Streetwise Professor

Arch neoconservative Robert Kagan looks upon the Trump phenomenon with horror, and has declared his intention to leave the party and vote for Hillary Clinton. He has much company among fellow-neocons, and  #NeverTrump has become a thing on Twitter.

I guess Thomas Wolfe was wrong: you really can go home again. The neoconservative movement was begun by an assortment of leftists whose political home was the Democratic Party. They ranged from dyed-in-the-wool Trostskyists (or is it Trotskyites?) to New Deal Democrats. The rise of the New Left in the 1960s and 1970s left the soon-to-be-neocons marginalized within the Democratic Party, and they decamped to the Republican Party. Now that they are being marginalized in the Republican Party (such as it is) by a populist uprising, so they are looking to return to their old political home. Not that they will fit in comfortably there, either.

Kagan calls Trump a Frankenstein’s monster. This is rich with irony, because if that’s true, he, and his fellow neocons are Dr. Frankenstein, or at least Igor. The George W. Bush administration represented the neocon ascendency, especially in foreign policy. From that catastrophe was born Obama, and now Trump. The brutal repudiation of Jeb Bush, and the lack of widespread outrage among the hoi polloi at Trump’s borderline-Truther attack on George W., demonstrates how totally the Bushes, and their neocon advisors, have been rejected.

If Kagan et al want to go back to the Democrats, and embrace the Hildabeast, I reply as my grandfather would have: “Here’s your hat. What’s your hurry?” Or, more crudely: “Don’t let the door hit you in the ass on your way out. I wouldn’t want you to damage the door.”

Why? Well, precisely because neoconservatives are antithetical to the classical liberal, small government, and libertarian types who are also called “conservative” in the American political lexicon.

There are two big points of contrast between neoconservatives and small government conservatives, Jacksonian populists, and other non-neoconservative elements on the right.

Neoconservatives are anti-individualist, and statist. Neoconservatives owe a considerable part of their philosophical foundation to Leo Strauss. Following Strauss, neoconservatives are hostile to individualism, and the natural rights of individuals. Individuals pursuing happiness are merely egotists, and lack virtue. Achieving virtue requires collective projects, carried out through the state, and guided by an elite.

These projects should be pharaonic in scope. In the 2000s, neoconservatives were pushing the “national greatness conservatism” agenda. The goal of policy should not be to promote the betterment of individuals’ lives, but to pursue great projects worthy of a great nation and a great people. New space programs. Massive infrastructure investments. Such projects can only be executed by the Federal government.

Neocon political heroes were men like Teddy Roosevelt–a progressive, remember.

For the neoconservatives, foreign affairs present the greatest opportunity for the pursuit of endeavors worthy of a great nation. Spreading democracy, through regime change and war if necessary, is such an endeavor.

To some, the phrase “war is the health of the state” is a damning criticism. To many neocons, it is anything but. Wars fought in a virtuous cause are a good thing, and require a strong and healthy state.

This, of course, is what impelled Bush foreign policy, and led to its ignominious repudiation among a large majority of Americans. Obama, remember, won primarily by running as the anti-Bush. It would be fair to say that he won by running as the anti-neocon.

In the current campaign, Rubio is the standard bearer for the neocon cause. Trump, and to some degree Cruz, are prospering in large part because of their opposition to that cause.

Neocons are elitist and anti-populist. Again reflecting their Straussian roots, neocons believe that a robust state pursuing grandiose national projects can only be led by an elite. The people are too fickle, too ignorant, and too self-regarding to be trusted to carry out great schemes. But to implement their agenda in a democratic system, neocons have to manipulate public opinion, in part by telling different “truths” to different groups.

One remarkable tell of this elitism is immigration policy. Kagan and other major neoconservatives (e.g., Jon Podhoretz) adamantly support open borders. (Keep that in mind when you parse what Rubio has to say on immigration.) Opposition to unlimited immigration has been the singlemost important issue in galvanizing Trump’s support.

Robert Kagan and his cabal find themselves in their current straits because of the disastrous effects of big government elitism. Again, the catastrophe of the Bush years, which began with a disastrous intervention in Iraq and ended with a financial crisis, utterly discredited the self-anointed elite. Interventions during the Obama years–notably in Libya–that neoconservatives strongly supported only cemented the popular revulsion.

And said people are rising up, pitchfork and torches in hand, with Trump at their head, to storm the neocon castle. Further evidence of the cluelessness of Kagan and his ilk, they don’t understand that in the popular mind they are Dr. Frankenstein. If the neoconservatives don’t like the current political environment, they have primarily themselves to blame. It is in large part a reaction to them, and what they wrought.

In some respects, it is remarkable that neoconservatives (whom Reagan did not like) and small/smallish-government types were able to coexist in the same party for so long. But the stresses that have accumulated in fifteen years of foreign policy failure and economic malaise are too much for whatever bonds held these disparate groups together to hold. So Kagan and his fellow neocons will go their own way, and will not be missed. If they are perceived as being instrumental in putting Hillary in the White House, they will be the target of even more enmity by those they left behind.

The fundamental fact is this. In the Republican Party or out of it, neoconservatives are not friends of individual liberty and a modest, constrained state. To the contrary, they are its enemies. Whatever else the Trump movement accomplishes, it has already succeeded in forcing the neoconservatives to drop their Straussian deceptions and reveal their true beliefs: a big state and an interventionist foreign policy that is more than comfortable with using war to achieve their messianic purpose.

