FOR ANYONE STILL under the illusion that the United States is a benevolent giant, the always obliging Bush administration continues to offer a series of reality checks – or shocks. The latest, reported last week in the New York Times, is a U.S. lawsuit filed with the World Trade Organization against the European Union, which apparently has not shown sufficient gusto in opening its markets to genetically modified American agricultural products.

The underlying animus against the European Union is of course not surprising, given the endless headlines in recent weeks about the administration's seeking ways to "punish" France, Germany, terrorists, evildoers, wafflers, and anyone else with the temerity to stand between Mr. Bush and some treasured objective. The current president's punitive instinct is positively Sade-like; I wonder when the editorial cartoonists will pick up on this. If George II looked good in a flight suit, he would be splendid decked out in leather and with a whip.

It is amusing to see the Bush administration complaining to an international organization about the alleged misbehavior of another nation, or group of nations. One supposes the food lawsuit was not cleared with Rummy and his factotums over at Defense; no doubt they would have begun work at once on a war plan, assuming a plan for the liberation (yet again) of France has not already been drafted.

Still, the American positions are chilling. According to Robert Zoellick, the administration's trade representative, the E.U.'s "protectionist" policies are costing U.S. agriculture – i.e., poor beleaguered agribusiness – "hundreds of millions of dollars every year."

The E.U. denies it is engaged in protectionism, but it does want genetically modified food to be labeled as such and its producers identified. We – and I use the term "we" advisedly – contend that such labeling is, in the Times' words, "costly and impractical." In a similar vein we recently objected to (again in the Times' words) "a new European proposal to test industrial chemicals before they are put on the market as a precaution to protect public health and the environment."

Historians of some future era – assuming there are any future eras once our fabulous new doctrine of preemptive war (and, presumably, trans fats for all) is carried out – will thank the Bush administration for its candor, its baldness, in saying what really matters. The health of people (even the American people) and of the environment do not engage the sympathies of this administration, and there is no pretense to the contrary. Its only real concern is the financial health of corporations. We know this is so because government representatives say it, clearly, without reservation or qualification or shame. Plain speaking indeed.