International Security Course–Fall 2020

In this week’s class session discussion of the concept of sovereignty and the United States allegedly trying to regain its sovereignty during the Trump administration,  I could not stop thinking about another discussion of sovereignty that was the running rampant in a certain recent current international event that shook the realm of international affairs: Brexit, the withdrawal of Great Britain from the European Union.

In an article from the Atlantic entitled The Problem of Britain Taking Back Control, by Tom McTague, McTague outlines that while Britain may be looking at regaining the said sovereignty that it once had before their membership in the EU, the pursuit of reasserting such could mean that Britain may have to be on the losing end in terms of a strong economy.

As discussed in class, we went over how the concept of sovereignty is hijacked by the concepts of nationalism and populism, the prime reasons fueling the country to vote Leave four years ago was fueled by these concepts hijacking sovereignty. The specific arguments that fueled the decision to leave the EU consisted of arguments of Brussels’ overreaching power and expanding bureaucracy with in the EU, the free flow immigration from Europe that of course was unwanted, as well as the idea of being in the EU undermining the national identity and culture of the UK. The article speaks about Boris Johnson and how he sought to stick to the script of preaching about how it is vital that Britain takes back control and by delivering a Brexit based upon the idea of Leave Means Leave by advocating a “Brexit model that prioritized sovereignty and maximum freedom from the EU”, different from his predecessor Theresa May who attempted to deliver it and Johnson quit the government based on her Brexit plan bowing to the EU even after officially leaving.

While Boris Johnson is committed to deliver this script of sovereignty and freedom in all spectrum’s of the relationship between the UK and the EU, McTague argues that there could be a challenge in delivering that what Boris has sought out to do. The argument that McTague reveals is can Britain, who is definitely not a superpower or even remotely close to its past days, currently a midsize power, be able to execute this doctrine of taking back control without suffering an economic loss or loss of prosperity to the point that the whole campaign was utterly in vain. While Britain may be bent on achieving this, there are questions on whether Britain’s economy can endure this or face calamity as the EU still wants to have an economic free trade relationship with Britain still that benefits both however that sees the EU wanting the UK to a binding level playing field which sees Britain main certain standards such as the environment or state aid or social conditions.

If one were the UK, they would see this as a stumbling block to its sovereignty as the EU wants to bind them legally with the help of the EU legislation on their side, which clearly indicates that Brussels also wants to have control which sees this as a potential deadlock between two entities and their interests. To the Brexiteer like Johnson, this seems like playing by the rules of the EU still despite breaking from the EU, which is not what the intent was. Johnson wants the EU to accept the UK rules or instead go to the WTO to to its free trade. This is a test to see whether the Brexiteer rhetoric of Johnson and a Brexit government will be able to break through the EU red tape or as McTague concludes with “desire for national sovereignty bumps with raw economic power.” This certainly will be an interesting contest to see whether a independent UK looking for its sovereignty will be able to play by its own rules or be subject to EU regulations where its efforts will prove to be a failure. If this effort fails by Boris and the UK government, then people will look back on this and back to the historic decision back in 2016 and ask “was it worth it”? I for one am interested to see whether this is true superficial yearning of the said concept or will it just be in vain at at the same time losing economically that could hurt the country for years to come.

 

Several of the readings for this week discussed how developments in artificial intelligence (AI) technology is a double-edged sword, promising to make so many aspects of human life more efficient, convenient, and secure while creating new forms of threats – and raising uncharted legal questions. Many of these readings noted China’s ambitious AI strategy.

When we talk about China and AI, it’s usually in the context of protestors in Hong Kong or the Uighur minority population. We think immediately of the PRC’s odious use of facial recognition technology to track and suppress activists and political dissidents, or to assign social scores to reinforce “good behavior” among its population. China and AI, in the same breath, usually bring to mind the violation of civil liberties.

But this recent WaPo article describes another use of Chinese AI technology that will have decidedly positive consequences for international security: AI technology in agriculture and facial recognition for livestock.

Orwell’s nightmare? Facial recognition for animals promises a farmyard revolution.

The practice of tracking individual farm animals has several purposes, most of which are about optimizing agricultural production. But facial recognition to track individual cows, pigs, or other livestock can also help to identify signs of infection and illness in their earliest stages. With advanced AI technology, we could detect swine flu, bubonic plague, and even coronavirus in animals and stem diseases before they destroy food supply chains or spread to human populations.  This technology could be tremendously consequential for global food security given that China feeds over 20% of the world’s population and, of course, would have positive consequences for global health. Imagine if signs of the novel coronavirus could have been identified by AI technology last year in the markets of Wuhan? It would have been a different 2020 indeed.

