A broken immigration system: the extension of the Title 42 immigration policy leaves many Cuban asylum seekers in crisis

After five years of saving money, Patri, from Havana, Cuba, was ready to make the trek to the United States. Cuba’s economic crisis has become so dire in the past few years, due to COVID-19. The cost of living has been steadily rising and there has been an increase in food shortages. In 2022, 2% of Cuba’s population left for the U.S. and Patri hoped to be one of them. She saved up the equivalent of 8,000 dollars. However, this was rendered impossible by the Supreme Court’s decision that extended Title 42’s immigration policy. Now if you are seeking asylum, as Patri is, from four countries, Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Haiti, you have to apply for a parole process. The process allows only 30,000 migrants to enter the U.S. per month and the qualifications are steep. You need to have a valid passport, pass a background check, afford the airfare, and have a sponsor with legal status who is already inside the U.S. that can help to support you financially. If you do not have a sponsor, as Patri doesn’t, you will be turned away at the border and forced to remain in Mexico for the time being. For many, this can be a death sentence, left vulnerable to theft, homelessness, and kidnapping for ransom. Despite these risks, many migrants make the trek anyway because they simply have no other alternative. The extension of the harmful Title 42 immigration policy by the Supreme Court and the Biden Administration leaves many Cuban asylum seekers in a crisis due to unreasonable restrictions. In response, the Biden Administration has put forth future policy changes to counteract the extension of Title 42 that will hopefully accomplish its goal of fixing the broken immigration system. 

What is Title 42? 

Title 42 is a U.S. law used in issues such as civil rights, public health, social welfare, and more. The government can use it to take emergency actions to keep contagious diseases out of the country. It was first used in 1929 during a meningitis outbreak to keep Chinese and Filipino ships from entering the U.S. and spreading the disease. The law was only enacted again in 2020 by then-president, Donald Trump, due to the global COVID-19 outbreak. However, Trump also used this law and its implications to turn away migrants from the border more quickly without having to consider their cases for asylum. Since this law has been put into effect in 2020, 2 million people have been barred from entering the U.S. 

The Trump Administration’s impact on immigration policy

Donald Trump’s campaign and presidency are defined largely by his harsh views and policies on immigration and enforcement.  There are 100 million displaced refugees in the world today, a number that only grew worse during Trump’s presidency. He reduced legal immigration into the United States by 49%. From 2016-2019, there was an increase in denials for military naturalizations by 54%. During his presidency, 5,460 children were separated from their families at the U.S.-Mexico Border. In 2017, he announced that he would dismantle DACA, Deferred Actions for Childhood Arrivals, which provides relief from deportation and work authorization for immigrants brought to America as children. He also tried to terminate TPS, Temporary Protected Status, a program that grants legal status – including work authorization and protection from deportation – to people from designated countries facing ongoing armed conflict, environmental disaster, or other extraordinary conditions preventing their safe return. Hate crimes against Latinos and Hispanics rose by 21% in 2018. By increasing his anti-immigrant rhetoric, he made the issue of immigration one of the top priorities in the 2020 election. 

The Biden Campaign’s immigration policy promises

Since immigration played a powerful role in the 2020 election, the Biden campaign put out extensive information on how he was going to help fix the immigration crisis if he was elected to office. He starts by evoking emotion in his plan by saying, “It is a moral failing and a national shame when a father and his baby daughter drown seeking our shores. When children are locked away in overcrowded detention centers and the government seeks to keep them there indefinitely.” He ultimately, flat-out states, “Trump has waged an unrelenting assault on our values and our history as a nation of immigrants. It’s wrong, and it stops when Joe Biden is elected president.” 

Biden states overall goals for immigration policy, such as modernizing the immigration system and welcoming immigrants into the community. However, since this election was about defeating Trump and reversing his policies, Biden created promises for his first 100 days in office. These include, “Immediately reverse the Trump Administration’s cruel and senseless policies that separate parents from their children at our border” and “End Trump’s detrimental asylum policies.” He wants to end the separation of families at the border by ending the prosecution of parents for minor violations since these are mostly used as scare or intimidation tactics. He said that he wants to restore asylum laws so they can actively protect people fleeing persecution. The Trump Administration put restrictions on access to asylum for anyone traveling through Mexico or Guatemala and those fleeing from gang or domestic violence. 

The economic crisis in Cuba

Why are there record numbers of migrants leaving Cuba for the United States? The number of migrants (200,000 in 2022) reflects percentages that haven’t been seen since the 1990s, and it's because Cuba is facing its worst socio-economic crisis since the collapse of the Soviet Union. There are daily shortages of food and medicine. There are regular power outages and last year during a protest against the government, the internet was switched off. Shortages of resources have culminated since 1962 when the U.S. trade embargo was imposed. To survive, Cuba has become reliant on earnings from international tourism and Cuban nationals working abroad. Due to COVID-19, the island was mostly closed off to foreign tourists and reduced visitor numbers by 75% in 2020. When Trump was elected in 2016, he reinstated longstanding travel and business restrictions between Cuba and the U.S., further closing them off from U.S. resources. He also reinstated Cuba to the list of state sponsors of terrorism, which obstructed the country’s access to international finance. 

In the last few years, resistance to the government has risen, partly due to social media and the internet. There are increased demands for political and economic change and for government officials to be held accountable. In 2021, there were massive Cuban protests that were fuelled by COVID restrictions and food and medicine shortages. Due to limited resources provided by the government, many were forced to turn to the black market. Many preferred to work for and sell on the black market because they usually made more money than a salary at a typical job to cover basic needs. The Cuban's ability to be resourceful and stretch themselves thin is running out and unless there is significant economic change, many more are bound to follow the 2% of the population that have already left in 2022. 

Impact of the continuation of Title 42 on Cuba and asylum seekers

The continuation of Title 42 could create an asylum crisis for many Cubans. An official from the Washington Office on Latin America, a human-rights nonprofit, estimates that people like Patri, without a sponsor, have no chance of crossing the border anytime soon. While she and many others wait in Mexico for their case to be heard, they would be risking dangerous conditions such as homelessness and kidnapping for ransom. Oftentimes, appointments for Title 42 expectations get booked as soon as they become available and people have to wait weeks to have their cases heard. 

Since there are so many restrictions, many Cubans are turning to more creative ways to migrate to the U.S. In 1994 there was a Cuban rafter crisis or balseros crisis where 35,000 Cubans migrated to the U.S. on makeshift rafts. They spent all their money on the materials to make a raft and row across the Gulf of Mexico to Miami, Cuba. After five weeks of riots, Fidel Castro announced that anyone who wanted to leave Cuba was welcome to do it without hindrance. However, President Clinton mandated that any rafters captured be detained at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base. About 31,000 of those 33,000 were detained at the base while many others were lost at sea. Even though this process of immigration is risky and dangerous, many are worried that the balseros crisis will happen again. 

The extension of Title 42

On December 27th, 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court voted to keep Title 42 in place, allowing asylum-seekers to be turned away at the border, even though it would have expired at the end of 2022. It is now in place indefinitely after 19 Republican state attorneys general filed an emergency appeal to the Supreme Court to keep it in place. U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan ruled that Title 42 should expire at the end of this year because the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s implementation of this policy was “arbitrary and capricious.” While many, such as Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch, argued that the public-health justification of Title 42’s implementation has lapsed, they still voted for it to stay in place. Some Democrats, such as California Governor Gavin Newsom, think that if Title 42 is ended, the asylum system would break. White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said in a statement that “Title 42 is a public health measure, not an immigration enforcement measure, and it should not be extended indefinitely.” Yet, the Biden Administration is complying with the Supreme Court’s Order and enforcing Title 42, offering no alternative to those trying to seek asylum on the border. 

However, there are steps in the right direction being made. In January of 2023, Biden issued an executive order restricting asylum applications on the U.S.-Mexico border for four countries, Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Haiti. As mentioned in the first paragraph, the qualifications for asylum applications are steep, including needing a sponsor in the U.S. that can sponsor you financially. If one goes to the border without a sponsor, they will be turned away and the “Remain in Mexico” policy under Title 42 will be in effect. This Executive Order talks about expanding legal pathways for safe, orderly, humane, and legal migration. This includes increasing humanitarian assistance to Mexico and Central America, expanding the parole process, launching an online appointment portal to reduce overcrowding and wait times at the border, and tripling refugee resettlement from the Western Hemisphere. Biden has also reopened the U.S. embassy in Havana for visa applications allowing some an official route to emigration to the U.S.

Conclusion 

After the extension of Title 42 by the Supreme Court, the  NGO, The Washington Office on Latin America, WOLA, gave a list of 5 reasons why Title 42 must end immediately. Title 42 was not designed to protect public health, it creates a discriminatory system because it targets four specific countries, it puts people in need of protection in danger, and it undermines the U.S. ability to promote a protection-centered response to regional migration. However, the foremost reason is that Title 42 is illegal. It denies refugees protection from life-or-death situations. The Biden administration expels around 2,500 migrants every day.  Section 1158 of Title 8 of the U.S. Code does not allow for the blocking of fundamental protection and safety of migrants seeking asylum. Instead of perpetuating and prolonging a broken immigration system, it would be beneficial to invest time and resources in other areas. This would start with restoring the right of all refugees to seek asylum at the border. Using a COVID-era policy is not a justification anymore to keep implementing this law. Another is ensuring humanitarian support for the migrants that are arriving while also coordinating the response of federal, state, and local organizations to make sure everyone gets the same resources and treatment. Finally, there needs to be improvements to the adjudication capacity and resources, as the wait time could be anywhere from 2 months to 1 year.  There is a shortage of lawyers at the border who have impossible caseloads. By increasing the number of public defenders at the border, due process can still be ensured in a timely manner. The US immigration system has been broken for decades. Every day we wait to fix or come up with a new policy, thousands of people fall through the cracks and succumb to the danger they are running from. The system needs to be fixed, for the sake of rebuilding our asylum process and the democratic values that the U.S. was founded on. 

The United States is Failing Yemen

Earlier this year, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced $585 million in humanitarian assistance for the war-torn nation of Yemen. The US was quick to celebrate its own generosity, asserting that it remains “one of the largest donors of humanitarian assistance to Yemen” in the world. US leaders also called on other nations to contribute more to the chronically underfunded international response. However, while America takes its victory lap, the people of Yemen will still have to shelter from barrages of US-provided missiles. The US government has quietly facilitated the Yemeni Civil War through “incoherent” policy that the US media and public have largely failed to notice. Meanwhile, the struggles of the Yemeni people caught in the “world’s worst humanitarian crisis” are lost in the background. This article will examine the origins of Yemen’s current conflict, its impacts on civilians, and the many ways in which the United States is failing the desperate nation.

Origins of the Yemeni Civil War

The conflict in Yemen began in 2014 when Houthi rebels seized control of Yemen’s capital, Sana’a. The Houthis are Shiites who have long been at odds with their nation’s Sunni government. Contrary to popular belief, however, the Yemeni Civil War was not caused by Sunni-Shiite antagonisms alone. Fuel price hikes and corruption in former President Ali Abdullah Saleh’s government also caused tensions to rise throughout the early 2000s and 2010s. Massive protests erupted from these tensions when the Arab Spring reached Yemen in 2011. President Saleh was eventually ousted in 2012 and succeeded by his vice president, Abd Rabbu Mansour Hadi. Hadi’s tumultuous presidency came to a brief pause in January 2015 when he resigned as president after rebels took Sana’a. The Houthis took advantage of his absence and seized control of the Yemeni government. However, while Hadi fled his palace and sought exile in Saudi Arabia, he rescinded his resignation a month later, declaring himself the rightful leader of Yemen.

Hadi has since been embroiled in various clashes with the Houthis. However, these two parties are not the only ones involved in the conflict. Saudi Arabia and a cohort of other Gulf nations sided with Hadi’s government and launched a campaign against the Houthi insurgents, with arms and logistical support from the United States. Iran, Saudi Arabia’s bitter enemy, has supplied the Houthis with weapons, deepening the divides between the two nations. Although separate from the civil war, there are also ongoing military operations in Yemen that target Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). 

Despite the occasional ceasefire, the conflict and chaos in Yemen only seem to be escalating, and innocent civilians are undoubtedly suffering the most. According to UNICEF, hunger and starvation are widespread, with 17.4 million people in need of food assistance—over half of Yemen’s population. This number is expected to balloon to 19 million by 2022. Further, nearly six million people have been displaced from their homes, most of them internally displaced in Yemen. Access to healthcare, clean drinking water, and sanitation services is scant at best. There are few areas of Yemen that are untouched by poverty and adversity.

