Peter L. Berger's Blog, page 145

One of These Things Is Not Like the Other

On Monday evening, the New York Times published a draft version of an interagency special report on climate science that’s chock-full of observations that climate change is already observable here in the United States. The report was made public back in January via the non-profit Internet Archive, but didn’t grab any sort of widespread attention until the NYT got involved this week. Each and every one of the draft’s pages are emblazoned with the words “DO NOT CITE, QUOTE, OR DISTRIBUTE,” commands that were disobeyed presumably out of fear that the Trump Administration would attempt to quash the report’s contents.

That may have been a legitimate concern. The President’s tweet labeling climate change as a Chinese hoax is well known, but that rejection of mainstream science extends into his cabinet, too. Scott Pruitt, the head of the EPA, rejects the well-established fact that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas, and is causing a rise in surface temperatures. Energy secretary Rick Perry touts a more watered down form of climate skepticism by saying that he doesn’t believe human activity is “the primary control knob” of our climate. This week, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson sent a message to American embassies around the world instructing diplomats to evade questions about U.S. commitments to combatting climate change in the wake of Trump’s decision to pull the country out of the Paris accord. One at least can understand why scientists might be concerned that this report, part of a congressionally ordered quadrennial National Climate Assessment, might not get the green light from the Trump Administration.

One of the most interesting parts of the leaked report concerns the various connections between climate change and weather. But before we dive in, a little bit of housekeeping. First and foremost, it’s important to remember that weather is not climate. The two affect one another, but when we discuss climate and changes in climate, we’re doing much more than simply noting that it was hot on Tuesday. Climate occurs over years, decades, and centuries, while weather can seldom be accurately predicted even a week out. Conflating these two concepts is one of the most common—and yet most easily avoided—pitfalls in the heated (sorry) climate change debate. When Senator Jim Inhofe brought a snowball onto the Senate floor, he made his climate skepticism look foolish, not justified. When Al Gore remarked in his newly released film, An Inconvenient Sequel, that “every storm is different now” thanks to climate change, he watered down (again, sorry) his case that we’re already seeing warming’s effects. This gets to one of the central difficulties most of us have when it comes to grappling with climate change: it occurs on a time scale that’s foreign to the manner in which we’re accustomed to thinking (and it certainly occurs on a much longer time scale than the length of time policymakers are in office). Because of that, we often see politicians and activists on both sides of the debate putting their feet in their respective mouths.

Still the fundamentals of climate change are easy to grasp. Gases like methane and carbon dioxide work to trap more of the sun’s radiation in our atmosphere, much like the glass of a greenhouse, and increases of their concentrations lead to rising surface temperatures. That causal chain is “settled,” as much as science can ever be.

But there’s still much that’s unsettled in climate science, thanks to the enormous complexity of the system scientists are studying. There are a mind boggling number of variables at play here, and they interact with one another in ways both known and unknown, the results of which can often confound the predictions of our best models. Climate change is real and it’s happening in large part because of humanity’s industrialization, but things get quickly get fuzzy when we move further into the field.

That’s why it’s so interesting to see this special (draft) report taking on one of the most difficult to pin down aspects of climate change: its relationship with weather. We can already measure summers getting hotter across much of the globe and winters getting milder, but the day-to-day weather effects are harder to predict. Researchers are increasingly focused on climate’s effects on extreme weather, not only because these events can wreak havoc on civilization centers and are therefore important to forecast, but also because it should be easier to draw a link between these events and climate change than it would for milder weather.

Still, even these kinds of observations can be fraught. For example, the report claims with “high confidence” that climate change is projected to cause increases in precipitation rates in hurricanes and typhoons, and projects with “medium confidence” increases in intensity. And yet “[the] current 11-year (2006–2016) absence of U.S. 7 major hurricane landfall events (sometimes colloquially referred to as a “hurricane drought”) is unprecedented in the historical records dating back to the mid-19th century,” the report acknowledges a few pages later. Scientists have differing explanations for this historic luck for the United States that range from landfalls being essentially random, to a 2016 study’s hypothesis that “conditions conducive to hurricane intensification in the deep tropics occur in concert 19 with conditions conducive to weakening near the U.S. coast.” Another study cited by the report calls into question “uncertainties in the historical data,” a perennial problem for climate scientists when you consider that we only started paying close attention to these phenomena recently.

Climate science is most convincing when it is framed in general terms, and this report is no exception. “There are no alternative explanations, and no natural cycles are found in the observational record that can explain the observed changes in climate,” the report says. The evidence for these changes are all around us, “from the top of the atmosphere to the depths of the oceans,” and the more we study it, the more bad news we seem to uncover. We’re well past the point of equivocating about whether this is actually occurring, or whether humans are responsible for it—the experts we trust to delve into this problem have answered those questions definitively.

Nevertheless, much of the public and most of the current Administration seem loath to take positive action on climate change. In an attempt to convince the non-believers, many environmentalists are placing an emphasis on the rising risks of extreme weather, and it’s not hard to see why: if you can definitively link the visceral impacts of natural disasters with the more nebulous concept of climate change, you’d be able to make more people care about this problem. That said, establishing that causal link between a warming planet and any specific storm is very difficult, and if done incorrectly it could easily make people more mistrustful of the more well understood aspects of climate science.

That’s not to say that this isn’t a subject deserving of further research—for aforementioned reasons it absolutely is, and this draft report is full of examples of those sorts of studies. But greens like Gore that use extreme weather to try and persuade skeptics play a dangerous game, and they often do so with little regard for what the actual scientists are saying.

The post One of These Things Is Not Like the Other appeared first on The American Interest.

China Lays Down Tracks in Malaysia

Beijing has cut the ribbon on one of its most ambitions Belt and Road projects yet: a $13 billion railway across Malaysia. From the Nikkei Asia Review:

A Chinese state-owned contractor broke ground Wednesday on Malaysia’s largest railway project, symbolizing Southeast Asia’s growing economic reliance on Beijing’s financial clout and technological prowess.

While the project is a major coup for China, which is aggressively promoting its Belt and Road Initiative to develop infrastructure throughout Eurasia and Southeast Asia, the 55 billion ringgit ($12.8 billion) deal has critics questioning Malaysia’s transparency in dishing out big-ticket projects.

Called the East Coast Rail Link, or ECRL, the 688km railway connecting Port Klang, Malaysia’s main shipping hub outside Kuala Lumpur, and Pengkalan Kubor near the Thai border is seen by its supporters as a way to spur the development of the rural states along the line.

The groundbreaking of the Malaysian rail project comes as Xi Jinping’s Belt and Road initiative has run into obstacles almost everywhere else. Violent unrest in Pakistan and Laos, local protests in Myanmar and Sri Lanka, and an Indian boycott of the Belt and Road summit have slowed Xi’s infrastructure agenda and generated a series of negative headlines for Beijing. By contrast, the Malaysian project is off to a happy start: Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak has unambiguously embraced China’s overtures, touting the rail project as a “game-changer” that will dramatically ease travel across the country while bringing much-needed growth to Malaysia’s most sparsely populated states.

But there is good reason to question that rosy narrative. Najib has lately been putting all his eggs in the Chinese basket by turning his back on the U.S., accepting multiple Chinese bailouts and speedily cutting deals with Beijing with little regard for their long-term hazards. The rail project is a case in point: initial talks started last October and the project was fast-tracked in a remarkably non-transparent process. To be sure, China’s terms certainly look attractive: Beijing is offering a 20-year soft loan at a 3.25% annual interest rate, with no payments due until the line has been up and running for 7 years. But the simple fact remains that Malaysia will be heavily indebted to Beijing for years to come, and ambitious rail projects hardly have a reputation for coming in under budget and ahead of schedule.

The whole enterprise shows the danger of Najib’s recent policy in miniature: he keeps placing risky long-term bets on China due to short-term incentives. His public embrace of China this fall was an opportunistic one, motivated by immediate financial needs (Beijing had saved Najib’s skin with a $2.3 billion deal after the 1MDB money laundering scandal) and a grievance with the United States, whose Department of Justice implicated him in the scandal. And the Prime Minister’s enthusiasm for the rail project looks similarly short-sighted: with a general election coming next year, Najib is eager to demonstrate that he is bringing investment and development to the country. But the ultimate consequences of all that Chinese money will be mixed—and with critics already charging Najib with selling out Malaysia’s sovereignty, China’s expanding footprint may end up less politically popular than he thinks.

