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(05/20/23 4:03am)
During the first year following the Feb. 24, 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, China maintained a neutral stance, as Beijing attempted to undercut democracy without provoking Western economic sanctions. However, China’s true stance in the war was put on full display in March of this year when President Xi Jinping visited President Vladimir Putin in Moscow, and the two leaders signed an agreement that promised a stronger relationship and condemned American hegemony. Worryingly, Beijing has allegedly considered further expanding its trading repertoire with Moscow by selling weapons — including artillery shells and attack drones — to Russia. Arming Russia would officially end any pretense of Chinese neutrality and undoubtedly provoke a series of Western sanctions against Beijing. Instead, China should work to broker a realistic peace treaty with Russia and Ukraine, asserting itself as the world’s foremost diplomatic leader at a time when geopolitical tides are turning in favor of the developing world and the Global South.
(04/18/23 4:01am)
Brasilia, the capital of Brazil, completed its construction in 1960 with the intent of using modernist architecture as a tool to forge a futuristic utopian society. The city was designed around urban planner Lucio Costa’s airplane-shaped “Plano Piloto.” A series of residential “superquadras” along the plane’s wings contained dwellings, hospitals and schools and were connected to government buildings in the airplane’s cockpit through central highways. Brasilia’s designers hoped to create an egalitarian city which could be inhabited by government ministers and blue-collar workers alike.
(04/04/23 4:05am)
In recent years, China has performed a series of threatening military exercises around the Taiwan Strait, leading to the United States demonstrating its commitment to defending Taiwan, a disputed island territory which mainland China claims as its own. Taiwan, now a democracy, became the headquarters of the Kuomintang, whom the Chinese Communist Party defeated at the end of the Chinese civil war (1945–49).
(03/09/23 5:03am)
Ukraine’s unyielding resistance to Vladimir Putin’s autocratic aggression has improved the country’s reputation on the international stage and led to a powerful alliance between Presidents Joe Biden and Volodymyr Zelenskyy. However, the greatest test of this partnership has yet to come. There is no end in sight to the Russia-Ukraine conflict, and Ukraine’s military is highly dependent on U.S. aid. Although the Biden administration has supported Ukraine rhetorically and politically, it is not surprising that Ukrainian leaders may worry that American politicians will not support a foreign war indefinitely. This strategic partnership is currently at a high point after decades of ups and downs, but future military aid could be jeopardized by a lack of support on Capitol Hill. Therefore, Kyiv faces external pressure to achieve sustained military success, as they must prove to Washington that military support is a worthwhile investment.
(02/22/23 5:03am)
By transitioning from a centrally planned, collectivist economy under Mao Zedong to a free market system of “capitalism with Chinese characteristics,” China has undergone an economic explosion since the late 1970s, and many scholars see the nation’s continued rise as inevitable. China’s GDP per capita is quickly rising, and its annual growth has long outpaced the United States’, leading to predictions that China’s GDP will overtake America’s by 2035.
(12/02/21 5:01am)
During the last four decades, China has undergone a radical change, metamorphosing from a predominantly agrarian nation to a city-centric, economic powerhouse. The Chinese Communist Party has actively facilitated this trend of mass urbanization.
(10/28/21 4:01am)
The Assad dictatorship in Syria — led for 50 years by Hafez al-Assad and his son Bashar — has been brutal, long-lasting and authoritarian. Even movements such as the 2011 Arab Spring revolts, which dethroned dictators in Libya, Egypt and Tunisia, did little to dislodge Assad's iron grip on its civilians. The revolts prompted a still-ongoing civil war in Syria, in which millions of Syrians were forced to seek refuge, were externally displaced or perished from the violence. Tragically, the Assad regime has been the main perpetrator of human rights abuses throughout the war, abandoning its obligation to protect Syrian citizens. In her book, “Ambiguities of Domination,” Lisa Wedeen illustrates how this phenomenon reflects the politics of “as if."Per Wedeen, the Assad regime does not care about Syrian citizens, but it acts as if it cares in order to appear legitimate.Conversely, many Syrians do not necessarily support the Assad regime, but act as if they do to escape persecution.
(09/30/21 4:01am)
During the formation of Israel, aspects of two distinct cultural groups — European Ashkenazi Jewish people and Arabic Mizrahi Jewish people — were fused to form a shared national identity within the supposed Jewish homeland. However, Israeli society remains hierarchical; many Ashkenazi Jewish Israeli individuals have long suppressed both Mizrahi Jewish individuals and Palestinians, who claim indigeneity over much of Israel but have long been confined to the margins of Israeli society by the government.
(10/07/21 4:01am)
Twentieth-century technological advances led to the modernization of Pan-Arabic music. Musicians utilized improved microphones to cultivate the sensation of “atifiyaa,” an artist-centric feeling of sentimentality and sensuality characteristic of modernist Egyptian music. Further technological changes led to the popularity of the cassette tape, which helped deviant underground music reach millions of Pan-Arabic listeners. Underground cassette tape recordings were utilized by Dana International, a transgender Mizrahi Jewish pop singer whose music generated controversy because of her sexual lyrics and provocative dancing. Modernist changes in musical style allow artists to push traditionally rigid boundaries of gender in Middle Eastern culture.
