Timothy Garton Ash is one of the very few people around with the depth and breadth of historical understanding to produce genuine contemorary history.
His new Book, Facts are Subversive, contains short essays, mostly originally written for newspapers, but far too good to let go for tomorrow’s fish and chip wrapping. At this year’s Kirchentag I was struck by the skill, good humour and perspective TGA brought to a shared seminar with
Bundeskanzlerin Angela Merkel. He knows his way round the issues of the age, and has real critical insight about Europe (“If the EU were to apply to join the EU it would be refused”) without losing his grasp on the positive achievements of the whole project.
These essays range from
big questions of definition and identity (“Islam in Europe”) to
well known flashpoints (“The strange toppling of Slobodan Milosevic”, “9/11”) and
contemporary predicaments (“Beauty and the Beast in Burma”). His main interests, as Oxford professor of European Studies, have been
foreign policy — there is an extraordinary insider’s account of an attempt to brief George W. Bush about Yoorp, and another about Obama’s inauguration.
To every subject he brings deft precision, like a peanuts cartoon — inscape in context.
TGA’s standpoint is classically Liberal. He articulates what the word could and should mean as more than just a hysterical reactionaries’ catch-all ra-ra term of abuse.
Only when we are prepared to allow our own most sacred cows to be poked in the eye can we credibly demand that Islamists, Turks and others do the same. This is a time not for erecting taboos but for dismantling them. We must practise what we preach.
TGA is also highly articulate about the difference between secularism and new model atheism.
I do not believe there is a God and therefore assume that some 2007 years ago a couple called Joseph and Mary just had a baby. But what a man he turned out to be! Like the great Swiss historian Jacob Burckhardt, I can’t get anywhere with Christ as God, but as a human being Jesus Christ seems to me a constant and wonderful inspiration — perhaps even, as Burckhardt put it, “the most beautiful figure in world history.” And some of his later imitators didn’t do so badly, either.
As historians get down to work on Bush foreign policy,
TGA draws up a preliminary balance sheet, measured against the administration’s stated aims at the outset.
He is no knee-jerk anti-Republican, indeed much of his journalism as I remember from the period tried to encourage people to stand back and give Bush what benefit of the doubt they could. As the roll begins to be called up yonder, however, as a former advisor to Bush, he has to conclude:
In every vital area of the wider Middle East, American policy over the last five years has taken a bad situation and made it worse
He then forensically sketches the whole “amazing bloody catastrophe ” —
- Afghanistan worse (more dangerous and hospitable to terrorists),
- Pakistan worse (even more unstable, radical and effective as a clearing station and training camp for terrorists from all over the world)
- Iraq worse (now radicalised and unstable),
- Iran worse (newly prestigious, confident and dabbling in WMD),
- Israel worse (more worried, less secure and self-confident),
- Palestine worse (with a new radical terrorist government)
- Lebanon worse (Bush scored an accidental early goal in the Cedar revolution, but latterly managed to muck it all up by undermining the very government he had supported, so, on balance, less stable).
- Egypt, the Islamists are now scoring at the ballot box as well as with their AK47’s: worse.
The score is 8-1, then. The 1 was Gaddafi. We can credit Bush with a phenomenal performance, especially when his team was the only superteam in the league, with no serious opposition.
Again and again, he played blinders, kicking the ball into his own net, stunning the occasional goalkeeper in the process.
Hucknall Town played Manchester United and after 90 minutes the score is 8-1 to the giantkillers, 7 of them own goals, and the Manchester goal itself is a cracked and wobbling ruin with bigger holes in the net. Such is the trainwreck courageous and innocent young men and women are now dying to try and recover, as, tragically, horribly, the coffins come home.
For me, the jewels in the crown of this collection, however, are TGA’s essays on
Gunther Grass and
George Orwell. Most of the pieces are very short. Keep this book for train journeys and occasional reading. Agree or disagree with his conclusions, it flags up the real issues, remarkably consistently for a collection of occasional pieces.
TGA lays out in historical order the events and alarums of our age in a way nobody else has yet managed, and I salute it as a tremendous and surprisingly readable achievement.
One powerful moment in the Leadership Summit was an appeal by Andrew Rugasira, founder and CEO of Good African Coffee, social enterpreneur from Kampala, for Trade not Aid. He drew attention to the distorting effects of aid on economies with significant proportions drawn from overseas aid, that could unintentionally suppress the life and economic skills of poor people, whilst feeding a huge and sometimes corrupt panjandrum of dependency. We need a new paradigm that will read Africa in terms of potential as well as need and deficits.
This is not to say all aid is simply bad, but that it has to be applied for emergencies, short term or infrastuctural pump priming, not as a substitute for regular economic activity. By analogy, you can employ people in a social or vokuntary enterprise, but there is a law of diminishing returns about the benefit, and whatever you do, it is important to build, not kill off the voluntary capacity of the organisation.
This put a great context around the session with, IMHO, the most impressive entrepreneur at the summit, Jessica Jackley, founder of Kiva.org, a microfinance site that lets anyone with computer access invest small loan sums in a targeted way, mainly in the developing world. The clever bit is marshalling all the agents into a slick process that connects loaner and entrepreneur as directly as possible, making it easy for anyone with a credit/debit card or paypal to get involved at the click of a mouse.
This is not an entirely rose-tinted process — some have criticised Kiva’s recent inlusion of US small businesses in its portfolio, as well as some interest rates the other end (not astronomic by UK small finance standards, but high and largely dictated by the partners who make it happen, in a way that’s almost inevitable with microfinance). Potential collywobbles some feel about child sponsorship might apply; Microfinance investing from home may not be for everyone. That said, Kiva does boldly go to places conventional banks don’t and makes the connections. Kiva would be the first to say microfinance is not the magic bullet to end poverty — but some involvement in microfinance certainly seems as defensible as sitting around on your spotty behind, beefing up the bottom line of conventional banks to the tune of £3,000 a taxpayer, which is what we’re all compulsorily doing anyway.
In terms of Leadership learning, kiva.org shows how someone in their twenties can impact world development to the tune of 86 Million dollars in four years with a good idea, creative use of technology, and the guts and stickability to pursue her vision out of Sunday School, through Business School, and out onto the streets.
