Final Reflection over Paracel and Spratly Island Disputes

This past semester, our group touched upon the topic of island territorial disputes between China, Japan, and Vietnam. The Paracel and Spratly Islands lie in the East China Sea and South China Sea. As far as we were concerned, sovereignty over these territories were quite vague, but it was heavily implied that the Paracel Islands belonged to Vietnam, as the Spratly Islands were of Japan's. Both islands contain rich ocean resources as well as oil reserves, increasing incentive for China to invade and claim sovereignty. Over the semester, we witnessed countries in conflict with China protesting and boycotting against Chinese goods. Over the course of the semester, rising tension between China and Japan were very obvious, when China seized maritime frontiers and increased naval ships in the Spratly Islands. Although meetings were made by Japan's Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe, in attempt to resolve the issue, political tensions only increased at the home front of both countries. 

Fortunately in the light of global peace, we did not see much action between China and Vietnam, but unfortunately, as the semester came to and end, the barrel exploded on the Paracel Islands. On May 1, 2014,  China National Offshore Oil Corporation deployed an oil rig in a patch of disputed territory 150 miles from Vietnam's coast. Over the past 16 days, Chinese ships have aggressively attacked Vietnam's vessels, killing a few and injuring many of the fisherman as well as the Vietnam ships trying to enter the illegal oil rig China has been invading. Since then, violent protests and tremendous discontent with China's impulses have spread across Vietnam and even in the Vietnamese-American community overseas. The Vietnamese consider this a "breaking point" in which they cannot suppress the constant bullying and political inequality involving China in the past decades. Riots broke out so violently the Vietnamese government are taking measures to contain destruction, especially in fear of losing foreign direct investment due to economic instability.We have discussed the global economy and the Western nation's foreign investment in developing nations or resource abundant ones. Over the past decade, many foreign investors have put in billions of dollars into Vietnam's economy, benefitting from the growing technology but also rich amounts of human production at lower costs. However, due to recent riots, if the Vietnamese government does not control the voices of dissent, Vietnam's growing economy could definitely decrease growth due to the political affecting the economic stability (Song). 

Our group gathered research for these issues quite efficiently by committing out of class and out of group time to conduct research, which we would then bring together to share notes and highlight current events that occurred most often. We then collaborated to write the post together, uploaded it to a Google document in which all group members could access and revise prior to the blog post date. Working as a group allowed me to view our topic on a more personal matter, and allowed me to develop my own personal international political theory. It was very interesting for one of our group members and myself, were in opposition of taking political sides to this issue due to our ethnicities.We both respected each other's ideals and sharing our ideologies as a whole definitely made me think of what international peacemakers would say or do. 

From this project, I learned that international politics is an issue in which one must deeply examine the historical context and vantage points of different nations, states, and groups. It is unfair to simply examine multiple current event flashes, but in order to understand why a nation or state behaves in certain ways, we must understand the cultural, economic, and political (in a narrow sense) influences that results in these actions or nationalism. One thing I deeply appreciated from working as a group was the effect that our International Studies concentration had upon our research. The compilation of our research from individuals either focused on peace and conflict, international economics, or global politics more, which was very essential in completing a cohesive and well-rounded post. International studies and international politics is not an issue one could determine on their own; organizations are of a group effort; treaties or of group efforts; political system are built upon group work; and in order to influence the globe, I learned that one must determine his or her personal theory in order to efficienty contribute to international politics. 

Song, S. (2014, May 14). Anti-China Riots In Vietnam Could Hurt Western Consumers And Brands' Supply Chains. Retrieved May 16, 2014, from http://www.ibtimes.com/anti-china-riots-vietnam-could-hurt-western-consumers-brands-supply-chains-1584985

Hodal, K. (2014, May 15). 
At least 21 dead in Vietnam anti-China protests over oil rig. Retrieved May 16, 2014.http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/may/15/vietnam-anti-china-protests-oil-rig-dead-injured. 

