The Rohingya people of Myanmar face some of the world’s most oppressive conditions, yet receive little international attention. Hundreds of thousands have fled to neighboring countries to seek asylum, with many dying en route. To prevent further human rights violations, the US must take more serious actions.

When the word “refugee” is mentioned, what’s the first thing that comes to mind? For Americans, it’s probably the Syrian Refugee Crisis, a tragedy which has resulted in over 5 million refugees and another 6 million internally displaced persons. The term “drowning at sea” may also convey similar imagery, particularly the drowning of a Syrian children in the Mediterranean Sea, or perhaps the other failed attempts of asylum seekers on dangerous boat journeys.

Unfortunately, a similarly disturbing crisis on the other side of the world has been largely underreported in American mainstream media. This is the Rohingya Refugee Crisis, which the European Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid Operations has termed a “forgotten crisis.”

So where does the US come into play? In 2014, the United States House of Representatives passed a resolution on persecution of the Rohingya people, urging the Burmese government to stop the persecution and discrimination of minorities within its borders and calling on the international community to put pressure on Burma (Myanmar). The US has also taken in about 13,000 refugees from Myanmar in the past 15 years. Since this resolution, however, the US has done little else, and human rights violations have persisted.

To get up to speed with the crisis, read the answers to six important questions below.

Who are the Rohingya?

The Rohingya are an ethnic minority group in the Rakhine state of Myanmar. The Rohingya are Muslim and speak the Rohingya language, whereas the Rakhine ethnic majority speak the Burmese language and are Buddhist. There are a total of 800,000 Rohingya living in the Rakhine State, making up around two-thirds of the state’s population. The Rohingya’s origins can be traced back to the 15^th century, when Muslim traders immigrated to the region.

However, Rohingya is largely a self-identified term in Myanmar, as the government does not recognize it as one of its official 135 ethnicities. Rather, the Rohingya are largely considered as Bangladeshi illegal migrants.  In fact, a 1982 Citizenship Law stripped them of their citizenship, as well as the rights associated with it; Rohingya must obtain permission to marriage or work, are restricted on the number of children they may have, and cannot vote. They are not even included in the national census. Not surprisingly, the Rohingya have been called “the most persecuted people on Earth.”

What is the Current Situation?

In recent years, persecution of the Rohingya has intensified. The Rohingya must endure institutionalized systemic discrimination due to government policies that restrict almost every aspect of their lives. According to the Council on Foreign Relations, 78% of those living in the Rakhine State live below the poverty threshold.

They lack almost any official recognition. Although a 2014 national consensus backed by the United Nations permitted the Rohingya to self-identify with that term, Buddhist nationals protested, threatening to boycott the census. The government then reneged and decided Rohingya could only identify as “Bengali.”

Violence has also broken out between the Rohingya Muslims and Rakhine people. In 2012, for example, riots broke out when several Rohingya men were accused of raping a Buddhist one. This led to riots and mass destruction, with over 2,000 homes destroyed and the displacement of over 140,000 people.

Attacks on the three guard posts on the borders between Bangladesh and Myanmar in 2016 resulted in additional ethnic conflict, as the attacks were blamed on Rohingya militants. Tens of thousands more Rohingya were displaced, and many more homes were destroyed.

Why are the Rohingya Persecuted?

The Council on Foreign Relations, a US think tank focusing on US foreign policy, provides a good explanation:

Widespread poverty, weak infrastructure, and a lack of employment opportunities exacerbate the cleavage between Buddhists and Muslim Rohingya – Council on Foreign Relations

An example that illustrates this is protests in 2014 by the Buddhist majority over concerns that humanitarian aid was only going toward the Rohingya. However, conflict here cannot only be understood in terms of economics and competition. Much of the discrimination goes back to the idea that Rohingya are not citizens of Myanmar, but rather illegal Bangladeshi immigrants. This view is strengthened by the fact that this is codified in law. As Rohingya are not included in the national census, it as if they do not even exist.

Where Are They Going?

The Rohingya began migrating to Bangladesh in 1978, but their first major wave occurred in 1991-1992. Currently, there are two official UN Refugee Agency camps in Bangladesh, with a total of 33,000 people. However, between 300,000 and 500,000 Rohingya live elsewhere within the country. While those inside the camps are recognized as Rohingya, the others are not afforded any legal status, and are rather seen as “undocumented Myanmar nationals.”

The Rohingya have also fled to Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, and even the Philippines, often via a treacherous boat journey. Previously, many were trafficked by land through Thailand, but after recent crackdowns on human trafficking by the Thai government (as a result of pressure by the United States), much of the trafficking has shifted to sea routes instead.

Sadly, human traffickers often take advantage of the Rohingya and have abandoned them at sea, resulting in stranded refugees. Countries in the region have not been too willing to help, only doing so after much international pressure.

According to the International Organization for Migration, more than 88,000 migrants fled by sea between January 2014 and May 2015. However, some of these migrants were actually from Bangladesh, which created political complications, as the Bangladeshi migrants were fleeing for economic reasons, whereas the Rohingya were fleeing from persecution (as well as economic hardship, largely caused by this very persecution).

What’s Being Done So Far?   

Not too much, unfortunately. Myanmar’s de facto leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, who is seen as a champion of democracy after enduring over 15 years of house arrest and leading the National League for Democracy Party to victory in the first free election in 25 years has been largely silent on the issue, refusing to speak publicly about it. Her spokesperson has also denied allegations about human rights abuses.  However, Suu Kyi, who is a Nobel Peace Prize Winner, recently established a commission led by Kofi Annan, a former United Nations Secretary-General; the Peace and Reconciliation Commission will have a report ready in August of 2017.

The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), which is composed of 10 Southeast Asian nations including Myanmar, has not produced a unified response either. This is largely because ASEAN lacks established legal frameworks, and its human rights branch, the ASEAN Intergovernmental Commission Rights, lacks any real power. In addition, ASEAN is consensus-based, meaning every country must agree.

On March 17, China and Russia blocked a potential press release from the UN Security Council which would have “noted with concern renewed fighting in some parts of the country and stressed the importance of humanitarian access to all affected areas.”

The European Union also recently called on the UN to send a fact-finding mission to Myanmar to investigate allegations of human rights abuses against the Rohingya.

With Myanmar and ASEAN staying largely uninvolved, the brunt of the work has fallen on non-governmental organizations, such as Human Rights Watch.

What Else Can Be Done?

A single, simple solution does not exist. Rather, the international community must work together to further expose human rights violations and pressure Myanmar to change its ways.

In terms of the US, The Council on Foreign Relations suggests that it “lead an international effort to find a humane solution.” This would involve a fact-finding mission, as called for by the EU, to assess the true amount of human rights abuses that have occurred. It would also mean a willingness to accept more refugees. While President Obama lifted sanctions against Myanmar so that the US could take in more Rohingya refugees, it’s unlikely President Trump will be very willing to take further action.

Instead, it will likely be up to ASEAN to take a stronger stance. But is this political will there? Given that three of its members, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Brunei Darussalam are all Muslim-majority countries, the hypothetical answer is yes. But only time will tell if ASEAN will actually take any concrete action.

While action at a federal level may not be plausible in this administration, Americans can still make a difference*. By starting conversations about this issue, supporting NGOs, signing petitions, and more, we can ensure that the Rohingya Crisis does not remain “forgotten.”

*This article provides great information about specific actions we can all take.

The views expressed by the author do not necessarily reflect those of the Glimpse from the Globe staff, editors or governors.

Alex Melnik is a junior at the University of Southern California majoring in International Relations and pursuing a Progressive Master’s in Public Administration. He spent the past year abroad in Indonesia via the Boren Award and Critical Language Scholarship. He has also interned in Taiwan in the past.

The post The Rohingya Refugees: 6 Things You Need to Know About Myanmar’s “Forgotten Crisis” appeared first on Glimpse from the Globe.

International borders are designed to control the people, goods and even the information moving across them. Among these resources, water stands as one of the most critical, and least cooperative. In the Caucasus region, transboundary water resources shared by Armenia and Azerbaijan in the Kura-Araks river basin force these two fierce adversaries into limited cooperation. Georgia, the third stakeholder in the river basin, often acts as an informal mediator in negotiations between its estranged neighbors. In the past, some observers saw these negotiations as a formula for long-term resolution of the frozen conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh (a large territory in southwestern Azerbaijan), where ethnic Armenians continue to assert their independence from Azerbaijan. However, growing water scarcity in the Caucasus and climate change in the larger region could poison this water partnership and ignite a second, even more catastrophic Nagorno-Karabakh War between the neighboring countries.

