The Guardian , Uneasy peace has broken out between Nato and the EU following their brief but bloody hostilities over plans to boost European defence. It took the considerable spinning powers of Jamie Shea – the media star of the Kosovo war – to shut down a damaging story about a serious spat between the two big beasts of Brussels.
But angry words from the normally silky US ambassador to Nato, a Gallic sulk from his French counterpart and a stream of Pentagon complaints about European designs and British duplicity add up to far more than diplomatic tittle-tattle.
The strains between the world's most successful military alliance and an EU with increasingly grand ambitions are part of the wider issue of sorting out the way the world works after the Iraq war. That's difficult enough. But add Europe's attempts to write a constitution, including the novel question of defence, and you have a real problem.
The US wants European allies to stop setting up committees and whingeing about budget deficits and instead to do more to share the burden of policing the world's trouble spots. Modest EU missions have been sent to Macedonia, Bosnia and the Congo. Poles – the toughest of next year's new intake – Spaniards and of course Brits are doing their bit in Iraq, while even those “old European” French and Germans are with Nato in Afghanistan.
But the ructions over Saddam dented trust in the carefully negotiated deal under which EU forces could use Nato planning and equipment. Then the “chocolate summiteers” -France, Germany, Belgium and Luxembourg – proposed an EU operational planning HQ, breaching the principle of not duplicating what Nato does and confirming American suspicions that the ultimate, Gaullist, goal is to set up a European rival.
It was Tony Blair, though, who really annoyed Washington, signalling to Jacques Chirac and Gerhard Schr
