Global Change, China's Strange Rise, and Worries About the Young: An Interview With Historian Niall Ferguson

What worries him most is this: a generation that has never read anything of substance is no different from barbarians.

In recent years the British historian Niall Ferguson has been coming to China more and more often. China, he thinks, is running an extremely important experiment, one that tells him a great deal about how history works. Measured in current US dollars, China could be the world's largest economy by 2030. That would be a major event in economic history.

"China has now met four of the standards I set out in Civilization. For me the biggest question is whether China can prove me wrong. Can China sustain economic growth and political stability without political competition and without a rule of law based on private property rights? That is the experiment this country is running. Can China keep going down its own road with no crisis to stop it? If it can, I will rewrite Civilization," Ferguson told QDaily.

Civilization, a bestselling history published in 2011, examines how Eastern and Western civilizations developed. In it Ferguson argues that the West rose after 1500 and pulled ahead of the rest of the world, China included, because of a series of institutional innovations. He sums them up as six "killer apps": competition, the scientific revolution, the rule of law and representative government, modern medicine, the consumer society, and the work ethic.

Born in 1964 in Glasgow, Scotland, Ferguson is one of the best-known historians in the world. He is prolific — 15 books, most of them bestsellers, among them The House of Rothschild, Empire, Civilization, Colossus, The Ascent of Money, and The Pity of War. He is currently a senior fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution and at Harvard University's Center for European Studies.

Ferguson is a Scot, shaped from childhood by the ideas of the Scottish Enlightenment, a disciple of Adam Smith and David Hume. At 15, after reading Leo Tolstoy's novel War and Peace, he "decided to become a historian." In 1989, at 25, he took his doctorate at Oxford and began his academic career; he has since held posts at Cambridge, Oxford, New York University, and Harvard.

In his early years he specialized in economic and financial history, then worked on ever larger canvases — the big questions of power, war, and peace. "For nearly 20 years I have spent a great deal of time trying to understand the nature of power and the causes of war and peace. At first my focus was the German Empire and the British Empire; after crossing the Atlantic, my attention turned, perhaps inevitably, to that strange empire that dare not speak its name — the United States," Ferguson wrote in Kissinger: 1923-1968, The Idealist.

Empire became one of Ferguson's central subjects. Where most of his peers criticize empire, Ferguson has boldly defended it: empire, he argues, is a good thing. The United States should admit that it is an empire and should get on with imperialism properly, which would be good for the whole world. For this he is regarded as a leading "neoconservative" historian. Put simply, "neoconservatism" can be read as "fundamentalism about liberal democracy" — that is, in the view of Ferguson and others like him, Western countries should not merely "defend" liberal democracy but "expand" it.

Besides writing a great deal of popular history, Ferguson turns much of it into documentaries, usually appearing in them himself. Those adaptations include Empire, Civilization, The Ascent of Money, and Kissinger. The Ascent of Money won an International Emmy for best documentary, and Kissinger won best documentary at the New York International Film Festival. He also writes often, and influentially, for The Wall Street Journal, The Financial Times, The Sunday Times, and The Boston Globe, among others. In 2004 Time named him one of the 100 most influential people in the world. He founded the advisory firm Greenmantle, where he is managing director, and sits on the board of Affiliated Managers Group.

All of which is why some people call Ferguson not just one of the very few scholars who can work across academia, the media, and finance, but a "celebrity historian."

In April 2018 Ferguson published his new book Kissinger in China, the first of a two-volume life of Henry Kissinger. The English edition of volume one came out in 2015; volume two has yet to appear in English. Where most people take Kissinger for a Machiavellian realist, Ferguson argues in volume one that he was a Kantian idealist.

"I always wanted this biography to be in two volumes. The question was where to break it. In the end I decided volume one would run up to just after president-elect Nixon announced to the world that Kissinger would become national security advisor, and before Kissinger moved into the basement office in the West Wing to take up the post. There are two reasons for the division. First, at the end of 1968 Kissinger was 45, and he was 91 while I was writing the book, so this volume covers almost exactly the first half of his life. Second, I wanted to draw a clear line between Kissinger the thinker and Kissinger the man of action," Ferguson wrote in the preface.

