• EU must be more than about banks and cash, warns top US security commentator
• US authority also weakened - by invasion of Iraq - conference hears
"The European Union is a union mainly of banks rather than of peoples." There is a growing inclination to regard the EU as a "piggybank".
The invasion of Iraq "delegitimated" America's moral and political leadership in the eyes of many, cost $3tn, caused 35,000 US casualties, and prolonged the war in Afghanistan.
These were the words, not of a polemicist, a left-wing or liberal politician eagerly running for office.
They were passages in a keynote speech by Zbigniew Brzezinski, former national security adviser to President Carter and a leading geostrategist, to Globsec, a fast expanding annual security conference in the heart of Europe (supported, among others, by BAE Systems, Europe's largest defence and arms company, Saab, the Swedish military aircraft and car maker, and the German motor manufacturer, BMW).
Brzezinski's status is on a par with that other, Republican, former US national security adviser, Henry Kissinger. His forthright comments were enthusiastically applauded by participants at the Globsec conference held in Bratislava, capital of Slovakia, over the past few days.
"Europe's lack of global ambitions makes the American public more sceptical of Europe", he said.
Brzezinski, of Polish origin, spoke of the dangers of resurgent, intolerant, nationalism in Europe, of the "chaos of religious fanaticism", of "restless and fragmented humanity".
He also urged the EU to "embrace Turkey", and added, provocatively: "If Russia did not join the west, it will become a satellite of China".
There were ambitious plans for the "Visegrad 4" — Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Hungary — including cooperation on energy policy.
They rely on Russia for their energy supplies.
(The Visegrad group, or V4, as they are called, is named after a castle north of Budapest where, Radoslaw Sikorski, Poland's foreign minister, told the conference, in 1335 the kings of central Europe met to discuss how to improve trade routes.)
The V4 are even planning to form their own military battlegroup. But the group's real interest is to increase their clout in the EU by forming a united regional front at summit meetings in Brussels.
They say it is in their combined interest to push for deeper European integration.
It would be in the interest of smaller countries because it would dilute the influence of bigger nations like Britain while at the same time making Europe a bigger, more coherent, more meaningful, player on the world stage.
That was the view from the banks of the Danube over the past few days.
It is a completely different perspective to the one seen from Britain.
On the subject of different perspectives, a most striking one was offered by the excellent commentator on the US, Andrew Sullivan.
On the day of the Boston marathon, he wrote in his column in yesterday's Sunday Times, 65 Iraqis were murdered by terrorist bombs.
And more US soldiers were now killing themselves than were being killed in Afghanistan — veterans were committing suicide at a rate of 22 a day.