WASHINGTON: So that's it: Washington is no longer at war. But didn't President Bush just tell us the exact opposite in his State of the Union address? He did. He said most emphatically that the war goes on - and showed that it's over. The war on terror, September 11, 2001, to January 20, 2004. RIP.

I don't mean by this that fighting international terrorism, rogue states and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction won't remain near the top of the United States' foreign policy agenda for some time to come. They probably will. I don't mean that Bush won't try to fight the election as the commander-in- chief of a nation at war. He probably will.

I mean that the real psychological sense of being at war has faded even in Washington, where it was strongest, and, unless there is another major terrorist attack on the American homeland, will further fade. "The killing has continued," Bush said, "in Bali, Jakarta, Casablanca, Riyadh, Mombasa, Jerusalem, Istanbul and Baghdad." Well, better not go on holiday there.

Accordingly, foreign policy is slipping back down the American agenda to its usual second, third or fourth place. America's real war this year will be the election war, and that will be won or lost on the economy, education, healthcare and family values. Iraq, with American soldiers being killed almost every day, is not such an election-winning triumph. Flimsy evidence of "weapons of mass destruction-related programme activities" (an early entrant for weasel words of the year) will hardly make voters' flesh crawl.

Democrats and Republicans will agree on the need to hang tough in the fight against international terrorism. If the Democrats field the Vietnam veteran John Kerry, or General Wesley Clark, they can look almost as credible on matters of national security.

One giveaway is the order of the speech. Last year's state of the union address, which was a preparation for war on Iraq, started with several pages on the economy, education and health, then turned to the real business of war.

This one starts with a resounding statement that "hundreds of thousands of American servicemen and women are deployed across the world in the war on terror", and goes on for three pages about national security, but then turns to health, education and the economy. The most important part comes last.

It was always difficult to imagine how the war on terror would end. There could hardly be a moment when the president would don pilot's gear, descend on to an aircraft carrier and declare that major combat operations were over, as he did after the toppling of Saddam.

You can't do that with a worldwide, open- ended war on an abstract noun. You can't capture an abstract noun. You can't shoot fear. But now we know how the war on terror ends: with the president loudly proclaiming that it continues. The war in Iraq continued when it was declared over; the war on terror ends when it's proclaimed to be continuing.

Obviously I'm using war on terror in a rather special sense, to mean the central, organizing principle of a White House agenda. But then, that's the only clear, concrete meaning the phrase has ever had. It's never been anything like the second world war against Hitler's Germany, or the cold war against the Soviet Union.

Where does terror live? What is its capital? Who commands its army? The 2001 terrorist attacks have changed for ever the way governments think about many problems in the world. They have heightened our sense of insecurity, our security measures, and, more patchily, our commitment to addressing the underlying causes of that insecurity. (Causes such as the lack of an equitable peace settlement between Israel and Palestine - notably absent from this election-year presidential address.) But will the first decade of world history in the 21st century be remembered as that of the war on terror? I suspect not. Rather, I think there'll be a chapter in the history of the United States entitled war on terror, and the dates future historians add in brackets may well be 2001-04.

This is a risky prognosis, to be sure; another major terrorist attack on the American homeland, and it could look very silly. But we always have to operate on informed guesswork. Now if this guess is right, one interesting question is: where would it leave the rest of us, especially us in Europe? The awkward answer might be: holding the bawling baby.

I have never thought that the greatest danger from American policy under George Bush was that it would go storming around the world, deposing dictator after dictator, occupying country after country, in pursuit of a neo- conservative programme of revolution from above. The greater danger was always that the United States would start intervening, and then retreat into its own vast carelessness, preoccupied with domestic issues, leaving the job abroad half-done.

For some two years after the 9/11 attacks, America quite understandably went ape. This frightened the hell out of terrorists and dictators, but also out of many of America's allies and friends. The neo-cons enjoyed a brief, heady moment of agenda-setting supremacy. But that's over. Next stop Syria is not a message heard much these days. In Iraq, the US is looking for what Bush called "a transition to full Iraqi sovereignty" by the end of June.

Where does that leave the wider Middle East? Still in a mess. Who's most directly affected by this mess? Europe. Not that America will simply turn away; things are never that clear-cut.

We in Europe need urgently to work out for ourselves how we stand to this unpredictable, but in principle hugely welcome, process. America may light the fuse, but we will feel the heat - not least, through our own Muslim populations. At the end of the day, we also have most to gain. Washington's war on terror, as it began on September 11, 2001, may be over. The campaign for freedom in the Middle East has only just begun.-Dawn/The Guardian News Service.