CPR Spring 2018 (XVII, 5)

COLUMBIA POLITICAL REVIEW

How does the legacy of the Cold War rhetoric impact our perception of China today?

- pg. 11

Spring 2018 Volume XVII, No. 5

EMERGING GIANTS: SPOTLIGHT FOCUS ON CHINA AND INDIA - Is China colonizing Pakistan?

- Why is India forging closer ties with Japan and Israel? 1

Masthead & Editor’s Note Editor-in-Chief Publisher

Bani Sapra Isabelle Harris

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Theresa Yang

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Iris Frangou Matheiu Sabbagh Christian Gonzalez Dimitrius Keeler Anamaria Lopez Vivian Casillas Audrey DeGuerrera Daniela Apodaca Benjamin Sachs Hannah Wyatt Sheena Qiao Alex Siegal Jake Tibetts Kinza Haq Caroline Kelly Dimitri Vallejo Helen Sayegh Sanam Jalinous Song Rhee Sonia Mahajan Henry Feldman Grace Protasiewicz

Dear readers, Welcome to a new year and a new CPR Board! In the Spring 2018 edition of the Columbia Political Review, the Board’s coverage of politics tilts East.

We begin with a quick look at domestic politics, where Eric Scheuc explores the role of gerrymandering. Will Connell then shifts our attention to South Korea, where the Pyeonchang Winter Games just recently took place. Although North Korea’s ultimate participation in the Olympics was big news, Connell examines the internal politics of gender in the Olympics and the sports industry as a whole.

We then take a look at the rise of Asia’s giants, India and China.

As China grows increasingly powerful, Berkley Velez and Theresa Yang dissects the history of Sino-American relations stemming from the Cold War, in an attempt to understand its increasingly sinister portrayal in American media. Kinza Haq looks to the future of Sino-Pakistani relations as China’s economic dealings in the country have allowed them to gain the upper hand.

Turning our attention to China’s neighbor, Josh Nacht writes on India’s increasing attractiveness as an ally to the West. Meanwhile, Anjali Pal looks the domestic policies of the Modi administration, as she criticizes the government’s role in allowing the divide between Hindus and Muslims to grow. To round off our Asia coverage, Hannah Cho examines the legacy of the war of terrorism on US-Pakistani relations.

Our edition wraps up with a piece on free speech in the age of biased media, where Zack Abrams interviews professors from the Journalism School to compare objectivity and transparency as two objectives in the debate to reform journalism.

Happy reading!

Bani Sapra Editor-in-Chief

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this magazine belong to their authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the Columbia Political Review, of CIRCA, or of Columbia University.

COLUMBIA POLITICAL REVIEW 4: Gerrymandering: An Unbreakable Habit?

Published by CIRCA

Spring 2018 Volume XVII, No. 5

17: Pakistan’s Double Game

by Hannah Cho

by Eric Scheuch 20: Charting India’s Rise 7: Transgender Athletes in the Olympics

by Will Connell 11: Cold War Rhetoric: China and the US today

by Berkley Sanders-Velez / Theresa Yang

by Josh Nacht 24: Cynical Politics: Exploiting the Hindu-Muslim Divide in India

by Anjali Pal 27: Rethinking Media Objectivity

by Zack Abrams

15: Development or Colonialism?

What China’s OBOR Initiative Means for Pakistan

by Kinza Haq

04 // SPRING 2018 // COLUMBIA POLITICAL REVIEW

GERRYMANDERING: AN UNBREAKABLE HABIT? Eric Scheuch

Maryland’s Sixth Congressional District was once the state’s most conservative district, consisting primarily of hills and farms in the state’s western “handle.” Rural and Republican, for decades its boundaries remained largely unchanged, and with them, its representation: Republicans or conservative Democrats held the Sixth District House seat for more than seventy years. In 2010, Republican incumbent Roscoe Bartlett won his tenth term with 61 percent of the vote. Yet even as he celebrated, the boundaries of his district were shifting under his very feet, and with them, the district’s political future.

Under the Constitution, seats in the House of Representatives are redistributed among the states every ten years based on data from the most recent census. Most state legislatures take the opportunity to redraw their congressional and state legislative district maps to reflect their state’s changing population. In 2012, Maryland Democrats, who controlled both the state legislature and the governorship, wanted to redraw the electoral map to help defeat one of the state’s two Republican incumbents: either Andy Harris in the 1st district or Roscoe Bartlett in the 6th. They decided on Bartlett.

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As a result, the Sixth District was radically altered. Heavily Republican Carroll County and Frederick County were removed and replaced by heavily Democratic portions of Montgomery County. The Sixth District consequently flipped from predominantly Republican to predominantly Democratic: while John McCain won the district with 57 percent of the vote in 2008, the new boundaries would have allowed his opponent Barack Obama to have won it with 56 percent of the vote.

Among the Democrats who ran against Bartlett was State Senate Majority Leader Rob Garagiola, who, perhaps not coincidentally, had played a major role in drawing the new district lines after the 2010 census. The Sixth District election was seen by many as a test of whether long time incumbents could win reelection in districts that had been radically altered by redistricting.

Having won the Republican primary, Bartlett went on to face John Delaney, who had upset Garagiola in the Democratic primary. Thanks to the new map, Delaney thumped Bartlett in the general election, winning by a whopping 21 points. While Bartlett retired to a cabin in the West Virginia hills, Delaney won reelection twice and has now declared his bid for the presidency in 2020. Moreover, Democrat candidates are now

heavily favored to hold his seat this November.

2012 was not the first time that Maryland Democrats had used the redistricting process to force Republican incumbents out of the state’s delegation. In 2000, after Al Gore won the state with 56% of the vote, the delegation was split 4-4 between Democrats and Republicans, testifying to the power of longtime incumbents to win reelection on familiar territory. After the 2000 census, Democrats, who again controlled both the state legislature and the governor’s mansion, redrew the lines of the Second and Eighth Districts, home to Republican incumbents Connie Morella and Bob Ehrlich, to make them more Democratic. Morella lost to now-Senator Chris Van Hollen, while Ehrlich bailed to wage a longshot bid for the governorship (he won in an upset, but lost reelection four years later). His seat was won

by Democrat and Baltimore County Executive Dutch Ruppersberger, who remains in Congress.

But the act of partisan redistricting is not one unique to Maryland Democrats—indeed, it is a habit that legislators of both parties across the country cannot—or will not— break. At least seventeen congressional incumbents besides Bartlett lost their reelection in 2012 due to redistricting. Most of these candidates

COLUMBIA POLITICAL REVIEW // SPRING 2018 // 05 lost in the primaries. Many others, like longtime North Carolina Rep. Brad Miller, chose to retire instead of struggling for reelection in a drastically changed district.

Partisan redistricting, or “gerrymandering,” is the namesake and legacy of Elbridge Gerry, Vice President to James Madison. Prior to this position, Gerry was governor of Massachusetts, where he signed into law a state electoral map designed to heavily benefit the Democratic-Republicans who drew it. The Boston Gazette compared one of its district shapes to a salamander, and the paper soon put two and two together and nicknamed the process of partisan redistricting “gerrymandering” in his dubious honor. Massachusetts voters gave Gerry the boot at the first opportunity, but the State Senate remained Democratic-Republican and the nickname stuck.

Although Elbridge Gerry is long dead, his legacy lives on in state legislatures across the country. The Washington Post found that a whopping forty states currently have gerrymandered congressional maps. The rise of complex computer programs has made gerrymandering far easier, and allows for the creation of mutant districts that make Elbridge Gerry’s salamander look quaint. The map of North Carolina’s Twelfth District, redrawn in 2010, is a prime example of a district that twists and turns without regard for geography, town, or county lines, all in an effort to include precincts and even individual voters to favor the party in power.

Adapted from Christopher Ingraham’s column in The Washington Post

The same year that North Carolina’s Twelfth District was re-

drawn (by a Republican-dominated state government) to look like a pig’s intestine, two longtime Democratic incumbents, Brad Miller and Heath Shuler, decided to retire rather than run for reelection in heavily gerrymandered districts; another, Larry Kissell, lost reelection in a heavily changed district. A fourth, Mike Mcintyre, won by 655 votes but retired the next cycle; his seat was then won by a Republican. That year, the Republican Party picked up 63 seats in the House. Gerrymandering like North Carolina’s, which specifically targeted Democrats, prevented them from taking back the House during the 2012 elections, when they won the popular vote but not a majority of seats.

Gerrymandering has not only ensured Republican control of large sections of government until the end

of the decade, it has also practically killed competitive House elections.

Calculations done by the Redistricting Project at FiveThirtyEight.com found that, under current congressional maps, just 72 congressional seats, 17 percent of the total, are competitive from election to election, meaning that in the other 363, winning the Republican or Democratic primary is tantamount to winning the general election. In 83 percent of the country, the winner of House elections are predetermined, making it questionable why voters even bother to show up.

However, before we write the obituary of American democracy, it’s important to note that gerrymandering could, as soon as 2020, be a thing of the past. That’s because activists and legislators from across the political spectrum are seizing upon a new

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06 // SPRING 2018 // COLUMBIA POLITICAL REVIEW method of attack against gerrymandering: challenging it in the court system on constitutional grounds.

There is currently a series of cases pending before the Supreme Court that presents a diverse array of challenges that have the potential to end gerrymandering, determine control of the House of Representatives in 2018, and change American democracy as we know it.

The first of these cases, which is currently awaiting oral argument before the Supreme Court, is a Republican challenge to the same Maryland congressional map that ejected Roscoe Bartlett from the House of Representatives and sent him packing for the West Virginia hills. Benisek v. Lamone challenges the state’s congressional map under the First Amendment. The plaintiffs,Republican voters from the 6th district, argue that by predetermining the outcome of elections, the congressional map violates the First Amendment right to political association. The state will argue that the map was a legitimate exercise of the redistricting power granted to state legislators by the Constitution, and that the Republican voters in question were not harmed by the map any more than any other Maryland voter disappointed with the outcome of the 2012 congressional elections.

In August, a three-judge federal district panel struck down the Republicans’ challenge. The challengers appealed the decision all the way to the Supreme Court, which accepted the appeal in December, with oral argument scheduled for March. This acceptance was remarkable: while the Court regularly strikes down legislative maps that unfairly discriminate against voters on the basis of race, it has never struck down a map for un6

fairly discriminating on the basis of partisanship. The last time the Court was faced with such an opportunity, it declined to do so, in the narrow 2004 decision of Vieth v. Jubelirer, where the challenge was based on a violation of the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. This means that should a majority of the justices vote to strike down the Maryland map, they have a logic to do so without overruling their earlier decision in Vieth.

Benisek is not the only challenge to partisan gerrymandering currently pending before the Supreme Court. Gill v. Whitford, a Democratic challenge to the Wisconsin State Assembly map, has already been argued this term and will be decided concurrently with Benisek.

Much like Vieth, the plaintiffs in Gill have based their challenge to the map on the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

The difference between Vieth and Gill is that unlike in Vieth, the plaintiffs in Gill have created a concrete standard for judging whether maps are unconstitutional: a formula known as the “efficiency gap.” The efficiency gap measures the number of “wasted” votes cast for either party: the larger the gap between the percentage of votes cast and the percentage of seats won, the larger the efficiency gap.

