The fitting geological metaphor for the so-called G-8 meeting in Germany is not a summit, but a precipice — as the world’s leaders scramble around to grab something before one of them falls into the abyss.

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The old postwar order is tottering on the brink of Islamism, oil-price hikes, energy shortages, terrorism, nuclear proliferation, Russian belligerency, global-warming concern and hysteria, and war.

Europe is at the edge of the chasm, despite its strong euro and strengthening economy. Once convinced that they would serve as a kinder, gentler Western answer to the United States, Europeans would offer humanity a sort of soft-power colossus that would check George Bush’s “dead-or-alive,” “smoke-‘em-out” America. They would fix through good works what we had botched. That welcomed alternative seemed attractive to many as we slogged it out in Iraq, and the “I told you so” Europeans felt justified that military power really does cause far more problems than it solves.

But now suddenly regimes of a less liberal sort are calling the EU’s bluff — and Europe knows it. Historians looking back at Europe in 2007 will see a sort of summer of 1914 all over again: Never had things gone better just as they are about to become never so bad.

One of the great transmogrifications of our era has been the Russian 20-year metamorphosis from crumbling Soviet totalitarian into a chaotic oligarchy into a confident neo-czarist petro-power.

Or was it ever really that much of a transformation in attitude at all? Now emboldened by $60-plus-barrel oil instead of the old Red Army, Russia suddenly bullies like the old Soviet Union without all the hassles of multiethnic subjects and the burdens of empire. 

Mad at Estonia? Wage an Internet war against the tiny democracy.

Mad that a cobbled-together missile-defense system might save the West from an errant Iranian nuke or two? Boast that you could nuke it into smithereens — and maybe a European capital in the bargain.

Mad at dissidents abroad? Kill ’em.

Mad at foreign oil companies in Russia? Squeeze them until they leave.

Mad at sermons about human rights? Threaten to cut off half of Europe’s natural gas.

The result is that a continent of well over 400 million, with the world’s largest economy — but without many energy supplies and less of a military — is terrified of a nuclear, oil-rich bully shrinking to less than 150 million. Russia, remember, like the jihadists, hates Europe’s guts. And it wants payback for the humiliating 1990s.

A rich, large, and influential European continent won’t rearm given its own pacifism, and demographic, entitlement, and immigration crises. Fine. But consistent with its mission of global secular proselytizing, it will continue to sermonize.

Bad idea. That well-meaning impotence sadly will win it the contempt always shown the self-righteous and sanctimonious weakling — especially in the case of nearby Russia hurt by lost power, surprised by newfound wealth, and eager to expose the parading European emperor as buck naked. Remember the landmark moment when Mr. Putin advised a French journalist harping over Chechnya (but who now remembers Chechnya?) to consider a Russian form of extreme circumcision.

Perhaps, individually and collectively European nations will cut their own oil and defense deals with nearby Russia — sort of doing at the national level what the corrupt former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder did at the personal to prostitute himself to the Soviet gas conglomerate.

Or consider the other response — blame the Americans for not “reaching out” after the crack-up of the Soviet Union, and instead, through NATO expansion and missile defense, gratuitously jabbing at an otherwise kinder and gentler new Russia. Apparently in some corners, Bush & Co. caused a justifiably hurt Mr. Putin to destabilize Estonia or to muzzle (and worse) its own dissidents or to threaten Europe with nukes.

The American public may not be so dense about all this as they think in Europe. Four years of cheap anti-Americanism have eroded the old popular support for NATO and most everything else with Europe. For good or bad, there will be no more interventions to save Europe’s hide like the Balkans campaign. This is the new unspoken truth, and in some small way also explains the new appearance of more reasonable leaders in France and Germany.