Author

Alex Langsam

Asia Environmental Change Featured Global Health

An Elephant Never Forgets, Unless it’s Proven Science

Over the last ten years, US party politics have prevented climate change from being treated as the national security threat that it is and turned the discourse surrounding it into a political gridlock. Despite the monumental danger posed by climate change, the Republican Party has thrown its head in the sand and neglected the issue because of its religious opposition to the Democratic Party’s platform. Understanding how this happened and its effect on climate change action is key to preventing future policy failures.

By 2016, despite the long-standing scientific consensus, only 48 percent of adults in the United States believed climate change was caused by human activity, with it being no surprise which party skeptics tended to vote for¹. Like healthcare, abortion and immigration, climate change had become a partisan issue in the US, largely opposed by the Republican Party². But it wasn’t always this way.

In the late 2000s, when alarm over climate change was growing and media coverage of the issue increasing, many Republicans seemed to share the concern. John McCain³, Rudy Giuliani⁴ and George W. Bush⁵ all either supported action on climate change or at least admitted its human cause. In 2010, the Department of Defence classified climate change as a national security threat, saying it was already “[observable] in every region of the world, including the United States” and could be an “accelerant of instability or conflict”⁶. Threats to national security, such as war and foreign policy, are usually granted some level of bipartisanship, so activists, scientists and legislators from all sides of politics hoped climate change would be no different⁷.

One of the first tests of climate change bipartisanship came in 2009, with the Obama Administration’s “cap-and-trade” program. Essentially an emissions trading scheme, cap-and-trade was originally a Republican Party policy that had undergone several iterations. The first program was introduced in 1990 by George H. W. Bush, as an amendment to the Clean Air Act. It attempted to prevent acid rain by reducing the sulphur dioxide from power plants⁸. In 2003, another cap-and-trade program, titled the Climate Stewardship Act, was proposed by Republican John McCain in conjunction with Democrat Joseph Lieberman, this time directed at climate change⁹. However, it failed to gain enough votes to pass the senate, and despite repeated attempts in 2005 and 2007, the McCain-Lieberman program never became a reality.

In 2009, shortly after assuming office, the Obama administration tried to establish its own cap-and-trade program but was met with opposition from a large number of Republicans, who claimed its cost would be too high¹⁰. A bill to establish the program was approved by the House of Representatives but never voted on in the Senate. The Democrats prioritized other legislation, after running the numbers and finding they didn’t have enough votes to pass it.

The failure of the cap-and-trade legislation was a turning point in the climate change debate. The Republican Party saw a political opportunity and began to shift its stance on climate change, latching onto right-wing anti-Obama sentiment. Where the debate had previously been about the logistics of climate change policy, the Republican Party instead solidified its opposition to the Democrats. The consensus on climate change eroded into partisan denial¹¹.

After the failure to introduce a cap-and-trade program, things became worse for climate change policy. In October of 2009, a poll from the Pew Research Center showed a decline in the number of Americans who believed there was solid evidence of global temperature rise, down from 47 percent of the population the previous year to 36 percent¹². This statistic was partially indicative of a change in the Republican base. In response to the Obama Administration and its policies, including its proposed cap-and-trade program, the right-wing and climate skeptic activist movement known as the “Tea Party” had grown in popularity, and was successful in gaining seats when the Republicans took control of the House in the 2010 midterm elections¹³. By 2012, climate skepticism was so entrenched in the party that its candidate for the general election, Mitt Romney, was a climate skeptic¹⁴.

The political polarization of climate change gave malignant interests a side to root for. Corporations with profits threatened by climate change regulation recognized a moment of uncertainty and exploited it, spreading disinformation and fueling doubt, using huge amounts of money to muddy the debate around climate change. Between 1998 and 2014, the oil and gas multinational ExxonMobil gave over $30 million to climate denier groups and think tanks¹⁵ and, between 2007 and 2014, donated $1.87 million to climate change-denying Republicans in Congress¹⁶.

