a mixture of praise and criticism, with critics like Pat Buchanan suggesting it would mean an end to U.S. sovereignty. During an interview for Commanding Heights: The Battle for the World Economy in 2001, after he was elected president, Fox said that he sought with the United States a "convergence of our two economies, convergence on the basic and fundamental variables of the economy, convergence on rates of interest, convergence on income of people, convergence on salaries." He suggested this might take as long as 20 years to be realized, but the ultimate "convergence" he saw between the United States and Mexico would allow them to "erase that border, open up that border for [the] free flow of products, merchandises, [and] capital as well as people". Fox cited the success he claimed countries Republic of Ireland and Spain had in modernizing their economies and raising the standard of living for their citizens by joining what is now the European Union. Vicente Fox also proposed a plan to U.S. President George W. Bush and Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chrétien that he said would move the North American continent towards an economic union based on the example of the European Union. Fox's proposal was rejected by President Bush, with Fox later alleging in his book Revolution of Hope that the White House wanted him to "stop raising hackles" by talking about a North American Union. Later, amid a push for greater integration and concerns about the impact of heightened security on trade relations following the September 11 attacks in 2001, an effort was organized in 2003 by the Canadian Council of Chief Executives, U.S. Council on Foreign Relations, and the Mexican Council on Foreign Relations called the Independent Task Force on North America. Several weeks before a meeting of North American leaders on March 23, 2005, the Task Force issued a press release and a statement from the Task Force's chairmen calling for deeper integration of NAFTA to form a North American Economic and Security Community by 2010. A January 2005 diplomatic cable that was released by WikiLeaks in 2011 includes discussion by U.S. government officials about the best approach to North American integration based on an assessment of Canadian views. The cable suggested a new "North American Initiative" that would address goals in the areas of "security" and "prosperity" through incremental measures, saying such a proposal would get the most support