Peter L. Berger's Blog, page 498

Shale Buoys American Oil Output

America’s latest oil production numbers suggest shale producers are coping with cheap prices much better than expected. The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) recently published November’s crude output numbers, and in that report there was something unexpected: Onshore output in Texas and North Dakota—two of the shale boom’s most productive regions—actually increased. Reuters reports:

U.S. crude oil production fell for a second month in November due to a drop offshore, but higher output from the biggest shale states highlighted the industry’s surprising resilience. Production nationwide in November dropped 52,000 barrels per day to 9.32 million bpd, the lowest figure since June, according to data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration’s petroleum supply monthly report on Friday.

Gulf of Mexico output fell 57,000 bpd, while onshore production inched up 3,000 bpd in Texas and rose 5,000 bpd in North Dakota, broadly in line with previously reported state data…In absolute terms, Friday’s data was much higher than expected, with output of 9.32 million bpd versus the 9.05 million bpd expectation in the EIA’s forecasts.

To really understand the health of the American shale industry, let’s first look at what fracking has accomplished thus far. Below, you can see the transformative effect shale has had on America’s crude oil production. In January 2009, the United States produced just over 5.1 million barrels of crude per day, and in fact for most of the 2000s our output stayed fairly consistent with that level. But hydraulic fracturing and horizontal well drilling set off a veritable bonanza, and our latest figures put U.S. production at 9.32 million barrels of oil per day:

Of course, the big news in the global oil market has been the nosedive prices have taken over the past 18 months or so, as an oversupply has brought benchmark prices down from over $110 per barrel in June of 2014 to under $35 today. Shale production is relatively expensive when compared to more conventional oil operations, so many observers expected U.S. production to quickly come down as companies were forced to shut up shop when faced by vanishing profit margins. But as we can see below, since June of 2014, U.S. output hasn’t fallen off a cliff:

True, the consistent growth in crude production that the shale boom unleashed over the past four years has tapered off, but the latest data evince the remarkable resilience of a still nascent industry. Shale producers got off the ground by innovating new techniques to unlock reserves previously deemed inaccessible, and they’re continuing to stay afloat thanks to a wide range of clever adaptations and refined techniques. If oil stays at bargain price levels, producers around the world—including here in the United States—will be forced to cut spending, but so far the numbers suggest America is more ready than many thought to take on the challenge of a bearish market.

Zika Virus a “Public Health Emergency,” Says WHO

The Zika virus outbreak is a “a public health emergency of international concern,” according to the World Health Organization. And that health emergency will likely hit impacted countries in more than one way: Last week, we suggested that the Zika virus could have a serious effect on the tourism-dependent economies of the Caribbean and Central America, and it looks like that’s exactly what’s happening. As the Boston Globe reports:

A survey from the travel risk-management company On Call International, released Friday, found that 64 percent of Americans said they would cancel trips to areas affected by Zika…

We cannot be totally sure about the impact of the news regarding Zika,” said Laura Rodriguez, the lead analyst for ForwardKeys, a company that predicts travel trends through booking patterns. “The Caribbean as a whole is showing a decline that has become sharper starting Jan. 25, but we still cannot assess Zika to be the only, or main, reason for that.

Unsurprisingly, this is a particular problem for a region popular among newlyweds and young families.

If regional economies are badly affected, we could see major problems in the Caribbean and Central America, including possible political instability and migration to the United States. 

Surprise: Firing Bad Teachers Improves Student Performance, Study Says

Much of our education policy is built around the assumption that teacher turnover is generally undesirable—that training new teachers is too costly, that tough accountability standards deter good people from entering the profession, and that it’s best if teaching is a lifelong career protected and underwritten by unions. And, indeed, there is some evidence that, all things being equal, schools with high rates of teacher turnover do worse than those in which teachers stay for longer periods of time.

