It's very hard for me to imagine what interests might be so powerful as to reverse the declining trend in European defense spending, for instance. Pretty hard to see that. But thirdly, it's very hard to conceive of situations where the Europeans would want to do something and the United States not. I recently talked to a French official and she said something very surprising for a French person. And I think it's the other way around now.
Nations have changing interests, but permanent friends.
Their interests keep changing, but they have permanent allies. Permanent allies means there is a community in the West, a similar level of economic development and political development, same kind of postmodern, democratic liberal culture. Plus the kind of new rules of the game which say you can't go on your own, you cannot intervene by yourself. And so that keeps driving this game, where indeed we might have only permanent allies, as much as we sometimes dislike and resent each other. No, it's still states' rule.