From Joe Stiglitz

Those who thought that the euro could not survive have been repeatedly proven wrong. But the critics have been right about one thing: unless the structure of the eurozone is reformed, and austerity reversed, Europe will not recover.

The drama in Europe is far from over. One of the EU’s strengths is the vitality of its democracies. But the euro took away from citizens – especially in the crisis countries – any say over their economic destiny. Repeatedly, voters have thrown out incumbents, dissatisfied with the direction of the economy – only to have the new government continue on the same course dictated from Brussels, Frankfurt, and Berlin.

But for how long can this continue? And how will voters react? Throughout Europe, we have seen the alarming growth of extreme nationalist parties, running counter to the Enlightenment values that have made Europe so successful. In some places, large separatist movements are rising.

Now Greece is posing yet another test for Europe. The decline in Greek GDP since 2010 is far worse than that which confronted America during the Great Depression of the 1930s. Youth unemployment is over 50%…

Stay tuned.

The terrible thing about atrocities is that they cause us to lose our judgement just when we need it most. We saw it with 9/11 — but, interestingly, much less with the 7/7 bombings in London. The events in Paris are terrible, but they took place in a context, and it will be the context that decides what happens in the coming months and years.

That’s why it was good to see Adam Shatz’s piece in the LRB today:

Already, anyone who dares to examine the causes of the massacre, the reasons the Kouachi brothers drifted into jihadist violence, is being warned that to do so is to excuse the real culprit, radical Islam: ‘an ideology that has sought to achieve power through terror for decades’, as George Packer wrote on the New Yorker blog. Packer says this is no time to talk about the problem of integration in France, or about the wars the West has waged in the Middle East for the last two decades. Radical Islam, and only radical Islam, is to blame for the atrocities. We are in what the New Yorker critic George Trow called the ‘context of no context’, where jihadi atrocities can be safely laid at the door of an evil ideology, and any talk of pre-emptive war, torture and racism amounts to apologia for atrocities.

We have been here before: the 11 September attacks led many liberal intellectuals to become laptop bombardiers, and to smear those, such as Susan Sontag, who reminded readers that American policies in the Middle East had not won us many friends. The slogan ‘je suis Charlie Hebdo’ expresses a peculiar nostalgia for 11 September, for the moment before the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, before Abu Ghraib and extraordinary rendition, before all the things that did so much to tarnish America’s image and to muddy the battle lines. In saying ‘je suis Charlie Hebdo’, we can feel innocent again. Thanks to the massacre in Paris, we can forget the Senate torture report, and rally in defence of the West in good conscience.

The other interesting fallout of the Charlie Hebdo atrocity is that Sam Huntingdon’s ‘clash of civilisations’ thesis will get a new lease of life.

The great Irish second-row forward, Willie John McBride, was famous for his strategy of “getting your retaliation in first”. Now the head of one of Britain’s security agencies has adapted the idea for modern circumstances: get your excuses in early.

The head of MI5, Andrew Parker, has called for new powers to help fight Islamist extremism, warning of a dangerous imbalance between increasing numbers of terrorist plots against the UK and a drop in the capabilities of intelligence services to snoop on communications.

Parker described the Paris attack as “a terrible reminder of the intentions of those who wish us harm” and said he had spoken to his French counterparts to offer help.

Speaking to an invited audience at MI5 headquarters, he said the threat level to Britain had worsened and Islamist extremist groups in Syria and Iraq were directly trying to orchestrate attacks on the UK. An attack on the UK was “highly likely” and MI5 could not give a guarantee it would be able to stop it, he said.

“Strikingly, working with our partners, we have stopped three UK terrorist plots in recent months alone,” he said. “Deaths would certainly have resulted otherwise. Although we and our partners try our utmost, we know that we cannot hope to stop everything.”

The hidden agenda of the speech is, of course, to ensure that surveillance capabilities of the security and intelligence agencies are not constrained by any namby-pamby concerns about privacy and civil liberties. (The Intelligence and Security Committee of Parliament is currently completing an investigation following the Snowden revelations. Having given evidence to the inquiry, I do not expect much change, but senior securocrats never leave anything to chance.)

Parker’s speech has had the desired impact on UK media — respectful, overly-credulous media coverage, with the BBC Today Programme asserting that we are all “nervous” as a result of what’s happened in Paris. Sir Malcolm Rifkind — the Chairman of the ISC Committee and Parker’s ostensible overseer — added his voice to the chorus, asserting that the two Paris attackers must have been communicating with Yemen; the implication was that these communications ought to have been monitored and intercepted. Which led one to wonder how Rifkind knew this. But his message was clear: don’t mess with our surveillance capabilities.

So far, the fallout from the Charlie Hebdo massacre has followed the standard pattern: terrorist atrocity –> outrage –> massive publicity –> calls for more surveillance and more resources for intelligence agencies. One wonders when it will occur to people that this is a positive feedback loop (aka a vicious circle). Given the statistical probability that there will be more atrocities, and that the security services will miss some of them (as the MI5 chief predicts), we’re heading for a full-blown national security state. In which case Bin Laden will have won, hands down.

Einstein defined insanity as “doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result”. Maybe it’d be worth trying a different approach to these terrorist threats. As Paul Bernal puts it:

If the resources – time, money, energy, intelligence – currently put into mass surveillance systems that are unproven, have huge and damaging side-effect, and are even potentially counterproductive, were, instead, devoted to a more intelligent, targeted approach, it might even be that counterterrorism is more effective. We should be looking for new ways, not going down paths that are costly in both financial and human terms.

The fundamental problem is that terrorism, by its very nature, is hard to deal with. That’s something we have to face up to – and not try to look for silver bullets. No amount of technology, no level of surveillance, will solve that fundamental problem. We shouldn’t pretend that it can.

Right on cue: General Michael Hayden, former head of the NSA, commenting on the Paris killings.

MICHAEL HAYDEN: Let me be a little dark here: there really are no solutions, this is a condition. We can manage the condition better, we can make these attacks somewhat less likely or lethal but without changing the character of our society we can’t make them go away all together. Let me add another thought: About 12 months ago I talked about these massive amounts of metadata the NSA held in storage, that metadata doesn’t look all that scary this morning. And I wouldn’t be surprised if the French services pick up cell phones related to the attack and ask the Americans where have you seen these phones active globally.