38.2: The Middle East and North Africa in the 21st Century

38.2.1: Democracy and Authoritarianism in the Middle East

Learning Objective

Compare democratic and authoritarian countries in the Middle East

Key Points

• According
  to the measure of the level of democracy in nations throughout the world
  published by Freedom House, the Middle Eastern countries with the highest scores
  are Israel, Tunisia, Turkey, Lebanon, Morocco, Kuwait, and Jordan. The
  remaining countries of the Middle East are categorized as authoritarian
  regimes, though some have  certain democratic aspects.
• Freedom House categorizes Israel and Tunisia as the only “free”
  countries of the region. Tunisia is a representative democracy and a republic
  with a president serving as head of state, prime minister as head of
  government, a unicameral parliament, and a civil law court system. Israel operates under a parliamentary system as a democratic
  republic with universal suffrage. Some organizations and states, however, see the Israeli
  treatment of Palestinians as a serious blemish on Israel’s democratic
  system. 
• Lebanon, Turkey, Kuwait,
  Morocco, and Jordan are all categorized as “partly free.” All of these countries are to some extent representative democracies. Despite its “partly free” status, Lebanon is still considered one of the most democratic states in the region while Kuwait is
  among the Middle East’s freest countries in terms of civil liberties and
  political rights. Jordan was upgraded from “not free” to
  “partly free” only in 2017 and while it is a constitutional monarchy, the king holds wide
  executive and legislative powers.
• None
  of the Middle Eastern countries received the “free” status from the
  Freedom House in their 2016 Freedom
  of the Press report,
  which measures specifically the level of freedom and editorial
  independence enjoyed by the press. Israel, Lebanon, Turkey, and Kuwait
  were determined “partly free” while all the other countries in
  the region received the “not free” status.  
• All the remaining Middle Eastern states are
  currently determined to be “not free” (including Western Sahara,
  which is controlled by Morocco). In some cases, what may seem a democratic model
  does not stand the test of scrutiny (e.g., elections in Syria, Egypt, or Iran).

  Absolute monarchy is
  common in the Middle East. Authoritarian regimes (not necessarily monarchies)
  evolving around a powerful individual holding power has long been the critical
  feature of the Middle Eastern politics.
  There are diverse theories
  on why the Middle East remains essentially undemocratic.

• Nearly
  all the Middle Eastern states, including those categorized as democratic,
  violate some human rights according to international legal standards. Some of the gravest violations include the application of capital punishment and lack of legal protection for women and children.

Key Terms

Freedom of the Press report

A yearly report by U.S.-based non-governmental organization Freedom House, measuring the level of freedom and editorial independence enjoyed by the press in nations and significant disputed territories around the world.

confessionalism

A system of government where high-ranking offices are reserved for members of specific religious groups. It is usually applied to prevent sectarian conflicts.

Freedom House

A U.S.-based and U.S.-government funded non-governmental organization that conducts research and advocacy on democracy, political freedom, and human rights. It was founded in October 1941. Wendell Willkie and Eleanor Roosevelt served as its first honorary chairpersons. It describes itself as a “clear voice for democracy and freedom around the world.”

Democratic Status of Middle Eastern Nations

According to the measure of the level of democracy in nations throughout the world published by Freedom House,
a U.S. Government funded non-governmental organization that conducts research and advocacy on democracy, political freedom, and human rights, the Middle Eastern countries with the highest scores are Israel, Tunisia, Turkey, Lebanon, Morocco, Kuwait, and Jordan. The remaining countries of the Middle East are categorized as authoritarian regimes, though some have certain democratic aspects. The lowest scores are held by Saudi Arabia and Yemen.

Freedom House (data from the 2017 report) categorizes Israel and Tunisia as the only “free” countries of the region.
Tunisia is a representative democracy and a republic with a president serving as head of state, prime minister as head of government, a unicameral parliament, and a civil law court system. The number of legalized political parties in Tunisia has grown considerably since the beginning of the democratic reforms. Rare for the Arab world, women hold a significant share of seats in the constituent assembly (between 24% and 31%).
Israel operates under a parliamentary system as a democratic republic with universal suffrage.
It has no official religion, but the definition of the state as “Jewish and democratic” creates a strong connection with Judaism as well as a conflict between state law and religious law. Interaction between the political parties keeps the balance between state and religion. Some organizations and states, however, see the Israeli treatment of Palestinians as a serious blemish on Israel’s democratic system. 

Lebanon, Turkey, Kuwait, Morocco, and Jordan are all categorized as “partly free.”
Until 1975, Freedom House considered Lebanon to be one of only two (together with Israel) politically free countries in the Middle East and North Africa region. The country lost this status with the outbreak of the Civil War and has not regained it since. Even though Lebanon, a parliamentary democracy that includes confessionalism (high-ranking offices are reserved for members of specific religious groups to prevent sectarian conflicts), is now rated “partly free,” the United States still considers Lebanon one of the most democratic nations in the Arab world.
Turkey is a parliamentary representative democracy but recent developments, particularly the efforts to expand the prerogatives of president, cracking down on opposition, and silencing media and individuals who criticize the government, have caused serious concerns that it is taking an anti-democratic turn.
Kuwait is a constitutional emirate with a semi-democratic political system. The emir is the head of state and the hybrid political system is divided between an elected parliament and appointed government. Kuwait is among the Middle East’s freest countries in terms of civil liberties and political rights. Morocco is a parliamentary constitutional monarchy. The Prime Minister is the head of government and a multi-party system is growing.
Jordan, which in 2017 was upgraded from “not free” to “partly free,” is a constitutional monarchy where the King holds wide executive and legislative powers.

None of the Middle Eastern countries received the “free” status from the Freedom House in their 2016 Freedom of the Press report, which measures specifically the level of freedom and editorial independence enjoyed by the press. Israel, Lebanon, Turkey, and Kuwait were determined to be “partly free” while all the other countries in the region received the “not free” status.  

Authoritarianism

Apart from the seven states discussed above,  all the remaining Middle Eastern states are currently determined to be “not free” (including Western Sahara, which is controlled by Morocco). In some cases, what may seem a democratic model does not stand the test of scrutiny. For example, a number of presidential republics embracing Arab socialism, such as Syria and Egypt, regularly hold elections. However, critics assert that these are not full multi-party systems since they do not allow citizens to choose between many different candidates for presidency election. Moreover, the constitution of modern Egypt has given the president a virtual monopoly over the decision-making process, devoting 30 articles (15 percent of the whole constitution) to presidential prerogatives. Another example is Iran, where the Iranian Revolution of 1979 resulted in an electoral system (an Islamic Republic with a constitution), but the system has a limited democracy in practice. One of the main problems of Iran’s system is the consolidation of too much power in the hands of the Supreme Leader who is elected by Assembly of Experts for life (unless the Assembly of Experts decides to remove him which has never happened). Another main problem is the closed loop in the electoral system; the elected Assembly of Experts elects the Supreme Leader of Iran, who appoints the members of the Guardian Council, who in turn vets the candidates for all elections including those for Assembly of Experts. However some elections in Iran, such as those for city councils, satisfies free and democratic election criteria to some extent. 

Absolute monarchy is common in the Middle East. Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and United Arab Emirates are all absolute monarchies. Authoritarian regimes (not necessarily monarchies) evolving around a powerful individual holding power has long been the critical feature of the Middle Eastern politics. For example, in the past, Saddam Hussein of Iraq or Muammar Gaddafi of Libya were among the most influential figures of the region. Today, Bashar al-Assad, who refused to resign from the presidency of Syria, which is one cause behind the brutal civil war that has been waged since 2011, serves as a symbol of the authoritarian rejection of democratic changes in the region. 

Iraqi police show of their ink-stained index fingers – proof that they visited the polls to cast their ballot in Iraq’s historic parliamentary elections in 2005, photo by
Jim Goodwin. 

According to Transparency International, Iraq’s is the most corrupt government in the Middle East and is described as a “hybrid regime” (between a “flawed democracy” and an “authoritarian regime”).

Theoretical Considerations

The endurance of authoritarian regimes in the Middle East is notable in comparison to the rest of the world. While such regimes have fallen throughout Eastern Europe or sub-Saharan Africa, for example, they have persisted in the Middle East. At the same time, Middle Eastern history includes significant episodes of conflict between rulers and proponents of change. 

Theories on why the Middle East remains essentially undemocratic are diverse. Revisionist theories argue that democracy is slightly incompatible with Middle Eastern values. On the other hand, post-colonial theories propose a number  of explanations for the relative absence of liberal democracy in the Middle East, including the long history of imperial rule by the Ottoman Empire, Britain, and France and the contemporary political and military intervention by the United States, all of which have been blamed for preferring authoritarian regimes because they simplify the business environment while enriching the governing elite and the companies of the imperial countries.

Albrecht Schnabel argues that a strong civil society is required to produce leaders and mobilize the public around democratic duties, but for such a civil society to flourish, a democratic environment and process allowing freedom of expression and order is required in the first place. This theory therefore supports the intervention of outside countries, such as the United States, in establishing democracy. Other analysts, however, disagree. Some researchers suggest that independent nongovernmental associations help foster a participatory form of governance. They cite the lack of voluntary associations as a reason for the persistence of authoritarianism in the region. Others believe that the lack of a market-driven economy in many Middle Eastern countries undermines the capacity to build the kind of individual autonomy and power that helps promote democracy. Therefore, the relationship of the state to civil society is one of the most important indicators of the chances of democracy evolving in a particular country. Poverty, inequality, and low literacy rates also compromise people’s commitment to democratic reforms since survival becomes a higher priority. 

Human Rights Violations

Nearly all the Middle Eastern states, including those categorized as democratic, violate some of what according to international legal standards falls under the category of human rights.
In regard to capital punishment, the countries of the region can be separated into two categories. Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, and Israel are considered abolitionist in practice. Aside from Israel, all of the above countries maintain the death penalty for serious crimes although no executions have been carried out in a long time. All other countries in the Middle East execute prisoners for crimes. In the de facto autonomous Rojava federation in Syria, formed during the Syrian Civil War, capital punishment has been abolished.

No country in the region (with the sole exception of the Rojava federation) offers specific protections against spousal rape or domestic violence. There is a lack of official protection of rights within the home and a lack of government accountability. Domestic violence is typically covered up and kept within the family as many women in the region feel they cannot discuss their abuse without damaging their own and their family’s reputation and honor.
Women have varying degrees of difficulty moving freely in Middle Eastern countries. Some nations prohibit women from ever traveling alone, while in others women can travel freely but experience a greater risk of sexual harassment or assault than they would in Western countries. Women have the right to drive in all Middle Eastern countries except Saudi Arabia.

All the states in the Middle East have ratified the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC). Following the ratification of the CRC, Middle Eastern countries have enacted or proposed laws to protect children from violence, abuse, neglect, or exploitation. A number of countries have comprehensive laws that bring together legal provisions for protection of the child. However, child labor, violence against girls and women, gender gaps within education, and socioeconomic conditions continue to be identified areas of concern. Both external and internal conflict, ongoing political instability, and the Syrian refugee crisis remain grave dangers for children. The escalating armed conflict in Iraq has placed more children in peril. Human rights organizations document grave violations against children, particularly in conflict-ridden and politically unstable areas, focusing specifically on discrimination issues, sectarian violence, and abuse of women and girls.

Israel, the most democratic state in the Middle East,
faces significant human rights problems regarding institutional discrimination of Arab citizens of Israel (many of whom self-identify as Palestinian), Ethiopian Israelis and women, and the treatment of refugees and irregular migrants. Other human rights problems include institutional discrimination against non-Orthodox Jews and intermarried families and labor rights abuses against foreign workers. In the last several states, Tunisia, the second most democratic states of the region, has made significant progress by enacting sweeping legislation to protect the rights of many previously vulnerable groups, including women, children, and the disabled. Human rights organizations note the country is currently at the stage of transition and they continue to observe whether the legislation is put in practice.
One group that has not benefited noticeably from the Tunisian turn to democratic reforms is the LGBTQ community. 

38.2.2: The Rise of Islamism

Learning Objective

Connect the rise of Islamism with outside intervention in the Middle East

Key Points

• The concept of Islamism has been debated in both
  public and academic contexts. The term can refer to diverse forms of social and
  political activism advocating that public and political life should be guided
  by Islamic principles, or more specifically to movements that call for full
  implementation of sharia. In Western media, the term tends to refer to groups
  that aim to establish a sharia-based Islamic state, often with connotations of political extremism and implications of
  violent tactics and human rights violations.

• Islamism is not a united movement. Rather, it takes different forms and spans a wide range of
  strategies and tactics. Moderate and reformist Islamists accept and work within the
  democratic process. Islamist groups like Hezbollah and Hamas participate in
  the democratic and political process and carry out armed attacks. Radical Islamist
  groups entirely reject democracy and call for violent/offensive jihad or urge and conduct attacks on a religious basis.

