BERLIN - The young man who lays tiles a few blocks from the German parliament building was a West German soldier when his country was still split in two. He knows utopia is a concept and not a place.

And he knows, he says, that ultimately the strength of the United States, the fearsome potential of its military, is what led to Germany's reunification. To him, it was the United States that eased so much suffering on the communist side of the Berlin Wall and won freedom for millions of Eastern Europeans.

Knowing all of this, he says, is why he cannot help but feel bad about hating America.

"I just hate it and can't help that," says Manuel Baczynski, 31, who quickly adds: "Make it clear I don't hate Americans. I hate America for what it is doing."

This is something both very old from Europe and very new. Americans are accustomed to encountering resentment here, but what is happening now is in many ways different. European historians, intellectuals and political leaders are in general agreement that no longer are anti-American voices merely a vocal minority mired in the hate portion of a love-hate relationship.

The anti-American sentiments now come from the wealthy and the economically hard-pressed, from the highly educated and the barely so, from young people just opening their eyes to the world and from those who lived through World War II, Vietnam, the rise of communism and its fall.

The primary reasons for the anti-American feelings: They start with President Bush himself. There is a widespread belief that he is belligerent and lacks an adequate comprehension of the wars of Europe's past, demonstrated not only by his stance on Iraq but by his attitude toward those who oppose military action.

When Bush sought an international coalition to move into Afghanistan after the Sept. 11 attacks, the United States scored high marks among Europeans, who saw the response as tempered as any move toward war could be. That approval has dissipated, replaced by negative feelings largely centered on the president and U.S. policy toward Iraq.

"After 9/11, the United States had an outburst of sympathy from all of Europe," says Karsten D. Voigt, coordinator for German-American cooperation in Germany's Foreign Ministry. "The pictures of the towers revived the collective memories of the bombing of Germany. In a psychological way, those New Yorkers were us."

But in recent weeks, the demonstrators who came to Berlin's Brandenburg Gate to shed tears for Americans after the terrorist attacks have been replaced by protestors marching against a war in Iraq, and decidedly against the United States.

"There is a clear distinction in Germany and Europe between the campaign against international terrorism and war," Voigt says. "We've said Germany gives its unlimited solidarity in the stand against terrorism. The United States government says war with Iraq is an extension of the war on terrorism. We don't see the evidence of it. We don't buy it."

On Wenceslas Square in Prague - where Czechs faced Soviet tanks in 1968, and where tens of thousands of Czechs gathered in 1989 during their "Velvet Revolution" that ended communist rule, and where anti-war protests now take place - Dana Osuska feels much the same as the tile man in Berlin.

"I can't say I hate Americans," says Osuska, a 21-year-old psychology student at Prague's Charles University, "but if you ask if I hate America pushing everyone around to get its own way, then I say, 'Yes, I'm very sorry, but I hate America in that way.' I don't think one country should rule the world."

The president does have backing from some foreign leaders, and there are voices speaking in support of his policies. British Prime Minister Tony Blair is from a left-of-center political party that could be expected to oppose American policies, but he has attached himself solidly to the position that force may be necessary. Australia is sending troops to the Persian Gulf region, and the leaders of Poland, Italy and Spain have embraced Bush's policies even as their constituents express a strong dislike for the president and his aims.

"The price of influence is that we do not leave the U.S. to face the tricky issues alone," Blair said in a recent speech. "By tricky, I mean the ones which people wish weren't there, don't want to deal with, and, if I can put it a little pejoratively, know the U.S. should confront, but want the luxury of criticizing them for it."

In Germany, Reinhold Butifoker, a spokesman for the Green Party, part of the country's governing coalition, says Europe is partly to blame for war becoming an option in Iraq, because Europe fails to press its own agenda.

"It's not about acting or not acting but how to act" on the world stage, he says. "Europe needs to be much more aggressive about pushing its own agenda for international security."

No common bond

The negative feelings matter in tangible ways. Foreign leaders representing constituencies that resent the United States are less likely to follow its lead diplomatically, economically and, especially, militarily.

That was demonstrated last week when Germany, about to take over the presidency of the United Nations Security Council, said it will not endorse a resolution calling for war against Iraq. France went a step further, mobilizing opposition against such a resolution and hinting that it might use its veto power in the council. Not coincidentally, opinion surveys show that more than 80 percent of people in both countries oppose using force to remove Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.

The government of NATO member Turkey - a Muslim country that shares borders with Iraq, Iran and Syria, and where less than 15 percent of the population favors any military action against Iraq - has resisted the Pentagon's request to allow large numbers of U.S. troops there.

"People are afraid of what a war means to Turkey," Deniz Ulke Aribogan, a political science professor, says from her office at Bilgi University in Istanbul. "America keeps the view that what's good for America is good for the world. It would be much better if that view were, 'What's good for the world is good for America.'"

Andrew Kohut, director of the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press in Washington, which has documented the growing anti-Americanism over the past two years, says Europeans dislike and distrust President Bush. Indeed, anti-Americanism has widened to a breadth not approached since the Reagan administration.

"I've been doing this for a couple of decades, and I've never heard such all-out dislike for an American president," Kohut says of attitudes in Europe. "It seems to be this self-righteousness, this 'We are America, we are the best,' which Bush never misses an opportunity to promote. That's fine to a point, but there's a reaction when people also get the message, 'You and your feelings are insignificant.'"

