Streetwise Professor

The combination dumpster fire, shit show, and clusterfuck AKA the Middle East got even more disastrous today when the Saudis beheaded a prominent Shia cleric (along with 46 Sunni radicals). The reaction from Iran was immediate: the Saudi embassy was sacked by outraged Shia.

And the reaction from certain quarters in the US was almost as swift: the usual (neocon) suspects in the US (e.g., Max Boot) immediately swung into action, shrieking loudly about the Iranian violation of the sanctity of the Saudi embassy (I wonder what really goes on there, besides, you know, slavery and stuff) but saying nary a word about the morals or justice or reasonableness of going medieval on Nimr al Nimr.

It is beyond bizarre that certain quarters of the right are so obsessed with Iran that they are willing to go all in with the Saudis and the other oil ticks of the GCC. How can they be blind to the facts that (a) the most direct terrorist threats that we face are all Sunni, and specifically Wahhabi-influenced, (b) these threats receive material and ideological support from Saudi Arabia, and (c) the Saudis have spent billions propagating their hateful creed, including supporting the very mosques in the US and Europe where terrorists are radicalized and recruit?

I stipulate that Iran under the Mullahs is dangerous. I further stipulate that Assad is evil. I further stipulate that Putin is a malign force.

It does not follow, however, that their enemies–the Wahhabi Sunni extremists–are good guys, or that following the enemy-of-my-enemy strategy is even remotely wise.

This is particularly true in the case of Syria, which is a proxy war between the Saudis and the other oil ticks (and the Sunni Turks) and the Iranians. Opposing Assad means throwing in on the side of the very same types of jihadis that are trying to kill us in Paris, Brussels, and San Bernardino. Empowering them today is a recipe for disaster tomorrow.

Just how far the anti-Iran cabal is willing to go is illustrated by their deification of Zarhan Alloush, whose extreme Sunni-sectarian background (he openly advocated a genocide of the Alawites in Syria) has been whitewashed in order to transform him into some martyred potential interlocutor of peace.

Insane.

There is a civil war in Islam. Indeed, there are multiple civil wars. Sunni vs. Shia. But even within the Islamist Sunni “community” there are deep divisions and vicious, brutal fights.

Intervening in a civil war, especially one between extreme sectarians with mindsets completely alien to our own–and indeed, actively hostile to our own–is a recipe for disaster.

But those who counsel staying out–such as Ted Cruz–are pilloried as “isolationists.” Rushing in where angels fear to tread is not isolationism. It’s prudence.

Cruz in fact was-and is-an ardent foe of the Iran deal. So he’s not dew-eyed about the mullahs, or an isolationist. But he’s smart enough to realize that you have to pick your battles, and even if you don’t like Iran (which he doesn’t), that doesn’t mean you have to fight their proxy in Syria.

Indeed, one of the reasons that the Iran deal was a disaster was precisely that it stoked the conflict between Iran and the Saudis. This was predictable, and predicted: well over a year ago I argued that one of the reasons the deal was a bad idea is that it would intensify the conflict in the Gulf specifically, and the Muslim civil war generally, because the Saudis would feel the need to take matters into their own hands and fight Iran before Iran became too strong. We are seeing that happen right before our eyes.

What’s particularly maddening about the interventionist crowd is that they have no specific strategy. This is epitomized by this Garry Kasparov article. Kasparov waxes eloquent about American exceptionalism, and our need to do something:

But the Iraq War was a rebuke to bad planning and lousy implementation, not a refutation of the idea that America can be an essential force for good in the world. America must do better, not do nothing.

OK. I’ll stipulate that doing nothing is not good. But it’s a long way from saying “do something!” to specifying just what that something is, and showing that it will make things better, not worse. After all, in this very paragraph Kasparov admits that we are capable of “bad planning and lousy implementation”: what’s to say we won’t have a repeat? Vacuous generalities about spreading democracy and freedom are exactly what gets us into trouble.

It is particularly irritating that Kasparov invokes Reagan’s name (as many neocons do, though he didn’t care for them, and the feeling was quite mutual). Reagan indeed engaged in soaring rhetoric about freedom and democracy. But he had a concrete strategy that he developed over years and implemented methodically when in office. The new interventionists have the rhetoric. The strategy, not so much.

Further, the situation Reagan faced–a Cold War with a military peer and ideological rival–is completely different than the one we currently face in the Middle East. There are no one size fits all solutions, and anyone who claims to know how Reagan would respond to these completely different circumstances is just full of it. That’s unknown and unknowable.

Perhaps as a chess player, Kasparov is used to there being  black pieces, and white pieces. But in the Middle East, there is no such clean divide. It is just different shades of anti-western and anti-modern sectarians looking to extirpate their enemies–who include us, by the way. Democracy and freedom are on no one’s agenda there, and we shouldn’t pretend otherwise. We made that mistake in Iraq: why repeat it again.

I am not a huge fan of Kissinger, James Baker, and Brent Scowcroft, but on these issues they have a more measured understanding of the realities. They recognize the importance of idealistic goals, but temper that with a recognition that realistic means are needed to achieve them.

Scowcroft:

Scowcroft does not believe that the promotion of American-style democracy abroad is a sufficiently good reason to use force. “I thought we ought to make it our duty to help make the world friendlier for the growth of liberal regimes,” he said. “You encourage democracy over time, with assistance, and aid, the traditional way. Not how the neocons do it.”

(The whole piece is worth reading.)

Kissinger and Baker:

Like most Americans, we believe that the United States should always support democracy and human rights politically, economically and diplomatically, just as we championed freedom for the captive peoples of the Soviet empire during the Cold War. Our values impel us to alleviate human suffering. But as a general principle, our country should do so militarily only when a national interest is also at stake. Such an approach could properly be labeled “pragmatic idealism.”