• Western colonialism of the Muslim world, beginning in the 19th
  century, greatly contributed to equating the secular West with the enemy of Islam, thus fueling the development of increasingly radical Islamism. Beginning in
  the 1970s, Western and pro-Western governments often supported fledgling
  Islamists and Islamist groups that later came to be seen as dangerous enemies.
  For Islamists, the primary threat of the West is cultural rather than political
  or economic. 

• In the late 20th century, an Islamic revival developed in the
  Muslim world. It was manifested in greater religious piety and a growing
  adoption of Islamic culture. Two of the most important events that fueled the
  resurgence were the Arab oil embargo and subsequent quadrupling of the price of
  oil in the mid-1970s and the 1979 Iranian Revolution, which established an
  Islamic republic in Iran under Ayatollah Khomeini. Although religious extremism and attacks on civilians and military targets represent
  only a small part of the movement, the revival has seen a proliferation of
  Islamic extremist groups.

• The number of militant Islamic movements calling for “an
  Islamic state and the end of Western influence” is relatively small.
  According to polls taken in 2008 and 2010 by Pew and Gallop, pluralities of the
  population in Muslim-majority countries are undecided as to what extent
  religion should influence public life,
  politics, and the legal system.

• Saudi Arabia and Qatar have devotec considerable energies to
  spreading Salafism and to gaining influence in the countries that benefited from
  their financial support. Such developments as the Iranian Revolution and the
  Soviet-Afghan War convinced many that the Westernization of the Muslim world
  was avoidable and fueled radical Islamism. As a result, groups like
  al-Quaeda, Taliban, and Islamic State gained popularity and tangible military
  and political power across the Middle East and other regions of the world.

Key Terms

Muslim Brotherhood

A transnational Sunni Islamist organization founded in Egypt by Islamic scholar and schoolteacher Hassan al-Banna in 1928. The organization has combined political activism with charity work as its model of functioning, gaining supporters throughout the Arab world and influencing other Islamist groups. As of 2015, it is considered a terrorist organization by the governments of five Arab countries and Russia, but claims to be a peaceful, democratic organization that condemns violence.

Islamism

A term that can refer to diverse forms of social and political activism advocating that public and political life should be guided by Islamic principles, or more specifically to movements that call for full implementation of sharia. It is commonly used interchangeably with the terms political Islam or Islamic fundamentalism.
Its meaning has been debated in both public and academic contexts.

jihad

An Arabic word that literally means striving or struggling, especially with a praiseworthy aim. It can have many shades of meaning in an Islamic context, such as struggle against one’s evil inclinations or efforts toward the moral betterment of society. In classical Islamic law, the term refers to armed struggle against unbelievers, while modernist Islamic scholars generally equate it with defensive warfare. The term has gained additional attention in recent decades through its use by terrorist groups.

sharia

The religious law forming part of the Islamic tradition. It is derived from the religious precepts of Islam, particularly the Quran and the Hadith. In Arabic, the term refers to God’s divine law and is contrasted with fiqh, which refers to its scholarly interpretations. The manner of its application in modern times has been a subject of dispute between Muslim traditionalists and reformists.

Hamas

A Palestinian Sunni-Islamic fundamentalist that has been the governing authority of the Gaza Strip since 2007. It is a point of debate in political and academic circles over whether or not to classify it as a terrorist group.

Hezbollah

A Shia Islamist militant group and political party based in Lebanon. Its status as a legitimate political party, terrorist group, resistance movement, or some combination thereof is a contentious issue.

Islamic State

A Salafi jihadist extremist militant group led by and mainly composed of Sunni Arabs from Syria and Iraq. In 2014, the group proclaimed itself a caliphate, with religious, political, and military authority over all Muslims worldwide. As of March 2015, it had control over territory occupied by ten million people in Syria and Iraq, and has nominal control over small areas of Libya, Nigeria, and Afghanistan. It also operates or has affiliates in other parts of the world, including North Africa and South Asia.

Taliban

A Sunni Islamic fundamentalist political movement in Afghanistan currently waging war (an insurgency, or jihad) within that country. The group has used terrorism as a specific tactic to further their ideological and political goals.

Salafism

An ultra-conservative reform branch or movement within Sunni Islam that developed in Arabia in the first half of the 18th century against a background of European colonialism. It advocated a return to the traditions of the “devout ancestors” (the salaf).

al-Qaeda

A militant Sunni Islamist multi-national organization founded in 1988 by Osama bin Laden, Abdullah Azzam, and several other Arab volunteers who fought against the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in the 1980s. It has been widely designated as a terrorist group.

What Is Islamism?

Islamism is a concept whose meaning has been debated in both public and academic contexts. The term can refer to diverse forms of social and political activism advocating that public and political life should be guided by Islamic principles, or more specifically to movements that call for full implementation of sharia. Sharia is the religious law forming part of the Islamic tradition, derived from the religious precepts of Islam, particularly the Quran and the hadith (various reports describing the words, actions, or habits of the Islamic prophet Muhammad). Islamism is commonly used interchangeably with the terms political Islam or Islamic fundamentalism. In Western media, the term tends to refer to groups who aim to establish a sharia-based Islamic state, often with connotations of political extremism and implications of violent tactics and human rights violations.

Different currents of Islamist thought have advocated a revolutionary strategy of Islamizing society through exercise of state power or a reformist strategy of re-Islamizing society through grassroots social and political activism. Islamists may emphasize the implementation of sharia (Islamic law), pan-Islamic political unity and an Islamic state, or selective removal of non-Muslim influences, particularly Western military, economic, political, social, or cultural influences, from the Muslim world.

Islamism is not a united movement, but takes different forms and spans a wide range of strategies and tactics. Moderate and reformist Islamists who accept and work within the democratic process include parties like the Tunisian Ennahda Movement. Jamaat-e-Islami of Pakistan is basically a sociopolitical and democratic vanguard party, but has also gained political influence through military coup d’états. Islamist groups like Hezbollah and Hamas participate in the democratic and political process as well as in armed attacks.
Hezbollah is a Shia Islamist militant group and political party based in Lebanon.
Hezbollah’s status as a legitimate political party, terrorist group, resistance movement, or some combination thereof is a contentious issue. Similarly, Hamas is a Palestinian Sunni-Islamic fundamentalist that has been the governing authority of the Gaza Strip since 2007. It is a point of debate in political and academic circles over whether or not to classify Hamas as a terrorist group. Radical Islamist groups like al-Qaeda or the Taliban entirely reject democracy and call for violent/offensive jihad or urge and conduct attacks on a religious basis.

Islamism and the West

In the 19th century, European encroachment on the Muslim world came with the retreat of the Ottoman Empire, the French conquest of Algeria (1830), the disappearance of the Moghul Empire in India (1857), and the Russian incursions into the Caucasus and Central Asia. The first Muslim reaction to European encroachment was of rural and working class and not urban origin. Charismatic leaders launched the call for jihad and formed tribal coalitions. Sharia in defiance of local common law was imposed to unify tribes. All these movements eventually failed, despite some successes over the colonizing armies. 

Under later Western colonialism, nostalgia for the days of successful Islamic empire simmered. This played a major role in the Islamist political ideal of Islamic state, a state in which Islamic law is preeminent. The Islamist political program is generally accomplished by reshaping the governments of existing Muslim nation-states. Today, however, the means of doing this varies greatly across movements and circumstances. Many Islamist movements, such as the Jamaat-e-Islami and Muslim Brotherhood, have used the democratic process and focus on votes and coalition-building with other political parties. Radical movements such as Taliban and al-Qaeda embrace militant Islamic ideology.

Beginning in the 1970s, Western and pro-Western governments often supported fledgling Islamists and Islamist groups that later came to be seen as dangerous enemies. Islamists were considered by Western governments bulwarks against what were thought ore dangerous leftist/communist/nationalist insurgents, which Islamists were correctly seen as opposing. The U.S. spent billions of dollars to aid the

Muslim Afghan enemies of the Soviet Union during the Soviet-Afghan War. Similarly, although Hamas is a strong opponent of Israel’s existence, it traces its origins to institutions and clerics supported by Israel in the 1970s and 1980s. Israel tolerated and supported Islamist movements in Gaza as it perceived them preferable to the secular and then more powerful al-Fatah. Egyptian pro-Western, anti-Soviet, and pro-Israeli President Anwar Sadat released Islamists from prison and welcomed home exiles in tacit exchange for political support in his struggle against leftists. Sadat was later assassinated and a formidable insurgency was formed in Egypt in the 1990s.  

For Islamists, the primary threat of the West is cultural rather than political or economic. Islamists assume that cultural dependency robs one of faith and identity and thus destroys Islam and the Islamic community far more effectively than political rule. Furthermore, the end of the Cold War and Soviet occupation of Afghanistan has eliminated the common atheist Communist enemy uniting some religious Muslims and the capitalist west.

Islamic Revivalism

In the late 20th century an Islamic revival or Islamic awakening developed in the Muslim world,  manifested in greater religious piety and growing adoption of Islamic culture. Two of the most important events that fueled or inspired the resurgence were the Arab oil embargo and subsequent quadrupling of the price of oil in the mid-1970s and the 1979 Iranian Revolution, which established an Islamic republic in Iran under Ayatollah Khomeini. The first created a flow of many billions of dollars from Saudi Arabia to fund Islamic books, scholarships, fellowships, and mosques around the world. The second undermined the assumption that Westernization strengthened Muslim countries and was the irreversible trend of the future.

The revival is a reversal of the Westernization approach common among Arab and Asian governments earlier in the 20th century. Although  religious extremism and attacks on civilians and military targets represent only a small part of the movement, the revival has seen a proliferation of Islamic extremist groups in the Middle East and elsewhere in the Muslim world. They have voiced their anger at perceived exploitation as well as materialism, Westernization, democracy, and modernity, which are most commonly associated with accepting Western secular beliefs and values. 

Rise of Radical Islamism 

The number of militant Islamic movements calling for “an Islamic state and the end of Western influence” is relatively small. According to polls taken in 2008 and 2010 by Pew and Gallop, pluralities of the population in Muslim-majority countries are undecided as to what extent religion (and certain interpretations of) should influence public life, politics, and the legal system.

Starting in the mid-1970s, the Islamic resurgence was funded by an abundance of money from Saudi Arabian oil exports. The tens of billions of dollars obtained from the recently heightened price of oil funded most of the expenses associated with the resurgence. Throughout the Muslim world, religious institutions for people both young and old received Saudi funding along with training for the preachers and teachers who went on to teach and work at the emerging universities, schools, and mosques. The funding was also used to reward journalists and academics who followed the Saudis’ strict interpretation of Islam known as Salafism (sometimes referred to as Wahhabism, but Salafists consider the term derogatory). In its harshest form, it preaches that Muslims should not only “always oppose” infidels “in every way,” but “hate them for their religion … for Allah’s sake,” that democracy “is responsible for all the horrible wars of the 20th century,” and that Muslims not ascribing to this strict interpretation were infidels. While this effort has by no means converted all or even most, it has done much to undermine more moderate local interpretations.

The strength of the Islamist movement was manifest in an event that might have seemed sure to turn Muslim public opinion against fundamentalism, but did just the opposite. In 1979, the Grand Mosque in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, was seized by an armed fundamentalist group and held for over a week. Scores were killed, including many pilgrim bystanders in a gross violation of one of the most holy sites in Islam, where arms and violence are strictly forbidden. Instead of prompting a backlash, Saudi Arabia, already very conservative, responded by shoring up its fundamentalist credentials with even more Islamic restrictions. Crackdowns followed on everything, including shopkeepers who did not close for prayer and newspapers that published pictures of women. In other Muslim countries, blame for and wrath against the seizure was directed not against fundamentalists, but against Islamic fundamentalism’s foremost geopolitical enemy – the United States.

Saudi soldiers fighting their way into the Qaboo Underground beneath the Grand Mosque of Mecca, 1979

The seizure of Islam’s holiest site, the taking of hostages from among the worshipers, and the deaths of hundreds of militants, security forces, and hostages caught in crossfire in the ensuing battles for control of the site, all shocked the Islamic world. Following the attack, the Saudi state implemented a stricter enforcement of Islamic code.

Just like Saudi Arabia, Qatar has devolved considerable energies to spreading Salafism and gaining influence in the countries that benefited from its support. Over the past two decades, the country has exerted a semi-formal patronage for the international movement of the Muslim Brotherhood. Qatar is known to have backed Islamist factions in Egypt, Libya, Syria, and Yemen. Hamas has also been among the primary beneficiaries of Qatar’s financial support. 

The first modern Islamist state was established among the Shia of Iran. In a major shock to the rest of the world, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini led the Iranian Revolution of 1979 in order to overthrow the oil-rich, well-armed, Westernized, and pro-American secular monarchy ruled by Shah Muhammad Reza Pahlavi. Khomeini believed that complete imitation of the Prophet Mohammad and his successors was essential to Islam, that many secular, Westernizing Muslims were actually agents of the West, and that acts such as the plundering of Muslim lands were part of a long-term conspiracy against Islam by Western governments. The Islamic Republic has also maintained its hold on power in Iran in spite of U.S. economic sanctions and has created or assisted like-minded Shia terrorist groups in Iraq, Egypt, Syria, Jordan, and Lebanon (Hezbollah).

