Peter L. Berger's Blog, page 582

India’s Weak Green Promises

India finally submitted its emissions reduction pledge to the UN a solid six months past the initial deadline. The UN has been collecting these pledges—called Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs)—in the run-up to December’s climate summit in Paris, hoping that a clearer view of national commitments will pave the way for negotiators to produce an international accord.

But if that’s the goal, then India’s submission leaves plenty to be desired, as it doesn’t actually promise to reduce emissions. Instead, New Delhi committed itself to boosting renewable energy production, and only promised to slow its rate of emissions growth rather than actually pulling it down. This is in line with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s comments on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly earlier this week, where he insisted that any Global Climate Treaty needed to work “without affecting our ability to meet the development aspirations of humanity.”India’s environment minister Prakash Javadekar reminded the world exactly where his countries priorities are earlier this week. “We want to clean our air, our water, our energy, our environment,” he said, but noted that “[p]overty reduction is our top priority. Providing power in the next 2,000 days is our priority. We want faster development. My people have a right to grow.”

It’s Finally Here: Senators Introduce Prison Reform Bill

After months of protests, presidential speeches, and impassioned public debate, prison reform got one step closer today to becoming the first major bipartisan legislative achievement of President Obama’s time in office. The New York Times reports on legislation introduced today that the Senate Judiciary Committee is likely to consider later this month:

A bipartisan group of influential senators on Thursday proposed a far-reaching plan to cut mandatory prison sentences for nonviolent offenders and promote more early release from federal prisons in what they described as the most important criminal justice reform effort in a generation. […]

The legislation proposes an extensive set of changes in federal sentencing requirements. Those changes include a reduction in mandatory minimum sentencing to five years from 10 for qualified cases; a reduction in automatic additional penalties for those with prior drug felonies; and more discretion for judges in assessing criminal history.

Many of the new rules could be applied retroactively, and an estimated 6,500 people now in prison would be able to petition for new sentences should the legislation become law. […]

Lawmakers hoping for more sweeping changes did not win the across-the-board reductions in mandatory minimum sentences they had sought when the negotiations began. They compromised to win the backing of Mr. Grassley, who in the past has been critical of broad efforts to reduce prison time.

As currently written, the legislation is sure to disappoint ardent criminal justice reformers on both the left and the right who were hoping for something more sweeping. But it is remarkable that this bipartisan group of Senate heavyweights was able to agree on any legislation at all, let alone legislation this substantive, in the midst of a polarized election season and in the wake of a summer crime wave that had some observers pronouncing prison reform dead in the water.

We have long been in favor of cautious and intelligent efforts to scale back lengthy prison sentences for nonviolent offenders. Such sentences drain government coffers and are tremendously socially disruptive, and many people currently behind bars deserve second chances. So this legislation looks promising, and we hope that it gets careful consideration in both houses and can retain the bipartisan support that has brought the cause so far in such a short period of time.

But don’t expect this bill, or any federal sentencing reform bill, to have a substantial impact on the social phenomenon of mass incarceration. Ninety percent of the more than two million prisoners in the United States are in state prisons, and any real effort to meaningfully reduce America’s total prison population would require aggressive state-level reforms to prosecutorial procedure and sentencing laws (and not just sentencing laws for drug offenders). Many states are already experimenting with these reforms, but the changes may not be cost-free.

America’s prison problem is a thorny one, and it won’t be undone by any single piece of legislation. But the legislation introduced in the Senate seems like a good—if mostly symbolic—first step.

Plan B for Libya

The September 20 deadline for establishing a unity government in war-torn Libya ahead of the UN General Assembly meeting came and went, and reconciliation between Libya’s internationally recognized parliament based in Tobruk and the rival leadership, the new General National Congress (GNC), in Tripoli, was nowhere on the horizon. Anyone who is surprised by this just hasn’t been paying attention.

