Quotes of the Day

For the first time in 50 years, it is the U.S. that needs Europe's help, rather than the other way around. Americans realize that, without European diplomacy, money and soft power, freedom's march would be a lot more halting. In Kiev, Sarajevo, Ankara, Ramallah and even Tehran, the E.U. is having a more constructive impact than the U.S. Yet the E.U.'s transformative power is often confused with weakness. The E.U. doesn't change countries by threatening to invade them. Its biggest threat is not intervention but withdrawal of the hand of friendship and especially the prospect of membership. For countries like Bosnia, Turkey and Ukraine, the only thing worse than having to deal with the Brussels bureaucracy is not getting to deal with it at all. E.U. membership is such a powerful lure that countries will revamp their legal, judicial and political systems just to join.

The E.U. and U.S. face similar threats — drug trafficking, large flows of migrants, networks of international criminals and terrorists — but their responses could not be more different. The U.S. has sent troops into neighboring countries more than 15 times over the past 50 years, but many of them — from Haiti to Colombia — have barely changed; they limp from crisis to crisis, often sucking U.S. troops back in. Sometimes, military force is the right — and only — solution. In the Balkans, for example, the U.S., with the backing of the U.N. Security Council, led NATO air strikes to protect the Muslim population while Europe fretted.

But Europeans have learned the hard way that political and economic engagement can be a more powerful and permanent agent of change. These days in the Balkans, it's the prospect of E.U. membership that's driving political and social transformation. Beyond the 450 million citizens who are already living in the E.U., there are another 1.3 billion people in about 80 countries linked to the E.U. through trade, finance, foreign investment and aid. Nearly a third of the world's population lives in the Eurosphere, the E.U.'s zone of influence.

The E.U.'s secret weapon is the law. The U.S. may have changed the regime in Afghanistan, but the E.U. is changing all of Polish society, from its economic policies to its property laws to its treatment of minorities. Each country that joins the E.U. must absorb 80,000 pages of new laws on everything from gay rights to food safety. Once drawn into the Eurosphere, countries are changed forever — and they never want to get out. The U.S. can impose its will almost anywhere in the world, but when its back is turned, its potency wanes. The elections in Iraq and Afghanistan were only possible because of American intervention, but the Administration's suspicion of international law and multilateral institutions mean that the democratic changes could be difficult to entrench.

In the aftermath of the war in Iraq, the Administration has realized it can't change the world on its own. Similarly, the Europeans have learned that it sometimes takes good, old-fashioned U.S. might to get the attention of undemocratic regimes and so prepare the ground for reform. There is a lot the U.S. and the E.U. can do together to rein in the nuclear ambitions of North Korea and Iran, to further cement Turkey's relationship with the West, to combat the threat of terrorism. So while he's traveling through Europe this week, President George W. Bush might want to take a second look at the E.U.'s success. Countries around the world are drawing inspiration from the European model and nurturing their own neighborhood clubs, from asean and Mercosur to the African Union and the Arab League. This regional domino effect is redefining the meaning of power. As this process unfolds, I believe the 21st century will come to be seen as the "new European century." Not because the E.U. will run the world, but because the European way of doing things will become the world's.

• Mark Leonard
• Why the U.S. Needs the E.U. for twenty first century diplomacy