Peter L. Berger's Blog, page 609

Brazil Crisis Deepens as Ex-President Calls for Resignation

This is how bad Brazil’s political crisis has become: last week, one of the country’s ex-presidents Fernando Henrique Cardoso strongly suggested President Dilma Rousseff should consider resigning in the midst of protests hitting the country. Folha de S.Paulo:

“The most significant aspect of the protests like yesterday’s” [Sunday 16] is the ongoing popular feeling that while “the government is legal, it is illegitimate,” Cardoso wrote. In addition, he argued that Rousseff should make a “grand gesture” and consider the possibility of resignation.

“If the President is incapable of a grand gesture (resignation, or at least a frank admission that she has made mistakes, and can indicate the way for national recovery), we will witness the government’s increasing disintegration,” he continuedCardoso said that the government lacks “moral foundation, which has been corroded by the scheming of Lula [da Silva] and the PT [Workers’ Party].”

Cardoso is widely credited with restoring monetary stability to Brazil after years of insane inflation, as well as with many of the reforms that institutionalized democracy. That makes his criticism weighty. Moreover, he is pointing the finger at Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the popular leader of the PT who succeeded Cardoso as president. Lula supported Dilma as his successor, and as the investigations into systemic corruption have intensified, it is looking more and more as if the entire PT political machine—a machine built and run by Lula—was at the center of a web of corruption. If true, this would be a major challenge not only to Dilma Roussef’s presidency, but to Lula’s standing in the country.

Interestingly, Cardoso seems to be offering Dilma a way out: if she doesn’t resign, some kind of admission of wrongdoing might itself save her. Brazil has historically been a moderate country with a strong center and something of a conservative bent. “Order and Progress” is the country’s motto, and while both of those qualities sometimes seem in short supply, at its best Brazil tries to live up to both ideals.While some in the opposition want to make the government pay for its mistakes, hoping perhaps to crush Lula and the PT once and for all, others worry that in an all-out struggle, Lula and his supporters might take to the streets, polarize the country further, and make Brazil ungovernable even as the economy sheds jobs and heads into a recession. So one option Brazilians are now discussing would involve some kind of national pact between the government and the opposition — a program to attack the economic crisis, reform corruption, and stabilize the country’s politics at a dangerous time.Given the problems in Venezuela (where a true catastrophe seems to be taking form), Ecuador, Bolivia, Argentina, and other countries where left wing populist governments have overspent and under-managed, South America is not well positioned to ride the economic shock waves coming out of China. Brazil is the anchor of stability and the natural leader of the continent. That Brazil is looking inward and worrying about its own stability is not a good sign.

Kremlin Leaves Rosneft Out in the Cold

If you’re a petrostate coping with plunging crude prices and you have to choose between funding future oil projects to keep your output up or, on the other hand, paying pensions, what do you do? Well if you’re Russia, you put pensions over your energy future: Moscow has decided to deny billions of dollars in state financing for four new projects for state-owned oil company Rosneft. The FT reports:

Rosneft last year asked for more than $40bn in support from the [National Welfare Fund (NWF)], but later trimmed its request to just five projects requiring Rbs301bn ($4.3bn) of state financing. […]

The fall in the rouble and closure of western capital markets to Russian companies has triggered a scramble to secure financing from the $75bn fund, which supports the country’s pension system. […]The decision to refuse all but one project reflects the growing pressure on Russian government resources as oil prices slide to six-year lows. Russian business daily Vedomosti earlier this month quoted a government official saying that the NWF should be preserved as a “piggy-bank in the event of a crisis”.

Earlier this month Rosneft chief executive Igor Sechin announced that the company would be shifting its focus away from the development of new fields towards boosting production in existing plays, essentially capitulating to the price pressures of a bearish market and a lack of financing due to Western sanctions.

Seemingly besieged on all sides, Rosneft turned to the state for comfort and isn’t walking away with much. Production in Russia’s massive oil fields is stagnating, and neglecting investment in new projects now will have large and lasting consequences for a country so reliant on oil and gas revenues.

Liberal Education and American Democracy

Leadership is all the rage at elite colleges and universities. Students are not only admitted because of their “leadership potential,” but are congratulated on being “leaders in the making” before they show up to their first class. Admission is proof enough, it seems, that this potential will become actual. Yet such “leadership” is often about resume building and piling up dizzying credentials that have little if anything to do with genuine leadership, particularly of a civic variety. Worse, as William Deresiewicz argues in Excellent Sheep: The Miseducation of the American Elite, what passes for leadership at elite colleges may reflect their self-congratulatory impulses, encouraging a mindset at odds with the traits of genuine leadership. Yes, there are examples of true leadership at these institutions, and certainly students who will go on to be leaders. There is also genuine civic commitment. Yet when it comes to civics, students are increasingly likely to be putting their minds to problems in Uganda and Mongolia rather than to problems confronting America.

