Sino-Russian Interactions in Central Asia

Robert Cole

Central Asia is probably one of the least discussed areas in international relations, yet it could play a central role in the politics of the 21st century. This is primarily because it is so central. Located between the great powers of China, India, and Russia, it is likely to be a point of major development as each seeks to expand its economic and political influence. For now, India is confined by the Himalayas and has limited connections to northern parts of the region such as Kazakhstan. China however has in recent years begun to look west, into Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan, many of which it sees as critical to the larger Belt and Road Initiative, as well as major gas suppliers. Russia, for its part, has presented the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) as its own hegemonic economic and political union, though it has in many ways become more of a political rather than economic sphere, an acquiescence to the dominance of the Chinese in terms of trade. 

The present system of Chinese economic dominance and Russian political dominance is premised on continued cordial relations between Moscow and Beijing, something that should not be taken for granted. Sino-Russian cooperation is premised on shared interests, primarily an opposition to the western-led world order and an increasingly interconnected economic relationship. Given the extremely concentrated control Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping hold over national political and economic power, changes in leadership in either state could disrupt the personal relationship they have cultivated. Additionally, the entire relationship is premised on Chinese disinterest in dominating regional politics, which given its present relationship with the Xinjiang Autonomous Region, is no certain thing. 

For the US and its allies, separating these two key opponents of democracy should factor more heavily into decisions to level broad sanctions against either. Alienation from the west pushes the two closer together, and so alternatives should be found where possible. US decisions to oppose developments like the Nord Stream 2 pipeline between Russia and Germany should also be considered more in the context of Sino-Russian relations, since separating Russia and Europe only forces Russia to turn east.

Pariah in Name Only

Rohan Rajesh

One of the more interesting results of the pandemic is that adoptions and purchases of dogs and other pets have soared, at least in the United States. I, myself, am one of those lucky individuals blessed to own a “pandemic puppy.” While searching for the appropriate breed, I became curious about the situation for dogs in India. Whenever I visited India, I would see stray dogs in every street and alleyway. I almost stepped on one in the middle of the night outside my grandparents’ home. In this article, I will explore how dogs have historically been valued in India, and what the future for Indian dogs looks like today.

First, it should be noted that, as with everything in India, the value of dogs varies by community. Although not as prominently featured as other animals, in Hinduism, the dog is the mount for the deity Bhairava, a manifestation of the supreme deity Shiva.  The final scene of the ancient Indian epic - the Mahabharata - narrates the deaths of the five Pandavas (one of two major clans in the epic) in the Himalayas. The eldest Pandava - the almost sinless Yudhishthira - is the last one remaining and followed loyally by a dog. The dog turns out to be the Hindu god of death, Yama, who briefly takes Yudhishthira to the underworld (where his loved ones are temporarily residing) before bringing him to heaven. In Nepal and the neighboring Indian state of Sikkim, the dog is celebrated in the annual Kukur Tihar (“Dog Festival”) as the manifestation of Yama. In Zoroastrianism (a minority religion whose followers came from Iran to western India following the Islamic conquest of Persia), dogs are sacred animals.

Of the many dog breeds indigenous to India, the oldest is the so-called Indian pariah dog. They were likely the first dog breed encountered by humans when they came to the subcontinent 60,000 years ago, and their remains have been found in the ruins of the Indus Valley Civilization. Today, they are found in every clime and thrive in India’s streets. The English word “pariah” actually comes from a Tamil word meaning “drummer” because the drummer caste was traditionally associated with the lower rungs of the caste system. Since Indian pariah dogs usually scavenge on the outskirts of human settlements, the term was applied to them. In Indian languages, these dogs are generally referred to as “native dogs.” However, traditionally, the pariah dog’s trainable nature has made them great guard dogs. They are loyal, protective, sturdy, and low maintenance as well. But during British rule in India, foreign dog breeds were prized over indigenous breeds, which contributed to their association with an outcast status. 

