The discussion draws parallels between Kaiser Wilhelm II and Donald Trump, highlighting shared character flaws like vanity and incoherence, and argues that Trump's actions are systematically dismantling the rules-based international order, posing a significant threat to global stability.
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What is terrifying is that Trump is
systematically dismantling the world,
the rules-based world order. And when
Trump told a New York Times interviewer
the other day uh that he didn't
recognize any morality but his own
instincts, Trump is making up the rules
Hello, I'm Tom Switzer. Welcome to the
program today. Max Hastings, the
distinguished military historian, war
reporter, columnist, and former longtime
editor of leading British newspapers.
Sir Max is author of several
best-selling and award-winning books,
including Catastrophe:
Europe Goes to War 1914,
All Hell Let Loose, The World at War,
1939 to 45,
The Korean War, Vietnam, an epic
tragedy. Max, lovely to be with you again.
again.
Let's start by putting on the screen
something you wrote recently in your
Bloomberg column. Quote,
a senior naval officer writes of a world
leader who is familiar to us and this is
the quote. He is vanity itself
sacrificing everything to his own moods
and childish amusements and nobody
checks him in doing so. I asked myself
how people with blood rather than water
in their veins can bear to be around
him. Now, Max, uh, some of our viewers
might be thinking you're referring to
Donald Trump.
Never. No. Um, I was cheating by doing
it that way round. Um, those were
actually the words of a German admiral
called Albert Hopman, um, writing in
1914 about Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany.
And um um I as I'm sure uh many
historians and I know you do all the
time, I'm exchanging emails all over the
world all the time with fellow
historians and um one of the comparisons
we've been discussing is the comparison
of Donald Trump with Kaiser Wilhelm of
Germany and what they have in common um
let me start by saying it's Kaiser
Wilhelm played a large part in starting
the first world war. Now, um I don't
think we believe that Donald Trump is
likely to start a third world war
anytime very quickly, but there are the
same huge character flaws. Uh first of
all, it was said by many of those who
lived with Kaiserville Helm, he did seem
mildly deranged. Uh he was often u
incoherent. He was um this this huge
manity. He loved dressing up in
uniforms. He loved posturing. He loved
showing off. um and um he frightened
many of those around him by um his his
capacity. He was obsessed with
masculinity, vility in that for instance
um he despised the French whom he called
a feminine race, not masculine like the
Anglo-Saxons and Tutons. And Trump, I'm
afraid uh many of us think uh is in the
end a white supremacist who wants to see
the world run by white men. Um and this
verility thing, this um um incoherence
um it is very scary and um there's no
doubt that Kaiser Wilhelm, who of course
he reached his position simply by being
the son of his father. Well, in Trump's
case, he's been elected. But Trump is
much more dangerous than Bill Helm
because Trump is the most powerful man
on earth whereas Wilhelm's instability.
And yes, I I think many of us we we have
to say this um that we do think there is
a mild derangement about Donald Trump
that um some of his remarks and his
lapses into incoherence are pretty scary.
scary.
>> Yeah. So, so there are quite a few
similarities then between the Kaiser and
Trump. Tell us about the story of
Wilhelm that you say is absolutely
relevant to Trump. This is about the
time when the Kaiser received Ceil Roads
who of course was a great British
imperialist. Tell us that story.
>> This this was um Ceil Roads the famous
or notorious uh British imperialist
tycoon um went to visit uh the Kaiser
one day at his palace in Berlin and uh
Wilhelm said to him he said now roads
tell me. He said uh I am very unpopular
in Britain. Why am I so unpopular? what
should I do to become more popular?
And roads responded uh s you could try
doing nothing
and um the trouble is that just as the
Kaiser was incapable of taking that
advice so is Trump. Now, one of the
things that I think many of us find
alarming, um, here are we at a certain
age, and we've grown accustomed to the
idea that there have been good
presidents and bad presidents in the
White House, but over the decades, very
often, even those of us who are keenly
interested in world affairs, from one
month the next, we don't think much
about who's in the White House, we don't
think very much about what the United
States is doing. We now live in a world
in which literally every day we find
ourselves forced to think and talk about
what the president is doing because
almost every day Trump embarks on some
new initiative at home or abroad which
scares the pants of us. And um he is
this is part also of the Kaiser this
this um this narcissism this obsession
with himself. Everything has to be about
Trump. And I was talking, as you
mentioned Bloomberg just then, I was
talking to my Bloomberg editor the other
day and I was saying, "Well, don't you
think I I should probably write a column
about something other than Donald Trump
for once." And he said, "Well, how?" He
said, "Well," he said, "Well, how can
you?" He said, "In the end, um um world
affairs at the moment are all about
Donald Trump. Trump." And it's
terrifying. You talk about the
similarities between the Kaiser and the
Trump, but what about the similarities
between 1914 Germany and today's America?
