Ukraine

After the election, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky congratulated Trump, saying he looks forward to a strong U.S. approach to global affairs. Trump has pledged to end the war in Ukraine but has revealed little plans on how he would do so. The United States provides the most aid to Ukraine out of any other country, and Trump, alongside his Vice President JD Vance have cast doubt on whether they would continue military aid to Ukraine. This would be devastating for the hopes of beating Russia, which is steadily advancing into Ukraine’s Donbas region. President Putin has not congratulated Trump, and re-iterated U.S. hostility towards Russia making them hesitant to make any statements on the future of the two countries’ relationship. However, given Trump and Putin’s friendly-ish relationship (possible collusion between Russian officials and Trump campaign members in 2016 and Trump calling Putin a “genius” for invading Ukraine), it would not be surprising for the Trump administration to reduce aid to Ukraine. Last week, President Biden sent Ukraine official approval to use American long-range missiles to strike deep within Russian territory, a move seen as Biden hedging against Trump’s future plans.

Hungary

Moving westward, another relationship that should be watched is that between Trump and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, a right-wing autocrat. Hungary and Russia are close, despite Hungary’s membership in the European Union and NATO. Hungary relies on Russia for gas and is refusing to let aid pass through Hungary into Ukraine. Additionally, Orbán was the only EU leader to endorse Trump for the U.S. presidency and flouted their close relationship. Therefore, under the new administration, Hungary might gain an influx of foreign investment from American companies or enjoy a closer economic relationship. These circumstances suggest there will be good relations between the United States and Hungary over the next four years. 

Poland

Another conservative leader, Poland’s President Andrzej Duda, congratulated Trump on his win. Duda wants to strengthen Poland’s relationship with the United States, but Poland is against Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, sending more than $3.5 billion to support Ukraine’s army. Duda’s main goal is to curry U.S. favor and keep the United States in NATO, so it’s no surprise that Duda has tried to become closer friends with Donald Trump. In April 2024, Duda and Trump met in New York City for dinner, and both shared positive sentiments, with Trump stating that he is “behind Poland all the way.” Thus, it would not be surprising to see Poland continue to schmooze up to the incoming president in the coming months. 

Czech Republic and Slovakia

The Prime Ministers of the Czech Republic and Slovakia, both populist conservatives, have welcomed Trump with open arms.

Petr Fiala, the Prime Minister of Slovakia, and President Biden have enjoyed positive relations, with the U.S. and Slovakia becoming closer over the past four years. The Czech Republic has continued sending military aid to Ukraine, but Fiala is growing weary as the war has surpassed its 1000th day. In September, he stated that Ukraine “will have to be realistic” about the growing possibility of ceding some territory to Russia, even if temporarily.

Fico has ended Slovakia’s military aid to Ukraine and opposes Ukraine’s bid to enter NATO. Slovakia is in the midst of a political crisis, with a sharp divide between Fico’s conservative government and the liberal opposition party. Fico has been consolidating power, undermining media independence, eliminating the office responsible for investigating political corruption and prohibiting protests. As such, expect to see Slovakia drifting towards an Orbán-style populist way of governing, to Trump’s delight.

The fate of Ukraine lies, in large part, in the hands of Trump and Vance. 

The Soviet Union viewed religion as Karl Marx did, calling it “the opiate of the masses” and removed all religious teachings and references from school curriculums just weeks after the 1917 October Revolution. Churches were destroyed, as were synagogues and mosques, and the official belief of the State became scientific atheism, which posited that people should only follow the natural and physical sciences and the notion that a God doesn’t exist. For those living under Soviet occupation, their longtime relationship with religion and statehood was tarnished.

Despite Article 124 of the Constitution of the Soviet Union guaranteeing freedom of religion, prosecution of religious beliefs persisted in the Soviet-governed territories. Between 1936 and 1937, tens of thousands of religious leaders were shot and it became illegal to teach religion. Freedom of religious expression was effectively dismantled: anti-religious propaganda was commonplace and so was the repression of established religious groups. Founded in 1925, The League of Militant Godless was the Soviet regime’s project to secularize Soviet states completely by 1937. The League was comprised of volunteers who would attempt to eliminate the practice of religion from one’s daily life by organizing and hosting anti-religious demonstrations and lectures and promoting atheist propaganda in public spaces. In 1929, the government created a new Calendar that removed Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays, all of which are considered days of worship for many religions. 

What caused the Soviet Union to relax its grip on freedom of religion? In a 1944  interview between U.S.S.R. leader Joseph Stalin and a Roman Catholic Priest, Stalin stated “[World War Two] eliminated the contradictions between the church and the state. The believers abandoned their positions of rebellion, and the Soviet government abandoned its own militant position toward the religion.” With the start of the war, the government adopted a more tolerant attitude towards religion to ensure support from the Allied powers and was more subjected to influence by Western values, which included religious acceptance. When Germany began its occupation of multiple Soviet satellite states, the forced secularization ended as the Soviet Union lost control of its proxy states. During this time, these newly German states were exposed to new ideologies and the populations that were forced to resettle became Orthodox and Catholic. While the Nazi party was not friendly towards religion, it found that many Catholic Churches in German-occupied countries were antisemitic and hateful towards Jewish people and supported Hitler’s Holocaust. 

In 1943, Temples and other sites of religious worship were reopened and the Orthodox Church, which was the largest religion pre-Soviet Union, was once again recognized by the State. Despite this seeming reversal of its anti-religious policies, the Soviet Union was clear that Marxism was the dominant ideology, and religions would be inferior. 

