The Journal of International Service is proud to present our Spring 2022 edition, featuring a variety of interesting and rigorously researched articles written by graduate students at the School of International Service. Here you’ll find an introduction to both our authors and their topics as well as an editor’s corner where some of our editors share their thoughts on how Russia’s invasion of Ukraine will shape the future of international relations. A huge thank you to our authors, editors, and faculty and staff advisors for all their support in publishing this edition!
Foreign Aid for Rural Development: Catalyst for EU-Algeria Cooperation in Migration Policy? – Alvina Ahmed
The European Union’s European Neighborhood Policy (ENP) is an ambitious policy that aims to “bring the EU and its neighbors (to the east and south) closer.”[1] Different from most of the other neighbors of the union, Algeria’s relationship with the EU is an interesting and baffling case. Unlike other countries in the Euro-Mediterranean region, Algeria has not negotiated a Mobility Partnership and is not involved in any country-specific European Union Emergency Fund for Africa (EUFT) projects.[2] Scholars have debated whether such aid projects would deter emigration from developing countries. While many believe that foreign aid might actually encourage emigration by providing greater disposable income, others have deduced that foreign aid provided to rural areas would reduce emigration rates by strengthening local economic institutions. This research asks the question whether EU aid allocated specifically for rural development in Algeria would reduce emigration from Algeria to European nations over time. This question is significant because one of the converging interests between the nation and the EU is to seal off borders to irregular migration and for Algeria to maintain internal security.
The purpose of this study is not to find policy implications that aim to restrict migration from Algeria into the EU. Rather, it explores whether aid provided to rural development can indirectly lead to greater cooperation between the nation and the EU. The reasoning behind this, according to experts,[3] is that rural residents prefer to stay in their home nations; when they do emigrate, they do so out of necessity—an economic pull factor—and not aspiration. Therefore, providing such aid may be a good incentive for Algerian policymakers to engage in increased cooperation with the EU for two reasons: first, it caters to the Algerian government’s interest in limiting illegal emigration from its country. Second, rural development can lead to economic growth for the local population which can, in turn, secure electoral victory for incumbent Algerian governments.
In order to conduct this study, data from the EU aid explorer on the amount of EU aid disbursed over 2007-2020 and data regarding asylum applications from Algeria to European nations over the same period from the UNHCR database were collected. Using the data obtained, the change over time in the number of applications—which is the change over time—was analyzed. The study concluded that while many factors lead to a change in the number of asylum applications, increase in foreign aid may lead to a decrease in emigration in the following years after the aid had been disbursed to the rural development sector in Algeria from the EU. While these findings do not aim to create policy implications that aim to restrict emigration specifically, it can work as an incentive for Algerian policymakers to cooperate more with the EU.
[1] “The European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP),” EU Neighbours. https://www.euneighbours.eu/en/policy/european-neighbourhood-policy-enp
[2] Federica Zardo and Chiara Loschi. “EU-Algeria (non)cooperation on migration: A tale of two fortresses” Mediterranean Politics, May 31, 2020
[3] Jonas Gamso and Farhod Yuldashev. “Does rural development aid reduce international migration? World Development, October 2019.
Sexual and Gender-Based Violence in the Ethiopian-Tigrayan Conflict- Rachel Crocker
Ethiopia’s civil war, largely fought in Tigray, has caused mass civilian displacement and a lack of medical and food aid in the region. The upset of the war resulted in a significant increase in sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV), and experts conservatively estimate that at least 10,000 instances of SGBV have occurred since the beginning of the conflict. Seeing how rape and violence was used as a weapon of war naturally incensed me. It didn’t seem like the Ethiopian government was doing much, if anything, to stop the violations. Their lack of action spurred me to research the issue of SGBV in Tigray and generate a policy analysis on the topic.
