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Considered Position: Thinking Through Sanctions – Do Sanctions Work?

image of Russian banknotes

This piece begins a Considered Position series investigating the purpose and permissibility of economic sanctions.

In this series of posts, I want to investigate some of the ethical questions surrounding the use of sanctions. Each post will be dedicated to one important ethical question.

Part 1: Do sanctions work to change behavior? 

Part 2: Do sanctions unethically target civilians?

Part 3: What obligations do we as individuals have with regard to sanctions?

In this first post I want to address a particularly fundamental question. Do sanctions even work?

Why It Matters if Sanctions Work

If sanctions are ineffective, then there are very strong reasons to reject their use. That is because sanctions cause massive harm to innocent civilians. We can already see this happening in Russia.

In the Spring 2010, the high school debate community debated whether or not it is permissible to use economic sanctions to achieve foreign policy objectives. I remember that at the time, it was widely accepted that sanctions directed against Iraq had killed over half a million children. And while we now know that the number was almost entirely fabricated by the Iraqi government, the very fact it was widely accepted by the United Nations shows just how plausible it is that sanctions can cause incredible amounts of harm. Even so-called “smart sanctions” — such as the choice to freeze the banking assets of a nation’s leaders — can sometimes be circumvented with harms passed onto civilians.

Because sanctions are accompanied by high costs to civilians, it is therefore important that sanctions work. Otherwise, we cannot possibly justify the harm they cause to innocent people.

How Sanctions Don’t Work

This raises a problem, however. Because at first blush it looks like sanctions are generally ineffective. If you look at the various times in the past that the United States and United Nations have imposed sanctions, they do not seem to really change a nation’s behavior.

Indeed, some studies suggest that sanctions are actually counterproductive — resulting in an increase in repression and human rights abuses.

Why would this be? There seem to be a couple of mechanisms.

First, economic sanctions often lead the populous of a nation to think they are being victimized by the international community. This can often produce a ‘rally around the flag’ effect where the populace comes to support national leaders more strongly in response to an external threat.

Second, sanctions decrease economic and information exchange between a nation and the wider community. This, at least historically, meant that sanctions made it easier for a government to control the information available to a citizenry (though this is changing in the world of modern computers).

Third, sanctions often cause the sanctioned government to crack down and increase control over the populace (as we are currently seeing in Russia), and this can result in the prosecution of opposition parties or free media. Thus solidifying the government’s control.

This forms the foundation for the standard objection to sanctions. Imposing sanctions does not actually work to change behavior. So, given the harms they cause, we should not use them.

However, there are good reasons to doubt this argument. The problem is that these studies find that sanctions are ineffective because they misunderstand how sanctions work in the first place.

I tend to think that sanctions are actually fairly effective. So, it is worth looking at the two mechanisms by which they actually seem to change behavior.

The Primary Mechanism: Threats

Most people critical of sanctions assume that sanctions work by changing behavior once the sanction is imposed. However, it is actually the preliminary threat of sanctions that changes behavior. Elizabeth Rogers makes this point in a discussion paper for the Belfer Center:

The literature focuses on the ability of imposed sanctions to compel the target to change its behavior, but does not systematically study whether the threat of sanctions can deter the target from taking a certain action. Hence the literature asks if sanctions can achieve compliance (which is difficult) without asking if they can achieve deterrence (which is easier). Deterring an untaken action is easier than compelling a policy reversal because leaders do not face the higher political costs that accompany reversing course.

Sanctions can deter in two ways. Target states can be threatened with sanctions directly, or sanctions can deter indirectly, by example. States seeing the economic damage sustained by sanctioned states may decide to avoid actions that will make them the targets of similar sanctions. Press accounts imply that this logic was part of the rationale for sanctioning Haiti in 1991 and Niger in 1996 after military coups in those states.

If sanctions work via a credible threat then you should not expect sanctions to change behavior once they are imposed.  Once you issue a threat of sanctions, then the other nation decides if it is still worth performing the triggering action. Normally, the sanction will tip the balance against the action. But where it doesn’t, the other nation has already factored in the chance of sanctions, and so is unlikely to change just because the sanction is actually imposed.

That does not mean that sanctions don’t work. It just means when you impose sanctions, then they have already failed. As such, if you try to test the efficacy of sanctions by looking at where imposed sanctions change behavior, you are basically trying to assess if sanctions work by only evaluating sanctions that failed.