In 1979, the Soviet Union deployed its army into Afghanistan, attempting to suppress an Islamic rebellion against an allied Marxist regime in the Afghan Civil War. The conflict, pitting indigenous impoverished Muslims against an anti-religious superpower, galvanized thousands of Muslims around the world to send aid and sometimes to go themselves to fight for their faith. When the Soviet Union abandoned the Marxist Najibullah regime and withdrew from Afghanistan in 1989 (the regime finally fell in 1992), many Muslims saw the victory as the triumph of Islamic faith over superior military power and technology that could be duplicated elsewhere. The veterans of the war returning home to Algeria, Egypt, and other countries were often eager to continue armed jihad.

Another factor in the early 1990s that worked to radicalize the Islamist movement was the Gulf War, which brought several hundred thousand U.S. and allied non-Muslim military personnel to Saudi Arabian soil to put an end to Saddam Hussein’s occupation of Kuwait. Prior to 1990, Saudi Arabia played an important role in restraining the many Islamist groups that received its aid. But when Saddam, secularist and Ba’athist dictator of neighboring Iraq, attacked Saudi Arabia (his enemy in the war), western troops came to protect the Saudi monarchy. Islamists accused the Saudi regime of being a puppet of the west.

These attacks resonated with conservative Muslims and the problem did not go away with Saddam’s defeat, since American troops remained stationed in the kingdom. Saudi Arabia attempted to compensate for its loss of prestige among the conservative groups by repressing those domestic Islamists who attacked it (bin Laden being a prime example) and increasing aid to Islamic groups that did not (including some violent groups), but its pre-war influence on behalf of moderation was greatly reduced. One result of this was a campaign of attacks on government officials and tourists in Egypt, a bloody civil war in Algeria, and Osama bin Laden’s terror campaign climaxing in the 9/11 attack.

In 1992, the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan ruled by communist forces collapsed and democratic Islamist elements founded the Islamic State of Afghanistan. In 1996, a more conservative and anti-democratic Islamist movement known as the Taliban rose to power, defeated most of the warlords, and took over roughly 80% of Afghanistan. The Taliban differed from other Islamist movements to the point where they might be more properly described as Islamic fundamentalist or neofundamentalist, interested in spreading “an idealized and systematized version of conservative tribal village customs” under the label of Sharia to an entire country. Their ideology was also described as influenced by Wahhabism and the extremist jihadism of their guest Osama bin Laden. The Taliban considered politics to be against sharia and thus did not hold elections. The Taliban’s hosting of Osama bin Laden led to an American-organized attack that drove them from power following the 9/11 attacks. Taliban are still very much alive and fighting a vigorous insurgency with suicide bombings and armed attacks launched against NATO and Afghan government targets.

The Islamic State, formerly known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, is a Salafi jihadist extremist militant group led by and mainly composed of Sunni Arabs from Syria and Iraq. In 2014, the group proclaimed itself a caliphate, with religious, political, and military authority over all Muslims worldwide. As of March 2015, it had control over territory occupied by ten million people in Syria and Iraq, and has nominal control over small areas of Libya, Nigeria, and Afghanistan. ISIL (commonly referred to ISIS) also operates or has affiliates in other parts of the world, including North Africa and South Asia.

Originating in 1999, ISIL pledged allegiance to al-Qaeda in 2004, participated in the Iraqi insurgency that followed the invasion of Iraq by Western coalition forces in 2003, joined the fight in the Syrian Civil War beginning in 2011, and was expelled from al-Qaeda in early 2014. It gained prominence after it drove Iraqi government forces out of key cities in western Iraq in June 2014. The group is adept at social media, posting Internet videos of beheadings of soldiers, civilians, journalists, and aid workers and is known for its destruction of cultural heritage sites. The United Nations (UN) has held ISIL responsible for human rights abuses and war crimes and Amnesty International has reported ethnic cleansing on a “historic scale” by the group. The group has been designated a terrorist organization by the UN, the European Union (EU) and member states, the United States, India, Indonesia, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and other countries.

38.2.3: The Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan

Learning Objective

Evaluate the consequences of American military efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan

Key Points

• The U.S. invasion
  of Afghanistan occurred after the September 11 attacks in late 2001. U.S.
  President George W. Bush demanded that the Taliban hand over Osama bin Laden
  and expel al-Qaeda from Afghanistan. The Taliban government refused unless it provided evidence of his involvement
  in the 9/11 attacks. The request was dismissed by the United States as a meaningless
  delaying tactic and on October 7, 2001, it launched Operation Enduring Freedom
  with the United Kingdom. The two were later joined by other forces. 
• Although outgunned and
  outnumbered, insurgents from the Taliban and other radical groups have waged
  asymmetric warfare with guerrilla raids and ambushes in the countryside, suicide
  attacks against urban targets, and turncoat killings against coalition forces.
  From
  2006, the Taliban made significant gains and showed an increased willingness to
  commit atrocities against civilians. Violence sharply escalated from 2007 to
  2009. 
• On May 2, 2011, U.S. Navy SEALs killed Osama bin Laden in Abbotabad, Pakistan. A year later,
  NATO leaders endorsed an exit strategy for withdrawing their forces. UN-backed peace
  talks have since taken place between the Afghan government and the Taliban.
  Although there was a
  formal end to combat operations, as of 2017 American forces continue to conduct airstrikes
  and special operations raids, while Afghan forces are losing ground to Taliban
  forces in some regions.
  War
  crimes by have been committed both sides.
• The Iraq War began on
  March 20, 2003, with the United States, joined by the United Kingdom and
  several coalition allies, launching a “shock and awe” bombing
  campaign. The invasion led to the collapse of the Ba’athist government. President Saddam Hussein
  was captured in 2003 and executed by a
  military court three years later. However, the power vacuum following Saddam’s
  demise and the mismanagement of the occupation led to widespread sectarian
  violence and insurgency against U.S.
  and coalition forces. 

• The Bush administration
  based its rationale for the war principally on the assertion that Iraq
  possessed weapons of mass destruction, but no substantial evidence for this claim was found.
  President
  Barack Obama formally withdrew all combat troops from Iraq by
  December 2011, but
  Iraqi insurgency surged in
  the aftermath of the U.S. withdrawal. In 2014, ISIS took over the cities of Mosul and
  Tikrit and stated it was ready to march on Baghdad. In the summer of 2014, President Obama announced the return of U.S. forces to Iraq in an effort to halt the advance of ISIS forces, render
  humanitarian aid to stranded refugees, and stabilize the political situation.

• The war resulted in
  a humanitarian crisis, including child malnutrition, the psychological scarring of Iraqi children, a scarcity of safe drinking water (resulting in a cholera
  outbreak), the outflow of half of Iraqi doctors, birth defects caused by the
  use of depleted uranium and white phosphorus by the U.S. military, 4.4 million internally displaced persons, and the dramatic decline of the population
  of Iraqi Christians. Throughout the entire
  war, there have been human rights abuses on all sides of the conflict. Arguably
  the most controversial incident was a series of human rights violations against
  detainees in the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

Key Terms

Iraq War

A protracted armed conflict that began in 2003 with the invasion of Iraq by a United States-led coalition that toppled the government of Saddam Hussein. The conflict continued for much of the next decade as an insurgency emerged to oppose the occupying forces and the post-invasion Iraqi government.

War in Afghanistan

A war that followed the 2001 United States invasion of Afghanistan, supported initially by the United Kingdom and joined by the rest of NATO in 2003. Its public aims were to dismantle al-Qaeda and deny it a safe base of operations in Afghanistan by removing the Taliban from power.

al-Qaeda

A militant Sunni Islamist multi-national organization founded
in 1988 by Osama bin Laden, Abdullah Azzam, and several other
Arab volunteers who fought against the Soviet invasion of
Afghanistan in the 1980s. It has been widely designated as a terrorist group.

Islamic State

A Salafi jihadist extremist militant group led by and
mainly composed of Sunni Arabs from Syria and Iraq. In 2014, the group
proclaimed itself a caliphate, with religious, political, and military
authority over all Muslims worldwide. As of March 2015, it has control over
territory occupied by ten million people in Syria and Iraq and nominal
control over small areas of Libya, Nigeria, and Afghanistan. It also operates
or has affiliates in other parts of the world, including North Africa and South
Asia.

Operation Enduring Freedom

A code name used to officially describe the War in Afghanistan, from the period between October 2001 and December 2014. Continued operations in Afghanistan by the United States’ military forces, both non-combat and combat, now occur under the name Operation Freedom’s Sentinel.

Taliban

A Sunni Islamic fundamentalist political movement in
Afghanistan currently waging war (an insurgency, or jihad) within that
country. The group has used terrorism as a specific tactic to further their
ideological and political goals.

War in Afghanistan

The United States invasion of Afghanistan occurred after the September 11 attacks in late 2001. U.S. President George W. Bush demanded that the Taliban hand over Osama bin Laden and expel al-Qaeda from Afghanistan. The Taliban government refused to extradite him (or others sought by the U.S.) without evidence of his involvement in the 9/11 attacks. The request was dismissed by the U.S. as a meaningless delaying tactic and on October 7, 2001, it launched Operation Enduring Freedom with the United Kingdom. The two were later joined by other forces, including the Afghan Northern Alliance that had been fighting the Taliban in the ongoing civil war since 1996. In December 2001, the United Nations Security Council established the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) to assist the Afghan interim authorities with securing Kabul. At the Bonn Conference the same month, Hamid Karzai was selected to head the Afghan interim administration, which after a 2002 loya jirga (Pashto for “grand assembly”)
in Kabul became the Afghan transitional administration. In the popular elections of 2004, Karzai was elected president of the country, now named the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan.

NATO became involved in ISAF in 2003 and later that year assumed leadership of its troops from 43 countries. NATO members provided the core of the force. One portion of U.S. forces in Afghanistan operated under NATO command. The rest remained under direct U.S. command. The Taliban was reorganized by its leader Mullah Omar and in 2003, launched an insurgency against the government and ISAF. Although outgunned and outnumbered, insurgents from the Taliban and other radical groups have waged asymmetric warfare with guerrilla raids and ambushes in the countryside, suicide attacks against urban targets, and turncoat killings against coalition forces. The Taliban exploited weaknesses in the Afghan government, among the most corrupt in the world, to reassert influence across rural areas of southern and eastern Afghanistan. In the initial years, there was little fighting but from 2006 the Taliban made significant gains and showed an increased willingness to commit atrocities against civilians. Violence sharply escalated from 2007 to 2009. While ISAF continued to battle the Taliban insurgency, fighting crossed into neighboring northwestern Pakistan.

On May 2, 2011, United States Navy SEALs killed Osama bin Laden in Abbotabad, Pakistan. A year later, NATO leaders endorsed an exit strategy for withdrawing their forces. UN-backed peace talks have since taken place between the Afghan government and the Taliban. In May 2014, the United States announced that its major combat operations would end in December and that it would leave a residual force in the country. In October 2014, British forces handed over the last bases in Helmand to the Afghan military, officially ending their combat operations in the war. In December 2014, NATO formally ended combat operations in Afghanistan and transferred full security responsibility to the Afghan government.

Aftermath and Consequences 

Although there was a formal end to combat operations, partially because of improved relations between the United States and the new President
Ashraf Ghani, American forces increased raids against Islamic militants and terrorists, justified by a broad interpretation of protecting American forces. In March 2015, it was announced that the United States would maintain almost ten thousand service members in Afghanistan until at least the end of 2015, a change from planned reductions. In October 2015, the Obama administration announced that U.S. troops would remain in Afghanistan past the original planned withdrawal date of December 31, 2016. As of 2017, American forces continue to conduct airstrikes and special operations raids, while Afghan forces are losing ground to Taliban forces in some regions.

War casualty estimates vary significantly. According to a UN report, the Taliban were responsible for 76% of civilian casualties in Afghanistan in 2009. In 2011, a record over three thousand civilians were killed, the fifth successive annual rise. According to a UN report, in 2013 there were nearly three thousand civilian deaths, with 74% blamed on anti-government forces. A report titled Body Count put together by Physicians for Social Responsibility, Physicians for Global Survival, and the Nobel Peace Prize-winning International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW) concluded that 106,000–170,000 civilians have been killed as a result of the fighting in Afghanistan at the hands of all parties to the conflict. According to the Watson Institute for International Studies Costs of War Project, 21,000 civilians have been killed as a result of the war.

An estimated 96% of Afghans have been affected either personally by or from the wider consequences of the war. Since 2001, more than 5.7 million former refugees have returned to Afghanistan but 2.2 million others remained refugees in 2013. In 2013, the UN estimated that 547,550 were internally displaced persons, a 25% increase over the 2012 estimates. 