Meanwhile, the Russo-Ukrainian War has compounded the suffering of the Yemeni people. “It’s another blow to Yemen, driving food and fuel prices further up,” said Abeer Etefa, a senior spokeswoman at the UN World Food Programme. Exports continue to fall as Ukraine grapples with its own conflict, sending shockwaves through the global food supply chain. The Middle East, Asia, and Africa have been hit the hardest, and the burden is the greatest in conflict-stricken nations. “Yemen depends entirely on food imports, with 31% of its wheat coming from Ukraine over the past three months.” Wheat has disappeared from Yemeni food markets, making it extremely difficult for families to meet their basic needs. At the same time, humanitarian donors are feeling the financial strain of providing aid to both nations, and given that the conflict in Yemen has stretched on for eight years, its assistance is dwindling rapidly.

The Yemeni people are clearly in dire need of help from the international community, and the responsibility for their situation lies with those who created it in the first place. As a contributor to the conflict and subsequent humanitarian crisis, the United States must do more to provide meaningful help to Yemen.

Policy Problems 

The United States has allocated $4.5 billion to humanitarian assistance for Yemen since the conflict began. However, it has also sold more than $355 million worth of arms to Saudi Arabia—one of the main instigators of the Yemen conflict—and has signed off on $4.5 billion more in future sales. It appears that America wants the world to think that they care about Yemen while they quietly pour money into the war. Not only does this render the $4.5 billion in humanitarian aid a very poor investment, but it is endlessly destructive to the Yemeni people. The Biden administration made moves to rescind support for Saudi Arabia and prioritize peace, but foreign policy experts agree that these are now nothing more than “broken promises.” US policymakers have also consistently blamed the Houthi rebels for the Yemen conflict and crisis. While the Houthis undoubtedly have a large role, breaking the war down into this “false binary” fails to account for the massive role that Saudi Arabia plays in Yemen. The United States must sever its ties with Saudi Arabia and put down its arms if it truly wants to end the conflict.

Experts also point out numerous issues with the peace process that has been led by the United States for the last several years. Katie Kizer of Foreign Policy writes: “The peace process led by the United States and United Nations has remained where it has for years: pursuing a top-down ceasefire between the men with guns—a strategy that has already failed multiple times—instead of engaging Yemen’s vibrant civil society which is interested in peace.” This assertion is true, as the UN brokered a six-month truce in early 2022 that temporarily reduced hostilities, but negotiators were unable to renew it. It expired on October 2nd, leaving civilians uncertain about their future. The US should be focusing its efforts on the resilient Yemeni people and rebuilding the local and state institutions that have collapsed since the start of the war. However, the US government currently faces little pressure to change its ways, so the gaping holes in its foreign policy will persist until the rest of the world takes notice.

Media Mistakes

America has clung to stories about conflict in the Middle East for the last several decades. The public hung onto journalists’ every word about the invasion of Afghanistan throughout the 2000s and the conflict in Syria for the last decade. Both of these wars have one thing in common: one big, scary enemy. It seems clear to Americans that Al-Qaeda was the enemy in Afghanistan and ISIS was the enemy in Syria. This makes both wars classic cases of good vs. evil (as it is painted by US media, at least) and portrays the United States as the hero of the Middle East. The conflict in Yemen, on the other hand, is complicated. It is difficult to sort through the complex politics and culture of the region and find the heroes and villains. Since it does not make Americans feel like they are on the right side of history, it is not worth covering for many news organizations.

As easy as it may be to point the finger solely at the media, its audience is also partly to blame. The conflict in Yemen is largely contained to the Middle East, meaning spillover onto US soil is unlikely. Since the conflict has no tangible effects on American citizens, many are content to live in their blissful ignorance. Journalists will understandably not go out of their way to cover an event that their audience will not read about, so the lack of public interest perpetuates negligent reporting. However, in the interest of fairness to US media, it is important to note that the sheer complexity of Yemen’s situation can make reporting particularly difficult. “You don’t see photos of Yemeni refugees anywhere because a lot of them are actually inside of [Yemen],” says activist Sama’a Al-Hamdani. Most Yemeni refugees are internally displaced, meaning they are trapped in dangerous areas and unable to speak to journalists. Despite this, it should also be remembered that journalists were willing to fly into war zones with troops to cover Afghanistan, but they do not seem to display the same drive to cover the situation in Yemen. Once again, this is due to the lack of public concern.

The Lost Generation

Why should the United States care about Yemen? In the middle of all the bad arms deals, failed attempts at peace, and the massive humanitarian crisis are the Yemeni people. They are just as entitled to security and peace as the citizens of every other nation involved in the Yemen conflict. But the United States' contributions to the conflict that surrounds them are part of the reason that they now face the loss of an entire generation of children. If Yemeni children make it through the conflict and into their adult lives, they will be forever hindered by illiteracy and lack of education. Two years ago, then UN humanitarian coordinator for Yemen Lisa Grande said, “If the war doesn’t end now, we are nearing an irreversible situation and risk losing an entire generation of Yemen’s young children.” The war still rages two years later. The lack of tangible impacts on US soil does not merit citizens’ ignorance of this conflict, and the US government certainly cannot continue to fund it. The US owes the suffering Yemeni population so much more.

How Grassroot Movements in Latin America can help influence the fight for Reproductive Rights in the United States.

Grassroots movements in Latin and South America, such as The Green Wave, have generated change and progress in reproductive rights by implementing modern human rights frameworks and emphasizing that criminalizing abortions does not stop them from happening. Hopefully and eventually, these movements will be adopted in the United States to help mobilize their grassroots movements to fight for reproductive 

rights by spreading awareness of the goals and methods of these groups. The United States Supreme Court’s recent nonadherence to stare decisis in the overturning of Roe v. Wade will not only have detrimental consequences for reproductive rights in the United States, but the whole world. Roe v. Wade was a landmark decision by the Supreme Court and was considered as an advocacy model for reproductive rights in many countries. In 2020 in the United States, the abortion rate was 1 out of 5 pregnancies ended in abortion. It is estimated that 20-26 states could outlaw abortions and reduce the number of resources and rights for someone who is pregnant. These new laws can then act as trigger laws for more reproductive rights reduction in more states. 

In 1970, an anonymous woman known as Jane Roe filed a lawsuit against the district attorney in Dallas, Texas, named Henry Wade. She wanted to challenge a Texas law making abortion illegal except if necessary to save a woman's life. She alleged that

the law was unconstitutional, vague, and did not protect her right to privacy. The main question that the Supreme Court had to answer: does the US Constitution recognize a woman’s right to terminate the pregnancy by abortion? 

Ultimately, the court decided that the Texas law was unconstitutional because the 14th Amendment of the Constitution has a due process clause which protects individuals against state action called the right of privacy. They decided that a person’s right to choose to have an abortion is within the right to privacy and that any other law that would prohibit abortion violates that right. 

However, in June of 2022, Dobbs v. Jackson was decided and overturned the decision of Roe v. Wade. This is because, in 2018, Mississippi legislators passed a law called the Gestational Age Act, which prohibits abortions after 15 weeks. The only licensed abortion clinic in Mississippi called the Jackson Women’s Health Organization filed a lawsuit that went all the way up to the Supreme Court. The ultimate question that they had to answer was is the Mississippi’s law banning abortion after 15 weeks unconstitutional? In the end, they would find that there is nowhere in the Constitution that gives a person a right to an abortion. The Supreme Court has broken from stare decisis in following a precedented and influential decision from 50 years ago. In the Majority Opinion, written by Justice Samuel Alito, he discussed the right to abortion as neither deeply rooted in the nation’s history nor an essential component of “ordered liberty.” 

What exactly is the United States’ history with abortion and reproductive rights? Unsurprisingly, the history is rooted in sexism, the patriarchy, and the idea that the American woman’s duty and sole purpose was to bear children. The first time that abortion was actually criminalized was in the mid-nineteenth century. In the 1850s and 1860s, doctors helped legislators pass anti-abortion laws to make it

illegal to have an abortion and to take birth control. And yet, even though all these new laws were passed criminalizing birth control, women started to take control over their bodies, pregnancies, and abortions. During this time period, many argued that too many native-born white women were terminating their pregnancies. Many people were afraid that if white American women stopped having children, America would be overrun by foreigners. Many were against the use of contraceptives as well, likening the women who used them to prostitutes. Some leaders of the anti-abortion movement were of the view that pregnancy and having children were women’s purposes in society. One of those leaders, named Horatio Storer, wrote “what a woman is in health, in character, in her charms, alike of body, mind, and soul because of her womb alone.” The ideal, white, American family was seen as one that had lots of children to carry on the ideal American society. When women started to unsubscribe from that idea, many anti-abortionists felt it threatened their society and way of life and left them open for an ‘invasion,’ if you will, of foreigners. It has only been since the 1960s that women could even think about getting access to a birth control pill. Even today, while more accessible than 50-60 years ago, birth control is still not as widely accessible as one might think. Now with the overturning of Roe v. Wade in Dobbs v. Jackson, many women in America are worried that more policies will follow that could make their accessibility to reproductive health resources even smaller. 

What about the rest of the world? A lot of times, when the United States makes policies about issues, other countries would try to follow it or model their policies on the United States. A region of the world that is very interesting to look at as a case study is Latin and South America. As the United States’ southern neighbors, a lot of what the US does affects them. As of this moment, there are only 6 countries in Latin and South America that have a ban on abortions. They are El Salvador, Haiti,

Honduras, the Dominican Republic, Suriname, and Nicaragua. In most of the countries where abortion is legal, they usually have one of two models: 

● The Grounds Model: this model is where abortion is criminalized except in certain circumstances. These could include when a pregnancy is the product of rape or if the pregnant person’s health will be at risk if they go through with the pregnancy. 

● The Mix Model: this model is used in countries such as Argentina, Colombia, Uruguay, and Mexico. It gives access to legal abortion 

resources and there are no specific circumstances or requirements to get one. 

The Grounds Model has been the most commonly used model in the Latin and South American regions for many years. However, due to increasing feminist activism there has been a rise in social movements in Latin America that have paved the way for their countries to move towards the Mix Model instead.. 

In the 1970s, an activist group started in Argentina called Abuelas de la Plaza de Mayo, or Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo as a result of the human rights abuses at the time. It was founded in 1976 with the goal of finding the children and grandchildren stolen and illegally adopted during the Argentine military dictatorship that occurred from 1976-1983. These children were stolen from Los Desaparecidos, or those who disappeared because they spoke out against the regime and its leaders. It is estimated that 30,000 people disappeared during the regime and at least 500 babies were taken from their parents while in captivity and given to childless military couples. This organization has made a lot of progress; since it was started, they identified thousands of bodies and relocated many of the missing children and reconnected them with their families. During their protests, Abuelas de la Plaza de Mayo wore white headscarves

on their heads which symbolized their right to know the final fate of their children and grandchildren. 

This organization has inspired many pro-abortion activitst movements today in Latin and South America. For example, a women’s rights movement called The Green Wave wears green headscarves as a symbol of their protest and solidarity with each other. This organization started in Argentina and was directly inspired by the progress and change that Abuelas de la Plaza de Mayo has made in achieving its goals. The Green Wave has helped deliver groundbreaking change and progress in reproductive rights in Latin America. Through mass protests and keeping up the pressure on lawmakers, they have gotten the government to make major steps in decriminalizing abortion. They also have helped people break away from the stigmas of birth control and abortion and have raised general awareness around reproductive rights. Through their efforts, they have forced policymakers to make sure reproductive rights and access to resources are at the center of political debate and decisions. This grassroots movement’s influence has not only been confined to Latin America. It has spread throughout the world and people are seeing their success at making real change happen around reproductive rights. For example, in Poland, people protesting against abortion bans are using green scarves on their heads as a symbol of their right to reproductive autonomy. 

Grassroots movements such as The Green Wave are focusing their goals on trying to get policymakers to move their laws closer to compliance with international human rights obligations. The global trend recently with legislators is to try to expand access to legal abortion by including and following international human rights laws into the laws of their own countries and constitutions. A good example of this strategy is in Colombia; in February 2022, the Constitutional Court in Colombia decriminalized

abortion for up to 24 weeks of pregnancy. This is a historic step in reproductive rights and for grassroots movements. Their reasoning behind this decision came from the need to decriminalize abortion so that sexual and reproductive rights could be preserved. They noted the studies done by the Committee on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights (ESCR Committee) where they mention the right of all to enjoy the highest standard of health. 

The ESCR Committee has General Comment No. 14 and General Comment No. 22 which also played a role in Colombia’s decriminalization of abortion. These general comments talk about the right to health, equality, and freedom of conscience. By extension, the interpretation of these international human rights laws implies that denying women access to abortion is a form of discrimination that is in contrast with basic human rights. Colombia’s new policies and laws adhering to international human rights have influenced other countries in Latin America to do the same and now abortionservices have been included in health care systems all over Latin America due to the persistence and pressure of grassroots movements to make sure reproductive rights are a present topic in policy debates. 

