Peter L. Berger's Blog, page 485

Why the US Should Stand Up for Hong Kong

On February 12, British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond blamed China for the disappearance of Lee Bo, a British citizen from Hong Kong, declaring it a “serious breach” of the Sino-British Joint Declaration, the treaty governing Hong Kong’s return to communist mainland rule in 1997.

Lee is one of five men connected to the Hong Kong-based Mighty Current Media publishing house and its bookstore in the Causeway Bay neighborhood who, since last fall, have disappeared and subsequently reappeared on the mainland in official custody.On February 4, mainland authorities acknowledged holding Lam Wing Kee, Cheng Chi Ping, and Lui Por, on unspecified “illegal activities.” On January 17, Gui Minhai, who had disappeared from his Thailand beach home in October, appeared on Chinese state television and gave an emotional “confession,” in which he said he voluntarily returned to the mainland to face responsibility for a 2003 drunk driving incident.As for Lee, Hammond said, “The full facts of the case remain unclear, but our current information indicates that Lee was involuntarily removed to the mainland without any due process under Hong Kong SAR law.”London has taken an important step. However, if it is serious about defending Hong Kong, it will have to ask other democracies for support that has not so far been forthcoming. Even before the formal transfer of sovereignty, but while China’s meddling was already underway, the Clinton Administration insisted its hands were tied. Assistant Secretary of State Winston Lord told Congress in 1996, “The United States does not offer legal interpretations of agreements to which it is not a party,” adding, “by the way, the British have not stated their legal position.”Now that Great Britain has said the treaty is breached, the United States must go beyond its February 1 expression of “deep concern” over Lee and the fate of the other men. It should now be more difficult for the Obama Administration to avoid implementing the key provision of the U.S.-Hong Kong Policy Act. That law directs the President to withdraw Hong Kong’s separate treatment in some economic and trade matters if he finds it to be insufficiently autonomous.No one really wants that to happen. That was the point. The law was drafted by Congress as a kind of “poison pill”. As written, the law directs the President to hurt Hong Kong, rather than the central government in Beijing. The President could fulfill his duty instead by seeking amendments to the law to make the penalty fall on those responsible. Congress should also look into other measures, for example by expanding visas for independent journalists and democracy programs. Hong Kong is a battleground for democracy in China and U.S. policy should reflect that.London and Washington must also resist the temptation to view the case of Lee and Gui narrowly. Their fates have implications well beyond the preservation of Hong Kong’s autonomy and freedoms, as important as they are. Beijing’s actions are part and parcel of its projection of power beyond borders, in violation of universal values and international law. While Beijing rebuffs criticism of its violations of human rights and authoritarian rule, it is interfering in other countries’ affairs in pursuit of its domestic repressive objectives. In Thailand, in addition to Gui, Beijing has also forcibly repatriated more than a hundred Uighurs, as well as two democracy activists Jiang Yefei and Dong Guanping. In Nepal, China has interfered with Kathmandu’s longstanding provision of a haven for Tibetan refugees.London needs the United States on its side, but a broader coalition of democracies is necessary. Philip Hammond recently visited Japan to strengthen security cooperation, possibly in an effort to correct London’s tilt toward Beijing. This included Chancellor George Osborne’s stated desire to become China’s “best partner in the West,” a fawning reception of General Secretary Xi Jinping during his state visit in October, and its joining of the Beijing-founded Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank against Washington’s wishes.Let’s not be naive. The UK may not intend to do much following the declaration of the breach. Prime Minister David Cameron declared business as usual after a parliamentary inquiry found that Russian President Vladimir Putin “probably” approved the assassination on British soil of the defector-spy Alexander Litvinenko. In the case of Hong Kong, however, Britain has international obligations as well as historic responsibility to 7.2 million people—their civil liberties, the rule of law, free market capitalism, and democratic development. According to Hammond, there are 3.7 million British passport holders in Hong Kong.With Lee’s case, the British have apparently reached the limits of their tolerance, or perhaps just the limit of their rationalization that Chinese interference in Hong Kong has fallen within the letter if not the spirit of the Joint Declaration.The cases of the missing booksellers have sent a chill through Hong Kong. Even if Great Britain doesn’t follow through on the logical consequences of declaring a breach in the Joint Declaration, the United States should.

