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Intelligence Squared
Is This the Twilight of American Supremacy? Simon Jenkins on Why the World Needs the USA
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- [00:00]
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Mia Sorrenti
Welcome to Intelligence Squared, where great minds meet. I'm producer mia Sorrenti. In 2026, the United States of America marks its 250th birthday. The country is younger than the British Museum and Guinness. So how did this vast melting pot of people and ideas come to dominate global politics and culture? Historian and journalist Simon Jenkins believes America's success stems from its careful balancing of the freedoms and interests of the states and the federal government. For this episode, he talks to Maithili Rao about the enduring tensions and balances that have enabled these 50 distinct states not only to survive civil war but to prosper. Let's join our host, Maithili Rao, now with more.
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Maithili Rao
Welcome to Intelligence Squared. I'm Maitha Lee Rao. Our guest today is Simon Jenkins. Simon is the author of the bestselling A Short History of England, A Short History of Europe, Britain's 100 Best Railway Stations, England's thousand Best churches, and England's thousand Best Houses. He's a former editor of the Evening Standard and the Times and a columnist for the Guardian. Today, Simon joins us to discuss his new book, A Short History of From Tea Party to Trump. Welcome to Intelligence Squared, Simon.
- [03:45]
Simon Jenkins
Thank you very much, Simon.
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Maithili Rao
To start with, I wondered if you could describe where your interest in American history began. I was surprised to learn in this book that you were a Senate intern in the late 1960s. Is that correct? How did that come about and what did you take from that experience?
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Simon Jenkins
I've always been one of those Britons who always thinks of themselves as sort of half American or at least transatlantic. My father worked in America. He was an academic at Princeton. I spent a year there when I was a child. My first wife was American. I went there every year. So I'm pretty half American. And I've always been fascinated by the place. I have to say, I've never lived there for very long as an adult, but I've visited there every year. I love America.
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Maithili Rao
That came across in this book, which is a very thorough history that kind of, you know, reminded me of why I loved AP US History in high school, kind of hits all the highlights and tells a nice story about the country's origin and eventful couple hundred years. As an American living in the uk, I've been in this country for seven years. Something I have a little bit of a bee in my bonnet about is the way I feel American politics and history are not necessarily well understood in this country. And I think there are lots of reasons for that. And there are also lots of reasons why you could say, well, it doesn't matter that much. You know, the United Kingdom has its own history and politics to concern itself with. How is American history taught in the UK and, and what role do you think a book like yours has to play?
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Simon Jenkins
American history is appallingly badly taught. And indeed, I actually think everyone's understanding of history, to my mind, is always gained from newspapers, not from books. And so if you rely on the media, the newsround, all these sorts of inputs to learn about anywhere in the world, not just America, you're going to get a very, very biased view of the world. When I've been in America, I've been appalled how badly they know Europe because they rely on Fox News or whatever. And there is a sort of great ignorance conspiracy about history. And it's why it should be really taught in schools properly. And I think it's not taught. One of the problems with American history I learned since I read good knows how many books on American history before writing this book is they're all so long. And I can remember my wife saying the reason why I read these short histories is my wife saying she can't stand long history. She wants a short history. And that's why I started writing short histories. And the test was, is it all I need to know? And in each chapter I try to only say what you need to know to understand the general thrust of historical tale. So that was my motive, was just to tell people that the news you get as a historian to the truth.
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Maithili Rao
And who would you say your target reader is for this kind of book?
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Simon Jenkins
I really don't know. You never know if you write books. I don't know how many of you have written, but I mean, you don't know who's going to read it. All I do know of the other ones is an awful lot of students and teenagers read them because they wanted something short. And most academics write books for other academics. And that's my real beef. I try to write things as a journalist. I'm a proud journalist. I write as a journalist for ordinary people who are reading, who are interested in reading something reasonably serious about what the world is like.
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Maithili Rao
This book starts at the very beginning with land bridges, so. So we're talking as early as human civilization that we know of. But things really kick into gear with the story of the Jamestown colony, which, incidentally, is not that far from where I grew up. And you admire how autonomous the Jamestown colony managed to be and see in that kind of some of the germs of what the United States would become. What was significant to you about Jamestown?
