THE ECONOMIST on the transatlantic alliance:

It’s very difficult to argue that America should bust a gut for Europe ever again. But it’s also difficult to watch central and eastern Europe failing to make the safe docking with western Europe that was hoped for ten years ago, and slipping back into the orbit of an exploitative and illiberal Russia. If there is to be hope here, it has to lie with some sort of resurgent American soft power which offers some moral leadership to central and eastern Europe and some political example to Russia.

But it’s the “Old Europe” leadership that doesn’t like American soft power (or hard power either) and that has given Americans the sense that the alliance has been mostly a one-way street all along.