POLS170 Group 2

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...