Writing this paper was a culmination of the frustration I felt while researching and writing about different instances of SGBV around the world. SGBV can occur in any circumstance: in times of war, conflict, during migration, in refugee camps, at work, and within relationships. SGBV undoubtedly stems from the perseverance of patriarchal societies that aim to keep women around the world trapped in subjugation under men. This is not a world that any woman deserves. Through my research I hoped to better understand these power structures and bring awareness to the underlying gender imbalances of our society. In the future I hope to create more equitable power dynamics around the world.
I applied the International Human Rights Law and International Humanitarian Law principles from my Human Rights class to the situation in Tigray. In this piece, I argued that SGBV was illegal both domestically and internationally. The international community needs to take three actions for women to receive justice:
First the United Nations, followed by individual nations, should impose economic and legal sanctions against Ethiopia to pressure the government to uphold their own constitution. Second, external governments and civil society should deliver more humanitarian aid in Tigray so that women can access holistic health services. Third, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights should conduct an independent investigation with the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission to fully document the violations and bring justice to women in the region.
For the better part of two centuries, the impetus has on women to explain away the behavior of men. No longer should women face that burden. Men around the world can and should do better.
Media Coverage of Afghan and Uyghur Women Post-9/11: A Comparative Case Study – Madeline Moreno
Although I am originally from Laramie, a rural town in landlocked Wyoming, my multicultural background inspired me to pursue a career in international affairs. While majoring in International Politics as an undergraduate at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service, I discovered a passion for mass atrocity prevention. I first became aware of the Uyghur genocide in the summer of 2019 when I interned at Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service. I had learned that there were Muslim populations in western China through a class I took in 2017, but I had no idea that China was undertaking a systematic attempt to eradicate the cultural, linguistic, and religious traditions of these populations. Since then, I have become increasingly appalled that such horrendous atrocities could be happening in today’s technologically advanced age with so little press coverage.
My passion for atrocity prevention inspired me to apply to the Ethics, Peace, and Human Rights program at American University’s School of International Service, where I enrolled in an incredible philosophy class entitled “Islam and Women.” When it came time to choose topics for our final papers, I knew I wanted to write about the Uyghur Genocide. Coverage of the US withdrawal from Afghanistan was dominating the US news cycle at that time, and my professor, Dr. Shatha Almutawa, wisely suggested that I compare media coverage of Uyghur women and Afghan women. Dr. Almutawa has been an incredible mentor, and I am extremely grateful to her and my peers in that class who helped me refined this paper and provided guidance and encouragement throughout the publication process. Though I do not know her, I must also thank Anna File, whose 2009 publication “American Media Portrayals of the Uighur Minority Pre and Post 9/11” helped inspire my research design.
I decided to investigate the discrepancy in the Washington Post’s coverage of Muslim women in Afghanistan and China between September 2001 and November 2021. I found that stories about Afghan women featured more heavily in the Post’s coverage of Afghanistan than stories about Uyghur women did in their coverage of China. I propose two reasons for this discrepancy. First, Islamophobia is deeply entrenched in the American media industry. There is already some well-researched literature on this topic, so I wanted to dive deeper into the second reason: The extent to which American companies are economically dependent on China. This is a growing concern in the foreign policy community, but it is often framed in terms of the Chinese threat to American power on the world stage. With the exceptions of Hong Kong and Taiwan, there tends to be with less attention given to how the Chinese government’s actions affect people in Chinese controlled territories. I aim to fill a gap in the literature and encourage future research to investigate how the Chinese government’s investments in companies around the globe, as well as the expansive Chinese consumer marketplace, can shape or silence media narratives about the Uyghur genocide and other human rights concerns.
Land Reform in the Caucasus Region and the Relationship to Developments of Post-Soviet Grievance- Wiley Carter Reid
Three decades after the dissolution of the USSR, the echoes of the previous system can be heard throughout Eastern Europe and Central Asia. Although countries in the post-Soviet space have pursued diverse approaches to reform, one unifying theme is the feeling of being tied to the Soviet order. This notion of past-present tensions in the former USSR drives a great deal of my intellectual curiosity in the field of International Development.
