Dollars for Diplomacy

In a global landscape that is constantly evolving, economic diplomacy is emerging as a powerful tool for mitigating conflict and promoting world peace. Economic diplomacy is a form of diplomacy that involves the strategic use of economic tools to advance countries’ national interests while promoting peace, stability, and prosperity. As nations attempt to navigate a complex global economic landscape that has been weakened by rising geo-political tensions, it has been realized, in recent years, that economic prosperity and stability is often the basis for lasting peace. This realization has played a pivotal role in international relations, with the increased role of economic diplomacy. This diplomatic approach not only aims to resolve disputes through economic tools, but also highlights the importance of working together – as nations – to solve some of the world’s most pressing issues, to bridge the gaps, and foster long-lasting peace.

     The United State’s Department of State defines economic diplomacy as a “means to both harness global economic forces to advance America's foreign policy and employ the tools of foreign policy to shore up our economic strength.” Economic diplomacy plays a crucial role in shaping the landscape of international relations, international trade, and promoting peace. In contrast to traditional diplomatic approaches which tend to rely primarily on political and military forces, economic diplomacy focuses on economic policies and tools to advance a country’s strategic goals. These policies are created with the intention of fostering mutual benefits for the countries involved. In an interconnected world in which countries become dependent on one another, the establishment of strong economic ties is crucial and has the potential to lower geo-political tensions when the parties’ interests are represented and taken into considerations during the decision-making process.

     Living in such an interconnected world poses an important challenge for countries, who must first and foremost protect their local economies. Governments must work towards achieving economic diplomacy, which encompasses creating strong economic ties with other nations, while protecting domestic companies, and achieving their strategic goals. Doing so can be particularly challenging for countries who have not only different priorities and objectives, but also vary in their economic needs; some nations may seek new foreign investments, other more technological development and some access to more natural resources. Countries have different trade balances, especially in terms of exports and imports, and also because countries have a comparative advantage in the production of various goods and services. Economic diplomacy comes into play as nations have to navigate the complexity of trade imbalances, through the negotiations of fair trade agreements, macro-economic tools such as tariffs and protectionism policies. The negotiations of trade alliances become crucial to achieve economic diplomacy, ensuring an agreement representing the interests of the nations involved in the negotiations is met. A failure to reach a mutually beneficial agreement in international trade could lead to conflicts, such as trade wars, which negatively impacts the economy of many countries, and the overall balance of trade. Trade disputes may lead to job losses, decrease in productivity, diplomatic tensions, and a rise in products and services’ price. 

     Since the establishment of the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 1955, 164 nation-states have joined the international organization which plays a pivotal role in the global economic landscape, serving as a multilateral forum for regulating international trade and fostering a rules-based system. The goal of the WTO “operates the global system of trade rules and helps developing economies build their trade capacity”. These rules have been important to ensure that international trade runs as smoothly, predictable, and freely as possible, the WTO advocates on its website. Although the WTO is the largest in size, a significant number of trade organizations and trade agreements have been created since, in a continuing effort to increase global trade, advance the global economy through the promotion of fair trade practices, and through agreements. In a globalized world, the establishment of these organizations has been important in the promotion of international trade, economic cooperation, and the development of emerging markets. 

     In 2012, the United States Institute of Peace (USIP) published a report that explicitly references how business can promote peace. Since then, numerous organizations have presented research, analysis and reports on how business, trade and entrepreneurialism can contribute to the promotion of peace in the international and diplomatic scene. The USIP report first acknowledges the continuing violence and instability in our world - although this report is ten years old, its statement is still pertinent to this day - it is growing more important for nation states and their national governments to seek other means of promoting peace. There are five main ways in which corporations have the potential and the ability to promote stability: by providing jobs and economic opportunities; by respecting the rule of law and international labor and environmental standards; by adopting principles of corporate citizenship; by undertaking risk assessments specific to the political environment of conflict-affected regions; and, in certain circumstances, by engaging in Track Two diplomacy, as outlined in a report from USIP. 

The USIP provides an argument that ethical businesses are already contributing to peace, and the awareness of the consequences of their behaviors only further motivates these firms to act ethically. Economic activity is a significant factor in mitigating conflicts, studies by both the World Bank and the United Nations respectively have shown a correlation between poverty and violence. Economic growth often leads to an increase in economic activity, which in turn creates more employment opportunities. Employment can provide individuals with a steady stream of income, thereby enhancing their economic welfare and reducing the likelihood of them being involved in illegal or criminal activities due to lack of alternatives or because of a sense of hopelessness. Similarly, economic activity can alleviate poverty by increasing household disposable incomes.

     The report emphasizes the importance of the rules of laws, and international standards when conducting business in a foreign country. Unethical business practices not only harm the reputation of the companies involved but can also have severe social, environmental, and economic consequences. For instance, a lack of commitment to ethical business practices can further negatively impact a company’s productivity level, lead to legal issues, and can create a hostile business environment. In today’s ever-changing world and with the rise of geo-political tensions, it has become increasingly important for large companies – but also for governments – to respect the rule of law and abide by international labor and environmental standards that can contribute to peace. For example, companies can work to raise the awareness of child labor, unsafe working conditions, or protecting workers. The lack of ethical business practices has the potential to negatively impact the communities in which the company operates, the disregard of labor laws can lead to social unrest, protests, but also the tarnishing of a company’s public image. Corruption has the potential to fuel instability and violent conflicts. Therefore, businesses that uphold robust ethical principles and maintain a strict zero-tolerance stance against corrupt practices play a pivotal role in promoting peace.

     The report further mentions corporate citizenships, which can be defined in simple terms as a commitment to ethical behavior in strategy, operations, and culture. Today, many companies have what we call a “Corporate Social Responsibility '', an annual report that aims at highlighting the company’s efforts in terms of sustainability, but also responsible and ethical business practices. These reports become very important to foster peace as it demonstrates the company’s commitment to various stakeholders, emphasizing its role beyond profit-making and towards contributing positively to society. The last two methods by which corporations can contribute to the promotion of peace involve participating in Two Track Diplomacy and implementing practices and risk assessments. Two Track Diplomacy is especially significant in situations where two governments experience tensions. In this approach, the involved governments come together to engage in discussions and collaboration on issues of mutual benefit. On the other hand, practices and risk assessments are crucial for companies operating in regions marked as conflict-sensitive. A proper understanding of the business practices of the country, and an awareness of the political landscape become important for companies, thus, a risk assessment must be made to determine the potential challenges and opportunities. 

     While the USIP specifically mentions five ways through which businesses can foster peace, additional research from other organizations such as the The United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR) emphasizes the role of the private sector in building peace. The main argument of the study argues that firms can effectively contribute to economic development and stability initiatives in precarious environments by means of deliberate engagement and proactive dialogue. Similar to the USIP’s report, UNITAR mentions the important role of the private sector in the creation of jobs and investments, both vital to a country’s economic stability and security. The report mentions an important point that “economic development does not automatically lead to peace; rather it takes unconventional approaches from economic actors to contribute to peace and it takes collaboration from a variety of actors to make this link work.” This is particularly important to remember when researching and analyzing how the private sector can foster peace, there are many factors to consider and various ways through which economic tools can contribute to peace. 

     UNITAR further highlights the importance of balancing risk-opportunity to promote long-term success. Indeed, many regions present challenges for companies that they must be able to navigate, this includes weak infrastructures, geo-political tensions, or even opaque power structures. Emerging markets and developing economies are central to global trade, development and economic well-being. However, these countries often face political and economic instability, creating a hostile environment for conducting business. It becomes imperative for the private sector to effectively navigate the intricacies of these markets, to engage with diverse stakeholders and to use appropriate economic tools. This approach is essential to promote peaceful conflict management and uphold the principles of good governance as part of their core business practices.

     Although there is no right answer as to how economic diplomacy can foster peace, there are a number of ways, as highlighted by the USIP, through which companies can utilize economic tools to promote peace. This research provides a good starting point for companies seeking to promote ethical, sustainable, and responsible business practices, while learning how they can – as large corporations – contribute to peacemaking. In the pursuit of peace, highlighting effective communication and fostering robust relationships is crucial. This emphasis serves not only to facilitate dialogue but also to work towards achieving the ultimate objectives of all parties involved.

     While this article focuses primarily on the role of the private sector in promoting peace, the important role played by the government in economic diplomacy should not be overlooked. Governments have the power and ability to control various aspects of the economy, including regulatory frameworks, trade policies and international agreements. In addition, governments have the ability to take action to tackle socio-economic disparities, promote growth and create an environment conducive to stability. Moreover, government efforts in sensitive regions (those often faced by geo-political tensions) can extend beyond simple economic considerations to include diplomatic efforts such as peace negotiations and the establishment of international partnerships. In these contexts, governments tend to act as mediators in establishing diplomatic relations that contribute to global stability, and foster peace. 

     Economic diplomacy as a means of mitigating conflict and fostering peace cannot be achieved without the strategic partnership of governments and the private sector. As the private sector drives economic growth, innovation and job creation, governments are responsible for providing the overall framework and strategic direction, aligning economic interests with diplomatic objectives. Recognizing and leveraging the two sectors' strengths is a key part of promoting sustainable peace and economic prosperity. Further research should be conducted to analyze case studies in which economic diplomacy has effectively been used as a means of fostering peace or mitigating conflicts in hostile regions of our world. In the future, it will be interesting to look at how international organizations will take into account economic diplomacy and business as a means to promote peace, shifting away from classic diplomatic tools. 

The rise of geo-political tensions poses a big challenge for nations seeking to promote peace, especially because corporations have a tendency to focus on their own best interests, often disregarding the needs of communities. It becomes important for governments to make companies aware of the positive ways through which they can contribute to diplomacy, focusing on peace, stability, and trust over profits. In a highly competitive landscape, working together to achieve strategic goals becomes more than crucial; collaboration is the key driver of promoting peace.

The Rise of Artificial Intelligence in the Global Economy

The rise of artificial intelligence (AI) has already begun to influence labor markets around the world, and its impact is set to continue evolving in a variety of ways. The advent of artificial intelligence has opened up an era of transformation for labor markets worldwide. As AI technologies continue to advance at an unprecedented scale, their impact on the world of labor is indisputable. AI has the potential to re-shape our approach to employment, skills development and economic growth. Against this backdrop, it's essential to study not only how AI is influencing labor markets, but also focus on how governments are beginning to feel the rise of AI in their own economies, forcing them to develop policies to ensure that AI is used for the benefit of individuals, rather than harming the global economy, potentially impacting trade, nation-state relations and society.

Over the last decades, the rise of emerging markets has led to various companies outsourcing their manufacturing activities in countries where the cost of labor is relatively cheaper. While doing so benefited companies who enjoyed cheaper labor costs, it presented a threat to domestic companies as jobs once performed by domestic workers were outsourced abroad, leading to a rise in unemployment, especially in the manufacturing sector. This tendency to outsource manufacturing and low-skilled activities abroad was a first important shift in the labor market of many countries, creating new opportunities in emerging economies. Now, a new threat has arisen in the labor market, not only in the United States, but throughout the world, which could further impact the global economic landscape. Indeed, the technological advances and the rise of artificial intelligence more particularly are increasingly being integrated into professional workflows and business applications. This integration could further impact the stability of the labor market worldwide, causing a shift in productivity and efficiency due to a potential disruption of labor markets. 

The Brookings Institution, a prominent research organization, is delving into the future impact of advanced AI tools on worker productivity and labor demand. It's crucial to distinguish between earlier AI technologies and the emerging generative AI tools. Historically, AI and automation have mainly affected jobs with routine tasks, jobs that tend to be low-skilled such as manufacturing occupations whose tasks could be replicated more efficiently and at a lower-cost by machine automation. However, generative AI tools are poised to influence a broader range of professions involving non-routine tasks. In today’s world, the heavy focus on innovation and technological advances – mainly from emerging markets who attempt to increase their role in an increasingly competitive landscape –have led to the development of technologies in various sectors of the economy, such as banking, teaching, or biotechnology. This shift marks a significant change in the labor market dynamics, as it encompasses roles previously thought to be safe from automation. This growth in the influence of AI in non-routine tasks highlights the need for proactive and policy-driven adaptation to ensure the successful and sustainable integration of AI tools. Brookings Institution research provides valuable insights for navigating this changing technological landscape.

The rise of the automation of routine tasks, which has been an increasing threat for the workforce, as individuals have witnessed the growing role of AI and robotic process automation, with many seeing their jobs disappear to this new advanced technology. Automation and AI represent transformative forces reshaping the business landscape, promising not only increased efficiency but also substantial contributions to economic growth through heightened  productivity. However, they also pose a threat to individuals who work in manufacturing or service jobs. As these technologies further grow and develop, they are able to perform tasks that even humans cannot yet accomplish. This trend, if it continues, could lead to a decline in demand for manual labor in certain segments of the economy. Society will have to cope with major workforce transitions and upheavals. Workers in different sectors of the economy will have to acquire new skills and adapt to the increasingly powerful machines to maintain their important position in the labor market and compete against technologies that appear to get better and smarter everyday. In some cases, the rise of AI and automation may lead workers to rethink their career path and pursue a path that aligns with the new reality of the labor market, one in which technology is deeply integrated. Although the rise of these technologies have benefits in terms of added efficiency and productivity, it will require workers, and businesses to reinvent their way of working to mitigate job loss and displacement. It is important that we highlight the importance of working with technology, and not against it, especially when countries develop different technologies and competition rises. Threats become more evident with rising competition and geo-political tensions.

The rise of automation looks very different in developed and less developed countries where the labor market is significantly different. In the United States, automation and other forces will continue to reshape the labor market. According to a McKinsey report, the integration of generative artificial intelligence is expected to cause 30% of hours worked today to be automated by 2030. Research has also demonstrated that automation and AI will boost productivity, showing that generative AI has the potential to increase U.S. labor productivity by 0.5 to 0.9 percentage points per year through 2030 in a medium adoption scenario. It is important to remember that the United States is a developed and highly skilled country, other forces are also expected to reshape the workforce in the country, including but not limited to federal investments with recent federal legislation stimulating momentum and investment in other areas that will have an impact on employment. As the country goes through this period of technological transformation, it needs to consider not only the potential of automation to improve productivity, but also the wider implications of these changes on employment, workforce development and the overall economic landscape.

In emerging markets, often referred to as developing economies, the rise of artificial intelligence could accelerate the de-globalization process, making it easier to bring production back onshore without incurring significantly higher costs, as mentioned by Standard Chartered’s Madhur Jha and Christopher Graham in a Bloomberg article. Due to the rise of technological advances, emerging countries have been able to increase their role in the global economic landscape, adapting in an ever-changing world, even catching up to developed markets. Emerging markets can greatly benefit from AI: its applications offer new ways of bridging infrastructure gaps and solving pressing development issues in key sectors. In terms of labor market, the rise of these generative technology will potential lead to job displacement, but also will cause a shift in skills demand, because emerging markets are increasingly demanding a workforce with skills in AI, data science and other related fields; as AI becomes more widespread, there is a growing need for people who can develop, maintain and operate AI systems. Lasly, emerging markets will greatly benefit from artificial intelligence that is expected to increase productivity and efficiency, which will in turn result in the creation of new jobs in industries related to the development and maintenance of AI technology. 

However, the rise of AI technology in the global economy is not without its challenges. Leading economists, known for their expertise in this field, have issued a message of caution regarding the potential repercussions of artificial intelligence on the middle class. They fear that the integration of AI and automation into the workforce could further worsen the current decline of the middle class. This imminent threat, they argue, is anchored in a dual mechanism: firstly, the progressive undermining of traditional, stable and well-paid job opportunities that don't require advanced educational qualifications, and secondly, the rapid pace of automation, which could overtake the simultaneous creation of new roles for human workers. This confluence of factors poses a challenge to middle-class stability and prosperity, and justifies a closer look at the potential economic and societal transformations associated with AI advances. Questions have risen concerning the ethicality of these technologies in terms of privacy, prejudice and job displacement. Governments in developed and emerging markets are faced with the need to establish regulatory frameworks to address these issues. 

In response to the current challenges posed by AI and the need to mitigate the potential risks associated with these transformative technologies, the Brookings Institution highlights the need to develop sophisticated tools and strategies to manage AI's influence on the labor market. As we saw earlier, AI introduces a significant measure of uncertainty into the world of employment, particularly with regard to its implications for middle-class stability. However, it is essential to recognize that assessing the deep and multifaceted effects of AI on labor demand is a complex undertaking, characterized by nuanced intricacies that require careful consideration. Governments around the world are working hard to develop and implement policies to regulate the use of AI, with an emphasis on protecting data privacy and strengthening security measures. These regulatory efforts represent an important step towards responsibly harnessing the capabilities of AI while minimizing potential risks to individuals and society as a whole. In the ever-changing landscape of advanced technologies, it must be acknowledged that the future remains somewhat of a mystery, and that it is difficult to predict the exact impact of AI on the labor market.

However, it is essential to underline that AI, despite its remarkable capabilities, lacks certain essential human attributes. Elements such as creativity, emotional intelligence, ethical and moral reasoning, and the profound ability to understand and navigate complex social and cultural contexts remain exclusively in the human domain. While the role of AI continues to expand, and there is potential for the displacement of certain jobs, it is essential to recognize that the global labor market is a dynamic ecosystem that is constantly adapting to the changing landscape. In this landscape, those who manage to adapt, upskill and embrace the opportunities offered by AI will be the most successful. AI-driven transformation is a call to reimagine our roles, cultivate unique human qualities and harness AI as a supplementary resource in the drive for shared prosperity.

As emerging markets have demonstrated their resilience and adaptability as they recovered from the pandemic, it is important to note their heavy focus on the research and development of new technology, competing with developed markets to gain a competitive advantage and boost productivity. It will be interesting to see how trade organizations will be reacting to the growing impact of AI technologies on international trade, and more specifically on job displacement throughout the world. Indeed, as emerging markets are further developing, they are shifting away from low-skilled labor, giving opportunities for less developed countries such as Vietnam, to develop their manufacturing sector. As previously mentioned, governments and trade organizations will have to focus their policies and regulations on job protections, to ensure that countries do not negatively suffer from these innovative technologies, but that they are rather used as a supplementary tool for success.

Climate Refugees: Their Phantom Protections

insideclimatenews.org

In 2020, unprecedented flooding in rural areas of Afghanistan displaced thousands of Afghans. This resulted not only from more extreme storms, but also from the destruction of trees that protected and aggregated the soil. Farmers were forced to move to higher ground, local cities, and to Iran as their homes, crops, and livestock washed away. Since then, flooding has continued to increase year to year during the wet season, making the region inhabitable and contributing to global climate migration. 

Climate change poses a major threat to nations around the world. In the coming decades, millions of people will be displaced as a result of natural disasters, coastline erosion, and lack of resources. As of 2021, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees released data saying that the rate of climate related migrants has risen 21.5 million since 2010, and the Institute for Economics and Peace estimates that at least 1.2 billion people will be displaced as a result of these disasters by 2050. The facts are clear: climate migration will become a major policy issue as an eighth of the world’s population is expected to migrate in the next thirty years, so how are governments responding to the looming climate-caused refugee crisis? The answer: they are not. Current policies and standing meetings like the Paris Agreement (adopted in 2015), the annual Conference of Parties (COP), and the Loss and Damage Finance Facility (LDFF) set standards for net zero emissions and began reparations work that hold major emitter, industrialized countries accountable for climate change. But these do not establish individual protections for climate migrants who are the face of climate adaptation and the bearers of environmental injustice. 

Climate migrants fall into three categories: refugees, internally displaced peoples (IDPs), and stateless peoples. Yet they cannot be defined by their relation to the climate alone as they often live in the cross hairs of conflict, making them even more vulnerable. Climate hotspots are areas more susceptible to the effects of climate change, leaving the people within them particularly vulnerable. They contribute to the lack of the necessary resources needed to adapt to climate change in their regions, forcing communities to move once again. Environmental damages are even being used against minority groups in existing national conflicts, as seen in the Azerbaijan/Armenia conflict. For the past three decades, Azerbaijan has demolished the biodiversity in the Nagorno-Karabakh region, the disputed territory of the Armenian minority population, to make them more vulnerable during their attacks. This is just one example of how the environment is weaponized by states to debilitate populations already in crisis. 

While the UN General Assembly acknowledged in 2018 that climate change is a major contributor to migration, “climate refugee” is still not an official status. Without refugee status, individuals cannot seek asylum abroad, are waitlisted for medical care and social services, and are not protected as stateless people by their receiving countries. Additionally, the acknowledgement of climate refugees would signal that “wealthier countries, which are most responsible for planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions, [have a] global responsibility to help those harmed by climate change,” according Mia Prange of CFR. With the rates of climate migration growing, the international community is currently unprepared for the rise in refugees they will have to take in and will likely need more lenient refugee policies that encompass victims of climate change to support them.

In 1950, the United Nations High Commissioner on Refugees (UNHCR) was organized, and in 1951, the Refugee Convention defined a refugee as, “someone who is unable or unwilling to return to their country of origin owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group, or political opinion.” This definition is still the framework for defining refugees today, and while its broad outlook on refugees makes it adaptable to many different conflicts and circumstances, its stagnant definition has prevented it from adapting to modern issues like climate change. Since migrants moving as a result of natural disasters and climate change are not facing direct persecution by another group of people, they are not covered in all cases in the way that they would be if they were their own designated group. 

In 2008, the Brookings Institution identified five categories of migrants who have to move for climate and natural disasters: hydro-meteorological disasters, situations of environmental degradation, sinking of small island states, zones too dangerous for human habitation, and climate change induced. In many instances, the initial reason for migration is to look for economic advantages abroad, but when things get drastic and a sudden hurricane or fire wipes out a region destroying homes and livelihoods, the move is more urgent. While economic migrants have protection, climate refugees do not have the designations protecting them when disaster strikes. 

Without climate refugees being a defined status, individuals do not get the protections that legal refugees do. These can range from resettlement documentation and health care to case work and recreational activities. The most significant of these protections is non-refoulement in Article 33 of Refugee Convention, which gives everyone the right to seek asylum and protects asylum seekers from being turned away or sent back to their country of origin at international borders. This is important because, even before a person receives their official refugee status and the process of resettlement, they are protected by international governments and supported in their journey to liberty. Therefore, the concern advocates of climate refugees have is that, without protection and a legal category by the international community, climate migrants will be deported back to their homes of origin, which may be demolished, in famine or drought, and uninhabitable, as in the case of Ioane Teitiota. He is a citizen and resident of Kiribati, a small island nation in the Pacific threatened to “sink” as result of rising tides. In 2015, he sought asylum in New Zealand but was denied because there was no imminent threat to his life, as scientists still predict a few decades before sea levels rise to the point of island consumption. This resulted in him being sent back to Kiribati where he appealed to the UN Covenant on Civil Liberties. 

So what’s stopping the international community from stepping up and protecting climate refugees? One argument is that expected migration as a result of land loss and degradation is not severe enough for it to pose a threat to life or well-being, as was the conclusion of the court in Teitota’s appeal. Yet, even though they upheld the New Zealand decision, the UN ruling was critical for how climate refugee status is discussed. They acknowledge that in countries like Kiribati, life threatening effects of climate change are likely and that climate refugee status must be determined on a case by case basis. They also affirmed that slow on-set effects, like sea level rise and long term drought, can be just as deadly as quick on-set effects, like wildfire and cyclone decimation. 

In this case, the UN court used judicial activism to push the international community towards official climate refugee status but failed once again to legalize it. The true reason for the polarization of this debate is the responsibility of colonization that would fall on Western countries, and the economic burden they would have to bear. Research from the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research shows the countries that will be hit hardest by temperature increases are those nearer the equator. The propensity for drought, soil degradation, monsoon level storms, heat waves, and wildfires are all projected to “reach 560 a year – or 1.5 each day, statistically speaking – by 2030,” according to the UN in 2022. And the states carrying the brunt of this burden are those in the global south, where these events occur more frequently. Additionally, equatorial developing countries are substantially more vulnerable, which leads to “long-term economic disadvantages,” whereas developed countries closer to the poles “tend to show no significant vulnerability.” When rich, colonizer nations block climate refugee status and modern migrant protections from passing on the global level, they are protecting themselves from the backlash of the inequalities they created, and they will not atone for their errors until it is too late. 

One cannot discuss the global response to climate change without talking about reparations, and this would be just one way that wealthy countries can make amends. At COP28 in Dubai last year, two dozen countries committed to a “loss and damages” fund that would distribute wealth from countries responsible for the creation of global warming, to countries suffering the impacts. While this is a monumental step towards adapting to climate change on a state by state basis, COP and the UN still need to support individuals on the frontlines of natural disasters. Adaptation can only take the world so far when major action to stimmy the burning of fossil fuels has failed time and again. Eventually, people, often the economically disadvantaged from underdeveloped countries, will be forced to move, and when they do, states have to be ready to take them. Waiting for the day when a flood of people land on a country’s doorstep looking for aid to make a decision, is neither constructive nor sustainable.

And the day has already come. In March, Cyclone Freddy hit southern Africa, killing more than five hundred people and displacing hundreds of thousands of people across Malawi, Madagascar, and Mozambique, leading to record breaking internal and external migration. Migration as a result of climate change is not just the future, but the present, and until governments put aside their prides and end the debate on refugee status, people will not be safe to move where they need to protect themselves and their families against the rising water levels, increased temperatures, and extreme weather. In decades to come, inaction during the case of climate refugee status is the same as inaction during a human rights crisis. Definitions in the law are important - they define who has rights and who doesn't, who is secure and who isn’t. This is just one definition that could make a world of good if the international community took up the mantle and protected migrants.

When Diplomacy Joins Sports: An Overview of Sports Events Turned an IR Feast

Does it even make sense to discuss these two concepts together? Sports exist to test our physical and mental boundaries, a chance to engage in some friendly teamwork and entertain or challenge others, and diplomacy is all about fancy suites and long conversation-heavy gatherings that do not necessarily reflect the thrill and musicality of a good baseball game. The UN Assembly meetings and the Super Bowl or World Cup do not necessarily have much in common at first glance - in fact, they are as opposite as things can get. You see my point, we do not often think of sports and international relations as things that go hand in hand, and we cannot so easily envision an ambassador and a famous basketball star sipping coffee at the same table. They are just one of those pairings that simply do not exist, like the opposite of yin and yang. This explains why we seldom discuss sporting events at international relations courses, and why the Super Bowl does not necessarily revise the UN Declaration of Human Rights at halftime. 