Reuniting the Libyan militias has been the West’s only endgame for Libya since the oil-rich country slid into a civil war following the 2011 removal of Muammar Qaddafi by a select coalition of NATO countries led by Britain, France, and the United States. But this outcome does not seem to be getting any closer. Indeed, things have gotten much worse.During the 12 months in which the UN Special Envoy for Libya, Spanish Diplomat Bernadino Leon, labored to hammer out a deal, the country became a destination for ISIS fighters taking advantage of the chaos on the ground. The fact that a UN arms embargo prevents weapons transfers to either the Tobruk or Tripoli governments means that ISIS fighters have a distinct advantage: Where two fight, a third may win out. In June, ISIS temporarily took over the city of Sirte on the coast of the Mediterranean, and several days ago a group of their suicide terrorists attacked Libya’s international airport in Tripoli, killing three people.To make matters worse, the lack of functioning government and border controls had enabled many thousands of migrants from North and Sub-Saharan Africa to cross the Mediterranean into Europe, exacerbating Europe’s migrant crisis.Neither the continuation of ISIS’s expansion in Libya nor the persistence of the flow of African migrants are options the U.S. government and those of the European Union can tolerate. It is time to thank Leon for his noble efforts and recognize the reality that the only realistic solution one can aspire to at the moment is the division of Libya into two independent national entities.Following Leon’s maneuvering in Libya over the past year, one always got the false impression that a deal to stabilize the country was just around the corner. A draft proposal on forming a national unity government would be put forth; the two sides would stall in approving it; they would then suggest amendments which, in turn, would get rejected; and public protests would then lead the rival factions to back down. And so it went, and so it goes. The appearance of progress when in fact there is none has served as eyewash as Libya has fallen ever deeper into chaos—and as the flow of migrants through Libya to Europe intensifies.The failure of the Leon doctrine is not a testament to his less-than-stellar mediation skills but rather a reflection of a far deeper reality: the inability of the rival factions to accept the concept of shared governance over the country. Indeed, they don’t even genuinely recognize the notion that Libya is a country.What has complicated the West’s efforts to reunite Libya is the senseless characterization of the Tripoli government as “Islamist.” In our day and age there is no better way to delegitimize a group than to label it as Islamist. This is exactly what happened to the GNC. While the Tobruk government enjoyed broad international recognition and free access to international forums, only Turkey and Qatar recognize the Tripoli government, and its leaders cannot even travel abroad freely. But the notion that Tripoli is more Islamist than the other groups vying for control over Libya—not the least other groups and regimes throughout the Middle East that the West is happy to embrace—is bogus. When it comes to Islamist tendencies, all tribes are more or less cut from the same cloth. By not recognizing those who are in command of most of the country’s institutions and strategic assets—paradoxically, the salaries of Libya’s diplomatic staff representing the Tobruk government all over the world are drawn from the coffers in Tripoli—and who also contributed their fair share to Qaddafi’s removal, the West is undermining any chance for stabilization. Equally delusional is the idea toyed with by some American and European operatives of installing a Western backed Libyan expat who would miraculously rally the tribes behind him. Wasn’t the Ahmed Chalabi mirage in Iraq enough?Now, when the deadline for reunification is passed, it is time to consider a Plan B for Libya. This plan should draw from the country’s history. Back in the early 20th century the territory of today’s Libya was split into three self-governing regions: Cyrenaica, which was located in eastern Libya, more or less in the region controlled today by the Tobruk government, and Tripolitania, situated today in some of the area controlled by the GNC. The third was Fezzan, which was and still is an inhospitable desert region in the southwest sparsely populated by Arab and Berber tribes. Some version of this arrangement, which lasted until 1963 during the reign of King Idris I, should be considered today.Washington and Brussels should first recognize the Tripoli government and treat it as a legitimate party. They should then work to hammer out an agreement with the factions to form an orderly division of Libya into two separate entities, under the condition that these two will work—separately and jointly—to combat the spread of ISIS in North Africa. They also need to cooperate in active measures to create a virtual wall along Libya’s coastline to thwart additional migration into Europe. To this end the Libyan navy and coast guard should be reconstituted, and the arms embargo should be gradually lifted to allow security forces to effectively take on ISIS.In his UN speech this past week, President Obama boasted of America’s achievement in Libya. But he admitted, “Our coalition could have, and should have, done more to fill a vacuum left behind.” And then he somewhat incongruously promised, “In such efforts, the United States will always do our part.” Thinking again on how to fill the vacuum, Obama should take note of a 2006 proposal by the senior Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee—namely, his Vice President, Joe Biden. Then-Senator Biden proposed that Iraq be divided into three separate regions—Kurdish, Shi‘a, and Sunni. At the time the U.S. government and its allies were still consumed by dreams of forming a democratic heaven on the Tigris, and the idea was dismissed. A decade later it no longer sounds so bizarre. Let us hope that, when it comes to Libya, it will take the West less time to recognize that sometimes a divided country is better than a broken and hopeless one.

