Free World
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- £5.99
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- £5.99
Publisher Description
At the start of the 21st century, the world plunged into crisis. What began as an attack on the West by Osama bin Laden soon became a dramatic confrontation between Europe and America. Britain has found itself painfully split, because it stands with one foot across the Atlantic and the other across the Channel. The English, in particular, are hopelessly divided between a Right that argues our place is with America, not Europe, and a Left that claims the opposite. This is today's English civil war. Both sides tell us we must choose. In this powerful new work Timothy Garton Ash, one of our leading political writers, explains why we cannot, need not and must not choose between Europe and America.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
A Great Britain caught between America and its Continental neighbors on Iraq and much else commences Ash's look at the 21st-century's strains on relations in the West. As the eminent British scholar and journalist (The File) moves on to the Continent, he echoes several recent critiques of the call for a unified Europe to act as an alternative superpower, citing the "uneven development" of the European Union. He suggests, however, that the European community still has a vital role to play in advocating the spread of freedom around the world, and looks forward to the day when America treats Europeans as "full partners in a common enterprise" in doing so. For Ash, that enterprise is largely economic. He calls for a global "war on want" and urges Western nations to open their borders to trade from developing neighbors; emigrants from undeveloped countries in the Arab world will turn to Europe, he argues, for homes and jobs. He also points to the imminent threat of global warming, which inspires his harshest criticisms of the current American government. The combination of sweeping historical insight with journalistic immediacy, related in Ash's own conversational style, should help this incisive commentary on world affairs stand apart from its competitors.
