Mr. Timothy Garton Ash

(DRAFT:  Not to be cited without the consent of the speaker. This draft transcription has yet to be approved by the speaker.)

Well ladies and gentleman, as you will have gathered from the Warden, Oxford has done it again and in fact an absolutely characteristic of Oxford, we have managed to organise two conferences on subjects of absolutely essential interest to Europe both partly organised by St. Antony's exactly at the same time at opposite ends of Oxford. What I thought I might do… I must say I'm not totally uninformed about what has been said here, because I did have a spy in the audience, a Bulgarian spy, as you, Bulgarian spies are famously effective. So he briefed me a little. But what I thought I might do is to try and come at this question in a sense from the agenda of the other conference, which was about whose Europe. Whose Europe. And it was about the constitutional debate at the convention about what Europe should become. What Europe is and what Europe should become. And it seems to me that actually the topic here today is as important in practice for the future of Europe as the one we were debating at the Said Business School, the constitution for Europe. But I wanted to make to make sort of four broader points looking at this question from the point of view or consideration of the European project and the larger Europe. And the first is one that we discussed over there, which is this: that Europe since the end of the Cold War clearly has a certain nostalgia for the enemy. The European project during the Cold War was catalysed, at the very least, by two 'others', to use the jargon of identity studies. The Soviet bloc, as the obvious threat, the old 'east'. And a kind of virtual other, which was, in fact, Europe's own bloody past of the 30 years European civil war from 1914 to 1945, the past of the Holocaust. And a great deal of the force of the dynamism of the European project from 1945 until 1991 came from that very real other, the Soviet bloc, and the virtual other of Europe's own bloody past. Now the Soviet other no longer exists and it has to be said that the virtual other of the memory of the bloody past is clearly fading, it no longer has the traction in younger generations, however much lip-service is paid, no longer has the traction, the emotional traction that it had for other generations and so Europe is in search of another 'other,' of a new 'other.' Russia really won't do at the moment, so there are two leading candidates: one is, of course, the United States, the traditional other, and it has to be said that Donald Rumsfeld and George W. Bush are working quite hard for European integration and the other possible other is, of course, Europe's original other, that is to say the Islamic Arab world. I don't need to remind you, I'm sure it's been said already, that the first recorded mention of European, Europeansis, in a chronicle of the battle of Tours in 732, which was a battle against the Muslims. Pius II, who popularised the notion of Europe as successor to Christendom, did it in the struggle against the Ottoman Turks. Europe's original other for at least 600 years was the Islamic Arabic world. Now what strikes me is how ineffective attempts have been to revive any definition of Europe against the Islamic Arab world. I'm sure that this has been debated here, but my own view is they have been remarkably ineffective. If you look at, for example, Berlusconi's clumsy attempt after 9/11 to redefine Europe as Christendom immediately shot down as right out of court. If you look at Giscard's remark about Turkey, defining Europe as a Christian club. I mean he wasn't deposed as the President of the Convention, but he certainly got nowhere at all, not even among European Christian Democrats. I'm sure it's been pointed out that the two wars that in a sense Europeans fought on European soil in the last decade have been on the behalf, effectively, of Muslims, the Bosnian Muslims very late, of course, but better late than never, and more strikingly, on behalf of the Muslims of Kosovo and this does relate to the virtual other I talked about. The first time, I think it's true to say, that German troops have seen action on the continent of Europe since 1945 was in the defence of Muslims in Kosovo and the two things are corrective precisely because Europe's self-definition is about the rejection of discrimination and persecution of minorities, above all, of course, of the European Jew. It is morally and politically legitimate for German soldiers of the Bundeswehr to act in the defence of another persecuted minority, namely the Muslims. If you look at European textbooks and someone at the other conference has been doing just that, a Turkish scholar called Yasmina Cesal, it's very interesting to see how the relationship with the Islamic Arab world is handled and the crusaders are not anymore the forefathers of European Union. She says that, for example, in many of these textbooks we are reminded that it was the Arabs, the civilised Arabs, who taught the barbaric Europeans how to use a knife and fork. I mean I haven't read the textbooks, but I think it's true to say, in other