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A Tetanus, Diphtheria, Pertussis vaccination is prepared for a patient in the clinic at Cannon Air Force Base, N.M., May 29, 2012. The Tdap vaccine protects against those viruses that can cause illness like lockjaw and whooping cough. (U.S. Air Force photo by Airman 1st Class Alexxis Pons Abascal)
EuropeFeaturedGlobal HealthImmigrationPopulism

Measles: Europe’s Underreported Epidemic

written by Andrea Zachrich

Worldwide, measles cases have been declining for decades, but in Europe there has been a dangerous reversal of that trend throughout the last several years. In 2016, there were 5,273 cases of measles recorded in Europe, an all-time low. Yet, in 2017, the number of cases jumped to 23,927. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), in the first 6 months of 2018, there were over 41,000 recorded cases and 37 fatalities, and that number continues to grow.

Measles is a highly contagious infectious disease spread through airborne particles exhaled by an infected individual. About 1 percent of all cases are fatal and the disease can cause permanent harm. In some cases, the disease can result in permanent hearing loss or affect brain functioning and development. Although Europe’s recent measles outbreak is a seemingly insignificant issue that’s consequences are often ignored, its roots can be traced in part to other, more notable European phenomenons such as populism, disruption of healthcare due to Russia’s invasion of Crimea and poor funding, and massive waves of immigration.

Over the last several years, Europe has witnessed a resurgence of right-wing populism and ethno-nationalism in many countries, embodied by the politics of Viktor Orban of Hungary, Beppe Grillo of Italy, and Marine Le Pen of France, among others. Many of these populist politicians show a deep distrust of the scientific community and their research, including those regarding vaccines. As such, many have claimed that vaccines are harmful in spite of vast amounts of evidence to the contrary. Some, such as Grillo, founder of Italy’s Five Star Movement, have explicitly linked vaccines and autism. In July, Italy passed a law reversing their parliament’s earlier requirement that parents have documentation of 10 vaccines before sending their children to school. The popular myth that there is a link between vaccines and autism can be traced back to a now-debunked 1998 study by British gastroenterologist Andrew Wakefield. The study was shown to have used falsified data and Wakefield has since lost his medical license. Moreover, numerous studies since have found no link between the MMR vaccine and autism. Despite this, many still cite Wakefield’s paper to support their opposition to vaccines. Marine Le Pen, the French right-wing politician and 2017 presidential candidate, voiced her opposition to a bill in parliament requiring school-aged children to be vaccinated, citing a lack of long-term evidence of the effects of vaccines, despite the fact that such evidence exists. Additionally, in France, the trust citizens have in vaccines is alarmingly low; 41 percent of people surveyed in France disagree that vaccines are safe. Other European countries hit hard by the recent measles outbreak, such as Ukraine and Greece, also show low levels of trust, and having high ranking members of globally powerful governments discussing the links between vaccines and diseases certainly won’t help. This political rhetoric and the distrust of a once widely-respected scientific community by populist politicians is already having- and therefore likely will continue to have- dire effects on global health.

In addition, another cause of the spike in measles cases in Europe can be traced to Ukraine and the disruption of its healthcare system due to violence. Ukraine was home to over half the measles cases from 2018. Experts have blamed Russia’s invasion of the Crimea, a small peninsula on the Black Sea, for the disruption of health care services that have prevented many Ukrainians from receiving vaccinations. In addition to the invasion, the Ukrainian healthcare system requires individuals to pay higher out of pocket fees for services than those in other European countries. Ukraine’s share of healthcare spending out of pocket is the second-highest in Eastern Europe at around 50 percent. Cost to the patient is thus a strong motivator for Ukrainians not to get vaccinated. While there are plans to reform this system, Ukrainians continue to pay more than their Eastern European counterparts in the meantime. With a healthcare system that disincentivizes vaccinations for many through high out of pocket fees and a war that has prohibited it for others, it’s no wonder the European measles outbreak has hit Ukraine particularly hard.

The final piece of Europe’s measles puzzle can be traced to the continent’s ongoing migrant crisis. Between 2013 and 2016 the number of applications for asylum in Europe jumped from 354,000 to 1.1 million per year, with a peak of 1.23 million in 2015. Since these migrants- most of whom are of Middle Eastern and North African descent- are escaping violence in their home countries, many of them haven’t received the measles vaccine like their European neighbors have. This has led to huge outbreaks of the disease in popular refugee destinations such as Greece, which had 173,000 migrants living in reception centers or camps in 2016. At the time, Greece was not routinely offering vaccines to adult migrants (although they were giving them to children). Greece also waits to offer vaccines until migrants are living at the holding or the community level, thus missing the opportunity to vaccinate people as they arrive. Italy– another migrant haven due to its location on the Mediterranean- has exhibited similar problems with vaccinating migrants entering the country. This influx of unvaccinated adult migrants combined with the existing population’s low vaccination rate has too been partially responsible for the measles flare-up in Europe.

The often ignored measles outbreak can therefore best be understood as a symptom of the larger, more reported trends in Europe such as right-wing populism, Russia’s invasion of the Crimea, and the high level of Muslim immigrants entering the continent. With these cultural and political shifts unlikely to change anytime soon, it is of the utmost importance that European countries, the EU, or even the WHO pursue tactics to address the disease and become more aggressive in their vaccination efforts. Possible solutions include education campaigns for new parents or for young school children, a push for stronger vaccination laws, and vaccination requirements for all immigrants – not just the children. Vaccines have extraordinarily high success rates and have saved countless lives, but they require upwards of 95 percent of the population to be vaccinated in order to prevent an outbreak of the disease. In September of 2017, measles was declared dead in England, meaning that it had low enough case numbers for three years to determine that it was not spreading through the population. This decision was reversed earlier this year. It should be a public health goal to declare measles dead in all of Europe. With vaccines being the only tool we have at our disposal, it is of the utmost importance that governments, the EU, and GNO’s alike make widespread vaccination a priority.

October 4, 2018 0 comment
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EuropeFeaturedGeopoliticsHistoryMilitaryRussiaSecurity and ConflictTerritorial disputesVladimir Putin

The Russo-Georgian War, 10 Years Later

written by Conor McDonald

On August 7th, 2008, the leaders of the Russian Federation shocked the world and made the controversial decision to mobilize and invade Georgia, a small, sovereign nation located in the Caucasus Mountains just south of Russia. The Georgian military had been engaged with separatists from the regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia for just under a week, yet by the time a large batch of Russian military personnel entered their territory through the mountainous Roki tunnel at 11:00 PM, it was too late. Despite what any news outlets would later report, the international community knew that Georgia had just lost a major chunk of its territory to this aggressor from the north. What no one knew, however, was that this seemingly minor excursion would begin a decade’s worth of continued Russian belligerence and adventurism toward its neighbors. But why start with Georgia?

Historically, the strained relations between Russia and Georgia are nothing new, and can be traced back as early as the year 1785 when the Russian Empire violated a treaty and refused to defend the eastern Georgian Kingdom during a Persian invasion. Some decades later, in 1801, Georgia joined the Russian Empire, and it remained a protected member up until 1918 when the independent Democratic Republic of Georgia was established following the Russian Revolution and the abdication of the Russian Tsardom. This was short-lived, however, as the Bolsheviks and the Red Army overthrew the Georgian government in 1921 and forcibly annexed the region into the newly-established United Soviet Socialist Republic (USSR) in 1922.

The USSR forced an era of tension, fear and powerlessness upon the citizens of Georgia. Under the first three years of Soviet control alone, approximately 50,000 Georgians were executed by the government, while an insurmountable 150,000 were purged up through 1951 by Joseph Stalin, a native Georgian himself. Additionally, basic rights to citizenship were stripped; according to Michael Parrish in The Lesser Terror: Soviet State Security, 1939-1953, Stalin forced entire Ingush, Chechen, Balkarian and Karachay populations, all native to Georgia, into deportation. Georgian territories were seized and distributed amongst various states, including Armenia and Turkey, and nearly half of the 700,000 soldiers that the country was forced to contribute toward the Red Army were killed over the course of World War II. Even when relatively progressive leaders like Nikita Khrushchev took control of the Soviet Union — “progressive” in that he succeeded Stalin — Georgian protests promoting independence from the USSR resulted in the massacring of hundreds of college students and demonstrators.

Thus, it should surprise no one that, upon the dissolution of the USSR in 1991, Georgian officials were quick to declare sovereignty and begin holding democratic elections. Unfortunately, the radical and autocratic Georgian presidency of Zviad Gamsakhurdia prompted some to lose faith in their nation, and pro-Russian separatist groups gained prominence in certain regions — most notably in South Ossetia and Abkhazia — leading to a short-lasting civil war in the latter. Somewhat ironically, this forced Georgia to join the post-Soviet Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) in order to receive Russian military support, and, in 2001, Abkhazia and Georgia co-signed “an accord pledging not to use force against each other.”

