Category: PSIR

The Dream of Open Borders Is Real—in the High Arctic

August 11, 2021

The Norwegian territory of Svalbard has been open to citizens of the world since 1920. But don’t call it a utopia.

What I discovered was a historical accident, rooted in environmental determinism and shaped by economics, that is being irreversibly upended. There’s a dismal symmetry at play: As climate change renders the rest of the planet as hostile to human life as the far north, we too must make the choice between throwing up walls and letting them down. Svalbard’s geopolitics provide an imperfect but alternative vision of how places can be governed, whom they can accommodate, and how communities can form.

https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/svalbard-arctic-open-borders/

China’s Claims to the South China Sea Are Unlawful. Now What?

August 11, 2021

Republican and Democratic administrations have failed to thwart aggressive expansion in one of the world’s busiest sea lanes. The solution isn’t flashy, but it could work.

It is, nonetheless, a message that is valid and long overdue. Over the past decade, China has steadily hardened its claims to most of the South China Sea, a zone circumscribed by a vague “nine-dash line” that one American naval commander called the “Great Wall of Sand.” The claims have included a campaign of building up shoals and militarizing islands or proclaiming municipal districts and settling people on contested islands. The reclamation of several reefs and atolls in the Spratly Islands has included construction of runways, hangars, barracks, missile silos and radar sites.

For Nagorno-Karabakh’s Dueling Sides, Living Together Is ‘Impossible’

August 10, 2021

Armenians and Azerbaijanis coexisted in Soviet days. But conflict over the disputed territory exploded in the late 1980s, leaving festering wounds that have erupted anew.

Armenians and Azerbaijanis lived side by side in the Soviet days, until conflict over the disputed mountain territory called Nagorno-Karabakh exploded in the late 1980s into riots, expulsions and a yearslong war. The violence left personal wounds festering for decades, as stubborn as the tan and gray stone ruins of Azerbaijani villages still scattered in the Armenian countryside.

Why the Ukraine Crisis Is the West’s Fault

August 10, 2021

The Liberal Delusions That Provoked Putin

U.S. and European leaders blundered in attempting
to turn Ukraine into a Western stronghold on Russia’s border. Now
that the consequences have been laid bare, it would be an even greater
mistake to continue this misbegotten policy.

https://www.mearsheimer.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Why-the-Ukraine-Crisis-Is.pdf?fbclid=IwAR15dye1l5EyS5JL3ifNam0-SILfqe0OKlthFtGMbAcmEN0HU5aDyXsBNoo

What is a Nation?

August 10, 2021

In his influential 1882 essay “What Is a Nation?” French philosopher Ernest Renan wrote about the bonds that hold nations together. He explained, “A heroic past, great men, glory [are the links between people] upon which one bases a national idea. . . . A nation is . . . a large-scale solidarity, constituted by the feeling of sacrifices that one has made in the past and of those that one is prepared to make in the future.” Others have stressed language, ethnicity, or even pseudo- scientific ideas about “race.” The migration of people between one nation and another is challenging long-held assumptions about who belongs.

https://www.facinghistory.org/civic-dilemmas/what-nation

China’s ‘purification’ of classrooms: A new law erases history, silences teachers and rewrites books

August 10, 2021

With China’s tightening control over Hong Kong, including passage of a new national security law, the territory’s pro-democracy activists, politicians, journalists and others are facing a Communist Party determined to crush dissent. Perhaps the greatest threat from this new purge — one that will affect generations to come — is the increasing pressure on schools and teachers over what to put in the minds of students. Both activists and bureaucrats know that a nation’s soul is distilled in the classroom; history can be erased with the silencing of teachers and rewriting of textbooks.

https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2020-09-11/hong-kong-teacher-purge

The world’s money transfer system is China’s Achilles heel in its sanctions battle against the US

August 10, 2021

But China is actually far more vulnerable to US sanctions than it will let on, even if the sanctions are aimed at individuals and not banks. That’s because the primary system powering the world’s cross-border financial transactions between banks, Swift, is dominated by the US dollar.

https://qz.com/1893235/swift-transfer-system-leaves-china-vulnerable-to-us-sanctions/

Global democracy has a very bad year

August 10, 2021

The pandemic caused an unprecedented rollback of democratic freedoms in 2020

Government-imposed lockdowns and other pandemic-control measures led to a huge rollback of civil liberties in 2020, causing downgrades across the majority of countries. Confronted by a new, deadly disease to which humans had no natural immunity, most people concluded that preventing a catastrophic loss of life justified some temporary loss of freedom. The ranking penalised countries that withdrew civil liberties, failed to allow proper scrutiny of emergency powers or denied freedom of expression—regardless of whether there was public support for government measures. In France for example, severe lockdowns and national curfews led to a small but significant decrease in its overall score and the country dropped into the “flawed democracy” category.

https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2021/02/02/global-democracy-has-a-very-bad-year

Trump’s deal on Morocco’s Western Sahara annexation risks more global conflict

August 10, 2021

Last week, President Trump formally recognized Morocco’s annexation of Western Sahara as part of a deal to get Morocco to normalize relations with Israel. But Morocco’s claim on Western Sahara is rejected by the United Nations, the World Court, the African Union and a broad consensus of international legal scholars that consider the region a non-self-governing territory that must be allowed an act of self-determination. This is why no country had formally recognized Morocco’s takeover — until now.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/12/15/trump-morocco-israel-western-sahara-annexation/