Peter L. Berger's Blog, page 481

The P-Word

Things are happening so fast in the armed diplomacy of the Levant that it is hard for codgers like me to keep up. No sooner do I finish responding to one major development than another laps at my closing period.  And now again: I finish “Ceasefire or Bait-and-Switch” and the very next day John Kerry drops the “p” word on us: “partition.” Ka-boom.

Let’s pick up where we left off: with the mega-sized Russian bait-and-switch proposition that we let the Russians take care of our ISIS problem, but only after we agree to Russia’s saving the Assad regime “in all the territory of Syria the regime wishes to control,” and if we “stay out of the way of the developing Russian relationships with Iran and the Kurds.”I chose my words carefully on Tuesday. Whatever Bashar al-Assad has said lately about wanting to recover all the territory of what used to be Syria, he has very little capacity to act independently. He has become a satrap to the second power, so to speak, having first become beholden to Tehran and now more so, exponentially even, to Moscow. When the Iranians floated a concept of partition in the weeks after the July 14 nuclear deal, they probably had discussed the notion with the Russians with whom they were about to go kinetic together in Syria.All the Iranians really care about is Damascus International Airport, for that’s how they mainly supply and hence control Hizballah and the murderous Shi‘a Arab militias they have created like so many Stephen King monster-clown automatons. The Russian leadership cares about Tartus, and about regime maintenance as a point of both reactionary-revolutionary principle and ultimate self-protection. (I say “reactionary-revolutionary” because today, in a Western normative context, it is revolutionary to be reactionary in the face of established idealpolitik political correctness, which helps to explain why Donald Trump is so fond of Vladimir Putin, but never mind all that for the moment.)No one in Moscow, Tehran, or Damascus really cares particularly about the eastern desert in Syria, which is the ur-patrimony of Syria’s Sunni Arab population. Yes, over the centuries the Sunnis have migrated to, and gotten a majoritarian grasp to one extent or another, on major cities such as Homs, Hama, Aleppo, and Damascus too. But we are witnessing a form of generic ethnic cleansing—seen most vividly now in the weaponization of the Sunni refugee flow out of embattled Aleppo—that in time could make a rump Syria consisting of the Damascus area, the Qusayr pivot zone, and Latakia Province non-Sunni enough to be demographically viable for Assad’s Alawi heirs. It is hard for nice Western people to think in such horrid, draconian terms—and so what?This is where the bait-and-switch comes in. If the Russians, and the Iranians, have been thinking forced partition for some time now, as many believe is the case, then there isn’t going to be any follow through wherein the Russians smash Raqqa, extirpate the Islamic State, and figure out, wishfully with us at their side, how to stabilize and govern the Sunni areas of Syria and adjoining Iraq. That would take a formidable ground force, much time, and much headache in conducting the Russian version of a Phase IV operation. They are not about to attempt that, not after what they experienced in Afghanistan. They are not about to gratuitously stimulate the wrath of the entire Sunni world directed against Russia—at least not any more than they already have. And they are not about to bleed in order to remove a menace that constitutes a real threat to Saudi Arabia and the other Sunni Arab states, the better to cow them in future. That is why Putin’s “anti-terrorist” rhetoric is mere brain baffle. It is meant to appeal to good-natured but slow-witted Westerners, and unfortunately it is working better than it ought to (not against Ash Carter, thank God, but still…).The old saw is that Russians play chess, and Americans play checkers (or horseshoes). Well, here’s testimony to the fact. The Russian leadership has carefully and fairly skillfully taken advantage of what reality has had to offer in and around Syria. They have, by putting skin in the game, established Russia as the local and regional kingmaker. They have, by so doing, made any new, serious U.S. attempt to re-torque the battlefield vastly more dangerous, and hence much less likely to happen. They have, by aiding the progress of the Iran nuclear