Transcript of Conflict: Niall Ferguson on Ukraine, Taiwan

And I think that’s what annoyed Vice President Vance so much. I think he’s right that we can’t expect to be able to do what the United States was able to do at the end of the first Cold War, when we were really at the height of our power. Now, in the relatively early phase of Cold War Two, when, let’s not forget, China stands behind Russia. And China has kept Russia in this war and shows no sign of stopping supporting Russia.

Historical Frameworks for Understanding the Conflict

PETER ROBINSON: So is it fair? I’m searching for… What I’m asking here is, given your deep knowledge of history, what’s the model? What’s the framework? What’s the way the layman should be thinking about this? None of us is insiders. On the other hand, this is a democracy, and we get to ask them questions and we get to challenge them. Fine. Astonishingly enough, JD Vance is willing to rise to the challenge.

NIALL FERGUSON: And that’s great. It’s great that we’re having this kind of open space.

PETER ROBINSON: And by the way, kudos to Elon Musk for preserving Twitter or X as…

NIALL FERGUSON: It is where this kind of debate goes on. And even if it was not very civil to begin with, I’m glad to say that it got more civil. From the outset of the conflict, certain things were obvious, and I remember writing them at the time. I remember writing “War is Coming” right at the beginning of 2022. After the war had broken out, one of the points I made was the duration of the war would depend heavily on how far China supported Russia as opposed to seeking to broker a peace. While China opted to support Russia, that massively increased the odds against Ukrainian victory.

PETER ROBINSON: And the Chinese support of Russia has taken what forms? They’re buying Russian oil…

China’s Role in the Conflict

NIALL FERGUSON: More importantly, they export massive amounts of dual-use technology to Russia. And that is the principal basis on which the Russian economy keeps going and the Russian army keeps fighting.

So let me try and give you the analogies that will help here. They’re not perfect because the United States and China are not directly involved in this war. They are supporting proxies, Ukraine on our side, Russia on the Chinese side. But it’s quite helpful to think of Ukraine as being somewhere between South Korea and South Vietnam. I remember saying this to President Zelensky. I was in Kyiv late 2022, and I said to him and his advisors: Your nightmare scenario is to be South Vietnam. Your success is to be South Korea.

Let me explain what I mean by that. So in 1950, there is a surprise attack that takes American policymakers wholly by surprise on South Korea by the North, which has Stalin’s wholehearted backing. This time, the United States and its allies intervene wholeheartedly, directly. The Chinese also end up intervening on the North Korean side. It’s a really big war. After a year of all kinds of motion, it settles down into a war of attrition. There’s a stalemate and negotiations begin. These negotiations are painful and difficult, and ultimately the South Korean President has to be forced to accept an armistice forced by the United States.

PETER ROBINSON: By Dwight Eisenhower.

Historical Parallels: South Korea vs. South Vietnam

NIALL FERGUSON: By Dwight Eisenhower, who is then president. And this is painful for him. On the other hand, he has his country. Crucially, the United States then provides a permanent military presence in South Korea, which continues to this day. And South Korea goes from being a ruined and devastated dictatorship – it was not a democracy – to being one of the most successful economies of the late 20th century and a democracy. So that’s the good outcome.

The bad outcome for Ukraine would be the South Vietnamese outcome, where the United States intervenes, but extricates itself after a peace has been painfully negotiated, not least with Henry Kissinger leading the American effort. It looks like he gets peace, but two years later, Saigon falls and South Vietnam vanishes from the map.

So when I’m trying to think about the position of Ukraine, it’s the position that other countries have been in that have had American support. But in one case, it’s a huge success story, and the country is a huge success story – one of the greatest successes of the late 20th century by any measure. And then the other, it ends in a debacle after a relatively short period of time. And that, I think, is why the Ukrainians have been arguing so forcefully that they really need American security guarantees.

The Potential Deal on the Table

PETER ROBINSON: Okay, so next question then. Take the deal. As you just mentioned, we’re recording this in mid-March. The Trump administration, with the support of the Ukrainians, has suggested a 30-day ceasefire. And Putin has said no. As we sit here, negotiations are continuing. By the time this program airs in a few hours, who knows where things may be, but that’s where we are right now.

That said, it seems fair to say, I think, correct me if necessary, that we already know roughly what President Putin would receive in the kind of deal that the administration seems to have in mind. He gets to keep the Crimea, he gets to keep the Donbas, and he gets an assurance that Ukraine will never be part of NATO. What is unclear is what the Ukrainians get in this deal.

Applying Pressure on Russia

NIALL FERGUSON: And this is where my fight with the administration began. My complaint was that in the opening salvo three weeks ago, President Trump appeared ready to give the Russians all that they wanted before the negotiations began. And that struck me as, however much you like the art of the deal, not a great negotiating strategy.

The key question, Peter, has all along been, is the United States going to put pressure on Putin, real pressure in a way that the Biden administration failed to because the Biden administration did the Kabuki sanctions. These sanctions never meaningfully impacted the Russian economy. We didn’t seriously try to stop them exporting their hydrocarbons, nor, to be fair, did the Europeans stop trading with Russia.

So a key question for me has been, is it the intention of the Trump administration now to apply the real pressure on Russia that the Biden administration never did? If they do it, and this is the moment of truth, if they now apply real pressure to Russia, then I think Putin will have to concede. But if they don’t, if there is no serious effort to put Russia under pressure, and I mean both economic and military pressure, then I think Putin will see himself increasingly in the position the North Vietnamese were in in 1972-73. He can fight while talking and talk while fighting and wait for the Ukrainian position to crumble because the American support for it will simply fade. And can I add one other point?

PETER ROBINSON: Of course.

The European Response

NIALL FERGUSON: And this is really the Europeans are talking a big game. And it’s clear that there’s been a huge shift in sentiment in Berlin, in Paris, in Brussels, not to mention in London.