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Simon Jenkins
If I could just start by saying. What I start in the book by saying is that you need first to appreciate what America was before the Europeans ever came near the place. The city of Cahokia in St. Louis in the Midwest had about 20,000 people. In the Middle Ages, it was bigger. An American city was bigger than Paris or London. At the time, America was a bigger continent in every sense than Europe was. Because it was cut off. We don't think it existed. But I make the point because America was the present. America was a relatively Late intrusion onto the story of America, which is why I started at the very beginning, but coming onto the Europeans when they came along. And the Europeans, of course, were first the Spanish. The Spanish never really penetrated North America. It was. Well, the Vikings were the first, actually, but then the British. What was interesting and I think critical, and I really mean critical to the future of the United States of America as they became, was that there were two Americas. There was the America of Virginia, of Jamestown and so on, and there was the America of Massachusetts. And they were completely different. One was the gentry, the English gentry, English speaking, but English gentry. And they brought servants with them, they hired slaves. Eventually they were the basis of American slavery. And there was the Massachusetts and Mayflower Pilgrims who were assiduously Protestant, very hard working, very down to earth. They didn't employ other people, they worked themselves the land. And they were a completely different sort of America. And it was these two Americas that made the present America. And I think that's a critical understanding to have of why America is like it is.
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Maithili Rao
It's such an interesting reading of it. I think you're right, but it's not something I necessarily thought about. The way history was taught to me as a Virginian, where there was much more of an emphasis on the early Virginian settlements. You kind of work your way up to the story of American independence, which you chronicle with a great deal of enthusiasm, writing that nothing in political history merits more admiration than America's progress to independence. I wonder if you could describe what you found admirable about this chapter.
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Simon Jenkins
Well, I mean, it is Virginia. I mean, Virginia was America, there's no question about it. One of the reasons why slavery lasted so long, I'm afraid, is that Virginia was America. I mean, most of the first presidents were all from Virginia. But the key to Virginia and its role in America was the fact that it had at its core a cadre of very well educated, intelligent young men who took over the business of American independence. They always had to keep the wretched Massachusetts people on site. They always had to be sure that they were Protestants as well as some of them were Catholics. But there was this compromise. The word compromise always was used. Franklin said, we're a compromise. We're an experimental compromise. And it was this tension between the Virginians and the north and the emphasis that both of them actually, but particularly the Virginians placed on a classical education, on Greek democracy, Roman republicanism, all these concepts, very old fashioned, very academic, but they were built into the political conversation of America in a way that applied to no Other country. When you think what France was going through at the same time France was chaos, France ended up in dictatorship, America did not. And I think you've got to understand why America did not to understand why America has been so successful, successful country ever since.
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Maithili Rao
There's a line you quote from Alexis de Tocqueville that I wanted to bring up. It is very pithy. The American is the Englishman left to himself. I imagine a lot of British readers will enjoy that characterization. What did he mean by that and what truth do you think, if any, is in that statement?
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Simon Jenkins
I think he was very much referring to monarchy. He was referring to Britain then as basically a monarchy and he was testing it against France. So it's a very. He was writing in a very difficult period to be generalizing like that. But I think when he got to America, he did see all the qualities he rather admired in the English with none of the constraints that they were subject to when they were in England. Constraints of rather old fashioned sort of semi democracy and so on. I mean, he. It's very difficult to take detoqueful at face value, which is why there's a club in America of people in the journalism business who promise never ever to mention de Tocqueville. But I mean, it's a true story. And he did think that. His other quote, which I think I do have, is American politics defaults to the mob. British politics defaults to the club. And that's actually a much truer statement, I think, particularly the light of things that are happening today.
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Maithili Rao
While we were making broad generalizations about American politics versus British politics, I was recently listening to a conversation between David Remnick and Zadie Smith. And there was an interesting sidebar. They got into the question of how Americans and Europeans differ on what they understand government to be for. And they were talking specifically about the welfare state, about what a government is expected to provide, be that healthcare or housing, and these very fundamentally different conceptions in the United States and Europe about what government should do. How do you define that distinction, if any? And what explains it?
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Simon Jenkins
Well, if we go back in history actually to where you asked my last question about the states and so on, nobody will understand America if they didn't understand states. And it's states plural, not states singular. There's a great debate at one point is the USA United States of America or the United States of America? It's always been plural, the United States of America. And embodied in that is this concept of what is the state all about, what is the government about? And by Government, there's the endless tension. Is it the state's government or the federal government? The government of the national state? And all the differences between Europe and America boil down to this difference. In America, there's a compromise between state rule and federal rule. In Britain, there's none, which is why our electoral government is such a mess. But in America, it's very, very sort of embedded in the Constitution. The Constitution itself is about the state. And that's why you have term limits, we hope, why states have to approve constitutional change, all these things. To understand America, you have to understand the rights of the state and the freedoms of the state. That's the answer to your question, I think. There's no answer to your question. There are two states in America.