deal—as one of the P5—pumped oxygen into the pre-existent U.S. motivation to head for the exit ramp in the Middle East. They have therefore found it almost child’s play to aid the process of dissolving any lingering trust the Sunni Arab states and Turkey had in American pledges and promises accumulated over decades, but that have been summarily cut off at the knees by the Obama Administration’s seven-plus years of serial strategic malpractice. They have in particular put Turkish President Erdogan in a policy cage formed on its four sides by Kurds, ISIS, U.S. passivity, and Russian threats. They are rapidly in the process of stealing a critical U.S. “futures option,” namely the key external relationship with a rising Kurdish nationalism. In the process, they have found a way to undermine Western resolve on Ukraine via the orthogonal pressure of the migrant/asylum crisis on the European Union.Not bad, for a bunch of guys whose country is weak and getting weaker. And now, having in Vienna and Geneva herded the Obama Administration into the corral with the sign dangling above reading “Assad Can Stay,” they have driven John Kerry through the rat’s maze to ring the little buzzer that says “partition.”If you say partition with regard to Syria, you do at least two other things at the same time. First, if you say it with regard Syria you say it also with regard to Iraq (and maybe also Libya, Yemen, and so on), because once you let that demon out of the cave, it cannot easily be put back. In the Middle East, if you pull on the partition string, there is really no telling where it ends. And second, if you say “partition” with respect to Syria, you are saying at the least Kurdish autonomy if not independence in the same breath.Please understand: Partition has long been inevitable in both Syria and Iraq. If you have been reading this column in recent years, you will know that I pronounced both the Syrian and Iraqi territorial Westphalian units dead a long time ago. It is probably possible in theory for some imperial master with lots of hammers and nails to put these places back together again in the confabulations of the post-Ottoman epoch. But there is no such imperial master to hand, and putting them back together is not nearly so hard as keeping them together when there is no practical raison d’etre for it or national spirit to serve.It is not true, as is often claimed, that this is all the fault of the British and French for creating “artificial” territorial entities after World War I. The heterogeneity of these places existed also in Ottoman times and before those four centuries as well, and heterogeneity has its beauty as well as its challenges (remember E pluribus unum, perhaps?). And post-World War I Syria, and even Iraq, were not as newly or as wildly heterogeneous as all that, and their economic logic persisted from the Ottoman experience as well—but never mind the history for now: These territorial states will not be reconstituted in reality, theory once again be spited.But it is one thing to understand—not that the U.S. government has showed any signs of it—that partition is inevitable in Syria and Iraq, and another for a Secretary of State to come right out and say it in a way that sounds like a minor descant in a symphony written and conducted in Moscow. This is part of a desultory pattern. The Iranian regime wanted to retain its ability to enrich uranium; we ended up blessing that desire in return for some wishes we cannot by ourselves redeem. The Cuban regime decided to finally bite the bullet of normalization; we blessed it without extracting the slightest useful condition from those thugs. The Russian regime wants to partition Syria in a way that aids its clients, allies, and itself but that hurts U.S. clients and allies, and we again bless it.No matter; he said it, and now what?This is not the place, a mere blog post, to go into what lies ahead in any detail. It will, however, be quite a shit show, and a multidimensional one at that. Let me only briefly note what partition always means in human terms, and then finish with a word about the Kurds.As necessary or inevitable as partition may be in Syria and Iraq, as it was nearly seventy years ago in Palestine and the Raj, it is never much fun. There are population transfers and these are always accompanied by violence and mass tragedy. So anyone who thinks that an agreement on partition among outside powers will end the nightmare Syrians have