It was not always so. In his elegant little book College, Andrew Delbanco notes that the modern elite college and university have only an indirect sense of their public obligations, particularly compared to their past incarnations. Increasingly, the careerist and commercial ends of education threaten to eclipse the broader mission of higher education and obscure its link to democracy. The embrace of careerism has been most evident at leading public universities, but it’s also a potent force at elite colleges long know for their commitment to liberal arts education. The Board of Overseers at the University of Virginia recently tried to force the president out for not speaking enough to the practical aims of university education, most notably with regard to online education and its newest fad, MOOCS (Massive Open Online Courses). The Rector of the board, a political appointee, thought it was high time to rethink the mission of Mr. Jefferson’s University in the 21st century. The Board of Governors at the University of North Carolina (which claims to be the oldest public university in America), urged on by a state governor who has been dismissive of liberal arts education, is looking to eliminate departments and areas of learning to suit market “demand.” According to several members of the board, education is about jobs. Politicians, too, speak as if getting a job was the sole aim of college education. Governor Scott Walker of Wisconsin recently tried to remove language about citizenship and the pursuit of knowledge from the University of Wisconsin’s mission statement and replace it with “meeting the state’s workforce needs.” (Walker has since said this was a misunderstanding.) Senator Marco Rubio dismissed the study of Greek philosophy given its apparent job prospects. We frequently hear this sort of criticism of the liberal arts. Never mind that this dismissal of liberal arts is misguided even in careerist and market terms. My guess is these folks, dismissive of liberal education as they are, are unfamiliar with Montesquieu’s famous line on the crucial link between education and republican government.The creators of America’s republican government were acutely aware of the link. So much so that they argued for the establishment of a national university to nurture and sustain the republic they created. The idea of a national university was widespread during the founding era. To list the advocates of a national university is to name the seminal political and educational figures of the day: George Washington, Benjamin Rush, Noah Webster, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and both John and John Quincy Adams. They justified the idea of a national university in civic terms: it would cultivate the habits and mindset in citizens and public officers—Madison referred to “national feelings,” “liberal sentiments,” and “congenial manners”— necessary to America’s republican experiment. As George Washington asked in proposing a national university: “a primary object of such a National Institution should be, the education of our Youth in the science of Government. In a Republic, what species of knowledge can be equally important? And what duty, more pressing on its Legislature, than to patronize a plan for communicating it to those, who are to be the future guardians of the liberties of the Country?”Yet this was not a public policy program, a Kennedy or Wilson School for the founding generation. On the contrary, knowledge itself, particularly detached from theological orthodoxy, was believed to be essential to the republic. University education of a wide-ranging sort was necessary to sustain a broader way of life that included things we do not usually associate with government: science, commerce, literature, and the arts, for example. In his first formal call to establish a national university, Washington insisted that nothing deserved Congress’s patronage more than “the promotion of science and literature,” as knowledge itself contributed to a “free constitution.” Congress agreed, with both the Senate and House passing resolutions of support that echoed Washington’s thought: “literature and science are essential to the preservation of a free constitution.” In the founders’ eyes, successful political institutions depended on culture and ideas, which depended on education.Contrary to what we are so often taught, the leading minds from the founding generation, who also happened to be the advocates of a national university, did not think the Constitution was a “machine that would go of itself.” Acute students of history, they were deeply aware that political institutions degenerate and decay. (We might do well to recall that James Russell Lowell’s memorable phrase comes from an address preoccupied by political decay that warns against this sentiment.) The national university would supplement America’s political institutions by fostering a healthy civil society. As Jefferson put it, education will “form the statesmen, legislators and judges, on whom public prosperity and individual happiness are so much to depend.” Education of the sort offered at the national university would shape the public mind and forge a spirited leadership class to carry the American experiment forward.A recent report from the American Academy of Arts and Sciences commissioned by Congress, the Heart of the Matter, similarly insists that education is “the keeper of the republic.” But how do American colleges and universities contribute to maintaining American democracy in the early years of the 21st century? At its best, liberal arts education is defended as training for democratic citizenship. The virtues of liberal education mirror the characteristics required of democratic citizens: the ability to grasp and evaluate arguments and evidence and to articulate and defend ideas in a reasoned manner. And so it may be. Yet is teaching reasoning and critical thinking enough? Does it foster civic understandings and commitments? Do we need more specific knowledge of American liberal democracy: its institutions, history, and culture? An understanding of the past may be crucial to the present and future of American democracy.America’s history is bound up with its civic identity. As The Heart of the Matter observes, American democracy depends on a “shared knowledge of history, civics, and social studies,” and “the humanities remind us where we have been and help us envision where we are going.” This thinking runs back to the idea for a national university. Even prior to the establishment of the Constitution, Noah Webster was berating his fellow citizens for not knowing their history: insofar as we don’t know our history, we lack knowledge of ourselves. This thinking was also behind the creation of the Core Curriculum in the 20th century at places such as Harvard and Columbia. In the middle years of the 20th century, the famous Harvard report, General Education in a Free Society, insisted, “It is impossible to escape the realization that our society, like any society, rests on common beliefs and that a major task of education is to perpetuate them.” The curriculum, accordingly, aimed to nourish the “general art of the free man and the citizen” by teaching the habits of mind and character that were necessary to civic life. The Core, still taught at Columbia, grew out of a desire to foster a shared history and civic consciousness against the division of world