Peter L. Berger's Blog, page 531

Shinzo Abe Goes to India

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe arrives in India today for a three-day trip, during which two defense pacts are expected to be finalized: one on defense technology transfer and another on the sharing of military information. Indian officials said the broad parameters of the agreements were already in place, and that it was only a matter of ironing out details. The first tangible outcome of any agreement would be the sale of two Japanese seaplanes to India, which would be the first major arms deal for Japan since Abe lifted a 50-year old ban on weapons exports. India would then proceed to build ten more of the planes in Indian factories, furthering Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s plans for bolstering India’s domestic defense industry.

Abe, on his third trip to Delhi since he became Prime Minister, has high hopes for the burgeoning alliance: “In order to maintain an open, free and peaceful sea, it becomes important more and more for there to be collaboration between Japan and India, as well as the international community including the U.S.,” he wrote in an op-ed ahead of his trip.The United States is very happy to see India and Japan deepen their ties. To confront China, Tokyo and New Delhi must become strong allies and there are lots of opportunities for the two countries to strengthen their economic relationship beyond defense. Japan just won the contract for India’s first high-speed rail line. Japan has an aging population with manufacturing and high-tech expertise. India has a young, inexperienced population hungry for middle class jobs. And given that both countries have a strong interest in seeing the other become wealthier and more powerful, there are geopolitical incentives to expand trade and investment.Of course, there are also reasons Japan hasn’t moved all its manufacturing to India. Some of them have to do with Japan’s own inefficient version of the blue model, and some have to do with India’s substantial barriers to foreign investment and the country’s corruption problems. Abe can visit Modi once a week, but if the two leaders don’t reform their own economies, taking a partnership to the next level will be difficult. And Modi and Abe have both so far struggled to push real domestic reform through their legislatures. So, although the India-Japan relationship has immense potential, realizing that potential fully doesn’t appear in the cards at the moment.

Support for Assault Weapons Ban Reaches 20-Year Low

The New York Times report on its latest public opinion poll buried one of its most interesting findings: Support for one gun control measure has plummeted in the wake of the San Bernardino attacks. As Patrick Egan pointed out, just 44 percent of Americans now support an assault weapons ban, the lowest number in the 20 years that the NYT poll has asked the question. In 2011, 63 percent of Americans supported such a ban.

This isn’t the only trend that should give pause to politicians and commentators (like those who write the New York Times editorial page) who hoped that San Bernardino would finally prompt Americans to give up their gun obsession. Gun sales have reportedly soared in the wake of the tragedy, in part because of the outpouring of liberal demands for draconian gun restrictions.Via Meadia doesn’t take any position as to whether an “assault weapons ban” (whatever that means) is good policy. But we do think that commentators who interpreted a jihadist attack as a gun control story were profoundly missing the point, and profoundly misinterpreting the American peoples’ historical relationship with the Second Amendment.Since the founding, the right to bear arms has been understood by American Jacksonians not primarily as a practical tool for hunting and self-defense, but as a political safeguard against authoritarian movements that threaten American liberty. Almost two-thirds of Americans see gun rights as a protection against tyranny. The ISIS-inspired attacks in San Bernardino, therefore, cut to the core of what many Americans, rightly or wrongly, see as the overriding purpose of the Second Amendment. If gun control boosters were more in tune with the nation’s character, they would recognize that attacks by Islamic extremists are unlikely to win over many Americans to their cause.

Renzi Holds EU Russia Sanctions Hostage

Italy is holding up the works on the EU renewal of Russian sanctions. Politico Europe reports:

Sanctions were set to be extended on Wednesday, but that did not happen after the Italian government instructed its ambassador to raise objections during a closed-door meeting of EU countries’ delegates, which was supposed to approve the extension without much political noise.

On Thursday, the 28 EU ambassadors met again, but the delicate topic was not put to vote for a second time as Italy signaled it wouldn’t change its position, diplomatic sources told POLITICO.[..][T]he silent vote […] was supposed to deliver one message, according to diplomats: The EU will keep up sanctions as long as the situation in eastern Ukraine is unchanged, but without blaming Russia publicly.Renzi has now forced leaders to do exactly that. Italy wants Europe to take Russia’s military help in Syria into account when discussing sanctions, a source said.

