The Eisenhower Coalition

Thomas Friedman has expressed his desire for a radical centrist to save us from our partisan bickering. He thinks our two-party system is broken (written in 2010).

My definition of broken is simple. It is a system in which Republicans will be voted out for doing the right thing (raising taxes when needed) and Democrats will be voted out for doing the right thing (cutting services when needed). When your political system punishes lawmakers for the doing the right things, it is broken. That is why we need political innovation that takes America’s disempowered radical center and enables it to act in proportion to its true size, unconstrained by the two parties, interest groups and orthodoxies that have tied our politics in knots.

Be careful what you wish for, Mr. Friedman. Because you have precisely your savior right in front of you: Donald J. Trump.

The last time we had a centrist, non-partisan president in office was Dwight D. Eisenhower. He was courted by both parties to serve as their nominee, but chose the Republicans. He believed in big infrastructure (e.g., the Interstate Highway System), balanced budgets, and American patriotism. Those were the days of beneficent paternalism (Father Knows Best) and he-man heroics (John Wayne movies). His modern critics accuse him of sexism and racism, conveniently forgetting that Ike sent in the 101st Airborne to help desegregate schools in Little Rock, Arkansas.

So in Ike's image along comes Donald, nominally a Republican, though those most loyal to the Republican ideology hived off as NeverTrumpers. Likewise, a lot of Democrats have claimed to hate him, and some of them really do. But it's difficult to find much animosity between Trump and Chuck Schumer, for example. A lot of Democrats actually voted for Trump!

Trump has muddied the waters more by throwing some bones to the Democrats. Most embarrassingly for Congressional Republicans, he forced them to cave on the debt limit extension. The Dems got everything they wanted with no return favor granted or requested.

There are, I think, some not-so-subtle signs that the President is looking for bipartisan, centrist solutions. He knows he is not going to get there by simply hectoring--telling the Democrats that they're obstructionists. Instead he's put some carrots on the table and made it clear that if they bite he'll reciprocate. His debt ceiling surrender was an invitation to negotiate.

I see four general areas where the President would be happy to work with a coalition of centrist Democrats and Republicans, throwing both the Tea Party and the Progressives overboard in the process.

1) Health care. Trump relentlessly challenged the Republicans to make good on their Repeal & Replace promise. They couldn't do it--and perhaps Trump even predicted that. He's gone out of his way to embarrass the Congressional leadership, saying he'll be happy to work with Democrats.

And that's true--Trump would love to strike a deal with Chuck Schumer to craft a version of Obamacare that is both financially and politically stable. It will have to be less intrusive and less comprehensive than the original, but unlike ideological Republicans, Trump definitely believes that health care is a legitimate responsibility of the federal government. In his view Obamacare was a step in the right direction, only it went too far to be practicable.

Trump's strategy is to pressure the Democrats by gradually dismantling Obamacare until they are willing to deal. Eventually (he and Mr. Friedman hope) they will. Obamacare will be saved to be renamed Trumpcare.

2) Immigration. Mr. Trump was never against immigration (see my post from early 2016 here). But he is also right when he says that a country without borders ceases to be a country. Americans will never agree to any legalization not accompanied by much stronger border security. Trump's goal, which he presented in very visceral language illustrating that trade-off, is precisely to craft a comprehensive immigration deal (such as what Chuck Schumer, Marco Rubio and Mr. Friedman also want).

For that he needs Democratic support. The carrot is already there--he's offered to sign a DACA bill. But that bill also has to include a "wall", which really just means more border enforcement. Trump has indicated a willingness to legalize most undocumented people already here, but not an automatic path to citizenship.

Under Trump an immigration bill becomes politically possible--his base trusts him and the Dems can work with him. In the meantime he is going to make life as uncomfortable for the Democrats as possible by deporting dreamers and defunding their sanctuary cities. Eventually they'll come to the table.

