History Readings

Iraq was the bad war and Libya was the good war and Afghanistan was the necessary war and Bosnia was the moral war and Syria is now another necessary war.

They are all the same war.

multisectarian societies, most of them Muslim or Arab, are held together for decades by dictators ruling vertically, from the top down

how the people in these countries respond to the fact that with the dictator gone they can only be governed horizontally

own social contracts for how to live together as equal citizens

without falling into Hobbes or Khomeini.

Saddam to Jefferson

“the army of the center.”

Iraq, we toppled the dictator and then, after making every mistake in the book, we got the parties to write a new social contract

“army of the center.”

Ditto Afghanistan.

Libya: No boots on the ground. So we decapitated that dictator from the air.

both will be uphill fights.

For any chance of a multisectarian democratic outcome in Syria, you need to win two wars on the ground: one against the ruling Assad-Alawite-Iranian-Hezbollah-Shiite alliance; and, once that one is over, you’d have to defeat the Sunni Islamists and pro-Al Qaeda jihadists.

Hobbes took hold before Jefferson.

The center exists

weak and unorganized

pluralistic societies

lack any sense of citizenship or deep ethic of pluralism

tolerance, cooperation and compromise

pluralistic society but lack pluralism

not without an army of the center to protect everyone from everyone.

not just poison gas, but poisoned hearts

self-governing, largely homogeneous, ethnic and religious units, like Kurdistan

modus vivendi, as happened in Lebanon after 14 years of civil war

smaller units will voluntarily come together into larger, more functional states.

“arm and shame,”

spare me the lecture that America’s credibility is at stake here. Really?

Their civilization has missed every big modern global trend

learning to tolerate “the other.” That struggle has to happen in the Arab/Muslim world

quality of local leadership and the degree of tolerance

If sea level rise over the next 40 years is low, about half a foot, then the chances of flooding increase slightly. If sea level rise is at the top end up of predictions — two yards — then much smaller storms would cause as much flooding as Sandy did and Lower Manhattan could be inundated every couple of years by 2100, the researchers said.

Without peace, there can be no form of economic development. Violence never begets peace, the necessary condition for development. 

It is regrettable that, from the very beginning of the conflict in Syria, one-sided interests have prevailed and in fact hindered the search for a solution that would have avoided the senseless massacre now unfolding.

To the leaders present, to each and every one, I make a heartfelt appeal for them to help find ways to overcome the conflicting positions and to lay aside the futile pursuit of a military solution. Rather, let there be a renewed commitment to seek, with courage and determination, a peaceful solution through dialogue and negotiation of the parties, unanimously supported by the international community.

Moreover, all governments have the moral duty to do everything possible to ensure humanitarian assistance to those suffering because of the conflict, both within and beyond the country’s borders. 

The question is not so much about his results but his methods. He has a reputation for being merciless and brutal, and as the accolades have stacked up, he has cracked down on his own people and covertly supported murderous rebel groups in neighboring Congo

Though Rwanda has made tremendous strides, the country is still a demographic time bomb. It’s already one of the most densely populated in Africa — its 11 million people squeezed into a space smaller than Maryland — and despite a recent free vasectomy program, Rwanda still has an alarmingly high birthrate. Most Rwandans are peasants, their lives inexorably yoked to the land, and just about every inch of that land, from the papyrus swamps to the cloud-shrouded mountaintops, is spoken for.

why has the West — and the United States in particular — been so eager to embrace Kagame, despite his authoritarian tendencies?

Kagame has become a rare symbol of progress on a continent that has an abundance of failed states and a record of paralyzing corruption. Kagame was burnishing the image of the entire billion-dollar aid industry. “You put your money in, and you get results out,” said the diplomat, who insisted he could not talk candidly if he was identified. Yes, Kagame was “utterly ruthless,” the diplomat said, but there was a mutual interest in supporting him, because Kagame was proving that aid to Africa was not a hopeless waste and that poor and broken countries could be fixed with the right leadership.

In some areas of the country, there are rules, enforced by village commissars, banning people from dressing in dirty clothes or sharing straws when drinking from a traditional pot of beer, even in their own homes, because the government considers it unhygienic. Many Rwandans told me that they feel as if their president is personally watching them. “It’s like there’s an invisible eye everywhere,” said Alice Muhirwa, a member of an opposition political party. “Kagame’s eye.”

much has improved under his stewardship. Rwandan life expectancy, for instance, has increased to 56 years, from 36 in 1994. Malaria used to be a huge killer, but Kagame’s government has embarked on a wide-scale spraying campaign and has distributed millions of nets to protect people when they are sleeping — malarial mosquitoes tend to feed at night — and malaria-related deaths plummeted 85 percent between 2005 and 2011.

