Peter L. Berger's Blog, page 634

Burundi’s Purple Finger Problem

Burundian President Pierre Nkurunziza awoke Tuesday morning to vote in an election that, if he wins it, would give him an unprecedented third term as president. And, considering that every other major opposition party has boycotted the vote, it’s expected he will.

For many Burundians, the cadence of gunfire and explosions ripping through the country’s capital the night before election day is the most immediate concern. It marks either a final thrust of election violence—or the beginning of another round of terrible ethnic and tribal violence. The New York Times: 

On Tuesday morning, large crowds gathered in several Bujumbura neighborhoods hostile to the president, tearing up cobblestone streets, knocking down signs and setting tires ablaze to create roadblocks.

In the Nyakabiga neighborhood, the site of many protests in the spring, residents awoke to find the body of a known opposition supporter in a ditch.Many other people were afraid to be seen as taking sides. Outside a polling place in Cibitoke, another neighborhood where there have been protests, Ndizeye Leonidas, 30, rubbed his ink-stained finger in the dirt. “I do not want others to know I voted,” he said.Looking around, seeing few other people casting ballots, he was not optimistic. “I am afraid there is going to be a civil war,” he said, before tucking his hand into his pocket and walking off.

The country’s last civil war ended just ten years ago and resulted in over 300,000 Burundian deaths, and Burundians seem to see trouble once again on the horizon. According to the story, Doctors Without Borders is reporting that as many 1,000 Burundians are fleeing into Tanzania each day. With Nkurunziza’s election all but assured, it remains to be seen if his gamble for a third term will pay off, or if he will have brought his country back to the brink of another deadly conflict.

Russia Reeling From Oil Price Plunge

Russia is the world’s largest exporter of oil and gas, and that position has helped it wield influence abroad and grow domestically—or at least it did until the last year or so. Since last June the price of oil has plunged from over $110 per barrel to hovering around $55 today, and that’s threatening the solvency of a Moscow government that relies heavily on the hydrocarbon sales to balance its budget. Bloomberg reports:

Russia, which ING Bank NV estimates needs oil at $80 a barrel to balance its budget, will endure a two-year economic contraction if crude prices remain at $60 through 2016, according to the central bank.

“Russia will face a recession or stagnation next year” if oil is near $50, Dmitry Polevoy, a Moscow-based economist at ING, said by e-mail. “It will likely be necessary to cut spending more, to postpone a part of military spending and to use what remains in the Reserve Fund.”

Moreover, the global oversupply driving down prices doesn’t look to be going away anytime soon. Iran is getting ready to boost its own oil and gas exports at the prospect of the nuclear deal’s sanctions relief, and American shale producers continue to surprise OPEC with their resilience in the face of cheap crude prices. That suggests prices won’t be soon returning to their $100+ per barrel levels, much to Moscow’s chagrin.

This won’t just hamper Russian growth—it could also affect Moscow’s military budget as the prospect of spending cuts loom. If you live by energy markets, you can also die by them, too.

U.S. Not Neutral on Adjudication of S. China Sea Claims

In a move likely to draw cheers from Manila, the U.S. has firmly stated its support for international adjudication of the territorial disputes in the South China Sea. The Philippines has long advocated for such adjudication, arguing that China’s size and power would make any “bilateral negotiations” (China’s preferred option) a fait accompli. So in the fight over the fight over Asia’s coastal waters, the Philippines has just gained “Washington’s top diplomat for East Asia”, Daniel Russel, as an ally, according to the Diplomat:

The United States has repeatedly said that while it takes no position on competing sovereignty claims over disputed land features in the South China Sea, it does want these maritime claims to be advanced in accordance with international law and without the use of coercion. […]

…in response to a question by a Chinese participant on perceived U.S. ‘neutrality’ in the South China Sea, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Daniel Russel firmly clarified at a think tank conference in Washington, D.C. that this neutrality only extended to the competing claims, rather than the way in which the disputes were resolved.“We are not neutral when it comes to adhering to international law. We will come down forcefully when it comes to following the rules,” Russel said during a keynote speech delivered at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. […]“It’s really not about the rocks and the shoals. It’s about rules. It’s about the kind of neighborhood we all want to live in,” he said.

China knows perfectly well it’s acting illegally and any decision is virtually certain to rule against its expansionist ambitions (a quick glance at a map including the Scarborough Shoal will show why Manila thinks it would win its day in court). That’s why, although it is a signatory of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, which explicitly outlaws China’s actions, Beijing has said it will not recognize the legitimacy of any decision the court makes. It has refused even to show up for the hearings.

