May 2010

Imagine an almost paradoxical dynamic whereby the state with the greatest defense posed the greatest threat to international strategic stability. In this dynamic, wars will no longer be won or lost based on the offensive prowess of the advancing military; rather, they will be won or lost based on a nation’s ability to [...]]]> By Justin Baker

May 2010

Imagine an almost paradoxical dynamic whereby the state with the greatest defense posed the greatest threat to international strategic stability. In this dynamic, wars will no longer be won or lost based on the offensive prowess of the advancing military; rather, they will be won or lost based on a nation’s ability to nullify offensive superweapons with an impenetrable defense shield. During the mid-to-late 20th century, this dynamic was more of a fantasy-in-development than it was an operational and effective system.

During the Cold War’s détente era (1962-79), the United States accelerated an ambitious effort to address the threats posed by the intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) and the tactical ballistic missile (TBM). Building from the lackluster Nike Hercules missile system of the 1950s, the United States developed the Nike Zeus missile system with limited success. This continuous programmatic evolution culminated with the development of the Army Air Defense System which, in the 1970s, was renamed the PATRIOT Air Defense Missile System.¹ However, in May 1972, the United States and the Soviet Union signed the Anti-Ballistic Missile Systems Treaty (ABM Treaty), severely restricting the deployment of ABM systems to two domestic locations per nation. With the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, the ABM treaty lost much (if not all) of its efficacy and the Western world finally witnessed an end to the decades-long nuclear arms race that enveloped the world in the Cold War.² With 21st century advances in GPS, microprocessors, and laser-guided weaponry, a new arms race is now emerging – one that compels nations to cooperate on a hemispheric level by deploying a global missile defense system.

With the United States pioneering the regionalization of missile defense, select global powers (most notably Russia) initially feared that the regional proliferation of missile defense systems directly threatened the strategic stability of the international arena.  According to a 2002 CRS report National Missile Defense: Russia’s Reaction, Russian officials explicitly feared that the proliferation of missile defense systems posed a direct and immediate threat to international strategic stability.³ These threats to the global balance of power struck at the hearts of core neorealists who feared that distortions in the ‘just equilibrium’ (i.e. a disproportionate shift in the balance of power) would not mitigate but incite international conflict.

Despite fervent Russian opposition, the United States under President George W. Bush continued to deploy Raytheon’s MM-104 PATRIOT missile system in the territories of six NATO allies (primarily European) and eight non-NATO nations. During his second term, President Bush attempted to expand U.S. missile defense systems into Poland and the Czech Republic, whereby Moscow responded by blasting the U.S. for attempting to unilaterally shift the balance of power.⁴

In September of 2009, the Obama administration dispensed with Bush’s plans to expand missile defense into Poland and the Czech Republic. Instead, Obama has pushed for expansions into Bulgaria and Romania, prompting Moscow to seek inclusion in a NATO-led missile defense system. In an April interview with the Danish Broadcasting Corporation, Russian President Medvedev expressed his desire to participate in this system of global missile defense, as it must protect “all responsible participants of the international society.”⁵ More recently, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov cautioned that “cooperation needs to be from A to Z: to the end… We will assess the threats together, evaluate the risks together, and begin creating a defense system together.”⁶ After an April 2010 summit in Estonia, NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen and the United States have expressed optimism that substantial missile defense talks will involve Russia in the coming months.⁷

However, Moscow warns that an attempt by the U.S. to significantly expand its own missile defense would compel Russia to exit any prospective agreements. Still, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov affirmed in an April 2010 interview that Obama’s current plans for missile defense expansion posed little-to-no threat to the national security interests of Russia.⁸

With these new developments, it seems as though the prospect of a global missile shield is compelling world powers to come together and cooperate on common defense. Nations that fall under the auspices of this defense shield must now consolidate their security interests by becoming dependent on mutual cooperation among shielded nations. While the Cold War divided the East and the West, the prospect of a Russo-American global defense shield may, at last, catalyze a mutually beneficial partnership between both regions.

Works Cited

¹ Cirincione, J. (n.d.). Brief History of Ballistic Missile Defense and Current Programs in the United States. Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Retrieved May 6, 2010, from http://www.carnegieendowment.org/publications/index.cfm?fa=view&id=133

² ABM Treaty 1972. (n.d.). U.S. Department of State. Retrieved May 3, 2010, from http://www.state.gov/www/global/arms/treaties/abm/abm2.html

³ Woolf, A. (2002). National Missile Defense: Russia’s Reaction. Congressional Research Service: Library of Congress, RL30967, 1-20.

⁴ BBC NEWS | Europe: US Missile Defense. (2009, September 20). BBC NEWS | News Front Page. Retrieved May 4, 2010, from http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/6720153.stm

⁵ Novosti. (n.d.). Moscow expects U.S. reaction to missile defense system by year end. ‘RIA Novosti’ newswire. Retrieved May 18, 2010, from http://en.rian.ru/russia/201005

⁶ Ibid

⁷ Associated Press. (n.d.). NATO chief urges U.S.-Russia missile link – Europe- msnbc.com. MSNBC World news. Retrieved May 9, 2010, from http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32910142/ns/world_news-europe/

April 2010

The Amazon rainforest, the world’s largest and most species-rich tropical rainforest, has suffered severe deforestation since the early 1960s when colonists1 established farms and companies began illegal logging operations within the forest. The last two decades have witnessed a motivational change in the Amazon operations from one that was executed by and for [...]]]> By Bécquer Medak-Seguín

April 2010

The Amazon rainforest, the world’s largest and most species-rich tropical rainforest, has suffered severe deforestation since the early 1960s when colonists¹ established farms and companies began illegal logging operations within the forest. The last two decades have witnessed a motivational change in the Amazon operations from one that was executed by and for Brazil’s wealthy landowners to ones subsidized by the government in an effort to turn Brazil into one of the world’s most promising developing countries.

