A Communitarian Future

What Can the EU Experience Teach Us?

JAMES M. GOLDGEIER
George Washington University

Amitai Etzioni has provided a vision for developing a future global civil society. If his com-
munitarian approach has any hope, its starting place will be modern Europe. The continent’s
bloody rivalries of the past are history. By creating a larger community, Europe has achieved
what Etzioni seeks on a global scale. How has Europe done it? Can Europe’s success be a
model for other parts of the world, just as its development of the modern nation-state became
the model for political life in previous centuries? And will Europe itself be likely to survive as
a thriving community, or will it fail in the end to sustain its own model? This article explores
the basis for Europe’s remarkable developments of the past 60 years and the possibilities that
Europe can lead the way forward for the achievement of Etzioni’s vision.

Keywords: communitarianism; European Union; global governance

There are two kinds of scholars of international relations. The first has
argued that international affairs has always been marked by the need to prac-
tice balance-of-power politics and said that good leaders are those who play this
game successfully in a world that lacks a global authority to enforce peace.
Whether we are reading Thucydides’s discussion of Athenian and Spartan dip-
lomats and generals, Niccolo Machiavelli’s comparison of the virtues and short-
comings of Italian princes, or Hans Morgenthau’s or Henry Kissinger’s exhorta-
tions for their adopted nation to be more calculating and less ideological, realists
have argued they are being just that: realistic about what can be achieved in a
world of power-seeking human beings who lead competing political entities.
Then there are the idealists. Whether seeking to strengthen international law,
international institutions, or international identity, these scholars and practitio-
ners—Hugo Grotius, Immanuel Kant, Woodrow Wilson, and their heirs—have
believed that the rule of law that can be achieved at home can also be achieved
globally. Whereas the realists have looked at religious warfare of the 17th cen-
tury, dynastic clashes of the 18th century, and nation-state rivalries of the 19th

Author’s Note: I would like to thank Kate Arcieri for her research assistance.
AMERICAN BEHAVIORAL SCIENTIST, Vol. 48 No. 12, August 2005 1545-1557
DOI: 10.1177/0002764205278072
© 2005 Sage Publications

1545

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1546 AMERICAN BEHAVIORAL SCIENTIST

and 20th centuries and asked how leaders could best ensure the survival (and
perhaps even growth) of their state through balance-of-power politics, the ideal-
ists have searched for a different path, sometimes focusing on a league of
democracies but occasionally culminating in the idea of global governance
through the creation of empowered global institutions.
Although there are many critiques of the idealist pursuit, two are most rele-
vant here. One comes from within the tradition, the other from outside. Kant
(1795/1983), whose thesis about the possibilities for a democratic peace has
achieved a renaissance since the collapse of communism and the explosion of
democracy at the end of the 20th century, wrote that relations among democratic
states rather than global government was the ideal in international relations. He
argued that the only way to ensure the rights of nations was to create a federation
of nations, rather than “a nation consisting of nations”; Kant believed that a
world of what today we call market democracies would be peaceful due to the
domestic makeup of the countries (p. 115). At the outset of his second term in
office, President George W. Bush has forcefully articulated the Kantian logic in
discussing the need to spread liberty throughout the world to combat global
threats.
A different critique comes from realist scholar E. H. Carr (1964), the father of
modern international relations theory, whose classic work The Twenty Years’
Crisis explores the dialectic between realism and idealism in international life.
Although Carr was a realist, he argued that human beings seek progress in their
affairs, and he believed that realism without idealism was too barren to serve
alone as a guide to action. On the other hand, Carr argued that idealism too often
serves as a mask for the pursuit of individual state self-interest rather than a self-
less pursuit of a better world and, thus, after a while, idealism would need to
“once more be attacked with the instruments of realism” (p. 93).
Amitai Etzioni’s (2004) communitarian approach is mindful of the realities
of the international system. He does not believe that Kant’s (1795/1983) demo-
cratic peace is sufficient to end the need for using force in world affairs and like
Carr (1964), he is wary of idealism that merely fronts for one or another
particularistic agenda.
Etzioni’s (2004) way forward is the building of a global civil society, built
first from regional communities that would ultimately blend Western individu-
alism with the East’s “respect for social obligations” (p. 15). Only through a
global community buttressed by global institutions can we manage the transna-
tional problems that now constitute the greatest threat to humankind.
If the communitarian approach has any hope, its starting place will be mod-
ern Europe. The continent’s bloody rivalries of the past are history. By creating a
larger community, Europe has achieved what Etzioni (2004) sought on a global
scale. How has Europe done it? Can Europe’s success be a model for other parts
of the world, just as its development of the modern nation-state became the
model for political life in previous centuries? And will Europe itself be likely to

