Valery Giscard d'Estaing has made much of the comparison between his efforts in writing a new European constitution and those of the founding fathers of America during the last quarter of the 18th century. This gesture does not make up for the damage done to American-French diplomatic relations by the behavior of President Jacques Chirac before and during the Iraqi conflict.

Even Giscard's comparison has its limitations. Ferdinand Mount has pointed out that "in fact, it [Europe] would be more of a superstate than the United States, where those powers not specifically granted to the federal government are reserved to the individual states. Here it would be the other way around with the Union deciding when and where it wishes to exercise its competence" (The Sunday Times).

For nearly 50 years, the United States has generally promoted European unity. It saw Europe's integration as a device for preventing future wars within the continent and as a benign, friendly economic partner across the Atlantic Ocean. Now there are clear signals that America is seriously reconsidering this traditional position. According to The Economist, "The idea that the United States is now actively undermining European unity crops up regularly in the reflections of Europe's great and good."

The Sunday Times' commentator Andrew Sullivan observed that "for the first time, Washington is taking European internal policies seriously." For one thing, "Washington would not be happy to see the UK subsumed under a European security apparatus."

Times columnist William Rees-Mogg bluntly asked of the British prime minister in print: "Does he have the realism to recognise that the proposed European constitution is intended to cut Britain away from the United States?" This veteran journalist and commentator, formerly editor of The Times, sees that "since 1914 the United States has been the moon which determined the tides of power in Europe through two world wars and a cold war."

Clearly America will now be watching the architecture of this new Europe very closely. —WNP