Perhaps this partnership will work out as an example of “win-win cooperation,” to use China’s language. But given the way other Belt and Road projects are going, Malaysia may soon find itself in an unenviable position of dependency vis-a-vis Beijing—and China may run into more construction headaches than are now apparent.

The post China Lays Down Tracks in Malaysia appeared first on The American Interest.

The End of the Abbas Era

The closest the Israeli-Palestinian conflict got to an actual third intifada, or uprising, happened late this past month when Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas mobilized the shadowy militia elements of his party for widespread Friday protests. What the lone-wolf stabbing attacks that have plagued Israel for the past several years lacked—and what both the first and second intifadas had—was political leadership and support. In activating the Tanzim, a faction of his own party that Abbas has struggled to control, the Palestinian President was sanctioning his people’s unrest.

It was an unprecedented step from Abbas. In his 12 years as President, he has feuded with the elements of his party that carried out attacks during the second intifada, declared security coordination with Israel “sacred,” and largely avoided participating in large-scale protests. And yet, after Israel initiated several security measures in response to a terror attack at the al-Aqsa compound in Jerusalem’s Old City, Abbas crossed the Rubicon. He froze all ties with Israel, including security coordination, met with leaders of the protests, and urged his people to march in every public square across the West Bank. The crisis was finally resolved when Israel removed the security cameras and opened Bab al-Hutta (where the attack took place), but the impact of this near-catastrophic escalation will linger. Palestinians see the massive protests that rocked Jerusalem as the reason for Israel’s acquiescence. When tensions flare again, they’ll look to a political leadership willing to support them in these tactics.

And they may start to look elsewhere for leadership. The aging Abbas has turned increasingly autocratic in recent years. He’s overseen a purge of his own party, including the ouster of Mohammad Dahlan, a former security chief who recently announced an agreement with Hamas, Abbas’s rivals in Gaza. Abbas has also clamped down on political expression, regularly arresting students and shutting down websites critical of his government. To top it off, he spends most of his time outside the West Bank. His people have responded with varying levels of unrest: A majority of Palestinians want him to resign, and refugee camps in the West Bank have become flashpoints for clashes with the PA. The Balata camp in Nablus and al-Amari camp between Jerusalem and Ramallah have seen sustained fights against PA forces in recent years.

Abbas’s policies have also come under heavy scrutiny. In recent months, he has attempted to turn up the pressure on Hamas in Gaza financially. He cut off electricity payments to Israeli power reactors, effectively plunging the Strip into darkness during the hottest days of Ramadan. He has sanctioned Hamas leaders, halted payments to Hamas prisoners, and even forced his own PA employees in Gaza into early retirement. He coupled this pressure campaign with calls from his top advisers for Gazans to take to the streets and overthrow Hamas, but to no avail. Instead, Gazans stayed home and endured devastating conditions while Hamas entreated Egypt and Dahlan to allow imports of emergency fuel shipments. A majority of Palestinians view Abbas’s actions as a cruel punishment of everyday Gazans.

The terror attack on July 14 at al-Aqsa took the Palestinians’ attention away from Gaza and Abbas’ actions there, and returned it to Jerusalem, where the West Bank leadership attempted to steer the events. Yet the relationship between the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah and the Palestinian population in East Jerusalem has always been murky. Under the Oslo Accords, the PA was to have no official representation in the city, as its status was to be determined by negotiations. Instead, both the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and its dominant faction, the Fatah party, would be able to maintain links to the city. Since the accords, the PA’s leadership in Jerusalem has become fragmented: In the height of the terror of the second intifada, Israel closed the Orient House, the PLO’s headquarters in East Jerusalem. Fatah officials in Jerusalem have become disconnected from the rest of the leadership, owing in part to Israeli restrictions on movement. Complicating matters, some of the Islamic officials in charge of the al-Aqsa compound are appointed by Jordan, others by the Palestinian leadership. All of these factors have contributed to the isolation of East Jerusalem. “There is no Fatah or Hamas here,” one East Jerusalemite told reporters this week. “Just the people.”

The crisis in Jerusalem underscores the simple fact of the Abbas era: He does not control events on the ground; rather, they control him. It was Abdullah of Jordan who bypassed the PA to work out a deal with Israel to remove the metal detectors. And it was the East Jerusalem Islamic officials who declared that the status quo was restored and Palestinian Muslims could return to pray at the al-Aqsa compound. In freezing all ties with Israel and supporting the street leaders within his party, Abbas was pulling out all the stops to retain some semblance of relevance.

But his actions may have shifted the center of gravity within his own party. The three likeliest contenders to replace him—Marwan Barghouti, Jibril Rajoub, and Mahmoud al-Aloul—all represent a significant shift of power back to the Palestinian street. And all three figures have connections to the Tanzim, the faction within Fatah that Abbas mobilized this week. Barghouti was the commander of Fatah’s terror activities during the second intifada and remains wildly popular with everyday Palestinians. Rajoub came in second behind Barghouti in the group’s internal elections in November and has rallied a base of support by running the Palestinian soccer federation. And al-Aloul, the newly appointed vice president of Fatah, is the former head of mobilization within the party and the point person for mass protests.

Abbas is 82 years old and hasn’t faced an election in over 12 years. Reports indicate he’s in poor, and possibly deteriorating, health. Many Palestinians—including his own allies and rivals—have begun to plan for the post-Abbas era. The events of the past month have Palestinians convinced that wide-scale, coordinated protests are the way forward. At some point, they’ll want a leadership that fully endorses it.

The post The End of the Abbas Era appeared first on The American Interest.

Rouhani’s Road to Ruin

A growing split between Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and its President Hassan Rouhani has escalated in recent weeks, leading to verbal attacks and public humiliations. Both men share the same basic goals: to ensure the Islamic Republic’s survival and to bring about its preeminence in the Middle East. Nevertheless, the two leaders are competing for power within the Iranian regime’s narrow Khomeinist circle. This struggle has escalated since Rouhani’s landslide re-election victory in May, in which he garnered 57 percent of the vote and handily defeated conservative cleric Ebrahim Raisi, who many analysts believed was a leading contender to succeed Khamenei as Supreme Leader. Some observers described the election outcome as a potential turning point for Iran to chart a more moderate course, but this view ignores systemic factors inside the Islamic Republic that stymie such change, as well as Rouhani’s alignment with Khamenei on the issues that matter most for the regime.

Western media outlets portrayed the presidential election as a watershed in the Islamic Republic’s history, one in which the Iranian people chose Rouhani as their champion to pursue a path of reform and moderation. The Guardian, for example, reported that Rouhani’s “powerful mandate” to end international isolation and bring greater freedoms at home “could also have much longer-term implications for Iran’s future, by giving reformists a greater influence over the looming battle to choose a new supreme leader.” The New York Times cited “analysts,” without naming any specific experts, who said that Rouhani’s win “should enable him to strengthen the position of the moderate and reformist faction.”

One of the analysts the Times may have been referencing was Trita Parsi, president of the National Iranian American Council. Parsi welcomed the election results and drew a sharp distinction between Rouhani and “hardline voices” pushing for more repression at home and hostility abroad.

“President Rouhani’s convincing win is a sharp rebuke to Iran’s unelected institutions that were a significant brake on progress during Rouhani’s first term,” Parsi said, adding that the United States can help change Tehran’s future by engaging with the President.

“For decades, moderates in Iran could not demonstrate the benefits of their moderate policies because of an unwillingness in Washington to play ball and negotiate directly with Tehran,” Parsi added in an article shortly after the election. He also argued that the outcome was a “stunning setback [for] the hardliners in the elections” and an indication that the Iran nuclear deal “could establish a new balance of power in Iran’s internal politics with significant long-term repercussions.”

Some experts have put forth a more subtle argument about Iran’s future that is based on the country’s internal power dynamics rather than its leaders’ ideological differences. Their argument is not based directly on Rouhani’s election victory, although it similarly asserts that reformists led by the President could very well steer the regime in a new direction. Alex Vatanka, Sanam Vakil, and Hossein Rassam recently argued that Rouhani and his circle of technocrats are “hardly impotent” and their capacity to play a significant role in the succession process after Khamenei dies should not be underestimated. They noted that “Rouhani is undeniably pushing back against the IRGC’s penetration of state institutions” and that “the technocrats will not sit idly by as the IRGC attempts to grab more power.” One of their key underlying points was that Khamenei does not have as great an ability to drive events as many assume. They also argued that Rouhani has one big advantage over the Supreme Leader’s allies: “legitimacy among the public,” because the technocrats “come closest to reflecting the aspirations of ordinary Iranians.”