>> I don't think we should push it too far
in that um whereas many people in 1914
did see a very real and imminent danger
of world war. I don't think it's so much
that. But my hero among historians and I
think yours too, professor Sir Michael
Howard who died a few years ago, very
close friend of mine,
>> Oxford University.
>> Yeah. And I remember Michael saying um
six, seven years ago during Trump's
first term. Well, he said two things
that are important. The first he said we
must never allow anyone to try and
persuade us that what's going on is
normal. It's not normal. It's a terrible
perversion of democracy. And secondly he
said everybody talks too much about
peace. He said peace in a way is a
nothing word. He said what matters in
world affairs are order and stability.
And what is terrifying is that Trump is
systematically dismantling the world the
rulesbased world order. And when Trump
told a New York Times interviewer the
other day uh that he didn't recognize
any morality but his own instincts. I
think a great many of people, I'm sure
in Australia as well as in Europe were
um appalled by this that uh Trump is
making up the rules at every term. He
says, "I don't care what the traditional
rules are, but um this is what what's at
stake. It's the terrible instability of
where we are now." And um it's not
knowing what on earth's going to happen
next. And of course, part of this
terrifying um to call it selfishness is
inadequate narcissism at trumps. What
most of us want every day is to be able
to go to bed at night reasonably
confident we're going to wake up
tomorrow morning finding the world's in
roughly the same state it was before. We
want um we want some degree of
tranquility. We can't ever have total
tranquility, but we want some peace of
mind. And that is what Trump and his
people are destroying for Americans too
because what's going on in Minneapolis
for example. How can you I just had an
email from somebody I know in
Minneapolis who said um he said some
people are saying oh well um if you
don't get involved in the protests at
life in Minneapolis is pretty normal. He
said it's not. He said we're all scared
out of our wits and this is Trump's
doing and it is almost exclusively Trump.
Trump.
There are other dangerous forces in the world.
world. >> Yeah.
>> Yeah.
>> So he's not like Kaiser about to
precipitate a world war. I think you
mentioned that. But you you are worried
that he's, you know, tearing down the
pillars of the rules and norms of the
the liberal international order that has
been in place for decades. And that
sounds a lot like the Canadian Prime
Minister Mark Carney in his speech at
Davos recently where he called for
solidarity and honesty over US threats
and the need to stand up to lie. So I
take it you'd agree with with Mark
Carney's statement about well he didn't
mention Trump but about the state of
play in Trump's
>> I wrote a column for the times uh saying
that uh as many other people did that
Carney's speech was the speech of the
week. It was the speech. It was a voice
of civilization when um we need all the
civilization we can get and it was a
great speech and you don't often get
that sort of thing that um I think we've
got to see this. There are two aspects
of this. Um we can't blame everything
that's going on on Trump. We can say
that he's made things far worse. But the
world is anyway a dangerous place
because you've got people like President
Putin and the invasion of Ukraine. Uh
you've got um China constantly pushing
out in a way that you down there in
Australia of course are acutely aware
of. Um and I'm afraid um I think
Australians are more awake than a lot of
us in Europe are to the dangers. And the
kids, for example, there's a terrific
anti-militaristic mood in Britain in the
universities, for example, uh insisting
that uh all their investments are
withdrawn from defense companies. Um the
refusal of the the young say, but we
don't want to fight anybody. Now, part
of the message that some of us are
trying to convey all the time is it
takes two to tango or rather not to
tango that it's not good enough to say
we don't want to go to war with anybody.
We are up against people.
