Reflection: World Politics

I thoroughly enjoyed everything about the World Politics class, even the enormous amounts of reading, which were interesting and impressive enough to make up for the time consumed reading them. In my first semester out of high school, the discussion-based, largely independent format of the class was a big change, and everything I had always wished my classes were more like. The wide range of different views and theories taught in the class was nicely reflected by the variety of interests and political opinions held by the class members.

The class discussions were my favorite part of not just World Politics, but all my current classes at AU -- the setup was simple, but open to a huge range of ideas and directions to go in. Just a prompt and the beginning from the readings and Professor Jackson, and a few periodic nudges in some of the more interesting directions (because in this class there was no right or wrong direction to go in), and the students took care of their education on their own. It became so interesting to participate in the discussions that there were times that I could’ve let a class period last another hour, just so we could clean up loose ends of whatever fascinating idea we had stumbled upon. In fact, discussions were sometimes so fulfilling and interesting that I became suspicious about whether or not PTJ was subtly manipulating us into discussing a topic that he specifically thought would give us insight into World Politics, which totally destroyed my ability to trust that he had no hidden agenda whenever he brought up a subject. Sometimes the connections we made and the insights we gained seemed a little too perfect, which made me paranoid -- was international relations really so complex and intertwined a subject that mere freshman college students could have a semi-intelligent debate over it, or were we all just being fed information in a form slightly more subtle than a lecture? Either way, I learned (by doing, rather than just listening) a lot more about how international relations and global politics works than I would have in a differently-styled class.

World Politics is not just a class for those interested in IR, it helped me to understand my other classes better than I would have without it -- Comparative Politics, Law, Economics, even the essays I had to write for College Writing. If I get the chance to have another class like this one, I will most definitely take it. Anyway, this class was like a breath of fresh air, and if other college classes are similar to it, a brilliant introduction to my college experience. In high school, no matter how interesting the subject matter can be, the way the classes teach always restricts the enjoyment I could get out of the subject. World Politics made me more confident that I could in fact choose to learn and figure things out by myself and with peers, not just from experienced experts, although they do help me to remember what I’m talking about in the first place.

“When I think back on all the crap I learned in high school, it’s a wonder I can think at all.”

~ Paul Simon

Sovereignty and Difference — Narrowing Down what Qualifies

Sovereignty can certainly be a tool to protect those who are “different”. While difference is not the only thing associated with sovereignty, sovereignty is essential to protect differences that are present in society, especially those of groups or cultures that are diametrically opposed to each other. However, historically, there have been several different factors that make this a viable option.

One obvious way sovereignty protects difference is the protection of minority groups from persecution. There are two ways for a minority group to protect itself -- one, change society around it to accept them, or two, form their own safe haven with rules that applied to them and borders that defined the extent of the rules. This second approach worked much better a long time ago, when minority groups usually all lived in the same geographical area and their oppression originated from an external force, but there are also variations to it, most obviously, in the definition of what constitutes a difference. One example is America, which broke off from England to become an independent sovereign state. America became sovereign because of difference, even though they weren’t a different cultural or ethnic group in the traditional sense. Even though at the time of the American revolution, Americans identified themselves as English, the colonists’ differences from other Englishmen is what caused their separation. While they didn’t have a radical cultural difference from the rest of Britain, they were treated by the British government differently than other british people, in a negative way, especially with regard to economics. Eventually, the American colonists’ differences with the British government became so great that it trumped the colonists loyalty to Britain and self-identification as British, and caused them to gain independence, and sovereignty to retain their independence from interference by the British.

An interesting parallel between Rosenblum’s book and the revolution is that in both instances, the group seeking independence was geographically grouped together and isolated from the motherland -- Earth and Britain respectively. In these situations, it’s not a lucky chance that both groups happened to be isolated and could therefore easily form a sovereign state, but they wouldn’t have developed the differences that would cause them to feel the need to form a sovereign state, had they not been separated. (While the first colonists were persecuted minorities fleeing England, this same movement of immigrants was not the one that would later push for American independence.) It was their geographical difference, in conjunction with their differences in values, that made sovereignty a plausible way of protecting differences. This ties in with the still-valid notion that a nation-state, fixed and geographical in definition, is the only truly accepted sovereign entity. Therefore, while sovereignty does indeed protect difference, it only protects a specific kind of difference, one that is partially based on geography, and cannot be a solution to the protection of all forms of difference.

Reflection on Columbus

Reading about Columbus in The Conquest Of America was a very thought-provoking experience. Columbus comes off in the book as a highly eccentric person at best, and a total lunatic at worst. He seems so irrational and downright deluded that it’s almost hard to hate him, because if he really was so out of his mind as to punish people for suggesting that Cuba was an island just because he wanted to have reached Asia, how could he have hoped to comprehend or draw any logical conclusions from his interactions with the native americans? While I had always known Columbus had all the closed-mindedness and religious rigidity of the times, I had never heard just how bizarre a person he was. Perhaps his exploits in the new world weren’t quite what would be expected of a typical European explorer. If another person had discovered America instead of Columbus, surely they would have had a different approach.

The question, however, becomes how different? After all, while Columbus was undoubtedly someone who would seem strange to anyone, in any time era, were his overall actions in the Americas that far from the norms of the times? While his sponsors were taken aback by his enthusiasm, and his crew noted how odd his behavior was, he ultimately did not get labeled as someone who was famed as being chronically deluded. Even modern times, with the sharp increase in acknowledging Columbus as being nothing close to a hero, usually emphasizes the quest for gold and ill treatment of the natives he recorded in his letters, not his convictions that mermaids existed. Perhaps we are viewing him from too far in hindsight, from a time when logic rather than faith was the norm, for if he had truly been considered as strange as he would today, the reputation would have followed him. We see mild versions of this even nowadays, with the flaws and eccentricities of various public figures being brushed over as not being a big deal in their lifetime, only to provoke outrage much later on. What is considered normal for a culture steadily changes over time, and it was clear that even if Columbus's actions did not represent an average European, they were not wild enough to severely damage his reputation as the great discoverer of America for many centuries.

