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On the latest episode of GoodFellows, Senior Fellows John Cochrane, H.R. McMaster, and Niall Ferguson, as well as moderator and Distinguished Policy Fellow Bill Whalen, answer questions submitted by viewers covering a wide range of topics.
After an opening discussion on the latest in Iran, the group dives into the future prospects for democracy in the United States; what it takes to win wars; the current state of British politics; advice on clothing and men’s style; the impacts of climate change; and whether our resident historians make the time to watch historical dramas on TV.
Quote of the Day
Niall Ferguson responds to a question on whether liberty is decaying in the United States:
Well, as Franklin said, “A republic, if you can keep it.” And the great thing about Americans is that they’ve been worrying about this ever since the founding. It’s a recurrent feature of American discourse that the great experiment is failing, that we are Rome, that the Republic will give way to empire. And as long as Americans worry about that, I think we’ll be fine. My view is that the Constitution, which is really the key to the success of the republic, remains an extraordinarily impressive operating system. And as I check up on it regularly, it’s doing exactly as the founders intended. So I’m more optimistic than [the questioner]. I think the system is doing exactly what the founders hoped it would do. And as long as you keep worrying about it, I think we’ll be fine.
The Core Conversation: Assessing the War with Iran
H.R. McMaster explains why he’s baffled by Western commentary suggesting that Iran now enjoys a strategic advantage over the United States:
They [the Iranian leadership] are feeling pain. . . The Iranians are watching the Western media, I guess, and are encouraged. They’re encouraged because they think that the time is on their side. It’s not on their side. They’re desperate for cashflow right now and they’re in a position of profound weakness. The reason they keep pushing it is their ideology and their belief that we’re weak. They’ve studied us. They look at Vietnam. “Oh, [America] lost Vietnam.” They look at Afghanistan. They think that all they have to do is wait us out and we’ll buckle. I mean, are they right about that? Damn, I hope not, but they’re in a position of profound weakness, [and] this idea that they have the advantage. . . it’s baffling to me, baffling to me.
John Cochrane outlines why, in his view, this war with Iran makes it highly unlikely that the Iranian regime will ever voluntarily give up its quest for nuclear weapons:
We keep saying, give up your nukes, give up your nukes. And it occurs to me there is no way they will ever give up their nuclear program. And why not? Because they look around the world: they look at Ukraine, Iraq, Libya, North Korea. And they can conclude that, “Oh, [in] North Korea, people who have nuclear weapons don’t have their leadership attacked, they’re immune.” Not because they want to on day one bomb Tel Aviv. If they wanted to do that, they would’ve done it already with chemical, biological, or regular missiles. They know the Israelis would go completely nuts and that would be the end of that. So what do they [the Iranian regime] want? They want a nuclear weapon as a get out of jail free card so they can continue to harass Israel and the neighboring states. More than harass, inflict as much damage as they can just below the level of a massive attack. And that level is pushed back dramatically when they have a nuclear weapon. So that strikes me as why they’re never going to give up a nuke as long as that regime and its goals [are] in place. And so asking them to do it seems fairly hopeless.
Niall Ferguson explains how policymakers and strategists in Israel view the current state of the conflict:
President Trump appears to have leaned quite hard on prime minister Netanyahu to lay off his strikes against Hezbollah in Lebanon. Israel was ramping up its campaign against Hezbollah. This, of course, was making it very difficult with the Iranians, for whom Hezbollah are proxies. And it’s not the first time that President Trump has leaned on the Israeli prime minister. From an Israeli perspective, it’s frustrating because they haven’t entirely dealt with the Hezbollah threat in the way that they want to. On the other hand, they’re clearly the junior partner in the US-Israeli relationship. They can’t defy President Trump’s pressure. What I hear from Jerusalem is a good deal of frustration. That President Trump did not finish the job off, that he’s left Iran in a stronger position. . . They fear that the Iranians, despite all the damage that’s been inflicted, are actually in a strategically stronger position than they were in before, because they now control the Strait of Hormuz, which previously was not at all the case. So, there’s a lot of dissatisfaction in Jerusalem, but they have to suck it up.
Key Takeaways
Is the European Union threatened by economic stagnation?
John Cochrane responds: “Well, if [EU member states are] happy with economic decline, then they can survive in Union as well as they can survive independently. Now the EU as a union will not survive if people start to believe that the Union is the cause of their decline and that endless red tape from Brussels is the problem. And the European Union at least says it understands that problem, [in] the Draghi Report, and it’s up to them to fix it. . . The UK took Brexit as an excuse to add more regulations, not to get rid of Brussels regulations.”
