The greatest tragedy of the Israeli-Palestinian gridlock, aside from the many lives lost, is that the parameters of any future agreement are already known to all sides involved. These are the common parameters of then-Prime Minister Ehud Barak’s proposal at Camp David II in 2000, the Clinton Parameters of December of that year, and former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s initiative in 2008.

Broadly speaking, Israel would be required to forfeit the dream of a Greater Israel, to agree to the two-state solution based on the 1967 borders with land swaps, and to accept some Palestinian presence in the Arab neighborhoods of East Jerusalem and in the Holy Basin. The Palestinians would have to agree to an end of conflict and an end of claims, a solution for the Palestinian refugee problem only within the borders of a future Palestinian state (not Israel), and limitations on their sovereignty due to security concerns. Unfortunately, national narratives and aspirations, religious beliefs, perceptions of historic justice, and the practical lessons each side learned in the recent past have all prevented the leaders of both sides from convincing their publics of the need for such concessions—which are necessary for an agreement.

Plans A and B

Reaching an agreement is harder today than it was in either 2000 or 2008. Even the moderates among the Palestinians are unwilling to concede a right of return, to acknowledge an “end of conflict and end of claims,” to recognize Israel as a Jewish state, or to allow basic security arrangements that will ease Israel’s justified concerns. It appears that in 2016, the Palestinians do not view a two-state solution, along the Clinton Parameters, as a preferred outcome. Instead, their discourse is rooted in a "return of rights" in historic Palestine as a whole (including Israel), in accordance with both the Hamas and Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) charters. Indeed, the Palestinian positions have not budged much since Camp David II in 2000.

Photo courtesy of REUTERS/Carlo Allegri

Instead, the Palestinians have an attractive (in their view) “Plan B,” which is to get the Israeli concessions in international decisions, without having to make their own concessions—all while denouncing Israel and delegitimizing it in international forums. Since 2008, there are strong indications that the international route was actually the Palestinian "Plan A"—hence their intransigence in entering the talks and in the negotiations themselves. 

A sustainable—but undesirable—status quo

The continuation of the status quo—which appears so problematic to many Israelis and Americans—represents for the Palestinians a favorable strategic avenue that would lead, eventually, to an Arab-majority, one-state outcome. When Americans, Europeans, and even elements of the Israeli public repeatedly warn that Israel will be “lost” if it allows the status quo to persist, it does not encourage Palestinian moderation or willingness to compromise. Instead, it strengthens the underlying Palestinian assumption that a failure of negotiations is a reasonable option from their perspective. For the Palestinian leadership, all paths lead to the same destination: either Israel accepts their conditions (which, through flooding Israel with refugees, will lead to the demise of Israel as a Jewish state) or the status quo persists and Israel is supposedly lost.

Photo courtesy of REUTERS/Amir Cohen

Moreover, any demand made of Israel that it alter the status quo must convince the Israelis that their situation will not deteriorate further. The days of the Second Intifada—a terror campaign initiated by Yasser Arafat after the failure of Camp David with dozens of dead each month—are still etched in the collective Israeli memory. Similarly, Israelis are unwilling to accept a West Bank that would be a base for rocket launching, tunnels, and a continuation of terrorism against Israel, as is Gaza, which Israel fully evacuated. Only a move that would provide Israel security and full legitimacy to act against future Palestinian terrorism will create public support in Israel to move toward a two-state solution. 

Yet, while the status quo is much more sustainable than the conventional wisdom claims—for reasons beyond the scope of this post—it is certainly not desirable, since it furthers Israel from its goal of a Jewish, democratic, safe, and just state of Israel. It is therefore important that Israel have a viable alternative plan that is not merely a continuation of the status quo. 

Four paths for an Israeli alternative

There are more than two options, muddling through in the status quo or accepting Palestinian demands in full. If Israelis cannot get peace in terms that secure an end of conflict, security, and no "right of return," we must look for another option—an Israeli Plan B. 

An Israeli Plan B would consist of a proactive effort to formulate the future borders of the state of Israel in one of four paths in order of preference: 1) a negotiation process resulting in a final status agreement, 2) a regional agreement, 3) an interim bilateral agreement, or 4) in the case a negotiated agreement cannot be realized, an independent Israeli determination of its own borders. 

First, Israel should present an initiative for a final agreement with the Palestinians, based on the Clinton Parameters: generous borders for a future Palestinian state, demilitarized Palestinian state and no compromises on Israeli security, a commitment to an end of conflict and end of claims, and a Palestinian relinquishment of implementing a “right of return.” This should be followed by a comprehensive effort to reach an agreement on the basis of the Israeli proposal. Such a move should be led by the leadership on both sides in order to foster genuine relations based on trust. 

Photo courtesy of REUTERS/Asmaa Waguih

Should the (preferable) bilateral track fail, Israel should move to a regional track, including the moderate Arab states—led by Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan—in an effort to reach a final status agreement. This effort could be grounded in an updated version of the Arab Peace Initiative—as a starting point rather than a take-it-or-leave-it proposition. Such a plan should be decoupled from the issue of the Golan Heights (given the situation in Syria today and in the foreseeable future) and should not be conditional on a solution to the refugee problem according to U.N. Security Council Resolution 194 from 1949. 