Despite eradicating many of the institutional foundations of religion in the Soviet Union, religion privately persisted. By the late 1980s, Mikhail Gorbachev passed legislation (by a vote of 341 to 1) that allowed religious education in schools, granted freedom of worship and ended the policy of atheism for the government. Gorbachev himself was secretly baptized as a child and his mother was a practicing member of the Russian Orthodox Church. This also marked the end of the Soviet Union: its central stance on religion — that it is antithetical to Marxism — was broken, and so was the Soviet Union’s moral legitimacy.

Many of the older citizens who had grown up before the Soviet Union happened still held onto their religious beliefs and returned to their respective religious practices after the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991. According to a Pew Research Center study, roughly 72% of Russians identified as Orthodox Christians in 2008, a 41% increase from 1991. Older and less-educated Russians were more likely to identify as Orthodox Christians. As national identity and religion are closely intertwined, the majority of Eastern Europe identified as Catholic or Orthodox Christian before the Soviet occupation so as a result of the dissolution of the U.S.S.R. they returned to their respective religions.

The Soviet Union’s legacy with religion is long and complicated, but ultimately, the regime failed to eradicate religion and force secularization. Freedom of religion expanded rapidly as a result of World War Two and the dissolution of the Soviet Union, but it is also likely that people still practiced their religion behind closed doors during the age of the Godless.

In 2020, Eastern Europe’s response to the pandemic was a loosening of monetary policies to support citizens and protect against short-term economic loss, which ultimately led to higher inflation and an increased cost of living. Out of the whole continent, Eastern Europe has been impacted the most; while it used to be known for countries with lower living costs compared to the rest of Europe, the cost of living in Eastern Europe is now almost comparable to Western European countries. 

After the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Eastern Europe saw a sharp decrease in retail sales, skyrocketing food and energy prices and higher rent, all of which have cut significantly into families’ incomes. Hungary, a small, landlocked country bordering Ukraine and the EU country with the highest rate of inflation, saw the most severe inflation rates it has seen in decades following the invasion, rising more than 20% year after year from January 2021 to December 2022. 

How is this crisis impacting the average Eastern European citizen?

Low-income families are paying around double for groceries, electricity and gas compared to upper-middle and wealthy families in Eastern Europe. This results in worse economic gaps between low and high-earning families. Food prices have also risen faster in Hungary than any other country in the EU, rising over 45% from 2022 to 2023, with Slovakia in second place at 29%. 

Meat products, once considered a staple in the Eastern European diet, are now a luxury for many. Bottled water, milk, eggs and bread now cost 72-80% more than they did in 2021– a staggering difference when compared to the average monthly income of Hungarians, which is 554,540 forints (about $1,631 USD). A dozen eggs can now cost as much as 858 forints (about $2.34 USD); this is not currently a sustainable price point for the average Hungarian. In Hungary, many families like to vacation in Lake Balaton, a world-famous vacation destination that European citizens flock to every summer for its warm temperatures and beautiful landscapes. 

When I visited Hungary this July, I was shocked by the cost of food. Cheese was somehow more expensive in Hungary than in the United States and what I would have considered affordable in Hungary the last time I was there was no longer affordable. According to my Hungarian family members, as well as other Hungarians I met during my time there, fewer and fewer people are able to travel for vacation to other countries or even within Hungary.

The risks of inflation rates remaining this high are many, including consumers buying fewer things, having to find a second or third job, finding alternatives to using gas and having less disposable income, which in turn negatively impacts Eastern Europe’s economies. According to the European Commission, Hungary’s GDP growth fell from 4.6% in 2022 to a mere 0.5% in 2023, and unemployment rose from 3.6% in 2022 to 4.2% in 2023. Experts predict that Hungary will be able to recover in 2024 with forecasted disinflation and a tightening of monetary policy. Hungarians should expect a decrease in inflation to 7-8% by December of this year, according to Hungary’s Finance Minister Vargás. The IMF predicts a low 0.3% GDP growth in Poland for 2023, 2.4% in Romania and -0.3% in Lithuania. 

The Israel-Palestine war will affect not only the Middle East’s economy but Eastern Europe’s as well; the cost of oil has already risen but will expect to recover unless Iran is sanctioned by the West for its support of Hamas. With no end in sight for the Russia-Ukraine war, rippling global conflict, lower consumption and economic activity and climate disasters such as wildfires and heat waves, the next couple of years will be difficult for Eastern Europeans. 

For most of my life, I have relied on government welfare assistance to make rent and buy groceries, and I have leaned on my community for food banks. When considering my opportunities for higher education, I was severely limited in my options. Many public universities wouldn’t be able to offer me a full-ride scholarship to attend, which was the only way I would be able to attend a university. My estimated financial contribution determined by FAFSA was, of course, zero dollars, but as my university acceptances rolled in, my financial aid packages did not reflect what the government thought I should pay for my schooling. Each school left me with a massive sum of money to pay out-of-pocket and through loans. As I learned about my mother’s struggle to pay back her loans, I knew I did not want to have to take out student loans unless necessary.

When I received my financial aid package from the University of Southern California (USC), an elite private university dubbed “University of Snobby Children” because of its largely white, wealthy and upper-class student body, I was told I would need to pay over $5,000 out-of-pocket for my freshman semester (I was a spring admit and only attended USC the second semester of my freshman year). 

I was discouraged because USC was a university that, at the time, had a claim on its financial aid website that said that USC meets 100% of students’ demonstrated need. My demonstrated need was certainly high. I required a full ride to attend, but $5,000 was a tremendous amount for me and my mother. I still committed to USC, despite receiving a full-ride scholarship at the University of Minnesota, because I believed that USC was my path to leaving generational poverty and providing for my mother in the future.

