Peter L. Berger's Blog, page 600

Avoiding the Crush of the Rush

Changes coming to New York’s Port Authority Bus Terminal have a lot to teach us about the future of transit. The WSJ reports that the Terminal will be changing how it organizes busses, moving around where the vehicles leave from and arrive to:

The aim is to give the carriers better control over their dispatching, so if a problem arises it can shuffle buses as needed. That way, they don’t have to work through the other carrier whose buses may be at nearby gates or send buses out of the terminal, only to re-enter to access gates on another floor […]

Earlier operational fixes have helped get more buses into the terminal during evening commutes, the authority said […]The result, according to the Port Authority, has been reduced bus congestion, less crowding of passengers waiting for buses, and fewer buses clogging city streets.

This story suggests three transit lessons. First, the humble bus remains the key to mass transit. It’s less expensive and more popular than rail.

Second, using existing infrastructure more effectively can postpone or even eliminate the need for massive, new construction that costs billions. There is a lot more to come here as smarter cars and busses—and ultimately autonomous vehicles including busses—make better use of existing roads and terminals.Finally, as telework takes hold—and it will—look for declines in the commuter rush. Telework won’t just mean that some people stay home all, or almost all, of the time. More commonly, it will mean that workers will stay home (or at convenient, shared satellite office facilities in the exurbs) for one or more days a week, coming in and going home at more flexible times to avoid the crush of the rush—and this, too, will have implications for infrastructure.The Big Infrastructure lobby, backed by unions and crony construction companies, will scream bloody murder and warn of imminent disaster as some of these changes take hold. But, in fact, while not totally fictitious, the so-called “infrastructure deficit” is one of the country’s problems that’s not as bad as advertised.

The Solar Curse Goes for a Three-peat

The hothouse solar industry, in general built on subsidies and hype, is known for throwing up huge companies that quickly fall apart. The last two companies to become the world’s largest makers of solar panels have both since gone into bankruptcy; now the third to hit the number one spot may face the same fate. Bloomberg reports:

Rising to the top of the solar industry is the easy part. Staying there has proven more of a challenge.

No one illustrates that better these days than Yingli Green Energy Holding Co., which was until last year the world’s biggest panel company by shipments. It’s lost two-thirds of its market value in 2015 and in May acknowledged “substantial doubt” about whether it can stay afloat amid a pile of debt. The Baoding, China-based manufacturer will report second-quarter results Tuesday and analysts are expecting a 16th straight loss.

There are two big problems with the solar industry as a whole. First, the resource simply isn’t good enough yet to compete without subsidies and a cozy crony relationships with government. Second, green prejudice is keeping us from deploying solar in the most useful and effective way. As we’ve noted, fields of GMO soybeans don’t need fertilizer or pesticides, which means that solar is replacing the energy that used to go into running the fertilizer and pesticide plants. Combining solar with GMOs is a wildly successful way to decarbonize the economy—without reducing efficiency or living standards.

But organized greens will be fighting these ideas when the last polar bear slips from the last iceberg in the warming Arctic. Irrational prejudice and hatred of science permeate the contemporary green movement. It would rather see serial bankruptcies in solar boondoggles than any actual progress made on decarbonization if that progress violates one of the movement’s many irrational taboos (in this case, against GMOS).It’s a sad state of affairs: The world’s worst-led social movement continues to flounder and flail.

Time to Rein in Public Sector Unions

The union movement has changed considerably since American workers began observing Labor Day more than a century ago. Unions in the 1880s consisted of private-sector workers voluntarily banding together to fix horrendous working conditions. This is what most Americans envision when they think about unions: workers on the assembly line, or on a construction site, bargaining for safety or higher wages.

