International Relations Review Fall 2017 Edition

IR REVIEW The International Relations Review at Boston University

Fall 2017

The Effectiveness of Sanctions The Paris Attacks: Two Years Later

The Catalan Defiance and Spain’s Economic Nightmare

IN THIS ISSUE

The International Relations Review

Fall 2017

SECURITY

5 The Paris Attacks: Two Years Later By: Alice Ferre, CAS ‘19 8 South Sudan: Where Independence Does Not Mean Freedom

By: Alex del Tufo, CAS’19 10 An Island Torn Apart: ISIS Proliferation in the Philippines

By: Kristen Pantano, CAS’18 15 Princes and Persia: An Analysis of the Rivalry Between Saudi Arabia and Iran

By: Matt Manarchy, CAS’18

DIPLOMACY 21 ISIS vs Iran: Propaganda and its Significance By: Michelle Ramiz, CAS’20 25 Cutting Off Qatar: How Terrorism is Challenging Alliances and Hegemony in the Middle East

By: Samira Jafar, CAS’20 29 The Northern Front: Strategies of Dealing with North Korea

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ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT 59 CETA: Just the Tip of the Iceberg for Belgian Discord

By: Luciano Cesta, CAS’20 62 An Analysis of China’s Economic Future By: Tal Dickstein, CAS’19 65 The Nicaragua Canal: Doomed and Desperate

By: David Damiano, CAS’21

BOOK REVIEWS 69 Thinking Differently About Terrorism By: Yoni Tobin, CAS’21 71 Holding Us Accountable By: Adia Armstrong, CAS’20

By: Yubin Lee, CAS’21 and Andy Ellis CAS’20 72 Terrorism: Why We Care and How 33 On Sanctions We Can Stop It By: Alexander James Pritzen, CAS’19 By: Adia Armstrong, CAS’20 38 The Catalan Defiance and Spain’s Economic Nightmare By: Rebecca Faroro Giovannetti CAS‘19

HEALTH & AID

45 The Road to Zika By: Rachel Petherbridge, ENG’19 49 Friend or Foe: UN Relief Efforts in Haiti By: Yoni Tobin, CAS’21 53 Failure to Mind the Gap: The Divide Between Rich and Poor in Middle-Income Countries

By: Desmond Molloy, SAR ‘19

EDITORIALS

73 The Most-Told Lie in Human Rights History By: Raina Kadavil, CAS’19 74 Saffron Terror By: Gowtham Asokan, CAS’19

SECURITY

05

The Paris Attacks: Two Years Later

By: Alice Ferre, CAS’19

08

South Sudan: Where Independence Does Not Mean Freedom

By: Alex Del Tufo, CAS ‘19

10

An Island Torn Apart: ISIS

Proliferation in the Philippines

By: Kristen Pantano, CAS’18

15

Princes and Persia: An Analysis of Saudi Arabia and Iran’s Rivalry

By: Matt Manarchy, CAS’18

Photo by Stephen Conrad, ENG’19

5

The Paris Attacks

The International Relations Review

Two Years Later

By Alice Ferré, CAS ‘19 November 13th, 2015, an ordinary Friday night in Paris, quickly became one of France’s most horrific days in recent memory. At around 9:20 P.M., during a FranceGermany soccer game, an explosion broke out near the Stade de France area, triggering a deadly chain of events that ultimately ended with 129 people dead and another 380 wounded. The Islamic State of Iraq and Levant (ISIS), a jihadist militant group, claimed responsibility for the Paris attacks. The Monday following the incident, former President François Hollande called for unity and courage before announcing France’s new ruthless stance against the Islamic State.

Although it seemed as if nothing had changed on the surface, France’s political and social climate experienced a subtle shift in the wake of the Paris attacks; anger and fear paved the way for blatant forms of racism and xenophobia throughout the country.

A few weeks after the attacks, the French polling organization Odoxa revealed that the far-right National Front (NF), a controversial party known for espousing views in line with radicalism and bigotry,

was the only political party gaining noteworthy popularity in the regional elections race. Odoxa posited that a good portion of votes in the Ile-de-France regional elections would be allocated to an NF candidate known for his staunch anti-immigration policies. Such an outcome was unprecedented for the NF Ile-de-France: this region had been a stronghold of the Socialist Party for the last two decades.

Although the NF did not win in Ilede-France, they collected around 4.2 percent more votes than they did in the previous regional elections in 2010.

The poll further determined that France’s primary concerns related to national security and counterterrorism, an unsurprising result that could be attributed to the amplified feelings of helplessness and confusion following the Paris attacks. It becomes clear then, that fear fueled the rise of the NF. The heightened fear in France following the Paris attacks was pervasive and thus easy to exploit.

Counterterrorism tactics in cities soon infiltrated everyday life, with

blocks of concrete and barricades becoming physical embodiments of a new era in France.

Neighborhoods were shut down and buildings evacuated at the first potential sign of danger.

A January 2017 study determined that darker skinned males between 18 and 25 years old were 20 percent more likely to go through the police identity checks.

According to another study, led

by French NGO SOS Racisme in January 2016, racists acts (such as discriminations or physical and verbal attacks perpetrated by other citizens) augmented by 223 percent. The main take away is that fear following the Paris attacks also resulted in more racial profiling which inevitably seemed to stigmatize minorities.

Emmanuel Macron, the new president of France as of May 2017, has made it clear that domestic policy will be a primary focus of his administration and has so far promised strict anti-terrorism laws and regulations at home. Over the

Fall 2017 summer, the National Assembly implemented a sixth fourth-month extension of the state of emergency, declared since the attacks. The state of emergency restrains some public and private freedoms for individuals suspected to be threats to national security and facilitates legal procedures for police raids, house arrests, and identity and background checks by delegating more power to authorities. This October, the Assembly validated the first reading of Macron’s proposition for the normalization of the state of emergency. If the Senate agrees on this project, the temporary and extraordinary suspension of some rights would be embedded in the law to become permanent, superseding the state of emergency expiring on November, 1st. The Minister of the Interior, Gérard Collomb, defended the normalization by stating that “France cannot live indeterminately under an exceptional regime like it did during the Algerian war.” The extension of the state of emergency to the current body of law is “a lasting solution to a lasting problem.”

Macron’s call for the normalization of the state of emergency has resulted in diverse reactions. According to the polling

Photo By Natalie Carroll, COM ‘19

agencies Odoxa and Fiducial, 62 percent of the surveyed citizens think that the normalization will likely limit their freedoms. Indeed, the implications of the normalization, such as an intensified surveillance, worry the French that the Macron administration might use its newly acquired powers for other matters than counterterrorism. Nonetheless, 89 percent support having a heavier police presence around places of worships and public gathering spaces, and overall, there has been a continuously increasing consensus from the population on having stricter security measures, certainly due to the series of attacks over the past months.

Meanwhile, the international community is less divided: for the United Nations, Amnesty International, and Human Rights Watch, it is a categorical no. If the project of law is fully passed, France will have to be careful to not blur the lines between fighting terrorism and violating its citizens’ basic human rights.

However, on the international level, Macron’s approach seems to be a healthy balance between diplomatic and aggressive policies. Like former

6 Presidents Nicolas Sarkozy and François Hollande, Macron places the fight against ISIS at the center of French foreign policy; nonetheless, the President is taking a sharp turn from the position of the previous administrations which repeatedly called for Bashar AlAssad’s resignation. Indeed, Macron considers that ISIS is a more urgent threat and wishes for a redefinition of our premier goal: fighting ISIS, as their supporters killed thousands in France. This does not imply that the President disregard the Syrian issue, but that he is willing to make compromises and be more practical, tackling one task at the time.

He plans to reinforce the dialogue with Bashar Al-Assad and its allies, including Russia, to eliminate ISIS at its core. “My lines are clear: firstly, a complete fight against all the terrorist groups.

We need everybody’s cooperation, especially Russia’s, to eradicate them. My deep conviction is that there needs to be a diplomatic and political roadmap. We will not resolve this solely military,” Macron said to Reuters in June. “I want France to propose solutions and initiatives when there are new rises,” he added during the 2017 Ambassadors’ week this August.

To make sure of the efficiency of this diplomatic approach, Macron

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The International Relations Review

Photo By Natalie Carroll, COM ‘19

has been trying to put aside ideological differences and previous tough ties with Putin. Indeed, the president understands that renewing a dialogue and a possible friendship with Russia is crucial for rooting out the ISIS problem. He now has to fix the consequences of Hollande’s tough stance on Russia’s support of the Assad regime and annexation of Crimea over the past years. The new president also need to rub some balm on the burns he himself inflicted on Putin by publicly declaring, in a news conference in May, that the national news outlet Sputnik was some sort of “lying propaganda.” In the topic of reconciliation for the eradication of ISIS, the French foreign minister Jean-Yves Le Drian met with his Russian equivalent, Sergei Lavrov, in hopes for reinstituting “a spirit of trust.”

The negotiation talks will also involve fighting terrorism by drying out its financial resources; according to the president at the Ambassador’s week, a conference on this matter will take place at the start of 2018. Macron seems to have learned from Hollande: Even if France will keep its troops in the Sahel region, Iraq, and Syria to fight ISIS at its core, turning away from the old tactics could be a solution, as there would be a correlation between heavy French military interventionism in the Middle East

and the multiple assaults on the French territory. Indeed, not only France is one of the only Western nations, along with the U.S., involved in the Syrian conflict but Hollande intensified airstrikes in Raqqa, the Islamic State’s stronghold in Syria, after the Paris attacks.

Such behavior could explain why the country has been targeted more than its European neighbors – at least five times in seven months throughout 2016.

Now, the question is whether this new dynamic of diplomatic meetings will lead to something concrete. Can Macron, by renewing strategies and betting on stronger bonds, change the status-quo?

This winter will salute the second anniversary of the Paris attacks, and with it, an emphasis on reconstruction, resilience, and the duty of memory in France. Last year, the country payed homage to the victims in multiple ways: they placed memorial plaques at each location targeted by terrorists, released balloons of different colors and shapes to symbolize togetherness and diversity. The “une fenêtre, une bougie” movement invited Parisians to place a candle at their window for each victim. On the eve of the anniversary, Sting revived the Bataclan.

The Paris attacks had more than just an emotional impact on the French population. Like many

other attacks after it, it shaped France socially and politically. Ugly traits like racism and xenophobia resurfaced and were translated by the ascension of a populist party.

The originally exceptional and temporary state of emergency became part of the population’s everyday lives, in the streets – and maybe soon, in the law. French politicians now aspire for a bigger role in the international ISIShunting scheme and have somehow learned from their mistakes by balancing combat with more diplomacy. Even after the attacks, Paris remained strong as one of the premier tourist destinations in the world. France is a resilient nation in spite of the numerous attacks endured over the past months.

Indeed, are there really mistakes to acknowledge when a nation and its citizens are barbarically targeted during a night out?

“France embodies everything religious zealots everywhere hate,” stated a comment on a New York Times article that went viral after the attacks. The author of the comment justly depicted a France that is bon vivant, lover of the arts, fashion and culture, and proud of its secularism. Therefore, what other responses than being themselves could the French people give to terrorists, as Paris and France are their antagonists in values?

Fall 2017

8

South Sudan

Where Independence Does Not Mean Freedom

By Alex del Tufo CAS ‘19 The hope and nationalism seen in South Sudan on its independence day six years ago starkly contrasts with the picture of violence and turmoil plaguing the country today.

On July 9, 2011, citizens of the southern states of Sudan flew flags of green, red, and blue, rushing to the streets to celebrate their great triumph. Under the leadership of Dinka President Salva Kiir Mayardit the country of South Sudan had been officially formed, and brought with it the promise of a better nation rid of ethnic discrimination and warfare.

But with South Sudan’s Dinka majority president, the conflict between the country’s two major ethnic groups: the Dinkas and Nuers, was growing in the background.

The referendum that granted South Sudanese independence had been agreed upon in 2005, through the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) between the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) and the Sudanese government. When it was put to a vote in 2011, the result was almost unanimously in favor of independence. After years of civil conflict in Sudan, the ten Southernmost states were prepared to secede from the rest of the nation.

The North and South Sudanese leaders and citizens were eager to end what had been one of the longest civil wars in history.

Spanning over 20 years, from 1982 to 2005, the war had plunged Sudan into in a bloody massacre of SPLM members by the central Sudanese

government. With many Sudanese deaths imposed by the SPLM as well. The death tolls at the highest since World War II, with nearly two million killed.

Ethnic and religious conflicts are a driving factor in many civil wars in the developing world, due to deeply engrained ethnic roots and strong ties to religion.

These conflicts, because they are so intertwined with identity, seem impossible to resolve. Current day South Sudan is a prime example.

South Sudanese independence brought peace for a brief period.

However, by December 2013 the SPLM had devolved back into the violent entity it had been preindependence.

The South Sudanese feared a recurrence of warfare even after independence. Although the vast majority of the civilian population supported the movement and hoped for its success, Sudan’s history of civil and ethnic conflict was not in their favor. Sudan had two civil wars, both spanning several decades. The First and Second Sudanese Civil Wars were characterized by unending brutality and disagreement between the SPLM and the Sudanese government.

The CPA between the SPLM and Sudanese government had the purpose of eradicating this civil conflict. Although the CPA succeeded overall, and peace was sustained in South Sudan after 2005, the CPA failed to account for a separate, growing conflict in the country that would later contribute

significantly to violent instability in South Sudan.

Tensions between President Kiir and his former-Vice President Riek Machar flooded into the public eye when a SPLM National Liberation Council meeting in December 2013 turned violent. As the President publicly accused Machar of plotting a coup against him.

The violence that ensued during the meeting was strongly tied to the ethnic conflicts that have plagued Sudan throughout its history. Although supporters of both President Kiir and Machar come from all ethnic backgrounds, there is a clear divide between the Dinka and Nuer ethnic groups. President Kiir coming from the Dinka tribe while Machar is a Nuer.

South Sudan is one of the most ethnically diverse countries with 64 tribes in total. Although, there the two distinct majority tribes are: the Dinkas, making up 35 percent of the population, and the Nuers, making up 15 percent. These two competing majorities have been pitted against one another in the ongoing conflict sparked by President Kiir and Machar. Those who support the President continue to refer to themselves as the SPLM while Machar’s opposition group identifies themselves as the Sudanese People’s Liberation Movement-inOpposition, or SPLM-IO. Ethnic identity was, and continues to be, a strong force in South Sudan both before and after independence.

Tensions between President Kiir and

9 Machar led to an ethnic divide that mirrored the ethnoreligious conflict between Arabs and non-Arabs in the unified state of Sudan prior to Southern independence.

Similarly, the underlying source of conflict in Sudan prior to independence could be traced back to issues beyond ethnicity.

Scarcity of natural resources greatly contributed to the continuation and intensification of the Sudanese Civil Wars. Sudan’s major oil fields in

“Today nearly six million people in the country are facing starvation.” the South were the hottest areas of conflict during the Second Sudanese Civil War.

In 2005, the North and South agreed to split oil revenues evenly, despite the fact that a third of the oil production comes from the South.

This set the North up for economic failure when the South seceded.

The significance of oil as an underlying factor to ethnic conflict is seen in South Sudan as well. In addition to the individual conflict between Kiir and Machar, oil production in certain Southern regions continues to be an area of contention. Both the SPLM and SPLM-IO are willing to shed blood for control of oil reserves in many areas of South Sudan, one of the largest being Block 5A.

Block 5A refers to a region west of the White Nile that stretches through a large portion of South Sudan and into Sudan. It was the

The International Relations Review location of immense fighting during the Second Sudanese Civil War and continues to be a hotspot in the South Sudanese Civil War. With 98 percent of the South Sudanese budget being support by oil production, these areas are vitally important to their economy. Any small fission between groups (i.e. supporters of President Kiir and Machar) is only exacerbated by the competitive drive for oil.

Both a cause, and an effect, of South Sudan’s Civil War is expansive poverty and famine. Today nearly six million people in the country are facing starvation. The relationship between civil conflict and famine is cyclical. The civil war has impacted rates of famine, while famine has also pushed along the civil conflict.

On the one hand, military presence has led to the evacuation of 3.5 million civilians from their homes. This movement makes access to reputable food sources an increasing challenge. Additionally with warfare comes a dip in the nation’s economy therefore increasing food prices due to lack of accessibility. On the other hand, an already food insecure state such as South Sudan is more susceptible to civil conflict due to a dire need for resources, such as oil, to create an income.

It is at times assumed that the greatest challenge for nations seeking independence is escaping oppressors. However, while that is part of the battle, the process of becoming an independent nation is an immense challenge. This is often due to the nation’s desire to keep their country united.

This aspect of the South Sudanese independence movement can be compared to the recent

Catalonian independence movement.

The Spanish government and its citizens seek to keep Catalonia under their rule while Catalonians hope for an independent nation. According to the 2017 Catalan Independence Referendum, a large majority of Catalans, 92 percent, want Catalonia to become an independent republic.

However, Spain declared the referendum illegal in reference to the Spanish Constitution of 1978 and is continuing to make efforts towards maintaining Catalonia as a Spanish territory. This desire for nations to maintain control if fueled by both a desire for wider control as well as a need to maintain the cultural identity of a nation.

Sudan sought to hold onto control over the Southern regions of Sudan for as long as possible. For decades the central government oppressed non-Arab populations instead of encouraging a secession.

In the case of an independent South Sudan this was also fueled by a desire to maintain control of oil reserves. Even after independence there is speculation that Sudan is not content with the newfound independence. The South Sudanese have even directly blamed Sudan for arming ethnic groups, specifically the Dinkas and Nuers, in order to encourage a rift.

The deeply ingrained ethnic conflicts that have fueled violence not only in South Sudan but across the world continue to affect the nation, fueled by economic struggle, religious differences, and natural resources. Developing countries rely greatly on the stability of their economies, so a seemingly minor political dispute can erupt into a large scale civil war, such as seen in the struggling nation of South Sudan today.

Photo By Raina Kadavil, CAS ‘19

Fall 2017

An Island Torn Apart

10

ISIS Proliferation in the Philippines

By Kristen Pantano, CAS ‘18 In Malawi, Philippines, bullet holes and empty streets consume the once-bustling city. ISIS is not just in the Middle East anymore; it has spread, picking up support from local terrorist groups. In a country where 90% of the citizens are Catholic, ISIS still creates huge waves of destruction as a small sect of the population ready to fight against anyone in the way. While the Marawi militants have targeted Christians (as ISIS has elsewhere in the world) the majority of the jihadists’ victims are moderate Muslims who wholeheartedly reject violence. The ideology of ISIS has infected the southern island of Mindanao as groups of well-armed militants penetrate the city of Marawi and outlying islands, driving out civilians as they violently clash with President Duterte’s forces. In the midst of an ongoing civil war for representation for the island of Mindanao, violence has become a weapon of jihadi groups who only seek power for themselves.

The government, slow to react at first, is now is struggling to combat the forces. What used to be domestic terrorist cells fighting for profit and political autonomy has turned into a battle for control of the second largest island in the Philippines. Duterte has done little for those affected and could stand to learn a few lessons from the allies of the Philippines and the United States. Foreign support for ISIS in the battle has been pouring in, and now the government needs its own aid to combat the growing jihad.

The Situation on the Ground

The last few months have yielded the highest military death toll in recent Philippines history as militants have swarmed through the southern island of Mindanao.

The army reports that 133 soldiers, 617 militants, 45 civilians have killed in the hostilities so far, and states that around 1,728 people have been rescued from both hostage situations and the firefight.

“A humanitarian crisis the government is struggling to contain”

This conflict has been going on since early 2014, but widespread violence was not prevalent until more recent times. In 2016 alone, from March to July, there were over six attacks by ISIS. In April, 2017, 18 soldiers were killed in a gun battle with Abu Sayyaf, another terrorist organization that declared loyalty to ISIS in 2014. Graphic execution videos and violent social media posts have been circulating the world and with no signs of stopping or slowing down. As the fight in the Middle East is coming to an end, eyes are turning to the Philippines.

In response to the conflict, Filipino president, Rodrigo Duterte, declared martial law in Mindanao on May 23rd, 2017, days after ISIS raided a military checkpoint, killing a soldier. After an overwhelmingly supportive vote, the Filipino congress voted to extend the period of martial law to a full year, negating

the constitution’s allowance for only 60 days. The crisis in Marawi has forced almost 350,000 people to flee the city and surrounding areas, creating a humanitarian crisis the government is struggling to contain. Many have found shelter with friends and family outside Marawi, but thousands of others have no choice but to stay in makeshift camps for ‘Internally Displaced Persons’. Many people are fleeing the ISIS-patrolled regions to escape religious persecution. As a former Spanish colony, 90% of the Philippines identifies as Roman Catholic. However, Marawi is the only city in the Philippines that is predominantly Muslim. It operates under pseudo-Sharia law with the exemption of punishments illegal throughout Philippines as a whole.

Alcohol is prohibited and women must wear coverings outside the home. Other provinces on the island are Muslim, but only about 20% of Mindanao’s population identifies as such.

Mindanao boasts 11 of the 20 poorest provinces in the country.

President Duterte was born and raised on the island, and many hoped that with his election Mindanao would benefit from aid. After this failed to happen, many citizens on the island felt abandoned by him.

Further backlash came after Duterte publicly told his soldiers stationed in Marawi that they could rape up to three women and he would still protect them. Many were outraged.

If that weren’t enough to alienate the civilians of Marawi, Duterte also called for aerial strikes and said that he would have no issue with

11 “carpet bombing” the city, since it was up to civilians to run for safety.

The blatant disregard that Duerte shows for a city that is less than 200 miles (about distance from Boston to New York City) from where he spent much of his life and career is incomprehensible to many. His cold-hearted disregard for his fellow Filipinos has ostracized many of his early supporters, and he is no friend to the island anymore.

Who is the Filipino ‘ISIS?’

Battles for independence in Mindanao are not new to the Island.

Beginning in the 1960s, groups like the Moro Nationalist Liberation Front (MNLF) as well as the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) have been fighting for the region’s autonomy. From there, splinter groups have been forming and growing, many of whom have since declared allegiance to ISIS. One such group, Abu Sayyaf, has been operating in the region since the 1990’s. Led by Isnilion Hapilon, #1 on the FBI’s most wanted terrorists list, this group has been a haven for foreign terrorists seeking refuge.

Many of their activities center around kidnapping for profit. In the first half of 2016, Abu Sayyaf ’s profits were around $7.3 million according to a Philippine government report. However, as tides changed, so as the ideology, ISIS has united many of the groups that have splintered off of MBLF and MILF under one cause.

