Historian Timothy Garton Ash on the World After Trump

SPEAKER_1 (0:02)

The New Yorker Radio Hour is a co-production of WNYC and The New Yorker.

David Remnick (0:08)

Welcome to The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick.

Tens of millions of Americans in many places are still giddy from delivering a verdict on Trump's second term. Voters have turned away from the Iran War, from mass deportation, from the rampant corruption in the administration. But for responsible, reality-based leaders, the challenges ahead are truly daunting. Under Donald Trump, America has largely given up its place in the world. We've been weakened by a quagmire in Iran. Our allies are looking at China as perhaps a more stable, mature economic partner. They're concerned that Russian aggression will spread even beyond Ukraine, and nobody counts on Donald Trump to stand up for NATO. Meanwhile, far-right parties are seeking power across Europe. So how much could a future administration in Washington regain of what's been lost?

The person I most wanted to sit down with to think through this precarious moment is Timothy Garton Ash. He's a historian and I should say a real hero of mine. Tim started writing about Eastern Europe and Germany when he was very young, in the early 80s. He documented the fall of the Iron Curtain with unbelievable on the ground reporting coupled with his immense scholarship. I have learned a lot from Timothy Garton Ash.

Tim, you and I were lucky enough in the 1980s and early 90s to cover the collapse of communism, the fall of the Berlin Wall. And liberal internationalism was on the march. It didn't turn out quite the way we had thought. What is your sketch, and we'll get to the specifics, of how things went wrong for so long?

Timothy Garton Ash (1:58)

I think that in the early 2000s, we fell prey to hubris. We rarely believed it was mission accomplished and that history would go on going our way.

And Europe and freedom would march forward arm in arm. And hubris is always a mistake because then the problems come, and I think the problems come from outside, starting with the fact that Vladimir Putin clearly didn't like what had happened, and the empire started striking back. But also the global financial crisis, which segues into the Eurozone crisis. And a lot of that had to do with neoliberalism, extreme economic inequality.

So I think there's a bunch of things that have to do with what went wrong with liberalism. But then there's a bunch of things that have to do with what was happening in the rest of the world, not just Russia. But also, of course, the quite spectacular rise of China as a competitor superpower.

David Remnick (2:59)

I heard you say elsewhere that the true alternative ideology to liberalism is the Chinese alternative. How would you describe the Chinese ideology in contemporary terms?

Timothy Garton Ash (3:14)

If you wanted to describe it very kindly, you would say developmental authoritarianism.

But honestly, look at the West, particularly the United States since 2008, and then look at China. Seen from South America or Africa, China looks in many ways more attractive.

David Remnick (3:32)

Until the midterm elections, we have experienced in the United States, and you've seen this elsewhere in Europe, a complete flouting of democratic norms, you saw all these European states looking at the Trump presidency as something that was absolutely repugnant. You even saw the spectacle of Canada, thinking that maybe it was time to make a much closer alliance with China, much less Europe.

Timothy Garton Ash (3:58)

The sense of growing repugnance and disgust, not just of the Trump administration, obviously, but of what's happened to American society is honestly very painful. Now, I don't think that means that we're back in the 1930s, because remember in the 1930s, people thought communism was the future. I've seen the future and it works. Then there was another big group of people who thought fascism was the future. Now, I don't think many people in Europe, not even in Africa or South America, think Putin's Russia is the future, maybe not so much even Xi Jinping's China. But what they think is that Western Democratic Capitalism is just failing to deliver.

In many respects, they're not wrong.

David Remnick (4:49)

There's a lot of glee in the United States and in a lot of quarters about the midterm elections. I don't know how you interpret it and what its meaning will be. It's as decisive as all that in the European mind about a reversal of the American temper.

Timothy Garton Ash (5:06)

So this was one of the best evenings of recent times for me too, no question.

But David, for us in Europe, we have to keep our heads on because actually, it doesn't make such a big difference for us. I mean, okay, Congress has the power of the purse. Maybe it will constrain the Trump presidency a bit, but he is still in charge of foreign policy. He's going to be the largest and angriest lame duck in the history of the world.