No one denies that AI technology has lots of positive uses, but China rarely gets good press in this area so I thought I’d highlight it.

According to multiple sources, scholars have noted the Trump Administration’s consistent attacks imposed onto Nicolas Maduro, his repressive regime, as well as his constituents following the debt default crisis in 2017 . Largely due to the death of former President Hugo Chavez and Maduro’s desire to extend his predecessor’s socialist agenda, much of Venezuela’s economy has spiraled into disarray. As a result of the issuance of financial and individual sanctions on most of Maduro’s closest allies, much of these restrictive mandates have included the revocation of travel visas into the US, the sanctioning of two Russian-related oil subsidiaries that transported Venezuelan oil, the blockade of funding sources towards US-deemed terrorist organizations in the Middle East (i.e. Hezbollah), and much more.

Ultimately, all of these US sponsored sanctions have been proven to be effective within the grounds of US Diplomacy; However, much of these sanctions have crippled the Venezuelan economy and has caused for much political upheaval and uncertainty for the next potentially democratic government to take its place. Although much of these sanctions aforementioned have not caused much of a dent in the overall economic output of the nation, a particular sanction, authorized under Trump, caused for the embargo of Venezuela’s state oil company to effectively collapse, not allowing gas to be transported into the US to be converted into gasoline.  It has been proven that Venezuela may have more reserves than Saudi Arabia. But in terms of output, Venezuela’s oil industry has collapsed. The country’s production of oil is at its lowest point in 77 years. With a crippled economy and an exacerbated migration crisis comparable to the likes of the Syrian War migration event, The US has not made matters easy for the potential regeneration of Venezuela’s economy.

A remedy to allow for the survivability and sustenance of the Venezuelan economy may involve detaching the state-sponsored aspect and privatizing production output under effective oversight by a delegation from The United Nations Economic and Social Council.

 

 

Sources:

Sullivan, Mark P. “Venezuela: overview of US Sanctions.” Congressional Research Service, May 8 (2019).

https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2019-venezuela-key-events/

 

The world has recently seen the peace agreement and normalization in diplomacy between UAE and Israel. Many scholars and officials argue that the reason why this agreement came into place is that it was simultaneously agreed with the U.S. selling advanced weapons to the UAE which consists of F-35 fighter jets and EA-18G electronic warfare planes.

 

The Arms sale raises many questions concerning national security in the Middle East region. Will this deal shift the military balance in the Middle East given that Israel has been supported heavily by the U.S. in the region? The United States has reaffirmed that it is fully committed to supporting Israel and maintaining its military advantage in the region. The U.S. has always been known to have a special relationship with Israel being its main seller of weaponry despite the many inhumane usages. Similarly, the UAE also has a special relationship with the U.S.

 

The reality behind the U.S. selling advanced weaponry to the UAE and supporting a peace agreement between Israel and UAE is to counter Iran. The Emiratis, like Israel’s, consider Iran an avowed enemy[1]. Further diplomatic relations between all three countries are considered from my point of view a win-win situation. Regardless, Trump’s administration is pushing to sell advanced weaponry to the Emirates, the deal might be difficult to pass by congress, but these steps are considered urgent in Washington because the white house strategist perceives that strengthening Israel will benefit him in the re-election process from evangelical Christian voters. Finally, next month, in October the United Nations embargo on arms sale to Iran is scheduled to expire, this deadline has been specified by the previous Obama administration[2]. However, the Trump administration is taking the hard line to remain in place. The arms deal is crucial to the Trump administration because most probably the Biden’s administration will halt the deal.

 

[1]Mark Mazzetti, “Netanyahu privately condoned U.S. plan to sell arms to U.A.E” Sept 3, 2020.

 

[2]Reuben F. Johnson “ The dangers presented by Russian and PRC weapons sales to Iran” Aug 4, 2020.

Why do we meddle in places that don’t want to be meddled with? It seems much of the United States foreign policy is based on demanding other nations to act multilaterally while the US acts unilaterally. An article published today in the New York Times, “Joe Biden’s China Journey”, recalls a graduation speech Joe Biden made at Fudan University in Shanghai in 2001. Biden asks, “The students of Tiananmen Square, were they patriots or traitors to the People’s Republic of China?” The response he received from one of the students was simple, yet remarkably profound. The student answered, “The students of Tiananmen were heroes of the People’s Republic of China. Senator, change will come to China. But it will be we, the students of Newton, who determine the pace and the direction of that change, and not you or anyone else working on the banks of the Potomac.” 1

