Peter L. Berger's Blog, page 501

Shale Producers Cinch Belts Tighter

It’s hard to make a profit if you’re in the business of selling oil these days. With the market oversupplied, prices are hovering just below $35 per barrel, and a number of America’s biggest shale companies are slashing spending in 2016 to help staunch the bleeding. The FT reports:

Oklahoma-based Continental Resources, controlled by its founder Harold Hamm, said it would cut capital spending by 66 per cent this year to $920m, following a 46 per cent reduction last year. New York-based Hess said it would cut spending by 40 per cent this year, following a 29 per cent cut in 2015. Noble Energy, based in Houston, said it planned a 50 per cent cut in spending for 2016, as it also reduced its quarterly dividend from 18 cents per share to 10 cents. […]

The costs of drilling and completing wells in the US has fallen sharply — in some cases by 40 per cent in the past year — but not as fast as oil prices.The slowdown in activity at both Continental and Hess means their production is set to decline. Continental predicted average output of 200,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day this year, down 5 to 9 per cent from 2015. Hess said production would be 330,000 to 350,000 b/d for 2016, a drop of 7 to 12 per cent from its rate in the first nine months of last year. Noble did not predict a fall in production, but said it expected oil and gas sales to be “consistent” with last year’s levels at abut 390,000 b/d.

Cheap crude is wreaking havoc on the balance sheets of oil companies all over the world, and here in the United States our overall crude production numbers reflect that, retreating nearly 350,000 barrels per day (bpd) from a high of just under 9.7 million bpd in April of last year. But that’s just a 3.5 percent decrease, hardly the sort of reckoning many expected was coming America’s way as shale producers fell victim to vanishing profit margins.

The industry has surprised everyone with its ability to keep the oil flowing even as prices have dipped well below what was considered the low end of its breakeven range—or the price level at which companies need to sell their product to stay in the black. To no one’s surprise, Continental, Hess, and Noble are all cutting capital expenditures this year, but their output predictions are hardly dire. Even our smallest-scale producers are finding ways to keep operations going. The same experimental spirit that launched the shale boom is keeping it afloat with oil barely above $30. It’s a lesson that bears repeating: don’t bet against American innovation.

China’s Corruption Crackdown Goes Global

Chinese citizens and foreigners living in China have been on high alert lately, as Beijing’s purges have intensified. This tweet from Bill Bishop, the editor of the influential Sinocism newsletter, is representative of the kind of warnings we’ve seen:

Westerners in china who do not have an exit plan need to make 1.Pretty clear we are targets now,hope things change but trend not ur friend

— Bill Bishop (@niubi) January 20, 2016

Earlier this week, the WSJ reported that the Chinese Communist Party’s chief watchdog promised that the anti-corruption campaign wasn’t going to slow down in 2016. But it’s the scope of the government crackdown, extending beyond Chinese citizens living in China, that has everyone so worried. Last week, NGOs sounded alarm bells after Peter Dahling, a Swedish national and the leader of a Chinese legal aid NGO, was detained and then apparently forced to confess to “damaging national security” on Chinese state television. Dahling was subsequently deported to Sweden.As we reported the other day, American businesses are feeling the heat from the crackdowns too. They say that, along with onerous and inscrutable regulations in the country, national security laws and restrictions on civil society are harming their ability to conduct business.Increasingly, the crackdown isn’t even confined by China’s borders. The Washington Post reports:

Amid extraordinary moves to rein in criticism at home, Chinese security personnel are reaching confidently across borders, targeting Chinese and foreign citizens who dare to challenge the Communist Party line, in what one Western diplomat has called the “worst crackdown since Tiananmen Square.”

A string of incidents, including abductions from Thailand and Hong Kong, forced repatriations and the televised “confessions” of two Swedish citizens, has crossed a new red line, according to diplomats in Beijing. Yet many foreign governments seem unwilling or unable to intervene, their public response limited to mild protests.

This comes just after China trumpeted the success of what Beijing calls “Fox Hunt 2015,” in which undercover Chinese agents traveled the world, rounding up hundreds of allegedly corrupt “economic criminals” to face the music in Beijing (and, critically, bring back some of the capital they took with them). The Obama administration delivered a warning to Beijing last summer, but it doesn’t seem to have dissuaded anyone.

The West, for the most part, has remained quiet about these developments. But the more the purges affect Westerners in China and Chinese citizens living abroad, the more difficult it will become for Europe and the United States to sit on the sidelines.