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 Goldgeier / THE EU EXPERIENCE 1547

survive as a thriving community, or will it fail in the end to sustain its own
model?
Understanding Europe is vital for exploring the viability of the communi-
tarian logic. Europe is communitarianism’s greatest proof that the theory is pos-
sible in practice. A failure of the European community would signal that
communitarianism on the international level is unworkable.
Although significant for communitarian logic is the vast extension of the
European community in 2004 into Central and Eastern Europe, the real issue to
watch is the EU’s management of Turkey’s future accession. The inclusion of a
secular Muslim state in the Western community of market democracies would
be a remarkable achievement—for Turkey and for Europe.

THE BUILDING OF THE EUROPEAN COMMUNITY

For those who believe that it was easy to build a community among peoples
who shared a common European heritage, just recall how little was shared as
recently as 1945. Nearly 25 million Europeans died in battle in the two World
Wars, and another 30 million civilians died from causes attributable to the wars.
But even that slaughter was not sufficient to build a community after the war
ended. Would France and Germany have been able to succeed in building their
postwar cooperation without Germany’s division, the Soviet threat, and Ameri-
can leadership after the war? It seems doubtful given the horrors of the past and
the constraints on cooperation that stem from the lack of overarching authority
in international affairs.
It is equally hard to imagine that Germany’s division, the Soviet threat, and
American leadership would have been enough to build a new Europe had there
been no vision. Vision did exist, a vision that could guide postwar planners even
if the goal of building a peaceful European community seemed unattainable in
the immediate aftermath of war. As A. W. Deporte (1979) has written,

The deadlock of the attempt to move toward greater European unity . . . was broken
only—but definitively—by the bold and imaginative proposal made by French
Foreign Minister Robert Schuman on May 9, 1950, to place the French and West
German coal and steel industries under a joint authority with supranational pow-
ers, that is, powers in this defined field superseding those of the member govern-
ments. (pp. 221-222)

The French had found a way to ensure that what they believed would be the core
of a rebuilt German economy would not threaten it by placing both nation’s
economies under external control. This step was truly revolutionary, as it
marked the beginning of European states’ willingness to give up the sovereignty
cherished since the 1648 Treaty of Westphalia established the modern nation-
state system.

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From this early effort, the European Economic Community was built. But at
first, Europe meant only six of the states on the continent—the three Benelux
nations (Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg), France, Germany, and
Italy. And the main focus was on creating an economic basis for the relationship.
It was the classic liberal ideal as expressed by philosophers such as Adam Smith
and Immanuel Kant: Create free market interdependence among free societies
to foster economic growth and in turn, if successful, countries might be able
to eliminate the possibility of war. At the start, countries were not in the business
of creating new identities. The European Community was built on a set of
instrumental bargains that were driven by the relative power of the countries
involved.1
For Etzioni (2004), one of the root principles of a community is that in a bat-
tle between the larger entity’s rules and the rules of a particular unit, the larger
entity wins. EU states have to agree to European Commission rulings, but a key
norm underpinning this system is subsidiarity, which was formally defined in
1992 to protect member states from a supranational entity that might seek to
overreach:

In areas which do not fall within its exclusive competence, the Community shall
take action, in accordance with the principle of subsidiarity, only if and in so far as
the objectives of the proposed action cannot be sufficiently achieved by the Mem-
ber States and can therefore, by reason of the scale or effects of the proposed
action, be better achieved by the Community. Any action by the Community shall
not go beyond what is necessary to achieve the objectives of this Treaty. (Wood &
Yesilada, 2002, p. 79)