PETER ROBINSON: There’s a complacency to panic.

NIALL FERGUSON: I don’t think it’s even panic. I think there is a sudden realization that the United States is no longer willing to provide a subsidy to European security in the form of paying the lion’s share of the budget, the combined budget of NATO. That has finally sunk in. And I think that was partly what made President Trump so offensively disparage Zelenskyy in the way that you said, in the same way that it was the reason that Vance went to the Munich Security Conference and disparaged the Europeans in the calculated way that he did.

PETER ROBINSON: I believe that dismissing people, dismissing their concerns, or worse yet, shutting down media, shutting down elections, or shutting…

NIALL FERGUSON: People out of the political process protects nothing. In fact, it is the most sure…

PETER ROBINSON: Fire way to destroy democracy. The audience was not Vladimir Putin. The audience was the European self.

Ukraine, Taiwan, and His War of Words with V. P. Vance

# European Response to U.S. Policy Shift

NIALL FERGUSON: Absolutely part of the goal here, and this has taken me a while to understand, was to administer a shock to the Europeans that would finally convince them that the United States was not going to provide the backstop to Ukraine and might not necessarily honor Article 5 of the NATO treaty, that that had become a contingent commitment. I think that’s important because it puts the Europeans in a terrible bind, economically and emotionally.

They think we can do this. We’re going to stand by Ukraine, we’re going to take the place of the United States, we’re going to have strategic autonomy. Let’s spend hundreds of billions of euros on rearming. But Ukraine needs this to happen tonight, and it’s going to take years. So there’s a big disconnect between European rhetoric, European pledges, and what the Europeans can do. They cannot take the place of the United States in terms of the defense of Ukraine anytime soon. And that’s the great weakness of the Ukrainian position.

PETER ROBINSON: All right, let’s stay with the Europeans for just a moment. Leaders in the European Union have held emergency talks earlier this month. Every report that I read termed them emergency talks. To give Ukraine a security guarantee of their own. Prime Minister Starmer of the United Kingdom and President Macron of France has suggested a joint European peacekeeping force in Ukraine of as many as 100,000 troops.

Now, the Russians immediately said, you do that and we’ll consider an act of war. Nevertheless, the important point is, for our purposes of our discussion, that Keir Starmer, a laborman, and Macron were able to work together and were talking about sending troops into Ukraine. Furthermore, President Macron has even offered to extend the French nuclear deterrent. France possesses just under 300 nuclear missiles, as best I can tell, to the rest of Europe, this is astonishing.

On the other hand, may I quote our friend and colleague Victor Davis Hansen:

A genuine European deterrent in Ukraine military security guarantee in Ukraine would require Europeans to prune back their social welfare state, begin fracking, use nuclear energy, stop their green obsession, and spend 3 to 5% of their GDP on defense. Promises, promises.

NIALL FERGUSON: He’s right.

PETER ROBINSON: Oh, really? Oh, come on, cheer me up, please.

# The German Factor

NIALL FERGUSON: He so often is. Yes, he is. And you didn’t mention the most important person in the European drama. Who is Friedrich Mertz. Who is going to be very soon the German Chancellor and who is going to lead a new Christian Democrat led coalition. Now, Mertz was more sure the AfD.

PETER ROBINSON: Will be out of the coalition.

NIALL FERGUSON: The AfD has no chance of being in this coalition. Whatever Vice President Vance may say, Mertz seemed, if anything, more shocked by President Trump’s statements on Ukraine than Macron or Starmer, and almost immediately on election night said, it is clear that something has fundamentally changed. We can no longer rely on the United States and therefore we are going to have to invest substantially more in our defence.

And with amazing speed by German standards, coalition negotiations began, which in a matter of days produced a commitment to a massive investment in German defense and German infrastructure. This is much more plausible than anything Keir Starmer says. Talking about sending troops to Ukraine when your entire army is 75,000 is just pure fantasy. But the Germans can rearm.

And Peter, this will be very important to watch because the German rearmament, which will have, I think, big impacts on not only the German economy, but the European economy, will be quite an important change. And it’s very bad news for Vladimir Putin. We mustn’t think that Putin is winning all the way here. In a sense, his whole strategy has been a disaster rearmed.

PETER ROBINSON: Europe is a total defeat.

NIALL FERGUSON: Right? I mean, he not only failed to take the whole of Ukraine, not only has he suffered incredible casualties, particularly in the last few months, but also he’s reawakened the slumbering German giant. And that, from a Russian point of view, has to be the massive strategic blunder of the Putin era.

So I don’t take Keir Starmer’s pledges terribly seriously because I don’t think the United Kingdom has the military capability that it used to have. I take Macron’s nuclear umbrella more seriously because France has a genuinely independent nuclear deterrent. But the big story is German rearmament and what it will do to revive Germany’s pretty moribund economy. Merz is a very important new actor on the world stage.

PETER ROBINSON: Would you contrast Olaf Scholz, the outgoing, or the previous chancellor? When Russians invaded Ukraine gave big seemed like a very dramatic change. He was going to pledge in 100 billion euros to an immediate buildup and they were going to get up to some large number of GDP. And as best I can tell, almost.

NIALL FERGUSON: Nothing actually happened and hardly any hardware went that the Germans could have sent.

PETER ROBINSON: And you’re telling me that Merz is different this time? The Germans are away. What is the difference? Is the difference Donald Trump?

NIALL FERGUSON: Yes, I think it is, because that’s.

PETER ROBINSON: That’s what got their attention, not an invasion.

# The Trump Effect on European Defense

NIALL FERGUSON: And this is where we have to give credit where it’s due. I was in Berlin in July last year at the invitation of the Christian Democrats to give a lecture arguing for German rearmament. I never thought in my life that that would be my role. A British historian who’d spent much of his career working on 20th century German history, going to Berlin to tell the Germans to rearm. But that’s what I did, and I believe it’s necessary.

