Global Interdependence and Climate Migration

Anyi Li

Interdependence “is a way of conceptualizing the webs of connections between people and places” (Lepofsky). And such a web, or “a constellation of relationships, connections, and movements that link people and places” that interdependence tries to conceptualize, is space (Lepofsky). Interdependence can cause both shape and get shaped by geography. 

In “The Great Climate Migration Has Begun,” Abrahm Lustgarten introduces how climate change results in an insufferable living condition for many residents of locations currently experiencing extreme heat and drought. Consequently, these residents choose to migrate. For desperate migrants like Cortez from Guatemala and El Salvador, places such as the United States and Mexico render the special meaning of a new life and freedom from fear of starvation and violence. Yet residents of Mexican southern border cities, though relatively less impacted in climate, also feel climate change’s negative effects when crime increases and economic growth slows as migrants flood into Mexico, the place where they adore as their home and country. 

These shared negative impacts show the power of global interdependence: when one is hit by drastic climate change, others connected to it are also influenced. And this is because all places are connected to one another through spatial networks. As the original spatial structure, broken by climate change, can no longer sustain its original network, a geographical event in the form of human movements (a.k.a. Great climate migration) occurs to reorganize the space to form a new web of connections--a new space. Though the physical distance between the absolute locations does not change for these migrants, the relative locations change for them as leaders in the United States and Mexico enact different policies. For instance, when Obrador, the President of Mexico, decided to welcome the migrants into the country, the relative locations changed to be closer for the migrants since Mexico is more accessible to them. And when the United States and Europe enact anti-immigrant policies, literal or metaphorical walls erect to block migrants from reaching their dream locations and change relative locations to be farther from them. 

Building a wall or enacting restrictive immigration policies may seem to be an easy way out for the developed countries. However, it generates an ethical dilemma of the underdeveloped countries suffering environmental disasters resulting from developed countries’ polluting activities and only works for the developed countries in the short run. If the global environment continues to worsen, we could foresee a similar forced migration away from the developed countries’ near-equator regions. In the end, in this interdependent, global world, the only way to not become impacted by global climate migration is to get involved, help the migrants find resources to stay in their countries and work together to cut the roots of environmental change.

Work Cited

Lepofsky, Jonathan. “Lesson 1: Introducing Globalization as Uneven Interdependencies.”

Geography 121, 12 Aug. 2020. University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. 

Lesson Notes.

Lustgarten, Abrahm. “The Great Climate Migration Has Begun.” The New York Times, 

The New York Times, 23 July 2020, www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/07/23/magazine/

climate-migration.html. Accessed 12 Oct. 2020. 

Cultural Appropriation and Globalization

Anyi Li

As more and more immigrants migrate to America, along with the surge of Chinese international students in America, more and more Chinese restaurants spring up in the United States, especially near colleges and in populated cities. 

After arriving in America, I always miss the taste of food from home. When my host family brought me to a Chinese restaurant, I made a few discoveries: there are dishes such as the Orange Chicken and the General Tso's Chicken which I had never seen in China. I understand the meaning of every word, but I just had no idea what they are. My American host parents had to explain to me what Orange Chicken and General Tso's Chicken are inside a Chinese restaurant. When the food is served, I discover that everything is sweeter, less salty, and less spicy. The majority of food is very meaty, while in reality, more than half of good Chinese dishes don't have much meat in them.

Later on, I found out that Orange Chicken and General Tso's Chicken are not original Chinese dishes, but Chinese American immigrants' inventions to court American taste. Since Americans eat a lot of meat and sugar and can't take food that is too spicy or too salty, these Chinese restaurants purposely appropriated their dishes to suit American eating habits. In the process, the Chinese cultural emphasis of variability, nutrition, season, nature, aestheticism, temperament, enjoyment, and the different social, regional, political, and religious backgrounds, revealed through different eating habits and cuisine styles, all disappeared to appropriate to American tastes. Chinese food's cultural meaning in America also appropriates to limited, representative dishes such as steamed dumplings and chow mein. In some heavily populated metropolitan areas such as New York City and among non-Christian religious entities such as the Jews, Chinese food even gradually becomes the traditional, cultural Christmas Eve feast. With globalization, I can enjoy some tastes of home while studying in a nation across the Pacific. However, I don't get to eat authentic food and disconnect from the original Chinese food culture.

Work Cited

Chang, K.C. “Food in Chinese Culture.” Asia Society, 2 Sept. 2008, asiasociety.org/blog/asia/

food-chinese-culture. Accessed 7 Mar. 2021.

Goldwert, Lindsay. “Chinese Food on Christmas Eve; Best Restaurants in Manhattan, Brooklyn,

Staten Island.” Nydailynews.com, New York Daily News, 22 Dec. 2010,

www.nydailynews.com/life-style/eats/chinese-food-christmas-eve-best-restaurants-

manhattan-brooklyn-staten-island-article-1.471889. Accessed 7 Mar. 2021.

O'Brien, Sara Ashley. “It's True. Everyone Eats Chinese Food on Christmas.” CNNBusiness,

Cable News Network, 24 Dec. 2014, money.cnn.com/2014/12/24/smallbusiness/

chinese-food-christmas/index.html. Accessed 7 Mar. 2021.

Shyong, Frank. “Southland's New Wave of Chinese Restaurants Are about a Lot More than

Takeout.” Los Angeles Times, 29 Oct. 2016, www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-

chinese-restaurants-immigration-20161020-snap-story.html. Accessed 7 Mar. 2021.

Sowder, Amy. “What Is the Difference Between Orange Chicken and General Tso's Chicken?”

Chowhound, 1 Feb. 2017, www.chowhound.com/food-news/180804/what-is-the-

difference-between-orange-chicken-and-general-tsos-chicken/. Accessed 7 Mar. 2021.

China’s Clamping Down Control of Alibaba

Suhas Nannapaneni

The Chinese Communist Party is hitting the e-commerce titan Alibaba with a record $2.8 billion antitrust fine as party officials want to send a message to all in the internet industry, watch out because we’ve got our eyes on you. The penalty against Alibaba, the bedrock of the business empire of Jack Ma, is the biggest move yet as China attempts to tighten its control around Big Tech. 

Their investigation began in December as to whether Alibaba had broken the country’s antimonopoly law by preventing merchants from selling their goods on other shopping platforms. This fine far exceeds the $975 million antitrust penalty that China imposed on Qualcomm in 2015. China’s the People’s Daily, the official Communist Party newspaper, called regulation, “a kind of love and care.” The paper’s article went on to say that “monopoly is the great enemy of the market economy” unironically. 

Angela Zhang, an associate professor and director of the Center for Chinese Law at the University of Hong Kong, has said that Alibaba and Tencent are now more likely to be cautious about doing anything that resembles strong-arming users or rivals. Alibaba has stated that “the penalty issued today served to alert and catalyze companies like ours…it reflects the regulators’ thoughtful and normative expectations towards our industry’s development.” Clearly, Alibaba and Jack Ma have gotten the message from the CCP. 

Although China is the first to make such a substantial antitrust case against Big Tech, the movement is surely growing in Europe and America against companies like Google and Facebook. In western nations, there is an added aspect that Big Tech has great control over our political messaging as it is home to most political awareness movements such as the Black Lives Matter movements, and the blocking of Donald Trump’s Twitter account following the riot on Capitol Hill earlier this year.  

As the high-tech competition grows between China and United States, cases like this will continue to indicate which way the wind is blowing and who is truly in control – the government or Big Tech.

The Derelict Condition of International Shipping

Robert Cole

In the wake of the media frenzy surrounding the grounding of the Ever Given in the Suez Canal, remarkably little attention has been paid to the industry failures that are making incidents of this type more common. International shipping has been thrown into chaos by the pandemic, endangering international trade, billions of dollars in property, and the lives of sailors. None of the industry’s problems are necessarily new, but they have been seriously exacerbated by the pandemic and the economic uncertainty that has accompanied it. 

First and perhaps most seriously is the issue of ship abandonment. When owners can no longer pay for a vessel, they often simply abandon it, often still carrying its cargo and with the crew onboard, stranding both indefinitely. It was this sort of abandonment that led to the presence of the large amounts of fertilizer that exploded in Lebanon late last year, killing hundreds. Crew members are forced to rely on governments to provide them with means to return to their own countries, which can take weeks or months during which they are forced to remain in cramped onboard conditions. A string of bankruptcies during the economic fallout from covid have increased abandonments by upwards of 90%. Others have simply been kept sailing for far longer than intended thanks to covid restrictions, some in excess of a year, a violation of international law. They claim they have not been paid for the extra time worked, nor had access to adequate medical care. Many of the ships they sail on are in terrible condition, leaking toxic waste and experiencing serious breakdowns. 

Why does this matter, and how has it gotten so bad? As the Ever Given demonstrated, cargo ships have great capacity to wreak havoc when they do not behave as intended, and tired sailors manning decrepit ships unsurprisingly have higher accident rates. Damaged ships can cause serious pollution, and delayed transit costs end consumers throughout the global economy. Outside of the pandemic, one of the main reasons the industry is in such bad shape is the failure of international law enforcement. Adherence to the Maritime Labor Convention, which governs the treatment of sailors, is not strictly enforced and many companies evade more stringent inspections by registering in countries such as Panama that are infamous for their lax regulatory environment. International shipping is one of several areas of maritime law that lacks strong international enforcement, a rising issue that must soon be dealt with by a globalizing world. Global leaders, often skittish of handing authority to international arbitrators and legal enforcers, should recognize the net benefit they derive from providing a stronger, more centralized entity to regulate the world’s seas. Inconsistent and poor quality shipping hurts everyone, and fixing it could unite otherwise opposing interests on the international stage.