Final Post: Iranian Nuclear Talks

Our group covered the Iranian nuclear talks. As part of our research we touched upon various elements of Iran’s nuclear program. Throughout the semester we presented a broad overview of the issue with Iran including a background of Iran’s connection to nuclear arms and why this area in particular has triggered global apprehension. Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons dates back several decades. Over the course of research we covered the revelation of nuclear development in Iran, deals made with Russia, as well as the ultimate intervention of the United Nations. We also analyzed the issue’s significance evaluating why Iran’s nuclear program is a serious threat and the potential detriments it could result in. We examined the preventative measures that have been taken by the international community and the result of these actions. Finally, we discussed the current situation in Iran and where the nation currently stands with different global powers. 

Research for this topic was done independently by each group member and then presented in one cohesive post. Working as a group made it so that every person could conduct their own research individually and then share what they found as a contribution to the group project.

This project required that I explore the topic of the nuclear situation in Iran further. Prior to this project, I had only a general and very basic understanding of the Iranian nuclear talks. Now I feel that I have a deeper understanding of the issue overall and more specifically, a better understanding of the international ties and why this is considered a global issue. The group project also stressed the importance of communication when working in a group. Having to work on this project in a group setting really stressed the importance of communication. Working with six different people involves six different ideas and six different approaches which can be difficult to merge into one cohesive piece. To do this effectively, coordination and frequent communication are imperative.

Final Blog Post: Iranian Nuclear Talks

Iranian Nuclear Talks are just one of the long history of disputes between the Western World and the Middle East. It all started with the United States being concerned about Iran's intentions behind creating nuclear energy. They believe that Iran holding this power poses danger to the rest of the world. This worry comes from the constant tense relationship between Iran and the UN for many, many years. The United States, along with many other Western countries, have been fighting the creation of nuclear plants for the past 60 some years. The United States placed strict sanctions against Iran with regards to trade and due to this Iran decided that they must negotiate an agreement in order to sustain themselves economically. Recently, Iran has come to some terms of agreement with the United States that they will restrict their use of nuclear energy and eliminate certain plants they have in place. The UN decided to lift some of the trade restrictions held against Iran although they are willing to put them immediately back in place if Iran proves to not hold true to the agreement. 

Our research was done through browsing several different news articles in order to gather as much information as we can on the situation. It was also helpful to look at historical time lines of the matter as we needed to know the background on Iran and the UN's relationship before understanding the current conflict. It was obvious that most news websites had seriously biased opinions on Iran. Because of this, it was necessary to do research on several different news stations in order to compare and contrast the different opinions. Working with a group was also helpful in this regard as we could understand the various opinions on the matter within ourselves. No one is ever going to have the same opinion as anyone else and if they did, the world would be a very close-minded place. It is important to always look at different sides of a situation in  order to truly comprehend the facts surrounding it. I don't think using any form of media would have given us any more or less of a biased opinion. There is no such thing as media that isn't biased. 

I think the most that I learned from this project was seeing all the different countries perspectives on the matter of Iran. We were able to see the United States perspective, Russia's perspective, Iran's perspective, Israel's perspectives, Europe's perspective, etc. It is obvious that Israel and the United States are the most worried about Iran possessing nuclear power in that they believe it will affect them the most. It is difficult to write a blog post only on the facts of a situation because "facts" are relative. The research was difficult due to the varying opinions on where each country stood in the matter. Working in groups for a blog is especially difficult in the same way it is difficult to write a paper in a group setting. It is not always possible to always meet in order to write a blog post especially when there are so many different news articles and websites. I enjoyed learning about the Iranian nuclear talks though, because I was previously somewhat uninformed on the situation. This is one of the most important disputes in the history of the world and to understand it better really helped me to understand why countries feel the way they do about certain things. 