I don’t think you can have anything resembling strategic autonomy in Europe if the Germans are spending 2% of GDP on defense. And most of that is going on what looks like the Boy Scouts. So this is really an important change, and it’s because of Trump. In July, I gave the speech. Everybody politely applauded over drinks afterwards, a number of eminent business people from the German elite said to me, yes, but in the end, we will have to deal with Russia.

The mood had not changed, and that was always the mood during Olaf Scholz’s chancellorship. Yes, this is all very unfortunate, but in truth, it’s going to end with the Russians in the driving seat and we’ll have to deal with the Russians. The German mood until just a few weeks ago was sooner or later, we get back to the status quo. What was the status quo? The Americans provide our security, the Russians provide our energy, and the Chinese provide our export market. Guess what? It’s all gone.

That was the basis of Angela Merkel’s worldview, of Olaf Scholz’s worldview, and in fact, it had been the basis of the German world view for a generation. Mertz gets that with Trump in the White House, that American security guarantee is gone or it’s become contingent. With Putin in the Kremlin, you’ll never get back to normality with Russia and with Xi Jinping in Beijing, your export market’s gone because Chinese vehicles, electric vehicles, are cleaning the clock of the German automobile manufacturers.

So the big changes in Germany, and I think one has to give President Trump his due, and Vice President Vance, they did this together. They went to the Europeans intent on administering a shock. And that shock has worked better than all the persuasive words of every president from Richard Nixon to Barack Obama, who all tried and failed to get the Europeans to do well.

# NATO’s Historical Context

PETER ROBINSON: Let me try a quotation on you that I discovered as I was pulling together notes for our conversation.

If we have learned anything from the NATO experience, it is the rediscovery of an old truth. Dependency corrupts and absolute dependency corrupts absolutely to the degree that Europe has been dependent on the United States, the European will has been corrupted and European political vitality has diminished. A reconstructed NATO could reverse that, but it would have to be an all European NATO with the United States as an ally, but not a member.

Brace yourself, my friend. Those are the words of Irving Kristol, published in the New York Times in 1983. Was he right? Two questions, one of which is purely speculative. I mean, what does it matter? What has happened has happened. But was he correct then?

Irving’s view was NATO made all the sense in the world while the Europeans were rebuilding. But by about the 1970s, they had achieved a standard of living that was about equal to ours. They had re-industrialized, they were just fine. And we ought to have rethought NATO then that these decades of dependency and ill will have been corrosive to them and to us. So the big American mistake in NATO is not Donald Trump saying, boys, we need to rethink this, it’s that that didn’t happen. Nobody said that 40 years ago.

NIALL FERGUSON: Well, I’m old enough to remember the world of 1983. And at that point, it was, of course, a completely deranged idea to suggest that the United States should withdraw from NATO at a time when the Soviet Union still posed a massive threat, not only to European security, but to American security. And I think this is the problem with a lot of these debates.

I hear the same thing this year from Kishore Mahbubane. It’s time the Americans got out of NATO. But the problem is that you can’t have deterrence from France and Britain’s nuclear capabilities alone. The Russian arsenal is vastly larger, and it would take a long time for the Europeans to have the capability to deter Russia in the way that NATO with the United States could, can deter Russia with a full arsenal of strategic, intermediate and other nuclear weapons.

So that’s a very important part of the problem. But there’s another part of the problem we have to bear in mind. Technology has moved a long way since the early 1980s. It’s not just about nuclear power anymore. It’s about artificial intelligence. It’s about space wars. It’s about satellite communications, which are vital to modern warfare. The Europeans aren’t even close in any of those fields. In these fields, they’re entirely reliant on the United States. They’re more reliant than in the nuclear domain.

So when the Europeans talked, as they’ve done for years, about strategic autonomy, my response was always, you realize it will take you at least a decade and 5 to 6 to 7% of GDP to get even close. What’s interesting about Trump’s contribution is that he’s finally made them realize that strategic autonomy is not just a line in a speech. It now is a major line in a budget for all these countries. And this goes back to Victor’s excellent point. You are not going to be able to do the kind of expenditures that you need on defence if enormous amounts are already being spent on dysfunctional welfare estates and in some cases interest payments on public debts.

# The Global Cold War Context

Can I globalize the conversation for a moment? Because I’m really struck by the fact you can do what you want to do. I talk a lot about this in a very regional way. We talk about Europe and Germany and then Russia. But I think one has to understand Cold wars as global phenomena. This is Cold War 2. China is the other superpower. Russia is somewhat in the situation that China was in the early phase of Cold War one. It’s clearly the junior partner now. Beijing is really the architect of the global strategy.

And the Trump administration seems to me, despite all the chest beating on issues like Greenland or Canada, the 51st state, Panama Canal, look, behind the chest beating, the Trump administration is actually keenly aware of American weakness. They understand, I think this was J.D. Vance’s point, that the United States can’t easily take on China and Russia and Iran and North Korea. It’s not 1990, it’s much more, if I can use another analogy for a minute, it’s much more 1969.

Yes, I’m very struck by how Nixonian much of the inner thinking of this administration is not the stuff, in truth, social, the stuff that’s going on internally. They think, or at least some people in the administration think, hey, we can’t do all of this. We got to try and close down the commitment in Ukraine, limit the commitment in the Middle East, hence talk to the Russians, talk to the Iranians, something I didn’t expect they would do because the big game is China. And if we don’t focus our minds on China, we’re going to find ourselves in trouble. This is somewhat similar to the way that the Nixon administration thought when they came in Vietnam.

PETER ROBINSON: Was this detente?

NIALL FERGUSON: Right.

PETER ROBINSON: The translation of the French term detente is playing for time.

