Peter L. Berger's Blog, page 548
November 16, 2015
Is Putin Going Soft on Ukraine?
At the G20 summit today, Vladimir Putin appeared to make a big concession to Ukraine by announcing that Russia would be willing to restructure Kyiv’s upcoming $3 billion debt repayment on a bond coming due December 20. Putin offered to free Ukraine from all payments this year, and instead have them pay $1 billion in 2016, 2017, and 2018 instead.
Ukraine and Russia were set to face off in a London court over the bond, which was bought by Moscow from Kyiv as a reward for former President Viktor Yanukovych’s rejecting the EU Association Agreement in December 2013. The cravenness of Yanukovych’s maneuver eventually led to his ouster, as street protests by outraged citizens brought his government down.Ukraine has been playing chicken over the bond repayment since the end of August, threatening to default if Russia did not accept the write-down terms Kyiv had negotiated with its other bondholders, led by Franklin Templeton. Russia, for its part, has been refusing, claiming the bond amounts to sovereign debt and is thus qualitatively different from the debt featured in the restructuring deal. This turns out to be a significant distinction, since the IMF has an explicit policy of not lending to countries with outstanding sovereign debts.So what’s going on? Is this evidence, as some journalists seem to think, of Putin easing up in a bid to play nice with the West? Probably not.For one, Putin was on the verge of losing significant leverage over Ukraine, as the IMF was considering rewriting its “lending-into-arrears” policy to allow for Ukraine to safely default. Reports are that the IMF “welcomed” Putin’s offer, and was now kicking the ball into Ukraine’s court. This doesn’t of course mean that the IMF’s rewriting its policy is off the table, but it does keep the pressure up on Kyiv.For another, though Russia is giving way on the payment schedule, it is insisting that there be no write-down on the principal of the loan. This could cause problems for Kyiv with the Franklin Templeton-led consortium, which may well start insisting on a better deal for itself. The existing deal took many months of brinksmanship to negotiate, and it explicitly stipulates that a better deal can not be offered to any holdouts.Finally, Putin appears to be insisting that the EU, the United States, or some other global institution guarantee the repayment of Ukraine’s loan in exchange for the term extension: Put up or shut up, he seems to be saying.In short, it appears to be a shrewd strategic move: Russia’s downsides are minimized and pressure is ratcheted up on Kyiv.And as if to underline this point, after more than two months of relative calm, fighting is starting up again in eastern Ukraine:A Ukrainian serviceman was killed and eight were wounded in attacks by pro-Russian separatists in the past 24 hours, the Ukrainian military said on Sunday, as both sides reported renewed violence despite a ceasefire deal.
The guns were mostly silent in September and October, but there has been an increase in ceasefire violations in recent weeks, with each side blaming the other.“The most difficult situation is still around Donetsk airport, where illegal groups cynically violated agreements, firing at Ukrainian positions using 120 caliber mortars,” Ukrainian military spokesman Oleksander Motuzyanyk said in a daily televised briefing.
This brings the total Ukrainian dead for the weekend up to six. Both sides are blaming each other for the resumption of hostilities, but if recent history is any guide, this is likely just Putin reminding everyone involved that he still has his fingers on a painful pressure point.
Next up, Ukraine will have to look over the specifics of the proposal and decide what to do. And with Western leaders appearing increasingly fixated on Putin as some kind of savior in Syria, Ukrainians may well end up getting the short end of the stick in these negotiations.
Trump After Paris
Some Donald Trump supporters—most prominently, the attention-seeking pundit Ann Coulter—are predicting that the slaughter in Paris has clinched the election for their candidate. “They can wait if they like until next November for the actual balloting, but Donald Trump was elected president tonight”, Coulter tweeted on Friday.