In addition, grassroots movements have also emphasized to lawmakers how criminalizing abortions is not going to stop them from happening. Criminalization threatens the ability of women to get access to essential reproductive health care and resources. At the same time, it also increases inequality and discrimination. If a wealthy person has the resources to get an abortion, then the chances of deadly results are slimmer. The rate of unsafe abortions is four times higher and is increasing in countries with abortion laws that are restrictive and where abortion is criminalized. According to a study done by an organization in Colombia named La Mesa por la Vida y La Salud de las Mujeres says that only 1 to 12 percent of abortions are performed legally. This

implies that most women in Latin America getting abortions are doing so in unsafe conditions where their health could be at a much greater risk. Furthermore, many of the legal abortion clinics are located in major cities, which are unaccessible to many women. Women who live in rural areas already experience greater discrimination and marginalization and are now being put in an even more vulnerable situation. This is why grassroots organizations and movements are fighting for better access to clinics, information, and resources to obtain an abortion in safe conditions. The organizations are positioning reproductive rights as a social justice issue, the absence of which is a violation of women’s rights. By putting this topic into public conservation, they are helping everyday people and lawmakers think of circumstances and conditions that have not even crossed their minds. 

The main question here is: will the policymakers in the United States try to incorporate some of these strategies that grassroots organizations are implementing to help women get more access to resources for safe abortions and take steps to decriminalize abortions and birth control fully? Well, seeing how grassroots movements such as The Green Wave have already spread all through Latin and South America and have even gone to Europe, it is conceivable that these methods could be adopted by similar protest movements in the United States. By putting pressure on lawmakers and generally informing the public about abortion access and reproductive rights, these movements can make sure that these issues are at the forefront of political conversations and debates. On paper, the United States is a secular country, with very clearly laid out foundations for a separation of church and state.The model which protects the rights of women most is the decriminalization model, where abortion is recognized as an essential health care service that no one needs to be prosecuted for or die from. It is only when personal and religious beliefs are set aside and looking

toward movements are arguments that have worked for others that the United States can finally make progress in the realm of reproductive rights. 

State of Present-Day Federalism

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

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

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

The Case of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia

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

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

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

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

The Case of the Republic of India

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

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

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

The Case of the Russian Federation

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

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

The Case of the United States of America

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

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

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

The Case of the Argentine Republic

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

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

Conclusion

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

Green New Champions

While fossil fuel companies and politicians often blame individuals for their carbon emissions and plastic straws, environmental issues are upheld by the lasting effects of industrialization and colonization and perpetuated by systems of oppression. As fires plague entire countries, global temperatures rise, and communities remain without clean water, government policy is the most efficient mechanism for change.

Countries such as Argentina, Poland, Indonesia, and Tanzania engaged in climate protests throughout the month of January. Coordinated events by Fridays for Future brought out protesters around the globe, and people spoke out with criticisms of various environmental policies. These continued into February, and Sweden, Peru, France, and Serbia were brought into the picture. On March 25th, over 700 youth climate strike protests took place worldwide, and one billion people took part in Earth Day this April. As stated by a supporter of the UK Extinction Rebellion Movement, “This has to be the biggest year yet for climate protest.” 

In 2019, Senator Markey and Representative Ocasio-Cortez introduced H.Res.109/S.Res.59. This resolution acknowledged human activity as “the dominant cause of observed climate change over the past century” and climate change as a catalyst for mass migrations, wildfires, and deadly heat stress. It noted that there will be “more than $500,000,000,000 in lost annual economic output in the United States by the year 2100,” and moreover, BIPOC and low-income communities will be disproportionately affected. People, infrastructure, and industry will take a massive blow without major changes in policy, and with this in mind, 14 Senators and 101 Representatives officially recognized “the duty of the Federal Government to create a Green New Deal.” A new vigor was brought to the movement for environmental justice. 

The Green New Deal calls for supporting community projects, updating infrastructure, upgrading renewable energy sources, building energy-efficient power sources, investing in clean manufacturing, working with farmers and ranchers to decrease pollution by the agricultural sector, restoring biodiversity and natural ecosystems, cleaning up hazardous waste, and promoting international collaboration on climate issues. It includes a lengthy section about how jobs and education intersect with these environmental goals, and it recognizes a variety of equity issues. In the past few years, however, the Green New Deal has been criticized for being “too broad and not specific enough.” To dissolve any blurry areas and rejuvenate the energy behind the 2019 resolution, a new environmental pledge was released in March. 

The Green New Deal Pledge

The general idea of the Green New Deal Pledge is for officeholders to actively push for progressive climate legislation, organize their colleagues to join the fight, and publicly advocate for the Green New Deal. More specifically, there are nine bills beyond the Green New Deal Resolution that pledges must co-sponsor within six months of their swearing-in, and they must abide by a contribution policy.

That contribution policy is for each pledge-taker to “reject contributions of over $200 from oil, gas, and coal industry executives, lobbyists, or PACs,” and the essence of this standard is to ensure that political loyalties lie where they should: with the constituents. When Senators and Representatives are propped up by fossil fuel corporations, entire movements can stall. For example, Joe Manchin, who helped stall the Build Back Better Act, had “between $1.4 million and $5.8 million held in coal companies” in 2020. Taking it back to 2019, the “combined fossil fuel contributions to ‘no’ votes against [the] Green New Deal resolution” was over $55,000,000. As shown in the past few years, big oil, gas, and coal companies are responsible for regulating big oil, gas, and coal companies. In order to hold so-called “climate champions” accountable, the pledge requires officeholders to detach their strings. 

On the topic of fossil fuels, one of the bills that must be co-sponsored is the Keep It in the Ground Act, which “eliminates new fossil fuel production projects on federal public land and waters.” It prohibits the Bureau of Land Management and the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management from renewing or authorizing fossil fuel projects, but there are a couple of exceptions involving national security and specific legal restrictions regarding contracts. While the United States is highly reliant on fossil fuels at this point, policymakers must be conscious of the long-term effects. The use of fossil fuels results in land degradation, water pollution, and ocean acidification, and according to the International Energy Agency, no new fossil fuel projects can be implemented for the world to have even half a chance at reaching net-zero emissions by 2050. However, as Senate sponsor Jeff Merkeley stated, “affordable and reliable technology exists to gradually transition to clean energy and clean transportation.” His proposal would be a major win for progressives, and the planet.

Another bill listed in the pledge is the Environmental Justice for All Act, which would “address the disproportionate adverse human health or environmental effects of federal laws or programs on communities of color, low-income communities, or tribal and indigenous communities.” Notably, the infrastructure that distributes fossil fuels is often built in areas that impact communities with little socio-political power. For example, in regard to tribal and indigenous lands and resources, the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) near Standing Rock would contaminate the reservation’s sole source of freshwater; the Line 3 Pipeline would harm aquatic ecosystems; the Keystone XL Pipeline would have threatened ancestral homeland with dirty tar. Additionally, BIPOC and impoverished communities are often the ones most affected by chemicals and toxic materials. Flint, a city that had dirty water for years, is 57 percent African-American with 41 percent of the city under the poverty line—but although Flint is well-known, other communities are facing similar struggles. A journal article published by Nature Communications stated that “water hardship is spread unevenly across both space and society, reflecting the spatial patterning of social inequality due to settler colonialism, racism, and economic inequality in the United States.” Furthermore, when these communities are affected, it takes longer for the problem to be solved than wealthy, white ones, as evidenced by the degree of post-wildfire cleanup and rebuilding. Climate inequality is already prevalent in the United States.

The next bill, the Civilian Climate Corps for Jobs and Justice Act, would create a climate service program “to help communities respond to climate change and transition to a clean economy.” This Act would not only assist with the completion of federally-funded projects—reducing carbon emissions, transitioning to renewable energy, responding to climate disasters, and launching conservation projects—but it would promote equity. Over 5 years, 1.5 million Americans would each receive “compensation of at least $15 per hour, full health care coverage, and critical support services such as transportation, housing, and childcare,” and corpsmembers would be eligible for educational funding. Plus, the bill would include tribal sovereignty protections and funds, and career pathways would lead participants towards green sector jobs. As previously explained, addressing climate injustice is a major part of the environmental movement, and this bill would be a step forward on that front.

The Green New Deal for Public Housing Act would also create up to 240,000 union jobs per year while reducing annual carbon emissions to “the equivalent of taking over 1.2 million cars off the road,” and it would alleviate issues like “mold infestations, lead contamination, poor indoor air quality, and unsafe temperatures.” Additionally, the bill would reduce the costs of water and energy for residents while transitioning to energy efficient, zero carbon housing, and it would showcase how the economy and climate action can be positively intertwined. 

Another bill required through the pledge is the Green New Deal for Cities, which would have the Department of Housing and Urban Development fund projects by states, local governments, and Native American nations. To receive funding, the government must have a local Green New Deal program proposal that includes commitments such as working towards zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2030, and the money would be for solutions to issues like climate adaptation, pollution, and conservation on family farms. Especially due to varying levels of familiarity with local issues and resources, it is critical for all levels of government to collaborate on environmental response. The Green New Deal for Cities would allow that to happen, and it would embolden a stronger network of advocates.

Next, the Farm Systems Reform Act would help give family farmers and ranchers a better chance within a system that favors multinational meatpacking companies. One key part of this bill would include strengthening the Packers & Stockyards Act of 1921 that regulates the meat industry “from unfair, deceptive, unjustly discriminatory and monopolistic practices.” The newer bill would “place a moratorium on large factory farms, sometimes referred to as concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs), and restore mandatory country-of-origin labeling requirements.” To examine the broader picture, large CAFOs create massive amounts of waste—as much as 1.4 billion tons each year—and they are not required to upkeep a treatment facility for that waste. Large CAFOs also cause water pollution that harms not only the environment, but the health of rural communities, and “The overuse of medically important antibiotics by large CAFOs has led to the generation and spread of dangerous antibiotic resistant bacteria.” Additionally, research has shown that air pollution stemming from animal agriculture causes 12,720 deaths in the United States per year. The industry has been accused of supporting profit over people, and this bill seeks to address that.

The Green New Deal for Public Schools Act would offer environmental and educational resources to children at public elementary and secondary schools, as well as Bureau of Indian Education schools. The Department of Energy’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy would provide grants to help convert their facilities into zero-carbon schools, and the Department of Education (ED) would award grants for hiring and retaining teachers and staff in high-need schools. The Climate Change Resiliency Program would be created under ED, helping to “increase the resiliency of public and BIE schools during climate change-related events, natural disasters, and public health crises,” and a similar grant program for state educational agencies would be established. This bill would also create the Office of Sustainable Schools within ED to carry out the administrative process of these tasks.

The Better Utilizing Investments to Leverage Development and Generating Renewable Energy to Electrify the Nation’s Infrastructure and Jobs Act, more succinctly known as the BUILD GREEN Infrastructure and Jobs Act, requires the Department of Transportation (DOT) to establish a substantial grant program for governments and other entities to invest in “electrified surface transportation infrastructure projects.” The bill outlines specific elements of maximum-sustainability projects, and it instructs the DOT to prioritize vulnerable communities and new outdoor areas. In terms of costs, grants must be at least $2 million, with certain exceptions, and a project “may not exceed 85% for planning, design, and construction purposes and 50% of the operation and maintenance costs of the project for its first 10 years.”

Finally, the End Polluter Welfare for Enhanced Oil Recovery Act is a short one, and the overall purpose is to eliminate “the use of carbon oxide as a tertiary injectant” and repeal the tax credit “for enhanced oil recovery costs.” The bill would decrease federal support for fossil fuel projects and remove a financial burden on American taxpayers. It would update royalty rates for oil and gas production, reoccupy royalties from offshore drilling, and reconstruct bidding and leasing practices for coal development on federal property. It would also help fund medical care for “tens of thousands working-class Americans” by maintaining the Black Lung Disability Fund. Within 10 years, the United States will “account for 60 percent global growth in oil and gas production,” but this legislation would help prevent more damage caused by special interests.

Responding to the Climate Emergency 

In 2022, there is irrefutably a climate emergency. The Green New Deal Pledge would create new leaders, or “champions,” of the environmental movement in the United States, and the bills themselves would affect not only Americans, but the rest of the world. While passing the original Green New Deal would be valuable, the health of our planet is declining exponentially, and we need specific steps to take as a united front. That is what the Green New Pledge is designed to do. 

