The Continental Divide

LONDON, Sept. 20, 2006 — -- What is going on between the United States and Europe?

Are they drifting apart? Well, yeah.

It used to be that the land below the table supporting your computer was part of Europe.

If you look at a world map, and think about geology, you know that Europe is moving away from America at a steady pace, at about the same rate that your fingernails are growing.

That may be only a few inches a year, but a few million years here, a few million years there, and before you know it, there's a rift.

Now, some people believe they sense temblors in the continental political plates, which could cause a new diplomatic rift between Europe and the United States.

Politics' seismic needles have been twitching after several developments.

In recent German elections, the far-right National Democratic Party, known by its German initials NPD, won 7.3 percent of the vote in the northeastern region of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, entitling it to six seats in the local legislature.

The NPD has made no secret of its harsh anti-foreigner stance, and has praised Nazi-era economic and education policies.

Widespread unemployment and resentment of cheap immigrant labor were cited as important factors.

Sweden, that bastion of socialism, has just slid a bit to the right, as well.

A center-right coalition beat the left-leaning Social Democrats in elections, and the coalition did it by campaigning on pledges to fine-tune Sweden's cherished welfare state by lowering taxes, trimming unemployment benefits, and selling off state assets in big companies.

In France today, far-right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen launched his 2007 presidential campaign on a historic French battleground, urging people of all colors and origins to rally to his anti-immigration flag.

Le Pen shocked France by finishing second to President Jacques Chirac in the 2002 election, and is confident of repeating the upset in next year's poll, thanks to widespread discontent with France's mainstream political parties.

We'll see.

Le Pen may not be the big quake that shakes France into the far right, but he is showing some amazing gravitational pull.

Yes, we come to expect volatility in European politics.

But what may be sneaking up on us, is the question of whether Britain might be pulling away from the "special relationship" or not?

Prime Minister Tony Blair, frequently criticized at home as being slavishly loyal to President Bush and U.S. foreign policy, is now on record as saying he will resign by next summer.

His likely successor is British Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown, who, if elected Labour Party leader, will become British prime minister, at least until the next election.

No one running for election can afford to ignore the widespread British public disenchantment with U.S. foreign policy.

According to a recent YouGov poll for The Daily Telegraph, nearly two-thirds of Britains think Blair is doing whatever Bush tells him to do.

An ICM poll in The Guardian newspaper reports that 63 percent think Blair has tied Britain too closely to the United States, and that more than half of that opinion is held by Labour Party supporters.

The British opposition Conservative leader, David Cameron, perhaps with a sharp eye on the seismic needle, recently declared that Britain should drop its "slavish" support for the United States and restore "moral authority" to its foreign policy.

Labour's Brown, ever cautious and ever shrewd, has said very little.

But that hasn't stopped political pundits from predicting what a potential Brown-led British government would do.

Dr. Robert McGeehan, associate fellow at the British think tank Chatham House, said, "I don't think that we will see a dramatic sea change in British-American policy," adding that Brown appeared to be prepared to carry forward Blair's U.S.-U.K. relations.

"But one has to remember that Brown has never been anti-American," McGeehan said.

Gideon Rachman, a foreign-relations analyst at The Financial Times, said, "Changes in Europe's political landscape will have a side effect on relations with the U.S. These changes may not be dramatic or immediate but it'd appear that following the war in Iraq, and with public opinion against American policies at an all-time high, there will be some changes."

A gradual drift will be inevitable, he says. "Under a Brown leadership, official cooperation will continue, but this will be in the areas of, for example, climate change. In terms of foreign policy, if Brown can distance himself from American policies without causing chaos then he will do that," Rachman said.

But some analysts think U.S.-British relations are not about to change.

"A Gordon Brown premiership would make very little difference to the U.S.-U.K. relationship," said Andrew Mueller, a British political commentator.

"In fact, it's hard to imagine a plausible combination of a president and prime minister that would," he said.

"Brown is very famously an Americophile, anyway. It's true that [he] has been noticeably quiet about the war in Iraq, but, when pressed, [he] certainly hasn't come out against it, and I can't imagine he'd have done much differently in the last five years."

For most Britons, it seems clear that the next British prime minister will want to maintain the "special relationship," but perhaps without the special headaches of blanket support for U.S. policy.

That will be a challenge worthy of a world-class leader.

Additional reporting by Derek Karikari and Roger Kaplinsky-Dwarika.