Whether the ‘motivational change’ was merely political rhetoric or a genuine attempt by the post-dictatorial Brazilian government to provide welfare for its poorest citizens has yet to be seen, as its current leader, Luís Inácio Lula da Silva’s (Lula) left-leaning Worker’s Party has implemented a fair amount of social projects since their election in 2002. Multinational organizations like Greenpeace and the World Wildlife Foundation predict, however, that, if severe levels of deforestation continue at the present rate, loggers and farmers could destroy 55 percent of the rainforest by 2030.² This places Brazil’s political leaders in a position where they must decide the extent to which they are willing to continue or abandon the destruction of the Amazon at the cost of economic development.

On October 3, Brazilian constituents will go to the polls to elect their next president in one of the country’s most wide-open presidential elections to date. Five major candidates—José Serra (38); Dilma Rousseff (28); Mariana Silva (10); Ciro Gomes (9); and Heloísa Helena (N/A)—will vie to succeed Lula as Brazil’s next president.³ Of the major candidates receiving polling votes, Mariana Silva is the only one not associated with one of Brazil’s four major political parties that, collectively, control the absolute majority of seats in the Senate. Silva is the nominee from Brazil’s Green Party that, like the United States’s Green Party, is committed to ensuring social-democracy and sustainable development, yet receives a minimal amount of votes—3.6 percent in the 2006 general election.⁴

In recent polls, Silva’s popularity has increased from 5 percent in late March to 10 percent a month later. This may be attributed to Silva’s hard-line approach to ‘green politics’ that has led the writers of The Economist to note: “What she lacks in party machinery she is trying to make up with ethical force.”⁵ Born in the state of Acre, Silva demonstrates a level of personal connection with the policies she champions unparalleled by her fellow candidates. She was a colleague of Chico Mendes, perhaps Brazil’s most famous environmental activist, and helped him lead demonstrations against deforestation until his 1988 murder at the hands of ranchers who opposed his activism.

Her recent political career began in 1994, when she became the first rubber tapper elected to Brazil’s Senate and began building national support for sustainable development projects in the Amazon region. Between 2004 and 2007, Silva’s integrated government policies decreased deforestation in the region by 59 percent and fostered burgeoning sustainable practices.⁶ Her views on hydroelectric dams, biofuels, and genetically modified crops, however, departed from those of the Worker’s Party and led her to resign in May of 2008.

Silva’s bid for the presidency in 2010 is founded on a platform of Brazil’s ethical responsibility to become a high-tech, low-carbon economy in order to, among other things, provide other developing countries with an example to follow. Her aim to address the negative environmental effects of globalization is not unique, but the ethical weight she imbues in these and related issues is.⁷ Her immediate aim to make the run-off election once seemed highly unlikely, but is becoming an increasing reality and impressive given that many Brazilian voters, like those in the U.S. and elsewhere, do not list environmental concerns among their top priorities. Soon, Silva will choose her running-mate and the likely choice is Gilherme Leal, the owner of a cosmetics firm and one of Brazil’s richest individuals. While this choice might seem counterproductive and contradictory to her environmental concerns, Leal’s choice could bring Silva an unprecedented economic and popular backing leading up to the October elections. In any case, it is highly unlikely that such a principled woman like Silva would give up ethical concerns so deep to her political and human nature, concerns best captured by Chico Mendes’ decree: “At first I thought I was fighting to save rubber trees, then I thought I was fighting to save the Amazon rainforest. Now I realize I am fighting for humanity.”⁸

Notes

¹ The term “colonists” here refers to the group of individuals, typically statesmen from the cities of Rio de Janeiro or São Paolo, who sought to census the roughly 25 million Brazilians living in the Amazon.

² “Amazon: World’s largest tropical rainforest and river basin,” WorldWildlife.org 25 Apr. 2010.

³ The parentheses indicate their percentage of the overall vote in the latest presidential election poll by Datafolha. Fifteen percent of the population, according to the poll, still remain undecided. For the complete results, see Tatiana Freitas, “Datafolha mostra Serra com 38% e Dilma com 28%,” O Estado de S. Paulo 17 Apr. 2010.

⁴ For more on Brazil’s Green Party, see www.pv.org.br/.

⁵ “Another Silva,” The Economist 22 Apr. 2010.

⁶ “Fall in Amazon deforestation rates (2004-2007),” Embassy of Brazil in London 30 Dec. 2007.

⁷ For an economic debate surrounding the effects of globalization on the Amazon Rainforest, see Rachel Godfrey Wood, “Globalization Continues Destruction of Amazon Rainforest,” The Cutting Edge 1 June 2009.

⁸ See Chico Mendes Institute, www.chicomendes.org.br.

April 2010

High-level U.S. and Mexican officials, including Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Defense Secretary Robert Gates, met recently to re-strategize the war on drugs initiated under the 2008 Merida Initiative. This year’s budget, valued at $330 million, will provide continued military aid, but will be directed toward judicial reform and programs to promote [...]]]> By Samantha R. McRoskey

April 2010

High-level U.S. and Mexican officials, including Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Defense Secretary Robert Gates, met recently to re-strategize the war on drugs initiated under the 2008 Merida Initiative. This year’s budget, valued at $330 million, will provide continued military aid, but will be directed toward judicial reform and programs to promote good governance. Officials still believe that supporting the government and military is the best way to disrupt cartel operations and curb violence, particularly in the country’s most violent city: Ciudad Juárez. Absent from the plan, however, is any mention of the city’s other most prominent interest: big business.

Ciudad Juárez does not only occupy the top spot as the city with the highest murder rate in the world, it is also northern Mexico’s epicenter of cross-border commerce. Around $165 million of Mexico’s $1 billion-a-day trade with the United States is generated in the Juárez region. Since NAFTA, the presence of multinational maquiladoras, or assembly-plants, has expanded rapidly due to wage advantages and tariff-free imports of raw materials for manufacture and sale back to the United States. Today, many leading American companies, including General Electric, Dell, and General Motors, operate factories in Ciudad Juárez.

