On the broad and fraying canvas of European integration, the vicious brawl between France and Britain that wrecked a summit meeting late last Friday seemed, as one British official put it, to be "the worst crisis."
But, through the narrower focus of the political fortunes of British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Europe's disarray may offer different omens, diverting attention from challenges closer to home and enabling him to rewrite the timetable of his third term in office. With a bold -- and as yet uncertain -- maneuver to mold Europe's agenda, he might even be hoping to resuscitate the global role he once pursued as a bridge between the US and Europe.
Like his predecessor and adversary Margaret Thatcher, Blair returned from the Brussels meeting in the bloodied mantle of a victorious warrior against those in Continental Europe -- France and Germany -- whose demands have long grated on his nation's euroskeptic soul.
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A poll on Sunday in the tabloid News of the World showed almost three-quarters of respondents in favor of Blair's readiness to face down his adversaries in what was reported in the UK as a macho arm-wrestling match with French President Jacques Chirac over the European budget.
He could hardly have chosen a more suitable adversary than Chirac, mocked in British tabloids with almost the same venom as British chauvinists reserve for the Germans. Indeed, columnists noted that the Brussels summit meeting broke up on the 190th anniversary of the Battle of Waterloo, fought near Brussels on June 18, 1815, when the defeat of France's Napoleon Bonaparte by British- and Prussian-led armies redrew the map of Europe.
"In saving Europe from itself, he thinks he has found a new mission," said Andrew Rawnsley, a columnist, in the Observer Sunday newspaper.
Suddenly, last weekend, no one was talking about Blair's unpopular support for the war in Iraq -- the issue that haunted his re-election campaign.
The vote on May 5 returned Blair to office for a third term, but with a reduced parliamentary majority that inspired much debate about when he might hand over power to his rival, Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown. But, faced with a common enemy across the channel, Brown and Blair seemed united in opposing French demands for an end to Britain's multibillion-dollar rebate from the EU, because of Britain's meager benefits from European agricultural subsidies.
Like the Duke of Wellington before him, Blair had found a new battleground. With Chirac and German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder weakened politically, he clearly feels it is a battle worth the fight to mold Europe's future.
"It's certainly a crisis -- it's the worst crisis that I've seen during my four years as foreign secretary, indeed my more than eight years as a member of this government," British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said on Sunday.
"But crises can either turn into disasters if you do nothing about them or they can turn into cathartic opportunities, and I believe that we both have a duty and an opportunity here to turn it into a catharsis from which greater good comes," he said in a radio interview.
Some of Blair's calculations are based on felicitous timing.
On July 1, Britain will assumed the rotating presidency of the 25-nation EU, offering Blair the chance to combine two roles as a leading combatant in the continent's division, and as umpire in its struggle for healing.
Then, on July 6, as chairman of the summit meeting in Scotland for the G8 major industrialized nations, he will strut the world's stage as host to the leaders of the richest and most powerful nations, including the US -- a gathering that offers, in equal doses, the opportunity for great statesmanship and the peril of unseemly disputes over climate change and poverty relief with friend and foe alike.
July 6 is also the date for the announcement from the International Olympic Committee of the host for the 2012 Olympic Games: with Paris and London among the top contenders, the decision will have more than simply sporting significance for Blair and Chirac.
In some ways, the battle for Europe has finally crystallized the distinctions that have kept Britain aloof from the Franco-German social vision of the continent -- and thus from the closer integration of the euro single currency -- for years.
It is, said Straw, "essentially a division between whether you want a European Union that is able to cope with the future or whether you want a European Union that is trapped in the past."
In this analysis, Britain, with its hire-and-fire labor laws, its low unemployment, its struggling public services and its economic growth, is depicted here as the future. Continental Europe, with its jobless millions cosseted by unaffordable benefits, is history.
Of course, it may not turn out to be so simple. European plans for a new constitution -- which Blair once said he supported -- have been wrecked by referendums in France and the Netherlands rejecting the charter. The continent Blair seeks to lead may well be adrift, with domestic politics dominating agendas from Paris to Berlin.
When he took office in 1997, moreover, Blair set out a grand vision of putting Britain at the heart of Europe and overcoming a profound euroskepticism among his own people. Now, though, he seems to be the central proponent of that same hostility to the rest of the continent.
"At last he has `come out' as Thatcher in a suit," Simon Jenkins, a columnist, wrote in the Sunday Times.
What will underpin Blair's actions in coming months is the sense here that he is seeking a triumph that will define him for posterity in a way that eluded him in Iraq or at home.
"Two hundred years ago William Pitt gloomily rolled away the map of Europe for as long as Napoleon was on the loose," Jenkins wrote. "At Waterloo, 10 years later, it was unrolled."
"Today it is unrolled again and, briefly, laid at Blair's feet. His legacy is what he does next," Jenkins wrote.
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