There’s a great deal of speculation as to what Renzi wants. According to Politico, many think it’s just some time in the limelight. Others suspect he wants the Russian sanctions eased—or he wants to appear to want that.

Here’s what we do know: Italy’s economy is hurting, badly, and the Russian sanctions have weakened it even more—for instance, in Milan, where Russians were wont to spend their money on fashion. So at the very least, the Italians probably want their pain taken into consideration, and to see their Prime Minister raising the issue. More substantively, although it’s unlikely that the Italian government will undermine the sanctions regime entirely, officials may desire some offsets from other EU members to ease the pain, either built in to the sanctions regime overtly, or granted through other initiatives.Either way, keep an eye on this dynamic. The Russian sanctions will continue to be in play, the Italian economy isn’t poised for a dramatic recovery, and so stories like this will likely continue to crop up.

Violence Flares in Burundi

After weeks of escalating tensions and sporadic bursts of violence, forces opposed to President Pierre Nkurunziza launched a coordinated attack against military sites across Burundi’s capital today. Reuters:

Gunmen attacked military sites in Burundi’s capital on Friday and 12 of the assailants were killed while 20 were arrested after heavy fighting, the army said.

Soldiers told Reuters at least five of their number were also killed, but an official army spokesman said they were only wounded in the latest flare-up in a nation Western powers fear may be sliding back into ethnic conflict.The sound of firing echoed across the capital, Bujumbura, through Friday after heavy gunfire and blasts erupted in the early hours. Residents said streets were empty and police were out in force at a time when people normally head to work.

Though the conflict has thus far remained anchored in political opposition to Nkurunziza’s constitutionally questionable third term in office, some Africa watchers fear the re-emergence of ethnic violence between Tutsis and Hutus. Ethnic divisions are important for understanding what’s happening in Burundi. It’s not clear that the situation there will escalate into full-scale genocide, but there are many shades of ugly, and the country may be primed for at least one of them.

Instability in Burundi isn’t an isolated event in Africa, of course. Next door, eastern Congo is embroiled in a conflict that has displaced millions—and that instability in turn affects Burundi. The Council on Foreign Relations has published an excellent backgrounder on the subject. Read the whole thing.

What Happened to Millennial Dovishness?

Since President Barack Obama’s first presidential campaign, part of the received wisdom about Millennials has been that they would push American public opinion on foreign policy in a more non-interventionist direction. Several surveys in the last few years have supported this notion: A 2011 Pew report found that Millennials were significantly more dovish than older generations, and a 2013 poll on Syria found that “opposition to unilateral airstrikes peaks among young adults.” Earlier this year, the Cato institute hopefully speculated that Millennials “may have internalized a permanent case of ‘Iraq Aversion.’”

But Millennials’ views on ISIS are complicating this narrative. A new poll from the Harvard Institute of Politics finds that 60 percent of Millennials support the use of U.S. ground troops against the Islamic State. The IOP only surveyed Millennials, so it’s impossible to directly compare this finding to the attitudes of older generations, but 60 percent is a higher level of support than most surveys have found among the general public. A CNN/ORC poll released earlier this week found 50 percent support for ground troops among Americans aged 18-34, roughly in line with the 53 percent support registered among the general public.These are just two polls, and it’s very possible that the idea of Millennials as a non-interventionist generation overall will remain accurate in the long run. But it’s also possible that, for all the media headlines about Millennials’ uniqueness, they may end up being more similar to previous generations than many people think.

No Consensus in Sight Heading into Final Day of Paris Summit

Tomorrow is supposed to be the last day of the Paris climate summit, but at this point it’s looking like a pretty good bet that discussions will spill over into the weekend as negotiators continue to attempt to iron out a number of serious points of contention. But let’s start with the successes: On the penultimate (scheduled) day of the conference, the French hosts have submitted a proposal for a slimmer draft text, down to 29 pages from 43 earlier this week.

And that’s about it for positive Paris progress. Let’s take a look at the problems that remain, starting with this new draft text. Just as was the case with the text in the run-up to this summit, the document negotiators are parsing is chock-full of bracketed clauses, each representing a remaining point of dispute. Reuters provides an example of one such disagreement in phrasing:

One option favored by developing nations says “financial resources shall be scaled up from a floor of $100 billion per year” beyond 2020. Another option, which is favored by rich nations, is vaguer and says countries should “enhance the scale and effectiveness of climate finance”.