Ferguson also writes that Kissinger himself commissioned the biography, which gave him access to a great deal of historical material that had never been made public: more than 100 boxes of private papers and material from 111 archives, over 8,000 items running to nearly 40,000 pages. To keep the biography independent, Ferguson says, he and Kissinger signed a legal agreement stating that the author has full editorial control over the finished work, and that the person who authorized it has no right to review, edit, or revise the final manuscript, or to block its publication.

Most Chinese people know Kissinger largely for his part in the normalization of US-China relations. As Ferguson told QDaily: "What draws me to writing Kissinger's biography is that when Nixon came to Beijing in 1972, history reached an important turning point — the US and China began interacting again."

To promote the new book, Ferguson came to Beijing and Shanghai from late April to early May, taking part in six public events and giving interviews to about ten media outlets. When we met him he was still having his picture taken, every bit the celebrity. The photographer even thought Ferguson looked a little like the American filmmaker George Clooney.

He was so busy that on the day of the interview he had only 15 minutes to eat. So in a meeting room in a hotel in Beijing's Haidian district we watched him work unhurriedly through shrimp dumplings and a beer, enjoying a rare moment of leisure. When the interview turned to how the world has changed over the past years, his face grew serious and heavy, his brow furrowed, his speech slowed, and worry crowded in.

"Do you have any worries about this society?"

"Oh, plenty. My biggest worry is about the younger generation. My children's generation is far too easily distracted by technology, and the habit of reading long books is dying out — they can't even get through a book like War and Peace. A generation that has never read anything of substance is no different from barbarians. They have no idea they are living inside a civilization," Ferguson said.

Q = QDaily

F = Niall Ferguson

Kissinger Was Not a Realist But a Kantian Idealist

Q: Let's start with your new book published in China, Kissinger: 1923-1968, The Idealist. Where most critics see Kissinger as a realist, you argue he was an idealist. Seen from that angle, how would you reassess Kissinger's theory of foreign policy?

F: For years most books and articles about Henry Kissinger have made him out to be a thoroughgoing realist, but I think I have shown in Kissinger that this is wrong. There are three reasons it is wrong.

First, as a young man he was steeped in Immanuel Kant's idealist philosophy. Second, it shows up in policy. Through the Cold War, all through the 1950s and 60s, he resisted the notion that communism was more advanced, and he did so on ideological grounds. In that sense he was an idealist. He criticized realists like Hans Morgenthau, who thought the fighting in Vietnam was pointless. So on the great question of Vietnam, Kissinger again stood on the idealist side, against the realist Morgenthau, who thought there was no need to worry about Vietnam. Third, I think it has to do with his experience as a young man. In the 1930s the policy of appeasement, meant to prevent the Second World War, failed. In his papers I found a sharp attack on the British prime minister of the day, Neville Chamberlain, in which he called Chamberlain a "realist" — and that word was absolutely not a compliment. So I do not think Kissinger was a realist.

Of course, this is only the first of two volumes. Perhaps in volume two I will write about how he became a realist. But I also know that if that did happen, it happened after 1968.

Q: Volume two hasn't been published yet, but I'm curious whether you can give us a preview of your findings. I've read that its subtitle might be "The Networker."

F: It's possible. But I have not settled on a subtitle. I may just use the idea of the network inside the book. In fact I am quite sure I will use it; I just have not decided whether to put it in the subtitle.

Another subtitle I am considering is "The Realm of Power." In 1969 Kissinger became national security advisor and stepped into the realm of power. From that moment he was no longer the author of his own fate; he became part of the US government. In that sense everything changed. He had to handle a whole series of questions on which he disagreed with President Richard Nixon. I like "The Realm of Power" because it captures an important shift the intellectual of volume one had to make: from saying whatever he liked to compromising with the rules of the political arena. He had to accept the president's decisions, including ones he did not agree with.

So one big theme of volume two will be the compromises a person has to make inside the realm of power. The difficulty for an idealist is that every minute of the day you have to make decisions and answer for them.