After the accord’s ratification, a shaky sense of peace was established between Georgia and the separatist regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. It was clearly imperfect, though, as protests and skirmishes continued to break out while political tensions rose unwaveringly; South Ossetia even went so far as to hold an unofficial referendum in which 99% of the public voted in favor of independence, an act ignored by the European Union but supported by the Russia Duma. Two years later, after hearing direct pleas for support from Abkhazian and South Ossetian officials, Russian President Dmitri Medvedev stated that allying with the separatist regions “is not an easy choice, but it is the only way to save the lives of people,” and pledged both political and military support to both. Several months later, after the Georgian military responded to another South Ossetian attack, Russia launched its now-infamous military invasion.

Russia’s 2008 seizure of the Ossetian and Abkhazian territories provided eerie foreshadowing for what the Federation’s neighbors had in store. Six years later, in 2014, a near-identical crisis transpired in Crimea and Eastern Ukraine’s Luhansk and Donbas regions, disputes which continue to the time of this article’s publication. The primary characteristic that both the Georgian and Ukrainian annexation attempts had in common is that they highlighted deep, pervading insecurities from within the highest ranks of Russian leadership. These insecurities are two-pronged, with stress placed on both military and political pressures. From a military perspective, the intimidating reach of NATO expansion is obviously considered to be a pervading, existential threat; Georgia and Ukraine were invaded while the United States and the West considered their bids to enter NATO. However, the more alarming insecurities are political, and they continue to grow increasingly problematic as democracy gains popularity within Russian spheres of influence.

During a 2005 visit, President George W. Bush proudly referred to Georgia as a beacon of liberty in a region where freedom is not always to be taken for granted. He spoke glowingly about the 2003 Georgian Rose Revolution, in which a peaceful change of power allied Georgia more strongly with the West. This revolution preceded and arguably inspired Ukraine’s 2004-2005 Orange Revolution, which forced the overturning of then-President Viktor Yanukovych and his corrupt, Russophilic administration in favor of the more Western-oriented candidate, Viktor Yushchenko. These so-called Color Revolutions, which also took place in post-Soviet Yugoslavia and Kyrgyzstan, sent a message to their former occupier that these nations were now independent and desirous of fair domestic representation. Seeing that his neighbors were quickly working to distance themselves from the influence of a relatively weakened Russia, it would not take a foreign affairs specialist to understand that Vladimir Putin, a longstanding disbeliever in the promises of democracy, was far from pleased with the symbolism of these revolts.

Following the 2008 invasion of Georgia, Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko began to indirectly lay the groundwork for his own country’s invasion by publicly voicing his support for Georgian independence. It is no coincidence that this controversial anti-Russian stance hurdled Ukraine toward further political crisis in November of that year, a window which Russia seized to further exacerbate political troubles. When Yanukovych successfully regained his presidency in 2013, Ukraine spiraled into yet another revolution, and this time Putin chose to involve himself on his pro-Russia counterpart’s behalf. Shortly after, the autonomous region of Crimea was annexed by Russian soldiers.

Russia had been guilty of testing Western resolve all throughout the 21st century, particularly in Eastern Europe, but the dramatic actions against Georgia in 2008 marked a critical shift in Russian foreign policy. Long gone were the days of press releases or discrete political subversion, and ushered in was an era of violent military intervention and territorial seizures. The only thing protecting Russia’s other Western-oriented, post-Soviet neighbors is their NATO membership, and the United States and its allies should not be surprised to see Russian intervention on behalf of other separatist groups from non-member states in the coming years. Ten years after the events in Georgia, the world still waits to see who will be next.

September 26, 2018 0 comment
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AfricaEuropeFeaturedHistoryMilitarySecurity and ConflictUncategorized

La Guerre du Sahel

written by Grayson Peters

Along a desert road, a military convoy is passed by an unassuming gray car.  There is a sudden explosion, then gunfire.  Fifteen minutes later, four civilians are dead and eight Western soldiers are wounded. This is not the first act of terrorism in the region, nor will it be the last.  The story is familiar – an Islamic terrorist attack against Western soldiers stationed in the region – but the players and setting are not. These foreign forces are not American, and the battleground is not Iraq or Afghanistan.  The soldiers are French, and they are in the Sahel, a sub-Saharan strip of Africa that links the Atlantic Ocean to the west and the Red Sea to the east.

The Sahel is a vast, scarcely populated, and loosely governed region that stretches across fourteen African countries, including Mali, Chad, and Niger.  In recent decades, the absence of effective governance has allowed the Sahel to become a hotbed of political violence and a safe haven for transnational terrorist organizations.  Boko Haram, al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), and smaller, regional terrorist organizations have all used the Sahel as a base of operations and refuge from counter-terrorist operations.  The Sahel states’ porous borders enable militant groups to travel unchecked across vast swaths of the continent and strike targets in North African nations such as Algeria and Tunisia.

Ethnic and economic tensions in the Sahel predate the arrival of transient Islamic terrorist organizations, but temporary alliances between militant groups and villagers increase the scale and danger of regional violence.  The New York Times reported that France and Mali estimate that ISIS in the Greater Sahara has only 40 to 60 core members.  By inflaming local passions and escalating grievances between villagers, small groups of transnational militants are able to create disproportionately large violence and chaos.  For instance, Niger and Mali’s cattle-herding Tuareg people, who had previously only taken up arms to defend their cattle and on occasion engage in small-scale ethnic violence, became involved with international terrorism.  Far from home, Tuareg recruits have been involved in terrorist incidents in Libya, raids in Nigeria, and “banditry” in northern Niger and southern Algeria.  Ethnic grievances between the Tuareg and Fulani peoples in both Mali and Niger led to ethnic armed conflict which was dramatically escalated by the presence of Islamic militant groups.  Because these ethnic grievances are often intertwined with economic concerns, especially cattle ownership, external pressures that threaten the livelihood of Sahelian villagers can catalyze conflict.        

As global warming progresses, the increased frequency of droughts, expanding desertification of the Sahel, and dwindling resources in the area will likely worsen regional tensions and create conditions favorable for the growth of terrorist networks.  In 2012, according to the State Department, droughts and failed harvests in the Sahel placed 18.7 million Africans at risk for food insecurity, further fueling instability in the region.  It is no coincidence that, immediately following the outbreak of drought, cattle die-offs, and famine, relations between Mali’s Tuareg and Fulani peoples worsened.  A series of escalating cattle raids led to an arms race and created an opportunity for al-Qaeda affiliates to supply villagers with automatic weapons.  Within the year, the Tuareg people of northern Mali, with support from al-Qaeda in the Maghreb, formed the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (NMLA) and rebelled against the central government of Mali.

When France military forces entered Mali in 2013, campaign, known officially as Operation Serval, aimed to support the beleaguered Malian government and block the NMLA’s war for a Tuareg ethnostate in northern Mali.  Although Mali and France decisively defeated the NMLA after only a few months, the French remained in Mali in an attempt to suppress a continued insurgency. Five years later, Operation Barkhane, France’s ongoing operation to stabilize the greater Sahel is ongoing and there are fresh casualties.  As recently as July 1, a car bombing in Gao injured French soldiers and killed dozens of Malian civilians.  Nusrat al-Islam, an al-Qaeda linked organization and the primary terrorist network currently operating in the Sahel, claimed responsibility.    

In 2013, three-quarters of the French citizenry supported Operation Serval, the original intervention against NMLA secessionists in Mali.  Today, substantial French support endures for the ongoing Operation Barkhane despite the campaign’s duration and casualties.

 At first, it may seem surprising that France is leading the international effort to stamp out terrorism in the Sahel.  After all, in 2003, the French government’s opposition to American intervention in Iraq was widely mocked in the United States. In protest, Los Angelenos (and even some UCLA students) publicly poured out French wine in front of the French consulate, and the U.S. House of Representatives cafeteria menu infamously renamed French fries to Freedom fries.  During this wave of anti-French sentiment, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman declared that “France is becoming our enemy.”  In 2003, France insisted on a multilateral diplomatic approach to Iraq, in opposition to U.S. President Bush’s insistence on unilateral military action.  Yet, ten years later, the French army unilaterally entered Mali, touching off a protracted five-year campaign that has expanded to include the entire Sahel region.

What changed between Freedom fries and a permanent French presence in the Sahel?  In reality, France’s relationships with Iraq and the Sahel are vastly different. Countries in the western Sahel such as Mali and Niger were colonized and imperialized by France during the European Scramble for Africa in the late 19th century.  These Francophone African nations still bear both the trauma and cultural legacy of French rule.