They are correct that Rouhani is pushing back against the regime’s unelected faction, but to what end? Will it actually make a fundamental difference? And while the President does have support among a large portion of the Iranian public, has such support yielded significant change in the past?

Alas, it has not, and a primary reason this is so has received little attention: Iranian Presidents generally become much weaker in their second terms, falling under the control of the Supreme Leader and his institutions. Indeed, every Iranian President who has challenged the regime’s unelected faction since Khamenei became Supreme Leader has been severely damaged. The ongoing rift between Khamenei and Rouhani is showing that the current President is no exception to this pattern.

Thus if history is any guide, a Rouhani-led reformist transition will not come to fruition, and institutions close to the Supreme Leader, like the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), will retain their influence. Moreover, even if the Islamic Republic’s system allowed Rouhani to assert his authority in a meaningful way, it would make little difference. He and Khamenei agree on the issues that matter most in Iran. The West would be unwise to bet on Rouhani or his ability to moderate the regime.

War of Words

In an instructive episode in the ongoing Khamenei-Rouhani power struggle, Khamenei publicly humiliated Rouhani in a June speech to senior officials, including the judiciary chief, the parliamentary speaker, and top military brass. The seriousness of the humiliation is underscored by the fact that Rouhani preceded Khamenei on the podium, discussing themes central to his reelection campaign, including the need to attract foreign investment. Khamenei was not moved:

The President has talked at great lengths about the country’s economy, and he’s said, ‘This should be done,’ ‘that should be done.’ But who is he addressing by mentioning the ‘should dos?’ Himself.

Video of the speech shows Rouhani smiling uncomfortably throughout—and the audience bursting out in laughter.

“In 1980-1981, the then-president polarized society in two camps, and divided the country into opponents and supporters; this should not be repeated,” Khamenei added, referring to Iran’s first post-revolution President, Abolhassan Banisadr, who was impeached and later exiled after clashing with the clerical establishment.

Rouhani responded to the comments the following week, saying that the political legitimacy of a religious leader is determined by the “people’s will and invitation.” Supporters of Khamenei, many of whom believe the lifelong appointment to Supreme Leader is divine, did not take kindly to the President’s remarks, and some appeared to lash out. Days later, Rouhani had to be rushed to a car to escape hecklers in Tehran at the Quds rally, an annual pro-Palestinian gathering.

“Rouhani, Banisadr, happy marriage,” protesters chanted in an apparent reference to Khamenei’s speech. Some hecklers even chanted “death to liar” and “death to American mullah.”

Weeks after this episode, Rouhani’s brother, Hossein Fereydoun, was arrested on July 16 on suspicion of “financial irregularities.” Iran’s judiciary, which is closely aligned with Khamenei, announced the arrest amid growing tensions between both sides. Fereydoun was hospitalized the following day with high blood pressure. There is no indication that Khamenei was involved with the arrest, but the Supreme Leader appoints the head of the judiciary and his office has significant influence over its functions.

What does the escalating dispute between Iran’s Supreme Leader and its President mean? Khamenei wants to contain Rouhani’s post-election popularity and send a warning to him not to overstep his bounds. In other words, the elected government should know its place.

This power struggle is real, but its scale should not be overstated. Rouhani is not questioning the Islamic Republic’s core foundation: velayat-e faqih, or guardianship of the jurist, the concept of an Islamic system of clerical rule that gives the Supreme Leader ultimate political and spiritual authority. Indeed, the President is a product of the Iranian Revolution and wants to ensure the regime’s survival above all else. Moreover, Rouhani shares Khamenei’s fundamental foreign policy vision to diminish America’s role in the Middle East and achieve regional preeminence. He supports Iran’s ballistic missile program and use of Shi‘a militias across the Middle East—two cornerstones of the regime’s regional strategy. Even if Rouhani did feel differently, Iran’s President, whoever he might be, has little power in forming the country’s foreign, defense, and nuclear policies.

Still, despite shared strategic objectives, Khamenei has given the green light to his supporters to undermine Rouhani. Furthermore, his public, brazen criticisms of the President indicate that the Supreme Leader wants to reassert his authority, particularly as the 78-year-old Ayatollah ponders who will succeed him and carry on his legacy.

Such power struggles between the Supreme Leader and the President are not new, and history suggests that the present one will end as the others did: with the Ayatollah’s unelected faction coming out ahead. Let’s examine that history to see why.

Challenging the Ayatollah

Since Khamenei became Supreme Leader in 1989, every Iranian President has been elected to a second term—and each one clashed with the Ayatollah, only to be severely weakened. Iran’s first President in the Khamenei era, the late Ayatollah Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, started off as a close ally of the Supreme Leader. The two wanted to rebuild the country after the devastating Iran-Iraq War (1980-88), but their visions of how to do so steadily diverged. Initially, Khamenei’s mediocre clerical credentials and lack of a strong base of support limited his religious authority and broader influence, empowering Rafsanjani and the presidency. Khamenei responded by forging alliances with IRGC leadership, conservative clerics, and bazaari merchants, and began to push back against Rafsanjani’s agenda during his second term.

Khamenei first supported Rafsanjani’s ambitious national reconstruction plan and united the political right in Iran. The Supreme Leader represented the conservative traditional right—which included religious and clerical entities, those who supported the power of the guardian jurist, and the bazaaris—while the President led the modern right—which was focused on modernizing Iran’s economy and preferred expertise over ideological orthodoxy for managerial positions.1 Rafsanjani and his technocrats, however, also pushed for increased government oversight of the commercial sector and less strict Islamic social regulations, angering those in the Supreme Leader’s camp.

Khamenei’s conservative faction backed Rafsanjani’s economic agenda during his first term (1989-93)—in part because the IRGC was able (and encouraged) to seize control of key aspects of the economy and form a multibillion-dollar industrial empire. The President met with little resistance in privatizing state-owned industries and boosting domestic manufacturing. The conservatives’ main problem was with Rafsanjani’s efforts to soften social restrictions, which they viewed as an attack on Islamic and revolutionary values. In August 1992, for example, the High Council for Cultural Revolution, a government body headed by Rafsanjani, came out with a liberal-themed document that pushed for pragmatism in cultural affairs.2 Experts should be the ones finding solutions in society, the council argued, not the clergy.

Conservative backlash led to the resignations of Mohammed Khatami and Mohammed Hashemi (Rafsanjani’s brother) as culture minister and head of radio and television, respectively. Both men, seen as key engineers of the government’s social liberalization efforts, were replaced by staunch conservatives Mostafa Mir-Salim and Ali Larijani, who publicly endorsed different policies. They and other conservatives whom Khamenei appointed to key posts made it their mission to resist the infiltration of Western culture and values. They allowed activists and Basij militiamen, who fell under the IRGC’s umbrella leadership, to police the streets. These efforts, the IRGC’s growing power (bolstered in part by securing lucrative government contracts), and new election laws that gave Khamenei and his allies effective veto power over political candidates allowed the Supreme Leader’s camp to stymie efforts at reform.

The Khamenei-Rafsanjani alliance fractured in the mid-1990s, when the President began his second four-year term. Rafsanjani proposed higher taxes and greater government regulation of the commercial sector, which threatened the bazaari’s economic weight. A somewhat united political right split into pieces, with traditional conservatives now at odds with the President on both social and economic issues. As a result, Rafsanjani sought greater backing from the left in addition to his modern-right faction. This new coalition performed well in the 1996 parliamentary elections, though it still constituted a minority compared to conservatives. In this environment, Khatami was elected President in 1997 in a landslide victory, winning nearly 70 percent of the vote on a reformist platform.