Coulter’s overconfidence aside, it is possible to see how the post-Paris political landscape will be favorable to Trump. The political tradition we call Jacksonianism is emerging from its post-Iraq, post-Snowden hibernation. Issues like ISIS, immigration, and crime have been driving the Jacksonian train, and the Paris massacre seems likely to cause it to accelerate.Trump’s appeal is primarily Jacksonian, as seen in his economic populism, his anti-immigrant rhetoric, and his proverbial middle-finger to the political establishment. But Jacksonians have historically supported at least two kinds of leaders. One is the clown populist (for example, Huey Long and Jesse Ventura), who expresses discontent and crudely validates this school’s code. Trump is a clown of this sort, a man who is transparently uninformed about even the most basic elements of terrorism and Middle East policy. This type of figure has been elected to state office, but never won a major party’s nomination, much less made it to the Oval Office. For the White House, Jacksonians tend to seek out more substantive figures, like Old Hickory himself, or Ronald Reagan. (Liberals thought of Reagan as a clown figure in 1980, but Jacksonians saw him as a successful, two-term governor of California who had restored order to the Golden State and would take on the Evil Empire).As the Paris attacks put the evil of America’s enemies on full display, the Jacksonian impulse is rising, and many Jacksonians will still support Trump for his ability to flout norms and poke elites in the eye. But the attacks also underscore the fact that the world is a dangerous place, and that politics is a deadly serious business. Therefore, others may be less likely to support a charlatan out of protest at a time when America is confronting a cunning and determined enemy seeking the annihilation of the West.But who, then, will they turn to? Jacksonianism is back, but where is the real leader who can harness and productively apply it, as opposed to the opportunistic, sputtering clown?OPEC Selling Oil at Six-Year Low
Too much supply and too little demand always means cheap prices, as any OPEC member could likely explain. The oil cartel hasn’t cut production in the face of falling crude prices over the last 17 months or so, choosing to compete for a share of the increasingly crowded market rather than setting a price floor to the market by restricting global supplies. Now, as Bloomberg reports, the group is reaping what is has sown as it sells its oil for less than $40 per barrel:
The daily OPEC Basket Price fell to $39.21 a barrel on Nov. 13, according to an e-mail on Monday from the organization’s secretariat in Vienna. The basket, an average of export grades from each of the group’s 12 members, typically trades below international oil futures as some OPEC nations pump denser or higher-sulfur crude that’s less profitable to refine. […]
OPEC’s annual revenues may be curbed to $550 billion at current prices from an average of more than $1 trillion in the last five years, Fatih Birol, executive director at the IEA, said in London on Nov. 10. Even Saudi Arabia, the group’s biggest member, faces a budget deficit this year that the International Monetary Fund predicts will exceed 20 percent of gross domestic product.
OPEC’s do-nothing strategy has been underpinned by a hope that non-OPEC producers would necessarily be forced to cut their own production in the face of declining prices as higher-cost projects no longer proved profitable. This approach has been championed by Saudi Arabia, which is the group’s largest producing member and therefore the best suited to act as a global swing producer and cut back on production in today’s oversupplied market. Instead, Riyadh has done nothing but pump crude with abandon, hoping to cede that role of swing producer to America’s high-cost shale companies.
We’re essentially watching an extraordinarily high-stakes game of chicken play itself out, as oil producers around the world continue to keep output up despite the fact that supply is outstripping demand by more than two million barrels of oil per day. For shale producers, the Saudi strategy creates a stress test that shrinks profit margins and tries the industry’s ability to innovate its way out of a problem. But for petrostates like OPEC’s members, this is putting strain on government budgets and even regime stability.How to Beat ISIS: The President Is Partly Right
In a contentious press conference, President Obama vowed to stay the course regarding his ISIS policy in the wake of the Paris attacks. The AP reports:
President Barack Obama on Monday conceded that the Paris terror attacks were a “terrible and sickening setback” in the fight against the Islamic State, but forcefully dismissed critics who have called for the U.S. to change or expand its military campaign against the extremists.
“The strategy that we are putting forward is the strategy that is ultimately is going to work,” Obama said during a news conference at the close of two days of talks with world leaders. “It’s going to take time.”
Both in the United States and abroad, the reaction to the President’s statement has been largely negative. There is a very widespread view that President Obama’s own dilatory leadership style and his refusal to engage seriously in Syria gave ISIS the room it needed to take root and grow. It’s likely that future historians will agree; this president is unlikely to be hailed as a strategic genius by anybody not on his payroll.