If Elizabeth Warren were to have her way, you’d see my mug on the wall of your local Post Office. What have I done to become to earn her nomination as Public Enemy? Having the temerity to oppose position limits, and co-authoring a report summarizing the deliberations of the CFTC’s Energy & Environmental Markets Advisory Committee, which strongly criticized the need for, and details of, the Commission’s proposed position limits rule.

The backstory is this. In 2015 I was an associate member of EEMAC. (As of 10 days ago, I am a full member.) The Committee’s sponsor, Commissioner Christopher Giancarlo, asked me to write the (Dodd-Frank mandated) report summarizing the Committee’s deliberations at two meetings in 2015. I agreed, and along with Jim Allison (who just retired from ConocoPhillips), I wrote a relatively short draft that just summarized the transcripts of the two meetings. The report went through some additional edits, and was then submitted to the nine full members of EEMAC for their approval. It was approved by an 8-1 vote.

The conclusions and recommendations of these meetings were rather straightforward to recapitulate, because there was considerable agreement on the major issues of (a) whether position limits were necessary, (b) the proposed rule’s bona fide hedging exemptions, and (c) whether to implement limits for spot months only initially, or to implement for all months.

If you read the transcript, and read the final report, you will see that the report is a faithful record of what happened during the meetings. As I said in yesterday’s meeting, I viewed my role to be that of “faithful scribe,” and that’s what I was.

But since the message in the report was NOT what Elizabeth Warren (and one of the EEMAC members, Public Citizen’s Tyson Slocum) wanted to hear, Warren, Slocum, and Warren’s journalistic creatures (most notably the New York Times) decided to kill the messenger. Warren wrote a letter to the CFTC, demanding that the report be withdrawn. Slocum wrote a dissent to the majority report. Assorted journos scurried along behind. Each called foul on my authorship. Here’s what Warren said about yours truly:

The second panelist I am concerned about is Dr. Pirrong. According to the New York Times, “Mr. Pirrong has positioned himself as the hard-nosed defender of financial speculators – the combative, occasionally acerbic academic authority to call upon when difficult questions arise in Congress and elsewhere about the multitrillion-dollar global commodities trade…. [who] has reaped financial benefits from speculators and some ofthe largest players in the commodities business,” and played a key part in “a sweeping campaign [by the financial industry] to beat back regulation.”10

With specific regard to the position limits rule, Dr. Pirrong served as a consultant for the International Swaps and Derivatives Association – a lead plaintiff suing to block the very rule he was asked to provide his views on for the EEMAC.11 There is no record indicating that these conflicts were even disclosed by Dr. Pirrong when he served as a witness, let alone addressed by the EEMAC.

The straw man argument is one of the oldest–and lamest–rhetorical tricks. Obama is a master. But he’s by no means alone. Alleged intellectuals (and yet another 5 time Jeopardy champion!) like John Podhoretz play this cheap trick, as in this Podhoretz article denying the existence of a Republican Establishment.

Here’s Podhoretz’s straw man definition:

and:

an Establishment is a set of people in the elite who share the kinds of cultural and social commonalities that truly define a kind of social and political caste, and for which important matters are transmitted invisibly through family and educational and social ties so that they end up operating almost unconsciously from the same base of experience.

How’s that for crypto-academic argle-bargle?

It’s also completely at odds with the way that the term is hurled as an insult in the ongoing 2016 presidential contest in the Republican Party. In the current political discourse, the term is not used as it would be in a sociology seminar. In fact, those using the term today are referring precisely to people who sound like they are giving a sociology lecture.

Instead, it is used by normal people to refer to a particular group of individuals concentrated in Washington, DC. This group consists of senior elected officials (especially in the Senate), Republican Party functionaries, and assorted courtiers in journalism (notably the Weekly Standard, National Review, and Commentary), think tanks, and lobbying firms. The extended establishment includes businesses who are dependent on regulation and government expenditure (e.g., defense contractors).

This is a self-perpetuating group whose primary purpose is not ideological or principled, but is instead dedicated to maintaining power, access to power, and the sinecures attendant to power. These are people who speak of the nation, but whose real obsession is much more parochial: their horizons do not truly stretch beyond the confines of the 202 area code. These are people who are mainly interested in being players. Winning the game is actually secondary.

Indeed, the thought of a game that can actually be won or lost is rather terrifying to them, because losing would mean that they could be unceremoniously ejected from their comfortable perches. An unending, static contest is much more to their interest, and their liking.

This group has many mechanisms of social control to keep its members in line. Withholding funding, social ostracization, or providing plum jobs or committee assignments are all used to coerce or seduce loyalty.

This is why Trump and Cruz are so terrifying to the establishment. Trump is not dependent on it in any way. Indeed, he has gained traction precisely because he insults it at every turn, and they can do nothing about it: their levers of social control do not work on him. The establishment recoiled in horror at his remarks about Iraq and 911, but this did not dent his popularity, and likely increased it: the fact that he was willing to say such outrageous things about the establishment signaled that he is the kind of guy that many Americans are thirsting for, because it shows he does not play by the establishment’s rules.