This is based on the legal principle of symmetry, in which a party’s share of the vote total should be roughly symmetrical to its share of seats won.

The efficiency gap is targeted to get the swing vote of Justice Anthony Kennedy, who expressed openness in his opinion in Vieth to striking down partisan gerrymanders if given a concrete standard for judging such maps.

Even if the Supreme Court fails to strike down the maps in Benisek

and Gill, gerrymandering may still find itself under judicial threat. Last month, in a 5-2 ruling, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court struck down the Republican-drawn congressional map in League of Women Voters, et al. v. The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, et al. League is noteworthy for its constitutional basis: the judges based their decision on a violation of the state constitution, not the federal one.

Earlier this month, the Supreme Court declined to stay the ruling in League, opening up a third avenue of attack against partisan gerrymanders: judicial challenges under state constitutional grounds. One ripe target could be North Carolina, home of the contorted Twelfth District, one of the most gerrymandered in the country. If current federal challenges to the maps are unsuccessful, plaintiffs could challenge the state’s map again for violating the state constitution, and have a decent chance of success, given the North Carolina Supreme Court’s new Democratic majority.

Any of the above cases on their own would pose a potent threat to the future of partisan gerrymandering. Taken together, with their varied constitutional logics, geographic diversity, and bipartisan nature, they have the potential to mount a multifaceted, sustained, and hopefully fatal judicial assault on partisan gerrymandering.

Immediately at stake is nothing less than complete control of the House for the rest of Donald Trump’s presidency, be that three or seven years. The current congressional map, has an efficiency gap such that even in a Democratic wave year, as 2018 increasingly resembles, it would be very hard for Democrats to take back the

COLUMBIA POLITICAL REVIEW // SPRING 2018 // 07 House. Under the current maps, in an average election year, Democrats would be projected to win 200 seats in the House, well short of the 218 needed for control. If the maps were drawn to minimize the efficiency gap, the Democrats would be expected to win on average 214 seats. That’s a difference of 14 seats based only on shifting boundaries on the same map.

Even if the whole country’s congressional maps are not redrawn over the next eight months (such a drastic move is highly unlikely), control of the House could still be affected.

In Pennsylvania, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court redrew the state’s congressional map in time for the midterms this coming November.

The new map is far more favorable to Democrats than the old, and could lead to a Democratic gain of three to five seats, according to calculations

by Daily Kos Elections, making their

path to retake the House that much easier. The new map is such an electoral boon to Democrats that some liberal activists are even calling it “redistrictmas”.

With our current political situation, control of the House means everything. If Democrats take over the House, they gain control of congressional committees with the power to stymie the White House at every turn. Control of the House Oversight Committee would give Democrats subpoena power to investigate all aspects of the Trump administration. With control of the Rules Committee comes power over which bills are brought up for a vote, meaning Trump’s legislative agenda will be dead on arrival. And, should it come to that, the House’s majority party will determine whether Articles of Impeachment die in the Judiciary Committee or pass the House. If

Republicans keep the majority, on the other hand, they can continue to steamroll the Democratic minority, and they will likely have gerrymandering to thank.

Over the next few months, the Supreme Court has an historic opportunity to relegate gerrymandering to its rightful place on the garbage heap of history, right next to property requirements, literacy tests, and poll taxes. Additionally, the League case improves Democratic chances to take over the House and will likely lead to future strikedowns. Either way, Elbridge Gerry’s legacy may soon be gone. Gerrymandering could soon be a thing of the past, and a bad voting administration practice soon broken.

Eric Scheuch is a freshman at Columbia College. You can contact him at egs2161@columbia.edu

TRANSGENDER ATHLETES IN THE OLYMPICS Will Connell

On February 9th, 2018, nearly one billion people crowded around their television sets to watch the Pyeongchang Winter Olympic Games Opening Ceremony, which rivaled the 2008 Opening Ceremony in Beijing as the most-viewed televised event in history. Since their inception, the Olympic Games have focused on promoting the values of peace, unity, and international community. Founder Pierre de Coubertin sought to uphold these

core tenants through the medium of competitive sport, hoping to bring leaders and nations of political strife together in well-natured competition. This year’s events were no different, as they pitted athletes from all around the world against each other in an effort to promote global citizenship.

Sports have always existed as an arena of political thought, and this year’s Olympic Games did not fail to disappoint. In the geopolitical arena, the unified Korean hockey squad put Korean politics and the prospects of unity in the spotlight.

Pyeongchang is also unique in being

just the second games by which the International Olympic Committee (IOC) recommendation on gender verification will remain outlawed until further notice, joining the 2016 Rio Games with this distinction. Athletes will not face any regulation in gender verification, after the Court of Arbitration for Sports (CAS) findings ruled against the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) in utilizing the IOC’s policy.

The presence of social politics in sports is not unique to the Olympics. In 1912, Jack Johnson became the first black heavyweight

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08 // SPRING 2018 // COLUMBIA POLITICAL REVIEW boxing champion in world history; he won despite his face and spit in his eyes. The attendees at his matches, exclusively white, decried his brazen tactics in the ring—tactics that left one wondering, does Johnson win in spite of them, or to spite them?

The likes of Joe Louis, Muhammad Ali, and Joe Frazier came to embody the manifestation of racial politics in boxing. In baseball, Jackie Robinson struggled with death threats on his path to becoming a National League MVP. The tennis player, Billie Jean King, revolutionized the role of women in sports and elevated her female peers into the mainstream.

Professional sports have advanced several conversations on social issues; however, certain social and political issues remain that cloud its progress. Many people doubted tennis player Serena Williams’ fitness after childbirth, questioned WNBA player Brittney Griner’s gender because she can dunk, and called NFL player Cam Newton a “thug.” Institutional problems also remain, such as the wage discrimination toward the US Women’s National Soccer Team and the blind eye turned toward the decades of abuse inflicted upon athletes by predators like by Larry Nassar of the US Gymnastics Team and Jerry Sandusky of Pennsylvania State University.

The decision to outlaw gender verification is part of the complicated relearning of gender in the collective consciousness of the international community, yet these policies implemented by the Olympic Committee and IAAF have failed to adequately reshape the manner in which gender is perceived, discussed and judged in sports. Why 8

so?

The question of incorporating and including all genders in sports is complicated by the unique playing field that sports occupies in society. The art of physical competition is dependent on fair play to produce a fair outcome, the basis of which is minimizing physical differences that would provide one athlete an advantage over another. It is for this reason that doping in cycling and the use of steroids in baseball are strictly prohibited.The IOC and IAAF’s approach to producing fair play in international competition thus revolves around a fear that abnormal testosterone levels will be the death of competition; as a result, taken steps to minimize this concern alongside their policies of inclusion for the transgender community.

The reliance on science is the downfall of an otherwise well-intentioned Olympic Committee. To be clear, the world of sports has always struggled to embrace the nuances of gender theory as a result of its commitment to fair play, rather than any conscious tactic to exclude. However, the current value placed on science is a subconscious legitimization of transmisogyny. Until gender is understood as self-determined rather than scientifically verifiable, sports will remain an unsafe space for non-cisgender athletes and fans alike.

Sports is a peculiar arena for the discussion of transgender rights, given the historic separation of men and women in athletics. The conversation of transgender rights in the Olympics demands an understanding that in every sport wherein speed or strength are the isolated dependent factor (e.g.. high jump, 800m, swimming), male athletes are

setting world records faster or further than their female counterparts.

The conversation of transgender rights in the Olympics equally demands recognition that the division of male and female athletes in the Olympics, and all athletics for that matter, have historically viewed gender as an exclusively physical trait.

Through this lens, the value the International Olympic Committee places on fair competition becomes understandable grounds upon which they would expect trans-athletes to cede ground to physical testing before competing. After all, the antiquated, over-simplified notion of gender as a physical trait creates a clear binary of men and women, the former of which has clear biological advantages over the other. Reacting to a changing social and political climate around our understanding of gender, the International Olympic Committee held the Stockholm Consensus on Sex Reassignment in Sports in 2003. World leaders in sports convened to discuss the science behind gender and what to make of athletes who identify with a gender at odds with that with which they were assigned at birth.

CONDITIONS FOR TRANSGENDER ATHLETE TO COMPETE (2003) 1.The athlete has undergone sexual reassignment surgery, appropriately altering their external genitalia and receiving a gonadectomy 2.The athlete has attained legal recognition of their gender from their respective government or governing sports federation 3.The athlete has participated in hormone therapy for at least two years prior to competition.

COLUMBIA POLITICAL REVIEW // SPRING 2018 // 09 With these conditions met, transgender athletes were allowed to compete against those of their actual gender. The IAAF adopted these regulations, urging all international athletics federations to do so as well.

Individual federations remained autonomous in their decision-making, but transgender Olympic participation became defined by these restrictions.

Enter Caster Semenya.

When Semenya started racing on the world stage, she immediately became the ironic figurehead of a gender revolution in Olympic competition. A cisgender sprinter from Africa, she placed first in the 800m in 2008 at the World Junior Championships. From there on, she would continue to dominate the competition in her event, continuing to reign supreme in international competition through 2009. However, once it became public that she had undergone sex testing by the IAAF in 2009, controversy erupted.

Semenya was born with hyperandrogenism, a condition wherein the body produces more testosterone than considered normal. Although the average biological male testosterone levels fall anywhere between 10 and 35 nmol/L of blood, the female equivalent typically ranges from 1 to 3 nmol/L. Semenya’s testing remains confidential, but temporary disqualification from international competition in 2009 hinted at disproportionately high testosterone for women.

Indian sprinter Dudee Chand soon fell victim to the same testing complications, with her hyperandrogenism disqualifying her from competition in 2014. As cisgender intersex athletes reeled from the 2004 restrictions, the IOC revisited its regulations.

By 2015, the demand for transgender athletes to get sexual reassignment surgery was omitted from international regulations.

CONDITIONS FOR TRANSGENDER ATHLETE TO COMPETE (2015) 1.The athlete must declare their gender 2. The athlete’s declared gender must remain unwavering for four years 3. In the case that the transgender athlete has declared she will compete as a woman, she must demonstrate testosterone levels below 10 nmol/L for at least one year prior to competition 4. In the case that the transgender athlete has declared he will com pete as a man, he need not go under any testosterone sampling

Former IOC Medical Commission Chairman Arne Ljungqvist lauded this new set of conditions, relaying that “[the IOC] cannot impose a surgery if that is no longer a legal requirement in various countries.” Ljungqvist went on to urge the irrelevance of sexual reassignment surgery in maintaining the fair play of the Games, suggesting instead that “it is necessary to ensure insofar as possible that trans-athletes are not excluded from the opportunity to participate in sporting competition.”

This progressive attitude from such an influential international governing body in sports was initially heralded as a new age of inclusivity for the Games. While 99 percent of cisgender women fall between the 1-3 nmol/L figure, the limit being placed at 10 nmol/L

became known as the hyperandrogenism rule and provided a buffer for women born with unnaturally high testosterone. Likewise, a looser regulation made athletes in the midst of hormone therapy to participate in the Games sooner rather than later. IOC scientists and doctors alike patted themselves on the back with enthusiasm.

