The global gag rule (GGR), also known as the Mexico City Policy, has been limiting the resources of countless foreign non-governmental organizations (NGOs) over the last four decades. Despite studies in sub-Saharan Africa revealing that the global gag rule is associated with higher rates of abortion, this policy persists as a way for the United States to police abortion abroad. 

What is the GGR?

The GGR, initiated by President Reagan in 1984, was created to curb the use of United States funding in performing or actively promoting abortion “as a method of family planning in other nations.” Initially targeted towards family planning assistance, the Republican policy prohibited NGOs from providing legal assistance and referrals for abortion if they accepted U.S. aid. The sole exception was providing “passive referrals” to pregnant women who had already decided to have an abortion. Under the Trump administration, the policy was expanded to include restrictions on all foreign health-related assistance and currently prohibits NGOs from providing funding to other organizations who engage in the banned behavior. 

Even prior to President Trump’s controversial expansion, the policy caused widespread instability among NGOs. The funding of many health organizations was frequently removed and reinstated as it became vulnerable to political changes. For example, the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF) lost $11 million dollars of U.S. aid during the Reagan administration and $18 million dollars during the Bush administration. 

Moreover, ambiguity in the wording of the policy and lack of open communication with the impacted NGOs led them to excessively restrict activities in order to protect themselves from possible funding cuts. Out of fear, organizations began withdrawing from meetings or conferences where contraception or abortion was expected to be mentioned. This so-called “chilling effect,” continues to impact HIV/AIDS prevention efforts and maternal and reproductive care services. 

A History of Meddling in Abortion Overseas

The involvement of the U.S. in utilizing funding to control the foreign anti-abortion agenda has not been limited to one single policy. The following timeline of events shows this development over the last 40 years.

1961: The Foreign Assistance Act (FAA) addresses utilizing U.S. funds to aid in voluntary population planning abroad. 

1973: The Helms amendment to the FAA prohibits the use of U.S. funds for abortion services.

1981: The Biden amendment to the FAA bans the use of U.S. funds for biomedical research related to abortion. 

1984: The Mexico City Policy is announced at the UN International Conference by President Reagan.

1993: The Mexico City Policy is rescinded by President Clinton.

2001: The Mexico City Policy is reinstated by President Bush.

2009: The Mexico City Policy is rescinded by President Obama, but the use of U.S. tax dollars for abortion is still prohibited.

2017: The Mexico City Policy is reinstated, renamed “Protecting Life in Global Health Assistance,” and expanded by President Trump. 

2019: Secretary of State Mike Pompeo clarifies that NGOs must not provide any funding to other organizations defying the rules set by the GGR.

Resistance to the GGR: WaterAID

An important case in understanding the unexpected impacts of the GGR is that of WaterAID. An organization dedicated to ensuring clean water, proper hygiene and sanitation, WaterAID is working to integrate water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) services into maternal and antenatal clinics in order to prevent maternal and infant deaths. In a statement released by Lisa Schlechman, the director of policy and advocacy for WaterAID, she revealed the intersections between sexual health and WASH: “In some countries where [WaterAID] operates, women face the risk of sexual assault as they walk to fetch water.” The referral of women to a clinic “gagged” under the GGR would have been a violation of the new Trump era policy. 

However, WaterAID chose to defy the 2017 GGR and signed a coalition statement along with 140 organizations opposing the policy. As a result, it lost funding opportunities for health and nutrition programs in six countries and was forced to terminate certain programs and limit the scope of outreach in countries such as Madagascar.

Cutting AMODEFA Funds in Mozambique

Another example demonstrating the deleterious effects of the GGR is that of the Associação Moçambicana para Desenvolvimento da Família (AMODEFA) in Mozambique. As a member association of the IPPF, AMODEFA provides a wide range of services including HIV prevention and education and family planning. In a country where 12 percent of the population is HIV positive and the majority of children are unaware of their status, AMODEFA clinics play a vital role in encouraging parents to educate their children on HIV, and providing the physical, social, and mental support for patients who deal with the difficulties of treatment and stigma. AMODEFA has lost approximately 60 percent of funding under the Trump administration gag rule, largely due to its involvement in legalizing abortion in Mozambique. As a result, AMODEFA was forced to slash the budget of their HIV prevention and education efforts, laying off a third of its staff and halving the number of youth education clinics. These cuts have caused job loss and and the reduction of services to thousands of families impacted by HIV. 

AMODEFA has also cut or completely removed services such as male condom consultations, gynecological appointments, and contraceptive recommendations. The executive director of the Global Access Project (GAP) highlighted the importance of multi-service clinics, stating “Women…need one-stop shopping…they’ll go to the [clinic]they think is the most important.” The structural changes forced by the GGR have reduced the number of these multi-service clinics available. 

What Does This Mean for Future Foreign Policy?

The foreign impact of the U.S. should be in the form of long-term non-conditional aid, not funds with strings attached and political moves without evidence of their benefits. Conditional aid sets the precedent that the U.S. can pressure other foreign entities into adopting stances that align with the morals of the political party in power. Moreover, recklessly pursuing agendas abroad without factual evidence and prior analysis of the implications causes harm to humanitarian aid efforts. The political leanings of the current U.S. administration should not determine the standard of healthcare offered to innocent people in other countries.

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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On February 22, well-known realist scholar and R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago John Mearsheimer spoke at USC in a talk titled “Liberal Dreams & International Realities.”

Glimpse correspondents had the rare chance to interview the celebrated scholar, getting his insight on the challenges facing US foreign policy as the world transitions from a unipolar order based on liberal hegemony to a multipolar one in which realpolitik will play a much larger role. Mearsheimer addressed weighty issues like NATO expansion, nuclear proliferation in Iran and North Korea, the influence of US foreign policy elites, the hypocrisies of liberal American foreign policy, and the rise of China.

The full video is available here.

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Last month I participated in a foreign affairs simulation hosted at the US Air Force Academy, co-sponsored by the US Department of Defense, the Mellon Foundation and Dickinson College. Students of international affairs from a variety of universities were teamed up with cadets and midshipmen from US Military Academies to fill the roles of the Augmented Deputies Committee, a body of senior government officials from all branches of government that advises the National Security Council and the President on issues of national security. A group of highly accomplished academics and government officials with decades of public service experience took on the task of designing and running the simulation as realistically as possible.

This article is an abridged first-person account of the exercise we conducted over three days in the beginning of March; during it I filled the role of Deputy Secretary of the Treasury Department. Some details have been modified for the sake of brevity. Alongside a nightmarish scenario, I also try to describe the work atmosphere of the Executive Branch as it was simulated for us. We had to cope with miscommunication, unreliable information and a lack of group cohesion, just as a young presidential administration would five years from now. Through the simulation I discovered that there is always a human element to governing, and hope to provide a glimpse of that too.

The date is 31 January 2021, and the newly elected president has been in the White House for ten days. The incumbent elected in 2016 had lost re-election to a centrist politician in 2020. The National Security Staff and Cabinet had barely moved into their offices when the third gut-wrenching intelligence report hit the room, courtesy of the Deputy Director for National Intelligence: “The Israelis are beginning preliminary preparations for a unilateral airstrike.”

At this point, we knew the Mossad, Israel’s intelligence agency, had heard the same reports that we had—Iran had secretly set up an undisclosed uranium enrichment facility. Israel considers any Iranian attempt to develop fissile nuclear material to be an existential threat, and thus would not hesitate to remove the facility by any means necessary.

“How long do we have?” asked a State Department officer.

“Depends what they’re after. They’ll take their time selecting targets carefully. Tel Aviv will only want to do this one time if they really go through with it.”

Reports began floating in that the Iranians were hiding 1,000 centrifuges from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). (Centrifuges are big, rapidly spinning containers used to separate Uranium-235[1] from Uranium-238.) If we had not prevented Iran’s development of the bomb through diplomatic means back in 2015, Israel would have had no problem acting alone to sabotage Iran’s nuclear program. Yet with these new reports, the tenuous peace appears to have been broken.