The pragmatic Arab states have the capacity to add much-needed value to the table in order to move the negotiations beyond a zero-sum game on the territorial, financial, security, and ideological levels. However, if the moderate Arab states are unwilling or unable to contribute, Israel can aim to secure interim agreements with the Palestinians. Interim agreements would necessitate abandoning the principle of “nothing is agreed until everything is agreed” and shifting the paradigm to a principle of gradual implementation of any area of agreement, deferring talks on more contentious subjects to a later time. 

Only if all these paths fail, Israel should embark on a long-term independent strategy for shaping its borders. This strategy should be innovative and creative, removing the effective veto Palestinians have through negotiations on Israel future. It would require as much coordination as possible with the United States and the international community. It would leave open the option for a return to the negotiating table and to a negotiated settlement, and reinforces the agreed two-state solution paradigm. Likewise, this route undermines and prevents the most problematic outcomes, namely the continuation of the status quo or a final agreement without an end of conflict and security arrangements, and the flooding of Israel with refugees. 

An independent route suffers from a bad reputation within Israeli society, as a consequence of the perceived failure of the unilateral withdrawal from Gaza in 2005. As discussed below however, the Gaza precedent can provide valuable lessons for the West Bank that can mitigate the potential pitfalls of such a move. 

Four lessons from the disengagement plan

Any independent move with unilateral elements suffers from strong negative connotations among Israelis because of the perceived failure of the "disengagement" from Gaza in 2005, though I know of no one in Israel who wants to regain control over the 1.7 million Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. Still, while then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon was right to initiate the disengagement plan, it was riddled with strategic errors. Four major miscalculations also offer lessons for a future independent move:

1. The plan was initiated without securing a strong internal Israeli or international backing. Israel must show that it is ready for substantial concessions in certain areas in order to be able to put forward significant demands in others. Therefore, the first move in a future plan should begin with a genuine and generous peace proposal to the Palestinians. If the Palestinians again show intransigence, and if Israel demonstrates a willingness to accept compromise, then there will be a significantly increased likelihood for international acceptance of independent Israeli measures to work toward building a two-state reality.
2. The Israelis left an open border between the Gaza Strip and Sinai, evacuating the “Philadelphi line” on the Gaza's Strips border with Egypt, which Hamas subsequently used to rearm with smuggled weapons from Iran and Libya. This mistake must not be repeated in the West Bank, and so the Jordan Valley—that separates the West Bank from Jordan—must stay under Israeli control, preventing arms smuggling into the West Bank. These moves therefore offer a clear separation between ending the occupation and expanding Palestinian self-rule on the one hand, and taking decisive action to prevent the buildup of terrorism in the West Bank, on the other.
3. Sharon ordered the complete evacuation of all of the Gaza Strip in order to gain world recognition of an end of the occupation there. In reality, it did not achieve this outcome and left Israel without any bargaining chips for future negotiations. A future Israeli redeployment should only be to the security barrier, or close to it, leaving Israel in possession of the main settlement blocs and other strategic areas, some of which could be used as future bargaining chips.
4. There was a complete lack of communication between the Israeli leadership and the evicted Israelis, as well as the lack of planning that botched their resettlement to this day. In order for any future plan to succeed, there is a need for an open and serious conversation within Israeli society—including through elections or a referendum—that would gradually build the societal trust needed for such a move. 

Photo courtesy of REUTERS/Amir Cohen

So, an independent Israeli strategy would therefore involve:

• Israel’s willingness to hand over 80 to 85 percent of the West Bank—a willingness demonstrated by undertaking concrete steps on the ground. Israel would need to initiate further redeployments from the West Bank not including the Jordan Valley and East Jerusalem;
• The transfer of Area B and much of Area C to a full Palestinian responsibility;
• The full completion of the Security Barrier in areas that are currently lacking in order to provide Israel with a contiguous and defensible border;
• A full cessation of Israeli settlement construction beyond the declared lines;
• A plan, preferably under an agreement, to resettle Israelis living east of these lines into Israel-proper, preferably to the Galilee, the Negev, and the main settlements blocs; and 
• The responsibility for the security of Israel remaining in the hands of the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) and the proper Israeli authorities. Israel must preserve its capacity to conduct preventive action, hot pursuit, border control, and air security. However, the IDF must try to minimize such operations in the evacuated territories.

Drawbacks of an independent strategy

The proposed independent course of action is not ideal, and has elements that will be difficult to implement. Its main weaknesses are:

• The difficulty of formulating a political plan that would be all-inclusive and that could feasibly garner wide acceptance within Israeli society. Today, the right wing in Israel would view such a plan as a capitulation to the Palestinians, a forfeiture of parts of the Land of Israel, and a withdrawal from territory without gaining anything in return. The left would also be appalled from the lack of agreement with the Palestinians. The Israeli public at large does not recognize the need to change the status quo.
• The widespread unpopularity of evacuating Israelis from the settlements. Since the 2005 Disengagement Plan, no Israeli government has dared to directly address this topic. Israel’s leadership would need to oversee prolonged financial, social, and political preparations for such a strategy. Likewise, it would require coordination with the settler leadership to ensure the maximum possible cooperation from the settler population.
• Obtaining international legitimacy—something that should not be taken for granted. Israel can mobilize the international community only if it shows that this course preserves the feasibility of a two-state solution. It must work to counter the perception in the international community that this two-state framework is rapidly becoming irrelevant. Halting settlement construction would provide a much-needed signal from Israel showing its sincere desire to end the conflict, and would promote international efforts to build a future Palestinian state.
• The inherent tension between Israel’s need to ensure its future security and its desire to provide the Palestinians with the essential tools for self-government. Balancing these two requirements would continue to pose major challenges for the future.

