The End of the American Empire
00:41:
(David Frum)
Hello, and welcome to The David Fromm Show.
00:44:
(David Frum)
I'm David Fromm, a staff writer at The Atlantic.
00:47:
(David Frum)
My guest this week will be Margaret McMillan, the eminent historian and scholar of international relations.
00:54:
(David Frum)
Our topic is The End of the American Empire.
00:57:
(David Frum)
My book this week will be The Old Curiosity Shop by Charles Dickens.
01:02:
(David Frum)
And I hope you will stay to the end of the program to hear that discussion.
01:06:
(David Frum)
But first, some preliminary thoughts on some recent events.
01:10:
(David Frum)
I'm going to open with an ancient story that has, I think, some points of familiarity with modern-day Americans.
01:18:
(David Frum)
I think you'll see what I mean as I go along.
01:20:
(David Frum)
Let me start with the story.
01:22:
(David Frum)
In the year 448 of this era, a Roman writer named Priscus accompanied his friend Maximin on an embassy to the camp of Attila the Hun.
01:34:
(David Frum)
They were sent by the Roman emperor, Theodysius II, who reigned in Constantinople, the capital of the eastern domains of the Roman Empire.
01:41:
(David Frum)
And they were sent on a mission laden with lavish gifts for the benefit of Attila.
01:47:
(David Frum)
There was gold.
01:48:
(David Frum)
There was silver.
01:49:
(David Frum)
There were spices.
01:50:
(David Frum)
There were silks.
01:51:
(David Frum)
There was all the wealth of the highly developed Roman realms, all on their way to the cross-denubian camp of the terrifying barbarian chief.
02:00:
(David Frum)
Now, at the time, 448, Attila commanded probably the most formidable military force on the entire European continent.
02:07:
(David Frum)
It had ravaged the domains of the Western Romans, and the Eastern Romans were terrified that this weapon would be turned on them.
02:14:
(David Frum)
And so they sent the gifts to propitiate Attila.
02:17:
(David Frum)
As I said, gold, silks, spices, everything you could want.
02:21:
(David Frum)
Priscus recorded his recollections of the visit.
02:24:
(David Frum)
That recording still survives.
02:25:
(David Frum)
You can read it online to this day.
02:27:
(David Frum)
He described what it was like to meet Attila, to watch Attila eat.
02:30:
(David Frum)
And he described delivering, he described his friend, rather, Maximin, delivering a letter from the Roman emperor full of good wishes for Attila's health and prosperity and pleading for Attila's grace and favor.
02:42:
(David Frum)
a humiliating thing for a Roman emperor, but necessary under the circumstances.
02:46:
(David Frum)
As I say, all of this is recorded.
02:49:
(David Frum)
And it came to mind when I read the story in Axios of the government of Switzerland sending a delegation to Washington, D.C., bearing gifts for President Donald Trump.
02:58:
(David Frum)
a personalized Rolex desk lock, a solid gold bar, apparently a kilogram in weight worth $130,000 inscribed with the numbers 45 and 47.
03:09:
(David Frum)
So it was the two terms of Donald Trump's presidency.
03:12:
(David Frum)
So personalized to Donald Trump, the gold bar, a nice touch if you're Swiss and profusions of flattery and good wishes from the government of Switzerland to Donald Trump.
03:22:
(David Frum)
And as with Attila,
03:24:
(David Frum)
It paid off.
03:26:
(David Frum)
Shortly afterwards, it was announced that the American tariff imposed by Donald Trump on Swiss goods would be cut from 39% to 15%.
03:35:
(David Frum)
So if you enjoy your coffee and Nespresso pods, good news for you.
03:39:
(David Frum)
The tariff on Nespresso pods will drop.
03:41:
(David Frum)
Other Swiss goods, chocolate, watches, those will all be cut too.
03:44:
(David Frum)
And good news for Switzerland, good news for Americans and buyers of Swiss goods, good news for the world economy.
03:50:
(David Frum)
But as I read the story and recalled Priscus's visit to Attila, I found myself wondering, what do the Swiss really think after they buy Donald Trump's favor with a clock and a gold bar?
04:03:
(David Frum)
I mean, Switzerland is a highly developed country with strict rules and standards of behavior.
04:09:
(David Frum)
Swiss government officials do not accept gifts.
04:12:
(David Frum)
They don't take gold bars.
04:13:
(David Frum)
I don't know much about Swiss law, but I'm guessing that that would be frowned on by Swiss rules and by Swiss public opinion.
04:18:
(David Frum)
They would not accept that their government accept these kinds of lavish personal presence.
04:23:
(David Frum)
But in the United States, it seems to be okay.
04:26:
(David Frum)
Does Switzerland respect the United States more after buying Donald Trump's favor with a gold brick?
04:31:
(David Frum)
Or does it respect it less?
04:33:
(David Frum)
Is there, as there was with Priscus's account of the visit to Attila, a kind of quaint, mixed with the fear, certain condescension and contempt of people of a superior cultural level to people of a lower cultural level, barbarians who accept bribes.
04:46:
(David Frum)
Now, the theory of the gift to Donald Trump is that these gifts, the gold bar and the clock, will someday go to the Donald Trump presidential library.
04:56:
(David Frum)
And that makes them legal.
04:58:
(David Frum)
Remember, the United States Constitution forbids presidents, forbids anyone, but forbids presidents to accept gifts from foreign powers, except with the express consent of Congress.
05:09:
(David Frum)
And of course, there are all kinds of anti-corruption statutes that apply even to the president where he can't take bribes and gifts.
05:14:
(David Frum)
But the library has become a loophole.
05:16:
(David Frum)
And it's to the library that, for example, the jumbo jet that the government of Qatar has given Donald Trump is supposedly going to go.
05:23:
(David Frum)
When people heard about the gift of the jet from Qatar to the library, when people who wish to defend Donald Trump, that is, they recalled that there's an old Air Force One in the Reagan Library in California.
05:34:
(David Frum)
But that Air Force One, which was the plane flown by presidents from Kennedy, John F. Kennedy to Ronald Reagan, was decommissioned.
05:40:
(David Frum)
It doesn't fly anymore.
05:41:
(David Frum)
It's on the ground.
05:42:
(David Frum)
And tourists can enter and walk around and see it as it was, but it can't be used anymore.
05:47:
(David Frum)
It can't fly.
05:49:
(David Frum)
But the jet that the Qataris are going to give Donald Trump to his library
05:52:
(David Frum)
is apparently going to remain operational.
05:55:
(David Frum)
And the idea is, yeah, I mean, it will belong to the Trump so-called library, but Trump will be able, and his air is in their turn, to fly around in it and to use it until such time as it, too, ultimately meets whatever fate it is.
06:05:
(David Frum)
But for now, it's an operational airplane that has been given to the library, along with the gold bar, along with all the other benefits that are sluicing through Washington.
06:14:
(David Frum)
The New York Times recently reported that Pakistan had bought itself a lot of goodwill and a lower tariff rate than India.
06:20:
(David Frum)
by splashing benefits around the Trump circle.
06:22:
(David Frum)
There's just money upon money, gift upon gift, flowing from all the allies and all the dependents of the United States into Trump's Washington, making many people very comfortable and some very rich.
06:34:
(David Frum)
This is not how a Republican system of government is supposed to work.
06:38:
(David Frum)
As I said, it's the Constitution contemplated this fate and tried to forbid it.
06:43:
(David Frum)
But that provision, like so many others, has just gone out the window.
06:45:
(David Frum)
It's also illegal for the president to impose tariffs.
06:48:
(David Frum)
Tariffs belong to Congress.
06:49:
(David Frum)
It's also illegal for the president to withhold money that Congress has appropriated.
06:54:
(David Frum)
The Supreme Court has ruled that the president cannot refuse to spend money that Congress appropriated.
06:58:
(David Frum)
He cannot withhold the funds.
06:59:
(David Frum)
He cannot pocket veto them.
07:01:
(David Frum)
That's the law.
07:02:
(David Frum)
In the same way that Donald Trump cannot spend money.
07:04:
(David Frum)
He cannot say, I'm taking this money from the tariffs and giving it to the farmers or whoever else I like.
07:09:
(David Frum)
That's a power of the purse.
07:10:
(David Frum)
That belongs to Congress, or at least that's what the Constitution says.
07:13:
(David Frum)
That's what it used to be.
07:14:
(David Frum)
But as I said, with the gifts, with the tariffs, the emoluments, all of it out the window, it's a different kind of regime.
07:21:
(David Frum)
The theme this week is the end of the American empire.
07:23:
(David Frum)
And what I mean by that is not that the United States is going to, is diminishing so very rapidly in power and wealth.
07:30:
(David Frum)
But the United States has always been something more than a system based on power and wealth.
07:35:
(David Frum)
It's been an idea in the minds of people.
07:37:
(David Frum)
It symbolized something.
07:39:
(David Frum)
And that something has been very important and very powerful.
07:41:
(David Frum)
It's part of the power and wealth of the United States, but it's also bigger than wealth or power.
