Free World: Why a Crisis of the West Reveals the Opportunity of Our Time (Paperback)

Garton Ash uses something as simple as how Europeans and Americans write dates. The infamous "9/11" [September 11] in the United States is a glorious "9/11" [09 November] in Europe. These are the pivotal dates in viewing the true onset of the 21st Century. For the United States, it is the collapse of the World Trade Centre under the hijackers' assault. For Europeans, the collapse of the Berlin Wall signalled the end of a divided continent. For the United States, "9/11" has divided a nation by an administration bent on revenge. In Europe "9/11" is an opportunity to consolidate and dispose of old rivalries. In making this comparison, however, the author is quick to point out that none of these images are as simple as they appear. Europe has a long way to go to shed local interests and jealousies. The United States is a single entity bearing immense military power which, as is now obvious, it feels it may use with impunity. European nations, even as a "Union", must not develop policy out of resentment for that power. The United States must realise that the world is a highly diverse place. Other norms, other interests, other feelings must be regarded seriously.

Within a short time, Europe will count almost as many states as the continental USA. Within a few years, there will be forty nations participating in a European community. This amalgamation will include, as it already does, former Soviet Bloc nations. It will reach to the Near East [what Americans call the "Middle East"], which will likely be a stepping stone to the Far East. What all these assembling nations will have in common is a large measure of freedom. The economic and social benefits of joining this organisation will make absolutist governments untenable. "Human rights" and environmental protection are already a condition of EU membership. With the expansion of that standard, says Garton Ash, a positive framework will be in place for further beneficial policies. The looming question will be whether the United States will follow that lead. America's consumptive and expansionist power must be curbed from within. Will it be able to take that step?

Garton Ash thinks that's a possible path. The guide down that track must be Great Britain. The "Special Relationship", established by Churchill [Roosevelt's job was mostly to agree] so derided by many, is a keystone in the bridge between Europe and America. America's place as the "daughter of Europe" has been replaced by it being "uncle of Europe". Britain can help the United States back on the path to multilateralism it once championed with the formation of the United Nations. Once that structure is firmly in place, the wealth of the new linkage can be used to break the bonds of poverty leashing so many. The first step in that regard is the tumbling of another wall, the trade barriers restricting the imports of Third World products.

This is a book to be studied, not merely read. It's not a difficult job, and Garton Ash hasn't wasted a single word in the presentation. He's an observer of consummate skills and a peerless writer. The book contains some compelling comparative "maps" illustrating the way the world is structured in human terms. They are an intriguing way of imparting the information - even if you need to shed your old geography lessons. The only lack in this book is failure to offer a way to overcome the established mind-sets of the people who cannot or will not see beyond the path they are on. Read this book, then show it to them.

The book is an entertaining read. It would appear that the British have yet to notice that they are more pro-European than anything else. This 'anti-Europe thing' takes largely place on the fringes of the political parties and the press, which is also the reason why it appears as a larger topic than it actually is.

The EU is the successful result of European countries moving their differences from the battlefield to the debating chamber. The goal of a truly European Union will remain elusive as more countries join it. As TGA quite rightly points out a community of 25 states (and more to come) will always be less of a Union than a combination of 50 federal states. The 2003 Iraq war is a case in point.
I don't see the affair leaving the EU any more divided than it was before the event. Just witness its regular battles over the Common Agricultural Policy or the budget.

The US was thrown onto the international stage by accident following Europe's inability to solve a problem (World War One), and then another problem (World War Two). With the demise of the Soviet Union, the US was bound to occupy a pre-eminent position. That it is pushing its perceived interests should not come as a surprise. All nations push their interests. The 2003 Iraq war again is a case in point.

If Britain does have a special relationship with the US, the latter doesn't seem to know about it. If she does perceive a special bond though, she ought to use her expertise to draw both the US and Europe into the same camp.
At the same time, the US should be less pushy and sacrifice some of its perceived interests for the greater goal of global harmony (and I really do mean global).
At the same time, the EU should stop defining itself as an elitist Christian Club, but instead draw in the countries on its fringes, so as to safeguard the life-style of its citizens and those of its neighbours.

