Historian Timothy Garton Ash on Trump's election: "We have difficult times ahead of us"

FR Historian Timothy Garton Ash on Trump's election: "We have difficult times ahead of us" Article by Michael Hesse • ​​49 million • 9 minutes reading time Historian Timothy Garton Ash on Europe's tasks after the election of Donald Trump, his fear of a Ukraine "deal" and dangers for liberal democracies. Professor Garton Ash, you wrote the book "Free World". Is Trump's election the beginning of the end of liberal democracies and the free world? The book is called "Free World" and deliberately not "The Free World". By the free world we meant the transatlantic West. It is visibly threatened. It is perfectly clear that we in Europe, including Great Britain, have to do much more to assert ourselves. We do not know what will happen in four years. It is quite possible that American democracy will still be functioning. The hope is that in four years we will find our way back to better transatlantic cooperation. Many Americans, who have known how Trump acts since his first presidency, voted for him again. Isn't that a clear rejection of liberal structures? Many voters in Thuringia and Saxony voted for BSW and AfD, many voters in France for Marine Le Pen, many voters in the Netherlands for Geert Wilders and many voters in Great Britain for Brexit and Nigel Farage. This is a trend, not only in the USA, but in most liberal democracies. So there is not only a geopolitical analysis: we must begin with our self-assertion by supporting Ukraine. There is also a domestic political analysis: what do we liberals, left-wing, center-right liberals, have to do to get more voters back? That is the analysis we have to do! This certainly includes the consequences of a neoliberal economic order over several decades. This also includes a self-critical analysis of excessive identity politics. In my opinion, these are the areas in which we should be moving, and not so much in the direction of: Oh, this America is lost and so different from us Europeans! Since the financial crisis of 2008, criticism of neoliberalism has increased significantly, but the forces of neoliberalism seem unbroken. Indeed. Even in the only seemingly paradoxical form that major billionaires like Elon Musk are close confidants of Trump, that he has received more support from billionaires than Kamala Harris. This is called plutopopulism. I see a structural problem here. One of the secrets of liberal democracy was that wealth and power were separate. For many millennia, wealth and power went hand in hand. In liberal democracy they were separate for a time. In the neoliberal order, in globalized financial capitalism, they are coming together again. We are experiencing something like a plutocracy, not in its pure form, but with recognizable traits in this direction. This is a fundamental problem that liberals do not address enough, perhaps for the simple reason that they feel that they need the money of the financial sector and billionaires to be able to do politics and win elections. What impression does Elon Musk make on you? Isn't it dangerous when people like him push their way into politics? Very dangerous! Starting with Twitter. As you know, I worked on the subject of freedom of speech for many years. Along with Wikipedia, Twitter was one of the relatively few really great positive achievements of the Internet age. Twitter was something like a global agora, a global public, a place of Habermasian public discourse. Elon Musk is in the process of destroying that. Twitter has become "Xitter", which can be pronounced in different ways in English, as "hermaphrodite" but also as "shitter". This is a catastrophe. This is extremely damaging not only for American democracies, but also for our liberal democracies. In addition, this man tried to buy votes almost directly during the election campaign. Not quite like Russia in Moldova, but offering a million dollars as a prize in a lottery that was supposed to go to Trump was very dangerous. This mixture of plutocracy and populism is the worst thing in the West. American institutions seem to be undergoing a stress test. Trump refuses to leave the White House at the end of his term, the Capitol is under massive attack. What makes you optimistic that the institutions will survive another term? What makes you optimistic that I am optimistic on this issue? In my analysis, I am not optimistic at all, on the contrary, I think we must not have any illusions, we have a very difficult time ahead of us. Starting of course with tariffs, according to Trump, "tariffs" are the most beautiful word in the English language. These are two interrelated issues, Europe and support for Ukraine, protectionism, the question of the future of American democracy. I am speaking to you from a country where democracy, one can now truly say, has really survived the threat of populism in the time of Boris Johnson. The paradox is that the separation of powers, the independence of the courts, the neutrality of the bureaucracy have proven to be viable, and this in a country where there is no written constitution. In the country where there is a written constitution on precisely these issues, in the United States, it is seriously threatened. As we have heard by now, Trump has practically all three branches of government more or less in his hands. The White House, Congress, both houses, and a Supreme Court that sympathizes with him. And we know that Trump intends to quickly and radically politicize the bureaucracy, the administrative apparatus of the state, in his own interests. But there are still some important counterforces, checks and balances, the media are still really free. Second, the states. America has a federal system. And third, public opinion, the half of the population that did not vote for Trump. In summary, this is the greatest threat to American democracy in 200 years. Many say Trump is a fascist. Do you too? There are actually two questions behind this: Does it make analytical sense to draw a comparison with fascism? As with all historical comparisons, it is important to see the similarities, but also