Victims of the Narang night raid that killed at least 10 Afghan civilians, December 2009

The Narang night raid was a raid on a household in the village of Ghazi Khan in the early morning hours of December 27, 2009. The operation was authorized by NATO and resulted in the death of ten Afghan civilians, most of whom were students and some of whom were children. The status of the deceased was initially in dispute, with NATO officials claiming the dead were Taliban members found with weapons and bomb-making materials, while some Afghan government officials and local tribal authorities asserted they were civilians.

A large crowd gathers around the bodies of the victims.

From 1996 to 1999, the Taliban controlled 96% of Afghanistan’s poppy fields and made opium its largest source of revenue. Taxes on opium exports became one of the mainstays of Taliban income. By 2000, Afghanistan accounted for an estimated 75% of the world’s opium supply. The Taliban leader Mullah Omar then banned opium cultivation and production dropped. Some observers argue that the ban was issued only to raise opium prices and increase profit from the sale of large existing stockpiles. The trafficking of accumulated stocks continued in 2000 and 2001. Soon after the invasion, opium production increased markedly. By 2005, Afghanistan was producing 90% of the world’s opium, most of which was processed into heroin and sold in Europe and Russia. In 2009, the BBC reported that “UN findings say an opium market worth $65bn funds global terrorism, caters to 15 million addicts, and kills 100,000 people every year.”

War crimes have been committed by both sides and include civilian massacres, bombings of civilian targets, terrorism, use of torture, and the murder of prisoners of war. Additional common crimes include theft, arson, and the destruction of property not warranted by military necessity. The Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIGRC) called the Taliban’s terrorism against the Afghan civilian population a war crime. According to Amnesty International, the Taliban commit war crimes by targeting civilians, including killing teachers, abducting aid workers, and burning school buildings. The organization reported that up to 756 civilians were killed in 2006 by bombs, mostly on roads or carried by suicide attackers belonging to the Taliban. NATO has also alleged that the Taliban has used civilians as human shields.

In 2009, the U.S. confirmed that Western military forces in Afghanistan use white phosphorus,   condemned by human rights organizations as cruel and inhumane because it causes severe burns,   to illuminate targets or as an incendiary to destroy bunkers and enemy equipment. U.S. forces used white phosphorus to screen a retreat in the Battle of Ganjgal when regular smoke munitions were not available. White phosphorus burns on the bodies of civilians wounded in clashes near Bagram were confirmed. The U.S. claims at least 44 instances in which militants have used white phosphorus in weapons or attacks. 

Iraq War

The Iraq War began on March 20, 2003, with the United States, joined by the United Kingdom and several coalition allies, launching a “shock and awe” bombing campaign. Iraqi forces were quickly overwhelmed as U.S. forces swept through the country. The invasion led to the collapse of the Ba’athist government (under the rule of the Arab Socialist Ba’ath Party’s). President Saddam Hussein was captured during Operation Red Dawn in December 2003 and executed by a military court three years later. However, the power vacuum following Saddam’s demise and the mismanagement of the occupation led to widespread sectarian violence between Shias and Sunnis as well as a lengthy insurgency against U.S. and coalition forces. The United States responded with a troop surge in 2007. The winding down of U.S. involvement in Iraq accelerated under President Barack Obama and the U.S. formally withdrew all combat troops from Iraq by December 2011,  but left private security contractors in its place to continue the war.

The Bush administration based its rationale for the war principally on the assertion that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) and that the Iraqi government posed an immediate threat to the United States and its coalition allies. Select U.S. officials accused Hussein of harboring and supporting al-Qaeda, while others cited the desire to end the repressive dictatorship and bring democracy to the people of Iraq. After the invasion, no substantial evidence was found to verify the initial claims about WMDs. The rationale and misrepresentation of pre-war intelligence faced heavy criticism within the U.S. and internationally.

In the aftermath of the invasion, Iraq held multi-party elections in 2005. Nouri al-Maliki became Prime Minister in 2006 and remained in office until 2014. The al-Maliki government enacted policies that were widely seen as having the effect of alienating the country’s Sunni minority and worsening sectarian tensions. 

Aftermath of 2011 Withdrawal

The invasion and occupation led to sectarian violence, which caused widespread displacement among Iraqi civilians. The Iraqi Red Crescent organization estimated the total internal displacement was around 2.3 million in 2008, and as many as 2 million Iraqis left the country. The invasion preserved the autonomy of the Kurdish region and because the Kurdish region is historically the most democratic area of Iraq, many Iraqi refugees from other territories fled into the Kurdish land.
Poverty led many Iraqi women to turn to prostitution to support themselves and their families, attracting sex tourists from regional lands. 

Iraqi insurgency surged in the aftermath of the U.S. withdrawal. Terror campaigns involving Iraqi  (primarily radical Sunni) anti-government insurgent groups and various factions within Iraq escalated. The events of post U.S. withdrawal have showed patterns raising concerns that the surging violence might slide into another civil war. By mid-2014, the country was in chaos with a new government yet to be formed following national elections and the insurgency reaching new heights. In early June 2014, the ISIL (ISIS) took over the cities of Mosul and Tikrit and stated it was ready to march on Baghdad, while Iraqi Kurdish forces took control of key military installations in the major oil city of Kirkuk. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki asked his parliament to declare a state of emergency that would give him increased powers, but the lawmakers refused.

In the summer of 2014 President Obama announced the return of U.S. forces to Iraq, but only in the form of aerial support, in an effort to halt the advance of ISIS forces, render humanitarian aid to stranded refugees, and stabilize the political situation. In August 2014, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki succumbed to pressure at home and abroad to step down. This paved the way for Haidar al-Abadi to take over. In what was claimed to be revenge for the aerial bombing ordered by President Obama, ISIS, which by this time had changed its name to the Islamic State, beheaded an American journalist, James Foley, who had been kidnapped two years earlier. Despite U.S. bombings and breakthroughs on the political front, Iraq remained in chaos with the Islamic State consolidating its gains and sectarian violence continuing unabated. 

Consequences

Various scientific surveys of Iraqi deaths resulting from the first four years of the Iraq War estimated that between 151,000 and over one million Iraqis died as a result of the conflict during this time. A later study, published in 2011, estimated that approximately 500,000 Iraqis had died as a result of the conflict since the invasion. For troops in the U.S.-led multinational coalition, the death toll is carefully tracked and updated daily. A total of 4,491 U.S. service members were killed in Iraq between 2003 and 2014. Regarding the Iraqis, however, information on both military and civilian casualties is both less precise and less consistent. 

A city street in Ramadi heavily damaged by the fighting in 2006

The Iraq War caused hundreds of thousands of civilian and thousands of military casualties. The majority of casualties occurred as a result of the insurgency and civil conflicts between 2004 and 2007. The war destroyed the country and resulted in the humanitarian crisis. 

The war also resulted in a humanitarian crisis. The child malnutrition rate rose to 28%. Some 60–70% of Iraqi children were reported to be suffering from psychological problems in 2007. Most Iraqis had no access to safe drinking water. A cholera outbreak in northern Iraq was thought to be the result of poor water quality. As many as half of Iraqi doctors left the country between 2003 and 2006. The use of depleted uranium and white phosphorus by the U.S. military has been blamed for birth defects and cancers in the Iraqi city of Fallujah. By the end of 2015, according to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, 4.4 million Iraqis had been internally displaced. The population of Iraqi Christians dropped dramatically during the war, from 1.5 million in 2003 to perhaps only 275,000 in 2016. The Foreign Policy Association reported that “the most perplexing component of the Iraq refugee crisis” was that the U.S. has accepted only around 84,000 Iraqi refugees. 

Throughout the entire Iraq war, there have been human rights abuses on all sides of the conflict. Arguably the most controversial incident
was a series of human rights violations against detainees in the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. These violations included physical and sexual abuse, torture, rape, sodomy, and murder. The abuses came to widespread public attention with the publication of photographs of the abuse by CBS News in April 2004. The incidents received widespread condemnation both within the United States and abroad, although the soldiers received support from some conservative media within the United States. The administration of George W. Bush attempted to portray the abuses as isolated incidents, not indicative of general U.S. policy. This was contradicted by humanitarian organizations such as the Red Cross, Amnesty International, and Human Rights Watch. After multiple investigations, these organizations stated that the abuses at Abu Ghraib were not isolated incidents, but were part of a wider pattern of torture and brutal treatment at American overseas detention centers, including those in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantanamo Bay. Several scholars stated that the abuses constituted state-sanctioned crimes.

Iraq War and Terrorism

Although explicitly stating that Iraq had “nothing” to do with 9/11, President George W. Bush consistently referred to the Iraq war as “the central front in the war on terror” and argued that if the United States pulled out of Iraq, “terrorists will follow us here.” While other proponents of the war regularly echoed this assertion, as the conflict dragged on, members of the U.S. Congress, the U.S. public, and even U.S. troops questioned the connection between Iraq and the fight against anti-U.S. terrorism. In particular, a consensus developed among intelligence experts that the Iraq war actually increased terrorism. Counterterrorism expert Rohan Gunaratna frequently referred to the invasion of Iraq as a “fatal mistake.”

London’s International Institute for Strategic Studies concluded in 2004 that the occupation of Iraq had become “a potent global recruitment pretext” for radical Muslim fighters and that the invasion “galvanized” al-Qaeda and “perversely inspired insurgent violence.” The U.S. National Intelligence Council concluded in a 2005 report that the war in Iraq had become a breeding ground for a new generation of terrorists. David Low, the national intelligence officer for transnational threats, indicated that the report concluded that the war in Iraq provided terrorists with “a training ground, a recruitment ground, the opportunity for enhancing technical skills … There is even, under the best scenario, over time, the likelihood that some of the jihadists who are not killed there will, in a sense, go home, wherever home is, and will therefore disperse to various other countries.” The Council’s chairman Robert Hutchings noted, “At the moment, Iraq is a magnet for international terrorist activity.” The 2006 National Intelligence Estimate, which outlined the considered judgment of all 16 U.S. intelligence agencies, concluded that “the Iraq conflict has become the ’cause célèbre’ for jihadists, breeding a deep resentment of U.S. involvement in the Muslim world and cultivating supporters for the global jihadist movement.”

38.2.4: The Arab Spring

Learning Objective

Discuss whether the Arab Spring was a success

Key Points

• The
  Arab Spring was a revolutionary wave of both violent and non-violent
  demonstrations, protests, riots, coups, and civil wars in North Africa and the
  Middle East that began in 2010 with the Tunisian Revolution.

  Analysts
  have pointed to a number of complex factors behind the movement, including
  authoritarianism, human rights violations, political corruption, economic decline, unemployment, extreme poverty, and a demographic structural factors such as a large percentage of educated but
  dissatisfied youth. 

• In
  the wake of the Arab Spring protests, a considerable amount of attention has
  been focused on the role of social media and digital technologies in allowing
  citizens to circumvent state-operated media channels. The influence of social
  media on political activism during the Arab Spring has been much
  debated. While social networks were a critical instrument
  for rebels in the countries with high Internet usage rates, mainstream electronic media devices and word of mouth remained important means of communication. 
• Prior to the Arab Spring, social unrest had been escalating in the Arab world.
  Tunisia
  experienced a series of conflicts. In Egypt, the labor movement had been strong for years and provided an important venue for
  organizing protests and collective action. In
  Algeria, discontent had been building for years over a number of social issues. In Western
  Sahara, a group of young Sahrawis demonstrated against labor discrimination, unemployment, looting of resources, and human
  rights abuses. 
• The
  catalyst for the escalation of protests was the self-immolation of Tunisian
  Mohamed Bouazizi. Unable to find work and selling fruit at a roadside stand,
  Bouazizi had his wares confiscated by a municipal inspector in December 2010.
  An hour later he doused himself with gasoline and set himself afire. His death
  on January 4, 2011, brought together various groups dissatisfied with the
  existing system, including many unemployed individuals, political and human rights
  activists, labor, trade unionists, students, professors, lawyers, and others, to
  begin the Tunisian Revolution. 
• The demonstrations, triggered directly by
  Bouazizi’s death, brought to the forefront such issues as high unemployment,
  food inflation, corruption, lack of political freedoms, and poor living
  conditions. With
  the success of the protests in Tunisia, a wave of unrest sparked in Algeria,
  Jordan, Egypt, and Yemen and then spread to other countries. By the end of
  February 2012, rulers had been forced from power and protests occurred across the region.
  Several leaders announced their intentions to
  step down at the end of their current terms.
• In
  the aftermath of the Arab Spring in various countries, there was a wave of
  violence and instability known as the Arab Winter. It was characterized by extensive civil wars, general regional
  instability, economic and demographic decline, and religious wars between Sunni
  and Shia Muslims. Although
  the long-term effects of the Arab Spring have yet to be shown, its short-term
  consequences varied greatly across the Middle East and North Africa. As of
  2017, Tunisia is considered the only full democracy in the Arab World.

