One Europe: The Dream of Unity : America From Abroad : Bye-Bye American Pie--and Troops and Power : The Cold War’s end has left the Continent more confident and Washington weary of its global burden. The ties that once stretched across the Atlantic are unraveling.

For the first time since since President Franklin D. Roosevelt cast aside neutrality and committed the United States to a “lend-lease” aid agreement with Britain in 1940, American power in Europe is in decline.

Despite repeated vows by President George Bush that America will not step back from its global responsibilities, Europeans--especially West Europeans--see a different reality.

For them, America--a nation that gave Western Europe billions for its initial economic revival, then followed it with decades of military protection and enough rock ‘n’ roll, fast food and Hollywood dreams to change its culture forever--is loosening its ties to the Old World.

At the heart of this perception lie two simple facts: The end of the Cold War has left Europe more confident and America tired of its global burden.

As the rich West European nations move boldly toward greater economic and political unity and take on the lion’s share of responsibility both for their own defense and in defusing regional political crises, America has begun turning inward.

The end of European communism, the rise of Japan and dramatic demographic shifts that will make three of every five Americans of non-European descent by the middle of the next century, all work to diminish Europe’s once-undisputed priority in U.S. foreign affairs.

In addition, a malaise of pressing domestic crises now preoccupy the American voter as the “Communist threat” in Europe fades into history.

The passing of this threat--which effectively ended with the collapse of last year’s military coup in Moscow--removes the single most compelling, politically salable argument that kept America committed to Europe for more than half a century.

“The August, 1991, coup is as fundamental to European-American relations as the Berlin crisis of 1947-48,” said Oxford University historian William Wallace in an interview.

Just as Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin’s crude attempt to lay siege to the German capital in the late 1940s generated the famous Berlin airlift and an American resolve to defend Europe against Soviet aggression, so has the end of that threat loosened that resolve, Europeans are convinced. “There is no longer a reason for the U.S. to stay,” Wallace added.

That message was clear to see last month at a modest ceremony in Frankfurt marking the reduction of U.S. Army troop strength in Germany from four to two divisions. But the signs of American disengagement go far beyond the military parade grounds.

In the biggest single challenge facing post-Cold War Europe, that of achieving a degree of social and political stability in the Soviet Union’s successor states, Germany, not the United States, has taken the lead, providing nearly 60% of all Western economic aid to the troubled region since September, 1990. The U.S. has contributed 6%.

Politically, the current Yugoslavia civil war marks the first time since World War II that Europeans, not the Soviets and Americans, have directed efforts to resolve a major regional crisis.

It has been said that the first question on European lips in any crisis was what the Americans thought. But “no one asks that question any more,” commented a senior German diplomat.

In a part of the world where burning the Stars and Stripes came close to being a college sport as recently as the mid-1980s, America’s declining profile has been met more with a mixture of sadness, concern and inevitability than with any overt celebration.

Indeed, many observers note the irony that America’s retreat comes at a time when not a single European nation or influential political voice questions the U.S. presence on the Continent. Instead, Europeans view America as a once proud but now confused and tired nation increasingly paralyzed by its own problems.

For Europeans, the Persian Gulf War was America’s last hurrah.

“They feel sorry for us,” said Steven Muller, president emeritus of Johns Hopkins University and chairman of the 21st Century Foundation, after a brief visit to Europe last month.

Under the caricature of a worried Uncle Sam and the headline, “Sam, Sam, the Paranoid Man,” the British weekly The Economist commented late last month on what it perceived as excessive American worry, noting: “The trouble is that in recent months these fears have become so intensive that they threaten to do real, not imaginary, harm.”

For Americans and Europeans alike, the implications of a diminished U.S. role are enormous.

The United States must face the uncomfortable new reality that less involvement means less power and that Europeans now expect to deal with Americans as equals, not as underlings.

“The Americans have to shift from leadership to partnership,” said Dominique Moisi, co-director of the French Institute of International Relations in Paris. “They need to let Europeans develop by themselves.”