Bretton Woods System’s Lasting Impact

Anyi Li

After WWII, leaders from forty-four nations met in New Hampshire, U.S.. This conference is known as the Bretton Woods Conference. At the conference, world leaders decided to tie the world currency exchange to the U.S. gold dollar to stabilize the international monetary order so that they can prevent another catastrophic war. At the time, the gold standard worked because the U.S. held three-fourths of the world's gold. It also came off WWII relatively unscratched and experienced a dramatic economic boom, while the rest of the world's infrastructure and cities were devastated and their national economy broke. When the 1970s rolled around, the American government had to fund a costly Vietnam War by printing more money. The American gold reserve could no longer support its increasing money supply. As a result, American President Richard Nixon relinquished the gold standard completely. Though the U.S. breakoff canceled this part of the original Bretton Woods agreement, the U.S. dollar is still largely the world's currency even today, as part of Bretton Woods' legacy.

Americans who grew up using American dollars may not understand what this means. As a Chinese international student, I experience firsthand the Bretton Woods legacy of U.S. dollar dominance in the world monetary order. Through globalization, my family's affordability of my American education often depends on the American government's monetary or trade policies, even though my family lives an ocean apart from the U.S.. Before the Great Recession of 2007-2009, the exchange rate between the U.S. dollar and Chinese yuan was about 1 dollar to 8 yuan. My family could never have been able to afford my education if the exchange rate remained that high. However, when the Great Recession hit, the U.S. government enacted the monetary policy of printing more money to save the U.S. economy from another Great Depression. Consequently, the dollar and yuan exchange rate fell to 1 dollar to 6-6.5 yuan. Though the exchange rate had climbed to about 1 dollar to 7 yuan for a short while, the 2018 trade war and 2020 COVID stimulus had both seen the dollar unofficially devaluates compared to the yuan. As a result of this global interdependence, U.S. government policies allowed my family in China to pay about 250,000 yuan less for my education, making it much more affordable.

Work Cited

Beck, Frank. “Dollar Devaluation To Fix The Great Recession.” Forbes, Forbes Magazine, 

19 June 2013, www.forbes.com/2008/12/09/dollar-devaluation-gold-pf-ii-in_fb_

1209soapbox_inl.html?sh=711190281968. Accessed 7 Mar. 2021.

“Dollar Yuan Exchange Rate - 35 Year Historical Chart.” MacroTrends, 2021,

www.macrotrends.net/2575/us-dollar-yuan-exchange-rate-historical-chart. 

Accessed 7 Mar. 2021.

“The Postwar Economy: 1945-1960.” University of Groningen - Humanities Computing,

www.let.rug.nl/usa/outlines/history-1994/postwar-america/the-postwar-economy-1945-

160.php#:~:text=The%20Postwar%20Economy:%201945-1960%20As%20the%20Cold

20War,consolidated%20its%20position%20as%20the%20world%27s%20richest%20

contry. Accessed 7 Mar. 2021.

Rudes, Jorge. “From Gold to Paper: the History of the Devaluation of the US Dollar.”

BitcoinDynamic.com, 28 Feb. 2021, bitcoindynamic.com/news/from-gold-to-paper-the-

history-of-the-devaluation-of-the-us-dollar/. Accessed 7 Mar. 2021.

A Letter of Critique to Frederich Hayek

Anyi Li

Hello dear Dr. Hayek,

After learning about your philosophies in class, I first want to express my respect to you for formulating your neoliberal school of thoughts and provoking so many intellectually intensive debates throughout the decades. However, I must say I have lingering doubts about a few of your stances.

According to Dr. Matthew Sparke’s book Introducing Globalization: Ties, Tensions, and Uneven Integration, you argue from the world’s painful experience of Nazism and Fascism before and during WWII that “all government planning had authoritarian tendencies,” and therefore we must limit all sorts of government regulations on the market in your book The Road to Serfdom (Sparke 239). 

However, I do not see how an economy can naturally work toward prosperity without government guidance. For instance, the United States in the 1920s mostly followed laissez-faire capitalist economic policies, but the United States still fell into recession after a period of economic boom. When the United States first entered the economic downturn at the end of the 1920s, the relative inaction and lack of monetary and fiscal corrections from the federal government only deepened the recession to a Great Depression. Based on what I have read from Dr. Sparke’s book, even Margaret Thatcher, who abundantly admires your philosophies, chose to utilize monetary policies of “reducing the money supply, pushing up interest rates, and imposing fiscal austerity in order to restore price stability” (Sparke 240). Though you could say that recessions are the market’s self-correcting methods, I believe that a government has the responsibility to ease the people’s suffering and misery in times of hardships, which involves enacting policies to kick-start a depressed economy as Keynesian doctrines suggest.

Nor do I think economic policies have any singular, causational relations to whether a government is democratic or authoritarian. As Dr. Sparke has pointed out, the Chilean style of “Chicago shock therapy” of instantly transforming a nation from socialist policies to pro-market neoliberal structures that you favored and suggested to former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was actually achieved by a dictator who overthrew a democratically-elected socialist government.

Moreover, the privatization of public services and deregulation of the market, which you support, is causing severe issues in the Global South. As stated in an article by Earth.org, after Guinea privatized its water services in 1989 and later on faded its subsidies to the industry, the private sector that held water services contracts soon became monopolies, and the water price skyrocketed sevenfold (“Water Privatisation in the Global South: Lessons From Guinea”). This left many poor citizens unable to afford their water bills, subsequently punished by water disconnection or evicted out of their home due to debt accumulations resulting from borrowing to pay their water bills (“Water Privatisation in the Global South: Lessons From Guinea”). Dr. Hayek, would you not think that government intervention or market regulation would have helped these low-income families in cases such as this? Or the question may become: should water, the essential item to human survival, be privatized from public services and sold as commodities?

Thank you!

Blessings,

Anyi

Work Cited

Sparke, Matthew. Introducing Globalization: Ties, Tensions, and Uneven Integration. 

1st ed., Wiley-Blackwell, 2013. 

“Water Privatisation in the Global South: Lessons From Guinea.” Impakter, 

Editorial Board - Earth.org, 17 Dec. 2020, impakter.com/water-privatisation-global-

south-guinea/. Accessed 28 Feb. 2021.

A Tryst with Destiny IIIB

Nehru’s Foreign Policy Legacy

Rohan Rajesh

“Thomas, that was a real nice declaration
Welcome to the present, we’re running a real nation”

— Hamilton

For those in power, one’s values are often put aside for the strategic interests of the nation. As we saw in the last article, Nehru had to reconcile the nonviolent legacy of the Indian Independence Movement with the messy process of Indian integration, decolonization, and the Cold War. Nehru handled many of these issues with a deft touch. Nehru and his Home Minister Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel were instrumental in integrating the princely states and the other remaining colonial territories by applying both diplomacy and military force where necessary. However, Nehru’s idealism and his calls for Asian unity and non-alignment spectacularly failed when it came to defending India’s northern Himalayan border. In this article, the last of the series, I will describe the process that led to Nehru’s greatest failure – the infamous 1962 war with China.

The Root Cause of Most Conflicts – British Maps

India’s troubled relations with China stem from, as usual, British mapmaking. When the princely state of Jammu and Kashmir agreed to British suzerainty, British mapmakers determined that it was necessary to delineate the boundaries of all of its possessions. One of the maps produced by the British included 15,000 square miles of remote, barren territory between the Karakorum Mountains and the Kunlun Mountains within the borders of Jammu and Kashmir – Aksai Chin. The Qing Empire (which controlled China, Tibet, and Xinjiang at the time) was not concerned about the map since the territory was so remote and there were significant issues in China proper. 

When the Qing Empire collapsed in 1912, Tibet gained de facto independence. British officials met with representatives of Tibet and the Republic of China to delineate the border – the Simla Convention. This time, Britain included around 30,000 square miles of territory in the eastern Himalayas within its province of Assam, later known as the Northeast Frontier Agency (NEFA). The Republic of China never agreed to the Simla Convention, but Tibet did. For forty years, the border did not pose an issue to Sino-Indian relations because China simply did not have a border with India during this time. That changed when the People’s Republic of China (PRC) annexed Tibet in 1951, making the two countries neighbors for the first time since 1912.

Sino-Indian Relations – the Early Years

At first, relations seemed to be sailing smoothly. India was one of the first non-communist countries to recognize the PRC, which was established when the communists won the Chinese Civil War in 1949. In an agreement signed in 1954, both countries agreed to respect each other’s territorial integrity and sovereignty. It was also in this controversial agreement that Tibet was referred to as the “Tibet Region of China” for the first time. Phrases like Hindi Chini Bhai Bhai (“Indians and Chinese are brothers” in Hindi) represented the zeitgeist of the time. Despite these loft pronouncements, the border issue proved a thorn in Sino-Indian relations. Letters between Nehru and Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai show the immense difficulty in resolving the border issue. India was outraged by the Chinese building of a road in Aksai Chin (which at the time belonged to India) to connect Tibet and Xinjiang. China viewed the inclusions of Aksai Chin and the NEFA (known today in India as the state of Arunachal Pradesh and in China as “South Tibet”) as legacies of European imperialism.

