What Kind of Europe ...

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Some Bush allies argue that American interests are best served when Europe is divided, and that the U.S. is well advised to cherry-pick the European states that support it — and ignore the rest. "We should be agnostic, not cheerleaders, about the faith-based project of European integration," says John Hulsman, a neoconservative analyst for the Heritage Foundation in Washington. But that's a stingy view of what the E.U.'s projection of soft power has achieved. The goal of E.U. membership has compelled Turkey to abolish the death penalty, rein in its military and grant cultural rights to the Kurds. That same prospect has moved Croatia to give up eight war-crimes suspects, although failure to deliver another key suspect, General Ante Gotovina, will likely lead to postponement of E.U. talks. Even Serbia recently turned over General Vladimir Lazarevic, suspected of war crimes in Kosovo. And the lure of E.U. membership is also casting its spell over former Soviet satellites such as Ukraine, where President Viktor Yushchenko is pushing a reform agenda meant to win candidate status as soon as possible. The E.U.'s power doesn't come across with shock and awe, but it is a potent force just the same.

The E.U. and the U.S. agree that promoting democracy and combatting tyranny are goals best achieved by working together. But the means to those ends often seem to come from completely different universes. Will President Bush gain a new appreciation for the E.U.'s way of doing things from his four-day stay on Planet Europe? Here's a look at three issues on which the U.S. and E.U. could actually learn something from each other.

IRAQ The Bush Administration used to think that nation building was beneath it; now it's clear that the creation of a civil society is crucial to stability in Iraq. That happens to be a European speciality. In Slovakia, Bosnia and the Caucasus, the E.U. has created civil, judicial and political institutions, from agricultural advice bureaus to customs inspectors. Can it work in Iraq? Germany and France, among others, have now promised to forgive some of the country's debt, and the E.U. is launching a training program for some 800 top Iraqi law-enforcement and justice officials.

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