In recent years, the human-dog conflict in India has risen significantly. The collapse of vulture populations has meant more carrion has been available, leading to an explosion in the stray dog population in Indian cities. Currently, there are around 35 million free-roaming dogs in India. Unfortunately, this has also meant more violent encounters between humans and dogs. India currently has 20,000 cases of rabies annually, and children are frequent victims of dog attacks. In the city of Bengaluru (India’s IT hub) alone, there are 25,000 dog bites per year. These attacks have occasionally led to brutal retaliation by humans. Feral dogs have also become a threat to endangered wildlife.

Despite these sobering statistics, there is a burgeoning movement in India to adopt stray dogs, including pariah dogs (since most stray dogs are indigenous, the kinder term is “Indie” dogs), and it has gained the support of prominent Bollywood celebrities. Many in the West have also begun adopting Indie dogs. The Indian government is now interested in sourcing talent from the indigenous population since Western breeds are more expensive and are not as used to India’s environment. Police departments in various Indian states have been inducting pariah dogs into their forces. In 2018, the Indian military adopted indigenous Mudhol hounds from the southern Indian state of Karnataka. In his monthly radio address, Prime Minister Narendra Modi advocated the adoption and use of indigenous dogs as a part of his Atmanirbhar Bharat (“Self-Sufficient India”) Campaign, which has reduced stigmas surrounding these dogs and increased their adoption rate. Appreciation for Indie dogs was best exemplified when some of them became showstoppers at a dog show in Chennai. Indeed, it seems that Indians’ views of their dogs are going back to their 4,000-year-old roots when a wise person wrote:

“श्वभ्यः॒ श्वप॑तिभ्यश्च वो॒ नमः॑”

Homage to you: the dog and the protector of dogs!

-Yajurveda 4.5.4.2

From the Yellow River to Yellow Skies

Jay Ramesh

We complain every year of the waves of yellow pollen that coat our cars, houses, and clothes every spring. But in Beijing, the skies are actually turning yellow, and it’s not because of pollen.

The US Air Quality Index (AQI) is used to measure air quality levels, air pollution, and potential health effects resulting from dangerous air quality. According to the index, Green levels between 0-50 are satisfactory, with little to no risk of health effects. Maroon levels 301 and higher pose a health emergency that is likely to affect everyone.

On April 15, sand, dust, and pollution caused Beijing’s AQI to hit 324, with levels soaring to over 1,300 in the afternoon. China officially blames the Gobi desert it shares with Mongolia for the majority of these dust storms, though dangerous levels of air pollution certainly don’t help the air quality. Though other countries also struggle with dangerous levels of air pollution in their cities, China has become infamous for smog and poor air quality in its major cities.

Global climate talks have been under the radar lately, but the talks, or as we will see the lack of things talked about, represent a significant closing window for international cooperation between China and the US. John Kerry, former US Secretary of State and current US Climate Envoy, wrapped up his trip to China on Saturday, April 17. As of this writing, it is unknown how productive the talks were, which most likely reflects a failure by both parties to reach any consequential agreements. 

In the wake of former president Donald Trump pulling out of the Paris Climate Accords, the Biden administration is making moves to resume US involvement in global climate initiatives. Biden will be hosting a virtual climate summit for world leaders on Earth day. 

Secretary of State Antony Blinken has announced that, despite disagreements and criticisms, the US is prepared to work together with China to fight climate change. As for China? Well… they’re giving Washington the silent treatment. 

Chinese president, Xi Jinping, left Kerry and the Biden administration on read after Kerry’s visit, with Jinping not revealing if he would attend Biden’s summit. Meanwhile, China texted back close US allies France and Germany, stating that the country would be happy to cooperate with them on climate policy. China had previously used Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris accords to criticize US climate policy, claiming that the US must “catch up” to China and do more for the environment. 

Though the window for cooperation between the US and China is closing, there may be a new opportunity for international competition. 24% of US electricity is coal powered, far less than the estimated 65% of China’s share. 

Bashing heads in flashpoints across the world could manifest into a sort of race to the bottom for a race to the top in world climate leadership. As both parties seek international political leverage, the fight against climate change could become a valuable arena to turn political bickering into useful progress and change.