been suffering now for more than four years needs to think again. Things will get worse for many and probably most ordinary people before they get any better, if they ever get any better. It may stop the current civil war, but partition is no protection against new wars, both civil and crossborder (again, see Palestine and India/Pakistan).Russian diplomacy is long-practiced at using the Kurds as a lever against its neighbors, particularly Turkey. Do you know what it means to recall the Republic of Mahabad? If you are like most normal Americans—and, I’d be willing to wager, if you are John Kerry or Barack Obama—you have not the slightest idea. The Republic of Mahabad was a short-lived puppet Soviet client state created just after World War II, which, along with an equally short-lived Azeri “state,” was designed to subvert both Iran and Turkey. The Soviets of course reneged on their wartime pledge to evacuate northern Iran after the end of the war, and these puppet states were designed in part to be cover and pretext for their remaining on the ground. Harry Truman had to wave a nuke at Josef Stalin to get the Russians out of there. Mahabad was a Kurdish state; a fake state yes, but a Kurdish state all the same.After the 1946 Mahabad escapade, the Soviets switched their methods but not their aims. The PKK was, to a considerable extent, a Soviet creation. When Soviet agents found Abdullah Öcalan et al., they weren’t much to look at. But at the price of espousing Marxism-Leninism, meager PKK cadres soon found themselves awash in weapons, bombs, money, intelligence, and networking aid to ideologically like-minded groups elsewhere in the region and beyond (for example, the East German and Czech secret services).Now pay attention, please, because this is where things get pointedly relevant to current matters. Of course there have always been Kurds in Syria. During the Cold War the Soviets set out to use these Kurds, living in a state with which the USSR was closely allied by the 1960s, to “liaise” with PKK-affiliated Kurds inside of Turkey. That is how the PYD got created, and that it why it has long been “ideologically” associated with the PKK. Soviet aid to the PKK via its Syrian Kurdish agents worked very well. It was designed to create violent havoc up to and including civil war in Turkey (as earlier in Greece), or, failing that to prompt military intervention into Turkish politics, the better to roil relations between the United States and its NATO ally. That worked pretty well, too—not that the Soviets lacked ample raw Turkish material to make use of.Then, in the 1980s, Soviet machinations against Turkey via the Syrian PYD-PKK connection got so be so dangerous and brazen that Turkey threatened to go to war against Syria. That threat, backed quietly by the Reagan Administration, helped to calm things down a bit. Later, in October 1998, Turkey mobilized its army on the Syrian border and threatened invasion if the Syrians continued to give refuge to Öcalan, who was directing a war inside of Turkey. They buckled, expelling Öcalan from his comfortable exile in Damascus, which is how he fairly soon ended up in a Turkish prison.The point of this pocket history lesson, in case it still resists entry to consciousness, is that Russian statecraft is very long practiced in this sort of thing, and cannot be compared to U.S. experience in these matters. Even the Israelis, for reasons of their own, know far more about the Kurdish business than we do, and have been more deeply if quietly involved in it, as well, for decades.What it means in simple schematic terms, among other things, is that the dominant valance of Kurdish politics may now shift away from the moderate and pro-Western bastion of the Barzani-led Kurdish Regional Government in northern Iraq to the far less pro-Western leaders who now govern what is called Rojava, the Kurdish autonomous zone in what used to be northeastern Syria.This is not good—not good for the Kurds themselves, for any of their neighbors, or for the United States. Maybe there was never really more than a slight chance that Kurdish nationalism would develop in a benign, liberal direction, even as it seemed to be doing exactly that. But if the Russians get their hands on this budding nationalist dynamo, as they are now well positioned to do, there will be no chance at all. If I were Mustafa Barzani, I’d be worrying about now. I’m not Mustafa Barzani of course; but I’m worrying anyway.

