This of course is to be expected, the US cannot rule the world.  Europe is
after all a full power, with a significantly higher standard of
living.  And Russia and China, certainly the US equal have given grave notice.

At 02:29 AM 2/10/02 -0800, you wrote:
>http://www.guardian.co.uk/bush/story/0,7369,647554,00.html
>
>Patten lays into Bush's America
>
>Fury at president's 'axis of evil' speech
>
>Jonathan Freedland in Brussels
>Saturday February 9, 2002
>The Guardian
>
>Chris Patten, the EU commissioner in charge of Europe's international
>relations, has launched a scathing attack on American foreign policy -
>accusing the Bush administration of a dangerously "absolutist and
>simplistic" stance towards the rest of the world.
>
>As EU officials warned of a rift opening up between Europe and the US
>wider than at any time for half a century, Mr Patten tells the Guardian it
>is time European governments spoke up and stopped Washington before it
>goes into "unilateralist overdrive".
>
>"Gulliver can't go it alone, and I don't think it's helpful if we regard
>ourselves as so Lilliputian that we can't speak up and say it," he says in
>today's interview.
>
>Mr Patten's broadside came as the French prime minister, Lionel Jospin,
>warned the US yesterday not to give in to "the strong temptation of
>unilateralism".
>
>Like France, Mr Patten singled out Mr Bush's branding of Iraq, Iran and
>North Korea as "an axis of evil".
>
>"I find it hard to believe that's a thought-through policy," he says,
>adding that the phrase was deeply "unhelpful".
>
>EU officials concede that the US and Europe could now be on a collision
>course over Iran, with the EU determined to forge a trade and cooperation
>agreement with Tehran just as Washington has deemed it an "evil" sponsor
>of terror.
>
>Mr Patten insists that the European policy of "constructive engagement"
>with Iranian moderates and North Korea is much more likely to bring
>results than a US policy which so far consists of "more rhetoric than
>substance".
>
>The commissioner's remarks represent the most public statement yet of what
>has become a growing sense of alarm in Europe's capitals at the
>increasingly belligerent tone adopted by Washington.
>
>One senior EU official said: "It is humiliating and demeaning if we feel
>we have to go and get our homework marked by Dick Cheney and Condi Rice.
>We've got to stop thinking that the only policy we can have is one that
>doesn't get vetoed by the United States."
>
>Publicly, the British government continues to stand "shoulder to shoulder"
>with Mr Bush. But senior Labour figures admit they are deeply troubled by
>the newly aggressive thrust of US thinking - especially the hints that
>America could widen the war against terrorism to a clutch of new
>countries. They are likely to seize on Mr Patten's remarks as they press
>their case with Tony Blair.
>
>In the interview the former Conservative party chairman delivers a
>devastatingly comprehensive critique of US strategy. He upbraids
>Washington for showing much more interest in stamping out terrorism than
>in tackling terror's root causes.
>
>"When you're addressing that agenda, frankly, smart bombs have their place
>but smart development assistance seems to me even more significant," he said.
>
>That view is widely held in Europe, typified by Mr Blair's much-quoted
>"heal the world" speech last year in Brighton. But it barely gets a
>hearing in today's Washington, Mr Patten concedes, especially since the
>dramatic success of the US-led military operation in Afghanistan. That has
>fed a new US mood of "intense triumphalism", according to EU officials,
>with secretary of state Colin Powell regarded as "a lone voice of reason".
>
>Mr Bush's "axis of evil" speech appears to have been the last straw for EU
>policymakers. In today's interview, Mr Patten offers withering
>condemnation of the phrase.
>
>Besides balking at the word "evil", he disputes whether the three
>countries named are an axis at all, insisting there is no evidence that
>they are working together on weapons of mass destruction. But Mr Patten
>also expresses great irritation with Washington for undermining
>long-established EU efforts to reach out to Tehran and Pyongyang.
>
>"There is more to be said for trying to engage and to draw these societies
>into the international community than to cut them off," he says.
>
>But Mr Patten's greatest ire is reserved for America's go-it-alone
>approach to international relations. "However mighty you are, even if
>you're the greatest superpower in the world, you cannot do it all on your own."
>
>He calls on Europe's 15 member states to put aside their traditional
>wariness of angering the US and to speak up, forging an international
>stance of their own on issues ranging from the Middle East to global warming.