The End of the American Empire
The historian Margaret MacMillan on the impact of the Trump-led American withdrawal from world leadership. Plus: David on the corrupting effects of lavish foreign gifts to President Trump and Charles Dickens’s “The Old Curiosity Shop.”
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Show Notes
On this episode of “The David Frum Show,” The Atlantic’s David Frum opens with his thoughts on the recent gifts given to President Donald Trump by the Swiss government. He argues that the incident is yet another example of Trump’s favor being won through personal gifts and another sign of how his administration has forced the United States to abandon its traditional leadership role in the global order, reshaping American foreign policy into something closer to that of an extractive predator state.
David is then joined by Margaret MacMillan, emeritus professor of history at the University of Toronto and emeritus professor of international history at Oxford University, for a conversation about what a “post-American” world order might look like. They examine the United States’ retreat from global leadership under Trump, and consider whether the U.S. functions as an empire and whether that empire is now in decline.
Finally, David closes with a discussion of what Charles Dickens’s “The Old Curiosity Shop” can teach us about grief.
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