war. Such courses, as Louis Menand reminds us, often began as thinly veiled propaganda. But they also forced educators to think more fully about the place of American democracy within the curriculum (and within history more generally). Courses in history, philosophy, literature, and politics would provide a common basis of knowledge. One could have many complaints about the parochial nature of these institutions in their earlier years, and about the Core in particular, but they did impart a sense of public duty.Even if we are skeptical that American democracy stands on some shared civic identity, there is a compelling argument that knowledge of American history, politics, and culture is essential to students’ futures as America’s leaders. Recently in these pages, Francis Fukuyama argued that we don’t see America’s current institutional decay clearly because we lack a historical perspective on it. Even if we take an entirely pragmatic approach to the current issues that beset America, a sense of the past is essential to grappling with the present. Should illegal immigrants be given a path to citizenship? Does the health care mandate as applied to religious organizations violate religious liberty? Does increasing inequality threaten American democracy? Will persistent budget deficits and government debt bankrupt America? Is the common core harmful to education? Is the American separation of powers dysfunctional? Come up with nearly any question you want. Can we have a meaningful public debate about such vexing issues—never mind find plausible solutions to them—without a fairly robust understanding American history, institutions, and culture?For all the talk of leadership at elite colleges and universities these days, do they provide the sort of knowledge and cultivate the mindset essential to the tasks of public leadership? Most leading institutions of higher education have in common the aim of developing a set of critical skills—critical thinking and writing in particular. Looking at the top ten universities and liberal arts colleges, as ranked by U.S. News (and, yes, such rankings are a problem in their own right), many do this by way of breadth and distribution requirements: students must take a range of courses outside their particular area of study. Others have core requirements, where students must take interdisciplinary courses that are meant to introduce them to Western civilization, literature, philosophy, and the like, with some requiring the study of other civilizations or cultures.Now it may well be, as Princeton President Christopher Eisgruber argues, that the civic traits we depend on in a liberal democracy—critical thought, deliberation, and toleration, for instance—will indeed be cultivated by way of general liberal education. There is a happy convergence between liberal values and liberal education. As Eisgruber puts it, “liberal democratic government is in many respects an effort to constitute the political order on the same terms that govern rational speech.” The liberal arts curriculum will naturally inculcate the critical rationality we depend on in a liberal democracy; therefore, specific courses in American history, politics, or literature are unnecessary. General courses in philosophy, science, economics, history, politics, and so forth will do just fine.Most leading universities and liberal arts colleges implicitly seem to share President Eisgruber’s sense that a range of liberal arts taught in a critical manner will impart the skills and traits necessary to sustain democracy. Most of these institutions speak of cultivating leadership and citizenship. My own institution, Claremont McKenna College, specifically attaches responsible leadership to liberal education. Others specifically mention, as part of their general education requirements, civic engagement. Duke University lists civic engagement as an essential part of its curriculum, while Harvard seeks to prepare students for civic life, and Bowdoin College mentions reflective citizenship as part of its overall mission. The University of Pennsylvania has even begun a new program, the President’s Engagement Prizes, which will fully fund a local, national, or global engagement project in the year after graduation. The goal is specifically to put student’s knowledge to “work for the betterment of humankind.” At some of these institutions, there are also centers or programs that highlight the link between democracy and education, such as Yale’s Center for the Study of Representative Institutions and UCLA’s Center for Liberal Arts and Free Institutions.Yet none of the top-ranked universities or colleges has a specifically required course in American government, history, literature, or culture. To be sure, such courses are taught at all these colleges and universities, and one can get an excellent education along these lines, but they are not a required part of the curriculum. Indeed, a handful of these elite colleges and universities require a course in “global citizenship” or in preparation for “global life” instead. Carleton College has a global citizenship requirement, Stanford University notes the importance of preparing students for global citizenship, and Haverford College has a Center for Peace and Global Citizenship. Such requirements, along with the diversity requirement at Williams College and the requirement for courses across cultures and civilizations at Middlebury College, may well be in keeping with a broad liberal education that naturally has a cosmopolitan element. Understanding different cultures and modes of thinking, the alternatives to the world we inhabit, is a crucial part of liberal education. In considering the nations of the “Globe” and the “characters and customs which distinguish them,” James Madison insisted on the educational benefits of such knowledge in the early 19th century: “An acquaintance with foreign Countries in this mode, has a kindred effect with that of seeing them as travellers, which never fails, in uncorrupted minds, to weaken local prejudices, and enlarge the sphere of benevolent feelings.”In the same way that global concerns have been integrated into the curriculum, colleges and universities might re-integrate, so to speak, courses in American history, politics, literature, and culture that speak to American civic life. Many in higher education will think that civic education is the province of primary and secondary education, or that it smacks too much of sentimental patriotic attachment at odds with the rationality at which higher education aims. Yet civic education can be integrated into liberal education in ways that are good for both education and democracy. Courses on the features of American liberal democracy can be taught in what William Galston dubs an “investigative” rather than “inculcative” manner. Such a mode would “adopt the American regime as its point of departure while problematizing it as an object of inquiry.” Courses that focus on American history and civic institutions would introduce students to essential concepts—liberalism, democracy, rights, representation, equality, separation of powers, federalism, the rule of law, administration—and how they have played out over the course of American history. But they would also invite students to think critically about these different issues. Civic knowledge is essential to thoughtful civic participation—whether the matter at hand is the