When Cheap Oil Raises Meat Prices

Bahrainis are going to start paying more for their meat as the government phased out food subsidies this week in the face of budget pressures caused by cheap oil prices. Customers will have to shell out more than twice as much for chicken and beef now, as Reuters reports:

Like other Gulf oil-exporting states, Bahrain has for many years subsidised goods and services such as meat, fuel, electricity and water, keeping prices ultra-low in an effort to maintain social peace. But since its oil income began to plunge last year, the subsidies have become much harder for the government to afford.

The Bahraini government delayed this reform for months, fearing the inevitable popular backlash it’s sure to unleash. It went ahead with it anyways, convinced that the estimated $58 to $77 million it would save annually was worth the potential unrest it might cause. The Gulf country is stuck between a rock and a hard place, to be sure. Cutting social welfare spending could help destabilize an already vulnerable regime that struggled to weather the upheaval of the Arab Spring; tensions between the Sunni Al-Khalifa leadership, army, and police force and the country’s Shi’a majority remain high.

On the other hand, Bahrain stands to run a nearly $4 billion deficit this year thanks in large part to the fact that it’s getting well under half the value for its oil sales than it was last year. Many of the world’s petrostates face the same problem. They can’t help set a floor to oil prices by cutting production because of the need to compete for market share in a world suddenly awash in crude; but neither can they afford to cut spending enough to balance their budgets for fear of provoking domestic turmoil. The Saudis have talked a big game about facing down upstart non-OPEC producers in a game of who-can-endure-longer, but the longer prices stay below $50 per barrel, the more desperate these regimes are going to get. American shale production is driving up Bahraini beef prices, and that could threaten stability in the Middle East.

In Rail Deal, Indonesia Snubs Japan for China

Indonesia has turned to China instead of Japan for its fancy new rail network, a move which surprised Japanese officials and comes as a blow to Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. The Japan Times has more:

Jakarta dropped both Chinese and Japanese high-speed railway construction proposals early this month, citing the high cost of each, and offered to consider instead a cheaper medium-speed railway.

But Sofyan [Djalil, an Indonesian official] told [Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide] Suga that China recently submitted a new proposal to build the high-speed rail link between Jakarta and the West Java provincial capital of Bandung without requiring Indonesian fiscal spending or government debt guarantees […]In Jakarta, Presidential Chief of Staff Teten Masduki told a small group of reporters that Japan failed to win Indonesia’s heart because its proposal was more about government-to-government cooperation, while Jakarta preferred business-to-business cooperation.

Railway competition is part of a larger bidding war for major infrastructure development projects in Asia. After China announced it was establishing the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank in 2013, Japan promised $110 billion for its own Asian Development Bank. In recent plans for a new fiscal stimulus, Beijing expressed high hopes for its rail technology, saying it thinks projects in southeast and central Asia can boost the struggling Chinese economy. Japan has similar aspirations.

From this story, it appears Beijing may simply wanted this deal more than Tokyo did. At the very least, China was more willing (and perhaps more able) to take on lots of risk. If that remains true in the future, Japan is going to have a hard time competing for business.

Move Over, Col. Klink, It’s Time for Sgt. Schultz

Until very recently, Germany seemed to be more and more German every day. Bossing Greece around, lecturing Italy about austerity, telling France it was time for reform, upbraiding the U.S. about environmental policy and the need for tighter regulation of big companies, issuing demands to Europe about accepting more migrants—and smiling while they did it all.

But suddenly it’s looking a bit different. The VW scandal, which gets bigger and more embarrassing every day is taking the shine of Germany’s economic model, its commitment to green policy, its culture of honesty, and the competence of its regulators. The strong trumpet on the migration crisis is moving to something more, well, nuanced, with talk now about reducing benefits to immigrants. And mounting resistance to migrants around Germany is imperiling Merkel’s once impregnable position in the polls.

And then there’s the comic tale of incompetence, bad planning, and dolce far niente that is the Willy Brandt Airport in Berlin. Under planning since 1990, the airport wasn’t necessary because of a need for more plane space, or for economic reasons, or for anything so practical as all that—rather, it was supposed to be a grand symbol of reunification. As an excellent, darkly entertaining piece by Joshua Harris in Bloomberg in July recounts, the 2011 grand opening had to be delayed because of the discovery of design flaws that eventually numbered 150,000. 85,000 of these were deemed “serious.” The worst problems of all were related to its fire suppression systems, which were so dysfunctional that at one point the plan was just to have minimum-wage workers with walkie-talkies looking for smoke. Four years later, it looks like that still hasn’t been sorted out. The Times of London reports:

In the latest snag, officials have demanded that 600 interior walls be replaced as they are not fireproof.