But a new NBER working paper from economists at Stanford and the University of Virginia suggests that, when done right, one kind of teacher turnover, at least, can be highly effective: programs for aggressively replacing bad teachers. The authors collected data from a unique Washington, D.C. program called IMPACT, which assesses teachers based on student outcomes and ratings from their peers, rewards those who perform well, and replaces those who persistently perform poorly. In a nutshell, it worked: The teachers pushed out for poor performance were consistently replaced with teachers who performed significantly better. “Under a robust system of performance assessment,” the authors write in their conclusion, “the turnover of teachers can generate meaningful gains in student outcomes, particularly for the most disadvantaged students.”As we’ve written before, the idea that all teachers must be teachers for life needs to be questioned more often. That’s especially true when one is talking about replacing poorly performing teachers. Despite the protestations of unions, the evidence has been mounting that identifying teachers with passion and skill is eminently possible, and that pumping new blood into the system can be good for students. This doesn’t mean policymakers should construct arcane accountability metrics for the sake of looking like they are doing something. But it does mean that we need more experimentation in teacher assessment (and in our education system more broadly)—and that programs that work, like IMPACT, should be adapted and built upon elsewhere.

More Reports of Ethnic Conflict In Burundi

The African Union has decided not to deploy peacekeepers in Burundi—for now. According to the Financial Times, AU members are concerned about setting a precedent and entering a country without permission from the sovereign government. The AU had discussed sending 5000 troops, but backed down after objections from Burundi’s president. The AU charter gives it authority to step in to prevent war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide. So far, it hasn’t deemed conditions serious enough to justify an intervention. A turning point may be coming, however, as the FT reports that “more than 230,000 have fled the country during the past nine months, with some of the violence taking on increasingly ethnic overtones.”

International NGOs have been taking the Voldemort approach here: speak the Dark Lord’s name, and you’ll make him stronger. Yet even though they haven’t been using the words “ethnic conflict” or “genocide,” that doesn’t seem to be making any of Burundi’s problems go away. Instead, they only seem to be getting worse.

“Outsourcing Visa” May Hurt Even More than Reported

Just in time for a primary season that’s highly-charged over the issue of immigration, the H1-B visa is back in the news for facilitating layoffs of American workers. The visa allows companies to bring over tech workers on a visa that gives them no path to citizenship status and ties their presence in the U.S. to their job. This makes the H1-B workers cheaper and more pliable than U.S. workers; furthermore, H1-B workers in the U.S. are often used to pave the way to outright offshoring. We’ve covered H1-B layoffs before, especially before the saga of workers laid off at Disney. But it turns out that due to a legalism present in many contracts, there may be far more affected workers who are not speaking out. ComputerWorld reports:

The Disney severance package offered to them did not include a non-disparagement clause, making it easier for laid-off workers to speak out. This is in contrast to the severance offered to Northeast Utility workers.

The utility, now known as Eversource Energy and based in Connecticut and Massachusetts, laid off approximately 200 IT employees in 2014 after contracting with two India-based offshore outsourcing firms. The employees contacted local media and lawmakers to pressure the utility to abandon its outsourcing plan.

Some of the utility’s IT employees had to train their foreign replacements. Failure to do so meant loss of severance. But an idea emerged to show workers’ disdain for what was happening: Small American flags were placed in cubicles and along the hallway in silent protest — flags that disappeared as the workers were terminated.

Some workers feel that under the circumstances, silence is impossible:

[S]taying silent is difficult, especially after Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) co-sponsored legislation in January 2015 that would hike the 65,000 H-1B base cap hike to as high as 195,000. The measure, known as the I-Squared Act, left some of the former utility IT employees incredulous. They were far from alone.

The 200,000-member engineering association, IEEE-USA, said the I-Squared bill would “help destroy” the IT workforce with a flood of lower paid foreign workers.Eventually, Blumenthal’s staff did learn, confidentially, about the experiences of former Eversource IT workers.In November, Blumenthal co-sponsored new H-1B legislation by longtime program critics, Sens. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), designed to prevent the replacement of U.S. workers by H-1B visa holders.Nonetheless, Blumenthal remains a co-sponsor of the I-Squared Act, which raised questions among those laid off about his intentions.

This issue has salience for the GOP primary. Sen. Marco Rubio is a leading proponent of the I-Squared Act. On the other hand, Grassley and Durbin’s reform effort comes alongside one by Sen. Jeff Sessions (who has been rumored to be on the verge of endorsing Donald Trump) and Sen. Ted Cruz, which would essentially create a whistleblower’s exception to non-disparagement provisions: you could speak out if you were complaining about H1-B layoffs.

There are many reasons to be supportive of legal U.S. immigration. But as we’ve written before, the H1-B is an ugly, crony-ist measure. It brings none of the benefits to the nation of legal immigration, while carrying many of the costs. Lawmakers may be tempted to look to it as a way to work-around a broken immigration system—but evidence suggests that it makes many problems worse: layoffs, lowered wages, and ultimately, offshoring (as well as unknown amount of visa-overstays.) Passing an expansion of it right now would be sure to exacerbate immigration tensions, to little gain—unless you own a business that uses H1-B workers.