Voting Rights Act of 1965, immigration, the place of religion in public schools, same-sex marriage, or Congressional redistricting.Knowing the history and principles of the American polity is a first step in thinking about and applying political principles to contemporary issues. Grasping the historical antecedents of many contemporary issues may well elevate contemporary democratic discourse. This also includes criticizing pieces (or the whole) of American democracy. Studying our country, we will find that its great champions have often been its most stringent critics, pointing out how it has failed to live up to its promise. Think of Abraham Lincoln, Fredrick Douglass or Susan B. Anthony. And even as “investigative” civic education seeks to instill civic commitments, it is a reasoned project that can be situated within a broad liberal education. Courses in the history of political philosophy and the history, culture, and languages of other countries would also be useful features of civic education. Indeed, a course in comparative constitutionalism may be the most illuminating way to study America insofar as it brings to light both what is unique and what is universal within American democracy. As Seymour Martin Lipset has argued, “it is impossible to understand a country without seeing how it varies from others. Those who know only one country know no country.” The study of America could complement and deepen liberal education, including the global perspective many colleges view as essential to education in the 21st century.Elite students—at both public and private colleges and universities—who will shape American institutions and culture ought to have a rudimentary education in the American polity, to make them culturally literate individuals able to contribute to civic life in meaningful ways. (Indeed, there is a strong case to be made that students at all institutions both need and deserve such an education.) Interestingly, the schools that best serve this politically educative function today may be elite law schools and public policy schools. In focusing on current constitutional questions and questions of civic and public policy, these schools inevitably, if indirectly, offer an education in the history and theory of American liberal democracy. They educate an elite that goes into public office, governmental service, and civic and public life more generally. Yet aspects of this education focus on professional development, which sits uneasily alongside a more robust sense of civic life. This is particularly so with law schools, which tend to create a professional legalistic understanding of public affairs that can be profoundly at odds with wider civic engagement.Indeed, pre-professionalism has begun to creep into undergraduate education in ways that threaten to overshadow civic and liberal education. This development is a key reason why leadership as understood and practiced at elite educational institutions risks being engulfed by careerism—by material success, which is not quite the same as leadership. This narrow view may be the biggest threat to the sort of education essential to democracy. Ironically, the economic success of American democracy may itself be the reason for this threat to our civic health. To be sure, parents and students ought to be concerned about career prospects, particularly given the high cost of college. Assurances that graduates will thrive materially are not all bad. Colleges and universities should take it on themselves to educate parents and students along these lines: the evidence overwhelming suggests that students who graduate from elite institutions with a liberal arts focus thrive in career and material terms. More importantly, though, educational institutions must insist that the market is not the most important measure of education. When Madison ventured that “learned institutions ought to be favorite objects with every free people” and proceeded to list their numerous benefits, getting a job did not make the list.I don’t want to overstate this careerist ethos. The idea that students at our leading institutions are “excellent sheep” is overwrought. Students are bright, eager, thirsting for knowledge, and loaded with questions—and questions about things that matter, like what things matter? They are also ambitious and imaginative in thinking about how their knowledge will make the world a better place. This is evident to anyone who has spent a small amount of time on an elite college campus. Yet, just as surely, there are students who have a “me-first” attitude and define getting ahead as having a career that makes them piles of money. (Ask all those students why they go into finance, increasingly the career choice of students at top schools.) These are often students whose most searching question is “how do I get an A in this class?” They have little interest in liberal education as such, little concern with civic things, and could be characterized as leaders only in the sense that they’ve made it this far—this far being, they’ve gotten into an excellent college and are doing reasonably well there. This, too, is obvious to anyone who has spent much time on a college campus. Elite higher education is a mixed bag. Both of these mindsets exist on college campuses. If the charge that they are producing status-seeking automatons is exaggerated and off the mark, it nonetheless forces colleges to engage in self-reflection, pushing against their self-congratulatory tendencies. This last, alas, is pervasive: colleges persistently remind students how excellent they are. They got in, didn’t they? But this doesn’t make them knowledgeable or leaders, let alone knowledgeable leaders.American democracy depends on generally knowledgeable citizens, but it does not count on them to be professional historians, constitutional scholars, or experts in public affairs. This says something important about the nature of American democracy: most people will be busy in private life. The people whom Edmund Burke called “the less inquiring” with regard to public affairs are likely to take cues on civic questions from the ideas generated by political and intellectual leaders. Yet this is just why we depend on elite institutions to provide the virtues of such leadership: the people, preoccupied by private life, are unlikely to do the heavy lifting on civic questions. Preserving American democracy depends anew on each generation: it requires, in Burke’s words, “much thought, deep reflection, a sagacious, powerful, and combing mind.” Liberal education cultivates this frame of mind.Today we are confronted with partisan divisions and institutional decay that bring the health of American democracy into doubt. Our educational institutions, driven more and more by careerist concerns and the market, may compound the troublesome effects of self-interested institutions rather than softening them. The idea of a national university was a means of cultivating political and civic leaders, almost a hedge against self-interest. In a similar fashion, contemporary students might be lured away from excessively careerist and commercial concerns by way of civic education. Our educational institutions could turn to the American past to help teach today’s students what Alexis de Tocqueville famously called “self-interest rightly understood.” In just this way, the American heritage may be used to save Americans from themselves.