The recession has dealt a crippling blow to social stability in Juárez. Unemployment is up to 20 percent and 120,000 jobs have been lost since 2007 in the city of 1.8 million. Tens of thousands of homes have been abandoned by the jobless and thousands of people are feared to have been swept into the narco-business by the financial desperation. Yet despite threats of economic decline and anarchy, many factories are standing their ground. 

Instead of fleeing, as maquiladora trade association president María Soledad Maynez said, they are “adapting” to the violent city. The costs of shutting down or relocating are simply too high. This bodes well for Juárez because a mass exodus of the city’s major employers would likely signal victory to the cartels and a shift toward the city becoming an anarchic, lawless territory.  

As part of their coping strategy, many factory executives now travel to work in armored cars and have removed cash from their premises. Some have signed off on security fences to surround their buildings. Others have introduced precautionary measures for workers, such as company-sanctioned carpools and dismissal before sundown. And it is the companies that have had to think up and execute these plans on their own dime. So it seems paradoxical that companies, which offer the most powerful alternatives to drug trafficking, seem to be receiving the least amount of help. With murders continuously on the rise and a palpable fear about the streets, the maquiladoras provide a sense of normalcy that military presence and judicial reform cannot.

This casts the revisions to the Merida Initiative in a new light. If military aid and judicial reform have not produced results thus far, why should we believe they would now? From the outset of his administration, Mexican president Felipe Calderón has taken a hard-line approach to combating drug violence; in early 2007, he initiated a military offensive aimed at drug traffickers and corrupt civil servants suspected of facilitating operations in Mexico’s northern states. Today, some 7,000 troops remain in Juárez.

Legal system reform has been a major topic since 2006, when Chihuahua State Attorney General Patricia González Rodríguez spearheaded an effort to improve investigative capabilities, promote public trials, and root-out corruption in the police force. Despite these improvements, impunity among drug criminals remains high while conviction rates remain low.

A police state is not a viable long-term solution for Ciudad Juárez, or other Mexican cities beset with drug-violence. Upholding the business sector as a legitimate alternative to making a living in the drug trade, on the other hand, is. This is not to say that maquiladoras are unequivocal bastions of social good. They have been criticized for everything from labor violations and health threats, to environmental degradation and sparking the murders of thousands of women in the late 1990s. In spite of their tarnished reputation, they have pushed back against encroaching cartel pressure.

If U.S. and Mexican officials are going to take drug-violence seriously, then they need to focus their resources on these key entities of social cohesion. They must realize that to achieve social stability, they must not acquiesce to war on the cartels’ terms, with their means. Guns, troops, and jail cells are only temporary solutions. Social stability and political legitimacy will come from promoting job creation, worker safety, and increased security at local factories. The architects of our renewed plan of attack against drug violence should realize that the real battlefield is the economic one—who will offer the most stable and secure means to support families and promote growth.

April 2010

Kenneth Waltz, in his important 1979 book entitled The Theory of International Politics, puts forth a theory of positional structure in the international system. He asserts that the structure of the international system, once created, is unchanging and self-reinforcing. Waltz’s ontology is as follows: Discrete units (states) interact at an initial level and [...]]]> By Rheanne Wirkkala

April 2010

Kenneth Waltz, in his important 1979 book entitled The Theory of International Politics, puts forth a theory of positional structure in the international system. He asserts that the structure of the international system, once created, is unchanging and self-reinforcing. Waltz’s ontology is as follows: Discrete units (states) interact at an initial level and from their interaction “emerges a structure that affects and constrains all of them” (448). This structure, once formed, becomes a “force in itself” which cannot be controlled by the discrete units from which it was first formed. In this way the structure is, as IR scholar David Dessler puts it, “the unintended positioning, standing, or organization of units that emerges spontaneously from their interaction”. The rules and norms in this system, once created, are fixed; as rational actors, the agents in this system follow these fixed rules because they know they will be punished for bad behavior. For this reason, the system is self-reinforcing because subsequent choices within the structural framework are based on rule-following. In light of the increasingly complex structure of the international system—in particular with the rise of international organizations like the EU—it is worth asking if this description remains valid today.

Dessler, in his article “What’s at stake in the agent-structure debate?” challenges this understanding of the international system. At issue is Waltz’s assertion that the structure of the international system, once created, is unchanging and self-reinforcing. In reaction, Dessler puts forth what he calls a transformational ontology which takes into account the medium through which states interact. He believes this is richer than Waltz’s ontology, which he argues only accounts for the position of states relative to one another in the international system.

Although Dessler agrees with Waltz’s initial description of the creation of the system, he contends that Waltz’s system erroneously presupposes rules and norms in the international system because it assumes rational actors, which by definition must mean they know which choices are acceptable and which are not (i.e. there are rules governing which choice is best). What is problematic for Dessler is that Waltz’s description doesn’t explain the transformation of norms and modes of behavior within the system. Because Waltz assumes the rules of the system once created are fixed, there should be no change in rules or norms over time. Dessler points out that this misses the way the world actually works, in which case the explanation must be lacking or incorrect.

Dessler attempts to build on Waltz’s conception of the structure of the international system by considering the medium through which states interact. Rather than assuming a fixed set of rules, Dessler argues that the interaction of states with one another actually changes the decisions of the agents, which then transforms the rules and norms created. Rule-generation is not a one-time, static experience but is rather a process of regeneration over time. This makes sense if we consider simple game theory: as agents gain familiarity with the outcomes that occur after each game they will learn to adapt their behavior so that the outcome will be in their favor, or at least will cause a less-bad outcome.

By taking into account how agents might actually attempt to consciously alter the conditions of action in a way that promotes change, Dessler begins to explain how social norms change over time, for example the taboo against nuclear weapons use now found in the international system. Look no further than the Obama Administration’s shift in nuclear weapons policy since his Prague Speech and the recent Nuclear Posture Review to make the point. Not only has he attempted to alter the rhetoric surrounding nuclear weapons but, importantly, has repositioned the US in the nuclear weapons debate: a country that has long considered itself the leader in nuclear weapons technology (and the only country to have detonated the bomb) has taken on a leadership role on the road toward a nuclear-free world. That said, it is worth considering the extent to which this change has occurred given Obama’s weapons use policy toward states that do not conform to the Non-Proliferation Treaty; Iran and North Korea in the Nuclear Posture Review find themselves a safe target for nuclear weapons use should the US deem them fit.

