Opinion | Historian Margaret MacMillan on the possibility of the next world war and why there is no satisfying Donald Trump

Margaret MacMillan is one of Canada’s greatest historians. She’s taught at the University of Toronto and at Oxford, has written a dozen books, and was even sanctioned by Russia, a country she’d like to visit but now can’t. She is also unhappy to report that this moment in history reminds her of some of the darkest days of our past. 

Steve Paikin: Mark Twain once had this great expression that history doesn’t repeat, but it does rhyme. As you consider this moment in history, what do you think it rhymes with? 

Margaret MacMillan: Nothing much good, I think. That’s what worries me. I’ve spent a lot of my life studying difficult patches in history and I always had a slightly comfortable feeling that, well, at least I won’t live through one. And now we’re all living through one. It reminds me of the period before the First World War, when you had nations that were prepared to disrupt the existing order, you had international competition over colonies, you had nationalism, and you had people in positions of authority who were prepared to use force, and we got the First World War. And it reminds me a bit of the period before the Second World War, where, again, you’d had an attempt made after the First World War to set up an international order, and you had nations — Germany, Italy, Japan — that were prepared to break that. 

That is definitely not encouraging. That suggests we’re on the precipice of another massive conflagration. Try to convince me, please, that’s not the case. 

I think what will hold nations back is that the weapons are so much more terrifying than they were. When you think of the devastation of the Second World War and what it did, it laid waste to huge sections of Asia and Europe and killed perhaps 50 million people. But a number of countries now possess nuclear weapons, and I think what may hold people back from making the decisions that would take us to the edge of war is just that fact, that if you start a war with the sort of weapons we have, you don’t know how it’s going to end, but you won’t come out unscathed. 

The man who is getting all the credit or blame for the new international order that we are embarking upon is, of course, U.S. President Donald Trump, who seems more obsessed with winning the Nobel Prize. How come? 

I mean, surely he’s got other things to think about. I find it beyond comprehension. I really do. 

Barack Obama got one, so he wants one. I guess he feels very competitive with his predecessor? 

It’s sort of schoolyard stuff, isn’t it? He’s got a bigger baseball bat than me, and I want the same thing, and it’s not fair. It’s not a rational way to behave. And why alienate your allies? Why alienate Norway? Why alienate Denmark? Why alienate Canada? Why alienate all the allies you’ve worked with and trusted for years? I really am having trouble understanding what the long-term goal of President Trump is. 

Can you recall a time in history when an American president so brazenly threatened to take over an ally’s territory? 

No, I can’t. There have been times when the United States has been cross with its allies, but that happens all the time. It was very cross with the British when the British tried to seize the Suez Canal from Egypt in the 1950s. The U.S. government felt that some of its allies weren’t supporting it enough in Vietnam. But I cannot think of a time when an American president has made it clear that he doesn’t value NATO and doesn’t care about his allies. 

Are we heading back to the world of the late 19th, early 20th century, when it was everyone for themselves? 

I think we are. There’s always been a sort of tension in international relations between the view that it’s all about power, and the great powers do what they want, and the lesser powers just go along or gang up against them. But the other view is that, in fact, we’re all better off if we work together, that international relations needn’t be a zero-sum game where I win and you lose, that actually it could be something where we build an international order so that we don’t have costly wars and we settle our disputes peacefully. A dog-eat-dog world is miserable. It leads to human misery. It leads to poverty. And we have to ask ourselves, is that the sort of world we want? 

Which president before Trump was this disruptive on the international stage in the same kind of way? 

I’m finding it very hard to think of a president who was this disruptive. You’ve had presidents who’ve asserted American primacy or tried to bully their neighbours. Canada knows this. We had a number of attempts in the 19th century, and earlier, by the United States to invade us. The United States invaded Mexico several times, and it invaded Central America several times. But for the most part, I think American presidents have realized that the United States is better off if it doesn’t have to defend its own borders and worry about unfriendly neighbours. President Trump seems to be driven by a sort of passion for expanding the map of the United States. He talks about the Louisiana Purchase. He talks about the purchase of Alaska. And Greenland is even bigger. And I think, everyone, as they get older, gets to a point where they start to think about their place in history, and it’s possible that President Trump wants to be remembered as a president who expanded the footprint of the United States enormously. 

Are there any circumstances you can imagine which would see the United States invade Canada in order to make us their 51st state? 

You know, if you’d asked me that question even a year ago, I would have said, oh, that’s ridiculous. I don’t know now. Now, the fact that the president would demand that the Danish government hand over Greenland or threaten the prime minister of Norway for not giving him the Nobel Peace Prize — President Trump constantly does things that you don’t expect. So, yes, I can no longer not imagine that the United States might try and invade Canada and take it over. We’ve always been a very dependable ally. The border is safe. So, why turn on Canada? Why turn on Denmark? Why turn on most of the European powers? I find it very difficult to understand. Even great powers need allies. 

Who was the last American president you can recall, who seemed to get along better with his authoritarian, totalitarian adversaries than with his democratic, Western allies? 

I can’t think of anyone. President Franklin Roosevelt, in the Second World War, tried very hard to get on with (Soviet dictator Joseph) Stalin, not because he liked the Soviet system, but he just felt it was necessary for the future. President (Richard) Nixon, who people often see as a ruthless president with authoritarian tendencies, very well understood the importance of alliances and spent a lot of time on his allies. No, I think Trump’s instincts are to do what he wants, and to hell with the consequences. I think the closest analogy to someone like President Trump is actually a monarch. In some ways, he’s like Louis XIV, the French king, who built Versailles, which also had lots of gold and lots of mirrors. And Louis XIV made war. As he said, “I do it for my own glory.” Like Louis XIV, Trump conducts himself in a way, internationally, for his own glory. He’s actually put out memes of himself wearing a crown.

Do you think there’s too much appeasement of Trump going on in this world today? 

Well, I think the attempt in itself is not bad. I think it’s very important to avoid war and to avoid international confrontations. And so, if someone is making demands, if you can find something that will appease them, that will settle them down, I mean, we do this in personal relationships. We make compromises. And so I think appeasement has got a very bad name because of what happened in the 1930s. Even then, I think, it was an honourable attempt to try and avoid a second world war. The people who were doing it were too naive about (German dictator Adolf) Hitler. But I think the attempt in itself wasn’t bad. And so, an attempt to try and find ways of keeping President Trump within the community of nations was not a bad one. But what seems to be clear is that there’s no satisfying his complaints, because once you satisfy one, there’ll be another one. I hope that nations are getting to the point where they’re realizing that this is probably not going to work very well.