Sir Niall adds: “The problem, I think, is not actually so much with the European institutions, though they’re usually blamed; it’s actually with the national governments. And the reason that growth is suboptimal in Italy, in France, in Germany isn’t Brussels. It’s the way the national governments are run. And Britain’s the perfect illustration of the point, isn’t it John? Because Britain tried to blame everything on Brussels in the period running up to 2016, then had a referendum; Britain voted to leave. Britain’s been out now for, in effect, a decade and its economic performance is just as bad as the economic performance of the continental countries.“
Are We Paying Enough Attention to North Korea?
H.R. McMaster, former National Security Advisor, says we are not: “We really are in a bad situation now because North Korea is not as isolated as it used to be. . . They’re able to draw on the support of Russia and China in particular and that’s what can help, I think, keep the Kim family regime alive. And of course, they stay alive through the brutal repression of their own population and now they have enough economic wherewithal, I think, to remain in power. It’s not clear who’s going to succeed Kim Jong-un, but he may live a really long time despite his unhealthy habits.”
What Can We Do In Response to a Changing Climate?
John Cochrane threads the needle between alarmism and inaction: “I’m against bad policies. . . but I’m not against moving to clean energy. I’m against the costly unproductive policies. Climate change is real. Climate change is caused by human emitted carbon dioxide, largely. I’m not proclaiming those as verities. I’m just summarizing what the actual science says. I’m sad, though, that this got turned into a massive green pork project that wastes trillions of dollars, de-industrializes places like Europe, all to no benefit [for] the climate. So, I’m against climate policies that don’t begin to pass a whiff of a cost-benefit test. California’s $230 billion high speed train is an example, and the perversion of actual science that has gone on in trying to whip us all into a millenarian cause.”
H.R. McMaster adds: “As Niall said and John said, I think the problem [of carbon emissions] isn’t going to be solved by policy decisions in the US and in Europe [because of the role China in particular plays in global emissions today]. And so what you need is a solution that will be effective based on the market to [avoid] a false dilemma of trading off energy security to reduce carbon emissions. You need a cost-effective way to [reduce emissions]. And we have that on the horizon, I think with nuclear fission. For example, the largest manmade reduction in manmade carbon emissions in history was in the United States, based on the availability of cheap natural gas, a market solution. So hey, I think this is where people who are skeptical that it’s an existential threat and those who believe it is: they should come together and say, “Okay, let’s work on a market-based solution to this problem.”
Recommended Reading
H.R. McMaster recommends Uniforms: Why We Are What We Wear by Paul Fussell and Legacy: What The All Blacks Can Teach Us About The Business Of Life by James Kerr
John Cochrane recommends the works of Senior Fellow Thomas Sowell as a great introduction to the study of economics.
Parting Wisdom
Dressing to Impress, Without Overthinking It
Sir Niall responds to a viewer who wants to know how the GoodFellows’ Knight-in-Residence manages to dress so well despite a busy schedule and frequent world travel. Ferguson shares his surprisingly straightforward sartorial secret:
I have spent, I think, more or less 30 years not thinking too hard about clothes. Now the key to not thinking too hard about clothes is to buy some clothes you like and then just wear them unthinkingly. One of my son Campbell’s friends, a little boy called Rory, once asked a question which has become famous in Ferguson family lore. “Niall,” He said, “Why do you always wear the same clothes?” And that was a very good question. And my answer was, “Because that way, Rory, I don’t need to think about clothes.” So the essence of being a gentleman-scholar is not to think about clothes: buy them when you’re a graduate student and wear them until they fall apart. . . You don’t want to have to waste time thinking about clothes.”
John Cochrane adds: “Mark Twain said, “Clothes do make the man. Naked people have very little influence in society.“ Which is a good quote. I wish I were better dressed. I think we need to ask that question to Stephen Kotkin when he comes on!
That wraps up this GoodFellows conversation guide. If you like this companion to the show, or have any recommendations for future conversation guides, please let us know in the comments below.
John H. Cochrane is the Rose-Marie and Jack Anderson Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. An economist specializing in financial economics and macroeconomics, he is the author of The Fiscal Theory of the Price Level. He also authors a popular Substack called The Grumpy Economist.
Niall Ferguson is the Milbank Family Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. He is the author of sixteen books, including The Ascent of Money, Civilization, and Doom; columnist with the Free Press; founder of Greenmantle; and co-founder of the University of Austin.
H. R. McMaster is the Fouad and Michelle Ajami Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University and distinguished visiting fellow at Arizona State University. He is author of the bestselling books Dereliction of Duty, Battlegrounds, and At War With Ourselves.