It Was his first trip to Europe since Sep-tember nth, his first ever to Russia, France or Germany and his first since the usual transatlantic backbiting reached new levels of sourness after his "axis of evil" speech in January. Yet, to the casual eye, George Bush hardly went out of his way to make things better. At a press conference in Paris, he announced to the crowd that he had heard French food is good (Jacques Chirac, he said, had exclusively revealed this to him). Touring the Kremlin's Cathedral Square, his attention-span lasted about ten minutes; at the Hermitage in St Petersburg, the largest museum in the world, it lasted about fifteen. When an American journalist had the temerity to ask President Chirac a question in French, Mr Bush mocked him for showing off by speaking the language of the country he was in. All in all, not a performance of the sophisticated sort Europeans would prefer from the man in whose hands the fate of the world lies. Yet, beyond the personal behaviour, the subdued anti-American demonstrations and the occasional mutual incomprehension, Mr Bush used his trip to outline a policy change that flies in the face of received wisdom about American unilateralism. It is a serious and potentially significant attempt to revitalise the main transatlantic institution, the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation. If it works, it could help to put transatlantic relations on a new basis, rather as Mr Bush's policy has already done with Russia. That is, if it works.
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