Is America listening? The war has given Europe stark confirmation that Washington calls the shots. "The Americans are walking on water," one European recently back from Gen. Tommy Franks's headquarters told the Observer. "They think they can do anything...and there is bloody nothing Tony can do about it." At the same time, it has pushed Europeans to name their differences from the superpower that keeps them in its shadow. The many forms of opposition to the war make up a sketch map of dissent from American hegemony. At the fringes, there is the vulgar anti-Americanism that holds the United States responsible for every evil. This view is still more prevalent on the left but also has its right-wing adherents--for instance in Greece, where the Orthodox primate described September 11 as "God's judgment" on America. (The complex history of anti-Americanism there makes Greece something of a special case: According to one poll, a third of the population believes that September 11 was masterminded by the CIA, Mossad or one of their shadowy subsidiaries.)

Nearer the center, there is the view that America has a just cause but is likely to wreak havoc in pursuing it--because of its history of cynical interventions, and because of Bush's unilateralism and shoot-from-the-hip stupidity. Many European commentators have pointed to his contempt for all international bodies before September 11, from the International Criminal Court in which bin Laden might have been tried to the Kyoto agreement, which might have helped to wean the West from its dependence on the black stuff. In between is a great gray area, where America's conduct abroad is subject to passionate debate. Immediately after September 11 The London Review of Books ran a roundup of responses from its regular contributors, most of whom discussed America's role in creating the conditions for terrorism. The issue provoked outrage from some US readers; the blizzard of letters that followed desperately tried to parse this new universe, where the empire's enemy is worse than the empire itself, and where sympathy must coexist with skepticism.

The war's outright opponents come from many different political backgrounds, making for an occasionally uncomfortable coalition. Before September 11, the main radical force in Europe was the antiglobalization movement, and in spite of the connections to be drawn with oil and underdevelopment the current crisis has not fit easily into its analytic grid. The old peace movement has come out in force, both in its pacifist and antinuclear forms, arguing for aid, not bombs. Antiracist activists and civil libertarians have had much to talk about. At a "Stop the War" demonstration in London on November 18 (police estimate, 15,000; organizers' estimate, 100,000) all these came together with sizable Muslim contingents from across the country; for the first time ever prayer tents were provided, as well as food for those who wished to break their Ramadan fast at nightfall. The demonstrators seemed unfazed by the fall of Mazar-i-Sharif a few days before, or by concern about what it would mean to leave Afghanistan in the hands of the Northern Alliance.

Europeans also tend to be more skeptical about one-size-fits-all definitions of terrorism. Some Britons have been heard to wonder where this leaves the IRA's friends in the US Congress. Others point to the Northern Ireland peace process, which saw the IRA begin decommissioning its arsenal in October, as an example of what can only be achieved by rejecting violence. More cynically, Spain's Prime Minister José Maria Aznar has signed up for Bush's war in return for the use of American spy satellites to help target Basque ETA separatists. Bush's Texas love feast with Vladimir Putin was widely viewed here as a triumph for the Russian, who gets a free hand in Chechnya and a chance to avenge his country's Vietnam. But nowhere is the divergence of view more evident--and Europe more impotent--than in the Middle East. Blair's thankless sales trip to Syria (where Assad humiliated him in public), Saudi Arabia (where they snubbed him) and Israel (where Sharon, fresh from humbling Britain's foreign secretary, contented himself with ignoring everything Blair said) was supposed to lay the groundwork for American re-engagement with the Israel-Palestine conflict. Bush's evident reluctance even to speak the name "Palestine," followed by Colin Powell's overdue and overcautious advocacy of a state for Palestinians, came as a bitter disappointment. The early December suicide bombings blew the Afghan war off the front pages but have not changed the widely held view that Israeli withdrawal from the occupied territories is the esential first step to peace.

So far, frustration has not led to dissent. Blair's government remains "shoulder to shoulder" with the Bush Administration (though other anatomical conjunctions have been suggested). France has sent troops, Holland a frigate, Italy an aircraft carrier. Even the Germans have signed up, a Rubicon in that country's postwar history even more astonishing for being crossed at the behest of Joschka Fischer, the radical street fighter turned foreign minister. Chancellor Gerhard Schröder turned a motion on sending troops into a vote of confidence in his government. The Christian Democrats and other pro-war, right-wing parties voted against it, forcing the divided Greens to vote in favor or risk the governing "Red-Green" coalition. At a Green Party conference afterward, Fischer's argument that pacifism was no longer an option carried the day.

Nor have European governments hesitated to embrace the brave new world where security trumps civil liberties. Spain may refuse to extradite Al Qaeda suspects to the United States to face the death penalty, but it also wants to broaden the European definition of terrorism in order to target the legal separatist party in the Basque parliament. France, Britain and Germany are tightening their surveillance of the Internet. Denmark is about to pass draconian restrictions on the rights of immigrants and refugees. British Home Secretary David Blunkett had emergency legislation ready to go before the dust settled on Ground Zero, with the Germans not far behind. Is it mere coincidence that in both these countries questions of immigration and asylum were a focus of public anxiety long before September 11? Probably not.

In the words of one Dutch commentator, the attacks and the war together have "laid wide open the whole debate about a multicultural society." In Britain, tabloids run hysterical spreads about North London's "mad mullahs"; acres of newsprint have been devoted to the handful of British Muslims who supposedly flew off to die for Islam. Liberal commentators have detected "a corrosive national danger in our multicultural model," issuing thinly veiled calls for loyalty tests. Blunkett has found a new weapon for frightening off asylum seekers, proposing a "state of emergency" in order to opt out of part of the European Convention on Human Rights. The Anti-Terrorism, Crime and Security Bill, currently stalled in the House of Lords, would allow the indefinite internment of foreign nationals suspected of terrorist activities.

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