How the World Sees It: The world may have high hopes for the new administration, but the EU at least should look to its own house first; Today Europe's standing in the United States is so low that it scarcely figures in election rhetoric, let alone in U.S. geopolitical calculations.

Byline: Andrew Moravcsik (Moravcsik is director of the European Union Program at Princeton University.)

Europeans were right. It was a world election. They favored Kerry, roughly 6-1. Now they must live with the result. Europeans opposed Bush largely because they believe his administration lives in a dream world of libertarian conservatism, religious revivalism and American patriotism. Ideologically driven officials, Europeans believe, manipulated the American public and made a false virtue out of "shoot first and ask questions later." Revelations of how Bush insiders exploited tight control over access to the president and invoked religious faith to quash debate only reinforced this impression. So did the administration's refusal (or inability) to acknowledge its failures in the deepening Iraqi quagmire.

Europeans like to think of themselves as free of such ideological baggage. Most believe their foreign policy is nonpartisan, culturally sensitive, properly skeptical of military intervention and grounded in a consensus on the centrality of human rights and international law. But does Europe offer a serious and sober alternative to American hegemony? Not really.

In the run-up to Iraq, European governments were pushed to ideological extremes of their own. Britain's Tony Blair borrowed Bush's absolutist moral rhetoric, only to sign on to the American program with little to show for it. France's Jacques Chirac and Germany's Gerhard Schroder voiced strident opposition--to the point of unilaterally ruling out participation in Iraq, even under a U.N. mandate. The result: Europeans were utterly discredited in American domestic politics. Today Europe's standing is so low that it scarcely figures in election rhetoric, let alone U.S. geopolitical calculations. Will this change? Not likely, because the problem isn't just America. It's also Europe and its lack of seriousness when it comes to foreign policy.

Consider Iraq. Gerhard Schroder didn't even wait for the U.S. election results before pulling the rhetorical rug out from under the Democrats, reiterating Germany's unwillingness under any circumstances to send troops to Iraq. The French followed suit. Compromise measures--debt relief, training, or financing--are nowhere to be seen. And what of Iran, perhaps the next big global crisis? Even if Europeans were correct to doubt the existence of weapons of mass destruction and the impracticality of a regime-changing occupation in Iraq, there is little disagreement among Western intelligence services that Tehran will be able to construct a workable nuclear device by 2007. The European policy of engagement, ...