But if Obama lost sleep over this tepid European response, he showed no signs of it. In the new Obama world order, transatlantic relations are not the foundation, but just one of the Venn diagram’s ellipses – as significant or insignificant as Europeans choose to make it.
毫无疑问，无论是在阿富汗战争还是刺激全球经济方面，欧洲都没有做多少为奥巴马分忧的事。而与此同时也没有任何迹象表明奥巴马会因欧洲的冷淡而辗转难眠。因为在奥巴马的世界新秩序中，大西洋两岸关系不再是基石，只是众多椭圆形关系的其中一个，至于这层关系到底重不重要，那就要看欧洲人自己的表现了。