"Colossus" at 20: How Niall Ferguson's American Empire Became Reality

 

Colossus by Niall Ferguson (2005)

The Republic Is Dead. Long Live the Empire.

In Colossus, Niall Ferguson strips away the post–Cold War illusions of American restraint and neutrality. He lays out a blunt thesis: the United States, for all its protestations, has always functioned like an empire. What makes America different, Ferguson argued in 2005, isn't a lack of imperial ambition—it’s the country’s refusal to admit it.

Ferguson saw America as an “empire in denial.” It had military bases across the globe, economic leverage everywhere, and cultural influence that dwarfed that of past empires. What it lacked, he claimed, were three key ingredients to make that empire sustainable: the will to act long-term, the cash to pay for it, and the people willing to run it.

He was half-right.

The 20 years since Colossus hit shelves have been a case study in imperial evolution. Ferguson's warnings have aged better than most predictions from that era. The United States didn’t withdraw from empire—it doubled down. But it didn’t become Rome or Britain 2.0. It became something uniquely American: an empire without borders, without colonial offices, and without a consistent moral compass.

The Will:

What Ferguson thought America lacked—imperial will—turned out to be plentiful. Not in the form of long-term strategic planning, but through endless war and intervention dressed up as counterterrorism, humanitarian action, or “democracy promotion.” Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, drone strikes in a dozen countries. The will wasn’t missing—it just wasn’t honest about its goals.

The Cash:

Ferguson worried about imperial overreach breaking the American bank. Instead, the empire learned to run on debt. Trillions spent, deficits shrugged off. Military budgets climbed while bridges crumbled. The financial system became an extension of the empire—Wall Street as colonial administrator.

The People:

Ferguson thought Americans wouldn’t want to run the empire. But who needs boots-on-the-ground administrators when you have surveillance tech, global finance, and client states? A handful of military contractors and NGOs filled the gap. It’s empire by proxy.

And Now, 2025:

Two decades later, America looks less like the “shining city on a hill” and more like the imperial core Ferguson predicted—overextended, bureaucratically sclerotic, and increasingly indifferent to the ideals of the republic it once was. Domestic surveillance, a permanent war state, and a foreign policy driven by commercial interest (and Trump's infinite personal greed) rather than democratic values have become normalized. The line between citizen and subject is blurry. Elections feel ritualistic. Congress is performative. The courts are political. Empire has swallowed the republic.

Ferguson’s biggest miss was that he still wanted to rescue the project. He saw imperial America as a potential force for good—if only it would admit what it was and act with competence. But competence wasn’t the missing piece. Integrity was. By 2025, it’s clear: America isn’t an empire in denial anymore. It’s just an empire run by a pathetic wannabe dictator. 

Death Camp Visits Resume: Treblinka and the Warsaw Ghetto

Memorial at Treblinka Death Camp in Poland

In November, I will resume my visits to Nazi Death Camps. This time I will travel with my friend Cliff, my usual partner on these journeys, and Emily, a friend who is currently serving as a medic with the U.S. Army in Europe. 

I will meet Cliff in Germany where he is Bruder Timotheus at the Land of Kanaan monastery in Darmstadt. We will drive to Berlin, pick up Emily and go to visit the Warsaw Ghetto.  The next day will be Treblinka. Possibly the day after we will visit Sobibor. 

On the way back to Darmstadt, Cliff and I will go to the Sachsenhausen and Bergen Belsen Death Camps. We will also visit the Deutsche Panzer Museum near Bergen Belsen.  

Some of my previous visits to Nazi Death Camps:

Auschwitz my first visit 2017

The first concentration camp in Nazi Germany.

Buchenwald visit in 2019

Dachau in March 2020 while Covid-19 swept the world 

Flossenburg in July 2021

Second visit of Auschwitz

Terezin Death Camp in Czechia

In My Time of Dying by Sebastian Junger

 

In My Time of Dying is the fifth book I have read by Sebastian Junger since I met him almost a year ago. He was the opening keynote speaker at the Hannah Arendt Center Conference in October 2024. 

In all of Junger's books and films, death hovers in the background when it is not the main topic. As the title says, this book is about Junger's near/almost death from abdominal bleeding. The cause is complex and rare.  He was close enough to death to have the haunting experience of his (dead) father beckoning him into the world beyond this life.  

Reading the book, made me look at my own brushes with death differently. I thought before reading this book I had three near-death experiences. Now I think it was one. Two of them, a missile explosion and a 75-mph motorcycle crash, left me badly injured and temporarily unconscious, but I was still (painfully) aware.  The 50-mph bicycle crash in which I broke my neck, I have no recollection of and near total memory loss for months.

And each of my brushes with death was a sudden bone-breaking crash or explosion. I have never had brush with death that was from disease or internal organ failure.  

Life gone wrong in an instant brought me to death's door, not a slow aching internal failure as was the case with Junger. The book is precise and vivid on the small arteries and ligaments that conspired to nearly kill Junger. It also chronicles current research and experiences of those who are near death or actually dead for a short time and revived.  

