Meet America’s New Sheriffs

“President-elect Donald Trump and Kash Patel, his pick to lead the FBI, during the Army-Navy football game at Northwest Stadium in Landover, Md., on Dec. 14, 2024.” Doug Mills / The New York Times/Redux via NBC

The Trump administration would like you to know that there is a new sheriff in town. They invoke the trope frequently, from a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Facebook post praising President Donald Trump and DHS Secretary Kristi Noem for deterring illegal immigration to a speech by Vice President JD Vance in which he lambasted European nations for their anti-hate speech laws. In Western films, where the trope originates, the archetypical “new sheriff” arrives in a frontier town ruled by corrupt or incompetent lawmen, deposes them, and establishes a new order that promises a truer form of justice. In the month since Trump returned to Washington, purges in every major part of the federal law enforcement apparatus have left it beyond doubt that a reordering is underway. However, the kind of justice that Trump’s emerging order will produce largely remains to be seen. The task of forging this order will fall to the new wave of conservative officials appointed to replace their mostly non-partisan predecessors.

To lead the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), America’s premier federal law enforcement agency, the Trump administration has appointed a pair of loyalists, Director Kash Patel and Deputy Director Dan Bongino. Both have a skeptical relationship with the agency. Patel, an embittered former federal prosecutor, spearheaded the Republican-led House Intelligence Committee investigation into the FBI’s investigation of Trump’s ties to Russia. During this investigation, the CIA criminally referred him to the Justice Department (DOJ) after he allegedly disclosed classified intelligence related to the investigation to people without clearances. Patel was ultimately not charged with a crime. Patel has asserted that the FBI is part of the “deep state” and even proposed turning the bureau’s headquarters into a museum showcasing its crimes. Multiple FBI officials made Patel’s so-called “enemies list” of government officials supposedly part of the “deep state,” including former Directors James Comey and Christopher Wray. If anything, Bongino, a prominent right-wing podcast host, has been an even more virulent critic, arguing without evidence that the bureau hid information about the pipe bombs planted outside the Democratic and Republican National Conventions because they were part of an “inside job” to frame Trump supporters for the violence. 

Given their appointment of two men who hold the agency in contempt to its highest positions, it is unsurprising that the Trump administration has also sought to purge disfavored individuals from the bureau. Under the direction of Acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove, eight senior executives were fired, and an additional seven executive assistant directors (who had led the bureau's Criminal, Cyber, Human Resources, Information and Technology, National Security, Response and Services, and Science and Technology branches) were demoted. Bove, who previously served as one of Trump's personal defense attorneys, has also sought the names of all FBI agents who worked on cases related to the January 6th Capitol riot. That effort concluded with a legal agreement not to publicly reveal the names of agents who worked on those cases without giving them two days’ notice and the opportunity to contest the decision in court. Despite this seeming victory, one of the agents most strongly resisted Bove’s attempt to access the names, James Dennehy, was forced out not long after the agreement was signed. Dennehy, who led the FBI’s New York field office, had told his staff that he would “dig in” in response to the firings of senior FBI leaders. 

Retaliation against those who worked on Capitol riot cases has not confined itself to the FBI. The interim U.S. Attorney for Washington D.C., Ed Martin, has overseen the demotion and firing of prosecutors who worked on cases related to the January 6th attack, as well as the forced resignation of a prosecutor who refused to freeze Biden-era environmental funds. Martin, who previously represented three Capitol riot defendants, recently referred to himself and those working under him as “President Trumps’ [sic] lawyers”. Martin has expressed openness towards pursuing other political goals on behalf of the Trump administration, including threatening to prosecute Democratic lawmakers for statements that he argues are tantamount to incitement of violence. Martin’s office has sent legal threat letters to Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Representative Robert Garcia (D-CA), accusing them of threatening violence against their political opponents. In particular, Schumer’s comments, in which he stated that Supreme Court justices Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch had “released the whirlwind” and “w[ould] pay the price” following a 2020 abortion-related case, caused a stir when they were made. Following condemnation from the American Bar Association, Chief Justice John Roberts, and Congressional Republicans, Schumer apologized on the Senate floor. Despite this widespread backlash, the letter from Martin was the first indication that Schumer might face legal consequences for his remarks, which likely do not meet the legal standard for true threats. 

Perhaps the most dramatic showdown between Trump’s appointees and the old order came in the Justice Department’s Southern District of New York (SDNY), an office with such a reputation for independence that it has been nicknamed “the sovereign district.” Acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove, once again serves as the administration’s chosen enforcer. Bove, a former SDNY prosecutor, has a complicated relationship with his old office, having been investigated there multiple times for allegations of abusive behavior towards his subordinates. The recent clash occurred after Bove ordered interim U.S. Attorney Danielle Sassoon to dismiss a corruption case against New York City Mayor Eric Adams, a Democrat, who was charged in September with accepting bribes from Türkiye. Sassoon, a registered Republican and member of the Federalist Society who clerked for Justice Antonin Scalia, refused to do so, instead accusing Bove of arranging a quid pro quo in a letter to his boss, Attorney General Pam Bondi. According to Sassoon’s account, Adams’ lawyers informed Bove that the mayor would only be able to assist the administration in conducting immigration enforcement if the charges against him were dropped. Sassoon then offered to resign if the Department of Justice was still unwilling to allow the case to go on. Bove responded with a blistering eight-page letter accusing Sassoon of insubordination, accepting her resignation, placing the line prosecutors working on the case on leave, and defending the decision to dismiss the case. Bove accused the prosecution of being politically motivated, echoing allegations made by Adams’ lawyers that the Biden administration had prosecuted him in retaliation for his criticism of their immigration policy. Bove also defended the idea that advancing the Trump administration’s immigration policy was a legitimate reason to drop the case. Following Sassoon’s forced resignation, seven other lawyers, comprising nearly all of the supervisors in the SDNY’s Public Integrity unit, resigned. One of them, Hagan Scotten, another conservative who clerked for Chief Justice John Roberts, accused the administration of choosing to dismiss the case without prejudice in order to use the threat of reopening the case as leverage against the mayor, calling any lawyer who would obey the directive to dismiss the case a “fool” or a “coward.” The morning after the mass resignations took place, Bove summoned the remainder of the Public Integrity unit to a meeting in which he informed them that he wanted a prosecutor from the unit to cosign the motion to dismiss. He then left the unit time to decide who would sign the motion. After a discussion in which the unit reportedly considered resigning en masse, Edward Sullivan, an experienced anti-corruption prosecutor who is nearing retirement, offered to sign the motion, supposedly to avoid a mass firing. The dismissal was filed just hours later. Around the same time, Eric Adams gave federal immigration agents access to the jail complex on Rikers Island, becoming one of the first public officials outside of the administration to accede to its demands under legal pressure. During the old order, the apolitical nature of America’s federal law enforcement institutions was assumed but rarely felt. Now that the officials who defined and defended these institutions are gone, the Adams case shows the consequences of their removal. 

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth became the latest Trump administration official to move against his department’s law enforcement apparatus with his firing of the top Judge Advocate Generals (JAGs) for the Army, Air Force, and Navy. The JAG Corps forms the core of the US military’s criminal justice system, fulfilling a variety of roles from prosecuting and defending accused criminals to advising senior military leaders on the legality of their actions. It is this latter role that has earned them Hegseth’s ire. Hegseth, a consistent defender of American war criminals, blamed JAGs (derided in his book The War on Warriors as “jagoffs”) for imposing restrictive rules of engagement that he believes crippled the American war effort in Afghanistan. Hegseth has only just begun to replace the fired JAGs, recently appointing his personal lawyer, Timothy Parlatore, as a commander in the Naval Reserve JAG corps. Parlatore previously served as defense counsel for two Navy SEALs: Eddie Gallagher, who was demoted for photographing himself posing with a corpse, and another SEAL who was charged with sexual assault. In a letter to Congress, five former Defense Secretaries, including one former Marine Corps General James Mattis, who served during the previous Trump administration, have denounced the firings of the JAGs and other military leaders, condemning what they saw as the President removing constraints on his power. Their letter was hardly necessary. At a press conference a few days earlier, Hegseth had all but said as much, stating that the fired lawyers would have been “roadblocks to orders that are given by a commander in chief.”

Intent is often difficult to discern in the actions of the Trump administration, particularly as its reign remains in its early stages. However, Trump has shown a repeated tendency to appoint officials to the leadership of agencies that they have reason to despise. Kash Patel, who launched his career in conservative politics attacking the credibility of the Russia investigation, sees the FBI as a tool of the deep state. Ed Martin represented Capitol rioters imprisoned by the office he now leads. Emil Bove gutted the DOJ office where he had faced multiple investigations. Pete Hegseth, who had always chafed at the idea of men in suits telling men in boots how to fight, was given authority over the JAG corps. From the President down, a sense that they have been greatly wronged - and that retribution is necessary - pervades the Trump administration. Now that they have struck against their enemies in the government, nearly all of whom are either gone or on their way out, what comes next is unclear. What is clear is that the sheriffs of the old order are gone. The lawmen who run Washington now prize a single virtue: loyalty. Those who can’t get behind that had best be on their way.

The Case for a Third Party

It is time to wake up from the American nightmare. Two corporate parties dominate politics in the United States– inefficient, polarized, and shunned by the masses of America. On one hand, the Democrats pay lip service to identity politics, preaching change for the oppressed while maintaining firm status quo policy positions. On the other, the Republican party continues to spiral into Trumpism, with radical right wing elements encroaching on the electoral territory of traditional conservatives. Meanwhile, issues such as climate change, housing, and healthcare continue to crush regular people, especially marginalized groups. Neither party represents the interests of the majority of society, and it is not possible to “reform” either party, as some progressive Democrats have suggested. The truth is, the two parties are different arms of the capitalist status quo, and to participate in the charade that passes for politics in the US is to give up hope for real change. What is necessary is a clean break from the Democrats and Republicans, the establishment of a new party which the masses of society can have faith in. This party must put forward a socialist program, a radical alternative to the piecemeal politics of the Democrats and the pseudo-fascism of the Republicans. 

To understand the necessity of a new party, one first must fully grasp the problems with the current system. At the core of the ineptitude of the two major American parties is their class makeup. Both parties are funded and controlled by a tiny minority of wealthy donors and politicians; the political elite. In the context of liberal democracy, this is perfectly acceptable because fundamentally, liberalism is capitalist ideology. As David Harvey argues, neoliberalism has become the hegemonic discourse of our time, justifying many of the injustices of capitalism through the logic of free markets and individual liberty. The political elite does the bidding of, and in many cases, overlaps with the economic elite of our society, the bourgeoisie. The bourgeoisie’s fundamental interests are to extract as much value out of working people as possible, and to keep the masses of people from overthrowing them. Through the lens of class analysis, it is clear that the two ruling parties will not present solutions to the contradictions of capitalism, and they will continue to defend the interests of the ruling class, giving as few concessions to workers as possible and concentrating as much wealth as possible in the hands of the few. The ruling parties are representatives of the interests of the ruling class, and they have been since the foundation of the United States. As Howard Zinn revealed in A People’s History of the United States, the revolution of 1776 was a bourgeois revolution which successfully took political and economic power from the British crown and put it in the hands of the American elite. The appeals to liberty, democracy, and other enlightenment ideals put forward by the so-called “founding fathers” were disingenuous at best, and complete lies at worst. Every major party that has risen and fallen in the period since the revolution has represented the interests of the elite of the time at the expense of the masses of society. In order to escape the downward spiral of capitalism, a new political formation is necessary, an organization through which the masses can exert their will. The two modern American parties are not capable of representing the interests of the masses, but it is necessary to analyze their recent behavior in order to understand the state of the ruling class. 

Donald Trump’s support from rural and white workers smacks of serious discontent with the status quo. This discontent is mirrored in more progressive layers of society by the Bernie Sanders candidacy. These populist candidates harnessed the rage of the masses at the material conditions of capitalism in order to propel themselves to electoral victory. The masses of America have become so rightly dissatisfied with the present state of things that they were willing to vote for candidates who promised radical change, even if the policies pursued by these politicians were ultimately detrimental to the interests of the masses. Both Sanders and Trump were opposed by large segments of their respective party elites, which reveals a divide between the political elite as a whole and the rank and file of their parties. “Anti-system” candidates have not gone away, but under the constraints of the modern party system, they can only serve as dissenters within the existing parties, and weak ones at that. Until there is a new party that can openly confront the capitalist system, politicians will continue to harness the discontent of the workers to increase their own political power, meanwhile, the country will continue to deteriorate as the parties put the interests of the ruling class above the concerns of the masses. For example, the resurgent labor movement proves that workers are looking for higher wages, better conditions, and more benefits, but neither party is aiding them because these goals contradict the interests of the bourgeoisie. This is the basis of the logic that a mass socialist party is viable in the United States. 

The fact that there is no mass party fighting for socialist policies is evidence of the stranglehold the bourgeoisie have over American politics. Critics of American socialism like Madison Gesiotto argue that America is too polarized for a mass party of any sort to emerge, but what is the actual nature of the divisions in our society? The issues that are presented as the most contentious in our society frequently stem from some variant of identity politics. This is true of debates over LGBT and women’s rights, immigration, and “critical race theory”. On the right, Republicans appeal to white voters with barely concealed racism and open xenophobia and other forms of bigotry, while on the so called left, a gentler form of identity politics allows Democrats to pose as the party of justice without actually following through on any progressive policies (Das). What both forms of identity politics conceal is the fundamental class contradiction of our society. Regardless of however one identifies, if a person has to work to live, it can be said with almost complete certainty that there is a set of desires that they share with every other working person. These include but are not limited to, reasonable working hours, wages that will support a comfortable life, stable housing, healthcare that won’t immediately result in bankruptcy, affordable education, and freedom to pursue one’s interests outside of the workplace. How many of these desires are met by the social, economic, and political institutions of the United States? When we look past the noise of the culture war, we realize that we are losing the class war. This is an affirmation of Noam Chomsky’s hypothesis that people can be kept passive and obedient if they are presented with lively debates in a narrowly confined spectrum of what is “acceptable” (Chomsky et al.). This is not to dismiss issues of identity as irrelevant or superficial–it is obvious that race, gender and sexuality, and other forms of identity are extremely prevalent to the experiences of huge layers of the population. But in order to actually address them, it is necessary to create a fighting party of the masses which will rise to meet the needs of the working class as a whole, and then work outwards to solve the systemic injustice which runs rampant in this country. The culture war is perpetuated not by the masses of people, but by the political elites, who understand that it is useful to divide the population to prevent it from uniting under a common banner.  A mass socialist party would directly combat this strategy, and is the first step towards the realization of a truly just and equitable society. 

For those who are serious about constructing a mass socialist party, the program of that party is of the utmost importance. The party should stand for the interests of all working people and oppressed groups to encompass as wide a range of interests as possible. First, come the social benefits that a civilized society should afford its citizens. Healthcare, housing, education, and work should be guaranteed to all people. Secondly, the party should fight hand in hand with the labor unions to raise wages and strengthen labor protections. Third, a socialist party should advocate for the nationalization of the key levers of the economy, including the banks, corporations, and financial sector, in order to distribute economic resources according to human need rather than profit. Finally, the party should advocate for action against systemic injustice and policies that will restore the wellbeing of marginalized groups as well as a strong response to the ecological crisis. The point of this program is not necessarily to achieve every proposed reform, but to illustrate for people the inadequacies of the American political system. The strength of such a radical platform lies in the inability of the ruling parties to accept it. When people realize that the policies they support through the mass party will not be accepted by the American government, they will realize the necessity of  revolutionary changes to our society. The party should not be a goal in and of itself, it should be a means towards the end of advancing the consciousness of the masses. 

A Case to Update How America Measures Poverty

Millions of Americans experience poverty each day. The idea to measure poverty for the purpose of allocating government resources came about in the 1960’s during Lyndon B. Johnson’s “War on Poverty.” The Office of Economic Opportunity needed a statistical measurement and relied on Mollie Orshansky at the Social Security Administration to provide that equation. In 1967, the United States government officially adopted Orshansky’s measurement as the Official Poverty Measure. With this measure, the government created a threshold of who – based on income – qualifies as experiencing poverty and who does not. The Poverty Threshold is the minimum amount of income needed to avoid poverty, and that threshold can vary for families of different sizes, ages, and members. However, for each size of a family, the threshold throughout the U.S. is constant. For example, in 2018 the Poverty Threshold for a single person was $13,064, but that number will alter when evaluating a family of four. The measurements and subsequent thresholds are used to determine eligibility for government services and track trends in poverty. However, there has been little change to how poverty is measured in the United States since the 1960’s, despite how greatly the nation’s economic context has changed. Therefore, poverty in the United States has been mismeasured for years. There are changes that can be made to the poverty measurement in order to account for needs in the 21st century, and to include those who were previously excluded from the equation.

The Current Poverty Measurement

The measurement that President Johnson’s administration created compared pre-tax income of a family unit to three times the minimum food basket of 1963. To gauge the economic makeup of the country, the Official Poverty Measurement draws upon data from the Current Population Survey Annual Social and Economic Supplement, where 100,000 households are surveyed annually during the months of February, March, and April. However, the income that is calculated within the poverty measurement is not just income earned from work. According to the United States Census Bureau, income can include: “Earnings, Unemployment compensation, Worker’s Compensation, Social Security, Supplemental Security Income, Public Assistance, Veteran’s Payments, Survivor Benefits, Pensions, Interest, Dividends, Rents, Royalties, Income on estates, Trusts, Educational assistance, Alimony, Child support, and other qualifying sources. Qualifying income in comparison to the average annual cost of food is adjusted for inflation using the Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPRI Urban), meaning that “it measures the changes in the price basket of goods and services purchased by all urban customers.” Therefore, changes in an urban family’s regular spending habits are accounted for, but expensive expenditures and geographic diversity are not.

This measurement accounts for 88% of the United States population but does not adequately account for sudden and costly expenditures: such as healthcare.  However, some analysts suggest adjusting poverty measurements to the Chain Consumer Price Index. The Peter G. Peterson Foundation “argues that the chained CPI provides a more accurate estimate of the changes in the cost of living by reducing the substitution bias, which occurs when consumers substitute one good for another as prices rise.”  The Chained CPI reflects what people buy before and after a price change, and therefore can provide a more accurate estimate of poverty in the United States based on how people are able to withstand economic changes: to not fall under the poverty threshold.

Gaps in the Official Poverty Measurement

The current threshold is created based upon if a family falls above or below the Official Poverty Measure. One’s total income is taken and divided by the threshold. While this measure heavily relies on food, it is not an adequate representative of how a family in 2022 allocates their funds. The Annie E. Casey Foundation notes that while families previously spent one-third of their budget on food in 1963, it is certainly not the case anymore as housing; utility; and technological cost put a heavier burden on American families. Due to holes in the poverty measurement itself, poverty within the United States is under-estimated and therefore excludes many individuals from obtaining fiscal assistance.

One reason that poverty is under-estimated in the United States is that many people experiencing poverty are ignored in official government measurements. When calculating pre-tax income, non-family housemates are calculated separately than the rest of the family, skewing the scale of need. Furthermore, those in institutions such as prisons, nursing homes, college dormitories, military barracks, foster homes, and experiencing homelessness are not surveyed at all in the poverty measurement: leaving out many who are in need. Additionally, the measurement fails to gage the depth of income. The Official Poverty Measurement has not kept pace with the changes in healthcare policies, tax regulations, and other laws. Furthermore, it fails to account for other social programs families receive such as the Child Tax Credit and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). However, one of the core issues opponents note with the Official Poverty Measurement is how there is no variation amongst geographic regions. The cost of living in a rural area is not the same as in a city. For this reason, the lack of geographic variation within the poverty measurement is one of its main faults.

Supplemental Poverty Measure

The federal government has known about gaps in the Official Poverty Measure since only a few years after it was created. However, research is conducted continuously in order to keep up with a rapidly changing economy. In 1970, members of the Census Bureau, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and the Department of Health and Human Services formed the Interagency Poverty Task Force to re-evaluate how the United States measures poverty. In 1990, the National Academies of Sciences met again to evaluate the true scope of poverty in the United States. After finding a higher rate of poverty than the Official Poverty Measurement, the Supplemental Poverty Measurement was created. The Supplemental Poverty Measurement accounts for modern needs in a way that the Official Poverty Measurement does not. It includes expenses for food, clothing, shelter, and utilities. Additionally, the equation makes geographic adjustments and benefits, which is one of the core issues with the original measure. The equation adds cash income and non-cash benefits and subtracts work expenses; medical expenses, and child support from the previous total.

However, this new equation is not a full-proof solution. First, the Supplemental Poverty Measure does not account for the value of benefits. For example, one’s housing unit may not be stable, and access to healthcare does not mean that an individual has a comprehensive plan. Another concern is that the new measurement is prone to human error due to its base in a family’s spending habits and its data collection method. It is based on survey results, which may not be accurate. The American Enterprise Institute suggests that a new poverty measure “will use administrative data to improve the accuracy of survey responses, include a fuller set of resources, reflect actual spending, and recognize some of the issues regarding poverty thresholds.” Finally, there are advantages to living in a high-cost urban area, such as access to more job opportunities and diverse culture. Overall, the concerns with the Supplemental Poverty Measure come from the quality of living being quantified.

Despite its errors, the Supplemental Poverty Measure takes steps closer to truly understanding poverty in the United States. It accounts for a family’s average expenditures over five years, rather than annually. With knowing how many people  and expenditures are excluded from the Official Poverty Measure, the higher poverty rate the new methodology uncovers is widely accepted as a more realistic measure. Furthermore, it gives critical insight to social and economic patterns to further understand how poverty touches American lives.

Moving Forward

Four out of every ten Americans cannot financially manage a $400 emergency such as an ambulance ride, flood, or car accident. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, 50 million Americans faced food insecurity, with that number rising since the start of the pandemic. With 43.3% of Americans identifying as poor or low-income, a measurement that under-estimates poverty makes it seem like an odd socio-economic phenomenon, further stigmatizing the experience: which is harmful.