For his part, Cruz has shown that he will not play by establishment rules either, even though as a Senator he is ostensibly an insider. He has fought against the Republican Senate hierarchy (the heart of the Republican establishment) in a very public way from day one, and has expressed his disdain for it while doing so. This has earned him the hatred of the 202 in-crowd: witness the intense anti-Cruz fury of establishmentarian emeritus Bob Dole. But again, this is a feature, not a bug for many Americans.

Establishment political culture is not new. Americans have long been inured to the existence of a governing class consisting of different partisan elements that is more engaged in advancing its interests as a class than national or popular interests. What is different about 2016 is that many Americans believe, with good reason, that the governing establishment is utterly indifferent to their concerns: once upon a time, the establishmentarians were able to fake sincerity, but now they don’t seem to try to do even that. Further, the fact that the establishment has done pretty well for itself in the past decade, while many Americans can’t say the same, feeds anger. Washington seems like pre-Revolutionary Versailles to many Americans.

On the Republican side, immigration has proved to be the issue that has alienated the establishment from those outside of DC. Trump realized this early, and seized on it. It is the issue that will make it difficult indeed for the Republican establishment’s preferred candidate-Rubio-to win. Too many people who vote in Republican primaries identify with Trump on this salient issue, rather than Rubio.

It must be noted that the disdain for the governing establishment is not limited to the Republicans. Hillary’s inability to shake a dotty socialist demonstrates that many Democratic voters are also deeply alienated. Hillary is rightly perceived as the insiders’ insider, and her risible attempt to sound militant comes off as dishonest and phony.

Podhoretz’s attempt to deny the existence of a Republican establishment has a comic element to it. It reminds me of the rules of Fight Club: The first rule of the Republican Establishment is: You do not talk about the Republican Establishment. The second rule of the Republican Establishment is: You do not talk about the Republican Establishment. Podhoretz’s attempt to deny its existence betrays a deep fear. He is very much a part of that establishment, and his access, influence, and income are threatened by the barbarians at the gates. He is not alone, and as a result the desperation is palpable: witness the frenzied attempts to pump up Rubio.

What Podhoretz and his ilk aren’t getting, however, is their efforts are completely counterproductive. Since they are the problem in the minds of many Americans, their attempts to promote one candidate and tear down others hurts the former and helps the latter: their endorsements are an insult, and their insults are endorsements.

They don’t have a positive agenda to offer, and preservation of their class is hardly a selling point in the current political environment. And an establishmentarian’s denial of the existence of an establishment will do nothing to convince anti-establishmentarians that their anger is misdirected. To the contrary, it will come off as another act of condescension-“the establishment doesn’t exist: who are you gonna believe, me, or your lying eyes?”-that will just feed the anger.

I think it is fairly clear that the Republican side of the establishment is doomed, which is precisely why people like Podhoretz are so intent on denying its existence. I sometimes wonder whether the party is in the throes of a collapse comparable to the Whigs in the 19th century. Its passing will not be lamented. What remains to be seen is whether what replaces it will be an improvement.

Platts is preparing for a Brentless future by introducing a new Dated Brent CIF Rotterdam assessment.  The idea is that as North Sea production continues its decline, other streams of light crude that are imported into Rotterdam can be added to the assessment. Adding (or substituting) say Nigerian crude to the FOB Brent assessment would be much more difficult because of locational differences: FOB Nigeria and FOB North Sea can be quite different, even adjusting for quality, due to freight differentials. A CIF contract eliminates that.

The decline in North Sea production has been occurring for some time, so the need to adjust the pricing mechanism has been apparent. Plants has been thrashing around for a while, mooting the possibility of adding other crude (e.g., Urals Med) to the assessment.  It had already widened the delivery window to make more cargoes eligible (remember 15 Day Brent? 21? It’s now 25 Day.) This problem has become more pressing though, as the decline in prices is hastening the decline in North Sea production.

It is ironic that at the same time that Platts (and therefore, ICE) are grappling with the problem of  declining supply, the main rival to Brent has the exact opposite problem. The WTI contract is currently drowning in oil. Storage at Cushing is bumping up against capacity, and there are reports that some storage operators there are refusing requests to store additional crude.

Although the current situation at Cushing (and in the North American market generally) is as much a demand story as a supply story, the facts are that (a) the NYMEX WTI contract is linked to a much more robust and flexible production base than Brent, and (b) the WTI contract’s periodic difficulties are due to infrastructure issues that are more readily, cheaply, and rapidly addressed than production issues. Thus it has been for the past five years or so, as I discussed when I wrote that those foretelling the demise of WTI were fundamentally mistaken:

But these problems are all surmountable.  WTI’s problems arise from the consequences of too much supply at the delivery point, which is a good problem for a contract to have.  The price signals are leading to the kind of response that will eliminate the supply overhang, leaving the WTI contract with prices that are highly interconnected with those of seaborne crude, and with enough deliverable supply to mitigate the potential for squeezes and other technical disruptions.

Brent’s problems are more fundamental, because they arise from declining supply.  Even as paper volumes continue to rise, physical volumes available for delivery are falling inexorably.  The Brent complex had faced this problem before, and confronted it by adding Forties, Oseberg, and Ekofisk to the eligible stream.  But BFOE production has declined from 1.6 mm bbl/d in 2006 to barely more than half that today.  And the decline continues apace.  This makes the contract vulnerable to squeezes of a kind that were chronic in the 1990s and early 2000s, and which spurred Platts to add the three other grades to the benchmark.

