Timothy Garton Ash's Blog, page 3

‘Not losing’ is not enough: it’s time for Europe to finally get serious about a Ukrainian victory | Timothy Garton Ash

In Munich I heard both Ukrainians and Alexei Navalny’s widow tell us why Putin must be defeated

As we approach the second anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine this Saturday, ask yourself a simple question: is Europe at war? When I put this to a room full of participants at the Munich security conference last Sunday, most of them raised their hands to say yes, Europe is at war. But then I asked a second question: do you think most people in your own country have woken up to this? Very few hands went up.

This was a Munich of painful contrasts. Here, at the conference, were badly wounded Ukrainian soldiers giving us stories from a frontline hell. Yuliia Paievska, a veteran military medic, told us she had seen “streams of blood, rivers of suffering”, and that “children have died in my arms”. “We are the dogs of war,” she said, recalling how she herself was captured in Mariupol, imprisoned for three months and tortured by the Russians. “Give us the weapons,” she concluded, “to kill this war.”

Timothy Garton Ash is a historian, political writer and Guardian columnist

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As Putin and Trump threaten from east and west, Europe must stand up for itself | Timothy Garton Ash

In the 1950s European nations tried and failed to build a defence community. They should try again

On 6 June, Europe will celebrate the 80th anniversary of the D-day landings that began the liberation of western Europe in 1944. However, there’s another round anniversary this summer that won’t be celebrated, because it marks a big failure. On 30 August 1954, a vote in the French national assembly killed the project of a European Defence Community (EDC). Instead, European integration proceeded around the economic community that remains the core of the EU to this day, and European security was built around the US-led Nato. But as the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, advances from the east and the US presidential contender Donald Trump threatens to withdraw from the west, it’s time to revisit the idea of Europe defending itself.

Historical circumstances were obviously very different 70 years ago, but there are some interesting echoes. Then as now, a key driver for the European defence initiative was an aggressive Russia. Then as now, another driver was the desire of the US to focus more on threats involving China in Asia – in that case, the Korean war, which began in 1950. (The EDC treaty was signed in 1952, while the war was still going on.) Then as now, a central issue was the military role to be played by the Federal Republic of Germany. France’s then prime minister, Pierre Mendès France, summed up the reasons his parliament rejected the EDC with perfect French clarity: “too much integration and too little England”. Might there also be a lesson there?

Timothy Garton Ash is a historian, political writer and Guardian columnist

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The world should learn from Poland's tragedy: restoring democracy is even harder than creating it | Timothy Garton Ash

After eight years of populist chaos, Donald Tusk must rebuild trust in the state and resist the urge to simply turn the tables

“Evolution or revolution?” The question being asked in Poland today captures the dilemma of trying to restore liberal democracy after eight years of populist state capture. Must one, for instance, break the letter of a specific law in order to restore the rule of law as an overall condition? The Polish experience will tell us something important about the future of democracy inside EU member states. It also prefigures a challenge the United States could face at the end of a second Donald Trump presidency.

The last few weeks in Polish politics have been dramatic, angry and sometimes bizarre. Two former ministers of the previously ruling Law and Justice (PiS) government, convicted of the falsification of documents while in public office, take refuge in the palace of the president, their party comrade Andrzej Duda. While Duda is away at another meeting, the police arrest them in the palace and carry them off to prison. The president says they are “political prisoners”, talks of “rule of law terror”, and even makes a comparison with Bereza Kartuska, a notorious concentration camp in 1930s Poland. PiS launches a protest demo in the snow, deploying the iconography of the Solidarity movement that led Poland to freedom in the 1980s. PiS leader Jarosław Kaczyński says the arrested politicians are heroes who should be awarded the country’s highest honours. Poland’s genuinely tragic and inspiring past is recycled as grotesque parody.

Timothy Garton Ash is a historian, political writer and Guardian columnist

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War or peace? Dictatorship or democracy? Europe’s future is on the line | Timothy Garton Ash

At the European Council, liberalism and populism will lock horns. Whichever side prevails could decide the course for years to come

I have been in more than 20 European countries this year and I have seen two Europes. Across large parts of the continent, you’re still in a Europe where high-speed trains waft you across frontiers you hardly notice, as you travel seamlessly between highly integrated liberal democracies resolved to solve all their remaining conflicts by peaceful means. But take an old slow train just a few hours to the east and you are spending time in bomb shelters and talking to badly wounded soldiers with tales from the trenches reminiscent of the first world war. I keep the Air Alarm Ukraine app active on my phone, so its warnings of air raids on Ukrainian cities remind me every day of that other Europe.

There’s a related duality in our politics. Many European countries still have governments on the spectrum between centre-left and centre-right, often with complicated coalitions, yet all committed one way or another to making both liberal democracy and the European Union work. In Poland, we can this week celebrate the return of such a government under Donald Tusk, kicking out a populist nationalist party that had dangerously threatened the country’s democracy. On the other hand, populist nationalist parties of the hard right have scored notable successes, from the emergence of Giorgia Meloni as Italian prime minister last year, through to worrying regional election gains for Germany’s Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) and the recent election victory of Geert Wilders in the Netherlands. Hungarian leader Viktor Orbán is more aggressive than ever as he works against both the interests and the values of the EU, while exploiting all the advantages of membership in it. (Brexiters at least had the honesty to leave the club they loathe.)

