Europe's desire to please the United States without looking too much like it is dependent on it and 'Western' policy towards the difficult emerging powers of the East, whether Russia, Iran or China, are intimately connected.

There is worldwide coverage of the Pentagon’s demand for the death penalty for the six Guantanamo men who are being placed on military trial for masterminding 9/11. The military nature of the 'justice', the undoubted use of torture to obtain evidence and the possibility of the death penalty will profoundly alienate not only much Islamic sentiment but liberal Europeans as well.

There is also apparent tension over US linkage of visa waivers to EU citizens with acceptance by European governments of US security demands. This is centring on two issues: armed air marshals on US flights across the Atlantic; and electronic authorization schemes for travellers.

As so often, the US is exploiting Czech and Polish pro-US sentiment against the older members of the EU, but these debates have to be seen in the context of EU Justice and Home Affairs Commissioner Frattini’s (a veritable security ‘hawk’) plans to toughen EU border controls.

The EU has no objection to a tough security agenda - any more than it does to improved regulation of capitalism through transatlantic collaboration - but the EU's political leadership are aware that its desire to build a unified Western response to global conditions is not one where it wants its public to ask too many questions about the process by which the sausage is made.

US-European relations remain sensitive on a whole series of issues – not only on Guantanamo and the death penalty and the attempt to ‘bully’ the EU into some counter-intuitive security measures, but also over commitment to Afghanistan and (in some quarters) missile defence.

This is not to say that the EU is anti-American (far from it, even in the 'street') but only that it is aware that radical right-wing sentiment and small states are being used by the US to place undue pressure on European officials and systems. 

Irritation is growing in some quarters (though most EU government officials remain as supine as ever) because special interest groups and the centre-left are being upset in a period when the 'faux' constitution needs a smooth passage through legislatures and with minimum debate on referenda or democratic deficits - let alone policy.

A last burst of policy aggression from an outgoing US Administration is the logic of only nine months in which to handle a lot of unfinished business. There is a determination to set the foreign policy agenda whether for a conservative successor (McCain) or to cause division and introversion amongst an unstable Democrat Party.

The EU is trying to manage its way through this, hoping (quite simply) to recover ground in later co-operation with a more reasonable US Administration that wants a proper, traditional and realist alliance.

Take as an example, pressure on Iran. US pressure on EU banks is not diminishing but growing tougher. The Atlantic Powers (US, UK and France) are trying to force the rest of Europe to mount further pressure on Bank Saderat and Bank Melli.

The failure of the EU to take action has meant that Bank Saderat can continue to operate in the City of London, which is highly embarrassing to a weak British Government. Germany and Italy in particular are resisting full EU action until a UN Resolution is passed.

The current draft UNSC Resolution, apparently pre-approved by China and Russia, merely calls on member states to ‘exercise vigilance’ over Iranian banks. If the UNSC can pass something like this, EU officials can then use it politically to ‘gold plate’ (i.e. extend beyond its original mandate) the Resolution with action of its own if they are so minded.

Officials can pretend to a semi-educated public that their hands are being forced by the UN when all they are really doing is bending, once again, to American will. European publics are sheep led by donkeys - but the sheep still think that they are free to roam and the donkeys do not want them to find out that they are surrounded by electric fences.

The diplomatic ‘spin’ is, somewhat laughably, that this is all about ‘sending important messages to Tehran’ – as if Tehran really cared that much about Western opinion nowadays.

As we have argued elsewhere [see our comments on Chad], the UN is declining, at UNSC level, into a mere tool for creating cover for specific Western foreign policy initiatives. Its reputation is sliding by the month as this becomes apparent to all except those Western publics that the process is designed to delude.

We now see the almost bored collusion of the non-Western powers in this decline as they see that manipulation of the substance of UN decision-making merely allows the West to dig itself into ever deeper holes.

After the imbroglio over Iraq, powers like Russia and China are perfectly well aware that a Western-inspired Resolution will be used to give public relations cover for more than was intended. 

Rather than fight the process, foreign ministries have cynically learnt to give the West enough rope to hang itself by supporting resolutions that damage its economic competitiveness and suck it into new adventures without any obligations on themselves. Western diplomats are being 'played'.

From a Western point of view, this does not matter. Such initiatives are required to give a 'moral base' and forestall criticism in liberal societies - 'if the UN agrees it (it never being entirely clear what was agreed, however), then it must be all right'.  Cynicism in all directions.

It is not true that the Iranian economy is not being hurt by sanctions of various sorts and it may be that the hurt is sufficient to undercut Ahmedinajad’s political base (which may then permit an eventual negotiated settlement), but there is still no sign that the economy is in ruins while the clerical establishment appear fully committed to nuclearisation.

Nor is it likely that a vague UN Resolution can ever be again be interpreted as a right by the West to wage war - the rising powers are not that collusive or that stupid. Proponents of a first Israeli strike, eat your heart out.

Nevertheless, the curent political leaderships in the West are aware that they are losing ground amongst their electorates. They need to reinvigorate support for some reassignment of resources. Between now and the April NATO Summit, we are going to see a lot of propaganda to try and recapture the moral high ground in the West and for the West. 

The process started in earnest yesterday with Foreign Secretary Miliband's assertion that the UK had a ‘moral mission’ to spread democracy throughout the world despite the mistakes made in Iraq and Afghanistan.

What was most interesting in this context was his concentration not on the Middle East but on China - the big Daddy of resistance to Western aspirations - in advance of a planned visit to the Chinese capital. 

We are back to the golden days of PNAC-type theorizing only days after the (coincidental?) uncovering of a Chinese spy ring in the US defence industry and the day before Stephen Spielberg withdrew as artistic adviser to the Beijing Olympics over Darfur. As we say, all international relations are connected.

Miliband was specific that the rise of China meant that the ‘forward march of democracy’ could no longer be taken for granted. He was simultaneously trying to reclaim the promotion of democracy from the neo-conservatives by recasting it as a “great progressive project”.

Our view has always been that neo-conservatives and liberal progressives always have been and always will be two sides of the same coin and we identified (for our private client base) a deliberate 'shift to the left' by ideological proponents of the extension of Western values, beginning as early as 2003 and embedding itself in the system by 2006.

Whether 'Western values' are neo-conservative or progressive is an intellectual irrelevance because it is merely a matter of emphasis within the close association of free markets and liberal constitutional politics.

The unapologetic advocacy of military power as a tool by Miliband (a view no doubt shared by Sarkozy) may sustain existing divisions within the centre-left (not that those actually in power care that much), but it will also confirm that alleged 'progressives' have a theory of confrontation with other systems that should be deeply worrying if analysed with any integrity.

A decade ago we theorised that a European Project designed to ensure that the conditions no longer existed for violent conflict between European powers (with much success to date) would degenerate, as the federalisation process extended, into one which assisted in creating the conditions for far more dangerous conflicts between mega-powers over resources in the new century.

We do not think this process is inevitable by any means but a supine European leadership seems to be sleep-walking into an offensive 'progressive' agenda that has all the appearance of the pursuance of the victories of 1945 and 1989-1991.

If so, these liberal extremists directly threaten the original dream of the European community to pre-empt all causes of war through dialogue. The next war, the one that kills billions, may be caused by good intentions.

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