America has become quite accustomed to being despised by Europe. I wonder how Europe will adjust to being hated -- or worse, dismissed -- by America. What's that? You thought that the contemptuous attitude to Old Europe had been definitively trounced when the swaggering Texan was replaced by Barack Obama, the cosmopolitan sophisticate who took time out from his own domestic political campaign to address adoring crowds in Berlin? Bizarrely enough, precisely the opposite has happened. Paradoxically, what Mr Obama has succeeded in demonstrating to his own nation is that no amount of charm and flattery, no degree of self-abasement and apology for American "arrogance" is going to get any meaningful reciprocity from the Old Europeans (which is to say France and Germany, and the EU which they dominate) who could give lessons in sublime, transcendental arrogance to any American president however urbane and nuanced his message might be.
It is only now America has stopped swaggering that its more erudite, socially acceptable commentators have begun to engage in vitriolic condemnation of European selfishness and irresponsibility in the face of international danger: what is emerging is, in effect, a mirror image of the anti-Americanism which has become commonplace among European intellectuals. And paradoxically, it is precisely the change in presidential tone and approach which has made this possible.