Another group who has united with Abu Sayyaf under the ISIS flag is the Maute brothers and their band of men (referred to collectively as the Maute group). Described as a new breed of extremists, these brothers are

The International Relations Review charismatic, social-media savvy and thanks to their education in the Middle East, have a large international contact list. Their extended family is part of Marawi’s elite, and they have family high up in the MILF. However connected to the MILF they are, they have no interest in compromise or the MILF’s goal of political autonomy for the island of Mindanao. They only want jihad and are willing to kill anyone in their way: non-Muslims, Shia Muslims, and “obstructionist” Sunni Muslims. Isnilion Hapilan and Omar Maute were killed on October 16th, 2017, leaving a power vacuum in the Filipino ISIS. How it will be filled remains to be seen.

Abu Turaipe, head of the group Jamaah Al Muhajirin wal Anshor (JMA), another terrorist group with loyalty to ISIS and very adept at attracting foreign fighters, seems to be the leader with the most to gain.

Mindanao is a petri dish for radicalization. Poor governance, an out-of-sync legal system weakened by the Sharia laws incompatibility with the country’s law system and the anarchy of the drug wars, and endemic poverty that runs rampant on half the island. Mindanao’s prisons are overcrowded and in disrepair, making them a perfect place to recruit new radicals. At the start of the insurgency ISIS claimed to have over 600 members on the island. They swarmed the city sowing discord and conducted jailbreaks, massacred Christians, and burned down anything in their path. Now, many militants have been killed and much of the effort has been pinned to a few square blocks in Malawi, but the fighting is far from over.

Boys not even in their teens are picking up arms as they are indoctrinated into the cause, usually by family members. For younger boys as well as those much older, social media is playing an enormous role in rallying members to the cause. According to the Counter Extremism Project, 70% of ISIS propaganda is broadcasted from Indonesia and the Philippines into all of Southeast Asia, but it is not just Southeast Asians who are consuming the propaganda. In mid-2016, coalition forces made the Syrian-Turkish border much harder to permeate, leaving ISIS fighters stranded on the wrong side of the fight. The Filipino groups invited those unable to get into the region to come to Mindanao instead. With this influx of fighters came new tactics that the Filipino military is still attempting to adjust to. Jihadi methods learned in Iraq and Syria, such as using IEDs and RPGs, came with the migrant fighters.

Government forces not used to this type of warfare have been injured and killed, taken by surprise by these tactics, just as American forces were when they entered the war on terror in the Middle East.

Still, government forces have been hitting hard at the ISIS fighters.

The city of Marawi has turned into a no-holds-barred war zone. Neither side care about civilians in their path, but only about coming out victorious at the end of the fight.

There are many issues with this on both sides, but the government keeps making critical errors eroding their path to success. The Marawi’s failure to protect itself before ISIS gained strength on the island is what has led to this lasting conflict.

Fall 2017 Afraid to scare off investors, especially after the bad press of the drug wars and with it the lack oflaw, the government was unwilling to jeopardize its reputation further.

If they had acted sooner, when the threat first appeared, Mindanao might not be in its current state of disarray. Furthermore, Duterte’s strong-arm tactics have been drumming up support for the terrorist cells and creating martyrs on the islands, rallying civilians and foreigners to the cause against the brutal campaign.So the government first reacted too slowly, and now is still attempting to make up for it, making slow progress that threatens to stagnate with the next wrong move or influx of ISIS fighters. After the deaths of Hapilan and Maute, Dueterte declared Marawi liberated, but ISIS isn’t gone, it has just pushed south. As the fighters flee to the less populated areas of Mindanao, they gain protection from the marshes, mountains, and forests throughout the island, places government forces will have great trouble reaching.

The region of Kauran is particularly vulnerable to the infiltration, as it is region directly south of Marawi.

What Can the US Do?

With the battle for control of Mindanao raging on, it is important that the Philippines can lean on the support of the international community, especially the United States.

The no-holds-barred campaign by Duterte only alienates sections of the population further and creates martyrs. With over 40,000 foreign ISIS fighters in Syria it is clear that preventative steps must be taken to prevent migration to the Philippines. The economy of Mindanao, previously booming, is

12 weakened by constant attacks, the scattered island borders are porous, and the abundance of social media propaganda furthers the spread of ISIS ideology.

While the United States doesn’t have military bases on the Philippines, they have a nearby presence throughout Southeast Asia. In 1951, the Philippines and the United States signed a Mutual Defense Treaty, so if called upon by Duterte, the United States would have no choice but to become embroiled in the conflict. If the United States were to get involved logistically in a supporting role earlier in the fight, it would prevent the deployment of US troops later down the line, preventing American political turmoil over a new war.

The Philippines is a country where many support the United States, but a fear of encroachment on Filipino sovereignty is never far from their minds. A territory of the US for over 60 years, the Philippines declared war against the US for independence and it was not until the treaty of Manila in 1946 that they were finally successful. The United States must support the cause without crossing the line, which will be made possible by the United States providing support, but not soldiers.

A much-needed step for the Filipino government is a show of support for the moderate Muslim population.

The government needsto address the hateful rhetoric and not just perpetuate hate for anyone of the Muslim faith. Just like in the United States, fear and anger aimed at Islam creates more problems than it solves. Sponsorship of grassroots de-escalation efforts by

those who have local connections to the population can go a long way in helping to neutralize radicalization.

The United States can help to train the government and these groups in human rights protocols which they can use to make a promise to the population that life will be better after the fighting ends. Duterte has lots to learn in the human rights sector and a pledge by him to work with these groups to lessen the atrocities of his presidency would not be lost on the country. By aiming resources at human rights, ISIS will have fewer domestic supporters as the government gains a more favorable light.

Groups like the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) can be incentivized to work closely in the Philippines to make economic conditions better for the country and region as a whole.

ASEAN works to create regional trade deals and development which can help to stabilize the Asian sphere of influence. In addition, using an organization that is already familiar with Filipino culture can prevent a mess such as the United States’ entry into Afghanistan.

ASEAN can also be used to help limit terrorists’ funds in the country, as well as prevent the terrorists from scaring off foreign investment in the country. It is extremely important for the United States to prioritize working with democratic institutions, and in a nation like the Philippines an asset like ASEAN is extremely useful. It is hard to work with Duterte thanks to his blatant disregard for human rights (proven by his extrajudicial war on drugs) and opposition to many morals the United States holds extremely dear.

Photo By Natalie Carroll, COM ‘19

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The International Relations Review

Photo By Claire Martin, CAS’20

His use of rape as a tool to gain submission from the fighters and their supporters is heinous, and for the United States to help without propping up injustice, it should be made clear that Duterte’s tactics will need to change.

The United States military would be a fantastic support system to train police forces to patrol islands, much like it has supported the training of troops and peacekeepers in the Middle East. Since June 2017 the United States Navy has supported the Filipino government with a P-3 Orion surveillance plane which has been used to monitor the movements of the jihadists.

The intelligence that is gained from this one plane could supplement the efforts of a well-trained police force so much more that the current ill-equipped, understaffed, forces that patrol the islands now. With the knowledge of how to organize forces, as well as what equipment is most efficient, the Philippines will be able to make great strides in regaining order within its borders, as well as preventing unwanted persons from entering the country

and perpetuating the fight. The United States State Department would also be a huge asset to help supply experts in negotiation and de-escalation methods.

The issue of social media being used to gain sympathizers and recruit fighters must be addressed.

In the United States it is already a mission of both the government, as well as the sites, to remove terrorist propaganda and to redirect that traffic to anti-ISIS propaganda, such as stories of fighters who have defected from the cause. Social media sites like Facebook can block live videos of executions and Twitter can take down offensive content that advocates violence and jihad.

This public-private-partnership should be used as an example and duplicated in Indonesia and the Philippines to fight the ISIS accounts that circulate their ideology.

With the aid of the United States and other regional allies, the Philippines stand an increased chance of defeating ISIS before the issue becomes even more widespread and deeply rooted.

With the spotlight the world has

cast on ISIS in the Middle East, it should not be hard for countries to drum up domestic support to aid the Philippines. While many Americans are wary of getting involved in another conflict, the current political attitude towards ISIS gives American politicians wishing to aid a fighting chance to convince the public that it is necessary. The fact that so much can be done to support the Philippines without involving a single United States Soldier in the combat is a fantastic argument to gain supporters who cannot stand more American deaths in foreign wars.

A partnership between the United States and the Philippines is a tricky balance of power that is important to get right. The intelligence methods developed throughout America’s war on terror would be instrumental to stopping ISIS in Southeast Asia. If Duterte allows for United States support, and the United States is willing to give it, ISIS would stand little chance of gaining any more land and support in the Philippines.

Fall 2017

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15

The International Relations Review

Princes and Persia:

An Analysis of Saudi Arabia and Iran’s Rivalry

By Matt Manarchy, CAS ‘18 The right questions have to be asked in order to receive the answers one wants. When it comes to making an intelligence assessment, solid first questions tend to be: who is involved, why is this an issue, how does it affect us, and what is the projected course. These are especially important to ask regarding the rivalry between Iran and Saudi Arabia and its implications on the security and stability of the Middle East. The theocratic mask of this rivalry divides the Muslim community and cause further instability in the Middle East. With scores of bases, numerous allies, and countless investments in the region, the United States has every reason to be concerned with how Iran and Saudi Arabia sort out their differences. Continued instability in these vulnerable states is the likely prospect of the future, and gravely endangers Saudi Arabia, Iran, and the United States.

History and Overview

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia was successfully unified in 1932 by Abd Al-Aziz Ibn Saud.

The Al-Saud family derives its legitimacy through an agreement made between Muhammad AlSaud and Muhammad Ibn Abd AlWahhab in 1744. Al-Wahhab was a cleric preaching a conservative interpretation of Islam’s Sunni Hanafi school, which sought a return to the “golden age” of Muhammad and the rightly guided Caliphs and promised death to those who practiced anything but the “pure

Islam of the forefathers.” He saw the military resources of Al-Saud as a tool to spread this ideology and cleanse the world of perceived sin, ignorance, and barbarism not seen since the age before the prophet.

Likewise, Al-Saud saw the blessings of the cleric and his devotees as a means of securing legitimacy for his rule thus making the two natural

“The IranianSaudi Arabian rivalry threatens American and European oil interests.” allies. This alliance was solidified through strategic marriages and mutual support up to this day.

The kingdom is financed through petroleum exports to energy-hungry countries. Current estimates and technology give the Saudi’s roughly 12 percent of the world’s proven reserves. This resource wealth, combined with kingdom’s custodianship of Islam’s two holiest sites, allows the exertion of inordinate influence on how other countries practice Islam through the patronage of Wahhabi mosques, textbooks, and clerics. This leads the Saudis to see themselves as the rightful hegemons of Middle East, and the Islamic world.

The Islamic Republic of Iran was established in 1979, after a popular revolt fueled by rising inequality and an increasingly stagnant economy toppled the U.S.-friendly Pahlavi dynasty. As a result, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and his supporters seized power and created the first Islamic state. Ayatollah Khomeini and many Iranians were outraged by the Western domination of their country, and sought to help other countries “throw off their shackles.” Iran was less successful than it had hoped, finding little desire for support outside of the Shi’a community. Shi’is were underdogs from the start; their preferred candidate for the first Caliph was rejected by the close friends and followers of Muhammed, and ever since they have been a persecuted minority, only gaining status as a state religion in the 16th century under the Safavid Dynasty in Persia. Shi’is still face persecution in many countries, especially Saudi Arabia. Nevertheless, ideals of antiimperialism and long-deserved justice drive the Iranians to believe they are the rightful hegemons of the Middle East and the Islamic community. Iran also sits on vast oil reserves and is eager to rejoin international markets since the lifting of sanctions for its nuclear program.

Divides between Saudi Arabia and Iran lie in the Sunni-Shi’a split due to the Saudi’s conservative Wahhabi interpretations of Sunni Islam and Iran’s revolutionary

Fall 2017 brand of Shi’i Islam, competition for oil markets, and their desire to lead both the Middle East and the Islamic world. While rivalries are expected and may even be healthy for countries, what has developed is quite troubling due to the military actions and expenditures of Saudi Arabia and Iran. They are the preeminent military powers of the region, capable of effectively waging war beyond their borders.

It shows in their defense budgets, respectively the highest and fourth highest in constant USD in the region with the Saudis at $38 billion and the Iranians at $12 billion.

Syria’s Civil War has captured the public eye since 2011 due to the Assad regime’s brutality against unarmed civilians. Now in its sixth year, thousands of Syrians are dead, millions are displaced, and peace talks in Geneva and Astana have yielded little progress. Assad has few reasons to engage in anything more

than nominal negotiations with opposition forces due to continued support from the Russians, Iranians, and Hezbollah. Assad and his allies are Alawi Shi’is and as natural allies of Iran have earned the deployment of the Revolutionary Guard Corps.

Conversely, the Saudis are strong supporters of two groups within the opposition; the Free Syrian Army, moderate Sunni Arabs, and the Army of Conquest, a coalition of Jihadists with links with Al-Qaeda.

Yemen’s Civil War has also become a Saudi-Iranian proxy conflict. Iran and the Saudis “switch roles,” in that Saudi Arabia directly intervenes in the conflict through military deployment. The Saudis want to re-install ousted President Hadi as Head of State and restore order to its immediate south. To do this, they must secure a total victory over the Houthis, a Shi’i minority aligned with former President Saleh and former officers with alleged links

16 to Iran, who have declared that they will accept a negotiated end to the conflict. Indiscriminate bombing led to dislodge the Houthis has made little progress while harming Yemen’s population severely.

This battle for dominance is important to Middle Eastern stability and the well being of its population. It has left 80 percent of Yemenis in need of aid from a NGO. Recovery from this trauma will take decades and may set Yemen further back on its track to development.

Unrest in Syria will likely exacerbate refugee flows from Iraq, Central Asia, and Syria itself. With Turkey turning away from Europe under Erdogan and Iraq still recovering from Islamic State’s barbarism, there is no authority to help stem the flow of refugees into Europe. In economic terms, 20 percent of the world’s oil passes through the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz. Disruption of the status quo in those waters

Photo By Sabrina Khan, SAR ‘19

17 would greatly drive up the price of oil, which would have global implications. In military terms, these are two countries heavily armed in danger of being controlled by hardliners vehemently opposed to the continued existence of the other.

These circumstances are made even more worrying by the fact that the present Saudi King continues to age and the Iranian Guardian Council and Grand Ayatollah Khamenei may intervene in favor of hardline candidates in the future.

U.S. Involvement

What does this buildup and continual conflict mean for the United States? The U.S. and Saudi Arabia are close, although somewhat unnatural allies. Before 1979, relations were focused on the development and extraction of petroleum. This changed with the Islamic Revolution in Iran, which brought an unfriendly regime to power. Relations quickly soured at a time when the U.S. needed Saudi support to fund anti-Soviet efforts in Afghanistan. Since then, the Saudis have used American animosity towards Iran in their favor, picking up market share from Iran’s former oil clients as sanctions racked up.

At present, the U.S. operates 41 bases in Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the U.A.E..

These countries form the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), which the Saudis use to counter Iran.

Hostilities between Iran and Saudi Arabia would see some members of the GCC act in favor of the Saudis and engage in combat against Iran.

American bases and personnel would likely be endangered as a result, therefore forcing American involvement in the conflict, either as a peacemaker, combatant and ally of the Saudis, or as logistical support for the Saudi-GCC campaign.

The Iranian-Saudi Arabian rivalry threatens American and European oil interests. Twenty percent of the global supply passes through the gulf every day and any conflict that endangers shipments would force global price increases. As drilling technology has improved, the United States has increased its energy security via shale oil.

Europe remains vulnerable to oil shocks. Sanctions on Russia for its role in Ukraine’s civil war and an increasingly anti-Europe and proRussia Turkey have forced the EU to look towards the Middle East, specifically Algeria, GCC countries, and Africa as sources of energy.

It has been the norm that American presidential candidates make promises that, once elected to office, they find out cannot be kept. President Obama’s was to close Guantanamo Bay. President George H.W. Bush said “Read my lips. No. New. Taxes.” before raising taxes to fund the government.

Some were unconcerned when President Trump stated he was not opposed to Saudi Arabia developing nuclear technology for non-peaceful purposes. When the Administration tried to implement a campaign promise, the “Muslim travel ban,” there was concern about the President’s comments on proliferation. As the only nation to use nuclear weapons in war, America has a responsibility to ensure that they are never used again and to prevent their spread. Allowing or encouraging nuclear armament in Saudi Arabia would force Iran into the security dilemma. Constructing appropriate defensive capabilities or equivalent offensive capabilities would be interpreted as signs of aggression, and a much deadlier arms race would be sparked, not to mention the years of diplomacy

The International Relations Review between Iran and the P5+1 that resulted in the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action would be for naught, and America’s reputation would stand tarnished as a proliferator.

Implications and Projections

What is all this leading to and what will happen if the conflict continues? Saudi Arabia’s economic model is unsustainable.

The minimum price the Saudis need to break even on drastically cut spending is $67 a barrel, which lies about $15 above the current average rate in global markets. Despite recent measures within OPEC to raise the average price of oil, the price has remained stubborn, hovering at just above $50 for months with no signs of budging. The Saudis face a tradeoff between decreased military spending to diversify the economy and wean citizens off the social safety net or continuing military spending while cutting non-military programs. They will choose increased military spending due to scares from the Arab Spring, President Trump’s “America First” rhetoric, and realized fears of expanding Iranian influence. In Syria’s Civil War, the Saudis will likely continue to support the opposition and coerce member groups into attending talks and accepting treaties and demands it finds suitable to its interpretation of the proper balance of power. These will be few and far between, and if those opportunities are not taken the Assad regime will violently claw back parts of the country piece by piece. The refusal of the Houthi coalition to negotiate an end to the conflict means that the Saudis will be involved in a bloody and protracted campaign that will result in stalemate because of the morale draining effects of occupying a country. The Saudis will withdraw

Fall 2017 because the costs of occupation will exceed the benefits.

As Iran is freed from sanctions it will modernize its military and continue to test American administrations with shows of force. Campaigns to support the Houthis and Assad will continue due to their low costs and high benefits, namely humiliating the Saudis and asserting Iranian dominance. The Houthi coalition will continue to receive small arms shipments and will see the arrival of more “advisors” to give its declared government more structure, though Iran still nominally supports President Hadi. The situation will be exploited by the Iranians to force the Saudis to bear the high costs of occupation in blood and money.

Shi’i solidarity will drive continued support of the Assad regime, which will slowly consolidate control of the country. This will be helped by continued Russian support for the foreseeable future, based on expansion of its naval base in Tartus and the construction of another runway at its airbase in Latakia.

To test the U.S., Iran will support unrest and uprisings in countries with oppressed Shi’a populations and continue aggressive patrol boat exercises in the strait of Hormuz.

At the moment, Iran has little to no reasons to cheat on the JCPOA. So long as they comply, sanctions will be lifted and conflict should be avoided.

However, the Trump Administration throws a wrench into all these gears. The president is not practiced in diplomacy, he is prone to brash and provocative statements that cause confusion at best and panic at worst, and is

a believer in the utility of military force, as evidenced by ten percent increases in defense spending in his budget proposal. There are a host of anti-Iran hawks in the administration and Congress, notably Secretary of Defense James Mattis. These voices have pushed and will push for a tougher stance on Iran. Any perceived violation of the JCPOA will be used as grounds for the re-implementation of sanctions. Direct military action against Iran will not happen; it is dangerous and irresponsible to think that would end up in anything more than a quagmire of carnage.

Additionally, the prospect of further conflict in the Middle East is deeply unpopular with the average American. Logistical support will be given to any efforts by Saudi Arabia against Iran or Iranian influence, as is the case in Yemen.

Intelligence agencies will continue to take covert action against Iran in the form of sabotage. In the event of direct conflict between the Saudis and Iran, the United States will deploy advisors and special forces to assist its GCC allies. Covert action would be expanded to encompass paramilitary operations and direct action behind Iranian lines by special forces and drone strikes.

Saudi Arabia and the GCC will also see continued sales of arms by the United States to their militaries.

Perpetual conflict between Iran and Saudi Arabia will create more failed states, which create a large policy headache for the United States. Aid and rescue packages will have to be devised and stabilization missions will have to be organized. In the meantime, Yemenis and Syrians have experienced unprecedented

18 humanitarian disasters. Faced with a lack of opportunities due to the destruction of their countries, some will turn to jihadist groups as a means to provide for their families. Some may begin attending more radical mosques that support Jihadist views when those mosques can provide food and shelter for their families and governments cannot. More may join jihadist groups as a means of striking back at the perceived roots on the problem, Western nations.

Absence of government rule has allowed groups like ISIS and AQAP (Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula) to flourish and establish bases of operations against local and western governments. Covert paramilitary action, especially in the form of drone strikes, will be the predominate method of dealing with these bases for the foreseeable future.

Conclusion As the United States moves forward, one of the most pressing issues it will have to face is the security dimension of the IranSaudi rivalry. Conflict between them threatens the stability of global energy markets and many countries in the Middle East, namely Yemen and Syria, and could spread further.

Managing and mitigating the effects of this conflict and stabilizing the countries hosting proxy wars between the two are some of the biggest priorities the U.S. should have for the region. Doing so has the potential to save thousands if not millions of lives, as well as diminish bases of popular support and areas of operation for Jihadists. The right questions have been asked, but will the answers be heard?

Photo By Sabrina Khan, SAR ‘19

DIPLOMACY 21

ISIS vs. Iran: Propaganda and It’s Significance

By: Michelle Ramiz, CAS’20

25

Cutting Off Qatar: How Terrorism is

Challenging Alliances and Hegemony in the Middle East

By: Samira Jafar, CAS’20

29

The Northern Front: Strategies of Dealing with North Korea

By: Yubin Lee, CAS’21 and Anna Ellis CAS’20

33 38

Photo By Anastasia Kukunova, CAS ‘20

On Sanctions By: Alexander James Pritzen, CAS’19 The Catalan Defiance and Spain’s Economic Nightmare By: Rebecca Faroro Giovannetti, CAS’19

21

The International Relations Review

ISIS vs. Iran

Propaganda and its Significance

By Michelle Ramiz, CAS ‘20 Iran is in a politically interesting place right now as one of the few relatively stable Middle Eastern countries, which at the same time is intricately involved in Syria’s civil war. Due to the many branches of Islam that have propagated across the region, as well as the terrorist threat looming at Iran’s borders, the situation in Iran is becoming more and more volatile. Iran does not want the same thing that has been happening in Iraq to happen to them, and largely for that reason are an active party in the Syrian civil war. The spread of ISIS is a very real threat to Iran’s domestic security that has so far been relatively curtailed. Propaganda has been a major tool used by ISIS for both the sake of intimidation and for attempts at recruitment, and as a response, Iran has tried to release recruitment videos meant to garner support for their own defensive and offensive cause. One of the major reasons ISIS hasn’t been able to get a significant footing in Iran is because of some of the cultural differences most of Iran has with the rest of the surrounding region. Religion is a major part of the conflict between

Iran and ISIS, and also contributes to the aforementioned cultural differences, because Syria was the only technically non-Shia country in the area generally denoted as the “Middle East.” ISIS also falls on the Shia side of the spectrum, creating only more antipathy between them and the Sunni Iranian state.