U.S. Navy Challenges Beijing a Second Time

Over the weekend, the United States Navy sailed a destroyer within 12 miles of Triton Island in the Paracels, a series of islands that China considers its territory and that it has fortified. Vietnam and Taiwan also have claims to the territory, but they were largely quiet after the U.S. operation. Beijing, predictably, protested loudly. The New York Times reports:

In a statement on the website of the Chinese Foreign Ministry, Hua Chunying, a ministry spokeswoman, said, “The U.S. warship’s arbitrary entrance of China’s territorial water has violated the relevant Chinese law, and the Chinese side has taken relevant measures in accordance with the law including monitoring and warning.

“We urge the U.S. side to respect and abide by the relevant Chinese law, and do more things that may contribute to the mutual trust between China and the U.S., as well as regional peace,” the statement added [. . .]

In a harsher reaction, the Chinese Defense Ministry said a garrison on the island, as well as navy ships and planes, had “immediately” identified the American warship and warned it to leave.

The U.S. conducted a similar operation in the disputed Spratly Islands last October, but U.S. officials sent mixed signals afterwards about whether the Navy had conducted a Freedom of Navigation operation or a less assertive “innocent passage” operation. This time, there appears to be more clarity.

Beijing was scrambling to spin a face-saving narrative over the weekend. Although the Pentagon’s spokesman said there were no Chinese ships in the area throughout the duration of the operation, Chinese officials told domestic media that a PLA garrison had successfully repulsed the U.S. destroyer. The apparently false comments underscore the importance of the South China Sea as a propaganda tool to appease Chinese nationalists, for whom Chinese sovereignty in the Spratlys and the Paracels is a paramount concern.

American observers who feel compelled to combat Beijing’s falsehoods should pause and consider: The dynamic that played out this weekend, thought not ideal, might not be such a bad thing. As long as the United States can continue to patrol the South China Sea and protect freedom of navigation, it might be best to let Beijing tell its citizens what they want to hear.

A Timely Reminder: America’s Biofuel Policy Is a Farce

With the Iowa caucuses today, the one state with stakeholders who actually support our federal biofuel policy will be making its voice heard. But while some (but not all) politicians pander to the Corn Belt state by supporting the ethanol mandates that require vast swathes of corn crops to be used for the production of biofuel, just about everywhere else in the country a consensus is growing that this policy, enacted under the Bush administration in 2007 and carried out by President Obama, is a failure. The New York Times reports:

[B]eyond the borders of a state with outsize importance in the selection of presidents, ethanol may be losing its grip on the body politic. Energy policy experts, advocates in the fight on poverty and even other farmers say a law that has been a boon for Iowa has been a boondoggle to the rest of the country. The ethanol mandate has driven up food costs while failing to deliver its promised environmental benefits. Rising domestic oil production and a global energy glut have all but nullified the pitch that ethanol would help wean the country off foreign oil.

And now a powerful coalition including oil companies, environmentalists, grocery manufacturers, livestock farmers and humanitarian advocates is pushing Congress to weaken or repeal the mandate. As soon as this week, the Senate could vote on a measure to roll back the Renewable Fuel Standard, just days after the Iowa caucuses close and the issue largely goes to rest for another four years.

This will all come as no surprise to regular TAI readers, as we’ve been covering this biofuel boondoggle for years. These biofuel mandates, the vast majority of which are met using ethanol distilled from corn, find that unique sour spot in public policy, ticking off just about every box you wouldn’t want to tick: They’re bad for the environment, they cost consumers at the pump, and they even raise global food prices, hurting the world’s poor. A study published by scientists from the University of Tennessee this past October found that corn ethanol could lead “to a sharp and overall increase of [greenhouse gases].” Some high-profile greens have themselves recently started critiquing the mandate.

The facts are clearly stacked against corn ethanol, but that hasn’t stopped politicians desperate for votes from embracing the dubious “green” fuel in stump speeches. There’s a word for that: pandering.