Before the border issue could be solved, relations began to truly sour in 1959 when the Dalai Lama fled to India after a popular uprising in Tibet against Chinese rule was crushed. India granted political asylum to the Dalai Lama, much to the chagrin of the Chinese who viewed him as the product of “fugitive upper-class reactionaries”, “American imperialists”, and the “Chiang Kai-shek clique.” Many Indians (including prominent politicians and social workers) were furious with China’s control of Tibet, viewing it as an act of imperialism on a friendly neighbor with whom India has had millennia-old ties. The frustration with the border situation led to anti-China protests in Bombay, which culminated in the desecration of Chairman Mao’s portrait. China viewed the protests in India as an insult to the People’s Republic even though the Indian government tried to explain, in vain, that the government could not interfere with the free speech of Indian citizens.

Matters were not aided by the fact that Nehru relied heavily on his Defense Minister V.K. Krishna Menon. He was mentioned in the last article as the UN representative who controversially voted to abstain on a resolution condemning the Soviet invasion of Hungary. He was also unpopular within the Ministry of Defense and clashed frequently with his popular chief of staff, General K. S. Thimayya. Thimayya argued for the deployment of troops to the Chinese border and for the upgrading of the military’s guns by purchasing Belgian FN4 automatic rifles (at the time, Indian troops were using the .303 Enfield rifle from the First World War). Menon shot down Thimayya’s proposals, claiming that India’s greatest threat was Pakistan and that he “was not going to have NATO arms in the country.” When Menon promoted a Lieutenant-General (B. M. Kaul) over twelve senior officers for the post of Army Chief of Staff, Thimayya tendered his resignation. The resignation was met with outrage across the country, with many in the non-communist press arguing for Menon’s resignation instead. Nehru managed to persuade Thimayya to withdraw his resignation. But when the Chinese road was revealed to the Indian Parliament, the MPs were outraged with many calling for Menon’s head. Nehru stubbornly refused to fire him.

Indians across the country (and within Nehru’s own party) were growing frustrated with China’s actions in Aksai Chin and Nehru’s “overscrupulous regard for Chinese susceptibilities and comparative indifference towards the anger and dismay with which the Indian people have reacted.” At the time India’s military was much weaker than China’s, which had amassed significant Soviet weaponry, aircraft, and equipment. Indian leaders, for so long focused on war with Pakistan, were ill-prepared for mountain warfare as Thimayya, now retired, pointed out in a 1962 symposium on defense policy, saying he could not even “as a soldier envisage India taking on China in an open conflict on its own.” It was in 1962 that Thimayya’s prophecy was realized.

The 1962 Sino-India War

Clashes between Indian and Chinese troops escalated into a full-blown conflict. The Chinese troops, prepared for mountain warfare with Tibetan rebels and supplied by a better road network, easily overran the ill-equipped Indian troops in Aksai Chin and the NEFA. Menon was finally forced to resign. A weary Nehru requested British and American assistance. President Kennedy was eager to help but was preoccupied with the Cuban Missile Crisis. Nonetheless, America sent transport planes with arms and ammunition. The British, French, and Canadians also provided support. Around this time, likely due to fears of Western intervention, China, then poised to enter further into Indian territory in the Northeast, declared a unilateral ceasefire. Chinese troops withdrew from the NEFA but kept Aksai Chin.

The Aftermath

Several thousand Indian soldiers were dead or injured. Menon was sacked and Kaul prematurely retired. Nehru was devastated and his image had taken a beating. His party lost key by-elections in 1963. Opposition leaders introduced a vote of no-confidence against Nehru. This was easily defeated by the Indian National Congress’s majority, but significant criticism was leveled at the Prime Minister for four days. A physically and emotionally weakened Nehru died in 1964.

In the wake of India’s humiliating defeat, the Americans saw an opportunity. President Kennedy and his ambassador to India, Kenneth Galbraith, wanted to forge closer ties with India since America had given assistance while the Soviets had sat on the sidelines, and Nehru was now receptive to American overtures and was charmed by First Lady Jackie Kennedy. However, the goodwill would not last. After Kennedy and Nehru, successive Indian and American leaders failed to ensure better relations. India would eventually side with the Soviets (who fell out with the Chinese in 1969, leading to a serious border conflict), particularly under the rule of the populist and socialist Indira Gandhi (Nehru’s daughter). India-US relations would reach their nadir in 1971 during the Third Indo-Pakistan War. You can read why in this article.  

In Nehru’s final years, he attempted peace with Pakistan but the initiative died with Nehru. The Second Indo-Pakistan War would break out again over Kashmir in 1965. This time, India was better prepared. The failures of 1962 led to a significant change in India’s defense strategy. Pakistan was also now openly allied with China (the enemy of an enemy is a friend, after all), so India had to prepare for a two-front war. Nehru’s successor, Lal Bahadur Shastri, deftly managed the conflict, and it is conceivable that India could have annexed Pakistan had it not been for an intelligence failure that led the Indians to declare a draw. 

Nehru’s failures leading up to 1962 essentially taught successive Indian leaders what not to do. Successive Indian governments have invested significantly in weapons and infrastructure along the border with China. Indian leaders also aligned with the Soviet Union who provided weapons and political support. At the same time, Indian leaders erased idealism from its foreign policy with the main exception being that India continues to advocate against colonialism, most recently in its opposition to UK sovereignty over the Chagos Islands. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, India has made a definitive shift towards the United States and the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (an informal strategic partnership between the US, India, Japan, and Australia), all of whom are concerned about Chinese activities in the Indo-Pacific. India became a nuclear-weapons state in 1996 to match China’s existing nuclear weapons capabilities. India has also diversified its weapons portfolio to add purchases from the United States, France, and Israel to its mostly Russian repertoire, while also developing indigenous weapons capabilities, such as the recent Anti-Satellite Test, a capability thitherto only possessed by the US, Russia, and China.

Conclusion

With that, we have reached the end of the series. While Nehru was vital to the development of India’s democracy, his record on economic and foreign policy issues is mixed. The above quote from Hamilton illustrates the difficulty of incorporating morality in foreign policy, particularly when none of your neighbors have it. As the maxim goes, if you want peace, prepare for war.

Music as a Cultural Commodity

Anyi Li

The global popularity of hip-pop is a perfect example of how culture itself can be a commodity and circulate through the geographies of globalization. Hip-hop begins in the Bronx of New York City, originally with very locally-based content. Over time, it evolves into a cultural movement narrating many aspects of African and Latino American culture, life, and the diaspora. As rappers in The Global Influence of Hip-Hop introduced, hip-pop presents the pan-African story, taking all Africans back to the proud African culture, and represents the African spirit to overcome the difficulties brought by the history of slavery and courageously seek new opportunities for themselves (“The Global Influence of Hip-Hop”). Hip-hop is not just any piece of music but also a movement learned and shared by African people throughout the world. Though it may have started local, African people worldwide resonated with the local New York City conditions, for they have endured similar oppression and diaspora experiences. They grasped their shared essence and culture behind the local art and developed it into a global cultural movement. While circulating through the geographies of globalization, hip-hop also has proved itself a worthy commodity, defined as we learned: “something which can be bought, sold, and invested in” (Lepofsky). It is now “a multi-billion dollar business sector” and commands global influence (Lepofsky). People pay to enjoy hip-hop art and to understand the fascinating African culture. In spreading its pan-African message through cultural globalization, hip-hop also transcends global geographies as a cultural commodity.

The relatively recent popularization of Chinese gufeng music (means ancient-style music) is another case that music sells as a cultural commodity. Gufeng music is the music that tells a story in ancient and contemporary Chinese history and literature. For instance, a viral song named YuXiTan tells the tale between Xiangyu, the Hegemon King of Western Chu, and his beloved concubine Yu Ji when Yu Ji bid farewell and committed suicide in front of a defeated and hopeless Xiang Yu. It starts with sounds that model natural-occurring sounds of fire and horses to provide the context of the story behind the music, which in this case is war. Not all gufeng music incorporates such natural sounds, but many do. YuXiTan’s vocal style adopts the modern Western orchestra, traditional Chinese instruments such as Pipa, and Peking Opera’s sharp, dry sound. Since gufeng music a recent surge in Chinese music, its exact definition remains unclear, especially when it often imports modern, western musical structures. For example, YuXiTan also has Jazz elements on top of the very historical storyline and the Peking Opera vocal style. As one gufeng musician Yin Lin says, gufeng music doesn’t exemplify a clear boundary structurally or instrumentally. Rather, any music that conveys traditional Chinese culture and narrates ancient Chinese literary and historical stories is gufeng music. Similar to hip-hop’s role in African culture, gufeng music is a testimony to modern China’s transition. In recent decades, education has produced generations of upwardly mobile and historically literate people, spurring the society’s nostalgic confidence in China’s glorious history and multifarious traditions. Meanwhile, the rapid surge of globalization has shaped a population with a very diverse aesthetic in musical structures. Especially amongst the Millenials, the mix-bred of local Chinese stories and vocal styles accompanied by global Jazz invokes appreciation of both traditional Chinese and modern globalized cultures. In addition to purchasing music, gufeng music lovers are buying modern Chinese culture.