Beijing’s Reality Denial

China is throwing out the bathroom scale to scotch rumors it is gaining weight. The NYT:

In January data released last week, the Chinese central bank omitted or hid one key number and altered the parameters of another that gave insight into what the central and commercial banks were doing to prop up the country’s currency.

Both sets of numbers, which show commercial banks’ foreign exchange purchase positions, appeared last year in the central bank’s monthly announcements. The central bank, the People’s Bank of China, did not answer a request for comment.

The panicky Chinese attempt to cover up bad news by suppressing the release of normal economic statistics is the worst possible sign for the future of the economy. It tells us that things are so bad that the authorities (who have all that inside information that they don’t want to share with other people) think that they lose less by hiding bad news than by revealing it.

If we put that piece of information alongside the trend of rich people in China moving their money offshore by any means possible, an alarming conclusion is hard to resist: The people who know China best are the most bearish about where things are heading.And when you in turn add that to the growing evidence that Xi Jinping is cementing his personal authority and promoting a cult of personality, as well as to the news that China continues to put pressure on media and journalism, what you get is a strong sense that the authorities in Beijing are terrified by their country’s future prospects.China is bearish on China: That may be the most important political and economic fact in the world today. Every investor, diplomat, CEO and strategist needs to think carefully about what this means.

Australia Takes a Stand in the South China Sea

We’ve been watching Australia get increasingly anxious about Beijing’s behavior, as Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull faces increasing domestic pressure to push back more forcefully in the South China Sea. Now, it looks like Canberra is going to take a more assertive posture. The WSJ:

Australia’s government is strengthening its U.S. alliance and plowing ahead with a 10-year, $140 billion military expansion amid rising regional tensions over China’s muscle-flexing on key trade routes in the South China Sea.

A defense blueprint released by Australia’s conservative Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull on Thursday urged Beijing to be more forthcoming about its security intentions in the South China Sea, where China is building artificial islands on disputed reefs.“We are a maritime power, we are an island nation,” Mr. Turnbull said. “We operate in a region where sea lanes, freedom of access to navigation, where maritime assets in a naval sense are growing, both submarine and surface vessels.”While stopping short of directly confronting China over the artificial islands, the defense blueprint warned the construction would have a “major impact” on the stability of the Pacific and Indian Ocean region in coming decades.

This is especially significant given the murmurs sometimes heard in Australia about the need to find some kind of balance between its security relationship with the U.S. and its trading relationship with China.

The white paper makes clear that Australia is building up its military and will do its part in a common effort to stand up to China. Australians have learned, as have many others, that the best way to work with China is a mix of firmness (and resistance to bullying) with pragmatic flexibility and willingness to engage where interests are aligned. Prime Minister Turnbull seems to have come around to believe that robust participation in the Asian maritime coalition that seeks to defend the freedom of the seas is the best way forward.

UK Doubles Down on Burning American Wood

It’s not exactly a high-tech solution, but that’s not stopping the UK from embracing the practice of burning wood—sourced from the United States—to generate electricity as a step towards a greener future. Ars Technica reports:

Last year, 6 million tonnes of “wood pellets” harvested from forests in Louisiana, Georgia, Florida, Alabama and Virginia were shipped across the Atlantic, to be burnt in renewable “biomass” power plants. This was almost double the 2013 figure—the US “wood pellet” industry is booming.

Demand is largely driven by European countries wanting to meet targets set out in the EU’s Renewable Energy Directive. Half of the pellets exported from the US were used to generate electricity in Britain’s massive Drax power station, which is slowly converting from coal to biomass in order to reduce carbon emissions and claim valuable “Renewable Obligation certificates” for green electricity.

But biomass’s green merits are murky, to say the least. The vast majority of the southeastern U.S. forests that Britain sources its wood pellets from are privately held, and in 2014 a group of 60 scientists wrote to UK Energy Secretary Ed Davey warning that there wasn’t enough regulation in place to ensure that companies felling trees to ship them across the Atlantic were replanting them in a sustainable manner. If that replanting step isn’t dutifully followed, then biomass becomes a decidedly non-renewable and non-carbon neutral energy source. As the UK continues to ramp up its imports of American wood, unscrupulous companies will find even more profit incentive to clear cut swathes of land and fudge the replanting, making out with a quick buck while actually harming the environment, not saving it.

That’s not the only eyebrow-raising aspect of the UK’s plan to burn its way to a greener future, either. Biomass gains its carbon-neutral credibility when forests are replanted under the logic that those new trees will absorb enough carbon to offset the greenhouse gases released by burning biomass pellets. But this equation neglects to account for most of the biomass pellet production chain: cutting down trees, processing them, and shipping them across the Atlantic are all carbon-intensive activities that make any true carbon neutral claim by biomass boosters dubious at best.Defenders of biomass fall back then to the claim that the energy source is cleaner than coal, but that’s not saying a whole lot. Countries across the EU are looking to these wood pellets to help meet renewable energy requirements set by Brussels, and while this may help some move slightly further away from more carbon-intensive energy sources in the short-term, it’s hardly a forward-looking solution.

What Would Free College Actually Look Like?

It’s one thing to hope for a free lunch. It’s another to expect to be served the whole menu.