In a modern economy, Americans pick up more than one job to keep their family above the poverty threshold. With food taking up less than a quarter of a household’s budget, a modern measure is needed to adapt to a changed economy. Shawn Fremstad, a senior policy fellow at the Center for Economic Policy and Research, states that “A better, more modern measure of poverty would set the threshold at half of median disposable income — that is, median income after taxes and transfers, adjusted for household size, a standard commonly used in other wealthy nation.” This is because median income changes faster than the rate of inflation, so a new measure based upon those estimates can keep up with the changing economy more than the current measurement can. Flexibility and inclusivity are key going forward.

Conclusion

An understanding of poverty in the United States is critical to create policy that helps those experiencing it. Policymakers need to recognize that poverty touches every aspect of an individual’s life, from housing to school and healthcare. A new and improved poverty measurement must consider the aforementioned different aspects of poverty, as well as the different groups of people experiencing it — such as those excluded from the Official Poverty Measurement and diverse geographic factors. Without a change in how poverty is measured, the standards of living for an individual can decline without acknowledgement, and they can be barred from crucial social programs. The poverty measure has a long and stagnant history in the American economy, and it is worth the effort to question where there is room for improvement, so more people can thrive.

Comparing Trump and Biden's Foreign Policy

It’s a new day in Washington D.C.. With the swearing in of Joseph R. Biden over, and the confirmation of his cabinet members well underway, the Biden administration has commenced overturning several key policy themes of the previous administration, from climate change to civil rights. One contentious area where drastic changes have yet to occur, however, is foreign policy. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has quickly set about contacting his counterparts across the globe, and the Paris Climate Agreement has been rejoined - but on many pressing issues, the tone is all that has changed. 

With the presidential campaign heating up amidst a global pandemic killing hundreds, if not thousands of Americans daily, deteriorating race relations reaching a breaking point after the murders of George Floyd, Ahmad Arbury, and Breonna Taylor, and the largest economic downturn on record since the Great Depression, it is perhaps unsurprising that foreign relations were low on the list of priorities in debates, speeches, or press releases. Russia, one area that was always a little bit too relevant for the Trump administration, did arise on the campaign trail, with President Biden lambasting Trump for his lack of action against Russian President Vladimir Putin, in wake of the startling news that Putin was paying bounties to kill American soldiers in Afghanistan. While the Trump administration has been characterized by its lenience in the face of election interference and bounties on American troops alike, they have not been quite so steadfast in China-US relations, where they swung wildly between hosting Chinese President Xi Jinping for a summit and getting into a trade war that, at least according to Vice President Kamala Harris, the US has lost. Biden has advocated for, firstly, taking a harder stance on human rights from Hong Kong to the Uyghur genocide, and secondly, applying pressure on China’s trade practices. Biden’s advisers have touted some aspects of Trump’s China policy as worth continuing, such as the economic and diplomatic pressure placed on Beijing over things such as trade practices and technology theft. These advisers have held more fault with Trump’s erratic, brash statements than the policy itself. There is a similar disconnect between policy and rhetoric in the Middle East; while Trump and Biden had a shared goal of withdrawing troops, Trump insisted, publicly and often, that troops would be pulled out on a strict timeline that never materialized. On the other hand, President Biden struck a more cautious tone, saying withdrawal was contingent on the meeting of benchmarks that have yet to be determined. 

Much of Biden’s foreign policy appears to be a return to the Obama years, a strategy that fits neatly into his overall message about a return to normalcy. Included in this return to normalcy is reaffirming our commitment to NATO and the Iran nuclear deal which Trump pulled out of directly, imposing sanctions that hurt Iran's economy and resulted in an increase in nuclear activity. While some leftists have criticized Biden for failing to promise more progressive foreign policy, many have argued that Trump damaged both relations with allies and the very institution of American diplomacy to the point that it needs to be walked back to a baseline and stabilized before any more action is taken. One area that illustrates this is Afghanistan - Trump campaigned on pulling troops out, and the administration brokered a deal with the Taliban calling for US troops to leave by mid-2021. Biden has refused to commit to a definitive end date, insisting that conditions on the ground must be monitored closely. This is not to say Biden is taking no action on foreign policy at all - beyond rejoining supranational institutions such as the Paris Climate Agreement, World Health Organization, NATO, the Iran Nuclear Deal, and the Trans-Pacific Partnership, he has also swiftly reversed some actions of the Trump administration, such as the “Muslim ban, a travel ban that restricted citizens of primarily Muslim countries from immigrating to the United States. Continuing in this vein, President Biden has pledged to take a stance on refugees that is more humanitarian than isolationist, in a sharp turnaround from the Trump administration’s cap of 15,000 annually. Indeed, Biden is even surpassing the Obama administration’s cap of 85,000, to admit 125,000 refugees annually. 

While on the campaign trail, almost exactly a year ago, President Biden laid out his foreign policy proposal, full of idealism and promises for direct action, in Foreign Affairs magazine. Included in this were a laundry list of changes, a “day-one down payment on our commitment to living up to democratic values at home.” Among these were the reversal of the Trump administration’s highly controversial family separation policy, reaffirming the ban on torture, more transparency in US military operations, and restoring a government-wide focus on lifting up women and girls around the world. Later, he would propose a “global Summit for Democracy,” calling democratic leaders and civil society organizations around the world to America to “put strengthening democracy back on the global agenda”. 

While the Summit for Democracy seems to have been put on the back burner, global leaders seem unequivocally relieved to have someone with foreign policy experience and diplomatic chops in the White House again. Biden is uniquely suited to repair America’s image abroad, having served twice as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and having met with close to 150 foreign leaders from nearly 60 countries. Anne Hidalgo, the mayor of Paris, provided perhaps the best endorsement of Biden’s positive image abroad, tweeting “Welcome back America” shortly after the election.

In his first hundred days, beyond the myriad domestic crises occurring, Biden has been left with a series of increasingly alarming international crises, the Trump administration’s parting gift. In his lame duck days, Trump set about damaging the last reachable parts of Obama’s foreign policy legacy that Biden came in hoping to rebuild. As Raffaello Pantucci, a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore put it, “The Trump administration is locking in place a series of conflicts that change the starting point for Biden walking into office on the world stage.” In his last days in office, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo oversaw legislation and statements that named Cuba a state sponsor of terrorism, planned to designate the Houthi rebels in Yemen as a foreign terrorist organization, and lifted restrictions on contact between American officials and Taiwanese officials. This last shift in policy is particularly dangerous, diplomatically speaking, as it threatens to wreak havoc on a fragile peace struck by decades of building US-China relations. Since the US established formal diplomatic ties with the People’s Republic of China in 1979, it has refrained from having official diplomatic relations with China - until now. 

All in all, it is easy to believe that there will not be a seismic shift in foreign policy with the transition of power, but rather in rhetoric. Restoring moral leadership and soft power as cornerstones of American foreign policy are priorities of the Biden administration - the Summit for Democracy is simply the manifestation of a desire to showcase the commitment to returning strengthening global democracy to a priority. While Biden may be focusing on rebuilding the moral aspects of US foreign policy, Trump focused mainly on economic and security ideas - translating, policy-wise, to a priority on peace and international cooperation for the former, and prosperity and safety for the latter.

In the foreign policy proposal published in March 2020, just as the COVID-19 pandemic was gathering strength, Biden pledged, “As president, I will take immediate steps to renew U.S. democracy and alliances… This is not a moment for fear. This is the time to tap the strength and audacity that took us to victory in two world wars and brought down the Iron Curtain.” It is almost ironic, Biden calling for Americans to not be afraid, directly before one of the most tumultuous years in American history, before a year that would see hundreds of thousands dead from the pandemic, millions unemployed, widespread civil unrest, and an insurrection that killed five and very nearly resulted in the assassination of multiple members of Congress. If we tapped into our reserves of strength and audacity to lead us to victory in two world wars and brought down the Iron Curtain abroad, America will need to dig deeper than ever before to heal our own divisions before we attempt to lead the world again. It remains to be seen whether the actions taken thus far are just the first step in Biden’s self described “return to soft power,” or yet another area where the American people will have to say, as Greta Thunberg put it, “while we do appreciate beautiful speeches and promises - we prefer action”.

The History of Forced Sterilization in the United States

Earlier this September, a licensed nurse at a Georgia detention facility filed a whistleblower complaint revealing that a contracted doctor had been performing a high rate of hysterectomies on migrant women without their consent. As justifiable outrage ensued, there were many comparisons between these forced sterilizations in ICE facilities to the eugenics programs of Nazi Germany. While these comparisons are certainly accurate, they ignore the fact that forced sterilizations are a tactic of genocide that cannot only be attributed to fascist regimes. Furthermore, these comparisons specifically overlook the fact that forced sterilization already has a historical foundation within the United States as it has been used as a means of controlling certain “undesirable” segments of the population from reproducing. The proliferation of eugenics programs in the United States throughout the 20th century was a violent reinforcement of the power of white, able-bodied men on both the domestic and international level. The hysterectomies that were forced upon migrant women were not an aberration or a horrific, singular example of a lack of accountability: they are a specific tool that the United States government has repeatedly employed to control various populations and strengthen a status quo that favors the white patriarchy above all else. 

Eugenics Programs: An American Tradition 

In the early 20th century, proponents of eugenics, which is defined as the belief of ‘improving’  society by preventing certain groups of people who have been deemed inferior from reproducing, saw two threats to the gene pool: external threats, which were neutralized through immigration laws, and internal threats, which were eventually addressed through sterilization. Eugenics was seen as an appropriate response to the alleged issue of protecting society from those deemed inferior, which was often racialized. The parallels between early 20th century and 21st century immigration laws are already apparent- the government utilizes white supremacy and eugenics logic to legitimate their treatment of immigrants from the Global South. The hysterectomies performed on unwilling migrant women are just another example of the government attempting to exert control over certain populations and protect the white gene pool. 

Nevertheless, there was some initial debate as to what solution should be employed to eliminate the public health threat of“criminality, feeblemindedness, and sexual deviance.”  The first eugenics law was passed in Connecticut in 1895, which prohibited certain types of marriage; however, they quickly realized that “undesirable” people would simply reproduce despite not having a marriage certificate. While segregation was seen as the next step towards achieving societal purity, this specific solution, which involved institutionalizing women through their reproductive years, was too expensive to properly implement. The forced sterilization of certain segments of the population was the final, and most effective, solution, due to the fact that it was relatively inexpensive to perform a one-time procedure and then release the individual back into society without the means for reproducing. 

Throughout the 20th century, 32 states had federally funded sterilization programs as a means of social control. These eugenics programs were constitutionally upheld through the 1927 Supreme Court case, Buck v Bell, which solidified the Racial Integrity Act of 1924 which allowed institutionalized people in Virginia to be sterilized in order to protect the “health of the patient and the welfare of society.” The decision led to 70,000 people being formally sterilized in the United States. Sterilization was often done on the grounds of mental illness, but physical disability, economic status, and race were also significant factors. By itself, California accounted for approximately one-third of forced sterilizations in the county as the state performed approximately 20,000 sterilizations; the Asexualization Act of 1909 legitimized the procedure of eugenic sterilization on unwilling participants who were diagnosed with being “mentally ill” and “deficient.”  

It should be noted that the eugenics programs that were implemented across the country during the 20th century inspired the Nazi’s forced sterilization programs in the Holocaust; Adolf Hitler viewed states such as California as a starting point for implementing “a better conception of citizenship.” While the concepts of eugenics and forced sterilization evoke imagery of fascist regimes, it is once again important to remember that they are also tools that the American government implemented to ‘protect’ white, able-bodied society from the perceived threat of certain groups. The comparisons that have been drawn between the practices of ICE and Nazi Germany are accurate, however it is more accurate to recognize that sterilizing female detainees without their consent is not an outlier, but a continuation of American policy. 

The Reinforcement of White Supremacy and Patriarchy 

Though mental health played a large part in justifying these procedures, these eugenics programs were explicitly racialized. For example, the sterilizations in California were driven by anti-Asian and anti-Mexican sentiments; Black and Mexican people were more affected than is suggested in official data. In particular, thousands of Mexican women who had immigrated to the United States had been sterilized between the 1920s and 1950s as they were deemed to be an “undesirable type.” In the latter half of the decade, Mexican women were tricked into being sterilized under the guise of receiving medical care or having their babies delivered. These women who were admitted to the Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center were confronted with a choice: in order to receive care, whether it be painkillers or an operation, they had to sign a slip of paper. Unbeknownst to these women, who were often in too much medical distress to comprehend what was going on and/or did not understand English, they were signing a consent form for sterilization. 

The Southern United States, however, did not pretend that sterilization programs were for any other purpose beyond controlling their Black populations.  In the example of the South, every solution to protecting ‘society,’ was implemented: this included Jim Crow laws prohibiting interracial marriage, physical segregation of the races, and the forced sterilizations of Black women. “Mississippi appendectomies” was a name given to the hysterectomies performed in the South on Black women as practice for medical students; North Carolina was known to practice on girls as young as nine years old. Furthermore, as the South began to desegregate, sterilization rates for Black women increased.

Even after these eugenics programs came to an end, forced sterilization was performed on Indigenous women in the 1970s and 80s; an estimated 25 to 50 percent of indigenous women were sterilized between 1970 and 1976 through the Indian Health Service (IHS). When the Government Accounting Office released the results of an investigation into these events, they found that they occurred at one-third of all IHS facilities. Additionally, the number of Indigenous women who were sterilized is the proportional equivalent of sterilizing 452,000 non-Native women; however, the number of sterilizations is most likely even higher as the IHS at the Albuquerque site contracted non-IHS doctors to perform these procedures and inaccurately added zero procedures to the official count. These statistics are especially jarring when taking into consideration the fact that the United States government has repeatedly tried to eradicate the Indigenous population, whether it be through the Trail of Tears, attacks on ancestral homelands, or the massacre at Wounded Knee; the forced sterilization of Native women is another example of a genocidal tactic. 

The United States also used sterilization on populations within their colonized territories. Between the 1930s and 1970s, nearly one-third of women in Puerto Rico were sterilized as a result of a eugenics campaign. Since its invasion of Puerto Rico in 1898, the United States has maintained control over the island’s economic development. Until 1952, the Governor of Puerto Rico was appointed by the President and veto power over a local House of Representatives; government entities, including the civil services, social programs, and armed forces, were all under US supervision. 

During this time, as population control research was being carried out, it was believed that the root of economic problems in underdeveloped countries was overpopulation. Subsequently, it was proposed that if the growth could be controlled, the standard of living would improve. Within the context of economic development, Puerto Rico had a high unemployment rate that remained consistent throughout the 20th century; in order to address this issue, it was believed that they had to “reduce the growth of the working sector.” This included forced migration of Puerto Rican workers and the mass sterilization of working-class women. As a result, there was a federally-funded sterilization campaign where medical professionals were told that if a woman came in to give birth and already had two or more children, she must have her tubes tied; most sterilizations were done postpartum. Puerto Rico had the highest sterilization rate in the world. 

It has been made clear that forced sterilizations disproportionately affected people of color and Indigenous people. This was done in an attempt to ‘protect’ American society which has largely been conceived to be white, able-bodied, and male. It cannot be forgotten that while forced sterilizations were performed on men, they disproportionately affected women. There is a clear intersection between white supremacy and the patriarchy that is evident in both the historical examples given and in the ICE detention facilities. It has largely been women of color who have been deemed ‘undesirable’ and have subsequently had their reproductive rights forcibly taken from them. Considering that forced sterilization is often recognized as a tactic of genocide, it is important to remember that institutionalized violence has played a defining role in the government’s treatment of marginalized peoples. 

A Step Towards Reproductive Justice 

In light of the knowledge that forced sterilization has been a continuous policy that has inflicted violence upon women of color, in both a domestic and international context, it is necessary to consider what steps need to be taken in order to begin righting the wrongs that have been committed. It is obvious that forced sterilizations need to be stopped in their entirety, but we must go further: any proposed solution must be rooted in reproductive justice. This term was coined by Black women and essentially advocates for the “freedom to reproduce on your own terms and to be provided with the support and access to do so.” The ability to control their reproductive lives is something that must be restored to women of color, Indigenous women, and immigrants from the Global South- this necessitates a solution that ensures that those who have been formally denied access to governing their own body are given full control. This goes beyond simply ending forced sterilization: it also requires full access to fair and equitable reproductive health care and education, access to affordable childcare, and more. The migrant women who were forcibly sterilized are not the first women to go through this, but we should make them the last.

U.S. Policy Towards Saudi Arabia: The Up's and Down's

The United States’ (U.S.) policy towards Saudi Arabia restrains numerous determinants and interests. The U.S. considers the global market for oil, counterterrorism efforts, containing Iran, trade, and human rights when conducting policy towards the kingdom. The U.S.-Saudi relationship is significantly progressing as both countries share a number of interests in the Middle East. 

The U.S. trade in goods with Saudi Arabia has been steady since 1990. At that point in time, U.S. exports were $4 billion and imports were $10 billion, while in 2010, exports were $11.5 billion and imports were $31.4 billion. In 2019, exports so far have amounted to $8.9 billion and imports to $9.8 billion. Over the years there has been a pattern established where the total value of imports exceeds that of exports. The U.S. imports hydrocarbons from Saudi Arabia, which is a crucial component of petroleum and natural gas, making it essential for U.S. energy needs. The U.S. then exports weapons, machinery, and vehicles to Saudi Arabia. 

Historically, the U.S. was dependent on oil from Saudi Arabia. However, the U.S supply of oil has changed. As of now, the U.S. is the top oil producer and the largest consumer of crude oil and petroleum products, surpassing Russia and Saudi Arabia in the production of crude oil. The U.S. has numerous reserves with various natural resources, including crude oil. As a result of technological advancement in oil extraction, U.S. oil production is expected to increase even more in the future. Though the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) continues to be the largest oil producer, non-OPEC countries such as the U.S. and Canada will contribute significantly to the growth of world oil supply. Despite this, Saudi Arabia is still an important player in the world market for oil.  As a key member of OPEC, Saudi Arabia is able to coordinate with other OPEC members in order to control oil prices through the manipulation of the oil supply. As a "swing producer," Saudi Arabia is able to influence the world market quickly and independently with its spare oil capacity.

Saudi Arabia is more important to U.S. interests because of its capacity to change the world price of oil than as an oil exporter. Even though the U.S. is a top exporter of oil, it is still dependent on the world price of oil as part of the global market. If Saudi Arabia increases its supply, the world price of oil would fall, which would harm U.S. oil producers. For example, if the U.S. imposed restrictions on imports of Saudi oil, U.S. oil refineries would experience a shortage, as Saudi Arabia imports an estimated five million barrels a day to the U.S. While the five million barrels Saudi Arabia imports is significant, the U.S. is in a position to replace that with oil imports from Canada or domestically produced crude oil. However, the cost to U.S. oil producers from a Saudi-led price drop would be considerably more detrimental to U.S. economic interests. 

Because Saudi Arabia plays a major role in controlling the global oil market, U.S.-Saudi policy should be governed by collaborating on the world price of oil rather than focusing on imports and exports. As top exporters, the U.S. and Saudi Arabia could collaborate to meet increasing oil demands from emerging economies. According to the World Bank, as developing nations' economies grow, their demand for fuel and consumer goods that are dependent on crude oil will also increase. This allows the U.S. to prioritize energy independence without weakening relations with Saudi Arabia. In the long run, policy focused on cooperating with Saudi Arabia on regulating the global oil market would benefit U.S. economic interests. 

U.S. energy policy extends beyond oil to nuclear energy within Saudi Arabia. The U.S. and Saudi Arabia signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) which represented their willingness to cooperate on nuclear activities in medicine, industry, and electricity production. In 2018, Secretary of Energy Rick Perry and Minister of Energy, Industry, and Mineral Resources Khalid al Falih discussed the potential for civil nuclear engagement, including new technology sharing. In 2019, the Trump Administration stated that it would share its nuclear technology if Saudi Arabia agreed to International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspections. The U.S. must be especially wary of Saudi attempts to develop nuclear weapons considering escalating tensions with Iran in the aftermath of the crumbling Iran Nuclear Deal. However, if the U.S. pushes too hard for the enrichment and reprocessing restrictions, several U.S. Administration officials and nuclear advocates have argued that Saudi Arabia would search for nuclear cooperation with Russia or China. Therefore, the U.S. is constrained in its ability to push for IAEA inspections, which puts them in a difficult position since inspections are essential for nuclear security. It is necessary for the Trump Administration to demand IAEA inspections, as a nuclear conflict between Saudi Arabia and Iran would be incredibly detrimental to U.S. national security. 

There have been a number of security-related events that have positively and negatively affected the U.S.-Saudi relationship. Shortly after the Cold War, the Gulf War that lasted from 1990 to 1991 strengthened U.S.-Saudi cooperation after half a million U.S. troops were deployed to Saudi Arabia in order to push back Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait. At the same time, Salafi jihadism was spreading in Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia. For political reasons, Saudi Arabia suppressed the internal Salafi opposition but did not react to transnational Salafi jihadism. Saudi Arabia did not want to have a conversation about Salafism domestically seeing as it was ideologically similar to jihad and Wahhabism, an ideology central to Saudi government institutions. U.S.-Saudi relations then worsened after Al-Qaeda bombed the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998 and conducted the September 2001 (9/11) attacks. Saudi Arabia denied any connection to Osama Bin Laden including financial connections to Al Qaeda. Saudi Arabia additionally viewed the U.S. negatively after the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.

Despite these events negatively affecting the U.S.-Saudi relationship, they have partnered together in counterterrorism efforts. For example, Al-Qaeda campaigned against the Saudi Arabian regime and conducted terrorist attacks there in 2003. After Saudi Arabia condemned Al-Qaeda following the 2003 terrorist attack, the U.S. cooperated with the kingdom in intelligence sharing and eliminating financial sources to jihadist groups. Like the U.S., Saudi Arabia views Al-Qaeda, Al-Qaeda's affiliates, ISIS, and Salafist-jihadist groups as a threat to Saudi national security. The U.S. believes that Saudi Arabia has improved its counterterrorism efforts since the 9/11 attacks, and it has been more involved in cooperative initiatives. For example, Saudi Arabia co-chairs the Counter-ISIL Finance Group of the Global Coalition to Counter ISIS, and since 2014, Saudi Arabia has prevented Saudis to travel abroad to support terrorist groups. In 2017, Saudi officials stated that they plan to contribute to stabilization efforts in Syria and get involved with Iraqi leaders. U.S.-Saudi relations also continued to cooperate because they have a shared interest in containing Iran, as it remains both a threat to U.S. interests in the Middle East and a rival power of Saudi Arabia. 