07:46:
(David Frum)
There's a kind of belief that people all over the world have had.
07:49:
(David Frum)
It's a reason why people migrate to the United States.
07:51:
(David Frum)
It's a reason why people who are not Americans still look to the United States with trust and hope when they get in trouble and they need protection against aggression or violence or domination.
08:01:
(David Frum)
There's something about America that is supposed to mean more.
08:05:
(David Frum)
It's an idea in the minds of human beings, not just battalions and divisions and entries in a Federal Reserve credit book.
08:13:
(David Frum)
The United States is right now amassing in the Caribbean the largest military force, naval force seen in that sea since apparently the Cuban Missile Crisis, or so it's reported.
08:22:
(David Frum)
Apparently, President Trump contemplates deploying this power in some way against Venezuela, a dictatorship under a crooked leader, for sure, Nicolas Maduro, that's involved in all kinds of bad activities from money laundering to drug smuggling associated with Cuba and with Russia.
08:38:
(David Frum)
And it is hated by its own people.
08:40:
(David Frum)
There's a lot of reasons why the United States would regard Venezuela as a legitimate object of concern.
08:45:
(David Frum)
But a military expedition against Venezuela would require, normally, again, on the same theory that the president's not supposed to take gifts, would require the consent of Congress.
08:55:
(David Frum)
And it would be wise and well for the United States to mobilize regional allies to join with it in any project involving Venezuela.
09:03:
(David Frum)
The United States has always advertised itself as something more than just another big power that throws its weight around.
09:09:
(David Frum)
It represents some idea of international law and consensus.
09:12:
(David Frum)
And to demonstrate that, to make that vivid, when it deploys power on a large scale, it does so in association with others.
09:19:
(David Frum)
The allies are there both because they bear risks and pay costs, but also because they create a legitimacy and show this is not just one powerful country.
09:27:
(David Frum)
or one powerful man acting out its wishes.
09:30:
(David Frum)
This is some kind of representation of a consensus of many nations.
09:34:
(David Frum)
I think we would all have one view of what was happening in Venezuela if right now
09:38:
(David Frum)
President Trump had gone to Congress and obtained some kind of authorization, had assembled Colombia and Mexico and Brazil and other regional neighbors to cooperate with the United States, whether they sent literal military forces or not, that they would have some stake.
09:52:
(David Frum)
And if you were explaining his plan for the future of Venezuela, some system of moving toward elections, recognizing some kind of legitimacy, creating some kind of path of development so that the many millions of
10:03:
(David Frum)
Venezuelans who've had to flee their country, most of them, the single largest number of them in Colombia, but in other countries too, could hope to return home and a way to forge a democratic and successful Venezuela for the future.
10:16:
(David Frum)
The plan seems to be just to either hit them from the air, probably, or intimidate them into replacing Maduro with the next thug in line.
10:24:
(David Frum)
No elections, no authorization, no plan, no consent by neighbors, just an expression of dominance and force as if the United States were some
10:33:
(David Frum)
Some imperial power of the past, exercising gunboat diplomacy to replace this dictator, who's obnoxious to the gold bar receiving president of the United States, with another dictator less obnoxious to the gold bar receiving president of the United States.
10:47:
(David Frum)
That's a change in what America was.
10:50:
(David Frum)
And it's something that everybody has to accommodate in their thinking.
10:54:
(David Frum)
When Donald Trump was elected the first time,
10:57:
(David Frum)
Friends of the United States could say, well, you know, that was kind of a fluke.
11:00:
(David Frum)
It was a good run.
11:01:
(David Frum)
And the American people wanted Hillary Clinton.
11:02:
(David Frum)
That's pretty clear that she won by a big margin.
11:05:
(David Frum)
It was not a close election.
11:06:
(David Frum)
Had Hillary Clinton won the popular vote, won the electoral college, the popular vote margin would not have been considered an especially close one.
11:13:
(David Frum)
But the system is ancient and glitchy, and it produced this one weird result.
11:17:
(David Frum)
But the American people spoke in the congressional elections of 2018.
11:21:
(David Frum)
They replaced Trump's party in the House with a Democratic majority, and then they ejected Trump himself in 2020.
11:28:
(David Frum)
Everybody can breathe a deep sigh and get back to normal.
11:33:
(David Frum)
But it happened again.
11:34:
(David Frum)
It happened a second time, and this time with a popular vote behind it.
11:39:
(David Frum)
And everybody, whether they wish America well or ill, has to accept this is
11:43:
(David Frum)
really an expression of some kind of American preference.
11:46:
(David Frum)
And if it happened twice, it can happen three times.
11:50:
(David Frum)
And the whole world has to adjust to a new kind of United States where the president takes gold bars, where the president's administration is perforated and permeated by foreign gift giving.
12:01:
(David Frum)
and where power is used without much regard to what the formal letter of the constitution says, and where power can be used, where military power can be deployed without Congress, without allies, to replace one dictator with another dictator at the whim and wish of the president of the United States.
12:16:
(David Frum)
It's a different kind of country.
12:18:
(David Frum)
So even regardless of whether or not American power in any objective sense is ebbing or waxing or waning, it's clear the American idea is ebbing.
12:28:
(David Frum)
What America meant, what it means, is ebbing and changing and evolving.
12:33:
(David Frum)
And the United States is becoming something a little less special and a lot more like, well, like empires past.
12:39:
(David Frum)
You know, when Attila died in 453, he died five years after the meeting with Briskus, the Huns left nothing behind.
12:45:
(David Frum)
There are no buildings.
12:46:
(David Frum)
There are not even any documents.
12:48:
(David Frum)
We don't even really know exactly what language they spoke.
12:50:
(David Frum)
And there was a language called Hunnic that people refer to.
12:53:
(David Frum)
But whether it was Turkish in origin or Mongol or what, no one really knows because they wrote nothing down.
12:58:
(David Frum)
There are no cultural remains.
12:59:
(David Frum)
There are no achievements of the Hunnic Empire.
13:01:
(David Frum)
It was just a system of attack, aggression, domination, exploitation, predation.
13:08:
(David Frum)
And then Attila died and the whole thing fell apart and he's gone dead.
13:11:
(David Frum)
That's it.
13:12:
(David Frum)
Nothing more to say about the Huns.
13:14:
(David Frum)
The mark of a civilization is that it does leave something behind.
13:16:
(David Frum)
It creates in its time and then it leaves behind something better for others to build upon.
13:22:
(David Frum)
That's what we thought the United States was.
13:24:
(David Frum)
Not some extractive regime like Attila's, but an ongoing civilization committed to ideals of which democracy was one, but many others.
13:32:
(David Frum)
Respect for the decent opinion of mankind.
13:34:
(David Frum)
It's in the Declaration of Independence that the United States would show respect for the opinions of others.
13:39:
(David Frum)
And that was said when the United States was small and weak, but it remained a factor in American thinking, even as the United States became great and powerful.
13:46:
(David Frum)
Respect for the opinion of mankind.
13:47:
(David Frum)
if you're going to invade somebody uh you do it with some idea of making the situation better you do it with the permission of your congress you do it with association with allies you do it with a clear vision of the end state otherwise you're just another vanished historical predator you know i don't think literally the united states is an empire exactly and i don't think it's on its way out exactly but it's changing into something
14:12:
(David Frum)
I don't recognize anymore.
14:13:
(David Frum)
I think a lot of people feel the same way.
14:15:
(David Frum)
I grew up in Canada where the United States represented a powerful ideal of security and something to admire, something you could rely upon.
14:22:
(David Frum)
I don't think there are many Canadians who feel that now.
14:24:
(David Frum)
I don't think there are many Danes who feel that now.
14:26:
(David Frum)
I don't think there are many true friends of America who feel it now.
14:28:
(David Frum)
But I think there are a lot of enemies in the United States that feel relieved and grateful that the United States no longer pretends to be more, but has agreed under Donald Trump to be less.
14:38:
(David Frum)
Hence the gold bar, useless, shiny,
14:41:
(David Frum)
going to be put in a vault somewhere, not do anything except endure as a kind of memento of shame and disgrace of this once so admired gleaming democracy.
14:53:
(David Frum)
And now my dialogue with Margaret Macmillan.
14:55:
(David Frum)
But first, a quick break.
16:15:
(David Frum)
Margaret Macmillan is one of the modern world's leading historians of war and peace.
16:21:
(David Frum)
Many will know her from her best-selling books about the beginning and the end of the First World War, The Road to 1914, and Paris 1919.
16:30:
(David Frum)
She has also written important histories of global conflict, of women in British India, and of the Nixon-Mao relationship as well.
16:38:
(David Frum)
Margaret Macmillan has divided her career between her native Canada and the United Kingdom, where she served among many distinguished roles as warden of St. Anthony's College at Oxford University.
16:48:
(David Frum)
I'm very grateful and delighted to welcome her today to the David Fromm Show.
16:52:
(David Frum)
Thank you, Margaret.
16:52:
(David Frum)
Well, thank you, too.