My paper, “Land Reform in the Caucasus Region and the Relationship to Developments of Post-Soviet Grievance,” represents the intersection of agricultural policy and themes of state-community interaction. In particular, I explore the relationship between land reform in the former USSR and the development of internal societal tension, discontent, and grievance in the post-Soviet era.
One of the hallmarks of the Soviet system was collectivization of the agricultural sector. Farms, rather than being privately-owned enterprises, were managed as state-run operations without farmers holding direct claim to the land, equipment, or yields. Yet while the history of collectivized agriculture in the USSR is in many ways fraught, the legacy of collectivization and the post-1991 attempts to reform agricultural policies have proved to be complex.
This piece seeks to address some of that complexity. I examine this legacy specifically in the Caucuses region. The post-Soviet land reform journeys in Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan exposed the relationship between the reform strategies used and the consequences of these strategies in the present social space. Simply put, I wanted to see if privatization of previously collectivized farms would be socially disruptive beyond the economic benefit. The results as found in the paper were fascinating.
Despite collectivized farms being a definitive fixture across the Soviet world, strikingly little research has been done to evaluate the degree to which shifting away from collectivization towards privatization has impacted the social landscape in the decades to follow reform. In many ways these state-run farms embodied the fundamental ideological messaging of the Soviet system. Thus, land reform after 1991 represented an equally important declaration of vision for what the post-Soviet space would look like. The emergence of nostalgia for the USSR over the decades, however, and even outright grievance aimed against these reforms is quite telling of the complexity of the Soviet world.
The aftershocks of the post-Soviet land reform in the Caucuses region carries broader implications for understanding populations’ responses to USSR policies. Three decades after these reforms began, there remains a clear linkage between the land reform strategies employed and how rural populations continue to perceive the strengths and weaknesses of the collectivization system. In conducting this comparative analysis, this paper yields insight into the enduring legacies of the Soviet system. It represents a contribution to what hopefully will become a growing subject of investigation in Soviet and post-Soviet studies in Eastern Europe and Central Asia.
Tracing Protracted Refugee Encampment: Lessons from Kenya’s Kakuma and Dadaab- Lia Russell
When I started volunteering as an ESL tutor in college, I was struck by the enormous challenges that immigrants face, not just learning how to communicate, but also how to navigate complex new systems of institutions and cultural norms. While serving in Peace Corps Rwanda where Congolese refugees were among my English students, I first witnessed the protracted displacement that precedes this grueling integration process. I observed my students’ academic apathy as they endured ‘transitory’ multi-year stays in a UNHCR camp while waiting for extensive bureaucratic screenings to be completed. Disturbed by the apparent normalcy of this drawn-out process, I sought out accounts of refugee experiences to better understand this problem and was increasingly stunned by the suffering that most refugees endure after escaping persecution and violence as a direct result of resettlement or host country policies.
As a graduate student, I’ve taken every opportunity I can to better understand forced displacement and its many costs. I learned that as of 2020, 15.7 million refugees were in protracted refugee situations where 25,000 or more refugees of the same nationality are in exile for at least five consecutive years in another country. Although refugee camps have expanded their services to accommodate this long-term displacement among 76% of refugees worldwide, life under these circumstances is excruciating.[1] Refugees are confined to crowded settlements of semi-permanent structures and sustained by unreliable aid, with limited access to educational and economic opportunities. When discriminated against by host communities where they lack the protections of citizenship, they are vulnerable to unpunished violence and coercion. Refugees sacrifice years in this seemingly interminable limbo of restricted mobility, idleness, and dependency in violation of their basic rights.[2] The pervasiveness of these conditions begs the question that this paper seeks to answer: who bears what responsibility among the international actors involved?
My paper examines how the UNHCR, advocacy groups, resettlement countries, and host nations have contributed to refugees’ long-term confinement to camps by analyzing Kakuma and Dadaab, two Kenyan refugee camps established in the 1990s. Kenya’s experience as a host nation sheds light on the imbalance and lack of cooperation among all actors directly and indirectly responsible. Kenya has been criticizing for strictly enforcing encampment of refugees, which are perceived as security threats and socio-economic liabilities that put its internal stability at risk. Though deeply problematic, this policy reflects legitimate domestic strain – exacerbated by massive refugee inflows – which the international community has observed yet failed to alleviate by providing Kenya with adequate financial support and resettlement opportunities. Affluent countries with the capacity to give so much more have harped on Kenya’s obligations and failures as a country of asylum without equally interrogating their own, prolonging the encampment of refugees who cannot return home and have nowhere else to go.
