UNWITTINGLY, perhaps, Vladimir Putin is playing Cupid to America’s Mars and Europe’s Venus. By seizing Crimea, he has rekindled the love lost between the transatlantic allies. As with so many old couples, irritation has built up in recent years: over the war in Iraq, how to fight jihadi terrorism, the NSA spying scandals, the euro crisis and Europe’s ever-shrinking defence budgets. Now Russia is reminding both sides of the ties that bind. “I have not felt this good about transatlantic relations in a long time,” whispers one senior European politician.

After his “pivot” to Asia, events in Ukraine are forcing Barack Obama back to the old continent. His trip to Europe this week was dominated by the issue of Russian militarism. Fittingly, perhaps, Mr Obama began in Belgium by honouring fallen American soldiers of the first world war, when Europe’s security first became an American concern. To turn a blind eye to the redrawing of borders by force, Mr Obama said, would be to “ignore the lessons that are written in the cemeteries of this continent.” Yet the new affection is more than just a return to Europe’s dependence on American protection via NATO (see article). The relationship is now more complex, and increasingly with the European Union. For Mr Obama, Europe’s Lilliputians made a mess of the euro crisis. And the confrontation over Ukraine confirms to some in the administration that Europeans cannot be left to manage their own backyard.

US-EU summits have become less frequent under Mr Obama, and his encounter with leaders of EU institutions on March 26th lasted little more than an hour over a working lunch. But for all of Mr Obama’s ennui, political contacts between America and the EU are intensifying. The president will be back in Brussels in three months’ time for a G7 summit, replacing the G8 that Russia was due to host in Sochi. America’s mission to the EU is one of its few embassies that is expanding. As secretaries of state, first Hillary Clinton and then John Kerry have worked closely with Cathy Ashton, the EU’s high representative for foreign policy. At times American officials have been stronger advocates of European integration than European federalists, encouraging the euro zone to bind itself together and urging Britain not to leave the EU.

In part this is borne of a desire for simplicity. Better to deal with one Lady Ashton than have to call 28 European foreign ministers. In part it is because many of the world’s threats, from terrorism to cyber-attacks, are not exclusively, or even mainly, military or national in nature. Foreign-policy problems, such as Iran’s nuclear programme, are more effectively dealt with if Europe adds its weight to sanctions (Lady Ashton has been the lead negotiator with Iran). If America is still the world’s “indispensable” power, Europe is often its indispensable partner.

The EU’s embryonic military ambitions were once viewed in Washington with some suspicion, which deepened after Franco-German opposition to the war in Iraq in 2003. Musings of intellectuals such as Jürgen Habermas and Jacques Derrida, who once said “Europe has to throw its weight on the scale to counterbalance the hegemonic unilateralism of the United States”, did not help. Yet these days Europe’s worry is not America’s hegemony, but its indifference. And America’s fear is not European military rivalry, but incapacity. If Europeans want to act on their own in, say, Africa, America is more likely to help than hinder them.

Many now want to add an economic pillar. Supporters of the ambitious Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) hope it might be an economic NATO. TTIP has been given a strong political push, but all know it has many obstacles to overcome. France has excluded the audio-visual sector from the outset in the name of its “cultural exception”. Congress has not given Mr Obama the necessary trade promotion authority, and it is not about to. “There will be many people in Moscow who are happy if we fail on TTIP,” says one EU official. Success would make it easier for America to export gas to Europe. Mr Obama was sympathetic to helping Europe reduce its dependence on Russia, which supplies about a fifth of all the gas burned in the EU (and much more in some countries). But he was also clear that Europeans must pump unpopular shale-gas from under their own feet.

Of trade and war

The power of trade can be seen in the revolution in Kiev after Ukraine rejected the EU’s proposed free-trade deal in November. The surprise is that America, and indeed European governments, had carelessly left such an explosive issue in the hands of EU technocrats. Now that it finds itself in a dangerous confrontation with Russia, the EU has been more cautious about sanctions than America. It has declined to follow America in imposing travel bans and freezing the assets of Mr Putin’s business cronies. Many EU members oppose wider economic sanctions that will hurt some more than others. “Europeans are not from Venus. They are from Pluto—as in plutocrats who are only interested in making money from Russia,” was the scathing comment of one hawk.

Yet the EU still has powerful weapons. Its trade with Russia is more extensive than America’s. The Russian elite has more assets in Europe than America. And in the struggle over Ukraine, Europe is best placed to help the country succeed in its second democratic revolution after the failure of its first Orange version. EU leaders rushed to sign the political chapters of the contentious association agreement with Ukraine last week, and will open their borders unilaterally to Ukrainian goods. The remaining trade chapters will follow after Ukraine’s presidential election in May. Agreements will also be signed with Georgia and Moldova. Mr Putin has not only rekindled relations between America and Europe, but also hastened Russia’s divorce from many ex-Soviet partners, despite trying to win them back by fair means or foul.

Economist.com/blogs/charlemagne