Niall Ferguson
Thomas: “Ferguson -- a Glaswegian by birth -- must have a weak grasp of American political history. Parties in this country hold onto power by holding onto it, not by abdicating it. Thus the Jeffersonian Republican dynasty of 1801-25, the new Republican dynasty of 1861-85, the Democrat hegemony of 1933-69 (broken only by Ike's winning popularity), and the Republican hegemony of 1969-2005 (interrupted only by Carter's one-term debacle and Clinton's Perot-assisted two terms).”
Pejman Yousefzadeh: “Ferguson assures Republicans that John Kerry is a weak candidate--just like Neil Kinnock (the British Labour Party leader in 1992) was, and therefore, that he is fated to serving only one term as President. How he comes to this conclusion is a mystery. Many Democrats consoled themselves after the 2000 election, believing that George W. Bush was fated to only be a one term President, but here he is, with a fighting (and some might say excellent) chance at being able to serve another four years. Many Republicans consoled themselves after 1992 in believing that Bill Clinton would only serve one term as President. That belief was only strengthened by the disastrous performance of the Clinton Administration in its first two years, and with the election of Republicans to majorities in both houses of Congress in 1994. You know what happened next.”
Both are in response to Niall Ferguson's argument that the Republican Party is better off in the long run if George W. Bush loses in November
Niall Ferguson: “The lesson of British history is that a second Bush term could be more damaging to the Republicans and more beneficial to the Democrats than a Bush defeat. If he secures re-election, President Bush can be relied upon to press on with a foreign policy based on pre-emptive military force, to ignore the impending fiscal crisis (on the Cheney principle that "deficits don't matter") and to pursue socially conservative objectives like the constitutional ban on gay marriage. Anyone who thinks this combination will serve to maintain Republican unity is dreaming; it will do the opposite. Meanwhile, the Dems will have another four years to figure out what the Labour Party finally figured out: It's the candidate, stupid. And when the 2008 Republican candidate goes head-to-head with the American Tony Blair, he will get wiped out.”
Joel Beinin reviews Colossus: The Price of America's Empire by Niall Ferguson: “Admirably, Ferguson, in contrast to most academic historians who remain within the boundaries of ever narrowing specializations and write for diminishing audiences, aspires to influence public culture and political discourse. He is unapologetically presentist and believes that historical insight can be applied to the pressing questions of the moment. The obvious peril of such writing is that no one can reasonably be expected to be an expert on all the topics in a book ranging across the last 200 years of Anglo-American history. What can be expected is basic factual accuracy, internally consistent use of the evidence presented, broad consultation of others' work and due consideration of differing interpretations on matters that are critical to the argument. In these respects, Ferguson disappoints. When addressing the actual histories of Latin America, Vietnam or the Middle East, Ferguson simply ignores unambiguous facts and interpretations that do not confirm his opinions.”
Beinin says that Ferguson give a contradictory account of Central American history and the United States' military involvement in it; does not know the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict very well, misinterpreted American ratification of the Oslo accord as "pressure"; conveniently de-emphasizes European and Central American terrorist movements, and that terrorist movements have varying degrees of tactics, lethality and, importantly, motivations; has an unreliable account of late 19th century Egyptian and Sudanese history, underemphasizes Egyptian nationalism (and gets facts wrong about the British occupation there) and asks if British rule in Egypt is really a model the United States should follow.
Niall Ferguson takes a break from empire to reflect on British government plans to install wind farms of the coast of the UK: “As I write this, looking out the window of our newly acquired house on the Glamorgan coast and trying to imagine how the 30 turbines due to be built directly opposite will look and sound, I am of course a sitting duck. I accept that some will say that my opposition is mere Nimbyism, but there is no denying that the Government's commitment to wind power is a huge con perpetrated in the name of environmentalism.”
He argues that wind farms are not efficient at creating electricity (partly because of the cost and technical difficulty of installation), negatively affect coastal property-owners, and benefit only the super-rich who get tax breaks to install offshore turbines.