The U.S. has every reason to hope for a legal resolution. With tensions in the region already red hot due to a war of words between Japan and China, international arbitration is clearly an attractive option. But even with the U.S. pushing for it and Manila pressing its case, Beijing is not likely to succumb to the pressure to respect any law it doesn’t like. The differences of opinion between China and its neighbors about territorial matters are irreconcilable and international law has never shown itself to be particularly useful at stopping geopolitical problems from snowballing.We’re reminded of the great quote from E.H. Carr, reflecting on the failure of the League of Nations to stop history from repeating itself in Europe. He observed that “the metaphysicians of Geneva found it difficult to believe that an accumulation of ingenious texts prohibiting war was not a barrier against war itself.” Any attempt to manage tensions in the region is unlikely to hinge on The Hague.

Warriors and Nurses

When gays and lesbians decided to forge an alliance in their struggle to achieve public acceptance, somebody thought of adding bisexuals (probably a sizable group). More recently transgender persons were also added to form the acronym LGBT—that is to say, individuals who actually seek to reconstruct their physical male or female constitution (not to be confused with transvestites, who dress and behave in ways traditionally assigned to a gender other than their own). This group cannot be very large. It has gained public attention by demands for separate bathrooms and for recognition of sex changes in official records. I have long been interested in the ideological uses and mutations of language: “Gender” is a grammatical term without reference to biology—“sun” has a masculine gender in French (le soleil), a feminine one in German (die Sonne). By contrast, the term “sex change” is clearly appropriate to an individual whose genitalia have been altered by surgery or medication. [Let me not delve into the curious move of lesbians having moved from second to first place in the LGBT acronym – a curious reincarnation of the old maxim “Ladies first?” Or the recent (occasional) addition of the letter “Q” to the LGBT acronym, which, I understand, stands for “queer”—the old pejorative adjective for gays now referring to individuals who don’t want to be put in any gender-specific box or who still freely roam in the wide field of erotic esoterica.] Be this as it may, it strikes me that the adjective “transgender” could have a broader meaning than individuals changing their physical equipment from male to female or vice versa (for which “trans-sexual” would be the more logical adjective). Rather, it could well describe an age in which all the boundaries between men and women have become fluid and open to redefinition.