However, are they really that different? To what extent are the goals and outcomes of sporting and diplomatic events related? As someone who had the honor to find herself in Buenos Aires for that historic World Cup final on December 18th, 2022, I can testify that watching this final in one of the central parks in Palermo and hearing the public accompany the national team in the singing of the national anthem with jumps and cries was one of the most zealous and evident portrayals of national unity and participation. Witnessing this, as someone deeply curious about the way nationalism emerges and manifests itself, and someone who during my study abroad in Buenos Aires continuously passed by posters and graffiti expressing critique about the way the public only comes together for World Cup and is not equally united in the country’s stance against the ongoing inflation and a myriad of economic and socio-political issues, I found myself thinking of the power of sporting events and their relationship to a country’s or a region’s politics and sense of self. This article is meant to provide an overview of moments in which sporting events and major diplomatic statements and action converged to create powerful messages and results. 

Sports and Diplomacy Through World Regions

Asia

Beginning with the largest, most populous region, that also happens to be the first one to face the morning sun, it is important to reflect on how regional organizations here happened to recognize and center sporting events as cornerstone of multilateral and intercultural cooperation. ASEAN, a main Asian regional body composed of 10 Southeast Asian members and in charge of facilitating political, economic, and cultural interaction and regional integration. ASEAN is also interesting due to its particular emphasis on sports. As such regional bodies are a newer, modern trend, it is enlightening to see the emphasis ASEAN has placed on sports as part of its mission towards fulfilling its pillars of integration and supporting amicable relations. ASEAN specifically recognizes the ancient roots of the practice of sports and sporting events and tournaments across the region, with an understanding of the intersection of sports and race, gender, religion, age, ethnicity, and nationality and ways that these identities manifest and interact through sports, as well as the sports’ ability to instill and promote the values of “respect, inclusion, fairness, and duty” as a way to contribute to a sense and prosperity of the ASEAN Community. ASEAN has come to facilitate football (soccer) and chess regional associations as part of its role as a regional body, which is unique and not observed to the same extent in other regions. 

Sports have also played a key role in breaking up tension between warring countries or countries in dispute. The case of a ping pong tournament organized in 1971 as a way to allow for lessening of tension and first official interactions in Cold War between China and the US serves as a great example, to the point that this initiative known sometimes as ping pong diplomacy, was also featured in popular culture masterpieces such as Forrest Gump. More recently, however, we were able to bear witness to a historic merger of North and South Korea at 2018 Winter Olympics following days of talks between the two countries. While the degree to which interactions and exchanges occurred was limited in time and scope, fans from both sides of the 38th parallel could join in the celebrations and cheering together, and athletes marched side by side at the opening ceremony, with some additional future collaboration being planned and later materializing to a degree, such as a unified Korean women’s hockey team for that season. While the Olympics also feature some well-known and continuous tensions such as disputes over Taiwan’s name and flag, and more recent controversy over national attire, national dishes, and their promotion, these cases still show the impact of sports on the regional and international  psyche and their contribution to our meaning making and positionality of modern nation states. 

On the other side of the continent, Turkey and Armenia, still at crossroads due to Ottoman colonial heritage and subsequent disputes over acknowledgement of genocide against the Armenian people, managed to get their presidents to sit together and see visa regulations relaxed thanks to the 2008 World Cup qualifying match. This event even contributed to kickstarting additional diplomatic channels and, albeit arguably for only a very limited window of time, the two countries saw a potential to make amends and deepen their diplomatic interactions. 

Australia and Oceania 

The Australian Government has an entire 2030 Sports Diplomacy Strategy, with its goals being to affirm and deepen the ideals of sports diplomacy “to bring people together, generate goodwill and cultivate partnerships for Australia across the world.” The Plan also recognizes and lists the exact economic contribution of sports to Australia annually and outlines the competencies of Australian industries in competition and participation as much as in hosting, opening additional facilities, and being engaged in sports-related innovation. This attitude centers investment in sports and allows Australia to explicitly rely on sports in its diplomatic efforts.

Over in New Zealand, a unique node to Native culture has been expressed precisely through the haka dances, a traditional Māori ceremonial dance, performance of which went viral during the 2014 Basketball World Cup game against the baffled US. While the internet and modern culture led to the popularity of the New Zealand basketball team, it is important to note that the practice actually dates back to the New Zealand Native football team of the 1880s and has continued on through rugby and basketball associations for over a century. While this is celebrated as a way to honor the ways of the Native people of New Zealand, the practice has also been seen as controversial when performed erroneously by non-Native members of New Zealand’s society. New Zealanders with Māori origins historically and presently greatly contribute to the country’s sports culture, but it is crucial to ensure these sporting tributes to them and their culture are not purely performative and that they are accompanied by a proper way to honor and contribute to the communities these cultural practices come from in order to ensure the dance’s intended purpose of unifying the country and celebrating Native culture. 

Oceania famously joins New Zealand in its focus on rugby as a national sport, although there are increasingly many efforts to honor traditional sports and associated ceremonies unique to this part of the world. Still, the focus remains particularly strongly on sports such as rugby, football, cricket, and basketball. It is the Olympics that are at play once again here as the Tongan sports sensation Pita Taufatofua represented his country three times so far and has famously done so with his shirtless walks in various traditional outfits, both as the country’s first taekwondo player and also even in the Winter Olympics where he was a sole representative of his country, having qualified for the cross-country skiing category. A fellow regional representative rower Rillio Rio Rii of Vanuatu joined in the showcase of traditional outfits. While critique can be placed here as well due to global gaze and objectification of these athletes that ensued, these all represent important potentials, when done and observed properly, to celebrate world traditions but also amplify knowledge about these countries living in a particularly unique and increasingly vulnerable part of the world. 

Africa

Africa, the birthplace of humanity and forever a hub of great sportsmanship, both through talent and sports virtue, continues to impress the world with its many top-notch athletes, who defiantly win against all odds following centuries of colonial oppression and continued global inequality in earnings, which is of course also dangerously and tragically reflected in sports. The Olympic Games have bestowed a number of medals going to African athletes, with South Africa, Nigeria, and more recently Botswana reaching for the stars. However, it is also important to note that, while records have been broken and consistent medals received in longer distance running, with brilliant anecdotes about winning under excruciating circumstances such as Kenyan Kip Keino winning a 1500-meter race, while hurt and even after running for 2 miles in order to arrive on time for the competition when his bus was caught in traffic in Mexico City. In spite of this, the lack of proper investment, infrastructure, and necessary preparation and equipment that requires continuous funding and lifestyle that African athletes cannot always afford back home often prevents these exceptional athletes from reaching their full potential - and this is best manifested in the fact that African short distance sprinters are less likely to break records, with short distance running being a discipline where consistent prior preparation and very specific infrastructure is required. These complexities show how sports results may be impacted by inequalities of the global setting, albeit sports and athletes still often find ways to overcome neo capitalist competition and allow raw talent and hard work to shine. 

Sports, however, can also be used to not only push our limits and always reach for a higher, faster, and stronger achievement, but also break the social mold and help us move beyond stereotypes. Movies such as the Egyptian Maye Zayed’s documentary Lift Like a Girl can help break the stereotypes and showcase true potential that sports have to offer for everyone, including girls and women that are often cut off from investment and support of male counterparts in the sporting world. 

When it comes to brilliant results by African athletes, one cannot overlook the incredible advancement of African football (soccer) showcased throughout team games as well as in the World Cup, with the most recent World Cup featuring Morocco at the forefront of action and reaching 4th place thus breaking African records, and countries like Cameron and Ghana boasting incredible strategy, power, and true love of the game, not to mention the strength of the fans themselves and their dance moves and sportsmanship. While this helps position Africa as a force to be reckoned with in world football (soccer), it is important to note that this attention that African players receive on such big events also invited the corporations’ gaze and has facilitated the buying and selling of African players, which erodes development of local clubs as players are invited elsewhere, though this practice still brings fame and recognition to Africans and can help diversify the world of football (soccer). However, looking further into the outcomes of commercialization of sports, it should be noted that this phenomena also provides platform for a lucrative business of clandestine trafficking of young African talent where young athletes, especially boys, are promised jobs as players in Europe only to be left at mediocre clubs or made to essentially engage in forced labor as poverty and lack of protections at home are being exploited to trick young talents with false promises of success. Thus, the sporting world remains intricately connected with the globalized world and finds itself in constant interaction with the global development policies and current disparity. 

Europe 

Making our way westward, Europe comes with some important examples from recent history, showing just how powerful and influential sporting events can be. The event that is a more widely known case but that cannot be left out of any analysis of this type is the uncomfortable decision to allow the 1936 Summer Olympics to be organized by Hitler’s Third Reich. Having won the bid in 1931 to organize the Games in 1936, Berlin proudly assumed the role of an internationally-savvy host. Hitler and his Cabinet worked hard to outmaneuver records of the previous Olympic Games hosted in Los Angeles, ensuring larger track fields, bigger stadiums, and more gymnasiums, all the while sprinkling, and usually not at all subtly, the now painfully known elements of Nazi propaganda. Visitors were welcomed by the Nazi eagle and insignia, and, after the US and its allies came out of heated debates agreeing to not boycott the Games but rather send their representation and compete, the 1936 Games came to showcase almost 4000 athletes and 49 teams competing in 129 events. 

While this event dangerously contributed to glorification of Hitler’s regime and deepened the influence of contemporary Nazi propaganda, painting the image of the Third Reich as a tolerant and peaceful nation, some events that were impossible for Hitler to predict went down in history as some of the biggest challenges to the Nazi ideology. Most notably, the biggest star of the games was Jesse Owens, an African American who captured four gold medals and was constantly on the podium. In fact, African Americans tended to dominate the popular track and field events and were welcomed with cheers by the German audience, demonstrating the ability of sports to uniquely bring people together and break the societal molds. The censorship prevented offensive remarks for the duration of the game, but it became obvious that Nazi publishers and thinkers were struggling to process the event, and this certainly threatened to shake up the dubious ideology of the Third Reich. Obviously, this sadly could not prevent the bloodshed that was to ensue with the onset of WWII, as Jewish athletes and citizens had already been prosecuted and excluded by this time. A great irony also comes from the fact that Jesse Owens and his compatriots had to return to a deeply segregated society that rejected them and never properly compensated for their successes despite calling itself a free country and supposedly being a perfect foil to Nazi Germany. While the sporting world cannot function as a peace treaty in its own right, the events of these Olympic Games allow us to see the ability of sports to showcase socio-political irony and once again help us to think critically and beyond stereotypes, although it cannot be ignored that the influence of sports has been used in this case to promote the opposite - a dictatorial regime with grotesque, horrifying policies looking to justify itself through sports. 

Since we inevitably reach the topics of the two World Wars when talking about Europe, it is also important to note that, although sports are sometimes seen as a “war minus the shooting”, it is sports that often assisted in normalization of relations and at least brief truces, as well as means to support the troops’ sanity during the toughest of times. It is on European soil stained by blood and tragedy during the horrendous conflicts of the 20th century that some of the most curious truces have been established, with sports events used as an excuse for ceasefire and brief moments of joy and camaraderie. In fact, while the threat of an air attack made it impossible to do so in WWII, the Football Association (FA) allowed football (soccer) matches to continue as normal in WWI, boosting the morale of everyone involved, and this served as continuous recreation throughout the war. In WWII, the armed forces still retained the rights from FA to organize matches, and women working in munition factories formed their own teams, which shows the reach and inclusionary potential of sports in spite of societal challenges. While sports can be used to motivate competitive spirit not dissimilar to that which leads to conflict and war, sports also allow us to conceive a world in which we all come together to play and treat each other fairly and respectfully, showing the potential of sports towards in fact ending the conflict when appropriately organized and facilitated.  

The Americas 

Last but not least are the Americas. People say that football (soccer) is the world’s favorite pastime, and as someone who has had the utmost pleasure of witnessing a World Cup while in Latin America, I would be lying if I said that this statement can be truer anywhere else. The sport has fascinated the region ever since its first arrival with European fans in the Southern Cone. It has spread from the port of Buenos Aires, a city which today holds America’s record for the greatest concentration of football (soccer) stadiums per capita, and today it encompasses a large part of regional identity of Latin America, to the point where countries such as Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, and Colombia, to name just a few regional representatives, use this sport essentially as part of the nation-building processes.

It is important to note that here too we see some less-than-ideal conditions that sports are exposed to. Football (soccer) in particular is often associated with the hooligan culture, also known as the barra bravas in many countries of the region. These groups are not always the same as traditional street gangs and their cliques, and they oftentimes in fact find themselves in conflict with other violent groups/gangs. However, in many parts of Latin America and Europe, they are also known to consistently engage in violence both inside the stadiums and on the streets, often themselves participate in the selling and distribution of drugs and other illicit deals as a way to attract and organize youth and attain more earning for their activities, and have more recently been observed performing the function of paid protestors and rioters that catalyze corrupt political aims, once again revealing the power and socio-political reach of sports. The groups started with the supposed intent to support the club, and the fervor for the club is still there through impressive percussion and energy they always bring to the stadiums, but in some cases, and this happens all too often, these groups’ behavior goes out of hand and this becomes detrimental to other fans’ presence at the stadium, leading to some clubs and entire countries, as is the case with Argentina, to ban stadiums from hosting both competing teams’ fans just to avoid clashes of the barra bravas at the expense of sportsmanship-loving fans’ ability to follow their club to each game.  

However, the relationship that clubs retain with their supporters and neighborhoods is impressive. I saw that some of the clubs I had the honor of interacting with in Central America and the Southern Cone function essentially as non-profits where all, or a significant portion, of additional profits are used to finance the building of sporting infrastructure for the youth of the neighborhood, and they also provide educational opportunities in their own facilities or through educational programs or school supplies they help finance. This is just one example of how football (soccer) remains the sport of the people and is able to retain its neighborhood spirit and local appeal as much as it has also presently become a lucrative business investment and a part of the system of multinational corporations. It is also, as previously mentioned, crucially used for the process of nation-building and a form of symbol for national identity, hope, persistence, and unity. Uruguay is a great example as it is the glorious host of the very first World Cup, an event that also coincided with the celebration of the centennial anniversary of the country’s first constitution and led to construction of Uruguay’s national stadium. It was a great struggle and honor to receive the title of host for the inaugural competition, and Uruguay is now working with partners from across the region to bring the World Cup back to its initial hosts for the World Cup 2030 bicentennial celebration of Uruguayan first constitution and centennial anniversary of the World Cup itself. Later renditions of the World Cup in the Americas have both been praised for infrastructure projects they brought in and a focus on increased security and social cohesion, but also critiqued as a distraction from national issues ranging from debt to dictatorial governance, again revealing the complexity of the world of sports and its influence on political matters, willingly or not, stretching all the way to present-day World Cup history.

It is again revealed that corrupt and power-hungry gangsters, officials, and even political leaders manage to successfully manipulate the world of sports, with football (soccer) in particular even having been used as a supposed prelude and an instrument to support wartime efforts in the infamous example of the 1969 conflict between Honduras and El Salvador, with the war even being referred to as “The Soccer War” as much as root causes of exactly zero examples of international warfare in the world are actually due to any sporting event. Better understanding the impact that sports and the rhetoric and feelings surrounding sports is necessary for policy makers to delegate the world of sports appropriate thought and protections, keeping in mind that sports are also a means of supporting one’s patriotic pride as well as a way to nurture the spirit of sportsmanship, fair play, and proper treatment of rivals, and facilitate infrastructure projects and community development efforts. Sports thus become a key issue of governance and the people’s trust in sports must be carefully cultivated and protected through proper policymaking. 

Conclusion

Sports are inevitably connected to issues ranging from nation-building, global trade, and development to issues of governance, peacebuilding, and transnational crime, and, with their power having been recognized by those in leadership positions, sports have been used to meet both noble and corrupt goals in each world region. For the world of sports to not be corrupted and exploited but rather retain its significance as an honest, productive, and unifying pastime and fulfilling activity for people of all walks of life, it is necessary to ensure proper policymaking is applied. Sport disciplines and athletes, across gender, age, nationality, and bodily ability divisions, should be properly celebrated and rewarded. Issues such as inequity and impact of global inequality on the world of sports and trade in athletes should be examined. Comments made by FIFA higher-ups claiming that “less democracy is sometimes better for organizing a World Cup” should not be taken lightly so that fans around the world, myself included, and hopeful hosts do not have to suffer through the controversies that continue to surround the World Cup. Finally, sports should be seen as a way to celebrate humanity’s competitive spirit and need for teamwork and group association, but in a purely constructive manner that cherishes the spirit of cooperation and respect for rivals. One way to begin addressing these issues is to revive the UN Office on Sport for Development and Peace (UNOSDP) with a greater emphasis on monitoring mechanisms, possibly through sustained cooperation with the International Olympic Committee which currently completely overtook UNOSDP’s mandate as a cost-saving measure. This is all just the beginning and apparently a lot to ask, but if those in positions of leadership in the international political scene do not recognize and always keep the impact of sports in the back of their minds and at the forefront of some of the policymaking, we can amplify the positive impact of sports, which in one way or another reach and impact every human being on this planet. This article serves to be the catalyst of change.

A Deadly Profession: The Role of Journalism in Conflict Analysis and Resolution

Anna Politkovskaya, a Russian investigative journalist, is best known for her reporting on corruption and human rights abuses in Chechnya. She was shot in broad daylight in the lobby of her Moscow apartment building on October 7, 2006. In a CNN article titled, “Media Martyrs,” Anna Politkovskaya is put on a long list of reporters who have died working as journalists in the last 15 years. Her tragic story highlights a crisis around the world. According to NPR, the total of journalist deaths was almost 50% higher than in 2021. This is mostly due to the coverage of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, as well as violence in Latin America. Over half of 2022's killings occurred in just three countries, including Ukraine with 15, Mexico with 13, and Haiti with 7. This staggering report is the highest yearly number the Committee of Protecting Journalists (CPJ) has ever recorded for these countries since it began compiling data in 1992. In the recently released 2021-2022 Freedom of Expression report, UNESCO noted the deaths of 86 journalists last year, amounting to one every four days, up from 55 killings in 2021. The findings emphasize the serious dangers and vulnerabilities that journalists continue to encounter during their work and even once they go home. UNESCO Director-General Audrey Azoulay stated this problem as alarming, noting, “Authorities must step up their efforts to stop these crimes and ensure their perpetrators are punished because indifference is a major factor in this climate of violence.” UNESCO noted that nearly half of the journalists killed were targeted while off duty, while the rest were targeted while traveling, or while others were in their homes at the time of their killing. This report not only showcases the horrendous, dangerous conditions journalists must face during their work, but it gives a warning to us all about the perils of providing coverage and reporting to the population in times of conflict and widespread human rights crises. Journalists construct the foundations of healthy political societies with vital information. Their position is particularly important in areas of conflict, violence, and under repressive regimes.

According to the Freedom of Expression report, despite improvements in the past five years to limit risk, the rate of impunity for journalist killings remains high at 86 percent. Journalism continues to remain a deadly profession with nine times out of ten, the murder of a journalist is unresolved. From 2016 to the end of 2021,  UNESCO recorded 455  journalists killed for their work or while on the job. Murder is not the only crime for which journalists are at risk. Disappearances, kidnappings, detention, legal harassment, and digital violence all remain likely possible threats. While institutions and organizations continue to monitor these crimes, the increasing numbers since 2015 continue to be a cause for concern. Even more concerning, journalists are being killed outside of war zones, including half of the deaths that were documented last year were in the Latin America region, which is officially not in any conflict. With global insecurity and political instability, this is an indication of the disregard for democracy and could lead to an increase in censorship. It isn’t just other parts of the world in which this threat can be felt, with one killing of a journalist being reported in the United States in 2023 so far. Dylan Lyons, a Florida TV journalist, and a nine-year-old girl were fatally shot near Orlando, Florida. In 2021, there was a new global high in the number of journalists being imprisoned, with the total number reaching 293. This is another glaring red flag that could be detrimental to the global community, suppressing journalists to report on corruption and mistreatment. Commenting on this dangerous environment, the president of the Committee to Protect Journalists, Jodie Ginsburg, stated, “When you think about it, the killings and the imprisonments of journalists are just the tip of the iceberg. They're indicative of a much broader pattern of declines in press freedom more generally. We see thousands of journalists harassed online every day, and unfortunately, often that turns into offline, real-world violence, physical threats against journalists, and that's something we're seeing more and more.” Seeing this decline in democracy is accompanied by an undermining of democratic norms, the target is increasingly becoming journalists who can report on wrongdoing by leaders, organizations, and institutions. Additionally, UNESCO reported that over the past five years, press freedom has continued its downward trend across the globe with 85 percent of the world’s population experiencing a decline in press freedom in their country over the past five years. What would the world look like if the number of journalists continued to be in a downward spiral? Furthermore, what would the world look like if journalism became only censored, restricted, and blocked in times of conflict? 

The essential service mission of journalism is particularly vital in times of crisis, like reporting on wars and conflict zones, environmental and climate issues, natural disasters, and on public health emergencies like COVID-19.  This is why many countries under the curfews introduced under the pandemic recognized journalism as an essential service. Journalists are not only important in spreading the news to the international community, but journalists and media institutions can also help diplomats contact intended target audiences. When embassies, diplomats, and other international foreign affairs institutions invest in their media presence, they are awarded. The U.S. Embassy in Pakistan, for instance, has more than 200,000 followers on Twitter and more than 6,000,000 page likes on Facebook. Using social media, embassies can communicate directly with the local population and use the media landscape to their benefit. Journalism cannot now fully be understood or analyzed apart from globalization. This process refers to the intensification of social interconnections, which allows apprehending the world as a single place, creating an interconnectedness and greater correspondence. Using communication media, journalism can be studied to showcase social interactions, movements, and the intersection of identities. International media sources such as the BBC, CNN, al Arabiya, and al Jazeera have global reach, and as such have an "agenda-setting effect." This effect, as professor of Media and Public Affairs and International Affairs at the George Washington University Steven Livingston, explains, “revolves around the ideological components of political disagreements, and more specifically the way key actors in conflict seek to manipulate public perceptions of the disagreement. That is, actors in any conflict will seek to either minimize or exaggerate the conflict, depending upon their relative position of power.” The international media can sweep communities, drawing them together, and has the potential to influence governments and international organizations. This is seen in countless occasions and case studies, including when studying Cyprus. 

In conflict-affected communities, journalism has a crucial part in shaping the public’s perception and knowledge of a given issue, surrounding topics such as identity, conflict, and important peace efforts. When mediating a conflict abroad and at home, journalists do more than information reports, they also define, frame, deliberate, and promote it. Using Cyprus as a case study, a 2021 journal article titled, “Journalism in conflict-affected societies: Professional roles and influences in Cyprus,” highlights just how journalists define their roles and responsibilities. Disseminating political and military messages, journalists took part in the very creation of these messages for the public. Journalists on both sides of Cyprus articulated proficient roles that varied from monitoring the political and business elite, acting as watchdogs, promoting social change, and educating and informing the public about societal problems. When asked about professional roles, journalists on both sides of the island stressed that accurate reporting is a crucial part of their professional roles. In both communities across the divide, information, especially on the Cyprus problem, can be controlled and manipulated by the political elite and be shaped by outside interests. The journal research shows that journalists in conflict and post-conflict societies assume more comprehensive obligations than other journalists in democratic countries, and advocacy for peace is one of them. Journalists are more likely to adopt an active role in the resolution of the problem. When asked about it, in a 2019 personal interview, a journalist remarked: “If we lived in another society, one without conflict, then we could have answered this question differently, but we live in Cyprus and we have concerns about our future.” This underlines that journalists’ identities are not fixed but fluid and journalists struggle to find a balance between their professional role and their identities. Depending on the state of the conflict or the transition their communities are going through, journalists renegotiate and reproduce the meaning and role of journalism. They outline the potential to harness social change and change policy, informing the public and persuading the population. With the increasing number of targeting and deaths related to the field of journalism, the advocacy to promote journalists' individuality and press-related freedoms is pivotal in maintaining a transparent world. 

There is no doubt that journalism is an essential, integral part of the international community. UNESCO’s work on monitoring and reporting on the safety of journalists helps keep this information accessible and able to be used in policy-making decisions, forming an integral component of the UN Action Plan on the Safety of Journalists and the Issue of Impunity. Media organizations must be sure to adopt safety protocols, allocate enough resources to protect journalists, and ensure proper training of journalists. Deputy director of the International Press Institute, Scott Griffen, emphasizes the need for accountability, noting, "If some of these journalists were directly targeted, we need to start collecting the evidence for possible war crimes prosecutions." The need to be vigilant and prepared to adapt has never been more useful than now. With a public health crisis and the Russian invasion of Ukraine, journalism remains a critically ingrained part of humanity. If journalism is declining and persists to be as dangerous as it is heading, this says a lot about society and the future of everyone in the world. The voices of so many communities will increasingly become silenced, leaving a painful disregard for verity. 

Revisiting the Genocide Convention

The concept of genocide, as outlined in the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide, is no longer useful and detracts attention and resources from other instances of systematic mass violence. In fact, the concept of genocide as we know it today, was not what Raphael Lemkin had originally conceived when he coined the term. Only four groups are protected under the convention: racial, ethnic, national, and religious groups. Other groups are excluded from protection including political groups. There are also no explicit prevention provisions within the Genocide Convention. The definition and conception of genocide as it currently exists allows us to pick and choose which acts of mass violence deserve the recognition that comes with labeling something a genocide.

There is a tendency to downplay instances of mass violence if they do not conform to the strict definition of genocide outlined in the convention. Taking away attention from mass atrocities because the victim pool is not homogenous or does not neatly fit into one of the four categories is cruel and dehumanizing. 

The Original Conception of Genocide

It would be neglectful to not begin this paper with a brief overview of Raphael Lemkin’s original conception of genocide. This is to honor his role in coining the term but to also demonstrate how different the current definition is from what he imagined and how that limits our understanding of genocide today. Lemkin coined the term genocide in 1942, but the bones of the concept were there as early as 1933. Lemkin’s report titled “Acts Constituting a General (Transnational) Danger Considered as Offences Against the Law of Nations” developed the precursor to genocide which he called “barbarity.” Barbarity was “acts of extermination directed against the ethnic, religious, or social collectivities whatever the motive (political, religious, etc.). Barbarity was unique in that the attacks were “carried out against an individual as a member of a collectivity” with the goal being to damage the collectivity. A second type of attack on a collectivity was known as “vandalism,” or cultural and artistic destruction. Lemkin saw individual cultures as contributing to a wider world culture that all humans were part of. His argument was that destroying a particular culture inflicted a loss on world culture. These two acts, barbarity and vandalism, violated the law of nations and therefore a multilateral convention criminalizing these acts was necessary. 

