Is there still such a thing as the West?
At the height of the disagreements over
Iraq in 2002-2004, that question was
posed over and over by visitors to America
from Europe, whether they were
journalists, students or officials. Some
Americans, too, wondered whether we
still hailed from the same planet, what
with Europeans being from Venus and
Americans from Mars, in the snappy
phrase of U.S. foreign policy expert
Robert Kagan. The war in Iraq became
the overarching symbol of a host of
other differences between Europeans
and Americans, great and small - over issues
ranging from the Kyoto Protocol to
the death penalty, gun laws and religion
- that had grown into full bloom in the
absence of a common enemy after the
fall of the Soviet Union.
To others, the answer was always
perfectly clear. Of course the West still
exists. No matter how hot tempers have
grown in recent years, and no matter
how sharp the disagreements, Europeans
and Americans do share values, political
systems and traditions, and centuries of
common history - in other words, a civilization.
Not only that, but Europeans
and Americans are also tied by millions
of individual bonds that crisscross the
Atlantic, forged through centuries of migration
and trade.
Oxford historian Timothy Garton
Ash belongs to those who continue to
believe fervently in the existence of West.
In his latest book, the author sets out to
record and put in context the divisions
between the United States and Europe,
and within Europe, that are still fresh in
the memories of those who follow international
affairs. He writes more like a reporter
and a commentator than a
traditional historian, and the result is a
quick read, rather than a groundbreaking
study. Garton Ash’s conclusion is an
ultimately optimistic vision for the
Transatlantic community, which challenges
Americans and Europeans to
work together for a better world.
Garton Ash’s passion for the values
of “the West” derives in large measure
from the body of his work that preceded
Free World, pioneering writings about
the fall of communism throughout Central
and Eastern Europe. No armchair
historian, Garton Ash traveled extensively
throughout the region before, during
and after the collapse of the Warsaw
Pact and the Soviet Union. His writings
gathered a large following in the New
York and London Reviews of Books, as
did his books, The Polish Revolution, The
Uses of Adversity, The Magic Lantern and
The History of the Present.
“Anyone who traveled regularly behind
the Iron Curtain,” Garton Ash
writes, “to countries like Poland, was
confirmed in his belief [in Western values].
My friends there talked all the time
about the West. They believed more passionately
than most West Europeans did
in its fundamental unity and its shared
values; [West Europeans] feared it might
be weak and decadent.”
As Garton Ash has frequently
demonstrated, when you viewed the
West from the perspective of the East,
behind the Iron Curtain, its contours
came into focus much more clearly. Back
then, those who opposed communist
dictatorship had no doubt that there was
a West.Western values represented freedom,
human rights, democracy and the
rule of law.
None of those Western values have
changed, of course. But the fall of the
Soviet Union in 1991, which left the
United States as the world’s sole superpower,
weakened the cohesion of the
West. The early 1990s also saw a significant
evolution in the European Union,
which, with the Maastricht Treaty,
started down the road toward a single
currency and deeper integration. In May
2004, the European Union expanded to
include ten more countries, mainly from
the former East bloc, placing its economic
output, at least temporarily, on a
par with that of the United States. The
enlarged European Union’s population,
at 470 million, is now more than 170
million higher than America’s.Militarily,
however, the United States remains
vastly predominant - a major irritant
for many Europeans, who fear an America
whose power they cannot constrain,
and whose motives they increasingly
do not trust.
Garton Ash perceptively ascribes a
good deal of recent European anti-
Americanism to the search for a common
European identity. In fact, it
sometimes seems as if Europeans have
become obsessed with the United States,
with everything from popular culture to
elections. Since the fall of the Soviet
Union, the United States has become the
“other” against which Europeans try to
throw their common identity into relief.
The reverse, however, is not true. Ask
most Americans how frequently they
think about Europe and it is probably
not that often, writes Garton Ash. “Well,
I guess they don’t have much huntin’
down there,” offers a carpenter from
McLouth, Kansas. “Well, it’s quite a ways
across the pond,” says an elderly farmer
of German descent. As Garton Ash comments,
“If you said ‘America’ to a farmer
or carpenter in Europe, even in the remotest
mountain village in transcarpathian
Ruritania, he would, you
may be sure, have a whole lot more to
say on the subject.”
Stereotypes, however, can be destructive.
A refreshing part of this book
is Garton Ash’s plea for an understanding
of the diversity of Europe and the
United States alike. It is an appeal both
sides would do well to take to heart, if
and when we head into another major
policy disagreement. Understanding diversity
means that you eschew stereotypes
and over-simplification: American
“cowboys” on one side and Europeans
“cheese-eating surrender monkeys” on
the other.
For instance: “‘The U.S.,’ writes
British Euro-Gaullist Will Hutton, ‘is
hostile to all forms of international cooperation
and multilateralist endeavor.’
“ ‘The U.S.?’ Which U.S.?” asks Garton
Ash. East Coast,West Coast, Mid-West,
Deep South, red state, blue state? Not all
Americans are the same.
In the same way, Europeans need
to be differentiated, even in the age of
European integration. Sea-faring British,
Danes and Dutch have histories and
views of the world very different from
those of traditional land-based rivals
France and Germany, which again have
different perceptions from the relatively
newly free Poles, Czechs or Lithuanians.
Underlying all our diversity, however,
is a dedication to the common values
of the “free world,” of “the West.”
Today, this free world faces the challenges
of globalization, international terrorism
and the rise of radical Islam. The
common project Garton Ash has in
mind is for Europe and the United States
to work together to promote the values
of freedom, good governance and the
rule of law - without doing so by military
means, except in extraordinary circumstances.
“A crisis of the West has
revealed a great chance. Shall we seize
it?” he asks.
No doubt, this is easier said than
done, for in some inevitable regards, the
United States and Europe are traveling
along different paths at this point in history.
Nevertheless, good work has begun
to heal the Transatlantic rift of recent
years, and there is no doubt in this reviewer’s
mind that the rest of the world -
and the West itself - will be much better
off if we are able to rise above our disagreements.
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