NIALL FERGUSON: Yes, exactly. You’re in a weak position, so you don’t want to get into a showdown. You want to try and get the other superpower talking and then you’ve got to liquidate these commitments that are just going nowhere. Vietnam in 1969, Ukraine in 2025. It’s something you want to try. Well, the Atlanta winds up, the traffic.

PETER ROBINSON: February 1946.

NIALL FERGUSON: Luckily, I don’t think the position of the US is anything like this.

PETER ROBINSON: Thank goodness. Thank you. Just checking, Just checking. It’s not that bad, just checking.

Ukraine, Taiwan, and the Geopolitical Chess Game

NIALL FERGUSON: But it is, I think, interesting that if you listen carefully to what’s being said in Washington, there are those who think the ultimate goal must be to get the Russians and perhaps the Iranians away from the Chinese and do what’s been called reverse Nixon. So if Nixon played the China card in ’71, ’72, exploited the Sino-Soviet split, the name of the game now is you somehow have to drive a wedge between Russia and China, get the Russians at least away from the side of Xi Jinping, and then you can focus American energies on China. Paradoxically, while Europeans see Trump as a chest-beating imperialist, actually this administration is acutely conscious of American weakness, of the limits of American power. What’s happening with respect to Europe, and I think it will also be true in Asia, is America saying to its allies, “The party’s over, Uncle Sam’s not writing the checks anymore, it’s time for you to step up.” And that was exactly what Richard Nixon said. That was what Vietnamization really meant. The Nixon doctrine was, “We like you, you’re friends, you’re allies, but you’re going to have to pay for your own security. We ain’t doing it anymore.”

PETER ROBINSON: Okay, so now Robinson is here sitting in the stands. Thank you very much. I think I understand the game now. I’m keeping notes. Note number one, we have three objectives, three strategic objectives. To put this unbelievably crudely, but Niall, you know me, this is the top of my form. Number one, we wake up the Europeans and make them aware that Europe is their problem. Over the longer term, Europe is going to be their problem. Check. Actually, that’s done. Macron, the Germans. I have friends in Germany who say everyone is denouncing the Americans at every turn. Well, fine. If you are rearming because you’re angry at us, all we can say is thank you very much. That’s exactly what we wanted you to do.

We’ll come to China in a moment, if we may. But in the meantime, a couple more questions. Check. Item number two is ending the conflict in Ukraine. Which brings us back to this question of a security guarantee. Two quotations, if I may. I have a couple of questions on Ukraine. The first is security guarantee. Victor. This is Victor Davis Hanson. “How will Putin be deterred by a commercial sector tripwire, A joint Ukrainian U.S. Europe Resource Development Corridor in Eastern Ukraine,” close quote. The second quotation is my friend Niall Ferguson in The Spectator of March 8, quote, “the mineral rights Ukraine would give the United States are worth not very much. The security guarantees America would give Ukraine are worth even less.” Explain yourself, please.

Security Guarantees and Diplomatic Missteps

NIALL FERGUSON: I like the idea—the symbolism made sense. Zelenskyy should have signed when he was in the Oval Office and accepted that this was part of the price that he had to pay. But if you’re giving away mineral rights that aren’t really worth anything because they weren’t worth anything before the war, and they’re certainly not worth much during a war, then that seems like a relatively small price to pay. Let’s be clear. There is not some vast treasure underneath Ukrainian soil that would have been developed but for a little local difficulty. This was, I think, an elegant bit of fiction.

And the argument that President Trump wanted to make was, and he got his Treasury Secretary, Scott Bessent, to make it very eloquently, “Here we are, we’re going to invest in Ukraine, we’re going to go into partnership with you. And surely that will deter the Russians from trying to invade the rest of Ukraine.” The problem with this argument is fairly obvious. There have been American investments in many countries around the world over the years in many different minerals and other fuels beneath the soil. The presence of American miners and engineers, to my knowledge, has never deterred a hostile power from invading a country. You need American troops for that.

So I think Zelenskyy’s skepticism was understandable. It’s just that if you’re going to be skeptical about the President of the United States’ plan, do not do it on live TV. Don’t do it in the Oval Office. Do it in the Oval Office, but not when the cameras are rolling. And that was Zelenskyy’s big mistake.

PETER ROBINSON: So what is the security guarantee? If the Trump administration says one way or the other, we’re out. And you say the Europeans can’t begin to install an effective security guarantee for a number of years, maybe single digit years if they really move, but it’s years. Not weeks or months, but years. How does this conflict end?

NIALL FERGUSON: That is why the negotiations will go on and on. And a year from now, you and I will be talking about the negotiations over Ukraine. Because it’s really hard to end a war. Just think how long it took to end the Korean War. The negotiations took at least two years from memory. Vietnam War, peace between Israel and Egypt, call it five. I mean, it’s really hard to end a war that nobody’s won.

This is the critical point—we’re trying to end a war here that nobody has won. That’s what produces very, very protracted processes. I’m sure there’ll be a ceasefire at some point—the Russians need a ceasefire. They’ve suffered such heavy casualties they have to have one. So there’ll be a ceasefire. It just won’t last. That was another thing Zelenskyy was so tactless as to say when he was in the Oval Office. True, but the definition of a gaffe in diplomacy is precisely saying the truth in the wrong context.

So I think we have to recognize here that it’s pretty unlikely that we get a lasting Korean-style armistice during which Ukraine flourishes as things presently stand. The United States is not going to provide the security guarantees. That is clear. Whether the Europeans can is not yet clear. Whether the Russians will accept them providing security guarantees is not yet clear. That is why it’s harder than it looks.

Questions of Honor and Diplomacy

PETER ROBINSON: All right, second question. I want to get back to China and the large strategic matter, the global. All with you and thinking globally but one more question that relates specifically to Ukraine. And to put it again crudely, this is the question that bothers a lot of people, a lot of conservatives, a lot of people who are very happy to vote for Donald Trump. And it’s the question, it’s the question of honor really. Could we have a video excerpt here?