Europe’s Waning Welcome

Football hooligans rampaged through the Stockholm train station on Friday evening targeting immigrants. The Local.se reports:

A gang of up to a hundred black-clad masked men marched in central Stockholm on Friday evening, singling out and beating up immigrants, and handing out leaflets threatening further violent attacks against unaccompanied refugee youth.  [ . . . ]

According to Aftonbladet newspaper, men were distributing leaflets on Friday evening with the slogan “It’s enough now!” which threatened to give “the North African street children who are roaming around” the “punishment they deserve.”

The mood in Europe is starting to sour on immigration almost by the day. So far, thankfully, this kind of organized violence has been relatively rare. But even responsible political leaders are starting to make it clear that immigrants are no longer so welcome. Sweden, Finland, and Germany have all taken action in the last week to accelerate deportations and deter further immigration; now Austria is joining in. Reuters reports:

. . .The government announced this month that it would cap the number of asylum claims at 127,500, or 1.5 percent of the country’s population, over the next four years.

Now the government has decided to carry out at least 50,000 deportations in the same period. . .

Stories like these are an indication of how badly the European elite has lost its way over the last few years. Making grandiose statements about the right of asylum, lecturing citizens for their prejudice and narrow-mindedness, and pursuing open borders in the face of unprecedented demographic pressure: It was never going to last. And now, Stein’s Law seems to be kicking into action: Trends that can’t continue, won’t.

The problems of migrants and refugees are real, and the desperation of people fleeing war in their homelands is something to which no good human being can be indifferent. Yet it is also true that the only thing that makes legal rights possible is a human community bound by law and solidarity. In modern Europe, that is the nation-state. Europe spent the last few hundred years sorting itself into polities that were relatively ethnically homogenous, in a process that led to stable communities with the protection of laws—but at the cost of unprecedented bloodshed. And those states—like all human communities—are both enabled and limited by the ideas, associations, culture, and history of those who compose them.However much the idea appeals to cosmopolitan utopians, it is not possible for such human communities to accommodate levels of migration beyond some ceiling. That ceiling is variable, and when there are large cultural and religious differences between the native population and newcomers, the ceiling drops.The European elite’s reckless disregard for the very real limits on the Continent’s political and psychological ability to receive migrants, and the shortsightedness of arrogant policymakers who charged on without an understanding of public sentiment, is going to cost Europe—and migrants—dear.The U.S. is also heading for this kind of reckoning: Immigration and refugee policy have become detached from public sentiment and the backlash is gathering force. In both the U.S. and the EU, there is a rising sentiment in public opinion that elites are deliberately and consciously taking steps that will change the demographic and cultural balance of the countries they oversee. This is the kind of soil in which poisonous plants grow well, and one can watch them growing on both sides of the Atlantic.Both the U.S. and the EU need new conversations about migration and immigration, and elites are going to have to dial back their enthusiasm for policies that rest on an increasingly frail basis of public support. Spouting liberal clichés and accusing one’s opponents of racism won’t help. Rather, elites must listen much more carefully to the message that many in the U.S. and the EU are trying to convey.

A Tale of Two Strategies

“An island of stability in the midst of the Iraq inferno”—thus wrote Ilnur Çevik, a journalist at Turkey’s pro-government Daily Sabah, about the Kurdistan Region of Iraq when President Masoud Barzani visited Ankara in December. For the first time, Turkey placed Kurdistan’s flag alongside Turkey’s own, a gesture underscoring the countries’ strategic bond.

