POLS170 Group 2

 For my final blog post, I wanted to discuss our game of Risk in class, and reflect on what I learned from it. To begin, I have never played Risk before, so even with reading the directions I was pretty much in the dark about what was going on. However, after playing the two rounds, I found it interesting how the game can be applied to real life, and how important information plays in international relations. I was in the Blue group, so off the bat we sort of had a "target" on our backs that put us at a disadvantage because we had the largest army. Our army was no secret, so it made us vulnerable because other countries immediately wanted to engage in war with us. Our objective was to occupy Ukraine and to have World Council sanction to do so. This was a difficult task, because due to the size of our army and global hegemon, I think it caused the other teams to be wary and suspicious of our goal.  Through the course of two rounds, our team was mostly occupied with working on ...

  Over the course of the semester, we have looked at international politics from various angles where we aimed to understand why actors behave in the way they do and how this affects other actors, sometimes without us even knowing. At the very beginning of the course we looked at “Of the Culture of White Folk” by W. E. Burghardt Du Bois and the way states behave through exploiting others. It highlighted how international relations studies tend to provide a Eurocentric view with White Christian men in power. In the final discussion, we talked about Tzetan Todorov’s book, The Conquest of America: The Question of the Other . This touched Christopher Columbus’ journey to the Americas and the impact of his discovery. As we take a closer look at history, there are evident differences such as moments being turning points in human history. Moments like Columbus being the first European to discover the Americas or the various political regimes that have taken place have a world that may not...

While reading the potential prompts for our final essay, I began thinking back to all of our readings and class discussions on these topics. One of the questions that really stuck out to me was the question asking, "What is terrorism? Why does it matter?" This is such a deep question that can unravel so many different thoughts, perspectives, opinions, and international laws and concepts.  Terrorism occurs when unlawful groups are in the pursuit of personal political goals by acts of violence and criminal activity. Terrorism is not an empirical event, and is not a term used to chastise particular political events.  A terrorist can be an individual or group whom inflicts violence against civilians of a certain culture, group, etc., motivated by political gains or hate. Terrorists use violence, intimidation, and threats through the use of destruction or violent acts in pursuit of political gain. These acts of violence directly harm people for a hateful reason to pursue individua...

 For my final blog post, I am choosing to talk about the article from Nhina Le on the topic of human rights. While everyone is familiar with human rights as a general concept, Le loosely defines them early on in her passage saying "By definition “human rights” are based on the universal dignity of all human beings by virtue of their humanity." However, this concept is up for much debate across cultures in different countries.  I would personally argue that human rights are essential to the formation of structure within a government or state system. In order to create a trusted system, you must provide the people with basic rights to feel like they can support a system. However, one could argue the situation I just layed out only applies to certain forms of government, such as a democracy. Whenever citizens have a direct impact on their politics, they need securities. One interesting portion of Le's article highlights how corrupted these systems just might be when it comes...

  Harrison Gold POLS170 Blog 5   Discussing the Rise in Domestic Terrorism   During the week of November 8th, we covered, “What Is Terrorism and Why Does it Matter??”.  Most memorably for me, were the heinous acts of Dylan Roof in the Emmanuel African Methodist Church in Charleston, SC and, of course, the assault of January 6th of our nation’s capital. Just a few years ago, when an American spoke of terrorism, most would’ve thought of an unthinkable act that took place in the Middle East - in places like Afghanistan, Iran or Pakistan.  But today, Americans are seeing these acts frequently play out in our own communities.  Whether it be school shootings, bombings at places like the Boston marathon or violent protests (BLM or White Supremacists) – it is huge and worsening problem. Most certainly, acts of domestic terrorism have taken place over the years, it has sadly become a far more frequent problem over the past few years – I think it is important to unde...

After the recent discussion and threats of the new variant of COVID-19 and our class discussions, I have decided to write my blog post on World Health. There has recently been a lot of discussion and debate over another round of lockdowns and closing borders, versus vaccinations and booster shots being able to protect against this new variant. To inform myself more on the new strain, named Omicron, I read the New York Times Article Omicron: What is Known - and Still Unknown .  This article put forth a discussion on the intense research of the new covid variant first identified in southern Africa. The World Health Organization, or WHO, has deemed Omicron a "variant of concern" which has caused scientists and public health officials to urge all to get vaccinated. Health officials see getting vaccinated as the strongest possibility for protection against this strain with, "unusually high number of mutations that have the potential to make the virus more transmissible and le...