Reports of Anti-Semitism at Oberlin

Militant anti-Israel ideology seems to be a central part of some of the leftwing activism that has engulfed college campuses over the past year, and Jewish students at a growing number of universities are reporting that they are being disparaged for their identities. The latest example comes out of Oberlin, a small liberal arts college that, in the last few months, seems to have taken on an outsized role in the campus identity wars. The Washington Post reports:

Alumni and students from a prominent college in Ohio are concerned that pro-Palestinian student activists have taken their political views too far — creating an anti-Semitic culture on campus with comments that Israel is a “violent apartheid state” and “Ohio is infested with Zionism.”

As a result, they say, pro-Israel advocates on campus are being harassed for their allegiance to Israel.More than 200 alumni and students of Oberlin College have written an open letter to the school’s president and board of trustees, asserting that the Boycott, Divest and Sanction movement on campus has become a platform for anti-Semitism. The letter urged Oberlin officials to open a forum where students and alumni who have felt victimized can share their experiences, and to create a task force to address the issue.

Oberlin’s Palestinian activists told the Post that they “see these accusations as a way to limit the free speech of students, silence political activism and intimidate pro-Palestinian activists.” Campus BDS activists frequently make this argument when confronted with charges that their anti-Israel invective has strongly anti-Jewish undertones, and it’s at least somewhat ironic to see the same sort of campus leftists who pioneered speech codes, trigger warnings, and “safe spaces” suddenly become free speech crusaders when it comes to Israel-bashing.

At the same time, it is important that defenders of the campus Jewish community don’t make the same mistake as the campus left and try to silence their opposition through methods like speech codes. Resurgent anti-Semitism is too important a problem to be ignored and suppressed; it must be confronted, exposed, and repudiated—but with argument, not with formal speech prohibitions.

Zika Virus a Crisis for the Caribbean

UPDATE: As concern spreads over the Zika virus, two major airlines offer refunds for passengers concerned about the health risks associated with the mosquito-borne virus.

The Zika virus, carried by mosquitos, has spread rapidly from Brazil up to the Caribbean. And now the CDC is saying American mothers have reason to be concerned about the virus’ potential to cause birth defects. The New York Times reports:

Newborns should be tested for infection with the Zika virus if their mothers have visited or lived in any country experiencing an outbreak and if the mothers’ own tests are positive or inconclusive, federal health officials said Tuesday.

But determining who’s been affected, as well as testing for the virus, won’t be simple:

There is no commercial test for infection with the Zika virus, which is transmitted by mosquitoes. Testing must be done by the C.D.C. or some regional health departments [. . .]

Only one out of five people infected with the Zika virus develop symptoms. Just because pregnant women “don’t develop symptoms doesn’t mean that they can’t transmit it to their fetus,” Dr. [H. Cody] Meissner cautioned.

This is not just a public health crisis. It is also an economic crisis for a region that can ill-afford one. The Pan American Health Organization is telling pregnant women not to travel to certain countries in which the virus is present. How many Americans will want to travel to the Caribbean if it becomes known as birth defect central? How many tourists will attend Brazil’s Olympics this summer, under the circumstances?

This comes at a terrible time for the region. The Brazilian economy is in shambles. The Venezuelan state is threatening to implode any day. And partly as a result of the long-looming Venezuelan collapse, Cuba has opened itself to the U.S. That poses a threat to the tourist revenue of its smaller Caribbean neighbors, who cannot afford to take a hit to a major economic sector, and it means that Cuba will grab a part of whatever tourist travel is still southbound despite the virus.It will also exacerbate America’s immigration problem: More central and South Americans will want to come, some to avoid the virus, some because a fall-off in tourism will make jobs harder to find.  Americans, already worried about illegal immigration will be more wary of admitting people who may have been exposed to a scary new virus. (And the inability to perform frontline screening won’t help.)The next American president will have to spend a lot more time paying attention to South American issues than most people currently realize. Our neighbors are in trouble, and the spread of Zika won’t help.

How a Green Cause Is Worsening China’s Smog Problem

Electric vehicles may be one of environmentalists’ favorite eco-options, but they aren’t helping China clear its smoggy skies. To the contrary, they’re actually part of the problem, as their expansion in recent years has raised demand for coal-fired power plants and increased the air pollutants those plants produce. Reuters reports:

A series of studies by Tsinghua University, whose alumni includes the incumbent president, showed electric vehicles charged in China produce two to five times as much particulate matter and chemicals that contribute to smog versus petrol-engine cars. Hybrid vehicles fare little better.

“International experience shows that cleaning up the air doesn’t need to rely on electric vehicles,” said Los Angeles-based An Feng, director of the Innovation Center for Energy and Transportation. “Clean up the power plants.” [. . .]Tsinghua’s studies call into question the wisdom of aggressively promoting vehicles which the university said could not be considered environmentally friendly for at least a decade in many areas of China unless grid reform accelerates.