We also heard that a senior fellow from the Brookings Institution, an American citizen who was visiting Tehran on an academic trip, was detained by Iranian law enforcement last night for unknown reasons. So in addition to the usual crew from the intelligence community and the Departments of Defense and State, the White House called in Homeland Security, the Justice Department, Energy Department and my beloved Treasury to form the Augmented Deputies Committee.

“So what should we be doing?” asked my Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Intelligence and Analysis (the title barely fits on her business card). She had been chugging bottles of Robitussin since 7AM to hide her bronchitis.

“Well, if the Attorney General wasn’t in the room, I’d be buying oil futures before this news hits the markets,” I joked. “Any news that stokes fears of Middle East instability will give oil a ten dollar boost these days, so any sign that Iran has belligerent intentions will send it off the charts.

“So what do we do?”

“Well, nothing right now. This is still State and Intel’s ballgame, so I think I might go visit State. Think you could find a copy of the SDN list? We should go over it and see if any obvious names are missing. Let’s have some names ready for the White House to sanction at will.”

“But sanctions don’t work. We’ve got reams of reports telling us that. It’s a waste of our time.”

“Of course they don’t work. But it sounds good to the American people, and I think the man in the Oval would like to make it to February before his approval rating drops below 60%. Let’s feed some new SDN’s to the media so they don’t eat this administration alive.”

The SDN list, or Specially Designated Nationals list, has the names of every person that the US has implemented special sanctions against. It’s composed of mostly Iranians, Russians, North Koreans, a few African dictators and a bunch of terrorists. If we could add some Iranian scientists or clerics to the list, that could dampen the public outcry when this inevitably leaks—buying us time to find a real solution. But I wasn’t visiting the State Department office to explain all that. The Deputy Secretary of State was trying to get the Israeli ambassador on the phone when I walked in.

“Hey Bren, got a sec? Need to see you and the American ambassador to the UN.”

He hung up the phone in disgust. “The Israeli ambassador is participating in a Latke-Hamantash debate at Georgetown during an international crisis. Unbelievable.”

“Yeah, well, you don’t need her. We can make a public move to delay Tel Aviv by asking for an IAEA inspection team.”

He stopped to think about it, but I could tell he understood the reasoning. If Israeli jets bombed UN inspectors on a peacekeeping mission, the entire world would eviscerate them. They couldn’t afford to bomb Iran unilaterally while inspectors were in the country. “We still don’t know where to send them,” he countered.

“We don’t have to announce a location right now. We just have to make a statement from the White House and ensure it gets voted on in the Security Council later today. It won’t be hard to get the Russians and Chinese on board if they know that the Israelis are already strapping bombs on their planes. It buys us time, and we can use that to gather more information. It also saves us from having to implement unilateral sanctions if this were to get leaked. We can keep the Israelis fenced in and take control of the news cycle on this one.”

He nodded in agreement. “Let’s run this by the Deputy NSA.”

Aside from the missing Brookings Institution fellow, we felt like we had most things under control for a few hours. Russia, China, Germany, France and the UK were all on board with the plan to send international inspectors to Iran. But as we were walking into our third plenary meeting, nearly everything spun out of control.

“Khameini is dead? Did I hear that right?”

Yes you did, Mr. Assistant Secretary of Something Obscure from the Department of Energy.

A White House official was enjoying an I-told-you-so moment. “He’s been out of contact for days and we have good intel that he went into the hospital over a week ago! He’s probably been dead for a while now, and we have nothing in place to deal with this!”

Worse, the Iranian public didn’t know yet, and it was unclear if the regime wanted to announce his passing. Without an Ayatollah, the Iranian government is essentially leaderless. We had asked the Iranians to accept an IAEA mission to look for undocumented centrifuges, but the mission approval relies on the Ayatollah’s consent.

The presence of IAEA inspectors was meant to be our insurance policy against an Israeli strike on Iran, and that was no longer possible. On top of that, the Israelis would probably love to hit a dysfunctional Iranian government.

“New intel came in,” said the White House’s Deputy Chief of Staff. “The IRGC are mobilizing and spreading across the country. Looks like a possible coup.”

The Ayatollah of Iran is perhaps one of the most hated Middle Eastern political figures in the West. Having him gone would be a dream come true on literally any other day. But having the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) ascend to create a theocratic military dictatorship would be worse. With no obvious solution in sight, we spent most of a few hours bickering among ourselves and hoping for new intelligence that might provide a pathway out of this mess. But it never came.

“Guys, we don’t have any other quick fixes to slow down the Israelis, and there’s only one way we get the IAEA into the country. We need an Ayatollah.”

Personal experience has taught me that in government, most of the scenarios you plan for never actually occur, and the ones that do become real are never precisely what you imagined. Eventually we all agreed to break the news of the Ayatollah’s death in order to speed up the process of getting a new leader selected. But we had to accomplish that without appearing to be the leakers: if we broke news of his death, that would be like Kim Jong Un announcing the death of a sitting US President. Ayatollah Khameini is of ethnic Azerbaijani descent, so we decided that if the news had not broken by the next morning, it would be leaked to Azerbaijani media disguised as a tipoff from a distant relative.

The next morning, Iranian authorities had announced his death and our hours of designing a nearly foolproof leak were for naught. We decided to prioritize working out a diplomatic resolution with what was left of the civilian government in Tehran before making any regional moves. Threat levels were raised, travel advisories were issued and our sincere condolences were shared with the Brookings researcher’s family and colleagues, as a video of his beheading had surfaced overnight. We nervously watched IRGC units mobilize across the country, unsure if they were cementing a coup or deploying to prevent political unrest in the wake of the Ayatollah’s passing. We began contemplating military and economic options that could be useful for responding to any of the possible outcomes in Iran.

Ultimately, we enacted a policy of “strategic patience” — observing and doing nothing, waiting for an opportunity to act — while we tried to make sense of a new Iran. This was just the beginning of a scenario that would have implications for many years beyond 2021. And we had only dealt with the first two days of it.

[1] U-235 is an atom of uranium with three less neutrons than normal. Therefore it is less stable and useful for anyone trying to build an atomic bomb. Under the Iran Deal signed in 2015, the Iranians are supposed to have only a certain number of centrifuges and let the IAEA monitor them to ensure that they don’t enrich a mass of uranium above 3.67% U-235.

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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“Shall I explain to you in one easy lesson how the world works?” Tywin Lannister sneers in the final episode of Game of Thrones, season 3. With that, he unloads the most comprehensive summary of the show’s survivalist political intrigue:

“The house that puts family first will always defeat the house that puts the whims and wishes of its sons and daughters first.”

This piece of advice may initially only seem relevant for the scheming lords and ladies of Westeros, the fictional political entity of the show. But by simply replacing “house” with “nation-state” and “family” with “national interests”, the violent and fantasy-laced plots devised for this would-be Medieval realm line up eerily well with the foreign policy of various national governments.  While many believe author George R.R. Martin’s fictional world is based on the War of the Roses, and others attempt to match each of the Seven Kingdoms to corresponding countries, few analyses make connections to more contemporary events.

In many ways the foreign policy of Westeros bears resemblance to the roles, perspectives and decisions taken on by the West since the Cold War era. With some imagination, viewers can connect the crises and conflicts in the struggle for the Iron Throne to modern international challenges.

Consider the Red Wedding. When Walder Frey realizes Robb Stark has broken their agreement, he secretly switches allegiances and organizes an ambush massacre at his own daughter’s wedding with Tywin, the Machiavellian head of House Lannister. It may seem unthinkable that a gruesome, underhanded murder would be used to end a war. However, after examining Tywin Lannister’s rhetoric that justifies the attack as a preventive measure, the move echoes a game-changing moment in modern history. Tywin concedes the cruel nature of the attack, but doesn’t recoil from his decision to end the war with the North. In a heated exchange with his son Tyrion, he presents a familiar defense for his actions.

Tyrion: I’m all for cheating. This is war. But to slaughter them at a wedding?

Tywin: Explain to me why it is more noble to kill 10,000 men in battle than a dozen at dinner.