16:54:
(David Frum)
Let me start by taking us all back on 101 international relations.
16:59:
(David Frum)
The lesson that we all thought we had learned from historians like you about the 20th century is that
17:06:
(David Frum)
We tried to put together a stable peace in 1919 without the United States.
17:11:
(David Frum)
Well, they didn't know it was going to be without the United States, but that's the way it turned out.
17:14:
(David Frum)
And that project completely failed.
17:17:
(David Frum)
Great Depression, Second World War.
17:19:
(David Frum)
And the lesson that leaders of the world took from the Second World War is that stable peace depends on American presence.
17:26:
(David Frum)
And that lesson held for, by international relations standards, a reasonably long time.
17:30:
(David Frum)
But it seems to be becoming unstuck now.
17:33:
(David Frum)
In the Obama years, there was a phrase that went round about a post-American world.
17:37:
(David Frum)
And the idea there was that would be a post-American world because India and China and others would get so big and powerful that they would overtake the United States.
17:44:
(David Frum)
But no one ever seemed to contemplate was a return to your Paris 1919 situation and a post-American world because America withdrew.
17:52:
(David Frum)
Can you reflect on that experience, the comparisons then and now, and what lessons we ought to have learned and seem to be failing to learn?
17:59:
(David Frum)
Yeah.
17:59:
(Margaret Macmillan)
Well, I suppose what we should always remember is that any international order or any international system is only as good as the parties in it.
18:08:
(Margaret Macmillan)
And so unless you have the most powerful nations in the world willing to support a stable international order, you're in trouble.
18:14:
(Margaret Macmillan)
And I think where the League of Nations did have problems, I wouldn't agree with it was complete failure.
18:18:
(Margaret Macmillan)
I think it did actually do some very good things.
18:21:
(Margaret Macmillan)
But where it was in trouble was that it didn't have the United States in it, and it also for a long time didn't have the Soviet Union, two very big powers indeed.
18:28:
(Margaret Macmillan)
And the Second World War, I think, brought a recognition that if you want to build an international organization and an international order, then you've got to get the good powers in if you possibly can.
18:37:
(Margaret Macmillan)
And so the United States, under President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, was very determined to get the United States in, to win over American public opinion,
18:46:
(Margaret Macmillan)
to get the United States into the United Nations and all the Bretton Woods organizations, but also to get the Soviet Union in.
18:52:
(Margaret Macmillan)
And I think that's what helped to make the post-World War II system work better, that there was a commitment by the big powers.
18:59:
(Margaret Macmillan)
And eventually, of course, communist China came in as well.
19:02:
(David Frum)
We do seem to have in the present day a kind of American abdication, an American withdrawal, not just from a role in the system, but also from the rules of the system.
19:14:
(David Frum)
And right now we're poised on, apparently, the verge of a United States war on Venezuela.
19:18:
(David Frum)
With no authorization by Congress, no partners, no allies, no real stated cause of the war, and no idea of what the United States hopes to achieve.
19:28:
(David Frum)
It's just acting like a pirate state.
19:31:
(David Frum)
And again, it may all fizzle out, but it looks like there's a kind of completely role-less, rule-less American war coming.
19:37:
(Margaret Macmillan)
I think you're expressing very much what I feel as well, that the United States is playing a role which we didn't expect it would play because it has, in fact, played a very significant role in keeping a world order.
19:48:
(Margaret Macmillan)
We don't have to agree with everything it's done, and I wouldn't agree with everything it's done since 1945, but it's been key in keeping the world on an even keel.
19:56:
(Margaret Macmillan)
And I think what's been very important is that the United States and other powers have
20:00:
(Margaret Macmillan)
have obeyed the rules.
20:01:
(Margaret Macmillan)
There are international treaties, international laws, international conventions.
20:05:
(Margaret Macmillan)
They've also followed the norms that nations behave in certain ways if they're responsible and don't behave in other ways.
20:11:
(Margaret Macmillan)
And we now see United States under this present administration, which really doesn't seem to care about any of that, that makes its own rules, breaks whatever norms and rules and ignores whatever values it doesn't like.
20:23:
(Margaret Macmillan)
And once you get a great power doing that, perhaps the key power in the international system, then others will follow along
20:29:
(Margaret Macmillan)
We've already seen Russia beginning to abdicate any responsibility for the international order, beginning to break the rules, beginning to invade its neighbors.
20:37:
(Margaret Macmillan)
And we're now seeing a United States which...
20:39:
(Margaret Macmillan)
I don't think it's planning to invade its neighbors anytime soon, but it's certainly not upholding a system where everyone is expected to obey the rules.
20:48:
(Margaret Macmillan)
And I find this very dangerous indeed.
20:50:
(Margaret Macmillan)
And in the case of Venezuela, it's not at all clear what the United States wants to do.
20:54:
(Margaret Macmillan)
That's the other worrying thing.
20:55:
(Margaret Macmillan)
What is their purpose and what is their goal and what are their plans?
20:59:
(Margaret Macmillan)
Very unclear.
21:00:
(David Frum)
Yeah, well, that's just a caveat to the question, but not attacking their neighbors.
21:04:
(David Frum)
Greenland isn't literally a neighbor of the United States, but there does seem to be a fairly developed plan to attack Greenland.
21:10:
(David Frum)
I'm guessing that as experienced players of the board game risk know that to secure North America, you need Venezuela, Greenland, and Kamchatka.
21:17:
(David Frum)
So the pattern here is going to be a little disturbing if we find ourselves at war with Kamchatka.
21:22:
(David Frum)
There are American troops in Greenland under NATO arrangement, but the United States wants more and more and more.
21:27:
(David Frum)
And aggression against Greenland would be a very feasible project.
21:31:
(Margaret Macmillan)
I don't see
21:51:
(Margaret Macmillan)
that they don't want to become part of another empire.
21:54:
(Margaret Macmillan)
They would rather come out of the Danish empire and have their independence, but they certainly don't want to be part of an American empire.
22:00:
(Margaret Macmillan)
And what I find about a lot of the Trump administration's policies is I just don't get the point.
22:04:
(Margaret Macmillan)
I don't see what they're gaining from the actions they're taking.
22:07:
(Margaret Macmillan)
In fact, if anything, they're creating pushback, which is presumably not what they want.
22:12:
(David Frum)
Yeah.
22:12:
(David Frum)
Well, I think in Greenland, I think I do see a glimmer of what they want.
22:16:
(David Frum)
As you say, I think the American presence in Greenland goes back before the Second World War.
22:20:
(David Frum)
It starts before the United States enters the Second World War in 1941 with the consent of Greenland.
22:26:
(David Frum)
Denmark was, of course, occupied by the Nazis.
22:28:
(David Frum)
There was a government in exile in Greenland.
22:31:
(David Frum)
And they welcome the American presence in the same way that Iceland welcomed the British presence to keep the northern sea lanes free from Nazi submarines.
22:38:
(David Frum)
But I think the logic I do see is, yeah, you can mine in Greenland, but you're subject to Danish law.
22:45:
(David Frum)
And it's hard to bribe people in Denmark.
22:46:
(David Frum)
Whereas if Greenland were annexed, then mining in Greenland could be subject to American law.
22:51:
(David Frum)
And as we see, America is a...
22:53:
(David Frum)
much looser approach to bribery of misleading officials.
22:56:
(David Frum)
That seems to be a motive.
22:58:
(David Frum)
But as you say, otherwise, aside from the question of bribery, there's not a lot of point to it.
23:02:
(David Frum)
I mean, Greenland is part of Denmark, and Denmark is a country where people can and do successfully do business.
23:06:
(Margaret Macmillan)
Well, I think the same thing's happening with Canada.
23:09:
(Margaret Macmillan)
I mean, the United States has always had access to Canadian resources.
23:12:
(Margaret Macmillan)
It's had a quiet neighbor on its northern border, and we've
23:14:
(Margaret Macmillan)
had our disagreements.
23:16:
(Margaret Macmillan)
But why do what the present administration is doing and alienate Canada unnecessarily?
23:21:
(Margaret Macmillan)
I don't see that this is benefiting the United States.
23:24:
(Margaret Macmillan)
What it is doing is creating a lot of mistrust out there in the world of the United States and its motives.
23:29:
(Margaret Macmillan)
And once you lose trust, I think it is very difficult to restore it.
23:32:
(David Frum)
I think the administration, this administration, likes the idea of being able to do whatever it wants regardless of other people.
23:38:
(David Frum)
And in fact, that may be the real fun of it, that it's the regardless of other.
23:42:
(David Frum)
It doesn't have to make sense.
23:43:
(David Frum)
It just has to make the people running the policy feel empowered and dominant.
23:48:
(David Frum)
Because in some ways, I think Trumpism, and this goes back to the points I wanted to ask you about at the beginning.
23:53:
(David Frum)
Trumpism is a psychological coping mechanism for feelings of weakness.
23:57:
(David Frum)
I talked before about the post-American world concept that was circulating in the 2010s.