Greens would have you believe that electric vehicles are by nature environmentally friendly, but that glosses over an important point: how the electricity used by those cars is produced. In China, coal is going to be the cheapest option more often than not, and while the recent effort to get more EVs on the road might save emissions at the tailpipe, it is increasing localized air pollutants and greenhouse gas emissions at coal-fired plants. According to this new research, these EVs actually have a net negative effect on Chinese air quality.

This serves as a timely reminder of the dangers of buying into green hype. Many of the policy prescriptions they’d have governments champion have unintended consequences or, as is the case here, don’t actually accomplish the environmental achievements that they claim. It’s not enough to incentivize electric vehicle purchases with tax breaks. To really make this a effective policy, you need to green the power supply itself and make sure the grid can handle the new, cleaner energy sources. None of that is easy, and, especially, it’s not cheap, but embracing this approach halfway has put China in a position where new cars are actually making its deadly smog worse.

China’s Shady Statistics

China’s statistics chief was detained yesterday as part of a graft investigation. The South China Morning Post reports:

The Communist Party’s anti-graft watchdog made the dramatic announcement about National Bureau of Statistics chief Wang Baoan just as state radio aired comments Wang made earlier in the day at a press conference on the economy [. . . ]

The Central Commission for Discipline Inspection said Wang was under investigation for “suspected serious violations of discipline”, a phrase that often refers to corruption. The CCDI’s statement was brief and did not suggest what the case might involve.

There’s no evidence the arrest had anything to do with the quality of the statistics themselves, and this story serves to underscore the breadth of President Xi’s corruption crackdown. But the detention is an ironic development considering Beijing’s notoriety for falsifying official numbers, and it comes amidst debates about the validity of China’s official statistics. The Wall Street Journal reports on a Chinese economist who believes the country’s real rate of GDP growth might be closer to 4.3 percent–5.2 percent than to the officially given rate of 6.9 percent:

Given weaker industrial output in China and more than three years of industrial deflation, a 6% expansion for manufacturing in 2015 is questionable “no matter how the number is counted,” said [Xu Dianqing], who added that he believes it’s more probable that industry and construction grew at most by 2% last year and perhaps not at all.

That translates into economic growth that tops out at 5.2% last year and perhaps something in the 4s, assuming the official agriculture and service sector growth figures are correct, he said.Mr. Xu said it’s unlikely that the service sector– sometimes cited as an explanation for growth rate discrepancies – did better than reported by authorities.

Xu is not alone; economists have long assumed that China’s growth numbers are unreliable. In a 2007 cable, later leaked, Premier Li Keqiang (who was then a governor) confirmed that the GDP numbers are edited by party officials. So, for the most part, everyone just assumes that the numbers are at least somewhat off, even when the economy is doing well. But during the present slowdown, the official statistics have come under heightened scrutiny.

This is, potentially, a very big deal. Because while a few percentage points’ inaccuracy in one year might not seem all that significant, over the course of many years—perhaps even pushing into decades—the real numbers and the official numbers would start seriously to diverge. If China has been systematically overestimating its GDP growth for many years, its economy could be much smaller than people assume.No one knows what China’s actual growth numbers are, or by how much they might be off, or for how long they’ve been misreported. But the inflation of important numbers is a contributor to the global China bubble that we’ve been covering. Around the world, public and private investors bet on rapid and sustained Chinese growth for many years. From Nigeria to South Africa, they invested in mines and dug oil wells, and built roads and bridges. Then the bottom fell out of the commodities market when China stopped buying so much, and now around the world many are scrambling to move their money into safer assets. And although economists and investors often admitted that the official growth numbers were iffy, the global frenzy in the recent past has nonetheless been premised on the general trend lines and magnitudes indicated by Beijing’s statisticians.All of this is very important for U.S. diplomats and military analysts. As the United States works on its China strategy, it’s key that we know more about what we’re dealing with. How big is China? How fast is it growing? These are questions that matter not just to the CEOs of South African mining companies, but also to world leaders looking to ensure stability in a changing world.

A U.S. Blueprint for Syria

A friend who works in the Obama Administration recently lamented that the Russians are always a step ahead of us when it comes to Syria and the Middle East. If we are wondering why this is the case, the answer is simple: Moscow knows exactly what it wants in Syria and we do not. The time has come for the U.S. government, with selected allies, to publicly offer what it thinks a comprehensive solution to the Syrian crisis should look like. As suggested below, even if the proposition put forth here does not end up as the ultimate outcome, it is important for the U.S. government to assert a leadership role to start the process going.

