Interdependence

MINURSO - December 2018
The United Nations Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara (MINURSO) opened negotiations between groups with contesting claims. These talks took place in Geneva, and were the first negotiations in six years. This comes after UN Resolution 2440, encouraging groups in the Western Sahara region to try to come to an agreement. The United Nations has undergone a peacekeeping mission in Western Sahara for several years. Despite the negotiations, the region remains contested today.

OPEC - December 2018
Qatar decided to leave the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, an alliance of global oil producers. This comes after 57 years of Qatari membership. This was seen by many as a largely symbolic move; Qatar produces mainly natural gas. Qatar has been engaged in a rivalry with Saudi Arabia, the de facto leader state of OPEC. By leaving, they sent an obvious jab at Saudi Arabia while not losing very much strategically.

NATO - June 2019
NATO member Turkey agrees to buy S-400 air defense missile systems from Russia, angering many NATO member states. Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan defends his decision as "not a preference but a necessity," citing regional threats against Turkey. The United States responded especially negatively. The F-35 is a stealth fighter produced by American contractor Lockheed Martin. The United States sells F-35 fighters to allies around the globe. In July 2019, the United States removed Turkey from the F-35 program as retaliation, further straining US-Turkey relations.

NAFTA - August 27, 2018
The North American Free Trade Agreement is/was a free trade treaty between Canada, the United States, Mexico. It was put into place by Bill Clinton in the 1990s. Since then, it has received criticism from both sides of the political spectrum; critics say it allows American manufacturers to outsource jobs. Throughout his presidential campaign, Donald Trump bashed NAFTA. In 2018, he appeared to fulfill his campaign promise by renegotiating NAFTA. However, the new agreement, the United States Mexico Canada Agreement (USMCA) has also received criticism for being fundamentally similar. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Future of Work - Connor Morley

Image
The future of work in America is, like any prediction, ultimately uncertain, but there are numerous factors that are contributing to what can be predicted. Through the careful gathering of data by the McKinsey global institute, it is plain to see what jobs/lines of work are likely set to thrive and which ones might be in danger. It seems to be the trend that the jobs most in danger of displacement are the ones that are on the lower end of the pay scale. This appears to be correlated highly with jobs whose workers do not possess college degrees, as evidenced by this graph: Which shows that college degrees are more important than ever in a global economy less willing to shell out the big bucks on manufacturing and blue-collar work than ever, even though they constitute the largest portion of jobs in the world relative to other occupations, which really illustrates certain inequalities brought-on by a country exemplifying a capitalist model, such as the United States.  ...
Read more

Hey Check This Out 12/11

 https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/11/republicans-discover-dangers-selling-bunk-their-constituents/617197/ This article from The Atlantic draws the parallels between the lead up to, and the aftermath of the 1860 and the 2020 US presidential elections.  The divisions between modern day Americans and the two political parties are similarly as divided as back in the 1850’s leading up to the election of 1860 in which Abraham Lincoln (a Republican) was elected, much to the outrage of the US South; As described in the article the fiery speeches in the US Congress and toxic political rhetoric and conspiracy theories that were prevalent in the lead up to the 1860 election, which can also be said about the harsh divisions in the current 2020 political climate. In some ways, electing Obama president in 2008 helped improve race relations on some levels, or at least it opened up more dialogue about several important topics that had been ignored or downplayed for too long; i...
Read more

Coronavirus and issues of Development and Power

Jorge Larach 5/20/20 GPHC Coronavirus and issues of Development and Power  I read two articles:  Why Rich Countries must Protect Developing Nations from Coronavirus Pandemic How is the United Nations responding to the Novel Coronavirus (2019-nCoV) / COVID-19 outbreak? Despite this assignment being due weeks ago, I still compared what these articles are talking about to today and processed the timeline provided in the second article (chronologically), as well as considered what the call to action of the first article was referring to. I think the first article provides a persuasive, fact-supported argument as to why higher-income countries should divert some of their attention to poorer countries, not just for the well being of those countries, but for theirs as well. It argues that if poorer countries are not given the support they need, monetary or otherwise, then not only will those countries be hit substantially harder than richer ones, but it will like...
Read more