Like it or not, America remains indispensable

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Bush insists missile defence system will go ahead

The ceasefire agreement between Israel and the Palestinians, which the CIA director George Tenet has brokered, may or may not hold. Neither side was especially keen on the arrangement, and militant Islamic groups such as Hamas may see to it that the self-defeating cycle of violence in the region soon restarts. But the deal does at last offer a small ray of hope, after months of unremitting disaster for what was once known as the Middle East peace process. It also underlines a geo-political truism. Whether we like it or not, America, even under President George Bush, remains what Madeleine Albright, the former secretary of state, liked to call "the indispensable nation".

Many, plainly, do not much like it. We sneer at Mr Bush's first foray into Europe this week as a modern Mr Malaprop's progress, while the leaders of France and Germany, the EU's most influential powers, deliberately choose that very moment to thumb their noses at Washington by jointly signalling their opposition to his, admittedly regrettable, policies on missile defence and global warming. But the Middle East is proof again that while Europe aspires to influence in most of the great conflicts of our time, only America truly possesses it. And not only in the Middle East.

If Nato seems about to be galvanised into action to prevent full-scale civil war in Macedonia, that is certainly not unconnected with the presence in Brussels this week of Mr Bush and Colin Powell, the Secretary of State. The same is true of secretive North Korea, where the Europeans tried to dabble after the new President placed negotiations with Pyongyang over its suspected nuclear programme on ice very early in his term. Now Mr Bush has changed his mind, reportedly with a prod from his experienced (if no less Malapropism-prone) father; and the "rogue state" par excellence has leapt at the opportunity to renew contacts with Washington, aware that it simply could not afford to say no.

Taken together, these developments are very good news. If there is one thing more dangerous than American unilateralism, it is an America that withdraws into itself, believing itself unconcerned by, and impervious from, the problems of the world. Prodded by General Powell, as well as by his otherwise unadmiring European allies, Mr Bush is undergoing a crash course in global realities. He is learning that America is indeed the indispensable nation ­ and that if you are indispensable, your duty is to act.