The Russians, along with the Iranians, want Assad to remain in power. He offers Russia a strategic window with the base in Tartus and elsewhere. Syria’s mafia-like regime structure has deep links with its counterparts in Moscow whereby a small elite benefits economically. For the Russians, Syria is where they can make a stand against their dreaded nemesis: Western-inspired soft regime change.By contrast, the U.S. position is all over the place. It first wanted Assad to leave and supported rebels, perhaps not enthusiastically. With the emergence of the Islamic State, it has shifted priorities to fight it. Washington has been contemplating an arrangement with Moscow whereby Assad would remain in power for a “transitional” period so that everyone can focus on ISIS. Russia is unlikely to deliver in the long run. Its air force is helping Assad consolidate power along the heart of Syria, the Damascus-Aleppo axis. This will be completed when Aleppo is taken from the opposition. For the Russians and Assad, the rest of Syria does not really mater.This could produce a stable equilibrium even if the opposition refuses to accept it and continues fighting. But this opposition, squeezed between regime and ISIS forces, is weaker and therefore incapable of changing the facts on the ground. All it can do is inflict casualties on the government side, but then this is does not appear to be much of a burden.The U.S. government has no convincing alternative vocabulary to offer. The Sunni majority does not trust Washington, especially since the failure to live up to its chemical weapons ultimatum. By not employing force after a clear and justified reason for doing so, it has forfeited all credibility. In other ways, too, the Obama Administration has been more of a spectator than an activist. Regime supporters have little reason to look to the United States since Washington has ignored their concerns by focusing solely on Assad and conflating the regime with the bulk of beleaguered Alawi and Christian population. The Syrian Kurds are the only ones cooperating, but they too are cognizant of the unreliable U.S. policy record on the Kurds and are wary of Turkey’s natural influence on its long-standing American ally.On the eve of a possible Syria meeting in Geneva, a forward-looking U.S. proposal could be as straightforward as the following: The U.S. government commits itself to the creation of a confederal democratic Syria that is divided along confessional and ethnic lines. In its most elementary form, the new Syria would be divided along three main areas, Alawi/Christian, Sunni, and Kurdish, with Damascus remaining as the capital although temporarily run by a UN administration. Each of these regions would send representatives to a governing council where they would exercise veto rights over certain types of legislation, such as defense, foreign policy, and natural resources, but certainly not on all. This would encourage cooperation across regions. Other, smaller groups such as the Druze and the Turkmen, provided their numbers add up, could get subsidiary regions.The underlying principle behind this proposal is that after five years of war and its accompanying atrocities the lack of trust that permeates Syrian society will not abate anytime soon. Therefore, citizens will feel safer and more willing to reconstruct their societies if they are governed by their own kind.Such an American announcement may elicit strong reactions from Turkey, which abhors the idea of any Kurdish autonomy and would rather see Sunni Arabs rule Syria, or from Russia and Iran who may rightly see that the areas that would be under the control of Alawis would be much less than what they now control. The main objection would be that this could be the beginning of the redrawing of boundaries in the region. Maybe so. But the people in the region should decide these boundaries, though not through war.Whatever the merit of the idea, it will serve three purposes. First, it will consolidate American thinking along a concrete end-state and bring coherence to the policymaking enterprise. Second, and most importantly, it is a way to signal to Syrians everywhere that there is a definite plan out there to end the fighting. For the Sunnis, the knowledge that they will obtain the majority of Syria might also galvanize them ultimately to take on ISIS. Third, it has the added advantage of overturning the negotiating table where, to date, Washington has been discussing the issue almost entirely on the basis of Russian terms.To be sure, trying to implement a confederal solution would be messy, and, as always, the devil is in the details. All actors would be tempted to game the proposal. Some population movements are likely to occur as a result, but it is better that this happen by design and not though ethnic cleansing, which is what is going on now in selected parts of the country.Still, this is possibly the only constructive option out there: Not everyone will get what they want and drawing the lines separating communities will require tough give and take. But at least one can visualize an end to the fighting and, with the U.S. government taking the initiative, begin to think about how to organize the day after.

African Bishops Against Sexual Liberation

The World Missionary Conference met in Edinburgh in 1910. The delegates were in a triumphalist mood. The official purpose  of the meeting was “Carrying the Gospel to all the Non-Christian World”. The twentieth century saw this project successful to a degree that could not have been foreseen by those who formulated it in the Scottish capital in 1910. If they could have foreseen this success, they might have heeded the advice to be careful what you wish for. Not that anybody gave them such advice.