Key Terms

Arab Winter

A term for the rise of authoritarianism and Islamic extremism evolving in the aftermath of the Arab Spring protests in Arab, Kurdish, and Berber countries. The process is characterized by the emergence of multiple regional civil wars, mounting regional instability, economic and demographic decline of Arab countries, and ethno-religious sectarian strife. According to a study by the American University of Beirut, as of summer 2014, it resulted in nearly a quarter of a million deaths and millions of refugees.

Egyptian Revolution

Social unrest that began in January 2011 and took place across all of Egypt. It consisted of demonstrations, marches, occupations of plazas, non-violent civil resistance, acts of civil disobedience, and strikes. Millions of protesters from a range of socioeconomic and religious backgrounds demanded the overthrow of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.

Arab Spring

A revolutionary wave of both violent and non-violent demonstrations, protests, riots, coups, and civil wars in North Africa and the Middle East that began in December 2010 in Tunisia with the Tunisian Revolution.

Tunisian Revolution

An intensive campaign of civil resistance that took place in Tunisia and led to the ousting of longtime president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali in January 2011. It eventually led to a thorough democratization of the country and to free and democratic elections.

The Arab Spring was a revolutionary wave of both violent and non-violent demonstrations, protests, riots, coups, and civil wars in North Africa and the Middle East that began in 2010 with the Tunisian Revolution. The Tunisian Revolution effect spread strongly to five other countries: Libya, Egypt, Yemen, Syria, and Iraq, where either the regime was toppled or major uprisings and social violence occurred, including civil wars or insurgencies. Sustained street demonstrations took place in Morocco, Bahrain, Algeria, Iran, Lebanon, Jordan, Kuwait, Oman, and Sudan. Minor protests occurred in Djibouti, Mauritania, the Palestinian territories, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, and the Moroccan-controlled Western Sahara. A major slogan of the demonstrators in the Arab world was “the people want to bring down the regime.”

Analysts have pointed to a number of complex factors behind the movement, including issues such as authoritarianism, human rights violations, political corruption (at the time, explicitly revealed to the public by Wikileaks diplomatic cables), economic decline, unemployment, extreme poverty, and a number of demographic structural factors, such as a large percentage of educated but dissatisfied youth. Catalysts for the revolts in all Northern African and Persian Gulf countries included the concentration of wealth in the hands of autocrats in power for decades, insufficient transparency of its redistribution, corruption, and especially the refusal of the youth to accept the status quo. Some protesters looked to the Turkish model, with contested but peaceful elections, fast-growing but liberal economy, and secular constitution but Islamist government, as an ideal. 

Role of Media

In the wake of the Arab Spring protests, a considerable amount of attention has been focused on the role of social media and digital technologies in allowing citizens to circumvent state-operated media channels. The influence of social media on political activism during the Arab Spring has been much debated. Protests took place both in states with a very high level of Internet usage (such as Bahrain with 88% of its population online in 2011) and in states with one of the lowest Internet use rates (Yemen and Libya).

Facebook, Twitter, and other major social media played a key role in the movement of Egyptian and Tunisian activists in particular. Nine out of ten Egyptians and Tunisians responded to a poll that they used Facebook to organize protests and spread awareness. In Egypt, young men referred to themselves as “the Facebook generation.” Furthermore, 28% of Egyptians and 29% of Tunisians from the same poll said that blocking Facebook greatly hindered and/or disrupted communication.
During the protests, people created pages on Facebook to raise awareness about alleged crimes against humanity, such as police brutality in the Egyptian Revolution.
The use of social media platforms more than doubled in Arab countries during the protests, with the exception of Libya. 

Social networks were not the only instrument for rebels to coordinate their efforts and communicate. In the countries with the lowest Internet penetration and the limited role of social networks, such as Yemen and Libya, the role of mainstream electronic media devices such as cell phones, emails, and video clips was very important to cast light on the situation in the country and spread the word about the protests in the outside world. In Egypt, in Cairo particularly, mosques were one of the main platforms to coordinate the protest actions and raise awareness to the masses. Jared Keller, a journalist for The Atlantic, noted differences between the Arab countries where protests emerged. For example, in Egypt, most activists and protesters used Facebook (among other social media) to organize while in Iran, “good old-fashioned word of mouth” was the main means of communication. 

Social Unrest in the Arab World

Tunisia experienced a series of conflicts during the three years leading up to the Arab Spring, most notably in the mining area of Gafsa in 2008 where protests continued for many months. These included rallies, sit-ins, and strikes. In Egypt, the labor movement had been strong for years, with more than 3,000 labor actions since 2004, and provided an important venue for organizing protests and collective action. One important demonstration was an attempted workers’ strike in 2008 at the state-run textile factories of al-Mahalla al-Kubra, outside Cairo. The idea for this type of demonstration spread throughout the country, promoted by computer-literate working class youths and their supporters among middle-class college students. A Facebook page to promote the strike attracted tens of thousands of followers and provided the platform for sustained political action in pursuit of the “long revolution.” The government mobilized to break the strike through infiltration and riot police, and while the regime was somewhat successful in forestalling a strike, dissidents formed a committee of youths and labor activists that became one of the major forces calling for the anti-Mubarak demonstration.

In Algeria, discontent had been building for years over a number of issues. Some estimates suggest that during 2010 there were as many as 9,700 protests throughout the country. Many events focused on issues such as education and health care, while others cited rampant corruption. In Western Sahara, the Gdeim Izik protest camp was erected 12 kilometres (7.5 mi) south-east of El Aaiún by a group of young Sahrawis (an ethnic groups living in western part of the Sahara desert)

in 2010. Their intention was to demonstrate against labor discrimination, unemployment, looting of resources, and human rights abuses. The camp contained between 12,000 and 20,000 inhabitants, but it was destroyed and its inhabitants evicted by Moroccan security forces. The security forces faced strong opposition from some young Sahrawi civilians and rioting soon spread to El Aaiún and other towns within the territory, resulting in an unknown number of injuries and deaths. Violence against Sahrawis in the aftermath of the protests was cited as a reason for renewed protests months later, after the start of the Arab Spring.

Catalyst of Arab Spring

The catalyst for the escalation of protests was the self-immolation of Tunisian Mohamed Bouazizi. Unable to find work and selling fruit at a roadside stand, Bouazizi had his wares confiscated by a municipal inspector in December 2010. An hour later he doused himself with gasoline and set himself afire. His death on January 4, 2011, brought together various groups dissatisfied with the existing system, including many unemployed individuals, political and human rights activists, labor, trade unionists, students, professors, lawyers, and others, to begin the Tunisian Revolution.
The demonstrations, triggered directly by Bouazizi’s death, brought to the forefront such issues as high unemployment, food inflation, corruption, lack of political freedoms, and poor living conditions.

Protesters on Avenue Habib Bourguiba, downtown Tunis on January 14, 2011, a few hours before president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali fled the country, VOA Photo/L. Bryant.

Tunisia is the only country where the Arab Spring resulted in the consistent democratization of the state.
It is now a representative democracy and a republic with a president serving as head of state, prime minister as head of government, a unicameral parliament, and a civil law court system. In October 2014, Tunisia held its first elections under the new constitution following the Arab Spring. The number of legalized political parties in Tunisia has grown considerably since the revolution.

With the success of the protests in Tunisia, a wave of unrest sparked in Algeria, Jordan, Egypt, and Yemen and then spread to other countries. By the end of February 2012, rulers had been forced from power in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and Yemen. Civil uprisings had erupted in Bahrain and Syria. Major protests had broken out in Algeria, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Morocco, and Sudan. Minor protests had occurred in Mauritania, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Djibouti, Western Sahara, and Palestine. Tunisian President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali fled to Saudi Arabia in January 2011. In Egypt, President Hosni Mubarak resigned in February 2011 after 18 days of massive protests, ending his 30-year presidency. The Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi was overthrown in August 2011 and killed in October 2011. Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh signed the power-transfer deal in which a presidential election was held, resulting in his successor Abd al-Rab Mansur al-Hadi formally replacing him as the president of Yemen in February 2012, in exchange for immunity from prosecution. Weapons and Tuareg (a large Berber ethnic confederation)

fighters returning from the Libyan Civil War stoked a simmering conflict in Mali, which has been described as a fallout from the Arab Spring in North Africa. 

During this period of regional unrest, several leaders announced their intentions to step down at the end of their current terms. Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir announced that he would not seek re-election in 2015, as did Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, whose term was ending in 2014, although there were violent demonstrations demanding his immediate resignation in 2011. Protests in Jordan also caused the sacking of four successive governments by King Abdullah. The popular unrest in Kuwait resulted in resignation of Prime Minister Nasser Mohammed Al-Ahmed Al-Sabah cabinet.

Aftermath: Arab Winter

In the aftermath of the Arab Spring in various countries, there was a wave of violence and instability commonly known as the Arab Winter or Islamist Winter. The Arab Winter was characterized by extensive civil wars, general regional instability, economic and demographic decline, and religious wars between Sunni and Shia Muslims. According to a study by the American University of Beirut, as of summer 2014, the Arab Winter resulted in nearly a quarter of a million deaths and millions of refugees.

Although the long-term effects of the Arab Spring are not yet evident, its short-term consequences varied greatly across the Middle East and North Africa. In Tunisia and Egypt, where the existing regimes were ousted and replaced through a process of free and fair election, the revolutions were considered short-term successes. This interpretation is, however, undermined by the subsequent political turmoil that emerged, particularly in Egypt. Elsewhere, most notably in the monarchies of Morocco and the Persian Gulf, existing regimes co-opted the Arab Spring movement and managed to maintain order without significant social change. In other countries, particularly Syria and Libya, the apparent result of Arab Spring protests was a complete collapse of social order. As of 2017,
Tunisia is considered the only full democracy in the Arab World, despite many challenges the country still faces. Since the end of the revolution, Egypt has gone through political turmoil, with
democratically elected President Mohamed Morsi attempting to pass an extremist Islamist constitution that would grant him unparalleled powers, just to be ousted in 2013 by a military coup. Despite some democratic gestures (e.g., secular constitution and elections), international organizations currently consider Egypt to be an authoritarian regime.  

Celebrations in Tahrir Square after Omar Suleiman’s statement concerning Hosni Mubarak’s resignation, photo by Jonathan Rashad.

While it initially seemed that Egypt might be as successful in introducing democratic reforms as Tunisia, the country remains an autocratic regime where political opposition is repressed and grave human rights violations constitute the major issue.

Social scientists have endeavored to understand the circumstances that led to this variation in outcome. A variety of causal factors have been highlighted, most of which hinge on the relationship between the strength of the state and the strength of civil society. Countries with stronger civil society networks in various forms saw more successful reforms during the Arab Spring. One of the primary influences highlighted in the analysis of the Arab Spring is the relative strength or weakness of a society’s formal and informal institutions prior to the revolts. When the Arab Spring began, Tunisia had an established infrastructure and a lower level of petty corruption than did other states such as Libya. This meant that following the overthrow of the existing regime, there was less work to be done in reforming Tunisian institutions than elsewhere and consequently it was less difficult to transition to and consolidate a democratic system of government.

Also crucial was the degree of state censorship over print, broadcast, and social media in different countries. Television coverage by channels like Al Jazeera and BBC News provided worldwide exposure and prevented mass violence by the Egyptian government in Tahrir Square. In other countries, such as Libya, Bahrain, and Syria, such international press coverage was not present to the same degree and the governments were able to act more freely in suppressing the protests. Strong authoritarian regimes with high degrees of censorship in their national broadcast media were able to block communication and prevent the domestic spread of information necessary for successful protests. Morocco is a case in point, as its broadcast media at the time of the revolts was owned and operated almost exclusively by political elites with ties to the monarchy. Countries with greater access to social media, such as Tunisia and Egypt, proved more effective in mobilizing large groups of people and appear to have been more successful overall than those with greater state control over media.

The support, even if tacit, of national military forces during protests has also been correlated to the success of the Arab Spring movement in different countries. In Egypt and Tunisia, the military actively participated in ousting the incumbent regime and in facilitating the transition to democratic elections. Countries like Saudi Arabia, on the other hand, exhibited a strong mobilization of military force against protesters, effectively ending the revolts in their territories. Others, including Libya and Syria, failed to stop the protests entirely and instead ended up in civil war. The support of the military in Arab Spring protests has also been linked to the degree of ethnic homogeneity in different societies. In Saudi Arabia and Syria, where the ruling elite was closely linked with ethnic or religious subdivisions of society, the military sided with the existing regime and took on the ostensible role of protector to minority populations. 