Some people have said that passing the “Green New [Anything]” is far-fetched. However, almost 5 percent of Americans would “willingly participate in civil disobedience” to demand climate action, Data for Progress found that “More than 65 percent of likely voters support Green New Deal measures for cities, public housing, and school,” and already, 71 candidates and 22 elected officials are listed on the official website as having taken the Pledge with almost 50 groups as partners.As time goes on, an increasing number of people are understanding that their lives are on the line, and building a coalition committed to strong environmental advocacy is critical. Taking this Pledge is an expression of government responsibility and accountability, and ultimately, taking the greatest strides to protect this planet is not a “radical” path forward.

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.

Educational Policy is not enough to Address Rural Educational Inequity in China and the U.S.

It has been argued that cities are the future. In recent years, there has been an uptick in highly educated individuals moving from non-urban areas to America’s major cities. Scholarly, political, and social interest in theories about “brain drain” has infiltrated many interdisciplinary fields, analyzing why there seems to be an unspoken agreement among aspiring professionals that rural areas have no opportunity. As the U.S. and China begin competing for first place in what is appearing to become a bipolar international order and as the major cities in both these countries grow wealthier and more urbanized at breakneck speed, the question about what happens to rural areas is inevitably raised. In the contemporary context of increasingly urbanized international superpowers and a pandemic-shaken world, urban/rural educational inequity is becoming a concerning issue despite not receiving nearly enough attention from policymakers around the globe. In this piece, I aim to analyze the urban/rural educational inequities in China and the U.S. and explore whether or not Chinese and American educational policy with its current characteristics and limitations is the most effective solution for tightening the educational equity gap between urban and rural communities.

Since the Chinese market reforms began in the early eighties, China’s GPD has risen dramatically, making income inequality a major policy issue in addition to widening the equity gap between urban and rural students. Although China spends over ¥5.3 trillion ($837 billion) on education, the allocation of this money is inequitable. Cities with large populations like Beijing and Shanghai require more funding, but what does this mean for places like southwestern China’s Yunnan province, among other rural regions with widespread financial instability and suppressed financial mobility? Many would argue that the state of China’s education system is not poor, at least when compared to pre-market reform China. This line of reasoning can be supported by the data showing China’s adult literacy rate rising from 65% in the 1980s to 96% today. In fact, some policy progress has been made in recent years with China’s development of an economic modernization plan, signifying the country’s commitment to basic public education for all by 2035.

However, the problem with urban and rural educational inequity cannot entirely be solved by money. Income inequity between urban and rural provinces is inexplicably related to the problems faced by China’s rural schools. With financial mobility being near impossible in rural provinces, many parents migrate to China’s major cities for work, leaving behind a generation of children widely referred to by Asian studies and development scholars as the left-behind children. Many of these children, saddled with newfound household responsibilities instead of parental academic supervision, drop out of school after the compulsory nine years of public education. Thus, the “increasing intergenerational poverty trap” is strengthened. If China’s market reforms have only aided in widening the educational inequity gap, what kind of supplemental policy has the potential to achieve more equity for rural schools?

Tackling some of the core issues in which rural poverty is rooted is a good start. Beginning in 2011, China launched a nutrition improvement plan designed for compulsory education students living in crowded, poverty-stricken areas in rural China. With ¥52 billion being spent by the central government on nutritious meal subsidies for rural students and ¥100 billion being put toward the construction of rural school canteens, many would agree that educational equity progress is heading in the right direction. Data problematizes this assumption, showing that only an approximate quarter of the rural compulsory students enjoy this policy. This likely has to do with the government’s focus on compiling nutrition quizzes for rural students and advocating more strongly for the funding of nutrition training for teachers than the funding of rural jobs that keep students’ families from having to move to large cities in order to support their children. These strategies do not address integral educational inequity issues in China like the urban/rural college gap. Over 70 percent of students from China’s major cities attend higher educational institutions as opposed to under 5 percent of students from rural, lower-income areas. China’s GPD rise has caused these inequities to increase since China’s western rural regions are struggling to keep up with the increasingly rich and increasingly urbanized cities.

This same “wealth-inequity paradox” can be seen in the U.S. In fact, many of the challenges affecting rural education in China are shared by rural schools in the U.S. As major urban areas in the U.S. like New York and D.C. have become increasingly richer, while the poor are largely excluded from any kind of financial or social mobility, which can be brought about by access to quality education. Many of the inequities facing rural education in America can be linked back to institutional racism and segregated schools. Although rural Americans as a whole have gradually attained better education over the years, students of color have considerably lower rates of college enrollment and completion. Solutions are being proposed for tightening the equity gap between rural students of color and rural white students, such as Dr. Gerri Maxwell’s proposal of more after-school programs for rural students of color and putting more of an emphasis on social justice leadership in rural K-12 schools.

Researchers have also looked into the proposal of attracting and retaining faculty members of color as a way to provide rural students of color with mentorship, but this raises the question of whether after-school programs and mentorship are enough to achieve educational equity in a country scarcely instating any policies to address this issue. While China’s rural education policies have been arguably ineffective at producing any noticeable equity in its most poverty-stricken, rural regions and with the U.S. not fully addressing the unique needs of rural schools, education policy scholars are left with few answers as to how to achieve urban/rural educational equity without the funding and support of government policy. Scholars from both China and the U.S. have supported the idea of technology as a means to bring about meaningful and sustainable change to rural schools. However, only half of the rural children in China have the necessary undisrupted access to online classes, causing a serious increase in the Chinese education gap during the pandemic. This has much to do with the mere 56.2% of rural families who have internet access at home and the staggering 7.3% of students in Chinese villages who own a computer. This problem is shared by those in America, although not to the same extent, with 35% of rural students reporting that they often or sometimes have to do their homework on smartphones and 12% reporting that they often or sometimes have to rely on places with public Wi-Fi like fast-food restaurants to do their homework. This data problematizes the increasingly popular counter to educational policy effectiveness, which argues that technology’s effectiveness in addressing and combating educational inequity seriously outweighs policy’s effectiveness. If poor students in rural America and China are being excluded from the digital age, technology without efforts to make Wi-Fi more accessible is futile.

Reports from the Asian Institute of Research offer a holistic solution to the inherently multidimensional issue of education inequity in China. The report’s first countermeasure involves “vigorously develop[ing] the rural economy” as one of the preliminary steps in combating the rural education gap. Targeting alleviation of rural poverty is another goal of the Asian Institute of Research rather than specifically targeting schools with nutrition quizzes. An interesting point brought up in the report is the emphasis on improving the social support system of rural teachers and fostering a sense of belonging rather than nutrition training among other training efforts from the government. Many of these ideas are directly applicable to the rural education challenges going on in the U.S. Dr. Gerri Mitchell’s proposal of hiring more faculty members of color is immeasurably more achievable once these faculty members are given the social and professional support needed to enjoy a sustainable career in education as well as a sense of belonging, which is essential for teacher retention. The cyclical nature of rural poverty in the U.S. and China is driven by a myriad of causes, including institutional racism in the U.S., rural taxes in China, and the decline of industries that formerly sustained these regions in both countries. These driving forces prove that development policies would be much more effective in addressing the urban/rural educational inequity gap in the U.S. and China than educational policies alone.

These holistic, economy-focused policies will only work in accompaniment with government acknowledgment of the social determinants of learning. Similar to the social determinants of health, a prominent public health theory analyzing the ways in which one’s surroundings, identity, and lived experience contribute more significantly to their health than their individual choices, the theory of social determinants of education works to place more emphasis on the context of one’s surroundings, identity and lived experience over a school’s individual choices, a teacher’s individual choices, or a student’s individual choices. Specifically for a rural student, one’s social environment and community, economic stability, and physical environment and community are significant contributing factors toward their academic success. For a school, its physical environment and community are overlooked aspects of its success. Rundown schools in communities with failing job markets and economic instability are widespread in rural America and China. They cannot be fixed by educational policies alone but rather policies that address the reasons why these schools and communities are struggling in the first place. Overall, the work to end rural educational inequity in China and America begins with poverty-reduction policies.

Neglect of Public Housing Has Harmful Consequence

Public housing became a critical part of American social infrastructure after President Franklin Delano Roosevelt created the first public housing units for Americans outside of the military. Prior to this expansion, public housing was only offered to members of the U.S. military. Economist and legal scholar Richard Rothstein wrote in his book “The Color of Law” about the pattern of systemic segregation in public housing since President Roosevelt started the program. The first Department of Housing and Urban Development authorities on public housing directly asserted segregationist policies when it came to who can rent public units. The Secretary of the Interior under President Roosevelt—Harold Ickes of the Chicago NAACP—pushed to create public housing units for people of color. However, these policies pushed African Americans together, which gave politicians the ability to directly impact majority-minority communities. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 banned discrimination in the housing market and the Fair Housing Act of 1968 attempted to increase access to housing. Despite these laws, minority populations are continuously hurt when public housing is neglected. Even if one does not support public housing, it is undeniable that millions of Americans rely on the program, and vulnerable populations would be hurt the most if the program was gutted. The American government has significantly diminished the funding for public housing since it’s implementation in the early 20th century, and the pattern of neglect comes back to hurt disadvantaged populations.

History of Public Housing

Public Housing originated in 1937 and has faced opposition since. The Housing Act of 1937 authorized construction of the first public housing units and then the act was reauthorized in 1949. However, with conservative opposition to government assistance, President Nixon halted all public housing programs in 1974. In 1992, the HOPE VI program destroyed thousands of units and displaced or evicted all of those residents. The pattern of demolishing public housing units continues into the present day; according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, 200,000 homes have been demolished since the 1990s. The Fair Cloth Amendment of 1998 set a limit on how many new public housing units could be created, a policy that the Biden Administration is looking to repeal. Currently, 950,000 Americans rely on public housing, and that number is increasing due to the strains of the COVID-19 pandemic as 915,000 families were served in 2019. One qualifies for public housing if they make less than 80% of their local median income. Of the residents who live in public housing, 47% are located in areas that are in high poverty areas; 56% are elderly or disabled; more females than males live in public housing by 30%; the largest age group in public housing is under 18; two-thirds of residents in public housing identify as either Black or Latino. Those living in public housing pay a base rent of $50, and the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) has two funds to subsidize the difference between the rent payments and market price. The first is the Public Housing and Operating Fund, which covers the differences between rent and operating cost of the unit, and the second is the Public Housing Capitals Fund, which exists for covering renovations and development. However, the funding for both accounts has been decreasing throughout the past decade, and it means that renovations on the aforementioned tenants and placement of new ones are backlogged.

Diminished Funds

President Biden made the improvement of public housing a legislative goal for his administration but has already encountered difficulties. Through years of turning a blind eye to public housing, more resources are required to catch up to the damages previously ignored. President Biden proposed $40 billion in a new bill for public housing and an extra $300 billion for public housing in the Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill. However, Republicans have cut that $300 billion to $100 billion already, and there are major drawbacks for municipal governments. For example, New York City only received $26 billion to improve their housing units, after requesting $32 billion. Therefore, the city was not able to complete all of the construction that the municipal government intended to.

For the 2021 fiscal year, HUD under President Trump and Dr. Ben Carson received a $2.8 billion budget for the department. The majority of the funds went to safety initiatives: $35 million to remove lead paint, $45 million for grants to improve unit safety, $5 million for radon tests, and $35 million for inputting new CO2 detectors. Additionally, the budget cut funds for both the Public Housing Operating Fund and the Public Housing Capitals fund by thousands of dollars but increased funding for self-sufficiency funds to $190 million. Money from the aforementioned housing funds was reallocated to “Move to Work Programs,” which test innovative housing policies but tend to leave behind the residents. Lawmakers prefer to subsidize housing, to extend choice but also decrease government involvement in public housing.  

Primary Experiences in Public Housing Units

Narratives about creating self-sufficiency undermine the experiences of public housing tenants and put forward the implication that they do not work hard enough to warrant government aid. To combat this narrative, The Washington Post shared a moving story of a man who once worked as a flight attendant and musician, who suffered heart attacks and strokes and now lives in New York City public housing. His home has several large holes in the ceiling, and with the stormy weather of a coastal city, there is severe damage to the inside of his home. This man worked hard, and faces uncontrollable health battles, yet is neglected rather than assisted. Residents in public housing have spotted urine and feces spread throughout the hallways, they have difficulty securing new appliances, and children encounter violence daily. One resident discussed the difficulties to procure basic home maintenance in Narratively Studio’s article on life in New York City public housing. She had to call city hall to get the contact information for the unit’s maintenance service, and then call the maintenance office and schedule an appointment. Additionally, due to disorganization, the repairmen did not show up to the resident’s scheduled appointment, causing the tenant to argue with the municipal government. This is not an infrequent occurrence. Most who do not live in public housing simply fill out a form online, and could not imagine the bureaucratic barriers to simple maintenance requests. However, life in public housing is not all bad, and it perpetuates a harmful stereotype to believe that one cannot have a fulfilling and happy life in public housing. That stereotype is far from the truth. For example, some tenants discussed the sense of community that they felt within housing projects. Since those living in public housing faced similar economic setbacks, residents cited a great amount of empathy within their neighborhood. One resident stated, “The projects were more human. I saw humanity because everybody knew each other. They walked amongst each other and their kids played together. You didn’t know who had money and who did not have money.” On the other hand, a strong community can be fostered and nourished without people having to encounter so many malfunctions in the infrastructure of the home.