The Syrian civil war is a bloody conflict that is partially indeed a civil war, partially a proxy a war that is going for what is its seventh year. It began with the spirit of the Arab Spring, spurring revolt against President Bashar al-Assad, which resulted in the imprisonment of many of the demonstrators and eventually unrolled into a military conflict between the Free Syrian Army and the Syrian military.

Eventually, due partially to outside funding largely from Saudi Arabia and the United States in a lopsided attempt to oust Assad, terrorism also started developing into a large problem and now ISIS is also a major player in the current Syrian war.

Though Syria itself is largely Sunni, al-Assad and his family are members of the Shia Alawite sect,

which is considered to be heretics by some orthodox Muslims. This is a very important part of the entire conflict and Iran’s involvement in it because Iran is the only majority Shia country. With the anti-Shia sentiment in Syria, particularly as ISIS started developing as an organized movement, the need for self-assertion rose.

It is important to note that ISIS’s policy regarding religious tolerance is nonexistent,. The unfortunate modus operandi has been to kill anyone who does not agree, which includes other Sunnis, Shia, Alawites, Christians, etc. As such, it is a movement that is meant to implement the concept of jihad in its most violent form; though the concept itself applies as one’s own struggle against sin, the way that many terrorist groups see it is as they are spreading their one true faith, reminiscent of many Crusade/ conquista/colonial-era Christians.

Sunni and Shia muslims have been able to coexist for centuries.

Nevertheless, the tension was always there because the two groups divide on a few core principles as far as Islam goes, and because the majority

Fall 2017 of Muslims are overwhelmingly Sunni. Thus, Iran fighting ISIS is partially Iran standing up for its own religious autonomy.

Within Iran, the religious demographic falls into the following percentages: Shia 90-95%, Sunni 5-10%, other ( Zoroastrian, Jewish, and Christian) 0.3%, unspecified 0.4% as of 2011. Iran’s non-Shia communities are very important when it comes to making sure that ISIS’s religious extremism does not take hold, for they are exactly the people targeted by ISIS propaganda.

There are a few ethnic groups that are particularly at risk as far as conscription goes called the Baluch and the Iranian Kurds.

There has already been a proven case of radicalization of Sunni Kurds in an ISIS-sponsored terrorist attack that occurred on June 7 of this year. Gunmen entered the Iranian parliament building and began shooting, while concurrently coordinating a separate attack at Ayatollah Khomeini’s mausoleum in southern Tehran. Four gunmen were killed by security in the parliamentary building, and in the mausoleum one attacker committed suicide by way of suicide vest while another was killed by security as well. According to the BBC, a total of about 40 people were injured in both attacks, and Iranian authorities state that they managed

to foil a third attack on the same day.

Another source says that 23 people died including the five attackers, and mostly Sunni Kurds, and a third says that 18 people died. According to the Washington Post, at least four of the five assailants came from a Kurdish town in western Iran.

Iranian Kurds live mostly along Iran’s western border with Iraq, a country that has been having numerous issues with ISIS along with fighting its own war. The other volatile ethnic group often targeted

by ISIS, the Baluch community, live in the southeastern part of Iran. It is important to mention once more that these groups are religious minorities within Iran, and as such are often suppressed, which leads to easier radicalization by outside forces. According to the US Department of State Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 2016, an estimated eight million Kurds in Iran are campaigning for “greater regional autonomy,” but the Iranian government has prevented that from happening by suppression of Kurdish media and arrest of Kurdish protesters. The Baluch ethnic group constitutes 1.5 to two million people, according to the same document. Additionally, it states that Baluchi rights activists claim that more than 70% of the Baluchi population lives under the poverty line with journalists and

22 activists belonging to the ethnic group routinely arrested and subjected to unfair trials.

Dina Esfandiary, a MacArthur fellow at King’s College London, says, “Iran is fighting the Islamic State on multiple fronts, and Iraq and Syria is certainly one of them… But the fight against the Islamic State inside Iran has become even more important.” ISIS has recently released its first Farsi propaganda video in which at least one militant identified as Baluch, which is meant to be recruiting material. It calls upon Iranian Sunnis to rebel against the Shia majority, which is often considered to be heretics by orthodox Sunnis.

An explicit threat is said in the video by a young “Persian” boy: “we will destroy your land and your home, we will disrupt your security and we will shed your blood.” Overall, the video is done in a very interesting manner that resembles a documentary more than anything else, building up an inaccurate historical narrative meant to appeal to the Sunni minority and to “empower” them by building up hate.

In addition to the video, ISIS has released the first four editions of its magazine “Al-Rumiyah,” which means “Rome” in Arabic, in many languages including Farsi.

The magazine has been published in many languages, including

Photo By Natalie Carroll, COM ‘19

23 English, and the articles tend to be gruesome, in one case “[detailing] the supposedly religious justification for the killing of unbelievers” and one issue boasted a “blood-soaked blade” on the front cover. A video of the June 7th attack was also posted online, meant as propaganda of a terror-inducing time.

The reason that ISIS hasn’t been more successful yet as far as recruiting in Iran goes is due to cultural differences, including the factor of a Shia majority in the country. Even within the minority, though there are issues among the Kurd and Baruch populations, according to Ali Vaez, an analyst with the International Crisis Group, “groups like IS[IS] exploit disorder.

There might be discontent within Iran’s Sunni community, but that’s not quite the same as disorder.”

He also states that, “Salafism and

enough to bring change about that way, rather than with the violence preached by ISIS. President Hassan Rouhani of Iran has been trying to reach out though Sunni religious leaders to try and make sure that there is no alienation of the Sunni minority, which would only lead to discontent and not bode well for Iran’s domestic anti-terrorism efforts.

It is worth mentioning that other than physically fighting ISIS forces in Syria, Iran has also prevented a few recruitment efforts that were attempted through a telecommunications app called Telegram, and more notably has released its own propaganda videos.

There is one that targets the United States as retribution for an airliner shot down by the US in 1988, along with some celebrating the Iranians fighting in Syria against ISIS forces. The most interesting,

The International Relations Review to show others what happens when you step out of line, regardless of religious affiliation. The issue is that not enough is known about the incident to make a completely clear judgement about this move from the Iranian media, but the fact that it happened is somewhat indicative of the domestic anti-terrorism efforts.

ISIS propaganda has so far been minimally effective in Iran, and that is for the better. Partially on the basis of religious difference of the Sunni vs. Shia, and partially on a cultural basis of Persian vs.

Arab, Iran has been able to lead a rather successful domestic antiterrorism campaign. The translation of ISIS materials into Farsi is indeed a troubling development indicative of their efforts to spread ideas regardless of how well they are working because it shows that ISIS is in a well and stable enough condition

“ISIS propaganda has so far been minimally effective in Iran, and that is for the better.”

Persian culture are like oil and water, they don’t mix. Violent extremism is more a product of instability than its primary driver, and is due more to radicalization during crises than beforehand. None of these conditions apply to Iran, which is both stable and has strong state institutions.” To note, Salafism is a type of fundamentalist Islam that is practiced by most ISIS followers.

According to Radio Free Europe, the high Sunni turnout at the latest Iranian elections, somewhere between 60 and 90 percent, shows that the Sunni community is active in its own politics and thus invested

though also unpleasant, video is that of the public execution of 25 Sunni men accused of involvement in an armed group, complete with their confessions. Whether they are legitimate or not is still unknown.

The reason why this last video is highly problematic is because if the video is a political move and these men were in actuality innocent, the parading of a religious minority in mass media and subsequent public execution is not a very good move if one is trying to keep the religious minorities content. On the other hand, if they were truly guilty, then it is a shrewd, though effective, way

to focus on spreading, rather than survival. It is easy to understand why Iran is so intricately involved in the war in Syria, because, in the words of professor of literature and Orientalism at the University of Tehran Mohammed Marandi, “if Syria falls, Iran will have to fight these groups within its borders,” which will be a considerably harder and bloodier fight. Iran’s last war on its own land was with Iraq in the 1980s and resulted in catastrophic casualties. An ideological war for survival of a Shia minority in a Sunni region will doubtlessly prove to be a whole lot worse.

Photo By Natalie Carroll, COM ‘19

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25

Cutting Off Qatar

The International Relations Review

How Terrorism is Changing Alliances and Hegemony in the Middle East

By Samira Jafar, CAS ‘20

Fall 2017

On June 5, 2017, the Arab world was rocked by news of a political and economic blockade against Qatar.

Shortly after Qatar was responsible for the expulsion of a Saudi-led militant coalition in Yemen and two weeks after U.S. President Donald Trump’s visit to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, and Bahrain severed ties with Qatar. The Arab states charged Qatar with support for terrorism and a hostile foreign policy as part of their reasons for the blockade. These states gave ambassadors a period of forty-eight hours to exit the country while simultaneously halting all land, sea, and air traffic with Qatar, including imports and exports of goods and services. Even countries with internationally organized governments, such as Yemen and Libya, have isolated themselves from Qatar amid the growing animosity.

Citing this blockade as an “illegal imposition” and “a violation of human rights,” the Qatari Sheikh, Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani has urged the United Nations to intervene and end the blockade.

Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia and the other participating Gulf states have issued a list of thirteen demands they would like Qatar to act on in order to restore friendly relations, including shutting down news media outlets and denouncing its camaraderie with Iran; Qatar has since rejected these requests. Regardless of Qatar’s response, the demands illustrate that the Gulf states’ anger towards Qatar stems from allegations of terrorism, Iran’s rising power in the region, and

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Qatar’s influence over Arab media outlets. The root of this conflict is one in which Arab states struggle to assert their power over one another, and it creates uncertainty over which of these states will ultimately continue holding - or begin to hold hegemonic power in the region.

Up until 2014, The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia’s relationship with Qatar was relatively stable.

They were political and economic allies under the umbrella of the intergovernmental Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), which includes Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). In the twentieth century, Qatar’s most intense dispute with Saudi Arabia consisted of a border conflict in 1992, which was settled in 1996. Qatar also had a border dispute in 1991 with Bahrain over control of the Hawar Islands.

Tensions between Qatar and the other Gulf states intensified in 2002, when a diplomat was pulled from Saudi Arabia over controversial comments made by the Qatarifunded Al-Jazeera News Network.

This was the first example of the upheaval that would result from Al-Jazeera’s coverage of the other GCC countries. In 2006, Saudi Arabia and Qatar got into another dispute concerning whether or not Qatar had permission to build gas pipelines connecting Qatar and Kuwait. These border disputes and economic tensions did not severely impact the way in which the Gulf states and Qatar were united through the GCC alliance. Prior to 2014,

Qatar did not have any significant ties to terror organizations that were reflected in its foreign policy.

However, in 2014 a Qatar citizen was arrested in the UAE for allegedly working for a terror organization.

Then, from March to November of 2014, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Bahrain shortly severed ties with Qatar for allegedly supporting the Muslim Brotherhood’s regime in Egypt. At the time, the Brotherhood was facing harsh criticism for its extremist views.

Simultaneously, relations between Qatar and Iran were never plagued by the level of animosity that exists between Iran and some of the other Gulf states. Though Qatar and Iran were never explicitly friendly towards one another until recently, Qatar had access to Iranian oil reserves and the two countries trade other commodities. Due to their unique economic relationship, Qatar was always careful to refrain from directly condemning Iran for its political actions. Because of this relationship, as well as controversial media coverage and escalating terrorism allegations, Qatar’s relations with the other GCC states, save for Kuwait and Oman, worsened to the point of the blockade’s implementation.

One of the key demands issued by the blockade is that the Al Jazeera News Network be shut down. After the conflict between Saudi Arabia and Qatar over Al Jazeera’s coverage in 2002, the network has commonly been seen as “complicating foreign policy Photo By Stephen Conrad, ENG ‘19

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objectives” between Qatar and other states. While Al Jazeera “avoid[s] dealing with internal Qatari policies,” it has been known to not shy away from more critical coverage of Saudi Arabia and Egypt, on whom it does not depend on for financing or funds. An example of this can be found in Al Jazeera’s seeming leniency towards the Muslim Brotherhood and its minimal coverage of the 2022 Qatar World Cup controversy. In 2014, three journalists from the network were arrested and found guilty of aiding the Muslim Brotherhood.

Saudi Arabia is critical of this support because they believe that promoting the Brotherhood undermines their critical stance against the organization, which has remained a constant element of their relationship with Egypt. Saudi Arabia has long said that it disapproves of this “propaganda” on behalf of the network. Al Jazeera, often criticized for being a “self proclaimed carrier of an ideological message,” presents a challenge to Saudi Arabia and Egypt’s solid presence as big powers in the Middle East. It is expected that these states would want to maintain a fortified presence in the Middle East without objection, and Qatar’s media presents a challenge to that goal. Regardless of whether or not the network is in fact biased, it cannot be denied that Al Jazeera’s presence in the Middle East heavily influences the opinions of Arab viewers; naturally, states that seek solidified power in the region would work towards reducing the negative public opinions which have arisen as a result of Al Jazeera’s reports. The

The International Relations Review

conflict raises the question of how strong of an influence the media has in determining hegemony in the Middle East.

Qatar’s relationship with Iran is also a strong source of tension and insecurity in Middle Eastern foreign affairs; another one of the demands Qatar was asked to comply with had to do with reducing friendly relations with the state. At its root, Saudi Arabia and the other states’ animosity towards Iran can be seen as a proxy conflict which has been prominent since the midtwentieth century. According to Simon Mabon’s 2015 book entitled Saudi Arabia and Iran: Power and Rivalry in the Middle East, the ideological conflict between these two states intensified in 1971, when both states began a “competition for Islamic superiority” based on “ideological and political grounds.”

More tangible tensions between the two are the result of conflict over the Strait of Hormuz, one of the world’s most strategic choke points in the Arabian Gulf, and Saudi Arabia’s disapproval of Iran’s quest for nuclear weapons. Since “oil flows through the Strait of Hormuz account for roughly forty percent of all traded oil,” the UAE has long been in conflict with Iran over who has the right to it, thus aligning its interests in limiting Iran’s power with those of Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia’s own nuclear shortcomings account for its desire to limit Iran’s capabilities in this regional conflict. However, despite this animosity with its former allies, Qatar has remained friendly with Iran, both economically and

politically. Qatar insists that they maintain an economic relationship trade routes with Iran and Turkey are the most cost-effective. Qatar has even housed members of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard. While they have remained on good terms, Qatar has often seemed hesitant to pursue full relations with Iran due to Saudi Arabia’s disapproval; however, with the blockade in place, Qatar is keen on gaining a new ally in the region to ensure its safety. Though one of the thirteen demands of the blockade was to denounce ties with Iran, Qatar actually restored full diplomatic ties with Iran for the first time since November 2016.

Tensions between Qatar and the other Arab states also stem from Qatar’s purported support for terrorist organizations. In May of 2017, Qatari government websites were hacked to claim that they supported various terrorist groups, such as Hezbollah in Lebanon.

However, since no source of the hacking has been identified, Saudi Arabia and other Arab states have taken these claims very seriously. In the past, Qatar has been vocal about supporting Mohamed Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood’s regime in Egypt; the Brotherhood is now branded as a terrorist organization

by Saudi Arabia. Qatar has also supported the Nusra Front’s regime in Syria, which many perceive to be extremist. Saudi Arabia, in trying to distance its theocratic government from terrorist attacks originating in the region, is keen on identifying the source of funds given to the Islamic State. This will help to sculpt its image as an ally of the West against

Fall 2017

terrorism. In a natural fight for hegemony, Gulf states would like to be stable and steadfast allies for the U.S. and other Western states, and help to quell anxieties over terrorist organizations would certainly be beneficial. However, it can be hard to confirm or deny such allegations, since very few of these groups have open banking practices; some commercial banks, like Bank AlTaqwa, have been found to funnel funds towards such organizations.

Ultimately, allegations of terrorist activity are a supreme source of hostility in the Middle East.

With the rise of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), Arab states are rushing to get a handle on the violence and bloodshed being caused by these groups. In 2017 alone, ISIL claimed responsibility for at least four large-scale terror attacks, specifically in Iraq, Syria, and Egypt. Saudi Arabia is already reeling from the implementation of the Justice From Sponsors of Terrorism Act which was passed in the U.S. and enables the families of 9/11 victims to sue the Saudi government. In addition to political concerns, Qatar’s controversies are also having severe economic ramifications for Saudi Arabia and other GCC states. ISIL has gained control of various oil reserves, and Saudi Arabia has tried to manipulate oil prices to weaken the funds they gain from these reserves. Thus, any suspicions on behalf of these states would ultimately be cause for action, since each state is trying to gain power in the region and does not want to give ISIL or any other organizations to opportunity to

28

further solidify its position.

Upon analyzing the reasons for freezing out Qatar, it is apparent that the conflict among Arab states ultimately emerges out of a pursuit of regional hegemony. In demanding that Qatar reduce its ties to both Iran and Turkey, Saudi Arabia is emphasizing its desire to weaken its political rivals in the region. Saudi Arabia is also insistent that Qatar “align [its] military, political, social, and economic policies with the other Gulf and Arab countries, as well as an economic matters, as per the 2014 agreement reached with Saudi Arabia” in which Qatar agreed to do so. It seems as though Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Bahrain, and the UAE are using this opportunity to gain the upper hand domestically as well; another one of the thirteen demands is that Qatar “cease contact with the military opposition” in these states. To the other Arab nations, these demands are not viewed as a violation of Qatar’s sovereignty, but rather as a necessary method of instilling uniform control over the region in a way which has kept the GCC together since 1981. Hegemony and solidarity are historically clear sources of geopolitical and economic success: according to an article written by Ian S. Lustick for the Cambridge University Press, a lack of hegemony in the region has long been the source of “backwardness” and political crises. Though the time has passed for Qatar to accept the thirteen demands, whether they eventually decide to comply with or reject the wishes of the blockading states will be reflective of their influence in the region. Qatar would

most likely want to maintain some kind of stable relationship with the historic hegemon, Saudi Arabia, but in shunning the Kingdom’s proposals and keeping up blossoming relations with Iran, questions are raised about how likely this is.

The future of the blockade is heavily contingent upon whether or not Qatar’s sovereignty is infringed upon further in the future. The extent of the will of Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Egypt, and the UAE to impose the blockade is not entirely clear, but likely scenarios include Riyadh and Abu Dhabi pursuing a tactic of regime change. If the conflict escalates to the point of military action, it is more than likely that Turkey and Iran would intervene to defend Qatar. This is especially true when considering the newfound alignment of Turkey and Qatar’s foreign policies.

Ultimately, it is difficult to predict how - or if - the tensions will be reduced. It is apparent that Qatar’s economy has suffered as a result of the diplomatic rupture, and will most likely continue to do so, but Qatar seems unlikely to give into its former allies’ demands at the risk of looking weak. Simultaneously, Saudi Arabia is unlikely to accept limited concessions.

Regardless of the outcome of the blockade, the incident will lend significant insight into which Arab states will be able to retain, wield, and project power in the modern Middle East.

Photo By Stephen Conrad, ENG ‘19

29

The Northern Front

The International Relations Review

Strategies of Dealing with North Korea

By Yubin Lee, CAS ‘21 and Anna Ellis, CAS ‘20

This year’s General Assembly of the United Nations, which commenced on September 19th, was especially significant as it was the first world theater for the United States President, Donald Trump. His speech was one of the most anticipated speeches of the year, for this speech was President Trump’s stage to explain how his “America First” policy can work with the agenda of the global community.

While the President discussed a number of issues, ranging from the United States funding of the UN to the Iranian Nuclear deal. He especially emphasized the issue of the North Korean Nuclear threat. He stated that if the United States “is forced to defend itself or its allies, we will have no choice but to totally destroy North Korea.” He also severely criticized the North Korean leader, Kim Jong Un, saying that North Korea “threatens the entire world with unthinkable loss of life.”

The general sentiment was

echoed by Antonio Guterres, the Secretary-General of the United Nations. While his comments were not marked by controversy, they held the same level of urgency.

He warned that we are living in a “world in pieces”. “Unity can lead to the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula and – as the resolution recognizes – create an opportunity for diplomatic engagement to resolve the crisis,” the SecretaryGeneral remarked, also giving an implied warning to both Mr. Kim and Mr. Trump by adding that “fiery talk can also lead to misunderstandings.”

President Trump and the UN Secretary General’s remarks stem from the renewed threat of the North Korean Nuclear Crisis, which escalated quickly when the North Korean government announced that they were now capable of building and firing a hydrogen bomb. In a state media announcement the DPRK government, confirmed that the tremors experienced in the

northeastern part of the country were indeed a result of a nuclear test which Kim Jong Un had personally signed off for. A few days before this announcement, North Korea had carried out an unprecedented missile test in which the nation fired a ballistic missile directly over Japan. This was an act that caused immediate panic and tension in not only Japan and countries neighboring the DPRK but also the international community as a whole.

This alarming news led the United Nations Security Council to add more sanctions against the DPRK. On its meeting on the 11th of September, the UNSC convened in an effort to curtail the nation’s destructive agenda.

Their new resolution aims to limit the operational capacity of the DPRK by: banning the supply, sale or transfer of all condensates and natural gas liquids to the DPRK, prohibiting the direct or indirect supply, sale or transfer to

Fall 2017 the DPRK of all refined petroleum product beyond 500,000 barrels for three months, and banning the supply, sale, or transfer of crude oil to DPRK for 12 months. Nikki Haley, the drafter of the resolution and the US Ambassador to the UN, portrayed this as an action coming from nations that “are done trying to prod the regime to do the right thing, we are now trying to stop it from having the ability to do the wrong thing.”