Subsidiarity reflects the notion that the goal of community is first and foremost
to solve problems that the states cannot solve on their own, but not otherwise to
infringe on national sovereignty.
In his development of the notion of global community, Etzioni (2004) wrote
about creating “crowning subsidiarity” in which the supranational community
possesses three key capabilities: “control of means of violence, ability to reallo-
cate assets, and command [of] superior loyalty in select matters” (p. 188). This
crowning capacity does not mean sole capacity is maintained at the higher level.
Etzioni suggested, “Supranational communities can provide a context for a
group of nations, but they need not seek to replace these states or to abolish their
autonomy” (p. 188). But the supranational entity has to “have the final say in
cases of conflict, no matter how much power and resources are delegated to the
smaller member entities” (Etzioni, 2004, p. 188).
In important respects, the nomenclature of European integration suggests
that the continent has gone beyond simply a community; after all, in 1992 at
Maastricht, the European Community became the EU. The most significant
aspect of deeper integration was the decision to adopt a common currency,
which signified a willingness of national governments to give up a cherished
feature of sovereignty—a nation’s money and its government’s control of its

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supply. The failure to date of Britain, Denmark, and Sweden to part with their
own monetary sovereignty shows just how significant it was for 12 countries to
forge ahead. But as a new Union of 25 (a majority of which are not yet using the
euro) demonstrates, one can have a successful community without achieving a
complete union in spheres such as money.

EUROPE AS A MODEL?

Europe as a community of values and interests, and not just its utilitarian eco-
nomic base, has been of growing interest in other parts of the world. Asian
scholars and practitioners have shown increasing interest in Europe’s creation of
the Conference (and since 1994, Organization) on Security and Cooperation in
Europe (OSCE) and its relevance for institutions like the Association of South-
east Asian Nations’ regional forum for creating new norms of cooperative secu-
rity in Asia.2 The OSCE is not as significant an institution as the EU or NATO,
but it was designed to establish norms and principles of peaceful relations and
peaceful change in Europe. The establishment of regional institutions in other
parts of the world similar to the OSCE could serve as a mechanism to develop
transnational society.
If one hopes to see Etzioni’s (2004) vision of global community emerge in
the coming generations, what features of the broader notion of community in
Europe are most significant? As noted earlier, Etzioni argued that three capabili-
ties are central to full-fledged supranational unions. These are the legitimate
control of the means of violence, the capability to allocate resources, and the
ability to command political loyalties over those accorded to the member states
(p. 182). The EU does have the capacity to allocate resources in many areas and
it commands some loyalty, although not to an extent that would supercede that to
the member states. It does not possess control of the means of violence, although
the member states are in the early stages of trying to build a common foreign and
security policy. But in thinking about these categories, the EU does have several
features that are important for proceeding in the direction that Etzioni wishes to
take us. These include the protection of minority rights, the ability to expand
membership, flexibility in governing arrangements, and the avoidance (to date)
of a concerted effort to build Europe as an anti-American power in world affairs.
The protection of minority rights allows particularistic identities their place
in the broader tapestry. Here institutions like the OSCE and the Council of
Europe help buttress the norms underpinning the EU. One reason that Scots in
the United Kingdom and Catalans in Spain as well as Hungarians in Slovakia
and elsewhere have not so far pushed more traditional nationalist secessionist
projects is because of the protection afforded them through the EU. Those who
live in regions that have sought greater autonomy—such as Catalonia or Scot-
land—are not necessarily more loyal to the EU than to their national group, but