“Warrior” and “nurse” are two occupational terms that, even today, evoke gender-specific associations—warriors are thought of, at least at first, as macho men, nurses as gently nurturing women. In our “transgender” world, some women want to be warriors, others are content to perform the traditional role of gentle care-givers. Two stories (one, two) in The New York Times, on July 13, 2015, placed side by side (perhaps coincidentally), nicely illustrate the two possibilities.On June 30, 2015, Lieutenant-Colonel Kate Germano was removed from her position as commander of the all-female boot camp of the Marine Corps at Parris Island, North Carolina. She had taken over as commander last year after repeated failure by female recruits to match the performance record of their male counterparts. Her approach was described as “an aggressive drive for parity”. She instituted a ruthless training program, driving her charges to the limit of their endurance. Apparently this had the desired result: The performance of her recruits markedly improved. So did their resentment: Some of them complained of maltreatment. She also irritated her superiors, by badgering them for additional staff and equipment; if they did not give her what she wanted, she would go over their heads up the chain of command. After several internal investigations Brigadier General Terry Williams, the commander of Parris Island, said that he had lost confidence in her ability to lead, and fired her. She denied the charges, and claimed in an interview that her superior officer had created for her “a toxic work environment”, a standard charge in complaints of gender discrimination. (And a bit off under the circumstances: are Marines not supposed to thrive in hostile environments?) Of course an outsider cannot assess the validity of charges and countercharges in this case. The Marine Corps, which has a considerably lower percentage of female soldiers than the other branches of the military, has been under great pressure from a mandate by the Pentagon for the integration of women into all combat units by 2016. As far as I know, there was resentment of the policy of gender integration in all services, but not surprisingly it was strongest in elite combat units such as the Army’s Special Forces and the Navy Seals—and especially the Marine Corps, which has prided itself for its tradition of ferocious combat almost from the beginning of the country, “from the Halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli.” Almost by definition, such a tradition is based on strong male bonding, not easily accommodating to the inclusion of women.The other Times story deals with yet another episode in the litigation over the requirement under Obamacare that all employers include contraception in the health plans offered to employees. It provided from the start a “religious exemption” for religious institutions centered on worship (such as a Roman Catholic or Baptist church), but not for religiously defined organizations providing larger services (such as a Catholic hospital or a Baptist college). In the face of strong legal challenges, mostly by Catholic or Evangelical organizations, the Obama administration has retreated step by step by widening the scope of the “religious exemption”. The latest accommodation, which has mustered the scrutiny of some federal courts, has been to grant the exemption to organizations that declare that their objection is on religious grounds, in which case the contraception coverage will be paid for by the insurance company or the government. That is not good enough for some, who claim that despite this evasion they are still “complicit” in providing a service their religion considers illicit. All of this (fascinating though it is) does not concern me here. Rather, I am intrigued by one (Catholic) organization that has gone to court rejecting the proffered accommodation. It is The Little Sisters of the Poor, an order of nuns that live out in a pristine form the traditional role of women as givers of comfort and care to the needy.The order of The Little Sisters of the Poor was founded in France in the 1830s by Jeanne Jugan (1792-1879), who grew up in bitter poverty and worked for years as a kitchen maid for wealthy families. Her life changed when she found a destitute blind old woman abandoned on the street. She invited the woman to sleep in her own bed. With the help of some other young women she took care of a growing number of similarly destitute old people. This became the nucleus of a monastic order recognized as such by Pope Pius XI in 1854. Jeanne Jugan was canonized as a saint by Benedict XVI in 2009. The order she founded has now spread to many countries (including the U.S.) and has over 2000 sisters. The order practices a combination of contemplative prayer with what they call “hospitality” – providing care and homes for people (mostly old and poor) whom nobody wants. The Little Sisters stand in a long tradition of Christian nursing (mostly done by women) going back to the earliest Christian communities, through the Middle Ages (the Poor Clares founded in 1212 by Francis of Assisi), into recent times—the Little Sisters of Jesus (founded by Charles de Foucauld, 1858-1916, the “Martyr of the Sahara)—and most famously the Missionaries of Charity (founded by Mother Teresa of Calcutta, 1910-1997).Thus one may counterpose two contrary figures—the male warrior, a killer by profession, and the super-feminine nurse, whose profession is care-giving. Is this a division of labor based in biology (“sex”)? Or is this division of labor simply based on social constructions that are freely variable (“gender”)? Clearly biology sets some limits to the range of imaginable constructions. For example, if one decided, on the ideological ground of “equality”, to give the right to vote and run for office to four-year olds, a political system based on this principle would quickly disintegrate into chaos. Is there a biological foundation to the above counterposition? It is plausible that the evolutionary process has produced some such foundations: After all, men have greater upper-body strength, and women have breasts that give milk to the newly born. A society that leaves the care of new infants only to men, and to women only the task of hunting buffalos to provide supper, has poor chances of surviving. I don’t think that we know enough to draw exact boundaries between biological limits and social choices. Let us stipulate that women can be warriors (Kate Germano and a politically savvy Pentagon are betting on this). Some tough men can be very gentle with babies or fragile patients. Some human actions “come naturally”; yet socialization can modify or even defy the programs of nature (though defiance probably comes at a cost). I don’t know whether there really were Amazons, but is interesting that the mythical ones had to cut off one breast. (One might call this an anticipation of transgender surgery).Let me speculate for a moment: Suppose that the extreme “constructivists” are right, and that there are no biological reasons why women cannot be trained to crawl into an enemy camp with knives held by their teeth and to cut the throat of the enemy commander. (Call their unit the Daughters of Delilah.) But could one not think of cultural reasons why killing should be, in the main, left to men, and nursing to women? Would one perhaps prefer to live in a society where such gender discrimination prevails, rather than in a society in which women and men are equally ferocious? On balance, I think I would. If only because in the other case much of world literature would become incomprehensible.

Russia Threatens Military “Countermeasures” if Sweden Joins NATO

We know that Putin, really, really hates NATO expansion, but even by the standards of today’s Russia, this is extreme: The Kremlin’s ambassador to Sweden said in an interview that Russia would take military action against Stockholm if it decides to join NATO. The Independent reports:

In an interview with Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter, Viktor Tatarinstev warned against joining the Nato alliance, saying there would be “consequences”.

Decrying what he called an “aggressive propaganda campaign” by the media, Tatarinstev stressed that “Sweden is not a target for our armed troops”.But with a recent surge of Swedish support for joining Nato, the ambassador said: “If it happens, there will be counter measures.“Putin pointed out that there will be consequences, that Russia will have to resort to a response of the military kind and re-orientate our troops and missiles.“The country that joins Nato needs to be aware of the risks it is exposing itself to.”