Many observers at the time thought momentum was with the pragmatists and that a wave of popular support for them would undermine the conservatives—similar to the reactions to Rouhani’s presidency today. Moreover, their claims at the time were not baseless. Some of the rigid cultural and religious rules instituted after 1979 gave way to a bit more life and color, particularly at the municipal level. More attractive public spaces were put in place, for example, and debates were held on women’s subordinate role in society.3

Beneath the surface, however, Khamenei, who became increasingly aligned with IRGC leadership, had built a separate, unelected governing structure outside the purview of the elected government—and even the constitution—that held the real reins of power. The intelligence and security services, amplified by the Basij’s presence on the streets and in the schools, fought what they termed the reformists’ Western “cultural invasion” at every turn. Prominent clergymen and bazaari leaders pushed back against their political and economic initiatives. The Guardian Council, a 12-member body composed of clerics and jurists appointed either directly or indirectly by the Supreme Leader, barred any unseemly candidates from running for office. (It also could veto any legislation passed through parliament.) And the IRGC continued expanding beyond a military role to hold major economic and cultural weight through business ventures and massive financial foundations, forming a symbiotic relationship with Khamenei. This multi-faceted, unelected faction, encompassing the so-called “deep state,” entrenched itself in Iranian society such that it could circumvent or overrule the presidency and parliament.

Still, the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance did ease certain restrictions, like censorship rules. But changes at the margins should not distract from the bigger picture. Conservatives intimidated those with whom they disagreed, imprisoned opponents, and shut down reformist newspapers. A breaking point came in July 1999, when one reformist newspaper, Salam, was closed after it published a document suggesting there was a conservative conspiracy to censor pro-Khatami media. Anger over the closure and possible censorship led to widespread student protests, which were met by counter-demonstrations from Basij and allied activists. The protests intensified, as did the rhetoric; conservatives said the students were undermining Islam and the Supreme Leader himself. The IRGC and Basij mobilized their forces into the cities to prevent further unrest.

On July 12, Khatami received a letter signed by 24 top IRGC and Basij commanders who castigated the President for allowing his supporters to criticize the Supreme Leader openly and threaten Iran’s Islamic system. They issued a blunt warning:

How long should we have revolutionary patience while the system is being destroyed? … Mr. President: If you do not make a revolutionary decision and if you do not fulfill your Islamic and national mission today, tomorrow will be far too late…. In the end, we would like to express our utmost respect for your Excellency and to declare that our patience has run out. We cannot tolerate this situation any longer if it is not dealt with.4

The message was simple: If Khatami did not stop the student protesters, the IRGC would bypass his authority and take action itself. Khatami quickly disavowed the protests, and supporters of Khamenei soon flooded the streets to show their devotion to the guardian jurist. In a moment of crisis when some questioned the regime’s legitimacy, the presidency proved powerless, folding to the IRGC—and the Supreme Leader. What power does the President have if military leaders can ignore his office and use force as they see fit?

Khatami easily won re-election in 2001, but he was, as one expert on Iran, Afshon Ostovar, described, a “near-powerless leader.”5 Conservatives blocked all of Khatami’s major initiatives by controlling the most influential state institutions and continuing their coercive tactics. The President also did not have support in the security and intelligence services, evidenced by hardline activists, including some in the police, who stormed a pro-Khatami celebration the day after his re-election and arrested and injured many present. Khatami was especially squeezed when it came to foreign and nuclear policy. He was unable to reach any compromise with the West over the war in Afghanistan or Iran’s nuclear program, which the National Council of Resistance of Iran made public in 2002. Both outreach efforts were suspect because Iran had a history of supporting the Taliban when it was convenient and continued its then-secret nuclear program during Khatami’s presidency. But the main point is that Khatami was unable to try and compromise even if he wanted to do so as long as the Supreme Leader and his allies opposed the initiative. He became an impotent President despite his electoral success and apparent popular support.

Khamenei not only had rifts with reform-minded Presidents; he also clashed with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the firebrand President who served from 2005 to 2013. Ahmadinejad—who became notorious for his belligerent statements about Israel, questioning of the Holocaust, and efforts to ramp up Iran’s nuclear program—had a less pragmatic approach to the Islamic revolution than Khamenei. But he had something in common with his two predecessors: He challenged the Supreme Leader and his allies and lost.

Initially, however, Ahmadinejad had Khamenei’s support. The Basij and the IRGC backed his election victory in 2005 and were suspected of tampering with the vote count on his behalf. Ahmadinejad did not have major public clashes with the Supreme Leader during his first term and had the Ayatollah’s implicit backing during his 2009 re-election. But the two had a public rift in 2011 when Ahmadinejad tried to fire then-Intelligence Minister Heydar Moslehi, a Khamenei ally. The Supreme Leader ordered him reinstated, but Ahmadinejad did not act for 11 days until Khamenei indicated that the President was also expendable. The two subsequently clashed over cabinet appointments and Ahmadinejad even decided not to hold cabinet meetings for a time to protest Moslehi’s presence. The President, Supreme Leader, and their allies had a tense relationship that continues today. When push came to shove, however, the Supreme Leader got his way.

One reason for this clash is that Ahmadinejad is a second-generation revolutionary who appears less committed to velayat-e faqih, making him more likely to defy Khamenei than those who served in the early years after the 1979 revolution—including Rouhani. Despite this fact, however, Ahmadinejad could do very little as President to challenge the Supreme Leader’s power.

Rouhani was first elected in 2013, and Western media outlets immediately portrayed him as a reformer. One reason for this belief was that he had a bold plan as a focal point of his campaign: to negotiate an international agreement over Iran’s nuclear program, thus lifting the punishing sanctions and rescuing the country’s economy. The idea was considered “moderate” because it necessitated negotiating with the United States and European countries, a red line for some in the Iranian regime (though not for the Supreme Leader), and making concessions on Tehran’s nuclear program—which was covertly underway during both Rafsanjani and Khatami’s tenures. (The program was also underway while Rouhani was Secretary of the Supreme National Security Council from 1989 to 2005 and Iran’s Chief Nuclear Negotiator from 2003 to 2005.)

One point that some observers miss is that Rouhani would not have been able to strike a nuclear deal without the Supreme Leader’s blessing. The President did not undermine Khamenei by signing the accord; to the contrary, he needed the Ayatollah’s backing. To portray it as a harbinger of major change is to misread the situation. Furthermore, the agreement has been a huge boon for the Supreme Leader and his allies—more so than for the Iranian people and moderate forces.

The hobbled regime was able to, through sanctions relief, strengthen its military, bolster its foreign policy adventurism, and pursue business interests through companies and foundations linked to groups like the IRGC. Under the deal, Khamenei also secured Iran’s status as a nuclear-threshold state in about a decade, got a provision that weakened a United Nations Security Council resolution on Tehran’s ballistic missile development, and lifted a U.N. embargo on his country’s ability to buy or export conventional arms in five years. Moreover, the regime was better able to target opposition groups and activists. And perhaps most significantly, the grumblings of Iranians unhappy with their government for their economic situation largely dissipated with the deal. With the system in place, Khamenei, perhaps counter intuitively, became more secure and entrenched.

“Ayatollah Khamenei has emerged as the single most powerful man in the Middle East,” Iran expert Karim Sadjadpour told the Wall Street Journal in August 2016. “It will take years to assess the full impact of the nuclear deal on the Middle East and in Iran internally, but the hope that the deal would weaken Khamenei and the Revolutionary Guards so far hasn’t been borne out.”

Beyond the nuclear question, Rouhani clearly differs from Khamenei on issues like economic interdependence, international engagement, and the extent of Islam in Iran’s culture. He is challenging the Supreme Leader at a tactical level—but only a tactical level—in these areas and others.

It would not be the first time, however. How well did that fair for his predecessors? What does the empirical evidence tell us for what to expect going forward? These questions, rather than hopeful visions of a moderating Islamic Republic, provide a better starting point for thinking about the regime’s future.

Don’t Expect Change

Such is the historical basis for arguing that Rouhani’s efforts to challenge the Supreme Leader won’t turn out substantially different than those of his predecessors. Khamenei has worked for decades to create institutions and forge alliances that effectively form a parallel, unelected government, which has more power than its (un-freely) elected counterpart. The recent arrest of Rouhani’s brother on the mere suspicion of vague and nebulous charges is but the latest indicator of this reality; in this case, the Khamenei-allied judiciary was the unelected faction that took aim at the President.

Neither Rouhani nor any other President will be able to challenge the Supreme Leader and “win” as long as velayat-e faqih is the core foundation of Iran’s government and the role of the guardian jurist is absolute. The President’s power is limited, even over executive matters, and he remains unable to change the regime’s decision-making process. This is one reason why any given presidential election, including the last one, is important but not transformational. The real transition will come when the elderly Khamenei dies and the succession process begins.