However, their celebration was brief.The Court of Arbitration for Sport looked into the new policies surrounding gender verification in the Games, and quickly ruled against the IAAF, stating that the Association had failed to prove that women with naturally high levels of testosterone had a competitive edge. The CAS recognized that the contemporary means for gender verification are a pseudo-science, but went further than that and highlighted the shortcomings of gender verification in international sports as a whole. The Association had failed to demonstrate how the 10 nmol/L figure, despite aligning with biological averages in cisgender bodies, is any threat to fair play. Without ample evidence, the rule was suspended and the IAAF was given a two year window to collect sufficient data supporting their claim.

This February, athletes lined up behind their respective flags to march into Pyeongchang Olympic Stadium without any regulations on gender verification. Three years after the IAAF’s regulations were deemed discriminatory, they have yet to put together a research-based, data-driven argument supporting their claim. One would hope that this was a hint towards a victory for transgender athletes and intersex athletes alike.

Why, then, are the Olympics

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Games yet to see a publicly transgender athlete as an active participant?

From Semenya to Chand, the case studies on gender verification have never included a single transgender athlete. The most prominent trans-athlete on the world stage was Caitlyn Jenner, who declared her correct gender identity 40 years after she won gold in the decathlon. Transgender athletes continue to compete in silence, hiding their identity to a world that will not have them.

The cause is rooted in the fundamental misunderstanding of how gender rears itself in the public sphere.

In The Washington Post, transgender marathon runner Joanna Harper laid out the gross misconception that transgender women dominate their respective sport. Not only does any dominant athlete have some advantage over their less successful counterparts, but the likes of RenĂŠe Richards, Mianne Bagger, and Fallon Fox have failed to live up to the dominant athletic beast so many stereotype trans female athletes to be. This misconception has simply failed to manifest itself 10

to balance fair play and inclusion, these organizations turned to science, an move which was the final nail in the coffin of their efforts to embrance trans-athletes.

Gender is not encapsulated in a vial or a blood sample, and it is not written in DNA. If the Olympics wants to be the progressive face of change that it clearly strives to be, the Committee must recognize just how antiquated its underlying beliefs about gender identity and its practices of gender verification are.

Until then, multiple trans-athletes will march under the fireworks during the Opening Ceremony, their identity hidden beneath a history of misunderstanding. Pyeongchang will mark another Games without a publicly transgender Olympian, pointing at the failures of the International Organizations in successfully engineering a space that is not simply safe, but welcoming of athletes of all genders.

On July 24th, 2020, nearly one billion people will crowd their television sets to bear witness to the Tokyo Olympic Opening Ceremony. We can only hope that by then, then next Joanna Harper will not have to don a gendered-guise in order to compete.

in actual case study in professional sports.

Even making the argument that trans women are not as dominant as they may be expected to be plays into the hands of transmisogyny. As Harper aptly asks herself, “How slow would I need to be for them to be happy?� Physical ability is not a function of gender, and to places limits on trans-athletes by demanding they re-engineer their body to conform to cis-passing conceptions of ability is unbridled transmisogyny.

Joanna Harper is a woman, and chooses to compete as such. Yet because of the body she was born with, the IAAF demands she inject herself with chemicals that stunt muscle development and weaken Will Connell is a junior at Columher bones, all in the name of fair bia College. You can contact him at wmc2131@columbia.edu play.

Neither the International Olympic Committee nor the International Association of Athletics Federations are consciously transphobic. Yet the regulations placed in international competition between 2004 and 2015 reflect not a hate, but an ignorance around contemporary understandings of gender theory.

In a well-natured, calculated effort

COLUMBIA POLITICAL REVIEW // SPRING 2018 // 11

COLD WAR RHETORIC: CHINA AND THE US TODAY Berkley Sanders-Velez / Theresa Yang

“We can’t allow China to rape our country anymore,” bellowed a fiery Donald Trump during his 2016 campaign for President of the United States. “We need to stop them [the Chinese] from taking our jobs,” Donald Trump often portrays China as a common enemy to US citizens, (CNBC, 2016). However, it isn’t only right-wing politicians like Donald Trump that promote anti-Chinese sentiments. Our media has continued to illustrate China as a cultural, military and economic threat for years. A simple google search including the words “China”, “threat” and “USA” bring up a variety of titles from media outlets including CNN, Fox News, the Atlantic, USA Today, the New York Times, and thousands of others that all portray China in a threatening light relative to the future of the United States. For example, the first sentence one of CNN Money’s articles on China by is, “If you are looking for a reason to be scared of stocks in 2016, look no further than China.” This rhetoric, which traces its origins back to the Cold War, continues to gain traction and terrify Americans. America’s Cold War past coupled with China’s recent success thus gives American media and politicians the ammunition to

paint China as a type of “threat” to the United States.

Anti-Chinese sentiment in American media has existed since before the rise of Communism and the subsequent larger ideological tension between Chinese Communism and American democracy. Institutional and social discrimination targeting Chinese individuals existed in the United States for nearly a hundred years under the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, where Chinese people were barred from immigrating to the United States. This act was the first exclusionary immigration act in the United States that targeted a specific ethnic group. This was largely fueled by the concerns of American laborers, who were worried that Chinese workers would immigrate to the US and take their jobs for lower pay. Fears like these were echoed perpetuated in the media, which capitalized on these concerns to gain traction among American audiences. This places the beginning of the long history of tensions between China and the US long before the mid-twentieth century and Mao Zedong’s reign.

That said, anti-Chinese coverage in American media reached new heights when 1949 saw the victory of Mao’s Communist forces in the Civil War against Chiang Kai Shek’s Nationalist forces, effectively rendering Mao the new ruler

and Communism the new system of rule. Up until that point, China had experimented with being a Republican state--only to watch it dissolve into the chaos of the Civil War--but was otherwise traditionally a dynastic empire. The success of the Communist Revolution represented an unprecedented and large-scale political upheaval. Largely guided by the iron-fisted hands of Mao, the nation was envisioned as an egalitarian society that would bring equal prosperity for all through the harnessing of the power of the population--specifically the peasant class. A significant step in the implementation of this vision in reality was the Great Leap Forward, which was essentially a series of rapid collectivization and industrialization measures meant to strengthen the country’s industrial sector and alter the nature of the economy from a predominantly agrarian one. Ultimately, however, this movement ended in failure, resulting in the Great Famine from 1958-61 and the deaths of tens of millions of people due to starvation.

Another particularly brutal movement was the Cultural Revolution, which stretched through the ‘60s and ‘70s, during which the purging of “traditional” elements in Chinese society resulted in mass violence, in the manifestations of public humiliation, arbitrary imprisonment, forced labor, torture and sometimes 11

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execution, throughout the country.

Although the Cold War was primarily between the US and the Soviet Union, the consolidation of communism in China meant that, in a transitive fashion, China was a testament to the potentiality of the spread of Communism and thus a hostile entity. Although American mass media played an especially large role in peddling this particularly targeted brand of animosity and fear, another thing that must be noted is that this also seeped into academic curriculum. Children who grew up during the latter half of the 20th century were taught to be biased against communist style of governance, in a way that, ironically, resembled instituted indoctrination and forceful propaganda in communist regimes that was so criticized by Americans in the name of the democratic ideals of freedom of speech and thought. In light of this,

a further fact worth noting is that, according to The Washington Post, the demographic of white males over the age of 45 still make up the largest plurality of American federal political representation—meaning that a significant portion of American voters today is made up of people who grew up amidst a pervasive sense of fear and loathing towards Communist regimes with a general mentality of us-versus-them wherein coexistence between the US and communism was a possibility that was dubious at best. It was from this era that the association between China’s success and America’s decline emerged; of course, depending on who you ask today, the degree to which this association remains prevalent and true varies.

Today, China’s economic and technological boom and the subsequent battle for influence in East Asia, Southeast Asia and be-

yond raises a red flag in the US—in the vein of Cold War-era containment policies, China’s efforts at being a dominant presence somehow triggered an existential crisis within the US regarding global standing.

For example, even with North Korea still treated with enmity throughout much of the world, China maintains close relations with the renegade nation. With missile tests and nuclear expansion in North Korea, most Americans immediately associate these negative connotations with China as well, due to their close relationship. These actions remind many Americans of the power that China can exert over its region and have led these negative sentiments to resurge within the United States.

The interpretation of Chinese actions as a play for hegemonic power over a region that has had close relations with the United States is even further compounded by the current sentiment that the Trump administration is pushing for a retreat of the United States from its former global standing—the Foreign Affairs March/April 2018 issue cover features “Letting Go—Trump, America and the World,” with a graphic of a globe being released from the clutches of an eagle’s claws. A retreat from the part of the United States would mean a power vacuum into which China could very easily step.

Despite this move being instigated on the part of the Trump administration, there is still overwhelming lip service for the idea of the Chinese threat, the idea that China is planning to and is going to take over the world.

A major dimension of this culture of China as an antagonizing entity also has to do with the economy. Many have raised the point

COLUMBIA POLITICAL REVIEW // SPRING 2018 // 13

that there is a correlation between US economic decline and Chinese economic growth—again reinforcing the idea that China’s success is somehow detrimental to America.

An article by U.S. News states that the rise of China has resulted in 3.2 million jobs being outsourced to China in the last fifteen years (Peralta, 2014). At the same time, the United States has seen a steady decline in manufacturing jobs in the same time period. As according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. manufacturing employment fell from 19.6 million in 1979 to 13.7 million in 2007 (Pierce & Schott, 2012). This has resulted in mass unemployment for people in the United States who have worked in manufacturing jobs for generations.

There has been large political uproar as a result. People are unhappy with their unemployment and want answers as to why they can no longer put food on the table for their families (American Council on Health and Science, 2017). It is conve-

nient for domestic politicians to blame China, an external actor, for the loss of these jobs. Because China has seen a rise in manufacturing jobs due to outsourcing, many politicians employ the rhetoric that China is, “stealing jobs away from hard working Americans”, as stated by none other than the current President of the United States (Washington Post, 2016). Without context, statistics like these and strong political rhetoric are terrifying for many Americans who vividly remember when the United States and China were in conflict with one another and the United States did not fully win out.

Donald Trump’s aggressive anti-China rhetoric during the presidential election, then, cleverly fits into this narrative of China as the enemy, stoking underlying ideological fires, returning an idea that has been somewhat dormant in mainstream media since the end of the Cold War to the nation’s consciousness. Capitalizing upon this, Trump is now taking a major stand in the form of a trade war—a trade war that may not be benefiting the United States at all. The anti-China rhetoric employed by Trump has several themes to it, but primary amongst them is what Trump perceives as a trade deficit between the two countries, which he maintains amounts to $500 billion. Rhetoric is one thing, but formulating policy from it is another. Trump has engaged in a trade war with China (announcing, “Trade wars are good, and easy to win,”) one of the latest acts in which was the announcement that the US will adopt tariffs of 25% and 10% on steel and aluminum, ART CREDIT: PEYTON AYERS

respectively—with exemptions to some allies including the EU, Mexico, Australia, Argentina, Brazil and South Korea. Then a couple weeks ago, a more targeted action was announced, Trump’s administration declared the imposition of tariffs on as much as $60 billion worth of Chinese goods. This announcement was accompanied by a report released by a US trade representative on the issue of China’s predatory behavior in trade—including items related to intellectual property theft.

