A friend in Germany writes of his frustration with America's course through the world, and I write back, and over time I begin to see we don't live in the same world after all.

We both, Markus and I, approve the idea of an empowered world court system, with jurisdiction over international conflicts. But to him, and not to me, this system of international law:

1. is enough

2. exists.

I see it as a pipe dream, but something that's possible 100 years from now, maybe more. I like the United Federation of Planets from "Star Trek," too, but I don't intend to live as though Captain Kirk is out there and will solve my problems.

Before there can really be such a strong, solid legal framework for international relations, the world has to change. Most of the world will have to learn such concepts as the rule of law, life under incorruptible administrations, and independent judiciaries. These things may be in place in Western Europe (though the Rushdie case leaves me wondering), but they are unknown in the nations where the majority of human beings live.

I might add also that these things were achieved in Europe because brave people there took up guns, risked their lives, and drove out tyrants and demagogues, sometimes with some help from Americans. I also might point out that any court -- whether global or local -- is useless without some sort of force to back up its decisions.

Even in semi-developed places like Mexico and China, incorruptible, independent judicial systems are not part of daily life. Even in the U.S., their hold is not as sure as it ought to be. Recently a federal judge in set free a notorious Lancaster murderer on procedural grounds. There was a howl of indignation and tens of thousands of people signed a petition demanding a change in the legal system that would have subjugated it to popular will if not political control.

Which brings me to disagreement number 1, and the great irony it contains: in order to achieve the kind of world we wish to live in, wars like the Iraq invasion will have to happen first. In the U.S.neo-con/neo-imperialist ethos, the Iraq war is meant to spread this value system of law, freedom, justice, and prosperity into one of the darkest regions of the world. There can't be real global justice if a huge chunk of the planet lives under the kind of dictatorship that turned the Garden of Eden into a charnel house, where weeping people are now digging up thousands of skulls of their loved ones.

The present system of world justice grew out of Nuremberg, and in a larger sense it grew out of World War II, at a time when the greatest threat to human life and dignity was war between nations. So its structures are designed to prevent wars. But they do nothing about what goes on within any nation. A country like Zimbabwe or Burma can go about butchering and raping its citizens yet be judged "peaceful" under international law.

Those who protested the Iraq war worry that the alternative to international law is terror, cowboy-ism, the law of the jungle. I've got news for them: the people of Iraq were already living under the rule of terror, thugs, and predators. International law was what would have been invoked to prevent American and British troops from putting an end to that nightmare.

Can you spread love of peace and respect for law from the barrel of a gun? Of course not. But in failed nations you have to clear out the rottenness and the deadwood, and protect the open land, for the years it will take for these things to grow and grow strong there. The British conquered India with brutality and bloodshed on a vast scale. They exploited the resources (and made massive investments in the infrastructure of the colony in doing so) and neglected the people, largely. But by the time they were pushed out, by a British-educated subject, they left an India prepared to become the world's largest democracy, with a tradition of the rule of law, a sense of national identity, and widespread education.

Yet we will be told we are "imposing Western values" when we attempt to do this in Iraq. I do not think that is so. In an important address in February, Bush made it very clear that “the world has a clear interest in the spread of democratic values,” not least because “free nations do not breed the ideologies of murder.” These are humanity's values, not America's. I intend to use whatever power I have here in the U.S. to make sure he sticks to that tone and that path.

By contrast, recently I read a quote by Finnish Prime Minister Paavo Lipponen, who said in London last year that "the EU must not develop into a military superpower but must become a great power that will not take up arms at any occasion in order to defend its own interests." That is Old Europe's way. After 4,000 years of living by the sword, the continent that came to rule the world through force of arms in one generation has entirely given it up. You can't entirely blame them if you look at what they did in the first half of the century and the cloud they lived under in the second.

Props to the Europeans, then. "Violence kills." Thanks for the tip. Yet it is part of human nature. The challenge of any human, or any human society, is to master that instinct. Not to exterminate it, but to control it. That is the source and purpose of the Warrior's Code. It is, perhaps along with some version of the incest taboo, the one feature of every culture on the planet: Spartan hoplitai, Roman legionnaires, Rommel's Panzer captains, Vikings, naked Celts, King Arthur's knights, Zulus, Iroquois braves, Amazon tribes, U.S. Navy SEALs, Chinese monks and Japanese samurai, all would understand one another on this.

So we disagree. America is the heir of Europe, whether it loves us or hates us. Hates us, most likely. I just read a delightful long article in a mainstream British newspaper, from one of their regular columnists, all about how much she loathes America and Americans. Topping off the list: she hates us for doing the things that made her feel hatred, because she's the kind of European who doesn't like to think of herself as capable of hatred.

So hate us, but we're still your heirs. We're yours by genetics, for starters. German writers used to be fond of the theme of the "Narrenschiffe," the "Ship of Fools," into which a community would put all its lunatics and sail them off down the river to anywhere-but-here. But the image is quite literal: They sent them to America. For generations, Europe shipped its criminals, its greedheads, its religious fanatics, its restless adventurers off to the wilderness of the "New World." Guess what? We're back.

But we're heirs in more than that. Every institution that shaped the United States -- from the common law to Christianity to materialism to slavery -- is a pure product of European culture and history.

And now America, emerging into a world power, finds itself in a world shaped -- or unshaped -- by 300 years of European dominance. All these artificial nations strewn across the map of Africa and the Middle East, all those dysfunctional ex-colonies, all that seething resentment of "the West" in Arab and Asian peoples -- even the troublemaking state of Israel. Thank you, Europe, for everything. There would be no need for a state of Israel if Europeans had been able to live among Jews without trying to methodically kill them all every 30 years or so.

Yet suddenly Europe wants to stop dealing with the world as a work in progress. It refuses to fight, but it intends to boss. It wants to declare the planetary status-quo perfect -- except for America.

If they want to walk away from the mess, that's fine. We'll miss them, of course. They know a lot and they can do a lot. Albania and Spain are no substitute for Germany and France. But we'll get on. So walk away. But don't try to take our tools with you when you go.

Meanwhile, it's nice to know that Old Europe is still capable of something like national pride, even if it seems more like national pique. The Germans were beside themselves all week over Poland's being given a one-third role in the Iraq peacekeeping mission. The choice of the Poles, despite their small and under-funded military, was much more than just a prize to a loyal U.S. ally, as it was made out to be in the German editorials. Poles worked in Iraq in the thousands from the 1970s until the fall of the Eastern Bloc, as doctors, technicians, and so forth. Thousands of Iraqis, in turn, studied at Polish universities and still speak the language.

The Polish embassy in Iraq represented U.S. interests there for a time when there were no formal U.S.-Iraq contacts. And Poland could be a perfect bridge between America and its disaffected former friends in Europe, if only France and Germany could see past looking down their nose at a poor neighbor.

But I doubt they're going to be capable of that for a while. Instead I read that France and Germany, having decided the U.S. is too un-democratic and too militaristic, have decided to begin a new strategic alliance with ... Russia! Great gods, and they call Americans stupid! You don't like that the U.S. killed hundreds of Iraqis with errant missiles in Baghdad, or trigger-happy Marines at road blocks. Very well, but check out what your new friends did to Grozny a few years back.