Photo courtesy of REUTERS/Amir Cohen

Try, try, try again

This independent strategy would allow Israel to pursue a solution from a point of strength, rather than being dictated by outside forces or waves of terror. It represents a long-term, paradigm-changing option which would preserve the two-state solution while removing several of the most serious obstacles to such a solution. 

Zionism always yearned for a future that has seemed impossible at times. Generations of people have strived to achieve it, often overcoming great obstacles amid harsh realities. In our generation, we too can succeed.

At the very heart of the American idea is the notion that, unlike in other places, we can start from nothing and through hard work have everything. That nothing we can imagine is beyond our reach. That we will pull up stakes, go anywhere, do anything to make our dreams come true. But what if that's just a myth? What if the truth is something very different? What if we are…stuck?

I. What does it mean to be an American?

Full disclosure: I'm British. Partial defense: I was born on the Fourth of July. I also have made my home here, because I want my teenage sons to feel more American. What does that mean? I don't just mean waving flags and watching football and drinking bad beer. (Okay, yes, the beer is excellent now; otherwise, it would have been a harder migration.) I'm talking about the essence of Americanism. It is a question on which much ink—and blood—has been spent. But I think it can be answered very simply: To be American is to be free to make something of yourself. An everyday phrase that's used to admire another ("She's really made something of herself") or as a proud boast ("I'm a self-made man!"), it also expresses a theological truth. The most important American-manufactured products are Americans themselves. The spirit of self-creation offers a strong and inspiring contrast with English identity, which is based on social class. In my old country, people are supposed to know their place. British people, still constitutionally subjects of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth, can say things like "Oh, no, that's not for people like me." Infuriating.

Americans do not know their place in society; they make their place. American social structures and hierarchies are open, fluid, and dynamic. Mobility, not nobility. Or at least that's the theory. Here's President Obama, in his second inaugural address: "We are true to our creed when a little girl born into the bleakest poverty knows that she has the same chance to succeed as anybody else because she is an American; she is free, and she is equal, not just in the eyes of God but also in our own."

Politicians of the left in Europe would lament the existence of bleak poverty. Obama instead attacks the idea that a child born to poor parents will inherit their status. "The same chance to succeed as anybody else because she is an American…."

Americanism is a unique and powerful cocktail, blending radical egalitarianism (born equal) with fierce individualism (it's up to you): equal parts Thomas Paine and Horatio Alger. Egalitarian individualism is in America's DNA. In his original draft of the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson wrote that "men are created equal and independent," a sentiment that remained even though the last two words were ultimately cut. It was a declaration not only of national independence but also of a nation of independents.

The problem lately is not the American Dream in the abstract. It is the growing failure to realize it. Two necessary ingredients of Americanism—meritocracy and momentum—are now sorely lacking.

America is stuck.

Almost everywhere you look—at class structures, Congress, the economy, race gaps, residential mobility, even the roads—progress is slowing. Gridlock has already become a useful term for political inactivity in Washington, D. C. But it goes much deeper than that. American society itself has become stuck, with weak circulation and mobility across class lines. The economy has lost its postwar dynamism. Racial gaps, illuminated by the burning of churches and urban unrest, stubbornly persist.

In a nation where progress was once unquestioned, stasis threatens. Many Americans I talk to sense that things just aren't moving the way they once were. They are right. Right now this prevailing feeling of stuckness, of limited possibilities and uncertain futures, is fueling a growing contempt for institutions, from the banks and Congress to the media and big business, and a wave of antipolitics on both left and right. It is an impotent anger that has yet to take coherent shape. But even if the American people don't know what to do about it, they know that something is profoundly wrong.

II. How stuck are we?

Let's start with the most important symptom: a lack of social mobility. For all the boasts of meritocracy—only in America!—Americans born at the bottom of the ladder are in fact now less likely to rise to the top than those situated similarly in most other nations, and only half as likely as their Canadian counterparts. The proportion of children born on the bottom rung of the ladder who rise to the top as adults in the U.S. is 7.5 percent—lower than in the U.K. (9 percent), Denmark (11.7), and Canada (13.5). Horatio Alger has a funny Canadian accent now.

It is not just poverty that is inherited. Affluent Americans are solidifying their own status and passing it on to their children more than the affluent in other nations and more than they did in the past. Boys born in 1948 to a high-earning father (in the top quarter of wage distribution) had a 33 percent chance of becoming a top earner themselves; for those born in 1980, the chance of staying at the top rose sharply to 44 percent, according to calculations by Manhattan Institute economist Scott Winship. The sons of fathers with really high earnings—in the top 5 percent—are much less likely to tumble down the ladder in the U. S. than in Canada (44 percent versus 59 percent). A "glass floor" prevents even the least talented offspring of the affluent from falling. There is a blockage in the circulation of the American elite as well, a system-wide hardening of the arteries.

Exhibit A in the case against the American political elites: the U. S. tax code. To call it Byzantine is an insult to medieval Roman administrative prowess. There is one good reason for this complexity: The American tax system is a major instrument of social policy, especially in terms of tax credits to lower-income families, health-care subsidies, incentives for retirement savings, and so on. But there are plenty of bad reasons, too—above all, the billions of dollars' worth of breaks and exceptions resulting from lobbying efforts by the very people the tax system favors.

So fragile is the American political ego that we can't go five minutes without congratulating ourselves on the greatness of our system, yet policy choices exacerbate stuckness.

