Lawrence Summers

George Bush arrives in Britain on Tuesday for a state visit including dinner with the Queen.

But while his welcome in Buckingham Palace will be warm, he's likely to feel a chill as his motorcade moves down the Mall. Britain's anti-war movement will be out in force, and some of them talk as though there's little to choose morally between the US President, and Saddam Hussein himself.

Lawrence Summers, who used to be President Clinton's Treasury Secretary, is working on an analysis of the transatlantic relationship to be published shortly.

Kirsty Wark began by asking him how Americans would react to visible and vocal hostility towards their President.

LAWRENCE SUMMERS:
My hope would be that people who want to protest should protest. But the real question we have is not whether the steps taken in the past were or were not wise. Historians will be debating that for a long time. The real question on which we really do need to co-operate is how best to move forward. How best to establish stable democracy in Iraq.

KIRSTY WARK:
You talk, though, about the central paradox confronting the US, that the American power is at its zenith, that it is at a Nadir. Why?

LAWRENCE SUMMERS:
It is a combination of reasons. It may be the backlash from some actions that the United States has taken. For 45 years after the Second World War, the United States provided protection against the Communist threat to the whole world. That was a major source of influence. Now that protection is no longer needed, American influence is attenuated. We have to recognise, as a country, that one nation may be able to win a war, but it takes many countries that win a peace, and work on our ways of co-operating with other nations in peacekeeping. All the more because the United States has disproportionate military strength. But, given what US Congress's have been willing to support, US has disproportionate peacekeeping ability.

KIRSTY WARK:
You talked today about the kind of US ultimate Goal, which is spreading democracy and the need to deal with rogue states. There is a push in the doctrine of pre-emption as well. People here and on mainland Europe are quite uncomfortable with this.

LAWRENCE SUMMERS:
Pre-emtion is something that people should be uncomfortable with. But there are threats, there are threats involving acquisition of nuclear weapons, there are threats involving suicide terrorism whereby their logic, deterrence isn't going to be sufficient. The great challenge, and it will be one of the important areas for dialogue, between the United States and Europe is to find a set of rules of the road, a set of approaches, for recognising that you can't have every nation pre- empting whenever it seems right. But, at the same time, no great nation, in the United States or Europe, is ever going to completely cede to an international or foreign body the right to take fundamental national security decisions.

KIRSTY WARK:
But we don't see America holding out the hand of friendship to Europe. Let's deal with issues as wide apart as steel tariffs, protectionism and also Guantanamo Bay. Europeans have to deal with What they see as protectionism and America acting out with the rule of law.

LAWRENCE SUMMERS:
It is a serious mistake to suppose that either side has a monopoly on virtue. When I see the kind of sentiment that is arising in Europe, that suggests the United States is the power that has to be contained, when I see serious political leaders seeing the United States as a threat to world peace in a way that terrorist states like Iran and North Korea are seen as threats, those are problems as well. What we need to do is take the rhetorical temperature way down, find ways to co- operate, and recognise that we are all in this together.

KIRSTY WARK:
You talk about taking the rhetorician temperature down. Now I know you don't hold any brief for this administration, but when Donald Rumsfeld talks about a old Europe and new Europe, is that corrosive

LAWRENCE SUMMERS:
If this is a blame game, we are not going to make progress. What is crucial is that people together think about the future rather than engage in recriminations about the past. There is no need to defend everything that was done by either side over the last year. What there is a need to do is to move forward, constructively. If we don't move forward together, we will move forward apart and in directions that I believe will be quite dangerous for the world.

KIRSTY WARK:
In what way?

LAWRENCE SUMMERS:
Dangerous for the United States because we will lack influence, lack legitimacy, and be able to achieve our objectives. Dangerous for Europe because a Europe not integrated with the United States will be a Europe that is very likely to be divided by the consequences of American actions as we have seen over the last 18 months. Dangerous for the world because there's no collectivity to address global problems, whether it is global warming, whether it is trade liberalisation, whether it is weapons of mass destruction. Dangerous also, Kirsty, because, if you look to the long run, the United States and Europe aren't going to be the only great powers. China is on the rise. India is on the rise. And if we see a return to the kinds of great power dynamics that you had before the First World War, with people choosing upsides and jockeying for influence in India and China, it will be a much less stable and ultimately more dangerous world.

KIRSTY WARK:
Lawrence, Thank you.

This transcript was produced from the teletext subtitles that are generated live for Newsnight. It has been checked against the programme as broadcast, however Newsnight can accept no responsibility for any factual inaccuracies. We will be happy to correct serious errors.