Old-world angst

In the end, however, Europeans have not sought to counter U.S. hegemony in the usual, power-oriented fashion, because they do not find U.S. hegemony threatening in the traditional power-oriented way. Not all global hegemons are equally frightening. U.S. power, as Europeans well know, does not imperil Europe 's security or even its autonomy. Europeans do not fear that the United States will seek to control them; they fear that they have lost control over the United States and, by extension, over the direction of world affairs.

If the United States is suffering a crisis of legitimacy, then, it is in large part because Europe wants to regain some measure of control over Washington 's behavior. The vast majority of Europeans objected to the U.S. invasion of Iraq not simply because they opposed the war. They objected also because U.S. willingness to go to war without the Security Council's approval -- that is, without Europe's approval -- challenged both Europe's world view and its ability to exercise even a modicum of influence in the new unipolar system.
--Robert Kagan, from The Crisis of Legitimacy: America and the World

Vivevo in una simulazione di attività. Un'attività noiosissima (I was living in a similation of activity. An extremely tedious activity).
--Italo Svevo, Zeno's Conscience (La conscienza di Zeno)