Water access in the Caucasus has been an issue of concern since the early 20th century, when population growth and Soviet industrialization made water scarce. Both Armenia and Azerbaijan get the vast majority of their surface water resources from the Araks (also spelled Aras, Araz and Arax) and Kura (Kur) rivers originating in the eastern highlands of Turkey. Georgia also depends on this river basin for agricultural and municipal use; its capital, Tbilisi, was built along the shores of the Kura. When Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia were part of the Soviet Union, all of this water was governed by Moscow, which made bilateral treaties with Turkey and Iran to ensure equal access to Kura-Araks water for all countries in the region.

When the USSR collapsed, however, the capital and technology-intensive water infrastructure built by the Soviets in these countries fell into disrepair, causing several minor water crises and forcing farmers and herders to sell their land and migrate elsewhere. Likewise, the Soviet framework for water sharing between Azerbaijan, Armenia and Georgia also fell apart. To make matters worse, the breakup of the Soviet Union corresponded with a brutal war between Armenia and Azerbaijan in the early 1990s, when ethnic Armenian separatists in the Nagorno-Karabakh region attempted to break away from Azerbaijan and unite with Armenia. Large-scale hostilities died down in 1994, with small skirmishes along the border between Azerbaijan, Armenia and the de facto-independent Nagorno-Karabakh Republic every year since. As a result of this perpetual low-intensity conflict, Armenia and Azerbaijan have no diplomatic ties and their populations regard each other as mortal enemies. The political friction is immense, stalling even the most basic level of cooperation.

Azerbaijan, the downstream state in the basin, is the worst off in the stalemate. Unlike Armenia and Georgia, it lacks access to sustainable groundwater resources and experiences periodic upstream river flooding that damages agricultural land. Above all, Azerbaijan suffers from upstream pollution of the Kura-Araks basin. Both Georgia and Armenia dump huge volumes of pollutants including industrial chemicals and heavy metals into the rivers with little water monitoring or treatment. As a result, Azerbaijan struggles to find adequate water supplies that aren’t already polluted. In Baku, the capital city of more than 2 million people, only a fraction of municipal water is safe to drink and available throughout the day. While Baku lies outside the river basin itself, even the communities located deep within the river basin struggle to get potable, clean water.

Meanwhile Armenia faces its own dilemma. The country is sandwiched between Turkey and Azerbaijan, allied countries that both resent Armenia’s existence and have long since closed their borders to it. The resulting economic isolation makes Armenia energy-poor, vulnerable to frequent electrical outages and dependent on primitive fuel sources like timber and coal. Armenia uses so much local timber for heating that it now faces large-scale deforestation, which in turn leads to shrinking water tables and further erosion in the river basin. Armenia’s isolation from its immediate neighbors is the major reason behind the country’s close relationship with its Collective Security Treaty Organization and Eurasian Economic Union (EEU) partner, Russia. As things stand, Russia provides Armenia with energy and security guarantees, while Armenia gives Russia a strategic foothold in the Caucasus and added political legitimacy for bodies like the EEU. If not for the Russian military base in Gyumri, Armenia’s second largest city, Azerbaijan may have already invaded. Armenia has enough water to meet its needs at present, but like its neighbors, it lies in a region identified as “high stress” for water scarcity. Armenia also has problems with water pollution; according to Azerbaijan, water flowing downstream from Armenia appears to be virtually untreated, containing raw sewage, chemicals and pharmaceutical products.

Georgia rounds out the Caucasus water troika. As an ancient wine-producing nation and a net food exporter, Georgia depends on the Kura River, glacial runoff from the Caucasus Mountains, rainfall and underground aquifers for agricultural irrigation. Because of this diversity of sources, Georgia is not water-poor or water-insecure like Azerbaijan or Armenia. However, its territory covers a large part of the Kura River basin and its economic activity contributes heavily to the degradation of the waters running downstream to Azerbaijan. Its own municipal water supply is also seriously contaminated. Key pollutants include manure, fertilizer, industrial chemicals and sewage from major urban areas like Tbilisi. Georgia also gets more than 60% of its electricity from hydroelectric dams, which lessen water quantity and quality within the larger river basin.

Georgia’s relatively good relations with its two neighbors have made it an important intermediary for key transboundary issues. In 2002, the governments and civil society actors of Georgia, Azerbaijan and Armenia met in Tbilisi for a water management summit, drafting several key resolutions on how to improve water management in the region. These included expanding water monitoring activities on both sides of the border, easing data exchange and cooperation among scientists and regulatory authorities, developing a joint industrial water pollution mitigation strategy and continuing the dialogue on sustainable water use in the river basin. The European Commission then gave these resolutions legs with several phases of multimillion-euro grants. In November 2015, Azerbaijan and Georgia reached a new bilateral agreement on transboundary water from the Kura River. Georgia has also signaled that it will ratify the Water Convention, which would introduce stricter standards for pollution control and monitoring in its waterways.

In spite of this progress, the fundamental problem of water pollution and scarcity in the Caucasus remains. None of the stakeholders in the region are doing enough to truly address these issues with long-term solutions. Data sharing and water monitoring between Azerbaijan and Armenia is still woefully lacking, and without this key information, policymakers cannot begin to address water sharing and pollution reduction (even if they were willing to cooperate). Population growth and climate change will only exacerbate the situation.

There are many other factors contributing to instability in this region: Azerbaijan is currently dealing with widespread protests and civil disturbances linked to soaring food prices and high unemployment. These events are echoes of the demonstrations against political corruption and electricity shortages in Armenia in 2015. In Georgia, memories of the 2008 Russian invasion and de facto annexation of Abkhazia and South Ossetia remind the populace that good fences do not always make good neighbors.

Most importantly, the threat of another war over Nagorno-Karabakh looms over everything. In the near future, water could easily become the underlying factor that re-ignites the conflict. Azerbaijan’s military spending has long-since dwarfed Armenia’s. Its increasing capabilities and boldness have manifested in dozens of skirmishes along its border with Armenian-controlled territory over the last year. Fatalities on both sides have reached historically high levels since the 1994 cease-fire.

If Azerbaijan’s current economic woes continue, one severe drought could lead to riots in the streets of Baku. Similar events took place in Syria before its civil war: ongoing drought devastated the agricultural economy, causing massive rural-to-urban migration by unemployed farmers and herdsmen. These people formed the bulk of the anti-government protesters who toppled the political order in 2011, sparking war and insurgency. If Azerbaijani president Ilham Aliyev feels enough social pressure, he could choose to go to war with Armenia to distract and unify the population. This act would risk Russian intervention, but given Russia’s weak economy and its entanglement in eastern Ukraine and Syria, now could be an opportune moment for Azerbaijan to strike.

This extreme scenario is just one potential outcome of a prolonged water crisis. But the real likelihood of violence and hardship in the Caucasus due to future water scarcity should motivate the international community to tackle this problem. As mentioned before, the EU Commission has already helped fund several key projects involving shared water monitoring and related tasks. The United States has a strategic interest in preserving Caucasus stability and fostering peace, and could make a large impact with ongoing USAID grants similar to those of the EU Commission, which encourage institutional-level cooperation between Armenian and Azerbaijani monitoring agencies. In addition to monitoring and data collection, larger projects involving the improvement of existing water utilities and the construction of new infrastructure would also make a significant improvement in water scarcity. The objective should be to foster cooperation and interdependence between the quarreling neighbors. When it comes to water, Azerbaijan and Armenia must work together, or suffer together.

The views expressed by the author do not necessarily reflect those of the Glimpse from the Globe staff, editors or governors.

AUTHOR BIO: Jaim Coddington studied international relations and Russian language at American University in Washington, DC. He is a former Symington and Critical Language Scholar, and he is currently working as a 2nd Lieutenant in the Marine Corps.

The post Forecasting Water Wars in the Caucasus appeared first on Glimpse from the Globe.

Japan has the only constitution in the world that denounces the use of or threat of force in all cases but self-defense in its own territory. The provision that outlines this, Article 9, has caused controversy since the American occupational government included it in the postwar constitution. On July 1, 2014, current Prime Minister Shinzo Abe decided to break from the traditionally strict interpretation of this provision and declare that Article 9 did allow for collective self-defense. This marks a shift in the Japanese constitutional narrative that has spurred endless controversy amongst neighbors and global onlookers alike.

Although many have interpreted this move as militarism, this shift is a far cry from the nationalist resurgence of expansionist Japan. Abe is not a sudden war hawk rising up to match a growing China; nor is he a pawn of the United States. Rather, Abe is the heir of a post-war ruling elite who used Article 9 for their own convenience in maneuvering Japan’s stance in international politics. Article 9 is no longer convenient – and so Abe changed it.

Article 9’s Roots in the Cold War

Article 9 can only be understood in the context of the era that conceived it. The United States’ occupational government under General McCarthy wrote Article 9 to strip its former enemy of military capability in 1947 in order to prevent any future belligerence in the region. After fierce domestic debate, the Japanese government accepted. Then, in 1950, the Korean War started.