Redskins vs. The Many Native American Nations

The Museum of the American Indian is a much more acceptable depiction of Native Americans than the exaggerated, easily-represented, old-fashioned stereotype used to symbolize the Washington Redskins. In the pop-culture encyclopedia from which simplistic concepts like sports teams are taken, the native american is a feather-adorned, red-skinned, warpainted, weapon-wielding noble savage. Like all stereotypes, this image takes a grain of truth and treats it as though it is the whole truth. As shown by the museum exhibits we saw, native americans are a vastly complex, varied series of different nations, all of which have unique identities. The “Native American” is not a single idea, but a term that can only be used correctly when referring to all the indigenous people of the Americas.

The depiction of the Native American given by the Museum of the American Indian is one of a number of different people who are described as human beings, with the histories of any other number of world civilizations and the same modernization and variation that other cultures have today. The pop-culture depiction embraced by the Redskins strips the humanity out of native americans, reducing them to an outdated cliche that, after bombarding the population enough without opposition, begins to affect peoples’ thoughts about real Native Americans. Without a strong presence of real Native American culture to be an alternative, the cliche is sadly all the exposure some people receive to the idea of Native Americans. And when this is the only idea they have to work with, Native Americans logically seem like an idea that isn’t real, and can’t really exist in the modern world, and become in peoples’ subconscious minds an extinct concept, like crusaders or Arthurian knights.

Largely because of this, the fact that Native Americans are real people who not only live in the present and are nothing like the stereotypes depict, but are also a people who still struggle with ongoing problems left over from the European conquest, slips many peoples’ minds. This is not just a matter of cultural knowledge and sensitivity, but poses another hurdle for the problems of Native Americans. When a marginalized group, such as African Americans during various periods of history, are given attention and presented accurately, people quickly begin to figure out the injustices and problems they deal with, dismissing flawed conceptions of the group in question as they go. But when a group is pushed to the side and never gets a chance to speak, overcoming any problem becomes much harder. And because the stereotypes of Native Americans is so pervasive (and not nearly as widely derided as stereotypes of most other minorities), Native Americans not only have to make their voices heard, but have the added task of doing away with the stereotypes first. After exposure to Native American cultures, such as the exhibits of the museum, it is simple to see that it is a more acceptable depiction, because it is a more accurate depiction. Unfortunately, too few people get that kind of much-needed exposure.

“Being ignorant is not so much a shame, as being unwilling to learn.”

Benjamin Franklin

Blaming Columbus

Can we blame Columbus for what happened to the Native Americans? Surely he was no saint, and certainly had no respect for the indigenous people here, but we cannot blame him for Europe’s response to the new world. Even if Columbus had been an idealistic, altruistic adventurer who respected native people, was willing to be fair with them, and wanted to explore more than to make money, it would not have had any impact on the way the Native Americans were treated.

The culture of Europe at the time was one that combined the early renaissance values of developing new ideas, expanding fields of knowledge, and outwards-thinking expansionism; with the religion-infused, narrow-minded concepts that had been internalized and strengthened throughout the dark ages. Europeans had a great drive to become a successful, enlightened people; but were limited by the decades to centuries of a stagnant social condition, lack of attention to the evolution of schools of thought on multiple levels -- political, technological, scientific, artistic, philosophical --, crushing poverty, and religious fanaticism brought on by the massive death rates due to both the Black Plauge and the devastation that followed; that had drastically slowed the development of European society. When Europe emerged from the dark ages, they were socially not far removed from the crusades, invading and slaughtering to heroically spread the word of Christ among heathens. They were taking risks and venturing into the world with their rising power, but did not have the knowledge and development to match. In short, they were rather like uneducated enthusiasts secure in the knowledge that they knew best. It is ridiculous to think that upon discovering a new land, filled with an abundance of resources and populated by a people who seemed primitive savages to the best of their knowledge and were most certainly not Christian, Europeans would collectively decide to be respectful and diplomatic with these new people and lands, even if an important adventurer had protested.

Europeans at that time did not have the standards to measure up to that we do. They were convinced that the people they had discovered were lower than they were, and did not deserve to have their way of life respected, not when it so neatly fit their ideals about spreading the Christian and European way of life as the superior way. They were struggling to emerge into a period of renaissance, and would not have dreamed of leaving alone land and resources that were so abundant and easily taken. Perhaps if, by lucky chance, Columbus had been an unnaturally learned, experienced, and enlightened person who also had an immense amount of power; he might have been able to stall the European conquest of America slightly, or maybe inspired a school of thought that pushed for a less brutally oppressive campaign. But even so, the discovery of the new world was such a godsend, and arguments against its conquest so unsupported, that it never would have been left alone. Columbus may have done nothing to make the plight of the Native Americans easier, but he had a minimal impact on the European approach to the Americas after discovering them.

Reflection - World Bank

I found the presentation from the World Bank to be an excellent one, although it was unfortunate that we could not go visit the World Bank at the same time. I think the World Bank Organization is a great thing for the world to have. It is dedicated to the betterment of the world by helping out countries that are in need while also encouraging them to improve on their own by using incentives and developing infrastructure. This gives rise to wealthy states with healthy economies and stable political systems, which in turn lessen the need for the World Bank’s help and makes the world as a whole a better place to live in.

The World Bank also has careful policies to maximize its effects. Its policies regarding investment returns for the countries that give it money to fund its programs greatly incentivize the countries in questions to do everything possible to make the programs succeed. Also, higher donations mean higher amounts of discretion over spending, which gives the country that gives the most money the most power because money can be used as leverage in international politics, fostering more cooperation and providing better conditions and advantages to the countries with increased power. This helps not only the countries being helped, but the countries doing the helping, thereby increasing the amount of people helped without having to increase the amount of money spent on programs.