Even if Rouhani were able to implement his vision, however, Iran would not look much different than it does today. Many Western journalists and some analysts miss this point. So-called reformers like Rouhani and Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif do not want real change. Their goal is to “sustain the Islamic Republic’s authoritarian regime,” as Ray Takeyh has argued. The President shares the Supreme Leader’s expansionist foreign policy vision and fervent belief that the current theocratic system inside Iran must endure. Rouhani and his allies may be pragmatists who believe that economic reforms to attract foreign investment and avoid sanctions for terrorism and human rights violations are the best path forward, but such disagreements are a matter of tactics, not strategy.

A reformer would be someone like Abdolkarim Soroush, who has written that religion must be separated from politics and questioned the concept of velayat-e faqih. A reformer would be someone who does not violate citizens’ human rights, make militant statements against Israel, or support a clandestine nuclear program. Rouhani is not this person. Moreover, and most relevant to American interests, Rouhani and his allies do not differ from Khamenei on basic foreign policy and Tehran’s goal of achieving preeminence in the Middle East.

One key variable that could change the status quo is Iran’s population. A significant portion of the Iranian people wants the Islamic Republic to disappear, and many would like a democracy to emerge in its wake. But the regime has a monopoly on violence and is willing to use force if necessary to stay in power. As Robert D. Kaplan said in September, Iran is engaged in the Syrian conflict, helping President Bashar al-Assad kill hundreds of thousands of people in a bid to stay in power. Imagine what the Iranian regime would be willing to do to keep itself in power.

Moreover, many Iranians may see their government as undesirable but still preferable to the chaos that has enveloped other countries in the region whose leaders fell from power. Still, a popular pro-democracy rebellion, one like the Green Revolution of 2009, has the potential to bring change. The question is not if another wave of large-scale protests against the regime will occur but when.

The 2009 demonstrations ended up strengthening the regime after security forces violently put down the protests and the government regained some legitimacy. Will the next major uprising produce the same outcome? It remains to be seen, but one thing is clear: Until then, do not expect change in Iran. One can work toward that goal, but to expect change without any real evidence for its likelihood lays the foundation for dangerous policies based on misguided notions of strengthening moderates in the regime. The reality is that the Supreme Leader and his allies will likely remain in a strong position going forward, at the expense of the President. Rouhani may be challenging the Supreme Leader, but all he should expect to find along that course is a road to ruin.

1Afshon Ostovar, Vanguard of the Imam: Religion, Politics, and Iran’s Revolutionary Guards (Oxford University Press, 2016), p. 144.

2Farideh Farhi, “Cultural Policies in the Islamic Republic of Iran” (paper presented at a conference hosted by the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars entitled “Iran After 25 Years of Revolution: A Retrospective and a Look Ahead, Washington, DC, November 16-17, 2004).

3Farhi, “Cultural Policies in the Islamic Republic of Iran.”

4Suzanne Maloney, Iran’s Political Economy Since the Revolution (Cambridge University Press, 2015), p. 286.

5Ostovar, Vanguard of the Imam, p. 162.

The post Rouhani’s Road to Ruin appeared first on The American Interest.

The Right Nightmare

“Sticks and stones can break my bones, but words can never hurt me,” we all learned to say as a child. The idea was, as I recall, don’t let a verbal bully get your goat. But if he gets physical with you, it’s okay to nail him in the forehead with a fastball.

This is still pretty good advice, notwithstanding the fact that when heads of state open their mouths, really bad real things can follow. Kim Jong-un and Donald Trump are each, in their own ways, bullies. Both have been frothing at the mouth lately about nuclear weapons and missiles, and a lot of people have become frightened by it. If you are among them, try to relax—and here’s why.

When the North Koreans foam at the mouth, it’s deliberate. They seek attention, because to them attention from the likes of the United States translates into status, both in East Asia and in the world, but also internally in the DPRK. Sometimes they try to barter this attention for more goodies from China. Sometimes they try to parlay it into a form of extortion wherewith to evoke propitiatory gestures from the United States, Japan, and other countries, which has worked several times in the past.

When Donald Trump foams at the mouth in response to a North Korean verbal provocation, he is—to use the scientific-technical term—“stepping in it.” Acting like the mental junior high schooler that he seems to be, Trump has helped the DPRK propaganda machine do its work.

Note the contrast between Trump’s demolition-derby style of diplomacy and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s understated manner when the UN Security Council recently passed new sanctions against North Korea for its continuing missile tests. Tillerson was so relaxed that South Korea’s Foreign Minister felt obliged to raise the emotional level. While Tillerson apparently remains clueless about how to be Secretary of State in most respects—if this New York Times feature on Foggy Bottom can be even partially believed—he’s got this part of the job locked down tight.

Now it is true, of course, that North Korea’s recent provocations have not been all words. Missile tests are acts without an explicit script, as are nuclear-capable U.S. Air Force bombers flying near Korea in response. So the verbal exchanges are only part of the picture. Still, tests and bomber exercises are more like words than sticks or stones. No one has gotten hurt, and no one has to get hurt.

I lose no sleep worrying about North Korea’s nuclear weapons shenanigans. Kim Jong-un has proved himself in his short tenure homicidally insane, but he has given no evidence of being suicidally insane. The country experts—American and otherwise—all tell us that Kim Jong-un sees himself as responsible for the Kim family dynasty, pointed back to father, grandfather, and great-grandfather, as well as forward to future generations. In that light, provoking the United States Air Force to turn his country into an irradiated ruin—which he knows is North Korea’s certain fate if he strikes out at either the United States or Japan with nuclear weapons—is not on his calendar.

Yes, it’s true that a nuclear-armed North Korea complicates the credibility of U.S. extended deterrence in East Asia, and it complicates the triangular relationship between the United States, South Korea, and Japan. But it also complicates China’s life in ways potentially useful to us in the fullness of time, and the challenges it does create are not very hard to master. The danger here is that this Administration will not master those challenges because it doesn’t understand the larger picture. If U.S. alliance credibility deteriorates on account of this lack of understanding—as it already has to some degree in Europe—it will likely lead Japan, South Korea, and perhaps other regional states to step up their military spending and preparations, including potentially nuclear preparations.

That would on balance be bad, because it could prove to be accident-prone. The point of U.S. post-World War II alliances in Asia as well as in Europe has been to suppress such security competitions because they make the world a more dangerous and poorer place. What Donald Trump, in his two-dimensional, zero-sum brain, cannot understand is that a little “freeriding,” as he and others have called it, is far preferable from a U.S.-interests perspective to an unrestrained regional security competition, and certainly to multiple sets of such competitions. That was true during the Cold War, but it is still true today.

If we do what it takes to maintain the credibility of U.S. extended deterrence in the region, what North Korea does or does not do fails to fall into the category of a vital U.S. interest. As I have sketched it out before (for example, here), we can tell when a vital U.S. interest is put at risk if a threat involves, in descending order of severity: a credible existential threat to American life, limb, and constitutional order; or threatens a treaty ally in such a way; or will likely touch off a significant regional war; or, short of war, jeopardizes the security and flow of resources critical to the wellbeing of the global economic order. North Korea’s obtaining a nuclear-weapons capability would do none of these things.

We have assured the DPRK leadership, publicly and through private channels, that we do not seek regime change. We have assured it repeatedly that we do not seek an accelerated reunification of the Korean peninsula, presumably at the DPRK’s expense. We have tried—yet again, it must be said—to leverage Chinese interests in our favor against North Korea; it didn’t work beyond the spilling of a few harsher words, but it was worth a shot under new circumstances. We want to talk things over; they refuse. We’ve done about all we can reasonably do; so, yes, we “watch and wait.” And no, we do not start a nuclear war for all the wrong reasons. It’s not as if we’ve got nothing else on our plate about now.

Please understand that the foregoing analysis should by no means be taken to imply that nuclear weapons proliferation is always a non-vital threat to U.S. interests. Whether it is or isn’t depends on the context. To see the point more clearly, let’s compare the threat posed to international security by North Korea to the one posed by Iran.

North Korea possesses no interesting economic resources. It is not enmeshed in an active security competition with near equals in power, because in Northeast Asia there are no near-equals: China and Russia are huge; South Korea and Japan are orders of magnitude wealthier and more capable polities; and the number of state actors is fairly small. The DPRK is not trying to aggressively project power directly or via proxies into its region, because it can’t. It does not purport to export an ideology or belief system, for its wack-a-doo juche doctrine, whatever else it is, focuses relentlessly on self-reliance—as appropriate, perhaps, to a “Hermit Kingdom” sort of place. In such a situation, deterrence is calculable because it is essentially dyadic, U.S. extended deterrence can be reasonably unambiguous as having been long extended to key democracies, and hence it is very likely to work.