So is the threat of sanctions effective? It turns out this is a really difficult empirical question to study. Nevertheless, we can get some indirect evidence that these threats are effective. For instance, it does seem as though one reason that Russia was willing to invade Ukraine now is because there was a fairly weak international response to the original invasion of Crimea in 2014. This would suggest that it was partly because Russia thought that serious threats were uncredible that they were willing to begin a larger invasion.

At this point you might wonder. If it is the threat of sanctions that does all the work, why actually ever impose sanctions? After all, imposing them won’t actually do much once the threat has failed.

The problem, however, is that to have a credible threat in the future you need to be willing to follow through with it even when deterrence has failed. For example, if we want China to think that there is a credible threat of sanctions should they invade Taiwan, then we need to sanction Russia even if we don’t expect it to change Russia’s actions (or even if we think it will increase Russian aggression).

The Secondary Mechanism: Norm Internalization

Sanctions also seem to work by reinforcing clearer international norms.

There is a big difference between a real social norm, and merely something that everyone in society pays lip service to. For instance, most highways have a speed limit of 55 miles per hour; but that is not the norm for how fast we drive. Most people drive 5 to 10 miles above the ‘official’ speed limit.

Why? At least in part because no one ever enforces the actual speed limit. The norm tends to get solidified where the punishment kicks in, not where a piece of paper says the norm should be. This also occurs with social norms that are not imposed by the government. Things that our social norms consider rude, are pretty much those things that might get other people to respond to you negatively.

Sanctions, in the broad sense, help to define norms.

Not only that, but when other nations impose sanctions because of the violation of some value, it tends to deepen that value in the sanctioning nations. So, nations that come together to sanction Russia, are likely to have a renewed commitment to certain international norms (if for no other reason than to not look like hypocrites).

So, one way that sanctions seem to work is providing a non-military form of punishment by which international norms are solidified.

This would also explain why sanctions are effective, even if they don’t tend to change behavior after they are imposed. After all, the nations who violate the sanctions tend to also be the ones that don’t care about the norms in the first place. That does not mean the sanctions don’t have an important effect on most other countries, however.

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Criticism of Israel, Media Focus, and Bias

photograph of Jerusalem through barbed wire fence

As in the past, in the wake of this most recent bout of violence in Israel an argument has raged in the media over the proper bounds of criticism of the state of Israel — when, in other words, does criticism of Israel merge with Jew hatred? No sane person denies that criticism of Israeli policies is, at least under some circumstances, not equivalent to prejudice against Jews. Nevertheless, some defenders of Israel claim that what they call the disproportionate attention paid to the Israel-Palestine conflict by Western media and other critics of Israel is itself evidence of Jew hatred. It is this claim that I will evaluate in this column.

I will grant the premise of those who make this claim — to wit, that the Israel-Palestine conflict does receive more critical attention than other, worse conflicts around the world. This is not to underplay the moral enormity of Israel’s treatment of Palestinians; my claim is simply that there are even more egregious violations of human rights in other parts of the world that receive relatively less attention from certain quarters. In order not to beg any questions — “disproportionate” has a negative connotation — I will put the question to be answered as follows: “Is the relatively greater attention paid to the Israel-Palestine conflict over other, worse conflicts itself evidence of Jew hatred?”

There are a number of players who might be said to pay more attention to the Israel-Palestine conflict than other, worse conflicts, but I will consider three: the Palestinians themselves, Arab observers, and the Western media. First, let’s consider the Palestinians. Suppose that Smith is a shop-owner whose store is periodically raided by a Jewish shoplifter. As yet unable to catch the shoplifter, Smith is consumed by hatred for him. Meanwhile, in another town, a Gentile serial killer rapes and kills women. On the rare occasions when the thought of the killer comes to Smith’s mind, Smith feels some degree of indignation and pity. Still, he does not hate and resent the serial killer as he does the Jewish shoplifter. It seems to me that Smith’s attitudes are not evidence of Jew hatred. It is natural — not to say morally good, just natural or commonplace — to focus more attention on the moral wrongs perpetrated against oneself than on the moral wrongs perpetrated against distant others. To do so does not necessarily reveal prejudice against the ethnicity of the wrongdoer. By the same token, Palestinians are naturally more focused on the wrongs perpetrated against them by Israel than on other, perhaps worse conflicts.