Such lobbying, or bribery, continued to occur throughout the 2010s, while the number of Republican climate skeptics in Congress grew from 169 in 2015 to at least 180 by 2016¹⁷. The Republicans fortified their position, with a leadership increasingly dominated by lawmakers representing constituents threatened by climate change regulation, such as workers in the coal and oil industries¹⁸. By the 2016 US election, all of the most prominent Republican presidential candidates were climate change skeptics of some variation, including Jeb Bush, Ben Carson, Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, John Kasich and Donald Trump¹⁹. The party had been well and truly overtaken by an anti-climate change agenda.

This partisanship sets a dangerous precedent for the international community. The US is not just holding itself in the past, but the rest of the world too. As one of the world’s largest carbon dioxide emitters, the US is needed to help lead any global initiative²⁰. France and Germany have tried to champion climate change reform by themselves as well as through the European Union, but they are not nearly as influential as the US and require its support and leadership.

And while efforts to combat climate change stall, something even worse than inaction could occur: other countries might follow the United States’ partisan path. Conservative parties around the world argue about climate change action, and while many of them still only disagree with progressive parties on how to implement regulatory policy, there are some that seem keen to follow the Republicans’ lead and deny climate change science itself²¹.

Australia, for example, implemented the first ever tax on carbon emissions, only for its conservative party to axe it after winning government²². Taking a leaf out of the Republican Party’s book, the conservative Liberal Party of Australia won government after running an election campaign in which their strict partisan opposition to the progressive Labor Party’s policies meant they ended up on the wrong side of climate science. This entrenched climate skepticism into conservative politics in Australia. Since the 2013 election, the Australian Government has found it impossible to pass climate change policy, with an empowered far right climate change skeptic faction holding conservative leaders hostage over the debate.^23,24

Meanwhile, China sits on the sidelines. As a rising global power and the world’s largest carbon dioxide emitter, China is hesitant to take the first step in reducing emissions²⁵. It has recently introduced some measures to mitigate climate change effects, mostly aimed at substituting coal consumption for natural gas and electricity instead²⁶, but despite this, and the fact that it emits less carbon dioxide per capita than developed countries, China’s emissions are increasing, as it continues to develop at an extraordinary rate²⁷.

Unlike the US and Australia, China as a one-party state has no problems with partisan dogma, but it is concerned with maintaining its footing in the international order. China will not combat climate change if it jeopardises its status as a global power. It needs other world leaders, namely the US, to assure it that reducing emissions is not a fool’s folly.

In the US, one of the greatest existential threats to humanity has been reduced to a partisan game. The Republican Party espouses pseudo-science, seduced by corporate bribery and the stench of political opportunity. They camouflage a disregard for expert opinion, and by extent a disregard for the health of the human race, against fiscal and social policies like taxes and healthcare, betting on the fact that even the most intelligent of their voters won’t swap ship because of one issue. In doing so, they’ve shown how alluring polarization for the sake of polarization can be, and how effective powerful corporations are at manipulating political discourse. The evolution of the climate change “debate” shows a vulnerability in democracy, and experts, politicians, and voters will have to keep it in mind for both future climate change policies, as well as other political issues.