Their ruling comes a week after the government ordered construction inside the main terminal hall to be stopped because the roof was in danger of collapsing under the weight of the ventilation system. The cost of delaying the opening of the Berlin Brandenburg airport — also known as Willy Brandt airport — is £15 million a month. It costs £100,000 a month just to clean the terminals that have yet to accommodate a single passenger.

The airport is now slated to open in 2017 at the earliest.

So is Germany becoming less German? Not really. The German national character, like all national characters, is complicated. The old American TV show Hogan’s Heroes, about U.S. soldiers in a German POW camp during WWII, featured two leading Germans at the camp: Colonel Klink, the disciplinarian, and Sergeant Schultz, who would always look the other way for a cigarette or a bottle of schapps. Clearly, the Brandt Airport and VW are more Schultz than Klink. The other Germany never really went away; Sgt. Schultz is still nursing his schnapps.

Italy and Bulgaria Reject GMOs, Science

Italy and Bulgaria opted to ignore science this week, banning GMOs in their borders. Italian ministers submitted a “request to exclude cultivation of all the GMOs authorised at an EU level from all of Italian territory”, according to the Italian government. Likewise Bulgaria’s Agriculture ministry sent letters to the Commission “[upholding] its position that Bulgaria should be free from cultivating GMO crops.”

Earlier this year the EU struck what it saw as a compromise between the Luddite anti-GMO movement and, well, scientists, allowing its members to decide to reject specific crops even after approval by EU researchers. With this decision Italy and Bulgaria join Scotland, France, Latvia, Greece, and Germany in snubbing GM crops—and the general scientific consensus that they are safe for human consumption.This growing group of European nations all now share the dubious distinction of explicitly rejecting measured, rational evaluations of new crops in favor of green hysteria. Scientists have warned that this decision could come back to bite the countries in the future, for these technologies are going to be increasingly important in a warmer, more crowded world. No issue more starkly lays bare the hypocrisy of the modern green movement than GMOs. If greens were as interested in solving problems as they were in diagnosing them, they’d be the biggest champions of GM technologies. We need smarter green thinkers as badly as we need genetically modified crops.

Signs of Wear and Tear in the Clinton Machine

Celebrities, corporations, and world leaders appear to have skipped a Clinton Foundation event in unusually large numbers, as the Wall Street Journal reports that the 2015 Clinton Global Initiative—the Foundation’s annual New York City soireée—was unable to attract the kind of money and star power that it has commanded in previous years:

After more than a decade, the Clinton Global Initiative, the showpiece event of the Clinton family’s charitable foundation, is losing some of its pizazz. Many of the group’s longtime supporters are avoiding the Clinton spotlight. Some of the most-sought speakers didn’t make it. Piles of media passes sat uncollected. […]

In all, at least six major corporations that sponsored previous Clinton Global Initiative meetings didn’t make cash contributions the event this year. They include global banking giant HSBC PLC, which in 2014 donated $1 million to the conference, accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers and electronics company Samsung. Others include Exxon Mobil Corp., Dow Chemical Co. and Deutsche Bank AG.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi also couldn’t make it, and neither could Hillary Clinton’s former boss:

President Barack Obama declined an invitation, though he attended the conference in previous years.

“The Clinton Global Initiative was just not something we could fold into the president’s schedule this year,” said White House spokesman Josh Earnest. No secretaries in Mr. Obama’s cabinet are attending. Instead, the head of the Overseas Private Investment Corp., a U.S. loan-guarantee agency, appeared.

It would be rash to draw any definitive conclusions from this poor showing at this year’s CGI. It could be that this event was an outlier, and it could be that, as one attendee told the Journal, people are backing away from the Clinton Foundation because it’s campaign season (even though the CGI had no trouble attracting celebrity guests during Hillary’s 2008 campaign). But it’s also possible that something more consequential is happening—that the great Clinton machine, the engine for sustaining and expanding the Clintons’ political power even as the couple is out of office, is showing signs of wear and tear.

As WRM has written, the Clinton Foundation is far more than a charity; it is the beating heart of an unprecedented political operation, standing “where money, influence, and celebrity form a nexus.” If Hillary’s presidential campaign falters, the machine loses its raison d’etre—not for the Clintons, of course, but for the people who give them money. It says something about the durability of the Clinton machine—and the motives that lead people to support the Foundation and its work—that support for the Clinton Foundation may have started to slip now that the Clintons’ chances of once again wielding national power have been threatened.

