How the west was lost – and why we need it back

The ties between Europe and the US have loosened, but there are still huge global challenges – Russia, China, the Middle East,
climate change – we can only face together

Timothy Garton Ash

Thursday 28 April 2016 14.00 EDT

Whatever happened to the west? Barack Obama just visited Europe to praise and strengthen the west, urging Britain to stay in the EU and Germany to support the proposed Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP). Reactions in Britain, Germany and the United States suggest that he was praising a ghost. Or at least, a ghost of a former self.

Writing in the Daily Telegraph, the hymn sheet of the English conservative middle class, Obama recalled all the institutions Britain and America have worked together to create since 1945, and how the EU has helped “spread British values and practices – democracy, the rule of law, open markets – across the continent and to its periphery”.

His reward was to be furiously denounced in the same newspaper by the mayor of London, Boris Johnson. Having earlier suggested that Obama’s Kenyan ancestry has made him anti-British, Johnson now railed against “American presidents, business leaders, fat cats of every description” who want Britain to stay in Euro-bondage.




Remarkably, the dismissive Brexiteer responses did not bother to address the larger argument Obama was making, about the now threatened interests and values of the wider west. Their riposte was all me, me, me. Britain would be better off making its own trade deals, Britain would have fewer immigrants, Britain would be happier, more sovereign, more free. Ask not what Britain can do for the world, ask what the world can do for Britain.

This is a dramatic contrast with the way the debate was conducted in the early 1970s, as Britain decided whether to join the European Economic Community. It’s true that the main arguments for joining were economic. But in parliamentary debates at that time, Tories argued for this continental commitment as a contribution to western security, against the Soviet Union.

Back then, it was Conservatives who thought globally, while Labour tended to be more Eurosceptic and insular. Now it’s the other way round. The party of Winston Churchill, or at least its Eurosceptic half, has abandoned the west which Churchill did more than anyone to bring into being.

Obama went on from lunching with the House of Hanover (now Windsor) to a trade fair in Hannover, Germany, there to try on virtual reality goggles with Angela Merkel and to make the case for TTIP. But again, this initiative to strengthen the west was met with widespread opposition and scepticism. In a remarkable column in the leading news magazine, Der Spiegel, Jakob Augstein characterised Obama as “the last president of the west”.

“The word ‘west’ once had a meaning,” he wrote. “It described the goals and values of a better world.” But no longer. Today we Europeans “observe America more and more as we view Russia, China, India”. Well, speak for yourself, Jakob. But there’s no doubt he does express a widespread feeling in Germany, with a growing political, cultural and emotional distance to the US.

Meanwhile, most of the contenders to succeed Obama oppose TTIP. Even Hillary Clinton, the odd one out and fortunately also the one most likely to become president, has expressed reservations about it – for transparently tactical reasons, given the protectionist tendencies of significant sections of the Democratic electorate and party faithful.

It’s not just TTIP that Donald Trump dumps on. He has said he regards Nato as “obsolete”. You might think that Vladimir Putin seizing Crimea by force would suggest the continuing importance of Nato, but no, Vlad and the Donald would get along famously: “I’ve always felt fine about Putin, I think that, you know, he’s a strong leader, he’s a powerful leader, he’s represented his country.”

In Wednesday’s scripted speech on foreign policy, Trump tried to sound more statesmanlike. But he still talked of doing a “deal” with Putin. As for Nato, “the countries we are defending must pay for the cost of this defence, and if not, the US must be prepared to let these countries defend themselves.” So much for Nato’s article 5 guarantee to Poland and the Baltic states. Yes, he did say he wants to “reinvigorate western values”, but he immediately contrasted them with universal values. So much for the Enlightenment. With friends like Trump, who needs enemies?

There’s an obvious historical explanation for this fading of the west. As a cultural community, the west has existed for centuries; but as an effective geopolitical actor it came into being only in the struggle against one common enemy, Nazi Germany, and continued in the face of another, the Soviet Union.

But then the cold war ended and the Soviet Union disappeared. As Europe and America fell apart over the Iraq war, a former British foreign secretary murmured to me, “If only we had Brezhnev back.”

In my 2004 book, Free World, I argued that the great global challenges we face, from a rising China through a traumatised Middle East all the way to climate change, cannot be addressed without close cooperation between the US and the EU, the world’s two largest assemblages of the rich and free. However, this should only be the kernel of a wider partnership with all those who share some basic values and interests, be they in India, Brazil or South Africa, in what I dubbed the “post-west”.

I believe this analysis remains fundamentally correct. Even with the national plans recently blessed in Paris, global warming will probably exceed the 2C target. China, under the neo-Maoist leadership of President Xi Jinping, is not emerging gently into a global leadership role. We face a revanchist, reactionary Russia, one which shares with Nigel Farage and Marine Le Pen the goal of taking apart the EU. What a great moment to give up on the west.

The west, with Europe and North America at its core, has many sins to its account. But the vision of the west put forward by Obama is a genuinely liberal internationalist one, which pays much more attention than earlier versions to the needs of the global south. The real-life alternative is not something more progressive, but rather some ghastly amalgam of Putin, Trump and Le Pen: the Putrumpen.

Internationalist Obama or nationalist Putrumpen: which would you prefer? I’d call that a no-brainer.

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