words, at the level of public, political discourse and of school textbooks, I don't see any significant attempt to revive the Islamic 'other' or, at least, significantly successful attempt to revive the Islamic 'other' after the end of the Cold War. So that's my first point. Many more attempts, of course, are made and more effectively to revive the American other, as I said, with a little help from our friends across the Atlantic. And this is my second point. In the rhetoric of Europe versus the United States, which in many ways is becoming a dominant self-definition of what it means to be European, to be European is not to be American in certain specified ways. You have a rhetoric of moral superiority, about the moral superiority of Europe vis-à-vis the United States. We don't have the death penalty. We don't let people starve in the streets. We have a welfare state. We believe in international law, not in unilateral war and so on. The great flaw, it seems to me, or one of the great flaws in that rhetoric of moral superiority, is the disastrously worse record of Europe in respect to immigration as against the vastly superior record of the United States. Of immigration and of making immigrants feel at home, feel citizens in the United States. Leon Wieseltier has written, I think, rightly, though harshly, about the "moral incompetence of Europeans when it comes to foreigners living in their midst", the other in their midst. And I think the judgement is harsh but fair. He's thinking, of course, particularly of the Jewish experience, but that unaccepted other at the social level and in terms of citizenship and identity is now above all, it seems to me, the Muslim immigrant. Europe, it seems to me, dramatically worse than the United States at making Muslim immigrants feel at home. I believe you had some discussion of this. One has only to ask how often have you heard anyone define themselves as a Muslim European. A Muslim European. I don't think I've ever heard anyone define themselves as a Muslim European. People might talk of European Muslims, possibly, although I haven't heard many people define themselves that way. I have heard people define themselves as British Muslims or French Muslims, but European Muslims, let alone Muslim Europeans. Whereas many people would define themselves as Muslim Americans, certainly as American Muslims. So why is it that European-ness cannot be the functional equivalent of Americans. European-ness should, after all, be the overarching civic identity of all those who live in Europe, just as American-ness is the overarching civic identity of almost all those who live in the United States. But it clearly does not function in that way at all. I'm sure you've talked about this. Let me just mention two things that strike me, one is that it seems to me that the United States has a peculiar combination of a highly religious society, but a civic inclusive national identity. And Europe has a combination of highly secularised societies, but very often ethnic exclusive national identities. And somewhere in there is the beginning of an explanation of why it's so much easier to be a Muslim American than it is to be a Muslim European. Britain is, of course, to some extent the exception that proves the rule, because Britishness, and I'm sure Lord Ahmed will have something to say about this, is halfway to a civic inclusive national identity a la American. But if you take Germany, let alone if you take central or Eastern Europe, you are very far away from a civic inclusive national identity. Now one might also expect that secular society should be better at absorbing immigrants, because they don't, as it were, have strong religious prejudices of their own. I don't know if this has been discussed yet, but it strikes me that that is not the case, because secularism, particularly secularism a la Francaise is itself a religion. It is a belief system which is required of its citizens. It is not a level playing field, a neutral public space. And curiously enough, a society like the United State, which is highly religious, religion is the American exception, but pluralist, is an easier place, perhaps I would suggest, for religious Muslims to feel at home than this highly secularist societies of Europe. So those are just two suggestions as to why it is that Europe displays, continues to display, this extraordinary moral incompetence when it comes to making immigrants and, in particular, Muslim immigrants feels at home. An incompetence which is so serious, because as everyone knows, in the next 20 years with our ageing population we will need, for social and economic reasons, to take in tens of millions more immigrants, particularly Muslims. My third point relates to that. I don't know if there has been much discussion here about the other big processes that are going on in Europe at the moment, beside the constitutional debate, the eastward enlargement of the European Union from 15 members to 25 members, soon 27, and then the question of Turkey and the Euro. Now without going into any detail, I would just say this, to try and broaden our discussion, that it is quite clear that both these major