The ambassador’s condemnation of the DPRK’s actions is a part of a recurring theme of the US, one of the major stakeholders in this particular conflict. The United States, as one of the nations that are constantly targeted by North Korean propaganda, has always been a strong advocate of sanctions against North Korea. The majority of the resolutions in the United Nations Security Council sanctioning North Korea were drafted by the US or an immediate ally.

The US has historically dealt with the North Korean threat with a succession of carrot and stick policies, one president extending carrots to the North Korean regime,

30 and another threatening the government with the stick. These transactions began chiefly during the Clinton administration when the DPRK government launched a missile capable of hitting Japan.

Leading negotiations, former President Carter struck a deal in which the US Government would lift multiple sanctions, supply North Korea with 500,000 tons of oil a year and provide $4 billion in aid to construct a light-water reactor capable of producing nuclear energy but not weapons. This deal resulted in failure, partly due to internal political dissent from the US Congress. The DPRK government did reap some of the benefits of this deal, however, and this resulted in the government realizing that they could manipulate the international community and the U.S. into acting in a way that benefits the North Korean government.

The following president, Mr. George W. Bush, in consideration of the catastrophic failures of the previous government in dealing with the North Korean crisis, took a harder line. He denounced the North Korean government, along with the

Iranian government as the “axis of evil.” The Bush administration enacted a succession of sanctions, in the assumption that punishing the government would destabilize it. The approach, however, was met with an announcement in 2003 claiming that the DPRK government now had nuclear devices. This surprising announcement led the US into the negotiating table, in which the international community was able to have a brief time of rest due to the results of the six party talks.

Although President Trump has been extremely vocal about the North Korean issue, his administration has not had a coordinated response, let alone action at the government level or any positive results. The current administration started its public dealings regarding the DPRK with Rex Tillerson, the Secretary of State, commenting, “the policy of strategic patience has ended,” and that negotiation “can only be achieved by denuclearizing, giving up their weapons of mass destruction.” In a quick succession of weeks starting in April, the US government blamed China for its lack of interest in the

Photo By Kexin Yang, CAS ‘19

31 matter, and continued on to threaten the DPRK with the Vice President declaring that “The United States of America will always seek peace but under President Trump, the shield stands guard and the sword stands ready.” However, a few days after Mr. Pence’s ultimatum, Secretary of State Tillerson released a joint statement with the Secretary of Defense that the North Korean government should “de-escalate and return to the path of dialogue” – a statement that went against the previous calls for drastic action by the US government. More puzzling was the contradictory interview with Mr. Tillerson with the NPR in which he claimed that the US would be open to direct talks with North Korea, but “North Korea has to decide they’re ready to talk to us about the right agenda. And the right agenda is not simply stopping where they are for a few more months or a few more years and then resuming things.” He was again challenged by Mr. Trump, who declared that “There is a chance that we could end up having a major, major conflict with North Korea. Absolutely,” in an interview with Reuters shortly after Mr. Tillerson’s remarks.

Recently, President Trump has been extremely vocal regarding the North Korean leader, insulting Mr. Kim repeatedly. His “rocket man” statement was only the first in a series of jabs at the DPRK, escalating with the threat that US will have no choice but to “totally destroy” DPRK if it came to the protection of America. The President led on with tweets calling the North Korean leader a madman, which, needless to say, wasn’t well received by the

The International Relations Review DPRK; Kim Jong Un made a rare public announcement condemning the US president for giving an “intolerable insult to the North Korean people” and interpreting the speech and tweets as a declaration of war.

President Trump, as is exemplified in this exchange, has been prone to deliver speeches and tweets that antagonize the recipient, most of the time against his enemies, but sometimes even to his closest allies. “South Korea is finding, as I have told them, that their talk of appeasement with North Korea will not work, they only understand one thing!” Mr. Trump tweeted, right after the hydrogen bomb test, making an apparent jab at the Korean government.

Of course, there is some truth to the tweet. The current government of South Korea, led

by Mr. Moon Jae In -- a staunch supporter and advisor to President Roh Moo Hyun’s government -came into power with the goal of solving the North Korean crisis by having an open dialogue with the government of DPRK. The administration at the time was best known for its “Sunshine Policy”, a policy economically incentivizing the DPRK government under the condition that the government does not pose any more threats to South Korea and the international community. This particular act was viewed as a failure by the two successive administrations, pointing to the fact that there were no positive behavioral changes from the North Korean government despite the continuous support from the South Korean government.

The conservative party considered the “Sunshine Policy” ineffective.

Despite progressive and tolerant South Korean policies, the DPRK continued to provoke South Korea by instigating military conflict, which led the two successive governments to have a strong stance against North Korea. However, proponents of the “Sunshine Policy,” along with President Moon, have claimed that it had not failed, for the general basis of the policy was predicated on the grounds that South Korea would not let the DPRK government apply provocation to its land militarily, which the two successive governments delivered.

Furthermore, they claim, the two governments had a reduction of tension and the looming gloom of a potential for war, a situation that was overturned with the end of President Roh’s government.

The “Sunshine Policy” was strengthened by the six party talks, a series of multilateral negotiations. As the name indicates, the negotiations were brokered by 6 countries: Japan, Republic of Korea, China, Russia, the U.S. and the DPRK. The talks started after the DPRK withdrew from the Nuclear Proliferation Treaty. The talks did reach some critical breakthroughs, when the North Korean government -- in the 2005 meeting --pledged that they would abandon “all nuclear weapons and existing programs.”

The talk even brought forth a step by step plan to implement the agreements of the 2005 meeting in its 2007 meeting. However, there were no significantly tangible results of the talks. The DPRK government withdrew from the meetings in

Fall 2017 2009. The Chinese, who chaired the meetings, have been calling for its resumption ever since.

Current South Korean President Moon Jae In expressed on numerous occasions during the first few months of his presidency that he would much prefer to have an open dialogue between North and South Korea. Backed by his commitment towards a peaceful approach, he went to the extent that he proclaimed, during his speech on the South Korean Day of Liberation, that military action in the Korean Peninsula wouldn’t take place “without the consent” of the South Korean Government. He also halted the introduction of THAAD in South Korea. At the same time, however, he drew a red line: building and firing an Inter-Continental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) equipped with a nuclear warhead. He would strive for talks until the moment that the North Koreans crossed the line.

He kept true to his word, reversing his decision to block THAAD missiles in Korea and bringing about a hardline approach shortly after DPRK launched its ICBM in the direction of Japan. He has since then had a significant increase in communications with the US, stating at one point that the South Korean government viewed Trump’s speech at the UN “as portraying a firm and specific stance on the key issues regarding keeping peace and safety that the international community and the United Nations are faced with.”

The Moon administration, however, cannot help but be wary of the implications of having America – a country directly in

32 conflict with North Korea – as its primary ally. The situation is escalating very quickly. This was made evident during the destructive back and forth between DPRK and the US, wherein which the DPRK government, in a press release by its Foreign Minister, Ri Yong Ho, responded to President Trump’s UN speech by telling reporters that “Trump claimed that our leadership wouldn’t be around much longer and declared a war on our country” and that “since the United States declared war on our country, we will have every right to make all self-defensive countermeasures, including the right to shoot down the United States strategic bombers at any time even when they are not yet inside the aerospace border of our country.” The US responded to the accusation and ultimatum by denying DPRK’s claims that the US declared war, and added that “the suggestion of that is absurd.”

Despite its subjection to numerous UN sanctions and condemnation from the international community, the DPRK government has prevailed thus far. The continuance of their regime can be attributed to China, their biggest – and perhaps only – business partner. While the US and Korea are the primary opposition to the DPRK government, China has been its primary advocate. It is equally important for the Chinese to stop trades and take a hard line against the DPRK regime as it is for Korea and America to adjust diplomatic proceedings and strategy with the DPRK. Following the September hydrogen bomb test, the Chinese foreign ministry issued the

following statement: “The Chinese government resolutely opposes and strongly condemns” the hydrogen bomb test, and they “ urge North Korea to recognize the determination of the international community to achieve a denuclearized Korean peninsula … and to return to the path of resolving conflicts through dialogue”. China seems to have become less sympathetic with the DPRK, placing the ball in their court.

With mounting Chinese opposition, this might be the best time for the international community to create a coordinated strategy to tackle the DPRK nuclear crisis once and for all.

While diplomatic and economic strategies on the part of the United States and the South Korean governments have not proved successful against the DPRK regime, it is not necessarily true that these powers will have to resort to war against North Korea, as fear mongers claim. With additional Chinese support, perhaps the DPRK will be forced to bow its unruly head to world order. Until then, current relations with the DPRK can only be exacerbated by bombastic and antagonistic responses like the tweets of Donald Trump. Although the problems the DPRK poses to the international community are larger than one person, individual actions have the potential to shape the course of history. Conversely, feeble foreign policy gesturing against the DPRK will cause their power to grow. Something must be done, swiftly and decisively, to bring the North Korean nuclear threat to a firm, but peaceful conclusion.

Photo By Kexin Yang, CAS ‘19

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The International Relations Review

On Sanctions

By Alexander James Pritzen, CAS ‘19

Photo By Alexander James Pritzen, CAS’19

Through a cacophony of sanctions discussion, deducing strategy from this blanket diplomatic policy statement has become difficult and even the word itself meaningless.

This confusion and grandstanding is not limited to any party or faction either. Summer 2017, many democrats, in response to allegations of Russian meddling in the U.S. 2016 presidential election, have responded with further hostility towards the Putin regime. Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi commented that, “Russia’s outrageous and unacceptable behavior in our election and in Europe demands that we have strong, statutory sanctions enacted as soon as possible”. Many party officials on the other side of the aisle have expressed desires for stronger sanctions against a multitude of nations. In April, Republican senator Marco Rubio affirmed that he is, “confident that President Trump will treat Cuba like the dictatorship it is…”, inferring the necessity for sanctions. Republican Senator Tom Cotton, one could argue, built his career on an aggressive stance against

Iran, and in October 2017 affirmed that, “The world needs to know we’re serious, we’re willing to walk away, and we’re willing to reimpose sanctions…,” on Iran. Semantic saturation is the psychological phenomenon of repeating a single word enough times to cause the meaning of the word to slowly disappear, and the term “Economic Sanctions” is suffering. Sanctions must again be redefined with care and its history reminded of, and only then can the effectiveness of sanctions be analyzed. Sanctions were once a diplomatic and military tool practiced for millennia, but during the past century, their use has become commonplace among Western powers and economic giants. Sanctions have grown to become a popular political tool more so than a diplomatic one. So, how effective are sanctions as an act of diplomatic coercion rather than as an aspect of warfare? Also, do successful sanctions reach their intended goals and do they need to?

The Russian Federation A friendly status quo, growing for a quarter of a century, came tumbling

down November 21st, 2013. This day marked the organized student protests against Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych and Prime Minister Mykola Azarov. These protests marked the beginning of the Maidan Revolution, which ultimately led to the ousting of Yanukovych. The successful revolution expanded into an international crisis with Russia’s response of annexing Crimea and likely backing of counterrevolutionaries in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region. The United States and international community responded to the annexation, meddling in Ukrainian elections, and supporting of counterrevolutionaries with sanctions against the Russian Federation.

The OFAC released an overview of U.S. sanctions programs targeting Russia. OFAC explains that, “The Ukraine/Russia-related sanctions program implemented by the Office of Foreign Assets control began on March 6, 2014, when the President, in Executive Order 13660, declared a national emergency to deal with the threat posed by the actions and

Fall 2017 policies of certain persons who had undermined democratic processes and institutions in Ukraine; threatened the peace, security, stability, sovereignty, and territorial integrity of Ukraine; and contributed to the misappropriation of Ukraine’s assets”. OFAC stated clearly the U.S. justification for economic sanctions against the Russian Federation. The U.S. State Department’s ultimate goal regarding sanctions is less clear.

The U.S. State Department explains that the actions of E.O.s 13660, 13661, 13662, 13685, and 04/03/14 H.R. 4152 and 04/03/14 S. 2183 “in close coordination with our EU and international partners, send a strong message to the Russian government that there are consequences for their actions…. [and] the United States, together with international partners, will continue to stand by the Ukrainian government until Russia abides by its international obligations.” The EU, led by the U.S. and passionate EU actors, enacted sanctions and asset freezes against “149 people and 38 entities… because their actions undermined Ukraine’s territorial integrity, sovereignty and independence.” The EU also followed suit with the United States and in July and September 2014, they passed economic sanctions targeting exchanges with Russia in specific economic sectors.

Sanctions have no end-date either due to renewed sanctions in June and September 2017 by both the United States and EU. Furthermore, Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. election has led to the passing of H.R. 3364 – Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act which on August 2nd, 2017 imposed renewed and strengthened asset blocking, the revocation of visa or other documentation, and

34 exclusion from the U.S. of any person deemed by the President of engaging in “significant activities undermining cybersecurity against any person, including a democratic institution, or government on behalf of the Government of the Russian Federation” or is connected with or acts on behalf of any such person.

The sanctions of 2014 seemed to have united an international community against a single state who had broken international norms while the sanctions of 2017 were a political response in order to further punish and coerce the Putin Regime.

On March 6th, 2018 the Ukraine/Russia Sanctions policy will turn 4 years old alongside its baby sibling sanctions of August 2nd, 2017. After 4 years of targeted sanctions by a united international community, have the United States and her allies reached or come closer to reaching their initial goals set after the annexation of Crimea? The economic sanctions implemented have certainly hurt the Russian economy and accelerated any economic woes the country was already experiencing.

The Central Bank of Russia was unable to defend the value of the Ruble, Russia’s interest rates were hiked severely in December 2014, and GDP has declined annually since sanctions were enacted.

Russian GDP sharply dropped after the sanctions had been enacted, from $2.2306 Trillion in 2013 to $1.2832 in 2016. Furthermore, the Western sanctions of 2014 seemed to unify the international community against the Russian Federation. Many policy-makers of 2014 feared that sanctions and Russian embargo responses would negatively influence the European

economies and lead to infighting within the western bloc, however this turned out to be not the case.

In reality, “Some 21 out of the 28 EU Member States experienced a net gain in exports to the world in spite of the Russian downturn, thanks to increases in exports to other markets that more than compensated for the falls in exports to Russia.” The sanctions imposed on to Russia have been successful in inflicting damage on the Russian economy, however did they reach their intended goal of coercing the Putin Regime? Many policymakers and the Putin opposition saw the 2016 Duma election to be a referendum on the Putin regime and to reflect on the effectiveness of Western sanctions implemented 2 years earlier. Although voter turnout was at a record-low of 47.8%, the Putin-backed party, United Russia, won 343 seats of the 450-member parliament. Stories emerged of voter unhappiness with the election and ballot irregularities, however Russian media outlets reported primarily positive outlooks on the election with the Moskovsky Komsomolets calling the election, “an informal referendum on trust in the person who is in charge of making all the key decisions”.

Responses by Russian officials to the new sanctions passed by the United States in August 2017 have a similar uniform and resilient tone. On August 22nd, 2017 Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov commented on the new US antiRussia sanctions, stating that “…we are not losing hope that the voice of reason will prevail sooner or later, and that our American colleagues will come to realise the futility and detrimental nature of further sliding down the spiral of sanctions. In

35 the meantime, we will get down to charting the retaliatory measures that are inevitable in this situation”.

So far, the new adopted sanctions have not been in effect long enough to see any effect on the stability of the Putin regime, however cracks among the Western bloc are becoming apparent. In 2015, Nord Stream II AG was founded in Zug, Switzerland, with plans to build a twin pipeline running from Russia, through the Baltic sea into Europe, transporting natural gas into the European Union. By Summer 2017, Nord Stream II AG had “received financing from five European companies in the amount of 324 million euros”, while new US sanctions would then target all five of these European companies. This has created strain between EU and US relations with dissent among EU actors and European politicians.

German Economy Minister Brigitte Zypries spoke out in response claiming that Germany considers, “‘this as being against international law, plain and simple…. Of course we don’t want a trade war. But it is important the European Commission now looks into countermeasures’” and claiming that the “‘threat from the United States to also punish European companies by so-called extra-territorial sanctions is not acceptable…’”, with Germany business and government officials arguing that the new sanctions “could prevent German companies from working on pipeline projects they say are essential to the country’s energy security”. Infighting between the EU and US has become apparent to the Putin Regime as well. In a briefing held by Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Maria Zakharova, Zakharova, in response to the question “How resistant is Europe

The International Relations Review to US pressure?” she responded by explaining that, “These sanctions are damaging European producers and the European economy. These sanctions are not doing any good to anyone. In the Long-term they won’t benefit the mutually beneficial partnership between Russia and the EU…”. Although severely and effectively striking the Russian economy, the sanctions against Russia have not been successful in coercing Russia in the slightest and may have even influenced the emboldening of the Putin regime.

“A friendly status quo, growing for a quarter of a century, came tumbling down November 21st, 2013.”

Similar to Mussolini’s response against Allied sanctions against Italy, Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov responded to the August 2017 US sanctions on September 1, 2017 at a meeting with students and faculty of MGIMO University, explaining that, “[The West] would like to deal with an obedient Russia that is ready to make concessions to its own detriment….” But, “we have an enormous and the richest territory, the army, the navy and the aerospace forces; we have the Russian people, who have our civilizational culture in their genes…. I do hope that your colleagues from foreign

countries, studying shoulder to shoulder with our citizens, will feel this great feature of the Russian people in all its fullness.”

Cuba Just 90 miles off the coast of Florida, floats the Island of Cuba, which at this point is under the strictest sanction policy under the American sanction empire. Beginning in 1959, Fidel Castro overthrew the Batista regime, began extensive trading with the Soviet Union, and nationalize U.S.-owned properties along with an increased tariff on U.S. imports. Under President John F. Kennedy, the U.S. government instituted a full economic embargo on Cuba, including a complete severing of diplomatic ties with the island nation. Relations between the neighbors have only worsened, with several attempts by the CIA to overthrow the Castro regime.

In 1982, the U.S. government identified Cuba as a state sponsor of terrorism and this label remains in 2017. After the fall of the Soviet Union, Cuba lost its top trading partner, and in 1992 the U.S. passed the “Cuban Democracy Act”. The “Cuban Democracy Act was soon overshadowed by the much stricter “Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity Act of 1996, or HelmsBurton Act, which tightened the embargo to further “prohibit foreign firms from entering into any trade or financial transactions with Cuba…. [and] the Act prohibits third country companies and other businesses entities that are owned or controlled by US persons from engaging in any transactions with Cuba or Cuban nationals…. The Act has been viewed as effective because… [it] authorizes the use of the most tenuous type of control liability to limit or prohibit foreign

Fall 2017 business activity with Cuba by coercing US nationals who can exercise controls over that activity” These 3 factors proved to cripple the Cuban economy and limit the abilities of the Castro regime.

Signed into law by President Bill Clinton on March 12, 1996 following a Cuban attack on two U.S. civilian aircraft, the act set out clear goals against the Cuban regime. The Act itself reads that “It is the sense of Congress that the acts of the Castro government, including its massive, systematic, and extraordinary violations of human rights, are a threat to international peace…” and that the Act intends to, “assist the Cuban people in regaining their freedom and prosperity, as well as in joining the community of democratic countries…” The Act clearly sets out its goal of deposing the Castro regime and promoting and assisting in the implementation of democratic elections as well as the weakening of the regime itself. The Act has met half of its goals with Shamberger writing that, “Since its enactment…. The act has already begun to stem the tide of investment and financial assistance in Cuba” Following the passing of the Helms-Burton Act, a multitude of European businesses had pulled out investment from Cuba and “several European banks have decided to withdraw loans to Cuba…” The drastic decline in loans and investment immediately led to a sharp decrease in the Cuban economy, effectively inhibiting the Cuban government from supplying food and safety to its citizens, and this “rift between the Cuban government and the citizenry is exactly what Helms-Burton envisaged as a way of bringing an end to the Castro Regime”. Shamberger concludes

36 that due to the U.S. suffocation of the Cuban government, the Helms-Burton Act “will ensure Cuba’s long-term prosperity as a democratic nation after the demise of the Castro regime.” Although it is true that sanctions have thus far been effective in hurting the Cuban economy and thereby severely mitigating any Cuban influence abroad, the true goals of the US sanctions and embargo have still been unmet: The fall of the Castro Regime and the rise of a democratic government. The extensive sanctions

“The sanctions against Russia have not been successful in coercing Russia in the slightest.” on the US’s island neighbor has been under a large amount of scrutiny for ineffectively reaching its goal while inflicting severe damage to the citizenry of Cuba. Joy Gordon is one of those critics explaining that Cuban innovation potential is being swept away by their inability to acquire US companies’ stateof-the-art equipment or products” which have been standardized in international business. Gordon makes the case that sanctions are not showing a clear effect on the Castro regime and are only leading to the Cuban government’s inability to “meet the basic needs of its

population.”

The future for the Castro Regime and Cuba itself remains unclear. The Obama administration followed steps to thaw one of the last time capsules of the Cold War. Several visits to Havana by US officials, including Secretary of State John Kerry, were distinctly different actions taken compared to administrations prior. Former President Barack Obama even included proposals to shut down Guantanamo Bay, with speculation of returning Guantanamo Bay back to Cuba. On November 26th, 2016 Fidel Castro died at the age of 90. Although he was no longer president, the passing of Cuban revolutionary and dictator led many to see uncertainty in the future of the Castro Regime. Almost a year later, cracks in the Cuban government remain unseen. Under the Trump administration, the thaw is reversing and strong sanctions will remain. In President Trump’s UN address on September 9th, 2017 Trump affirms US commitment against the Castro regime explaining that, “in the Western Hemisphere, the United States has stood against the corrupt and destabilizing regime in Cuba and embraced the enduring dream of the Cuban people to live in freedom.

My administration recently announced that we will not lift sanctions on the Cuban government until it makes fundamental reforms” which just reflects the goals stated in the Helms-Burton Act. The future still remains unclear for Cuba.

After more than half a century of embargo, and 20 years of strict sanctions has left a crippled nation drifting in the Caribbean which no longer provides any significant threat to the United States, however the United States has also proven

37 that their sanctions policy against Cuba remains incomplete.

Sanctions on In an ever globalizing world, which over time continues to further string itself within a complex web of global economies, the use and advocacy of sanctions increases. US political actors continue to push aggressive sanctions policies in speeches and on social media. Sanctions proposals by politicians have been overly simplistic to the point of incoherence with foreign policy. This has only led to our perceived weakness and indecisiveness by enemy states, confusion among allied states, and division within the United States.