Nevertheless, it’s worth noting that President Obama isn’t just blowing smoke when he talks about successes against ISIS. In particular, the strategy of helping the Kurds push ISIS back has led to significant progress on the ground. Just last week, the Kurds cleared ISIS out of Sinjar, and as a result of its military setbacks, ISIS has less access to fresh supplies and recruits coming through Turkey.This matters. Groups like ISIS depend on two power sources. One is the radical jihadi ideology that now circulates widely among discontented Muslims and rootless young people in the Middle East and elsewhere. The other is the sense of victory and drama. ISIS needs to create wins and excitement to lure new recruits and keep its current fighters loyal and inspired.The self-styled caliphate isn’t a major military power and has only been able to acquire and hold territory because of state breakdown in Iraq and Syria. For the last few years, ISIS has been following a successful formula: Rapid military gains on the ground led to a huge international profile, which in turn attracted jihadis from all around the globe and established the organization as the new leader of radical Islam. ISIS advertises its success with the pornography of jihad: bloody executions posted on the web, widespread announcements that it is selling captured girls in slave markets, massacres of the “heathen.”The goal of the terrorists has always been to escape the drab realities of ordinary history and events, to create a kind of magical space—a return to the 7th century, the age of the Prophet, of miracles and legends. Joining the group offered a real life version of a video game.The problem the jihadis are now facing is that while it is easy to create this kind of illusion in the short term, it is very hard to make it work over the long run. History grinds that kind of illusion down and drags those who tried to sustain it back into the world of real forces, real obstacles, real (as Clausewitz would say) friction.We’ve seen this before. After 9/11, the great and dramatic attack created a legend, but then al-Qaeda was dragged down, and dogged by its adversaries. The group managed to survive the U.S. attacks on Afghanistan, but, despite that, this attrition little-by-little (and sometimes big step-by-big step) damaged the brand. ISIS represented a new approach, and its victorious march across Syria and Iraq electrified the jihadi universe. But now ISIS, too, is beginning to sag.On the ground these days, ISIS is engaged in a war of inches that will likely test its capacity to the limits, like its (lack of) ability to manage and operate supply lines, for example. The poor training and quality of its fighters will also now matter more. And the absence of dramatic victories, indeed the reality of setbacks and retreats, will reduce the enthusiasm and undercut the morale of current fighters, to say nothing of the impact on potential recruits.This may be one reason why ISIS has apparently shifted to prioritize attacks like the Paris horror. It likely needs the acts of drama and violence to replace the revolutionary theater that its military advances once gave it. Running wild through the streets, gunning down the crowds in a night club: This is fantasy violence, video games brought into the real world. ISIS is again the coolest of jihadi brands, the cutting edge of the war against the real. The intent is not so much to terrorize the West as to galvanize the faithful.Understanding ISIS’ methods can help us counter its aims. One key for us: to step up the grim war of attrition against ISIS on the ground. Life for the average ISIS fighter has to become a miserable affair of holing up, getting shot, running out of food, and putting up with bad medical care and low supplies even as the higher-ups live it up in the ruins of Raqqa. That word needs to filter out across the jihadi grapevine. To cut the flow of recruits and funds to ISIS, we must make ISIS look unattractive and weak—drab. If at the same time we work aggressively to reduce its ability to repeat the Paris attacks, ISIS will continue to fade.This is a way to weaken ISIS, but it won’t solve the problem of jihadi violence. The cultural fugue of the Islamic world will continue to generate new disorders, new radicalisms, new waves of hate and murder. And the stories of the glory days of the Caliphate and legends of ISIS will continue to resonate and inspire new waves of jihad, just as the legend of al-Qaeda did before it.But defeat hurts—and the more we keep whacking moles, the more discouraged the other moles will be. So the defeat of “terrorism” is a long way off. But the defeat of individual terrorist groups and forms of jihadi ideology, while short of a complete solution to the problem, is good in and of itself, and it contributes to the long term solution: the definitive disillusionment of potential radicals.This is what we have to teach our enemies and those tempted to join them: disenchantment. There is no magic road back to the 7th century triumphs of Islam. That door is closed. The Islamic world, like the rest of us, must live in the real world of the 21st century.So President Obama is partly right. The American partnership with the Kurds has inflicted real damage on ISIS. But he’s wrong if he thinks what we have done is enough, or that a few incremental shipments of ammo and MREs will do the trick. The battle against ISIS is one campaign in a long and brutal war. The bloodiest battles and the greatest dangers may still lie ahead.The Liberty-Security Pendulum Will Swing
It’s becoming increasingly clear that the Paris massacre will reopen debates about security and surveillance—which, since the Snowden revelations and related events, appeared to be breaking in favor of privacy advocates—in a big way. New York City Police Commissioner William Bratton said yesterday that encryption technology was likely “a significant factor” in the attacks, and this morning took a shot at Silicon Valley software manufacturers, who he said are “working against us” by failing to create back doors for law enforcement to monitor suspected terrorists’ communications. CIA Director John Brennan made similar comments at a CSIS forum this morning, according to Foreign Policy‘s John Hudson. “When asked why #Paris happened, CIA Director Brennan says privacy advocates have undermined the ability of spies to monitor terrorists”, Hudson tweeted.