Now consider Arab observers. Suppose that Adam is Smith’s cousin, and Adam is almost equally consumed by hatred for the Jewish shoplifter as Smith. Again, I do not think this relatively greater focus on the Jewish shoplifter is evidence of Jew hatred. It is natural — again, not morally good, just commonplace — for those who feel a kinship towards victims of particular wrongdoing to focus more on that wrongdoing, even if there is worse wrongdoing somewhere else in the world. Arab critics of Israel tend to feel a bond of ethnic kinship with the Palestinians, and so will naturally focus more attention on the wrongs done to them than to others. This may offend against some conception of moral equality according to which we ought to dole out our attention to wrongs precisely in proportion to their egregiousness, with no special attention paid to wrongs that are “closer” to us in any sense. My point is merely that even if this form of neutrality is morally required, those who offend against it do not necessarily reveal prejudice in doing so.

It might be objected that some Arab observers have a history of openly anti-Semitic statements. Suppose Adam had such a history. Given this, would Adam’s focus on the Jewish shoplifter smack of Jew hatred? Surprisingly, the answer is no. This is a subtle point, so I want to be clear. With a past history of anti-Semitic statements, we have good evidence that Adam is an anti-Semite. However, Adam’s focus on the Jewish shoplifter does not provide additional evidence, over and above Adam’s past statements, that Adam is an anti-Semite. Similarly, an Arab who criticizes Israel and has a history of anti-Semitic statements is not more likely to be an anti-Semite than an Arab who has a history of anti-Semitic statements but never criticizes Israel.

Now suppose that both the Jewish shoplifter and the Gentile serial killer are caught. It turns out that the Jewish shoplifter is a local “golden boy” who attends high school on a city scholarship, volunteers at soup kitchens, and plays varsity basketball. Many of his relatives hold important positions in government and the media, and many prominent members of the community rally around him, raising money for his legal defense. The serial killer, by contrast, lives on the margins of society, grew up in an abusive household, and had innumerable encounters with law enforcement prior to his most recent crimes. He’s represented by a public defender. Predictably the media, including local gadflies on the opinion pages of the local newspaper, focus a lot of their attention and ire on the golden boy. Once again, that they do this may be in some ways regrettable, as they ignore the serial killers’ victims in the process. There may be a moral argument for apportioning their attention and criticism differently. On the other hand, there is at least a partial justification (and not just a “man bites dog” explanation) for the focus in the fact that the golden boy receives a city scholarship. The point is that the greater focus on the golden boy is not necessarily evidence of Jew hatred. Similarly, Israel not only holds itself out as an upstanding member of the international community, but it also receives significant material support from the United States. These facts can explain why the Western media focuses attention and criticism on the Israel-Palestine conflict to a relatively greater degree than other, worse conflicts.

My conclusion, then, is that there are reasons that explain why both participants and observers pay more attention to the Israel-Palestine conflict than other conflicts — reasons that have nothing to do with Jew hatred. This is, of course, not to say that such attention is certainly not due to anti-Semitism. Rather, my conclusion is that the fact that, say, a member of the Western media focuses more attention on the Israel-Palestine conflict than other conflicts is not itself evidence — does not make it likelier — that this person is an anti-Semite.

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The US, the UN, and Human Rights Investigations

Photo of the UN flag flying against a blue sky with white clouds

This article has a set of discussion questions tailored for classroom use. Click here to download them. To see a full list of articles with discussion questions and other resources, visit our “Educational Resources” page.

The United States has stopped cooperating with United Nations human rights investigations in the US. There are at least 13 requests for inquiry that have gone unanswered since May 7, 2018, and the only UN investigators that have operated in the US in Trump’s administration were invited by the previous administration under President Obama.

Human rights are norms that apply to all members of the community and attempt to protect our basic human dignity from abuse in the political, legal, and social spheres. These rights include freedom of expression/religion, the right to a fair trial if charged with a crime, and the right to participate in political activity.

The UN investigators organized by President Obama were looking into extreme poverty in the US. Extreme poverty violates human rights because of the suffering experienced at the time, and the purported human right to autonomously guide one’s own life. When you live in extreme poverty, often this affects your health, which limits your options in life, and also the poverty creates a situation of need that shapes the choices you make. Because you will enter choice-making scenarios, such as where to live, what jobs to pursue and accept, what food to purchase, etc., from his position of need, these choices are not autonomous but coercive. Your continued survival and baseline well-being are the deciding factor; in a real way you are not free to choose your life’s direction.

The Trump administration has implemented a number of controversial policies that have received outrage by the national population, let alone the international community. The administration has reintroduced mandatory minimum sentencing (contra right to a fair trial), has moved to rescind DACA (contra right to education and right to arbitrary detention), selectively banned immigration from Muslim-majority nations (contra freedom of religion and non-discrimination), invited an anti-LGBT+ hate group to the UN commission on the Status of Women (contra non-discrimination, equal protection under the law, and undermining the rights of LGBT+ people and women), just to name a few.