(04/28/21 5:01am)
In November 2019, Evo Morales, Bolivia’s longtime president, resigned from office after an audit uncovered inconsistencies in the recent presidential election.Morales, Bolivia’s president for nearly 14 years, was only allowed to run for a third consecutive term because of a 2017 court ruling which critics claim was slated in his favor. Despite this controversy, Morales remains highly popular within Bolivia; a leftist populist, he was the first Indigenous president in the history of the majority-Indigenous country.Morales’ popularity was validated in the 2020 presidential election, as his hand-picked candidate, Luis Arce, won the presidency in a landslide.Arce’s victory prompted many topredict a leftist resurgence in nearby Ecuador, which had been governed from 2007 to 2017 by Rafael Correa, an authoritarian populist whose socialist policies were beloved by the working class.
(04/21/21 5:01am)
Content warning: This column discusses police brutality.
(04/07/21 4:31am)
Colombia has a long history of civil war. Tragically, violence between the Colombian military and leftists dates back to La Violencia of the 1940s and ‘50s, in which the Conservative government persecuted Liberal Party members, and escalated after the formation of FARC — a leftist guerrilla group — in the early 1960s. Colombia’s civil war officially lasted over five decades and claimed over 220,000 lives. A 2016 peace deal between the Colombian military and FARC was supposed to resolve a decades-long, low-intensity war between the two parties. Unfortunately, neither party has lived up to the terms of the agreement, as FARC has continued to militarize since signing the treaty. However, the government is no less culpable than the guerrilla groups; in March, the military bombed a youth-inhabited rebel camp, killing multiple children.
(03/31/21 5:31am)
Neoliberalism, the ideology that the government’s primary purpose is to support the free market, has been one of the most important buzzwords in modern politics for the last 30 years. Neoliberalism considers government restrictions an impediment to freedom and encourages globalization and unrestricted trade among countries.
(02/24/21 6:03am)
Since the election of President Biden, U.S.-Russia relations have quickly worsened; the U.S. government fell victim to a cyber hack by Russian hackers in December and Western-backed politician Alexei Navalny has inspired pro-democracy protests across Russia in recent weeks.However, in a rare display of Russian-American cooperation, the United States and Russia recently agreed to extend the New START treaty,an agreement that limits both nations’ nuclear stockpiles. Despite extreme tension, the United States and Russia have historically found common ground on the issue of nuclear weaponry. Since the implementation of nuclear technology, nuclear limitation treaties have served as the backbone of cooperation between the two nations. For example, after the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis — the closest any two nuclear nations have ever come to war — Soviet-American relations were restored through the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks of the late 1960s and 70s, in which both countries agreed to reduce their production of nuclear weapons. It may sound counterintuitive, but nuclear weaponry has been crucial in preventing major warfare since World War II. The threat of mutually assured nuclear destruction deters countries from engaging in total interstate wars and gives countries incentive to strengthen international institutions through arms control treaties and collective security measures.
(03/24/21 5:33am)
In recent weeks, disparities in vaccine distribution between various nations have begun to manifest. Countries such as the United States and United Kingdom have succeeded relative to other first world nations from an inoculation standpoint; other wealthy countries, such as those in the European Union, have failed to vaccinate their populations to a comparable extent. At this point in time, it makes sense that countries best equipped to vaccinate would prioritize vaccinating their own citizens over those in other countries. Opting to give vaccinations to other nations, even those that are struggling, would likely be a disastrous political gambit. This strategy also makes sense from an international relations perspective; realist thinkers, who believe that individual states must protect their own citizens over those in other countries, would applaud countries who prioritize domestic vaccinations over foreign ones.
(03/17/21 4:01am)
In a chapter from his World War II-era book dubbed "Dialectic of Enlightenment" (1947),German Jewish philosopher Theodor Adorno hypothesized that capitalist media producers prioritize marketability over artistic value, causing all genres of mainstream entertainment to conform to rigid guidelines. According to Adorno, mass media encourages conformity to the point where “every detail is so firmly stamped with sameness that nothing can appear which is not marked at birth, or does not meet with approval at first sight.”"Dialectic of Enlightenment" was published after the Nazi propaganda machine fully infiltrated German society and offers a unique perspective on the roles of mass media and fascism.
(03/10/21 6:31am)
The historically strained relationship between the United States and China has seen rising tensions in recent months, as President Joe Biden has promised to reinforce American presence in international institutions and promote a pro-democracy ideology that threatens China’s authoritarian efforts to annex the democratic island of Taiwan. Negotiations between the United States and China regarding Taiwanese sovereignty date back to the Cold War. This topic is an especially contentious issue for Chinese-U.S. relations, because China believes that the U.S. government reneged on promises to acknowledge Chinese control over Taiwan.The United States has pledged to defend Taiwan for moral reasons, as the U.S. sees itself as a standard-bearer for democracy worldwide. From this standpoint, the choice for the United States is clear: Taiwan must be defended to protect the institution of democracy as well as the individual rights of Taiwanese citizens.
(03/03/21 6:31am)
Content warning: This column discusses anti-Semitism and Islamophobia.