Video clip:

[You’re right now not in a very good position. You’ve allowed yourself to be in a very bad position from the very beginning of the war.

You’re not in a good position. You don’t have the cards right now with us. You start having cards right now.

You don’t have your playing cards.

You’re gambling with the lives of millions of people. You’re gambling with world war, gambling with World War Three. And what you’re doing is very disrespectful to the country, this country that’s backed you. Far more than a lot of people said they should have.

Have you said far…Thank you once this entire meeting? No, in this entire meeting have you said thank you. You went to Pennsylvania and campaigned for the opposition in October. Offer some words of appreciation for the United States of America and the President who’s trying to save your country.]

PETER ROBINSON: All right now I’m still not to you for a question. This question is getting set up in a big way. I want to give you an incident from history and one more brief video and then I will let you tell me why I should calm down. Here’s the incident from history, the Melian dialogue. You know this well. This is related by Thucydides. The great power Athens forces the tiny island of Milos to do its bidding. And as the Athenians explain to the Melians, and of course in Thucydides. This goes back and forth and it’s quite moving in a way and also horrifying because this is what it comes down to. The Athenians say the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must. All right, which brings me to a last video excerpt. Our friend Andrew Roberts, the Lloyd Roberts of Belgravia in the House of Lords last week.

[Video clip: Since the disgraceful scene in the Oval Office on Friday, the situation has changed since the publication of the report, and significantly for the worse. We must not underestimate the gravity of what has happened, which is that during a war against totalitarian dictatorship, the United States has effectively changed sides. But the sheer brutality of his dealings over the last week, and especially the United Nations vote alongside Russia, Syria, the Central African Republic, North Korea and Belarus, countries which I’m sure your lordships would like to live in. A vote even in which the Chinese had the decency to abstain, thrusts us into utterly uncharted territory. Winston Churchill called President Roosevelt’s Lend-Lease Agreement the most unsorted act when the Americans allowed us 65 years to pay off the debt. By total contrast, the Trump administration is gouging Ukraine while the war is still going on. The very definition of kicking a man when he’s down.]

Realpolitik Versus Idealism

PETER ROBINSON: I’m going to grant you every word of analysis on the realpolitik that the Trump administration is attempting. And I’m even going to grant you that it all makes very good sense. But Niall, getting into a screaming match with Vladimir Zelensky, even if you have the right side of the argument, you said a moment ago Zelenskyy was impolitic for saying things on camera in the Oval Office. I’m even willing to grant that. But Volodymyr Zelenskyy is a heroic figure. He’s the one who said, “I don’t need a helicopter out of here, I need ammunition.” He’s the one who has organized the resistance and saved 4/5 of the country and given an opening to all of Europe to pull itself together.

Speaking of playing for time, the man has now played three years to our benefit. And, well. All right. So is it your friend and biography subject, Henry Kissinger? I can’t quote him. And I have the feeling that he was annoyed that this was the way it was. But he said in various ways at various times that the United States of America just is ill-equipped to engage in raw realpolitik unless our diplomacy is mixed with some sense of idealism, it won’t succeed. All right, that’s the question.

NIALL FERGUSON: I think Oxford finals was easier than this, Peter.

PETER ROBINSON: And briefer too.

Ukraine, Taiwan, and the Trump Administration’s Foreign Policy

NIALL FERGUSON: The scene in the Oval Office was painful to watch, especially for anybody who’s been a supporter of Ukraine, as I’ve been. I’ve been to that country every year since 2011 and was there with President Zelensky in the year that the war began and again subsequently. What made it painful to me was not the calculated rudeness of the President and Vice President—it was calculated. It was Zelenskyy’s naivety in having an argument with them with the cameras rolling. That was a terrible blunder. Most Ukrainians who were really following the diplomacy understood that. What he had to do was smile, grin and bear it as the wake he, Starmer and Emmanuel Macron had done that same week, sign the minerals deal, and make sure that he stayed close to the administration as it began the negotiations with the Russians.

I do think, if one thinks in Nixonian terms, it makes sense. If you accept the premise that the United States is overstretched, that it can’t do everything, that it needs to reduce its commitments in Eastern Europe and the Middle East if it’s to be ready for a Chinese challenge over Taiwan, then I think one can understand the real politic. But here’s the question: Does it work? Because if it doesn’t work, if the Russians stay tight with the Chinese, and if the Iranians simply play the latest nuclear deal the way they played the last one, then all the realism doesn’t work.

If it doesn’t work, then its lack of a moral foundation becomes unforgivable. This is the Bismarckian view. If you’re going to do the Bismarckian or Machiavellian thing, you must succeed. You got to succeed.

The Economic-Foreign Policy Connection

Here’s a nightmare scenario we haven’t really talked about, but it’s crucial. The administration insists that there’s no real separation between its economic policy and its foreign policy, that they’re intertwined, that the reason the President is imposing tariffs is to persuade allies as well as adversaries that they have to stop taking America for a ride. And that includes the question of defense spending.

The problem is that if you impose the kind of tariffs that the President is talking about imposing in just a matter of days on April 2, you will take the average American tariff rate back to where it was in 1937. This is a radically more protectionist policy than anything we saw in the first Trump administration. It is going to have very disruptive impacts on America’s trading partners and on America. The stock market already has woken up to this in recent days.

So here’s the nightmare scenario: I get the realism that lies behind the Trump-Vance approach. We ought to accept also that Marco Rubio, the Secretary of State, is playing a part here. The administration is trying to do something that is tough, that requires realism, requires a certain brutality towards allies. But if it fails, that will be an ignominious failure.