This is not a trivial disagreement, either. In fact, the divide between the developed and the developing world on what to do about “climate financing”—UN-speak for money paid to poorer countries to help them mitigate and adapt to climate change—is the most important issue being discussed by the summit’s delegates. John Kerry promised earlier this week to double American financial contributions in the form of public grants, from last year’s $430 million total to $860 million by 2020. But $860 million isn’t a lot of money when you put it up against the $100 billion annual fund promised at the 2009 Copenhagen summit. Given the noises being heard out of the American Congress, the developing world shouldn’t hold its breath for much more U.S. cash, either.

Talks are also being bogged down by disagreements over the details of a review mechanism for countries’ climate commitments called Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs). Gulf nations, along with China, are throwing a wrench in the works over concerns about how transparent the data needs to be, and how often these INDC reviews and updates ought to occur. But while these debates were to be expected, another argument has cropped up that comes as something of a surprise. Reuters reports:

With the unexpected support of the United States and Europe, the agreement, due to be completed within days, could go beyond the current goal of limiting the rise in global temperatures to 2 degrees Celsius (3.6F) above pre-industrial levels…Instead, according to the latest draft and negotiators, it may state a goal of keeping the rise to “well below” 2C, and recognize the need to aim for just 1.5 degrees. […]

More than 100 developing nations want the agreement to include a long-term goal to limit the increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit) over pre-industrial levels, even though the emissions cuts that countries have pledged to make over the coming decade are far from achieving that limit.

This one is hard to understand. A binding global treaty isn’t in the cards, and instead negotiators have moved on to discussing how to keep member states to their national pledges (the aforementioned INDCs), a plan which, lacking any enforcement mechanisms, amounts to little more than naming and shaming. That leaves us with just the aggregation of national commitments, but as Bjorn Lomborg points out, the sum of those pledges (which only extend to 2030) would reduce global temperatures by just 0.048°C by 2100. Even if those pledges were extended through the end of the century, they would only cut temperatures by 0.17°C. Delegates can talk about intentions and aspirations all they want, but there is no realistic strategy under discussion that would bring about this suddenly more ambitious goal.

And in a way, that says everything about these talks. There’s no shortage of nice-sounding rhetoric and discussion of what should be done, but there’s nothing backing up all of this talk. With one (official) day left, just three details remain: what the goal actually is, how to achieve it, and who is going to pay for it. Other than that…consensus!

No Consensus in Sight Heading into Paris’ Final Day

Tomorrow is supposed to be the last day of the Paris climate summit, but at this point it’s looking like a pretty good bet that discussions will spill over into the weekend as negotiators continue to attempt to iron out a number of serious points of contention. But let’s start with the successes: On the penultimate (scheduled) day of the conference, the French hosts have submitted a proposal for a slimmer draft text, down to 29 pages from 43 earlier this week.

And that’s about it for positive Paris progress. Let’s take a look at the problems that remain, starting with this new draft text. Just as was the case with the text in the run-up to this summit, the document negotiators are parsing is chock-full of bracketed clauses, each representing a remaining point of dispute. Reuters provides an example of one such disagreement in phrasing:

One option favored by developing nations says “financial resources shall be scaled up from a floor of $100 billion per year” beyond 2020. Another option, which is favored by rich nations, is vaguer and says countries should “enhance the scale and effectiveness of climate finance”.

This is not a trivial disagreement, either. In fact, the divide between the developed and the developing world on what to do about “climate financing”—UN-speak for money paid to poorer countries to help them mitigate and adapt to climate change—is the most important issue being discussed by the summit’s delegates. John Kerry promised earlier this week to double American financial contributions in the form of public grants, from last year’s $430 million total to $860 million by 2020. But $860 million isn’t a lot of money when you put it up against the $100 billion annual fund promised at the 2009 Copenhagen summit. Given the noises being heard out of the American Congress, the developing world shouldn’t hold its breath for much more U.S. cash, either.