Another Sign of Solar’s Shaky State

SunEdison is a major player in the solar energy market—the U.S.-based company is involved in both the manufacture and installation of solar power, in addition to its operation—and it’s having a downright dismal year. Its share prices are down below $2, and it’s now being forced to shed holdings in an attempt to find firmer financial ground. Katie Fehrenbacher writes for Fortune:

SunEdison is also now desperately cutting costs and slashing some of the divisions that once made it highly valued. Earlier in the month SunEdison sold off its Japanese solar arm to a Thai oil company.

Now it’s continuing its slash and burn strategy to stay afloat. But with a handful of lawsuits pending, and a stock price below $2 per share, how much runway does SunEdison have before it reaches the end of the cliff?

SunEdison isn’t the only solar company struggling, either. SolarCity, the solar firm Elon Musk helped create, saw its stocks fall to a three-year low earlier this week, while a leading solar stock index has fallen more than 27 percent so far this year. Some of this can be put down to the fall in global oil prices, because while solar energy and petroleum products don’t directly compete with one another, bargain crude can throw the costs of subsidizing renewables in sharper relief for policymakers.

Some of it can also be put down to uncertainty over net metering, a term that describes the ability of solar producers to sell the excess power they produce back to the grid, at the state level. This arrangement favors solar producers and strains utilities and grid operators; utilities argue that net metering adds to their own costs while threatening the stability of grids that weren’t designed to send power in two directions. And in many states (most recently Nevada), these net metering deals are being reworked. These changes alter the underlying economic calculus for many solar producers, which is why investors are understandably spooked.This is a distorted market. Until solar technology advances far enough to be able to compete with fossil fuels on its own merits, and, maybe more importantly, an energy storage option emerges that allows solar producers consistently to contribute power, this industry will remain one that’s reliant on government largesse. Due both to cheap oil and to the strain that net metering puts on grids, policymakers are finding it harder to justify supporting solar—and the stock market is showing it.

“Yes Means Yes” in the Constitution State?

The proponents of affirmative consent are quietly pushing forward with their offensive in the sex wars. The national media briefly and intensely debated the “yes means yes” standard for sexual assault in 2014, when California Governor Jerry Brown signed a bill mandating that colleges across the state require that students receive ongoing, affirmative consent for every act at every phase of every sexual encounter. Then New York followed suit without attracting very much press, and the influential American Law Institute started to mull endorsing the standard for colleges across the country.

The latest: Connecticut legislators have recently taken up again the fight to make the Constitution State adopt an affirmative consent policy for college campuses. An effort last year to establish this policy was unsuccessful; if it works this year, Connecticut will be the third state in the country to adopt this rule for college students. The Hartford Courant explains:

The concept, known as “affirmative consent,” shifts the burden of proof in disciplinary cases from victim to perpetrator. Instead of requiring a victim to prove that she or he said no to sexual contact, the policy requires a school’s disciplinary board to determine whether there was an unambiguous and voluntary agreement to engage in sexual activity. If not, a student could be expelled or subject to another punishment.

Such policies “create a safer campus environment for students to come forward after an assault,” said Maddie Granato, a policy associate with the Connecticut Women’s Education and Legal Fund.

What is currently taking place is nothing short of a revolution in the meaning of rape, consent, and due process of law. Though it’s currently confined to campuses, don’t expect this movement to stay that way. After all, it doesn’t make sense for state legislatures to mandate one definition of sexual assault for 22 year-old college students and another for 22 year-olds who are out in the workforce. There have already been some discussion of applying standards like “yes means yes” outside of the campus context, and we fully expect efforts to do so to get more aggressive if and when the campus takeover becomes complete.