Now let’s consider Iran. It has oil and gas, lots of both. It is enmeshed in an active security competition with many near-equals in power, and in a region composed of a great many state actors. It is a competition that could trigger a catalytic regional war and implicate the security, availability, and price of the vast energy resources found there. It is aggressively projecting its influence into the wider region, directly and very much via proxies. It is the font of an evangelizing belief system—Shi‘i Islam in its revolutionary politicized form. In such a situation, deterrence would be much shakier: There would in due course be multiple nuclear-weapons possessing actors, and U.S. extended deterrence would be much less credible as newly extended to non-democratic states.

You would think that this very dramatic difference in context would be obvious to anyone who claims to be serious about such subjects, right? You can think whatever you like.

Obviously, the North Korean nuclear weapons program is somewhat more advanced than the Iranian one, and Pyongyang’s bellicosity is stunning. (I have always envied the linguistic freedom enjoyed by North Korean speechwriters.) But in the longer run—and it is not that longer a run, regrettably—the Iranian program is a vastly greater danger to international security and to U.S. interests. It is not presently in U.S. interests, for a variety of reasons, to abandon the Iran deal or cause it to be defunct, whatever its shortcomings. But it is presently in the U.S. interests to think hard and plan carefully for what to do about the threat Iran poses, and will pose acutely in just a few more years.

If you simply must lose sleep over something, try to make sure you’re having the right nightmare.

The post The Right Nightmare appeared first on The American Interest.

Mercenaries Are a Bad Idea for Afghanistan

When Erik Prince, the notorious founder of Blackwater, published an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal in June calling for an American viceroy in Afghanistan to lead a contracted military force (aka, mercenaries), the idea was widely lambasted. The Trump Administration, however, seems to be taking the idea quite seriously. As USA Today reports:

The White House is actively considering a bold plan to turn over a big chunk of the U.S. war in Afghanistan to private contractors in an effort to turn the tide in a stalemated war, according to the former head of a security firm pushing the project.

Under the proposal, 5,500 private contractors, primarily former Special Operations troops, would advise Afghan combat forces. The plan also includes a 90-plane private air force that would provide air support in the nearly 16-year-old war against Taliban insurgents, Erik Prince, founder of the Blackwater security firm, told USA TODAY. [….]

The plan remains under serious consideration within the White House despite misgivings by Trump’s national security adviser, H.R. McMaster, an Army three-star general, and Defense Secretary Jim Mattis. Other White House officials, such as chief strategist Stephen Bannon, appear open to using private contractors.

Before considering the merits, it’s worth considering the man. Erik Prince has a bad reputation for a reason. In Iraq, Blackwater was accused of using force recklessly. One of the most infamous examples, in which 14 Iraqi civilians were killed and another 17 injured, is still being adjudicated. He has been investigated for money laundering and has been more than happy to sell his services to various governments of less than pristine reputation. The largest shareholder in his current venture, Frontier Services Group, is the Chinese state-owned conglomerate Citic Group. While he is a known quantity whose companies have received billions of dollars from the U.S. government, the level of access he has received, including a bizarre backchannel meeting in the Seychelles, raises questions of nepotism: Would Prince be taken as seriously by the Administration if he weren’t Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos’s brother? Maybe, but it makes the connection no less troubling.

And even on the merits, his proposal has met with skepticism from the “adult” wing of Trump’s advisers, Secretary of Defense Mattis and National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster. And rightly so. Prince’s op-ed points to many long-standing objections to the U.S. approach in Afghanistan that will resonate with readers familiar with the conflict. He points to the high turnover rate for U.S. commanders (17 in the past 15 years), a problem which has jokingly been summarized as the United States not having fought in Afghanistan for 16 years, but fighting for one year 16 times. He correctly identifies that the key to U.S. withdrawal will be to stand up the Afghan security forces, and that the long term viability of the Afghan economy will likely depend on their ability to exploit Afghanistan’s vast and largely untapped natural resources.

While his overview of the problems and objectives may be sound, his solution is a bait and switch. In interviews, Prince tries to normalize his proposed privatization of the conflict by noting that 26,000 contractors are already present in Afghanistan. In using the Orwellian construct of “contractor” to describe what his own company does, he elides the fact that the vast majority of those contractors are in unarmed support roles like logistics, maintenance, and construction. Of the small percentage of armed contractors, most are involved in simple security, with only about 800 involved in training activities. Prince’s proposal then would not simply involve re-tasking existing contractors; it would involve a massive increase in the number of armed contractors and a fundamental change in their mission.

It is also worth noting how few armed contractors would even be willing to do this kind of work. The world’s largest private security contractors, companies like Gardaworld and G4S, though they often recruit the same kind of ex-special forces operators to run their in-country operations that Prince does, simply don’t do this kind of work.

Prince’s proposal also raises worrying issues of sovereignty. Arguably the most successful use of mercenaries in a recent conflict, the Nigerian government’s hiring of mostly South African mercenaries in the fight against Boko Haram, was contracted by the government of Nigeria itself. In Prince’s proposal, the Afghan mercenary army would be contracted to the U.S. government. Under what jurisdiction would these mercenaries be tried when the inevitable civilian casualties occur? Would the U.S. guarantee them some degree of immunity from Afghan law as is afforded to U.S. troops? Using U.S. troops may be expensive, but at least part of the expense is the result of responsibility that the U.S. bears in using military force in a foreign country. The ubiquitous insertion of lawyers into the American way of war is problematic; their removal could be disastrous.

What’s more, Prince’s proposed Afghan “viceroy” sounds an awful lot like an official who would be empowered to supersede the Afghan government. The Afghan government is a corrupt mess, but does the U.S. really want to dismiss its power and authority entirely? The optics of doing so would be disastrous in a region with a long memory and abiding hatred of British colonial rule. Prince has said that the title doesn’t matter, but his use of the word and references to the East India Company taint the proposal with colonialism regardless of what you call it.

It’s true that the war in Afghanistan may not be going well. But privatizing the war as a cost-saving exercise is not just of questionable efficacy; it is a renunciation of our responsibilities as a constitutional nation-state. Its not for nothing that King George’s use of Hessian mercenaries was cited among the causes for separation in the Declaration of Independence:

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & Perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

Erik Prince might not be a product of the most barbarous ages, but turning to mercenaries to win the fight in Afghanistan would be a vulgar precedent for a country that ought to be above such things.

The post Mercenaries Are a Bad Idea for Afghanistan appeared first on The American Interest.

After Sanctions, China Tentatively Tightens the Screws on North Korea

On Saturday, three days before President Trump ominously threatened North Korea with “fire and fury like the world has never seen,” his administration pulled off a genuine diplomatic success: the unanimous passage of a U.S.-penned resolution in the Security Council that hit North Korea with a heavy slate of new sanctions. The latest penalties, which ban Pyongyang’s exports of coal, iron, iron ore, lead, lead ore and seafood, could (if fully enforced) cut North Korea’s exports by an estimated $1 billion, or a third of the regime’s total export revenue.

And happily for the Trump administration, there are some promising early signs that the Chinese will enforce the latest sanctions more strictly than past ones. As Reuters  yesterday:

A thriving trade in seafood across the Yalu River that separates China from North Korea has dramatically slowed, traders said, although there is still nearly a month to go for a United Nations deadline to tighten sanctions on Pyongyang as punishment for its missile tests. […]

Countries have 30 days to enforce the tougher measures, which aim to choke off a third of the North’s $3 billion annual export revenue, after the isolated country persisted with two intercontinental ballistic missile tests in July.

But a Reuters reporter who visited Dandong, through which about three-quarters of China’s trade with North Korea flows, was told by traders and fishermen that authorities tightened enforcement on seafood coming from North Korea on Saturday itself. […]

“It has pretty much all slowed,” said one worker at Dandong’s small Yicuomao port, adding that of the 10 or so major operators in the seafood trade only a few still continued to operate, risking fines.

Beijing’s speedy enforcement of the seafood ban hardly proves full compliance, but it does suggest a gesture of goodwill toward the Trump Administration. And China’s cooperative actions have been echoed by its official rhetoric. Speaking in Manila on Monday, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi acknowledged that China would bear the brunt of the economic pain from the resolution, but was ready to fully enforce it nonetheless. “In order to protect the international non-proliferation system and regional peace and stability,” Wang said, “China will as before fully and strictly properly implement the entire contents of the relevant resolution.”