3) Infrastructure. Personally I think this country needs more infrastructure like it needs a hole in the head, though I know Mr. Friedman disagrees with me. But then I'm not a congressman with people in my district looking for candy. Trump--a born builder--is looking for any shiny, new thing that he can attach his name to, along with the name of the local congress-critter. So it's a done deal--yet another tool he can use to bribe the Democrats.

4) The Trump Doctrine. This will replace the Cold War/containment strategy conceived and executed under the Eisenhower administration. Of course that model is now obsolete, and Mr. Trump--in his own colorful and non-intellectual way--understands that. He realizes that the United States has no real use for NATO anymore. He understands that the word "ally" only makes sense if there is also a global enemy (which there isn't). He intuits that countries as disparate as South Korea, Canada, and Saudi Arabia are no longer as strategically important to the United States as they once were. Indeed, they're all about to get thrown under the bus.

But there is one global issue that will keep the US involved on the global stage indefinitely, and that is nuclear proliferation.

In a policy that I predict will eventually be known as the Trump Doctrine, the United States will prohibit any additional country from acquiring deliverable nuclear weapons. The first test case is North Korea--there are only two options. Either the Norks gradually dismantle their nuclear and missile capabilities, or the United States will use military means to take them out. The Trump administration has made that abundantly clear--to North Korea, to China, to South Korea and Japan. While we hope those latter three are allies in this fight, neither their opinion nor their fate will determine our action. If necessary we will attack North Korea to destroy their bombs and missiles regardless of consequences elsewhere.

Once North Korea is disarmed we will pull our troops off the Korean peninsula. There is no strategic reason for us to be there.

Terminating the treaty with Iran is of the same piece. It doesn't matter if Iran was in compliance or not--their nuclear program is non-negotiable. The fact is that a nuclear Iran will experience the very same fire and fury that may be visited on North Korea. I think the Iranians understand that--their nuclear program is over.

So while I supported Trump in 2016 (and compared to Hillary it was no contest--also no regrets), I'm not really a Trump centrist. Count me more sympathetic to neverTrumpers ideology (though frankly they're not a very inspiring group of people).

I'm skeptical of more federal involvement in healthcare, and as stated, I generally oppose big infrastructure projects. I am pro-immigration, and I would strongly support the immigration plan I attribute to Trump above. I support the Trump Doctrine, if that's what it turns out to be.

Still, it's a strange world out there. I won't make any predictions, but if in 2020 I vote against Trump, and if Thomas Friedman votes for him I will not be all that surprised.

Further Reading:

• Good Trump, Bad Trump
• Trump & Trotsky
• Book Review: The Accidental Superpower

Book Review: The Absent Superpower

So I'm on a Peter Zeihan tear this month--this is the third post in a row about that author. But now is the end of it, for as much as I agree with his premises and some of his conclusions, his recent (2016) book goes off the rails.

The first section, entitled Shale New World, is worth the read no matter what you think of Mr. Zeihan's opinions. It is a concise and clear description of the US and global shale industry, including relevant facts about technology, geology, chemistry and finance, all very clearly explained. In particular, my Trotskyist friends would do well to read this--not that it will change their minds, but at least they could argue their environmental extremist positions knowledgeably.

American frackers have worked hard to ameliorate the environmental problems of their trade, also making it cheaper in the process. For example, there has been much talk about the amount of water used in fracking. That was never as big problem as it was cracked up to be--the US industry uses less water American golf courses. Still, especially in arid areas, water had to be trucked to the site, and the resulting waste water was no longer usable by humans or agriculture.

What frackers have since discovered is that accompanying shale oil is also a layer of water far below the shallow ground water that makes up important aquifers. This deep groundwater is brackish, meaning it can't be used as fresh water, which is an advantage to frackers since they need to add salt to frack-water anyway. Further, organic material--algae, etc.--is a problem and aquifer water needs to be filtered to remove that. The deep groundwater contains little or no life, which saves money. Finally, they drill through the layer on their way to the oil, so water can be extracted on site, eliminating trucking costs.