As we’ve said before, affirmative consent proponents clearly have the best of intentions: They are trying to combat sexual assault. Additionally, one could also see affirmative consent as a way to attempt to level the playing field in a post-sexual revolution campus romantic scene that all too often seems to conform primarily to the interests and desires of unrestrained young men. But “yes means yes” is no solution at all. The rule is simply unworkable: Many ordinary sexual encounters would run afoul of the standard, if interpreted literally. Moreover, a presumption of guilt—requiring the accused to prove his innocence—is incompatible with American principles of due process of law. Hopefully citizens of the Constitution State, of all places, will recognize this, and urge their representatives to say “no” to “yes means yes.”

The Oil Beyond OPEC’s Control

In the same week that Saudi Arabia and Russia proposed freezing production, many of the world’s biggest oil exporting nations have had their credit ratings slashed. These are tough times to be in the business of selling oil, and even if OPEC+Russia are able to succeed in their plan to freeze production and induce a rebound in prices (an unlikely feat, due to Iran), there are plenty of producers that this coalition can’t control. Take, for example, U.S. shale, which Bloomberg reports would see a resurgence if prices recover:

Shale output will come back if oil prices rise to $50 a barrel, Ian Taylor, chief executive officer of Vitol Group BV, the world’s largest oil trader, said in an interview before the Saudi-Russia deal was announced. “It looks clear that a lot of the oil that’s probably going to be shut down in the next year or so because it is simply too low a price, some of it could come back,” he said.

But if and when prices start to rebound, whether that happens as a result of a pick-up in demand (hard to imagine, given China’s slowing growth) or OPEC coordination to reduce supply, U.S. shale producers won’t have to go to great lengths to restart production. After all, they’ve been drilling but not yet fracking wells for months now, producing what’s come to be known as a “fracklog,” which is set to flood the market with new supplies just as soon as market prices make it profitable to restart operations. Bloomberg continues:

The cheapest and quickest way for shale companies to increase output would be to tap the fracklog. Almost 4,000 wells have been drilled but are still waiting to be hydraulically fractured so they can produce, according to Bloomberg Intelligence analysts William Foiles and Andrew Cosgrove. If the fracklog were reduced by just 170 wells a month, it could add 400,000 to 600,000 barrels a day, Cosgrove said.

American shale companies aren’t the only producers outside of OPEC control, either. Oil projects can involve billions of dollars in investment before they start producing, and there are a number of projects that were conceived of before the price drop that are poised to start producing in the next few years. Reuters reports:

Around 3 million barrels per day (bpd) of oil production is set to come on stream in 2016 from projects whose development started as early as 2013, according to Oslo-based consultancy Rystad Energy. These projects will add a further 1.5 million bpd in 2017, with around two-thirds of the production coming from offshore developments.

OPEC controls 40 percent of global oil production, and though the Saudis may have found common ground with Russia, the rest of those non-OPEC producers don’t seem likely to play ball with the cartel. Whether its upstart shale firms, oil majors, or petrostates (as is the case with Iran), producers around the world have their eyes set on one thing—market share—and they’ll boost output at the first chance they get. If OPEC does manage a production freeze, it will be giving a window of opportunity to those suppliers eager to expand.

Getting North Korea Wrong

North Korea is back in the headlines after a series of dangerous provocations. The regime has once again spurned the international community by carrying out a satellite launch widely believed to be a disguised intercontinental ballistic missile test. The launch came on the heels of the country’s fourth nuclear test and heightened cyber activity directed against South Korea. Congress has just passed additional sanctions and efforts are underway at the U.N. to impose meaningful sanctions on the already heavily sanctioned regime.

