Charlie Rose interviews Huntington on the ideas in his oft-cited and even more criticized “Clash of Civilizations” thesis. Rose calls the clash thesis “provocative.” What do you think about the logic of the clash thesis. Given that you’ve read Amartya Sen’s response to Huntington, what kinds of questions would you have asked Huntington that Rose failed to? (The Huntington interview runs from 1:55 until about 21:00. No, Professor Huntington is not a dead-ringer for John Cleese. That is, in fact, John Cleese, who is interviewed in the middle segment; hence, the screen shot of Cleese.)
Category: International Relations–PLSC250
This category was previously named PLSC250–the name and number of my Introduction to International Relations course at U of R.
Serb Demonstrators Attack US and Croatian Embassies in Belgrade
The Washington Post reports that following a massive (upwards of 150,000 participants) and peaceful demonstration in the Serbian capital of Belgrade, with the theme “Kosovo is Serbia”, a group numbering a few thousand at most has attacked the US and (neighboring) Croatian embassies, setting the US embassy on fire. The demonstrations were held in the aftermath of Albanian Kosovars’ official declaration of independence on Monday. The US is one of many countries to have officially recognized Kosovo as the newest ex-Yugoslav independent state, setting off a public and official outcry on the part of Serbs, for whom Kosovo is the historical birthplace of their nation.
Politicians in Belgrade are caught between their rhetoric to do what it takes (short of violence) to prevent Kosovo from achieving full-fledged independence and the lack of many good non-violent options to do so, given the Serb leadership’s openly declared goal of one day joining the European Union. One possibility would be to energize (or otherwise entice) the Serbs in neighboring Bosnia and Herzegovina to agitate for higher levels of autonomy, or outright independence, stressing the similarities of the situations. This would certainly raise the ire of European leaders and would not earn the Serbs any bonus points in their quest for further integration into European political and economic institutions.
Here is footage from the Belgrade independent media outlet B92:
From the “About Video” (translated by me): Beograd — Stotine nasilnih demonstranata nakon završetka mitinga napalo američku i hrvatsku ambasadu. U 19:13 intervenisala policija.
“Upon the conclusion of the [official] demonstration, undreds of violent demonstrators attacked the American and Croatian embassies. The police intervened at 7:13 pm.”
You can find a gallery of photographs from the day in Belgrade at B92’s website here.
Playing the Dominant Strategy in a Prisoner’s Dilemma Situation
As you’ll see in lecture tomorrow, instrumentally rational players will also choose to “defect” in a priosoner’s dilemma type situation even though they could be much better off absolutely if they and their opponents could learn to cooperate. The chart below has been created using data from the simulation of yesterday. What is take-home message from the chart? Why is the relationship between the phenomena displayed not completely linear? Think about the nature (i.e., the specific rules) of the oil game we played yesterday. (The plot below is a box plot, which is a way of summarizing the means, range, and certain percentiles of the values of a single variable based on another variable.)
Results from a Prisoner’s Dilemma Simulation–The Oil Game
Today in class, you competed in groups to maximize total profits in a simulation called “the Oil Game.” You represented one of two competing oil producers–Iraz and Sabia–trying to maximize profits selling oil to a net importer of oil–ESYUVI (the names were created using a random letter-generator–I swear!). Most of you recognized very quickly, if not immediately, that the simulation was a modified Prisoner’s Dilemma situation. As I’ll discuss on Friday, in a Prisoner’s Dilemma situation, players acting in an instrumentally rational manner will always choose not to cooperate (i.e., “defect”), because it is a dominant strategy. What makes the situation a dilemma is that the players could do much better were they able to cooperate and trust one another.
The compelling logic of the prisoner’s dilemma, along with some strong empirical evidence, is used by realists to support their arguments regarding the nature of interaction in the international world. Liberals, on the other hand, argue that there is much more cooperation in the world than realists would predict. Thus, despite the structure of the prisoner’s dilemma, players are able to cooperate in international politics. What factors do you think make cooperation more likely? Less likely? Why?
The results from our simulation today are in graphical form above. You’ll note that communication was not allowed for Years 1, 2, and 4; communication was allowed for Year 3, and communication (to decide what to do for Years 5 and 6) was allowed prior to Year 5. The results from this class are consistent with the expectations. I would note the relatively low level of cooperation throughout, rising only initially after the first episode of communication.