FInal Blog Post - Climate Change

Our group’s chosen topic was Climate Chance.  We chose to focus on biomass and its implications as a “green” alternative energy source to coal.  Recent policy decisions in the European Union aimed at mitigating Climate Change have led to some member states scrambling to find a quick alternative to coal.  The solution it seems is wood pellets since they are inexpensive and can be swapped out easily for some of the coal in current power plants without any major retrofitting.  Limited resources, few existing pellet manufacturers and stringent regulation of the lumber industry have steered Europe to look across the Atlantic for help.  The pellet industry in the southeastern United States and Canada were more than willing to oblige and expand.  This resulted in increased jobs in US plants while the EU is able to work towards meeting its self-imposed goal of reducing carbon emissions and mitigating Climate Change.  It seems like a win-win situation.  But, as research shows, it is not that simple.  Although burning biomass such as wood pellets emits far less contagions (in particular carbon) into the atmosphere that is only part of the picture.  It does not incorporate the amount of carbon released in the process of producing and transporting the wood pellets to Europe.  Also not included in the calculus is the amount of carbon sinks eliminated by cutting down old growth forests in order to make the pellets.  Trees act as nature’s filters and containment units for carbon and other greenhouse gases.  Pellet giants such as Enviva claim that they only use waste material from flooring and other manufacturing processes and sick or “unviable” trees in the manufacturing processes.  However there are few, if any, US state regulations which would prevent them from logging old growth forests on their own property.  While many, including a number of environmental organizations, are cheering the EU’s policy decisions as a successful environmental step forward in the fight against Climate Change, wood pellets produced in the Western Hemisphere is not the  magic "green" bullet they were hoping for.

As a group, we realized early in the process of creating our blog that the topic of Climate Change was immense and encompassed vast and varied subject material.  It forced us to focus on one particular aspect of climate change while making a clear connection to Global Politics.  I feel that all of us were in agreement that having a more narrow and specific topic was especially important since we had a small number of members compared to the other blog groups.  Being that my brother works in the petroleum and chemicals industry, I had some prior knowledge of biomass as an alternative energy source and that was somewhat useful in the beginning.  However, it was not until after extensive research utilizing online resources along with print and government sources that I gained a better understanding of what types of biomass are currently being used for energy and the rapidly expanding use of wood pellets.  The staff at the library was extremely helpful and for me Fusion was a great resource in locating articles on the subject.  I appreciate working in a group atmosphere because it affords you the opportunity to explore other people’s views, opinions and learn from their ideas.  I enjoyed working with the members of our group.  I felt each of us brought to the table a unique perspective to the topic and together we were able to cohesively construct our posts.

I was able to absorb a good deal about the “alternative energy” sector in the United States through my research for this blog.  It led to me to think critically about how policy decisions in one part of the world can affect states in another part of the globe.  Climate Change is global in scale – everyone essentially is exposed to the same atmosphere on Earth, so everyone is connected.  Legislation which, on its face, attempts to solve a problem, in this case mitigation of Climate Change, could actually lead to the opposite result than what is intended.  What may be widely accepted as being “green” may actually turn out to be less so when you look at the big picture.  Prior to working on this project I would never have thought this could be possible.  One of the statistics that shocked me the most was that the United States has less than 5% of old growth forest left and that states in the southeastern part of the country are willing to allow corporations who own forested land to use those trees for fuel production.  The amount of published information and analyses was somewhat overwhelming at times, but the constraints of a blog forced me to tailor my contributions to be more concise and digestible.  As for the project itself, creating a blog was a brand new experience for me, and one I look forward to exploring again in the future.

Long Story Bit by Bit: The CAR Retold

Ben Gill

4/28/14

My blog group studied and analyzed the ongoing ethnic and religious conflict in the Central African Republic (CAR) over the course of this semester. Our first blog post began as a general overview and brief political analysis of what even those intimately familiar with the 2013-2014 CAR Conflict consider to be a complex, convoluted, and at times seemingly impenetrable quagmire between poorly-defined and little-known ethnic/religious groups, namely on the torrent of bloodshed between the Muslim Seleka rebel coalition and the predominately Christian Anti-balaka militias. We came together to decipher and interpret a complex and sometimes contradictory array of media and academic sources to craft what we believe to be an accurate, concise portrait of the conflict as of February 2014. Doing this required coming to a consensus, as a group, of what events, actors, and statistics best defined the violent civil strife of the CAR; specifically for an audience that is by and large unfamiliar with the topic in question. 