Q: In January 2018 you published a piece in POLITICO called "The Secret to Henry Kissinger's Success", which said: "Kissinger's greatness lay not only in his sharp observation of power politics but in his singular gift for building networks. He walked onto the political stage at a crucial moment: the world was shifting from the ideological polarization of the early Cold War — an arena for two superpowers — to an interdependent, multipolar age. That gave Kissinger exactly the conditions he needed." Can that be read as your overall verdict on Kissinger's practice of foreign policy? Would you add anything?

F: I think building that network was an original act; no secretary of state had done it before. And he built networks both inside and outside the United States, not only in politics but in the media, even reaching into Hollywood. And of course it reached leaders around the world, Zhou Enlai among them.

Another important point, I think, is that Kissinger preferred to make contact privately rather than through official channels. That let him solve many problems that official channels could not. His dislike of bureaucratic dealings and his taste for private communication surprised me. So that is an important theme of volume two.

Of course, in the piece you mention I only sketched the basic argument. I have only just begun to research the network side of things. The real difficulty in the research is drawing the map of relationships — including, for instance, every journalist he dealt with. His relationship with the press is an important theme of volume two. He was very good at manipulating reporters, editors, everyone. The coverage of him was always handsome. He was forever on the cover of Time. Read what The Washington Post and The New York Times wrote about him and you will find it is all positive. That is one of the more interesting parts of the story. The institutions of that period had lost their trust in the press, above all in The New York Times and The Washington Post, which were pursuing Nixon. All of this was deliberate on his part. I love this piece of history, because it has never been studied properly, and his memoirs say almost nothing about networks — reporters barely appear in them. In fact, during his years in government he spent a great deal of time having meals with journalists. I want to write down those interesting stories about his dealings with the press.

Q: One of the Kissinger stories Chinese readers are most curious about is the normalization of US-China relations. In your research, have you found anything new about that history — any thoughts or impressions you can share with Chinese readers?

F: I wish I could share more, but it is a little early to answer that. I think that once volume two is out I will be able to say with confidence that I have new insights into that extraordinary history. The initial idea of restoring relations between China and the United States came from a Czechoslovak diplomat, Antonín Šnejdárek; Kissinger first heard it in Prague. So I have started digging into that: how did it begin, and why? I expect there will be more to share in the book.

Q: Beyond the stories about your dealings with Kissinger that are already in volume one, is there anything else about your relationship with him you can tell us?

F: Well, it is an interesting relationship. I have to keep some distance from him in order to write about him objectively. But when I sit down with him and discuss the things, past and present, that interest him, I benefit enormously. In fact I am flying from China straight to New York to have dinner with him, and next month we will celebrate his 95th birthday (May 27). I know that when I see him he will be very curious about what I have seen and heard on this trip, because nothing in the world interests him more than US-China relations. He has been to China many times and has met every important Chinese statesman from Zhou Enlai to Xi Jinping, so he has a solid grasp of modern Chinese history. I often learn something new from his personal relationships with Chinese leaders. I remember him telling me once that he had gone swimming with Mao Zedong. Whenever I think about it, it astonishes me. And he told me this while the two of us happened to be swimming together. I thought: how incredible, that I am swimming with a man who once swam with Mao Zedong.

Globalization Is Now Correcting Itself

Q: In November 2016, shortly after Donald Trump was elected president, you published a piece in The American Interest called "Donald Trump's New World Order", arguing that Trump should follow Kissinger's advice and learn from Theodore Roosevelt. More than a year on, what do you make of Trump's foreign policy?

F: I may have got that wrong. Just look at the trade war President Trump has launched against China and other countries. In fact the Trump administration has taken a lot of Kissinger's advice. Steve Bannon's original idea was to confront China not only on trade but on a whole set of strategic questions — Tibet, Taiwan, the South China Sea. I think Kissinger played an important part in reining in that confrontational strategy. I also think the recent handling of North Korea is exactly what I had hoped to see: the permanent members of the UN Security Council, and above all the US and China, joining forces to put pressure on Pyongyang. I think the pressure from the two countries worked.

Kissinger has been influential in another respect too, though it was never really reported: he advised the US ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley, and helped her manage the whole process. So while President Trump has his own strategy, and he is an erratic, unpredictable strategist, I think he has taken Kissinger's advice, and given it more weight than President Obama did. Then again, who has not taken Kissinger's advice? So US-China relations will be tense this year. I also think things could get worse than they are now.

