The Globe: Spring 2010 2nd Edition

The Clash of Gender Systems

By Kirsten Ortega Nationalism in Japan: Issues for Education, Youth, and Politics in the Modern Era

By Daniel Boehmer Dialectical Materialism and the Green Revolution

By Andrew Detsch Food Scarcity and its Effects on Health

By Alison Salisbury Islamism v. Nationalism

By Behnam Ben Taleblu

World News from all Sides Spring 2010—Issue Two

The Globe: World News From All Sides

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Letter from the Editor……………………………………………………………………………………3 The Clash of Gender System…………..…………………………………………………………….4‐9 French and Muslims Views on the Display of Sexuality and their Implications

By Kirsten Ortega

Nationalism in Japan…………………………………...……………………………………………12‐17 Issues for Education, Youth, and Politics in the Modern Era

By Daniel Boehmer

Dialectical Materialism and the Green Revolution……………………………………………………………………………………..18‐23

By Andrew Detsch

Food Scarcity and its Effects on Health………………………………………………………23‐33

By Alison Salisbury

Islamism v. Nationalism……………………………………………………………………………33‐40

By Behnam Ben Taleblu

COPYRIGHTED 2010 ©

Copyright © 2010, [The Globe]. Unless otherwise noted. All rights reserved.

Reproduction of any content, in whole or in part, without the express permission of the Chairman of the International Affairs Society is strictly prohibited. Violations are subject to legal action. The Globe is a production of the International Affairs Society and is a registered student organization of The George Washington University in Washington, D.C. The views expressed in this publication are those of the authors, and not necessarily those of The George Washington University, its entities, or the International Affairs Society.

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Dear Readers:

I am very proud to present the fourth and final edition of the The Globe: World News from All Sides for the 2009‐2010 academic year. The Globe is the only undergraduate academic journal at the George Washington University devoted solely to International Affairs. The Globe is an amazing opportunity for International Affairs Society members, Elliot School students, and those interested in international affairs to publish their academic papers and articles in a professional manner. More than that, it is an opportunity to open discussion, publish ideas and to think and write critically on world issues. This edition of The Globe culminates a year of great academic writing by publishing our best submissions of the spring semester in print.

The Globe and its submissions are drawn from many different areas of interest within international affairs from economics, to politics, to interdisciplinary discussions. This edition is no exception and with a wide range of submissions from policy papers, to case studies, to philosophical debates, this edition truly represents the wide range of interests and abilities of Elliott School undergraduate students.

The printing of this edition is bittersweet as it will be my last edition as Globe Editor‐In‐Chief. It is my hope that this edition will cause you to ask questions, think globally, and learn more about unfamiliar topics.

My endless thanks to everyone who made this edition possible, and please enjoy this, the annual print edition of The Globe.

Cheers,

Lauren Jacobson Editor‐In‐Chief

Assistant Editors: Justin Snyder Nabeela Malik Jeff Richards

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The Clash Of Gender Systems French and Muslim Views on the Display of Sexuality and their Implications

By Kirsten Ortega

Since the days of women’s suffrage movements and the burning bras of

activists in the 1960s, feminists of the Western world have fought not only to attain equal rights before the law, but define themselves as free individuals in society as well. One vehicle through which these women have asserted their newfound “freedom” is through public display of their sexuality. In the last half of the twentieth century, women began to dress with less modesty, their exposed skin seen as rebellion against the discrimination they faced in the past, requiring them to hide their sexuality. Wearing as little as they pleased and acting as they wanted was a public declaration of their “freedom” from the social constraints that had once bound them. The open attitude towards publicly displaying female sexuality challenged the long‐held double standard that men could publicly indulge in the play of sex and seduction while women who fell to their carnal instincts outside of the private sphere were considered social infidels. Now, at least from the Western perspective, women could publically embrace, instead of hide, their sexuality and the West rejoiced as they achieved “full equality” between the sexes and “freedom” from gender‐based discrimination. But did they really? Was the right, nay the obligation, to publically display one’s sexuality an indication of true “freedom”?

Let us turn to France, a nation that prides itself as being the epitome of

Western civilization. In France, women (and men) are completely “free” to publically express their sexuality; it is seen as a fundamental and a natural right. For women, this expression usually takes the form of fashion designed to display and reveal, instead of hide, the female figure. French culture celebrates sex, and goes as far as claiming sexuality as being free of social and political risk. This “open” system of sexuality, in which exposure of the body and free accessibility to the other sex are considered positive influences on society, is seen as the only system in which

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women can be totally “free” and “equal” to their male counterparts. Any woman who denies the right to expose her body as she pleases—and any women who does not take advantage of that right—is seen as oppressed, and, therefore, not fully free.

In Politics of the Veil, Joan Scott analyzes France’s perspective that the public

display of sexuality in the public sphere is an expression of “freedom” and an indication of “equality” in the context of French‐Muslim relations during the headscarf ban controversy in the latter half of the twentieth century. According to Scott’s analysis, French society sees the Islamic veil as an instrument of oppression, a way to subjugate women as lesser beings, a device used to deem them unequal, and, among other things, a denial of their natural right to exhibit their sexual “freedom.” During the headscarf debates, pro‐ban legislators emphasized public “sexual self‐expression as the primary test of equality. ”1 Scott explains that from the French perspective, “the visibility of the bodies of women and men, their easy accessibility to one another, [and] the free play of seduction, were taken to be hallmarks of liberty and equality, the expression on the personal level of what it means to live in a politically free society.2 In other words, sexual display was not seen as dangerous to political and social intercourse, but rather the defining characteristic of a “modern” society that is fundamentally “free.” As Scott states, “equality [in France] became synonymous with sexual emancipation, which in turn was equated with the visibility of the female body. ”3 Therefore, those women who do not make visible their bodies, indicative of their “sexual emancipation,” are, in this logic, obviously suffering from inequality, and not “free” individuals, in the French sense of the word. However, as Scott points out in her essay, many Muslims in France regarded the veil as a personal choice, a defining characteristic of their individuality, or an affirmation of their spiritual dedication. From their point of view, their modesty was not a sign of oppression or inequality, but a symbol of respect for themselves, and a respect for God. These two opposing interpretations of the veil, and their heavy implications regarding freedom and equality, not only

1

Joan Scott, Politics of the Veil (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007), 168.

Ibid.

3 Ibid, 156.

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amplified tensions between French and Muslim groups, but exposed the French fear of ideas about displaying sexuality different than their own.

To describe these two different approaches to addressing the display of

sexuality in the public and private realms, Scott coins two terms: “psychology of denial” and “psychology of recognition,” referring to the French attitude toward sexual exhibition and that of Islam’s, respectively.4 The “psychology of denial” refers to the inherent contradiction in France’s republican theory in which individuals are reduced to abstract beings and yet, men and women are held as inherently different due to their biological make‐up. “Citizenship in France,” Scott states, “is based on an abstract individualism” in which individuals are stripped of all communal, ethnic, religious, or social distinctions in an effort to make everyone equal.5 This overzealous emphasis on individuality, independent of all identifications (other than dedication to the French state) diminishes the identity of individuals to the lowest common denominator: an abstract being, nothing more and nothing less. According to France’s political theory as presented by Scott, French citizens are completely “equal” as abstract individuals, with no inherent advantages, disadvantages, symbols of superiority, or inferiority. In other words, as abstract individuals, we are all fundamentally the same. While this way of conceptualizing equality appears philosophically straightforward, there is a key problem in its practicality. Although French society claims all individuals are the same and equal, the difference in the anatomy of men and women is still recognized on both social and legal levels.

Women are biologically defined by their sexual difference and their unique anatomic make‐up, which is a difference that French “sameness” cannot correct.

Scott identifies this contradiction in French republicanism: the idea that equality (or sameness) is possible while still elevating the differences between the sexes as distinctive traits. According to Scott, the French see women only through their sexuality, a logic that implies that women cannot be abstracted from their gender. In different terms—women cannot be reduced beyond their anatomy; their sexual

4 5

Ibid, 186.

Ibid.

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difference is a fundamental, defining characteristic and their individual identity cannot be reduced any further. Therefore, they are inherently different. To illustrate this difference, there is great emphasis in France on the visibility and display of women’s bodies and the sexual interaction that goes along with the openness of seductive play. This line of thought both seeks to prove women’s difference and overzealously expose it, while at the same time denying the problem of reconciling sexual difference and sameness under French republican theory. While women may be formally equal, the difference of their sex belies that equality and reveals the deep‐rooted uneasiness in French politics about actually sharing power with the opposite sex, and these are the difficulties French society stubbornly denies. In the words of Scott, “the objectification of women’s sexuality serves to veil a constitutive contradiction of French republicanism,” a mask to cover the limits of a system France claims to be universal.6 Therefore, this “psychology of denial” Scott refers to is the denial of the existence of this contradiction within French political theory and of the problem of reconciliation in the relationship between sexual differences and abstract individualism in French society.