The American system is also a weak reed when it comes to redistribution. You will have read and heard many times that the United States is one of the most unequal nations in the world. That is true, but only after the impact of taxes and benefits is taken into account. What economists call "market inequality," which exists before any government intervention at all, is much lower—in fact it's about the same as in Germany and France. There is a lot going on under the hood here, but the key point is clear enough: America is unequal because American policy moves less money from rich to poor. Inequality is not fate or an act of nature. Inequality is a choice.

These are facts that should shock America into action. For a nation organized principally around the ideas of opportunity and openness, social stickiness of this order amounts to an existential threat. Although political leaders declare their dedication to openness, the hard issues raised by social inertia are receiving insufficient attention in terms of actual policy solutions. Most American politicians remain cheerleaders for the American Dream, merely offering loud encouragement from the sidelines, as if that were their role. So fragile is the American political ego that we can't go five minutes without congratulating ourselves on the greatness of our system, yet policy choices exacerbate stuckness and ensure decline.

In Britain (where stickiness has historically been an accepted social condition), by contrast, the issues of social mobility and class stickiness have risen to the top of the political and policy agenda. In the previous U.K. government (in which I served as director of strategy to Nick Clegg, the deputy prime minister), we devoted whole Cabinet meetings to the problems of intergenerational mobility and the development of a new national strategy. (One result has been a dramatic expansion in pre-K education and care: Every 3- and 4-year-old will soon be entitled to 30 hours a week for free.) Many of the Cabinet members were schooled at the nation's finest private high schools. A few had hereditary titles. But they pored over data and argued over remedies—posh people worrying over intergenerational income quintiles.

Why is social mobility a hotter topic in the old country? Here is my theory: Brits are acutely aware that they live in a class-divided society. Cues and clues of accent, dress, education, and comportment are constantly calibrated. But this awareness increases political pressure to reduce these divisions. In America, by contrast, the myth of classlessness stands in the way of progress. The everyday folksiness of Americans—which, to be clear, I love—serves as a social camouflage for deep economic inequality. Americans tell themselves and one another that they live in a classless land of open opportunity. But it is starting to ring hollow, isn't it?

III. For black Americans, claims of equal opportunity have, of course, been false from the founding.

They remain false today. The chances of being stuck in poverty are far, far greater for black kids. Half of those born on the bottom rung of the income ladder (the bottom fifth) will stay there as adults. Perhaps even more disturbing, seven out of ten black kids raised in middle-income homes (i.e., the middle fifth) will end up lower down as adults. A boy who grows up in Baltimore will earn 28 percent less simply because he grew up in Baltimore: In other words, this supersedes all other factors. Sixty-six percent of black children live in America's poorest neighborhoods, compared with six percent of white children.

Recent events have shone a light on the black experience in dozens of U. S. cities.

Behind the riots and the rage, the statistics tell a simple, damning story. Progress toward equality for black Americans has essentially halted. The average black family has an income that is 59 percent of the average white family's, down from 65 percent in 2000. In the job market, race gaps are immobile, too. In the 1950s, black Americans were twice as likely to be unemployed as whites. And today? Still twice as likely.

From heeding the call "Go west, young man" to loading up the U-Haul in search of a better job, the instinctive restlessness of America has always matched skills to work, people to opportunities, labor to capital.

Race gaps in wealth are perhaps the most striking of all. The average white household is now thirteen times wealthier than the average black one. This is the widest gap in a quarter of a century. The recession hit families of all races, but it resulted in a wealth wipeout for black families. In 2007, the average black family had a net worth of $19,200, almost entirely in housing stock, typically at the cheap, fragile end of the market. By 2010, this had fallen to $16,600. By 2013—by which point white wealth levels had started to recover—it was down to $11,000. In national economic terms, black wealth is now essentially nonexistent.

Half a century after the passing of the Civil Rights Act, the arc of history is no longer bending toward justice. A few years ago, it was reasonable to hope that changing attitudes, increasing education, and a growing economy would surely, if slowly, bring black America and white America closer together. No longer. America is stuck.

IV. The economy is also getting stuck.

Labor productivity growth, measured as growth in output per hour, has averaged 1.6 percent since 1973. Male earning power is flatlining. In 2014, the median full-time male wage was $50,000, down from $53,000 in 1973 (in the dollar equivalent of 2014). Capital is being hoarded rather than invested in the businesses of the future. U. S. corporations have almost $1.5 trillion sitting on their balance sheets, and many are busily buying up their own stock. But capital expenditure lags, hindering the economic recovery.

New-business creation and entrepreneurial activity are declining, too. As economist Robert Litan has shown, the proportion of "baby businesses" (firms less than a year old) has almost halved since the late 1970s, decreasing from 15 percent to 8 percent—the hallmark of "a steady, secular decline in business dynamism." It is significant that this downward trend set in long before the Great Recession hit. There is less movement between jobs as well, another symptom of declining economic vigor.

Americans are settling behind their desks—and also into their neighborhoods. The proportion of American adults moving house each year has decreased by almost half since the postwar years, to around 12 percent. Long-distance moves across state lines have as well. This is partly due to technological advances, which have weakened the link between location and job prospects, and partly to the growth of economic diversity in cities; there are few "one industry" towns today. But it is also due to a less vibrant housing market, slower rates of new business creation, and a lessening in Americans' appetite for disruption, change, and risk.