After a lengthy appeal process with financial aid, I received an updated financial aid package from USC and ended up paying around $1,000 that semester, which was only possible through a payment plan and an educational savings plan that my mother made after selling her only asset, an apartment in Hungary. My sophomore year, I received better aid, although it didn’t come in until the day I moved into my dorm, so I was panicking until the last moment. A few of my friends were forced to transfer out of USC due to poor financial aid packages. However, through outside scholarships and USC grants, I have remained student-loan-free and able to afford my education at an elite private school.

Being low-income in a school that brings out A-list celebrities to perform at our semester festivals, that has a speculated $110 million contract for USC football coach Lincoln Riley, and that has events where they give out free Lululemon gift bags, I certainly experienced culture shock coming here. I am surrounded by people who fly first-class or private, who go to Coachella and have a car, who walk around wearing designer clothes, and who show me distaste or even disgust when I say I grew up taking public transit everywhere. I am surrounded by people who have had the complete opposite economic upbringing from me, and I feel worlds away from them in many aspects. 

I am defined and restricted by my economic background, and I am limited in my ability to climb the economic ladder and achieve that notorious “American Dream.” 

On a national level, student debt increases each year as education gets more expensive and minimum wages increase at a shamefully slow pace. 

And, of course, who is being most affected by the rising cost of college? Marginalized, Black and Brown communities are most disadvantaged by our economic system. Black college students, on average, take out more student loans than white students, and BIPOC students are more likely to default on their student loan payments. International students studying in the United States are ineligible for federal student aid, which prevents many from attending college in the United States. 

Moreover, student loan debt is not a uniquely American problem: higher education is becoming more inaccessible to students in developing nations, and British college graduates, for example, face some of the highest average student debt in the world at $55,000. 

Beyond rising education costs and rising student debt, a micro-level analysis of low-income students is valuable. American culture thrives on flashing wealth and posting Instagram photos from your spring break in Cabo, which is even more prevalent at a school like USC. 

While some USC students are homeless (over 2,000 as of 2020), every student-athlete is given an electric scooter to get to class. The university offers free tuition for households making less than $80,000 per year, but that doesn’t mean the school will cover other expenses like housing and meal plans, which bring your bill total to around $20,000. This is coupled with an average five percent increase in tuition at USC each year. 

Although my mother’s income almost doubled from 2021 to 2022, we are still considered low-income in my city and are well under the tuition-free threshold. USC may look at this and decide to charge me more for next year, which is worrying, considering USC does not guarantee housing after sophomore year and I have to pay my rent. 

Los Angeles is facing a severe housing cost crisis, with 60% of Angelenos renting and the median rent for a one-bedroom in LA costing $2,265 per month. The median household income in 2021 in LA County was $76,367. Students at universities across the country and the globe are facing increasing housing costs, which affects the poorest students the most. USC financial aid, meanwhile, badgers you to submit tax documents from three years ago to try to find ways to lower the university grant it gives you. When you are awarded an outside scholarship, USC will lower your university grant, making the outside scholarship worthless.

Ultimately, as student debt increases, the cost of education becomes higher, and post-graduate jobs struggle to keep you above the poverty line, those in poverty are left most vulnerable.

Looking closely at Griswold v. Connecticut (1965), Lawrence v. Texas (2003) and Obergefell v. Hodges (2015), the dissenting opinion in Dobbs certainly has the better case to argue the potential unraveling of privacy rights. 

The majority in Griswold ruled that there is a right to marital privacy in the use of contraceptives. Although the Constitution does not explicitly give the right to privacy, the Court found the right existed in the First, Third, Fourth and Ninth Amendments. Lawrence established the right to engage in private, consensual sexual acts under the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, which states “No state…shall deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law (Privacy); nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws (Equality).” Obergefell found that the right to marry is protected by the Constitution under the Fourteenth Amendment’s due process clause. 

Each case is built upon the other to determine privacy rights. In Lawrence, the majority relied on Griswold about protecting the private decisions of consenting adults, and the overturning of Roe, which protected the private decision of an abortion, was just the first to go in the fall of the privacy rights dominoes.

The Supreme Court had to reach long and far when trying to justify its ruling in Dobbs, and in the majority opinion, Justice Samuel Alito stated that precedent would not factor into the decision because “Roe was egregiously wrong from the start.” Alito argued one must look to the Constitution to determine if something is protected by substantive due process, and abortion was not explicitly described as a liberty or a right, nor did the Constitution mention the word abortion at all. Additionally, one must take American history and tradition into account when making judicial decisions, and abortion. Noneone of the rights like use of contraceptives, same-sex marriage or same-sex sodomyare rooted in American history. 

Abortion is only built on other unenumerated privacy rights like Griswold and Lawrence. Because the right to have an abortion is built on previous decisions, it’s likely that Griswold and Lawrence are threatened. The Dissent in Dobbs argued that if you apply those same arguments to same-sex marriage, contraceptives, sodomy, etc., that will result in overturning those cases.

The opinion also explained that abortion destroys “potential life” and Alito argued that none of the other previous decisions involved the potentiality of life. He argues that “None of the other decisions cited by Roe and Casey involved the critical moral question posed by abortion. They are therefore inapposite. They do not support the right to obtain an abortion…” 

However, Griswold was about potential life because it was about the use of contraception. Contraception is inextricably tied to abortion because contraception prevents pregnancy. Plan B or other emergency medications are considered contraceptives but could be considered an abortion, which would be unconstitutional based on Dobbs, which means the Court could go after contraceptives to limit possible abortions. 

Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh argued in his concurring opinion that “The Court in Roe erroneously assigned itself the authority to decide a critically important moral and policy issue that the Constitution does not grant this Court the authority to decide…” He explains that the Supreme Court should not have the ability to decide over issues of morality, but if that were true, then privacy cases before Roe (ie. Griswold, and Lawrence) would not have established those rights. Same-sex sodomy, the use of contraceptives and gay marriage are unquestionably moral issues, and the Court ruled in favor of all three. It would not be surprising if the Supreme Court took a similar approach in other privacy rights cases using the morality argument. 