24:01:
(David Frum)
And the idea then was China and India were going to get so big, America would seem reduced in comparison.
24:06:
(David Frum)
And so Trumpism is about self-assertion.
24:10:
(David Frum)
But self-assertion on a much smaller scale, which is, you know, we're giving up on Asia.
24:14:
(David Frum)
We're giving up on Europe.
24:16:
(David Frum)
We're going to have a Western Hemisphere zone of influence stretching from Argentina to Greenland that will be dominated.
24:22:
(David Frum)
It'll run much more like a 19th century zone of influence than like the American idea of a world order governed by rules.
24:28:
(David Frum)
But it will be America's and America will otherwise retreat.
24:31:
(David Frum)
And the more boastfully America conducts itself,
24:34:
(David Frum)
The less people will notice, I think Trump feels and others around him hope, the less people will notice that America is actually reducing its position in the world.
24:41:
(Margaret Macmillan)
Well, the Chinese will notice, won't they?
24:43:
(Margaret Macmillan)
And a number of others will notice.
24:45:
(Margaret Macmillan)
And I think you have a China which is spending more and more on defense, which is talking really more and more openly about how it sees a future role for China as a dominant power.
24:54:
(Margaret Macmillan)
It's certainly in East Asia, perhaps further afield.
24:57:
(Margaret Macmillan)
And a China which is, at least as far as we can tell, beginning to surpass the United States in very key technological developments.
25:04:
(Margaret Macmillan)
And so the idea that the United States can sort of pull up the drawbridge, I mean, even in the 19th century, that was becoming a rather old idea.
25:12:
(Margaret Macmillan)
And the United States has always been protected by two big oceans, but we are living in a very globalized world with highly...
25:19:
(Margaret Macmillan)
advanced weapons that can travel very, very fast in some cases.
25:22:
(Margaret Macmillan)
The idea that the United States can somehow put a motor around itself, I think simply doesn't work anymore.
25:27:
(Margaret Macmillan)
It hasn't worked actually for decades since the end of the Second World War.
25:30:
(Margaret Macmillan)
And I think also the idea that the United States can have a zone of influence.
25:35:
(Margaret Macmillan)
I mean, this whole idea of zones of influence, which seems to be revived now,
25:38:
(Margaret Macmillan)
I think is a formula for instability, because what you get is always the points where the zones meet and you always get meddling in each other's zones.
25:46:
(Margaret Macmillan)
I mean, you know, if the United States tries to dominate the whole of the Western Hemisphere, I would predict and I think it wouldn't be a difficult prediction that other powers, China, for example, which is always already making inroads into Latin America, already building ports.
25:59:
(Margaret Macmillan)
already winning friends and influencing people, will continue to do it.
26:03:
(Margaret Macmillan)
And there will be points at which the Chinese zone of influence in the Pacific, for example, clashes with the American zone of influence.
26:10:
(Margaret Macmillan)
And so the idea that you can have these neat little boxes and just ignore the rest of the world, it seems to me, is unrealistic.
26:16:
(David Frum)
Well, a lot of it comes from too much looking at maps and not enough looking at economic realities.
26:21:
(David Frum)
So the idea that Brazil is the largest country in South America, the most powerful, it's also a major agricultural exporter like the United States.
26:28:
(David Frum)
Its economy isn't very complementary to the United States.
26:31:
(David Frum)
It's more competitive.
26:32:
(David Frum)
You know, if you're going to have a Western hemisphere behind high tariff walls, what does Brazil do for a living?
26:39:
(David Frum)
I guess it can sell coffee to the United States, but who takes its soybeans?
26:42:
(David Frum)
Who takes its beef?
26:43:
(David Frum)
Who takes its other agricultural products?
26:45:
(David Frum)
The Americans produce those.
26:47:
(David Frum)
And the whole idea of a multilateral free trade system is you don't make your partners your prisoners.
26:53:
(David Frum)
In a multilateral system, Brazil can be a member of the American Security Alliance system while still selling its agricultural products to other people who need them, which will not be the United States.
27:02:
(Margaret Macmillan)
No, I think Brazil is increasingly selling its products to Asia.
27:06:
(Margaret Macmillan)
And certainly the countries on the west coast of Latin America are dealing with Asia.
27:10:
(Margaret Macmillan)
I mean, I was in Chile fairly recently and met someone there who had a fruit farm.
27:15:
(Margaret Macmillan)
And she told me that most of her products go to China now.
27:18:
(Margaret Macmillan)
because the Chinese have an enormous appetite with their population for the products of Latin America.
27:23:
(Margaret Macmillan)
And what also the danger of zones of influence, of course, is that the peoples within them don't always choose to be there and don't always like it.
27:30:
(Margaret Macmillan)
So not only do you have always the threats from outside, the tensions with the other zones of influence, but you also have a rest of the population who don't like the fact that they've ended up under your domination.
27:40:
(David Frum)
Well, that is such an important point.
27:42:
(David Frum)
I'm very grateful to you for making it because for those who want to take pride in the American role in the world, Europe and Northwest Asia, Germany, Japan, those are good stories.
27:51:
(David Frum)
The Latin American story is not a good story.
27:54:
(David Frum)
And even its best chapters aren't that great.
27:56:
(David Frum)
And its worst chapters are
27:57:
(David Frum)
of the darkest chapters in american history and pretty bad even by world standards i mean you mentioned chile i mean you know the pinochet coup in 1973 it wasn't the doing of the united states but it wasn't stopped by the united states and the united states certainly had the power to stop it if it wanted to and argentina can possibly even worse their dictatorship in the 70s even worse than the pinochet i mean certainly more
28:21:
(David Frum)
Crazy.
28:23:
(David Frum)
I think the death toll was bigger in Argentina than in Chile, but Argentina has a bigger population.
28:28:
(David Frum)
But there seemed to be a kind of sadism and cruelty and stupidity and insanity to the Argentine program, whereas the Chilean was sort of more cold and ruthless and purposeful.
28:36:
(David Frum)
Not to make that any kind of justification, but just...
28:40:
(David Frum)
So those are bad chapters.
28:41:
(David Frum)
And a lot of them have to do with, as you say, Latin Americans saying, if this is going to be a zone of American empire, we want out...
28:48:
(David Frum)
And the United States Senate says, well, then we will back the people who will lock you in by whatever means they need to lock you in.
28:53:
(Margaret Macmillan)
I think it's absolutely it's a very grim prospect.
28:56:
(Margaret Macmillan)
And, you know, what will happen in Venezuela?
28:59:
(Margaret Macmillan)
Will Maduro go?
29:00:
(Margaret Macmillan)
And if he goes, will someone even worse take over?
29:02:
(Margaret Macmillan)
I mean, there are a lot of.
29:04:
(Margaret Macmillan)
very nasty people around him who presumably will have some control of the military or will there be chaos which won't benefit the very unfortunate people of Venezuela who've already been through so much torment and through so much poverty and so much unnecessary poverty.
29:19:
(Margaret Macmillan)
One of the richest countries in the Americas and it's been reduced to sort of a basket case by incompetent rulers.
29:26:
(Margaret Macmillan)
But I think what the American policies are doing is
29:29:
(Margaret Macmillan)
is reawakening the Latin Americanism, the anti-Americanism, which is always there under the surface in Latin America, and sending the gunboats.
29:37:
(Margaret Macmillan)
I mean, it's back to the pre-World War I period or post-World War I period where the Americans thought they could bring in Latin America under control by sending in the military, and it didn't work then, and I don't think it will work now.
29:51:
(David Frum)
While you were in Chile, I was in Mexico last week, and I spoke to a lot of people about the Maduro regime.
29:56:
(David Frum)
Now, the present government of Mexico under President Claudio Scheinbaum is very Castroid or emotionally.
30:02:
(David Frum)
I mean, they run a fairly conservative domestic policy, but there's a lot of lip service to the glorious ideals of the Castro revolution abroad.
30:08:
(David Frum)
And Mexico ships subsidized oil to Cuba to keep it afloat.
30:13:
(David Frum)
So the government has, the leaders of the government have kind of an emotional connection to Venezuela.
30:18:
(David Frum)
But most Mexicans have little love for the Maduro regime, which has sent 8 million or so refugees spilling all over the world.
30:26:
(David Frum)
The largest group of Venezuelan refugees are in Colombia, and there's a big number in Mexico, as well as, of course, the United States.
30:33:
(David Frum)
But what they're terrified of is unilateral American action.
30:36:
(David Frum)
They want some deference to the concept that the United States respects the other countries of Latin America.
30:42:
(David Frum)
If you want to intervene, do so in a multilateral way, get some buy-in and consent, and reassure everyone that the goal is to restore the Venezuelan democracy that existed before Chavez and Maduro, and not to appoint the next thug in line who will do business with Trump and avoid some of the provocations that Maduro has indulged in.
31:01:
(Margaret Macmillan)
No, I agree with you completely.
31:03:
(Margaret Macmillan)
And I think, you know, we've seen in recent history, regime change doesn't always go well.