A Good Resource for Information on “Eurasia”
Eurasianet.org has a very informative website that offers news from Eurasia. Here is a snippet from their about page (when you find a source online always read their “about” or “description” page to get an idea of what the organization is, if they have any political biases, etc.):
EurasiaNet provides information and analysis about political, economic, environmental and social developments in the countries of Central Asia and the Caucasus, as well as in Russia, the Middle East, and Southwest Asia. The web site also offers additional features, including newsmaker interviews and book reviews.
Based in New York, EurasiaNet advocates open and informed discussion of issues that concern countries in the region. The web site presents a variety of perspectives on contemporary developments, utilizing a network of correspondents based both in the West and in the region. The aim of EurasiaNet is to promote informed decision making among policy makers, as well as broadening interest in the region among the general public.
EurasiaNet is operated by the Central Eurasia Project of the Open Society Institute.
Today, they report on contested presidential elections in Armenia, where opposition supporters claim fraud has taken place while supporters of current Prime Minister (and declared winner) Serzh Sarkisian believe that their candidate has won with more than 50% of the vote, obviating the need for a run-off election (in many electoral systems, for a candidate to be declared the official winner, s/he must have received a majority (i.e., 50%) of votes cast. If no candidate passes that threshold, a run-off election is held where the two leaders go head-to-head.) You can read the Washington Post’s report here, with a snippet below:
YEREVAN, Armenia — Thousands of opposition supporters marched through Armenia’s capital Wednesday after an election official said complete results showed that the prime minister had won the presidential election.
Allegations of fraud and threats of mass protests have raised concerns about the stability of the volatile, strategic country, located at the juncture of the energy-rich Caspian Sea region and southern Europe and bordering Iran.
An initial count of the ballots showed Prime Minister Serge Sarkisian had nearly 53 percent of the vote in Tuesday’s election, Central Election Commission chief Garegin Azarian said _ enough to win outright and avoid a runoff. Top opposition candidate Levon Ter-Petrosian had 21.5 percent, Azarian said.
Ter-Petrosian’s backers have alleged widespread fraud, and a crowd gathered in central Yerevan to protest the results, swelling to some 20,000 as riot police with truncheons guarded the election commission building a five-minute walk away.
The protesters then marched to the government headquarters in a broad central square, many shouting “Levon!” and raising a clenched fist _ Ter-Petrosian’s campaign symbol. Helmeted police blocked the building, and the protesters moved on, marching toward the election commission building.
“I have no doubt that the authorities have falsified the election and I will protest with all those who also feel cheated,” Simon Grigorian, a 38-year-old engineer, said at the protest.
Price of Crude Oil Closes above $100/bbl First Time Ever
We’ll be playing the “Oil Game” in class tomorrow in PLSC250. When colleagues of mine used this teaching tool in their classes 4 or 5 years ago, the price of oil was about 1/3 of what it is today. In the clip, Brian Williams will tell you that oil reached a “record” high of $100.01 US a barrel. That’s only true if we’re talking about nominal dollars. In terms of real dollars it still has about 4 USD/bbl to go to hit the all-time high set in December 1979. Hmmm…I wonder what was happening in late 1979? Iran, Afghanistan, plus ca change…
Click here to see Maria Bartiromo report from NBC News.
“People are afraid that there is just not enough oil in the world to meet demand; demand which is coming not only from the United States but from emerging economies like China and India.”
You’ve got to Fight…for Your Right…to…Gain Citizenship
During our discussion in class today on different forms of group identity, many of you seemed surprised when I mentioned that there were many non-US citizens currently fighting for the US military in Iraq; many (a majority at least) are doing so in exchange for the promise of US citizenship. Which begs the questions, just how many non-citizens are currently serving in the US military? According to this paper (pdf),
“As of February 2003, there were 37,000 non-citizens serving in active duty in the U.S. armed forces, almost 12,000 foreign nationals serving in the selected reserves, and another 8,000 serving in the inactive national guard and ready reserves.”*
As we learned in class, prior to the establishment and consolidation of nation-states in Europe, post-Westphalia, most political leaders recruited mercenary armies. Thus, the link between military protection and citizenship is a modern phenomenon. This makes the results of a recent survey done by Foreign Policy Magazine very interesting.
Many proposals have been suggested to help the military meet its recruiting and retention needs. But an incredible percentage of the index’s officers favor the same solution: Nearly 80 percent support expanding options for legal, foreign permanent residents of the United States to serve in exchange for U.S. citizenship. A high percentage of officers, about 6 in 10, also support the idea of allowing more recruits who have a high school equivalency degree—but no diploma—to serve. Almost 40 percent favor reinstating the draft.