The UN has reached out regarding incidents in the US under the Trump administration only to be met with silence: “Among the formal approaches that have failed to receive a response from the US over the past several months are queries about family separation of Central Americans at the US border with Mexico, death threats against a transgender activist in Seattle and allegations of anti-gay bias in the sentencing to death of a prisoner in South Dakota.” When events like the family separations at the southern border of the US occur at the administration’s injunction, there is no further authority to regulate the practices; they are legally permissible unless some court can declare them illegal in some way. The huge bureaucratic force of the executive branch was (and is) behind a system that separated families and housed many in cages, all performed according to policy.

A major role of the United Nations is to monitor and report on the condition of respect for human rights in countries around the world. This is a crucial function because there are multiple ways that the living conditions for people can violate their human rights, even in manners systematically supported or allowed by governing systems. The UN human rights investigators serve as an external check on the effects of the policies that sovereign nations can enact.

Countries sometimes enact policies that directly violate human rights, such as the border policies in the US recently, but systemic conditions in a country can also create or reinforce conditions that violate human rights, such as the poverty being investigated by the UN before the Trump administration ceased to cooperate. Both of these routes to human rights violations are concerning, of course, but what is perhaps most troubling is that direct rights violations are being blocked from UN and international scrutiny.

For the UN to be effective in holding sovereign nations accountable, nations need to cooperate and take its authority seriously. For the US to cease to interact and respect the UN’s human rights investigations is a blow to their international authority and may have long-term effects on the effectiveness of extra-national checks on the living conditions of citizens. One advantage of having a body like the UN perform such checks is that it reduces the pressure on individual nations to perform the checks or feel individual burden to perform humanitarian interventions.  Cooperating with the UN thus has the benefit of highlighting and hopefully cooperating with international standards of human rights within one’s own country, and maintaining an international body that can serve as such a check on nations in the future as well.

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Is the Global Citizenship Movement the New “White Man’s Burden”?

Photograph of Palais des Nations building with flags in two columns in front of it

This article has a set of discussion questions tailored for classroom use. Click here to download them. To see a full list of articles with discussion questions and other resources, visit our “Educational Resources” page.

In an age of red-eye flights and the ability to communicate digitally across thousands of miles, the world has never felt so small and interconnected. Despite this, the governments of countries across the world remain relatively segregated in regards to policies concerning citizenship and human rights. These issues were discussed at large during the 37th session of the UN Human Rights Council, which took place on March 6 in the Palais des Nations. During the session, many different methods for improving human rights worldwide were discussed, including the concept of Global Citizenship Education. The movement for global citizenship counters the concept of isolationism and advocates for a set of moral standards to apply a global society. Though global citizenship sounds relatively straightforward, the movement is often steeped in questions of justice and national self-determination.

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) Program for Global Citizenship Education aims to improve human rights worldwide “by empowering learners of all ages to understand that these are global, not local issues and to become active promoters of more peaceful, tolerant, inclusive, secure and sustainable societies.” But does the call for global citizens risk the erasure of national identity? Are the standards set for development always just? And does the initiative for global citizenship encourage a 21st century “white man’s burden” mentality?

The term global citizen refers to “someone who is aware of and understands the wider world – and their place in it.” Though the concept of global citizenship is not necessarily new, the organized global citizen movement began less than 10 years ago. The organization Global Citizen was founded in 2011 with the mission of empowering individuals and communities to make an impact worldwide on a variety of human rights issues. Though one of Global Citizen’s largest goals is to eradicate extreme poverty, the organization also works toward securing gender equity, environmental health, and civil rights.  

Global Citizen takes steps to empower people at the local level, but is there a danger in redefining certain issues as inherently global? There have been ardent critics of this concept of the sentiments of global citizenship, such as British Prime Minister Theresa May and President Donald Trump. In a speech delivered in October of 2016, May expressed her discontent with the attitude of global elites. She commented, “Today, too many people in positions of power behave as though they have more in common with international elites than with the people down the road, the people they employ, the people they pass on the street.” It’s obvious that May feels that globalization has erased local and national connections. She continued with a more controversial statement, declaring that “If you believe you are a citizen of the world, you are a citizen of nowhere.” Only a few months after May’s comments, Donald Trump expressed a similar sentiment. He proclaimed, “There is no global anthem. No global currency. No certificate of global citizenship,” in a speech given during his presidential victory tour. Trump appealed to the isolationist values of his supporters, promising that “Never anyone [sic] again will any other interests come before the interest of the American people.” For these politicians, and their supporters, global citizenship means abandoning national identity.