But half of today’s union movement works in government-sector jobs. A movement formed to defend blue-collar laborers now fights primarily to help white-collar workers expand government.These transformations have been underway for the past half century. The problems that initially attracted members to unions vanished a long time ago. Federal law, for example, prohibits child labor and requires safe working conditions. Workers comp programs provide for those injured on the job. The forty-hour workweek has been standard since before any employees today started working.As unions scored these protections, employee interest in unionizing waned. It has been many years since unions organized more new workers than they lost to unionized firms going out of business. In the 1950s, one out of every three workers belonged to a union. Today less than 7 percent of private-sector workers do.Unions Come to GovernmentGovernment unions have been the only exception to this downward trend. The labor movement originally thought organizing government employees made no sense. Civil service laws protect them from mistreatment, and the government has no profits to bargain over. In 1955 AFL-CIO President George Meany opined that “bargaining collectively is impossible in government.”In the late 1950s, however, the unions came to see government employees as an untapped source of new members and dues. Starting with Wisconsin in 1959, many states began allowing—or requiring—collective bargaining in government. In the next two decades, unions organized millions of government employees.Union membership has flourished in government since then. Unionized government agencies have no non-union competitors. No matter how inefficiently they operate, they stay in businesses. Moreover, government unions don’t run for re-election, so they don’t have to persuade new employees to support them.Unions now represent two out of every five government employees, and those employees make up half the union movement. Twice as many union members work in the Post Office as in the entire domestic auto industry.Lobby for More GovernmentThis shift to government has transformed the nature and interests of the union movement. Private-sector unions often lobby for special treatment, such as trade barriers to limit foreign competition, but they fundamentally desire a strong and growing private sector. That’s why the AFL-CIO endorsed the 1963 Kennedy tax cuts. Today’s construction trades unions support the Keystone XL pipeline for the same reason.Government unions primarily want a bigger government. More government employees mean more government union members. Higher taxes mean more money they can bargain over. So government unions have campaigned for almost every major tax increase in recent history.For example, unions provided much of the financing for the successful 2012 California sales and income tax hike ballot initiative. Two years earlier, government union members rallied for higher taxes in Springfield, Illinois. With chants of “Raise my taxes!” and “Give up the bucks!” they helped persuade then-Governor Pat Quinn and the legislature to raise the Illinois income tax by two-thirds. Almost all that money went to fund government employee pensions.Samuel Gompers, the first president of the American Federation of Labor, was once asked what his members wanted. He memorably answered “More.” Today’s government unions give the same answer when asked how much Americans should pay in taxes.Conversely, anything that shrinks the size (or increases the efficiency) of government means fewer government union members and fewer union dues. So government unions fiercely oppose government spending cuts. They resist any outsourcing to the private sector, no matter how much it may save taxpayers. And they certainly don’t want to let parents send their children to non-union charter or private schools.Indeed, unions now see themselves as a left-wing political movement. At its most recent convention, the AFL-CIO resolved that it “has as a founding ideal the assembling of a broad progressive coalition for social and economic justice.”Of course many government employees do not support this agenda. However, their views matter little to union leaders. In the 25 non-right-to-work states, these workers must pay dues anyway. And the unions don’t have to earn their support in a re-election bid.Disaster for TaxpayersThis transformation of the labor movement has had disastrous consequences for taxpayers and the recipients of public services. In most states, the average government employee makes considerably more than comparable private-sector workers, with most of that difference coming in back-loaded retirement benefits. This pushes taxes higher and squeezes out funding for other programs.Consider California. In the late 1990s, Golden State unions pressured the legislature to allow most government employees to retire at age 55 with a pension worth three-fifths of their final salary. This increased the total compensation of the average government employee in California to a third more than an equivalently skilled private-sector worker.These labor costs have started pushing California cities into bankruptcy. Stockton and Vallejo have already filed for bankruptcy, and many more cities face severe financial shortfalls. Even San Jose, in the heart of thriving Silicon Valley, now spends more than a fifth of its general fund on retirement benefits—and still has multi-billion-dollar unfunded pension liabilities.These problems extend well beyond California. Moody’s estimates states and cities face more than $2 trillion in unfunded pension liabilities. Retirement benefits consume nearly 30 percent of school payrolls in Michigan. Chicago’s liabilities have hit levels the city cannot repay—more than $80,000 per household. Across the country, government labor costs have driven taxes higher while cutting into core services.Conservative Labor ReformsThis transformation of the union movement should make government labor reforms a top conservative priority. Government unions are a powerful institutional force opposed to limiting the size and scope of government. They make top conservative (and politically popular) priorities—from tax relief to school choice—very difficult to enact. Creating them was a mistake that states should rectify.Several states—such as Virginia and North Carolina—never permitted collective bargaining in government. States that did should return to this example.Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker did this in 2011. He signed legislation eliminating the power of unions to bargain over government benefits and work rules, and strictly limited bargaining over wages. This enabled Walker to transform a $3.6 billion budget shortfall into a surplus and $2 billion in tax cuts. Savings came not just from cutting government pay, but also from operating more efficiently.Wisconsin school districts, for example, saved tens of millions of dollars through lower health insurance premiums. Previously, the Wisconsin Education Association (WEA) had required school districts to buy health insurance through WEA Trust, a union-backed insurance provider. Once school districts were allowed to shop around, they got lower rates.Similarly, Wisconsin unions can no longer force their work rules on the state or local governments. The seniority system that forced Milwaukee Public Schools to fire Megan Sampson a week after naming her their “Outstanding First Year Teacher” has now become optional.Unions threatened to end Scott Walker’s political career for taking them on. They failed miserably. Walker won a union-backed recall election handily. He won his regular re-election bid by almost the exact margin he first won in 2010. Walker’s reforms cost him no political support.Exit polls in 2014 showed that Walker won the political argument over the role of unions in government. Wisconsin voters view government unions unfavorably by a 52–44 percent margin.Less Sweeping Reforms Still ConstructiveHowever, political and legal realities mean not every state can follow Scott Walker’s example. In states with referendum laws, unions can put reforms to a ballot before they take effect. Unions’ substantial financial resources immediately put the “Yes” side at a disadvantage, and the referendum occurs before voters can even see the reform’s benefits. Such a campaign killed Ohio Governor John Kasich’s collective bargaining reforms.In other states, legal realities make removing government unions’ powers impossible. The Missouri and Florida Supreme Courts have interpreted their state constitutions as expressly protecting collective bargaining. Their courts would void any legislation eliminating it in government. In these states less sweeping