Despite the general consensus, few believe North Korea can be compelled to dismantle its ballistic and nuclear programs anytime soon. Instead, policymakers in Washington are scrambling for new ideas on how to deal with a regime that is ratcheting up tensions on the Korean Peninsula. Unfortunately, two myths continue to distort Korea-related policy discussions, thereby hampering the effort to curb North Korea’s ambitions.Myth Number 1: North Korea Behaves Irrationally North Korea confounds analysts. Ruled by the mercurial Kim Jong-un, the country seems to be trapped in a Stalinist twilight zone. It struggles to feed its population while spending most of its resources to attain nuclear and missile technology developed more than half a century ago. The regime has defied expectations of collapse, but it hasn’t overcome the deep economic crisis unleashed by the collapse of the Soviet Union either. Over the years North Korea has committed acts of terrorism, kidnapped Japanese and South Korean citizens, and is now attempting nuclear blackmail. Pyongyang is also relentless in hurling at times utterly bizarre imprecations at the United States, Japan, and South Korea. Unsurprisingly, DPRK’s highly provocative and risky behavior has led many to declare the country’s leaders to be unhinged.While North Korean leadership politics are inscrutable and regime collapse is always a possibility, there is nothing that indicates Pyongyang acts irrationally on the international stage. To the contrary, the DPRK, with a GDP lower than Mozambique, has consistently punched above its weight. During the Cold War, Kim Il-sung deftly played off China against the Soviet Union to extract considerable economic and military assistance from both Moscow and Beijing for next-to-nothing in return. North Korean obdurate diplomacy once caused Gorbachev to proclaim in frustration that the tail was wagging the dog.Even during the regime’s darkest days in the 1990s, when widespread famine killed hundreds of thousands of Koreans, North Korea continued to be a tough negotiator with the Clinton Administration and South Korea. The North Koreans wanted political normalization and broad economic assistance or at the very least financial compensation for halting their nuclear and missile programs. Concerned by the threat of proliferation—a fear that Pyongyang shrewdly played up— the United States reached a deal with the regime over its nuclear program and refrained from applying serious pressure at a time when the regime was particularly vulnerable.Towards the end of the Clinton Administration, high level talks intensified and even a possible trip to Pyongyang by President Clinton was discussed. At that time, South Korea launched the “Sunshine Policy” of engagement with the North. From the onset North Korea was in the driver’s seat; original goals of coupling investment opportunities with changes to North Korean economic policy were quietly dropped in favor of nonreciprocal assistance. Pyongyang was able to use the humanitarian and economic assistance as it saw fit.North Korea also secretly continued its nuclear program, which contributed to the deterioration of relations under the Bush Administration. Despite a harsher tone, the Bush Administration still engaged North Korea in a similar manner of trying to offer incentives for North Korean compliance— albeit through the enlarged six-party talks format. While Pyongyang was forced to make intermittent concessions, North Korea successfully resisted efforts at disarmament.At present, Kim Jong-un is likely pursuing several goals at once by continuing to expand the country’s nuclear and ballistic programs. Domestic prestige and shoring up his internal standing are the most obvious, but there is also reason to suspect North Korea is attempting to alter the geopolitical balance in Northeast Asia in the hope of extracting additional economic and military assistance from China. The DPRK leadership understands that the country has remained in a precarious international position since the end of the Cold War. Russia is at best ambivalent about North Korea, while China is concerned