Whisper it softly, but a compromise on missile defence may soon be reached. John Lloyd on why America will win

During a recent discussion in London, Henry Kissinger said that he thought it would be more difficult to persuade the Europeans to acquiesce in the US development of a missile defence shield than it would the Russians. He was wrong: the Russians, as members of the only state other than the US that retains the capability for vast, rather than selective, nuclear destruction, are by definition more concerned at the loss of their only remaining source of superpower status. They are also living through a long and agonising humiliation of their power in the world, and no Russian president would easily agree to a measure disabling that source of power.

Kissinger's remark hides a more complex reality, because it is remarkable how rapidly a new, if very quiet, consensus is forming around an acceptance of the putative missile defence system.

Kissinger is, however, right on one thing: his comments accurately reflect the growing perception of both European and US elites that there is trouble across the Atlantic. European commentators and politicians - especially the French - see in the United States a country with sharply divergent values from Europe in matters of welfare, capitalism, crime and punishment (especially the death penalty) and strategic judgements. The US sees in Europe a series of states that increasingly ignore its interests while expecting it to serve theirs; whose people are avid to import American popular culture and eating habits while its elites excoriate both; and whose expectations of a continuing free ride on US defence and security expertise are endless.

The US thinks that Europeans are either nonchalant about actual or potential threats or, worse, that they take advantage of US-inspired sanctions on such countries as Iran to do business in areas from which US corporations are excluded. According to William Wallace, a professor of international relations at the London School of Economics and the Liberal Democrat spokesman on defence in the Lords, Europeans "see an America unhealthily preoccupied with identifying enemies who require a military response, while it refuses to invest in political accommodation or transition within authoritarian regimes".

Since George W Bush won the US presidency, the European media have gloried in portraying him as a foolish warmonger, in thrall to big business, who lacks either the capacity or the desire for accommodation with moderate Europeans.

The interesting elements of truth in this - which concern differing political cultures, differing attitudes to threats, the differing relative powers of elite and popular views - now risk being submerged by the caricatures. There is simply too much to be done in a world in which stability cannot be ensured, and where huge areas of deep and murderous poverty remain substantially without cure, for a false divide to yawn. Missile defence - which many had thought to be one of the main causes of the widening gulf between the old and new worlds - is now, it seems, capable of finding a solution.

In the case of Europe, two old bad reasons for finding agreement with the Americans have been complemented by three new good ones. The old reasons are, first, the consideration, especially in the UK, that a system as complex and as costly as missile defence will mean big electronics contracts, especially valuable at a time of slowing demand; and second, the resigned view that, if the Americans are going to do it, then we may as well learn to live with it.

The three new reasons are, first, that the confident power which Bush initially projected after his contested victory has been hobbled by the loss of Republican control of the Senate. The Democrats, to be sure, were also committed to a missile defence system, but partisan warfare changes minds. Besides, some Democrats were sceptical about the need and expense. At the least, the loss of control will mean that a deal has to be reached with the Democrats, which ought to curb the defence hawks who circle the Bush administration. This, added to the inherent technical difficulties that have not been overcome, means that deployment is likely to be a very long way off.

Second, in talks with European governments over the past two months, US envoys have made a plausible case that the threats from "states of concern" - especially in the Middle East - are more serious than the Europeans at first admitted. This case has always been received more warmly in the UK, because the two states share intelligence gathering and agree on much of the analysis.

Third, and more important, the US side has substantially downgraded the scope and ambitions of any potential system. Ronald Reagan envisaged a grandiose and cinematic project aimed at providing a system of total defence against any nuclear attack on the US. But American officials and scientists are now proposing something that would protect the country against the one or two missiles a "rogue" state might manage to get in the air, but which would be too modest to protect against a retaliatory strike launched by Russia.

But problems remain. The French, with their own, genuinely independent nuclear force, have no desire to lose their deterrent capacity for any reason to anyone. In any event, the Europeans are less paranoid over nuclear threats than the US, and this difference of opinion will not go away.

A fear of attack has been stoked by those closest to Bush. In particular, Donald Rumsfeld, the US Defence Secretary, is a very strong voice urging the president to deploy missile defence and more. One of the two commissions that he chaired in the late 1990s was influential in moving public and political opinion to the point where the Clinton administration could not refuse to deploy a missile defence system; the other is likely to do the same in pushing the US military to examine ways in which it could control space so as to avoid a "space Pearl Harbor" - a sneak attack that, by disabling American satellites, could render the country helpless.

But this is in the future. Indeed, the US paranoia about attack is amply shared by Russia. It is possible that, with some adroit diplomacy and a willingness to get closer to Vladimir Putin than George W Bush has yet shown, Russia's historic distrust of the US may be tamed and even harnessed.

Russia has much better reason for paranoia than the US. Most obviously, it is a very weak superpower indeed. Its army is bogged down in an apparently endless guerrilla war in Chechnya: it is under-strength and poorly equipped, and training and morale are low. Those wars it is fighting - in Chechnya, and on the Afghan border against Taliban-backed groups seeking to infiltrate and destabilise the pro-Moscow governments of central Asia - are against extreme Muslim states or groups: it is thus as likely as America to suffer retaliation. Furthermore, the US is protected by the Pacific and the Atlantic oceans; Russia is in easy range of most of its putative enemies (and always has been).

The negotiations on missile defence between the US, Europe, Russia and China, which may involve compromises over Taiwan, are likely to resemble an endless, stately dance, with occasional eruptions. But most strategists in these states believe that, sooner or later, the system will be developed and will have to be accepted. The terms of that acceptance, the deals made, and the new balance of power and terror that will ensue, are likely to be the first lineaments of the new world order.

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