31:09:
(Margaret Macmillan)
You know, I think great powers often have this illusion that because they're so powerful, they can control everything.
31:14:
(Margaret Macmillan)
And it's a temptation and a snare.
31:17:
(Margaret Macmillan)
And you can't control events once they start to happen on the ground.
31:20:
(Margaret Macmillan)
And you don't always get the results you want.
31:22:
(Margaret Macmillan)
I mean, look at Afghanistan today.
31:24:
(Margaret Macmillan)
I mean, I don't think any American government would have wanted what's happened in Afghanistan, but that's what they've got now.
31:29:
(Margaret Macmillan)
They've got a Taliban government again.
31:31:
(David Frum)
Let's go back to the year 1919, which seems to be such a mystic turning point.
31:35:
(David Frum)
I think one of the things that Americans don't remember enough about their history, everyone, I think, is taught in high school the story of the U.S. decision not to join the League of Nations.
31:44:
(David Frum)
But I don't think enough people, because it's a little technical, understand what it meant that the United States in 1919, or actually a little later, 1921 and 23, decided to return to its high tariff policies that prevailed before the First World War.
31:57:
(David Frum)
Europe was ravaged.
31:58:
(David Frum)
Europe needed to export.
32:00:
(David Frum)
Europe needed to earn dollars.
32:01:
(David Frum)
And the United States said, no, we are withdrawing.
32:04:
(David Frum)
And in a way I won't go into here, for complicated reasons, that isolation triggered both the artificial 1920s boom in the United States, but also the 1930s depression.
32:13:
(David Frum)
And Americans remember the boon, and they think, oh, that's our good policies.
32:18:
(David Frum)
they remember the 1930s depression say i guess something happened on wall street but we don't it's very complicated and they don't see that the two are linked together but the people who lived through it understood that that must never be repeated and so after the second world war the united states integrated itself with the with the economies of europe and northwest asia and now it's 1919 again yeah it's sort of beggar your neighbor isn't it and we've seen these tariff wars before and this idea that somehow
32:42:
(Margaret Macmillan)
you can protect your own economy.
32:45:
(Margaret Macmillan)
Well, there are times when protecting your economy and protecting infant industries works.
32:50:
(Margaret Macmillan)
I mean, it worked for the Asian tigers.
32:52:
(Margaret Macmillan)
They protected domestic production for a time until their domestic industries were capable of competing.
32:58:
(Margaret Macmillan)
But in the end, what they did is lower the tariffs.
33:01:
(Margaret Macmillan)
And I think the idea that you can protect your economy by putting up tariffs, especially if you haven't got the basis to develop industries, I don't know.
33:09:
(Margaret Macmillan)
I mean, do you really think
33:11:
(Margaret Macmillan)
that Americans are going to go back to producing things in massive factories, which are now being produced in Asia or elsewhere.
33:19:
(Margaret Macmillan)
I mean, is this the way the American economy is going to go?
33:22:
(Margaret Macmillan)
I don't see it myself.
33:24:
(David Frum)
Yeah.
33:24:
(David Frum)
And tariffs on bananas and chocolate and coffee.
33:28:
(Margaret Macmillan)
Yeah.
33:29:
(Margaret Macmillan)
Well, and the use of tariffs to do non-economic things, the use of tariffs to force political change,
33:35:
(Margaret Macmillan)
or the use of tariffs just to punish someone you don't like.
33:38:
(Margaret Macmillan)
I mean, Canada got another tariff slapped on when the Premier of Ontario did an advertisement with Ronald Reagan's making a speech that President Trump didn't like.
33:47:
(David Frum)
Yeah.
33:48:
(David Frum)
Well, that sends a message to the world, and this is something we need to underscore, that one of the ways that the United States is going backwards is in those years from the end of the Second World War to Trump, there was a thing called the United States that was bigger and different from the president of the moment, and that in many, many areas of
34:05:
(David Frum)
important areas of the United States' relationships with the world didn't matter that much.
34:10:
(David Frum)
NATO went on being NATO.
34:12:
(David Frum)
The US-Japan arrangement went on being the, sometimes it was a little bumpier, sometimes a little smoother.
34:17:
(David Frum)
And sometimes there's some difference that sometimes Democrats were more comfortable with one country than another, and the Republicans were more comfortable with one country than another.
34:26:
(David Frum)
But basically, you did not depend on the moods of the president.
34:30:
(David Frum)
And that's also part of going backwards.
34:32:
(David Frum)
I mean, it makes the United States feel more like a semi-developed country.
34:35:
(Margaret Macmillan)
that the moods of the president matter so much or an absolute monarchy i mean i've always found it an irony that the united states had a revolution in the 18th century to get rid of a king and they've ended up and long before this president i mean they've ended up with the president who has more powers than poor old george the third
34:52:
(Margaret Macmillan)
who was king at the time in England, ever had.
34:55:
(Margaret Macmillan)
But I think what always gave the United States a lot of strength, I mean, it was by far the biggest economic power in the world after the Second World War, and it was the major military power.
35:04:
(Margaret Macmillan)
I mean, it had assets that the Soviet Union couldn't even begin to compete with.
35:08:
(Margaret Macmillan)
But what gave it a great deal of influence, I think, was the fact that people looked up to it.
35:13:
(Margaret Macmillan)
They thought the United States represented a better kind of society, a better kind of politics, a hope for the world.
35:18:
(Margaret Macmillan)
I think also a lot of people had a belief that if the United States
35:21:
(Margaret Macmillan)
makes a mistake as all nations do, it will correct itself because that's what democracies can do.
35:26:
(Margaret Macmillan)
And so what the United States had, and I think there was a very wise, I think he was from one of the Scandinavian countries, a historian called Geert Lundestadt.
35:35:
(Margaret Macmillan)
And he said, the Americans built an empire by invitation.
35:38:
(Margaret Macmillan)
And it was the invitation coming from the people who wanted to be part of it.
35:42:
(Margaret Macmillan)
I mean, the Western European countries wanted American leadership.
35:45:
(Margaret Macmillan)
They wanted American protection.
35:47:
(Margaret Macmillan)
And I think, and the Japanese did too, a number of Asian countries.
35:50:
(Margaret Macmillan)
So this gave the United States tremendous power, far more than the Soviet Union ever had.
35:54:
(Margaret Macmillan)
I mean, the Soviet Union's empire was empire by sheer brute force.
35:58:
(Margaret Macmillan)
And as soon as people could get out, they did.
36:00:
(Margaret Macmillan)
Whereas the United States had great moral authority as well as great power.
36:05:
(Margaret Macmillan)
And that I see is something that it really is losing now.
36:08:
(Margaret Macmillan)
And it seems to me again...
36:09:
(Margaret Macmillan)
extraordinary that a power would throw away obvious advantages.
36:14:
(Margaret Macmillan)
And what I'm struck also is that a great power, and I've asked all my fellow historians about this, and we can't think of other examples, a great power would throw away dependable allies.
36:23:
(Margaret Macmillan)
And you get rid of the ones you can't count on.
36:25:
(Margaret Macmillan)
But getting rid of the dependable ones like Denmark, like Canada, why would you do it?
36:29:
(Margaret Macmillan)
I mean, it doesn't gain you anything, really.
36:32:
(David Frum)
It's so imbecile that when you try to think, is there something deeper going on?
36:37:
(David Frum)
As I said, the theory that I come to is this is a coping mechanism.
36:40:
(David Frum)
It's a retreat under pressure.
36:42:
(David Frum)
What is happening to the United States is retreat under pressure.
36:45:
(David Frum)
It can't that many in American life feel they can't compete with new rivals, China and India.
36:51:
(David Frum)
They're retreating.
36:52:
(David Frum)
But in order to conceal their retreat, especially from themselves,
36:56:
(David Frum)
That they then are more boastful, more obnoxious, more aggressive.
37:00:
(David Frum)
But as you say, where power meets power, the United States suddenly isn't there.
37:06:
(David Frum)
I mean, if you're Vietnam or Indonesia, the United States was the most important factor in your life in 1995.
37:13:
(David Frum)
Since 1995, there's been more and more competition.
37:16:
(David Frum)
And that competition seems to be ending on Chinese terms.
37:19:
(David Frum)
The United States is receding from those places.
37:20:
(David Frum)
And indeed now, after you never know what these things last, but at least as of this speaking, Trump's latest mood swing has tariffs on Vietnam higher than the tariffs on China.
37:32:
(David Frum)
So what's the message to them?
37:34:
(Margaret Macmillan)
Well, I don't get it because we know that Vietnam has a long and complicated history with China.
37:39:
(Margaret Macmillan)
I mean, it was part of the Chinese empire for a thousand years and then broke free.
37:44:
(Margaret Macmillan)
And the Chinese have never been regarded in Vietnam as, I'm exaggerating, but they've usually been regarded as not a very benevolent power, something the Vietnamese want to steer clear of.
