The president of the Fifth French Republic, Jacques Chirac, seems to have overestimated his sway with his countrymen when he decided to put the proposed European Constitutional Treaty to a national referendum. On Tuesday, Mr. Chirac’s wife, Bernadette, urged her fellow citizens to approve the treaty, which comes up for a vote Sunday. A rejection, she said, would weaken Mr. Chirac’s position “when he goes to international summits.”

Last night, the president himself appealed directly to the French people in a televised address. “This is a historic responsibility,” Mr. Chirac said, warning that a “non” vote would put European integration and French influence at risk. “Europe would break down,” Mr. Chirac implored his countrymen. “France would be less strong in defending its interests.”

Despite these appeals, France appears poised to reject the proposed constitution, with at least 10 successive polls predicting defeat for Mr. Chirac – and, in turn, for the European Constitution itself, since the treaty must be ratified by all 25 members of the European Union to take effect.

It would be a high irony to see dreams of European integration run aground in France. No other country has more enthusiastically promoted the idea that a strong, unified Europe could counterbalance America’s influence in world affairs. The draft European constitution was shaped by this vision. It would establish a single European foreign minister and diplomatic corps to push a single European foreign policy. Not for nothing did the German minister for Europe, Hans Martin Bury, call the European constitution “the birth certificate of the United States of Europe.”

To be sure, France’s rejection of the European constitution does not signify any new pro-American sentiment. Quite the contrary: The vast bulk of “non” voters – French nationalists on the right, anti-globalization socialists on the left – oppose the constitution precisely because they fear it will subject them to “Anglo-American” economic policies. That is, free markets and free trade.

But these activists, in ensuring that the “U.S.E.” is never born, are inadvertently on America’s side. Only an integrated Europe – not a confederation of independent nation-states, as the treaty opponents want – could ever hope to challenge America’s dominance of the global stage. The failure of the European constitution spells the end of Mr. Chirac’s dream of Europe as a counterweight to American power.

European integration has faced electoral setbacks before, of course, but never from so invested a country as France, and never for so important a reason. Free trade and free markets, after all, have been the rationale for the European Union from the very beginning.

As John O’Sullivan has noted, the French rejection of the European constitution can’t help but spark a reconsideration of the European Union itself and for what it should stand. Fortunately for America, this rethinking will occur precisely when the anti-American politics of Mr. Chirac and Germany’s socialist chancellor, Gerhard Schroder, are on the wane. Polls suggest not only that French voters are poised to hand Mr. Chirac a humiliating defeat in Sunday’s referendum, but also that German voters are preparing to put Mr. Schroder’s party out of power in favor of a government friendlier to America.

The recent rift between Europe and America was always based more on the cynicism of Messrs. Chirac and Schroder than on the actual sentiments of the Europeans. Voters in the Netherlands, Czech Republic, Poland, and, most notably, Britain, have expressed skepticism over the proposed European constitution for reasons opposite those of the French electorate: These states resent the overweening influence of France and Germany and worry about socialist economic regulation.

In other words, it’s not a conflict between Europe and America so much as a conflict within Europe about America. Suddenly we’re at a pass when America may be able to redirect European integration in a more favorable direction – toward a liberal, open, intergovernmental union that furthers democratization in Turkey, Ukraine, and the Black Sea region. That is, toward broader economic integration and away from the deeper political integration that aims at resisting America’s brand of freedom.

It’ll be up to the Bush administration to seize this opportunity by giving vigorous support to America’s allies in Europe and thereby building what President Bush, speaking in February at Brussels, called “a new era of trans-Atlantic unity.” The polls suggest the French, of all people, will give America an opening. If they do, here’s hoping our leaders won’t waste it.