Benjamin Wallace-Wells, in a profile of Niall Ferguson, critiques the author's view that America should openly pursue an empire: “like many other pro-war intellectuals, Ferguson was so seduced by the boldness of his idea that he neglected to follow the logic of the evidence he saw. And the simple explanation for the failure of the imperial and quasi-imperial attempts of the last 50 years may not be that France, Russia, and the United States all went about it all wrong, but that the project of empire is just not possible in today's world, that the prevailing political tempers, on each side of the colonial equation, won't permit it.”
Niall Ferguson: “A very large proportion of Americans don't have passports. But even more striking to me is the fact that the kind of people you might expect to be well-equipped to engage in what we rather euphemistically call nation-building—that's to say, the graduates of the elite universities—disproportionately avoid overseas engagements. The ambitions of the educational elite in this country are quite domestically focused. They really would rather be running a Wall Street law firm than governing Baghdad. And I think that's a fundamental social-cultural reason why the United States is bad at empire.”
In the following paragraph, Ferguson makes a very interesting point about drafting soldiers (which I oppose on the grounds that it weakens the army because volunteers are more likely to follow orders than those there unwillingly). He says that when you draft people in the military, you increase the likelihood that soldiers will have a diverse range of talents, and these talents came into play during the post-WWII period nation-building in Germany and Japan because soldiers were drawn from more walks of life than those who would join the army anyway.
Niall Ferguson, before diagnosing America with Asperger's syndrome: “The fact that America did such a good job in West Germany and Japan after the Second World War - to say nothing of South Korea - suggests that it doesn't always have to end in tears. But, right now, Iraq's prospects look more Haitian (to mention just one of numerous other examples of botched American interventions) than West German.”
Mark Steyn responds to Niall Ferguson's assertion that commanders in the field in Iraq do not know the parallel between the Iraq of today and the Iraq of 1920: “Professor Ferguson's thesis is that the "ignoramus" Yanks are so hung up on theories of American exceptionalism that they decline to learn from the British experience. This accusation might more usefully be bandied closer to home, where London's governing class has, in little more than a generation, cut loose its imperial inheritance. If one were to pursue the parallel further, one might argue that the British Establishment is so hung up on theories of European exceptionalism it's shrugged off its own history.”
He goes on to answer that age old question of why Hawaii is an American state and not a colony.
Christopher Hitchens agrees with Niall Ferguson that comparisons of the current situation Iraq to that of Vietnam are flawed: “If the United States were the nation that its enemies think it is, it could quite well afford to Balkanize Iraq, let the various factions take a chunk each, and make a divide-and-rule bargain with the rump. The effort continues, though, to try and create something that is simultaneously federal and democratic. Short of that, if one absolutely has to fall short, the effort must continue to deny Iraq to demagogues and murderers and charlatans. I can't see how this compares to the attempt to partition and subjugate Vietnam, bomb its cities, drench its forests in Agent Orange, and hand over its southern region to a succession of brutal military proxies.”
Niall Ferguson: “What happened in Iraq last week so closely resembles the events of 1920 that only a historical ignoramus could be surprised. It began in May, just after the announcement that Iraq would henceforth be a League of Nations "mandate" under British trusteeship. (Nota bene, if you think a handover to the UN would solve everything.) Anti-British demonstrations began in Baghdad mosques, spread to the Shi'ite holy centre of Karbala, swept on through Rumaytha and Samawa - where British forces were besieged - and reached as far as Kirkuk.”
Ferguson is arguing that looking to Vietnam for a comparison to today is flawed, and that, as in the above quote, Iraq in the 1920s provides an instructive case for the Americans in Iraq now.
Niall Ferguson writes a condensed version of his speech about the demographic decline of Europe (which I've summarized) in The New York Times Magazine. The magazine has no syndicated feed, so it's unclear how the publishers expect me to read it (other than it getting filtered up via Feedster searches).
Niall Ferguson: “Europe will turn out to be not an empire in the sense that I think the United States is today--that is to say, an expansive geopolitical entity--not a rival or a competitor or a counterweight to the United States, but almost its antithesis, something that is drawing political energies into it, that is perhaps even being colonized by exogenous forces.”