Sweden has already borne more than its share of Russia’s increasing aggression following Moscow’s seizure of Crimea, with Kremlin jets and subs making more frequent and more serious incursions into Swedish airspace and local waters. And now this. Back in March, we reported on Russian ambassador Mikhail Vanin’s threat to nuke Danish warships in the Baltic if the country signed on with NATO’s missile shield program. Based on this story, Tatarinstev has now taken from Vanin the dubious honor of being the Russian ambassador to make the most insane threat to a northern European country yet.

Russia’s victim complex always makes itself most apparent when NATO comes up, and this story is no exception, as the ambassador really hits his stride further into the interview:

Tatarinstev blamed souring Swedish-Russian relations on a media campaign in which “Russia is often described as an attacker who only thinks of conducting wars and threatening others”.

Gee, wonder why.

Unions vs. Obamacare

A powerful coalition is forming against one of the more unpopular features of the Affordable Care Act, and even unions are getting into the mix. The New York Times reports on growing opposition to the so-called “Cadillac tax” imposed by Obamacare. This tax, which is slated to go into effect in 2018, puts employers on the hook for individual plans that costs over $10,200 annually or family plans that exceed $27,500. The total amount that an employer pays over those limits for his employees’ plans is taxed at a 40 percent rate.

The tax is well-intentioned. As the NYT reports, it’s aimed at discouraging employers from giving their employees plans that are too generous (and thus help inflate health care spending) and at limiting the tax breaks employers get for providing health care. Wonks on both sides of the political spectrum have long argued that our system of employer-provided health care is seriously dysfunctional, and reducing the tax incentives for it could encourage people to purchase insurance on their own outside the workplace. The hope also appears to be that employers, prompted by the tax to offer less generous health care plans, will spend their money instead on raises for their employees.These are all very sensible policy aims, but, as so often happens, sensible policy aims aren’t necessarily enough to ensure good outcomes or create widespread support. NYT:

“As we get closer to 2018, we’re starting to hear the organic resistance out there,” said Representative Joe Courtney, a Connecticut Democrat who has proposed a bill to repeal the tax. The bill has gained nearly 130 co-sponsors, including more than 100 fellow Democrats, and with supporters ranging from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to the A.F.L.-C.I.O. […]

Critics argue that the tax penalizes employees with plans that are expensive rather than generous. “Geography, age, gender and occupation are much more significant in how you come up with the cost of the premium,” Mr. Courtney, the Connecticut representative, said. “It’s such a blunt instrument.”

Employers that have unusually high medical costs, like a premature baby whose care costs $5 million, or that have a work force with a large number of people with expensive illnesses, could also be liable for the tax.

The Times also points to critics who think employers might not always transfer dollars saved on health care over to wage increases as neatly as the proponents of the measure might hope.

This story shows that the debate over Obamacare is nowhere near over, regardless of what the Supreme Court decided about the legality of federal subsidies. In the first place, the ACA hasn’t actually yet even been fully implemented—the tax at issue here doesn’t hit until 2018. To declare the ACA a success—or a failure—when it’s not even fully in place is premature. We don’t know how the law will ultimately shape the health care market, and we can’t until all its provisions are in effect and enough time has passed for any consequences to be felt. Early signs indicate that premiums could rise dramatically over the next few years, and the eventual effect of the Cadillac tax won’t be in evidence for another three or four years—at the earliest.

But there’s even more uncertainty than that, because we don’t only need to wait for the law to come into effect; we also need to see what changes may happen to the law itself. Perhaps the Cadillac tax will be repealed at the urging of the increasing powerful coalition that opposes it, and it isn’t the only ACA provision on the chopping block. Many want the medical device tax to go, and the employer mandate has vocal critics on both sides of the aisle. It seems likely that the ACA will undergo at least some changes in the coming years.

And all of that’s not to mention the fact that health care will continue to be a key domestic policy topic for years to come, for the simple reason that even if the ACA goes fully into effect without any more major hiccups, it won’t solve the underlying unsustainability of our health care system. ACA or not, health care in America costs too much for too little return. A lot more policy work (as well as private innovation) will need to be done to help turn that around (we’ve outlined some ideas here, as well as other places). Until that time, expect continued unrest and more debating.

