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T HE E CO N O M Y
9 Time to Get Growing
Weak economic performance is not inevitable. By John F.
Cogan, R. Glenn Hubbard, John B. Taylor, and Kevin Warsh
P O L I T IC S
21 Tyrants Like Unity, Too
Americas founders accepted the perennial clash of interests
and passionsin fact, they welcomed it. What they feared
was unity: the unity of a people under a demagogue or a
domineering government. By Bruce S. Thornton
R E G U LATIO N
27 Death by a Thousand Paper Cuts
Bloated, overpowerful, inefficient: the regulatory state drags
down the economy and undermines the rule of law. By Adam
J. White
H O O V E R D IG E ST FALL 2017 3
37 The Once and Future Internet
The man trying to scrap net neutralitygovernment
oversight of the Internethas a distinct vision of digital
progress. He also has angry protesters outside his house. A
profile of FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai. By Tunku Varadarajan
HE ALT H C A R E
43 Single-payer Straitjacket
Universal, state-managed coverage would be even worse than
the current systemwhich, under ObamaCare, is bad enough.
By Richard A. Epstein
T HE E NVIR O N ME N T
49 Forget Paris
The Paris Accords on climate change were vague and
unenforceable, and carried a stratospheric price tag. Good
riddance. By Richard A. Epstein
55 Blooming Nonsense
Panic blossoms after the discovery of genetically modified
petunias; scientists wilt. By Henry I. Miller
CY B E RWA R
60 New Weapons, New Shields
Emerging trends in the battle to secure our digital frontiers.
By Herbert Lin
T HE MIL ITA RY
71 Total Volunteer Force
Long advocated by Hoover fellow Milton Friedman, the
volunteer military represented a dramatic innovationforty
years ago. Now we need smarter ways to assign, train, and pay
military personnel. By Tim Kane
KOREA
77 The Outlines of a Deal
What does China want? If we could figure that out, we might
find a way to secure peace on the Korean Peninsula. By
Stephen D. Krasner
81 Smarter Waiting
America should stop wishing for Kim Jong Un to go away,
warns Hoover senior fellow William J. Perry, one of our most
seasoned diplomats. This daydreaming only gets in the way of
hardheaded negotiations. By Michael Knigge
H O O V E R D IG E ST FALL 2017 5
R U SS I A
96 Revolutionary Century
The Russian Revolution, a vast and bloody experiment, began
a hundred years ago. Hoover fellow Norman M. Naimark
insists there are lessons we still need to take from such
forced utopias. By Svetlana Suveica and Sergiu Musteat,a
CHINA
111 Lenins Ghost
Russia and China once contested each others claims to
socialist purity. Now they vie for this distinction: who will
challenge America? By Miles Maochun Yu
C AL I F OR N IA
116 How the West Was Wired
Californias electrical power capacity is bottled up by an
inefficient regional network. Heres a bright idea: fix that grid.
By James L. Sweeney
F R E ED O M
124 Friedman to the Rescue
Milton Friedmans ideas were a beacon that guided
Americaand much of the worldtoward economic freedom.
We need to keep that light burning. By Charles G. Palm
E D U C ATIO N
136 Bully for Budget Cuts
Never mind the hysteria. The proposed federal cuts
in education funding are smart and long overdue. By
Williamson M. Evers and Vicki E. Alger
R E L I G IO N
145 The Religious Animal
Faith informs war, peace, and civil society. Thats why
believers must learn to listen to each other. By Charles Hill
H O O V E R D IG E ST FALL 2017 7
I N T E RV I EWS
150 Push Back on Dawa
Hoover fellow Ayaan Hirsi Ali, author and foe of political Islam,
on doing battle with dangerous ideas. By Cynthia L. Haven
F R E E S PE E C H
175 Free Speech Doesn't Need Rethinking
Persuasion is American, coercion is not. To Hoover scholar
Richard Epstein, the First Amendment is both bedrock and
shield. By Tunku Varadarajan
HO OV E R A R C HIVE S
181 A Voice from the Camps
A literary quest brings life to the story of Latvian journalist
Arsenii Formakov, an imprisoned poet who yearned for
motherland and freedom. By Emily D. Johnson
TH E ECONOMY
Time to Get
Growing
Weak economic performance is not inevitable.
S
ince the economic recov-
ery began eight years Key points
ago, the rate of economic Lower marginal tax rates on cor-
porate income, business income,
growth has averaged only 2
and earnings from work will boost
percent per year, the weakest eco- both productivity and employment.
nomic expansion since World War II. Antiquated, unnecessary rules
Participation in the labor force is near should be eliminated; a rigorous
cost-benefit analysis should steer
its lowest level since the malaise of all rule making.
the late 1970s. The country is expe- Spending, particularly entitle-
riencing the worst five-year run for ment growth, must be reined in.
John F. Cogan is the Leonard and Shirley Ely Senior Fellow at the Hoover Insti-
tution and a member of Hoovers Shultz-Stephenson Task Force on Energy Policy,
the Working Group on Economic Policy, and the Working Group on Health Care
Policy. R. Glenn Hubbard is the dean and the Russell L. Carson Professor of
Finance and Economics at the Graduate School of Business, Columbia University,
and a member of the Working Group on Health Care Policy. John B. Taylor is the
George P. Shultz Senior Fellow in Economics at the Hoover Institution, the Mary
and Robert Raymond Professor of Economics at Stanford University, chair of the
Working Group on Economic Policy, and a member of the Shultz-Stephenson Task
Force on Energy Policy. Kevin Warsh is the Shepard Family Distinguished Visit-
ing Fellow in Economics at the Hoover Institution and a lecturer at Stanfords
Graduate School of Business.
H O O V E R D IG E ST FALL 2017 9
productivity ever measured outside of a recession. And the median wage is
growing only slowly.
We do not share the view that the recent period of weak economic growth
was simply an inevitable result of the financial crisis. Economic recoveries
tend to be stronger after deep recessions, and any residual headwinds from
the crisis should have long been remedied had pro-growth policies been
adopted. Historically, some post-crisis periods are marked by lower eco-
nomic growth, but we believe that the poor conduct of economic policy bears
much of that burden.
For individuals and
households, the recent
Policy failures restrain growth expec-
economic performance
tations, undercutting consumption is insufficient to improve
and investment spending. standards of living at
a rate to which most
Americans are accustomed. And it is at odds with a society that promises
opportunity and upward mobility for the next generation. Most Americans
rely largely on wage income. The conduct of economic policy during the past
several years, however, has failed to address structural impediments to more
rapid growth in productivity and wages.
For businesses, the underlying economy lacks dynamism in output, invest-
ment, and employment. Start-up activity outside of a few regions remains
poor. Business investment in real assets, such as real and intellectual proper-
ty, plant, and equipment, is stuck at very low levels. Companies have instead
used cash flows for share buybacks and corporate consolidation.
Focused primarily on stimulus in the short-term, the conduct of eco-
nomic policy in the post-crisis years did little to reset expectations higher for
long-term growth. That policy failure restrained those expectations, adverse-
ly affecting consumption and, especially, investment spending.
What explains the slow economic growth? Economists focus on the two
proximate determinants of growth: productivity growththe increase in
production of goods and services per hour of workand total hours of work.
And, as we review each factor in turn, we are confident that US growth can
be materially higher than the reality of the post-crisis era.
Productivity increases arise from human capital (labor), technology, and
real capital investment. Productivity growth declined in the 1970s, rose
markedly through the 1980s and 1990s, and fell again sharply in recent years.
The data do not support the popular contention that the United States is in
the midst of a long-term decline in productivity growth.
H O O V E R D IG E ST FALL 2017 11
in animal spirits into a significant improvement in economic activity by
resetting long-term higher economic growth expectations.
The administrations proposed regulatory reform agendaincluding the
reinvigorated presidential effort to remove unnecessary, antiquated federal
rules, a rigorous, independent benefit-cost analysis of proposed rules, and
a regulatory directive to ensure that regulations are pro-competition, not
pro-incumbentwould further enhance economic growth by boosting net
returns to investment in physical and human capital and by reducing barri-
ers to employment.
Spending restraint, especially through legislation, along the lines proposed
in the House Budget Committees 2018 Budget Resolution, that slows the
growth in entitlement
spending is essential to
The CBOs projection of 1.8 percent achieving higher econom-
growth per year is based on a continu- ic growth. In the absence
ation of status quo policies. of spending restraint,
entitlements will cause
projected annual federal spending to increase by 60 percent in ten years.
The higher spending will cause the annual federal budget deficit to increase
to $1.4 trillion. These increases will eventually crowd out private invest-
ment and thereby act as a brake on economic growth. A comprehensive set
of changes in entitlement laws that limited the growth in federal spending
to the rate of inflation plus population growth would, in contrast, free up
resources for greater private sector investments to enhance productivity.
It is important to emphasize that tax reform and spending reductions go
hand in hand. Without significant spending restraint, even with positive
effects on economic growth, the tax rate reductions would likely be limited
and temporary, limiting their economic benefits.
Enacting this comprehensive set of economic policies is a heavy lift; as dif-
ficult a challenge as confronted policy makers in the 1980s. But the rewards
measured in terms of higher economic growth, more jobs, and improved liv-
ing standards are huge. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) now projects
that absent fundamental changes in economic policies, real GDP will grow at
only 1.8 percent per year. But, as we discussed, historical experience suggests
that the economic reforms can raise both productivity growth and employ-
ment growth.
Could implementation of such a comprehensive economic plan raise the
economic growth rate to 3 percent? We believe it can. We judge that such
a policy package, in part by encouraging firms to expand by bringing new
H O O V E R D IG E ST FALL 2017 13
remain high and the tax code remains unreformed, the large regulatory
burden persists, and the growth in federal spending and the national debt
outpace the growth in GDP.
With this distinction in mind, the accounting differences between our
economic growth estimates and CBOs are as follows: 0.7 percentage points
of the difference is due to our judgment that labor productivity will generate
a 2 percent per year increase in GDP compared to CBOs assumption of 1.3
percent per year. As recently as 2012, CBO assumed that productivity growth
under the previous nongrowth policy environment would generate a 2
percent per year growth in GDP. The remaining 0.5 percentage points of the
difference is due to our judgment that the labor force participation rate will
remain constant compared to CBOs assumption that the labor force partici-
pation rate will decline.
Taken together, these policy changes will help reset household and busi-
ness expectations toward faster growth. Failure to enact these policies would
lead to lower incomes and smaller improvements in the standard of living
and would leave the economy closer to recession than resurgence. Moreover,
it would leave our country considerably less capable of an economic upturn
when the next recession or shock hits.
TH E ECONOMY
Good News on
Taxes
The administrations tax reform proposals may
not be perfect in every particular, but they would
do what needs to be done: spur growth.
By Edward P. Lazear
P
resident Trumps tax outline leaves many details undefined, but
there is plenty to evaluate. The administration claims its pro-
posed changes would encourage growth and make the tax system
more efficient. History suggests they will.
Less certain is the claim that the tax cuts will pay for themselves. Although
budget concerns should always be paramount when cutting taxes, revenue
neutrality does little to guarantee that thisor anyadministration will
exercise fiscal responsibility.
Most economists favor moving away from taxing capital and toward taxing
consumption through value-added taxes (VAT) or sales taxes. Taxing capital
squelches growth because capital is mobile and can cross borders in search
of the highest risk-adjusted, after-tax return. Economists in both parties have
scored the effects of eliminating capital taxation in favor of a pure consump-
tion tax. Estimates range from a 5 percent to 9 percent total increase in
gross domestic product.
Edward P. Lazear is the Morris Arnold and Nona Jean Cox Senior Fellow at the
Hoover Institution, co-chair of Hoovers Conte Initiative on Immigration Reform,
and the Jack Steele Parker Professor of Human Resources Management and Eco-
nomics at Stanford Universitys Graduate School of Business.
H O O V E R D IG E ST FALL 2017 15
There are a number of ways to move toward a consumption tax and reduce
taxes on capital without instituting a national sales tax or VAT. One is to low-
er tax rates on corporate profits and pass through income, as the president
proposes. Another is to
permit full expensingto
Unless were willing to accept major let companies deduct the
tax increases in the futuremost entire cost of investments
likely through a value-added taxwe immediately.
need to reduce government spending Expensing creates an
incentive for corporations
significantly.
because they receive the
tax benefit only when they invest in themselves. A Treasury Department
analysis done while I was chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers
showed that a given dollar of tax cuts through expensing is more powerful
than rate cuts in the short run by about a factor of four.
Rate cuts, on the other hand, benefit new and old capital alike and confer
tax benefits on companies that have invested in the past. This saves compa-
nies money but provides no direct incentive for new investment. In the long
run, the distinction between expensing and rate cutting disappears because
all capital is new capital and so is taxed at the lower rate.
Tax-rate cuts on pass-through income will have additional growth effects,
but the administration hasnt released enough details to score them. Separat-
ing capital income from wage income may add some complexity, but thats
not a new problem. Defining income and profit is not straightforward. Tax
accountants already struggle to determine true costs, including business
owners implicit wages.
State and local taxes might no longer be deductible under Trumps plan.
Much has been said about the cross-subsidization of high-tax states such as
New York and California by low-tax states such as Florida and Texas. Remov-
ing this deduction would mean that overall federal personal income-tax rates
can be lower and generate the same revenue. Beyond that, there is a subtle
and positive growth effect of eliminating state tax deductions.
The deductibility of state taxes provides incentives to raise overall taxes
at the state level. Californians and New Yorkers bear only part of the cost of
their tax increases; the rest is passed on to other states taxpayers through
the deduction. This leads state governments to overtax their citizens, result-
ing in economic distortions and reduced overall growth.
Tax cuts enacted through the Senates budget-reconciliation process must
sunset after ten years, although this may not be the roadblock to lasting
Reprinted by permission of the Wall Street Journal. 2017 Dow Jones &
Co. All rights reserved.
H O O V E R D IG E ST FALL 2017 17
T H E ECONOM Y
T H E ECONOM Y
Rates, Revenues,
and Rhetoric
Dont blame deficits on tax cuts for the rich
those cuts tend to actually boost revenues. Blame
runaway spending.
By Thomas Sowell
O
ne of the painful realities of our times is how long a political lie
can survive, even after having been disproved years ago, even
generations ago.
A classic example is the phrase tax cuts for the rich, which
is loudly proclaimed by opponents whenever there is a proposal to reduce
tax rates. The current proposal to reduce federal tax rates has revived this
phrase, which was disproved by facts as far back as the 1920sand by now
should be called tax lies for the gullible.
How is the claim of tax cuts for the rich false? Let me count the ways.
More important, you can easily check out the facts for yourself with a simple
visit to your local public library or, for those more computer-minded, on the
Internet.
One of the key arguments of those who oppose what they call tax cuts for
the rich is that the Reagan administration tax cuts led to huge federal gov-
ernment deficits, contrary to supply side economics which said that lower
tax rates would lead to higher tax revenues.
Thomas Sowell is the Rose and Milton Friedman Senior Fellow on Public Policy
at the Hoover Institution.
H O O V E R D IG E ST FALL 2017 19
and under the G. W. Bush administration after Reagan. All these administra-
tions cut tax rates and received higher tax revenues than before.
More than that, the rich not only paid higher total tax revenues after
the so-called tax cuts for the rich, they also paid a higher percentage of all
tax revenues afterwards. Data on this can be found in a number of places,
including documented sources listed in my monograph titled Trickle Down
Theory and Tax Cuts for the Rich.
As a source more congenial to some, a front-page story in the New York
Times on July 9, 2006during the Bush 43 administrationreported, An
unexpectedly steep rise in tax revenues from corporations and the wealthy is
driving down the projected budget deficit this year. Expectations, of course,
are in the eye of the beholder.
POL I TI CS
Tyrants Like
Unity, Too
Americas founders accepted the perennial
clash of interests and passionsin fact, they
welcomed it. What they feared was unity: the unity
of a people under a demagogue or a domineering
government.
By Bruce S. Thornton
T
hanksgiving Day will elicit the customary calls for unity and
healing. Last year, after a divisive and bitterly fought presi-
dential election, several pundits referenced Abraham Lincolns
wish to heal the wounds of the nation, which he articulated
in the speech instituting Thanksgiving Day in 1863. Donald Trump echoed
this idea last year in his Thanksgiving address, saying, Its my prayer that
on this Thanksgiving, we begin to heal our divisions and move forward
as one country, strengthened by shared purpose and very, very common
resolve.