Tyrion: So that’s why you did it? To save lives?

Tywin: To end the war, to protect my family.

Notwithstanding the numbers and the nature of the attack, if “family” is again substituted with “state”, this reflects the language surrounding the American decision to bomb Hiroshima and Nagasaki in order to extract a Japanese surrender in WWII. While the two attacks may not be comparable in magnitude nor impact, the similar justification for both alongside the reactions from their respective “international” communities indicate that they share an underhanded, low blow nature.  

Similar and even more recent parallels are peppered throughout the show, whether through actions taken by leaders, crises that befall the realm or the nature of the politics employed and the interactions they create. Below are only a few real-world analogies to GoT plot developments to keep in mind as winter approaches.

Lesson No. 1: Despite norms and agreements, national identities and historical memory will hamper cooperation

The Red Wedding did (temporarily) end the war by quelling the North’s rebellion. But, this was only accomplished at a high human and political cost. In ordering the attack, Tywin cemented himself as an antagonist to the North, a region which must now fall back under King’s Landing’s rule. The sneaky nature of the attack was as much a blow to Northern pride and identity as it was an assassination of their leaders. Tywin defends his decision nonetheless, believing he spared many lives and did what was best for his house.

As a parallel, the most common justification of the atomic bombs in Japan holds that it was the only tactical way to secure an unconditional surrender. On the show, no one outside the Lannisters reference the attack as necessary and merciful. This is why, even two seasons later, characters keep promising that “the North remembers.”

This statement offers curious insight into the way states resume normal relations after a conflict. In fact, it reflects an area of post-modern foreign policy scholarship known as historical memory. How do past acts of aggression, war crimes and genocide affect relations after the peace talks and treaties? Westeros can serve as an interesting political microcosm, with the show documenting the rise and crumble of alliances between the Seven Kingdoms. Because so many dynamics are a consequence of rampant power seeking in the absence of a unifying power, the kingdoms’ interactions can be compared to the post-Cold War power distribution.

Just as in real-world international politics, new arrangements among the kingdoms never happen in a vacuum, but rather are always rooted in (or at the very least weighed against) previous events. Each kingdom has a distinct relationship with and perception of each other kingdom, mostly influenced by a coup d’état to overthrow the Mad King Aerys Targaryen—an event that takes place before the show’s main plot. Many of the interactions the viewer sees have therefore already been conditioned by this distant, past conflict. Part of the intrigue of the show is the viewers’ guesswork in discerning how the events of this shadowy war drive the decisions of each character.

This war, though long over, has had lasting political effects. Because each of the Seven Kingdoms is ruled by its respective “lord paramount” to the realm, these are not entirely sovereign states. They were previously unified through the strength of the Targaryen dynasty, but since the coup, political cohesion among the kingdoms is frequently challenged. National identities developed divergently, and especially in the North’s case, not only are “national interests” at play but also socially and historically-conditioned experiences that have woven themselves into the fabric of each territory’s identity.  

The gradual re-fragmentation of the kingdom demonstrates how, when a hegemon falls — particularly one that overshadowed intricate relationships like the various rivalries among the Westerosi houses — the resulting power vacuum allows many smaller-scale conflicts to surface. Are the Lannisters truly in control of Westeros after Robert Boratheon’s death? The North’s rebellion and the subtle dissent of other houses suggest they are not.

In comparison, many question whether the fall of the Soviet Union meant the rise of US hegemony or a multipolar power distribution. No longer worried about belonging to an East, West or third bloc, countries’ internal differences began to surface after the Cold War. Similar to the fall of the Targaryen dynasty, the abrupt end of the bipolar power distribution of the Cold War scrambled the identities of many previously aligned countries. Because the bipolar power structure was so pervasive and all-encompassing, when it finally crumbled, it laid bare numerous internal politics that had been masked and conflicts that had been suppressed. This gave way to an era of intrastate and ethnic conflicts.

Similar to the Seven Kingdoms and the downfall of the Mad King Aerys Targaryen, many persisting barriers to cooperation are offshoots of the Cold War experience. Lingering tensions both within and outside national borders can be explained by the variation in historical memory, whether in the eastern, western or non-aligned blocs.

Lesson No. 2: The excessive use of unreliable weapons can be counterproductive

Identity and historical memory are also shaped by symbols of power. On the show, dragons represent a tool for coercion—in other words, a weapon. The Targaryens’ dragons enabled their ancestors to conquer Westeros and unite the Seven Kingdoms. When their sole surviving heir, Danaerys Targaryen, becomes the “mother of dragons”, she significantly increases her military capacity and even her political authority. But as the dragons mature and she transitions from warrior to ruler, she begins to see how little control she actually exerts over them. By season 4, one dragon begins killing livestock, and later, a child.

This is not unlike the concerning rise in “collateral damage” from drone warfare.

In addition to their power, dragons demonstrate both the temptation and perils of using effective but ultimately imperfect modern weaponry like drones. Take the drone wars in Pakistan. The appeal of drone use comes from its cost effectiveness compared to traditional boots-on-the-ground combat, and from its ability to cleanly take out individuals. But in order to carry out these surgical missions, extremely accurate intelligence is absolutely necessary; most civilian deaths occur when the target is unknown or unidentified. The joint campaigns of the US and Pakistani governments have advanced the fight against terror cells, but at the significant cost of civilian casualties.

Lesson No. 3: Freedom is never imposed

Wielding these dragons as she amasses an army, Danaerys takes viewers through a lesson in “otherness” as she conquers her way across the Eastern continent.

Her crusades against the masters of Slavers’ Bay seem like a noble and justified cause, especially after she witnesses the gruesome acts they committed. Likewise, the democracy-touting neoconservatives of the early 2000s thought that in spreading their model, they would solve the world’s problems. But seen differently, Danaerys is a silver-haired outsider who is using her “liberation” campaign as a political wrench in order to add numbers to her army, which she hopes will one day take back Westeros.

As she upends the entire structural and institutional makeup of these societies, she fails to consider the aftermath of her interventions. Her exchange with Jorah, her guard and counsel, foreshadows some of the trouble she later experiences:

Dany: Perhaps they didn’t want to be conquered.

Jorah: You didn’t conquer them. You liberated them.

Dany: People learn to love their chains.

Later, the aftermath of her liberation in the first slave nation comes back to haunt her. “Without the [armed forces]there to enforce your rule, the Wise Masters have retaken control of the city,” she is informed. “They’ve re-enslaved the freed men who stayed behind and swore to take revenge against you. And in Astapor, the council you installed to rule the city has been overthrown by a butcher named Cleon, who’s declared himself ‘His Imperial Majesty.’” Realizing her liberations have created instability, she decides to impose her own system of law and order.

Slowly, she begins to see her liberation project unravel after failing to account for internal political complexities. Not all the slaves are better off than before her invasion; many are now homeless and jobless. In addition, the elite masters she ousted have mobilized into a group of violent extremists, the Sons of the Harpy, with growing legitimacy.

In these crusade-like interventions, Danaerys embodies the turn of the century neoconservative sextant of promoting democracy around the world without understanding that when it comes to governance, one size doesn’t fit all. As she, like the neoconservatives, disrupts the fabric of society, she lacks the understanding necessary for creating sustainable peace tailored to the lands she invades.

In a real-world parallel, once it became clear Saddam Hussein did not possess WMD, the mission of operation Iraqi Freedom turned to establishing democratic rule. In a costly and drawn out war, the US overlooked factors like religion, ethnic divides and arbitrary borders that made its brand of democracy impossible to achieve in that state.

Danaerys’s experiences can teach developed countries with policing aspirations that no matter how well-intentioned the intervention, political institutions must be tailored to the local environment. Furthermore, as development economist William Easterly says, freedom cannot come from the outside; otherwise, it wouldn’t be freedom. 

What’s Next for Westeros?

Westerosi “foreign policy” is in a period of transition, much like the international system after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. The creation of power vacuums, both on the Eastern and Western continents on the show, have led to destabilization as multiple poles vie for control of the Iron Throne.