In the coming days and weeks, we can expect intelligence officials to spar with civil libertarians over the extent to which the new privacy measures prompted by the Snowden revelations—like end-to-end data encryption software—are responsible for the attacks. But however that debate plays out, it seems safe to say that the slaughter in the City of Lights will at least dent the celebrity of Snowden and other privacy advocates like him, and make his admirers’ dire warnings about the existential threat to liberty posed by the NSA seem overblown.In periods of relative safety, Americans tend to be sympathetic to the Jeffersonian tradition—that is, zealously protective of their civil liberties and alert to the danger of creeping federal tyranny. But in periods of perceived danger, the Jacksonian impulse to get the bad guys at all costs grows more powerful.Since the Snowden leaks, America has been enjoying a Jeffersonian moment—skeptical of foreign interventions, and especially conscious of potential threats to liberty at home, like NSA snooping and militarized police forces. This moment may have already on its way out in the last year, as evidenced by Sen. Rand Paul’s decline in popularity and influence. But after Paris, it certainly is. We are once again in a period of perceived danger, for the Paris attacks, perhaps more than any other event in the last decade, highlight that the West is still at war with a vicious enemy. To many Americans, government spies and cops with big guns might no longer seem like the greatest threat to American liberty, but rather a necessary if unpleasant precaution against those who would destroy it entirely.As these debates reopen, hard-core Jeffersonians and Jacksonians alike will insist that any deviation from their preferred position will lead to either tyranny or chaos. But it is important to remember that America has a 300 year tradition of balancing civil liberties, government power, and security through a mix of legislation, judicial oversight, and public debate. While our system isn’t perfect, we have mostly reached compromises that accommodate both of these deeply American political traditions relatively well. Post-Paris, the terms of the debate have changed, but that capacity for balancing opposing values likely has not.Paris: the New Normal?
The whole world has its gaze fixed on Paris these days—and rightly so, given both the horrific nature of the attacks and the reverberations the massacre has already sent through European and American political discourse. The shock is still fresh. The wounded are still in the hospitals; the dead have not yet gone to their rest. The politicians are making speeches, and President Hollande has declared that France is at war, but it is already painfully clear that nothing France or its allies can or will do in response will end the threat of Paris-type attacks.
Regardless of what kind of response the West ultimately launches, military efforts in the wake of Paris will not spell an end to terrorism. There is no chance for a cure for the causes of terrorism anytime soon, no matter how much Paris may have stiffened Europe’s resolve. Across the Middle East, democracy isn’t taking hold, economic development is further away than ever, and bad governance is still endemic. This “civilizational wound” isn’t going to be cured, and the sense of backwardness, bitterness, alienation it creates isn’t going to get better. The Arab world as a whole is no closer today to, say, an East Asian-style development miracle than it was in 1950 and neither the West nor anybody else has the slightest idea how to change that.Meanwhile, in the West, Muslim populations in Europe will be economically underprivileged for a very long time. They’ll be facing a future with few jobs, bad schools, and popular prejudice running against them. This will increase the radicalization that we are already seeing in places like Belgium.We have had “never again” moments before in COFKATGWOT (the Conflict Formerly Known as the Global War on Terror). There were the attacks in Mumbai and in London. There was the Madrid train bombing. And, of course, there was 9/11 itself. We have used bombs and ground troops. We have engaged in efforts to build bridges to the Islamic world. We have collaborated with “moderate Islamists.” We have promoted democracy, both by the former President George W. Bush method in Iraq and the President Barack Obama method in Egypt. We removed despots in Libya and Iraq; we have supported strong men in Egypt and Turkey. None of it has made the jihad go away.Nothing we do after Paris is going to make it go away, either. We can kill Osama bin Laden. We can (and we should) crush ISIS. But we can’t change the reality that jihadi ideology is alive and well, feeding off the discontent and disempowerment felt so widely in the Islamic world. We can strengthen our security at home, we can continue to improve intelligence collection and to disrupt the ability of terrorists to communicate, to travel, and to raise and move money. None of these measures can ever be completely successful, and new jihadi movements will likely spring up to replace