Q: Speaking of Trump, many people are now worried about the US-China trade war. I see you recently wrote a paper on it, "Make Chimerica Great Again". But the paper is heavy going for most readers. Could you explain simply why, in your view, the US and China ended up in a trade war? What do you make of its effects and its future?

F: My co-author Xu Xiang and I argue in that paper that over the past decade "Chimerica" has gone through several phases. In many ways it is the key to reading the period before the crisis. In some ways it may also have been a cause of the crisis. In any case, Chimerica survived the crisis — I think China and the United States avoided a depression through their stimulus programs.

But today, because the Trump administration is fixed on the bilateral trade deficit, Chimerica is in crisis again. We argue in the paper that a US-China trade war would damage China more than the United States. If tariffs stay high over the long run, China's exports to the US could take a heavy hit, perhaps falling by around 20%, which would have a major effect on the Chinese economy.

The point of the paper is to seek reconciliation, because the collapse of Chimerica and of the US-China relationship would be bad for the world. Our sense is that China's response on the key question of the bilateral trade deficit may need to be more flexible. That is the crux of it.

Overall, the paper points to the asymmetry of the harm a trade war would do to the two sides, and recognizing that asymmetry matters a great deal.

Q: Behind the trade war is globalization itself. Many people worry that globalization has widened inequality around the world and brought on financial crises and migration crises. What do you make of the problems it has caused? Do you have any thoughts on how to solve them?

F: I have been writing about globalization for years. The first time was in 2001, in a book called The Cash Nexus. I have often observed that if globalization goes too far, too fast, it can produce a backlash — and that is exactly what has happened. It happened in trade, above all in the trade in non-manufactured goods that drove large-scale deindustrialization in Europe and North America. The free flow of capital played a major part in the financial instability of the past 15 years. Most important of all, large-scale migration reached an unsustainable point in many countries. So given the financial crisis, I think a backlash against globalization was inevitable, and it will last for years. What is surprising is that it came so late. You can watch it happening across the Western world, in the US and in Europe.

What I would say is that a considerable number of voters are now calling for globalization to slow down: a little less free trade, please, a little less free movement of capital, a little less free migration. They are not saying they want no globalization at all, or that the whole process should stop. Nobody is saying we should go back to the 1930s. What voters are asking for, I think, is to dial globalization back a little. And I think that is a reasonable demand, especially on migration. Look at what happened in Germany in 2015 and 2016 — a million refugees arriving sent the situation completely out of control, and most of them were young men from Muslim countries. Would China let refugees in? It seems unlikely.

There is another point. In many ways globalization has already passed its peak, and not only politically but technologically. When Chinese labor was far cheaper than labor elsewhere, globalizing supply chains made sense. But as China's labor supply shrinks and its price climbs, globalized supply chains become less effective. Robotics is advancing, and 3D printing may bring manufacturing back to local markets. Even leaving politics aside, globalization is already in its closing act. Look ten years further ahead and I think globalized supply chains will matter even less.

Q: So is that a solution?

F: I think in some sense it is a self-correcting process. The logic of globalization served us well in the 1990s and the 2000s. But now that China has successfully joined the world economy and become one of the largest economies in it, with per capita income rising sharply, labor arbitrage no longer works — so a correction will come by itself.

But mass migration has not corrected itself. Migration under globalization is driven by basic contradictions in South Asia and Africa. As long as people can cross the Mediterranean, their desire to set foot on the European continent will stay very strong. I see no sign of correction there at the moment. I think the refugee crisis could get worse.

Can China Keep Growing and Stay Stable Without Political Competition or a Rule of Law Based on Private Property Rights?

Q: At last year's Munk Debates in Canada you argued that the liberal international order has ended. Faced with that big question, how do you think it should be dealt with? Do you have any thoughts?

F: In that debate I said there is no such thing in the world as a liberal international order — or rather, the phrase is at best an ironic description of the real world. A more accurate name for it would be "the order as China revised it." That order needs updating. So does NAFTA. So I think updating the trade agreements of the 1990s and 2000s is necessary for us now. It is not as bad as some people say. So when people tell me "the liberal international order is disappearing and it is all Donald Trump's fault," I think that is nonsense.

