In a succinct Financial Times Article, Chris Patten, a well-known British Politician who has always kept a shrewd eye on EU-US relations, lists the six early challenges Europe faces to help realize the promise of Obama.

First, says Patten, Europe should take more responsibility for the issue in the Congo. The EU needs to have more of a presence and effect by keeping troops “on the ground until the job is done”, says Patten.

Second, when Obama officially pulls into office and asks Europe for a greater military commitment in Afghanistan, non-fighting members of NATO should step up and support the members that are fighting (Britain, Denmark, Poland, the Netherlands).

Third, the EU should keep its commitment to double assistance to poor countries that have been hit hard by the current financial crisis despite rough times at home.

Fourth, the EU should be clear, at the December heads of state meeting, about hitting their goal of 20% emissions cut by 2020.

Fifth, emerging economies such as India and China should not be allowed to block conclusion to the DOHA round. French President Nicholas Sarkozy should be very clear about having nothing to do with barriers to free trade.

Finally, says Patten, the EU needs to give up seats in the IMF and World Bank to reflect true gross domestic product and allow a more effective financial multilateralism to emerge as a result.

Europe risks losing political, military, and economic importance in a multi-polar world that will emerge over the next two decades. That view emerges in “Global Trends 2025: A Transformed World” a report issued by the National Intelligence Council.

Ironically, European leaders have long called for the emergence of a multi-polar world to replace the U.S. dominance as a “unipolar power in a unipolar moment” just after the cold war’s end.

But the new U.S. report – the latest in a series of foreword-looking “think pieces” published every 4 years by the U.S. intelligence community – says that Europe will become less competitive, not more – because of several weaknesses.

Perceived weaknesses, according to the report, include 1) internal arguing, 2) skeptical public views of the EU and the European Commissions, 3) continued dependence on Russian energy, and, 4) the rise in the roles of “non-state” actors, specifically organized criminal groups.

Eastern European criminal groups in particular, who have benefited handsomely from involvement in energy and minerals, are set to dominate “one or more governments in Eastern or Central Europe”, according to the report. Though no countries were named there are several leading candidates that support this theory with rising organized criminal incidences.

The report emphasizes the decisive role of leadership in the future of the transatlantic relationship between the EU and US. Some issues mentioned are likely to pull the two countries closer – notably the environment and energy. But the two sides are likely to be separated by defense issues and immigration policies. The EU is seen as cutting its defense budget and tiring of support for NATO and the US in wars outside Europe. Overall, Europe is depicted as liable to turn inward, according to Thomas Fingar, Chairman of the NIC. Presenting the report at a Washington think tank, he said….“An EU with substantial cohesion is unlikely and the EU will have less interest in external relations.”

Concerning immigration the EU’s decision to be more receptive toward an immigration policy that deals with the growing shortage of the working age population, as written about prior in European Affairs issue 27, “Despite Rising Immigration EU Still Graying With Pensioners”, will likely be a long and difficult argument. “Continued failure to convince skeptical publics of the benefits of deeper economic, political, and social integration…could leave the EU a hobbled giant distracted by internal bickering and competing national agendas, and less able to translate its economic clout into global influence,” the report says.

The section titled, “Europe: Losing Clout By 2025”, suggests a consensus view among U.S. intelligence agencies sees current trends reducing U.S. dominance and ushering in the “multi-polar world” that European leaders have long sought. The trouble for Europe, however, is that these changes seem unlikely to help Europe emerge in a stronger position because EU member states seem unlikely to replace their internal bickering with united leadership.

Though the report made headlines in the U.S. mentions of the EU were almost entirely absent in the American media reporting on it.

Russia is stepping up its campaign to impose a moral equivalence between its military action against Georgia over South Ossetia last summer and NATO’s intervention against Serbia over Kosovo in 1998-1999. The Kremlin line consists of justifying Moscow’s actions by claiming that it is implementing the resolution of the U.N. Security Council imposing a “responsibility to protect” civilian populations from genocidal threats, even from their own legitimate government. That resolution was passed in response to events in Rwanda, but it has never been implemented by major U.N. member states.

Calling the comparison a “red herring,” that is being fabricated by Russia, Jamie Rubin, former U.S. assistant secretary of state under the Clinton administration, writes in the current issue of The New Republic that the international community’s action in Kosovo was “all about moral intervention” whereas Russia’s action in Georgia is “all about geopolitical resentment.”