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they may well be more politically loyal to the EU than to their state because they
depend on the EU for their ability to develop their identity politics.3
Europe’s ability to reach out to new members—from 6 to 25 and counting—
has proven to be quite dramatic as the EU now covers almost the entire conti-
nent. Occasionally the process has stalled: For example, France’s unwillingness
to support the British desire for membership for many years before finally shift-
ing its position. The decision in 1992 to pursue “deepening” (e.g., through cre-
ation of common currency) before “widening” (i.e., letting the Central and East-
ern Europeans into the club) postponed enlargement to the former Warsaw Pact
until 15 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall.
The real test began in earnest in December 2004 when the EU heads of state
announced they agreed with the European Commission’s recommendation to
set a date to begin formal accession talks with Turkey; these talks are scheduled
to begin in October 2005. This historic decision to put Turkey on a formal path to
join is an important step because in the past, those states that began formal
accession talks eventually did become members. The negotiations will likely
take from 10 to 15 years to come to fruition as Turkey seeks to bring its political,
economic, and social norms in line with the body of EU law known as the acquis
communautaire.
Europe has shown itself quite able to adapt with time to govern itself effec-
tively enough through various voting mechanisms. And it has allowed for flexi-
bility in terms of participation in different aspects of union. This flexibility is not
simply on adopting currency as discussed above but also in joining the defense
organization of the community or adopting the Schengen provisions of free
movement of peoples inside EU territory. And this flexibility in Europe is even
more demonstrable when we think about not only the EU but also the other main
institutions in Europe: OSCE and NATO. Nearly all the states in Europe are
members of OSCE. Many are members of NATO and the EU. But look closer.
France is in NATO but not integrated into the military command. Norway is a
member of NATO, but Sweden and Finland are not; Sweden and Finland are
members of the EU, but Norway is not. Only 12 of the 25 members of the EU are
in the Eurozone. Turkey is a member of NATO but will not become a member of
the EU for some time. The United Kingdom is a member of the EU but not yet a
signatory of the Schengen accord allowing visa-free movement across borders
(for further discussion, see Goldgeier, 2003). Flexibility may become even more
necessary if and when Europe reaches even further east to former Soviet
republics such as Ukraine and Georgia.
Finally, the EU has not sought to orient itself as an anti-American force in
world affairs; what Etzioni (2004) called an “anticommunity” (p. 191). The
question of anticommunity is perhaps the greatest test for a global communi-
tarian vision. After all, many realists believe that it was the Soviet threat and
American leadership in Europe that provided the glue that kept Europeans from
returning to their old ways after World War II. When the Soviet threat

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 Goldgeier / THE EU EXPERIENCE 1551

disappeared, many argued that the United States would soon leave, and left to
their own devices, the Europeans would revert to the multipolar power balanc-
ing of the pre–World War II era.4
Since the transatlantic divisions regarding the war in Iraq, concern has grown
that Europe’s community would be developed in a way that was designed to
combat U.S. influence in the world. And the reasons strike at the very heart of
what we mean when we talk about a larger community—in this case not Europe
but the “West.” After all, if the West cannot even stay together, then there is little
hope for the blending of West and East that Etzioni (2004) ultimately
envisioned.
There are a number of reasons why one could believe that Europe might
develop as a regional bloc against the United States. One is simply the realist
appreciation of history—hegemons make others nervous, no matter how self-
definingly benign they are, and those countries that can balance against the lead-
ing power will do so. German analyst Josef Joffe (2000) wrote,

Ten years after victory in the cold war, the United States is still No. 1 by any con-
ceivable measure. But the lesser actors—Russia, Europe, China—are beginning
to make true what history and political theory have predicted all along: Great pow-
ers will generate “ganging up.” Nos. 2, 3, and 4 will seek to balance against Mr.
Big. (p. A25)5

And French Gaullists have long viewed the EU as providing them a voice in
world affairs that France could not achieve on its own and allowing Europe to
have an independent voice in the international realm; it is possible that a more
widespread concern about American intentions would lead to a more broadly
shared European view of the importance of countering the United States.
A second reason for thinking that an anticommunity could develop depends
more on psychology. Is it possible, we need to ask, for a community to develop
without defining itself against someone? Theories of social identity or of in-
group and out-group behavior suggest that the very notion of an identity is
exclusive—those in the group have an identity by defining themselves as differ-
ent from others (Mercer, 1995; Tajfel, 1981). Part of being European would
involve being not American, not Asian, and so forth. Again, let us come back to
Etzioni’s (2004) notion that a supranational loyalty has to command political
loyalty. For Europe, that means trying to get the populations in the member
states to identify with Europe and not with some larger cause. And even in terms
of membership, the EU is open only to European states (as is NATO). Turkey
now appears to be part of Europe, but North Africa would not be. The countries
of the Caucasus, especially the Christian countries of Armenia and Georgia,
might become viewed as Europe, but the Central Asians will not be viewed as
potential members. So a European identity would define itself as distinct at least
geographically from other identities. On the other hand, we have seen in Europe
that individuals have national identities that fit comfortably with being

