I first encountered Niall Ferguson in a real way when I was writing Review article For The New Yorker at the end of 2003. The editors had sent me a small collection of books about what we might call the “new imperialism” moment that had taken hold of Washington, D.C., in the wake of the September 11 attacks. One of these books was by Ferguson, a rather dramatic and unabashed celebration of the British Empire. If anything, it has been among the indirect and implicit versions of the story told by various authors, celebrating the glories of empire and leaving it to the reader to draw the conclusion that it is time to bring it back. As I have read his columns here and there over the past two decades, the historicism has receded as the disinterested agitator has moved to the fore. But something different caught my attention The article he published in The Free Press earlier this week (Subscription required) On Trump’s Gaza peace plan: Here’s how closely it matches the main outlines of the article I wrote on the same topic last week. If you remember, I wrote that Trump’s plan was actually a pretty big deal, one that only Trump was in a position to implement for several reasons. The basis of the agreement is the shared tyranny and corruption that now links Washington, Riyadh, Abu Dhabi and other regional capitals through the personal ties that link the Trump family to the princely families of the Gulf.