Work Cited

Lepofsky, Jonathan. “Lesson 2: Chocolate--An Example of Uneven Interdependencies Through

Culture, Communications & Capital.” Geography 121, 19 Aug. 2020. University of North

Carolina at Chapel Hill. Lesson Notes.

Lepofsky, Jonathan. “Lesson 3: Culture as Uneven Interdependencies.” Geography 121, 

2 Sept.2020. University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Lesson Notes.

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Russia in Donbass: Europe’s Most Wanted

Jay Ramesh

In November 2013, protests rocked Ukraine, leading to unpopular president Viktor Yanukovych fleeing the country. Over 7 years later, the country is perennially fighting against Russian-backed separatists in the Donbass region of Eastern Ukraine. 

The conflict has largely settled into a stalemate, but tensions are rapidly flaring up as Russia has begun amassing troops, tanks, and artillery in a bold display of force on the Ukrainian border. Even if it may be a bluff, the US and NATO have been quick to respond, and both sides are pooling their chips together in anticipation of a Russian Full House.

Though the conflict in Ukraine hasn’t flared up recently until now, over 10,000 have died and thousands more have been wounded. Most western analysts believe that Russian President Vladimir Putin has purposely been drawing out conflict in attempts to destabilize the pro-Western government of Ukraine, which it sees as a threat to its interests. Although Russia isn’t directly involved in the fighting, the conflict has turned into a US-Russian proxy war, with both sides arming their local pawns in the conflict.

The buildup is likely part of a larger trend by Putin to test the limits of the Biden administration, as well as reassert its dominance on the world stage. NATO scrambled jets 10 separate times on March 29, 2021 as an unusually large number of Russian military aircraft started flying close to NATO airspace. 3 days before that, Russian nuclear submarines surfaced and punched through a thick ring of ice in the Arctic circle, the first time in Russian naval history.

All these maneuvers are aimed at drawing international attention to Russia’s military capabilities, and conveniently away from the poisoning of Putin’s political rival Alexander Navalny. However, the buildup along the Ukrainian border is different. It’s almost like a game of chess, and Putin just moved his bishop to pin the US’s knight in Ukraine.

President Biden has already shown that he will be tougher on Russia than his predecessor Trump was. At the beginning of March 2021, he approved a $125 million arms deal to Ukraine, supplementing Ukrainian anti-air and anti-tank capabilities. US national security advisor Jake Sullivan affirmed that the US will stand with Ukraine and protect its territorial integrity, and Biden looks ready to counter any blow from the Underwear Poisoner (Putin).

These aren’t just empty words. The American military command in Europe (EUROCOM) has officially raised its threat level to imminent crisis, up from potential crisis, and two US warships have been dispatched to the black sea in a show of force. Many in Washington believe that although there’s no clear evidence of an imminent attack, the unusual concentration of troops along the border could signal an escalation of violence in Ukraine, if not an outright Russian intervention.

There are several possible reasons and consequences of this intervention. In the everlasting chess game between Russia and NATO, the buildup could simply be Russian attempts to probe NATO’s willingness to intervene in Ukraine, and Biden’s tolerance of foreign aggression. It could also be a distraction from Putin’s domestic political crisis over the poisoning of Navalny. It’s no coincidence that Putin spearheads aggressive foreign policy during a dip in his approval rating, as the strongman effect of standing up to the West wins the hearts and minds of many. 

Russia could also be actually preparing for an invasion of Ukraine, but this course of action is extremely unlikely as NATO presents a significant military deterrent to any direct Russian action in Ukraine. Although this did not stop Russia from annexing Crimea in 2014, it appears that NATO has learned to put its money where its mouth is and match all Russian military flexing. 

Regardless of who brings the bigger piece to the gun show, an all-out war in Ukraine isn’t really in anyone’s best interests (except for maybe a few radical separatists). Russia’s military buildup has attracted the eyes and scorn of NATO, but it’s more than likely an aggressive probe to see what a potential NATO response to conflict would look like. Internationally, all eyes are on Ukraine for the first time in years, and Putin is once again Europe’s most wanted troublemaker.

India: No Mom, We Don’t Have Oil at Home

Jay Ramesh

All across the world, people have felt the effects of rising gas prices for about a year. After demand for oil fell off a cliff last April due to worldwide covid quarantines, the price has slowly risen as Russia and the OPEC cartel have decided to voluntarily cut oil production, leading to rising prices. Cartels can only squeeze you for money when they’re the only ones you can buy from, but OPEC’s influence is under threat from a seemingly unlikely buyer: India.

India is even more dependent on foreign oil imports than the US is, with around 84% of all of its crude oil being imported. Around 62% of those imports come from OPEC members in the Middle East, as their prices are typically lower than competing states and their proximity to India lessens burdens on shipping. 

Oil is essential for economies to operate. When prices rise, it hurts economies as consumers and businesses depend on it heavily and buy less. India was hit hard by the pandemic, and its economy is struggling to recover. High oil prices coupled with the state’s reliance on foreign imports and pricing only make a bad situation worse.

To solve this problem, India has ordered its local refineries to diversify their oil imports, which is a fancy way of saying, “This shop is too expensive, let’s go look around these other stores.” The country more than doubled its oil purchases from the US in January 2021, and imports are already starting to trickle in from other states such as Guyana where 1 million barrels of oil are expected to be shipped to India by early April 2021.

So why does it all matter?

Well, India is the 3rd largest consumer of oil in the world, which means its buying and selling habits have significant consequences for global oil demand. It’s all about how cartels and monopolies/oligopolies work. Let’s say that one business makes 90% of all stuffed animals. They have the ability to drive their prices far below competitors, as the sheer number of consumers will still generate a profit. After clearing out the market again, they can raise prices higher, and since there aren’t any businesses large enough to compete, it’ll be hard for consumers to look elsewhere for cheaper stuffed animals.

OPEC operates in a similar way. It’s an economic alliance of several countries that come together and artificially manipulate the oil market by deciding on collective supply boosts and cuts. They make up 40% of the world’s oil production and 60% of the world’s internationally traded oil. So, whenever they want to boost their profits, they can either raise prices or undercut the prices of competitors, and world importers don’t have much of a choice.

India does have one advantage over OPEC. The state has a massive oil refining industry, and Prime Minister Narendra Modi has plans to almost double India’s refinery capacity. This well-developed industry means that India has the ability to process almost all forms of crude oil, allowing the country to be more flexible with its imports. India may not have much oil at home, but shopping around could lessen the burden of oil prices on Indian consumers and reduce the power of OPEC. Who cares about brand loyalty anyway?

Burmese Unrest Revisited

Robert Cole

Before we begin, a quick note on terminology: The nation formerly known only as Burma in English-speaking circles is now according to the government to be known as Myanmar. However, the Burmese linguistic equivalents for both words are still used by native speakers depending on the context, and the military junta that made the decision to go with “Myanmar” was motivated by complex political interests that deserve a blog post of their own. Internationally, there remains division over the naming, with the UN, France, and Japan using Myanmar, and the US and the UK using Burma. Both terms are politically and culturally loaded among Burmese people, but in absence of a clear standard, I will be using both interchangeably. For another perspective, please read Internationalist contributor Joshua O’Brian’s February 14th blog post on the topic.

Less than two months ago, I wrote a post about the coup that ousted the government of Aung Sang Suu Kyi from power in Naypyidaw and returned the Burmese military to power. Even then it seemed likely that strong resistance would emerge from a people fed up with decades of military meddling, but to what degree and how the military would respond was yet to be seen. The answer was a mixture of good news and bad. People rose up, most dramatically in the former capital and most populous city of Yangon, to protest what was clearly an illegitimate seizure of power. At first, the military showed some restraint and no live rounds were fired into crowds. However, eight days after the coup and two days after my post, the first known instance of live round use occurred, leaving two protesters wounded. Since then, the military police have killed over 550 people, including almost 50 children, and detained thousands of others. By the time this post is published, those numbers will likely have risen even higher. 

Yet the protests have only grown in scale, and at least three of Myanmar’s armed resistance groups have jointly pledged retaliation if the military does not back down. The entry of rebel groups into the fray is important because it signals a unity of cause unimaginable before the coup. One of the signatories of the retaliation pledge is the Arakan Army, a group best known for being the Suu Kyi government’s stated target and main opponent during the Rohingya Genocide that began in 2016. It now finds itself in alliance with Suu Kyi’s supporters, and the dismal support the military demonstrated in the last election means nearly the entire country is united against it. However, as Venezuela has demonstrated over the past few years, it is difficult for opposition groups without some measure of military support to topple a regime. While resistance groups like the Arakan Army have been able to survive military assault, they are limited to the far west and northeast of the country and do not represent a serious challenge to the military outside of the periphery. Given that almost all of them are ethnic separatist organizations, their opposition to the military crackdown is likely an attempt to generate sympathy for their efforts rather than directly challenge the authorities in Naypyidaw. The only other source of potential support, Myanmar’s neighbors, have shown little interest in fueling a civil war, and are principally interested in regional stability. 