Scholars Quinn Mecham and Tarek Osman have identified some trends in political Islam resulting from the Arab Spring. These include repression of the Muslim Brotherhood (transnational organization that claims to be pro-democratic although many Middle Eastern commentators questions its commitment to democracy); rise of Islamist state-building, most prominently in Syria, Iraq, Libya and Yemen, as Islamists have found it easier than competing non-Islamists to fill the void of state failure by securing external funding, weaponry, and fighters; increasing sectarianism (primarily Sunni-Shia); increased caution and political learning in countries such as Algeria and Jordan where Islamists have chosen not to lead a major challenge against their governments; and in countries where Islamists did chose to lead a major challenge and did not succeed in transforming society (particularly Egypt), a disinterest in finding the answer as to what went wrong in favor of antagonism, anger, and a thirst for revenge.

38.2.5: The Syrian Civil War

Learning Objective

Outline the events that led to the Syrian Civil War

Key Points

• Since 1949, Syrian has been under authoritarian rule, with
  numerous coups shifting the center of power.  In 1971, Hafez al-Assad
  declared himself President. Immediately after his death in 2000, the Parliament
  amended the constitution, reducing the mandatory minimum age of the President
  from 40 to 34, which allowed his son, Bashar al-Assad, to become legally
  eligible for nomination by the ruling Ba’ath party. Bashar inspired hopes for
  reform and a Damascus Spring of intense political and social debate took place
  from mid-2000 to mid-2001. However, the movement was suppressed.

• Following the Arab Spring trends across the Arab world, in March
  2011, protesters marched in the capital of Damascus, demanding democratic
  reforms and the release of political prisoners. Security forces retaliated by
  opening fire on the protesters. Initially, the protesters demanded mostly
  democratic reforms, but by April, the emphasis in demonstration slogans
  began shifting toward a call to overthrow the Assad regime. Protests spread
  widely to other cities.

• In July 2011, seven defecting Syrian Armed Forces officers formed
  the Free Syrian Army (FSA), aiming to overthrow the Assad government with
  united opposition forces. In August, a coalition of anti-government groups
  called the Syrian National Council was formed. The council, based in Turkey,
  attempted to organize the opposition. The opposition, however, including the
  FSA, remained a fractious collection of different groups. By September 2011,
  Syrian rebels were engaged in an active insurgency campaign in many parts of
  Syria.

• The war is currently being fought by a complex network of
  factions: the Syrian government and its allies, a loose alliance of Sunni
  Arab rebel groups (including the Free Syrian Army), the majority-Kurdish
  Syrian Democratic Forces, Salafi jihadist groups (including al-Nusra
  Front) who sometimes cooperate with the Sunni rebel groups, and the Islamic
  State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). Hezbollah, Iran, Afghanistan,
  Pakistan, and Russia support the pro-Assad forces while a number of countries,
  including many NATO members, participate in the Combined Joint Task Force,
  chiefly to fight ISIL and support rebel groups perceived as moderate and
  friendly to Western nations.

• Estimates of deaths in the Syrian Civil War, per opposition
  activist groups, vary between 321,358 and 470,000. The use of chemical weapons attacks
  has been confirmed by UN investigations. Formerly rare infectious diseases have
  spread in rebel-held areas, brought on by poor sanitation and deteriorating
  living conditions. The violence has caused millions to flee their homes. As of
  March 2017, the UNHCR reports 6.3 million Syrians are internally displaced
  and nearly five million registered as Syrian refugees (outside of
  Syria). 

• According to various human rights organizations and the United
  Nations, human rights violations have been committed by both the government and
  the rebels, with the “vast majority of the abuses having been committed by
  the Syrian government.” The war has also led to the massive destruction of
  Syrian heritage sites.

Key Terms

Damascus Spring

A period of intense political and social debate in Syria, which started after the death of President Hafiz al-Assad in June 2000 and continued to some degree until fall 2001, when most of its activities were suppressed by the government.

Free Syrian Army

A faction in the Syrian Civil War founded in July 2011 by officers who defected from the Syrian Armed Forces, with the stated goal to bring down the government of Bashar al-Assad.

shabiha

Mostly Alawite groups of armed militia in support of the Ba’ath Party government of Syria, led by the Al-Assad family. However, in the Aleppo Governorate, they were composed entirely of the local pro-Assad Sunni tribes. The Syrian opposition stated that they are a tool of the government for cracking down on dissent. Syrian Observatory for Human Rights has stated that some of the groups are mercenaries.

Syrian Civil War

An armed conflict taking place in Syria. The unrest in Syria, part of a wider wave of 2011 Arab Spring protests, grew out of discontent with the authoritarian government of President Bashar al-Assad and escalated to an armed conflict after protests calling for his removal turned violent in response to the crackdown on dissent. The war is being fought by several factions: the Syrian government and its allies, a loose alliance of Sunni Arab rebel groups (including the Free Syrian Army), the majority-Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces, Salafi jihadist groups (including al-Nusra Front) who sometimes cooperate with the Sunni rebel groups, and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).

al-Nusra Front

A Sunni Islamist terrorist organization fighting against Syrian Government forces in the Syrian Civil War with the aim of establishing an Islamist state in the country. It was the official Syrian branch of al-Qaeda until July 2016, when it ostensibly split, now also operating in neighboring Lebanon. In early 2015, the group became one of the major components of the powerful jihadist joint operations room named the Army of Conquest, which took over large territories in Northwestern Syria.

Arab Spring

A revolutionary
wave of both violent and non-violent demonstrations, protests, riots,
coups, and civil wars in North Africa and the Middle
East that began in December 2010 in Tunisia with the Tunisian
Revolution.

Assad Regime

Syria became an independent republic in 1946, although democratic rule ended with a coup in 1949, followed by two more coups the same year. A popular uprising against military rule in 1954 saw the army transfer power to civilians. The secular Ba’ath Syrian Regional Branch government came to power through a successful coup d’état in 1963. For the next several years, Syria went through additional coups and changes in leadership. In 1971, Hafez al-Assad declared himself President, a position that he held until his death in 2000. Immediately following al-Assad’s death, the Parliament amended the constitution, reducing the mandatory minimum age of the President from 40 to 34, which allowed his son, Bashar al-Assad, to become legally eligible for nomination by the ruling Ba’ath party. In 2000, Bashar al-Assad was elected President by referendum, in which he ran unopposed, garnering the alleged 97.29% of the vote according to Syrian government statistics.

Bashar, who speaks French and English and has a British-born wife, inspired hopes for reform, and a Damascus Spring of intense political and social debate took place from mid-2000 to mid-2001. The period was characterized by the emergence of numerous political forums or salons where groups of like-minded people met in private houses to debate political and social issues. The phenomenon of salons spread rapidly in Damascus and to a lesser extent in other cities. The movement ended with the arrest and imprisonment of ten leading activists who had called for democratic elections and a campaign of civil disobedience.

Syria’s Social Profile

Syrian Arabs, together with some 600,000 Palestinian Arabs, make up roughly 74 percent of the population. Syrian Muslims are 74 percent Sunnis (including Sufis) and 13 percent Shias (including 8-12 percent Alawites), 3 percent are Druze, and the remaining 10 percent are Christians. Not all of the Sunnis are Arabs. The Assad family is mixed. Bashar is married to a Sunni with whom he has several children, but is affiliated with the minority Alawite sect. The majority of Syria’s Christians belonged to the Eastern Christian churches. Syrian Kurds, an ethnic minority making up approximately 9 percent of the population, have been angered by ethnic discrimination and the denial of their cultural and linguistic rights as well as the frequent denial of citizenship rights.

Socioeconomic inequality increased significantly after free market policies were initiated by Hafez al-Assad in his later years, and it accelerated after Bashar al-Assad came to power. With an emphasis on the service sector, these policies benefited a minority of the nation’s population, mostly people who had connections with the government and members of the Sunni merchant class of Damascus and Aleppo. This coincided with the most intense drought ever recorded in Syria, which lasted from 2007 to 2010 and resulted in widespread crop failure, an increase in food prices, and a mass migration of farming families to urban centers. The country also faced particularly high youth unemployment rates.

The human rights situation in Syria has long been the subject of harsh critique from global organizations. The rights of free expression, association, and assembly were strictly controlled. The country was under emergency rule from 1963 until 2011 and public gatherings of more than five people were banned. Security forces had sweeping powers of arrest and detention. Authorities have harassed and imprisoned human rights activists and other critics of the government, who were often detained indefinitely and tortured while under prison-like conditions. Women and ethnic minorities faced discrimination in the public sector. Thousands of Syrian Kurds were denied citizenship in 1962 and their descendants were labeled “foreigners.”

Breakout of Civil War

Following the Arab Spring trends across the Arab world, in March 2011 protesters marched in the capital of Damascus, demanding democratic reforms and the release of political prisoners. Security forces retaliated by opening fire on the protesters. The protest was triggered by the arrest of a boy and his friends for writing in graffiti “The people want the fall of the government” in the city of Daraa. The protesters burned down a Ba’ath Party headquarters and other buildings. The ensuing clashes claimed the lives of seven police officers and 15 protesters. Several days later in a speech, President Bashar al-Assad blamed “foreign conspirators” pushing “Israeli propaganda” for the protests.

Initially, the protesters demanded mostly democratic reforms, release of political prisoners, an increase in freedoms, abolition of the emergency law, and an end to corruption. Already by April, however, the emphasis in demonstration slogans shifted slowly towards a call to overthrow the Assad regime. Protests spread widely to other cities. By the end of May, 1,000 civilians and 150 soldiers and policemen had been killed and thousands detained. Among the arrested were many students, liberal activists, and human rights advocates.

In July 2011, seven defecting Syrian Armed Forces officers formed the Free Syrian Army (FSA), originally composed of defected Syrian military officers and soldiers aiming to overthrow the Assad government with united opposition forces. In August, a coalition of anti-government groups called the Syrian National Council was formed. The council, based in Turkey, attempted to organize the opposition. The opposition, however, including the FSA, remained a fractious collection of political groups, longtime exiles, grassroots organizers, and armed militants divided along ideological, ethnic and/or sectarian lines. Throughout August, government forces stormed major urban centers and outlying regions, and continued to attack protests. By September 2011, Syrian rebels were engaged in an active insurgency campaign in many parts of Syria. By October, the FSA started to receive active support from the Turkish government, which allowed the rebel army to operate its command and headquarters from the country’s southern Hatay Province close to the Syrian border and its field command from inside Syria.

The scene of the October 2012 Aleppo bombings, for which al-Nusra Front claimed responsibility

The fighting has caused damage to entire cities, including both civilian quarters and numerous historic buildings. All six UNESCO World Heritage Sites in the country have been destroyed. Destructive effects of the conflict are caused by shelling, looting, and rebel occupation.

Fighting Factions

The war is currently being fought by a complex network of factions. A number of sources have emphasized that as of at least late 2015/early 2016, the Syrian government was dependent on a mix of volunteers and militias rather than the Syrian Armed Forces. The Syrian National Defense Force was formed out of pro-government militias. They act in an infantry role, directly fighting against rebels on the ground and running counter-insurgency operations in coordination with the army, who provides them with logistical and artillery support. The shabiha are unofficial pro-government militias drawn largely from Syria’s Alawite minority group. Since the uprising, the Syrian government has been accused of using shabiha to break up protests and enforce laws in restive neighborhoods.

The Christian militias in Syria and northern Iraq are largely made up of ethnic Assyrians, Syriac-Arameans, and Armenians. Sensing that they depend on the largely secular government, the militias of Syrian Christians fight both on the Syrian government’s side and with Kurdish forces. The Eastern Aramaic-speaking Assyrians in north eastern Syria and northern Iraq have formed various militias (including the Assyrian Defense Force, Dwekh Nawsha, and Sootoro) to defend their ancient towns, villages, and farmsteads from ISIS. They often but not always fight in conjunction with Kurdish and Armenian groups.

In February 2013, former secretary general of Hezbollah Sheikh Subhi al-Tufayli confirmed that Hezbollah was fighting for the Syrian Army. Iran, on the other hand, continues to officially deny the presence of its combat troops in Syria, maintaining that it provides military advice to Assad’s forces in their fight against terrorist groups. Since the civil uprising phase of the Syrian Civil War, Iran has provided the Syrian government with financial, technical, and military support, including training and some combat troops. The number of Afghans fighting in Syria on behalf of the Syrian government has been estimated at 10,000-12,000 while the number of Pakistanis is not known. In September 2015, Russia’s Federation Council unanimously granted the request by President of Russia Vladimir Putin to permit the use of the Russian Armed Forces in Syria.

The armed opposition consists of various groups that were either formed during the course of the conflict or joined from abroad. In the northwest of the country, the main opposition faction is the al-Qaeda-affiliated al-Nusra Front allied with numerous other smaller Islamist groups, some of which operate under the umbrella of the Free Syrian Army (FSA). The designation of the FSA by the West as a moderate opposition faction has allowed it to receive sophisticated weaponry and other military support from the U.S., Turkey, and some Gulf countries that effectively increases the total fighting capacity of the Islamist rebels. In the east, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, known more commonly as ISIS), a jihadist militant group originating from Iraq, made rapid military gains in both Syria and Iraq. ISIL eventually came into conflict with other rebels, especially with al-Nusra, leaders of which did not want to pledge allegiance to ISIL. As of 2015, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey were openly backing the Army of Conquest, an umbrella rebel group that reportedly includes an al-Qaeda linked al-Nusra Front and another Salafi coalition known as Ahrar ash-Sham and Faylaq Al-Sham, a coalition of Muslim Brotherhood-linked rebel groups. Also, in the northeast local Kurdish militias have taken up arms and fought with both rebel Islamist factions and government loyalists.