Is There a Biden Coalition?

The Democratic presidential primary—and the Democratic coalition itself—are both in flux as Vice President Joe Biden weighs a 2016 bid with increasing seriousness. The buzz intensified when it was reported that Biden held a private meeting with populist-progressive superstar Elizabeth Warren over the weekend, prompting speculation about the potential potency of a Biden-Warren ticket among Democratic voters. The Wall Street Journal reported yesterday that Biden is now “leaning toward” entering the race, as Hillary Clinton continues to falter.

If Biden decides to jump in, the race will immediately get much more interesting—and not only because of gaffe-prone “Uncle Joe’s” inevitable verbal slip-ups. A Biden run would be interesting because of what it might reveal about the coalition that makes up the modern Democratic Party. While Hillary Clinton is looking to reconstitute the Democratic coalition that nominated Barack Obama in 2008—a coalition heavy on young people and, especially, minorities—Team Biden is reportedly imagining a primary support base among white working-class voters and independents. (Ironically, this is the same constituency that Clinton chased after during her first presidential run—only to be outdone by Obama’s rainbow coalition). From Thursday’s  WSJ :

With Mrs. Clinton slipping in polls, Mr. Biden could introduce another challenge to her campaign by drawing away key voters: working-class Americans and independents. Both groups have moved away from the party in recent elections, and Mr. Biden fares better with them than Mrs. Clinton, according to a Wall Street Journal/NBC poll taken this summer.

“He has a reach that other Democrats don’t have at this stage,” said Peter Hart, a Democratic pollster who worked on the survey…Jim McQueeny, a former Democratic strategist from New Jersey, said Mr. Biden could win the support of blue-collar workers, such as steelworkers, mechanics and factory workers, by capitalizing on “the feeling that he understands their issues” more than Mrs. Clinton does.“It’s mostly white, it’s mostly male but it can be very powerful,” Mr. McQueeny said. “Hillary has a challenge with these people,” he added.