South China Sea on the Boil

China is apoplectic about the strong reactions of its most powerful adversaries, Japan and the U.S., to its territorial aggression in the South China Sea. To start, the head of the U.S. Pacific Fleet, Admiral Scott Swift, signaled the strong American stance by hitching a ride on one of the spy planes that are now over-flying the newly built islands around which China claims an exclusion zone. Meanwhile, Tokyo released the outline of a forthcoming defense white paper on July 19, and in Beijing’s eyes at least, it’s a wildly provocative document that sets the stage for conflict. The annual defense report lists Tokyo’s policies about the biggest threats to Japan, from North Korean nuclear missiles to ISIS’s activities in the Middle East to, of course, Chinese expansionism. Compared to last year’s report, the new one raises the stakes by taking a much firmer stance against Beijing. For example, the report condemns China’s reclamation work on the strategically located Fiery Cross Reef, where satellite imagery shows an airstrip being built. Defense News reports:

In what may turn out to be the first step in a dangerous game of chicken, Japan’s upcoming annual defense white paper will accuse China of belligerency in its dealings with neighbors as it becomes clear that China is laying the foundations of a military base on Fiery Cross Reef, one of seven artificial islands China has created in the disputed Spratly Islands.

In the outline of the white paper, to be released in late July, on top of the usual statements citing North Korea’s nuclear and missile development as issues of concern, the paper will directly call China’s reclamation work on the Spratlys, “high handed.” […]Japan’s latest assertion led to predictably robust responses from Beijing, with Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying accusing Japan of trying to “smear China to create tensions in the region.”

Things have only deteriorated from there. The full white paper (which is not yet available on the Japanese defense ministry’s website), will go well beyond the Fiery Cross Reef issue, touching, for instance, on the matter of any undersea oil and gas deposits in the disputed areas. China’s response to all of this has not been restrained, with the Defense Ministry in Beijing calling Japanese policy “two-faced”, alluding to the possibility of military action should Japan take it too far, and reiterating its claim over the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea as well. Reuters has more:

China reserves the right to a “necessary reaction” after Japan issued a defense review that called on Beijing to stop building oil and gas exploration platforms close to disputed waters in the East China Sea, the Defense Ministry has said. […]

China would further evaluate Japan’s defense review, or white paper, when the full text is issued and would then make a “necessary reaction depending on the situation”, it said.Beijing described Japan’s annual defense review as misleading and malicious, saying it overplayed the “China military threat” and stoked tensions between the two East Asian powers. It stuck by its claims over the disputed island chain.Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang said the review ignored that China’s maritime activities were carried out in line with international law, according to a statement posted late on Tuesday.“The Diaoyu islands have belonged to China since ancient times … China will continue to take necessary measures to safeguard its territorial sovereignty and Japan should not hold any unrealistic illusions,” he said. […]

Neither side sounds willing to back down from its position, and China’s building projects, unfounded but emphatic claims to be following international law, and exploratory drilling aren’t likely to stop just because Japan has made opposing them more explicit in its policy. South China Sea tensions continue to heat back up after a lull at the beginning of this year, this time with the American navy more in the mix.

France Adopts Hypocrisy in Bill Form

It’s not often you see a law passed enshrining two opposite aims, but that’s exactly what’s happening in France, which today is adopting an energy transition law aimed at cutting emissions while reducing the country’s reliance on zero-carbon nuclear energy. Bloomberg reports:

The sweeping energy transition law reflects a campaign pledge more than three years ago by President Francois Hollande to cut nuclear energy in favor of renewables. The law was delayed by industry resistance and ministerial changes, while the opposition-led Senate watered down nuclear provisions. […]

The focus on nuclear has eclipsed wide-ranging provisions contained in the law on carbon emissions, fossil fuels, energy efficiency of buildings and recycling, including a ban from January on stores handing out plastic bags.

No country in the world gets more of its energy from nuclear power than France. More than 75 percent of French power is generated by its nuclear reactors. Yet instead of touting this as the green boon it is (nuclear energy is virtually the only baseload energy source that doesn’t emit greenhouse gases), it seems embarrassed by its position. The new law will reduce nuclear’s share of French energy supply to roughly 50 percent over the next ten years.

This would be a hard bill to sell with a straight face on its own, but the fact that it’s being packaged with higher efficiency standards and ambitious renewables targets—and therefore being hailed as an eco-triumph—borders on the surreal. French environment minister Segolene Royal lauded the new law as a “the most advanced law of its kind among industrial countries.” Surely something is being lost in translation.

Focusing on the Bigger Picture

Any negotiation can be looked at in two different ways. First, there is the immediate deal and how it is reached. The focus is on who won and who lost, and whether the deal is one-sided or reasonably balanced. The questions are how shrewd were the negotiators, could they have gotten more, or were they hoodwinked into giving up too much? Call this focus “the art of the deal.”

