Niall Ferguson and Scott Horton Debate the Russia-Ukraine War: Who Provoked Who?
An evaluation of their debate and debate rhetoric
Scott Horton and Niall Ferguson recently debated each other on the primary cause and course of the Russia Ukraine War. It was an interesting, entertaining, and quite provocative debate because Horton had no patience for Ferguson’s arguments or debating style and was quick to anger and insult.
There are two main threads to pull on in evaluating this debate. One is evaluating Horton’s argument that U.S. NATO expansion and similar geopolitical maneuvering antagonized Putin into invading Ukraine and the second is about the quality of modern debating. The first I waded into before critiquing entrepreneur and new Trump administration AI and Crypto Czar David Sacks's similar argument.
As a bit of background I had never heard of Scott Horton before, but here’s his bio via Perplexity:
Scott Horton is an American radio host, author, and libertarian activist born in 1976. He is the director of the Libertarian Institute and editorial director of Antiwar.com, best known for hosting Antiwar Radio on Pacifica Radio's KPFK 90.7 FM and The Scott Horton Show podcast.
Horton has authored several books focused on foreign policy and anti-war perspectives: Fool's Errand: Time to End the War in Afghanistan (2017), Enough Already: Time to End the War on Terrorism (2021), Hotter Than the Sun: Time to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (2022) Provoked: How Washington Started the New Cold War With Russia and the Catastrophe in Ukraine (2024)
Niall Ferguson is someone I’m very familiar with and listen to frequently on the Goodfellows Podcast and am enamored with his history books. For more bio, he’s a:
prominent Scottish-American historian known for his works on international and economic history, currently serving as the Milbank Family Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and a senior fellow at Harvard's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. (Perplexity)
I tried to go in with an open mind, knowing I would be more predisposed to Ferguson’s argument. And while Horton made some really strong and well-researched historical arguments he basically lost the debate by being quick-to-temper and impetuous. As soon as Ferguson accused Horton of “Russian propaganda” in his Russia was provoked line of arguments he lost his cool and turned to ad hominem attacks. To use Ferguson’s word from the debate these attacks were “juvenile”.
I’ll come back to debate style but first let's talk about substance. Horton is in a nutshell arguing that since the fall of the Soviet Union, the U.S. has not done a proper job of bringing Russia into the international fold and making them more of an ally than an enemy. Horton was strong on the details here and cites some compelling evidence for the U.S. and particularly the Clinton administration for lying to Russia about not doing NATO expansion. And then what do you know, in 1999 the Czech Republic (preferred English name is now Czechia), Poland, and Hungary joined NATO.
Ferguson counters that there was no written agreement or treaty during this period just a “promise” made by Secretary of State James A. Baker under President George H.W. Bush to then Russian leader Mikhail Gorbachev that after East Germany reunified with West Germany, already a longtime NATO member, that NATO would not expand “one inch eastward”.
Litigating the historical accuracy of whether or not there was a broken promise(s) is not the main point. Regardless, Horton argues this NATO expansion and other actions provoked unnecessary hostility between the two countries and you can point to numerous examples of provocation from the U.S. and the West that made it more likely for Russia to become a more aggressive country, culminating in the 2008 invasion of Georgia, the 2014 invasion of Crimea and more of eastern Ukraine in 2022.
Even if you do buy wholesale Horton’s argument that these actions weakened Russian security, including support for "color revolutions" in former Soviet states, and NATO’s 2008 Bucharest Declaration promising NATO membership to Ukraine and Georgia it doesn't make full sense if you look at it from the perspective of Russia, President Vladimir Putin, and Russia’s long history of aggression.
We can go back to the 16th century to Ivan the Terrible to trace the start of Russian imperialism and territorial aggression, but more pertinetly would be tracing the history of the Soviet Union. And to add in more important historical context in 2005 Putin in his annual State of the Nation address said:
"The demise of the Soviet Union was the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century."
And in 2021 he reiterated these views for a documentary and added that the dissolution of the USSR was:
“a tragedy as for the vast majority of the country's citizens.”
Reading him carefully here when he says “the country’s citizens” he’s not just referring to Russia but its vassal states, like Ukraine too.