Clear policy goals must be reached and prudently analyzed by foreign

The International Relations Review policy experts and advocated by politicians, rather than allowing for politicians to privately stand on their soapbox and mark themselves unto basic policy. Without this, the United States will encounter a divided international community as seen by the 2017 Russia Sanctions.

Quick sanctions implementation without any understanding will embolden the target nation, the Russian Federation for example, and convince them that time and patience will be on their side.

Cuba, on the other hand, proves some progress and understanding of sanctions policy. Although still dividing the international community, Cuban sanctions policy has a clear target, the sanctions

are severe and crippling alongside this goal, and the policy ideas itself have been building for decades.

The US policy goal of a democratic Cuba is still unreached, however any and all threats from Cuba have disappeared. The United States, being an economic superpower and implementing sanctions the most, will continue to implement sanctions on states disobeying international norms, but this diplomatic tool must have meaning and purpose driving it besides just the desire for political capital, or else the unclear sanctions will only confuse and anger allies, and embolden and empower enemies.

Photo By Danielle Wallner, CAS’19

Fall 2017

The Catalan Defiance and the Spanish Economic Nightmare

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Economic Reasons and Consequences of a Referendum

By Rebecca Faroro Giovannetti, CAS ‘19 In July, the New York Times published an article with the title “Spain’s Long Economic Nightmare Is Finally Over,” with the news that Spain is now expanding its economy at a 3 percent rate, producing exports and creating more jobs. To the relief of Spanish citizens, Europeans, and the world, Spain had returned to its “precrisis size,” according to the article, meaning that the Euro-zone debt

crisis was finally over and that the countries in the EU affected by the financial catastrophe are resurging and ready to thrive economically.

Just a month before that, Catalan President Carles Puigdemont announced that his government would hold a binding referendum on the independence of Catalonia from Spain in October. While investors and news agencies took notice,

no one could’ve expected this announcement would escalate the way it did in the following months.

The situation in Spain is now uncertain after the illegal referendum took place, and the “sense of revival” in the Spanish economic scene is being held hostage under the new Catalan Secession Crisis.

Catalonia is a region in the northeast of Spain, holding the city of Barcelona, the unofficial capital of Catalonia, and headquarters of industrial companies like Mango, Gas Natural and Abertis. This major industrial region for agri-food, chemistry, and car-manufacturing comprised 19 percent of Spain’s Gross Domestic Product in 2016 and attracted 14 percent foreign investment to Spain in 2015.

Catalonia is one of the wealthiest regions in Spain.

Tensions between President Puigdemont and Spain’s Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy escalated significantly after PM Rajoy said

Photo By Rebecca Giovannetti CAS ’19

39 he would prevent the Catalan referendum from taking place. The Spanish democratic constitution that followed Francisco Franco’s dictatorship in 1978 was approved by more than 90 percent of Catalan voters. While it gave considerable autonomy to regional leaders and held Catalan governmental institutions, such as La Generalitat, in place, it also has an indissoluble clause that prevents any region from separating itself from Spain.

The Catalonian regional parliament tried to impose an independence referendum in 2014, following the Scottish referendum called in 2014. The former Catalan vote was also considered illegal until Artur Mas, the Catalan president at the time, changed it to an “informal poll on Catalan opinion,” which resulted in over 80 percent calling for independence and voting to be held in Catalonia.

This voting process did not go as smoothly as 2014, mainly due to Puigdemont’s insistence on a “binding” referendum, which implied that a result in favor of separating from Spain would lead to a formal announcement declaring such independence. This declaration by Puigdemont deemed the voting process illegal according to the Spain’s Constitutional Court.

Catalan separatists retorted stating that they have a democratic right to decide on their future and would do so regardless of Spanish approval.

Rajoy’s assurance to prevent this voting from taking place and Puigdemont’s commitment to making it binding was explosive and brought violence and clash to the Catalan country alongside uncertainty regarding Spain’s future. A couple of weeks before the election, thirteen Catalan

government officials were arrested under Madrid’s order for not calling the referendum off, and the national police seized millions of ballot papers.

The dramatic measures the Spanish authorities took to avert the vote didn’t go unnoticed by the people living in Catalonia.

There have been several protests across the Catalan region, and tens of thousands went to the street in Barcelona on multiple occasions as tensions soared between Catalan and Spanish authorities. The 7.5 million inhabitants of Catalonia are divided over independence, but most protestors just wanted to voice a response to: “Do you want Catalonia to be an independent state in the form of a republic?” in a formal manner.

The decisive moment that changed foreign investor expectations toward the Spanish economic recovery came on October 1, the day of the voting.

Human Rights Watch published a statement condemning Spanish national police abuse of force during that day, which led to over 800 Catalan citizens injured.

News agencies released videos of the national police hitting voters with intent to hurt and dragging them out of polling stations by any means possible. The chaotic voting scenario was marred with riot police firing rubber bullets into crowds and physically stopping people from entering polling stations. The social climate became increasingly tense as Rajoy said in a televised address that “today there has not been a self-determination referendum in Catalonia. The rule of law remains in force with all its strength.”

Out of the 5.3 million registered voters, 2.26 million voted on October 1, and 90% of those

The International Relations Review voted in favor of independence, according to Catalan officials.

Spain has entered the worst constitutional crisis since the 1930s because of this Catalan Session Crisis, and it doesn’t seem to be fading, as many companies and banks wish. In the days following voting, Puigdemont delivered an ambiguous speech instead of the declarative stance he once had, frustrating many Catalans waiting to celebrate their new, yet merely nominal, republic. Some Catalans have been waiting for the day Catalonia would become a sovereign nation for more than 20 years.

This discontent with Spain is not new for Catalonia.

Secessionists argue that Catalonia was never indeed voluntarily part

Photo By Rebecca Giovannetti CAS ’19

Fall 2017

40

Photo By Meaghan Delaney CAS ’18

of Spain and that their culture, language, and costumes suffered systematic persecution from the Spanish government ever since they first became a unified nation, with the worst period under Franco between 1939-1975.

Franco was one of many fascist rulers of the 20th century, and under his government, Catalan language, folklore, and religious celebrations were banned and criminalized. Franco planned to unify the Spanish culture under one, and any other cultural tradition from the different regions of Spain, such as Basque, Occitan, Galician, and Catalan, was to be oppressed enough to disappear from people’s minds. The Catalan defiance then was to continue speaking Catalan and continue to respect their traditions in secret during the dictatorship, which ended in 1975 and led the way to the constitution now in place. Even though the Franco era is long gone, that feeling of oppression and persecution from the Spanish government was one of many reasons why secessionists wanted independence from Spain in the first place.

Many of the reasons for rising discontent in Catalonia are more tangible and measurable. As one of the wealthiest regions of Spain, many claim that Madrid’s government has long taken more money and resources from Catalonia than it gives back to Catalans. As a net contributor of Spain, Catalonia’s gap between what it gives to the rest of the country in taxes and the benefits and services they receive from the national government is 8 billion to 10 billion euros each year.

This mismanagement of finances was enhanced by the Spanish economic crisis from 2008 to 2012, in which the country didn’t default on their loans because of bailouts from the European Central Bank and International Monetary Fund. The bailout price for Spanish citizens was harsh austerity measures and financial sanctions to cut back in spending. The bailout institutions thought these austerity measures would increase the competitiveness of Spain and other countries with default risk. Increases in public pensions and wage and lowering of trade barriers would have made national products more attractive to

foreign consumers, and the increase in exports would result in economic growth high enough to slowly pay off the remaining debts.

As most of the cases, the economic model didn’t predict the human reaction to those measures.

In the short term, austerity slowed Spanish economy down, as it did with Greece, Portugal, Italy, and Ireland. The measures implemented increased unemployment, which decreased consumer spending and reduced lending capital for citizens.

These confounding factors added to the feeling of not receiving enough services for the amount paid in taxes, and it was one of the biggest causes that led voters to elect a majority pro-independence coalition to Parliament in the Catalan regional elections of 2015.

This new Generalitat of Catalonia shortly started to take measures to assure the referendum and possible independence happened in the next years, even though Catalonia already enjoys more autonomy than the average region. That secession spirit was heightened by the Scottish referendum in 2014, and Brexit in

41

The International Relations Review Photo By Meaghan Delaney CAS ’18

2016, which propelled the Generalitat to push further into planning the 2017 referendum. They counted on British and Scottish governments’ support throughout the process and anchored international opinion and possible influence to their decisions to continue even after threats from the national government.

In short, Catalans want more money, the Generalitat seeks to have more power, and both are pushing for Catalonia to be recognized as a nation. The Economist article “Spain faces a constitutional crisis over Catalonia,” cites that Catalans demands those three things even though they already enjoy “broad self-government” given by the Spanish Parliament.

Both support and against Catalan independence protests were held throughout Spain. The clash between the Catalan Generalitat and the Government of Spain over the independence of Catalonia is far from being over. But just as the situation is continuously changing,

so are the expectations of foreign investors and consumers on the future of Spanish economy and in the security of having assets in Spain and Catalonia.

In a note titled “Catalonia, the cost of being single,” Geoffrey Minne, a Dutch Bank ING Economist discussed the economic consequences of Catalonia becoming independent in three

The motivations behind the ING analysis can be summarised by the statement:”cultural and political motives have been put forward, but the economic benefits are far from clear.” Minne states that as happened with the British exit vote from the European Union, the “Catalexit” would propel the region into “a long period of uncertainty,” which would affect the private sector with assets and capital in the region “Some Catalans have substantially. The ING economist argues that declaring independence been waiting for the would be a easy step compared day Catalonia would to the economic perspectives of an independence project, which become a sovereign is considered to be costly. And as nation for more than far as financial consequences, the uncertainty the constitutional crisis 20 years.” brought forth already has observable macro levels: Catalonia, Spain economic costs. and the European Union. In his study Banks in Catalonia suffered of the potential economic impacts a plunge in share prices following of splitting up, he concluded that the events of October 1st, and other this possibility could lead to adverse industries like textiles, energy, effects that are proportionally larger and telecommunications also lost than Brexit. value. Spain’s fifth-biggest bank

Fall 2017 Sabadell shifted its headquarters from Catalonia to another region in Spain following the share plunge, and its stock price already recovered 6 point percent on the first day of the relocation. Other banks and companies, including Catalonia’s biggest lender, CaixaBank, also recovered from the initial plunge in value by moving their headquarters out of the region.

In a poll by Mestroscopia, 62 percent of Catalan respondents were ‘worried’ about the future of their region, against the 31

Photo By Rebecca Giovannetti CAS ’19

percent who were ‘excited.’ This public uncertainty affects normal consumption behavior in a way that increases household’s savings and decreases consumption. A 62 percent average fall in consumption causes a dent in demand for goods and services, and growth in economy stagnates in the goods market as well.

With the palpable tension in Catalonia, investors, especially foreign investors, are already finding alternatives to invest their money somewhere else and hedge themselves against a possible independence process.

The expected investment in the region immediate decreases as a result of a regional crisis. The yield on Spanish 10-year bond already increased as the country spirals into

42 the worst political crisis in 30 years.

The effect of many investors moving their money elsewhere results in a stagnation of the country’s growth, which damages possible Spanish recovery from this crisis regardless of secession.

If the secessionist movement succeeds, both Spain and Catalonia will lose a considerable amount of GDP, and recovery would be harder as prospects would decline even further. One thing is definitive; independence or not, Spain and Catalonia’s economy will end up affected negatively in the long run.

The question that remains in the minds of consumers and investors is: Did the Spanish Economic Nightmare actually ended, or it just entered a new phase?

HEALTH & AID

45 49

The Road to Zika By: Rachel Petherbridge, ENG’19 Friend or Foe: UN Relief Efforts in Haiti

By: Yoni Tobin, CAS’21

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Failure to Mind the Gap: The Divide Between Rich and Poor in MiddleIncome Countries

By: Desmond Molloy, SAR’19

Photo By Brenda Chavez, CAS’17

45

The International Relations Review Photo By Rebecca Giovannetti, CAS ’19

The Road to Zika

By Rachel Petherbridge, ENG’19

Zika: the most recent infectious disease to overthrow our 21st century advancements in prevention and treatment and make the developed world feel vulnerable yet again to 20th century horrors.

While not the “worst” disease in terms of casualties and lasting economic impacts (compared with, for example, Ebola or malaria), Zika re-invigorated a primal sense of fear in the unknown of a disease that has laid mostly dormant since the 1980s with the first outbreak of HIV. Within the span of 8 years, Zika had jumped from a mild virus in equatorial Asia to a WHOdeclared international public health emergency, threatening occurrence the Olympic Games for the first time since the Cold War. The question is, how did Zika escalate so quickly to such a grave public emergency?

How did the virus’ momentum couple with governmental and international policies to lead to an epidemic whose victims bore children with severe neurological disorders? Could this epidemic have been prevented?

In order to best address this topic, a little background is necessary (as well as a little vocabulary).

Zika was first discovered in a captured Rhesus monkey in Uganda sometime in 1947. The research group who found the virus was performing a routine survey of the area for yellow fever, another virus that causes catastrophic organ failure in 15% of cases and, coincidentally, shares the same vector (infectious disease carrier) as Zika. In 1948, a separate group of scientists confirmed that the mosquito Aedes aegypti was the vector responsible for

transmission. Between its discovery and 2007, only 14 cases of Zika virus infecting humans had been reported worldwide. In 2007, a major outbreak occurred on the island of Yap in the Federated States of Micronesia. Between 2013 and 2014, four more outbreaks occurred on a number of Pacific islands, including French Polynesia. On March 2, 2015, Brazilian authorities reported that a new virus was infecting civilians in the northeastern states, causing skin rashes. Over the next several months, heartbreaking video after viral video showed the world Brazilian mothers with newborn babies, all with abnormally small heads. On February 1, 2016, the WHO declared a Public Health Emergency of International Concern due to the correlation between Zika, microcephaly, and another

Fall 2017 very rare neurological disorder called Guillain-Barre Syndrome.

The tale of Zika’s rise to infectious disease enemy #1 contains a significant jump in prevalence and location between 2007, when the first “big” outbreak of Zika occurred on Yap, and 2015, when Zika became a regional and then global menace. Prior to 2015, Zika was a relatively unknown virus that was not associated with virulence or debilitating birth defects, and so it was ignored.

Then the virus transformed from a relatively mild one infecting just a few thousand people, to a teratogenic terror that had infected hundreds of thousands and caused a public health catastrophe. Part of this transformation lay in the virus itself; a recent article coauthored by dozens of researchers based in China demonstrated that a single amino acid mutation (a serine transformed to an asparagine, for anyone very interested) was enough to give Zika the ability to cause severe neurological damage to the infected, with fetuses developing in infected women found to be especially susceptible. A separate group of researchers had previously shown, only two months after the February public health emergency was declared, that incidences of definitive Zika-induced microcephaly had originally occurred during the outbreak in French Polynesia. This led the researchers behind the paper to believe this amino acid mutation occurred during that outbreak. The virus also became more virulent (more easily spread) between 2007 and 2015, which the authors of the paper also linked to this single amino acid mutation; however, other

46 factors like previous exposure to Dengue fever may also play a part in the virulence of Zika.

Accumulated superpowers provide one of the many reasons that Zika became so prevalent in South America, but do not explain the whole story. Smallpox was

“Within the span of 8 years, Zika had jumped from a mild virus in equatorial Asia to a WHO-declared international public health emergency.”

the fetus acquires the virus and potentially develops microcephaly) and during sexual intercourse, but the predominant method of transmission for Zika (and Dengue fever, yellow fever, malaria, etc.) is a mosquito biting a human. It does not take a stretch of imagination then to realize that one of the surest ways to prevent the spread of Zika (or any mosquito-borne illness for that matter), is to prevent mosquitoes from biting people.

The most effective way to do this is to control the mosquito (the vector) population. Vector control necessitates finding a difficult combination of sound public policy and well-funded and regulated scientific research.

Brazil’s effort to control mosquitoes began early in the 20th century.

The International Division of the Rockefeller Foundation, a U.S. based nonprofit whose mission statement reads “promoting the well-being of humanity around the world,” invested half of their budget into mosquito eradication in Brazil.

much more virulent, much more prevalent, and much much more deadly than Zika has ever been (and hopefully will ever become), and yet we managed to hunt smallpox to extinction and, before its extinction, successfully contain several outbreaks. This was done through the systematic, concerted effort of countries, affected and unaffected alike, to isolate or destroy the vectors of the disease.

During the outbreaks, sanitation workers would descend upon infected areas, vaccinate everyone who could have potentially come in contact with small pox, and quarantine the vector (the infected population). It is here that we see the ultimate failure of Zika outbreak: vector control.

As stated previously, the Zika virus is carried by Aedes aegyptis mosquitoes, which spread the disease by biting an infected human, acquiring the virus, and then spreading the virus through subsequent bites. Zika can also spread from mother to child through the umbilical cord (explaining how Photo By Rebecca Giovannetti CAS ’19

47 Their good intentions paid off: by 1928, the prevalence of yellow fever had declined significantly.

The significant input of time, money and a well-trained, wellresourced group of on-the-ground mosquito sanitation officials from the Rockefeller Foundation led to the near-eradication of the Aedes mosquito in all of Brazil; rigorous surveys of areas prone to yellow fever, regular checkups on the infected, biopsies of those who died from a mysterious “fever”, and very intense oversight by the group’s superiors all contributed to this decline. Yet, the mosquito was never truly eradicated in the 1940s. Governments in surrounding countries were not receiving the same kind of support the Brazilian government was in eradicating mosquitoes, so whenever eradication seemed possible, another mosquito could just fly over the border. This lack of a concerted effort on the part of the continent to eradicate mosquitoes would become a trend that lasted for decades, making complete eradication doubly difficult.

Nevertheless, despite the departure of Rockefeller Foundation from Brazil compounded with remaining obstacles, Brazil declared itself completely Aedes-free in 1958.

This lasted for 9 years, a period of time that saw the development of general lethargy on the part

The International Relations Review of countries and international bodies to combat mosquitoes.

When the mosquito appeared again in 1967, despite the best efforts of Rockefeller Foundation and the Brazilian government, it took another six years to eradicate. Within that time, the United States and the WHO had stopped all international aid to eradicate mosquitoes, leaving the Brazilian government, which had recently undergone a massive regime change, to fend for themselves. They managed to eradicate the Aedes mosquito again in 1973, but it returned yet again in 1976. By then, the world had largely lost hope in eradication campaigns internationally, and Brazil witnessed its first Dengue fever outbreak in over 50 years.

The events that took place between 1976 and 2007 largely do not to be recounted, as they follow the same pattern presented here: well-intentioned people from international organizations investing a lot of time and energy to formulate a plan to eradicate the mosquito.

The only difference is between 1976 and 2009, not a single plan developed by the Brazilian

government or any international body was implemented due to a severe lack of funds caused by international apathy. The lethargy on the part of the international community to combat mosquito-borne illnesses was a complete public health failure.

The immediate consequence of this was a series of Dengue fever outbreaks, compounded by another regime change, globalization, and unregulated small aircraft movement, which aided the spread of diseases. Furthermore, just prior to this time it was discovered that the only insecticide known to act on mosquitoes, DDT, was becoming ineffective due to increased mosquito resistance (its use was also discouraged by the international community, particularly the U.S., due to its detrimental effects on the environment). Due to the international community’s absolute faith in the effectiveness of DDT to eradicate mosquitoes, little monetary support was allotted to the research and development of alternate forms of mosquito control. This was the international community’s second critical failure.

Fall 2017 There was also a third, final failure between 1976 and 2009. Zeal for mosquito eradication did eventually arise once more in the international community at the end of the 20th century, but it was focused almost exclusively on the eradication of mosquitoes in order to combat malaria. Malaria and Zika both utilize mosquitoes in the Aedes genus, but use different species within that genus. Thus, any preventative treatments used against mosquitoes to combat malaria invariably decrease the population of mosquitoes that carry Zika, Dengue fever and yellow fever. The important point here is that any gains made in reducing the incidence of the mosquito that carries Dengue, yellow fever and eventually Zika, were invariably just a consequence of the battle against malaria; the mosquitoes that carry these diseases were not the primary target by any government or international body since the 1950s. Emphasizing the eradication of mosquitoes causing malaria over mosquito vectors of other diseases depleted the amount of international money and resources flowing to South America to combat continually more frequent outbreaks of Dengue fever. This is not to say the Brazilian government stopped

48 trying to combat Dengue fever (and thus, inadvertently Zika). In fact, the Brazilian government has spent almost a million dollars per year since the 1990s on ineffective control methods. However, with no aid coming from the international community, at this point the government had long since given up on complete eradication and efforts were now focused on containing the mosquito population. The lack of effort to eradicate the Aedes aegyptis mosquito by the international community, and simultaneous failures to adequately control the mosquito set the stage for the 2016 Zika outbreak.

The rest of the story almost does not need to be told since it has been splattered across the headlines of every major paper in the world from 2016 until today; and yet, the rest of this story should be addressed with the new understanding that the entire outbreak - all the suffering and panic - could have been averted. By 2014, the Zika virus had found its way from Pacific islands to the sub-tropical, mosquito-rich country of Brazil.

With the prevalence of mosquitoes that the Brazilian government and international community had failed to control, the country was ripe for the taking by the virus. Zika found a home in the mosquitoes of the northeastern states - Brazil’s poorest and thus with the fewest resources - and began infecting thousands in the region. Zika’s recent genetic mutations allowed it to infect the population more quickly. Brazil alerted the WHO of the outbreak of some new virus. High volumes of regional travel quickly brought Zika to other portions of the country, and even other countries. The threshold of time passed so that children with microcephaly began to be born to infected mothers. The WHO declared an international public health emergency. Global panic ensued, followed by hundreds of millions of dollars in funds, a wealth of human resources, and a global scientific push to combat this new disease; all resources that, had they been applied earlier - even by just ten years - may have prevented, or at least reduced the magnitude of the Zika outbreak.

Photo By Rebecca Giovannetti, CAS ’19

49

The International Relations Review

Friend or Foe: UN Relief Efforts in Haiti

By Yoni Tobin, CAS ‘21

Haiti has, in recent years, made news for the all of the wrong reasons. Whether it be a devastating earthquake, disease, or ruinous poverty, any mention of Haiti is likely to conjure up images of a country falling apart. The United Nations has played a major role in attempting to address those issues, but with mixed results.

Unfortunately, however, these efforts have come with unintended consequences that received insufficient media coverage.