Vladimir Putin has three assets. He's
got oil, gas, and a willingness to use
extreme violence. And it's quite
extraordinary how he manages to leverage
it. And whatever we may want or not
want, the Trump has been right about one
big thing. Europeans have allowed our
defenses to atrophy in the most
terrifying fashion. And even now when we
see the threat from an unstable America,
an unstable Russia, um a dangerous
China, many people in Europe are
completely unwilling to face up to this
by rearming. and and some of us find
this um a very scary um other part of
the whole Trump equation.
>> Let's put this in some sort of broader
context. I mean, if you go back to the
1990s, Max, and you were the editor of
the London Daily Telegraph, and you'd
remember that with the fall of the
Berlin Wall and the collapse of the
Soviet Empire, collapse of communism,
there was a widespread view that liberal
democracy was the wave of the future.
the so-called end of history proclaimed by
by
there you go. Now almost every nation
was bound to become a liberal democracy.
This was the argument. The consensus was
that it would be relatively easy to
create this liberal international order.
I think President Bush senior called it
a new world order because spreading
democracy would meet little resistance.
Again that was the widespread expectations.
expectations.
Yet well before Trump, the number of
liberal democracies was already
declining. So again, pushing back to
Mark Carney and Max Hastings, is it
unfair to blame Trump for the rise of
authoritarianism that's helping unravel
the liberal international order? Max,
>> I agree with you entirely and Carney was
absolutely right in appealing for
solidarity, but it's so much easier to
talk about this than it is to get it. we
are seeing uh for example Victor Orban
the leader of Hungary um and even to a
lesser extent Georgia Maloney in Italy
they're not going to have anything to do
with any European initiative that
involves a direct bust up uh with Trump
because they've got their right-wingers
and they have good relations with Trump
and achieving any sort of solidarity. Um
I think it was the Spanish prime
minister who said about a year ago he
said you needn't think that we are going
to take um um one farthing or one euro
away from our welfare budgets in order
to pay for rearmorament. So achieving
solidarity is very difficult. But what
is I I think one of the things those of
us um we have a platform. We don't have
in in the media we we don't have power
but we have a platform. And one is
shocked by the reluctance of politicians
to try and educate our peoples to um we
so seldom hear um a major politician in
our country in Britain. Um, and I think
it's a bit better in Australia. Um, who
who makes a speech or gets on television
and says to the British people or the
Australian people, "We're living in a
dangerous world." And although we hate
spending money on vastly expensive
weapon systems, we have to do it to
preserve all the things we hold dear. We
have to be willing to defend ourselves.
And if we're not willing to defend
ourselves, and of course there are more
than one way to defend yourself. In
Europe, another of the major problems in
seeing off Vladimir Putin is the
Europeans when they cancelled uh nuclear
power, they also committed themselves uh
to a dependence on Russian gas um which
is still there. And even though we're
now three or four years since the four
years since the invasion of Ukraine,
still um Germany, most of Europe has
this terrific dependence on Russian gas.
Now, if you want to defend yourself, um,
then you do something about ending that
dependence. And they're not doing it. >> Yeah.
>> Yeah.
>> Well, when you mention Putin, it brings
to mind the views of a another prominent
historian, Steven Cotkin, who's a
biographer of Joseph Stalin, as you well
know. Now in the latest issue of foreign
affairs magazine Cot he this is his
argument that the world's strong men are
much weaker than they appear partly
because repression is the enemy of
economic and technological progress and
Cochan says that authoritarian systems
suffer from corruption cronyism and
overage and he says that the US will
escape becoming a dictatorship. So Max,
do you share Professor Copkins confidence?
confidence?
>> I read his uh piece very carefully and
he's a very clever man and uh one thing
we all have to maintain hope. I don't
want um although some of what I'm saying
may sound like despair. I don't believe
in despair. I believe that um I
passionately believe in wakeup calls. I
believe we got to wake up and and do
more for ourselves uh if we are going to
have a future. But we owe it to our kids
and our grandchildren um to have hope
for the future. So um I greatly admire
Hopkin for um uh writing a piece that it
that does have hope. But there are
various forces that I think he neglects.
Now one of them in the domestic context
when he says he doesn't think America
will become a dictatorship is the
terrifying power of social media. Um and
of course Trump um has forged a close
alliance with these tech giants and any
attempt abroad when the Europeans um
attempt to find um these American tech
giants for some of the ghastly stuff
that they're putting out online um
America immediately leaps in and the
American Secretary of State says this is
an attack on on the American people.
