The division of Europe into "old" and "new" parallels the blue and red state split of American electoral politics. In the Old Europe--synonymous with Western--defense and foreign policy thinkers and officials tend to see Barack Obama as a ray of hope for an America that reaches out in benevolent acceptance of European attitudes toward peace and how to achieve it around the world. In the New Europe--read Central and Eastern--men and women with the same expertise and official responsibility regard the possible election of Obama with deep concern. They worry about whether he can deal purposefully with Russia, about whether he instinctively grasps the importance to the West of an effective alliance, and about his ability to provide effective leadership at a time when so little is to be found in Europe and so much is expected from the United States.

Western Europeans see threats to their security in climate change, human trafficking, and a nuisance level of terror. They no longer think of NATO as an important club since their part of the world seems benign, nonthreatening, and assured of continued invulnerability so long as multilateral organizations can restrain the fitful compulsions of the American electorate. The Central and Eastern European states, on the other hand, see NATO and its security guarantees as inseparable from their continued independence. Even those who don't view Russia's invasion of Georgia as a return to military competition still see a growing threat from Moscow as it combines its energy resources with an aggressive foreign

Germany is at the center of Western Europe's strategic blindness. Surrounded by pliant neighbors and reminders of past horrors, Germans are strongly motivated to avoid any repetition of such calamities. Placing their trust in multilateralism, further European integration, and a proto-Kantian expectation that the universal embrace of pacifism will unite the international community, they hope for nothing more than the benefits of a continued and expanding welfare state. The outside world has been reduced to a judgment of its immediate effects on domestic comfort. The editor of a large northern German newspaper observed to me, following the Georgian invasion, that his countrymen were less anxious about tensions with Russia than they were about the chance that such tensions could lead to a cutoff of Russia's oil and gas. (Russia supplies nearly 40 percent of Germany's oil and 43 percent of its natural gas.)

For Germans, a strategic partnership with Russia is good because it assures the energy supply. Strategic association with NATO is bad as it requires onerous defense expenditures, participation in distant missions, and association with the United States. Seventy percent of the public, according to a poll taken this year, object to Germany's noncombat participation in NATO's mission in Afghanistan. A German political expert I spoke with in August warned that if Berlin's popular mayor, Klaus Wowereit, and his coalition were to succeed on a national level, it might lead to German withdrawal from NATO. A German defense intellectual remarked to me that "people say that Germany is no longer a reliable ally. I can't blame them."