Nice sentiments all, but one hopes they are merely feel-good rhetoric
typical of the holidays. For as comforting as they are for some, these words
reflect a misunderstanding of our political order and the foundational ideas
behind the Constitution. Except in times of war or other national crisis,
H O O V E R D IG E ST FALL 2017 21
national unity and healing divisions frightened the founders, for unity
historically has been the precondition of tyranny.
The founders knew that the thirteen colonies were diverse in their inter-
ests, religions, regions, folkways, and cultures. Modern diversicrats have long
peddled the notion that Revolutionary-era Americans were all white males
unified and defined by the same interests and beliefs. Such superficial racial
categories were politically important mainly when the issue was race-based
slavery. But the peoples who created the United States were otherwise not so
shallow and simplistic. They realized that confessional, regional, economic,
and class divisions were significant and potentially dangerous, for they are
often zero-sum in their pursuit and practice and can lead to fragmenta-
tion and violence. The Civil War was the gruesome proof that this fear was
justified.
Moreover, the diversity of interests and passions could never be eradicat-
ed, for it reflected a flawed human nature vulnerable to ambition, greed, and
the desire for power. James Madison called the political instruments of this
diversity factions and said they were sown in the nature of man. Hence
the checks and balances and divided powers of the Constitution were the
solution to the danger of a faction becoming too powerful and inciting politi-
cal disorder and threats to freedom.
In addition to the mixed federal government, federalism, which acknowl-
edged the sovereign powers of the states that created the federal govern-
ment, would be another check on factionalism. Clashing interests and
concerns would be adjudicated by state governments, which would be more
familiar with local conditions and interests, and thus better placed to create
policies more suited to them.
H O O V E R D IG E ST FALL 2017 25
The diversity was honored by devolving decisions that most affected peoples
lives to the most local level possible. In this way the founders assuaged their
greatest fear: concentrated power, whether in a majority or a minority, that
inevitably becomes tyrannical.
Unfortunately, the progressive vision of unity has become a reflex even
among many conservatives. But we dont need to be unified or have our divi-
sions healed to solve our problems.
The peoples and regions of our nation are still various and diverse, and 325
million people are not going to share a common purpose outside of defend-
ing ourselves from an enemy. What we do need is to reduce the bloated
power of the federal gov-
ernment by renewing fed-
Woodrow Wilson dreamed of a politi- eralism, making the states
cal order designed by technocrats and again the laboratories
resembling a perfected, coordinated of democracy, returning
beehive. power to the level closest
to the people, and recom-
mitting ourselves to the Constitution, the most important unum for all of
us pluribus. Thats how we can regain the one thing we all share and should
always be most grateful forour political freedom and autonomy.
REGU L ATION
Death by a
Thousand Paper
Cuts
Bloated, overpowerful, inefficient: the regulatory
state drags down the economy and undermines
the rule of law.
By Adam J. White
Hoover research fellow Adam J. White was invited to testify before the Senate
Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation on the subject of regulation.
Here are excerpts of what he said.
T
hank you for inviting me to testify today on an issue of such
immediate national importance: the modern administrative
states heavy burdens on the American people and American
businesses. This has been a subject of particularly intense
national debate in recent years, in a variety of forums: in Congress; in agency
proceedings; on the presidential campaign trail; and even in the Supreme
Court and other federal courts.
Indeed, President Obama diagnosed this problem candidly six years
ago in his 2011 executive order directing agencies to reduce their regula-
tory burdens. Our regulatory system must protect public health, welfare,
safety, and our environment while promoting economic growth, innovation,
H O O V E R D IG E ST FALL 2017 27
competitiveness, and job creation, he said. To that end, agencies must pro-
mote predictability and reduce uncertainty and must identify and use the
best, most innovative, and least burdensome tools for achieving regulatory
ends. And because some sectors and industries face a significant number
of regulatory requirements, some of which may be redundant, inconsis-
tent, or overlapping,
President Obama further
Regulatory burdens fall dispropor- recognized that greater
tionately on small businesses, the coordination across agen-
very businesses were counting on to cies could reduce these
spur a broad economic recovery. requirements, thus reduc-
ing costs and simplifying
and harmonizing rules, and so he directed the agencies to promote coordi-
nation, simplification, and harmonization and to identify, as appropriate,
means to achieve regulatory goals that are designed to promote innovation.
The failures and errors of todays administrative state are not simply
problems of public administration. More fundamentally, todays administra-
tive state is a profound failure of republican self-governance under a Consti-
tution of limited federal powers. As Chief Justice Roberts observed recently,
The administrative state wields vast power and touches almost every aspect
of daily life. . . . The framers could hardly have envisioned todays vast and
varied federal bureaucracy and the authority administrative agencies now
hold over our economic, social, and political activities. . . . The administrative
state with its reams of regulations would leave them rubbing their eyes.
But however true and important such statements from the executive and
judicial branches are, it is even more important for these matters to be dis-
cussed here in the first branchfor Congress truly is the primary source of
the modern administrative state. While the executive branch instills energy
in the myriad federal agencies, and the judicial branchs deferential habits
have for decades facilitated the agencies expansive assertions of power, the
legislative branch bears ultimate responsibility for empowering agencies and,
when necessary, reining them back in.
As the Supreme Court once observed, an agency literally has no power
to act . . . unless and until Congress confers power upon it. Congress has
conferred immense power on the agenciesand over the past century it has
often legislated such grants in words so capacious that the agencies have
found great success securing judicial deference to regulators unabashed
reach for even greater powers well beyond Congresss original intentions. By
the same token, it must fall to Congress to reform those grants of power to
H O O V E R D IG E ST FALL 2017 29
the years since Dodd-Frank have witnessed significant consolidation in the
banking industry, as community banks give up and merge. While community
banks and financial regulation fall outside of this committees jurisdiction,
the lessons that that industry has learned from Dodd-Frank should inform
regulatory reform across industries.
Another example I witnessed firsthand hits closer to this committees
home. Before I joined the Hoover Institution, my law-firm colleagues and
I became counsel to parties challenging the FCCs orders establishing the
unprecedented broadcast spectrum incentive auction, in which the FCC
would conduct a reverse auction
to buy back spectrum usage
rights from licensees, then
reorganize the available
spectrum, and finally auc-
tion spectrum usage rights
back to the public for
H O O V E R D IG E ST FALL 2017 31
major disadvantage that smaller companies face in the regulatory context:
when Congress legislates in broad terms, it gives regulators much more
discretion to impose their own policy preferences with the added benefit of
significant judicial deference. In that context, small companies are left to
fend for themselves in agency proceedings, where they enjoy far fewer of the
resources and tools wielded by their much larger competitors.
Thus, for all the talk today of economic inequalityof structural biases
that systematically benefit the richest instead of the poorestI would urge
you to keep in mind the modern problem of regulatory inequality: the
structural biases that systematically benefit the biggest businesses, who fare
much better before federal regulators than their smaller competitors do.
Let me now offer a few general suggestions for regulatory reform.
H O O V E R D IG E ST FALL 2017 33
Conference of the United States (ACUS) has also recommended that agen-
cies undertake retrospective reviews; indeed, ACUS has reported on the
significant benefits that agencies have reaped from reviewing their own
past work.
My fellow reformers often promote retrospective review as a tool for iden-
tifying and repealing outdated or counterproductive regulations. And while
that is a benefit of retrospective review, its not the most important benefit.
Retrospective reviews biggest benefit is actually forward-looking. That is,
by forcing agencies to look back at their previous rule makings and analyze
their costs and benefits today, the administration would force agencies and
the public to confront how accurate or inaccurate the agencies own projec-
tions were in forecasting the rules impacts in the first place.
As scholars and policy analysts often observe, agencies forecasts of costs
and benefits are woefully inaccurate. Former OIRA administrator Susan
Dudley colorfully described agencies tendency to perpetuate puffery by
exaggerating rules benefits and understating their costs. Shes not alone in
making these claims. In testimony last year before the Senate Committee on
Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Subcommittee on Regulatory
Affairs and Federal Management, I cited several other reports criticizing
agencies for haphazard analysis. And as Resources for the Futures scholars
observed a few years ago, independent agencies cost-benefit analyses are
especially questionable.
Whatever the reason for the underwhelming quality of agencies predictive
analyses, retrospective review offers a useful antidote. By forcing agencies to
go back and review their work, under the publics watchful eye, agencies may
learn from their mistakes,
identify biases and blind
By forcing agencies to review their spots, and thus become
work, under the publics watchful eye, more modest and less
agencies may learn from their mis- prejudiced in their predic-
tions and policy prefer-
takes, identify biases and blind spots,
ences. Once agencies are
and learn humility.
made to grapple seriously
with the ways in which their rules actual impacts resemble or depart from
the agencies original predictions, those agencies should demonstrate greater
epistemic modesty in making new predictions next time.
This is one of the major lessons to be found in Superforecasting, the
acclaimed 2015 book by Philip Tetlock and Dan Gardner, drawn from the
authors decades of close study of forecasters. Reflecting on the experience
ST REAM LI NE COMPLIANCE
Modern regulation places immense compliance burdens on American busi-
nesses. Some of those burdens are unavoidable: companies must take the
time and effort to identify whether their operations and services comply
with the law, and then they must explain themselves to federal regula-
tors. And then federal agencies must labor to review and react to all that
material.
But much of todays compliance burdenon the regulators and regulated
alikeis utterly unnecessary. Todays technology offers significant oppor-
tunities to reform and improve federal regulatory compliance, eliminating
myriad redundancies and automating submission of compliance data. The
Data Coalition, a trade group, highlighted these opportunities in a December
2016 preview of forthcoming research paper on Standard Business Report-
ing. The Data Coalition argues that if federal agencies would reform their
regulatory compliance frameworks to rely more on standardized, freely avail-
able data (also known as open data), then companies regulatory compli-
ance costs would be reduced.
And, the Data Coalition further observed, a shift to open data would cut
the agencies own costs by allowing the agencies to review, analyze, and
share compliance data much more efficiently. This would help alleviate some
of the most significant burdens on the agencies own budgetsand, thus,
on Congresss budget, and on the taxpayers. The Data Coalition points to
the experience of Australia, which moved to embrace Standard Business
Reporting in recent years, and which claimed to have reduced compliance
H O O V E R D IG E ST FALL 2017 35
burdens on both the government and the regulated public by more than $1
billion in 201516.
Of course, there are limits on the extent to which regulatory compliance
can be automated; compliance often requires nuanced judgments that cannot
be reduced to raw data. But to the extent that compliance does depend on
regulated people and companies submitting raw data, it is incumbent upon
Congress to help promote a modernized, streamlined approach to regulatory
compliance.
Todays administrative agencies should use twenty-first-century technol-
ogy to administer twenty-first-century statutes, not 1990s technology to
administer 1930s statutes.
REGU L ATION
By Tunku Varadarajan
P
rotesters from the far-left group Popular Resistance have
swarmed the Arlington, Virginia, street where Ajit Pai lives,
placing pamphlets with his face on his neighbors front doors.
Have you seen this man? the flyers ask, stating that PaiAge
44 / Height 6'1" / Weight 200is trying to destroy net neutrality. Pai is
chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, and the activists, not
without perverse humor, describe their picketing of his home as Ajit-ation.
They were there yesterday, Pai tells me in his office at the FCC, in uncool
Southwest Washington. I understand theyll be there today. Theyll be there
tomorrow and the day after. Its a hassle, especially for my wife and my two young
children. The activists, he adds, come up to our front windows and take photo-
graphs of the inside of the house. My kids are five and three. Its not pleasant.
Few phrases in the English language are dowdier than net neutrality.
Yet the passions the two words arouse are so intense that the earnest, nerdy
H O O V E R D IG E ST FALL 2017 37
Paihis hair crew-cut, his smile somewhat
goofyis among the Trump administra-
tion officials most loathed by the left. That
hatred was consolidated last spring when
Pais FCC voted 2-1 to begin the process
of scrapping the Obama administra-
tions net-neutrality regulations.
Coined in 2003 by legal
scholar Tim Wu, net
H O O V E R D IG E S T FALL 2017 39
then I was in the county bee and lost on the word discord. I was very upset,
because Id just read Norton Justers The Phantom Tollbooth, and theres a
character called Doctor Dischord. (Pai refers to Kakofonous A. Dischord, who
loves unpleasant sounds.) Having just read the book, I thought, Oh, that must
be the way its spelled in
real life, not realizing it
The infrastructure of the Internet was a play on words. Its
isnt like slow-moving utilities. Its not amusing, I observe, given
a water company. this little bit of history,
that Pai is today the source
of so much discord. He responds with a poker face. I did eventually recover,
and my career wasnt forever sullied by my failure to spell that word.
As Pai travels around the country, he is greeted with the same refrain.
The number one issue that I hear about is that people want better, faster,
cheaper Internet access, he says. They want access, period. To me, at least,
thats the question the FCC should be squarely focused on: what is the regula-
tory framework that will maximize the incentives of every company to deploy
the next generation of networks?
In his speech at the Newseum, Pai noted that Title II regulation was
weighing down investment in broadband. Among our nations twelve larg-
est Internet service providers, he told the audience, domestic broadband
capital expenditures decreased by 5.6 percent, or $3.6 billion, between 2014
and 2016. I ask him to elaborate. As Ive seen it and heard it, he says,
Title II regulations have stood in the way of investment. Just last week, for
instance, we heard from nineteen municipal broadband providers. These are
small, government-owned ISPs who told us that even though we lack a profit
motive, Title II has affected the way we do business.
The small ISPs reported that Title II was preventing them from rolling out
new services and deepening their networks. These are the kinds of companies
that we want to provide a competitive alternative in the marketplace, Pai says.
It seems to me theyre the canaries in the coal mine. If the smaller companies
are telling us that the regulatory overhang is too much, that it hangs like a black
cloud over our businessesas twenty-two separate ISPs told us three weeks
agothen it seems to me theres a problem here that needs to be solved.
This gets at the fundamental reason, in Pais view, why treating the Inter-
net as a utility is so harmful. We need massive investment in networks going
forward, he says. The infrastructure of the Internet isnt like slow-moving
utilities. Its not a water company. There are a number of ISPs, big and
small4,400 of them.
H O O V E R D IG E ST FALL 2017 41
says, of studying under Martin Feldstein, who taught the basic economics
course. At the same time he decided he was a Republican: Throughout high
school, I was a fairly determined Democrat. But studying economics played
a big part in my change. It seemed to me that the Republicans had the better
of the argument on economic matters.
Then it was on to law school at the University of Chicago. Pai learned a
great deal from the decidedly liberal Cass Sunstein, who taught administra-
tive law. I found him fascinating, Pai recalls, because even though he and
I disagreedand disagreeon the merits of a particular kind of regulatory
philosophy, I loved the way he teased out what the administrative process
was designed to do, and whether it makes sense to have expert agencies that
are given deference, or whether we want the courts second-guessing their
decisions. Pai stresses that the FCCs pending decision to scrap Title II
ought to receive judicial deferenceknown in the business as Chevron def-
erence, after a 1984 Supreme Court decision that held courts should defer to
regulators reasonable interpretations of ambiguous statutes.
For a period ending in August, the FCCs proposed net-neutrality reversal
was open to public comment. If recent events offer any taste of the future,
Pai can expect a great deal of turbulence. The news-comedian John Oliver
pilloried him mercilessly in a recent segment, calling on his millions of view-
ers to express their discontent on the FCCs website. The site crashed.
I ask whether another public outcry could make his job hellwith sites
crashing, social media pouring forth abuse (one tweeter demanded he go
back to Africa), and even more activists picketing him at home and work.
Can the FCC chairman live with all the hullabaloo? I suppose thats a risk,
Pai says, but its a risk Im willing to take. At the end of the day, Im not going
to be intimidated. No one is going to sway me away from the course that I
truly believe is the right one for the American people.
Reprinted by permission of the Wall Street Journal. 2017 Dow Jones &
Co. All rights reserved.
H EALTH CARE
Single-payer
Straitjacket
Universal, state-managed coverage would be even
worse than the current systemwhich, under
ObamaCare, is bad enough.