Lemkin coined the term ‘genocide’ in 1942, but it first appeared in print in his 1944 book Axis Rule in Occupied Europe. In Chapter 9, Lemkin defines genocide as “the destruction of a nation or of an ethnic group.” The word is 

intended rather to signify a coordinated plan of different actions aiming at the destruction of essential foundations of life of national groups, with the aim of annihilating the groups themselves. The objectives of such a plan would be the disintegration of the political and social institutions, of culture, language, national feelings, religion, and the economic existence of national groups and the destruction of the personal security, liberty, health, dignity, and even the lives of the individuals belonging to such groups.

Lemkin identifies two phases of genocide: destroying the “national pattern” of the oppressed group and then imposing the “national pattern” of the oppressor.

Lemkin’s definition highlighted different techniques of genocide in various areas. He identified eight techniques of genocide. The first was political, which included the destruction of local institutions of self-government and the imposition of the oppressing government. The second was social, which meant the overhauling of social structure through the forced deportation of intellectual leaders and the clergy. The third was cultural, which included prohibitions on speaking and printing in local languages, as well as strict control over cultural activities and artistic expression. The fourth was economic, which included lowering the standard of living, expelling groups from certain industries, seizing private property, and controlling the banking system. The fifth was biological, which was taking measures to prevent the group from reproducing like separating men and women, and also taking steps to actively reproduce the oppressing group. The sixth was physical, which Lemkin outlines in the following ways: “racial discrimination in feeding;” “endangering of health;” and “mass killing.” The seventh was religious, which included forcing people to renounce their religious affiliations and persecuting clergy. The last was moral, which meant creating an atmosphere of moral debasement by forcing oppressed groups to watch pornographic movies, to overconsume alcohol, and to gamble. In the end, the concept of genocide officially adopted in the convention only focuses on biological and physical techniques of genocide. 

It is important to note that Lemkin understood genocide as a process, not a singular event. Genocide was an attempt to destroy a nation, with ‘attempt’ meaning an “active social, political, or historical process set in motion intentionally” rather than a single act. Lemkin made sure to emphasize the role of the state in developing a genocidal policy over time through various laws, decrees, and administrative institutions that worked together to commit genocide. In this way, the apparatus of the state becomes a vehicle for genocide. 

Lemkin lobbied heavily for a UN convention outlawing genocide and in 1947, along with Vespasian Pella and Henri Donnedieu de Vabres, he created the first draft of such a convention, now known as the secretariat draft. I want to highlight two notable provisions in this draft that are not included in the final version. First, the protected groups are not just racial, religious, and national, but also linguistic, cultural, and political. Second, genocide can be biological, physical, and cultural. Cultural genocide included “forced and systematic exile of individuals representing the culture of a group;” “prohibition of the use of the national language even in private intercourse;” “systematic destruction of books printed in the national language or of religious works or prohibition of new publications;” and “systematic destruction of historical or religious monuments or their diversion to alien uses, destruction or dispersion of documents and objects of historical, artistic, or religious value and of objects used in religious worship.” Lemkin’s original conception of genocide was lost throughout the drafting process. Each draft after the secretariat draft looked less and less like his original vision and he was forced to decide what his priority was: definitions or prosecuting genocide. Ultimately, he chose to fight for the provisions that would establish an international criminal tribunal for genocide. In the end, the work Lemkin put into preserving his original conception of genocide would not produce tangible results until the ad hoc tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda were created in the early 1990s.  

Specific Problems with the Genocide Convention

1. The Exclusion of Political Groups

The exclusion of political groups is one of the critical flaws of the Genocide Convention. The primary justification for the exclusion of political groups from the Genocide Convention is that people choose their political affiliation, but people cannot choose their race or ethnicity. This argument hinges on the idea that genocide is the targeting of a specific group solely because of some innate characteristic, but that is rarely ever the case. It is important to note, however, that nationality, religion, even ethnicity are not innate characteristics. While you are born into a nationality or religion, it is a choice to remain part of a national or religious group and we know that ethnicity is not an entirely biological phenomenon, but also socially constructed and ever-changing. “Groups formed on the basis of ‘religion’ or ‘nationality’ are in reality no more stable or permanent than groups formed on the basis of political affiliation” and “ethnicity can be shaped by political and economic factors as much as ancestry and inherited culture.” Extensive research has been done into why political groups were excluded from the initial drafting of the Convention (states wanted to be able to suppress political opposition, among other things), but as Beth Van Schaack explains, the exclusion of political groups is fundamentally at odds with the international human rights apparatus. 

Discarding political groups from the Genocide Convention created an internally inconsistent human rights regime, because other major international agreements include the category. The prohibition of crimes against humanity prohibits persecutions on ‘political, racial, or religious grounds.’ Likewise, the provisions of the Refugee Convention protect individuals from persecution on account of ‘race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion.’ 

To solidify this point further, political persecution is a valid reason to seek asylum, which shows that political affiliation and expression, while not innate, is something worth protecting. Additionally, before the Genocide Convention was adopted, the UN General Assembly passed a resolution affirming that genocide is a crime under international law “whether the crime is committed on religious, racial, political, or any other grounds.” In sum, there is a history of political affiliation being a protected status under the international human rights regime that cannot be ignored. 

1. The Exclusion of Cultural Genocide

Culture is a fundamental part of identity, and its destruction not only harms that culture, but humanity as well. But the Genocide Convention does not reflect this. The first two drafts of the Genocide Convention explicitly stated that cultural destruction is a form of genocide. In the Secretariat Draft, the definition of genocide included provisions such as “forced and systematic exile of individuals representing the culture of a group;” “prohibition of the use of the national language even in private intercourse;” “systematic destruction of books printed in the national language or of religious works or prohibition of new publications;” and “systematic destruction of historical or religious monuments or their diversion to alien uses, destruction or dispersion of documents and objects of historical, artistic, or religious value and of objects used in religious worship.” The Ad hoc Committee Draft succinctly reiterated these provisions, defining cultural genocide as “any deliberate act committed with the intent to destroy the language, religion, or culture of a national, racial, or religious group on grounds of the national or racial origin or the religious beliefs of its members…” As mentioned in the previous section, fifteen years before the creation of the Genocide Convention, Lemkin explained how vandalism, defined as the “destruction of culture and works of art,” constituted an attack on a collectivity. “The contribution of any particular collectivity to world culture as a whole, forms the wealth of all humanity…Thus, the destruction of a work of art of any nation must be regarded as acts of vandalism directed against world culture.” The definition of cultural genocide in the first two drafts of the Genocide Convention is simply a generalization of the examples Lemkin used to describe the cultural genocide committed by the Nazis in France and Poland. 

Humanity clearly understands the importance of cultural preservation and appreciation. If we did not, UNESCO World Heritage sites would not exist, and museums would have nothing to exhibit. Culture gives life meaning and to destroy the culture of a particular group is to destroy the “social vitality” of that group, as identified by Claudia Card. She writes, “Social vitality is destroyed when the social relations—organizations, practices, institutions—of the members of a group are irreparably damaged or demolished.” Because culture gives groups social vitality, “When a group with its own cultural identity is destroyed, its survivors lose their cultural heritage and may even lose their intergenerational connections.” If people cannot participate in their culture because it was destroyed, life becomes devoid of meaning, leading to social death akin to physical death. “By limiting genocide to its physical and biological manifestations, a group can be kept physically and biologically intact even as its collective identity suffers in a fundamental and irremediable manner…the present understanding of genocide preserves the body of the group but allows its very soul to be destroyed.”

1. Forgets Prevention

The Genocide Convention as it currently exists fails to provide sufficient guidance on how states should prevent genocide, diminishing the utility of the convention as a legal instrument. For a crime like genocide, who implementation and methodology are constantly evolving, there simply needs to be more substantive explanation and guidelines for its prevention. Prevention is currently based on deterrence and the threat of punishment. But it is unclear how effective a deterrent punishment is. Preventing a genocide is a difficult task because the term tends to be retroactively applied via courts or independent fact-finding missions. The international community cannot prevent a genocide if it refuses to acknowledge one is happening and only do so after the violence has ended. Genocides can be prevented by understanding and mitigating the factors that are most likely to lead to genocide, a significant one being war. Prevention must be proactive and cannot be solely based on threat of punishment. 

Moving Forward

After highlighting a few problems with the concept of genocide, I want to offer a few alternatives. In terms of Genocide convention, changes are possible. Article XVI of the convention states “A request for the revision of the present Convention may be made at any time by any Contracting Party by means of a notification in writing addressed to the Secretary-General. The General Assembly shall decide upon the steps, if any, to be taken in respect of such request.” All it takes is one state to request that the Genocide Convention be revised, and the General Assembly can decide where to go from there. Given that this convention is 75 years old, it is worth reevaluating its provisions given that the world has changed tremendously since 1948. Revisions to the convention can mean including cultural genocide and expanding the protection status to include political groups. Revisions can also make the prevention aspect clearer. While convincing states to make changes might be difficult, proposing revisions does no harm and can even bring greater attention to the issues with the convention. 

One of the problems highlighted earlier in this paper is the exclusion of political groups from the Genocide Convention. Beth Van Schaack offers a new way of thinking of the protection of political groups from genocide and that is through the norms of jus cogens. Jus cogens is the idea that there are certain peremptory norms in international law, norms that cannot be violated no matter the circumstances. According to Article 50 of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties 

a treaty is void if, at the time of its conclusion, it conflicts with a peremptory norm of general international law. For the purposes of the present Convention, a peremptory norm of general international law is a norm accepted and recognized by the international community of States as a whole as a norm from which no derogation is permitted and which can be modified only by a subsequent norm of general international law having the same character.

Examples of peremptory norms are the prohibitions on genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, torture, human trafficking, slavery, apartheid, etc. Van Schaack makes the case for applying the norm of jus cogens to protect political groups from genocide. “When faced with mass killings evidencing the intent to eradicate political groups in whole or in part, domestic and international adjudicatory bodies should apply the jus cogens prohibition of genocide and invoke the Genocide Convention vis-à-vis signatories only insofar as it provides practical procedures for enforcement and ratification.” Enforcement and ratification can be found in Article IX which says the International Court of Justice has jurisdiction over disputes between states about the interpretation, fulfilment, and application of the Convention (although there are several reservations to this article). Article VIII says that any party can call upon “the competent organs of the United Nations to take such action…as they consider appropriate for the prevention and suppression of acts of genocide” or any enumerated acts.  

Conclusion 

There is a tendency to call instances of mass violence ‘genocide’ to garner attention and action from the international community because imbedded in the word is a certain gravity that necessitates action. The obsession with genocide makes equally grave crimes like crimes against humanity and war crimes secondary and something to settle for. This directs attention away from mass violence that is not genocide, leading to inaction and indifference. 

There are changes that can be made to reduce our obsession with genocide. Contracting parties can propose revisions to the Genocide Convention; the norm of jus cogens can be the legal framework by which we view genocides and mass violence in order to include historically excluded groups from the convention; and we can think diligently about the language we use to describe instances of genocide and mass violence and use the more inclusive phrase of ‘crimes against humanity.’ 

To be reiterate once again, this is not an argument for genocide denial or even the concept as a whole. Rather, it is an argument against the concept of genocide as it currently exists. The concept of genocide can be strengthened by the inclusion of other groups, cultural genocide, and more prevention provisions. 

The Implications of Türkiye and Brazil on Global Democracy

Fears of global democratic backsliding have become all but ubiquitous among international relations scholars, as complications emerge from fracturing in established democracies, such as the United States, and the rise of authoritarian powerhouses like China that offer an alternative political system for countries to consider. Are such fears warranted? Is democracy in retreat worldwide? To expand upon this discussion, this article will focus on two specific case studies of countries that could help forecast the future directions of democracy: Türkiye and Brazil.

This article will take a retrospective look at the political atmosphere in Brazil in the aftermath of Bolsonaro’s tumultuous 4 years in office, and a prospective look at the democratic outlook in Türkiye in the wake of the earthquakes and the forthcoming 2023 elections. In doing so, it will analyze what the domestic politics in these countries can tell us about what’s in store for global democracy.

Türkiye

Türkiye is in a crucial transition point, wherein the intersection of earthquakes, the general election, and the war in Ukraine could prove to have a ripple effect on democracy in Eastern Europe and beyond. Türkiye is facing a dire humanitarian crisis, with tens of thousands of casualties, billions of dollars in property damage, and millions of people being displaced, because of earthquakes in the region. The sheer scale of these earthquakes and the disruption of life that has ensued for large swathes of the Turkish population makes it pertinent for the AKP to address the immediate damage and mitigate the long-term effects to avoid adding insult to injury for Türkiye’s already struggling economy. With Türkiye’s elections mere months away, there’s little room for error, as resentment from a lackluster long-term response on Erdoğan’s part could jeopardize his bid for re-election. In that regard, the decision to call for elections a month earlier could backfire if the aftermath from the earthquakes isn’t addressed properly and lingers in the minds of voters when they’re casting their ballots.

The world is watching Erdoğan’s response intently, as it could prove to be a decisive moment for Western democracy and NATO unity. Another 5 years could embolden Erdoğan to consolidate more power, further endangering the already fragile system of checks and balances in place and eroding democratic institutions. Domestically, an emboldened Erdoğan could take past efforts to restrict the information available to the public one step further, through cracking down on dissent and curtailing the freedom of press, endangering a lifeline of any functioning democracy. Internationally, a successful re-election bid would provide Erdoğan with a concrete victory for him to tout as proof of the popularity of his policy, which he could use to justify further distancing from the West. Erdoğan’s intent and willingness to stall NATO operations is present and clear, it’s just restrained so he can gauge whether his base is receptive to it or not. Erdoğan’s refusal to let Sweden and Finland join NATO until he extracted concessions from alliance members was a clear example of this, and it could only be light work compared to what could happen if he wins re-election. A re-election would serve as validation for his foreign policy that promotes Türkiye’s self-interest above all else, including its NATO allies. The war in Ukraine is a test of Western resolve, and more pushback from Türkiye in NATO operations would only undermine the narrative of a cohesive unit that is committed to upholding international norms, and with it, Eastern European security.

Conversely, if Erdoğan’s election efforts are unsuccessful, a more democratic Türkiye could help NATO present a more unified front against Russia and put more pressure on countries such as Hungary and Poland to fall in line and undertake reforms to reinvigorate their democracies. If NATO’s greatest spoiler were to suddenly embrace cooperation with its fellow alliance members, it would send a clear signal to Putin that NATO is stronger than ever. Any desire Putin may have had to see whether NATO is bluffing about Article V commitments in the event of an invasion of the Baltics would be extinguished, effectively deterring further expansion in the region.

Furthermore, if Türkiye is on board with NATO operations, focus would be redirected towards two other members of the alliance that are struggling with democracy: Hungary and Poland. Without Türkiye to hide behind, Hungary and Poland would either fall in line with NATO initiatives, or risk being condemned by alliance members now that they’re in the spotlight. Hungary and Poland need not completely reform their democracies to be an asset for the alliance, nor should we expect them to, so long as they don’t stall NATO initiatives. Once Hungary and Poland are pressured into cooperation, NATO could reap the benefits of a more cohesive alliance, which would allow it to be more effective at accomplishing objectives across the board, but also would put autocracies on the defensive. In the absence of hurdles, NATO could pursue large initiatives that would make them more integrated than ever before. Further interdependence would strengthen NATO even more and allow it to take additional steps to promote democracy and condemn autocracy worldwide.

Brazil

Jair Bolsonaro ran on a platform that stoked nationalism among the populace by scapegoating globalization, gender minorities, and environmentalist efforts to protect the Amazon for the economic problems that the country was facing. By diving headfirst into the culture war, Bolsonaro was able to draw upon and weaponize the resentment brewing among the Brazilian public for his own political gain, a tactic that’s being increasingly used by politicians around the world.  Populists like Bolsonaro are able to tie people’s economic qualms to social issues, such as climate change and equality for members of the LGBTQIA+ community, areas which they may be underinformed or misinformed about, and use that confusion to steer them towards them. They identify that there is a problem that is causing dissatisfaction among the general public, pin the problem on something, and then argue that their policies can remedy the fabricated “cause” of the problem. By exploiting the ability to spread information quickly and the willingness of some to take this news at face value and without skepticism, Bolsonaro was able to win the Brazilian Presidential Election in October 2018.

Bolsonaro’s tenure was marked by repeated attempts to undermine democratic institutions, restrict the freedom of press, weaken the checks and balances in place, and was capped off with the promotion of unwarranted claims of electoral fraud. The installation of military officials into high-ranking government positions and efforts to close Congress and the Supreme Court sparked concerns of a return to Brazil’s military dictatorship. Then, in last October, Bolsonaro was unseated by former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in a run-off election, putting an end to his four years in office. Bolsonaro’s war on democracy was far from over, however, and was carried out by his supporters, who stormed the capital, calling for Bolsonaro to be reinstated as president, in an event that quickly drew comparisons to the January 6th insurrection. A cynic may look at these events over the past five years and be pessimistic about for the future of Brazilian democracy; however, Brazilian democracy’s perseverance through all of this offers reason for optimism, as it shows the resiliency of robust institutions in the wake of right-wing challenges.

Among the reasons to be sanguine about the outlook of Brazilian democracy is the durability of institutions. Brazil was only able to survive four years of constant attacks on democracy and an extravagant grand finale at the capital because of its durable institutions, which have been quick to adapt and respond to the attempts at unraveling the system. The Supreme Court’s consistent blocking of Bolsonaro’s undemocratic attempts to expand his power were complemented by Congress’ refusal to pass bills that condoned such behavior. The future looks bright for these institutions as Brazilians have elected a president who has shown a strong commitment to maintaining the integrity of them and working with them to achieve his efforts. Furthermore, the rejection of Bolsonaro’s particular brand of far-right populism by the masses is an indication of the strength of the movement against autocratic governance. The fact that Bolsonaro’s blatant disregard for the liberal international order and his anti-globalization, anti-environmental, and anti-immigrant stances were ultimately dissuasive to the Brazilian public is a win for liberalism and can inspire people worldwide to pushback against far-right populists. While skeptics might point to the recent election of far-right populists in other parts of the world, such as Giorgia Meloni in Italy, as a reason to be cautiously optimistic, or even pessimistic, about the future of global democracy, they underestimate the effect that experiencing a far-right populist presidency has on the strength of the resistance movement. In the United States, for example, a major reason that Joe Biden got 15 million more votes in the 2020 presidential election than Hillary Clinton got in 2016 was because of the resentment people had for the Trump administration—resentment that was only amplified by the administration’s incompetent response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Similarly, after experiencing 4 years of Bolsonaro’s abrasive style of politics, Brazilians reached the same conclusion, and there’s fair reason to believe that Italians will too, and that Italian democracy will emerge stronger than ever.

Closing Thoughts

This article sought to expand the conversation on democratic backsliding by examining the democracies of two powerful international players: Türkiye and Brazil. Turkish democracy is at a crossroads, and it’s likely that the road it embarks upon will depend on the Erdoğan administration’s response to the earthquakes. If the response is successful and receives public praise, it could allow Erdoğan to secure another term, which could spell the end of Turkish democracy. If the response is lackluster and receives continued scrutiny, then a challenger could unseat Erdoğan and revitalize Turkish democracy through pursuing domestic reforms to strengthen the institutions and increase cooperation with its NATO allies, bolstering European democracy in the process. Similarly, Brazil’s democratic resilience offers a case for optimism about the ability of democracy to persevere against right-wing power grabs. Brazil’s ability to withstand several massive shocks to the system indicates remarkable democratic resilience, and not only does Lula’s victory offer a beacon of hope for protestors around the world who are fighting to reverse democratic backsliding in their country, it provides optimism for democratic prospects in other countries, such as Italy. Ultimately, it’s time to look closely at Turkish politics and see if their democracy shares the same resilience as Brazil’s.

Irreversible Catastrophe: Climate Change as a Human Security Concern

The effects of climate change are already being felt across many parts of the world, increasingly causing new dangers to domestic and international security in the United States. With increased natural disasters, refugee flows, and conflicts over essential resources like food and water, climate change is an urgent matter that seems to only get more alarming. The present-day effects of climate change are felt from the Arctic to the Midwest and natural disasters are sweeping across every country. Increased sea levels are affecting coastal regions, destroying infrastructure and making land unlivable. In return, the global economy is suffering, requiring many to spend more and more money on rebuilding and reestablishing buildings. It is no surprise that climate change is transforming the way we think about security. “This will not be the first time people have fought over land, water and resources, but this time it will be on a scale that dwarfs the conflicts of the past”, said the Congolese representative at the UN Security Council debate in April 2007. The French called it the “number one threat to mankind.” This danger is an ever-changing, tremendous conflict that will produce problems that won’t care about transnational borders. Rather, climate change will impact every single one of us and everyone is vulnerable. 

In a report in 2021, the Pentagon found that “increasing temperatures; changing precipitation patterns; and more frequent, intense, and unpredictable extreme weather conditions caused by climate change are exacerbating existing risks” for the U.S. This report highlights that at a fundamental level, climate change will affect the national security of the entire country.  Analyzing the consequences of the next two decades, The National Intelligence Estimate written in 2021 is a joint assessment produced by the entire U.S. intelligence community, which is a total of 18 agencies. There are a sequence of immediate security threats that the report remarks. For example, it is likely that the temperature will rise by 1.5 degrees by 2030. Not only are we unlikely to stop this from happening, but the report also reveals the consequences of the inability to prevent it. U.S. direct consequences relate to territorial integrity which the U.S. military has been talking about rising sea levels on bases since the 1970s, if not earlier. Rising sea levels are affecting how the military undertakes military operations and then scarce resources lead to political violence and terrorism. Domestically and internationally, climate change is an issue that affects everyone. 

Federal literature outlining the domestic security implications of climate change directly looks at regional areas that are impacted, like the coastal areas or in the Arctic and also looks at how those domestic risks influence broadly. The White House’s Findings from Select Federal Reports: The National Security Implications of a Changing Climate in May 2015 suggest that climate change is not isolated to any one region, and the impacts will be felt in distinct ways. For example, coastal areas are cited as the most vulnerable to rising sea levels as critical infrastructure, major military installations, and hurricane evacuation routes are increasingly vulnerable to storm surges, and flooding worsened by climate change. An example of this domino effect is Superstorm Sandy, as the storm’s effects were exacerbated by the sea level in the New York Harbor, which had risen one foot since 1900. The storm, which left 8.5 million people without power, caused infrastructure to be destroyed, hospitals were evacuated and train and roadway tunnels and wastewater treatment facilities were flooded. 

Just like the coastal regions, the Arctic faces an interconnection between national security and climate change that is undeniable. Although this is a remote area to most Americans, the changing Arctic climate will be felt far beyond that of the region itself. According to a 2022 journal published in the Communication Earth & Environment, the Arctic has warmed nearly four times faster than the globe since 1979. Rising ocean temperatures are causing northward range shifts of certain fish species, affecting ocean ecosystems and the communities and economies that depend on them. Placing additional burdens on economies, societies, and institutions around the world, the problems that face the Arctic showcase that climate change is far-reaching and extensive. The consequences of climate change are in your backyard, in the country, and around the globe. 

Coupled with other global dynamics, climate change will devastate the international community. Food scarcity and urbanizing populations could devastate homes, land, and infrastructure. In a Stanford article by Josie Garthwaite, Garthwaite noted, “ as early as 2025, the World Health Organization estimates that half of the world’s population will be living in water-stressed areas. The pressures caused by climate change will influence resource competition while placing additional burdens on economies, societies, and governance institutions around the world.” In one recent example, India has lost 70 million hectares of farmland since 2015 due to climate change. A farmer from Harigarh village in Punjab’s Barnala district, Manjeet Singh, explains this crisis, “When the crop was almost ready to harvest, there was heavy rainfall in the last week of September, followed by another two-day rain spell between Oct. 7 and 8.” Many governments will face challenges to meeting even the basic needs of their people as they confront demographic change, resource constraints, and risks of global infectious disease outbreaks. The risk of conflict may increase exponentially as well. Undoubtedly, U.S. relations with Russia and China are the worst they have been since the end of the Cold War, with a recent Department of Defense policy document warning of an “increased potential for regional conflicts involving nuclear-armed adversaries … and the potential for adversarial nuclear escalation in crisis or conflict."  The intelligence report identified 11 countries as being particularly vulnerable to the effects of climate change and particularly unable to cope with its effects. That list included four countries near the United States, among them Guatemala and Haiti; three countries with nuclear weapons (North Korea, Pakistan, and India); and two countries, Afghanistan and Iraq, that the United States invaded in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. The National Security Council released there own report that takes a look at how climate change is already pushing people to flee their residences. The report noted one forecast suggesting that climate change could lead to almost three percent of the populations of Latin America, South Asia, and sub-Saharan Africa moving within their countries by 2050, which is more than 143 million people. The problems that the world is facing today are illustrated by science and governments. But, are there ways in which the effects of climate change can be reduced? 

Regarding natural disasters, the recommendations of the Hurricane Sandy Rebuilding Task Force and the White House have emphasized the importance of rebuilding damaged infrastructure to a higher standard that can withstand the risks posed by higher sea levels, increased flooding, and other impacts. This would allow buildings to be built that fight tremendous damage and therefore prevent interminable economic struggles. On December 8, President Joe Biden signed an executive order to spearhead his administration’s efforts to combat climate change. The Biden executive order “will reduce emissions across federal operations, invest in American clean energy industries and manufacturing, and create clean, healthy, and resilient communities.” In addition to his executive order, Biden has backed infrastructure spending that would incentivize industry to produce more electric vehicles and other technologies that could eventually lower emissions. Most countries have set aspirational nationwide net neutrality goals for 2050. Suriname and Bhutan claim already to be net neutral, while other nations, including Uruguay and Sweden, are aiming for sooner, and a few, like China and Singapore, are targeting later dates. However, even with this optimism, few nations have made urgent domestic legislation or detailed plans to meet this goal for a full energy transition. The urgency of the effects of climate change is far more than lacking, it is disturbing. If governments and the international community continue to do little, we will promise the worst possible outcome for future generations. 