The history of Kakuma and Dadaab reveals a lack of international solidarity that does tremendous harm to some of the world’s most vulnerable people. Despite this disheartening reality, two recently developments offer a glimmer of hope. The Global Compact on Refugees and the Comprehensive Refugee Response Framework were introduced by the UNHCR in 2018 to increase international responsibility-sharing for refugees and better support overwhelmed and under-resourced host nations. Although their objectives are far from being achieved, they mark a promising shift in discourse that is gradually being reflected in practice through programs that help host communities integrate refugees and initiatives to expand avenues for resettlement. The articulation of these goals suggests that at the very least, the international community recognizes it must take voluntary steps to effect a change that refugees across the world badly need.
[1] “Global Trends in Forced Displacement,” UNHCR, 2020, https://www.unhcr.org/en-us/statistics/unhcrstats/60b638e37/global-trends-forced-displacement-2020.html.
[2] Merrill Smith, “Warehousing refugees: A denial of rights, a waste of humanity” (World Refugee Survey, Washington: US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants, 2004).
Resolving the Tigray Conflict: Transforming Ethno-Political Identity in Ethiopia- Samantha A. Sloane
In early November of 2020, members of the ruling party of Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region, the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), attacked an Ethiopian military compound in Tigray. Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed responded by ordering a military offensive into Tigray. This clash sparked the underlying ethno-political tensions in Ethiopian society, igniting a major conflict between the TPLF on one side and the federal government, Amhara regional special police and affiliated Fano militias, and Eritrean military on the other. Since the beginning of November 2020, this conflict has left over 7.5 million people in the Afar, Amhara, and Tigray regions facing severe acute food insecurity, 2.1 million people displaced, and 63,110 refugees fleeing to Sudan. At least 820 women and children have been raped by Ethiopian, Eritrean, and Amhara forces, lending credence to world leaders’ allegations of ethnic cleansing. The conflict in Tigray has been evolving into the genocide of the Tigrayan people and needs to be resolved quickly to stop the violence, provide humanitarian assistance to those in need, and ensure the protection of human rights in Ethiopia.
However, neither world leaders nor the news cycle has given much attention to Ethiopia’s plight. “Resolving the Tigray Conflict: Transforming Ethno-Political Identity in Ethiopia” seeks to shed light on the conflict in Ethiopia and help fill the gap of literature on resolving the conflict. This paper first analyzes how current ethno-political identities in Ethiopia evolved into two camps of thought on Ethiopian nationalism and governance, creating the conditions for this conflict to ignite. Next, the paper examines how these ethno-political identities and associated camps of thought have influenced the development of the Tigray conflict. This paper also critiques prior attempts to resolve the conflict and recommends strategies to improve and transform these attempts by incorporating ethno-political identity into transitional justice mechanisms. Though the conflict in Ethiopia may seem intractable, employing principles of conflict transformation may be the best way to constructively build an Ethiopian identity conducive to resolving the conflict.
Psycho-Social Media: How Cycles of Retaliation and a Perilous Information Space Drive the Northern Ethiopian Conflict and Jeopardize Future Reconciliation- Benjamin Stevenson
“Is peace worth it?”, “What is truth?” and other questions I’ve never thought about before now
After decades of recurring cycles of man-made famine, massacres, and chilling episodes of sexual violence, one would assume that rational actors would have the common goal of peace. The reality is different. People have to be incentivized to commit to peace; they must stand to benefit in the immediate term from laying down their arms. When they ask themselves the question: “Is peace worth it for me?”; they have to consider what will happen to them in the immediate aftermath of ceasefire. Will they have a way to make money? Will they face retribution for actions they committed in wartime? They must view peace as a net neutral – if not a net positive – outcome compared to their expected return if they continue to fight. This alone makes it difficult to establish an initial ceasefire. But reaching ceasefire is only the first goal, and the hurdles to building a long-term peace are entirely different.
