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Confessions of a Foreign Policy Expert
I’m a highly credentialed foreign policy expert. Amazing, but true. It would be very easy for me to point to many things I got right and lots of things I know. I’d love to exchange what I know for money or power–or even just to give it away, or frantically push it on people.
But it’s more important for me to focus on what I didn’t see coming and ask myself “Why.” I won’t feel secure in my judgement until I have a better sense of why I missed things. Have I been using the right set of tools to look at things? What kinds of cognitive biases have been at work? Are they, still? Can I correct for them?
If I’m very honest with myself about my own predictive record, I’d say, “Good at trees. I may have missed a few forests, though.” A tree report from Paris. Remember how I saw “demographic decline” in France’s future? I was wrong. And yes, they’re French kids–trust me on that or fly on over and see it for yourself, the Euro probably won’t go lower.
Here’s where I think I went wrong. I think I was probably right in thinking, “You can’t pay for cradle-to-grave welfare without immigration or a baby boom.” I ruled out this idea: “France on the verge of a baby boom.” Wrong.
The left-of-center is telling me that of course, it’s because of all the free health care and childcare. Create incentives for women to have babies and they will. The right-of-center is more inclined to attribute it to a revival of Catholicism. I’m looking at this and thinking, “Whatever it is, I got it wrong. Retract the prediction and figure out why you were wrong.”
Upon realizing I had been wrong, I proceeded to have an existential crisis on the Rue Ebelman–map here–and thought, “Wow. An existential crisis in Paris. First ever.” I came home and forced myself to re-read Being and Nothingness as a punishment.
It was a worse punishment than I thought. Go force yourself to read it and take it seriously. You will see that he is prescribing guilt, not decadence. I missed that. Not like he called it, “Lots of Exits,” either.
So I’ve revised the theory. Begin with the theory that France is in the grip of ravening Sartre Fundamentalists. Take the text literally and seriously, and assume that this is in fact how France reads it, as opposed to the way Americans or anyone in the Anglophone world would.
Even if you pray to Sartre–in fact, especially if you do–he will speak to you clearly: “Admit you were wrong.” After that, you’ll hope for redemption. You won’t get it from him. Guess where you go for that, in France.
I was wrong about French demographics. I’ll have a rough time in this life or the next if I don’t admit that. Now, I’ve got figure out exactly how I got that wrong and come up with a better model. Or I’ll go to Hell.
I don’t quite understand how anyone else gets out of it.
Published in Foreign Policy, General
No way to say for sure, because you’re forbidden by law from recording religion on the birth records, and so there’s no legal way to collect the data. I don’t know what the religion of the babies I’m seeing is, but nothing about them suggests “Muslim”–maybe 1 in 30 women wears a headscarf. The rest look very typically French. But of course I’m just in Paris, it’s impossible to get a sense of the demography of Alsace or Marseilles from here.
Just very struck by it–I’ve been asking everyone. “These babies, it wasn’t like that when I was last here.” Oh yes, proud smile, a bit of maybe-this-maybe-than–and then “the most important thing is that we have more than the Germans.”
If this is the new French strategy, what on earth could be more moving? A war of life, children and economic competition, instead of a war to the death? When I started to see this, I felt more hopeful for our species. If France wants to live, after all of that, I think it says quite good things.
Wikipedia says in 2010 that 9.9% of French births were to parents, neither of whom was an EU citizen. 72.7% were born to two French parents.
This is not a high bar to clear. Germany’s TFR is 1.6. France’s is 1.9. They’re both dying, France is just dying slower.
France will cease to exist as a people, what, 50 years after Germany? I guess that counts as winning.
Demographic decline takes a while. There doesn’t appear to be a “baby boom” going on in France. Data is rather sketchy, but a January 2014 Reuters report said that the birthrate in France was 1.99 in 2013, 2.01 in 2012, and 2.03 in 2010 (it didn’t report 2011).
A Pew study in January 2011 reported that the 2005-2010 birthrate in France was 2.5 for Muslims and 1.8 for non-Muslims. The weighted average of these two would be in the range of 1.9-2.0, which is consistent with more recent years. The Pew study reported that France was 7.5% Muslim in 2010, and projected that it would be 10.3% Muslim in 2030.
By the way, re post # 18 identifying Sweden as stable (along with France and Ireland), the Pew study reported that the 2005-2010 birthrate in Sweden was 2.8 for Muslims and 1.9 for non-Muslims, and projected that the percentage of Muslims in Sweden would increase from 4.9% in 2010 to 9.9% in 2030.
I don’t know if these demographic changes will create problems in France or Sweden. As far as I know, neither France nor Sweden has much of a history of immigrants, and there is little relevant data on the assimilation of Muslims into European countries in modern times.
Overall, though, France remains near replacement fertility, which is much healthier than Germany, Italy and Japan (all around 1.4).