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1552 AMERICAN BEHAVIORAL SCIENTIST

European. And, thus, one could imagine Europeans having a geohistorical

identity that could fit comfortably within a larger global civil society.
More troublesome is the notion that it is those most alike who often have the
hardest time seeing themselves as part of the same community—what Sigmund
Freud (1959) termed the “narcissism of minor differences.” Freud wrote,
“Closely related races keep one another at arm’s length; the South German can-
not endure the North German, the Englishman casts every kind of aspersion
upon the Scot, the Spaniard despises the Portuguese” (p. 33).6 Often groups that
have just slightly different languages or histories make the most vociferous case
about being different from one another and about belonging to special catego-
ries. In U.S. history, the differences between North and South in the 19th century
come to mind. Applied to America and Europe, this notion would suggest that
no matter how much one talks about common values, each side of the Atlantic
relishes the distinctions that can be drawn with the other, and these minor
differences will magnify with time.
A third argument for why Europe may become an anticommunity pointed
against the United States would focus on political culture. Europeans and Amer-
icans do have a wide range of differences—beliefs about the role of the state in
economic life, the role of religion in public life, the death penalty, and the envi-
ronment, to name a few. Europeans are more accepting of a welfare state; Amer-
ica emphasizes individual responsibility. American politicians often invoke
God in their political discourse and Americans in general are fairly observant.
European elites and publics are more secular. The United States was unwilling
to sign the Kyoto Protocol that seeks to regulate carbon dioxide emissions to
mitigate the problem of climate change; the Europeans led the way on the
adoption of Kyoto internationally.
Despite all of these transatlantic differences and reasons for pessimism about
the West as a community, there is no deep divide of the kind that would lead
these peoples to go to war against one another or that, would prevent them from
working together to combat common threats. Americans and Europeans may
disagree about how to combat terrorism and the proliferation of weapons of
mass destruction, but they do not disagree about the need to address these
threats. And after all, what is the ultimate purpose of a global community? It is
not to make everyone alike; it is primarily to manage common transnational
threats that cannot be combated alone, and if we are lucky, to go a long way
toward removing war as a solution to problems between states.
When Karl Deutsch (1957) was developing the notion of a security commu-
nity in the 1950s, he was interested in states that, as a group, had removed them-
selves from the state of war described by realists as endemic to international
affairs. For realists, war is always a policy option, and without a supranational
authority, there is nothing to prevent war from breaking out. As Deutsch looked
at the North Atlantic Community, he was struck by a novel feature: States inter-
acted with each other without the threat of force hanging over their heads. This
definition of a security community among North America and Europe has

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 Goldgeier / THE EU EXPERIENCE 1553

grown stronger with time; no matter what divisions exist and despite plenty of
economic competition, there are no policy makers who think about using force
in this set of interstate relationships (Deutsch, 1957).
Perhaps when we think about current divisions within the West, we should
come at the problem from the other direction. How much worse would the rift be
regarding how best to deal with threats to international peace and security if
there were no security community? And at the end of the day, although Europe
has significant economic leverage and will play an increasingly important diplo-
matic role in the world, it cannot balance American military power because the
populations do not want to spend their money that way. Nor should they. Europe
has significant civilian power capabilities (e.g., in peacekeeping) and should
remain focused on those areas.
Ideally American and European military forces can complement one another.
Etzioni (2004, chap. 6) wrote about a global antiterrorism authority. The United
States and Europe are nowhere near the creation with others of such a transna-
tional force. But through NATO, and even NATO’s relationship with the EU, we
are already seeing a great deal of cooperation and particularly a role for Europe
in peacekeeping operations that are implemented after the conclusion of more
traditional military operations. Although politically Democrats and Republi-
cans fall all over one another to reassure the American public that American
troops will not serve under foreign command, particularly when discussing UN
missions, American troops have served under European commanders in NATO
operations in the Balkans and in Afghanistan. And in December 2004, the EU’s
peacekeeping operation replaced that of NATO in Bosnia, thereby freeing up
NATO for other military operations.