In that same trip in 2001, Senator Joe Biden, as the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, welcomed China’s entry to the World Trade Organization. While on his trip to China, Biden states, “The United States welcomes the emergence of a prosperous, integrated China on the global stage, because we expect this is going to be a China that plays by the rules.”1 Biden’s trip at the time was seen as a great success by bringing China into the fold- getting them adopt multilateral policies and to “play by the rules.” As the common saying goes, ‘keep your friends close, and you enemies closer.’ While I would not classify China as a true enemy of the U.S it is evident that Biden knows the potential of that is on the rise. As Vice President, Biden met with Chinese President Xi Jinping repeatedly to establish “a competitive relationship with China without it being a bellicose relationship, without it being a relationship based on force.”1 While I personally may be a bit of a pacifist, it seems like having a trade war evolve into a nuclear war is a futile path. I tend to agree most with one of Biden’s top advisers, Jake Sullivan, who says the United States “should put less focus on trying to slow China down and more emphasis on trying to run faster ourselves.”1

 The idea of not being first has become unacceptable to Americans, but I always question, does it really matter? Does a country having higher GDP numbers affect the lives of everyday Americans who simply want to make it to the end of the week and have food on their table? Does spending billions of dollars flying jets over boats in the South China sea put that food on the table? Fareed Zakaria points out in “The Self-Destruction of American Power: Washington Squandered the Unipolar Moment” that the American imperium is dead. It died when we ignored the Powell Doctrine and entered endless wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that were supposed to be swift victories.2 Does anyone truly believe a war with China would be swift, let alone victorious? 

1. Wong, E. (2020, September 6). Joe Biden’s China Journey. Https://Www.Nytimes.Com/#publisher. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/06/us/politics/biden-china.html

Zakaria, Fareed. “The Self-Destruction of American Power: Washington Squandered the Unipolar Moment.” Foreign Affairs, vol. 98, no. 4, July-Aug. 2019, p. 10+. Gale Academic OneFile, https://link-gale-com.remote.baruch.cuny.edu/apps/doc/A588990634/AONE?u=cuny_baruch&sid=AONE&xid=bc365eec. Accessed 6 Sept. 2020.

The Bolton,R. Chicago journal of International Law article “Should we take global governance seriously ?” discusses the different factions within the US regarding global governance. The article states the different understandings of global governance depending on people level of education. According to the article, highly educated group better understand the meaning behind global governance and the importance  in discussing it  comparing  to everyone else.

In order to keep the international security stable, global governance should consist on different aspects such as the legitimacy and authority of the use of force through constraining and limiting the nation-states themselves. For instance, the use of military force is one of the major decisions around the world and it is crucial when it comes to the worth of global governance. Limiting the decision making of military use of force helps in the diminution of sovereignty and the advance of global governance. Generally, global governance should be taken seriously either now or in the future; as the globalism category believes in. In regards to the US, the importance of the topic will result in a reduced constitutional autonomy, impaired popular sovereignty, reduction of our international power, and limitations on our domestic and foreign policy options and solutions.

The concept of global governance has always been fundamentally a major topic for decades. It has been approached differently within the framework of international relations and considered as a response to the current globalization process.

 

Multilateralism can be defined as unbiased trade and equal footing in foreign policy as well trade policy. One example of multilateralism is the United Nations, which is a way of allowing for multiple, more democratic and even distribution in trade and foreign policy. On the other hand, unilateralism is a tendency of a country to conduct themselves on their own, without consulting others.

Nowadays, there has been more divide between China and various European countries in their trade policy. This is allowing for the divergence of the economic and trade cooperation between China and various European countries. Prior to recent events, this has been more of a multilateral relationship. However, there is a more mixed relationship economically between China and Europe, along with not just economic but social values. This is very different from the United States, which is trying to take a more unilateral approach by trying to become more self-sufficient and decrease reliance on China in its economic reliance to Chinese manufacturing and relationships.

The United States policy and approach can be viewed more as unilateral in terms of trade policy, while for the European countries that have been long trading partners with China, such as Germany, this has been more of a switch recently from multilateral towards less reliance and economic policy.

 

References:

Johnson, K. (2020, June 25). How Europe Fell Out of Love With China. Retrieved September 06, 2020, from https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/06/25/china-europe-rival-strategic-competitor-huawei/

Perhaps there is no better time for nations to act in a multilateral fashion than when tasked with tackling a global pandemic. This is the precise point that Forbes’ Christine Ro poses in her op-ed entitled “Vaccine Multilateralism is the Alternative to Vaccine Nationalism.”  The “global effort” being called for comes in the form of the Covid-19 Vaccines Global Access (COVAX) Facility, which seeks to pool together the combined resources of participating countries to help further advance solutions to selecting and advancing vaccine candidates along with production and distribution.