reforms, ones that would still roll back unions’ ability to grow government, may be possible.Right-to-WorkFirst and foremost, right-to-work (RTW) laws making union dues voluntary are a good target for reformers. Without these laws, collective bargaining agreements typically require workers to pay union dues or equivalent fees. These dues run from $500 to $1,000 per year. Workers who don’t pay get fired. Government unions collect billions through these mandatory dues—money they use to bargain for bigger government and to elect left-wing politicians. Mandatory dues effectively function as public financing for one half of the ideological spectrum.Given the choice, many government employees want no part of this. Scott Walker included right-to-work in his Act 10 reforms. By 2013, a third of teachers in Wisconsin quit their unions. The Michigan Education Association lost one-eighth of its membership in school districts for which the right-to-work law has kicked in.Right-to-work legislation is a popular and easily defended proposal. Gallup polling finds Americans support right-to-work by better than a three-to-one margin. Unsurprisingly, union efforts to defeat pro-right-to-work politicians have largely failed.Recently Wisconsin, Indiana, and Michigan have passed right-to-work. Conservative legislative majorities in each state are larger now than before. Not one Michigan legislator who voted for right-to-work lost in the general election. Michigan unions didn’t even try repealing it via ballot initiative.Union Re-Election VotesAnother target for reform is to force government unions to regularly run for re-election. The vast majority of government employees never voted to belong to a union. Rather they are represented by a union their predecessors voted for in the 1960s and 1970s. This is a major reason government union density remains so high.For example, New York City public school teachers voted to join the United Federation of Teachers (UFT) in 1961. Not one of those teachers remains on the job. Yet the UFT represents every teacher in the district to this day and collects about $1,000 in mandatory dues from each of them. This both inflates union membership and makes it very difficult for government employees to hold their unions accountable.States can fix this problem by requiring government unions to regularly run for re-election, as Tennessee and Wisconsin did in 2011. These re-election votes hold union leaders regularly accountable to the workers they purportedly represent. They also make it easy for workers to get rid of unwanted representation. Wisconsin unions have lost roughly a fifth of the re-election votes they contested.Importantly, union re-election laws should require unions to surpass a minimum quorum of support. Unions have considerable experience mobilizing small groups of supporters. Absent a quorum requirement, unions will win many elections even when most workers do not support them.This happened to homecare workers in Michigan. The Service Employees International Union (SEIU) persuaded former Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm to hold a mail election on unionizing them. Less than a fifth of homecare workers voted, but the SEIU mobilized and won a majority of those who did.Lacking a Right-to-Work law, the union took more than $36 million in dues from these workers’ Medicaid reimbursement checks. Then state lawmakers made participation voluntary. Four-fifths of the homecare workers immediately left the union.States should require unions to regularly demonstrate the active support of a substantial number of employees to remain their representatives. Both Tennessee and Wisconsin required a majority of all employees—not just employees who voted—to support collective bargaining. Alternatively, states could require unions to win an election with at least 50 percent turnout.Such re-election legislation would be hard for unions to defeat in a referendum. Polls show over four-fifths of union members support regular union re-election votes.Union TransparencyRight-to-work and union re-election votes would make unions more accountable to their members. That accountability has limited value if workers do not know what their union does. Federal law requires private-sector unions to disclose their spending to their members. It does not require similar disclosure for most government unions.In the private sector, this transparency has ended many union officers’ careers. For example, Los Angeles Times reporters discovered that SEIU Local 6434 funneled hundreds of thousands of dollars to businesses owned by its president’s family members. These reports sparked an FBI investigation that lead to embezzlement convictions of that president and several other high-ranking union officers.Transparency also exposes unions’ priorities. Private-sector union members can easily see how much their union spends on politics and how much it spends representing them. They can see how much their union officers pay themselves.Last year, for example, several major unions donated almost half a million dollars to Planned Parenthood, America’s largest abortion provider. Union members who consider abortion the taking of innocent life now know their dues fund it.Unfortunately, most government union locals don’t have to file these transparency reports. Reformers should press states to pass their own transparency laws for government unions. These requirements should mirror the federal forms and require unions to categorize and itemize their expenses and receipts, as well as officer salaries. Union members should know what they get for their dues—and have the opportunity to decide whether they want to keep paying.Citizen Approval of Government PayThese measures would make government unions more accountable to their members, but they would do less to protect taxpayers. To do that, states should adapt a familiar policy—public referendums on bonds—to collective bargaining.Most states require voter approval of state or local government bond issues. The reformers who passed these measures wanted to ensure that politicians could not commit citizens to long-term financial obligations without their consent. When these requirements took effect in the 1880s, government unions didn’t exist. Today they do, and improvident labor contracts threaten many cities with bankruptcy.States should give voters a say on these obligations. States with collective bargaining in government should require a public vote on new union contracts. They could hold votes either on all contracts, or on contracts in which compensation increased faster than the rate of inflation.Of course, the public would probably approve most union contracts. Most bond initiatives pass, too. This reform would nonetheless be quite valuable. It would prevent government unions from controlling both sides of the bargaining table by electing political allies. They would still have to persuade voters to go along.End Public SubsidiesBeyond these measures, a final target for reform is the elimination of taxpayer subsidies for government unions. Virtually every state with collective bargaining automatically deducts union dues from members’ paychecks. This greatly reduces their fundraising costs.Most states also directly subsidize government unions’ administrative costs through “release time.” This allows government employees to do union business while on the clock. The public pays union officers to negotiate collective bargaining agreements, file grievances, and perform other union work.Release time costs taxpayers a lot of money. A recent lawsuit revealed the City of Phoenix spends $4 million a year on it. Nationwide, researchers estimate states and local governments spend roughly a billion dollars a year paying government employees to do union work. This subsidy significantly reduces government union spending on administrative expenses. In doing so, it frees up money for them to spend on politics and other activities.Release time and payroll deductions are unjustified public subsidies to government unions. The government shouldn’t allow any interest group to use public resources for private gain. It certainly shouldn’t give public subsidies to left-wing activist groups.Today’s unions look nothing like the movement that inspired Labor Day. Workers did not unite in the 1880s to protest insufficiently inflated government salaries, or to demand that Congress raise taxes. Today half of all union members work in government, and these unions have become a permanent lobby for bigger and more expensive government.Reformers should push to eliminate collective bargaining in government where possible. In states where that is infeasible, they should push through the many reforms that would give taxpayers a better deal.