Haiti is a country with severe poverty. The United Nationshas labeled Haiti as a “Low Development Country,” meaning that it lags behind even most Third World countries. While it’s often said that Haiti is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, that axiom hardly illustrates the full

scope of the situation. Haiti’s percapita-GDP is $1800 USD, ranking it 21st in the world (by comparison, North Korea’s is $1700 USD). Close to 60 percent of Haiti’s population is under the poverty line. Around 40 percent of Haitians are unemployed, which is the 6th worst in the world, and is worse than the unemployment rates of the Gaza Strip and Nigeria combined. Compounding the issue is the fact that of the approximately 60 percent of Haitians who do work, around two-thirds do not have any sort of conventional or stable job.

Haiti also is heavily impacted by a number of the problems that usually go hand-in-hand with extreme poverty, such as widespread disease and crime. Crime is widely considered to be rampant, but Haitian crime statistics are underreported

as a result of incompetency and corruption within Haiti’s police forces. Furthermore, the island has in recent years seen a massive cholera outbreak, a rampant and particularly malignant AIDS epidemic, and the outbreak of a number of infectious and foodborne diseases. While many of the issues that plague Haiti can be traced back to internal failures involving infrastructure, economic stagnation, and corruption, a number of these issues have been either exacerbated or caused outright by the United Nations.

The UN’s actions in Haiti over the past decade and a half, some unintentional and some not, have led to mixed results throughout the country. The UN’s charter details a utopian and commendable vision for the UN, in which affirms its

Photo By Sabine Tessono CAS ‘21 Photo By Sabine Tessono, CAS ’21

Fall 2017 dedication to “solving international problems of an economic, social, cultural, or humanitarian character, and in promoting and encouraging respect for human rights.” Yet, the UN has not always been successful in meeting those goals when it comes to Haiti.

The UN’s short history in Haiti has been a fraught one. The UN had a brief presence in Haiti, from 1993 to 1996, then, in 2004, deployed around 5,000 military and police personnel to restore rule of law and public safety following the coup d’état that removed JeanBertrand Aristride from power.

The new peacekeeping mission was christened the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti, also known as MINUSTAH. From the very beginning, the relationship between MINUSTAH and the people of Haiti fraught with tension.

A November 2004 report from the University of Miami Law Center faulted the MUNISTAH workers for assisting the Haitian National Police when the HNP carried out indiscriminate killing sprees in poor neighborhoods. The report quotes an anonymous MINUSTAH member who said that during certain operations, there was no clear objective, only a collective mindset of “shoot before you get shot.” The report also faulted the peacekeeping mission for largely being unable to speak Haitian Creole, the language spoken almost universally in Haiti, making communication with citizens and local forces close to impossible.

MINUSTAH’s presence was particularly strongly felt following the 2010 earthquake. The 7.0 magnitude earthquake crippled Haiti, killing over 100,000 people and destroying much of the island’s

already meager infrastructure.

MINUSTAH’s base was completely leveled by the earthquake, and some of the mission’s leaders were killed. Due to the urgent need for aid and assistance, MINUSTAH’s mandate, set to expire in October of 2010, was renewed through 2012, and the mission’s numbers were increased to around 9000 soldiers and over 4000 police personnel. In 2012, MINUSTAH’s mandate was renewed so that it would continue

“The UN’s short history in Haiti has been a fraught one.” on indefinitely. Many Haitians were aggravated by MINUSTAH’s combination of heavy-handedness when it came to dealing with small pockets of gang violence in Haiti’s worst areas, and perceived lax attitude towards aid distribution and rebuilding. Consequently, protestors gathered outside MINUSTAH’s home base and shouted slogans about ending the UN’s “occupation” of Haiti.

Whether or not the UN mission in Haiti is an “occupation” or not, the peacekeeping mission has produced at least some benefits for Haiti. The UN’s Haiti presence, while plagued with controversy, has still brought about significant progress in recent years. MINUSTAH has strengthened the infrastructure of many of the country’s institutions, which are generally either weak and incompetent or functional and corrupt. The UN report on MINUSTAH from 2016 noted that MINUSTAH provided logistical

50 support and training to polling and electoral staff during February 2016’s parliamentary elections, and helped to bolster Haiti’s chaotic prison system by standardizing and organizing prisoner data management and improving prison infrastructure. The report also referenced a litany of other MINUSTAH achievements in institution building, ranging from assistance in criminal justice reform to the creation of a revamped digital system for Haiti’s municipal personnel. The UN report from this year on MINUSTAH reflects upon other progress made, like developing strategy for the HNP, and establishing criteria for investigation of magistrates. These developments suggest that the UN’s presence in Haiti has serious potential for good, and future peacekeeping missions should build on the advances made so far by the UN. However, individual MINUSTAH workers have often jeopardized the headway made by the peacekeeping mission as a whole.

A serious charge that MINUSTAH faced in the years both prior to and following the earthquake were that a number of their personnel were sexually assaulting young Haitian men and women. A series of reports, including an internal report from the UN itself, revealed that over 150 instances of sexual abuse or exploitation by MUNISTAH peacekeepers were reported. The most serious allegation involved a group of 134 Sri Lankan workers, who were accused of operating a sex ring between 2004 and 2007 in which young children were given food and small amounts of money in exchange for sexual favors. More troubling than the sex ring itself is

51 the fact that, of the 134 peacekeepers involved, only 114 were sent back to Sri Lanka, and none faced any sort of additional punishment or criminal charges. In 2011, a video surfaced of several Uruguayan peacekeepers raping an 18 yearold Haitian male. Another incident rose to international attention in 2012, when multiple Pakistani MINUSTAH personnel were found guilty of raping a 14 yearold Haitian male, and each faced no more than one year in prison in Pakistan. Compounding matters, no Haitian officials were notified of the 2012 rape until after the trial had concluded, giving Haitians no say in the result and affording the peacekeepers a sort of indemnity.

The United Nations was also directly responsible for the 2010 Cholera outbreak, a tragic and catastrophic act for which it has yet to make full amends. The outbreak, which began soon after the earthquake and continued to ravage the country for three years, was in part caused by a small group of Nepalese MINUSTAH peacekeepers stationed on a MINUSTAH base in the Haitian province of Artibonite.

The peacekeepers, having been previously infected with cholera,

allowed the human waste from their facility to filter into a local tributary of the Artibonite River, a primary drinking source for hundreds of thousands of Haitians. Many Haitians have contracted cholera, and close to nine thousand have died from the disease. The UN officially denied its involvement in the outbreak until August of 2016, when it offered an official apology for its role and promised compensation to victims of the cholera outbreak as well as $400 million USD to combat future outbreaks and help treat those currently affected.

Individual wrongdoers in the peacekeeping mission caused many of MINUSTAH’s flaws, but a number of problems were engendered by systemic breakdowns in how the UN operates its peacekeeping missions. One significant issue that caused friction between MINUSTAH personnel

The International Relations Review and Haitians was the inability of the two sides to communicate. The UN Peacekeeping Operations Principles and Guidelines Manual stipulates that “all peacekeeping personnel have a thorough understanding of the history and prevailing customs and culture in the mission area,” and the “capacity to assess the evolving interests and motivation of the parties,” but mentions nothing about language. Requiring personnel to learn basic terms in the language of the mission area in which the personnel is stationed, if coupled with a “community-policing” style initiative, could better ingratiate the peacekeeping personnel with Haitian residents. Another issue which may explain why so many of MINUSTAH’s personnel have been involved in misconduct is the selection process. The UN Peacekeeping Operations Principles and Guidelines Manual goes into

Fall 2017 great detail when addressing the selection, education, and training of senior mission leaders, but not that of any other peacekeeping mission personnel. This is largely a product of the fact that the peacekeepers not in senior positions are not self-selecting, but are members of armies of various nations that are seconded to the UN. Absent a rigorous selection and training process that incorporates the relevant criteria, UN peacekeeping mission personnel are not likely to be the ideal candidates for the job. Accountability and justice have also proven to be fleeting.

UN personnel workers cannot be persecuted for crimes that occurred while they were in their “official capacity” anywhere in the world, and cannot be persecuted for crimes commissioned outside of their “official capacity” in Haitian courts, only in their home countries.

Going forward, there is still some room for optimism in terms of the UN’s presence in Haiti. The UN elected to withdraw all MINUSTAH forces in October. A revamped peacekeeping mission called MINUJUSTH, the Mission Support for Justice in Haiti, replaced the forces. MINUJUSTH will consist of a radically scaled-back presence, with fewer than 1,000 military personnel being stationed in Haiti, and their role being relegated merely to upholding the rule of law in the often-volatile country.

MINUJUSTH presents an opportunity for the UN to avoid the wrongdoings of MINUSTAH, but also will be far less effective at accomplishing its tasks because of the heavily diminished number of personnel. While the UN has caused a serious amount of damage in Haiti, it still has a role to play in maintaining resource distribution,

52 preventing gang violence from running rampant, and upholding the rule of law. A better solution would be for the UN to continue to maintain a reasonably sized contingency in Haiti with a workforce of several thousand. That mission could avoid the mistakes of years past by being to held to higher standards of behavior, facing more accountability and regulation by the UN as a whole, and being monitored by impartial arbiters such as human rights experts and selfappointed civilian review panels.

The civilian review panels would be a particularly important step, as accountability with Haitian citizens was a point of severe weakness with past UN missions in Haiti.

The UN’s checkered record of recovery efforts in Haiti will soon reach a point of reckoning.

MINUJUSTH’s smaller presence will serve as a good litmus test as to whether Haiti can prosper on its own, without a major UN mission supporting its institutions. Certain fundamental issues will either be addressed or not in the newest reiteration, and time will tell as to what the UN’s role will be in the future of Haiti.

Photo By Bianca Lapanche, CGS’17, CAS’19

53

A Failure to Mind the Gap

The International Relations Review

The Divide Between Rich and Poor in Middle-Income Countries

By Desmond Molloy, SAR ‘19 Despite nearly six years of political fulmination and speechmaking against income inequality, the world is gradually moving towards greater concentration of wealth. In his award-winning book Capital in the 21st Century, French economist Thomas Piketty demonstrates that across human history, capital goods such as newer machinery factories and, most recently computers, funnel wealth towards society’s upper crust. Barring natural disaster or war, this phenomenon is likely to accelerate in the near future.

As devices from vacuum cleaners to surgical equipment are given artificial intelligence, creating a socalled Internet of Things, human labor becomes less and less valuable.

Consequently, an increasing share of economic value flows to those who own capital goods such as robots.

Without corrective action, those without capital goods are likely to see their primary asset of value-their own labor--continue to shrink,

dimming their economic prospects.

The world hardly lacks for ideas to resolve the crisis. Earlier this year, Microsoft founder and philanthropist Bill Gates proposed that such high-value, laborsupplanting capital goods should be taxed at the point of sale, which would generate revenue for education, railways, health, and other public goods. Former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis offered a modified version of this model, in which every citizen would receive a dividend from the value of the corporations that produce such goods. Both proposals have economic merit. But both models face an uphill battle: in the 21st century, fewer and fewer members of the world’s upper classes are willing to use and support the public goods necessary to equitably develop their societies.

One powerful example comes from the case of the post-apartheid Republic of South Africa. When

white minority rule ended in 1994, observers and citizens hoped that the nation-state would begin to close the gap between rich and poor, as well as black and white. But twenty-three years later, it shows no sign of narrowing. The country’s Gini coefficient, measuring the share of income that would need to be redistributed to achieve equality, is among the world’s worst. Those on the wrong side of the gap often fare poorly; HIV prevalence rates are among the world’s highest, and violent crime is epidemic in poor neighborhoods.

In most democracies, public pressure would force politicians to adopt policies to develop poorer areas of South Africa by redistributing income. Wealth redistribution policies and practices have been implemented a number of times throughout history; at the close of the Second World War, British Prime Minister Clement Attlee’s Labour Party created one

Fall 2017 of the West’s first welfare states, transferring a considerable share of national wealth to working-class voters through the National Health Service and other public services. In South Africa, this route to change seems obstructed. The end of apartheid in 1994 did not coincide with an end to the authoritarian political and economic culture, in which a small circle of wellconnected individuals used the state’s power to claim a share of South Africa’s considerable natural wealth. To be sure, this circle became more ethnically and racially diverse, and added a number of trade union leaders to its membership. But it otherwise carried on more or less as before. The similarity to the projected development of AI is striking: a small stratum of society owns the means of generating wealth, and does well for itself. Most people are shut out, and do not share in their country’s success. South Africa may therefore be a useful case study for those concerned with the long-run effects of income inequality.

The effect on public goods has been considerable. Prior to 1994, when Johannesburg consisted of fewer, mostly white neighborhoods,

the city had a high quality of life, albeit one tempered by the constant fear of apartheid’s collapse. After the post-apartheid government began to expand the city limits to include black suburbs such as Soweto, and

“More than 94% of public South African hospitals failed to pass inspection last year.” welcomed black residents from the country’s poorer hinterlands, Johannesburg’s public sector fell apart. Rather than investing in the public sector, the newly minted black upper class joined their white counterparts in gated communities, sealed off from the surrounding city by private security guards, cleaned by private sanitation workers and beautified by private gardeners.

Their divorce from Johannesburg’s public sphere proved corrosive;

54 the city’s poor neighborhoods are among the continent’s most dangerous, and its public schools among the world’s worst. Without resources from the country’s upper class, the public sector is mired in a vicious cycle of low quality.

This problem has manifested itself in South Africa’s subpar healthcare system. Under the constitution of 1994, every citizen has a right to good health and healthcare. However, health outcomes remain subpar. More than 94% of public South African hospitals failed to pass inspection last year, and doctor/patient ratios remain well below those of poorer countries such as Russia. By contrast, private hospitals in Cape Town and Johannesburg attract medical tourists from across the continent. As long as upper-class South Africans have access to these services, they have no stake in the public sector. To the contrary, any attempt to redistribute their wealth into medicines or clinics for the poor is sure to meet fierce resistance. A proposal by the ruling African National Congress to introduce national single-payer health insurance has gone nowhere.

Photo By Claire Martin, CAS’20

55 Shy of violent rebellion, poor South Africans have few means of forcing their government to provide them with adequate medical care. Their country is mired in corruption, making it difficult for any interests but those of the powerful to be heard. Despite facing corruption allegations for years, President Jacob Zuma has retained power by exploiting tribal and racial divisions during election time, and spreading largesse throughout the upper levels of his party for the rest of the year.

The rot is also apparent at the local level; after years of deterioration, the Johannesburg region’s first new rail project since the end of apartheid, the Gautrain, was designed for whitecollar and government employees to shuttle back and forth between Johannesburg and the capital city of Pretoria. Here, a public good was provided, but in a manner designed to serve the already powerful.

In general, public goods are best preserved when a country’s upper classes are either willing to use and buy into them, or cannot find alternatives. The

Photo By Claire Martin, CAS’20

most consequential example is China. The Middle Kingdom is a country of contrasts. It is home to both one of the world’s largest and most economically powerful upper classes in affluent cities

“President Jacob Zuma has retained power by exploiting tribal and racial divisions...”

such as Guangzhou or Shanghai and underdeveloped provinces where the quality of life remains low. Some public goods, however, bridge the gap. No matter how much money China’s ruling classes accumulate, they cannot escape the environmental devastation that has characterized their country’s economic maturation. Chinese cities such as Beijing and Shanghai have unambiguously filthy air;

The International Relations Review residents wear masks daily, and respiratory health has deteriorated in recent years. But unlike South Africans who can afford private insurance, wealthy Chinese do not have a private option; they must breathe the same air as everyone else. Consequently, change has come much faster. Insurance agents and academics join hairdressers and bicycle couriers in demanding policies to curb pollution.

Conscious that their families are equally susceptible to asthma, Chinese Communist Party officials have redirected the country’s wealth to increase the public good of air quality. China has begun to shut coal plants and manufacture solar panels at an unprecedented rate, overtaking its western counterparts.

Unfortunately, this approach does not extend to public goods not useful to the ruling or middle classes. As a result of restrictive residency laws, many working-class urban Chinese are ineligible for education, healthcare or other services outside their rural home villages.

In economic powerhouses such as

Fall 2017

56

Photo By Claire Martin, CAS’20

Shanghai, those with local hukou (residence permits) have become an upper class in and of themselves.

Because they gain from their cities’ high ratio of economic activity to public service beneficiaries, they have every incentive to push against any effort to redistribute their wealth to poorer residents by changing the hukou system.

However clever NGOs and multilateral organizations’ schemes for economic empowerment become, they cannot succeed without redistribution at the national level. Despite decades of enforced economic equality, China only began to truly develop when First World corporations transferred resources in the forms of plants and wages from their home countries to areas such as Guangzhou. Even so, this development remained

highly uneven. At the moment, the majority of developed countries fall well short of the 0.7% of GDP recommended for foreign aid. This gap is likely to increase: as automation concentrates an increasing share of the world’s wealth in technology owners, their ability to block the tax increases needed to finance such development will grow. It remains unclear whether the vicious cycle of public sector disengagement, in which affluent citizens withdraw their patronage and support from systems that need their resources, making them even less appealing, can be broken. Canada has banned private competitors in sectors such as healthcare, and public support for and pride in their system of single-payer health care remains high. Further innovation may also be able to save systems that have

not already lost a critical mass of users and funding. For instance, if Britain’s National Health Service were able to further reduce its inhospital infection rates and improve its cancer care by using data science to improve its processes, fewer people would seek out private hospitals, increasing both the volume of patients and the base of taxpayers willing to support funding increases. But for public services in an advanced state of decline, as exemplified by South Africa’s public hospitals, such methods are unlikely to work. Unless the world can solve the predicament of declining public goods, and increase public sector buy-in, it will be an Herculean task to push against the steadily growing gap between the top and bottom strata of the world’s economies.

ECONOMICS & DEVELOPMENT

59

CETA: Just the Tip of the Iceberg for Belgian Discord

By: Luciano Cesta, CAS’20

62 65

An Analysis of China’s Economic Future By: Tal Dickstein, CAS’19 The Nicaragua Canal: Doomed and Desperate

By: David Damiano, CAS’21 Photo By Natalie Carroll, COM’19

59

The International Relations Review

The CETA Controversy: Only the Tip of the Iceberg for Belgian Discord

By Luciano Cesta, CAS ‘20 Seven years of negotiation between Canada and the European Union may have come to an unpleasant conclusion when Wallonia, the French speaking region in Belgium, threatened to reject the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA). This historical trade deal is expected to remove over 99% of customs duties that restrict trade between Canada and the EU-27. For CETA to be agreed upon in Europe, all countries in the Union must approve the deal unanimously. The approval of a trade deal in Belgium meant the approval of all regional parliaments and the Walloons had reason to disagree with certain provisions in the deal.

This disagreement is only indicative of Belgium’s current ongoing political crisis driven by an economic divide and divergent histories. The regions of Wallonia, Flanders, and the capital region of Brussels are divided along lines of politics, history, and economic prosperity. Why does Belgium remain so divided despite its attempts for unity? Are there any plausible, potential solutions to this growing divide?

There has been much speculation with regards to Belgium’s viability as a nation, and how it is to continue as a viable nation. The two largest communities in Belgium are the French speaking community of Wallonia and the Flemish-Dutch speaking community of Flanders.

Flanders is located in the north of the country and is home to around

6.3 million Flemings. Wallonia borders France in the south of the country and is home to around 3.5 million Walloons. 1.1 million people live in the county’s bilingual capital, Brussels, while the remaining 75 thousand German speakers live in their own community in the east of the country, where it boarders Germany. Four very distinct peoples live in these communities, but the most conflict arises between the two most dominant. Divergent histories, economic disparity, and an ongoing political crisis has made Belgium less viable.

Divergent Histories and Language Struggles Belgium, as an independent nation state, is very young. The Kingdom of Belgium succeeded from the United Kingdom of the Netherlands after the Belgian Revolution in 1830. Similar to many other young countries, a unifying national myth and history did not exist at the time of the country’s conception.

Historians and artists were soon tasked with creating this material, and effectively, a national identity that was not based on languages.

Consequently, because of the existence of two distinct and strong language groups, different cultural constructions and historiographies fought for dominance. In the country’s infancy, French language art and literature dominated the country’s elite The Belgian political and cultural elite were not motivated to appreciate or even understand Dutch literature. Both French and Dutch language media

were considered to be Belgian early on in the country’s existence, but further down the line, starting with the work of Hendrick Conscience, Dutch literature took on a Flemish identity. This identity, while not exclusively anti-French, contributed to a Dutch middle class cultural awakening. This literature inspires the Flemish Movement, even to this very day.

Simultaneously, there was a struggle for language recognition within the Flemish community.

Upon the nation’s founding, French was set as the official language and in effect the language of the elite. Dutch was mostly spoken by the working and middle classes. A fundamental problem in the creation of a common history was the exclusion of Dutch speakers as a hold out from the revolution which, in part, sought to reject Netherlandish influence, including the Dutch language. In contradiction, the Flemish people held themselves as Belgians for the most part. Most of what Dutch speaking people sought in the 19th century was equal representation.

Anti-Belgian sentiments had not set in yet. They also had no desire to divide the country up into two different language areas. In 1848, they “pleaded for Bilingualism, at least in Flanders”, and in 1870 they received some limited concessions including limited bilingual secondary education and Dutch services in local courts. In 1898, the Flemish movement successfully drove a campaign to have Dutch and French on equal footing by way

Fall 2017 of mass movement. Vos states, this was only a symbolic victory because “even to moderate Flemish activists that the French-speaking citizens would never accept bilingualism in Brussels or Wallonia.” Dutch speaking individuals were never to be on par with French speaking individuals from their view.

Flemish people have experienced the oppression of their language and were left fighting for power in their identity.

The Flemish wanted a homeland in Belgium. They were not Dutch, nor were they antiBelgian.

Flemish academics, writers and artists believed that “the interaction of Germanic and Romance traditions within Belgium would lead to a cultural synthesis.” It wouldn’t be long until that attitude was met with a desire for an officially Dutch Flanders. After the first and second Wold Wars, these sentiments only rose. In the 1960s and 1970s, regionalist parties, both Walloon and Flemish, sprung to popularity.

According to Stephenson, “… ethnic awareness between the two communal-linguistic regions has reached a point that threatened the viability of the state.” The 1971 general elections saw the height of popularity for these parties with 21% of voting Walloons choosing Rassemblement Wallon and 19% of Fleming voters choosing Volksunie.