The other approach looks at the long-term consequences of a negotiation. Here the questions are how the agreement fits into each side’s strategy, and how unanticipated political and strategic developments could affect behavior. Most important, a longer-term framework focuses on the residual capability that exists after an agreement. Are organizational structures dismantled, systems taken down, and key staff dispersed?The biggest mistake in any negotiation is to confuse these two approaches. Rather, the two approaches should be integrated into a balanced overall strategy. In the Iran agreement the focus has been on the art of the deal, that there was no better deal to be had, and that the United States got more in the agreement than many people expected. All of these things may be true—and to a reasonable extent I think that they are. But this isn’t a “good deal” from the long-term point of view. Highlighting the laudable energy put into the agreement by the United States team makes good political sense. After all, the deal has to be sold. As a practical matter putting the focus on the art of the deal is one way to do this. But it doesn’t put the spotlight where it belongs, on the consequences down the road.There are two such consequences that are worrying. First, the Iran agreement is likely to increase the spread of nuclear weapons, both in Iran and in the Middle East; it doesn’t alter the strategic environment in any way, nor are there other initiatives underway to do this. The other feature of the agreement that is worrying is that it barely touches Iran’s residual capability to get a bomb. All of the knowhow, institutes, and systems to do so remain in place, even if some of them are monitored. A largely unrestrained residual nuclear capability remains in a strategic environment that Iran considers extremely dangerous. This gives Tehran considerable scope for strategic and political moves to get atomic weapons.Iran’s Residual Capacity to Go NuclearThe P5+1 agreement with Iran grew out of complex political and military dynamics that began more than twenty years ago. A war against Iran’s neighbor, Iraq, to forcibly remove WMD has to be the most salient development. Here, a major power, the United States built a coalition to invade, occupy, and attempt to transform Iraqi state and society. The purpose of the war had clear implications for Iran. If it had been the success its architects wanted, it would have established a base to politically and militarily undermine the Iranian regime and its nuclear weapons program.The long history leading up to the current agreement also included an economic siege that caused great harm to the Iranian people. It bore witness to the first cyber attack that destroyed things, in the form of the Stuxnet computer virus. One could add to this list targeted killings of Iran’s scientists and a wide range of covert operations to disrupt its nuclear program.The point is clear enough. The agreement comes with a long history. Focusing only on the deal itself or the personalities of the negotiators (“they seem to like each other”) misses most of the strategic environment that Iran faces.The Iran agreement is one development in this long process. It’s like negotiating an end to a long war where each side gets to keep its forces intact. Here, the “war” is the American-led effort to prevent Iran’s atomic bomb. A “surrender” was never accepted by Iran, in the agreement itself or in the behavior that surrounds it. It wasn’t a strategic surrender of its bomb program in the sense that Iran has foresworn nuclear weapons. At best it was a tactical surrender of those parts of it, like old centrifuges, that leaders thought they could shed without too much political loss at home. In sum, Iran’s residual nuclear capability is largely untouched.Ending the Vietnam War was hardly settled once the United States signed an agreement in Paris with the government of North Vietnam. The agreement didn’t terminate the war—far from it. Rather, the Paris peace accord was an important development that shaped what followed. What was critical then is what’s critical now. North Vietnam wasn’t required to stand down any of its forces. They remained in place. This gave Hanoi freedom of action to exploit the post-Paris peace agreement situation. Hanoi never agreed to abandon its long-term goal of conquering South Vietnam, and that’s exactly what they did over the next two years.There’s a more general lesson here. Instead of focusing on what is agreed to in a document, we need to focus on the surviving capability that was central to the conflict in the first place. If that capability remains, the details over verification and implementation of any agreement are radically changed, because the side with it has the power to use its residual capability to wreck the deal, or dance around the edges to change it, alter its scope, or any of a number of other strategies.Iran has only accepted an armistice—a tactical, temporary suspension of some aspects of its nuclear program. It retains a capability to conduct other parts of its atomic program openly. Iran’s nuclear technology system has not been reduced, let alone dismantled. The knowhow, organizational structures, staffs, and systems (for example, advanced centrifuges and missiles) remain essentially intact.The Middle East Is a Dangerous PlaceLet’s put Iran’s residual nuclear program in the Middle East context. Iran’s Sunni rivals, such as Saudi Arabia and the UAE, are organizing against it. These rivals have a lot of money, and they’ve recently crossed a major escalation threshold, using military force in Bahrain and Yemen. Even Israel has joined this coalition in a de facto way.Nearby, a civil war in Syria has reached brutal levels of violence. Yet it goes on, putting paid to arguments that large-scale war is some kind of obsolete or improbable development. Some 300,000 people killed with all manner of outside states and subnational groups intervening for their own narrow purpose. That the result is apparent stalemate, or that many of the interventions look ill conceived, doesn’t change the fact that Iran can easily see something like this happening to them. Especially for Iran, this is an important fear; Iran suffered large-scale chemical warfare attack in its war with Iraq in the 1980s. I have yet to meet any Iranian who doesn’t believe that this was at least tacitly approved of by the United States and Israel.Finally, U.S. military capability is not appreciably any less than it was a few years ago. The United States is trying to get out of the area in terms of its deployed forces