The End of the SAT?

It’s been a tough year for the SAT. Colleges are dropping the exam left and right on the grounds that a test-optional regime would increase student diversity. The most recent College Board data, released Thursday, shows that race and income gaps in test performance are stubbornly persistent, and that scores are falling overall. Inside Higher Education reports:

SAT scores dropped significantly for the class of college-bound seniors this year. All three sections saw declines — and the numbers were down for male and female students alike.

At the same time, SAT scores showed continued patterns in which white and Asian students, on average, receive higher scores than do black and Latino students. And, as has been the case for years, students from wealthier families score better than do those from disadvantaged families. […]The release of SAT scores comes at a significant time for the College Board…  According to the National Center for Fair and Open Testing, a critic of the SAT, 27 colleges and universities have dropped ACT/SAT requirements in the last year — more than have dropped in any other 12-month period…Much of the criticism from colleges has been about fears that the SAT scores seem to reflect family income, and that, on average, black and Latino students receive significantly lower scores than white and Asian students do.

Anti-testing advocates are already pouncing on the disappointing results to argue for “test-optional” admissions policies, like the one George Washington University adopted in July. When GW—the largest and most influential school to go test-optional so far—dropped the SAT requirement, it cited a desire to “broaden access for those high-achieving students who have historically been underrepresented at selective colleges and universities, including students of color, first-generation students and students from low-income households.” On the surface, the new data showing unequal testing outcomes supports GW’s reasoning. Expect more colleges to drop the test in the coming year, explaining their decision using GW-style rhetoric about egalitarianism and diversity. But responding to disappointing data by simply dropping the test is a lazy and probably harmful approach, for two reasons—one well-documented, and the other often overlooked.

First, dropping the SAT while handwaving about “diversity” is often simply a politically convenient way for colleges to serve their own narrow interests, without doing anything to actually admit more low-income or minority students. Stephen Burd has reported on two ways test-optional policies can boost a college’s selectivity profile: (1) by increasing the number of applications (and, incidentally, the number of hefty application fees) it receives each year, and (2) by increasing a the average SAT score for admitted students, because applicants with higher scores are more likely to send them in. It’s ironic, but not surprising, that colleges are still self-conscious about their students’ average scores on a test they claim is useless and discriminatory. It’s also not particularly surprising that, as Burd notes, a 2014 University of Georgia study “did not find any evidence that test-optional colleges had made ‘any progress in narrowing these diversity-related gaps after they adopted test-optional policies.'”Moreover, even if colleges were sincere about dropping the test purely to increase the number of poor and minority students they admitted, it’s not exactly clear how going test optional would help them do so. High-income students who can afford expensive test prep courses naturally have an advantage on standardized tests. But these students can also afford tutors for their academic coursework, college coaches to help them map out their extra-curricular activities, and professional editors to help them polish their admissions essays. Anti-testing crusaders often repeat the well-known fact that poor students, and black and hispanic students, get lower test scores. Well, low-income students and students of color get lower high school grade-point averages as well, and no colleges have proposed becoming high school-optional.Anybody who has gone through the college application process knows that the entire system, from kindergarten to AP classes, favors rich kids who know the system. Eliminating a single admissions criterion will not change this. If anything, making the admissions process based more on subjective factors like essays, extra-curricular activities, and applicant “personality” will tilt the process even more in favor of students who know the ins and outs of what admissions officers want to hear—students that are disproportionately rich and white.There are, in fact, many avenues that colleges could explore to help level the admissions playing field, other than simply dropping more and more potentially informative admissions criteria. For example, they could make tuition more affordable, provide more grants for poor students, practice affirmative action, recruit aggressively in low-income areas, and lobby the government to promote proven initiatives, like school choice and charter schools, that help students trapped in failing education systems. But while those steps would actually require some sacrifice from colleges, the incentives are currently aligned so that dropping the SAT will earn schools fawning media coverage, expand their applicant pools, and boost their rankings.Hopefully, the new College Board data will alert higher education professionals of the need to take real steps to ease educational inequality in the United States, rather than leading more colleges to simply drop the test, pat themselves on the back, and sweep real inequalities under the rug.

American Ethanol on the Rocks

It’s been a bad week for U.S. ethanol producers after two plants, one in Wyoming and one in Virginia, closed their doors. Their shuttering signals a retrenchment in the fledgling biofuel industry that’s struggling to deal with falling demand and shrinking margins. The two shuttered facilities were so-called “destination plants,” sited well outside of the corn belt that produces their product’s primary feedstock. While just a few years ago their existence made sense thanks to government mandates creating an artificial market for corn-based ethanol, today it is harder to justify. Reuters reports:

[Those plants] that suspended operations this week were built in the ethanol boom years of the 2000s when the promise of increased U.S. government blending mandates could justify the cost of having to buy railcars full of corn from hundreds of miles away. That is no longer the case for some of these “destination” plants.

And demand is falling. With gasoline cheaper than ethanol in some parts of the country, little demand is seen beyond the U.S. government blending requirements that mandate nearly every gallon of gasoline sold in the United States contain 10 percent ethanol.

This is just the beginning. One ethanol trader told Reuters they “wouldn’t be surprised to see more” destination plants close as they prove incapable of turning a profit in a tightening market as a result of their increased transportation costs. And while these plants make up the minority of America’s ethanol production, their closing might be a kind of canary in the coal mine for the industry. Refiners can only blend so much biofuel into gasoline (beyond 10 percent by volume, ethanol can start harming older engines, creating what’s come to be known as the “blend wall”), a limit that ties ethanol’s fate to gasoline demand.

But even as that demand ticks upwards while prices decline to 11-year lows, ethanol is struggling to make it into your car’s gas tank—gasoline is simply cheaper without the biofuel blend, so refiners have no reason to demand any more than the government mandates.This is just the latest chapter in the long, sordid story of America’s biofuel boondoggle. What was once billed as an eco-friendly way to bolster our country’s energy security has instead turned out to be a policy disaster. Our federally mandated corn-based ethanol program starves the world’s poor by raising global food prices (and potentially incites riots), costs consumers an estimated $10 billion annually, and worst of all isn’t even green. It’s no surprise then to see contractions in the already struggling industry. The sooner we reform or repeal this harebrained policy, the better.

Malaysia and US Talk Spying and Flying

Malaysia has reportedly been in secret talks about giving U.S. spy planes access to its runways, as Josh Rogin writes at BloombergView:

Following a series of incursions into Malaysian waters by Chinese vessels in recent months, talks between the U.S. government and the office of Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak have intensified, two senior U.S. defense officials said. The U.S. side has been pressing Najib’s government to allow the U.S. Navy to fly both P-8 Poseidon and P-3 Orion maritime surveillance planes from Malaysian airstrips over South China Sea areas where the Chinese government has been rapidly building artificial islands.

