Digital Editor of The Dartmouth Review Lintaro Donovan (TDR) interviewed Niall Ferguson (NF) virtually via Zoom on August 25, 2022. Serving as Milbank Family Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Ferguson has authored sixteen books, including Doom: The Politics of Catastrophe (2021) and Kissinger 1923-1968: The Idealist (2015), the first in a two-volume biography of the former Secretary of State. He has faced controversy for his views on imperialism and currently serves as a Founding Trustee of the University of Austin, founded in 2021.
TDR: In your 2005 book Colossus: The Rise and Fall of the American Empire, you advance the thesis that the United States is an empire in denial and that such denial will be our undoing, both domestically and abroad. Does that thesis still hold in the world of 2022?
NF: I think it has withstood quite well the test of nearly 20 years. If you recall, the analysis was that the United States was trying essentially an imperial enterprise in Afghanistan and Iraq and that there were three deficits that were going to make it fail. There was the manpower deficit, because people really did not want to spend that much time in Afghanistan and Iraq – hence the short tours of duty. There was the fiscal deficit, which was already obviously a problem and has only gotten worse. And then there was the attention deficit. The prediction was that the US [BREAK] public would become disillusioned with these endeavors just as it became disillusioned with Vietnam. And if anything, the surprising thing is how long it took to get out of Afghanistan.
I wouldn’t have predicted it would be 2021. I expected it sooner than that. But I think that the overall framing of the US as an empire-in-denial works because it’s so deeply rooted in the way Americans think about themselves and the language that their leaders use. What was odd was that some neo-conservatives back then really were willing to say, “We’re an empire now.”
Of course, it kind of blew them up politically so that they’re now an irrelevant bunch of never-Trumpers. So I feel that book stood up remarkably well to the test of time. I’d stick by it.
TDR: What I’m hearing from your answer is that our denial is sort of endemic to what Americans are and that there were issues that were already present before the invasion of Iraq. Do you think that there’s any personality in American public life today who might be able to get us out of our denial and fix these issues that you’re talking about?
NF: No, because I think, if anything, the kind of aversion to empire has grown on both the left and the right. And so you have different versions of it.
Those wings, the progressive wing of the Democratic Party and the Trumpian wing of the Republican Party, are much stronger than they were then. I don’t think we are going to see any revival until the US suffers the kind of attack that it suffered at Pearl Harbor or 9/11.
Until there’s a punch landed, what will happen is that the US will try to exercise power through indirect means like sanctions or getting Ukrainians to fight Russians or arming the Taiwanese. And, in that sense, I think we’ve reverted to a Cold War playbook without calling it a cold war.
The problem is that we aren’t as far ahead [of China] economically and technologically as we were relative to the Soviet Union. If you’re doing a cold war with China, you have to reckon with quite a formidable antagonist, but that I think is where we are.
It’s amazing how far there is now a bipartisan consensus that China’s the problem. The continuities from the Trump to Biden Administration are very striking in that respect. I don’t see that changing until something bad happens, whether it’s a showdown over Taiwan that the US actually loses, or the collapse of Ukraine, which I guess is a conceivable if now unlikely scenario, or another terrorist attack, though I think that’s not especially likely these days.
The other thing to watch out for is the Middle East. Basically, as in the Cold War, you’ve got the potential for a crisis to happen. The problem for the US is that it’s quite overstretched. If there’s a crisis in Eastern Europe and a crisis in the Far East, say Taiwan, and one in the Middle East, then the US is going to be completely unable to respond to all of those.
The problem for the US is that it’s quite overstretched. If there’s a crisis in Eastern Europe and a crisis in the Far East, say Taiwan, and one in the Middle East, then the US is going to be completely unable to respond to all of those.
It’s already in the position that it can’t give Stinger and Javelin missiles to the Taiwanese, because they’ve already been given to the Ukrainians and we can’t actually make that many new ones. It feels like we are doing Cold War but with quite a bit more overstretch than was true certainly in the 1980s.
TDR: On the subject of conflict with China, especially over something like Taiwan – how likely do you think it is?