 Many leftist and African scholars argue that France’s reassertion of authority and military power over historic colonial possessions is best characterized as neo-imperialist.  Skeptical that France’s primary concern is protecting Malian citizens from terrorism, these critics of French intervention point to plausible ulterior motives including the protection of French corporate mining interests and nearby uranium mines (in both Niger and Nigeria) on which the French energy sector relies.  In February, Congolese novelist and UCLA professor Alain Mabanckou criticized la Francophonie, the informal and institutionalized network of French speaking countries, and described it not as a partnership of equals but as an instrument of French neo-imperial domination.

However, there is also evidence that the French feel a sense of obligation to and fraternity with the Francophone Africans of the Sahel.  Cultural ties, a shared language, and a sense of historical interconnectedness (despite the region’s colonial past) are all factors. Arguably, elements within France feel a sense of guilt and noblesse oblige, or responsibility of the privileged, towards the nations their ancestors exploited.  Whether this concern is genuine or paternalistically self-serving is a matter of debate.  What is clear, however, is that the security situation in the Sahel is as of yet unresolved and that the potent mixture of ethnic conflict, Islamic terrorism, rising global temperatures, and increasingly severe droughts represents a enduring security risk for African nations and a source of serious concern for France.

September 19, 2018 0 comment
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Donald TrumpEnvironmental ChangeEuropeFeaturedGeopoliticsInternational TradeInterviewMilitaryNorth KoreaNuclear DeterrenceSecurity and ConflictThe International EconomyUnited States

Adam Schiff: Bernard Brodie Lecture and Interview

written by Andrea Zachrich

Congressman Adam Schiff came to UCLA to give the Bernard Brodie Lecture on the Conditions of Peace on May 31st of this year. Before the lecture, members of The Generation were fortunate enough to sit down with Congressman Schiff and ask him questions about the House Intelligence Committee- of which he is currently the Ranking Member- his responsibility to his constituents and the American people, democratic institutions and the rule of law, and the reputation of the United States internationally. He echoed and elaborated on many of these topics during his lecture and audience questions, which we were also able to attend following the interview. While there has been a summer that has past since the time of interview, many of his comments remain relevant as we’ve watched President Trump’s antics unfold over the past few months.

Congressman Schiff has a great sense of humor. He began the lecture by telling an anecdote about when President Trump called him “sleazy”. Schiff said that he felt the need to explain to his son what had happened in case the other children at school talked about it. He told his son that “the President called your dad sleazy”, and his son, wholly unconcerned, replied, “Can I call you sleazy?”  Congressman Schiff used humor frequently throughout his lecture to highlight the absurdity of some of the administration’s recent actions, such as President Trump calling Vladimir Putin to congratulate him on his win. He even went so far as to mimic how that phone conversation might have gone, which had the entire audience laughing.

In the interview with us, however, Congressman Schiff’s tone was markedly more serious. We began by asking him about the partisanship on his committee in the House of Representatives, which is the House Select Intelligence Committee. The committee has been charged with conducting an investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election and possible connections between President Trump and members of his team and Russia. Despite the traditionally bipartisan nature of the Intelligence Committee, Schiff noted that one particular instance- what he called the “midnight run“– which divided the committee along partisan lines. The “run” occurred in March of 2017 when Republican Chairman Devin Nunes went to an undisclosed location to reportedly receive classified materials unmasking a conspiracy that claimed that the Obama administration had done surveillance on members of President Trump’s transition team. Nunes then went to the White House to present this evidence. However in a matter of days it as revealed that the supposedly undisclosed location was the White House. Schiff states, “But we learned within a matter of days that in fact the secret location he had gone too had been the White House and the materials he had received were from the White House that he was presenting to the White House.That kind of blew up the investigation because it became clear that the mission for the chairman was to protect the President at all costs rather than doing an objective investigation. The incident troubled Schiff for illustrating Nunes’ blatant disregard for the committee’s constitutional duty and for demonstrating the vastly different goals of its members.

We then asked Schiff what would change on his committee if Democrats win a majority in the House in the upcoming midterm elections and he becomes chairman. His first priority, he said, would be a return to “comity” on the committee, and blames the current chairman Nunes’ divisive actions for the current level of partisanship. When asked a similar question during the lecture, Schiff responded that he would like his committee to “get back in the oversight business”. Based on some recent special election results, Schiff may get his wish for his committee from the midterm elections. In a recent special election in Ohio, the vote came down to closer than 1 percent in a district that has had Republican representation in Congress for 35 years, the past incumbent consistently cruised to victory by 10 percentage points, and where Trump beat Hillary Clinton by a whooping 11 percent. These election results, while not representative of the entire nation, have led many to predict that Democrats may shortly regain the majority in Congress, making Congressman Schiff the leader of the House Intelligence Committee.

On a different note, one idea that Schiff kept highlighting throughout both the interview and his lecture was the breakdown of democratic institutions and the rule of law, and how this is affecting the U.S.’s reputation and negotiating power abroad. Schiff even went so far as to say “I think that the health of our democracy is very much at risk”. He mentioned numerous examples that ranged from President Trump’s tendency to ban reporters from news outlets he doesn’t like such as the New York Times and BBC from press briefings, to discussing the possibility of him pardoning himself for any possible crimes he may be charged with in the future. Additionally, the president’s constant Twitter tirades about the “fake news” press and special counsel Robert Mueller’s Investigation have led many of his supporters to distrust both the press and the Justice Department. The United States was downgraded from a full to a flawed democracy by the “Economist Intelligence Unit” the year Trump came into office, and has remained in the flawed category for its 2018 ranking, currently ranked 21 out of 167 countries for its democracy score. It seems as though Schiff may well be justified in worrying about the state of our democracy.

On a similar note, Schiff also noted his concerns with the way the rest of the world currently views the US, stating “our America first and everyone else be damned has really left us isolated and the rest of the world deeply concerned”. As evidence, he cited examples of this poor perception of America from our allies such as a Politico article titled “Leader of the Free World meets Donald Trump” referring to Angela Merkel, and Trump’s decision to pull out of the Iran nuclear deal. Since this interview, President Trump has continued to take actions that worry world leaders and isolate the U.S. on the world stage, such as placing tariffs on Chinese and European goods against the advice of most of the world’s economists and Trump’s troubling actions during and after June’s G7 meeting such as arriving late for the first meeting of the conference and acting outraged at Prime Minister Trudeau’s easily predictable retaliatory actions to Trump’s steel and aluminum tariffs. Congressman Schiff stated in the interview that “It’s hard to imagine a time when the United States has been held in lower regard around the world than right now”, but after Trump’s antics this summer, we may be even lower in the opinion of the world than we were in May when the interview was conducted.

This interview was conducted shortly before the first North Korea negotiations had occured. Congressman Schiff was glad to hear that the negotiations were back on after being canceled for a spell, but was concerned with this administration’s approach to North Korea, calling it “erratic and at times dangerous”. He warned that North Korea’s nuclear program was not going to be an easy problem to solve stating, “If it were not a hard problem, it would have been solved by any number of presidents in the past”. This statement has proven to be true since the interview. While President Trump and Kim Jong-Un did sit down for negotiations in June, the joint statement that came out of this was widely criticized as vague. President Trump conceded an important bargaining chip by agreeing to give up military exercises in South Korea while gaining no time table for denuclearization from the North Korean leader. Additionally, on August 24th President Trump called off talks between North Korean leaders and his Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, citing concerns that not enough progress has been made in regards to the country’s denuclearization. Congressman Schiff’s warning has proven true; it seems that the problem of North Korean denuclearization has shown itself to be trickier than President Trump first believed it to be.

In a time where dishonorable behavior has come to be expected from the current administration, the political backbone displayed by Congressman Adam Schiff was refreshing. He asked his audience “What’s the point of being there [in Congress] if you’re not going to do what the country needs you to do when they need you to do it?” At one point during the lecture, he received an spontaneous round of applause from the audience after declaring he believes politicians should “do the right thing and still find a way to get reelected”.

It was a pleasure speaking with the Congressman and listening to his lecture, and it will be interesting to witness any potential changes within his Committee following the November midterm elections.

