How the west was lost – and why we need it back | Timothy Garton Ash

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

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”.

Related: Barack Obama says world needs a united Europe

The vision of the west put forward by Obama is a genuinely liberal internationalist one

Related: TTIP is a very bad excuse to vote for Brexit | Nick Dearden

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