Cary Funk & Brian Kennedy, “Public views on climate change and climate scientists,” Pew Research Center, published October 4, 2016, http://www.pewinternet.org/2016/10/04/public-views-on-climate-change-and-climate-scientists/.
Nadja Popovich & Livia Albeck-Ripka, “How Republicans think about climate change – in maps,” New York Times, published December 14, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/12/14/climate/republicans-global-warming-maps.html.
Marianne Lavelle, “John McCain’s climate change legacy,” Inside Climate News, published August 26, 2018, https://insideclimatenews.org/news/26082018/john-mccain-climate-change-leadership-senate-cap-trade-bipartisan-lieberman-republican-campaign.
Joseph Romm, “Rudy Giuliani’s stance on climate and energy,” Grist, published October 19, 2007, https://grist.org/article/global-warming-divides-the-gop-presidential-field/.
George W Bush, “President Bush discusses global climate change,” The White House, published June 11, 2001, https://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2001/06/20010611-2.html.
“Quadrennial Defense Review,” Department of Defense, published February 2010, http://archive.defense.gov/qdr/QDR%20as%20of%2029JAN10%201600.pdf.
John Kerry & Lindsey Graham, “Yes we can (pass climate change legislation),” New York Times, published October 10, 2009, https://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/11/opinion/11kerrygraham.html.
Andrew Restuccia, “Obama: cap-and-trade was a Republican idea,” The Hill, published April 3, 2012, https://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/219753-obama-cap-and-trade-was-a-republican-idea.
Lavelle, “John McCain’s climate change legacy.”
Carl Hulse & David M. Herszenhorn, “Democrats call off climate bill effort,” New York Times, published July 22, 2010, https://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/23/us/politics/23cong.html.
Timothy Cama, “Poll: Partisanship in global warming opinions growing,” The Hill, published March 28, 2018, https://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/380624-partisanship-in-global-warming-opinions-grows.
“Fewer Americans See Solid Evidence of Global Warming,” Pew Research Center, published October 22, 2009, http://www.people-press.org/2009/10/22/fewer-americans-see-solid-evidence-of-global-warming/.
Katie Connolly, “What exactly is the Tea Party,” BBC, published September 16, 2010, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-11317202.
Sarah Childress, “Timeline: the politics of climate change,” PBS, published October 23, 2012, https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/timeline-the-politics-of-climate-change/.
“ExxonMobil Foundation & Corporate giving to climate change denier & obstructionist organizations,” Greenpeace & the Union of Concerned Scientists, published 2014, https://www.ucsusa.org/sites/default/files/attach/2015/07/ExxonMobil-Climate-Denial-Funding-1998-2014.pdf.
Suzanne Goldenberg, “Exxonmobil gave millions to climate-denying lawmakers despite pledge,” The Guardian, published July 15, 2015, https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/jul/15/exxon-mobil-gave-millions-climate-denying-lawmakers.
Molly O’Toole & Keith Johnson, “Climate change is undeniable. So why is the GOP still denying it?” Foreign Policy, published March 11, 2016, https://foreignpolicy.com/2016/03/11/climate-change-is-undeniable-so-why-is-the-gop-still-denying-it/.
Coral Davenport & Eric Lipton, “How GOP leaders came to view climate change as fake science,” New York Times, published June 3, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/03/us/politics/republican-leaders-climate-change.html.
Devin Henry, “Climate change: Where the GOP field stands,” The Hill, published January 23, 2016, https://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/266716-climate-change-where-the-gop-field-stands.
Andriy Blokhin, “The 5 countries that produce the most carbon dioxide,” Investopedia, published September 29, 2015, https://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/092915/5-countries-produce-most-carbon-dioxide-co2.asp.
Sondre Båtstrand, “More than markets: A comparative study of nine conservative parties on climate change,” Politics & Policy 43, 4 (2015): 538-561, https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/polp.12122.
Julia Baird, “A carbon tax’s ignoble end,” New York Times, published July 24, 2014, https://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/25/opinion/julia-baird-why-tony-abbott-axed-australias-carbon-tax.html.
Robinson Meyer, “It’s not just America: Climate policies are stumbling worldwide,” The Atlantic, published November 27, 2018, https://www.theatlantic.com/amp/article/576700/.
Judith Brett, “The Morrison government’s biggest economic problem? Climate change denial,” The Conversation, published October 18, 2018, https://theconversation.com/the-morrison-governments-biggest-economic-problem-climate-change-denial-105125.
Blokhin, “The 5 countries that produce the most carbon dioxide.”
Qi Ye & Jiaqi Lu, “China’s coal consumption has peaked,” Bookings, published January 22, 2018, https://www.brookings.edu/2018/01/22/chinas-coal-consumption-has-peaked/.
Noah Smith, “China is the climate-change battleground,” Bloomberg, published October 14, 2018, https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2018-10-14/china-is-the-climate-change-battleground.

April 28, 2019 0 comment

Featured Global Health

Heads of the Hydra

written by Alex Langsam

In 1993, Colombian troops shot dead the infamous Colombian drug kingpin Pablo Escobar on his rooftop. To celebrate, they fired their guns into the air while chanting “We won!”. Lee Brown, the director of the U.S. National Drug Control Policy at the time, said Escobar’s fate should “serve as an example to others who traffic in death and misery”. But despite the apparent victory, the New York Times made a sober clarification. Author Robert McFadden noted that, apart from the symbolism, Escobar’s death was “not expected to seriously affect cocaine traffic”. The drug would continue to sell through the various groups that had assembled in the power vacuum left by Escobar’s downfall.