The Bank also has careful restrictions on the qualifications for getting money, and discretion over which organizations in a country gets the money, which decreases the likelihood of the money being eaten up by corruption and incompetence before it has an impact on the people who need it the most, as happens in general block grants. I really admire well-constructed and efficient organizations that once started are self-powered, generating wealth and stability in the world leads to more funding for the bank, which in turn generates even more wealth and stability.

I think this kind of organization is the kind that gets to the heart of the problems of inequality and hardship in the world. It is difficult to be totally altruistic when your country has limitations of its own, but it is unanimously agreed upon (by people with balanced and healthy minds, at least) that leaving poor countries in the dust is unfair. However, this conflict is often incorrectly branded as a choice between two separate paths. In reality, helping other countries helps the whole world; the world, especially now after so much globalization; has become small enough that we can view it as a closed system in which (in most cases that is -- irrational and/or fundamentalist religious states still pose a problem in this area) a weak country weakens everyone else. and a strong country strengthens everyone else.

The Blind Men and the Elephant

When a subject or school of thought, such as World Politics, is taught and discussed in the same way, with the same assumptions, for a long time, it becomes easy to start assuming that that particular way is also the only correct way to go about it. This is more often untrue than not, and can even be a dangerous assumption to make. There is an inherent value in analyzing world politics from multiple perspectives, even more so than many other schools of thought, because the very concept of world politics incorporates bringing together many different perspectives on issues that affect many different actors, all of which are the ones who have said differing perspectives. Without that element present, world politics cannot legitimately include the word “world” in its name. And when dealing with a subject so dependent on multiple perspectives, brushing away different views on the subject itself as unnecessary or incorrect seems very hypocritical and self-defeating.

Alternative foundational stories about global politics are valuable in its study, because they help us to look at things we take for granted in a different light, and realize that we may be drawing lines in the sand based on artificial assumptions that are not universal, but we have accepted as such in the absence of alternate explanations. When we only have one way of going about things, it becomes easy to define the “proper” approach to a problem, or the “valid” explanation of a phenomenon, without taking other approaches or explanations into account. When this happens, things begin to appear in terms of black and white, truth and lies, when really, the only thing they do is conform, or defy, the generally-accepted foundational story about a very broad idea. An idea that is usually a human construct invented to categorize a certain collection of the random and multi-faceted actions that make up world politics, not to label a discrete, single phenomenon. Adding different stories about the nature of an issue, or concept, or convention makes said nature more complex, more inclusive, and more natural, while avoiding the pitfalls, logical fallacies, and oversimplifications that come with making up laws and definitions based on the combination of a short period of observation and contradictory or incomplete informations passed down from past, perhaps obsolete times; all taken from one particular perspective.

For example, Tickner placed particular emphasis on marginalized populations, who are deeply affected by the exact same issues that policymakers and experts wrestle with in the elite sphere of international diplomacy, but unlike the latter, have no voice. This is a problem that badly complicates, misleads, and reduces the efficiency of the systems in place meant to deal with said issues. Marginalized populations such as the very poor, the uneducated, women (to varying degrees depending on the country), children, and minority populations not only have a perspective on global politics very different from the perspective of the powerful, highly educated, well-connected officials working in governmental state departments; but they are very different from each other; and very different from the rich, the educated, men, adults, and majority populations. The non-marginalized populations have not just a voice, but many different voices with which they can influence the experts who have the power to agree to make changes in some aspect of global politics, while the marginalized populations do not. This means that only half of a story is being told. It doesn’t make the half that is told invalid, it just makes it incomplete. No single story is the complete story, only when all different perspectives are taken into account, and all different versions of what makes up the foundation of global politics are told and given equal weight, does the “real” story emerge. Like the proverbial blind men with an elephant, a single story can be a very accurate portrayal of what it deals with, just as a blind man touching the elephant’s trunk can give a perfectly valid and accurate description of the trunk. It is only when the trunk is declared (by, perhaps, if we want to make this metaphor even more obvious; an english-speaking blind man to another english-speaking blind man, ignoring the non-english-speaking man holding the elephant’s ear) to be the whole elephant; that is to say, when a particular story is billed as the whole truth, do problems arise.

Reflection: National Security

The trip to the Pentagon on Wednesday meshed very well with the issues we have been discussing in class this past week. One of the topics we kept circling is why we, as a population, consider issues like terrorism to “qualify” as part of national security, while other sources of American deaths and danger, such as high speed limits, do not. Some of the debate seems to be about how according to public perception, terrorism is more dangerous, even though car accidents kill many more people on average. However, while this observation is very likely true, I do not believe it is the whole answer. Neither danger, nor the perception of it, are the qualifications for national security -- cancer is considered an extremely urgent and dangerous issue, but no one considers it part of national security. It seems instead that while national security includes domestic policy, it must also include an external threat to the country’s safety.

Of course, given the fact that in the national security strategy, securing the nation against threats to it means taking domestic actions that on the surface have nothing to do with a particular danger, this issue has a difficult time separating the domestic and foreign policy spheres. What is the best way to protect the U.S? Strengthening ourselves at home to eliminate weaknesses, or striking out to eliminate the threats themselves? The national security strategy stresses both approaches, but its obvious that the latter triumphs in matters of crisis. The discussion of overreaction seemed to constantly become entangled with the point that we have very different approaches to foreign and domestic issues. In foreign issues, we want government, strong government, and lots of it, to act directly upon the people and forces who threaten us and eliminate them. In domestic issues, we have an opposition that sometimes borders on paranoia to government intervention, from regulation of the economy to the clash between federal and state issues. We profess that this is because we would rather have the freedom to do what we want without going through rules and regulations, rather than put up with such interference and become safer and better off. Yet when foreign threat occur close to home rather than far away, we still allow the government to get deeply involved, to the point of wiretapping and holding people with dubious cause when the situation is -- in the point of view of the American people -- dire enough.