NF: This year, not likely. In the next three years, quite likely. Right now, it would surprise me if the Chinese government risked it. And I think they telegraphed pretty clearly [in August 2022] that we are going to do some very symbolic things in response to the [Nancy] Pelosi visit, but “Don’t worry, we won’t do an actual war.” That’s my short-run read, but I think if I’m Xi Jinping and I’m really committed to resolving Taiwan’s anomalous status and bringing it under the control of Beijing, I can’t wait too long because time isn’t really on my side.
The US may up its commitment, and Taiwan might get to be more like a porcupine. China’s economy has suddenly stalled in a pretty big way. The demographics for China are absolutely terrible. You can’t help feeling that Xi Jinping has made this his top priority and he doesn’t have infinite duration to execute. My guess is that we get a big Taiwan crisis, the real thing, maybe in 2024.
That will be a very different story from the recent saber-rattling because there’s a risk that they [the Chinese] do an invasion or blockade. Then the US will have to decide whether we are actually going to war over this [Taiwan]. That will be a very difficult call for any administration to make because the economic consequences would be absolutely massive and negative if it [conflict over Taiwan] were to happen.
TDR: In a 2011 interview with The Guardian, you criticized the West’s self-flagellation in regards to its imperial legacy. How do you believe the West should evaluate and teach its history, especially when it comes to empires?
NF: In the last 10 years, that has only become more true. It is now almost impossible to have a rational debate about the history of empire in the US or the UK, or, for that matter, in Canada, because it’s now asserted that empire was so evil that it’s morally wrong to draw up a balance sheet and try to understand the costs and benefits. This means that reasoned historical discussion is no longer allowed.
As Bruce Gilley discovered when he tried to publish an article on this issue, which didn’t really say much different from what I’d said in my book Empire in 2002, it was a cancelable offense. We have a problem, and the problem is that we can’t in fact have a reasonable discussion on this subject.
My view is that if you want to understand the history of the modern world, it’s largely a history of empires. To say that empires are just utterly bad and had no redeeming features is to make it impossible to do history generally.
My view is that if you want to understand the history of the modern world, it’s largely a history of empires. To say that empires are just utterly bad and had no redeeming features is to make it impossible to do history generally.
In Monty Python’s Life of Brian, the best scene is the one when John Cleese asks, “What have the Romans ever done for us?” He’s speaking to the members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Judea. In answer to his rhetorical question, one of them says, “Well, the roads.” “Apart from the roads?” “Well, aqueducts.” “Apart from the aqueducts?” “Well, it’s quite safe in the streets at night.” “Apart from public order?”
Monty Python made fun of this approach a long time ago, but we’ve now reached that point where you can’t actually discuss the British Empire and draw a distinction between it and say Nazi Germany or Stalin’s Soviet Union. That makes historical scholarship impossible.
You can’t have a category of “evil empire” that includes just everything. It presumably includes the Roman Empire and why not include the Chinese Empire and the Ottoman Empire. If all empires are evil – and most of them did slavery, let’s face it – is the purpose of history just to say how wicked the past was?
That seems like a very uninteresting exercise intellectually. The answer to your question is that we need to teach the history of empires and of nation-states in a way that captures both their negative and positive aspects. One has to be able to talk simultaneously about slavery in Britain’s American colonies and the emergence of a tradition of self-government and individual liberty under the law that was really unique and far, far more unique than slavery. That’s the interesting thing about British settlement in North America, not slavery.
Slavery was the least original feature of it. Most empires, as I said, do slavery. The really interesting thing [about British America] was the way the rule of law and ideas about individual liberty and self-government evolved in the colonial context. If we only talk about slavery, if American history is the 1619 Project, we’re actually missing the point of American history. That seems like a pretty bad idea to me.
The really interesting thing [about British America] was the way the rule of law and ideas about individual liberty and self-government evolved in the colonial context. If we only talk about slavery, if American history is the 1619 Project, we’re actually missing the point of American history. That seems like a pretty bad idea to me.
TDR: Getting on the topic of college, what would you recommend an open-minded undergraduate do to get a real education from established universities? Or should they abandon those established institutions altogether for places like the University of Austin?