I think one has to give them the benefit of the doubt. We don’t know exactly the kind of pressure that they may impose on Russia in the coming days. There is still a realistic scenario in which Ukraine may lose territory temporarily or maybe permanently, but still can flourish. That is the South Korea scenario. But if the administration ends up with Kyiv as Saigon, say, two years after its ceasefire is achieved, if President Trump finds himself where President Ford was in 1975, it’s not going to be a good look.

PETER ROBINSON: And final question while we’re still on this. We live in a democracy. It’s important to bring the people along with you. Now, I know that Andrew Roberts gave that speech in the House of Lords, which is not Topeka or Peoria or any representative of anywhere.

NIALL FERGUSON: It’s almost the antithesis of Peoria.

PETER ROBINSON: It is the antithesis of Peoria. Nevertheless, if you’ve lost Andrew Roberts, you’ve lost a segment of Western opinion. You have also lost certain members of the United States Senate who have not said so publicly yet. But we can be totally confident in the cloakroom, they’re looking at each other saying, what does this man think he’s doing?

NIALL FERGUSON: I think shock is part of the point.

PETER ROBINSON: You do.

NIALL FERGUSON: And I think it’s interesting that the shock in Britain was bipartisan and that people like Andrew Roberts, who despised…

PETER ROBINSON: Charles Moore, was also shocked.

The Strategy of Shock

NIALL FERGUSON: Charles Moore, who despised Keir Starmer, have grudgingly to admit that he’s said and done the right things. So this is what shock is designed to achieve. It’s created bipartisan agreement in Britain and in Europe that now we need to step up and spend enough money on defense that we’re not entirely reliant on the United States. So it’s kind of worked.

That’s the thing that one can’t really dismiss—that there was a calculation here, and I think it was calculated. Part of the reason, I think that Vice President Vance wrote that intemperate tweet was it was part of the strategy of shock, the calculated strategy to shock.

This is what Richard Nixon did in 1971. In 1971, in two consecutive months, he shocked his allies. The first thing he did was to shock them by saying, I’m going to China in the midst of the Cultural Revolution. I’m going to go and visit the crazy communist regime. That was deeply shocking to the Japanese. The Taiwanese couldn’t believe their ears. Shock one, shock two. A month later, August ’71: We’re breaking the link between the dollar and gold. That is, we’re going to devalue the dollar, “our currency, your problem.” That’s what his treasury secretary said at that time.

So this is not the first time that an American administration has decided to shock the allies. That really should be the theme tune: “Shock the allies.” It’s part of a calculated strategy. But as I said, this only works if you undermine the axis. The axis of China, Russia, Iran, North Korea is a very powerful axis. If you don’t somehow drive some wedges between those four, then what have you achieved? You’ve alienated your allies.

What happens when the Taiwan crisis happens, as we think it may, before this presidency is over? The CIA is betting it’s 2027. That’s not long. That’s two years from now. Then what? And that’s the question that I really hope the administration has a good answer to.

Ferguson’s Law and America’s Fiscal Challenge

PETER ROBINSON: You’ve raised the question of our weakness. In the Wall Street Journal last month, you wrote of Ferguson’s Law, I hasten to add, as you hasten to add, that you were naming it after Scottish Enlightenment figure Adam Ferguson and not after yourself.

NIALL FERGUSON: No relation.

PETER ROBINSON: No relation. Well, it’s got to be a relation somewhere.

NIALL FERGUSON: I’d like to think.

PETER ROBINSON: And the law holds, quote, “that any great power that spends more on debt service than on defense risks ceasing to be a great power.” Close quote. It happened to the Spanish Empire. It happened to the British Empire, which ceased to be an empire. And last year, the United States of America began spending more on debt service than on defense.

Two quotations, Niall Ferguson. “In the absence of radical reform of America’s principal entitlement programs, those would include Social Security and Medicare, the only plausible way that the US can come back within the limit of Ferguson’s law is through a productivity miracle.” Close quote. Second quotation. President Trump, this is in an interview last year, quote, “I will never do anything that will hurt or jeopardize Social Security or Medicare.” Close quote.

All right, we have Elon Musk saying, waste, fraud, abuse, waste, fraud, abuse. Maybe they’re up to $100 billion so far. We’re running a deficit of 2 trillion a year. What do you make of all this?

NIALL FERGUSON: Well, first of all, is it over?

PETER ROBINSON: Is it over? Just get to the bottom line. Are we doomed?

NIALL FERGUSON: No, we’re not doomed. In a way, it’s good that there’s a radical administration that takes the fiscal problems seriously—seriously in the sense that they understand there are limits to American power overseas. We’ve talked about that. Seriously, in the sense that they are going to try and do something about our bloated federal bureaucracy and the ways that money gets wasted.

This is important because the previous administration showed enormous, complete disregard for these problems. It was over-committing itself overseas and it was running a deficit of 6% of GDP at full employment, which was indefensible and unsustainable. At least we’re taking steps towards understanding the seriousness of the problem.

But they’re a little bit like the Alcoholics Anonymous steps. There are going to be quite a few of them. And I think we’re only just beginning down the path to reduce our addiction to deficit finance. I mean, we’re now at the point at which the deficit exceeds the revenues. It’s not only that we’re spending more on interest payments than on defense. Our whole budget is massively out of kilter.

I have the greatest admiration for Elon Musk, who’s the Napoleonic figure of our times. But in some ways, it is mission impossible to try to reduce the deficit by eliminating waste in the realm of discretionary spending if Social Security and Medicare are pretty much off limits. So I think that the administration is highly unlikely to achieve its goal of reducing the deficit from 6% of GDP to 3%. Scott Besant, the Treasury Secretary, said that was his goal. I’ll be truly amazed if they achieve that.

The productivity miracle is interesting because we can’t lose sight of the fact that the age of Trump is also the age of AI.

PETER ROBINSON: And do you think there may be a miracle in the offing?