IDENTITY AND DEMOCRACY

There are two features of modern European life that are typically deemed sig-
nificant when thinking about the depth of the sense of community in Europe as
well as the chances for its future success. One gets us back to our discussion of
Etzioni’s (2004) third requirement for full supranationality, which is the transfer
of political loyalty. How deeply do citizens of Europe support the EU and even
identify themselves as Europeans rather than as Spaniards and Brits or even
Catalans and Scots? Liesbet Hooghe and Gary Marks (2004) argued data show
that the link between national identity and level of support for the EU is not
strictly correlated. Sometimes those who possess strong national identity also
strongly support the EU. Hooghe and Marks argued that the important factors
are whether national identity is exclusive or inclusive and whether elites are
divided on European integration: “Exclusive national identity is mobilized
against European integration in countries where the elite is polarized on Euro-
pean integration, where political parties are divided, and where radical right
parties are strong” (p. 418).

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1554 AMERICAN BEHAVIORAL SCIENTIST

A second feature that is relevant to the European community’s depth and

chances for success is what has been called Europe’s “democratic deficit”—the
notion that the European Commission is the real power in Europe and is unac-
countable to the continent’s population, whereas the European elected body, the
European Parliament, has little power. American Europe-bashers are often
quick to cite this deficit as symptomatic of the EU’s failure to provide legitimacy
and accountability. On this issue, polls show that individual support for the EU
rests in part on how satisfied citizens are with their own country’s democracy. If
they believe their own country possesses high-quality representative institu-
tions, then dissatisfaction with the EU is higher and support is therefore lower
for an EU-wide government (Rohrschneider, 2002). In general, however, it is
striking that only approximately 40% of EU citizens are satisfied with the
democracy of the EU (see European Commission, 2004).
The rejection of the proposed European constitution by French and Dutch
voters in May and June 2005 has been a major wake-up call for European elites
regarding the efforts to push forward the European project without a lot of popu-
lar input in the past, particularly on the issue of enlargement of the EU that took
place in May 2004 and the decision in December 2004 that the EU should begin
accession talks with Turkey. Significantly, thanks to the process used for the
constitution, citizens of the EU may now expect that referenda will be held in the
future on major issues. If they are, then perhaps the number of those satisfied
with the EU’s democracy will rise with time.
We might well wonder if the EU could work if the European Commission
itself was subject to greater popular pressure. Partisan gridlock might prevent
the EU from managing its diverse issue portfolios. Independent, nonelected
overseers can be a useful complement to the democratic process—witness the
Federal Reserve Board in the United States, whose work most Americans have
been more than happy to leave to Chairman Alan Greenspan and his colleagues
across Democratic and Republican administrations without forcing them to face
the voters.

THE FUTURE

It is far easier to find evidence for clashes among civilizations than it is to

believe that we might be headed toward the creation of a global community. On
the other hand, who really believed at the start that French postwar planner Jean
Monnet’s vision for a united Europe could be achieved?7 Etzioni (2004) is not a
pie-in-the-sky dreamer—his discussions of the difficulties of creating civil soci-
ety and community on a global scale and of the ways in which international
organizations like the United Nations become corrupt and inefficient infuse his
vision with a healthy dose of skepticism regarding the prospects for greater
international cooperation.

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 Goldgeier / THE EU EXPERIENCE 1555