. . .

Sixth, and most important, the United States must develop a firm and differentiated understanding of its vital national interests. Not every upheaval in the region has the same origin or remedy. The Arab Spring has the potential to become a great opportunity for the people of the region and the world. Over time, fostering democracy may provide an alternative to Islamic extremism; it may also, in the short term, empower some of its supporters. We need to develop a realistic concept of what is achievable and in what time frame.

The last point is a jab at the End of History strain of neoconservatism, which is universalist and believes that everyone wants to be like us, and that the world is inevitably destined to be like us, as the result of some progressive, Hegelian process.

No and no.

Insofar as Syria in particular is concerned. Our national interest there is limited, and the cost of doing anything is prohibitive. Putin’s intervention there is not a bug, but a feature: if he is a fool who rushes in, we should take grim satisfaction, not engage in hysterical reactions like Kasparov (and Max Boot and Michael Weiss). (Relatedly, Boot slandered Cruz, tweeting that he has affection for Assad. This is scurrilous: not wanting to fight him does not imply affection, especially since those whom Assad is fighting are Islamic extremists.)

In sum, the isolationism charge is a canard when hurled at people who don’t want to get deeper into Syria, and who don’t want to take sides between medieval combatants in a sectarian civil war. Saying that the Iranians are bad is not sufficient to justify intervening on the side of their Wahhabi foes–who are just as bad, and are in fact more directly involved in attacking the US and the West than are the Iranians.

To paraphrase Kissinger again (specifically, his remarks about the Iran-Iraq War): we should hope that they both lose. In the meantime, we should look for ways of shielding ourself from the fallout. Jumping into the fray is not the way to do that.

I have long hypothesized that an intense war between the White House and the Pentagon has been raging for years.

Exhibit 1 in support of this hypothesis is the simple fact that Obama is on his fourth defense secretary, whereas no other major department has had more than two. The most recently defenestrated SecDef, Chuck “Hapless” Hagel, recently blasted the administration, savaging it for micromanaging, and entrusting the micromanaging to certifiable idiots like Susan Rice, whose major qualification, of course, is her willingness to say anything–anything–in defense of the administration, no matter how ludicrous.

Hagel’s complaints about micromanagement merely echo those of his predecessors, Bob Gates and Leon Panetta. And of course, there are many other stories (some discussed here) that provide further support.

Hagel also claims that the White House tried to “destroy” him with a slanderous leak campaign. The White House no doubt did this pour encourager les autres: no independent thought will be tolerated! This apparently had the desired effect. One candidate,  Michele Flournoy, withdrew her name from consideration precisely because of her concerns about micromanagement by The Incompetent One.

All of this of course should make you look askance at anyone who would take the job.

Today brought another story of the Pentagon-White House War: Reuters reports that the Defense Department has been doing everything in its power, and pulling every bureaucratic trick imaginable, to impede Obama’s obsession with emptying Gitmo.

The most lurid war story came out some days ago, when Seymour Hersh wrote a long piece in the London Review of Books claiming that the Defense Department actively opposed administration policy in Syria. One must always take Hersh stories with a large grain of salt, but this one has a high degree of verisimilitude. The Pentagon was aghast at Obama’s support for jihadi groups fighting Assad, and for its deference to Turkey which was supporting every jihadist in sight–including ISIS.

The strongest piece of evidence in favor of the Hersh claims is the failed Pentagon program to arm allegedly moderate opposition groups. The Pentagon knows how to arm, equip, and train insurgent forces: indeed, this was the original purpose of Special Forces. The only possible reason that the Pentagon could have fucked it up as badly as it did in Syria is that it wanted to fuck it up.

Another piece of evidence in favor of Hersh is that he writes that ex-DIA head Michael Flynn was the most aggressive opponent of Obama’s Syria policy (with Dempsey playing a more devious Yes Minister role). Flynn has been very outspoken recently, including this recent interview.

So there you have it folks. The Defense Department and Obama and his thugs have gone to the mattresses. Helluva way to run a war. Or wars.

I’ve been spending something of a busman’s holiday, reading this and that about commodity market corners in days long past. I started out looking into some of the big cotton corners at the beginning of the last century, namely the Brown-Hayne corner of 1903 and the Patten corner of 1910. These are the subject of a new book, The Cotton Kings: Capitalism and Corruption in Turn-of-the-Century New York and New Orleans. The book is entertaining history, but could use some more economics. It is journalistic in style, rather than analytical.

Reading about Patten’s cotton corner led me to read about his wheat corner of 1909, his corn corner of 1908, and his oats corner of 1902. Mr. Patten was a busy man.

And a reviled one. He was known as “The Wheat King,” whom the The Literary Review accused of  “The Crime of Making Bread Dear.” He was the model for the villain in the very influential D. W. Griffith short film, “A Corner in Wheat.”

This early short was one of the first films, if not the first, to address a serious social subject. Its theme would be very familiar today: the two Americas, rich and poor. Sergei Eisenstein admired Griffith, and employed his “parallel editing” technique (which he referred to as Griffith’s “montage of collision”): some film historians consider Griffith’s technique more subtle and less heavy-handed than Eisenstein’s.

(Unbeknownst to me when I was growing up in Evanston, Illinois, Patten was a longtime resident of the city, and its former mayor. He built a mansion there, and funded the Patten Gymnasium, where I swam in the summers.)

Patten was a nationally known figure. The Justice Department indicted him under the Sherman Act for his cotton corner, and the case attracted front page attention in national newspapers, including the New York Times, when it went to the Supreme Court. (Patten was fined $4000, or less than .1 percent of what he allegedly made in his corner. Not much deterrence effect there, eh?)