Shortly after finishing the book, I had elevated heart rate in the night for five days.  Two of those days I woke up feeling my heart pounding in my chest.  After the second night, I went to the emergency room and then to a cardiologist.  It was probably a virus--I had very high rest heart rates when I had covid. I might not have gone to the emergency room, but after reading how Junger put off finding the cause of his abdominal discomfort, I decided to get checked by doctors.  Also in my mind was a friend whose rest heart rate raced to more than 150 beats per minute for no apparent reason.  

I strongly recommend In My Time of Dying as a story very well told and a cautionary tale if you have any tendency to ignore medical problems.

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Junger's other books, as I noted above, have the life/death theme:

War about a year with several months at the most dangerous forward outpost in Afghanistan. Junger also co-produced the documentary Restrepo about that year in Afghanistan.

Freedom about a long and occasionally danger walk along hundreds of miles of railroad tracks in Pennsylvania.

A Perfect Storm about a fatal shipwreck.

Tribe about, among other things, who we will give our life for.

The next book by Junger I will read is A Death in Belmont about murder in a small town near Boston when I was a child.  

 

I Dumped T-Mobile Because of Their Extreme Roamer Policy

 

I was a fan of T-Mobile even before I was a customer. Until this year I had very  reliable service fromT-Mobile.  

Then I ran afoul of the T-Mobile "Extreme Roamer" policy.  If a T-Mobile customer is out of the country more than two billing periods in a year, all international roaming service is blocked for a year. 

Once the restriction goes into effect it is for a full year.  In my case from February 28 of this year until February 27 next year.  

I could have avoided the problem by unlocking my phone or getting a differentphone with an international plan.  But unlocking would have cost several hundred dollars at the time, and I assumed I could get around the restriction.  

I couldn't.

It turns out even Canada is overseas. I was in Canada in June and had no service. So I changed my cell phone service provider to Verizon. They have no restrictions on international usage although their overseas plans are a little more expensive.  

In 2026 or 2027 I was thinking about spending a month or two in South America.  Depending on the dates of the billing cycle, I could end up in T-Mobile extreme roamer jail again if I continued with their service.  

By the way, the reduced service from T-Mobile did not reduce the monthly bill. 

Full price, no service.  

The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway

I grew up near the sea, several miles from the Atlantic Ocean north of Boston.  While the sea was always near, it was also remote for me. Our family went to the beach once or twice a year. I did not learn to swim until I was 59 years old.  Until I retired, the ocean was something I flew over.

Then a friend told me that the movie Master and Commander was based on a series of 21 novels.  I started reading them and was hooked. I read them all.  I am slowly re-reading the whole series on the Kindle when I travel.  

Then we moved to Panama for a year.  The Panama Canal connects the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. I rode along canal or the Pacific shore almost every day.  

In Panama I met Roger who retired at 51 and spent 21 years sailing around the world on a sailboat.  Roger loves the Master and Commander series, but his favorite sea novel is the Old Man and the Sea. I had never read it, but I had a copy with me. I read it and loved it.   

The old mariner goes far out to sea, alone. In his 80s he is still strong enough to fight the great fish day and night, a fish so big he can't get it in the boat. A fish torn apart and eaten by sharks so he returns with only a skeleton. But everyone knew he caught a great fish. 

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Only once did I go fishing on the ocean. I was seven years old. A neighbor who had a boat took me.  We fished form mackerel by dropping lines with a half-dozen hooks wrapped in orange tape.  I cleaned dozens of fish.  We took a couple barrels of fish back to Stoneham and cooked fish on a grill.  To this day I love mackerel.

My oldest daughter Lauren became obsessed with fishing when she was 11 and 12 years old. I would take her to a farm pond to catch carp which we always threw back.  

 

My Never-Published Pittsburgh Post-Gazette OpEd

I wrote this article at the request of David Mills of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.  It was never published.  I wrote the article after reading Tribe by Sebastian Junger. That book confirmed for me that while it seems my life is devoted to thrill seeking, it was really a life of looking for my tribe.  The thrill seeking was part of the tribes I joined: tank commander, soldier, missile technician, and bicycle racer. The tribe was the point. Thrills and 41 broken bones were part of my tribal membership.   

A friend sent me an article about a 42-year-old guy who crashed his mountain bike in a volcano and consequently decided to throttle back his thrill seeking.  I smiled and thought ‘So young!’ Half of the forty-one bones I have broken were cracked, crunched or splintered since my 40th birthday.  One vast difference between the reformed thrill junkie Gary and me is that I don’t remember my accidents, but he has a vivid memory of his big crash into the volcano. When he contemplates the next adrenaline adventure he can see his crash in his mind. I have no such hindrance. 

My most recent big crash, at age 54, happened so fast I have no memory of it. In fact, I have little memory of the half year that followed.  I was in a downhill race on a long, steep winding descent.  I started at the back of a dozen riders and, according to the other riders, I was just about to pass the racer in front when we touched wheels. I flipped into the air and landed headfirst at 50 mph.  My seventh vertebra was smashed. The first and second vertebra were cracked.  My forehead peeled up to my hairline. Four ribs, my right collarbone, shoulder, and nose were broken. 

