IT'S HUG-A-European Month for American foreign policy. First Condoleezza Rice inaugurates her tenure at the State Department with a grand tour of Europe's capitals. She wears tweed in London, speaks multilateralist in Paris, and from Brussels to Berlin dispenses erudite grace and scented bonhomie to once skeptical audiences.

Then last weekend, hot on Rice's elegant heels, and with no less enthusiasm, Donald Rumsfeld undertakes his own friendship initiative. At the annual Munich Conference on Security Policy, a venue he has used in the past to inflame European sensitivities, Rummy comes as close as his temperament and disposition will allow to being charming. What he lacks in Condi's mellifluous style, he makes up for in a bit of unaccustomed self-deprecation, telling his audience he is no longer Old Rumsfeld but a new model, one that dearly values the enduring ties that bind America and Europe.

All this activity is mere prologue, of course, to the main event. This week, President Bush will travel overseas for the first time since his re-inauguration, with symbolic stops in Brussels, for diplomatic dinners at the European Union and NATO, Germany, where he will praise transatlantic unity in a set-piece speech, and Slovakia, where he will meet Russian president Vladimir Putin.

You would have to be insensate to miss the meaning of all these semiotics. Message: We care, as the president's father might have put it. After four years in which the Bush administration has reached out to most of Europe with a single, raised middle finger, it has begun

Conscious that a sullen and hostile Europe is not in America's best interests, and eager to enlist even reluctant allies in the global struggle for liberty, the Bush team has decided to do all it can to mend fences. It won't compromise on its priorities, of course, but beyond that it will try to foster a productive relationship.

Other than the symbolism, what does all this diplomatic outreach mean? And how will Europeans respond? Can Europe be coaxed back into an alliance that will help the United States pursue its broader strategic aims?

There is a danger, in my view, that the Bush administration, in its newfound eagerness to show its kinder, less Martian, more Venusian side, will actually create bigger problems for itself. In its efforts to be diplomatically accommodating, the United States may end up supporting and bolstering a vision of Europe that is directly at odds with long-term U.S. goals and interests. Nothing is to be gained by unnecessarily antagonizing Europeans, to be sure, and the United States is right to pursue ways of cooperating. But if the early signs of the new détente are any guide, the Bush administration may find itself walking into a trap.

SINCE BUSH'S REELECTION last November, there have been welcome signs on both sides of the Atlantic of a willingness to bury hatchets. And this convergence of good will has been helped along by several events outside either party's control.

For starters, President Bush himself seems eager to reengage. The day after his reelection, he spoke with European leaders, including the once-despised Gerhard Schröder in Berlin, and emphasized his willingness to start afresh.