While the Turks hosted Barzani, the Saudis finalized the historic Syrian opposition meeting in Riyadh. The mid-December gathering of political and militant organizations worked to craft common purpose in the Syrian civil war. Yet despite administering Syria’s northeast and fighting grittily against ISIS’ westward sweep, the Syrian Kurds were not invited. They were left out in part because of significant Turkish pressure on the Saudis to exclude them.Turkey’s dualist Kurdish policies align with the course Ankara has taken over the past half decade: The country cultivates economic and strategic ties with the Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI) even as Turkey views the Syrian Kurdish administration, led by the Democratic Union Party (PYD), as an extension of the Kurdistan Worker’s Party (PKK)—a designated terrorist organization as far as the Turkish and U.S. governments, and the EU Commission, are concerned.Why is this? Turkey sees the respective politics of Iraqi and Syrian Kurds as dramatically different. And for now, a good case can indeed be made that they are very different. But this is a shortsighted approach. After all, Turkey wasn’t always friendly with the KRI. Turkey’s early hostility to the KRI diminished Ankara’s regional influence, whereas its subsequent engagement helped mold the KRI’s political dynamics. Turkish leaders might learn from that history and seek to cultivate a relationship with the Syrian Kurdish administration.Ankara’s current view of the KRI as an essential partner is quite recent. From the establishment, after the Gulf War, of Kurdish administration in northern Iraq in late 1991 through the Iraq War’s early years, Turkish leaders held a securitized conception of Iraqi Kurds. They believed the Iraqi Kurds actively facilitated PKK attacks from bases in Iraqi Kurdistan’s Qandil Mountains. In the run-up to the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, Turkish negotiators sought operational autonomy in northern Iraq as the price for allowing U.S. forces to stage the invasion inside Turkey. The U.S. government initially conceded, but the provisional deal collapsed after Ankara reneged under popular pressure, temporarily rupturing U.S.-Turkey relations and complicating U.S. operational plans.As Turkey held fast to its securitized view, the Iraq War rapidly changed U.S. conceptions of the Kurds. U.S. Special Operations Forces worked closely with Iraqi Kurdish pesh merga from the war’s early days, and in the new Iraq’s fractious politics, senior Bush Administration officials looked hopefully to the KRI as a stabilizing actor in the bumpy transition to constitutional democracy.Despite the collapse of U.S.-Turkish cooperation with regard to Iraq, Turkey’s Parliament approved plans to send two brigades into northern Iraq to protect Turkish interests. The Bush Administration saw through the pretext, understanding that Turkish forces would mount anti-Kurdish operations, and Washington restrained Turkey’s meddling. The “hood incident” of July 4, 2003—in which U.S. forces arrested and detained Turkish military personnel in the course of a raid in Sulaimani—sobered the Turks to sharply declining U.S. tolerance for Turkish adventurism in northern Iraq. As late as 2008, though, Turkey still launched Operation Guneş into the Kurdistan Region after a PKK attack staged in Qandil killed soldiers in southeast Turkey.Fundamentally however, the Turkish government possessed little influence in the new Iraq. Thus, during the mid-2000s, an alternative view of the Kurds arose in Ankara, with some advocating economic and political engagement with the KRI. Nascent economic ties had already been developing even while outward state-to-proto-state politics remained hostile.Turkish politics subsequently adapted—and they did so swiftly. Ministerial discussions began in 2009, and Ankara opened its Erbil consulate in 2010. In 2011, the Turkish-British energy firm Genel Energy sealed exploration deals in Kurdistan, establishing a long-running and deep partnership with the KRI. By 2012, more than 1,000 Turkish firms had registered to conduct business in Kurdistan. Turkish construction firms led the development and visual transformation of Erbil and Sulaimani. In 2013, Kurdistan’s KAR Group completed construction of a Kurdish spur to the Iraq-Turkey pipeline.Late that year, then-Prime Minister Tayyip Erdoğan hosted President Barzani in Diyarbakır. This was not only an advance in Turkey’s relations with the KRI; it also represented a milestone at the time in a deepening Turkey-PKK peace process. In 2014, for the first time, the KRI pumped oil to the Turkish port of Ceyhan—outside of Baghdad’s purview.Turkey’s adaptive policy was also smart regional politics. As the KRI’s relations with then-Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki deteriorated, Ankara’s heavy influence over Kurdistan’s economic viability increased Turkish leverage. The Turkish government initially played arbiter in oil-fueled economic disputes between Baghdad and Erbil, holding oil revenues in escrow pending internal Iraqi resolution of budgetary disputes. When Turkey-Iraq relations worsened, the Turks strengthened Erbil by enabling direct payment for Kurdistan’s oil sales through Ceyhan.This reinforced the KRI’s dependence on Turkey and, some argued, forestalled any independence bid. The KRI lodged no strenuous objections to Turkey’s cross-border strikes at PKK bases prior to the 2013 ceasefire and, not coincidentally, the KRI has met the current violence in Turkey’s southeast with a muted response. Amid Russia’s disinformation barrage following Turkey’s downing of a Russian jet, the KRI leapt to Turkey’s defense, claiming—truthfully—that the trucks queued up at Turkey’s border carried Kurdish oil, not that of the Islamic State.Despite the success of Turkey’s KRI policy, Ankara approaches the Syrian Kurdish administration with the same ineffectual, securitized view it originally deployed against the KRI in the early 2000s. Turkish policy has worked to cleave the PYD from the wider Syrian opposition. Turkish-backed Syrian Islamists have shown the least inclination of all opposition groups to reconcile with the PYD. The Turkey-based Syrian National Coalition criticizes the PYD’s administration repeatedly.Turkey also capitalized on the Incirlik deal with the U.S. administration