Just what kind of Gospel was envisaged in this missionary project? First of all, it was uniformly Protestant; no Catholics or Eastern Orthodox attended. I don’t know the theological character of the assemblage, but I am inclined to think that it was broadly Evangelical among those from English-speaking countries, broadly Pietist among the continental Europeans. The Protestants from the different countries were not theologically monolithic, but they were probably Evangelical/Pietist in the main; the others were less ready to go to places with crocodiles and hostile savages. The theology meant taking seriously the Great Commission, supposedly made by Jesus himself just before he left this world, to “make disciples of all nations” (Matthew 28:19). With the theology went a morality, taken just as seriously, which in English has been called “Victorian” and which in the United States reached its triumphal climax (soon to be regretted) with Prohibition. This kind of Protestantism still has a strong foothold in the United States, especially in the so-called Bible Belt—much less so in Europe; but remarkably so where it was established by the Protestant missionary enterprise in sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America (no longer characterized by Catholic hegemony), and in parts of Asia.Africa is today an area of frequently bloody confrontation between Christianity and Islam. But south of the Sahara there is a strong Protestantism very similar theologically and morally to the one energizing the 1910 conference, even though the religious landscape of western Europe and northern America has changed dramatically since then. The former is now the most secularized region in the world. The latter still contains a robust Evangelical subculture, but with its mainline Protestant churches (including the Presbyterians who were hosts in Edinburgh) greatly liberalized both theologically and morally.The slowly unfolding schism in the Anglican Communion can be seen as a late (and rather ironic) fruition of the great missionary success of Protestantism. The incipient schism, mainly pitting African bishops against those in the English-speaking world, has focused on what I Iike to call issues south of the navel (sexuality and gender). But there are underlying theological issues, especially based on different views of the authority of Scripture. The schism is on a slow fuse. But it has recently accelerated.It is important to understand both the demographic and the financial resources of the two parties. The total number of Anglicans in the world is generally estimated as between seventy and eighty million. The website of the Anglican Communion tries to be very careful to distinguish between official numbers (that is, individuals formally on parish rolls, some of whom rarely if ever show up in church) and “realistic” numbers (those who participate in the life of the church with some regularity). Even with the best of intentions, the latter are quite unreliable estimates. There is no central headquarters comparable to the Vatican (though recent revelations about its finances do not suggest confidence in its statistics): Each national church is autonomous under its own “primate” (an unfortunate term, since zoologists use it to refer to the big apes); the Archbishop of Canterbury is no pope, but simply presides over meetings of all the other bishops; the mother church, the Church of England, is still a state establishment headed by the monarch (thus its membership figures mean very little indeed—you stay listed unless you make the effort to opt out); finally, many government censuses do not ask questions about religion, as for example in the U.S.). Nevertheless, the discrepancy between the main Anglican churches in Western countries and those in Africa (now the demographic center of the Anglican Communion) is instructive. The Church of England has 44 dioceses with 26 million official members, 1.2 million “realistic” ones. The Episcopal Church in the U.S. has 111 dioceses with 2.4 million official members, 800,000 “realistic” ones. Nigeria and Uganda are the largest churches in Africa, the website does not differentiate between the two categories of members; be this as it may, in Nigeria there are over 100 dioceses with over 17 million members, in Uganda 32 dioceses with over 9 million members. It’s clear who has the numbers. Needless to say, the financial resources of the Western churches are much superior to the African ones.The Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, has been trying hard to avoid an outright schism. A recent event, which he himself caused for this end, has made his task more difficult. The leaders of African Anglicans, along with those in other non-Western countries, have been particularly shocked as the Episcopal Church in the U.S. sequentially consecrated an openly gay bishop, then ordained gay and lesbian priests, and most recently authorized priests to conduct same-sex weddings. Welby had adopted a relatively moderate position after the Westminster parliament legislated same-sex marriage. He said that this was now the law of the land, and the C.of.E. (unlike, he, implied, Rome) would not fight it. But it continues to consider marriage as between one man and one woman, and would only bless such unions. He pointed out that individuals wanting other arrangements would have no difficulty finding churches happy to accommodate them.Unfortunately for Welby’s peace-making efforts, the General Convention (the annual legislative authority of the Church) made just this accommodation. (The Archbishop of Canterbury is not even a mini-pope in England!) The Africans were now fully enraged. Welby had already cancelled one Lambeth Conference (the body in which all primates meet every ten years) because he feared that the meeting would lead to the schism becoming unavoidable. He now convoked an extraordinary gathering of the same group, even adding the bishop presiding over the rather small group of American dioceses that had seceded from the Episcopal Church for the same reasons that troubles the Africans. Welby was in favor of remaking the international Anglican Communion into a much looser federation, allowing its member churches much wider divergences of doctrine. Only he did not persuade the majority of the assembled bishops, who instead voted to impose sanctions for three years on the Episcopal Church. It was made clear that this time limit was until the next meeting of the General Convention, giving it a (presumably last) chance to recant its vote on same-sex nuptials. The sanctions now imposed sharply limit the American participation in Anglican Communion affairs.The chances of a recantation are slim; the Americans were put on probation—a kind of suspended excommunication. This did not please all the conservatives. Stanley Ntagali, the Archbishop of Uganda, walked out of the conference when it did not endorse his proposal to immediately demand that the Americans (and the Canadians who went almost as far as their coreligionists to the south) be required to repent and “voluntarily withdraw” (whatever that means). Michael Curry, the presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church in the U.S., predicted that his church would not reverse its decision on same-sex marriage, though he held out a signal of hope: “If this is of God, things will change in time”. Susan Russell, associate rector of All Saints Church in Pasadena, was more unbending in her reaction to the majority vote for sanctions: ”As a lifelong Episcopalian and a married lesbian priest, I think [the vote in favor of same-sex marriage] it’s not only an acceptable cost, it’s a badge of honor in some ways”. After a week of meetings the primates