By Richard A. Epstein
T
he United States faces another crisis Key points
in organizing its health care system. The failures of
Its clear that the private exchanges the Affordable
Care Act suggest a
concocted under the Obama admin-
government take-
istration are failing at a record rate for the simple over of health care
reason that they violate all known sound principles would be an even
worse failure.
of insurance.
Centralized
Those who created these programs unwisely health care
thought that universal coverage would overcome obliterates price
signals and stifles
the standard insurance problems of adverse selec-
innovation.
tion and moral hazard. But that didnt happen.
Rigid ideo-
Under the ObamaCare plans, insurers are allowed logical positions
to compete only on the cost of providing a fixed interfere with true
reform.
set of government packages of mandated services.
Richard A. Epstein is the Peter and Kirsten Bedford Senior Fellow at the Hoover
Institution and a member of the steering committee for Hoovers Working Group
on Intellectual Property, Innovation, and Prosperity. He is also the Laurence A.
Tisch Professor of Law at New York University Law School and a senior lecturer
at the University of Chicago.
H O O V E R D IG E ST FALL 2017 43
They have no power to select their own customers or to charge those cus-
tomers rates sufficient to cover insurance expenses. People are allowed to
game the system by signing up just before they need treatment, only to leave
once treatment is received. The young dump plans that require them to pay
for the insurance of the old.
The old sign
up in
H O O V E R D IG E ST FALL 2017 45
of social welfare. In his view, the benefits of taxation can more than offset
those rising taxes if those tax revenues can deliver superior levels of health
care in exchange. But that is one big if.
ANTI-COMPETITIVE LOGJAM
The proper path of reform must move away from single payer and toward
market liberalization, which would lower costs by removing these mandates
and by opening up insurance markets to interstate competition. Matters
would get still better by removing the state mandates for coverage in private
employer plans, which have led many firms to terminate their employee
coverage. Any reform should also kill the 3.8 percent net investment income
tax, which has done so much to retard overall growth. Apparently the Repub-
licans who have so far flubbed health care reform are still taking a statist
approach that keeps many of the worst features of the ACA intact.
H O O V E R D IG E ST FALL 2017 47
Here is one illustration. Senators Ted Cruz and Mike Lee introduced a pro-
vision that would have allowed any insurer offering two ACA-compliant plans
to also offer other plans for sale. The market plans would not have carried
the government subsidy,
thus evading full market
Legislated menus of mandated goods liberalization. A disguised
are so rigid and standardized that form of price control
firms have nothing new to sell. would prevent two plans
from competing on price,
which means that the option was illusory and the worst features of the ACA
remain unchallenged. But the possibility that consumers might nonetheless
prefer these plans offers powerful testimony to how far off base are both the
ACA and these attempted reforms.
It seems, therefore, that the public debate has been ruptured by the con-
stant war cry that all reforms hurt poor health care recipients to benefit rich
taxpayers. Public policy now ignores growth and innovation; the debate has
become a struggle about redistribution. A one-way ratchet embeds all tax
increases forever and makes it impossible to address the many design errors
in the ACA. Reckless Democratic claims for a single-payer system are a mas-
sive distraction. Republican naivet on dismantling a flawed system has led
to the rhetoric of repeal-and-replace, which tends to bypass critical design
elements that can spell success or failure.
TH E ENVI RON ME NT
Forget Paris
The Paris Accords on climate change were vague
and unenforceable, and carried a stratospheric
price tag. Good riddance.
By Richard A. Epstein
P
resident Trumps intention to with-
draw the United States unilaterally Key points
from the Paris Accords has argu- The Paris Accords
ignored the power of
ably awakened more fury in his crit- free trade as a natural
ics than any other position he has staked out. corrective to environ-
mental damage. The
His critics seem to believe he has an agenda to
drive for clean air and
poison the planet. However, for all its defects, water will continue.
Trumps position is more coherent than that of The Green Climate
his fiercest critics. Lets disentangle the pluses Fund falsely portrayed
advanced nations as
and minuses. despoilers of the world.
There are at least two principled ways to Nothing exempts
defend Trumps decision. First is the weak polluters from current
environmental laws
scientific case that links global warming and
and lawsuitsmea-
other planetary maladies to increases in sures that target forms
carbon dioxide levels. There are simply too of pollution more
harmful than carbon
many other forces that can account for shifts dioxide.
in temperature and the various environmental
Richard A. Epstein is the Peter and Kirsten Bedford Senior Fellow at the Hoover
Institution and a member of the steering committee for Hoovers Working Group
on Intellectual Property, Innovation, and Prosperity. He is also the Laurence A.
Tisch Professor of Law at New York University Law School and a senior lecturer
at the University of Chicago.
H O O V E R D IG E ST FALL 2017 49
calamities that befall the world. Second, the economic impulses underlying
the Paris Accords entail a massive financial commitment, including huge gov-
ernment subsidies for wind and solar energy, sources that have yet to prove
themselves viable.
The president should have stated these two points, and then challenged
his opponents to explain how the recent greening of the planet, for example,
could possibly presage the grim future of rising seas and expanded deserts
routinely foretold by climate activists. Unfortunately, Trumps silence on
these critical issues let his critics have a field day in portraying him as a man
who is prepared, in the coarse language of John Cassidy in the New Yorker, to
say screw you to the world in order to implement his maniacal, zero-sum
view.
What is so striking about the endless criticisms of the president is that
they all start from the bogus assumption that a well-nigh universal consen-
sus has settled on the science of global warming. To refute that fundamen-
tal assumption, it is essential to look at the individual critiques raised by
prominent scientists and to respond to them point by point, so that a genuine
dialogue can begin. But by failing to state a case for his policy, the president
has disarmed his allies. Alas, his recent statement, through UN Ambassador
Nikki Haley, that climate change is real is singularly inadequate.
NOT A DESPOILER
Instead of starting with the social case against the substantive provisions of
the Paris Accords, Trump justified his decision by invoking his highly nation-
alistic view of international arrangements. He said the United States was
once again getting ripped off by a lousy treaty that, in his words, would force
American taxpayers to absorb the cost in terms of lost jobs, lower wages,
shuttered factories, and vastly diminished economic production. He then
insisted that his first duty is to the citizens of Pittsburgh, not of Parisgiving
the impression that only provincial arguments support his decision.
The president actually has a stronger case here than when he uses similar
terms to attack free trade. Free trade has a natural corrective, in that no
private firm will enter into an agreement it believes will work to its disad-
vantage. But that was decidedly not true of the Obama approach to the Paris
Accords, which give a free pass to China until 2030 even though its recent
carbon emissions had increased by 1.1 billion tons, while the United States
total has dropped by 270 million tons and will continue to do so. The Chinese
can reduce emissions a lot more rapidly than the United States. The diplo-
matic pass represents a clear double standard.
The president was also right to cast a suspicious eye on the Green Cli-
mate Fund, established under the Paris Accords to mitigate the damage
that excess greenhouse gas production might cause to the undeveloped
world. But this moral posturing ignores the powerful point that undeveloped
countries have already benefited vastly from Western technology, including
carbon-based energy, and market institutions that, as the Cato Institutes
Johan Norberg reminds us in his book Progress, have done so much to amelio-
rate chronic starvation and poverty across the globe. Carbon dioxide has not
wrecked the atmosphere, and the political risk of the Green Climate Fund
lies in its false characterization of advanced Western nations as despoilers of
less-developed countries. Foreign aid may well be desired, but it should not
be packaged with the one-sided claims of Western wrongdoing so common in
todays climate-change politics.
Trump, moreover, does himself no favors when he relies on a handful of
controversial studies that point to dramatic declines in jobs and production
which will result in astonishing economic losses for the United Statesif
the policies embodied in the Paris Accords are fully implemented. These
H O O V E R D IG E ST FALL 2017 51
numbers are simply too large to be credible, given the adaptive capacity of
American industry. Contrary to what Trump says, US production will not
see paper down 12 percent; cement down 23 percent; iron and steel down 38
percent; coal . . . down 86 percent; natural gas down 31 percent. As the Wall
Street Journal noted, the level of carbon efficiency in the United States has
improved vastly in the past decade because of innovations that predate the
Paris Accords.
That trend will continue. Traditional forms of pollution generate two forms
of loss, which are addressed by current laws. First, nothing about the Trump
decision exempts domes-
tic US polluters from
The Paris Accords were built atop a
federal and state environ-
massive financial commitment for mental laws and lawsuits
energy sources that have yet to prove that target their behavior.
themselves viable. It is precisely because
these laws are enforced
that coal, especially dirty coal, has lost ground to other energy sources. Sec-
ond, pollution is itself inefficient, for it means that the offending firms have
not effectively utilized their production inputs. They can do better, garnering
higher yields from improved production processes. These two drivers toward
cleaner air and waterone external, one internalexplain why American
technological innovation will continue unabated after Paris.
None of Trumps detractors has, to my knowledge, praised him for his
pledge that the United States will continue to be the cleanest and most envi-
ronmentally friendly country on Earth. Indeed, the plumes of dirty smoke
that issue forth regularly from German power plants and Chinese steel mills
show that the United States has done a far better job than its rivals in match-
ing high levels of industrial production with effective environmental controls.
Indeed, one tragedy of Paris is that the nations adhering to it will invest more
in controlling greenhouse gases than in controlling more harmful forms of
pollution that developed nations have inflicted on themselves.
H O O V E R D IG E ST FALL 2017 53
My best guess is that withdrawal from the treaty will do nothing to hurt
the environment, and may do something to help it. With or without the hys-
teria, Earth has been through far more violent shocks than any promised by
changes in carbon dioxide
levels. It is important to
American technological innovation keep priorities straight
will continue unabated, with or with- when the United States
out Paris. and other nations around
the world face major chal-
lenges on matters of economic prosperity and international security. With-
drawing from Paris allows the United States to focus its attention on more
pressing matters, like global security and economic prosperity.
TH E ENVI RON ME NT
Blooming
Nonsense
Panic blossoms after the discovery of genetically
modified petunias; scientists wilt.
By Henry I. Miller
G
overnment regulators, like the rest of us, sometimes make mistakes
of judgment or poor execution. But occasionally they do things that
are in a class of their own, via decisions that are colossally, gratu-
itously stupid, and for those they should be held accountable.
US Department of Agriculture regulators recently demanded the destruc-
tion of vast numbers of at least fifty varieties of strikingly beautiful, vivid-
hued petuniasnot because they pose any sort of danger to health or the
natural environment but because theyre technically in violation of unscien-
tific, misguided, thirty-year-old government regulations. The flowers, you
see, were crafted with modern genetic engineering techniques.
Mind you, these petunias, which were developed about three decades ago,
have been sold unnoticed and uneventfully for years, and their pedigree was
only serendipitously discovered by a Finnish plant scientist who noticed
them in a planter at a train station in Helsinki and became curious about
their unusual color. (He picked one and confirmed in his own laboratory that
they were, indeed, genetically engineered, and tipped off Finnish regulators,
who then spread the word internationally.)
Henry I. Miller, MD, is the Robert Wesson Fellow in Scientific Philosophy and
Public Policy at the Hoover Institution.
H O O V E R D IG E ST FALL 2017 55
A primer on regulation is necessary to understand this absurd situation. The
Department of Agricultures Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS)
had for decades regulated the importation and interstate movement of organ-
isms (plants, bacteria, fungi, viruses, and others) that are plant pests, which were
defined by means of an inclusive listessentially a thumbs up or down approach.
A plant that an investigator wished to introduce into the field was either on the
prohibited list of plant pests, and therefore required a permit, or it was exempt.
This straightforward approach is risk-based, in that the organisms
required to undergo case-by-case governmental review are an enhanced-risk
group (organisms that can injure or damage plants), as opposed to organ-
isms not considered to be plant pests. But for thirty years, in addition to its
basic risk-based regulation, APHIS has applied a parallel regime that focuses
exclusively on plants altered or produced with the most precise genetic
engineering techniques. APHIS reworked the original concept of a plant pest
(something known to be harmful) and crafted a new categorya regulated
articledefined in a way that captures almost every recombinant DNA-
modified (gene spliced) plant for case-by-case review, regardless of its
potential risk, because it might be a plant pest.
Under this paradigm, which only an empire-building regulator could love,
the genetically engineered petunia varieties, with names like Trilogy Mango,
Trilogy Deep Purple, and African Sunset, became regulated articles because
they contain a noninfectious, tiny snippet of DNA from cauliflower mosaic
virus, an organism officially classified as a plant pest.
To perform a field trial with a regulated article, a researcher must apply to
APHIS and submit extensive paperwork before, during, and after the field trial.
After conducting field trials for a number of years at many sites, the researcher
must then submit a vast amount of data to APHIS and request deregulation,
which is equivalent to approval for unconditional release and sale.
These requirements make genetically engineered plants extraordinarily expen-
sive to develop and test: the cost of discovery, development, and regulatory autho-
rization of a new trait introduced between 2008 and 2012 averaged $136 million,
according to Wendelyn Jones of DuPont Pioneer, a major corporation involved in
crop genetics. At around $5 for five thousand seeds, there is no way to recover
the regulatory costs, which is presumably why the developers of the genetically
engineered petunias never commercialized them . . . legally.
H O O V E R D IG E ST FALL 2017 59
CY B ERWAR
CY B ERWAR
New Weapons,
New Shields
Emerging trends in the battle to secure our digital
frontiers.
By Herbert Lin
Hoover research fellow Herbert Lin was invited to submit his views on The Promises
and Perils of Emerging Technologies for Cybersecurity before the Senate Committee
on Commerce, Science, and Transportation. Here are highlights of what he wrote.
T
he Senate committee hearing made explicit reference to how
several emerging technologies, including artificial intelligence,
the Internet of things, blockchain, and quantum computing, will
affect the future of cybersecurity.
Artificial intelligence (AI). AI may be valuable to recognizing patterns
of system behavior and activity that could indicate imminent or ongoing hos-
tile cyberactivity. Many hostile activities are discovered long after the initial
penetrations, and earlier detection could reduce the damage they do. It may
also be possible to apply AI techniques across multiple systems to detect
hostile cyberactivities on a large scale, for example, a coordinated cyberat-
tack on the nation as a whole; this is a substantially harder problem than that
of detecting a cyberattack on a single system.
Herbert Lin is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution and a senior research
scholar for cyber policy and security at Stanford Universitys Center for Interna-
tional Security and Cooperation (CISAC).
H O O V E R D IG E ST FALL 2017 61
TARGETED: Former president Barack Obama and other officials tour the Nation-
al Cybersecurity and Communications Integration Center, a unit of the Depart-
ment of Homeland Security that is a nerve center for detecting and responding to
cyberattacks. The display at left describes telephony denial of service attacks,
attempts to disable a system by overwhelming it. [Pete SouzaWhite House]
NEW DIRECTIONS
Going beyond the technologies explicitly mentioned in the hearing introduc-
tion, let us consider other technologies that may have significant impact.
Some notable technologies are here, but these are by no means the only
emerging technologies that belong in this category.
Formal verification of programs. This is a process through which a
mathematical proof can be generated that a program does what its speci-
fications say it should do, and does not do anything not contained in the
specifications. Although program specifications can be wrong, ensuring that
programs conform to specifications would be a major step toward eliminat-
ing many cybersecurity vulnerabilities. DARPA has supported some remark-
able work in this area under the auspices of its program for High-Assurance
Cyber Military Systems, though of course there is no reason that the meth-
odologies developed in this program are necessarily applicable only to mili-
tary systems. Today, it is possible to formally verify programs of some tens of
thousands of lines of coderemarkable in light of the fact that several years
ago, formal verification was possible only for programs less than one-tenth
that size. On the other hand, programs today run into the millions and tens of
millions of lines of code, which suggests that formal verification alone will not
solve many real-world problems.
New computer architectures. Most of todays computing infrastructure
is based on a computer architecture proposed by John von Neumann in 1945.
Although this architecture has demonstrated incredible practical utility, it
comes with inherent security flaws. One of the most significant is that the
H O O V E R D IG E ST FALL 2017 63
LISTEN IN: Soldiers on a training exercise at the Yakima Training Center in
Washington state set up communications equipment. Both technologies and
vulnerabilities have proliferated during the information age, affecting every-
thing from kitchen appliances to critical national security architecture.[Staff
Sgt. Christopher McCulloughUS Army]
H O O V E R D IG E ST FALL 2017 65
CY B ERWAR
CY B ERWAR
Ayatollah Online
The mullahs call it sin; activists call it liberation.
