People are sitting in foreign ministries all around the pro-American world trying to work out what being an ally of the United States means these days. There are other people sitting around in foreign ministries in the anti-American world working out the costs and benefits of being an enemy of America, and more people sitting around in foreign ministries in the "are we a friend or foe of America?" world doing the same calculations on friend-om or foe-dom or in-between-dom.

The latter two, perhaps, have the hardest thinking to do, especially on the cost side. But Canadians and Europeans, who think they're solid buddies of the U.S., have to think through what that means. And what it will mean down the road.

In Washington recently, seeing a swath of policymakers and analysts in and around the Bush administration, it came home to me that here was a hegemon fully entering into a realization, and enjoyment, of its own power. No more Mr. Modest. Time to admit it: We're the strongest, the smartest, the richest. No boasting involved; these are just the facts. Admit it (you others out there), and have a nice day.

"The United States," write Dartmouth College professors Stephen Brooks and William Wohlforth in the current issue of Foreign Affairs, "has no rival in any critical dimension of power. There has never been a system of sovereign states that contained one state with this degree of dominance." The U.S. Defense Department, writes peace studies scholar Michael Klare in The Nation, will, in the next few years, "acquire a capacity to defeat any conceivable type of attack mounted by any imaginable adversary at any point in time. . . . This is a mandate for the pursuit of permanent military supremacy."

The statement of American power that's had the most effect is an essay by policy analyst Robert Kagan in the Hudson Institute's Policy Review. The essay says to the Europeans: Look, you're militarily weak. Your European Union hasn't done much about this weakness, despite all the talk of rapid reaction forces. You aren't spending any more on Defense You aren't making your military into one fighting force. You haven't got much of a strategic view of the world.

I called Mr. Kagan -- he lives in Brussels, which is as good a place as any to observe the weakness of Europe -- and asked him what he thought about the hot issue of the day with the Europeans: Will they go with the U.S. on Iraq?

"We probably know what will happen with Iraq," he said. "We'll probably do it and some Europeans will participate. The French and the Brits certainly will. Germany can't, but will support. But that doesn't solve the problem of weakness. The Europeans won't be central to it, whatever happens. If they're part of it, it will be minor. They can't stand the prospect of being irrelevant if they don't come in."

To say you're the greatest is a liberating, even exhilarating, feeling. It's something of a compensation for the horror of Sept. 11, and the ever-present sense, especially among those who live in Washington and New York, that some other, maybe worse, horror is being prepared. It is also largely true. Defense spending increases have made America stronger than the next nine states combined. Economic and productivity growth have made America the richest country on Earth.

Technological innovation has given U.S. corporations the decisive lead over those of any other, with the partial exception of the Japanese. The cultural projection of the U.S. through film, TV and cable news dominates, or is a major presence in, almost every culture. The pre-eminence of U.S. universities means that everything from nuclear physics to medical research to political science is often first or best done there.

The Washington elite thus has the increasingly confident sense of being at the hub of a great wheel. Down the spokes radiating out from the hubs are areas of a world that the U.S. dominates.

Some are challenging but full of promise: George W. Bush's foreign policy people see Russia in that way, believing it now to be on a course for inclusion in the West. Some are deeply uncertain -- as are the calculations on what place China will make for itself as it continues to grow in strength and wealth.

Some are alarming, as economic crises and political turbulence in Latin America conjoin to pull down many of the states. One is critical: The Middle East throws up constant choices as to the use, or withholding, of American power and pressure.

The spokes at the end of which Europeans and Canadians live are really not much of a problem. We may whine at times, and get a bit more condescension (or not) for our pains; but no U.S. president or secretary of state has to wake up in the morning thinking that America is going to be pulled into a European war, or that American corporations will be nationalized.

But both sides -- the U.S. and its buddies -- have some hard thinking to do and hard choices at the end of it. The Europeans, who actually say they want to become a superpower, have to determine this. Will we, after all, remain comfortably under the American shield? Or will our so far faltering efforts to create a common Defense and foreign policy and the military capability to match come to something? Will we remain subalterns to the U.S. general? Or aspire to general's rank ourselves, and share the burdens of world leadership?

It is the choice we are now being pressed to make. But it is a confusing one, subject to conflicting signals. Washington has not made up its mind between an updated version of an old strategy and accommodating itself to a new situation. The old strategy is assuring the security of its good friends, because it made the world safer for the U.S. and because it removed any need for any of its good friends to rival its power and cause it headaches. Updating it would mean finding new roles for its good friends -- as it has for the Canadians and Europeans in Afghanistan -- but setting the strategic priorities for them in a world it commands.

The new situation would be to begin to accommodate U.S. power to the expectation of Euro power, and to welcome, even encourage, the latter's growth. It would be a novel situation, reminiscent of British diplomacy's constant concern to build up weak European states to preserve a balance of power to neutralize a threat to its security -- but on a much vaster scale with a different intent.

The intent would be, as ever, a stable globe. For the moment, the U.S. sees no better route to stability than through its own power. It glories in that power but is willing to use it, too. It will take serious convincing that there is a better way to get along. If we think there is a better way -- for us, for them, for all -- then we have to be serious, too. Or get used to friendly irrelevance, revolving quietly around the busy hub.

John Lloyd, a former editor of The New Statesman, is a London-based journalist.

© 2002 Bell Globemedia Interactive Inc

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