Peter L. Berger's Blog, page 128

Russian Propaganda In Germany: More Effective Than You Think

In the wake of the September 2017 German elections, many observers have been puzzled by the seeming absence of Russian interference in such a high-stakes European race. A representative  New York Times headline posed the question most directly: “Why no Russian meddling”?

In 2015 and 2016, Russian activity in Germany had followed the same toolkit applied in the United States and France: cyberattacks, hacks, and the spread of fake news through the active use of bots, trolls, and pro-Russian TV channels. There was a cyberattack on German government computers and websites, a hacking attack of the Bundestag, and an attempt to compromise servers belonging to Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union. All of those attacks were attributed to Russian actors, but by early 2017, these same actors appeared to have scaled down their activity. No Russian hackers (or their intermediaries) ever released the documents collected from the hacks, and by some accounts, pro-Russian bots exerted only a minor impact on the German election. Gemma Pörzgen, a German journalist who has published extensively on Russian propaganda efforts, warned against overestimating the Kremlin’s role in the recent German election, arguing that the facts pointing at Russia’s meddling are scarce.

Several theories have been created to explain this seeming inaction. According to one version, Russia calculated that the radical right Alternative for Germany party (AfD) had no real shot of winning the election, unlike Marine Le Pen in France or Donald Trump in the United States. Thus provoking a possible retaliation from Merkel’s side as result of an active interference was simply not worth the risks.

But there is another view taking hold among some scholars: that the Kremlin simply chose a subtler approach this time, by directly targeting the Russian-speaking diaspora in Germany rather than the electorate as a whole. Stefan Meister, a Russia expert from the German Council on Foreign Relations, has argued that the Kremlin chose a tactically clever strategy to spread a targeted pro-AfD and anti-Merkel message across the Russian-speaking population. The German political scientist Hannes Adomeit has likewise noted that the AfD specially targeted ex-Soviet Germans and their descendants who returned to Germany after 1990. The Kremlin may have calculated that these groups are just as disgruntled as former East Germans, but for cultural reasons would be much easier to get to. And given language barriers and the group’s comparative cohesiveness within German society, the very fact of their courting could be harder to track.

It is no secret that the AfD has been cultivating ties with Moscow. The relationship goes back to at least 2015, when the AfD deputy chief Alexander Gauland traveled to St Petersburg on a trip paid for by the St. Basil the Great Charitable Foundation, funded by the pro-Putin oligarch Konstantin Malofeev (who has served as an unofficial Kremlin envoy to European right-wing parties). During the trip, Gauland met with several members of the Duma, along with the anti-Western ideologist Alexander Dugin. Other AfD links with the Kremlin have since emerged, including the participation of the AfD senior politician, Marcus Pretzell, as a guest of honor at a conference in Crimea, AfD’s cooperation with the Kremlin’s youth movements, and trips of AfD representatives as observers to the separatist regions of Ukraine. In February 2017, another AfD leader, Frauke Petry, traveled to Moscow to meet members of the Russian parliament, including the chamber’s speaker and ex-deputy chief of staff Vyacheslav Volodin. The AfD leaders have repeatedly offered to lift the anti-Russia sanctions and improve relationships with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

During this election cycle, the active phase of Russia’s pro-AfD campaign began around mid-May 2017. According to Anton Shekhovtsov, a scholar of the European radical right at the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna, that time frame saw a major upsurge of pro-AfD hashtags on Twitter, and pro-AfD and anti-Merkel content on RT and Sputnik Deutschland. A Russian bot network based in Nizhny Novgorod promoted the AfD. Pro-Kremlin German bots shared articles and hashtags supporting the party, promoting the content of Sputnik and RT and pro-AfD sites such as Journalistenwatch and Philosophia-Perennis. And at least some of the onslaught of anti-Merkel content on Twitter came from bot accounts and trolls that previously backed Donald Trump in the 2016 US election.

That was all standard fare. The really interesting aspect of the strategy involved direct outreach to the Russian-speaking diaspora. A recent study by London’s Institute for Strategic Dialogue turned up a clear pattern of mutually reinforcing messages between the AfD and Kremlin-linked media in both German and Russian languages, beginning in June 2017. The AFD was also the only major German party to have a Russian language strategy, publishing Russian-language ads on German streets and on Russian social media.

Russian state TV channels, which about half of Russian-speaking Germans still watch, played a particularly important role. Most Russian supermarkets in Germany sell cable TV packages offering access to the satellite versions of Russian TV channels (such as Rossiya-1, RTR Planet, and the Russian version of Euronews). The Russian satellite TV channel Rossiya-1 provided positive coverage of the AfD, emphasized the mistreatment of Russians in Germany, and even broadcast AfD campaign ads. AfD representatives appeared on popular Russian state TV news programs to support the Kremlin’s negative narratives about Europe and the “immigration chaos” caused by Merkel.

In the view of Nikolay Mitrokhin, a Bremen-based Russian political analyst, Russian social networks like Odnoklassniki and VKontakte also played a key role. These networks hosted multiple themed groups for Russian-speaking Germans, reflective of their pro-AfD, pro-Russian and/or pro-Putin loyalties. While the Germany-wide groups have larger membership (reaching up to 50,000 members), the regional groups are more numerous. These networks spread targeted content, often consisting of amusing “demotivator” memes and anti-refugee articles from Russian language media. This professionally produced content tapped into familiar themes: nostalgia for the USSR, celebration of the Soviet victory in World War II, praise for Putin and a homophobic, anti-Semitic streak that defined itself in opposition to “Western values.” An analysis of one of these groups, “We Live in Germany” (37,000 members) showed that over a half of its videos contained negative stories about migrants. The AfD also used an active Russian language social media strategy, and ran an account on Odnoklassniki and a Facebook page with over a million German-Russian users. One such page, “Russlanddeutsche Fur AFD NRW” contained a mix of AfD adverts and articles by German and Russian media outlets, including clips from Rossiya-1 and articles from Sputnik Deutschland.

Shekhovtsov believes that the Kremlin realized the feasibility of targeting the Russian-speaking diaspora in Germany after the 2016 Lisa scandal, which arose when a 13-year-old Russian-German girl made up a story about being kidnapped and raped by migrants in Berlin. The Russian media spread her false accusations widely, and Russian bots and trolls promoted this message by continuously accusing the Merkel government of covering up the case. Although denounced by German officials, the fake scandal proved able to substantially mobilize the Russian-speaking German population. As pro-Kremlin media actively spread the Lisa story, a series of protests against Merkel’s migration policy were organized on the same day in some 50-60 German towns (per Mitrokhin’s estimates). Interestingly, the organizers also used a relatively clandestine and targeted approach to spread the word. The protests were not publicly announced or indexed on search engines, with word spreading instead via personal invitation through social networks like Odnoklassniki and Facebook, and through encrypted messaging services like WhatsApp and closed groups on VKontakte.

All the Lisa protests were run under the same official slogan: “We are against violence.” While the numbers of participants varied dramatically from town to town, in some cases the tally reached into the thousands. Many protests featured AfD representatives, who (in a first for a German political party) made sure to speak to the protestors in Russian.

In general, the AfD strategy of targeting the Russian population seems to have worked. In the 2016 fall regional election, AfD received disproportionally high results in the Baden-Württemberg region (which has a high concentration of Russian speakers): 43 percent in the “Russian” area of Pforzheim, Haidach, and 51.8 percent in the “Russian” area of Wartberg, in the town of Wertheim. Similarly, in 2017 federal election the AfD results were above average in the districts with many Russian Germans, such as Pforzheim and a number of districts in Baden-Württemberg.

Moreover, the Lisa protests seem to have had a direct effect on the AfD vote. Looking at town-by-town results from the state of Baden-Württemberg, Mitrokhin finds that in most cases there is a correlation between the presence of a Lisa protest in early 2016 and a 2017 vote share for AfD exceeding the regional average of 12.7 percent. What’s more, the highest AfD results were achieved only in the towns where Lisa protests occurred.

