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The War of the World – Why Niall Ferguson is wrong and America Needs an Obama Presidency

This morning I happened to catch a repeat of the Channel 4 documentary The War of the World presented by historian Niall Ferguson.

He is a controversial figure arguing amongst many other controversial things that the British Empire was a force for good in the world.

I agree with his analysis of the events that led to the Second World War which he quite rightly points out started in July 1937 with the Battle of Lugou Bridge

Quite by chance I discovered FORA.tv via The Long Now blog because of the million dollar Warren Buffett bet. FORA.tv hosts videos of debates and speeches given around the globe on the world’s most interesting political, social and cultural issues. As well as hosting a very interesting debate between Niall Ferguson and Peter Schwartz as part of The Long Now Foundation’s Seminars about Long-term Thinking there is the following video of Niall Ferguson’s speech given to the Hoover Institution with the title The Old Man and the (Blue) Sea: Why America Needs a McCain Presidency.





Here Niall Ferguson unusually for him fails to present a compelling argument. He barely presents any kind of argument on Why America Needs a McCain Presidency, but instead attempts to make a case as to why the conventional thinking on the three major candidates (at the time of his speech Hillary Clinton was still in the race) is wrong.

In trying to counter the argument that John McCain at 72 is too old to become U.S. President, Ferguson contrives a statistic that in terms of age relative to the median age of the U.S. population McCain is no older than most of the previous Presidential candidates because the median age of Americans has risen over the decades. This is a spurious argument as clearly if you extend it maintaining the same relative age difference then for a population of median age 46 a candidate aged 90 would still be acceptable by Ferguson’s metric.

For as arduous a job as President of the U.S. the health of the candidate has to be a consideration and as people get older there is a tendency for their health to decline so age is definitely an issue. All this being the case I don’t believe that John McCain is not in the required health for the job.

Another of Ferguson’s major arguments concerns an area where he does have expertise, foreign policy. Specifically the argument in this case concerns Iran and its nuclear ambitions, this being an important issue where there are clear differences between Barack Obama and John McCain. Ferguson mentions the Barbara Ann/Bomb Iran incident and he views the dissemination of this video as a positive thing. The argument is that a hawkish president would have the upper hand in talks with Iran as there would be no doubt as to his commitment to follow through with military action should Iran not accede to the US demands.

This is only true if there are lines of communication open and if Iran believes that the U.S. President can be reasoned with. The crucial question here is how does the leadership of Iran view McCain and Obama? Will Iran view a casual reference and a jokey song about bombing them as McCain being a guy that they should take seriously in any possible future talks? I think not.

But putting the video aside there are still reasons that diplomacy is more likely to break down with Iran under a McCain presidency than if Barack Obama were president. McCain is tarnished by his association with President Bush and the current U.S. government’s failure to find a solution to the Iran question, he has said diplomacy is the preferred path but has ruled out talks with Tehran. In contrast Obama has stated that he believes strong presidents talk to their enemies, including the Soviet Union which posed a greater threat to the United States than Iran. Indeed the world was pulled back from the brink during the Cuban Missile Crisis because of the willingness for Kennedy and Khrushchev to ignore the hawks and open up lines of communication.

I don’t think that Iran would ever believe that any President of the United States would lack the resolve to launch military action. Obama’s willingness to talk is I believe a strength and not an indication that he is too weak to consider the military option.

Contrary to the claims of some, I have no interest in sitting down with our adversaries just for the sake of talking. But as president of the United States, I would be willing to lead tough and principled diplomacy with the appropriate Iranian leader at a time and place of my choosing if, and only if, it can advance the interests of the United States.

In closing it comes as no surprise to me that Niall Ferguson would endorse John McCain as President as in fact he is now an advisor to McCain on Foreign policy. But I expected more substance from him on the question of Why America Needs a McCain Presidency?

By Matt Wharton

Matt Wharton is a dad, vlogger and IT Infrastructure Consultant. He was also in a former life a cinema manager.

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