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September 10, 2018 0 comment
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AustraliaEuropeFeaturedHuman RightsLGBTMarriage Equality

The Dangerous Precedent of Marriage Equality Voting in Australia and Ireland

written by Xinong Wang

The institution of marriage in most countries around the world refers, by default, to marriage between a man and a woman. Marriage equality – the right of two persons to marry regardless of gender and sex, often equated with “same sex marriage” – is only fully legalised in 26 countries to date. In many countries, the idea of changing the laws to allow for marriage equality can be a contentious and often partisan issue. Marriage equality is inseparable from the rights of LGBTQ+ populations, therefore a largely classified as a liberal cause invoking debates on religious freedom as well as civil rights. Two countries so far, Ireland and Australia, have referred the matter directly to their citizens through a popular vote; that is, a vote which was extended to each country’s entire voting population. Ireland’s 2015 Referendum and Australia’s 2017 Postal Vote both returned majority “yes” votes, resulting in the passing of legislature that allows any two people to marry regardless of gender. Yet together, Ireland and Australia have set a dangerous precedent where a majority population was given the right to decide on equal access to human rights for an underprivileged group.

Despite being a near-universal practice, marriage is not a universal institution. Each country has its own definition of what constitutes a valid marriage under the law, canonised through laws, acts, even constitutions. Commonly, because dominant historical and cultural narratives see marriage as being between a man and a woman, it is accepted as implicit that this is also the legal definition. A country wishing to extend the right to marry to their LGBTQ+ population will often have to go through a process of legitimising it through amending existing legal texts. This is regardless of whether or not those texts explicitly forbade same-sex marriage in the first place. In countries such as the US, the sovereignty of governing bodies allowed them to determine the institution of marriage without involving the population – the Supreme Court exercised this to outlaw bans on same-sex marriage in a ruling in 2015, allowing for marriage equality to exist in all states of the US. Ireland and Australia exercised direct democracy instead.

Pre-polling in both Ireland and Australia had already indicated that the majority of those countries were overwhelmingly in favour of marriage equality. Yet the issue was forced into a popular vote in Ireland as a matter of judicial legality. Ireland has an extensive Irish-English constitution. Marriage is defined under Article 41, which was interpreted to implicitly restrict that marriage be between a man and a woman. That is, the Constitution never explicitly forbade same-sex marriage, but did not endorse it either. In order to insert the proposed 34th Amendment to the Irish Constitution which would definitively allow for marriage to be contracted “by two persons without distinction as to their sex”, there was a process stipulated by the Irish Constitution. After a bill which proposes to amend the Constitution passes parliament, it is mandatory to then seek the approval of the majority of all Irish electors (those eligible to vote in general elections) in a Constitutional Referendum. Hence overall, since the power to grant marriage equality in Ireland lay in the Irish Constitution, and a Constitutional Referendum is a necessary step in installing a Constitutional Amendment, a popular vote in Ireland was necessary. The Irish Referendum, held on the 22nd of May 2015, had a turnout of 60.5% and returned results of 62% yes and 38% no. Following its passing, the government legalised marriage equality on the 16th of November that year.

The Australian popular vote often claimed the Irish vote as precedent, but there is in fact a key distinction: there was no legal necessity for a vote in Australia. Unlike Ireland, the Australian Constitution only mentions marriage where it decrees that marriage and divorce came under the legislative power of the Australian Parliament. The Australian parliament holds discretionary powers on all matters relating to the institution of marriage in Australia, and they chose to define and parameterise marriage under the Marriage Act of 1961. The government is not obligated to seek approval directly from the people when changing Acts. Yet Australia opted for a vote because of a promise made by the Australian Liberal Party in the election of 2016 that they would refer the question of marriage equality directly to the voters (in Australia, the Liberal party is conservative and the Labor Party is liberal, though both are more centrist and less polarised than the conservative-liberal divide in the US). Hence despite having the power to circumvent this divisive popular vote, the Australian parliament essentially arbitrarily decided to conduct a survey on an issue entirely within their power of legislation, based on upholding an election-time promise.

The word “survey” is the correct one to use as a second key distinction should be made between the Australian and Irish votes: the Irish Referendum was binding, the Australian postal vote was not. The Irish Constitution states that the results of a Constitutional Referendum must be honoured. The Irish President is still required to sign the bill into law as a formality, but since the Irish public voted yes to changing the Constitution, the parliament had no power to overturn the result. However, since the Australian parliament’s legislative powers cover marriage, they could have either refused to pass the bill, or passed it anyway even if the postal vote had resulted in a “no” vote. Indeed, multiple members of parliament declined to vote in accordance with the results returned by their electorate, and a small number abstained from voting rather than vote with their electorate. If politicians who opposed marriage equality had simply outnumbered those who were for it, the conscience vote for the eventual bill could have sunk marriage equality regardless of the voting result.

The right to marriage and family is Article 16 on the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It specifies that “men and women of full age, without any limitation due to race, nationality, or religion, have the right to marry and to found a family”. (NB: while the singular form “a man and a woman” would decree that marriage be between men and women only, the plural form of “men and women” remains open to be two men, or two women, etc). It further stipulates that “the family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the State”. That is, governments ought to consider that discrimination in the institution of marriage based on gender is not simply a question of politics or civil liberties, but free and equal access to human rights. No other human right is, by default, curtailed by the gender of those under its protection. There is no reason, despite historical conventions, that marriage should be.

Hence Australia’s postal vote foregrounds a question which is understandable, or at least explainable in the case of Ireland – the question of why a government is allowing an entire country to vote on whether or not a historically underprivileged group can exercise their full and equal human rights. It is a dangerous precedent, especially considering that a former administration of Australian parliament had been responsible for prohibiting marriage equality in the first place. The Marriage Legislation Amendment Bill in 2004 was the first to explicitly define marriage in Australia as the “union of a man and a woman”, and was passed by policy makers alone without a popular vote. Clearly, there was precedent for parliament to alter the institution of marriage in Australia. In polling its citizens, the government asked citizens to grant a minority group rights that politicians alone had taken away. It was the government which denied its citizens access to a human right, and yet they put the responsibility on the country as a whole to restore it.

In a way, the affirmative outcome of both countries’ postal votes is ominous; this is an issue which extends beyond marriage equality or the LGBTQ+ population. It is a question of the role of government in upholding universal human rights. Underprivileged populations have a long history of appealing to the government for their rights. For example, the 19th Amendment of the US Constitution handed down by the Supreme Court mandated that states not withhold voting rights based on gender, giving (initially only white) women the vote. Australia and Ireland, intentionally or not, have set a precedent in the opposite direction. Ruling bodies now have a clear and positive precede for devolving the question of human rights to a majority population. They can now cite Ireland and Australia as examples where the will of the people was respected with the ostensible faith that history moves in the right direction. This can now be applied to many partisan political issues of the day which have an underlying foundation in human rights issues: treatment of refugees and undocumented immigrants can be linked to Article 15, the right to a nationality. Freedom of speech and buzzwords such as “politically correct” is relatable to Article 19, the right to freedom of opinion and expression. Debate on abortions and contraception tie back to Article 3, the right to life, liberty, and security of person or Article 6, the right to recognition as a person under the law.

Now the issue is not only in the intangible, hypothetical future – through putting the question of marriage equality to a vote involving not just politicians but each individual in the country, the pressure to pass or deny also falls to each individual in the country. A key and immediate issue presents itself: marginalised groups, instead of lobbying politicians who have civil and legal obligations to them as constituents, are now forced to appeal for their equal rights from every single voter. These are voters who have no constraints on how they treat political and civil issues apart from their personal beliefs. The onus now falls on individuals to prove their worthiness to equal treatment under the law. Where human rights are concerned, equal treatment should be something that is protected by governing powers and not begged for from the sum of individual opinion.

Overall, Ireland and Australia have set a positive precedent, but a dangerous one nonetheless. All citizens of Ireland and Australia now have the right to freely marry, yet this right had to be earned by convincing the majority of a voting population that a marginalised group was worthy of equal treatment. This precedent should be approached with great caution. The victories of Brexit in the UK and President Trump in the US were outcomes which shocked the world – in a world of ever increasing political partisanship, voting is increasingly turbulent and the lines between conservative and liberal are growing wider. It is a dangerous precedent to leave to sheer numbers the human rights of minorities.

April 27, 2018 0 comment
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Donald TrumpEuropeFeaturedMilitaryRussiaSecurity and ConflictUnited StatesVladimir Putin

The Connection Between Putin’s Chef, Global Political Interference and a Ukrainian Invasion

written by Conor McDonald

If the American dream consists of starting from scratch and, through tireless labor, building one’s assets up to formidable quantities, then it should be easy for Western capitalists to understand how certain individuals were able to take advantage of the Soviet Union’s collapse in 1991 to attain the status that they have today. Boris Yeltsin’s oligarchs with insider connections, of course, are exceptions to this; instead, the individuals being referred to include middle class contractors, mid-tier managers, and even hot dog stand owners. One stand owner in particular, Yevgeny Prigozhin, provides a particularly dramatic case study for economic success following modest origins. Prigozhin used to rob banks and sell street snacks just to pay his bills, but today, he owns a number of bustling enterprises and can be seen driving a blue Lincoln Continental. However, all is not as picture perfect as it seems for this Gatsby-esque individual.