Critics argue that Biden is mulling a campaign strategy for winning the nomination of a party that no longer exists. White working-class voters and independents—relatively moderate constituencies that were an important part of Bill Clinton’s 1990s support base—have drifted sharply away from the Party under Barack Obama’s more unabashedly liberal leadership. Building a bid for the nomination around these voters might seem to be a lost cause at time when the Democrats’ working-class base is diminishing and the party is growing more diverse and liberal. Still, the white working class represents a sizable, if shrinking, part of the Democratic primary electorate, and could help create a path to the nomination for Biden if Clinton’s email struggles take a turn for the worse.

Moreover, as Ross Douthat has written, “presidential candidates inherit coalitions, yes, but they also shape them.” Joe Biden clearly can’t single-handedly restore the Democrats’ status as a party of working class unionized workers—those days are long gone—but it is not impossible to imagine the back-slapping moderate-on-abortion pol from Scranton, Pennsylvania charting out a more working-class friendly path to the nomination than that which carried his boss in 2008, and which Hillary Clinton is trying, rather more uneasily, to win over this season. A Biden run would be informative—not only because it would boost the level of competition in a shallow Democratic field, but because it would help clarify whether the Democratic Party can appeal to a slightly broader constituency, or whether the Obama coalition is here to stay.

The U.S. Locks and Loads in the Pacific

Assistant Secretary of Defense for Asian and Pacific Security Affairs David Shear spoke to the press on Friday as the DoD released a new strategy report mandated by Congress on America’s plan for handling the tensions in Asia, primarily over maritime territory. His comments go a long way towards clarifying Washington’s policies, which haven’t in recent months always been clear.

The new strategy’s focus on the tools of the hard power trade begins, finally, to justify the phrase “pivot to Asia.” Chief among the takeaways is the redoubled U.S. commitment to deploy twice the number of littoral combat ships to Asian waters, in a drive to build up a fleet of powerful vessels that, unlike the USN’s biggest ships, can operate and dock in the shallow waters that combat in, say, the South China Sea, would require. DoD Buzz has more:

“The LCS is ideally suited for a role in the South China Sea. It is fast, light and flexible and it has a fifteen foot draft so it can go places other vessels cannot go. We plan to have four LCS ships in Singapore on a rotational basis by 2018,” David Shear, assistant secretary of defense for Asian and Pacific security affairs, told reporters on Friday. […]

Shear explained that stepping up LCS missions in the South China Sea is part of a broader strategic effort to maintain presence and patrol the area in light of China’s recent efforts to build artificial land structures in the contested Spratly Islands. […]“US forces currently present in the South China Sea conduct a variety of presence operations. We are in the South China Sea on a regular basis,” Shear said.

All of the recent signs from Washington indicate that the U.S. means to put its money where its mouth is in Asia, and the strategy document’s introduction explains the main reason why:

Maritime Asia is a vital thruway for global commerce, and it will be a critical part of the region’s expected economic growth. The United States wants to ensure the Asia-Pacific region’s continued economic progress. The importance of Asia-Pacific sea lanes for global trade cannot be overstated. Eight of the world’s 10 busiest container ports are in the Asia-Pacific region, and almost 30 percent of the world’s maritime trade transits the South China Sea annually, including approximately $1.2 trillion in ship-borne trade bound for the United States.1 Approximately two-thirds of the world’s oil shipments transit through the Indian Ocean to the Pacific, and in 2014, more than 15 million barrels of oil passed through the Malacca Strait per day.

The doubled LCS fleet will seriously increase the credibility of American threats to do what it takes to ensure freedom of navigation. And to complement the growing arms power, the Pentagon is upping the frequency and intensity of the drills it holds with China’s regional counterclaimants, preparing the forces to fight together smoothly should the need arise.

While China hasn’t yet seemed to back down from its aggressive policy in the Spratlys in response to increased American pressure, strategists in Beijing will most certainly take note of the growing power of the force that could rise up to stop it if it pushes things too far.