in theater. But the whole shift to maritime and cyber power in announced American plans points to exerting military force from a distance and from off shore.Absent some deterrent, the United States can destroy a large part of Iran’s military, opening it up to the kind of catastrophe Syria is now suffering. This really would shut down Iran’s nuclear program if it happened. The point here isn’t to make the case that the Middle East is a dangerous place. Everyone knows that. It’s to make the point that Iran’s residual nuclear program exists in this strategic environment.Two conclusions follow from this. First, no amount of negotiating skill on the West’s part was going to alter this strategic environment. No personal relations between negotiators could reverse the strategic realities that Iran faces. That members of the two teams went to MIT and swapped gifts for their grandchildren is all very nice. But it doesn’t come close to altering Iran’s dangerous situation.Second, even if the mullahs were to pass from the scene, Iran’s strategic situation doesn’t change. I would say that even the disestablishment of the Iranian Guards wouldn’t make a difference. The Iranian state needs something to keep the forces of chaos at bay. It has a nuclear capability because it did everything in its power to build it—in the face of an economic siege, cyber attack, targeted killing of its scientists, and the P5+1 negotiations.Iran isn’t going to give this capability up easily; moreover, no side promise from the United States or others that they will not strong arm Iran if they do give up their nuclear effort is likely to carry much weight in Tehran.The Bigger Picture of the Second Nuclear AgeIran has accepted an armistice—a temporary suspension of tactical aspects of its nuclear program. This is what North Korea and Pakistan also did. At various times both countries moderated their nuclear weapon programs, most especially visible signs of them. When Pakistan was collecting billions in U.S. aid in the 1980s and helping fight the war in Afghanistan, it didn’t want to flaunt its nuclear effort by testing a weapon. Nor did it want to overly irritate the United States. When North Korea was under military threat from the United States in the early 1990s, it embraced former President Jimmy Carter’s agreed framework to prevent an attack.In two major nuclear proliferation cases, arms control was a mask for strategy. Arms control and strategy were complements, not alternatives. I want to emphasize that this isn’t an argument against arms control. Actually it can be very important. But it is an argument against using arms control as a way to shape future history, or to use it to freeze-dry a certain particular era in world order. Expecting an arms control agreement to restore the nuclear world of 1970 or 1991, eras in which the United States had inordinate power, just isn’t likely to work.The world is going through a major transition, and the Iran deal needs to be seen in this light. There is a repolarization of international relations under way. It’s not just multipolarity replacing the bipolarity of the first nuclear age, the Cold War. Authoritarian regimes Russia and China are lining up against a new coalition of the United States, Europe, Japan, and India.Nuclear weapons are playing a key role in this realignment, and Iran has to be thinking about what such an arrangement means for it. Charles de Gaulle was once asked why he took France into the nuclear club. His response: “So we get invited to arms control meetings.” Israel, Pakistan, and India—Iran’s immediate neighbors—have the bomb. Tehran’s negotiating opponents, the United States, France, and Britain all have it. And so do Russia and China.Not only do all of these countries have the bomb; they are also redesigning their nuclear forces for the 21st century. Russia has added forty new modern ICBMs. It has violated several Cold War arms agreements that were the pillars of the global arms control regime. Moreover, Russia is “using” its nuclear forces to test Western defenses, as well as to threaten larger escalations should Ukraine join NATO. China’s nuclear rebuilding is a critical part of its across-the-board modernization, from maritime forces to anti-satellite weapons.Let’s add to the picture North Korea, which has about twenty nuclear bombs and a missile capacity to deliver them. Pakistan’s arsenal is the fastest growing in the world. And there’s a new class of tactical nuclear weapons. I have no interest in reviewing all this bad news in detail; doing so only obscures certain more fundamental point that Iran has to consider. First, a global arms control regime led by the United States is hardly spreading. In fact, it’s contracting. There are defectors from that regime who go unpunished, big gaps that remain, and even Britain and France have modernized their nuclear forces. A world without nuclear weapons doesn’t appear to be on the horizon, at least in any time enough to matter to Iran.Looked at this way, the 21st century is a multipolar order that has nuclear weapons more deeply embedded in it than the bipolar order of the 20th century. Any country that gave up the bomb would immediately be at a political disadvantage. They wouldn’t be invited to arms control meetings, where others would design the future order—quite possibly at their expense. It’s one thing to repudiate outside devils as Iran has done for so long. But it’s altogether different to ignore that one’s friends and enemies are meeting to enforce new arms regimes that affect you—when you are not even invited to the meeting.The Iran agreement is likely to mark a major change in perceptions, but not in the way that many advocates of the deal foresee. The four-decade effort to prevent a second nuclear age is giving way to what could be an even longer era of trying to manage a second nuclear age. For this, strategic thinking and arms control need to be applied; so in an unintended way the Iran agreement may accelerate such an effort. The Iran agreement was announced a few days after the seventieth anniversary of the Trinity nuclear test at Alamogordo, New Mexico, in 1945. I did not see many celebrations to mark this occasion. It was something of a memory the United States wishes to forget. But July 16, 2015, could have been used not to celebrate the test, but to try to fundamentally rethink what nuclear weapons have done, and where we may go in the future. Perhaps the Iran agreement will force this kind of sober reflection, and might in its own unintended way help us rediscover the fundamental purposes of strategy and arms control.