President Obama’s absence—indeed, the absence of any high-level administration officials—is particularly noteworthy. The president has shown increased interest in building a political machine of his own once he leaves office, and there is likely to be real competition between Obama and Clinton over who becomes the most influential living ex-president. Who will be the elder statesman to whom the party turns and from whom it seeks guidance? Obama is likely to be a much more unabashedly liberal ex-president than Clinton, who remains a man of the 1990s and Third Way triangulation. One of Obama’s long-term political goals is probably to leave the Democratic Party as a more solidly left-wing organization than it was when he entered national politics. That can only be accomplished if Camp Clinton is forced into retreat.

It’s important not to read too much into a single event; it could well be that the machine is alive and well. But the convergence of two trends—the Clintons’ threatened political prospects and the potential challenge from an Obama machine down the line—may be making the whole operation less appealing to the luminaries who normally would have been at the Foundation’s New York gala this week.

How Europe’s Capital Became a Jihadi Recruiting Center

At the turn of the 21st century, a parade of books and articles declared that the American century had ended, and that the new century would be a European century. Matthew Kaminski of Politico wrote recently that in 2000, many believed that “a continent free, whole, prosperous looked within reach” and that “the new century promised pooled sovereignty, peaceful cooperation, soft power, and social justice.” As Kaminski notes, futurologist Jeremy Rifkin wrote that Europe’s “vision of the future is quietly eclipsing the American dream” and that “Europe will run the 21st century.” Washington Post correspondent T.R. Reid predicted that the Euro would replace the dollar as the world’s reserve currency. The Euro, he wrote, “is more than money. It is also a political statement—a daily message in every pocket that cooperation has replaced conflict across the continent.”