Berlin Wants to Ban Safe GMOs

Germany, Europe’s self-anointed green leader, is no stranger to making rash and counter-productive policy decisions in the name of eco-idealism, so perhaps it doesn’t come as a surprise that the country is looking to ban safe GMOs. Earlier this spring Brussels caved to Luddite green fear mongers who have been hard at work raising the public’s hackles about so-called “frankenfoods” and pushing for national and even international bans of GMOs. The EU now allows its members to restrict the import of GM foods that have been deemed healthy and safe for human consumption, and Berlin is preparing to jump at the chance to exercise that opt-out. Reuters reports:

German Agriculture Minister Christian Schmidt has informed German state governments of his intention to tell the EU that Germany will make use of new “opt-out” rules to stop GMO crop cultivation even if varieties have been approved by the EU, a letter from the agriculture ministry seen by Reuters shows. […]

In the letter, the ministry stressed that Schmidt is continuing a previously-announced policy to keep a ban on GMOs in Germany. Under the new EU rules, countries have until Oct. 3, 2015, to inform the Commission that they wish to opt out of new EU GMO cultivation approvals, the ministry letter said.

You’d be hard pressed to find a more succinct summation of the ludicrous anti-GMO movement than this: a supposedly eco-conscious country is actively flouting scientific assessments and rejecting outright crop technologies that are more capable than conventional crops of boosting yields with fewer pesticides in more extreme climates. When Scotland moved to ban GMOs earlier this month, it at least had the honesty to admit it was doing so to protect its “clean and green brand” (whatever that means), but it’s clear that when it comes to these genetically altered foods, eco-image has little to do with actual science or the safety of the crops in question—and everything to do with deeper cultural biases.

The smart environmentalist would be hard at work trying to counteract these biases, but unfortunately examples of those kinds of thinkers are few and far between.

Kurds Defy Baghdad to Supply Israel with Oil

Over the past few month, as much as 77 percent of Israel’s oil has come from one source: Iraqi Kurdistan. The Financial Times reports that Israel may have spent as much as $1 billion on the region’s oil between May and early August, buying the energy through third party traders Vitol and Trafigura. Experts believe that Israel’s money may be contributing much-needed funds to the Kurdish government’s fight against ISIS.

Kurdistan is still part of the Iraqi state, and it is supposed to sell its oil through the Iraqi state-owned oil company. Last year, Baghdad successfully managed to block the sale of Kurdish oil to the U.S. by threatening a suit in a Texas court, yet Iraqi Kurdistan continues to push for control over its own oil deals, and has been selling not only to Israel but also to other countries, like Italy and Cyprus. Baghdad reportedly is aware of the sales, but is too occupied with other pressing issues to crack down. All it could manage at this time is a statement of protest.In the background of this story lies Turkey. Kurdish oil is piped through Turkey and shipped out of Turkish ports. Ankara is trying to suppress Turkish-Kurdish and Syrian-Kurdish ambitions, but has nevertheless for some time now been underwriting Iraqi Kurdistan as a weak client semi-state (in part precisely by allowing them to transship oil to Turkish ports).As TAI editor Adam Garfinkle recently noted, a large, unwieldy coalition is starting to coalesce in the Middle East. Anti-Iranian and generally anti-ISIS, the coalition is comprised of the Sunni Arab nations, Israel, and Turkey. It’s also riven with internal contradictions—the Egyptian and Turkish governments hate each other, for example, and the Saudis have gotten closer than ever to the Israelis even while all the Muslim nations officially maintain both antisemitic and anti-Israeli positions.This news, therefore, seems of a piece: the Israelis and Kurds are both fortifying themselves for the struggles ahead against Iran and ISIS, respectively, and the countries are forging bonds in what increasingly seems to be a regional struggle. And yet, the pieces fit together awkwardly, due both to the anomalous status of Iraqi Kurdistan and the role Turkey is playing. It will take real skill to forge something durable out of these pieces—but as the oil deal shows, the opportunities are there.

Eurogreens’ Attack on Utilities

Europe’s utilities aren’t spending money on conventional fossil fuel power plants, dissuaded by an uncertain regulatory atmosphere and the green mania that has gripped Germany. But the trend away from the construction of new fossil fuel power plants or investment into existing facilities could prove  in the very near future. As the FT reports, the renewable sources that are edging out their browner competition are still hampered by problems of intermittency—that is, keeping the lights on when the sun isn’t shining or the wind isn’t blowing. Lacking cost-effective commercial-grade energy storage options, Europe will still need fossil fuels for consistency’s sake, which makes low investment by utilities a big problem for future grid stability.

And this has an effect on the European economy, too. As a Barclays analysit told the FT, low spending by utilities is “putting considerable pressure on suppliers. Siemens is significantly reducing manufacturing capacity in Europe, and I would expect other vendors to follow suit.”Germany’s energiewende lies at the heart of all of this. The country’s “green” energy transition has not only threatened the stability of its own grid, but of its neighbors‘ as well. Given its track record it shouldn’t be surprising at this point that the systematic propping up of solar and wind energy production at extravagant cost has also produced another problem for the health of the continent’s utilities.