In the American Conservative, Samuel Goldman makes an interesting observation about what “free college”—a proposal quickly gaining popularity on the American left—might look like if actually put into practice in the United States. Continental European nations, Goldman reminds us, are only able to afford free or near-free higher education systems by sharply limiting the range of services and amenities their universities offer:

A Washington Post piece recently praised Germany for allowing students from around the world to enroll at its universities without charge. What German universities offer in exchange was not discussed. More specifically, the piece didn’t mention the services German universities usually don’t provide. Here is a partial list:

Sports.
Dorms.
Elaborate food and other amenities.
Subsidized clubs and extracurricular activities.
Academic remediation.
Flexibility in majors.

German universities, in other words, are different from what most Americans have in mind when they think of college.

Much the same way that single-payer healthcare in the U.S. would be more affordable if Americans were willing to accept scaled back service, publicly funded college would be more affordable if students and parents changed their expectations for what college ought to be. Many Americans—especially, it should be noted, the upper-middle class students at elite universities who are feeling the Bern—expect their “college experience” to be a kind of all-encompassing four-year journey, complete with academic exploration, personal growth, and political awakening, with an army of highly paid administrators guiding them along the way.

There would be much to admire in a more European university model. American colleges have become too much like resorts, and the massive bureaucracies they employ are making students coddled and politically intolerant. At the same time, we aren’t prepared to say that the entire American higher education system should become completely Europeanized. The more student-centered American system—at least, the American system as it existed before the excesses of government intervention and PC—does offer something distinctive, and it is worth preserving, and reforming.A better way to create a leaner, cheaper option for American students is through market forces, rather than diktat. Breaking the federal monopoly on accreditation, reining in reckless student loan subsidy programs, and reducing the regulatory barriers for alternative education systems could enable new education models to emerge. Students living at home are already earning recognized degrees in computer science through MOOCs at a fraction of the cost of traditional programs, and its possible to imagine such offerings growing and expanding to other fields. These students don’t get access to elaborate dining options and counseling services, but they do get access to what they need most—a degree.Cheaper higher education, without all the economic excess and political rot, is within reach. But single-payer tuition is emphatically not the answer.

U.S. Plans More Freedom of Navigation Operations

Testifying before Congress today, Admiral Harry Harris said that he is planning to do more to address China’s militarization of the South China Sea. Reuters:

The head of the U.S. Navy’s Pacific Command told a congressional committee on Wednesday he will carry out more freedom of navigation operations with more complexity in the South China Sea.

The news follows Beijing’s deployment of missiles to Woody Island in the Paracel island chain, and comes a day after analysis suggesting that a sophisticated radar system is under construction in the Spratly Islands. And yesterday, U.S. officials said that Beijing is continuing to fly fighter jets to the islands as well, according to the WSJ:

News of China’s latest deployment of fighter jets to Woody Island, part of the Paracel Islands chain, comes amid bilateral tensions over Beijing’s recent placement of air-defense missiles on the same island and while Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi was visiting Washington [. . .]

The recent fighter-jet deployment “is not a surprise and has been going on for the last few years,” said Capt. Darryn James, a spokesman for U.S. Pacific Command. “But it is still part of a disturbing trend of China’s militarization of the South China Sea.”

It certainly doesn’t seem like China is very worried about an American backlash against its recent or continuing militarization moves. Those new and improved freedom of navigation operations can’t come soon enough.

Of Syria, Dead Donbas Commanders, and Ukraine Fatigue

Ukraine muddled through 2015, meeting neither the exalted expectations of the country’s boosters nor the malevolent hopes of its detractors.  Its major accomplishment for the year sounds rather minimalist, but is important nonetheless: the country survived.  Since the retreat from Debaltseve in early 2015, Ukrainian forces have managed to stabilize the front in the Donbas, and the military situation looks much better for Kyiv at the start of 2016 than it had a year ago.  The rest of southern and eastern Ukraine has been spared the destruction and depopulation that have befallen Donetsk and Luhansk.  Mariupol, Kharkiv and Kherson may have been battered figuratively by Ukraine’s severe economic downturn, but not physically by Russian artillery.  Even on the economic front, macroeconomic stabilization augurs a return to growth, albeit weak, in 2016, following years of contraction.  The steep, protracted drop in energy prices has been a boon to Ukraine even as it has hobbled the country’s Russian adversary.