In 2016, the United States congress imposed economic sanctions against Prigozhin alongside several other Russian political elites in an attempt to strike back at the heart of Putin’s inner circle. Just under a month ago, Prigozhin was indicted by Robert Mueller, special counsel overseeing the alleged Russian interference in the United States’ 2016 presidential election, for playing a major role in the digital manipulation of public opinion. Similarly, the international community has expressed repeated disdain toward Prigozhin for his establishment of the Wagner Group, which today stands as Russia’s premier private military corporation acting in Syria, Crimea and Eastern Ukraine. So, how exactly did a humble, bank-robbing hot dog stand owner such as Prigozhin manage to gain such prestige and controversy in Russia’s government?

As Russian political rebel Aleksei Navalny stated in a recent interview, Prigozhin “didn’t invent anything, didn’t find buried treasure, didn’t win at the Olympics. He received his prize as thanks for serving the president well.” In 1998, Prigozhin opened his most famous conventional business to date: New Island, a buoyant restaurant that lies atop an adorned ferry in Saint Petersburg, Russia. Two years later, in 2000, Russian President Vladimir Putin brought the then-Prime Minister of Japan, Yoshiro Mori, to a professional dinner at New Island out of sheer interest. Coincidence or not, Putin took a liking to Prigozhin, and the very next year he brought Jacques Chirac, the former President of France, to the very same restaurant. He also brought United States President George W. Bush in 2002, and he hosted his personal birthday party there in 2003. Putin and Prigozhin rapidly formed a unique friendship, the shady personal and economic perks of which would be seen in the years to follow.

Some of these perks included contracts to provide food for Russian public schools and the Russian military — at his peak, Prigozhin was feeding 90% of Russian service-members, a job which Vox News reports earned him over a billion dollars. Perhaps it is because of Prigozhin’s humble origins as a hot dog stand owner that he is not afraid of doing President Putin’s dirty work. Perhaps he was enraptured by the economic benefits, or perhaps he was simply too afraid to say no. Regardless, with economic favors from Putin came political and social responsibility for Prigozhin to serve his leader’s interests. A decade after Putin’s birthday party, Prigozhin was presumably advised by government sources to use his funds to create the Internet Resource Agency — also known as Glavset — a Saint Petersburg-based technological company seeking to promote disinformation campaigns both domestically and abroad. Glavset’s campaigns initially sought to put down domestic protests by creating fake social media accounts advocating on behalf of President Putin and disparage the actions of his primary opponent, Aleksei Navalny, but, according to Mueller, it allegedly expanded to the point of interference in international elections, including the United States’ in 2016. The most prominent evidence citing Prigozhin’s involvement in the US election meddling pertains to his meeting with Mikhail Bystrov, the appointed head of Glavset, several times from 2015-2016 to discuss the work being done. It’s also important to note that Glavset’s Project Lakhta, a so-called “disinformation campaign,” received approximately $1.2 million in funding from Prigozhin in 2016 alone.

Following dramatic success countering protests and slandering rivals with Glasvet, Prigozhin used his immense wealth in 2014 to found and develop ChVK Wagner, a private military corporation which has, as of late, become one of President Putin’s primary sources for military operations that Russia cannot formally be involved in. Commanded by Dmitry Utkin, an ex-Russian Special Forces brigade commander, ChVK Wagner has been involved in both the conflicts in Syria and in Ukraine’s Luhansk region. Perhaps most infamously, it was recently discovered that the Wagner Group shot down the Ukrainian Air Force’s Ilyushin Il-76 in 2014, an act which was originally attributed to rogue Russian nationalists in Ukraine and killed all 49 of the plane’s passengers. ChVK Wagner has also been involved in the recent conflict in Crimea, where their innocuous green uniforms earned them the title of “little green men.” Prigozhin’s decision to fund military bases in Ukraine’s Donbas region has been a critical component of the success of Russian encroachment. In Syria, ChVK Wagner’s shady activities include serving as “shock troops” to President Bashar al-Assad, as well as seizing ISIS-held oil fields for Russian companies, including the newly made conglomerate Evro Soyuz. The Wagner Group’s economic and military influence is easily one of the most valuable assets that Prigozhin is bringing to Putin and his oligarchs’ table.

In everywhere but Putin’s Russia, it is positively bizarre for one to imagine a world in which a hot dog stand owner with a vast criminal record can rise to a point of such prominence in one of the world’s most powerful political and military systems. Prigozhin himself once said that “Vladimir Putin saw how I built up my business from nothing,” but the roots of his success lie not in his hard work — they instead lie in the fact that Putin was a personal witness and catalyst to it. This is precisely how modern Russia has operated since Boris Yeltsin and Yegor Gaidar’s disastrous economic reforms in the early 1990s. Regardless, President Putin’s crony-infested inner circle will continue to thrive on loyalty and trust above all else, proving that even the bank robber putting mustard on a hot dog has a valid chance at fulfilling his wildest dreams.

March 24, 2018 0 comment
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#MeTooEuropeFeaturedUnited StatesWomen's Rights

#MeToo Movement: A Comparison of French and American Gender Equality and Secularism

written by Andrea Zachrich

When film producer Harvey Weinstein was accused by dozens of women last November of sexual assault and predatory behavior, an outpouring of comparable claims and allegations arose against other high-profile men, subsequently launching the #MeToo movement. American social activist Tarana Burke, who is credited with the original hashtag, states that the goal of the movement is to let victims of sexual assault and harassment know that their experiences are not uncommon and thus they should not be shamed into remaining silent about them. After My Name is Earl actress Alyssa Milano tweeted the hashtag, the movement gained popularity and female movie stars such as Gwyneth Paltrow, Uma Thurman, and Viola Davis all expressed sympathy or shared stories of sexual exploitation. Even Senators Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Claire McCaskill of Missouri joined in and tweeted about the movement. Women and men of all backgrounds in America have expressed support.

Conversely, the #MeToo movement has recently experienced backlash from across the Atlantic in France, where a public letter signed by over 100 prominent French women, including actress Catherine Deneuve, have criticized the movement’s “puritanism” and its claim to “promote the liberation and protection of women” when actually “enslave[ing] them to…eternal victim[hood] and reduc[ing] them to defenseless preys.” While criticism from other women, who appear as though they should be natural allies, may shock at first glance, the disagreement over proper sexual norms between French women and their American counterparts comes as no surprise when accounting for the cultural differences regarding sex and gender between the two nations. Given France’s more progressive history of gender equality as well as a proud tradition of secularism amongst its citizens, the more accepting attitude of sexual advances and unwanted intimacy expressed by Deneuve and others is, upon closer inspection, not so unexpected after all. One of the letter’s chief criticisms of #MeToo was that although the movement claims to empower women by shielding them from unwanted sexual advances, by “demand[ing]” protection, its supporters are instead suggesting that women lack the individual agency and ability to speak up for–and defend–themselves without help. This distinction between American supporters and French doubters regarding the rights and abilities of women can be traced to the countries’ differing histories on the subject.

By multiple metrics and measurements, France has achieved higher levels of gender equality than the United States. For instance, the French parliament is currently 38.6% female, with women holding 233 out of a total of 577 seats. In contrast, 21% of U.S Senators and only 19.1% of U.S Representatives are female, with women holding 106 out of 535 total seats. Additionally, while France appointed a female Prime Minister in 1991, the U.S has yet to elect a woman to its highest office, and only in the most recent 2016 election was Hillary Clinton named the first female major party presidential nominee in American history. This seemingly trivial discrepancy among representation in government should not be dismissed out of hand. Women in France may very well feel as if they have more political power because their representation in Parliament is significantly higher and because they have seen women occupy the highest offices of government.

In addition to political representation, women in France also retain a number of cultural and workplace advantages that their American counterparts lack. First, France permits up to four months of paid maternity leave, while the U.S. only allows for up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave. Furthermore, French women are allowed unrestricted access to abortion throughout the first trimester of pregnancy. In contrast, in the U.S., states are allowed to make their own decisions on abortion access so long as the regulations do not cause “undue interference.” This wording has been interpreted broadly and many states have implemented mandatory waiting periods, state-mandated counseling, and numerous other roadblocks to delay and impede access to abortion. Women’s rights have also been one of the central focuses of French President Emmanuel Macron’s campaign and presidency.  The French government even pressures the media to refrain from posting sexist or demeaning images of women. Finally, the Global Gender Gap Index which measures gender inequality across economic, political, educational, and health-based criteria ranked France 12th in the world in 2018 while the U.S ranked 49th–between Bangladesh and Zimbabwe.