Housing Vouchers

Rather than choosing to fund public housing, legislators are moving towards supporting voucher programs such as Section 8 Housing. Section 8 Housing comes from a contract between HUD and a private property owner under the Section 8 Moderate Rehabilitation Program. Tenants pay up to 30% of their income in rent and a flat utility rate of $50. The gap between what the tenant pays and the cost of operation is covered by HUD. Section 8 housing vouchers can be a positive program for many since sometimes the public housing rent of $50 is more than 30% of the tenant’s income. However, landlords can find loopholes in their contacts and bump the tenant’s rent up to market price, leading to debt or eviction. Additionally, according to Richard Rothstein, Section 8 landlords are allowed to refuse certain government housing vouchers—leaving room for bias, indirect discrimination, and the abandonment of people experiencing the worst poverty. A total move to vouchers could leave behind those in public housing, who do not have the resources to find new locations or apply for vouchers. Additionally, vouchers can lead to more bureaucratic obstacles and backlog than already exist.

The Future of Public Housing

California Representative Maxine Waters is a strong champion for public housing and wants to see a shift from funding rental aid back to public housing. She requested $80 billion to repair one million homes, but only received $65 billion. Frustrated, Representative Waters stated “We cannot build back better without investing in our nation's crumbling housing infrastructure. Housing is not a miscellaneous afterthought, a nice-to-have, a ‘something that can wait until later.” Representative Waters stands with President Biden in an attempt to expand public housing with a whole new housing bill where “The newest version includes $15 billion for the national Housing Trust Fund, a program that supports the construction of deeply affordable housing, as well as $10 billion for the HOME Investment Partnerships program, the federal government’s largest block grant program for building and rehabbing affordable housing. Another $10 billion will go to down payment assistance for first-time homebuyers.” The administration’s main goal is to get Americans into secure and sustainable housing.

Concluding Remarks

The purpose of this piece is not to state that public housing is the best option to provide homes to those experiencing poverty. The goal is to present the data on who utilizes public housing and how the tenants who rely on the federal program are impacted by gutting funds. It is crucial that the millions of Americans who live in public housing projects can live in dignity even if public housing is not a political priority or policy preference.

The Modern Midas: How Mineral Economies Hinder Political And Economic Progress

Upon cursory review, the prospect of striking large amounts of mineral wealth appears to be a cause for celebration, evoking romanticized notions of great periods of developmental transformation, like the California Gold Rush or the Texas Oil Boom. Such enticing imagery, however, only serves to veil the potentially regressive economic and social reality of such abundance. There exists a growing discourse validating the resource curse paradox, an economic theory that correlates a nation’s mineral plenitude with an inhibited rate of economic and social progress. While such a relationship might initially seem counterintuitive, upon the examination of the phenomena that underpin such a claim, one may find that there exists a substantial amount of evidence that warrants further consideration in the policy making process in relation to nations dependent on resource rents, especially those in the oil-saturated Middle East. 

Defining the Resource Curse and the Nature of the Rentier State

First coined in 1993 in his book Sustaining Development in Mineral Economies, economic geographer Richard Auty outlines the resource curse paradox, in which he notes that the economic and social welfare of nations wealthy in hydrocarbons and hard minerals were “inferior to those of non-mineral economies at a similar level of development” despite the flow of wealth one would expect from the additional means of taxation and foreign exchange. He explains that much of this dissonant relationship is due to the nature of a nation’s mining and extraction industries being more dependent on foreign capital than domestic labor, with most export revenue leaving the country to feed back into foreign capital investment and leaving the exporter with only residual tax revenue. Auty’s most compelling explanation of the resource curse’s hindrance to development, however, lies within his observation of how mineral economies are often at the mercy of the economic phenomenon known as the Dutch disease. Originally referring to the Netherlands’ lagging manufacturing sector, the term refers to a change in “exchange rate movements following a large inflow of foreign currency… due to a natural resource discovery… , foreign aid, or investment” and the subsequent detrimental economic impact on a country’s industrial and agriculture sectors. As a mineral economy subjects itself to large flows of foreign investment, its domestic currency appreciates to the level wherein the prices for non-mineral exports become too expensive to be competitive. Meanwhile, these periodic influxes of foreign wealth result in consumers demanding a “shift to the production of domestic goods that are not traded internationally” to accommodate increased consumer spending, ultimately resulting in all non-mineral market sectors collapsing in favor of consumer goods. Whilst there exists a counterargument that the flow of foreign capital would offset any need for other export industries through comparative advantage, one must not discount that, in allowing the Dutch disease to take root, developing nations with mineral economies leave themselves at the mercy of often volatile mineral markets amidst shrinking sectors that would otherwise ameliorate crises in the event of scarcity. There exists a visible testament to this in the form of Venezuela's ongoing financial crisis. From 2007 to 2017, Venezuela's liquid steel and automotive manufacturing industries fell by 93% and 98%, while its rice and corn production fell by 58% and 55%, respectively. Whilst these declining industries may have had their losses previously concealed with petrodollar-funded imports, the oil glut of the 2010s and subsequent reduction of Venezuela's imports by three quarters from 2012 to 2017 served to mark how truly fragile a mineral economy can be, as one may witness from the subsequent commodity shortages and scarcity that have greatly served to perpetuate the ongoing political violence. 

Whilst the long-term economic risks posed by a mineral economy’s unwillingness to diversify exports has the capability to drive developing democracies into economic ruin, it is this very same lagging development allowing other developing nations to perpetuate autocratic governments, particularly within the context of the petroleum-rich rentier state. Brought into modern discourse through the writings of former Egyptian Minister of Finance Hazem El Beblawi, the rentier state is characterized by its dependence on “external rent… to sustain the economy without a strong productive domestic sector”, more often than not through rents on mineral resources, with “the government [being] the principal recipient of the external rent”. Such a term is often used in the context of the various petroleum-exporting nations of the Middle East, particularly;Gulf States such as Saudi Arabia who possess oil profits that comprise over 90% of their respective budget revenues. Due to the state being the primary medium of distributing these mineral rents to its citizens, the government is able to freely “[distribute] favors and benefits to its population”. This, when coupled with the minimal or nonexistent taxation in most rentier states, creates an environment that is inherently contradictory to the democratic social contract of government representation at the cost of taxation. Instead, political apathy dominates as a citizen of a rentier state has little incentive to participate in civil society or agitate for social change. Furthermore, in the event that mounting political pressure does lead to calls for democratization, the state’s absolute control over mineral rents ensures that it is able to mollify any dissenting groups through favorable rent payments. One may see this phenomenon at work in the wake of the initial Arab Spring protests in Tunisia, after which the Kuwaiti government announced that each citizen would receive the equivalent of $3,500 and free food staples for 13 months, or through Saudi Arabia’s $10.7 billion social welfare increase following the fall of Hasni Mubarak’s regime in Egypt. This pacificatory of state patronage may also take a less overt form through government mandated employment, with rent-funded programs such as Saudi Arabia’s Nitaqat and Qatar’s Qatarization initiatives offering their citizens guaranteed job security in the public sector for the sake of preventing job insecurity from adding to the costs of living in an autocratic state. 

Preparing for a Post-Rentier Future 

Despite the elaborate way in which this unique form of social contract has upheld authoritarian rentier states for decades, there does exist a growing trend that indicates such regimes--particularly those in the Middle East--are to inevitably plan for a post-rentier future. With OPEC crude oil prices having fallen by 38% from 2019 to 2020 and the COVID-19 global economic crises resulting in economic contractions for the majority of rentier states, many rentier states both abroad and in the Middle East have found themselves unable to sustain their generous distribution of rents. Such crises serve a twofold detriment to the rentier state, as they not only highlight said governments’ atrophied public health institutions in favor of those that produce resource rents, but also the inability of such states to sustain its pacification measures when under economic duress. In such cases, upper-class citizens in rentier states who have offered guaranteed employment, namely the Gulf States, have engaged in an en-masse departure from their countries of origin in an effort to secure financial stability elsewhere, resulting in overwhelming waves of capital outflow. For a country directing their rents primarily towards the middle class, however, the consequences of this pressure to abandon the rentier system appear to be much more severe, resulting in explicit civil unrest. Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari’s 2020 decision to cease the country’s long standing and popular subsidization of oil and electricity, spurred by the need to reallocate oil rents to combat the coronavirus, has resulted in the mass eruption of protests that threaten to undermine the foundations of the current Nigerian government. For increasingly youth-saturated rentier states such as Saudi Arabia, a nation with 25% of its population being below the age of 14, typical rentier systems of mollification such as state-mandated employment may find itself no longer able to guarantee employment to the eventual influx of youths entering the workforce. With the insidious regression caused by the resource curse made apparent, one must reconsider if the United States’ attempts to embargo foreign nationalized oil industries truly do serve only as mere economic retaliation. Though the United States has been criticized for its recently tightened sanctions directed towards Venuzuela’s state oil company, Petróleos de Venezuela, S.A. (PdVSA), for their admitted role in harming the nation’s economy through “accelerating a decline in oil production”, policy-makers must consider the true value of accelerating recovery at the cost of allowing Venezuela to depend on an industry responsible for siphoning its agricultural sector and leading it into its current crisis. 

Though the United States itself can hardly be considered a rentier state, policy-makers must be wary of its constituent states’ susceptibility to the resource curse, namely the states of Alaska, North Dakota, and Wyoming, who draw 72%, 54%, and 39% of their respective net tax incomes from mineral severance taxes. It is apparent that the same 2010s oil glut responsible for Venezuela's economic downfall has not left these oil-dependent states unscathed, with Alaska in particular, a state dependent on energy taxes for 90% of its general fund revenue, dropping by as much as 84% from its 2007-2013 average. Whilst the United States possesses the necessary economic and political institutions to mitigate persistent economic regression in such instances, it is necessary that policy-makers regard the reality that even the United States is not immune to the economic fragility wrought by the resource curse, and ensure that states that normally flourish from severance taxes do not do so at the expense of a diverse industrial base and neglected non-mineral industries. 

In light of how mineral wealth gnaws at the foundations of the democratic social contract and supports regimes built upon apparati of repression, one must use this knowledge to both understand future global trends concerning the rentier state and the operational possibilities such an understanding offers. For rentier regimes that have indicated that they are ready and willing to diversify their economy in preparation for a post-rentier future, it is recommended that the United States  accelerate this transition via selective multilateral trade negotiations. However, the United States must also prepare itself for the inverse concerning rentier regimes expected to enter a period of mass civil unrest following the collapse of the rentier system if it is to successfully prevent possible regressions into failed states.

Notwithstanding the presence of a strong social contract and relatively stable democratic institutions, the United States must nonetheless acknowledge its constituent states’ susceptibility to the economic vulnerability wrought by the resource curse, and is urged to take any steps it deems necessary to diversify its local economic sectors. In regards to its dealings abroad, however, it is apparent that the US may capitalize on the rentier state’s dependence on mineral wealth through embargoes on such goods, forcing any repressive regimes build upon the rentier system to diversify their economy and subsequently develop in a way that facilitates a civil society conducive to democratic ideals.

Climate Change & The Public’s Perception In The United States

In the United States, there is not a unified public perception of climate change. Despite the scientific evidence, there is debate over whether or not climate change is real, and if it is, whether or not humans are perpetuating it. Among the people who agree that climate change is existent and perpetuated by humans, there is still controversy about whether the burden lies on the government, corporations, or individuals to counteract it. However, the situation gets even more complicated. The public’s perception of climate change has been impacted by everything from the economics of a region to the deflection of guilt from large corporations, and at this point, some people are influenced by specific global leaders and political ideologies more than science.

As aforementioned, some people do not believe that climate change is real. This perspective is not rooted in science, so it has to come from somewhere else. Accordingly, the most common opinions of climate change have a correlation to certain ideologies. For example, in the United States, the current President of the United States, Donald Trump, has a history of denying the existence of climate change. Arguably the most prominent political figure in the country, President Donald Trump has called climate change a “hoax” and asserted that it was fabricated by China. He has also referenced “global cooling,” a belief dating back to the 1920s — although it was not a widespread view at the time — in order to denounce global warming. In the same statement, he claimed that nobody actually knows if global warming is a reality, despite the evidence offered by scientists.