Claire,
You are so persistent. OK OK I’ll address the problem. Babies. France’s social climate is worse than Germany’s or England’s. However, when it comes to baby making she has a secret weapon and that is the Catholic Church. Other than that those Orthodox Jews preparing for Shabbos in the Kosher Market can also hold their own against all comers. As proof of this I place the supporting evidence of…wait…yes you guessed it..Monty Python! An incredible source of Wisdom (If you can keep from falling off your chair laughing.)
And let that be a lesson to you, as my dear old Dad used to say to me.
Regards,
Jim
At one time, Europeans ruled the world because they eliminated their high childhood deathrate through technology first, and their population exploded outward. Now, they are first to incorporate technologies to reduce the number of babies. It’s a race to see who gets to the bottom last.
“It has nothing to do with your existential crisis. But it is a great story none the less….”
Ekosj
‘I can sort of see some French academic thinking, “Make love as war.”
Claire
” the driving factor is probably nationalism, homogeneity, and outright chauvinism. “
Sabrdance
Great article and wonderful commentary by all. It reminds me of attending conferences with an international crowd, official biz conducted in English except when a Frenchie spoke. Then, heavy sigh, everyone reaching for the headphones, settling them on head, turning dial to right channel to hear the translator. Sabrdance offers most plausible explanation for my money, God love the darlings. The Euro project has tried to stamp out all nationalism, to include the healthy kind. Which results in the unhealthy kind having oxygen. Alors!
That’s one thing it is not. The data is challenging to interpret, but we have a ton of it. Don’t let Reuters handle your data for you–alas, they’re a bit sloppy.
The French collect these statistics with astonishing meticulousness. They’re not, by law, allowed to collect certain kinds. Anyone born in France is “a French baby.” Not “some immigrant’s baby.” Not a morally absurd law, by the way–at all. And France does not count “Christian, Atheist, Jewish, and Muslim” babies. It counts “babies.” Not morally absurd either.
And I can get all of the data, broken down by neighborhood, and probably even by hospital. It exists, and so do tons of statisticians here who are just dying to talk to me about their methodology. They’ve been waiting all their lives to be asked. Then, mapping it against a lot of other data they’re legally allowed to collect, I may be able to give you B+ educated guess. Right know I have “B- guess.” Last time, I flunked.
I bet I can improve on this one. If I work at it. Hard. No shortcuts, though. This is and should be “hard work,” not journalism. But if you want “journalism,” take it from me–“They’re having lots of babies and who knows? They may keep it basically at replacement rate or above. In which case Germany’s hosed–short-term, at least. (Next 50 years being “short-term.”) That thrills everyone in France, deep down. And hey, who can argue with that? That’s the most wholesome sublimation of murderous aggression imaginable. ”
But let’s keep my judgement, my opinions, and anything like journalism out of it. I’ll see what I can do on “data.”
Hold on here. “Having babies” is not the unhealthy kind of nationalism.
Babies? You have to be further down the cynicism tree than I’ll ever be able to go to look at a baby and think, “A baby. How sinister. The motive behind this impulse to create new life is unhealthy.” There might be nationalism involved.
Come on. “A sinister bunch of moms cooing nationalistically over their sinister babies and watching them play in a sinister, nationalistic way at the park?”
I’m never going to look at babies that way. Or kittens.
I’d be very interested to see the data. The part that I think is “sketchy” is exactly what you noted — there is little data on the breakdown between Muslim and non-Muslim births in France, which is the key issue The fact that the French government doesn’t even keep these statistics comes across as a combination of political correctness and willful blindness, but that’s an American impression which might not apply at all in France.
I agree that France, overall, has a healthy birthrate and there is no reason to expect overall demographic decline. There are reasons to expect demographic decline for the ethnic French, and a substantial increase in the French Muslim population, which may or may not ultimately present a problem.
What is your overall impression of the assimilation of Muslims in France?
That depends on what messages they inculcate into their growing children. At the baby stage, they may be fine, but as an Amish woman once told my mother, “Babies don’t keep.” At some point they grow up. And what will you have in twenty years?
Claire,
We must have a crash program. We need more machine’s that go “ping” immediately!!!
Regards,
Jim
Somewhere, Pierre-Simon Laplace is smiling.
One word: Lebensborn.
Claire – I haven’t yet finished the read, however having reached this gem:
“Upon realizing I had been wrong, I proceeded to have an existential crisis on the Rue Ebelman–map here–and thought, “Wow. An existential crisis in Paris. First ever.” I came home and forced myself to re-read Being and Nothingness as a punishment.”
I thought I would choke on my coffee!
Your wonderful reporting on a variety of subjects motivates me to provide continued comfort in the form of something one of my college professors told me. My degree is in Meteorology; a discipline that’s the mother lode of imperfect predictions. He said that if anyone ever gives you a hard time about your forecasts just remind them that we’re not as bad as economists!