Additionally, Kavanaugh claims that women are still free to travel to other states to get an abortion, because of the “constitutional right to interstate travel.” However, this is inconsistent with the majority and concurring opinions because there is no right to interstate travel in the Constitution, just as there is no right to an abortion explicitly in the Constitution.

If the Supreme Court stays as conservative as the majority of it is, then we can see the possibility of the Court relying on Dobbs to overturn future privacy rights cases. This is even more likely when Justice Clarence Thomas explicitly said the Court should “reconsider all of this Court’s substantive due process precedents, including Griswold, Lawrence, and Obergefell.” 

The dissenting opinion cites Chief Justice John Marshall, saying that the Constitution is a living document that must endure an ever-changing society that faces new challenges. Following the dissenting opinion’s logic, we must not simply look at how the framers originally intended the Constitution to be, but also confront new problems that either weren’t addressed during the framing or didn’t exist in 1788. The framers knew the U.S. would change so they didn’t write specific rights into the Constitution, intending for them to be created later. And the Court has done just that in its history, creating new rights and liberties. Roe was the same. 
The ruling in Dobbs is a walking violation of every person’s guarantees of liberty and equality for all and undermines all other privacy rights laws. A lawsuit filed in Amarillo, Texas against the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is seeking to block the use of mifepristone and misoprostol, which are abortion medications and account for more than half of all abortions in the U.S. and has been legal since 2000 when it was first approved by the FDA. As the federal judge making the decision is conservative, abortion advocates are worried the lawsuit could further restrict women’s access to abortion nationwide.

However, by 2003, North Korea had already announced that it would not be bound by the treaty’s terms and had secretly been operating a uranium-enrichment program. In October 2006, North Korea conducted its first nuclear test to the great dismay of the UN Security Council, which quickly imposed sanctions against North Korea. To this day, the proliferation of North Korea has been contentious and seen as a major threat to U.S. security.

When U.S. President Donald Trump came into office in 2017, he was tasked with a difficult problem: How should the Trump Administration go about the North Korean nuclear problem? 

Trump had campaigned on the platform of denuclearization of North Korea. He claimed he wanted to reduce tensions with North Korea, which had reached new heights when North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un’s regime conducted its first intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM). In response, Trump said that any North Korean nuclear attack would be “met with fire and fury like the world has never seen.” 

A few months later, in September, North Korea tested what it claimed was its first hydrogen bomb. Trump responded by designating North Korea as a state-sponsor of terrorism. Trump and Kim launched their war of words, with the insult “Rocket Man” being thrown at Kim and “Dotard” at Trump. 

However, on March 5, 2018, the world woke up to the shocking news that there would be the first United States-North Korea summit. 

The summit was eventually held between Trump and Kim in Singapore in June 2018.  The two leaders signed a joint statement  in which they both agreed to pursue nuclear peace, better United States-North Korea relations, return U.S. troop remains home, and called for the complete denuclearization of North Korea, although all of the details were few and far between. 

In return, Trump agreed to suspend U.S.-South Korea joint military exercises and provide sanctions relief to the Kim regime. Although this was the first of its kind and a landmark event in history, only one agreement was partially met, which was the repatriation of some U.S. POW/MIA remains. 

After their summit, Trump and Kim appeared to be on good terms, with Trump saying he and Kim “fell in love.” Trump failed to appoint a U.S. special envoy for human rights in North Korea, and North Korea continued to grow its warhead stockpile, enrich uranium and develop missile launch sites, but did not conduct more missile tests in 2018. 

Feb. 27, 2019 marked the second Trump-Kim summit, held in Hanoi, Vietnam, which was cut short on the second day of talks. This, similarly, did not result in a joint statement from the two leaders. Negotiations failed to move forward, and Kim agreed to dismantle a nuclear facility at Yongbyon in exchange for sanctions relief.

However, Trump wanted more concessions, which resulted in both walking away without a deal, despite the leaders suggesting they would continue talks in the future. Despite the fact that North Korea was still proliferating, at least the U.S.-North Korea relationship was less strenuous. In June, Trump historically became the first sitting president to step into North Korea and boast about their “great relationship,” despite North Korea continuing to test-launch missiles. By May 2019, North Korea had conducted its first missile test launch since the first summit, launching the KN-23, a tactical ballistic missile and reigniting tensions between the two countries.

In October 2019, the world witnessed the crumbling of U.S.-North Korea relations. 

North Korea announced that the country will not do more to denuclearize or resume negotiations unless the United States relieves more sanctions and ends joint military exercises with South Korea. In December, Trump resumed calling Kim “Rocket Man” and threatened to use military force against North Korea, which Kim promised to counterattack. The North Korean regime then threatened the end of diplomacy by the beginning of 2020 if the United States  did not cease sanctions and hostile policies. 

Meanwhile, current U.S. President Joe Biden has been taking a different approach to relations with North Korea. 

He declared that he is rejecting Trump’s approach to North Korea and instead adopting a middle-ground strategy, positioning himself between strategic patience and a grand bargain, while maintaining the ultimate goal of complete denuclearization. 

Although Biden expressed willingness to negotiate, North Korea was not interested. According to the Department of State, the United States  and North Korea do not have diplomatic relations. In March 2021, Kim conducted the first missile test during the Biden Administration, launching two short-range cruise missiles. Despite this, Washington stated they remained open to talks with North Korea.

At a standstill with diplomacy, North Korea has tested 36 ballistic missiles since Biden has taken office. There have been more missile tests in 2022 than ever in North Korean history. Meanwhile, the UN Security Council has been unable to impose more sanctions on North Korea because Russia and China veto the proposals. 