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Maithili Rao
One era I've been thinking about recently and that you really pay a lot of attention to in the book, is the Reconstruction era. These are the years after the American Civil War, when the war was over, but there was still such a live political discussion fight over how the country should look like in the future, what rules should govern it, what would become of former slaves, what kind of legal overhaul was necessary for this new country to exist. I've been reading a terrific new biography of Charles Sumner, whose legal writing set the framework for Brown vs. Board of Education a century later, and who is famously caned in Congress by the South Carolinian Congressman Preston Brooks. You place a lot of importance on the Reconstruction period as maybe a period that's underestimated for how much of an impact it's had on American history. Do you want to talk a little bit about what interested you about it?
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Simon Jenkins
Well, I suppose, repeating myself. The thing that always fascinates me about America is everything in American politics and history is a compromise. There are two tensions, always operating very fiercely. I mean, never more so than now between a number of different Americas, for goodness sake, South America, it's 20 countries. America's one country still. It's still amazing to me, having read the history of America, that it's still one country. And one reason is that this tension never quite resolves itself. Jefferson, I mean, all the Virginian Federalists, they all knew slavery was a terrible, terrible mistake. They owned slaves, half of them, and they knew it would have to go. They tried to think of things, of getting rid of it and so on, and. And eventually the Constitution failed. They failed to compromise. They had the Mason Dixon line trying to divide them and separate them, and it ended up in Civil War. Civil War was overwhelmingly won by the north, as it was always going to be. The case afterwards, this theory of reconstruction meant that the slaves are now free. We've rid ourselves, we the northerners, we've rid ourselves of the terrible legacy of the old south and we're moving forward to a great future in what became the Gilded Age. They didn't, I mean, not just Andrew Johnson, the president after the Civil War, but successive presidents compromised again and again. They allowed the black codes, they allowed discrimination, they allowed segregation to continue in the South. Slavery continued as virtual serfdom, but they always have turned a blind eye to it. And it continued right through into the 1960s when LBJ finally I think did cure it. But the point was that they sort of knew that if they pushed it too hard, America would break up. And it was this determination. They started with 13 colonies and they got up to 50 states. It was amazing. They didn't break up, they never broke up. They never broke up because they always compromised, they always gave in, they always allowed something to continue. They never quite confronted the slavery issue or the discrimination issue. More recently, they've never quite confronted the power of the lobbies in Washington, which is a much under told story. And these lobbies prevented any health service really emerging in America. They've enabled the Pentagon to become a vast world force. All sorts of things go wrong in America, but it stays together. And it's this force of union that I find so impressive in America.
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Maithili Rao
The office of the President is one that has evolved a great deal over American history. And you write about various presidents who had an outsized impact on shaping the country's future. Do you have a favorite president who you admire or see as particularly instrumental or. A few.
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Simon Jenkins
People always say, do I have a favorite building? I mean, I don't really. I mean there are presidents that fascinated me certainly. I mean the presidents who were genius like Lincoln, who had many weaknesses and so on, but he was a remarkable man and I think Lincoln was. The union would not have survived if it hadn't been for Lincoln, who himself was a compromiser. The ones I've always fascinated to read about is a different answer to your question. I mean, Teddy Roosevelt, the nearest I may say to Donald Trump, Teddy Roosevelt was an extraordinary man. And had there been no term limit, I mean had he been there for 20 or 30 years, which he could have done probably if he'd been allowed to, he'd have built up a huge American empire. There's no doubt about it, Central America would be part of the United States of America. And possibly not if it had been for the first Roosevelt, less of an enthusiast about the second Roosevelt, then they're the ones you sort of people like Herbert Hoover and Ulysses Grant. They're characters who are characters. But America's been very good in not always choosing talented people to be president. It's almost a boring one followed by a talented one. And there have been no American presidents, I have to say, since the first group, who were outstanding, I may say, in holding together the early union, the union or the union of states before independence. But I don't know. I think that America's gift is for not getting too clever presidents.
- [20:11]
Maithili Rao
Since you mentioned Trump, I'm going to steer us in that direction now. And you said that the president who in some ways you think resembles Trump quite a bit is Teddy Roosevelt, which is interesting, because I think when he was elected for a second time, a lot of people also thought that Trump resembled Andrew Jackson. What presidential era from the past do you think is most like the one we're in now? Not just in terms of leadership, but I'm thinking also of the America that Trump seems to want to return to, to kind of roll back to and to refashion.