AI and Economic Transformation

NIALL FERGUSON: I think something quite extraordinary is happening in the realm of AI that most of us are only beginning to pick up. And I think it will be dramatically transformative of very large parts of our economy. But it’s not clear that it happens tomorrow. It’s more likely that it takes something like five to ten years for all of the efficiencies that are possible to permeate their way through the entire economy.

Right now, it’s happening in certain sectors. You’re going to see big improvements in productivity in financial services. Back offices are going to get much more efficient. That’s happening. But I struggle to imagine as an economic historian that it’s happening fast enough to impact our GDP and our productivity overall.

The other thing that we mustn’t lose sight of, Peter, is that AI requires massive amounts of compute, that requires massive amounts of electricity, and that requires massive amounts of capex. The hyperscalers, the big tech companies are spending a quarter of a trillion dollars—I’ll say it again, a quarter of a trillion dollars a year on CapEx to build the necessary infrastructure for this productivity miracle to happen. It won’t be a free lunch. In other words, a lot of what happened with the Internet was a really low capex free lunch. This is different.

So to put it really simply, I think the timescale of politics and foreign policy is quite short. The Trump administration, they’ll be worrying about the midterms next week. People are already talking about presidential runs in 2028. Politics happens so fast that this is like a blink of an eye. But meanwhile, the economics plays out over multiple years and decades and so the productivity payoffs, I think they may benefit President Trump’s successor or maybe even his successor.

PETER ROBINSON: Okay, so here’s a horrifying thought that just occurred to me. I keep looking for the good cheer in all of this and I thought I was beginning to hear it in AI, but then here’s the way. All right, if this thought is occurring to me, it’s occurring to Xi Jinping as well. It will already have occurred to Xi Jinping.

Niall Ferguson says the Europeans may get their act together in some single digit number of years. Niall Ferguson says the United States may actually get serious about its budget problem in a few years. And Niall Ferguson says we may begin to see the benefits—we, the United States of America, may begin to see the benefits of AI in something like five years. The economic miracle may begin to take. If I’m Xi Jinping, I listen to Niall Ferguson and say the west may get its act together again in two to five years. We move now.

The Taiwan Threat: China’s Growing Power and America’s Response

NIALL FERGUSON: I think that’s probably going through his mind. It would be odd if it wasn’t because there’s so much disruption happening and the opportunity begins to look more and more tempting to take advantage of that disruption. The United States does not have deterrence in the Indo-Pacific. I don’t think it really can have because China has invested so aggressively in its own military capabilities, naval capabilities, missile capabilities, that it’s really quite daunting how much they’ve managed to acquire in terms of firepower just in the last 10 years. And so we have a looming problem, and that problem is Taiwan.

While we have been focusing, you and I, but also the media, on Ukraine, while we’ve been talking a bit more about Gaza, the Middle East, the real action is somewhere else. The real action is in the Taiwan Strait. The real action is in the Indo-Pacific, where just a matter of days ago, the Chinese navy sent three warships off the coast of Australia to conduct a live fire exercise. They did one in the Gulf of Tonkin, too. The cables that connect Taiwan to the outside world, the fiber optic cables are being attacked, as are fiber optic cables elsewhere in the Baltic as the Axis exercises the kind of hard power that it has in abundance.

China is now a manufacturing superpower. Manufacturing value added is 2 times that of the United States in 2004. Ours was 2 times that of China’s. So there’s been a huge reversal of hard power. And Xi Jinping knows that he doesn’t have limitless time. He, as an individual, won’t live forever. Secondly, the window of opportunity in which he can make a move on Taiwan may close. Perhaps the Trump administration starts seriously to arm Taiwan, although that is by no means clear. Or perhaps a new president comes along who’s a lot more hawkish, conventionally hawkish, than President Trump, who since his election has spoken quite emolliently of China, who wants to go to Beijing, who invited Xi to the inauguration.

So the key question for us, the big geopolitical question, is, does Xi make a move on Taiwan? While the opportunity is almost irresistibly tempting, it will be, I’m absolutely sure, during this administration, during this presidential term. I can’t tell you if it’s 2025, 2026 or 2027. Nobody knows. Only in the end, only he knows. It’s not that he’s going to invade. I don’t even think he does a blockade.

PETER ROBINSON: Oh, really? No.

NIALL FERGUSON: There are much smarter things he can do that will be much harder for us to respond to. Suppose he says, just for example, from now on, all vessels going in and out of Taipei have to clear Chinese PRC customs, and we’re sending Coast Guard vessels to do that. What do we do then? It’s not an act of war. On the other hand, it’s an assertion of sovereignty that it would be very difficult for us to let pass.

If Donald Trump’s ultimate vision of himself, in addition to having a Nobel Peace Prize and his face in Mount Rushmore, is that he does the Nixon visit to Beijing and the great big beautiful deal with Xi Jinping, what is that deal? What does it consist of? If it consists of ceding Taiwan to China, of acknowledging China’s claim on Taiwan, then that is a profound shift in the geopolitical and geo-economic order because Taiwan’s not Cuba. Taiwan is where nearly all the most sophisticated semiconductors get manufactured. It is the HQ of the AI industry. Nvidia makes its chips in Taiwan.

So the big issue is who controls Taiwan? Not Greenland, it’s not the Panama Canal, it’s not Ukraine, not Berlin anymore. It’s not Gaza, it’s not Berlin, it’s Taiwan. So the fate of this administration and of Donald Trump’s reputation hinges on whether his realpolitik, this Nixonian realpolitik that he, J.D. Vance, Marco Rubio are applying, whether it avoids China gaining Taiwan. If China gains Taiwan, I think that is the end of American primacy in the Indo-Pacific. If it’s the end of American primacy in the Pacific, I think it’s at least the twilight of the reserve currency status of the dollar and the ten-year treasury. That’s the risk they run.