There are a number of things wrong with the move to engage in a trade war. First of all,, the move to slap tariffs on Chinese goods will definitely have a great economic impact on China. The South China Morning Post estimates the direct and first-order impact to be worth 0.1-0.2% of Chinese GDP—and the reverberations of this adverse effect will be felt by many of the US’s allies, including Japan—which is, notably, not one of the countries exempt from the steel/aluminum

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tariff—South Korea and Taiwan.

Furthermore, other issues with Trump’s policies include the administration’s misguided view on China, which (correctly)identifies that the Chinese economy has deep-seated weaknesses that will be exposed through and highlighted by a trade war, yet fails to take into consideration that China’s economy has many shock absorbing mechanisms that will cushion the nation from the negative effects that Trump is wishing to cause—thus the adverse effects of this trade war may be more felt by countries caught in the crossfire instead of by China. International reverberations aside, it doesn’t appear that Trump has fully considered the domestic impact of his trade war—the trade war will create losers at home, not just abroad. Just

as an example, many state governors have reasons to be afraid of the escalating trade war with China with California having imported $159 billion worth of goods from China and Tennessee’s trade with China amounting to about 13% of the state’s economy.

What will happen next, how will China respond, and what are the long-term consequences of Trump’s current actions—which New York Time’s Paul Krugman has called “bumbling into a trade war,”—are all questions that cannot yet be answered. But with a recent survey performed by Pew Research Center showing that only 44% of Americans view China favorably, his policies and clear anti-China stance will clearly appeal to a majority of the public. We cannot for-

get that before Trump, American policy has been primarily to help China integrate peacefully into the political and economic framework built by the US and other Western powers after World War 2—there was a time when anti-Chinese rhetoric laid dormant and overtaken by the advantages reaped by American businesses from having China as a part of the global market economy.

Trump has set the US on a vastly different path—one that harks back to a Cold-War era sentiment that China is an enemy, one whose success spells disaster for America. To be completely fair, China definitely has not been a model global community member with its history of disregarding intellectual property rights and subsidizing certain industries to the point where they contribute to the world’s excess capacity. A rhetoric-based policy without thorough understanding of implications and reverberations is, nonetheless, dangerous, a lesson that should’ve been learnt since the Cold War days during which ideological warfare hailed economic and physical destruction on a number of countries throughout the world.

Berkley Sanders-Velez and Theresa Yang are both Columbia College juniors. You can contact them at brs2151@columbia.edu / yy2657@ columbia.edu

COLUMBIA POLITICAL REVIEW // SPRING 2018 // 15

DEVELOPMENT OR COLONIALISM? WHAT CHINA’S OBOR INITIATIVE MEANS FOR PAKISTAN Kinza Haq

Early last year, former Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif traveled to China to negotiate the final details of the Long Term Plan on China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, a plan that began with the construction of the Gwadar port in Balochistan to facilitate the Chinese import of oil from the Persian Gulf.

Since the plan’s initial development in 2006, it has grown to become an effective blueprint for the overhaul of Pakistani infrastructure and economic development. The agreement has raised concerns among leading Pakistani economist S Akbar Zaidi, who confirmed that “After OBOR [the One Belt One Road Initiative under CPEC’s umbrella] gets ready, Pakistan will become China’s colony”. Through investments of $62 billion spread over the next decade and a half, Chinese enterprises will eventually grow to monopolize Pakistan’s agricultural and industrial markets while simultaneously increasing imports of cheaper goods and inculcating itself into Pakistani households through active “dissemination of Chinese culture”. To understand the risk of potential colonization caused by the Plan’s successful implementation, it is crucial to examine the social and economic impacts of the negotiations on Pakistan’s economy

and population.

The Long-Term Plan mentions agriculture as the gateway to a revitalized Pakistani economy, facilitated by the leasing of land to Chinese enterprises. Agriculture currently constitutes twenty-four percent of Pakistan’s GDP, and employs half of the nation’s labor force directly or indirectly according to the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics. The largest crop within the agricultural sector, rice, stands at a whopping 8.3 per cent of exports. Despite this heavy reliance on agriculture, the plan mentions that “due to lack of cold-chain logistics and processing facilities, 50% of agricultural products go bad during harvesting and transport”, which Chinese enterprises will attempt to redress through investing in storage units across the major cities of Islamabad and Gwadar. Leasing out thousands of acres to Chinese enterprises will also quell the tide of wasted crop, and will allow owners to navigate with autonomy to “establish factories to produce fertilizers, pesticides, vaccines, and feedstuffs” while “imparting advanced breeding techniques to peasant households and farmers by means of land-acquisition by the Government”. The Government also encourages investors to form mutually beneficial relationships with local farmers and to maintain “orderly competition”. However, it enforces no restrictions on maintaining the existing workforce or a minimum ART CREDIT: JOY LEE

employment level. Past precedent indicates Pakistan often cannot compete in orderly competition against cheaper, imported Chinese goods, so the employment of workers in Pakistan’s biggest industry remains a concern.

The problem of competition is concerning, as Chinese competitors undercut the local competition by sacrificing quality. In the textile industry, local reports indicate 100% polyester cloth imported from China has become an increasingly unbeatable cheaper alternative to locally sourced 65% cotton 35% polyester cloth. While consumers understand the cloth is less durable than its Faisalabad alternative, the 30-40% price difference incentivizes them to purchase Chinese material.

This trend carries through various industries including toys, artificial jewelry, and shoe production, where Chinese imports already claim more than half of the market. According to the President of Jama Mall in Karachi, the rising share of Chinese goods in the market is a threat to small and medium-sized businesses. The report mentions continuing to establish a market presence in the small household appliance and mobile industries, where Chinese retail giants like Huwei have already edged national services out of the arena.

Given Pakistan’s employment rate, which has been hovering at around 50% of the last 13 years, a shift of this nature has the potential

14 2017 // COLUMBIA POLITICAL REVIEW 16 // // FALL SPRING 2018 // COLUMBIA POLITICAL REVIEW to reverberate through the entire economy. Half of the nation’s workforce is employed in agriculture in some regard and it feeds the “entire rural and urban population”. In addition to granting a foreign power full control of the nation’s food supply, Chinese entrance and domination of the market thus also risks plunging employment rates,

The plan also focuses heavily on industry and divides Pakistan into three Special Economic Zones based on export good. Mineral extraction, production of household appliances, and the entire auto industry are open for investment with the same lax regulations as the agricultural industry. Investing in Pakistan’s largely untapped natural resources allows foreign investors (particularly large ones) the opportunity to directly control exportsand to effectively control Pakistan’s economy. Even more dangerous than the risk of purposeful manipulation by foreign officials is the plan’s provision regarding surveillance and the “dissemination of Chinese culture”.

Under the title “The Safe Cities Project”, the Chinese government will establish twenty-four hour surveillance in major cities on “major roads, case-prone areas and crowded places” as well as “urban areas”.

The objective of this system is to protect citizens but fails to mention anything beyond monitoring to diffuse potential threats. Plans for the monitoring end nearly immediately after they begin, and do not include information about those viewing the films, their distribution, or their possible use as a tool to indiscriminately monitor Pakistani citizens.

The language of the Plan continues to grow more confusing when

discussing plans for future Chinese cultural influence in Pakistan, merely mentioning establishing a fibreoptic framework for broadcast television that would be “beneficial to disseminating Chinese culture in Pakistan, further enhancing mutual understanding between the two peoples and the traditional friendship between the two countries.”

Dissemination is not reciprocated, and nothing further is mentioned in the 231-page document about the execution of this plan. The ambiguity surrounding the Long Term Plan’s provisions have caught the attention of Pakistan’s population, who are approaching Chinese influence with a degree of caution.

The unprecedented control Pakistani officials are prepared to allow Chinese investors is dangerous, according to S Akbar Zaidi, because “the CPEC initiative is the most discussed but the least transparent among all the foreign initiatives in Pakistan.” His sentiment is echoed by data from the Journal of Applied Sciences, which notes that a sample survey of college students reveled 46.6% had “a normal understanding of the China-Pakistan economic corridor” while 15.5% claimed little understanding. The language “normal understanding” is particularly meaningless in this setting, where the Pakistani government continues to confuse the plan’s explicit provisions to the public and denounces he media’s interpretation of the Plan while offering no supplementary material of their own . The study additionally notes the Plan “has not been popularized in the public or not been paid enough attention by the public” . Public understanding of the Plan is very rudimentary, and many only begin to feel the

ramifications of implementation in a decade, when Chinese private investment has come to exert influence over nearly every industry and will cut costs so prohibitively burgeoning Pakistani enterprises won’t stand a chance. While referring to the investments as colonization may be hyperbolic of Zaidi, Chinese investments controlling the means of production and creating massive economies of scope within Pakistan coupled with command of the underlying fibreoptic structure supporting the national circulation of news is undoubtedly cause for concern. Particularly for Pakistan, which has been riddled by “the influence of US imperialism, then allowed unusual degree of Saudi intrusion in domestic, cultural and social affairs”, the Chinese investment considers a dangerous risk into 21st century colonialism.

Kinza Haq is a sophomore at Barnard College. You can contact her at ksh2142@columbia.edu

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PAKISTAN’S DOUBLE GAME

lars in aid ($700 million of which was intended toward reimbursing PakiHannah Cho stan’s counterterrorism expenses and $225 million to the Foreign Military Financing fund) and motioned the

President Trump rang in the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) New Year on his favorite medium to place Pakistan back on a global for undignified diplomacy, tweeting: terrorism-financing watchlist from “The US has foolishly given Pakistan which it was removed in 2015. more than $33 billion in aid over the Hard-lined as these policies last 15 years, and they have given us may seem, they are not new. Past nothing but lies and deceit, think- administrations in Washington have ing of our leaders as fools. They give tried similarly to pressure Pakistansafe haven to the terrorists we hunt through sanctions, strong rhetoric, in Afghanistan, with little help. No and the withholding of aid. For the more!” The tweet catalyzed a meet- past 15 years, the U.S. government ing of high-powered officials in Pa- has faced the same frustration with kistan, drawing “a toxic reaction” as Pakistan as it helps the U.S. fight cerdescribed by the New York Times. tain militant groups while offering

Since then, Trump has an- sanctuary to the others, in particular nounced a cut of $900 million dol- the Afghan Taliban, that threatens

the U.S.-led NATO forces in Afghanistan. In January 2018, Republican senator Bob Corker called Pakistan “one of the most duplicitous governments [he has] had any involvement with” (Reuters).

The history of this “duplicity” traces back to the Cold War, during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan when Pakistan joined international powers (including the U.S.) in supporting the Afghan mujahedeen forces.