How should we handle it? The same way Canada and Mexico are handling NAFTA — by negotiating. These agreements are not ancient, and the world is changing. What looked right in the early 2000s needs updating by 2018. And although China still has a long way to go in raising per capita income, I think the protection and control of the Chinese economy today is out of date. Why, for instance, are China's tariffs on imported cars so much higher than America's? I see no obvious need for that.

So I think this will be a process of negotiation. It is happening this week (April 30 to May 6, 2018), but it will not be finished this week. My fairly practical view is that in the end a deal will be struck. The US-China relationship will be updated, not broken up or wrecked altogether. I am reasonably optimistic; a deal will get done in the end.

Q: Most of your work has been translated into Chinese, and many of your books discuss the decline of the West and the rise of China. This year is the 40th anniversary of China's reform and opening. Looking back at the history of China's rise, what strikes you most? What risks and challenges do you think that rise will face?

F: What draws me to writing Kissinger's biography is that when Nixon came to Beijing in 1972, history reached an important turning point — the US and China began interacting again. As economic engagement picked up speed through the 1980s and 90s, China's own economic reform moved very fast too. Foreign direct investment, technology transfer, the US adjusting the international trade order to accommodate China — all of it let China advance at an astonishing rate. The thought that China will become the largest economy in the world is remarkable. Measured in current US dollars, China could be the world's largest economy by 2030. I think that is a major event in economic history. Over the past hundred years China has been through a genuine industrial revolution, has grown at double-digit rates for long stretches, and has all but eliminated poverty.

Q: But it seems to me China is still some way from the "six killer apps" you describe — competition, the scientific revolution, the rule of law and representative government, modern medicine, the consumer society, and the work ethic.

F: That is exactly what I was about to say, thank you. Think of the "six killer apps" as an interesting experiment. China has adopted some Western ideas and institutions, but not all of them. Plainly, China has now met four of the standards I set out in Civilization. First, nobody would deny that China has been through a "scientific revolution," and you have "modern medicine" — health in China today is far better than in the 1970s. You also have the "work ethic" and the "consumer society." A flourishing consumer society drives economic development.

But you have not yet achieved "political competition," and you have not built a rule of law founded on private property rights. So for me the biggest question is whether China can prove me wrong. Can China sustain economic growth and political stability without political competition and without a rule of law based on private property rights? That is the experiment this country is running. Now, I am not going to put on a scholar's arrogance and claim I am obviously right. There have certainly been times when I was proved right. But I may also be wrong.

So we have to watch closely how China develops over the next twenty or thirty years. Can it keep this up? Can China keep going down its own road with no crisis to stop it? If it can, I will rewrite Civilization. Or at least add an afterword saying: "The 'six killer apps' I wrote about do not matter at all — skip that chapter." But it is hard to say. That is precisely why I have been coming to China so often lately: the experiment running here strikes me as extremely important, and it tells me a great deal about how history works.

To Study History Properly Is to Understand How Three Things Interact: The Complexity of the Historical Process, the Messiness of History, and Decisive Individual Acts of Chance

Q: In January 2018 you published a new book, The Square and the Tower. It hasn't been translated into Chinese yet, so could you tell Chinese readers why you wrote it and what its central argument is? From what I have read, the book touches on much of what has happened in recent years, and you want more people to think about the effect networks have had on politics — that social networks are setting off a global crisis of democracy.

F: I wanted to understand networks more deeply, partly because I wanted to write about Kissinger's network, and partly because I sensed a crisis spreading to Silicon Valley the way one had once landed on Wall Street. In 2008 I wrote The Ascent of Money. That book came out ten years ago, and of course it is more than ten years since I wrote it. I felt it was time to write a similar book about technology. So the book starts in ancient history, showing that vast networks existed long before the internet.

The best part of the book is the analysis of the past 20 years, and especially of the events of 2016. In it I argue that the 2016 elections in the US and the UK were both decisively shaped by online social media, Facebook above all. Social networks have changed the nature of democracy enormously, because the entire public sphere is now dominated by a handful of internet giants.

That crisis has since spread further, and the most striking example is still Facebook. It is in that sense that the book also foresaw the crises people would face.

