The primary focus of this thesis is to investigate the amount and nature of influence that the United States has on the potential future admittance of Turkey, Ukraine and Georgia into the European Union. All three countries have expressed interest in EU membership and are supported by the United States in their effort to join the union. This thesis attempts to shed some light on the means by which the US has attempted to facilitate accession and the reasons for its supportive stance, as well as to predict the effectiveness of its pro-membership advocacy. Four major factors common to all three case studies are used to analyze the issue and provide evidence for the author's hypothesis that US influence on European affairs is declining. In addition to US interests and relating efforts, these factors are: candidate country background situations, the EU's position on potential membership, and Russian influence on EU decision making. In concluding analysis, this thesis explains how a change in US influence over European affairs may affect the overall power relationship between the US, EU and Russia, as the question of EU membership for the cases studied is about much more than simply EU expansion.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ucf.edu/oai:stars.library.ucf.edu:honorstheses1990-2015-1997 |
| Date | 01 January 2010 |
| Creators | Funk, Marco S. |
| Publisher | STARS |
| Source Sets | University of Central Florida |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Source | HIM 1990-2015 |
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