Armed only with their anger, the Burmese people are unlikely to be able to topple the generals through force of arms. In all likelihood, they will continue to be mowed down by a regime whose psyche is dominated by a fear of its own people. Ultimately, the power to stop the violence rests with the Burmese military and its tacit supporters in New Delhi, Beijing, Bangkok, and Dhaka. If the leaders of any or most preferably all of its neighbors leveled sanctions against the military, the Burmese people would likely have a much brighter road ahead of them.

Reviving the Iran Nuclear Deal?

Suhas Nannapaneni

For weeks, both Iranian and United States officials have stated their openness to reenter negotiations without much effect. However, now there are significant first steps towards renegotiating the controversial JCPOA, even if it does not include direct bilateral talks between the United States and Iran. The delay seems likely the cause of domestic political disputes within Iran between forces in the government devoted to ending the crushing sanctions and hard-liners in the military and parliament as well as clerics who want reparations for the United States’ exit in 2018. 

Within Iran, parliamentarians like Javad Karimi Ghodousi have denounced Foreign Minister Javad Zarif over his support to enter negotiations with the United States. This is after the passing of a bill by the Iranian parliament in December that would suspend United Nations inspections of the country’s nuclear facilities and allow it to increase its uranium enrichment. The bill was in response to the assassination of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, a prominent nuclear scientist who was the driving force behind Iran’s nuclear weapons program as well as the tough sanctions imposed by the United States. However, the passage of the bill was tempered by government spokesman Ali Rabiei who stated that the move would not change Iran’s nuclear policy – a statement at direct odds with the Iranian Parliament. 

Since then, Iran has reached a compromise with the U.N.’s nuclear watchdog after threatening to suspend inspections until it receives sanctions relief. Although the International Atomic Energy Agency has been able to secure necessary monitoring, IAEA chief Rafael Grossi has stated that, “there is less access, let’s face it”. Although President Biden has indicated his intention to reenter the Nuclear Deal, he does not want to remove sanctions before renegotiations, while Iran predictably wants the opposite order of events. Since February 22, 2021, there now exists a three month grace period between the U.N. inspectors and Tehran – putting pressure on Washington and Tehran to work out their demands and agree on concessions. 

In the face of this context, both the United States and Iran have made the preliminary steps to a modified Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. President Biden has reassembled many of the key negotiators who helped create the Iran Nuclear Deal in 2015. One prominent player is Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s incoming deputy, Wendy R. Sherman. Mrs. Sherman was the lead day-to-day negotiator of the Nuclear Deal during Obama’s presidency. Furthermore, Jake Sullivan and William J. Burns, who began secret negotiations with Iran eight years ago, are now his national security advisor and his C.I.A. director, respectively.

American officials have said they are willing to meet directly with Iranians, but the Iranian government has insisted on working through the Europeans. The upcoming proposals in Vienna will be unpredictable and much-awaited as both the U.S. and Iran have indicated that the other side should make the first move. Nevertheless, Ali Akbar Salehi, head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization, has shown optimism and stated that all the steps Iran has taken to enrich its uranium can be reversible in just a few months.

Similar to Iran’s anti-deal hardliners, there exists opposition within the United States from Republicans and even some Democrats in Congress, who have introduced legislation to tighten sanctions enforcement and block the express disapproval of the JCPOA, President Obama set the clear precedent that although the US Congress can request oversight and review, the ultimate decision falls to the Executive branch and the Executive only. 

Furthermore, President Biden must consider the much larger picture of how stability in the Middle East and the Iran Nuclear Deal will affect the US’s geopolitical struggle with China. When President Trump exited the JCPOA in 2018, he advocated a full press strategy, tanking the Iranian economy with strict sanctions enforcement.  However, instead of forcing Iran back to the negotiating table, this strategy has pushed them into the arms of an expanding China. China signed a 25-year, $400 billion deal that provides critical investment into Iranian industries including banking, telecommunications, ports, railways, health care, and information technology. In return, China will receive a regular and discounted supply of Iranian oil, securing its energy independence. Furthermore, the deal calls for expanded military cooperation, including joint training and exercises, joint research and development, and intelligence-sharing. 

The Middle East has become an endless quagmire for US foreign policy, locking in military engagement for twenty years and diluting attention from other regions of importance such as East Asia. Securing a Nuclear Deal, this time with the support of Israel and Saudi Arabia, can be a crucial first step to creating a lasting foundation for peace and security in the Middle East.  

China-EU Trade Deal on the Ropes

Robert Cole

It took only a few days to potentially destroy a project that has taken seven years to build up. That is what lawmakers in Beijing and Brussels have been discovering in the past week, as a spat over Chinese human rights abuses in the Xinjiang Autonomous Region of western China threatens to destroy a bilateral trade agreement. Experts say over a million Uighur people are being held in concentration camps by the Chinese government in Xinjiang, a finding that the Chinese government vehemently denies. After the EU targeted four Chinese officials in the region with sanctions over the issue, its first sanctions against Chinese officials since the Tiananmen Square Massacre in 1989, China responded with what has widely been seen as a disproportionate response, sanctioning five members of the European Parliament, the entire EU subcommittee on human rights, as well as several leading European experts on the issue. In response, the EU has threatened to cancel the EU-China Comprehensive Agreement on Investment or CAI, a deal long pursued by both sides. How has it come to this? To understand why this dispute has escalated so quickly and in such an unprecedented manner, the motivations of both sides have to be taken into consideration. 

China, for its part, is clearly attempting to assert itself on the international stage and make clear that it will not tolerate any nation meddling in what it considers to be its internal prerogative. Perhaps the move was intended purely to scare away European critics of Chinese Uighur policy, and to make an example out of those in Europe that endanger its plans for Xinjiang. However, this alone makes little sense. It is doubtful that China’s leadership could reasonably expect these sanctions to actually halt its opponents half a world away, especially when it has just challenged them so publicly. More likely, the decision was a combination of internal and external motivations, some of which are obscured by the West’s limited insight into Chinese domestic politics. On the external side, China has seventeen active border disputes, including a very serious and occasionally deadly one with India and a highly militarized situation in the South China Sea. It is also facing widespread condemnation for its crackdown in Hong Kong over the past few years, as well as scrutiny for its reticence to share information on the origins of the covid-19 pandemic that started in the southern Chinese city of Wuhan. The internal elements are more obscure, but a few things are clear. The Communist Party has always relied on the promise of greater prosperity and the imposition of order to remain popular, particularly under Chairman Xi Jinping. The pandemic has greatly weakened China’s economic growth, and appearing to accept criticism of its handling of Hong Kong or Xinjiang would undermine the other of its major appeals. Appearing to be strong externally could also offset any appearance of internal weakness the Hong Kong protests or pandemic may have generated. There is also a strong cultural memory of the “Century of Humiliation” when the country was brought low by colonial powers, and the internal optics of China standing up to Europeans criticizing its internal policy are likely very good.

On the European side, things are in some ways similar, in others quite different. As evidence of a Uighur genocide continues to pour out of Xinjiang, and public sentiment turns against China in the midst of the pandemic, leaders feel compelled to make a stronger stand against the worst of the PRC’s abuses. Both Macron and Merkel, leading proponents of the trade deal, are facing tough political challenges to their respective parties at home, which likely factored into their stances on Xinjiang and subsequent threats to derail CAI. Macron in particular is facing a strong challenge from right-wing and highly xenophobic candidate Marine Le Pen, and may be attempting to bolster his nationalist credentials by publicly refusing to acquiesce to China. The shock of such a strong response to the EU’s initial sanctions may prevent the EU from backing down, but it doesn’t hurt that the bloc needs this deal much less than China does. Part of the strategic purpose of the deal from the Chinese perspective was to sideline Europe in the ongoing US-China trade dispute, and prevent the bloc from aligning more closely with American grievances. Lacking a solid geostrategic reason to stick with the deal, the EU is much more likely to persist in its demands that China lift the sanctions imposed on European officials as a precondition to ratification of CAI. 

The controversy over Xinjiang and resulting conflict over CAI reveals the great weakness of Chinese foreign policy. Often characterized as a military and economic juggernaut by Western commentators, China is often hampered in its strategic aims by internal approval, just like any other nation. As China reaches out across the world and attempts to assert itself, it will have to contend with the need to save face at home, limiting its ability to compromise. On the other hand, CAI reveals the power Europe currently holds as a fulcrum point between the established power of the United States and the rising strength of the People’s Republic of China. Each side desires to be the EU’s primary economic and political partner, giving the bloc the power to play off the two sides for maximum benefit. From an American perspective, the conflict shows how China’s dismal human rights record and sometimes capricious diplomacy represent a rhetorical line of attack in unifying opposition to its worst practices. The same works in reverse. China serves as a reflection of America’s own shortfalls internationally, and continued human rights soul-searching domestically as well as a more straightforward trade policy abroad would go a long way in maintaining American standing as a world leader.

China Enters the Middle East

Suhas Nannapaneni

Ever since President Trump exited the JCPOA, Iran has had a few limited options. The first was retaliating by increasing its nuclear leverage since the positive effects of the Iran Nuclear Deal have been greatly diminished by the US’s tough sanctions.  The second was to engage directly by increasing its state-sponsored terrorism in Syria, Yemen, and especially in Iraq. This would hit the US especially hard as public opinion against so-called endless wars has ramped up consistently over the past decade. The third option was to wait out Trump’s administration and hope the Democrats win the White House which might open opportunities to reenter the JCPOA. Biden’s administration, although nominally always available for negotiations, has not let up on sanctions and has made no indication to do so in the future – much to the Iranians’ disappointment. 