In Ethiopia, decades of ethnic tension hit a flashpoint on November 4, 2020, when a reported attack on a military base by the former ruling party—the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF)—sparked an immediate retaliatory offensive by Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed. The TPLF ruled Ethiopia for about three decades, committing human rights abuses and siphoning resources for their own people in Tigray, a region in Northern Ethiopia that accounts for about 6% of Ethiopians. In the armed conflict, however, Ethiopian Defense Forces have teamed up with Eritrean Defense Forces and paramilitary groups from the neighboring Amhara region to commit unspeakable violence – what some have even called a genocide – against ethnic Tigrayans. After a short-lived ceasefire last summer dissolved into renewed conflict on a larger battlefield, the TPLF invaded neighboring regions and committed atrocities of their own in the wake of their advance to the capital.
All parties have been accused of crimes against humanity, and the conflict cannot be reduced to a struggle between heroes and villains. Unfortunately, it is human nature to try to make sense of complex issues by constructing a version of truth that is black and white, manipulating facts to reflect a perceived or desired narrative.
We are now in a new period of ceasefire; one that shows slightly more promise than last summer’s but which is still at risk of dissolving into renewed conflict if the parties cannot reach successful and sustainable reconciliation. One important foundation for long-term reconciliation is the establishment of a consensus truth. In Ethiopia, that will be very hard, as every available effort has been made by the Ethiopian government to suffocate independent reporting from Tigray, blacking out internet and social media and prohibiting the few visitors allowed entry from bringing hard drives, flash drives, and photo or video devices into the region. Nonetheless, social media has played a huge role in the conflict—especially in diaspora communities—giving new life to centuries old techniques of disinformation, misinformation, hate speech, and propaganda.
When I first began studying peacebuilding, I had to confront my naïve belief that peace was a natural common goal for all. It’s not; peace must be incentivized, consistently and across a long period of time. I hope that my research offers a lens into understanding the barriers to peace, especially in the disinformation space created by social media, and can help reframe your perspective as we search for actionable solutions. The conflict in Northern Ethiopia is horrifying at every level, but in this moment, we at a crossroads that will prove crucially important in its evolution. Short-term peace is here, but it is incredibly volatile, and we must collectively act quickly and with open-mindedness to address the underlying barriers to true reconciliation and sustainable peace.
Who is Liberation For: An Analysis of Gender and Sexuality Outside the Western White Gaze- Adam Ropizar
Pride. Equality. Coming Out. Acceptance.
In recent times, these words have become synonymous with a western viewpoint of queer liberation. Scholars and commentators hold up pride parades and inclusive acronyms as the pinnacle of support for LGBTQ+ individuals, failing to recognize that such daily expressions of identity are only synonymous with the institutionalized view of queerness, not the lived reality.
Events in history like the gay marriage movement in the United States and the systematic institutionalization of responses to queerness and gender have created a system that limits the collective imagination around identities to mere categories. What is possible when we reject the assumption that there is a dichotomous, universalized, binary of male/female and heterosexual/queer and instead allow communities to form their own perceptions of identity free of categorical expectations or limitations?
The institutionalization of queerness created a dynamic pathway for some western countries to spread their cultural or political influence under the guise of protecting queer & transgender people worldwide from inhumane conditions and unaccepting laws. This baleful assumption perpetuates a framework of colonization as an antidote, as it assigns non-LGBTQ+ individuals as the sole perpetrator. This framework pushes a narrative that these individuals are more politically aghast towards queer & trans individuals when the creation and upholding of said homophobic & transphobic beliefs and policies can be traced back to the colonizer and their influence.
