Some time ago I upset the Prime Minister by suggesting in several articles that his notion of becoming a bridge between the US and the EU is a fantasy, and that Britain would some day, and soon, have to choose between America and a Europe dominated by a Franco-German axis. Tony Blair used the occasion of the David Frost programme to say that I was wrong, and that only the “bad guys” benefit when someone tries to drive a wedge between America and Europe.

That was before Iraq, in the balmy days when the Prime Minister and the French agreed to the Nice Treaty, which the French knew was the beginning of the end for Nato, and Blair honestly believed marked the creation of a new European supplement to that pact, one that had kept the peace in Europe for more than 50 years. A united and militarily potent Europe would march hand in hand with America into the future, Europe carrying its own weight, and Great Britain positioned as the balancing force between France and Germany, and as a bridge between a united Europe and the United States. Better still, more and more decisions would be moved to the United Nations, where Britain’s veto on the Security Council confers on it a role more commensurate with its one-time rank as a world power than with its current more humble standing in the international ranking of nations.

In short, in this joined-up view of the world, Britain did not have to choose between its special relationship with America and placing itself at the heart of Europe: it could have both its ice-cream and apple pie, and its brie and chablis.

Now we have Iraq, and Jacques Chirac’s alliance with a Germany wallowing in anti-Americanism. Chirac’s stirring up of “the European street” to derail Anglo-American efforts to strip weapons of mass destruction from one of the cruelest regimes the world has seen since Hitler and then Stalin came crashing down surprised no one.

Well, hardly anyone. The Secretary of State, Colin Powell, took France at its word when Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin promised that, if America would sign up to Resolution 1441, no further resolutions would be required to underwrite the use of force to disarm Saddam. If you want to know why doveish General Powell has grown talons, imagine the session in the White House at which he had to explain to President Bush, who had reluctantly agreed to allow his Secretary of State to enmesh America in the UN process, that the French had reneged, and that the US was now hopelessly sinking into the muck of Security Council processes.

Bush’s reported promise that he would never forget nor forgive France’s perfidy, following on his frosty reaction to Gerhard Schröder’s anti-American blatherings, brings us back to Tony Blair. What will happen to Britain’s position vis-à-vis Europe and the United States in a post-Saddam world? It seems clear that the bridge that the Prime Minister was so painfully constructing between Europe and America has collapsed. To add to the Prime Minister’s post-Saddam woes, US Administration officials have begun to re-examine America’s historic support for European integration. The thinkers who influence the Bush Administration’s foreign policy no longer see the need to support unification of Europe so that it can be a more formidable ally against the now-gone Soviet Union.

Rather than deal with what Donald Rumsfeld calls “Old Europe”, goes the new thinking, the US should deal directly with Britain, and a Prime Minister who has proved himself one of the great international statesmen of his age.

Attention should also be paid to the “New Europe” of countries that know first-hand what it is like to live under a tyrant, supplemented by other countries that feel no need to join the Franco-German axis.

But that puts Blair between a rock and a hard place. He is deep in negotiations with Valéry Giscard d’Estaing over the shape of a new European constitution. There is no question that by signing this document Britain will commit itself to a common European defence and foreign policy. There will then be no inclination and very little reason for the Bushes to receive the Blairs at the Crawford, Texas, ranch or at Camp David.

“W” and “Tone” may continue to use the same brand of toothpaste. But America’s need and wish to consult No 10 on matters of importance will be gone in a world in which the G7 has been replaced by a G3 (the EU, US, Japan), for the sensible reason that one need not discuss international monetary policy with countries that don’t have their own money. Eventually, Britain and France will be pressured to surrender their Security Council seats to the EU’s chosen representative.

It is, of course, for Blair and Britain to decide whether the costs of deeper integration are exceeded by the benefits. But it is for America to say how it will deal with Britain under the alternative scenarios available to the UK. As an American in love with your country, and an admirer of your Prime Minister’s willingness to pay a steep political price for his moral principles, I can only hope that Britain understands the situation it faces.

Blair once saw only one path open to Britain — further integration into Europe in the hope of becoming Europe’s man in America. The world has changed: he can no longer have Brussels and Washington, too. He will have to choose between the new European constitution, which weds him to the Franco-German axis, and the alternative that strengthens and enlarges the historic special relationship with America, while at the same time solidifying Britain’s role as the leader of “New Europe”. That would involve what politicians dread — a U-turn. But a driver who has negotiated the twists and turns of foreign policy as skilfully as has Blair surely knows that when headed in the wrong direction it is better to execute a U-turn than to continue on a hiding to nowhere.

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