The battle for Iranians hearts and minds rages in
social media.
By Abbas Milani
A
trench war, fought in our labyrinthine digital world, has been
raging in the Islamic Republic of Iran for more than two
decades. On one side is a youthful, Internet-savvy society
adept at the gender-neutral, hierarchy-averse pluralism of plat-
forms and networksa society craving to join the twenty-first century. On
the other side is a clerical despotic regime with a claim to divine legitimacy, a
parallel male-dominated septuagenarian elite enamored of gender apartheid
and of ideas more than a millennium olda power structure that is retro-
grade, pass, and stale, compared to the vibrancy of Iranian society at large.
Of Irans more than 80 million people, 56.4 million have a cell phone and
57.4 percent have access to the Internet. At least 14 million people (with some
estimates going as high as 40) use Telegram, and 12 million to 14 million sub-
scribe to Instagram. While Facebook is banned and Twitter filtered, millions
of Iranians use them both, for everything from e-commerce and romance to
politics and public relations.
More ironically still, virtually all government officials, including Ali
Khamenei, the supreme leader and the most fervent advocate of the need to
A DIGITAL PANOPTICON
The regime, now acknowledged around the world as one of the most adept at
hacking, has tried to use social media and the possibilities of the digital age to
contain, co-opt, control, even suppress the opposition. Government mem-
bers eclectic and elected affinities with the digital age, while averse to its
liberation possibilities, display a goal very close to what nineteenth-century
utilitarianism called the pan-optic vision: the ability to monitor every node
of a social organism from a unitary position. Orwell in his inimitable style
called this same kind of vision Big Brother. What makes the achievement
of this goal unlikely is that
alongside the efforts of the
regime and its ideological and Stealth satire is a favorite pastime.
security apparatus, Iranians
from all walks of life, especially Irans embryonic civil society, and the vast
nonviolent opposition to the regime, inside and outside the country, have also
tried to use the same media to organize and mobilize their activities and fight
regime policies and propaganda.
In a sense, then, Iran is the smithy wherein the paradigmatic problem of
our age is hammered out each day: are social media a tool of utopian libera-
tion or a means of Orwellian control? The verdict, at least in Iran, is yet to be
determined.
In this trench war, as expected, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps
(IRGC), the main muscle of clerical despotism, plays the critical role.
Through some of its myriad front companies, it controls the majority share of
corporations that own and operate virtually the entire digital infrastructure,
as well as smartphone services in the country. The IRGC uses that power to
slow down access to the Internet, deny services in times of crisis, and filter
sites or platforms seen as most dangerous. It has purchased more than $500
million worth of sophisticated software that allows the corps to track and
monitor every account and message in the country. Only a few platforms, like
Telegram, are still deemed to be beyond its reach. More than once the regime
has toyed with the idea of emulating China and establishing a safe national
Internet.
Where software interdiction and overtly threatening gestures of censor-
ship do not suffice, the regime and the IRGC use a vast army of paid minions
and ideological myrmidonsor in their own parlance, cyberjihadiststo
H O O V E R D IG E ST FALL 2017 67
[Taylor Jonesfor the Hoover Digest]
both control and shape the social media, and also to track and if needed
arrest civil society activists. In this effort, they enter chat rooms, study what
they call the semiotics of the digital age, and try to reframe discussions in
these rooms; they follow activists not only to offer arguments amenable to
official dogma but to help undermine narratives incongruent with prevail-
ing regime ideology. The militia-cum-gang Basij, with its throng of a million
men and womensome believers, others social opportunists who join (the
way opportunists joined
the Young Communist
League) to enjoy the Iran is a laboratory of sorts for a ques-
perks of membership tion of our age: are social media a tool
have been the foot sol- of utopian liberation or a means of
diers of this cyberjihad. Orwellian control?
So important is this
jihad in the regimes often militaristic narrative of the world that more than
once Irans ideologues have referred to the Internet as a tool or incarnation
of the devil. Social media, they say, are the favorite weapon of America in its
culture war with Islamic Iranthe most potent tool in what Khamenei calls
Americas Cultural NATO against Iran. Fighting its negative impact is
thus central to government strategy. Every city and region has its own com-
mander of oversight for social media.
In a lengthy article in an official website, Iran outlines these negative
aspects. The list includes such sins as the ability of social groups to learn
from experiences of places like Yugoslavia about how to disrupt national
unity and change consumption patterns, to intensify cultural cleavage,
and to spread fake news. Foremost amongst the dangers of the digital
age, according to the regime, is the effort to undermine peoples piety and
religious identity and replace it with secular or hybrid identities. The article
even refers to a verse from the Quran as proof positive that social media are
sinfully subversive. The verse says, Those who love that indecency should
be spread abroad concerning them that believethere awaits them a painful
chastisement in the present world and the world to come; and God knows
and you know not (Quran, 24:19; Arberry translation).
DISSENT UNVEILED
And yet, in spite of these regime efforts to filter and control, limit, and
structure the digital landscape, the people continue to use it cleverly to learn
about the world, counter regime claims, and organize everything from raves
to underground theater performances.
H O O V E R D IG E ST FALL 2017 69
A movement to have women publish online images of themselves without a
veil was surprisingly successful, while stealth satire, through recording and
sharing small comically dubbed clips, has been a favorite pastime.
During the May 19 presidential elections, a remarkably vast social network
was active, using every platform, working on fact checking candidates
claims, getting out the vote, and even guiding voters to polling stations with
shorter lines. The
reformist candidate,
More than once the regime has toyed Hassan Rouhani, won;
with the idea of emulating China and the conservative can-
establishing a safe national Internet. didate, Ebrahim Raisi,
generally assumed
to be the conservatives main candidate to succeed Khamenei as supreme
leader, lost badly. Regime shenanigans in trying to engineer the final tallies
to make the loss less embarrassing were duly exposed in the social media.
Conservative threats to strike back remain a constant digital reminder that a
battle might have been won by the people, but the trench war rages on.
TH E MI L I TARY
Total Volunteer
Force
Long advocated by Hoover fellow Milton Friedman,
the volunteer military represented a dramatic
innovationforty years ago. Now we need smarter
ways to assign, train, and pay military personnel.
By Tim Kane
W
e miss something vital when our
minds turn to visions of advanced Key points
weapons, technologies, and scien- Performance
evaluations must
tific breakthroughs whenever we
be improved.
consider the twenty-first-century military. As impor-
Matching of
tant as those elements are, they are not the key to jobs with the
greatness. The key is people and nothing else. best-qualified
service members
Think about the super-teams in the NBA or NFL, must be decen-
loaded with the most expensive weapons money can tralized.
buy. Those organizations often lose to well-coached Military pay
must be re-
teams that play seamlessly as one.
vamped to
Similarly, people are the key to a successful twenty- reward skills in-
first-century military. Thats why there must be progress stead of seniority.
Tim Kane is the JP Conte Fellow in Immigration Studies at the Hoover Institu-
tion and co-chairman of Hoovers Conte Initiative on Immigration Reform. His
new book is Total Volunteer Force: Lessons from the US Military on Lead-
ership Culture and Talent Management (Hoover Institution Press, 2017).
H O O V E R D IG E ST FALL 2017 71
joining the services. Managing the new generation of millennials will offer unique
challenges, but thats a secondary concern if the core principles are right.
If the task is merely to resist the growth of a suffocating bureaucracy, we
have already lost. As two recent defense secretaries, Ash Carter and Robert
Gates, made clear, the existing personnel bureaucracy is arguably the top
threat to readiness facing our armed forces.
When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, I was a butterbara newly com-
missioned second lieutenantheading to the Pacific for my first active-duty
assignment. One mentor joked that communist central planning was dead all
around the world except for three
last holdouts: Havana, Har-
vard, and the Pentagons
personnel commands.
Amid the imple-
mentation
of the
H O O V E R D IG E ST FALL 2017 73
Many officers advance their careers by focusing excessively on making a good
impression on their rating commander while being otherwise toxic toward
subordinates and peers. Unfortunately, rapid job rotations every two years
make it hard to identify toxic leaders before they have already moved on.
In contrast, the US Army Ranger School uses peer evaluations as an inte-
gral part of the training. Individuals are routinely removed if rated poorly by
a wide group of peers in the same class. Students offerand receivepeer
evaluations three times during the course.
The simple process involves rank-ordering fellow students and answering two
basic questions: Would you go to war with this person? and Would you share a
foxhole with this person? If a student is peered out with a majority of negative
ratings, that individual is recycled to a different platoon and given a second chance.
The consequences of Ranger peering are a central shaping event in the lives
of elite Army soldiers. They are widely cited as a key in promoting excellence. By
contrast, peering plays no role in standard Army performance management.
Not just the Army but also the Navy, and especially the Air Force, are
plagued by highly inflated, uninformative, top-down evaluation systems.
Former defense secretary
Bob Gates spends four
A decade ago, cyberthreats were bare- pages of his new book,
ly on the horizon. Now theyre a top A Passion for Leadership,
national security concern. describing how deeply
flawed these are, with
the chilling observation that the mentally disturbed officer who killed thir-
teen people on a rampage at Fort Hood had received sterling performance
evaluations.
The Marine Corps stands apart from the other services with its world-class
fitness reports. Not only are the quantitative assessments useful in identifying
individual talents, the comment blocks offer valuable feedback. Yet even the
Marines neglect peer and subordinate feedback. This is a missed opportunity.
To improve talent management, the services should immediately imple-
ment a better evaluation system that identifies unique skills and includes
Ranger-like peer evaluations. Along with serving as the building block for
improved promotions and assignments, these would provide the kind of per-
sonal attention that millennials reportedly thrive on.
CO MMAN D AUTHORITY
Two surprising facts about the US force posture in recent years stand out.
First, the percentage of the population serving on active duty is lower today
H O O V E R D IG E ST FALL 2017 75
rather than selecting one person per billet, should provide a slate of no fewer
than three candidates for the unit commander to interview.
KOREA
The Outlines of a
Deal
What does China want? If we could figure that out,
we might find a way to secure peace on the Korean
Peninsula.
By Stephen D. Krasner
N
orth Korean leader Kim Jong Uns quest for nuclear weapons
and intercontinental missiles is rational. The ability to strike
American allies South Korea and Japan and even the United
States itself with nuclear weapons is the most obvious deter-
rent against any effort to end his regime. If the threat posed by North Koreas
nuclear weapons were easy to solve, the problem would have been solved
long ago. The United States must confront two very difficult challenges.
First, the United States cannot act unilaterally without risking a devastat-
ing strike against South Korea. Hundreds of thousands of people or more
could be killed in Seoul, which is within the range of conventional weapons
in North Korea. If South Korea suffered such a large loss of life because of a
basically unilateral American strike, it would be the end not only of the South
KoreanUS alliance but of NATO as well. No countries would tie themselves
to the United States if Washington, through its own actions, could take mea-
sures that result in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of their citizens.
Stephen D. Krasner is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and the co-chair
of Hoovers Working Group on Foreign Policy and Grand Strategy. He is also the
Graham H. Stuart Professor of International Relations at Stanford University and
a senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute.
H O O V E R D IG E ST FALL 2017 77
Second, China is the only country that mightand the key word is
mightbe able to engineer a leadership change in North Korea and an end
to Pyongyangs nuclear and missile program. If China were confident that it
could alter the leadership in North Korea and introduce Chinese-like poli-
cies for economic development, it probably would have done so long ago. A
greater role for China, which the Trump administration has embraced, is not
a guarantee of success but it is the only possible path to success.
Since the United States cannot act unilaterally and since China is the only
country that might be able to change North Korean policies, the question is
this: what would persuade the Chinese to adopt a more risk-acceptant stance
and pressure the North to abandon its nuclear ambitions, recognizing that
the outcome of any such effort would remain uncertain?
FEAR OF AN IMPLOSION
The United States, South Korea, and China do not have the same priorities.
The first best option for all the most relevant parties is a soft landing for
North Korea in which the regime endures but minus Kim, the North gives
up its nuclear weapons and missiles, and Pyongyang introduces economic
reforms that mirror those Deng Xiaoping brought to China. The next best
option for the United States, however, is the denuclearization of North Korea
and the end of its missile program even if this means a messy implosion of
the regime. For South Korea and China, the implosion of the North Korean
regime would present huge and probably unmanageable challenges.
The population of North
Korea is about twenty-five
Why would the North Koreans believe million, half that of South
us? Why would we believe them? Korea, and its per capita
income in nominal terms
is less than 3 percent of the Souths. The North Korean people have lived
under a repressive dictatorship with limited access to outside information for
several generations. If their regime collapsed, would China and South Korea
shoot people at the Yalu River or the DMZ? For both countries, the prospect
of political chaos is a nightmare.
The most obvious option, direct US negotiations with North Korea, is a
nonstarter. The North has demanded for years that the United States sign a
peace treaty that recognizes the regime and guarantees its security. Succes-
sive US administrations have resisted, and not just because there would be
a political cost for a picture of an American president shaking hands with a
Kim. Regardless of the political fallout in the United States, it is hard to see
how the United States could make a credible commitment to the Norththat
is, a commitment the North would believeor how North Korea could make
a credible commitment to the United States to give up its nuclear and missile
program. Why would they believe us? Why would we believe them? Direct
negotiations are a dead end.
A more appealing, at least possible, option is the replacement of Kim Jong
Un with a leader in the North who might support different policies. China is
the only country that could achieve such an outcome. If, however, leadership
change in the North were easy, China would have done it long ago. Pressuring
the North would be risky for China.
What might make the Chinese more likely to act? China above all does not
want a stronger American position in East Asia and the western Pacific. A
unified Korea allied with the United States would be unacceptable to China,
a clear signal that Chinese power had peaked. But a Korean Peninsula still
divided, with a North Korea bound closely to China and Kim Jong Un gone
and with a South Korea free of American troops, would be an attractive
option for China.
Withdrawing all US troops from South Korea even if the USSouth Korean
alliance endures would be a costly move for the United States. The Trump
H O O V E R D IG E ST FALL 2017 79
administration, however, has called into question the commitment of the
United States to its allies, and those allies will be searching for security
alternativesnot just in Asia but in Europe as well. This evokes the question
the French asked in the 1950s, when deciding to develop their own nuclear
capacity: would the United States give up New York for Paris? The question
never had an unambiguous answer.
IT COULD WORK
So there exists a deal the United States could credibly offer to China: leader-
ship change in North Korea and the end to nuclear and missile programs
there, in exchange for the withdrawal of American troops from the peninsula.
A North Korean commitment to end its nuclear program made by a leader
dependent on China would be more credible than any commitment made by
Kim.
This strikes me as the most plausible prospective deal. Direct negotiations
between the United States and North Korea will not work, because the United
States cannot credibly commit to not attacking the North and because a North
Korean regime led by Kim cannot credibly promise to end its nuclear and mis-
sile programs. If a troop withdrawal and regime change deal were successful,
China would gain a subservient ally and a demonstration of its ability to change
American behavior in East Asia. South Korea would get a reduced threat from
the North, but at the cost of removing the American tripwire. The United
States would get an end to the threat of a North Korean nuclear attack, but at
the cost of altering its alliance. Of course, the Chinese might fail.
In that case, the only option for the United States would be the one that we
have implicitly relied on, which is deterrence: attack us and you will be dead,
literally dead.
KOREA
Smarter Waiting
America should stop wishing for Kim Jong Un to
go away, warns Hoover senior fellow William J.
Perry, one of our most seasoned diplomats. This
daydreaming only gets in the way of hardheaded
negotiations.
By Michael Knigge
H
oover senior fellow William J. Perry served as US secretary
of defense under President Clinton from 1994 to 1997. After
his tenure at the Pentagon, he observed Korean affairs up
close while serving as Clintons special envoy to North Korea.
Perry is also the founder of the Perry Project, which aims to educate the
public about the danger of nuclear weapons in the twenty-first century.
Days after the death of an American student who had been detained by
North Korea under the guise of having committed crimes against the state,
Deutsche Welle asked Perry for his take on the dangers posed by Kim Jong
Uns unpredictable regime, the current diplomatic stalemate, and whether
there were any prospects for dtente or even a unified Korea.
William J. Perry is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and the Freeman
Spogli Institute for International Studies. He is the Michael and Barbara Berbe-
rian Professor at Stanford University and co-director of the Nuclear Risk Reduc-
tion initiative and the Preventive Defense Project. Michael Knigge is the US
correspondent for Deutsche Welle.