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Simon Jenkins
I think it's a very difficult question to answer. It really is, because Trump is bizarre. I don't think Trump is an ideologue in the sense of which you're asking. I mean, I don't think there is an America that he dreams of. I think he's a very, very strange character. I think he's sort of clinically egotistical. I think he only does things he thinks is going to work for the next five minutes or 10 minutes or two days. And it's clearly chaotic. Whether it's going to be as chaotic as it was first time around, we don't know yet. The one thing always to remember, I keep saying to people, he's only there for another three years, he will not be able to run again. There's just no way he'd get the Constitution changed. But going back, I mean, there's an awful sense of not so much Andrew Jackson, more Andrew Johnson. I mean, after Lincoln, the Reconstruction period, when everyone in Washington basically tried to pretend that the Civil War hadn't even been won. I mean, it was a period of deep reaction and a desire, frankly, to forget there was ever a civil War, with the same emphasis on isolationism, on primitive conservatism. I'm trying to think. I mean, you had it again, I suppose you had it under Reagan. Initially, under Reagan, when basic conservative principles were being adumbrated. It sort of worked then. It hasn't not worked under Trump. What's frightening under Trump, I think is for the moment, the much treasured checks and balances of the Constitution are not working. I think that. I notice that all the cases that have gone before the Supreme Court are postponed. They're not decided. In other words, everybody's marking time. And I just hope they go on marking time. But it's very useful every now and then. And it's happened so many times before in American history. I mean, Cleveland and people like that between the wars, they, Herbert Hoover, they all spoke to the American people against the Northeast, against the liberal intelligentsia, against the conventional wisdom, against being involved in world affairs. This line, this sort of populist isolationist line is a long standing one. Throughout American history, George Washington pleaded with his successors, pleaded as the first president of America, do not get involved in other people's affairs. Don't meddle in Europe. Don't get any, don't, don't touch these things. And when two world wars in the 20th century, Woodrow Wilson and then FDR, Franklin Roosevelt, both had to plead with their people when they were being elected. Don't worry, I will not get involved in a foreign war. They both broke their promise, but it was so strong. And the American people, who are a very different group of people from the New York Times, they just are. They, I used to go to Texas every year. They hate New York. They hated New York. I mean, when I married a Texan girl, they said, we don't mind as long as you don't come from the north, you're okay from Britain, but not the Northeast, please. And he was that passionate. And every now and then, I think you need a Trump to say to people, just remember that the United States of America is not New York and Washington. And this time the American people took him at his word. Whether the great American people still think that, I mean, the polls aren't helping him, I don't know. But it's a corrective built into the Constitution. Donald Trump. And he's warning you, if you go too far down the liberal road or the liberal federal road or whatever you call the road, you'll get someone like me.
- [24:43]
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Maithili Rao
On this idea. I mean, I think the way you phrase it in the book is you write, it can be no bad thing for a nation to be asked to occasionally question its place in the world, to review its strategies. I think that's what you mean exactly about a country having a forced moment of reckoning. I think it's pretty easy to make the argument that what's happening in the United States now is far more than a recalibration. It's something much more destructive. I know you've been critical about the US on things like the Iraq War, for example, in the past in your column. There's plenty to criticize. When you think about the kinds of corrections that could emerge from this moment. What does the best case scenario look like for you?
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Simon Jenkins
Good question. I think the best case scenario is that Donald Trump goes in three years time. Everybody says, phew, thank goodness that's over. But he did tell us, look, why have you been supporting Europe's defense for 25 years? What is this, NATO? We're not threatened by Russia, we're not threatened by Europe. We're not threatened by anybody, really. We don't even need the Pentagon, frankly. He's asked you questions that need an answer. I think all that said, never forget America's successes every turn. I mean, every 10 years a new revolution comes along, born in California, somewhere like that. I'm much more worried about AI than I am about the Pentagon. I think finding your way through this new technology, which has only been part of my life, large part of many other people's lives, but finding a way through that. We will be guided by America, and it's very important that America gets it right because the capacity of technology now to make a serious mess of our lives really matters. I think global warming will be sorted out sooner or later by the Chinese and the Americans in some sort of deal. But technology is a different matter and technology really does matter. And it's just interesting to see America get through if you go back to the Gilded Age, when the most interesting part of America was the 1890s, 1890s to the 1920s, fascinating period when America was making almost all the cars in the world, all the tractors in the world, every tractor in Russia was made in America. At the turn of the 20th century, America was a phenomenal success. You then have the phenomenon of Hollywood and television and films. World culture was transformed by America. These things were happening before America was the world's superpower. To me, it proves that capitalism in the traditional sense does work, provided you regulate it and handle it properly. And America's proved all that beyond peradventure, and it's still proving it. It's still going to be a better place than China. I know it. All these reasons I'm for America, but every now and then you get Donald Trump and you've got to handle. You've got to handle, you've got to work out what it is. He's telling you what you need to do to prevent him happening again. That's why I think he's in many ways quite a beneficial figure.
