Once strong Atlantic Alliance has become weak

By JOHN HALL
MEDIA GENERAL NEWS SERVICE
WASHINGTON -- For those of us born before World War II, the Atlantic Alliance has been a permanent but largely unseen rock of stability. To find that it is being chiseled out from under us is a little disconcerting.
U.S.-European ties are so weak at the moment that there is reason to question whether this dance is over. The absence of a "red menace" from Moscow isn't the only problem. It is the lack of interest and common cause between Europe and the United States.
The general alarm over Islamic radicalism has been trumped by European opposition to the American leadership of the war in Iraq, which is now widely blamed for all troubles in the Middle East -- including the current bombing of Lebanon.
U.S. methods brought to bear in the war on terrorism, from rendition of terrorist suspects to warrantless inspection of international bank records, have shocked some European parliaments and other institutions. Others just pretend to be shocked by them. Their motivation is and always has been removal of U.S. influence from the continent.
NATO's first "out of area" assignment since the collapse of the Soviet Union -- in Afghanistan -- has become predominantly an operation of British forces. There is only token support from most other NATO countries.
Many European leaders have turned inward to the European Union.
The European left, which has proved resilient in Germany, France, Britain, Spain and other large Western European nations, is busy running Americans out on a rail. Everything that European leftists ever said to disparage the United States is being dusted off -- from the evils of Abu Ghraib to the shortcomings of an economic model that is equated to harder work, longer hours, shorter vacations and a lifestyle of privation.
Generous benefits
These thoughts aren't just the opinion of the ruling elite or the chattering classes. An American doesn't have to go far on a European trip to encounter a waiter or a cab driver who wants to tell you about her six- or eight-week vacation, or his generous unemployment check if he loses his job.
You also encounter one couple complaining that, unlike in George W. Bush's United States, there will be little left after the United Kingdom taxes their children's inheritance. But that's a rare exception.
What of these children and the world they will inhabit on each side of the Atlantic when they grow up? Try to think of Europe if the Yanks go home.
Russia's impressive show of economic power in the age of $70-a-barrel oil now seems to make it a real player on the chessboard, not the clownish kleptocracy it was under Boris Yeltsin.
At the G8 summit in St. Petersburg, Russian President Vladimir Putin had the upper hand from start to finish. He hired a high-powered U.S. public-relations firm to get him through the run-up to the meetings. It was a very successful charm offensive, judging from the press notices overseas.
By wringing an Iranian nuclear deal out of Bush, Putin seemed to be well on his way toward his goal of presenting Russia as some kind of an alternative to American leadership.
Russian energy monopolies are making a big splash, and some investors in Europe and elsewhere who are used to the idea of state-owned enterprises are impressed.
The "American model" of limited government and laissez-faire free enterprise hangs by a thread in Europe. One last bastion is Poland, where identical twins with an emphatic pro-American foreign policy and ultra-conservative views have just taken over the government. They are facing a German-led campaign to laugh them out of office because of their looks.
Next door in Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovich -- who was Putin's choice to be president until the "Orange Revolution" of pro-Western voters stopped him -- has now re-emerged as the near-certain favorite to become prime minister.
Blair drowning
Russia at the moment is winning everywhere. Tony Blair's Britain is the last redoubt of solidarity with the United States, but, at home, the prime minister looks like a drowning man about to go under for the third time. Could the Atlantic Alliance go down with him?
John Hall is the senior Washington correspondent of Media General News Service.