WASHINGTON: At the opening ceremony of the Winter Olympics, the delegation of French athletes went further than any other to express solidarity with the post-Sept 11 United States: They carried small French and American flags attached back to back. It was an endearing gesture from America’s oldest ally. But while the cut-and-paste job was successful in Salt Lake City, it is going to be harder to overcome widening gaps between the US and its European allies - the backbone of the “coalition” against terrorism.

What is driving such speculation: the shock many Europeans felt at how handily American military might knocked out an unfriendly regime in Afghanistan - a place known for centuries as a graveyard for empires. Afghanistan demonstrated that an America that chooses to is capable of going it alone.

“There’s real drift occurring in the alliance, and it is not just over cultural criticism of the US or differences over the death penalty,” says John Hulsman, a senior research fellow in European issues at the Heritage Foundation in Washington. “The US has made it clear it’s not going to let the Lilliputians tie Gulliver up, and that has some of them terrified.”

A shift by the Bush administration to a more offensive and preemptive footing in the battle with terror has Europeans worried about where the US could strike next. President Bush’s grouping of Iran, Iraq, and North Korea as an “axis of evil” in his State of the Union address put Europeans on guard that countries they may prefer to deal with in other than a military manner could soon face American strikes.

Some diplomatic experts have speculated since the early days of the coalition that a key objective of some allies in joining the terror fight was to rein in a wounded US understandably bent on striking the Sept 11 perpetrators. But now some of these allies fear being dragged into a wider conflict they do not support.

The sharpest criticism came from French Foreign Minister Hubert Vedrine, who said the emerging US approach to problem states is “not well thought out.” He went so far as to categorize US policy as a threat, saying, “Today we are threatened by a new simplistic approach that reduces all the problems in the world to the struggle against terrorism.” Also troubling to many allies, is recent congressional testimony from Secretary of State Colin Powell indicating his full support for the administration’s new act-alone-doctrine. —Dawn/LATS Service (c) Christian Science Monitor.