. . . .

Which means that those who are crowing about Brent today, and heaping scorn on WTI, will be begging for WTI’s problems in a few years.  For by then, WTI’s issues will be fixed, and it will be sitting astride a robust flow of oil tightly interconnected with the nexus of world oil trading.  But the Brent contract will be an inverted paper pyramid, resting on a thinner and thinner point of crude production.  There will be gains from trade–large ones–from redesigning the contract, but the difficulties of negotiating an agreement among numerous big players will prove nigh on to impossible to surmount.  Moreover, there will be no single regulator in a single jurisdiction that can bang heads together (for yes, that is needed sometimes) and cajole the parties toward agreement.

The CIF alternative makes sense, and is probably superior to the “economic par” contract I suggested in the 2011 post. But once you move to a Rotterdam pricing basis, why remain tied to an assessment mechanism based on transactions in immense full cargoes? The large size of the lots inherently limits the number of transactions, which makes the assessment mechanism more erratic and subject to manipulation. The lumpiness of the market has also led Platts to design a baroque process involving bids and offers, contracts for differences, futures prices, spreads, etc., to increase the number of trades that go into the assessment.

The WTI contract, in contrast, is based on delivery in store of modest-sized (1000 barrel) units of crude. This is much more flexible, and permits a large number of firms to participate in the delivery process. This makes delivery and the threat of delivery a reliable and efficient way of ensuring convergence of futures to cash market values. The mechanism is not immune to all types of manipulation: delivery squeezes are still possible (though relatively unlikely in current market conditions). But small numbers of transactions can’t have a pronounced impact on pricing, and the in store delivery mechanism does not rely on an arcane and mysterious assessment mechanism (which also helps to enrich the party making the assessment).

So rather than shifting to a Rotterdam CIF mechanism, why not shift the futures market to a Rotterdam in store delivery contract? This mechanism is more flexible and resilient in the short run, and is readily adjusted in the long run to respond to changes in the underlying physical production base as NYMEX did by adding foreign crude streams (including Brent) to address the (then) declining domestic production base.

I can see why Platts wouldn’t like this, but it has some decided advantages for ICE, not the least of which is reducing its dependence on Platts. Given the difficulties of changing contract specifications, or generating liquidity for even a better contract introduced in competition with an established liquid one, I doubt this will happen. Which means that ICE, and the market generally, will have to continue to endure periodic changes the “Brent” assessment mechanism as North Sea production continues to decline.

I put “Brent” in quotes because the handwriting is on the wall: any future European-based contract may be called “Brent” even after Brent (and Forties, and Oseberg, and Ekofisk) no longer represent the bulk of the benchmark stream. The contract will come to resemble the old Harry Anderson comedy bit, where he juggled a chainsaw and an axe. He would stop juggling, hold up the axe and say: “This is George Washington’s axe. The handle was replaced years ago, and I just put on a new head, but it’s George Washington’s axe!” So it will be with Brent, and sooner than anyone would have thought even a few short years ago.

I am not a Trump supporter, for many reasons. But the depth and intensity of support that he has attracted is an important social and political phenomenon, that needs to be understood before the deep concerns and anger that he has tapped can be addressed with good policies.

I made a preliminary attempt here. Others have done a much more thorough job. Most notable of these is Walter Russell Mead, on whose idea of Jacksonian Americans I drew upon in my post. His Andrew Jackson, Revenant, is a must read on the subject. So are Charles Murray’s Trump’s America and Angelo Codevilla’s Does Trump Trump?

Then there is Tom Nichols. The Naval War College professor’s theory is–I am being serious here–“Facebook envy.” Specifically, social media has made middle and working class Americans newly and keenly aware that there are people with more stuff than them. This has made them green with envy, and their envy-fueled anger has driven them to support Trump.

I think that is a very fair summary. Read for yourself:

In other words, Trump (and Sanders) have convinced people that the same socioeconomic arrangements that once benefitted them are actually screwing them, mostly on the premise that it’s not benefitting them enough.

No one factor explains Trump, but this underlying resentment is at least in part a result of the Information Age, which is spurring one of the biggest experiments in relative deprivation in human history. People who once had little idea how others outside of their social circle lived now constantly compare themselves not just to their neighbors, but to the wealthy, and even to the super-wealthy. They are not just keeping up with the Joneses next door, but via the Internet and cable they’re keeping up with the Reeds down the street, the Browns in the next town, the Smiths in the next state, and the Kardashians all the way across the country.

As one wag on Twitter put it, call it the “HGTV Effect.”

This is only possible because of new technology.

Two stories that illustrate what a clueless monstrosity the EU is. (H/T to @libertylynx on both.) (I was about to write “has become”, but that would be wrong–it’s been this way from the beginning.)

First, “France fails to win immediate EU action on farming crisis“:

France failed to secure further relief measures for its struggling livestock farmers at a meeting of European Union agriculture ministers on Monday, as it tries to contain protests sparked by persistent low prices.

French dairy and meat farmers have been staging protests for weeks, blocking roads, dumping manure, straw and earth in front of public buildings and supermarkets.