ceremonially washed each other’s feet (I don’t think that this was a gesture toward Pope Francis). Now everyone can exhale with some relief that the worst was avoided, and then hold their breath until 2019. The Diocese of Massachusetts, ever in the progressive forefront, stated that “We re-affirm our commitment to the full inclusion of all Christian persons, including LGBTQ Christians, in the life of the church”.There is profound irony in what is happening here. The Protestant missionary enterprise in Africa did convert large numbers of people to Christianity and with it to a morality which was then closely linked to the Christian message. The whole enterprise has in recent years been criticized as having been an exercise in cultural imperialism, directly or indirectly in the service of political and economic imperialism. Cultural influences from one region to another can, if one likes this term, be called “imperialism”. Was it “imperialism” when, starting with the evangelism of the Apostle Paul, early Christianity made ever deeper inroads into the Roman Empire (despite the many Christians who were martyred for refusing to pay obeisance to the imperial cult)?As far as Anglican missions in Africa were concerned, the British colonial authorities had mixed feelings about missionaries, because the modus operandi of the British Empire was to be respectful of indigenous culture and religion as pillars of social order, and because the pukka sahibs suspected (with good reason) that the network of mission schools would make the “natives” uppity and eventually endanger imperial rule. And so it happened: As the Union Jack was ceremonially lowered and the flags of newly independent African nations fluttered in the breeze, the leaders of the resistance movements took over, dressed in business suits and speaking fluent English. (I imagine that colonial officials learned early to prefer untamed “savages” to Africans who quoted Shakespeare.) But the new African elites who celebrated the end of the Victorian Raj had been successfully indoctrinated with Victorian morals—and those turned out to be very functional to poor people trying to get out of poverty (if you will, the Max Weber effect), even if the elite (like elites everywhere) only paid lip service to moral principles while enjoying the hedonism supported by the privileges of power. But Anglican bishops are not part of the elites in Africa: When they uphold good Protestant values, in the best Evangelical tradition, this is no mere lip service—they really mean it! And so the Archbishop of Uganda may by 2019 excommunicate the Archbishop of Canterbury!One way of looking at what is happening here is as an international extension of the American culture war. America is at the heart of the Anglican crisis. It is the Episcopal Church of the U.S. that is specially sanctioned by the angry African bishops; even the Canadians have thus far avoided sanctions (they have only allowed some local variations on same-sex marriage while the Americans have formulated a policy for everyone). The Church of England has offended the Africans by allowing women into the clerical hierarchy, but Archbishop Welby has been much more cautious on gays (he even said that the sanctions were justified to make clear that the consensus of all in the Anglican Communion must be respected; on the other hand he apologized to gays for any hurt they incurred by past policies). The American mass media, especially Hollywood, have weighed in heavily on the progressive side; sitcom after sitcom has portrayed gays in a favorable light, spreading this image of sexually liberated America throughout the world. On the conservative side Evangelicals have been active both in the U.S. and in Africa; Evangelical visitors from the U.S. went to Uganda and preached on the evils of homosexuality in a crusade that supported the draconic anti-gay legislation in that country. Evangelical theology emphasizes the continuing authority of the Old Testament, including the ferocious penalties for gay activities in Leviticus (mandating the death penalty for both men). I think that in an African contest between Hollywood and Nashville (headquarters of the Southern Baptist Convention), Hollywood has the stronger hand.It is instructive to compare the contrasting cultural developments in the Western and in the developing worlds. In the former the 1960s and 1970s saw a powerful sexual revolution that by now is largely victorious. In the same period the developing countries have been undergoing an accelerating modernization process. In the nightclubs of Nairobi and Lagos American films, music and sexual liberalism have been fully adopted. But there is a deep class divide: Most Africans are still poor; they don’t dance in classy nightclubs; they try desperately to get out of extreme poverty and secure a better future for their children. And here Hollywood is an elusive mirage of frustrated aspirations; Nashville is of more practical help in getting out of poverty—the “good old religion” is also the good old Protestant ethic.The wider African cultural change is very relevant. Traditional African culture was certainly not ascetic, if anything hedonistic, but with men getting most of the fun. As long as this culture was polygamous, it put women into an inferior status, but even so it provided a certain order for them and the children. Modernization broke down this order, as it was based on kinship and tribe. This was enhanced by men employed in migrant labor in the cities, their families left behind in the villages for long periods of time–lives of these women certainly not enhanced by sexual liberation. Instead they wished, not for the old polygamous order (many of their men were already in serial polygamy), but precisely for the bourgeois family propagated by the good old Protestant ethic. Women play an important role in African Protestant churches in the cities, and they often succeed in “domesticating” their men. Using a lot of historical sources, Brigitte Berger has shown how what she calls the “conjugal nuclear family” (husband and wife living with their children in a household separate from wider kin) played an important causal role in European modernization (The Family in the Modern Age, 2002).  She also argued that the same arrangement has a modernizing effect in developing societies today, particularly in Africa. This is the real liberation for women and children in the slums of what used to be called the “Third World”, and the ensuing domesticity can be attractive for men as well in the midst of rapid and tumultuous social change, where all the traditional sources of stability–village community, tribe and extended kin–have weakened or disappeared. The British sociologist David Martin has shown in a series of studies how the Protestant congregation, especially in its rapidly growing Pentecostal version, fills this gap.I think that the African bishops understand this very well. This helps explain their visceral reaction against the sexual revolution as it has affected Anglicans, especially in America and the English mother church. Economic and political developments will certainly affect this particular contestation. But theological reflection in both camps could lead to some compromises. I don’t think that rigorous neo-Puritanism has a bright future: If you let children eat as much candy as they want, they will be furious if you take away the candy again. On the other hand, gorging on candy can become boring or lead to stomach troubles. Since Anglicanism originated historically in the sweaty bed of Anne Boleyn, it has mellowed and developed a culture of moderation – its legendary via media. It is conceivable that this genius will re-assert itself.

