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Hypocrisy and Credibility in U.S. Foreign Policy

Wide-angle photo of a tattered American flag

As Russia’s invasion of Ukraine enters its second week, much of the world appears to be united in opposition to Russian aggression and support for an economic blockade that has already caused the value of the Russian ruble to drop by thirty percent. Although Putin is still capable of snuffing out Ukrainian resistance, it appears that he underestimated both Ukraine’s willingness to fight and the world’s willingness to punish Russia for violating its neighbor’s sovereignty. Ultimately, Putin’s geopolitical gamble, which is aimed at resurrecting something like the Soviet Union’s sphere of influence in Eastern Europe, may backfire spectacularly, leading Eastern European nations to embrace the West more fervently than ever before.

Of course, the United States has been among the leaders of efforts to sanction Putin for his war of aggression. In the diplomatic negotiations leading up to the war, it rejected Russia’s demand that NATO retreat from Eastern Europe. The United States plausibly believes that Putin’s objections to NATO expansion are pretextual. The man who famously said that the fall of the Soviet Union was the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the twentieth century would have waged war on Russia’s neighbors even without NATO expansion if they demonstrated a desire to align themselves with the West politically, economically, and culturally. According to this narrative, Putin’s aim is not, as he claims, to maintain a neutral buffer zone between Russia and expansionist Western powers, but to throttle the democratic aspirations of small nations. And U.S. support for these nations reflects its longstanding commitment to national self-determination.

Again, this is a plausible story, but when the United States tells it, its past actions undermine its standing as the storyteller. For over two hundred years, the United States pursued a policy of zero tolerance of other major powers’ involvement in the political affairs of the Western hemisphere, or even the political alignment of countries in the Americas and the Caribbean with other major powers. Thus, the so-called “Banana Wars” of the early twentieth century saw successive administrations invade various Caribbean and Central American nations, often to deter foreign meddling. For example, the Wilson administration sent the U.S. Marines to invade Haiti in 1915 because, among other things, he feared German influence over Haitian affairs and even a possible German invasion of Haiti.

During the Cold War, the U.S. acted aggressively to isolate and, if possible, overthrow Marxist or socialist governments in the Americas, seeing them as potential Soviet allies or proxies. In 1954, for example, the CIA toppled a socialist government in Guatemala and attempted to justify the coup by producing evidence of Soviet meddling in the country’s affairs. When Fidel Castro established a pro-Soviet regime in Cuba in 1959, the U.S. responded with an economic blockade, an attempted invasion, and numerous plots to assassinate him. The U.S. covertly backed a coup against a social democratic government in Brazil in 1964, and in 1965 it invaded the Dominican Republic in order to prevent what the Johnson administration believed to be a second Cuban revolution. In 1973, the CIA helped overthrow the Soviet-friendly democratic socialist government of Chile and install a pro-American dictator. When the Soviet-aligned Sandinistas took power in Nicaragua in 1979, the Reagan administration, fearing that they might export Marxist revolution to other Central American countries, backed the Contras’ bid to overthrow them through the use of brutal terroristic violence. And in 1983, the Reagan administration launched an invasion of Grenada, which it justified on the grounds that its non-aligned Marxist government was aiding a Soviet-Cuban military buildup in the Caribbean.

The point of this recitation is not to defend Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. When a blamer is accused of hypocrisy for acting in the same manner as the person she blames, the accusation does nothing to justify the behavior of the blame’s target. Instead, it calls into question the sincerity of the blamer’s commitment to the principle she blames others for violating. The accusation goes to the blamer’s standing as a blamer, and as a result, it has a tendency to affect others’ willingness to take the blamer seriously and to accept the blamer as a moral leader.

Thus, the U.S.’s actions in the Western hemisphere genuinely undermine its standing to blame Russia for waging aggressive war aimed at establishing dominance over its immediate neighbors. Of course, Putin makes just this point at every opportunity. As of now, most countries appear to accept the U.S.’s leadership. But how many politically-engaged people with a little knowledge of history have been led to sympathize with Putin’s agenda, or at least doubt the validity of the liberal international order, by their awareness of this hypocrisy? According to reports, many Chinese citizens, conditioned by years of Chinese propaganda harping on American hypocrisy in foreign affairs, appear to be largely sympathetic to the invasion.