37:55:
(Margaret Macmillan)
And the Vietnamese, in spite of the Vietnam War, and this is, I think, quite extraordinary, really looked to the United States, admired the United States, have traded with the United States.
38:03:
(Margaret Macmillan)
And yet the United States policies at the moment seem to be driving them towards China, which I suspect is not where the Vietnamese leadership or the Vietnamese people want to go, but it's a result of American policies.
38:14:
(Margaret Macmillan)
And the Americans are doing the same thing to South Korea.
38:16:
(Margaret Macmillan)
I mean, that raid on the factory...
38:19:
(Margaret Macmillan)
when the technicians were rounded up and accused of being illegal immigrants.
38:22:
(Margaret Macmillan)
This was a factory being built by Hyundai, I think, wasn't it?
38:25:
(Margaret Macmillan)
They're being built in the United States.
38:26:
(David Frum)
I forget which firm, but more than 300 people, I believe, were detained and without warrants and under inhospitable conditions.
38:34:
(David Frum)
Yeah.
38:34:
(Margaret Macmillan)
Yeah.
38:35:
(Margaret Macmillan)
And that did not go down well in South Korea.
38:38:
(Margaret Macmillan)
I mean, the South Korean press there covered it.
38:40:
(Margaret Macmillan)
And the Japanese, again, I mean, I think, who have been firmly in the American camp are now finding themselves sort of pushed at arm's length.
38:48:
(Margaret Macmillan)
So, again, I don't get it.
38:50:
(Margaret Macmillan)
I mean, I think your explanation that perhaps it's a way of covering up a sense of unease may be part of the story.
38:56:
(Margaret Macmillan)
I just don't see what the United States is getting out of it.
38:59:
(David Frum)
Well, the new South Korean president made his first trip abroad to Tokyo.
39:04:
(David Frum)
An unprecedented, he was like, came to power in June, made his first foreign trip to Tokyo.
39:09:
(David Frum)
Unheard of.
39:10:
(David Frum)
Every South Korean president since the coming of the democratic regime has made the first visit to Washington.
39:16:
(David Frum)
As you know well, the Japan-South Korea relationship is fraught.
39:19:
(David Frum)
South Korea was a Japanese colony for
39:21:
(David Frum)
a long time and it was a very brutal occupation.
39:23:
(David Frum)
And South Koreans look to the United States as their protector, principally against North Korea and China, but not a little also against Japan.
39:32:
(David Frum)
And now they're having to make the best deal they could because they, again, the United States just seems gone.
39:37:
(Margaret Macmillan)
Yeah.
39:38:
(Margaret Macmillan)
And again, I speak as a Canadian.
39:40:
(Margaret Macmillan)
I mean, I think you're Canadian too, and you've been in Canada recently.
39:44:
(Margaret Macmillan)
But the shock, I mean, it's just shock and disbelief, actually.
39:49:
(Margaret Macmillan)
What have we done to deserve this?
39:51:
(Margaret Macmillan)
And I was in Ottawa fairly recently, and people there said, everything has shifted.
39:55:
(Margaret Macmillan)
Things we took for granted has just changed.
39:57:
(Margaret Macmillan)
And I said, do you think it'll go back?
39:59:
(Margaret Macmillan)
And one of the people I was talking to said, no.
40:01:
(Margaret Macmillan)
You know, once things shift like this, they don't go back easily.
40:05:
(Margaret Macmillan)
And it doesn't help that we seem to have an American ambassador in Ottawa who behaves like a sort of a kindergarten teacher ticking us off the whole time and telling us to behave better.
40:14:
(David Frum)
Yes.
40:15:
(David Frum)
A former congressman from Michigan, so somebody who should know better, you would think.
40:18:
(Margaret Macmillan)
Yeah, I know.
40:19:
(Margaret Macmillan)
I'm surprised.
40:20:
(Margaret Macmillan)
But he did the same thing, I gather, in the Netherlands.
40:23:
(Margaret Macmillan)
So perhaps this is just a characteristic.
40:26:
(David Frum)
Or maybe they're chosen for obnoxiousness.
40:28:
(David Frum)
Canada's had a very peculiar kind of national.
40:31:
(David Frum)
I mean, it's vast terrain, not a big population, never been a major military power, although it certainly has a very distinguished chapter of military history in two world wars, but always in alliance with others.
40:42:
(David Frum)
But Canada's always benefited from a security guarantee from the great power of the day.
40:47:
(David Frum)
And so in the 19th century, one of the ways I think a lot about the compare and contrast of Canadian and Mexican history, that even though
40:55:
(David Frum)
Canada was also on the American border, and even though it also was at intervals subject to depredations, that the Americans always knew ultimately behind Canada in the 19th century stands Great Britain, which is the dominant military power in the world, certainly the dominant naval power.
41:10:
(David Frum)
So, you know, handle with care.
41:12:
(David Frum)
And then Canada seamlessly transitioned from British protection to American protection.
41:17:
(David Frum)
And it's a shock to the national outlook that the British protection is long gone and the American protection has been withdrawn.
41:25:
(David Frum)
And they're now meeting their neighbor that is behaving to Canada the way it's behaved to many of its Latin American neighbors.
41:32:
(David Frum)
And it's building the same kind of feelings in Canada and pushing, I think, in my opinion, Canada to some destructive ideas about being more self-sufficient in industry, which are not feasible, but which certainly are emotionally appealing.
41:47:
(Margaret Macmillan)
Yeah, no, it'll be interesting to see how far it goes.
41:50:
(Margaret Macmillan)
But I mean, certainly, I mean, I think what Canada is doing something that perhaps it should have done before is it's upping its defense spending.
41:57:
(Margaret Macmillan)
And it's thinking more about how it can find partners elsewhere.
42:00:
(Margaret Macmillan)
I mean, it's been very comfortable to be protected by great powers.
42:04:
(Margaret Macmillan)
Not always, but it has on the whole been comfortable.
42:07:
(Margaret Macmillan)
And I think we've got used to it.
42:09:
(Margaret Macmillan)
And I think we've got used to that we didn't need to do much to defend ourselves because Britain or the United States would always be there.
42:15:
(Margaret Macmillan)
And now we really are having to think about where we fit in the world and how we deal with our situation in the world.
42:21:
(Margaret Macmillan)
And then I think certainly our prime minister has been paying more attention to the Europeans and he's also been going to Asia.
42:27:
(Margaret Macmillan)
And I think this is something that perhaps is necessary, but it's going to be a very hard adjustment for Canada.
42:34:
(David Frum)
I was going to ask you a question drawing on your academic expertise.
42:36:
(David Frum)
So you are both an historian and a teacher of international relations, two disciplines that normally are engaged in a constant, speaking of clashing zones of interest.
42:45:
(David Frum)
The historian's always saying it's different.
42:47:
(David Frum)
The international relations people with their models and their generalities and the historian saying, no, it's different.
42:53:
(David Frum)
There's an academic game, I think, of lumpers and splitters.
42:55:
(David Frum)
And international relations people are lumpers and historians are splitters.
42:59:
(David Frum)
So drawing on both those clashing zones of expertise.
43:03:
(David Frum)
Do you think it's meaningful to ask the question, was is the United States an empire?
43:08:
(David Frum)
And if it's a meaningful question, how would you answer it?
43:11:
(Margaret Macmillan)
It's always worth asking those sorts of questions.
43:13:
(Margaret Macmillan)
I mean, because we got used to the idea that empire was dead and gone.
43:17:
(Margaret Macmillan)
You know, the winding up of the European empires after the Second World War, we thought, well, that's it.
43:20:
(Margaret Macmillan)
We won't have that again.
43:22:
(Margaret Macmillan)
We should have looked more closely at Russia or the Soviet Union as it was because it remained an empire and it's still an empire today.
43:28:
(Margaret Macmillan)
In fact, one ethnicity ruling over a lot of other ethnicities who don't necessarily want to be there.
43:34:
(Margaret Macmillan)
But I think empire never really disappeared.
43:36:
(Margaret Macmillan)
We simply got informal empires.
43:38:
(Margaret Macmillan)
Or we got, in the case of China, the Chinese moving into Tibet and absorbing or attempting to absorb Tibetan culture into Chinese culture.
43:46:
(Margaret Macmillan)
So I think empire has never really disappeared.
43:48:
(Margaret Macmillan)
And we're seeing it back again with the vengeance.
43:51:
(David Frum)
You didn't answer the question, though.
43:53:
(David Frum)
Is the United States an empire?
43:57:
(Margaret Macmillan)
Yes, I think it was.
43:59:
(Margaret Macmillan)
I mean, it behaved like an empire.
44:02:
(Margaret Macmillan)
I don't think empires are necessarily malevolent.
44:05:
(Margaret Macmillan)
I mean, the Roman Empire had both good and bad things about it.
44:08:
(Margaret Macmillan)
The people within the Roman Empire got stability and security, and people far more moved into the Roman Empire than moved out because of that.
44:17:
(Margaret Macmillan)
And so empires, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, managed to
44:20:
(Margaret Macmillan)
provides stability for a lot of different ethnicities, religions, peoples.
