NEWS ANALYSIS : U.S. Angling for Role in Shaping Face of Europe : Diplomacy: As the Cold War wanes, Bush adopts strategies to strengthen U.S. influence on Western allies.

Almost a quarter of the way through its four-year mandate, the Bush Administration has renewed the traditional American claim to Western leadership.

In President Bush’s summit Saturday with French President Francois Mitterrand on this sunny island in the French West Indies, and in Secretary of State James A. Baker III’s weeklong European trip, the Administration served notice that the United States is determined to play a role in shaping Europe for the post-Cold War era.

For most of the four decades since the end of World War II, Washington’s leadership of the West rested on its nuclear arsenal. Europeans sometimes chafed at the American hegemony but, at least in their serious moments, they realized that there was no substitute for the U.S. nuclear deterrent as long as Josef Stalin and his successors in Moscow seemed to menace the Continent.

That reason for the American presence in Europe now seems to be much diminished, maybe gone for good. But after months of relative passivity that critics called timidity, Bush has made it clear that the United States does not intend to be dismissed and forgotten like a demobilized soldier whose services are no longer needed.

In a speech last Tuesday in West Berlin, Baker laid out the U.S. vision of “a new architecture for a new era” that would join Europe to the United States in the future by revising some of the organizations that held them together in the past.

So far, the U.S. approach seems to have been relatively well received. But Baker’s speech contained few details, giving critics a poor target, at least for now. When some of the ideas are rounded out into specific proposals, they may prove to be more controversial.

Speaking at a press conference after his talks with Bush, Mitterrand praised the U.S. initiative in principle while carefully avoiding most of the specifics.

“Mr. Baker’s statement on the subject seems to show great understanding on the needs of Europe,” Mitterrand said. But he said the details would require additional study.

Bush conceded that he had some “nuances” of difference with Mitterrand on the future of Europe.

But he added, “I don’t find any countries suggesting that the United States should decouple from Europe. . . . I don’t think you are going to see out of all this dynamic change a tendency to try to push the United States out of Europe. You might see some isolationist pressures develop in our country that I will fight.”

Baker said the United States wants some sort of formal consultative role with the European Community before the 12-nation trading bloc completes its scheduled establishment of a “single European market” in 1992.

“As Europe moves toward its goal of a common internal market . . . the link between the United States and the European Community will become even more important,” Baker said. “We propose that the United States and the European Community work together to achieve, whether in treaty or some other form, a significantly strengthened set of institutional and consultative links.

“We suggest that our discussions about this idea proceed in parallel with Europe’s efforts to achieve by 1992 a common internal market so that plans for U.S.-EC interaction would evolve with changes in the (European) Community,” he added.

Baker insisted that he brought no “preconceived model of transatlantic cooperation” and that the United States did not want to become “the 13th member of the EC.” Nevertheless, it seems clear that Washington wants to have a regular and continuing opportunity to affect EC decisions.

U.S. officials said that France appears to be the most skeptical of any of the Europeans about the U.S. proposals.

“Historically, the French have wanted to use the European structures to check German influence,” one senior U.S. official said.

“The French are the most resistant in Europe to some of the ideas we proffered,” the official said. “I have no doubt that they will be more cautious than the British or the (West) Germans.”

However, Jacques Delors, the former French government official who heads the permanent bureaucracy of the European Community, agreed Friday to increased consultations with the United States.

Although Delors said it would take some time to work out the exact procedures, “the transatlantic links must be strengthened.” To which Baker, seated at Delors’ side, added, “You said it.”

U.S. officials are cautiously optimistic about the future relationship with the EC. But they are almost euphoric about the future of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

In the U.S. “architecture,” NATO would play an as-yet vaguely defined political role in the post-Cold War world, managing the emerging East-West detente in the same way it once managed the Western side of the East-West confrontation.

French Foreign Minister Roland Dumas unleashed scathing criticism of U.S. plans for the alliance. But when NATO’s foreign ministers published their final communique after their winter meeting Friday, almost all of the elements of the Baker plan were included, at least in substance if not word for word.

A senior U.S. official said Saturday that the “American tone” of the communique was striking, perhaps the clearest endorsement of U.S. objectives since the early days of the alliance when U.S. domination was unquestioned.