Talks are also being bogged down by disagreements over the details of a review mechanism for countries’ climate commitments called Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs). Gulf nations, along with China, are throwing a wrench in the works over concerns about how transparent the data needs to be, and how often these INDC reviews and updates ought to occur. But while these debates were to be expected, another argument has cropped up that comes as something of a surprise. Reuters reports:

With the unexpected support of the United States and Europe, the agreement, due to be completed within days, could go beyond the current goal of limiting the rise in global temperatures to 2 degrees Celsius (3.6F) above pre-industrial levels…Instead, according to the latest draft and negotiators, it may state a goal of keeping the rise to “well below” 2C, and recognize the need to aim for just 1.5 degrees. […]

More than 100 developing nations want the agreement to include a long-term goal to limit the increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit) over pre-industrial levels, even though the emissions cuts that countries have pledged to make over the coming decade are far from achieving that limit.

This one is hard to understand. A binding global treaty isn’t in the cards, and instead negotiators have moved on to discussing how to keep member states to their national pledges (the aforementioned INDCs), a plan which, lacking any enforcement mechanisms, amounts to little more than naming and shaming. That leaves us with just the aggregation of national commitments, but as Bjorn Lomborg points out, the sum of those pledges (which only extend to 2030) would reduce global temperatures by just 0.048°C by 2100. Even if those pledges were extended through the end of the century, they would only cut temperatures by 0.17°C. Delegates can talk about intentions and aspirations all they want, but there is no realistic strategy under discussion that would bring about this suddenly more ambitious goal.

And in a way, that says everything about these talks. There’s no shortage of nice-sounding rhetoric and discussion of what should be done, but there’s nothing backing up all of this talk. With one (official) day left, just three details remain: what the goal actually is, how to achieve it, and who is going to pay for it. Other than that…consensus!

Is Secularization Oversold?

ISI has published a piece adapted from Rodney Stark’s new book, The Triumph of Faith, that argues that religion is not only growing globally (an uncontroversial assertion that we’ve noted in these pages before), but that it is still relatively robust in the United States as well, a much more contentious claim. Stark thinks the pessimism among religious leaders about the secularization of America isn’t supported by history or data. Here he is on the widely discussed Pew data showing an increase over the past couple of decades in the number of “nones,” Americans who say they have no religious affiliation:

But what this [increase] means is not so obvious, for, during this same period, church attendance did not decline and the number of atheists did not increase. Indeed, the percentage of atheists in America has stayed steady at about 4 percent since a question about belief in God was first asked in 1944. In addition, except for atheists, most of the other “nones” are religious in the sense that they pray (some pray very often) and believe in angels, in heaven, and even in ghosts. Some are also rather deeply involved in “New Age” mysticisms.

So who are these “nones,” and why is their number increasing—if it is? Back in 1990 most Americans who seldom or never attended church still claimed a religious affiliation when asked to do so. Today, when asked their religious preference, instead of saying Methodist or Catholic, now a larger proportion of nonattenders say “none,” by which most seem to mean “no actual membership.” The entire change has taken place within the nonattending group, and the nonattending group has not grown.

In other words, Americans who didn’t attend church but identified as a particular denomination are now instead saying they are unaffiliated. For Stark, this is evidence that the secularization worries are overblown—these people were only nominally religious anyway, so their defection doesn’t really change the number of people who are “actually” religious or irreligious. Moreover, lower church attendance among young Americans isn’t alarming, because young people always go to church less and tend to come back as they “get married and have children.” Add in the data that church attendance has been stable for the past 40 years and that the nones still pray and believe in things like angels or ghosts, and things don’t look so bad.

Nominal Christian affiliation, however, matters. Even for those who don’t go to church, a decision to identify as Christian in responding to polls means something. A connection, however cultural or tenuous, to a faith is capable of being deepened. A person who calls herself Presbyterian but never goes to church might, at some point later in life, find it easier or more natural to start attending a local Presbyterian service than someone who has severed all affiliation—or never had an affiliation to begin with. The jump from nominal to serious is a different kind of jump than from unaffiliated to serious.Moreover, nominal Christian affiliation creates a cultural “buffer” space between devout believers and the unaffiliated. Here’s Ed Stetzer on this point, h/t Michael Brendan Dougherty:

In many ways, nominal believers who identified as Christians but were generally unengaged in church provided a “cultural cushion” for Christians. Nominals worked as a restraint on the advance of secularism. Even though they did not order their lives around Christian beliefs, nominals saw themselves on the same “team” as convictional Christians, who did order their lives around their religious faith, so nominal Christians tended to join with the more religious Christians in broader cultural decisions.

