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The heavily guarded hoopla of NATO's summit last week masked growing doubts on both sides of the Atlantic about whether the alliance has much of a future. Many Americans feel that, from a security standpoint, Europe is a backwater; the real action is in the Mideast and Asia. Many Europeans feel that Europe is now so safe from external threat that it no longer needs Uncle Sam's protection.

So should NATO go the way of the Warsaw Pact? No -- but for a reason that neither side can officially acknowledge. NATO's continuing purpose is to save Europe from the consequences of its own strategic nearsightedness and moral obtuseness.

Harold Macmillan once quipped that the British had to be the wise Greeks to America's bumptious Romans, but the reality is that the Greeks (and the French and the Germans and the Belgians and ) need the latter-day Romans' guidance.

In the early 1990s, many American officials assumed that the European Union would take the lead in dealing with security problems on its frontiers. Europe flunked the test in two ways. First, it refused to admit East Europeans immediately into the exclusive European Union. Second, it took no decisive action to end the bloodletting in the former Yugoslavia.

In both instances it was left to the Clinton administration to step in and deal with the mess.

The United States led military missions to end Serbian ethnic cleansing in both Bosnia and Kosovo, and U.S. envoy Richard Holbrooke negotiated an accord for the partition of Bosnia. The Europeans followed the American lead by providing peacekeeping forces, but nothing would have happened without Washington's leadership.

When the EU closed the door on enlargement to the East, Washington opened the door to NATO. In 1999, Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic were admitted; now come Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Bulgaria, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia. This remarkable achievement has helped to consolidate democracy in the East, much to the benefit of Western Europe. But the original NATO members had to be dragged into enlargement, kicking and screaming, by Washington.

The European Union is only now preparing to grant membership to eight East European states.

But, although Turkey has been part of NATO since 1952, it still can't get out of the starting gate in its bid to join the EU. This represents a spectacular bit of geopolitical folly. Turkey is the most moderate and democratic of Muslims nations. By brushing off its bid for membership, the EU makes it more likely that Turkey will revert to the extremism that characterizes its Middle Eastern neighbors, thus becoming a huge headache for Europeon its doorstep.

President George W. Bush is making this case to European leaders. Unfortunately, this is only one of many instances in which Europe has allowed sentiment to trump self-interest.

While tough on the friendly Turks, Europe has a long history of appeasing terrorists and rogue rulers, from Moammar Gadhafi to Saddam Hussein. The Italian, Greek and French governments have been lenient, leading to suspicions that they are trying to buy the goodwill of Middle Eastern terrorists. Yet far from limiting their attacks to Israel and America, Islamist fanatics have been busy plotting against European targets ranging from the Eiffel Tower to the London Underground.

Europeans may finally be waking up to the need to get tough with terrorists. But they still seem willing to cut lucrative deals with Saddam Hussein, and never mind that their trading partner has a disturbing tendency toward genocide.

Perhaps Europeans feel free to ignore the threat from Iraq because they have got into the habit of outsourcing their protection to the United States. European defense budgets remain woefully low, with the average NATO member spending less than 60 percent per capita of what America spends.

The only bright spot on the horizon is the rapid reaction force created at last week's NATO summit. Please note that this is an American initiative. The French idea of an independent European army is headed nowhere fast.

On issue after issue, the pattern is clear: America acts, Europe acts up.

What does America get out of this? The satisfaction of extending peace and freedom in an important region -- but scant thanks from the Europeans, who have adopted the attitude of a petulant 16-year-old toward his parents. Oh well, that's what America gets for being the grown-up in this relationship. The writer is Olin senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and author of "The Savage Wars of Peace: Small Wars and the Rise of American Power." He contributed this comment to the International Herald Tribune.