While the French possesses a psychology (or more appropriately, a politics)

of denial when approaching sexuality, Islam takes a different perspective. In Islamic society, sexual difference is recognized as a potential threat to political and social order, and the placement of sexual display under the private, instead of public, sphere is a way of addressing it. According to Scott, “Islamic jurists deal with sexual difference in a way that avoids the contradiction of French republicanism by acknowledging directly that sex and sexuality [may] pose problems (for society, for politics) that must be addressed and managed” (170‐171). While sexuality and sex may not necessarily create problems, they have the potential and must be dealt with accordingly to maintain societal order. Unlike France, Islam honestly and openly acknowledges the problems that sexual differences can provoke in society, and through this recognition as implied by Scott, it is able to more effectively meet and deal with such issues. According to her analysis, Muslims realize that the rejection of

6

Ibid, 170.

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such fundamental differences and the denial of a problem with such weighty implications only feed the fire of social tension. For Muslims, “modest dress…is a way of recognizing the potentially volatile and disruptive effects of sexual relations between women and men, driven by impulses.”7 Coverings such as the headscarf or the veil are open declarations that sexual relations are not meant for public places.

While the French theory denies the problem of reconciling the abstract individualism of French republicanism and the sexual differences inherent in nature, the Islamic interpretation of sexuality suggests a different perspective. The veil signals the acceptance of sexuality and even its celebration as something special and something to be preserved, but only under the proper, private, circumstances.

This system of sexuality is, therefore, a “psychology not of denial, but recognition.”8

Although Scott appears on the surface to espouse the Islamic approach to

sexuality over that of the French, she makes it clear that both systems are essentially patriarchal. Scott points out that in both systems, “women are objectified…although in different ways.”9 Despite France’s insistence on equality, their system is still patriarchal as seen in the contradiction previously discussed in their political theory. Islam, on the other hand, is patriarchal not because it denies the problems sex can pose for a society, but because they cite women as the primary instigators and the source of social disruption caused by sexuality. While Islamic theory uses a conspicuous covering of the body to expose sex as a potential problem, France calls for a conspicuous display of the body in order to deny the problem that sex poses for French republicanism; either way, women are conspicuously objectified. The ultimate aim of Scott’s analysis is, therefore, not to cite one approach as being superior to the other, but to show that sex and sexuality are differently represented and differently managed by these two different, yet patriarchal, systems.

These differing views on sexuality and France’s rejection of any system

contrary to their own only increased tension in French‐Muslim relations. Not only

7

Joan Scott, Politics of the Veil (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007), 171.

Ibid.

9 Ibid.

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were these Muslim “immigrants” flooding France’s cities, but they were bringing with them a different perspective, a point of view that challenged France’s own, superior, Western way of life. France felt threatened and “Islam’s insistence on recognizing the difficulties posed by sexuality revealed more than republicans wanted to see about the limits of their own system.”10 Such dissension from traditional French values, was intolerable and yet another indication of the inadmissibility of Islam into French society. From France’s point of view, their way is the right way, the natural way, and the only way to structure their gender system, and those who cannot conform to the French way, are not welcome.

Nationalism in Japan

Issues for Education, Youth, and Politics in the Modern Era

By Daniel Boehmer

Since 1945 Japan’s national psyche has experienced great change, the Japanese nation having morphed from a constitutional monarchy and later de facto military dictatorship into a more representative constitutional monarchy, grounded in democratic principles. The Japanese citizen was transformed from a subject of the emperor with a primary duty to protect and serve the motherland to a subject‐ citizen with personal rights and liberties that could never be legally ignored. With these changes in the status of the Japanese citizen came a change in the way that the citizen viewed himself and his relationship with the Japanese state. Many of the controversies that have plagued the Japanese state since the end of the Second World War remain salient today from issues of constitutional reform to the battles waged over the historical depiction of Japan’s past. Fundamentally there seems to exist a difficulty for the Japanese in deciding the ways in which there have been continuities from Japan’s Meiji‐era past into modern times in the face of many changes in Japanese life in the political, economic, and socio‐historical realms. Thus, to a large extent the legacy of Japanese involvement in World War II has caused the

10

Ibid, 154.

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relationship between the Japanese and the Japanese state to change. Japanese nationalism today is largely characterized by a set of relatively distinctly constituted factions, from those who have reacted toward the legacies of the past with shame, discomfort, and a desire to move beyond them to those who believe that too much of Japan’s past has been rejected in this process. Resulting from this discourse have been disagreements between the Japanese people over how to view their national history, the state of Japanese youth, and their modern politics in the post war period. It is the modern manifestations of these competing factions of Japanese society that will be the subject of this study.

The depiction of the history of Japan by the Japanese has been an issue of literally epic importance since the dawn of history of the Japanese islands. Japan’s origins are documented in Japan’s national myths, which have been instrumental in the formation of a national consciousness in Japan. This process was only accelerated after the Meiji Restoration, Japan’s military victories being described in positive terms as indications of Japan’s emergence as a modern nation, equivalent in power to the West. As military dictatorship took Japan in the 1930s, the Ministry of Education took action to suppress student rioting and communist‐affiliated political activities in reaction to student protests.11 Meiji Japan textbooks tended to emphasize the positive contributions of Japan to the provinces of its growing Pacific Empire. Efforts were also made during the Second World War to highlight the importance of service to the nation by comparing the samurai to the modern Japanese soldier; service to the emperor is an essential continuity in Japanese political culture even in post‐War Japan.

After the War, General MacArthur and his office of the Supreme Commander

for the Allied Powers (SCAP) ordered the Ministry of Education to change the rhetoric contained in Japanese textbooks, exchanging “lessons for war and loyalty to the state with teachings of peace and democracy.”12 The ideological climate of Japan began to change rapidly, as many Japanese began to embrace a “fever of

11

A. Gordon. (2009). A modern history of Japan: From Tokugawa times to the present. (2nd Ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press., p. 184-5.

12 Gordon, p. 229.

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‘democratization’ [that] swept Japan.”13 More rights being devolved to the people on the basis of a constitution (at least officially) written by their own government (it was actually prepared by SCAP) in contrast to the former constitution—one of rights bestowed generously by a divine emperor—had a profound effect on the Japanese consciousness. After the war, education continued to be an activist forum for enacting social policy, where students, especially in the public schools, were shuffled and sorted into different categories based on exams and a job‐based mentality of a standardized labor force.14 Educational changes were transforming Japan’s sense of self or its kotukai from a basis in the imperial institution to one based on Japan’s way of life in the economic, political, and cultural spheres of all the different classes in Japanese society.15

After the end of the occupation, the rhetoric contained in Japanese history

textbooks became even more condemnatory of wartime policies, denouncing the war as imperialistic and describing the cruelty of Japan’s colonial policies in great detail.16 Efforts by Japan to improve its relationships with its neighbors, such as China in the late 1970s, required it to be even more conscious of the ways its described its wars in the pacific, with the result that textbooks began to even describe in graphic detail atrocities committed by the Japanese military during the war, such as the Rape of Nanjing.17 This exemplified an issue where the Japanese people wished to find a way to distance themselves from the actions of their family members during the war.

By the time of the formation of the Society for the Creation of a New History in 1996, the frustrations of members of the right wing, which decried the way that a pacifist, foreign constitution had been used to redefine Japan’s identity and form an apologetic and vacillating system of diplomacy, had reached their apex. The Society for the Creation of a New History sought to find a different path and create a middle‐ school textbook that would not instill in Japanese schoolchildren feelings of shame

13

Gordon, p. 230.

Gordon, p. 260.

