Given the financial fiasco in the EU in the past two years, EU partisans now seem to be significantly overrating the appeal of membership to prospective candidate nations. Yet that message does not appear to have penetrated the thinking of either Western political leaders or pundits in the policy community.The EU is still the great brass ring of European politics, but it is now a tarnished brass ring.

It bears repeating. The European Union's soft power works. Not always, not everywhere, and not without reverses, but the EU has a transformational capacity to make others adopt their values: free, fair elections; rule of law; market economies that maximize the welfare of citizens; and a pan-European outlook.

Yes, Germans will grumble aboout being on the financial hook for their profligate cousins down south,...But Berlin will ensure that it happens. With great financial responsibility comes even greater power. Merkel now has the opportunity to recreate Europe in Germany's image.

But Europe is not speaking with one voice, despite appeals from the likes of Javier Solana, the former high representative for European Union foreign policy, who has called for unanimous European support for Palestinian membership.

To establish a longer-lasting world order, the aims have to be set high and broad enough to encompass mutually shared interests...and the working plan should be realistic enough to embrace different developmental strategies for countries in different development stages and having different cultural backgrounds.

We have to accept that inevitably Europe will account for a smaller proportion of world output, as the balance shifts to the emerging world. But it can and still will be able to deliver an enviable lifestyle for its people. And insofar as it projects power to the world, it will be soft power, through admiration for its cultural and technical achievements.

Today, the USC Center on Public Diplomacy released a Media Monitor Report on "Expo Shanghai 2010 - Flaunting Nations' Beauty through the Practice of Nation Branding".

That open-air midday prayer video on YouTube illustrates the operational capacity of Turkey as a natural extension of European soft power in the Middle East and North Africa. Turkey would definitely hold greater sway in the region if it was a member of the EU. But that requires visionary European leaders.