While shale producers recycle as much wastewater as possible, eventually there is a disposal problem, which remains the largest environmental issue associated with fracking. Accordingly frackers have worked hard to make their solutions as non-toxic as possible. Today they restrict themselves to using non-toxic, consumer products as additives. Apparently there are YouTube videos showing frack executives drinking frack water!

The result is that the American frack industry is profitable at $35/barrel, competitive even with Saudi Arabia.

A second important point is that fracking is overwhelmingly an American industry, and Mr. Zeihan explains why that will remain true even two or three decades into the future, despite the fact that there are massive shale reserves elsewhere on the planet.

And that leads to the remainder of the book, which reads very much like a war thriller. It's as compelling as fiction largely because it mostly is fiction--at least in my opinion.

I accept Mr. Zeihan's two premises: 1) North America is already energy independent, and does not depend on global trade for oil; and 2) the United States no longer has any compelling reason to remain engaged in world affairs outside the Western Hemisphere, and therefore will no longer police global sea lanes or enforce international borders. 

The result will be the Great Disorder as the rest of the world fails on short notice to establish their own order. Mr. Zeihan predicts three wars, all occurring roughly simultaneously. The Twilight War, centered around the Baltic Sea, will pit Russia against Scandinavia, Poland, England, and probably Germany. Related to the Twilight War will be Russia's effort to secure its southeastern flank against Turkey by occupying land to the banks of the Danube in Romania.

The second war is the (Next) Gulf War which will pit Iran against Saudi Arabia, precipitated by the withdrawal of American forces from the Persian Gulf. This will lead, in extremis, to the complete de-civilization of the entire Middle East, including the destruction of the electricity network from Oman to Lebanon. It will result in 60 million deaths and/or refugees.

And finally is the Tanker War, caused by the closure of the Persian Gulf, along with most Russian oil exports. The Tanker War will be a struggle between China, Japan, Korea, and Taiwan to secure whatever little oil is left on the open market, and to protect their ships from the depredations of enemies, pirates, and third-party countries such as India that will engage in privateering.

Of course all of this could happen--anything could happen--but it's not likely. When I mentioned these scenarios to a friend of mine, he immediately asked Don't any of the countries have any diplomats? It's a good question--Mr. Zeihan's scenario assumes they don't and they all go for absolutely the worst possible outcome.

Let's take the Twilight War as an example--so named because Russia is in terminal demographic decline and has only a few more years to wage war of any sort. It will spend this opportunity attempting to recover the defensible boundaries of the former Soviet Union. Of course they will probably lose, and either way their demography will still decline, so this really doesn't make too much sense.

It's easy to come up with a diplomatic solution to the Twilight War. Germany, far from fighting Russia, has every reason to ally itself. In return for a guaranteed supply of oil and access to the Russian market, Germany will guarantee Russian borders. Indeed, Germany can guarantee all the borders in the Baltic region. As Mr. Zeihan points out, the Russians could invade the Baltic countries on a Sunday afternoon. There's no reason for them to do it preemptively when there is no military threat on the Western frontier. By treaty both Poland and the Baltics could be demilitarized.

Further, the Germans will float a flotilla down the Danube to Romania, and set up camp on the Black Sea. Of course they'll be keeping an eye on Russia, but their primary mission will be to defend against the real rising power in Eurasia--Turkey. On this front, too, the Germans and Russians are allies. Germany has been very quiet about objections to the Russian reconquest of Crimea, and is not all that upset by the Russian invasion of Ukraine precisely because the Turks are a bigger threat.

If the French navy can secure the Eastern Mediterranean, Russia can fortify the northern shores of the Black Sea, and Germany can defend Romania, Bulgaria, and mainland Greece against Turkey, then Europe is as secure as possible against either military or refugee invasions from the Middle East. The Russians can get back to doing what they most urgently need to do--make babies.

Turkey can relieve Iranian pressure on Saudi Arabia simply by attacking, or threatening to attack, Azerbaijan. With this tool the Turks can turn Saudi Arabia into a vassal state, reminiscent of the Ottoman Empire. By building a pipeline from Ghawar (Saudi's oil-producing region) to the Mediterranean, Turkey will have both the Iranians and Arabs by the short hairs.

