Posted on 12/16/2004 10:49:06 PM PST by neverdem
GUEST OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR
Oxford, England
LAST week I stood among flag-waving demonstrators in Independence Square in Kiev and heard the leader of Ukraine's "orange revolution," Viktor Yushchenko, triumphantly declare that Ukraine was a European country. Not Western, not merely democratic, and obviously not American - European.
Yesterday in Brussels, the leaders of the 25 member states of the European Union agreed to open negotiations with Turkey next year to join the union. Mr. Yushchenko, meanwhile, who will probably be elected president on Dec. 26, is also expected to seek a promise of eventual membership in the European Union for Ukraine soon after his inauguration.
These two large, poor states on the edge of Europe will pose a huge challenge to the adaptive capacity and internal coherence of the political, economic and security community that is the European Union. But their desire to become part of the union is a tribute to the magnetic power of a body that American policymakers have dangerously underrated in the last four years.
There are signs that in his second term, President Bush is preparing to take the European Union more seriously as a union - not just a collection of diverse states from which Washington can pick and choose its allies. This is a welcome development, since only by working together can the United States and the European Union hope to surmount the challenges that face these twin heirs to the Enlightenment in today's dangerous world.
The most immediate challenge, of course, is terrorism. And one could make a strong case that the European Union's agreement to open membership negotiations with Turkey will be a bigger contribution to winning the war on terrorism than the American-led occupation of Iraq.
Iraq is now a bloody playground for existing groups of Islamist terrorists - and probably a breeding ground for new ones. The European Union's offer to Turkey, by contrast, sends a clear signal that Europe is not an exclusive "Christian club," that the West is engaged in no crusade, and that a largely Islamic society can be reconciled not only with a secular state but also with the rules and customs of modern liberal democracy.
It is also significant that the European Union's offer has been made to a Turkish government headed by a devout Muslim, Prime Minister Recip Tayyip Erdogan, who was jailed just five years ago for publicly reciting a poem containing the lines, "The mosques are our barracks, the domes our helmets, the minarets our bayonets, and the faithful are our warriors." Mr. Erdogan is now doing everything in his power to meet what Turks call "European standards."
Why is it that Americans do not understand the power of the European Union? Is it because they are simply not well informed by reports from Brussels and other European capitals? Or is it because, as citizens of the world's last truly sovereign nation-state, Americans - and especially American conservatives - find it difficult to acknowledge the contribution of a transnational organization based on supranational law? It's as if they can conceive of power only in the old-fashioned terms of a classical nation-state.
Robert Kagan describes the difference between America and Europe as the difference between power and weakness - American power, that is, and European weakness. This description is sustainable only if power is measured in terms of military strength. In the way that some American conservatives talk about the European Union, I hear an echo of Stalin's famous question about the Vatican's power: how many divisions does the pope have? But the pope defeated Stalin in the end. This attitude overlooks the dimensions of European power that are not to be found on the battlefield.
In economic power, the European Union is the equal of the United States: the combined gross domestic product of the union's 25 member states is some $11 trillion at current exchange rates, about the same as the G.D.P. of the United States. American business has long recognized the importance of the European market, and it is also beginning to understand the influence of its regulators. Three years ago the union blocked the merger of two American companies, General Electric and Honeywell - after American regulators had already approved the deal.
The European Union is also strong in a less tangible kind of power - what is known as "soft power." The European way of life, its culture and societies, are enormously appealing to many of its neighbors. Meanwhile, the policies of the Bush administration have prompted a wave of hostility toward America around the world, while its security measures have made it more difficult for foreigners to study or work in the United States. So Europe may currently have a comparative advantage in the exercise of soft power, if only temporarily.
Yet the most distinctive feature of European power is a fourth dimension - one that the United States wholly lacks. It is the power of induction. Put very simply: the European Union is getting bigger, and the United States is not. Haiti cannot hope to follow Hawaii into the American union, and even an American territory like Puerto Rico faces resistance in becoming the 51st state. But Ukraine can hope to follow Poland into the European Union.
AS we have seen across central and eastern Europe, and now in the Balkans and in Turkey, countries that wish to join the European Union are prepared to make profound changes to their economic, social, legal and political systems in order to qualify. Indeed, in the run-up to accession, the union has intervened extensively in the affairs of candidate states, but it has done so with the consent of their democratically elected governments. This is regime change, European-style.