There has been no final agreement between the two governments, but the talks themselves represent a shift of Malaysia’s long effort to straddle the fence between the U.S. and China.

China, the most obvious target for U.S. spy missions in Asia, is Malaysia’s biggest trading partner. Indeed, the big Malaysia–China news earlier this week had been about joint military exercises between the two countries. Yet as we’ve written before, though Asian states cannot avoid cooperating with Beijing on certain key issues, that doesn’t mean they are happy about China’s rise.

The more China asserts itself, the more concerned other Asian governments become, and the more likely they are to band together. In May, Malaysia and Japan upgraded their relationship from “bilateral ties” to “strategic partnership.” If Malaysia does enter into closer military ties with the United States, it would be another sign that China’s regional rivals are indeed looking to forming a net around it—though at the moment Beijing doesn’t seem terribly convinced that meaningful opposition to its rise exists.

Puerto Ricans to Spain: Take Us Back

As Puerto Rico struggles to deal with its crippling debt crisis, some of its residents have come up with a novel solution: rejoin Spain. The Guardian reports:

“By returning to Spain, we’ll have autonomy,” said José Nieves Seise, who in 2013 founded the group Reunification of Puerto Rico with Spain. “With autonomy Puerto Rico could have sufficient powers to boost the economy and attract foreign investment.”

On Sunday, as the commonwealth’s financial crisis continues to cast a shadow over its relationship with the US, some of the group’s more than 3,000 members will gather in Puerto Rico for their annual assembly to explore the idea of becoming the 18th autonomous region of Spain.The movement is based on a mix of nostalgia and alternative history, with Nieves Seise pointing to what he calls a flawed depiction of Puerto Rico as a colony of Spain. “In reality it was an integral part of Spain. The US invaded us in 1898, and they separated us against our will.”

The movement (and to a lesser extent, the Guardian‘s reporting of it) depends on some, ah, novel interpretations of history. And then there’s the small matter of the economic predicament Spain itself is in:

As Spain struggles to shake off the lingering effects of a double-dip recession, Pons Rodríguez dismissed concerns that taking in Puerto Rico and its $72bn worth of public debt could dampen Spain’s tepid economic recovery. “This shouldn’t be an impediment to working together,” he said. “The more united we are, the better chance we have of overcoming issues like debt.”

The story really is a treasure trove of quotations, and if you have a few minutes and want a laugh, read the whole thing. Meanwhile, back in the real world, Puerto Rico reached a tentative agreement with some of its creditors to resolve debt related to its power company this week. It’s a good first step, but there’s a long, hard slog to go.

For a sense of just how long and how hard, consider this: someone proposed rejoining Spain as a solution to a debt crisis.

Emperor Nero’s Lesson on Ukraine

How does one fight a war for a buffer state?

