George Bush, we are told, has chosen as his White House work desk a handsome product fashioned from timbers taken from HMS Resolute, a British naval vessel that ran aground off New England in the 1850s. If so, the desk - last used by President Kennedy - will be just about the only example of British resolution to come within a yardarm's length of the new administration.

According to Bruce Jackson, vice president of Lockheed Martin and a leading Republican member of the U.S. Committee on NATO, failure by the United Kingdom to commit to the revamped National Missile Defense System would "materially degrade the security of Europe."

It is a serious charge to level at America's most loyal ally and gets to the heart of a NATO feud that has opened up between the United States and its European allies.

Tony Blair, the British prime minister, concerned that his close personal relationship with Bill Clinton does not exactly endear him to the incoming administration, has rushed to defuse the crisis. So far, he insists, no one in Washington has so much as asked him his opinion on NMD, so that all he can do is wait and see.

Well, he may not have to wait too long. Bush's appointment of Donald Rumsfeld as defense secretary is virtually an open endorsement of NMD - or Son of Star Wars, as it is popularly known. Rumsfeld has promised an immediate review of America's defense and early-warning systems, and no one doubts that this means an early boost to the $50 billion-plus Star Wars program.

What now unfolds could prove a rerun of the cruise missile crisis of the early 1980s. Then, it will be recalled, President Ronald Reagan exerted pressure throughout Europe to ensure the success of his controversial "twin-track" approach to strategic arms limitation.

To make the Soviet Union cave into his demands for an Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty, he planned to deploy new-generation cruise missiles throughout Western Europe, targeted on the Soviets. France was aghast, West Germany was reluctant to become involved and Britain, as ever, was seen as the key.

At that time, of course, Margaret Thatcher was in power at No. 10 Downing St., and it was her almost-symbiotic relationship with Reagan that saved the day for the cruise missiles. Millions of ordinary Britons were concerned - some of them to the point of sustained, occasionally violent opposition to the deployment. But the deal was done, and the result, like it or not, was history.

Twenty years later, William Hague, the eager young leader of the Conservative opposition at Westminster, is itching to repeat the trick. He, too, wants to play his part in history. More than that, he wants to cement an already close bond with President Bush, a man he sees as infinitely preferable to the slippery, too-clever-by-half Clinton.

Britain, says Hague, must once again rally to the flag - to the Stars and Stripes, that is - and upgrade its Fylingdales early-warning center to accommodate NMD. Bush, in Hague's view, is right on the button. Europe must be made to see sense before Western democracy is seriously threatened by ballistic missiles based in such "rogue" states as North Korea, Iraq and Libya.

Hague, it needs to be said, is an out-and-out Atlanticist. To him, the continent to which Britain is so inconveniently hitched is constantly out of step with "correct" thinking and needs urgently to be brought to heel.

The problem is, Prime Minister Blair does not agree. Indeed, his defense secretary, Geoff Hoon, has accused Hague of showing no judgment or sense of responsibility and of "blundering around on a very sensitive issue."

Bush will not like that. Rumsfeld will be wondering if Blair is, as Thatcher used to put it, "one of us." But America needs to remember two things. First, Europe cannot easily be pushed around any more. The euro has come off the floor and is punching its way back into the international currency fight. It is also deeply engaged in a debate on continental self-defense and the future of NATO. Britain has influence and respect in the defense field. Its forces, pound for pound, remain the toughest and best trained in the West. But it is only one partner in a complex mix, and its Labor government - set to be re-elected this year - is, at the very least, of two minds about NMD.

Rumsfeld and his boss should tread warily until they find out exactly what is going on in Europe's capitals on this vexed, and costly, issue. And they should not take Britain's backing for granted. Failure to get agreement and do the right thing on Star Wars would be the most damaging start imaginable to the new, mature relationship that is supposed to exist today between the United States and its European friends.

Walter Ellis, a writer and analyst based in London, is a former Brussels correspondent for The Irish Times and features editor of The European.