Again, Putin’s war of aggression against Ukraine is wrong. Indeed, I believe that it is my generation’s Spanish Civil War: a canary in the coal mine, a prelude to a larger conflict between the world’s rising illiberal powers and its floundering liberal democracies. I know what side I’m on. But for the sake of the liberal international order, the U.S. must take more seriously its responsibility to act in accordance with the principles it avows.

Esquire and the Life of an American Boy

Sculpture of Esquire magazine's logo

This month Esquire magazine published an article titled “The Life of an American Boy at 17” on their website. It profiles the day-to-day of a white, male teenager from Wisconsin named Ryan, who seems to have a life similar to many other white, male teenagers from Wisconsin: his routine consists of getting up early to work, going to school, hanging out with friends and his girlfriend, and playing videogames. When asked about various social and political issues he expresses his beliefs, although it’s not clear how well he has them worked out (when asked what he thought about the #metoo movement, for example, he responded “I’ve heard of that…What does it mean again?”). All in all, the article profiles what appears to be an average, not terribly politically engaged or well-informed teenager.

The response to the article, however, has been more than mere frustration at its lack of content. One criticism is that it was a questionable choice on Esquire’s behalf to present a profile of a white teenager during Black History month. This is not to say that there must be a moratorium on stories about white people during the entirety of February, nor is it to say that a profile on what it means to grow up as a white male teenager in the current political climate would not be worthwhile. However, since the profile is presented as the first of a series on growing up in America from the perspective of many different types of people – “white, black, LGBTQ, female” according to Esquire’s editor Jay Fielden –  the choice to present this particular profile first, and during Black History month, struck some as tone-deaf.

Others criticized Esquire for portraying the profile’s subject as a victim of political correctness: in response to saying that he supported Trump, for example, Ryan lamented that “Last year was really bad…I couldn’t say anything without pissing someone off.” As many online responded, given the challenges faced by members of the other groups that Esquire will ostensibly profile in the future, the fear of “pissing someone off” is pretty small potatoes. “Finally, the representation we’ve been waiting for” expressed one popular Tweet in response to pictures from the Esquire piece, one in which the profiled subject is holding a hunting rifle: “magazine covers are very important and powerful real estate…they empower those that feel reflected…and the people who see this don’t super need to feel empowered right now! Especially the ones with guns!!!”

In a defense of the piece, however, Fielden explains what he takes to be serious issues facing people like Ryan today, as well as his own children:

We disagree as a country on every possible cultural and political point except, perhaps, one: that private life, as a result, has also become its own fresh hell. This has made the very social fabric of modern democratic civilization – watercooler BS, chats with cabbies and total strangers, dinner parties, large family gatherings – sometimes feel like a Kafkaesque thought-police nightmare of paranoia and nausea, in which you might accidentally say what you really believe and get burned at the stake. A crackling debate used to be as important an ingredient of a memorable night out as what was served and who else was there. People sometimes even argued a position they might not have totally agreed with, partly for the thrilling intellectual exercise playing devil’s advocate can be, but mostly for the drunken hell of it. Being intellectually puritanical was considered backward. More often than not, it was all a lot of fun.

Fielden’s worries seem to be the following: in such a partisan climate one must be constantly on their guard about the kinds of beliefs they express, lest they be chastised by those who disagree, whereas perhaps in a different time people may not have been so worried about offending others, and so felt much more free to express their beliefs (no matter how potentially offensive). Dealing with this climate must be particularly difficult for teenagers, Fieldman goes on to claim, and especially white teenage boys, who need to wrestle with concepts like “#MeToo, gender fluidity, Black Lives Matter, ‘check your privilege,’ and #TheFutureIsFemale.”

