The Power Of Attraction

...is a power of Europe. I have long argued on many forums about this, for example I wrote a month ago:

the EU's unique characteristics of its neighbours more wanting to get into it than fearing takeover

To my surprise, Robert Kagan, the neocon warmonger with the "Americans From Mars/Europeans From Venus" fixed idea, turned his European Venus vision upside down, and became the first mainstream American pundit who has now noticed this - heightening the surprise, he argues it crystal-clearly on the ocassion of the Orange revolution in Ukraine, altough it's less clear in that example:

The European Union has become a gigantic political and economic magnet whose greatest strength is the attractive pull it exerts on its neighbours. Europe's foreign policy today is enlargement; its most potent foreign policy tool is what the E.U.'s Robert Cooper calls "the lure of membership."

Of course, Kagan frames this with lines reeking of the neocon recycling of the White Man's Burden, speaking about our 'task' to deal with the 'tangle of problem regions' neighbouring the current EU, and does his round of war apologism, and even resurrects the anti-French theme in a completely out-of-reality argument, but nevertheless. I thought about his probable source - he quotes Joschka Fischer and other Europeans, so it seems those TV debates I saw during 2003 did have their effect after all. (I recall in particular his exchanges with Daniel Cohn-Bendit[*], who declassed him, Kagan came across as clueless and closed-minded.)

I read this at Cabalamat, via a post by Nick @ A Fistful Of Euros. Cabalamat follows the thought and thinks about the effect of the attraction of the EU on populations under repressive regimes like Iran. I only disagree with the article about a possible EU/US good cop/bad cop cooperation - such a cynical game would destroy the attractiveness of the EU after one or two attempts. This is also the criticism I could implicitely aim at Kagan.

[*] One of these exchanges, in German, is here.