As technological innovations continue to grow in both countries, a green throne as world climate policy leader is slowly starting to emerge, supported by decades of international cooperation and several climate initiatives. Both countries could turn their international tensions into a productive force for good through innovation and trying to outdo the other in terms of green energy. China might not have texted the US back, but Biden has shown that he isn’t afraid to double text his other allies.

20 Years Later

Joshua O’Brien

On October 7, 2001, the U.S. and its allies launched Operation Enduring Freedom—the invasion of Afghanistan. By the year’s end, the Taliban government had been disposed of. Since then, the war continues as a counterinsurgency operation to prevent a resurgence in terrorism and support the Afghan government against Taliban insurgents. Last week, President Biden announced that 20 years after the attack that launched the war, American forces would be withdrawn from the country.

The end of the war in Afghanistan naturally brings reflection on the last twenty years of American foreign policy. What are the goals of keeping forces in Afghanistan? Is it counter terrorism, to protect the homeland from a future attack? Is it a state-building mission in Kabul? I think that the inability to decisively answer these questions informed the decision to withdraw. But if we take those as the objectives of American military presence in Afghanistan, we need to ask: how will this decision affect them?

On matters of counterterrorism, I cannot come to a firm conclusion. American intelligence capabilities will be diminished, making it harder to predict and address threats. But whether a new or existing terror network is able to strengthen is going to depend on several factors, such as the political climate in Afghanistan post-withdrawal, the organizational capabilities of leaders on the ground, etc. The latter has fairly simple conclusions: al-Qaeda does not exist in the organizational capacity it did under bin-Laden. Any competent network will likely take time to reorganize, to the best of my knowledge.

On matters of state building, I have a better idea. It has always been my belief that state building missions in Afghanistan and Iraq were doomed to failure. First, these wars were not conceived with a mind for democratic rehabilitation or stability. They were reactions to terrorist attacks, poorly calibrated to reach the non-state actors responsible. Simply, the motives, means, and political will to take the time to install a government in Kabul were not there. Moreover, it does not seem entirely reasonable to me to think that a democratic government can be brought about successfully by invasion and imposition. Whether the Afghan Government survives is uncertain, but it seems certain that the Taliban will regain significant power, and quite possibly, the country. Whatever happens on this front affects the issue of terror once more and leaves the issue uncertain.

So, what does America have to show for 20 years of war? An uncertain legacy, an uncertain future, and uncertain objectives. In a graveyard of empires, now rests the 21st century imperial objectives of America.

Cultural Authenticity of Silk and China

Anyi Li

When I came to the U.S., my parents directed me to bring gifts such as silk handkerchiefs, folding fans,  ties, and scarves to my American host family and high school teachers. Upon receiving them, my host sister proudly showed off pictures of her silk wallet on Instagram with the label: "look at my Chinese wallet!" 

In reality, the clothes she wore, the bed she slept on, the chair she sat on, and the phone with which she posted her Instagram were all made in China. Nonetheless, she and the rest of my host family all believed that the chair, the phone, the bed, and clothes do not represent the Chinese culture, but the silk items I brought to them do. This understanding is well-founded in the Chinese history of globalization. The earliest evidence of silk production in the world was dated to as ancient as 3630 B.C.E. in the Chinese Henan province during China's Shang Dynasty. From as early as 400 B.C.E., the Silk Roads were trade routes that connected the East and the West. Today, China still produces about three-quarters of the world's silk and continues to pledge efforts in building modern trade routes that enable economic globalization between China to even as far as the Arctic regions. To the world and us, fancy silk represents China. 

Globalization has made silk production techniques no longer exclusive to China. Americans don't even have to go to Chinatown. They can find silk products in probably any mall. With modern technology, my host family can also just sit in their house, purchase the silk products I brought them on Amazon, and three days later, they will receive the same items. However, they and I still consider what I brought them was the original Chinese silk. It is clear that in my host family's and my mind, there is a sense of authenticity on the cultural emphasis of silk being the practices and commodities of the Chinese.

Work Cited

Jiang, Fercility. “Chinese Silk - Silk History, Production, and Products.” China Highlights, 

4 Mar. 2021, www.chinahighlights.com/travelguide/culture/chinese-silk.htm. 

Accessed 7 Mar. 2021.