This geographic settling is at odds with historic American geographic mobility. From heeding the call "Go west, young man" to loading up the U-Haul in search of a better job, the instinctive restlessness of America has always matched skills to work, people to opportunities, labor to capital. Rather than waiting for help from the government, or for the economic tide to turn back in their favor, millions of Americans changed their life prospects by changing their address. Now they are more likely to stay put and wait. Others, especially black Americans, are unable to escape the poor neighborhoods of their childhood. They are, as the title of an influential book by sociologist Patrick Sharkey puts it, Stuck in Place.

There are everyday symptoms of stuckness, too. Take transport. In 2014, Americans collectively spent almost seven billion hours stuck motionless in traffic—that's a couple days each. The roads get more jammed every year. But money for infrastructure improvements is stuck in a failing road fund, and the railophobia of politicians hampers investment in public transport.

Whose job is it to do something about this? The most visible symptom of our disease is the glue slowly hardening in the machinery of national government. The last two Congresses have been the least productive in history by almost any measure chosen, just when we need them to be the most productive. The U. S. political system, with its strong separation among competing centers of power, relies on a spirit of cross-party compromise and trust in order to work. Good luck there.

V. So what is to be done?

As with anything, the first step is to admit the problem. Americans have to stop convincing themselves they live in a society of opportunity. It is a painful admission, of course, especially for the most successful. The most fervent believers in meritocracy are naturally those who have enjoyed success. It is hard to acknowledge the role of good fortune, including the lottery of birth, when describing your own path to greatness.

There is a general reckoning needed. In the golden years following World War II, the economy grew at 4 percent per annum and wages surged. Wealth accumulated. The federal government, at the zenith of its powers, built interstates and the welfare system, sent GIs to college and men to the moon. But here's the thing: Those days are gone, and they're not coming back. Opportunity and growth will no longer be delivered, almost automatically, by a buoyant and largely unchallenged economy. Now it will take work.

The future success of the American idea must now be intentional.

Entrepreneurial, mobile, aspirational: New Americans are true Americans. We need a lot more of them.

There are plenty of ideas for reform that simply require will and a functioning political system. At the heart of them is the determination to think big again and to vigorously engage in public investment. And we need to put money into future generations like our lives depended on it, because they do: Access to affordable, effective contraception dramatically cuts rates of unplanned pregnancy and gives kids a better start in life. Done well, pre-K education closes learning gaps and prepares children for school. More generous income benefits stabilize homes and help kids. Reading programs for new parents improve literacy levels. Strong school principals attract good teachers and raise standards. College coaches help get nontraditional students to and through college. And so on. We are not lacking ideas. We are lacking a necessary sense of political urgency. We are stuck.

But we can move again if we choose.

In addition to a rejuvenation of policy in all these fields, there are two big shifts required for an American twenty-first-century renaissance: becoming open to more immigration and shifting power from Washington to the cities.

VI. America needs another wave of immigration.

This is in part just basic math: We need more young workers to fund the old age of the baby boomers. But there is more to it than that. Immigrants also provide a shot in the arm to American vitality itself. Always have, always will. Immigrants are now twice as likely to start a new business as native-born Americans. Rates of entrepreneurialism are declining among natives but rising among immigrants.

Immigrant children show extraordinary upward-mobility rates, shooting up the income-distribution ladder like rockets, yet by the third or fourth generation, the rates go down, reflecting indigenous norms. Among children born in Los Angeles to poorly educated Chinese immigrants, for example, an astonishing 70 percent complete a four-year-college degree. As the work of my Brookings colleague William Frey shows, immigrants are migrants within the U. S., too, moving on from traditional immigrant cities—New York, Los Angeles—to other towns and cities in search of a better future. Entrepreneurial, mobile, aspirational: New Americans are true Americans. We need a lot more of them.

This makes a mockery of our contemporary political "debates" about immigration reform, which have become intertwined with race and racism. Some Republicans tap directly into white fears of an America growing steadily browner. More than four in ten white seniors say that a growing population of immigrants is a "change for the worse"; half of white boomers believe immigration is "a threat to traditional American customs and values." But immigration delves deeper into the question of American identity than it does even issues of race. Immigrants generate more dynamism and aspiration, but they are also unsettling and challenging. Where this debate ends will therefore tell us a great deal about the trajectory of the nation. An America that closes its doors will be an America that has chosen to settle rather than grow, that has allowed security to trump dynamism.

VII. The second big shift needed to get America unstuck is a revival of city and state governance.

Since the American Dream is part of the national identity, it seems natural to look to the national government to help make it a reality. But cities are now where the American Dream will live or die. America's hundred biggest metros are home to 67 percent of the nation's population and 75 percent of its economy. Americans love the iconography of the small town, even at the movies—but they watch those movies in big cities.

Powerful mayors in those cities have greater room for maneuvering and making an impact than the average U. S. senator. Even smaller cities and towns can be strongly influenced by their mayor.

There are choices to be made. Class divisions are hardening. Upward mobility has a very weak pulse. Race gaps are widening.

The new federalism in part is being born of necessity. National politics is in ruins, and national institutions are weakened by years of short-termism and partisanship. Power, finding a vacuum in D. C., is diffusive. But it may also be that many of the big domestic-policy challenges will be better answered at a subnational level, because that is where many of the levers of change are to be found: education, family planning, housing, desegregation, job creation, transport, and training. Amid the furor over Common Core and federal standards, it is important to remember that for every hundred dollars spent on education, just nine come from the federal government.