Kagame hopes to make more money from coffee, tea and gorillas — Rwanda is home to some of the last remaining mountain gorillas, and each year throngs of Western tourists pay thousands of dollars to see them.

aid flows to Rwanda because Kagame is a celebrated manager. He’s a hands-on chief executive who is less interested in ideology than in making things work. He loves new technology — he’s an avid tweeter — and is very good at breaking sprawling, ambitious projects into manageable chunks. Rwanda jumped to 52nd last year, from 158th in 2005, on the World Bank’s Ease of Doing Business annual rating, precisely because Kagame set up a special unit within his government, which broke down the World Bank’s ratings system, category by category, and figured out exactly what was needed to improve on each criterion.

Congratulating him on being made a fellow at Cambridge, Sorely told Oakeshott he was likely to produce work of value: ‘If you have been ploughing a lonely furrow, you have learned to plough deep and straight.’

Mr. Gaucher sees all these efforts as an example of French journalists’ predilection for being clever and writerly, but not necessarily for producing what might elsewhere be considered good journalism.

“There are a lot of journalists in France who are more or less consciously writers who don’t write and here suddenly in the summer they have a bit of space, they have a bit of time to address topics that aren’t journalism anymore,” he said.

In Turkey, a court recently imprisoned dozens of senior military officers on charges of plotting to overthrow the government, a punitive reminder to a military once accustomed to reasserting its authority through coups.

Though General Sisi is riding a wave of popularity among some Egyptians and neighboring countries, notably Saudi Arabia and Israel, for cracking down on Islamists, the events in Turkey and Pakistan have shown the limits of military power.

Military and civilian leaders have been competing for power in Turkey, Pakistan and Egypt for decades. The military has exercised muscular influence in all three countries, openly or behind the scenes, because of weak civilian rule that can be traced to the foundation of the states — in some cases, in a bid to circumscribe Islamist influence.

Yet as all three countries climb the ladder toward functioning democracies, the effort is complicated by outside pressure, which often favors the military.

Pakistani, Turkish and Egyptian generals profess to love democracy, but they practice it with varying degrees of reluctance.

Instead, the military has deeply embedded itself in each state’s DNA, winning privileges and lucrative jobs for its officers, all the while controlling politics in blunt fashion. Pakistan’s generals have mounted four coups over the past 55 years; Turkey has had three. In both Pakistan and Egypt, analysts describe the military as the core of the “deep state.”

In all three countries, Islam is often seen as the boogeyman of democracy, Dr. Nasr said. “But that is wrong. The real struggle in the Middle East is between civilian rule and the military.”

For years, Turkey was the model of progress for many Muslim countries. But the military’s retreat has been driven, in part, by the country’s desire to join the European Union. And the gloss of civilian rule vanished in June when Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan violently suppressed a protest movement in central Istanbul, suggesting that one authoritarianism was being replaced with another. This month’s treason trial brought out sharp divisions between secularists and Islamists, underscoring how Turkey’s nation-building model remains a work in progress.

Egypt’s generals ousted the monarchy and established a republic in 1952. Turkey’s first president, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, a military revolutionary, led a fierce secularization drive in the 1920s.

His support from Egyptian civic society could evaporate as revulsion grows at the bloodshed against Islamists and the military’s crackdown on other dissenters. If he alienates Western support, financing from the Middle East cannot sustain his country for very long. And, as events in Turkey and Pakistan have shown, the military’s eminence can endure only by strategically ceding space to civilian players — or the use of violent repression.

the challenge in France seems especially hard, in part because of the nation’s amour-propre and self-image as a European leader and global power, and in part because French life is so comfortable for many and the day of reckoning still seems far enough away, especially to the country’s small but powerful unions.

as the European economy slowly mends, the French temptation will be to hope that modest economic growth will again mask, like a tranquilizer, the underlying problems.

The French are justifiably proud of their social model. Health care and pensions are good, many French retire at 60 or younger, five or six weeks of vacation every summer is the norm, and workers with full-time jobs have a 35-hour week and significant protections against layoffs and firings.

the question is not whether the French social model is a good one, but whether the French can continue to afford it. Based on current trends, the answer is clearly no, not without significant structural changes — in pensions, in taxes, in social benefits, in work rules and in expectations.

Today, at Nanterre, students worried about finding jobs and losing state benefits are demanding that nothing change at all.

“The young people march now to reject all reforms,” he said. “We see no alternatives. We’re a generation without bearings.”

The Socialists have become a conservative party, desperately trying to preserve the victories of the last century.

There is nonetheless an underlying understanding that there will be little lasting gain without structural changes to the state-heavy French economy. The warning signs are everywhere: French unemployment and youth unemployment are at record levels; growth is slow compared with Germany, Britain, the United States or Asia; government spending represents nearly 57 percent of gross domestic product, the highest in the euro zone, and is 11 percentage points higher than Germany. The government employs 90 civil servants per 1,000 residents, compared with 50 in Germany.

Hourly wage costs are high and social spending represents 32 percent of G.D.P., highest among the industrialized countries; real wage increases outpace productivity growth; national debt is more than 90 percent of G.D.P.