Though May and Trump’s comments were blasted as ignorant, uncompassionate, and even sympathetic to fascist values, whether or not one can ethically reconcile nationalism and globalism remains largely unanswered. In an article titled “Global Citizens vs the People,” Jim Butcher of online political magazine Spiked explains how global citizenship does not only contradict conservative ideology, but liberal populist ideology as well. Butcher argues that global citizenship does not necessarily mean renouncing nationalist sentiments, but he notes that global citizenship runs the risk of “seeking respite from democracy” and can in fact be “a way of avoiding having to address the political views and arguments of your fellow citizens.”

But some proponents of global citizenship claim that such criticism fails to acknowledge the difference between soft and critical global citizenship. In her article “Soft versus critical global citizenship education,” Vanessa Andreotti acknowledges the potential harm in global citizenship education, but believes that it can be eradicated by emphasizing critical thinking. It is possible for global citizen education to encourage its proponents to “project their beliefs and myths as universal and reproduce power relations and violence similar to those in colonial times.” This need not be the inevitable result, however, if global citizenship education gives learners the tools to critically assess issues of inequality and injustice, which are skills soft global citizenship fails to provide.

For example, while soft global citizenship may frame the solutions to global issues as humanitarian, critical citizenship frames these solutions as a political and ethical. Teaching these critical distinctions keeps the global citizen aware of their own biases and safeguards the global citizen movement from a patronizing mindset. And organizations such as Global Citizen arguably embody critical global citizenship education, with its mission explaining that “everyone from citizens, governments, businesses, and charities have a role – because none of aid, trade nor charity can do this alone.”

But global citizenship is also inherently reliant on globalization. Though critical global citizenship encourages people to think critically about the negative effects of globalization, it assumes that globalization can be used as a positive force. Some might argue that globalization has in fact created a new world hierarchy, specifically in terms of the standards of development. Post-development theory holds that the global crusade for development has failed and that in some cases development operates as a modern form of imperialism that is “a reflection of Western-Northern hegemony over the rest of the world.”

Prominent post-development scholars, such as Wolfgang Sachs, have argued that because development standards often include assimilation to Western lifestyle, “it is not the failure of development which has to be feared but its success.” It is undeniable that development standards are often set and enforced by the Western world, with Western countries holding the majority of power in prominent global organizations working toward development, such as the United Nations and the World Bank. A paper funded by The National Bureau of Economic Research’s Economics of National Security program found that since the UN’s inception, there has been an unwavering power bias in the secretariat in favor of Western countries. Though the UN maintains its mission is to keep peace throughout the world, one could argue that such an imbalance in institutional power is obstructive to this mission and actually reflects the continuation of geographical and racial inequalities spurred by the history of Western imperialism.

However, many supporters of globalization argue that the concrete effects of globalism justify its problematic ideological implications. The United Nations was single-handedly responsible for the eradication of smallpox, with its initiative in the 1960’s and 70’s through the World Health Organization. The UN also touts a variety of achievements through partner organizations like UNICEF, which, between 1990 and 2015, reportedly saved the lives of over 90 million children. The World Bank, an organization working to end worldwide poverty that also grew out of globalization, is responsible for providing essential health services to over 600 million people and providing 72 million with better access to clean water. These achievements are undeniably significant, and would not be possible without a unified effort and collection of people advocating for positive globalization.

Though the struggle for human rights and global economic equality has improved, the problems made apparent by globalization are nowhere close to disappearing. A world of global citizens might just be the solution that marks the 21st century as the century that eradicates extreme poverty and radically improves justice and equality. However, the effects of increasing the global stake in these issues will not be easy to backtrack if such initiatives are unsuccessful or have unintended consequences. We should not underestimate the potential of the global citizen movement to encourage a “developed man’s burden” outlook if it fails to encourage critical and ethical examinations of its followers.

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In Trump’s Jerusalem Declaration, Diplomacy by Blowtorch

A landscape photo of Jerusalem.

On December 6, 2017, President Trump announced his intention to move the U.S. Embassy in Israel from its current location in Tel Aviv to a new location in Jerusalem.  This move is in accordance with the Jerusalem Embassy Act, passed by Congress in 1995 but waived by every president every year since it was passed. This decision has tremendous political implications, which is why previous presidents, despite conducting much of their business pertaining to Israel in Jerusalem, have refrained from moving the embassy or announcing any formal position on the matter of Jerusalem at all, other than to attempt to advance peace talks between Israel and Palestine.