Patten was not alone in being a figure of national renown–and infamy. Commodity speculators were the banksters of their day. The Matt Taibbi of the 1880s, Henry Demarest Lloyd, wrote about cornerers at the Chicago Board of Trade in a famous essay. Frank Norris wrote a famous roman à clef, The Pit, based on the Leiter wheat corner of 1898.

In sum, in the last third of the 19th century and the first quarter of the 20th, commodity markets generally, and commodity market corners in particular, were the subject of intense interest. In some respects, it is not surprising that commodity corners were the subject of close journalistic coverage, serious fiction, social critical literature, and film during this era. Agricultural commodities were much more central to Americans as both consumers and producers. In 1900, 41 percent of the American workforce was employed in agriculture: now it is under 2 percent, and agriculture represents less than .7 of GDP. Half of American consumption spending went to food and textiles in 1900: a century later, that figure was down to 20 percent. Relatively speaking, the commodity derivatives markets (the Chicago Board of Trade, the Minneapolis Chamber of Commerce, Kansas City Board of Trade, the New York and New Orleans cotton exchanges, etc.) were more important and more developed that the capital markets, including the New York Stock Exchange, than is the case today: by the 1990s, when I was researching commodity exchanges and doing work with some, the commodity traders lamented that the explosion of financial futures had led the managements of exchanges to lose touch with the realities of commodities.

That said, one can see many echoes of the distant debates about and social criticism of commodity trading and corners in current controversies over financial markets. Just as outrage over the alleged excesses of the 2000s gave birth to the spate of post-Crisis financial regulation, fury over the Leiters and Pattens and Browns led to the first major regulations of financial markets in the United States: the Cotton Futures Act of 1914, and the Grain Futures Act of 1922 (which morphed into the Commodity Exchange Act, which is still with us, and which was amended by Frankendodd). Both Acts followed major government studies, the Commissioner of Corporations’ Report on Cotton Exchanges, and the Federal Trade Commission’s Report on the Grain Trade. Both of these are very well done, and provide very detailed descriptions of both the cash and futures markets. They are priceless resources. In some respects, because of them, we know more about the operation of commodity markets in the first decades of the 20th century than we do of their operation in the first decades of the 21st.

Maybe someday I’ll write a book about all of this, one that integrates the economics, history, and political economy. It’s of great personal interest, but not highly valued in the economics or finance professions today. I was amused when I came upon the link to an AER article about the Cotton Futures Act: it is beyond imagining that something similar would appear there today. But as I hope the foregoing shows, plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose. Issues of the relationship between financial markets and the real economy, the political economy of financial markets, and the influence of financial titans on political and judicial institutions, are still with us. In 1909, a film like A Corner in Wheat grappled with the social impact of finance in a very provocative and arguably simplistic way: in 2009-2015 movies like Too Big to Fail, Margin Call, and The Big Short do the same.

Don’t hold your breath, but maybe someday you’ll read about this in depth in print, rather than superficially in pixels.

The myth that global warming caused a drought which caused the civil war in Syria has been flogged repeatedly by the left, especially in the lead-up to the Paris farce: another example of the “elites” letting no good crisis go to (political) waste. As I discussed in March, there was indeed a drought in Syria, but no credible scientific evidence links the drought to climate change.

Droughts happen. What turned the drought into catastrophe in Syria was the depletion of groundwater by previous government-driven efforts to spur production:

Syria was such a successful producer that it became a net exporter of wheat for the better part of two decades — almost unheard-of in a region where most governments imported cheap wheat from abroad. According to ICARDA Director General Mahmoud Solh, the increased productivity netted the Syrian government more than $350 million a year . The country also kept a strategic reserve of wheat — usually about 3 million metric tons, enough to get it through a lean year or a price spike. In this most stable of dictatorships, nobody dreamed of a war.

But all that productivity came at a price. To produce these remarkable gains, Syria’s agricultural sector “mined” groundwater to irrigate farms. Experts predicted that this would lead to severe water Shortages. When a four-year drought struck in 2006, devastating 60 percent of Syria’s agricultural lands, the country’s groundwater was already depleted.

(This sounds a lot like Soviet agricultural malpractice.)

This brings to mind Adam Smith’s argument that bad government policy turns “dearths” caused by nature into famines:

The seasons most unfavourable to the crop are those of excessive drought or excessive rain. But as corn grows equally upon high and low lands, upon grounds that are disposed to be too wet, and upon those that are disposed to be too dry, either the drought or the rain which is hurtful to one part of the country is favourable to another; and though both in the wet and in the dry season the crop is a good deal less than in one more properly tempered, yet in both what is lost in one part of the country is in some measure compensated by what is gained in the other. In rice countries, where the crop not only requires a very moist soil, but where in a certain period of its growing it must be laid under water, the effects of a drought are much more dismal. Even in such countries, however, the drought is, perhaps, scarce ever so universal as necessarily to occasion a famine, if the government would allow a free trade.

It as not just the  Syrian government that contributed to spiraling food prices which created popular unrest in the Middle East that culminated in 2010-2011 (which the Muslim Brotherhood exploited in Egypt and Syria in particularly): US government policy contributed to the problem. In particular, US biofuels mandates that stimulated the production of ethanol drove up the price of corn by an estimated 30 percent, and as Brian Wright has shown, drove up all other grain prices as well (because corn is a substitute for other grains in both consumption and production). (I strongly recommend reading at least the introduction of the Wright paper: I’d quote in detail, but the online versions embed some devious feature that makes it impossible to copy-and-paste.)

