AS THE DUST SETTLES after the explosive referenda at the heart of the European Union, interested parties from all sides are peering nervously into the crater, trying to figure out what remains of the European "project." E.U. heads of government will meet next weekend to map an immediate route out of the debris. In the Brussels bunker, of course, the familiar instinct has kicked in--pretend nothing has happened. Incredibly, the official plan is that the other E.U. countries should simply carry on ratifying the constitutional treaty that was essentially detonated by the French and Dutch voters.

In the real world, whose characteristics are not readily recognizable to the inhabitants of the bureaucratic fantasy theme park that is the European Commission, serious reconstruction work must now begin. The "No" votes should in fact provide a real opportunity for Europe to revisit the very purpose and meaning of its union. Whatever else they have shown, the popular rejections ought surely to prompt a serious effort both to devolve power from an overweening Brussels and to reconnect the E.U. with the voters of Europe. All that is a question for the Europeans themselves to decide.

The United States, however, has always had a vital national interest in the direction Europe takes, and the events of the last month provide an opportunity for much needed reflection in Washington about the transatlantic relationship. Many of the countries of Europe have been reliable allies over the last 50 years or more. A healthy functioning relationship with this other pole

First, the Bush administration should take a vow of silence when it comes to specific discussions of how Europe should develop. Though some may be tempted to indulge in a little schadenfreude at the sight of Jacques Chirac and Gerhard Schröder contemplating the fragments of their superpower ambitions, they should resist it. Even the merest hint in Europe that Washington is actively seeking to undermine European unity would be enough to strengthen it.

But this silence must, at long last, be genuinely symmetrical. The administration should stop forthwith insisting that it believes ever deeper and closer European integration is in America's best interest. This was true in the Cold War, when Western European fragmentation would have been a real problem in the fight against communism. But in the more complex post-9/11 world, in which threat perceptions and strategies differ across the Atlantic and within Europe, it is no longer self-evidently in U.S. interests that the E.U. try to eliminate national policies.

It is hysterical nonsense to suggest that without closer E.U. integration the European nations will fall back into internecine strife. In fact most E.U. members are mature democracies capable of making rational decisions. It is much more likely that top-down efforts to force separate nations into the straitjacket of one sprawling, remote supernation will only heighten national tensions.

Washington, then, should resist the usual attempts of Europe's political elites to enlist it as an enabler in their efforts to bypass the popular will and pursue their own grand visions. Studied neutrality, with a bias towards supporting the will of the peoples of Europe, should now guide the institutional U.S. approach towards the E.U.