Victory Claimed by Both Candidates in Romania

This article can be found here.

December 6, 2009

President Traian Basescu is in familiar territory. It was only five years ago when Basecsu was in a highly contested election which he barely won. The results of this year's election were even closer. While some polls proclaimed Mircea Geoana the victor with 51 percent of the popular vote, but Basascu claims that the results were skewed by the media. As a result, both candidates have publicly proclaimed themselves president. More than an election about the poor economic conditions for this agriculturally based nation, the campaign revolved mostly around the scandals involved with both parties. For one, a video of Basescu was released where he is shown slapping a 10-year-old boy. Once again, the president claimed media manipulation. There still appears to be some stigma attached to Geoana's Socialist Party, as one Basescu supporter decries the alleged victory of a "red". What the video does add to the election outcome is the increased visibility of the aggressive nature of the president. The results will be officially released on Monday, December 7, 2009, and when they do, at least half the voting population will be left in disappointment.

Italian Jury Convicts U.S. Student of Murder

This article can be found here.

December 4, 2009

One year ago, American student Amanda Knox was arrested for her alleged involvement in the murder of her roommate, Meredith Kercher, with the help of her boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito. It was believed that Knox and Kercher were fighting when it eventually escalated into the Sollecito wielding a knife and cutting Kercher's throat, while a third party, Rudy Guede, held her back. Prosecutors revealed Knox and Sollecito's attempt to cover up the murder by making it look like a robbery. The trial, like the article itself, failed to offer much description of the supposed happenings of that night, but there was apparently plenty of evidence for indictment. The jury deliberated for six hours and ultimately found the pair guilty of sexual assault and murder, giving Knox 26 years and Sollecito 25 years. The third offender, Rudy Guede, is already serving his 30 years, as yet another collaborator in the murder. The trial was held in a small Italian city, to counter the heavy amount of attention the case was getting that would possibly skew the jury's decision. Attached to charges of murder and sexual assault was unlawful possession of a weapon (the knife) and defamation, since Knox had accused her boss of doing the murder after being questioned by the police. Rachel Donadio ends the article by citing that most sentences in Italy are reduced after two tries of appeals; giving the idea that the sentences which may seem heavy now, will probably be much milder after the routine appeals are made.

What Can We Do to Change the World

This excerpt can be found here.

November 31, 2009

Zehfuss finds flaw in the idea of changing what’s wrong in the world through political policy. For one reason, it is not always easy to determine right from wrong, so we cannot whole-heartedly advocate going the right thing to defeat a specific ‘evil’. Secondly, people often get frustrated when their cause does not succeed, when the cause is often so broad and vast an issue, that it cannot be easily solved. Ability to create change assumes we, as humans, have some kind of control over all the world’s workings. In acting on war, there is inevitably a sacrifice of some lives in order to protect others. Another issue is in which conflict should we involve ourselves, as there will always be an infinite supply of conflicts. She cites the differences between problem-solving and critical theory: the former finds solutions using the same system, while the latter tries to alter the entire system as a solution in itself. Throughout the work, her tone is very informal; she connects to her audience by inciting a personal relationship with her audience, so that they may easily relate to what she is saying and thus better comprehend what she is trying to convey.

Culture, Crisis, and America's War on Terror

This excerpt can be found here.

November 30, 2009

“The Incredibles” was an incredible box office success, something Stuart Croft admits might be due to the popularity of other family, animated movies during this time; but the author also suggests another, more political, reasoning behind the success of this movie. Mr. Incredible is a retired superhero, put out of commission after the people he once spent his days saving from certain destruction rejected him. He and his superhero family now live mundane, middle class lives. Once danger reveals itself again, the Incredibles must return to superhero status in order to save the society, once again, from inevitable devastation. The author sees that the parallels the Incredibles share with America during this time are what lend it support among many Americans. America is now living off past glory, but many are becoming tired of this empty, grandiose promise. They need a new threat, terrorism, to show that they can still do great things, and ‘save’ the world. In the end, it incites a very real fear that the current war will be brought to America, when Cyndrome brings his weapons of mass destruction over to the Incredibles’ home town.

Citing the same reasons “The Incredibles” was successful, Croft makes another argument citing why “The Last Samurai” was not. The movie is about a respected, decorated military officer who was the sole survivor in a mission to defeat the great Samurai in Japan. Captured by these people, he assimilates to their ways, which involve a kind of morality lost in American values of that time, and learns to respect them. It is believed that the failure of this movie and the brutal criticism it received directly relate to the fact that it was a criticism of popular American policies.

Can the War on Terror Be Won?

This article can be found here.