It is sickly ironic that policies intended to reduce global warming pushed by the same crowd that falsely blame the Syrian drought and subsequent civil war on global warming (a) do nothing to reduce global warming, and (b) have done far more to exacerbate poverty and create social unrest  in the Middle East than global warming ever has or ever will.  Ethanol is an unmitigated disaster environmentally, economically, and socially. Yet the people Thomas Sowell trenchantly calls “the anointed” colluded with agricultural lobbies in the United States (encompassing both growers and processors) to inflict this monstrosity on the world.

How dare they–how fucking dare they–presume to lecture anyone on their obligations to “save the planet” and help the poor? Through biofuels policies alone they have inflicted huge misery and privation, and yet they have the audacity to try to exploit one of the consequences of these policies in order to ram more of their brilliant ideas down our throats.

Haven’t they done enough? Can they please now just go away?

Alas, we won’t be so lucky. These are our elites, after all, and we are stuck with them, like a case of malaria. And they are actually proud of stupid policies like biofuel mandates. There is no stupid that can equal the stupid of not just not learning from mistakes, but reveling in them.

Do you still wonder why the Trump phenomenon exists? The global reaction against the elites, of which Trump is just the most prominent example, is yet another baleful consequence of the failure of these so called elites. The reaction may be as bad as the disease, but let the blame fall where it should: squarely on the shoulders of those condescending fools whose allegedly good intentions have paved a superhighway to hell.

Ukraine has announced that it will default on the $3 billion debt to Russia incurred in the waning days of the Yanukovych government–or is it regime? For that distinction could prove to be important.

It is somewhat surprising to me that as of yet Ukraine has not formally invoked the concept of “odious debt,” even though it seems apposite. Although there were earlier legal precedents (notably, US repudiation of Cuban debts incurred by the Spanish government prior to 1898), the concept was formalized in the 1920s by (ironically) a Russian emigre, Alexander Nahum Sack. Sack wrote:

When a despotic regime contracts a debt, not for the needs or in the interests of the state, but rather to strengthen itself, to suppress a popular insurrection, etc, this debt is odious for the people of the entire state. This debt does not bind the nation; it is a debt of the regime, a personal debt contracted by the ruler, and consequently it falls with the demise of the regime. The reason why these odious debts cannot attach to the territory of the state is that they do not fulfil one of the conditions determining the lawfulness of State debts, namely that State debts must be incurred, and the proceeds used, for the needs and in the interests of the State. Odious debts, contracted and utilised for purposes which, to the lenders’ knowledge, are contrary to the needs and the interests of the nation, are not binding on the nation – when it succeeds in overthrowing the government that contracted them – unless the debt is within the limits of real advantages that these debts might have afforded. The lenders have committed a hostile act against the people, they cannot expect a nation which has freed itself of a despotic regime to assume these odious debts, which are the personal debts of the ruler.

The key criteria established by Sack fit in the Ukraine-Russia case quite well. Yanukovych’s regime quite clearly utilized the debt to “strengthen itself” and “to suppress a popular insurrection.” If anything, the debt was used contrary to the interests of the nation. Putin provided the debt in order to make it financially feasible for Yanukovych to reject an EU association agreement, even though this agreement was widely popular in Ukraine. Furthermore, it is quite clear that the lender–Russia/Putin–were knowledgeable of the purposes for which the debts were “contracted and utilised.” Indeed, Putin offered the loan precisely in order to achieve these purposes, which suited Russia.

Russia, of course, argues that Yanukovych’s government was legitimate, and the current government is an illegitimate regime. Given the history, the facts seem to be on Ukraine’s side.

If the case proceeds, I anticipate that Ukraine will eventually invoke this doctrine. At the very least, it would strengthen its negotiating position.

Putin evidently has given up on a wholesale invasion of Ukraine, or even the eastern Ukrainian regions that he once (but no longer) referred to as Novorossiya. Militarily it was likely to be too difficult, and it would likely lead to further western measures that crush the already weakened Russian economy.

Instead, Putin is resorting to measures to prevent the consolidation of the Ukrainian state. The conflict in Donbas is kept on simmer. There is evidence of Russian active measures in the parts of Ukraine under government control. To these military and paramilitary means, Putin is adding economic conflict. Last week he announced that Russia was suspending a free trade agreement with Ukraine. Russia’s rigid negotiating stance on the $3 billion loan is another way of weakening Ukraine, and also creating strains between the Ukrainian government and the west (in the form of the IMF). Rather than striking a death blow, Putin is inflicting multiple ulcers on its recalcitrant neighbor.

Unfortunately, Ukraine is adding self-inflicted wounds to those dealt them by Putin. In particular, it has failed signally in its attempts to get corruption under control. Oligarchs still control the country. Struggles between oligarchic factions are reflected in bitter conflict in the Rada, culminating in the farcical events of last week, when a legislator lifted up Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk (grabbing him in a very delicate place in the process) while Yatsenyuk was addressing the parliament. Ukraine keeps copious quantities of inflammables piled up, making Vlad the Arsonist’s job very easy. Old Sovok habits die hard, and Putin is exploiting that.

Realpolitik, geopolitics, and western exhaustion and frustration with Ukrainian dysfunction are leaving Ukraine increasingly isolated. This is why Putin is pushing on many fronts, including on the matter of the $3 billion of debt. Ukraine’s best legal option is to declare the debt odious, and fight it out in court. It will at least buy time, and it has a reasonable chance of success given the, well, rather odious history of this loan.

The linchpin of Obama’s recalibration of his anti-ISIS campaign (for it is little more than that) is the deployment of US special operations forces in direct actions targeted on ISIS leadership. This represents further proof of Obama’s intellectual rigidity, and his utter inability to learn from experience–or to admit error.