The take-down of cartel leaders has become a recurring story, one that shows the futility of America’s current policy. Earlier this month, New York courts found Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán guilty of ten criminal counts relating to his drug enterprise. Guzmán was the leader of one of the largest drug-trafficking operation in the world, which sold cocaine, methamphetamine, heroin and marijuana. He was convicted for this and numerous other crimes, including conspiracy to murder and conspiracy to distribute of heroin, cocaine and marijuana internationally. Now he is likely to spend the rest of his life in prison. Justice was served, law and order prevailed, and America caught the bad guy. U.S. Attorney Richard Donoghue valiantly told reporters after the verdict was announced, “There are those who say that the war on drugs is not worth fighting. Those people are wrong.”

Mr Donoghue’s claim and Guzmán’s conviction seem to suggest it is time for celebration. Perhaps George W. Bush could lend us his Mission Accomplished banner? While the media and the courts savor the conviction of one of the once-most-powerful drug traffickers in the world, it’s worth thinking back to 1993. Let us remember the Colombian troops standing over Escobar’s bloody corpse on the rooftop, shooting into the air and shouting “we won”. Recall what Robert McFadden, the New York Times’ journalist who wrote of Escobar’s death, said following Pablo’s death: beyond symbolism, cocaine traffic was not expected to be seriously affected. Like an echo from the past, while the U.S. justice system was busy dancing with glee, Guzmán’s defence lawyer Jeffrey Lichtman prophesied that “the cocaine doesn’t stop flowing with the take-down of El Chapo”.

The War on Drugs has been waged in the U.S. for nearly fifty years now. Originally a cheap campaign slogan for Richard Nixon in 1971, the U.S. government now spends roughly $47 billion every year fighting the War on Drugs. This ideological war in the U.S. is fueling a very real one in Central and South America. The cartel wars in Mexico have killed more than 200,000 people since 2006. And yet despite the cost of America’s War on Drugs, its tactics have not changed. The fight has assumed a cyclical nature, that goes something like the following:

Some substance, such as cocaine in the 1910s or marijuana in the 1930s, becomes popular among U.S. citizens. The government, who usually extol this kind of free-market supply and demand efficiency, prohibit the substance and its production in the United States. But the free-market keeps kicking and before long a black market emerges, with demand from the U.S. citizens satiated by supply from poorer, less easily-regulated countries. Huge amounts of money are siphoned into cartels, whose leaders subsequently gain immense power and notoriety. If born in the U.S. they might have been respected as self-made entrepreneurs. But capitalism is a nationalist game, and so the U.S. incites a manhunt against such an obvious and out-in-the-open enemy. Multinational coalitions are formed and mass resources spent in the pursuit and capture of said individuals. After years of bribery, murder and evasion of the authorities, the cartel figurehead is either executed or taken into custody. New organizations are then free to fill the vacuum left in their absence. It’s back to square one, with little disruption made to the distribution of narcotics. Despite the media hype that follows the demise of such leaders, reality is typically less optimistic: cocaine remains wildly popular in a post-Escobar world and people will continue to smoke weed despite Guzmán rotting in prison.

The War on Drugs rages on, reinforced by opportunistic politicians after a scapegoat, fanatical law enforcement unquestioningly chasing agendas, and a corrupt private prison industry that’s desperate for profit. But despite being afforded unwavering commitment, it isn’t being won. A campaign of tough love and prosecution has given tremendous power to criminals and left minimal impact on the drug trade. In Mexico, innocent people are dying, while the cartels’ economic power grows similar in scale to that of multinational corporations, positing an existential threat to the sovereignty of their home countries. An abstract war waged against a noun (see also the War on Terror) is not only ambiguous rhetoric used to drum up political support, but, as seen with the War on Drugs, can be the cause of as many casualties as conventional warfare. The War has perpetuated a violent and powerful black market that shows no signs of disappearing. In an effort to protect its own citizens from the ills of substance abuse, the U.S. has put citizens in other countries at risk – prime examples being Mexico and Columbia, with deaths numbering hundreds of thousands for both countries. The War on Drugs must come an end in order to save innocent lives. Alternatives to prohibition need to be considered.