We may be witnessing the end of many decades of national-government dominance in domestic policy-making (the New Deal, Social Security, Medicare, welfare reform, Obamacare). The Affordable Care Act is important in itself, but it may also come to have a place in history as the legislative bookend to a long period of national-policy virtuosity.

The case for the new federalism need not be overstated. There will still be plenty of problems for the national government to fix, including, among the most urgent, infrastructure and nuclear waste. The main tools of macroeconomic policy will remain the Federal Reserve and the federal tax code. But the twentieth-century model of big federal social-policy reforms is in decline. Mayors and governors are starting to notice, and because they don't have the luxury of being stuck, they are forced to be entrepreneurs of a new politics simply to survive.

VIII. It is possible for America to recover its earlier dynamism, but it won't be easy.

The big question for Americans is: Do you really want to? Societies, like people, age. They might also settle down, lose some dynamism, trade a little less openness for a little more security, get a bit stuck in their ways. Many of the settled nations of old Europe have largely come to terms with their middle age. They are wary of immigration but enthusiastic about generous welfare systems and income redistribution. Less dynamism, maybe, but more security in exchange.

America, it seems to me, is not made to be a settled society. Such a notion runs counter to the story we tell ourselves about who we are. (That's right, we. We've all come from somewhere else, haven't we? I just got here a bit more recently.) But over time, our narratives become myths, insulating us from the truth. For we are surely stuck, if not settled. And so America needs to decide one way or the other. There are choices to be made. Class divisions are hardening. Upward mobility has a very weak pulse. Race gaps are widening. The worst of all worlds threatens: a European class structure without European welfare systems to dull the pain.

Americans tell themselves and the world that theirs is a society in which each and all can rise, an inspiring contrast to the hereditary cultures from which it sprang. It's one of the reasons I'm here. But have I arrived to raise my children here just in time to be stuck, too? Or will America be America again?

Editor's note: This piece originally appeared in Esquire.

Editors’ Note: President Obama came into office promising to turn the page on a chapter of American history defined by two wars in the greater Middle East, writes Tamara Wittes. Ironically, however, his fixation on closing one chapter led him to decisions that opened a new one that reads very similarly. This post originally appeared on The Atlantic.

President Obama came into office promising to turn the page on a chapter of American history defined by two wars in the greater Middle East. His consistency in delivering on that promise is admirable, as is the focus with which he has learned from and sought to avoid his predecessor’s mistakes regarding the use of American force abroad.

Ironically, however, Obama’s fixation on closing one chapter led him to decisions that opened a new one that reads very similarly. This new war on ISIS—Obama’s war—which began in August 2014, can be traced to two errors of judgment. Jeffrey Goldberg’s article on “The Obama Doctrine” reveals that these errors were driven by the president's determination to keep his promises to the American people and to avoid the mistakes of the past.

The first mistake was Obama’s retreat from Iraq—the withdrawal not just of U.S. forces, but even more so of diplomatic energy and leverage, which, successfully deployed, might have mitigated the collapse of the Iraqi political experiment and thus blunted the rise of ISIS. After Iraq held its (pre-American withdrawal) elections in 2010, the Obama administration took a hands-off approach to Iraqi domestic politics, and it failed to replace the American military presence with a robust set of civilian, economic, and other partnerships to sustain American influence. In 2011, my last of about two years working on Middle East policy in Obama’s State Department, we were planning for sharp cuts in civilian programs for Iraq alongside the military drawdown—and over the next two years, U.S. economic aid to Iraq dropped nearly 50 percent. The administration had ample warning about the damage Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s sectarian and power-hungry behavior was having on Iraqi security and stability. But the president and Vice President Biden, who managed the Iraq portfolio on Obama’s behalf, chose to do very little to constrain Maliki as he began to unravel the tentative political bargains between Sunnis, Shiites, and Kurds within federal Iraq.

America’s regional partners decried the rise of Iranian influence as the United States stepped back, and feared Maliki’s steps against Sunni politicians could reignite civil violence, but the White House brushed off their concerns in both Iraq and Syria. And so the Gulf states sent their own support to Sunni tribes in western Iraq and militias battling Assad in Syria, stoking the sectarian flames and setting the stage for extremists to outbid them. As ISIS began to gain ground among Sunni populations alienated from the central government, the administration didn’t see any reason to invest in persuading Maliki toward a political accommodation that might have tamped down the emergent Iraqi Sunni militias and held Iraq together. That’s not to say Obama would have succeeded—but because he wanted to turn the page on the Iraq experience, he failed to try.

Likewise, Obama’s read of the Syrian conflict as holding only narrow implications for American interests was a signal failure to learn the lessons of the 1990s and recognize the risk that Syria’s civil war could spill over in ways that directly implicated U.S. interests. It did not, in 2012 and 2013, require special foresight to apply to the Syrian case other lessons from history than those Obama focused on. The experience of the 1990s clearly suggested how a neglected civil war offered easy opportunities for a violent jihadist movement—just as the Afghanistan war did for the Taliban in the mid-1990s—and how large-scale refugee flows would destabilize Syria’s neighbors, including key U.S. security partners like Jordan and Turkey. And as we now know, ISIS used the security and governance vacuums created by the Syrian Civil War to consolidate a territorial and financial base that the United States has been seeking since late 2014, with limited success, to undermine.