Russia’s Syrian campaign has not only given Ukraine a respite from military pressure, but has also confounded predictions of a Russian-Western understanding on Syria at Kyiv’s expense.  A wide range of observers postulated, with varying degrees of enthusiasm or unease, that the desire to form a common front to combat ISIS would induce the West to weaken or drop sanctions against Russia—and perhaps even quietly consign Ukraine to the sphere of privileged interests of its mighty neighbor. Curiously, no one seems to have suggested another equally plausible option: that the need to secure Western cooperation against ISIS would cause Russia—arguably more vulnerable than the West to Islamic terrorism—to abandon its failed Novorossiya venture and leave its Donbas proxies to twist in the wind.In any event, none of this has come to pass. The reason is probably not even so much a question of Western scruples regarding Ukraine (although they would ultimately have played a role) as the fact that there is simply no lasting deal to be had on Syria right now between Russia and the West. Russia’s overriding goal is the preservation of the Assad regime against all challengers, with the rout of ISIS a logical consequence, but decidedly a secondary consideration, of this goal.  The West, on the other hand, is intent on Assad’s removal as well as the defeat of ISIS, and it is difficult to say, on any given day or for any particular Western capital, which of these two goals takes precedence.So, on the three-dimensional chessboard of the Syrian civil war, Russia and the West are likely to continue striking largely uncoordinated blows against ISIS while working completely at cross-purposes with regard to Assad. Recent gains by Syrian government forces and a looming siege of the rebel-held parts of Aleppo, both heavily supported by Russian air power, belie facile predictions about Russia and the West finding common ground on Syria.  A notional Russian-Western alliance against ISIS is undercut by the reality of Russian military actions that largely bypass ISIS and instead appear to deliberately create further spikes in the number of Syrian refugees desperate to reach Europe.  It is difficult to imagine any logical way for Ukraine even to factor into this equation.  (However, any Ukrainian relief over the vanishing likelihood of a Syria-related sellout must be tempered by a recognition that a victorious Russian campaign in Syria would probably embolden the Kremlin to revisit unfinished business closer to home.)Analysts have speculated whether the recent short-notice Russian military drill, held in the country’s southwestern areas at the start of February was aimed at Ukraine or Turkey. In fact, the two are hardly mutually exclusive.  For Moscow, the beauty of snap military readiness exercises is that they provide the chance to rehearse mobilization for numerous contingencies.  It is truly a target-rich environment, encompassing not only Ukraine and Turkey, but also Georgia, an operation in support of Armenia or Transnistria, or even a deployment to Russia’s own restive North Caucasus.  So many enemies, so little time…In a rather different vein, pundits have seized on another data point as a possible portent of a resolution at least to the war in the Donbas: the appointment of Putin insider Boris Gryzlov to replace a Foreign Ministry functionary as the Russian representative to the Contact Group on Ukraine.  Putin, the theory goes, picked Gryzlov as a signal that he means business and wants to get down to serious negotiations. Another straw in the wind has been the series of assassinations of Donbas separatist commanders supposedly viewed by Moscow as too independent or uncompromising.  Once again, the idea seems to be that the Kremlin is laying the groundwork for concessions.Of course, while it cannot be ruled out that Gryzlov was chosen to wind up Russia’s Donbas debacle and salvage the best possible terms for Moscow, neither can it be assumed. It could be a case of reculer pour mieux sauter.  Gryzlov could be going in precisely to play hardball and send the signal that his boss is tired of being Mr. Nice Guy. Likewise, Moscow’s assertion of stricter control over its Donbas proxies is not necessarily the precursor to a sell-out of the rebels.  One need only recall the invective that Russian chauvinists hurled in 2014 at Vladislav Surkov, the Kremlin’s gray eminence on Ukraine policy, for his supposed readiness to abandon Novorossiya and the rebels to the tender mercies of the “fascist junta” in Kyiv.  