1930s Chicago found itself in a similar predicament to what Columbia and Mexico face today. The ruthless gangster Al Capone ran a powerful crime syndicate that held the city hostage. Capone had taken over from criminal boss Johnny Torrio, who had in-turn replaced James “Big Jim” Colosimo. Just like Pablo Escobar, these criminals were easily replaceable, one after the other. Their business was also drugs, albeit a kind that is now fairly socially acceptable – alcohol. Black-market bloodshed went on for more than a decade until the U.S. Government repealed the prohibition of alcohol. This repeal didn’t completely shutdown the mafia groups, but it did cut off a valuable part of their revenue. In the same way, a well-assessed end to certain contemporary drug prohibitions could seriously threaten the cartels of today.

Marijuana, once the sworn enemy of authorities, is slowly winning its fight against prohibition. A growing awareness of the issues of prohibition have caused a shift in public opinion. As remarkable as it seems, the U.S. Government was defeated by potheads. The War on Drugs had to withdraw from its cannabis front. The futility and hypocrisy of prohibition is starting to show, as more and more evidence proves in favor legalization. The legalization of medical marijuana alone saw violent crime in U.S. border states fall by an average of 13 percent, while homicides related to the drug trade fell by an incredible 41 percent.

The legalization of marijuana, a policy previously unimaginable for much of Western society, shows the need to reassess the approach to prohibition. Rational and sane adults should be free to do as they please in regard to their own bodies, so long as it doesn’t cause harm to others. The slow-setting end of marijuana prohibition is indicative of an alternative to the War on Drugs. Substances too damaging to society should be kept away from it, but the blind and perhaps arbitrary prohibition of certain substances could be re-evaluated. Western society’s tabooing of some drugs is deliberately ignorant of the reality of these substances. Research done on octopuses showed that MDMA reduced the creatures’ antisocial behavior (ravers all around the world could tell you the same thing). There are numerous allegations of our fine and honorable policy-makers using cocaine, yet they continue to rise into successful positions. This is not an endorsement of uninhibited hedonism, but a call to at least inspect the laws, as well as cultural norms, we’ve developed around drugs. These laws tend to punish the poor, marking them with criminal records, while the rich pump money into the black-markets that allow the real criminals to prosper. Separately, addicts are of course a problem for society, but, rational individuals looking to experiment, who are not so susceptible to dependence, are not. Alcohol has its dangers, but Western society has assumed it can be handled well enough by society’s sane majority. This doesn’t apply to certain drugs for sure, but laws arbitrarily drawn up decades ago do not follow a rational methodology or a comprehensive analysis of each case. There is more that can be learnt and understood about these substances. The re-evaluation of prohibition could lead to better regulation of such substances, as well as deflating the barbaric trade that supplies drugs to the West while tearing apart poorer countries with gang violence.

Governments around the world need to listen to the advice of experts and treat drug abuse as a social and health-related issue, not a criminal or military one. The eradication of mind-altering substances is impossible – there will never be a truly drug-free society, and as long as there is demand, supply will find a way. Instead of eradication, governments should introduce policies to address the societal factors that lead to increased risky drug use, in turn mitigating the damage caused by such substances. Wielding prohibition like a blunt battle-axe solves very little and seems to have caused more damage than good. If governments don’t change their approach to narcotics, then men like Pablo Escobar and Joaquín Guzmán will continue to gain wealth and power. The fight against drug traffickers has become something like Heracles’ fight with the mythical Hydra. Each head Heracles chopped off the mythical beast was replaced by two new ones. Cartel figureheads are much the same; their defeat does little to prevent future danger. Heracles defeated the Hydra by cauterizing each decapitated stump, and governments need to take a similarly creative approach. Address the cause, not its symptoms, or else the illness will remain. The end of the cartels will come by exploring alternatives to the costly and ineffective War on Drugs that gives them economic power.

March 12, 2019 0 comment

Featured History Human Rights

Can the Liberal World Order Stop Genocide?

written by Alex Langsam

In October, a gunman killed 11 people at a synagogue in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in the deadliest attack on a Jewish community in the history of the United States. Such a blatant act of antisemitism should trigger alarm bells for the West, as it accompanies a growing fear that history may start to repeat itself. Jews are a canary in the coalmine for the West which, following the end of the Second World War and the crimes of the Holocaust, attempted to create a world order that would prevent such a thing happening again. But now, more than seventy years later, with nationalism on the rise and racist attacks seemingly increasing, it seems like the attempt failed. The so-called “Liberal” World Order has been apparently unsuccessful in containing the Second World War’s horrors. What can the West learn from its mistakes and what must it do about them? Genocide is preventable, but it demands work from many world actors.