AA young man cries out after his friend was badly injured by passing Chadian peacekeepers during a protest Dec. 23 in Bangui, Central African Republic. (Rebecca Blackwell/AP)

The group’s second post aimed to provide a more nuanced, in-depth political and social inquiry into the driving forces both on the ground in the CAR and within the Pan-African and international communities. Factors both local and international are playing major roles in determining the course and nature of the carnage that continues to occur in the CAR. We integrated this analysis with a number of key updates on new developments within the country to craft the most thorough outline possible for our readers. Needless to say, the violence that has come to define the CAR over the past few years in the in the collective conscious of the outside world rages on as I type this sentence. Thus far, the efforts off African and Western nations have been limited, weak, and largely ineffective at quelling the violence or the intensity of it. The ethnic and religious divisions continue to deepen according to both civilians and international observers—mainly foreign national employees of various NGOs—and the outlook for the embattled and embittered nation is uncertain at best, hopeless at worst. This conflict has many of the features that have come to define the numerous recent genocides in Africa over the past twenty years, especially the Rwandan Genocide and its’ resulting overflow into the DR Congo in my mind. Sadly, if Liberia, Sierra Leone, and especially the DR Congo are any indication of what’s in store for the CAR, I wouldn’t be placing any bets on success for the nation’s future. However, cynicism aside, there is some hope for the CAR in the form of newly-founded UN peacekeeping mission set to be deployed sometime this summer, named the UN Multidimensional Integrated Stabilisation Mission in CAR (MINUSCA).

Since I’ve been obsessed to an unhealthy degree by African civil wars and conflicts for some time, with the CAR Conflict being no exception, I was already fascinated and deeply familiar with the general sequence of events that led to and created and current catastrophe that is the CAR. Hence, doing research for these for me felt like something I would spend my free-time ding normally anyway. My research initially centered on contextualizing and translating an extremely difficult to comprehend situation for a class of American college students far removed from any reminder of this conflict’s existence. Trying to make the facts, figures, dates, and subtle nuances of the Central African Conflict relevant to the audience at hand was my most important goal in these blog posts. Hence, summarizing and creating intriguing analysis of the CAR Conflict was my primary objective throughout this work.

An infographic summarizing key dates and figures shaping the conflict in the CAR as of late 2013. (AFP)

As someone who spends an inordinately large amount of time studying the ins and outs of these types of conflicts out of personal curiosity and professional interest, there wasn’t much for me to discover on this topic that I hadn’t already read or come across already. Although, I did find myself jumping even further down the rabbit hole of studying the culture and history of the CAR than I ever thought possible. I even went so far as to track down obscure, largely out-of-print texts on the topic with riveting titles like Culture and Customs of the Central African Republic and Dark Age: A Biography of Emperor Bokassa. Thus, there wasn’t a whole lot for me to learn about the recent details of the Central African Conflict that I didn’t know in advance, but I did gain a much deeper and richer understanding of the nation in question. I also developed a better sense for the level of cooperation and teamwork involved in working effectively as a group to form a cohesive unit. In fact, the most valuable take away of this semester-long assignment was collaborating with an extremely intelligent and thoughtful group of like-minded students.

Catalyst for Change: Final Blog Post

Throughout the semester my team and I have researched and followed current and past events that had to do with the treatment of women in India and the protection and rights they weren't receiving that they are now fighting for. We focused our blog on the 2012 New Delhi Gang Rape and how it was a catalyst for change which erupted a wave of new policy development issued by the government that was to be enforced on a ground level. Many rape cases came to surface once the New Delhi Rape Case took off in publicity and a big part of our research had to do with the problems that were still occurring because enforcement was not happening where it should have been happening. Because there is an issue with ground law enforcement, through research we discovered that there are many grassroots organizations in India teaching girls and women about their rights as well as other important skills. By countries coming together and uniting with India, many Indian citizens have banned together to create movements and make public the mistreatment of women in India. Although the process is a slow one, the progress being made since the New Delhi rape case is ever growing and women are finally fighting back for the rights they deserve.