Brussels represented the kind of post-national, multicultural city that European bureaucrats hoped the continent would become. In a 2001 report entitled “Brussels: The Capital of Europe”, Italian philosopher and novelist Umberto Eco wrote, “In the presence of a multi-lingual, multi-religious, multi-ethnic Europe, Brussels [is] the center where diversities are not eliminated, but rather exalted and harmonized.” In May 2001, British historian Timothy Garton Ash described Brussels as “a place where highly sophisticated, multilingual men and women from the most diverse backgrounds . . . reconcile national interests and national ways of thinking with the pursuit of larger, common interests.”But the last ten years have produced mounting evidence that this European experiment in multiculturalism is in jeopardy. The governing parties in England, Germany, Denmark, and the Netherlands have explicitly rejected multiculturalism in favor of assimilationist models of immigrant incorporation. In May 2005, French and Dutch citizens voted down a proposed European constitution in nation-wide plebiscites. Since 2008, the sovereign debt crises in the Mediterranean countries have left future of the Euro in question. And in 2017, the British will hold a referendum on whether to withdraw from the European Union.The EU’s capital, Belgium, seems to have become a microcosm of this troubled European project. Like Belgium, the European Union is an artificial multi-national construct, created around conference tables. Belgium is officially bilingual, yet there is almost no Dutch spoken in Wallonia and little French spoken in Flanders. “The division could not be starker if barbed wire separated the two provinces”, Theodore Dalrymple wrote. In 2010, an anti-immigration, euro-skeptic Flemish nationalist party became Belgium’s largest political party, raising the specter of Belgium’s breaking apart. Today, the largest political parties in Flanders are nationalist and free-market oriented, while the largest political party in Wallonia is socialist. The tensions between the Flemish north and the French south echo the divisions within the European Union between the Germans and the Greeks. In 2014, the European Commission warned that Belgium’s debt ratio will reach 108 percent of GDP by 2016, and Belgium came out worse than Italy on the Commission’s stress test scenarios.Gangsta Rap and Jihadi PreachersBut more worrisome than these economic and political cleavages are the anti-societies of gangsta rap, criminal activity, and extremist versions of Islam that are developing in Belgium’s Muslim enclaves. Tourist sites warn visitors to avoid Muslim neighborhoods in the northern parts of the city, especially at night. “Twenty years ago, I was convinced that the young New Belgians would be quickly assimilated”, writes Vander Taelen, a Flemish MP for the Green Party. “But now there is a generation in Brussels that has grown up like rebels without a cause.” Vander Taelen lives near a Muslim neighborhood, and his daughter refuses to set foot in the neighborhood. “She has simply been abused too often”, Valder Taelen writes.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.Jews feel especially besieged. In May 2015, The Institute for the Study of Global Anti-Semitism and Policy (ISGAP) reported that in Brussels, a majority of Muslims students surveyed agreed with these statements: “Jews incite to war and blame others” and “Jews want to dominate everything.” Less than ten percent of non-Muslim students agree with these statements. Such prejudices have led to horrific attacks against Jews. In May 2013, a Jewish Belgian woman, Cindy Meul, was severely beaten by two neighbors after Meul and her wife installed the mezuzah on their front door. In May 2014, a gunman opened fire at the Jewish Museum of Belgium in Brussels, killing four people. The assailant had spent a year in Syria with jihadist fighters. In April 2015, a Belgian insurance company refused to renew The European Jewish Kindergarten’s insurance policy. The insurer said that the recent growth of anti-Semitic attacks on Jewish organizations made the risk of insuring the school too high. European Jewish Congress chief Moshe Kantor has said, “It is clear from the statistics and the feeling on the ground that the situation for Jews of Europe hasn’t been as bad since the end of the Holocaust.”Demographic trends exacerbate the feeling of impending crisis. As in other European countries, the Muslim population of Belgium is young; thirty-five percent of the Moroccans and Turks in the country are below 18 years old, compared to eighteen percent of the native Belgians. Since 2008, the most popular baby boy’s name in Brussels has been Mohammed. By 2030, half of the residents of Brussels will be Muslim. A popular t-shirt among Muslim youth says “2030—then we take over.”Jihadi Recruiting CenterOne 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. Unfortunately, the relentless brutality of the civil war in Syria is creating growing numbers of traumatized young men who are accustomed to violence and are ready to carry their apocalyptic worldview back home. Those willing to commit acts of terror will be connected to a worldwide network of fellow jihadis. The Norwegian Defense Research Establishment’s Thomas Hegghammer found that, between 1990 and 2010, one in nine Western foreign fighters who returned to Europe became domestic terrorists.Palestinian researcher Montasser AlDe’emeh, who grew up in a refugee camp in Jordan and currently lives in Molenbeek, is writing his dissertation on Belgian foreign fighters in Syria. In June 2013, he spent fifteen days in Aleppo with a group of Belgian jihadists. AlDe’emeh reported that the Belgians he met there were in good spirits. ISIS made these young men feel like full-fledged members of a caliphate, fictional though it is. “The Islamic State is giving them what the Belgian government can’t give them—identity, structure”, he wrote. These young people are saying, “It is boring…in Belgium. Here we have nice rivers and Kalashnikovs. Here in Syria we are somebody.”Belgium is a divided country without a common culture, and this complicates the immigrant quest for identity. In Belgium, Flemish, French, and Germans live side-by-side, carefully segregated from one another in their different linguistic and cultural communities. Furthermore, Muslims don’t feel that they are represented politically. Belgian politicians have resisted Muslim attempts to make Arabic Belgium’s fourth official language. Muslims used to vote for the Flemish Social Democrats, a party that is liberal on immigration, but also liberal on social issues (feminism, gay rights, euthanasia). But in 2010, the Social Democrats supported a nationwide burka ban, and, in 2014, the party promoted a controversial child euthanasia bill that nearly all Muslim religious leaders opposed.In Brussels, Turkish and Moroccan mosques haven’t proven helpful in establishing connections with at-risk youth. Rather, at-risk youth are often Islamized through Salafist Internet preachers who offer apocalyptic explanations for the dislocations of modern society. ISIS has run an especially effective social media campaign in this regard, offering young people the opportunity to take part in an apocalyptic struggle prophesized 1,400 years ago. One of ISIS’ favorite hadiths refers to Syria as the land where an epic battle between Muslim armies will take place, leading to the end of times. ISIS draws foreign fighters into its ranks with carefully orchestrated mixtures of images of terror (crucifixions and beheadings) and domestic images of fighters playing with fluffy kittens and jihadi wives proudly displaying food they have cooked.Belgium’s anti-terrorism program blends police vigilance with aggressive prosecution of jihadi recruiters. On January 15, 2015, Belgian police conducted raids against Islamist groups in nine homes in Molenbeek, disrupting imminent terrorist attacks on police stations and on Jewish institutions. That same night, Islamists equipped with military weaponry opened fire on police in the town of Verviers, located on the German border. In the firefight, the police killed two suspects. In an ensuing investigation, police discovered heavy