This dynamic, though not completely analogous to post-Cold War international politics, at the very least loosely resembles Samuel Huntington’s Clash of Civilizations. In this theory, though the state remains the main political actor, conflict will be driven by fundamental ideological differences. “Civilization identity will be increasingly important in the future,” he says in his book, “and the world will be shaped in large measure by the interactions among seven or eight major civilizations.”

Many other ties exist in the show. What if the constant reminders of winter’s impending arrival were actually signaling a dangerous rise in temperatures due to greenhouse gases trapped in the atmosphere? The sorry state of the Night’s Watch and the little attention that is paid to the ever-worsening situation north of The Wall demonstrate the challenges of negotiating an issue with intangible or long-term effects, i.e., climate change.  In addition, the influx of Wildling people attempting to move south to escape the white walker army could well result in a refugee crisis.

And Season 6 could unleash an entirely new set of foreign policy lessons.

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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Correspondent Steve Helmeci wrote an interesting and critical piece on Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for Glimpse this year. The thrust of Helmeci’s argument is this: Hillary Clinton expounds an “outdated and dangerous” strategic ideology, which he refers to as “Cold War-era Realism.”

Clinton’s Cold War-era Realism, in Helmeci’s understanding, “operates under the assumption that any international entity not pro-US must be anti-US.”

I take exception to Helmeci’s characterization of “Cold War-era Realists”, not least because I consider myself to be one. But more importantly, the figures he calls “Cold War Realists” — Harry Truman, Richard Nixon, and Ronald Reagan (not directly, but implicitly through his reference to Margaret Thatcher)— each represent a very different strain of Realism that cannot be simply reduced to a Manichean, us-versus-them mentality.

So what was Cold War Realism? It could be considered a stool that rested on three legs of equal importance, as best described by George Kennan’s X Article and Long Telegram: First, a defense of the American-led international trading order encompassing US Arab Allies, NATO and liberal East Asian states like Japan and South Korea; Second, containment of the Soviet Union through power-balancing in strategic regions of Eurasia; Third, a defense of American principles of liberty and democracy in the face of the Communist threat.

The different strains of Cold War Realism embodied by Truman, Nixon and Reagan each emphasized a different pillar of the bipartisan consensus around Cold War Realism, without neglecting the other two. They made for very different types of strategies, all in the service of the same overall goals.

The Democratic Party of the 40s, 50s and 60s followed the international order-building tendencies of Franklin Roosevelt. President Harry Truman, along with Democratic Internationalist assistants like Dean Acheson and John Foster Dulles, were the real enablers of the NATO alliance, the trade arrangements and the Marshall Plan that grew so crucial during the long conflict with the Soviets. Other Democratic Internationalist presidents like Lyndon Johnson carried the tradition through. They were prone to interventionism—Democratic Internationalist presidents got America embroiled in both Korea and Vietnam.

Reacting against these sorts of internationalists were the Republican Power-Balancers, like Dwight Eisenhower, Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger. Where Democratic Internationalists focused on the international order leg of the stool, Republican Power-Balancers focused on its power-balancing aspects—hence Eisenhower’s refusal to support American allies, the British and the French in the Suez Crisis, and President Nixon and Secretary Kissinger’s legendary trip to and recognition of the People’s Republic of China. More concerned with keeping order than with promoting principles, this kind of strategist was often accused of being un-American.

Thus, after periods of retrenchment and recalibration, Neoconservative Hawks, or their Democratic equivalents, came to power, promising a return to values-based foreign policies. In some ways, President Kennedy was more a Neoconservative Hawk than a Democratic Internationalist. Just take his inaugural assertion that “we shall pay any price… to assure the survival and the success of liberty.” But the best representatives of this values-based anti-Soviet militarism were President Ronald Reagan and his assistant, Jeanne Kirkpatrick. The primary thrust of Neoconservative Hawks’ agenda was the defense and promotion of liberty and democracy abroad, as evidenced in Reagan’s support for anticommunist forces around the world but especially in Eastern Europe, and their harsh anti-Soviet rhetoric, as best exemplified by Reagan’s “evil empire” quote.

What About Hillary?

Now this leads us to another question—is Hillary Clinton rightly regarded as a “Cold War-era Realist”, and if so, which type is she?

Given the criteria Helmeci cites, it’s not clear to me that Secretary Clinton fits into the Cold War Realist tradition. Hillary’s yes-vote on the 2003 invasion of Iraq and her counsel to President Obama to topple Qadaffi and Assad in the name of human rights seem to indicate that the former Secretary of State falls into a very different and newer foreign policy tradition than that of the Cold War Realists: let’s call it the “End of History” camp.

Published in 1991, Francis Fukuyama’s essay, “The End of History”, basically argues that free markets, open societies and democratic polities represent the last conceivable form of human social organization. Thus all societies in the post-Communist world will begin to evolve, slowly or quickly, towards Western liberal norms.

Fukuyama did not literally mean that the United States should actively promote democratic transitions all over the world. Nonetheless, the American political elite generally interpreted Fukuyama’s essay quite literally, and did just that. A brilliant case can be made that the foreign policy strategies of Presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama were each a version of the “End of History” overlaid onto traditional American foreign policy strategies.

For example, President Clinton made intensive efforts to expand the liberal international trading order as a global regime rather than a series of regional trading regimes. Under his administration, many believed that national sovereignty would slowly erode as globalization inevitably took its course. Clinton was what Truman would have been had Truman shared his optimistic outlook on the progress of history.

President Bush made efforts in his first term to spread democracy around the world by the sword, most notably in Iraq and most memorably through his “Axis of Evil” designation. Bush’s democracy-hawking interventionism was what Reagan’s neoconservatism would have been, had Reagan not displayed prudent restraint and a more limited view of freedom’s progress.

President Obama promised better relations with former American rivals around the world through a diminished American stance that assumed that natural balances of power would materialize as America withdrew her influence. Obama is what Nixon would have looked like, had Nixon not been cynical and tough-minded about human nature and international politics.

The strategies that post-Cold War presidents like Clinton, Bush and Obama have pursued have reflected the “End of History’s” intellectual understanding of a relatively benign human nature, cooperation rather than competition as the natural state of human affairs, and globalization and democracy as inexorably advancing developments pushed along by history itself. The strategies themselves — order building, promotion of American ideals, retrenchment and power-balancing — are not bad. But their application by political elites who lack a tragic understanding of human history is what has led to the vast gulf between the foreign policy successes of Truman, Nixon and Reagan, and the foreign policy failures of Clinton, Bush and Obama.

So where does Hillary Clinton fit into all this?

Based on her votes and counsel on the Iraq War and the Arab dictators, she seems to be not a Cold War Realist but an End of History democracy hawk like George W. Bush. That means that for the next four-to-eight years, we’ll probably have more of the same intellectually flawed, post-Cold War foreign policy we’ve had for the last three administrations.

Ideas really do have consequences—Fukuyama’s optimism and Kennan’s caution have inspired very different results.

But in an age of ascendant rivals abroad and terrorists lurking in every shadow, we need a mix between the internationalism of Truman and the power-balancing of Nixon. And we need a policy informed by understanding that jettisons the illusions of globalized democratic progress and benign human intentions. We need someone who will preserve the international order without attempting to impose it upon others. We need someone who can best protect the American way of life in an increasingly complicated and dangerous world.

We need a Cold War Realist.

Luke Phillips would like to thank Dr. Colin Dueck for providing inspiration for some of the ideas presented in this piece.

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

The post Looking for a Cold War Realist appeared first on Glimpse from the Globe.

As the United States edges ever closer to another presidential election in 2016, foreign policy discussion on the campaign trail has turned ugly. A leading candidate for the Republican Party nomination openly stated that they would ban all Muslims from immigrating into the country, while another mused aloud on the feasibility of glow-in-the-dark sand in the deserts of the Middle East. Given these first few months, it appears a number of candidates feel that apocalyptic force is the only viable US foreign policy strategy.

The good news is that polls and pundits alike do not anticipate Donald Trump or Ted Cruz to occupy the Oval Office come January. Professional consensus on the 2016 election sees the Democratic frontrunner, Hillary Clinton, becoming President at the end of the year, partly as a result of her vast experience in the realm of foreign policy.