It is necessary to examine the policies that continue the counterterrorism alliance between Saudi Arabia and the U.S. because they face similar threats from common enemies. The U.S. benefits from having a counterterrorism partner in the Middle East, especially from a wealthy nation that has significant political influence over Arab states. The U.S. should ally with Saudi Arabia to contain Iran, especially because of the current high tensions between the three actors. U.S. and Iran tensions have recently escalated after potential military attacks and an Iranian shootdown of a U.S. drone over the Strait of Hormuz. If the U.S. were to get into a military confrontation with Iran, it is in U.S. national interest to cooperate with Saudi Arabia, where it could access Saudi air space and bases for troops. Thomas Lippman, Adjunct Scholar at the Middle East Institute, claims that Saudi Arabia is not crucial for U.S. security interests because its military capabilities are limited. The U.S. holds naval headquarters in Bahrain, maintains a large airbase in Qatar, and has troops in Kuwait and Djibouti, among many other areas. He claims that the U.S. should go by an "issue-by-issue basis" with Saudi Arabia, rather than maintaining a close partnership. I disagree with this point; even though the U.S. has strategic military bases in numerous areas in the Middle East, Saudi Arabia is still an important asset for intelligence sharing, and using it for additional military space would be an added benefit of partnering with them.

Though Saudi Arabia has limited military capacity, the U.S. conducts arms sales and training and service support to strengthen the Saudi military. For example, there is the United States Military Training Mission (USMTM) in Saudi Arabia and the Saudi Arabian National Guard Modernization Program (PM-SANG), which supervises U.S. defense cooperation with Saudi Arabia. In May 2017, President Trump indicated that the U.S. would continue strengthening bilateral defense cooperation with Saudi Arabia through arms sales. In 2019, Secretary of State for Political Affairs David Hale went to Saudi Arabia to meet with the Saudi Deputy Defense Minister Khalid bin Salman Al Saud and Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Adel al-Jubeir. Secretary Hale emphasized the strong U.S.-Saudi partnership and shared interests in working with other regional partners to contain Iran's influence over the Middle East, as well as promote security and stability.

Encouraging dialogue between Saudi Arabia and Qatar is also in the U.S.’s security interests. Saudi Arabia has had a rocky relationship with Qatar for over twenty years as they have been concerned over Qatar's ties with Iran, in which Qatar provides natural gas reserves. In 2017, Saudi Arabia cut diplomatic relations with Qatar, closed its land borders, air space, and waters to Qatari vessels, and disallowed Saudi nationals from visiting Qatar, as well as demanded Qatari nationals to leave Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia had claimed that Qatar supported terrorism, interfered with the domestic affairs of other Arab countries, and supported Iran's push to destabilize Saudi Arabia.

This is of significant concern to U.S. security interests in the Middle East. The U.S. has close defense cooperation, including in arms sales, with both Saudi Arabia and Qatar. Because the U.S. has major facilities in Qatar, it is in the national interest to attempt to fix Saudi Arabia's relationship with Qatar, as this broken relationship is unsuitable for U.S. security interests. If the two states went into military conflict, the U.S. would be in a difficult situation because it has defense cooperation with both countries. Picking sides would further the conflict and severe one or the other relationship.

Another current event pertaining to U.S. security and human rights interests in Saudi Arabia is the Yemen Civil War. The Trump and Obama Administrations have diplomatically supported Saudi Arabia's attempts to reintegrate the Hadi government, and have also provided logistical and intelligence support to their military operations. The Saudi-led coalition has contributed to Yemen civilian casualties, a humanitarian disaster, a blockage on the flow of goods and humanitarian aid to Yemen, the empowerment of Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State, and Iranian support for the Houthis. Following a Saudi airstrike that killed numerous children in 2018, Lieutenant General Michael Garrett went to Saudi Arabia to pressure the government to investigate this accident. The Saudi-led coalition found that the accident violated the coalition's rules and recommended that it comes with punishment. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo additionally stated to Congress that authorities from both Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are taking action in preventing the danger imposed on Yemeni civilians and infrastructure. 

U.S. arms sales and military support to the Saudi-led coalition have sparked debate within U.S. Congress. Proposed foreign military and commercial arms sales aligning with the Arms Export Control Act (AECA) have been criticized by several Congress Members because Saudi Arabia has been using them for airstrikes in Yemen, which violates international humanitarian law. Congress has also attempted to investigate an instance where an exception was made under the AECA, allowing the Trump administration to continue selling weapons to Saudi Arabia without a required congressional review period. Those critical of the arms sales argue that the U.S. should instead share more advanced U.S. technology and increase training and intelligence support to the Saudi air force. Other members offered for the implementation of conditions for the Department of Defense activities and U.S. support for the coalition. Another proposed solution is for President Trump to withdraw U.S. military forces from Yemen missions. Numerous members proposed to require more oversight reporting on U.S. activities, disallow deployment of U.S. military personnel or U.S. funds to be used for specific goals in Yemen, and prohibit sales of a specific type of weapon to Saudi Arabia. On the other end of the debate, several members argue that U.S. support lessens Yemen civilian casualties by encouraging more human rights.

The U.S. is in a difficult position in the Yemen conflict. On one hand, both U.S. officials and Saudi Arabia have concerns about the Houthi movement due to its ties with Iran. Houthi forces additionally operate cross-border attacks to Saudi Arabia, which also threatens American citizens there. Both countries are concerned about armed threats from Al-Qaeda and Islamic State supporters in Yemen. Despite these concerns, there have been civilian casualties, mass displacement, and infrastructure damage caused by Saudi intervention using U.S. weapons. 

There should be a sense of compromise to this debate. The U.S. should not discontinue arms sales to Saudi Arabia. If Saudi Arabia does not purchase U.S. arms, it will seek out other partners such as Russia and China. Russia and China would be less likely to have human rights concerns in Yemen and would not make any effort to hold the Saudi-led coalition accountable for its actions. However, the U.S. could terminate the sale of a specific type of weapon used in Saudi airstrikes. That way, it is a stronger signal to the Saudis that they should be careful of where they target. It is additionally important to not single out Saudi Arabia and claim that they are committing all of the humanitarian violations in the conflict. The Houthis and Iran are equally responsible. Therefore, it would not be tangible to simply discontinue arms sales to Saudi Arabia, because it would imply that Saudi Arabia is not there to bring a political solution to the issue. On the diplomatic side, the U.S. should continue encouraging a United Nations negotiated resolution that incorporates the GCC transition document which was signed and agreed to in 2011. 

Aside from Yemen, Saudi Arabia has a low record of domestic human rights as well. The Kingdom is run by Islamic sharia law, which does not allow freedom of expression, press, religion, or association, and political parties are prohibited as they are seen as going against the Kingdom. Saudi Arabia gives death sentences to crimes committed by minors and uses torture to interrogate alleged criminals and force confessions out of them. The government also unlawfully interferes with the privacy of families and homes. The government decides which media content can be public in order to maintain internal security and prevent chaos or division. Jamal Khashoggi, a Saudi journalist who lived abroad in "self-exile," was murdered by government agents in Istanbul, Turkey. In 2016, Saudi authorities banned Khashoggi from writing, appearing on television, and going to conferences because he had made critical statements about Saudi government officials. Per the U.S. State Department's 2018 report on human rights in Saudi Arabia, human rights activists were detained and later released but warned not to use social media for their activism or reach out to foreign diplomats, international human rights organizations, and travel outside the country. The use of torture has also been employed against detained human rights activists, including women who fought for the right to drive.

Dana Stroul, a former senior professional staff member on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, states that human rights in Saudi Arabia can progress with the U.S. simply encouraging change. While the U.S. does not have a say in how to run another government, their assistance can help promote long-term change. For example, the Two Holy Mosques Scholarship Program admits 50,000 Saudi students each year to attend U.S. universities, which provides them an American-style education. These students go back home with ideas they have learned through this education. Though this is a catalyst for long-term change, it is better than telling Saudi Arabia what it should and shouldn't do. If there were a situation that went against U.S. interests, U.S. policy should be direct and question Saudi Arabia's actions. For example, the U.S. should condemn and outright state that it believes that Saudi imprisoned civil-rights activists should be let out. Additionally, the U.S. must be more forward with holding Saudi Arabia accountable for the murder of Jamal Khashoggi. Overall, it is better to maintain positive relations with Saudi Arabia to encourage human rights, because if the U.S. severs its economic, military, and strategic relations, then Saudi Arabia would turn towards powers such as China and Russia, which would not have much interest in encouraging respect for human rights. 

After discussing U.S. policy and interests in Saudi Arabia, it is reasonable to argue that the U.S. should continue keeping Saudi Arabia as a close security partner in the Middle East. Saudi Arabia has the potential of being an even stronger U.S. ally in counterterrorism efforts and containment of Iran because it is a wealthy and influential nation in the region. In regards to human rights, there is a more likely chance that Saudi Arabia would cooperate with the U.S. rather than other powers, which may not consider the issue. Lastly, it is important to maintain economic relations with Saudi Arabia for the world market for oil and to take advantage of emerging economies in the long run. Though there are disagreements and a difference in views between the two nations, there are more benefits than disadvantages in their relationship.

Freedom vs Equality: Considering the Relationship Between Campaign Finance Reform and the First Amendment

Campaign finance reform: a pillar of  debate in United States politics for over a century. For just as long, voters intensely debated this controversial topic. Scholarly discussion on nearly every aspect of reform increased in the years following the Federal Election Campaign Act in 1971, and major amendments to it in 1974. Subsequent court cases altered or validated campaign finance laws to varying degrees. One of the most pressing questions arising from this legal ping pong is the ongoing debate over the constitutionality of limits on two pillars of campaign finance policy: contributions and expenditures.  The First Amendment is a keystone of American democracy, and viewpoints from different sides of the debate elucidate the relationship between the constitution specifically, the First Amendment, and campaign finance reform, beginning with scholarly work focusing on the landmark case Buckley v. Valeo, then progress through opinions post Citizens United v. FEC.  

The Federal Election Commission defines a contribution as “a gift, subscription, loan, advance or deposit of money or anything of value given to influence a federal election; or the payment by any person of compensation for the personal services of another person if those services are rendered without charge to a political committee for any purpose,” and  an expenditure as “a purchase, payment, distribution, loan, advance, deposit or gift of money or anything of value made for the purpose of influencing a federal election. A written agreement to make an expenditure is also considered an expenditure.”  In passing FECA in 1971 and it’s major amendments in 1974, Congress sought to limit the amount of money in politics – to level the playing field. They also attempted to halt ‘quid pro quo’ arrangements by limiting both contributions and expenditures. The 1974 FECA amendments came on the heels of Watergate, a time of heightened concern over the potentially corrupting nature of campaign contributions and fundraising.

In 1976, the Supreme Court heard Buckley v Valeo, which brought the First Amendment to the forefront of the campaign finance conversation. The case challenged the constitutionality of the contribution and expenditure limits set in FECA ’74.  In their decision, the Court equated money with speech, which is protected under the First Amendment to the Constitution. It also made a distinction between different levels of corruption, which they said may result from different amounts of contributions or expenditures. When a contribution is made, an exchange of money takes place therefore a higher risk of corruption is present, where expenditures are made independent of a campaign - people spend in isolation. Directly addressing the constitutionality in their opinion, the Court wrote,

“The Act's contribution and expenditure limitations operate in an area of the most fundamental First Amendment activities. Discussion of public issues and debate on the qualifications of candidates are integral to the operation of the system of government established by our Constitution. The First Amendment affords the broadest protection to such political expression in order 'to assure (the) unfettered interchange of ideas for the bringing about of political and social changes desired by the people…The Act's contribution and expenditure limitations also impinge on protected associational freedoms.”

To conclude, the Court added, “although the Act's contribution and expenditure limitations both implicate fundamental First Amendment interests, its expenditure ceilings impose significantly more severe restrictions on protected freedoms of political expression and association than do its limitations on financial contributions.” In summary, it is acceptable to limit freedom of speech in giving money but not in how money is spent.  

The Buckley decision remains a cornerstone in the debate over the constitutionality of contribution/expenditure limits on both sides of the issue. During the 1980s, in the wake of Buckley, J. Skelly Wright, former Chief Judge of United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, calls the Buckley ruling a “serious obstacle in the path of our society's advancement toward political equality through law,” and a “vitally important and, in [his] judgment, tragically misguided First Amendment decision.” More specifically, Wright declares that in “equating spending with speech, the Court treated the First Amendment as a near-absolute in the sphere of political debate.” This is, of course, not an unchallenged opinion. Wright’s contemporary Martin Redish, a professor of law at Northwestern University, provides an opposing consideration of the Buckley case, concluding that the Court was right to strike down some of the limits set by FECA as “by limiting spending, such regulation decreases the flow of information which might produce better informed voters and thus undermines important First Amendment values.” Wright and Redish also disagree over what exactly the First Amendment protects.

A key part of the Buckley decision lies in the Court telling the government that it should not attempt to level the political playing field, which was one of the intentions of FECA. The Court famously states in their decision, “the concept that government may restrict the speech of some elements of our society in order to enhance the relative voice of others is wholly foreign to the First Amendment.” Opposing this, Wright believes “democracy is often shadowed by lopsided inequalities in campaign resources” and “the predominance of money comes at the expense of the ideals of liberty and equality that underlie our political system.” Redish is less certain on this point, providing a devil’s advocate stance on the matter, positing that “important values other than equality are at work in First Amendment analysis and that, on occasion, these values may even clash with the equality principle.”  He expands on this, with the idea that limits on contributions and expenditures with the intention of normalizing those with significant financial resources are:

“not necessarily unconstitutional, for the benefits of ‘purifying’ political campaigns and equalizing candidate access to the public may outweigh the resulting harms to free speech interests. The outcome of the conflict is, for present purposes, irrelevant. Whatever the outcome, the equality principle and the values furthered by free expression directly conflict...”

Redish notes this important idea that because the Supreme Court’s decision in Buckley equated money with speech, an intersection formed between freedom of speech and the equality principle.

Scholars continued to address this tension in the 1990s,  with Gary Stein proposing that “the theoretical conflicts [between First Amendment freedoms and reform efforts] are largely reconcilable…coexistence between the First Amendment and effective campaign-finance reform is constitutionally permissible.” Fred Wertheimer and Susan Weiss concur, citing that the Supreme Court “recognized this when it upheld the constitutionality of campaign finance contribution limits in Buckley.” Wertheimer and Weiss point to the Buckley opinion, which itself states it is “unnecessary to look beyond the Act’s primary purpose,” which is “to limit the actuality and appearance of corruption…in order to find a constitutionally sufficient justification for the $1,000 contribution limitation.” In this case, the authors draw a comparison between a lack of corruption in politics and political equality.  The idea that while freedom is speech and speech is nearly unrestricted, preventing corruption will further political equality in the same way that restricting someone from yelling ‘fire!’ in a crowded theater promotes safety.

This argument for the constitutionality of contribution limits is partially echoed by David A. Strauss, who both reinforces and scrutinizes the validity of such limits based on their intended effects, saying that “in fact it is far from clear that campaign finance reform is about the elimination of corruption at all.” He further explains, “corruption-understood as the implicit or explicit exchange of campaign contributions for official action-is a derivative problem,” and therefore, “those who say they are concerned about corruption are actually concerned about two other things: inequality, and the nature of democratic politics.” In this analysis, the Court actually qualified government intervention to ‘level the playing field’ in the Buckley decision by limiting contributions on the basis of limiting corruption which Strauss views as an extension of inequality. On this thread, Strauss concludes that corruption “is not in itself an appropriate target of campaign finance reform,” because it is an outgrowth of inequality and interest group politics, and appropriate reform will seek to address these root issues.

An interesting counter to Strauss’ connection between corruption, equality and democratic politics is offered by lobbyist Scott Harhbarger, “the effort to end unlimited campaign contributions is a fundamental civil rights issue…we need to make it just as clear what we stand for: reclaiming our democracy.” In The Fallacy of Campaign Finance Reform, John Samples describes limits on contributions as a “reason for lamentation, not rejoicing.” He warns, “no one should exercise his or her First Amendment right to freedom of speech without advice from counsel, preferably one schooled in the intricacies of campaign finance regulation.” And leaves readers with his startling take on campaign finance laws, “In the United States, speech is no longer very free…” Samples delves deeply into the anti-limits ideal that money is speech, and speech must remain free:

“The First Amendment offers a classic statement of negative liberty: it enjoins the government from abridging individual freedom. It does not “empower” the individual to achieve some good. It does not give the individual the means to speak or to persuade others. It does not direct the government to use speech as a means to some social end.”

The recurring theme of the government overstepping to promote equality in the political arena is clearly present throughout Samples’ book.  

Samples devotes a considerable portion of the book to discussing the divergent Madisonian and Progressive schools of thought on the relationship between the First Amendment and campaign finance reform. Those on the Madison side favor no limits at all, but with full and immediate disclosure requirements, while Progressives advocate public financing of all campaigns and no private money allowed. The narrative Samples lays out is not unlike the current debate over the 2nd amendment and gun control laws.

The views of authors discussed to this point were all penned prior to the landmark case Citizens United v. FEC,  a ruling issued in 2010. As such, they focus heavily on the Buckley v. Valeo decision of 1976. The following selection of sources will also include analysis of the Buckley decision, but afford considerable allowance to the Citizens United case.

Citizens United v. FEC  incurred serious implications for scholars from all sides of the campaign finance reform arena. In the decision, while the Court denied corporations and labor unions the right to make explicit contributions, it does permit them to use treasury funds to finance independent expenditures. The holding is essentially that political spending is protected under the First Amendment as political speech, and therefore the government cannot restrict corporations and unions from exerting their right to free speech through limits on corporate/union independent expenditures.

In the wake of Citizens United, Floyd Abrams penned a novel in defense of the First Amendment. Abrams spent years arguing against restrictions on the Amendment, delving deeply into issues of campaign finance when he represented Senator Mitch McConnell in an unsuccessful challenge (by a 5–4 vote) to key elements of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act which they believed violated the First Amendment. He and Susan Buckley also submitted, during the 2010 Citizens United case, an amicus curiae (friend of the Court) brief on behalf of Senator McConnell to argue orally on his behalf. Abrams favors a broad reading of the First Amendment, “sometimes nearly absolutely so.” He repeatedly describes limits on campaign related finance issues as Congress, “turning political speech into a crime.”

Expanding on this ear-catching slogan, Abrams says, “political speech…has long been considered worthy of the highest degree of First Amendment protection.” It is, in fact, meant to do just that. Justice Elena Kagan summarized the argument Abrams and his colleagues made before the Supreme Court in 2010 as saying, “political speech is the highest form of speech under the First Amendment entitled to the greatest protection and that the courts should be wary of Congress regulating in this area in such a way as to protect incumbents to help themselves.”  In turn, Abrams cites Justice Anthony Kennedy’s decision in another case, United States v. Automobile Workers, in which Kennedy wrote, “first Amendment rights are part of the heritage of all persons and groups in this country. They are not to be dispensed or withheld merely because we or the Congress thinks the person or group is worthy or unworthy.” He continues this thread, “political speech must prevail against laws that would suppress it, whether by design or inadvertence… [the First Amendment] has its fullest and most urgent applications to speech uttered during a campaign for political office.” Following his broad analysis of the perils of campaign law infringing on First Amendment protections, Abrams moved on to specific areas of such laws which he believes pose the most concerning threats to freedom of speech.

Abram identifies limits on contributions by anyone, including corporations, and statutes restricting close-to-election speech as particularly worrisome. He calls for the public to carefully examine the cost of restrictions on political speech required for almost all proposed campaign finance reform, and the ‘inherent’ constitutional dangers they present. Abram expresses his bewilderment with public outcry following the Citizens United decision, “what I find inexplicable is the willingness of so many not even to acknowledge, let alone weigh, the powerful First Amendment interests at all.” He concludes his argument on the antagonistic relationship between the First Amendment and campaign finance reform by calling limits on political spending or speech as  “an approach which views the First Amendment as an impediment as opposed to a protection, as a disagreeable, painful limitation to be overcome, evaded or eluded rather than as a shield against the government.” This impassioned expression of his views is paralleled in enthusiasm, if not in opinion by Robert Post.

Post, a constitutional law scholar and former dean of Yale Law school, offers his novel in the form of two lectures, followed by commentary from fellow scholars, and concluding with Post’s response. The arguments proposed by Post within this work are particularly interesting because he refutes both pro-regulation claims that the First Amendment supports equality and anti-regulation views that the First Amendment lends itself only to the freest forms of speech. He devotes Lecture I to a detailed – and argumentative – analysis of the history of attempts at campaign finance reform. Post begins with the Buckley v. Valeo decision, in which he says the Court tried to “...split the difference...” between the two issues at hand: freedom of speech and electoral integrity. They did this by creating an proposing an “...arbitrary distinction…” between campaign contributions and independent campaign expenditures. Limits on the former were intended to protect electoral integrity, while restrictions on the latter were prohibited to safeguard freedom of speech. He warns that this compromise is quickly disintegrating, because it “lacks theoretical structure…there is little to stop the slide into chaos.” Post argues that this chaos arises from the fundamental question raised by campaign finance discussions; how does the country reconcile “republican tradition with…our commitment to discursive democracy.”  

Post explains that campaign finance Court cases where the juxtaposition of these two American ideals is painfully present, specifically Citizens United, the Court was “forced to choose whether the nation’s commitment to self-governance would be better realized through institutions of representation or through the discursive democracy established by First Amendment rights.” The Court chose the latter path, even though, according to Post, “we have been committed to structures of representation for far longer than we have aspired to democratic self-government.”