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Maithili Rao
We've been talking about how it's a precarious moment in American politics. It's also a precarious moment in British politics for the state of democracy here in the United Kingdom. Are there particular lessons from American history that you think can be applied to this moment in the uk?
- [29:18]
Simon Jenkins
I don't know. I think the thing that America always tells you, and I come back to Tocqueville here, I promise I'd never do. What is the default mode in America when things go wrong in America? You choose a populist. You go out there into the yard and you get some guy who says something you rather like William Jennings Bryan style. In Britain, it defaults to the club. You find which group of apparatchiks in Westminster are most likely to win the next election and you probably don't know who any of them are. They come up with someone you don't want as Prime Minister, like Starmer or Rishi Suno or Liz Truss, whoever it is, who's been served you on a plate by the club. And in our case, you don't like it very much, so you vote them out. Somehow. I don't know. I think the lesson I always get from America is always remember that every voter matters, Every voter counts that out. There are people who are doing the things you want to do. They're working hard, they're living a life and they're paying their taxes and you listen to them when they get really upset about something in Britain. At the moment, the one aspect of Britain that I find very depressing is the dominance of London over the rest of the country outside the London and Southeast area. And I try and go to Wales quite often, the north country, in parts of Scotland. These are poor parts of the country and no one cares about them. The high speed train. The high speed train is the most extravagant project ever undertaken by British government. Is now going to join London to Birmingham in the south. It is absolutely ridiculous. And the trains in the north are terrible. Provincial. Britain has no voice. And very soon we call the United Kingdom. United Kingdom. It's the union of England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland are now have in the majority or effectively in a majority. Separatist parties, they all want to leave the union. Now, I don't think they all really do, nor do I think they don't necessarily win a referendum for that. But separatist parties, Sinn Fein, sdp, SNP and Plaid Cymru in Wales, all wanting independence for their regions of the United Kingdom. That's pretty terrible. I mean, nowhere else in Europe has that unsatisfactory a union. America is the country to learn unions about.
- [31:56]
Maithili Rao
I want to conclude by reading a few lines from the very end of the book you write. It has been a strength, not a weakness, that America has seen many false starts and hesitant finishes. But its constitution was born not of vanity, but of the determination of good people to see if they could live together through compromise and prosper through energy. They've shown that they can and have done so for two and a half centuries. I regard this as nothing short of astonishing. However battered and blemished, the achievement stands as an example to the world. If today's United States ceased to exist, it would be a global catastrophe. There's no other nation imaginable that could take its place. Why would it be a global catastrophe if the United States as we know it ceased to exist?
- [32:38]
Simon Jenkins
I think because America is without any doubt a citadel of freedom. I mean, all right, Trump is playing fast and loose with this, but it is the very reaction to Trump shows that America is the most powerful country in the world militarily, for what that's worth. It seems unable to win wars these days, but that's a different matter. It's a huge country, it's a rich country, it's the richest country on earth. It was until recently aiding all the poor countries of the world in some sense or another through usaid, which has now been stopped. I'm sure will be restarted sooner or later. But America is an example to the world of how you can get very diverse peoples to live together in a peaceful, relatively peaceful, stable state and prosper if there's no other country and there isn't any other country that comes across in quite that sense. I mean, I said you could say Europe does collectively, Japan might, I don't know. But nothing comes near America. And for America not to exist, I'm sure I won't be around. But if it doesn't exist, the idea that there's nowhere on earth that's a citadel of freedom in that sense, I think is terrible. And so I want America to work.
- [33:53]
Maithili Rao
As do I. Simon. Simon, thank you so much.
- [33:57]
Simon Jenkins
Thank you very much.
- [33:58]
Maithili Rao
That was Simon Jenkins, author of A Short History of America, which is available now online and in stores. I'm Maitha Lee Rao. You've been listening to Intelligence Squared. Thank you for joining us.
- [34:08]
Mia Sorrenti
Thanks for listening to Intelligence Square Squared. This episode was produced by Ginny Hooker and it was edited by Mark Roberts.