I also think it is extremely important for Chinese readers to work out how those social-media giants have evolved in the West and in China. Because for all the differences between the two, the effects of social media in East and West actually run in parallel. I think China faces the same challenge now. China is turning into a social-media society too; you all use platforms like WeChat and Weibo. In the last part of the book I write about China's experience: how Alibaba's relationship with the Chinese government has evolved, and how it differs from Facebook's relationship with the US government.

Q: This year is the 100th anniversary of the end of the First World War. Looking back at that war a century later, what strikes you most?

F: I wrote a book about the First World War back in 1998, The Pity of War. That is 20 years ago now. In it I argue that wars are usually caused by mistakes — that basic errors of judgment by the European powers, Britain included, brought the war on. So the lesson is that small mistakes and misunderstandings can set off enormous wars and bring disaster. I think we should keep that in mind at all times.

We also need to make sure China and the United States do not repeat what Britain and Germany did in the 1890s and 1900s. It was the mistakes those two countries made then that finally brought on the First World War. Once bitten, twice shy. I hope I have learned that lesson, and I wish universities offered more courses on the origins of the First World War. I do not see many American students studying it today.

So on the centenary of the end of the war this November, I would say it gives us a chance to remember history. This is very important history and everyone should remember it. That alone would be good. Kissinger, of course, wrote a great deal about the First World War in Diplomacy. So I think historians like me should keep reminding people, retelling the history of that war from time to time, telling people that the mistakes of the past can be made again today — and the stakes today may be higher, because we have far more destructive weapons.

Q: In Virtual History you wrote: "The path the past took cannot determine how things turn out. The world is neither progressing nor going backwards. Only individual actions decide whether we end up living in a better world or a worse one." So in your view history is highly contingent, and individual agency is the decisive factor. Is that a fair reading? Could you say more?

F: People love to stress patterns and cycles in history. American politicians like the phrase "the arc of history" — and the arc of history always bends the way they want it to. I think there is little sense in any of it. History has no cycles and no laws. In economics we do have singularities like the Industrial Revolution. The first Industrial Revolution happened in Britain in the 1780s, and it went on to change the economic shape of the whole world. That was not a cyclical event. It is simply world history at the economic level, and that is all. There is no predetermined history. Much of what is said about history as a deterministic system runs against reality. Reality tells us that history is a tangle of complex systems.

China is a complex system, and so is the United States. The world economy is a complex system too. Complex systems always share certain properties. They can look as if they are in equilibrium when in fact they are already on the edge of chaos. They are prone to sudden, unexpected shifts. A great deal of chaos happens in the world, and inside the chaos of human history an individual's agency can sometimes matter enormously. There have been a number of recent films about Winston Churchill, like Dunkirk and Darkest Hour. Watch them and you understand that the world of the 1940s was hanging off a cliff. Had Britain fallen apart then, the whole of world history would look completely different. A Nazi victory would have been a catastrophe.

I think we need to be more alert to these possible alternative histories, because we tend to accept the present as though it were the only one available, and then tell a story of how we got here. In the case of the 1940s: without Winston Churchill, would Britain have kept fighting? I doubt it.

So to study history properly, I think, is to understand how three things interact: the complexity of the historical process, the messiness of history, and decisive individual acts of chance. That is how I look at the historical process, and it is why I keep switching between writing biography, like Kissinger, and writing the big picture, like The Square and the Tower — because what I am really trying to understand is how large structural forces, technological change among them, interact with the lives of ordinary people.

Enlightenment Thought and 19th-Century Literature Are My Intellectual Capital

Q: I've read that you chose to study history because you read War and Peace. Could you tell us why? What did the book do to you?

F: I was a 15-year-old schoolboy when I read War and Peace. At the end of the book Leo Tolstoy writes an essay on historical determinism. In it he asks: what is the force that moves nations? I remember sitting in the back garden of my parents' house in Scotland, thinking this was the most interesting question in the world and that I would spend my whole life thinking about it. That was the moment I decided to become a historian.

Q: You write in the book that Kissinger's intellectual capital rested on a double foundation: the study of history and the study of idealist philosophy. Looking back over your own life, what is your intellectual capital?