The Court’s decision to protect representation over discursive democracy is particularly thought provoking for Post. He observes that in Citizens United “the Court applied First Amendment doctrine as though it were a repository of abstract and categorical rules,” and that because the Court “never asked what these rules are designed to accomplish, it could not begin to explain how discursive democracy might be connected to the representative integrity that campaign finance reform seeks to sustain.” Post continues to address the ambiguity of the First Amendment and the possible relationship between political speech and electoral integrity in Lecture II.

Weaving an intricate web of analysis, Post lays out his argument for the proper role of the First Amendment in campaign regulation. He states:

“First Amendment rights do not ensure that each citizen can exercise equal influence on government action. The First Amendment does not protect direct democracy; within discursive democracy, public opinion should not be analogized to an initiative. The point of First Amendment rights is instead to guarantee that each person is equally entitled to the possibility of democratic legitimation.  First Amendment rights institutionalize the hope that affording each person the opportunity to participate in public discourse can create the ‘communion of interests and sympathy of sentiments’ between persons and their government that is the foundation of self-government.”

Post’s presentation of the First Amendment centers on the idea that meaningful – not equal – participation is at the core of what the amendment means. This is in direct contradiction with the views of researcher David Strauss, who was discussed earlier in this paper. However, Post’s view clearly explains why he so vehemently opposes the Citizens United decision that gave free speech rights to corporations; he believes the corporations would use such rights to make a profit, as opposed to individual citizens who may use their political free speech to make an ideological or political position. Perhaps the only author discussed to do so, Post’s writings on the First Amendment offer a hopeful tone for the path forward – for a plausible balanced relationship between the true meaning of the First Amendment and representative integrity, via proper campaign finance reform.

While the arguments of authors presented thus far accept the Constitution as written, Senator Tom Udall of New Mexico penned a parallel plan. Udall describes the Buckley v. Valeo case as having “...laid the groundwork for  a broken system...” of campaign finance. He also condemns the Citizens United decision for putting “...the First Amendment rights of corporations  and other large organizations on par with those of individual citizens, opening the door to an unregulated influx of special interest campaign dollars.” Senator Udall advocates for an amendment to the Constitution, which he cautions should not be taken lightly.  However, he claims that comprehensive and viable campaign finance reforms will only be passed “...if there is a constitutional amendment which provides Congress with the authority to regulate all aspects of the campaign finance system.” Udall’s proposed amendment would not lay out the type of regulations passed by Congress of individual states, leaving room for debate, interpretation and change. He also discusses a more narrowly written amendment introduced by his colleague Senator Max Baucus (D-MT), which would address the issue of corporations having the same political speech rights as an individual person. Senator Udall holds that barring a constitutional amendment or reversal of the damaging Supreme Court precedent unlimited special interest money will continue to flood election campaigns, and influencing the outcomes of elections.

Over the course of this examination, the viewpoints of multiple scholars on the issue of campaign finance reform and the First Amendment have been examined. For the pro-regulatory side, J. Skelly Wright, Gary Stein, Fred Wertheimer and Susan Weiss Mane and Robert Post  argue for come form of regulations on campaign contributions and/or expenditures. Martin Redish, Scott Harshbarger, John Samples, Floyd Abrams argue degrees of the opposite: that such regulations are oppressive, illegal, and unconstitutional. Davis Strauss’ argument both viewpoints straddling a delicate and unique middle-ground, while Senator Tom Udall advocates a departure from the First Amendment the other authors all hold dear. All of these works exhibit the same obvious and deep respect for the First Amendment. Pro-regulation works tend to generally hold that the First Amendment supports equality in the political system, and that government intervention is necessary to preserve the integrity of America’s electoral process. Anti-regulation scholars broadly interpret money as speech, therefore validating the view that campaign contributions and expenditures are protected speech under the First Amendment.

Arguments continue in courts, classrooms and coffee-shops across the nation. Campaign finance is far from the only issue where clashing interpretations of the First Amendment lead to heightened tensions and legal uncertainty. Which side’s view will prevail? Currently, precedent backs the anti-regulation ideals money under the umbrella of protected political speech. However, it remains uncertain whether legislation or new court cases could pose a serious threat to this current interpretation.

Citizens United v. Our Democracy

In 2016, Secretary Hillary Clinton, the Democratic presidential candidate, was thought to wield specific political advantages over her Republican opponent Donald Trump. Secretary Clinton had the experience, she was more knowledgeable than Mr. Trump was in regards to the issues being discussed, some said she was more articulate, and Secretary Clinton raised a lot more money. Typically, a candidate’s advantage in campaign fundraising was always an indicator that they had more support from more people, they had more exposure, and had more power to sway the undecided and independent voters.  In the 2016 election, we learned that this is not always the case. Super PACs do not have complete sway power over the voters, but they do greatly influence the politicians in office.

In this day and age, campaign donations do not directly go to the campaign and candidate themselves. Since Citizens United v. FEC in 2010, the floodgates opened and soft money barreled into our elections. Super PACs, through independent expenditures, send money towards media buys in hopes of advancing their candidate of choice or encouraging the public not to vote for another candidate. Since the Citizens United decision was held, we saw dramatic increases in independent expenditure spending and independent expenditure spending posited as a significant and unfair game changer in elections, but Super PACs are not having the affect many people thought they would have. We are now entering an era where independent expenditures by Super PACs only have a large impact over politicians and are not reflective of the people.

Secretary Clinton raised over $563 million dollars and independent expenditures spent over $231 million in support of her. Mr. Trump raised a little over $333 million, most of which ($66 million) was his own money, and he received $75.2 million from independent expenditures. The significant amount of money flowing into Secretary Clinton's campaign coffers led political experts to come to the conclusion that she would win. However, Donald Trump beat Secretary Clinton - even taking states that historically supported democratic presidential candidates.

Super PACs funnel an exorbitant amount of money into political campaigns in order to sponsor and advocate for and against specific candidates. While ads and media buys by independent expenditures may have some sway on the undecided and in swing states, Super PACs and their outreach in campaigns are not the ultimate decider in elections. President Trump and his campaign proves this. He won the election, yet independent expenditure spending for Secretary Clinton spent was $155,849,637 more than it was for President Trump. However, just because Super PACs aren’t the ultimate decider in elections doesn’t mean they do not have a great impact on our government. What we are seeing is Super PACs becoming the deciders in how the politician they are supporting will view particular issues.

When a politician receives most of their support from Super PACS, either directly or indirectly, they are going to be likely to view issues in the eyes of the Super PACs regardless of their constituents’ views. The issue of gun control exemplifies how Super PACs shape politicians' views on issues. According to a Gallup Poll taken in October 2017, 60% of people want stricter gun control laws. This poll also revealed that 96% of people asked support background checks - with 86% saying they support a universal system, 75% support a 30 day waiting period when purchasing a weapon, and 70% of people polled would support privately-owned guns to be registered with the police. With all this information and other information from other polling organizations that reflect similar  results, politicians would be jumping at the chance to put their name on a gun control bill or that the President would pass an executive order reflecting what the people want - but that is not what we are seeing.

Let’s look at everyone’s favorite lobbying group, the National Rifle Association. The NRA goes above and beyond, shelling out an exorbitant amount of money to defend the right to bear arms. The NRA's influence is felt not only through campaign contributions, but also through millions of dollars in off-the-books spending on issue ads. Lobbying expenditures for the National Rifle Association regularly exceed $1.5 million and increased from $3.2 million in 2016 to more than $5.1 million in 2017 and 2018. The organization's lobbyists frequently try to exert their influence over government agencies including members of Congress and they are consistently successful in doing so. In just 2018, the NRA lobbied for and against 283 bills concerning gun laws. Politicians, particularly Republicans in regards to this issue, are doing everything in their power to avoid the issue or appease public opinion by agreeing to small things because the money they receive through ad buys and media wants them to keep an anti-gun control stance.

The same can be said with Democrats as well, who receive a lot of support from Super PACs, like Priorities USA. In the 2016 election, Priorities USA acted as if they were Secretary Clinton’s actual campaigning team and they did more campaigning in states, like Pennsylvania, than Secretary Clinton did herself. Priorities USA actually broke fundraising records, raising over $175 million dollars in the 2016 election cycle. Priorities USA targeted swing states and battleground states, drafting specific pro-Clinton messages that would appeal to each state’s populations and needs. In a way this Super PAC did a better job than the Democratic Party did, yet it still didn’t work. States that Priorities USA targeted with big media buys didn’t swing in Clinton’s favor, contributing to her overall loss. A majority of people in states like Michigan, Florida, and Ohio - where a lot of those ads aired - voted for President Trump, clearly indicating that Super PACs’ ads did not do much to sway the voters. People in these states for the most part wanted to hear from the politician who was running for office. While voters wanted to hear from Secretary Clinton that she would meet their needs, it is possible that they didn’t respond well to hearing about it from an ad paid for by a Super PAC that wasn’t directly connected to Secretary Clinton herself.

The Center for Responsive Politics predicted that over $5.2 billion would be spent on the 2018 midterm elections, making it the most expensive midterm election ever by a wide margin. More than $4.7 billion was already spent by candidates, political parties and other groups such as PACs, super PACs and nonprofits a week before this year’s midterm elections. Prior to this election cycle, no midterm election had surpassed more than $4.2 billion in spending when adjusted for inflation. Sheila Krumholz, the executive director of the Center for Responsive Politics, postulates that “the significance of this election is clear. But whether it’s a blue wave or a red wave, one thing is certain: A wave of money is surging toward Election Day, much of it coming from the wealthiest donors targeting this year’s most competitive races.” Now that the midterms are over, the Center for Responsive Politics estimated that at least $5.1 billion was spent on this year’s midterm.

Established politicians align their views to those of Super PACs in order to receive their money and get away with it because they carry the incumbency advantage over opponents who barely have any visibility due to a lack of support from financially powerful Super PACs. It is too soon to see what kind of long term effect the 2016 election will have on the way politics is run in the country and how elections will function in the months and years to come. One thing, however, is clear. Super PACs do not have the sway many people believe they do. They are not representative of the population. Candidates’ ability to receive the benefit of ‘free media’ worth millions of dollars from independent expenditures does not mean they have the public support necessary to win an election. Voters have the power to control the election and it is politicians who have become hypnotized by Super PACs and what they believe those PACs can give them.

Advocacy in American Politics: Examining the Quality and Effectiveness of Lobbying in the Trump Era

The quality of the United States’ advocacy and lobbying practices, as well as the effectiveness of the profession’s role in policymaking, have become a recent subject of debate. The transition to the Trump administration has particularly served to amplify an ongoing criticism of the lobbying profession, particularly in regard to the influence of special interests and the economic elite. The quality of practice towards the end of a pluralist representative democracy and the profession’s ability to adapt was, and continues to be, scrutinized by the media, political pundits, and lawmakers alike. Ultimately, the quality of advocacy and lobbying practices within the United States is lacking, despite its effectiveness in adapting strategy and tactics to fit the unique political situation, particularly in response the growing distinction of partisan interests as well as congressional gridlock.

In measuring the quality of advocacy practices within the Trump administration, the standard that the Framers, particularly James Madison, envisioned for competing factions must be recognized. An “extended” republic, or a pluralist model of democracy, was proposed by Madison as the best defense against partisan factions, special interests, and a potential “overbearing majority.” This pluralist model ideally limits the influence of a singular dominate interest – the “tyranny of the majority:” a potential ill-effect of democracy addressed by Madison in Federalist No. 10 and later by Alexis de Tocqueville in his observation of American democracy. Ultimately, the standard of quality that contemporary advocacy practices should reflect is that of  Madison’s “extended” republic, with special interests remaining numerous and equally competitive within the policymaking process.  

The quality of contemporary advocacy practices, however, does not meet this standard of a well-functioning pluralist representative democracy. This concept is widely explored within political and sociological academia; one recent study conducted by Dr. Martin Gilens and Dr. Benjamin Page creates individual and comprehensive statistical models for four distinct theoretical perspectives of democracy. Gilens and Page measure the relationship between the policy preferences of average citizens, economic elites, and special interests and respective policy outcomes. The results suggest that organized interest groups maintain significant influence over the majority’s preference in the policymaking process, especially with the assistance of PAC contributions, lobbying expenditures, and membership. Moreover, this study reaffirms Madison’s argument that a domineering majority can be restrained as various interests in the United States compete for political influence. Yet, sociopolitical variables like money and organizational agency impede and conceivably discourage the open competition of interests. In short, today’s advocacy process fulfills the intent of a pluralist model of democracy, but the process is facilitated through an inequity of resources.

The inequity of monetary resources and organizational agency has led to an increased likelihood of ethical misconduct with contemporary advocacy practices. Indeed, these variables can influence how advocacy strategies engage in the policy-making process and influence their adherence to ethical standards. Attempts have been made, specifically by the American Bar Association, to limit the influence of financial contributions, “shadow” lobbying, and to emphasize organizational accountability by reforming the Lobbying Disclosure Act of 1995 (LDA), which made significant strides in establishing transparent and ethical advocacy practices. The recommended reforms that target these key issues include the requirement for LDA registrants to specify specific public offices that are being targeted, as well as reporting all activities of the advocacy and partner entities. Yet, these reforms have faced setbacks, especially following the landmark ruling of Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission in 2010 which lifted restrictions on campaign and advocacy donations. Nonetheless, the advocacy profession ideally fulfills the intent of a pluralist model of democracy with a competitive and level playing field for special interests.  

The role of special interests and their influence in the policymaking process has contributed to the negative disposition that the public has of lobbying practices, prompting notable responses from the Obama and Trump administrations. With the media’s reinforcement of a negative special interest narrative, both President Obama and President Trump crafted unique responses pertaining to ethics in order to reflect the public’s negative opinion on lobbying and corruption. For instance, both administrations established direct ethical standards by way of executive order, targeting gift bans and the “revolving door.” Even more pertinent is the Trump administration’s unorthodox structure, which creates indirect challenges for advocacy practices. Specifically, the Trump administration’s lack of intervention points/points of contacts, as well as the President’s frequent use of social media, mainly Twitter, as a platform to disrupt, veil, and shape his intentions, creates a dynamic and unpredictable environment to maneuver for advocacy practices.

Though the methods and strategies vary by organization, there are three distinct tactics that have proven effective within the Trump administration: (1) anticipating unpredicted outcomes, (2) isolating and targeting key players, especially through social media, and (3) emphasizing the player over the policy. Each of these tactics effectively counters some aspect of the Trump administration’s direct and indirect approach to impede the role of special interests and advocacy practices. Ultimately, the ability for advocacy practices to maneuver this political climate is noteworthy and illustrates the adaptability and effectiveness of the industry.

The intense partisan gridlock and the unpredictability of Trump’s style of governance has prompted organizations to anchor their advocacy strategies with administrative networks and the rulemaking process. Though Trump’s victory was not predicted within most academic circles, engaging with the Trump campaign and transition teams proved to be advantageous compared to strategies that relied on their established connections in presuming Secretary Clinton’s Beltway-insider victory. Moreover, the executive institution has grown in administrative authority and is uniquely comprised of appointed and hired officials with backgrounds in advocacy and special interests, such as the appointments of former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos. With the anticipated momentum of a unified government falling short on several legislative failures, strategies sought key administrative intervention points, despite facing difficulties with empty roles and a lack of appointments. Demonstrating network connections within the Trump administration displays to potential clients that an advocacy organization maintains control within an unpredictable administration. As such, strategies have been reallocating efforts towards the rulemaking process in an increasingly partisan and gridlocked environment.

Isolating and targeting key players through social media, especially Twitter, has become an increasingly utile strategy within advocacy. Though it is unclear whether President Trump’s Twitter habits are impulsive or calculated, the acute fixation on Trump’s tweets and other social media platforms provides publicity and the potential for earned media to promote targeted messages. For example, a coalition effort known as “Boot Pruitt,” which targeted EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt, promoted a targeted Twitter-ad campaign to reach key public officials in areas that EPA and Trump administration heads frequent, like the White House, the EPA, and Trump’s private club Mar-a-Lago. In subscribing to the media effects model, in that the media takes on an agenda-setting role in the policymaking process, Trump’s usurpation of the conversation has now become a manipulation of the policy-making agenda. In adapting to President Trump’s governing strategy, advocacy groups can easily test, deploy, and reassess their messages, tracking them through polling, focus groups, or statistical data gathering software, to refined and better implement their issue campaigns. With the media’s, political pundit’s, and the public’s attention focused on social media, advocacy strategies have increasingly become centered on social media issue campaigns.

The most noticeable adaptation that advocacy practices have made in response to the Trump administration is how issue-oriented campaigns now focus on the key players as opposed to the policy. Rather than emphasizing an issue and anticipating the opposition’s arguments, targeted messaging now pinpoints key players within the policymaking and/or rulemaking processes, as opposed to specific policies. As it turns out, the Trump administration has a high tolerance for unpopular public officials and contentious issues, notably with Secretary of Education DeVos and EPA Administrator Pruitt. Rather than argue over policy provisions, advocacy organizations and coalitions, like “Boot Pruitt,” have targeted messages surrounding the player’s background, qualifications, and overall character, which can be measured through focus groups, benchmarks, and brushfire surveys. While these messages can vary, a successful campaign can dehumanize key players and render their policies unpopular and without support.

The state of advocacy and lobbying practices in the United States consists of several, yet surmountable, issues. In an ideal pluralist model of democracy, public competition between interests over policy preferences is undoubtedly encouraged. Advocacy strategies and tactics of the profession are rather effective in adapting to President Trump’s unorthodox administration. The ability for lobbying organizations to skirt professional norms and ethical codes, however, detracts from the demonstrated effectiveness of advocacy practices. It reaffirms the negative perception lobbying and strikes at the quality of the practices. In adapting strategies of network engagement, message targeting, and discrediting attacks, it is necessary to increase transparency and oversight of the industry in order to encourage an open competition of interests.

Birth Control: Uses, History, and Policies

Across the country and the globe, some women are fortunate enough to take personal control over their health, economic opportunities, and lives. They are granted an unprecedented freedom with the help of various contraceptive. However, it is only the fortunate that control their fate for various state and federal laws within the United States make this freedom all the more onerous to attain. To understand how we came to these restrictions it is first necessary to explore the purpose of the medicine and then the history of restrictions and allowances in the United States. Finally, alternative methods of access as seen in in certain states will illuminate potential future policy aspirations.

Uses and Affects

All women have personal reasons to take birth control, in any of the many forms available. One such reason is preventing unwanted pregnancy. Of sexually active women of a reproductive age (15-44) in the United States, roughly 70% are at risk of an unwanted pregnancy. Within this group 68% of women who use contraceptives only account for 5% of unwanted pregnancies. The combination of risk and preventability profess the incredible need for accessible birth control. Statistics show the demand; in 1960 the pill became available and within five years 6.5 million American women used it. Today,  80% of sexually experienced women have used the pill. Also, alternative methods are increasing in popularity including sterilization, hormonal methods, IUDs and male condoms.

Photo from: https://www.guttmacher.org/fact-sheet/contraceptive-use-united-states

While many women choose to take birth control to avoid becoming pregnant, there are multiple uses for the drug. An estimated 72% of women take oral contraceptives for non-contraceptive reasons alone, or for non-contraceptive reasons in tandem with contraception reasons. The pill has the ability to reduce cramps, menstrual pain, regulation, and acne treatments. It also has farther reaching effects like controlling endometriosis and polycystic ovary syndrome. Endometriosis is a condition affecting millions of American women that causes such severe pain as to drastically affect women’s ability to go about their daily lives. Polycystic ovary syndrome, on the other hand, can increase the risk of endometrial cancer and death if not properly regulated. This condition affect one in ten women and hormonal birth control is the most common treatment. In addition to health concerns, birth control has the ability to affect many aspects of a women’s lives.

Birth control and reproductive control are essential to women’s legal and economic status. Indeed during her Senate confirmation hearing, Ruth Bader Ginsburg famously said:

“The decision whether or not to bear a child is central to a woman's life, to her well-being and dignity. It is a decision she must make for herself. When Government controls that decision for her, she is being treated as less than a fully adult human responsible for her own choices.”

Restricting women’s access to birth control methods is discrimination on the basis of sex.  Sex discrimination is treating someone unfavorably because of their sex; it is cited both in terms of sexual harassment and economic opportunities. To understand access to birth control as a discriminatory issue it is essential to recognize the legal and economic repercussions. First, in regards to legality, women are only treated as independent persons under the law when they have the freedom to choose. Restricting women from this right is paramount to treating then as a lesser person under the law, unable or unqualified to make decisions for themselves. Second, birth control access is essential for protecting women’s economic opportunities. When women are able to regulate pregnancy on their own terms, the results are swift and definite. Birth control advances women’s economic status and educational opportunities. In the job market, young women have previously been relegated to low level jobs and deprived of promotions because companies assumed that they would leave within a few years to start families. Birth control has helped cull this trend and has allowed women the freedoms to choose when and if to start families. Indeed, more women are choosing to put off having children, many in favor of their job opportunities; today, a third of wage gains to women are a result of birth control access. Additionally, women’s educational opportunities are affected. Birth control is the most influential factor in women choosing to stay in college and is a large component of many women’s choice to attend in the first place: even with a bachelor’s degree, an estimated 30% increase of women in skilled jobs (medicine, law, dentistry) can be attributed to birth control access. The effects don’t merely stop with opportunities; oral contraceptives are associated with lessened risk of ovarian and endometrial cancers. However, it is important to mention that there are potential costs to taking oral contraceptives as well; namely, the associated increased risks in cervical (5% increased risk) and breast cancer (7% increased risks). Yet, both risks decline or disappear when use of oral contraceptives end.  Considering the evident benefits both to women and the economy it is important to investigate the political history of birth control to understand today’s regulations.

History

The history of birth control is riddled with inaccuracies. Since the beginning of humankind people have avoided unwanted pregnancy. However, many historic methods were very unsafe, if effective. In more modern times researchers have focused on safe and effective methods to prevent unwanted pregnancies. In the early 19th century many methods of birth control were available and easily accessible including condoms, diaphragms and douches. However, the American Medical Association began attacking these options in the 1850s. Anthony Comstock, in particular, crusaded against contraceptives and orchestrated the 1873 ban on sending contraceptives or distributing information through the mail. It was not until the 20th century that birth control increased in popularity, largely in part to the efforts of Margaret Sanger. She is attributed with coining the term “birth control” and started the American Birth Control League, later known as Planned Parenthood Federation of America. Sanger also lobbied biologist Gregory Pincus to develop a birth control pill. Pincus partnered with physician John Rock, a catholic doctor who educated people on sex and treated and tested infertility. Rock’s research on infertility paved the way for birth control pills that were later approved by the FDA in 1957. Regardless of the serious side effects of the first available version of the pill, by 1965 6.5 million American women were taking the pill. Only five years later, President Nixon signed Title X into law providing federal funding for family planning services. Other methods of birth control began taking off following this funding, most notably the IUD.