At bottom, it was a ferocious and highly public battle between those Russians who wanted to swallow Ukraine whole and those who wanted to consume it one bite at a time—a distinction largely without a difference, except that the latter approach was less likely to cause indigestion.All the same, the violent demise of key Donbas commanders does drive home an important lesson.  If any commentators should suggest that Moscow does not and cannot control the rebellion in the Donbas, one need only direct them to the widows of Aleksandr Bednov, Pavel Dremov, Aleksey Mozgovoy or Dmitry Utkin for an authoritative rebuttal.If the military reprieve has been the good-news story of 2015 for Ukraine, perhaps the most ominous development has been the return of Ukraine Fatigue, an enervating and ultimately debilitating condition characterized by mental and emotional symptoms ranging from anger, annoyance, outrage and disgust to cynicism, ironic amusement, despair and feelings of utter helplessness. A devastating outbreak of Ukraine Fatigue in 2007-10 crippled Western interest in, and support for, the very notion of a post-Communist transformation of the country.  The pathological history of the condition suggests that virtually the entire Ukrainian political class are carriers of Ukraine Fatigue, showing no symptoms themselves of the dread malady, but contaminating practically every Westerner with whom they come in contact. Clinically, the condition can be intensely irritating but is never fatal for the sufferer—although it could ultimately prove deadly for Ukraine itself.Ukraine Fatigue matters because Western support for Kyiv over the past few difficult years has stood firmly on two legs. The first has been the realpolitik concern to preserve/restore the post-Cold War security of central and eastern Europe.  The second, however, has been more aspirational and imaginative: the desire to see a Europe “whole and free” comprised of democratic, free-market states that would be worthy candidates—whether they choose to join or not—of European and Euro-Atlantic institutions.  However, if the euphoria of the Maidan was infectious for so many Western observers, so too is the frustration with Ukraine’s persistent corruption and poor governance.  If Ukraine continues to disappoint in this respect, it is questionable how long Western support for Ukraine could remain standing on only one leg.It would be ironic, and deeply discouraging to Ukraine’s well-wishers, to see Kyiv essentially snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.  Having foiled Russia’s attempt to detach all of southern and eastern Ukraine in 2014, and having stabilized the military and economic situations in 2015, Ukraine’s leadership risks throwing everything away in 2016 through its inability or unwillingness to follow through with domestic reform.  February could well prove to be a tipping point, with the resignation of Ukraine’s Lithuanian-expatriate Economy Minister, Aivaras Abromavičius, the warning from IMF chief Christine Lagarde about suspension of disbursements to Ukraine, and the long-sought resignation of the tainted Prosecutor General, Viktor Shokin.  While unpopular PM Yatsenyuk—with passive oligarchic support—has survived a no-confidence vote, domestic and foreign pressure might still force a government reshuffle or even new elections, followed by a serious reform program. If not, it is not hard to imagine Ukraine Fatigue turning into Ukraine Panic—that all the efforts and sacrifices have been for naught—or even Ukraine Revulsion—that it was all a pointless endeavor from the start, with no better outcome possible. One can even envisage domestic Ukrainian exasperation leading to a revolution that is Jacobin rather than Velvet, with a 21st-century equivalent of a guillotine on the Maidan.Russia, for its part, did not instigate a war in Ukraine in order to create a devastated basket case of a client state that must be propped up indefinitely. Frozen conflicts are meant to be thawed out and served up piping hot at an opportune moment. In Ukraine, Moscow has been waiting for the right confluence of three factors: a recovery of hydrocarbon prices, Western distraction or loss of interest, and Ukrainian internal instability. The Kremlin seems unlikely to get a break on hydrocarbon prices. However, if enough people in Ukraine and the West conclude that the Revolution of Dignity has turned out to be just as sordid and futile as the Orange Revolution, Moscow could well be tempted to embark on a second iteration of its Novorossiya gambit.  Indeed, it is hard to believe the Kremlin would send in Gryzlov to cut a deal precisely when events could be taking a decisive turn in Moscow’s favor.The finest, most innovative Western medical technology is powerless to cure Ukraine Fatigue.  A comprehensive treatment plan can only be devised in Kyiv, and there is not a moment to lose.