These significant differences in gender equality between France and the U.S. demonstrate two fundamentally unique female experiences which can help explain the backlash to the #MeToo movement expressed by Deneuve and others. In a country where women are nearly equally represented in their government, that has laws and regulations seeking to level the playing-field in the workplace, and that maintains high female educational and economic achievement, women may feel as though there is less of a disparity of power when men make unwanted sexual advances. French women would thus perceive an advance as flirtation between equals and therefore feel as though they have the agency to either continue or put a stop to such actions. In comparison, American women may feel uncomfortable with similar types of advances due to a greater power imbalance between men and women in society. Such imbalance would likely lead to women feeling as though they lack the ability to speak up about how they feel, especially if sexual advances are unwelcome. The French letter’s critique of American women seeking to be “protected” and maintain “eternal” victim status may stem from these cultural divide. Understandably, French women–coming from a culture that consistently affirms their belief of themselves as equals to men–will have a different perspective from their American counterparts, who have grown up under a political, economic, and educational imbalance that undoubtedly seeps into their sexual and romantic lives.

In addition to a demonstrable difference in gender equality between France and the United States, the variation of the role and importance of religion also helps shape distinct sexual attitudes amongst citizens of these respective nations. For instance, a Pew Research study from 2015 found that 53% of Americans say that religion is “very important” in their lives. In contrast, only 14% of French adults said the same. Moreover, the U.S is an outlier among wealthy, Western countries when it comes to the importance of religion. 21% of the populations of both Germany and the United Kingdom say that religion is “very important” in their lives, and other developed nations such as Australia and Canada also came in well below the U.S. at 18% and 27% respectively. This disparity unquestionably creates divergent societal understandings of sex.

One manifestation of this discrepancy in religious attitudes can be found in the differences between French and American sexual education programs in schools. In an analysis of sex-ed programs in the U.S., France, and several other Western nations, author Kelly Bell noted that as a result of its religious citizenry, the U.S. views sex in more “puritanical” and “moral” terms as opposed to the “open, matter-of-fact attitudes” found in the other countries studied. This perspective naturally has led to lobbying by churches and religious groups across the U.S. on behalf of abstinence-only programs, fearing that a more comprehensive education in schools will lead to promiscuity (although this fear has been proven to be false). The result is that the American school system is failing to give teens an understanding that sex and sexuality are a “normal and positive part of human development,” an understanding that sex-ed programs in Western Europe reaffirm. Again, the connection between these differences and the views expressed in the letter is clear. When there is a tendency to see sexual advances and activity as taboo due to poor sexual education, the reaction to such experiences when unwanted will unquestionably be harsher than if they were viewed as a normal and natural experience.

Another cultural difference between the two countries can be found in interpretations of flirting. Alex Giami–co-author of a study on sexuality in France and the U.S–found that French women on the whole do not view “‘flirtation and seduction and romance as a direct sexual approach, and that flirtation does not necessarily lead to sexual intercourse.” In other words, “the language of seduction is not an explicit language of sex.” This understanding differs dramatically from American attitudes which tend to view flirtation and seduction almost exclusively as sexual advances. When flirting is recognized as separate from sex, the notion that men should be “disciplined” for such actions and placed in the “same category as sex offenders” would seem troubling and puritanical.

If the disagreement between French and American women over the #MeToo movement surprised some, it shouldn’t have. As a result of a more progressive history of gender equality, the female experience in Nice is fundamentally different from that of New York. Furthermore, the variation of the importance of religion between these countries creates two profoundly different understandings of sexual activity and flirtation. Yet cultural disagreement is not unique to France and America. Instead, the French letter and the American reaction to it represent a failure of cultural relativism: The idea that one’s actions and opinions should be judged by their own culture standards rather than someone else’s. Such instances are not unique. Supporters of the movement in both countries are failing to recognize that there are clear cultural differences that led to this disagreement. They are thus making judgements and assumptions based on their own morals and standards. This misunderstanding serves as an important reminder that, given the array of cultural variation found in every corner of the globe, social movements are not always exportable, however beneficial they may be to their country of origin.

March 6, 2018 1 comment
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Kurdistan Referendum and Independence Rally at Franso Hariri Stadium in Erbil Kurdistan Region of Iraq
EuropeFeaturedMiddle EastMilitarySecessionism

The Irony of the Economic and Political Viability of Iraqi Kurdistan and Catalonia’s Independence

written by Andrea Zachrich

Iraqi Kurdistan and Catalonia have many similarities. Both held independence referendums within a week of each other earlier last year.  Additionally, they are both fairly autonomous regions in confederation with larger national governments – Iraq and Spain, respectively – and consist of an ethnic minority geographically grouped in their historic homeland. Yet, however comparable these regions appear, there is one major differentiating factor: The Kurds need their own country; the Catalans do not. In the absence of independence, the Kurds will remain politically disenfranchised, continue to have their culture banned, and will remain in harm’s way as a result of oppressive and often violent rule from their adopted countries. In contrast, absent autonomy, the Catalans will still enjoy great political freedom, retain the ability to openly celebrate their culture, and be significantly aided by Spain’s membership in the EU. It is an ironic misfortune that the Kurds, a people with an extensive history of suffering at the hands of their host nations and a future similarly bleak, find independence impossible, while the wealthy Catalans seek a plausible independence from a non-oppressive state willing to compromise on their demands. An independent Kurdistan will only be possible if the region works on diversifying the economy, democratizing the government, and gaining the support of the international economy.

In order to gain political and social freedom comparable to what the Catalans currently enjoy, the Kurds need their own nation. The Kurds are currently the largest ethnic group in the world without a formal homeland and are spread across four countries: Turkey, Iraq, Iran, and Syria. They have their own language and culture, and do not identify as Arab or Persian, alienating them from the ethnic majority in each of the states they live in. While Kurds in Iraq have much more autonomy and freedom than Kurds in other countries, such as being allowed a fairly autonomous government, no Kurds have ever enjoyed equal rights in their adopted countries. For example, Syrian Kurds are denied citizenship, and Turkish Kurds are banned from speaking their language, using traditional names, and have been relabeled “Mountain Turks” by the government in an effort to erase their historically separate identity. Additionally, Iraqi Kurds have had numerous atrocities committed against them, most infamously when Saddam Hussein killed over 50,000 Kurds in the late 1980’s using chemical weapons and targeted shootings in an attempted genocide. With the current war against ISIS, Erdogan’s fear of a Turkish Kurd revolt, and the tenuous power Syria’s President Assad holds, this treatment of the Kurds is unlikely to improve if they do not have a nation of their own.

Starting in January, Turkey began a military offensive into Syria called the Olive Branch Campaign. The goal of this campaign is to drive the YPG out of Afrin, a group Turkey considers a terrorist organization but the US and many other UN member states do not. So far, this campaign has reportedly killed around 25 civilians and displaced thousands more. There are also allegations of war crimes, including Turkish soldiers firing their weapons indiscriminately at Kurdish civilians, and one particularly horrifying instance where Turkish-backed fighters mutilated the breasts of a female Kurdish fighter, posed for selfies with her corpse, and filmed the entire incident. Turkish officials justify this offensive as a way to secure their border against Kurdish “terrorists”. The US and other Western powers such as France have urged the de-escalation of the offensive, and the US even stated that they would not withdraw troops from one of the cities, Manbij, that Turkey wishes to attack, potentially bringing the two NATO allies into direct conflict. But, no Western power has seriously attempted to force Turkey to cease this offensive. As gruesome and objectionable as these actions by Turkey are, there may be a silver lining for the Kurds. Under international law, secession  is mainly used as a last resort when  people have been oppressed by the government they live under. There is already an argument to be made that the Kurds have been oppressed by each of the nations they live in, but this offensive by Turkey and highly publicized war crimes only strengthens the Kurdish justification for an independent state under international law.

In contrast to the Kurds’ situation in the Middle East, the Catalans not only enjoy great political and cultural freedom but are also guaranteed safety in their homeland. While it is true that Catalonian independence activists were executed under the regime of Francisco Franco in the 1940’s, it never amounted to the systematic atrocities committed against the Kurds’ under Hussein’s regime. Since Franco’s death, the region has been largely autonomous and has its own parliament and police force. Catalonia also has significant power in the national government of Spain as its representatives total nearly one-seventh of the total number of representatives in the Congress of Deputies, Spain’s National Legislature. Catalonia also gains significant advantages from Spain’s status as a member of the European Union due to their use of the Euro and access to the single market. Additionally, Catalonia owes 52 billion euros to the Spanish Government due to a program created in 2012 that loaned cash to regions who were not able to borrow money after the financial crisis. In comparison to the Kurds, Catalans are not persecuted for speaking their language or celebrating their culture; regional TV and news stations are in Catalan. While the region does hold valid complaints about the taxation policies of the national government – Catalonia currently pays 10 billion euros more in taxes annually to the national government than they receive back – Madrid has said that they are open to negotiations regarding this issue. Such accommodation is impossible to imagine from Iraq, Turkey, or Syria. Declaring independence is an unnecessary and polarizing step for a people who are already largely autonomous, reap many benefits from being a part of Spain, and whose national government is willing to negotiate on their main grievance. While it is true that the Spanish government did take control of Catalonia shortly following the independence referendum, Spain did allow new elections for the Catalonian parliament within 3 months. The Catalans can win the concessions they want without full independence.

