Dissmiss the authors as leftists or whatever if you wish, but face that IMHO it reflects ever more accurately the world's view of the USA.

<snip>
The Atlantic Alliance is dead, and in the coming period, trade conflicts will combine with political differences to push the US and Europe even farther apart. Europe is key to the sustainability of the American empire. As the neoconservative writer Robert Kagan notes, "Americans will need the legitimacy that Europe can provide, but Europeans may well fail to grant it." But the widening Atlantic gulf is not only one based on different approaches to securing global stability; Europeans increasingly fear that the an aggressiovely militaristic US is the greatest strategic threat to their regional security.
<snip>

http://www.globalpolicy.org/ngos/advocacy/...08challenge.htm