Making the same point more directly, a senior German diplomat stated flatly, “American behavior must change.” And British historian Wallace predicted that America is about to go through the same painful adjustment of a global power in decline that Britain faced in the late 1940s.

“The United States hasn’t yet learned that if there’s no money, there’s no leadership,” he said. “The perception (in the United States) that America can have a free ride because it’s protected Europe for 40 years just won’t wash much longer.”

Europeans face equally uncomfortable adjustments.

French relief at the superpower’s departure is tempered by the anxiety of once again being left alone with the Germans--an idea that drives France’s quest for accelerated European economic and political union.

For the smaller European countries, America’s departure means once again facing on their own the disproportionate power of their larger neighbors.

“We’re more worried than relieved,” said Jerome Heldring, a columnist for the leading Rotterdam daily NRC Handelsblad. “Sure, there were demonstrations against the (deployment of U.S. medium-range nuclear) missiles, but in general the Dutch were more comfortable with the U.S. here. Now we’re on our own with Germany and France, two countries with whom we’ve never gotten along well.”

But the greatest adjustments will come in Britain and Germany, countries where the transatlantic relationship served both as the backbone of their external affairs and as part of their identities as nations.

In West Germany, America was simultaneously conqueror, liberator, supporter and protector. For the Germans, America’s withdrawal means growing up.

At one point in an hourlong interview, German Parliament member Karl Lamers likened his country’s concerns about taking on new political burdens to those of his son, who decided at age 12 that he wanted to grow no older because adult life was too tough.

“We were free and without responsibility,” Lamers said. “That’s no longer possible. We’ve got to learn that our size will bring criticism. We have to be self-confident, but not arrogant.”

In many ways, America’s reduced profile completes a process of maturity that began with the collapse of the East German state and the return of full sovereignty that accompanied unification.

While German policy-makers describe America’s withdrawal as both important and necessary, they admit the adjustment will be hard. “Yugoslavia has shown us how difficult it is to resolve problems on our own,” noted Social Democrat foreign affairs specialist Norbert Gansel.

Many Germans are working actively to keep America engaged in Europe.

Werner Weidenfeld, a Mainz University political scientist and Kohl adviser, has set out a four-point program to keep bright minds from both countries engaged, including a German-American Academy of Sciences and a series of “chancellor’s stipends” modeled after the Oxford University Rhodes Scholarships to support the studies of young Americans in Germany.

“For us, there are two anchors of stability: the United States and Western Europe,” Weidenfeld said in an interview.

The trauma of a reduced American presence is just as great for the British, a people whose belief in strong transatlantic ties is almost as great as their collective allergy to continental European ideas.

The choice between Europe and America as the key partner in political and security affairs has split the ruling Conservative Party since former Prime Minister Edward Heath first took Britain into the EC nearly 20 years ago. It also was at the heart of the 1986 Westland Affair, the biggest crisis of Margaret Thatcher’s 11-year prime ministership.

“We’ve always seen America as our natural partner, and the horrifying part of what is happening now is that there’s no alternative being articulated,” said Oxford historian Wallace. “We haven’t yet woken up to just how fundamental a shift is under way.”

Although America’s political power may be eroding, there is no sign of any erosion of the cultural impact of Americana throughout Europe.

“Generally speaking, America’s (cultural) influence in France has never been stronger than it is today,” said Moisi. “Burger King has been accepted as a part of our culture.”

The picture is similar elsewhere.

German mail-order houses advertise a variety of American goods from Los Angeles Lakers rooters caps to star-spangled children’s lunch boxes. Second German Television (ZDF) program buyer Manfred Schuetze says the number of U.S. TV productions is down, but the level of films remains at about 75% American. And the only German rock band with global impact--the Scorpions--performs strictly American hard ‘n’ heavy rock in English.

Dutch commentator Heldring described American cultural influence as “pervasive” and went so far as to suggest that it may have played a role in the more open, less inhibited Dutch national lifestyle.

“When people talk of the decline of American influence, they do so against the omnipresent beat of American music,” said Muller. “The energy, optimism and practicality of America and its willingness to express a radically democratic lifestyle will continue to influence Europe.”