RUTHFULLY YOURS

The jihadists struck Paris on November 13. On that Friday the 13th, the band on stage in the Bataclan theater, where 89 people were murdered, was Eagles of Death Metal. The song it was playing was “Kiss of the Devil.” The details sound like something out of Hollywood, but the horror was deadly real. In total, the terrorists would murder 130 people, the vast majority in the prime of their lives.

The multiple massacre left France reeling, vulnerable, and also deeply confused—but not about the nature of the operation. Islamic State (IS) took responsibility for the attacks, which were clearly another spillover from the Syrian civil war. Their so-called mastermind, the Belgian Abdelhamid Abaaoud, had spent time in Syria as the head of an IS unit devoted to dispatching jihadis to Europe. Earlier in the year, in a profile in Dabiq, IS’s propaganda magazine, Abbaoud flaunted the fact that he was planning acts of mass murder. “We spent months trying to find a way into Europe,” he said, “and by Allah’s strength, we succeeded in finally making our way to Belgium. We were then able to obtain weapons and set up a safe house while we planned to carry out operations against the Crusaders.”

So the problem was clear, as was the threat: global jihad enjoyed a safe haven in Syria, which allowed it to build jihadi networks across Europe and the Middle East. French confusion stemmed not from identifying that threat but from figuring out what, practically, could be done about it. In the immediate aftermath of the attack, Nicolas Sarkozy, the former French president, stepped forward. France, he said, is “in the worst of situations. We are sufficiently prominent to be a target, but not prominent enough to eradicate these barbarians.” His solution: “[T]he Russians must be associated with the work of the coalition to destroy [Islamic State].”

Sarkozy’s proposal was not new. Vladimir Putin himself had first floated the idea of a unified alliance against Islamic State two months earlier, at the meeting of the United Nations General Assembly in New York. At the time, the government of François Hollande responded tepidly, observing that Russia was less interested in defeating Islamic State than in propping up the Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad: a vicious sectarian actor whose wholesale slaughter of Sunni Muslims was IS’s greatest recruiting tool. In the view of the French government, Assad’s barbarism, abetted as it was by the Russians and the Iranians, was thus also the main cause of the refugee crisis plaguing Europe; until he was deposed, a stable new order would never arise.

Then there is the question of just how long Russia can afford to sustain its expensive military adventure in Syria. The Russian economy already has enough difficulties without having to bear the cost of Mr Putin’s latest act of military aggression.

Russian President Vladimir Putin may well come to regret agreeing to Iran’s request for Moscow to intervene militarily in Syria’s brutal civil war.

The shooting down of a Russian warplane over the Syrian border by Turkey has graphically illustrated the risks Moscow faces after the Kremlin agreed to intervene on behalf of Syria’s beleaguered President Bashar al-Assad.

Mr Putin took his fateful decision to launch military action in Syria after meeting Major-General Qassem Soleimani, the head of Iran’s notorious Quds Force, in Moscow last August. Visiting Moscow shortly after the conclusion of June’s deal on the future of Iran’s nuclear programme (JCPOA), Soleimani delivered a blunt warning to the Russian leader that the Assad regime, Russia’s long-standing strategic ally in the Middle East, faced defeat without outside support.

The global-warming crusade (we mustn’t call it a “jihad”) is a strange exercise in Protestant virtue. Consider the endlessly repeated argument: “Even if the threat is being exaggerated; even if the models aren’t as reliable as they say; even if the scientific consensus isn’t quite so iron-clad as the activists claim, wouldn’t we be better off, still, if we consumed less, conserved more, and invested in efficiency and green alternatives?”

This is a question of virtue masquerading as a question of engineering.

There is One True American Faith, and Joel Osteen (in the shadow of whose church, a former professional-sports arena, I type these words) is its prophet, the latest in a line that includes such diverse figures as Cotton Mather, Norman Vincent Peale, and Dave Ramsey.

One current of that faith is the so-called prosperity gospel, the belief that if one performs the proper offices honoring God, then He will proffer blessings in this world, as well as in the life to come. Put another way, some Christians believe that the One who commands us to take up our crosses and follow Him also cares a great deal about who wins at bingo and whether you get a preferential rate on your mortgage. (“Not a sparrow falls,” etc.) Material prosperity of supernatural origin comes with some indentures, however, and thus we have the ancient American cult of thrift, the deep-seated prejudice against indulgence and extravagance (our Protestant friends sometimes lament the fact that Europe’s Catholic altars are garnished with priceless masterpieces), and the mania for efficiency in American life. The ancient Calvinists believed debt to be wicked; Ramsey, their modern torchbearer, merely insists that “debt is dumb, and cash is king.” King of kings, for some, to be sure.

Historian of science Thomas Kuhn famously argued that scientific progress comes not from an incremental, stepwise accumulation of knowledge, but rather from a “paradigm shift,” the relatively sudden collapse of an old paradigm under the weight of new evidence and new insights. Kuhn’s idea has implications beyond scientific research. Historical changes as well often reflect an abrupt shift, as the old received wisdom is no longer adequate for understanding new events.

For example, the collapse of the Soviet Union was anticipated by at most a handful of analysts and historians. Indeed, in 1984 esteemed economist J.K. Galbraith claimed, “The Russian system succeeds because, in contrast to the Western industrial economies, it makes full use of its manpower.” Yet in a few years looming economic collapse swept away the communist superpower that for half a century threatened liberal democracy. In an instant, the seemingly permanent Cold War geostrategical paradigm disappeared, taking with it the whole academic discipline of Sovietology.

Perhaps today we are witnessing the beginning of a similar paradigm shift: the end of the notion that universal progress driven by scientific and technological innovations will eventually improve human life and political order to the point where the tragic constants of human existence––conflict, violence, oppression, brutal autocracy, and violations of basic human rights––will disappear. Considering the current failures of the West both domestically and abroad, this faith seems on shaky ground.