What I'm Reading
May 25: Five reads that piqued my interest this week
Firstly, a note to thank you for bearing with me while I’ve been on assignment in Australia.
It was an intense period that left me little time to sleep, breathe/eat, let alone attend to you here, so thanks for putting up with the temporary outage. Normal programming will resume as of today.
So now to my reading list for this week.
The fall of an Empire, or a Republic?
I haven’t read anything better than this interview by Noēma magazine with historian Niall Ferguson in a long, long time.
Ferguson’s assessment of the Trump and MAGA takeover of the United States is that it constitutes the fall not of an empire but of the Roman Republic.
He is unequivocal that we are in a second Cold War and that it has been going on already for around six years.
I’ve personally never found the Cold War 2.0 thesis very convincing but his is a compelling case, as he argues that there are only two superpowers competing where it matters — on quantum computing and AI.
On China, he is optimistic that the Xi Jinping’s order will fall — eventually.
(But will the US first?!)
Chinese civilisation was far more advanced in, say, the year 1000, than anything in Western Europe. But for most of the next millennium, China stagnated.
That is history. Now we are living through the end of that period of Western ascendancy.
Why is that? It is because the rest of the world finally realised, if you can’t beat them, join them. And so, people in non-Western societies, beginning in Japan, downloaded the killer apps of Western civilisation. And of course, they work everywhere because one of the important things about ideas and institutions is that they don’t care what colour you are or what your religious background is. If you adopt those ideas and institutions, your economy will grow, your human lifespan will increase and everything will be better.
It’s amazing that it took so long. It took into the late 20th century for China to accept that there really was only one path to prosperity, and it involved markets, it involved science. You couldn’t rig those because of Mao’s ideological predilections. Once they finally recognised this, the Chinese caught up and they caught up really quickly.
If you thought of history starting in 1600, there is not a huge difference between Chinese and European incomes. But it just diverges spectacularly all the way until 1979, when, on a purchasing power basis, the average American was 22 times richer than the average Chinese. Now, in 2025, it’s maybe three times because there’s been a dramatic reconvergence. That’s the story of our time.
That’s the way to think about this historical moment. The problem for the Chinese is that they did not download all the killer apps. They were never willing to download the political competition app, that is to say, the idea that there should be competition between institutions, branches of government and parties. Without that, they can’t really have rule of law, because you can’t have rule of law if there’s no accountability through a system of justice.
So what the Chinese did was to say, ‘Yeah, we’ll take science, and we’ll certainly take modern medicine, and we’ll have a consumer society, and we’ll have a work ethic, but we just don’t want those institutions that presuppose competition and private property rights.’
That is why, in my view, their system can’t succeed. It is incomplete and thus fundamentally doomed. Over the next 10 or 20 years, it will unravel.
Recap: the Republic v the Empire
Rome is one of my least favourite cities. Sigh. I know, you don’t need to lecture me, I have good reasons. But I am starting to kick myself that I haven’t thrown myself into a full Roman history tour during my many (work) visits.
(To be fair last weekend’s trip was somewhat busy!)
Between now and my next visit, I have plenty Philip Matyszak books to catch up on.
The early Republic began in 509 BC, when a group of Roman aristocrats got together and overthrew the last king of Rome – Lucius Tarquinius Superbus (Tarquin the Proud).
These aristocrats needed the support of the people in order to maintain this new Republic, and so you ended up with a rather odd contrast of a democratic republic that was run by aristocrats. This basically set the tone for the Roman Republic from then on.
….
Despite its bloody reputation, Roman society was in some ways very civilised – particularly in the city of Rome. There was a rule, for example, that stated a butcher was not to go more than three steps away from his stall while holding a knife. And an actor could sue his audience for injury to his feelings while booing. So plebeians did actually have a great deal of legal protection.
The problem was that Rome had what we might call a strong society and a weak state. Scythian philosopher Anacharsis summed it up nicely when he said: ‘Laws are spiderwebs, which catch the little flies, but cannot hold the big ones.’
So, Roman laws were good at containing ordinary Roman citizens, but the rich and powerful could brush through them as though they didn’t exist.
Putin doesn’t want to end the war, Trump admits
On Monday US President Donald Trump held a two-hour phone call with Ukraine’s President Volodomyr Zelensky and European leaders.
Earlier he spoke with Russia’s President Vladimir Putin.
According to the WSJ, he told European leaders that Putin doesn’t want peace because the Russian leader believes he is winning the illegal war he launched against Ukraine.
One of the European officials, who participated in the call, said that Trump began Monday’s discussion, held to brief allies on the US president’s lengthy phone conversation with Putin, by saying, ‘I think Vladimir does not want peace.’
Trump, the official said, told the people on the call that the war was going well for Putin and that he would ‘therefore keep fighting.’ This official’s conclusion: Trump ‘simply doesn’t want to take sides.’
…
That Sunday call included some of Trump’s signature off-the-cuff style, mixing praise and criticism of European leaders. He complimented Merz on his beautiful English. ‘I love it even more with your German accent,’ he said, according to a person on the call.