It is impossible to know precisely how many AfD votes come from Russian-speaking Germans, or indeed, if those votes were influenced primarily by Moscow’s disinformation campaign. Regardless, the raw numbers suggest a potentially powerful constituency. In the 2017 election, roughly 1.5 million German Russians (about half of the total Russian-speaking population) were eligible to vote, representing about 2.5 percent of the 60-million strong German electorate. These voters may not all vote as a single bloc, but there is already some evidence that Russia’s propaganda is having an effect on them. Shekhovtsov, for instance, has noted that the AfD’s popularity surged by about 2 percent following the start of the Kremlin’s pro-AfD campaign in May 2017. Although these numbers may seem low, they may well increase in the future as the Kremlin continues to refine its influence operations, and if the mainstream German parties continue to ignore the second largest linguistic community in Germany. The Kremlin’s continuous investment in its propaganda sources certainly suggests that Moscow believes in the efficacy of its efforts.

Overall, the evidence suggests that pro-Kremlin actors implemented an active and successful influence campaign targeted at Russian-speaking Germans in the 2017 election. But a more systematic and scientific analysis of Russian influence operations is needed—one that uses experimental and survey data to focus on the population groups most susceptible to Russian propaganda, and the impact of the targeted information campaigns on these constituencies.

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Toward a Civil War in Northern Iraq

The federal Iraqi government has retaken the city of Kirkuk from the Kurdistan Regional Government. While there were some clashes between the Iraqi army and the Peshmerga, the Iraqi army’s massive show of force allowed federal troops take over the city with little real fighting. As Reuters reports:

Iraqi government forces captured the major Kurdish-held oil city of Kirkuk on Monday, responding to a Kurdish referendum on independence with a bold lightning strike that transforms the balance of power in the country.

A convoy of armored vehicles from Iraq’s elite U.S.-trained Counter-Terrorism Force seized Kirkuk’s provincial government headquarters on Monday afternoon, less than a day after the operation began, a Reuters reporter in Kirkuk said. [….]

It was not immediately clear whether or when the Iraqi government would seek to retake control of all Kirkuk oilfields, a vital source of revenue for the autonomous Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG).

President Trump, when asked about the clashes in a press conference, replied: “We don’t like the fact that they’re clashing. We’re not taking sides, but we don’t like the fact that they’re clashing.” Pressed further, he cited opposition to U.S. involvement in Iraq in the first place: “Let me tell you, we’ve had for many years a very good relationship with the Kurds, as you know. And we’ve also been on the side of Iraq, even though we should have never been in there in the first place. We should never have been there. But we’re not taking sides in that battle.”

Playing down the tensions and maintaining American neutrality about which government runs Kirkuk is a sensible policy. Though the city has been under the control of the Kurdish Peshmerga since 2014, Kirkuk is not a part of the Iraqi Kurdistan Region. Its inclusion in the Kurdish independence referendum was incredibly provocative. Though the status of the oil fields outside the city is unclear, they are the prize in any fight over Kirkuk for both the KRG and the federal government.

That does little to reduce the danger that this crisis poses going forward. The most dangerous possibility, of course, would be of open conflict. The United States has armed and trained both sides. The Iraqi government’s advantage in materiel might be assumed to be equaled by the Peshmerga’s better morale, but the Iraqi army has been battle-hardened by years spent fighting ISIS. The Iraqi army that marched into Kirkuk is the army that retook Mosul, not the army that fled those cities three years ago. The casualties from an open civil war would be enormous. Not to mention that thousands of U.S. troops are currently in Iraq on either side of the potential front lines, threatening both American lives and to draw the United States into the conflict.

The crisis has also revealed deep divisions among Iraq’s Kurds. The PUK, based in Suleimaniyah and the second-largest Iraqi Kurdish faction, is undergoing a succession crisis following the death of Jalal Talabani earlier this month. The details remain unclear and the recriminations are still flying, but substantial elements of the PUK’s peshmerga forces seem to have abandoned Kirkuk, raising questions about possible coordination between the PUK and their long-time patrons in Iran. If Iraq falls into civil war with the Kurds, the Kurds might well fall into civil war with one another.

As the PUK example should show, Iran’s role in this is not straightforward. Commentators pushing the idea that “backing the Kurds” should be part of some strategy for “confronting Iran” are dangerously oversimplifying matters. Yes, the Iraqi army is supported by some militia units that take orders from Iran. Yes, the KRG is the more “pro-American” option and the Iraqi government the more “pro-Iranian” option. Iran also has much to gain in this crisis, but a precipitous U.S. decision to “back the Kurds” would finish off the U.S. relationship with the Iraqi government, drive Turkey toward Iran, and win the U.S. the allegiance of half of a completely isolated pseudo-state at war with all of its neighbors. It’s extremely difficult to see how any part of that would better serve U.S. interests compared with the status quo.

U.S. strategy for Iraq in this crisis and for post-ISIS generally needs to be made clear. For one thing, it needs to establish red lines. The U.S. has guaranteed the autonomy of Iraqi Kurdistan for decades and must continue to do so, but should not guarantee the defense of contested areas. Second, the U.S. needs to take steps to counter Iranian influence in the crisis. Empowering Iraqi Prime Minister Abadi to make decisions and compromises with U.S. backing would be one key part of that. Maintaining the status quo on oil production and revenue, with oil flows continuing to go through Turkey, would be another. It doesn’t help that this crisis in Kirkuk comes amid the worst period of U.S.-Turkish relations in decades. But that too points towards a U.S. policy that should be guided by extreme caution.

It’s unfortunate as well that all of these strategic dilemmas were so predictable. The U.S. mantra, to the point of parody, has been that all sides should put aside their differences and concentrate on defeating ISIS. Leaving aside that no other regional actor views defeating ISIS as their greatest strategic priority, both the Iraqi government and the Iraqi Kurds did concentrate on defeating ISIS before moving on to those other priorities. The Kurdish referendum was announced after the Iraqi Kurds had completed their portion of the anti-ISIS mission. The Iraqi army’s push into Kirkuk was made possible because earlier this month they liberated the last major pocket of northern Iraq under ISIS control, leaving only the sparsely populated Syrian border areas. That “killing ISIS” was not a sufficient strategy for Iraq and that the fall of ISIS would lead to multiple regional crises has been clear for months. Whatever American efforts were made to try to prevent this outcome up to this point have clearly been insufficient.

The U.S. currently stands between two American partners on the brink of a very serious conflict. President Trump campaigned on the notion that Americans were tired of Middle Eastern conflicts, that he would put American interests first, and that he would defeat ISIS. More recently, he has committed to countering Iran. There is a path to fulfilling all of those promises in the crisis over Iraqi Kurdistan, but it’s going to require treading a very narrow path indeed. That path should be pursued, but it’s also time to start considering which of those promises will need to be broken if the U.S. runs out of options.

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Getting Tough with Aliyev

“The Azerbaijani regime continues to use torture, politically-motivated criminal charges, harassment, international kidnapping, and other forms of intimidation to silence human rights defenders, independent journalists, and religious leaders,” said Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ), who chairs the House panel on global human rights. “It is evident that there are important security and economic ties between our countries; however these violations cannot be ignored.”

Smith made those comments late last month while unveiling his latest legislative effort to hold officials in Azerbaijan accountable for one of the worst human rights situations in Europe. Joined by Rep. Jim McGovern (D-MA), the legislation, H. Res. 537, would, among other things, press the U.S. government to “prioritize the human rights and fundamental freedoms of the people in Azerbaijan when dealing with their government and urge the application of provisions of the Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act (P.L. 114-328) to punish Azerbaijani officials who violate internationally recognized human rights.

It also calls on the government of Azerbaijan “to immediately release all political prisoners and prisoners of conscience and to cease targeting those who advocate for government based on accountability and democratic values.” Estimates of the number of political prisoners and religious practitioners being held in Azerbaijan suggest almost 120 individuals, more than twice the number in Russia and Belarus combined. Sanctions have been imposed on both of those countries for their human rights abuses, and yet not a single step has been taken against the government in Baku.

The introduction of H. Res. 537, before it was even taken up by committee or voted on in the full House, had a mildly positive impact, stoking fear among Azerbaijani officials that they might pay a price for their egregious behavior. The editor of the independent Turan Information Agency, Mehman Aliyev, was released from pretrial detention and placed under house arrest (still an outrageous abuse but a slight improvement); the rigged tax case against the news agency appeared to have been dropped, but recent indications are that it has been dredged up again. Turan, which has been in operation for 27 years under various adverse conditions, courageously resumed operations October 1.

Even while the government takes small steps to undo the bad things it has done, it has continued its ugly crackdown on all critics and groups it doesn’t like. In recent weeks, authorities have rounded up and detained dozens of suspected gay people, causing panic among the already-oppressed LGBT community. Ahead of a rally against government corruption, authorities reportedly detained at least three members of the opposition Popular Front Party. And this past weekend, Turan TV journalist Fikret Huseynov, who received Dutch citizenship two years ago, was detained at Kyiv’s airport on the request of Azerbaijani authorities.

The situation in the country took an ugly turn after the 2013 re-election of Ilham Aliyev and the start of the Euro-Maidan Revolution in Ukraine. Spooked that something similar might occur in his country, Aliyev launched a major crackdown, going after activists, journalists, opposition leaders, and religious believers. Azerbaijani authorities recently kidnapped a journalist, Afghan Mukhtarli, who was seeking refuge in neighboring Georgia, tortured him, and brought him back to Azerbaijan illegally.

Azerbaijan is currently ranked 162nd out of 180 countries in Reporters Without Borders’ 2017 World Press Freedom Index. It scored a very low 30 on the Transparency International Corruption Perceptions Index indicating “rampant corruption,” as revealed in the recent investigative reports titled “Azerbaijan Laundromat,” which exposed $2.9 billion money laundering.

“Azerbaijan has a very dire human rights situation,” Nils Muiznieks, the Human Rights Commissioner of the Council of Europe, told RFE/RL in an interview in Prague on September 26. “Human rights defenders, independent bloggers, and journalists are under enormous pressures there, and there was a time when all of my primary partners in the country were behind bars on trumped-up charges.”

Despite the Azerbaijani government’s scandalous actions, senior officials in Baku are engaging with E.U. counterparts on a new partnership agreement with Brussels. The European Union should make it clear that it will not entertain any negotiations unless and until the government in Baku ends its ugly human rights crackdown.

The United States has measures it can take, too. For starters, the U.S. Congress should adopt the Smith-McGovern legislation. Congress should also hold more hearings focused on Azerbaijan.

In addition, the Trump Administration should follow the recent recommendation of a group of non-governmental organizations in applying the Global Magnitsky Act—legislation passed last year that imposes a visa ban and asset freeze on foreign officials involved in gross human rights abuses and serious corruption—to Mirgafar Seyidov, head of the Baku City Police, for the alleged torture of two activists. Other Azerbaijani officials, from police to judges, to political leaders, and even President Aliyev himself, should be considered by the State and Treasury Departments for inclusion on the Magnitsky list. As Rep. Smith noted, applying the Magnitsky Act “would shatter the impunity that rights violators in the government of Azerbaijan enjoy.”

During a reception at the United Nations last month, President Trump posed for a photograph with a smiling President Aliyev and their wives. Given what is happening in Azerbaijan these days, the two leaders should not have been photographed together, let alone seen smiling.

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Cyberjitsu

The Gutenberg Elegies: The Fate of Reading in an Electronic Age

by Sven Birkerts

Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1994

About 25 years ago, in The Gutenberg Elegies: The Fate of Reading in an Electronic Age, I set out my various apprehensions about the arrival of computer technology. My views were strongly stated, for which I was branded a Luddite by some. I soon became an available contrarian asked to give my thoughts on the progress of digital culture. The invitations still arrive from time to time. 

In the early days this was still fairly easy. I could point to whatever were the newest developments and reflect on their implications. There was no shortage of things to be said, of course, because every fantastic progressive advance in the processing speed of the microchip also marked the loss of something in some other sphere, particularly in the cultural web of deep reading, or what we like to call literacy. For me it all seemed very quid pro quo—until at some point early in the millennium the quid and the quo started to tangle and trip me. Two big things were happening that changed everything, and rendered my assertions in The Gutenberg Elegies not so much wrong as descriptive of an already bygone era. 

One was on the personal front. I had to concede that I had, by degrees, become far too implicated in things digital myself to make any further pretense at disinterested observation. I was, after all, online, writing and filing electronically; I was e-mailing; I was streaming movies at night. I had joined the game: I was compromised.

Distressing as it was, however, this implicated state was not the disqualification it would have been before. Because the other big thing—the far bigger thing—was that somewhere in that time interval (there is no pinpointing a moment, no matter how hard we may try), the system of isolated parts, the emergent facets of technological change, had morphed into a totality. A seamless-seeming integration had taken place. The world was now effectively digital, its various systems all monetized and merged, every quotidian superficial need met, every kind of transaction or operation having its own cunningly engineered “app.” We were now all together inside a system and there were few, if any, viable non-digital perches to be had. There was no chance anymore for neutral descriptions, no Archimedean place to stand. 

Overnight, so it still seems to me, everyone got on board with the new way of things—already there was a whole generation coming up for whom it was not even new—and the only question left was about the degree of engagement. Some users were fully immersed, welcoming each innovation; others were more selective. I put myself in the latter camp. I used the ATM but avoided online banking. I e-mailed but eschewed social media—that is, until one day someone guided me to Twitter and I found I quite enjoyed putting up literary quotes and seeing what responses came back. But I drew the line at Facebook, and still do. Enough was enough. We all need our private virtue markers. I was still fine, I reasoned, for at least I had not fallen into that locally minor yet cumulatively massive “time-sink.” That’s what everyone I knew called it. “You’re better off,” people said, even as they themselves indulged. And I took them at their word, so no Facebook. 

No iPhone, either. That was my other big virtue marker, good for lots of private preening. I saw people driving and talking, or sitting isolated in public places focused on the little screens they were holding. I thought them pathetic. But then—well, we all know how this goes. Aging parents, teenaged children…the nearly inevitable capitulation so easy to predict, and solemnly understand. One might “autofill” the rest of this piece and make a cautionary tale—of pride preceding fall, of best-laid plans, of slippery slopes and the rest. But I would like to salvage some pride and describe a small turn of resistance instead. 

When I was a kid I remember being intrigued by what I understood to be the principle of jujitsu: using an opponent’s strength against himself. I wasn’t sure how it was done—and I never took up the art—but the concept itself stuck. And I will make use of it soon.

For as I said, I did at last succumb to various pressures and committed what I saw as the big transgression: I began to carry on my person a flat little device that could make and receive calls, send and receive emails, do something called “texting,” take pictures—an apparatus outfitted with options that would allow me, if I chose, to stream music, call taxis, play games, do my banking, pay for items at checkout counters…. There was really no end to the options, and I found myself tormented by my capitulation even as I succumbed. Here I was, former digital scold—“Mr. Gutenberg” as my wife and kids mockingly called me—equipped with the distraction of distractions. I might as well have agreed to have a cluster of silicon chips embedded in my head. 

I tried to be defiant. I held what lines I could. I used the telephone sparingly, and texted with my children only as needed (since there was often no other way to reach them). If I was away from home or work I would from time to time check e-mail, replying only if necessary. No banking, no use of apps, nothing—until the day when I was out walking and responded to a vibration in my back pocket. The phone was in my hand and by accident I tapped the camera icon, whereupon instantly some tall and strikingly sunlit reeds reared up in my viewfinder. I clicked the icon and discovered, right there and then, that I had taken what I thought was quite a nice picture. I, who had all my life admired photographers and done nothing to emulate them, had unwittingly achieved a miracle—me, a man in his 60s.

This is where the jujitsu idea gets relevant. For, obsessive individual that I am, I did not call a halt to my image-taking with that one inadvertent success. Instead, I went immediately overboard. I started taking iPhone pictures at every opportunity. Flowers, dry leaves, sunlight on cornices, folds in the drapery. I took photos all day long and at night I lay in the dark and brought the phone close to my face and studied what I had captured. I couldn’t stop, and I didn’t want to. This went on for months. And I found that not only was my way of looking at things affected, but my whole way of going through the day was also changing. I was at every moment on the lookout for interesting things to fix in my lens. I was also, more and more, calculating my path through the day, whether driving or walking, so that it might put me in the way of what I half-jokingly referred to as “photo ops.”

For a long time this was obsession pure and simple. I was eager and everything was grist. There was no jujitsu as yet; indeed, things got worse before they got better. For I somehow discovered that with another simple click I could post an image directly from my phone to Twitter, and then, not long after, I realized that I could do the same with Instagram. I was in a veritable flurry. I was having more fun than I’d had in ages. The business was threatening to lurch out of control. 

Mercifully, there is with photography, as with every other mode of expression, a learning curve. I snapped and snapped, and gradually I started wearing out my more obvious subjects and got tired of my customary ways of framing. I looked at the postings of my fellows, but I also looked closely at the work of the truly gifted—Edward Weston, William Eggleston, Robert Mapplethorpe, Irving Penn, Sally Mann, Vivian Maier, Andre Kertesz, and others. And the more I studied, the easier it was for me to go back through my various prizes and discard. I got ruthless, declared war on images I saw as too easy or derivative. Every day I caught myself muttering “no, no…” under my breath as I moved past things that would once have had me stopping to take a shot.

I should note that at no point along this “curve” did I fancy myself anything more than a rank amateur, and I don’t think I ever will. But—and now we come to the turn—I did in time get a sense that something was changing in me, something fundamental. Because of this little apparatus and my own surprise engagement with it, I was learning to look. That sounds terribly pretentious, I know, but how else am I to characterize it?

“Look” is a loaded word, and I would like to linger on it, for itself, and also for its implications with respect to the topic I started with, which was the set of transformations brought about by digital technologies that have habituated us to ease and distraction, to multitasking, to mash-up aesthetics, and to the thousand and one siren songs that pull us away from a focused engagement with the things in our lives. Our innovations have become the very definition of that slippery slope—a nearly endless expanse of slick mud—which is by definition a one-way track.

But now the paradox. My iPhone camera, because of its own seductive ease, has in these past few years given me an instruction that I might not have gotten otherwise, an instruction that has, believe it or not, made me feel that I am reversing course; that I am beginning to push back against some of my previous capitulations. It is all connected to this business of learning how to really look, which has become, after that season of first promiscuous infatuation, a kind of discipline unto itself. It is a discipline that has many facets and, I’m sure, a long course of mastery, but I can already mark out three recognitions that have been deeply restorative.

The first, obviously integral to the traffic in images, is attentiveness. The more time I have spent contemplating photographs, whether mine or those of others, the sharper and more defined my seeing has become. This is, I’m convinced, a direct result of learning to hold a steady gaze on what is in front of me—which is not as easy or automatic as I might have imagined. That new learning became ingrained very slowly and was the result of a particular recognition I experienced over and over. For what I found was that after a certain time of keeping my eyes fastened upon some object, it would often reveal itself to me in ways I never imagined existed. I don’t mean anything particularly mystical here, though there is mystery: how something at first concealed behind habit and expectation suddenly seems to change, offers itself as beautiful, or at least interesting. And it was a transformation that held true for me once I had taken a photograph. I could look at the image and see it. How, I wondered, had I not experienced this before?

The second, which seems almost the opposite of focused attention, is something I think of as “the peripheral”—the phenomenon of the corner of the eye. I will be walking, or sitting somewhere, and I will feel something like a flash at the very edge of my field of vision—a movement, an anomaly of some kind. I have trained myself to act quickly—to turn, aim, and snap. More than a few times this proved to have been a justified call, and I realize yet again how astute the instincts are, how they short-circuit the more sequential operations of thought. I realize, too, that these instincts work best when we trust that they do work—the peripheral senses, our instinctual survival tools epitomized by the deep penetration of the world that we mistakenly call “mere” glancing, are fast and accurate.

Finally, I felt myself taking a step back toward things. This turns out to be another paradox. For as our digital living carries us ever further from our roots in the material world, so does our sense of the presence of things change. Unless we are made to regard them—to interact with them—they slip behind the virtual scrim. But as Rilke so presciently put it in his famous “Ninth Duino Elegy”: “We are perhaps here to say house, bridge, fountain, gate . . . .” Already a century ago he felt us growing away from the creature world and the thing world, and who will these days deny the truth of that? A big part of what this action, this looking, has brought back for me is a respect, an admiration, for the surfaces, colors, textures of things. The eye comes to rest on an object and by slow degrees engages its separate otherness.

The process by which this happens exemplifies that larger countering I’m talking about—the taking back of a kind of awareness that was not so unusual in earlier times, but which is now being threatened as never before by the systems and devices we live with. The great irony for me, so unexpected, is what I’m calling the jujitsu effect, the fact that it was a sophisticated technology that got me once more pushing against the stream created by our sophisticated technologies.

I have never regretted the assertions I made in the Gutenberg Elegies. It was a book of its time and I would not change a word. But I also know that it is a book that cannot be easily revised into a new edition—the changes of the past few decades have taken us well beyond any standoff between an old order and a new one. We are all, myself very much included, caught up in a new amalgamation of reality, one that challenges our reflexes as well as our former psychological certainties. Entirely new exertions await us. 

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The Twilight of an Era in Europe

It was not that long ago that scholars and analysts confidently foretold the imminent arrival of a new Europe, whose economic weight and population would all but ensure that the continent would be a global leader and a counterweight to the United States not just in economic but also geostrategic terms. To read such forecasts today is to be reminded yet again of how myopic such grand projections of the inevitability of systemic change can be. Today the common European project is in serious trouble; the past enthusiasm for ever-deeper federalism and supra-nationalism is fast giving way to warnings of nationalism, the breakdown of authority, and the deepening public rebellion against the elites.

In the third of Europe’s defining ballots of 2017, Germany has now revealed a more fractured political scene; its election results are of a piece with a larger trend across Europe toward political fragmentation and realignment (as in the Netherlands and France). Likewise, judging by the early returns, the Austrian Right is poised to create the new government, not just because the conservative Austrian People’s Party (ÖVP), led by 31-year old Sebastian Kurz, appears to be the clear winner but also because the nationalist Freedom Party (FPÖ) is on track possibly to become the ÖVP’s coalition partner for the first time in 17 years. Subject to the final vote count, the FPÖ could become the second-largest party in the parliament, eclipsing the Social Democrat Party. As winter approaches, Europe’s policy choices going forward are forming into an interlocking azimuth that, once set, will define the continent’s political landscape in the next decade.

Four key currents, now in plain view, are reshaping Europe and redefining not just the grand vision that once underpinned the European project, but also the continent’s security, politics, ethnic composition, and culture.

First, the vision of a federated Europe that only a decade ago was celebrated as the way of the future is no more, having been replaced with various and sundry plans for a “multi-tiered Europe,” as though changing the way we talk about the European Union project will help to preserve the consensus on its essential components. This is the most significant development to watch in the coming decade, as it represents the sum total of several factors impacting the continent, including deepening economic fissures across Europe, MENA migration, and the re-nationalization of political discourse, with the attendant concerns, especially in Western Europe, about structural shifts in ethnicity and culture. The customary elite invocation of “more Europe,” heard especially in Germany and France, in fact speaks to the political establishment’s inability, or perhaps unwillingness, to accept the reality that resurgent nationalism across the Continent is no longer a fringe factor but rather an increasingly powerful public sentiment. At the same time, the electorate in these two countries, which have traditionally served as the engine of the European project, is anything but satisfied with business as usual. The Christian Democrats’ poorest performance since 1949, the implosion of the SPD, and the emergence of the Alternative für Deutschland as the third largest party in the country, a party which only a few years ago did not even exist, speaks volumes about how fluid traditional German politics has become. In France, the election of the non-establishment Emmanuel Macron as the country’s President and the doubling of public support for Marine Le Pen’s National Front in the last balloting are further indicators of the deepening crisis of traditional elite politics.

Second, no issue has redefined Europe’s political future in the next decade more than the the surge in MENA migration in 2015-16. Its effects continue to ripple across the Continent, bringing into view long-term changes in European culture and politics, including the bifurcation of the European Union into western and eastern halves when it comes to immigration. Europe’s largest migration wave since World War II—and one whose arrivals are for the first time overwhelmingly from outside the continent—will become an increasingly urgent factor as the Continent’s indigenous populations continue to age and diminish in number. The politics of the immigration crisis in Europe isn’t just marked by the rise of the AfD and the continued anti-immigrant backlash at the state and local level. In a sign of what lies ahead, Chancellor Merkel was compelled to accept a 200,000-person annual limit on immigrants coming to Germany just to keep the CDU’s sister party, the Bavarian CSU, on board. While Merkel’s approach to the continued inflow over the past two years has been the positive “Wir schaffen das!” (“We can manage!”), the last election results mark a clear end to the Wilkommenskultur of yesteryear.

Germany is only the most recent focal point of a longer process of migration into Europe from outside the Continent. Various European cities, and increasingly towns and even villages, have become home to largely un-acculturated “suspended communities,” even as the gap in labor market participation between those migrants born in the EU and those outside last year continues to grow (according to Eurostat). Despite the concurrent rise of terror attacks across Europe and migrants’ shifting entry points into Europe (plug one border leak and another springs up elsewhere), Europe’s governments appear unable to devise a broader strategy to address the issue at its source—namely, in the MENA region. The unacknowledged reality is that Europe’s southern border no longer runs along the Mediterranean Sea but through the Sahel and beyond, deep into Africa. More importantly, given that the rate of deportation for migrants whose asylum claims have been turned down is lower than 30 percent on average, the Continent is faced with the prospect of a large and rapidly growing illegal diaspora that is likely to remain in the gray zone of E.U. economies for some time.

One development in intra-E.U. politics that has been driven by the immigration policies of individual governments has been the emergence of a de facto “gray fault line” between the West and the East. The majority of new E.U. members in Central and Eastern Europe have refused to allow any resettlement of new waves of immigrants on their territories. As there is no indication of any significant compromise on the issue, this bifurcation within the E.U. is likely to become the new normal in the coming decade, especially if E.U. Commission President Jean-Claud Junker’s vision of a “two-tiered” Europe becomes the reigning strategy. The end result of this approach is likely to be a “Europe of clusters.” States will align differently on issues related to national security and economic priorities, and regionalism and bilateralism will increasingly become the default option. This trend will be further aggravated by Brexit, as the departure from the European Union of its second-largest economy will dramatically upset the already tenuous balance between the Eurozone and non-euro members of the European Union, taking down the non-euro states to a mere 11 percent of the European Union’s total GDP.

Third, the return of state-on-state conflict along NATO’s periphery is about more than simply Russia’s bid to reassert its influence in the post-Soviet sphere. It has forced Europe to revisit fundamental questions about the utility of military power and, by extension, the role of European militaries going forward. The question of whether Europeans will in fact generate meaningful military capabilities is becoming ever-more important, as Brexit will lead one of Europe’s key militaries to refocus on NATO and, by extension, on its alliance with the United States. Notwithstanding the various and sundry declarations by European NATO members that they will meet the NATO requirement of 2 percent of GDP, there are precious few indications that Europe is likely either to generate meaningful military capabilities or to change its overall military posture. The issue is not only the unwillingness of the majority of European governments to redirect resources to defense, but also the overall public attitude toward the use of military force. Only the so-called eastern flank countries such as the Baltic States, Poland, and Romania have demonstrated that their societies are willing to prepare for the possibility of an armed conflict.

A subset of the problem of Europe’s increasingly exposed borders is the growing crisis brewing along the southern flank. In the south, a key challenge for Europe’s future will be the ongoing decomposition of Atatürk’s legacy in Turkey and potentially the progressive Islamization of this key NATO ally and gatekeeper of Europe amid rising migration flows. The deteriorating relations between Turkey and several key European states, especially Germany, are not likely to be mended any time soon in the coming decade. This is especially so if the Kurdish question is put on the agenda of a larger regional settlement. Turkey has been determined for decades to prevent the formation of a Kurdish state, which it sees as a direct threat to its territorial integrity and national security. How relations between Turkey and Europe evolve in the coming years will be decisive for European security in the long term. Most important of all, it will be a key variable in determining how MENA migration into Europe evolves over time.

The fourth challenge is the rising tide of nationalism and separatism across Europe, foreshadowed by the recent referendum on and struggle over Catalonia’s independence. Decades of multicultural policies across Western Europe, pushed by large segments of European elites, have not resulted in the formation of a pan-European identity but rather have generated a backlash that has pushed ethno-nationalism again to the forefront of European politics. The net outcome may very well be a push for the progressive fragmentation of European states; as central governments push back against these movements, it seems doubtful that the relative domestic tranquility Europe has enjoyed on the national front will endure. This pattern of internal fracturing and potential instability is likely to affect Western Europe more, in part because this is where the multicultural experiment has played itself out the most, and also because the region today is fast becoming a place where distinct cultures and religions, both indigenous and those of immigrant communities, are competing for space and recognition. The strain between Europe’s Muslims, on the one hand, and its Christian and secular population, on the other, is bound to accelerate as Muslim immigrant numbers continue to grow over the next decade. This phenomenon may in turn further accelerate the process of Europe’s bifurcation between West and East.

The path that the European project has travelled since the end of the Cold War appears to be at an end. The idea that a treaty-based organization originally rooted in the idea of a shared economic space can be transformed into a quasi-federal superstate of sorts that can both “widen and deepen” the continent’s integration has all but run its course. It has not done so as a result of external pressure, war or an economic calamity, but because the notion that a centralized bureaucracy in Brussels that lacked a popular mandate could replace the national interests and priorities of each and every E.U. member state proved to be as fantastic as the idea that one could implement a common monetary policy across the Eurozone while leaving fiscal decisions to individual governments.

The key challenges outlined above have yet to fully register with Europe’s political leaders. Hence, in the absence of strategic engagement by Europe’s capitals aimed at addressing rather than merely contemplating the problem, the coming decade is likely to generate more conflict and fragmentation. The next decade is shaping up to become the most demanding and complex yet, and Europe’s capitals remain as reluctant as ever to move beyond a reactive, crisis-management style of governance.

The twilight of a “quasi-federalized Europe” does not mean that Europe cannot have a common future. The need for a common European market, for increased trade, and for the pooling and sharing of resources on security and defense is as vitally important today as it was in 1951, when the Treaty of Paris launched the larger European idea. But to get there will require more than mindless repetition of the mantra of “more Europe”—and more than admonishments of those who question the policy course set in Brussels. Rather than clinging to a formula that is increasingly being rejected by the citizenry, the managers of the European project need to embrace genuine give-and-take negotiations between E.U. member-states about the principles the project should be based on. This discussion should be built on the foundation of respect for national sovereignty and state interests, yet it should also unabashedly confirm the idea of a Europe that is greater than the sum of its parts.

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The New New Europe

When the four Visegrád countries were joining EU and NATO, hopes were running high for a reinvigoration both of the transatlantic partnership, and of sclerotic EU structures and institutions. Ten years later, instead of a new generation of forward-looking leaders, the region’s political debates are dominated by the likes of Viktor Orbán, Jarosław Kaczyński, or Miloš Zeman. Reforms in Central Europe have not only stalled, but some of the main achievements of the post-1989 era, including independent media, judiciaries, and openness to foreign investment, are now under attack.

But the tide might be turning again. Across Central Europe, new reformist parties are hoping to emulate Emmanuel Macron’s success France. In Poland, there is the Nowoczesna (“Modern”) party, founded in 2015 by economist Ryszard Petru. The Momentum Movement in Hungary, led by the 28-year old András Fekete-Győr, was transformed into a political party in March this year after successfully pressuring the Hungarian government into withdrawing its bid to host the 2024 Olympics. In Slovakia, there are two emerging political groups with similar goals: the left-liberal Progressive Slovakia and the center-right Spolu–Civic Democracy (“Spolu” means “together” in Slovak).1

These new movements appear to be drawing support mostly from young urbanites who are waking up to the geopolitical choices that their countries face—striving to integrate into the EU’s core versus remaining outside of the eurozone—but also to the reality of incomplete post-communist transitions that have left the quality of public services in particular lagging far behind the economic progress achieved in the past 28 years.

Between 1992 and 2015, the population of Central and Eastern Europe shrank by 6 percent, as citizens of new EU member states sought a better life elsewhere. The emigration flows have slowed down as of late but the diasporas remain large—close to 10 percent of Slovak citizens, for example, live in other OECD member states—and are not in a rush to return to countries with subpar education and healthcare systems.

To many young people, post-communist democratic politics is an unsatisfying way of changing things. In fact, extremists in Hungary and Slovakia enjoy a disproportionate level of support among the youngest generation of voters, who lack direct experience with non-democratic rule. For that reason, Hungary’s Momentum Movement aims to “bring politics closer to the people by making it more direct and more social,” as its deputy leader Tamás Soproni explains. “What most people see in us is the potential to mobilize, to bring politics to the streets,” he adds.

Characteristically, at the “ideas conference” of Progressive Slovakia in Bratislava in September, the crowd had an overwhelmingly millennial, urban, iPhone-wielding bent to it. Many of the movement’s representatives lean Left but most appear to embrace markets and innovation. Quite a few, including the movement’s leader, Ivan Štefunko, are coming into politics from technological start-ups. Štefunko founded several business ventures, including Pelikan.sk, Slovakia’s successful competitor to Kayak and Expedia. He also offers a powerful personal story. In 2007, shortly after his daughter was born, doctors found a malformation in his brain. Three surgeries later, few expected him to be able to regain the ability to speak and write. Since then, he has launched new business projects and now is hoping to become the leader of Slovakia’s center-left.

Poland’s Nowoczesna, which came fourth in the 2015 election, is by far the most seasoned of the new political groups in the region. Its leader, Ryszard Petru is a former student of one of the country’s first post-Communist reformers, Leszek Balcerowicz. After a stint at the World Bank in Washington, he returned to Poland in the mid-2000s where he worked in the private sector and also built up a presence as author and public intellectual.

The decision to start a party was “a result of liberal discontent which was growing during the entire second term of the Civic Platform (PO) government,” Mateusz Sabat, Nowoczesna’s co-founder and its current head of research, tells me. “It was caused by their lack of a long-term vision and political will to modernize the country.” Although Poland successfully weathered the Great Recession, the Civic Platform government, led by Donald Tusk and Ewa Kopacz, was complacent about economic policy and preparing Poland for the challenges that lied ahead: automation, globalization, and ageing. To plug a growing hole in the country’s public finances, in 2013 the center-right government simply nationalized the assets held by private pension funds, ignoring PO’s own free-market principles and creating a dangerous precedent for economic populism to come.

Since the election of Mr. Kaczyński’s Law and Justice (PiS) party, the stakes have gone up for Nowoczesna. “We had to stand fast against PiS to protect the Constitution and the very principles of our democracy to stop the quasi-Bolshevik revolution started by the ruling party,” Mr. Sabat says. Nowoczesna’s story is also a cautionary tale—after its rapid rise in the polls after PiS’ electoral in October 2015, when Nowoczesna was seen as a genuine alternative to both PiS and the flailing PO, its support has started to decline and is now hovering at around 10 percent, down from above 20 percent in early 2016.

Mr. Petru’s background resembles that of Miroslav Beblavý, the young leader of Slovakia’s Spolu and a member of Slovakia’s parliament. A UK-trained economist who has spent time both in the policy world and academia, he served as junior minister at the ministry of social affairs in the early 2000s. His ambition is to fill the void created by the implosion of the country’s catch-all Slovak Democratic and Christian Union (SDKU), once led by the reformist Prime Minister Mikuláš Dzurinda.

Unlike the Left-leaning Progressives, Mr. Beblavý has already recruited several parliamentarians from fragmented political parties on the center-right. He also believes that the popular appeal of political groups tailored to center-left, millennial audiences is limited. Although Slovakia is not as socially conservative as neighboring Poland, with 62 percent Catholics and one of the smallest urban populations in Europe, a successful leadership will require navigating away from the divisive cultural wars. The region has also seen very little immigration and the idea of accommodating any number of refugees from Africa and the Arab world stirs strong emotions. Attempting to confront them head-on seems a fool’s errand for an aspiring political leader.

A more compelling way forward involves offering practical solutions to people’s grievances and stressing the importance of the region’s place in the EU’s integration core. With the exception of Slovakia, Visegrád countries remain outside of the eurozone. The problem is not only that, by staying outside, Central European countries are excluding themselves from important conversations about the bloc’s future—conversations which will likely affect them economically and politically. For Poland especially, as Mr. Sabat tells me, joining the euro as soon as possible is a matter of national security, given the country’s proximity to Russia.

One country appears to be in a very different mental place and is ostensibly not experiencing the same ferment in its political center: the Czech Republic. There, that space had long been filled by Andrej Babiš’ movement, ANO. A member of the liberal ALDE family in the European Parliament, ANO (the acronym for “Alliance of Dissatisfied Citizens”—also meaning “yes” in Czech) was founded before the most recent election in the autumn of 2013. Its success catapulted its leader, also one of the wealthiest Czechs and the owner of the country’s two leading broadsheet newspapers, straight into the office of Finance Minister.

The sheer concentration of economic and political power in the hands of one person is making many Czechs uneasy. As junior coalition partner to the Czech Social Democrats, Mr. Babiš’ impact on policymaking has been limited to small, overwhelmingly technical, reforms. As of late, his large conflicts of interest are also limiting his popular appeal, especially as one of his signature business ventures is being investigated for fraud involving EU subsidies.

Still, after the parliamentary elections held later this month, Mr. Babiš is expected to become the Czech Republic’s next Prime Minister. Although his centrism has a populist flavor and his promises are poor on details, it offers an important lesson to the aspiring reformers of the region. For better and worse, his politics never aspired to forcibly drag ordinary Czechs outside of their comfort zone, whether it came to immigration or EU matters. Simultaneously, his party has given a platform to a number of high-quality individuals, including the current defense minister or the European Commissioner Věra Jourová.

Mr. Babiš might end up disappointing voters—especially if his campaign slogans prove to be more effective than his policies. However, to all those who are seeking to anchor Central Europe in the West, they should serve as a reminder that the right instincts, professionalism, and a certain degree of ruthlessness are necessary conditions for political success. Until then, the lofty ambitions, such as the hope to build “a new kind of politics, in which we organize ourselves from our roots, and we put a greater emphasis on our local groups and communities”—as Momentum’s Mr. Soproni explained his movement’s goals to me—will have to wait.

1 Full disclosure: Rohac co-authored a position paper of Spolu – Civic Democracy on foreign policy, together with Vladimír Bilčík and the party’s founder, Miroslav Beblavý.

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America’s Emissions Are Still Declining Under Trump

One doesn’t have to be an environmentalist to harbor fears about President Trump’s effect on America’s role in mitigating global climate change. The United States is responsible for roughly 15 percent of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, and those GHGs are driving surface temperatures upwards. Those facts make Trump’s dismissal of climate change as a hoax perpetrated by China concerning, to say the least.

But the picture isn’t as grim as many environmentalists fear it to be. Even now, after Scott Pruitt’s EPA move to unravel President Obama’s marquee domestic green initiative, the Clean Power Plan, American energy-related emissions are projected to drop in 2017, according to the Energy Information Administration (EIA). So what’s at work here? If the Trump Administration is so skeptical of climate policy, why aren’t the projections matching the doomsday rhetoric?

In large part, what’s happened to U.S. emissions since their recent peak in 2007 has occurred despite—not because—of federal policy. The Clean Power Plan was never put into place, as it was still working its way through legal challenges before Pruitt announced his intention to dismantle it. Therefore, we can’t give President Obama’s green aspirations credit for this recent drop in emissions.

Instead, the drop occurred due to market forces, specifically the displacement of coal-fired power generation by cheap, plentiful natural gas provided by the shale boom. Fracking’s flourishing has made our dirtiest form of electricity production less economical, and because natural gas plants emits half as much carbon as their coal counterparts, this shift has also made our energy mix more climate friendly.

For the most part, this will continue to be the case under Trump, which is why the EIA is expecting energy-related emissions to fall this year. The agency’s projections show those emissions rising 2.2 percent next year, but attribute that to a spike in colder days, which will necessitate more heating and therefore more power production.

The one wrinkle in the equation is Energy Secretary Rick Perry’s plan to subsidize coal and nuclear power plants for the role those sources play in providing baseload electricity. There is some merit to the idea that power providers ought to be compensated for providing reliable electricity—something renewables struggle with currently—but the fact that Perry’s plan excludes natural gas suggests that this is motivated in part by a specific desire to prop up the struggling coal industry.

If this goes through, and coal gets federal support to help it compete with natural gas, we could see the first significant policy-related impact on American energy-related greenhouse gas emissions in quite some time. But to this point, fracking has done more for America’s green credibility than anything President Obama did—or than President Trump has undone.

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Cracks Widen in Catalonia

In the days since Catalonia’s unsanctioned referendum on independence from Spain, Catalan President Carles Puigdemont has found himself in a trap of his own making. Torn between pressures to declare independence unambiguously and to negotiate with Madrid, the Catalan leader has decided to split the difference. In a muddled speech to the regional parliament on Tuesday, Puigdemont asserted Catalonia’s right to become an independent state before calling on parliament to “suspend the effects of the declaration of independence so that in the coming weeks we may begin a dialogue.”

Madrid, however, is not letting Puigdemont have his cake and eat it too. In response to Puigdemont’s speech, Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy effectively called his bluff by asking to clarify whether he really meant to declare independence. Either answer spells trouble for the independence movement, as Leonid Bershidsky aptly argued at Bloomberg yesterday:

If the answer is “yes,” Rajoy intends to take over the government of Catalonia, making it likely that secessionist leaders will be arrested and tried for sedition. If the answer is “no,” or a fudge like Puigdemont’s speech on Tuesday, Rajoy won’t need to do it because the radicals in Catalonia’s government coalition will then withdraw their backing from the first minister, likely leading to a new election.

Sure enough, Rajoy’s ploy is already exposing the rifts between various factions supporting independence. The hardline, far-left Popular Candidacy (CUP)—a small but vocal minority in parliament—is egging Puigdemont on to declare independence unequivocally, no matter the retaliation from Madrid. “If [Madrid] wants to continue to threaten and gag us, they should do it to the Republic that has already been claimed,” the party said after Rajoy imposed a Monday deadline to clarify Catalonia’s intentions on independence.

But members of Puigdemont’s own party, including its leader Artur Mas, are sounding a more realistic note—perhaps, even, a vaguely defeatist one. Reuters:

“If a state proclaims itself independent and cannot act as such, it’s an independence that is merely aesthetic,” he told Catalan television TV3.

“The external factor must be taken into account in the decisions that will be made from now on,” he said.

The “external factor” here seems to be a reference to the European Union, whom the separatists have been entreating to mediate between Catalan authorities and Madrid. But that prospect seems as dim now as it ever was. Brussels has been consistently keeping its distance from the separatist movement, and European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker reiterated that hands-off stance this week. “People have to undertake their responsibility,” Juncker said. “I would like to explain why the commission doesn’t get involved in that… It will create a lot more chaos in the EU. We cannot do anything. We cannot get involved in that.”

In effect, that stance empowers Madrid, since the Catalans cannot hope for favorable outside intervention and must deal with Rajoy on his own terms. The Prime Minister still holds most of the cards here, and even his more generous overtures could be useful in fracturing the separatists. Preliminary talks are already underway on constitutional revisions to grant greater autonomy to Catalonia, for instance, and Rajoy has sounded cautiously open to those proposals. That stance may allow Rajoy to position himself as the reasonable party, in contrast to hardliners like CUP who have already rejected compromise outright.

Next week should tell us whether Puigdemont will back down from the brink or double down to satisfy the die-hard separatists. Either way, forcing him to choose sides is likely to tear apart the fragile facade of unity that has underpinned the separatist movement until now. And the fracas to come may well change the international narrative to Madrid’s benefit, reinforcing its arguments that Catalan leaders are in no way ready to strike out on their own and govern effectively.

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Is There a Crisis of Liberal Democracy?

For two decades after the fall of the Berlin Wall, democracy enjoyed unprecedented global preeminence. In Europe and Asia, the most successful web of alliances in history, led by the United States, bonded the world’s liberal democracies, not only through common interests, but through deeply shared values as well. As a result, when the Soviet Union collapsed, democracies thrived across most of Central and Eastern Europe, as well as in parts of the former Soviet Union and Africa. By then, most of Latin America was already democratic, and about two in five Asian states were as well.

The post-Cold War era, lasting from 1991 to—I argue here, 2016—presented the most benign security environment for the United States since the immediate aftermath of World War II. And like that earlier period, it was not unrelated to the positive momentum for freedom and democracy in the world. When democracy is dominant in the world, the United States is safer. We may face economic competition from other liberal democracies, but no established democracy has ever been a threat to our national security.

The September 11 attacks on the United States seemed to herald a new era of threat and vulnerability. But without minimizing the shocking scope of that assault, it has so far proved a manageable threat. It required an invasion of Afghanistan to dislodge Al Qaeda and constant military, intelligence, and policing vigilance since then, but it has not posed an existential challenge to America, or to American leadership in the world.

Indeed, 9/11 failed in its design to cripple the United States as a global leader. In its wake, the world rallied behind America as it led an assault on global networks of radical Islamist terrorism. After a brief shock, the American economy recovered. And freedom and democracy continued to expand in the world. Between 2001 and 2006, the world witnessed the net number of democracies increase by seven, with the number of democracies one might characterize as reasonably liberal (with good protections for civil liberties) increasing by ten. This trend peaked in 2006, with about 60 percent of the world’s states being democracies and about two-thirds of those qualifying as “liberal” democracies.

What followed was a decade of democratic recession. According to Freedom House, more countries have become less free than not every single year since 2006. Following a trend that began with the destruction of democratic pluralism in Russia and Venezuela, a growing number of countries have seen their formally democratic constitutions gradually hollowed out by authoritarian rulers and parties. The reality or promise of democracy was squelched in strategically important emerging-market countries like Turkey, Bangladesh, Kenya, and Nigeria—and in many smaller ones as well.

There were several reasons why the thirty year trend ran out of steam around 2006. Economic growth was already slowing in many democracies when the financial crisis hit hard in 2008. Globalization, with its social disruptions and increasing inequality within nations, was accelerating. The financial crisis severely damaged the luster of the world’s most powerful liberal democracy, the United States, where greed in the financial industry and wholly inadequate regulation nearly caused a global economic depression. But perhaps the biggest cause of the change was the deepening military quagmire in Iraq and the growing backlash against what was seen as a failed policy of “democracy promotion.” While historically high levels of funding continued to flow for some time into democracy assistance programs, and the U.S. did occasionally push for freedom (in several high-profile Obama speeches, and during the early days of the Arab Spring), freedom and democracy gradually receded as priorities in American diplomacy.

Over the past decade, the structure of global power has been changing in other important ways. China accelerated its rise toward superpower status, and toward becoming the world’s largest economy (a goal it may well achieve later this decade).  Many world leaders who chafed at facing accountability before their own people began talking about “the China model”. The implication was that authoritarianism was necessary for growth so querulous publics should just shut up and accept it.  (Never mind that many of the fastest-growing economies during the last twenty years have been democracies, and that virtually all of the worst performing economies have been dictatorships.) At the same time, Vladimir Putin was reconstructing Russian military power—and using it in Georgia and then Ukraine—while also developing a sophisticated and far-flung apparatus for information warfare. And dictatorships of the world were uniting in networks like the Shanghai Cooperation Organization to share worst practices for Internet censorship and coordinate their respective assaults on freedom.

Until very recently, it was unthinkable that the democratic recession could spread to the liberal West. But by 2015 illiberal ruling parties had erased the basic safeguards of democratic competition and the rule of law in Hungary, and were eagerly seeking to construct a similar authoritarian hegemony in Poland. As the Syrian civil war intensified immigration pressure within the European Union, illiberal parties gained momentum in major West European democracies like France and Germany, while anti-immigrant and anti-globalization sentiment helped tip the 2016 British referendum toward Brexit.  The right-wing populist Marine LePen was soundly defeated in the second round of the French presidential election in May, and the far-right populist Freedom Party was narrowly defeated in the Austrian presidential election last year. Nevertheless, all across Europe, illiberal populist parties have been gaining electoral ground at alarming speed. In parliamentary elections last month, one out of eight Germans cast their votes for an anti-immigrant party, Alternative for Germany, which, according to Deutsche Welle, contains a substantial far-right faction that “shades over into ethnic and even racist nationalism.”

What all these parties share is contempt for elites, for institutions, and for the liberal values of pluralism and inclusion. It’s one thing to question how much immigration a democracy can rapidly absorb. But these parties don’t stop there. They portray themselves as the sole authentic defenders of the “true” people, against all the other corrupt elites who have betrayed the people. They favor unvarnished majority rule, depicting checks and balances as suppression of the popular will. (After all, who are these judges and bureaucrats but more corrupt elites?) Even when these populists claim to support democracy, it is with authoritarian overtones. Forget about the overwrought comparisons to fascism and think of Juan Perón in Argentina in the 1950s, Hugo Chávez in Venezuela in the 2000s, and more recently Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Turkey and Viktor Orban in Hungary. It doesn’t end well for democracy.

The most profound shock to democracy, however, occurred not in Europe but in the United States, with the Russian hacking of the 2016 American presidential election. For the first time, a hostile foreign power not only deeply intervened in the American electoral process but tipped it toward its preferred candidate. Russia’s authoritarian regime hacked into the emails of the Democratic Party and some of its key campaign leaders. It then “weaponized” this information, leaking it with exquisite timing and tweeting and posting it with surgical precision, socially and geographically, to inflict the maximum damage on the party and its presidential candidate. The effort employed a vast social media army of machines (“bots”) and paid agents (“trolls”) to pretend to be real Americans venting their political cynicism, disgust, and provocative extreme views.

None of this would have worked if the American public had not already become deeply polarized and distrustful. But Vladimir Putin found a deep vulnerability in his adversary, and—as with all forms asymmetrical warfare—used a limited expenditure of resources to deal a devastating blow. We still don’t know what the Russians did or learned when they hacked into the voter registration databases of more than twenty American states. What we do know about the overall attack, as former FBI Director James Comey testified in June, is:  “They did it with purpose, they did it with sophistication, they did it with overwhelming technical efforts.” And: “They will be back…. They’re coming after America.”

China’s ruling Communist Party has been taking a very different, more incremental and subtle approach. Analysts are only now beginning to piece together the full scope of this strategy, but it involves:

The relentless global expansion of Chinese state media enterprises, such as Xinhua News Agency, the People’s Daily, and CGTV, which—unlike the BBC, CNN, or Deutsche Welle—offer a uniformly rosy view of China, its government, and its intentions.
The aggressive expansion of Confucius Institutes and other initiatives to promote the study of Chinese language and culture while conveying the Chinese state’s political line.
Growing efforts to penetrate U.S. movie, media and information companies, as with the recent purchase of the second largest chain of movie theaters in the U.S., AMC.
The rapid expansion of Chinese ownership of vast tracts of farmland and critical industries and infrastructure worldwide.
Opaque flows of support to American institutions and individuals to fund sympathetic studies of China.

Perhaps most ominous is the current effort of one of China’s largest and most opaque business conglomerates, HNA to establish in New York a charitable foundation to directly fund a variety of “philanthropic” activities in the U.S.  With $18 billion in assets, this foundation—whose resources come from what many observers presume to be a front company for the Chinese state or Communist Party—would be the second largest foundation in the U.S., positioned to distribute nearly a billion dollars a year to promote a vast network of friendly societal ties with the world’s most powerful dictatorship.

It is time for Americans to wake up. The post-Cold War era is now truly over. We have entered a new era in which two great-power adversaries are, with formidable subtlety, resourcefulness, and technical sophistication, threatening our democratic way of life. That may sound a lot like the twentieth century; in fact, it is quite different. But it will require the same kind of resolve, and the same kind of patient and comprehensive strategy that enabled us to prevail in what we thought, just a brief quarter-century ago, would be the last great rivalry we would need to wage against an authoritarian adversary. The strategy we need will be the subject of my next column in this space.

The post Is There a Crisis of Liberal Democracy? appeared first on The American Interest.

Monk at a Hundred

With October 10 marking the hundredth anniversary of Thelonious Monk’s birth, much of the commentary in the jazz music world has focused on the pianist’s distinctive gifts and eccentric behavior. Born Thelonious Sphere Monk in Rocky Mount, North Carolina, in 1917, Monk was a bebop pioneer who swiftly left that medium behind for a style of music entirely his own making—full of unpredictable turns, shifting time signatures, and paradoxically melodic dissonances. At one hundred, Monk stands as a god-like figure, blessing us with the possibilities of jazz composition. What Louis Armstrong is to the art of the solo, Monk is to the art of a song in its entirety.

He was not a prolific writer, composing only about seventy songs. But it was as though each composition became a standard in the Monkian universe, whose reach extended to all of jazz, and especially to the minds of jazz musicians who, in the late 1950s, were looking for new roads to explore.

Monk’s own creative breakthrough occurred at a series of sessions for Blue Note in 1947. By the time he paired with John Coltrane—a tenor saxophonist looking for a specially designed, and specially rewarding, road to explore—in 1957, Monk was with the Riverside label. This proved to be his final, full-on flowering as a writer, though he lived until 1982. He died rather young, as too often seems to happen to gifted musicians, and nearly as much has been made of his quirks as his music. At times, he spoke like a bebop savant beamed in from another world; at others he said nothing at all for days on end. Moved by an engrossing solo from one of his bandmates at a concert, he would arise and dance a little jig around his piano. He was found of pacing, and would do so, in silent contemplation, for hours at a time.

Monk was the jazz musician who first pulled me into the medium, but not through the usual means you would expect. I had been thrilled by Charlie Parker—who became my favorite jazz musician—but upon first hearing the alto player as a mid-teen, I was so unaccustomed to the speed at which the music went that it outpaced my ears, which were used to rock and roll backbeats. My first Monk encounter occurred around the same time with his 1958 live album, Thelonious in Action, cut at New York City’s Five Spot Café. Thus was instigated a regularly renewing love affair with what I think of as the most overlooked area of Monk’s career, his in-concert prowess.

The sound quality of Thelonious in Action provides a wonderful ambience. You hear the occasional clinking of beer and wine glasses, tables being adjusted, patrons coughing; it is as though Monk and his band were sitting not ten yards in front of you. Monk’s music, for all of its shifting and turns, has a way of situating you in the dead center of his compositional canvas. This live album worked that same way. I didn’t know at the time that Monk had entered the live album portion of his career, when in-concert sets were becoming what you would normally be looking for at the record store in terms of the latest Monk LP on offer.

And what a band this was, one of the great small group units in jazz history. Roy Haynes commanded the drums, dispensing his fills, accents, and bite-sized polyrhythms with a delicious, slowed-down blues quality. Ahmed Abdul-Malik presided over the bass, providing just-off-the-beat synchronicity with Monk’s distinctly timed blocks of chords, a yeoman’s feat of musical symbiosis. Mighty Johnny Griffin blew tenor. That man could flat out blow, but he was a thinking-player’s blower, if you will. His tenor brawn wasn’t as beefy, say, as that of Coltrane in full fury, but it was up there with Hank Mobley’s, and he thought as progressively, at times, as an altoist like Paul Desmond did in his work with Dave Brubeck’s quartet.

This was beyond exciting to me. I still think that the version of “Blue Monk” on that record is the purest expression of the blues in all of jazz. The blues was Monk’s secret weapon; granted, he contorted it, reworked its structures every bit as much as Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie did when they were launching it toward the high heavens like a rocket ship, but blues was Monk’s terra firma. It just so happened that his terra firma was up in the air, and he was attached to it upside down.

A number of years ago, Monk’s gig with Coltrane from Carnegie Hall in 1957 was released; it may be the best live jazz album ever. Monk was everything to Coltrane, much as multi-instrumentalist Eric Dolphy later would be, a kind of artistic conscience, prophet, and directive dispenser. Coltrane had made his mark in Miles Davis’s first great quintet, but his head was racing ahead of his horn. The hard bop medium—even within the ultra-artful, highly stylized expressions of the Davis band—could not hold him. Monk gave him a new way of thinking, of hearing, of working within silences, even, to draw a power that dealt with a fluidity of ideas beyond riff, lick, extended chorus. These ideas were basically harmonic in nature, the understanding that, paradoxically, a musical road could get you from point A to point B more powerfully if you understood that stopping along the way—at the right places—would hasten your journey into the hearts and heads of your listeners.

But I always return to Thelonious in Action. You cannot go awry with any live Monk album. There are a lot of them, so one never lacks for options. But there is something, to me, about sitting in that club—or virtually sitting in it, transported the moment eyes close—and experiencing what I’m sure was a typical Monk gig: You experienced a ready slew of pleasant surprises any time you heard him. He made you better if you were in his band, because you always had to be so actively engaged with what what his songs might do next, in that context of their latest evening, which is like a form of extemporization that draws as much on life, as it doers on the accepted precepts of jazz. Then again, that is probably jazz’s point, in some degree, at its highest level. For with Monk, never let it be said that the journey from A to B did not require all involved—eccentric genius pianist, brilliant group members, excited listener—to ascend to a peak that would better show where we were all going.

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