These two errors of understanding and judgment, both driven by the president’s commitment to avoid his predecessor’s mistakes, left major risks to regional stability unaddressed, and thus fed the rise of an ISIS threat so significant as to compel Obama, in August 2014, to overturn his longstanding preferences and recommit American blood and treasure to fighting Islamist extremists on the ground in Iraq, and now in Syria. His errors (as well as the famous “red line” climbdown) also provoked anxious regional partners to take their own initiatives to advance interests they felt Obama had slighted—condoning jihadism at times along the way, and very often exacerbating the disorder and sectarianism on which ISIS feeds.

Obama feared a slippery slope going up against Bashar al-Assad in Syria—but the war against ISIS is the slipperiest slope of them all.

Obama feared a slippery slope going up against Bashar al-Assad in Syria—but the war against ISIS is the slipperiest slope of them all. In just under two years, the administration has moved from airstrikes, to 475 additional military advisers in Iraq, to over 4,000 troops on the ground including U.S. special-operations forces in both Iraq and Syria. At the same time, the metastasizing threat from ISIS is forcing Obama to order limited military strikes in Libya, consider plans for further military intervention there, and build up military commitments to the Sunni Arab states of the Persian Gulf—the latter two steps, if Goldberg’s piece is accurate, against his own inclinations. An American president who, in May 2013, rejected the notion of a “global war on terror” has now launched one.

Meanwhile, the wide gulf between Obama's fixation on defeating ISIS, and his regional partners’ focus on pushing back Iran and Assad, means that America finds itself with too few partners to share the burden of this battle, which U.S. generals now call a "generational struggle.” America’s regional friends are acting to defend their own interests, not always in ways congruent with American interests. Obama’s apparent inability to see the conflicts between his Syria policy and his ISIS policy, and his reticence to do the sustained work necessary to hash out common priorities with the Gulf Arabs, Turkey, and Israel, have generated a problem more costly and harder to solve than the free-rider problems he complains of. The price is visible in, for example, Obama’s wordless facilitation of Saudi Arabia’s war in Yemen—which, ironically again, has given al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula its most congenial working environment in years.

Finally, Obama’s actions—his reticence to push Maliki, his dithering over Abdel Fattah el-Sisi’s 2013 military coup in Egypt, and now his reversion to uncritical security partnerships with Gulf states in the name of fighting ISIS—suggest that what he fears is not just military entanglement: It’s entanglement of any kind, any uncertain investment of American leverage to try and shape outcomes in places where the locals’ interests are not already aligned with Washington’s. This is clear from his abandonment of any concerted nonmilitary effort to generate lasting stability in the Middle East in the way he still says is necessary. Obama’s own strategic judgment—announced publicly in May 2011 and repeated to Goldberg—is that stability in the Middle East will only emerge through addressing dysfunctional governance. But after the first blush of 2011, Obama demonstrated little readiness to invest political capital or build platforms for persistent engagement on behalf of the messy, imperfect, and always incomplete work of democratic growth. To the contrary, Obama cut funding for democracy assistance globally throughout his presidency. Between May 2011 and his 2013 speech at the United Nations General Assembly, democratic reform in the Middle East moved from a “top priority” to a bare footnote.

Having failed to implement his own views on the primacy of governance, Obama is now using force to defeat ISIS while abjuring the work necessary to build something with which to replace it. That path bodes ill for the anti-ISIS project he has launched, and recreates for the next U.S. president the same dysfunctions in U.S.-Arab relations—moral hazard, security overcommitments, and the like—that Obama resents. To be sure, the weakness and illegitimacy of state institutions and the upwelling of societal conflicts in the Arab world is making the process of reforming politics both lengthy and painful. But those challenges are the inescapable legacies of authoritarianism, and would have emerged no matter how or when the region’s regimes collapsed. They are certainly not a consequence of American intervention or mere “tribalism,” nor are they evidence, as Obama suggests, that American military intervention in Libya “didn’t work.” What didn’t work was the administration’s constant reliance on arguments about slippery slopes and the wisdom of restraint to shoot down proposals for deeper U.S. engagement in regional problem-solving—even and perhaps especially nonmilitary engagement. The policy debate may have been won in public, but the policy objective was lost.

A president elected and reelected on a platform of ending wars in the Middle East has reproduced, at the end of his presidency, the very situation he inherited, decried, and swore to avoid.

It is a tragic irony: A president elected and reelected on a platform of ending wars in the Middle East has reproduced, at the end of his presidency, the very situation he inherited, decried, and swore to avoid: an escalating war against a vague terrorist enemy, with no geographic boundaries, no clear military or strategic objectives, and no principles or policies that might stop the slide down this slippery slope.

The Obama presidency’s relentless focus on avoiding entanglements came alongside a failure to reckon with risks—especially those risks that grow from inaction. This should be instructive for us all, but perhaps especially for those who, surveying the many messes in today’s Middle East, conclude that Obama was right to sit out the Syrian war, and is right today to regret his intervention in Libya as a failure.

The lesson is that inaction is not obviously better than action as a moral choice in foreign policy—it is a choice, and it carries consequences. The United States is a global power, one that moreover roots its global power in a set of universal moral claims. As such, America's choices (whether to do, or to not do) have global implications, and carry moral responsibility. One cannot avoid the moral responsibility for these choices by citing the Hippocratic Oath, or by creating some idealized set of criteria, the total fulfillment of which are necessary to justify even a limited use of American military power. While Obama repeatedly reminds Goldberg that his primary concern in contemplating force is the risk to the American people, not to citizens of other regions, the new war on ISIS reminds us powerfully that threats to others, left unaddressed, very easily land on America’s doorstep in ways its citizens see and feel.