the ones we defeat. But we cannot relax our vigilance. The price of failure is too high.To survive and to thrive, the West will have to become more like Israel: guarding ourselves constantly against a threat that can’t be eliminated. The terrorists will continually try to develop new tactics to get around our security measures, and our security forces will have to find countermeasures against new and shifting terror attacks. Life in the West will be marked by periodic episodes of violence, which will be followed by security increases—but life will still go on.Grave dangers remain. The terrorists are still on the hunt for WMD. Chemical weapons are being used in Syria; the jihad knows no scruples when it comes to their use. The dirty bomb, the chemical attack, the poisoning of reservoirs: These dangers grow over time.But for now, Paris simply reminds us that, like the Israelis, we live in a dangerous world. The peace and security of the western world, our ability to enjoy the amusements and the diversions of the greatest and most beautiful cities the world has ever known, all depend on the vigilance of our security forces and the competence of their leaders.The French and their allies have every right, and even have a duty, to strike ISIS as hard as they can. The hopes and the prayers of the civilized world will go with the pilots and fighters as they bring retribution to the authors of evil. But we cannot be naive. The war against terror has a long way to go, and we must brace for more horrors like the ones so recently visited on the City of Light.What Lies Ahead for the Paris Climate Summit
We’re just two weeks away from the start of the COP21 climate talks in Paris, and the terrible violence endured by the city last Friday is sure to cast a pall over the proceedings. As Reuters reports, France has already moved to cancel concerts and marches planned around the summit, paring down the event to just the nuts-and-bolts negotiations:
[French Prime Minister Manuel Valls] told RTL radio that “a series of demonstrations planned will not take place and it will be reduced to the negotiations … a lot of concerts and festivities will be canceled.” […]
Mainstream groups say they will respect any bans, decreed under emergency powers in France after the attacks on Friday that France blamed on Islamic State.
But while the negotiations themselves will go on, they don’t look likely to produce substantive results. The noises out of the G-20 meeting in Turkey over the weekend paint a picture of deep divisions on the issue, as negotiators struggled with the climate change paragraph in the group’s joint statement. One official said about the discussion over that paragraph that “[a]t certain times I was feeling that we’re not living on the same planet.”
This summit doesn’t get any prettier by viewing it from other angles, either. The UN’s own climate chief has already admitted that the 2C goal is a non-starter, and John Kerry’s recent comments about how Paris won’t produce a “treaty” ought to put to bed any hopes that the summit might produce anything more than a green version of the Kellogg-Briand Pact.With a binding Global Climate Treaty essentially off the table, countries more taken with the idea of typical green policies (read: the EU) will realistically be pushing for two things. First, they want a way to make sure nations are keeping to their commitments as outlined in the pledges they’ve been asked to submit to the UN, though that hope has already gotten pushback from India and Saudi Arabia. Second, they’re looking for a mechanism that would allow the UN to exact further national commitments going forward—again an idea that won’t be welcome in the developing world.On the other side, developing countries have said that they won’t sign on to a deal unless it has concrete promises for climate financing—a more diplomatic way of saying “show me the money.” Each one of these goals makes at least one group of stakeholders at the negotiating table very nervous, and taken together they make the task of Paris’s delegates unenviable.Making matters worse, the draft text that negotiators will be working with is already chock-full of points of contention, as the FT reports:[T]here was so much bickering over the draft text at the last meeting in Bonn in October that the final document going to Paris is far from concise. At more than 50 pages it is shorter than the drafts that went to Kyoto or Copenhagen but it is still highly repetitive and confusing. There are several competing options for almost every important clause in it. […]
The problem is not just that there is a plethora of rival options on the most basic points, including how much countries should collectively cut global emissions by and when. The larger difficulty is that there is so much in it that the EU, the US and other countries most eager for a successful deal will find almost impossible to swallow.
Anyone interested in getting a more complete picture of the uphill slog awaiting negotiators in Paris would do well to read that FT piece in full—it gives an excellent run-down of the many, many points of contention that still remain.
