To the Point

The Future of US-European Relations

The most adamant European opponents of the US war in Iraq, including France, Germany and Belgium, agreed this week to build a new military force less dependent on the US. The agreement in Brussels came as Washington was already threatening to punish France for its anti-war position. Is the American-led NATO alliance an unintended casualty of the war in Iraq? Are the Europeans now trying to challenge the United States as the world-s sole superpower? Guest host Marc Cooper examines the future of US-European relations with a political columnist for the Guardian, syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer, a former staffer from the National Security Council, and political analysts from the French Institute of International Relations and the Russian Academy of Sciences' Institute of the USA and Canada. Reporter's Notebook: Arctic Photos Politicized at the Smithsonian Subhankar Banerjee spent 14 months shooting the Alaskan wilderness. The Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History planned to exhibit his photographs in a prime location, just off its main rotunda. But Banerjee, whose images appear in Arctic National Wildlife Refuge: Seasons of Life and Land, says that when Senator Barbara Boxer used one of his images to illustrate her opposition to the Alaskan oil drilling controversy, the museum moved the exhibit.