History of the Present

Timothy Garton Ash is the author of History of the Present and a former Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Center.

The collapse of communism left Europe with a revived challenge of political and economic integration. It meant that the 1990s would be a period of political and economic redefinition in Western and Central Europe. For the West, economic integration proceeded apace with the Maastricht conference as a focal point of activity. For Central Europe, particularly the Balkans, turmoil and bloodshed marked the decade with Sarajevo as a symbol of a different reality. Timothy Garton Ash explains Europe's unmet moral challenge and the necessity of building a broad-base liberal order.