For this is exactly what Obama did in Afghanistan starting in 2009:

Each year during the Afghan “surge” that President Barack Obama initiated in 2009, one declassified document shows, the manhunting task force ran many more missions than the year before–about two per night countrywide in August 2009; six per night a year later, when the Norgrove mission went south; and eleven per night a year after that, at the time of the “Extortion 17” tragedy. By 2011, the JSOC task force numbered more than 3,800 personnel — huge in special operations terms, but still just 2.4 percent of the overall U.S.-led force in Afghanistan, as one briefing slide notes.

Accompanying the overall surge was a “Ranger surge” that put more and more platoons of the elite light infantry regiment into the field alongside the SEALs, allowing more targets to be struck. Operators from the Army’s Delta Force were present as well, some of them providing what a JSOC staff officer calls a “very special capability”: the ability to track a moving convoy of cars or trucks by helicopter and raid it on the go, as depicted in the movie “Black Hawk Down” and numerous YouTube videos. The documents describe one joint Delta-Ranger team specializing in this task as an “expeditionary targeting force”—the same term defense secretary Carter used this week to describe the new JSOC raid force deploying to Iraq.

And this has accomplished what, exactly? The Afghanistan hamster wheel spins and spins and spins, regardless of how many SEAL and Ranger raids are mounted, and how many “high value targets” are killed. The main result of these operations–if “successful”–is to provide promotion opportunities for aspiring guerrillas and terrorists. It certainly has not changed things on the ground.

Actually, the operations have accomplished something: getting highly trained and difficult to replace special operators killed and maimed and just worn out. The details of the operations were only discovered because they were included in FOIA’d reports about two raids that went horribly wrong.

But faced with another difficult situation, this time in Syria and Iraq, rather than contemplating soberly the all pain, no gain lessons of the “Expeditionary Targeting Force” model in Afghanistan, Obama goes to it again.

What Talleyrand said of the Bourbons applies with even greater force to Obama: He has learned nothing, and forgotten nothing.

Not if the barber is Barack Obama. Two days after it was blindingly obvious that the atrocity of San Bernardino was a terrorist attack carried out by Islamists, Obama clung to the possibility that this was workplace violence (yeah, of the Nidal Hasan variety). He also grudgingly admitted that it was possibly terrorism, but even then he would not speak its name. Rather than name the specific ideology that inspired this brutal act, Obama retreated to his usual circumlocution of “people succumbing to violent extremist ideologies.” Then he descended into the vapidity of calling for more gun control: after all, no crisis should go to waste, right?

Truth be told: gun control will do nothing to impede people like Syed Farook and Tashfeen Malik, who broke numerous state and federal firearms and explosives laws, and who engaged in an attack that they knew would certainly result in their deaths. Such people (and I use that term loosely) are extremely infra marginal demanders of firearms and bombs. The increase in the cost of obtaining these instruments of mass mayhem caused by any even remotely plausible gun laws would still put that cost below their very high willingness to pay, and if they are not deterred by the prospect of violent death, the punishment for violating gun laws is clearly not going to deter them either.

Although Obama has seen fit to lecture us in the aftermath of Charleston, Sandy Hook, Ferguson, and even Louis Gates, for Christ’s sake, his statements in the aftermath of San Bernardino were limited primarily to his weekly radio address, recorded before he went to party down at the White House holiday party, with, among others, BLM luminary Deray McKesson. Priorities, you know.

One of the obvious early tells of the Islamist nature of the attack was that mere hours after Farook had been identified, his family members were participating in a press conference with Muslim Brotherhood front organization CAIR. Another tell came yesterday, when the Farook family’s scumbag lawyers gave a press conference that can be summarized as: “Who is the real victim here?” Hint: Farook, Malik and Muslims generally. After all, somebody teased Farook about his beard, and that might have set him off.

The administration picked up the victimhood narrative, with Attorney General Lynch saying that  her “greatest fear” is the “incredibly disturbing rise of anti-Muslim rhetoric” and promising to prosecute speech that “edges towards violence” (whatever the hell that means). So, along with trashing the Second Amendment, the administration has its sights set on the First. No doubt the 5th can be jettisoned too, if guns or politically incorrect speech are involved.

No doubt the administration’s denial of reality and its attempt to suppress speech has many causes. For one, San Bernardino totally contradicts the administration’s narrative on terrorism. For another, it creates serious problems for the administration’s plans to bring in large numbers of Syrian refugees. Within a few hours of her being named, Tafsheen Malik’s numerous family connections to Islamists in her home country of Pakistan and her adopted country of Saudi Arabia were documented. Pakistani intelligence said that the family had well known extremist connections: Now they tell us. Her father was an extremely conservative and rabidly anti-Shia immigrant to Saudi Arabia.

Yet the State Department and the immigration authorities failed to uncover these facts in their investigations of potential terrorism connections before granting her a fiancee visa. So yes, we can’t vet someone who has lived in countries with functioning governments that are (allegedly) our allies, but we can evaluate the risk of tens of thousands of people coming from a country embroiled in a  civil war, for whom it will be impossible to obtain any documentation whatsoever. And so much for the women pose no risk thing.

With Obama’s obduracy, we can expect more of the same. The demonization of domestic opposition, and the turning of a blind eye to real enemies within and without.

One theme pushed very hard by Putin oppositions, including people like Garry Kasparov and numerous Ukrainian bloggers and tweeters, is that Putin is deliberately creating the refugee crisis in the EU. There is no doubt that he is benefitting, but there is no evidence that he is doing anything to create it. He gets it without having to lift a finger.