Notably, North Korea’s ballistic missiles have the ability to reach the continental United States, which continues to concern U.S. security and defense experts. The most recent U.S. Department Press Meeting on Dec. 20 discussed the possibility of North Korea’s seventh nuclear test. 

In response to this possible provocation, Department Spokesperson Ned Price stated that “We would seek to impose additional measures on those responsible for its nuclear program…seek to ensure that we have sufficient defense and deterrent capabilities in the region,” adding,“We urge the DPRK to… cease with the provocations, and to engage in diplomacy.”

Given the stall in talks with North Korea, Biden could possibly have to look to new strategies to ease tensions with the DPRK.

The most prominent goal ever set by the COP was established at COP21 in Paris in 2015. The Paris Climate Agreement agreed that every country needed to work together to limit a global average temperature increase of 2°C, preferably to 1.5°C, in comparison to pre-industrial levels. 

COP is critical to the entire world because it highlights the significance of a global commitment between countries as climate crises accelerates rapidly. Global temperatures rose by 1°C between 1901 and 2020, and CO2 levels have risen by 25% since 1958. By 2030, 700 million people may be displaced due to drought. 

Despite the dire rate of global climate change, multiple European Union countries, faced with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, have been turning back to coal plants to compensate for the lack of Russian-supplied gas, which only further exacerbates global warming and makes this year’s COP even more crucial.

COP27 is being held from Nov. 6 to Nov. 18, 2022 in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt. Hosted by President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi and the Egyptian government, it will host 2,000 speakers with over 35,000 expected participants. Its vision is to “achieve as much progress as [possible]across the board on every item under negotiations in a balanced and principled manner… [basing all of the work]on the most reliable, credible science available… [ensuring]that no country… is left behind through building mutual trust….”

How environmentally friendly is the event?

Sharm el-Sheikh is a resort city on the Red Sea Coast that has been turned into a green city with a $7 million grant from its partner, the UNFCCC. The city has adopted eco-friendly practices, including the use of renewable energy, water conservation and certifying the majority of their hotels as Green Star officiants, which deems them environmentally friendly. Additionally, the city has implemented electric energy for electric and natural gas buses as transportation for the conference. The Egyptian government also added more green spaces to the city, banned single-use plastic bags and relocated smokestacks from within the city to the desert.

What are the key challenges for negotiations at COP27?

The Egyptian government has organized panels over multiple days of the conference to cover a wide range of issues. They have listed four main goals: mitigation, adaptation, finance and collaboration. These goals encompass limiting the global average temperature rise to 1.5°C, minimizing damage from climate disasters and investing in infrastructure to prevent major damage, creating more transparency of climate finance including with the annual USD $100 billion provision for climate action in developing countries provided by the wealthiest nations and ensuring that governments work together to follow through on their commitments. 

COP27 is facing a new host of challenges presented by climate change. The conference will likely set up formal arrangements for receiving funding after damage caused by climate change, which China and the Group of 77, a coalition of developing countries, requested be addressed and formalized. If this framework for loss and damage compensation is not agreed upon and developed, it is likely that negotiations of the adaptability goal will not reach a consensus at COP27. 

At COP26 in 2021, wealthy countries agreed to double finance from the agreed-upon 2019 amount of funding to developing countries for adaptation to $40 billion by 2025, but many countries are calling for more than $40 billion, saying that more financing is required to adapt to climate change and curb emissions.

COP27 will revisit countries’ emissions targets, also known as nationally determined contributions (NDCs), to keep in tandem with the Paris Climate Agreement’s goal of limiting the average temperature rise to 1.5°C. This means that India, Egypt, the United States and China, among other large emitters, will have to expand their targets and commit to curbing their emissions more.

What to look out for at COP27?

This year, the Conference of Parties wants to prioritize follow-through. One of the largest issues in combating climate change is the lack of countries fulfilling their commitments. This can be seen with former U.S. President Donald Trump exiting the Paris Climate Accord in 2020 (although President Joe Biden subsequently rejoined on his first day in office). One goal of COP26 was to provide climate financing for developing countries to adapt to climate change disasters, with $100 billion per year allotted to developing countries. However, the negotiating countries never decided how to measure and report the countries’ financial pledges. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), reported that the countries who pledged money did not reach $100 billion, but instead only a measly $356 million. Furthermore, it is clear that much more financing is needed to adapt to climate change, meaning that even meeting the $100 billion goal is not enough.

A key question at COP27 will be how developed countries will address the needs of the Group of 77 in how these countries adapt to climate change and mitigate damage caused by climate disasters, particularly because climate change affects developing countries disproportionately. 

Ultimately, COP27 negotiations must simultaneously meet the demands of vulnerable developing countries and establish NDCs that developed countries will commit to. Striking this balance will be a challenge, but as temperatures increase and the world hurdles closer to climate fallout, this year’s COP27 consensus will be crucial to navigating impending climate change.

Beyond those impressions, the country has also been carrying out cyberattacks as an alternative form of warfare for the last decade, first becoming relevant to the U.S. government in 2014. North Korean hackers compromised computers at Sony Pictures Entertainment (SPE) in retaliation for Sony releasing The Interview, a political satire about North Korea and Kim Jong Un. According to the U.S. Department of Justice, the hackers “gained access to SPE’s network by sending malware to SPE employees, and then stole confidential data, threatened SPE executives and employees and damaged thousands of computers.” 

Sonygate might sound frivolous, but the FBI declared it one of the largest cyberattacks in U.S. history. It was the dawn of North Korea’s information warfare.

Before they began attacking the United States, the DPRK hit two South Korean banks and three of the country’s largest news broadcasts in 2013. The attack rendered ATMs useless and disrupted the television station’s systems. 