Now, they have turned towards their fourth option – courting another Great Power who has historically not been very involved in the Middle East. As China continues to expand its debt diplomacy through the Belt and Road Initiative, it has entered a bilateral deal with Iran dubbed the Comprehensive Strategic Partnership. Despite its seemingly innocuous name, it has far reaching impacts as America’s two largest threats join hands to stave off isolation and dependence on the West. 

The foreign ministers of each country, Javad Zarif and Wang Yi, met in Tehran during Yi’s trip to meet not only Iran, but also Saudi Arabia, Turkey, U.A.E., Bahrain, and Oman.  China has even offered to facilitate a peace deal between Israel and Palestine. Clearly, China has deemed itself ready to be a great power with influence in the tumultuous Middle East alongside the United States, Russia, and the European Union.  

So, what exactly is in the deal between China and Iran? Although the details of the agreement were not made public prior to the agreement, experts agree that it is mostly identical to the draft that was leaked last year. The draft included $400 billion in Chinese investments across many sectors of the economy including banking, telecommunications, ports, railways, health care, and information technology over the next 25 years. In return, China will receive a regular and heavily discounted supply of Iranian oil, which is crucial for its energy independence. 

However, it does not end with China just becoming a cornerstone of the Iranian economy using debt diplomacy. The draft also called for increased military cooperation, including joint training and exercises, research and weapons development, and intelligence-sharing. Although it might seem that Iran is giving too much away to China, its isolation in recent years has practically forced Khamenei’s hand. President Trump withdrew the United States from the JCPOA, imposing new tariffs that have scared off European investment and pushed inflation well above 30%. Now, Iran has gotten $400 billion in investments, likely with plenty of hidden strings, towards multiple foundational sectors of the economy. Zarif, the Iranian foreign minister, has said that, “China is a friend for hard times.”

Supporters of the deal point towards Iran’s pragmatism while detractors consider another step towards our new Cold War against China. Not only has China entered the Middle East to create new alliances, but it has also been able to impose sanctions and boycotts against the West. As the United States, Britain, Canada, and the European Union announced sanctions over the treatment of Uyghurs in Xinjiang, China has not stepped down. Instead, it has imposed a boycott of fashion houses such as H&M and Gap, making them impossible to find on Chinese apps and banning them from online retail stores. 

As President Biden stated in his first press conference this past week, the next generation will likely be studying whether democracy or autocracy has succeeded in the 21st century. As China enters the Middle East and pushes the world towards bipolarism, it will become a paradigm that our generation will have to pay great attention to.

25 Years of Back-Scratching: Is China Just a Rebound?

Jay Ramesh

The enemy of my enemy is my friend. Iran took this to heart when, on March 27, they signed a 25-year cooperation agreement with China.

Iran’s international diplomacy is like Bill Belichik in free agency: they don’t like signing long-term deals. Iran’s lengthiest deal before this partnership was a 10-year deal with Russia back in 2001. Often isolated from the world, especially Western powers, the country is forced to keep its options open and align itself with other states that find itself on the wrong side of America’s bad temper. 

However, this isn’t just about Iran. Although it seems like China is simply a rebound for an Iran fresh out of a toxic relationship (and harsh break-up) with the US, there’s much more to the story. So let’s explore both sides of the coin. 

It’s no coincidence that this deal marks the 50th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between China and Iran. They have historically had relatively warm relations, but recently Iran has grown economically closer to China. After withdrawing from the Iran Nuclear Deal in 2018, former US President Donald Trump imposed heavy sanctions on Iran in order to put pressure on the government to come to the negotiating table. However, Iranian prime minister Hassan Rouhani has stubbornly held his ground, at the expense of his country’s economic well-being. 

Sanctions hit Iran hard. After experiencing 12% annual growth in 2016, Iran’s economy tanked and fell by more than 3% in 2018 and more than 9% in 2019. The coronavirus pandemic only worsened an already bad situation, and Iran’s oil output has also fallen by almost 50% after the US sanctions.

Like a toxic ex, these sanctions cut Iran off from much of the world- especially the world’s banking systems. The 25-year deal included a provision detailing a joint Iranian-Chinese bank, which could prove a godsend for cash-strapped Iran. The state may even be able to evade US sanctions by rerouting trade, loans, and other funds through Chinese banks, similar to what Iraq did during the Iran-Iraq war. Sanctions have caused Iran to be heavily dependent on China economically, and this deal eases financial burdens on Iran and also gives China a strong economic and potentially diplomatic ally.

The plan will eventually integrate Iran into China’s ambitious Belt-and-Road initiative. China will receive discounts on oil imports from Iran, which it desperately needs as China receives around 75% of its oil from abroad. In return, China will invest heavily in Iranian industry and telecommunications: building free-trade zones, improving transportation infrastructure, and even bringing a 5G network to Iran. Both countries will also continue their close military cooperation, including technology sharing and joint-military exercises. 

This new Pact of Oil presents a challenge to the Biden administration. Biden has tried to entice Iran to engage in negotiations to revive the Nuclear Deal, but Iran said it would refuse any negotiations until sanctions were lifted. When it was reported that Iran would export 918,000 barrels of oil to China in March despite a US embargo, tensions flared up. 

Iran had tried to put pressure on other western governments such as Germany and the UK to concede more economic incentives to Iran in exchange for the revival of the Nuclear Deal, but this new deal provides Iran with more economic options. Exporting oil to a large market such as China should increase Iranian oil production and help its ailing economy, and it reduces the economic leverage Biden has over Iran. 

Supporters in Iran claim the deal provides the best economic prospects for an isolated Iran, but many aren’t as enthusiastic about the deal. Critics, especially nationalists, claim the deal makes Iran too financially reliant on China. They’ve seen many African nations fall into a debt-trap of financial reliance on Chinese loans and investment, and they think their government is getting a little too cozy with Chinese investors. As Iran has been arguably the worst-hit country in the Middle East by the coronavirus pandemic, domestic relations between Iranian citizens and China haven’t exactly been the best either.

 
Regardless, this Pact of Oil provides both countries with much-needed economic relief, and in theory, the deal should bring the two economies closer. They say relationships are built on trust more than out of necessity, but maybe the couple’s lust for each others’ resources can turn a potentially toxic relationship into a good one.

The Yellow Fleet and “Trouble in the Suez”

Joshua O’Brien

Last week, the Ever Given, a 200,000 metric ton cargo vessel, somehow managed to get itself stuck lengthwise in the Suez Canal. As of writing the ship still has not been freed, and it blocks the artery carrying 12% of international trade. It has also become an internet joke that I have been a little too eager to participate in. But this is not the first time the Suez Canal has been blocked. Nor is it the first time a vessel has been stranded in the Canal.

In 1967, the Six Day War resulted in the Israeli control of the Sinai Peninsula, in the east banks of the Canal. Nasser, rather than allow Israel use of the canal, ordered his military to blockade and close it. Fifteen cargo ships were stranded in the Canal as a result. They anchored in the Great Bitter Lake, and as the desert winds whipped sand onto their hulls, they earned the nickname the Yellow Fleet. Though the sailors were evacuated over time, the vessels remained with rotating crews until 1975. At this point the Yom Kippur War had happened, and Egypt regained control of the Sinai.

The Yellow Fleet incident is a minor historical event, one of note to trivia nerds rather than serious academic evaluation. Though it highlights that “Trouble in the Suez” is more than a lyric in a novelty Billy Joel song. It is a recurrent theme of Suez's history due to its geostrategic position.

The Suez reduces the time for trade between Europe and Asia, with the Cape of Good Hope route adding weeks to a voyage even in modern times. But beyond its economic significance, its position has always given the Suez some political contention. When it was built in the 1860s, the Canal was under the ownership of an Anglo-French company, which maintained effective control over the body even after Egypt’s independence. When President Nasser nationalized the Canal in 1956, the British and French orchestrated an intervention with the Israelis, hoping to regain the profitable pass. The Suez Crisis tarnished Anthony Eden’s premiership in Britain and solidified the loss of superpower status for both European countries.

This is to say that though the particular circumstances of the obstruction are surprising, the fact that the Suez was obstructed in some form is not surprising. This is in part due to the current reality of global supply chains—growing numbers and bigger boats—but also the Suez’s importance. It is a chokepoint for 12% of global trade and has political significance across the region and the world. Perhaps we should not take its smooth functioning for granted, even after the Ever Given clears.

A Tryst with Destiny IIIA

Nehru’s Foreign Policy Legacy

Rohan Rajesh

Continuing the series from last week, in this article, I will be discussing Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru’s foreign policy legacy. If you want more background about Nehru’s life and domestic political legacy, read this article from two weeks ago. If you want to read my assessment of Nehru’s economic legacy, read this article from last week. In those articles, I argued that Nehru’s domestic legacy was vital to India’s democratic development while Nehru’s economic policies, while they made sense at the time, can be viewed as misguided with the benefit of hindsight. Nehru’s foreign policy legacy is arguably Nehru’s weakest spot. Nehru’s conception of foreign policy was a product of the idealism of the Indian independence movement. However, as we shall see, Nehru’s idealism (although significant to Indian soft power in the Third World) was subject to significant (and oftentimes justified) criticism amidst the realpolitik of the Cold War. 

