World Politics News   Articles for World Politics Course

The publication of a very good essay on Just War Doctrine in the New York Times is an opportunity that I cannot pass up.  To emphasize its importance, I won’t post any other articles today.

The quiz will be on the Lecture Notes on the Just War and the blog readings from 8-12 November.

For the first time since the war in 1973, Israel has fired on Syrian territory.  As is usually the case, the incident provoking the attack is unclear:  the initial attack might have been fired by the Syrian army or by the rebels.  Regardless of the source, the opening of armed hostilities in a conflict already joined by Lebanon and Turkey is a very destabilizing event.

Another European state, Poland, has experienced an outbreak of right-wing violence.  In a parade marking Polish Independence Day, some protesters became violent and chanted anti-Jewish slogans.  Parts of Polish society are deeply conservative, and some Poles feel quite threatened by the Polish accession to the EU.  The right-wing will always have strong local roots even if some of the right-wing themes are shared across borders.

We live in a world of cyberwarfare, but we never hear about the computer attacks the occur on a daily basis against virtually all governments and corporations.  The US and Israel developed a computer virus called Stuxnet to disrupt the computers in Iran’s nuclear program, and, at the time, it was viewed as a peaceful solution to a serious problem.  However, Stuxnet has made it into the wild, and it now appears to be infecting many non-Iranian computers.  I’m not sure how the US and Israel believed that such a consequence was not going to happen, but both states sowed the wind and are soon to reap the whirlwind.

More tension in the Gaza Strip.  The violence between Israel and Palestinians in the Gaza Strip has been escalating steadily, but these most recent attacks signal more than the usual tension.  Unfortunately, it seems as if matters are building to a crisis stage.

Counterfactual questions are always intriguing:  asking the question “what if?” stimulates our thought processes in novel ways, even though there are never any answers.  The US election prompted a massive “what if” question in China, with bloggers asking the question, “what would China look like if it help an election along the lines of an American election?”  The question was allowed to circulate by the censors, and the results are quite interesting.

The country of Mali has been troubled by a serious internal dispute that emerged after the collapse of the Qaddaffi regime in Libya.  After the collapse in Libya, the Tuareg people, who had long bristled under the rule of the central government in Mali, rebelled, and elements of al-Qaeda have moved into northern Mali.  Efforts by other African states to quell the unrest in Mali have been unsuccessful, and it seems clear that a more significant outside effort has to be launched.

A rather dramatic shift in the Cuban-American population in Florida was documented in the recent US presidential election.  That population historically has supported a hard-line against Cuba and voted rather reliably for Republicans.  It now appears as if a younger generation has emerged and voted in considerable numbers for President Obama and his more flexible approach toward Cuba.  A change in Cuba policy is long overdue.

Stephen Walt has written a great piece entitled, “Why the United States Should Help China Get More Involved in World Affairs.”  In the essay Walt articulates a authentic realist argument–hardly a conclusion that one might expect from a realist.

We are getting a little more information about the Iranian attack on a US drone over the Persian/Arabian Gulf.  The US insists that the drone was over international waters–an assertion that likely depends on whether the waters include the islands claimed by Iran in the Gulf.  It is also unclear what part of the Iranian military was involved in the attack.  The Revolutionary Guard is separate from the Iranian military strictly defined and is generally less disciplined and controlled.

And now, a little comic relief.  Navel-gazing is a full-time preoccupation of many people, but few have probably ever wondered what life-forms exist within that tiny part of our bodies. Fortunately, science has come to our aid.  Consider the wonders of the bacteria living in our belly buttons.  This article will not be on the quiz on 14 November.

The news about the European economy is steadily getting worse, and now that the US election is over I suspect that we will start getting more news about it.  Perhaps the most distressing bit of information are the rates of youth unemployment in Europe: those rates are a harbinger of things to come as young people are statistically more likely to engage in political protests.

The Pentagon is reporting that Iran fired on a US drone while it was in international airspace.  I’m not sure why the media are so breathless about this event.  I sincerely doubt that firing on an unmanned device designed for spying would be considered by most as a major act of war.  The US could probably ask the Iranians to pay for the drone, but a casus belli?  Please.

The dramatic protests against Chinese rule in Tibet are continuing and increasing in frequency as a record number of young Tibetans immolate themselves.  The protests are clearly timed to embarrass the Chinese while the Party Congress is going on, but there is little indication that the Chinese government is paying much attention.  The outside world will have to make sure that these protests cannot be ignored.

Der Spiegel is one of the pre-eminent newsmagazines in Germany.  Its staff has compiled a long essay, “Notes on the Decline of a Great Nation,” which addresses the decline of American power in the world .  It is both insightful and provocative: an important perspective by one of America’s strongest allies.  Since the essay is quite long, I will not post other articles today.

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?