In 2016, Lazarus, a government-sponsored hacking team in North Korea, targeted the Bangladesh Bank. Hackers spent almost a year figuring out a backway into the bank’s systems and learning about its operations. 

The Bangladesh Bank has an account with the Federal Reserve Bank in New York City, and in February of 2016, the Federal Reserve Bank was sent instructions from Lazarus posing as the Bangladesh Bank to make over thirty payments totaling nearly one billion USD to multiple accounts. They were successful in receiving $81 million, but the Federal Reserve blocked the other transactions. Lazarus was also linked to the Sony attack.

In 2017, a cyberattack called WannaCry 2.0 targeted hundreds of thousands of computers in major cities and then demanded money in exchange for unfreezing the computers and the accounts. WannaCry was also linked to North Korea. 

According to a report by the United Nations, North Korea used cyberattacks to accumulate around $2 billion for the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction in 2019. The attacks were aimed at various banks and financial institutions through money laundering to disguise the income as coming from a legitimate source. According to the National Intelligence 2021 Annual Threat Assessment, these were deeply problematic developments: “North Korea’s cyber program poses a growing espionage, theft, and attack threat.” 

The regime has reportedly stolen almost $400 million in cryptocurrency in 2021, giving more credibility to the accusation that North Korea uses cyberattacks to fund its economy and proliferation programs due to heavy sanctions. According to some estimates, North Korea employs around 7,000 people in its cyber programs across multiple departments. 

In 2016, hackers in the capital city of Pyongyang gained access to hundreds of gigabytes of South Korean Army data which had documents detailing a plan if North Korea were to invade the South and even had a plot to assassinate Kim Jong Un. 

What’s revelatory about North Korean cyberattacks is that despite its isolation, it is able to have such a widespread impact on the rest of the world. North Korea is aided by Russia and China, as virtual private networks (VPNs) are often connected through China to conduct cyberattacks. Russia and China have not acknowledged their hand in cyberattacks, but a member of the U.S. Department of Justice claimed that China helps North Korea with its cyberattacks because of their alliance and illegal trade across China-North Korea borders. 

Beyond the Soviet Union’s early involvement in the formation of North Korea, more recently, Putin and Kim have gotten closer over the last few years. North Korea has publicly supported the Russian invasion of Ukraine and Russian officials have discussed the possibility of employing dozens of thousands of North Korean laborers to help reconstruct after the war. 

Each time an attack happens, the FBI and other national security agencies urge U.S. organizations and companies to protect their data from potential hacks and attempt to prevent ransomware. Aside from that, there isn’t much more that the government can do because North Korea does not claim responsibility for their attacks. 

In 2021, the U.S. Department of Justice charged three North Korean hackers who reportedly worked for the government for conspiring to steal the billion dollars from the Bangladesh Bank, the Sony Pictures attack, and multiple other attacks on other institutions. Director of the FBI Christopher Wray announced that this charge “demonstrates the FBI’s unceasing commitment to unmasking and stopping the malicious actors and countries behind the world’s cyberattacks.” However, the FBI conceded that this was unlikely to lead to the arrest of the alleged hackers but the point of this very public charge was to “name and shame” to bring more attention to the public. 

Despite the Justice Department’s charges, they have no ability to stop or fully prevent North Korea’s cyberattacks. Cyberwarfare is not well-known by the public, nor are the attacks that North Korea carries out to further its military and/or political aspirations. When Russia interfered with the 2016 U.S. elections, a federal grand jury indicted 12 Russians for their alleged roles but a federal judge dismissed the charges and the trial in 2020.

Cyberattacks are a key component of North Korea’s alternative warfare that will continue as North Korea ramps up its proliferation efforts in an attempt to curb Western hegemony. With China’s complicity with the regime’s attacks, it will be important for the United States to watch both countries as China continues to rise in the global world order, taking North Korea with it.

The country is important to the European Union (EU) and the West — as well as to Russia, which invaded Ukraine in February. Hungary has taken an ambiguous position in response to Russia’s invasion, even though it is part of both the EU and NATO. Russia is not a part of the EU or NATO, largely because of the differing ideologies between the EU/NATO and Russia, including both organizations’ disapproval of Russia’s expansion in Eastern Europe with its invasion of Crimea and now Ukraine.

To understand Hungary’s position between the East and the West, it’s important to first understand Hungary’s past. 

Hungary During WWII

In the 1930s, Hungary began relying on Germany and Italy for trade to help pull itself out of the Great Depression. It joined the Axis powers in November 1940 when it signed the Tripartite Pact.

The main reason for joining German forces was that Hungary didn’t want to keep losing territory: Northern Transylvania was in danger of being lost to Romania, which had also joined the Axis powers. To escape the danger of communism from the USSR, it felt that it should align itself with Germany.

Germany began pressuring Hungary to aid in its invasion of the Soviet Union, but Hungary refused. After Hungary was bombed in 1941 by an unknown country but perceived as the Soviet Union, Hungary declared war on the USSR.

Hungary’s alignment with Germany began to weaken when Miklos Horthy, a leader of Hungary through the two World Wars, replaced the Prime Minister with Miklos Kallay. Kallay worked with Horthy to put distance between Hungary and Nazi Germany to gain the favor of the West again. 

By 1944, Hitler had learned that Horthy was communicating secretly with the United States and the United Kingdom about peace negotiations. Hitler told Horthy that Hungary would have to fully cooperate and submit to Germany, or the Third Reich would move to occupy Hungary. While Hitler and Horthy were negotiating, German forces quickly moved into Hungary and occupied Hungary in March 1944. 

Prime Minister Kallay was replaced by Döme Sztójay, a pro-German candidate who saw submitting to Germany as the only way to keep Hungary “sovereign.” During his reign, more than 550,000 Jewish people were sent to concentration or extermination camps. 