Rather than accept Waltz’s description of a static international system, then, it is useful to consider how it is that changes in rhetoric and political norms shift the position of states vis-à-vis one another. Only by viewing the international system through a transformationalist lens can we begin to understand and explain how it is that we can translate power into peace.

Works Cited

Dessler, D., Kratochwil, F. V., & Mansfield, E. D. (1997). What’s at Stake in the Agent-Structure Debate. International Organization (pp. 441-474). New York: Longman.

Waltz, K. N. (2010). Theory of International Politics. New York, NY: Waveland Pr Inc.

April 2010

With the recent formation of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC), many have begun to wonder why the U.S. and Canada were not asked to join the new organization. A quick economic explanation makes the answer to this question very clear: in a region where class distinctions still [...]]]> By Ian King, Guest Columnist

April 2010

With the recent formation of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC), many have begun to wonder why the U.S. and Canada were not asked to join the new organization. A quick economic explanation makes the answer to this question very clear: in a region where class distinctions still prevail, dependency theory rhetoric appeals to the masses more so than the concept of comparative advantage. Many Latin American leaders have been elected as a result of campaigning on dependency ideas and this new organization is evidence of a shift toward an attempt by Latin American countries to be economically independent.

Behind the leadership of new leftist leaders like Hugo Chavez of Venezuela and Evo Morales of Bolivia, the link between dependency theory and the new organization is undeniable. Dependency theorists typically believe that developing economies become increasingly dependent on superpowers, such as the U.S. and Canada, to the detriment of those developing economies. As a remedy, dependency theorists argue against liberalized international trade; comparative advantage, if it exists, can only be emphasized once the historical distortions of global capitalism are ameliorated through state support of local industries.¹

In the 1970s, Latin Americans freely expressed their support for leftist leaders. For example, although Salvador Allende was eventually ousted by a military coup, he won the Chilean presidency by professing to be a Marxist.² Towards the end of the 20th century, Brazilian Fernando Henrique Cardoso gained his popularity with his Real Plan, designed to control inflation in a way that would be sensitive to the concerns of equity voiced by the dependency theorists.³ However, once president of Brazil, Cardoso turned his back on dependency ideas in an attempt to help the Brazilian economy by IMF aid and loans, which required liberalization of the economy.⁴

Cardoso’s dilemma is not unique to Brazil, although it seems that in more recent years, a new rise of leftist leaders are sticking to their principles of not getting too heavily involved with the Colossus of the North and its investments. Since Hugo Chavez’s election, the United States has had practically nothing to do with Venezuela, undoubtedly due to his practice of nationalizing various industries.

Leaders in Latin America have cited different reasons for supporting the creation of CELAC. Evo Morales called it “a weapon to combat imperialism,” indicating common Latin American fears of U.S. domination in both the Organization of American States and the U.N.⁵ However, not everybody involved with CELAC is as quick to demonize the U.S. or Canada. The chairman of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) and Prime Minister of Dominica, Roosevelt Skeritt, said that the purpose of CELAC is to unify CARICOM with mainland Latin America and to address issues that are not necessarily of concern to the U.S. or Canada.⁶

Although the United States and Canada have yet to come forth with any real policy about the organization, it would be difficult to believe that the two countries’ foreign ministries are particularly enthralled about being excluded from what is being called “an alternative to the Washington-influenced Organization of American States.”⁷

Regardless of the ultimate intention of the formation of this new body, U.S. officials should take note. Other countries in the Western Hemisphere no longer feel like they need to have their big brother constantly looking out for them.

Notes

¹ For a more in-depth discussion and definition of dependency theory and other economic models for the underdeveloped world, see Mayer, Lawrence; Burnett, John & Ogden, Suzanne. “The Third World and Political Development.” Comparative Politics: Nations and Theories in a Changing World (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1993), pp. 267-96. The specific discussion of dependency theory, as well as a critique, is pp. 275-80.

² “Chile: The Bloody End of a Marxist Dream.” Time, September 24, 1973.

³ Schemo, Diana Jean. “Dead Dream- Brazil’s Plan is Blocked.” New York Times, January 18, 1999.

⁴ “A Paradox for Cardoso.” The Economist, July 27, 2000.

⁵ “Latinoamérica y el Caribe necesitan luchar ‘juntos sin Estados Unidos’.” Interview with Telesur, February 22, 2010. <http://www.telesurtv.net/noticias/entrev-reportajes/index.php?ckl=471> (Spanish; translation by author)

⁶ “CARICOM: We are not mashing up the OAS.” Caribbean News Agency, February 24, 2010.

⁷ Hennigan, Tom. “Latin American and Caribbean states set up bloc excluding US.” The Irish Times, February 24, 2010.

The views contained herein are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the U.S. Coast Guard, Department of Homeland Security, or any other agency or department of the U.S. Government.

Biography

Ian King is a sophomore at the United States Coast Guard Academy majoring in Government: International Affairs, with a heavy concentration in Latin America and Spanish. His primary areas of research include the drug trade and its implications on the development in Latin American countries as well as how the U.S. military fits in with those plans. He eventually plans to work in Coast Guard foreign affairs, helping direct military policy in other countries.