As many nominals have become the religiously unaffiliated, they identify less with convictional believers.

The switch from “affiliated but non-church going” to “unaffiliated” is therefore a very big deal. It may not portend a collapse of the backbone of American Christianity, but it does mean that a cultural space that kept Christianity culturally powerful and put Christian belief within plausibility framework of some Americans is eroding.

And, of course, when you look at the trends to religious reversion or even conversion for younger Americans as they start families, the obvious issue is that millennial family formation patterns don’t mirror exactly those of previous generations. If family formation plays a big role in keeping church attendance stable over time, a lot rides on whether millennials (and their children) ultimately marry and have children at high enough rates to perpetuate that pattern. As things currently stand, we don’t know if that will be the case. Of course, aging might also help inspire reversion or conversion in another way: As one gets older, one becomes more aware of mortality, and might turn to faith as a result. This seems to be the view of Gallup editor-in-chief Frank Newport, who predicts Baby Boomers will become more religious in coming years. So a lot rides, too, on whether that kind of late life aging can inspire reversion and conversion even among the unmarried or childless.As for the perduring spirituality of the “nones”—the belief, for instance, in ghosts—here too there is a lot of uncertainty. Ross Douthat:

One of the big religious questions going forward is whether the large swathe of people who have drifted from traditional faith but remain dissatisfied (for excellent reasons!) with strict neo-Darwinian materialism constitute a major market for religious entrepreneurs. Is there a version of theologically-liberal Christianity that could actually bring these drifters back to church and keep them in the pews? Is there some new synthesis –pantheist, deist, syncretistic — that could seem plausible and nourishing and intellectually satisfying enough to plan an actual new religion in “spiritual, but not religious” territory? Is there enough residual Christian orthodoxy knocking around in the West’s cultural subconscious to make a revival or Great Awakening not only possible but likely? Etc.

Douthat says his “suspicion” is that something like this will be the case, but that there are other reasons to think it might not—that the unaffiliated might find ways of integrating their spiritual beliefs or experiences into a broadly secular life. Again, we don’t know yet.

Stark’s essay is part of a large book, so he may deal with these and other objections there. But, as far as the piece itself goes, the case he makes that all the furor over American secularization is merely a “false alarm” does not quite convince.

All Is Forgiven?

Besides Vladimir Putin, who has benefitted the most from the terrorist attacks in Paris and from the wave of fear that has gripped Europe? Prime Minister Viktor Orbán of Hungary, as well as several other populist leaders from Central Europe, are doing their best not to let this crisis go to waste, using it to boost their approval ratings at home and gain—and in some cases regain—friends abroad.