Yes, and a highly significant one, too. I’ve never thought it an accident that pro-natal policies are highly taboo in Germany and Italy, where the very mention of it invites charges of you know, “that.” And the birth rate has collapsed in both countries.
But: Opportunity to sell a book. Albeit with a retraction on French demographics.
Well what if the immigrant population is having all the kids but not wanting them to assimilate, or even the kids, as they grow older, are influenced NOT to assimilate? So therefore France could be having more than Germany but it wouldn’t necessarily be a good thing for France.
In Germany, if I am not mistaken, the largest immigrant population there is from Turkey. They have more kids than Germans do. It was only a few years ago that Erdogon, on a visit there, told the Turkish-Germans to NOT assimilate. To turn Germany Turkish basically. It’s not car-bombs or Jihad ISIL style that Europe has to worry about. It’s waking up one day realizing that the people in the streets and in the governments reject Western Civilization out right and are implementing something completely different through the vote.
I’m ruling out nothing entirely this time without doing the work on the data first and then drawing the conclusions. Data first, then conclusions. But there are huge differences between France and Germany that make it entirely plausible to imagine things would be different.
First, German law focused for generations on the idea that immigrants were “guest workers” who would go home, not “They’re Germans.” French law started from a different assumption. More like, “This is France. Why is south trying to secede?” (To view French colonial history about as crudely as possible, think of France as “the North, after Lincoln said, ‘to hell with the South, this is too hard. Let the Union fail.” Don’t forget that there was a coup attempt on DeGaulle–losing the South was not a popular decision.)
Turkish immigrants never had much to do with Germany in the first place. (Apart from the Empire’s last, fatal decision to throw in its lot with the Axis and that whole Drang nach Osten business, some physical reminders of which you can still see in Turkey in the form, for example, of the Haydarpasha train station.)
Not that many Turkish immigrants in France–and most I’ve met haven’t been quite so much Turkish as “Well, yes, we’re Turkish, but not really Turkish, and we’re not ‘mountain Turks,’ either–come on. We think we’re Kurdish, but you know how that is–and we came here to get away from that [redacted]. We find your interest in talking about Turkish politics kind of … well, never seen that in an American before, but you don’t seem like MiT, just a very strange American. Seems you understand Turkish. Yeah, okay, we understand it, too. Fine, okay, it’s our first language, but we still grew up in Mardin, right? Okay, if you know us that well, you know why we’re more interested in the football game than talking about the news from Turkey.”
(After that, they’re glued to the television screen: Toulouse v. Marseille, but sometimes the lousy, half-edible thing they’re selling as “kebab” is a bit better than usual, because anyone who speaks some Turkish–the language they like to think isn’t in fact their native language–and knows enough about “home” to know “The polite thing to do now is pretend you’re as into that game as they really are, keep your views about Apo to yourself, and watch the game”–well, she gets something more like real food. She might know the difference.)
They’re not like most French immigrants, though. Most French immigrants started out as “so French we got a bit confused and tried to keep them French–in a way we don’t really like to talk about much, now,” as opposed to “Gastarbeiter.” Otherwise known as “Even Turks admit there are Kurds, now, but they’re still Turks, or okay, they’re Kurds, or Alevis, and by the third generation? Could well be Germans, by that point.”
But main thing is that the babies I’m seeing look, not to put too fine a point on it, like French babies whose grandparents, at least, were born in what is now the smaller version of France. This is not a euphemism for “white”–I mean, the French were just not “white” to begin with, for that you want the Swedes–but like maybe they had a distant ancestor who was a Gaul (or an Italian, but who’s counting).
But as you’ll quickly be reminded here if you ask–with a bit of indignation–“The ‘smaller version of France’ is not as small as you think.” Don’t forget the DOM-TOM is for sure still France. Places like French Guiana are not “formerly France.” They’re France. Tell them otherwise and they’ll look at you as you’d look at me if I said, “Well come on. Hawaii’s not really American.” They’re part of the European Union. With two deputies in the National Assembly and two senators in France. (Total fertility rate there in 2012 was 3.50–disappointingly low, from the French perspective, down from a great 3.57 in 2008. But no cause for despair. Definitely above anything the Germans managed to do recently, non?)
Even in Germany and Austria, where there was a ton of Turkish immigration, every time Erdogan goes over there to say, “You should not assimilate,” you get “The ones who love him showing up to hear him” and “the ones who came there to get the hell away from Turkey–especially the Alevis–protesting him.” The very beleaguered cops often have to separate them with a firehose afterward. Sometimes those cops notice quite an important difference among the excitable people they’re hosing down. Other times they’ve had enough and start ranting about “immigrants.”