I had intended to write about Nehru’s foreign policy in one article. However, that proved to be impossible, so I have split it into two parts. In this article, I will discuss some of Nehru’s military actions in the subcontinent, his leadership in the global anti-colonialism movement, his policy of non-alignment, and his relations with the United States. In the next article, I will discuss relations with China, arguably Nehru’s greatest failure.

“A Queer Mixture of East and West”

Nehru had always been an international figure. His command of the English language and his time in London made him a keen student of Western culture. That said, he was still always rooted in the sublimity of India’s culture and history. Nehru was keenly aware of the strangeness of his identity, writing, “I have become a queer mixture of East and West, out of place everywhere, at home nowhere.” That said, these were exactly the qualities needed to represent independent India on the world stage. Indeed, Prime Minister Nehru was concurrently India’s External Affairs Minister (the Indian equivalent of the United States Secretary of State).

To Attack or Not to Attack

Nehru inherited an interesting philosophical legacy. Indian independence had mostly been achieved through a nonviolent nationalist movement. Would the Indian state become nonviolent as well? What about when its territorial integrity was threatened? For Nehru, this moral struggle began right after independence. While attempting to cajole the various Rajas and Nawabs that controlled significant territory within India, war broke out over the princely state of Kashmir when Pashtun paramilitary forces from Pakistan attacked the state. The Maharaja of Kashmir begged India for military support. India agreed on the condition that the Maharaja acceded to Indian control. The Maharaja, who entertained ideas of controlling an independent Himalayan kingdom on the lines of Nepal, Bhutan, and Sikkim, reluctantly agreed. 

It is unclear why Nehru chose to incorporate Kashmir. There are multiple theories. Nehru himself was a Kashmiri Pandit, so that may have influenced his division to retain Kashmir in India. While Pakistan argued that Kashmir was Muslim-majority and so should go to the Muslim state, Nehru argued that India was a secular state and that Kashmir’s religious demography should not be a factor in which country it joins. As the war dragged on, Nehru appealed to the United Nations (an institution which Nehru whole-heartedly supported). The UN Security Council mandated a cease-fire: Pakistan was to pull out its troops from Kashmir, and a plebiscite was to be held. Neither country agreed to the stipulations, and the conflict (whose history you can read about here) has raged on to this day.

Nehru also used military means to incorporate the princely state of Hyderabad in 1948 and the Portuguese territories in western India in 1961. The latter was particularly controversial in the West since Portugal was a NATO ally. President Kennedy angrily told the Indian ambassador to the US, “You spend the last fifteen years preaching morality to us, and then you go ahead and act the way any normal country would behave … People are saying, the preacher has been caught coming out of the brothel.” Some also questioned the timing of the operation, given that it coincided with the reelection campaign of Nehru’s embattled Defense Minister Krishna Menon (more on him below). You can read more about the Portuguese Raj in this article. 

With regards to the incorporation of the Princely States and colonial holdovers, Nehru was decisive in his use of the military when peace did not work. While South Asians continue to debate the legacy of the incorporations of Kashmir and (to a far lesser extent) Hyderabad, Nehru had given Portugal ample time to cede its colonies peaceably (France had ceded its colonies years earlier), and the resulting military conflict was entirely predictable if suspiciously timed.

Anti-Colonialism

Beyond concerns about India’s borders, India’s foremost foreign policy concern was the end of colonialism in Asia and Africa. Nehru fashioned himself as the leader of the global anti-colonial movement. To that end, he convened the Asian Relations Conference in New Delhi in March 1947 (five months before Indian independence). Representatives from India’s vicinity, Southeast Asia, China, Tibet, the Asian republics of the Soviet Union, South Korea, and the Middle East talked on issues of Asian integration, Western imperialism, and racism. This was followed up by the Afro-Asian Conference of 1955 in Bandung, Indonesia, which also included delegates from four free nations in Africa. 

These conferences would lay the foundation for the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), which still exists today. This movement mostly consisted of former colonies and sought to temper the passions created by the Cold War. In practice, the NAM could not do much: the communists sought to export their revolution everywhere while the West sought to crush anything that remotely suggested communism, including social democracy, leading to devastating conflicts and coups from Vietnam to Iran to the Congo to Argentina. Nonetheless, India’s vigorous anti-colonial (and anti-apartheid) stand has given it a strong moral standing and significant soft power in the Third World, as evidenced by the fact that the Third World largely supported India’s annexation of Portuguese territories.

Tensions with the West

Naturally, protestations against Western imperialism (while morally commendable) did not sit well with NATO. Relations between the US and India were strained during Nehru’s premiership. Nehru had never been particularly taken by American culture. Perhaps due to the influence of British culture (and the persistence of Jim Crow in the South), he viewed Americans as hopelessly materialistic, uncultured, and racist. While Nehru’s India was nominally non-aligned, in practice, Nehru’s government tended to side against the West more often than not. Much of this had to do with the persistence of colonialism in Asia and Africa after independence. While America dragged its feet in pressuring its European allies to end colonialism, the USSR publicly remonstrated against imperialism. While America was concerned about whether a colony would become communist, India was concerned about whether a colony would become independent. 

Thus, Nehru insisted on the People’s Republic of China being given China’s permanent seat on the UN Security Council instead of the US-backed Taiwan. India was also irked by US military aid to Pakistan. While US support was meant for Pakistan to combat communism (Pakistan was separated from the USSR by a 12-mile strip of land in Afghanistan), India argued that Pakistan was more likely to use that aid and weaponry against India. To be fair, the US also gave significant economic aid to India, which irked the Pakistanis. 

That said, there were incredibly shocking moments of hypocrisy on Nehru’s part when it came to communist aggression and imperialism. When Egyptian President Gamel Abdel Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal (which was at the time under the control of the British), the British, the French, and the Israelis launched a military operation to seize the canal. The plot was exposed by poor planning, and the world was furious. India openly condemned the Western powers. The crisis was resolved when US President Eisenhower forced the British and the French to withdraw. 

However, in the same year, the Soviet Union crushed a popular anti-communist uprising in Hungary, and India said nothing publicly. India, then represented by V. K. Krishna Menon, abstained from a vote of condemnation in the UN Security Council, causing great consternation in the West (and indeed in India as well). Nehru was actually very unhappy with the Soviets and privately (and later publicly) urged the Soviets to withdraw from Hungary. But he refused to renege on Menon’s abstention.

Menon and Mao

Nehru’s reliance on Menon was frustrating for the Americans and inexplicable to his contemporaries. Menon would become Nehru’s Defense Minister. Menon’s influence on Nehru would lead Nehru into a disastrous policy vis-à-vis China. This would prove to be profoundly significant for India’s foreign policy and military policy because of the lessons it provided to Indian leaders on what not to do. We will explore Nehru’s fateful China policy next week. 

The City of Missiles

Joshua O’Brien

Last week, Iran revealed the existence of “missile city,” an underground Revolutionary Guard base filled with missiles, likely to be one of several. Commentators have been quick to point to this as another complication in the possible American renewal of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). Certainly, the video footage of the base does nothing to ease tensions in the region.

When the JCPOA was negotiated under Obama, it made no provisions on missiles. Instead, it focused on the development of a nuclear warhead, to prevent the acquisition of a nuclear weapon regardless of whether means of delivery existed. The JCPOA, in my opinion, provided one of the most solid international arms control regimes to date, in terms of nuclear weapons. But missiles are their own problem.

On September 14, 2019, twenty cruise missiles destroyed Saudi Arabian oil installations in an attack that UN investigators have concluded was launched by the Iranian Air Force. While Iran continues to deny the attack, which the Yemeni Houthis claim credit for, the attack still illustrates the potential of Iranian missile forces. And it also illustrates why Gulf states have criticized the JCPOA for excluding missiles from its controls.

The inclusion of missile provisions would have made an already difficult deal nearly impossible. Six years ago, this was an acceptable concession to ensure Iran did not acquire a nuclear weapon. But today, the Iranian missile program is large and fairly sophisticated. It can be used to deliver conventional munitions to targets across the region—in Saudi Arabia, Iraq, or Israel—with often little advanced warning. This allows Iran to pursue a policy of destabilization to advance its goals, at a much lower strategic cost than the threat of nuclear capability.

It also shows why renewing the JCPOA might not be a policy worth the cost for America and its allies. Regardless of whether or not the Agreement’s provisions are in force, and Iran is prevented from breaking out a nuclear weapon, it will still have and maintain a missile program capable of destabilizing the region. Cruise missiles will be able to fly under the radar to deliver surprise attacks, and ballistic missiles will be able to strike distant targets. Iran will still have a capable and legitimate arsenal of weapons. The city of missiles should remind American policymakers that the strategic landscape has changed since the Obama years, and restoring the legacy of a once shining policy is likely not the most strategic option for the neighbors and states who have the most to lose in the region.

A Tryst with Destiny II

Nehru’s Economic Legacy

Rohan Rajesh

Continuing the series from last week, in this article, I will be discussing Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru’s economic legacy. If you want more background about Nehru’s life and domestic political legacy, read last week’s article. In that article, I concluded that Nehru’s record is close to perfect. His economic record, however, is spotty, but his policies can only be understood in the context of India’s pre-independence economic history.

