The European left has been so stung by the rise of nationalism and religious sentiment in Eastern Europe since the fall of the Iron Curtain that it no longer knows if it has a reason to exist.
The "New Left" has lost its way because it claims that "pacifism," its traditional rallying cry, has been so defiled by what NATO did in Kosovo that it dare not lift its eyes. But this criticism of the bombing of Kosovo is in the mould of Cold War politics, of East against West.
The Western European left's ideological umbilical cord was ripped out with Lithuanian independence and the demise of communism, as a system of government. By then the left had already witnessed the rise of nationalism among the Russians and minority ethnic groups in Eastern Europe. It would have saved face if the Soviet Union in the late 1980s and early 1990s had managed to keep its revolution-prone proletariat under control and had not altered the course of historical materialism.