A war for the maintenance or reestablishment of a buffer state is a peculiar beast. It is not a war of conquest, because direct territorial control would undermine the purpose of the buffer. It is also not a war aiming to inflict a massive defeat on the rival power, due to the recognition that such an outcome would be undesirable and unfeasible (hence, it is better to be separated). The objective is to bring back a zone of separation, lowering the tensions between the rivals and allowing for an economy of force in that region.The war for Ukraine is a case in point. A geopolitically independent, economically stable, and militarily confident Ukraine would separate a revanchist Russia from the West, establishing a buffer of sorts. It would also allow Europe and the United States to enjoy an economy of force in the region, continuing the security posture of the past decades characterized by anemic defense expenditures, limited and decreasing presence of American military might in the region, and the freedom to focus on other regions or issues.For those in the West who are willing to restore the status quo ante in Ukraine and in the wider region, the initial question—how does one compete for the restoration of a buffer?—is pertinent.A small episode in Roman history can provide some guidelines. As we now have Ukraine and Russia, Rome had Armenia and Parthia.Parthia was Rome’s rival in Asia. But Rome had a relatively thin military presence in the region and no troops in Armenia. Preoccupied with its vast empire and lengthy frontiers, Romans seemed to have been counting on Armenia’s desire to maintain its own independence and a corresponding willingness to put up a fight in case of Parthian advances. They also hoped that Parthia, weakened by internal strife, would be reluctant to expand its influence too close to the Roman Empire, thus escalating tensions and risking a war. Armenia served as a buffer state, under neither Parthian nor Roman direct control, independent enough to care for its own autonomy and yet dependent on the adjacent great powers’ will to maintain stability.The metric of success for the Armenian buffer was obviously the absence of a war between the rival great powers. But for Rome one crucial metric of success was also its ability to leave Anatolia and Syria relatively undefended, with most of the legions deployed along more restless frontiers such as the Rhine and Danube. For the buffer to fulfill this role, Rome had to ensure that Armenia would not fall under the control of Parthia, whose forces were much closer. The way to achieve this was to ensure that the ruler of Armenia was friendly to Rome. Thus was balance maintained: Rome had an ally in the buffer state’s leader, Parthia its forces on the buffer state’s border. By intervening in Armenia in 58 AD and replacing a pro-Roman leader with one more servile to Parthia, the Parthian Arsacids altered this delicate arrangement.This relatively small Parthian move, and the resulting change in the internal political posture of Armenia, led to the one foreign war of great importance under Emperor Nero, from 58 to 63 AD. The historian Tacitus described the war at length in the Annales, perhaps eager to cover a subject other than Messalina’s sexual perversion or Nero’s perseverance in committing matricide.Nero could have let Parthia’s limited intervention slide. He had plenty of nasty courtly affairs to occupy his mind and a cornucopia of amusements to satisfy his perversions. Moreover, Armenia was a distant and poor place that the vast majority of Romans did not value very much. Parthia also had internal political problems and was relatively weak, and thus did not seem inclined to continue its westward march past Armenia. Finally, war was risky for many reasons, including the possibility—dreaded by many emperors—of a victorious general returning home surrounded by his soldiers and becoming capax imperii.Neither Rome nor Parthia appeared eager for a direct confrontation over the internal arrangements of a third country. Parthia’s little intervention in Armenia could easily have been interpreted as a silly little annoyance of no real consequence, one that did not merit Rome’s attention and resources. Yes, Rome lost a friendly ruler in Armenia, but there had been no Roman military losses and the imperial territory had not been attacked.Nero had a choice: an uncertain war or a dishonorable peace (“bellum anceps an pax inhonesta”) (Tacitus, Annales, XV:25). The Emperor, in perhaps his best foreign policy (or policy in general) decision, chose war. And in a corollary decision, also of great luck if not wisdom, he picked a capable and experienced general, Gnaeus Domitius Corbulo, to lead the conflict.The war over Armenia was that peculiar type of a war for a buffer zone, requiring great martial and political skills. It was a war to restore stability, not to attain supremacy; to rebuild one’s own credibility rather than to destroy the rival; to restore an independent buffer, not to conquer new lands. But it was a great power confrontation nonetheless, with all of the associated dangers of massive devastation and systemic disorder.Corbulo’s immediate objective was the restoration of a Roman friend as Armenia’s ruler. But the the larger purpose of his military response to Parthia was to decrease Rome’s costs of maintaining security on the Asian frontier by ensuring geopolitical autonomy for Armenia. He had to fight a war for a buffer zone; a war for Roman reputation and regional stability.The war for the Armenian buffer had one main goal: to restore Rome’s image.In a strategic interaction over a buffer, reputation matters, perhaps even more than in large-scale direct confrontation. The existence of a buffer state is contingent on a set of often unspoken and unwritten rules that are respected because one side fears the other. Neither great power has a military presence in the buffer. But over this state there is an aura of great power interest—the expectation that the great powers separated by it will fight for its independence. When that expectation weakens for whatever reason, one of the great powers senses an opportunity to expand toward the buffer.Another way to put this is that a buffer state is protected by a form of extended deterrence—in its simplest formulation, this is a great power’s promise to protect its allies—but without the material commitments that usually accompany it. There are no bases in the buffer, no troops rotating in and out. The buffer is defended by the image of might projected by the interested great powers, not by the actual forces they field in and around it.Romans knew this well. Appearance—species­—was crucial in their conduct of foreign policy. An appearance of power was preferable because it allowed economy of force: The actual use of force was then unnecessary. An image of power prevented the clash of armies, and it allowed a state, Rome in this case, to have its armies dispersed and mobile rather than fixed in a place to guarantee the stability of deterrence. This is how Rome maintained security along a frontier, the length of which could not be constantly patrolled. As Tacitus puts it, the frontier potentates—among them, Armenia—relied on Rome: “Iberian, Albanian, and other kings, to whom our greatness was a protection against any foreign power” (qui magnitudine nostra proteguntur adversum extema imperia) (Tacitus, Annales, IV, 5). Not Roman legions, but Rome’s greatness!One can note the preoccupation with appearances even in the way Romans built a simple wall girding a city exposed to the threat of roving enemies. For example, the wall protecting the Roman outpost of Tridentum (today’s Trento) on the Adige River had, from the inside of the city, a solid but not particularly orderly appearance. On the outside, however, it