In my paper “Who is Liberation For? An Analysis of Gender and Sexuality Outside of the Western White Gaze”, I argue for, a deeper understanding of the binary categories of male/female and heterosexual/queer. It is impossible to take a western notion of categorical identity and apply it on a broad perspective to the entire world. Race, class, and other power structures (including colonialism, imperialism, proselytism, and capitalism) render this application negligible. Western tactics of promoting “liberal” policies abroad around gender and sexuality set up a false dichotomy: On one hand, it pushes a white, western-created perspective of gender and sexuality onto other nations; on the other hand, it fails to account for the destructive influence of imperialism and colonialism in eroding other cultures and belief systems.
I focus on Haiti and the M Community to explore these ideas. Pushed through the largest activism group in the country, Kouraj, the M Community rejects the categorical LGBT identifier that was brought into Haiti by international entities. Instead of the identity basis most familiar to international elites, the M community works on a social apparatus basis. This allows it to meld with Haitian society more authentically and accurately than outside entities attempting to push a brand-new system onto an existing people.
If gender and sexuality rights are to be advanced on a global scale, then the western white gaze must be rejected and acknowledged as intentionally harmful. That is the only sustainable way for global communities to retain ownership and sustainability of their own movements. Liberation has never been meant to be separated from the people, but when an outside perspective is pushed with no care, that is all that will occur, and it will never work.
Towards a Depoliticized Belarusian State – Helen K. McHenry
Belarus has been led by President Alexander Lukashenko for the past 27 years, building a state where the vast majority of power resides in the executive branch. Belarus’s extensive security apparatus, inherited from the Soviet Union, has helped Lukashenko preserve an absolute monopoly on the use of force. The extent of his power enables him to use state resources at his personal discretion; his use of the security forces to suppress the opposition prevented a viable alternative elite from forming until Svitlana Tikhanovskaya created the Coordination Council in 2020.
Cohesion between Lukashenko and his staff is based on personal loyalty and material incentives. Despite the vast extent of his command, Lukashenko is dependent on the security forces, political elites, and Russia to stay in power. Even after an unprecedented level of protests following the 2020 presidential election, continued support from these three sources has allowed him to maintain the presidency. The Coordination Council, an opposition council formed in the aftermath of the election, represents the first real opportunity for political change in Belarus. The Council’s goal is to organize new elections, paving the way for democratization and a depoliticized state apparatus.
My work outlines a policy proposal for how the United States can assist the Coordination Council in encouraging defection among political and security elites in Belarus. Elites can be incentivized to defect because their loyalty to Lukashenko is based primarily on their salary. This is within the United States’ interests because improved US-Belarusian relations have the potential to ease East-West tensions.
The 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine complicates the situation, however, as Russia closes itself off from the West in response to sanctions and international condemnation. In this climate, the incentives are even higher for Russia to keep Belarus in its orbit as a buffer between Russia and the West. It is significantly less likely now that Russia would allow the Coordination Council to organize a transfer of power because the Council is supported by many Western nations. Regardless of the outcome of the Russo-Ukrainian War, I believe Russia will tighten its hold over Belarus as relations with the West worsen. Belarus is still well-placed geographically to play a vital role in East-West relations, but the current situation is not conducive for democratic change in the country.
I originally wrote this piece for a state-building class to expand my understanding of the 2020 protest movement in Belarus. In it, I explore the aftermath of the 2020 presidential election through a state-building lens, focusing on the mechanisms Lukashenko uses to maintain a loyal staff. This research helps us to understand how Lukashenko has stayed in power for so long, as well as the challenges Svitlana Tikhanovskaya’s Coordination Council faces in establishing itself as a rival elite to break his hold on power.
I chose this topic to develop my understanding of other topics in Russia and Eastern Europe, having done prior research on the arms race between NATO and Russia in the Baltics and the Kuril Islands dispute between Russia and Japan. This policy proposal is particularly salient today, as the current violence in Ukraine raises questions about Belarus’s future geopolitical role in East-West relations.