Other notable victories for birth control include the 2000 Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) decision on contraceptives. The EEOC ruled that employers must cover contraceptives costs if their health insurance plans also pay for a number of other products that enhance well-being.  Various legislations of this nature were already in effect in 28 states by the mid-1990s.  The right to contraceptives through health plans were solidified at a federal level in 2010 when President Obama signed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA). The ACA added contraceptives to the list of preventative services covered without patient co-payments. Ultimately, protections of this manner have been lessened by President Trump. Religious and moral opt-outs by companies are now affecting thousands of women’s access to birth control. The religious exemptions have a basis in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby in 2014. The case allowed Hobby Lobby to opt out of providing contraception under the Religious Freedoms Act. Justice Ginsburg wrote the dissenting opinion, stating that “the exemption sought by Hobby Lobby and Conestoga would…deny legions of women who do not hold their employers’ beliefs access to contraceptive coverage.” A similar case has recently come under scrutiny with the nomination of Judge Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court by Trump. During the senate confirmation hearing Judge Kavanaugh was asked about his decision in Priests for Life v. the U.S. Department of Human and Health Services. Judge Kavanaugh sided with the religious organization that argued against health plans covering birth control because IUDs and emergency contraception are “abortion inducing drugs.”  This term, used by Judge Kavanaugh is alarming to those who use and promote access to birth control. This turn of events and increasing restrictions for birth control are making access increasingly difficult, especially considering the price of attaining birth control.

Policies

Birth control varies in cost by type of contraceptive. The average cost of the pill is anywhere in between $0-$50 before insurance that covers birth control. To be able to get the pill, many states require a yearly doctor visit costing from $0-$350, again dependent on insurance. Many have rallied against the provision of having a doctor’s visit, especially considering that many women who take the pill have done so for years, and that women have been proven to be just as accurate at self-screening as a doctor. Additionally, there is a shortage of  OB/GYNs in the United states, making it difficult for women to get a prescription in the first place. Indeed, many parts of the world have easier access to oral contraception than America.

Photo from: http://ocsotc.org/world-map/

In response, seven states have made it possible to get the pill without a prescription. California, Oregon, Colorado, New Mexico, Hawaii, Maryland and Colorado all allow pharmacists to sell birth control over the counter. States considering legislation of this manner include Illinois, Minnesota, Missouri, and New Hampshire. The District of Columbia and Utah also recently authorized similar legislation, although they have yet to implement it. This ease of access will not only lower the cost of entry, but this free-market solution also has the potential to drive down costs.  Also, birth control via mail is more readily accessible. Companies like Nurx let women get a prescription and order birth control online. The prescription part of the service is mere health questionnaire that is later reviewed and submitted to a partner pharmacy. Nurx offers over 40 types of contraception and emergency contraception. This service is already available in 18 states and is particularly popular in “contraception deserts” where women lack access to health services. Other services offer different types of birth control and have their own methods of prescribing.

Apps are also going up in popularity. There are both apps for ordering birth control via mail or to a pharmacy, and apps that provide birth control advice. Natural Cycles is an app based on the temperature method. The temperature method is the tracking of a woman’s temperature to estimate her fertility on any given day. Natural Cycles tracks the temperature and alerts women to days when pregnancy is likely or unlikely to occur after unprotected sex. The method, if used properly, is 91% effective— the same as the pill. In August of 2018 the app was approved by the FDA.

Policy Recommendations

Birth control is a necessary medicine to the equal opportunity of women under the law and in regard to economic and educational opportunities. Birth control also provides women with needed protections from various ailments and conditions. Given the obvious need for access as seen in statistics mentioned earlier as well as contraception deserts and economic restrictions to obtaining birth control, as well as religious infringes, the United States needs to pass comprehensive legislation protecting and expanding women’s access to birth control. The approval by the FDA of Natural Cycles is an excellent start that will affect many women, yet women who chose other methods or need other methods to curtail personal conditions are not protected. Federal legislation should be pursued to include the following:

Allow pharmacies to write prescriptions

Allowing pharmacies to write birth control prescriptions ensures that women have an ease of access to vital medicine while still receiving a consultation. If a woman has any questions on birth control types or situations, she has a trained professional to ask who won’t cost her. This method is also necessary for contraception deserts where alternative medical professionals are not available.  

Allow prescriptions to be sent via mail

Contraception deserts tend to be in rural areas, away from many medical professionals and urban areas. Women in these areas must be allotted the same rights to birth control as women elsewhere, and thus should be able to revenue medication through the mail. Mail prescriptions have already been proven to be highly affected in these areas, and the opportunity should be afforded to all American women.

Restore protections to birth control under all health care plans irrespective of  the provider

Companies that refuse to provide their employees with access to birth control are not only overstepping their bounds as a capitalist business but are also imposing their beliefs on their employees. All Americans are free to pursue their own belief system and to not be coerced into a certain religion. The federal government should protect this right by imposing a level rule over health care: companies should not be able to opt out and disproportionately affect their employees. Furthermore, this precedent opens door to refusing such services as antidepressants and anesthesia, to name two medications opposed by various religions.

Conclusion

Birth control is a divisive topic in America, yet it helps both individual women and the enhancement of the American society and economy. Certain companies and states are making headway via online access with enormous success, and should be considered an ideal for the future, yet the government needs to act to apply these benefits across all 50 states. To best serve American citizens and to yield the highest possible results for the country, birth control should be made more accessible through health care protection and ease of access.

Strategic Political Inaction: The New Norm for the Republican Party

As the 2018 Congressional midterms approach, election observers will once again fixate on survey research and public polling figures. Of course, these factors are the easiest variables to measure within electoral politics, ironically becoming the one constant aspect of an unpredictable political climate. The 2018 midterms are overshadowed by President Trump’s publicly unpopular and controversial policies. Ultimately, the upcoming midterms are primed as a rebuke of the Trump administration.  Though the Republican Party retains a majority in both congressional chambers, many lawmakers remain silent or refuse to publicly condemn the Trump administration’s controversial policies. This behavior reveals an interesting dynamic in today’s highly polarized electoral politics: it is more advantageous for lawmakers to default to political inaction in unpredictable situations than to challenge party leaders - especially President Trump. This is the new norm within Republican Party politics.

The Trump administration ushered in an era hostile to establishment party politics. Among Republicans, many rank-and-file party members fall in line with the President, while those with substantial political capital, like Senator John McCain and former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, vocalize their dissent towards the party’s emerging anti-establishment and anti-elitist platform. As the Trump administration prioritizes issues like trade and immigration, policies championed by the establishment wing of the Republican Party, like health care and tax reform, are pursued haphazardly. This sudden political shift isolated Republican incumbents, ranging from moderate budget-balancers to mainstream conservatives, forcing many into retirement. The majority of Republican incumbents intent on running for reelection opt to remain silent and avoid taking controversial stances that would show opposition to President Trump.

Survey research and public polling indicate an up-and-coming rebuke of the Trump administration’s policies in the 2018 midterms. For Republicans, there has been widespread scrutiny regarding the accuracy of survey research and public polling as a result of the 2016 election. The risk and uncertainty in gauging President Trump’s grassroots support creates a difficult political situation for Republican lawmakers running for reelection. Even with generally high approval ratings, the President’s party typically loses seats in midterm House elections. President Trump’s historically low approval rating, with an average of 39% over his entire term, should incentivize Republican incumbents to distance themselves from the Trump administration, in order to expand majorities within their districts. Instead, Republican incumbents are strategically choosing to remain silent, refusing to publicly condemn the Trump administration. The perceived threat of public shaming through President Trump’s frequent attacks on members of his own party retains a hollow loyalty and political complacency.

Indeed, the Trump administration fosters a certain unpredictable political climate by pigeonholing Congressional Republicans into reluctant obedience. This revives ideas of risk and uncertainty associated with game theory politics in international relations.  For instance, the “madman theory,” coined in the 1960s by military strategist Herman Kahn, describes the act of making a threat credible by convincing an opponent of one’s own instability. Realist international theory often notes examples of this concept, specifically with world leaders like former President Richard Nixon and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev. The Trump administration has seemingly adopted this risk-based tactic both in international diplomacy and domestic politics, especially as it pertains to his campaign-style governance. For instance, Trump has created an atmosphere of uncertainty for those who publicly oppose his administration’s agenda by targeting lawmakers and journalists through Twitter, campaign rallies, and press briefings.  The effectiveness of this tactic has yet to be measured, it effectively subdues dissidents within the Republican Party.

Under the Trump administration, game theory and risk factors largely dictate behavior in Washington. President Trump’s abrasive behavior amplifies Washington’s uniquely polarized and partisan climate, creating an ambiguous pressure for key players to fall in line with Trump’s agenda. Given Trump’s background as a real estate tycoon and a reality TV star, it was expected that his administration would operate like a business or even a reality-television show. As it turns out, the Trump White House is essentially an unraveling prisoner’s dilemma, with factionalism perpetuating a standoff between self-interest and the goals of the administration. Empty administrative positions, sudden resignations, and the frequent leaks characterize the administration’s dog-eat-dog culture. Such a chaotic administration is unprecedented, which further complicates the policymaking process in a tense political climate.

As the 2018 midterms approach, the Trump administration’s influences on an already unique political climate cannot be dismissed. It is foreseeable that President Trump’s footstep in Washington will be one of acute partisan division. Fear of becoming a target of the administration and the unpredictability of President Trump’s core base is forcing Republican political actors into complacency. Democratic opponents are becoming more ideologically radical in seeking polarizing candidates rather than moderate ones. Though partisan interests are growing increasingly distinct, the Trump administration creates obstacles for those with intentions of returning to a predictable process of legislation and executive action. That said, Trump may have fulfilled his campaign promise of bringing an end to establishment politics, as risk and uncertainty hold Washington in a stall.

“A New Nationalism”: 1992 and the Birth of President Trump

“I understand good times and I understand bad times. I mean, why is a politician going to do a better job than I am?” – Donald J. Trump on NBC’s Meet The Press, October 1999

You could be forgiven for thinking that 2016 was the first time Donald Trump ran for President of the United States. Much was made about the Republican nominee’s lack of political experience, and his campaign certainly looked the part. The candidate regularly ignored the consensus and orders of Republican leadership, staffers were kicked out seemingly at random, and the campaign’s ground game consisted of little more than eye-catching rallies. Of course, Trump’s unorthodox campaign was ultimately enough to win him the presidency in violation of all political wisdom. But his campaign wasn’t quite as unprecedented as it’s made out to be, either.

During this election, surprisingly little attention was given to the first presidential campaign of Donald Trump–no, not this year’s, but his campaign for the Reform Party nomination in 2000. Granted, Trump’s first run for President wasn’t much to write home about, as his campaign lasted just four months and the Reform Party was little more than a footnote in the election. The eventual Reform Party nominee, Pat Buchanan, captured less than 1% of the national popular vote on Election Day. In the mythos built up around the 2000 presidential election, pundits and historians have been much more interested in debates over the Electoral College, Bush v. Gore, and Ralph Nader than the meager implications of the Reform Party.

But Pat Buchanan’s Reform campaign in 2000 was a remnant of a powerful wave of populism that swept the nation eight years earlier. Populist movements already had a proud tradition in American history, periodically resurging in national politics every couple of decades. The mid-nineteenth century witnessed the rise of the nativist Know-Nothing Party; the turn of the century saw the radical anti-bank campaigns of William Jennings Bryan; and in the 1960s, Alabama Governor George Wallace militantly defended Southern “states’ rights” and segregation. In the 1992 presidential election, another populist wave motivated by economic nationalism, cultural conservatism, and rabid anti-elitism propelled two fringe candidates to the front of the race and threatened to upend American political orthodoxy. Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign, though far more successful than the movements which came before it, simply picked up where the last wave of populism left off a quarter-century before.

1992: Pat Buchanan Takes On Washington

President George H. W. Bush was in poor shape entering the 1992 presidential election. Just a year earlier, President Bush had become a national hero due to his decisive leadership in the Operation Desert Storm campaign to drive Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait. But the President had seen his approval ratings plummet since their high of 89% in early 1991. Bush infamously recanted on his 1988 campaign promise–“Read my lips: no new taxes”–by signing on tax increases to address the climbing federal deficit, costing him dearly among voters who once admired his integrity and commitment to the middle-class. The nation was struggling to recover from a recession, leaving many in doubt of the President’s ability to lead the country through economic crisis. Bush was also developing a reputation as an out-of-touch elitist, egged on by incidents including a clip that appeared to show the President marveling at a mundane supermarket scanner. Incumbent presidents rarely face serious challenges for their party’s nomination, but in 1992 one candidate saw an opportunity to take on George Bush: Pat Buchanan, a right-wing commentator and former advisor and speechwriter to Presidents Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan.

Pat Buchanan’s campaign against President Bush rings awfully familiar to modern ears. Buchanan described his campaign as “America first,” claiming a need for “a new nationalism” that would defend the American worker first and foremost heading into the 21st century. Buchanan attacked free trade deals that the United States signed with other nations and decried manufacturing jobs being outsourced to Japan. He called for a shutdown of immigration to the United States to prevent American jobs from being stolen by foreign labor. He rejected George Bush’s conception of an American-lead “New World Order” after the fall of the Soviet Union, asserting that the United States should stay out of unnecessary foreign conflicts and focus on domestic issues. Buchanan also railed against Washington elites, admonishing President Bush’s lack of energy and “vision.” He called for a “law and order” response to the crime wave seizing the nation, drawing criticism for racially suggestive comments he’d made in the past. And he undertook what he later coined as the “culture war,” attacking multiculturalism and liberal sensibilities–an obvious precursor to Trump’s assault on political correctness, albeit based more in conservative Christianity than deliberate vulgarity.

Buchanan’s message hit home in New Hampshire, a state roiling from the recession and the first stop in the Republican primaries. Voters in the state, fraught with economic worries, were drawn to Pat Buchanan’s promise to restore American jobs and economic power. New Hampshire was also flooded with ads attacking President Bush’s dishonesty for caving on his “no new taxes” pledge, sinking his reputation in the state. Buchanan won 37% of the vote in the New Hampshire primaries, including over half of independents and most of the 30% of voters who said they wanted to “send a message to the White House.” Buchanan’s showing in New Hampshire was also his best; after giving President Bush a severe rattling in the first primary, Pat Buchanan’s campaign began to lose steam for the rest of the race. Buchanan won 22% of the total Republican primary vote to Bush’s 72.5%. The President emerged victorious in the Republican primary, but not without some serious fatigue. Later on at the Republican National Convention, Buchanan gave a concession speech touching on several familiar refrains. He assailed the “radical feminism” of future First Lady Hillary Clinton, criticized the Democratic Party for elitist pro-free trade policies, and called for Americans to “take back our country” in the wake of the Los Angeles riots, describing the city like a war zone.

Pat Buchanan was not the only challenger to the political establishment in 1992. Though many in the nation were looking for a change from President Bush, the Democratic nominee wasn’t proving to be a very appealing alternative. Emerging from a hard-fought and bitter primary, Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton was already battling an unsavory reputation due to his involvement in the Whitewater housing scheme and accusations of sexual impropriety from multiple women. Many Americans, dissatisfied with both major parties, found themselves supporting Ross Perot, an eccentric Texas billionaire and independent candidate who announced he would run for President on CNN’s Larry King Live in February. Much like Buchanan before him, Perot campaigned on a protectionist economic plan to restore American jobs and a strong response to the crime wave, all the while railing against Washington elites and government corruption.

Ross Perot began his national campaign with a huge wave of support, leading in several polls taken in early summer of 1992. But just as his lead was surging in July, Perot unexpectedly suspended his campaign due to a bizarre alleged blackmail plot involving his daughter’s upcoming wedding, only re-entering the race a few weeks before the general election. Despite his months-long absence from the race, Perot still won 19% of the popular vote, the best of any third-party candidate since Theodore Roosevelt’s Bull Moose run in 1912. Meanwhile, Bill Clinton was elected President with 43% of the popular vote, the smallest share by a winning president since Woodrow Wilson.

The Aftermath of 1992

Pat Buchanan wasn’t ready to rest after his 1992 defeat. He ran in the Republican primaries again in 1996, this time facing off against Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole. Though Buchanan had a better-organized campaign in his second run, he still couldn’t keep up with Senator Dole, capturing just 21% of the total primary vote in a distant second to Dole’s 59%. However, Buchanan’s second campaign found a stronger audience in the industrial Midwest, where he pulled 34% of the primary vote in both Michigan and Wisconsin. Blue-collar voters, concerned about their economic future, were drawn again to Buchanan’s rhetoric about an “America first” economy that would protect the working-class and sympathized with his distrust of immigration and multiculturalism. Though Buchanan was defeated for a second time, his campaign laid a blueprint for a populist candidate to court working-class voters in regions like the Rust Belt by appealing to economic nationalism and anti-elitism.

Ross Perot also ran again in 1996, this time on the Reform Party ticket after establishing the party himself a year earlier. But the less conservative and more reform-minded crowd that Perot captured four years ago had largely come around to President Clinton, who was by then quite popular nation-wide and easily leading the race. Perot was able to win 8% of the popular vote–not a bad performance for a third-party candidate in the greater scheme of history, but a marked drop from his much more successful 1992 campaign.

The populist wave began to seriously wane after 1996. President Bill Clinton’s popularity was only continuing to increase, and a period of immense economic growth left a satisfied country less skeptical of globalism and multiculturalism. The Reform Party would face a serious crisis of character in 2000; without Ross Perot’s magnetism to unify it, many feared the primary could become a free-for-all of fringe candidates in search of a party. Pat Buchanan eventually won the Reform Party nomination, but not without enduring a bizarre and dramatic primary which at points involved Donald Trump calling Buchanan a “Hitler lover”and a counter-convention organized by John Hagelin supporters following his primary loss. Buchanan attracted just a fraction of the voters he won over in the Republican primaries, ultimately winning 0.43% of the popular vote.

The radical populist movement appeared to die off after the Reform Party’s dismal performance in 2000. After Pat Buchanan’s challenges to the Republican Party in 1992 and 1996, following primaries would be largely dominated by mainstream conservatives like George W. Bush and John McCain. Ron Paul was probably the closest successor to Pat Buchanan, a staunch libertarian with a devoted cult following who entered the Republican primaries in 2008 and 2012, but he never posed much more than a headache to party leaders. The Tea Party movement, a hard-right grassroots movement motivated by economic conservatism and anti-establishment rhetoric, briefly threatened to challenge Republican orthodoxy during Barack Obama’s presidency. However, so-called “tea-party whisperers” like Paul Ryan and Marco Rubio were effective at bridging the gap between Republican leadership and the newest popular conservative movement, helping to preserve party order.

At least, until this year. After lying dormant for nearly a quarter-century, the radical populist movement once led by Pat Buchanan returned with a vengeance to elect Donald Trump President of the United States. Trump’s presidential campaign focused on many of the same issues that Buchanan did in 1992: economic protectionism, backlash against multiculturalism or “political correctness,” resentment of the Washington establishment. But what was different about Donald Trump in 2016 that allowed him to win the presidency where Buchanan failed twenty-four years before?

Why Trump Struck Lightning

Part of the answer can probably be chalked up to pure party structure. In 1992 and 1996, Pat Buchanan was facing off against the most powerful Republicans in the country, leaving him little path to challenge party leadership and win the nomination. In contrast, Trump entered a Republican primary where attention was split between over a dozen candidates, none of which held the blessing of party leaders. Trump could take advantage of sheer personality to bulldoze past his competitors, gaining enough momentum to be unstoppable once the primary field was worn down to something more manageable. And unlike Ross Perot, once Trump won the primary he had the force of the Republican Party behind him; he didn’t have to worry about winning over conservative partisans or convincing pragmatically minded voters to throw their vote to him.

But there’s more to Donald Trump’s victory over Hillary Clinton than just being in the right place at the right time. Public opinion has shifted dramatically against globalization and the economic elite in the twenty years since the heyday of NAFTA and free trade. Many Americans believe that the economy now caters to elite interests and has ceased serving the working-class, increasing the appeal of economic populists like Trump. This sense of economic alienation only grew after the 2008 financial crisis, where to many it appeared that the federal government went out of its way to protect Wall Street and wealthy corporations while ignoring the workers those institutions left behind. For all of her progressive rhetoric, Hillary Clinton couldn’t shake her reputation as a Washington insider unsympathetic to American workers. Donald Trump, in contrast, fed into the feelings of abandonment and resentment held by many working-class voters, especially in the industrial Midwest.

Immigration is also a more salient issue now than it was in the 1990s–the number of illegal immigrants in the United States now numbers at about 11 million, compared to just 4 million in 1992. Declining faith in government and backlash against Congress also make anti-elitism and promises to “drain the swamp,” in Trump’s words, much more appealing to the public. In a 1992 interview with Face the Nation’s Bob Scheiffer, Pat Buchanan claimed Americans wanted a decisive leader who would take on Washington in response to Scheiffer’s description of the 102nd Congress as “the most partisan session that [he] could remember.” Buchanan was right, but a few decades too early.

Pat Buchanan has not been silent on the similarities between his past campaigns and the modern-day campaign of Donald Trump. In a pre-election interview with New York Magazine, Buchanan said he was “delighted we were proven right,” celebrating the similarities between Trump’s message and his own vision from 1992. In another interview with the Washington Post’s Chris Cillizza, Buchanan claimed the Republican Party will eventually realign around the values of nationalism and protectionism which Trump brought to the forefront, regardless of the will of the party establishment. He also correctly predicted Trump’s winning strategy for the presidential race, calling for Trump to “go for victory in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan and Wisconsin … campaigning against the Clinton trade policies that de-industrialized Middle America.” Now that Trump is president-elect, Buchanan has expressed hopes that his ideological successor will engage in battle with Congress and refuse to back down on his radical campaign promises.