The evidence of safe havens in Waziristan,a region in northwestern Pakistan, for groups like the Afghan Taliban and the Haqqani network seems undeniable—the U.S. has killed several key leaders living in the region with drone strikes, and the origins of terrorist attacks in Afghanistan and India have been traced back to Pakistani soil. In March 2016, Sartaj Aziz, Adviser to the Prime Minister on Foreign Affairs stated in the most up-front admission to date that, “[We told the Taliban leaders that] we have hosted [them] enough for 35 years, and we can’t do it anymore because the whole world is blaming us just by [their] presence here” (Dawn).

The response by Western mainstream media and governments has been, overwhelmingly, a condemnation of this “double game,” blaming Pakistan for squandering U.S. aid intended for counterterrorism, for the failure of the peace process in Afghanistan, and for the continued destabilizing threat of terrorism across the region.

Yet, in this coverage and in

18 // SPRING 2018 // COLUMBIA POLITICAL REVIEW official statements issued by the U.S. government lies a gaping hole, a question that never seems to be asked: why? Why does Pakistan maintain a policy that marginalizes them in the international community? What, for domestic leaders, is the incentive that outweighs external political and economic consequences? Certainly, Pakistan does not seek isolationism. They have a track record of hitching their wagon to powers like the U.S., briefly the Soviet Union, and now, increasingly, China. The policy it has maintained for the past 70 years is protectionist, rooted in anxieties over their geopolitical position. With India to the east, China to the north and an essentially U.S.-controlled Afghanistan to the west, Pakistan bears an existential insecurity that has, since its independence in 1947, formed a large part of its national identity.

Local papers like Dawn and The Express Tribune provide an insight into domestic interests that are utterly lost in international coverage. This insight may explain Pakistan’s choices that is more plausible than the cursory criticism from the White House that says the nation is inexplicably and characteristically “duplicitous.” While a few years outdated, a study conducted by scholar Salman Yousaf and published in the International Journal of Communication in October 2015 observed a pattern of negativity in the U.S. mainstream coverage of Pakistan in the first few months of Operation Zarb-e-Azb, the Pakistani military’s most exhaustive counterterrorism offensive. Yousaf found that “the United States was often presented as very ‘concerned’ about Pakistan’s situation, but serious doubts were raised about Pakistan military’s

‘commitment’ strategy and the ‘capability’ of the state to overcome terrorism.”

In light of such findings, it makes sense why the Pakistani government feels compelled to constantly reiterate their unacknowledged efforts to fight terror, and that no country has done or sacrificed more for the war on terror than they have. There is little to no mention of the successful counterterrorism operations Pakistan has conducted, namely the ongoing Operations Zarb-e-Azb and Radd-ul-Fassad that target militant groups along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border in Waziristan. Pakistan’s Express Tribune referred to a statement issued by the National Security Committee’s (NSC) that these military offenses “had served as bulwark against possible expansion of scores of terrorist organizations present in Afghanistan […to] the loss of tens of thousands of lives of civilians and security personnel, and the pain of their families.”

Pakistan has borne the brunt of the fall-out from such operations, from violent retaliation by militants to the subsequent displacement of the local populations they target.

The state also announced the construction of an 1,800-mile fence in an attempt to to contain the movement of militants that take advantage of the porous border.

It is certainly counterintuitive that the Pakistani state, military, or intelligence would then covertly protect, aid, or turn a blind eye to Afghan militants. This flip-flop of policy is rooted in their insecurity as a nation; they are unwilling to allow American interests to dictate their domestic and foreign policy.

Instead, they play to their own in-

terests, appeasing the international community when it benefits them.

In Pakistan, the thankless tone of U.S. media and Trump’s hostile tactics are understood as bullying, a lack of appreciation for the country’s sacrifices and efforts, and an attempt to strong-arm them into acting for American policy goals instead of their own. A statement

by Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) Chairman Imran Khan articulated these very sentiments, saying, “You cannot insult a country of 200 million people by blaming, scapegoating them for the disaster in Afghanistan. [Trump] has treated Pakistan like a doormat.”

Internally, Pakistan faces difficulty, as their democracy struggles with the strain of competing factions in the military and among the various political parties. Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif was ousted last July for corruption allegations connected to the Panama Papers leak, and was recently banned by the Supreme Court from leading his party. Last November, a 21-day sit-in on the Faizabad Interchange forced the government to concede to demands by Islamist political party Tehreek-e-Labbaik (TLP) that included the resignation of Law Minister Zahid Hamid.

The New York Times described the event as “the cynical use of Islamist extremism by the country’s security establishment to hold democracy hostage and to foment the insecurity it needs to maintain its grip on power.”

The Pakistani government sees themselves as being made a scapegoat, a catch-all reason and justification for the monumental U.S. failures in Afghanistan.This is crucial to contextualize the Afghan conflict, and is yet a neglected topic

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whenever the U.S. government discuss the conflict.

In addition, the White House’s increasing intimacy with India has made Pakistan feel their standing in the international political arena diminish as India’s star rises. This vulnerability has only been compounded in the last few years as the U.S. has conducted drone attacks within Pakistan, sometimes without consulting or even giving notice to the government—a huge breach in national sovereignty and a large embarrassment for the state.

Furthermore, these drone attacks have killed militant leaders as well as civilians. Groups like Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) have used these attacks as ammunition against the government, accusing them of being puppets for the Americans.

There are a several possible explanations for why Pakistan

has refused to take every measure to placate the Americans. One is that the state may be concerned about retaliatory attacks on civilians in the Federally Administered Tribal Regions (FATA) where these militant groups are primarily based. Another is their anxiety over India’s role in Trump’s designs for Afghanistan, which only heightens their sense of geopolitical peril. A final possibility is that Pakistan fears that a stable Afghanistan dooms their political relevance. Once a solution for peace is attained, Pakistan may lose all of its leverage with the United States in facilitating the influx of NATO supplies across their border and pressuring the Afghan Taliban to participate in the peace process.

The common thread among these theories is simply put—Pakistan does not see it as being in their national interest to expel the groups that threaten their neighbors. The Pakistani state desperately seeks international standing and the opportunity to articulate their power as part of the global system that comes with it. Bullying and strong-arming Pakistan through sanctions and harsh rhetoric will not accomplish anything, yet it has been the White House’s policy for the last 15 years.

Instead, Washington needs to understand the nuances of the Pakistani situation—its geopolitics, its nationalism, and its domestic affairs.

Just as Trump parrots an “America First” ideology, so too does Pakistan put itself first.

It is true that Pakistan needs to stop playing a “double game” of fighting the groups that pose an internal threat while simultaneously offering sanctuary to Islamist groups ART CREDIT:PEYTON AYERS

that target their neighboring countries. The state needs to understand that their existence is not under imminent threat, and that a stable Afghanistan truly does benefit them.

At the same time, the U.S. must stop breaching Pakistani state’s jurisdiction if it wants their cooperation.

Trump must stop using the same bullying tactics of his predecessors if he wants a different outcome. And, unlikely as it may be, the U.S. needs to be as critical of itself just as it is of Pakistan. They must accept that other nations have as much of a right as they do to prioritize national interests, and face the fact that their policies have often been incorrect, unjustified, and counterintuitive to the peace process.

If the White House respects Pakistan’s own policy goals, including respect for their sovereignty and a seat at the table of the international political forum, they may find that their goals can align to find peace in Afghanistan.

Hannah Cho is a junior at Columbia College. You can contact her at hc2842@columbia.edu

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CHARTING INDIA’S RISE Josh Nacht

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This past summer, Indian and Chinese troops stared each other down for over two months in Doklam one of the most tense periods ever known in the fraught history of the two Asian nuclear powers. The crux of the dispute lies in Doklam, a tri-junction region where the borders of India, China, and Bhutan meet. India and Bhutan have always been strong allies; the two countries currently share a security pact, signed in 2007, naming India a partial guarantor of Bhutan’s foreign defense, according to the Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses in New Delhi. Despite these close ties, it was still a surprise to many that in response to the Chinese government’s construction of a road past their internationally recognized border with Bhutan in the Doklam region this summer, India sent in its own troops to prevent the Chinese forces from progressing further into their smaller neighbor’s territory. The bold decision by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to commit his troops to not only defend foreign soil but also to risk war with China in the process represents a new assertiveness in India’s foreign policy that is taking the country to an unprecedented level of global influence.

This increasing willingness on the part of the Modi Adminis-

tration to counter China and bolster India’s standing on the world stage has not only played out in Bhutan but also at sea, as India now participates in trilateral naval exercises alongside the US and Japan. Indian-Japanese relations have also grown economically, as Japan has pledged to support the construction of bullet trains in India with billions in foreign direct investment.

India and Japan have also recently begun to cooperate on nuclear energy, as Japan, a long-time leader in the field of civilian nuclear power, and India, a country that possesses an ample stock of nuclear weapons, are both looking to improve the economic benefits and mitigate the environmental consequences of each of their respective programs.

If these developments proceed as scheduled, the growing economic and technological collaboration between the two countries will serve as a direct counterweight to China’s global expansion both economically vis-a-vis its Belt and Road Initiative, and territorially, through its recent take-over of a Sri Lankan port town through a 99-year lease.

In recent years India has upgraded its military technology on a massive scale, leading to significant growth in its economic and strategic relations with not only Japan and the United States but also with Israel. Israel is now in fact India’s second-largest provider of arms and military technology, with weapons trade between the two countries in

2016 totalling over 4.5 billion dollars, according to the Jerusalem Post. This past year, Modi also became the first Indian Prime Minister to formally visit Israel, a development indicating a new stage in Indian-Israeli relations. In the past, ties between the two countries have been constrained by India’s close ties with Egypt during the Cold War, as well as by the wish of Indian politicians not to alienate Muslim voters in the country by cozying up to the Jewish State. However, nearly three decades separate current politics from the Cold War, and the Hindu nationalist party in power no longer relies on the Muslim minority for its support in the polls. India’s leaders thus have little to fear from expanding their partnership with Israel.

India’s increasingly close alignment to both Israel and Japan at the same time that it has been expanding ties with the US bodes well for American interests. The Modi Administration’s effort to make common cause over the dual threats of Chinese aggression and Islamist violence demonstrates that India’s new role in the world may be a boon to long-term US policy goals in the region. Whatever one might say about some of Narendra Modi’s domestic social policies, especially in regards to his ties to ultra-nationalist movements like Hindu Yuva Vahini, this prime minister has undoubtedly positioned India to a more openly pro-Western foreign policy stance.

Now that trade between the U.S. and

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India is at an all-time high and military collaboration has developed, it appears that the U.S. and India are likely to become increasingly closer allies over the course of the next few years. Indeed, as President Obama said during his 2010 visit to India, the relationship between the two countries would be a “defining partnership of the 21st century.” The words ring especially true, given the massive growth in economic and military relations between the countries in the years since the visit.

The warm relationship between the heads of state of each country has not dissipated with changes in leadership on either side. President Obama took another trip to India following the election of Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2014, and in turn, Modi visited the U.S. But even as other foreign leaders who enjoyed close relationships with President Obama, such as Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, have received the cold shoulder from the recently elected President Trump, Modi appears to be one of few world leaders who can boast of his close ties with both President Donald Trump and his predecessor.