Climate change needs to be prioritized as a human security issue. Not only will there be catastrophic damage to infrastructure, but there will also be mass migration and unyielded competition in the international community for resources. Certain regions will be far more at risk than others, including third-world countries, but the effects of climate change will be disastrous and fatal to all. Destroying ecosystems, homes, and livelihoods, climate change doesn’t raise questions about whether it will affect human security, but it is a question of when. The international community needs to collaborate with one another to prevent conflict and future fatal impacts. Policies must be urgent, global agreements must be ensured, and a sense of desperation must be acquired to create change that is crucial for the health of the population. The world is changing rapidly, and the more we address these global security challenges, the better it will be for everyone. Climate change needs to be taken seriously, and these natural disasters are no longer containable. The planet is practically screaming it’s time to wake up.

Autocratic Elites and American Television

American audiences are increasingly finding the conflict within autocratic power structures to be entertaining drama. Two of the most popular shows dominating American airwaves and conversation revolve around how autocratic elites manage their empires. HBO’s House of the Dragon and Disney’s Andor both portray autocratic systems under stress and under threat as the show’s central conflict. However, there are noted differences in how they approach portraying this conflict. While there has been a lot of valuable analysis on how individual characters or events have impacted the conflicts inherent to these shows, this paper will attempt to use the existing academic literature around autocratic elites to help explain how the events in the show unfolded the way that they did.

House of the Dragon

HBO’s House of the Dragon is a sequel to its wildly popular fantasy epic Game of Thrones, and is itself based on George RR Martin’s Fire and Blood. The first season of the show focuses on a slow-moving succession crisis within the dominant ruling Targaryen dynasty of Westeros, that culminates in the outbreak of a large civil war following the death of the incumbent King Viserys. While on paper the show and its dragons, magic, and Iron Throne make a poor venue for serious analysis, a closer inspection reveals it as an interesting case study to examine how autocratic elites govern themselves and how failures can lead to internal conflict.

It’s important to begin with an analytical framework that explains how autocrats hold on to power, and why elites colace behind an autocrat, whether that be a monarch, dictator, or warlord. In their book “The Dictator's Handbook,” Bruce Bueno de Mesquita and Alastair Smith (both of NYU) proposed that autocracies revolve around a small inner circle of elites, known as “Keys.” In a modern dictatorship these may include the heads of the military, police, and intelligence services, as well as regional governors and the ministers for key institutions like the treasury. The goal of any autocrat is to manage their limited resources (including coercivity and inducements) to convince a majority of those “keys'' that the autocrat is the best option for managing those resources and mediating the different needs each “key” has. One way to minimize the work required to placate these allies is to minimize the number of allies that need to be supported. Of course, this risks introducing uncertainty and alienating key supporters, so it is only done when the autocrat is confident in their position. Importantly, this system isn’t exclusive to the ruling autocrat. Every member of the ruling elite has their own “keys.” The commander of the armed forces relies on the support of his generals, who in turn relies on their colonels, all the way down to the individual foot soldiers. In that way, an autocracy resembles a pyramid, where each level on the pyramid has to secure the support of the lower rung for its own survival. 

Importantly, de Mesquita and Smith argue this system applies to all political regimes, but with autocracies the number of “keys” is reduced to the point where the leader can individually manage each key. In Saudi Arabia, for example, they argue that there is “a tiny nominal and real selectorate, made up of the royal family and a few crucial merchants and religious leaders.” Ensuring that these key figures remain placated is key to Saudi regime survival. When Mohammed bin Salman took power in 2017 for example, he did it on the pack of several of these key members. Once he took power, he then tried to minimize the number of supporters he needed via a large purge. 

The Kim dynasty in North Korea is also another successful (as in long lasting) example of how to manage this pyramid. Political power is highly centralized into a few key family members, generals, and businessmen. The regime, to ensure the loyalty of these key supporters, in turn allocates the vast majority of its tax revenue to the military, and to businesses run by key supporters. North Korean leaders use their strong levels of control to frequently purge key supporters who are deemed unnecessary (especially after a leadership change to another member of the family). 

And, while the likelihood of this depends on the strength of the regime, these key supporters have the ability to remove the autocrat. In 2002, Chinese premier Jiang Zemin tried to convince his keys in the party Politburo to back him for another term. However, the key supporters in the Politburo felt that Jiang’s economic policies would threaten their own bases of support, and then backed Hu Jintao as leader instead. 

This pyramid model, where each level supports, coups, and purges each other to various degrees, breaks down when the keys have access to dragons. The dragons of Westeros are a military advantage without parallel in the fictional world they inhabit, a weapon of mass destruction, and Westerosi military planners will treat an individual dragon as a similar or larger threat than an army of tens of thousands. This breaks the pyramid. If the commander of an autocratic military in our world wants to rebel against his autocrat, he needs to convince hundreds of lower keys to join his rebellion. If Aemond Targaryen, the second son of King Viserys, wants to rebel he only needs to convince a single key, his dragon Vhaegar. 

While dragons lower the threshold for rebellion, they are the core of Targaryen power. The Targaryen dynasty is best understood through the framework of a foreign colonial power. The Targaryens aren’t from Westeros, instead they are from the now-destroyed Valyria. They practice a different religion and have separate cultural traditions than their subjects, and rely on overwhelmingly superior military technology (in the form of their dragons) to maintain their control over their keys.    

An advantage of overwhelming military force is that the Targaryen dynasty had some ability to reshape the constituency of their key constituents. Westeros is dominated by seven great houses, who serve as regional leaders. This is augmented by several national level-keys, including the king's family members and representatives of national level institutions. During his initial conquest of Westeros, theTargaryens used their military advantage (and the complete destruction of several great houses) to replace several great houses with one's perceived as more loyal.

In this way the Targaryen model of governance mirrored the empire building projects of France and Britain in Africa during the 19th century. They co-opted existing traditional leadership and appointed their own leaders from the local elite if the existing ones were perceived as insufficiently loyal.This ensured that the “keys” they relied on for power were loyal to them. They also implemented several other policies that mirrored the actions of other colonial elites in our world. Nearly fifty years after the Conquest, when the Targeryan leadership felt their rule had been sufficiently stabilized, they invested in a highly-expensive series of highways across their holdings. Importantly, all of these highways (with one exception) terminated in the newly established capital, Kings Landing. This mirrors several European infrastructure projects in Sub-Saharan Africa during the 19th century, such as the British-made Uganda Railway that linked Uganda with the Indian Ocean port of Mombasa. These infrastructure projects were aimed at linking the resources in the periphery that Imperial elites valued with the Imperial core. These roads linked Westeroses key cities and production centers (such as gold mines) with the capital, but crucially not with each other. 

Of the replaced houses, House Tyrell is of particular note here. The kingdom of the Reach is generally considered the most important constituent kingdoms. It has the largest population, largest economy, and the largest city (Oldtown). There are several notable and famous houses from the Reach, any of whom would be strong leadership candidates. Instead, the Targaryens opted to appoint House Tyrell as their successors, who at the time were described as “mere stewards.” This ensured that House Tyrell remained loyal, but at the price of excluding several key constituents from power. Most notably House Hightower, who were lords of Westeros’s largest city and had deep ties to both the national religious and educational organizations. 

The political order was relatively rigid and centralized. It lacked the ability to accommodate major stakeholders that had been excluded from the current arrangement (such as the Hightowers). It also lacked the ability to accommodate the rise in power of previously insignificant subjects. House Velaryon was, at the start of Targaryen rule, a relatively minor town known for their merchant fleets. By the time of House of the Dragon their lord, Corlys Velaryon, had embarked on several trade voyages to distant lands that made House Velaryon the richest in the realm. He raised a new castle, High Tide, and married into the Targaryens. However, House Velaryon's position as a minor house remained static, and the political order wasn’t able to adapt to their new-found wealth.  It’s no coincidence that the two most powerful houses left out of the existing power structure (Velaryon and Hightower) were also the main backers for each of the two factions during the Dance during House of the Dragon.

Perhaps part of this static order relates to the source of their power: dragons. It is generally accepted by the Targaryens (though unproven) that only those of Targaryen blood are capable of riding dragons. Besides, the Targaryen keep a monopoly on the dragon eggs and thus adult dragons. Inter-marrying with other houses means that there are more dragon-riders in Westeros, more outside House Targaryen, and a loss of the Targaryen monopoly on dragons that underpins their rule. However, inter-marriage is also how the Westerosi political order adjusts to different power dynamics by reinforcing alliances, strengthening ties, and concluding peace agreements. This dilemma, and the failure of successive Targaryen rulers to navigate it, was the root cause of the Dance. 

There were also several other factors that, while not a core driver of the conflict, were escalating factors that led to the disputed violent outcome. First, there was no clear succession law and no laws or norms that protected potential rival claimants from harm, even if they never planned to press that claim. That factor led to both potential claimants to the throne taking the view that, if they did not press their claim, they would be killed by the other along with their family. While neither side actually wanted to do this, the lack of norms and laws to prevent such behavior led to miscalculation that escalated the conflict. “You win or you die” is a catchy slogan, but a poor norm in an autocratic system. 

It’s also important to note how the Targaryen dynasty functioned after they lost their dragons. Once the dragons died out following the Dance, there was a marked and notable increase in instability within the kingdom. There were a series of Blackfyre rebellions, as well as many revolts by regional lords that eventually culminated in Roberts’ Rebellion, which overthrew the dynasty. In summary, the Targaryen dynasty were able to use their significant military advantage as a way to cover up the deep inefficiencies within their own governing system, which led to said system collapsing after they lost that military advantage.

Andor

The world of “Star Wars,” where Disney+’s new show “Andor '' is set, is on the surface level radically different from Westeros. Instead of a rural peasantry ruled from large castles, the citizens of “Star Wars'' live in a deeply interconnected and networked galaxy. Instead of a military dominant but feudal Targaryen dynasty, the galaxy is ruled by a Galactic Empire that, while ever present, lacks the technological dominance that the Targaryen’s had with their dragons. Despite these surface level differences, however, these two governing regimes operated under similar governing principles. 

“Andor '' represents a deeper dive into the actual minutiae of how the Galactic Empire functioned compared to other movies and TV shows in the setting, which took a grander perspective. This deep dive lets us explore how the Empire governed its various territories, and the results are fascinating. While the Empire is known for its overwhelming displays of power: thousands of TIE fighters, hundreds of towering Star Destroyers, and the terrifying Death Star, they actually relied on local partners for day-to-day governance. On the planets of Ferix and Morlana One, for example, governance was handled by the Preox-Morlana Corporation. Security personnel from that corporation, rather than the ubiquitous Stormtroopers, handled security in the area. These sort of partnerships appear to be common throughout the galaxy, with hundreds of separate vassel governments represented in the Imperial Senate. In addition, direct imperial power was also decentralized. Regional rulers, known as Moffs, had a large amount of local autonomy. In that way the Galactic Empire has similarities with the feudal Westeros governance system, but through a system of power divestment that is less apparent on first dance.

However, the Galactic Empire is also far more bureaucratic than the aristocratic Westerosi state. Bureaucratic autocracies have several key differences from more personalistic autocratic structures. As Kent Weaver of Georgetown argues, bureaucratic politics is structured around blame avoidance. Individual bureaucrats don’t want to be punished or reprimanded for failure, so they take steps to limit their personal risk in the event of failure. This is especially true in autocratic regimes, where the risks of failure extend beyond simply losing one's job (this applies triply so in the Empire, where force-choking failed administrators appears to have been common practice).

One key way to mitigate personal risk is by outsourcing to contractors. This gives bureaucrats a convenient scapegoat if things go wrong and ensures they only have to carry out limited oversight functions. As Don Moynihan of Georgetown notes, Imperial bureaucrats embraced contractors like this in the form of security forces like the Preox-Morlana Corporation. They ensured that, when there was an incident on one of their worlds, they were there to take the blame instead of Imperial bureaucrats. This is similar to how large-scale military bureaucracies have functioned, even in established democracies. The United States, for example, have relied on a armada of military contractors to fight the War on Terror in the form of trainers, logistics support, and even armed personnel. These forces are able to do the same tasks as the conventional military, but with greater cover for the military if there are any errors or issues involving the contractors.   

The Galactic Empire also has a large standing army, unlike the Targaryen dynasty. This means that we see a principle of autocratic rule: coup-proofing.  Caitlin Talmadge of Georgetown argues that, in authoritarian states where there are no clear external threats, ruling elites will implement “coup-proofing” measures that limit the military's ability to seize power in a coup. This is because, in the absence of an external threat, a strong well-organized military is a danger rather than a benefit to the current authoritarian elite due to the prevalence of military coups. Common coup-proofing practices include promoting based on loyalty rather than merit, limiting joint training exercises, overly-centralized command structures, and a lack of information sharing. Coup-proofing measures decrease that military's total effectiveness, at both being an internal threat and preventing external threat.

A real world case that Talmadge uses to examine these ideas is North and South Vietnam during the Vietnamese civil war. Both North and South Vietnam were autocratic regimes, and both countries were very similar in terms of population, economy, and ethnic make up. Despite this, North Vietnam’s military was highly effective compared to their South Vietnamese counterparts, and they were ultimately able to earn a military victory despite the large-scale assistance that South Vietnam received from the United States. Talmadge argues that this difference in effectiveness was driven by the differing threats that South Vietnamese and North Vietnamese leadership faced. South Vietnam had a series of successful and attempted military coups before and during the conflict, while North Vietnam never faced an internal challenge from the military. This led to South Vietnamese autocrats to impose coup-proofing measures on their own military, despite the external threat from the North. South Vietnamese commanders were appointed based on perceived loyalty rather than ability, command and control was centralized, and cross-training and information-sharing was limited. This had a negative impact on battlefield effectiveness. At the Battle of Ap Bac, for example, the South Vietnamese military lost a battle where they held a 4:1 military advantage in part because the force lacked a cohesive command and control structure. These measures led to a series of military defeats and their eventual defeat in the conflict. 

At the time of  “Andor '' the Empire was at the height of its power, and the nascent rebellion was the only small external threat. Thus, we see several key coup-proofing measures in place. In the Empire's ISB intelligence agency, for example, information was kept divided. Every senior official was assigned a certain geographic region, and intelligence was not shared between sectors. At the same time, ISB command was centralized, where every senior and mid-level official reported directly to the head of the agency, who then in turn reported directly to the Emperor. Loyalty to the ruling regime was also viewed as valuable.

The fledgling rebellion was able to take advantage of this. They exploited the incompetence of local non-imperial security forces and spread their operations across multiple sectors which prevented the ISB, with their lack of information sharing, from properly tracking rebel activity. When the Empire became aware of the scale of the Rebellion, however, they quickly realized the external threat was more dangerous than the internal threat, and begane to adapt. They started to encourage greater information sharing, subsumed several poorly-performing vessels, and tightened security measures. This demonstrates that the Imperial ruling elite were reactive. 

Conclusion

American television audiences have been increasingly drawn to the internal workings of fictional autocracies as a form of entertaining drama. While many audiences focus on the soap opera-like conflicts between individual characters based on their own needs, values, and desires, the structural factors that underpin these personal conflicts are equally interesting to study. While there are plenty of additional lenses that academia can use to analyze these systems, this paper introduced a few of them. 

These series have drawn mass market appeal, and that’s important for a few reasons. First, it offers an avenue for academic engagement. Many of the academic theories presented in this article have been confined to academia, but using these fictional cases as an avenue to present existing and new ideas on how autocracies function to the public could further the broader public's understanding of how real-world autocracies function, leading to a better informed electorate.  

Second, perhaps audience fixation on elite politics betrays something about our society's values. As Autocratic parties and policies are on the rise both domestically and abroad, it's possible that audiences want to find some sort of catharsis by watching these autocratic systems, initially viewed as unstoppable within their own worlds, topple either due to internal pressure (House of the Dragon) or external revolt (Andor), and in doing so reminds the audiences of the inherently transient nature of autocratic regimes.

The Not-So Faint Remnants of Colonialism: Neo-Imperialism in Museum Curation

It is safe to say that most university-aged students can appreciate a free museum. For many students who are lucky enough to attend college in a major city from Washington, DC to Paris, museums often offer free or discounted entry. Museums are wonderful monuments to the arts, antiquity, and culture, of that there is no doubt. However, in recent years, it’s become increasingly apparent that many museums function also as sites of display for a bounty of goods from former colonies. Western museums and the countries in which they reside have been beset for decades by requests from foreign governments to return these relics to their “rightful owners”. However, the arguments that these museums make for keeping them is often tinged with imperialist perspectives. For museums to keep their cultural relevance and reflect the true liberal internationalist, humanitarian ideals they supposedly champion, their governments must return these stolen items to do their part, however minor, in helping to restore the cultural heritage they worked so hard to destroy. 

The Elgin Marbles Story 

The British Museum is one of the primary culprits in this debate and its Elgin Marbles are often touted as the prime example of a looted good that they are refusing to return. For context, between 1801 and 1812, Thomas Bruce--7th Earl of Elgin and ambassador to the Ottoman Empire--removed a considerable amount of original marble sculptures that had decorated the then-dilapidated Parthenon for centuries. They were taken first to Malta, and then to Britain, where he wanted them to decorate his private home in Scotland, but then due to a costly divorce, was forced to sell them to the British government for around £35,000 pounds, or around £1 million in today’s pound sterling. Elgin argued that his authority for this endeavor came from a mandate given to him by the Sultan of the Ottoman empire, which at the time controlled the territory in Greece, but the original document was never procured, and its authenticity is highly disputed. 

Unsurprisingly, the Greek government has requested the marbles back several times. After the restoration of the Hellenic Parliament in 1974, the country first submitted a request through the United Nations. The issue was brought to UNESCO, which went unresolved, and then an official diplomatic request was submitted to the Government of the UK in 1983, which also fell on deaf ears. The Greek government has made this ask in various forms over the subsequent decades, only to be rejected by the British every time on different grounds. Most recently, in November of 2021, the Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis met with Boris Johnson, who insisted that the matter is not the responsibility of the British government, but the trustees of the British Museum. Taken together, the general picture is that the government is unwilling to return them, and blatantly do not wish to give them back.

Legal Grounds

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights Article 27 that “everyone has the right freely to participate in the cultural life of the community, to enjoy the arts and share … its benefits.” This human right has been widely applied to a range of issues, and has also been interpreted as applying to an individual’s right to their own cultural history without infringement by other sovereign nations. Following the end of the Second World War the Constitution of UNESCO was adopted, and with it the idea that cultural property warrants international protection. In 1970, the very succinctly titled Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export, and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property was drafted by UNESCO, which as the name suggests, encourages cooperation among nations to prevent the illicit movement of cultural property. More recently, the International Committee of the Red Cross established that the prohibition of looting of cultural heritage and obligation to return artifacts illegally exported from an occupied territory falls under international law and should apply to all states, regardless of whether they have ratified the UDHR or the UNESCO treaties.  

The limits of such treaties and declarations are evident. They are non-enforceable and are non-retroactive, meaning that countries are unable to cite them as the legal grounds to return objects stolen before they were ratified. With the absence of international binding legal obligations, their return often rests on ethical grounds and increasing public pressure. Additionally, the US, the UK, and France have carefully cultivated their image as the proponents and leaders of the so-called liberal international order, upon which international treaties the United Nations, and the values of UNESCO are supposedly upheld. The hypocrisy of the British, as well as the rest of the Western world to continually ignore the claims of foreign governments is almost comically apparent. 

The Imperialism of It All

In addition to their role as valuable cultural institutions, museums also serve as sites of former imperial glory and as monuments to state glory and power. There are many explanations thrown around by Western institutions that attempt to explain away their seeming inability to return the items, but an oft-cited reason is that returning the artifacts to their countries of origin would put them at risk of damage, that they are safe in Western institutions then they would be in their home countries. Art dealer Andre Emmerich summed up the crux of this argument when discussing pre-Columbian Peruvian artifacts, stating that “if Peru cannot properly take care of its national treasures, the rest of world will take care of them for the Peruvians, as it should be.” This argument is more than obviously tinged with imperialist era attitudes, that these countries whose art was stolen from them are somehow lesser than the western institutions who would be able to take care of them “properly.”

Putting aside the reason many of these countries are so unstable is due to centuries of imperial exploitation, the British Museum itself does not have a perfect record when it comes to caring for its collection. In the 1930’s there was an attempt to “clean” the marbles, and significant damage was done to them due to improper and heavy-handed methods. This example is just one of many that undercuts the argument that Western countries must take care of these objects because we can’t possibly trust the countries from which they came. Additionally, the collections that are often on display are just a fraction of the museum’s collection. The British Museum’s collection totals around 8 million objects, and only 80,000 are on display at any given time, around 1% of the total collection. This means that the remaining 99% are kept in storage, oftentimes underneath the museums or in offsite locations. So even when these museums might be keeping them “safe” by keeping them out of sight and out of the public mind, they are still contributing to the continuation of a destruction of cultural heritage.

The argument that countries are unable to care for their own objects also does not hold much merit when almost every country can claim at least one national museum that showcases their history and art that are perfectly capable of showcasing it to their own population. Oftentimes, their collections are so small simply because it’s all held elsewhere. Turning back to Peru, the Museo de Arte Precolombiano in Cusco houses an impressive exhibit of objects created by ancient Andean civilizations. It is the sister institution of the larger Larco Museum in Lima, which was established in 1925, and has an extensive collection of Pre-Columbian art. And in the case of the Elgin Marbles, Greece is more than capable of caring for their own artefacts. The Acropolis Museum is one of the largest and most storied museums in Greece today, housing over 4,250 objects exhibited over 14,000 square meters. 

The Met Opportunity 

The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York is a wonderful place. It’s a beautiful building on the border of Central Park, and houses thousands of pieces of art, both ancient and modern, and hosts an excellent party once a year. Recently however, it has been at the center of several legal issues relating to their purchasing and displaying of stolen goods. In September of 2022, the Manhattan District Attorney’s office seized twenty-seven artefacts, as part of a larger investigation that has led to the repatriation of nearly 2,000 artefacts to their home countries. There has always been a thriving illegal art trade, and much of it can be connected to more illicit organized crime operating outside of official government actions, but this presents an opportunity for countries to work together under the liberal international order they have created to deal with such cross-border issues.

While the Met might be cooperating fully with investigators and has returned said items to Greece, Italy, and Egypt, this should be the norm. In some instances, the Met has even returned objects voluntarily, as in the case of the Benin bronzes, which it has returned to Nigeria. It should be the responsibility of the museums, as well as the governments to take it upon themselves to do the due diligence, the provenance, on all the items in their collections. 

These incidents present an opportunity for museums to rethink their role in housing ancient artefacts from former colonies or countries in the global south and their role in attributing rightful ownership where it is due, as part of a larger project of decolonizing the social and cultural sphere. The nature of art, culture, and antiquities might not be as pressing to the international community as other more hot-button topics, but this specific issue is directly tied to the legacy of colonialism. It highlights the responsibility that western countries have to level the playing field which they have dominated unjustly for decades and restore these relics to their rightful owners as well as treating other countries as equals in the global system.

Looking to the Future

While this issue could seem minor in the grand scheme of international global relations, these 

cultural artifacts in question are the visible and tangible manifestations of a country’s history, memory, and culture. For them to exist outside of their place of origin works to further perpetuate the cultural genocide of which western countries are guilty. There are simply so many stolen artifacts around the world it is hard to fathom. Some estimates state that between 80-90% of all Africa’s cultural heritage is held outside of Africa by major museums. This article does not even cover a fraction of the larger issue surrounding reparations and the return of cultural artifacts in the post-colonial era. But every country has the right to their history, and if it means, as PM David Cameron once put it, “if you say yes to one, you suddenly find the British museum… empty” then so be it.

No Longer Human: Addressing the use of Artificial Intelligence in IR

Artificial intelligence is a principal instrument for international relations. In areas such as cyber security, military application, and threat monitoring, artificial intelligence isn’t just something that could change the political landscape as we know it: AI will create it. The idea of a non-human entity having a specific agency could make a massive change in politics at the international level. AI has been a doctrine of apocalyptic notions that the world will end with robots. Artificial intelligence has long been a fanciful vision for the future in cinema, art, and literature. The future, however, might be nearer than we think. Already, forms of artificial intelligence affect our everyday lives, including Google translate and search, facial recognition, navigation apps, social media, banking, and even Netflix. From the moment we wake up, AI impacts and influences our lives. Our preferences are tailored to what we are likelier to buy and what we would most likely watch and go. How is this advancement in technology going to change the political and international community? It is safe to assume that artificially intelligent systems might dominate decision-making in the future and that the next cyber attack might not even be human.

In 2022, artificial intelligence will have progressed far enough to become the most revolutionary technology ever created by man. According to Google CEO Sundar Pichai, its impact on our evolution as a species will be comparable to fire and electricity. He also warned that the development of AI was still in its very early stages but that its continued growth would be extreme, stating, “I view it as the most profound technology that humanity will ever develop and work on.” The 2022 trends of AI include advanced language modeling, no-code AI platforms, computer vision technology in business, and creative AI. In global security ventures, artificial intelligence will be increasingly more significant in handling and adequately managing. However, these 2022 AI trends do not come without a cost. Cybercrime has been identified as a substantial threat to global prosperity by the World Economic Forum, which urged nations worldwide to work together to address it. This cybersecurity threat is expansive, transformative, and critical, and with the continued rise in cyberattacks, there is massive growth in the AI market. A July 2022 report by Acumen Research and Consulting says the global market was $14.9 billion in 2021 and is estimated to reach $133.8 billion by 2030. More and more money is being put into this industry, and consequently, working together as an international community is essential in preventing catastrophic damage. Specifically for international relations, AGI might be capable of executing any cognitive or operational task for which human intelligence is currently necessary. These advancements in IR will fundamentally change how the world will look in the near future. 

In a Chatham House Report titled “Artificial Intelligence and International Affairs Disruption Anticipated,” AI can be used in international politics and policymaking in three categories: Analytical roles, predictive roles, and operational roles. In the first category, Artificially intelligent systems are already found in analytical roles, combing through large datasets and deriving conclusions based on pattern recognition. This can be especially helpful when monitoring the outputs of sensors set up to confirm compliance with, for example, a nuclear, chemical, or biological arms control treaty that might be too demanding for human analysts. In predictive roles, artificially intelligent systems may offer opportunities for policymakers to understand possible future events. One such example in the arena of international affairs would be the possibility of modeling complex negotiations. AI might take on other predictive roles with a bearing on geopolitics, contributing to more accurate forecasting of elections, economic performance, and other relevant events. The last category, operational roles, is the traditional sense of robots. The day-to-day functioning of the international system would not be expected to change if truck drivers, ship crews, or pilots were replaced with automation. Still, the large-scale replacement of existing human labor in these capacities will likely cause widespread economic and political disruption in the short to long term. MIT economist Daron Acemoglu’s new research showcases this shift in labor. From 1990 to 2007, adding just one additional robot replaced about 3.3 workers nationally. With this rapid transformation in the labor force, the ethical landscape of AI is becoming more and more significant to the lives of everyone on Earth. 