We don’t know yet if Buchanan’s prediction that Donald Trump will transform the Republican Party are true. The president-elect’s lack of political experience could make him vulnerable to manipulation from seasoned politicos, crippling his attempts to reshape the political culture of Washington. Attempts to predict Trump’s path during the election have a mixed record at best, however, casting doubt on any predictions of what a Trump Administration might look like. At any rate, the movement that propelled Donald Trump into the White House is far from new, building heavily on Pat Buchanan’s campaign from a quarter-century ago. The main difference between Trump and populists of the past is that the former was able to win a presidential election, overcoming efforts by political leaders from both sides to stem the tide of populism. Trump’s economic nationalism, backlash against political correctness, and militantly anti-elite rhetoric fed into feelings which had been fomenting among a significant portion of Americans for decades at the least. The political establishment will have to formulate a response to the Trump movement if they want to quash the populist uprising that seized the nation in 2016, or else pray that this bout of populism is just overstaying its welcome.

Trump, National Myths, and the Rise of Populism

It happened.

What was to me incredibly obvious a few months ago, that Donald Trump would be elected the 45th President of the United States, was a complete shock to most of the country and the world. Polls got it wrong. Experts got it wrong. GOP insiders got it wrong. American University’s Allan Lichtman got it right, but he seems to be about the only one.

Why were we so sure that Trump would lose?

How, in the wake of so many populist movements across the world, so many uprisings from the disenfranchised, so many new and growing platforms for the people who have felt their identities slipping away — whose pain and anger with the systems in place swelled until it was the only newsworthy story — could we dare to pretend for one moment that the United States would be immune to the power of a populist revolt? Our “exceptionalism” is not invulnerable to those who put truth to power, even when their truth is one we think we can cast aside as uninformed or irrational.

Frustration with the economy and leadership in a post-economic crisis world has manifested itself in various ways across the world. The so-called Arab Spring, which engulfed the Middle East and North Africa in 2010, resulted in revolutions of various types. Populist parties have won elections in Hungary, France, Greece, the Czech Republic, and Poland, among others. Jeremy Corbyn, a fringe radical in the UK Labour Party, rode a wave of voter discontent to take his party’s leadership. In Russia, Vladimir Putin’s government has turned to a nationalist foreign policy to distract a restive Russian middle class that has seen its quality of life decline. Britain voted to leave the European Union, arguing that the EU was restricting fair trade policies, strangling the UK’s choices on immigration, and threatening the British way of life.

The international uprisings founded on discontent, the increasingly momentous populist movements, and the newly-empowered, vocal, and active American right-wing community should have made us stop and seriously question the polls that told us we were safe from a Trump Presidency.

The ascent of Donald Trump in the 2016 US presidential election, anticipated by no one just a year earlier, is driven by a deep dissatisfaction with the “Washington establishment.” All of the recent developments across the world have a common thread—their supporters seek to revise the status quo at the expense of established political, economic, and cultural institutions. Trump’s appeal is no exception.

What makes a Trump supporter?

First, we must ask what makes an anti-establishment voter, since before people support Trump’s specific policies (or lack thereof, frankly) on immigration, healthcare, etc., they support the idea of Trump. The ideology driving an anti-establishment, populist voter is that a new leader who represents the people can dismantle the systems and institutions currently in place, which the voter believes have made their quality of life worse. Those who support anti-establishmentarianism want an honest candidate, unchained from the corrupt circle of elites.

Trump’s populism is a form of voter backlash against long-term social changes that threaten to dismantle the country, culture, and society that they know. In other words, many Trump supporters live in fear that the America that they know is slipping through their fingers, and that the cultural values that they define as “American” are shifting, causing them to feel apprehensive of the future and overwhelmed with uncertainty of their place and role in the country. The fear of being marginalized and left behind causes what Jennifer Mitzen calls ontological insecurity. This refers to a person’s sense of “being” in the world; an ontologically insecure person does not have a stable sense of self and place. This threat against one’s identity creates a difficulty to act and maintain a steady self-conception. In contrast, the ontologically secure person has an unquestioned sense of self and is confident of his or her place in the world in relation to other people.

While all anti-establishment movements are based on grievances and all seek to revise traditional political and social institutions, they disagree on what those grievances and institutions are, causing a split in anti-establishment movements. Bernie Sanders was an anti-establishment candidate, but could not be more unlike Trump in his political beliefs. Sanders supporters absolutely fit the mold of disenfranchised, angry voter that I just outlined in regard to Trump supporters: they wanted to dismantle the institutions (i.e. Wall Street, NAFTA) and systems (i.e. structural racism, sexism, patriarchy) in place that make the quality of life worse, and wanted an honest candidate who was “above” the politics of the political world. We can see, then, that Sanders and Trump supporters initially agree ideologically, yet they place blame on extremely different institutions and systems. Why would people who, fundamentally, share so many of the same complaints about the status quo back leaders with two very different versions of a better future?

I contend that the answer lies in one’s national Origin Story.

If we accept Role Theory, which states that people’s perceptions of their place in society shape their actions and their expectations for the actions of others, then we can start to move toward an understanding of the Sanders/Trump split in modern American populist movements. The national role is one subset of Role Theory. Individuals use their interpretations of national role to set expectations for their in-group and out-groups. In other words, people rely on their answer to the questions “who are we?” and “what is our mission?” to develop preferences over political outcomes. In this sense, national role can co-constitute a set of very specific policy preferences for a voter.

If one’s view of the national role shapes one’s policy preferences, we should be able to see distinct correlations between certain policy preferences and certain perceptions of the national role. It’s easy to put an empirical measure on policy preferences; support for a particular political party or candidate is perhaps the most obvious. But the idea of national identity is very nebulous, so measuring a person’s perceptions of the national role is difficult. Besides just asking, “what do we do?” there are alternate ways to observe an individual’s view of national role. This is where the national origin story comes in.

The origin story of America essentially answers when and why America became the America it is today. The story will change from person to person, and is dependent on a person’s view of the country, of himself, and how he constructs his own identity. Thus, the origin story fits the national role. Where you come from defines who you are and what you do. So, if people have different ideas about what we do, it should trace back to different Origin Stories. I posit that the national origin story is a salient marker of identity that can be used to distinguish between varying conceptions of nation and national role.

Divergent interpretations of the national role (measured through one’s origin story of America) are responsible for the split between anti-establishment movements based on pocketbook grievances and those focused on nationalistic and xenophobic grievances. If I have constructed my identity based on a nation that begins to undergo radical social change, my identity will be shaken. If I believe America to be a white, Christian, English-speaking, conservative country, an influx of immigrants, the enactment of liberal social policies, or the advancement of women, LGBTQ, or non-Christian peoples will shake my perception of my country. For people who base their own sense of self on their interpretation of the country, changes like these can cause ontological insecurity.

In August, I put these theories to the test. After running statistical (regression and comparative) analyses on 500 survey responses, with 240 of these coming from Trump and Sanders supporters, I have come to the conclusion that origin story is a better predictor of political tendencies than previously understood. This means that how a person views America’s origin (when did America become America?) can shed light on whom he or she will vote for. Thus, the origin story can be seen as a predictor of voter behavior.

The survey collected respondents’ demographics, their first choice for President in 2016, xenophobic indicator questions, and gave three origin stories and asked them to rate how warmly they felt toward the stories on a scale from 0-100. The stories, as they appeared on the survey, are written below.

“America came into its true character after defeating the Germans and the Japanese in the second Great War. During this time, each U.S. state and territory unified to contribute to the war effort, leading to American agricultural and industrial supremacy. Our victory after WWII established international respect and honor for American citizens, our government, and our military, proved our unity as a nation, and showcased the power and importance of the United States of America.”

“America came into its true character during the Civil Rights Movement. In 1965, African-Americans and their allies worked through multiple channels to compel the American government to recognize that all Americans, regardless of the color of their skin, deserve equal protection under the law.”

“America came into its true character when the pilgrims landed on Plymouth Rock. The pilgrims and other early American settlers were people who were fleeing the horrors of the old world, where individuals could not be free. In the New World, these young Americans created a nation based on liberty and freedom.”

Each of the three stories presented a distinct character of American identity and told a brief story of when America came into its “true character.” The story themes are based on David Bell Mislan’s previous work on identity formation, which recognized them as significant categories. The first story reflected an American origin based on power, unity, military might, international prestige, and importance. I call this story the Exceptional Story. The second story, the Legal Story, emphasized equality, opportunity, hard work, and equal protection under the law. The third story, the Enlightened Story, underscored an America that was founded on liberty, freedom, and progress away from the European “old world.”

While I originally thought that Trump supporters would overwhelmingly choose the Exceptional Story, the table below reveals the results that, upon reflection, make a lot of sense.

Trump supporters did not have a clear winner when asked to choose from three American Origin Stories; all three were almost equally chosen, and twice as many Trump supporters ranked a combination of stories equally as compared to Sanders supporters, as can be seen in the graph below.

This tells us that there is not one conception of American origin that Trump supporters follow. There is no guiding story that enlightens the average Trump supporter about who we are, what we do, and what our mission is, as Americans. This tells us a few things about Trump’s win: first, that his vague and vacillating policies were probably more of a strong suit than we thought. By refusing to take firm stances and stick with them, and instead opting to allude to ideas or simply promise to “Make America Great Again,” Trump took advantage of the ontologically insecure voter and allowed him to employ whatever conception of the national role he liked.

Sanders, in contrast, very clearly symbolized one particular national role ideology, causing him to gain a cult-like following from those who shared his same view of the country’s national role. The second take-away from this data is that Trump’s supporters possess a wide-range of origin stories and are often unsure of their own opinion of the national role. This means that for a Trump supporter, one conception of national identity might be more or less salient depending national or global current events, or how he or she is feeling about their own personal life during any given time. Sanders supporters proved confident in their Legal Origin Story of America, while Trump supporters did not all align in their beliefs and often chose more than one origin story. This could mean that Trump supporters are more easily convinced of new national roles or are more easily manipulated through messaging or false news, since they do not have a sturdy and steadfast perception of identity through which to view the world.

Trump tapped into the wave of international unrest of the establishment and of the “other,” a combination that fed perfectly into a disenfranchised, ontologically insecure voter. There is a correlation between one’s conceptions of the national role and the ability to be swayed by xenophobic ideologies. If a voter possesses ontological security, he is less likely to be convinced that groups, individuals, or ways of life outside of his own social network are an existential threat to his own safety, wellbeing, or way of life. Sanders supporters are nestled in this camp, since the Legal Story of American Origin emphasizes equality and community under the law. They feel that America did not really become America until all of its citizens were equal under the law. Thus, a Trumpian view of immigration does not fit their national narrative, because immigrants are fundamental to the understanding of America under the Legal Story framework. If a voter does not posses ontological security, he is more easily convinced that others are to blame for his own discontent.

So, it happened. In January, Donald Trump will be inaugurated. Shock, fear, anger – many Americans have felt it all since November 8th. What we need to remember, though, is that Trump supporters should not be cast aside as idiotic, uneducated, or almost anything else that prominent media outlets have called them. Yes, their political preferences might be racist, xenophobic, sexist, etc., and this should not be dismissed. But these preferences are based on deep seeded conceptions of national and personal identity, national role, and American origin. This, unfortunately, means that until we can teach “who we are” and “what we do” in a way that allows all Americans to feel ontologically secure in a globalizing world, we’re likely to see Trump-like nationalism live on well into the future.

This article presents a new angle from a full research paper completed September 2016 on xenophobia and anti-establishmentarianism, which was co-authored by Emily Dalgo and Dr. David Bell Mislan and funded by the AU Summer Scholars Research Fellowship.

What’s Wrong with Liberty?

Or, as a former professor of mine phrased it less presumptively, is anything wrong with liberty? Specifically, I should ask what—if anything—is wrong with the libertarian conception of justice. Robert Nozick’s emblematic libertarian argument in Anarchy, State, and Utopia posits liberty as a sure-fire means of achieving justice. Nozick ultimately argues for a “minimal state” that does not infringe on individual property rights, thereby protecting its citizens’ liberty as a result. However, Nozick assumes that liberty results primarily, if not exclusively, from individual action. In excluding consideration of our liberties which depend on others’ actions for their fulfilment, Nozick wrongly conceives of the state as the principal violator of people’s freedoms. Rather, the state can also enable people to be freer than they would otherwise be without its influence.

In order to arrive at his conclusion, Nozick draws on classical state of nature theory. In the state of nature, Nozick suggests that “several different protective associations or companies” arise in order to enforce individuals’ rights. With the help of an invisible hand, a dominant protective association enters into the business of selling its protective services, crowding out all other competitors and becoming what he calls the minimal state. The minimal state is that protective association which retains a monopoly on the legitimate use of force and imposes taxes only to the extent required to maintain the infrastructure that prohibits individuals’ from limiting the freedoms of other individuals. In other words, the minimal state is justified in taxing its citizens at the lowest rate that will fund a military, police, courts, and other similar such institutions.

But how are individuals justified in owning and making decisions about their property? Philosopher Will Kymlicka identifies three explanations for this in Nozick’s theory. First is the principle of transfer, where individuals are allowed to freely transfer whatever they acquire legitimately. Second is the principle of just initial acquisition, which accounts for how people originally come to own things. Third is the principle of the rectification of justice, dealing with the things that may have been unjustly acquired or transferred. In essence, these principles amount to the following: as long as individuals acquire goods justly in society, then Nozick’s minimal state would be unjustified in coercively redistributing goods from some people to others. If Jordan stole Pamela’s blowtorch, then Jordan did not acquire that blowtorch legitimately and therefore has no legal right to own it, let alone decide what to do with it. Thus, the minimal state has a right to confiscate Pamela’s blowtorch and return it to her using the bare amount of force necessary to do so.

Nozick’s theory relies, moreover, on the primacy of individuals’ rights as Kantian self-owners that represent ends in themselves. Individuals are said to be “inviolable” because they possess existences independent of other people. According to Nozick, there is no social entity that undergoes sacrifice for its own good; there are only people within the bounds of the state. Therefore, because there are “only individual people, different individual people,” each person is entitled to his or her individual rights, which may not be sacrificed as means for another person’s ends. Kymlicka suggests that, while the premise that individuals are ends in themselves is valid, Nozick’s property-ownership conclusion does not necessarily follow. Instead, Kymlicka argues that the goods that result from the exercise of self-owned powers cannot adequately be traced to a reliable position whereby they were initially acquired legitimately, thus violating either the premise that individuals are self-owners, or that individuals legitimately owning property means they necessarily obtained that property legitimately in the first place. For instance, land was—for the most part—initially appropriated by force. Generals of olden times, bullies, bandits, barbarians, and so on raided, pillaged, and stole land from people long ago. Thus the assumption that buying land means that that land was initially acquired legitimately does not hold. One could easily claim that, if Alex legitimately bought a plot of land that was stolen from John’s family long ago, then John’s descendants also deserve that land. In other words, any transfer of that land is illegitimate to some degree since that land was not acquired legitimately in the first place. So, true enough that individuals are ends in themselves, but that does not imply their absolute right as property owners.

At least two kinds of freedom constitute liberty, although Nozick accounts for only one. Liberty consists of simple freedoms (what Nozick’s conceptualizes as the entirety of liberty) and complex freedoms. Simple freedoms are, essentially, the freedoms people enjoy from others’ restraint on their actions. In other words, I can freely study in the library because no one stops me from doing so. But liberty also consists of a series of complex freedoms that depend on the actions of other people for them to take shape in the real world. I am free to study in the library not just because no one stops me, but also because someone built the library in the first place. As consisting of both simple and complex freedoms, liberty results from both top-down constraints such as society’s laws and rules, as well as society’s bottom-up structures and public works.

Nozick assumes that liberty only results from top-down, simple freedoms. Take his argument for minimal taxation, for example. According to Nozick, just uses of tax revenue include maintaining the police to prevent against theft, a judicial system to enforce contracts, a military to protect the state’s external borders, and so on, because these uses protect individuals from other people’s attempts to restrain their freedom to transfer their (supposedly legitimately acquired) property as they see fit. In contrast, government expenditures on public works like roads, hospitals, or schools “involve coercive taxation of some people against their will.” Nozick famously gives the example of Wilt Chamberlain to illustrate how, as long as an individual acquires his or her property legitimately, the state is unjustified in anything more than minimal taxation.

Wilt Chamberlain’s contract pays him twenty-five cents for every ticket sold in a home game. Chamberlain, in Nozick’s example, ends up with a hypothetical $250,000 after the season. Nozick argues that any tax on Chamberlain’s income unjustly violates his absolute property rights if it pays for anything except the infrastructure required for protecting others from stealing Chamberlain’s money, or otherwise causing him to transfer it to another person against his will. However, Chamberlain’s freedom to spend his income however he deems fit does not just depend on the state minding its own business; it depends on fans paying tickets to come see him play. Fans who, presumably, drove to games on government-funded roads, or became fans by playing varsity basketball while attending government-funded high schools. Without Nozick’s so-called “coercive” taxation, Chamberlain’s freedom to spend his income is contingent upon market forces—as opposed to state protection—to generate a fan-base through private high schools’ basketball teams and private toll roads that bring people to the stadium. Whether or not the private market would build enough roads and high schools to supplement Chamberlain’s hypothetically lost income through “coercive” taxation is unexplored here, though my hunch is that it is highly unlikely. What I believe confidently, though, is that when the model of liberty consists of both simple and complex freedoms, people’s ability to acquire and transfer wealth freely expands greatly.

Furthermore, in conceptualizing liberty merely as a set of simple freedoms, Nozick glosses over violations of liberty by individual market actors and downplays the validity of people’s complex freedoms. Consider Kymlicka’s example of hypothetical individuals Ben and Amy’s land-owning relationship, which he gives in the context of Nozick’s Lockean proviso. (Nozick’s Lockean proviso states that people can legitimately acquire property rights over a disproportionate share of the world’s material resources as long as no one is left worse off.)

Ben and Amy work a plot of land collectively. Amy, however, appropriates so much of the land that Ben can no longer live off the crops produced by his share. Thus, Ben comes to rely on Amy to provide a wage to compensate him for working a portion of the land for her. This satisfies Nozick’s Lockean proviso because both Ben’s and Amy’s shares of the land’s crop increases through the division of labor, though his increases less than hers. Despite the widening inequality, no one is worse off than they were before. For Nozick, the logical conclusion of the Lockean proviso stipulates a free market of labor and capital in order to protect both individuals’ private property rights. Nozick’s free market conclusion assumes the state to be the primary violator of individual property rights as Amy, a private market actor, fairly compensates Ben through consensual wage labor. According to Nozick, if the state were to regulate either Ben’s ability to contract with Amy or Amy’s willingness to provide a minimum wage, this would infringe upon both parties’ absolute property rights. However, by emphasizing the state’s violation of property rights, Nozick ignores Amy’s illegitimate appropriation of Ben’s land rights. Moreover, Nozick takes Ben’s consent to the wage-labor arrangement as given. More likely, Ben is left with two options: sign the contract and take Amy’s buy-out, or die of starvation since he has no land upon which to grow crops, nor any money to buy food—hardly indicative of freely given consent. In terms of simple freedoms, Nozick’s justification of free market capitalism only protects against violations of freedom committed by the state, not violations that occur amongst individual market actors.

In addition to this tacit legitimation of simple freedom violations by individuals, Nozick’s theory endangers complex freedoms. In the libertarian view, the minimal state is unjustified in coercively taxing citizens in order to redistribute wealth from rich people to poor people. As in Nozick’s Wilt Chamberlain example, individuals’ self-ownership leads to ownership over their talents and, by extension, the fruits of their labor. However, individuals only own themselves to the extent that their liberty depends on simple freedoms. Individuals’ freedom also depends more or less equally on the actions of others. Chamberlain’s income depends on publicly funded roads that brought fans to his games. Therefore, the taxation required to build public infrastructure contributes to Chamberlain’s ability to make money rather than detracts from it.

If we are to accept Nozick’s view that the state is never justified in taxing people for things like roads, then we have to accept that our complex freedoms cannot be guaranteed, but only hoped for. Simply put, the endangerment of complex freedoms represents the legitimation of non-minimal state in contrast to libertarians’ viewpoint. Humans’ lives depend on certain freedoms that depend in turn on someone to provide them, but which have no guarantor in a totally free market. For example, a family living in northern Alaska depends on heating, which requires someone (whether the government or an energy company or whomever) to take active steps to ensure that the family’s need is fulfilled. If Chamberlain plays a basketball game in northern Alaska, then the family’s freedom to see his performance relies on their not freezing to death. If an energy company charges a higher price because they cornered the market on heating in northern Alaska, then individuals face potential hypothermia and cannot freely see Chamberlain play, let alone live. Not to mention that now, because the family’s lack of heating limits their ability to see Chamberlain play, Chamberlain’s own freedom to spend his money is limited as he has just lost paying customers. Ultimately, the libertarian reliance on simple freedoms undermines their own premise that the state should not intervene in the individual transfer of property lest it infringe upon such freedoms—without the state, both our simple and complex freedoms may be in jeopardy in an unregulated free market.

Nozick, as a libertarian, privileges simple freedoms and private property rights in a free market system unregulated by a minimal state. People who hold the preponderance of wealth and influence in society are justified so long as they acquired both honestly. Therefore, government regulation, including things like coercive taxation, baseline health and safety standards, or publicly funded infrastructure unjustifiably forces the wealthy to give their property to those in society who have supposedly not earned their fair share. However, simple freedoms make up only one element of liberty, with complex freedoms making up another. Ironically, libertarians ignore at least half of what liberty means.

By claiming that complex freedoms violate individual property rights, libertarians apologize for a system that denies some members of society the freedom to attain even simple freedoms. Libertarian philosophy crucially implies a system where rights and freedoms founded on the rational, self-interested part of humanity triumph, while those founded on empathy and altruism enter into consideration as distinctly subordinate. Under libertarian assumptions, we remain subject to a narrow and dangerous view of freedom predicated on our baser instincts towards individual self-interest. In modern society, these primal instincts no longer hold as we have developed empathy and recognized our role in promoting others’ liberty.