Despite the positive perception of her experience, her foreign policy ideas must be examined independently—and they prove to be outdated and dangerous. It is true that Clinton’s foreign policy platforms are neither apocalyptic nor isolationist, making them preferable to those of Cruz or Trump. But that is setting an incredibly low bar for presidential foreign policy. Based on two defining moments during her tenure as Secretary of State – her council on regime change in Libya and her response to the Arab Spring in Egypt – Hillary Clinton has shown herself to be a Cold War-era realist, much like Harry Truman, Lyndon Johnson or Richard Nixon (perhaps even Margaret Thatcher). Clinton operates under the assumption that any international entity not pro-US must be anti-US and, as happened during the tenures of the aforementioned leaders, that view has often lead to involvement or escalation in unnecessary, unproductive conflicts.

The most visible example of Secretary Clinton’s realist ideology came when she advocated for aggressive regime change in Libya without a strategy in place for the aftermath. Muammar Gaddafi was certainly a tyrant who treated his people horribly and masterminded an attack on US soldiers in Berlin before the turn of the century. But the willingness on the part of President Obama and Secretary Clinton to destabilize Libya originated in a Cold War ideal. In explaining his choice to use force in the country, President Obama said that if Gaddafi were left in power, “The democratic values that we stand for would be overrun.” In the estimation of President Obama and Secretary Clinton, foreign leaders are either “with us or against us”, and those against us should be deposed. Interestingly, when the Muslim Brotherhood was voted into power in 2014, a CIA-trained, Libyan-born, US citizen named General Khalifa Belqasim Haftar assumed control of the Libyan government. General Haftar has since threatened to disband governmental institutions in an attempt to seize power—in effect, rule as Gaddafi did. Should Secretary Clinton become President, a willingness to open up power vacuums by toppling regimes considered anti-American could pose a number of problems.

The lack of a clear strategy for implementing traditional democracy in Libya, as evidenced by the early success of the Muslim Brotherhood and the subsequent chaos that rendered the country a hotbed for loose weapons and terrorists, calls into question Secretary Clinton’s ability to handle a similar situation. Bashar al-Assad has overstayed his welcome as leader of Syria, and more damning evidence of infringements on democratic values has been brought against him than Gaddafi. Given Secretary Clinton’s council to President Obama on how to handle Gaddafi, President Clinton would surely do her best to depose Assad. She has even alluded to wanting to depose Assad before tackling the problem of ISIS in Syria.

Her argument that rebels on the ground would be more invested in fighting ISIS if Assad was gone is incredibly naïve for a woman of her experience. Nature abhors a vacuum, so the most organized group will surely fill the power void left by a deposed Assad. Unless Clinton has a miracle plan for organizing the moderate forces in Syria, ousting Assad would clear a path for ISIS to seize even more control in the country. Hasty regime change in Libya led to the Muslim Brotherhood gaining power; why would that pattern not continue in Syria?

Secretary Clinton’s support of the pro-democracy Libyan intervention is made all the more curious when considering how she handled the Arab Spring. Following the Tahrir Square protests in 2011, Secretary Clinton warned President Obama and his foreign policy team that the protesters would not be able to govern themselves if Mubarak was overthrown. According to Dennis Ross, Clinton feared that if the US backed protesters it would be turning its back on a long-time friend in Mubarak. Even Ross, a man described as “a hard-headed realist”, felt Clinton was “putting too much stock in…old friends.” Surely Mubarak was opposed to democratic values, but he was pro-US. Therefore, Secretary Clinton fought to protect Mubarak until President Obama chose to support the protesters.

Hypocrisy aside, Secretary Clinton’s desire to stand behind “friends” at all cost could deprive the US of a great opportunity during her Presidency: a shift away from its alliance with Saudi Arabia. The political, social and economic timing could not be better. Saudi Arabia has grown increasingly violent, and rang in the New Year by executing 47 dissidents. Domestic shale oil production in the US continues to decrease petroleum imports, meaning less business with Gulf States. The nuclear deal with Iran has opened the door to a more friendly relationship. The times are changing, and such a strong alliance with Saudi Arabia may no longer be required. Under President Clinton, however, the policy of defending “friends” would allow for no such maneuvering, lest the US be seen as turning its back on an ally. It is therefore plausible that in order to placate her ally, President Clinton would keep Iran at arms length (putting strain on a still-tenuous relationship), ignore human rights violations and allow democratic ideals like free speech to be punished by beheadings and public crucifixions.

Supporters of Secretary Clinton might argue that these events took place years ago and don’t reflect her current thinking on today’s challenges. However, while she has not had to defend her position on the Arab Spring movement, Secretary Clinton has reaffirmed her position on the Libyan intervention multiple times during debates in October and December of 2015. Moreover, while new situations pose new challenges, the overarching premise remains the same—renegade leaders who do not heed American warnings (Gaddafi and Assad) and decades-old alliances made untenable by leaders who systematically oppress their people (Mubarak’s Egypt and Saudi Arabia).

In fact, if Clinton embraces a foreign policy as President similar to the one she exhibited as Secretary, the ramifications will be more severe. Russia is openly backing Assad, which could lead to increased hostility if the US directly attacks Syria in an attempted regime change. ISIS, rather than the comparatively benign Muslim Brotherhood, would likely fill the power vacuum left post-Assad. And the escalation of proxy wars between Saudi Arabia and Iran could lead to potential US involvement on the Saudi side, calling into question the burgeoning diplomatic relationship with Iran.

Despite her vast experience in the field of foreign policy, Hillary Clinton is a Cold War-era realist. Her worldviews perpetuate conflict and utilize the same “us vs. them” mentality that saw the US become involved in countless aggressions from World War II until the 1990s. While Clinton may not be screaming incoherencies about the evils of Muslim people and is certainly not actively seeking apocalyptic nuclear conflict, her agenda isn’t that of peace and cooperation. I cannot say for certain why Secretary Clinton feels the need to exude toughness and operate based on the realist ideas of old, but I can say for certain that her ideas will not move the world in a positive direction. One can only hope that American voters concentrate on the reality of Secretary Clinton’s foreign policy rather than accept experience alone as a qualifying factor for the Presidency.

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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Behind the landmark climate deal that came out of Paris almost a month ago, one negotiator’s success deserves reflection. Izabella Teixeira was in a complicated position. As Brazil’s environment minister, she was tasked with a mediating role despite environmental negligence and political discord at home.

In Teixeira’s own words, Brazil suffered its “worst environmental disaster” mere weeks before the climate summit. On November 5, a dam in the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais burst, causing a sickly gray sludge with the consistency of concrete to ooze into the Doce River. Though mine operators are maintaining that the sludge is not toxic, it’s already clogged the gills of many species of fish and killed off their main food supply, plankton. The sludge also made the water too turbid for treatment. On November 25, the UN declared the Brazilian government’s response to the accident “insufficient”. The slow response meant that weeks after the dam burst, there was still no word on when diggers would begin to shift the sludge.

That might be because of a host of other problems currently plaguing the administration—namely, impeachment proceedings. In the midst of the Paris talks, Brazil’s congress officially opened a request filed in September. Around that time, President Dilma Rousseff’s popularity fell into single digit approval due to the corruption allegations circling her administration.

But even if Dilma weren’t being ousted, even if there weren’t a recession and even if the dam didn’t burst, Brazil’s bargaining position domestically would still be greatly limited, for one important reason: hardcore agribusiness lobbyists have infiltrated the country’s lawmaking bodies.

Take the exemplary case of Agriculture Minister, Katia Abreu. Her appointment by Rousseff in 2012 was extremely controversial. This land baroness was once the head of the National Agricultural Confederation (CNA), now an aggressive and politically savvy interest group that before her leadership was scattered and overlooked. Brazil’s media calls Abreu the “chainsaw queen” after her zeal to weaken the forest code. Her other interests include putting roads through the Amazon, the encouragement of monocultures and use of a highly volatile seed sterilization technology which biotech giants like Monsanto have pledged never to make commercially available.