When we visited the Pentagon, I was disappointed that our planned briefing was cancelled, but it seemed appropriate that it was cancelled for the reasons it had -- a situation had cropped up somewhere overseas, and people were called away to attend to it. I don’t know if everyone would share this with me, but I am sure that if we were visiting the Department of Justice, for example, and our presenters suddenly got called away, I’d feel much less charitable towards them than those at the Pentagon. In foreign affairs, it is rather impressive and commendable that these people drop everything to ensure our security, whereas in domestic issues, it wouldn’t feel nearly as justified.

Perhaps it is because in foreign affairs, there is usually a clear-cut “them”. There is Osama Bin Laden, Al Qaeda, the Taliban. Even when there isn’t a face or title to attach to the threats, they are still a “them”. There are undemocratic regimes that strip women of natural rights, corrupt leaders that blatantly rig elections without consequence, and violent factions that kill people for being a member of a certain race. These are un-American. These are enemies of the United States. With domestic issues it’s much harder. There may be some labels we can apply, but they tend to be contradictory and vague, and highly dependent on the times -- CEOs, bank executives, criminals who deal in everything from drugs to high-level fraud, deluded liberals, teacher’s unions, corporate sponsors, crazy conservatives, oil companies, car companies, insurance companies...how vague and riddled with qualifiers are these “threats”, in the eyes of the public (and the media) as opposed to the seemingly clear ones faced in foreign affairs? How exactly do we “overreact” to the financial system’s failings without hurting ourselves in ways much more obvious than the convoluted, long-term, and highly indirect ways we hurt ourselves when we overreact to foreign threats? We overreact to foreign threats because we can, because there is, or we think there is, something there to react to and defeat. It is hard to secure our nation against domestic issues, because we have the notion -- sometimes correct, sometimes woefully shortsighted -- that domestic action will affect the American people much more than foreign action will.

The Difference between Security and Small Victories

Does the U.S. presence in Afghanistan make us more or less secure? It’s hard to say. On one hand, it seems to be human instinct to feel better when you are doing something to solve a problem, like securing against a terrorist threat, because then you know that at least you’re trying to do everything you are capable of and not needlessly endangering yourself by not acting. On the other hand, this does not mean that taking action for the sake of action will actually solve the problem -- sometimes, it just makes people feel better. However, given the fact that the nature of “security” is disputed, to say the least, how exactly can we tell if our actions make us more secure? One idea about the nature of security is the extent to which people feel secure, because there is no way to know about every single possible danger that could easily crop up at any moment. Another similar idea is that security involves dealing with any danger at hand, because if we cannot be safe from unknown unknowns, we should at least guard against what we know to be a danger, lessening the amount of danger however slightly. Do either of these idea apply to the presence of U.S. troops in Afghanistan?

First of all, it is true that in Afghanistan, the U.S. is seeking out a real, tangible danger to U.S. citizens, unlike the operations in Iraq, where the dangers to the U.S. were speculative at the very best. The Taliban in Afghanistan were responsible for supporting and giving sanctuary to Al Qaeda, and therefore are a direct threat to the U.S.’s security. However, and this is a rather large “however”, how exactly do we mitigate that threat? The Taliban is not a nation-state that can surrender and “lose” a war, and Al Qaeda is not a single entity that can be defeated by a strong enough push from the U.S. Fighting the threat in Iraq has greater similarities to fighting organized crime than to fighting a war, and we measure the success of fighting crime by fewer deaths due to crime, lower crime statistics, fewer criminal convictions. Organized criminals do not all stand up, organization by organization, and surrender to the police. The same concept applies in Afghanistan. Just because the criminals are foreign, it does not mean they are the work of a foreign state. Therefore, while having troops in Afghanistan can make us “feel” safe, we cannot really expect to have a single clear-cut victory, because for one, unlike in domestic affairs, the U.S. cannot police the whole world simultaneously and indefinitely; and for another, terrorist attacks on the U.S. are not nearly frequent enough to provide reliable statistics.

In addition to this, given this idea that we cannot completely win against a danger that is not a single entity but simply a series of actions stemming from the same general idea, there’s the question of whether, if we cannot possibly foresee all the dangers that could arise, if simply feeling safe and secure means security. I believe that sometimes it does, but only if it does not influence our actions that could raise the total number of seen and unforeseen threat even higher. As discussed in class, it frequently is true that if we act as though we are at war, we tend to induce actual war. If we are sure that we are at war in (the distinction between “in” and “with” does not have as much meaning to the people in Afghanistan who are affected by our presence as it does to us, far away in the United States) Afghanistan, the obvious reaction in Afghanistan would be to react accordingly. Therefore, in theory, having troops in Afghanistan could actually be seen as making us less safe in the long run.

Of course on a smaller scale, this is much more complicated. The fact that our problems in Afghanistan were caused by what we did more than what we, at this moment, are doing makes a lot of difference. On a small scale, we are technically lessening dangers of more 9/11s by weakening and disrupting the organizations who caused it. However, our troop presence in Afghanistan does not make us, as a nation, in the long run, more “secure”, because there is no discernible, naturally-occurring, obvious end in sight, no victory like the toppling of the Nazis in World War II. The only way to solve this overarching threat is to allow the ideas and social conditions that fermented the ideas to die off. In the meantime, we are racheting up resentment towards us by acting (or at least being perceived as acting) as though we are at war in a situation where conflict cannot be framed in terms of war. Also, in the meantime, we may prevent some particular American deaths by weakening our strongest enemies and derailing specific plans, but to say that these few acts actually makes us more secure, as a nation and in the long run, is a gross oversimplification.

The Rally to Restore Sanity (Did Jon Stewart get ahold of our schedule?)