In past few months, the refugee crisis has enabled Orbán to lure back voters who had previously deserted Fidesz in favor of the neo-Nazi Jobbik Movement for a Better Hungary, a group that has been reinventing itself, much like Front National in France, as a mainstream, respectable group. In his opposition against the mandatory refugee quotas proposed by the European Commission in September Orbán has been joined by Slovakia’s Social Democratic Prime Minister Robert Fico, who, after the terrorist attacks in Paris, “[is] not interested in any musings about ethics, at a time when people’s lives and state security are at stake.”The leader of Poland’s governing Law and Justice Party, Jarosław Kaczyński, famously warned against the refugees’ spreading tropical diseases. The President of the Czech Republic, Miloš Zeman, another Social Democrat, thought it a good idea to celebrate the 26th anniversary of Czechoslovakia’s Velvet Revolution at an anti-Muslim rally, whose convener is being prosecuted for inciting religious hatred.Domestically, the posturing makes sense. Whether justified or not, fear of Islamist terrorism has shifted the focus of public discussions away from corruption and state capture. Sadly, this grandstanding blurs the fact that, after years of disinvestment and bad management, Central Europe’s military and security forces are in tatters, hardly capable of confronting ISIS or preventing radicalization (so far purely hypothetical) at home.The attacks in Paris have also put Orbán and his ilk back on the map internationally. Over the years, his controversial economic policies at home, his opposition to the EU’s sanctions on Russia, a secret nuclear deal he reached with Rosatom, and even his deliberate use of the refugee situation for political gain have lost him many friends, including ones in conservative circles on both sides of the Atlantic.Now, Mr. Orbán is back with a vengeance. A leader who insists he “wants to save the EU and NATO,” as he told Politico.eu in November, may appear to be a necessary, if a bit abrasive, corrective to German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s naive and reckless invitation to Middle Eastern hordes bound to destroy the Continent. Orbán’s crime, after all, is only in “speaking honestly about the real problems,” as a recent National Review article puts it.Here is a word of advice for those on the conservative center-right who think it is time to rehabilitate Viktor Orbán and other seemingly patriotic politicians of the region: don’t. The reality of the refugee crisis does raise some serious questions, which Europe’s mainstream politicians have been dodging either because of incompetence or misplaced concerns over political correctness. What should be done to discourage illegal migrant flows? How can the EU integrate the asylum seekers who are already there—or indeed the many European Muslims who seem alienated from the societies in which they live? And how do we prevent the recurrence of terrorist attacks in the future?On all these, Europe indeed needs leaders who “speak honestly.” But it also needs leaders who are able to work together.Instead of unveiling their proposals to solve the crisis, Orbán and Fico are threatening the European Commission with a lawsuit at the European Court of Justice over the refugee quotas. If the current refugee crisis marks the end of freedom of movement in the Schengen area, one of the EU’s key claims to popular legitimacy—and perhaps the most obvious and tangible one—will disappear. The damage, should that scenario materialize, would not be repaired easily.While Orbán has not yet commented on the issue, many of his ilk (President Zeman, most vocally) have advocated teaming up with Russia to create a grand coalition to defeat ISIS militarily. Not only would that involve throwing Ukraine under the bus, it would also be self-defeating in Syria, where President Putin’s objectives and those of the Western liberal democracies are not exactly aligned.Above all, in order to weather the present crisis, Europe needs responsible leaders. And while they might pretend otherwise, Messrs. Orbán, Zeman, Fico, and Kaczyński are not there to solve Europe’s problems, but to capitalize on them.

Lebanon: The Syrian War’s Next Casualty?

After the Islamic State’s terrorist rampage in Paris, France deployed an aircraft carrier to Syria and implemented unprecedented security measures at home. It’s less clear how Lebanon, attacked by ISIS just a day earlier, will respond. The assault on Beirut was less lethal than Paris, but the long-term implications for security and stability in Lebanon could prove more consequential.

