Tom Nairn's response to Timothy Garton Ash's Free World is critical. He says:
"While glad of release from doom, however, one may still have serious doubts about the recipe Free World offers us. A more free, democratic world must be due, beyond the crisis: but on these terms, and argued for in this way?....a grim vein of truth does emerge from his new story — not quite intended, but impressive all the same. What he’s pleading for is, in effect, a globe of “special relationships”, bonding yet non–constraining. And such relations could indeed proliferate along his super–motorway bridge."
So what is the problem? nairn says:
"It is not that I pine in any way for warriors and prophets, who stand reconfirmed in the camp of great–power conviction after Bush’s 2 November 2004 victory. No, my doubts about any re–baptised Free World are far more conservative and mundane. All I’m arguing for is nations, minus the dratted “–ism”: democratic–national independence, diverse, ordinary, even boring rather than 18th century museum–pieces, or dictators, or hustlers like Blair and Berlusconi."