This was a full week for World Politics. Interesting readings, interesting classes, (finally) a Wednesday lab, and the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear. And everything had something to do with each other. Out of all three readings for last week, my favorite was “Simplicity and Spook” which I enjoyed so much that even though I had planned to just skim the beginning and finish reading on Monday, I wound up reading the whole thing at once. It seemed to put into words a great many things that I had been vaguely thinking about but never was able to put into words. We see ridiculous and irrational behavior in reaction to political and world events all the time, and realize, on some level, that it is ridiculous, but rarely do we stop to think about just what makes it ridiculous. People in a frenzy of worry make assumptions and hypotheses based on first impressions, worst case scenarios, or the first possible explanations that pop into their heads. This is fine when there is no alternative, but the danger comes when, instead of accepting or dismissing these reactions in favor of rational, reasoned explanations based on analyzing accumulated information, they cling grimly to their initial hysteria as though afraid of being “proven” wrong. And so we manage to go for long periods of time taking what was meant only to be a possibility as the truth. Later, we scratch our heads and wonder how on earth we ever were so stupid, but that doesn’t always stop us from doing the same thing again.'

I thought that this article, reading it just one day after a rally to literally restore sanity, was perfectly timed. Speaking of the rally, I was both exasperated and rather thrilled that so many people turned out. Being new to D.C., I’m not sure I’m qualified to make a judgement on just how overcrowded the Metro was, but when I have to take the red line north all the way to Rockville in order to get onto the red line going south to Judiciary Square next to the mall, because every southbound train is jam-packed, it’s pretty obvious there’s something big going on. However, the time and trouble it took was still an encouraging sign that people truly are fed up with overreaction, insanity, and exaggeration to make a public call for everyone in the country to just calm down and think for a minute. Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert were hilarious as usual, and for the most part waved away political debate in favor of light-hearted lampooning and entertainment, but at the end, Stewart became serious, calling for the news media to report events with responsibility and reason instead of stirring things up until everything seems so insane we cannot tell who the real bigots, extremists, and, well, insane people are. This really struck a chord with me. After all, in America the people have a great deal of control over the actions of our government, and if we don’t have a clear picture of what the world is like, how can we possibly pressure our elected officials to act in a reasonable manner? Again, I would like to marvel at the serendipitous timing of the Rally and the schedule of our class. Perhaps it’s a good thing we went overtime on the Risk game.

Security and Identity

Are there boundaries to security policy? This is a difficult question to answer, as almost anything that defines us as a state could, in some way, be interpreted to affect our security, beyond the weapons and manpower needed to defend ourselves from attack. The most distantly-connected aspects of our nation can have an impact on our ability to stay secure. Some are obvious, like, for example, the economic situation and our diplomatic ties: if we have enough money, we will be able to build proper weapons, if we have the right allies, they can help us. However, some are less directly connected, but just as important. For example, educational standards: if our population is well-educated, they can utilize their mental capabilities and knowledge to defend our country intelligently. And then there arises the issue of what makes a state more or less likely to be attacked, which is varied and could come in all shapes and forms. One could be direct and logical, and say that if we push green fuel, we will be less interested in foreign oil, and thus weaken the power of people in regions where America is not well-liked, therefore stopping a threat before it advances. Or one could be completely speculative and disconnected, and theorize that fighting global warming might improve America’s image in the world and stop a threat before even the motivation for the threat emerges. Even the craziest of ideas can, at least theoretically, be seen as possibly affecting a state’s security.

For example, take education. This one policy can affect our national security on many, many levels. On the most direct level, it can help fill and expand a workforce with a certain skill set, such as engineers who can design better weapons. On a slightly less direct level, it can create a large pool of extremely knowledgeable experts who can come up with better strategies and tactics for defending ourselves. On an indirect level, it can give a population the means with which to select better leaders, the information that lessens the threat of irrational, uncomprehending voter anger forcing the government’s hand on important issues of national security, and even could make people more knowledgeable about foreign countries, therefore lessening misunderstandings. And this is just one policy that could have a ripple effect of consequences that wind up profoundly affecting the security of the state. There really are no boundaries on what can be labelled as “security policy”.

Of course, this can lead into murky territory. It would help our security, of course, if we could meddle in other states’ affairs to the extent that we could make sure that they act internationally in a way that would strengthen our own security, help us out with all domestic issues that would make us stronger, and not do anything to help or incite our enemies. This of course, does not mean we should do this, because while it helps our own security, it may not do the same for that of other states. This is the murky part, because just like our national identity can affect our level of security, our approach to security can affect our national identity. For example, taking over as many countries as we can in order to control them and use them against our enemies is something most Americans would object to. Since in our definition of the concept, sovereignty rests with the people, we would only be defined as “the United States of America” as long as we had a say in how we as a state acted. However, if we all decided that controlling other states was a good idea, we would be blatantly violating our professed ideal of self governance, and would therefore render our national identity false. Our state would no longer be “the United States of America” as defined before we started controlling other states. On a similar note, it would help security if the government could arrest anyone they wished to, at any time. However, we as a country define ourselves by our commitment to liberty and our affording of natural rights, such as habeus corpus, to our citizens. Therefore, we would cease to be defending American ideals the moment we gave them up, and since our ideals define us, we would cease to be Americans. We would probably still be called “Americans”, but the definition of an American that runs deeper than the name would be lost.

I believe that things should stop being defined as “security” the moment they stop protecting a state, and proceed to destroy it. If we cease to become America, we are no longer protecting America, we have only a defensive shield left, and whatever we are defending would no longer resemble America, but would be something entirely different. This is a dangerously tempting path to take when our security is threatened. After all, it is very difficult for an enemy to harm something if it is destroyed before they reach it.

