The Week in Politics: The Great Persuader sees his new world role as bridging the US-Europe divide

As if Tony Blair did not have enough to worry about on the war front, he has also appointed himself to the awesome and perhaps impossible task of making peace between America and Europe after the conflict is over.

The Great Persuader who successfully won over the middle classes to Labour will need all his persuasive powers for his new mission as the world's super-statesman. The surprise is not that Mr Blair is confident in his ability to heal the deep wounds caused by the decision of America and Britain to go to war without the backing of the United Nations. It is that he sees the UN as the mechanism to put the shattered pieces of the world order together again.

On the face of it, Mr Blair is a gambler who has suffered heavy losses but cannot resist one last throw of the dice. The bruising experience of failing to secure a second UN resolution to authorise a war has not deterred him. The Bush administration is puzzled by the Prime Minister's attachment to the UN, as I discovered during his visit to Camp David this week for talks with President George Bush.

The UN is a discredited body in the eyes of Washington hawks. They are convinced it is "finished", and want it to become little more than a glorified aid agency.

These attitudes explain why Mr Blair travelled to the US for the seventh time since Mr Bush became President and Mr Bush has played only one return match in Britain.

Although they reviewed the war and discussed how best to capture Baghdad, a large part of their talks focused on what the Prime Minister calls the "big picture". Top of the list was the estrangement between the US and Europe, notably the role of the French, who seem more determined than ever to build Europe into an alternative to the world's only hyperpower.

Mr Blair, who wants the EU to be a "partner, not a rival" to the US, believes the French strategy is dangerous; he sees it as his duty to turn the anti-American tide in Europe.

I asked the Prime Minister at his Downing Street press conference on Tuesday: "What specifically are you going to do to rebuild relations between America and Europe, and is there not a danger that at end of the conflict, rather than there being a bridge between the two, Britain will be left isolated, unable to deliver Europe to America and no longer at the heart of Europe?"

He replied that at the end of the war, there would have to be a "reckoning" about relations between America and Europe. If Europe and America split apart, "the loser will be the wider world because on every single issue that comes up there will be rival poles of power to which people can gravitate. It will be far harder to make the international order stable and secure."

Mr Blair and President Bush have forged their strong partnership coming from two different directions. The Prime Minister's multilateral approach is designed to lock America into the global community.

Although his comments about a "reckoning" seemed aimed at France, he believes America must meet Europe halfway. His task is to stop President Bush being seduced by the Washington hawks, who see the UN's "failure" over Iraq as an excuse for the United States to opt for "coalitions of the willing" in future crises.

This is dangerous stuff: where would the world be if America decides to "deal with" Iran or North Korea after the Iraq war, as some Washington hardliners want? I doubt Mr Blair could get that through Parliament, or would want to. Mr Blair believes America cannot be the world's only policeman. This is why the UN remains so important to him: it is the only other show in town.

It explains why Mr Blair is desperately keen for the UN to be "closely involved" in post-war Iraq, though he beat a tactical retreat this week to prevent his Camp David summit being overshadowed by a row.

It may seem strange that Mr Blair is spending so much time looking over the horizon while so much is at stake in Iraq. Ministers are worried that public expectations of a short war cannot be fulfilled. They insist there will come a "tipping point" when the Iraqi people realise President Saddam's time is up and they will turn against him. But they privately fear a different "tipping point": the war drags on, and the public turn strongly against it, and Mr Blair.

* Have you noticed that Tony Blair uses the word "war" very sparingly? Although he makes general statements such as "war is a brutal and bloody business", he prefers "conflict" or "campaign" when talking about Iraq.

There is a reason, a very senior Foreign Office source explained on the Prime Minister's flight to Washington on Wednesday.

Technically, Britain is not "at war" with Iraq because a formal declaration would mean it was at war with the Iraqi people. Instead, Britain has joined America in taking "action" against Saddam Hussein's regime to enforce the will of the UN. (Whether there is a mandate for this is, of course, a matter of dispute.)

You could call it the Basil Fawlty approach: don't mention the war. In that wonderful episode, Fawlty told his German guests Germany started the last war because it invaded Poland. This time the Germans could say to us: "You started it."

a.grice@independent.co.uk