World Politics News   Articles for World Politics Course

No blog posts tonight.  I’m following election results.

Happy Guy Fawkes Day!

Earlier in the course we discussed various theories of imperialism, among them the social-psychological theories that raised the specter of a “warrior” class, or, in more modern parlance, the military-industrial complex.   Aaron O’Connell, a professor at the US Naval Academy, wrote an op-ed piece for the New York Times  that analyzes this idea in contemporary terms.

A 48 hour strike has been called by Greek labor unions in protest of the next round of austerity cuts proposed by the government.  Tensions are high now because the deadline for Greek repayment of the next series of debts is 11 November and the troika (the EU, the ECB, and the IMF) are waiting to see the cuts before the lend Greece the money to make the repayments (I know, loaning money to pay back loans doesn’t make much sense, but such is the world we currently live in–the troika is lending Greece the money so that it can repay the banks that currently hold Greek debt).  In the meantime, France is resisting the austerity cuts–we’ll see how the world markets react to the French decision.

The greatest virtue of the scientific method is its ability to be tested:  if causes are specified, then effects can be predicted.  Whether the effects come about is a great way to identify if the causes have been correctly identified (but not infallibly).  The scientific community speculated on what would happen in major cities around the world if global warming raised the sea levels by three meters.  Its predictions were published five years ago and maps of the likely effects were made.  During Hurricane Sandy, the storm surge was three meters, and the flooding predicted for New York City was identical to the actual flooding.

Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu reacted to Mahmoud Abbas’s statement on the Palestinian “right of return.”  The reaction was tepid and, thus, disappointing.   Abbas made a concession that will probably cost him the leadership of the Palestinian Authority.  One would hope that the Israeli position would welcome such a move.

And now we have to worry about the rise of the right-wing in Russia.  There are people to the right of Putin?

More reaction to Mahmoud Abbas’s speech at the UN.  Hamas has rejected any possibility that the “right of return” could be ignored.  Israel, on the other hand, welcomed the speech, although Prime Minster Netanyahu has yet to comment on it.

A video showing war crimes being committed by Syrian opposition forces has dramatically sharpened the need to somehow organize the opposition before it loses legitimacy.  The tension between the secularists within the opposition and the religious extremists has grown and it is clearly compromising the effectiveness of the rebels.  Additionally, the powers who wish to enforce a cease-fire in Syria are becoming increasingly worried that they have virtually no leverage over the infighting within the opposition.

It’s Saturday night. Relax and enjoy.

The leader of the Palestinian Authority and of Fatah, Mahmoud Abbas, gave a speech to the UN in which he asserted that he favored the creation of a Palestinian state within the boundaries established by the 1967 war.  Implicitly, that statement excludes the “right of return” which has been a key Palestinian demand–Abbas is suggesting that Palestinian refugees do not possess any rights to lands not included within the Occupied Territories.  Hamas has blasted Abbas for the speech, and the Palestinian movement faces a serious rupture.

The Obama Administration has made intensive use of drones in Afghanistan and Pakistan.  It claims that the drones have significantly weakened the Al-Qaeda network and that few civilians have been killed in the attacks.  There is no way to verify these claims, and it is very difficult to get hard information in both Pakistan and Afghanistan.  Pakistan, in particular, has protested the drone attacks as a violation of its sovereignty, but it has not pushed its protests beyond verbal rebukes.  Slowly, however, civilian groups have made progress in finding out the truth about the effectiveness of the attacks.

The political status of women globally is very low–in only a handful of countries are women effectively represented in government positions.  Even though there has been a lot of rhetoric on this unequal division of power for a number of years, change is very difficult to measure.  Even the Chinese seem willing to ignore Mao’s famous aphorism that “women hold up half the sky.”

The quiz at Mount Holyoke on 7 November will only be on the articles posted in the blog.  Since we’re two classes behind  there is no reason to advance on the syllabus until I catch up with the lectures.

Recent attempts to protect vast areas of Antarctica have failed.  Although no state can make a legal claim to sovereignty over the continent, some sort of agreement is necessary to protect the environment and the species that populate the area.  The failure is not only an environmental setback, it is also a failure of the international mechanisms designed to protect areas that cannot be protected  by state sovereignty.

China has advanced a peace proposal for Syria–a very important step.  Both Russia and China have impeded efforts to broker a UN cease fire, and the Chinese proposal is a welcome change from simple obstruction.  The Chinese are slowly beginning to take on global responsibilities commensurate with their power.  The US and the European states should support this new initiative.

Climate Change has finally become an issue in the US presidential campaign, albeit in a weird way.  New York City Mayor Bloomberg has endorsed President Obama and has cited climate change as the decisive issue.  Curiously, the media, for all its coverage of the tragedies associated with Hurricane Sandy, has yet to talk about climate change as a possible determinant of the unusual characteristics of the storm.

The media is finally paying more attention to the Rohingya.  The Christian Science Monitor published a review of a new book on the people, and it supplies more background on the status of the Rohingya in Burma.

Greece is facing two deadlines (11 and 16 November) which could determine whether it remains a member of the eurozone.  The Greek government is considering a budget that the “troika” (the European Central Bank, the EU, and the IMF) will have to approve before it releases money Greece needs to pay back its creditors on those two dates.  But many Greeks are fundamentally opposed to the austerity budget, and labor unions have voted to hold nation-wide strikes in protest.

Viktor Yanukovych and his Party of the Regions have apparently won the right to form a government in Ukraine. Yanukovych is not very popular because he was instrumental in jailing his former rival, Yulia Tymoshenko, and his persistent attempts to stifle a democratic movement in Ukraine.  More worrying is the number of votes received by Svoboda, a far-right nationalist party often compared to the National Front in France.  Democracy is still far away in Ukraine.

Both Obama and Romney have suspended their campaign travels, and some have wondered how Hurricane Sandy will affect the election outcome.  Weather has often been a determinant of political outcomes, as noted in Foreign Policy magazine.

Another aspect of the US presidential election that has many wondering is how the role of campaign contributions will affect the outcome.  ProPublica compiled all the available information about these contributions (much of which is still unknown, so these statistics are incomplete).  It created a graph showing the major contributors to the various campaign organizations.  What is most stunning about the information is how little we actually know about the largest contributors.  I am certain that those who wrote the US Constitution never anticipated such an outcome.

Now we know the situation is serious!

Stephen Walt is one of the smartest realists around and his blog posts are always informative and insightful.  One of his more recent posts has to do with the problem of assessing China’s power–obviously something all states need to do, but a very difficult task given China’s secrecy.  A good read.

A few days ago, I posted an article about a munitions factory in Sudan that was bombed, presumably by the Israelis.  The link between Iran and Sudan is strong, and the Iranian navy has made a port call to Sudan.  We also have some more details about how the Israeli raid was conducted, and how the Israelis suspected Iranian involvement with arms smuggling into Gaza to help Hamas.

Casualties of war are often difficult to determine in any comprehensive manner.  Even among combatants, we lack the statistics necessary to determine the whole range of possible damages such as post-traumatic stress.  Even more difficult are statistics among non-combatants, and damage that occurs after the fighting is over.  Many have believed that many birth defects can be attributed to the use of certain metals in modern war, and there have been some disturbing studies in Iraq which tend to confirm this problem.  The children affected should definitely be considered casualties of war.