March 2010

Of the upcoming elections in Latin America, the Colombian presidential election will likely command the most attention by United States politicians and pundits. The election itself, set to take place on May 30, still lacks an outright frontrunner among the six major candidates largely owing to the legacy of the current president, Álvaro [...]]]> By Bécquer Medak-Seguín

March 2010

Of the upcoming elections in Latin America, the Colombian presidential election will likely command the most attention by United States politicians and pundits. The election itself, set to take place on May 30, still lacks an outright frontrunner among the six major candidates largely owing to the legacy of the current president, Álvaro Uribe. Mr. Uribe changed the dynamics of presidential politics in Colombia beginning with his first run for the country’s presidency in 2002. Running effectively as an independent for the Colombia First (Primero Colombia) party, Mr. Uribe was a self-declared liberal and perceived as a leftist intellectual.¹ In a country whose history, like that of the United States, was dominated by a two-party, Liberal-Conservative binary system, Mr. Uribe surprisingly won 53 percent as an independent during the first round of voting and, therefore, his election did not require a run-off. Mr. Uribe’s campaign centered around a militaristic agenda of confronting the country’s main guerilla movement in the south, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), and economic referendums that sought to ease the burden on the government, primarily through industrial privatization.²

Mr. Uribe’s propositions soon drew renewed attention from the United States who, since the throes of the Cold War, had shared a strong alliance with Colombia against the threat of communism. Almost immediately after Mr. Uribe’s election, the U.S. Congress passed an emergency supplemental spending bill that limited a previous provision limiting U.S. counter-narcotics efforts in Colombia. This new bill allowed the U.S. to fund Colombian efforts against any group designated a terrorist organization, thereby conflating the U.S.-funded Drug War that began in 1998 with the developing War on Terror. The FARC, a Marxist-Leninist revolutionary guerrilla organization not unlike the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) in Nicaragua, for example, was subsequently categorized as a terrorist organization though the group had little to nothing to do with drug trading or the drug cartel. Soon into his first term as president, it became obvious that Mr. Uribe would neither follow his leftist intellectual aura nor his independent-minded campaign pretext while governing Colombia.

In a rather disturbing article published in 2003, George Monbiot exposes Mr. Uribe’s recent militaristic, war-crime laden past, beginning with his term as governor of the state of Antioquia in the mid 1990s. Then, “the civilian forces he established there, like all the paramilitaries working with the army, carried out massacres, the assassination of peasant and trade union leaders and what Colombians call ‘social cleansing’: the killing of homeless people, drug addicts and petty criminals,” writes Monbiot.³ Years later, in 2003, Mr. Uribe’s military record is called into question yet again after appointing General Carlos Ospina as the chief of the army. General Ospina, four years earlier, during the infancy of the Plan Colombia and the Andean Regional Initiative (both, U.S.-funded military initiatives to counter narco-trafficking), carried out similar raids and massacres in villages considered sympathetic to the FARC, according to Human Rights Watch.⁴ Mr. Uribe’s conservative government was economically and politically linked with that of George W. Bush’s throughout the 2000s under the pretense of the War on Terror and, similarly to the U.S. invasion of Iraq, the U.S.-funded war against the drug cartels in Colombia focused on the security of oil.⁵

Though Mr. Bush and Mr. Uribe will both be out of politics by May, their cooperative legacy (otherwise known as the U.S.-Colombia relations during the 2000s) remains and it is unlikely that President Barack Obama or the newly elected Colombian president will alter the cross-continental dynamic between the two countries. President Obama has yet to substantially make progress on his call for a historical change in the relationship between the U.S. and Latin America and breaking economic relations with Colombia or defining the goals of the mishandled operations (Plan Colombia and the ARI) will likely hurt his short-term political relations with the region. The newly elected Colombian president, regardless of whoever he may be, will almost certainly operate under a clear majority of the center-right coalition that comprised the Uribe government. For that coalition, the FARC is still a necessary enemy to combat and, as in years past, it is unlikely that they will ask their constituents to finance this costly enterprise. Furthermore, the new National Integration Party, running on an ultra-conservative platform, was “formed by friends and relatives of former legislators accused by prosecutors of links to right-wing paramilitary militias,” according to The Economist, and the winner in May will be forced to cooperate with the party when it comes time to govern because they hold nine senate seats and won 8 percent of the total vote during the last elections.⁶ The fashioning of the PIN merely further reinforces Colombia’s militaristic future and adds to Uribe’s pointed legacy.

Notes

¹ This popular perception is justified by Mr. Uribe’s education and marriage. Mr. Uribe was part of the Colombian Liberal Party’s “Liberal Youth” organization, was an honors student while studying law at the University of Antioquia, studied on scholarship briefly at both Harvard and Oxford University, and married the philosopher Lina Moreno.

² Somewhat perversely, Mr. Uribe’s campaign against the FARC was aided by the organization’s famous kidnapping of fellow candidate Íngrid Betancourt on February 23 of the election year, some three months before the election. It is also worth mentioning that Ms. Betancourt was released on July 2, 2008 along with 11 Colombians and 3 Americans. The operation, called Operation Jaque, involved U.S. spy satellites and, allegedly, U.S. militaristic cooperation, though Uribe claims no foreign involvement. For more, see “Colombian military frees Ingrid Betancourt,” The New York Times 2 July 2008.

³ Monbiot, George. “To crush the poor.” The Guardian 4 February 2003.

⁴ Breaking the Grip? Obstacles to Justice for Paramilitary Mafias in Colombia. New York: Human Rights Watch, 2008.

⁵ In late 2002, the U.S. began sending advisors to Colombia under a $94 million counterinsurgency program to protect some five hundred miles of an oil pipeline. Another interesting parallel between the U.S. invasion of Iraq and the U.S.-funded war on drugs in Colombia is the involvement of private military contractors (see Blackwater). In 2006, a congressional report on the economics of the operation in Colombia listed a number of private military contractors that had signed contracts to carry out counterinsurgency operations as a part of Plan Colombia.

⁶ “All uribistas now.” The Economist 18 March 2010.

March 2010

Imagine this: at a distance, you see tiny bodies moving across dozens of oil rigs perched in the waters of the Santos Basin off of the São Paulo, Brazil, coastline. It is 2020, and production in Brazil’s Tupi oil field is topping out at more than 150,000 barrels per day.  As you [...]]]> By Samantha R. McRoskey

March 2010

Imagine this: at a distance, you see tiny bodies moving across dozens of oil rigs perched in the waters of the Santos Basin off of the São Paulo, Brazil, coastline. It is 2020, and production in Brazil’s Tupi oil field is topping out at more than 150,000 barrels per day.  As you move closer, you notice the workers. They are not speaking Portuguese to each other, but Mandarin and Hindi—almost the entire force of offshore drillers and engineers are Chinese and Indian men. Many have Brazilian wives and families and own homes. They may be newly minted Brazilian citizens or long-term contract laborers brought over to fill an abundance of skilled jobs in mining and industry. Either way, they are part of a mass movement of workers to the most productive, and rapidly developing zones in the world.