All of the research I did for the blog post was internet based and I would conduct my research based on the question I was trying to answer. My group as a whole was not too familiar with the topic at hand so when we began researching, our research was very broad and we then focused on specific information once we had an idea about what our broad topic was. My group and I decided to split up of the blog post by the questions that had to be answered. One person would do the introduction, two others would do their research on whatever they decided to focus on, and the last person would do the final editing and conclusion. I was always doing the research and for the main points of our discussion for the blog post. Our issue was a current event that was still developing and changing so I was able to find a lot of news articles online that followed the issues in India. When I would see the different research my group would do it would make me look at the topic in a different light or make me research and read an article that I otherwise would not have thought to read.

I learned a lot about women’s issues in India that I had no idea about prior to beginning this blog post. I only knew very little about the New Delhi rape case and I didn't know about the movements that came about because of it. It was nice to read about grassroots developing within the country to educate woman, men, and children. There was so much information I read about the topic and at times I felt overwhelmed about what to add to my part of the blog that was relevant to what I was discussing because there was so much information to be said. I liked working in a group because it put ease into how heavy the load seemed. We always separated the work evenly so everyone was doing the same amount of research and work. The hardest part about working with my group was our conflicting schedules but luckily we were able to make it work via group texting and a google document that we kept so we could post our information for the entire group to see. Working in a group gave me a different perspective that I otherwise would not have seen or approached. It was nice to be able to read what the rest of my group had gathered and develop my research so that the entire blog was relevant and was specific enough to make sense. It was very helpful and useful working with my group.

Final Blog Post: Catalyst for Change (Monica Chitre)

"Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day you can hear her breathing."

- Arundhati Roy

Throughout this semester my group examined the catalyst for a national movement, the Delhi Gang Rape case, and how it has enabled backlash against permeating sexual violence within India. Our first post focused the facts of the case itself. We then went on to talk about the history of extreme colonization and the international outcry against the prevalence of rape within. Then, we connected all this information to another highly publicly visible case regarding rape in the tribal parts of India. After establishing the history, our second post then focused on the type of outcry, public demonstrations, and actual implemented effects that have emerged as response to the monstrosities. We looked at the involvement of youth within this movement, various nonprofits aimed at inciting lasting change, the issue of a patriarchal mindset pervading the nation, the lasting effects of colonialism, and current legislation instituted or proposed to combat what has been happening.

To contribute my portion, I did my research in a variety of ways. Being Indian-American, I have been surrounded by certain news sources that my parents frequently use, that I’ve seen on Indian television shows, and that I’ve been exposed to. So, for my posts I first looked at these sources which are typically written by Indians, out of India, or are recorded by members of the Indian diaspora. I then went to other sites such as BBC News from other parts of the world where the writer was not of Indian descent. I then examined these articles and discovered often contrasts in language, word choice, and content of what was included in the article. In this way I was able to better understand how different parts of the world perceive this issue in relation to what the actual members of the community are thinking and writing about. This also relates to how I contributed as part of the group. Each one of us had our own method of participating and I was able to bring my experience as a member of the Indian-American community to discuss how I’ve grown up with the issue, which sources considered popular by the people, and to add to a broader background understanding of India’s history. In this way, I feel that we were able to create a more balanced and thorough approach with hopefully less biases due to all of our unique perspectives.

Through this process, I learned extensively about the issue itself and the way it's being discussed globally. I was able to dive into and understand current legislation and progress being implemented. What I also appreciated was how we focused on the impacts of colonialism and its latent yet pervasive traits that directly relate to this issue. It truly demonstrates how we need to look at India’s history as well as current trends. Also, examining sources that are not as widely dispersed in the U.S. gave me an interesting perspective into what Delhi, Mumbai, and India in general are discussing regarding the issue of rape. In this way, my research encompassed a broader field of access by examining the issue from not just the most popular and often Western sources. From this project overall and through this experience I gained a better understanding of how to work within a group and how to integrate unique writing styles into one, cohesive blog post. To me, the group dynamic is relevant to what we’ll be experiencing in the workforce and was an aspect that promoted discussion and in depth analysis of the issue.