Today, agribusiness pulls in a fifth of Brazil’s GDP, and agricultural food companies fund a quarter of Rousseff’s re-election campaign. Representative in congress have participated in rural protests against the demarcation of indigenous territory, but half of the 594 Brazilian lawmakers identify with the agribusiness lobby. Another indicator of their political infiltration is Brazil’s pesticide consumption. The agribusiness lobby took steps to streamline pesticide regulation all under one ministry, replacing the current system of sales that has to be cleared by multiple agencies and ministries. According to a Reuters’ investigation, the industry’s influence and the small budget allotted to regulating bodies limit the state’s ability to enforce healthy pesticide rules. One such push to re-evaluate 14 controversial pesticides is in its seventh year, hindered by manufacturers’ lawsuits and opposition from lawmakers.

A congress like this makes it hard to push environmental reforms through. Most congressional energy is going into the Rousseff administration’s survival, and there is no word yet on the lobby’s reaction to the COP21 climate agreement. Speaking in London in October, Teixeira said that the US isn’t the only one facing congressional resistance to stronger climate policies. On top of federal difficulties, local government enforcement is lax. For example, she said, authorities in the Amazon region of Rondonia handed out logging permits exceeding its total forest cover.

At the negotiation table, Brazil’s position is just as complex and multidimensional. Brazil was supposed to be the golden child of the summit. On some topics, it still is. For example, Brazil was named chair of the committee dealing with the differentiation between rich and poor countries. On this issue, Brazil is highly respected; it was the first developing country to commit to an absolute emissions cut, and has proposed a policy of “concentric differentiation” that will allow developing countries to gravitate towards economy-wide carbon cuts, but will slowly expand from starting point sectors, like transportation. It’s clear how this vague projected expansion could trouble industry leaders, thus applying pressure through congressional interest groups. At a time when the most powerful interest groups in Brazil’s congress have demonstrated an aversion to environmental considerations, particularly in agriculture, not all Brazilian lawmakers will embrace this solution with open arms.

Back on the international level, Brazil’s credibility is seriously undermined by recent environmental mishaps. In addition to the burst dam, Brazil’s satellite data for annual deforestation (lauded as a reliable enforcement mechanism) shows that forest clearing in Brazil has surpassed last year’s rate by 16%. In early November, an OECD assessment of the Brazilian economy concluded that for all its progress in conservation, Brazil isn’t doing enough. According to them, Brazil destroys a rainforest area the size of Israel every four years. This too can be somewhat attributed to a congressional agenda more partial to corporate interests at the expense of crucial environmental measures.

Much like in Robert Putnam’s famous theory of “Two-Level Games” – where delegates are caught between the demands of their fellow lawmakers at home and their international counterparts at the bargaining table – Izabella Teixeira weathered criticisms at home and abroad. In Paris, it fell on her shoulders to answer to Brazil’s slippage in domestic environmental policy, and also to lead negotiations on the differentiation of rich and poor nations. In Brazil, she angers anti-environmental congressmen who prioritize an unsustainable breed of economic development.

Maybe, then, because of these two levels, Brazil’s agenda at COP21 was full of split decision-making. Brazil has accepted greenhouse gas cuts but refuses to budge on their right to development as an emerging economy. It has not contributed to a climate fund, but is willing to share its tropical forest expertise with poorer nations.

Let Brazil be a reminder that sometimes, no matter how committed delegates are to leaving a summit with all countries on board, even important mediating players cannot fully execute their terms due to domestic realities. Let it also be a cautionary tale to developing country officials and Western leaders trying to reverse the trend where sustainable growth is often placed below economic development as a larger goal. In Latin America especially, where politics and business are often inextricable, the bargains, pressures and new directions yielded by the signatures on international agreements don’t always carry into domestic policy.  

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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As 2015 draws to a close, every region of the world is experiencing some amount of volatility that will persist into 2016. Some countries around the world will resolve their problems and thrive;  others will fail to meet their challenges and continue to suffer.

Europe continues to muddle through its occasional economic crises while bearing the weight of a politically fractious influx of Middle Eastern refugees. Russia is attempting to punch above its weight in conflicts on its near abroad while NATO beats its chest in response. Former Soviet states in the Caucasus and Central Asia have seen their economies take a collective nosedive, following the descent of both oil prices and the Russian ruble. China’s government is grappling with a domestic economic slowdown while trying to secure a sphere of influence. The rest of Asia, suspicious of Beijing’s initiatives, is coalescing around security concerns, but each nation there is dealing with its own domestic challenges. Latin America is enduring simultaneous political crises in Argentina, Brazil and Venezuela. Several countries in Africa are dealing with persistent terrorist threats from Islamic State (IS) affiliates, while others have seen their domestic politics unwind into violence. In North America, the United States is witnessing the ugly sides of domestic politics emerge as the November 2016 presidential election looms. Looking forward, it is better to focus on larger international issues rather than the futures of individual states.

Global Economic Outlook

The global economy is slowly piecing itself back together. Europe has pushed through a number of economic crises, East Asian economies are still moving along and North America is rebounding well. “The Economist” predicts a global growth of 2.7% in 2016. They also predict that Asia, Africa and North America will grow at or above 3% in the coming year. With the US Federal Reserve set to hike interest rates, this seems plausible, but financial markets will need time to adjust. This will also have consequences for the value of currencies worldwide—the rate hike is meant in part to stave off inflation in the US where years of quantitative easing have flooded the economy with cheap dollars. A rebounding dollar could hit developing states hard, especially in emerging markets across Latin America and Asia. But it would also make their exports more attractive compared to American goods and services.

Natural resource exporters will suffer from low commodity prices. The addition of Iranian and American hydrocarbons to world markets will keep energy prices depressed. These same low prices can help fuel growth in other countries that leverage the availability of cheap energy and raw materials. More developed and sophisticated economies like India and South Korea are best positioned to take advantage of cheap, plentiful energy. Economies that depend on a sole supplier – especially those in Eastern Europe that depend on Russian hydrocarbons – may use this time to diversify their supply options.

The Cyber World

Cybersecurity continues its rise in importance and prominence. Developed nations will compete to create better cyber capabilities to protect utilities, banks and other types of infrastructure that are connected to the internet, and the demand for skilled information technologists will continue to surge worldwide. Developing nations, beset with other challenges, will struggle to keep apace. The most advanced countries, such as the US, China and Russia, may begin to offer cyber capabilities to developing nations in efforts to gain influence.

Meanwhile, increased government interest in the cyberworld will be matched by private citizen efforts to protect internet freedoms. Nations will settle debates over the competing importance of security and privacy differently. Those that land on the side of security and surveillance may find themselves under scrutiny from both hacker collectives like Anonymous and prominent civil liberties advocates. But mass surveillance and data collection will continue across the world; internet privacy for individuals will continue to be dismantled in 2016.

Terrorism

Terrorism will remain a worldwide security concern in 2016. Countries across the globe will continue to collaborate to combat terror threats, although different governments will implement vastly different measures. Inevitably, headline-grabbing attacks will be attempted in the West and Asia this year. The victimized nations will ramp up their security capabilities, possibly at the expense of civil liberties.

The Islamic State’s appeal to jihadists will remain strong, but it will remain physically isolated within parts of Iraq and Syria and focused on securing and legitimizing its caliphate. While fresh attacks are all but certain, an event on the scale of 9/11 is highly unlikely based on what information is available. IS cannot match al-Qaeda’s former capabilities, and multinational efforts will likely prevent IS from reaching that level. Al-Qaeda itself is no longer potent enough to carry out major attacks on the West, and it does not seem capable of resurrecting itself this year.