Putin is sometimes viewed as a murderous dictator but also an enigma. Someone who has crafted this careful persona of a geopolitical mastermind who you never know what he is going to do next. And while there is some truth to this characterization and in a society where free speech and government transparency are nonexistent when Putin says something he is sometimes to be believed and taken seriously. And most importantly his actions speak to the type of leader and person he is.
One of the central flaws in Horton’s argument is that this idea of being provoked into war doesn’t not only fit within Russian history and how Putin views Russia, but it reduces their agency and gives more agency to the U.S. than it deserves.
Horton in the debate uses as evidence a long history of failed U.S. foreign policy like Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq. He is right to point out these failures but is wrong to think that this then leads to conclusive evidence of provocation. Did Saddam Hussein provoke the U.S. into invading in 2003? To an extent sure, but the sole responsibility for invading another sovereign country rests with the U.S. for good and ill. To an extent, Horton agrees with this but overweighs the U.S. and NATO country’s responsibility in provoking Russia. Overall, it is probably Horton’s libertarian anti-American war views that skew his analysis for the worse.
The same line of provoked argument can be applied to Russia when they took over much of Eastern Europe after WW2. And invaded Afghanistan in 1979.
Horton is right to point out that the U.S. should have done more to mollify Russia after the collapse of the Soviet Union. But Ferguson makes the point that it was not wrong for other East European countries to want to join NATO and be protected from Russian aggression. What Horton labels a provocation can also be described as self-defense and Ukraine probably wishes they were in NATO as Putin has not had the temerity to invade a NATO member country.
Why is it that Russia has not been invaded since 1941 when Hitler’s Germany broke a nonaggression pact? For one, the other countries of Europe post-World 2 are not interested in imperialism. The U.S. foreign policy post-WW2 has been interventionist, and sometimes for the good of the global order, but if you can’t see the difference between the morality of U.S. foreign policy and Soviet and Russian foreign policy you’re only looking at the bad and not the good.
From the Berlin Airlift in 1948 to the Dayton Accords that mediated peace to end the terrible ethnic violence of the Bosnian war the U.S. has done a lot of good. This doesn’t erase its failures but to call it all a failure and act like the U.S. is an empire of old just trying to colonize and exploit the world is to misunderstand the unique liberal world order the U.S. led the creation of and has worked to maintain. Many American presidents and foreign policy officials have tried to export democracy, freedom, human rights, and foreign aid. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't but if we don’t study the successes too we will misunderstand what the U.S. role should be in helping to end the Russia-Ukraine war and other conflicts ongoing and possible. To sum up, briefly, that role should be active yet cautious.
Now for the debate lessons. While ultimately Ferguson’s argument was more compelling he won the debate on better rhetoric alone. Or more aptly Horton lost the debate by losing his temper and becoming shockingly rude. I’ve listened to many debates and while occasionally they will get heated with raised voices or vaguely personal attacks I’ve never heard a grown man criticize another grown man for “sounding like a little girl” in a public debate. Ferguson raised the point that these attacks and his going off-topic or not directly answering questions from the patient moderator Peter Robinson were proof that he lost the debate. And it was a shame because Horton made a lot of good arguments but he couldn’t keep his composure when he was tested by a more patient and structured rhetorical style.
Lesson one is don’t react emotionally to your opponent’s arguments. Therefore, lesson two would be to know the opposing side’s argument as well as your own. This is how one truly continues to learn and helps you not get stuck in narrative traps made by your personal biases. And it’s also how you win debates. If you steelman the arguments of your opponent you will know where the weakest points are.
Ferguson seemed to at times straw-man Horton’s points, another reason Horton flew off the handle and it exposed some of the weakness or shallowness of his position. Namely, that the U.S. has only so many cards to play without devoting more weapons, money, or even U.S. troops to the defense of Ukraine. Something next to no one wants.
A brief third lesson is to listen carefully to your opponent so as to respond directly and accurately to their arguments.
And finally, show humility. This relates directly to the previous three arguments but it’s okay to admit when you don’t know something. Sure in a debate you want to sound competent and make strong arguments, but having the intellectual humility to say you’re not sure about something adds credence to your other arguments.
Winning a podcast debate is nice and while Horton’s ideas intrigued me his comportment did not make me want to read his books or follow his work more closely. In that way he not only lost the battle, but the war.