Stetsons and Berets.

COULD it be that those smiles really were genuine? President Bush's trip to Europe was expected to be the occasion for manufactured bonhomie, but actual good feeling seemed to break out. Partly it was Bush's native charm at work--he's not the fanatical cowboy of European caricature. Partly it was circumstances. He had the wind at his back from what seem to be brewing political and diplomatic successes, from the Iraqi elections to an opening for an Israeli-Palestinian agreement to the U.S.-backed Orange Revolution in Ukraine. Bush pocketed increased EU help in training Iraqi forces and a strong joint statement with France deploring the Syrian occupation of Lebanon. As for the friendly atmospherics, usually they are quickly forgotten, but one never knows.

Yet a cloud hung over the proceedings, thanks to a pre-trip speech from German chancellor Gerhard Schroeder that called for managing transatlantic relations through the EU rather than NATO. This is a brazen power-play and a shot at the heart of the Atlanticism of the last 50 years. The move would increase French and German influence by essentially cutting the U.S., the leader of NATO, out of European security policy. By putting the EU and NATO on a theoretically equal footing, it would hasten the day when the EU is indeed--as the French have long said they want--a rival power bloc to the United States. Finally, it would diminish the influence of Europe's (often pro-American) smaller states as their voices would be swallowed by the German- and French-dominated behemoth in Brussels, now armed with the proposed EU constitution. It was particularly significant that it was Schroeder who gave this speech. The Germans have long been the swing vote in European affairs. The Brits have been strong American allies, while the French have consistently been more hostile.

If the continent's Schroeders are not blocked, Bush's trip may be remembered as the high point of U.S.-European relations, before an inexorable slide toward acrimony and competition. The first step to recovery, as they say in the support groups, is realizing that you have a problem. Encouragingly, Bush apparently has had such a realization. In an interview responding to Schroeder's speech, he called NATO "vital" and opposed the EU's becoming a "counterweight" to U.S. power. All his glowing (and occasionally quite powerful) rhetoric about American-European unity had as its backdrop this dispute, with an implicit message of dissent from the Chirac-Schroeder vision. Bush kept his references to the EU itself to a polite minimum (although Condi Rice, unfortunately, seemed to offer a measure of approval to the EU constitution in an interview with the Financial Times). As our John O'Sullivan argues, Bush will have to follow up his trip with hard diplomatic spadework, trying to keep the EU a loose confederation that encourages free competition and respects national sovereignty.

If transatlantic bonhomie is to remain viable in the future, this is among Bush's most urgent geopolitical tasks.