H O O V E R D IG E ST FALL 2017 81
William J. Perry: It has not, because Id already believed that this regime
was ruthless and the actions they had taken with this hostage were very
similar to the actions they have taken with the other hostages and to assas-
sination attempts they made in South Korea. So if we are going into negotia-
tion with North Korea, we have to do it with our eyes wide open. This is a
ruthless, ruthless regime and we should understand that from the beginning.
Its a ruthless regime that has nuclear weapons and we have to find a way of
dealing with those nuclear weapons. My contention is that the only reason-
able way to deal with them today is through diplomacy, and I do think we
have an opportunity to succeed in diplomacy.
Perry: President Trump has said contradictory things about negotiating with
North Korea, so I dont take that as a guideline. I think the important thing
is what the security team is saying. In this case, I think Tillerson and Mattis
and possibly [national security adviser H. R.] McMaster are all interested in
looking at the possibility of negotiations. So its possible that they will come
up with a negotiating approach and present it to the president.
Knigge: Trump has said that all options are on the table. Do you see a pre-
emptive strike, a military option, being a viable path forward?
Perry: I have myselfboth when I was secretary of defense and, later, when
I was advising the governmentseriously considered pre-emptive strikes as
a military option. But whether or not this was a good idea in those days, I am
persuaded, I am convinced its not a good idea today. A military strike would
lead surely to a military response against the South and would do much dam-
age to the South even with conventional weapons. It would likely involve the
United States because weve got almost thirty thousand troops over there,
and it could all too easily escalate into a nuclear conflict. So I would not rec-
ommend a pre-emptive military strike at this time.
Knigge: You have said that the United States, under both the Bush and
Obama administrations, never really had a negotiating strategy that made
sense and could be successful. Why is that and what would a successful US
negotiating strategy look like?
Perry: First, I think theyve never seriously considered the goals of the other
side. North Koreas goal is to achieve the security for their regime, sustaining
the Kim regime. And economic incentives, which we offered them, theyd like
to have, but they would not do it at the expense of their regime. Their entire
goal is to sustain the regime.
The Bush administration quite clearly was hoping for and pushing for a
collapse of the regime. So that was not to be. The Obama administration had
something they called strategic patience. I guess one interpretation of that is
just, be patient and wait until the regime collapses. So to me that did not have
a serious diplomatic approach which dealt with North Koreas goals, which were
H O O V E R D IG E ST FALL 2017 83
to sustain their regime, sustain the Kim dynasty. If we cannot do that, we might
as well not waste time trying to negotiate.
Perry: My goal, when I negotiated with them many years ago, was complete
elimination of the nuclear programs and long-range missiles. And we had a shot at
achieving that goal in those days. Today the bar is much higher, because now they
already have a nuclear arsenal and they are not likely to give it up easily. So today
I think that although we still want to retain the goal of eliminating the nuclear
weapons on the Korean Peninsula, we have to do it in two stages. First stage
would be to get a freeze on
the nuclear weapons and
If we are going into negotiation with their long-range missiles,
North Korea, we have to do it with our and we can do that verifi-
ably by controlling the test-
eyes wide open.
ing. And the second goal,
once we have achieved that, would be to start rolling back the nuclear weapons.
So its a complicated and slow process, but thats how we would have to approach
it today.
Knigge: Do you see that Europe, or even Germany, has a role to play in this
conflict?
Perry: I think that at this stage, if the six parties are involved, it is sufficient.
But when it gets to the stage where the nuclear problem is solved, and the
question becomes one of unification, I think Germanys background and
experience could be very useful in the discussion.
KOREA
The Stalin
Template
Kim Jong Un learned many things from the USSRs
master of repression. Kims bloody efforts to prop
up the family dynasty, however, are all his own.
By Paul R. Gregory
N
orth Korea is known for its eccentricity, nuclear and missile
programs, desperate poverty, and, increasingly, the execution
of its elite. The most sensational recent case was the brazen
poisoning of Kim Jong Nam, half-brother of Outstanding
Leader Kim Jong Un, in a Malaysian airport.
We cannot penetrate the veil of secrecy that shrouds North Korea, but
we can use the well-documented history of Josef Stalins repression to draw
parallelsand note the differencesbetween the Soviet Union of the 1930s
and the North Korea of the present day.
Both Stalin and Kim Jong Un used extreme terror to remain in power. Both
were prolific murderers of their inner circle. Stalin had almost 70 percent
of the 139 central committee members elected in 1934 executed. In his short
rule since 2011, Kim has executed 341 people, 130 of them government offi-
cials. Although we cannot calculate an exact percentage, Kim, like Stalin, has
executed a significant portion of his 303-member central committee.
H O O V E R D IG E ST FALL 2017 85
[Taylor Jonesfor the Hoover Digest]
H O O V E R D IG E ST FALL 2017 87
His methods included a low threshold for possible guilt; making informal
meetings of members of his inner circle a crime; arresting (and in some cases
executing) wives as a loyalty test; requiring signed confessions, through
torture if necessary; playing one deputy off against another; dividing and
conquering by repressing one group while expressing confidence in oth-
ers; not sparing his own relatives and childhood friends; and carving out no
exceptions for women. Stalin also observed the principle of contagion, that
is, that those in contact with traitors (such as relatives and friends) could
infect the rest of the population. As such, they had to be removed as well,
if not through execution then through a long sentence in gulag camps built
especially for relatives of traitors.
Stalin executed most of his victims under the infamous Article 58 of the
Soviet criminal code. This article covered the political crimes of espionage,
counterrevolutionary sabotage, and aiding foreign powers, among others.
The foreign threat was the most prominent justification of Stalins political
purges. Article 58 prosecutions diverted blame for policy failures to sinister
foreign powers who were being aided, the story went, by domestic agents try-
ing to overthrow the worker-state as represented by Stalin.
Though its unclear how Kim operates, there are instances where he has
followed Stalins playbook. His reasons for denouncing someone as guilty are
often arbitrary, including
disrespect, a failure to
As executions increase, members of follow orders, suspicious
a leaders inner circle grow tempted to connections, a bad atti-
plot against himnot from thirst for tude, a wife protesting
her husbands execution,
power but for personal survival.
or even the watching of
South Korean soap operas. In one case, he executed the manager of a turtle
farm after he attempted to explain why turtles were dying. Like Stalin, Kim
insists on the appearance of a proper legal proceeding, the most important
ingredient being a public confession. His uncle confessed before a military
tribunal to being a traitor of all ages, human scum, and plotting Kims
overthrow. And Kim clearly believes in contagion: five direct relatives were
executed alongside the uncle. His aunt was later poisoned.
Kim has followed Stalin and carried on the Kim family legacy by convicting
his victims of working for foreign enemies and engaging in counterrevolu-
tion. As one South Korean expert writes: All regimes under the Kim dynasty
tried to evade crises by shifting responsibilities onto political rivals to purge
them. . . . Most victims of purges in North Korea had been purged on charges
H O O V E R D IG E ST FALL 2017 89
alive by blowtorch or obliteration by mortar fire. Execution by firing squad
appears to be reserved for ordinary enemies of the people, almost an act of
mercy, as was beheading (versus quartering) in Europes Middle Ages. Unlike
Stalin, Kim wants public executions to intimidate potential opponents.
Perhaps one day researchers will have access to the official records of North
Korea as we do for Stalins regime. Most of Stalins victims were ordinary
workers, peasants, or technicians. The limited data for North Korea focus
more on executions of the elite. Both Stalin and the Kim dynasty used gulags to
isolate their enemies and to extract forced labor from the inmates, but that
is another story. When the
North Korean records are
In the end, are we dealing with a mad-
open, we shall understand
man or a calculating opponent who the extent to which Kim
may wish to give the impression of used the same methods as
madness? Stalin to avoid being over-
thrown by his own inner
circle. We will know whether he, like Stalin, made unauthorized meetings of
associates criminal conspiracies. Did he target one group while assuring others
that he was their best friend? Did he arrest the wives of his deputies? Was he
willing to execute childhood friends or favorite mistresses?
Kim Jong Un is third in the succession of the Kim hereditary dynasty, in
which the leaders torch is passed, at death, to the son. Stalin had no interest
in creating a dynasty. In fact, he considered both of his sons unworthy and
did little to promote their careers. He refused to exchange his captured elder
son for a high-ranking German general during World War II. If anything,
Stalin made sure that his offspring had no political ambitions. After Stalins
death, the wary survivors of his inner circle decided on a collective rule with
the party general secretary as the first among equals. Stalins cult of person-
ality was rejected and reviled. After the execution of would-be Stalin succes-
sor Lavrentiy Beria, elite executions ceased under the post-Stalin collective
rule. Each general secretary served until death, and his successor was then
chosen from the inner circle. Although factions lobbied for their favorite
candidate, the power struggle proceeded without blood. The Soviet system
had settled down into a political equilibrium of sorts.
With hereditary dynasties, succession has involved power struggles, purg-
es, and the creation of new cults of personality. The North Korean dynastys
founder, Kim Il Sung, had to eliminate a diverse opposition, which included
a pro-Soviet faction. The succession struggle he fought was reminiscent of
H O O V E R D IG E ST FALL 2017 91
KOREA
KOREA
Strategic
Patience Wears
Thin
The waiting game on the Korean Peninsula grows
more dangerous.
By Thomas H. Henriksen
N
orth Koreas decades-long quest for nuclear warheads capable
of hitting the American homeland has been compared by
some to a slow-moving Cuban missile crisis. The analogy, like
many analogies, is wanting. The famous 1962 nuclear stand-
off between the United States and the Soviet Union witnessed two mature
superpowers calculating their vital interests over Moscows gambit for a
forward missile base in Cuba. During the tense month of October that year,
the White House and the Kremlin took the measure of each other and wisely
concluded the nuclear game was not worth planetary annihilation. Sober
minds produced a sober outcome. Kim Jong Un, leader of North Korea,
evinces no such sobriety.
The atomic threat stemming from unstable and secretive North Korea
has less in common with the confrontation fifty-five years ago than with an
unpredictable summer storm. Then, the world stood on the brink of the
unthinkable when both global giants had their fingers on the nuclear trigger.
H O O V E R D IG E ST FALL 2017 93
the geopolitical configuration of the region in unpredictable ways. There is a
distinct possibility that a peninsula war would develop into a Sino-American
conflict, as occurred in the Korean War. Russia and Japan might also be
drawn into what could escalate into World War III. It is little wonder that all
US presidential administrations since the fall of the Berlin Wall have been so
circumspect in their dealings with Pyongyang. All have adhered to the wis-
dom of not cornering North Korea, no matter how many sword-waving antics
its desperate regime performs. Instead, they have resorted to medium-level
deterrence, bribes, agreements, and near-endless talks to reconcile the recal-
citrant dynastic dictatorship.
Ruling out war (unless
forced upon the United
We must drive home the message to States), Washington must
Pyongyang that launching nuclear confront the growing
arms would amount to little more menace of a belligerent
than suicide. and erratic Kim, soon to
possess nuclear-tipped
intercontinental missiles, with a powerful US deterrent. In short, we need a
ring of steel around North Korea. The point of an overwhelming nuclear and
conventional posture is to drive home the message to Pyongyang that launch-
ing nuclear arms would amount to little more than courting suicide. The United
States sent this message to the Soviet Union for decades, with great success.
So far the Pentagon has partially installed one Terminal High Altitude
Area Defense (THAAD) missile battery in South Korea to shoot down the
Norths short- and intermediate-range rockets. The US Navy has deployed
destroyers and cruisers with Aegis antimissile systems to Korean waters. No
doubt American nuclear submarines lurk beneath the surface not far away.
These positive initial steps need augmenting with additional missile defense
installations in the South and beyond.
It behooves Washington to buttress its defensive platforms with more
THAADs and the Aegis Ashore ground-to-air interceptors (like those being
stood up in Romania) on South Korean soil, the US base on Guam, Hawaii,
and perhaps some of Japans islands to contain the threat. Facilities beyond
South Korea have become more of a necessity as the new government of
Moon Jae In has halted the full deployment of the first THAAD system in
deference to Beijings opposition. Indeed, Tokyo is considering obtaining the
Aegis Ashore system.
Finally, the Pentagon could consider frequent, routine flights of US nuclear-
capable bombers in the friendly skies near North Korea. These defensive
H O O V E R D IG E ST FALL 2017 95
R U SS I A
R U SS I A
Revolutionary
Century
The Russian Revolution, a vast and bloody
experiment, began a hundred years ago. Hoover
fellow Norman M. Naimark insists there are
lessons we still need to take from such forced
utopias.
Norman M. Naimark is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and the Free-
man Spogli Institute for International Studies. He is also the Robert and Florence
McDonnell Professor of East European Studies at Stanford University, where he is
the Fisher Family Director of the Global Studies Division. Svetlana Suveica is a
researcher at the Institute of History, University of Regensburg, and an associate
professor at Moldova State University in Chis,inau. Sergiu Musteata is a profes-
sor in the history and geography department of Ion Creanga Pedagogical State
University in Chis,inau.
PLURAL: The 1917 revolution is considered one of the main turning points of
the twentieth century. We historians know that each event is unique, due to
the circumstances that led to its evolution, the actors, each playing its role,
and immediate and long-lasting outcomes. Nevertheless, are the 1917 events
comparable with other historical periods, and if so, to which extent? Is here a
comparative historical exercise useful?
H O O V E R D IG E ST FALL 2017 97
IN THE STREETS: The Bolshevik, a 1920 painting by Boris Kustodiev
(18781927), offers a typically heroic view of the Russian Revolution. Kus-
todiev also produced images of Vladimir Lenin intended for mass reproduc-
tion. Revolutionary experiments usually entail utopian visions, which, when
faced with the harsh realities of human behavior and societal vicissitudes,
cannot be fulfilled, says Hoover fellow Norman M. Naimark. [Tretyakov Gallery]
by counterposing how they happen, how events accelerate, and how the
revolution is betrayed in various ways.
PLURAL: The 1917 revolution was considered a seminal event in the history
of the Soviet Union. Today it is no more a myth of a lone-genius Vladimir
Lenin; it has also lost the status of the cornerstone event that legitimized the
Soviet regime. If not a myth, what is revolution today, after a hundred years?
A shadow that follows the Russians? A burden that one wants to get rid of
but cannot?
PLURAL: The twentieth century was a time when millions of people lived
with the belief that revolution is a simple, effective tool to change the politi-
cal order, and that revolution belonged to everyone. This is mainly due to the
successful Soviet propaganda that lasted many decades. Was this, all in all, a
negative belief, or did something positive also come out of it?
Naimark: Negative and positive are evaluations that historians try to avoid.
Our job is to understand what happened and why, and describe those events
clearly and accurately, without judging. With that said, my own view is that
the Russian Revolution and the Soviet experimentand the Chinese,
Cuban, Southeast Asian, and East European variants that derived from it
created enormous harm without the commensurate good that would have
perhaps justified it.
Revolutionary experiments usually entail utopian visions, which, when
faced with the harsh realities of human behavior and societal vicissitudes,
cannot be fulfilled. The frustration of revolutionaries in this context frequent-
ly leads to attempts to violently implement their policies, causing immense
social and individual harm. Think about the Great Leap Forward (195859),
which cost anywhere from thirty million to forty-five million Chinese lives,
all to fulfill Maos utopian ideas about the transformation of the countryside.
The costs of Soviet modernization were similarly extremely high, tak-
ing tens of millions of lives in the end and creating by force an economic
H O O V E R D IG E ST FALL 2017 99
structure that hurt more than it aided the welfare of its citizens. The horrors
of the rule of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia derive from similar forced uto-
pias that, in the end, created hell on earth rather than heaven. In my view
such revolutionary acts of transformation landed Russia and Russians in an
economic dead end, and they are still trying to find their way out.
Naimark: Certainly, one should think of the Soviet period as lasting from
1917 to 1991. Some would suggest Bolshevism was over with Gorbachev and
perestroika. I dont think so. Mikhail Sergeyevich tried to revive, as we know,
the original spirit of Bolshevism through his reforms, but this just did not
work. My view is that one of the major problems for the Soviet Union was
economic. This supposed great power simply could not perform well enough
to keep up with the pretensions of empire and the needs of the Russian
people and others in the Soviet Union. Another problem was that the ideol-
ogy no longer motivated
anyone, either in govern-
Vladimir Putin can be interpreted as ment (where this created
an unusual mix of Russian autocratic enormous corruption) or
traditions and the Bolshevik Chekist in society, where cynicism
and duplicity prevailed.
culture.
