Newsweek: Europe Must First Come Together - by Dennis Macshane

For the complete report from Newsweek/MSNBC.com click on this link

"Europe Must First Come Together" - by Dennis Macshane

Does the welcome decline of European anti-Americanism mean Europe and the United States are converging? Not yet—and not for the foreseeable future. While government leaders in the European Union pay lip service to the United States and its ideals, they remain far apart on a slew of social and economic issues. But beyond that, a true alliance between the United States and the EU cannot take place until Europe finds a singular voice with which it can begin to build bridges across the Atlantic."

Poland has been showered with EU funds provided by taxpayers farther west, in the biggest cash transfer in Polish history. Yet instead of focusing on Poland's EU destiny, the ruling Kaczynski twins have accused their main political rivals of being in the pay of Germany. Warsaw's rhetoric mocks the idea that European convergence will one day replace the old nationalisms.

The French and Dutch rejections of the EU constitution in 2005 were symptoms of a Europe that does not know where it is going or what it wants to be. In Britain there is at best ambivalence, and often downright hostility, to Europe. The decline of anti-Americanism will not lead to a narrowing of the Atlantic until there is European leadership that is self-confident about the EU's future and can face down this kind of nationalist sectarianism, which sees Europe as a problem rather than as a solution.