that Pyongyang’s bellicosity is paving the way for unwelcome additional U.S. involvement on the Korean Peninsula and in East Asia. Making matters even more difficult for the North, China continues to woo South Korea in an effort to upgrade an already important economic partnership into something more. Feeling squeezed on multiple fronts, North Korea is hoping that nuclear tests and missile launches can ratchet up tensions between China and the United States. If that bilateral relationship were to deteriorate, North Korea’s strategic importance to Beijing would grow considerably.So far the United States has responded to the latest events by proposing to deploy a sophisticated anti-missile defense system called Terminal High Altitude Area Defense, or THAAD. South Korea has been hesitant to publicly discuss additional missile defense deployments in order to avoid tensions with China. For their part, both China and Russia were quick to criticize the U.S. proposal. If the missile defense deployment goes through and ends up straining Sino-U.S. relations, North Korea will likely conclude that its strategy is bearing fruit.Myth Number 2: China Is Willing to Get Tough on North KoreaGiven that North Korea is such a problematic ally, there must conceivably be some point at which China would jettison its support. Such thinking was a lot more popular a few years ago, but there are still some who think China could be convinced to abandon the DPRK. Much of their faith rests on the fact that China has indicated on several occasions that there is considerable high-level frustration in Beijing with Pyongyang. Despite the friction, however, North Korea remains an important partner for China. Beijing is reluctant to punish North Korea because it fears the consequences of regime collapse. First, a sudden collapse of the DPRK could create a refugee crisis for China. Second, Beijing would view a unified Korea with a continued U.S. military presence as a major security threat along its northeastern flank. As a result, China sees maintaining the status quo—no matter the costs—as the least bad option.China has balked at adopting sanctions that would really send a message such as denying North Korea access to airspace or closing port access to its vessels. It also continues to provide strategic resources such as crude oil, even if official customs records show oil deliveries have ceased. North Korea’s oil refineries are believed to be too crude to satisfy military demand, and the country likely imports rocket fuel from China as well. The latter suggests that China could compel North Korea to shutter its missile program if it wanted. Moreover, even though high-level contacts were frozen after the surprise 2013 nuclear test, Beijing recently sent Politburo Standing Committee member Liu Yunshan to attend the seventieth anniversary of the Korean Workers Party parade and celebrations. While Liu was in Pyongyang, an effusive congratulatory statement from President Xi Jinping was broadcast on CCTV.The biggest shortcoming in China’s policy toward North Korea is the implicit assumption that Pyongyang is also interested in the status quo. As I mentioned, there is strong reason to suspect that North Korea is actually striving towards disrupting the current balance of power in the region. This means there is a significant risk that the region will descend into an arms race. The United States, bound by security guarantees to both South Korea and Japan, would be obligated to respond vigorously to any sort of gauntlet thrown by the North—the kind of outcome Beijing is most loath to see. By failing to apply adequate pressure on Pyongyang, China risks being taken hostage by North Korea’s adventurism.U.S. and Chinese core interests diverge in North Korea, but neither side is interested in seeing heightening tensions on the Korean peninsula spiller over into the wider region. To avoid those risks, North Korea must incur costs for its destabilizing behavior. As those who have met with DPRK officials are fond of saying, “North Korea does not respond well to pressure, but without pressure they do not respond at all.”