Ferguson argues that Europe as a whole can be seen as an equal trading partner to the United States, although perhaps not on a per capita level. Europe may even have a similar political structure: a federal system with a high court with equal powers to that of the United States Supreme Court. All that said, calling Europe an "impire", Ferguson argues that Europe and its institutions will decline in power, but not disappear. The German economy is “unhealthy” and “an unhealthy Germany is an unhealthy European economy.” And while productivity per hour is very similar between Western Europe and the United States, the workers from latter work longer and a larger percentage of Americans—people, that is, not just the subset of people that are workers—participate in the economy and therefore its economy produces more. He is also skeptical as to whether the former Communist bloc has benefited as much as it should have after liberation. Ferguson also argues that much of European integration has been done on Germany's dime, and Germany is under-represented in European Parliament and Council of Ministers, not only in terms of population but also—and strikingly so—in terms of how much of the European budget is paid for by German taxpayers.
Ferguson also has a cultural argument explaining the decline of Europe. He notes that Europe's median age is increasing faster than that of the United States. Speaking to the audience, mostly university students, it seems, he alludes to the fiscal overstretch the United States is facing, and says that Europe is facing a far worse situation. Allowing Turkey into the European Union might be a solution, as he notes that even the last argument—that Europe is fundamentally a Christian continent—is de facto untrue. Immigration, although it will be resisted, is the solution to declining economies and rising ages.
Niall Ferguson and Laurence Kotlikoff [PDF]: “For reasons quite unrelated to federal fiscal policy, there are strong deflationary pressures operating at home and abroad. Overcapacity generated during the 1990s boom, investor pessimism in the wake of the bust, consumer anxiety about job losses—all these factor mean that virtually the only sector of the U.S. economy still buoyant is housing, for the simple reason that mortgage rates are the lowest in two generations. At this writing, the U.S. unemployment rate has just reached a nine-year high. Meanwhile, the unleashing of China's productive energies is filling the global economy with amazingly cheap consumer goods.”
Not particularly argumentative—I'm more interested in arguments than facts, although facts can be presented in a way to make an argument—but this strikes me as a well-written, understandable to the lay-person, economic summary, even if it paints a bleak picture. The article covers some interesting ground, like market psychology (the "mental prisoners" on the 6th page), the "conventional wisdom" of using Congressional Budget Office Numbers simply because they're press-friendly, the advantage (as well as disadvantages) of inflation, a comparison of the Bush Administration to Lenin (!), why lowering taxes lowers revenues (the chain of the reaction happens longer than conventional wisdom suggests), why pension reform in America will not go through as easily as it did in Britain in the late seventies-early eighties. Among the solutions—which the authors hint, if the President is to implement them, they must have his electoral interests in mind otherwise he won't implement them—include vouchers for private insurance which may mean a loss of privacy. (Privacy is effectively a currency these days anyway: the goal is not how to protect it but how to get the most from giving it up.) The authors then draw parallels between pre-Revolutionary French and contemporary American policies and implications. The authors argue that while America is militarily understretched, it is fiscally overstretched and that this may be the ultimate downfall of the empire in everything but name.
Christopher Hitchens: “One of the merits of Niall Ferguson's recent work on the British Empire is the reminder it provides of how Scottish that empire was. Not only did the Scots provide a vast proportion of the soldiers and miners and ship's engineers of the system (I have seen it argued that Scotty on Star Trek is a tribute to this grand tradition), but several colonies bore a distinctly Caledonian stamp. Even today a visitor to New Zealand or Canada is bound to notice the influence of Scottish architecture and of the Scottish educational and religious heritage; and in the Cameron Highlands of Malaysia, and the city of Blantyre, in Malawi, the imprint of Scotland is to be felt in numerous distinctive ways. The battle flag of the Confederacy, indeed, displayed the cross of Saint Andrew; and I recently read an account of the revolution in Texas in which one of the proclamations under discussion featured a stirring line from the poetry of Robert Burns—the more impressive because it was unattributed and assumed to be familiar in the context. ”