Continue reading “In Trump’s Jerusalem Declaration, Diplomacy by Blowtorch”

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The Risks We Take When We Move Towards Isolationism

A photo of Donald Trump speaking at a conference

What do we risk when we take a quasi-protectionist/isolationist role in global politics? What are the unintended ramifications globally? In the face of increasing violence against ethnic minorities worldwide, it is hard for many human rights activists to digest President Trump’s foreign policy stance without addressing the clear violations of human rights in many regions around the world. For example, violence against the Muslim-majority Rohingya population in Myanmar has increased dramatically in past weeks. Despite this, no statements concerning crimes against humanity or ethnic cleansing, which are both violations of the Responsibility to Protect UN doctrine, have been released by the White House.

In addition, a withdrawal from global promises like the Paris Agreement on climate change passes a terrifying tone for global security, signaling a passive foreign policy stance to issues outside the US’ immediate national interests. By reverting our foreign and economic policies to the pre-WWI status of protectionism and isolationism, we risk a retreat of our influence on global affairs, and eventually will have to accept that our importance as a global player will diminish.

To fully understand Trump’s foreign policies, his global economic policies, which reflect a form of protectionism, needs examination. Protectionism, widely defined as an economic policy aiming to benefit the producers, workers, and businesses against foreign competitors, largely shifts economic importance onto the host country. To accomplish the goal of protectionism, states use methods like tariffs on imported goods, restrictive quotas on foreign goods, and other forms of regulatory initiatives. Despite most economists’ belief that protectionism hurts businesses and consumers within the practicing state, Trump has largely shifted his economic and foreign policies to reflect the goals of protectionism, including his goal of withdrawing the US from the North American Free Trade Act, or NAFTA. NAFTA’s target is to reduce trade barriers between Mexico, Canada, and the US to create a comprehensive North American trading bloc, progressively benefiting each economy in the region.

Furthermore, economic protectionism can be accompanied by isolationism. Isolationism focuses on moving a state’s concentration away from a global level of analysis back into issues of national interest. This includes retreating from foreign conflicts and staying out of global issues. By focusing on domestic issues, some believe that the state’s overall health is improved. Despite these beliefs, in an increasingly globalized world where foreign affairs are deeply interconnected into nearly all lives, a foreign policy like isolationism sets a dangerous precedent because of its aftereffects on other countries. Moving towards a foreign policy like isolationism would revert back on decades of increased globalization and US hegemony, allowing many of the human rights goals attained in our post-WWII society challenged by competing rising powers, like Russia, China, and many others.  

Essentially, Trump’s foreign policy, often described as isolationist and protectionist, is focused on reducing influence in regions of minimal importance to the economic and global standing of the U.S. By taking this foreign policy stance, Trump (whether intentionally or inadvertently) fails to recognize certain atrocities against mankind, such as the conflict in Myanmar. Furthermore, he sets a tone that disregards maintaining the well-being of the global order by effectively saying that matters concerning issues like human rights and climate change have little importance to US interests, and are grounds for other countries to exercise whatever influence they want in those areas of security. By taking such stances, the US’s global influence begins to withdraw, allowing other countries to effectively carve their own stories into the post-WWII liberal order created by the US.

As a nation, if we continue with these types of foreign affairs and economic philosophies, we must inherently recognize that our influence worldwide will not reflect the kind of global power held since WWII. We will need to accept that many of the rising powers challenging our influence will eventually succeed us in certain spheres of influence. This will arise as a result of our inability to assert ourselves in global affairs. Although that is the route that our current president has decided to take, this does not mean that total global US influence will decrease within this presidential term. Changes within Congress in the midterm elections and the will of the people to actively voice their opinions on these philosophies have the ability to challenge the quasi-protectionist/isolationist moves made by the current administration.

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On Syria: Humanitarian Aid

The United States and Russia announced on February 11 a “cessation of hostilities” in Syria. The plan includes increased humanitarian aid, in addition to the ceasing of hostilities, and does not include ISIS or the Nursa front as they are both UN-recognized terrorist organizations. The plan, if executed as announced, will be the first formally declared end to fighting in Syria since 2011. While the plan is a step forward in stopping the five-year conflict, is this humanitarian aid and tentative cessation really enough?

Continue reading “On Syria: Humanitarian Aid”