There is no shortage of oil in the world--the only issue is transport disruption due to war. Get rid of the other wars, then the tanker war becomes unnecessary. Peace will prevail. And we'll all live happily ever after.

Or maybe not. It may not end as cheerily as I suggest. But Mr. Zeihan's predictions I think are almost certainly wrong.

Further Reading:

• Book Review: The Accidental Superpower
• New World Disorder
• North Korea

Book Review: The Accidental Superpower

The Accidental Superpower, by Peter Zeihan, has a long subtitle: "The Next Generation of American Preeminence and the Coming Global Disorder." The thesis is summarized in a talk Mr. Zeihan recently posted here, and which I reviewed in my previous post, here. Both the book and the talk are a perfect trifecta of things that interest me: geography, politics and economics. Accordingly, my enthusiastic account of the video might be described as "breathless."

I found the book equally fascinating, and I pretty much inhaled it as others might a good novel. Mr. Zeihan is a talented writer and makes an excellent case. But now I will force myself to take a more critical eye and look for weaknesses. There are a few.

Briefly, Mr. Zeihan's thesis is that two things have changed: 1) the Soviet Union is no more, and even Russia itself is in the process of disintegrating; 2) The shale revolution means that the United States is largely energy independent, and therefore no longer relies crucially on foreign trade as it once did.

The result is that the global free trade regime, institutionalized under the Bretton Woods framework, is breaking down. From the US perspective, Bretton Woods provided lots of allies as a bulwark against the Soviets, and also guaranteed American energy supplies, including from the Persian Gulf. In return, the US policed global sea lanes, ensuring safe travel from the Skagerrat and Malaccan Straits, all the way to the Straits of Hormuz and everything in between.

The result is the Soviet Union was defeated, and everybody got rich--from Western Europe to Japan, Korea, and even China, Israel, Chile, and more.

But now, because of shale oil, America has little incentive to patrol the global trade routes. Accordingly we will no longer guarantee shipping through the Persian Gulf or the Indian Ocean, or over much of the rest of the world as well. Absent energy needs, the USA depends less on trade than any other country on earth, and can simply rely on itself. Or so Mr. Zeihan maintains.

The US can get away with this new isolationism because it is blessed in two ways: geography and demographics.

Geographically, America has more navigable, internal waterways than the rest of the world combined, not even counting the intracoastal waterway from Chesapeake to the Rio Grande. Since transport by water--even today-- is more than a factor of ten cheaper than by truck, and still a factor of three cheaper than rail, the US has a huge advantage. Further, our water network overlaps the largest bit of agricultural land in the world. Put bluntly, a homesteader in Iowa had, via the Mississippi, cheap access to global markets, even from Day One in the early 19th Century. By comparison, today's small farmer in Mexico's Chiapas state still has no cheap access to any market, not even Mexico City.

The Iowan will get rich. The Chiapas peasant will remain poor no matter how much some stupid Commandante rails against the injustice.

Second, while birth rates have declined in most of the world, the US still has relatively bright demographic prospects (though perhaps not as bright as Mr. Zeihan imagines). By contrast, countries like Canada, Japan, Greece, and especially China and Russia, are facing a crisis.

Using these two factors as a guide, Mr. Zeihan offers predictions for the next 15 years, beginning in 2015. The book was written in 2014--a very long time ago. Back then oil cost $100/bbl, the Canadian dollar fetched US$1.05, and the word "trump" doesn't even appear in the index. Further, he never mentions robotics (a subject in the more recent video), which certainly changes the situation considerably.

Still, for all that, his predictions hold up reasonably well:

• Russia is at the point of demographic collapse and will cease to be a viable nation within the next decade.
• The Chinese economy will collapse, and China as a unitary state will disintegrate. He points out that China throughout its history has only briefly existed as a single state.
• Japan, no longer able to source oil from the Persian Gulf, will need to conquer neighboring, oil-bearing territories to meet its needs. He predicts that Manchuria and Sakhalin Island will fall to the Japanese.
• The fastest growing economy over the next fifteen years will be Mexico (though the spread of robotics might change this).