China’s words and deeds here indicate a more cooperative posture than recent events would suggest; Beijing and Washington have lately been at odds over the U.S. imposition of secondary sanctions on Chinese banks and President Trump’s accusations that China has not done enough to restrain its neighbor. Has China been cowed by Trump’s pressure into a more accommodating position? Or is something else at work here?

Reuters offers a clue, indicating that Beijing demanded important assurances from the U.S. before signing on to the sanctions:

China appreciated comments earlier this month by U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson that the United States does not seek to topple the North Korean government and would like dialogue with Pyongyang at some point, Wang added.

The United States does not seek regime change, the collapse of the regime, an accelerated reunification of the peninsula or an excuse to send the U.S. military into North Korea, Tillerson said.

Wang said Tillerson’s “Four Nos” promise was a positive signal.

In short, China’s cooperation on sanctions seems to rest on the conditions that the U.S. will not pursue an aggressive military approach and will soon engage in dialogue with North Korea; for that reason, the UN resolution also calls for the resumption of the suspended Six Party Talks. But President Trump’s latest rhetorical bombshell seems to contradict that understanding. And even before Trump’s threat, his administration had made clear that it won’t restart talks unless North Korea halts its missile tests, while Tillerson has given no clear timeline for when discussions might begin.

In other words, China’s expectations of talks look unlikely to be met soon; under the current circumstances, neither Pyongyang nor Washington seems inclined to come to the negotiating table. Hours after Trump’s blustery threat, North Korea publicly released a strike plan for attacking U.S. military bases on Guam, which hardly suggests it will be intimidated into negotiations. If anything, the regime may feel emboldened both by the sense that Trump is bluffing and by its own rapid technological advances: according to a major Washington Post scoop, North Korea has already produced a miniaturized, missile-ready nuclear warhead.

All of these factors point to a dangerously escalating crisis, one that is compounded by the uncertain China factor. The Chinese may be cooperating at the moment, but if no dialogue is forthcoming, and the U.S. keeps upping the ante to pressure Pyongyang, Beijing could balk and cease the vigorous enforcement of sanctions. With President Trump foretelling “fire and fury” rather than negotiations, China’s cooperation may well prove short-lived.

The post After Sanctions, China Tentatively Tightens the Screws on North Korea appeared first on The American Interest.

The Democrats’ Distorted Coalition

Dave Wasserman of FiveThirtyEight yesterday offered up a striking statistic to illustrate the Democrats’ weakness heading into the 2018 Congressional elections:

Even if Democrats were to win every single 2018 House and Senate race for seats representing places that Hillary Clinton won or that Trump won by less than 3 percentage points — a pretty good midterm by historical standards — they could still fall short of the House majority and lose five Senate seats.

The root of the Democrats’ woes is that their strength is concentrated in dense House districts and big, urbanized states even as the Constitution deliberately puts a brake on the accumulation of political power by geographically concentrated majorities. (In the House, gerrymandering also plays a role, but leave that aside for now.) Wasserman:

In the last few decades, Democrats have expanded their advantages in California and New York — states with huge urban centers that combined to give Clinton a 6 million vote edge, more than twice her national margin. But those two states elect only 4 percent of the Senate. Meanwhile, Republicans have made huge advances in small rural states — think Arkansas, North and South Dakota, Iowa, Louisiana, Montana and West Virginia — that wield disproportionate power in the upper chamber compared to their populations.

In other words, even if the Democrats manage to carve out a lasting popular vote majority at the national level, that majority might not be reflected in America’s political institutions.

Democrats see data like this and cry foul. If they come up short in the 2018 midterms even as Democratic candidates win more votes, expect a series of treatises against the injustices of territorial representation. Indeed, Wasserman’s framing—that Congress has a “GOP bias”—seems to implicitly endorse the view that the way our institutions are set up is fundamentally unfair.

It’s worth unpacking the (powerful) assumptions that lead to this conclusion. One way of looking at politics is that parties exist to champion a set of beliefs and present those beliefs to voters. In this view, the Democrats stand for, among other things, social liberalism, environmentalism, and high immigration levels. The Republicans stand for, among other things, social conservatism, the development of home-grown sources of energy, and nationalism. Those are the parties’ values, and they are more or less unchanging. Because the voters who tend to support the Democrats’ worldview tend to be clustered in non-competitive blue districts in major metropolitan areas, their votes are “underrepresented.” This amounts to a systemic bias against the Democratic Party.

But this is not the only way of understanding at political competition. In a more “realist” view of politics and parties, there is no bias here—just a failure on the part of the Democrats to compete effectively. In his 1942 treatise, Party Government, Elmer Schattschneider famously wrote that “a political party is an organized attempt to get control of the government.” For Schattschneider, politics isn’t so much about values and ideals as it is about devising a strategy that can win according to the rules of the game. Parties don’t “stand” for anything so much as they constantly adapt their agenda so that it can reliably deliver them to power.

By doubling down on an agenda that plays well in metropolitan centers but flounders in key states and districts, the Democrats have in a sense ceased to operate as “an organized attempt to gain control of the government,” acting instead as a vehicle for certain ideals—and in so doing, created their own handicap. There is nothing stopping the party from adopting a more Bill Clinton-esque cultural stance that could win more seats in the Midwest. (This might dampen the enthusiasm of donors and some voters in cities—but as we have seen, running up huge majorities with clusters of voters doesn’t have much political payoff).

So yes, the Congressional map is biased against the Democratic Party as it is currently constituted—but that bias is a choice. If the Democrats constructed a different coalition, the effect of the bias would be significantly attenuated or disappear.

Why do the Democrats insist on moving culturally to the Left even if this imposes an electoral penalty under U.S. Constitutional structures? Part of the answer, I would argue, is a self-defeating sense of certainty on the part of Democratic elites that they are in the right. This leads to a view that certain universalist liberal ideals—immigration, feminism, climate politics—are simply too fundamental to be subordinated to the harsh realities of the competition for political power in America. This is what they stand for, no matter what that means for their electoral prospects. There need not be any compromise, because liberal ideals will prevail.

And, one day, they may well. But until the Democrats can figure out how to actually seize back power, those ideals will keep losing.

The post The Democrats’ Distorted Coalition appeared first on The American Interest.

Telemedicine’s Constituents: Vets and ’Rents

The VA continued its tradition of innovation in telemedicine this past week, as it rolled out its newest tool, an app that will allows appointment-making by smart phone, with an assist from Trump. VA Secretary David Shulkin also announced the launch of a video service that will connect patients from wherever they are—whether at home or at a clinic—to wherever in the United States their doctors happen to be.

Why is the VA racing ahead with these tools, when American healthcare on the whole is merely ambling, if that? The VA benefits from being a Federal program; whereas current regulations forbid a doctor from practicing medicine in any state where she doesn’t have a license, the rules do not apply if you’re at a VA hospital or clinic. At these locations, a vet can video-call a doctor anywhere else in the country, without that doctor risking her license (though she has to be at a VA facility, too). For everyone else, you may be able to contact your doctor virtually, but she must be licensed in the state you’re currently sitting in.

The VA’s recent announcement includes an important change—allowing the mystical crossing of state lines for vets who are at home or in a private medical facility, not just on Federal ground. Such a change was proposed by Senators Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) and Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii) in a bill this past April, which they hope will go on to “strengthen” the VA’s new policies.

Telemedicine has helped alleviate the VA’s overcrowding problem, where the system simply doesn’t have enough personnel to handle demand. It allows doctors to monitor veterans who live in rural areas, far from the nearest clinic. Furthermore, the population of vets is aging, and as they grow increasingly infirm the system is straining to provide for them. Nor are telemedicine services restricted to those no longer on active duty; a recent deal between a defense contractor and George Washington University will make the university’s medical associates available to deployed troops via video appointments.

The VA’s forays into telemedicine not only give real-life test cases for private health entities trying the same tactics, but also lend support to loosening up the rules for everyone else. According to a survey taken earlier this year, the public broadly favors telemedicine (a telemedicine company funded the survey, which was conducted by Harris Poll). However, due mainly to regulations blocking their path, most health systems have not moved rapidly to adopt these tools. Perhaps the VA’s suspension of the state-line rule, once in practice, will increase momentum for the same change elsewhere. Another recent Senate bill, also with bipartisan support, proposes a similar change for Medicare.