There Is No Trumpism. There Is Only Donald Trump.

With Donald Trump’s stunning lead only widening as the Iowa caucuses hurtle closer and closer, conservative opinion makers are divided when it comes to the sources of his success. “Establishment”-oriented thinkers and donors—to the extent that “Establishment” as a category actually retains any significance—have tended to shrug off his success as a temporary if increasingly alarming fad with little significance for the future of the GOP or its traditional agenda. Meanwhile, for longtime critics of elite GOP orthodoxy, Donald Trump’s populism is a vindication of everything they’ve ever said is wrong with the party, even if he is the wrong man to communicate their concerns.

A prime example is Michael Brendan Dougherty, who wrote a provocative column yesterday entitled “For Trumpism, Against Donald Trump.” His opening:

I’ve been waiting for a Republican who would say, bluntly, the Iraq War was a disaster. I’ve been waiting for a Republican candidate to say that the trade deals and legal frameworks that drive globalism have been bad deals for America’s workers. I’ve been waiting for a candidate who would question the elite consensus on mass immigration, not tweak it. And I’ve been waiting for a candidate to deliver a shock to the conservative movement and the Republican Party, something that would force them to reconnect to the actual material interests of their voters, to make them realize that the market was made for man, and not man for the market.

Unfortunately, the candidate espousing these views is Donald Trump. And the few good causes which he espouses — the ones which could stand on their own, apart from the crutches of noxious racism and populism he uses to prop them up — are too important to be entrusted to him.

It’s clear that Trump has challenged elements of the Republican orthodoxy in sometimes useful ways, and, moreover, that the Establishment dismissal of Trump is no longer tenable—he would not have made it this far if the party’s national coalition was strong or if the agenda set by party leadership had widespread appeal. But what portion of Trump’s appeal really derives from his populist policy positions that could “stand on their own”? Like many others, Dougherty argues that the overriding lesson of Trump is that GOP voters are tired of the traditional Republican agenda, and they want the party to offer them something closer to Buchananism (protectionism, anti-immigrant policy, strident nationalism) instead. A variation of this theory is the one offered by David Frum in his blockbuster Atlantic cover story, which argues that Trump is leading, in part, by appealing to GOP voters’ contempt for the party’s “Wall Street Journal wing” and their desire for a more straightforwardly centrist economic policy.