Fearing the domino effect would spread communism throughout the region and expand the Soviet sphere, the US sent Ambassador John Foster Dulles to Japan in 1950 to ask the Japanese government to amend their constitution to eliminate Article 9. Yoshida Shigeru, the prime minister at the time and a former member of the Imperial foreign ministry, refused. He knew that remilitarizing would cripple the still devastated Japanese economy. Favoring development over militarism, he used Japan’s supposed new pacifist identity to dissuade American pressures to remilitarize. Dulles went back to Washington empty handed while Japan reaped the benefits of procurement orders from the war in Korea. Using the Japanese people as a shield, Article 9 was thereafter a convenient bargaining chip to resist pressure to join the United States’ wars in the Pacific.

 A New International Context

The original rationale to maintain Article 9 was its convenience in preventing costly remilitarization and helping Japan to a path of economic development. In 2014, those conveniences no longer applied: Japan had been economically stagnant for over two decades, and the costs of militarizing would not cripple its economy. On the contrary, a strict interpretation of Article 9 under the current state of affairs in East Asia posed a threat to the US-Japanese alliance.

Under strict interpretation, if a US vessel was attacked in Japanese waters, the Japanese Self Defense Force (SDF) would have to stand by and watch their ally sink. This would create an extremely complicated situation for Japan, at best resulting in damaged US-Japan relations and at worst, the termination of the security alliance. Some segments of the US political elite already resent what they see as a one-sided alliance. An incident of this nature would be disastrous for Japan. The likelihood of an accidental clash has been rising in recent years with the numerous territorial disputes in the region and the increased presence of Chinese marine vessels in the waters around Japan. In the eyes of Abe, Article 9 is becoming less convenient and more of a risk to Japan’s national interests.

At the same time, the new interpretation is in no way a return to militarist Japan. Its roots are less “national” and more “practical”. The actual wording of the new interpretation and the laws implementing it are too limited to even pretend to be expansionist. The phrasing allows for Japan to act in collective self-defense only in places of strategic importance to Japan’s national interest. It also must be acting on behalf of a country with whom Japan as a long-standing close relationship. Currently the only country that qualifies is the United States. This strict wording is again a matter of convenience. Japan can use it to refuse to participate in wars in the Middle East or even to refuse to come to the rescue of countries in the Pacific. While there are segments of the Japanese conservatives that would prefer a more active role in global military operations, they face strong opposition by most of the population and government. Members of the opposition party in the Diet are fighting hard to enact legislation that severely limits the SDF’s ability to be deployed abroad.

Because the discussion of reinterpretation was framed around risks posed by North Korea and China, many outside of Japan see the interpretation as a sign of the rise of nationalism. Abe’s government is painted as wanting to return to the glories of a militarily strong Japan, fueling nationalism to achieve their goals. While there is a correlation between this shift in security policy and the increased tensions in the region, framing the reinterpretation of Article 9 as purely a nationalist move ignores its long history. The reinterpretation is lauded by nationalists and brought about by a conservative government. But nationalism is not a cause of the reinterpretation; it is not the primary reason Abe’s government pursued a new policy. Moreover, were it the primary reason, opposition in the government and the populace would have been much stronger and defeated it altogether.

Misunderstanding the context of Article 9 and its place in Japanese political history, many commentators have read Abe’s rhetoric and decried it as a nationalist resurgence in reaction to China. This is an ahistorical understanding that only drives the fearful reactions of Japan’s regional neighbors. Article 9’s reinterpretation must be understood in context. Abe is doing as Shigeru did: using Article 9 for Japan’s convenience in the midst of a shifting international order.

The views expressed by the author do not necessarily reflect those of the Glimpse from the Globe staff, editors or governors.

AUTHOR BIO:

Kayla Foster is a current senior at USC pursuing a double major in International Relations and East Asian Languages and Cultures. Her focus of study is American foreign policy, politics of the Pacific Rim, and Japanese security policy. Kayla spent one year studying abroad at Sophia University in Tokyo where she took classes on Japanese society and Northeast Asian security. She has working proficiency in Japanese as well as conversational ability in Spanish and Korean. In the past she has spent six weeks in Washington, D.C. researching how policy makers address the issue of nonproliferation of weapons of mass destruction, which culminated in a team policy brief on North Korea’s nuclear IBM capabilities. She also spent a month at Ewha Womans University in Seoul studying the transitions in South Korean society.

The post The Inconvenient Constitution: Japan is Not on a Path Toward Nationalism appeared first on Glimpse from the Globe.

For all the excitement about Euromaidan and the Ukraine crisis over the last 18 months, it seems that many have forgotten why Vladimir Putin so desperately wanted to keep Kyiv in Russia’s orbit in the first place. Starting as early as November 2013, Putin gambled his government’s international credibility to coerce Ukraine into joining his new Eurasian Union (EAU) and rejecting the European Union and the West. He has failed, for now, but the Eurasian Union is moving ahead anyway. Russia, Kazakhstan and Belarus signed an association treaty in 2014, and Armenia and Kyrgyzstan have since joined them. While the Kremlin portrays the EAU (also called the Eurasian Economic Union/Eurasian Customs Union) as a purely economic entity, it is structured to guarantee Russian dominance and lays the groundwork for political integration. Incidentally, all current EAU member states are also members of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), a mutual defense alliance and the spiritual successor to the Warsaw Pact. Stopping short of recreating the Soviet Union, Russia will use the EAU to control its smaller neighbors and consolidate its sphere of influence.

Here are three pressing reasons why the Eurasian Union, even without Ukraine, is still going to be a big deal for the transatlantic community:

1. A Frozen Conflict Warming in the Caucasus

Armenia and Azerbaijan’s century-long struggle over the Nagorno-Karabakh region is one of the world’s thorniest ethnic conflicts. The Soviet Union originally placed this majority ethnic Armenian territory within Azerbaijan’s national borders, and when the USSR dissolved in 1991, Nagorno-Karabakh tried to break away from Azerbaijan and unify with Armenia. The secession ignited a war between Azerbaijan and Armenia, killing at least 20,000 people and turning more than a million into refugees. The conflict officially ended with a shaky ceasefire in 1994, but frequent border skirmishes since then have killed dozens. In the past, Azerbaijan’s larger military and bigger GDP was perceived as being balanced by Armenia’s better-trained, Russian-backed forces, creating a strategic deterrent for either side to break the pair’s delicate truce. However, Azerbaijan’s growing energy revenues have allowed it to invest heavily in its military capacity in recent years, spending more on defense than the entire Armenian national budget. Within a few years, Azerbaijan will have good reason to believe it can win a war against Armenia.

Yerevan is fully aware of this threat, and in the absence of other viable options is turning to its CSTO ally, Russia, for further security guarantees. Since acceding to the EAU in December 2014, Armenia has essentially placed its economic and political destiny in Russian hands. Doing so might deter an Azerbaijani attack, but it could also give Russia an excuse to intervene in Nagorno-Karabakh and Azerbaijan itself, much like it has in Crimea and eastern Ukraine, not to mention Georgia in 2008. This scenario would ensure Russian hegemony of Europe’s energy gateway in the Caucasus and continued European Union dependence on Russian gas.

2. Water Wars in Central Asia

Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan control most of Central Asia’s freshwater through massive glaciers in the Tian Shan Mountains. Both states also generate the vast majority of their domestically-consumed electricity using hydroelectric dams. The “downstream” states of Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan compensate their water-rich neighbors with natural gas and other fuels in exchange for Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan’s promise to refrain from further hydropower use and development, which would decrease downstream water availability. Recently, both upstream states have begun planning more extensive hydro projects, which could devastate the agricultural production and exports of Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan.

Russia can utilize the Eurasian Union to apply selective pressure on Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, potential EU gas suppliers that have begun to politically distance themselves from the Kremlin. When Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan both join the EAU (Kyrgyzstan acceded on August 11, 2015), neither will have an incentive to continue trading water for Uzbek and Turkmen energy when the alternative is cheap Russian and Kazakh gas and hydropower investments. Moscow may choose to sell energy to Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan at bargain prices and provide generous loans for hydroelectricity projects in order to starve Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan of upstream water. This leverage could be used in a variety of ways, the most obvious and pragmatic being to coerce the two water-poor states into EAU accession and lock down Central Asian energy for good.

3. Eurasian Energy Flows East

Surprisingly, some observers have dismissed Russia’s new gas deal with China, claiming that the much lower prices demanded by the Chinese will guarantee Russia and Europe’s continued energy co-dependence. The same skeptics may have doubted that the Soviet Union would become Europe’s main energy supplier before the discovery of the Medvezhe and Urengoy gas fields. Although China has been able to haggle for rock-bottom gas prices in the short term, it is actually desperate to secure new, cleaner energy sources to meet its burgeoning demand without increasing pollution in its major cities. China may have the upper hand in this deal now, but Russia stands to benefit immensely from it in the years to come. It is entirely possible that China will supplant Europe as Russia’s main gas market in the near future. Incidentally, this could also mean the evisceration of lucrative US coal exports to China.