the differences. Was and is it politically useful to use the term fascist, as John Kerry and Kamala Harris have done? To the first question, I would say: Yes, we should not shy away from the fascism comparison, even if it has often been overused in recent decades - especially in Germany. I still remember the 1970s in Germany, when almost everyone was called a fascist. I am firmly convinced that using this term has little political value. We should rather get to the root causes and see how we can win these voters back. Certainly not by calling them fascists. Trump will probably focus on domestic politics first. But what does it mean for Europe to now have Trump on one side and Putin on the other? How stable is the European Union to withstand this pressure? First a metahistorical answer: We are in a phase in which forces of integration and disintegration, centripetal and centrifugal forces, are competing with each other. In five or ten years we will see which of these forces has gained the upper hand in Europe. But the phenomenon itself is new. Ten or fifteen years ago there was no need to emphasize this, as the forces of integration were always stronger than the forces of disintegration, and this also applies to the time of the euro crisis. Now it is up to us! If we take the opportunity of the double crisis, Putin on the one hand, the advance in Ukraine, let us have no illusions, especially in the perspective of Trump and the so-called deal and his protectionism, his transatlantic behavior, his scepticism towards NATO, if we do not pull ourselves together, then we will head towards disintegration. Why exactly? What about the "deal" that Trump is supposedly thinking about, with a demilitarized zone: what consequences would that have? I am shocked. I have spent a lot of time in Ukraine, have been there six times since the beginning of the great war, most recently in September. The idea that this war will end with such a defeat... Let's not kid ourselves, loss of 20 percent of the territory plus neutralization: that is what Ms. Wagenknecht calls "peace". That is not peace! That is a defeat. That is uncertainty for Ukraine and for all of Europe. That is just a respite of a few years until Putin tries again. High-ranking Ukrainian politicians and military officials admit in discussions that recapturing the occupied territories is not possible in the foreseeable future. So it is primarily about security, and that requires more, not less, military support for Ukraine from Europe to stabilize the front line and give Putin the feeling that he is no longer winning. Secondly, we need an invitation for Ukraine to join NATO, which Britain, France and Poland are for and the USA and Olaf Scholz's Germany are against. You can't do that tomorrow, but you have to take concrete steps so that the country can find safety step by step. That was history's gift to West Germany in the 1950s, after a war that Germany started. As a German, do you want to deny Ukraine what you yourself have received? I hope that this question will be asked very directly in the German election campaign. Trump is considered chaotic and unpredictable; there are many international crises and conflicts. Is there a risk of world war? Firstly, in order to avert the risk of world war, we in Europe must help Ukraine to achieve a good and lasting peace. Secondly, Trump is of course unpredictable. But I don't think he will cause a major war, because there are some things he has been relatively consistent about for many years. One is protectionism, his preference for which goes back to the 1980s. But he also doesn't like foreign wars in which the USA is involved: Ukraine, the Middle East, Afghanistan, Iraq. He would rather withdraw the USA than get involved there, the dangers under him should not be underestimated, but this danger does not seem to me to be present with him. Especially since there is no axis between China, Russia, Iran and North Korea on the other side. That is much more transactional and clearly conditioned. I see neither a belligerent America nor a war-ready axis on the other side. What are the Eastern Europeans teaching us about how to defend democracy? A good question, especially for me. At the beginning of last year, Poland was an illiberal democracy. A liberal democracy in disintegration. That is not a permanent state, it is a phase, it was much more threatened than American democracy is today. But in an election on October 15th last year that was not free, the Poles turned things around thanks to a united opposition with good, active leadership and an incredible voter turnout, the highest in Polish history. More women than men voted, more young people than older people. Now the Poles are going the other way. Instead of de-democratization, we are experiencing re-democratization. The example of Poland shows us how it can be done. When I look at Germany, half a year until a new government is in place, really? Is that serious? At such a critical moment? That is absurd. When the time of the traffic light coalition is over, we should have new elections as soon as possible and form a new government. France has a really weak, unstable government with a weak Macron, Great Britain is perhaps trying to have a reset with continental Europe after Brexit, but also a special relationship with the USA. Then Giorgia Meloni in Italy and then the Trump party: we have something like that in Europe now: Victor Orbán, Fico, maybe Meloni, Wilders, Kaczynski, Marine Le Pen, Nigel Farage. That weakens Europe. It doesn't look good, but it's up to us. Germany is not making a good impression, VW is in crisis, the traffic light coalition is history. How do you see the country? Yes, it looks unstable, that's for sure. And I'm very excited to read Angela Merkel's memoirs ( laughs ). The question is how to get out of this deep crisis of the corporatist, neo-mercantilist economic model that worked well for 25 years: cheap energy from Russia, security from the USA, large exports to China. We all know this story. The question is: how do we get out of it? And that requires radical reforms. And that requires a new government.