Historian Niall Ferguson is concerned about the future of the United States, warning that it may face a fate similar to that of past advanced civilizations if it does not address its debt problem.
As the Milbank Family Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, Ferguson criticizes Donald Trump’s ambitions to expand the empire, suggesting that these endeavors may come at a cost too high for the country.
In his article titled ‘Debt Has Always Been the Ruin of Great Powers. Is the U.S. Next?’, Ferguson highlights Trump’s proposals, such as acquiring Greenland, incorporating Canada as the 51st state, and his strategies for addressing conflicts like Ukraine and Gaza, as potential signs of expansion that could exacerbate the debt issue.
The historian claims that Trump is doing this while ‘he discerns the more prosaic operation of budgetary constraints’ and says empires from the Habsburgs to the Spanish to Bourbon France in the 18th century.
Ferguson cites fellow historian Adam Ferguson (no relation), who claims that borrowing money to pay for warfare places the burden on future taxpayers.
He says the elder Ferguson claims debt is ‘extremely dangerous…in the hands of a precipitant and ambitious administration.’
‘An expense, whether sustained at home or abroad, whether a waste of the present, or an anticipation of future, revenue, if it bring no proper return, is to be reckoned among the causes of national ruin,’ Adam Ferguson wrote in his 1767 essay.
Niall Ferguson said the US began violating ‘Ferguson’s Law’ for the first time in nearly a century in 2024 when spending on servicing its debt ($1.124trillion) exceeded its defense spending ($1.107trillion).
Historian Niall Ferguson claims that the United States could be headed to the same ruin of every previous advanced civilization if it doesn’t fix its debt problem
His piece titled ‘Debt Has Always Been the Ruin of Great Powers. Is the U.S. Next?’ notes Trump’s plan to annex Greenland , make Canada the 51st state , as well as his plans for peace in Ukraine and what to do with Gaza amount to expansion
Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Ferguson said that this ‘crucial threshold’ tends to destroy a great power’s geopolitical grip and ‘leaves it vulnerable to military challenge.’
America hasn’t seen debt service and defense spending this close since the pre-World War II era of isolationism.
Ferguson – an occasional DailyMail.com columnist – cites the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, which says the federal debt will reach nearly 5 percent of US GDP by 2049.
Between 1962 and 1989, defense spending averaged 6.4 percent of GDP, debt service was less than a third of that figure, averaging 1.8 percent.
Following the Cold War, the US was still spending around twice as much on defense as it was on servicing its debt.
‘The fact that the U.S. is currently projected to spend a rising share of its GDP on interest payments and a falling share on defense means that American power is much more fiscally constrained than most people realize,’ Ferguson wrote in the Journal.
Ferguson said that defense spending is unlikely to increase in the years ahead because of the downward pressure needed to service the rising debt.
He worries the US could be headed to the same place as pre-WWII Britain and the policies of appeasement but says the consequences could be worse, leading to ‘down the path of default, depreciation and imperial decline.’
Ferguson worries the US could be headed to the same place as Pre-WWII Britain and the policies of appeasement but says the consequences could be worse, leading to ‘down the path of default, depreciation and imperial decline’
It comes as Donald Trump appears to have won his trade standoff with Volodymyr Zelensky , as the Ukrainian president is set to give in and sign a deal giving the U.S. access to deposits of critical minerals
‘In the absence of radical reform of America’s principal entitlement programs—which successive administrations this century have either failed to achieve or ruled out—the only plausible way that the U.S. can come back within the limit of Ferguson’s Law is therefore through a productivity miracle.’
His words come on the same day Trump appears to have won negotiations with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky to surrender billions worth of minerals in a deal that could end the war with Russia.
The deal was seen as crucial for satisfying Washington’s demands for a peace settlement between Ukraine and Russia to end their three-year long war.
It’s a staggering surrender from Zelensky, who had said just days earlier: ‘I defend Ukraine, I can’t sell our country.’
Zelensky said on Friday that officials from his country and the U.S. were working on concluding an economic deal to ensure that the accord worked and was fair to Kyiv.
‘We’re signing an agreement, hopefully in the next fairly short period of time,’ Trump told reporters in the Oval Office when asked about a deal for Ukraine’s minerals.
The Wall Street Journal later cited several people familiar with the matter that the deal is close and will be signed within hours.
It comes following word that Zelensky angered Trump so much during negotiations that Trump threatened to completely pull US funding from Ukraine, Axios reported.
Zelensky had apparently worn out his welcome with the entire American negotiating team – which included the president, JD Vance, Marco Rubio, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and National Security Advisor Michael Waltz – in the span of a week before a deal was eventually made.
Trump has made ending the war and keeping the United States out of foreign entanglements a key agenda item for his second term.