It was clear that both Wallonia and Flanders desired regional autonomy at the time. Work from both sides of the regional split eventually led to their desires being met in the form of two autonomous regions.

Constitutional reforms in 1980, 1988, and 1993 led to autonomy for both the Flemings and the Walloons.

These autonomous regions drove a further divide between these two language groups and lessened

the unity and viability of Belgium as a whole.

The Divided Political Scene In the case of contemporary Belgium, its past certainly effected the current state of its politics.

One of the most pertinent cases of disunity in the country is that there are no longer any remaining political parties that operate both in Wallonia

“Why does Belgium remain so divided despite its attempts for unity?” and Flanders. Popular parties in each region have strong regionalists agendas. The New Flemish Alliance (N-VA) is currently the largest party in all of Belgium, and by far the most popular party in Flanders.

In Wallonia, the two most popular parties are the Socialist Party (PS) and the Movement Reformateur (MR). While they vary in economic ideologies, they are firmly regionalist in social character.

While the 2014 federal election followed previous patterns in party electoral popularity, predictions for the 2019 federal election are showing different patterns. While the N-VA had in the past been focused on a close to separatist decentralizing agenda, they now have new life as a law and order party with a strong bent to high levels of surveillance and security centralization. Since the 2015 terrorist attacks in Paris, the character of the party has moved away from separatism.

Vlaams Belang, a radically Flemish

60 separatist party, is attempting to fill that gap. While they built their success on propagating fear of Islamization, they stand firmly for the separation of Flanders from the rest of Belgium. Since the 2014 election, VB has gained popularity at the expense of the N-VA. In 2014, 5.8 percent of the vote was earned by VB. In September 2016, polls indicated that 13.10 percent of polled Flemings would vote for VB. This indicates that there is a gradual turn to ideologies that are increasingly hard line.

Similarly, in Wallonia, due to high levels of unemployment, income inequality and a comparatively low GDP (PPP), the Workers’ Party of Belgium (PTB) is rapidly gaining popularity. In the 2014 federal election, the PTB earned 5.8 percent of the vote. Current polling indicates that 18.4 percent of Walloons would vote for the PTB. An alliance of left wing and centre-left wing parties in Wallonia would constitute over half of the vote. The left in Wallonia is a force to be reckoned with.

Anti-establishment and nationalist sentiment is on the rise nationally.

These sentiments run the risk of dividing the people even further than they already are, putting the viability of the Belgian nation-state at risk.

Economic Strife As mentioned in the introduction of this paper, the Walloon trouble with CETA is indicative of economic problems that exist within the country. One of the largest industries in Wallonia is agriculture, with dairy production being at the top of that list. Walloon dairy farmers were concerned with the cheap competition that the Canadian dairy industry would impose upon their significantly more subsidized dairy industry. The Walloon left most Photo By Natalie Carroll, COM ‘19

61 likely saw this as an opportunity to garner popularity amongst farmers and other blue collar professions and started its tirade against the deal. Socialist Walloon Premier Magnette held the opinion that the deal would weaken health, legal, and labour standards. Him and his party were not fans of the proposed powers the deal would grant to large multinationals to sue local regulators or the deal’s threat to its dairy farmers.

In Belgium, a drastic difference in economic power exists between Wallonia and Flanders, fueling more anger and regional discontent. Surprisingly, in comparison to cases of regionalism and separatism in Quebec and Scotland, Flanders as the more powerful region economically has a greater desire to leave Belgium.

Historically, economic and cultural dominance belonged to the French speaking populations of Wallonia, but this is no longer the case. In 2009, Flanders GDP (PPP) per capita was 18 percent higher than the EU-27 average, whereas the Walloon GDP (PPP) per capita was 14.9 percent lower than the EU-27 average. Brussels-Capital, in the same geographic region of Belgium, has a GDP (PPP) that is

The International Relations Review 133.3 percent higher than the EU27 average. Such a disparity has allowed for the popularity of far-left politics in Wallonia, and separatist movements in Flanders.

This economic disparity, in part, exists because of different dominating industries in each region. The 1972 European Steel Crisis hurt Wallonia far more than it hurt Flanders. In 1975 over 60,000 workers were employed in the steel industry. Ten years later, in 1985 only 35,000 people were. Francq et al. state that, “the largest victims of the crisis were the blue collar workers, who were particularly young and Walloon”. The effects of this event are still felt today, with over 30 percent unemployment in the regions hardest hit by the steel crisis. In 2015, youth unemployment in Charleroi, one of Wallonia’s largest cites was approximately 44 percent. It is understandable why so many Walloons are seeking to elect a new anti-establishment left wing government. While the PS has been the most popular party since Wallonia gained autonomous governance, they are losing support to the more radical PTB. While radical parties seek solidarity, they are most likely to create division in the process. Both the social divide

Photo By Natalie Carroll, COM ‘19

between the rich and the poor and the divide between regions run the risk of drastically widening, as economic disparity between the two regions continues to grow to this day.

Belgium, just like many other nation states, formed without regard to regional representation and is now experiencing problems predestined by its history. It may be presumptive to suggest solutions to a deep seeded historical problem, but success has been found in other countries that have had similar problems. The mitigation of separatist tendencies depends on each country’s situation, but many successful remedies to separatism involve both political reform and economic intervention.

The CETA controversy can serve as an impetus for Belgian patriots to campaign for a more perfect union. While the initial rejection of CETA by the Walloon parliament may have portrayed the region as a spoiler for Belgium and the rest of the European Union, it opens the lid on the long-standing problems to the rest of the European Union and the rest of the world.

We must consider regional unity if we expect a transnational union to exist. While country wide economic strife is common to Eastern Europe, regional disparity is a force that is contributing to dissatisfaction in Western Europe.

Belgium’s disunity can be seen as a function of historical, economic, and political strife. The mending of this disunity must include both economic and political reforms that serve to uplift the entire population of Belgium.

Fall 2017

62

An Analysis of China’s Economic Future

By Tal Dickstein CAS ‘19 A quick Google search for news on China will have you believing that the nation will return to its full glory as the Celestial Empire the next day.

China is continuously hailed as a rising or emerging superpower by academics and countries alike. A 2014 PEW research paper on the global balance of power discovered that about 50% of the 20 countries surveyed believe that China will replace the US as a superpower if it hasn’t already while only 30% believe it will never happen . It is worth noting that the 30% who believe otherwise consist of countries with staunch anti-Chinese stances such as South Korea, Japan, and Vietnam. This is a significant 22% jump from the last time this survey was conducted in 2008. Regardless of China’s rise (but certainly a result of it), its overtly aggressive actions in the South China Sea and talk of possible war with several ASEAN countries and even the United States make it a nation of global intrigue.

There exists a marked difference between current popular opinion, as discussed above, and the focus of recent literature on the region. Michael R. Auslin, a professor at Yale and researcher for a prominent think tank known as the American Enterprise Institute, believes that most predictions on China’s future are too ‘rosy’ and that too “little attention has been paid to understanding the broader economic showdown that could cause global growth to grind to a halt. Or how the combination of nationalism and miscalculation

could result in armed conflict over territorial disputes. A succession of crises could in turn lead to political upheaval and revolution, plunging some societies into civil war and crushing democracies in others.”

This is a sentiment reminiscent of that of former Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao’s 2007 remark, in which he outlined China’s growth trajectory as “unstable, unbalanced, uncoordinated, and unsustainable.” This shift in opinion comes following recent speculation regarding China’s rising capitaloutput ratio, a metric for efficiency, and slowing GDP growth. A higher capital-output ratio means that the cost of producing one more unit of output increases, resulting in greater inefficiencies. China’s GDP growth, a measure of its productivity, has fallen from around 11% growth to around 7% growth in the last six years . While a slowdown of growth is to be expected after decades on the rise, it is the uncertainty around the accuracy of these numbers that is cause for concern. It’s been known for years that Chinese officials have been manipulating information before it goes public, but it’s the story that these actions tell that is damning.

Stanford professor and acclaimed researcher, Dr. Alice Lyman Miller asserts that a superpower is a country that has the power to project dominating influence anywhere in the world by economic, military, and political means. China does not currently have the capabilities to dominate the

world as an economic superpower due to problems originating in its formal institutions and factor markets as a result of poor policymaking.

Weak Formal Institutions Institutions are the rules by which organizations such as firms and individuals operate.

Douglass North splits institutions into two types: formal and informal. Formal institutions are comprised of laws, property rights, constitutions, and other similar objects that form proper rules while informal institutions are cultural and relate to societal traditions, codes of conduct, and more . Institutions are important for several reasons. First, a country with strong institutions is a more viable and favored candidate for inward Foreign Direct Investment (FDI). Additionally, it is believed that institutional strength is directly correlated with maintaining and translating short-term gains into the long term.

China ranks 58th percentile (78th of 190 countries measured) of the World Bank’s Ease of Doing Business Index. The Ease of Doing Business Index is often used as a variable to represent institutional strength in a region. China’s relatively low ranking demonstrates that its institutions are lacking, especially when compared to the United States, which ranks in the 96th percentile on the Ease of Doing Business Index.

Debunking The Myth Given all of this, it seems counterintuitive for China to have Photo By Michael Yang, CAS’18

63 such high levels of inward FDI when it has weak institutions; however, this is not actually the case. When controlled for population and GDP per capita, China’s FDI inflows are at the same level as other emerging economies . There is no such thing as “Chinese Exceptionalism” playing a role here. That being said, there was a jump in the percentage of FDI coming into China after Deng Xiaoping’s 1993 Southern Tour, but all benefits of these inflows diminished as subsequent FDI growth dropped off every year after.

The National Bureau of Economic Research released a working paper in 2007 spearheaded by Joseph P.H. Fan that ran a statistical analysis of China’s FDI in relation to its institutions. The research concluded that the power of the rule of law and the government’s track record lend themselves to lower FDI in China than previously thought, and that China’s overall rapid growth meant this fact was not immediately discernible at first glance . This is a challenge for a country like China that is now extremely dependent on investment as it experiences increased diminishing returns on inputs. This will be discussed at length in the Factor Market Distortion section.

The Domestic Problem China’s weak institutions have adversely affected its own domestic market. The government’s policies to incentivize foreign investment have left domestic firms unable to realize these same investment opportunities; domestic firms are now hesitant to enter high-return, high-tech industries that are traditionally dominated by foreign companies. When coupled with

China’s incredibly high savings rate, this impedes Chinese citizens from earning higher incomes and doesn’t bode well for the country on the whole . Policymakers have been trying to push from an input-heavy economy to a consumption-based one, but China’s savings rate of about 50% makes such a shift difficult.

Furthermore, Between 1980 and 2010, China experienced worsening corruption, resulting in reduced expansion opportunities for those private domestic firms that did not have the means to pay off greedy officials. Such corruption can be attributed to a weak judicial infrastructure during the start of the reform period. Furthermore, reports indicate that China’s ongoing anticorruption movements might have had no real effect on corruption and that the problem may have even worsened over the last several years .

Factor Market Distortion The factor market is a supply-side marketplace where organizations can buy services relating to the factors of productions. These factors (ie. land, labor, and capital) are inputs that firms use to transform raw materials into finished goods. In conjunction with the Solow Growth Model, businesses and governments alike manipulate these inputs to maximize productivity.

A market distortion occurs when a non-market force, usually governmental, intervenes in a market and enacts policies that alter the current market equilibrium. This change in equilibrium values causes a country to lose potential output in the form of deadweight loss. China’s rapid growth over the last three or so decades is partially a result of government policy fixing distortions

The International Relations Review through economic reform; however, the manner in which the government attempted to fix issues in the short run ironically resulted in significant challenges in the long run. The government’s insistence on controlling every step of the reform process, from brainstorming to post-reform industry protection, led to a series of capital allocation and labor problems that have dangerous repercussions for China today.

What Does This Mean For China?

Land, labor and capital are still controlled and restricted, though less so than before. Despite recent economic liberalization, there are still large market distortions that have arisen through the Hukou system, one-child policy, and preferential State Owned Enterprise (SOE) treatment. The effects of the current distortions are examples of underlying issues that have become more prominent. The 2010 Fall edition of the Asian Economic Papers featured a study by Yiping Huang and Kunyu Tao, professors from two of China’s top universities, that placed an emphasis on the Current Account surplus as a result of the governments many subsidies for SOE producers . This ongoing industry protection at the cost of the private sector has helped cause issues from rising input costs to provincial inequality.

Capital At the turn of the millennium, the Chinese government attempted to rectify the income gap between inland and coastal provinces through the Great Western Development Strategy. Its purpose was to revitalize the economies of the western provinces by redirecting mostly foreign investment, in

Fall 2017 to these areas. The Strategy did not work as intended, however; foreign investment actually decreased many western regions due to what foreign investors saw as increased central control because of local government preference to almost exclusively invest in SOEs. This FDI reduction in the west is one of the main reasons behind the Total Factor Productivity growth reduction from 2000 to 2007.

TFP is often used as a substitute for technological innovation when dealing with growth to signify the level of efficiency in a firm or country. Initial TFP growth increased because of policies during economic reform from 1985 to 1997, but these advances were all offset in the following ten years because of the long-term distortions the aforementioned policies created.

An analysis of the capitaloutput ratio over the last several decades corroborates this conclusion, as it has become more expensive to produce an additional dollar of output. In 1980, an extra dollar of output required two units of capital whereas now, an extra dollar requires six units.

The increase in the capitaloutput ratio, proof of diminishing marginal returns, and a decrease in TFP growth, has lead to an increase in manufacturing costs and subsequent price shocks in China. These effects have resulted in a dramatic decrease in the foreign investment that China is still heavily dependent on.

Labor China’s population is aging rapidly during a time when it needs more people working than ever before. As of 2015, China’s labor force accounted for about 68% of

the population, down 5% in 20 years, with the participation rate projected to drop by approximately 12% of the current value to 60% in another twenty years. This decrease in workers threatens to reduce total productivity and slow growth even further.

This problem is only exacerbated by the fact that China’s fertility rate is low, with a current rate of about 1.6 births per woman.

Additionally, as of right now, China’s dependency ratio is estimated to be 2:1 by 2035, meaning that each retiree will be supported by two workers via taxes, a drastic decrease from the 2015 rate of 5.5 workers per retiree.

This is highly unsustainable in a country with meager social welfare offerings and low pension rates. In order to sustain a dependency ratio as high as the one estimated by 2035, the Chinese government will have to increase social welfare spending dramatically as it simultaneously confronts massive debt and decreases in production.

Unfortunately for China, increased lifespans and working hours coupled with decreases in disposable incomes, means that this trend is unlikely to reverse -- even with the lifting of the one child policy. China’s current situation is similar to the one the United States and Japan, among other countries, found themselves in not too long ago with only one important difference: in China’s case, the middle class is not as rich or as young, leading to uncertainty and concern regarding China’s performance in the years to come.

Ultimately, China’s future economic prospects are limited by the government’s poor past policy

64 decisions that have now resulted in diminishing foreign investment just as overall production in the country becomes increasingly expensive.

This is the result of a potent combination of corruption, loss of labor (future expectations of said loss), and a relatively undeveloped middle class.

Qualifications It should be noted that nothing is set in stone and future positive policy decisions can still help China overcome the challenges ahead; This is especially true when it comes to combatting what the Economist and Forbes call “The End of Cheap China” with China’s high rates of intra-Asian investment both independently and through the Asian Infrastructure and Investment Bank (AIIB) . In line with the AIIB, China’s One Belt One Road initiative (OBOR), is strategically placed to shower the country with relevance and capital should things go awry.

Additionally, China’s decreasing rate of GDP growth to indicates a decrease in productivity, but another reason for this drop is that the sheer amount GDP grew by made the following year’s increase seem smaller despite this not necessarily being the case.

For example, if a country starts off with $1 million in year 1 and gains another million by year 2, it shows 100% growth. If this same country increases productivity by another million dollars by year 3, it only shows 50% growth despite productivity not falling. This doesn’t mean that China is in the clear in this regard, but just that interested researchers, myself included, should watch this rate closely in the future.

Photo By Michael Yang, CAS’18

65

The International Relations Review

The Nicaragua Canal:

A Doomed and Desperate Project

By David Damiano, CAS ‘21 In September 2012, Nicaragua’s President Daniel Ortega announced that his government had signed a memorandum with a Hong Kong based company called HKND for the construction of what was to be known as the Great Interocean Canal of Nicaragua; in layman terms, the Nicaragua Canal.

The announced project caused shockwaves around the world, as such a project would theoretically cause a dramatic transformation of international commerce and shipping lanes. Furthermore, it was an indication of China’s growing power as an international power, threatening the United States in America’s own backyard. Yet now the project, where construction was supposed to begin in the latter half of 2016, is now facing setbacks which may threaten its viability. The ramifications of such a project have also been brought to light amidst the stagnation of the HKND, and raises the question: is this canal worth it for Nicaragua?

President Ortega, who came to power in 1979 following a successful revolution, has sold the canal as a future source of immense profit and prosperity. Ortega describes the project as the second phase of the revolution and promises that upon completion the canal will create 250,000 jobs for Nicaragua.

Ideally, the canal will boost trade through Nicaragua immensely, improving the second poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere’s economy, as well as that of its neighbors and fellow members of

the commercial pact North Triangle of Central America (Triángulo Norte de Centroamérica).The canal also would serve as a political victory for Ortega and his allies. Juan Sebastian Chamorro, the director of an economic think tank stated that “The canal has been part of the Nicaraguan psyche for centuries.

If Laureano [Ortega’s chosen successor] turns out to be the guy who went to China and made the canal happen, then that would be a great platform [for a presidential election campaign].”

However, despite these anticipated benefits, the project suffers from systemic flaws that deem its success improbable and the ramifications enormous. The initial and perhaps most damning flaw in the project is the geography of Nicaragua. One of the main selling points of the future Canal is that it will be wider than the nearby Panama Canal, accommodating Triple E class container ships that are currently unable to pass through the Panama Canal. However, the obstacles facing such an endeavor are incredible. The idea for the canal is that it will connect to Lake Nicaragua, thus shortening the dig area. However, the Lake is too shallow as such to admit large commercial ships. Therefore the channels across would need to be dredged to deepen the Lake, but even still ships would need to cruise at much slower speeds than they would in the artificial parts of the canal. Consequently, current estimates state that it would take a

ship 30 hours to cross through the canal, as opposed to the 8-10 hour traversing time in the Panama Canal. Besides the increased travel times, dredging Lake Nicaragua would have potentially disastrous environmental consequences, as disturbing the floor could disturb huge amounts of potentially toxic sediment. Furthermore, connecting the Lake to the ocean could damage the currently flourishing freshwater ecosystem.

Centro Humboldt, an internationally renowned environmental group, reported after a two-year investigation that the canal posed an extraordinary environmental risk and that there will be insufficient water to maintain the canal by 2039. The environmental consequences of this project have caused outrage in the region. Roger Garcia Rios, a retired biology professor, argued that “... this project is brutal...It’s inhumane and unpatriotic. Any risk to our lake is unacceptable and we will do everything humanly possible to protect it. Without water, there is no life.”

Besides the environmental consequences, protests have focused on the social impact that the canal would have. According to a report

by Amnesty International, the construction of the canal would forcibly displace an estimated 120,000 people, including many from the Rama and Creole communities who live in protected indigenous territories. HKND officials, under the protection of

Fall 2017 Nicaraguan authorities, reportedly visited lands without the consent of the inhabitants to conduct measurements. There is little the locals can do about this egregious invasion of private property as laws enacted by the Ortega government reportedly “authorizes HKND to expropriate whatever land it wants, while denying displaced families the right to appeal.”

With a recent surge in protests, stories of clashes between protesters and police have emerged.

Octavio Ortega, a leader of the opposition to the canal, recounts being brutally beaten by police and illegally imprisoned following a protest in 2015. Ortega and his followers stopped traffic every half hour to tell the drivers “we don’t want to sell our properties, we have never put our properties up for sale, and we don’t want Lake Nicaragua to be destroyed.” Despite being peaceful in nature, Ortega was imprisoned for his protests and held in prison for seven days, despite Nicaraguan law stating that prisoners can only be held for 48 hours before being released or taken before judicial authorities.

More recently, the InterAmerican Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) granted protection to a Nicaraguan rural leader Francisca Rivera. The IACHR granted their protection due to threats, harassment, and violence subjected upon Rivera

by Nicaraguan authorities for her protests of the canal. Monica Lopez, a lawyer for Rivera’s National Council in Defense of Our Lake, Land, and Sovereignty, stated that the IACHR’s protection represented the agency’s “recognition of the countless number of abuses that the rural movement has suffered [protesting] the outrage that is the

66 canal concession.”

Finally, the supposed economic benefits, which make up the basis of President Ortega’s endorsement for the canal, are likely to be vastly overstated and the cost of the project, in both fiscal, social, and environmental terms, is likely to greatly exceed the future profits. The first issue is the cost of construction.

When the plan was announced in 2013, the estimated total cost was $40 billion, but has since been raised to $50 billion. “Whatever figure they give you, you just multiply by two,” said geographer Jean-Paul Rodrigue. Less biased analysts have reported an estimated cost between $70 to $100 billion, or nearly seven to ten times Nicaragua’s current GDP. Further criticism of Ortega’s rosy assessment of the canal’s economic benefits is that there is simply not enough demand in the region to make two canals economically viable. “The Nicaraguan canal is at this point a gigantic white elephant,” said Jean-Paul Rodrigue, a prominent Canadian transport geographer at Hofstra University. “Most people in the industry think there is not, within a foreseeable future, enough demand.” Oscar Bazan, executive vice president of the Panama Canal Authority estimated that “if you put all that cargo together there is not enough cargo volume for two canals,” and that the Nicaragua Canal was not a “feasible investment from a private investment standpoint.”

As the Nicaragua Canal would have to compete with its Panamanian counterpart, the advantages that the Panama Canal currently has over Nicaragua’s envisioned canal suggests that the former would likely still be the canal of choice for commercial vessels. The shorter

traverse time (8-10 hours versus 30 hours) through the Panama Canal would make it far more rational for vessels to choose to go through Panama rather than Nicaragua.

Given that it would take over a day to traverse the Nicaragua Canal, commercial ships would have to debate between docking or attempting to sail overnight. A counterargument to the greater travel time through the canal is that despite it, ships traveling from Asia to the US Gulf Coast would rather go through Nicaragua as it is 500 nautical miles closer than Panama. However, it is still likely that this shortcut would not save significant time given the relative inefficiencies of the Nicaragua Canal. Due to these inefficiencies, consultant to the South China Morning Post Andy Lane estimated that the Nicaragua Canal could only admit on average 16 ships a day as opposed to Panama’s average of 34. Compounding the project’s financial issues, HKND’s president Wang Jing reportedly lost nearly $9 billion in net worth following the Chinese stock market crash in 20152016. Given the glaring problems facing the canal’s economic viability, the project’s future looks murkier every day.

