Niall Ferguson on the Empire America Won't Admit To

Robinson's Podcast #232 - Niall Ferguson: Trump v. Harris | Israel v. Hamas | Russia v. Ukraine

Sir Niall Ferguson is the Milbank Family Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and a senior faculty fellow of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University, where he served for twelve years as the Laurence A. Tisch Professor of History. In this episode, Robinson and Niall discuss three of the biggest conflicts currently gripping the news—the election in the United States and the two wars between Israel and Hamas on the one hand, and Russia and Ukraine on the other. Undergirding the entire discussion is the question of whether the United States is an empire, whether it is failing, and what the world needs America to be. Niall's most recent book is Doom: The Politics of Catastrophe (Penguin, 2021).

Robinson Erhardt researches symbolic logic and the foundations of mathematics at Stanford University.

[honesty_-nohe]

UK is a colony, Germany is a colony, Japan is a colony, South Korea is a colony....!!

[mestizounsolo]

Lol just like Empires BEFORE its the same united states IS EMPIRE

[ngaiForrest]

Criminals do not consider themselves criminals

[SteveBeaty-wd]

We're not an empire, we're the cops. Sometimes we're dirty cops.

[rastoferi]

Just because bretton woods decide USD to be the international reserve currency

[JohnStarkey-uz]

The comparison to empire is both more profound and simpler. In its very creation, it grew as empires do. Russia had an emperor, not a king, because it was a contiguous, continental land empire ... just like the United States ... which grew from Atlantic to Pacific through continuous territorial acquisition. The nature of that growth, from separate colonies into a collection of an ever increasing number of states, defines an empire better than it does a unitary nation state. It's one of the few countries that is identified by its federated status while actually lacking a conventional country name. Having grown in such a fashion, it's only natural that that expansionary urge would continue. What was Hawaii if not a conquered territory? President Cleveland called for the restoration of the Hawaiian monarchy exactly because he was an anti-imperialist.

[vincentmcleanpodcast]

Rock on America—it’s called the Strongest Tribe

[shamsamehmood]

Every empire eventually falls and they're on the way down, God willing

[abstractalien]

Guam, Hawaii, and Alaska are very colonyesque as well

[awilliams]

America is the most powerful nation in the history of the world

[daviddickey]

The contiental US was built just like an empire, acquiring territory piece at a time until it spread across North America and beyond.

[yaneznayoui]

Thats great! Its beneficial to be at the top, especially when you're a capitalistic liberal democracy.

[rmwarthen]

It projects to keep the seas open for commerce. Oil, goods, fuel, etc. For all countries really.

[joaquinpraveenvishnu]

I'm here only to look at Robinson's face. He has the same expression all the time. But 8 dont know why im obsessed with that. Lol

[Sleepingbear]

Damned if you do, damned if you don’t…let’s go back to 1940 when the UK was begging for our help. Well, what does the U.S. do to stop the next global bully?

[km]

A lot of words that say absolutely nothing. America is the greatest force for freedom that the world has ever known. We have sacrificed the blood of our sons to protect that freedom and at great fanancial cost. And there sits a man who is a beneficiary of those sacrifices and casts doubt on the legitimacy of those sacrifices. As an American, I would rather you just say a polite thank you and thank your lucky stars for America.

[EllenHarbus]

Most countries own and protect a few small islands. We are not an empire. We are a powerful country. So?

[benjamin-te]

I've been listening to Dr Ferguson for years and respect his take on world affairs. He unlike many political scholars do not mix words or sugar-coat his position if it is critical to popular thought. In my mind his word is legit.

[boomerbill]

Sounds like this guy has Empire Envy 😂

[creepystares]

every empire did their own way and always think that they're current definition is that they are doing it better than the prior. but at the end of the day, history shows they pretty much are the same. it's great if born to them, sucks if not.