weaponry, explosives, phony police uniforms, and walkie-talkies. On June 8, 2015, Belgian police arrested another 16 suspects in another wave of anti-terror raids.On February 11, 2015 in Belgium’s largest-ever terror trial, a court in Antwerp found a total of forty-five members of the Salafist group Sharia4Belgium guilty of terror-related charges. Only seven of the accused were in court for the ruling. Most others are in Syria, and some may already be dead. It is clear, however, that these punitive measures will not be adequate to deter the growth of jihadi movements. When Saria4Belgium leader Fouad Belkacem was sentenced to twelve years in prison, he said, “Everyone in prison is against the system. Infidels and Muslims alike. There is work to be done. It will be awesome.” Three quarters on the inmates in Belgian prisons are of immigrant background, and many of these prisoners are at risk for radicalization.The Belgian government is supporting a variety of preventative programs for at-risk youth that draw on techniques that help young people leave gangs. These programs bring friends, mentors, moderate imams, and security personnel together to identify at-risk youth and integrate them into their communities. Montasser AlDe’emeh is helping shape some of these programs. He believes that exposure to a more sophisticated study of Islam can help young Belgians rethink their fanatical views. When he meets young people with ISIS’s interpretation of sharia, he engages them in theological discussions to help them develop a more moderate religious perspective. He encourages young people to build relationships and get jobs in order to build a life in Belgian society. “In my efforts to help these youth channel their frustrations, I hope that I can at least prevent them from hurting themselves and others”, AlDe’emeh said.Islam and the Future of EuropeThe struggle to develop a common civic culture that is capable of immigrant incorporation is a problem that plagues most European countries. The attacks on the World Trade Center, the Madrid and London public transport bombings, the Toulouse attacks on Jewish school children, and the Charlie Hebdo massacre dramatize how Europe has become a breeding ground for fundamentalist movements within Islam. French sociologist Oliver Roy has argued that in Europe, Islamist radicalization goes hand in hand with Westernization. The typical European Muslim terrorist becomes radicalized (“born again”) only after indulging in a fully Westernized lifestyle, which includes alcohol and girlfriends. Roy argues that traditionalist Muslims, who practice folk religion with strong cultural and linguistic ties to Muslim cultures, are not prone to extremism. Francis Fukuyama likewise writes, “we profoundly misunderstand contemporary Islamist ideology when we see it as an assertion of traditional Muslim values or culture.” Contemporary jihadi radicalism is rather a “deterritorialized” religion that has been severed from its traditional context.An optimistic reading of Europe’s future anticipates that Muslim youth will eventually adapt to the cultures around them and become carriers of liberal principles imparted to them in the modern West. In The Islamic Challenge, Brandeis University political scientist Jyette Klausen expresses the hope that Euro-Muslims, like the Euro-Communists before them, will eventually embrace democratic pluralism. Gilles Kepel writes that, in this hopeful scenario, European Muslims “will participate fully, as Muslims, in the dynamic, creative dimensions of a universal civilization, while rejecting extremism, along with the violence and chaos that follows in its wake.” Asylum seekers who are fleeing from homicidal theocrats may be at the forefront of such a movement. Angela Merkel’s welcoming response to Syrian refugees has made her a hero in Syria, and it is leading refugees in Germany to seek integration into German culture. Associated Press reporter Kirsten Grieshaber reports that large numbers of Muslim refugees in Germany are attending Lutheran churches and seeking Christian baptism.A more negative reading of Europe’s future focuses on the crime-ridden ghettos where most European Muslims live. European welfare states have trapped Muslim youth in permanent unemployment in countries that contemptuously feed and house them. High minimum wages, payroll taxes, and labor protection laws mean that European economies do not have the dynamism to create large numbers of entry-level service sector jobs. There is also widespread discrimination in hiring practices. A February 2015 survey of Flemish temp agencies found that two-thirds of temp agencies heed clients’ wishes to refrain from hiring cleaning personnel of immigrant descent. Sorbonne scholar Jean-François Amadieu found that in France male job applicants with North African sounding names receive one-third of the invitations for job interviews as white applicants with equivalent qualifications.But for many Muslim youth, cultural dislocation is even more wrenching than economic alienation. Ian Buruma reports that second-generation Moroccan men are ten times more likely to suffer from schizophrenia than native Europeans from similar economic backgrounds. As Junes Kock, a Danish convert to Islam, said, “we Muslims in no way need your help to drag us down into a sad, Western culture where youth suffer from a capitalist existential void which causes widespread depression, addiction,…and an alarmingly high rate of suicide.” Even atheist French novelist Michel Houellebecq, who called Islam the world’s “stupidest” religion, admits that he sees benefits in the Muslim conversion experience. Theodore Dalrymple, another harsh critic of Islam, writes that Muslim girls who are removed from school at the age twelve often end up vastly superior to their white counterparts in manners, outlook, and intelligence.In contrast to American Muslims, who tend to be affluent, integrated, and educated, second- and third-generation European Muslims are more alienated from European cultures than their parents and grandparents were. European Muslim youth are increasingly finding dignity in Muslim identities in closed communities that reject the surrounding culture as “the land of unbelief.” Most of these re-Islamized youth embrace quietist and peaceable Islamic traditions such as sufi mysticism, Tablighi sectarianism, and pietistic salafism. Others embrace Tariq Ramadan’s political mixture of globalism, socialism, and Islamism. A small minority passes from voluntary sectarianism into violence, escaping cultural dislocations to participate in a cosmic struggle that explains their rage and imposes upon them an obligation to retaliate. But for all these youth, their primary identity is a Muslim identity, not a European identity. European countries seem incapable of fashioning a national identity that can connect Muslim youth to a common democratic culture, as the American creed does for immigrants to the United States. Garton Ash wonders whether the personal attitudes and behaviors of millions of Muslims and non-Muslims in Europe can change in time to avert a catastrophe. “I fear not,” he writes, “it’s already five minutes to midnight—and we are drinking in the last chance salon.”A compassionate, organized, and tough-minded response to the Syrian civil war might have advertised the benefits of European civilization to the Muslim world and changed the perception that Europe is hostile to Islam. Europe has squandered this opportunity. In 2011, Europeans and Americans demanded that Bashar Assad step down, but they were unwilling to back up their demands with military power, even as Assad crossed red lines set by the West. In the absence of effective European and American action, Russia and Iran are intervening in Syria in ways that are almost certain to exacerbate the refugee crisis. Europe’s inability, politically, economically, and culturally, to absorb the millions of people who have yet to show up on its shores means that greater numbers of young men will languish in despair in Middle-Eastern and European refugee camps. Such people will become increasingly vulnerable to radicalization by ideologues who offer them hope for an apocalyptic end to the political and religious systems that have failed them.