While the kinds of concerns expressed by Fielden and Ryan are readily found online, it’s not clear how warranted they are. The worries that Fielden expresses above, for example, border on hyperbole: despite his portrayal of a “Kafkaesque thought-police nightmare,” dinner parties full of enjoyable conversation and arguments are alive and well, and people do, in fact, continue to “BS” around the watercooler. Fielden is perhaps correct that society has started to take the kind of talk that used to be dismissed as inconsequential more seriously, but it seems that, if anything, this is a change for the better, not the beginning of a slide into some 1984-style dystopia. (For example, one is reminded of Trump’s claim that his infamous remarks about where he felt entitled to grab women was simply “locker [room] talk”: while Trump was no doubt correct that there does occur locker room talk with similarly vulgar content, society moving in a direction in which such talk ceases to exists hardly seems lamentable.)

Part of the problem with Fielden’s concerns that Ryan is being unduly censored for expressing his political views is that he does not seem to have given those views too much thought. From the article:

The most popular opinion at [Ryan’s high school] West Bend seemed to be anti-Trump. Ryan, raised in Republican households, was surprised by the vitriol. “Everyone hates me because I support Trump?” he says. “I couldn’t debate anyone without being shut down and called names. Like, what did I do wrong?” […] I also ask him about Trump’s reputation as a misogynist.  “He is respectful towards his wife, as far as I know,” he says. “I don’t think he is racist or sexist.”

Ryan is certainly not alone is not being as informed about his beliefs as he could be. But if one expresses a political opinion without an adequate understanding of why one holds it then it does not seem like a bad thing that they should be taken to task for it. If this is what those like Fielden and Ryan are worried about – the loss of the ability to express one’s views no matter how well-supported without being challenged – then these worries seem to be misplaced.

We’ve seen that there do seem to be good reasons to be concerned with both the timing of Esquire’s profile, as well as the way in which an average white, male, American teenager is portrayed as a victim for his political views. Perhaps one thing we can take away from the article, then, is that instead of society becoming more “intellectually puritanical,” as Fielden puts it, we should consider it progress that people are starting to prefer that their “crackling debates” and watercooler conversations start from a more informed position.

Considering the Consequences: Withdrawing from the INF Treaty

Photograph of Reagan and Gorbachev shaking hands and holding a document

In a very dramatic speech on February 1, 2019, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo declared that the US is suspending its obligations under the INF Treaty effective February 2 due to Russia’s continuous violation of the Article XV of the treaty, which obligates parties “not to produce, possess, or flight-test a ground-launched intermediate-range cruise missile system with a range between 500 and 5,500 kilometers.” Russia followed the US decision just hours after the Secretary Pompeo’s speech.

The Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty was signed by Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev in 1987 in order to prevent both the US and then the Soviet Union from developing an entire class of nuclear weapons, leading to a gradual removal and destruction of more than 2600 missiles. The Treaty was celebrated as one of the most advanced and consequential agreements between the two world powers that aimed to bring more security to the North Atlantic Area, and most importantly to calm down the tensions caused by the Cold War. The purpose of these missiles was to threaten the possibility of nuclear war in Europe, as they were not easily noticeable on radars due to their short flight times and unpredictable flight patterns. Notably, this treaty was not only important for Europe, as it also imposed a ban on using “all types of ground-launched cruise and ballistic missiles” anywhere in the world.

The US has first warned about Russia’s violation of the treaty in 2014, and since then has been imposing various policies and sanctions trying to leverage Russia to comply with the treaty. Russia has rebutted those claims, asking that the US provides evidence, while also giving a list of US violations. As time passed the US allies started to increasingly align with the US assessment and ultimately “concluded that Russia has developed and fielded a missile system.” The Euro-American front seemed to be clear in their position towards Russia, but some of the first reactions coming from Europe seem hesitant to completely side with President Trump, as most of those countries view this treaty as a pillar of their security architecture. Several questions arise after the withdrawing from the treaty: what are the major consequences of the withdrawal, and was the decision to withdraw more opportune then the policy of trying to leverage Russia back to compliance?