Over 170 countries are at some stage of talks to join the conglomerate and this includes both the European Union and China. Some of the more notable absentees from COVAX are the United States and the Russian Federation. In the case of the U.S., the rejection of global cooperation appears to be an extension of the Trump Administration’s enduring hostility towards scientific consensus as well as the World Health Organization. The WHO represents the cornerstone of multilateralism in the global public health arena and the administration’s outspoken criticism of the organization is very much on-brand.

The article raises a critical point that I feel is relatively glazed-over in the media given that vaccine candidates themselves have been the primary focus of the news cycle. Distribution methods and mass-manufacturing of vaccines – which will require a monumental mobilization of global resources – are a primary focus of COVAX. Proponents of the “vaccine nationalism” exhibited by the U.S. and Russia argue that lack of cooperation can breed the same kind of innovation seen during the Space Race of the Cold War. However, this analogy is an apples-to-oranges comparison. Here we do not have a struggle based on a competition for global hegemony between two superpowers; instead, the situation is a global health catastrophe that requires a much larger mobilization of resources.

The New York Times Article “U.S. Examines Whether Saudi Nuclear Program Could Lead to Bomb Effort” discusses the findings of spy agencies this week in Saudi’s production of nuclear fuel and the role China will play in enabling to create and build it. The report does say that the findings are much too early and that nothing would likely be built in a short amount of time. The article describes Saudi’s steer away from the U.S. post- J.C.P.O.A as Saudi believes they “can’t rely on anyone reining in the Iranians, and they are going to have to deter Iran themselves,” said Rolf Mowatt-Larssen, a former C.I.A. officer and director of intelligence and counterintelligence at the Energy Department. So now Saudi has turned to China to “begin building the multibillion-dollar infrastructure needed to produce nuclear fuel. China has traditionally not insisted on such strict nonproliferation safeguards, and is eager to lock in Saudi oil supplies.” However, the U.S. has enabled Saudi Arabia”s nuclear proliferation by remaining quiet while remaining strict and intolerant about Iran’s nuclear production ability.

This article particularly caught my interest after our last discussion in class on the levels of security and the impact of nuclear proliferation. I also think this article ties in pretty well with Burn’s question on the appropriate extent the U.S. should push its global dominance. He argues that to begin remedying the past tricky methodology, future administrations should begin with “the purpose and limits of the United States’ international engagement”.

Joseph Nye’s article, “The Rise and Fall of American Hegemony from Wilson to Trump,” calls attention to the decline of Pax America and the unipolar world order led by the U.S. since the end of the Cold War.

While the U.S. and allied partners grapple with shifts in the global power balance, the world economy and strategic interests among nation-states have become increasingly interdependent, perhaps more than any point in our collective history.  This warrants thinking on the various types of power used by regimes to influence geopolitical outcomes. In conventional terms, hard-power is the use of military force: mobilized boots on the ground and airborne B-52s. Conversely, the use of non-military means to win geopolitical objectives is defined by Nye as soft-power, which is not a euphemism for weakness or ineptitude. In fact, the profound success of Wilsonian Interventionism, the rules-based world order that immerged as a result, and strategies of game-theory, which aided the U.S. victory in the Cold War, are prime examples of effective soft-power.

Soft-power does not have a moral prerequisite; it’s neither good nor bad. The application of soft-power is what counts. Still, soft-power, as a tool of statecraft, is a mechanism in support of international democratic institutions.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, the term sharp-power, first defined by Christopher Walker and Jessica Ludwig, describes authoritarian regimes, such as China and Russia. It’s my understanding that sharp-power is inherently bad, as it strives towards illiberal ends and undermines democratic institutions.  The  Russian sponsored interference of the U.S.  presidential election in 2016, or Chinese censorship demands of the NBA and Hollywood film production studios are examples of sharp-power. 

Increasingly, it seems, free and open societies are exploited by illiberal, authoritarian regimes, who aim to reconstitute the rules-based world order to serve their ambition.  In a Foreign Affairs article, Nye further describes the features of sharp-power and the difficulty in responding to it.

The bygone era of Wilsonian Interventionism offers a rich historical context to think through the complexities of the modern world.  In addressing current challenges with China, President Trump’s zero-sum approach to leadership, which Nye describes as Hobbesian realism, is easy to dismiss as unproductive. Indeed, he has strained relations with prominent international institutions and allies. However, Trump’s response to Chinese sharp-power might demonstrate the most substantive results compared to past administrations and other world powers, considering how far China has gamed the international system since joining the WTO in 2001.