Consider the implications if Russia does expand the EAU to include all of Central Asia, or at least all CSTO states (Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia and Tajikistan): while impeding Caspian and Caucasus energy development for European markets in the west, Russia can direct most or all Central Asian gas to the east under EAU terms. China isn’t the only Asian country that wants Eurasian gas; Japan and the Koreas are keen to cheapen and diversify their supply. In the last year, BRICS partner India has made serious overtures about a Russian-Indian gas and oil pipeline as well. The truth is that within a decade, Russia may not need European energy revenues nearly as much as the EU will need Russian energy.

Policy Solutions

It’s been generally accepted in American foreign policy circles, especially after Ambassador McFaul’s damning analysis of US-Russian cooperation, that what is good for Putin is probably not good for the United States and the West. To prevent the EAU from becoming a real threat for the transatlantic community, the US ultimately needs to find a way to efficiently export liquefied natural gas to the EU. In a more immediate sense, the White House must work with its EU partners to court and cooperate with Russia’s neighbors. In the Caucasus, speeding up Georgian accession to NATO would send a strong signal to Russia that the West is prepared to resist Ukraine-style soft invasions in the future. While energy-rich Azerbaijan is still too autocratic and unpredictable to become a full partner for the West, Baku may be willing to trade democratic reforms in exchange for NATO and EU membership within the next decade. Armenia’s fate should also be considered. The ruling Republican Party, which oversaw Armenia’s EAU accession in 2014, was only supported by a 44% plurality of Armenian voters in the last election.

In Central Asia, the US and EU should consider targeted development assistance for Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan’s water infrastructure. Both countries suffer from hopelessly inefficient water transportation and storage systems, and improving these would strengthen regional water security and Caspian ties to the West. Incidentally, this new efficiency could also help reverse the ecological devastation caused by heavy Aral Sea water withdrawals. Perhaps most importantly, the US should cultivate bilateral ties with Kazakhstan. This is a country with immense economic potential and a healthy dose of skepticism about Russian patronage. Although the elderly President Nazarbayev is one of the world’s longest-serving autocrats, his government contains several young, Western-educated officials with relatively progressive worldviews. Kazakhstan sees itself as a balance between Russia and China, and could prove a valuable partner for the US in the years to come.

The views expressed by the author do not necessarily reflect those of the Glimpse from the Globe staff, editors, or governors.

AUTHOR BIO: Jaim Coddington studied international relations and Russian language at American University in Washington, DC. He is a former Symington and Critical Language Scholar, and he is currently an Officer Candidate with the United States Marine Corps Reserve.

The post Eurasian Union: Three Reasons to Pay Attention appeared first on Glimpse from the Globe.

Nepal is a crucible where a new experiment in pluralistic, secular democracy is being forged. Though overshadowed by its neighbors India and China, and riven by poverty and social, economic and linguistic divisions, the country’s current political transition is leading Nepal toward a society that shares in Western political values. The democracies of the West should note this shift and invest in Nepal’s political and economic future.

History and geography divide Nepal by caste, ethnicity, money, region and gender. The three geographic divisions, as in the map below, are the mountains, the hills and the Terai or Madhesh.^[1] The Pahadis (hill dwellers) are richer and a majority. The people of the Terai are poorer. Kathmandu, the capital, and its surrounding valley are in the hills and have long dominated politics.

Nepal’s caste system dates back to 2000 BC, when Indo-Aryans moving from India brought the system with them. The caste system was legalized by Jayasthiti Malla, a 14^th-century king, with the Brahmin (priests) and Chettri (warriors) at the top, the Terai keeping their Indian castes, and the Tibeto-Burmese divided among various strata. The ethnicities occupy distinct regions to some extent.^[2]

All these divisions drive voting behavior, with all groups voting separately as blocs. That voting behavior falls on an ideological spectrum akin to that in the West, though in general all political parties are farther to the left. To the center-right is the NC (Nepal Congress). The NC attracts the old royalists, those who once supported the monarchy, and social and economic centrists and conservatives. The military has long allied with such groups. The left end is the moderate leftist CPN-ML and the more extreme Maoists. All parties are secular in ideology and influence and now renounce violence in theory and in practice. However the Maoists are the political offshoot of a rebel group that fought a civil war from 1996 to 2006, seeking to make Nepal a communist state. The military fought against them with support from the centrists—particularly the royalists. However at the end of the war allegiances shifted and the NC and CPN-ML made common cause in the name of democracy, ousted the king, signed a peace agreement and started work on a new constitution.

Though voting falls along social divides, Nepali democracy is still secure—a point of considerable strategic import to the West. In the current political climate, no group has the majority, as the charts below show. There is more than one dominant party, and power has stably switched hands before. Other destabilizing elements that bedevil young democracies are also absent or weak. One such element, civil war, is unlikely to repeat itself. Another, a strong monarchy, is gone for good now. Kings have effected coups in Nepal’s historic past, deposing elected leaders in 1961 and 2005; however, republics rarely revert to kingdoms, and the military is now considered apolitical. Communists, a potential antidemocratic force, are subject to the whims of the electorate, and suffer periodic electoral reversals that keep them from monopolizing power. Democracy is also strengthened by the influence of Nepal’s other neighbor, India. The NC traces its origins to the struggle for Indian independence in the 1940s when the founding leaders of the party allied with Indian nationalists.

Figure 3. Demographics of Nepali diversity.^[3]

For democracy to function in a heterogeneous country, compromise helps. Here, too, Nepal has made considerable progress. The Maoist civil war – demanding social justice for the oppressed – was waged at a time when the king held most of the power. Maoists have since compromised, renouncing violence. The peace agreement that ended the civil war required them to lay down arms, with some of their fighters getting integrated into the national army. The party is now explicitly committed to democracy. The NC has also compromised, jettisoning hopes for a constitutional monarchy. The NC, long allied with royalists, had supported the institution of the monarchy even when it politically opposed the king himself. The Maoists and ethnicity-based parties want states based on ethnicities; the NC and CPN-ML fear this would sunder the nation-state. This disagreement is, however, likely temporary. More states implies more variation in wealth and a stronger need for federal taxation to redress the greater imbalances. Maoists, however, want a loose federation. The current draft with fewer states might well stick; the Maoist position wanting more states strengthens central power, a contradiction of aims.

So despite divisions, or perhaps because of them, Nepal looks set for democracy, secularism and political openness, a future likely to raise its strategic relevance to the West. Primarily, the developed countries of the West can help with investments and technology. Nepal has eight of the world’s ten tallest peaks, including Mount Everest; the Himalayas contribute to tourism revenue, and developing tourism requires investment. While the country is prone to natural disasters such as earthquakes, these tragedies have little long-term effect on social and political conditions.[4] This topography also creates potential for hydroelectric power generation, coveted by energy-hungry India and China. Hydroelectric power is reusable and generates no carbon emissions and the West, along with the rest of the world, has a clear stake in promoting it.

The US, specifically, is in the best position to help. It looms large in Nepal’s economy, and the US is Nepal’s second largest export market, after India.[5] It also provides development assistance under programs such as the Economic Supports Fund program, but the net annual assistance is just 45 million dollars and could be significantly expanded. The US, also, has the West’s main organic constitution. Britain, for instance, has none; the constitutions of other Western democracies such as Germany, Italy and France are practically post-World War II creations initiated under allied guidance. Spain’s constitution is post-Franco; Greece too has a recent constitution.

However, politically, missteps have dogged US-Nepal relations. America labeled the Maoists terrorists until 2006. While the Maoists acted brutally during the civil war, the insurgency was driven by the genuinely dispossessed and was not anti-American in nature.[6] While the culture and the context differ considerably from the Western, and American, experiences, the Nepali populace has shown a similar basic aspiration for a democratic, pluralist, secular society that guarantees broad equal rights to the most vulnerable. The tolerance for consensus building demonstrated by both political leaders and the populace testifies to that aspiration. The US is in a position to help with technical expertise on constitution writing, something Nepal desperately needs after it failed to draft a secular, republican constitution in 2008 due to state delineation issues. In June of this year, Nepal’s major parties reached a consensus on a host of legal issues causing gridlock, and are now ready to give a constitution another try. The West, and America in particular, can provide needed help, along with trade facilitation, capital commitments, and targeted aid for human development. These are investments likely to be repaid in the future with a friendly country in a strategic location between India and China.