16th-century Mughal India was the largest economy in the world, having surpassed Qing China. It was a proto-industrial society where living conditions surpassed Western Europe. The Mughal province of Bengal, in particular, was renowned for its cotton textile exports to the extent that British weavers demanded tariffs on Indian goods, which they were granted via the Calico Acts. India was also more urbanized and less dependent on agriculture than Western Europe. Beyond textiles, India was a leader in shipbuilding, steel manufacturing, spices, pepper, silk, indigo, etc. That changed when the Mughal Empire collapsed, and the British East India Company (BEIC) annexed Bengal.

Despite the shock of the Mughal collapse, regions such as Bengal and Mysore were still economic and political great powers. But, after the Battle of Buxar, the BEIC forced the embattled Mughal emperor Shah Alam II to grant the company the sole rights to tax collection in Bengal. While the Mughal taxation policy could hardly be described as reasonable, the BEIC policy caused an outflow of capital to London, leading to a severe economic downturn. This was compounded by a terrible famine in the late 18th century. Previously, local rulers provided aid during famines, mitigating the death toll. The BEIC provided no such aid, leading to a third of Bengal dying of starvation, a brutal foreshadowing of future famines that devastated British India until 1943. 

Protectionist political forces in Britain led Parliament to force the BEIC to open the still-insulated Indian market to British exports. This dovetailed a policy of forced deindustrialization in Bengal. Whereas in the past Indian goods were the envy of Europe, British India merely provided raw materials for British manufacturing, and these British goods were then sold back to Indian consumers. Indeed, the industrialization of the West (particularly that of Britain) was made possible by the deindustrialization of India. Ultimately, India’s share of the global economy collapsed from 22.6% in 1700 (almost the same share as all of Europe) to a mere 3.8% in 1952. The percentage of the population working in agriculture increased and India went from being the premier economy in the world to a poster child for poverty, disease, and famine.

This was the situation that confronted Nehru and the INC in 1947. There was vigorous debate on the route India should take. Gandhians believed in a village-centered Indian economy. Indeed, there was a serious need for agricultural reform. Landless tenant farmers farmed as their ancestors did for abysmal wages and in brutal conditions. This inefficient system of farming also contributed to India’s serious food shortage issues. Thus, the central government redistributed land to give tenants more control over their production. However, to meaningfully improve India’s economy and standard of living, (re-)industrialization was desperately needed.

The Nehru-chaired National Planning Committee (set up by the Indian National Congress in 1938 to direct economic policy in independent India) concluded that state-led industrialization was the solution to India’s economic woes. While this may sound like a recipe for the kind of socialism in failed states like the USSR and Maoist China, in reality, this policy had the backing of the private sector (who wanted incomes and thus profits to rise), history, and many economists. Japan and Russia had both successfully industrialized through government support, so it made sense for India to do the same. This was also a common economic message at the time, including in the West, where Indian economic planners sought advice from the leading economists at Harvard, Cambridge, and Paris. Nehru was inspired by the five-year plans of the Soviet Union, and he would implement three such plans in India.

It should also be noted that Nehruvian socialism was limited to heavy industries, such as steel mills and power production. Indian self-sufficiency, already an important concept in Gandhian philosophy, in these critical industries gained even more importance with the rising Cold War tensions and India’s non-aligned policy (more on this in the next article). It should also be noted that Nehru did not simply take cues from the Soviets. He also found inspiration in the West, particularly in energy production and education. Nehru was especially taken by the Tennessee Valley Authority, which brought electricity and economic growth to the poverty-stricken Tennessee Valley region during the Great Depression. Indeed, Nehru was fascinated by dams, referring to them as “the temples of modern India.” Dam building would bring electricity and irrigation to poor regions and control flooding.

Finally, Nehru’s most enduring economic policy may be his commitment to the development of a “scientific temper” in India. Under the guidance of Nehru and the newly established Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, two major scientific institutions – the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research and the Atomic Energy Commission – were established. Such was the zeitgeist of the Nehruvian era that important investments were also made in an indigenous space program. The idea of a developing country supporting an expensive space program was audacious at the time. But today, India is a major space power due to those investments by Nehru. 

Perhaps Nehru’s most important economic contribution to India was the setting up of five engineering universities known as the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs). In these IITs, English-speaking Indians (including my father) became world-class engineers and programmers. Many migrated to the United States, where they would play critical roles in NASA (as President Biden recently remarked) and the IT boom of the 1990s. The IITs laid the foundation for India’s 21st-century middle-class prosperity.

However, the facts still show that despite Nehru’s best intentions, the Indian economy’s growth rate lagged behind that of similarly poor Asian countries, including South Korea, Sri Lanka, and Pakistan. The pejoratively termed “Hindu rate of growth” was 3.5% per year between 1950 and 1980. In the same period, South Korea’s economy grew at a rate of 10% per year. 

While India’s economic growth was commendable compared to that of British India, the Indian economy was still too dependent on agriculture. Crop failures would often lead to a decline in economic growth, and Nehru’s last years as Prime Minister saw severe food shortages and dependence on American economic aid. When Indira Gandhi (Nehru’s daughter, no relation to Mahatma Gandhi) became Prime Minister, she took state control of the economy much further than her father, leading to even more lackluster growth. It took the shock of the 1991 balance-of-payments crisis to force India to liberalize its economy, leading to an economic boom that caused a significant drop in poverty and cemented India’s status as a rising great power. 

Essentially, what all this means is that while Nehru’s economic policies made sense at the time, with the benefit of hindsight, we know that India should have gone a different route. That said, Nehru established infrastructure and provided funding that proved critical for industrialization and electrification even if it was and is not perfect. Nehru’s greatest economic legacy is his prescient investments in science and technology that set the stage for India’s IT boom, the success of its space research program, and its post-1991 economic prosperity.

US & China in Anchorage: A Flashpoint?

Suhas Nannapaneni

The rising threat of China as a formidable economic, political, and military power is of no surprise to anyone who peruses blogs covering international relations. Perhaps most readers have concluded that the US and China have entered the opening salvos of a new Cold War. Of course, there will be many unprecedented aspects in this new Cold War such as cyberwarfare and unexpected alliances, but it is safe to say there is much we can learn about our old enemy, the USSR, that we can apply to China in this opening stage. 

Certain events, such as the Fall of the Berlin Wall, reverberate throughout the world as an eternally immortal moment – seared in the minds of the millions of viewers who watched it live and the billions who learned about it after. However, there are other events that gain their importance in the historical record only in hindsight. For instance, George Kennan’s “Long Telegram”, written in 1946, that articulated the United States’ analysis of the Soviet Union and advocated the containment policy which informed the structure of Cold War policy over the next four decades. 

Nearly no one outside the Federal Government was attentive to this telegram and few outside of Cold War scholars understand its impact. In the telegram, Kennan outlines Soviet policy as “devoted to increasing in every way strength and prestige of Soviet state: intensive military-industrialization; maximum development of armed forces…designed to conceal weaknesses and to keep opponents in the dark”. Furthermore, he makes a pointed comment about Soviet strategy writing that “Russians will participate officially in international organizations where they see opportunity of extending Soviet power…efforts are restricted to certain neighboring points…such as Northern Iran, Turkey, possibly Bornholm”. This was a major political turning point in devising America’s priorities and response to the rising Soviet threat. 

Of course, one should not paint the present with the colors of the past, but that does not preclude us from taking lessons from it. In the last week, the United States Secretary of State Antony Blinken and National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan met with their Chinese counterparts Yang Jiechi and Wang Yi and waged an “undiplomatic war of words”. Senior American diplomats accused China of threatening world stability and violating human rights while Chinese officials retaliated with accusations of hypocrisy regarding race relations and America’s endless wars in the Middle East. 

The two countries already find themselves at odds with each other from cyberattacks to long-standing trade disputes. Although official statements from Sullivan convey a rosy outlook such as “we do not seek conflict, but we welcome stiff competition, and we will always stand up for our principles”, it is clear that this crucial and under-reported meeting set the stage for harsher diplomatic relations going forward. 

In response to US allegations that there exists a genocidal campaign against Uighur Muslims, Beijing responded by telling the US to butt out of such “internal matters” and pointing out that black people are being “slaughtered” in the United States. These pugnacious statements all occurred in an explicit breach of protocol where each country was allotted two minutes for statements and China unheedingly went on for nearly twenty. 

The specific discussions, memos, personal interactions, and all of the other diplomatic activity that goes on behind closed doors will eventually be revealed in the inevitable memoirs of Biden’s administration following their service and through the historical record, but it is safe to conclude that they will not reveal anything close to Sullivan’s rosy statements. What Anchorage indisputably revealed is that US-China relations will get much worse before they get better and both countries are hunkering down and emboldening their long-term strategies in order to deal with the others’ geopolitical mindset, whether it be increasing defense spending, strengthening strategic alliances, or neo-imperialism. 

In many ways Kennan’s Telegram and the Anchorage Meeting are similar. The event itself is rather opaque, yet its effects will be long felt and studied by future historians. However, it is the job of an international relations strategist to predict what deserves historic importance before it becomes historic.