The growing crisis had prompted President Francois Hollande last week to promise tax cuts for farmers and to call for decisions at the EU farm minister meeting.

France, the EU’s largest agricultural producer, had gone to Monday’s EU meeting with a set of proposals to regulate oversupply in the milk and pigmeat sectors, but the European Commission asked it to come back with new proposals.

From the time that the Common Agricultural Policy began in the early-1960s, European farm policy has been a special interest nightmare. Agricultural markets have never been permitted to work, and 300+ million Europeans have been held hostage by a few million (relatively inefficient) farmers, particularly (but not exclusively) in France.

Second–again from France!–“Most vulnerable industries need 100 percent free carbon–France“:

Energy intensive industries most likely to leave the European Union because of costs should get all of their EU Emissions Trading System permits free until other major blocs have a carbon price in place, France‘s economy minister said on Monday.

The European Commission is revising its rules for handing out free permits to cushion energy intensive industries, such as the steel sector and oil refiners, from the expense of offsetting emissions on the ETS.

As if this wasn’t completely predictable. Apparently the Europeans believed that the world would immediately see the error if its ways, and defer to the shining example of Europe on climate change policy.

Actually, the rest of the world–the developing world/emerging markets in particular–pretty much decided that they didn’t like being poor, and if the Europeans were going to burden their energy intensive industries with myriad restrictions in the name of battling global warming, the rest of the world was perfectly willing to seize on the opportunity.

I could go on. The immigration mess. The fact that European post-crisis financial regulation (MiFID II and EMIR) makes Frankendodd look like light touch regulation. Energy policy. The list is endless.

There’s an old joke that Arkansas exists so that Mississippians have someone to look down upon. (Or is it Mississippi exists so that Arkansans have someone to look down upon?) I often think that the EU exists so the US has someone to look down upon. As dysfunctional as we are, we ain’t got nothing on them.

What makes it worse is that Europe presumes to lecture the world on policy and governance. That, and all the navel-gazing “more Europe” crap. “More hitting myself in the head with a ball peen hammer” sounds preferable.

When asked what would make a good president, Marco Rubio answered: “Do they the know difference between Sunni & Shia..between ISIS & Al Qaeda?”

Apparently those able to answer the $200 question in Teen Jeopardy would make good presidents.

Rubio has been Johnny One Note on the Shia-Sunni issue. He is beyond insipid. It also brings to mind the time of the Iranian Hostage Crisis. The prevailing narrative at the time was that Shias were radicals, and that Sunnis represented the “moderate branch of Islam.” In retrospect, this was the Saudi propaganda line, and they are pushing the same thing today.

Perhaps it was excusable for Americans in 1979 and 1980 to be ignorant of the deep radicalism that permeated Sunni Islam. But in the aftermath of at least 20 years of Sunni terrorism, the relentless proselytizing of the Wahhabis, and the insidious operations of the Muslim Brotherhood, it is inexcusable to swallow the Saudi narrative, hook, line, and sinker, as Rubio clearly has. To add insult to injury, he presumes to lecture us on his superior knowledge of the nuances of Islam.

The best Western analogy to what is going on in Islam right now is the 30 Years War. A sectarian conflict between two branches of the same religion, being fought across a good portion of a continent. Taking sides in that is idiotic. But that is exactly what Rubio and his supporters and advisers are pushing, and claiming that it is wisdom.

I haven’t written much about the ongoing presidential race because, well, it’s just too damn depressing. The race is nearing a critical period, so I’ll make a few observations and then go back to looking for an island to escape to.

Trump is still ascendant in the Republican race. His closest rival, Cruz, is almost as frightening to the Republican establishment as Trump. So said establishment has seized upon Marco Rubio as its savior. After Iowa, Rubio was anointed as the voice of reason with the best chance of defeating Hillary (assuming that she is the nominee, and given the way the Democratic nominating process is rigged, that could happen even if she loses every primary to the dotty socialist, and has to appear at her inauguration in an orange jumpsuit instead of a canary yellow Mao suit).

That lasted for about a week, when Chris Christie showed that the establishment’s Great White Hope had a glass jaw in the New Hampshire debate. This sent the establishment into paroxysms of defensive rage, directed mainly at Christie for having the temerity to challenge The One and undermining the Republican’s best chance at victory in November.

This logic is delusional. If Rubio can’t handle  a telegraphed punch from a fellow Republican, how could anyone possibly expect him to do anything but wither under the assault of the Clinton machine and the national media (but I repeat myself)?

Even if Rubio is toast, the establishment’s enthusiasm for him and his positions is disturbing, and reveals precisely why Trump and Cruz are dominating the process. Rubio has made foreign policy the centerpiece of his campaign. This despite the fact that the signs are all around that economic troubles are mounting, and that the election is likely to turn on economic issues than foreign policy ones. The seething discontent that feeds Trump (and Cruz, and Sanders on the Dem side) is at root a populist revolt driven by economic anxieties and a belief that the political system is favors elites that have done quite well in the aftermath of the crisis while many Americans are floundering.