The History Trap

On the headstone of George W. Bush’s foreign policy, whatever else may be written there, will be in capital letters “IRAQ.” And on the headstone of Barack H. Obama’s foreign policy, whatever else may be written there, will be in capital letters “SYRIA.” Those two words also comprise the essence of the second strategy trap the next President will face. Even if he or she is a sober, pragmatic internationalist of a more or less traditional stamp—something that alas, can no longer be taken for granted—it is a trap the President must walk into.

Even those of us who favored the Iraq War will acknowledge that one of its chief premises—an active and dangerous nuclear program—was wrong. Even those of us who participated in the formulation of strategy for it will admit that it took the United States government too long to understand the complex war upon which we had embarked, and that the conflict was marred by inexcusable organizational infighting and dispersion of efforts and by errors of direction, the price of which was paid in the blood of our soldiers and of Iraqi civilians. Even those of us who, nonetheless, believe that it was worth something to eject Saddam from power and who contend that by 2008 many of the earlier errors had been redeemed will admit that the war caused acute strains with our allies and diverted resources and executive energy from other threats in the Middle East and Asia.Similarly, even those who think that the humanitarian case for intervention in Syria was not strong enough for action must admit that the losses in life—nearing half a million by some accounts—are appalling. Even those who believe that there were no good options must concede that the declaration of meaningless red lines dealt a debilitating blow to American credibility around the world. Even those who regret civilian deaths but think it matters little how innocents are slaughtered will flinch as a brutal government and its allies target its own citizens with poison gas and barrel bombs. No one, no matter what their position on Syria, can deny that the ensuing refugee crisis has the potential to destabilize Europe, and that other conflicts originating in Syria (between Turkey and Russia, for example) have a real possibility of spreading.The next President will inherit the tangible consequences of these episodes: an Iraq fractured by sectarian war, in the hands of a government more than a little beholden to Iranian influence, and the chaos that is Syria. The old Middle Eastern order was already beginning to break down by the beginning of this century, which is why the so-called Arab spring of 2011 swept through countries that had not been touched by the Iraq or Syrian conflicts. But these wars have surely accelerated the disintegration of the Middle East state system. What replaces it no one can tell; multiple seething puddles of mayhem no doubt, but beyond that grim prospect it is hard to see. In the old days an imperial power might reassert order, but no external power has the desire or the intestinal fortitude for such adventures. Yet neither is chaos acceptable: unlike Las Vegas, what happens in the Middle East does not stay in the Middle East, as Angela Merkel and other European politicians are learning at great cost.The intangible consequences of these wars will be no less severe. American credibility, once lost, can only be repurchased at the price of action, and probably violent action. The aversion to intervention brought about by a war that most Americans think went sour, and that they are not sure was necessary to begin with, will restrain future Presidents, no matter how hawkish their temperament or how urgent the needs they confront. Yet when the dust and smoke clear in Syria, we will see a country ruined for generations, half a million or more dead, many millions more homeless and hopeless, an Iranian-Russian condominium in the center of the Levant, and a Sunni Arab world determined to reverse the outcome of Tehran’s and Moscow’s success. That picture will make it clear that, if American action has its costs, inaction does as well, and those costs may be even greater.Compounding the history trap will be the uses to which its component parts are put by politicians and the increasingly politicized academy. “Iraq” and “Syria” have become epithets, and professors and journalists use them as such every bit as much as the demagogues who blight this year’s presidential campaigns. Yet in so doing they merely echo the intemperance of the arguments that Americans who pay attention to foreign policy have been having with each other for years.The temptation for a new President will be to coin a doctrine that can avoid the history trap. This will probably take the form of a commitment to swift, punitive campaigns, waged for the narrowest of purposes, and stripped of all commitment to follow up pacification or consolidation of government. This too would be a mistake. Some strategic problems simply will not lend themselves to the devastating sudden blow. When politicians talk about destroying the Islamic State, for example, they seem not to comprehend that this means rooting out that movement (or coalition of movements) from major cities with our own troops, and not just proxies. Hopes to deal with such problems by drone shots, special operations, or large scale bombing are almost certain to be disappointed. Beliefs that such wars can be won cleanly and then exited swiftly are fatuous.No doctrine will save the next President from the strategy trap. Indeed, it was President Obama’s aversion to his predecessor’s decisions that led to a disastrous overcorrection in the Middle East. A corresponding overcorrection from a more hawkish successor would be a similar error.The theme of this series is that strategic traps can only be managed, not escaped or neutralized. In this case, part of the challenge for a new President will be explaining the history trap to the American people. But he or she will have to do much more than that. The United States has entered a new, more complicated, and more dangerous era of world politics. The White House is not merely a “bully pulpit,” as Theodore Roosevelt put it, but a lectern, and a President, particularly in an era like this, must be an educator as well as a leader.Although the new President should not dwell on Iraq and Syria, he or she will have to explain what lessons to take from those episodes. He or she will similarly have to articulate to the American people the case for their continuing to assume the leading role in international politics, a course openly and forcefully opposed by politicians like Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders. It will not be enough to direct foreign policy, including the use of force, through executive action and the occasional, cursory press conference.The power of the Presidency, Richard Neustadt once famously argued, is merely the power to persuade. The history trap means that, now more than ever, the rhetorical powers of the President will be indispensable for constructing a national security policy that is both acceptable and prudent. He or she will have not only to rebuild American foreign policy for a divided and conflictual world, but for a fractured politics at home. That will require explaining the unpalatable truths that Iraq will not be the last murky war we will fight; and that Syria will not be the only tragedy we do too little to stop.

The Most Trusted State Governments Are Red

Bad news for the blue model at the state level: According to a recent Gallup poll, red states are home to some of the most trusted state governments in the country, and blue states are home to some of the least. The four states whose governments have the highest “confidence” ratings—North Dakota, Wyoming, Nebraska, and Montana—are all red, while the four states whose governments have the lowest ratings—Illinois, Rhode Island, Connecticut, and New Jersey—are all deep blue. (Note: The terms red and blue refer to governing models, not partisan affiliation of the current state leadership; blue New Jersey has a Republican governor, and red Montana has a Democratic governor).