Well, of course it's not. that this
alliance between the tech giants um and
the the poison that that they are
spreading and the fact that many of
these Trump the 40% of Trump's base
these people they don't read the
Washington Post or the or or the even
the Wall Street Journal or the or the
New York Times they take all their news
from Fox News or from u or from uh Trump
social media. So, I think the danger of
the United States becoming an autocracy,
we're seeing, thank God, a push back as
a result of the ghastly happenings in
Minneapolis, but that's a worry. Um, as
far as the world scene goes, um, nothing
is inevitable. There is still, as Copkin
wrote, he said, there is um, there is
hope that some of these strong men are
vulnerable, but there you've got Putin.
Putin's going to fall. Yeah. um sooner
or later. But many of us and people who
know far more about Russia than I do,
they said, "Don't hold your breath
hoping that what follows him is going to
be better just
resilience of American democracy." Are
you downplaying the checks and balances
in the US government? You got the
executive branch which as you know is
the presidency that is still being
checked and balanced by if not the
legislature, the Congress, certainly the
courts and the judiciary, most notably
the Supreme Court. I mean they may well
strike down President Trump's tariffs.
So are you overstating these threats to
I'm heavily influenced by my American
friends uh some of them an awful lot
cleverer than me who are scared stiff
and in particular the Republicans and
the Trump people have packed the Supreme
Court. So the Supreme Court has come up
with a succession of terrifying
judgments and in fact I quoted in one of
my columns um the comparison um that
Chavez in in Venezuela um uh when he was
dictator he packed his Supreme Court. So
I think during his term the the Supreme
Court in Venezuela delivered I forget
how many thousand judgments and they
were all supporting Chavez. Well I will
believe that the Supreme Court is doing
what it's there to do on the day that it
starts calling out judgments if it finds
against Trump on tariffs. Then I will
start believing the Supreme Court is an
effective check. We should be grateful
that the federal courts, the lower
courts in America are doing great and
standing up to >> Yep.
>> Yep.
>> But aren't aren't elections the ultimate
check on wayward and abusive presidents?
And in November, as you well know, the
US faces these midterm congressional
elections, which are likely to elect the
Democrats to the House of
Representatives. Isn't that a check on
uh a a president who's um who's
overreaching to put it mildly?
I think it's horrifying. Those of us who
are keen students of American history,
um, one always been impressed, for
example, during the Vietnam era, um,
there was a remarkable degree of
bipartisanship in the in the Congress in
criticism of what was happening in
Vietnam, um, and on many other issues.
And um one of the things that Churchill
during the Second World War, he tended
to forget that Roosevelt um had far more
trouble with the Congress during the
Second World War than um than Churchill
ever had with the House of Commons. Um
and yet today we're seeing this this
Congress um apparently paralyzed. Um and
the other thing that the degree to which
political dialogue and this is not
unique to America but it's worse in
America has become coarsent that maybe
it's hopeless to plead for a return to
civility but one of the many reasons
regarding Donald Trump with contempt is
that his absolute lack of respect
respect for other people and other
nations is fundamental to any sort of
civilized conversation whether in your
own home or in your own country uh or
abroad. And this Trump has willfully
destroyed. Trump is insulting people
every single day. And we have got to
call this out. We've got to keep saying
um this is the behavior of in fact again
American commentators a mafia boss. This
is how Tony Soprano behaves. In fact,
Don Kolleone had better manners than
Donald Trump. And I say that having
thought carefully about the language of
Don Corleone and the language of Donald Trump.
Trump.
What about Trump? I mean people put him
in the category of an ultra nationalist
which he is. I mean merit make America
great again. But going back to the theme
of the 1990s when globalization economic
interdependency was all the rage and
many people thought that nationalism was
fading. Some even thought that the
nation state itself could be in retreat.
Yeah, you had this popular surge, as you
well know because you covered it in
various columns throughout the 2000s and
2010s. You had this popular surge all
across Europe that suggested otherwise.
Brexit, which you strongly opposed in
2016 that predated Trump and it was
driven in part by a desire to reclaim
sovereignty from Brussels. So again,
doesn't that complicate the Carney
argument, the essential Carney argument
that Trump was a prime mover behind this backlash?