The array of consequences are still debated, especially the results of this decision on the peace and security in the world. America’s European allies have already expressed their disaffection with President Trump’s decision as they fear that Russia is once again going to be able to target all parts of the European territory. Another fear also accompanies that of the Russian attack: the decoupling of US and European security. European allies have relied for a long time on US interest in keeping Europe safe, but President Trump has often emphasized that this responsibility is now on Europeans themselves. The transatlantic area has been under a strain for a quite some time, and the withdrawal is going to provide just another kick in the already tense relationship. There is a lot of discussion on whether NATO is going to be able to balance between the allies as the new challenges arise, but the next steps have yet to be seen.

Another important factor is that the US will now be free to develop intermediate range missiles as a deterrence mechanism against China, but this might also indicate a beginning of a new arms race. China has not been part of the INF, and as such was not restrained to develop intermediate-range missiles which led to China’s missile arsenal consisting of approximately 95% of intermediate-range systems. However, the fact remains that if US and China commence the arms race, the chances of a potential new INF treaty that would include China, Russia, and European allies seems less likely especially as the US will need to ensure support both from Europeans and Russians in order to compel China to join.

The previous administration pursued the approach of targeted policy and sanctions to try to convince Russia to get back to compliance to the INF Treaty. Although this approach did not result in Russia’s policy reversal and decision to comply, one question remains open: why did the US withdraw without a readily available alternative, and would remaining a party to the treaty make any future negotiations easier? In case of the START I Treaty, Russia and US readily replaced the expiring treaty with its refreshed version New START, just half a year after its expiry. Exiting the treaty obligations while the treaty was still in force, despite the fact it had been violated by one party, makes it much harder to renegotiate as it opens space for potential disagreements on things that the previous agreement had established and clarified, and most importantly allows for a period of arms race before any new potential agreement is reached. Consequently, one must take into account the long lasting process that goes into negotiating any kind of arms deal, especially between two world powers. In evaluating the consequences of the withdrawal one ought to take into account the possibility of renegotiating the status quo.

The full range of consequences of the US and Russian withdrawal are not yet clear, but we can only hope that we are not going to repeat the mistakes of our past.

Angola Prison and the Ethics of Prison Labor

Photograph of the entrance to the Louisiana State Penitentiary, showing a stop sign and a guard station along with a sign naming the institution and the warden Burl Cain

Walking through Louisiana State Penitentiary, one might feel as though they have traveled back to the early 19th century. Instead of wasting their days away in a cell, inmates (most of whom are black) line massive farm fields harvesting wheat, corn, soybeans, milo, and cotton. Prison guards (most of whom are white) patrol the fields on horseback, prepared to subdue an unruly inmate, or worse, an organized strike. Most hauntingly, there’s a good chance that many of the prisoners working this field are descended from the slaves who worked it when it was a private plantation in the 19th century. It was during this period of private ownership that the land got its nickname, “Angola,” after the African nation where many of its slaves hailed from. Centuries later, Angola Prison is now the largest maximum-security prison in the United States, and rigorously employs inmate labor.

Conditions of prison labor at Angola are known to be particularly brutal. Once called the “Alcatraz of the South” and the “Bloodiest Prison in America,” there have been multiple alleged cases of prisoner maltreatment and torture. In the 1930s, 31 prisoners slit their Achilles tendons to protest brutal working conditions. More recently, however, allegations of slavery in court have been inmates’ primary method of resistance. Social justice organizations such as the American Civil Liberties Union have attacked indications of slave labor such as inmates working for as little as two cents an hour, and punishments for not working being as severe as solitary confinement. Additionally, organizations have challenged Angola Prison on allegations of inmates being denied healthcare and being forced to live in unsanitary conditions.

