At his best, Timothy Garton Ash is the closest we have to a George Orwell in today's Britain. Like Orwell, he shuns jargon, dressing up common sense in elegant prose. And like Orwell, he is unabashed about taking the kind of moral stance that the cynical will smirk at - in his new book, he urges readers to donate 1 per cent of their income to poverty reduction in poor countries.
Unlike Garton Ash, Orwell was a waspish member of the awkward squad and inclined to pessimism. Garton Ash - at least in his bold and ambitious new book - is an optimist. Free World: What the Crisis of the West Reveals about the Opportunity of our Time is about the spread of freedom. No neoliberal, Garton Ash defines "freedom" as freedom from want as well as freedom from oppression. He reckons that about 1bn people out of 6bn in the world are free, and wants the current free world to work for the creation of a completely free world. Given the rise of China, India and other places, he believes that Europe and the US have about 20 years in which to shape history. He says we should call the free world the "post-west," given that its reach extends far beyond Europe and the US.
Garton Ash is known for his expertise on Europe, especially its eastern half, but this book impresses through its breadth. He finds pertinent things to say about global warming, poverty in developing countries and the risks of war in Asia. The book's weakness may be excessive optimism about the prospect of the EU and the US being able to work together to tackle these problems.
Garton Ash believes, like Tony Blair - whom he admires, though not uncritically - that Britain has a special role to play in forging transatlantic co-operation. He makes much of the confused identity of what he calls "Janus-Britain." He argues convincingly that, in contrast to comparable countries, Britain has no national consensus on what kind of country it is, and where it would like to be. He thinks that Britain presents four faces to the world (the classical god Janus had a mere two), and that behind each of them lies a competing national story.
The first story is that Britain's destiny is independence - which it needs to regain not only from Brussels, but also from Washington. The United Kingdom Independence party is the current heir to this romantic strain of nationalism, which Enoch Powell used to speak for. The second story is that Britain should embrace America. This was Margaret Thatcher's, and is now Michael Howard's version of British destiny. The third story is that Britain should choose Europe. There has never been much popular support for this version of national identity, though some Heathite Tories, trade unionists, socialists and Liberal Democrats - and David Marquand in last month's Prospect - would back it.
The fourth story, that Britain should be close to both the EU and the US, has few backers in the popular press, and little resonance in myth or literature. But Garton Ash observes that virtually every government since 1961 - when Harold Macmillan applied to join the EEC - has followed it. And he thinks that it probably commands the support of the silent majority of the British people.
Garton Ash, like Blair, is a champion of option four. "Britain's connections with both Europe and America are so thick and vital that to 'choose Europe' or 'choose America' would be to cut off the country's left or right leg. So it must keep trying to pull America and Europe together." He believes that this could become a viable option for Britain if only the left could learn to accept America and the right could learn to accept Europe. But he chides Blair for using the metaphor of "Britain-as-bridge" between Europe and America. It is a hubristic image, and he rightly argues that every EU country should have its own special relationship with the US.
Garton Ash analyses two competing strategies on how Europe should deal with the US: neo-Gaullism, which seeks to build the EU in opposition to the US, and Euroatlanticism, which is about Europeans seeking to work with the US to deal with common problems. He is of course with the Euroatlanticists, as believers in "the west" must be. He thinks that if the British were prepared to abandon their "neo-Churchillism" - the idea that Britain should follow the US and forget about working with Europe - the French could be persuaded to set aside neo-Gaullism and adopt Euroatlanticism instead.
He rightly points out that a more unilateral US makes neo-Gaullism in Europe stronger, and that a more multilateralist US helps the cause of Euroatlanticism; equally, a neo-Gaullist EU strengthens the unilateralists in Washington, while a Euroatlanticist EU reinforces the arguments of the multilateralists there. Garton Ash urges both sides to renew their efforts to remove barriers to free trade; forge common approaches on overseas aid, debt relief, farm subsidies and climate change; and work with the UN and other democracies to hammer out rules for intervention in countries' internal affairs.
Few reasonable people will disagree with this. But Garton Ash tends to assume that people are reasonable, which is why I find him (along with Philip Gordon in July's Prospect) too sanguine about the future of transatlantic relations. He is less worried than I am about how America is changing. Of course he is right to point out that most Americans are not neocons, that a Democrat administration would make more of an effort to consult allies, and that the mess in Iraq has weakened the case for pre-emptive military interventions. Nevertheless, 11th September seems to have changed the US profoundly, in ways that Europeans neither like nor understand. Many Americans - including quite a few on the Democrat side - have become more nationalistic, more worried about national security and less willing to wait for allies before taking action against a perceived threat.
Americans have also become more contemptuous of Europeans for their military and economic weakness, and their slowness and complacency in the face of big threats. As Garton Ash acknowledges, US exceptionalism is on the rise. "The American creed has two gods: one is called Freedom, the other is called God… religion is more than ever at the heart of American exceptionalism."
