Philip Gordon has an article in this months edition of Prospect that is well worth reading. Say thank you Gavin for finding the free version (PDF) on the Brookings Institution website.
Gordon is senior fellow in foreign policy studies and director of the Centre on the United States and Europe at the Brookings Institution.
A response to this letter is written by Timothy Garton Ash, and follows the Gordon piece.
Curiously Gordon makes some remarks regarding the future of US-EU relations such as:
We could be in the process of creating a new world order in which the very concept of the west will no longer exist. I am not saying that Europe and America will end up in a military stand-off like that between east and west during the cold war. But if current trends are not reversed, you can be sure we will see growing domestic pressure on both sides for confrontation rather than co-operation. This will lead to the effective end of Nato, and political rivalry in the middle east, Africa and Asia.
I tend to agree, thought Gordon later argues that this scenario is unlikely to unfold. I think it is much more likely than he makes out. Which reminds me that I must buy The End of the American Era: U.S. Foreign Policy and the Geopolitics of the Twenty-first Century by Charles A. Kupchan