By: KENNETH MAXWELL

Folha de São Paulo - Op-ed section - page A2 

Gulliver's travels had an inauspicious beginning. He is shipwrecked.Yet Gulliver is able to swim safely to the shore. Exhausted he falls asleep.He wakes to find himself securely tied down. His body and his long hairpegged securely to the ground by the tiny folk of the country of Lilliput.
All a bit like the US in Iraq, the hyper power now tied down as securely aswas Gulliver by the Lilliputions.

The shift of power in the Congress in January has added to these woes with Democrats now holding the chairmanship of powerful congressional committees. Using their subpoena power investigations are underway into the multiple instances of alleged improprieties. There is very little likely chance this impasse will end until a new US president is inaugurated in January 2009.

With the US self preoccupied, new actors, new configurations, and new opportunities are emerging on the world stage.
At the beginning of this week, for instance, the European Community surmounted its contentious internal debates to craft a reform treaty which will introduce a full time EU president, strengthen Europe's foreign affairs portfolio, and create a European diplomatic service.

In Paris, Sarkozy has quickly erased the tired Chirac legacy. And he has made it clear that his new more "market oriented" France will not abandon the protection of those areas of industrial production which sustain an independent capacity for European defense. In London, meanwhile, a new prime minister, Gordon Brown, took office. British public opinion leaves Tony Blair's successor little alternative but to distance himself as best he can from the American intimacies so recklessly cultivated by his predecessor.

At week's end the leaders of five South American countries will meet for the Mercosul summit in Asuncion. But Chancellor Celso Amorim has no deal on global trade between Brazil and India and the US and the EU to announce. And Mercosul's vociferous and colorful new member, commandant Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, will not be there. He has other business to attend to with his petrodollars. He is in Moscow to buy some submarines.
There is an old truth. Vacuums do not remain unfilled.

KENNETH MAXWELL is a weekly op-ed columnist (every Thursday) for Folha de São Paulo, Brazil's leading newspaper.