Risk - at the end

Three teams winning the game of Risk that had gone on so long was not something I was expecting. The mutual win was unexpectedly satisfying. In games, the high point is usually when you wipe out another player, but this time, the hoops we had to jump through and the difficulty of designing a perfect solution to all three of our problems (combined with the pleasure of rubbing the Green team off the map) made the three-way win feel like just as big an accomplishment. After all, we got all of our goals, so why not go for a win-win-win scenario? It seemed that in this game, Liberalism definitely won out. Working together to achieve individual goals and mutual benefit worked, while not collaborating or considering the other teams’ concerns enough, like red and green, did not turn out quite as well.

Briefly, before deciding to join forces, the blue team briefly considered turning on the yellow team for gain, only to realize that the better, safer, and shorter strategy was to collaborate. Likewise, when yellow, blue, and black all decided to gang up on green in response to their unhelpfully realist actions, they were easily surrounded by troops of three different teams, all of whom were mutually committed to their destruction, and therefore eliminated them very quickly and easily. And everyone was glad for the earlier defeat of team Red as well, giving the game the same satisfaction of victory while still keeping the, well, risk of the game low by cooperating. By the end of the night, the teams trusted each other so much that, for the sake of troop movement logistics, blue had no concerns over letting black temporarily declare war on them, trusting that they would not be attacked.

The game showed that when individual goals could be attained without threatening each other, there is little reason not to work together. Too much suspicion raises the risk of attack, makes people less likely to act boldly, and more likely to disregard the concerns of other teams, losing an important bargaining chip in the process. However, out of everything that this class has done throughout the entire course of this game, the thing that I would say way most true to what I would imagine real International Relations to be like came in the form of a throwaway remark at 11:30, near the end of the game: “everyone wants to go to bed.” In real life, states want to achieve their goals and come to a solution as soon as possible, and whether it’s a game being dragged on a full class and a late-night meeting past the deadline, or a war lasting a year and a half longer that expected, the more the parties want to just get it over with, the more sure they are that the other parties share their goals, and the more risks they are willing to take to secure a solution.

Risk and the Real World

I think that while diplomatic Risk ignores a great many aspects of the real world, such as economic relations, nuances in alliances, and the internal actions of a state that may change its goals, the ones it does address are often quite like international relations in the real world. In diplomatic risk, every team has a specific agenda, a specific relationship with each of the other teams, a set of abilities, resources, and armies, and uses all of these in order to achieve their goals. Every action a team takes is in the interest of these goals ultimately. Sometimes the connection between an action and a goal is rather indirect -- for example, one team may do something that will help an ally because said ally is a stronger enemy of the team that is at war with the first team. However, in the world of Risk and the rules that apply in that world, the only reason for a team to act is to achieve a goal. This might seem a little out of sync with the way real world IR happens, but in the short run, this is a reality for many states. Sometimes, the only way for a state to survive is to achieve a very specific goal, such as the ones given to the Risk players.

For example, a state may be hell-bent for getting access to a certain resource in another state, because the first state has run out and completely depends on that resource to sustain their economy. Or a state may have decided that the only way to survive is to have control of territory on the border of an enemy state. Or a state may have a policy of opposing anyone who fulfills a certain criteria, like the US in the war on terrorism. We only see part of the picture in a Risk game, but the bottom line is very similar to real life.

IR theory also came up in diplomatic risk. There was obvious realism, as every state’s first priority was to achieve their goal by any means. There was also liberalism in the diplomatic part of the game, where the different state diplomats allied with one another for mutual benefit, or when various members of the state leadership held conferences with members of other teams on the costs and benefits of a particular action, so that they would help each other to both get individual benefit. Constructivism showed up as well -- instead of every team just trying to conquer the world, each team had a described identity that included, but was not limited to, a goal. They also all had a unique set of special powers. I think that the liberal influence on the game was the most obvious, at least in this version of Risk, as each state found that working together was very beneficial to getting things moving in their preferred direction.

Reflection 8 - IR and Opera

I have never played Risk before, although I knew the basic rules, so I can’t really comment on whether diplomatic risk is more interesting or less interesting the regular kind. However, our class on Tuesday was really interesting. I particularly enjoyed the division of responsibilities that came with playing the game as a team. I thought it felt as though we (our team) was all really working together to maximize our gains. The rules regarding the diplomatic side of the game made the game feel almost realistic with regards to what we have learned about world politics so far. The changing nature of the relationships between the teams made things very confusing but fun, as over the course of one short period, we became more and less resentful of other teams, such as the black hegemon, and the teams we had been at war with but later made peace with, even though it was supposed to be just a game.The secrecy between the teams also made the game very interesting, although also complicated, because it was hard to remember what all the other teams were doing whenever we transferred information from the head of state to the diplomat and vice versa. I suppose that’s a bit like how it happens in real life, though. One thing that really made the game fun was, I think, the fact that it was a game, and while some teams, at some times, were trying to screw over all the other teams in a very realist way, working together for a more mutual outcome was also imposed on us by the rules to make it different from regular Risk and make our interactions more complex.

The opera was a really great way to restart our wednesday labs. I have wanted to go to the Kennedy Center for a long time, and was very exited to finally get to see it and attend a performance there. I had never seen an opera before, and although I thought it was a good performance, I found it to be pretty boring. I fell asleep briefly during Salome’s love song to the head, because of all the repetition. I enjoyed the music more than the stage part, being a musician myself.

Reflection: Auto Workers Simulation

While I missed the class discussions and subject matter last week, the project on the auto industry was an interesting change of pace. It was current, addressing an issue that is of concern in America today, whereas our usual discussions are theoretical and many of the examples we use are historical. Dealing with specific facts and hard evidence -- that is, dealing with how the world is currently working, rather than how it ought to work or how it tends to work in the long run, was very different from the theory and hypotheticals of the different schools of IR was a major shift in the style of our class.