The current global pandemic has sparked more conversation around the importance of global health and how to both support and maintain it. Global health is a broad and daunting issue that cannot be solved simply. Despite it being “global,” global health is not global with much of its representation coming from the North. This flaw does not allow for developing states in the South to get representation in different policies and procedures that will benefit its people. The article “Silenced Voices in Global Health” from Think Global Health, bring up the importance of representing diverse groups of marginalized populations in global health. One point mentioned, which I am aware is obvious, is that “A person can belong to an underrepresented population but still be highly privileged,” but I have rarely ever thought about it in terms of representation. They highlighted this by comparing a “a woman from the global South from civil society may have been raised in New York, networked with the g...

For my fourth blog post, I wanted to write about a particular article that we read for class, followed by a discussion we had in class regarding NGO's. NGO's, or Non-Governmental Organizations, are groups that are founded with the intention to help groups of people outside of that government body. The issues they tackle include human rights violations, poverty, environment, and other injustices. This is all well and good, when the NGO's are honest and are helping those who want to be helped. However, after our discussion in class, and the article by Sebastian Mallaby, I am far more skeptical about the general concept of NGO's than I was prior to learning more. The Mallaby article brings to light how NGO's can be harmful through their "framing" tactics, which we also discussed in class. Framing can be a useful tool to present information to make it more accessible to the average reader. Rather than confront an audience with an overload of facts and data, fr...

 In our recent readings and discussions regarding the concept of global justice, I found the September 2019 bombing in Syria (against ISIS) to be an interesting point of dispute. This situation relates to the discussion of just war versus unjust war. I would argue that the U.S. frequently acts against "Just War". In a sense, more often than not in our history, we have seen the U.S. take much more severe retaliations to offenses against our homeland or our troops abroad. Referencing back to the idea of the September 2019 bombing, in tandem with other retaliations in history, such as the dropping of atomic bombs in Nagasaki and Hiroshima have shown to be drastically increased levels of destruction in reaction to the bombing of Pearl Harbor. These completely destroyed the cities, taking numerous casualties in the process, whereas Pearl Harbor was more concentrated on a military base. Relating to the concept of Anticipatory war, the United States have engaged in pre-emption more ...

  I wrote a paper earlier in the year on the question of Has War Declined and spent a large part of the essay discussing nuclear powers and the rise of mutually assured destruction. I wanted to revisit some of the points I made in that essay while drawing upon the readings that came after the paper was submitted. I had briefly touched on the power that globalization has had upon the modern political scene.  Organizations such as the IMF, World Bank and various trade organizations have increased their influence in developing nations through the funding of first world countries. When these multinational groups and organizations come together they create alliances between countries that if left alone might develop a sense of hostility towards each other.   Another aspect I wish I had touched on is the perception of war by the general public. Following Vietnam the American public has adopted a rather negative view and opinion in regards to US involvement overseas. The av...

Harrison Gold POLS170 Blog 4   Why did President Trump withdraw from the Paris Accord?   In early November, I watched President Obama address the International Climate Conference (COP26) in Glasgow, Scotland. He referred to President Trump’s administration, pertaining to their attitude and policies on global warming, as “four years of active hostility”. Like most people, I kept thinking, “why would a US President, with complete access to overwhelming scientific evidence regarding the dangers of global warning, virtually deny its perils and create policies which ignore the imminent danger that global warming has on the Unites States, as well as the rest of the world.  It is clear that the United States is one of the biggest contributors to global warming, yet this President Trump was, for the most part, ignoring science and not creating policies to combat this serious problem that the science community has been warning us about for many years.   Presidents have a very...

 In my third blog post, I wanted to discuss global economy, and specifically, Strange's article that discussed the difference between Japan's financial power compared to the United State's (keep in mind that this article was written in 1990). Strange's core argument is that the reasoning behind the disparity between the financial powers of Japan compared to the united states comes down to the fact that Japan's power was "relational", while the United State's was structural. Essentially, the international use of the Yen along with the "percentages of Japanese trade invoiced in Yen" (269). Strange argues that these two indicators fell short on the international playing field, as the use of the Yen made up very small percentages in international trade. The United States, on the other hand, dominated in terms of the use of the dollar, and even had exchange rate protections for imports and exports.  The point of my discussion, however, is to discu...

Recently looking into our class discussions and readings about globalization, I was particularly fascinated with the concept of transnational corporations. Transnational corporations are defined simply as companies or corporations that exist in more than one country. We can see an ever increasing number of these as globalization remains a driving force of capitalism in our society.  According to Abdelal and Ruggie in their piece called "New Perspectives" there were seventy seven thousand transnational corporations in 2010, spanning eight hundred thousand subsidaries and millions of suppliers. This is eleven years ago, and that number has definitely grown since then. These corporations, such as Nike or Amazon, have frequently used other countries for cheap labor, exploiting workers with poor living conditions and mistreatment at small wages. This article continues to talk about how these corporations get away with behaviors that would never be acceptable at home, simply becaus...