After the Second World War, there was an effort, led by the US, to build a fairer and so-called “Liberal” World Order. The United Nations was established, with a charter that promoted “universal respect for… human rights and fundamental freedoms for all without distinction as to race, sex, language, or religion”. Various other measures were employed to encourage a more co-operative and empathetic global community, such as the establishment of the European Union, the creation of the Sister City program and the decolonisation of both Asia and Africa. The US championed a new form of international politics, using its immense power to establish a set of norms for the world that would make it a more just place. But large-scale conflict was inevitable, and both the US and the new intergovernmental organizations it set up would not be enough to completely eliminate barbarity from the world.

Instead of extinguishing persecution and bringing about a perpetual peace, the second half of the twentieth century resulted in numerous genocides across Asia, Europe and Africa, as well as the forty-year long Cold War. The systems put in place to prevent a repeat of the Second World War were a step forward, but are not enough in and of themselves. They required constant support and improvement. Instead, they were only a moment of sobriety in an otherwise alcoholic world order.

These days, pundits have heralded the end of the Liberal World Order, due to a variety of factors including the rise of European nationalist parties, Britain’s attempted exit from the EU and the election of Donald Trump. But perhaps the Liberal World Order they mourn was in need of a re-evaluating shake. It had been taken hostage by American Exceptionalism, an ideology that places the US as superior to other countries, and the idea that its brand of capitalism should run the planet. Masked by the US’ excitement following the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Liberal World Order seemed to be strengthened, but in truth it had been cracking for awhile and was in need of repair.

Three particular cracks run deep into the Liberal World Order: the sovereign states of Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia and Herzegovina. In these countries, genocide was carried out, while the Liberal World Order stood by and watched. Atrocities were ignored, bloodshed denied, and international responsibility abandoned. They are proof of the international community’s reluctance to prevent genocide. And the problem continues today, with the Rohingya in Myanmar, the Yazidis in Iraq and Syria, and Darfuri citizens in Sudan facing all-too-familiar stages of ethnic cleansing.

The world must figure out what it can do to prevent future genocides. The United Nations was granted some power to do so in 2005, when it established a principle called the Responsibility to Protect. This provided a framework of diplomatic and military steps to combat genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity, and seemed to be a step forward in mobilising the international community to take action. However, recent interventions have left a bad taste in the international community’s mouth and the Responsibility to Protect has been accused of basically being an easy excuse for regime change. New-age “intervention” can be hard to distinguish from good old-fashioned imperialism. However, despite the criticism against it, the Responsibility to Protect could still prove useful in preventing atrocities. It is a step in the right direction for solidifying rules in the international community.

What the world must do is to continue to support and develop the many systems and institutions in place to prevent genocide, as. The Liberal World Order needs to evolve from the US’ alter ego into something new, while the norms it set up must remain. The United Nations must continue to act as a forum and monitor for the international community. The Responsibility to Protect has to be refined and evoked when needed. The citizens of democratic states have to hold their governments accountable. The checks and balances that exist to stop genocide are in a constant state of flux – strengthened when states are in solidarity with them and weakened when states ignore them.

Constant normalisation of rules for the international community and solidarity against genocide is the best way to prevent it from occurring. It may seem unrealistic or too optimistic a premise, and in a way it is, but much progress has been made already. War has decreased, homicide rates are down and education rates are up. While there have been failures of the post-WW2 world order, there has also been tremendous success. The last seventy years have been among the most peaceful on Earth. Citizens in the West have developed a tendency to abhor genocide, taught to them by the failings of previous generations. The world is becoming smaller and smaller, and it needs to continue to be pushed in the right direction. Progress takes time, so long in fact that few possess the ability to properly comprehend the direction it follows. However, through a committed and maintained opposition, the brutality of international politics can perhaps be tamed.

January 20, 2019 0 comment