Less than a decade ago the Cold War world was transformed by the collapse of the Soviet Union, leaving only one superpower, the United States. At first sight this might have seemed a welcome development from a US point of view; for, almost overnight, its world leadership was unchallenged. But in fact this has proved less comfortable for the US than might have been expected. For this is a lonely eminence, upon which even a confident superpower might feel uncomfortable. And because of domestic political divisions, the US is by no means as self-confident in world affairs as some might think.
The removal of the Soviet threat subtly altered the relationship between the US and countries that had previously felt threatened by the Soviet Union, in particular those in western Europe. It also seems to have subtly altered the perception by the United States of its own role in the unfamiliar aftermath of the Cold War era.
The effect thus far has been both limited and gradual: indeed many are still unaware of it. One factor that obscured this shift in loyalties was the Kuwait crisis and the resulting Gulf War.
To many the role the United States played in that crisis appeared to be a striking manifestation of the country's new unchallenged dominance in world affairs. But beneath the surface the reality was much more complex.
For, even when it had been spurred into action over Kuwait by Margaret Thatcher, the US government under George Bush did not feel free to launch unilateral military action against Iraq. In order to secure congressional endorsement, the president had to get some form of UN authorisation for such action.
Securing this required a fair bit of arm-twisting, and the formula eventually employed can be argued to have involved a somewhat strained interpretation of the UN Charter. But in the long run what is significant is that the US felt unable to act without cover from the UN.
During the Cold War the United States had not seemed to feel such a need. Indeed that country's dismissive attitude, not just to the UN, but to international law, had been manifest when it refused to accept the authority of the World Court on the issue of its mining of Nicaraguan ports.
And even Ronald Reagan's most loyal ally, Margaret Thatcher, was shocked by US support for the Israeli bombing of the PLO headquarters in Tunis. She flatly rejected his attempt to secure her support for this breach of international law, telling me at the time she had responded by asking him what he would have had to say to her if she "bombed the Provos in Dundalk".
Two factors seem to have influenced US attitudes in their new situation. The first, I believe, has been an instinctive concern that in a position of unchallenged power it should not be seen to abuse it. And the second has been the weakening of foreign policy bipartisanship in Congress following the disappearance of the Soviet threat.
These changes in the position of the United States pose issues for Europe. On the one hand we in Europe (and I say "we" advisedly, for in neutral Ireland we were just as vulnerable to the dangers of nuclear war as our NATO neighbours) are obviously no longer so dependent on the US strategic umbrella. European countries can thus afford to act somewhat more independently of the US than was the case between 1945 and 1990.
At the same time, in its isolated position as the sole superpower, psychologically the US needs Europe more than it did in the past.
There is a basis here for a new and more balanced Europe-US relationship, a more genuine partnership than has been possible in the past when, because of dependence on the American strategic umbrella, European states felt it necessary to defer to the US on a whole range of issues unconnected with the Cold War.
There will, of course, always exist a potential for US-Europe tensions on particular issues, but it is fair to say US policy-makers are now more prepared to talk to Europe on a footing of genuine partnership, and towards this end they would like to see the emergence of a concerted European foreign policy.
Far from American foreign policy-makers wanting to "divide and conquer" by playing off one European state against another, they are in fact deeply frustrated with European divisions. And it has to be admitted their frustration is justified.
To give an example. When the United States belatedly decided to involve itself seriously in the Yugoslav crisis and brought the combatants together at Dayton, both Britain and France immediately undermined the role of the European negotiator, Carl Bildt, by privately informing the Americans "Bildt doesn't speak for us".
And the Americans were further confused by an approach from the European Commission demanding it also be represented at the negotiations.
I have also heard Americans claiming that in the case of Cyprus the European representative is shadowed by national representatives from half of the memberstates, including Finland, Sweden and Ireland.
Moreover, the Americans believe that at times they have been fobbed off by individual member-states on the basis that a particular matter is one for decision at European level, only to find when they approach the European institutions they are referred back to the individual states.
Some of these complaints may be exaggerated, but it is true that at this stage of the evolution of the European Union, its structures lend themselves to such confusion, and this is not to our advantage as Europeans.
The problem, of course, is that member-states have such different histories and experiences that the formulation of an agreed European position on many issues is extremely difficult. Thus Britain and France, former colonial powers which retain important economic interests in former colonies, see the rest of the world through quite different eyes from ours.
And by virtue of their geographical position at the heart of Europe, and their particular historical experiences, some years ago Germany and Austria approached the issue of recognition of the emerging states of Croatia and Slovenia in a quite different way from the rest of the European Union.
Such divergences of approach between member-states are very difficult to reconcile, but in many cases it is clear that almost any compromise approach by the member-states would be preferable to the negative effect of disunity, which often produces results that satisfy no one.
The provisions of the Amsterdam Treaty may help ease some of these hitherto intractable problems. The treaty offers strong protection for the rights of individual states, in that all strategic decisions on foreign and security policy have to be agreed unanimously.
Moreover, even the implementation of these strategic decisions is to be subject to a unanimity requirement in the case of security matters. And while the implementation of unanimously agreed foreign policy decisions will normally be capable of being decided by qualified majority voting, even in this case there is to be provision for a veto to be applied by any member-state "for important and stated reasons of national policy".
These are powerful national safeguards, but they are to be paralleled by a new provision that offers some prospect of flexibility. Where one or more states, whose numbers do not exceed one-third of the membership, do not want to participate in a foreign policy decision, but at the same time do not object to others joining together for that purpose, there will now be provision for "constructive abstention". This will leave much more room for manoeuvre in cases where there is disagreement.
Hitherto Irish attitudes to this EU common foreign policy issue have, I think, been dominated by anxiety to protect our right of dissent. But in new conditions more favourable to a genuine transatlantic partnership, conditions which offer a real possibility of a united Europe exercising some positive influence on the direction of US foreign policy, it is perhaps time to review the rather negative approach we have previously adopted to this matter.
We cannot in conscience overlook the damage done to human rights, and to peace in parts of our continent, through past failures of the EU to act in a concerted way in crisis conditions.
I believe we should now be willing to move from a semi-detached and rather passive position with respect to non-economic aspects of the European Union to one of active engagement in the promotion of values which we share with a number of our partners.
It is time to reconsider our traditional attitude of keeping ourselves apart from what we have self-righteously, indeed somewhat offensively, seen as the dirty business of European foreign policy. We must recognise we have moral responsibilities which we cannot adequately fulfil by opting out and isolating ourselves from the reality of the world around us.