This is a conversation I wish we’d had a year ago. Will Hutton, the Observer columnist and author of A Declaration of Interdependence, is on the line from London. “What I think American progressives often don’t realize is how fundamentally important it is for the rest of the world that America is progressive. Once it moves to the right, it pulls the whole world to the right.”
Here’s the short form of Hutton’s book, published by Norton early in 2003 but largely drowned out by the war drums. 
“What happened in the last 25 years is that America’s center of gravity–politically and culturally–has moved to the right. It’s moved the whole international common sense to the right. If you’re a Western European, if you’re in Asia, the kinds of options that are open to individual nation states are right-wing options. It’s all about having a minimalist or non-existent social contract. It’s all about expressing public endeavor as minimally as possible. About having tax rates and redistribution of income that’s as niggardly as possible, with the United States as the benchmark for normality… I don’t think the United States should see itself or be regarded by the rest of the world as a benchmark which everyone has to migrate to… With that has come a view–it was very explicit in the State of the Union address and in the Bush Doctrine 18 months ago, in the aftermath of September 11–that actually not only is America the social model that the world has got to migrate to; essentially the United States’ obligation to itself and to the world is to act unilaterally and preemptively in international relations. There is no such thing as the rule of international law. What there is is the rule of might. Institutions like the United Nations which try to formulate international law should only be heeded to the extent they go along with what the United States administration at the time actually wants. And if that’s not what the administration wants, it can ignore it. So here we have the United States, the great republic of laws, you know, the quintessential democracy, actually saying internationally it’s not going to observe the rule of law… I think at the heart of the problems of reconstruction in Iraq, at the heart of the problems in the Middle East, lies a radical Muslim view that they’re legitimate in having a crack at the United States of America because it’s a lawless globe that’s being constructed.”
Part One of our conversation sweeps up around President Bush’s state visit to England and the Istanbul bombings of British targets last Thursday. British opinion polls show a slight majority still favoring the Bush-Blair alliance and the “war on terror,” Hutton said, though he believes confidence is shattered below the surface. “We have made our security position worse… We have radicalized and legitimized Islamic terrorism. W’ve extended it across the Middle East. In Britain’s terms, we’ve directly damaged our interests. British nationals can’t move in the Middle East. Our banks and financial service institutions there, which are among our most extensive, are closing. British Airways can’t land in Riyadh. Our position in the European Union is completely compromised. And for what? I mean, if you’d made some gains in the War on Terrorism, I think people would feel a lot better about it.” A political storm is at work which, “notwithstanding today’s polls, will lead to a major reevaluation by the British of what happened.”
Part Two is Will Hutton’s side of the argument with Robert Kagan and the book that rationalized American unilateralism a year ago, Of Paradise and Power, the book that argued: “On major strategic and international questions today, Americans are from Mars and Europeans are from Venus.” There’s an debate here that Kagan and Hutton have waged face-to-face repeatedly in Europe but not enough for American audiences. Kagan is an American who lives in Brussels. Hutton pictures him as a stranger to the progressive tradition in his native country and to the civilized social standards in Europe. Hutton is no Yankee hater–far from it. He’s cosmopolitan Brit who says: “our job in the rest of the world is to do as much as we can to support American progressives winning the battle at home. That’s where the battle is going to have to be fought. A new language has to be invented,” he said, in an echo of George Lakoff. “One of the tasks for progressive America is to develop a story, a language, a rhetoric which challenges the way the Right has captured the whole discourse.” The shame of Tony Blair and England in the Iraq War, Hutton said, is that: “we’ve helped legitimize George Bush and undermined people in America who were critical of this adventure.”
Listen up: Will Hutton is talking about politics today and an Atlantic Alliance for the future, here and here.
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