In 1944, Hungary lost territory to Soviet troops, and Horthy signed a ceasefire armistice with the Soviet Union. The German government kidnapped Horthy’s son, forcing Horthy to submit in order to save him. Soon after, Horthy was replaced by Ference Szálasi, who served as a puppet for German interests. Because of this, Hungary became controlled entirely by the Third Reich.

As Germany fell in 1944 and began losing territory to the USSR, four parties that had been against Hungary’s involvement in the Axis powers formed the Hungarian Provisional National Government (established with USSR support) in December 1944 and declared war on Germany. The Red Army liberated Budapest in February 1945.

The Yalta Conference of February 1945 gave the Soviet Union a massive amount of political power in Eastern Europe. Each party involved in the conference, the Big Three (the United States, United Kingdom and the USSR), agreed that the liberated countries would be able to “create democratic institutions of their own choice” and to help those countries form governments to hold elections. 

However, the Eastern Bloc appeared not to hold up their end of the bargain, as the Soviet Union would still control elections in their “liberated countries” and maintain influence. 

Soviet Occupation of Hungary

Postwar Hungary was economically devastated. A three-year plan was enacted to rebuild Hungarian infrastructure and resume trading. The Soviet regime nationalized banking, industry and trade. Soviet troops stationed in Hungary would live off Hungarians’ land and take whatever they liked. Education was centered around communism, and children would join the Hungarian Socialist Youth League. In addition, the Soviet Union forced many Hungarian prisoners of war, among other civilians and ethnic minorities, into gulags (forced labor camps). 

As the Soviet’s relationship with the West deteriorated, hallmarked by the Cold War, Hungarian resentment towards their ruling party grew. Imre Nagy, known for criticizing Soviet policies, was put into office in 1953 as Prime Minister. However, a displeased Soviet Union forced him out of office and replaced him with Ernő Gerő. Stalin died in 1953 and was succeeded by Nikita Khrushchev.

Hungarian Revolution of 1956

Khruschev’s secret speech denouncing Stalin in favor of moving back to Leninist-style socialism and the general resentment of Gerő culminated in a student protest on October 3, 1956. 10,000 students took to the streets of Budapest, demanding the end to the Soviet occupation. Party leaders met for an emergency session, and all telephone communications between Hungary and the West were cut off. At its peak, around 100,000 people were protesting, and police began responding with tear gas and shots. The peaceful revolution very quickly became a violent one.

Imre Nagy was reappointed Prime Minister, emboldening activists even further, while the army joined the protesters and gave them arms to strike back against the police. Peasants returned to their fields that had been taken from them, and POWs were broken out of prisons. 

Nagy attempted to create peace by asking the Soviets to withdraw their troops but later abolished one-party rule and became the head of a new coalition government representing parties that had been against Soviet occupation. In a bold move, he stated Hungary was withdrawing from the Warsaw Pact on November 1 and asked the United Nations to recognize Hungary as a neutral country.

The Soviet Union was angered, and their troops returned, rushing into Budapest on November 4, killing protestors. Nagy made a statement to Hungarian citizens that the country was fighting back, but within a few hours, he sought safety at the Yugoslav Embassy in Budapest. He was kidnapped and executed two years later. 

János Kádár, a defector from Nagy’s party, had flown from Moscow to a small town in Hungary to announce he was taking power back with the support of the Soviets. He declared Nagy’s government illegitimate, announced a new government supported by the Soviet Union and vowed to withdraw Soviet troops from Hungary and suppress the revolution.

Around 2,500 Hungarians died, and 200,000 left as refugees. In 1957, it was declared that Hungary was a dictatorship of the proletariat and that Soviet troops would stay there. However, by the early 1960s, the standard of living rose and farm cooperatives were allowed to produce goods for themselves or to sell. Restrictions on foreign travel for Hungarians were lifted, but Hungary’s economy struggled greatly and a large debt accumulated.

Post-Soviet Occupation

The Soviet Union dissolved formally in December 1991, but Hungary had already created the National Assembly, a system of representative government. Elections were held in the spring of 1990, leading to the victory of a right-center party with the first post-communist Parliament leader Jósszef Antall. In 1944, the ex-communist Socialist Party headed by Gyula Horn won 54% of the seats in the Parliament, and the move to place Hungary in NATO and the European Union, as well as supported the tearing down of the Berlin Wall.

1998 saw the right-winged Fidesz Party, led by Viktor Órban, come to power in the Parliament, which moved Hungary into NATO and began consolidating more power into Parliament, and created a widening gap between left and right-winged Hungarians. 

He lost power in 2002 until he regained his position in 2010. Serving as Prime Minister ever since, he has turned away from both communism and liberalism to form what he calls an illiberal democracy.

The governments of Hungary and Russia have had a generally friendly relationship since both leaders came into power. In 2011, the Fidesz party announced the Eastern Opening policy, part of which included opening Hungary to more trade with Russia, and stated, “We need a new opening for the world economy, including an Eastern orientation, while keeping the benefits of our EU membership.” 

Órban and Putin also share some similar ideologies – both have clamped down on free speech and democracy and have established laws that allow them to stay in power for long after democratic states would allow.

In late August, Hungary issued a permit for a Russian state-owned company to build two new nuclear reactors in Hungary. Hungary also decided not to give Ukraine military support during the invasion. 

Despite Hungary’s apparent friendship with Putin, the Órban government has called for peace and negotiation between Russia and the West because he says that Russia is militarily dominant over Ukraine and Ukraine could not hope to win the war. Hungary and Ukraine have argued over education and language policies, and Órban blocked NATO from holding meetings with Ukraine before its invasion. Hungary supported using EU money to reimburse countries that have sent Ukraine weapons.