When President Trump discussed the current California fires, he belittled them. It took him three weeks to finally acknowledge the fires at all, but once he did, he attributed them to a forest management issue. Despite mounting criticism on his climate change rhetoric, he has remained committed to his original opinion on the cause of the fires. In 2018, the last time California experienced devastating wildfires during President Trump’s term, he blamed forest management once again, discounting the role of climate change in the catastrophes. Even when evidence of climate change is extraordinarily conspicuous, President Trump will revert back to his initial stance on climate change: pure denial. When the American people and public figures accused him of ignoring science, all he had to say was “It’ll start getting cooler, you just watch.” He also insisted that other countries did not have the same problems, implying that climate change must not be real because it would be affecting the entire planet.

There is some merit regarding President Trump’s default to blaming forest maintenance mismanagement. Insufficient forest management does contribute to the problem; even California Governor Gavin Newsom has admitted that fact. However, the fires are getting exponentially worse, to the point that forest mismanagement can no longer account for these issues. In 2018 alone, 1.89 million acres of California burned. It was “the most destructive year in California history” — that is, until 2020. As of October 4, 2020, 4 million acres of state lands have gone up in flames, and California has already had “six of the 20 largest blazes in state history” this year. Additionally, if President Trump blames California’s inadequate forest management for the fires, he should comment on Oregon and Washington’s forest management as well. For that matter, he should mention forest management in Canada, a country that proves this wildfire problem is not unique to the United States.

Misinformation has been spreading around the internet, and just like President Trump, people on social media have implied that the impacts of climate change are constrained to the United States. For example, conspiracy theories about the fires have spread on TikTok. Certain videos include maps that show how the fires stop at the United States-Canadian border, and several influencers have used them to support their narratives that the fires are fake, they were started by the United States government in a big conspiracy, or they are a problem unique to the United States. However, as many people have pointed out, it was not a global or North American fire map; it was only a fire map for the United States. Yet, influencers, President Trump, and a portion of the American people have insisted that other countries never experienced the same measure of fires as the United States.

One other semi-common view is that climate change exists, and humans do not contribute to it. This is second in the order of President Trump’s five stances on the reality of climate change. He made his belief very clear: “I am not a great believer in man-made climate change. I’m not a great believer.” Given his status as the current leader of the GOP, it is not surprising to learn that members of his party align with his beliefs more than members of the Democratic Party. Pew Research Center found that “Republicans with a high level of science knowledge were no more likely than those with a low level of knowledge to say human activity plays a strong role in climate change.” Although it is unclear whether this view stems from the members of the party or the President — the chicken or the egg — it is certainly perpetuated by President Trump. 

On the other hand, politics around the globe has played a role in the public’s perception of climate change, and a scientific study by the University of Kansas showed how framing plays an impactful role in the media. According to the study, climate change is more politicized in richer countries than poorer countries, and the conversation in richer countries is more centered around “debate or argument about political approaches as opposed to proposing policy solutions.” It is advantageous to many groups to either claim that humans do not contribute to climate change or to affirm their stance that people are not a major contributing factor.

For those who do claim that people perpetuate climate change, there are several main beliefs: it is up to the individual, corporations, government, or a combination of the three to reduce its effects. Beginning with the individual, most of us probably know someone who brings a reusable straw in their bag everywhere they go. Although it is admirable, one must acknowledge that corporations have benefited from shoving this idea and other emphases on the individual down people’s throats. Even if everyone recycles and sticks to using reusable straws, some sources say that one hundred companies are responsible for seventy percent of greenhouse gas emissions. Taking that into consideration, many people believe that the mission to limit climate change to 1.5 degrees Celsius is impossible without corporations and governments doing their part. Some corporations seem to agree and have taken measures to become more sustainable, such as Starbucks with their recyclable and strawless lids and the sustainability efforts by McDonald’s, but these actions are not enough to outweigh the damage by corporations as a whole. Many people have called for governments to sanction corporations so that they will not have a realistic opportunity to ignore the environmental costs, and others have advocated for other ways in which governments can counteract climate change.

In terms of public opinion regarding the effectiveness of climate policy, identifying with a political party in the United States is once again an indication of a person’s stance. According to Pew Research Center, 71% of Democrats and only 34% of Republicans said that policies to reduce climate change overall benefit the environment, while 43% of Republicans said they make no difference and 22% said they “do more harm than good for the environment.” However, a two-thirds majority of adults in the United States said that the federal government is not doing enough to reduce the effects of climate change. 

A multitude of people are actively pushing the federal government to do more. For instance, people have been advocating for the Green New Deal, a proposal to move the United States toward net-zero emissions by 2050. Renewable energy, new jobs with government-funded training in clean energy industries, an upgraded power grid, and modified transportation systems are just some of the proposed provisions. Others have urged the government to rejoin the Paris Climate Agreement. 

The criticism against the United States for its failure on climate action was particularly amplified when the decision was made to withdraw from the Paris Climate Agreement. The United Nations Secretary-General called the decision a “major disappointment.” The New Zealand Climate Change minister gave a similar message, also conveying her opinion that the United States should be decreasing its dependency on fossil fuels. The spokesperson for China’s Foreign Ministry called the United States the “biggest destroyer of international environmental cooperation.” France, Italy, and Germany released a joint statement affirming their belief that the Paris Climate Agreement cannot be renegotiated. 

In the end, it is clear that there are many factors that cause such varied views on climate change within the United States. With the mixed signals from the government, international leaders, domestic leaders, the experience of each country, and corporations, it can be understood why the public’s perception of climate change is not necessarily based on science.

What the West Gets Wrong About Putin

After his 2001 Slovenia Summit with Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, American President George W. Bush reiterated his belief that a constructive and productive dialogue between the U.S and Russia was possible. Per Bush, “We had a very good dialogue. I was able to get a sense of his soul. He's a man deeply committed to his country and the best interests of his country and I appreciate very much the frank dialogue and that's the beginning of a very constructive relationship.” As four consecutive American presidents have faltered in their stated efforts to improve relations with Moscow while simultaneously leading the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), it is evident that American policymakers underestimated the ambitions and capabilities of Putin. 

Through the invasion of sovereign states and interference in foreign politics, Putin’s Russia has undermined European confidence in NATO and democracy. In at least some regard, the blame lies at the feet of American foreign policy analysts, whose interpretations of Russia in the early post-soviet period were largely colored by predisposed attitudes about the country and who were too eager to project the idealism of the unipolar moment onto the past two decades. For a former KGB agent like Putin who conceptualizes and compartmentalizes threats, the world is a zero-sum game where the restoration of Russia’s prestige comes at the expense of the rest of the world. This push-pull dynamic of U.S. provocations and outright Russian bellicosity has shaped U.S.-Russian relations today and demands a new strategy.

The Pre-Putin Days

Understanding Putin’s geopolitical calculus requires studying U.S.-Russia relations in the era before he came to power. For Putin, the end of the Cold War was a formative experience. He has called the breakup of the Soviet Union and erosion of Russian power “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century.”

When the U.S. came to power in this unipolar moment, as Charles Krauthammer among others would coin it, the U.S. was essentially the closest thing imaginable to a global hegemon and thus played a prominent role in the settlements of post- Cold War Europe. In particular, at the February 1990 meeting between American Secretary of State James Baker and then-Soviet Union leader Mikhail Gorbachev, Baker told Gorbachev that “there would be no extension of NATO’s jurisdiction for forces of NATO one inch to the east” and agreed to terms that “Any extension of the zone of NATO is unacceptable.” As a former imperial power and superpower, the new Soviet leadership was petrified of a post-USSR world order in which the U.S. played a sizable role in Europe and challenged Russia diplomatically and militarily in Eurasia.. The U.S., meanwhile, wished to stabilize and securitize Europe without being overly adversarial toward Russia. These goals, not necessarily in contradiction of each other, have largely remained the same but the way each party approached achieving that means led to the thaw.

Presidents Bush and Clinton, two presidents who saw their duty as Commander-in-Chief as defending the international liberal order, sought a policy of “enlargement.” By bringing more countries into the democratic, U.S.-led order, the logic went that the U.S. could keep Europe from takeover by a resurgent revisionist Russia. Poland and a reunified Germany joined and they were followed by more than a dozen other states including Albania and Montenegro most recently. To this day, the door remains open to Ukraine as it is embroiled in a hot war with Russia over the Donbass. 

Presidents Bush and Clinton were presented with three real options for a post-Cold War NATO, as Benn Steil wrote: ignore Baker’s promise and expand NATO on the basis that Russia would always behave like the imperial Great Power it conceived itself, wait until Russia took concrete actions that infringed on the sovereignty of its neighbors (George Kennan’s position), or “expand NATO on the cheap,” figuring that the alliance faced no true enemy anymore. Bush chose the third position and Clinton continued the policy, despite the advice of Sam Nunn, the former senator of his own party, who argued, “Are we really going to be able to convince the Eastern Europeans that we are protecting them while we convince the Russians that NATO enlargement has nothing to do with Russia?” Nunn’s criticism gets to the root of the issue with Eastern European NATO expansion: while NATO has admittedly succeeded greatly in building an alliance of democracies and intervening to put an end to crimes against humanity in the Balkans, it would have had to be seen as legitimate by both the allies and Russia to avert violent resolution of disputes and it has failed to do so. The choice fundamentally was between isolating and building up against Russia in a fit of post-Cold War triumphalism and using America’s status as the sole superpower to urge Russia to behave like a responsible actor in exchange for being treated like one. Instead of isolating or cautiously integrating Russia, the United States made the well-intentioned but fatally flawed decision to ignore it.

The Reality of NATO Enlargement

The claims of NATO expansion promoters are contradicted by the historical record. While they claimed that Eastern European countries that had been threatened before by the Soviets remained vulnerable in the post-Cold War era and needed to be welcomed into the alliance, Russia was incredibly weak in the 1990s. Secondly, while the world will assuredly never know whether Vladimir Putin was fully intent on pursuing an interventionist foreign policy in his own backyard before NATO enlargement, it can be noted that tensions grew after enlargement.

In reality, the expansion of NATO’s influence into the Balkans and the proposed bids to Russian neighbors represents an unnecessary and somewhat predictable strategic mistake. In its well-intentioned bid to establish a single Europe free from an Eastern threat and united in values and security, NATO isolated Russia. In extending membership and security guarantees to the weakest European states that would simultaneously be the most difficult to defend once Russia recovered, NATO left itself with two undesirable options. The first was to let Russia have what it wants and undermine the solidarity of the alliance in the name of not having a dog in the fight. The second option was to contest every Russian challenge and put NATO troops at risk over the status of countries that are either minuscule in size or internally rife with rising authoritarianism and corruption. Washington and Brussels could live with these contradictions because they never envisioned these security guarantees would need to be fulfilled. 

Eventually, however, Putin sought a more expansionist agenda. Two major strategic decisions by the U.S. and most of its European allies served as catalysts for deteriorating U.S.-Russian relations: the recognition of Kosovo’s independence in 2008 (Russia is the closest ally of Serbia, which continues to dispute Kosovo’s claim) and NATO’s Bucharest Summit, held that same year, which guaranteed future NATO membership to Georgia and Ukraine. Both decisions crossed a red line for Moscow, as statements by Russian leadership made clear. Former Russian president Dmitri Medvedev, before the Russian war in Georgia, elucidated a clear position laying out Russia’s perception of greater European integration in Eastern Europe, calling Ukrainian and Georgian accession a threat to Russian security. At the same time, then-Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov argued that Georgian accession would “lead to another stage of confrontation.” In this way, what followed, in the form of Russian instigation of wars in Georgia and Ukraine, should have been foreseen by American officials. Putin was not as much a brilliant strategist creating chaos and disorder out of post-Cold War kumbaya but rather he was taking advantage of and responding to American foreign policy on the fly. Yet in its hubris, Washington added to its security burdens and provoked Russia while getting next to no benefit out of the enlargement. 

It is also worth noting that the democratizing benefit of NATO was widely oversold beyond Central and Western Europe. There has been a great worry among NATO watchers about democratic backsliding in several NATO powerhouses and some of the newer or proposed members from recent periods of expansion. Turkey, which has the second-largest military in NATO, is rated as Not Free by Freedom House for the first time in the history of the report as Recep Erdogan has concentrated his own power and persecuted political opponents. The country once billed by the U.S. as a model secular democracy in the Middle East and Southeastern Europe is now essentially a theocracy with more journalists imprisoned than any other country in the world. In Hungary, Viktor Orban has shuttered universities, promoted white nationalist theories about immigrants, criticized liberal democracy, and now made himself a dictator for the foreseeable future through a new law granting him authority to rule by decree. Montenegro, Ukraine, and Poland each struggle with corruption and have experienced recent democratic backsliding. With this, the very democratic solidarity at the root of NATO is endangered and NATO expansion did not stop any of it from occurring.

