One man who manifestly does trust America, and its President, is British Prime Minister Tony Blair. Blair will visit Camp David this weekend as the most significant political leader offering Bush unstinting support. In the past two weeks, he has reiterated, in language stronger than ever, that though he would prefer clear U.N. backing for a war in Iraq, Britain's troops will fight alongside their American counterparts if Washington judges that Saddam Hussein is not making a good-faith effort to disarm.

Blair's commitment to Bush is a huge gamble, twice over. He is risking his position as the dominant figure in British political life, and he is placing in jeopardy one of his long-term goals — that Britain should be at the heart of an attempt to make the E.U. a dependable global partner for the U.S. Domestically, the threat comes not from the pitiful opposition Conservative Party, but from the fact that many of his own Labour Party members are implacably opposed to a war without U.N. sanction.

	HERBERT KNOSOWSKI/AP   "We haven't sold our position well, and the opinion polls abroad and in the U.S. show it. Starting with President Bush's speech of last September, we have behaved multilaterally. But the resentment is growing with the anticipation that when the chips are down, our multilateralism is window dressing." — JOSEPH S. NYE, Jr. Dean of Kennedy School of Government, Harvard

Blair, unfortunately, did not come to Davos this year. In his absence America's supposedly arrogant, unilateralist, riddled-with-double-standards foreign policy was trashed in session after session. Haass himself conceded — as Powell has done — that the Bush Administration has not yet succeeded in convincing the rest of the world that the case for military action in Iraq is ironclad. Privately, a senior member of the U.S. Congress made the point — which is evident from opinion polls — that the Administration hasn't done that great a job convincing its own voters back home.

To an extent, this marks a reversal in America's fortunes. After all, it was just a few months ago that President George W. Bush electrified the U.N. General Assembly with an impassioned case for disarming Iraq. After some skillful American diplomacy, the Security Council voted unanimously for a tough resolution, whose implication was that if Iraq did not disarm soon, a U.S.-led military action would do the job for it. So the real question from Davos was this: Why was the Administration finding it so hard to win the trust of others in January, when it had seemed able to do so in November?

In two senses, Washington's problems are not of its own making. Political developments have moved in ways that have made it more difficult for the Administration to get others to salute smartly and march to war humming The Star-Spangled Banner. In Turkey, the election of the energetic, ambitious new government of the pro-Islamic Justice and Development (AK) party — well represented in Davos — has changed the strategic balance. Ankara still wants to be close to its traditional American ally — not least because of the assistance that Washington offers in its long campaign to become a full member of the European Union — but its policy is now shaded by a desire, epitomized by last week's conference of Iraq's neighbors, to identify itself as a political leader in the Islamic world.

And in Western Europe, the political situation has changed in unexpected ways that have diminished Washington's clout. Last fall, when French President Jacques Chirac all but openly campaigned for the election to the German chancellorship of Edmund Stoiber, the Christian Democrat candidate, it seemed highly unlikely that France would ever be able to revivify an alliance with a German government led by Gerhard Schröder, the narrow victor in the election. Yet that has happened. Propelled largely by a desire to forge a common position on the future constitution of the E.U., Paris and Berlin have rediscovered the virtues of their alliance, and extended it from narrow European concerns to wider issues. Last week, at an elaborate ceremony in Versailles to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Elysée Treaty that cemented French-German unity, Chirac and Schröder agreed on their opposition to any early military action in Iraq. At the same time, the voice of Britain, Washington's principal ally, in European debates has been diminished by the growing realization that early British entry into the common European currency system looks increasingly unlikely.

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