by claiming it was joining a broad anti-terror campaign—a move that deliberately muddled operational distinctions between the Assad regime, ISIS, and the PYD. Turkish officials apply continuous pressure on the U.S. government and others to diminish strategic cooperation with the PYD. The Riyadh meeting represented a key success of this strategy. Most recently—and troublingly—late December brought preliminary indications of discrete Turkish force movements across the Syrian border into Kurdish-administered territory.By fixating on the differences between the KRI and the PYD administration, the Turkish government ignores the lessons of their own past diplomatic successes, repeats mistakes of the early 2000s, and misses an opportunity to steer Syrian Kurdish economic and political development. Undoubtedly, the PYD shares ideological kinship with the PKK, and the People’s Protection Units force (the YPG) that fights ISIS so effectively evinces little operational distinction from the PKK command. Yet, the PYD consistently reiterates its Syrian focus. It seeks to develop Kurdish areas economically and build a Syrian political architecture that, at a minimum, safeguards a decentralized administration in a future Syrian state. It refuses to consider publicly Rojava’s—western Kurdistan—independence.Turkey is every bit as essential to the PYD’s ability to realize its vision for Syria as it has been to the KRI. Turkey presents the only logical route to international markets for Syrian Kurdish goods. The country’s mature construction sector and experience developing infrastructure worldwide will prove invaluable to rebuilding a postwar Syria, and to building the Syrian Kurdish region.Altering the PYD’s ideological affinities is likely unachievable. But cultivating relations anyway would cement a partnership with, and dependence on, Turkey. The more advanced the Syrian Kurdish development project, the higher the costs of activities that strike at Turkey’s perceived interests or security. The Turks need not agree with the PYD’s ideology to engage with its administration in mutually beneficial ways.Resistance to working with the PYD also undermines the Turkish government’s overarching objectives in Syria. A fragmented opposition cannot sufficiently threaten the Assad regime to extract the concessions necessary to forge a palatable negotiated peace. Though far from the only impediment to greater cooperation, Turkish intransigence significantly hampers its emergence. Turkey has long advocated the view—correctly—that ISIS cannot be defeated without addressing the Syrian civil war’s source: the barbaric behavior of the Assad regime. Does the Turkish government think a resolution in Syria can be achieved that excludes the PYD entirely?Turkey would benefit from rethinking its tactics in Syria. While it has retarded the PYD politically, Ankara has not swayed the U.S.’ assessment of the YPG’s military effectiveness. The U.S. government has resisted intense Turkish pressure to cease its operational support for the YPG. With the capture of the Tishrin Dam, the PYD-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) scored a major tactical victory against ISIS west of the Euphrates—this despite Ankara’s months-long insistence that Kurdish movements across the river would be a “red line.”Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu responded that the YPG itself did not cross the Euphrates, the Syrian Kurds’ central role in sustaining the SDF coalition and the likelihood that YPG forces participated in the Tishrin operation directly. Turkey’s ability to impose its will on the ground in Syria has long been in doubt, even before the government committed fresh troops and resources to a domestic battle against the PKK in urban areas of Turkey’s southeast.Rapprochement with the PYD could also offer an exit ramp from that southeastern turmoil. The PKK has fueled the hostilities: formally ending the ceasefire, killing Turkish police in their beds, declaring autonomy in select cities, and encouraging proxies to root themselves in urban areas. Yet the conflict’s urbanization is dangerous in the extreme for Turkey. The government’s campaign re-securitizes population centers, creates civilian casualties, and immiserates the population. It instills fear and alienation in a new generation of Kurdish citizens, delegitimizes electoral politics in their eyes, and undoes much hard-won progress from the 2013-15 peace process. It may have even substantially shattered inter-communal good faith.The existence of Rojava presents an opportunity to de-escalate the conflict and halt spiraling mistrust. By including the PYD among groups focused on transition in Syria and facilitating Syrian Kurdish development, a new Turkish policy would send a strong message to the PYD and the PKK while providing a fresh starting point to negotiate another ceasefire and retrenchment from urbanized conflict.None of this seems possible today. The Turkish government’s rhetoric evokes the worst periods of domestic tension over the Kurdish issue, and the PKK has demonstrated little inclination to conciliate and de-escalate. Structurally, however, the conflict remains the same. The government will not successfully impose a military solution to the conflict, and it will never accept unilateral efforts by southeastern Kurds to introduce local autonomy. A negotiated settlement remains the only way forward.With Turkey’s Nationalist Movement Party reiterating its opposition to a presidential system, even the presumed domestic benefits of renewed hostilities with the Kurds are questionable. The AK Party secured four years of single-party government in the December’s snap elections, after having lost its majority in the initial June ballot. A return to domestic stability will prove increasingly important. Though ongoing violence in Turkey’s southeast precludes an immediate return to final settlement negotiations of the Kurdish issue, a Syria-focused interim agreement would yield immediate, tangible benefits: an end to escalating urban warfare in Turkey itself and the beginning of productive engagement with Rojava.The results could ultimately prove historic: a Turkey-PYD relationship built on mutual accommodation, and an opening for a coordinated Syrian opposition to mount a stronger challenge to the ghastly Assad-ISIS menace.