And who’s gonna pay for it? The Costs of Trump’s Anti-Mexican Platform

Among large swaths of Republican voters, it is a truth universally acknowledged that the next President of the United States must enhance border security between the US and Mexico to keep illegal immigrants from entering the country and to protect American jobs. Perhaps the most pervasive of these policy proposals is Donald Trump’s monolithic response to immigration control: we’re gonna build a wall, and Mexico’s gonna pay for it. While crowds of supporters enthusiastically echo Trump’s wall demands at his rallies, the spread of their anti-Mexican rhetoric threatens US foreign relations with its neighbor, and consequently, threatens the future of the US economy and national security.

Though the specifics of his plan remain unclear, Trump asserts that his $10 million wall, measuring around 35 feet tall (and ‘it just got ten feet higher’) would impede the flow of alleged criminal activity from Mexico to the United States. With the Patriot Act serving as his legal framework, Trump claims he has the ‘moral high ground’ to impose stricter border regulation at Mexico’s expense; not only does Mexico’s ‘unfair subsidy behavior’ threaten US jobs, Mexico has an obligation to offset the “extraordinary daily cost of this criminal activity, including the cost of trials and incarcerations.”

Citing the US’s powerful economy and political dominance as coercive tools, Trump assures that Mexico will pay for the cost of a border wall “in one form or another,” through economic sanctions, trade tariffs, and/or greater trade regulation. According to the platform on Trump’s campaign website, “Mexico needs access to our markets much more than the reverse, so we have all the leverage and will win the negotiation.” As Trump pushes his characterization of Mexico as a country of “cunning” criminals who take advantage of the US’s economy, he builds an isolationist discourse that ignores the value of our international relations and paints the US as a self-sufficient hegemon that can bully its neighbors into any position that suits it.

In response, however, past and present Mexican leaders have reassured their constituents that Mexico will not bend so easily to Trump’s will. In an interview with Excelsior, current Mexican President, Peña Nieto, likened Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric to the fascist mechanisms of Mussolini and Hitler, warning that his unrealistic political strategy presents “simple solutions to problems that, of course, are not so easily solved.” Acknowledging that trade relations with the US are vital to the Mexican economy, Peña Nieto expressed hope to continue cooperation with the future president, whoever he or she may be. Nonetheless, the Mexican government firmly maintains that Trump’s border wall will not be constructed with any support, financial or otherwise, from Mexico.

Regardless of the feasibility of Trump’s prospective wall, his anti-Mexico platform gravely threatens the US’s relationship with an important regional ally. The North American Free Trade Agreement, NAFTA, has been instrumental in promoting economic growth and development throughout Mexico, Canada, and the US. Since its beginnings in 1994, NAFTA has strengthened interactions between the US and its neighbors; through the arrangement’s framework, the three nations have instituted mechanisms to facilitate intergovernmental relations and forums for dispute resolution. Though the tripartisan trade agreement is entrenched with asymmetrical power divisions between the three partners – as studies demonstrate the US influencing policy decisions in Canada and Mexico without the reverse occurring – the United States economy has enjoyed significant benefits from NAFTA, and a fair amount of its success is pinned to the agreement’s success.

Currently, Mexico is the US’s third largest goods trading partner, the second largest export market, and third largest supplier of goods imports – in 2015, total goods traded between the two nations amounted to $531 billion. Moreover, the Department of Commerce estimates US goods and services to Mexico supported 1.1 million American jobs in 2014. Since creating stronger economic ties with the United States, Mexico’s economy has transformed into a new level of competitiveness. While the Mexican economy felt some pressure from lowered oil prices and reduced production, its expansion of exports to the United States encouraged economic growth in 2015. Projections of Mexico’s financial future also appear positive; if Mexico continues to develop close economic relations with the US, the World Bank forecasts a gradual acceleration of growth in coming years.

Furthermore, communities along the US-Mexico border comprise the fourth largest economy in the world, and in order to encourage greater development in this region both governments must coordinate their local and national economic policies. To build upon the region’s strengths, US perceptions of the border area must transform to recognize its potential as an asset rather than a problem. Successful interaction on either side demands a more developed cross border infrastructure – not to divide and separate, but to create more windows for international exchange. By continuing to support Mexico’s growth and development, the US helps make North America more competitive on a global scale, which in turn benefits its own economic situation. Despite Trump’s populist rhetoric, investments from the US to Mexico are more than one-sided aid packages – the US stands to benefit from stronger relations with its southern neighbor.

Additionally, the existing economic ties between the two countries have helped reinforce their diplomatic relationship, especially in addressing similar security concerns like drug related violence and illegal immigration. Through programs like the Merida project, the US has assisted the Mexican government scrutinize law enforcement and institutionalize rule of law south of the border. While this program enjoyed limited successes, it serves as a starting point for further cooperation in the fight against drug related violence. In her article, US and Mexican Cooperation: The Merida Initiative and Drug Trafficking, Yasemin Tenkin argues the US could more effectively eradicate root causes of the illicit drug trade and drug related violence by investing further in Mexico’s economy, targeting poverty and unemployment. To address these security concerns, the US’s conceptualization of Mexico must shift to recognize it as a permanent, strategic partnership. Contrarily, Trump’s isolationist discourse suggests the US renounce its links to Mexico, questioning the benefits the US receives from the asymmetrical relationship.

The increasingly populist tone of bilateral relations between the US and Mexico has led to tension in the past decade, occasionally putting a strain on diplomatic decision-making; as such, a Donald Trump presidency would place bilateral relations between the two nations at risk of severe deterioration. From Trump’s perspective, the US enjoys a hegemonic status in the sphere of foreign affairs, and may wield its political power for leverage in its international relations. What Trump’s rhetoric fails to recognize, though, is that his brand of isolationism is ineffective in today’s globalized reality. In order to achieve progress in shared policy areas such as immigration reform or weakening the drug trade system, the US must maintain a working partnership with Mexico. If Trump were to stifle the Mexican economy’s growth and cut off remittances, as he proposes, the consequential loss of income for Mexico’s vulnerable population would provide prospective immigrants an increased incentive to seek better opportunities in the US; by ignoring the role of American consumers in perpetuating the influx of illicit drugs, and failing to coordinate policy with Mexico, the US can do little to address long term solutions to cross border dealings.

By promoting a characterization of Mexico as a dependent, underdeveloped, and violent country, Trump and his supporters disregard the value of Mexico’s growing economy, and hence fail to recognize the benefits of the US’s partnership with Mexico. Without cooperation and coordination between the two countries, the US would suffer the loss of a significant trade partner and destroy myriad opportunities for economic growth and employment, weakening North American competitiveness in the global market. In regards to national security, Trump’s failure to recognize Mexico’s potential as a cooperative, problem solving partner rather than the source of conflict weakens the US’s ability to create far-reaching policy solutions to stabilize the border. So who’s gonna pay for that wall, Mr. Trump? Looking at the likely economic and political future of a US without strong bilateral relations with Mexico, it looks like the United States stand to bear more costs than the presidential hopeful may have foreseen.

To Salute or to Burn: The Battle Over Flag Desecration did not End with Texas v. Johnson

“You are a fucking scumbag traitor piece of fucking trash.” In Missouri Donald Trump supporters shout at flag stomping Anti-Trump protesters. Violence erupts as more than 200 people take part in a standoff at the very same Trump rally. Another rally in Wisconsin includes members of the “Fuck Your Flag Tour” protesting against racial discrimination while stomping on an American flag.

Flag desecration and in particular flag burning is not a new controversy. While the act o flag desecration has been declared legal and a legitimate form of free speech by the United States Supreme Court; controversy and emotions are building over the issue again. The views of our potential candidates on this sensitive issue may be worthy of more discussion given the huge impact on our society another era division over this issue would cause.

History

In 1984 a man named Gregory Lee Johnson protested the policies of Ronald Reagan by burning an American flag outside of the Republican National Convention in Dallas. His conviction for the act was brought to the Supreme Court. Here in Texas v. Johnson (491 U.S. 397), the Court decided that “flag burning constitutes a form of ‘symbolic speech’ that is protected by the First Amendment.” The ruling was the first to protect flag desecration based on the freedom of speech. Writing for the dissent Justice Stevens argued that the government had a state interest in limiting the right to desecrate the flag due to the flag’s unique status in the United States.

When congress tried to circumvent the Johnson ruling with the passage of the Flag Protection Act the decision was upheld in United States v. Eichman (496 U.S. 310). After this ruling there were various attempted to work around the ruling by congressional statute and state laws, there were also attempts to overrule the ruling through a constitutional amendment.

Current Presidential Candidates

The most recent political battle over this issue was in 2005 and 2006 with a flag desecration bill (in 2005) and constitutional amendment (in 2006) introduced in Congress. The Flag Protection Act of 2005 was cosponsored by Hilary Clinton. This piece of legislation was different from past bills in that it sought to punish flag desecration if it were to incite violence. The New York Times equates the bill with, “attempt[ing] to equate flag-burning with cross-burning, which the Supreme Court, in a sensible and carefully considered 2003 decision, said could be prosecuted under certain circumstances as a violation of civil rights law.  A middle ground between those who want to keep flag desecration legalized and those who wish to completely forbid it under all circumstances regardless of consequences or content. Both Democratic candidates, Sanders and Clinton voted no on the 2006 Amendment due to its lack of clarity and broad nature. However, Clinton did endorse a counter measure similar to her 2005 bill to replace the 2006 Amendment.

Relevance

With flag desecration issues and events popping up more frequently in this present election the votes of the past could become more relevant than the candidates would believe. Donald Trump has stated that he believes that flag desecration should be illegal and events at his rallies have shown that violence can result when people on opposite ends of this spectrum confront each other. The candidates may need to confront this issue head on at some point in the future.

The most dangerous part of this issue aside from the violence is the near 50/50 divide among the public. A Gallup poll asked for the public’s opinion on the issue in 2006 while the Flag Desecration Amendment was being discussed. The poll asked two questions, one that gave some information about the issue and the other that was more specific, the polls fluctuated the majority on each side of the issue but still hovered around 50/50. With the public so sharply divided on the issue any conflict resulting from it would be hard to resolve. Even more difficult would be to amend the constitution in favor of those rallying against flag desecration.

This particular election has seen an unusual degree of polarization. American’s have seen what they perceive to be their own American values questioned. The foundation of the system of our democracy and electoral system has been questioned by Trump through criticisms of the nomination process. Sanders has brought an economic ideology to the table that many Americans are uncomfortable with in the form of Democratic Socialism. Donald Trump has also touched nerves with his comments on race, women, and immigration. These clashes of values are extremely volatile. The question of flag desecration is even more toxic in this environment as America is redefining its image. The American flag does not stand for the same principles for everyone anymore and these polarizing points of view of America make this a nasty time for such a dangerous discussion.

The Candidates and Latin America: Policy in our "Backyard"

Ahead of the 2016 presidential election, questions on candidates’ foreign policy positions have mainly focused on the Middle East, with tough debates surrounding ISIS, the Iran nuclear deal, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Second and third in line for candidates’ foreign policy concerns seem to be the growing economic influence of China and Russia’s political aggression. Although hailed as the United States’ “back yard,” Latin America is merely a blip on the foreign policy radar this election season. However, three issues regarding Latin America have been widely discussed by most (if not all) campaigns: Immigration reform, normalizing diplomatic relations with Cuba, and NAFTA. The candidates’ stances on the issues vary, not only between political parties but within them as well.  

Immigration

With an estimated 11 million undocumented people living in the U.S., immigration is no small issue. The two parties are vehemently divided on the issue of immigration reform. Democrats often promote a “pathway to citizenship,” while Republicans tend to favor securitization of the (southern) border.

As the son of a migrant from Poland, Bernie Sanders proposes an immigration policy that emphasizes justice and human rights to keep families together and protect workers from exploitation. He plans to build on the Obama Administration’s immigration reforms by expanding the DACA and DAPA programs. Sanders will not wait for Congress to act, instead he has said he will take executive action within the first 100 days of his administration. Sanders specifically addresses the flow of unaccompanied child migrants, primarily from the Northern Triangle – Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras. While it reached a peak in 2014, the U.S. is still dealing with the repercussions of the massive influx of tens of thousands of unaccompanied children. Sanders condemns the deportation of these children, amid reports that children who are returned to their home countries are being killed by the same gang-incited violence they fled.

Hillary Clinton also supports comprehensive immigration reform. Her proposed immigration plan includes creating a pathway to citizenship, closing family and private detention centers, and upholding President Obama’s previous executive orders on immigration reform. Clinton also plans to provide deportation relief for DREAMers, DAPA candidates, and to “extend those actions to additional persons with sympathetic cases.” As a senator, she cosponsored the Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act. Although Clinton mainly addresses the legal aspects of immigration reform, she also emphasizes that immigration is a “family issue” and wants to work to keep law-abiding immigrant families together.  

The current GOP front-runner, Donald Trump, proposes the radical and improbable solution of building a wall to seal the border with Mexico. Trump also plans to make Mexico pay for it, by refusing to process remittances from relatives and friends in the U.S. Trump states, “ It's an easy decision for Mexico: make a one-time payment of $5-10 billion to ensure that $24 billion continues to flow into their country year after year.” According to experts, the proposed 2,000-mile wall would be the largest infrastructure project in the U.S. since President Eisenhower’s highway program. While Trump estimates the cost at about $10 billion, it could actually cost up to $25 billion and would take until the end of his first term to complete. It is also unclear if it is feasible or even legal to halt remittances. To make matters worse, Trump has also come under fire for racist comments, equating Mexican immigrants with gang members, drug traffickers, and rapists.

In keeping with reductionist immigration reform, Ted Cruz states on his campaign website that “he will stop illegal immigration.” Not only that, but he also plans to build a wall across the southern border, as well as triple border security, and implement a biometric tracking system. Although his campaign does not delve into details, a biometric tracking system would likely include collecting the fingerprints of every foreigner who entered or exited the country. Congress passed a biometric tracking bill shortly after 9/11, but the Department of Homeland Security has maintained that the program is too costly and impractical. A preliminary study found that it would cost up to $6.4 billion to install the system just in all air and seaports, which would not even track the 79% of migrants who enter the U.S. over land.

The more center-leaning GOP candidate, John Kasich, fails to mention immigration on his campaign website. Even more vexing, Kasich has changed his position several times, even within the campaign season. In June 2015, he stated at an Iowa forum that undocumented immigrants who otherwise follow U.S. laws should have a pathway to obtain legal status. However, he also added that this legal status should not lead to citizenship, although that may have to be part of a compromise. Later, he told an Ohio newspaper that he does not support any legal status for undocumented immigrants, and he wanted to end birth right citizenship.

The Democratic candidates are proposing massive reforms, which will greatly improve the current system and provide desperately needed services to millions of migrants and their families. However, it will likely be extremely tough to get these reforms through a gridlocked Congress. On the other hand, the Republic candidates’ plans are either non-existent or so preposterous that they might as well be non-existent, as they will likely never bear any semblance of reality.

Cuba

President Obama’s actions to normalize relations and lift the embargo against Cuba have become major topics in most candidates’ foreign policy proposals. Since the process began in December of 2014, Cuba has been removed from the State Sponsor of Terrorism List, the U.S. Embassy in Havana has been re-opened, and direct mail flights have been re-established. On going efforts are working to lift the trade embargo and allow to greater freedom for Americans wishing to travel to the island.

Sanders has long supported the normalization of relations with Cuba, however, his stance is nuanced. In an interview from 1985, Sanders commends Castro’s socialist reforms to improve access to universal health care and education. While Sanders has expressed hope that Cuba move towards a more democratic system of governance, he has also emphasized the need for the U.S. to respect Cuba’s sovereignty. This last statement is evident of Sander’s non-interventionist position, and he has often criticized the U.S.’s habit of toppling left-leaning regimens in Latin America (from 1898 to 1994 there were at least 41 U.S. interventions in the region – an average of one every 28 months). More recently, in 2014, Sanders traveled to Cuba to discuss human rights, trade, and health care as part of an official U.S. delegation.

Clinton’s position has slowly shifted from her time as First Lady to her more recent position as Secretary of State for the Obama Administration. As First Lady, she supported the 1996 Helms-Burton Act, which President Bill Clinton signed into law, that prevents the embargo from being lifted until Cuba fulfills certain requirements, including fair elections, freeing political prisoners, and uncensored press. In her 2008 presidential run, she maintained her position of opposition to lifting the embargo, however she added a caveat, stating, “As president I would be ready to reach out and work with a new Cuba government, once it demonstrated that it truly was going to change that direction.” Then, as Secretary of State, Clinton recommended that Obama reconsider the embargo, as it “wasn’t achieving its goals.” In July of 2015, Clinton made a speech in Miami, a highly symbolic location due to the number of Cuban immigrants living there, in which she declared, “The Cuba embargo needs to go, once and for all.” Hillary’s changing position on Cuba could be the result of a progression in thought, though it may also just be an attempt to court Latino voters.

Although not entirely clear or detailed on his position, it appears that Trump is not opposed to the normalization of relations, stating, “Ultimately, it’s going to be good.” However, in the same interview, he went on to express that, “we could have had a better deal, a much stronger deal,” though he does not reveal what a stronger deal might entail. Other Republican candidates have criticized Trump, as they generally oppose lifting the embargo and normalizing relations with Cuba.

Despite his Cuban heritage, Cruz strongly opposes normalizing relations with Cuba, especially if the country remains under the Castro regimen. During the GOP primary debate in Miami, Cruz stated that he would reverse Obama’s actions and re-break diplomatic ties with Cuba, a “nation that hate[s] us.”  He has also promised to block the appointment of a U.S. ambassador to Cuba, a necessary step in re-establishing diplomacy between the two countries. Currently the ambassador is serving in an “acting” role since the U.S. re-opened the Havana embassy in July of 2015. Cruz’s plans would set a dangerous precedent for U.S. foreign policy and damage relations in the region.

Kasich has not outlined a definitive position on Cuba thus far in the campaign. However, as Representative he voted against two measures in 2000 that would reduce the economic and travel embargoes. In an interview in February, Kasich responded to a question on breaking diplomatic relations with Cuba by stating, “Well let’s see where we are when I come [into office] and what the administration has done…I think [the Obama Administration] made a big mistake because I think Cuba needed to do something. Why are we always reaching out?...They keep demanding things so I don’t understand what the administration is doing.” It seems only time will tell what his final stance is.

The candidates express varying degrees of enthusiasm for normalizing relations with Cuba. Clinton and Sanders would build on the Obama Administration’s policy, while Cruz would break ties once again, severely damaging the budding diplomatic relations. In keeping with their lack of foreign policy experience, or even interest, Trump and Kasich have said little on the issue.

NAFTA

The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), enacted in 1994, is a multilateral agreement between the United States, Mexico, and Canada to increase economic cooperation. NAFTA has been highly controversial. Critics say it causes job losses in the U.S. and unfavorable working conditions abroad. Supporters respond by saying it will actually help create jobs and spur economic growth across the region. Currently, most experts conclude that NAFTA has been net positive for the U.S., although it has failed to deliver on the big promises made in its early years. Furthermore, it is difficult to distinguish the direct effects of NAFTA on economies in the wake of globalization and increased technology use.

Sanders strongly opposes NAFTA, blaming it for increased poverty in Mexico, loss of jobs, and an influx of undocumented migrants in the U.S. His plan is to rewrite trade deals such as NAFTA to promote fair trade in lieu of free trade. Sanders has been consistent in his position, stating in a debate in early March, “I was on a picket line in the early 1990s against NAFTA, because you didn’t need a Ph.D. in economics to understand that American workers should not be forced to compete against people in Mexico making 25 cents an hour.” While Sanders’ draconian interpretation of NAFTA may be a bit exaggerated, a fair trade agreement would likely be more beneficial for the American worker than the current free trade model.

Clinton has a complicated history with trade deals. She supported NAFTA as the First Lady during Bill Clinton’s Administration. As a Senator, Clinton supported free trade, as long as it “can increase living standards and foster…economic development for all parties.” In 2007, during her first presidential run, she remarked that NATFA was a mistake because it did not deliver on many promises that were made in 1994, which is mostly true. As Secretary of State, Clinton embraced free trade with the beginnings of the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) – which she has since turned against. Her stance as a current presidential candidate has been fuzzy; she does not openly support NAFTA and other free trade agreements, but she does not decry them as middle-class and job destroying plans, either. This is another case of questioning whether Clinton’s change of heart is due to gradual belief progression, or, as is likelier in this case due to her sudden turn against TPP, an attempt to round up votes.

Trump also opposes NAFTA, as he believes it is destroying the U.S. manufacturing industry. In an interview in which Trump was asked how he would respond to an American car company that wished to open a plant in Mexico, he stated that he would charge the company a 35 percent tax on each product that was then sent back into the U.S. However, this measure directly violates NAFTA and disregards the fact that only Congress can establish separate tax rates. In a separate interview, Trump said, “I am all for free trade, but it’s got to be fair.” This statement under scores his lack of basic economic knowledge, as free trade, by definition, cannot be constrained by measures to make it “fair.”

Cruz’s positions on NAFTA and free trade have been murky. At press time, he has not given a position on NAFTA, and has only vaguely expressed opposition to the Trans Pacific Partnership.

Although he has not said much on this issue during his presidential campaign, Kasich voted for NAFTA as a Congressman in 1993. He has not spoken at length on the issue, but Kasich currently supports free trade, and also maintains that many American jobs are the result of free trade.

Conclusions

 The foreign policy positions of the candidates represent a large range of experiences, interests, and perceptions. Clinton, having served as Secretary of State, is by far the most qualified candidate. However, her record in Latin America is stained by revelations that she played a role in the 2009 Honduran coup d’etat. Sanders remains fervently committed to his ‘diplomacy first’ and non-interventionist beliefs, and often connects foreign policy with reducing inequality and promoting social services – two core points of his domestic campaign. Trump’s proposals are either outlandish or half-baked, and there seems to be no moderate middle ground in sight. Similarly, Cruz’s views are both simplistic and extreme, and he would not hesitate to turn back the clock to the 1950’s on the U.S.’s relationship with Cuba. Finally, Kasich leaves much to be desired in the realm of foreign policy, and, really, in his campaign in general. It seems that the only issue the candidates might be able to agree on is their condemnation of NAFTA, which, in reality, is not the catch-all to blame a stagnant economy and loss in industry jobs on that they want it to be.

