LONDON -- Ever since the end of World War II, Western Europe and the United States have felt like partners, sharing a wide range of common values and bound militarily by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization alliance. There have, inevitably, been strains over the decades, and a need to re-assess the relationship emerged with the collapse of communism and the end of the Cold War.
Now, European capitals are asking themselves if the bedrock of the last half-century is being seriously eroded. Fresh trans-Atlantic disputes seem to emerge almost every week, with most of them originating across the ocean.
Some of U.S. President George W. Bush's early policy moves were a portent of things to come. The refusal to go along with the Kyoto Protocol caused widespread disquiet in Europe, where Green parties had Cabinet members in both France and Germany. Plans for an antimissile system also worried a continent that would see the destruction of treaties it had considered integral to its security.