Yet despite all of these environmental, social, and economic criticisms, President Ortega still anticipates constructing the canal. Bianca Jagger, the Nicaraguan human rights activist, summed up thusly: “Daniel Ortega seems determined to go ahead with a nefarious mega-project … [but] the canal is not financially viable, it is an insane project that would cause harm to the people of Nicaragua, irreparable damage to our water sources, to our rainforests, to our environment. If allowed to go ahead, Photo By Morgan Peterson, CAS’17

67 daunting: how can he elevate Nicaragua out of crushing poverty and make his country economically feasible and interesting in an increasingly globalized international economy? This is the dilemma that all developing countries will have to face sometime in the immediate future. While it is easy to criticize Ortega for acting like a neoliberal dictator, inconsideration for Nicaragua’s genuine issues is a mistake. Nicaraguan National security minister Dr Paul Oquist in an Oxford Union debate, summarized Nicaragua’s dilemma: “the root cause of our crisis:

The International Relations Review the endless, limitless, mindless accumulation and concentration of capital on a planet with limited resources.”

It ought to be acknowledged, however, that the Nicaragua Canal is not the solution to Nicaragua’s problems. The externalities that it brings would severely damage the nation’s environment, fragment society, and indebt the government immensely. Instead, this failed endeavor ought to be viewed as a consequence of a globalized world; in a world where the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, the poor will begin to resort to desperate means

to sustain themselves. Chinese interest and investment in poor nations such as Nicaragua, but also in Africa and other Latin American nations, shows its willingness to attempt to bridge the gap between the developed and undeveloped worlds. While this project may end in failure, it is a sign of a change in the global order and perhaps a foreshadowing of things to come.

Photo By Morgan Peterson, CAS’17

BOOK REVIEWS 69

Talking to the Enemy By: Yoni Tobin, CAS’21

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Activists Beyond Borders: Advocacy Networks in International Politics By: Adia Armstrong, CAS’20

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ISIS: The State of Terror By: Adia Armstrong, CAS’20

Photo By Natalie Carroll, COM ‘19

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The International Relations Review

Thinking Differently About Terrorism On “Talking to The Enemy” by Scott Atran

By Yoni Tobin CAS’21 Why do people become jihadists?

The question has been posed, in some form or another, countless times, by everyone from exhausted members of intelligence agencies to young children. The question was most notably asked in stark terms by then-President George W. Bush soon after 9/11: “Why do they hate us?” In his book Talking to the Enemy, Scott Atran sets out to find the answers. A cognitive anthropologist, Atran tries to find the answers by approaching the issue from that angel, rather than from the perspective of a traditional counterterrorism expert. Looking at the topic through fresh eyes, or so he claims, Atran explains the root cause of terrorism in stark terms: “People don’t simply kill and die for a cause. They kill and die for each other.”

Atran’s argument, at its core, is sound. Examining the cases of terrorists from al-Qaeda, the Taliban, Hamas, and other organizations, Atran concludes that overwhelmingly, terrorists “willing to go kill and die for jihad were campmates, school buddies, soccer pals, and the like, who become die-hard bands of brothers in a … quest to save their imagined tribal community from Crusaders, Jews, and other morally deformed … subhuman beings.” Consider the case of the four 9/11 hijackers who lived together in Hamburg, Germany, whom Atran accurately characterizes as a “network of friends and fellow travelers in search of making sense of their

lives” rather than having been radicalized or recruited. As a result, any true comprehension of terrorists will come, argues Atran, “from understanding group dynamics, not individual psychology.”

Atran’s theory of group dynamics as a leading cause of terrorism is also supported by evidence. Drawing from a wealth of anthropological and sociological research, Atran’s best literary tool is his use of examples. The examples, both historical and contemporary, have the dual purpose of strengthening Atran’s arguments and also making them accessible to readers who lack an anthropological background. In one three-page stretch, Atran seamlessly interweaves references to Aristotle, Alexander the Great, Osama bin Laden, and the Ohio State football team. Though Atran’s work is commendable for its insights on group dynamics, it also has its fair share of shortcomings.

While Atran’s overall point about the role of group dynamics and terrorism is strong, it is incomplete, it disregards ideology as a driving force behind terrorism. Atran assumes a number of different roles throughout the book—anthropologist, evolutionary biologist, and historian, to name just a few—but one he should have forgone is the role of mind reader.

At times, it seems the title of the book should have been Talking for the Enemy, rather than Talking to the Enemy. Take, for example, this sentence by Atran: “Islam

and religious ideology aren’t the principal causes of suicide bombing and terror in today’s world.” Then, contrast it with this sentence from Osama bin Laden: “I’m fighting so I can die a martyr and go to heaven to meet God.” Or this one, from the official publication of ISIS: “We hate [Westerners], first and foremost, because you are disbelievers; you reject the oneness of Allah.” Ignoring the motivations that terrorists themselves claim weakens Atran’s overall argument.

Atran’s attempts at outsideof-the-box thinking have the tendency to barrel unreservedly into the absurd. For example, Atran claims that when it comes to producing terrorism, radical Islam is no more culpable than— get this—soccer. And there’s just sentences like this: “’What does obesity have to do with terrorism?’’

Atran waggishly ponders, “Well, nothing … and everything.”

Atran’s decoupling of ideology and terrorism is not his only troubling claim in the book.

He is also woefully off-base when it comes to the degree of danger that global jihadism presents. At one point, Atran states that the threat of terrorism is relatively insignificant in the grand scheme of things: “The physical threat to our population is extremely low, if fairly constant, and by no means poses any serious threat to our nation’s existence or infrastructure.” Put simply, Atran believes that, left alone, terrorism would pose virtually no serious threat. However, what seems to

Fall 2017

elude Atran is the possibility that terrorism has been restrained by the same sorts of reaction and defenses that he bemoans on the very next page, when he criticizes the U.S. government for expending resources on counterterrorism efforts and for

70

declaring a Global War on Terror.

Atran also characterizes the policy of “focusing on troop strength and drones, trying to win over people by improving their lives with Western-style aid programs” as a failure. The evidence that it was

a failure? The fact that terrorist attacks in Afghanistan increased along with troop increases. Even setting aside the age-old warning about correlation not equaling causation, the number of fatalities due to terrorism in Afghanistan nearly doubled between 2012 and 2015, a period during which U.S. troop presence in Afghanistan went from around 90,000 troops to fewer than 10,000. Atran’s minimizing of the danger of terrorism shows a troubling dismissal of the threat it presents.

Talking to the Enemy can best be summarized by a sentence from the book which appears in an entirely unrelated context, when talking about technological efforts to thwart potential terrorists: “Billions have been spent in the airy realm of widgetry, but next to nothing has been spent on field research.” The “widgetry” is the fascinating analysis of the world, both past and present, that Atran brings to the table, and the gripping writing that it is packaged in. It is, however, an “airy realm” indeed. The conclusions that Atran comes away with would be far more complete if they included “field research,” basic observations about the overlap between ideology and terrorism, and the resultant threat it entails.

Talking to the Enemy is certainly a worthwhile read. And yet, it is quite a frustrating one—not because it misses the point entirely, because it doesn’t, but because it goes right up to the point, stares it down, and turns away.

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Holding Us Accountable

The International Relations Review

“Activists Beyond Borders: Advocacy Networks in International Politics,”

by Margaret E. Keck and Kathryn Sikkink

By Adia Armstrong CAS’20 Transnational Advocacy Networks (TANs): “a networks of activists, distinguishable largely by the centrality of principled ideas or values in motivating their formation.”

In 1998, Margaret Keck, a Professor Emeritus and Academy Professor in John Hopkins University’s Political Science department and Katheryn Sikkink, a Fulbright scholar and Professor of Human Rights Policy at Harvard University, teamed up to write the book Activists beyond Borders: Advocacy Networks in International Politics. They argue that “[w]hen they succeed, advocacy networks are among the most important sources of new ideas, norms, and identities in the international system.” Keck and Sikkink focus on the three most prominent and influential topics for TANs: human rights, environmental rights and women’s rights; in particular violence against women.

Keck and Sikkink “suggest that scholars of international relations should pay more attention to network forms of organizationcharacterized by voluntary, reciprocal, and horizontal exchanges of information and services.” Networks that are driven by volunteers who care about an issue, not for the money, but for the shear success of the cause are hard to deter and hard to silence. More so, these issues pertain to a large portion of the world’s population.

Advocacy networks target not only policymakers, but the general public to rally support, and funds, for their causes. Many people of the general population either relate personally

to some of the issues TANs support, like women’s rights, while others sympathize and feel empathetic for other causes, like human rights.

And as for environmental rights, there is a large enough proportion of the world’s population that agree that environmental rights are as relevant as ever in today’s society and is something everyone should be actively seeking to improve.

The power of TANs come the multitude of voices that “argue, persuade, strategize, document, lobby, pressure, complain” and relentlessly call for action on topics that too often get pushed to the wayside. TANs bring a humanitarian aspect to policies that decisionmakers try to implement. They influence international policy, as well as domestic issues and take the responsibility of letting the world know of any transgressions that they do not agree with. By not only advocating for issues that are in their self-interest, TANs target the public, through strategic transmission of information and ideas, as a means of additional voices to aid in their persuasion of government policies.

Keck and Sikkink outline that TANs are effective in “framing debates and getting issues on the agenda; by encouraging discursive commitments from states and other policy actors; by causing procedural change at the international and domestic level; by affecting policy; and by influencing behavior changes in target actors.” For example, in their 2012-2013 annual report, Amnesty International, one of the most powerful transnational

advocacy networks in the world, outlined how they helped influence the Qatari government to commission an international law firm to review migrant worker conditions in Qatar regarding their preparation for the 2022 FIFA World Cup. Amnesty International is one of many networks that come out Margaret E. Keck and Kathryn Sikkink, Activists Beyond Borders: Advocacy Networks in International Politics, with annual reports on their progress and impact in their fields, which is tangible proof of the effectiveness and necessity of TANs.

TANs are about challenging morality on the domestic and international stage. Human rights are about empathy and combatting censorship. Every human on this earth is entitled to certain inalienable rights and women’s rights organizations in particular, ensure that these privileges and rights are upheld for women everywhere.

Environmental rights are about making countries around the globe take responsibility for the world in which we live, and take ownership of nurturing and preserving it. And these are only the issues that this book touches on. There are many other topics and voices that TANs ensure do not get lost in the wind.

Transnational Advocacy Networks are about accountability. After all, Francis Fukuyama, an economic and political scientist as well as author, agrees that “[t]he erosion of the state-centered international order is nowhere more evident than in the rise of a host of transnational activist groups.”

Fall 2017

Terrorism: Why We Care And How We Can Stop It

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“ISIS: The State of Terror,” by Jessica Stern and J. M. Berger

By Adia Armstrong CAS’20 ISIS. Extremism. Radicalism. Islam.

Insurgency.

Fundamentalism.

Terrorism. Complex terms that have been detrimentally oversimplified in today’s media. News outlets recklessly use these terms whenever there is a terrorist attack, sometimes with no regard to the mass assumptions and incorrect insinuations these words carry. Few take the time to truly understand the concept of terrorism or the people behind it. Despite all the coverage, definite answers to the following questions have yet to be answered: Who are these men? Where did they come from? What do they want? 1 ; and probably the most important question of all, How do we stop them?

Published in 2015, Jessica Stern and J.M. Berger explore those questions in their book, ISIS: The State of Terror. Stern, a Guggenheim fellow and research professor at Boston University’s Pardee School of Global Studies, and Berger, an analyst and fellow for the International Centre for Counter-Terrorism at The Hague, are two expects in the field of terrorism who answer the former questions and propose the potential solutions to the latter.

But, so what? Why should the world care about terrorism?

Well, to put it plainly, it is the communism of our age. According to Nasser Balochi, a member of ISIS’s social media team, “This is a war of ideologies as much as it is a physical

war.” Terrorism is the manifestation of forced Western ideology and institutions that ended up failing in places that never asked it in the first place. The world should care about terrorism because it “inspires oaths of loyalty and acts of violence in nearly every corner of the globe.”

This book argues that to truly halt terrorism in its tracks, the Western world needs to put these terrorist groups in perspective and control the narrative by manipulating the way in which Western countries react to terrorist attacks. Instead of being bated into another invasion or war, the West should strategically cut off ISIS’s main means of power and influence. Cutting off ISIS’s human capital, money, and especially their social media presence, 5 are the ways in which Stern and Berger claim the world should tackle ISIS – essentially, by using brains, not brawn.

ISIS.Extremism. Radicalism.

Islam. Insurgency. Fundamentalism.

Terrorism. All words that have become a part of everyday life.

A constant fear that would be preferably forgotten just as quickly as it emerged. A popular argument, one endorsed by Stern and Berger is that Western intervention created and fueled the ugly, infectious disease we call terrorism. Michiko Kakutani, a journalist for the New York Times, agrees that “the role that missteps

and disastrous decision- making on the part of the United States played [a part] in fueling the rise of the Islamic State and its antecedents and affiliates.” With that mind, armed with these potential solutions, it is only fitting, that the West should take ownership of its creation and put a stop to its own, self-created, war on terror. ISIS: The State of Terror strives to get people to rethink the way ISIS operates. This book challenges the international community to think outside the box on how to tackle extremist and proposes realistic and practical ways we can begin combatting terrorism purposefully.

Photo By Kexin Yang, CAS’19

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The International Relations Review

Editorial:

The Biggest Lie in Human Rights History

By Raina Kadavil, CAS ‘19

In 1948, the world unanimously chose to paint the name “genocide” onto the mass killing and human rights atrocities they had witnessed, and turned the words “never again” into a call of action. Today, the idea of “human rights” is mainstream and legitimized: the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court preserve it, the United Nations discusses it, local high school classes teach it, and revolutions like the Arab Spring demand it. In recent years, we have seen an international ban on land mines, censored information about human rights violations released, the trade of arms to commit crimes against humanity forbidden, and deeply entrenched gender-, sexuality-, and race-based discrimination outlawed around the world. And yet, we have been unable to keep our promise to the millions of victims who prompted us to say “never again” in the first place.

In the 21st century, genocide is all but gone: if anything, its incidence has increased, and little has been done by world powers to combat it. Twelve or more countries have suffered major genocides since the Holocaust: Guatemala (1962-66), Bangladesh (1971), East Timor (197599), Burundi (1972, 1993), Cambodia (1975-79), Guatemala (1981-83), Iraq (1986), Somalia (1988), Bosnia (199295), Rwanda (1994), Sudan (2004 – present), Syria (2014-present). Onto this stage is now added Myanmar, the newest of the world’s genocides.

The seeds of genocide have been festering in Myanmar for years, and could easily have been recognized by the rest of the world, had they been paying attention. The Buddhist majority-led government has called the minority Muslim population (or

Rohingya) illegal immigrants from Bangladesh and aimed discrimination campaigns at them since the 1970s.

The Rohingya are considered to be agents of the nefarious Islamic caliphate that seeks to take root around the world and in Myanmar.

They have been prohibited from becoming citizens, traveling without official permission, and having more than two children, and were subject to routine labor. Extremist Buddhist monks have been calling the minority Muslim population (or the Rohingya) reincarnations of snakes and insects and spreading the word that their killing would be more like pest control than a crime. Every genocide begins with a similar dehumanization campaign before blood is ever spilled.

The outburst of violence in 2016, however, transformed matters in Myanmar from discrimination into genocide.

Myanmar’s Rakhine state once contained over one million Rohingya people who have lived there for generations. An attack on border police posts in the Rakhine State by Rohingya insurgents gave the Myanmar army the justification they needed to begin a fully-fledged armed campaign against the Rohingya population. Blockades, starvation, arbitrary arrest, extra-judicial killings, burning of homes, mass killing of children, gang rapes, and looting have been reported, leaving hundreds of Rohingya dead. The military justifies these attacks as necessary to strangle the militant Rohingya insurgents who started the violence in October.

In early August 2017, the genocide developed into a refugee crisis. The Myanmar military began a “systematic” cleansing of their country by driving hundreds

of thousands of Rohingya out of Myanmar. As of October 2017, over 500,000 Rohingya (nearly half of the Rohingya population) has fled Myanmar. Many have attempted to resettle in neighboring Bangladesh, but as a developing nation itself, Bangladesh has been understandably reluctant to accept so many new people into its own infrastructure.

India and Nepal, too, have responded inhospitably, deporting Rohingya refugees and barring more from entering. This has left hundreds of thousands of Rohingya displaced and settled in makeshift camps along the Bangladesh-Myanmar border.

In summary, the United Nations has labeled the Rohingya among the world’s “least wanted” people.

Since the Holocaust, the United States and its ally nations have invaded, sent humanitarian aid to, and started military campaigns in a number of countries for a number of purposes including removing dictators, keeping communism at bay, and protecting oil interests. So why have they not kept their 1948 promise and intervened where it is needed most? The United States has refused even to recognize and denounce the Rwandan Genocide, and even played a part in inciting the Cambodian Genocide.

It was not until midSeptember 2017 that the UN Security Council finally addressed the ongoing genocide in Myanmar, but China and Russia have historically blocked statements and action addressing the situation. What will be done about the hundreds of thousands of people who are suffering on a fine line between life as a refugee and death, hoping that the world’s apathy will become empathy for them, is yet to be seen.

Photo By Sophie Park, CAS ‘20

Fall 2017

74

Editorial:

Saffron Terror

By Gowtham Asokan, CAS ‘19

There is a specter haunting India, not of fiction but the scepter of Narendra Modi. The saffron tide brought on by the victory of Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has engulfed every nook and corner of Indian society, eroding centuries of pluralistic tradition and discourse.

Narendra Damodardas Modi was pegged to be a reform minded center-right politician with a gift for sweeping oration and as a paragon of moral righteousness. Modi’s roots as a cadre in the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh – A far-right Hindu supremacist organization established his bona fides with the Hindu base in the Indian state of Gujarat. He ascended the political ladder in Gujarat to eventually become its Chief Minister in October 20011 and within months of taking office massive riots between Hindus and Muslims broke out. Thousands died in the ensuing violence, most being Muslims. Modi was silent and compliant with the violence and was ultimately an enabler for violence against Muslims.

Modi has prided himself on bringing economic development and prosperity to Gujarat by supposedly adopting Free-market principles and wished to translate that onto the national stage, but under closer scrutiny this narrative collapses. The so-called Gujarat model consists of increasing credit accessibility to big enterprises and infrastructure investment and operates on a trickledown model. Trickle-down . However one strong indicator of unequal growth can be seen in Gujarat’s social metrics. Despite having a strong track record of economic growth and some of the country’s most efficient power systems these benefits did not trickle

down as Modi had hoped. While Gujarat’s per capita income is 20% higher than the national income, its rural per capita income is 15% lower than the national average 2. In fact Gujarat ranks 11th out of 23 states in India in the Human Development Index (HDI) at 0.61643, much lower than other industrialized developed states such as Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu at 0.66593 and 0.6663 respectively. The Reserve Bank of India Governor – concluded that Gujarat fell in 12th place out of 29 Indian states in development based off monthly per capita consumption expenditure, education, health, household amenities, poverty rate, female literacy, percent of SCST population, urbanization rate, financial inclusion and connectivity4.

Interestingly enough the Gujarat model has resulted in the highest selfemployment gap between Hindus and Muslims amongst all states 54% per cent of Muslims as opposed to 39% of Hindus are self-employed in the State, which may indicate a lack of opportunities for the ostracized Muslim community in Gujarat.5

With a trickle down model masqueraded as economic reform, how did this fare on a national stage once Modi took office? Fatally.

The reign of terror magnified to a national level with epic proportions of economic mismanagement and exclusion of non-Hindu groups by the Modi administration. Modi’s first attempt to alleviate India’s dysfunctional bureaucracy began with his demonetization policy that was not only going to remove black money notes out of circulation but also digitize India’s economy. The Faustian bargain backfired as 15.28 trillion rupees ($239 billion)6 of

the cancelled notes were deposited or exchanged for new currency; this was nearly 99%6 of the notes in circulation before demonetization without declaring it on tax forms. Not only did the intended effect not work but also GDP growth slowed to 5.7% in the first quarter of 2017 compared to 7.9%6 from the previous year.

The Modi administration’s rebuttal has been that this will put Indians on the digital grid to hold them accountable for taxation and prevent tax evasion. Not only did this help the rich legitimize their black money into white money but also stripped the poor of their spending ability in sacrifice for the nation. The booming economic reforms deflate when actually put into practice and the response has been to muzzle criticism and dissent.

Where the previous government was characterized by complacency through its many scandals and crippling bureaucracy, the BJP led government is characterized by its cruelty for the underprivileged and negligence of democratic norms and institutions.

Whatever freedom found within India was not created by the Indian constitution but through years of pluralistic culture and discourse to which great emperors like Akbar and Ashoka contributed. To quote the independence fighter and framer of the Constitution Dr. Ambedkar “We must stand on our own feet and fight as best as we can for our rights. So carry on your agitation and organize your forces. Power and prestige will come to you through struggle”7 It’s in the citizens’ hands to reclaim their democracy and country from the Saffron terror.

Photo By Raina Kadavil, CAS ‘19

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The International Relations Review

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About the IR Review

The International Relations Review, ISSN 2152-738X, is a subsidiary of the Boston University International Affairs Association. The IR Review is an international relations magazine serving the undergraduate students at Boston University. With a circulation of nearly 1,500 the IR Review is considered Boston University’s premier academic journal.

Since it was founded in 2009, the IR Review has striven to create a forum for students interested in international affairs. The submissions features in the publication cover a myriad of topics and controversies, including but not limited to globalization, international security, human rights, international law and politics and sustainability.

A PDF of the current issue, as well as citations and archives can be viewed online at irreviw.org.

Photo Credit The cover photo used for the Fall 2017 edition of the IR Review was taken by Raina Kadavil, CAS ‘19 Photos used in the contents page were taken by: Jessica Mansur, CAS’18 Sophie Park, CAS’20 Natalie Carroll, COM’19 Rebecca Faroro Giovannetti, CAS’19 Danielle Wallner, CAS’19 Raina Kadavil, CAS’19

Partially funded by CAS Student Government

Fall 2017

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