Modi and Trump even exchanged

a hug in the White House’s Rose Garden for their first in-person meeting, a gesture that stood in direct contrast with Trump’s refusal to even shake Merkel’s hand at their joint press conference earlier that year.

Signs that the U.S.-India relationship continues to flourish with Donald Trump in office stem from India’s elimination of all economic ties to North Korea last year in response to American-led international pressure to punish Kim JongUn’s regime for its acceleration of the country’s nuclear missile program.

This move by the Modi Administration was welcomed in Washington and may well have been a contributing factor to the U.S. suspension of military aid to Pakistan last month.

America’s arming of India’s longtime rival has long been a point of contention between the two countries, and so the denunciation of military aid to Pakistan was seen as a pivot toward India, triggering immediate responses among different governments. In China restated its commitment to Pakistan’s security immediately after the U.S. made this announcement, and hinted publicly at deepening its already-close eco-

nomic and military ties to Pakistan.

Thus, two new geopolitical entities in East and South Asia may create blocs, uniting Pakistan, China, and (to some extent) North Korea against India, the U.S., Japan, and South Korea.

This new alignment in the Asia-Pacific is based not merely on common goals but also the personal ideological outlooks of the leaders whose worldviews, with the notable exception of South Korea’s Moon Jae-in,, are all strikingly similar. Narendra Modi, Donald Trump, and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe (as well as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, for that matter) are all nationalistic leaders from conservative parties that see themselves as leaders of great civilizations surrounded by hostile rivals and threats to their power. But in spite of the implicit xenophobia underlying each of their stances, the administrations of each of the three men have championed realist foreign policies that call for alignment with other democratic powers in order to counter shared threats. In the case of India and the U.S., that includes both the rise of China, as outlined in the Trump Administra-

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tion’s latest national security memo, and Islamist extremism.

As the U.S. and India have each been the victims of multiple Sunni Islamist terrorist attacks over the past decade and are regarded by Islamist militant organizations like Lashkar e-Taiba, the Taliban, Al Qaeda, and ISIS as hostile infidel powers occupying Muslim lands (Kashmir in India’s case, Afghanistan and Iraq in the case of the U.S.), both nations stand to gain from collaborating to defeat terrorist groups that target each of them. The fight by the U.S. to eliminate the Afghan Taliban, an organization covertly backed in part

by Pakistan’s intelligence service ISI and the Indian government’s wish to secure itself from attacks by the ISIlinked and Pakistan-based terrorist group Lashkar e-Taiba (which carried out the deadly Mumbai attacks of November 2008) could even inspire mutual assistance. To be fair, even under the assertive reign of Na-

ren- the 1980s. Cooperation between the d r a Mossad and India’s national intelligence services began when the two countries considered a joint operation to disrupt Pakistan’s fledgling nuclear weapons program, and continue to be strong today. Israel and India have both long been targets of state-backed terrorist organizations emanating from Muslim-majority countries and, in some cases, have even had their citizens jointly targeted by the same group, such as in the 2008 Mumbai attacks in which four Israelis were killed due to Lashkar e-Taiba’s choice to destroy a Jewish center in the city. Although the close Cold War alliance between the U.S. and Pakistan has prevented the U.S. from cultivating similarly significant national security ties to India, shifts in long-held U.S. foreign policy trends under both the Obama and Trump administrations Modi, India is unlikely to commit are finally changing the foreign relatroops to the NATO campaign in tion dynamics in South Asia, allowAfghanistan anytime soon. Howev- ing the possibilities for U.S.-Indian er, a shift to relying upon India in- cooperation to grow. stead of Pakistan, an untrustworthy Most international relations partner in the War on Terror, as scholars conclude that the world NATO’s primary ally in the region is becoming increasingly multipocould help to finally bring an end to lar as the U.S. faces an increasingly the seventeen-year-long struggle for powerful China, a resurgent Ruscontrol of Afghanistan. Similarly, sia, and a host of non-Western reU.S. intelligence cooperation with gional powers (some of which are India could in turn aid India’s own rogue states) like Iran, North Korea, struggle to deter attacks on their soil Turkey, and Brazil. A question has from Islamist organizations based been: where does India fit into all in Pakistan and Kashmir undercut this? Will India merely be a regional Pakistani-backed anti-Indian sepa- powerhouse in South Asia, or, like ratist movements in Kashmir.

Russia and China, will its influence

In fact, collaboration with be felt across much of the world? the Indian intelligence communi- Furthermore, if India does reach the ty would be a more convenient ar- level of a world power, who will the rangement for the USA as Israel, a country align itself with? Will India long-time American intelligence champion democracy and the Westsharing partner and trusted ally, has ern geopolitical order, or, like Chialready engaged in close collabora- na, will India form strong relations tion with India on intelligence since with a host of different nations while

COLUMBIA POLITICAL REVIEW // SPRING 2018 // 23 advocating exclusively for its own interests without joining any particular coalition?

The answer to the first question may depend in part upon India’s economic growth over the next several decades. In the past 25 years, India’s economy has expanded from a total GDP of a couple hundred billion (in U.S. dollars) to over 2.25 trillion in 2016, according to the World Bank. And if the estimates by the International Monetary Fund are correct, India’s total GDP may well exceed 2.65 trillion this year, which would cause it to overtake France as the world’s fifth largest economy.

Meanwhile the GDP of India’s traditional rival, Pakistan, remains below 300 billion dollars, and it is in part this vast economic mismatch that has enabled India to move beyond its regional struggle with Pakistan to become a rising power on the global stage. Indian economic growth has been extraordinary. In 2016 the country’s GDP grew by 7.1 percent, eclipsing China’s 6.7 growth rate that same year, according to China’s National Bureau of Statistics. In spite of this impressive growth, however, India is still beset by a multitude of socio-economic problems that limit its competitiveness in the modern world. India’s national literacy rate still hovers around 75 percent, according to the Times of India, a rate far lower than that in developed countries, which primarily enjoy literary rates spanning the high 80s to the very high 90s percentage-wise.

Even China, a country whose development is often compared to India’s, has achieved a 95 percent adult literacy rate, according to UNICEF’s latest statistics. And literacy isn’t the only area where India still lags behind its rival to the northeast, as India still has approximately 20 per-

cent of the population, or 270 million people, living in extreme poverty, according to the World Bank.

Meanwhile, the World Bank’s figures from 2012 reveal that only 6.5 percent of China’s citizens are similarly impoverished.

However, even as India’s economy and education rates still have some catching up to do, the still considerably vast economic gulf between India and China does not necessarily mean India won’t be able to sustain its role as a world power.

Russia, for instance, has expanded its influence across the globe over the past decade under the tenure of Vladimir Putin, who remains a popular Russian leader in spite of the economic upheaval that Russia has faced under his rule. Putin’s political success may actually be in part due to his willingness to defy the international community with military incursions into Georgia, Ukraine, and Syria that have not only won the country enhanced border security but restored the sense of pride that many Russians feel in their identity now that their country is once again regarded as a mighty world power.

Given that Russia, which possesses an economy less than half the size of India’s and ranks only 12th in the world in terms of total GDP, according to the latest figures from the World Bank, is usually considered among the top three global powers, alongside the U.S. and China, India may well be able to maintain its newfound assertive foreign policy postures even if the nation’s currently high rate of economic growth begins to stagnate in the near future.

We now return to the second question: where India will fall in terms of its geopolitical alignment on the world stage? Given that India has been expanding its strategic part-

nerships with Japan, Israel, and the United States, the trend suggests the growth of a relatively pro-Western foreign policy based on the establishment of alliances between fellow democratic countries over shared values and mutual security goals.

There are some exceptions to this, of course—in a rare holdover from their Cold War foreign policy, India still maintains a close relationship with Russia, a clear adversary of the NATO-aligned democratic West.

But overall, India’s concerns about China’s encroachment near its borders and its reasonable fear of Islamist-inspired terrorist groups perpetrating attacks on Indian soil and sowing of political dissent in Kashmir seem to be pushing the country in a firmly pro-Western direction in the foreseeable future. Unless these threats rapidly dissipate or India slides from being the relatively robust democracy it is today to a technically democratic but increasingly authoritarian government like Turkey or Hungary, India’s pro-Western foreign policy alignment appears likely to only strengthen its commercial, scientific and security ties to the USA going forward. Thus, the rise of India is not the presence of yet another rival for global supremacy that the U.S. should fear, but may represent an opportunity for the U.S. to share more of the burden that comes with being the world’s most powerful democracy with the world’s largest democracy.

Josh Nacht is a sophomore at Columbia College.

You can contact him at jan2167@columbia.edu

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CYNICAL POLITICS Exploiting the Hindu-Muslim Divide in India Anjali Pal

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It’s not a secret—a sizeable portion of the American population, 56% according to Gallup Inc.’s most recent public opinion polls, believes that Donald Trump’s administration in conjunction with the Republican Party are taking swift measures to subtly reduce and humiliate religious minorities such as Muslims. Just last November President Trump retweeted egregious videos posted by an ultranationalist British organization, supposedly showing Muslims committing a range of crimes, from beating to children to destroying religious statues. Unfortunately, if one were to spin their globe to the other half of the world, people would observe a strikingly similar practice of marginalization in India. The Indian government under Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) have actively promoted a pro-Hindu agenda that result in the marginalization of the Muslim minority. The government has also turned a blind eye to the sometimes violent,extreme goals of radical BJP fringe organizations and other farright groups. This has deepened the religious rifts between Hindus and Muslims exponentially.

Many find it difficult to pinpoint the beginning of these divisions.

However, the most apparent division was witnessed in the 20th century in India right before the partition,

a devastating experience that deeply impacted many families, including that of my own. Today, capitalizing on anger from the past and focusing on present-day disputes relating to religious inequality, Islamophobia, and changes in the global political environment, leaders in society have bought this social rift to the forefront of Indian politics and everyday life.

The creation of India and Pakistan in the beginning of the twentieth century was an outcome of political pressure on the British government by the All India Muslim League and exacerbated by the limited resources of the British government following World War II. Although the League was initially formed to advocate for the interests of the Muslim community in 1906, by the 1940s, their leader Mohammed Ali Jinnah, was advocating for the creation of a separate state.

On August 16, 1946, tensions between the majority party (Congress) and the League reached their height: Jinnah advocated for a ‘Direct Action Day’— a public call for a separate Pakistan. These events inspired the British government to hastily draft an exit agreement to avoid the blame for the oncoming storm. By doing so, they initiated the largest mass migration in human history.

As Hindus and Muslims left their homes and headed for their new promised homes in India and Pakistan, Hindu-Muslim riots caused this migration to be an exceedingly violent one. An estimated 17.9 million peo-

ple abandoned their homes leading to a drastic change in demographics disrupting the smooth functioning of many societies. Out of those, roughly 2 million citizens are estimated to have died as violence ensued within communities.