44:25:
(Margaret Macmillan)
And so empires can bring a lot of peoples together.
44:27:
(Margaret Macmillan)
It depends how they're ruled.
44:28:
(Margaret Macmillan)
It depends whether, you know, in our day we'd prefer that they have more democracy.
44:32:
(Margaret Macmillan)
But the United States has certainly ruled over other people who are not what Americans would consider Americans.
44:38:
(Margaret Macmillan)
I mean, the fact they never made Puerto Rico a state, I think, indicates something
44:43:
(Margaret Macmillan)
of the American attitude, that they don't really regard Puerto Ricans as being fully Americans in the sense that they define it.
44:50:
(Margaret Macmillan)
And the United States has behaved like an empire in the Caribbean.
44:52:
(Margaret Macmillan)
It's behaved like an empire in Mexico.
44:55:
(Margaret Macmillan)
It actually absorbed large bits of Mexico, conquering them and bringing in people.
44:59:
(Margaret Macmillan)
So I would say the United States has been an empire and in many ways still behaves like an empire.
45:04:
(Margaret Macmillan)
Not that Americans would probably agree with me.
45:07:
(David Frum)
If it was or if it is, what would it mean for that empire to end and how would we know?
45:13:
(Margaret Macmillan)
How do we know when empires end?
45:14:
(Margaret Macmillan)
When the peoples who are in the empire no longer want to be part of it and they leave or they rebel, the British empire was based partly on force, but also on consent from a lot of the people being ruled over because they saw no alternative.
45:29:
(Margaret Macmillan)
Once the British themselves, once Britain began to weaken and once
45:33:
(Margaret Macmillan)
it began to become less willing to bear the costs of empire, because empires can be expensive, then the number of the peoples within the British Empire saw a chance to seize their independence.
45:43:
(Margaret Macmillan)
We did as Canadians.
45:44:
(Margaret Macmillan)
We were already moving to independence and we achieved it fully, I would argue, in 1930.
45:49:
(Margaret Macmillan)
But India, Indian politicians, nationalists led by Gandhi, saw an opportunity during and after the Second World War, and India became independent.
45:58:
(Margaret Macmillan)
So you decide the price of being in the empire is not worth it any longer.
46:03:
(Margaret Macmillan)
You're not getting anything out of it.
46:04:
(Margaret Macmillan)
You see a chance for independence, and you see the imperial power weakening.
46:09:
(Margaret Macmillan)
So will the United States begin to see...
46:12:
(Margaret Macmillan)
Parts wanting to break away.
46:13:
(Margaret Macmillan)
I don't know.
46:14:
(Margaret Macmillan)
The Hawaiian Islands were brought into the American empire, but they seem to be content as a state.
46:21:
(Margaret Macmillan)
But will the countries of Central America, the Caribbean, begin to push against the United States?
46:27:
(Margaret Macmillan)
Not at the moment when the United States still was powerful in its own neighborhood.
46:30:
(David Frum)
Yeah, I think the United States will always remain powerful in its own neighborhood.
46:34:
(David Frum)
I'm not sure how I would answer that question.
46:36:
(David Frum)
I've thought about it a lot, and I have a complicated answer and not a completely useful one.
46:42:
(David Frum)
But what does seem to be happening is that the network, the latticework of agreements on which
46:48:
(David Frum)
American power was based since World War II.
46:50:
(David Frum)
Those seem to be dissolving.
46:51:
(David Frum)
And the American presence, which reached its apogee in the 1990s and early 2000s, it seems to be in retreat.
46:59:
(David Frum)
And it's moving fast.
47:01:
(David Frum)
And your point about the Empire of Invitation, a lot of the British Empire in India grew because basically the British offered a better deal.
47:09:
(David Frum)
to people in india than the previous rulers had done more security at lower cost and local landed and mercantile elite said you know i like the british deal of security at cost better than i like the old previous muggle deal anyway the muggle deal is no longer available they've cracked up their power is gone so if i want security british are offering a lot of security at a reasonable price i'll take it and then that lasted as long as it lasted and then
47:35:
(David Frum)
And then local elite said, you know what?
47:36:
(David Frum)
We don't want the British here anymore.
47:38:
(David Frum)
And then everyone discovered the British had always been there only because the Indians put up with them.
47:41:
(David Frum)
And the moment the Indians decided not to put up with them, the British had to go.
47:45:
(David Frum)
But I think there's something like that.
47:46:
(David Frum)
The United States has offered these guarantees to everybody.
47:50:
(David Frum)
And it's cost the U.S. Treasury military spending, but it's benefited the American economy enormously.
47:57:
(David Frum)
But Trump's theory is the American economy doesn't benefit.
47:59:
(David Frum)
He's wrong, but he believes that.
48:01:
(David Frum)
And so therefore, why should the treasury pay for the military costs, which are much less than the economic benefits?
48:06:
(David Frum)
And so it all begins to shrink and wither and everybody has to then make their own independent arrangements.
48:11:
(David Frum)
And some people have no choice.
48:12:
(David Frum)
Canada has no choice.
48:14:
(David Frum)
Mexico may have a little bit more choice than it thinks.
48:16:
(David Frum)
Although Mexico has to worry about American violence in a way that direct violence in a way that it suffered before and may suffer again.
48:22:
(Margaret Macmillan)
Yeah.
48:23:
(Margaret Macmillan)
I think a lot of Americans forget just how much of the southern United States was once Mexican.
48:28:
(Margaret Macmillan)
Mexicans don't forget it.
48:30:
(Margaret Macmillan)
But I think you're right.
48:32:
(Margaret Macmillan)
I think you get some people within empires.
48:35:
(Margaret Macmillan)
I mean, it's partly a confidence trick.
48:37:
(Margaret Macmillan)
I think that's what George Orwell said, that the people who rule it believe they have the right to rule, the people who are ruled accept that.
48:45:
(Margaret Macmillan)
But I think what also begins to change empires is when you get the notion of self-determination.
48:49:
(Margaret Macmillan)
and democracy and people within empires who have put up with rule because they've always put up with rule from different rulers.
48:55:
(Margaret Macmillan)
They've never had a say in who the rulers are suddenly begin to think they should.
48:59:
(Margaret Macmillan)
And I think that also made a difference in countries like India is that the idea that the Indians themselves should choose their own rulers, which hadn't happened in the past and hadn't happened with the British now began to take root.
49:10:
(Margaret Macmillan)
And ideas can be, as we know, can be very, very powerful.
49:13:
(David Frum)
Well, if the American...
49:15:
(David Frum)
arrangement or whatever system is receding some people will be sad the allies in continental europe will be sad canadians will certainly be sad some people will be relieved i think many in south america will be relieved but the many like in southeast asia vietnam malaysia and it wasn't well we just have to make our new deal with the new arrangement um
49:33:
(David Frum)
that's that's that's the eternity of politics and there there seemed to be this moment when the united states offered us a world built by law but they rejected law even for themselves and they certainly can't give the benefit of law to us and so we have to make our own new deal with the our own new regional overlords whoever they may be china or india yeah um and it's very difficult to see how how it will shape out i mean
49:54:
(Margaret Macmillan)
Will the Chinese be a benevolent overlord?
49:57:
(Margaret Macmillan)
The record so far isn't all that good.
50:00:
(Margaret Macmillan)
I mean, the way they've treated Xinjiang and the way they've treated Tibet and the way they're treating Hong Kong now doesn't give me much hope that the Chinese will allow different cultures and different areas to flourish and have a certain degree of autonomy.
50:15:
(Margaret Macmillan)
And what you had in a lot of the empires in the past is you did have
50:19:
(Margaret Macmillan)
various degrees of autonomy.
50:21:
(Margaret Macmillan)
And then you did actually, in some cases, have protections for minorities.
50:24:
(Margaret Macmillan)
I mean, the British Empire, the Ottoman Empire, the Austria-Hungarian Empire were actually very good on minorities.
50:34:
(Margaret Macmillan)
And the Ottomans treated Jews and Christians better
50:37:
(Margaret Macmillan)
than many states which were a single religion.
50:41:
(Margaret Macmillan)
Empires are often better at treating minorities.
50:43:
(Margaret Macmillan)
Whether this will happen as we see a new world, or perhaps an area dominated by China, the Russian
50:51:
(Margaret Macmillan)
Treatment of its minorities is not very encouraging.
50:54:
(Margaret Macmillan)
And I do think what is worrying and is, I think, keeping some Europeans up at night is what's going to happen to Europe itself if the United States pulls out support for Europe.
51:04:
(Margaret Macmillan)
The Europeans are a long way, I think, from being able to replace American power, American weapons, American technology.
51:10:
(Margaret Macmillan)
They're moving in that direction, but it's going to take a while.
51:13:
(Margaret Macmillan)
And there they've got Russia right on their borders.
51:15:
(David Frum)
On the day we are speaking, Monday, November 17th, there are reports of a major act of sabotage inside Poland, presumably by Russian or Russian agents.