was perfectly laid out, with regular stones. A barbarian tribe that might have reached the city could not but have been impressed by the evident care in which the façade of the wall had been built. And first impressions mattered. The orderly exterior of the wall may not have been sufficient by itself to deter the enemy, but it was one of the many ways in which Rome built its posture of deterrence. What you show the enemy from without is different from what you see from within.In the case of Nero and Armenia, the actual military operations were less important than the image that Rome managed to convey. A historian notes that “Public demonstrations and propaganda play a crucial role in foreign affairs, particularly when major powers are in conflict over such a token prize as Armenia and must both retain prestige.”1In Rome, the immediate preoccupation of shrewd imperial advisors was to show a unified court. When an embassy of Armenians came to Rome, two of Nero’s counselors (Seneca was one of them, a great Stoic philosopher but also an imperial bootlicker) carefully managed the public behavior of the Emperor and of his conniving mother Agrippina. As Cassius Dio recounts, all this was done “so that the weakness in the empire should not become apparent to the foreigners” (Cassius Dio, Roman History, LXI 3.4). A Rome that appeared divided conveyed feebleness and indecision, and as a result was less apt to sustain the image of power needed to reestablish stability in that distant region.Related to the necessity of rebuilding Rome’s reputation was Nero’s decision to appoint Corbulo as the general in charge. Of a senatorial family, Corbulo had experienced frontier wars along the Rhine, clearly demonstrating his possession of indispensable martial talents. The selection of a good general was important not because he was capable of wielding a sword but because his reputation and his high rank would demonstrate to the enemy the seriousness of the Empire. In Tacitus’s words: “The highest rank chiefly worked through its prestige and its counsels more than by the sword and hand. The emperor would give a plain proof whether he was advised by good or bad friends by putting aside all jealousy and selecting some eminent general, rather than by promoting out of favouritism, a rich man backed up by interest” (Tacitus, Annales, XIII, 6). For at least a brief moment, Nero put merit above sycophancy.Corbulo marched speedily to the region, “with a view to the prestige which in a new enterprise is supremely powerful” (Tacitus, Annales, XIII, 8). Speed was accompanied by tailored violence. The purpose was not to destroy Armenia, and even less so to start a large war with Parthia; rather, it was to remove Parthian influence from the buffer state.Another general, Lucius Caesennius Paetus, had a different vision of what Rome should do. Jealous of Corbulo’s successes, Paetus criticized the apparently cautious military operations. He argued “that there had been no bloodshed or spoil, that the sieges of cities were sieges only in name.” Instead, he suggested a war of conquest: he, Paetus, “would soon impose on the conquered tribute and laws and Roman administration, instead of the empty shadow of a king.” (Tacitus, Annales, XV, 6) A few years later, in 62 AD, he was put in charge of Armenia after Corbulo’s successful military operation, only to promptly lose it again—and forcing Corbulo to return to clean up the mess. Paetus thought only in categories of conquest, not of Roman security and regional stability.Corbulo, by contrast, mixed threats and suggestions, terror and moderation (simul consilio terrorem adicere) (Tacitus, Annales, XV, 27). One piece of advice, for instance, he directed toward the Armenian rulers who had accepted Parthian control. Surely, Corbulo told them, they did not want to rule over a wrecked polity, or sit in the middle of a great power war. Above all, they should doubt Parthian staying power. Instead, they should accept the Armenian kingdom as a gift of the Roman emperor, acknowledging Rome’s reputation of power.He backed his advice with terror. In an episode recounted not by Tacitus but by Frontinus, when an Armenian town was stubbornly refusing to surrender, Corbulo executed “one of the [Armenian] nobles he had captured, shot his head out of a balista, and sent it flying within the fortifications of the enemy. It happened to fall in the midst of a council which the barbarians were holding at that very moment, and the sight of it (as though it were some portent) so filled them with consternation that they made haste to surrender” (Frontinus, Stratagems, Book 2, IX ). Perhaps the story is apocryphal, but it conveys the decisiveness, speed, and violence used by Corbulo to restore Rome’s reputation for overwhelming power.The target—or rather, the audience—of Corbulo’s operations was not just Parthia. In fact, the Parthian audience was secondary. Rome needed to rebuild its image first and foremost in the eyes of Armenia as well as of its own allies and clients along the eastern frontier. Armenia needed to be convinced that its pro-Parthian tilt (encouraged by Parthia’s intervention) was not sustainable, even if tempting. As Tacitus writes, “the Armenians in the fluctuations of their allegiance sought the armed protection of both empires, though by their country’s position, by resemblance of manners, and by the ties of intermarriage, they were more connected with the Parthians, to whose subjection, in their ignorance of freedom, they rather inclined.” (Tacitus, Annales, XIII, 34)But the other allies and friends of Rome in the region also had to be shown that Roman power and reputation remained firm. At the sight of Parthian advances in Armenia some probably tergiversated, uncertain about the future and hedging their bets. The more certainty Rome could instill, the more likely they would stand by the Roman legions and defend the empire. And early on Tacitus notes that Corbulo, by his imposing eloquence, his nobility, and his speed, impressed the various allies whose sympathies then leaned toward him (studia eorum in Corbulonem promptiora ) (Tacitus, Annales, XIII, 8).This specific conflict over Armenia ended not with a decisive victory, but with a new diplomatic arrangement, made possible and sustained by Corbulo’s operations in Armenia. The so-called “Neronian compromise” allowed the Armenian king to be Parthian but required that he be given the authority to rule by the Roman emperor. For some this amounted to a loss of Armenia: “Nero, the vilest imperator the Roman state has endured, lost Armenia”, a minor historian wrote three centuries later (Festus, Breviarium , 20). But such an evaluation was wrong. Armenia was not Roman, even though Rome wanted to have some say in the internal politics of that kingdom. The most relevant feature of Armenia was that it was a geopolitically independent state before Parthia’s intervention in 58 AD. After 63 AD it returned to that status.As they did before this small confrontation, so afterwards Rome and Parthia continued to clash. Reaching a settlement over Armenia did not resolve the natural competition between these two great powers. But the tensions could be reduced by limiting the ability of the rivals, and in particular of the one with imperial aspirations in the region, to expand by maintaining a stable and independent state in between them.And the maintenance of that zone of separation was predicated on the reputation—the appearance of power—that Rome could generate.We will be wise to remember this now too. Our reputation has been weakened by Russia’s intervention in Ukraine. To let it slide, hoping to cut costs now, will force us to expend more resources later. A reputation of greatness allows for an economy of force; a weakened reputation is costly.