Meanwhile, surveys about telemedicine reveal another constituency for telemedicine, if not one so easily organized as veterans. The survey mentioned above reported an even higher rating of favorability toward telemedicine among parents than in the general public—74 percent. Furthermore, a survey done by a children’s hospital system found that a high percentage of patients would use telemedicine for their children, and the few who had done so on the whole rated these visits equal to or better than the in-person variety. It’s no wonder: Parents spend a great deal of time on healthcare for their children, often for minor ailments like colds. While the parents surveyed were less comfortable using telemedicine for more severe medical problems like diabetes, they seemed to think the screen in this case was a savior. Perhaps the smart way for telemedicine advocates to proceed going forward is to sell the benefits to harried, overworked parents in this modern life. If you could point your smartphone down your kid’s throat in the morning instead of losing four hours on a doctor’s appointment, wouldn’t you?

But perhaps more parents will be introduced to telemedicine not by their doctors or the media, but by their children’s schools. School systems around the country are beginning to bring telemedicine in their halls. Given the shortage of school nurses (according to STAT, 60 percent of schools lack a full-time nurse), it’s a solution that shows promise. However, for the moment many such newly installed systems depend on nurses to implement them, though one system in Rochester is pursuing an alternative, employing specially trained aides to operate the stethoscope and other devices while a doctor consults via the screen. And of course, none of this proceeds without parental permission.

Telemedicine is gaining momentum, though with some difficulty and blocked by regulations. But what certain segments of the population would find extremely useful, we all might like to use from time to time.

The post Telemedicine’s Constituents: Vets and ’Rents appeared first on The American Interest.

When Church and State Are Anything but Separate

America’s official creed turned 61 on July 30. On that date in 1956, President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed Public Law 851, resolving that “In God we trust” shall henceforth be the motto of the United States, even though the phrase had already begun to appear on U.S. currency almost a hundred years earlier. The chances of such an innovation happening today are slim to nil.

Few things are more controversial in America today than the subject of God-talk in the public square. The courts have thus far rejected First Amendment petitions to expunge the loaded language from our wallets, but only by positing that the God of the Treasury is a secular impostor. In 1984, Justice William Brennan invoked “ceremonial deism”—a dictum first conceived by Yale Law School dean Eugene Rostow—to suggest that references to the Divine on legal tender or in the Pledge of Allegiance should be “protected from Establishment Clause scrutiny chiefly because they have lost through rote repetition any significant religious content.”

For guardians of the U.S. Constitution, “Thou shalt preserve the separation between church and state” is the 11th commandment. It ensures that no single religious tradition is given preference over all others, providing for all citizens to be treated equally before the law. America’s fidelity to this principle, however inspired, may have stunted its ability to fully fathom world events.

Here’s a news flash: God never left the Middle East. This isn’t to say that he’s deserted the United States, which—despite the growth of the “Nones”—remains in many ways a deeply religious land. But over in the Middle East, religion is intertwined profoundly with national identity. It’s not relegated to the realm of personal choice, a private matter seldom discussed in polite company, but a completely public affair. And turning the American model on its head, both synagogue and mosque are very much connected to the apparatus of state throughout the region.

The July 14 shooting on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, where three Arab Israeli gunmen killed two Druze policemen, has ignited passions across the region. The site, which is under the control of Israel, is administered by the Islamic waqf (religious trust). The introduction of metal detectors to screen visitors for weapons—standard practice at venues around the world—was sufficient pretext for the Palestinian Authority to suspend security coordination with Israel.

The outbreak of nationalist violence at one of humanity’s most sacred shrines—home to both ancient Jewish temples and the present-day Haram al-Sharif mosque—has once again focused global attention on the tangible and explosive nexus between faith and politics. Nothing could better epitomize the volatility of mixing sanctity with earthly dominion.

In the Middle East, loyalty to country—a relative term where borders have proven fluid historically—continues to play second fiddle to deeper spiritual ties. We’re not talking about some perfunctory expression of tribal solidarity either. A 2012 Pew Research Center survey found that a staggering 97 percent of the world’s Muslims subscribe to the shahadah, according to which “there is no God but Allah, and Muhammad is his messenger.” (Pointedly, the poll excluded North America and Western Europe.) And 93 percent of them observe the daytime fast throughout the holy month of Ramadan.

Meanwhile, in Israel, where 93 percent of Jews profess to taking pride in their Jewish identity, a plurality of them describe themselves as Jewish first and Israeli second. Notwithstanding a robust debate about whether “being Jewish” is foremost a religious or national attribute, the facts speak for themselves: at least 90 percent of Israeli Jews claimed that it was “important” or “very important” for them to circumcise their male infants, celebrate a bar mitzvah, and say the kaddish mourning prayer for their parents. Just over three quarters (76 percent) of them maintain the dietary laws of kashrut in their homes. These levels of ritual performance vastly outpace comparable figures for their co-religionists in the United States.

But personal observance is only half the story. In the United States, questions of devotion and praxis are confined largely to domestic affairs. Access to abortions, school prayer, and discrimination against the LGBT community are typical examples of this. To the God-fearing masses of the Middle East, where religion and state have a symbiotic relationship, they are also a core driver of foreign policy, impacting forcefully on the security and economics of the entire planet.

President Donald Trump and his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, have been engaged in trying to broker a ceasefire in Syria. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson just recently returned from a failed round of shuttle diplomacy in the Persian Gulf, where he attempted to conciliate a Saudi-led consortium of four Arab states and their rival in Qatar; his two envoys have just arrived in the region to pick up where he left off. And the tenuous nuclear deal with Iran remains under administration review. At the heart of all these Middle Eastern conflicts lies a civilizational struggle for primacy between opposing versions of Islam.

In Syria, Iraq, Yemen and other quarters of the region, the Islamic Republic of Iran (note the official appellation) employs its assets and proxies to promote its vision: exporting the Islamic Revolution. Employing their own form of “replacement theology,” its leaders aim to expand the influence of their Shi‘a brand at the expense of Mecca-centered Sunni Islam. Geopolitically, through the deployment of Hizballah in Syria and Lebanon, and its de facto alliance with Moscow, Tehran supports this objective by maneuvering to keep Bashar Assad in power and preserve its beachhead on the Mediterranean. Riyadh and its Sunni allies are pushing back, not only against Iran, but also against its satellites; thus, their bitter resistance to Qatari sponsorship of the Muslim Brotherhood and the Al-Jazeera network, which threaten to undermine their regimes and ideology. This power struggle over which doctrinal interpretation will prevail will define the future of the Arab world. The demands it places on the resources and bandwidth of the United States and its Western allies are enormous.

No less consequential is Muslim hostility toward the Jewish state of Israel, whose security repeated U.S. administrations have pledged to uphold. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the Supreme Leader of Iran—a nation once friendly with Israel—has called for the destruction of Israel, allegedly based on “well-established Islamic principles.” Saudi textbooks have branded Jews as “apes” and “swine,” and Qatar’s largest mosque hosted a sermon calling for Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa mosque to be saved from “the claws of the Jews;” they’ve had no kind words for Christians either. Israel has found common cause with a number of Sunni Muslim states in opposing Iranian expansionism, but contagious racial sentiments continue to incite fundamentalist violence against Western targets.

Israel, meanwhile, is awash in religious discord of another sort. Recent government decisions concerning prayer arrangements at the Western Wall and religious conversion standards have sparked divisions between Judaism’s different denominations. The fallout has unleashed talk within the U.S. Jewish community of possible repercussions that could affect Israel’s standing abroad. If steadfast friends of Israel in the United States were ever to withhold their support, it could potentially trigger changes in congressional voting patterns on issues such as foreign aid.

The devil, if you’ll allow me to mix metaphors, is in the heavenly details. Belief is not simply a quaint feature of the human condition but a complex operating system that holds the key to understanding the Middle East. If diplomats and other professionals involved in international affairs are to be effective, they need to get up to speed. Cross-cultural literacy, the bread-and-butter of navigating relationships, implies more than just a bemused, superficial understanding of religious customs; it’s about engaging in reflective dialogue, not just knowing whose hand you’re allowed to shake and when. Never before has it been so important that practitioners develop a nuanced appreciation of religious canons and motivations. In too many cases, these are the powers behind the true game of thrones.

The post When Church and State Are Anything but Separate appeared first on The American Interest.