World View/Paul Gillespie : Where stands Tony Blair after the end of the war in Iraq? He has apparently emerged from it stronger politically at home and abroad, firmly convinced his influence on the US has made a difference by moderating the Bush administration's unilateralist instincts.
But it will take longer to judge whether that is so and how best to guarantee it by working within Europe. This week's developments in European defence and political integration and the relaunched Middle East peace process will test out his approach over coming months.
In an interview with the Financial Times on Monday, Blair spelt out his thinking in response to a question about the Anglo-American political rift with France caused by the war.
"Some want a so-called multi-polar world where you have different centres of power, and I believe will quickly develop into rival centres of power; and others believe, and this is my notion, that we need one polar power which encompasses a strategic partnership between Europe and America." This required a stronger Europe, "more capable of speaking with a unified force". But the quickest way to get US unilateralism "is to set up a rival polar power to America".
That was why Blair criticised the meeting of French, German, Belgian and Luxembourg leaders in Brussels this week, specifically their decision to set up a military planning cell independently of NATO.
As they met, he was being rebuffed by Putin in Moscow about post-war policy, including the need for UN involvement. In other respects, though, the Brussels decisions simply reaffirmed measures already under way to operate the EU's Rapid Reaction Force, by putting a timetable on it, acting as a vanguard rather than a divisive group. They acknowledged that a credible EU military capacity can be built only with British participation.
In the same interview Blair affirmed his determination to play a leading role in Europe. Joining the euro was in Britain's interests, he insisted, although he refused to speculate about the contents of Gordon Brown's evaluative report on the five economic tests to be made to the House of Commons next month. It would still be possible to swing British opinion in a referendum if it could be shown to be in the country's interests, just as opinion on Iraq was swung. An election has to be called by 2006 at the latest, so a referendum could still be held next year.
It is difficult to judge Blair's views on Europe because he tends to be much more cautious in practice about them than he has been in successive foreign policy engagements with the US.
In theory he holds to his position that to be influential in Washington, Britain has to be at the heart of Europe.
But this means he must be willing to offend Washington by strengthening Europe - as was the case with the St Malo agreement between Britain and France in 1998, which set the scene for the development of EU defence and security policy. He needs to be firm on the Middle East - who is more influential in Washington: Blair or Sharon?
Condoleezza Rice summarised US policy towards Europe after the Iraq war as engaging Russia, ignoring Germany and punishing France. Such cherry-picking serves US interests very clearly by weakening the development of a potentially competing European pole.
But do they force Blair to choose between Paris and Washington, as British neo-conservatives argue? On this account Chirac's refusal to give UN endorsement to the war was the UN's - and the EU's - Abyssinian moment, after which nothing will ever be the same again in world politics. France must bear the costs of Chirac's historic error and deserves to do so.
It is a nice line of rhetoric, seeking to revive British Euroscepticism in the face of the Conservatives' failure to turn it to advantage, by drawing on populist neo-conservatism in the US. The Daily Mail called the Brussels meeting an "axis of weasels", borrowing the term from the New York Post. The Sun spoke of how "the enemy would be quaking the first time the European surrender-monkey army went into action - not with fear but with laughter . . . The new army will need a flag. How about a white one?" - drawing on the Simpsons via the National Review.
Opinion polling shows this rhetoric could have a resonance. A Financial Times poll shows 75 per cent of Britons think the US is its most reliable ally and 55 per cent say France is its least reliable ally.
The paper's focus group research shows the greatest swings towards Blair's position on the war were among skilled male workers - precisely the same group as swung against the euro. It would be the most difficult group to win over in a referendum, but the most necessary. Only the most affluent, broadsheet-reading British voters place a significantly greater importance on Europe than the US.
Strongly held opposition to the euro is at an all-time high. Robert Worcester of MORI concludes that it is therefore "difficult to see how the europhiles can garner enough support to chance a vote on the euro in the life of this parliament and perhaps the next".
So Blair needs to take bold action to retrieve his European policy to preserve his influence. Timothy Garton Ash, in the Guardian on Thursday, suggests he should negotiate a new entente cordiale and sign it on the 100th anniversary of the last one on April 8th next year.
This would help greatly to stop the US policy of "disaggregation" in its tracks - dividing Europe the better to rule it, which is uncannily reminiscent of British policy in the imperial period.
It would also strengthen what Ash describes as an Anglo-French "unholy alliance" at the Convention on the Future of Europe, as articulated by a member of the convention from a smaller EU member-state. Both states want to shift the balance of power in the EU to the larger states by a kind of politburo working under a new president of the inter-governmental European Council.
It will be up to the smaller states to head that off - perhaps under Ireland's EU presidency next year. Ash suggests France and Britain need to get together for a drink in an Irish bar to co-ordinate their act. It was interesting that the Greeks asked Brian Cowen to introduce yesterday's discussion on EU-US relations at Rhodes.
pgillespie@irish-times.ie