Japan Falls Back into Recession
Japan has fallen back into recession for the second time in PM Shinzo Abe’s tenure, a piece of economic news that should worry Washington as well as Tokyo. Agence France-Press reports:
The Cabinet Office said Monday that gross domestic product (GDP) shrank 0.2 percent in the July-September period, or an annualised contraction of 0.8 percent, marking the second straight quarterly decline — considered a technical recession.
It was also below the 0.1 percent forecast in a Bloomberg News survey […]
The data offer a mixed snapshot of the economy, with improving consumption countered by weakening corporate investment caused by uncertainty over the global outlook, particularly China, experts said.
Reading economic data is a tricky business, and we wouldn’t want to make any confident prediction about the future course of the Japanese economy, or the fate of Abe’s economic reforms, known as Abenomics. The death of Abenomics has been prematurely announced before, as have reports of its vindication. But whatever this latest news does or doesn’t tell us about Abenomics’ future, a technical recession in Japan, even if it should prove temporary, is unwelcome news for the U.S. Washington has a vested interest in seeing Japan prosperous and strong enough to act as an effective counterweight to China. And what worries us is that the boost Japan may very well have little to do with Abe: If China recovers, Japan may too; if not, the future looks bleaker.
Still, for all Abenomics’ troubles, there is also some good news coming out of Japan, as the prime minister’s militarization efforts continue to bear fruit. The latest: Tokyo and Manila have agreed on an aid program to help bolster the Philippines’ military. Although the details have yet to be hammered out, early reports suggest Japan may donate old aircraft to the Philippines for use in the South China Sea. The equipment is unlikely seriously to threaten China, but increasing ties between powers opposed to Chinese expansionism are a good thing.Belgium, Hotbed of Radicalism
As the world continues to grapple with Friday’s Paris terror attacks, one piece of intelligence that has emerged deserves special attention: According to French authorities, the man behind the attacks, Abdelhamid Abaaoud, is a Belgian national. This and/or other intelligence has triggered a crackdown in Belgium, where police have begun searching homes in Molenbeek, a largely Muslim neighborhood that stands close to Brussels and is known for being a hotbed of Islamic radicalism. The searches are presumably an attempt to reassert control, as Belgian officials have recently admitted that they have not had a handle on the area (h/t Jonah Goldberg):
Belgium’s home affairs minister said that the government does not “have control of the situation in Molenbeek,” a working-class neighborhood of Brussels that has been linked to several terrorism plots in recent years.
Speaking on the VRT television channel on Sunday, the minister, Jan Jambon, said that the government would “step up efforts” to bring order to the area of the Belgian capital. […]
Prime Minister Charles Michel of Belgium said he was also concerned about jihadist networks in Molenbeek.
“I notice that each time there is a link with Molenbeek,” he said. “This is a gigantic problem. Apart from prevention, we should also focus more on repression.”
For context on the situation in Belgium, an excellent place to begin is Robert Carle’s piece in our pages on the situation in the EU’s very capital:
In Undercover in Little Morocco, Moroccan-Belgian journalist Hind Fraihi reported on the prevalence of jihadi attitudes among young people in Molenbeek, one of Brussels’s largest Muslim enclaves. She found that the young men in Molenbeek talk about martyrdom in a way she hadn’t experienced even when she was in Israel. “They truly dream of their private hero tale”, Fraihi said, “A few live with their head already in paradise. And yes, they truly believe in those virgins that wait for you.” Fraihi reported that the Muslim youth in Molenbeek routinely refer to Belgians as “unbelievers” and boast about how they rob Belgians in order to support global jihad. In June 2011, the American advertising agency BBDO abandoned its offices in Molenbeek after citing over 150 assaults on its staff by local youth […]
One of the most vexing problems facing Belgian authorities is the large number of Belgian youth who have been drawn to jihad in Syria. An International Center for the Study of Radicalization (ICSR) report estimates that at least 440 Belgian youth are fighting in Syria. Belgian youth are twice as likely to become foreign fighters in Syria as French youth, more than four times as likely as English youth, and more than twenty times as likely as American youth.
There is not likely to be an easy answer to this challenge—though Carle looks at one effort to de-radicalize Belgium Muslims using methods similar to “techniques that help young people leave gangs”—but surely one place to start is to get a handle on the situation on the ground. Read the whole thing.
November 15, 2015
Will the West Mobilize to Defend Itself?