From a policy standpoint, it is essential to know what data is used, an AI model’s guiding assumptions and the kinds of practices developers employ. The Council on Foreign Relations recently conducted a conference titled “The Future of AI, Ethics, and Defense.” Speakers discussed the intersection of technology, defense, and ethics and the geopolitical competition for the future of innovation. Speakers included former secretary of defense Ash Carter, cofounder of LinkedIn Reid Hoffman, and professor at the Institute for Human-centered artificial intelligence Fei-Fei Li.  Discussing these implications of AI, Fei-Fei Li states, “We have a society that wants to respect human rights, we want to be inclusive, we want to use AI or technology for good, we can have a culture of transparency and accountability, and we can form multi-stakeholder allegiance to both push for innovation, but also put the right guardrails. And this kind of foundation in our world is our competitive advantage.”  Showcasing the ethics that need to be addressed as artificial intelligence advances, Fei-Fei Li concludes that these technologies can benefit society instead of holding it back in the long run. The accountability and transparency related to AI are crucial for the international community to maintain an ethical environment. But what exactly are the ethical challenges of AI? 

Brian Patrick Green, director of Technology Ethics at the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics, addresses these challenges in his article titled “Artificial Intelligence and Ethics: Sixteen Challenges and Opportunities.” Fundamentally, artificial intelligence is increasing at a tremendous rate. Technical safety and if the technology works as intended are important for companies. Another challenge is bias and the malicious use of AI. For example, China's facial recognition system logs more than 6.8 million records daily. The Chinese government is accused of using facial recognition to commit atrocities against Uyghur Muslims, relying on the technology to carry out "the largest mass incarceration of a minority population in the world today." In Russia, authorities have long used biometric data for artificial intelligence-powered facial recognition to surveil and prosecute peaceful protestors and other critics. Additionally, during the Invasion of Ukraine, Russia employed “deepfakes” in propaganda warfare. Deepfakes are images or videos created using AI that can show scenes of things that never happened or even people that never existed. This technology is still increasingly advanced and could be extremely realistic in the future. Furthermore, using AI technology to create cyber weapons to control autonomous tools like drone swarms are being developed. Russian President Vladimir Putin when speaking about the international race to develop artificial intelligence noted, “whoever becomes the leader in this sphere will become the ruler of the world.” 

Anja Kaspersen and Wendell Wallach are senior fellows at Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs. In November 2021, they published an article that changed the AI ethics conversation: “Why Are We Failing at the Ethics of AI?” Concerning the ethical implications of AI, the article states, “Society should be deeply concerned that nowhere near enough substantive progress is being made to develop and scale actionable legal, ethical oversight while simultaneously addressing existing inequalities.” There has been some work done to address ethical concerns, however. There are many ethical proposals, but they are not always coinciding, uniform or unanimous, even in an organization like the EU. A number of publications on AI highlight the need for policies and regulations that would diminish the risks and direct AI development and use toward public benefit. Public policy and governance can ensure that global AI development is a positive-sum game increasing benefits for all. Suggestions for the  US  leadership include calls for building strategic partnerships worldwide. Balancing competition and cooperation is indispensable, for artificial intelligence isn’t just a component of policy anymore but integral in global security. 

With artificial intelligence dominating everyone on the Earth and advancing at an alarming rate, understanding ethical implications and security risks is necessary to maintain a peaceful world that benefits citizens' lives instead of harming them. Artificial intelligence has a multitude of issues that need to be addressed by the international community, including the capability of cyberattacks, the creation of cyberweapons like drones, and propaganda warfare. With the malicious use of facial recognition and privacy crises, there is a plethora of panic and anxiety for the public. With continued technological advancement, policies must be updated and executed. U.S policymakers must balance risks, benefits, and responsibilities when continuing AI endeavors. Additionally, an enormous amount of ethical issues still need to be tackled. AI research will dominate global affairs, and it can be hard to predict outcomes with this transformation. Whatever the future holds, it is clear that artificial intelligence will be a part of it, or perhaps more accurately, directly beside humankind. 

State of Present-Day Federalism

The modern age is seeing once again a rise in authoritarianism and decline in freedom. As much as today’s globalized age and an accompanying increased tendency of people and ideas to come together and mix or clash calls upon greater mutual understanding, patience, and pluralism, we instead witness a rise in isolationist, nationalist policies. Pluralism, or a system in which two or more groups, principles, sources of authority coexist, is by definition supposed to lead to an increase of public tolerance, inclusion, and peace even in societies featuring a complex mix of ideological and ethnic belongings.

A mechanism that seemingly goes perfectly in hand with pluralist tendencies is precisely federalism. This is because the very idea of federalism allows for a distribution and compartmentalization of power in a way that ideally echoes societal needs and provides for an appropriate division of powers and greater societal and regional cohesion. However, with much left to still be explored and better understood, different styles of federalism have developed, with some favoring division along political lines while others along social lines, each with various degrees of success in ensuring citizen liberties and preventing abuse of power that are some of the core goals of a federal order.

Given the increased complexity of national, regional, and international bonds in the globalized world, ideas of pluralism or coexistence of various often competitive entities becomes imperative. In order to further develop potential for federal political order to support this kind of pluralism leading to greater peace and co-existence in the modern world, this article will reflect on different ways in which federalism is presently working to do this in countries across the world.

The Case of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia

Ethiopia is one of the oldest organized sovereign states. Throughout its long history, it has witnessed a number of power changes, migrations, internal, regional, and global turbulence, for the most part managing to preserve its sovereignty and territorial integrity in spite of all these threats including European colonialism and major financial crises of the past century. The Derg regime replaced its monarchy with nationalization and attempt at socialism by assassinating the last Ethiopian emperor Haile Selassie and changing political and economic circumstances to match the regime’s ideology. This period of Ethiopian history featured authoritarian behavior on behalf of the regime and is remembered with censorship and brutal behavior towards civilians. Everything changed again in 1991 when the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) won against the Derg regime and established democratic rule in the country. This is now being yet again challenged as, following dissolution of the EPRDF due to internal strife and shifting power dynamics, Prime Minister and Noble prize winner Abiy Ahmed broke off with his own Prosperity Party and attempted to yet again change political scenario in Ethiopia. Opposed Abiy Ahmed’s promise on bringing prosperity and economic and democratic progress to the country stand armies labeled as rebels such as the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) that in turn labels Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s actions as power-grabbing and undemocratic. The conflict is currently revolving primarily along ethnopolitical lines and has so far caused thousands of deaths and forced millions to flee. All of this comes following a period of perceived tolerance that marked the era of the EPRDF. As such, the regime of EPRDF that was marked by political focus on ethnic federalism and need for pluralism along the often described as divisive ethnic lines, serves as a perfect example and a test to durability and functionality of federalism when uniquely framed along ethnic divisions.

The Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) stayed in power in Ethiopia between 1991 and 2019. On top of its national emphasis on ethnic federalism and pluralism, it in itself featured very pluralist and compartmentalized politics. The party was actually a coalition of four political parties: Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), Amhara Democratic Party (ADP), Oromo Democratic Party (ODP), and Southern Ethiopian People’s Democratic Movement (SEPDM). The very existence of EPRDF required constant collaboration amongst the leaders of each party within the coalition, with special value placed on party, local, regional, and federal elections. Ethiopia first witnessed a democratic and federal ruling arrangement following the EPRDF ascend to power. The democratically elected House of Representatives chooses the president who has largely a ceremonial role as well as the prime minister who actually holds the executive power. In order to ensure nonpartisanship and separation of powers, the 6-year presidential and ministerial terms are usually meant not to overlap with the 5-year terms of the members of the House of Representatives.

The ideas of the federal government and the ruling coalition were passed onto the entire nation as the country was federally compartmentalized along ethnic lines, with Tigray, Amhara, and Oromo, being some of the largest ethnicities within Ethiopia having their separate local politics that would often center around their ethnic grouping, space, and culture. Southern Ethiopian tribes that largely practice traditional religions and are generally fewer in number were also able to receive special protections and recognition in this way. The ideal is that each ethnicity would be able to thrive on its own terms while also functioning as one on a unified national front with a form of supra-ethnic identity that would characterize them simultaneously as Ethiopian along their other ethnic, cultural, and local markers. This practice, while practiced in its own unique way everywhere due to unique ethnic and sociopolitical make-ups of each location, is not unique to Ethiopia. Other countries that featured or continue to feature this arrangement to varying degrees of success include Nepal, Pakistan, South Sudan, and historically Apartheid-era South Africa through its locally-led Bantustans, as well as former Yugoslavia and to an extent present-day Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Ethnic federalism is presently blamed for Ethiopian political fallout and ongoing war as now that Abiy Ahmed - a member of the Oromo, the largest ethnolinguistic group of the country that has traditionally been scarcely represented in politics - came to hold substantial power, the scales quickly tipped and fragile balance was disturbed as the traditional rulers usually of Tigrayan ethnicity sided against the present status quo. Ethnic federalism is, in short, blamed for maintaining and facilitating easier inflammation of ethnic fault lines because it by nature maintains these ethnic divisions through the way it facilitates politics and attempts to maintain inclusion. However, an alternative view to ethnic federalism also persists. It is easy to quickly label ethnic federalism as the cause of all troubles when, in fact, it might be simply a manifestation of causes that are buried deeper in the past. Oftentimes, ethnic federalism was in fact an imperfect albeit rare solution to more deeply engraved ethnic divisions and internal struggles. Countries that feature ethnic federalism, as evidenced from the list above, also tend to stand witness to centuries of foreign rule and colonial oppression and have been exposed to a number of migrations and complex ethnic and religious diversity as a result of this dynamic history. Thus, ethnic federalism can appear as the only possible solution, albeit imperfect. In this way, ethnic federalism can be awarded blame for maintaining ethnic fault lines, but should also be judged with an understanding of local complexities and unique situations the country found itself in historically and presently.

The Case of the Republic of India

The Republic of India features a highly diverse and complex social and political landscape. Having gained independence from the British Empire in 1947, India cherished its freedom and democracy ever since. However, India underwent a partition with Pakistan in that same year due to disagreements often labeled as ethno-religious which echo to this day and that affected the potential for a more unified South Asia. This perhaps showed flaws in ability to accurately and in a pluralist and inclusive fashion represent all of its constituents. All of this, similar to other cases where a need for ethnic federalism seems the apparent albeit imperfect solution, is against the backdrop of complex and divisive colonial heritage. In this case too, we see a need for greater attention towards ethnic foundations of political opinion that, for better or worse given flaws of ethnic federalism, are not as emphasized in India as in the previous case of Ethiopia. Regardless, present-day Indian politics show a focus on the increasingly Hindu nationalist ruling party and the emphasis on constitutional integrity and a rather unique form of centralized federalism. India, the world’s most populous democracy, now features a complex interaction between demands of local and somewhat central federal government, with demands balanced to carefully meet local needs for self-agency and linguistic integrity with the federal government’s need for national control. The system seems somewhat contradictory yet has shown to work resiliently for more than half a century.

In the case of India, we find a scenario more reminiscent of countries that adopted ethnic federalism succumbing to the need to balance ethnic divisions and unique cultural, religious, and linguistic spaces alike to those in India, here met with a persistent focus towards an emphasized federal level politics and nationalized parliament. The nationalized, centralized federal government has seen an interruption in Indian politics, especially in the 1990s following failure of the Indian nationalist Congress party that dates back to the independence movement, to maintain its traditional overwhelming majority in the parliament and consistent regional resistance towards centralized governance as witnessed in provinces such as Assam, Kashmir, Mizoram, and Punjab in the 1970s and 80s. This resulted in a rise of regionalization and coalitionary politics in the coming decades only to be yet again interrupted with the rise of Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata party (BJP).

India serves as an example of a nation carefully balancing demands for national unity and regional cultural, ethnic, and linguistic identities without relying on often divisive ethnic federalism and clear political compartmentalization along fault lines. However, the rise of nationalist politics that now threaten to establish a scenario alike to tyranny of the majority in a country that prides itself on its pluralism and democracy that withstands millenia-old demographic and class diversity shows that this promise may be too fragile and questions ability for a more centralized federation to ensure pluralism and civilian protections. On the other hand, Indian politics has previously managed to survive threats to its division of powers and imposition of presidential over federal and constitutional rule in landmark cases such as S. R. Bommai v. Union of India (1994) that ensured protection of regional administration and supremacy of federal, constitutional rule against the backdrop of presidential attempts at misusing constitutional authority of Article 356 to curb local autonomy. This means that there is still hope for resiliency of Indian uniquely centralized federal political institutions to withstand the pressure of internal nationalisms that threaten destabilization of the Indian federal system.

The Case of the Russian Federation

The largest country in the world, Russia, features its own version of federalism as well. The Russian Federation emerged following the dissolution of the Soviet Union. It became an attempt to balance the traditionally highly centralized power of Russian political leaders with the vast space and diversity of people and regions it governs, against the backdrop of a modern globalized and interdependent world. The Russian Federation as such consists of a number of areas with established regional governance that are all considered equal federal subjects albeit with diverse degrees of autonomy. There are 85 such federal subjects, albeit the Republic of Crimea and Sevastopol are two areas that are not yet internationally recognized as belonging to Russia. The federal subjects, based on their degree of autonomy and specific national considerations are divided into oblasts, republics, krais, autonomous okrugs, federal cities, and autonomous oblasts. Of these, republics and autonomous okrugs and oblasts or areas tend to be home to specific ethnic minorities where we see a degree of federal compartmentalization along ethnic lines. Given Russia’s vast territory featuring over 193 different ethnic groups, an aspect of ethnic federalism is not surprising , albeit fears of destabilization of this vast country often results in an emphasis on the core Russian, or Slavic, ethnicity as a state foundation.

While each federal subject has its own head, parliament, and constitutional court, federal politics, especially since the turn of the century, have come to dominate the Russian political landscape. The wording of the Russian Constitution allocates the president with primary relationship to maintenance of constitutional integrity and the federal presidential head also can choose degrees to which regional autonomy is reflected in practice. Regional governance of Russian federal subjects also is set up in a way that reflects the overarching federal government’s hierarchical structure and can thus serve to additionally reflect the degree of centralization favored by the federal government on regional governance institutions, as may presently be the case given the state of Russian politics centered on its president. This leaves integrity of minority rights as well as safeguarding of the separation of powers, civilian freedoms, and decisions regarding international relations, such as the decision to sign treaties or go to war, largely in the hands of the executive branch or the president. Implications of this scenario are evident in the ongoing attack on Ukraine that does not seem to feature an approval on a federal but rather on a centralized presidential level, as well as attempts to undermine and silence all internal opposition, again showing the overwhelming real-life implications of (mis)application of federalism. A greater recognition of the importance of separation of powers and checks and balances as key characteristics of federalism, as well as greater appreciation of civil liberties and powers vested in regional governments and autonomous regions would result in a more favorable case for pluralism and inclusion of the highly diverse political, ethnic, and cultural landscape of the world’s largest country.

The Case of the United States of America

The United States of America, or arguably the first modern world democracy, features a centuries-old constitution that establishes a very clear separation of powers and voting provisions. On a federal level, it features legislative, executive, and judicial separation of powers that many modern democracies take inspiration from, while on a territorial governance level, the country features what some describe as a true example of different states with their own degree of autonomy coming together to form “a more perfect union.” Decisions on the powers granted to states vs. the federal government are constitutionally divided and inalienable. However, states: a) often compete with one another to attract businesses by lowering taxes which hurts state-funded programs, b) can experience economic inequalities across state lines, and c) there is also a degree to which federal funding can manipulate states into accepting or enforcing certain kinds of legislation to which they otherwise would not agree upon, as seen in the enforcement of prostitution, drinking, substance control, and historically even slavery laws. Similarly, there is a weakness in the US ability to respond to pressures that need a more unified central government, as, for example, in cases of grave financial distress seen in the Great Depression.

However, the US was able to withstand many tests to its political system. The challenge of the Great Depression was resolved through unprecedented overarching federal policies showing the willingness of regional governing bodies to accept a more centralized federal functioning in times of grave need. On the other hand, the US failed to uphold integrity of its democratic institutions and territorial unity in the 1860s when it underwent a civil war revolving precisely around the issue of state rights and relation of the federal government towards the country’s particularly tragic disagreement on the institution of slavery.

Interestingly, the US was initially envisioned by its first president George Washington in his farewell address as a nonpartisan entity that would as such facilitate seemingly endless political plurality and inclusion. However, since the turn of the 19th century to the present day, the US features a rigid two-party system that leaves little space for a more nuanced ideological debate in its legislative body, the Congress, that also plays a major role in the decision to go to war or engage in international economic cooperation. The US curiously also finds itself amidst international criticism for imperial tendencies and overreliance on its military industrial complex. The state of constantly being in war campaigns around the world which received a highly mixed public opinion in the last couple of decades and (mis)treatment of its territories and indigenous/minority populations only serve to enforce the aforementioned criticism and further question US ability to ensure political, ideological, and cultural integrity of all of its subjects. In the end, a greater appreciation for the role of centralized government approaches in historically maintaining the country’s stability and minority protection coupled with a less rigid division of the congressional representation of public opinion may assist the US on the path of greater pluralism, stability, and inclusion.

The Case of the Argentine Republic

The Argentine Republic stands as an example of federalism from the South American continent. Argentina features a presidential representative democracy akin to that of the US where the president is in charge of the executive power, the National Congress possess legislative power while the judicial power is vested in the Supreme Court. Argentina similarly exhibits a highly decentralized political system, with each of its 23 provinces exercising considerable regional power and maintaining considerable ability to influence debates on the national levels through representation in the legislative branch. However, regional politics tend to suffer from exclusionary practices which then translate to misrepresentation of a region or a part of the region’s population and damage the cohesiveness of politics on the greater federal level, and Argentine congressional structure also can have unbalanced representation, having often been ranked highest globally on overrepresentation of some regions in the upper chamber. This may be a consequence of the post-colonial effects that see a translation of the exclusionary elite-based politics of the Spanish Empire translated in the modern world. Argentina is additionally grappling with dictatorial experiences such as that of the military junta rule of the 1970s that curbed pluralism and civil liberties but now also serve as a reminder of the fragility and importance of federal and pluralist ideals.

 Of particular attention are also the rights of the indigenous people in Argentine areas, that have faced centuries of abuse due to European colonialism and remain at threat in the post-colonial world. While indigenous peoples and integrity of their land, language, and culture are now federally recognized and under constitutional protections that many can learn from, in practice they often still face discrimination and theft from their lands and also stand victim to exclusion from political presence, including on local, province, and federal levels. In short, the federal structure of Argentina may benefit from greater enforcement of these protections as well as from greater focus on transparent and fair elections and representation on regional levels to ensure a more balanced discussion and development in the National Congress. Additionally, Argentine development policy initiatives could benefit from a sustained focus on perceiving Argentine provinces not as homogenous isolated units, as was traditionally the case, but as interconnected entities that should be on a shared development track coupled with cooperation from both all levels of government with civil society and flourishing local initiatives.  

Conclusion

Federalism, while at its core a system of governance favoring division of powers and participation of multiple entities in a shared political process, can differ significantly in the way that it is practiced. As evidenced in the cases above, the way federalism is to be manifested is highly dependent on a country’s history, past institutions, as well as features of its political, ethnic, and cultural makeup. The unifying lessons from examples above show the need for a strong constitutional backing in establishment of a federal political order, as well as the importance of the precise and detailed wording of this endeavor and ability to enforce constitutional integrity through a clear separation of powers and rule of law. The importance of separation of powers and check of balances, as well as constitutional and federal government’s ability to maintain protection of minority rights also proved of instrumental importance and challenge no matter what region and historical background a country finds itself in. An additional consideration when establishing a federal style of governance is the need to understand implications that ethnic divisions will play on the system and how ethnic divisions can be mitigated through democratic, inclusive policies on local, regional, and federal levels to avoid divisions while ensuring freedoms of ethnic, cultural, and religious expression. Lastly, there is also a need to recognize the dynamics between central and regional governance levels, appreciating and considering the need for centralized actions as well as federal, regional divisions and autonomy, and ensuring that the two levels of government are able to coexist, maintain clear communication in the interest of citizenry, and also maintain checks and balances on each other through constitutional, judiciary, and democratic means.

For a Few Rocks More:

One day, the stars and planets we look at will look back at us, for there will be people on these far off rocks. Space will change everything; it will probably change your life, and it will definitely change your kid’s life. What the internet was to Generation Z, space will double or triple in impact. Its presence will permeate every aspect of our lives to the point of cliche (if it already isn’t). Yet, when space is mentioned, it is talked about as a “few acres of snow,” to quote Voltaire’s satirically disparaging description of North America in Candide. However, just like North America, space is the next “few acres of snow”that will come to massively influence the lives of everything and everyone.

Talking about space as a real thing that humanity will inhabit seems wacky and far away, but we are in the middle of the exploration phase. When the expansion phase comes, then we will realize how much potential is just above us, in the vastness. Space is massive, larger than any human can possibly imagine, so when I refer to space expansion, I’m referring to an expansion within our solar system. Nevertheless, going into space and building colonies will fulfill cultural milestones, make trillions of dollars, influence great technological advancements, and, tragically, stain the sky with blood. Will all this energy dedicated to space settlement improve society? Why go into a region that is ridiculously difficult and expensive to access when we are packed to the brim with huddled masses demanding food, water, healthcare, and shelter? Why jump to the sky when the foundations we lift off from are as shaky as the spaceships we will hurtle into space? 

The answer to the question is that the fundamentals that shape our current global society make space travel inevitable. Globalization, growing populations, exponential resource consumption, and capitalism generally incentivize expansion. The issue then is whether this expansion into Space is a positive or negative trend. I hope, and I believe that the offerings of Space that we use will be a net positive for the average citizen of the world. Space has the potential to stimulate life-saving innovations, economic prosperity, sustainable resource acquisition, and even cultural reinvigoration. 

However, the key word is net, meaning that just because Space can benefit society, does not mean that benefit will be distributed roughly equitably or that Space will benefit us all. Maybe, in a hawkish act of hubris, some mustachioed military advisor will use a military space satellite and laser the fertile soil of Earth with the devastation of a nuclear bomb. 

Whether the changes will be net good or bad (I think it’ll be net positive), the changes from space exploration will change the DNA of our society, and, due to safer and more targeted genome editing, probably ourselves. Governments, including the one in Washington, should start planning for this eventuality now, with state and local governments following up in a few decades. A planned out grand strategy for space affairs and expansion will mitigate costs from the monumental changes that await once our spaceships bathe in the voluminous rays of Sol. 

The Timeline of the Second Age of Discovery 

Is 1961, the year Yuri Gagarin became the first man in space, the new 1492? Look at the timeline a certain way, and the comparison is strikingly prescient. In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue, and “discovered” the new world. 115 years later, colonists from the Virginia company would land on foggy shores in the backwaters of the Powhatan confederacy and found Jamestown, the first permanent English settlement in the Americas. Following the Jamestown timeline then, Jamestown: Mars edition should be a thing in 2076, exactly 115 years after Gagarin made his earth shattering voyage.

Is the metaphor perfect? No, old world colonization and conquest of the New world began around the early 1500s, but the Jamestown comparison creates a strong framework to think about the phase we’re in around space exploration. 

Space travel is a cost-inhibitive exercise. SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket has been praised for dropping the price to send an object into Space to just $2,720 per kilogram. That’s a big drop from the past, but just that cost, combined with laborious construction, testing, and maintenance requires large investments, meaning that only entities with a lot of capital can build the infrastructure required for space travel. The same was somewhat similar in the Age of Discovery where building colonies was capital intensive due to the large amounts of ships, supplies, and people that were needed to maintain a permanent settlement. 

In both situations, private companies (the Virginia Company in 1607, SpaceX & Virgin Galactic today) worked with their respective governments to maximize legality, capital and synergies. Just like the first settlements and expeditions into America, space exploration will not initially be dominated by the private or public sector, because both sectors benefit from a partnership. 

It may feel strange to dedicate thought, time, and money into space exploration when the world is already so chaotic and complex, but I imagine that Europeans must have thought the same way during the 1500s. The Renaissance was in full force lifting the non-Byzantine & Islamic parts of Europe from the “dark ages.” The Reformation, along with its court intrigue, wars, religious fanaticism, and social upheaval ravaged the attention of millions of Europeans. At the battle of Mohacs, the Ottomans reached their territorial zenith, and were then decisively halted 50 years later at the battle of Lepanto. The Gutenberg press introduced new methods of mass communication, and led to the aforementioned Reformation. In England, Henry VIII was busy deciding whether to divorce, behead, or remain with his wives. To many in Europe, just like today, the colonization of new lands was a sideshow viewed with varying degrees of interest by the general public. 

Just because space may seem like a sideshow, doesn’t mean it will remain as such. Sooner or later, I’d contend in 30-50 years, it will be put on center stage. As mentioned earlier, there are a variety of economic, social, and demographic factors that will drive space expansion. Put even more simply, there’s a lot, like in the trillions a lot, of money to be made in space, and that money will drive investment in Space and send us into the stars.

The Fattest Cash cows Float in the Vacuum

There are several major industries associated with space. The most developed are telecommunications (you’re reading this article on a phone which is only connected to the internet through a satellite in space) and scientific research. The next are defense and space tourism, both of which I’ll discuss later. However, the two big future industries that will make trillions of dollars are space mining/resources, and space colonization. The colonies in Space are a bit farther away from space mining operations, but the local economy that will be created from these colonies will be incredibly high-risk, high-reward long-term investments that will attract venture capital like a moth to a flame. 

Regardless, the biggest money makers in the foreseeable future of Space will be in mining operations on the practically limitless amount of rocks orbiting the Solar System. Goldman Sachs, Neil deGrasse Tyson, and Ted Cruz have all argued that the first trillionaires will get this insane wealth through space mining. The most obvious thing that can be mined on these rocks, most of which are asteroids, is an unearthly amount of precious metals and minerals. Gold, Copper, Platinum, Silver, the metals that are the backbone of all industrial nations, are all present in inexhaustible quantities. Just one large, rich asteroid would crash the market for these metals if it would be stripped of its metals immediately. There are dozens of asteroids in very close proximity (relative to space) to Earth that have billion dollar valuations, and the potential profit from these asteroids at current prices would be in the trillions.