Politics and Security in the Middle East

The Syrian crisis won’t be resolved. Refugees will continue to flee the conflict zone and surrounding nations must deal with the consequences. As the Islamic State is continually bombarded, outside actors like the United States, Russia and Iran will pick their proxies on the ground and commit to them this year. The US will continue to back Iraq as long as possible, but with Iranian and Russian military advisors also present in Baghdad, the Iraqi-American relationship may start to unravel. As relations deteriorate, the US will have no choice but to put its weight behind the Kurds. Washington must attempt to forge a mutual understanding between Kurdish leaders and Turkey to bring them both together against IS and the Assad regime. But the US will likely fail to create a meaningful Turkish-Kurdish alliance, unless both the Islamic State and the Assad regime cause all three enough pain to bring them together.

Turkey will not stand for the Kurds, IS or Assad gaining power in Syria and will vehemently protest American support for Iraqi Kurds. It will consider a unilateral incursion into Syria, and taking some of northeastern Syria under its control is likely. However, Turkey will not aim to engage Russian forces, limiting its activities to Kurdish and IS territories.

Russia and Iran will continue to support the Assad regime. However, they will seek a diplomatic solution where Assad remains in power over the Alawite-controlled areas of Syria between the western cities of Damascus and Aleppo. Russia will push hard for a diplomatic solution ensuring Assad’s survivability, even if that means leaving the regime with a smaller territory and putting the rest up for grabs among rebel groups. Assad’s forces have lost substantial manpower, and Russia needs to get out and focus its attention on issues closer to home. Iran has apparently begun withdrawing some of its forces from Syria. If IS becomes threatening enough to demand the full attention of other rebel forces, a settlement may become a possibility. But rebel enmity for Assad will not fade this year, and no agreement will be reached.

Sunni Arab nations will mull the possibility of extending support to non-Islamic State Sunni factions in Iraq and Syria, but will not get deeply involved unless a major Shia-led atrocity occurs. But in this conflict, the possibility of genocide cannot be ruled out. Arabs will maintain their strong focus on the civil war in Yemen where they will increase their support for anti-Houthi forces. Kuwait recently became involved on the ground alongside Saudi, Bahraini and Emirati forces; all these nations will redouble their efforts to eliminate the Houthi rebels. On the other side of the conflict, Iran will struggle to provide comparable aid to the Houthis due to Saudi Arabia’s effective blockade around Yemen. Yemen’s civil war could end this year in favor of the ousted Sunni government. The coalition of Sunni forces are certainly stronger right now, but they must achieve a decisive victory over the Houthis to see the conflict end. Iranian support will not enable the Houthis to push back, but economic pressure on the Gulf nations may diminish the total commitment that coalition members can make, delaying the end of the conflict.

Maritime Claims in Asia

China will continue to aggressively exert control over its proclaimed possessions in the South China Sea and East China Sea. Japan and South Korea will hold fast against these claims in the East; Japan’s recent apology to South Korea for atrocities committed during World War II is a sign of the two states’ emerging strategic alliance. Similar apologies may be coming out of Tokyo to nations such as the Philippines or Vietnam, but Beijing will get no such treatment.

In the South China Sea, the US will publicly raise the profile of its military and diplomatic support for nations with maritime claims competing against China. The US has announced its intent to base more forces in the Philippines, and it has also declared its intent to hold more multilateral exercises with ASEAN nations, obviously to deter Chinese aggression. America will be successful in forging a common cause across Asia to prevent the spread of China’s navy, but a formal alliance of nations aimed at deterring China is unlikely.

However, China will not be intimidated. It will continue its strategy of building and developing artificial territory that it claims for its own. No country will resort to the use of force against China in defense of an uninhabited island, but inhabited islands will be actively defended. China may succeed in taking control of most of its desired area, but won’t prevent American naval vessels from patrolling throughout the South China Sea. Neither side will provoke a military conflict; the economic impact would be disastrous.

Western Hegemony

The United States will remain the world’s superpower throughout 2016 and NATO the most potent military coalition. When bundled together, the European, North American and Australian economies dwarf the rest of the world, and this is the foundation of Western power today. However, the political appeal of the West has been diminishing and will continue to decline; China has proven that economic growth can be achieved without implementing democracy and developing nations have taken notice. The West cannot rely on its own perceived political superiority or glorifying human rights to influence other nations. Economic strength and cultural appeal are the foundations of Western soft power.

Vibrant economies will also support hard power, financing Western military expeditions worldwide as the West continues its global counterterrorism campaign. America’s combat mission in Afghanistan will also continue unabated through this year and the next American president will decide its fate. Eastern European NATO members will be bolstered as NATO’s original nemesis continues to revive itself. Russia may be seething at the loss of a jet to Turkey, but it will not seriously entertain the idea of confronting NATO. With the economy reeling, Putin cannot afford any defeat in foreign affairs, much less one with such astronomical consequences.

Trade between Eastern and Western economies will hold steady, with Western demand keeping manufacturing alive in East Asia and providing a basis for the expansion of the services sector. China and India will continue to feed off this energy to grow and diversify their own economies. American growth and European steadiness will keep demand for goods high. Dollars and Euros will continue to circulate globally as the preferred currencies for trade, and Western financial institutions will remain the standard bearers of the economy. Alternative financiers like the Chinese-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank will see their influence grow, but the West will maintain a strong lead in available capital. China will counter the West by attempting to invest faster and more actively in infrastructure projects across Asia and Africa, but its own economic slowdown will constrain its capabilities.

Overall, Western hegemony may not remain as powerful as it has been, but the West’s economic and military strength will persist even as other states ascend into regional powers.

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

The post A Glimpse of the Future: 2016 Global Forecast appeared first on Glimpse from the Globe.

Since Chinese President Xi Jinping first unveiled it in 2013, One Belt, One Road (OBOR) has only grown in importance as a Chinese policy goal. The comprehensive trade and infrastructure development initiative enjoys great enthusiasm in China, but the government’s notorious lack of transparency has kept other countries guessing at the true motives behind the project. In this case, however, China’s underlying interests may be closer to its stated goals than the international community might expect. Using OBOR, China hopes to shape its global image into a new model of benign hegemony, a great power that uses its influence to benefit, not suppress, other countries.

According to the Chinese government, OBOR is “President Xi Jinping’s plan to connect Asia and Europe by borrowing the concept of the historical Silk Road,” a plan that will include a “Silk Road Economic Belt” – One Belt – and a “21st century Maritime Silk Road” – One Road.

Chinese sources stress the widespread benefits of the initiative for all countries involved and downplay the underlying benefits for China itself. OBOR is portrayed as a magnanimous gift to the surrounding region, not a means to dominate it. The official website of the People’s Republic of China lists the beneficiaries of OBOR as “4.4 billion people, 63% of the global population, a collective GDP of $2.1 trillion and 29% of the world’s output.” Chinese professor, writer and foreign affairs specialist Dingding Chen similarly stressed the altruism driving OBOR: “China does not seek to become a hegemon in Asia and beyond,” he argued in a November 2014 article in The Diplomat. “Instead, by helping other countries develop, China hopes to achieve a ‘win-win’ situation between it and other partners.”

But statesmen do not craft policy out of pure altruism. China’s reluctance to reveal the true interests behind this major diplomatic offensive has engendered a range of speculations among the international community. After all, there must be a reason for “pouring huge investments into low-return projects in high-risk countries,” in the words of a June 2015 publication of the European Council on Foreign Relations. For instance, China has put billions of euros into the Greek port Piraeus, “the most important investment in Greece in the last decade” according to former Greek Prime Minister Antonis Samaras. Though it will facilitate Chinese-EU trade, the deal appears to disproportionately benefit Greece and appears risky at a moment of great financial instability in the country. Such a willingness to pursue connectivity projects speaks to Chinese determination in advancing OBOR and suggests strong underlying motivations.

The potential benefits of OBOR for the Chinese can be approached from two different angles – geopolitical and economic – although the quest for global soft power also plays a vital role.