The unfortunate irony of these two situations is that an independent Catalonia is economically viable while an independent Kurdistan would not be. Kurdistan’s main resource are its oil fields, which Iraq violently seized shortly following the referendum, and Kurdistan lacks the military power to gain back these oil fields. Turkey, Kurdistan’s main importer of oil, has threatened to stop buying their oil or even invade the region over fears of an uprising in Turkey. More so, the United States refuses to intervene on the Kurds’ behalf because they rely on their allies, Turkey and Iraq, in the war against ISIS. Syrian Kurds under attack in Turkey’s Operation Olive Branch have also seen little international support. Western powers have condemned the invasion but have undertaken no concrete actions to resolve the attack or stop Turkey. This leaves the Kurds with limited negotiating power in Baghdad. Since gaining semi-autonomy in 2006, the Iraqi Kurds have built two international airports and improved the region’s infrastructure, but the government is essentially an oligarchy run by the family and political party of recently resigned President Massoud Barzani. Barzani’s focus on building party loyalty has left other parts of the economy, such as agriculture and manufacturing, largely neglected. Left with little industry, the seizure of their main source of income, a weak military, and a lack of international support, an independent Kurdish state is not currently economically or politically viable.

In contrast, Catalonia has the economic strength necessary to support an independent state. Catalonia is one of Spain’s richest and most industrialized regions as a result of a booming tourism and manufacturing sector that garners massive amounts of revenue and creates thousands of jobs in the region. While it is true that Catalonia’s admittance into the EU could be vetoed by Spain, thus losing their access to the single market, an independent Catalonia would theoretically have an extra 10 billion dollars per year that they would no longer pay in taxes to Madrid, which  could be used to pay for access to the single market. Catalonia may even be able to continue to use the euro without the EU’s consent in the same way that Kosovo or Montenegro do, although it would lack access to the central bank. Catalonia could exploit its existing industries, large tourism revenues, and the financial surplus created from not having to pay taxes to Madrid in order to finance a newly independent nation.

In order to experience social and political freedom similar to the Catalans, the Kurds need their own nation. It is a terrible irony that an independent Iraqi Kurdistan is not currently economically or politically sustainable but an independent Catalonia would be. The US-backed Kurdish fighters have proved themselves strong allies in a fight against ISIS, and the US and other Western powers should support their campaign for independence. In addition, in order for Kurdistan to achieve the economic power to win their independence from Iraq, the region must gain the military power to win back their oil fields. While it is currently unlikely that the US would be willing to aid the Kurdistan military because they fear a resurgence of ISIS in this region and do not wish to anger Iraq, other countries with less of a stake in the region may be willing to step in. Even if the US does not provide military support, the country still may still be able to pressure the Iraqi government into some sort of deal regarding the oil fields. The region must also strive for a more democratic government by purging their current oligarchic regime and they must improve and strengthen their infrastructure. Those in connection with Barzani should step down and new elections should be held and new officials appointed. The government could possibly request loans from other countries with the purpose of improving agriculture, manufacturing, and taking advantage of their central location to trade. Lastly, Kurdistan must attain the support of the international community and powerful countries, such as the United States, who would recognize their independence, provide economic assistance, and assist and support them in negotiations. The Kurds need their own state in order to prevent the kind of persecution that has plagued their people throughout much of modern history. This state is a possibility in the future, but the Kurds have a long road ahead. They need both internal reforms and external support before this independent state could become a reality.

February 8, 2018 0 comment
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Russian President Vladimir Putin and US President Donald Trump at 2017 G20 Summit in Hamburg, Germany
EuropeFeaturedGeopoliticsSecurityTerritorial disputes

Stopping Russia In Its Tracks

written by Conor McDonald

In 2009, the United States and the European Union chose to discontinue efforts toward establishing a missile defense complex in Poland. This decision was influenced by a predictably negative reception from Russian President Vladimir Putin, as well as a startled hesitancy from the then-Prime Minister of Poland, Donald Tusk. Despite the clear rationality behind President Obama’s choice to cease progress, the heightened toxicity of today’s European political climate has rendered this decision unacceptable. Eastern European tensions have risen considerably within the past eight years, with the primary belligerent being a nuclear-armed, expansionist Russian Federation. In order for the United States to guarantee the safeties of its NATO allies, an Eastern European missile defense complex must be revisited; only by acknowledging Russian hostility, enacting defensive measures and penalizing continued belligerency can the United States ensure NATO’s longevity.  

NATO was created in 1949 in order to combat Russian broad-scale irredentism and provide security for sovereign states during the Cold War. Many, including US President Donald Trump, have entertained the possibility that NATO may now be nothing more than a vestigial remnant of a past era. However, the Russo-Georgian War of 2008 revealed that Russian irredentism is still quite alive, with President Putin merely reducing the broad-scale, Soviet expansionism to a less rash, intermediate form. Surprisingly, his efforts have gone largely unpunished — in the last ten years alone, the Russian Federation has expanded into South Ossetia, Abkhazia and Crimea, actions which have been met with passive sanctions and verbose but non-substantive condemnations from the international community. Recent statements from the Kremlin regarding ethnic Russian populations in countries such as Belarus, Latvia and Estonia, coupled with the nuclear saber-rattling of an unpersuadable President Putin, have not helped to quell this fear in the slightest.

It is absolutely critical for the President of the United States to create a State Department advisory committee on the topic of Eastern European territorial disputes, which can predict and prevent violations of sovereignty by foreign aggressors in the region. Imprudent? Perhaps. Necessary? Absolutely. Given President Putin’s blatant disregard for borders or sovereignty, preemptive and extraordinary strategic analysis must be incessantly conducted in the region until the Russian state proves itself capable of dormancy. Political and social overlooks were primarily responsible for the aforementioned disputes and invasions, proving that there is an intense need for the United States to secure its sphere of NATO influence. It would be in the United States’ utmost interest to determine which NATO members are at risk, and then proceed to manage that risk.

The respective Georgian and Ukrainian crises of 2008 and 2014 not only reestablished Russia as a geographically developing entity, but they also cornered the West into establishing a precedent of non-military intervention. President Putin has claimed on several occasions that, should the Russian Federation be attacked by a relatively devastating conventional weapon or force, a limited nuclear strike should and may be utilized in order to “de-escalate” the conflict, a position which prompted America and the European Union to avoid violence with Russia throughout the past decade. It is important that President Trump, his advisors and his allies realize that the substance of this threat matters not; what matters is that President Putin has revealed to the international community that he believes his authority is derived from the nuclear arsenal he possesses. The Russian president is trapped in the mid-20th century in the sense that he still believes in the symbolic power of nuclear weapons, and once their potential for mass destruction is reduced or done away with, his resulting sense of self-worth will undoubtedly deplete alongside it. Thus, it is necessary to establish preemptive defenses through interceptor site development.

By constructing radar detection and missile defense facilities with assets including THAAD systems and offshore SM-3 missiles in Eastern European, NATO-aligned nations (specifically, Poland and the Czech Republic), this nuclear confidence and its resulting threats could be eliminated. Similarly, and perhaps more importantly, the Kremlin’s sense of invincibility would be lessened. President Putin’s recent separation from the Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty clearly illustrates a sense of recklessness lingering within his administration. As NATO Chairman Jens Stoltenberg recently explained to a crowded audience in 2015, President Putin’s actions continue to be unjustified, destabilizing and dangerous toward neighboring, peaceful nations. Nuclear power is great and should not be trifled with, and decisive defensive reactions could do a great deal in regard to its relinquishment.

Although it would appear simple to hinder Russian revanchism by focusing on political insecurities and social vulnerabilities, the West would be foolhardy to assume that all Russian motivations to advance would cease to exist once President Putin’s nuclear capabilities are confronted. To supplement interceptor site development, efforts should be focused toward dealing with the highly-likely symbolic retaliation from the East. For instance: Should these NATO missile interceptor site(s) be placed in Eastern Europe, one could almost guarantee that President Putin would relocate Russian Iskander missiles — considered by many to be the modern replacement for Soviet Scud missiles — to Kaliningrad, by the Polish border, in an attempt to intimidate Western and NATO-affiliated neighbors.