The simulations themselves were an interesting experience. While we had fun making our video, we had to also spend a great deal of time looking up not just information and statistics on the subject of the automotive industry and outsourcing, but information and statistics that explicitly supported our group’s (the UAW’s) stance in order to make an argument, whether we agreed with it or not, and discredit the arguments of the other groups, even if we personally agreed with them. I think that all the groups’ arguments were both compelling and narrowly tailored to the group’s interest. All of them had solid, convincing evidence, and all of them had inflated, one-sided assumptions. This seemed very natural to me. In the real world, interests often are in directly-opposed conflict with each other, with both sides giving perfectly valid arguments and both sides being biased by their viewpoints. I got the feeling that while in real life, interests groups are probably a lot slicker and heavily invested than we were, debates between interest groups and the government probably have substantial similarities to our presentations.

However, despite the highly practical, contemporary, and facts-based nature of the debate, I also noticed a thread of the liberalism/realism debate coming through in some of the different groups. The UAW argued that the US would suffer economically if they had a trade imbalance with their partners, pointing to the realist argument that relative gains are important, not just absolute gains. They also were in favor of protecting American jobs first and foremost. The AIAM on the other hand, were highly liberal, arguing that free trade between nations would give rise to a higher-quality auto industry that would benefit all consumers around the world. Constructivism also cropped up in the debate, with the Sierra Club arguing that the U.S.’s identity as a economic power with high environmental standards, as opposed to China’s identity as a massively industrial state with very low environmental standards made it reasonable to assume that the two states would act as their identities predicted, with the U.S. producing less waste and China producing a great deal.

Reflection Week 6: And Now for Something Completely Different...

This week seemed strangely empty without a trip into D.C., which usually breaks up the monotonous classwork nicely. However, Dr. Peter Howard’s presentation was one of the more interesting and enjoyable presentations we have had for our Wednesday labs. Even more than Mr. Bame, Dr. Howard really gave us a picture of what it must be like to work in the State Department, especially for someone who used to be a professor, integrating broad sweeping ideas and mindsets and the minutiae of an office job. Dr. Howard’s (qualified) remark that IR theories had “nothing” to do with his job was actually rather interesting to think about after his presentation. The very fact that the IR theories are studied in real life proves that whatever government officials do on a daily basis, some higher-level theoretical knowledge must play an important role in their work. Yet their work is not primarily concerned with molding the global political society to work according to a theory, but to simply solve whatever urgent dilemma the world has to deal with. This served as a reminder to me that IR theories are not completely hypothetical. They must, at least in broad terms, describe the mundane workings of the world. However, Dr. Howard’s presentation also reminded me that the government of the US, and all states, is not some undefined self-aware entity but is made up of the interaction between actual human beings with thoughts and consciousness. The more I think about actual people like Dr Howard -- even if they are less personable than he -- working to accomplish the kinds of actions that he described, the more unrealistically rigid many conceptions of the state laid out in the various IR theories, especially the mindless, pre-programmed realism, seem to be.

This leads into the second part of my reflection nicely. After studying and nitpicking over the different IR theories for almost a month and a half, switching gears to start questioning the universality of everything we have learned is rather difficult for me to wrap my mind around at first. During discussion, I kept falling back into mentally trying to apply IR theory to solve an issue raised by a classmate, only to realize they didn’t apply in this situation, at least, not clearly enough for a student like myself to see. It feels to me as though each step of this class is opening my mind a little wider than before, letting me integrate my new knowledge with older knowledge before adding yet another perspective to the mix. I had been subconsciously starting to see world politics as a simple clash of different perspectives, but this new advancement reminds me that it is much more complex and far-reaching than that.

My Perspective: Why Contradictory Perspectives Are Not True Perspectives, and Other Perspectives On Perspectives

There are few things more headache-inducing than trying to reconcile different perspectives on the world. If a person, or a group of people, or many generations of people analyze something in order to discover an explanation for it, and emerge with a certain perspective based on their analysis, they tend to declare that as far as they can see, their perspective is the truth. If more than one group of people goes through this process, and come up with different perspectives that contradict each other, the situation can feel unresolvable. How does one discuss or compromise on what one believes to be the truth? There is a reason why people consider religion and politics the two things you should never get into an argument about — both claim to know the truth. However, being too hard-headed about the supremacy of one perspective over all others is jumping to conclusions, not because the perspective may be wrong, but simply because the other perspectives may still be right. While different perspectives may seem to contradict one another, it does not mean that one is absolutely right and the others are fundamentally wrong. There are two rather simple explanations encompass all incompatibility between different perspectives: 1) they are all wrong, and 2) they are all parts of a larger truth.

The first explanation is rather unlikely in most cases, especially cases like the three different viewpoints of the Bretton Woods system, because the theories can be easily tested to show that there is at least some grain of truth to them (although some people may feel that only one theory is correct, this still would mean that not all of them are wrong.)The second explanation is more likely, and easier to discuss, because there are many ways of interpreting it. If conflicting theories are part of a larger truth, it would stand to reason that different perspectives could apply to different situations. If one theory explains one situation perfectly, but cannot explain another, while a second theory that is completely incompatible with the first theory explains another situation perfectly, but cannot explain the first situation, that is a clue that neither of these theories are complete or “perfect” explanations, and therefore, there must be a larger truth that would explain both situations still waiting undiscovered. All we can do is come up with more and more theories and perspectives until all the pieces of the puzzle are found.

The pesky issue that would inevitably arise from this seemingly comfortable theory is the question of how to find out when the whole truth is found. Sometimes, conflicting perspectives may be one-directional, with perspective number one insisting that perspective number two is just part of perspective number one, and perspective number two insisting that they absolutely are not, or even arguing that perspective number one is actually part of perspective number two. For example, a realist might argue that constructivism is just part of realism -- identities are simply a factor of the state’s interest, and changing identities are just a factor of fluctuations in the state’s position of power in the world. On the other hand, a constructivist might argue that realism is perfectly accurate -- it’s just one facet of constructivism, because a state that operates by the rules of realism is the product of a state whose identity is described as realist. Which one is right then? Or are they both wrong once more? The issues of differing perspectives never seems to reach a satisfactory conclusion. It is, after all, almost certain that someone out there thinks my self-confident explanation of contradictory perspectives is a complete load, and then we’re back to square one again.