15 Gordon, p. 229.

16 Nathan, p. 140.

17 Nathan, p. 143.

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and disgust at Japan’s past, especially during World War II.18 Of secondary but equal importance was the desire to create a textbook that would not obstruct the formation of a national identity, as they claimed current editions of textbooks did rather it would serve in the drawing of a continuity in history that bridged the heretofore unbridgeable 1945 gap. The society submitted its draft, New History Textbook to the Education Ministry in 2001 in order have the textbook included on a list of approved textbooks that could be used in the teaching of eighth‐grade social studies. The textbook provided controversially heterodox interpretations of many points of the War in the Pacific, including the occupation of China, and neglected to mention anything regarding ‘comfort women,’ the local women in Korea and China used as prostitutes for the Japanese military.19 On April 3, 2001, the educational review board responsible for vetting textbooks approved the New History for use in schools, although it was the responsibility of each district to specifically choose to whether to use this textbook or one of the many others also approved for use. The outcome of the debates surrounding usage of the New History has served to affect significantly the countrywide discussion of nationalism. Although the New History failed to gain much usage in Japanese schools, with the Fuso edition of the text accounting for only 0.039% percent of the total orders of textbooks20, its tangential effects were notable. Japan’s depiction of itself in the form of textbooks, especially those addressed to the younger generation’s of Japanese society, continues to remain intricately tied up in issues of nationalism as Japan seeks to find a moderate way to depict its society to its newest members.

The state of Japanese youth in general, in addition to society’s official educational dialogue with them, has also had much to do with Japan’s historical legacy and lack of nationalism in comparison to neighboring countries, which many in Japan attribute to its lack of continuity in history and its lack of a national message. Japan’s demographic shift to an older population has also precipitated problems in the educational sector, with many Japanese elementary and secondary

18

Nathan, p. 139.

Nathan, p. 143-4.

20 Nathan, p. 152.

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schools closing and less competition to get in higher education.21 Additionally, reports of abusive bullying have increased, and crimes such as the decapitation of an eleven‐year‐old student by a fourteen‐year‐old have highlighted the social breakdown occurring among Japanese youth, such things being previously unheard of.22 Prostitution among Japanese school girls,23 cases of students dropping out of school for fear of sexual abuse,24 and increased rates of juvenile suicide25 all highlighted the need for reform in education to improve the national sense of self and country instilled in Japanese youth. In 2006, the first reform of the Fundamental Law of education of 1947 was enacted. It added to the list of the goals of a Japanese education 1) the maintenance of tradition and 2) the nurturing of love of the nation—in addition to the American inspired goals of realizing the ideals of peace and democracy.26 In this case, the social order and continued modernization and stability in society required the educational system to instill tradition and nationalism in Japanese students.

The consumerism of Japanese youth and young professionals has been a hotbed issue that has been associated with Japan losing touch with its traditional values, and these groups have been seen as particularly susceptible to its vices. As the average Japanese family saw its income increase during the post‐war period there became more opportunities to spend.27 People became liberated as the percentage of household budget reserved for purchases of foods fell from 50% in the early 1950s to 25% by the late 1970s.28 The typical Japanese person at that time (the parents of today’s youth in Japan) became far more obsessed with owning the “three Cs”: car, (air) conditioner, and color TV29 than they were interested in serving the Japanese nation, the obsession of their own parents. These luxuries fostered the

21

Gordon, p. 312.

Gordon, p. 312.

23 Gordon, p. 313.

24 Nathan, p. 68.

25 Nathan, p. 32.

26 Gordon, p. 313.

27 Gordon, p. 347.

28 Gordon, p. 264.

29 Gordon, p. 264.

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development of a middle‐class consciousness distinct from that of the rest of Japan.

In later decades, their chidlren were becoming just as excited as their parents about acquiring new status symbols, whether it was the latest edition of their manga magazines or the newest video and computer games.30 It was the early stages of this process that so distressed right‐wing political leaders like Mishima Yukio, who directed his veneration for the Japanese throne into an effort of critique Japan’s “modernizing, materialistic postwar culture.”31 Mishima’s effort to convince Japanese youth of the need for a return to traditional Japanese aesthetic values, including militarism and devotion to the emperor and nation, proved a failure; however, his critique is still commonly heard in Japanese society today, though in less militaristic terms. By the 1980s the middle age generation clearly thought of its children as less prepared than itself to take up the mantel of individual responsibility in the areas of career and personal relationships, labeling their children’s’ generation ‘shinjinrui’ or ‘new species’.32 Ironically, it was their influence that had precipitated their children’s becoming what they later came to criticize.

Modern Japanese political debates on the whole have been characterized by larger debates on nationalism for decades. The politicians on the left assert that Japan’s nationalism should derive from its unique status as a pacifist, democratic nation which can serve as a model for improvement to other nations, in light of its great economic successes. Politicians on the right believe that Japan’s constitution should be reevaluated and reexamined, including the controversial Article 9. It is also significant that the economic woes that Japan has experienced in recent years, including the recession that has plagued Japan since the early 1990s, has acted as proof that Japan’s economic system cannot be made the source of Japan’s pride as was once thought. Limited economic successes, they maintain, cannot supplant genuine investedness in the political process and the thought, history, and culture of Japan. Right leaning politicians view attempts to brand economic success as such as illegitimate and far from a legitimate continuity. Political activists and politicians

30

Nathan, p. 124-5.

Gordon, p. 266.

32 Gordon, p. 303.

31

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such as Shintaro Ishihara, his late friend Yukio Mishima, conservative Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, and manga author Yoshinori Kobayashi have shaped the debate in recent years to a great degree, focusing on the relationship between Japan and its neighbors, official visits to the Yasukuni Shrine, Constitutional reform, and Japanese nationalism in the public sphere. The ability of these individuals to shape and focus national debate has been a testament to their strength and vitality as political actors.

Ishihara’s influence on the national debate has been immense in his own right. He has continually sought to increase the pride of Japanese youth for their country by highlighting facts that evince Japan’s greatness: Japan’s sole status as the only fully modernized, powerful non‐Caucasian society, for instance.33 Ishihara blames many of Japan’s modern problems on historical and continuing U.S. influence and meddling. His opinions on Japan’s neighbors are equally as stinging, he already having condemned China on many occasions for its development of nuclear and ballistic weapons.34 He has also taken the opportunity to speak on behalf of Taiwan against China in defiance of the One China policy.35 His blatant disregard for international opinion is unnecessarily exaggerated and hawkish, but it speaks to his desire to see Japan no longer cow‐tail to the United States’ interests instead of its own. Mishima’s ideas reflected similar sentiments and he was an early proponent of Ishihara.36 Though Mishima died decades before the debates over nationalism of the 1990s, when Ishihara was arguably at his peak, Mishima’s ultranationalist political ideas have influenced many on the right. Ishihara’s arguments disturbed many Americans who saw his efforts as damaging to the strategic U.S.‐Japan security relationship, such as his remark that the Soviet Union could have been made to win the Cold War with help from Japanese microchips for guided missiles.37 Ishihara even called up the Self Defense Forces to be especially ready to play a greater role in

33

Nathan, p. 170.

Nathan, p. 172.

35 Nathan, p. 172.

36 Nathan, p. 178.

37 Nathan, p. 181.

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maintaining law in order because of the greater numbers of immigrants in Japan.38 Overall, Ishihara has historically been disappointed with the current political system’s inability to reflect what he thinks it should: pride for one’s country, the serving of national interests first, and defense.

Prime Minister Koizumi, a member of the LDP, emerged in the early 2000s as the next standard‐bearer of the conservative side of the nationalism debate. Elected by a wide margin as party president and prime minister and pledging great economic changes, he used his role to give Japan a more assertive role in the world with the first overseas deployment of the Japanese Self Defense Force and repeated annual visits to the Yasukuni Shrine while in office.39 Koizumi developed a closer bilateral relationship with the United States under President George W. Bush in the face of increasing importance of the Sino‐American partnership in recent years.40 By prioritizing Japanese politics differently, Koizumi faced down large amounts of pressure to do what was popular in the eyes of large numbers of the Japanese population, the visiting of a shrine dedicated to war veterans, even while protestors in Seoul and Beijing burned Japanese flags and hung Koizumi in effigy.41 In the face of calls to apologies for past Japanese atrocities, Koizumi, like some of his predecessors repeated verbatim the words of the Hosokawa apology,42 raising up Japanese feelings of self‐worth even as he was repeating expressions of regret.

Ultimately, Koizumi’s political success and popularity derived from his ability to connect Japanese with feelings for their historical national greatness. By not drumming up negative rhetoric but at the same time not focusing on the issues that are not beneficial for Japan to focus on, he was successfully able to find a middle ground that may serve as a guide to future prime ministers of Japan.

The legacy of Japanese involvement in World War and Japan’s subsequent history has been a cause of great controversy in Japan since the onset of the American occupation in 1945. With the imposition of rule directed by SCAP and the

38

Gordon, p. 311.

Nathan, p. 155.

40 Gordon, p. 329.

41 Nathan, p. 155.

42 Nathan, p. 154.

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United States government, American priorities began to influence Japan and the relationship between the Japanese their country began to change. In modern Japanese political culture, Japanese nationalism is characterized by two main competing factions within Japanese society, those who have reacted toward the legacies of the past with shame, discomfort, and a desire to move beyond them and those who believe that too much of Japan’s past has been rejected in this process.

