GPHC 2019-2020

On July 14th, 2015, a long-term accord on Iran’s nuclear programs was signed. This accord is between Iran and the P5+1 (Russia, US, France, Germany, China, and the UK),  and it is called the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). It said that Iran must limit their nuclear activities, research, and development, as well as allow for international inspections. Before this deal was signed, Iran had had enough supplies to make several nuclear bombs in a relatively short amount of time. This greatly worried the rest of the world, even though Iran claimed that their nuclear activities were peaceful.  Several years before the JCPOA was finalized, negotiations between the P5+1 and Iran began. Since at first, Iran did not agree to all of the demands of the P5 +1, economic sanctions were put on them, and many of their assets overseas were frozen. This cost Iran hundreds of billions of dollars over the years, and so eventually they agreed to the JCPOA.  This is ...

Elliott Conely Mr. Roddy GPHC 9/14/2019 Hard Power in The Persian Gulf War On August 2, 1990 Iraq, under the leadership of Saddam Hussein, Invaded Kuwait with hard, military power to control its oil production.  Kuwait is a small, oil rich nation Southeast of Iraq. Importantly, Kuwait had an alliance with the United States. The first global response to Iraq's actions were extreme sanctions. Early the next year, with the approval of the UN Security Council, a multinational coalition of forces led by the US attacked Iraqi forces in Kuwait and successfully drove them out. The attack on the Iraqi Army took two operations: Operation Desert Storm, which was an air attack on infrastructure. And Operation Desert Sabre which was a land based attack on Iraqi troops. The coalition forces drove all Iraqi troops out of Kuwait. February 27th, 1991 President Bush signed a ceasefire agreement marking the end of the conflict. This conflict showed how hard and soft power can be used in tandem...

In America is it highly uncommon to use trains in transportation. Americans might use the Metro train, or small trains to get from one terminal to the next in an airport, but travelling on a train for more than an hour in this country is often just about unheard of. There are a few passenger train lines that will take you from city to city, but these lines are slowly dying out with the lack of people using them. It's much easier and to take a car, bus, or plane. However, this is unusual in the grand scheme of things compared to other countries. If you look at Europe, one could travel throughout the countries and towns exclusively by train and easily get just about anywhere. Geography helps in this case, but there is still a lot of effort on Europe's part in bringing together such vast train lines. Despite the fact that Spain, Germany, and France have some of the most kilometres of high speed railways in the world, none of them combined come close to China. This superpower has b...

One contemporary example of the use of smart power is China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Consisting of both an overland Economic Belt and a Maritime Silk Road, the BRI is the most ambitious infrastructure investment in history. First announced to the world in 2013 by Chinese President Xi Jinping, China has since secured the signatures and agreements of 60 countries for such projects. The foundations for this project began even earlier, in 2001, when China first offered to build a brand new port in the small fishing town of Gwadar, Pakistan. They later connected a highway and railway creating, by 2018, a $62 billion corridor connecting to the BRI. On many occasions, China has offered billion dollar infrastructure loans to developing countries. China loaned about $1.5 billion for a new deep-water port in Sri Lanka, a key-stop on the Maritime Silk Road. This placed Sri Lanka in major debt and in 2017 China gained control of the port as part of a 99 year lease as an alternative paymen...

Smart power is achieving goals through force, persuasion and influence. Donald Trump uses smart power. Smart power is a mix of both hard power and soft power. Smart power is something that requires both military force  and relies heavily on alliances and partnerships to reach a goal. Trump puts more money into the military, which is a hard power than diplomacy. He uses hard power to achieve smart power which is persuasion through military force. Donald Trump sent troops in places like Afghanistan to help the citizens, so people like us and are on our side.  Another example of trump using smart power would be like with how trump is treating Kim Jong-un , the president of North Korea. Trump is being nice to “Little Rocket Man” to get him to cease the nuke threats.  Or how Trump is being nice to China's, leader Xi Jinping, so we can win the trade war. Trump is being diplomatic with soft power so that hopefully the president will agree to trump's terms like With North Ko...

Soft power is pretty simple. It is when a government or someone with power achieves aims using persuasion and/ or influence. One example of soft power is when China invested almost 1.4 trillion dollars to Africa for infrastructure. Because of this incredibly huge investment, Africa gave China favorable access to most of the natural resources in the Africa states. Although this move might be classified as soft power, it could just as well be smart power. China used its money and influence to gain access to Africa's resources. In turn, China probably gained some sort of alliance with Africa. With Africa having a ton of gold and resources and literally everything, I'd say it's a smart power play  I don't know if the US has done things like this before, but if they did, I think it would be a good investment. I don't know that much about investments and economical solutions/problems but having a place where you could invest money into it and get back resources sounds lik...

Izabella Curtis Mr. Roddy Global Politics 15 September 2019 South Sudan            South Sudan is the world's newest country, gaining independence in 2011 after decades-long of war that killed 1.5 million people. Through oil-rich, most people are poor. 1-3 people have no access to clean water and 1 child in 7 dies before their 5th birthday. In November of 2016, the UN visited South Sudan. They described it as a "Warped Environment" what they saw was more than shocking, the raping of women and girls had become "normalized". The UN says that the world is obligated to interfere and prevent ethnic cleansing. UN also says at least 600 people were killed in ethnic clashes in Jonglei. Fast forward to 2013, President Kiir declares civil war by accusing his former vice- president Riek Machar for plotting to overthrow him. That is a HARD POWER move.