Three of the four blue states most facing a confidence crisis are suffering from acute blue model decay in the form of runaway public pension costs. Illinois, according to the New York Times, is “facing one of the worst fiscal crises of any state in recent decades, largely because it has mismanaged its pension system.” Connecticut, despite being the wealthiest state per capita in the union, “has roughly half of what it needs to pay future retirement benefits for its workers,” according to the Wall Street Journal. And Moody’s recently warned New Jersey that it could face yet another credit downgrade if it loses a forthcoming pension lawsuit. (Rhode Island’s situation is less urgent, but still worrisome). Meanwhile, of the red state governments topping the list, all are comparatively fiscally healthy.Of course, not all red states beat out their blue competitors. Louisiana and Kansas both do relatively poorly (we’ve written before about why Kansas’ “red dawn” fizzled out). But the states with the biggest entrenched blue model bureaucracies are some of the most poorly governed in the country, and that their residents know it. How long before they stand up to Big Blue and try something new?

Piecemeal Policies in Lieu of a Plan

“Sentence first, verdict later,” said the Queen of Hearts in Alice in Wonderland. A variation of this—action first, changes to the rules later—has animated Europe’s response to various crises, ranging from the euro (where bailout rules and much else went by the board), to terrorism and the migrant crisis. Now Austria is taking things a step further: it’s unilaterally imposing migrant quotas, no matter what the EU-wide rules say to the contrary. Reuters :

Austria said on Thursday it would go ahead with introducing daily caps on migrants despite warnings from Brussels that the move broke European Union rules, which have already been badly stretched by the migration crisis engulfing the bloc.

Vienna announced it would let in no more than 3,200 people and cap asylum claims at 80 per day from Friday as it tries to cut immigration, drawing criticism from the European Union’s migration chief.“Politically I say we’ll stick with it … it is unthinkable for Austria to take on the asylum seekers for the whole of Europe,” Austria’s Chancellor Werner Faymann said on arriving at an EU leaders’ summit in Brussels.Around 700,000 migrants entered Austria last year and about 90,000 applied for asylum in the country sitting on the migrant route from Turkey via Greece and the Balkans to Germany.

At a summit dinner tonight, EU leaders are due to discuss what’s being called Plan B, the notion put forward by the Visegrad countries (Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Hungary) to set up fences and send guards to Macedonia border with Greece, thus cutting off the Balkans route to migrants and protecting Central, Western, and Northern Europe. Greece is, of course, screaming bloody murder about this plan, which would leave them holding the bag for the whole refugee crisis; the Visegrad countries, for their part, maintain Greece has not been holding up its end of the deal.

The Austrian plan makes Plan B all the more likely to get implemented, albeit in a piecemeal fashion. The Austrian quotas shut off the path between the Balkans and Germany anyway, setting up a domino effect down the migration path. Slovenia, which is in the Schengen Zone, has been making preparations for sealing off its border with Croatia. Croatia, Serbia, and Macedonia, which have been mostly cooperating in smoothly shuttling refugees north, are likely to scramble to seal themselves off too.And while this is easy to criticize, the sense of panic and emergency among many European nations as spring grows nearer is very real. Until and unless Angela Merkel can bring herself to craft a harder line on immigration that the whole Continent can agree on, this kind of fumbling, blind approach is going to look more and more attractive.

South Korea Dismisses Beijing’s North Korea Proposal

With tensions on the Korean peninsula high after North Korea’s nuclear and missile tests, Beijing has been pushing South Korea to consider pursuing a comprehensive peace agreement. Officials in Seoul made it clear, however, that they’re focused on more immediate and narrow concerns. Yonhap News Agency:

South Korea made clear Thursday that it’s too early to start talks on a peace treaty with North Korea, saying denuclearization is a more pressing task.

It was responding to Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi’s offer of formal consultations on replacing the truce on the peninsula with a peace pact. The two Koreas are technically in a state of war after their 1950-53 conflict ended in the Armistice Agreement [. . .]South Korea’s Foreign Ministry stressed that the North should first show its resolve to give up its nuclear arsenal.