The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) are an alliance of Arab, Assyrians, Armenian, Kurdish, and Turkmen militias fighting for a democratic and federalist Syria. They are opposed to the Assad government, but have directed most of their efforts against Al-Nusra Front and ISIL.

A number of countries, including many NATO members, participate in the Combined Joint Task Force, chiefly to fight ISIL and support rebel groups perceived as moderate and friendly to Western nations such as the Free Syrian Army. Those who have conducted airstrikes in Syria include the United States, Australia, Bahrain, Canada, France, Jordan, The Netherlands, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, and the United Kingdom. Some members are involved in the conflict beyond combating ISIL. Turkey has been accused of fighting against Kurdish forces in Syria and Iraq, including intelligence collaborations with ISIL in some cases.

Consequences 

Estimates of deaths in the Syrian Civil War, per opposition activist groups, vary between 321,358 and 470,000. In April 2016, the United Nations and Arab League Envoy to Syria put out an estimate of 400,000 deaths.

A UN fact-finding mission was requested by member states to investigate 16 alleged chemical weapons attacks. Seven of them have been investigated (nine were dropped for lack of “sufficient or credible information”) and in four cases the UN inspectors confirmed use of sarin gas. The reports, however, did not blame any party for using chemical weapons. Many, including the United States and the European Union, have accused the Syrian government of conducting several chemical attacks, the most serious eing the 2013 Ghouta attacks. Before this incident, UN human rights investigator Carla del Ponte, who has been investigating sarin gas use in Syria, accused the opposition of the government of using sarin gas in 2013.

Formerly rare infectious diseases have spread in rebel-held areas, brought on by poor sanitation and deteriorating living conditions. The diseases have primarily affected children and include measles, typhoid, hepatitis, dysentery, tuberculosis, diphtheria, whooping cough, and the disfiguring skin disease leishmaniasis. Of particular concern is the contagious and crippling poliomyelitis. 

The violence in Syria caused millions to flee their homes. In March 2015, Al-Jazeera estimated 10.9 million Syrians, or almost half the population, were displaced. As of March 2017, the UNHCR reports 6.3 million Syrians are internally displaced and nearly five million registered as Syrian refugees (outside of Syria). Most Syrian refugees have sought safety in Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey, and Iraq.
In 2017, the United Nations (UN) identified 13.5 million Syrians requiring humanitarian assistance (in 2014, the population of Syria was about 18 million).

Wounded civilians arrive at a hospital in Aleppo during the civil war in Syria, October 2012

Aleppo is an ancient city and one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world, possibly since the 6th millennium BCE. During the Battle of Aleppo, the city suffered massive destruction and has been the worst-hit city in the Syrian Civil War. In December 2016, the Syrian government achieved full control of Aleppo following a successful offensive.

According to various human rights organizations and United Nations, human rights violations have been committed by both the government and the rebels, with the “vast majority of the abuses having been committed by the Syrian government.” The UN commission investigating human rights abuses in Syria confirms at least nine intentional mass killings in the period 2012 to mid-July 2013, identifying the perpetrator as Syrian government and its supporters in eight cases and the opposition in one. By late 2013, the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Network reported approximately 6,000 women have been raped since the start of the conflict,  with figures likely to be much higher given that most cases go unreported. According to some international lawyers, Syrian government officials could face war crimes charges in the light of a huge cache of evidence smuggled out of the country showing the systematic killing of about 11,000 detainees. Most of the victims were young men and many corpses were emaciated, bloodstained, and bore signs of torture. Experts note this evidence is more detailed and on a far larger scale than anything else that has yet emerged from the crisis. In 2014, Human Rights Watch released a report detailing government forces razing to the ground seven anti-government districts in the cities of Damascus and Hama. Witnesses spoke of explosives and bulldozers used to knock down buildings. Satellite imagery was provided as part of the report and the destruction was characterized as collective punishment against residents of rebel-held areas. UN also reported that armed forces of both sides of the conflict blocked access of humanitarian convoys, confiscated food, cut off water supplies, and targeted farmers working their fields. UN has also accused ISIS forces of using public executions, amputations, and lashings in a campaign to instill fear. Enforced disappearances and arbitrary detentions have also been a feature since the Syrian uprising began. In February 2017, Amnesty International published a report which accused the Syrian government of murdering an estimated 13,000 persons, mostly civilians, at the Saydnaya military prison. 

As the conflict has expanded across Syria, many cities have been engulfed in a wave of crime as fighting caused the disintegration of much of the civilian state and many police stations stopped functioning. Rates of theft increased, with criminals looting houses and stores. Criminal networks have been used by both the government and the opposition during the conflict. Facing international sanctions, the Syrian government relied on criminal organizations to smuggle goods and money in and out of the country. The economic downturn caused by the conflict and sanctions also led to lower wages for shabiha members. In response, some shabiha members began stealing civilian properties and engaging in kidnappings. Rebel forces sometimes rely on criminal networks to obtain weapons and supplies. Black market weapon prices in Syria’s neighboring countries have significantly increased since the start of the conflict. To generate funds to purchase arms, some rebel groups have turned towards extortion, theft, and kidnapping.

As of March 2015, the war has affected 290 heritage sites, severely damaged 104, and completely destroyed 24. All the six UNESCO World Heritage Sites in Syria have been damaged. Destruction of antiquities has been caused by shelling, army entrenchment, and looting at various tells, museums, and monuments. A group called Syrian Archaeological Heritage Under Threat is monitoring and recording the destruction in an attempt to create a list of heritage sites damaged during the war and to gain global support for the protection and preservation of Syrian archaeology and architecture. In 2014 and 2015, following the rise of the ISIL, several sites in Syria were destroyed by the group as part of a deliberate destruction of cultural heritage sites. 

38.2.6: The Iranian Nuclear Deal

Learning Objective

Explain the arguments for and against the nuclear deal between the U.S. and Iran

Key Points

• The
  nuclear program of Iran has included several research sites, two uranium mines,
  a research reactor, and uranium processing facilities that include three known
  uranium enrichment plants. In 1970, Iran ratified the Nuclear Non-Proliferation
  Treaty (NPT), making its nuclear program subject to International Atomic Energy
  Agency (IAEA) verification. The program was launched in the 1950s with the help
  of the United States as part of the Atoms for Peace program. 
• The participation
  of the United States and Western European governments in Iran’s nuclear program
  continued until the 1979 Iranian Revolution that toppled the Shah of Iran.
  Following the 1979 Revolution, most of the international nuclear cooperation
  with Iran was cut off.

  In
  the 2000s, the revelation of Iran’s clandestine uranium enrichment program
  raised concerns that it might be intended for non-peaceful uses. While since 2003 the United
  States has alleged that Iran has a program to develop nuclear weapons, Iran has
  maintained that its nuclear program is aimed only at generating electricity.

• Formal negotiations toward the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action on Iran’s nuclear program began with the adoption of the Joint Plan of Action, an interim agreement signed between Iran and the P5+1 countries in November 2013. For the next twenty months, Iran and the P5+1 countries engaged in negotiations, and in April 2015 agreed on an Iran nuclear deal framework for the final agreement. In July 2015, Iran and the P5+1 agreed on the plan.
• Under the agreement, Iran agreed to eliminate its stockpile of medium-enriched uranium, cut its stockpile of low-enriched uranium, and reduce by about two-thirds the number of its gas centrifuges. For the next 15 years, Iran will only enrich uranium up to 3.67%. Iran also agreed not to build any new heavy-water facilities for the same period of time. Uranium-enrichment activities will be limited to a single facility. Other facilities will be converted to avoid proliferation risks. To monitor and verify Iran’s compliance with the agreement, the IAEA will have regular access to all Iranian nuclear facilities. 
• More than 90 countries endorsed the agreement as did many
  international organizations, including the UN and NATO. The most notable critic
  of the agreement is the state of Israel. Nuclear experts and watchdogs agreed that the agreement was a positive development. An
  intense public debate in the United States took place during the congressional
  review period, with various groups lobbying both opposition and support for the
  agreement. 
• With the prospective lifting of some
  sanctions, the agreement is expected to have a significant impact on both the
  economy of Iran and global markets. The energy sector is particularly
  important. The agreement will boost Iran’s scientific cooperation with Western powers and has already improved diplomatic relations in some cases. However, Iran and the U.S. have been both accused of violating the agreement, and its future under Trump administration is uncertain. 

Key Terms

International Atomic Energy Agency

An international organization that seeks to promote the peaceful use of nuclear energy and inhibit its use for any military purpose, including nuclear weapons. It was established as an autonomous organization in 1957. Although established independently of the United Nations through its own international treaty, it reports to both the United Nations General Assembly and Security Council.

Joint Plan of Action

A pact signed between Iran and the P5+1 countries in Geneva, Switzerland in 2013. It consisted of a short-term freeze of portions of Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for decreased economic sanctions on Iran as the countries worked towards a long-term agreement. It represented the first formal agreement between the United States and Iran in 34 years. Implementation of the agreement began January 20, 2014.

Iran Sanctions Act

A 1996 act of Congress that imposed economic sanctions on firms doing business with Iran (and originally also with Libya, but the act does not apply to Libya since 2006). The act allows the president to waive sanctions on a case-by-case basis, although this waiver is subject to renewal every six months. Despite the restrictions on American investment in Iran, other provisions apply to all foreign investors, and many Iranian expatriates based in the U.S. continue to make substantial investments in Iran.
On December 1, 2016, the Senate voted 99-0 in favor of extending the sanctions a further ten years.

Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action

An international agreement, known commonly as the Iran deal or Iran nuclear deal, on the nuclear program of Iran reached in Vienna in July 2015 between Iran, the P5+1 (the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council—China, France, Russia, United Kingdom, United States—plus Germany), and the European Union.

P5+1

A group of six world powers that joined together in diplomatic efforts with Iran with regard to its nuclear program. The group consists of the UN Security Council’s five permanent members and Germany.

Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty

An international treaty whose objective is to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons and weapons technology, promote cooperation in the peaceful uses of nuclear energy, and further the goal of achieving nuclear disarmament and general and complete disarmament. Opened for signature in 1968, the treaty entered into force in 1970. As of August 2016, 191 states have adhered to the treaty, although North Korea announced its withdrawal in 2003.

Iran’s Nuclear Program

The
nuclear program of Iran has included several research sites, two uranium mines,
a research reactor, and uranium processing facilities that include three known
uranium enrichment plants. In 1970, Iran ratified the Nuclear Non-Proliferation
Treaty (NPT), making its nuclear program subject to International Atomic Energy
Agency (IAEA) verification. The program was launched in the 1950s with the help
of the United States as part of the Atoms for Peace program. The participation
of the United States and Western European governments in Iran’s nuclear program
continued until the 1979 Iranian Revolution that toppled the Shah of Iran.
Following the 1979 Revolution, most of the international nuclear cooperation
with Iran was cut off. In 1981, Iranian officials concluded that the country’s
nuclear development should continue. Negotiations took place with France in the
late 1980s and with Argentina in the early 1990s, and agreements were reached.
In the 1990s, Russia formed a joint research organization with Iran, providing
Iran with Russian nuclear experts and technical information.

In
the 2000s, the revelation of Iran’s clandestine uranium enrichment program
raised concerns that it might be intended for non-peaceful uses. The IAEA
launched an investigation in 2003 after an Iranian dissident group revealed
undeclared nuclear activities carried out by Iran. While since 2003 the United
States has alleged that Iran has a program to develop nuclear weapons, Iran has
maintained that its nuclear program is aimed only at generating electricity.
The United States’s position is that “a nuclear-armed Iran is not
acceptable,” and the United Kingdom, France, and Germany have also attempted
to negotiate a cessation of nuclear enrichment activities by Iran.

In
2006, American and European representatives noted that Iran has enough
unenriched uranium hexafluoride gas to make ten atomic bombs, adding that it
was “time for the Security Council to act.” In 2006, because of
Iran’s noncompliance with its NPT obligations, the United Nations Security
Council demanded that Iran suspend its enrichment programs. In 2007, the United
States National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) stated that Iran halted an alleged
active nuclear weapons program in fall 2003. In 2011, the IAEA reported
credible evidence that Iran had been conducting experiments aimed at designing
a nuclear bomb until 2003 and that research may have continued on a smaller
scale after that time.