This is just one potential scenario for the future of the global labor market. Similar laborers might also be found harvesting Bolivia’s yet untouched lithium deposits or running Mexico’s manufacturing centers. They will almost certainly be founders of small businesses and start-ups in the United States. Immigration to the Western Hemisphere in the coming decades will not merely be born of economic necessity, but of demographic inevitability.

Many might be aware of the basic facts: 2.1 children per woman is the average birthrate needed to sustain a stable world population; 2.7 was the average rate at the turn of the century, down from 4.5 in 1970; and 2.05 is the rate predicted by 2050, and is a generous assumption if the trend does not worsen.¹ Among the countries that will be most drastically affected are China, India, and Russia; and in Europe, countries facing rapid population decline are Germany, Italy, and Spain. A decline in births compounded by an aging populace, however, is but one dimension of the problem. The other is that in Asian countries, population decline is accompanied by an extreme gender bias.

The Economist recently outlined how “gendercide”—the selective abortion of female fetuses, female infanticide, and cultural bias toward males—has led to a current average birth rate of 124 males for every 100 females.² Previously, this “biologically impossible” rate was attributed to the severity of the One-Child Policy, but similar trends in South Korea, Taiwan, and India have cast doubt on this assumption. Rather, the imbalance signals a prevailing preference for sons, particularly in patrilineal societies where inheritance and social status pass from father to son.

Experts have been quick to foreshadow the economic, social, and political effects of the dramatic decline in birthrates and the staggering gender disparity on the internal workings of countries and their standing within the international community. Socially, for instance, this spells trouble for China and other countries. Researchers cite a two-fold increase in crime in China over the last 20 years, with growing incidence of bride abduction, female trafficking, prostitution, and female suicide; this will only worsen, they say, when China faces a gap of 30-40 million more men under 20 than women around 2020.³ An abundance of young men might mean a more flexible workforce, but the economic benefits of “bare branches,” as they are called, could be outweighed by their social liabilities. Politically, this could be devastating as the Communist Party struggles to maintain order and legitimacy. In India, decreases in dowry prices (paid by the female to her husband) combined with increased bride prices (paid by the husband to the bride’s family) and female migration from poor to wealthy (and more gender-imbalanced) states already show the social strain.

Without question, declining population and disproportionate sex ratios will lead to internal instability in countries like China and India. European countries, like Italy, will suffer, too. Already facing pension shortfalls, by 2050 Italians will live in a society where 60 percent of people will have no blood relatives outside of their parents to provide financial assistance. What researchers have not considered as closely, however, are the transnational effects of countries facing demographic shifts, primarily in terms of migration to the Western Hemisphere and how that will shape a new world order.

In Asian countries, demographic changes are primarily affecting the highly educated. This means that millions of eligible bachelors, at risk of becoming criminals or supporting a growing sex industry, will be engineers, managers, scientists, and other professionals. How to avoid this type of crisis? One possibility is reflected in the recent past.

As the coffee trade boomed in Brazil during the second half of the 19th century, the end of the slave trade and growing unrest among existing slaves caused plantation owners to press the government for a new class of wage laborers to replace them. The search for a docile labor force happened to match the Japanese government’s desire for an outlet for a growing rural population whose needs were outpacing agricultural output. Hoping to exchange labor for increased agricultural trade, Japan and Brazil came to an agreement. Ultimately, many Japanese immigrants did not stay on plantations, but integrated into the consumer and service industries in cities like São Paulo.

Immigration, therefore, may likely play an important role in defusing domestic tensions from demographic changes. This may compromise the “rise of China” and a shift in world power toward the east—the dominant belief in international relations for the past two decades—at least in the short term.⁴ Perhaps, one might argue, China’s “bare branches” will be moved around to fill domestic labor gaps, but without opportunity to find spouses they will remain threats to social stability. More plausible is a growing trend of state-endorsed emigration to stave off domestic crisis.

Where will millions of Asian men immigrate? In all likelihood, they will move into the expanding productive centers of the Western Hemisphere: Brazil, Mexico, Peru, and the United States. This pattern may threaten another assumption of scholars, like George Friedman, who believe that declining birthrates in the United States will lead to “radically redefined modes of social life,” where family will not be the “critical economic instrument it once was,” and marriage and stable reproductive patterns will become obsolete.⁵ Essentially, the argument goes, we too will remain locked into a reproductive nosedive that transforms society. This view, however, does not consider immigration as a transnational consequence of demographic change. Immigrants, if they are to be successful in new host societies, must integrate themselves into the social fabric. For Japanese immigrants in Brazil, marriage and formation into family units was the primary means of achieving social legitimacy and, ultimately, mobility. The same is true for immigrant groups across time and countries.

Undoubtedly, the effects of demographic change will persist and deepen in countries around the world. Yet the consequences of these changes will not be confined within national boundaries; they will be transnational. Increased immigration might be a welcome solution for countries, like China, facing social unrest and those seeking skilled labor to meet demand, like Brazil and even the United States. If anything, this crisis may lead to possibilities—such as stronger multi-ethnic societies—that we never imagined before.

Notes

¹ Statistics based on UN estimates and compiled in Friedman, George. The Next Hundred Years: A Forecast for the 21st Century. New York: Anchor Books, 2009: 53.

² “The worldwide war on baby girls.” Economist. March 6-12, 2010.

³ Ibid.

⁴ For background on the rise of China discussion see Kristof, Nicholas D. “The Rise of China.” Foreign Affairs. November/ December 1993 and Ikenberry, G.J. “The Rise of China and the Future of the West.” Foreign Affairs. January/February 2008.