The refugee crisis is indeed creating huge political stresses in the EU that are benefiting rightist opposition parties (e.g., the National Front in France) that are sympathetic to (and in some cases, partially funded by) Russia. This redounds to Putin’s benefit, but he didn’t create the problem. The problem is largely due to the Syrian civil war, but not completely: only about one-half of the migrants swarming into Europe are Syrian. The other major contributor is European policy, notably Merkel’s grandiose humanitarian gesture, which served to open the flood gates.

No doubt Putin is pleased, but I cannot identify anything that he has done, that he wouldn’t have done anyways: for him, the refugee fallout is a happy unintended consequence. He has been all in for the Syrian government from the get go, and has supported its ruthless campaign. This has contributed to the refugee flow, but Putin would have done the same regardless.

One country that has definitely leveraged the refugee issue to its advantage is Turkey. Today, with great fanfare, Turkey and the EU announced a grand bargain whereby the EU would pay Turkey €3 billion, grant it visa free travel, and reopen Turkish accession talks. The €3 billion is to be used to improve conditions for Syrian refugees in Turkey. In return, Turkey will slow the flow of refugees to Europe.

In other words, Erdogan successfully blackmailed Europe. Unlike Putin, Erdogan can exercise considerable control over the flow of Syrians to Europe. He has basically exercised no control heretofore, and Europe has been overwhelmed. They have now agreed to pay Turkey to keep them, and also given Turkey other very important concessions to make it worth Erdo’s while.

This is bad news for Putin. Putin has been trying to leverage his role in Syria to get concessions from Europe on other issues, but as I have written before, he really doesn’t have that much leverage. Erdogan has leverage, and has just demonstrated that he can and will use it. He can also use it to make the Europeans think twice about making any concessions to Putin that would compromise Turkish interests in Syria. And since Turkish interests and Russian interests are close to zero sum there, this means that he wins, and Putin loses when he uses that leverage. Erdogan has therefore proved to Putin who has the whip hand in dealing with the Euroweenies.

When it comes to Syria, Erdogan’s policy is deeply problematic, to put it mildly. His policy towards ISIS can most charitably be described as ambivalent. He is certainly not an ardent foe, and is arguably an enabler–or worse. He is far more interested in crushing the Kurds, who happen to be the most reliable anti-ISIS force in the region. In that respect, Erdogan is objectively pro-ISIS. There is a colorable case that he is subjectively pro-ISIS as well. Furthermore, Turkey has been the main supporter of the Islamist forces–including al Qaeda-forces–fighting Assad. Once upon a time, supporting groups like this would have earned a star turn in the Axis of Evil.

Domestically, Erdogan is doing his best Putin imitation of crushing domestic opposition, including the arrest of journalists. Some antigovernment figures have been murdered (e.g., the Kurdish lawyer killed over the weekend), another similarity to Russia.

Thus, there is little to choose from between Erdogan and Putin in Syria. Indeed, as bad as Assad is, the Islamists fighting him are worse, so the nod goes to Putin here.

Unfortunately, the Kasparovs and Ukrainians who are so obsessed with Putin are completely in the grips of the enemy-of-my-enemy mindset that they are going all in for Erdogan and the Islamists for Syria. They are fighting Putin, so they must be great, right?

Wrong. They are dangerous and despicable, and Erdogan does a pretty good Putin doppelgänger impression.

It is possible to oppose Putin and Russia in Ukraine and elsewhere in Europe, without embracing his enemies in Syria. It is not only possible, it is necessary. Putin’s actions in Ukraine challenge the entire post-War order in Europe, and are deeply destabilizing. Indeed, they deeply challenge the Westphalian system that Putin and Russia claim to defend in Syria, Libya, the Balkans, and elsewhere, and constantly lecture the world about in the UN and elsewhere. So those actions should be opposed, and Europe and Nato in particular have to raise their games.

But that issue is completely separable from what is going on in Syria. And those whose hatred of Putin leads them to whitewash (and worse) Erdogan and the murderous Islamist anti-Assad forces in Syria are wrong as a matter of policy. This also deeply compromises their moral authority and undercuts their opposition to Putin in Russia and Ukraine.

Enemy-of-my-enemy logic almost always leads to a dead end, or worse. It prevents critical thinking, the ability to discriminate between threats, and between degrees of evil. All of that is particularly true in Syria, because siding with Putin’s enemies means siding with murderous Islamists, and a megalomaniacal would be emperor who is actually doing what Putin is only accused (rather implausibly) of doing: exploiting the refugee crisis in Syria in order to obtain political benefits from Europe.

There should be no shock or surprise at Turkey’s destruction of a Russian Su-24. Russia and Turkey have been in a state of undeclared war for a long time. Turkey has long supported rebels, most notably Islamist rebels, fighting to topple Assad. Russia intervened to prop up a tottering Assad, and has directed the bulk of its operations against the rebels Turkey supports. Many of these airstrikes have occurred close to the border, and are directed specifically at rebel ratlines running back into Turkey and at the front lines of the fighters Turkey supports.

This has made Erdogan furious. The shootdown was, as Lavrov said, clearly deliberate. Just as Putin’s intervention was a clear signal that Assad was losing, this incident is a clear signal that Erdogan believes that his forces are now losing. This is his way of hitting back and trying to get Putin to back off.

Russia says that it is striking ISIS. This is largely, though not completely, a lie. But Russia is striking Islamists. Today Putin pointedly criticized Erdogan, saying that he is Islamizing Turkey. Putin is correct.

To see the kind of people Erdogan is supporting, consider the fact that the rebels shot at the Russian air crew as they were parachuting after bailing out, killing one of them. They then gloated over the corpse.