Hungary has asked the EU to remove three prominent Russian leaders from an EU sanctions list, which has prompted anger from the EU as it wants to reignite sanctions on Russian officials.

Hungary has had a tumultuous century of war, revolution, and now, a return to authoritarianism. With this understanding of Hungary’s history, it may be easier to understand Órban’s position on Ukraine and Russia – which continues to be ambiguous likely not to anger the EU, NATO and Russia because it wants all three to maintain power and influence.

A Tipping Point

The Amazon Rainforest acts as a carbon-trapping lung for the Earth, storing billions of tons of carbon dioxide. However, the rainforest is losing more than 75% of its resilience to climate change events related to climate change like deforestation and droughts. It takes longer for the forest to grow trees, the land is dryer and temperatures are rising. In January 2021, deforestation rates reached a record high, despite international pressure that led the Brazilian government to promise ​​an end to deforestation by 2030. Scientists report that the Amazon is quickly approaching the tipping point of turning into a savannah, a phenomenon that would release. 

Losing the rainforest to a savannah ecosystem would have devastating consequences to the environment, like releasing 90 billion tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. According to scientist Tim Lenton, director of the Global Systems Institute in England, this is “equal to several years of global emissions.” The sudden release of carbon could also raise the average temperature rise and put the UN’s 1.5˚C climate goal far out of reach. It could cause the death of 10% of known species that call the rainforest their home and lead tocause massive drought in Brazil and nearby countries. Already, parts of the rainforest are producing more carbon dioxide than they do storing it, and it’s roughly equal to Japan’s annual carbon emissions. The death of the forest could happen in a few decades. 

The investment is said to work through the Lowering Emissions by Accelerating Forest Finance Coalition (LEAF). The coalition is a multilateral effort by countries like the United States and the United Kingdom, and companies like Amazon, AirBnB and Delta. This means Amazon is not the one directly investing in the rainforest; rather, it is giving money to a public-private organization to do climate change work on their behalffor them. LEAF states that “companies must publicly commit to science-based targets on… decarbonization targets, consistent with limiting warming in line with the long-term temperature goal of the Paris Agreement… Companies must have the targets in place before taking title to LEAF emissions reductions, no later than 2023.”

According to Amazon, the goal of the AGA is to “develop solutions that can rapidly scale from initial investment to millions of hectares of degraded pasture that have the potential for reforestation and agroforestry, which can improve livelihoods in local communities now and for future generations.”

The company has also made a pledge to reach net-zero carbon emissions by 2040 and 100% renewable energy by 2025. 

The company was not transparent about its carbon footprint until 2019, when Amazon pledged to become carbon neutral by 2040 and began releasing sustainability reports yearly. However, the company’s footprint is difficult to measure because of a continued lack of transparency, which is the first issue when determining whether Amazon is truly serious about addressing its carbon footprint. 

These climate pledges appear ambitious, but how earnest is Amazon with its efforts and has it met its commitments? The company’s sustainability website claims that in 2020, it achieved 65% renewable energy “across their operations” according to Amazon, which is quite vague. In addition, Amazon also states that its carbon emissions increased by 19% in 2020. The COVID-19 pandemic caused an increase in website foot traffic, thereby increasing daily shipments and subsequent use of trucks.

In addition, PrimeAir, Amazon’s airplane fleet, has almost doubled in daily flights between May 2020 and February 2021. Giving precise numbers of PrimeAir is difficult due to the lack of transparency fromby Amazonthe company, but it is likelyevident that emissions are growing as a result of increased plane activity. 

Amazon pledged to have 10,000 electric delivery trucks by 2022 and 100,000 by 2030. However, this pledge falls short as the auto industry is unable to produce any of the electric vehicles Amazon has been promising to use. According to the New York Times, Amazon expected to have around 175,000 of its electric vans in use by the end of 2021 according to a document from 2020, but nearly all of those vehicles burned fossil fuels. As of 2022, according to Amazon, they have missed this goal by miles. The company is still just testing delivery routes with electric vehicles and won’t have hit their pledge for years.

Insufficient public information from Amazon makes it difficult to determine whether they are meeting their climate goals. The statements made by LEAF and Amazon’s climate pledge are generally vague and lack results with data. The most recent update by LEAF on April 22nd, 2022, announced a form for interested companies/parties to become members of the LEAF coalition who want to be announced at the 2022 United Nations Climate Change Conference. 

Despite Amazon’s climate change goals, their lack of transparency and increase in daily flights, increased website traffic and orders, and lack of follow-through have made it easy to conclude that the company is not keeping their promises and pledges. Using LEAF as a middle-man for Amazon’s climate investments is a misuse of funding and investment as LEAF may be a smoke-screen for climate change efforts.

Climate activists are labeling LEAF as a rebrand of REDD+, which is a United Nations framework aimed at reducing climate change and ending the destruction of forests by creating financial incentives to reduce deforestation. The difference between LEAF and REDD+ is that countries will receive twice the amount of money for per tonne of CO2 avoided ($10 vs. $5) It is uncertain whether LEAF will be inclusive in its objective to send climate financing to indigenous groups who have received less than 1% of climate funds and hold only 10% of land rights to their forests.

Others criticize LEAF’s ability to quickly and substantially reduce CO2 emissions because communities in places like the Amazon have to wait up to twenty years to deliver on credits that companies bought. In addition, there are many questions surrounding land rights for indigenous groups because governments like Brazil have not wanted to give land rights back in the past, and the general distrust of the government in indigenous communities in regards to land protection. Others believe LEAF will allow polluters to delay cutting emissions by purchasing carbon credits and some land-rights activists say LEAF could create a carbon grab, where governments and corporations take carbon rights from indigenous groups which would prevent them from selling carbon credits and lose rights to fund their own climate change efforts.