⁵ Friedman, George. The Next Hundred Years: A Forecast for the 21st Century. New York: Anchor Books, 2009: 60, 64.

March 2010

Due to various factors endogenous and exogenous to the historical development of the party structures of many advanced industrialized democracies, the argument has been made that major political parties have evolved from their “catch-all,” mass-based roots to become more “cartelistic” in nature. The nature of the party system itself has changed through this [...]]]> By Kevin Taber

March 2010

Due to various factors endogenous and exogenous to the historical development of the party structures of many advanced industrialized democracies, the argument has been made that major political parties have evolved from their “catch-all,” mass-based roots to become more “cartelistic” in nature. The nature of the party system itself has changed through this cartelization process as parties – particularly in systems with two strong competitors – have effectively reduced the size of the policy space over which they compete while simultaneously “externalizing” responsibilities previously assigned to parties by their constituencies (or by the parties themselves). Perhaps some of the most striking examples of this process are the self-imposed limits placed on politicians and political parties vis-à-vis macro-level policies and issues that concern both the domestic and international political-economy.  The argument here is that political parties’ (and actors’) short-term goals (i.e. election/reelection) interfere with the long-term vision needed to ensure their respective states remain competitive in the international marketplace; therefore, policy-makers readily surrendered a large portion of their sway over – and responsibility for – macro-economic policy, hopefully reducing their accountability for these matters in the process.¹

All of this movement toward the cartelization of political parties and the party system has ostensibly taken place without the type of collusion we might expect between firms in a traditional cartelistic agreement, though it has been argued that “parties have tacitly agreed not to compete over certain issue areas,” thus lowering expectations and reducing their need to mobilize the masses comprising their traditional bases, instead focusing resources and efforts on marketing and media-based efforts. By evolving away from their traditional “catch-all” postures and limiting the space over which they compete, parties in cartelistic environments have become more similar to one another in their policy stances.²

In order to maintain the status quo and exclude any potential third party rivals, the tacit collusion of the existing parties in these aforementioned areas creates a type of long-term equilibrium which trumps any short-term gains parties might realize by “defecting” from the arrangement and attempting to overstep or extend the present restrictions of the arena of competition into currently-excluded policy areas.³ (In the US case, we may be seeing an example of this as the Republican party attempts to “punish” the Democrats for their perceived “defection” out of the existing arrangement, insofar as they have attempted a foray back into competition within the hotly contested arena of social-welfare policy, an issue space both parties had supposedly put to rest in the early-to-mid-1990s in order to promote more neo-liberal political-economic policies geared toward opening the US and its firms to the potential benefits of competing in an increasingly globalized world.)

It would seem that the institutional nature of the American political system in particular – first-past-the-post, majoritarian electoral rules and the strong presidential executive – have facilitated the development of a cartelistic two party system to an almost irreversible degree. The emergence of an organized third party in this type of system would seem at best a long shot since “the balance of play rests with the cartelisers.”⁴

Even so, the emergent Tea Party movement raises some interesting questions about the robustness and sustainability of the cartelistic party system in the United States. It would seem that the Republican party – perhaps even more so than the Democratic party – have a larger stake in ensuring that the Tea Party movement does little if anything to disrupt the current equilibrium, particularly in light of the fact that recent survey data show that self-identified “Tea Party activists” are approximately ten times as likely to also identify as Republican.⁵ This does not mean, however, that the Tea Party activists will necessarily align with the established Right at the polls; on the contrary, the loosely-confederated Tea Party groups and their supporters take issue with both Republican and Democrat lawmakers, past and present and “have a larger goal [in mind]…a political reordering that would drastically shrink the federal government and sweep away not just Mr. Obama, but much of the Republican establishment.”⁶

However, as the cartel theory literature tells us, “anti-party-system parties can exist only to the extent that they perceive themselves to be excluded from a cartel.” In other words, this type of “pro-democratic anti-party-system” party⁷ – embodied by the Tea Party movement in the United States – would need to remain a vivacious, vociferous opponent to the US political system (both parties included) in order to continue along its path of building support through protestation.

These theoretical characterizations, coupled with the empirical reality that the Tea Party movement may be siphoning support away from the Republican party (much more so than the Democratic party, as evidence by the aforementioned survey data), put Republican party leaders and figureheads in a particularly awkward situation vis-à-vis the Tea Party movement.  Do they attempt to downplay, co-opt, or even ignore the upsurge in support for this once fringe group over the course of the past several months?  Furthermore, which option – or combination of options – would yield the most electoral support for their party in the future, while simultaneously avoiding the types of shocks to the cartelistic system that might damage the status quo?

Former Alaskan Governor (and past Republican Vice Presidential nominee) Sarah Palin’s recent address to Tea Party advocates may reveal much about the true motives behind the Republican party’s uneasy stance toward the Tea Party movement. Palin’s suggestion to the Tea Party activists – received with much fanfare by the tea “partiers” themselves – was that they should remain an unorganized, un-institutionalized group, lest they become the very thing they protest: a bulky, centralized, bureaucratic political party which is led, or at least personified, by a single party personality or figurehead. As Palin put it, the Tea Party activists should continue to remind themselves that the Tea Party movement “is not a top-down operation,” but is rather “a ground-up call to action.”⁸ Furthering the cause of the cartelized Republican party in the face of the Tea Party threat, Palin added to her comments only a few days later that the Tea Party movement, while a worthy endeavor, would best serve its ends if it were to abandon its own goals of upending the status quo while aligning itself within the existing American political party system – preferably throwing support and resources behind the Republican party and its candidates in future elections. As Palin put it, “because the Tea Party movement is not a party, and we have a two-party system, they’re going to have to pick a party.”⁹

In order for the Tea Party movement – and other similar “pro-democratic anti-party-system parties” elsewhere in the advanced industrialized democratic world – to achieve a redefinition of the cartelistic political party system “they will have to solve their own external coordination problem.”  That is, they must find a way to mobilize vast groups of like-minded voters willing to go against the status quo and vote for a non-institutionalized party whose supporters and leaders might otherwise be inclined toward an existing party within the cartelistic system.  As impossible a task as this might seem, the now-cartelistic parties of many advanced industrialized democracies once faced a similar challenge themselves as they sought to appeal to large swaths of the rapidly-expanding, newly-enfranchised constituencies a century or more ago.¹⁰