Russia has noticed, leveraging its relationships with Turkey and Hungary to exacerbate discord within NATO. Putin sees Orban and Erdogan as ideological allies in the campaign against the European Union and European integration writ-large, and the NATO alliance did not stop Putin from politically and financially supporting anti-democratic forces aligned with them. Nor did it stop Turkey from seeking closer military ties with Russia, through the purchase of S-400 missile systems despite bipartisan congressional urging. The acquisition of the S-400 system will presumably hurt NATO’s security cooperation. Turkey’s critical role in NATO has not stopped it from turning toward Russia.

Putin and Make Russia Great Again

Another point of contention between common narratives about Putin and the historical record is whether his aspiration to “Make Russia Great Again” is (a) the main motivating factor of his foreign policy and (b) actually achievable. “[Putin] came to believe that he had been chosen for a special mission—to save Russia,” Russian journalist Mikhail Zygar wrote in Time. To some, especially those of all political stripes who have spent the past half-century projecting their worst fears onto Russia whether justified or not, it may seem that Russia will always have an interest in maintaining authoritarianism at home and behaving like an empire abroad.

The problem is that that is not the only factor at hand, and Russian interests, imperial or otherwise, are no more immutable than those of any other country. As Rutgers-Newark professor and scholar of empire Alexander Motyl writes, “As anyone with an appreciation of Russian, or any, history knows, no state can pursue identical interests for the duration of its historical existence, because states and their surroundings are always changing… As a result, foreign policy becomes a function of geopolitics, national interests, and ideologies, but also of regime type, personality of the leader, historical timing, context, and many other factors.” Take the example of the illegal Russian invasion of Ukraine. It may be that Putin authorized the action in part because he wanted to restore Russian prestige, but it is impossible to ignore that the Maidan revolution that ousted Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych made Ukraine politically unstable, and thus more vulnerable than ever before. At the same time, a revolution in his own backyard led by the populace would make any dictator sweat. Thus, Putin also saw the Ukrainian state as an easy target for expansion, wanted to send a message to the West that it was overextending its sphere of influence through NATO expansion, and wanted to assert his power in the face of regime vulnerability. In the end, it was not just ideology that motivated Putin, but also geography, the stability of rival states, and vulnerability at home, a more reactive, less ideological conclusion than the prevailing wisdom.

Furthermore, Putin’s Russia does not pose the existential threat that it once did to the United States. In a very real way, Putin has not and cannot “Make Russia Great Again.” Economic growth in Russia has slowed to a crawl, in part due to falling oil prices and inequality but also due to U.S. sanctions placed on Russia for its repeated abuses of human rights and international law. Its GDP is roughly the same as it was in 2008. While Russia has improved relations with several major players in international politics like China and Turkey, it still has very few real allies. Even among the few powerful countries with which it has good relations, such as Saudi Arabia and India, the United States has a serious claim to being a closer ally. In the same sense, since being kicked out of the G-8 for the intervention in Crimea and condemned widely for foreign assassinations, Russia has lost institutional power in recent years. Finally, militarily, Russia is relatively weak compared to its rivals. The European members of NATO alone spend four times as much as Russia on defense even as some of them fail to meet the suggested guideline of 2 percent of GDP and regional powers like Saudi Arabia and India, as well as the declining great power of France, all spend more on defense than Russia.

That is not to say that Russia is not going to continue to be an important consideration for policymakers. It is not to say that Russia will not continue to be a major player beyond its own region. Indeed, through its backing of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad and facilitation of peace talks in Libya and Northern Syria, Russia plays a much larger role in the Middle East than China does. Furthermore, Putin has reoriented Russian foreign policy towards the region since the Arab Spring, regaining some of the lost diplomatic clout from the Crimea invasion. Instead of a pariah state that had been absent from the region since the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, Russia is now being treated by even its most ardent rivals as a major player in Middle Eastern affairs. This is because the Iraq War and the U.S. intervention in Libya projected a form of regime change politics and created instability that reduced Russian trust in the U.S. while the Arab Spring showed that popular democratic movements could change international politics, a notion the ever-cautious Putin feared would manifest in regime vulnerability. It is important to note this caveat to understand why dialogue with Russia and consideration of its interests will continue to be essential even if it is not as capable of projecting power as it once was.

A New Strategy

Though often made out by those on both sides of the aisle as a master grand strategist, Putin’s foreign policy successes can be better understood as ample improvised reactions to American policy at best and outright boom or bust gambles at worst. The Blob, as former Obama Administration National Security Council staffer Ben Rhodes derogatorily refers to the network of the governmental, think tank, and media foreign policy establishment has long projected its fears onto Russia, from the Cold War to Putin’s alleged quest for world domination. To them, Putin is a brilliant strategist with a coherent worldview synonymous with decimating the institutions of the post-Cold War international order. In their eyes, there is no democracy Putin and his cronies cannot hack, no U.S. ally he would not squeeze, and no border dispute he would not settle violently in his favor. This lens, while common for the reasons outlined above, is not entirely valid.

A new Russian strategy must be devised to account for this new perception of Putin’s worldview and capabilities. With 90 percent of the world’s nuclear weapons on either side of the negotiating table, war must be averted at any cost. To date, the American strategy has been too militarized and focused on competition rather than a more nuanced position that acknowledges that cooperation is necessary to reduce the nuclear threat and define the rules of the road, even as the U.S. must stand ready to call out Putin’s Russia when it violates international law and foments instability. The primary challenge in this strategy of getting to peace and disarmament for U.S. policymakers will be to determine where valid Russian interests cease and where realistic red lines must lie. 

A more coherent and nuanced Russia strategy would continue to reiterate that the former Soviet republics bordering Russia are entitled to their sovereignty under international law and Russian violations of that sovereignty will be condemned accordingly. Yet at the same time, the U.S. should make clear that it does not intend to expand its sphere of influence through NATO or other means up to Russia’s border. Georgia and Ukraine’s NATO bids should be withdrawn, as they only give greater credence to the conspiracy theory that NATO exists to encircle and isolate Russia, a theory that has drawn Russia to foment war in both of those countries. Concurrently, the U.S. and its allies must cooperate to ensure that Ukraine’s territorial integrity is preserved and Russia abides by the terms of the Minsk Protocol in Donbass. Finally, in Eastern Europe, Russia must not be rewarded for its reckless and illegal annexation of Crimea, which should not be recognized. Reckless land grabs have no place in 21st century Europe and international politics, and as long as this principle remains intact, the U.S. should not recognize the annexation. 

In Syria, Moscow’s support for Assad’s regime has brought great harm to the Syrian people. Unfortunately, U.S. military misadventures in the Middle East have validated the Russian view that Washington seeks to destabilize the region through destructive regime change wars. This view may be motivated by Russia’s own interests, but that alone does not discredit it. As such, the U.S. has to be willing to negotiate an enduring peace settlement that includes all of the various factions and ultimately dramatically scales back both the U.S. and Russian presences in the region, even if it means Assad controls a sizable part of the country.

The U.S. missed a major opportunity when it chose to prioritize NATO expansion over the Partnership for Peace, which included Russia and aimed to create trust between NATO and Russia. Furthermore, the Partnership for Peace was not just a military alliance, as it facilitated cooperation on science and environmental issues, disaster response, policy planning, and civil-military relations. The Partnership was uniquely able to thread the needle posed by Nunn between assuaging Russian concerns about NATO enlargement, supporting democratic values, and preparing aspiring members for consideration. In short, it reached beyond the alliance to forge trust between NATO states and non-NATO states. While non-recognition of the Crimea annexation would preclude readmission to the G7 for good reason, the U.S. should seek to build similar low-risk institutions like the Partnership for Peace that engage with, rather than isolate Russia to facilitate cooperation on non-security issues and reduce distrust on security issues.

As stated earlier, 90 percent of the world’s nuclear weapons are in the hands of the U.S. and Russia. Those who huddled under desks during the Cuban missile crisis and those in the Obama Administration who worked tirelessly to approve the 2011 New START treaty that dramatically limited the deployment of strategic nuclear weapons by either side need no reminder of the danger of these weapons. Nevertheless, the George W. Bush and Trump administrations took dead aim at the various arms control and disarmament treaties governing these weapons. In 2002, the Bush Administration withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, which limited the number of anti-ballistic missile (ABM) systems each party could possess. Russia responded by building up its nuclear capabilities. Last September, the White House officially withdrew from the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF), which led to the elimination of almost 3,000 nuclear missiles. Even if the U.S. claim that Russia had been cheating on the deal was true, remaining a party to it would have been preferable because now Putin gets to tell the world that the U.S. cannot keep its word and that its interest in nonproliferation is not serious. Furthermore, with New START itself in danger of not being reauthorized (despite U.S. conclusions that Russia abides by the deal’s terms) by 2021, it is quite possible that there will be no legally binding limits on the world’s two largest nuclear arsenals for the first time in 50 years. Forty-five years of nuclear chicken was enough. The transparency and restrictions on proliferation and deployment instilled in these treaties reduce the likelihood of a third world war, and it is imperative that U.S. strategy prioritize getting back to the negotiating table.

Finally, Vladimir Putin’s kleptocratic authoritarian petrostate regime is as repressive as they come. The current president’s foreign policy is largely defined by his willingness to cozy up to dictators, including Putin himself. On the other end of the table, Putin has exported his particular brand of xenophobia, homophobia, all across Europe in the form of backing far-right parties and leaders like Orban. The U.S. has an obligation to support democracy and human rights through peaceful means in Russia and across Europe, as transparent, stable governments that can be held accountable by their voters make for good allies because they are sympathetic to the liberal worldview that benefits the U.S. and behave in predictable and rational ways. As Putin’s government bars his opponents from running against him, murders scores of journalists, and tortures LGBTQ people in Chechnya, the U.S., as the leader of the free world, must call him out and hold him and his cronies accountable every step of the way. 

While the last two decades of U.S. Russia policy has largely been characterized by a misreading of Vladimir Putin’s motives and capabilities that emboldened him, this new proposed Russia strategy builds upon the successes of the time period in arms control and the Global Magnitsky Act and reorients U.S. policy towards shared interests and challenges while condemning Russia’s many misdeeds. Russia may not be the imperial power some believe it to be, but its importance cannot be overstated in 21st century Eurasia and in international forums. To confront it when its actions demand it to be confronted and to cooperate and reduce tensions when changes in interests occur, nuance is essential. The status quo must go.

Is China a Friend or Foe?

China has acquired an increasing amount of power, beginning in the 1950s, allowing it to become a globally recognized economic and militaristic powerhouse. China’s military has become increasingly aggressive in East and Southeast Asia while simultaneously promoting economic growth to accomplish the widespread acceptance of their global influence. Increased militarization in the South China Sea and Taiwan will induce a rivalry between China and the United States (U.S.) as China maintains their position as a competitor for global influence with the expansion of their Belt and Road Initiative. 

After World War II, as tensions increased between China, the Philippines, Malaysia, and Indonesia, China began seeking the opportunity to occupy islands and define maritime boundaries. The dispute over territory became increasingly complicated because the introduction of the U.S. as a presence in the area challenged China as a regional power. China used the nine-dash line as a justification for claiming a large section of the South China Sea. The long-practiced presence of Chinese fishing in this area resulted in the self-asserted assumption that this section of the South China Sea was Chinese territory. China has a historical claim over the islands and the sea, stating that it was established before the implementation of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), even though they ratified the convention. The nine-dash-line largely overlapped with claims by Vietnam, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Brunei. Not only has China expanded their naval capabilities, but they also dumped sand and cement on numerous reefs to create man-made islands that would house military bases. China did so with the intent to counter other nation’s claims to territorial control in the South China Sea and take advantage of the Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ), which states that 200 nautical miles off the shoreline is the exclusive area for a country's economic use. Countries in their exclusive economic zones have "sovereign rights for the purpose of exploring and exploiting, conserving and managing the natural resources." China's main interests in the sea include accessing oil and gas deposits, as the seabed is a potential energy supply corridor.

China's aggression in the South China Sea is influenced by their history and current narrative regarding western involvement. Throughout the Century of Humiliation, China was exploited and overpowered by western nations. In an effort to overcome a period of history that, to China, symbolized their weakness, the nation became more assertive in places with territorial disputes such as the South China Sea. China's narrative consists of the idea that the U.S. is seeking to contain China as a rising power. China firmly believes that third parties, including the U.S., should not be involved in the dispute because it is not their direct concern.