This discourse has affected how the Japanese view their national history, the state of Japanese youth, and their modern politics in the post war period. While liberalism has dominated Japan’s political scene since the end of world war two, as right‐ leaning politicians and activists such as Ishihara, Koizumi, and Kobayashi continue to use their influence to determine what is discussed in Japanese national discourse, the future of Japanese politics remains uncertain.

Although it is unlikely that Japan will move dramatically to the right and embrace the ultranationalist political views of the likes of Mishima or Ishihara, the influence of these political leaders and thinkers is indirect. As the example of the textbook controversy showed clearly, although the right‐wing textbook, New History, was not able to gain a significant amount of circulation in schools (its stated intent), it still was able to become a bestseller in its own right in Japan. In addition, it influenced other textbooks to tone down their descriptions of Japanese atrocities during World War II and thereby decrease the feelings of guilt in Japanese school children, as far as the right wing publishers of the New History were concerned. In that way it did serve as a victory, and it is likely that if the political discourse in Japan continues to move in the direction it has been in recent years, the indirect influence of the right will precipitate an increase in moderation and reexamination of many of the heretofore unexamined issues of World War II and of Japanese society as a whole, and thereby reshape Japanese nationalism in the modern era. In the process, Japanese may find that there is more continuity with the past in the Japanese society of today to celebrate than they previously thought ever existed

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Dialectical Materialism and the Green Revolution

By Andrew Detsch

Can a convincing theoretical explanation of Iran’s Green Revolution be found in the writings of Karl Marx? Marx argued that capitalist systems, incompatible with popular realities, would encourage an ongoing political struggle between the bourgeoisie elite and proletariat working class that would inevitably bring about communism. This framework, dubbed dialectical materialism, is the strongest model we have to depict social change in Iran in the context of the Green Revolution movement, with disgruntled young voters battling oppressive clerical elites for systemic control and democratic freedoms. On June 10th, 2009, When Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, favored by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khameini, defeated his rival by a two‐to‐one margin in a presidential race considered to be a dead heat, fraud was popularly suspected, and throngs of young citizens took to the streets in protest of perceived disenfranchisement. Nine months later, with Green Revolution protests ongoing, theorists struggle to explain the protestors’ success in persisting where others have been suppressed.

How then are we to adequately understand the rapid progression of social change in Iran? There is no doubt that Mir‐Hossein Moussavi, Iran’s former Prime Minister and Ahmadinejad’s only serious electoral rival, used technological capabilities to great effect, by building and energizing a massive grassroots base of young, urban voters that brought the election to a dead heat and enabled the movement to survive the instruments of authoritarian power. The movement was particularly successful in evading the use of brute force by governmental proxies such as the Iranian National Guard and the Basij Militia. In this manner, the Green Revolution can be considered a historical affirmation of Marx’s theory of dialectical materialism, a harsh reminder to the establishment that Iran’s current political system is fundamentally incompatible with the changing demographic realities of

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the Iranian state, which have altered the nation’s sociopolitical landscape beyond recognition.

Marx’s metric of dialectical materialism, derived from the assumption that the proletariat, stripped of the ownership of society’s ‘means of production’ would push the illegitimate establishment to reform. History has proven, however, that authoritarian regimes can have staying power without popular legitimacy, as Saddam Hussein reigned for nearly thirty years by suppressing his opposition with brute force. So what makes this case so different? Adverse demographic conditions challenge the political fabric of the Islamic Republic to this day. From the inception of the state in 1979 until just before Ayatollah Khomeini’s death in 1989, Iran experienced an Islam‐inspired baby boom that peaked 3.8 percent in 1983,43 intended to account for the transformative and destructive war with neighboring Iraq, and derailing a system of fertility control that had been in place since 1967.44 While the high birth rate drove consumption of material resources skyward and drastically underscored domestic economic growth in the short term, it was a taxing burden upon developing, under‐resourced state and government institutions, already flagging under the weight of war.

To make matters worse, Khomeini had no choice but to send teenage soldiers into the fray to stabilize Iran’s war effort, killing off much of a generation of staunch political supporters. These demographic trends have fueled the Green Revolution as today, 70 percent of Iran’s population is under thirty. What does this mean politically? As aforementioned, the teenage martyrs who were killed in the Islamic Republic were largely supportive of Khomeini, and had been instrumental in providing the momentum that decapitated the Shah’s regime. Though Khomeini was eventually able to slow population growth to a crawl, as government promulgation of contraceptives increased their use to 56 percent among married couples and slowed the growth rate to 1.5 percent by 1996, with the teenage martyrs now lost,

43

F.S. Ghorbani, “Iran: The Family-Planning Challenge,” The Lancet, Dec 5, 1992. Research Library Core, pg. 1401.

44 Farzaneh Roudi, “Iran's revolutionary approach to family planning,” Population Today 27, no. 7 (Jul/Aug 1999).

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activist sentiment to turn against the Islamic Republic establishment during the 1990s.45 As a result of these demographic shifts, in 1997 reformist candidate Mohammed Khatami was elected to the presidency by a landslide, with decidedly mixed results: eight years at the helm tempered his idealism with reality. By the time the 2009 elections rolled around, many of the baby boomers from the Iran‐Iraq period became eligible to vote. This only drove the progress of dialectical materialism forward, especially considering that many of these people were not politically conscious during Khomeini’s rule and believed many aspects of the current system to be completely illegitimate.

Iran’s dialectical history does not solely owe itself to population growth: it also spawned from a deteriorating social relationship between the clerics and minority religious and intellectual communities who initially helped usher in the 1979 downfall of the Shah. When Iran’s sociopolitical situation is scaled to fit Marx’s system, dissident minorities, students and intellectuals, the most vociferous opponents of the bourgeois Islamic Republic, wholly embody the proletariat. In the dialectical process, Marx believed establishment powers would survive by promoting a systemic and doctrinally ingrained understanding of the “suffering” of the citizenry.46 Khomeini’s Islamic Republic is designed to do just that, playing into Shia devotion by promising salvation in exchange for political loyalty. Enabling these mechanisms, Ayatollah Khomeini developed a far‐reaching system of social control over the Iranian populace. But from the inception of the Republic there were signs that its political hardware was incompatible with reality, as its constitution refused to recognize religious minorities and condemned democracy as “western,” while promoting Sharia law.47 Such a perversion of intent was a slap in the face to the disparate coalition factions that brought it to power.

45

Ibid.

46

Bradley L Herling, A Beginner’s Guide to the Study of Religion (London: Continuum International Publishing Group, 2007), 77.

47 Hussein D. Hassan, “Iran: Ethnic and Religious Minorities” (paper presented before U.S. House of Representatives, Washington, DC, May 25, 2007).

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Khomeini further stoked the flames of intolerance with constant authoritarian crackdowns on his political, religious and ethnic opponents. Khomeini accused intellectuals of supporting liberal values that would “corrupt [the] youth…pave the way for the oppressor…[and] drag [Iran] to the bottom.”48 While this inflamed rhetoric and authoritarian posturing temporarily bolstered the Republic’s power, it ultimately hurt the legitimacy of the regime, alienating these strategically important populations. As Saul Newman rightly notes about the Marxist argument, that religion and ethnicity “…[can] be used by the dominant classes to legitimize their rule…and foster political passivity among the economically weaker classes.”49 Khomeini intended the Islamic Republic system to foster this dialectic, and Ahmadinejad and his allies in the clergy have continued it, as doctrinal, authoritarian and social persecution of religious minorities have become mainstay in Iranian culture, particularly the vilified Baha’i.50 In the 1990s, government discouragement of population growth, as detailed beforehand, bolstered the political power of the student movement in Iran, as students, no longer saddled with the burden of raising a family, had time for political organization and networking. As the average marriage age for young Iranians increased to 25.6 in the 1996 census from 23.6 a decade earlier, a mass of political organizations for voting age dissidents began to take hold, in urban centers and on college campuses across the country.51 This culminated in a transformative mobilization of students between July 8‐13 in fourteen cities to protest a bloody authoritarian suppression of political expression at Tehran University in the proceeding weeks the first of many blemishes the Islamic Republic would receive to its legitimacy.52

48

Judith Colp Rubin, Anti-American Terrorism and the Middle East Saul Newman et al., “Does Modernization Breed Ethnic Political Conflict?” World Politics 43, no. 3 (Apr., 1991), http://www.jstor.org/stable/2010402.