On November 12, a double suicide bombing in Bourj al Barajneh—a Shi‘a neighborhood of Beirut known to be a stronghold of the Iranian-backed militia Hezbollah—killed 40 and wounded more than 200. Taking a page from al-Qaeda in Iraq, ISIS was targeting a Shi‘a mosque; back in 2006, al-Qaeda destroyed a Shi‘a shrine in Samarra, touching off a Sunni-Shi‘a conflagration that killed thousands. While the Beirut bombing has not yet sparked retaliatory strikes, the attack ended a nearly year-long respite from terrorism in Lebanon, raising the specter of a resumption of destabilizing sectarian violence in the state.Lebanon, a state comprised mostly of Shi‘a, Sunnis, and Christians, has been divided about the war next door since it began in 2011. While the Shi‘a back the Alawite, nominally Shi‘a Assad regime, Sunnis are broadly sympathetic to the rebellion led by their co-religionists.Between 2013 and 2015, Lebanon witnessed more than a dozen suicide and car bombings related to Syria. While some of the blasts occurred in Sunni areas, the majority were directed at Shi‘a and Alawites—presumably Sunni retaliatory strikes against Hezbollah for its military deployments in Syria in support of Assad. To date, with the backing of Iran and Hezbollah, the Syrian regime has killed over 300,000 people, most of them Sunnis, which has enraged Sunnis within Lebanon and the region.In the face of repeated terrorist attacks against sectarian targets, Lebanese communal leaders have consistently sought to de-escalate tensions. Following a July 2013 car bomb attack on Hezbollah’s south Beirut headquarters, for example, both Hezbollah and Sunni leader Saad Hariri improbably blamed Israel.Yet it isn’t certain that calmer heads will continue to prevail.The same day of the Beirut blasts, the Lebanese Armed Forces defused a bomb in Jebel Mohsen, an Alawite neighborhood of Tripoli. Since then, the Lebanese press has reported that security agencies discovered $450,000 in a Beirut safe house belonging to Sunni militants and several suicide belts in the Hezbollah-controlled Bekaa Valley.With 1.5 million Syrian refugees, Lebanon today is the fastest-growing country in the world. Most of these Syrians are Sunnis who have fled the Assad regime’s brutality, but there is an abiding concern in Lebanon that ISIS sleeper cells reside among this community. Border security with Syria also remains spotty.While Sunni, Shi‘a, and Christian Lebanese alike view ISIS as the preeminent threat, many Sunnis are dismayed by the Faustian bargain between the Sunni-controlled Ministry of the Interior and Internal Security Forces, the Shi’a dominated General Security Forces, the cross-sectarian army, and Hezbollah that has maintained the country’s security for the past year. As part of this deal, the Shi‘a militia has been effectively granted a laissez passer for its troops to move back and forth to Syria, while Sunni militants—both Lebanese and Syrian—are routinely arrested.Further adding to tensions, Hezbollah, in highly controversial initiative, is now recruiting Sunni Muslims from the Bekaa Valley to fight Syria-based (Sunni) opponents of the Assad regime. In September, after one member of the so-called Saraya Moqawama or “resistance brigades” was rumored killed in action, Sunnis stormed a Bekaa Mosque to protest against the Imam who recruited the militiaman.Though Lebanon’s resilience is legendary, the Beirut attacks come at a particularly challenging time for sectarian relations in the state. Discord between Hezbollah, the Christians, and Lebanon’s moderate Sunnis has hamstrung the parliament, leaving a presidential vacancy since May 2014. Absent a president, no major decisions and appointments have been made.Word in Beirut is that a “compromise” presidential candidate named Suleiman Franjiyeh—a parliamentarian from Zgharta known for his close relationship with the Assad family—may soon be elected to the post. Alas, given his affiliation with the house of Assad, Franjiyeh’s election would do little to diminish Sunni resentment or soothe sectarian pressures in Lebanon.Amid the governmental paralysis, even trash has become a sectarian issue. This past summer after Lebanon’s principal landfill closed, thousands of tons of garbage littered the streets of Beirut. A brokered solution envisioned the establishment of two new dumps, one in a Sunni area and the other in a Shi‘a. While a site was identified in the Sunni Akkar region, efforts to find a suitable Shi‘a location foundered, and when trucks showed up to begin construction in Akkar, angry Sunnis torched the vehicles, refusing to accept “Shi‘a garbage.”In recent decades, violence, ineffective government, and sectarian tensions have been the rule rather than the exception in Lebanon. After five years of war in Syria—and with ISIS stepping up its game in Lebanon—the already tenuous status quo in Beirut is under serious and growing threat.Lebanon does not represent, at least in the traditional sense, a U.S. “strategic” interest. Nonetheless, Washington has a keen interest in Lebanese stability. Not only is the state one of the few remaining regional examples of religious and ethnic pluralism, it is—with the notable exception of Hezbollah—ostensibly pro-Western. Indeed, despite Hezbollah’s intimidation, the last two parliamentary elections in Lebanon resulted in moderate pro-Western parliamentary majorities.In addition, Lebanon shares a long border with Israel that would be more difficult to police should its security worsen. Serious security problems in Lebanon would also mean more refugees. During its own civil war, an estimated 900,000 Lebanese fled the country.Regrettably, while Washington’s $80 million military and security assistance in FY 2015 may help Lebanon withstand the current ISIS onslaught, it will do little to mitigate the perennial and increasingly corrosive sectarian problems that the war in Syria exacerbates day by day. In fact, the continuing devastation will likely make Lebanon even more fertile ground for ISIS’s brand of militancy.Five years into the war, ongoing stability in Lebanon has been an unexpected bright spot in a dark region. As ISIS takes the fight to Hezbollah in Lebanon, however, this regional anomaly is increasingly in peril. Fortunately, with memories of the 15-year civil war still relatively fresh, the Lebanese appear to have little appetite for round two. But the longer the war in Syria continues, the more likely Lebanon will experience its own Samarra moment.