[1] “Nepal: Country Profile,” Nepal and Bhutan: Country Studies, ed. Andrea Savada (Library of Congress, 1993), xxxiv.

[2] Nanda Shrestha, “Chapter 2. Nepal: The Society and Its Environment,” Nepal and Bhutan: Country Studies, ed. Andreas Savada (Library of Congress, 1993), 74.

[3] Caste demographics adapted from “Appendix: Table 1,” Federalism and State Restructuring in Nepal: The Challenge of the Constituent Assembly, (Kathmandu, Nepal: United Nations Development Program, 2007), http://www.ccd.org.np/publications/report.pdf (data from 2001); regional demographics from Nanda Shrestha, 66 (data from the 1981 census); language demographics adapted from Yogendra Yadava, “Linguistic Diversity in Nepal Perspectives on Language Policy,” Seminar on “Constitutionalism and Diversity in Nepal, Centre for Nepal and Asian Studies, Tribhuvan University, August 22–24, 2007, http://www.uni-bielefeld.de/midea/pdf/Yogendra.pdf.

[4]“Nepal: Country Profile,” xxxvi; Nanda Shrestha, 57.

[5] Bruce Vaughn, CRS Report for Congress. Nepal: Background and US Relations (Congressional Research Service, 2005), 17.

[6] Bruce Vaughn, 9–10.

The views expressed by the author do not necessarily reflect those of the Glimpse from the Globe staff, editors, or governors.

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Guest Contributor: Anna-Catherine Brigida

In 1951, an estimated one million people who were uprooted from their homes in the aftermath of World War II were still waiting to return home. World diplomats recognized the need to address this crisis and met in Geneva to discuss the concept of refugees. They considered who qualified and the guidelines that should be implemented to protect these people. The states present mainly thought of displaced populations related to the aftermath of World War II. In this context, the convention determined a definition that set the foundation for how the international community handles refugee cases decades later.

According to the convention, a refugee is someone who (1) lives outside of his or her own country; (2) fled because of a well-founded sense of fear based on persecution on the basis of race, religion, nationality, social group or political opinion; (3) cannot return to their country based on this fear; and (4) is in this situation as a result of events that occurred before January 1, 1951.

New patterns of migration and causes of displacement have since emerged. Transnational criminal organizations now play an important role in both domestic and international politics. In the 1970s, the Medellin Cartel, an organized network of drug suppliers and smugglers led by the notorious Pablo Escobar in Colombia, made drug trafficking an international business. In the 1980s, Central American states experienced civil wars and South American countries experienced repressive military dictatorships where thousands of people ‘disappeared’. The Medellin Cartel was dismantled in 1993, but transnational drug trafficking organizations have continued to be a problem. The 1990s also saw the mass deportation of US-based gang members, particularly from Los Angeles-born gangs MS-13 and 18th Street, back to Central America, creating transnational gang organizations.

Times have certainly changed since 1951, but the international definition of “refugee” has more or less stayed the same. Gang and drug related violence is a major factor in Central American migrants’ decision to make the journey north (see part one). When these migrants reach the US they will face a deportation hearing and must make a case for asylum. But, do these Central American immigrants fleeing violence in their home countries fit the description? The answer isn’t black and white. Fear for their lives is undoubtedly present; yet, violence is not explicitly listed as a basis for fear of persecution.

These migrants’ legal proceedings are based on a previously determined set of rules about who qualifies as a refugee. The 1951 convention determined that a refugee was someone not just living outside his or her country of origin, but fleeing for fear of his or her life. Those who fled on the basis of racial, religious, national, social or political persecution were assured asylum. 148 countries have accepted this definition, but many world leaders and human rights advocates believe that it should be even clearer.

In 1984, Latin American leaders decided that the current refugee definition was outdated, so they crafted the Cartagena Declaration on Refugees. Central America, Mexico and Panama agreed that fear of persecution from violence, human rights violations, foreign aggression or internal conflicts should all be added as valid reasons for one to request refugee status. But, the US has not ratified the Cartagena Convention. Therefore, lawyers for Central American migrants arrested in the US still have to use to the 1951 definition “of refugee” to argue a case for asylum.

This is problematic for Northern Triangle asylum seekers. However, in recent years, lawyers have become more resourceful in the way that they present cases for those fleeing gang related violence, while still staying within the legal confines of the refugee definition. In 2011, a 34-year-old woman from El Salvador was granted asylum by a judge in Baltimore, Maryland based on persecution of a social group. The lawyer argued that women who are the victims of gang rape or violence constitute a social group. In Arlington, Virginia, a young Salvadoran male also received asylum when a judge defined young males fleeing gang recruitment as a social group.

According to The Washington Post, most Americans – 80% of Democrats and 57% of Republicans – believe that these immigrants should be considered refugees. Of course, broadening the refugee definition would grant many more Central American migrants legal status to remain in the US, and this raises questions about Americans’ openness towards immigrants. The traditional argument is that undocumented immigrants burden American society, but a Pew report shows this to be untrue. According to the study, second-generation Americans’ income exceeds that of their parents and the national median.

These immigrants should not be denied the human right to live a life without fear. One part of this equation means granting asylum to those who need it without quota restrictions or legal barriers standing in the way. The other component requires addressing the root causes of migration from Central America. It’s no longer 1951. Now is the time for the world to ratify the Cartagena Convention to redefine “refugee” in the 21st century.

Anna-Catherine Brigida is a senior journalism student at the University of Southern California from Boston, MA.

The views expressed by the author do not necessarily reflect those of the Glimpse from the Globe staff, editors, or governors.

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Guest Contributor: Anna-Catherine Brigida

Along the Rio Grande Valley, migrants from the south can see the United States just feet away. Some have traveled more than 2,000 miles from Central America to make it this far. Under the cover of night, they sneak across the border. Some manage to cross successfully. Others are not so lucky and are caught by border patrol.

While migrants from Mexico and Central America have been making this journey for decades, a recent surge of unaccompanied minors, women and children from Central America has brought more attention to illegal border crossings. The New York Times reported in October that the number of unaccompanied minors from Central America who crossed the border last summer doubled from summer 2013. With heightened media attention, the Obama Administration has been forced to take a stance.

The 2016 federal fiscal budget announced a shift in the way the US will respond to illegal immigration. Instead of focusing primarily on border security, the US will allocate $1 billion to address issues of security and economic development in Central America, with the goal of reducing illegal immigration to the US.

This new federal policy is drastically different from the immediate response to the surge in migrants last summer. To curb the flow of migrants, the US began to pressure the Mexican government to arrest and deport these Central American migrants before they could reach the US-Mexico border. While this approach may have stopped many migrants from making it to the US, it didn’t stop them from attempting the arduous journey north. Although the fiscal budget also calls for increased border security, this billion-dollar aid package is a more sophisticated approach to immigration reform. Given the strong push factors driving these migrants undoubtedly, a shift towards addressing the root causes in Northern Triangle countries – El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras – is a step in the right direction.

The fiscal budget defines the primary causes of migration from Central America as the lack of economic opportunities, ineffective public institutions and insufficient public safety. Another cause that The Los Angeles Times reported in July – that a rumor about favorable immigration policy under the Obama Administration was fueled by coyotes, friends and relatives in Central America to drive migrants north – was not listed in the budget as a cause for migration. This information was likely left out because it is not true. A recent report on a detention center in Artesia, New Mexico shows deportations have not stopped. In fact, the sole purpose of the detention center was deporting women and children. Still, even before this detention center opened in June 2014, immigrants from Northern Triangle countries were granted asylum on a statistically small basics. In 2012, 600 Guatemalan asylum seekers won their cases out of the thousands that applied, an underwhelming number and the highest out of the three Northern Triangle countries. And, while economic strife is a factor for those who emigrate, it cannot be the only reason, since other parts of Central America have not seen migration in similar numbers. So, why have so many more young immigrants from Northern Triangle countries made the long and grueling journey north?

In Central America’s Northern Triangle, the biggest push factor is violence, usually related to gangs or drug trafficking. These three countries each rank in the top five internationally for murder rate per capita, with Honduras ranking first, El Salvador fourth and Guatemala fifth. Researcher Elizabeth Kennedy, who recently completed a Fulbright research grant in El Salvador, found that 59% of Salvadoran boys and 61% of Salvadoran girls cited crime, gang threats or violence as a reason for their emigration. In Honduras, drug-related crime has also contributed to heightened violence in the region. It is estimated that 80% of cocaine smuggled from South America to the US passes through Honduras, causing gangs to fight over distribution rights. San Pedro Sula, Honduras, which has been called the most dangerous city in the world, has become a hub for the cocaine trade in recent years. Last year, 2,000 unaccompanied minors came from this city alone. If this migration were only about economic opportunity, we would see immigrants from all over Central America pouring into the US. Yet, from October 1, 2013 to June 30, 2014, less than 200 children from Nicaragua, the poorest country in Central America, were apprehended at the border. More than 16,000 children from Honduras were apprehended during that same time frame.