50 Ibid.

51 Ibid, 401.

52 Mehrdad Mashayekhi et al., “The Revival of the Student Movement in Post-Revolutionary Iran,” International Journal of Politics, Culture, and Society 15, no. 2 (Winter, 2001), http://www.jstor.org/stable/20020116.

49

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Population growth alone, however, is not a sufficient explanation the progress of dialectical materialism, but Iran’s inability to economically cope with it.

Marx posited that a primary objective of modern political regimes was to provide a nurturing political environment for a free market economy, and necessarily were to abide by “material conditions” of governance or risk popular revolt.53 At its essence, the Islamic Republic, which subscribes itself legitimacy through God and maintains power through devotional constructs and authoritarian rule, is not an unhealthy backdrop for capitalism, as similar systems, such as the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, enjoy flourishing free market domestic economies.

The clerical mismanagement of population challenges has also become a significant economic problem in the thirty years of theocratic rule. Though population growth has finally been reigned in, since the founding of the Republic in 1979, economic growth has fallen by 33 per cent, inflation has doubled, unemployment is three times higher, and per capita income has declined by nearly 30 percent.54 Khomeini’s successors were also forced to deal with the economic fallout from the Iran‐Iraq war, which contributed to an already bleak outlook.55 This has brought the legitimacy of the Islamic Republic further into question in the eyes of a dubious public and encouraged political activism among the economic unfortunate and disenfranchised, who, like students, are unshackled from domestic obligations and have the time to network and organize. Even the Interior Ministry’s own internal polling shows that 90 per cent of the public is dissatisfied with the current regime.56 Iran’s under‐resourced physical institutions have also been adverse to population growth, leading to food shortages and high levels of malnutrition among the nation’s poor, overcrowded primary schools, and housing shortages, particularly in rural areas.57 The current “material conditions” of the

53

Ibid, 76.

54

Jahangir Amuzegar, et al., “Iran's Crumbling Revolution,” Foreign Affairs 82, no. 1 (Jan. - Feb., 2003), http://proquest.umi.com/pqdweb?.

55 David Waines. An Introduction to Islam (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 252.

56 57

Ibid Ibid, 1401.

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Islamic Republic are inadequate to the needs of the populace, and have exacerbated the dialectical process.

While the dialectical damage to the clerical establishment has paved the way for Moussavi’s “Green Revolution,” it does not at all ensure the ongoing vitality of the movement or the eventual demise of the regime. Marx envisioned the socialist construct of dialectical materialism would define history: the collision of systemic and popular realities and the ultimate, but progressive, victory of the latter, culminating in a fully socialist political system in which citizens controlled the “means of production.” After all, the Islamic Republic’s powers of authoritarian suppression are vast, including use of the Revolutionary Guard and Basij Militia to squelch future uprisings, nearly limitless abilities to censor free speech and powers of oversight that stretch into most facets of Iranian civil society.58 Thus, the future for the Islamic Republic is shrouded in mystery.

Can the Green Revolution truly endure? While the population trends that have given it life will likely continue to calm, the social dialectic between clerical elites and the rest of the populace seem to be on a continually downward trajectory.

As Jahangir Amuzegar bluntly states: “After nearly a quarter‐century of theocratic rule, Iran is now by all accounts politically repressed, economically troubled, and socially restless. And the ruling clerical oligarchy lacks any effective solutions for these ills.”59 Authoritarian action cannot long suppress such systemic devastation.

The Islamic Republic will not long be able to survive without the popular legitimacy of the Iranian people.

Food Scarcity and its Effects on Health: A Case Study

By Alison Salisbury

In June 2008, the price of basic food staples reached their highest prices on the international market in over 30 years. While food prices have since declined, the dramatic

58 59

Gabriel A. Almond et al., Comparative Politics Today: A World View (New York: Longman, 2010), 578.

Ibid, 401.

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increase of food prices in 2007 and 2008 has left an additional 115 million people battling chronic hunger.60 According to 2009 United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (UNFAO) estimates, with this new addition of 115 million people, 1.02 billion people around the world are undernourished.61 It is with these dramatic figures in mind that I plan to research food scarcity and its impact on health in Africa in this case study report.

In this report, I examine the factors that cause food scarcity through the dimensions of food availability and food accessibility, and how this has contributed to major health threats in Africa, specifically in Ethiopia and Kenya. After identifying the main factors that cause food insecurity and its impact in these countries, I will examine what can be done to help limit food insecurity by mitigating the factors that contribute to this major world problem.

What is Food Scarcity?

Food scarcity is a complex issue that has the potential to affect even the most affluent countries. In order to establish what food scarcity is, it is best to define what constitutes food security. The UNFAO defines food security as existing “when all people, at all times, have physical, social and economic access to sufficient safe and nutritious food that meets their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life.” It is with this definition in mind that the UNFAO defines food insecurity as a lack of “adequate physical, social or economic access to food” in relation to the standards put forth in the definition of food security. 62 Food insecurity is an issue in all regions of the world, especially in developing countries. In many cases, it is not just one single factor that contributes to food scarcity in a country, but rather a multitude of issues that could range from environmental factors such as drought, stability barriers such as political unrest, or economic factors such as increases in the world price of food and fuel, which occurred from 2006-08.

60

United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization, The State of Agricultural Commodity Markets (Rome, Communication Division, FAO, 2009), under Key Messages.

61 United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization, The State of Food Insecurity in the World (Rome, Communication Division, FAO, 2009, under Key Messages.

62 Ibid., 8.

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For developed countries like the United States and the United Kingdom, greater food prices were felt by their citizens in the case of the 2006-08 food and fuel crisis, however their developed status prevented their citizens from experiencing food scarcity like that which occurred throughout Asia, Africa, and Latin America. It is in these regions where even marginal differences in the price of staple food goods can be the difference between paying for a family to eat and sending their children to school. In the case of developing countries, among the poorest members of society food can account from anywhere between 50 to upwards of 70 or 80 percent of their budget.63 As food scarcity becomes greater, so too does the risk of families having to make difficult budgetary decisions that could come to affect their health and well-being. The questions remain: how has food scarcity become so prevalent in the world, and what will it take to mitigate this situation.

Breaking Down Food Scarcity Driving forces are key to understanding where food scarcity comes from and more importantly how to avoid it from happening. Kenya and Ethiopia are prime examples of countries that are experiencing dramatic food scarcity. According to recent figures, one in ten Kenyans suffer from food scarcity and 4.6 million Ethiopians are in need of food assistance.64 Through the examples of Kenya and Ethiopia, one can get a good sense of the multitude of driving forces that characterize food scarcity.

In both Kenya and Ethiopia, the agricultural sector plays an important role in the livelihoods of many of its citizens. In the case of Ethiopia alone, the agricultural sector provides the livelihood for 75 percent of the population, and accounts for 48 percent of the nation’s GDP.65 Statistics in Kenya are similar, as farming regions compose approximately 18 percent of Kenyan territory, despite low levels of agricultural

63

UNFAO, The State of Agricultural Commodity Markets, 26.

“Newspapers Examine Drought, Famine in Africa.” http://globalhealth.kff.org/DailyReports/2009/September/09/GH-090909-East-Africa-Drought-Famine.aspx. Accessed 14 October 2009.

65 UNFAO. Nutrition Country Profile: Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, 11.

64

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productivity.66 The strong agricultural connections in these countries make food scarcity an even more pressing issue because if this sector fails, the impact on large portions of the population will be devastating.

Through driving forces like environmental change in the form of drought and land degradation, food scarcity is on the rise in both Kenya and Ethiopia. Changes in the environment have lead to massive rain shortages both in Kenya and Ethiopia. As consecutive growing seasons pass with limited amounts of rain, crop yields and animal productivity continue to decrease.67 Rain shortages combined with drought are taking a toll on the populations of Kenya and Ethiopia. As poor communities lack the ability to make up for losses in crop yields, the prevalence of food scarcity is becoming more apparent. Many farmers live year-to-year based on the crops they produce. As rain shortages and drought expand from just one growing season to yearly repeated incidences, the communities of Ethiopia and Kenya lack the resources to recover from one bad growing season, let alone consecutive bad seasons. In the course of efforts to limit the affects of rain shortages, land degradation often occurs as agricultural rich soils become depleted of nutrients and growing capabilities from years of use with varying degrees of agricultural techniques.