NF: You can see a problem pretty much wherever you look in the established universities. I’ve written about it so I don’t need to repeat myself. The most disturbing problem, I think, is just the inability of students and faculty to speak their minds and explore ideas without fear.
I don’t think one can have intellectual innovation and intellectual advance in a climate of fear. Anybody going to one of the established universities in the US today needs to be as careful as if they were in a totalitarian regime because their thoughts if they articulate them, even in a classroom, are liable to be reported by informers. These reports then lead to disciplinary actions that will not be according to due process. All of this is extraordinarily discouraging.
My first piece of advice is to be very careful, watch what you say. My second piece of advice would be to avoid those disciplines that have become overtly ideological and history, unfortunately, is one of those. It’s become harder and harder to get good content in many history departments.
Maybe the answer is to be careful what you say and study hard science until the University of Austin is open for business, then consider transferring there. I say all this with a heavy heart. I had a wonderful experience at Oxford in the 1980s, but at that time you really could say what you liked and you could take intellectual risk without fearing cancellation, without the fear of the Twitter mob. We’ve reached the point at which even the president of the American Historical Association (AHA) can’t say a series of quite reasonable things about presentism or present-mindedness in historical study without having to retract what he said within hours because of a Twitter mob.
If you’re going to an undergraduate program these days as a mere freshman, you are certainly in a weaker position than the president of the AHA. So you’ve got to watch it. That’s the reality. Try to, and this is an important one, do your own thing.
I was lucky at Oxford because there was a lot of freedom. One had tutorials and lectures, but the real experience of academic life for me as an undergraduate was reading very widely and then talking to my contemporaries about what we were reading. One has to remember that part of the point of universities is actually to teach oneself, rather than to be taught. The more you take that approach, the less likely you are to be subject to indoctrination.
One has to remember that part of the point of universities is actually to teach oneself, rather than to be taught. The more you take that approach, the less likely you are to be subject to indoctrination.
TDR: In the past, you’ve described yourself as a classical liberal. How would you respond to thinkers on the New Right or illiberal right who say that classical liberalism is the reason why we have wokeism?
NF: First of all, I don’t think it is the reason why we have wokeism. The reason why we have wokeism is something that requires a deeper exploration. Of course, classical liberalism isn’t enough. I’ve never claimed that it is. There needs to be some sense of connectedness to institutions and traditions.
That’s the conservative piece. I’m probably a classical liberal when it comes to first principles but a conservative when it comes to the need to have some reverence for tradition. To say that it was classical liberalism that led to wokeism is, I think, to misunderstand what happened.
What happened was that a bunch of people who thought they were liberals, but actually didn’t uphold liberal principles, allowed themselves – perhaps out of some sense of guilt – to promote people who clearly weren’t liberals and were quite overtly illiberal. The rise of wokeism was a massive failure of succession planning by the liberal establishment in this country.
The way that they acted was counter to the principles of classical liberalism. At the heart of classical liberalism is the legacy of the Enlightenment. The legacy of the Enlightenment says that you defend to the death the right of people to say things that you disagree with. That’s the starting point.
If we aren’t upholding that principle, if we are actually engaged in political discrimination, then we’re not classical liberals. In that sense, it’s hard to pin wokeism on a failure of classical liberalism. In any case, I’m not sure that conservatives have much to say on this subject, because if ever there was a failure of succession planning, it was the failure by our conservative intellectuals, who completely failed to find any successors and found themselves utterly marginalized when the chips were down.
Brilliant: articulate, reasoned, unsparing. Many thanks.
Imagine if cell phones, cameras, laptops, etc. were treated like weapons inside the classroom/lecture hall. Hence, none were allowed. Banned. What would happen?
so the key point here is America is an Empire? Fine. It’s still a positive evolution in imperialism where the moral clarity is far better than being a purebred Colonial Empire which is what the Western European powers were all about until the 20th century. Imagine Biden standing up for Ukraine & Zelensky against Putin or Bush against Saddam & Osama, compared to Churchill railing against half-naked fakir of India who had a much higher sense of moral clarity for his country which was being illegally occupied & exploited by the British Empire.