So I think all of this makes sense, and I am now making sure that my retirement funds don't include any investments in China--that part of his argument is completely convincing. Still, there are some flaws, and it is now my duty to point them out.

1) Geography and demographics are certainly important, but hardly determining. That America has a near-perfect geography is as much historical accident as anything. Andrew Jackson could have lost the Battle of New Orleans, or worse yet, not fought it at all. A president not named Lincoln might have agreed to Southern succession on the condition of peace. A talented Canadian negotiator could have settled on the 42nd parallel rather than the 49th. Any of these would have changed American history dramatically, negating our geographical advantage.

History is contingent. Or put another way, history is just one damn thing after the other. Geography is the stage on which it all takes place, but it really doesn't tell us very much about the ultimate outcome. None of Mr. Zeihan's predictions will come true if the US descends into civil war, or if California really secedes from the union, geography notwithstanding.

Demography isn't all that it's cracked up to be, either. For example, Greece and Japan both have similar geographies (mountainous, seafaring nations), and similar demographics (old). Yet the prognoses are very different: Greece is predicted to be a failed state, while Japan will muddle through mostly as is. Culture matters a lot. Mr. Zeihan gives it too short shrift.

2)  I don't think Mr. Zeihan understands very much about economics. Some of this is just semantic--he refers to geographically-rich countries such as the US as "capital-rich." I think "resource-rich" would be more precise. Capital is investment in plant and equipment, which can be bought and sold and where depreciation is a problem. None of that applies to the Mississippi River, at least not in any meaningful sense.

Despite having no navigable waterways, Japan is a capital-rich country because of its beautiful cities, high-tech factories, elaborate rail system, and skilled labor force.

3) Mr. Zeihan claims that because of the retirement of the baby-boomers, total capital will decline. This is partly because we're not saving anymore (I stopped saving last month), and also because we're living off our accumulated wealth.

And this is true as far as it goes, but Mr. Zeihan leaves out the other half of the picture. Beyond withdrawing our savings, we are also withdrawing our labor. Capital is often usefully expressed as capital density: capital per worker. If total capital declines and the total number of workers declines, there is no obvious change in the capital density. So I think Mr. Zeihan exaggerates the scale of this problem.

The more important problem is the decline in the labor force. If Mr. Zeihan had phrased his argument from that point of view I think he'd make a stronger case.

4) Despite the crystal clarity in most of the book, there are a few sections that just didn't make any sense. For example, he claims that the Mexican drug war will lower the cost of labor--and for the life of me I don't understand his argument. It doubt it's true. First, a drug business, and much more a war, requires labor and therefore competes with other industries, raising wages. And second, civil discord makes labor less flexible and less productive, increasing the total cost. Again, I don't believe he thinks like an economist.

5) Mr. Zeihan apparently has never heard of comparative advantage. While the geopolitics he describes will undoubtedly change the comparisons by which the advantage is calculated, the principle will still hold.

Mr. Zeihan lumps all 1.2 billion Chinese together as "low-cost labor." But surely among that mass of humanity there exists particular skills and infrastructure that are comparatively advantageous--be it porcelain or shoelaces or rice or whatever. The US will still trade with China.

So I am skeptical that there will be the collapse in world trade that he predicts. Yes, the Americans will withdraw from the Persian Gulf and the Indian Ocean. And maybe even from the Mediterranean. But likely not from other important trade routes.

So he's left out culture and economic complexity. That let's him tell a simple, engaging, largely convincing story. It's fun to read. I think it's mostly true. But it is far from inevitably true. And indeed, there are enough differences between the book (2014) and the video (2017) to indicate that it won't be true.