The experiment failed and
came to an end, almost miraculously to an almost completely peaceful end,
especially when one thinks of all the blood that was shed to keep it going.
PLURAL: Today, nostalgia for Soviet times is not uncommon for the older
generation. One of the arguments is the experience of equality, the lack
of the drive for wealth, which gave people the feeling that all have the
same chance for success and a bright future. Nevertheless, one would
notice that gaining the elite social status required, most important, years
of dedication to the Communist Party. This led to bureaucratic expansion
Naimark: There is almost always nostalgia for earlier and simpler times.
Change is hard on everyone, whether established and well off or not doing
as well as one would wish. Im nostalgic for the old Stanford and the old Bay
Area, when things were inexpensive, there was no traffic, and one didnt have
to bother with constantly mastering new technologies. I dislike the world of
iPhones and Twitter. And my ninety-six-year-old mother doesnt like comput-
ers at all. My students would think this was all silly.
I can understand the nostalgia of those older folks in your region who lived
under communism and remember the social benefits, the lack of worry about
pensions, and the good times they had even when there were shortages and
nothing in the stores to
buy. There was a kind of
security and comfort in We still experience Russia through
not having any power at the lenses of the Cold War and cannot
all, not having any seri- separate the Moscow of then from the
ous consumer choices, new Moscow.
not knowing very much
about the outside world, and simply living day to day, doing ones jobwheth-
er it was a real one or notand enjoying family and friends. It is hard to be
shoved into a new hurly-burly world of competition and inequality, though, as
you noted, of course there was inequality in the communist system, as well,
in some ways even worse. But it wasnt so noticeable.
Its important to point out that nostalgia, like most forms of memory, is
also frequently subject to distortion. People tend to forget the bad parts of
the communist past and remember the good ones, and even misrepresent
to themselves the relationship between the two. Nostalgia produces an
unreal sense of the past. But some people need that as a way to face the
uncertain present and future. The problem is, of course, that this produces
some nasty political results, and not just in your part of the world: in the
United States as well, where Mr. Trump appeals to an idea of America
that first of all never really existed, and second, is unattainable in a rap-
idly changing global environment. There is no going backbut again,
the back that he and others imagine was not really what they think
PLURAL: On January 21, April 22, and November 7, the former communists
and their sympathizers bring flowers to Lenins monument in Chiinu. Some
argue that tearing down the monument will break down the memory of a
glorious revolution. What would be left?
PLURAL: In the post-Soviet space we are concerned with finding out the
ultimate truth: about the revolution, about the Soviet past and its legacy.
You were a member of the commissions for historical truth in Lithuania,
Latvia, and Estonia. How did the work of the commissions affect politics and
society in these countries?
PLURAL: Please share your thoughts about your new book, as well as your
future publication plans.
Naimark: As you know, I just published a book titled Genocide: A World His-
tory. This is really my attempt to wrap up a trajectory of my work on ethnic
cleansing and genocide that began with the war in Bosnia in the mid-1990s.
In this new book, I simply wanted to demonstrate how ubiquitous genocide
has been throughout human history and in all kinds of societies throughout
RU SS I A
By Jennifer Burns
T
he crowds jostling below, the soldiers marching down icy boule-
vards, the roar of a people possessed: all this a young Ayn Rand
witnessed from her familys apartment, perched high above the
madness near Nevsky Prospekt, a central thoroughfare of Petro-
grad, the Russian city formerly known as St. Petersburg.
These February days were the first turn of a revolutionary cycle that
would end in November and split world history into before and after,
pitting soldier against citizen, republican against Bolshevik, Russian
against Russian. But it wasnt until Rand became a New Yorker, some
seventeen years later, that she realized the revolution had cleaved not
only Russian society, but also intellectual life in her adopted homeland of
the United States.
We usually think of the 1950s as the decade of anti-communism, defined
by Senator Joseph McCarthy, the Hollywood blacklist, and the purging of
suspected communists from unions, schools, and universities. The prelude
to all of that was the 1930s, when the nations intellectuals first grappled with
the meaning and significance of Russias revolution. And it was in this decade
that Ayn Rand came to political consciousness, reworking her opposition
BITTER INFIGHTING
By the mid-1930s, after setting about a successful writing career and becom-
ing an American citizen, Rand was ready to explain the country she left
behind. We the Living depicted the quotidian gray of life after the drama of
the October Revolution had faded. What was left were the cynical machina-
tions of party insiders and the struggle to maintain a facade of gentilityone
hostess served potato-skin cookies to guests, who kept their arms pressed
to their sides to hide the holes in their armpits; elbows motionless on their
kneesto hide rubbed patches; feet deep under chairsto hide worn felt
boots.
At the novels heart was the quiet despair of hopes crushed by new lines of
class and caste, as students like Kira, punished for her familys former pros-
perity, had their futures stripped away. For Rand, We the Living was more
than a novel, it was a mission.
No one has ever come out of Soviet Russia to tell it to the world, she told
her literary agent. That was my job.
Only, in 1930s America, few wanted to hear what she had to say. When the
novel was published in 1936, capitalism itself was in crisis. The Great Depres-
sion had cast its dark shadow over the American Dream. Bread lines snaked
through the cities; Midwestern farms blew away in clouds of dust. Desper-
ate men drifted across the country and filled up squatters camps of the
ANTI-ANTI-COMMUNISM
And here unfolded the last act of the drama: the eventual emergence of
anti-anti-communism. It was one thing to reject a political movement gone
horribly wrong. It was
something different to
turn on ones former Whittaker Chambers watched as a
friends and associates, small intellectual army passed over
in the process giving to the Communist Party with scarcely
aid and comfort to Cold any effort on its part.
Warriors, as the writer
and historian Tony Judt wrote. And so even as communism fell out of favor,
among intellectuals anti-communism became as unfashionable as it had been
in the 1930s.
Once again, Rand was a talismanic presence. By the 1950s, her anti-commu-
nism had evolved into a full-throated celebration of capitalism, buttressed by
her original credibility as a survivor of Soviet collectivism. She had traded in the
elegiac historical fiction of We the Living for another Soviet inheritance: agitprop
novels, dedicated to showcasing heroic individualists and entrepreneurs. By
1957, she had fully realized the form in Atlas Shrugged, an epic that weighed in at
Tolstoyan proportions.
Reprinted by permission of the New York Times. 2017 The New York
Times Co. All rights reserved.
CH I NA
Lenins Ghost
Russia and China once contested each others
claims to socialist purity. Now they vie for this
distinction: who will challenge America?
By Miles Maochun Yu
T
he cadres of the global commentariat often discuss the intricate
relationships among the worlds most meaningful triumvirate:
the United States, Russia, and China. Less often analyzed,
however, are the very potent and peculiar interactions between
Moscow and Beijing. Those interactions manifest the ghost of Leninthe
decades-long competition between Russia and China to be the leading rival of
the United States.
Since Josef Stalins death in 1953, China has considered Russia unworthy to
be the leader in the international proletariats epic battle against the Ameri-
can-led capitalist world. During the era of Nikita Khrushchev, China viewed
the Soviet leader as a wholesale revisionist of Marxism-Leninism, someone
who was treasonably soft toward the United States.
To display his faith in Marxist-Leninist orthodoxy, Mao Zedong broke off
with Moscow in a quixotic and murderous pursuit of confrontation and prov-
ocation against the United States and its allies, including the 1958 shelling of
the Quemoy-Matsu islands held by the US-backed Nationalist government
in Taiwan. Mao also determined to build up Chinas own nuclear arsenal to
independently challenge US nuclear dominance in Asia.
HOSTILE TO GORBACHEV
In the 1980s and 1990s, Beijings communist autocrats and ideologues flouted
Moscow with renewed verve and intensified contempt. The reason was
Mikhail Gorbachevs glasnost and perestroika, approaches that China viewed
with abhorrence and animosity, particularly when Gorbachevs historic state
visit to Beijing in May 1989 helped inspire Chinese pro-democracy activists
in Tiananmen Square to demand Gorbachev-style reforms inside Chinas
repressive system. Moments after Gorbachev finished his visit to China,
Chinas communist leaders perpetrated the Tiananmen massacre, killing any
hope of political reforms. Today, China officially
labels Gorbachev the ultimate traitor
MISSILES OF CONTENTION
We may also recall that it was Russia that first objected to Americas deploy-
ment of the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) missile-defense
system in South Korea. But China doesnt want to be outdone by Russia in
this regard, either. Beijing has made THAAD a key point of contention with
the United States. As a result, the THAAD red herring is now primarily a
Chinese issue, not a Russian one, and Beijing is once again the primary objec-
tor to things American.
In June 1949, on the eve of the triumph of communism in China, Mao
Zedong poignantly wrote in his famous essay, On the Peoples Democratic
Dictatorship, that the salvoes of the Red October Revolution brought us
Marxism-Leninism. Even at the partys moment of euphoria and celebration,
the Chinese communist leader would credit the root of his historic victory to
the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia.
But in Chinas view, Moscow as the incubator of Chinas communist
revolution has long lost its legitimacy as the leader of the global socialist
movement. China sees a continuous, pitiful downward spiral from Khrush-
chevs Marxist-Leninist revisionism to Brezhnevs socialist imperialism to
Gorbachevs betrayal of socialism, and now to Putins Russian economic and
geopolitical nationalism intended to regain Moscows prominence as the
number one enemy of the US-led capitalist empire. This is the ultimate
albeit dubioushonor that Beijing wishes for itself.
Read Military History in the News, the weekly column from the Hoover
Institution that connects historical insights to contemporary conflicts
(www.hoover.org/publications/military-history-news). 2017 The Board
of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University. All rights reserved.
CALIFORNIA
By James L. Sweeney
C
alifornia has built up an excess of elec-
tricity-generation capacity in the years Key points
since the crisis of 20002001, the Los Integrating the West-
ern power grid would
Angeles Times recently reported. Some
reduce greenhouse
have sought to justify this capacity as insurance gases and energy costs
against more shortages and blackouts. while increasing reli-
ability.
As the author of The California Electricity Crisis
This integration
(Hoover Institution Press, 2002), I understand the would let solar and
need to prevent a repeat of service failures. But, as wind plants operate at
full capacity, lead-
the Times article correctly points out, excess gen-
ing to cheaper clean
eration capacity is a costly and unneeded remedy. electricity.
Far more cost-effective would be to fix the Fragmentation of the
inefficiencies of our fragmented Western electric energy grid spawns ex-
pensive and inefficient
grid. This also could put an end to Californias excess capacity.
increasing need to throw away inexpensive
CALIFORNIA
By Bill Whalen
G
overnor Jerry Brown plans a global climate action conference
for next year in San Francisco.
No need for German leader Angela Merkel to check in
with Lufthansa or Emmanuel Macron to book a flight on Air
Francethis wont be a meeting of the worlds great leaders. What Brown
envisions instead: entrepreneurs, singers, musicians, mathematicians, pro-
fessors, and others who, in the governors worldview, constitute the whole
world.
Lets skip the obvious ironythat a serious load of carbon will be dumped
into the atmosphere as these international swells jet their way to the Bay
Area to fight what Brown calls the forces of carbonization. Brown is clearly
enamored of the fact that if the nation-state of California were to go it alone,
it would have its own seat at the G-20 table. And as he preaches about the
world condition, he points to what he practices in California.
Last summer, Brown successfully negotiated a ten-year extension of the
states controversial cap-and-trade program past its previous 2020 deadline.
Pensions. One person Jerry Brown might not invite to a summit: David
Crane. The former Schwarzenegger aide and Stanford lecturer is a guberna-
torial pain-in-the-neck when it comes to California government and pension
reform.
The aforementioned California budget deal includes a provision that allows
the state to borrow $6 billion from a short-term investment fund to pay down
some of Californias pension obligation. Think Bernie Madoff handling state
finances by robbing Peter to pay Paul.
Crane contends that California is on a path little different from the one
used by mortgage lenders to entice borrowers before the past decades finan-
cial crisis: a teaser low-interest, floating-rate loan the proceeds of which
are invested in assets (i.e., houses) expected to grow at a higher rate and thus
generate healthy profits for borrowers.
Out of crisis comes opportunity. Perhaps Brown should shift his sights
from Europe to Illinois, a state staggering under its pension loadand figure
out a way for California to avoid a similar fiscal train wreck driven in great
part by pension liabilities.
Tax reform. A lot has happened since 1997. Your iPhone was still a
decade away. Its also the last time California waded into serious tax reform.
In 1950, 10 percent of the Golden States fiscal haul came from income tax.
Today, its closer to two-thirds, nearly double what it was a quarter century
ago. Almost half of Californias income taxes come from the states top 1
percent of earners (compared to 41 percent in Connecticut and 40 percent in
New Jersey).
Two years ago, California State Controller Betty Yee announced a nine-
member expert panel to analyze tax-reform proposals from varied
F R E EDOM
Friedman to the
Rescue
Milton Friedmans ideas were a beacon that
guided Americaand much of the worldtoward
economic freedom. We need to keep that light
burning.
By Charles G. Palm
M
ilton Friedman warned us that freedom is very far from
being the natural state of mankind . . . the natural state of
mankind in most periods in history has been tyranny and
misery. We may be seeing the first signs of a new state of
tyranny. The Internal Revenue Service deliberately tried to silence some four
hundred conservative organizations during the 2010 and 2012 elections; a
Milwaukee prosecutor conducted predawn raids of private homes in a false
criminal campaign finance investigation of some thirty conservative groups;
seventeen state attorneys general threatened Exxon with racketeering charg-
es for its support of research on climate change; in an act of intimidation,
opponents of Californias Proposition 8 ballot initiative published the names
and addresses of the initiatives supporters on a searchable map; and in an
attack on free speech Middlebury College students injured a faculty member
who tried to protect a conservative speaker from harm.
FREEDOM
Education
Emancipates
Hoover fellow Peter Berkowitz ponders the pursuit
of understanding. An excerpt from his Bradley
Prize speech.
Last spring, Hoover senior fellow Peter Berkowitz was awarded the 2017 Bradley
Prize. Here are excerpts from his remarks accepting the prize.
I
am grateful to the Bradley Foundation for this high honor. It is hum-
bling to join the ranks of outstanding individuals honored in years past
and this year. It is doubly humbling to contemplate the outstanding
figures to be honored in years to come.
Without quite intending, I have come to be regarded as a public intellec-
tual. Sometimes even family and friends call me a public intellectualto my
face, no less!
A whiff of disapproval hovers about the title. As if a public intellectual per-
forms acts in publicintellectualizesthat a decent person would do only in
private. And then only under the severest compulsion.
Public intellectual is not a recognized profession, though it somehow seems
to combine scholarship and journalism. To become a professor, you obtain
an advanced degree. Schools of journalism have proliferated. But where can
you acquire credentials that confirm competence in the science of publicly
intellectualizing?
Peter Berkowitz is the Tad and Dianne Taube Senior Fellow at the Hoover Insti-
tution and a member of Hoovers Working Group on the Role of Military History in
Contemporary Conflict.
ED U CATI ON
I
ts the end of the world as we know itat least thats what some people
would have us believe about President Trumps education budget.
Its a devastating blow to the countrys public education system,
according to National School Boards Association CEO Thomas
Gentzel. More like a wrecking ball, says Lily Eskelsen Garcia, president
of the National Education Association teachers union. No, its a veritable
assault on the American Dream, insists John B. King Jr., former Obama
administration secretary of education.
Such hyperbole is reminiscent of the early 1980s, when President Reagans
opponents battled his administrations education cuts, and its about as inac-
curate today as it was back then.
Trump wants to reduce the US Department of Educations discretionary
budget by $9.2 billion, from $68.3 billion to $59.1 billion. Close to two-thirds
of that reduction (63 percent) comes from eliminating programs that are
duplicative or just dont work.
EDU CATI ON
Three Ways
Forward
The charter movement has not one mission but
three: improve teaching, spur districts to do better,
andas a last resortreboot hopeless schools.
