It is Britain, not France, that is isolated in Europe

Austrians like to say, tongue in cheek, that the genius of their country's diplomacy is to have convinced the world that Hitler was a German, and Beethoven an Austrian. Something similar could be said of Britain's presentational feat over the past month. With hostilities in Iraq almost over, most people in this country now seem to believe that the best part of the world, including a majority of European countries, lined up with Britain supporting US military action, and that France, Germany and Russia were the odd countries out, led astray by that Gallic pied piper, Jacques Chirac.

So widely accepted has this view become that the Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw, was able to keep a completely straight face yesterday when he warned "key members" of the UN Security Council to "co-operate" with British proposals for the future of Iraq or risk sidelining the United Nations all over again. Not only did Mr Straw give the impression that he believed every syllable, but no one challenged his premise that those unnamed "key members" – a polite way of saying France, Germany and Russia – represented the problem.

Yet the truth is precisely the opposite. The problem was caused by President George Bush's refusal to see the United Nations process through to its conclusion and Tony Blair's decision to join him. If you take Britain out of the equation, both the UN Security Council, and the European Union, remained remarkably united.

And, lest we allow ourselves to be bamboozled into forgetting, what we have actually seen over these past four weeks is a US and British military victory that masks a devastating defeat for British diplomacy.

Britain was the prime mover in trying to negotiate a compromise through the UN that would either avert a war or give it UN endorsement. In achieving neither, Britain was "sidelined" – to adopt Jack Straw's terminology – both from the UN and, more catastrophically, from the European Union. The North Atlantic alliance has been split, and probably rendered terminally irrelevant.

In the wake of this débâcle, we have been spun a succession of myths that have brilliantly disguised two realities: that much of the blame for the failures and divisions of recent weeks lies with Britain and that in diplomatic terms, if not militarily, Britain is the chief loser.

Myth one has it that it was "all the fault of the French". If M. Chirac had not threatened to veto the so-called "second" UN resolution "in any circumstances", the resolution would have been passed and – Mr Blair has said – there would probably have been no war.

This is simply not true. There was no majority at any time for the resolution, as drafted, because it was seen as authorising military action. There was a hefty majority, including France, Germany and Russia, against. President Chirac's one mistake was to threaten the veto unnecessarily, allowing the Downing Street "spin" machine to cast him as the villain. Its campaign fed all the prejudices of middle England, turning the opinion polls for the first time in Mr Blair's favour.

Myth two is that Iraq exposed the hopeless divisions in the United Nations. Again, this is not so. The UN mechanisms worked. The international consensus, as expressed by a majority of Security Council members, was that the weapons inspectors should be allowed to complete their work and that there was as yet no reason for going to war. The UN did not fail; its will was flouted by the US and its faithful ally, Britain, which prized the power reflected from the United States above its allegiance to Europe.

Myth three is that Iraq proved how impossible it will be for the European Union to ever agree a single foreign and security policy. It proved no such thing. The EU showed considerable unanimity over Iraq. Spain and Italy aligned themselves with Britain and the US, in principle, as did most of the former East European countries which signed their accession documents in Athens yesterday, as well as Bulgaria and Romania, which have a few years more to wait. This allowed Britain to claim that the European Union was split, and would, when enlarged, take a more pro-American stance.

In fact, public opinion across Europe (old members and new) was united in opposing the war. Those governments which sided with the US and Britain are now in political trouble.

Many of the "new" Europeans have let it be known that they signed up to solidarity with the US out of a mixture of naivety and gratitude for the protection afforded by their US-sponsored admission to Nato. They have no intention of repeating what they now see as an error. With Nato in terminal decline, they see their future unambiguously in the EU. Unlike Britain, they will cheerfully embrace the euro, and willingness to join a common foreign and security policy will surely follow. The only question is whether the signatories to that common policy will include Britain.

It may yet do so. For what we are really hearing, through the din of all those victory chants and claims of French isolation, is the soft murmur of Britain suing for peace with the rest of Europe.

m.dejevsky@independent.co.uk