Reflection: Les Identites

The visit to the French embassy was very different than what I had expected. The identity issues that were raised and that the diplomat elaborated upon were very intriguing, particularly the major non-historically-cultural differences between France and the U.S. For example, the French do not categorize their citizens into minority groups. This seems either simple or rather odd on the surface, but when you dig deeper to try to understand what exactly that would entail, a great many other questions come up. We in America are so used to racial and ethnic groups figuring in much of our discussion that we don’t even realize that not all cultures would feel it has to be there.

This is a new concept for me that I cannot quite wrap my had around. In nearly every class I am taking, race comes up, even if it isn’t an issue, and it has always been the case all through school. For example, during Macroeconomics, we were being lectured about unemployment and the labor force, and employment statistics about white versus black workers were shown several times. I never stopped to think that it wasn’t actually necessary for these statistics to be shown. In America, we consider it very important, but perhaps in France, discussing black vs. white employment statistics would be a very odd thing to do unless someone was being accused of discrimination. However, I don’t know if it is actually like that in France, because I have not been exposed to French culture, and if these things truly are a part of French identity, it would be hard for the French to discuss it, as they would take it for granted, just as Americans take so much race-related discussion for granted.

Another thing that interested me about the diplomat’s presentation was what he said about the burqa ban. I do not know if he was speaking his opinions, or simply had to be unbiased and neutral and simply report the government’s position, but his arguments seemed to be both rational and odd. He says that banning the burqa is not an infringement on religious rights because it helps Muslim French women integrate into French culture better. This is a very strange idea for me, as in America, we (or at least, the more enlightened and progressive part of “we”) protect minorities in a highly group-based way; and tend to consider religious freedom part of being an American, and, therefore, much more important than integration. However, by French standards, where the idea of a minority group does not have the same connotations as it has here, this may not be instinctively considered an infringement on rights by most French people. That being said, I feel that even considering the differences in French and American identity, it seems evident that the “Liberte” in “Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite” seems to be getting passed over in favor of "Fraternite" at this time.

P.S. Scott beat me to the good title.

Reflection: The State Department and Liberalism

I enjoyed the visit to the State Department very much. I was always interested in learning about how the U.S. interacts with other countries and acts internationally, and I was pleased that Mr. Bame knew how to address our questions so well. He seemed to be one of the best people I could have imagined for the post he has. He was very intelligent, had a great deal of raw knowledge and a complex understanding of international relations, and was both compassionate and ambitious but savvy about the problems and issues facing the U.S. and the world. His discussion of "smart power" in particular showed how flexibility and a grasp of each particular current situation, rather than blind following of theories, can lead to better outcomes.

Bame also spoke of China, and the differences between that country and the U.S. I thought back to the discussion of liberalism, and how many times, there is war between liberal and non-liberal countries. It is difficult to imagine a war with China, given our current relationship with it, but the theory of liberalism seems to indicate that it is possible or even probable that we will have some kind of confrontation with China in the future.

The "Uninformed" Voter

While I believe uninformed voting is hazardous to American politics, and largely responsible for incompetence, corruption, and high incumbency in Congress, it is not as dangerous as not voting at all. Even if people do not know enough to make good decisions, at least they are making decisions and letting their voices be heard when voting instead of passively allowing others to make a choice for them.

This may not sound very logical, and in my opinion, it is actually rather dangerous to the country’s wellbeing, but not as dangerous as silencing people completely. When voter turnout is less than 100%, the result is no longer the country as a whole deciding an election, but a sample of the country indicating what the country as a whole thinks. One of the most basic ideas in statistics is that the smaller the sample, the less representative it is of the general population from which it was taken. Add to that the fact that voter turnout is not a random sample, and the result becomes even more skewed. The part of the population that makes informed voting decisions have factors, whether they be political beliefs, self-interest, or something else, that distinguish the informed from the uninformed part of the population. The naked truth is this: uninformed people are part of the population too. They are a demographic, and deserve to have their voices heard, however unhelpful they may be.

Let us see what it would be like if uninformed people never bothered to vote. First of all, what exactly does “uninformed” entail? If someone is “informed”, what does that mean? And “informed” by who? How is it possible to know if being “informed” actually means “misinformed”? If someone who is considered uninformed about issues votes, then, assuming he or she is not simply flipping a coin to choose, he or she must have some basis for choosing a candidate, even if it seems an idiotic basis. If their basis is that a candidate has good hair, then their choice and reasoning should, being the choice of a free american citizen, be respected. Possibly the will of the American people is to fill Congress with good-haired people, and if that is the case, so be it. What grants anyone the authority to tell people that their will should be to fight crime? The reasons why a given issue is “important” is completely relative. How are we supposed to know if fighting crime is the right thing to do? On whose authority is “fighting crime” stamped as a basis for an “informed” vote? People were firmly convinced that the subjugation of african-americans was the right thing to do decades ago. Perhaps fighting crime is a disastrous and immoral thing to do, and good-haired senators will make America the greatest nation on earth. The only way to find out if this is true or not is to ask the American people, because since all people are equal, there is no one who has the authority to tell us what is a legitimate basis for voting. This method is self-correcting, and bends towards the truth, because the “truth” in the context of what is politically important, is relative, depending entirely on the people themselves. If the population decides good hair is a ridiculous basis for electing someone (and they and only they have the authority to decide this), then the uninformed person who votes on that basis will be an inconsequential drop in the bucket -- assuming, of course, that the bucket is big enough.