Rubin points out that condemnation for Serbia’s crimes against Kosovo’s ethnic Albanian majority began with “unanimity among the major powers – the United States, key European governments, and, yes, even Russia.” Moscow supported economic sanctions against Serbia, and Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanovo even admitted to then-Secretary of State Madeleine Albright that the “threat of force might be necessary.”

So what has happened that made Russia change its tune? For one, the Bush administration strained relations with Moscow in 2003, by defying Russia’s objections to the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Rubin says that then-president Putin is a temperamental leader who took this affront personally. (After all, he notes, Putin had supported U.S. actions in Afghanistan, the scene of past Soviet humiliation.) So Putin viewed it as adding insult to injury when the U.S. and the EU moved to recognize Kosovo’s independence – against Moscow’s objections.

Creating false moral equivalences is no new tactic for Russia. Back in August during the Russian invasion of Georgia, European Affairs predicted the Kremlin’s tactics, saying that “Russia will certainly play the recognition card in negotiations about the outcome and future shape of Georgia” and explaining that “Russia wants to pay back the West in its own coin for recognizing Kosovo’s independence in defiance of Moscow.”

Now, Russian President Dmitri Medvedev argues that “there is certainly no serious argument which would allow one to … separate the process of recognition of South Ossetia and Abkhazia from decisions taken with regard to Kosovo.”

The idea that Russia is claiming to be the guardian of human rights will not convince many people, but Russia’s attempt to create a parallel between Georgia and Serbia – the two countries that have lost provinces after outside nations intervened in the interest of local civilian populations – irritates U.S. and European officials. Rubin calls Russia’s analogy “nonsense” and says that this flawed logic will draw Russia into a corner – aggravating what the European Affairs blog called “one of [Russia’s] chronic weaknesses: isolation.”

The EU has at last taken the first steps to diversify its energy suppliers away from Russia, at least on paper. The European Commission announced its plans - which will be submitted to EU member states for approval - to boost energy diversification by creating six interconnecting energy infrastructures which are essentially large interlinked grids to carry electricity and gas that would spread power to each of the EU states including the areas of the Baltics, the Mediterranean region, and offshore in the North Sea. The most ambitious plan yet at a pan-euro level, the announcement will complement other plans to mitigate climate change and reduce overall energy consumption by 2020.

It is also a call for a unified external energy strategy when dealing with non-EU states, according to the European Voice, a Brussels based newspaper. The commission is calling on EU member states to move away from bi-lateral energy contracts with non-EU suppliers and to have all contracts categorized under an agreed “EU” status.

Diversification in Southern Europe will depend largely on the success of the currently unrealized Nabucco pipeline, backed by the US and EU, set to thread natural gas from Turkey to Austria via Bulgaria, Romania, and Hungary. Nabucco would bring gas from the Caspian to countries which are not under Russian control. However Russia has thrown its own pipeline vision, South Stream, into the mix-South Stream a Russian controlled pipeline that would end in Italy- to create jostling between EU states and to snuff out Nabucco.

On the periphery of the pipeline race is the Nord Stream pipeline, a joint venture between Berlin and Moscow, that is described by Stratfor, an online intelligence service, as a “geopolitical project” to send natural gas supplies to Europe while bypassing Poland and the Baltic states. Stratfor reports that this project is now at risk because Germany fears the backlash of political risks and Russia fears the rising costs for such a long undersea pipeline.

Interestingly, Europe may also have another option in the form of energy imports from Africa. According to the International Energy Agency, Africa is set to triple its gas exports to Europe by 2030.

“President Obama will play a bigger role in re-inventing the international system than any other president before in past decades,” according to a former Clinton administration official who now teaches at Harvard. He predicted that the new U.S. focus will emphasize financial affairs, probably including efforts to start a more global regulatory system in the wake of the financial meltdown that started in September.

The expert, David Rothkopf, has written that the financial crisis was a bigger blow to the United States than the terrorist attack of Sept. 11, 2001.

Mr. Rothkopf emphasized the need for a global financial regulator – something a summit meeting of the so-called “G-20” in Washington on 15 November is likely to discuss but probably will be unable to agree upon, because the outgoing Bush administration opposes this idea and the Obama team is not yet in charge.

Speaking in a video conference organized by the Brussels office of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Rothkopf said that he expected the Obama administration to seek a much closer partnership with Europe in trying to overhaul a number of organizations and treaties, ranging from the Doha talks at the World Trade Organization to the nuclear non-proliferation treaty and to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the G-7 excluding some leading industrial economies. China, for example, does not belong to either of these two groups.