Should the Tea Party movement – and their contemporaries elsewhere – succeed in this “reconceptualisation of democracy,”¹¹ these anti-system parties would then themselves be faced with the ironic consequences and trappings of their own success: whether to continue in constant opposition to the established political parties or join them in the cartelistic system. Even in her calls for the Tea Party movement to align with the Republican party establishment, Sarah Palin herself has advocated for increased competition among Republican contenders for political office, presumably as a nod to the role that Tea Party activists – and Tea Party-supported candidates – might play in advancing the cause of the Republican party within the cartelistic US party system.¹²

Only time will tell if the Tea Party movement and others like it will introduce true shocks into cartelistic political party systems around the globe. In the meantime, regardless of one’s own political-ideological persuasion, we can take comfort in knowing that at the very least these types of parties and movements are not seeking the downfall “of liberal democracy,” but rather, are attempting to add new conceptualizations and definitions of what a political party – and political party system – should look like to the existing marketplace of ideas. Whether or not these ideas can ever generate enough buy-in to truly “break” the cartel that is the modern political party system in many advanced democracies should make for some interesting storylines which will hopefully unfold in the near future.

Notes

¹ Blyth, Mark and Richard S. Katz. “From Catch-all Politics to Cartelisation: The Political Economy of the Cartel Party.” West European Politics 28 (2005): 33-60.

² Ibid.

³ Ibid.

⁴ Ibid.

⁵ Opinion Research Corporation. CNN Opinion Research Poll. CNN/Opinion Research Corporation, 2010.

⁶ Barstow, David. “Tea Party Lights Fuse for Rebellion on the Right.” New York Times, February 15, 2010.

⁷ Blyth, Mark and Richard S. Katz. “From Catch-all Politics to Cartelisation: The Political Economy of the Cartel Party.” West European Politics 28 (2005): 33-60.

⁸ Rucker, Philip and Ann Gerhart. “With Speech before Tea Party Activists, Palin Once Again Steps on Political Stage.” Washington Post, February 7, 2010.

⁹ Conroy, Scott. “Palin:  Tea Partiers ‘Have to Pick a Party’.” CBS News.com, February 17, 2010.

¹⁰ Blyth, Mark and Richard S. Katz. “From Catch-all Politics to Cartelisation: The Political Economy of the Cartel Party.” West European Politics 28 (2005): 33-60.

¹¹ Ibid.

¹² Rucker, Philip and Ann Gerhart. “With Speech before Tea Party Activists, Palin Once Again Steps on Political Stage.” Washington Post, February 7, 2010.

March 2010

Since last fall, the US has raised the number of drone strikes carried out in the North Waziristan region of Pakistan from roughly one per week to nearly one every day. The strikes have been largely successful in targeting al Qaeda and Taliban operatives hiding out in the border region between Afghanistan and [...]]]> By  Rheanne Wirkkala

March 2010

Since last fall, the US has raised the number of drone strikes carried out in the North Waziristan region of Pakistan from roughly one per week to nearly one every day. The strikes have been largely successful in targeting al Qaeda and Taliban operatives hiding out in the border region between Afghanistan and Pakistan—so much so that the US has considered launching them in neighboring Baluchistan. But while most agree that the unmanned attacks have been materially successful in the targeted killing of al Qaeda and Taliban members, there is little agreement about the moral and legal legitimacy of the targeted attacks.

This certainly isn’t the first time the US has been involved in covert, targeted killing; the CIA in particular has a long history of political assassinations throughout the second half of the 20th century. Although assassinations were deemed illegal during the Ford administration, after 2001 the CIA developed vague plans to dispatch small groups to assassinate al Qaeda leaders abroad. Plans were never carried out and were eventually canceled by CIA director Leon Panetta in mid-2009. Drone strikes, however, have been openly pursued by the US government in the last few years and in particular since President Obama entered office in 2009. And the number of strikes has jumped substantially since seven CIA operatives were killed by a double agent in the Khost province of Afghanistan on December 30 of last year.

Government and military officials have provided mixed reasons for the increase in strikes: some highlight the need for greater pressure on Taliban leaders while others have pointed to a sort of revenge against al Qaeda and the Taliban for the death of the CIA staff.  Either way (and in particular if the latter!), the US and the international community ought to ask whether such attacks are acceptable both on legal and moral grounds.

Legally there is little agreement about the status of unmanned Predator drone strikes: do these fall into the realm of military attacks or, more problematically, might we consider them political assassinations? As mentioned, the latter reason falls squarely outside the realm of legality. These strikes become doubly problematic when we consider the question of Pakistani sovereignty. The US is not at war with Pakistan and in fact is working closely with the ISI to seek out al Qaeda and Taliban operatives in the country.  But not everyone in Pakistan—including at times their own political leadership—has been supportive of targeted attacks within the country’s borders. US attacks in Pakistan raise questions about the globalization of violence and its implications for national sovereignty more broadly.

We must also ask whether drone strikes are morally acceptable. It is estimated that a third of all casualties from the strikes have been innocent noncombatants; news reports are replete with stories of women and children killed by unmanned drone attacks. The argument, of course, is that there will always be collateral damage in warfare. It’s worth considering, though, what cost we’re willing to pay—how many civilians does it take to cross the threshold between collateral damage and moral reprehensibility? Additionally, there is serious fear that unmanned attacks on Pakistani civilians push the population into the arms of militants because of anger or the hope for protection. If the US is devoted to protecting civilians in battle (or outside of battle) and winning the “hearts and minds” of noncombatants then they ought to consider what effect daily strikes might have on a population that is told we are on its side. They may see things very differently. The payoff for the US may seem big now but the cost in civilian support and the breaches of legality may be too high a price to pay in the long-run.