Like many things in life, the reality of asteroid mining is orders of magnitude more complicated and expensive than on paper. One method to mine asteroids would be to physically push them into the Moon or Earth’s orbit, and mine them from this closer distance. Even so, all methods will be done mostly by automated spacecraft. 

Space agencies have experience landing automated space drones on asteroids. In December, a Japanese spacecraft will return with an asteroid sample, and on October 21st, NASA successfully put a spacecraft on the Asteroid Bennu, a tiny rock the size of the Empire State building. The craft should return to Earth with a sample of Bennu by 2023. In 2022, NASA plans to launch its Psyche mission which will send a probe to the near metallic asteroid Psyche 16. While technologies to mine asteroids are there, they haven’t been combined effectively enough to do so for a profit. 

Nevertheless, large mining companies are looking into Space as a long term strategy. Collecting rocks in Space will be a laborious, though eventually profitable industry combining the efforts of private mining companies, national government, space agencies, and private space companies. This current lack of technology to mine asteroids will stunt growth for some time, but that will change once the technology is created. The boom is coming: Just wait. 

There’s another, equally pragmatic but not as short-term profitable reason for asteroid mining: Climate change. Mining is incredibly toxic to the environment. It’s a major fossil fuels emitter, it’s incredibly resource intensive, and the pollution of some mining operations have turned local ecosystems into toxic wastelands. By offplaneting mining operations, vital minerals and metals can be extracted in an environmentally friendly way because the extraction isn’t happening in a terrestrial environment. Spaces, once used for mining, can be transformed into natural reserves, parks, commercial space, or housing. There’s another

In Space we find the elixir of life in great quantities: water. Currently abundant on Earth, water exists in even greater amounts within our Solar System. Mining water may seem redundant, because Earth is full of water, but having water in Space will incentivize space exploration, space expansion, and conflict mitigation all while making a hefty profit. 

Ground into its elements, water is just two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom. It’s this hydrogen that has a purpose: As Hydrogen fuel. This technology already exists. It’s used, albeit in different forms, in cars as a fuel cell and as rocket propellant. Creating a hydrogen supply chain through Space however, could be revolutionary in the revenue it generates, and the expansion in Space it would streamline.

What would a space-based hydrogen supply chain look like? There are multiple ways in which it could take shape, and depends a lot on technological discovery, and industry/government investment. However, I’ll adapt one postulated Bloomberg TV and mix in other sources and discoveries.

Imagine, a white, speckled dot surrounded by a sea of multifarious illuminations approaching in the distance. A spacecraft’s thrusters are seen going into a slow burn as they gracefully pivot into a landing position. Just over the crest, a bright gleam emanates from a metallic, plastic creation on the surface of the moon. Set to synthwave, a mining colony, almost completely robotic, comes into full view and reveals itself in its barest glory. It’s the beginning of a fascinating operation.

There’s a variety of things to be mined on the moon. Rare earth metals which can be used from everything to buildings to computer processors, Helium-3 which can be used for nuclear energy, and water which is what I’ll be focusing on. Water on the moon exists primarily on the poles, but a recent landmark discovery found water on the surface of the moon. Once mined, the water is separated into hydrogen and oxygen and the hydrogen is converted into a fuel. Then it is carried by rockets to a refuelling station in between the earth and the moon or in low earth orbit (less than 2000 km from Earth). Alternatively, these cargo rockets can carry hydrogen fuel back down to Earth where they can be used to fuel trucks, busses, trains, or cars.

These refuelling stations are incredibly important as they act as gas stations in space. Spacecraft and satellites need not carry all the fuel they plan to use or rely on costly launches from Earth. Launching spacecraft from Earth is expensive because Earth’s gravity and atmosphere are hard, and thus expensive, to break through. On the moon or a large asteroid these worries are greatly diminished, making them cheaper long term options to build colonies after a risky initial investment. Thus, not only could we make orbital hydrogen stations, but we could also cost-effectively supply them with a lunar mining colony. 

An orbital hydrogen station, our gas station in space, could greatly increase the capabilities of private space companies and space agencies to explore and colonize the solar system. Ships won’t need to carry as much fuel. They’ll need enough for launch, and then can immediately refuel to travel in Space where there is much less gravity and fuel goes much farther. Therefore, future spacecraft can be designed to store more cargo and passengers. 

Additionally, a refuelling station can mitigate the space trash problem. Most satellites in low earth orbit are decommissioned and left to float in orbit when they run out of fuel. The ISS is a notable exception, but it’s still an exception. These floating metal husks contribute to a growing space trash problem where remnants of rocket boosters and satellites can fall from the sky (though most burn up in our atmosphere) or destroy existing satellites. By refueling satellites from hydrogen mined on the moon or an asteroid, space agencies will increase the functionality of their satellites. This saves money, and greatly reduces space waste.

This is all possible with available technology and some surprisingly cheap investment. In a report by over a dozen industry experts, they made a case that a hydrogen propellant production facility would take only 4 billion dollars (about the same cost as a Las Vegas luxury hotel) of initial investment to complete a project that would eventually generate 2.4 billion dollars annually. The biggest problem wasn’t technological or financial, the authors argued, but rather of capability. No single organization can do this by itself, but with cooperation between government space agencies, private space companies, and other related industries (mining & chemical), this project is ambitious and risky but feasible. 

The specifics of what happens next are murky. The farther into the future one looks, the harder specific predictions are to make. However, the infrastructure that’s built to support space mining operations are conducive towards the construction of space settlements on asteroids, the moon, and the big, red prize: Mars. 

The mining of metals allows newly built settlements to have nearby accessibility towards construction materials, which would complement hypothetical 3D printing capabilities already on board the spacecraft. And mining water would provide new settlers with a self-sufficient water supply which would reduce dangerously unreliable and expensive logistical support from Earth. Moreover, water can be used to grow crops, can be turned into oxygen, and can, of course, be used in conjunction with solar panels to produce local energy.

The financial opportunities from Space are large from the outset, and will continue to expand as technology advances, and as settlements are created. After all, these settlements will desire goods and services which will likely be facilitated by a capitalist economic structure, or at least AN economic structure. That means that new companies will be created and old ones will expand to fulfill these new demands. Jobs will be created to make sure these demands are completed. The physical expansion into Space will force a supplementary economic expansion, and that will be a net societal benefit.

This is what I mean when I explain the likely inevitability of expansion into Space. Physical expansion fueled by scientific and financial opportunity will create an economic expansion which will bring in more people and start a positive feedback loop. The UN estimates that by 2100 the world population will peak at 11 billion people. These new people will want to live somewhere, and they’ll want to live with the same access to goods and services that is found with most abundance in the Global North. 

By 2100, space colonies won’t take in these extra people, but they’ll create an infrastructure for that to happen, and free up key spaces. Land intensive industries may offplanet, freeing up land in addition to being more eco-friendly, and new resources and industries created through space exploration and expansion will enlarge the global pie of resources and access to luxury goods.

We are in the Jamestown timeline 2.0, and the incentive to keep going in this expansive direction exists from an environmental, financial, and as will be discussed, cultural perspective.

The Cosmic Golden Age

For Space to be an important aspect of the culture, it must first filter into the mainstream culture. This is already somewhat the case. Science Fiction novels like Asimov’s Foundation series, Heinlein’s The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, and Liu Cixin’s The Three-Body Problem and shows like Star Trek, Babylon V, and the Twilight Zone have influenced policymakers, entrepreneurs, and cultural influencers of today. However, space travel is presented as a fantasy or future fiction to think about later. In the future, Space won’t be in the future because the discoveries and achievements made in the Cosmos will be part of that present discourse. Space travel will slowly be presented as more realistic and less futuristic. 

The, anybody-can-go-into-space narrative will somewhat ironically first be portrayed by the elites through the form of space tourism. Though they won’t be the only non-Astronauts to go into space- the Challenger shuttle was, before it tragically exploded, supposed to transport the first teacher into space- they’ll be the first, largest, and most publicized group of non-Astronaut individuals to break free from Earth’s gravity. 

SpaceX, Blue Origin, and Virgin Galactic, the three big private space companies, are all making the infrastructure for space tourism to happen. All of them will have flights around the end of the decade, but the tickets are in the hundred thousand dollar range, and thus will for a time be only accessible for the billionaires. 

Nevertheless, the media coverage on Facebook, Instagram, TMZ, and cable news will be such that if marketed well these billionaire astronauts will inspire a common dream for people to also want to go to space. If Dwayne Johnson, Taylor Swift, Elon Musk, and MrBeast go to space, many people would want to follow in their footsteps. 

The cultural desire that the elite would first get to experience and then permeate into the mainstream is the tip of the iceberg of space’s cultural impact. The actual iceberg could be the golden age created from space. It’s an argument rooted in history. The core benefits when the periphery of a state enlarges. Essentially, the core of a state benefits when the state’s periphery, the area around the core, gets larger.

Europe went through the Enlightenment, and the Industrial/Scientific revolutions as it expanded during the Age of Discovery. Rome’s success was derived from its massive conquests. The Inca’s achieved their very brief golden age when Pachacuti and his successors blazed through the western South America. The Han of China achieved their golden age when they conquered the Xiongnu. Each case has their own exceptions and contextual considerations, but the common thread is that as these states expanded, the core benefitted. Economies grew, order was maintained, and a cultural flourishing began. In this sense, as many of Earth’s nations expand into space, they will reap the financial and cultural rewards of this new land.

There are two criticisms of this core/periphery dynamic that space expansion avoids to a large extent. First, is that as a multipolar world expands into space they will fight over resources. Secondly, past expansions have nearly always been morally inhumane. As Tacitus (technically Calgacus said it but Tacitus probably made it up so I’m attributing it to him) famously described Roman conquest, “they make a desert and call it peace.” European colonial states, Chinese imperial states, the Aztecs, the Songhai, the Mongols, and the Caliphates of the Arab world all achieved their expansion through a variety of methods, one of which included brutal, bloody, exploitative conquest. 

The first is a more valid concern in Space, but remember, there is infinite space in Space. As humans get farther and farther away from Earth, there’ll be more and more uninhabited space to build mining colonies and settlements. Constant expansion is sustainable because there’s no end to space.  There’s no need for conflict if one’s possible opponents are looking for resources in a completely different direction from Earth. There’ll be less conflict during Earth’s forays into space because states have some scientific, moral, and economic incentives to collaborate. It’s more cost efficient and moral if China, Russia, and the US collaborated to put a colony on Mars than if the three fought over who goes where. However, in the initial stages, when only a few asteroids, moons, and planets are effectively colonizable, there could be room for conflict, and that’s a genuine threat policymakers will have to manage.

The second is, fortunately, less likely simply due to the fact that nobody lives in our Solar System. There might be aliens, but they’re either bacteria that won’t do much besides inspire more people to go into space and study it. Or, they’re aliens so powerful that there’s no counterplay against them except hope they don’t care enough to exterminate everyone. Besides these unlikely possibilities, there’s nobody to conquer, no one to enslave, and nothing to kill. This simple fact will make space colonization much less bloodier than anything Europe approached in the 16th-19th centuries. 

However, just because no one lives outside of Earth’s orbit now, doesn’t mean that in the future space colonizers will become unwilling indentured servants, or suffer from similar forms of exploitation. These concerns will be addressed in the second installment of this article, but when looking at net outcomes, more people will benefit than they will lose from the coming centuries of space exploration and expansion.

Space will revitalize stagnant cultures with common dreams and goals. New jobs, new money, and new technologies will create new industries for people to be creative with and to thrive in. The philosophers will have a field day, the scientists will literally have a field day, and the entertainment industry will film, mock, and write about both having their field days. How this golden age will specifically manifest itself is unpredictable, and how much the gold will shimmer depends on how the bounties of space are managed by policymakers and society writ large, but it can be a golden age.

Conclusions from the Bright side of the Moon

Whether our society becomes more or less dystopian in the next century is difficult to predict. Books have been written on the subject for centuries, and while some predictions are prescient, some are wildly off the mark. However, I believe that space, in the hundred years, would mitigate a dystopia, not enhance it. Sure, technology developed from space colonization may be used by malicious actors, but the predicted trends don’t indicate that this will outweigh the social gains from Space.

Nevertheless, these negative possibilities may happen, and thus deserve to be discussed. Wherever there is the possibility to fail, governments should create policies and strategies to mitigate these shortcomings. I plan to do so in my next segment, where I’ll talk about the reverse of space colonization, and what may happen if malicious actors game the political, economic, and social systems that exist within space and the ones that interact with Earth. The Moon may be bright, but travel into the land where the sun don’t shine, and there is a vast, haunting dark side.

The Effectiveness of Declaring a Climate Emergency

On January 21, 2020, Spanish Parliament declared a climate emergency and made a promise to propose comprehensive legislation in the next 100 days. This declaration came just weeks after the approval of a coalition government including the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party with Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, and Unidas Podemos, a left wing electoral alliance. The move was prompted by Barcelona’s own climate emergency declaration in which 104 carbon emission cutting measures were unveiled, and, if successful, would cut the city’s carbon emissions in half by 2030. 

Spain is just one example of a country that has declared a climate emergency. In 2019, a variety of countries, cities, and organizations have declared a climate emergency as well, totaling 1,348 jurisdictions. Similar to Spain, some cities made the declaration with the hope that it will be a stark signal to their national governments. Similarly in the United States, 80 cities have declared a climate emergency including, most notably, New York City. On a larger scale, the climate movement was propelled forward when the European Parliament declared in November that they had set a goal to cut emissions by 55 percent by 2030 in order to become climate neutral by 2050. 

However, while the number of places declaring a climate emergency is increasing, the next steps after the declaration are uncertain. When jurisdictions declare a climate emergency, there is a mix of different outcomes. For some places, the declaration is symbolic because it is a show of solidarity with other places and movements like the Extinction Rebellion and Fridays for the Future. Other declarations, like the one that occurred in Miami, have been in response to protests and calls of action by activists, but they have no legitimate plan in place to address the issue. For some larger jurisdictions, specific plans have been set. In Barcelona and New York for example, both have created their own versions of the Green New Deal, a proposed package of legislation in the United States. Activists consider any of these at least a step in the right direction. 

Due to the fact that declaring a climate emergency has no binding aspects, those in power who make the declaration tend to make a variety of promises without a clear deadline on their delivery. In analyzing the first place to declare a climate emergency, their progress has been relatively steady. Darebin is a small city in Australia that declared a climate emergency in 2016, followed by the creation of an emergency plan that addressed a number of different sources of their emissions. Darebin’s largest source of emissions was commercial/industrial electricity followed by residential electricity. To address residential electricity, the city implemented a Solar Saver scheme in which residents were able to get solar panels installed and pay them off using a payment plan. This scheme was considered very successful, as the amount of solar energy generated in the city almost doubled in just a couple of years. Smaller steps have also been taken, such as banning plastic cutlery at city events and resurfacing local roads using recycled materials. At the start of 2020, the city also started their food waste recycling program that reduced the jurisdiction's emissions by 1,600 tonnes in the first year. While these efforts should be commended, they do very little in relation to the global issue. 

Japan is suspected of producing 4 percent of the world's CO2 emissions, making it the fifth largest producer in the world, only surpassed by China, the United States, Russia, and India. There have been a handful of cities in Japan that have declared climate emergencies in hopes of influencing the national government's choices. Japan has felt a variety of effects from climate change, including heat waves that killed a thousand people in 2018, and flooding which resulted in 2 million people being evacuated in July 2018. These climate effects have been felt in coastal cities like Sakai and Hokuei, but especially in the island city of Iki, all of which have declared climate emergencies. The efforts of these smaller jurisdictions do not seem to have had an effect on the national government, as the government announced a plan to build 22 new coal power plants in the next 5 years. With coal burning being a major source of CO2 emissions, Japan's thought process comes into question when thinking about their proposed 26 percent cut of national emissions by 2030 as a part of their pledge to support the Paris Climate Agreement. Japan is just one example of the disconnect between local and national government, thereby showing how national government cooperation is the key to the success of emission reduction.

The climate movement took a major step on the global ladder when the European Union (EU) declared a climate emergency just before the United Nations COP25 Climate Change Conference. This declaration was monumental, but it also came with some drastic ideas for the majority of the continent. Based on the 1.5 degree target set at the Paris agreement, there was a call for a reduction of emissions with a focus on the aviation and shipping industries. The success of the EU accomplishing this goal is dependent on the funds that the European Investment Fund and the European Investment Bank would provide. Additionally, 75 million euros have been allocated for the BlueInvest Fund, a fund to strategically target and support the innovative blue economy working to address oceanic shipping improvements. While these ideas do hold some potential for improving aspects of the EU's emission issues, many activists worry about how much progress can really be made in such a large area with a wide array of issues.

Jurisdictions’ decisions across the world to declare a climate emergency have led to a mixed bag of results. Efforts being made on the local level can be considered successes even if they are small. The message is still very important in those places, however, whether they make major changes or not; it is time for the world to step up. The declaration of a climate emergency puts the pressure on national governments and international bodies to acknowledge the issue and treat it as the emergency it is. Progress may be slow, but it is progress nonetheless.

An Appeal to Geneva: Racial Politics and Discrimination at the Founding of the United Nations

Human rights often pose a paradox - foundational human truths, such as freedom from oppression and discrimination are arguably some of the most contested rights in the world, spanning all continents, all countries, all races, all religions, and all peoples. Human rights were formally institutionalized by the United Nations in 1948. The UN definition of human rights inaugurated norms of such basic rights and the prioritization of them within a Western context and notions of world order post-WWII. With human rights established for the first time, it is important to be critical of the time frame and historical significance of political and societal culture of the West - most notably in the United States with racial segregation. With the US playing a critical role in the creation of the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), by-products of politics and racism - the UN Declaration of Human Rights at its founding is inherently racists and discriminatory. How the UN defined, wrote and prioritized the UDHR and subsequent application of the declaration, fail to acknowledge the oppression and human rights abuses in the United States. The United States is insincere in regards to the role the US played in the creation and policies of the United Nations UDHR. The United Nations was created at a time when basic human rights were being denied to many citizens of African, Asian, South American and Indigenous descent in the United States. Forced segregation, Jim Crow laws, mob lynching and institutionalized racism, classism and sexism were experienced across the country. With a particular look at racism and the creation of the United Nations, a sense of injustice, inequality and Western ideology are at the core of the founding of the institution that represents the world. With the United States being the most influential leader in the creation of the United Nations, it is important to scrutinize the role the U.S. had in the creation of the institutional flaws of the UN.

The United States has one of the most complex and paradoxical histories of a democracy; built on the enslavement of Brown and Black bodies. Institutional racism will be defined and used within the context of the U.S. “...as the policies, programs, and practices of public and private institutions that result in greater rates of poverty, dispossession, criminalization, illness, and ultimately mortality of African Americans. Most importantly, it is the outcome that matters, not the intentions of the individuals involved.” This definition comes from African and Black Diaspora scholar, Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor. The fight for racial equality has been present in the US since the founding. Similarities between Frederick Douglass’ 1852 speech, “What is the fourth of July to a slave?” have similar tones to W.E.B. Dubois’ Introduction to Appeal to the World: A Statement of Denial of the Rights to Minorities in the Case of Citizens of Negro Descent in the United States of America and an Appeal to the United Nations for Redress (The Appeal). While a key difference from 1852 to 1947 was that slavery was unconstitutional in 1947, the rough 100 years, however, did little to change the oppression and institutionalized racism of Brown and Black bodies in the United States. However, with the creation of the United Nations as an international institution, a mode of redress was able to be amplified beyond the borders of the so-called Land of the Free. An Appeal to the World began the foundational movement for future Black power and race-related rights to be addressed, recognized and contemporary ideologies to be contested through the use of international institutions such as the UN on an international level. The elevated attention and body of nations allowed for racial oppression in the U.S. to be heard on a much larger platform than previously in human history.

The Appeal

The Appeal was not the first document presented to the United Nations on the racial oppression and discrimination in the United States. On June 6, 1946, the National Negro Congresses (NNC) petitioned the United Nations’ Secretary General’s Office with A Petition to the United Nations on Behalf of the 13 Million oppressed Negro Citizens of the United States of America (the Petition). This 15-page petition outlines the “economic, social, political, and physical machine of oppression” experienced by Black bodies in the U.S. The Petition was distributed and gained positive responses around the world from Bolivia to the West Indies along with support from American groups such as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). While the NNC was known for communist ideologies, the U.S. Government and primarily the FBI tried to discredit the Petition as communist propaganda and ‘un-American’. The UN required evidence to be gathered as proof that the rights of African Americans were being violated. Because of the organizational structure of the NNC, collection of evidence was almost impossible for the organization and the Petition was dropped. The NAACP leaders Walter White and W.E. Burghardt Du Bois’ inspiration came from the Petition and began to craft their own appeal. The chair of the Human Rights Commission was Eleanor Roosevelt, who was also on the Board of Directors of the NAACP, Du Bois and White believed they had a fighting chance at the idea and believed Roosevelt would support their work (Anderson 2003, 93).

The Appeal to the World: A Statement of Denial of the Rights to Minorities in the Case of Citizens of Negro Descent in the United States of America and an Appeal to the United Nations for Redress was written by W.E. Burghardt Du Bois; Earl B. Dickerson, Milton R. Konvitz; William R. Ming, Jr; Leslie S. Perry; Rayford W. Logan and presented to the United Nations

On October 23, 1947. Where the Petition was ideologically driven, it failed in being able to provide the appropriate structure that was required by the UN. The Appeal was able to fulfill the instructional bureaucracy, provide in-depth analysis and evidence, all while creating a compelling argument. The Appeal sought to change the way in which rights were conceptually understood and realized in the racial context of America. A movement and discourse to change from civil rights to human rights. The discourse was all within the freedom and equality struggle not just in the U.S. but racial equality around the world. Scholar Carol Anderson emphasizes that this was a critical move because equality from the perspective of white America and institutionalized racism understood equality as a slow progression to ‘equalness’ rather than the literal definition of equal. Through the conceptual shift to human rights, Du Bois then contends that the greatest threat to the US is within its own racist ideology. Du Bois gives a powerful introduction stating that, “When will nations learn that their enemies are quite as often within their own country as without? It is not Russia that threatens the United States so much as Mississippi; not Stalin and Molotov, but Bilbo and Rankin; internal injustice done to one’s brothers is far more dangerous than the aggression of strangers from abroad.” While history agrees with Du Bois in the importance of dealing with domestic issues, it is important to acknowledge that while simplistic, slavery, the Civil War, lynching, police brutality and racism at this time had killed more Americans than the Cold War ever did and ever would (including any proxy wars). The Appeal is a 94-page document and history of the grievances of Black and African-Americans organized chronologically; providing examples of oppression and discrimination. Organized by chapters from the USA's founding to pre-World War I; Black Legal status since WWI, present Black legal status from WWI to WWII; Patterns of Discrimination in Fundamental Human Rights; and concluding with the efforts made by the UN for Human Rights and rights of Minorities. The Appeal provides basic statistics, facts, and evidence, most of which was in the NNC’s Petition but dramatically expanded upon. The international component not only points of the hypocrisy of Western nations in DuBois stating that,

To disarm the hidebound minds of men is the only path to peace; and as long as Great Britain and the United States profess democracy with one hand and deny it to millions with the other, they convince none of their sincerity, least of all themselves… Most people of the world are more or less colored in skin; their presence at the meetings of the United Nations as participants, and as visitors, renders them always liable to insult and to discrimination; because they may be mistaken for Americans of Negro descent...

A critical aspect of The Appeal was the lack of state sponsorship, and the US had zero intention of sponsoring the document. While the African-American Black populations was larger than the population of some member states in the UN, the Petition was nonetheless dismissed as a domestic grievance and inapplicable.

The symbolism behind both the NNC’s Petition and the NAACP’s Appeal was one of the first instances of requesting redress beyond and acknowledgment of oppression within your own state to an international audience. The Petition and The Appeal at the time were politically disruptive towards American Foreign policy because of the danger of UN jurisdiction over “domestic affairs” and Cold War politics. The Soviet Union used America’s failings in racial equality in political attacks against the U.S. and democracy. On June 22, 1946, India filed a complaint with the UN with the South African Apartheid Government over racial discrimination laws that violated treaties. The Union of South African government claimed the mater outside the jurisdiction of the UN and that no internationally recognized human rights existed at the time.The matters of jurisdiction, defined and recognized rights became ever more a political discussion. Scholar Mary Dudziak emphasized the idea that if Apartheid human rights violations were enforceable by the UN, subsequently Jim Crow laws could be next and vice-versa. The U.S. had no interest in allowing for that to happen and neither did other nation-states’ such as Union of South Africa that had human rights violations occurring in their country and used what power they had to influence the UN to think and act in the interest of the US.

The Impact of the Appeal

The Appeal set into motion key Cold War ideological debates as well as provided a new international platform for the oppression of African-Americans and Blacks’ voices to be heard. One key and important response that The Appeal had was that of Eleanor Roosevelt’s refusal to be present and disdain to have The Appeal be presented to the United Nations. Roosevelt herself, who was a known critic of racial discrimination, refused to acknowledge The Appeal in fear of what The Appeal would do to America’s fight against communism. Her concern was sound in that the Soviet Union proposed that the NAACP’s charges be investigated. “On December 4, 1947, the United Nations Commission on Human Rights rejected the proposal, and the United Nations took no action on the petition”. The image of the US as a racial opressor, however, remained a significant battle for US foreign policy during the Cold War. As scholar Mary Dudziak points out in her book, Cold War Civil Rights, “If the [US] could not eradicate the conditions that gave rise to foreign criticism [racism in the US], it could at least place them ‘in context’... Rehabilitating the moral character of American democracy would become an important focus of Cold War diplomacy”. And so the United States, rather than foundational challenging and changing the racialized country created justifications and defenses for post-WWII segregated America.

The Appeal to the World not only significantly pointed out the flaws in American democracy, but the document also inspired documents of the like to be continuously presented to the UN. The petition, We Charge Genocide was presented to the UN in 1951 in Paris. We Charge Genocide created a linkage between police brutality and the inhumane targeting, profiling, and killing of a group of people based on notions of race specifically in the United States. The petition argued that police brutality crimes should be punishable by the UN Genocide Convention. The Appeal, and the subsequent We Charge Genocide created a notion for future Black Power leaders such as Malcolm X who in his famous speech, The Ballot or the Bullet in 1964 directly calls out the UN and highlights the need to define the oppression and the Civil Rights movement as a human rights issue, which appeared as well in the Appeal to the World.

