Why a Crisis in the West Reveals the Opportunity of Our Time

FREE WORLD Why Crisis in the West Reveals the Opportunity of Our Time Timothy Carton Ash Toronto: Viking Canada, 2004. xiv, 288pp, $38.00 cloth (ISBN 0-670-04494-6)Over nearly seven decades the idea of natural partnership between nations bordering the Atlantic has proven to be resilient. Conviction of the power and potential of the west has been burnished by wartime alliance, validated by success in the Cold War, and bolstered by countless economic and social links between countries. The idea continues to win adherents because, in world that has been complicated by the arrival of many new state actors exhibiting radically different cultures, the common heritage of Europe and North America is viewed as enabling straightforward communication, roughly similar worldviews, and cooperative action.At the same time, Atlantic partnership has had many detractors and, in 2003 and 2004, the relationship between major European countries and the United States appeared to be coming apart at the seams as result of acrimony generated by the Bush administration's intervention in Iraq. Timothy Carton Ash is an admirer of Prime Minister Tony Blair's neoChurchillian efforts to keep the two sides together. Blair wants Britain to enjoy special tie to the United States and, at the same time, play central role in the European Union. But, as one of his advisors said, Tony's default position is to go with the Americans (42). Is he condemned to choose between partners? That depends on whether recent transatlantic differences are mere ripples on the ocean or, as Robert Kagan would have it, the political equivalent of tectonic fault.Whereas Kagan believes Europe and the United States are sure to follow divergent paths on account of differences of power and ideology, Carton Ash places much greater weight on their shared values and long-term interests. The huge issues that should preoccupy both continents are the same: the bubbling cauldron of the east; the complex economic and political evolution of the far east; the plight of poor countries; and the imperative need to tackle the problem of climate change. They should be able to submerge their differences in joint mission to extend the boundaries of the free world to the at least 2.2 billion people presently living outside it. The need for action is urgent. The west enjoys unparalleled influence at the moment, but new contenders for world power are coming to the fore. There are only about 20 years left before these new contenders seize control of the international agenda.Garton Ash is the justly celebrated chronicler of the revolutionary changes that rocked central Europe 15 years ago. Now he wants to confirm the values that he saw triumphing at that heady time. For him, Europe's story is a story of the enlargement of freedom (191). Thus he leaps boldly into the debate over the old continent's future, advocating an outward-looking Europe that accepts that it can never be superpower but feels secure in its role as an influential partner and, at times, balancer of the United States, that shoulders its responsibilities for making rapidly growing Muslim population feel more at home, and that seeks to strengthen ties with the near abroad to further freedom's cause. …

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