The history of the European Union can be told as a story of the expansion of freedom: from the original six postwar democracies in western Europe; to 12 member states, including three former dictatorships in southern Europe; to 25, including many of the former Communist states of central and eastern Europe; and now on to the Balkans, Turkey and, one day, Ukraine.
It can't go on forever, obviously. If Europe is everywhere, it will be nowhere. So the European Union must decide what to offer neighbors that cannot be members. But for now, the European power of induction is working its magic on the streets of Kiev and Istanbul.
"The wisest use of American strength is to advance freedom," President Bush has said. Yet by overlooking the true dimensions of European power, America is failing to recognize the potential of what could be its greatest ally in the most hopeful project of our time: the advancement of liberty around the world.
Timothy Garton Ash, a fellow of St. Antony's College, Oxford, and the Hoover Institution at Stanford, is the author, most recently, of "Free World: America, Europe and the Surprising Future of the West."
Adding Turkey to the EU would be like the United States adding Mexico to its union, except the Mexicans are a Christian people who assimilate to North American ways rather quickly. Turks, by contrast, are an indigestable mass.
Or is it because, as citizens of the world's last truly sovereign nation-state, Americans - and especially American conservatives - find it difficult to acknowledge the contribution of a transnational organization based on supranational law?
There, bolded, is the internationalists' dream in a nutshell: that devoid of military power they can, by pure powers of persuasion, control those whose "only" advantage is violence and a willingness to employ it. Actually, I do find it rather difficult to acknowledge that "contribution" because there hasn't been one. What "contribution" have we seen from this transnational organization other than corruption, interference, and a studied ignorance of a world becoming shattered around them?
Similarities between this form of internationalist enthusiasm and the one in favor of the UN are not accidental. There, too, the only real hint of moral and political superiority is the seemingly universal assumption of it by those who have shown so little sign of doing anything concrete to demonstrate it.
The United States is far from the "last sovereign country," despite all the wishful thinking of the Garton-Ashes of the world. Anyone who picks up a gun and claims it is sovereign over anyone who will not. And a very good number of those states Garton-Ash is so sanguine about assimilating have a very large number of people who will do precisely that. Offering such people a slice of that "superior" European welfare state in exchange for not shooting simply raises the question in their heads: "why not shoot and simply take it all?"
If the EU is so appealing, then why are not the socialist loving likes of Mikie Moore, Baba Striesand, etc. flocking to immigrate to her culture and society? I have lived the past 4.5 years in The Netherlands and Brussels and the citizens are thin from lack of money, e.g., discresinary funds. They have the basics, but are not consumers in the classic American definition.
Many of the provinces of Canada are easily digestible if they want to join the USA. I wouldn't be surprised if most, besides Quebec and Ontario, would take the opportunity if offered. Who says we are against any further and farther enlargement of our union when it's mutually agreed upon? It could simplify border security as well if it decreased the size of the land border that needs to be secured. The Canadian immigration situation is worse than ours, IIRC.
should have been
I wouldn't be surprised if most, except Quebec and Ontario, would take the opportunity if offered.
Alberta will join first. Within 30 years. 2 conservative GOP Senators, and a whole lot of oil and cattle. Some hockey too, if the NHL's still around.
Where's the gag alert on this title? For info use only!
this bozo wants to know why manifest destiny ended at the shores of America. After he points out examples of American hegemony. Wait he wants to know why we don't except more immigrants - which is about twice the number in the EU and why our GDP has saved the EU during the last ten years. Yet he can not understand why the "lst soverign Power" can't except the value of the EU. What is a crime is someone is paying this hick with an Ivy league background to write this crap and he is probably a teacher too.
25 countries combined GNP nearly equals that of ONE country-the USA-and this fool thinks that makes them equal?!? And what happens if we do an EU-NAFTA comparison?
It is too bad, I used to enjoy his writing. He spends too much time at Oxford.
The Euros are in for a reat surprise doen the road.
She a Housewife, sorry that is really funny. incidentally some middle age men a still handsome toooooooooooooooo
"could be its greatest ally"
Looking towards the future, it could be it's greatest ENEMY.
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