It is important to note that despite these drops in food production in Kenya and Ethiopia as a result of environmental factors, since the 1970s the world has had enough (and still has enough) food to not only feed the people of the world at the bare minimum level for survival, but to eliminate hunger completely. Food scarcity cannot be contributed to a problem in the supply of food, but rather it is the distribution of food, specifically in the form of unequal distribution of economic power that results in global increases in food prices.68 Failure to manage the driving forces of food scarcity- namely in the form of environmental issues or economic distribution-that results in soaring food

66

“Rural Poverty in Kenya,” IFAD. http://www.ruralpovertyportal.org/web/guest/country/home/tags/kenya. Accessed 14 November 2009.

67 “KENYA: Tens of Thousands Facing Acute Food Shortage.” http://wow.gm/africa/kenya/baringo/article/2008/8/12/kenya-tens-of-thousands-facingacute-food-shortage. Accessed 29 October 2009.

68 Michael T. Clare and Daniel C. Thomas, World Security, Challenges for a New Century (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1994), 357-358.

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prices is a considerable world failure that subsequently affects one-sixth of the world’s population.

The Role of the Food Crisis of 2006-2008 as a Driving Factor The food crisis that began in 2006 as a result of increases in food prices is a key example as to why food scarcity is a particularly devastating the problem facing the world today. It is hard to pinpoint one specific cause that led to food price increases in 2006, but many experts including the UNFAO contribute these rises to policies undertaken in global economic markets and their respective global economic organizations. Depreciation of the United States dollar combined with existing tariffs imposed on the trading of agricultural products caused the prices of food to increase exponentially, especially for developing countries that rely greatly on imports of food to offset their own agricultural production.69 While food prices are traditionally known as goods that experience dramatic rises in prices, the 2006 crisis was different in the fact that rather than a few key agricultural goods like coffee or cocoa rising in price, key basic foods that are of international importance such as cereals, oilseeds, and dairy products were the goods that rose exponentially in price. It is these goods rather than goods such as coffee or cocoa that populations in all countries-especially less developed countries require to feed their citizens.70 The shock of rising food prices among these essential food items are key to contributing to the food scarcity Kenya and Ethiopia are currently experiencing. Due to their reliance on agricultural productivity as high portions of their GDP, both Kenya and Ethiopia were dramatically affected by rising food prices as a result of the 2006 food crisis.

Although food prices have declined slightly since the 2006 crisis, prices still remain high in many African nations. It is hard to pinpoint a single cause that contributed to rises in food prices, but decreases in cereal production, combined with a depreciating US dollar, high fuel prices, and a large demand for biofuels proves that the problem of volatile food prices will remain a persistent issue among African nations and even highly

69 70

UNFAO, The State of Agricultural Commodity Markets, 9-10.

Ibid., 10.

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developed countries for years to come.71 High food prices are an essential driving factor that creates food scarcity, and it is a driving factor that can be addressed with adjustments in both the world economic market and additional efforts in countries like Kenya and Ethiopia to increase their own agricultural outputs. However, until these issues are addressed, food scarcity continues to create dramatic problems in all sectors of society that must be addressed.

What are the Hazards Presented by Food Scarcity?

As the 2006-08 food and fuel crisis demonstrated, it is necessary to examine the different components that contribute to food scarcity. Food scarcity can be examined through measures of food availability and food accessibility. Food availability is the ability to have sufficient quantities of food for a population to exist on, while food accessibility is the ability to gain food for use through having sufficient income to purchase food, transportation to get to available food, and other similar categories. 72 If food availability or food accessibility fails to be maintained for populations, food scarcity is imminent, causing regional, national, and even global food problems. The following sections will provide a picture of the hazards that are presented by food scarcity.

Economic Hazards Food scarcity presents a great economic hazard in aspects related to both food availability and food accessibility. In both Ethiopia and Kenya, the role agriculture plays as a main source of income for many of its citizens creates a great risk if food scarcity becomes prevalent. In the case of Ethiopia, 48 percent of GDP is a result of the agricultural sector.73 In Kenya, 74 percent of the active working population works in agriculture. This data shows the important role agriculture plays in the dynamics of Ethiopian and Kenyan society, and the devastating impact agriculture can have when food scarcity strikes.

Failures in agriculture contribute to both food availability and food accessibility.

For those who produce food, bad crop years prevent high yields from reaching markets.

71

Ibid., 14.

Brix, Laura. “The Food Challenge” Power Point Presentation. 20 November 2008, page 7.

73 UNFAO. Nutrition Country Profile: Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, 13.

72

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This means that farmers loose profit, providing them with less money to buy food that other farmers produce, or forcing them to limit the amount of seeds and other agricultural material needed for next year’s crop. Financial failure from a bad harvest forces families to have to make tough decisions that may require children to drop out of school, or suspend trips to healthcare providers as families lack the income to pay for these endeavors.

This initial failure gets transferred to those in society who are not responsible for producing food. Limited food amounts mean that people may have to travel farther and pay more to get what limited amounts of food exist. This creates a great strain on families as they may have to pay more to get to food supplies, leave their jobs for longer amounts of time to go get food, or pay higher prices that take away income from other important things families need. Economic hazards in this regard affect both food accessibility and availability. What may appear to be food scarcity on an individual family or town level can very quickly turn into a country wide problem if food scarcity and the economic risks associated with it are not managed and mitigated.

Health Hazards Food scarcity has a dramatic role on health in countries like Ethiopia and Kenya whose populations are already greatly at risk for health issues. In Kenya, infant mortality and under-5 mortality are on the rise, as these rates were 73 percent and 105 percent respectively in the period from 1989 to 1993, and 77 percent and 115 percent respectively in 2003.74 While these high rates are attributed to many factors including communicable diseases like malaria or diarrheal disease, with a proper, more balanced diet, these rates can be cut down immensely. Food scarcity breeds malnutrition and vitamin deficiencies that could otherwise help protect infants and children under-5 from diseases that can be cured or avoided. Children becoming sick as a result of malnutrition means less time spent in school, which eventually turns into a population that is not well educated and limits future capabilities for progress.

Adults are also greatly at risk of the health consequences of food scarcity.

Malnutrition in adults as a result of a lack of food availability creates devastating

74

UNFAO. Nutrition Country Profile: Republic of Kenya, 11.

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problems for their health, especially in pregnant women. Vitamins and nutrients that are essential to pregnant women are found directly in many of the foods people eat. Food scarcity and malnutrition limits the intake of these important vitamins and nutrients, having a devastating effect on both mother and child. Infants can be born underweight and lower cognitive abilities among other side effects. Lack of good food supplies lengthen a women’s recovery time, which can impact her child rearing abilities, or her ability to go back to work. In other adults, food scarcity can lead to health problems as a result of not having enough food, which can hurt their economic productivity and limit the amount of income they can earn, which can lead to food shortages for their family if they do not have enough income to buy food.

Stability Hazards Food scarcity can prove to be a source of immense political conflict and hazards in countries. Lack of food resources among a hungry population can insight food riots, government coups, and contribute to corruption in society. According to the Kaiser Daily Global Health Policy Report, in Kenya alone, some government officials were recently “implicated in a scandal to illegally sell off thousands of tons of the nation’s grain reserves” in spite of a looming famine.75 Government endeavors of this nature only seek to worsen food scarcity in their respective countries. While political unrest of any sort is never particularly good for a ruling government, loss of credibility as a result of withholding food from its citizens will breed political discontent that can push a country into violence. In the case of Kenya, the elections of 2008 were a perfect example to show how food scarcity combined with an unhappy political climate led to violence and political uprisings throughout Kenya. Ethiopia also experienced similar issues during their war against Eritrea and in the years following as they attempted to rebuild their country and government.

Spanning from political problems, wars in other countries can contribute to food stability issues. Both Kenya and Ethiopia have become home to thousands of refugees attempting to escape the crisis in the Somalia and as a result of the Ethiopian-Eritrean

75

“Newspapers Examine Drought, Famine in Africa.” http://globalhealth.kff.org/DailyReports/2009/September/09/GH-090909-East-Africa-Drought-Famine.aspx. Accessed 14 October 2009.

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war.76 These refugees prove to be an added burden to governments as they work to feed these new inhabitants in addition to their own citizens. These added mouths to feed contribute to drops in food accessibility and availability, as food that is already in high demand must continue to be spread amongst even more people.

Social Hazards Food scarcity represents a great divide between those who have and those who have not. For many who are experience food scarcity and poverty, the small number of elites and wealthy in society who can afford to pay high prices for food, or have food in abundance create a great rift in societies. Cases of this rift have been reported in Kenya as corrupted officials gain from the spoils of wealth and access to food as a result of their positions in government.77 For many governments including Kenya and Ethiopia that have GDPs made up by a larger percentage of agriculture, food scarcity means that capital improvements such as public health clinics, better roads, and education systems cannot be achieved. These failures create problems on the whole for society as basic necessities for improving life cannot be completed. Overall, food scarcity represents a dramatic problem that affects all aspects of society.