The Naked Truth

Nude statues in Rome’s Capitoline museum were covered by white boxes for the state visit of Iranian President Hassan Rouhani earlier this week, leading to an outcry from the Italian public. The covered statues:

#Rohani a Roma, coperte alcune statue di nudi ai #musei #capitolini https://t.co/puZB814hPa pic.twitter.com/NQBcIEjY6d

— Agenzia ANSA (@Agenzia_Ansa) January 26, 2016

There are conflicting reports as to whether the cover-up was requested by the Iranians or enacted as a preemptive cringe by the Italians. Nevertheless, commentators and the public on both sides of the Atlantic have been swift to condemn the move.However, anyone who thinks that this was just a matter of hiding genitals from Iran’s repressive, easily-offended theocrats is missing something really important. The Capitoline—like the Vatican—is one of the foremost repositories of classical artworks, most of which are nudes (and at least some of which were clearly covered here). And the rediscovery and adaptation of these works in Rome during the Renaissance says much about what makes the West different from Iran under the mullahs. By hiding them, the Italians were hiding a statement about who we are.The classical nude was not just as fine art but as a profound statement about the nature of mankind and our place in the world. The nude embodied the Greek ideal of anthropos metron, that “man is the measure of all things.” Further, it highlighted both the beauty and vulnerability of humankind before a cruel world. Take a look at the Dying Gaul, a Roman copy of a 3rd Century Greek sculpture and one of the masterworks in the Capitoline’s collection:

Photo Credit: Wikimedia/antmoose

As the Gallic warrior stares down at the wound that’s killing him, his sword dropped beside him, his face bears a look of pain, regret, even sadness, masked to the best of his ability by stoicism. His nudity emphasizes both his prowess and his vulnerability, and the inescapable fact that the one could not save him from the other.

Renaissance thinkers blended Classical ideas with Christian thinking: man could be seen not as just a fallen creature in a vale of tears but as the foremost of God’s creations, whose good in this life was important to the Almighty.Art helps make these otherwise high-minded notions into something publicly accessible. When the Florentines put Michelangelo’s monumental, nude David in the center of their city in 1504, it said something important in a way that even an illiterate manual laborer could understand. Later, the Florentine sculptor would design the buildings of the modern Capitoline to house a collection that Pope Sixtus IV had donated to the people of Rome;in 1734, Pope Clementine XII would declare the Capitoline open to the general populace, making it the world’s first public art museum.Humanism, moderation, an appreciation for our common humanity, and the humane treatment of even those we disagree with on matters of the highest import—so much of what separates us from Iran’s brutal regime is on display to anyone walking through the Capitoline museum. Conversely, the covering up of such art has historically been a bad sign: When the Vatican ordered Daniele da Volterra to paint loincloths over the figures in Michelangelo’s Last Judgement in 1565, it signaled an era of epistemic closure and the hardening of intellectual battle-lines that would make the Wars of the Reformation even more brutal.Maybe covering up the statues was the price of doing business. (Although we’d note that the French managed to get contracts signed while refusing to hold a state dinner at which there would not be any wine.) But if so, we hope at least everyone was aware of the magnitude of what they were doing. More than just genitalia was being covered up.