It doesn't look like it when it comes to the issues of war and peace three years into the 21st century. In the run-up to the Iraq war, a part of Europe-France, Germany and Belgium-desperately tried to block the Anglo-American campaign against Saddam Hussein. It didn't work, not even with the help of Russia which Paris and Berlin had harnessed to a continental "axis" of sorts.

Last week, at the summit in St Petersburg, the trio tried again, but the fissures were only too visible. French President Jacques Chirac is hell-bent on containing American power in favour of a "multipolar world". So he wants the UN to take over in Iraq, hoping to use the Security Council-where France wields a veto-as a "force multiplier" against the US. Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, on the other hand, insisted that there was in fact no "axis". His spokesman added that the trio had "no planned long-term format".

A real axis is made of sterner stuff. Vladimir Putin's Russia will think thrice before sacrificing its American connection to the geopolitical ambitions of France, an Economy nation that always tries to fly Business. And Herr Schroeder has been having second thoughts about taking up permanent lodging in Monsieur Chirac's pocket. Though the Soviet threat-and thus Germany's excruciating strategic dependence on the US-is a thing of the past, Berlin will have to re-establish the balance between its European and Atlantic commitments that have served it so well over the past 40 years.

The real problem runs deeper than these day-to-day manoeuvres. In terms of population and economic clout, Europe is an equal of the US. Europe even has more men under arms than the US, but strategically, the European Union is a waif to the American Gulliver. Take one example: when President George W. Bush asked the Congress for a supplemental defence appropriation last spring, he requested a sum-$48 billion-that represented twice the total annual spending of Germany or Italy.

So much for the strategic gap. The political gap is even more dramatic. When Indians peer westward, they probably see a huge chunk of power labelled "European Union" that is poised to absorb ever more pieces of Moscow's former empire in eastern Europe. But when viewed close-up, Europe, in spite of its impressive integrationist record, remains what it has always been: an unruly bunch of nation-states with a lot of divergent interests. Take the Franco-German attempt last fall and winter to harness the rest of Europe to its anti-US policy on Iraq. It did not work. Eighteen nations-from Portugal to Poland, from Britain to the Baltics-coolly rejected the duo's leadership bid, throwing in their lot with America instead. Why? Britain will never give up its Atlantic vocation, and among the "Easties", behaviour followed geography. To wit: the closer to Russia, the stronger a country's urge to entrust its security to a faraway superpower than to nearby, middling powers like Germany and France with their continental ambitions.

Europe remains less than the sum of its parts; that is the sorry truth. It cannot be a counterweight to the American "hyperpower", as the French call the US, because it cannot subsume its vast resources to a common will. Never has this failure been more dramatic than before and after the Iraq war. Never has there been "less" Europe than today. To push the point, the two nations, France and Germany, who tried to unify Europe against the American "hegemony" have ended up deepening its divisions.

So where does Europe go from here? France, Germany and Belgium are now hawking a "European Defence Union"-without Britain and outside of NATO. If this comes to pass, it will formalise the division of Europe. How this mini-alliance would add to Europe's strategic weight remains the secret of its inventors. The war in Iraq, where US forces operated several technological orbits above the abilities of any other army in the world, has dramatised how steep the price of strategic power has become. A country like Germany that devotes exactly as much to its defence as Luxemburg, namely 1.5 per cent of the GDP, cannot even aspire to a membership in this club of one.

Unless Europe is willing to put its money where its mouth is, unless it succeeds in turning the many into one, it will continue to punch below its weight. There is a deeper problem still. Besides Britain and France, which still retain remnants of a warrior culture, most of the other European nations have become thoroughly "civilianised". As the massive peace demonstrations over the past months have shown, much of Europe has unlearnt the oldest lesson of international politics: force cannot be separated from diplomacy.

Having lived happily under its security blanket "Made in USA", will Europe relearn the lesson anytime soon? It should, because the world has become a much more dangerous place than it was during the "cosy" days of the Cold War.

(The author is the editor of the German weekly Die Zeit)