The atrocities during this period of migration committed instilled a permanent inter-religious distrust, especially between Hindus and Muslims. Ethnic cleansing via religious conversion, forced migration, and death, especially decimated minority groups—over 3 million members of such targeted minorities went missing. Families were abandoned, villages were slaughtered. The partition also resulted in the loss of livelihood for many, as the flux in migrants caused trade dynamics to shift and industries to collapse. ,

Such tragedies of the past persist in the memories of the Indian and Pakistani populations, jolted by reminders such as the continued territorial dispute over the Kashmir province, the 26/11 attacks in Mumbai committed by Pakistani terrorists, and the gruesome fatalities committed by soldiers on both sides of the border. Raw anger and hatred toward Pakistan have been projected from their citizens, onto the Indian Muslim community, creating deep social rifts in India.

These rifts trickle down the generations and poison Indian discourse amongst all public spheres.

BBC journalist Geeta Pandey recent-

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ly reported that children as young as five years old are being bullied at school and accused of being “Pakistani terrorists” for their Muslim identity.

Different violent groups rooted in a belief in the case for Hindu supremacy in India have played a big part in furthering the ugliness of this reality. Such organizations operate with connections to powerful politicians, which allow them to act completely autonomously with minimal consequences for their actions.

For instance, Shiv Sena, an extreme right wing political party, founded

by Bal Thackeray in 1966, was instrumental in coordinating the 199293 Hindu-Muslim riots in Mumbai where over 1,000 people died. Mr. Thackeray is quoted to have said, “‘We must teach these landyas [his derogatory word for minorities] a lesson. They are getting too arrogant by far! They must not be allowed to get away.” Shiv Sena is still active today

and continues to advocate its radical views on political platforms and engage in different forms of violence.

For example in July of 2016, Times of India reported on the riots in Phagwara incited by Shiv Sena activists next to Kashmiri-owned shops and a Muslim mosque. Members of the party were violent, and threw bricks and stones, and burnt Pakistani flags.

The actions of such large groups have thus inspired lone wolves to commit hate crimes motivated by religious differences, such as the assault and murder of two young Muslims returning from Ramadan shopping in June of 2017.

Islam may be a religious minority in India, yet the treatment of Muslims in India have fueled contentious legislative debates. A large area of controversy in Indian society fueling this religious divide is the Muslim Personal Law. The Indian constitution guarantees that all citizens will be treated equally under the

law. However, when it comes to civil matters such as inheritance, marriage, divorce, etc., Muslims have a separate code to ensure that the state doesn’t prevent them from handling civil matters in the way that their custom and religion mandates. This law was passed in 1937, prior to the partition, by the British to ensure that cultural differences were accordingly considered for governance. As a new independent state, India chose to adopt this law, the legitimacy of which has been questioned numerous times.

Many ask: “How are we all treated equally if Muslims get a separate set of laws for their personal matters?”

This brings about a crucial question that history, regardless of region or time period, brings forth repeatedly: To what extent should cultural relativism be taken into consideration by the constitution and governing body of a secular state?

Judgement of the law under which Muslims are governed in India is however, tainted by perceptions of Islam. While many Indians would argue that Indian Muslims should neither exceptions nor alternative treatment in light of their religion, rather than their status as an Indian citizen, some arguments in favor of banning triple talaq are biased by existing religious divides and the boost in global Islamophobia, which treats Islam as a violent or oppressive religion.

For example, many believe that the Muslim Personal law infringes on women’s rights. This came into the national spotlight most recently with the banning of ‘triple talaq’ in August 2017. ‘Triple talaq’ is a system where a man can instantly divorce his wife by saying the word ‘talaq’ three times. This practice has led to the sudden abandonment and consequent suffering of many women.

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26 // SPRING 2018 // COLUMBIA POLITICAL REVIEW Even though organizations like the Bharatiya Muslim Mahila Andolan (BMMA) praised this move, other institutions with greater influence such as All India Muslim Personal Law Board (AIMPLB) were not in favor of the verdict. Moreover, news groups like India Today praised the ruling as a “major victory in women’s rights” but also reported on how Muslim legal advisors, known as “muftis”, were secretly giving advice to men on how to circumvent the new ruling. This factor that contributes to the controversial perception that Islam fundamentally promotes misogyny.

The BJP tremendously capitalized on these festering negative opinions of Islam and the perceived inequality by non-Muslims during the 2014 elections, culminating inthe election of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Although initiatives such as the “Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao Yojana” (Save the Girl Child, Educate the Girl Child campaign), greater foreign investment in India, and the construction of toilets in over 400,00 schools have created opportunities for more Indians to move into the middle class, many complain that he has turning a blind eye to heinous crimes of radical Hindu groups like Shiv Sena and the RSS. These complaints stem from Modi’s tenure as chief minister for the state of Gujarat, where he has been accused of allowing the murder of over 1,000 Muslims committed by Hindu extremists to take place. However, Modi’s work in passing legislation to impose Hindu ideals throughout the country and denigrate Muslims further, has caused many to accuse him of fueling the divide that exists between Hindus and Muslims in India.

During Modi’s term, Muslims are marginalized through new legislation such as the ban on cow

slaughter. Although cows are considered holy in Hinduism, beef is a common form of sustenance for Muslims.

Many butchers in India are Muslims, and this infringement upon religious freedom has caused many Muslims to be denied access to their main source of livelihood. In the Aurangabad district alone, 20,000 Muslims were previously employed as cattle butchers before being forced out of work with this new law. In response to the new law, an elderly mother of a Muslim butcher in Allahabad commented, “Men in this community don’t have any other skill. We are already poor, and now we are not sure where the next meal is going to come from.

They may as well kill us.”

The formal punishment for cow slaughter ranges from 5 years in prison to a life sentence; however, Hindu extremist groups have even taken law into their own hands and lynched Muslims suspected of owning beef, even if the beef was obtained through legitimate means. Research shows that out of the 63 beef lynchings that have taken place over an eight-year period, 97% have taken place since Modi became Prime Minister.

Aside from the “beef ban”, BJP officials have made other outrageous statements deepening divisions. Senior BJP leader Subramanian Swamy was quoted in March 2015 saying that, “A mosque is not a religious place. It is just a building.

It can be demolished any time.” Furthermore, in December 2017 BJP officials supported the protesting of Hindu activists against a consensual marriage between a Muslim man and a Hindu woman by stating that it was a “forced conversion” since official permission for the marriage had not been sought. Also, President Trump’s statements on stopping “radical Islamic terrorism” through col-

laborating with Hindus has greatly empowered the BJP to be increasingly radical on the national and international political stage. For example, when President Trump tweeted on January 1, 2018 on how the United States was going stop aid to Pakistan due to their supposed harboring of terrorists, the national spokesperson for the BJP, GVL Narasimha Rao, tweeted the following, “Congrats to POTUS for calling Terroristan’s bluff & signalling resolve to end Pak’s deceit. Dear RahulG, here are results of diplomacy of PM @narendramodi ji. …” This tweet not only represents a complete absence of diplomacy and an unwillingness to establish peace with Pakistan but also shows the complete absence of bipartisan collaboration. Rahul Gandhi, referred to as RahulG in the tweet, is a prominent member of the opposing Congress Party, which runs on a secular rather than religious platform.

The Partition of India and Pakistan had repercussions that rippled through outside of geopolitical concerns between the two newly created states, and continue to affect domestic politics in India today. As violence and the abandonment of homes shaped the foundation of the newly independent India, it is perhaps natural for some religious divides to remain between Hindus and Muslims.

However, the Modi administration’s cynical attempt to gain political capital by fueling these divides both through legislation designed hurt the Muslim minority and through turning a blind eye to the violent riots incited by fringe groups is worsening social rifts in India. If India continues to follow this path of extremism and hate, it will no longer be able to remain a democratic secular nation.

Anjali Pal is a freshman at Barnard College. You can contact her at

COLUMBIA POLITICAL REVIEW // SPRING 2018 // 27

RETHINKING MEDIA OBJECTIVITY Zack Abrams Ritual performance “There really is no objectivity in journalism in any ‘pure’ sense, but reporters can convey to readers or to viewers a sense that they are looking at facts and at developments in a fair way. If they try to suppress their own points of view.”

– Thomas Edsall, New York Times.

Columbia is often called a “liberal campus,” yet, even on such a campus, there exists a large population of politically apathetic students.

Despite their apathy, these students have been conditioned to value bipartisanship over policy and give credit to both sides in a debate.

For instance, the GOP establishment’s consistent support for Roy Moore for Senate in Alabama despite allegations of child molestation should result in a cut-and-dry judgement, yet students have difficulty condemning their actions. This reflex–to believe in the validity of both sides–has been ingrained in their thought processes over time, and is a reflex I have encountered time and time again on campus. Rather than writing off this reflex as distinctively liberal drivel, it is worth tracing it back to its source: objectivity, or rather the performance of objectivity in traditional, established media.

Todd Gitlin, chair of the Ph.D. program in Communications at Columbia, defines objectivity as “the performance of a ritual,” adding that “these are the clichés of journal-

ism, they’re the certificates of objectivity: you get the other side of the story, you quote from multiple sources, you go down the middle of the road: he-said, she-said, you seek balance.” Gitlin acknowledged the futility of the pursuit of perfect objectivity, though he clarified that it’s still worth seeking.

“Performance” perfectly captures the mass-hiring of conservative pundits by the New York Times and MSNBC in 2016, or the Times recently giving over their Op-Ed page to letters from Trump supporters.

The media’s performative approach to objectivity is flawed for three reasons. First, it limits the use of the Internet to a mere tool for content syndication, rather than an instrument for social engagement, either with their base or their detractors.

Second, right-wing ideology-based media organizations, most notably Fox News and Breitbart, have gamed the system of objectivity, taking advantage of the “he-said, she-said” practice in order to discredit the very institutions they use to disseminate their message. And finally, the bias towards believing in the persistence and efficacy of institutions, most notably the federal government, makes the media inflexible in dealing with major crises affecting those institutions.

The traditional media’s approach to objectivity follows concrete policies using the aforementioned “cliches” as a guiding principle. For example, it is seen as precarious for

media figures to voice political opinions on social media. Some reporters avoid sites like Twitter altogether, while others choose mostly to retweet others’ works with the occasional comment. Choosing to engage online can often lead journalists into choppy waters. Lewis Wallace, a reporter for Marketplace, was fired after publishing an article on his employer-endorsed Medium blog rejecting objectivity. In the article, he had discussed how his transgender identity interacts with his political views and explained that he could not “be neutral or centrist in a debate over my own humanity.” Many organizations also forbid their employees from marching in protest. Some journalists even take neutrality to the extreme and choose not to vote, like Leonard Downie Jr., who sat out Election Day for the twenty-five years he spent as the Executive Editor of the Post. As Gitlin mentioned, getting both sides of the story, or the “he-said, she-said,” is of paramount importance, yet the practice of setting aside personal views limits the full scope of the political article in question.

Despite these practices, the United States is facing a crisis of trust between the media and the populace.

In this new age of mass information, it is worth considering the notion that transparency should replace the traditional performance of objectivity. Americans, once confined to a few media outlets, are now assaulted with information from journalists and peers alike. In order to mediate

3228 // WINTER 2018 // COLUMBIA POLITICAL REVIEW // SPRING 2018 // COLUMBIA POLITICAL REVIEW this precarious new climate, journalists should be more open to discussing their personal biases. They should be able to tweet freely, march in protest, and write about their identity on personal blogs. This approach provides big-picture solutions to the media problem–and this is an urgent problem. If trust in the media slides further, the political and societal implications could be drastic.