C
ity Academy High School in St. Paul, Minnesota, celebrated a
milestone in September: twenty-five years as the nations first
charter school. During that quarter century, charter school
growth has been remarkable. Today, forty-four states and Wash-
ington, DC, contain some seven thousand of these independently operated
public schools, serving nearly three million students. Remarkably, charters
account for the entire growth in US K12 public school enrollments since
2006.
Confusion abounds among educators and the broader public about the
purpose of charter schools and how these independent public schools relate
to school district improvement efforts. A mainline view sees them as the
research and development arm of K12 public education, crediting Albert
Shanker, former leader of the American Federation of Teachers, with most
fully envisioning this perspective. Yes, Shanker endorsed this approach, but
Chester E. Finn Jr. is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, former chair
of Hoovers Koret Task Force on K12 Education, and president emeritus of the
Thomas B. Fordham Institute. Bruno V. Manno is a trustee emeritus of the
Thomas B. Fordham Institute and the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation. Brandon
L. Wright is the managing editor and a policy associate at the Fordham Institute.
CHARTERS AS COMPETITION
A less collegial approach has charters competing with the traditional system,
drawing students and funding from district schools to charters. The assump-
tion is that districts will respond by improving their offerings and enhancing
school quality.
But a negative response is also possible. States and districts find ways to limit
competition. For example, a charter law may restrict the number of students
who attend charters or the number of new schools allowed or require a state to
reimburse districts for the money it loses when a student leaves the district.
Reform-via-competition has origins on the political right and left. This
approach in modern times is linked with the economist and late Hoover
fellow Milton Friedman. In 1962 (years before the first charter law), he
described how competitive market forces would strengthen educational qual-
ity, efficiency, and productivity.
On the left, Shankers 1998 New York Times piece describes a quasi-mar-
ketplace where parents could choose which charter school to send their
children to, thus fostering competition. So Shanker too thought of charter-
ing as about choice, not
just R&D.
Charters are research and develop- Washington, DC, is a
ment laboratories for districts; com- prime example of a char-
petitors to districts; and replacements ter sector large enough to
compete with the tradi-
for districts.
tional district, enrolling
nearly 47 percent of public school pupils, creating a mixed market of charter
and district choices for families. Mayor Muriel Bowser presides over this
dual system, where the traditional DC Public Schools are run by a chancellor
and the parallel sector of independently operated charter schools is answer-
able to DCs Public Charter School Board.
REL I GI ON
The Religious
Animal
Faith informs war, peace, and civil society. Thats
why believers must learn to listen to each other.
By Charles Hill
T
he modern worldor the era we blithely have been calling mod-
ernhas defined itself against religion. The Treaty of Westphalia,
which inaugurated todays international state system, pushed reli-
gion to diplomacys margins to avoid, it was hoped, further wars
of religion, such as the Thirty Years War from 161848. Gibbons 1776 Decline
and Fall of the Roman Empire struck by far the heaviest blow which [Christi-
anity] had yet received from any single hand, in the words of the Victorian
critic Sir Leslie Stephen. In his epoch-defining brief essay, What is Enlighten-
ment? (1784), Immanuel Kant declared that it is Mans leaving his self-caused
immaturity. Immaturity is the incapacity to use ones intelligence without the
guidance of another. . . . If I have a book which provides meaning for me (i.e., a
Bible), a pastor who has conscience for me . . . I do not have any need to think.
The Enlightenment would later be labeled the rise of modern pagan-
ism. Nietzsches masterwork, On the Genealogy of Morality, put forth a logic
chain: religion invented morality as the weapon by which the weak produced
civilization to suppress all that is strong and noble in mankind. Modernity, as
I N TERVI EW
Push Back on
Dawa
Hoover fellow Ayaan Hirsi Ali, author and foe of
political Islam, on doing battle with dangerous ideas.
By Cynthia L. Haven
A
yaan Hirsi Ali champions the fight against jihadi terrorism and
the struggle for womens freedom in the Islamic world. The late
Christopher Hitchens called her the most important public
intellectual probably ever to come out of Africaand he
accused the left of abandoning her.
She is the author of bestselling books, including Nomad, Infidel, Heretic, and
The Caged Virgin. This year, she published The Challenge of Dawa: Political
Islam as Ideology and Movement and How to Counter It with the Hoover Institu-
tion Press. She has founded the Ayaan Hirsi Ali Foundation in New York to
further her work, which continues to find new directions.
In June, she and Asra Nomani, a friend and colleague of Daniel Pearl, testi-
fied before the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental
Affairs. During the hearing, the Democratic women on the panel declined to
ask the two women any questions. In a column co-written for the New York
Ayaan Hirsi Ali is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution and founder of the
AHA Foundation. She is the author of The Challenge of Dawa: Political Islam
as Ideology and Movement and How to Counter It (Hoover Institution Press,
2017). Cynthia L. Haven was a Voegelin Fellow at the Hoover Institution and
writes a literary blog, The Book Haven (bookhaven.stanford.edu).
Cynthia L. Haven: In 2004, the Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh was mur-
dered. A death threat targeting you was pinned to his chest with a knife.
What is life like under a fatwa?
Ayaan Hirsi Ali: Im surrounded by men who carry guns and who tell me
where I may and may not go, and what I may and may not do. So Im not
entirely free. Thats all I can say, for security reasons.
Haven: Your choices have been very different from Salman Rushdie and the
Seattle cartoonist Molly Norris.
Hirsi Ali: Molly Norris went into hiding. I was offered that option and said
no. I fully understand why Salman Rushdie opted for the risk of living free.
Haven: Youve changed. While you earlier thought that Islamic violence was
inextricable from Islam itself, now you are calling for religious reform and
have joined forces with like-minded Muslims.
Hirsi Ali: Well, first of all, I have grown up. But lets make some distinctions.
Islam is treated just like any other religion in the United States. In reality, Islam
is part religious and part political. And the argument I make is this: lets protect
the religious aspects
of Islam. Lets fight the
When we talk about the threats
political aspects of Islam
emanating from radical Muslims,
that are subversive, using
economic, diplomatic, and people deflect by talking about white
political means. supremacists. I dont see hordes and
hordes of people joining them.
Haven: When you
appeared before Congress in June, you were ignored by the four women
Democratic senators on the panel. How do you account for their silence?
Hirsi Ali: In our country, we have people on the right who mistrust those
who look different and who dont share the same beliefs. Yes, we have white
supremacists who are anti-Semitic and dont like immigrants. I take comfort
in the fact that our law
enforcement and intelli-
Lets protect the religious aspects of gence communities know
Islam. Lets fight the political aspects who these people are
of Islam that are subversive. and where to find them.
Theyve been thoroughly
infiltrated, and at this moment, they dont pose a threat. Certainly I dont
feel threatened by themwhereas I actually live with armed guards against
radical Muslims.
When we talk about the threats emanating from radical Muslims, people
deflect by talking about white supremacists. I dont see hordes and hordes of
people joining them. I dont see international communities forming. Where is
the Saudi Arabia of white supremacy? Where is the ISIS of white supremacy?
Or the Al-Qaeda of white supremacy? Where is the Muslim Brotherhood of
white supremacists? Where is the money? There are billions of dollars that flow
out of these Gulf countries to enhance the agenda of radical Islam. Lets get real.
Hirsi Ali: No, because were not fighting it. We dont even recognize were
fighting an ideological war. Partly it is the arrogance. We think of radical
Hirsi Ali: And we never said our system was a moral equivalent with the
Soviet system. Nor did we pretend that capitalism was a sort of salvation, a
counter-utopia. It wasnt. By the way, Bertrand Russell had been attracted to
the idea of communism until he saw it in practice.
Haven: As you pointed out, that effort operated at a fraction of the trillions
weve spent on foreign wars.
Hirsi Ali: One MOAB the mother of all bombs what did it cost? If they
would give that to those of us who want to fight this war of the minds, it
would be way more effective. And its more humane. Its moral. Youre not
killing people. The goal is to change peoples minds.
To take the Cold War analogy all the way, you have to discuss the philo-
sophical legacy of Muhammad. Like Marxism, it includes a political theory.
When Marxism was applied in the Soviet Union, Cambodia, China, parts of
Africa, it was manifest for all to see. However eloquent Mr. Marx was in his
idea of justice and equality on the ground, it led to gulags.
When Islamic law is applied as a blueprint for society, what is the outcome?
You couldnt wish for a better demonstration of that blueprint than ISIS. It
applied the very letter of the law. When you use the state as a tool to make
this from top down, to create this ideal utopia, its anything but utopian.
Hirsi Ali: Theres one here in the United States. His name is Faisal Al Mutar,
and hes from Iraq. Ive listened to him on American campuses. Hes compel-
ling, logically consistent, persuasive, and very funny. His organization, Ideas
Beyond Borders, reaches out to change minds. I dont know what the future
holds for him, but hey, if youre looking for compelling people who reach
thousands, maybe millions, hes determined to do that. I pick him because he
speaks Arabic and hes working from the United States of America.
Haven: People on the fringe right have used your name to justify Islamopho-
bia and inflame an anti-Islam movement in America. What would you say to
them?
Hirsi Ali: I think what used to be called provocative is now called offen-
sive. Were in the grip of identity politics and political correctness. Radical
elements benefit from that and exploit it.
People dont see that sharia has spread from its heartland all the way to
the West. Female genital mutilation is happening in the United States. Child
marriages, forced marriages, and honor killings are happening in the United
States and Europe. They dont get publicized because the term Islamopho-
bia is thrown at everyone. News outlets feel too scared to handle this.
So back to your earlier question. Yes, I have changed. It used to be hard for
me to have conversations with Muslim reformists because I would get stuck
in a place of logical inconsistency. On the one hand, you want to reform Islam,
but you dont want to question the legacy of Muhammad or the morality of
the Quran. So how can you reform?
Ive come to realize that, first of all, things take time. Sincere people are
working on it Asra Nomani, Zuhdi Jasser, and others. Im also working with
ex-Muslims who want to raise critical questions. I want to create a wider
platform of people inside Muslim communities in the United States, particu-
larly on campuses, where the minds of the future leaders are shaped.
Haven: How realistic is your hope for reform? Are you being naive?
Hirsi Ali: We forget the Islamic Republic of Iran. A whole population in Iran
has lived under sharia from 1979 to now and are very much opposed to it.
May I say that the people that Ive met who are the most hostile to religion in
general and Islam in particular are Iranians?
Haven: How did the Arab Spring affect the thirst for reform?
Hirsi Ali: In the aftermath of the Arab Spring and the rise of ISIS, Muslims
who had avoided dealing with Islam as a political system couldnt duck it
anymore. They were put in a position where they had to decide. Now theyve
coalesced into a more visible group of people I call modifiers. They note
that something about Islam its tradition, its religion, its scripture needs
to be seen historically and not carried into the twenty-first century.
I give examples in my book Heretic. For instance, a clergyman who rhetori-
cally asks, Why should we hate Jews, when we take advantage of all these
discoveries that the Jews made? Questions like that may seem commonsensi-
cal here, but its revolutionary in parts of the Middle East where the general
population is indoctrinated for years and years to hate every Jew, good or bad.
Hirsi Ali: Women are organizing in Saudi Arabia, in the UAE, in Iran. In
Saudi Arabia, they are saying they do not want the male guardian. Theyre
being confronted with the accusation that they are demanding an anti-sharia
change, but they continue to demand it anyway. They continue to demand the
right to drive. They continue to demand the right to work. All of these things
are anti-sharia.
Haven: And yet, the electoral process hasnt necessarily supported your
hopes, has it?
Hirsi Ali: The Arab Spring was eye-opening, and I was very optimistic about
what was happening in Tunisia and in Egypt. In both countries, the Muslim
Brotherhood entered the picture. They were very well organized and running
for elections. In Egypt, they won, and in Tunisia, they won twice.
For me, that was predictable. What was heartening was the opposition,
the people who didnt want sharia law and said so as clearly as possible: We
oppose the Muslim Brotherhood because they want to establish sharia and
we dont want sharia.
You ask what changed
my mind. It is this empiri-
I would say there is no Islamopho- cal mass of evidence, right
bia. Its a strategically concocted in our faces. Not only did
term, designed to give Westerners the I change my mind, but I
same reaction as when you condemn began to see this opportu-
nity that our governments
homophobia or racism.
are not taking advantage of.
So Islamic doctrine has not changed but maybe, potentially, theres a large
enough constituency that could change it, could modify it. Many are trying,
and paying with their lives.
Hirsi Ali: The bloggers who championed secularization and political reform
have been hacked to death: Ahmed Rajib Haider, Ananta Bijoy Das, Oyasiqur
Rhaman, Dr. Avijit Roy, a naturalized US citizen. Others continue to fight
back.
Haven: You said that the intolerant brand of Islam is spreading in places like
Turkey and Indonesia. Why? Whats powering it?
Haven: And, as you have pointed out, fighting the ideological war costs a lot
less than fighting a military one. Controlling information can be far more
manageable than controlling the outcome of a battle.
Haven: Your analogy to the Cold War brought to mind Nobel poet Czesaw
Mioszs The Captive Mind, a study of how the mind adapts to totalitarianism,
Hirsi Ali: We have to do it. We have to take these extremes. I think the
assumption that this major religion is going to change peacefully without
casualties is in itself utopian. People are going to resist.
Think about the clergymen in Saudi Arabia. You think theyre going to
stand aside and say, Okay, lets modernize? Theyre going to put up a fight.
Theyre going to tell the people in the University of Al-Azhar in Egypt, the
University of Madinah in Saudi Arabiaall of these clergymen are going
to tell their followers, Go, and kill, and ambush, and destroy, and stop this
movement. Stop this change. We know this because thats what they say
already when they dont
like something. Its not
I want to create a wider platform of going to be bloodless.
Hirsi Ali: A great mind. These Arab-Islamic poet philosophers are celebrat-
ed here, and its great that hes celebrated outside of Islam. But his poems
should be read in Muslim schools, and they arent. They should be discussed
and appreciated. That would be part of this reformation, too.
Hirsi Ali: I would say push back on dawa. We need to educate ourselves on
what dawa is its both the ideology of political Islam and the organizational
infrastructure that Islamists use to inspire, indoctrinate, recruit, finance, and
mobilize the Muslims they hope to win over to the extremist cause.
Haven: I hear you are developing ways to work with these ideas at the uni-
versity level.
I N TERVI EW
We Are a Moral
Cause
Hoover fellow Condoleezza Rice explains how to
champion human dignity while engaging with a
flawed, complex world.
By Carol E. Lee
H
oover senior fellow and former secretary of state Condoleezza
Rice has released a new book, Democracy: Stories from the
Long Road to Freedom (Twelve, 2017). In an interview with the
Wall Street Journal, Rice touched on the role of Russia in US
elections, the recent tensions with North Korea, and American foreign policy
under President Trump.
Carol E. Lee, Wall Street Journal: Your book comes out as Americans are
grappling with alleged Russian interference in last years presidential election.
How much of a threat do you think Russia is to the United States in this respect?
Lee: The White House says it wants to work with Russia on areas of common
interestdo you think the United States has any common interests with a
country that purportedly tried to interfere in its election?
Rice: Yes, there is the issue of the election. Theres also the issue of threat-
ening our allies in Eastern Europe and the kind of low-intensity conflict in
Ukraine that they are waging. But I think there are some areas that we can
work together. I cant believe that the Russians are pleased to see a reck-
less North Korean leader with intercontinental ballistic missile rangein
the sense that if it can reach Alaska, it can reach Vladivostok. I think we are
ultimately going to have to work together in Syria.
But you have to lay the ground rules first, and I think the ground rules
have to say, among other things: Stop threatening our allies. Stop messing
around in Ukraine. And
yes, we know you were
trying to affect our elec- We stand for the rights and liberties
tions. We know it and of those who cant stand for those
well respond at a time of
rights and liberties themselves.
our choosing.
Lee: What do you make of President Trumps policy toward North Korea?
Rice: I think no American president can sit by and let the North Koreans
get intercontinental ballistic range and a nuclear weapon that can be mar-
ried to it. And I think theyre trying to do what probably any administration
would be trying to do, which is to change the Chinese calculus . . . because if
you dont change what theyre doing, then were going to have to take actions
ourselves. That message, to me, seems to have gotten through to the Chinese.
The way I can tell it got through is the North Koreans are now really critical of
the Chinese for the things theyre doing and saying. So thats a good step forward.