Given the large number of asylum seekers, securing the nearly 2,000-mile border between the US and Mexico is not a viable solution. Besides the fact that guarding this large amount of area is incredibly difficult, this will not improve the security and economic situation in Northern Triangle countries. In fact, in a July 2014 meeting between President Obama and the presidents of Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, they encouraged the US to allocate less money towards border security and more towards development aid. The 2016 fiscal report reflects an adherence to this advice, but not without stipulations. The plan stresses collaboration with the governments of El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala for “more democratic, accountable, transparent, and effective public institutions,” which will be key to ensuring the funds are properly allocated for effective programming. With this statement, Obama has sent a subtle message: the US is willing to do their part—as long as the leaders in Central America are willing to do the same.

Anna-Catherine Brigida is a senior journalism student at the University of Southern California from Boston, MA.

The views expressed by the author do not necessarily reflect those of the Glimpse from the Globe staff, editors, or governors.

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Guest Contributor: Amanda Schmitt

“There’s no negotiating with ISIL [and]nothing to negotiate,” asserted Secretary of State John Kerry in a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on US strategy against the Islamic State (IS), also commonly known as ISIS or ISIL. “ISIL must be defeated. Period.” IS has killed 5,500 civilians and created 1.8 million internally displaced persons in their quest to construct an Islamic caliphate under sharia law. As is common in cases of humanitarian intervention, the ethical and legal natures of the circumstances are at odds. The over 50-state US-led international coalition demonstrates the need for a response to IS; yet, the UN Security Council has not, and will not, authorize military action within Syria’s borders due to laws of sovereignty. This prevents legality of the action under international rules of force, necessitating a UN Security Council resolution, government consent or a self-defense claim.¹ Iraq requested the collective self-defense claim within its borders, but the US asserts that the Assad regime relinquished its right to consent foreign action within state territory given a practical lack of physical and political control of the area in question. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon accepted the legitimacy of this argumentation, further authenticating it as an exception to rules and norms in international law. While the technical legality of such action under international law and the future application of US dispersed weapons are controversial, it is ethically appropriate for the US to arm Syrian rebel forces deemed moderate by the intelligence community. Given the severity of the human security crisis, the nature of warfare with non-state actors and the purpose of sovereignty, the rationale for the action outweighs the potential negative aspects of infringements on international law.

With globally disseminated videos of public beheadings, systematic killing and raping of women, rejection of women’s right to education and acts of mass killing against any opposing group, IS is not an actor that abides by the rules of the international system and therefore cannot be dealt with as such. States have global legal frameworks and structural governance mechanisms to mitigate anarchy, but the context changes completely when dealing with non-state actors. When there is no option for diplomacy, the only viable alternative is military action to counter the violence. If the military response were confined solely to aerial bombardment, then IS’s resources and infrastructural support could be debilitated; however, the individual participants of IS would not likely be contained on a large-enough scale to cause a permanent power shift against them. The nature of such terrorist organizations prompts revitalized defiance and fundamentalism in response to attack. One cannot bomb an ideology.

IS’s power has grown militarily, territorially and ideationally, since their rhetoric has struck a chord with other Islamist jihadist groups. This momentum has created a daunting opposition on numerous levels that requires a multifaceted combative initiative, including the necessity of a ground counter-force to IS’s constant push for expansion. The Iraqi military has not proven itself as a strong enough containing force within Iraqi territory. Furthermore, the Turkish military became only recently involved in October 2014 to protect its borders. Within Syria, however, IS has gained significant territorial control, and the Assad regime’s military has proven ineffective. Within the US-led coalition, government positions vary in support of action within Syrian borders—all members agree with action in Iraq given the government request of collective security, yet they differ on both air strikes and arming rebels within Syria without government consent. Without other international military support, the Syrian rebels are therefore the most viable ground counter-force within Syria. As Secretary Kerry elucidated, arming the moderate Syrian rebels as a counter-force to IS precludes the potential need for US ground forces. While there are some American critics of a weapons assistance program, there is little to no support for any contribution of US troops to containing IS, restricting military options to training and weapons programs.

An unavoidable risk of engaging in a conflict of such an uncontrollable nature is the potential for future misuse of US weapons post-conflict, another area of American concern. In the September 2014 Senate debate for arming Syrian rebels against IS, Senator Rand Paul referred to past interventions, expressing his concern that intervention would create a “chaotic vacuum” of power that could result in radical groups contributing to further violence with the provided weaponry. While the future application of the weapons and training are always of concern, the extent of unease is lessened since the CIA already armed vetted Syrian rebel groups against the Assad regime in 2013. Any remaining weapons will likely be applied toward this same effort given the multifaceted conflict environment. This application of resources is likewise problematic under international law without a Security Council resolution for arming rebels against the Assad regime; nonetheless, this context limits the probability of weapon use beyond a US-backed initiative, given Syrian rebel priorities of combating IS and the Assad regime. This weapons allocation could actually act as an unstated strategy to bolster Syrian rebel groups for both US initiatives of combating IS and the Assad regime. This approach addresses US interests on both fronts and likewise prevents the need for American ‘boots on the ground’.

From an international legal perspective, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) has reacted negatively to the option of arming actors as a means of intervention, reasserting its illegality. In the 1986 Nicaragua case in the ICJ regarding the US arming of rebel groups, the ICJ declared, “the protection of human rights, a strictly humanitarian objective, cannot be compatible… with the training, arming and equipping of the contras.” ²However, when there is such immense international outcry for the need to relieve a humanitarian crisis, as there was in the Rwandan Genocide and Syrian Civil War and currently with IS, international organizations refrain from serious reprimands despite breaking international legal procedure. This dynamic creates a de facto exception to rules of international law, with the ethical concerns of intervention taking precedence over the legal complexities.

At the core of the debate of ethics versus international law is the issue of sovereignty for determining the acceptability of intervention. Laws of sovereignty prohibit a misuse of an intervention claim for individual or state control over another’s territory, like Russia’s recent claim of the protection of ethnic Russians in Ukraine to effectively annex Crimea. It is a legitimate concern that numerous “exceptions” to international legal procedure for such state interference could enable governments to either intervene for largely self-interested reasons or to manipulate shifts in power in a state-building process. However, the current gridlock around intervention within the UN Security Council given China and Russia’s vetoes limits the international legality of intervention for cases of legitimate humanitarian crises; China and Russia aim to preclude any precedence that could enable foreign interference in their domestic spheres. These circumstances put global leaders like the US in a catch-22 position. If they do nothing militarily given the legality issue, they receive condemnation for failing to prevent continued loss of life. They are ridiculed for allowing the promulgation of terrorism as a global leader in the international system. By acting, they violate and undermine the international laws that create structure for the system.

The Assad regime has used the strict legal argument of sovereign control to its advantage despite that US assistance to combat IS is actually in its interest, as well. If asked for consent, the Assad regime would undoubtedly oblige, as IS is a serious threat to their control both territorially and politically. However, the Assad regime would conversely be staunchly opposed to any bolstering of opposition rebel groups for this purpose, as that would likewise strengthen the groups vying to unseat them. Since the US government does not recognize the Assad regime’s authority due to its human rights abuses, the US will not legitimate the regime by requesting its consent to act within its borders for aerial attacks. The US government’s insistence to work against a stringent interpretation of laws of sovereignty demonstrates the prioritization of ethics, including rejection of the authority of the Assad regime and utilization of the most promising campaign strategy.

To look deeper at intentionality behind the concept of sovereignty, scholar Stephen Krasner explains that sovereignty within a Westphalian state system is legitimized through “political authority based on territory and autonomy.”³ He suggests utilizing the Westphalian model as a guideline rather than concrete rules.⁴ With the current state of global governance mechanisms and international institutions, Krasner asserts that “compromising Westphalia is not only inevitable, it can also be good,” allowing for a “normative discourse more consistent with empirical reality.” ⁵ By neglecting to provide the necessary components for a state’s viability – rule of law, security, and markets – the territory becomes a failed state unable to employ sovereignty rights. Scholars Michael Fowler and Julie Bunk additionally support criteria for sovereign nationhood through “de facto internal supremacy… and external independence,” as well as de jure independence recognized by other states. ⁶  The Assad regime does not have supreme political control within Syria or international recognition of authority, delegitimizing its sovereign power. Ethically, if a government does not uphold its responsibility to maintain the security of its territory and political autonomy over governance, the government forfeits its right to sovereignty. The purpose of international law is to mitigate anarchy in the international system by ensuring the global protection of human rights and establishing standard operating procedures to facilitate diplomacy. It therefore cannot permit a context in which both are being violated or abused by the party in power. International law should not become a delaying mechanism that inadvertently helps the violent opposition cause further harm.