How Can we Eliminate Food Scarcity?

Food scarcity is a far-reaching problem that cannot be fixed by examining one single issue, and the impacts of food scarcity on society are deep and far reaching. There are some global measures that have been discussed that can help to reduce and even possible end food scarcity, but a solution cannot be reached overnight and must be made a concerted international effort.

Education is one means to eliminating food scarcity. Educating populations through international organizations such as UNFAO and NGOs can help farmers establish better agriculture methods. Some of these methods include soil management, which helps farmers learn how to extract the most from soils year to year and help replenish nutrients after each crop season, and switching to seed varieties that can withstand particularly harsh growing seasons. Education can also lead to a rise in urban agriculture programs which help urban homes adapt their food situation and help account

76 77

Ibid.

Ibid.

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for providing food accessibility and availability. These urban programs have low start up costs when used as a community garden or in other group settings. These urban programs can also help provide larger yields than would otherwise be capable in an individual setting as people pool their resources together to contribute to the gardens.78 Other endeavors than can be used to help combat food scarcity is a state adapted safety net approach to food scarcity. A safety net approach is a way of instituting social programs to address food crises. For many years a food crisis appeared year after year in Ethiopia, and the country would then have to appeal for international help to supply them with enough food to feed its people. Ethiopia has now adopted a safety net program that works to combat food crises before they appear. This effort decreases relief assistance while enhancing risk management of a food crisis. Countries can do many things that qualify as a safety net program, including monthly cash assistance programs, food at work and school programs, cash for work or food programs, and other various programs.

In places like Ethiopia and Brazil, these programs have been very successful in mitigating food crises and preventing them from reoccurring. 79 Safety net programs have been very successful; however they require a focused government that can adopt its policies to accommodate a safety net program, in addition to a secure government that is not ridden by corruption. Safety net programs also require an increase in public spending on agriculture, which in least developed countries can be as low as 4 percent of GDP.80 The international community can also make a concerted effort to reducing food scarcity. By working with food insecure countries, the international community in forums such as the WTO can work to reduce the price of food and tariffs, greatly assisting developing countries battling food scarcity. As seen in the last rounds of the WTO, agriculture is often a sticking point for country regarding the success or failures of these trade negotiations. With the severity of the last food crisis in 2006-08, now is the perfect time for the international community to begin preparing for what will soon be another food crisis unless trade agreements and tariffs change. The difficulty of changing WTO

78

Marcel Rutten and others, eds. Inside Poverty and Development in Africa, (Boston: Brill, 2008), 226-227.

79 UNFAO, The State of Food Insecurity in the World, 42-45.

80 Ibid., 39.

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agreements is notorious in the international community and will take a great deal of diplomacy and negotiation. However, with time and compromise tariff barriers can be reduced, gradually freeing up more food for the world, and helping to limit food scarcity.

Conclusions Food scarcity is a very diverse issue that occurs from varying development needs and driving forces to create a multitude of hazards that men, women, and children must face, especially related to health. While these hazards are diverse, the status of food scarcity in terms of food availability and food accessibility in Kenya and Ethiopia provide a unique study of exactly what food scarcity can do to a population. Both of these countries are unique in the fact that despite agriculture making up such large percentages of their GDPs, millions of people still go hungry each year in these countries.

As seen from the food crisis of 2006-08, food scarcity will not go away, and in many ways the problem will continue to get worse unless changes are made both at a community, state, national, and international levels. Through small changes and assistance of the international community, countries like Ethiopia and Kenya can limit the outbreak of food crises and the health problems that follow these crises for years to come.

Islamism v. Nationalism

Iran’s Foreign Policy Towards its Neighbors, the Middle East, and the West

By Behnam Ben Taleblu

Executive Summary: For too long a clash of civilizations rhetoric has precluded policy makers in both Washington DC and Tehran from understanding the internal dynamics and regional politics that go into each other’s foreign policy formula. The point of this paper is to attempt to understand how Iran measures its foreign policy in three contexts; in relation to that of its neighbors, its region and America. By many standards, its seems as if Iran’s foreign policy is formulated by a group of radical clerics who have some of the most anti­western rhetoric the world has ever seen. What I have discovered are some more tangible reasons for Iran’s strategic posture as a realist state, not as an ideological rogue. Moreover, their perception of themselves as a regional power and natural hegemon are founded in policy, not ideology.

For three decades now, Iran and the formulation of its foreign policy have baffled policy makers and academics alike. Everything in Iran’s political system, from its leadership, to its internal dynamics as a theocracy, is often misunderstood 33

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as evidence that it is an irrational and ideologically driven state actor. In my humble opinion, nothing could be further from the truth. Iran’s foreign policy has at its heart a contradiction found across the greater Middle East; and that is of competing strands of Islamism and nationalism. While one utilizes history and the other religions, both are effectively galvanized, interchangeably I might add, to create a specific posture in the Middle East in relation to its neighbors and especially towards the West.

Looking at a map from Iran’s eyes one thing becomes extremely evident

really fast; Iran’s territory is smaller now than it has been in the past 2,500 years.

From its inception into history, whether we like the idea or not, Iran has been a significant player in the Middle East, Caucuses, and Central Asia. Today, the lack of physical territory under Iranian jurisdiction prevents it from having direct rule of these areas. Therefore in the realm of foreign policy, Iran looks to instill a sort of nostalgia of what Persian influence and culture was like in the respective areas.

Here Iran uses nationalism to stir emotions and replace unfavorable policies with favorable ones by drawing upon nationalistic and historic rhetoric of cooperation between cultures. There is no better modern day example of this than Tajikistan, the only Central Asian Republic without a Turkic or Russian ethnic bias that is fiercely nationalistic, protective of its gas reserves and at the whim of Iranian nationalistic rhetoric.

But sometimes nationalism can only get you so far. Thus, Iran, as a theocratic

republic of the 21st century seeks to promote a favorable brand of Pan‐Islamism around the globe and especially in the Middle East. The idea of ‘exporting the Islamic Revolution’ is one that still carries weight with many civilian pro‐regime loyalists in Iran but is one that is founded in the pillars of the regime constructed in the 70’s.

The Islamic Republic of Iran was built by Ayatollah Khomeini and modeled off of his Islamic thesis of government styled after a “Guardianship of the Jurist” (Vilayat­e­ Faqih.) It is a contentious system that required Bid’ah, or Islamic innovation to form and does not carry weight with many of Iran’s Sunni‐Arab neighbors. Thus Iran uses rhetoric to apply pressure to Sunni‐Arab states. It is more vocal than any other member of the Organization of Islamic Conference in its opposition to Israeli 34

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domination and hegemony. So much so that its rhetoric as of recent leaves people baffled and offended as to why a country that only spends 3% of its GDP on their military can threaten to wipe another nation with nuclear weapons off of the map.

The two cases mentioned above were brief summaries of how Iran uses or

has attempted to use two conflicting strands of ideology to formulate foreign policy.

Or so the smoke screen says. In reality, Islamism and Nationalism are mere rhetorical vehicles for Iran’s foreign policy goal, a goal that has been on the minds of dynasties in the Iranian plateau for more than millennia. Iran wants to be a regional power, a leader and interestingly enough a hegemon. It feels its culture, history and version of Islam are better than that of its neighbors and it can rise to prominence above them. Whether wearing a crown or turban, Iranian leaders and policy makers realized the importance of creating legitimacy, not inside Iran, but outside, in order to maintain an aggressive and expansionist view and negotiate on an about what they feel is their territory.

Here, it’s best to dissect each context and point of conflict in order to shed

light on Iran’s behavior. Iran’s main foreign policy initiative is to become this hegemon, this regional leader of sorts which it feels it was destined to be. Firstly, there is the case of Iran and its neighbors. Iraq and Afghanistan have been great impediments to the hegemonic posture of Shiite Iran for ages, but nothing exacerbated this conflict like the Islamic Republic of Iran first going to war for eight years with Saddam’s Iraq and then having its diplomats executed in the late 90’s by the rise of a Pashtun group in Afghanistan called the Taliban. While both these challenges to Iran’s posture come in an ethnic and ideological form, they also present political challenges. After Nasser’s death in Egypt, Iraq picked up the mantle of Pan‐Arabism and became the exemplary Ba’athist state. It was the vanguard for Arab nationalism and became a nepotistic nation to the Hussein family and city of Tikrit (Saddam’s home town.) In fact, during the Iran‐Iraq war, Saddam frequently called the invasion of Khuzestan in South‐western Iran “the Second Qadiyssa,” Qadiyssa being the battle that devastated the Sassanid Persian Empire in the seventh century AD. To counter this, Iran sought to support its Shiite brethren in southern Iraq by empowering its clergy. Moreover, it sought to instill a form of 35

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passion in its own soldiers and claimed they were martyrs, like Imam Hussein, fighting for the true Islam and would recapture the sacred shrine cities of Karbala and Najaf.