Stanway, David. “China Pledges to Build 'Polar Silk Road' over 2021-2025.” 

Edited by Shri Navaratnam, Msn.com, Reuters, 5 Mar. 2021, www.msn.com/en-us/news/

world/china-pledges-to-build-polar-silk-road-over-2021-2025/ar-BB1efVsx?ocid=uxbnd

bing. Accessed 7 Mar. 2021.

ICTs and Location

Anyi Li

Do you know that the development and distribution of ICT share an interconnected relationship with its geographical location?

ICT, which stands for Information and Communication Technologies, can be any hardware or software that makes the transmission of information possible. For example, a smartphone is hardware composed of many hardware and software and often carries an astonishing amount of information private to its owner. Another example is Microsoft--a software system that is developed and engineered by a set of digital instructions that allow it to transmit data. ICTs are often made into commodities and become buyable, sellable, and investable. Often, information and communication technologies grow to become industries and multinational corporations, such as Apple and Microsoft, benefitting the investors and the national economy where these industries and corporations set their headquarters.

With information and communication technologies linked to commodities, money becomes involved. People’s access to information and communication technologies are interdependent with the economy within the society of their absolute locations. According to Laura Silver’s article “Smartphone Ownership is Growing Rapidly Around the World, but Not Always Equally,” while about nine in ten people in advanced economies such as South Korea own a smartphone, only four in ten people in emerging economies such as Kenya are owners of a smartphone (Silver). This is particularly crucial in the times of COVID. While the overwhelming majority of South Koreans can learn about the discovery of a new variant of COVID-19 minutes after the announcement by scrolling through social media, the majority of Kenyans would have to wait to hear from radios and other slower forms of communication technologies. This time-lapse could cost not only billions of dollars but also millions of lives. The uneven interdependence is also true in the access to Microsoft. While Kenya only got its first Microsoft software testing center in 2018 (Mumbere), people in the U.S. could sit at home and run an online system test. Comparatively, people in the U.S. save money, time, and energy. Other factors make communication technologies incorporate locations as well. The location’s government actions can hinder the distribution of ICTs. Based on the article written by Peter Mburu, the Kenyan government imposed a digital device tax on digital transactions from January 2021 (Mburu). This government tax can make digital devices more unaffordable to the people who live in that location, as the prices would inevitably grow. 

Work Cited

Mburu, Peter. “Kenya: State to Tax Digital Transactions From January 2021.” AllAfrica.com, 

26 Jan. 2021, allafrica.com/stories/202011060212.html. 

Mumbere, Daniel. “Kenya's William Ruto Launches First Microsoft Software Testing Centre in

Africa.” Africanews, Africanews, 5 May 2018, www.africanews.com/2018/05/05/

kenya-s-william-ruto-launches-first-microsoft-software-testing-centre-in-africa/. 

Silver, Laura. “Smartphone Ownership Is Growing Rapidly Around the World, but Not Always

Equally.” Pew Research Center's Global Attitudes Project, Pew Research Center, 

5 Feb. 2019, www.pewresearch.org/global/2019/02/05/smartphone-ownership-is-

growing-rapidly-around-the-world-but-not-always-equally/.

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.

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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

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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.

Light, Alan, and Greg Tate. “Hip-Hop.” Encyclopædia Britannica, 

Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 27 July 2020, www.britannica.com/art/hip-hop. 

Accessed 12 Oct. 2020.

Luwen, Lin. “Keeping Good Vibes.” Global Times, 17 Apr. 2019, www.globaltimes.cn/content/

1146292.shtml#:~:text=Gufeng%20music,%20which%20is%20roughly%20translated%

0as%20a,of%20Technology%20surnamed%20Zhou%20told%20the%20Global%20Tims.

Accessed 7 Feb. 2021.

“The Global Influence of Hip-Hop.” Youtube, uploaded by REVOLT TV, 3 Dec. 2019,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fDrfAd3liNc&feature=youtu.be. 

Accessed 12 Oct. 2020.

Wise, John Macgregor., and J. Macgregor. Wise. Cultural Globalization: A User's Guide. 

John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., 2010. 

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.