F: It is not philosophy. I am not very good at philosophy and not good at grasping abstract concepts. I think mine is the product of two bodies of thought. One is the Enlightenment, especially the late 18th-century Scottish Enlightenment — Adam Smith, David Hume. That came down to me through my family. Enlightenment thought basically set the angle from which I see the world.

At the same time I have been deeply shaped by 19th-century literature — Tolstoy, whom you just mentioned, among others. I have spent a large part of my life reading the great 19th-century novelists, and their insight into the human condition has always been a guiding light for me.

So I tend to study history through the frame of Enlightenment thought while also trying to keep a feel for individual experience, which comes from my favorite 19th-century writers.

Q: You write in the book that what influenced Kissinger most was not books but mentors. I'm curious — looking back over your own life, who has influenced you most? Could you say more?

F: Apart from my father, whose advice was crucial to me when I was young, a small number of scholars were also my mentors. The most important was Norman Stone. He was a Scot too, and he was my doctoral supervisor at Oxford. He encouraged me to write my thesis from the angle of economic history. Norman was also one of the few conservative scholars who supported Margaret Thatcher. He and a small group of others, including Roger Scruton and Maurice Cowling of Cambridge, helped and encouraged me. They showed me that becoming a scholar does not mean you have to be on the left. So when it comes to mentors, Norman holds a very important place for me.

Q: What have you been thinking about lately?

F: For a while now I have been thinking about US-China relations, going back to the idea of "Chimerica." The Square and the Tower got me thinking a lot about technology and politics, so that is another focus at the moment. But I really do have to start writing volume two of Kissinger, so over the next few months and years I want to sink into the past, into the turbulence of the 1970s.

Q: What is the biggest change in your life over these years?

F: The biggest change of the past ten years was divorcing my former wife, marrying Ayaan Hirsi Ali, and having two beautiful sons, Thomas and Campbell. Campbell is only six months old. Yes, that is the biggest change that has happened to me.

Q: Besides volume two of the Kissinger biography, do you have any other books or research projects planned?

F: I will not start another book until this one is finished. This one is enough.

Q: Roughly when will you finish it?

F: I think it may take me another two years, so it might come out two years from now.

Q: Do you have any worries about this society?

F: Oh, plenty. My biggest worry is about the younger generation. My children's generation is far too easily distracted by technology to get through a book like War and Peace. The habit of reading long books is dying out, because people are busy posting on social media and socializing with each other. A generation that has never read anything of substance is no different from barbarians. They have no idea they are living inside a civilization. I worry a great deal that our education system will decay under these conditions.

Q: So do you strictly limit your children's use of electronic devices?

F: Of course. It has to be that way. They simply do not get much chance to go near them. I think books are what matter to their growing up. That is how they build good reading habits, how they learn to sit down and read deeply for hours. My worry is that if we lose that kind of reading, we lose ourselves. We also lose our connection to civilization. There are other things I worry about, but this is the most important one. As a father, looking at my five children, I find myself wondering how much what you are reading now has to do with what I read at your age. Every father and mother should work hard to help their children build good reading habits.

Q: What changed in your life after you moved to the US?

F: On the whole, life in America is never boring. Since I moved there I have not been bored for a single minute. Sometimes I get a little tired of being made welcome, but I am never bored. Oh, and I think I can say something about being an immigrant to America. As an immigrant you see the country with fresher eyes. My wife and I are both immigrants; we grew up in other cultures, so we look at America through the lens of other cultures. That, I think, is part of why we like the country so much. But some native-born Americans take the multicultural system for granted and are forever finding fault with it. Plenty of immigrants rather like that side of it. So, you know — never boring.

Q: Over the past 20 years you have spent a great deal of time exploring the nature of power, war, and peace. If you had to sum up those three concepts in one sentence, how would you put it?

F: The important thing about those three concepts is that they have not changed much with time. In essence, power, war, and peace today are the same as they are in A Tale of Two Cities. That is why we historians can find familiar confirmation in ancient literature: peace is the norm, war the exception, but without war, power rarely changes hands.

Cover image: a still from the documentary Civilization: Is the West History?, via Douban. Banner image: Ferguson, from Ferguson's personal website