Why U.S. Foreign Policy Isn’t Ready for Hillary

Hillary Clinton is now the presumptive Democratic nominee for the 2016 presidential election. While Clinton is, without question, a better fit for the job than the GOP’s inevitable nominee, Donald Trump, she might have some explaining to do before she can rally the entire party behind her. Any pro-Hillary voters who prioritize moral plans for American foreign policy should probably look into the candidate’s past in Haiti. Last summer, the Pulitzer Center hosted journalist Jonathan M. Katz for a discussion about the Clintons’ influence and rather infamous legacy in Haiti. It’s surprising how little the failures and destruction of Bill and Hillary Clinton’s presence in Haiti have been brought up so far. Hopefully by November, Clinton will have been pushed toward necessary change.

First, some background on the topic: on January 12, 2010, the deadliest natural disaster ever recorded in the hemisphere, a magnitude-7.0 earthquake, devastated Haiti’s southern peninsula and killed 100,000 to 316,000 people. Former President Bill Clinton and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton led the Haitian reconstruction effort and vowed to help the country “build back better,” so that if another disaster struck, Haiti would be able to respond more quickly and with more efficiency. Hillary described their efforts as a “road test” that would reveal “new approaches to development that could be applied more broadly around the world.”

The Clinton Foundation alone has directed $36 million to Haiti since 2010. Another $55 million has been spent through the Clinton-Bush Haiti Fund, and an additional $500 million has been made in commitments through the Clinton Global Initiative’s Haiti Action Network. But what does Haiti have to show for all of these investments? Not much, according to Katz. “Haiti and its people are not in a better position now from when the earthquake struck,” he said. The hundreds of millions of dollars and the years of reconstruction efforts have yielded negligible results. For a project so expansive, Hillary has kept relatively quiet about Haiti thus far in her campaign. Her spokesman declined to comment on how Haiti has shaped her foreign policy, saying Hillary would address that “when the time comes to do so.”

Hillary’s big plan for how she would “rebuild” Haiti in the wake of desolation was characteristically American: through business. With big corporate plans on the horizon, Bill and Hillary became exceedingly familiar faces in Haiti leading up to the 2011 presidential elections. It’s not surprising that the candidate who vowed to make Haiti “open for business” was ultimately the victor. Former Haitian pop star Michel Martelly eventually won the race, after Hillary salvaged his candidacy when he was eliminated as the number 3 candidate by convincing the parties to accept him back into the race. Katz said that this vote was fraudulent. Martelly, a businessman and strong proponent of foreign investment in Haiti, was “attractive” to the State Department, Katz noted. He very much had a “Clinton view of Haiti and a Clinton view of the world.”

That’s how Caracol Industrial Park, a 600-acre garment factory geared toward making clothes for export to the U.S., was born in 2012. Bill lobbied the U.S. Congress to eliminate tariffs on textiles sewn in Haiti, and the couple pledged that through Caracol Park, Haitian-based producers would have comparative advantages that would balance the country’s low productivity, provide the U.S. with cheap textiles, and put money in Haitians’ pockets. The State Department promised that the park would create 60,000 jobs within five years of its opening, and Bill declared that 100,000 jobs would be created “in short order.” But Caracol currently employs just 5,479 people full time. “The entire concept of building the Haitian economy through these low-wage jobs is kind of faulty,” Katz stated on Monday. Furthermore, working conditions in the park are decent, but far from what should be considered acceptable.

Not only did Caracol miss the mark on job creation, but it also took jobs away from indigenous farmers. Caracol was built on fertile farmland, which Haiti doesn’t have much of to begin with. According to Katz, Haitian farmers feel that they have been taken advantage of, their land taken away from them, and that they have not been compensated fairly. Hundreds of families have been forced off the land to make room for Caracol. The Clintons led the aggressive push to make garment factories to better Haiti’s economy, but what it really created was wealth for foreign companies. This trend was echoed when the Clintons helped launch a Marriott hotel in the capital, which has really only benefited wealthy foreigners and the Haitian elite.

Mark D’Sa, Senior Advisor for Industrial Development in Haiti at the U.S. Department of State, said that many of the Clintons’ promises remain unfulfilled and many more projects are “half-baked.” Haiti remains the most economically depressed country on the continent. If Hillary wins in 2016, U.S. policy geared toward Haiti will undoubtedly expand, meaning even more money will be funneled to the Caribbean nation to fund the Clintons’ projects, for better or for worse. According to Katz, the truth is that we don’t actually know how much money has been thrown into the Caribbean country to “rebuild” it, and that with economic growth stalling and the country’s politics heading for a shutdown, internal strife seems imminent.

The introduction of accountability for the foreign aid industry is the most important change that can be made, according to Katz. Humanitarian aid does nothing positive or productive if there are not institutions in place, managed by individuals who actually live in these countries, to oversee that aid is serving rather than hurting the people it is supposed to “help.” Hillary Clinton’s efforts in Haiti have fueled political corruption, destroyed arable farmland, and have forced hundreds of families to leave their homes and their jobs to make room for a factory that has not given even a fraction of the amount to Haiti as it has taken. If the introduction of accountability is the way to go, then we first need to start talking. So Hillary, what do you have to say about Haiti?

Taking Socialism Home to Meet Your Parents

So you come home from your first year at college. You wave goodbye to the rear fender of your friend’s beat up 1998 Toyota sedan as it drives away into the distance. You see your parents standing in your doorway smiling proudly, happy to have you back. You walk inside and sit down to a freshly cooked family dinner to reconnect after a year away. Your parents start to ask you about your life, how are the grades, have you locked down a job for the summer yet, do you remember your curfew is still midnight, and for god’s sakes do you have a boyfriend yet? “No,” you reply, no job and no boyfriend yet, but you have started to really like this idea you learned about in your introduction to political theory class; you’ve become a socialist.

Dad dramatically pushes his chair back and storms off to his study to drink scotch straight from the bottle and contemplate where he failed you, while your mother sobs into her apron, and your little brother runs off to alert the neighborhood watch that there’s a dangerous Marxist guerilla living in the area. The white-picket fence has caught on fire and all of the years of wholesome upbringing and money spent on college tuition have gone to waist…or not. Maybe it should not be so shocking that socialism is seeing a resurgence in popularity amongst many young college-age Americans. Now, this is not the socialism of the radical socialism of envisioned by dusty theorists where the government is in direct control of distributing wealth equally to all of its citizen. Instead, this article refers to democratic socialism, which is growing in popularity because it gives the government the tools it needs to administer economic policy and welfare programs, while still maintaining individual rights such as private land ownership and free markets. This allows the enhanced power of the government to be wielded by the larger populace. Indeed, to those who are educated, the ideas that drive socialism are not so foreign or exotic, but are actually reasonable and effective.

Now, in order to evaluate different forms of government, there must be some agreed upon metric by which to do so. For this article, an effective and efficient government is one that can most successfully carry out its laws and directives. Yet this comes with an important caveat, for a truly effective government must also take the best care of its citizens’ needs. In summary, an effective government must be accountable and responsive to its people, while still creating policy that is actually effective at accomplishing a government’s first job—to provide for its citizens—opposed to blindly following every brash impulse of its electorate. While an authoritarian government might be effective, it is not the most humane because large constituency of people are victim to the wants and choices of the small concentration of power in a ruling party or a dictator. A democracy, conversely, while the choices of the electorate might not always be the best or most humane, does have the largest portion of the total populace making the decisions, which is in theory the most humane form of government. Yet that large and theoretically humane electorate is slow to take action and thus is actually not the most responsive or effective in executing its policies. In this article, I posit that a socialist democracy is the best way to execute effective governmental action in the most egalitarian and humanitarian way.

A student of political theory might tell you that an authoritarian or autocratic government is one of the most effective at just directly carrying out its directives. In terms of the economy, a government that does not have to worry about any opposition, nor any approval, can make the changes it decides are the most beneficial for itself much more quickly than if it had to go through more widely accepted democratic routes. While other nations may make economic success more difficult for autocratic governments by punishing them for their system of rule, case in point the embargos that stood for decades against Cuba, authoritarian governments are some of the most capable in terms of implementing their own policy within the confines of their own economy. When speaking about economic development, Modernization theory puts forward the idea that democracy was something for rich and developed nations, and in order to achieve that affluence other less-developed nations had to go through a period of non-democratic rule. Indeed, this idea is supported by London School of Economics professors Timothy Besley and Masayuki Kudamatsu, who illustrate it thus:

[A]utocratic government is not always a disaster in economic terms. Indeed, throughout history there has been growth and development in autocratic systems of government. For example, the British industrial revolution predates the introduction of free and fair elections with mass participation. Modern China is also a case in point with a spectacular growth performance in a non-democratic setting.

The example of modern China is especially pertinent here, for many other countries in Southeast Asia—Taiwan, South Korea, and Singapore just to name a few—all experienced incredible economic growth and success under military dictatorships similar to that experienced by China under single party, autocratic rule. This is because of how efficiently they are able to administer their economic policy. Columbia University economist Jagdish Bhagwati is quoted by G. William Dick to say that “No policy of economic development can be carried out unless the government has the capacity to adhere to it […] Quite often, however, democratic governments lose equanimity and determination in the face of opposition.” Yet, the ability to effectively orchestrate policy comes at a price, for few would disagree that authoritarian or autocratic systems are not the most beneficial to the average citizen, thus violating our second rule for effective governance. In China, the economic growth that the single-party government has fostered has not equally benefitted all of its subjects: the elite have become richer and the wealth is not shared equally. This leads us to one alternative to an authoritarian system: democracy.

Yet while democracies are typically far better for all of their constituents in terms of holding their governing figures accountable to the populace, the question remains: can they achieve the same economic success as authoritarian systems? As NYU professor Adam Przeworski notes, “The reason everyone opts for democracy in affluent societies is that too much is at stake in turning against it” because the alternative is so much worse for the average citizen, especially those not aligned with the ruling party. Furthermore, it is true that, as Pranab Bardhan says in the Financial Times, “Democracies are better able to avoid catastrophic mistakes, (such as China’s […] massive mayhem in the […] Cultural Revolution), and have greater healing powers after difficult times. Democracies also experience more intense pressure to share the benefits of development among the people, thus making it sustainable.”

In essence, Bardhan is saying that democracies avoid dangerous blunders because all decisions must first come from the people or those who they elect to represent them. Yet while it might be better for the average citizen in terms of sharing the wealth, a democracy can prove to be painfully slow and inefficient when it comes to deciding upon and administering economic policy. One needs only to look at the struggle the American government goes through every year to pass a budget to simply keep itself operating, and the number of times it has shut itself down due to partisan differences, to see how cumbersome and lethargic a democracy such as our own can be. As Timothy Besley and Stephen Coate posit in the American Economic Review, “[W]hile political equilibrium does satisfy a certain efficiency property, this does not imply that policies are efficient according to standard economic criteria,” for even if we do manage to agree on an economic policy, there is no guarantee that all of the concessions made to reach that agreement have not stripped the policy of all actual effectiveness. This leaves us with one essential question: how do we maintain the economic efficiency of an autocratic government while imparting the social equity of a democratic one?

Our answer lies back in that one dirty word—socialism. A socialist government has a large federal government empowered by its electorate to be able to more directly implement its economic policies, while giving the fruits of its prosperity to its citizens equally instead of having it funneled directly to the top as an authoritarian system would. Cedric Muhammad of Forbes put it eloquently when he said of socialism that

[a] socialist system that is working well is one that is fully deploying the nation’s resources through a central plan that has the approval of the people. It would be superior to a capitalist system that is working so poorly that its adherents must find excuses for mass unemployment, widely diverging income classes, and deepening social pathologies.

Indeed, it is the effective implementation that is the crux of what makes democratic socialism the best choice for America. In post-WWII America, we had a massively powerful federal government that was able to capitalize on the economic success that the nation was experiencing and return it to the people in terms of social welfare programs. This union of the ability of the government to make decisive and responsive economic actions while still having a government by and for the people that makes socialism such a potent and attractive form of governance. I’ll leave you with another quote from Jagdish Bhagwati of Columbia University: “Another advantage of the socialist countries is their passionate conviction and dedication to the objective of economic growth—which contrasts visibly with the halting and hesitant beliefs and actions of democracies.” A socialist system gives the government the power it needs to enact successful policy, while still being accountable to and benefitting its people, and that’s an appealing concept.

A Tale of Two Governments: How American Politics Affects Iranian Politics

On November 8th 2016, millions of Americans will flock to their local polling places. Voters will be faced with choices for the senate, house, local elections, and of course, the presidency. While the conversations dominating the American political sphere are largely focused on the economy, healthcare, immigration, and ISIS, the party who gains control of American politics will also be well placed to craft a foreign policy that will have an immense effect on the political, economic, and cultural path of another country, Iran.

The main cleavage separating the democratic and republican parties regarding Iran is whether America, and the world, should open up or to continue imposed isolation. The lack of political consensus regarding Iran is reflected by the American population, which also holds a mixed view on the debate. The Iran nuclear deal further intensified the argument about the two possible paths, and will likely serve as a hot button issue in the general election. A democratic win in November means continued support for the agreement. Continued support for the agreement will empower both moderating voices and loud reformers in Iran, while a return to forced isolation due to a Republican win will continue to empower the hardline conservatives and radicals. Iran’s politics, economy and culture, oddly enough, is quite dependent on American politics.

The Iranian Political Context

Following former Iranian Supreme Leader Khomeini’s consolidation of power after the 1979 Islamic Revolution, three main factions eventually emerged. Reformers, conservatives (who can also be split into two factions, neo-conservative and pragmatic), and the hardliners constitute the political identities in the officially party-less state. The current state of the balance of power between the three main factions can best be explained by policies implemented immediately following the 1979 revolution regarding families. Iranian hardliners, as well as many conservatives have a demographics problem, called the youth bulge.

The youth bulge was brought on by calls for young and large families during the brutal Iraq-Iran war. Large families would contribute more soldiers and material benefits to the war effort. The residual effect of this policy, however, was an ever-growing youth population, and a shrinking middle aged and elderly population. The youth were required to make sacrifices during and after the war, often being compelled to join Basij groups or to join the Iranian paramilitary force, the Revolutionary Guard. In turn for this sacrifice, young Iranians were promised jobs, security, healthcare, and education. This “Iranian dream” can be seen as analogous to the American dream, if a person works hard, they should expect to see success.

The internal reaction to the Islamic Revolution, however, can largely be blamed for the Iranian government’s inability to provide this reality to young Iranians. Sanctions levied by America or by other countries with America’s backing placed severe burdens on the Iranian economy, environment, and general ability to function as a member of the world community. Because of this, Iranians looked inwards, either blaming their own government, or outwards, blaming America and other countries viewed to be antagonistic.

The Rafsanjani and Khatami presidencies highlight one response to outwards pressure. Both presidencies are marked by moves to somewhat liberalize society (resolving a major grievance of many Iranian youth), open economically, and to engage in discussion with both foreign countries as well as to resolve issues internally through discussion. Rafsanjani, who was much more the pragmatic conservative than the fervent reformer, re-engaged in diplomatic relations with Saudi Arabia, economic privatization and development was encouraged in a Five Year Plan, and lifted some cultural restrictions, such as allowing fraternization between unrelated men and women. Khatami, who was Rafsanjani’s cultural minister, continued many of Rafsanjani’s policies, as well as emphasizing civil law, the importance of civil society, introducing language to legitimize Israel’s claim to existence and to call for an open dialogue between Iran and America.

This pragmatic conservative and reformist response to outwards political pressure, however, was swiftly undone with the election of Ahmadinejad in 2005. After allowing for some foreign and cultural détente and economic liberalization, the hardliners quickly realized that their place in Iranian society would be endangered with a continuation of these policies. Hardliners in Iran faced the decay of their core cultural and political tenants, and thus moved to return to the pre-reform Iran. After ostensibly moving to help the youth and disenfranchised, why would this pro-reform momentum stop?

To put it bluntly, the reforms failed to reach their full effect. The main cause for this can be directed to two problems: the conditions produced by outward sanctions; and an internal backlash at a changing Iran by the clerical and hardline establishment. Although the Iranian economy is actually quite diversified , sanctions prevented full integration into the world economy, which meant that exports were kept to a minimum. The Iranian economy may have been internally diverse, but the inability to export goods and services to some of the worlds largest markets, such as America and Europe, meant that Iran would never quite exceed a certain level of economic success. This meant that jobs and resources would be scarce, dampening the enthusiasm for reformist politics.

Secondly, an internal backlash facilitated by Iranian hardliners and conservatives meant that even with popular support, the tenability of reformist politics may not have actually been as robust as some would believe. After Khatami’s success in 2000, pro-reform publications were closed, intellectuals and journalists were jailed, security forces and members of the Basij assaulted students at the University of Tehran, and political and judiciary oversight organizations were banned by the constitutional watchdog the Guardian Council. Khatami never put up much of an effort to stop the backlash, demonstrating his inability to direct Iran towards a major change.

After the enthusiasm for reform was significantly dampened, President Ahmadinejad came to power in 2005. Ahmadinejad was the immensely popular former mayor of Tehran. Furthermore, Ahmadinejad came from a certain background that made him more appealing to the culturally conservative poor, as well as to certain military institutions. Ahmadinejad was a commander in the Revolutionary Guard, Iran’s major paramilitary force. Framing the reformist politicians as morally bankrupt and economically self-interested, Ahmadinejad easily came to power. In the aftermath of the election, however, Ahmadinejad began to appoint former Revolutionary Guard officials to important political posts, highlighting his view that politics should be one in the same with the standard bearers of the Islamic Revolution.

In 2009, Ahmadinejad retained power in a widely disputed election, in which he was accused of voter fraud by several different important figures in the reform movement. Despite the large protests plaguing urban centers throughout Iran, Ahmadinejad retained power. Following reelection, Ahmadinejad would hurt relations with Arab states by endorsing the Arab Spring uprisings, hurt relations with the West through inflammatory comments about Israel and the Holocaust, and mismanaged the Iranian economy and political system, often arguing with his advisors and superiors as well as undertaking pet projects and needless reforms that distracted from improving the failing Iranian economy.

The constitution of the Islamic Republic requires that presidents cannot serve more than two consecutive terms. After Ahmadinejad served his second term, a new zeitgeist swept the country, demanding a return to competent and moderate rule. Hassan Rouhani, an establishment yet pragmatic member of the conservative faction, won the election with a promise to return Iran back to its pre-Ahmadinejad path. Perhaps the most significant of all of Rouhani’s accomplishments is the hotly debated Iran Nuclear Deal. As in America, Iranians too have a mixed reaction to the agreement, with some seeing it as a capitulation to the West and others seeing it as a fair trade off in order to secure Iran’s economic security. Nonetheless, the deal is still present, signaling Iran’s intent to join the world community and to secure its future.

We can see, then, that there are two main discourses on what Iran’s purpose should be. Some in Iran believe that Iran should be the standard bearer of the Islamic world, while others hold a less parochial view, recognizing the importance of existing as a member within the inter-country community. When one faction gains too much power, a reactionary current takes hold of the Iranian zeitgeist. Too much liberalization and integration results in a rapid snapback to the revolutionary fervor of politicians like Ahmadinejad and groups like the Basij and Revolutionary Guard. On the other hand, the Iranian youth are highly educated and underemployed, which is a recipe for political change if they are not satiated. A pattern has emerged, and the budding détente between Iran and the West might tip the balance of which political current maintains its power.

Democrats, Republicans, and Iran’s Future

Republican presidential front runner believes that the Iran Nuclear Deal is so bad, it is almost like it was constituted that way on purpose. On the other side of the aisle, Democratic front-runner Hilary Clinton claimed that it was unrealistic to get a better deal, arguing that it was the best possible compromise for both parties. Within those two instances, the different American paths towards Iran are demonstrated; one towards a gradual opening of relations, and another towards an immediate return to the last several decades, which, ironically, parallel the Iranian approach.

The Republican plan is to “undo” the agreement, returning to the previous sanction regime and to continue America’s forced isolation on Iran. Who would this help? And who would this hurt? By forcing Iran to return to its previous internalized nature, it is likely that groups such as the Revolutionary Guard and the hardline clerics will be empowered. A common theme in authoritarian regimes is to paint an outside actor as an enemy of the state. Iran has long been a pawn in a greater geo-political tool by outside powers, which is reflected by an important theory accepted by the Iranian polity called Gharbzadegi, which translates to a “Westoxification,” essentially meaning that Iran (and, indeed, the Muslim world) has been corrupted by the West through its imperial pursuits. Continued forced isolation will push Iranian politics down this path, increasing internal and external tensions, and empowering the extreme elements within the country.

The Democratic plan, on the other hand, will have the opposite effect. Through easing the path towards economic integration, the highly educated yet underemployed youth will see new economic opportunities, facilitated by an influx of foreign investment, which will provide new avenues for employment. The Iranian reformist movement, along with the pragmatic conservatives, could see a new wave of enthusiasm as the quality of life within Iran slowly improves. Furthermore, integration between countries tends to have a moderating effect. Foreign investment would be hard to come by if a corporation owned by the Revolutionary Guard would likely embezzle it. Efforts to improve the infrastructure and accountability of Iran’s economy would increase, as new opportunities to seek outward investment present themselves.

For two countries ostensibly at odds, it is a humorous irony that the politics of one can have such a large effect on the politics of another. When Americans go to the polls this November, they should remember that they are likely not only choosing who they want to lead their country, but also, the path that Iran will follow. A vote for a continuation of the long held policy of sanctions and forced isolation could mean a strengthening of the hardliners and a suppression of the moderators and reformers. A vote for a change in policy and the beginnings of a real détente could mean the reformers and moderating voices could finally get the break they have long needed. The future of Iran stands at a crossroads, much like that of America, a vote for one party over the other will have a wide range of effects, and could push Iran towards true reform or towards a consolidation of extremist politics.