So what should the Europeans do about it?

In my view, the Europeans have to open their doors, but also assimilate and integrate. They have to make sure that the Muslims who come in join the European mainstream.

But it appears that many European countries have failed to do that -- it's not a strong political or cultural value in a lot of places.

Right, that's not happening currently. Immigrants tend to live in relatively impoverished enclaves, in Rotterdam, in the Paris suburbs and Lyon and Marseilles, and that reinforces a sense of isolation. One could argue it creates breeding grounds for the sorts of terrorist cells that we saw in Hamburg [Germany] that supported the Sept. 11 hijackers, and that could support other networks. We know that al-Qaida networks were operating in Spain, because some of them have been shut down by the law enforcement.

Is that general view of immigrants in Europe -- if so starkly different from that of the U.S. -- perhaps at the root of some of the current political differences reaching across the Atlantic?

Yes, I would say it's one of the most significant differences in the software of the different systems. It's a nuanced issue, but you'd have to kind of change the way Europeans think about themselves before you begin to see a more far-reaching and productive integration of minorities.

Terrorist attacks by militant Islamists pose a real problem because it will just strengthen those who say, "Listen, we can't live with these people and we need to keep them out." Then Pim Fortuyn, Jorg Heider, Jean-Marie Le Pen and all the other icons of the European extreme right become major political forces.

That would seem to support the idea that an attack like the one in Madrid -- if indeed inflicted by Islamists -- would rally the E.U. more toward U.S. foreign policy, in terms of taking the fight to the Middle East to eradicate terrorism. But we also know that al-Qaida is politically savvy in terms of exploiting political schisms. What would be their broader motivation to strike in Europe, which has typically been much more sympathetic to the Arab world since 9/11?

Well, number one, the Madrid attack could be retribution for one of the main allies of the U.S. There have been statements by al-Qaida operatives that Spain is on the hit list. Japan, as another example, was explicitly threatened when it was making its decision whether to deploy troops in Iraq.

In the short run, I think the attack in Madrid will strengthen the center-right in Spain, and make it more likely that Aznar's party continues to rule by a relatively wide margin. One could hypothesize that it would be in the interest of a group like al-Qaida to carry out pre-election attacks to strengthen the political right, in order to escalate the conflict. Just as prior to an election in Israel, Hamas and other groups tend to blow up buses. They don't want the Labor party in Israel to win, because Labor would move forward with the peace track. They want to strengthen Likud, so that there's a stalemate -- and the war continues.

Could the "hit list" effect you describe have the opposite effect on some European leadership?

Certainly that will be one impulse. At this point, I think it's extraordinarily difficult to say which of these two contradictory forces will prevail in Europe. Will it be, you know, "We're all together now"? Or will it be: "What a disaster, we got in the boat with Uncle Sam, and now our trains are getting blown up"?

What will happen to relations between the E.U. and the United States if there are more attacks like this? What if it was al-Qaida, and is only the beginning of a larger wave?

If attacks like this were to become regular in the coming months, with this sort of targeting of public services and public spaces in places like Paris and Berlin and Rome, then I do think it will create a much broader sense of common threat and could help repair some of the political problems reaching across the Atlantic. It's a big if: Is this al-Qaida? And will it continue?

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