Eamonn Fitzgerald's Rainy Day

Timothy Garton Ash is a Senior Research Fellow in Contemporary European History at St Antony's College, Oxford, who has written extensively about the Cold War, the recent history of Central Europe and the current state of the trans-Atlantic relationship. After the Berlin Wall came down, he walked into the offices that housed the files of the Stasi, the East German secret police, and asked if there was one on him. The File: A Personal History is the result of his encounter with the sharp edge of totalitarianism.

Sir Ralf Dahrendorf can also speak with authority on old European totalitarianism. Born in 1929 in Hamburg, he came of age when the continent was preparing for its most devastating bout of barbarism. His father, a Social Democrat member of parliament, was rounded up by the Nazis in 1933, and the 15-year-old Ralf Dahrendorf was arrested by the Gestapo himself in November 1944. Half a century later, he sits in Britain's House of Lords.

In today's Süddeutsche Zeitung, the two respond to the call at the beginning of June by Jürgen Habermas and Jacques Derrida for a "core" Europe based on the six founding members of the EU plus Spain, with the goal of creating a European counterweight to the US. The Habermas-Derrida document was titled Unsere Erneuerung nach dem Krieg — Europas Wiedergeburt (Our renewal after the war — Europe's rebirth), and this is echoed in the Garton Ash-Dahrendorf rebuttal, which is called Die Erneuerung Europas (The renewal of Europe). Here's an excerpt:

"The renewal of Europe is necessary. But it will never emerge from the attempted self-determination of a Europe as a not- or, indeed, an anti-America. Any effort to define Europe against America will divide and not unite Europe. The history of the Iraq crisis proves that. Habermas regards the 15 February [anti-war, anti-Bush, anti-Blair, anti-America] demonstrations as a united European answer to "the loyalty declaration for Bush" that the eight government leaders, led by Jose Maria Aznar and Tony Blair, had announced shortly beforehand. That is misleading in three respects: firstly, because the demonstrations were not a reaction to the 'letter of the eight'; secondly, because that letter signed by statesmen, who are as known for their obsequiousness as Vaclav Havel, was more a profession of loyalty to western values and the trans-Atlantic relationship than to George W. Bush; and thirdly, because the letter was a reaction the Franco-German move against a second UN resolution. This thrust by the 'avant garde core Europe', didn't unite, it divided."

Just a flavour there of this powerful article, which resonates with passion for an alliance of Europe and the US and against a divisive vision based on the discredited concepts of Gaullism and statism. Throughout the Garton Ash-Dahrendorf article runs a fascinating argument about the ownership of Kant, an issue that pits Habermas against Robert Kagan. Garton Ash and Dahrendorf say that both Habermas and Kagan get the philosopher wrong — they interpret him to mean that it is our duty to act to create a civil society on a global basis. This is a long-term goal, a vision, and not every version of the European Union and not every government in Washington will further it, but it describes an America and a Europe that Timoty Garton Ash and Sir Ralf Dahrendorf, with their experiences of totalitarianism, wish to strive for.