US meets its old problems in new Europe

By Joseph Nye

Monday, May 24, 2004,Page 9

US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's petulant remark of last year about "old and new Europe" was right for the wrong reasons.

He meant it to refer to Europe's divisions, but in May, 10 additional states joined the EU. The expanded Europe truly forms a new Europe. Should the US be nervous?

Fifty-four years after the announcement of the Schuman Plan that began to knit together the economies of France and Germany, the EU now has 25 members and a population larger than that of the US.

Eight of the new members are former Communist countries that were locked behind the Iron Curtain for nearly half a century. Their attraction to the EU is a sign of the appeal -- the "soft power" -- of the idea of European unification.

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