Most conspicuously, in the wake of Sept. 11, a gap has opened up in the European and American perceptions of danger. It is not too much to say that while Americans intensely sense a new vulnerability and an urgent new need for self-defense, Europeans, after the end of the cold war, do not. Put bluntly, the people of Berlin now feel safer even as the people of New York sense a new danger.
By contrast, in many quarters in Europe, the public deems unbridled American power in the service of a pre-emptive strike to be the greater international menace..."What happens in the future if China or Russia decide that some other country is a threat to them, and they decide to go to war?" asked an editor for a Germany publishing company attending an antiwar demonstration in Munich last weekend. "What are you going to do then?"
NY Times