Social Media : An Ecosystem

Much of the discussion of American media habits following the 2016 election of Donald Trump centers around the idea of “bubbles.”

These online spaces reinforce certain favorable viewpoints, by filtering out those challenging the user’s worldview. Many critics and pundits cite the heavy use of algorithms by Facebook and Twitter as responsible for the creation of this phenomenon.

No longer do these networks show content chronologically, but rather they constantly mix up the order based on what the algorithm thinks will generate the most engagement from the user. This creates a myriad of problems, but after significant and prolonged backlash, the largest social media companies appear ready to tackle them. However, some of their recent attempts have been misguided to the point of causing harm.

In response to this phenomenon, social media sites have responded with reforms to their methods of newsgathering and distribution.

Facebook, for example, recently unveiled a major change to their News Feed algorithm, which now shows more posts from friends and family rather than those from news outlets.

They also began a pilot program to mark certain false or misleading articles as ‘Disputed’ after a thorough fact check. Similarly, Twitter recent-

ly suspended its Verification program after debates over which figures were deserving of the badge, largely sparked after the program Verified white supremacists such as Richard Spencer.

These efforts have largely failed or had significant detrimental effects. Facebook’s algorithm shift caused a crippling loss in revenue for some small newspapers, while the ‘Disputed’ process ended up making some articles seem legitimate, even if they were not.

However, these failures have not deterred social media organizations. New research from Yale shows that Facebook’s newest approach– crowdsourcing its users to determine which sites are trustworthy–may be more useful than expected. Facebook’s willingness to learn from its many failures sets an example that other, mainstream media outlets should follow; instead of being afraid to try a solution for fear of failure, they should be willing to accept failures in the search for future success.

However, issues routed through technological platforms only account for some of the problems with media organizations.

The New York Times, among the other traditional news organizations, has an official, strong stance on neutrality. Following that stance, Times reporters are allowed to operate Twitter accounts, but rarely, if ever, discuss personal beliefs or opinions. Those who tweet, mostly retweet significant scoops, quotes, or articles from their publication or others. Others largely avoid the service, which may be wise, as social media mistakes can often lead to punishment or termination, as in the aforementioned story of Lewis Wallace.

It’s clear that the attitude of younger generations toward social

media is often misunderstood by the older generations who currently run traditional media organizations.

Younger generations are inclined to favor personality over institution.

Several figures of the ‘new media’ have leveraged a personality-forward approach to great success.The hosts of the podcast Pod Save America, for example, have gained significant success by presenting a liberal viewpoint and emphasizing their personal experience in the Obama administration.

The complexities of using social media accounts as simple ‘content faucets’ thus reduces engagement with both subscribers and non-readers, and secludes journalists behind a semi-transparent curtain. This curtain is translucent enough to give the illusion of personality, but is not transparent enough for engagement.

Although becoming more transparent may leave journalists exposed to personal attacks, it is nonetheless an issue tech platforms must resolve to protect their most vulnerable users.

Only from this vulnerability can the media rebuild trust with disaffected readers, and subsequently surmount the crisis of fake news.

He Said, She Said; He Lied, So What?

“The right-wing charge against the media from the 60’s to recently was that “the liberal media were biased.” We still hear that, but the charge of “fake news” takes us to a different plane… there is no debate about fake news, fake news is a conversation stopper.” – Todd Gitlin

As Gitlin said, getting both sides of the story is widely seen as an essential part of objective reporting.

However, right-wing pundits, politicians, and media figures have gamed this practice, legitimizing their false or misleading stories under the pre-

COLUMBIA POLITICAL REVIEW // SPRING 2018 // 29 tense of ‘just asking questions.’ By taking advantage of the tendencies of the mainstream media to report news in a “he-said, she-said” format, the right-wing forces the mainstream media to cover their narratives. Worst of all, the mainstream media continues to dance to their tune, and returns to cover the narratives conjured up by these figures again and again.

There are certain practices of right-wing news that allow it to behave in this manner, the most important being the lack of expectations of impartiality. Fox News, which until recently described itself with the slogan “Fair and Balanced,” is hardly expected to be fair and balanced by any viewer. Conservatives watch Fox News because they enjoy seeing their views represented, and liberals watch Fox News to slowly drive themselves insane in pursuit of understanding the ‘other side.’ It’s a model that works, and has led Fox News to being the most-watched news channel for years now, despite their recent troubles with the departure of popular hosts Bill O’Reilly and Megyn Kelly.

Pew Research has found that liberal voters get their news from a wide variety of sources, while conservatives overwhelmingly turn to Fox News and other, smaller conservative outlets for information. With the power of this loyal fanbase conservative media has increasingly been playing a long game by sowing distrust toward mainstream outlets.

The blame for this tactic can be attributed primarily toward Steve Bannon, the former White House Chief Strategist who has stated his hatred of the mainstream media on multiple occasions. Even the defensive crouch that conservatives find themselves in because of their historically unpopular president has con-

tributed to this tendency to turn toward conservative media. No matter the cause, the effect has been destabilizing for the past few years and is potentially destructive for the future.

One example is the recent story of Representative Devin Nunes and his memo which, according to right-wing media, clearly articulated the liberal bias of the FBI and proved the existence of a widespread conspiracy against the President.

This conclusion is demonstrably and unequivocally false. The memo in question, which conservatives on the House Intelligence Committee voted to release, lends support to the conventional narrative: the investigation into Donald Trump was not started by the release of Christopher Steele’s ‘dossier,’ but rather had existed previously, and the fact that FISA warrants were renewed for the wiretap of Carter Page shows a legitimate interest in his dealings. This example, which led to no legitimate consequences for any party involved, serves only to show how the right-wing media, which supported Nunes’s false conclusions, had no qualms about lying to its consumers in order to reinforce their beliefs. Furthermore, their loyalty is rewarded with the allegiance of elected Republicans, among them the President himself.

It is worth considering how right-wing media sources take advantage of the crisis among liberal and non-partisan outlets in order to spread and validate their views. One theoretical component of media coverage is called the ‘Overton Window,’ the range of views that are deemed suitable for public discourse. The recent significant shift in the Overton Window toward more conservative ideas is telling; for example, MSNBC and CNN recently hiring conservative hosts and commentators, both

supportive and critical toward the Trump administration. Certainly, it can be argued that the media should be more tolerant and accepting of conservative ideas, but mainstream journalists are walking a fine line, given that much of the rhetoric coming out of outlets like Fox News would cheer on the destruction of media norms as we know them.

CNN recently unveiled an ad with an apple occupying the center of the screen. A smooth-voiced narrator describes how, although some people may claim to see a banana, it’s clearly an apple. The ad ends with the phrase “Facts first,” and then shows a CNN logo. For an outlet that has done a great deal of work legitimizing both Trump and his supporters, either by broadcasting his early speeches in full or consistently inviting back his spokespeople like Kellyanne Conway or Stephen Miller, who consistently repeat demonstrated falsehoods, the ad constituted a surface-level attempt at avoiding cries of ‘fake news,’ cheering on its liberal loyalists while denigrating its critics.

The manipulation of print media and cable news on the whole has been wildly successful. Perhaps the election of Donald Trump was an early symptom, or perhaps it was simply the result of shifting political winds. But everything since that moment, such as the continued assault on the validity of Robert Mueller’s investigation or the shifting of the Overton Window, can be traced back to right-wing manipulation.

The media must rethink its approach to “he-said, she-said” reporting when ‘he’ is a serial liar.

Institutional Bias

“Yes, there are institutions,

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but at some level those are built on individual human beings who have their own lives, families, children to worry about. If they see the profession they come to love, care about, and profess being trashed by the White House or by the Secretary of State and if they can find something else they’ll find something else... I do place a lot of faith in institutions but they don’t survive everything.” – Michael Schudson

Like the students on the Columbia campus, it’s undeniable that most journalists come from a more liberal persuasion, or at least donate to Democrats more than to Republicans. While most would agree that a recognition of this bias by the journalists themselves is beneficial, they should also agree that recognition of the problem alone isn’t enough. Journalists and organizations have approached this from different angles.

For example, the previously-mentioned Leonard Downie, Jr., who sat at the head of the Washington Post for twenty-five years, never voted or read any of the Post’s editorials , lest he be forced to take a side. Most journalists do not take the matter of liberal bias to levels this extreme, but many certainly refrain from donating to political campaigns or registering with either party.

There are legitimate issues with avoiding one’s own biases in this manner. The previously quoted Thomas Edsall spoke of the issues with bending over backwards to appear to combat this liberal bias in a 2009 piece for the Columbia Journalism Review, which argues that “Journalism Should Own Its Liberalism” in order to “manage it, challenge it, and account for it.”

While confronting the issue of liberal bias head-on is important to strengthen reporting and analysis,

a less-often discussed bias may be the real existential threat to the media: institutional bias or the belief that the institutions in which we place our trust will undoubtedly prevail through times of turmoil. Journalists most often apply this belief to the media itself, along with the American government, especially in times of existential threat.

“The Times wants an orderly world”– that was Todd Gitlin’s response when I asked him for his thoughts about this institutional bias.

Thomas Edsall and Michael Schudson also presented grave concern for the possibility of a crisis brought on by the current period of polarization.

Perhaps the crisis has already manifested itself in the election of a President more vociferously opposed to critical coverage than any in recent memory. The media’s implicit role in normalizing a candidate who by any metric did not fit in to the assumed boundaries of reasonable behavior raises larger questions about a duty to warn the American people when a novel and dangerous threat emerges.

However, the Times does not just desire an orderly world, it assumes that the world is orderly and will always remain orderly. The Times will never ask itself those larger questions because of its enduring belief that institutions will prevail as they always have.

In their interviews, Gitlin, Schudson and Edsall all disagreed with the opinion that increased transparency is an adequate substitution for the performance of objectivity.

Their most common argument was that objectivity is indeed impossible to master, yet that does not invalidate the effort. One disproved of the idea of “confessionals” where reporters would have to air their every predisposed thought on a subject. Mi-

chael Schudson acknowledged that the “he-said, she-said” approach was flawed, but explained that reporters have worked hard to include context.

My main complaint about these arguments, as I’ve articulated above, is that sticking with more or less the same approach did nothing to stop the current crisis of truth. In this way, current journalistic practices ignore the threat in deference to an unattainable ideal.

Each academic nonetheless agreed, to some extent, that the current crisis regarding trust in the media requires urgent attention. It could be institutional bias that is preventing the media from realizing the precariousness of its own situation, or perhaps they are blinded by the unprecedented growth in subscribers at papers like the New York Times. In spite of this, a post-truth reality is not necessarily imminent.

It’s possible that this period of rising distrust and nearly unmanageable polarization will pass, perhaps with the rise of a unifying figure or event or the emergence of a new ideology. However, with the media choosing to either look the other way or propose only surface-level solutions under an unprecedentedly coordinated attack, it is time for them to truly reckon with the effects of their current policies and their role in creating the situation America finds itself in today.

Zack Abrams is a freshman at Columbia College. You can contact him at zack.abrams@columbia.edu

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