All of this makes it beyond strange that so many on the right in the US are apoplectic about Russian intervention in Syria, and that this apoplexy has only intensified with the destruction of the Su-24. Senator Tom Cotton (and others) claim that we are in a proxy war in Syria, and that Russia has intervened against our “allies” in this war.

Why are we in a proxy war? What compelling US interests exist in Syria? And why are we allying ourselves with Salafists who are just branded affiliates of either Al Qaeda or the Muslim Brotherhood, and who are striving to kill us everywhere else in the world? If “our side” “wins”, what do we get? A Salafist stronghold and safe haven from which to attack us? If “our side” “loses”, what does it cost us? We’ve lived with the Assads  for almost 50 years. They are not going to be much of a threat to anyone, given the wreck the country has become (not that it was ever anything but a typically shambolic Arab dictatorship).

People like Cotton also speak in concerned tones about Turkey as a Nato ally under threat from Russia. This should be turned on its head: we need to reconsider quite seriously whether an Islamist country that provides material support to Islamist groups (including Hamas), and which is led by an increasingly erratic autocrat, is a suitable member of Nato.

This is particularly true given that Erdogan does not have clean hands, by any means, in the fight against ISIS. Erdogan has unleashed his air force against the Kurds, but not against ISIS. ISIS supply lines stretch into Turkey. ISIS members use Turkey as a safe area and a transit zone (including to Europe). He fought mightily to deny aid to the Kurds in Kobani when they were fighting for their lives. Furthermore, there is considerable reason to believe that Erdogan’s family facilitates the sale of ISIS oil. (This last detail raises questions about the US forbearance in attacking ISIS oil convoys, despite the fact that oil revenues are vital to ISIS’s financing. We have given excuses like protecting innocent truck drivers’ lives, or even “environmental concerns“, FFS, to explain the lack of attacks on the oil rat line. The Erdogan connection quite plausibly is a more important reason.)

The main issue for the United States is that this greatly complicates the US air campaign against ISIS, especially in Syria. In response to the downing of its jet, Russia has announced that it is deploying long range S-400 surface-to-air missiles to Syria to protect its aircraft. (Russia denied earlier reports that it had already deployed the missiles. There was some photographic evidence–of the distinctive radars–that they had, so perhaps they are using this as an excuse to announce something they had done before but denied.) Russia does not want to shoot down US planes, but accidents will happen, and the greater the envelope of the missiles, the more scope for accidents, especially given that US aircraft are operating out of Turkish bases.

There are reasons to be concerned about Putin and Russia. But Syria is not among them. Better to devote our efforts to proving a bulwark and deterrent against Putin where it matters to us, than tangling with him in a place where it doesn’t. As I’ve said, if anything, it’s better to have him stuck in Syria than running amok in eastern Europe.

There’s an old joke about “let’s you and him fight.” That seems about right here. Let Putin and Erdogan fight, if that’s what they want. We should want no part of it.

Further thoughts: There has been much blather post-Sharm al Sheik and post-Paris about a “grand alliance” between Russia and the West to fight ISIS. This was always a chimerical hope. First, Russia’s priority has never been ISIS, and even though it did intensify strikes on ISIS post-Metrojet, its efforts were still focused on the non-ISIS groups fighting Assad.

Second, what was the basis for  a bargain? What really can Russia contribute to an anti-ISIS campaign that the US (aided by France and maybe the UK) could not do without its help? The lame Western effort has not been due to lack of capability: it has been due to a lack of will. And if Russia rally desires to strike ISIS (because is it is allegedly in its own interest), why would the West feel obliged to offer it any inducement?  In particular, why would they offer what Putin really wants (concession on Assad, and in particular, elimination of sanctions and a free hand in Ukraine) when Putin really can’t offer anything material in return, especially since these concessions would be humiliating for Obama and the Europeans, and completely undermine Western credibility?

Third, differences over Assad’s fate appear reconcilable. The West–including Hollande, who has been most insistent (and pathetic) importuning Russia for help–has continued its insistence that Assad must go. Russia has been most insistent that he must stay. That gap cannot be bridged.

The downing of the Su-24 and the subsequent escalation (Putin has intensified the bombing of the groups Turkey supports, including the Turkmen) make any deal even less likely. This would involve throwing a Nato member over the side, and although Nato should be looking for ways to reduce commitments to Turkey, to do so under the current circumstances would be disastrous to the alliance, and would likely goad Erdogan (who doesn’t need much goading) into taking more provocative actions in Syria, and against Europe and the US. (For instance, if Europe thinks it is overwhelmed by refugees now, just think of what could happen if Erdogan put his mind to pushing Syrians into Europe.)

This may well be part of Erdogan’s thinking. If his action makes an already unlikely deal impossible, he wins.

Hollande is in Moscow today, looking awkward as Putin blasts Turkey. Putin also blamed the US for providing the intelligence about the aircraft that the Turkish F16s shot down. Especially with accusations like that, there is no way that there is going to be any deal. There may be words and promises, but nothing of substance, and Putin will certainly not be able to leverage the situation to his advantage.

If anything, he is in a weak position. Most of the non-military retaliatory actions he can take (e.g., cutting off food imports from Turkey, and shutting down tourism) are very damaging to an already economically isolated Russia. Cutting off gas sales would hurt Turkey, but at a large cost to Russia and Gazprom, which is already in bad shape. (The cancellation of Turkish Stream would be a potential benefit, as it would prevent Gazprom from wasting $10 billion.)

Militarily, Putin can intensify action against Turkish creatures in Syria, but Turkey can respond by escalating against the Syrian regime. What’s more, Turkey has a trump card: control of the Bosporus and Dardanelles. In the event of conflict between Russia and Turkey, Erdogan could close the Straits and leave Russian forces in Syria high and dry. Putin’s only escalatory option after that would be the unthinkable one.

