Different ties: UK, France, Germany

By Robin Oakley
CNN.com European Political Editor

LONDON, England (CNN) -- Relations between most European countries and the United States are amiable and constructive.

U.S. diplomats, in private moments, will acknowledge that there remains a particularly close relationship with Britain, a traditional ally that exchanges military intelligence with the United States.

The two nations more or less share a common language. But few on either side like to use the term "special relationship" now, because America's relationship these days is as much with Britain in Europe as with Britain alone.

At points in recent years when the United Kingdom's Euro-scepticism has been particularly apparent, there has been a tendency for Washington to talk a good deal to Germany. The reunified Germany, after all, is Europe's biggest economic power and most populous state.

Although France, like Britain, is a European nation willing to commit its troops to a Western alliance with the United States, as in the Gulf War, an essential prickliness remains in Franco-American relations.

The French were scathing in their condemnation of the U.S. bombing of Libya (from British bases) in 1986 in reprisal for terrorist attacks on U.S. personnel in Europe.

French efforts to pursue an ever-closer European integration with Germany and other nations are in part an effort by the Elysee Palace to ensure that globalisation does not become Americanisation.

However fast the onward march of McDonald's and Hollywood, the French -- echoed occasionally by the Greeks -- remain determined to resist what Paris sees as the dilution of French culture by American values.

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