Garton Ash does not like the Robert Kagan thesis that Americans are from Mars and Europeans are from Venus, because it challenges his idea of a united west. Indeed, he reformulates the thesis to suggest that Republicans are from Mars and Democrats from Venus. But Kagan is surely half right: most Europeans - if not the British and French - do not care much about the problems beyond their continent, are generally opposed to the use of force and do not want to pay for bigger defence budgets.
Whoever sits in the White House, trans-atlantic relations face a fundamental problem: it is not self-evidently in the interests of a sole superpower to act multilaterally. Take the US rejection of the Kyoto protocol on global warming. If the US accepted the protocol, it would have to make bigger adjustments to the way it runs its economy than others would, so it is in its economic self-interest to reject it. The benefits of signing up - in terms of better relations with the Europeans and the prospect of being able to ameliorate global warming - are vague and long term.
Of course, Europeans and some Democrats will argue that if the US disregards its allies and international organisations its ability to shape the world through persuasion and example - its soft power - will decline. But in a dangerous world where US military power and economic might is so preponderant, the US may prefer to move speedily and avoid the constraints of international institutions. It can probably attract a coalition of the willing when it needs one - the powerful usually find friends, however badly they behave. The experience of the Kosovo air campaign, when Nato governments vetted targets that the US wanted to bomb, turned the Pentagon off the idea of using Nato as a war-fighting machine, and that won't change if John Kerry is president.
The problem for the Europeans is that transatlantic imbalances are growing. Ten years ago, defence expenditure among the then 15 members of the EU was about 60 per cent of the US figure. It is now about 50 per cent, and the gap in military technology is growing rapidly. And there is a demographic imbalance. According to Bill Frey, a University of Michigan demographer, the combination of higher birth rates and more immigration into the US means that by 2050 the median age of America's population will be 36, compared to 53 in the EU. This demographic gap has strategic and economic consequences. Already the EU economies are underperforming compared to the US. The comparison is better for Europe measured on a per capita basis. But overall GDP is what matters for Europe's ability to deploy power - both the hard sort, such as battalions, and the soft sort, such as overseas aid - and thus to gain the respect of the US. Over the past 25 years, the EU economies have grown at an average rate of roughly 1 percentage point below that of the US. The "Lisbon process" of economic reform, designed to turn the EU into "the world's most competitive and dynamic knowledge-based economy by 2010" has so far failed.
The problem is not only quantifiable imbalances, but also different philosophies of international relations. The Europeans are, in Robert Cooper's phrase, "postmodern." They have learnt the hard way that when nation states pursue their own unbridled interests, disaster may ensue. They believe in negotiating compromises and in accepting supranational authority. America is a very "modern" state, unwilling to let international bodies or rules limit its freedom of manoeuvre. Both Republicans and Democrats tend to like rules and norms for others - they can be used to show that North Korea or Iran are cheats, for example - but often find reasons for saying that they should not apply to the US.
When the EU is strong and united, as it is in trade negotiations or competition policy, the US cannot impose its will on the world and has a clear interest in working multilaterally. But at the moment there does not seem much prospect of the EU getting its act together in foreign policy or the co-ordination of fiscal policy. So the US foreign policy elite may perhaps be right to ignore Europe as much as it does. There is no one at a senior level in the National Security Council focused on the EU. The Washington think tanks virtually ignore the EU - the Brookings Institution and the Centre for Strategic and International Studies are honourable exceptions - although they employ many dozens of experts to think about Nato. The New York Times and the Washington Post do not bother to employ Brussels correspondents. Foreign Affairs, America's pre-eminent international affairs journal, seldom covers the EU.
Garton Ash, however, argues that the US simply cannot tackle many of the world's most pressing problems without help from Europeans. As a prime example he cites the middle east, where he sees no serious transatlantic divergence over long-term interests and objectives, such as fighting terror, spreading democracy and securing access to energy. This is true, but he underestimates the differences over the means employed, and he seems over-optimistic on both Israel-Palestine and Iran.
On Israel-Palestine, the gulf between public opinion on the two sides of the Atlantic has widened. Most Americans see the Palestinians as the root of the problem, do not want their government to cajole the Israelis into making peace, and think that so long as some Palestinians are resorting to violence, the Israelis should not have to compromise. Most Europeans - including the British - see the Sharon government as the root of the problem, and while they do not condone Palestinian terrorism, they understand it. They want the US to push Israel towards a settlement, and assume that the power of America's Israel lobby prevents it from doing so. Meanwhile, many Americans believe that Europe is inherently antisemitic, and that the need to placate Muslim voters explains why European governments are soft on Palestinian terror. According to a 2001 Chicago Council on Foreign Relations opinion poll, 72 per cent of Europeans favour a Palestinian state, but only 40 per cent of Americans.