Former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan empathized with this legalistic versus ethical dilemma, stating, “sovereignty implies responsibility not just power.” In a context in which the de jure sovereign body is not able to exercise its state responsibilities or maintain authority over its territory, it forfeits its claim to sovereignty. Given this circumstance with the Assad regime, the US is ethically justified in its intervention through arming Syrian rebels. IS is not a threat that will diminish without forced containment, necessitating a significant international response and thorough actions toward a viable end to a successful campaign. The strategy must be robust enough to have a high probability of success to prevent an ongoing waste of resources and diminishing political will. The strong and global coalition coordinating various types of resources to aid in this campaign demonstrates the global sense of urgency in combating this threat. Therein, the military aspects of these contributions currently take prevalence as having the largest impact. The US is the only state with the resources, will and political power to lead the military effort against IS, therefore implicating its responsibility to act. Without US action to arm the Syrian rebels, there is limited ground support – only strongly on the Turkish border by the Turkish military and relatively ineffectively in Iraq by the Iraqi military – to ensure the finality of the air strikes’ intentions to contain IS. This leaves a high probability that IS will continue to expand its control militarily and its support from those they radicalize into their ranks. A further empowered IS would necessitate an elongated and increasingly expensive campaign, one that the US government aims to avoid. While there is never a definitive assurance of the success of any campaign, the absence of an armed opposition on the Syrian front significantly decreases the probability of success. It would not be feasible for any foreign military to contribute ground troops within Syria given the additional context. Moreover, there is no domestic political or social will to contribute American ground troops elsewhere in the region. The Syrian rebel groups become the final front to a holistic and hopefully conclusive IS containment strategy. Thus, beyond the paramount ethical argument of protecting collective human security, the US initiative to arm Syrian rebels is also practical from collective security, financial, strategic and sovereignty standpoints.

Amanda Schmitt is a senior at the University of Southern California majoring in International Relations.

The views expressed by the author do not necessarily reflect those of the Glimpse from the Globe staff, editors, or governors. 

The post The Ethics of Intervention appeared first on Glimpse from the Globe.

America is a land of immigrants; however, opposition to immigration predates the country’s founding. Benjamin Franklin, for instance, was a nativist who opposed even German immigration. In the final phases of America’s westward expansion, President Chester Arthur passed the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882. In the 1920s a new immigrant quota system favored Northern European immigrants. Under President Franklin Roosevelt a wartime emergency “Bracero” system admitted Mexican seasonal agricultural workers starting in 1942. In 1965 a federal bill opened the border to immigrants worldwide but ended the Bracero system. Unauthorized immigration of Mexicans surged, despite a strengthened Border Patrol.

Today the US has 11.2 million unauthorized immigrants, roughly half of whom are Mexican. This population is mostly younger than 35; as they age, they will feel the lack of a social safety net since they are ineligible for healthcare or welfare benefits per the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996. Unable to voice their interests, alienated from institutions that can address their needs, and invisible to policy makers, their marginalization plumbs new depths in social stratification.

In 2012 the Senate passed an immigration-overhaul bill allowing a path to citizenship for the unauthorized. Supporters included 14 of 46 Republicans. A group of eight crafted the bill, among them Republican Senators John McCain and Marco Rubio, the latter a Tea Party leader. Nevertheless, House Speaker John Boehner chose to ignore the Senate bill. According to the Hastert Rule – to be introduced, a bill needs the support of the majority of the majority party –Republican opposition in the House ensured Boehner shelved the bill.

Republicans opposed the bill for several reasons. First, dating back to Tammany Hall in New York, which (corruptly) supported the political careers of Irish-Americans, immigrants have trended Democratic. During the Civil Rights Movement immigration reform became one piece of the Democratic platform. Party stalwarts including Senator Edward Kennedy and President Lyndon Johnson pushed the 1965 bill. Due to these historical reasons, as well as current policy, unauthorized immigrants, if enfranchised, would likely vote Democratic.

Another factor is the demographics of electoral districts. Most Republican House districts are, as the figure below portrays, majority non-Hispanic White, partly from gerrymandering in states like Texas. More than 75% of Republican representatives have constituencies that are less than 17% Hispanic. Representatives in many swing districts with a heavy Hispanic population, such as Jeff Denham of California and Peter King of New York, supported a path to citizenship for unauthorized immigrants. (Note: the next round of redistricting is only after the census of 2020).

Voting patterns also influence the Republican electoral calculus. For instance, older non-Hispanic Whites register to vote and vote in larger proportions than same-age Hispanics. The gap between these two groups hovered around 15% from 1972 to 2008, though the voting rates of others, including African-Americans, increased. The reasons why are hotly debated. For Republicans these data prove that Mexican immigrants self-identify with Mexico; for Democrats they indicate a need to spread civic awareness among immigrant communities.

A possible backlash from non-Hispanic Whites adds to the Republican anxiety about supporting the enfranchisement of Hispanic unauthorized immigrants. Non-Hispanic Whites living next to large Hispanic populations tend to become more Republican, perceiving Hispanics as a threat. Nearly 70% of non-Hispanic Whites view Hispanics as likely to depend on welfare, and a majority view them as violence prone. These attitudes cause non-Hispanic Whites to vote Republican in both the short and long term.

Republicans also believe their stance comes at little cost. The US electorate considers immigration, unauthorized or legal, a low-priority issue. Table 1 shows few – of any ethnicity – consider it the most important domestic issue, consistently so for a decade.

The status quo of a group with no access to governmental healthcare, welfare, social security and, in 40 states, a driver’s license, is troubling. Unauthorized farmworkers often work in unsafe conditions, not daring to complain. Female laborers face harassment, terrified of notifying the police. Children of such immigrants pay out-of-state tuition at public universities in most states; lack of access to affordable education will likely hamper the future socio-economic status of unauthorized immigrants’ children. Yet, Republicans, per their agenda and the articulated demands of their base, will likely continue to oppose enfranchisement of unauthorized immigrants, and voters will probably not react, ignoring a “low-priority” cause.

Ajoy Thamattoor is a second-degree student at Foothill College in Los Altos Hills, CA, majoring in sociology. Ajoy has a BTech in Computer Science from Calicut University, India, and an MS in Computer Science from Stanford University.

The views expressed by the author do not necessarily reflect those of the Glimpse from the Globe staff, editors, or governors. 

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Since Myanmar’s 2011 reforms, the country has been widely re-evaluated by the international community. The US has moved from a policy of isolation and economic sanctions to offering partnership. With diplomatic missions now re-opened, Myanmar has been allowed for the first time to chair ASEAN in 2014. Driving these re-calculations is Myanmar’s geostrategic borders with India and China. It occupies the second largest area in Southeast Asia, has a population around 60 million and offers a significant market opportunity.

The Gulf States have been increasingly looking to their east in search of new markets, labor sources and diplomatic support. Their expanded relationship with Southeast Asian countries, and increasingly Myanmar, is evident through increased trade, foreign aid, investment and tourism. A shared religious culture with the Muslim population in the region has further characterized the relationship.

Interaction between the two regional multilateral organizations, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) has increased; they have a two-year action plan and there are ongoing ASEAN-GCC meetings regarding opportunities to expand and build on their relationships for security and economic gain.

Despite being geographically close, with some common cultural and religious threads, and generations of intermarriage stemming from migration and trade interactions, Southeast Asian countries and the Gulf States used to feel more strongly connected to the West than to each other. However, Myanmar’s earliest Muslims were traders, mercenaries and court servants of Persian, Indian and Arab ethnicity who settled in the country in the 13^th and 14^th centuries and married Burmese women. Another strand of shared history is that Myanmar was a British colony for more than 60 years, and the UAE, Oman, Bahrain and Qatar, although not colonies, were British protectorates for decades.

Yet, many stark differences between Myanmar and the Gulf States can be observed. For example, while Myanmar is predominantly a Burman society, only an estimated 60-70% of the people being ethnic Burmans. In contrast, the Gulf States’ native populations are very homogeneous. Myanmar claims to have 135 different ethnic groups, while migrant workers supply most of the diversity in the Gulf States, thus creating different issues for these countries to manage. Myanmar’s aspiring democratic government will have to learn how to respond to public opinion, while the authoritarian Gulf States largely ignore public opinion.

