The drumbeat of European dissatisfaction . . .

A drumbeat of European dissatisfaction with the US-led war in Afghanistan built up this week. It came just when the Americans made their greatest military gains, along with their allies in the Northern Alliance.

The possibility of a US attack on Iraq, the non-engagement of European forces in the military action, the supply of civil and humanitarian aid and the issues of prisoners' rights and repressive anti-terrorist legislation all contributed to the disquiet. This raised once again the nature of US political leadership in the world and whether and how it must share it with other major players if the US is to maintain its undoubted power and hegemony. However much the world has changed since September 11th, this issue has certainly come into the foreground of international debate. It seems set to stay there now that the military phase of the Afghan war may be drawing to a conclusion.

Pace Bill McSweeney in this newspaper yesterday I have not argued that the Afghan crisis witnesses "the conversion of the US to the principles of multilateralism" or that the Bush/Blair partnership should be interpreted "as announcing a change in the principles by which states relate to one another". Commenting on Blair's Labour Party speech (The Irish Times, October 6th) I said it must be seen in the context of a political battle for multilateralism in a changing world, but that it was still too early to say the multilateralists within the Bush administration had definitely won their struggle against those who would rather rely on the unilateral assertion of US military power to protect its interests and values.

In the light of subsequent events, including this week's ones, that note of caution is all the more necessary. Mr Bush's remarks on the need for Iraq to allow UN inspectors back in was interpreted in Germany, France and other EU states as heralding a possible attack on that state, as has been consistently called for by hawks in the Bush administration.

The Europeans said it would break up the international coalition assembled to conduct the war. The states among them that have pledged troops to the coalition have been frustrated not to have been involved by the Pentagon, which is determined to maintain US command and control of the operation.

Partly this is for strictly military reasons, partly for wider ones. A Bush administration official quoted in the International Herald Tribune put it like this: "Nobody wants to see the war effort sidetracked because a bunch of European peacekeepers get taken hostage or caught in a firefight and have to be rescued by us".

The Europeans have been further annoyed by the lack of consultation on civilian and intelligence issues. There is frustration over the installation of extra-territorial US military tribunals to try suspect foreign terrorists, which could bypass European reservations about extradicting people to the US, where they could face the death penalty. The European Commission and the current Belgian EU presidency this week rejected what they regarded as an arbitrary set of demands from Washington for counter-terrorism co-operation.

This is consistent with the view that the US role should be to orchestrate and lead global military interventions, while the Europeans would follow them up with essentially subordinate peacekeeping and humanitarian efforts. As McSweeney puts it, this is best described as strategic co-operation rather than multilateralism. It preserves US power and depends on a compliant group of allies in a series of willing coalitions.

The Bush administration's policy might be described as "unilateral when we can, multilateral when we must", in contrast to the Clinton administration. It is a mistake to confuse unilateralism with isolationism, since the US must be engaged with the world. Both approaches are predicated on maintaining its autonomy from alliances it does not control or from treaty obligations that bind in its power.

McSweeney is right to distinguish that heavily qualified strategic co-operative approach from a genuine multilateralism that would "submit its foreign policy to the rule-governed demands of international organisation and law". He says Blair provides a cloying moral cover for US interests, not a real contribution to international co-operation.

Similar conclusions are reached in a recent sharply critical study of US power, Peter Gowan's The Global Gamble, Washington's Faustian Bid for World Dominance (Verso, 2001). He says the "liberal cosmopolitans" he criticises, among them Blair and other social democratic leaders and the Third Way theorists they draw upon, confuse juridical forms with social substance. They hope new regional and global regimes can encase state sovereignties in a legally egalitarian rule of law but fail to see the highly centralised pyramid of political, military and economic power behind it, guarded not by any supra-national authority, but by a single hegemon, the United States.

The crucial point about this debate is whether it is possible to envisage a genuine multilateralism in international affairs or whether we are fated effectively to resign ourselves to continuing US hegemony. EU disagreements with the US tend to centre on this question, partly because they are gradually becoming more equal.

EU political, economic and security policies are becoming increasingly multilateral and rule-governed. According to leading Commission officials in Brussels this trend will continue and engage the EU in more and more bargaining with Washington. To protect its interests Washington needs to share power more and listen to different views, they say. But it is a competitive business. President Putin of Russia is seen to be engaged in a very clever game with the US, opportunistically playing the Europeans off against them on Chechnya and even willing to work with Washington on Iraq.

Blair's internationalist rhetoric demands that globalisation cannot be stopped but used with the power of community to combine it with justice.

It can certainly be criticised for moralism. But it can also be asked whether the mostly inter-governmentalist means he supports within the EU to realise such goals are capable of achieving them. A genuine multilateralism is arguably best realised by a deeper form of integration than he supports. That issue will play through the debate on the future of Europe over the next three years.