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Imagine the following headline: "European rockets sink US aircraft carrier in Taiwan Straits". Such a headline is unlikely, of course.
If such an event were ever to happen, it would mean that a massive crisis had erupted both in Asia and across the Atlantic.
Very likely it would indicate the end of Atlantic alliance and perhaps a developing Cold War between the United States and a new Euro-Chinese axis. But such a headline is far from impossible if two current political trends continue uninterrupted.
The first such trend was seen in the streets of Taipei nine days ago. Demonstrators favouring de jure independence for Taiwan protested against a new Chinese law threatening military intervention by Beijing if the island-province were to secede. And Washington is on both sides of this dispute.
It is well-known that the United States is committed to defending Taiwan against an unprovoked attack by Beijing. Bush made that unambiguously clear in the early days of his presidency.
That puts the United States on Taiwan's side. But the American guarantee protects only the de facto independence of Taiwan.
US policy has long endorsed the legal fiction of "One China" that both Beijing and Taipei accepted until recent years. But the United States has never supported the claim that Taiwan is an independent nation as of right. That puts Washington on China's side.
History has thus forced on the Bush administration the very ambiguity that the president sought to avoid. He is seeking to resolve it in the following way: He would help defend Taiwan against an unprovoked Chinese attack but he would not support a Taiwanese declaration of independence.
He wants it to be known that he will not let Taiwan drag the United States into an unwanted war with China. In practice this balancing act could prove extremely difficult.
What would he do if the Taiwanese did declare independence? Almost certainly he would ask Beijing to hold off from any military response while he placed enormous diplomatic pressure on the Taipei Government to withdraw the declaration.
That pressure would include telling them firmly that the United States would not protect them against Chinese retaliation in these circumstances.
It would probably succeed. If, however, the Taiwanese were rash enough to ignore this warning thus putting their real existing democratic independence at risk for a purely formal status Bush would be placed in a very difficult dilemma.
Best option
His best option would be to extract (in return for US inaction) a Chinese promise that a post-conflict Taiwan would enjoy the same kind of "special" status that Hong Kong has enjoyed since 1997.
A policy of "One China, Three Systems" would be far from ideal. But it would be preferable to a full-scale war with China because the Taiwanese tail had wagged the American dog.
It is uncertain, of course, that a Chinese attack across the straits would succeed even against a Taiwan unprotected by the United States.
Taiwan is formidably armed; its people would be desperate to prevail and as D-Day should warn us, amphibious operations are always very risky. That is why the Chinese are themselves desperate to acquire the most modern weapons from whoever will sell them. Which is where the European Union comes in.
At a time when the Bush administration is acting prudently to restrain Taiwan, the EU is aggravating this potentially serious crisis by considering the abandonment of its arms embargo on Beijing.
A decision to lift the embargo was taken in principle some time ago. It is being firmly pushed by France and Germany and supported by the nascent EU diplomatic staff headed by Javier Solana.
But it is being resisted by the Brits and the East Europeans internally in the EU and by the United States externally.
For the moment, then, any lifting of the embargo seems to have been postponed.
Exactly why have the French, Germans and the Euro-diplomats been pushing this controversial proposal so strongly? After all, it has some very obvious drawbacks.
It risks a major transatlantic rift at a time when better US-European relations were manifestly improving as a result of the recent Bush visit.
The EU would be extremely foolish, indeed irresponsible, to take these risks for the sake of a few billions in arms sales. Its original justification just because we're lifting the arms embargo doesn't mean we intend to sell China any more arms is plainly absurd. So what is the EU up to?
Quite simply, France under President Jacques Chirac wants to forge a strategic partnership with China against the American "hyperpower" in order to bring about a "multi-polar world".
Chirac has said so in as many words on innumerable occasions. The Germans are going along with this partly in order to sell arms but mainly because they wish to maintain their strong alliance with Paris.
And the EU diplomatic machinery under Solana is rubber-stamping it because its overriding impulse is to forge a common foreign policy distinct from US foreign policy.
What could be more distinct than a policy of arming a major state that is publicly threatening to invade the territory of an American ally?
It must give Solana and his adventurous new diplomats a tremendous frisson of excitement. Of course, it will seem much less exciting if, somewhere down the road, Bush's balancing act fails, the Chinese invade, the United States comes to the help of Taiwan, and an American aircraft carrier is attacked with French or German weapons sold by the EU.
Dangerous situation
That dangerous situation would be even more dangerous if, by then, the EU has been persuaded by Chirac to forge its strategic partnership with the Beijing dictatorship.
We would then be blundering into a new cold war worldwide and perhaps a hot war in Asia. The United States is seeking to avoid such a disaster by encouraging the Brits and others to delay the lifting of the embargo.
For the moment they seem to have succeeded. But the ability of London and Warsaw to resist Paris, Berlin and Brussels gets weaker with every step towards a common EU foreign policy.
And their willingness to defend US interests in Europe inevitably declines as they are increasingly absorbed by the anti-American political culture of the EU's "central powers".
Common sense would suggest that the United States should therefore resist the movement towards further Euro-integration and the common European foreign policy that is its latest expression as likely to weaken its friends and strengthen its enemies.
In fact it is the US policy, as the US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice reiterated on her recent European visit, to encourage these developments as helpful to America.
If that American aircraft carrier ever is sunk, maybe China's battle honours should be shared not only with President Chirac but also with the US State Department.
John O'Sullivan, former advisor to Lady Thatcher and former opinion editor from the New York Post, is a member of Benador Associates. | 
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