Meanwhile, South Korea has been welcoming of United States support: American F-22s participated in a high-profile flyover through South Korean airspace yesterday, and President Obama plans to follow Japan’s lead and impose new sanctions on North Korea soon.

It’s clear that, as Dan Drezner observed last week, South Korea has written off China as the solution to North Korea and begun to work alone and with Washington:

South Korea has closed the Kaesong Industrial Complex, which will hit Pyongyang in the pocketbook. New sanctions legislation is moving through Congress that should squeeze Pyongyang’s ability to move money in and out. The United States and South Korea have now formally begun talks about deploying the U.S. Terminal High Altitude Area Defense. This will really irk China, but Seoul is now at the point where it doesn’t care so much about that. This is a marked change in tone from conversations others and I had with South Korean officials last summer.

As we’ve been saying, when North Korea provokes, China loses.

Ukraine’s Grim Slide

Ukraine’s government was on the verge of collapse earlier today after two smaller parties quit the governing coalition in disgust following Tuesday’s failed vote to oust the unpopular Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk from office. Both Ukrainian reformers and journalists denounced Tuesday’s flubbed no-confidence vote as a crooked ploy by oligarchs to keep their grip on the levers of power. The departure of 26 MPs of the pro-Western Samopomisch (Self-Reliance) party today, joining the 19 MPs from Yulia Tymoshenko’s Batkivschyna (Fatherland) party that quit yesterday, left the remaining coalition of Yatsenyuk’s People’s Front and President Petro Poroshenko’s bloc without a majority.

Yatsenyuk, however, appears to have pulled a rabbit out of his hat, luring the Radical Party, which had quit last year, back into the coalition and thus staving off early elections.Anticipating these events yesterday, Anders Aslund warned that this arrangement could prove unstable:

Poroshenko and Yatsenyuk might be able to lure the Radical Party back and gain support from three smaller oligarchic parties outside the coalition, but doing so would confirm that they instigated the coup and undermine their reputation among voters. The natural consequence would be that the government falls apart prompting early parliamentary elections, for which Fatherland and Self-Reliance are campaigning.

We shall in due time see just who prevails, but things certainly don’t look good for Ukraine’s “Revolution of Dignity.” The crisis demonstrates just how weak and fractious Ukraine’s government really is, and just how much the political class remains under the control of shadowy oligarchs who would rather keep looting the carcass of Ukraine than help the country build a future.

Of course, Russia’s President Vladimir Putin understands the balance of forces in Ukraine very well; he intimately understands these oligarchs and their greed, and he also knows which politicians are for sale and how the country’s inability to make effective reforms can help him secure his core goals.Putin has an easier task than the West in Ukraine: He just needs for the country to fail. The West has by far the harder task. It has to demonstrate that a path of reform and modernization can create a prosperous and free society in a predominantly Orthodox country that Russians think of as part of their cultural sphere. If the Western plan works, Putin’s regime will face more threats at home; if Ukrainians can build a better future under democracy, many Russians will reason, why are we stuck with a flailing dictator? But if Ukraine fails, Putin’s political position at home will be reinforced: If it doesn’t work there, many Russians will believe, it won’t work for us.Unfortunately, the West ultimately can’t help those who can’t or won’t help themselves. But that doesn’t get European and U.S. leaders off the hook completely. The lift in Ukraine was always going to be very difficult, and with the stakes being as high as they are, a lot of engagement and concerted pressure for reform was called for. Western leaders—divided, distracted, and demoralized by a whole rush of crises—have by and large just thrown money and advice at the problem, hoping that the reformers would naturally prevail. They haven’t, and while the odds against their success were and continue to be very high, it’s impossible to describe what is happening as anything other than a serious setback for the West.At the moment, the West seems to be trying to fool itself. It is pretending that it has always had a coherent policy towards Ukraine. Ukraine’s failure gives Western leaders an opportunity to throw their hands up in despair—“We tried!”—and start to walk away, leaving Ukraine to fester.Sometimes effective foreign policy requires bluffing and deceiving your opponents, but fooling yourself almost never brings joy.