The recent German Marshall Fund survey is the latest indicator that points to a destructive habit in United States’ global policy. Tragically, the present situation in Iraq demonstrates an overestimation of military force as a tool of nation building. More critical is America’s striking unwillingness, in budgetary, ethical or social terms, to sustain long-term engagements after intensive bombing campaigns.

In the past decade, we have witnessed the extent to which ethnic strife leaves wounds that can only heal fully from inside. Those groups in conflict in Rwanda, the Balkans, Afghanistan, Iraq, and the Middle East, must choose to live together. Time has proven necessary to rebuild essential basic infrastructures after Western military campaigns. Despite accomplishments in post-conflict reconstruction, preventing violence is often an elusive goal.

For this reason, it is not enough to rely on articles in newspapers, or the views of small groups of experts outside a region in turmoil, to understand the tragic effects of conflict, ethnic or otherwise, on societies. We must persist until impoverished areas, and peoples excluded from opportunity, are connected to the rest of the world in dialogue. This can be a direct consequence of the actions we take, in TIESWeb and in diverse educational connectivity forums, to bridge the multiple divides that separate us.

Ironically, we live during a period in history when the challenges that confront the United States and the entire European continent should do more to bring peoples together than tear their two continents apart. Global pandemics, transcontinental migratory flows and the deep economic instability revealed by 11 September are present realities. The scarcity of fresh drinking water is potentially our common future and the legacy we leave the next generation. In an uncertain world, we are squandering the precious human resources that sustain an irreplaceable relationship.

Character and courage are in demand for “We, the peoples,” to act in unprecedented ways. Each continent’s leaders are faced with the prospect of acknowledging an ethical obligation to their respective populations. Ours is an era of blatant denial of leadership responsibilities to each group in society and to the larger global society in the making. As national interests are weighed, leaders and citizens in Europe and America also grapple with the plight of the majority of the world’s peoples.

In this age of communications, technology qualifies the importance of geography. Critical thinking about the tensions between global trends and local traditions, as well as active learning to transform static mindsets into creative minds, are noticeably absent. In this generation, our less advantaged neighbors are unlikely to be assured minimum standards of economic security, health and human dignity or mutual respect that is their basic right. This is as much a transatlantic problem as a global one. As Iraq demonstrates, its impact on the United States and Europe, and their mutual relationship, is profound.

In this context, neither continent is likely to learn the hard lessons that must be drawn from Iraq anytime soon. It’s too tempting to fill up on appetizers when the main course is difficult to digest. The paucity of pro-active responses to choose from along the spectrum between diplomatic initiatives and military actions could be sustained in the last century as long as the old paradigm of international relations, realism sustained by the balance of terror, reigned unchallenged. In many countries, particularly in Africa and Asia, this paradigm still dominates. The challenge to the traditional paradigm by regional integration and globalization brings with it the digital divide and the excluded majority.

The direct cost of military occupation in Iraq is estimated at $4 billion a month. L. Paul Bremmer 3rd has stated that Iraq would require “several tens of billions” in assistance next year. The prospect that the US military may have to grow to sustain post-conflict deployments is a real one. All these developments suggest that the costs of not engaging in conflict prevention are as prohibitive and irresponsible as America’s mounting trillion-dollar deficit. More importantly, disadvantaged groups in society can no longer sustain belt-tightening in education, health, and social programs. The world and its problems illustrate that resources channeled single-mindedly into the military do not counter the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction or make a country immune to the impact of global terrorism.

A number of European countries assert that the United Nations (UN) must have a more prominent role in Iraq. Is this a realistic alternative to a United States’ presence there? Given the on-going turmoil in Iraq, it is crucial to acknowledge the parameters of the UN’s actions. As a classical international organization, the UN can only be as effective as each of its member states allow. In matters that relate directly to member states’ national prerogatives, this is also true of the European Union’s conflict prevention initiatives within the evolving European Security and Defense Policy (ESDP). This fact leaves the ball as much in the Europeans’ court as in the Bush Administration’s. American support for a US isolationist stance is at a record low of 15 percent. This places the onus squarely on all European countries.

Yet, from inside the Union, and from the outside as well, the prospect of 25 distinct member states coming to terms with differing cultural, educational and intergenerational gaps about the Union’s global role is daunting. Increased democratic participation in the Union is a noteworthy objective. Alone it is not sufficient to address the Union’s diversity. Emotional attachments to national identity are genuine even as younger generations empathize more with tangible accomplishments of European integration. Mutual recriminations across the Atlantic about old and new Europe are unlikely to change this reality anytime soon.

These are the stubborn facts we know. Unknown challenges are bound to arise in Iraq, the Middle East and North Korea. This prospect makes a change of attitude and context in the transatlantic relationship, particularly among disenfranchised groups in each continent’s society, imperative. It is time to face the autumn of our discontent and resist hibernation through winter into the next election year.