November 26, 2009

Theorist Philip Gordon finds the goal of this so called “War on Terror” to be quite unclear. What is a victory with so broad an issue, and for that matter, what is terrorism? Traditionally, victory is when one nation finally forces another to accept given political ideology; so this war implies that all terrorists across nations must be defeated and accept the ideology given by the American government. This will not happen. Gordon believes the strategy needs to be more specific to call for the elimination of terrorist threats to the degree where they no longer affect the daily lives of citizens, a much more feasible outline. It is a key characteristic of war that it must eventually end, but this new War on Terror has the capability to last forever, as there will always be an infinite supply of terrorists. Rather, it is like the Cold War; which ended only when a certain ideology lost its appeal. Trying to end terrorism is counterproductive since costs would eventually outweigh benefits, and also lends the war a Utopian visage. Gordon cites patience and resolve and the only way to win this war, while simultaneously promoting alternative hopes to enemies. To him, victory will be when al Qaeda, the international terrorist group, no longer exists; not all terrorism in general. As the atrocities incited by these terrorist groups continue to build up, the support for these jihadists will eventually erode, especially as their violent efforts continue to kill fellow Muslims. Citing Fundamentalist Islam’s failure as a political regime in all the regions its been tried in, there’s reason to believe that with economic promotion and procurement of a middle class, Islam nations will break away from terrorist ideology. The author’s fatal flaw is his belief that the War on Terror is a clone of the Cold War, and all we need to do is copy the actions taken during that period to overcome our current crisis. Not only is that highly risky, as we are dealing with a new kind of enemy willing to die for their cause, but it is also ignorant, as the situation could never possibly be replicated.

The Culture of National Security: Norms and Identity in World Politics

This article can be found here.

November 25, 2009

Martha Finnemore’s main argument is that neither liberalist nor realist perspectives can provide adequate explanations for military intervention for humanitarian causes or preventative measures, since geostrategic and economic interests are not always involved. She adopts, instead, a constructionist’s standpoint. Shifts in intervention behavior reflect changes in norms regarding moral beliefs in military intervention, such as the definition of who is ‘human’, and thus deserving of humanitarian action. Classical liberals might promote the idea that intervention in nations with insignificant value economically may indicate a desire to spread democracy, but this still doesn’t explain humanitarian efforts. Interests cannot be assumed; rather, they must be interpreted for every unique situation. Norms determine interests, and interests are what determine action of the state, but norms do not directly affect action. Justifications, or reasons for action, are indicators of existing norms, as they are used to help explain feats of the state. Institutionalization of norms, by why which norms evolve when they become integrated into systems, also account for the progression of norms. Humanitarian intervention requires exclusive interest and identification in the peoples needing help. Eventually, humanitarian interests expanded to helping victims based on a new universal belief of humanity. I found it interesting, as Finnemore pointed out, that colonialism both began and ended as a humanitarian crusade to aid the ‘primitive’ peoples. There are conflicting views between ideas of state sovereignty and human rights, and which should be held to a higher standard. Today, it is not enough to intervene solely on the idea of humanitarianism, as it is viewed with suspicion. Unilateralism (action by one state) in intervention has been viewed as very expensive compared to multilateralism, which is known for making intervention measures more difficult since there is shared power. Intervention must be multilateral to be legitimate, since that is the only way for it to gain acceptance in the UN. Multilateralism of the 19th century was not driven by norms as it is today, but through the idea that one state acting alone would encourage adventurism, so in these times interventionism was marked by competitiveness and fear.

Power in International Politics

This excerpt can be found here.

November 24, 2009

Political power is cited by E.H. Carr, the author of this article, to be divided between economic power, power of opinion, and military power. The word ‘political’ is always applied to situations concerning power. When states cooperate on matters of “controlling the spread of epidemics or “suppressing the traffic in drugs”, this is not politics, because there is no concern over power. “Politics begin where the masses are,” as Lenin said, which references the fact that power mostly exists among regions with high populations or with greater prominence in the global community. An apt example given by Carr is that one is less interested in relations between Nicaragua and Great Britain, and more interested in politics between Great Britain and Japan. Carr sees many issues with Liberalist theory, as this ideology shares the same intentions as realism, but hides this fact with more subtle political tones. After WWI with the League of Nations, there was an idea that small nations would have no voice, as the League of Nations was created mostly for the benefit of the Great Powers. Like the previous article discussed, Power Politics today have been disguised under the name of “security”, and the effort to protect one's nation using sometimes preventative measures. In reality, war is never morality versus a villainous pursuit of power, but rather two nations competing over power. The treaty resulting from the Ruhr Invasion was unfulfilled when one nation, France, felt they had greater power over the weaker one, Germany. But as Germany became more powerful, only then was France willing to begin acting on the treaty’s agreements. This was spurred by a fear of power, not a desire to create diplomatic relations as the Liberal perspective espouses. The Locarno Treaty had ultimately failed when Germany no longer feared France, and France began to fear Germany., as “effective control of any government depends on its source of power.” Treaties and their effects don’t last forever; but the new mandates system trying to internationalize the globe has the same influences and appears as if it will have more lasting effects. If different states shared power within a same territory, their efforts to exert their separate strengths would incite rivalry and lead to increasingly more devastating wars.