Conclusion

“To forget them, to pass lightly over their wrongs, and to chime in with the popular theme, would be treason most scandalous and shocking, and would make me a reproach before God and the world”. - Frederick Douglass

To apply to modern times, to not acknowledge and scrutinize the motives, power politics and manipulation by the United States’ interest into the foundation of the creation of the first human rights laws is a server injustice not only the people whose human rights were violated but to also concede defeat to the belief that human rights only apply to certain people. While An Appeal to the World did not address, restore or equalize the rights of African-Americans and Black people in America, it did foster the scholarship and language in regards to how racial rights and therefore human rights are discussed in the context of the US. However the question remains, does the United Nations, or any international organization, such as the International Criminal Court (ICC) serve in modern notions as a platform for human rights denials to be heard and addressed in the United States? Answering this question requires a realistic analysis of these institutions - particularly looking at the UN and ICC, two institutions based on the protection and defense of human rights. The hope of redress through the United Nations in 1947 was also centered on the hope of international support from South American states and in recently decolonized states in Africa. With the development of power and politics within the last 50 years - the hope of redress through the United Nations, in particular, is less likely.  In regards to the ICC, the United States while signed the Rome Statute, that instituted the ICC, never ratified it and thus ICC does not have jurisdiction unless the United States consents to involve the ICC. Institutions such as the UN and ICC are forces of good and do valuable international work. While the creation of the United Nations was groundbreaking, it is critical to be mindful of the process that still needs to happen. The concepts and arguments created in The Appeal and in the formation go beyond the domestic sphere through international institutions and politics. Progress has been made, in that the UN now has a committee on The Elimination of Racial Discrimination and the United States is recognized as an obvious violator of racial equality. Racial inequality still exists in the world and in the United State. With movements such as #BlackLivesMatter, the fight for true equality continues.

Antarctic Cooperation: Challenges and Benefits to American Foreign Interests

Multinational cooperation plays an essential role in shaping the field of international relations. Throughout the years, countries have been trying to overcome and understand each other’s differences and create bilateral and multilateral partnerships. Nowadays, in Europe, Asia, North and South America, Africa, and Australia, nations have various sets of rules and regulations that all actors must abide by. Those commonly established principles make the cooperation within the continents safe and transparent, as those processes are usually overseen by the international organizations. Nevertheless, there is still one giant and geopolitically significant continent that is left out from the general attention: Antarctica. As the world’s coldest and hardest to reach continent, Antarctica has been attracting scientists and explorers from all around the planet for decades.

Countries, as a result of the Antarctic Treaty of 1959, have been granted a right to share and use the continent for “peaceful purposes only.” This means that no nation is capable of owning the whole icy land, it is common by the rule of international law. The Antarctic Treaty requires nations to use the icy continent according to the following principles: “Freedom for scientific research,” “International scientific exchange shall be promoted,” and “Territorial claims shall be held in abeyance while the Treaty is in force.” The United States (US), as one of the most developed nations, has been studying Antarctica since December of 1955 when the first American base, McMurdo Station, was established on the continent.

As time went by, the US and other members of the Antarctic Treaty furthered their influence in Antarctica by increasing the number of research bases and advancing their own infrastructural features on the continent. Additionally, nations have been increasing their budgets, related to the South Pole research and exploration. The United States certainly has national ambitions and goals in Antarctica, benefits that America might not be willing to split with others. However, because of the extreme weather conditions, logistical hardships, and other shared problems, the US, together with other nations, will be better off cooperating with one another within Antarctica despite the political issues, mistrusts, and resource nationalism of the current global order.

Opportunities of Antarctica

The South Pole region is one of the most unexplored parts of our planet that possesses a great amount of material, scientific, and other types of opportunities yet to be utilized. Therefore, the United States together with other nations can get more out of the icy continent by making the Antarctic partnerships with each other. Nonetheless, while cooperating, nations in Antarctica may or may not still act with respect to their own interests and this commitment uncertainty could make the cooperation perspectives less likely. Hence, by being clear about the sharing process of goals and gains that arise from collaborations, countries will be able to have far more trust in one another and eventually achieve significantly more objectives.

The article “The Fight to Own Antarctica” that was written by Benedict Mander and Leslie Hook in the popular publication Financial Times informs the reader that Antarctica has a lot to offer and the issue of sharing the findings may bring up a number of possession related matters between the countries. The authors highlight that “At stake is the last pristine continent, one that contains the world’s largest store of freshwater, huge potential reserves of oil and gas and the key to understanding how quickly climate change will impact the world through rising sea levels.” This excerption has a relatively pessimistic and competition implying message, which is a relevant concern, based on the current global order and long-determined relationships between the world’s most powerful nations. Nevertheless, the same statement may be interpreted as evidence for a different viewpoint. Antarctica has so much to offer that nations will benefit from cooperating and can eventually advance their exploration and gains from the icy continent’s enormous potential. America is capable of leading the common work and cooperation, which eventually can contribute to strengthening the US hegemonic future.

Furthermore, by working together with other preoccupied nations, the United States will get more information and a broader picture of a highly contemporary problem as climate change. Thus, by having a superior comprehension of this issue, nations will be able to orient the essential solutions to the existing causes of the climate change and the primary matter of global warming.

Competitors on the Continent

Our planet has been a gigantic arena where nations compete for resources, power, control, and usually act in pursuit of their own interests rather than the common good; ergo, with its resources and overall potential, Antarctica may become a new battlefield for the world’s leading countries. Nowadays, there are a lot of skeptics of the Antarctic Treaty saying that the agreement needs to be modernized in order to meet the demands of current global order and implement additional regulations on the agreement signing countries.

The Financial Times authors in their Antarctica related article introduce the Royal Holloway, London University’s professor Klaus Dodds, who raises the principal question about the icy continent. The online publication provides an interview excerpt: “Resources have always been the big trigger,” says Professor Dodds. “Once you get more explicit about resource exploitation, then you raise the troubling issue of who owns Antarctica. That’s the issue that haunts the Antarctic Treaty, and the Treaty System more generally.” This concern is not random and has been one of the key talking points of the Antarctica conversations, debates, and international meetings. Professor Dodds does not mention any countries, however, it is clear that the race for resources and other Antarctic prospects might erupt between nations with the most influence in the region, which are the United States, Russia, and China. Therefore, even if America follows all the rules and favors the cooperative way of diplomacy in Antarctica, the US will not have any other option but to join the contest when Russia or China begin the resource race. In that case, we may see the Antarctic Treaty countries form clusters, bilateral groups, or act solely and eventually any likelihoods of multilateral cooperation in Antarctica would be extremely hard to work through.

It is vital to note that countries such as Great Britain, Australia, Norway, Argentina, Chile, France, and many others are also crucial actors in Antarctica with their research bases and various influence giving aspects. Moreover, since the Antarctic Treaty was signed, more and more nations have been developing their technological, logistical, and monetary capabilities and can now join the scene. Whether it will be a cooperative or competitive scene has to be decided by the nations themselves, though it is understandable that the Antarctic Treaty will need to be updated according to the current global standards and preoccupations.

Prospects of Collaboration

Cooperation in Antarctica will most likely benefit the countries with less industrial and technological capabilities on the continent, yet this partnership will also make the nations with significant powers in the region much better off. The United States, as one of the leading players in Antarctic explorations and studies, is and should strive for the cooperation with other countries, especially if such interaction can bring the American side certain optimistic outcomes. The academic article, published in the scholarly periodical The Polar Journal by Georgetown University professor Christopher C. Joyner, touches upon the significance of Antarctica for the United States in scientific, astronomical, and geopolitical ways. The author also mentions the importance for America of the science-related partnership. He argues that “The United States government strives to undertake opportunities for cooperative scientific research to understand Antarctica and other global physical and environmental systems.” Additionally, the writer calls the American efforts a “major national interest.” This statement clearly shows that the United States is open towards various research-related partnerships on the icy continent.

Moreover, the American authorities view the scientific investigations and potential knowledge, gained as a result of Antarctic research, as a vital matter for the whole country. Consequently, by collaborating with other nations in Antarctica, the United States and its researchers will be able to make new scientific advancements, and as Christopher C. Joyner suggests, acquire valuable information to understand the world we live in. The US supports the Antarctic cooperation in pursuit of the scientific discoveries and is willing to create bilateral or multilateral partnerships with other nations on the continent. However, competition between the partner countries is the obvious issue that arises and needs to be addressed, while talking about the prospects of Antarctic cooperation and potential steps that must be communicated along the way.

Real Obstacles

The process of Antarctic cooperation is not easy to commence and even more difficult to stick to; ergo, the matter of trust is vitally important with relation to the partnership formation activities on the continent. Like most situations, cooperation cannot exist without trust between the global actors. Nevertheless, it gets tricky when you have to rely on the collaborator who you have been competing with for a long time. In the article “The WikiLeaks Arctic Cables,” published in the Polar Record, Professor Klaus J. Dodds analyzes and publicizes the confidential American foreign relations records that were obtained and distributed by WikiLeaks. Those documents reveal a great number of conversations, assignments, and exchanges of advice between the State Department of the United States of America, diplomats, and embassies around the globe. The primary reference point of those records is the situation in the Arctic among the North Pole countries. This peer reviewed publication talks about the present issue, related to mistrust of the US and other NATO nations towards Russia, as one of the active leaders in the areas of Arctic research, territorial control, and resource extraction. As a result, such North Pole matter can be compared with the possible course of events in Antarctica.

The author also references the WikiLeaks website and writes, “Under the heading of ‘New WikiLeaks revelations shed light on Arctic oil “carve up”’ it rallied against the ‘new revelations’ by the whistle blowing website WikiLeaks that show how the scramble for resources in the Arctic is sparking military tension in the region, with NATO sources worried about the potential for armed conflict between the alliance and Russia… .’” The publicity of these revealed records did not benefit the United States or its allies. Moreover, American competitors, primarily Russia and to some extent China, among others, got valuable insight information that concerns the NATO countries’ activities, preoccupations, plans, and talks about the North Pole region. The WikiLeaks publication shows that in the Arctic, neither the US and its allies trust Russia or any other potential adversary, nor can the Russian Federation trust their counterparts. This conclusion can also be empirically devoted to other regions of the planet and Antarctica is one of them. Consequently, based on these materials, a reliance-building process between the three strongest Antarctic nations will demand a great amount of diplomatic work and time.

Coexisting in Peace

        It is hard to deny that the United States views other powerful countries, such as China and Russia, as evident rivals because of the decades long competition for global hegemony, resources, and political ideas. However, Antarctica is an immensely different kind of location, as it is impossible to be in power and thus, cooperation has a lot less obstacles. Taking the Antarctic Treaty into account and the possibility of gaining benefits through mutual assistance, the United States should not worry about the threat from other nations. The Global Politics report titled “The Option for U.S.–China Cooperation in Antarctica” by Senior Research Fellow Dean Cheng, highlights that the Antarctic matter is not a zero-sum game and there can be multiple winners as a result of the cooperation on the icy continent. The report was published through The Heritage Foundation website and looks at the prospects and American interests from the United States-China cooperation in the Antarctic region. Cheng makes it clear that China is currently one of the biggest actors in Antarctica and will be advancing its influence in future. Beijing is spending more money in the field of South Pole research and Cheng emphasizes it by giving the information about the new Chinese base, which at the time of the report writing (2014) was close to be completed. The researcher affirms, “Once completed [the research station], it will give China one of the largest Antarctic presences. With its Antarctic budget growing from $20 million to $55 million, China clearly has the wherewithal to expand its presence even further.” By increasing the Antarctic exploration spending, China confirms its plans to stay in the South Pole region.

Throughout his report, Cheng stresses that Chinese efforts and advancements in Antarctica does not make the United States or other nations worse off, but rather that there are a lot more resources being spent in that region. So, by having China as a collaborator or a part of a partnership group, the Antarctic Treaty members, especially the United States, will be able to utilize far more joint means as opposed to working alone. Cheng through multiple examples and reasoning, emphasizes that in the South Pole region, cooperation, even with rival nations, has no particular threat for America. Cheng ends his report by concluding that “Consequently, like cooperation in the Gulf of Aden, the Antarctic is an area where the U.S. and China have much to gain through greater cooperation and little to lose. Antarctic cooperation is therefore well worth exploring, to help improve bilateral ties without infringing upon either side’s core interests.”

In his report, Cheng makes it clear that it is necessary to take into account the variation in location when talking about the national and foreign interests of the United States. Thus, relationships between China and America may be quite rival in area, such as South China Sea, Africa, or South America; nonetheless, the affairs in a place like Antarctica may be contrasting. This conclusion may also be used with correlation to Russia and other nations that are not considered allies of the United States. Ultimately, as long as America does not see any particular danger with regards to the Antarctic cooperation, benefits from future partnerships will exceed the possible disadvantages that combined efforts may present.

New Value of the Continent

Antarctica is not owned by anyone and can be freely used by humans in accordance with international law and the Antarctic Treaty; as a result, people all over the world should have equal access to the continent in years to come. While tourism in Antarctica is relatively new in the South Pole area, it is a growing activity. Visitors nowadays are willing to pay large sums of money to experience this pure and magnificent place, that only a small percentage of people have ever been to. An article in Financial Times by Leslie Hook and Benedict Mander reports,

“For most tourists — who pay between $10,000 and $100,000 for a trip — visiting Antarctica involves stepping off the boat at just a handful of highly regulated landing sites. But there are loopholes in the system, such as private yachts that flout permitting rules, as well as a growing number of tours that involve activities such as kayaking or skiing.”

The price, conditions, and available infrastructure of such Antarctic tourist journeys makes it extremely hard for the majority of people to go and visit the continent. Even though, Antarctica is undoubtedly difficult to get to and even more difficult to stay on, people are still capable of making constant progress as technology and our wealth of knowledge advances. Tourism on the icy continent is no different. Hence, this progress can be accelerated by creating new Antarctic partnerships and cooperating groups that will focus on the the processes of getting the general public in and out from the continent. In that case, nations can share experiences or focus on what they have comparative advantage in doing. It is vital to state that the United States may end up collaborating with nations that have a long and not always pleasant history with America and vice versa. As the authors of the article indicate, “The US, Russia and China all have critical infrastructure in Antarctica to aid their global positioning systems.” As the statement implies, the three countries have the dominant positions on the icy continent. Thus, it is logical to assume that for the United States, cooperating with Russia, China, or even both countries can bring the most benefits.

Yet, this potential can have a huge obstacle in its way. Significant political and cultural differences between the three nations, heated by the recent US-China trade arguments and Russia’s condemned behavior on the international arena, may primarily resist and blockade the bilateral or multilateral cooperation in Antarctica between America and the two Eastern countries. However, if the United States, through various diplomatic and scientific channels, were able to negotiate the initial South Pole cooperation deals with its two rivals, the future of humankind may see the totally unexpected outcome. Ultimately, with combined efforts, the overall travel experience, cost, and Antarctic’s own infrastructure can be drastically improved, making the Antarctic tourism more affordable and enjoyable. Also, such cooperation will improve the logistics of Antarctic research, which can upgrade the conditions scientists live and work in.

Nonetheless, the Antarctic Treaty members should also pay close attention to the environmental aspects of their future activities on and around the icy continent. Thereof, it will be essential to connect the future discoveries and progresses with new regulations, agreements, and international “manners”. The Antarctic nations will have essential tasks in the years to come: making the icy continent more accessible for travelers and reducing the environmental risks and problems.

The Antarctic cooperation is a field of international affairs that has not been thoroughly studied yet. Nonetheless, with the extraction of resources, advancement of sea level research, space observations, and Antarctic tourism development, countries will become more and more interested in the icy continent. Eventually, in spite of the different aims, cultures, governmental contradictions, and political hostility, the nations will be able to benefit from the bilateral and multilateral partnerships in Antarctica. Consequently, the United States with its capabilities and interests should not miss out on this opportunity. Moreover, America has all the resources and global recognition to become a leader in promoting, organizing, and maintaining such cooperation. By interacting in the logistic, touristic, infrastructural, and scientific fields, the world’s nations can make much greater progress together than separately. Nations like China and Russia may not be allies to the United States and are usually looked at as rivals.

Nonetheless, with combined infrastructural and other efforts, as well as by letting Antarctica shape new relationships, the cooperation on the South Pole continent is nothing but possible, even between completely different nations. The Heritage Foundation researcher Dean Cheng states that, “U.S.–China cooperation in Antarctica is a positive, admittedly limited, opportunity.” America, by leading and contributing to the partnerships in Antarctica will not only strengthen its own positions and advance its own progress on the icy continent, but will also create an example of a successful cooperation for other countries, which will ultimately benefit the whole humankind. Additionally, relationships and experiences that will be built in Antarctica can become a moving force for similar cooperation in other regions of the planet, making global affairs less hostile and more genuine.

Expanding Our Definition of Meat: Changing perceptions of alternative protein sources for potential benefits

Introduction

I’m vegetarian. I’m vegan. These are two statements that can mean very different things to different people.  For some, being a vegetarian or vegan means giving up animal products in order to save the lives of other living creatures. For others, it means eating a healthier or “cleaner” diet in order to obtain a certain weight-loss goal or body image. And in some cases, these statements can be heard with resentment or negativity, incorporating another meaning to vegetarianism and veganism that’s tied with an undesirable social context.

However, it is agreed that choosing to follow a vegetarian and vegan diet is so much more than simply giving up meat or only eating vegetables. A vegetarian diet excludes the consumption of animal meat (including any livestock, seafood, and wild animals), but can include the consumption of some animal byproducts, such as milk and cheese. A vegan diet, meanwhile, excludes the consumption of all animal meats and by products, including gelatin and honey. Vegan diets have also been referred to as “total vegetarian.”

Recently vegetarian eating behavior rose in popularity, almost as much as participation in the vegan lifestyle; between 2014 and 2017, there occured a 600% increase of the number of people in the United States who identified as being vegan. The reasons that more and more people have chosen to consume a meatless and/or no-animal-product diet are numerous, complex, and many are justifiably sound. It’s common to associate vegetarianism, veganism, and meat-selective diets with the ethical desire to avoid killing animals unnecessarily or with religion. But the rise in choosing an exclusively or almost exclusively plant-based diet over a diet that includes meat and animal products is linked to environmental, health, and economic benefits. These benefits have been thoroughly researched and examined for legitimacy with an abundance of scientific data as support.

Yet there is still a strong negative social response to veganism and vegetarianism. While most people in contemporary culture avoid “open expressions of prejudice towards racial outgroups,” many people feel that they can be openly prejudice towards vegetarians/vegans. Most of this prejudice is voiced in the form of social media, especially online memes, to represent non-vegetarians’ exasperation over vegetarian and vegan lifestyle choices. Stereotyping, exaggeration, and misunderstanding have all contributed to anti- vegetarian and vegan discourse, discrediting and diminishing many of the positive benefits these diets can provide. One of the main criticisms of meatless diets is the assumption that one cannot get sufficient protein from non-animal sources, or alternative protein sources. This assumption illustrates the fundamental lack of understanding and nutritional education of many people, especially in the United States. However, the negative perception of vegetarianism and veganism has been, and can continue to be, changed as new health related research, plant-based products, environmental concerns, and economic justifications provide a more holistic understanding of these diets. Changing consumers’ perceptions about alternative protein sources that are essential parts of vegetarian and vegan diets may lead to better public and individual health outcomes, environmental sustainability, and more economically affordable food options.

Today’s Meat Consumption Culture and Perceptions of Vegetarianism

Although vegetarianism and veganism is on the rise, it is sound to say that the consumption of meat will continue to grow as well. In 2004 the average American consumed 203.2 pounds of meat per year, which translates to over half a pound of meat per day. The meat industry continued to grow and strengthen its production capabilities throughout the decade until the economic shock of the Great Recession reduced Americans’ consumption of meat to 186.6 pounds a year in 201. Now, the average consumption of meat per person in the U.S. is creeping back up to 200 pounds per year and is expected to reach 219 pounds a year by 2025, according to the USDA Economic Research Service.

Indeed, even with the rise in meat-less and meat-restricted diets, Americans in general are demanding and eating more meat. There are several speculations for why this is, such as the idea that meat consumption has been a fundamental part of the “American” diet since the early settlement period. Increase in meat consumption can also be correlated with the steady increase in United States’ GPD over the past 50 years, offering the idea that as Americans generate more wealth they can afford to eat more meat. However, an increase in meat consumption is strongly correlated to other, more harmful, trends related to Americans’ health and environmental destruction. As Americans are eating more meat, they’re also increasing rates of obesity, cardiovascular disease, and diabetes among other weight related health problems.. Meanwhile, the food industry has contributed to a quarter of the increase in greenhouse gas emissions with 80% of that are linked to animal meat and livestock production. These massive livestock production farms are housed on huge areas of land that are depleted of their original and natural vegetation and create 3 times more animal waste than the amount of human waste the entire U.S population creates per year.

Yet with all of this data that emphasizes the disadvantages, an understatement for sure, of Americans’ current meat consumption habits, there are still strong negative perceptions of vegetarian and vegan diets. Unsurprisingly, an experimental survey to explore prejudices against vegetarians, found that individuals who enjoy beef tend to have to “anti-vegetarian prejudices”. This result emphasizes the sociological need that people have to distance themselves from groups who they disagree with. Simply put, people who eat meat really enjoy eating meat and it bothers some people that vegetarians and vegans don’t eat meat. And that is one of the fundamental reasons why there is resistance to vegetarianism and veganism: people enjoy and take great pleasure out of purchasing, cooking, and eating meat. Animal meat is delicious and high in protein so it leaves people feeling full and satisfied, so of course it would be difficult for a lot people to give up.

But what if we could change the perception and concept of “meat” to more than strictly animal products? There is an emerging market in the food industry that has been developing plant-based food products meant to resemble, taste like, and ultimately be able to replace meat as alternative protein sources. Beyond Meat, one of the leading companies, has already created and is now actively selling plant-based “meat” products that are changing how people view being vegetarian and vegan.  

Changing Perceptions of Alternative Protein Sources and the Potential Benefits

Beyond Meat is a company based in El Segundo, California that was founded in 2009 with the mission to “create mass-market solutions that perfectly replace animal protein with plant protein”. The company’s desire to use plant-based proteins to replace meat-based proteins is aimed to improve global and environmental health, decrease the demand for mass livestock production farms, and conserve natural resources. The company recognizes that to achieve this goal it must appeal to more consumers than just vegans and vegetarians. Alexandra Sexton thoroughly analyzes and the way in which the Beyond Meat company creates, markets, and justifies its products in pursuit of its mission.

One of the main concepts that Sexton focuses in her study is how the Beyond Meat company curates the experience of purchasing, preparing, and consuming its product to reflect almost identically the experience one has with the meat equivalent. Sexton argues that the experience, or the “non-stuff”, plays a strong role in the perception, categorization, and enjoyment of what we eat. This is particularly true with how we perceive meat and meat consumption. Culturally, socially, nutritionally, and psychologically speaking, foods that are labeled as “meat” have a very different process of being prepared than those that we would traditionally label as “non-meat” or plant-based. However, through her research and experience with Beyond Meat, Sexton shows that this distinct perception between meat and non-meat can be challenged by utilizing the experience and “non-stuff” of the food itself.

Sexton performed field work analysis of the actual Beyond Meat product and carefully describes the entire experience. She first describes her trip to the local Whole Foods where she walked to the refrigerated meat section of the store and picked up a package Beyond Meat “chicken strips” that are shelved just a few feet away from real, raw chicken breasts. When she opened the package back in her kitchen to prepare a meal with the Beyond Chicken Strips, she carefully describes the texture, consistency, and smell of the strips prior to cooking. Although they did not have a distinct smell, Sexton was surprised to find that when she “broke” a strip in half, it shredded like real cooked chicken meat would. At this point she emphasized her visceral reaction of preparing the Beyond Chicken; up until this point she had had the same experience she would have had with real chicken strips. The only significant difference was that she saved time from not having to worry about the health risks with actual raw chicken. While cooking her Beyond Chicken strips in a sauté pan with onions, spices, and coconut milk to make a “chicken” coconut curry, she reported that the “sounds and smells of the dish” were almost identical the what she had experienced while cooking the same dish but with real chicken. When she ate her meal she reported that although the chicken strips did not contribute largely or combat with the overall flavor of the dish, she said that “[if] I had not known they were plant-based I would have quite likely passed them off as pre-cooked conventional chicken pieces from the supermarket”.

It is at that crucial moment, the culmination of the entire process of preparation and consumption, where Beyond Meat can change one’s perception of what is meat. Based on Sexton’s, and many others’ experience with this alternative-protein product, there is reason to reconsider what we think of as “meat.” If this product looks like meat, is sold in the same grocery store location as meat, cooks like meat, smells like meat, tastes like meat, and even has the same texture as meat can it be considered meat? A follow up question would then be: Why not? Just because the Beyond Chicken strips do not come from an actual chicken and are in fact made of mostly soy protein isolate and pea protein isolate , can they not be considered meat? Ultimately, it is up to each individual consumer to decide that. Nevertheless, the Beyond Meat company has been able to capture the experience one has with meat and mimic it with a product that contains only plant-based protein. In the same way that we accepted the endless types of cakes, pizzas, soups, and many other foods with large varieties, perhaps we can include plant-based protein products in our “meat” category.

The potential benefits for substantially changing Americans’, if not other high meat-consuming countries’, perceptions of meat to include alternative protein sources from plant-based products are profound on both the individual and global level. First, increasing people’s intake of nutrient-dense vegetables from plant-based protein products while decreasing the amount of fatty meats will lead to more nutritious diets and curb the obesity epidemic. With the country’s current eating habit, Americans on average consume daily 2 to 5 ounces of meat more than the American Heart Association recommends to avoid heart disease from high saturated fat and cholesterol intakes. Meanwhile, the average American eats less than 60% of their daily recommended amount of nutritious vegetables.

Secondly, eating a more plant-based diet will also save people economic costs both at the grocery store and in weight-related medical bills. Plant-based protein is more cost efficient to produce as it only requires the farming of plants instead of clearing land, raising, feeding, maintaining, slaughtering, and packaging the meat of livestock. If Americans were to shift towards a predominantly vegetarian diet, the country could save up to $735 billion per year on groceries, medical bills, and other costs related to meat production and consumption. The greater affordability of mass-produced plant-based products would also help people with low-income obtain more nutritious forms of protein.