Further Reading:

• Book Review: Everybody Lies: Big Data, New Data...
• Abandoning the Working Class!
• Book Review: The Frackers

New World Disorder

My Trotskyist friends celebrate the supposed decline of American empire. They see this as the beginning of the end; the start of the breakdown that will climax in World Revolution. US imperialism is playing a losing game of whack-a-mole trying to smash rebellions in remote corners of the world: Syria, Afghanistan, Venezuela, Iran, etc. The Socialist Workers Party takes this furthest, going so far as to claim the US lost the Cold War in 1991.

So last night I listened to an amazing talk by Peter Zeihan, entitled The New President & World Challenges (h/t Arnold Kling). It's a bit over an hour long, but Mr. Zeihan is an entertaining speaker, and his ideas are very provocative. Highly recommended! Indeed, I'm sufficiently inspired to write about it now, despite the fact that I've just ordered his book and should probably wait until after I've read it. [I've since posted reviews of Mr. Zeihan's books here and here.-ed]

Mr. Zeihan does say that we're at an inflection point in world history, symbolized not by the end of the Cold War, but rather by the end of Bretton Woods (BW). BW was an agreement between the United States and the Free World that the US would control the world financial system, while in return we would 1) guarantee global security, specifically the flow of trade routes and oil supplies, and 2) allow free entry into the US marketplace. To keep its end of the bargain, the US built by far the strongest military in the world.

That agreement worked spectacularly well. After Nixon visited China, that country also became part of the "free world", and the system brought 400,000,000 people out of poverty. Japan and South Korea took maximum advantage of BW, to spectacular effect. And of course the Marshall Plan (which depended crucially on open US markets) was a smash hit. Organizations such as NATO prevented global war for 70 years, and the European Union was founded on the assumption that global peace was durable.

So what went wrong? Nothing, really, but something very dramatic went right. Fracking. Within a period of about 10 years the US went from being dependent on oil imports to being a net oil and gas exporter. Today we buy next to nothing from the Persian Gulf. Our need for the Venezuelan resource has dwindled to nearly zero, and even Mexico can't sell oil to it's northern neighbor.

For years this was euphemistically proclaimed as North American energy independence, as if we were dependent on Canada. And perhaps at one point we were, but no longer today. The much maligned Keystone Pipeline would have found a ready market as recently as 2008, but today it becomes irrelevant. American shale gas and oil are more than sufficient to supply the entire economy.

Further, they are now competitive on price with everybody but the Persian Gulf states, and on present trends US frackers will be the world's low-cost producers by 2022 or so.

Good news! Right?

For the United States, yes, but not for the rest of the world. The US now has no economic interest in the Persian Gulf, and therefore no incentive to maintain security there. Mr. Zeihan points out that historically the US maintained an aircraft carrier group in the Persian Gulf at all times. Today our ships are there only half the time. He predicts that soon enough there will be no American naval presence in the Persian Gulf at all.

Of course protecting the Persian Gulf means defending the sea lanes approaching the Gulf, especially from northeast Asia, which countries depend crucially on that energy source. But America's enthusiasm for defending their trade routes has also diminished. Japan and China are in a panic--they do not have the ability to protect those trade routes themselves, much less preserve peace in the Middle East.

A knock-off effect is the US no longer needs bases in Western Europe, which were used as a forward base for the Middle East. Indeed, Mr. Zeihan claims that the US now has fewer troops posted abroad than any time in postwar history. And our footprint is about to shrink further.

Of course Europe also depends on Persian Gulf oil, and will be equally unable to secure it for itself. The result is that Germany becomes dependent on Russia (and vice versa). The geopolitical calculus that led to the Hitler-Stalin pact reasserts itself. NATO is dead. So is the EU.

So doesn't the US care about the fate of its allies? A whole lot less than you might think, and that leads to the second disastrous piece of good news: artificial intelligence (AI).

AI reduces the need for large amounts of low-cost labor. All those women slaving away in the textile mills of China, Vietnam, Bangladesh, etc. are about to be rendered redundant. That manufacture will now be done by machine, with only a small fraction of the employees. Labor costs will not be the determining factor, but instead electricity (cheaper in the US than anyplace else), proximity to markets, and availability of natural resources will clinch the deal.

