And deferring to the US as what one top French official described to us as "le grand frère égalisateur" has other advantages: it allows Europeans to stop other Europeans getting above themselves. Italians can hope to use American clout to keep Germany off the UN Security Council; Germany can ignore French "pretension" in suggesting that the French nuclear deterrent could protect Germany; and Dutchmen and Danes are frank that their Atlanticism owes much to a wish to see France and Germany held in check.
..is not extra-EU foreign policy, it is intra-EU relations seen through an Atlanticist filter. *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
To qualify, Dutch transatlanticism has ebbed somewhat in the last Balkenende government, which has mainly been due to the mutual reaching out between Balkenende and Sarkozy on the one hand and the degree of toxicity of G.W. Bush on the other hand. I am not confident that this will be a lasting change of direction.
However, in the actual context of that paragraph, I don't think they play that much a role in allowing "Europeans to stop other Europeans getting above themselves". (So I agree that there's nothing in that paragraph that's not roughly correct, but there is an implication that these are main factors.)
To give another direction to this sub-discussion; I'm only at pdf page 17 now so don't know if it is covered later, but, IMO, there is a logical sequence of these European attitudes:
