Peter L. Berger's Blog, page 133

Subsidy-Free Solar?

Has solar’s day in the sun finally arrived? It’s a question that has long since lost any veneer of cleverness simply because it’s been asked so many times at this point, and yet here we are: the UK just hit a major milestone this week when it opened up its first subsidy-free solar farm. The 10MW project is located in Bedfordshire, and importantly it was constructed with no government-backed minimum rate guarantees for Anesco, the company behind the facility.

Importantly the project also has 6MW of storage capacity on site, which will help it contribute a more stable supply of electricity to the grid. Storage is a necessary complement to intermittent renewables, whose production is subject to the whims of weather. Interestingly, the storage component of this project is the reason why it was economical to construct in the first place. “It wouldn’t pay with solar by itself at the moment…it needs the storage as well,” Anesco board chairman Steve Shine told the FT.

But the fees Anesco will take in for helping the UK’s National Grid match supply with demand by providing storage capacity wouldn’t have pushed this new solar farm into the black if it weren’t also for the dramatic and ongoing fall in panel prices. This is, therefore, evidence of progress for an energy source that thus far has made only a minor impact on global power production.

The Bedfordshire solar farm’s construction represents a willingness and, given the right conditions, the capability of moving beyond government subsidies into the competitive marketplace. That said, there’s still a long way to go. Cheap panels are still the result of a global race to the bottom that is bankrupting companies in a number of countries, many of whom rely on state stipend to stay afloat. Furthermore, as a spokeswoman for the UK’s Solar Trade Association said, “government shouldn’t then assume the industry is away — it isn’t.”

At this point, solar is still only flourishing on the fringes, and when it has entered the mainstream (as we’ve seen in Germany), it’s done so only on the back of tremendous government support that is accompanied by rising costs for the consumer. Costs need to drop further before it makes a greater impact, and the issue of scalable, commercially affordable storage options will continue to be a stumbling block for solar’s growth going forward. But this new project’s viability without subsidies is still a big deal, because it’s a step in the direction the industry ultimately must move towards.

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Catalonia and the Malady of Democracy

The procés leading to the promised October 1 Catalonian referendum and its fait accompli independence declaration has produced all manner of spectacle: grotesque, depressing, surreal. But perhaps nothing captures how far off the rails of sanity things have gone than the divergent treatment of two men, Arnaldo Otegi and Joan Manuel Serrat.

Otegi is a condemned and unrepentant former leader of the terrorist group ETA. This is the same ETA that thirty years ago carried out one of the most horrific terror attacks in Spanish history in the heart of Barcelona, indiscriminately killing 21 and injuring 45 in an afternoon bombing of a supermarket. In his most recent iteration, Otegi has become a vocal proponent of an independent Catalonia and has been warmly embraced by pro-independence Catalans as a symbol of resistance to the Spanish state. In this vein, he was outrageously invited as a guest of honor to the march against terrorism held in Barcelona this summer following the August 17 attack, where he was treated a celebrity among young radicals who scrambled to take selfies with him.

Compare this with the reception of Joan Manuel Serrat. Serrat is Spain’s Bob Dylan. He is not the voice of a generation, but of generations, in a career that has traversed Spain’s entire modern history. But Serrat, who is from Catalonia and sings in both Spanish and Catalan, had the temerity recently to suggest that the Catalonian referendum being pushed by the regional parliament lacked transparency. For this he has been subjected to withering attacks by fellow Catalans who have deemed the leftist Serrat—who was himself censored by the Franco regime—a traitor, a fascist, and a Nazi.

And so here we are, in a moment in which a symbol of terror is lauded and a songwriter who transcends political cleavages is harangued. Such is the sheer irrationality we are confronted with.

The Catalonia situation is in many ways particularly Spanish. It arises from our history—both contemporary and more distant past—our politics, our economics. But the spasm of identitarianism that we now see on the streets of Barcelona is also a reflection of the challenges facing liberal democracy throughout the West. Catalonia is not sui generis, and as such this rocky road to October 1 and beyond is relevant not just for Spain or Europe, but for the Western world as a whole.

So what is really happening here?

The independentists argue that the roots of a distinct Catalan identity dates from the time of Charlemagne’s conquest of the northern part of the Iberian Peninsula in the 9th century, with an additional hook to the War of Spanish Succession in the early 18th century— arguments well rendered recently in El Pais. But whatever the strength of this foundation, it is undeniable that Catalan identity is a construct to which many people have gravitated. That is a reality.

This gravitation has been fueled by Spain’s transition to democracy. In moving away from the legacy of the Franco regime, whose laws suppressed Catalan culture, the 1978 Constitution allowed for broad autonomy for Spain’s regions via autonomy statutes. The 1979 Statute of Autonomy of Catalonia, and especially its 2006 revision, gave the Catalonian regional government responsibility in a wide range of areas. The result has been the absence and retreat of Spanish institutions and state, most crucially in the area of education. And so as Catalonia’s identitarian narrative strengthened, connections to the framework of Spanish statehood and common belonging, which is in and of itself not contradictory to the idea of Catalanidad, weakened. The mechanisms meant to reinforce bonds between citizen and state simply were not there. This denied a bridge to Catalonia and left isolated those Catalans who, as a majority still do, identify as both Catalan and Spanish without contradiction.

Enhanced by the 2008 economic crisis, which dimmed the promise of a brighter future, increasing numbers of people in Catalonia turned not to the state but to something more primordial and tribal—something nostalgic and something that had not yet had the chance to fail them: the idea of a separate national identity. For even as the Catalan Generalitat held significant powers, it was the Spanish state that served as the symbol of power.

This is a story of Spain and its historical development, but Catalonia represents an example of a malady infecting European and American democracies—the growing disconnect between government and the governed. What is instructive about the Catalonia example is that the gap is so tangibly and brutally visible. The Spanish state has physically withdrawn from linking itself with its citizens in this autonomous region. It therefore serves as both cautionary tale and possibly a playbook for addressing the challenges facing liberal democracy everywhere.

For what we are seeing today in Catalonia is a localized strain of what is happening in the West—with Trump’s America, Le Pen’s (almost) France, Brexit, and Germany’s ascendant Alternative für Deutschland and Die Linke. The list goes on and on. Postmodernity has created a perceived (and often real) loss of agency on the part of citizens. There is a sense that they no longer control their own future. This has thinned the relationship with government that is defined more and more on what is provided (on both sides) rather than on active democratic engagement—a substitution of the transactional for the emotionally substantive.

In times of plenty this weakness can largely be painted over, but during fallow periods when government does not deliver the goods expected from a social democratic contract (explicit or implicit), such passive citizenship is devastating, for it creates fickle buy-in and a propensity for exit. These are the perfect conditions for voices playing not to rationality but to emotion to chime in. In such circumstances truth matters less than belief.

This is a dangerous moment, particularly so for rules-based liberal democracies that base their legitimacy not on myth or coercion, but on rationality. Hillary Clinton summed up her difficulties in the 2016 U.S. election thusly: “That was my problem with many voters: I skipped the venting and went straight to the solving.” But as Clinton and the British Remain campaign before her saw, “solving” on the basis of educating about facts no longer cuts it politically in today’s world.

We have seen a similar problem in the Spanish Government’s response to Catalonia’s threatened secession in the months leading up to October 1. The argument has begun, and often ended, with the point that the planned referendum violates the Constitution and is against the rule of law. This is correct. It is rational. It is central to a normal functioning liberal democratic system. It is important.

But it is not enough in a situation in which irrational nativism has overcome the already weakened bonds between citizen and state. An argument cannot simply rest on the legitimacy of law. Society’s commitment to the law itself must be bolstered. In an ideal scenario and a healthy system, this is done organically on a daily basis through interaction, engagement, and education. It is a robust and fluid relationship. It is not too late to build such a framework, but for the present moment Spain is beyond incremental approaches.

What Spain needs today is something bigger, and to get it we must move beyond the Transición. The shift from dictatorship to democracy was as improbable as it was abundant in its blessings. It has brought all of Spain unprecedented prosperity, cultural flowering, and personal growth. It is, however, an accomplishment so big that it has cast its shadow on everything that has come after. It is an accomplishment of a generation, my generation, which, like our Baby Boomer cousins in other Western democracies, has been loath to release the levers of power. What we see in Spain, and in particular in Catalonia, is a yearning by some in the younger generations, the generation of King Felipe VI, to have a Spain of their own, to control their destiny, to have political agency as robust as they sense their personal agency. At the same time a huge number of this younger generation has simply disconnected. What made the Transición a success was that it galvanized all of society, but younger Spaniards have no personal memory of that era. This is the new generation’s moment to engage and take responsibility, while it is our time to step aside.

And in this Catalonia and Spain can be an example for the world. I believe that this crisis will pass. The lies and distortions of the Catalan regional government leaders have become so manifest that it is hard to foresee a plausible move to independence this go round. But dodging this bullet must not and cannot be the end. Rather it should be the start of a national project aimed at reinforcing the ownership and hence the legitimacy of the system and the law. What form such an endeavor takes is not for me to say, but whatever it is, it must be active, genuine, and ongoing. Democracy in the 21st century is not a turnkey operation. It requires daily work by both state and citizens. Spain could be a model for this.

I fear that if we do not take this opportunity to put reason back in the driver’s seat, we will be doomed to hear much more from Otegi and much less of the brilliance of Serrat. That would be a tragedy for Catalonia, Spain, and the world.

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Who’s Afraid of an Independent Kurdistan?

At long last, Iraq’s Kurdistan Region (KR) has held its independence referendum. The votes will be counted for the next few days, but pre-referendum predictions and the initial results point to a strong “yes” vote. In a sense, the decision to go forward with the referendum remains more provocative than whatever the final vote count may be. It won’t exactly be a surprise if 70, 80, or 90% of Iraq’s Kurds (not to mention the non-Kurdish residents of the KR) vote for independence after enjoying more than two decades of near-total autonomy and three years of fending for themselves against ISIS.

The vote itself won’t immediately trigger secession, but will instead prompt independence talks between the Kurdistan Regional Government and the federal government in Baghdad. But the neighbors of a potential Kurdistan have already started making threats about the consequences the new state would face. As the Turkish state-run Anadolu Agency reports:

Turkey and Iraq will launch a joint military exercise on the Turkish-Iraqi border on Tuesday following a controversial referendum in northern Iraq, according to the Turkish military late Monday.

Turkey started its military manoeuvers in southeastern Silopi region on Sept. 18, a week ahead of the referendum on independence in northern Iraq. [….]

In a brief statement on its official website, the Turkish General Staff said the third phase of the military exercise will start on Tuesday jointly with the Iraqi military in the Habur border gate, also known as Ibrahim Khalil border crossing, on the Turkish-Iraqi border in Silopi district of Sirnak province.

Iran, for its part, has closed its airspace to flights bound for the KR at Baghdad’s request and is holding war games along the border. The Turks have stated that the border crossing has not been closed, but the obvious implication that cross-border traffic could be closed was made explicit by the ever-colorful Turkish President Erdogan. Hurriyet Daily:

“There are several measures on the table… We will see through which channels the northern Iraqi regional government will send its oil, or where it will sell it,” he said in a speech.

“We have the tap. The moment we close the tap, then it’s done.”

As if that wasn’t theatrical enough, Erdogan was also quoted as threatening that “we can come unexpectedly in the night.”

For now, the most noteworthy result is that Turkey hasn’t actually taken punitive measures in response to the vote. An independent Iraqi Kurdistan is arguably less threatening to Turkey than any of its would-be neighbors. While it would end the territorial integrity of Iraq and risk joining with the autonomous Kurdish region in Syria, an independent KR would instantly become a Turkish tributary, entirely reliant upon Turkey for its links to the outside world. As we’ve written before, an independent KR would see an end to the oil sharing agreement between Erbil and Baghdad, thus further lining Turkey’s pockets with oil money. For all of its fears of Kurdish separatism, Turkey might just go along with Kurdish independence provided it can be given a few billion reasons to look the other way.

The U.S. position after the referendum on the other hand is only going to get more and more uncomfortable. Officially, the U.S. pushed for the KR to postpone the vote in the interest of focusing on the anti-ISIS campaign. That effort failed. The U.S. now finds itself as the largest foreign backer of a would-be breakaway state under potential threat from a U.S. ally (Turkey), a U.S. partner (Iraq), and a U.S. adversary (Iran). To the extent that the federal Iraqi government isn’t already under the complete domination of Iran, the Kurdish issue threatens to destroy what remains of U.S. influence. Iraqi Prime Minister Abadi yesterday rejected an independent Kurdistan as constituting a “sectarian, racist state.” That’s the baseline of rhetoric that he will have to maintain going into the Iraqi parliamentary elections in April, and that’s coming from arguably one of the most pro-American Iraqi nationalist politicians in the country. Pro-Iranian politicians, not to mention Iranian-backed militias, will go much further.

If we were to imagine that the KR somehow achieves independence, its creation would have two consequences for the United States. Lacking any other export routes for its oil or access to the outside world, the independent Kurdish state would be almost entirely reliant upon Turkey, a country that has grown increasingly distant from the United States and its fellow NATO allies. Secondly, its creation would cement a similar vassalage relationship between Iran and rump-Iraq, ending once and for all American influence over a country into which the U.S. has spent enormous blood and treasure since 2003.

While Americans might feel warm and fuzzy about the creation of a new, pro-America, pro-Israel, democratic and largely secular state in the Middle East, the uncomfortable truth is that the U.S. has been well served by a status quo that after the referendum will be extremely difficult to maintain. The U.S. has plenty of leverage over the Iraqi Kurds—it could withdraw funding and support for the Peshmerga, or close U.S. military bases—but that leverage doesn’t mean much if the U.S. is unwilling to use it.

Instead, with the KRG in the drivers seat, U.S. “mediation” will be of questionable value. If the U.S. isn’t going to stop the push for Kurdish independence, then it will need to both deal with the consequences as well as recognize that there is a risk of serious military conflict both in northern Iraq and eastern Syria. If the U.S. wants to delay Kurdish independence or maintain the status quo, it’s going to have to start throwing a lot more weight into the issue.

The post Who’s Afraid of an Independent Kurdistan? appeared first on The American Interest.

Illiberalism Is Expensive

After rioters shot fireworks at buildings, attacked students and smashed windows during a Milo Yiannopoulos appearance at UC Berkeley in February, the university has beefed up security in response to threats of violence against controversial speakers. Yesterday, when Yiannopoulos appeared briefly on the campus once again, the university deployed a hefty police force to keep the peace, reportedly at the cost of hundreds of thousands of dollars.

According to a New York Times op-ed by Colby professor Aaron Hanlon, this was a mistake; Yiannopoulos should have been barred from appearing on campus so as to satisfy the anarchists threatening mayhem and eliminate the need for extra police. Moreover, it is hypocritical of conservatives to defend the alt-right troll’s First Amendment rights because “conservative politicians have traditionally warned against reckless public spending.” More:

Should public institutions be spending taxpayer money allocated for higher education on speakers who aren’t there for teaching and learning?

I’m intimately familiar with the right-wing tactic of framing anything less than free speech absolutism as “against free speech,” in part because I practiced this tactic as a conservative college student. It’s easy to declare that if low-value speakers like Mr. Yiannopoulos want a campus platform, it’s censorship if a school doesn’t give them one. But as we are seeing with Berkeley, the reality is that “free speech on campus” is not resource-neutral.

Let’s get the caveats out of the way: Yes, Milo is a grotesque troll, and yes, campus conservative groups would be better-advised to invite speakers “like Walter Williams and Yuval Levin,” as Hanlon suggests (though I’m less certain than he is that such speakers wouldn’t also sometimes need extra protection). The long-running collapse of the campus Right into anti-PC trolling and provocation is deeply unfortunate—almost as unfortunate as the campus Left’s intensifying illiberalism and contempt for free debate.

But let’s also be clear about what Hanlon is proposing, in practice: He is proposing that if students or outside groups can make sufficiently credible threats of violence, then they ought to be granted control over what events may and may not be held on a university campus. If Hanlon were consistent, and alt-right thugs threatened to attack people and destroy property outside of a La Raza or Black Lives Matter event at UC Berkeley, he would call for the university to shut down the event rather than secure it—at least if he judged that some such speakers “aren’t there for teaching and learning.” Something tells me that critics of Berkeley’s costly security measures in the case of Yiannopoulos would forget their concerns in such a scenario, recognizing the profound perversion of letting violent criminals (whatever their motivations) set the agenda for a great university.

Is Milo a speaker of “low educational value,” who doesn’t add to the campus learning environment, as Hanlon asserts? Absolutely. But what is the educational impact of no-platforming speakers whenever the most radical agitators show that they have the means to do harm to people or property? That is anti-educational; a far greater threat to learning than the presence of any peaceful speaker, no matter how odious. Once a university declares that as a matter of policy it makes its programming decisions based on violent coercion rather than any neutral process or standards, it is not a university at all.

So no, Berkeley’s decision to drop the equivalent of a handful of sports scholarships on police overtime did not amount to “reckless public spending”; it was a crucial affirmation of the core principle of a free society, which is that disagreements must be channeled through representative institutions and not unaccountable violence, whether by states or political factions. It’s sad that the anti-liberal currents in America are so strong that such expenditures are necessary. Like any social pathology, illiberalism is ultimately costly to taxpayers. But so long as the it persists with such force and power, public universities need to keep bearing those costs. If they start forfeiting to mobs, the pathology will get worse, leading us toward a country of chaos and sectarianism that will cost much more to police than Sproul Plaza.

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Japan’s Abe Triggers Early Elections

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has called early elections for next month, invoking the North Korean threat to argue for a renewed mandate. The Financial Times:

“I will dissolve the lower house on September 28,” Mr Abe declared at a press conference on Monday, saying he would fight on a platform of strong leadership against the missile threat from North Korea and increased spending on education.

The election, expected on October 22, will decide whether Japan continues its drive to escape from more than two decades of on-and-off deflation and whether Mr Abe has the political strength to push through a revision to the country’s war-renouncing constitution.

Calling it an election to “break through our national crisis”, Mr Abe said he offered strength at a time of national demographic decline and tension with North Korea. He said he wanted to take on “the challenge of breaking the greatest wall — a declining birth rate and an ageing population”.

For Abe, the snap elections may look like an opportunity amid crisis. With North Korea’s missiles now regularly overflying Japan, the Prime Minister sees a chance for a rattled populace to embrace his long-sought revisions to the pacifist constitution. For now, Abe is publicly proceeding with caution on that front; his announcement speech did not explicitly mention changing the constitution, which remains a controversial proposition. But his rhetorical focus on the North Korea threat was clearly meant to bolster his image as a trusted defender of Japan’s security, a vigilant leader who will do what it takes to keep Japan safe.

Abe is also running on his economic track record, at a moment when Japan has hit its longest growth streak in 11 years and his Abenomics agenda seems to have finally turned a corner. His announcement speech touted a new $18 billion package to help subsidize education and childcare—just the kind of economic stimulus that may prove popular with voters. With the economy on the upswing, public support for a tougher defense posture growing, and Abe’s approval rating climbing, he has some reason to believe that he has a winning message. The latest poll numbers are on his side, too: Abe’s Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) currently enjoys 44% support over a frayed and divided opposition.

But snap elections are also a riskier proposition than they might initially seem. Abe has only recently recovered from a summer that saw his approval ratings plummet amid an influence-peddling scandal. He may also face a stronger-than-expected challenge from Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike, an ex-LDP member who delivered Abe an electoral drubbing in Tokyo’s regional elections this summer. It’s a feat that she hopes to replicate on a wider scale next month: on the very day that Abe announced early elections, Koike announced the “Party of Hope,” a new reform-oriented opposition party that has already attracted a few prominent defectors from Abe’s LDP.

With elections now less than a month away, it is unlikely that the opposition will get its act together in time to threaten Abe’s role as Prime Minister. But he does face some headwinds: almost two-thirds of the public disapprove of the decision to fast-track the elections, and 42% polled said they are undecided about whom to support. Those numbers could create a real opening for a charismatic opponent like Koike, reduce Abe’s ranks in the Diet, and limit his ability to push controversial legislation—especially the constitutional changes, which require a two-thirds majority to pass.

In that case, Abe could end up no better than Theresa May: another Prime Minister who called early elections to capitalize on a divided opposition and strengthen her hand, only to emerge chastened and weakened. For now, this is Abe’s election to lose—but recent history cautions against trusting “strong and stable leadership” to carry the day.

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Thinking Long-Term About Ukraine’s Defense

After a two-year hiatus, the question of lethal U.S. military assistance to Ukraine is back on the agenda‑specifically in the form of anti-aircraft capabilities and Javelin anti-tank missiles. The circumstances on the ground in Ukraine have changed considerably in two years, but the fundamental dynamic in the Russo-Ukrainian conflict remains the same – and it is that dynamic that drives the renewed impetus behind providing defensive arms to Kyiv.

In 2014-15, the front was fluid. Big tank battles were waged in places such as Ilovaisk and Debaltseve. Moscow’s Novorossiya ploy was down but not out, and there was a real question in the summer of 2015 whether Russian forces would attack the strategic Ukrainian port of Mariupol, or even attempt to create a land bridge across southern Ukraine to the Crimea.

Happily, for whatever combination of reasons, that assault never materialized. In the subsequent two years neither side has launched any major offensive, either to seize territory or to deliver a crushing blow to the opposing forces. The war has basically settled into desultory exchanges of artillery fire and positional fighting in the no-man’s land between the lines. If the conflict isn’t exactly frozen, it has at least congealed.

If the timing therefore seems a bit odd for a renewed effort to provide defensive military assistance to Kyiv, the specific weapons systems mooted also have some experts scratching their heads. As several analysts have observed, the fighting in the Donbas has no aviation component, so buttressing Ukraine’s air defenses would seem to be a pointless endeavor. Similarly, in a stalemated conflict being fought largely with artillery rather than tanks, the provision of Javelins to Ukraine would appear to be of limited utility.

Moscow is bound to take umbrage nevertheless, so we are already seeing a reprise of the anti-assistance arguments raised two years ago: Russia has compelling interests in its neighborhood, and we shouldn’t poke the bear; Russia will use its escalation dominance to ratchet up the fighting beyond the West’s willingness or capacity to respond; Washington lacks any real strategy, and is just blindly throwing more weapons into the mix. Thus, in our ham-handed attempt to help Kyiv, we will only manage to send the conflict spiraling out of control. Therefore, instead of provoking Putin, we should be trying to provide him an “off ramp” that would facilitate a Russian withdrawal while allowing Russia to save face and safeguarding its equities.

While not entirely without merit, these arguments betray a basic misunderstanding, both of the essence of the conflict and of the purpose in providing Ukraine with these specific weapons.

The pons asinorum for understanding the war in southeastern Ukraine is to grasp that the antagonists are not Russia and the United States, Russia and NATO, or Russia and the West. They are Russia and Ukraine. The matter at issue is not the status of the Donbas, but the disposition of Ukraine as a whole. The conflict is an existential struggle between two visions—either an independent Ukraine with Ukrainians pursuing their own national project, or Russia as a great power dominating Ukraine, and most of the rest of the former Soviet space, more or less unconditionally. This is essentially an either/or proposition rather than a split-the-loaf one.

Moscow’s 2014 intervention in Ukraine was an enormous gamble driven by the prospect of a large reward. The issue was not the possibility of Ukraine joining NATO; the 2008 Bucharest Summit pledge that Ukraine “will become a NATO member” was a dead letter, and the Maidan had done nothing to change that reality. Rather, the problem was that Kyiv had continued its drift away from Moscow even under the ostensibly pro-Russian presidency of Viktor Yanukovych, and the Maidan had accelerated Ukraine’s reorientation. Ukrainians remained well disposed toward Russia and willing to cooperate with their mighty northern neighbor, but their top priority was fostering their own national state and identity.

The disorder surrounding the overthrow of Yanukovych in February 2014 gave Moscow an opening to try an audacious gambit to recover Ukraine. However, apart from its stunning tactical success in seizing Crimea, Moscow’s wider campaign flopped badly. Far from rallying Russian-speaking Ukrainians to break with Kyiv and turn to Moscow, the Kremlin’s Novorossiya project confirmed and invigorated a sense of Ukrainian identity across the russophone south and east of Ukraine. The abortive attempt to break off half of Ukraine managed to bring only a devastated rump of the Donbas under Russian control. Moscow failed to capitalize on Ukraine’s 2014 interregnum and came up largely empty-handed.

Somewhat counterintuitively, this very failure makes it harder to facilitate a graceful Russian exit. The Kremlin missed its best post-Soviet opportunity to pull Ukraine firmly back into Russia’s orbit, but it is not, by all appearances, ready to give up and let Ukraine go off to pursue a European vocation. There is no combination of Ukrainian neutrality, linguistic and cultural concessions for Ukraine’s russophone population, or even tacit acceptance of Russia’s seizure of the Crimea that can induce Moscow to withdraw from the Donbas. Russian abandonment of the Donbas would equal abandonment of Ukraine; the loss of Ukraine would signify the demise of any meaningful Eurasian Union or “Russian world,” hence the end (or at least a drastic scaling back) of Russia’s restoration as a great power. Moreover, many Russians are convinced that Ukraine is simply part of their inalienable historical and cultural patrimony, regardless of what Ukrainians might think. Therefore, we can build all the “off ramps” we want, but Putin is simply not disposed—perhaps is not even able—to get off the freeway just yet.

One of the misconceptions impeding a practical approach to ending, or at least mitigating, the Russo-Ukrainian War is the false narrative that the fighting in the Donbas is an intra-Ukrainian affair—that Russian-speakers in the southeast rose up spontaneously to repel “fascism,” and that these “tractor drivers,” to use Putin’s phrase, valiantly held off the Ukrainian army using whatever weapons they could lay their hands on locally. Apologists for Donbas separatism, even when they can no longer deny Russia’s patent intervention in Ukraine,1 would still have us believe that the Donbas conflict is essentially a civil war rooted in deep regional differences, and whose resolution lies in sufficiently fulsome concessions to the just demands of the Donbas—principally, the assumption of a “Little Russian” rather than Ukrainian identity, the reversal of Ukraine’s European trajectory, and its reorientation toward (and preferably, complete reabsorption by) Russia.

Regional identities and differences in outlook have certainly played a role in post-Soviet Ukraine, but they never generated sustained, widespread separatist sentiment, let alone any viable separatist movement. At the outset of the disturbances in southeastern Ukraine in 2014 the hand of Moscow was manifest in the sudden appearance of Russians with no connection to the Donbas, often leading armed groups or abruptly proclaimed as leaders of some hitherto unimagined separatist entity. Exactly how they came to be in Ukraine or who chose them for leadership roles, no one could really say. They were not particularly successful at attracting active local support; whereas the Maidan protests in Kyiv regularly drew crowds in excess of 100,000, pro-Russian rallies in the south and east of Ukraine were hard-pressed to achieve a turnout of 5,000—with an undetermined number, at least in the Donbas, bussed in from nearby Russia. They proved rather more adept at seizing armories and government offices, and in violently dispersing pro-Ukrainian demonstrations.

One such Russian outsider, Igor Girkin (nom de guerre: Strelkov), suddenly and mysteriously proclaimed himself the Supreme Commander of the “Donetsk People’s Republic” in May 2014, and just as suddenly and mysteriously departed three months later. He has personally taken credit (if that is the correct word) for turning desultory agitation in the Donbas into armed conflict by leading his men into Ukraine, where they gunned down Ukrainian security personnel.2

A further indication of the external genesis of the conflict is the curious campaign for an entity dubbed “Novorossiya,” a term hitherto known only dimly from history books. Can anyone trace the indigenous development of a Novorossiyan identity in southern Ukraine, identify its origin and leaders, chart its activities and growth, or cite its manifestos? Of course not, because there was never anything of the sort. It was nationalist websites in Russia that were trumpeting the notion of Novorossiya, complete with maps and a contrived historical narrative, at a time when the idea of Novorossiya had virtually no organizational presence whatsoever in Ukraine itself. In fact, Novorossiya is a completely synthetic concept that was brought to Ukraine fully developed (or, to put it more accurately, half-baked) by Moscow’s agents.

Perhaps nothing demonstrates the artificiality of the notion of a “Ukrainian civil war” better than the utter inability of Moscow’s Donbas proxies even to present a coherent, consistent explanation of what they represent. Do they comprise two distinct “people’s republics,” Donetsk and Luhansk? Are they a single separatist entity called the Donbas, disavowing any connection with Ukraine? Are they the rump of a state called Novorossiya aspiring to unite all the russophone regions of Ukraine? Or are they the Piedmont of a new state entity, Malorossiya, dedicated to liberating all of Ukraine from…the Ukrainians? For a comparable situation, try to imagine the American Civil War with the Southern states unable to articulate whether they are 11 separate entities, a single Confederacy determined to separate from the Union, or the vanguard of a reconfigured Union in which the practice of slavery would be imposed on the North.

The impression of farce is compounded by the Donbas leadership’s odd sense of entitlement. Having angrily rejected any ties with the “fascist junta” in Kyiv, the proud, unbowed leaders of the Donbas proceed to stretch out their hands, palms upraised, and ask plaintively when Kyiv is going to resume paying their salaries and pensions.

The sheer inconsistency about what the Donbas even stands for belies the notion of principled, regional resistance to Kyiv and suggests instead a Kremlin frantically casting about for a workable Ukraine policy, throwing different, even contradictory, ideas against the wall in the hope that one will stick. This clumsy improvisation is a conclusive refutation of the implausible narrative that the Donbas conflict is essentially homegrown. If the Donbas rebels are separatists, let them pay their own salaries and pensions, and stop looking to Kyiv for handouts. And if they are instead the forefront of a great movement to liberate the “former Ukraine,” let them offer to start paying the monthly stipends of their separated brethren, the poor starving pensioners in the “fascist-occupied” portions of Malorossiya. The money, in either case, would have to come not from Donetsk, but from Moscow.

A final proof of the external impetus behind the Donbas war is the massive, ill-concealed use of Russian weaponry in the conflict. By some estimates the occupied Donbas contains one of the largest tank forces in all of Europe. There have been no major insurgent advances since the Battle of Debaltseve, hence no opportunities in more than two years to capture any significant amounts of Ukrainian weapons or ammunition. It simply beggars the imagination to suppose that the pro-Russian forces have continued to wage war all this time basically using only what they managed to seize from Ukraine prior to February 2015. One would have to believe that the Biblical multiplication of loaves and fishes had just been replicated in the Donbas, only with tanks, artillery, and ordnance.3 Moreover, the insurgents have curiously managed to obtain cutting-edge military capabilities, such as advanced drones and electronic warfare, which the Ukrainian army itself does not even possess. The inescapable conclusion is that Moscow is deeply and actively involved in arming the insurgency.

All in all, the Donbas presents a highly dubious scenario for an “internal conflict,” and trying to resolve it as such is a recipe for failure.

The second misunderstanding regards the purpose of the weapon systems proposed for Ukraine. Opponents of defensive assistance to Ukraine argue that the Ukrainians can never hope to defeat the Russian army in battle and retake the Donbas by force, and that arming Kyiv could never induce Putin to withdraw from the Donbas. These arguments are absolutely correct—but irrelevant.

Having failed to deliver a knockout blow to Ukraine in 2014, Moscow is hunkering down for a long-term struggle. Specific measures include enhanced troop deployments along Russia’s border with Ukraine, continued low-level military pressure in the Donbas, the construction of gas transit infrastructure bypassing Ukraine, and a relentless propaganda campaign depicting Ukraine as a fascist failed state ready to be tossed onto the ash heap of history. Additional activities that are probable but not conclusively provable include cyber-attacks, diversions, and assassinations of senior Ukrainian security personnel. Moscow’s strategy is to keep Ukraine down while preparing for another strike in the event of favorable conditions—some combination of a) a recovery of hydrocarbon prices; b) a distracted, pusillanimous West; and c) renewed domestic turmoil in Ukraine.

This is the context for Western policymaking on Ukraine, and in this context I dispute the charge that U.S. plans to arm Ukraine are being hatched willy-nilly in a strategic vacuum. The provision of anti-air and anti-armor capabilities to Ukraine is not about altering the balance of forces in the Donbas. Rather, it is a sober, considered response to the longer-term threat of a wider war in Ukraine. The clear strategy is to raise the cost of an expanded Russian military campaign against its neighbor. Arming Kyiv would complement other prudent measures to affect the Kremlin’s cost-benefit analysis—for example, allowing Russia no alternative but to continue transiting gas exports through Ukraine; Ukrainian preparations to wage guerrilla warfare in the event of invasion and occupation; practical measures to ensure that Western Europe could drastically curtail imports of Russian gas, if necessary; and laying the groundwork for much more damaging sanctions, as required, that would freeze assets and further curtail Russia’s ability to borrow overseas.4

These measures underscore the fallacy of Russian escalation dominance, a glib talking point derived solely from consideration of the Russo-Ukrainian balance of military forces to the exclusion of all other factors. It begs the question why Russia has not already used its unquestioned military predominance to obliterate Ukraine, either in 2014 or at any point thereafter, as Russian nationalists have pleaded. The reason is that Russian military escalation has the potential to trigger a host of dire consequences for Moscow. Among them are the perils of fighting a protracted guerilla war in occupied Ukraine, the enormous financial cost of occupying and rebuilding a country devastated by conquest, the probability of driving Russia’s post-Soviet neighbors into NATO’s embrace, and the likelihood of crippling Western sanctions targeting Russia’s overseas assets, energy and financial sectors, and state budget. It is these considerations, rather than Russian appreciation for Western forbearance, that have stayed the Kremlin’s hand thus far. As the Americans can testify from their experience in Iraq and Afghanistan, overwhelming victory in military engagements does not automatically translate into the achievement of one’s wider goals. In the real world, the Kremlin’s escalation dominance in Ukraine is strictly circumscribed by the extremely negative repercussions that would surely follow Russian military action.

As useful as enhanced Ukrainian anti-air and anti-armor capabilities would be to dissuade a broader Russian invasion, an even stronger deterrent would be the certainty that, in extremis, Europe could quickly slash its purchases of Russian gas. In a conflict characterized as “hybrid,” it is comforting to contemplate that the West has a few asymmetrical tricks up its own sleeve in the event of renewed Russian military activity in Ukraine.

1See in particular the revealing March 2, 2015 interview with Russian soldier Dorzhi Batomunkuyev, who recounted how the Russian army had deployed his unit of 31 tanks to the Battle of Debaltseve.

2“It is I who pressed the trigger of war. If our unit had not crossed the border, ultimately all would have ended as in Kharkov or Odessa. …For all intents and purposes it was our unit that launched the flywheel of war, a war that continues to this day. …And I bear personal responsibility for what is happening there.” Interview with the newspaper Zavtra, November 20, 2014.

3It should be a fairly simple matter to verify the Ukrainian provenance of military equipment in the Donbas by having some impartial third party (for example, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe) check the serial numbers of at least the heavy equipment (tanks, armored personnel carriers, artillery, and mortars) against a list of serial numbers of similar equipment found in the Ukrainian military’s inventory prior to 2014. In accordance with the Minsk Accords, any equipment not of Ukrainian origin would be removed from the Donbas.

4These pain-inducing measures would ideally be complemented by actions to strengthen Ukraine through political and economic reform—provided the governing authorities in Kyiv could ever be induced to undertake serious reforms.

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America Prepares for the Year’s Second Solar Eclipse

The International Trade Commission (ITC) made a ruling today that could reshape solar power here in the United States. Solar has been growing rapidly lately, growing from .01 percent of the country’s power generation in 2007 to just under 1 percent last year, and having increased another 50 percent this year to date. Much of that growth has come as the result of precipitously falling costs for solar systems, and in particular solar panels. But a Georgia-based solar power company may be spoiling the party: It blamed an influx of cheap Asian panels for its slide into bankruptcy in April, and soon afterward dusted off a section of the 1974 Trade Act to ask for import tariffs and minimum prices for foreign panels. The ITC ruled in favor of domestic panel producers today, and so now the ball is in President Trump’s court, who gets to decide whether or not to levy tariffs on these bargain products from abroad.

But make no mistake, this isn’t being hailed as a victory by the U.S. solar industry. Sure, panel producers like the one that filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy this spring will be pleased not to have to keep veering into the red in order to compete with Chinese companies (whose product quality is questionable, and whose finances are no less shaky), but every other link in the supply chain will loathe the ITC ruling just as much, and will hope that President Trump will choose to ignore it. Tariffs on panel imports will make solar panel systems much more expensive and therefore much less attractive to the consumer. As the CEO of San Jose-based SunPower put it, tariffs could “undermine an American industry that has been experiencing exponential growth and creating jobs at an unprecedented rate.”

Solar developers have been snatching up and hoarding panels in anticipation of these potential tariffs for months, leading to a shortage and a 40 percent spike in panel prices. Analysts estimate that tariffs could lead to a doubling in panel price, as compared to what they were at the start of the year, before Suniva went belly up and subsequently threw a wrench in the works.

Now, all eyes turn to the White House. Most in the renewables industry will be crossing its fingers that Trump will side with free trade over protectionism, but given Trump’s rhetoric about China, inaction seems unlikely. If Trump decides to put import tariffs on solar panels in place, we’ll surely see a reversal in the U.S. solar sector as companies struggle to adapt to higher costs. We’ll also likely see China retaliate in some way—we saw a trade war erupt in the solar industry back in 2013 and 2014, when the U.S., China, Taiwan, and Europe all blamed one another for illegally subsidizing domestic production and “dumping” it abroad.

Trump has an opportunity to play to his base that he may well find irresistible, but looking beyond domestic politics, this is a serious sign of concern for the health of solar power today. New and growing markets like this one are often dogged by shady state-backed first movers, but in recent years we’ve heard a lot of noise about how solar’s day in the sun had finally arrived—that the fledgling energy option had at long last matured. But if the U.S. solar sector can’t survive without cheap Chinese panels often sold below cost, that clearly isn’t true.

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Dear Colleague Letter, 2011-2017

The 2011 “Dear Colleague” letter, a notorious piece of Obama Administration guidance that pushed campuses to put in place more draconian procedures for adjudicating sexual assault accusations—and set in motion a fierce culture war over young people, sex, and the meaning of consent—is no more. The New York Times reports:

Reversing a key part of government policy on campus sexual assault, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos on Friday issued new temporary rules that could give accused students greater protection against campus rape and sexual misconduct claims.

Ms. DeVos said that colleges may now use a higher standard of evidence before finding students responsible for sexual assault, a decision that can lead to discipline and even expulsion.

It’s unclear how many schools will actually restore stronger due process protections. Administrators have some incentives to keep their current policies more or less in place—after all, a future Democratic administration could re-impose the Dear Colleague requirements, and any college president who tries to move policies in a fairer direction will face significant pushback from the campus Left. However, as KC Johnson points out, DeVos’ decision will undermine a key defense colleges have used when they are sued by (mostly male) students who say they were treated unfairly in campus tribunals: namely, that they had no choice but to carry out the federal government’s instructions.

The move is particularly notable for what it signals about the direction of advances in the culture wars over sex and gender identity. Progressives have won a steady stream of victories in this realm over the last generation—over same-sex marriage, premarital sex, gender equality, recognition for transgender people, and more. For a while, it looked like the sexual assault debate was going in a comparable direction, with progressives on an inexorable march to total victory. The Obama-era policies institutionalized a “believe the victim no matter what” mentality on college campuses. Democratic state legislatures in California and New York passed “yes means yes” policies dramatically broadening the definition of sexual assault at public colleges (and in California’s case requiring affirmative consent training for high schoolers). A group of legal scholars that helps draft model statutes once seemed poised to recommend that this standard be enshrined in criminal law, as well. In other words, the Dear Colleague letter was the first shot in an attempted revolution to change the way sex is policed and defined in the United States.

DeVos’ reversal—which was preceded by other defeats—represents a significant stumbling block for the revolutionaries. And it is telling that it has not been greeted by the same kind of universal, overwhelming condemnation in polite society that has met other Trump Administration social policies. The New Yorker has been running a series of columns critical of campus sex tribunals from the liberal Harvard law professor Jeannie Suk. The Atlantic ran a devastating three part series on the dubious science and miscarriages of justice swirling around the new regime. The Washington Post has editorialized in defense of DeVos’ approach. Democratic partisans have made pro forma denunciations of the Education Secretary’s supposed war on women, but the general atmosphere seems receptive and sympathetic to her decision to hit “pause” on the campus sex crusade. The culture wars don’t just run in one direction, as presumptuous progressives—and despondent conservatives—too often believe.

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Iran and North Korea Double Down

A key component of President Trump’s fiery United Nations speech this week was a denunciation of North Korea and Iran, two “rogue regimes” that he said represent the “scourge of our planet today.” In the days since, both countries have issued defiant retorts, lashing out at Trump.

First came the official response from Pyongyang. In a rare direct statement, Kim Jong-un attacked Trump as a “frightened dog” and “dotard” before threatening the “highest level of hard-line countermeasure in history.” Today, Kim’s foreign minister clarified what that countermeasure might be. Per the Wall Street Journal:

North Korea’s foreign minister said the country could detonate a hydrogen bomb over the Pacific Ocean in response to President Donald Trump’s speech before the United Nations that warned the U.S. would annihilate North Korea if forced to defend itself or its allies. […]

“In my opinion, perhaps we might consider a historic aboveground test of a hydrogen bomb over the Pacific Ocean,” Mr. Ri said in a video broadcast on a South Korean news channel.

Meanwhile, as President Trump weighs whether to scrap the Iranian nuclear deal he denounced as an “embarrassment” at the UN, President Rouhani is publicly touting the country’s ballistic missile program, per the NYT:

Escalating a war of words with the United States, President Hassan Rouhani of Iran declared on Friday that his country would continue to develop new missiles and “would not seek anyone’s permission to defend our land.”

As he spoke at a military parade in Tehran, the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps unveiled a ballistic missile with a range of about 1,250 miles, making it capable of reaching much of the Middle East, including Israel.

Mr. Rouhani’s nationally televised speech at the parade — which commemorates the Iran-Iraq War of 1980-88 — and the show of force were a direct display of defiance toward President Trump, who signed a bill in August imposing mandatory penalties on those involved in Iran’s ballistic missile program and anyone who does business with them.

The similarities between the North Korean and Iranian nuclear threats should not be exaggerated. Pyongyang has made no secret of its rush toward a nuclear ICBM, while Iran has denied seeking nukes at all as it adheres (for now) to the constraints imposed by the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. And the threat of an imminent H-bomb test in the Pacific is more pressing than Iran’s ballistic missile development, even if the long-term threat of a nuclear Iran is more serious.

Nonetheless, it is worth considering the two countries together, since Trump is needling both simultaneously in ways that could make one crisis rebound on the other.

As the New York Times‘ David Sanger recently noted, there is a dangerous contradiction in Trump’s pressure campaigns against Pyongyang and Tehran. Even while Trump tries to keep all options open on North Korea, including eventual negotiations, he is itching to torpedo the nuclear deal with Iran, which could forfeit whatever credibility he has on the matter.

If Trump intentionally blows up the Iran deal—as he by all accounts would like to do—Kim will be loath to enter into any negotiations with us, not trusting that any commitments would be honored by the United States. Both Iran and North Korea would feel even further validated in their drive for a nuclear deterrent. And the Trump Administration would struggle to rebuild an anti-Iran sanctions regime with its European allies, who are eager to do business with Tehran and are urging Trump not to kill the deal. Adam Garfinkle argued all of this and more back in January: a unilateral abrogation of the JCPOA would make the odds of war with Iran go way up—and it could also convince North Korea that they have nothing to gain from sitting down for talks.

That doesn’t mean that the Iran deal should be treated as sacrosanct. It was sold on duplicitous assumptions, and there are plenty of ways that it failed to address (and arguably emboldened) Iran’s destabilizing behavior in its neighborhood. But these are issues that Trump could address outside the scope of the JCPOA without scuttling it outright. French President Emmanuel Macron recently suggested a way forward, offering new negotiations to discuss sanctions on Iran’s ballistic missile testing and fixing the deal’s so-called “sunset provisions”.

Many foreign policy failures are born from failing to anticipate how actions in one theater can reverberate in another. If Trump does get his way in ending the Iran deal, though, the decision will certainly resonate in North Korea just as surely as it resonated when NATO overthrew Qaddafi in Libya. According to U.S. intelligence, that event hardened assessments in Pyongyang that the regime would never be safe if it disarmed through negotiations, since Qaddafi had given up his own weapons years earlier and was nonetheless deposed.

Iran and North Korea are both long-term security challenges that will vex American policymakers for many years to come. But Trump’s plan to kill the Iranian nuclear deal may well make matters even worse, triggering an unnecessary two-front crisis all at once.

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How Trump Inspired America’s Carbon Markets

When a 2009 bill that would have established a carbon trading system in the United States failed to get Senate approval, the market-based approach to curbing greenhouse gas emissions seemed dead in the water here in America. But while cap and trade failed at the national level, it’s seeing patchwork regional success.

And now, motivated by President Trump’s decision to pull out of the Paris climate accord, interest from state officials in the Northeast U.S. is growing to join the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI, or “reggie”). So far, RGGI includes Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, Rhode Island, and Vermont. And now Bloomberg is reporting that New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Virginia are considering joining the program.

It’s interesting that, in spite of his intentions, Trump may have done more to help the climate cause here in America by playing the eco-villain than he would have if he had upheld the status quo.

Let me explain: falling emissions in the United States are the result of cheap, abundant natural gas (thank you fracking) that’s displacing coal as our country’s single biggest source of power. Natural gas emits half as much carbon as coal, which means that the shale boom has been an extremely powerful climate mitigation tool. And, for all his talk about wanting to revive the coal sector, Trump isn’t about to regulate fracking into oblivion, which means American emissions—especially in the power sector—are going to continue to drop.

But by pulling out of Paris, Trump galvanized the environmental movement, and shook them out of Obama-induced contentment to start agitating for even greater controls of carbon. Since Trump’s announcement, cities and states have started to take a closer look at what they’re capable of doing to reduce emissions, since it’s clear that those mandates won’t be coming from the federal level—hence this surging interest in RGGI.

This bottom-up approach to combatting climate change has advantages over the top-down strategy embodied by the UN and the Paris deal. For one, cities and states have a better handle on what they’re capable of, and that matters when it comes to reducing emissions. Energy resources vary widely across countries, regions, and states, so it makes sense to allow for local control of climate policies that can account for, say, plenty of wind power potential—or a lack thereof. Local policies afford more accountability than nebulous, “comprehensive” international agreements. People can use their votes to speak their minds on these issues in ways that they can’t with the UN approach.

That said, there are drawbacks to a regional approach to capping or putting a price on carbon. California’s carbon market has been a resounding failure thus far: The state has struggled to fix a price for carbon allowances that’s high enough to induce heavy emitters to change behavior, but not so high that those same emitters pick up and move someplace that doesn’t entail those costs. Carbon leakage, as that last issue is called, is the central problem with a patchwork network of carbon markets, and it’s why the EU’s Emissions Trading System (EU ETS) has floundered, too.

The Golden State has also run into issues with how to spend the proceeds from sales of carbon permits. A number of Californian politicians signed on to the program because they saw it as a way to finance pet projects. This system, as currently envisioned, is fertile ground for pork barrel politics, which is as much a problem in Sacramento as it is in Washington.

Next year, California wants to link its market with Ontario and Quebec, and there’s talk of a link with RGGI as well. Scaling up will help reduce the threat of carbon leakage, but it won’t fix the pork problem, and neither will it create a Goldilocks price for carbon. Still, it’s interesting that cap-and-trade in the United States has gained momentum in 2017, despite (or because of) Trump’s intervention. Funny how things work out, sometimes.

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