In a word, manufacturing moves back to the United States. Big time. That's already occurring. Instead of the infernal mills, it will be local, flexible, small-scale, cheap, and very close to the customer. It's all very good news...for the United States.

China, meanwhile, goes bankrupt. Mr. Zeihan points out that China has existed as a unified state only for brief periods in its history. He predicts disintegration, or perhaps only civil war possibly leading to disintegration. China will resume its historical role of not being part of the world economy. Poverty for Everybody Now--my Trotskyist friends should be happy.

Donald Trump has likely never seen Mr. Zeihan's video nor read his book. He's not an intellectual sort. But he clearly has an intuitive sense of the immense bargaining power the United States now has over its so-called "allies." 

President Xi, Angela Merkel, Theresa May, Shinzo Abe, and Justin Trudeau all paid Mr. Trump a visit. (You really need to watch the video to see the humor in that situation.) Trump somehow understands that these people have absolutely no bargaining power whatsoever! Mr. Xi (according to Zeihan) basically conceded everything that Trump asked for in the vain hope that the US will continue to trade with China as it always has.

Theresa May offered a free trade deal with the US, pretty much entirely on American terms and in violation of EU law (Brexit hasn't happened yet).

Angela Merkel had nothing to offer the US, and thus came away with nothing. Germany is no longer a US ally in any meaningful sense of the word.

Justin Trudeau wants to maintain NAFTA, but Trump understands that Trudeau has no choice but to accept American terms of trade no matter what. NAFTA will turn into an American diktat.

All of these world leaders need the US way more than the US needs them. They came to Washington not to negotiate or bargain, but rather in abject supplication.

Welcome to the New World Order. And be very grateful that you live in the United States of America.

Further Reading:

• Venezuela
• Book Review: Rise & Fall of American Growth
• Capitalism Just Won't Sit Still

Hurricanes

The Militant does us a service with two articles about hurricane damage. Brian Williams covers destruction by hurricanes Harvey and Irma to Texas and Florida, while the second, by Seth Galinsky, describes the effects of Irma on Cuba. The comparison is instructive. In addition, I draw on this report from Houston by the Libertarian activist Leo Linbeck.

First, some basic data, courtesy of Wikipedia. Cuba has a population of 11 million people, only some of whom were impacted by Irma (which sideswiped the northern coast of the island). Cuba's total area is 46,000 square miles, but judging roughly from the TV maps, I'll estimate that about 10,000 square miles were affected by the storm. Mr. Galinsky reports that 1,738,000 people were evacuated, which we can take as a rough estimate of the area's population. Cuba's GDP is about $87 billion. Assuming that GDP scales proportionally to population, the GDP of the affected region is about $14 billion. Irma hit Cuba on September 8th.

Greater Houston has a population of 6.5 million people living in about 10,000 square miles. The GDP of the metropolitan area is about $450 billion. In addition, Harvey badly damaged the Beaumont-Port Arthur region, along with bits of Louisiana, for which I haven't compiled data. Harvey pounded Houston for several days beginning on August 25th.

Mr. Galinsky writes about Cuba.

More than 1,738,000 people were evacuated in advance of the storm by Civil Defense committees, minimizing the loss of human life. The committees made sure shelters — from community centers to caves — were comfortable and adequately provisioned. Students went door to door to persuade and help anyone in a danger zone who was hesitating, to evacuate. Tens of thousands of electrical and construction workers moved into action as soon as the storm died down.

By comparison, Mr. Williams describes Houston.

In Houston, where flooding levels were much worse, mounds of debris from about 126,000 damaged homes line the streets three weeks after Hurricane Harvey hit. Across Texas, the debris “could reach 200 million cubic yards — enough to fill up a football stadium almost 125 times,” reported Reuters. Tens of thousands still haven’t been able to return to their flood-ravaged homes. In many, sewage and other contaminants have left them permanently uninhabitable.

