One benefit of the international brinkmanship surrounding the future of Iraq is to throw into sharp relief the nonsense that is our current notion of European union.

Within a short space the cosy illusions of a common foreign policy, a co-ordinated military and a single currency have given way to the most profound redefining of difference and division since France opposed Britain's original entry.

Before the ink is dry on treaties to widen the Union, ending the division of those in and those out, we have Europe re-dividing into old and new - with the fundamental difference crystalising around conflicting policies towards Iraq.

Old Europe is formed around the Franco-German axis, its central contradiction being what it always was: a commitment to expansion and a pan-European ideal, undermined by a need to determine and control events across the continent in a way that can only be described as Napoleonic.

New Europe is formed around Britain, Spain and Italy, nations which, if no less dogmatic in their approach, realise the need to look forward in world politics and constantly to question and redefine the rules by which the game is played - a vision brilliantly understood and practised by none other than Saddam Hussein.

A charge of diplomatic absolutism might be levelled at the United States for continuing its threat to go it alone, clumsily blackmailing the dis-United Nations with the unpalatable alternatives of backing her or disintegrating into a decade of impotence, the ridicule of every terrorist and the contempt of every dictator.

But if the charge is made it must also be levelled at the French, whose presidential "Non" is as absolutist as anything that has come out of Washington since the crisis began. The "Non" that Chirac has threatened to make manifest in a French veto, even should there be a majority in the security council in favour of a second resolution, further illustrates the underlying agenda of France in Europe. Union must be on France's terms, and the arbiters of European policy must sit in Paris.

If Britain's permanent membership of the security council is an anachronism, an illogical hangover from the world war which bankrupted her and broke her empire, France has shown its own membership to be even more profoundly ancient and backward-looking.

The United States, flexing the power in 1956 that it still wields today, scolded and humiliated both Britain and France back into line at Suez. But where Britain has learned that her world role now must be a matter of leadership in principle, with military resolution ultimately submitting to a majority will in council, France has learned nothing from the last fifty years. The threat of force is gone from French foreign policy, but the manner of that policy is ever true.

As the world is treated to the unedifying spectacle of British and French officials chasing each other round Africa, entreating support in a grotesque parody of the colonial scramble, the Secretary General of the United Nations limps away from Cyprus, his mission a failure, and a Turkish "Non" stamped squarely across his peaceful proposals.

In Cyprus the division of Europe runs even deeper than in Northern Ireland or Gibralter, making cosmetic the differences surrounding the Euro zone or any beef-ban fines. Turkey, it seems, will not relinquish its military occupation of traditionally Greek territory. On this issue alone, surely, her application for membership must eventually founder.

Or must it? As Old Europe crystalises around diplomatic absolutism and high-minded impotence, the hope for Europe as a whole is that the New European nations led by Britain, Spain and Italy, and supported by many in the east who are not yet even members, will continue to risk accusations of inconstancy and hypocrisy to harvest what international progress they can in an ever more complex world.

It must be possible to stand on principle in one place and trade in Realpolitik and compromise in another. It must be possible to call time on a murderous dictator without tripping over the baggage of ex-colonial angst. If Europe is to go forward it must get ever more used to 21st century politics where no one is right all the time, where there is rarely a moral high ground, and where we must simply do the best we can with the problems before us, taking them one by one and resisting the temptation to confuse and compare. Over Northern Ireland there is no other way. Over Iraq there is no other way.

We can no longer afford the old simplicities of "Oui" and "Non". The world is grey, and in dealing with its dictators and democracies we can only do our best to distinguish right and wrong in detail, developing New Europe, warts and all, one policy at a time.

This New Europe, with its very strength lying in its common understanding and acceptance of compromise and difference, might then be able to balance the might that is the 21st-century, post-September 11th, United States.