Despite being nearly inevitable, symbolic Russian retaliation can still be limited through a mutually-beneficial, bilateral agreement between the United States and the Russian Federation. This agreement should enforce a standard where NATO members can not host missiles with the potential to carry nuclear warheads within an expertly predetermined number of miles from the borders of CSTO member states, and vice versa. Such a symbolic agreement would reassure President Putin that the United States will not encroach upon increasing Russian interests in Central Asia, while simultaneously protecting endangered NATO allies. NATO would most likely need to remove missiles currently stationed in Incirlik, Turkey, but the benefits of such an agreement would greatly outweigh the minor strategic advantage that comes with Turkish warhead emplacement. The presence of anti-ballistic missile sites would surely promise a greater future than the presence of ballistic missile sites, and there is no better place to start than Eastern Europe.

September 28, 2017 0 comment
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Former DPRK Supreme Leader Kim Jong Il and Russian President Vladimir Putin
EuropeGeopoliticsMiddle EastSecurity and Conflict

Looking in the Mirror: Dukes of Anarchy

written by Changyeun Hahn

The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, better known as “North Korea” is led by Dear Respected Comrade Kim Jong-Un, Chairman of the Workers’ Party of Korea, Chairman of the State Affairs Commission of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea and Supreme Commander of the Korean People’s Army. About 4600 miles away, the Syrian Arab Republic is led by President Bashar al-Assad, a leader with a much shorter title. Although the two countries are geographically distant and not often considered to be politically linked, they share a unique feature: both are run by leaders whose titles were heirlooms.

These two “democracies” are extremely relevant in today’s international affairs despite their relatively tiny economies. The population of both countries combined is 44.28 million. In comparison the population of US is 326.3 million. Economically, Syria’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in 2010 was $60 billion. North Korea’s GDP in 2015 was $16.12 billion. Comparatively, the GDP of the US is $18036.7 billion. Two Davids standing on the same ground as Goliath. These heirs have leveraged Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMDs) to stay in the international spotlight.

In 1953, Korea was divided into two with the establishment of the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ). Syngman Rhee became the president of the Republic of Korea (South Korea) and Kim Il Sung became the ruler of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea); North Korea was determined to follow the communism it found in the Soviet sphere, while the South was inspired by US capitalism. The 38th parallel separating the two countries also symbolized an international divide: the US supported the South, and China supported the North. The image of North Korea as a land of famished children and oppressed people was not always the case. In fact, during the 50s and 60s, North Korea had a fast growing economy while South Korea struggled with a lack of agricultural resources and was dependent on significant US aid; at the time, North Korea was an enviable land. However, South Korea developed technology and saw economic growth in the early 2000s, while North Korea withered into the state it is in today. Under the leadership of President Park Chung-Hee, South Korean policies focused on looser policies for economic giants, which allowed it to compete in the world market with companies like Samsung and LG. Furthermore, instead of taking the advice of the US to crackdown on corrupt businessmen, South Korean policies took their bank shares and invested them in import-substitution industries. This unconventional method proved effective and the South Korean economy grew exponentially within just a few decades. Meanwhile, North Korean economy dwindled rapidly. Regardless of the state of the nation, the Kim regime continued to stay in power.

While Japanese rule in Korea led to a civil war, after the Sykes-Picot Agreement, the French-ruled Syria managed to gain independence with the help of Britain, while remaining intact. In 1943, the country had its first election. However, the initial years of independence were not calm. After many coups, Baathist army officers took control of the government in 1963. Three years later, Salah Jadid led an internal coup and Hafez Assad became the defense minister. In 1970, Hafez Assad overthrew then- President Nur al-Din al-Atasi and became the president of Syria. He continued rule until his death, when his son, Bashar Assad took over.

The current leaders of both countries have kept the same ideologies of their fathers but have changed priorities in their domestic, defense, and foreign policies. Despite domestic and international resistance, both leaders have also managed to remain in power.

Domestically, Kim Jong-Un has not alleviated the humanitarian crisis faced by his people. In fact, during his leadership, the number of executions has been staggering. The Dear Respected Comrade even had his own uncle executed. However, when he first came to power, he did put effort into improving public infrastructure. Still, there has been no noticeable difference in the treatment of North Koreans or the overall quality of life in the country. Many have suggested that due to the relatively short transition period from Kim Jong-Il to Kim Jong-Un, the current leader does not hold the same level of respect that his father once did. He also does not have the close-knit advisors that his father had.

Domestically, Bashar al- Assad has a bigger problem on hand than his father Hafez did decades ago. There is no debate that Hafez al- Assad in the Hama massacres showed little regard for his people’s lives, slaughtering 20,000 Syrians. About three decades later, in 2016, his son dropped 13,000 barrel bombs onto his own people. However, with the current war in the region, and especially its role as a proxy war for Russia, US, Iran, and the Sunni countries in the region, the level of chaos is incomparable. In the beginning of his rule, Bashar al-Assad suggested his openness to a more democratic nation, while specifying that it would not look like Western democracy. However, over time, the young leader has used the barbaric tactics of his father and simply worsened the situation. A part of this may be due to the fact that Bashar al- Assad was not groomed to be the next leader, but only became so after the death of his older brother Basil al- Assad.

Both heirs have undoubtedly committed human rights violations. North Korea has been under continuous scrutiny by organizations like Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International for its concentration camps. However, recently, especially after the April 2017 chemical bombings, human rights violations in Syria have garnered much international attention. Regardless, both countries have not shown much regard for international shaming. Both leaders also continue using the methods of torture utilized by their fathers.

With regards to defense policy, which is tightly interwoven in the foreign policies of both countries, Kim Jong-Un and Bashar al- Assad have become more aggressive than their fathers and have relied more heavily on WMD programs.

Since losing wealth and power, North Korea has resorted to brinksmanship–making threats that are only significant due to the nuclear power it possesses. This tactic was also utilized by the current dictator’s predecessor and father, Kim Jong-Il. In 2012, North Korea fired multiple artillery shells which resulted in a retaliatory attack by South Korea.

While the country has made brazen threats, the US stance on the issue has been heavily influenced by North Korea-China relations. Until May 2017, there was little evidence that China will abandon its “little brother”. In fact in 2016, when Kim Jong Un conducted nuclear tests, Chinese politicians continue to visit North Korea and deepen relations, instead of reprimanding the country. However, as Kim Jong-Un continued to invest and hasten its nuclear program, its relationship with China has been significantly strained. In contrast, the previous Kim dictators had been very careful to not upset China.

An easy example of what North Korea-China relations would look like to the West if the country did not have nuclear weapons can be found by looking at Syria-Russia relations. President Assad has been surviving solely with Russian support. Publically, Russia has vocalized repeatedly throughout the war for NATO to stay away from Syria. The current chaos in the country has become the home to a proxy war where US-Russia relations are being challenged. Despite Russia’s comments towards NATO, American involvement in the region has increased under the Trump administration. In order to protect its ally, Russia has continued to send military arms to Syria, allowing it to combat the rebel groups in the region. Russia is involved in Syria to protect its access to the Black Sea- more specifically the port of Tartus- which is only possible through the Mediterranean Sea. Furthermore, with the Assad regime gaining power in the region, there is little reason to expect Russia to stop supporting Bashar Assad.

The Syria-Russia alliance dates back four decades and has only been strengthened by. US involvement in the region. Although there are other countries where the government targets its people, like the Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar, it is the involvement of major powers in this proxy war that has kept Syria at the center of global issues. On the other hand, the horrors in North Korea are not new, but the country gained attention as Kim Jong-Un has heavily focused on improving its nuclear program.

Although both chemical and nuclear bombs are WMDs, the reality is that nuclear bombs create a bigger existential threat for the entire world. As the threats made by the Kim dynasty become more and more tangible, the international community has become more involved. Simultaneously, as the North Korean’s capabilities improve, Kim Jong-Un has been more brazen and willing to separate from his country’s ‘big brother’, China. The reality is that both countries are slaughtering their own people, but nuclear weapons seriously challenge other countries’ citizens and therefore give Kim Jong-Un more voice in the international arena. The chemical bombs that Assad has been utilizing, although horrific, mainly call for international human rights intervention. There is little threat to the outside world and thus the conversation has more heavily involved Russia. Without Russia, there is little chance for Assad to survive; however, Kim Jong-Un is outdoing his father’s legacy and creating a more robust nuclear program, albeit more dangerous, international ground.

September 9, 2017 0 comment
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