51:23:
(Margaret Macmillan)
I hadn't heard that.
51:25:
(David Frum)
They blew up apparently an important train line with some kind of complicated device.
51:30:
(David Frum)
And it's a very undeniable act of aggression against the NATO state.
51:35:
(David Frum)
The Russians have carried out with more deniability attacks on defense installations in Europe before.
51:41:
(David Frum)
They've tried to commit assassinations of European defense executives.
51:44:
(David Frum)
This seems to be a new level.
51:46:
(David Frum)
And a lot of the permission seems to be because it's happening at a time when
51:49:
(David Frum)
The Trump administration is preparing to withdraw American presence from Poland and Romania, where it's been forward deployed.
51:55:
(David Frum)
So it's going to be, yeah, we may discover that post-American world is not just a topic for think tanks and seminars.
52:02:
(David Frum)
It may be our reality, and it may be a lot less pleasant than the world it replaced.
52:07:
(David Frum)
Margaret McMillan, thank you so much for making time for me today.
52:11:
(David Frum)
I'm so grateful to you.
52:12:
(Margaret Macmillan)
Thank you.
52:13:
(Margaret Macmillan)
I'm not sure we've cheered ourselves up, but it's been a pleasure to talk to you.
52:17:
(Margaret Macmillan)
Bye-bye.
52:25:
(David Frum)
Thanks so much to Margaret McMillan for joining me today on The David Fromm Show.
52:30:
(David Frum)
Now, my book of the week.
52:32:
(David Frum)
As I mentioned at the top, the book is The Old Curiosity Shop by Charles Dickens.
52:36:
(David Frum)
The Old Curiosity Shop is these days probably one of Dickens' less well-read books.
52:42:
(David Frum)
It is kind of a mess, and it's not very much to modern tastes.
52:47:
(David Frum)
Many people who have not read the book will know it from a famously mean-spirited quip by Oscar Wilde.
52:52:
(David Frum)
The central character of The Old Curiosity Shop is an angelic girl child named Little Nell.
52:58:
(David Frum)
Little Nell heartbreakingly dies in the course of the novel.
53:01:
(David Frum)
And Oscar Wilde is supposed to have said the remark was recorded years after his death.
53:05:
(David Frum)
It was not recorded in his lifetime, but it's from a pretty good source, a friend of his who wrote it in her memoirs in 1930.
53:10:
(David Frum)
Oscar Wilde was supposed to have said it would take a heart of stone to read the death of Little Nell without laughing.
53:17:
(David Frum)
Now, the death of Little Nell, in fact, sent all of England and many in America weeping.
53:22:
(David Frum)
It was a tremendously moving scene.
53:24:
(David Frum)
And I think if you read it today, you will still find it moving.
53:28:
(David Frum)
But it is more sentimental than modern readers tend to like.
53:32:
(David Frum)
And the whole novel has gone into kind of eclipse as a result of it.
53:37:
(David Frum)
And yet it made a big impression on me.
53:39:
(David Frum)
And I want to talk about it this week for a very particular reason.
53:42:
(David Frum)
The old Curiosity Shop, as I said, it's kind of a mess.
53:45:
(David Frum)
It was originally published in serialized form in 1840-41.
53:48:
(David Frum)
It was published in book form in 1841.
53:51:
(David Frum)
And it was an emotional response to a catastrophic event in the life of Charles Dickens.
53:58:
(David Frum)
Charles Dickens lived in his large and growing household with, among other people, his wife's younger sister, Mary Hogarth.
54:06:
(David Frum)
to whom he seems to have had a very intense romantic attachment.
54:11:
(David Frum)
The relationship seems not to have been physically consummated, but it came darn close.
54:16:
(David Frum)
Mary Hogarth died age 17 in 1837, died with Dickens in the room.
54:20:
(David Frum)
It was a heartbreaking event for him, deeply moved him, and its impact is felt in many, many of his books.
54:26:
(David Frum)
There are characters based on Mary Hogarth throughout Dickens' corpus, especially the early part of it.
54:30:
(David Frum)
Little Nell is also based very much on Mary Hogarth.
54:34:
(David Frum)
And the old curiosity shop, for all of its messiness and sentimentality, is Dickinson's attempt to reckon with early death.
54:41:
(David Frum)
And what brings it back to my mind was a tragic event in our outer world in the past week, dear friends of ours.
54:49:
(David Frum)
lost a child, a daughter, beautiful daughter, at age 18 to an unexpected health catastrophe.
54:55:
(David Frum)
I was on a visit to Mexico City.
54:59:
(David Frum)
I got word of this catastrophic event.
55:01:
(David Frum)
I was on a little bus going from one conference room to another conference room, and I stepped out of the bus, and there I was sitting on
55:08:
(David Frum)
Avenue de la Reforma, the big traffic artery in central Mexico City on a park bench, just sobbing while pigeons stared at me as if who is this crazy gringo who can't control himself on a park bench in the Pascio de la Reforma.
55:22:
(David Frum)
And it sent me back to the book to try to make sense of this kind of unexplained, unexplicable catastrophe.
55:30:
(David Frum)
And one of the themes of the book, and what is actually my favorite scene, and this came very much to mind, is how death folds time in a curious way.
55:40:
(David Frum)
The dead remain unchanged at who they were at the moment of death while we, the living, carry on.
55:47:
(David Frum)
And there's a scene in the old Curiosity Shop, and if you'll indulge me, it's about 300 words long, but I'd like to read it because it speaks to me, and it may speak to any of you who have had encounters with this kind of loss.
56:01:
(David Frum)
Little Nell is on her wanderings, and she comes into an old country churchyard and looks at the tombstones.
56:08:
(David Frum)
And here's what she says.
56:10:
(David Frum)
She was looking at a humble stone, which told of a young man who had died at 23 years old, 55 years ago, when she heard a faltering step approaching and looking around saw a feeble woman bent with the weight of years who tottered to the foot of that same grave and asked her to read the writing on the stone.
56:29:
(David Frum)
The old woman thanked her when she had done, saying that she had had the words by heart for many a long, long year, but could not see them now.
56:36:
(David Frum)
"'Were you his mother?'
56:37:
(David Frum)
said the child.
56:38:
(David Frum)
"'I was his wife, my dear.'
56:39:
(David Frum)
"'She was the wife of a young man of three and twenty?'
56:43:
(David Frum)
"'Ah, true.
56:44:
(David Frum)
It was fifty-five years ago.'
56:46:
(David Frum)
"'You wondered to hear me say that,' remarked the old woman, shaking her head.
56:48:
(David Frum)
"'You're not the first.
56:50:
(David Frum)
Older folks than you have wondered at the same thing before now.
56:53:
(David Frum)
"'Yes, I was his wife.
56:55:
(David Frum)
Death doesn't change us more than life, my dear.'
56:58:
(David Frum)
Do you come here often?
56:59:
(David Frum)
asked the child.
57:00:
(David Frum)
I sit here very often in the summertime, she answered.
57:03:
(David Frum)
I used to come here once to cry and mourn, but that was a weary long while ago, thank God.
57:08:
(David Frum)
I bless the daisies as they grow and take the home home, said the old woman after a short silence.
57:12:
(David Frum)
I like no flowers so well as these and haven't for 55 years.
57:17:
(David Frum)
It's a long time and I'm getting very old.
57:21:
(David Frum)
Then, growing garrulous upon a theme which was new to one listener that were but a child, she told her how she had wept and moaned and prayed to die herself when this happened, and how when she first came to that place, a young creature strong in love and grief, she had hoped that her heart was breaking as it seemed to be.
57:35:
(David Frum)
At that time passed by, and although she continued to be sad when she came here, still she could bear to come, and so went on until it was pain no longer, but a solemn pleasure and a duty she had learned to like.
57:47:
(David Frum)
And now that five and fifty years were gone, she spoke of the dead man,
57:50:
(David Frum)
as if he had been her son or grandson, with a kind of pity for his youth, growing out of her own old age, and an exalting of his strength and manly beauty, as compared with her own weakness and decay.
58:02:
(David Frum)
And yet she spoke about him as her husband too, and thinking of herself in connection with him, as she used to be, and not as she was now, talked of their meeting in another world, as if he were dead but yesterday, and she, separated from her former self, were thinking of the happiness of the comely girl who seemed to have died with him.
58:21:
(David Frum)
we remember as Anthony Foreman Barton in Grief and Love.
58:26:
(David Frum)
Thanks so much for watching and listening to The David Frumption.
58:29:
(David Frum)
See you next week.
58:55:
(David Frum)
This episode of The David Frum Show was produced by Nathaniel Frum and edited by Andrea Valdez.
59:01:
(David Frum)
It was engineered by Dave Grine.
59:04:
(David Frum)
Our theme is by Andrew M. Edwards.
59:06:
(David Frum)
Claudine Abed is the executive producer of Atlantic Audio, and Andrea Valdez is our managing editor.
59:12:
(David Frum)
I'm David Frum.
59:13:
(David Frum)
Thank you for listening.