GENEVA

AMERICANS remain curious about the reaction in Europe to the election of Barack Obama as the next U.S. president. As an American who has lived in Europe since the 1990s, I am often asked, “What do they think of Obama over there?”

To these questions, I respond by saying that while, in general, Europeans are pleased to see Obama elected, the more general trend is European indifference to the policies of the United States. They may like Obama, but many Europeans, in a political and economic sense, believe that America has decided to go it alone.

Economically, Europeans blame America’s financial narcissism for the recent market panic and recession. If only Wall Street investment houses had not brought down European economies with packages of phony mortgage collateral — this thinking runs — Europe would still be profiting from the expansion of the European Union into new markets such as Bulgaria and Slovenia.

On security, Europeans feel hung over from the binge of recent American imperialism. About half the European states backed the U.S. initiative for Kosovo’s independence. On both sides of the Atlantic, Serbia remains a convenient whipping boy. The likes of Radko Mladic fit well on wanted posters.

Beyond Kosovo, Europe wants little to do with more East-West confrontations, especially in nowhere lands like Georgia and Ukraine. The reality is that Europeans are more dependent on Russian natural gas than they are on the NATO alliance.

On a positive side, Europeans perceive that the Obama administration will be less Manichean than the Bush team in dividing the world between “good folks” and “terrorists.” But there is little agreement between Europeans and Americans on how to fight political violence.

Europe’s war on terror has a more homegrown quality than the American preoccupation with fighting colonial wars near the Khyber Pass. Terror attacks in Europe, like those on the London underground, are often spawned in local Islamic communities, not by jihadis sneaking across the border. If anything, the American invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan exacerbate, more than alleviate, religious tensions in Europe.

In the Middle East, which is often a rub in U.S.-European relations, the Obama administration looks as if it will stand for the status quo in Iraq, escalation in Afghanistan, continued saber-rattling against Iran and unwavering commitment to Israel. These great games are a large reason for the detachment of European interests from American foreign policy. Europe wants out of Iraq, little to do with Afghanistan, and has doubts about U.S. policies in Israel and Iran.

Most fun will be to watch the dynastic alignments that form between the Obama administration and various European governments. Ideologically, Obama looks like a good fit with Britain’s Gordon Brown and his centrist Labor government. But Brown fears the Blair trap of mortgaging his political future to a special relationship with the U.S. and might keep his distance.

In a search for continental friends, Obama might find French President Nicolas Sarkozy and his wife, Carla, more amiable companions. She dreams of serving as Europe’s Jacqueline Kennedy, and he does not mind tweaking the French left with his pro-American sentiments. They will invite Obama to fill the Champs-Élysée with adoring crowds. But the Sarkozys have too many problems in France to spend more than a romantic weekend with the Obamas.

One of the better European politicians, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, fears getting caught between a resurgent Russia and its natural-gas pipelines, and a new Cold War America. To be sure, Obama will want to tell rapturous crowds in Germany, “Ich bin ein Berliner,” JFK’s 1961 pledge to the then-divided city. But beyond welcoming Obama as a symbol of progress, Germany sees its future at the center of Europe, not in its alliance with the U.S.

Obama also has to look into the eyes of Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and decide if he can do business. Putin blames American-style capitalism for many of his country’s recent disasters. Who knows, Putin may find common ground with Obama in blaming Wall Street and speculators for the decline of their currencies, market panics, and the withering of their empires. But Russia will not tolerate Ukraine’s NATO membership, and my guess for a future world flashpoint is Crimea, the Black Sea region sought by Russia for its warm-water ports.

Obama will no doubt try to charm Europe into a new era of co-operation, and talk up issues like global warming. But the economic recession has exposed a number of “failed states” around Europe, such as Kosovo, Bosnia, Macedonia, Albania and Serbia. (Even Greeks are rioting in the streets.) These countries are the American stepchildren of the 1995 Dayton accords, the hallmark of the Clinton administration and now, by extension, the new Obama team, which is filled with Clinton acolytes.

Will Obama, as perhaps the next Woodrow Wilson, try to extend the self-determination concept of the Fourteen Points to new corners of Europe, for example, to such potential states as Scotland, Basque Spain, Transylvania, and Trans-Dniester? Defending minority rights in Europe often leads to the cause of self-determination.

Huge, delirious crowds followed Wilson around Europe in 1919, as they may Obama in 2009. But behind Wilson’s back, European leaders scoffed at American piety and intrusions. As French -president George Clemenceau said: “I like the League of Nations, but I do not believe in it.”

Matthew Stevenson, an occasional contributor, is a Switzerland-based writer. He is the author of Mentioned in Dispatches: The Essays of an Expatriate American.