developments will result in major socio-economic strains within the European Union, bringing in 10 countries, which on average have a per capita GDP about 25 to 30 percent less than the existing members, is bound to create major strains and movements of people. Movement of people here, movement of jobs there from here. In addition, the effect of the Euro, the single monetary zone, is clearly going to be that some regions of Europe do worse than others. And we do not, unlike the United States, have the compensatory transfers in place to compensate those weaknesses. So we have a situation where Europe itself, because of these two processes, faces major social and economic strains. My great fear is that European politics in the next decade, partly in response to these socio-economic strains, will become increasingly a politics of the scapegoating of immigrants. After all that is what we have already seen in Le Pen, Haider, to Pim Fortyn, parties which have very little in common apart from this single issue of resistance to immigration. So what I'm suggesting to you is that the process that you've been discussing about, I don't want to use the word, integration, the embedding, the making to feel at home of Muslim communities in Europe, is that much more urgent, because the larger forces that the historical development, make it seems to me, populist, anti-immigrant politics much more likely. And remember these populist anti-immigrant politics have already destabilised the main party systems in several European countries. Jacques Chirac, of course, owes his election to these Muslim voters. The final point I wanted to make is this, the question I want to throw out, again I don't know, I think this probably has not been much discussed, if one thinks about the future of what we used to call the 'west' that is to say the geopolitical community of Europe and North America and the question whether we are seeing a growing divergence of Europe and America as Robert Kagen has argued and Charles Kupchan has argued. And Charles Kupchan has even suggested that we're going to see a clash of civilisations between America and Europe. If one is thinking about that larger question, not coming at it from the point of view of Muslims in Europe, simply in terms of future of the west, one asks oneself so what is the great policy issue that most divides America and Europe at this moment. The answer is clearly the wider Middle East, that is to say the Islamic Arab world, that is to say where in the Cold War it was old 'East', the Soviet bloc, which united Europe and the United States, now it is the Middle East which divides Europe and the United States. I think the single most divisive policy difference between Europe and the United States. Now we have on the table, a proposition from precisely the curiously neo-conservative Wilsonian, the Wolfwitz-and-Perles, who were most in favour of prosecuting the Iraq war, which is that we should join them in a vast neo-imperial project of the democratisation of the wider Middle East. And there are two possible answers for Europe. One is to say not on your life. The other, which is the answer I would like to suggest, and I can only just sketch this out, is to say we agree that the long term development, modernisation, democratisation of the Islamic Arab world of the wider Middle East is our great common interest. It is in fact even more directly in Europe's interests than it is in America's direct interest, because Europe is right next door to the Islamic Arab world. But we don't want to do it your way. And this is how we Europeans would like to suggest we proceed about this, proceed with this common project. And the crucial difference, to put it in a nutshell, as I've gone over my time, to put it in a nutshell, is that this would be a project which was not something that is being done to the people of the Middle East in the first phase by military means, but it would be something that would be done with and for the peoples of the Middle East in the first phase by economic and cultural instruments. And that in a nutshell, in other words not the one dimension of power on which the neo-conservatives focus, military power, economic power, soft power, applied in an effort to do the work with and for the peoples of the Middle East as we did in the whole détente period attempt to work with and for the peoples of Central and Eastern Europe. In other words, I would argue, and this is my final point, that if we're thinking about the long term future of the relationship between Europe and the Islamic Arab world, including the Muslims who live in Europe, we should not simply reject the Perle-Wolfowitz proposal for democratisation, at least out of hand. We should take it, we should say we agree on your ultimate objectives, but you are completely wrong about the means with which we should set out to achieve it since it should be done not to the peoples of the Middle East, but for and with the Middle East and, yes, it is not an unreasonable proposition that we Europeans and Americans should try to do together over the next 20 years what we did for and with the peoples of middle Europe over the 20 years till 1989.