[LINK] "The language of cross-border love"

[rfmcdonald]

Nichole Sobieski's interview at Global Post with the very annoying and very sloppy Parag Khanna (Japan's not slipping into a Chinese orbit, right?) makes the interesting claim that the United States and Mexico should model their relationship on that between the European Union and Turkey.

I compare Turkey to Mexico in the sense that the U.S. has always had a very transactional policy towards Mexico. We have an energy relationship with them, we have an immigration relationship with them and there are remittance flows between the two countries. But while that transactional relationship is there, it hasn’t really been strategic since NAFTA. And now you see that many people are turning their back on NAFTA including, perhaps, the Obama administration. To me, that smacks of all that Europe has managed to avoid doing in their relationship with Turkey, despite all of the xenophobia in Western Europe.

For the last 40 years there has been a customs union, massive foreign investment and huge remittance flows between Europe and Turkey. They are working towards membership and accession [into the European Union] and retooling the Turkish economy. There are all kinds of binding agreements between the two sides, despite the fact that they don’t really like each other in a lot of ways. So for me it was just shocking that it was the “xenophobic Europe” that was having the success while we are not.

[. . .]

I really wanted to emphasize that the multidimensional strategy of engagement that Europe has had towards Turkey despite all of the high-level rhetoric. It works, and I don’t think there is any denying that. Now that doesn’t mean that there has to be an end state for the policy for have been a success; in this case membership into the EU. It is Turkish stability, prosperity and various forms of integration and cooperation with Europe that are the benchmarks of success, not whether a Turkish citizen has a EU passport. With Mexico, now, none of those things are happening. So for me there is a very stark contrast between the two relationships.

He seems to make the interesting implicit claim that Turkey, unlike Mexico, is a mature democratic polity, and EU-Turkish relations are complicated by the fact thqat Europeans don't seem to want Turkey in their union most like Mexico re: the United States.

Still, do my readers think that Khanna has a legitimate point? Or he is just another George Friedman?