1Kristine Gilmartin, “Corbulo’s Campaigns in the East: An Analysis of Tacitus’ Account”, Historia (4th Qtr., 1973), p. 625.

Putin Will Have a Say in Syria’s Future

As we noted yesterday, there is mounting evidence of Russian soldiers fighting on the ground in Syria. Nusra Front even posted some photographic evidence (not confirmed to be authentic) of Russian drones and warplanes flying through Syria’s skies.

With this as background, Russian President Vladimir Putin had :

“We really want to create some kind of an international coalition to fight terrorism and extremism,” Putin told journalists on the sidelines of the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok, saying he had spoken to U.S. President Barack Obama on the matter.

“We are also working with our partners in Syria. In general, the understanding is that this uniting of efforts in fighting terrorism should go in parallel to some political process in Syria itself,” Putin said.“And the Syrian president agrees with that, all the way down to holding early elections, let’s say, parliamentary ones, establishing contacts with the so-called healthy opposition, bringing them into governing,” he said.

Putin went on to admit that Russia was assisting Syrian government forces with weapons and training, but denied that Russian soldiers were participating in combat or that Russia had deployed its air force. He added that it was premature to talk about any overt Russian military action in Syria, though he admitted that “we are considering various options.”

A Russian analyst in Moscow interpreted the announcement as an opening offer in the attempt to find a negotiated solution to the Syrian crisis. “It’s a signal that we won’t stick to Assad at all costs, but we consider the most important thing is to preserve Syria as a state,” she said. “Otherwise you risk total chaos.”The idea that Assad could somehow share power with the opposition is a non-starter for the rebels, and perhaps even more importantly a complete non-starter for the Saudis. The Russians know this, since Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov heard it from the horse’s mouth late last month. Nevertheless, they’re doubling down on the devil they know, at least for now, in a bid to have a seat at the table as the future of the new, post-Iran deal Middle East is hammered out.Putin is clearly looking ahead. Can the same be said of Washington?

Europe’s Immigration Problem Is Structural

Gut-wrenching images of human suffering, despair, and determination as thousands from the Middle East, North Africa, and beyond scramble to reach the prosperous core of the European Union have sparked a debate about fundamental human rights, compassion, and European solidarity in burden-sharing. They have also fuelled another potential institutional crisis in the EU—as though the recent contortions over Grexit and the Eurozone crisis were not enough. This time the crisis is over one of Europe’s most cherished icons: the Schengen visa-free/passport-free zone, which has given the European project arguably its strongest evidence yet that a larger and ultimately “pan-European” community would emerge from the nation-states bound by the treaty and the ideals behind it.

The current wave is fast invalidating all earlier numerical projections: Germany is looking at about 800,000 asylum applications this year; in July alone more than 100,000 people entered Europe, mainly through Greece and Italy. Reportedly, EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker will now call for the member countries to resettle the 160,000 people who have reached Greece, Italy, and Hungary—a fourfold increase relative to two months ago. This is the “Schengen wave” of immigration; now reaching the point of entry places one within striking distance of Europe’s interior.The size and distribution of the resettlement quota within the EU has become an intra-family squabble, with Britain resisting and Germany and Italy asking for higher quota commitments from other countries, especially from the reluctant “new members.” Here Hungary has led the way in its opposition to the plan, building a barbed wire fence along the Serbian border and pushing enabling legislation through the parliament that would reassert national control. Prime Minister Viktor Orban has called the immigration wave a “German problem.”So it now will come to this: Germany’s Angela Merkel will insist that increasing resettlement quotas for all is inevitable, making it a litmus test of intra-EU solidarity. If she gets her way—and she likely will next week—Greece, Italy, and Hungary will be allowed to dispatch the migrants from their territory to other countries, establishing an ad hoc quota policy of sorts. Problem solved? Not so fast, as another deal on the resettlement quota will not alter the overall migration dynamic or momentum, with push and pull factors (war in MENA and Europe’s generous social support and prospect of a better life) now mutually reinforcing and locked in. And in a world framed by instant communications and social media, the message of Europe’s promise will continue to go out to the desperate and the entrepreneurial thousands, reinforcing their determination to come.The reluctance to accept more immigrants for resettlement is fast becoming a pan-European problem. The reaction of the European citizenry to the current immigrant wave has oscillated between compassion and assistance on the one hand, and resentment and anger on the other. There are indications that public attitudes on immigration in Europe are hardening. The changes in public opinion are testing whether Europe can manage the current crisis and devise a longer-term solution from under the European Union umbrella, or whether national policies will increasingly drive the process. The jury is still out on public opinion, but “immigration fatigue” is increasingly a factor. In Sweden the anti-immigration Sweden Democrats are in the lead as of last month’s polling. In Britain 47 percent of the population doesn’t want to welcome people fleeing from Syria and the Middle East, and 42 percent oppose offering refuge for anyone. Attacks on migrants have risen, with the largest numbers in Germany, where the interior ministry has recorded 336 assaults on refugee shelters since the start of the year—more than a hundred above the total in 2014—with close to half of those in Germany’s east.But arguably the greatest and truly structural problem in the current crisis is how it impacts the future of Schengen and Europe’s open internal borders. Since its inception, Schengen has offered common borders but not a common mechanism for securing those borders, with no EU empowered interior agency functionally equivalent to the interior ministries of member-states. Schengen lacks the mechanism to centrally manage the process of asylum claims and to manage relocations. This deficiency was recently highlighted by Guy Verhofstadt, the former Belgian Prime Minister and leader of the European Parliament’s liberal group, when he charged that, as with the euro crisis, Schengen lacks adequate rules and institutions necessary to implement the policy. Efforts to beef up Frontex, Europe’s border agency, have done little to stop routine breaches of asylum laws and procedures. Hence, the waves of migrants are almost literally pushing the states out their way, raising the most basic question about whether the EU can in effect control its borders. To appreciate how helpless individual governments have become, one need only watch footage of migrants storming trains, blocking rails, cutting through the concertina wire on the Hungarian border as they scuff with the police.As waves of migrants crash on Europe’s shores, the conversation has been focused on aid, processing, and resettlement, with few ideas as of yet about how to actually enforce the EU’s borders and stop the flow at the source. And yet without effective border controls one cannot devise a workable resettlement quota system. As a result, Europe is now saddled with a serious and rapidly growing security problem: the lack of adequate background screening of the people now entering the EU, with even medical protocols enforced only haphazardly. Europe’s response to the current wave of migration from MENA has thus far been predominantly focused on dealing with the immediate consequences. There is yet to be a coordinated law enforcement cum military response. The latter is especially important as the Europeans need to go to the source of the problem, stopping the boats from leaving and going after the smugglers and their enablers.Europe has been through several waves of migration, initially driven by labor migrants, then including asylum seekers, refugees, and family reunification. The current post-World War II “Schengen wave” of refugees and migrants is reaching the European Union at a time when its significantly expanded common institutions are especially vulnerable due to the lack of sufficient organizational infrastructure and procedures to support them. Unless the external Schengen border is secured and institutional structures put in place to properly manage and vet asylum claims, taking in what could be a million migrants this year poses a serious risk that the border free internal zone, one of Europe’s most prized achievements, could become a victim of this crisis.