From a hard power-driven, geopolitical standpoint, OBOR will undoubtedly enhance Chinese influence throughout the Eurasian continent, most notably in strategic areas like Central Asia. Despite China’s benign rhetoric, foreign policy experts in other countries have interpreted this move as a forceful pushback against other powers’ presence in China’s neighborhood; mainly a challenge to Russian and US power in the region. Though this sort of interpretation of OBOR is inherently grounded in the zero-sum assumptions about international politics and misses possible interpretations from other perspectives, it likely contains a degree of truth. The Chinese may not be primarily motivated by the desire for regional hegemony – government officials have stressed that OBOR is not a “tool of geopolitics” – but other countries’ perceptions of China’s goals can reify this power politics interpretation. Though the Chinese have publicly discouraged others from approaching OBOR with an “out-dated Cold War mentality,” such attitudes could easily arise, stirring up fear and defensive actions in countries that feel threated by China.

At its core, OBOR purports to be an economic initiative, aimed at increasing trade throughout the Eurasian continent through enhancing both physical connectivity – transport infrastructure – and monetary flows, all facilitated by the new and controversial Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. Chinese scholars have stressed a desire to help “rebalance” the global economy, implying that Western economies “were responsible for the global economic and political imbalances that led to the global financial crisis.” Professor Su Hao of China Foreign Affairs University described OBOR as “a strategic bridge between two complementary economies,” referring to those of Asia and Europe. But even from an economic standpoint, these sorts of statements inherently challenge US power, though not necessarily intentionally. OBOR works to solidify Europe’s recent reorientation toward Asia, which implies turning away from its traditional ally—the US. From the outside, it is difficult if not impossible to fully grasp China’s internal logic, but the fact remains that other countries’ perceptions of and reactions to OBOR matter as much as Chinese intentions.

Perhaps the most holistic interpretation of OBOR is captured by the argument that China wishes to become a “new type of rising power,” an appropriately broad statement that reflects the many goals folded into OBOR. This official position echoes throughout Chinese press and rhetoric: China as “a country that has learnt from history and intends to break the pattern of the rise of global powers, creating a new precedent of peaceful rise.” Hao has called China “a giver, not a taker.”

The sheer volume of such public statements put out by Chinese academics and officials suggests that at the heart of OBOR lies a quest for soft power. Perhaps China genuinely seeks to enhance trade in the region for the benefit of all, but a more nuanced interpretation suggests that China recognizes the importance of moral sway for boosting its global status. For instance, in addition to building transportation infrastructure in Central Asia, China has been striving to win favor in the region by providing services like the Confucian Centers, which offer grants to Kazakh students to study Chinese or topics related to China. Confucian Centers have been gaining popularity in Kazakhstan over attending Russian universities, traditionally the popular option.

The Central Asian example shows China building up a positive reputation to complement its quest for economic leverage. At the moment, according to Foreign Policy magazine correspondent Reid Standish, “China doesn’t have the same type of soft-power credibility that a country like Russia or even the United States has in Central Asia.” But its active pursuit of such a status suggests that OBOR is as much about shaping China’s identity in the world as it is about concrete economic or geopolitical goals. Of course, all these factors come together to help China achieve the status of an alternative, superior model for a world power and to legitimize its growing hegemony in its neighborhood by stressing good intentions. For instance, responding to comparisons of OBOR to the Marshall Plan, Chen pointed out that the Chinese initiative is much more ambitious and, crucially, has no strings attached to the development aid it offers but is “aimed at achieving a ‘win-win’ outcome for everyone.”

Such statements reveal the true intent behind OBOR, at least from a public relations standpoint. Setting itself up in opposition to past and present superpowers like the US and Russia, China can point to OBOR as an example of purportedly developing infrastructure and trade around the world with no hidden agenda, ideological goals or other “strings attached.” Whether or not China will be successful in this soft power campaign depends on the overall success of OBOR, which will dictate how other countries respond to increased Chinese presence in their own regions.

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

The post One Belt, One Road: China’s Ambitious PR Campaign appeared first on Glimpse from the Globe.

Luke Phillips

Finally. Decades after the Castro regime ceased being a true geopolitical threat, the US and Cuba will finally begin the long, slow process of formalizing their relationship, thawing it out of the Cold War-era stalemate and opening the way for something new and potentially fruitful.

A quick look at the map of the Caribbean reveals that, if controlled by a hostile power, Cuba could be a dagger pointed at the heart of the US. But, if controlled by a power friendly to US interests, it could easily prove a huge boon to the economy of the Greater Caribbean–the necessary piece for a great network of ports, refineries and passageways from which the mineral and agricultural goods of the US and Mexican heartlands might be improved and offered to the world. This network was the diamond in the eyes of pre-Castro US and Latin American statesmen, but the Cuban Revolution halted it in its tracks. Now that there can be real economic and political progress between the US and Cuba, expect all the Caribbean countries, especially the US, Mexico and Cuba, to reap the benefits of a rejuvenated trade network in the Greater Caribbean Basin.

Jack Anderson

It’s nice to see that Cuba is no longer a potential destination for the Marine Corps. Cuba now needs to become a destination for the Peace Corps. Under US embargoes, Cuban economic development stalled for years. For instance, stories of well-educated doctors abandoning their medical profession to drive taxis were commonplace. Furthermore, the Castro regime’s reform efforts have not been able to bring many improvements. Revived US-Cuba and Latin America-Cuba relations may provide the spark needed for development (and possibly the emigration of Cubans from Miami to Havana).

Additionally, this reconciliation gives Cuba greater international recognition for its role in the Colombia-FARC negotiations, which have been traditionally held in Havana. Reconciling with the US and brokering a peace settlement in Latin America’s longest running conflict may very well put Raul Castro in contention for a Nobel Peace Prize, if he can pull it off successfully.

Biz Peabody

Obama noted that reopening the US-Cuba relationship is geared towards “renewing our leadership in the Americas” and that this sudden policy change — if it gets through Congress — is clearly going to boost what has been a steadily declining economic situation for the Cuban people.

But let’s look at this issue from an international perspective: the US, though certainly correct to pursue this policy shift for the good of Cuba, its people, and US business and ideological interests, needs to be wary of how the international community will view the new partnership. US allies in other parts of the world are bound to question this 180-degree policy shift towards a regime that has been an ideological enemy for fifty years. Our allies in the Middle East, such as Israel, Saudi Arabia and Jordan, which are primarily concerned with IS’s territorial advancements and the extent of Iran’s nuclear capabilities, have relied almost exclusively on US commitment to their causes. Now, after a few years of watching the US teeter back and forth between potential rapprochement with Iran and, more recently, flirt with an official alliance with Syria’s Bashar al-Assad in the face of the IS crisis, long-term US allies have to watch as the US fixes its relations with an oppressive, communist regime without demanding or requiring any real changes on Cuba’s part. Who’s not to say the Obama administration will pull another wildcard from its deck and do the same with Iran — and this time, at the expense of valuable, long-standing alliances?

Nathaniel Haas

While the decision by the Obama administration to normalize relations with the Cuban government is important for both geopolitical and economic reasons, it is mostly significant for an entirely different reason.

Beginning to normalize relations did not happen in a vacuum isolated from domestic political factors. US policy towards Cuba has been obsolete for years; the 1996 Helm’s Burton Act that codified the embargo was only passed after the Cuban air force shot down two civilian planes operated by a Miami-based Anti-Castro cohort. If normalizing relations was so important from an economic and foreign policy perspective, then it would have been done long ago. Instead, the unique political position of the Obama administration made steps toward normalization both possible and practical.

The political genius of Obama’s decision is threefold. First, with midterm elections out of the way, the announcement at reconciliation signals Obama’s desire to leave a legacy as a President not afraid to act on his own and who refuses to be encumbered by Congressional gridlock. Second, with an incoming Republican majority in both houses of Congress and an upcoming Presidential election, the decision could not be more timely. While the President was able to unilaterally ease some travel and trade restrictions, only Congress can totally lift both the travel ban and the embargo on economic activity originally put in place in 1996. Doing so has already exposed divisions between potential Republican Presidential nominees: it was assailed by Florida conservatives Marco Rubio and Jeb Bush, but embraced by Libertarian Rand Paul. Third and finally, polls reveal the decision is widely popular among the young Latino voting base, not just in the Cuban-heavy and perennially important swing state of Florida, but across the country–another valuable contribution to the Democrat effort to hold the White House come 2016.

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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