Blog Post 3: China and its Economy Throughout the course, our class has discussed a lot about China since it can be categorized as a modern great power. In particular, China is often viewed as a threat to the United; this is typically from an economic standpoint. With this, the word communism is frequently thrown around. China operates under a one party system with the Chinese Communist Party, CCP, the ruling party. From a Western perspective, it may be assumed that every aspect of China is communist, but the economy does not exactly follow this rule.  During my East Asian Politics course, I’ve studied Chinese history and looked at the evolution of China and what has accounted for its major growth. When people think of China, many think of Mao Zedong, communism, and censorship. And since China is so heavily associated with Mao Zedong who mobilized the masses, enacted land redistribution, and left much of China poor, there is no sign of China being anywhere close to having a capit...

     After our class discussion on Game Theory and Cooperation, I have been thinking a lot about the Prisoners Dilemma. Being one of the participants, and also being a participant that told on my "partner", I have been thinking about this a lot.      During my junior year of high school I took a class that focused primarily on morals and ethics. During this class, we also discussed the prisoner's dilemma. When I was in high school I did not understand this concept very well, but after taking part in the example, reading and studying about it, and listening to our class discussion, I have gained new perspectives on the importance of this game: the framework of cooperation and competition.      Before this year, I learned about this "game" that is the Prisoners Dilemma, and never fully understood the point. I thought it was a weird documentary from Stanford that I watched and would never learn about again. After taking various political science...

  Harrison Gold POLS170 Blog 3 Economic Funding Under COVID-19 The Covid world we are living into today has created tremendous hardship, in many forms.  In addition to the unthinkable death toll associated with the Covid-19 pandemic, there is the devastating impact that the coronavirus has had on the economy – both in the US and abroad.  However,, some of this impact has been mitigated by our governments efforts. Because of the deadly and contagious nature of the Covid-19 and its variants, the last two years have created changes in our lives that were previously unthinkable – which includes the devastating economic toll resulting from Covid’s impact on the global economy.  For the sake of this blog, I will initially lay out the economic impact of the coronavirus, followed by the measures with which the US government has enacted to keep our economy in check and to avoid a complete collapse.  Many other countries has taken comparable measures w...

  Due 10/27 Throughout class in regards to the global economy we talked about the use of the United States dollar and the relation to the IMF. The United States has been the top dog really since the end of World War II. The IMF, while headed by a European leader, is still at the hands of Washington due to the unique veto power held by America. This brings into connection the claims of structural vs relational power. The US has tremendous power through legal channels and with the expansion of the global economy stretching far and wide. It is silly to think that in some way or another the United States does not have their hand on an issue in the 21st century.  Susan Strange references the way that Japan is related to global finance by acting as the largest donor/lender but the problem is that most of the money is funneled to the United States. I think that this scenario is reflective of a larger problem. If the money that the United States takes from their allies were to be pa...

       The definition of an empire, according to Merriam-Webster Dictionary, is as follows, " a major political unit having a territory of great extent or a number of territories or peoples under a single sovereign  authority especially : one having an emperor as chief of state". I argue that the United States is, in fact, and empire, despite opposing arguments.       The United States has troops or military bases in the majority of countries in the world, save for a few in Africa and a scattering of other countries. An empire is reliant on military power, and acts as a ruler (of sorts) for the countries that it occupies. Because the United States has troops, or has the potential to place troops, is such a vast number of countries around the world, it is reasonable to say that they also have the potential to excerpt power over these countries (maybe some more easily than others).      In an article regarding the withdrawal...

 For my blog post, I wanted to discuss another topic from the analytical paper that I did not select for my specific paper. I wanted to talk about the idea of security and how it has changed over time. At one time, security used to mean keeping the country as a whole safe and protected from invasion and being overrun by our enemies. Around this time, the main concern was to protect our borders and not allow attacks. Then, Pearl Harbor happened in 1941 and this concept was revamped yet again. This showed a new moment in our society, which meant we were no longer "invincible" as people may have thought.  For a while following this, security meant building up our arms and military power to ward off potential enemy countries. During the cold war, we kept security in a somewhat ironic way, by "scaring off" other countries. Then, we felt as though we were maintaining security by exerting our own political ideals on other countries, such as in the Korean or Vietnam wars. W...

     The United States undoubtedly influences nearly every corner of the world. It has set examples of what to do and what not to do, and can be categorized as one of the few great powers. The question then arises, is the United States an empire? And if it is, why doesn’t it want to be recognized as an empire? At first glance, the United States is not behaving like a traditional empire like the Roman Empire or British Empire, but when looked at closely, the United States partakes in practices that may resemble those of past empires. Following the class discussion about empires, I conclude that this argument comes down to an argument of definition when trying to break down whether or not the United States is an empire or not. As a class, we looked at empires in terms of their influence around the world and how countries act relative to said empire. In terms of the United States, this meant the number of  US troops around the world; regardless if there is an official c...