However, despite its seeming brutality, prison labor at Angola may be doing more to benefit inmates than to harm them. This is thanks to rehabilitative reforms made to prison operations by former warden Burl Cain. Upon taking over the prison, Cain stated that his number one priority was “moral rehabilitation” of inmates in order to reduce in-prison violence. He did this by two means: religion and labor. Religion is obvious at Angola, with Christian churches scattering the prison grounds, and services being held daily. Holding more people who are serving life sentences than Alabama, Arkansas, Mississippi, Tennessee, and Texas combined, Cain’s objective by imposing religion is to give inmates at Angola hope for their futures and motivation to behave properly. As for labor, Cain holds a similar objective. At Angola, work is intended to give inmates a day-to-day purpose by fostering skills and achievement. The type of work administered is not limited solely to the fields, however. Inmates are also encouraged to do work at the prison learning trades such as automotive technology, culinary arts, and plumbing. Those serving life sentences learn and teach these skills to inmates who have the possibility of parole, thus sustaining what is one of Louisiana’s largest vocational institutions. While using religion and labor as means to achieving “moral rehabilitation” may be controversial, the results speak for themselves: the number of assaults in the prison has decreased from 1,346 in 1992 to just 343 in 2014.

Yet, despite the potential benefits provided to inmates at Angola, serious ethical pitfalls still exist. The most obvious of these pitfalls is the fact that inmates have no choice whether they work or not. This is where the argument over prison labor slips into slavery. The Thirteenth Amendment reads, “neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for a crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.” While explicitly lawful, America’s history of harsh incarceration practices, such as mandatory minimums and severe sentencing for drug offenses, would point to prison labor being an unethical practice. Louisiana laws are especially tough on crime. For example, the mandatory minimum sentence for second degree murder in Louisiana is life without parole, and a Louisiana citizen can be sentenced up to 10 years for writing a worthless check. Harsh sentencing laws such as these in combination with other factors contribute to Louisiana having the highest state incarceration rate in the U.S., and therefore the highest incarceration rate in the world. Because incarceration is sometimes unfair, particularly in Louisiana, enforcing labor while incarcerated could be considered slavery.

Additionally, the fact cannot be ignored that statistically, there are innocent men living and working in Angola. There have been as many as 850 exonerations in the U.S. since the late 1980s, and it is estimated that approximately one percent of America’s incarcerated population is innocent. Applied to Angola Prison, which holds about 5,000 prisoners as of 2010, this means that as many as 50 men working Angola’s fields did not commit the offenses for which they are serving time. Furthermore, the practice of prison labor falls under even more scrutiny when it is used for capital gain. In the U.S., it has become an increasingly popular practice for prisoners to be outsourced to factories and call centers of private businesses for the businesses’ profit. These “private prisons” accounted for approximately 18% of federal prisoners in 2015, and corporations as large as Victoria’s Secret and Starbucks are guilty of employing inmate labor to work for well below minimum wage. While Louisiana has continued to expand the legal rights of private prisons in the state, Angola appears to be the exception to this. Angola is almost entirely self-sustaining, with prisoners processing and consuming the goods they produce.

While Angola’s version of inmate labor may seem inhumane on the surface, there are some very real benefits to prisoners who take advantage of some of the programs it has to offer. That being said, Angola still cannot escape many of the moral shortcomings that are carried with inmate labor. Inmate labor is a slippery slope into slavery, and slavery is the last thing the U.S. should be tampering with given its place in the nation’s history. However, there is also the challenge of making the lives of prisoners serving life sentences meaningful again, and Angola at least appears to be taking steps to address that challenge. Regardless, the practice of inmate labor is riddled with ethical complexities, many of which can be solved at the source by re-evaluating the reasons a person should be incarcerated.

 

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.

Should the United States Supreme Court Be Abolished?

Photograph of the US Supreme Court framed by shrubbery

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 Supreme Court is back at the forefront of political debate given the recent string of contentious decisions affecting key parts of the President’s political agenda (the Travel Ban), the culture wars (Masterpiece Cakeshop), and the labor movement (Janus). Even more, the recent announcement of Justice Kennedy’s retirement means that the Supreme Court’s ideological balance is likely to sway further to the right — and it may stay that way for some time, given the justices’ lifetime appointments. This makes landmark decisions such as Roe V. Wade vulnerable to being overturned. The time seems ripe for reflection on the moral and political justification for having a Supreme Court with its ultimate power of judicial review. Is this institution so undemocratic that it ought to be abolished in favor of majoritarian procedures for deciding the thorniest social issues of the day? Continue reading “Should the United States Supreme Court Be Abolished?”

