WORLDVIEW/Paul Gillespie: 'If we demonstrate an America that has a foreign policy that is smarter, more engaged and more respectful of the world, we're going to bring people to our side." So John Kerry told CBS Face the Nation last Sunday, explaining his foreign policy positions after the Democratic convention.
John Edwards said a Democratic administration could "bring other countries like France and Germany and Russia to the reconstruction effort, so that the Iraq economy can get off the ground and we can get some debt forgiveness".
Kerry said he could negotiate privately as president to get NATO involved in Iraq.
It's a pretty upfront signal to Europeans that a Democratic administration would put much more emphasis on mending transatlantic relations.
And it is an invitation to reflect seriously on what should be involved, precisely what the Kerry team is proposing, and whether it matches the desirable development of European policy - insofar as it can be said to exist yet.
Whoever wins the election John Bruton is expected to be the next EU ambassador in Washington, building on substantial goodwill arising from the Dromoland summit and Ireland's own commitment to - and interest in - keeping transatlantic relations as open and harmonious as possible.
Timothy Garton Ash writes in the Guardian that "if Europe has any wisdom at all, we should start thinking about how we answer the Democratic challenge".
As he sees it, the answer should be yes - so long as a Kerry administration: rededicates itself to a peace process between Israel and Palestine; recognises that Iraq has to be embedded in a much larger project of reform and development in the Middle East embarked on together with Europe; delivers on promises to develop on alternative technologies; address the US's own excessive carbon dioxide emissions and come back to the international treaties and institutions the Bush administration abrogated and scorned.
The policy positions adopted by the Democrats and recent articles by their influential advisers indicate they anticipate such bargaining.
Clinton's national security adviser Samuel Berger (who has now resigned after a Republican sting operation alleging he interfered with White House records), writing in the May/June issue of Foreign Affairs, says that although the US has "never enjoyed greater power than it does today. It has rarely possessed so little influence".
The Bush administration has alienated the US's natural allies by stressing unilateralism over co-operation, pre-emption over prevention and disengaging from many of the world's most pressing problems.
A Democratic administration would recognise that means are as important as ends in foreign policy.
Philip Gordon, another former Clinton official, writes a letter to Europe in the July Prospect magazine along the same lines, proposing a new deal and hoping there will be movement even before the election on a G8 initiative on the Middle East, the Doha trade round, and Israeli withdrawal from Gaza.
But he is pessimistic that fresh violence in Iraq, the Spanish pull-out from there after the elections, the Abu Ghraib scandal and the Bush-Sharon deal will undermine that and put off any movement until next year.
He invites European governments to respond positively, arguing that this would allow NATO to be reconfigured and the Europeans join the US at the top table to deal with global security, while agreeing not to try to constrain US power "and instead accept the goal of strategic partnership with the US".
This is a coherent programme and, it has to be recognised, a likely one if Kerry is indeed elected.
The balance of sentiment among European governments will be to give it a try, partly to sharpen up and strengthen the new EU foreign policy structures and bolster the incoming Commission.
And yet there are several reasons for scepticism. The outgoing EU ambassador in Washington, Günter Burghardt, addressing the European Parliament's foreign affairs committee last week, cautioned that getting the US to treat the EU as a partner "depends on how seriously we take ourselves", adding "that is something only we can manage".
The US will be willing to engage - but without dropping the option to deal unilaterally with sympathetic governments, which undermines the effort "to enter into a partnership of equals".
James Lindsay, director of studies at the US Council of Foreign Relations, says much will depend on how Iraq is going in six months.
If it has turned the corner and is doing very well there will be less pressure to internationalise.
But if it is not "there are going to be very real questions about whether the Europeans will want to make a commitment to Iraq, regardless of whether they like John Kerry".
Lindsay also says the Kerry and Bush positions on Iraq are very similar, as they are on US military power. Kerry would probably not control the Senate and would therefore not be able to deliver on Kyoto, the ICC and the UN.
Gordon asks how the Europeans would respond to a second Bush administration more convinced about the need for allies.
The latest issue of the British journal International Affairs concludes that on balance such a new deal will be reached.
Responding to such appeals from Washington David Marquand (in the August Prospect) goes outside the conventional wisdom and puts a different, much more challenging - and historically plausible - position.
The world has changed irrevocably after the end of the Cold War. NATO, the "West" and the transatlantic relationship are redundant and cannot be reinvented. Europe and the US have different interests even if they still have many values in common.
Europe's major task is "how to ensure that the EU has the power, cohesion and will to safeguard the interests of its peoples in the inevitable multipolar world of the future", in which China and India and perhaps Russia will join the US as superpowers over the next 50 years.
pgillespie@irish-times.ie