About 82 percent of the new jobs created last year were temporary contracts, up from 70 percent only five years ago, not the kind of full-time work that opens the door to the French middle class. That keeps nearly an entire generation living precariously, no matter how hard people study or work.

Last year, France was ranked 28th out of the 60 most competitive economies in the world, according to the International Institute for Management Development in Lausanne, Switzerland. The United States was first. Even China, at 21, and Japan, at 24, outranked France.

In the World Bank’s ranking of “ease of doing business,” France ranks 34th, compared with 7th for Britain and 20th for Germany.

France is the world’s fifth-largest economy, with strong traditions in management, science and innovation.

The country retains plenty of strengths.

The gap between rich and poor is narrower in France than in most Western countries, although it is growing.

When the French work, they work hard; labor productivity, perhaps the single most important indicator of an economy’s potential, is still relatively high, if dropping. But with long holidays and the 35-hour week, the French work fewer hours than most competitors, putting an extra strain on corporations and the economy.

Large French companies compete globally; there are more French companies in the Fortune 500 than any other European country. But the bulk of their employees are abroad, and there are few of the midsize companies that are the backbone of Germany.

Ninety percent of French companies have 10 or fewer employees and fear expansion because of extra tax burdens and strict labor regulations.

In poll after poll, the French insist that they want renovation and modernization, so long as it does not touch them. That is always the political challenge, and Mr. Hollande’s conservative predecessor, Nicolas Sarkozy, is considered to have failed in his promise to make serious structural changes.

One of Mr. Sarkozy’s advisers, Alain Minc, who tried to get him interested in Germany’s social market revisions, once admitted that Mr. Sarkozy was simply afraid to confront the unions and the social uproar that real change would provoke.

There is a broad consensus that real social and structural renovation can be carried out only by the left. But that can happen only if Mr. Hollande, who has a legislative majority, is willing to confront his own party in the name of the future, as the former German chancellor Gerhard Schröder did a decade ago with a series of legal modifications that now get much of the credit for Germany’s revival.

Economists have historically rejected what we call the “lump of labor” fallacy: the supposition that an increase in labor productivity inevitably reduces employment because there is only a finite amount of work to do. While intuitively appealing, this idea is demonstrably false.

Labor-saving technological change necessarily displaces workers performing certain tasks — that’s where the gains in productivity come from — but over the long run, it generates new products and services that raise national income and increase the overall demand for labor.

The multi-trillionfold decline in the cost of computing since the 1970s has created enormous incentives for employers to substitute increasingly cheap and capable computers for expensive labor.

Computers excel at “routine” tasks: organizing, storing, retrieving and manipulating information, or executing exactly defined physical movements in production processes. These tasks are most pervasive in middle-skill jobs

Logically, computerization has reduced the demand for these jobs, but it has boosted demand for workers who perform “nonroutine” tasks that complement the automated activities

At one end are so-called abstract tasks that require problem-solving, intuition, persuasion and creativity.

On the other end are so-called manual tasks, which require situational adaptability, visual and language recognition, and in-person interaction.

Computerization has therefore fostered a polarization of employment, with job growth concentrated in both the highest- and lowest-paid occupations, while jobs in the middle have declined.

overall employment rates have largely been unaffected in states and cities undergoing this rapid polarization.

So computerization is not reducing the quantity of jobs, but rather degrading the quality of jobs for a significant subset of workers. Demand for highly educated workers who excel in abstract tasks is robust, but the middle of the labor market, where the routine task-intensive jobs lie, is sagging.

Spurred by growing demand for workers performing abstract job tasks, the payoff for college and professional degrees has soared; despite its formidable price tag, higher education has perhaps never been a better investment.

The good news, however, is that middle-education, middle-wage jobs are not slated to disappear completely. While many middle-skill jobs are susceptible to automation, others demand a mixture of tasks that take advantage of human flexibility

we predict that the middle-skill jobs that survive will combine routine technical tasks with abstract and manual tasks in which workers have a comparative advantage — interpersonal interaction, adaptability and problem-solving.

this category includes numerous jobs for people in the skilled trades and repair: plumbers; builders; electricians; heating, ventilation and air-conditioning installers; automotive technicians; customer-service representatives; and even clerical workers who are required to do more than type and file

Lawrence F. Katz, a labor economist at Harvard, memorably called those who fruitfully combine the foundational skills of a high school education with specific vocational skills the “new artisans.”

The outlook for workers who haven’t finished college is uncertain, but not devoid of hope. There will be job opportunities in middle-skill jobs, but not in the traditional blue-collar production and white-collar office jobs of the past

we expect to see growing employment among the ranks of the “new artisans”: licensed practical nurses and medical assistants; teachers, tutors and learning guides at all educational levels; kitchen designers, construction supervisors and skilled tradespeople of every variety; expert repair and support technicians; and the many people who offer personal training and assistance, like physical therapists, personal trainers, coaches and guides