Mr. Linbeck reports that there are 1.6 million housing units in Houston (that seems low to me, but I'll take his number). That means that 6.25% of Houston housing units were damaged, some of which were left uninhabitable.

Mr. Linbeck also informs us that 30,000 people stayed in shelters during the storm. Of course many other people hopped into the RV and left town on their own or went to stay with relatives, or made some other arrangement--I have read no estimates about how many. But let's suppose it was 250,000 people--I think that's a very high estimate. It implies that less than 5% of Houston's population was rendered homeless, however temporarily.

In contrast, the entire population of the Cuban region was evacuated--they got to sleep in caves, which we're assured were "comfortable." Wikipedia reports:

Widespread destruction of housing was reported in the provinces of Ciego de Ávila and Villa Clara. In the city of Santa Clara, 39 buildings collapsed. Overall, Irma is estimated to have caused at least $2.2 billion (2017 USD) in damage and at least 10 deaths across the country.

"Widespread" surely implies more than 6%, and given the sorry state of Cuban housing to begin with, it's probably a lot more than 6%. Electricity was knocked out to the entire region, but Mr. Galinsky assures us that "as of Sept. 16, 87% of the population had some electricity restored." Which, given that electricity in Cuba is hit or miss to begin with, I guess that's something.

Mr. Galinsky adds detail.

The challenges are formidable. In addition to the electrical grid, tens of thousands of homes were damaged — 24,000 in Camagüey province alone. Dozens of oil wells, sugar refineries and more than 100,000 acres of banana, sweet potato, grapefruit, oranges, sugar cane and other crops, as well as chicken coops and feed lots for pigs and cattle were hard hit.

Wikipedia tells us that 74 people lost their lives to Harvey on the US Mainland, approximately 50 of whom lived in Houston. The ratio of deaths in Cuba vs. Houston is at least 0.20. The population ratio between the two is 0.26, or comparable. Further, the 10 deaths in Cuba is a minimum--so the ratios may in fact be even closer. There is no evidence that Cuba was better prepared to prevent deaths from the natural disaster than Houston. Nor did it do any worse, but at the cost of evacuating the entire population.

It's instructive to compare the ratios of monetary loss to GDP. For Cuba, from the data above, that number is $2.2 billion/$14 billion, or 0.16. A very high estimate of the damage to Houston is $180 billion, or about 0.4 fraction of GDP. Thus by this measure Harvey did more than twice as much damage to Houston as Irma did to Cuba.

There are a couple of ways to interpret this result. One is that Houston was just unprepared for a hurricane, which then ran rampant across the region. This does not strike me as credible.

The second is that Houston has more infrastructure. It's the petrochemical hub for North America, with lots of refineries and chemical plants. The media reported at length about the chemical explosions due to loss of power and loss of back-up power. Nothing like that happened in Cuba because Cuba has no petrochemical industry and no chemical plants. It's really hard to destroy something that doesn't exist.

No Cuban freeways got flooded either--because there aren't any Cuban freeways. Mr. Linbeck tells us that Houston freeways were built purposely to serve as detention ponds, so to prevent water from going into people's basements.

The ideologically pro-Castro Militant makes the best case it can for socialist virtues in a natural disaster. I don't think that case is very convincing, but that's not the bit that most offends me about their reportage.

Mr. Williams, who is usually a very careful reporter, makes the following claim.

Nowhere have government officials mobilized the forces to deal swiftly with this social crisis, destroying the lives of tens of thousands. At best they hope to get some paltry compensation by and by.

This seems slanderously untrue. As The Militant often points out, the media is happy to blame President Trump for almost anything. The fact that there has been very little blame about the Harvey recovery (apart from Melania's shoes), indicates that relief efforts have gone as well as can be expected. Mr. Trump notwithstanding, local government gets more of the credit.

Put bluntly, even if I were poor, during a hurricane I'd much rather be living in Houston than in Havana. So much for socialism.

Further Reading

• Tourism in Cuba
• If You Really Care About the Poor
• Viva Poverty!