Another Domino Falls in Europe

Those “temporary” border closures just keep coming. As Politico Europe reports:

The Belgian government deployed extra police to the French border to prevent migrants from the Calais refugee ‘jungle’ crossing into Belgium, Minister of Interior Affairs Jan Jambon said Tuesday.

“We want to avoid that tent camps are created on our side of the border, partially because of the upcoming tourist season, and have started to deploy 250 to 290 police officers on a daily basis,” the minister said at a press conference announcing the measures.The government notified the European Union Tuesday of the temporary suspension of the Schengen agreement on free movement.

The Jungle is an ongoing condemnation of the French economy and prospects for France’s future: Even semi-literate migrants would rather sleep out in the cold and rain for a chance at making it to Britain than settle in France. Likely, that’s also why they’re headed to Belgium—which has other crossings to the UK.

More broadly, this news highlights the one thing the powers-that-be in Brussels and Berlin are right about with regard to the immigration crisis: Absent a pan-European solution, a lot of responses to the crisis will result simply in passing the problem around. Unfortunately, nobody—from the Visegrad countries in the East to France in the West—trusts the solutions that the German government and the EU have been putting forward. And so we continue to have cascading border closures and ever-more-permanent “temporary” measures.

Bill Gates Is a Smarter Brand of Green

Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates has taken a keen interest in energy since he stepped down from the software company he used to lead, and in the annual letter he co-writes with his wife Melinda for their philanthropic foundation, he highlights the need for an energy technology breakthrough:

…[We] need an energy miracle.

When I say “miracle,” I don’t mean something that’s impossible. I’ve seen miracles happen before. The personal computer. The Internet. The polio vaccine. None of them happened by chance. They are the result of research and development and the human capacity to innovate. […]Governments have a big role to play in sparking new advances, as they have for other scientific research. U.S. government funding was behind breakthrough cancer treatments and the moon landing. If you’re reading this online, you have the government to thank for that too. Research paid for by the U.S. government helped create the Internet. […]I’m so optimistic about the world’s ability to make a miracle happen that I’m willing to make a prediction. Within the next 15 years—and especially if young people get involved—I expect the world will discover a clean energy breakthrough that will save our planet and power our world.

Bill Gates gets it: the relentless pessimism over humanity’s future on this planet ignores humanity’s ability to innovate and solve problems. His point that government money has an important role to play in funding these solutions is well taken, too. The modern green movement would rather see taxpayer money funneled into the subsidization of current-generation renewables, but there’s a huge opportunity cost to that approach: that money would be far better spent researching and developing the kind of “energy miracle” Gates describes above that would be able to oust more polluting energy sources on its own merit.

Gates isn’t just sitting back and letting public money do all the work, either. Just two months ago he unveiled the Breakthrough Energy Initiative on the outskirts of the Paris climate conference—a plan that pairs wealthy private citizens with governments to boost R&D investment. He’s also been heavily involved in financing new nuclear technologies, some of the most promising green solutions humanity has at hand.Bill Gates is a smart man, and he has smart ideas about our collective energy future. The modern environmental movement suffers from a lack of intelligent leadership, and it could certainly do a lot worse than taking its cues from Gates.

Brazil Credit Rating Falls Again

After every other major credit rating agency cut Brazil’s rating to junk, Moody’s held out—until now. Bloomberg:

The country’s benchmark stock gauge declined the most in two weeks and the currency weakened after the rating was reduced two steps to Ba2. The outlook is negative, meaning more downgrades may be coming, Moody’s said in a statement Wednesday.

Brazil’s credit metrics have deteriorated “materially” in the past few months and will worsen over the next three years, according to the ratings company, which also cited the negative impact of political gridlock on the government’s efforts to close a budget deficit and undertake structural reforms. The cut — Brazil’s third in as many months from major ratings companies — adds pressure on Rousseff to win lawmakers’ support for measures to raise taxes and reduce spending as she fights off efforts to impeach her.

Between the Zika virus, corruption scandals, rampant inflation and a shrinking economy, Brazil has been in a deepening crisis for months. President Dilma Rousseff, caught in an ugly impeachment fight, received a boost last week when the lower house re-elected her ally to lead it. But it’s difficult to see how a longer Rousseff tenure can be anything but bad for Brazil.

Brazil’s collapse may have started with the global commodities collapse, but the problems clearly go even deeper. Falling commodities prices have simply made it impossible to paper over the rotten frame that had been holding Brazil’s house together.