Further, the specifics of Rubio’s foreign policy positions are troubling and disconnected. Yes, terrorism is a major concern of many Americans. But Rubio’s nostrums involve a new round of interventions in Syria and Iraq that are unlikely to reduce materially the threat of terrorism. Indeed, mouthing the words of his neoconservative adviser Max Boot and his ilk, Rubio advocates getting involved in intra-Muslim sectarian civil war on the side of the primary source and funders of anti-American terror in a place where only minor American interests are involved, and where intervention would greatly increase the risk of a confrontation with Russia. And large swathes of the Republican establishment cheer him on.

Rubio talks constantly on the stump and in debates about taking the side of the Sunnis in the Sunni-Shia Muslim civil war. Let’s be clear about what he really means: he means taking the side of the Saudis and Qataris and Turks, none of whom are reliable allies, or have US interests at heart. Indeed, (a) the Saudis in particular are the wellspring of terror, and (b) their main interest is in manipulating the US to intervene in their battles to advance their interests, which are in no way aligned with ours. We have no stake in the Muslim civil war.

Ostensibly, Rubio’s (and Boot’s and the neoconservatives’ generally) support for Sunnis is aimed at fighting ISIS, and is anti-sectarian:

Because they currently occupy Sunni cities and villages. Sunni cities and villages can only truly be liberated and held by Sunnis themselves. If they are held by Shias it will trigger sectarian violence. The Kurds are incredible fighters, and they will liberate the Kurdish areas, but Kurds cannot and do not want to liberate and hold Sunni villages and towns. It will take Sunni fighters themselves in that region to take those villages and cities, and then to hold them and avoid the sort of sectarian violence that follows in the past. And why that is important is because if Sunnis are not able to govern themselves in these areas, you are going to have a successor group to ISIS. ISIS is a successor group of al Qaeda. In fact, they broke away from al Qaeda, because as horrible as al Qaeda is, ISIS thought al Qaeda was not radical enough. This is who we’re dealing with, and they have more money than al Qaeda ever had.

This is delusional for several reasons. First, it presumes that “Sunni fighters” are all that interested in fighting ISIS, which is an avowedly Sunni movement that wants to extirpate Shia. In Syria, the Sunnis are focused on toppling Assad. In Iraq, the Sunni powers in the region have little interest in defeating an insurgency because that would empower Iran and the Shia government of Iraq. Second, the governments of Syria and Iraq have no interest in empowering Sunnis who would, if they succeeded in defeating ISIS, become a threat to those governments. The aftermath of a putative defeat of ISIS by the magical Sunni fighters would almost certainly involve conflict between the victorious Sunni forces and the governments of Syria and Iraq, thereby involving the US as a partisan in civil conflicts in both countries. In the case of Syria, this would set up a direct confrontation between Russia and the US. Third, the idea that there are Sunni moderates, or that Sunnis with guns are likely to be moderate, is nuts. In Syria, the armed Sunni groups are overwhelmingly Al Qaeda or Muslim Brotherhood. Both are virulently anti-American. Even if they somehow vanquished ISIS, we would just be empowering other anti-American groups with a history of carrying out terrorism.

The Rubio model (or more accurately, the model of his advisors, because he seems incapable of independent thought) appears to be the Surge in Iraq. Yes, the Surge was very successful, much to the surprise of many. But its success depended on many conditions, none of which can be repeated now.

Remember what was “surged”: American combat units. 150,000 US personnel were involved. Although the Anbar Surge has received most attention, American troops also fought fiercely to subdue Shia militias as part of the effort. Indeed,  that was vital in giving the US credibility in forming alliances with the Sunni tribes in Anbar. Moreover, the Sunni tribes would not have stood up against Al Qaeda in Iraq (the predecessor of ISIS) if there were not tens of thousands of Americans in the fight. This is not happening, nor should it happen, because the gain is not worth the cost.

Nor can one ignore the fact that the US’s ignominious withdrawal from Iraq is what made it possible for ISIS to metastasize and wreak vengeance on those Sunnis who had cooperated. It also allowed the hardcore Shia sectarians in Iraq to run amok, and take their vengeance on Sunnis. The trust that Petraeus and other Americans so painstakingly built to coax the Sunni tribes into the conflict against AQI has been destroyed, and it will not be possible to restore it.

In brief, the success in Anbar was dependent on conditions that cannot be repeated. Those using the Surge as their model for the battle against ISIS are fighting the last war, which inevitably turns out badly.

I should also note that Rubio’s relentless criticism of Assad puts him clearly on the Sunni/Saudi/Turkish/Qatari side of the civil war in Syria. Further, his advisors, and those supporting him, are relentlessly anti-Shia and pro-Sunni. They demonize Assad-who is indisputably a malign man who has committed atrocities-but gloss over the equally malign nature of most of those fighting him. This black-and-white characterization of what is really a black-and-black situation is exactly what led to the disastrous intervention in Libya. Even if ISIS is subdued, the Rubio mindset makes it inevitable that he would get the US involved in a civil war in a minor country that is only tangential at best to American interests.

Here too Trump and Cruz have a better sense of the American people than Rubio. There is widespread opposition to another adventure in the Middle East, even one dressed up as a war against ISIS.

To some extent, this issue would be neutralized in a general election campaign between Clinton and Rubio, because Hillary is also an interventionist, and one who wears Libya like an albatross around her neck. But being an interventionist would be a disadvantage if Hillary was matched up against a non-interventionist.