At another point, he digressed into a broadside against Europe’s migration policies. Trump said out-of-control migration was bringing their countries to the ‘brink of collapse.’
Macron, who has the longest relationship with Trump, asked him to stop. ‘You cannot insult our nations, Donald,’ said Macron, according to the person on the call.
The decline of Elon Musk
With a lead like this, who needs an introduction?
‘Fuck you! Fuck you! Fuck you!’
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent was shouting at Elon Musk in the halls of the West Wing last month, loud enough for Donald Trump to hear and in a language that he could certainly understand.
Bessent and Musk were fighting over which of them should choose the next IRS leader—and, implicitly, over Musk’s bureaucracy-be-damned crusade. Without securing the Treasury chief’s sign-off, Musk had pushed through his own pick for the job. Bessent was, quite obviously, not having it.
The fight had started outside the Oval Office; it continued past the Roosevelt Room and toward the chief of staff’s office, and then barreled around the corner to the national security adviser’s warren.
Musk accused Bessent of having run two failed hedge funds. ‘I can’t hear you,’ he told Bessent as they argued, their faces just inches apart. ‘Say it louder.’
Musk came to Washington all Cybertrucks and chain saws, ready to destroy the bureaucracy, fire do-nothing federal workers, and, he bragged, save taxpayers $2 trillion in the process.
He was a Tech Support–T-shirt-wearing disruptor who promised to rewire how the government operates and to defeat the ‘woke mind virus,’ all under the auspices of the newly created Department of Government Efficiency. For weeks, he and his merry band of DOGE bros gleefully jumped from agency to agency, terrorising bureaucrats, demanding access to sensitive data, and leaving snack wrappers on employees’ desks.
But as Musk winds down his official time in Washington, he has found himself isolated within the upper reaches of the Trump administration, having failed to build necessary alliances and irritating many of the department and agency heads he was ostensibly there to help.
His team failed to find anything close to the 13-figure savings he’d promised. Court challenges clipped other projects. Cabinet secretaries blocked DOGE cuts they said reduced crucial services. All the while, Musk’s net worth fell, his companies tanked in value, and he became an object of frequent gossip and ridicule.
Four months after Musk’s swashbuckling arrival, he is effectively moving on, shifting his attention back to his jobs as the leader of Tesla, SpaceX, and X, among his other companies.
Mrs Warren’s Profession ⭐⭐⭐⭐
It has been great being back home in London.
This week I went to opening night of Mrs Warren’s Profession starring Imelda Staunton and her daughter Bessie Carter which is now playing at The Garrick.
‘That’s called nepotism’, I said when I learned of the on/off-stage relationship between the starring ladies.
I take it back and, I’m going to be a little controversial here — Carter totally stole the show and Imelda Staunton very much played second fiddle to her daughter.
The rest of the cast (male) felt perfunctory and lacked chemistry, they barely registered. It was all about the two women and in particular the two show-stopping scenes.
Unfamiliar with Mrs Warren’s Profession before I saw it, I was genuinely shocked that this Victorian play was ever written (1893), less so when I learned that it was originally banned and not publicly staged until 1925.
Even in 2025 this is still daring, a George Bernard Shaw dissects the ethics of not just prostitution, but also capitalism, materialism, money and greed.
What struck me most about this play was how clearly he knew women characters and in 1893 was celebrating those who dared to behave differently, whether it was Mrs Warren’s ability to justify her love of money and criminal work that she confessed to continuing doing, partly because it was exciting or Vivie’s work-driven, perhaps puritanical approach to life.
There were parts of Vivie that might still sound unorthodox to others in modern-day life!
VIVIE. I shall set up chambers in the City, and work at actuarial calculations and conveyancing. Under cover of that I shall do some law, with one eye on the Stock Exchange all the time. I've come down here by myself to read law: not for a holiday, as my mother imagines. I hate holidays.
PRAED. You make my blood run cold. Are you to have no romance, no beauty in your life?
VIVIE. I don't care for either, I assure you.
PRAED. You can't mean that.
VIVIE. Oh yes I do. I like working and getting paid for it. When I'm tired of working, I like a comfortable chair, a cigar, a little whisky, and a novel with a good detective story in it.
PRAED [rising in a frenzy of repudiation] I don't believe it. I am an artist; and I can't believe it: I refuse to believe it. It's only that you havn't discovered yet what a wonderful world art can open up to you.
VIVIE. Yes I have. Last May I spent six weeks in London with Honoria Fraser. Mamma thought we were doing a round of sightseeing together; but I was really at Honoria's chambers in Chancery Lane every day, working away at actuarial calculations for her, and helping her as well as a greenhorn could.
In the evenings we smoked and talked, and never dreamt of going out except for exercise. And I never enjoyed myself more in my life.
Go see this.
And that’s my list for this edition.
On Friday I reviewed the newspapers for Moncole Radio’s The Globalist.
Catch up on my appearance on The Foreign Desk with Andrew Mueller examining the Trump effect on the Canadian and Australian election results.
Please do send me anything that’s caught your eye, I enjoy knowing what you’ve been reading.