De-Niall
How Trump corrupts the conservative mind
Predictable as it was, Niall1 Ferguson’s almost-support for a Donald Trump victory in Tuesday’s US presidential election is still crushingly disappointing to this fan of his approach to writing history.
The “rockstar historian”, who is now as knighted as actual rockstars Sir Mick, Sir Paul, and Sir Van, has been teasing his justification for a Trump endorsement for months. But, foolishly, I still hoped reason would overcome Ferguson’s instinct for siding with his enemy’s enemy - a hope dashed by a pre-election think piece for the Dail Mail (Why Kamala Harris poses a greater threat to democracy - both at home and abroad - than Donald Trump).
The headline was so ridiculous that I assumed the pen must have been wielded by a subeditor rather than the scholarly author of The War of the World, Civilization, and The Ascent of Money. But no, this really was his argument. To choose between Trump and Kamala Harris is to choose between “Republic and Empire,” he writes. “[I]f you believe Trump poses a threat to the Republic, you must vote for the Democratic candidate. But if you believe the Democratic candidate poses a threat to American primacy in the world, then you must vote for Trump”.
A passionate advocate of lethal support for Ukraine against Russia, undeviating backing for Israel over Iran and its surrogates, and a readiness to challenge rising Chinese military power, Ferguson claims to believe that Trump would be a more reliable ally than Harris. Apparently, the former president’s candid support for Russia over Ukraine, his desire to withdraw from NATO and the Korean Peninsula, and his awe of Xi Jinping’s governing style should be taken neither literally nor seriously. Only last week, he said: “I don’t want to go to war … Number one, it’s very dangerous. Number two, a lot of people get killed. And number three, I mean, it’s very, very expensive”. Also last week, JD Vance, his running mate, said further US aid to Ukraine would be a “disaster” and sought “avenues of peace” with Moscow. These are the guarantors of continued “Empire”?
Perhaps I’m doing Ferguson an injustice since he did say that the loss of American primacy could be worth it if Trump “poses a threat to the Republic”. I’m not. “[T]he question is not how far Trump has authoritarian proclivities: it is how far he would be able to indulge them if re-elected to a second term,” he writes. Not very far, he argues. Confident in the democratic will of a Supreme Court that narrowed the scope of the constitution’s 14th amendment in Trump’s favour and assigned protections from criminal prosecution for his “official acts”, Ferguson expects its justices to block a third term and limit the use of executive orders to overhaul immigration policy. As for Trump’s desire to use the military to carry out domestic law enforcement – something his generals say he sought repeatedly during his first term – the officer class would probably refuse to obey.
Probably. Why take such an enormous risk with the Republic when this anti-war isolationist doesn’t even want to protect or project the Empire? Well, says this former Harvard professor, in August 2022, two other Harvard professors wrote a New York Times opinion column advocating an overhaul of the constitution. “[W]ho is to say that, if elected president with majorities in the Senate and the House, Harris would not be open to such revolutionary schemes?” Even Ferguson seems embarrassed enough by this epic reach to look for another Harrisian threat to democracy: shrinking relative military budgets as, for the first time, the costs of public debt service exceed the costs of defence. Fair enough, but every analysis – fiscal and political – of Republican and Democratic budgetary and defence plans show this trend will continue under Trump.
Living history
Ferguson’s capitulation to Trumpwelt maddens me when I couldn’t care less about Kelsey Grammer and the two Buzzes – Aldrin and Lightyear. The professor knows better. What makes his histories so good is how they reframe narratives – the Second World War as multiple conflicts staggered over decades and often fired by ethnic divisions dressed up as ideology, to give just one of many examples – and emphasise uncertainty and risk.
When we read history, we know what happened but history’s decision-makers didn’t. Especially when it came to the big questions of war and peace, they were assessing risk then making decisions they could regret. And often did. Throughout his career, Ferguson has made this thinking central to his writing and formalised it with counterfactual scenarios: What if Britain hadn’t entered the First World War? What if Hitler hadn’t survived one of the assassination plots? What if South America had developed economically and politically in line with North America?
So important is robust risk assessment to his thinking that he founded the Greenmantle2 advisory firm in 2011 to apply it to today’s macroeconomics and geopolitics. And yet, when it has come to big contemporary questions – Brexit and Trump being the most obvious – he seems to choose his tribe over sound analysis. Unlike the Cheneys and the Never Trumpers or Brexit-sceptical Tories David Gauke, Dominic Grieve, and Rory Stewart, Ferguson baulked at the new company he’d have to keep in exile from the right. He opposed Brexit before the 2016 referendum, then declared his conversion to withdrawal, and now seems to have returned to lightly held Bregretism. In 2016, before he was born again as a conservative, this “liberal fundamentalist” dismissed claims that candidate Trump was a fascist and saw him more as a late-19th-century populist in the mould of William Jennings Bryan. “The violence of populism is mostly verbal. Populist leaders are demagogues in suits, not jackboots”. A reasonable risk assessment then. Less so in November 2024.
The risk landscape today isn’t the same as 2016. Yes, Trump is fading physically and mentally, is personally and programmatically chaotic, and lacks the standing militia of a Benito Mussolini. But he is also angry, bent on revenge, has a record of using the street in his support, and has a more consistent foreign policy built around tariffs, military withdrawals, and a dislike of America’s traditional allies. Trump lacks the self-discipline to be a true fascist but he long ago moved beyond Bryanism into something that threatens both Republic and Empire. I believe the writer of some of our most thought-provoking recent histories can see this. He just can’t bear to disappoint his friends or comfort his enemies. With luck, voters will drive a metaphorical stake through Trumpism’s heart next week and Sir Niall can spend four blissful years criticising President Harris for not doing enough to suppress Russia, China, and Iran or reduce the public debt stock.
I know it’s pronounced Neil but I needed a headline.
Full disclosure - in early 2020, I emailed Niall Ferguson about working for Greenmantle. In a kind and respectful reply, he replied that there were no suitable roles. No hard feelings.
Very well said! People reveal so much by what they use to justify their positions. This is in a way an unmasking of his values more than anything else.