TRANSATLANTIC relations are now the most pressing foreign policy problem. Sorting out the damage to the unity of the West caused by the Iraq war is more urgent than the understandable British preoccupation with the euro assessment and the Convention on the Future of Europe, important though both decisions are. They are connected because, unless the West’s disunity is ended, it will be much harder to reach agreement about how Europe develops. Some of the fuss about the convention, absurdly over-the-top and dishonest though it is, is fuelled by these divisions.

The problem is urgent because there is now a deadline of only a fortnight to agree a United Nations resolution about the future of Iraq in the face of French, Russian and German worries about the role of the UN in rebuilding the country and over weapons inspections. This is the first big test of whether the permanent five on the Security Council can work together again. The odds are that some form of deal will be agreed, not least because the heads of government are due to meet for the G8 summit in France at the end of next week. Any image of harmony may be through gritted teeth.

Worries about the state of the alliance were discussed in recent visits to Washington by Sir David Manning, the Prime Minister’s foreign policy adviser, and by Sir Michael Jay, the Foreign Office Permanent Secretary. In a speech yesterday in Brussels to the Centre for European Reform, Jack Straw argued against being forced to make a choice between the US or the EU.

The scale of the difficulties is underlined by a declaration on transatlantic relations from 20 American and European heads of foreign policy think-tanks and former officials (a who’s who of the transatlantic policy world). They argue that, while emotions are still running high, now is the time to stop the provocations and work towards a common agenda: “We reject a policy of revenge, whether it is to punish those who disagree with the US and its allies or to refuse to participate constructively and wholeheartedly in the rebuilding of Iraq.”

The declaration suggests joint strategies or bargains on Iraq, the Israeli-Palestinian dispute, Iran, terrorism, weapons of mass destruction, development, trade and climate change. Each requires movement by the US and Europe, as well as no public grandstanding. The unstated targets are Donald Rumsfeld, with his attempt to split Europe into old and new, and Jacques Chirac, with his talk of a multipolar world with Europe as a counterweight to the US.

Peter Mandelson underlined the risks in a speech to the Königswinter conference of the Anglo-German old and the bold in Berlin. He argued for a more united EU co-operating with the US rather than a Gaullist “balance of power” view and for an activist approach to new threats involving, if necessary, pre-emption. The danger is of “an unsatisfactory dualism in which countries have to choose whether they are in the American or the non-American camp”. Continued divisions “risk consigning Germany to an arguably doomed alliance with France and Russia that would not be in Germany’s transatlantic interests and would greatly destabilise its EU partners”.

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