PETER ROBINSON: That’s the game. That’s the game. All right, so let me put a question to you again. This is the layman, not a historian, but some acquaintances with history. Here’s the statistic, statistic in a quotation. When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor they had 11 aircraft carriers. We had seven. By the time the Japanese surrendered less than four years later, the Japanese had four aircraft carriers, also badly damaged, they couldn’t put to sea. And the United States of America had 99 full fleet aircraft carriers and 71 smaller escort carriers.

In less than four years we had out-produced the Japanese by something like 20 to 1 mass materiel. This is what we did in the First World War. This is the way the north won the Civil War. Grinding the opposition down by out-producing them.

NIALL FERGUSON: Yeah, we can’t do that anymore.

PETER ROBINSON: Well, here, here. Exactly. Just to be clear, from the Center for Strategic and International Studies today, the Jiangnan shipyard alone, one shipyard has more capacity than all US Shipyards combined. And China’s broader naval shipbuilding capacity is over 230 times larger than that of the United States. If we can’t do what America has always done when it’s come down to the military crunch and out-produce our opponent and we can’t. What’s the way? Technology is the only hope. We have to reside all our trust in some sort of miracle in the office.

The Future of Warfare

NIALL FERGUSON: What’s the way out? Well, it is important to recognize that the next war won’t be like those other wars that you referenced, and it won’t be Pearl Harbor and it won’t be Liberty ships that decide the outcome. The war in Ukraine has given us a trailer for the war of the future. And the war of the future always contains the war of the past, but it is additionally different.

So we have, I think it was Max Boot who nicely said, it’s all quiet on the Western Front meets Blade Runner. The front line in Ukraine is trenches that would be recognizable to my grandfather who fought on the Western Front in World War I. But it’s also drones doing most of the killing. Most of the Russian casualties, 60% of Russian casualties in recent months have been killed by drones. The drones are why Ukraine has held up, because it’s just astonishing how effectively they’ve been able to ramp up production as well as make themselves leaders in the technology.

So the war of the future will be a war that won’t be quite like the war of the past. Ships will play a part, but sea drones will play a bigger part. And undersea drones and drones in the air. And increasingly we’ll be starting to see drones on land, although that’s the hard bit. The robots aren’t quite ready to be deployed.

PETER ROBINSON: We have a fighting chance. We have a fighting chance in that technology.

NIALL FERGUSON: The problem we have here is that while we have got leadership in certain areas, I think we still have leadership, particularly when it comes to training large language models in AI. And we’ve probably got an edge in quantum computing. We don’t have an edge in robotics. In fact, there are a number of different technological domains where China clearly has leadership.

The Australians worry a lot about this, and they have, I think, good reason to worry. If one goes back to Andrew Roberts’ impassioned speech in the House of Lords, I think part of what made him so passionate was this memory of 1938. And he’s a man who’s steeped in Winston Churchill’s life. And in his mind, Ukraine isn’t South Korea or South Vietnam, it’s Czechoslovakia. And what we’re doing, what Trump is doing, rather, what is so shocking to him, is effectively agreeing to the partition of Ukraine at the behest of a dictator for Hitler, read, Putin.

But the difference, and this is really important is that in 1938, Britain, confronted by an Axis with formidable military capability, could hope, as Churchill did hope, that as in the First World War, eventually the United States would come in on the British side. And the workshop of the world, the arsenal of democracy, was on the other side of the Atlantic. There is no arsenal of democracy that the United States can turn to if it is now in the position of Britain in the 1930s.

And I do think that that’s an important analogy. I read articles in the American press. Is Trump? Is he McKinley? Is he Polk? I’m sorry, none of this is relevant. The 19th century is not where we are. The situation of the United States today is not the situation of the United States at any previous era, including 1990. Hands up. You’re right, Vance. You’re right. It’s not 1990. I get it.

But what is the situation of the United States? I think it is more like that of Britain in the 1930s than of anything else I can think of, and certainly any previous era in American history, including the Nixon era, because Richard Nixon did not have the public financial problems that we have today. And if one looks at the military capabilities and the manufacturing capabilities of America in 1969, they were still awesome and unrivaled.

So the position of America today is alarmingly like that of the British empire in the 1930s. And that means that when we look at the Axis, we have to see not only that we’re dealing with a Cold War problem, we could be dealing with a World War problem. In the passage of clip that you showed a moment ago, President Trump shouts at Zelensky, you’re risking World War Three. It looms very large in the minds of American presidents. Joe Biden used to make the same argument. We’re close to World War Three. It’s Elon Musk’s fear. I’ve heard him say it.

They’re right to worry. Because if there is World War 3, if it comes to a kinetic war in the Indo-Pacific, there isn’t a war game that I’m aware of in which the United States wins. That’s the harsh reality. So when people complain about realpolitik or think that the tactics of the administration are cruel, brutal, they have to understand that at least some people in Washington get the true vulnerability of our position. It is very, very weak relative to a China that has not obliged us by collapsing. I wish I had a bitcoin for every essay I’ve read in the last 20 years predicting the China collapse. And it hasn’t happened.

PETER ROBINSON: It has not. Last question, your advice for the vice president.

NIALL FERGUSON: You know, I think one of the most annoying things about academics is the way they give advice to people in positions of power. And this is one thing I’ve got from reading and writing the Life of Kissinger. When he was in the White House, when he was there in the situation room, there was nothing more annoying than his former Harvard colleagues coming to Washington to complain about Cambodia.

So I’m not going to be that kind of professor. I’m not going to be the kind of person who has no access to classified information and lectures the president and vice president. I’ll call it as I see it, but I’ll judge them by results, not by tweets.

PETER ROBINSON: Niall Ferguson, thank you. Thank you for Uncommon Knowledge, the Hoover Institution and FOX Nation. I’m Peter Robinson.

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