Letter to Wall Street Journal Editor re Niall Ferguson op-ed
Has Niall Ferguson gone native? Has he been contaminated by anti-Bush phobia so prevalent in the US academia? How else explain his extraordinarily flippant “endorsement” of John Kerry in WSJ op-ed piece (August 27),? Professor Ferguson abandons his usually firm grasp of history in favor of a specious comparison and a dubious conjecture. Bush is compared to the last conservative UK Prime Minister, John Major, and Ferguson speculates about what might have happened to the Conservative Party if Neil Kinnock, Labour contender, would have won the UK general election of 1992. He then proceeds to argue that the key stake of the US elections is the future of party politics in the US! As he puts it: “In geopolitical terms, at least, what happens on Nov. 2 will change very little indeed.”
Really? Professor Ferguson should put back on his historian hat and explore for instance the consequences of Kennedy’s election in 1960. While it could be argued that Bay of Pigs disaster was inherited from Eisenhower administration, Berlin Wall and Cuba missile crisis, which brought the world as close to the thermonuclear war as any other event since 1945, were entirely JFK’s doings. And, lest we forget, he also initiated the Vietnam quagmire.
John Kerry models himself explicitly on John F. Kennedy, down to his initials. Yet, in his outlook and approach, he reminds me more of Jimmy Carter, righteous and opinionated loner. During his one-term presidency, Carter brought the world the Iranian “revolution”, the second oil shock and the Afghan invasion.
John Kerry’s past behavior as well as recent policy pronouncements, for instance his rationale for the US going to war, strongly suggest that, if elected, he intends to proudly and fully assume the Kennedy – Carter legacy. This legacy is marked by policy procrastination, confusion between friend and foe and preference for stirring rhetoric over effective action.
The real question before the US electorate is: Can US afford the Kennedy-Carter type of foreign policy at present times? If one believes, as Democratic activists fervently do, that there is no clear and present danger, the answer is yes. I am surprised and puzzled that Professor Ferguson, author of insightful work on challenges of the US colossus shares this view.