Surgeons reattached my forehead and replaced my seventh vertebra with a bone from a cadaver.  Three months later, the doctor cleared me to take off the neck and chest brace I’d been wearing to stabilize my neck.  The next day, I rode down that same hill I’d crashed on with two of my riding buddies who were in the pack when I crashed.  They were worried for me. I was fine. No memory. They told me they could see the crash clearly in their minds.  Two other guys who had seen my crash had already decided to quit racing. I returned to racing, but only intermittently. 

Two weeks after I took off the neck and chest brace, I re-enlisted in the Army after 23 years as a civilian. I was, as noted, 54 years old. Soon after, I had deployment orders for Iraq. At the time I re-enlisted, I had four kids and a wife and a good job and a racing team, but three of the kids were in or on the way to college and if I did not re-enlist as soon as I could, I would age out. So I raised my right hand and went from central Pennsylvania to southern Iraq.  

I spent most of 2009 at Camp Adder, Iraq, serving as an Army Sergeant in a Combat Aviation Brigade.  During that deployment, I flew to several bases across southern Iraq in Blackhawk and Chinook helicopters, once in a blackout sandstorm.  I had plenty of thrilling moments on that deployment, but thrills were not why I re-enlisted.  What I really wanted, I recently learned (and could admit to myself), was to have a mission that mattered and to be part of a group of soldiers risking their lives for each other and that mission.

As I learned from reading Sebastian Junger’s book Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging, a tribe was what I wanted. The thrills would follow, but my squad, my platoon, my company—my tribe was what I really wanted. I missed being a tank commander with my own crew. I got my tribe in Iraq. I stayed in the National Guard until May 2016 when I aged out. During that summer, soldiers who said Bill Clinton, a draft dodger, should never have been President, became avid Trump supporters.  Now that I was a civilian, my Army tribe evaporated faster than spilled water on an Iraq road in July.

But in November, my new tribe materialized. A former coworker said I should join a protest group in Philadelphia called Tuesdays with Toomey.  They planned to protest Senator Pat Toomey every week until he held a town hall meeting in Philadelphia. We rallied in front of Toomey’s office every Tuesday, rain, shine or snow until January 3, 2023, when he left office. He never held the town hall.

In February 2022, just after Russia invaded Ukraine, another friend who served in the Peace Corps in Ukraine told me how I could volunteer to send medical supplies to Ukraine. I did that until November 2022, then have been going to Congress three times a year to ask for aid.  

My tribe is now those who support Ukraine against Russia and those who support Israel against every form of Jihad. I have friends who have volunteered in Ukraine delivering medical supplies. I thought about going, but I know from deploying fifteen years ago that young people look at 50-year-olds as fragile.  I had to be very fit so as not to be suspect.  At my current age, I would just be a worry to people half my age. The same is true for Israel. I will work with my tribe here in the United States and, as with the deployment, the thrills will be part of the journey.

My FM Metal Music Life in the Early 70s

December 19, 1969, I got my  driver's license. I was so happy with that monumental event that I have celebrate the anniversary of my driver's license every year even though I barely celebrate my birthday.  

Among the many ways having a driver's license gave me independence, it meant I had control of the car radio.  My dad listened to sports and the news when we drove to and from work--I worked summers and Saturdays in the grocery warehouse where he worked.  Now, alone in the car, I could listen to music.

But not my favorite music. Most cars only had AM radios in the 1960s and well into the 1970s. In the car, I could listen to 68 WRKO Boston like everyone else.  

Late at night, I could hang a 3-meter long wire out my second-floor, north-facing bedroom window and listen to The Stones, The Who, The Doors, Boston Band Aerosmith, and other new metal bands that were never played on WRKO.  The two stations that played metal were WBCN and WHRB.  (Broadcast FM signals have a 2.8-to-3.2-meter wavelength.) 

WBCN was founded in 1968 calling itself "The American Revolution."  They played rock all the time mixed with news and antiwar messages.  WHRB played classical and had news broadcasts during the day, but had late-night and overnight broadcasts that played Led Zeppelin, Iron Butterfly, Black Sabbath, Deep Purple, Cream, Uriah Heep, Steppenwolf, and others.  

It would be years before I owned a car with an FM radio.  And by the time I had FM I also had a cassette player and did not usually listen to broadcast radio.  

Metal dropped out of my music listening until it returned with a jolt in 2007 when I re-enlisted in the Army.  Many of the 20-year-olds in my unit listened to speed metal, death metal and related genres.  After the brilliant lyrics of early Zeppelin and Uriah Heep, this 21st century metal was awful.  

During Covid I was riding and walking alone a lot.  I usually listen to podcasts but decided to listen to Zeppelin and read the lyrics. Brilliant and beautiful.  It was like catching up with an old friend.  

Riding along listening "Heartbreaker," "Whole Lotta Love," "Bring it on Home," and the rest of those songs took me back Stoneham, listening to my favorite music on a little FM radio.  That music came from WHRB on Harvard's campus and from WBCN on State Street south of the Boston Common. 

Now I can listen to music from any time and anywhere on iTunes.  But it was fun to carefully tune the little radio to 95.3 and see what the late night student DJ would spin.