[I]naction is not obviously better than action as a moral choice in foreign policy—it is a choice, and it carries consequences.

Taking foreign policy seriously, and taking moral responsibility for American power seriously, means recognizing that all America’s choices have consequences, and policymakers must nonetheless choose a path in situations of imperfect information and facing imperfect options. A global power cannot simply avoid messes, ignore risks, and set its sights rigidly on the pursuit of strategic opportunities. It cannot do so because even the best opportunities can be torpedoed by unaddressed problems. Given the necessity and moral responsibility of choice, delay and avoidance in the face of those problems are merely the dishonest versions of a decision to do nothing.

That’s why I don’t condemn Obama for launching this new phase of the global war on terror, and I don’t think his supporters, who voted for an end to wars, should either. I commend him for recognizing the gravity of the threat ISIS presents to regional and international security, for admitting his long-held preferences cannot hold in the face of this challenge, and for stepping up to explain to the American people why and how he was reversing course. I only wish he’d admit that his reticence to recognize the risks of inaction helped make it so, and that, in that regard, the lessons he learned from his predecessors were woefully incomplete.

Innovative activity and innovation districts are not evenly distributed across cities. Some metropolitan areas may have two or three districts scattered about, while other cities are lucky to have the critical mass to support even one strong district. London, however, a global city with nearly unparalleled assets, can best be understood as not just a collection of innovation districts but as a contiguous “city of innovation.” 

Our understanding of that innovative activity has taken a leap forward with the publication of a new report by the Centre for London called "Spaces to Think". Even for a paragon of innovation, a critique such as this is imperative if the city desires to maximize its assets while continuing to grow in a sustainable and inclusive manner. Much as we have recommended that urban leaders across the United States undertake an asset audit of their districts to identify key priorities, "Spaces to Think" focuses on 17 distinct districts, mapping their assets, classifying their typologies, and identifying governance structures.

The 17 study areas in "Spaces to Think"

The report provides lessons applicable to many cities.

Having identified, across all 17 districts, the three major drivers of innovative activity—talent, space, and financing—it becomes clear that the main hurdle for London, as a global magnet of talent and capital, is affordable physical space: “Increasing pressure for land…risks constraining London’s potential as a leading global city for innovation.” Similar to hot-market cities across the United States, many of the study areas of greatest promise are older industrial areas, such as Here East, Canary Wharf, and Kings Cross, where large plots of underutilized land have been reimagined as innovation districts. 

But who is prepared to undertake new regeneration projects? The report places significant responsibility on London’s many universities—whose expansions already account for much of the large-scale development opportunities in the city—for a “third mission” of local economic development. It is universities, the report notes, that are “devoting increasing amounts of money, resources, and planning to building new or redesigned facilities…pitched as part of a wider regeneration strategy, or the creation of an innovation district.” 

A second concern is the democratization of the innovation economy. Already a victim of rising inequality, London’s future growth must reach down the ladder. As we’ve argued, with intentionality and purpose, innovation districts can advance a more inclusive knowledge economy, especially given that they are often abut neighborhoods of above-average poverty and unemployment. Spaces to Think expands upon four key strategies: local hiring and sourcing practices for innovation institutions; upskilling of local residents through vocational and technical programs within local firms; increased tax yield, especially given recent reforms in which “local authorities retain 100 percent of business rates”; and shared assets and rejuvenation of place. This final lever requires inclusive governance that encourages neighborhood ownership of the public realm.

Finally, the report notes that, while there is much diversity of leadership in the study areas—some are university-led, some are entrepreneurial, some are industry-led—“good governance and good relations between institutions, are at the heart of what makes innovation districts tick.” This issue is at the heart of our work moving forward: identifying and spreading effective governance models that encourage collaboration and coordination between the public, private, and civic actors within innovation districts.

We are pleased that this future work will be strengthened by a new partnership between the Bass Initiative on Innovation and Placemaking and the Centre for London. The ambition of this Transatlantic Innovation Districts Partnership is to increase our mutual understanding of innovation districts found in Europe through additional qualitative and quantitative analysis and to integrate European leaders into a global network, all to accelerate the transfer of lessons and best practices from districts across the world.

Published version of the CSED October 2007 Working Paper

ABSTRACT

Background

In classical mathematical epidemiology, individuals do not adapt their contact behavior during epidemics. They do not endogenously engage, for example, in social distancing based on fear. Yet, adaptive behavior is well-documented in true epidemics. We explore the effect of including such behavior in models of epidemic dynamics.

Methodology/Principal Findings

Using both nonlinear dynamical systems and agent-based computation, we model two interacting contagion processes: one of disease and one of fear of the disease. Individuals can “contract” fear through contact with individuals who are infected with the disease (the sick), infected with fear only (the scared), and infected with both fear and disease (the sick and scared). Scared individuals–whether sick or not–may remove themselves from circulation with some probability, which affects the contact dynamic, and thus the disease epidemic proper. If we allow individuals to recover from fear and return to circulation, the coupled dynamics become quite rich, and can include multiple waves of infection. We also study flight as a behavioral response.

Conclusions/Significance

In a spatially extended setting, even relatively small levels of fear-inspired flight can have a dramatic impact on spatio-temporal epidemic dynamics. Self-isolation and spatial flight are only two of many possible actions that fear-infected individuals may take. Our main point is that behavioral adaptation of some sort must be considered.”

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