Thirdly, reducing the consumption of animal meat due to an increase consumption of plant-based protein sources would dramatically reduce the negative effects the livestock industry has on the environment. A vegetarian diet produces 76% less greenhouse gas than a diet that regularly consumes red meat and requires a fraction of the water waste used to produce red meat products. Additionally, reducing the size and quantity of livestock farms and replacing them with a healthy rotation of plant crops would help preserve the land. The land that is used for mass livestock farms becomes depleted and destroyed by animal waste that traps large quantities of carbon and nitrogen in the soil. Using more land for alternative protein crop production instead of livestock could also create a more efficient and sustainable method of food production to feed the world’s growing population. Research from National Geographic reveals that only 55% of the world’s crop production goes to feeding people while the rest goes to feeding livestock or is turned into biofuels and industrial products. The world population is expected to grow to 9 billion people by 2050, but the world’s harvestable land mass cannot expand to sustain our current meat production rates. Whether or not we voluntarily switch to more plant-based diets, we may not have a choice in the very near future.

Potential Challenges and Concluding Remarks

Even with clear, tangible benefits, there are many challenges that can hinder the process of changing perceptions of meat to include alternative-protein sources to reduce animal meat consumption. One of the most substantial challenges is that current plant-based protein sources meant to mimic and replace animal meat products are not perfect. Even with the many positive reviews of Beyond Meat’s products, there are still strong critiques and criticism that highlight the products flaws. The main ones comes from scrutinizing the ingredients list of any of the Beyond Meat products. Although the Beyond Chicken strips were made mostly of water, soy protein isolate, and pea protein isolate, it also contains “natural flavoring”, maltodextrin, and “0.5% less of dipotassium phosphate”. Chemicals like these in processed foods draw skepticism and concern from consumers who would call this not a ‘natural’ product. However, since this is a new and emerging industry, there is great potential for future innovation from other alternative protein companies with similar missions to that of Beyond Meat.

Another substantial challenge is the fact that it’s hard to give up animal meat products. It is culturally ingrained for many Americans that meat is not only a necessity in daily diets, but is hailed as a proponent of the ‘American Dream.’ People may resent Beyond Meat products because it’s not the “real thing” and of course cannot compare them to a thick-cut, perfectly grilled, medium-rare steak that’s chard ever so slightly on the outside and satisfyingly chewy on the inside. But the point of Beyond Meat is not to attempt to make plant-based “meat” take on every aspect of beef meat; the point is to provide another option for meat products. Plant-based meat is different from beef meat as chicken meat is different from pork meat as lamb meat is different from fish meat, etc.

The growing shift towards eating more plant-based diets can be interpreted as a positive sign. People are becoming more informed and aware of how their consumption habits affect both their individual health as well as the health of the planet. One of the best parts about being human is our love for cooking, eating, and sharing food. Shifting towards our eating habits and changing our perception of meat should not be considered as “giving up” an aspect of our diets, but a celebration of even more diverse protein sources to come.

Climate Change and the Long-Run Economic Health of the Arctic

Although one may decry the environmental circumstances that allowed it to happen, the economic possibilities of the Arctic have never been more interesting. Warming temperatures and receding summer ice coverage have expanded the menu of economic opportunities that the region could previously support, and countries and companies around the world have taken note. According to a 2008 U.S. Geological Survey assessment, the Arctic holds 13 percent of the world’s undiscovered oil resources (approximately 90 billion barrels of oil) and 30 percent of the world’s undiscovered gas resources (approximately 1,669 trillion cubic feet of natural gas and 44 billion barrels of natural gas liquids). As receding sea ice and technological investments render the Arctic region increasingly accessible, this vast reserve of resources has become an attractive commercial opportunity for multinational corporations and state-run entities alike. According to estimates by Northern Economics, an Alaska-based economic consulting firm, oil and gas extraction in Alaska’s Beaufort Sea and Chukchi Sea sites alone are estimated to be capable of generating between $193 and $312 billion in state and local tax revenue through 2057, assuming oil prices remain between $65 and $120 per barrel. Even at the current $55 a barrel Brent Crude benchmark, Alaska and the regions around the two sites still stand to bring in roughly $165 billion in tax revenue from these two sites alone. Additionally, these two sites stand to bring an average of over 28,000 jobs to Alaska from now until 2057.

In addition to oil extraction, mineral- and other resource-extraction exploits promise greater economic returns with a warming Arctic. In Alaska alone, exports of mineral resources (such as gold, lead, zinc, etc.) generated $1.3 billion in 2010, and it is estimated that one mine, the Red Dog mine in northern Alaska (which accounts for 5 and 3 percent of the global zinc and lead production respectively), “has contributed $558 million to the statewide economy and $66 million to the Northwest Arctic Borough” between 1989 and 2011. Receding summer ice has also expanded the area available to fishing, and yields have grown steadily in recent years.

In the United States, much of the Arctic extraction activity has come following federal land leases to the highest-bidding commercial company. Between 2003 and 2007, the Bush Administration issued 241 leases covering over a million and a quarter acres in the Beaufort Sea, receiving $97 million in bids. In 2008 alone, 487 leases covering almost 3 million acres of the Chukchi Sea were issued for a total for $2.66 billion. In 2011, the Obama Administrationauthorized three more areas in Alaska to be available for leasing between 2012 and 2017, but these lease sales were later postponed due to environmental concerns. In addition to the initial revenue from bids, federal, state, and local taxes all allow the U.S. to extract revenue from the process.

Unsurprisingly, the United States is not alone is the race to capitalize on newly-extractable Arctic resources. In Russia, where as much as half of state revenue is derived from oil, the government offers special tax rates to encourage Arctic exploration and drilling, in addition to funding university research on special drilling methods and materials, such as supermagnets. Russia has also plantedtheir flag at the bottom of the Arctic Ocean at the North Pole, symbolically indicating their intention to maintain a presence in the region. Concurrently, Norway has recently offered a new round of oil leases in the Barents Sea, continuing an over 50 year practice of selling off drilling rights in explored areas. For its part, Finland looks to capitalize on the rush for Arctic resources through its world-leading icebreaker industry. In Greenland, optimists are even suggesting that tapping into its vast Arctic reserves might allow Greenland to become financially self-sufficient enough to formally split with Denmark and become an independent nation.

Though Greenlandic independence powered by oil extraction may be a slight oversell, for a region like the Arctic that has never seen large-scale economic activity, the ability to capitalize on existing reserves of natural capital represents an unprecedented opportunity for development. However, the abundance of natural capital in a given region can prove to be a curse if not managed proactively. A resource curse – or alternatively referred to as “Dutch Disease”, named after the role that oil wealth played in the decline of the Dutch manufacturing sector – refers to the tendency of communities to over-invest in a specific profitable sector of the economy at the expense of maintaining a diversified and stable long-run portfolio. While lucrative in the short-run, this approach tends to concentrate wealth in small communities and discourage balanced long-run growth. When the resource is non-renewable, such as oil and natural gas in the case of the Arctic, the country or region with Dutch Disease finds itself unable to compete in the long-run, as the region’s natural capital has not been properly re-invested into more sustainable economic endeavors. In a previous issue of The World Mind, Deborah Carey described this counterintuitive phenomenon in the context of Africa.

While it is difficult to definitively diagnose a given country or region with Dutch Disease, the data coming out of much of the Arctic region is symptomatic of a resource curse. In Alaska, a full 36.8 percent of the state’s 2010 foreign export earnings came from mineral resource extraction. More strikingly, petroleum extraction and other mining directly accounted for 30.6 percent of Alaska’s Gross Regional Product (GRP) in 2012, including the value added from transporting the resources across the state via pipeline. Indirectly, taxes on petroleum and mineral activity contribute the lion’s share of the state’s revenue, rendering the state budget heavily dependent on external demand for the state’s oil, gas, and minerals. For comparison, only 0.4 percent of Alaska’s 2012 GRP could be attributed to non-fish or oil extraction-related manufacturing, and only 6.2 and 1.9 percent can be attributed to health care/social work, and financial/insurance services respectively.

A similar story is also playing out in Russia, where over half (51.7 percent) of the entire Russian Arctic region’s GRP in 2012 came exclusively from the extraction of petroleum and other natural resources. In contrast, a mere 4.0, 3.0, and 0.1 percent of GRP came from the manufacturing, healthcare and social work, and financial and insurance service sectors respectively. Like Alaska, much of the economic benefit from resource extraction is realized by companies located outside of the region, and the local population realizes little economic benefit outside of what any local taxes levied may pay for. Not only do Arctic Russia and Alaska to rely heavily on natural resource extraction for generating wealth, but the wealth generated by resource extraction in these areas is not being re-invested in other, more sustainable sectors of the economy, but transferred out of the region entirely. Just as over-investment in oil production led to the neglect of other sustainable Dutch industries in the 1960s, it appears as though Alaska and Russia – who together make up over 60% of the land area of the region – appear to be forgoing a sustainable growth plan in exchange for the promise of short-term riches.

However, while diagnosing Dutch Disease is difficult on its own, it is equally difficult to propose a workable cure for a region so rich in natural resources and capital-starved in just about every other sector. Nevertheless, some Arctic countries seem to be developing more balanced portfolios. Sweden’s Arctic region, for instance, relies on petroleum and mineral extraction for only 10.9 percent of its 2012 GRP, compared to 11.7 and 11.8 percent on manufacturing and healthcare and social work respectively. Others, such as Canada, have ensured that local regions receive transfers from southern regions in exchange for petroleum and mineral extraction.

Yet, in order to construct a compelling long-term growth plan for the Arctic that does not rely exclusively on non-renewable resource extraction, one must identify other comparative advantages that the region may exploit in lieu of resource extraction. Surprisingly, some argue that electronics manufacturing and data storage have a natural long-term home in the Arctic, simply due to the Arctic’s year-long cold temperatures. The idea is that the natural, year-round cold of the Arctic substantially reduces the cost of keeping electronics from overheating, thereby reducing a major cost involved in large-scale data storage. With the global data center construction market expected to increase from $14.6 to $22.7 billion and the global fiber optics market expecting to grow 9.5% by 2020, the gains are there for Arctic countries who are able to exploit their unique climatic advantage. Tech giants like Facebook and Google both seem to be convinced of the advantages of Arctic cold, as the former recently opened a data center in Luleå, Sweden, to service its European traffic, and the latter has begun the process of repurposing an old paper mill in Hamina, Finland, to serve as a data storage center.

Not to be outdone, the Finnish government has already taken significant steps toward developing an electronics manufacturing operation in Oulu, a university city in northern Finland. Feeding off of the pre-iPhone success of Nokia (a Finnish company), Oulu has become a regional hub for the electronics industry. Though the city and region endured a painfully long period ofcontraction after the 2008 crisis and Nokia’s significant loss of marketshare, it has appeared to have bounced back. According to local economic development officials, over 500 tech startups have opened shop in the area since 2014, helping to support about 17,000 high-tech jobs, including around 7,500 in research and development. Additionally, Nokia and the University of Oulu recently announced their intent to collaborate on a new project to develop a 5G test network, which will include a 5G hackathon in June, promising to attract top tech talent to the Arctic town.

More ambitiously, the algorithmic stock trading industry may also be moving North in the near future. Quintillion, an Irish fund administration company, is currently heading phase 1 of a project to build an underwater fiber optic cable network that connects London with Tokyo through Canada’s Northwest Passage. Currently, it takes about 230 milliseconds for data to travel through the network of cables connecting London to Tokyo through the Suez Canal. However, Quintillion claims that its cable will cut this time by just over 26% to around 170 milliseconds, simply by virtue of the shorter distance that the data must travel between points A and B. While this speed boost may offer little more than a nice convenience for most users, to algorithmic stock traders this slight speed advantage is everything. Given that traders in this industry have historically fought to be physically closer to financial centers, it is not inconceivable that the existence of a faster cable in the Arctic may entice this industry to move North, giving Arctic regions a realistic chance to woo traders (and their tax dollars) to their cities. In addition to Quintillion’s Northwest Passage cable, the Finnish government and the Russian company Polarnet have discussed plans to build a submarine cable from Europe to Tokyo via an eastwardly route around Northern Russia, though the plan looks to be impossible without financial backing from the Russian government. Regardless of the ultimate profitability of submarine cable projects like these from the perspective of algorithmic stock traders or city governments, the provision of fast, high quality internet needed in order to facilitate meaningful economic and human development is a boon for the Arctic region that is already being realized.

Of course, transitioning from an economy driven by resource extraction to a digital economy hosting premier electronics manufacturing, data storage, and high-speed trading operations is not straightforward or guaranteed. Perhaps the Arctic climate will keep companies from being able to attract top tech talent, or the data storage or electronics manufacturing markets do not grow as quickly as anticipated. However, if Arctic governments are serious about pursuing healthy long-run growth, they must find a way to keep from over-investing in natural resource extraction, no matter how tempting the short-run gains from doing so may be.

The New Nuclear Question(s)

Serious discussions of nuclear weapons and their use have not left the international stage since the 1940s. This year has seen significant developments in nonproliferation and disarmament efforts – but also more uncertainty and divisiveness regarding nuclear policies in general. From the international community seeing both progress and setbacks regarding legal intervention in nonproliferation; to the US elections, which have caused a frantic reorganizing of academic projections for future US foreign policies and actions; to, of course, the fact that North Korea is inching ever closer to full nuclear launch capability, this is a time of increasing unpredictability regarding the global response to the threat of nuclear weapons, arguably unlike any time since the Cold War. It’s 3 minutes to midnight, but that clock was set almost a year ago – and since then, nuclear tensions have only risen.

New international legislation: one step forward, one step back, one step sideways

The United Nations (UN) has always stood for peace and responsibility in regards to nuclear weapons, and has facilitated key treaties like the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT). The NPT, the most important nuclear legislation to this day, asserts member states’ commitments to disarmament, nonproliferation, and peaceful use of nuclear energy, and reinforces a continued commitment to the treaty through periodic conferences. Just last year at the 2015 NPT Review Conference, the P5 (China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States) issued a statement praising the three pillars of the NPT, vowing to “pursue practical steps towards nuclear disarmament,” and committing to bring into full force another key piece of legislation: the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty.

2015 also saw efforts by the UN General Assembly (GA) to work towards disarmament with the passage of Resolution 70/33, which created a working group to advise on steps forward regarding multilateral disarmament negotiations. This working group’s report, published September 2016, is revealing because it shows the underlying divides between states regarding the legality of disarmament, the limits to legal prevention, and the different understandings of the importance of nuclear weapons to collective security. The report also emphasized a focus on stigmatizing nukes and otherwise reinforcing an anti-nuclear weapon international community through other types of norm reinforcement. This report recommended convening in an official conference about disarmament, and from this suggestion spawned Resolution L.41 which attempts to take “forward multilateral nuclear disarmament negotiations,” and was adopted by the GA on October 27th. L.41 became the catalyst in highlighting the divides within the international community’s debate on nuclear disarmament and caused a major shift in US policy: namely, the reversal of the Obama administration’s anti-nuclear position, which meant the US, instead of supporting L.41, actively campaigned against it alongside other P5 members.

To put this shift in context, compare the US’s campaign against L.41 with Obama’s 2009 speech in Prague in which he became the first US president to express support for full disarmament. Even in June of 2016 when Obama visited Hiroshima, his speech focused on changing the nature of war itself to eliminate nuclear weapons from the conversation – a very normative approach, as was suggested by the GA working group report. In regards to the 2017 conference proposed by L.41, the US agreed with the rest of the P5, who all reiterated their nonparticipation in the voluntary conference, citing the current security climate and the lack of concrete solutions expected from the conference. The US even pressured NATO countries to vote against the resolution, arguing NATO was fundamentally incompatible with full disarmament.

So the new vote to, as one international anti-nuke campaign headlined triumphantly, “outlaw nuclear weapons in 2017” is actually not a very sure sign of progress. The resolution did pass and enjoyed a great deal of support within the GA, especially from Africa, Latin America, Southeast Asia, and the Pacific. What remains to be seen is how these states, especially rising regional powers who supported the resolution such as Brazil and South Africa, can use the conference as a platform in the favor of disarmament. While the conference will be a gathering of states that do not have nuclear weapons, and therefore might seem useless, there is also the potential to both reinforce anti-nuclear norms within the broad international community. This may include working to put into force the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty, as well as possibly putting diplomatic pressure on the P5 to at least come to the table on nuclear disarmament.

Addressing the DPRK-shaped crisis in the room

As much as the international security community works to regulate existing nuclear arsenals and frets about the massive destruction possible if a non-state actor like IS somehow got access to a nuclear weapon, there is a real and rapidly evolving threat of enormous importance in North Korea. The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) is an authoritarian regime that, since the Korean War, has called for the destruction of the Republic of Korea (ROK), the US, and all of the US’s allies. Following the successful development of its nuclear program, the DPRK is relentlessly pursuing nuclear strike capability. In the past four years alone the DPRK has conducted over 25 missile and nuclear tests, detonating a 10-kiloton bomb in September and conducting one of the most powerful rocket launches the same month. Heightened DPRK aggression prompted one of the largest military drills conducted yet between South Koreans and Americans, which for the first time included training on the “Korea Massive Punishment and Retaliation” plan (KMPR). KMPR is a military response to be used in the event of a North Korean nuclear attack; the fact that the ROK and US have now felt the need to include it during the drill is a clear indicator that the US and its allies are increasingly concerned about the developing situation in the DPRK.

Due to the lack of diplomatic contact between the DPRK and much of the international community, the US and allies have so far relied on exacting pressure through sanctions, mostly on luxury goods. China and the US worked together to increase sanctions last March in response to North Korean aggression. Due to recent tensions, however, some argue that sanctions should be increased to include non-luxury or resource goods. Increased economic sanctions on non-luxury goods, however, is neither a simple nor necessarily ethical solution, and the international community must keep in mind the effect of increased sanctions on the North Korean people. The human rights situation in the DPRK is, in a word, abysmal, as the UN continuously points out. The international community must make sure that a resource ban would not interfere with the North Korean people’s ability to survive. This might mean relying even more on the Chinese to put more diplomatic pressure on the DPRK, a solution which would require delicate and probably difficult negotiations between the US, regional allies, and China, and which, due to the new uncertainty of the future of US foreign policy, might prove un-obtainable.

The future of US commitments to nuclear disarmament

The Obama administration’s back-and-forth on full nuclear disarmament has certainly set the US on track to ignore the upcoming 2017 conference and maintain that nuclear weapons are a fundamental part of current international security doctrines, but the US’s position could shift in the very near future. In a few months, of course, the Obama administration will exit and the uncertainty of the Trump administration will begin. The foreign policy platform Trump ran on is an ill-defined mixture of realism, isolationism, and American exceptionalism that seems to hinge on moving towards a more ‘transactional’ approach to US diplomatic relations, rather than continuing the tradition of broad alliance networks and participation in liberal institutions. Trump’s remarks on the campaign trail ignited a combination of fury and fear regarding his nuclear and defense policies in Asia: not only did he suggest more countries should have nuclear weapons, he also suggested pulling back US support for security alliances and defense treaties (including with Japan and South Korea) since he believes the US disproportionately holds up these agreements. And, while his campaign was mostly consistent with its anti-nuclear and anti-proliferation rhetoric, Trump has been critical of the state of the US stockpile and additionally refused to “rule out anything” in regards to whether he would ever actually deploy them.

This rhetoric has changed somewhat with his election, though. Trump deniesthat he ever meant Tokyo and Seoul should go nuclear, and senior foreign policy advisor Michael Flynn insists the Trump administration considers nuclear non-proliferation one of two top foreign policy concerns (the other being terrorism) and remains committed to US military presence and support. What remains to be seen is what specific actions the US will take in regards to Obama’s ‘pivot’ in support and attention to Asian allies, and whether a potential regression of US presence in the region will open a power vacuum for others. While nothing is clear in terms of concrete policy, it is incredibly likely that the US will remain firmly against banning nuclear weapons. Additionally, the US is likely to remain aloof, and perhaps will become more harshly against, binding international legal solutions to situations especially regarding security. The legitimacy of international courts in the US has little traction as is today, and Trump’s “America First” viewpoint also means he’s unlikely to compromise on American security in favor of what some countries would argue is better collective security through nonproliferation.

Going Forward

During the Cold War, it likely seemed unfathomable to most that one day, the world would look back to the simple bilateral principle of Mutually Assured Destruction with anything resembling wistfulness. Yet the years of two main bilateral security blocs have obviously passed, and instead states must now attempt to find a solution to the most pressing nuclear development, the DPRK’s increasing capability, even though they are fiercely divided on the legal, ethical, and practical merits of full disarmament.

Despite the P5’s dismissal of the GA’s disarmament discussions, there is significant merit in having those debates, and the GA should reflect on the working group report and continue to apply pressure to reinforce and tighten restrictions on nuclear stockpiles. Arguably, the most effective way the conference could change the nuclear security situation for the better is by figuring out how to get the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty into force, and looking to that and other legal precedents to work towards more long-term solutions.

In terms of the DPRK, too much depends on unknown factors: communication with the DPRK, and with China, could change because of US politics. The security alliances in Asia, while stable for now, are also a little uncertain post-election. Acknowledging the DPRK from an official, diplomatic standpoint is not an option for the US and many other states, and the DPRK is similarly unwilling to increase participation in the international community, so multilateral negotiations or mediations is unlikely. Instead, the states most vulnerable and most active in preparing for a theoretical DPRK nuclear strike – the ROK, US, Japan, and other South Asian and Pacific states – must rely on the little diplomatic contact provided mostly by China and on economic and political sanctions to influence the DPRK as much as possible. Meanwhile, the logical increase in military exercises to prepare for combat is just one more antagonization of the DPRK regime, and their development of nuclear weapons continues. Whether the solution is in stricter sanctions, which is potentially a human rights concern, or working to possibly open more communication between China, the DPRK, and the rest of the P5 and allies, the international community is left with more unanswered questions.

Who Does Foreign Aid…Aid?

In the midst of terrorist attacks and domestic economic debates, foreign aid and its implementation has not been a prioritized talking point in America’s election this upcoming November.  However politicians on both sides of the aisle have stated the importance of foreign aid throughout recent history. In April, even rock star Bono appealed to the senate, encouraging senators to increase foreign aid expenditure. So is foreign aid really that important? If so, why has it been minimally discussed in debates for the presidential bid this year?

In the broadest sense of the phrase, foreign aid is defined as “assistance (as economic aid) provided by one nation to another”.  Throughout history is has allowed the United States to have a stake in the political decisions of other countries, curb global epidemics, create wealth in other countries, among other results.  It is no secret that the amount of aid the US gives to each country often directly correlates with our interests there.  We have also engaged in humanitarian foreign aid to build relationships with other governments. In their article, Benjamin Goldsmith, Uysaku Horiuchi, and Terence Wood argue that foreign public opinion is favorable toward the United States when we “do good” in other countries, which benefits Americans abroad and our foreign policy in the long run. However while foreign aid can be a great tool and demonstrates the American values of creating a more prosperous, free world, it is also a topic of large contention.

Foreign aid is not always used effectively. In 1987, Ronald Reagan made a speech opposing the mismanagement of foreign aid funds, stating “with this money we bought a yacht for Haile Selassie”.   Since this time, more safeguards have been instituted to ensure the responsible spending of foreign aid funds. To increase transparency in foreign aid spending, a new official government website reports all foreign aid data expenditures and breaks down funding by country and type of aid assistance.  Development projects have also been increasingly contracted out to third party organizations that have greater oversight capacity to manage projects funded by foreign aid.  So while there is still a margin of error and room for improvement, foreign aid spending has become much more responsible since Reagan’s speech in 1987.

Regardless of these changes in implementation, foreign aid is a highly unpopular concept.  In 2014 the US gave a total of 32 billion dollars in foreign aid to other countries.  While this sounds like a large amount, it was only 0.19% of the US national income. The US gives the most foreign aid in dollar value, however we fall short of generous on a global scale in percent of national income.  Sweden gives the most percentage of foreign aid, with 1.1% of their national income. In reality the US is average in its foreign aid expenditure, relative to national income. However Americans do not perceive aid this way. The Kaiser Family Foundation polled Americans and found that on average they believed 26% of our federal budget goes to foreign aid—more than all of military spending, education, transportation, and veteran’s benefits put together.  

Considering these misconceptions about foreign aid, it is easier to understand why an important topic like foreign aid, so capable of shaping international opinion of the US, has not been a greater priority in election 2016.  Both candidates address their foreign aid positions on their websites. Hillary Clinton refers to foreign aid as a component of her formula for “smart power” in her statement “we have to use every pillar of American power – military might but also diplomacy, development aid, economic and cultural influence, technology, and the force of our values, that is smart power.” Donald Trump directly mentioned aid in his bid announcement when he stated “It is necessary that we invest in our infrastructure, stop sending foreign aid to countries that hate us and use that money to rebuild our tunnels, roads, bridges, and schools […].” By “countries that hate us”, Trump is referring to Pakistan and Egypt, two of the largest recipients of foreign aid.   However most—almost half—of the aid we give to each of these two countries is categorized for “peace and security”. That is what can be so confusing about foreign aid. There is no specification within the term for what is given in military aid, and what is given in humanitarian and infrastructure assistance.

President Obama has proposed that foreign aid should be combined with the defense budget, since the multifaceted wellbeing of other nations and their citizens is vital to America’s national security.   With this assertion by our sitting president and the statements made by both president-elects of America’s two largest parties, we can conclude that aid cannot be supported by the American people unless it is framed as a power-inducing factor to America’s national security.  To revisit my initial question regarding foreign aid’s nonexistence in presidential debates this past election, what I least expected in starting this research has seemed to be true—foundationally, foreign aid is a nonissue in this election, with both candidates viewing it as a similar tool, from different sides of the aisle.

It could also be the case that recent events in Paris, Brussels, San Bernardino,  and Orlando, and the nativist sentiments that followed, do not allow for discussion of spending more money on aid that would not directly result in greater safety for Americans. However Bush’s support of PEPFAR to reduce the AIDS epidemic, Obama’s “Power Africa” program, America’s support of other countries after national disasters, and funding to make elections in budding democracies more transparent are efforts that do not go unnoticed globally. By framing foreign aid as solely an endeavor for power, we may miss out on opportunities to make deeper partnerships, greater developmental advancements, and participate in the successes of lesser-developed nations. While it is strategic to use foreign aid to make America more powerful, it is just as beneficial in the long run to use our power to promote—and fund—aid projects that reflect American founding ideals of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness beyond our own borders.  To our president-elects, it may be time to debate aid, and all categories of it, more in-depth. After all, foreign aid matters, and not just to those who vote for you.