The Battle of the Billionaires

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg is squaring off against Donald Trump in a battle of the billionaires on immigration. Unfortunately, Zuckerberg couldn’t have chosen worse grounds on which to fight. The Wall Street Journal reports:

Fwd.us, a group founded by Mr. Zuckerberg and others to lobby for issues issues important to the tech industry such as immigration reform, Wednesday argued in favor of increasing, not decreasing, the number of H-1B visas. Silicon Valley companies rely on the visas to bring in foreign engineers. Such a move would be beneficial to the U.S. economy, Fwd.us President Todd Schulte wrote in a blog post.[…]

Mr. Schulte was responding to Mr. Trump’s immigration plan, released Sunday. Mr. Trump said foreign workers are using the H-1B program to take jobs away from Americans, and he wants to raise the wages paid to H-1B holders to make it less attractive to employers. Mr. Trump named Mr. Zuckerberg in his plan.

This kind of response to Trump only underlines the failures of both sides of the immigration debate. As TAI Staff Writer Nicholas M. Gallagher explained in his insightful column on Thursday (if you haven’t read it, do):

Both parties have botched the case for increased legal immigration. Business-friendly Republicans have allowed it to be sullied by supporting measures like the H-1B and H-2 visas, which tie the visas of foreign workers to their employers. If workers holding these visas quit, or are fired, they have to leave the country. As I’ve written before, these visas hit the trifecta of bad policy: they’re used to displace American workers at cheaper rates, they facilitate exploitation of the immigrants in question, and they deprive the national economy of the full dynamism unfettered immigrants offer. Such measures divert political momentum from healthy reform and confirm the worst suspicions of the antis.

Zuckerberg isn’t a Republican, but that critique also applies to business-friendly immigration advocates like the Facebook founder. The optics on this are terrible. Trump’s message is that immigration is a con game rigged by big business and government against the little guy and Silicon Valley billionaires have chosen to respond by doubling down on support for the very visa type that, certifiably, really does hurt the little guy. As they say on Sports Center: Are you kidding me?

The shame of Fwd.us’ response is that Trump’s plan really is vulnerable to attack on so many other fronts, particularly from a group with resources to match his. And, what’s more, there are some really good ideas in the Fwd.us plan, including long-overdue recognition of the role start-ups play in American business in the 21st century. But in order to be able to make good policy, you first have to win the messaging battle—and, here, the old-school carnival barker is schooling the social media guru.

Thwarted Attack Shows Europe Must Rethink Intel Sharing

One of the staunchest defenders of free travel across Europe’s borders, Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel, said that Friday’s planned terror attack on a train traveling between Paris and Amsterdam (which was foiled by three quick-thinking Americans and one Briton) should prompt a rethink of one of the core pillars of the European project. The Telegraph:

“The Schengen Agreement is important for our economy and our citizens, but we are now faced with new threats in Europe and so we’ll maybe have to move towards new rules in identity and baggage checks,” Mr Michel said.

“It is certainly a boon to economic development and freedom of movement for those who have good intentions, but this freedom is also used in order to harm. The goal is not to suppress freedoms, but to deal with a threat.” […]A major revision of Europe’s travel rules may require treaty change, and could make Mr Cameron’s demand to change the rules around welfare for migrants appear mild by comparison.

The European Commission, for its part, has been trying to shut such talk down since the incident on Friday, saying that the Schengen provisions guaranteeing freedom of movement were irreversible and “non-negotiable.” It added that increased security measures need not be in conflict with Schengen if they do not amount to the equivalent of border checks.

What the attacks really ought to prompt, in any case, is a rethink of how Europe’s various intelligence agencies share information and coordinate with each other. The man responsible for the failed attack, Ayoub El-Khazzani, had a security alert on his file in France. He was tracked departing from Berlin for Istanbul in May, in what appears to have been an attempt to reach northern Syria. However, officials have no record of his returning to Europe. A Schengen-wide security database exists, but is used inconsistently and only for high-risk routes (for people likely to be arriving from Syria, for example). Furthermore, many European intelligence agencies are reportedly reluctant to put some of their dossiers in the database.All sorts of talk about reforming intelligence sharing emerged after the Charlie Hebdo attacks earlier this year, but the discussion hasn’t gained much momentum. Maybe this averted tragedy—coupled with the specter of ISIS operatives making their way into Europe amidst the huge groups of migrants arriving in the EU—will help focus minds in Brussels.