Compare and Contrast
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.
For all the talk of “old Europe” and “new Europe”, the former Soviet Bloc countries are not clamouring to create bilateral trade agreements with the US… they are fighting tooth and nail to join the EU, and so submit their trade relations with non-EU countries to the fiat of Brussels. This yearning for EU membership has produced and is producing massive social and political change across eastern Europe. However, it seems that the US project has stalled at its current borders … For many USians, the sheer idea that Honduras or Nicaragua could one day join the United States (if they met stringent legal and political requirements) is nonsensical, ludicrous, and vaguely repellent. Puerto Rico still languishes in an indeterminate, politically weak state many decades after such harmonization began.