The organized slaughter of civilians perpetrated by ISIS in Paris is an unequivocal act of war against France—a fact clearly recognized by President Hollande in his address to the nation in the wake of the attack. And it is also an act of war against all of us from the collective West, whether in Europe, America, or Australia. Once again, the West has been attacked by fanatical proponents of an ideology that is committed to a destruction of our value system, our way of life, and ultimately our states and societies. This is not just about a cultural battle space of ideas—the Islamist supremacists have already laid claim to territory, whether directly in the so-called Islamic state in the Middle East, or indirectly in Europe and America, where fear now delimits what we do, where we go, and how we live. During the past decade and a half, they have invaded our countries repeatedly (we choose to call it “terrorist acts”), forcing us to change how we live in our own homes. No amount of political posturing to the contrary will change that simple reality; just look around at our fellow citizens lined up in socked feet at the airport, waiting meekly to be screened and patted down. We have been under assault for close to a decade and a half and have adapted to self-defense measures at home and abroad, and yet through it all we have never made a total commitment to destroy our enemy, public declarations notwithstanding. What has been so resoundingly called by our leaders a “war on terror” has frequently been more crisis management than a campaign aimed at achieving victory.
We are at war—a war which has been declared on us all by a determined Islamist supremacist enemy of the West. Our response thus far has generally been a confusing, borderline condescending modernizing and mentoring of the adversary rather than an unrelenting fight. We have already wasted several trillion dollars and countless lives on various state-building projects (“if they only recognize the benefits of democracy, if they could only see the economic opportunity, if they only…”), on limited counterinsurgency campaigns driven by COIN theories (for “hearts and minds,” as if we seriously thought a PRT or local investment projects could stand up to the other side’s terror and ideological appeal), and on a few massive missteps like the 2003 invasion of Iraq.The time has come to mobilize our societies for the reality of what is facing us. This means that in the Middle East we need an on-the-ground campaign, and soon, against ISIS—one that will not just stop it but shatter it through a series of unequivocal defeats. The West and its regional allies need to break with the myth of the invincibility of the holy warriors, and air strikes and a handful of special operators will not do it.It is also time to stop the flood of migrants entering Europe each day, and time for the European Union to collectively rethink how to manage those who have already arrived. Europe’s leaders must weigh compassion against the imperative of national security, and the risks today are simply too high for the EU to allow for the current de facto open door policy to continue. While there are without a doubt many who are refugees fleeing for their lives, we simply do not know how many jihadis are infiltrating Europe in their midst. If the preliminary reports from Paris are true, at least one of the suicide attackers came from Syria via Serbia in the current flood. We need to work with Turkey, Jordan, and others in the region to prevent them from travelling to Europe until they have been processed in place, and to return those who pose a risk. We are in an emergency and must act accordingly. Democratic constitutions are not suicide pacts, and the imperative to defend the state and its citizens must take priority. The European Union needs to seal its external borders forthwith and place the highest priority on processing those already on the continent and deporting those who are economic migrants or who pose a risk.The final component of our long-term response has to be the hardening of our own ideological resolve to resist. We as a culture have increasingly failed to transmit to younger generations—and to reaffirm to the public at large—the core values of Western civilization. In Europe, postmodernism has deconstructed the sense of consensus and solidarity around freedom as a fundamental value, not just a means to a lifestyle or a consumer choice. An intellectually disarmed society whose educational centers and media shun a direct affirmation of our core civilizational tenets will not provide the necessary societal and national glue to keep us focused, able, and willing to take on this long battle.It is not true that Western ideas will simply prevail because they represent what all mankind craves. The idea of freedom needs to be reaffirmed by every successive generation in the West. Democracies are precious experiments, fundamentally dependent on viable societal and national links, on shared identities and shared notions that freedom and sacrifice are interconnected, and that privilege requires service. Democratic societies need to be nurtured and their values passed from generation to generation, with national histories retaining their ability to inspire rather than becoming narratives that tend only to lament the dark aspects of our heritage.With each attack, notwithstanding the deeply moving displays of solidarity across the world, the freedom of the peoples of the West has been reduced once more by the application of horror aimed at inducing fear. Today after the horrors perpetrated in Paris, the response has been once again resounding reaffirmation that we will go on living, that the killers will not make us live in fear or change our ways, that freedom is non-negotiable. Yet heightened anxiety is palpable not just among Parisians, but also elsewhere on the continent and in the United States. It is time for this equation to be reversed. It is time for our enemies to start fearing us.Peter L. Berger's Blog
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