The so-called “G-20” – including China and major emerging economies – will probably hold a second meeting in the first months of 2009, he predicted, and might then take concrete steps toward creating a new regulatory body and reform the IMF. Any financial agreement will be likely to include a leadership role for the US in coalition with the EU and other countries, Mr. Rothkopf said.

In terms of what a global financial regulator would look like, Mr. Rothkopf mentioned the EU as an example of “creating super-national structures – but noted that enforcement may pose problems for such a regulator. “Getting everybody in a room and agreeing on principles is easy,” he said, predicting this easy step will probably come at the 15 November summit. Then next year, he said, “We’ll see whether we’ll get institutions that have the ability to enforce new global standards on the international financial markets.”

As part of this effort, he predicted that President Obama will move quickly to improve teamwork with European governments, most likely traveling to Europe within weeks of his inauguration. While hoping to cooperate with Europeans, especially on financial reform, Obama will have to weigh multilateral ambitions against a deeply held U.S. view that Washington must not subordinate financial controls to any international body.

Amid the daily reports of deepening military problems in Afghanistan, NATO operations there are at risk not just because of the mounting tempo of the Taliban but also because allied capitals are papering over deep disagreements about the strategy and the conduct of the campaign. The command structure is afflicted by the simultaneous presence in the field of many three and four-star generals from different countries and their divergences have damaged morale among troops and officials on the ground and spread pessimism in the Western media, especially in Europe. The U.S. feeling of political concern has become acute now that Britain is showing signs of becoming lukewarm about its Afghan commitment. If Britain, the key U.S. ally in the campaign, were to pull its forces out of Afghanistan, it would be easy to see other European governments following the British lead to the exit.

A blunt analysis of the emerging confusion and disarray among the allies was delivered recently in Washington by a leading British specialist, who did not mince words about the urgency of the problem. “It is clear that for the next two years the EU and the US need to be brutally honest with each other about Afghanistan and to commit their focus to this war and its resolution”, Dr. Michael Clarke, Director of RUSI (the London-based Royal United Services Institute) told a think tank in Washington in late October.

The multinational character of the NATO-led military forces there are by no means the only source of confusion and trouble. According to Clarke, some of the numerous NGO’s and other international civilian organizations on the ground there are severely obstructing military operations with their mere presence. Perhaps worst of all, the Afghan government has yet to make substantive progress on its own in establishing stability and its own credibility, he said.

These problems in Afghanistan have exposed fundamental weaknesses in the EU’s defense capabilities. On paper, the EU and NATO together account for 25% of the world’s defense spending, but their actual capabilities for fighting a conflict such as Afghanistan are alarmingly weak and poorly adapted to the battlefield. A gap is widening dangerously between some allied governments’ claims on paper about their troop and equipment capabilities and the actual forces they can deploy. This discrepancy has often exposed, to a devastating degree, the conflict in Afghanistan. Defense Secretary Robert Gates has complained publicly about the European allies’ unreadiness to fight counter-insurgency warfare, and this fall 10 French service people died in a Taliban ambush for which the NATO fighters were ill-equipped. France has set out to repair the shortcomings in its expeditionary force there but, on a larger scale, this lack of realism in governments about the issue could threaten the future of European defense. “If NATO and the EU continue to have delusions about their military mission capabilities without actually assessing the realities, the consequences will be catastrophic,” he said.

British doubts about the outlook have surfaced in the form of conversations that have been leaked. Defeatist comments by British officials generally take the line that “America’s strategy is doomed” and “we are not going to win this war” in Afghanistan. Even US Admiral Mike Mullen (Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff) was reported by the Economist as admitting that Afghanistan is “not going in the right direction.” The British seem most in favor of starting some type of dialogue with elements of the Taliban – a move sternly rejected, so far, by Washington.

The U.S. role in Afghanistan has now come under the command of General David Petraeus, who was the architect of the surge strategy credited with bringing some stability to Iraq. But he would be the first to recognize that in some ways Afghanistan poses bigger challenges than Iraq. The very difficult, often treacherous terrain in Afghanistan makes it harder for Western forces to hunt down individual rebels. The Kabul regime lacks far behind Baghdad in having the foundations for a modern central administration. Pakistan seems even less inclined to cooperate about Afghanistan than Iran or Syria has been about Iraq. But Petraeus reportedly believes there is room for maneuver in getting “reconcilable” Afghan tribes to the fight against the Taliban. There may be some hopeful signs in Pakistan terrorist actions increase there and move leaders and public opinion in that country to turn against their own violent Islamic militants.