One or both of these theories may well turn out to be accurate, but there are reasons to be wary of putting too much weight on actual policy differences as an explanation for the Donald’s success. First, if there were a huge, unsated appetite in the Republican primary electorate for “Trumpism,” as Dougherty suggests, wouldn’t we expect to see more GOP candidates for other offices (state, local, Congressional) running on a similar platform? If GOP voters were really animated as by expanding health coverage as Frum suggests, would the party’s scorched-earth campaign against Obamacare really have been so unrelenting? Trump may be a political genius, but unless and until he can actually rally GOP elected officials behind his supposed agenda—which, as Dougherty correctly observes really does represent a radical break from traditional Republicanism, in more ways than one—it seems more likely that he is a personality-driven anomaly, made possible by the staleness of the mainstream Republican message, yes, but not actually representative of any specific alternative.Moreover, if voters were really drawn to Trump for the issues and policies he represents, wouldn’t they be more concerned about whether or not he actually believes in them? It’s been pointed out again and again that before Trump re-invented himself as an immigration uber-hawk, he supported amnesty and critiqued Mitt Romney for being too tough on immigration. Before he became a “guns, God and gays” conservative, he publicly advocated for gun control and never showed any kind of affinity for organized religion. Before he became a nationalist who was going to crush our enemies with overwhelming force, he praised the Obama administration’s Iran policy. He is an unusual pick for conservative voters genuinely whose preferences were dictated first and foremost by policy positions, rather than free-floating anger and mood affiliation.Of course, it’s not an either-or proposition. There clearly are many voters—especially on the far-right—who are excited by Trump’s singular willingness to speak about immigration and ethnic minorities in a way that is unprecedented in modern American politics. But at the end of the day, Trump’s populism may be more visceral than substantive. Like Pierre Poujade and Huey Long before him, Trump’s appeal is partly about the the fantasy of a strong leader, and the desire to see a grand simplification of the nation’s problems. It is also partly about affect: “By flouting PC norms,” as Walter Russell Mead has written, “Trump offers a different kind of ‘representation’… he is living the life that—at least some of the time—a lot of people wish they had either the courage or the resources to live.”It may be, as Ezra Klein suggested on the Vox podcast yesterday, that analyzing Trump from the perspective of policy positions is a “category error.” It may be, in other words, that there is no such thing as Trumpism as a political agenda. There is only Donald Trump, in all his vulgar glory.

Kurds to Hold Independence Referendum

Iraqi Kurdistan may be making its long-anticipated break for full independence. Bloomberg reports:

 Iraqi Kurdish leaders plan to hold a referendum on the region’s independence, an official said on Wednesday, in a move that could lead to the break-up of OPEC’s second-biggest oil producer.

Massoud Barzani, president of the semi-autonomous Kurdish Regional Government, and other Kurdish leaders have all agreed to hold the referendum, said Kifah Mahmoud, an adviser at the president’s office.

While they all agreed to hold the referendum, the vote “doesn’t mean independence. It is the decision of the people,” Mahmoud said.

Initially, the Bloomberg report contained a shocking detail, later “after official retracted”: the Kurds are aiming to get the referendum done before the U.S. Presidential election in November. Fortunately, the Kurdish news site Rudaw also had the story:

Kurdistan Region President Masoud Barzani told political parties on Tuesday that a referendum on Kurdish independence should take place before the US presidential election in November.

According to information obtained by Rudaw, Barzani said the Kurdistan region “should hold a referendum before the US presidential election kicks off,” which would be next November.

So retracted or not, this is clearly a major line of thinking within the Iraqi Kurdish government. Which raises an interesting point: as we’ve pointed out, more and more American enemies have been operating under the presumption that they have until the end of the Obama era to do as they please. Are our friends starting to think the same thing?

While Americans have long been sympathetic to Kurdish aspirations for a state of their own, formal independence has been a tricky balancing issue, involving questions about our NATO ally Turkey (although these days, Ankara is fairly friendly toward Erbil, the “good” Kurds) and the central government in Iraq. But it seems like the Kurds, just as much as any of America’s geopolitical foes, think that if they act in the next ten months or so, nobody is going to stop them. Then they could present a fait accompli to the next Administration.Its hard not to see the logic. But beware headaches ahead: if this kind of thinking spreads, the world could become even more disordered in the year to come.