Given the extent to which Americans and Europeans disagree, it is remarkable that their political leaders remain committed, just, to the "road map" and a two-state solution. Deft diplomacy by the likes of Blair, Javier Solana and Colin Powell has kept European governments and the Bush administration together, but may not do so forever. The shift of policy announced by Bush in April 2004, when he said that a Palestinian state should not include parts of the West Bank - a statement the Democrats did not criticise - makes it even harder to maintain a common EU-US position. As president, Kerry might put more energy into a middle east settlement, but according to his advisers there is not much prospect of his pursuing policies very different to those of Bush.
Garton Ash says little about Iran, which threatens to inject fresh poison into the transatlantic relationship. There is no longer much doubt that Iran is trying to build atomic weapons. The US strategy of isolation and sanctions has achieved nothing. The rival European strategy of trading and offering closer links so long as Iran changes its behaviour has done no better. Bush has said that he will not tolerate a nuclear Iran, and there is a serious possibility that, if re-elected, he would bomb Iranian nuclear facilities. Given that there are many nuclear sites spread across the country, some of them underground, Bush may also want to send in ground forces. I am told by someone close to Blair that he would want Britain to take part in a US-led attack on Iran. Most Europeans, only too aware of how Iran could retaliate by destabilising Iraq, would be horrified by such an attack. A Kerry victory in November would not necessarily preclude such an attack: if presented with clear evidence that Iran was on the brink of deploying a nuclear weapon, the new president might order raids.
Even if the US does not launch air strikes, Iran is likely to put transatlantic relations under immense strain. The fact that Europeans continue to trade with Iran, rather than punish it for trying to cheat the International Atomic Energy Authority, greatly riles people in Washington. But the unwillingness of the Bush administration to offer any incentives to the Iranians to abandon their nuclear ambitions - such as diplomatic recognition, or help with WTO membership - strikes most European governments as short-sighted (the British government is with the other Europeans on this argument, whatever Blair's private musings on Iran). The Europeans, rightly in my view, believe that America's ideological opposition to dealing with the mullahs makes it much harder to dissuade them from building a bomb.
Throughout his book, Garton Ash argues that the west (or post-west) is a meaningful concept, because Europeans and Americans believe in the same things. He is right that many of our values are similar, but not all. About half of Americans attend church once a week, compared with less than a fifth of Europeans. Americans and Europeans think differently about patriotism, gun control and the death penalty.
Garton Ash claims that because there are so many different social and economic models in Europe, one cannot speak of a clear division between the US and the EU. Yet despite the range of European models, they share certain traits that distinguish them from the American system. The federal tax burden in the US is around 20 per cent of GDP, while in the original 15 EU states central government takes over 40 per cent. Europeans like state-funded welfare and a strong role for trade unions. The recent accession of eight east European countries, many of them committed to low taxation, strengthens the Garton Ash argument. But most east Europeans aspire to western Europe's welfare provision, and its relative equality. All 25 EU governments have signed up to the charter of fundamental rights in the new constitutional treaty, including provisions such as the right to strike, collective bargaining, information and consultation in the workplace, the prevention of unfair dismissal, healthcare, and so on.
I hope that Garton Ash's optimism is borne out by events. He is right that Europe should not define itself as "not-America," in the sense of crude anti-Americanism. But why should Europe not define itself through a low key pro-European patriotism?
What would a European patriotism take pride in? The beauties and diversities of our landscapes, cultures and languages; a political system which resolves conflict through negotiation rather than war, but still leaves the essence of our nation states intact; an approach to global governance that strengthens multilateral organisations and rule-based regimes, but still encourages governments to intervene in other countries when there is a compelling humanitarian crisis or security threat. And if this patriotism accepts that Europe has many failings, that it has every reason to learn from other parts of the world, and that it is not morally superior to anyone, then I am all for European patriotism. And in an EU of 30-plus members, some sort of glue - a sense of shared values, and a nascent European patriotism - will be more necessary to hold us together.
If, as I fear, Garton Ash does prove over-optimistic about the EU-US link, then Britain's predicament will become very tough. He rightly says that Britain has a role to play in being a friend and interpreter in both directions. Like Blair, he thinks that Britain should refuse to choose between the EU and the US. But he does not say what Britain should do if and when it is forced to choose - as it was during the Iraq crisis, and may have to again soon over Iran. Blair chose America, thus causing huge damage to Britain's position in Europe. Garton Ash and Blair are right that Britain should try to avoid the choice - but when we had to choose, as we did over Iraq, I would have chosen Europe. This is not only because of the specific rights and wrongs of the Iraq case, but also because I think Britain's interests, social model, values and view of the world are ultimately closer to the continent than to the US.