The U.S. perspective on the dispute promotes the defense of Southeast Asian nations, benefits of trading, and promotion of international law. The Obama Administration demonstrated this perspective by strengthening allyship and security ties with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and promoting Freedom of Navigation Operations patrols. The United States continues to reject China's nine-dash line and its claims over the island, stating that it will defend the Philippines if China attacks them militarily. To ensure that China abides by the law, the U.S. additionally patrols the sea to defend international law and the rights to sail freely within international waters. The South China Sea is an important commercial trading route for the U.S., who is struggling between the desire to leave China unprovoked and prevent them from bullying their allies. Generally, the American public does not view China favorably either. In 2019, 60 percent of Americans viewed China negatively, while 24 percent believed that China is an increasing threat, and 81 percent believed that China's increasing military power is negative for the U.S. The U.S. must act with a clear strategy in mind because the South China Sea dispute has the potential to turn into a full-fledged war. If the U.S. does not have a military presence in the South China Sea, China could be further encouraged to increase aggression in other territorial disputes such as Tibet and India. 

Increased patrolling of the sea, however, can make the U.S. look like an aggressor, legitimizing Chinese militarization. The U.S. must recognize the economic risks, considering China is in a trade war and also one of their significant trade partners. The U.S. should aim to maintain stability within the region and promote negotiation, communication, and cooperation without causing interference that demonstrates aggression and western dominance. One recommendation is for the U.S. to continue its support for Southeast Asian allies by providing equipment, sea surveillance and coast guard infrastructure to build their maritime capacity. To counter China’s overwhelming presence in the region, the U.S. must increase defense cooperation with India by jointly conducting military exercises. Helping allies, especially the Philippines and Vietnam, allows these countries to defend themselves from China's aggression and balances power in the region. By doing so, the U.S. would increase security in the South China Sea, preventing military conflict and balancing power between Southeast Asian countries and China.

In the 1970s, China began to embrace globalization, international trade, and foreign direct investment. In 2013, President Xi Jinping announced the launch of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) during a visit to Kazakhstan, which allowed China to expand its regional influence and locations outside of the region, such as Africa, Central Asia, and parts of Europe. This multi-trillion dollar infrastructure project intends to create an economic belt and maritime "silk road" that connects China to over sixty countries in Eurasia and Africa. The BRI aims to fund infrastructure projects such as highways, railways, sea ports, airports, and oil refineries. 

Though the BRI will help underdeveloped countries, it also contains negative aspects that can simultaneously hurt the countries by ensuring their inability to repay their debts, which would prolong China’s control of their projects. Since its launch, China has been accused of putting countries into "debt traps.” The BRI has made project deals with numerous smaller economies; the most prominent and controversial one is Sri Lanka's. From 2009 to 2014, China financed almost five billion U.S. dollars on projects in Sri Lanka, including ports, roads, bridges, railways, an international airport, and a coal-fired power station. This loan, however, came at an interest rate of 6 percent and 8.8 percent, respectively. Other multilateral banks and national banks, such as Japan's, typically offered interest rates of 2-3 percent. The project was suspended due to legal issues over land, the project's financing, and environmental effects. Ravi Karunanayake, Sri Lanka's Minister of Finance, stated "'We mean business when we say we want clean, transparent, good governance... perhaps Chinese companies had to be corrupt in the past, but if they do that now they will be disqualified," showing China’s corrupt practices throughout the implementation of the BRI. The Hambantota Port project has sparked controversy within Sri Lanka because of China's "debt trap," along with the fear of China using the port for military purposes. Hambantota was historically a Sri Lankan naval base, but was built into a port and is now controlled by China. The port is under a 99-year lease to China Merchants Port Holdings for $1.12 billion, causing Sri Lankan citizens to rally against the BRI, fearing that China would use the port for military purposes to gain more influence on Sri Lanka as well as get closer to India, China's rival.

The BRI benefits countries with poor infrastructure and does not necessarily make China a "foe" of the U.S., but because China’s spread of regional and global influence challenges that of the U.S., they are still competitors. In terms of the U.S., one such policy recommendation is to increase foreign direct investment in regions such as Sub-Saharan Africa where the BRI has a strong presence. United States government agencies such as the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC) must continue to encourage and assist U.S. private businesses to invest in high-risk countries through its political risk insurance. OPIC has launched a “Connect Africa" investment initiative, which encourages "forging deeper ties with Africa and the world, through investing in physical infrastructure, technology, and value chains," and helps stimulate economic growth of developing countries, all while competing with the BRI. Having OPIC, a private U.S. business, invest in undeveloped countries may foster trust between the two. The U.S. would not directly invest or give loans to the country's government, which would block the potential opportunity for the U.S. to entrap such countries, as China has done with the BRI. 

Free trade agreements encourage economic growth in underdeveloped countries by allowing them to increase their trade opportunities. For example, if the textile industry in Sub-Saharan Africa was not limited by trade restrictions, the U.S. could promote economic growth in African countries while simultaneously benefiting themselves. The U.S. could additionally establish a free trade agreement with India, China’s rival in the region, who they have a positive relationship with. The Better Investments Utilization Leading to Development Act, established in 2018 by the Trump Administration, seeks to join OPIC with the newly established USIDFC. USIDFC aims to bring private capital to underdeveloped countries, make the U.S. a more "competitive leader on the global development stage,” and benefit underdeveloped countries without getting the state directly involved, which could negatively affect the countries.

China's increasing aggression toward Taiwan directly interferes with the unofficial ties that the U.S. has with Taiwan, creating tensions between the U.S. and China. The U.S. has recognized the People's Republic of China (PRC) since 1979, but the U.S. still has unofficial relations with Taiwan through the Taiwan Relations Act, which outlines the commitment of the U.S. to protect Taiwan from the PRC if they were to attack militarily. In 2019, the U.S. sold $2 billion worth of Abram tanks to Taiwan, a move to which China has responded negatively by threatening sanctions and stating that the U.S. should remove military involvement in Taiwan. In 2018, China approved delivery of the Russian S-400 surface-to-air missile system with the capacity to reach Taiwan. The PRC has additionally deployed approximately 1,600 missiles on the Taiwan Strait and practiced military exercises near Taiwan. One such policy recommendation in this case has to do with the continued sale of arms to Taiwan from the United States. If China ultimately attempts to forcefully overpower Taiwan, Taiwan must be militarily prepared and receive support from the U.S., who can increase Taiwan’s defense research and development in order to compete with that of China’s. 

Overall, China must be viewed by the U.S. as a "foe" because its use of force in territorial disputes creates instability in the nearby region and tension with the United States. China certainly must be viewed as a competitor in the field of global economic influence and as a "foe" pertaining to military aggression. China is spreading its influence internationally through the use of force in territorial disputes and by taking advantage of underdeveloped countries through the BRI. China is challenging the current international order by competing with the U.S. for global dominance, showing a complete lack of compromise and assertive attitude, and earning their title as a competitor.

Huawei and 5G in the Tech Cold War: China vs the United States

Although the White House publicly stated they oppose a government-lead deployment of a national 5G network, they reportedly considered it for over a year. The gravity of this idea —a federal takeover— sheds light on the current situation: China appears to be ahead of Silicon Valley on this technology. 5G is “a type of wireless networking infrastructure designed for fast connectivity of self-driving cars, virtual reality, the internet-of-things, and other technologies that are emerging after the smartphone-centric 4G era we’re currently in.” This means that whichever country leads 5G will dominate the technology sector and benefit from the economic and national security advantages that come with it. The strongest supplier of 5G technology is Huawei, a Chinese telecommunications company which has been doused in controversy since its beginning, and one that should be an important part of trade talks between the United States (U.S.) and China.

In the 1990s, the company made its first big deal with the People’s Liberation Army. Next, India intelligence agencies placed Huawei on a watchlist in 2001 for allegedly supplying the Taliban. When Huawei attempted to buy part of the U.S. company 3COM in 2007, the United States Congress blocked the deal due to security concerns. This was followed by the launch of an FBI investigation regarding possible violations of U.S. trade sanctions in Iran. In 2009, British spy chiefs “reportedly briefed ministers that Huawei hardware bought by BT Mobile could be hijacked by China to cripple the UK's communications infrastructure.” In security briefings by British company Vodafone, backdoors and other flaws were found in Huawei’s equipment. Huawei tried to buy the Sprint network and build a national wireless network for emergency services in the U.S., but both requests were denied by the United States government. A United States investigation surrounding Huawei and ZTE concluded in 2012 that neither company “cooperated fully with the investigation” and “the risks associated with Huawei’s and ZTE’s provision of equipment to U.S. critical infrastructure could undermine core U.S. national-security interests.” At about the same time, Australia blocked Huawei from its National Broadband Network and a Huawei CFO was linked to Skycom, a firm that offered HP equipment to Iran despite U.S. sanctions. Information leaked by Edward Snowden revealed that the U.S. National Security Agency hacked Huawei in order to spy on them through Operation Shotgiant, which was allegedly successful. In 2018, bans on certain Huawei products were implemented in several countries, including Australia, New Zealand, and Japan. Chief financial officer and the CEO’s daughter, Meng Wanzhou, was arrested by Canadian officials with plans for extradition to the United States and a court date set for September.

On the other hand, Huawei does not concede that they are a security concern or that they are undermining the United States. In an open letter to the Obama Administration, the company claimed that “the allegation of [Chinese] military ties rests on nothing but the fact that Huawei’s founder and CEO, Mr. Ren Zhengfei, once served in the People’s Liberation Army.” Additionally, Mr. Zhengfei stated in 2015, “of course we support the Chinese Communist Party and love our country. But we don’t compromise the interest of other countries. We comply with the laws of every country we operate in.” In an attempt to further show the company’s commitment to fight corruption, he cited their “confess for leniency” program: employees that came forward with violations before a certain deadline would receive leniency, while cases uncovered afterwards would be turned over to Chinese authorities. Furthermore, Huawei openly encouraged the United States to come forward with any evidence of its accusations.

This year is full of new developments. More countries banned certain Huawei products, major Silicon Valley companies cut ties, and the United States formally charged the company with thirteen crimes. These charges include violating United States sanctions on Iran but “prosecutors convinced a federal judge that releasing too much [evidence] would pose a risk to national security and other governmental concerns.” Clearly, this is bigger than just one company. The Wall Street Journal described these charges as just “the latest to accuse the Chinese government or Chinese companies of stealing intellectual property from U.S. firms through a combination of cyberattacks, traditional espionage and other means.”

Continuing down this path toward a “digital iron curtain” will negatively impact both China and the United States by limiting their access to necessary technological components, but the trade war is rapidly escalating. President Trump issued an executive order which restricted U.S. tech purchases, raised tariffs from 10 percent to 25 percent on $200 billion worth of goods, and the government added Huawei to a blacklist. President Trump stepped back by stating that American companies can once again sell to Huawei since “the companies were not exactly happy that they couldn’t sell because they had nothing to do with whatever it was potentially happening with respect to Huawei,” but it is unclear whether the U.S. will be able to purchase components from Huawei in the coming years. 

These tech tensions are shaping up to be a ‘technological cold war’ and the potential to alleviate the issues through trade talks seems rough. A Chinese government advisor said that the United States requested “enormous [amounts], even hundreds” of legislative modifications and an advisor to the Chinese State Cabinet explained that “China and the U.S. have fundamentally contradictory attitudes as to what would be a good deal.” Additionally, President Trump seems to think that China is desperate after experiencing what he claims was “the worst year they’ve had in 27 years.” However, as analyst Michael Ivanovitch notes, “nobody seemed to notice that the Chinese were laughing all the way to the bank with $137.1 billion of surpluses on their U.S. trades.” Although a trade deal could potentially benefit both countries and may be the only feasible solution, China does not think it is worth meeting the lengthy list of demands by the United States. 

On the other hand, editor-in-chief of the Chinese newspaper Global Times, Hu Xijin, mentioned that he expects in-person talks to come soon. Reuters reflected that the “Global Times is not an official mouthpiece for the Communist Party, though its views are believed to at times represent those of its leaders.” Despite conflicting expectations, perhaps the U.S. and China will be able to collaborate and end the turmoil that “upended” the markets.

The Huawei allegations prove that 5G stands at the forefront of international relations and a tech cold war between the U.S. and China is imminent if trade negotiations regarding 5G fail. Instead of considering aggressive government intervention with the private tech sector, such as nationalizing a 5G network, the United States should focus on strengthening diplomatic relations with China to make a deal that both countries can benefit from. Both sides need to be prepared to meet in the middle in order to prevent a much bigger conflict.