In the 1950s, the European left gained a large, respectful audience by arguing that the United States, because of its economic might, was a threat to peace. French President Charles de Gaulle, in the 1960s, resented the shadow that Washington's cultural and military power cast over the status of France. Later, there would be bitter differences over Vietnam.

President Reagan, during the 1980s, was viewed by many Europeans as a reckless hawk, whose rhetoric and weapons programs put Europe at risk, not the United States, which raised anti-Americans among the allies. But, says Kohut, the Cold War alliances kept anti-Americanism from intensifying to the point now reached in those countries.

A Pew study released at the end of 2002 found that people throughout Europe, except for Britain, wanted their country's foreign policies to be independent of the United States. Compared to a year earlier, the number of people with a favorable view of the United States had declined 17 percent in Germany, 8 percent in Britain and 6 percent in Italy. In Turkey, the decline was 22 percent.

"What's different now is, we don't have the common bond with the Europeans we once had that served to keep us together," Kohut says, referring to the fall of the Soviet Union. "Terrorism has not served that role."

There are also complaints from many Europeans that the Bush administration seems to underestimate the seriousness of war. Americans might find Donald H. Rumsfeld, Bush's secretary of defense, engaging and even witty, but Voigt and others say they find his televised news conferences deeply unsettling, as they watch him chuckling when talking about a war that inevitably would lead to the deaths of civilians.

When Germans or Frenchmen or Italians awake in the morning, they know that what happens in Washington that day could affect their lives.

That is partly by choice and partly due to circumstance, to Europe's relative military weakness and its failure, despite the emergence of the European Union, to become a cohesive economic force.

Because of that, and a deep-seated reluctance to shape the world, Europeans have long found it convenient to allow the United States to keep order while they have carped on the sidelines about American policy.

Americans do not worry much about what German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder might do on a given day, but Bush and members of his administration are watched carefully on newscasts and in the newspapers in Europe, which pay close attention to political developments in the United States.

The Bush tone

If anti-Americanism is already in bloom in Europe, its seeds were sown almost immediately after Bush took office.

The president's dismissal of the Kyoto Treaty, designed to slow global warming, was deeply resented in Europe. Resented, too, was Bush's refusal to accede to an international criminal court, which would have tried individuals accused of crimes against humanity, and his decision to withdraw from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.

President Clinton, too, had expressed misgivings about the Kyoto accord when he was in the White House. He also stated clearly that the United States would not take part in the international court as designed.

"But he didn't just dismiss those," says Christoph Bertram, director of the German Research Institute for International Affairs and Security, a think tank supported in part by the German government. "Bush just dismissed them out of hand.

"He didn't say, 'These have problems, let's try to fix them,' which was Clinton's approach - even if he never intended to go along with them. With Bush, he just said, 'No. We're not taking part.' How could Europeans not feel put down? How could resentment not grow?

"Look, what we hear is, 'Don't worry about what Europeans think, because they'll follow.' That may be true. In fact, it is true on so many issues and we know that. But Europeans don't want to hear that. We don't need our noses rubbed into it. Eventually, that works against the United States."

The perception in Europe that the Bush administration does not take Europe seriously and that the United States does not appreciate the seriousness of war, is shaped by the president's language and by pictures that convey American nationalism.

The president's speeches, and the backdrops designed with American audiences in mind, are heard and seen very differently abroad. If history is any guide, Bush's State of the Union address tonight will probably receive its loudest cheers from Congress after mentions of the United States military. Most European countries will carry the speech live and, because of time differences, show excerpts repeatedly tomorrow.

"The pictures that are presented show this joy for war," says Bertram. "That may be fair or not fair, but that is the perception people get, that this administration has a cavalier attitude toward war that doesn't match reality."

Those feelings have been exacerbated by Bush's tendency to draw a linguistic picture of the world that Europeans see as unnecessarily provocative. The president's remarks about an "axis of evil" do not play well abroad. His language is interpreted as relegating honest disagreements about the necessity for war to wrongheadedness and moral blindness.

The president, says Yalim Eralp, a former Turkish diplomat and now a commentator on Turkish television, needs to take more care explaining his policies. "He relies on slogans, and that's not good enough when you're trying to convince people about serious issues, and especially about going to war."

Anti-Americanism in Europe goes beyond the president. It is born of a contradictory desire for American culture and resentment of its ubiquity. Cultural differences about the role of religion in governing plays a part, with many Europeans believing that the religious right in the United States is driving American policy. Religion in most European countries, by contrast, rarely intrudes in political discussions.

Some Europeans believe the damage in relations can be easily repaired, that the antipathy toward the United States is always subject to rises and falls based on factors that include the world economy, political ambitions and, especially, war or the threat of it.

"It's the responsibility of political leaders to change the minds of people," says Wolfgang Schauble, head of the opposition Christian Democrats in Germany's parliament. "The danger for peace is not due to the United States and President Bush. It's due to Saddam Hussein."

Schauble dismisses anti-Americans as an example of Europeans' historical reluctance to take care of themselves. It's up to leaders in Europe and the United States, he says, to make a better case about the dangers posed by Iraq. But he adds that the Bush administration has not seen the value of geopolitical friendships.

"I like the term 'compassionate conservatism,' but Bush has to think of that on a global scale," Schauble says. "The role of a superpower means truth and values and to make clear that the richer parts of the world, including Germany, that we're looking for a better world not only for ourselves but for the poorer parts of the world."