The EU does represent the kind of community that Etzioni (2004) would like
to see develop on a global scale, and it developed for the reasons he proposed for
global society: To end large-scale violence and to manage issues that are too
complex to be handled by any one country. Etzioni argued that these types of
regional communities could in turn serve as building blocks toward global gov-
ernance. But to serve as a building block, Europe could not be alone; other
regional communities would have to form, and they would, as Etzioni noted,
have to form in ways that did not lead them to become anticommunities (see pp.
191-193).
Perhaps most intriguing is Etzioni’s (2004) vision of a blending of Western
and Eastern values. Here again, the EU may show the way. Turkey is the most
difficult challenge enlargement proponents have ever faced. Incorporating a
large Muslim state into the West’s leading supranational institution is unprece-
dented. But momentum both in the EU and in Turkey has shifted. Under Prime
Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey undertook a broad range of reforms to
obtain formal approval for the start of accession negotiations. These reforms
have included abolition of the death penalty, much greater allowance of freedom
of speech, and the introduction of civilian control of military budgets. Erdogan
has reached out to Kurds in his country and to neighboring Greece, with which
relations are better than ever. European leaders came to realize in 2004 that not
to provide a date for the start of negotiations might well radicalize Turkish poli-
tics and society.8
Accession negotiations will be just the beginning. Any candidate for acces-
sion has to adopt the 30 chapters of EU legislation, the acquis communautaire,
which covers some 80,000 pages across a wide range of economic, environmen-
tal, social, and foreign policy issues. To be a member, a country has to comply
with 85% of the acquis and have a credible plan for a transition period in which it
will adopt the rest. During the period of accession negotiations, more and more
pages of legislation are added to the acquis, thus, making the goal a moving tar-
get. Even under a best-case scenario, Turkey is unlikely formally to join the EU
until 2015.9
What is being asked of Turkey in terms of accepting the acquis is far more
than is required in Etzioni’s (2004) concept of global civil society. And it
largely involves Turkey accepting the Western agenda rather than a fusing of
values. Turkey has accepted Western labor standards, health standards,
antidiscrimination provisions, Protocol Six to the European Human Rights Con-
vention (abolishing the death penalty) and other policies that were necessary to
become part of the West.10 Nevertheless, with growing Muslim populations in
leading states in Europe, an EU that is based on the traditional Western values of
the Enlightenment but that can accommodate Muslim religious ways of life is
only going to be more important for the very functioning of the EU—with or
without Turkey.

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CONCLUSION

Carr (1964) was right. An international realm in which the most one can
accomplish is to balance power successfully defies the purposiveness of the
human endeavor. We are nowhere close to global civil society. But two decades
ago, most countries in the world were not democracies. Six decades ago, Euro-
peans were killing one another in biblical proportions. Progress is possible, but
it is possible only if positive visions of the future—whether Monnet’s (1978)
dreams of a unified Europe or Etzioni’s (2004) of global civil society—are put in
front of us to help us think through what we need to do to achieve them.

NOTES

1. On how new norms and attitudes can become internalized beyond initial instrumental deals,
see Goldgeier and Tetlock (2001). On EU developments as a series of instrumental bargains, see
Moravcsik (1998).
2. See, for example, the Council for Security Co-Operation in the Asia Pacific (2000) report on
the Workshop on Co-Operative Security. These issues were also the subject of a Japan Forum for
International Relations–George Washington University workshop in Tokyo, held December 2003
and titled “Redefining the U.S.-Japan Alliance: Toward Building a Security Community.”
3. For more on how the EU shapes national agendas among both states and groups within states,
see Csergo and Goldgeier (2004).
4. This argument appears most strongly in Mearsheimer (1990). For a counter argument, see
Goldgeier and McFaul (1992).
5. For an argument that America and Europe are destined to become rivals, see Charles A.
Kupchan (2002).
6. See also Freud (1961, p. 61). This theme was developed further in Volkan’s The Need to Have
Enemies and Allies (1988).
7. For Monnet’s glance back, see Jean Monnet (1978) Memoirs.
8. A good overview of these issues is Stephen Kinzer’s (2004) “Will Turkey Make It?”
9. For a good discussion, see the Atlantic Council of the United States’s (2004) “Turkey on the
Threshold: Europe’s Decision and U.S. Interests.”
10. For the provisions that have been accepted by Turkey in recent years as part of its effort to sat-
isfy EU criteria for membership, see European Commission (n.d.).

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JAMES M. GOLDGEIER is professor of political science and director of the Institute for
European, Russian and Eurasian Studies at George Washington University. He is also an
adjunct senior fellow in Europe Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. His most recent
book, coauthored with Michael McFaul, is Power and Purpose: U.S. Policy Toward Russia
After the Cold War (Brookings Institution, 2003); it was awarded the 2004 Georgetown Uni-
versity Lepgold Book Prize in international relations.

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