With respect to religion, the Gulf States have majority Muslim populations; in contrast only about 4% of Myanmar’s population is Muslim. The majority of Myanmar’s Muslims are Sunni, aligning them with the Muslims in the Gulf and worldwide, 90% of whom are Sunni. Due to recent Buddhist-Muslim conflicts within Myanmar and the humanitarian crisis with the Rohingya population in Myanmar’s western Rakhine State, a small but very visible percent of the population receives international media attention. Increasingly the Gulf States feel compelled to stand by fellow their fellow Muslims and respond to Myanmar’s dismal treatment of the Rohingya and its Buddhist-Muslim clashes. At an August 2012 extraordinary meeting of the Organization of the Islamic Conference the Gulf States supported a statement condemning Myanmar’s treatment of the Rohingya. The Saudi cabinet also spoke out against the violence asking for action from the international community to protect Myanmar’s Muslims. Saudi Arabia provided US$50 million in aid for Rohingya refugees and has also accepted groups of Rohingya as migrant laborers.

Yet, one development regarding this issue concerns the thousands of Rohingyas now held in Saudi prisons after an earlier asylum offer by King Faisal was reversed with the change in monarch. This shows that the Saudis are speaking out of both sides of their mouth on the issue, which may weaken their leverage with the international community when they urge action. Another complicating factor is that the Myanmar government’s failure to adequately respond to the poor treatment of the Rohingya could incite extremist Muslim groups. The religion factor will continue to complicate the relationship because Gulf countries must balance investment in Myanmar, yet admit they are working with a government that mistreats Muslims. In Myanmar the famous opposition party leader and Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, Aung San Suu Kyi, has also failed to speak out strongly on the issue, to the disappointment of the international community (a reticence on her part because it would probably be domestically unpopular).

While the diplomatic relationships between the Gulf States and Myanmar are complicated by religious ties, at the same time the Gulf States have great motivation to build a strong relationship with Myanmar. For example, Saudi Arabia has prioritized economic gains rather than religion in foreign policy, especially in its drive to become a major economic and political power by 2020. The emergence of Iran as an adversary and the collapse of Mubarak’s regime in Egypt also increased the Gulf States’ need for new friends and wider circles of influence. Thus they have invited Myanmar to open embassies in their countries. To make this a feasible reality for such a poor country, some of the Gulf States, such as Kuwait, pay half the salary of the new Burmese embassy diplomats.

Because Israel interestingly has had close ties with Myanmar in the past, the Gulf States could also be improving their relationship with Myanmar in order to have as much influence in the country as Israel. China, too, has been very invested in Myanmar and was taken by surprise by the country’s dramatic opening in 2011. Saudi Arabia’s relationship with China has been drastically improving over the past 10 years. As Saudi Arabia seeks to increase its influence with Myanmar, it will want to carefully consider Chinese perceptions of the Saudi involvement in Myanmar, as China is now one of Saudi’s largest clients, importing 19% of it’s crude oil from Saudi.

The Gulf States view the growing market in SE Asia as an opportunity for Gulf business, and they are interested in using land in Myanmar for food security. For example, they foresee that if there is a war between Iran and one or many Gulf States, then the Strait of Hormuz could be cut off making it hard to get food into the region; food concerns are also due to growing Gulf populations and rising food prices. The Arab Spring vividly showed the potential firestorm the region could erupt in if regimes do not keep their populations happy. In contrast Myanmar’s population is mostly rural, working in agriculture. As a result, Myanmar would be a great market for Saudi Arabia’s agricultural chemicals and fertilizers industry.

On another front, Saudi Arabia is extremely interested in possibly using the newly built pipelines in Myanmar to get their oil to China. This would avoid using the Malacca straits, a passageway that could be blockaded in the event of a conflict in the South China Sea or if anyone was trying to cut off China’s energy supply. The realization of this possibility depends on whether Saudi Aramco is the sole and exclusive partner with China National Petroleum Company (CNPC) in the move of oil to the southwest Chinese state Yunnan. Saudi Aramco and CNPC have a contractual agreement, but the details of the contract, and if/when government action kicks in is hard to obtain. CNPC owns and operates the pipelines and so it is most likely it would be required to pay transit fees to Myanmar’s government. Saudi Arabia has decided not to export natural gas, but rather to use that energy for domestic development. It will be interesting to see if this decision is reversed over time because the dual pipelines consist of one for natural gas and one for crude oil. Qatar, the world’s largest producer of natural gas, may also try to utilize the pipelines to export liquid natural gas to China.

A Qatari company, Ooredoo, is one of the two granted a telecoms license in a recent high profile bid in Myanmar. The license is good for 15 years and allows the largest foreign investment to date. Ooredoo said it would invest up to $15 billion in two years to bring all but 10% of the population on a 3G network, a quicker time scale than the government requested. Estimates as to when the company can expect to turn a profit on its investment are not clear.  Vodafone and China Telecom withdrew their bids saying the project did not offer sufficient returns. If this is the case, it may be that Ooredoo, which is partly a state owned company and a subsidiary of Qatar Telecom, has been told by the Qatari government that it will be compensated for the low returns; it may signal that the project is more important for its diplomatic and profile building investment rather than profit.

With respect to migrant workers from Myanmar, there are many in the Gulf States. As of 2004 it was estimated that there are 1.5 million Burmese migrant laborers in the UAE, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Jordan. There is a general concern with the treatment of foreign laborers in the Gulf countries and Burmese workers have been subject to the same dismal conditions that have been reported about other groups: for instance, reports have stated they are not paid the amount originally promised, work in different functions than what they signed up for, and have extremely long hours. However, the Myanmar employment agencies may be unfairly providing misinformation to the laborers being sent to the Gulf States.

There is no information about increased Gulf tourism in Myanmar, though growing numbers of Gulf citizens have been documented visiting Indonesia and Malaysia. Myanmar has a growing sense of nationalism and if Myanmar citizens feel that the Gulf States are expanding the relationship only to extract resources, obtain agricultural products or use the pipelines to get oil to China, the Burmese could resent the Gulf States for not taking the time to invest in the surrounding community. Tourism could be an opportunity for growth in the relationship, especially since Qatar Airways is one of the main airlines providing service to Yangon.

There is nevertheless a danger – if the religious conflicts in Myanmar spiral out of control, which is not an unlikely possibility given the violence in Rakhine State – that the Burmese will attack anything they view as a connection to Muslim Rohingya, such as companies from the Gulf States. Sensationalist press, in a country where free press is less than a year old and the media and population are still figuring out how to handle responsible journalism, could start rumors about the connections of these companies to Rohingya and encourage people to boycott the businesses.

Among the opportunities also lying in the Gulf States and Myanmar relationship, Myanmar could learn lessons from the Arab Spring as it works to build democratic institutions. Although the majority of the Gulf States survived the crisis without radical change, Myanmar could, for example, learn from Kuwait and Bahrain, which seem to be working towards a constitutional monarchy, a strategy to involve a new class of ruling elites and political participants, while at the same time keeping the old guard engaged and not threatened from an overthrow of the government.

Conversely, the Gulf States can observe Myanmar’s challenges as the country transitions from an authoritarian to a democratic government, assuming their governments could easily find themselves in a similar position. Because Myanmar’s military has long been the most influential force in the country, one challenge as the country transforms is to avoid spooking the military into clamping down for fear there will be retributive action against them or that they will be dramatically disenfranchised.

Many Gulf States and Myanmar also have comparative circumstances with both being well endowed with natural resources. The Gulf States have generally been able to use their natural resources profits to develop the state and to benefit the population. Myanmar could learn from the distributive states. It is hard to imagine what Myanmar could have been like today if natural resources profits coming from, for instance, energy sold to China and Thailand, had been invested in education and healthcare (allocated less than 5% of total budget), rather than the military (currently allocated at over 20% of the budget).

The Gulf States could further increase their influence in Myanmar by providing scholarships for Burmese students at Gulf universities. Graduates of strong engineering programs would produce qualified candidates for Myanmar’s energy sector, infrastructure, agriculture and service industries that in turn would benefit Gulf companies investing in Myanmar. Myanmar would benefit greatly in a technology transfer from Gulf States companies, and that could attract more investment by Gulf state owned enterprises, especially those supported by deep pockets and capable of taking on large scale projects with risky returns.

Lastly, although unlikely to happen, the Gulf States could play a constructive role in the Rohingya conflict. They could offer asylum or agree to resettle portions of the Rohingya population, initiate a mass guest worker program (adhering to international labor standards), or instead of providing aid money to the Rohingya, which makes the Burmese government suspicious, invest in Myanmar’s peace process.

The relationship between the Gulf States and Myanmar is one of contradictions, but also one with possibly immense growth. A mutually beneficial, although highly complicated and potentially politically difficult partnership between Myanmar and the Gulf States currently is in the making in the ongoing expansion of their relationship, a process that should be most interesting to follow into the future.

Anne Gillman recently graduated from The Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and is currently a Presidential Management Fellow in the International Trade Administration in the Department of Commerce.

The views expressed by the author do not necessarily reflect those of the Glimpse from the Globe staff, editors, or governors.

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