Can we all also please step beyond nationalism and stop pretending that we are just British, French, American, Moroccan or Bavarians.

At the same time, all of us should strive towards, bringing wealth to the corners of the world in a bid to prevent a potential north-south conflict.

This is the message I took home from reading this book.

If you are interested in commenting you should check out Freeworldweb.net, which is TGA's website on this book. There are lively discussions going on on a range of relevant subjects. And I think this is excellent.

My only reservation is that from the radio piece that alerted me to the book I was expecting more of the two conversations mentioned - one with President George.W. Bush, the other with an illegal Morrocan immigrant - perhaps TGA has in mind this sort of material for the web-site which he has set up to further the debate.

The greatest selling word world wide along with NEW is FREE - the USA has gone from being known as the new world to being seen as the champion of the free world, and we have gone in Timothy Garton Ash's witty phrase "from Plato to NATO".

Timothy Garton Ash (TGA) is an able and seminal chronicler of our (foreign policy)times, in particular he has been where it counted during the European changes of 1989
(We the People: The revolution of '89. Witnessed in Warsaw, Budapest, Berlin & Prague).

Writing now , honestly teasing out contradictions and interpenetrations in the relative positions of EU, UK and USA he speaks as Director of the European Studies Centre at St Antony's College Oxford.

Tellingly the jacket photo shows the author as a younger man. I judge this to be the less malign vanity of not wanting to make a fuss about getting an up to date portrait - endearingly English.

And it is, one senses, as an Englishman that Timothy speaks as Churchill and Orwell hover informatively about the text.

An Englishman who is called in on both sides of the pond to give his views on matters of foreign policy in small private briefings of high officials, presidents even.

An Englishman feeling now, perhaps, as many of that generation must, an obligation to step forward a little into the more direct fray from which they resiled as too too bloody a generation ago.

So as well as a fascinating and pacey discussion of the UK's necessarily Janus like position in relation to the US and EU in the first part, the book may signal TGA's move away from the detached though weirdly anthropomorphic discussions about the behaviour of states into the position of the activist.

This is accomplished in the second part of the book by what is, in my judgment, nothing more or less than a geopolitical fantasia.

TGA has the courage to let his coat, as it were blow in the wind and roll towards an enlargement, clarification, correction of Tony Blair's "bridge" thesis.

Towards a Europe where we simultaneously improve our welcome to immigrants from the fringe countries as replacement for our reduced numbers of young (and the major buggered-upness of those left ) and hope that potential immigrants stay at home and under freer trade make the goods we need to buy.

I began to get the feeling that process was, as it must with any fantasia, beginning to feed on itself.

Suddenly TGA imagines himself singing a European anthem. I put the book down for the first time. I felt a little queasy . Some awful memory. Suddenly the vision of esperanto flashed into my mind - both its dingy headquarters that I used to walk past on the way to school in Kensington, and also in one of Orwell's or was it Graham Green's tales.

Because it seems clear that any blooded knave who runs us, any hooded death lover will at last have to be confronted, no matter how many candles blow in the wind, no matter how much in tithes from those "on above average income" go to the international poor.

For as the disproportion in incomes in the exemplar state (USA) gets even more extreme than the charts in this book show us; as the combination of highest gun ownership with highest religious adherence becomes more strident it is there as it was in the USSR that things will happen from within, the hollow dead centre must be filled from the bottom and in this process the victims must learn, somehow, to speak with charity and pity of their oppressors.

TGA himself has a "Tiresias twinge" when he acknowledges the "insatiable power of Western-style consumerism" and sees clearly that some other model may emerge from newly free countries that they may not tread the same paths.

This is interesting. The idea that valuable ideas still securely located in "old fashioned" cultures could be their and our saving grace in the future is good.

Like the need to preserve bio-diversity because of the as yet unknown useful plants the idea of not being fobbed off with the pseudo choices of the consumer but to have the spiritual and intellectual guts to consider real alternatives seems to me the real starting point.

Matthew Hilton
apwb_1948@yahoo.co.uk