Rubio’s advisors are strong advocates of the idea of the US as the world’s policeman, and have blasted Cruz, Christie, Paul and Fiorina as “isolationists” because of their skepticism over engaging in new adventures in Syria and elsewhere. Yes, Obama’s anti-interventionism has contributed to the current chaos in the world. But just as Obama over-learned the lessons of the Bush presidency, Rubio, his neoconservative advisors, and the Republican establishment, seem hell-bent on over-learning the lessons of the Obama presidency. The average between too much and too little isn’t “just right.” Rather than see-sawing between extremes, we need a foreign policy that is discriminating in where and how it intervenes, focusing on areas of vital US interests, ignoring sideshows (as tragic as they are), not picking unnecessary battles even with egregious actors (e.g., Putin) and not being played by regional actors with their own agendas.

A callow Rubio, who is clearly very reliant upon the advice of others who are anything but discriminating, would combine the worst characteristics of Bush and Obama. This is definitely not what the US needs right now. Unfortunately, what the US needs is not on offer. Not even close.

Igor Sechin comes in a close second to Rogozin the Ridiculous in providing Russian comic relief. Perhaps there are others in Russia that excel them, and I am only aware of these two because they have a bigger presence in the West, but both can be relied upon for some levity–unintentional, to be sure.

Sechin no longer has the outrageous mullet to amuse, but his public utterances suffice. Today at International Petroleum Week in London are a case in point. The mood at the event was gloomy, with pretty much everyone predicting that we are in a prolonged era of low prices, and everyone had their favorite culprit. But Sechin’s scapegoat was unique: Robots! Well, “robot traders”, anyways:

He blamed ‘financial players’ and automated ‘robot’ traders for driving down the price, saying the collapse to near $30 had little to do with supply and demand.

I presume he means algo traders and HFT. Just how these “robots” trading at subsecond frequencies have mesmerized producers and consumers to behave so as to lead to relentless buildups of inventory–including a looming topping out of capacity at Cushing–is beyond my mere economist’s skills to fathom.

Maybe Igor can commiserate with US cattle producers, who blame HFT for causing excessive volatility in beef prices.

Igor also seems to misunderstand that the “US” is not analogous to Saudi Arabia as a producer (although the phrasing is ambiguous, but I interpret this to include the US in “they”):

“At the end of 2014 some Middle East producers followed the US in their desire to increase production,” Mr Sechin told London’s International Petroleum Week. “They have deliberately created this situation and they are committed to low prices.”

The US oil sector is not a unitary decision maker in the way the Saudis are. The US industry is extremely fragmented and diffuse, with dozens of producers acting independently. They are price takers, not price makers. Very different from KSA or other producers with NOCs. (Relatedly, this is why calling the US the “new swing producer” analogous to the Saudis is dumb.)

It’s also more than a little hypocritical of him to criticize others for increasing output: Russian production has been increasing steadily over this same period.

Sechin also engaged in a little wishful thinking:

He forecast prices would recover later this year as US shale output slows. “We believe that in the coming years US shale will lose its grip on the market,” he said.

Good luck with that, Igor. US shale output has proved to be far more resilient than anyone had expected. Productivity gains and lower input costs have mitigated the impact of low prices. More importantly, the shale sector has the ability to ramp up output rapidly if prices do rise, either due to a rise in demand, or an attempt by other major producers to cut output. Indeed, this is likely the real reason the Saudis resist cutting output: they know it is futile because the supply of non-OPEC output is much more elastic than it used to be. This makes the demand for the output of the major producers, notably the Saudis (and the Russians!) more elastic than it used to be. This implies that it is not in the individual interest of any major producer to cut output unilaterally.

Which brings us to the most informative and refreshingly different part of Sechin’s remarks: his discussion of the prospects of a coordinated output cut involving OPEC and Russia.

This idea has captivated traders, who chase the idea like Randy Chasing the Dragon, shooting (the price!) up every time the rumor is floated, only to watch it fly away from their grasp. Once upon a time, Igor was notorious for encouraging such notions. Not this time around:

The most powerful figure in Russia’s oil industry on Wednesday signalled his steadfast opposition to combining with Opec to reverse the crude price rout through co-ordinated cuts in production.

. . . .
“Who are we supposed to be talking to about cuts?” Mr Sechin said when asked by the Financial Times if he was considering working with Opec, the producers’ cartel, to try to shore up the oil price. “Will Saudi Arabia or Iran cut production?”

Methinks that the real story is that the Saudis have made it clear that they trust neither the Russians nor (especially) other members of OPEC to adhere to any agree upon cuts, even assuming a deal can be cut, which is highly doubtful. So Sechin is acting as if he is the one rejecting the idea, primarily because he knows that it is DOA.

Not that this will stop all those Randys from chasing the next rumor of a coordinated cut.

Which raises the questions: Is Randy a robot? Are robots programmed to buy whenever a rumor of a Russo-Saudi oil deal is announced?

Maybe Igor will enlighten us in his next public appearance. Maybe he can do it to some musical accompaniment. Might I suggest this?:

The Assad regime and the Russians are on the verge of victory in northern Syria. In particular, the rebel stronghold of Aleppo is on the verge of falling.

This is not all that surprising. It demonstrates the decisive effect of airpower if–and this is crucial–it is operated in support of an even minimally competent ground force, especially one with armor. This is particularly true if the airpower is utilized ruthlessly, with little squeamishness about civilian casualties.