Lee: You said in an earlier interview about your book that the president is
the most important voice for American foreign policy, values, and interests.
Rice: The words do matter, but lets also see what he does. When it comes
to Sisi and Erdogan, those are long-standing allies. Of course youre going
to meet with them. But recognizing that in the long run they are sitting on
powder kegs if they dont reform their countries is also very important.
I write about it in the book: what if [former Egyptian President] Mubarak
had actually carried out
the reforms he started
in 2005? There wouldnt I think Americans understand in a
have been a revolution gut-level way that we have respon-
in Egypt. And we should sibilities that we didnt wish upon
want our allies to reform,
ourselves.
not give way to revolu-
tions. But youre going to deal with allies who dont necessarily share your
values. The important thing though is to always remember that in the long
run our values and our interests are linked.
Lee: Secretary of State Rex Tillerson gave a speech in which he said freedom
and human dignity are American values, not policies. Isnt that a striking
departure from the agenda you had championed?
Rice: Well, I thought it was a more nuanced point than that. Look, freedom
and democracy and liberty are American values. Sometimes it is true that
policy means you have to deal with people who are not upholding those [val-
ues]. I remember after I gave the Cairo speech [about democracy in 2005]
everybody said, How could you go and meet with Mubarak? Well, of course
you were going to go and meet with Mubarak. So sometimes people do get
confused about that.
Lee: You write about the importance for the United States to do everything it
can to encourage and insist upon change, arguing theres a moral and practi-
cal case for that. Do you think Americans want their government to promote
democracy? And do you think this president wants to promote democracy?
Rice: I think that Americans are of two minds. I think sometimes theyre
tired of the burdens of leadership and they say, Why cant other people do it
themselves?
But then when we withdraw even the slightest, they dont like what they
see. They see people being
beheaded on television.
What if Mubarak had actually car- They see girls being
ried out the reforms he started in stolen away in Nigeria.
2005? There wouldnt have been a They see babies being hit
with chemical weapons in
revolution in Egypt.
Syria.
You know, its in our DNA to find that offensive and to want to do some-
thing about it. I see in the president somebody who said a lot of things in the
campaign, but when he was sitting in that chair and watched Syrian babies
choking on chemical gas, said, I cant let that stand.
Reprinted by permission of the Wall Street Journal. 2017 Dow Jones &
Co. All rights reserved.
I N TERVI EW
Putting Aside
Adolescent Things
Senator Ben Sasse wants to raise wise children
worthy of their birthright.
By Peter Robinson
Ben Sasse is a US senator from Nebraska. Peter Robinson is the editor of the
Hoover Digest, the host of Uncommon Knowledge, and a research fellow at the
Hoover Institution.
Robinson: This book lays out the figures. Millennials and those coming up
behind themdo they have a name yet? Lets call them millennials. Kids.
Sasse: You said in spite of. Maybe its because of. I want to be clear. This book
is a constructive book. Its mostly a program for how to think about habit
formation for thirteen- to seventeen-year-olds. Its not a blame-laying book;
its not a beat-up-on-millennials book. Its a wow, what is this category of
perpetual adolescence? book. Thats a new thing in human history. Adoles-
cence is a pretty special concept. Its only about two millennia old. We came
up with this idea that you go from the dependent state of childhood to the
independent state of adulthood and you dont have to, boom, transition from
one to the other instantaneously when you become physically an adult. Two
millennia ago people came up with this concept that when you biologically
transition from childhood to adulthood at puberty that doesnt mean you
have to immediately be fully independent: financially, emotionally, morally,
in terms of school-leaving or household structure. We have this idea that for
eighteen months to four years you can have a greenhouse phase of intention-
al transition from one to the other. Thats great, as long as we remember that
adolescence is meant to be a means to an end. It is not the destination.
Peter Pan is a dystopian hell; it is not a utopia, as Disney has tried to
remake it. Peter Pan is a character who becomes physically an adult and yet
he has no historical awareness. He has no moral awareness. He kills people
and he doesnt even remember their names. Thats a bad thing. We dont
want to be man babies. We want our kids to go from a stage of necessary
dependence to more and more independence, when they can.
Sasse: Right. I think that though theres no blame laying in this book, if there
were, it would be at ourthe parents and grandparentsfeet to not have
thought through what it means that our kids are growing up at the richest
time and place in human history. Theres a lot about that that is obviously
great: to be protected from levels of violence that most people have known
throughout human history; to be protected from abject poverty. But were
going to need to figure out how to celebrate scar tissue with these kids,
because scar tissue is the foundation of future character. We need to cel-
ebrate it.
Robinson: Well, you and Thomas Jefferson: Oh, no. Were not all farmers
anymore. The country cant work. Address that critique, that thought in the
back of a readers mind.
Robinson: OK. Tell me then. Weve got changed economic circumstances were
going through. The country has been through something like this once before.
Were going through a
huge something again.
Its not a blame-laying book; its not a Thomas Jefferson would
beat-up-on-millennials book. recognize what youre
talking about in this book,
although he believed in an agrarian America. Weve been in an industrial
America. Now were entering some third kind. Why do you argue in particular
that there are certain virtues that Americans need to learn to make this repub-
lic work? Explain that line of thought, which runs through the whole book.
Robinson: That people have the right to pursue happiness and that is the
only way to achieve it: by pursuing it on your own?
Sasse: Here, Ill blend a little bit of American ideas stuff with some modern
sociology. Lets just take sociology for a minute. I am solidly Aristotelian.
One argument in this book is some slight anti-Platonism. I dont want to
scare people away with no philosophical interests. I think social science is
now bearing out a lot of what Aristotle understood about the sort of way
Robinson: Id like to stay with the nature of the American republic for just
a moment longer. The Vanishing American Adult: Material abundance can
make us freer and less dependent, but simultaneously more lonely and isolat-
ed. Here is one of the most striking sentences in the book: It is very difficult
for a rich republic to remain virtuous. Youre almost setting up a tragic view
of American history here where the greatest generation, your grandparents,
they endure the Depression, your grandfather goes off to the Second World
War, and through the sacrifices that they made, their grandchildren and
great-grandchildren get just the kind of life they wanted for them. You and
your children get a period of peace and prosperity, and it ruins them. When
Sasse: Well, if you look at inherited wealth around the world, people who
figure out how to manage that inherited wealth without growing their kids
appetites, turning it into actual investments, it can work out well. If you
become consumers in
the next generation,
Were going to need to figure out how theres danger in that. Its
to celebrate scar tissue with these natural that there should
be a cycle of production,
kids, because scar tissue is the foun-
wealth creation, and then
dation of future character.
recreation or leisure. By
the way, theres an important historical debate about why the word recreation
is more virtuous than the word leisure because its cyclically driving you back
to productivity again. I want to be revivified but to get back to work, to live a
life of gratitude by serving my neighbor again. Its natural that inside any fam-
ily or any individual of maybe any generation that production leads to wealth
leads to recreation. But if it slides across generations and people in the second
or third generation are just living off inherited wealth from past production,
theres something lacking in their lives that is unsatisfying for them.
There are tons of data that show that one of the highest correlates to hap-
piness in life is whether or not you do work that you think anybody needs.
Not at the end of the day: Do my knees hurt, or my ankles or my back? Do
I think I made enough money? Was there some annoying jackwagon three
cubicles over who talks loudly? But, do I think somebody needs me? If Mon-
day morning, or whatever day of the week you go and start your work, theres
a place that you need to go because someone needs your work, you have
worth and dignity and self-esteem. Just consuming more cant replace that. I
do think there is a danger in becoming so wealthy that we forget to inculcate
those habits of productivity that lead to happiness.
Sasse: Not just stuff. More services that are quite interesting. I got here with
a Waze app. I was in San Francisco this morning and coming down to Palo
Alto. There are opportunities to not sit in traffic, which are not life changing,
but that was a nice little gift to know that taking this exit could avoid that car
wreck and that half-hour delay.
I think that what comes next in the digital revolution is going to be fasci-
nating. Were going to have a layering of information and data on top of the
physical world thats going to be fascinating. What Im not sure about is that
the benefits of that are
going to redound to the
median worker and the If you separate work from the house-
median family right hold, as weve done, our kids come of
now. Im scared about age with lots of material surplus and
that because I dont very little exposure to production.
think were thinking at
all about the disruption and the nature of work. Larry Summers talks about
how of 7.2 billion people on Earth maybe youve got 4.5 billion workers today.
Were going to go to 9 billion people on this planet by the year 2050, and we
might only need 3 billion to 4 billion workers to more than meet the needs for
all 9 billion people.
Guess what? Work isnt just about how you put bread on the table. Work
is a fundamental anchor of human identity and service. Were meant to live
a life of gratitude by doing something meaningful. Were meant to get to the
evening and get some of that leisure or recreation or fun, food, and wine, and
Robinson: The book actually ends on an up note. You just sounded more
like Augustine than I was expecting you to right there. The notion is what?
The notion is you need to teach your children these virtues so that they can
become good Americans,
so they can continue
Were meant to live a life of gratitude to change, so to speak.
by doing something meaningful. Youre very conscious
of American history. As
youve demonstrated a couple of times here, youre happy to go back to Aris-
totle at the slightest provocation. Also, because something big and actually a
little bit alarming is coming at these kids. Is that right?
Sasse: Yeah, there is a real difference between actually climbing to the top
of the mountain and going there on your friends Instagram. Right now
were doing a disservice to our kids by pretending that a more sedentary,
passive life might fulfill them. Its not true. We need our crazy uncle Teddy
Roosevelt in our life, and I want kids to become intoxicated with all that they
can travel to through literature, across space, into other cultures, by learning
to produce. Theres a lot of opportunity for our kids, but we need a different
conversation about how to raise them, and passively allowing them to be
peer-segregated into a more sedentary posture is not going to be satisfying
for them or for the republic.
FREE S PEECH
Free Speech
Doesnt Need
Rethinking
Persuasion is American, coercion is not. To Hoover
scholar Richard Epstein, the First Amendment is
both bedrock and shield.
By Tunku Varadarajan
U
nfazed by a stream of hustling residents, chatty doormen,
leashed dogs, and well-born children, Richard Epstein holds
forth in the lobby of the building where he lives, just off Man-
hattans Central Park. I worry about the background hubbub
spoiling the recording of our conversation, but Mrs. Epsteinwith good
reasonhas ruled their apartment out of bounds. She is packing and fussing
for their sons wedding, to take place four days later, and doesnt want us
underfoot.
The theme of our conversation is freedom of expression under the First
Amendment, and theres relish in discussing the subject with a man who
Richard A. Epstein is the Peter and Kirsten Bedford Senior Fellow at the Hoover
Institution and a member of the steering committee for Hoovers Working Group on
Intellectual Property, Innovation, and Prosperity. He is also the Laurence A. Tisch
Professor of Law at New York University Law School and a senior lecturer at the
University of Chicago. Tunku Varadarajan is the Virginia Hobbs Carpenter Re-
search Fellow at the Hoover Institution.
Reprinted by permission of the Wall Street Journal. 2017 Dow Jones &
Co. All rights reserved.
H OOVER AR CHIVE S
By Emily D. Johnson
I
arrived in Riga, Latvia, in April 2014 with one clear objective: I
needed to locate the surviving relatives of the Russo-Latvian poet
and journalist Arsenii Formakov (19001983) and secure permission
to translate and publish the letters Formakov had mailed home from
Soviet labor camps between 1944 and 1955. These remarkable documents
tell the story of Formakovs 1940 arrest, his internment in Stalins gulag, and
desperate efforts to survive hard labor and return to his family in Latvia. The
Hoover Institution acquired them in 2002 but, as is common in the case of
private funds, publication rights remained with the donor. Unless I secured
permission from Formakovs heir, I could cite them in research but not pub-
lish them.
The letters, I felt, told Formakovs story better than any scholarly article
ever could. A moving illustration of the kinds of horrors that Latvian citizens
faced as their country was first forcibly annexed to the Soviet Union in 1940,
then overrun by the Nazis a year later, and finally reconquered by the Soviet
TWO INVASIONS
The first pages of About the Motherland and Family, which I read through for
the first time at Ausmas kitchen table, suggested to me that Formakov had
tried to strike a careful
balance in the collection.
How much had Formakov managed He opened the book with
to hide behind the bland title About a quatrain dedicating
the Motherland and Family? Which his work to his muses, a
land did he consider his motherland? singular, informal you,
presumably his wife, Anna
Ivanova, and also Russia itself. Early poems in the collection focused on safe
patriotic themes, extolling well-publicized feats of military heroism (The
Ballad of Twenty-eight Soviet Heroes) or the bravery and honor of Soviet
military forces in general (The Russian Soldier, The Russian Sailor, The
Russian Pilot). However, the title page that Formakov had made for his book
of poems hinted at much more personal concerns and a Latvian as opposed
to Russian or Soviet meaning for the word motherland. Formakov framed
FOR ZHENIA: In a playful name day poem (opposite page) for his four-
year-old daughter, Evgenia (nicknamed Zhenia or, more intimately, Zhenich-
ka), Formakov describes a parade of animals carrying best wishes and a
bouquet to the little girl. A clumsy crow eventually ruins the flowers, the story
goes, leaving only the single blossom at the upper left of the card. In a letter to
his wife that same month, Formakov quotes a poem by Konstantin Simonov:
Those who would not wait for me, / Let them wonder later at my luck.
[Arsenii Ivanovich Formakov PapersHoover Institution Library & Archives]
the words About the Motherland and Family with neat drawings, in pencil,
of Riga church spires and the banks of the Daugava River rather than with
Soviet symbols or Russian landscapes.
Moreover, if one read About the Motherland and Family alongside the
explanatory note that Formakov mailed home on July 7, 1945, some of the
later poems in the collection emerged as mournful reflections on Latvian
identity in the wake of both Soviet and Nazi invasions. For example, in For-
makovs poem Parting Words for a Sailor (Naputstvie moriaku), an old man
held captive for many years far from home asks a young sailor to convey his
greetings to his wife and to try to ease her mind of worry, if he should ever
Classical Iambs
violence here just as it does in Dostoevskys novel. Rome, which often symbol-
izes the oppressive state in works of twentieth-century Russian literature
(for instance, see Mikhail Bulgakovs The Master and Margarita), in Classical
Iambs instead plays the role of victim.
Special to the Hoover Digest. The author thanks Carol Ueland for her
feedback on the translations and her suggestions for improving this
article.
A
dragon and a white knight: familiar mythological figures act-
ing out the clash between right and wrong, order and chaos.
This poster, created a century ago, offers a rearguard action
in the vicious contest that enveloped Russia: the knight in this
encounter is a bogatyr, a traditional Russian figure from medieval times,
poised to slay the red dragon of Bolshevism. The slogan atop the poster says,
A unified Russia. This knight, of course, did not slay his dragonbut the
bogatyr would ride again.
After the February and October 1917 revolutions in Russia, Bolshevik
forces rose up against the Provisional Government and the Russian Civil
War began. From 1917 to roughly 1922 Red forces, fighting for hard socialism,
fought against the loosely allied Volunteer Army or White guard, the anti-
Bolshevik forces. Both sides also fought a war beyond the battlefield, a war of
propaganda.
This image, found in the poster collection at the Hoover Institution, was
commissioned by the Whites to argue their case. It depicts a celestial bogatyr,
the Russian knight common in East Slavic legends (byliny), raising his sword
against the Bolshevist menace as the dragon tries to ensnare the heart of
Russia: the Kremlin in Moscow.
Russians were thoroughly acquainted with these legendary combatants.
In modern Russian bogatyr means hero. Joseph L. Wieczynski writes in
The Modern Encyclopedia of Russian and Soviet History that the bogatyri were
devoted to protecting the land, and their legends promoted unity against
foreign enemies. The bogatyr in this poster, though nameless, evokes tales of
a popular epic hero, Dobrynya Nikitich, who in surviving paintings is shown
wielding a sword, and who had been known to slay dragons.
Of course, the Bolsheviks were not going to yield the propaganda field to
their foes. They, too, invoked the bogatyri, but in the service of heroic com-
munism. Bolshevik poet Vladimir Mayakovsky wrote a 1,087-line eulogy,
Vladimir Ilich Lenin, intended to lionize Lenin in the style of the old byliny to
appeal to the uneducated masses. And in the Reds visual interpretations,
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