Hillary Clinton’s ‘Black Lives Matter’ Triangulations

Democrats are debating whether it is proper to say “all lives matter” or “black lives matter,” and Hillary Clinton has now formally taken a side. After watching her rivals for the Democratic presidential nomination Martin O’Malley and Bernie Sanders get burned at the progressive Netroots convention over the weekend for mostly declining to use the “black lives matter” slogan, Clinton took to Facebook yesterday and posted:

Black lives matter. Everyone in this country should stand firmly behind that. We need to acknowledge some hard truths about race and justice in this country, and one of those hard truths is that racial inequality is not merely a symptom of economic inequality.

Last month, Clinton herself said “all lives matter” in a speech at a black church, arousing the ire of some progressives—though not enough to make her apologize for using the phrase, as O’Malley did after his roasting at Netroots. Clinton’s statement Tuesday indicates that she likely won’t make the mistake of saying “all lives matter” again, at least during primary season.

It might be tempting to dismiss Hillary’s triangulation on “black lives matter” as petty primary posturing with little political significance. In fact, it points to a very real division within the American left, with important implications for the future of the Democratic Party—namely, the division between economic populists who rally around the politics of class and social progressives who rally around the politics of identity.Sanders, Hillary’s chief rival, is clearly a social liberal, but the unifying theme of his platform—which includes single payer healthcare, a Wall Street crackdown, and a 90 percent top tax rate—is economic populism. Clinton has attempted to adopt a left-wing populist tone during the primary campaign, but as a private jet-setting multimillionaire whose top donors are Wall Street banks, she cannot credibly position herself to Sanders’ left on class or economic issues. Her Facebook statement rebuking Sanders and O’Malley on race—along with other policy moves like her celebration of the Supreme Court’s same-sex marriage decision and her leftward pivot on immigration—can be seen as an effort to compensate for her populist deficiencies by emphasizing her identity politics bona fides.Fortunately for Clinton, in America, the politics of identity have usually trumped the politics of class. Unlike many European countries, the United States has a legacy of mass immigration and racial slavery that brings issues of identity to the fore of our politics. In part because of how slavery and immigration drove identity politics, we have never experienced the same degree of class solidarity as European countries have—one of the reasons a real American socialism never really appeared. Left-wing economic populism had a good run during the New Deal era, but since the 1960s it has been cultural liberals, not economic progressives, at the vanguard of the intellectual left.The Democrats’ days as the party of the working class are long gone. The party’s faithful is a coalition of non-white identity groups, along with young voters and upper class cultural liberals. Winning them over will require appeals to the politics of race, gender, and sexual orientation, not merely economic issues. Hillary Clinton recognizes the importance of social issues and identity politics for holding the party’s diverse constituency together; that’s why she emerged on top from the Netroots saga.