Reckoning with Democracy in Decline

Photograph of several flagpoles, with Chinese and Hong Kong flags visible

This article has a set of discussion questions tailored for classroom use. Click here to download them. To see a full list of our discussion questions, check out the Educational Resources page.


In the light of the recent decisions coming from People’s Republic of China regarding the elimination of the two-term limit on presidency, it is worth exploring the state of democracy in the world, and more specifically prospects for its survival. Even though China has never significantly approached fulfilling procedural minimum requirements for democracy, this move comes as a significant step away from classical conception of Chinese authoritarianism towards an even more closed political system. Setting China aside as just one among the sea of examples, one ought to focus on the reasons for which democracy or the ideals associated with democracy are globally in decline. Continue reading “Reckoning with Democracy in Decline”

International Sanctions: A War of Their Own?

"North Korea - Pyongyang" by (stephan) liscened under CC BY 2.0 (via Flickr)

In the current political climate, it is hard to avoid the topic regarding sanctions. The United States has been recently revising the sanctions it has placed on different countries in the past few years, such as North Korea, Russia, and Cuba. Economic sanctions are penalties or blockades against a targeted country, and are a “foreign policy tool” used when diplomatic relations aren’t as effective as intended. These sanctions can take many forms, such as tariffs, embargos, quotas and asset freezes.

Continue reading “International Sanctions: A War of Their Own?”

In the Manafort Indictment, An Ethical Test for the Trump Administration

Robert Mueller speaking during an Oval Office meeting.

On October 30, former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort and his business partner, Robert Gates, were indicted on 12 counts, including money laundering, conspiracy against the United States, false and misleading statements, and violations of the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA). The issue becomes more complex when considering the direct relation that the Manafort and Gates indictments have to the Trump campaign, which have not pointed to any verifiable collusion.  

Right-wing media instantly took up arms to help the Trump campaign defer and deflect the allegations.  These efforts include redirecting blame to the Clinton campaign’s “Steele Dossier” and the wholly unsubstantiated “Uranium One” claims. Attempts at deflecting Russian collusion from the Trump campaign to the Clinton campaign has involved a strategic attempt made by right-wing media sources to sidetrack the Mueller indictments of Manafort, Gates, and George Papadopoulos.

Continue reading “In the Manafort Indictment, An Ethical Test for the Trump Administration”

Does the United States Steal Nurses from the Developing World?

Jamaica’s healthcare system has a critical problem: there are not enough specialist nurses in the country. Jamaica produces plenty of specialist nurses. However, nurses trained in Jamaica are leaving the country to work in places in the developed world, like the United States or the United Kingdom. According to a recent NPR article, “the exodus has forced Jamaican hospitals to reschedule some complex surgeries because of a lack of nursing staff on their wards.” James Moss-Solomon, the chairman of the University Hospital of the West Indies in Kingston, accused richer countries like the U.S. of “poaching” nurses from Jamaica. The use of the verb “to poach” —which can mean “to take something in an unfair way”—implies a moral condemnation of the practice.

Continue reading “Does the United States Steal Nurses from the Developing World?”

Affirmative Hesitations in India and the United States

In February of 2016, caste tensions that have always smoldered under the covers of Indian life were shocked back into the open. February’s caste riots in Haryana, India, brought much needed attention to the ways in which the long-outlawed caste system manifests itself in modern India. These rioters joined the peculiar yet growing number of protesting high castes. The Jats, members of a high caste in northern India, violently protested to change their status from a high caste to a low caste to gain from the government sanctioned benefits enjoyed by the lower castes.

Continue reading “Affirmative Hesitations in India and the United States”