*Not all of these, of course, are serving in Iraq. Moreover, while it is a seemingly large number it is still a very small percentage of the total military.
Partition as a Solution to Ethnic Conflict/Violence
Today in class we discussed ethnic identity and various types of inter-ethnic violence. We saw that a large literature in political science (and related disciplines) sees the very fact of cultural (and especially ethnic) heterogeneity is being the source of much that goes wrong within states and societies. In a previous post, I mentioned Robert Putnam’s recent findings that trust is lower in more heterogeneous societies; there is a burgeoning literature on the deleterious economic impact of ethnic (and other forms of) identity (public goods provision, for example, is lower in more heterogeneous societies).
If the very fact of heterogeneity is the cause of conflict and violence, then wouldn’t a reasonable solution to inter-ethnic conflict/violence be to create new more ethnically homogeneous states out of a single ethnically diverse one? Some argue that this may be a legitimate solution to the extant difficulties in Iraq. Chaim Kaufmann has argued in favor of just this approach. Here (pdf) is an article written by Nicholas Sambanis setting out, then critiquing Chaim Kaufmann’s hypotheses regarding the usefulness of partition to resolve endemic inter-ethnic violence.
You can view a fascinating BBC documentary on the partition of India in 1947 here. Here’s an important quote from the documentary:
“…as a British barrister draws a line on a map…”
Much of the violence that occurred during the partition was the result of Muslims and Hindus (of course, the Sikh/Punjab problem adds another layer of complexity altogether) trying to be on (or being forced to move to) the right side of that barrister’s line. Millions were killed.
U.S. Formally Recognizes Kosovo Independence
We discussed in class today that of the four characteristics of a state, the only one that Kosovo had, at that point, not fulfilled was international recognition by other states. According to this Washington Post story, the United States has begun to change that:
President Bush hailed the newly independent Kosovo and officially recognized it as a state and a “close friend” on Monday, expressing strong support for the new Balkans nation even as he rebuffed protests by Serbia and Russia.
The formal announcement came in a statement issued by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who is traveling in Africa with the president. “The United States has today formally recognized Kosovo as a sovereign and independent state,” she said. “We congratulate the people of Kosovo on this historic occasion.”
I understand what it feels like to be a Kosovar Albanian today as it takes me back to 15 January 1992, when European and other states, including the United States, formally recognized the independence of the Republic of Croatia. I can also sympathize with Serbs, who must feel like their heart has been ripped out of their body given that Kosovo is integral to history and spirit of the Serbian nation. Ivo Banac has written that “the history of the Balkans is a history migrations, not only peoples, but of lands.” The Serbian nation was founded on land that the Serbs no longer control politically as a result of the vicissitudes of politics in that part of the world and the drift of the center of gravity of Serb political northward over the centuries. It is incumbent upon the new Kosovo government and the international community to allow Serbs to continue to have access to the sacred religious and spiritual monuments of their past.
You can see a comprehensive slide show of photographs marking the situation here.
Below is a photograph of the famous Serbian Christian Orthodox Gračanica Monastery in Kosovo.
Serbian Reactions to Kosovo’s Declaration of Independence
Serbia’s B92–an independent news source in Serbia–reports that protesters have ransacked the Slovenian embassy in Belgrade, and damaged the U.S. Embassy and a McDonald’s. The protesters view the U.S. as the major patron of the Kosovar Albanians and the major facilitator (with help from the E.U.) of today’s declaration of independence. I presume that the Slovenian embassy was attacked because Slovenia is the current holder of the rotating Presidency of the EU. Here’s part of the report (in English), along with footage of the protesters:
BELGRADE — At least 30 policemen and 30 civilians were injured as protesters demonstrated against U.S. and EU Kosovo policy.
Police used tear gas and rubber bullets to disperse rioters that attacked them after vandalizing a McDonald’s restaurant in downtown Belgrade.
Earlier, the Slovenian embassy came under attack when a group of some 30 people broke a police cordon to smash the windows and ransack the building, tearing and burning the furniture inside and flags displayed on the balcony. Police then managed to contain the situation and push them back.
Previuosly, the protesters, several hundred strong, shortly stopped in front of the Serbian government headquarters, to proceed toward the U.S. embassy.
Police were out to secure the parameter, but although the organizers said the protest would be peaceful, cars were being demolished, while stones and lit flares were flying toward the embassy building and the officers themselves.
Clouds, Clocks, and Sitting at Tables 
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