The New Stage of Crisis and Chaos

Russia began its bombing campaign over Syria yesterday. Zero Russian bombs fell on the ISIS stronghold of Raqqa, however, with planes instead attacking the provinces of Homs, Hama and Latakia—areas where Assad has faced recent setbacks. Though the strikes hit some al-Qaeda affiliated al-Nusra positions, they also appear to have targeted positions held by more moderate militias allied to the Free Syrian Army—groups which have been receiving weapons through the CIA since at least 2013.

Meanwhile, relations between Iran and Saudi Arabia soured even further this week. Iran doubled its estimate of how many of its citizens died in the recent deadly stampede in Mecca, and called for Saudi Arabia to lose its stewardship over the hajj. The Supreme Leader said that the Saudis were not doing enough to repatriate the bodies of the victims in a timely fashion, and threatened an unspecified harsh response should the Kingdom fail in its duties.At the same time, Saudi officials announced that an Iranian ship full of weapons was intercepted off the coast of Yemen, presumably intended for the Houthi rebels. Both Tehran and the Houthis denied that they had anything to do with the vessel.A small step back can help one make sense of just what is going on in the greater Middle East. A Russian-Iranian axis has clearly formed, based on the convergence between Iran’s goal to become the dominant power in the region and Russia’s fear of radical Sunnism stirring up its own restive Caucasus. Putin, characteristically a fast-moving, opportunistic player, has exploited the naive and slow decision-making process of the White House—plus its evident determination to pay virtually any price in order to stay out of the Syrian conflict as far as possible—to change the balance of forces in Syria and, therefore, in the region.And Iran, for its part, is using this alliance, and its stronger position globally after the nuclear deal, to move toward a more aggressive and confrontational regional role. It is not directly confronting the United States, but is stepping up the pressure on American allies, some of whom are now beginning to wonder if the they are ex-allies.In particular, the struggle between Iran and Saudi Arabia is heating up. In this struggle, Iran is in the ascendant at the moment, though the Saudis are pushing back hard.The consequences of the competition include a gradual tilt of Sunni opinion toward increased radicalism against a background of intensifying sectarian war. Longstanding foci of American policy in the region, including the peace process between Israelis and Palestinians, are falling by the wayside. There is a brutalization of governance in many countries, and the violence in the areas of warfare is becoming more entrenched and less constrained by any limits. In communal struggles for survival, after all, there are few limits and no rules.So far, the conflict has mostly been kept away from the most important facilities for oil production and shipment, and the core regimes in the conflict have not yet experienced internal instability on a major scale. Iran on one side and the Gulf monarchies on the other have been exporting violence and destruction without suffering severe internal problems—yet. It is not clear what the consequences of further ideological and religious polarization, intensification of the sectarian and great power conflicts and sense of existential threat will be.