The impact of the Iran‐Iraq war went beyond the one million lives lost. It

rationalized two major fears for Iran. One was that the international community did not care about the defense and well being of Iran, as was evident during the war when the UN was silent on Iraq’s use of chemical and biological weapons on Iranian soldiers and civilians. The second fear/threat for Iran was the proof that Iraq was not just an ideological enemy, but a potent military threat capable of bogging the whole country down with war. In my opinion, this created a sense of paranoia, and created the current mindset of the Revolutionary Guards in Iran. It is a very cowboy, go‐at‐it alone approach to Iranian politics, and it is one of the reasons cited by some policy circles outside Iran as to why it needs the bomb. It is a security guarantee that it can use to deter powers in the region while asserting legitimacy and military supremacy. This view would only come to be entrenched after Saddam’s deposition and the presence of the US military alongside the Iran‐Iraq boarder. Obviously, Iranian and American security interests for a stable Iraq converged, but the people they chose to support did not. Iran utilizes its strategic link to mobilize the Shiite majority in favor of American democracy attempts, showing that they can be productive in nation building and civic participation in government.

This is one of the key aspects of Iranian foreign policy not just in Iraq, but in

the entirety of the region. To broaden the scope of the context, Iran seeks to pursue a bottom‐up approach to Middle Eastern societies. It hijacks American pursuits and goals in the region and transforms it into theirs. The prime example of this is the American wish for security and democracy in the Middle East. Whenever autocratic Arab or Islamic governments have a referendum, or attempt to broaden the political spectrum and flirt with the idea of ‘slightly free‐er elections’ Iran’s friends and allies rise to prominence. This is proven by the Northern Alliance stepping aside for Karzai after the US‐Coalition led invasion of Afghanistan, the pro‐Shiite turn out and the rise of the Da’wa party in all Iraqi elections thus far, Lebanon and the rise of Hezbollah (especially after the 2006 war and their 45% dominance in parliament) 36

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and the election of Hamas in Gaza as an anti‐Israel entity. While all of these are not proxies for the Islamic Republic, they are great friends and allies, and in the case of Hezbollah and Hamas, are non‐state actors funded by Iran and labeled as terrorist organizations by the United States that have inflicted casualties on what Iran calls ‘The Zionist Entity.’

What it boils down to for Iran is a projection of power. Iran, until the

elections of Hezbollah and Hamas to power, has not had a hand in the politics of the Mediterranean for exactly one and a half millennia. Now they are back, and to add insult to injury, they feel the need to set the agenda in the region. Sad but true, Syria, Lebanon and the Gaza strip have become reactionary Arab forces to the instigation of Iranian hegemony, and the Gulf countries, both economically invested in Iran and the Untied States via their free‐market principles are afraid of Iran’s exercises of influence in what they feel is a Sunni‐Arab zone, not a Persian‐Shiite playground.

These countries have become vital extensions of the Iranian rhetorical arm and are glad to receive the pan‐Islamist spin Iran puts on their realist objectives.

Iran also has strategic and specific goals for the Arab populace. As the new

champion of the third world and lost Islamist causes, Iran seeks to use the Palestinian issue as a wedge for Arab governments like Saudi Arabia, Egypt and to a lesser extent Jordan. Iran looks to isolate the Arab street from the Arab governments, which are all cognizant of this fact. Iran’s most controversial President yet, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is the most rhetorically skilled diplomat in this area. He touts his populist credentials; he points more than just a finger at the UN by wearing a zip‐up windbreaker to the General Assembly, takes the Israeli‐Palestinian issue to a new height and manages to promote Iranian interest abroad in places like Venezuela, Belarus, Nicaragua, Armenia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Sri Lanka.

But the Arab populace is just a gateway, a wildcard if you will in Iran’s

foreign policy arsenal when it comes to relations with the US or lack thereof. For three decades now, failed policies of containment and isolation out of Washington have spurred Iran to go unchecked and unbalanced in the dark. It allowed Iran to accelerate its weapons program and civilian nuclear energy program for 18 years without the attention of the world. If anything, Iran prefers this attitude out of 37

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Washington, because it can galvanize liberal democracies to look at the US’s belligerence and obstinacy as Iran has reached out, both directly and indirectly to many US administrations and both sides have squandered successive chances for rapprochement.

Anti‐Americanism is a founding pillar of this Islamic regime. Additionally it is

anti‐western, anti‐colonial/imperial hubris and anti‐capitalism. Ironically enough, this is a country that has a youth bulge with 70% of the population aged 35 and under and 80% of that population being pro‐American. Hence, the status quo cannot remain. Iran’s graying population of clerics knows this too well and often employs the very same ‘clash of civilizations’ rhetoric (America is the great Satan, the Holocaust never happened…) to keep America from discovering its realist motives and power ambitions. Iran claims to be an Islamic Republic, yet it only advocates on behalf of Islam when necessary. It is a collective anti‐Americanism that unites Iran with Russia and China, two countries which have significantly oppressed Muslim communities but consistently watered down any sanctions from the United Nations Security Council on Iran’s behalf. Iran responds with lucrative gas and oil deals at a special price for such special friends. Recent news point to the $7.2 billion deal in place until 2012 with Iran and Lukoil in the southeast with Sinopec looking to do the same in the near future.

Iran knows America has devastated its potential to be a natural gas super‐

power by blocking the technology needed to access Natural Gas on the Caspian Sea and Persian Gulf. Iran needs to balance itself fiscally as a nation and remove the 70% grip of the state on the economy. Only full engagement with the west can provide the middle class and Bazaari’s in Iran with this chance. Tehran foreign policy makers know this too well, and instead seek to prevent engagement by not only being rhetorically bold but deterring American progress in Iraq and attempting to make sure the government in Baghdad and Kabul are not only friendly with Iran but also Shiite.

Thus Iran has formed a foreign policy of counter‐containment, to reach out to

3rd party actors and nations, like Armenia for instance, which is fiercely pro‐Iran, pro‐US, but anti‐Israel. Iran and Armenia have enjoyed a strategic relationship when 38

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Iran mediated the Ngoro‐Karabagh war of the 80’s between Armenia and Azerbaijan in favor of Armenia when one out of four Iranians are of ethnic Azeri decent. Iran’s ability to move past ethnic issues, when the Supreme Leader himself is half Azeri is proof that Iran wanted to rebuff pro‐American Azerbaijan which would sell gas to pro‐American Turkey. Instead Iran and Armenia have created a competing pipeline for Liquefied Natural Gas and are looking for a second one in 2011.

Iran and the US have definitely had a falling out, but that does not mean they

cannot realize they have some overlap of policy in the region. For years now, Iran sought to promote American failure in the Middle East with democracy movements.

But now, when Iranian security is challenged by the lack of a pluralistic democracy in both Iraq and Afghanistan, it has reached out to the US for collaboration. Firstly, Iran needs security assurances, not civilizing rhetoric. In my opinion, only when fears of regime change from Washington have been put to rest is when a series of cultural, religious and more importantly economic incentives, exchanges and programs can occur within each nation about the other.

However, Iran’s strategic posture remains hostile to the US and the June 12th

elections have exposed the militancy of the regime against clerics and pragmatists. It remains unclear as to how Iran will fare with Obama’s policy of engagement and negotiations without preconditions, but one thing is definitely for certain. Iran realizes that it is surrounded by American troops, pro‐American governments and economic powerhouses. Until Washington understands that Iran is facing a basic security dilemma and is merely looking to become the regional and natural hegemon that it historically was, engagement and negations will remain aloof.

All in all, as the saying goes, there is a reason behind the madness. Tehran

looks to rhetoric to project power where it lacks. This will ring true when it comes to the nuclear issue, to sanctions and human rights. Iran will not cease and desist on what is believes is its inalienable right to exercise its sovereignty. We simply need to be able to dissociate religious rhetoric from political rhetoric and realize that Iranian foreign policy is a creative formulation of realist policies set to allow Iran

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become a major player and rise to a position that it historically had, and now desperately feels it deserves.

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