Blog Group 0602

  To be honest, it has been a long time for me – a Chinese social media and news reader, not hearing any information about the follow-up of the Ukraine and Russia crisis on Chinese websites. Yes, you can’t find a lot of information about the invasion on Chinese news websites. If you do, then the news may be connected with the following reaction of European countries towards Russia, like the sanctions and changes in foreign policies. Some of the news writers did actually defame some of Ukrainian Defiance for some bad activities. It is quite clear for other people to understand the attitude of China towards the crisis. How about other Asian countries? Although I don’t want to be mean at this point, I have to indicate that the attitudes of many “second-tier power” countries are not that genuine. If we rationally consider the situation and the nature of politics, we must admit that it is not clever to think in either only a humanitarian angle or only a political angle. We need to comb...

  John Wallace   Blog Post 5   5/3/2022 It has been less than 3 months since the invasion of Ukraine by Russian forces. And so far, it has caused an uproar in the international community over how to respond, particularly in the neighboring European union.  While many nations in the European Union pledged large amounts of aid for Ukraine, the de facto leader of the bloc remained on the sidelines about the issue despite international pressure. For decades, Germany has not been shockingly ambivalent about Russian advances into Ukraine, with them being noticeably silent during the 2014 invasion of Ukraine. The unwillingness of Germany to publicly condemn Russia is due to one simple export, Russian Oil.  For decades now, Germany and many other European countries have been extremely dependent on imported Russian oil. With the dependence rising to nearly 100% of yearly energy consumption with nations such a the Baltic countries, Finland, Bosnia, and Moldova. ...

  Grant Voytovich POLS 170 Blog 5/3/2022 The article titled “Trump Sets Date to End WHO Membership Over its Handling of Virus” by Pien Huang talks about how President Trump decided to leave the World Health Organization because of their decisions on the COVID-19 virus.  This made me want to research the benefits and drawbacks of International Governmental Organizations.   One of the biggest benefits of IGO’s is that they assist countries with numerous economic policies.  For example, the World Bank assists countries with economic development, reduce poverty, and just help countries grow.  The World Bank website says, “The World Bank has two goals: to end extreme poverty and promote shared prosperity in a sustainable way.”  They have also stepped in to assist Ukraine in their efforts against Russia.  Another International Organization is the World Trade Organization, which helps to ensure that countries are trading with each other, and that tra...

  The fear of an action might be powerful enough to scare off another party, or cause them to fear the lengths others are willing to go. As Kenneth Waltz argues in “Why Iran Should Get the Bomb: Nuclear Balancing Would Mean Stability” allowing more countries to obtain nuclear defense would put international relations at a general deterrence from the nuclear wars that could start. Deterrence is a strategy that can be used in order to prevent another party from undertaking an action through coercion. Many times this works as a method to keep two parties from destroying each other, or to allow a smaller army to scare off a larger one to show the lengths they would go. Nuclear deterrence can be the ultimate way of scaring off other parties as it is the strongest weapon that could potentially cause complete destruction. Even if a nuclear power is relatively small and compared to other nuclear powers would seem less threatening, once they cross the threshold they are using deterrence (Wa...

  Kameron Schreffler 04/30/2022 Sections 2.3 and 3.1 of the article "Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Global Justice" can be connected to a paper read in class titled "Silenced Voices in Global Health" by Katri Bertram, Ngozi Erondu, Madhukar Pai. These articles both touch on our responsibilities to our compatriots and non-compatriots. This is a fascinating topic to discuss due to the ethical dilemma of if a human belongs to a global or national community. The article "Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Global Justice" says, "There is an important debate among egalitarian theorists about whether our concern with equality should be confined to members of the same state or whether it should extend to all globally." This concern of egalitarian theorists made me ask this question. To this dilemma, I believe that our equality concerns should be concerned globally and not just to the national extent.  Globalization is only getting larger, creat...