The few victories against ISIS–Kobane, Sinjar, and Ramadi–demonstrate the same point, as does the ineffectualness of the “allied” air attacks against ISIS in Syria and Iraq generally, because these attacks are not mounted in support of a coherent ground attack undertaken by an even moderately effective infantry and armor force.

The Syrian-Russian success also provides an interesting contrast to the Saudi fiasco in Yemen. The Saudis have bombed ruthlessly, with little military effect, because the bombing is not coupled with a credible ground campaign against the Houthis. This no doubt reflects the Saudi’s knowledge of the severe limitations of their ground forces.

These limitations made me laugh at the Saudi offer to deploy troops to fight ISIS in Iraq and Syria. Even overlooking the logistical impracticality of this, the Saudis would be setting themselves up for an embarrassing failure.

The Russians and Syrians actually intensified their offensive in the lead-up to the farcical “peace” talks in Geneva. No surprises here. They are in this to win decisively, not to negotiate a compromise. And there is no better way to send that message than by victory on the battlefield on the cusp of talks.

This has left the US and Europeans and Gulf Arabs sputtering in ineffectual rage. John Kerry was particularly embarrassing (nothing new here!):

“Hospitals have been hit, civilian quarters have been hit, and in some cases, after the bombing has taken place, when the workers have gone in to try to pull out the wounded, the bombers come back and they kill the people who are pulling out the wounded,” Kerry told reporters in Washington. “This has to stop. Nobody has any question about that. But it’s not going to stop just by whining about it.”

But what else is he (or anyone else) doing about it other than whine? Nothing. It would have been better for Kerry to remain silent, rather than advertise his (and The US’s) impotence.

It is also interesting to note that Kerry is damning the Russians and Syrians for bombing civilians, yet is utterly silent on the equally bad (if not worse) Saudi air campaign in Yemen.

In response to the Aleppo debacle, Turkey has closed its border with Syria. Erdogan is no doubt attempting to create (exacerbate, really) a humanitarian crisis in order to goad the US and Europe into intervening. It will never happen. The Europeans lack both the will and the means. The US has the military capability, but not the will: whatever will existed at one time (which was minimal) disappeared when intervention meant a confrontation with the Russians.

So Putin will likely get a battlefield victory. But so what? He and his Syrian creature will conquer a depopulated and devastated country. This will have little impact on the strategic balance in the region, and virtually no impact on US interests. Yes, Erdogan’s imperial and sectarian ambitions will be thwarted. Saudi and Qatari sectarian supremism will be defeated. To the extent that the US is impacted, these are actually favorable developments.

Those in the West who fulminate over Putin’s success in Syria are ironically engaged in the vacuous zero-sum thinking that drives Putin. A Putin victory is not necessarily an American defeat.

But the zero-sum thinker Putin is probably gleeful at the shrieks of distress from Kerry, the head of the UN, the Europeans, and various anti-Russian elements in the Western media. It’s all music to his ears, and also quite useful to him domestically. Another irony, that: the more that Putin’s enemies in the West screech about what is happening in Syria, the more it helps him.

Putin’s victory may be hollow, though, and his glee short-lived. He initially attempted to utilize his intervention in Syria as a way of presenting Russia as an ally of the West in the war against ISIS in order to undermine the sanctions regime, and to bring Russia in from the diplomatic cold. However, his unabashedly pro-Assad campaign, his intensifying the offensive in the run-up to the Geneva talks, the resultant humanitarian and refugee crisis, and the minimal Russian targeting of ISIS will make it impossible for the Europeans to do anything that will appear to be rewarding him. Putin’s intervention, with its demonstration of the cynicism and pointlessness of American policy, and thereby make Obama look bad, will cause our petulant president to retaliate in his passive-aggressive way, but maintaining sanctions, and pressuring the Europeans to do the same.

Putin is overplaying his hand elsewhere in Europe as well. The Russian media and government histrionics over the “Lisa” fake rape case in Germany has deeply angered Merkel who is already under siege over the migrant crisis (and especially the sexual assault crisis that has followed in its wake). Further, Putin met with Bavarian governor Horst Seehofer, Merkel’s most strident critic on immigration.  This will also anger Angela.

Putin, of all people, should realize that if you strike at the king (or queen) you better strike to kill. If Merkel survives-which is likely-she will be ill-disposed to ease sanctions, especially since Putin is ratcheting up the conflict in Donbas as well. Long surviving politicians tend to have long memories as well.

In sum. Air power can be dominant when teamed with infantry and armor. Putin will likely win a tactical victory in Syria. But the victory will be strategically barren, and possibly counterproductive, because (a) the “winner” will inherit a blasted and dysfunctional battleground, and (b) this “victory” will set back Putin’s efforts to roll back sanctions.

If anyone “wins” out of this, it is Iran. The Iranians will maintain their pipeline to Hezbollah, and deal the Saudis a stinging defeat. So Putin will succeed as the mullahs’ muscle, and in the process he will gain the satisfaction of humiliating the US (which stupidly set itself up to be humiliated), but at the cost of perpetuating Russia’s economic isolation, which is exacting a terrible toll on a country already reeling from the collapse in oil prices. That is about as Pyrrhic a victory as one could imagine.