State-Building in Commercial States – Ryan Sullivan
My research interests focus on states that are situated at major chokepoints for international commerce. Singapore and Panama make for a particularly compelling comparative case study because of their divergent development outcomes. Singapore has risen to the level of an advanced economy despite its size. Panama, by contrast, has experienced lesser development success and has not effectively spread wealth among its population. I set out to define the two countries as commercial states supported by literature of former entrepôt cities such as Venice, Amsterdam, and London to the studies of today’s global supply chains. My research employs various concepts from state-building theories that look at what makes a state and what are the various challenges and constraints in state-building efforts in contemporary history.
In my paper, “State-Building in Commercial States: A Comparative Study of Singapore and Panama,” I employ Singapore as my primary case where I argue that its colonial legacy, external threats, and internal pressures shaped the nation to succeed in a highly competitive region. First, having been under control of the British from 1819 to 1959, the formative development as a colony encouraged education, infrastructure, and institution building that spilled over once Singapore became independent. Second, the small nation built a sense of security established on free market principles and the development of human capital. Third, the highly diverse state had to overcome domestic obstacles that involved policies of inclusion. Panama served as a contrasting example of development outcomes where colonialism, security, and internal pressures were experienced in a different manner. Contemporary Panama has overcome the military dictatorship of the late twentieth century and has strengthened its economy around service industries that benefits the needs of the global commerce that flows through the Panama Canal. However, the prevalence of corruption and inequality serves as a worthy contrast to Singapore’s state-building efforts.
This paper was a final research paper for Professor Keith Darden’s State-Building course (SIS-619-009) in the fall 2021 semester. In formulating my research question, I drew on a combination of my coursework as a master’s candidate in the Comparative and Regional Studies program and my background as a graduate of the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy. My initial curiosity in this comparative case was inspired by my career prior to American University as a licensed mariner aboard military supply vessels. Through my many port calls around the globe, the degree of development among commercial states is immediately transparent through the available infrastructure and interactions with the locals. By employing state-building theories in this research, I was able to construct an argument that analyzes the two commercial states in a way that complements my interests in political economy and international trade.
Editors Corner
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine: global governance– Breanna Nierlich
Traditionally a rational actor, Vladimir Putin is subjecting Russia to a quagmire that is confirming Russia as an antagonizer on the international stage. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine tests the effectiveness of every intergovernmental institution (IGO) that was erected for the purpose of maintaining regional/global security and stability. Led by WWII victors, these institutions are a conglomerate of hard and soft power. As expected, decision-makers of states and IGOs prefer soft power by sending Ukraine weapons, monetary aid, welcoming refugees and imposing strategic sanctions on Russia. Even NATO (a military alliance) is hesitant to send troops to direct combat. It appears that, though WWII and Munich Syndrome are not forgotten, state and IGO decision-makers refuse to consider hard power. However, global leaders must decide on a new plan of action as Putin threatens biological warfare and escalates his aggression from invasion to massacre.
How will Russia’s invasion of Ukraine influence U.S. foreign policy?– Scott Kelly
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has caused rapid rearmament across Europe and renewed discussion around Europe’s desire for a collective security architecture headed by the EU separate from NATO.
Overlapping collective security architectures creates significant moral hazards for states that only belong to one, including the United States. A military act by the EU could quickly lead to retaliation against a state that is also part of NATO, bring the U.S. unwittingly into conflict.
To avoid this, America will either need to reassert itself on the European continent in a way not seen since the end of the Cold War or modify its role in NATO to such an extent that it neuters the collective security arrangement that underpins the alliance, ultimately leading to its dissolution. Given the rise of populism on the political left and right in America, the latter may prove to be a more tenable solution.
Thank you to our editors!
Shannon Short
Anna Loughran
Phil Dolitsky
Trevor Burton
Jordan Smith
Molly Carlough
Christopher Kimura
Kiersten Shirley Hileman
Scott Kelly
Alexander Engelsman
2022 Editorial Board
Kathryn Urban
Kyle Salee
Jake Sepich
Camille Rybacki Koch
Chris Fogarty
Monica Middleton
Breanna Nierlich