Atlantic Faultline

I don't have much sympathy for either side of the ongoing Atlantic word-war. On one hand, we've got Euro-globalist bureaucrats who can't bear the thought of American sovereignty; on the other, Bos-Wash neocons who can't bear the thought of anyone else's sovereignty. It's a good thing neither crowd speaks for all their countrymen—otherwise, I'd have to defect to Mexico.

But there's more to the tension than that, as Timothy Garton Ash points out in "Anti-Europeanism in America," a very sharp essay in The New York Review of Books. Ash explores the historical and ideological roots of Americans' distrust for Europe and vice versa. What he writes isn't surprising so much as it's enriching: He deepens our understanding, fills in gaps, and never lets go of his dry, detached wit.