Timothy Garton Ash is a Guardian columnist. His latest book, Homelands: A Personal History of Europe, is being published in more than 20 European languages

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In our new world disorder, the old bipolar frames of reference won’t get us anywhere | Timothy Garton Ash

Now, a country can be aligned with the US on security while cosying up to Russia on energy and China on trade

As the leaders of the world’s two superpowers, the US and China, hold a summit meeting in San Francisco, many observers hark back to grand bipolar simplicities. A new cold war! The west versus the rest! Democracy versus autocracy! Let’s woo the global south! But the great Swiss historian Jacob Burckhardt warned us always to beware of the terribles simplificateurs, the frightful simplifiers. The beginning of wisdom is to understand that we now live in a world fragmented between multiple great and middle powers who do not divide simply into two camps.

The results of an ambitious round of global polling, released today, help us to understand this new world disorder. Conducted for the European Council on Foreign Relations and an Oxford University research project on Europe in a Changing World that I co-direct, this is the second time we have surveyed what we call in shorthand the Citrus countries: China, India, Turkey, Russia and the United States. This autumn we added to them five other major non-European countries – Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, South Africa, Brazil and South Korea – as well as covering 11 European countries.

Timothy Garton Ash is a Guardian columnist

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With this election victory, Poland is smiling again – and that’s good for all of Europe | Timothy Garton Ash

The country’s populist nightmare is almost over, but it’s still early days and there are tough tasks ahead

To be in Poland on Sunday night was to experience a rare moment of political joy. Young voters queued until the early hours to see off the xenophobic, nationalist populists who have been dragging their country backwards; to prove that even an unfair election can be won against the odds; and to turn Poland towards a modern European future. If you were already in the queue at 9pm, when polls closed, you were allowed to wait to vote. Some of the queues were very long, so neighbours brought hot drinks to sustain people in the cold. Interviewed at about 1am on Monday, one young man in Wrocław said he had to hang in there because this was the most important election since 1989.

I walked to a Warsaw polling station on election day with the same old friends whom I had accompanied to that historic vote on 4 June 1989. With delight, they each chose one name from the long list of parliamentary candidates. With equal delight, they refused even to take the ballot paper for the simultaneous referendum, which – with its ludicrously biased questions about things like an alleged “forced relocation mechanism” for illegal immigrants, supposedly “imposed by the European bureaucracy” – was effectively election propaganda for the ruling Law and Justice party (PiS). But my friends and I were full of nervous anticipation.

Timothy Garton Ash is a Guardian columnist

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Unless Joe Biden stands aside, the world must prepare for President Trump 2.0 | Timothy Garton Ash

The president has had a good run. But the Democrats must choose a younger candidate if Donald Trump is to be kept out of the White House

During the two months I spent in the US this summer, I kept asking every journalist, academic and analyst I met one simple question: “Who will be the next president of the United States?” The response was usually the same. First there was a distinct hesitation, then they said “Well, probably Joe Biden, but …”

What followed the “but” was a long list of concerns, partly about deeper trends but mainly about how old and frail the 80-year-old president looks. Often, the conversation ended with my interlocutor saying it would be better if Biden stood aside, to let a younger candidate turn the age card against the 77-year-old Donald Trump.

Timothy Garton Ash is a Guardian columnist

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Europe talks to itself in many languages. That’s why English is vital to its democracy | Timothy Garton Ash

English is still the continent’s most widely used language – and the Guardian’s new digital Europe edition is a major addition to the Eurosphere

“How can anyone govern a country with 246 different kinds of cheese?” Charles de Gaulle, the founding president of France’s Fifth Republic, is said to have asked. As it prepares for European elections next year, the European Union faces an even bigger challenge: how to run a multinational democratic community with 24 official languages. And remember that the union is gearing up for a decade of enlargement, potentially including Ukraine, Moldova and Georgia as well as six countries in the western Balkans, which would take the official language tally closer to 30. In Europe at large, there’s an even greater diversity of languages – somewhere between 64 and 234, according to one expert.

This matters. Politics is also theatre. Politicians are actors, as we watch them on the national and international “stage”. And democracy is meant to involve people deliberating with each other. What if you can’t understand a word they say?

Timothy Garton Ash is a Guardian columnist

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In Ukraine I saw a brave but ravaged land in limbo. It needs a future – it needs Nato | Timothy Garton Ash

Joe Biden must be bold at this week’s summit, and help to give Kyiv the security that would allow it to rebuild

Unless the US gives bolder leadership on long-term security for Ukraine at Nato’s Vilnius summit this week, historians may one day ask, “Who lost Ukraine?” And their shocking answer might be: President Joe Biden.

I say this after talking to a wide range of people in Kyiv last week, before departing Ukraine on Saturday, the 500th day of the largest war in Europe since 1945. There’s still the extraordinary fighting spirit that I found on my last visit, in February. But in five months, some people seem to have aged five years. They are exhausted. The casualties, military and civilian, continue to mount.

Timothy Garton Ash is a historian, political writer and Guardian columnist

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Seven years on, the UK and EU are still drifting apart. The public wants a change | Timothy Garton Ash

Britain is like a sailing boat in the middle of the Channel, struggling for direction. It needs a bold new captain and a new crew

As we approach the seventh anniversary of Britain’s fateful vote, on 23 June 2016, to leave the EU, the state of UK-EU relations is superficially encouraging and structurally depressing.

Britain is like a sailing boat faffing around in the middle of the Channel. Most of its passengers want it to steer closer to the continental coast and even the captain seems willing to make some modest adjustments to his course. But strong winds and currents are pushing the boat further away from the continent. It will require a much more decisive change of course from a new captain, after a different crew comes onboard next year, for the forces of convergence to prevail over those of divergence.

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