In sum, I didn’t see much possibility for Putin to leverage Paris into a deal that would give him sanction relief or Western acquiescence on Assad before, and see even less now. Moreover, Putin’s position in the struggle with Turkey is relatively weak. In particular, he does not possess escalation dominance. Within the range of the thinkable, Erdogan does.

In addition to promulgating her vacuous “strategy” for vanquishing ISIS, Hillary has been making other foreign policy news. In part to push back on a potential source of criticism, she has defended her part, and the administration’s part in pushing the “Arab Spring”, and the uprising in Libya in particular:

Well, he has a very short-term view of history, because it is not at all clear what the final outcome will be in the places that you named. As I mentioned in the speech, I spoke about the foundations of the region sinking into the sand just as the Arab Spring was breaking. And I did so not knowing about the Arab Spring coming to full bloom, but because it was so clear that what was being done by dictatorships, by the denial of opportunity, by the repression, by the sectarian divide just could not stand. It was going to explode at some point or another.

And with the developments in Libya, for example, the Libyan people have voted twice in free and fair elections for the kind of leadership they want. They have not been able to figure out how to prevent the disruptions that they are confronted with because of internal divides and because of some of the external pressures that are coming from terrorist groups and others. So it’s — I think it’s too soon to tell and I think it’s something that we have to be, you know, looking at very closely.

She’s right, actually. We don’t know what kind of hell it will end up being, or which terrorist group(s) will end up in charge of which part of the “country.” We don’t know how many people will be slaughtered.

Apropos Nancy Pelosi’s defense of Obamacare, we’ll just have to wait to see what’s in it! Oh joy.

Hillary is basically saying we can only judge on the basis of what happens in the long run. This brings to mind Keynes’s quip “in the long run, we’re all dead.” In some places, that long run arrives sooner than others. Libya being one prominent example.

The administration played Sorcerer’s Apprentice in Libya, and in the Arab Spring generally, and brought chaos and destruction in its vain attempts to control the forces it unleashed.

Hillary also made news because her doubling down on her refusal at the Democratic debate to condemn radical Islam:

The bottom line is that we are in a contest of ideas against an ideology of hate, and we have to win. Let’s be clear, though, Islam is not our adversary. Muslims are peaceful and tolerant people, and have nothing whatsoever to do with terrorism. The obsession in some quarters with a clash of civilization, or repeating the specific words radical Islamic terrorism isn’t just a distraction, it gives these criminals, these murderers more standing than they deserve. It actually plays into their hands by alienating partners we need by our side.

It is quite remarkable how progressives, who adamantly support the idea that someone with a Y-chromosome can self-identify as a woman deny ISIS, etc. can self-identify as Muslim. As Orwell said, there are some ideas so stupid only an intellectual can believe. Or, in Hillary’s case, an intellectual poseur.

Not that the Republican presidential candidates, and many Congressional Republicans, are better, for they’ve veered to the opposite extreme, with Trump calling for registration of Muslims in a national database, Carson comparing refugees to rabid dogs, and indiscriminate condemnations of Muslims by many on the right.

Clinton is wrong: our adversaries–enemies, really–are avowed and chauvinistic Muslims. Those on the right are wrong: not all Muslims are a threat.

The problem is with Salafism, and in particular the virulent supremacists and eliminationist creed of Wahhabism. The wellspring of Salafism is the Gulf countries, notably Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the UAE. From the time of the first oil shock in 1973, oil money (or gas money, in the case of Qatar) has flooded the world, and supported the spread of this uncompromising and violent creed.

The United States is by no means immune. Many mosques (not all, but too many) have been created and supported with Saudi money, and have served as outlets for Salafist proselytizing–and worse. This deserves to be the focus of criticism and pushback. (To her credit, Hillary did so the other day, even though the Clinton Foundation has accepted about $40 million in Gulf government money.)

Focused on Iran and Assad, many on the right (notably McCain, who exercises great influence over Rubio) have made common cause with Iran’s enemies in the Gulf. They have also forgotten-or chosen to ignore-the fact that the attack on the USS Cole, 911 and the vast bulk of terrorism directed against the United States had originated on the Arabian Peninsula.

Perversely, by attacking Muslims indiscriminately, too many on the right are alienating non-Salafist Muslims, and moderate non-Muslims, and driving them into the embrace of the insidious and subversive public face of the Muslim Brotherhood in the US, CAIR. Reprising its post-911 role, CAIR is again claiming to be the voice of oppressed American Muslims. This is extremely disturbing, because CAIR is very much part of the problem, but because of overreaction on the right, it can successfully pose as the victim, and represent itself as the voice of all American Muslims. The right is therefore empowering the very elements of Islam that they should be fighting.

Left and right are locked in a sick dynamic right now. Denial on the left that terrorism generally, and ISIS and Al Qaeda in particular, are an Islamic phenomenon, and that there is a civilizational clash between parts of Islam and the West is driving the right to be indiscriminate in its criticism of Islam. The right’s intemperate criticism gets the left to double down on its indiscriminate defense. And the cycle goes on and on.

In some respects I get it. Political rhetoric tends towards the black-and-white, especially when a message has to be delivered in a short time to an audience with divided attention. I also get that a lot of this rhetoric is signaling and affiliation. It is hard to articulate to a (rationally) uninformed electorate the distinctions within a religion that is almost completely alien to most Americans.

But until we do, we are going to be trapped in this vicious and unproductive cycle. And the biggest winners will be the retrograde and violent parts of Islam who do not get the focused attention-and opposition-that they richly deserve.