The World Is Bipolar After All.(United States, Europe)

Moravcsik is director of the European Union program at Harvard University.

What lessons can Europe draw from the war in Iraq? One is that U.S. hawks are right. There's only one superpower. The United States can go it alone, militarily. Europeans should accept this fact and move on. Does this mean the "unilateralist" hegemon can continue to stomp through the world? No. For the second lesson is that the United States cannot go it alone. Winning a war in the Middle East, it's becoming clear, is far easier than winning a peace. And when it comes to the essential instruments for carrying out this task--trade, aid, peacekeeping, monitoring and multilateral legitimation--there is also one superpower. That is the "quiet superpower"--Europe.

The architects of this week's minisummit in Brussels should keep this in mind. Germany, France, Belgium and Luxembourg meet to discuss their latest pipe dream--a European defense force. Only by creating a military complement to the United States, the thinking goes, can Europe regain true influence in the world. In fact, it is a waste of time and resources.

First, Europe will never spend the money to rival U.S. defense spending. Second, Europe's internal divisions would probably paralyze any such force. Third, the effort to create a European defense corps plays to Europe's weaknesses, rather than its strengths. If Europe seeks more global clout, it should focus on its comparative advantage and do what it does best.

The Bush administration likens Iraq to West Germany after World War II, fancifully imagining that a couple of years of occupation, modest aid and a speedy transition to an interim government will ignite an "economic miracle" financed by sales of privatized oil. But the German economic miracle was possible only with a massive Marshall Plan, trade concessions and a continuing U.S. military presence. Recent transitions in Iran, Russia and Afghanistan may be the more appropriate--and alarming--analogies.

If Iraq is to avoid a similar fate, massive foreign assistance is needed. Can Washington handle it? Not likely. Just look at Afghanistan. America won the war and walked. It denied the new Afghan government trade opportunities in textiles, strictly limited its troop presence and, having promised $2 billion in foreign aid, delivered only one tenth of it--and that only after initially forgetting to include the line item in its proposed annual budget.

So what, realistically, is ...