A victory for Senator John Kerry in the US presidential election would see a substantial restoration of the transatlantic security partnership, the academic and leading member of the peace and human rights group, Action from Ireland (Afri), Dr Andy Storey, said in Dublin at the weekend.
If President Bush were re-elected, this would promote the development of an independent EU military capability, he told the Desmond Greaves summer school.
Despite the split between the US and some EU countries over Iraq, there was a tendency for the military roles of the EU and NATO to converge once again.
It had already been suggested by another academic that NATO had a new "deputy sheriff" in the EU. Dr Storey said there were "grounds for scepticism at the very least" about the ends towards which the EU's military capability would be directed.
In the words of one commentator, "The EU has lost its military virginity".
The EU had taken over a NATO police mission in Bosnia and a NATO military mission in Macedonia and had launched the first overseas mission in its own right, to the Democratic Republic of Congo. Later this year, the EU would take over the NATO military mission in Bosnia, Dr Storey said.
Ms Deirdre de Búrca, a Green Party councillor in Wicklow, said there was a "growing body of intelligent and engaged citizens" who wanted to believe in a politically progressive Europe, but had deep concerns about the EU's economic, security and immigration policies and the continuing "democratic deficit" in EU institutions.
"It is unfortunate that there only appears to be two positions that one can take when it comes to any kind of debate about European integration: For or Against the current model."
Highlighting aspects of the EU's democratic deficit, she said the powers given to the European Central Bank meant that economic and monetary policy was largely removed from democratic control.
The unelected European Commission had exclusive responsibility for EU trade policy.
The European Council, consisting of 25 heads of state or government, was "the most undemocratic institution of the Union".
She had no "magic answers" for democratising the European Union, but the first Danish rejection of Maastricht and the first Irish rejection of Nice had been "important wake-up calls", Ms de Búrca said.