Negotiations

In
March 2013, the United States began a series of secret bilateral talks with
Iranian officials in Oman and in June, Hassan Rouhani was elected president of
Iran. Rouhani has been described as “more moderate, pragmatic and willing
to negotiate” than his predecessor, the anti-Western hardliner Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad. However, in a 2006 nuclear negotiation with European powers,
Rouhani said that Iran had used the negotiations to dupe the Europeans, saying
that during the negotiations, Iran managed to master the conversion of uranium
yellowcake (the conversion of yellowcake is an important step in the nuclear
fuel process). In August 2013, three days after his inauguration, Rouhani
called for a resumption of serious negotiations with the P5+1 (the UN Security
Council’s five permanent members,  China, France, Russia, the United
Kingdom, and the United States, plus Germany) on the Iranian nuclear program.
In September 2013, Obama and Rouhani had a telephone conversation, the first
high-level contact between U.S. and Iranian leaders since 1979. U.S. Secretary
of State John Kerry also had a meeting with Iranian foreign minister Mohammad
Javad Zarif, signaling that the two countries were open to cooperation.

After
several rounds of negotiations, in November 2013, the Joint Plan of Action
(JPA), an interim agreement on the Iranian nuclear program, was signed between
Iran and the P5+1 countries in Geneva, Switzerland. It consisted of a
short-term freeze of portions of Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for
decreased economic sanctions on Iran as the countries work towards a long-term
agreement. The IAEA began “more intrusive and frequent inspections”
under this interim agreement, formally activated in January 2014. The IAEA
issued a report stating that Iran was adhering to the terms of the interim
agreement, including stopping enrichment of uranium to 20 percent, beginning
the dilution process (to reduce half of the stockpile of 20 percent enriched
uranium to 3.5 percent), and halting work on the Arak heavy-water reactor. A major
focus of the negotiations was limitations on Iran’s key nuclear facilities.

The foreign ministers of the P5+1 nations, the High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs, and the Iranian foreign minister in November 2013, when the Joint Plan of Action, an interim agreement on the Iranian nuclear program, was adopted in Geneva, photo by U.S. Department of State.

In June 2006, China, Russia, and the United States joined the three EU-3 countries, which had been negotiating with Iran since 2003, to offer another proposal for comprehensive negotiations with Iran.

Joint Comprehensive
Plan of Action

The
final agreement between the P5+1+EU and Iran on the Joint Comprehensive Plan of
Action (JCPOA) is the culmination of 20 months of “arduous”
negotiations. It followed the JPA and an Iran nuclear deal framework was
reached in April 2015. Under this framework, Iran agreed tentatively to accept
restrictions on its nuclear program, all of which would last for at least a
decade and some longer, and to submit to an increased intensity of
international inspections. The negotiations were extended several times until
the final JCPOA was finally reached on July 14, 2015.

The
final agreement’s complexity shows the impact of a public letter written by a
bipartisan group of 19 U.S. diplomats, experts, and others in June 2015, when
negotiations were still ongoing. That letter outlined concerns about the
several provisions in the then-unfinished agreement and called for a number of
improvements to strengthen the prospective agreement and win support. 

Major
provisions of the final accord include: 

• Iran’s current stockpile of low-enriched uranium will be reduced
  by 98 percent, from 10,000 kg to 300 kg. This reduction will be
  maintained for 15 years. For the same 15-year period, Iran will be
  limited to enriching uranium to 3.67%, a percentage sufficient for civilian
  nuclear power and research, but not for building a nuclear weapon.

• For ten years, Iran will place over two-thirds of its centrifuges
  in storage, with only 5,060 allowed to enrich uranium, an enrichment
  capacity limited to the Natanz plant.

• Iran will not build any new uranium-enrichment facilities for
  15 years.

• Iran may continue research and development work on enrichment, but
  that work will take place only at the Natanz facility and include certain
  limitations for the first eight years.

• Iran, with cooperation from the “Working Group” (the
  P5+1 and possibly other countries), will modernize and rebuild the Arak heavy
  water research reactor based on an agreed design to support its peaceful
  nuclear research and production needs and purposes, but in such a way as to
  minimize the production of plutonium and prevent production of weapons-grade
  plutonium. 

• Iran’s Fordow facility will stop enriching uranium and researching
  uranium enrichment for at least 15 years and the facility will be
  converted into a nuclear physics and technology center. 

• Iran will implement an Additional Protocol agreement, which will
  continue in perpetuity for as long as Iran remains a party to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation
  Treaty (NPT). The signing of the Additional Protocol represents a continuation
  of the monitoring and verification provisions “long after the
  comprehensive agreement between the P5+1 and Iran is implemented.”

• A comprehensive inspections regime will be implemented to
  monitor and confirm that Iran is complying with its obligations and is not
  diverting any fissile material.

Following
the issuance of a IAEA report verifying implementation by Iran of the
nuclear-related measures, the UN sanctions against Iran and some EU
sanctions will terminate and some will be suspended. Once sanctions are lifted,
Iran will recover approximately $100 billion of its assets (U.S. Treasury
Department estimate) frozen in overseas banks.

Response

More than 90 countries endorsed the agreement as did many
international organizations, including the UN and NATO. The most notable critic
of the agreement is the state of Israel. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
said, “Israel is not bound by this deal with Iran, because Iran continues
to seek our destruction, we will always defend ourselves.” Netanyahu
called the deal a “capitulation” and “a bad mistake of historic
proportions.” Most of Israel’s other political figures, including the
opposition, were similarly critical of the agreement. The two countries
maintain extremely hostile relations, with some Iranian leaders calling for the
destruction of Israel. 

Following
the unveiling of the agreement, “a general consensus quickly emerged”
among nuclear experts and watchdogs that the agreement “is as close to a
best-case situation as reality would allow.” In August 2015, 75 arms
control and nuclear nonproliferation experts signed a statement endorsing the
deal as “a net-plus for international nuclear nonproliferation
efforts” that exceeds the historical standards for arms control
agreements.

An
intense public debate in the United States took place during the congressional
review period, with various groups lobbying both opposition and support for the
agreement. Many Iranian Americans, even those who fled repression in Iran and
oppose its government, welcomed the JCPOA as a step forward. U.S. pro-Israel
groups are divided on the JCPOA. Various other groups have run ad campaigns for or
against the agreement. For example, the New York-based Iran Project, a
nonprofit led by former high-level U.S. diplomats and funded by the Rockefeller
Brothers Fund, along with the United Nations Association of the United States,
supports the agreement. In July 2015, a bipartisan open letter endorsing the
Iran agreement was signed by more than 100 former U.S. ambassadors and
high-ranking State Department officials. A separate public letter to Congress
in support of the agreement from five former U.S. ambassadors to Israel from
administrations of both parties and three former Under Secretaries of State was
also released in July 2015. Another public letter to Congress urging approval
of the agreement was signed by a bipartisan group of more than 60 “national-security leaders,” including politicians, retired military
officers, and diplomats. In August 2015, 29 prominent U.S. scientists, mostly
physicists, published an open letter endorsing the agreement. An open letter
endorsing the agreement was also signed by 36 retired military generals and
admirals. However, this letter was answered by a letter signed by more than 200
retired generals and admirals opposing the deal. 

Republican leaders vowed to attempt to kill
the agreement as soon as it was released, even before classified sections were
made available to Congress. According to the Washington Post,
“most congressional Republicans remained deeply skeptical, some openly
scornful, of the prospect of relieving economic sanctions while leaving any
Iranian uranium-enrichment capability intact.” Senate Majority Leader
Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky, said the deal “appears to fall
well short of the goal we all thought was trying to be achieved, which was that
Iran would not be a nuclear state.” A New York Times news
analysis stated that Republican opposition to the agreement “seems born of
genuine distaste for the deal’s details, inherent distrust of President Obama,
intense loyalty to Israel and an expansive view of the role that sanctions have
played beyond preventing Iran’s nuclear abilities.” The Washington
Post identified twelve issues related to the agreement on which the
two sides disagreed, including the efficacy of inspections at undeclared sites;
the effectiveness of the snapback sanctions; the significance of limits on
enrichment; the significance of IAEA side agreements; the effectiveness of
inspections of military sites; the consequences of walking away from an
agreement; and the effects of lifting sanctions.

One
area of disagreement between supporters and opponents of the JCPOA is the
consequences of walking away from an agreement and whether renegotiation of the
agreement is a realistic option. According to an Associated Press report, the
classified assessment of the United States Intelligence Community on the
agreement concludes that because Iran will be required by the agreement to
provide international inspectors with “unprecedented volume of information
about nearly every aspect of its existing nuclear program,” Iran’s ability
to conceal a covert weapons program will be diminished.  

Souvenir signatures of lead negotiators on the cover page of the JCPOA document. The Persian handwriting on top left side is a homage by Javad Zarif to his counterparts’ efforts in the negotiations: “[I am] Sincere to Mr. Abbas [Araghchi] and Mr. Majid [Takht-Ravanchi].

The final agreement is based upon (and buttresses) “the rules-based
nonproliferation regime created by the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT)
and including especially the IAEA safeguards system.”

Impact

With the prospective lifting of some
sanctions, the agreement is expected to have a significant impact on both the
economy of Iran and global markets. The energy sector is particularly
important, with Iran having nearly 10 percent of global oil reserves and 18
percent of natural gas reserves. Millions of barrels of Iranian oil may come
onto global markets, lowering the price of crude oil. The economic impact of a
partial lifting of sanctions extends beyond the energy sector. The New
York Times reported that “consumer-oriented companies, in
particular, could find opportunity in this country with 81 million
consumers,” many of whom are young and prefer Western products. Iran is
“considered a strong emerging market play” by investment and trading
firms.

In July 2015, Richard Stone wrote in the
journal Science that if the agreement is fully implemented,
“Iran can expect a rapid expansion of scientific cooperation with Western
powers. As its nuclear facilities are repurposed, scientists from Iran and
abroad will team up in areas such as nuclear fusion, astrophysics, and
radioisotopes for cancer therapy.”

In
August 2015, the British embassy in Tehran reopened almost four years after it
was closed after protesters attacked the embassy in 2011. 

Hours
before the official announcement of the activation of JCPOA in January 2016,
Iran released four imprisoned Iranian Americans. A fifth American left Iran in
a separate arrangement.

After
the adoption of the JCPOA, the United States imposed several new non-nuclear
sanctions against Iran, some of which have been condemned by Iran as a possible
violation of the deal. According to Seyed Mohammad Marandi, professor at the
University of Tehran, the general consensus in Iran while the negotiations were
taking place was that the United States would move towards increasing sanctions
on non-nuclear areas. He said that these post-JCPOA sanctions could
“severely damage the chances for the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action
bearing fruit.”

In
March 2016, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC),  defined by
English-speaking media as a branch of Iran’s Armed Forces,  conducted
ballistic missile tests as part of its military drills, with one of the missiles
carrying the inscription, “Israel should be wiped off the Earth.”
Israel called on Western powers to punish Iran for the tests, which U.S.
officials said do not violate the nuclear deal, but may violate a United
Nations Security Council Resolution. Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad
Zarif insisted that the tests were not in violation of the UNSC resolution. On
March 17, the U.S. Treasury Department sanctioned Iranian and British companies
for involvement in the Iranian ballistic missile program.

Future?

In
November 2016, Deutsche Welle, citing a source from the IAEA, reported that
“Iran has violated the terms of its nuclear deal.” In December 2016,
the U.S. Senate voted to renew the Iran Sanctions Act (ISA) for another decade.
The Obama Administration and outside experts said the extension would have no
practical effect and risked antagonizing Iran. Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah
Khamenei, President Rouhani, and Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman said that
the extension of sanctions would be a breach of the nuclear deal. Some Iranian
officials said that Iran might ramp up uranium enrichment in response.

In
January 2017, representatives from Iran, P5+1, and EU gathered in Vienna’s
Palais Coburg hotel to address Iran’s complaint about the US congressional bill.
The future of nuclear agreement with Iran is uncertain under the administration
of President Trump.

38.3: East Asia in the 21st Century

38.3.1: The Rising Economies of East Asia

East Asia is home to some of the world’s most prosperous economies while Southeast Asia witnesses the growth of some of the world’s fastest growing emerging economies, with
favorable political-legal environments for industry and commerce, abundant natural resources, and adaptable labor determined to be the main factors of the success. 

Learning Objective

Explain how East Asian economies have been increasing their share of the global economy.

Key Points

• East Asian countries’ various reforms resulted in “economic
  miracles,” making East Asia home to some of the world’s largest and most
  prosperous economies, including Mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan,
  Japan, and South Korea. Major growth factors have ranged from favorable
  political and legal environments for industry and commerce, through abundant
  natural resources, to plentiful supplies of relatively low-cost, skilled, and
  adaptable labor. The region’s economic success has led the World Bank to dub it
  an East Asian Renaissance.

• The economy of Japan is the third-largest in the world by
  nominal GDP, the fourth-largest by purchasing power parity (PPP), and the
  world’s second largest developed economy. Japan is the world’s third largest
  automobile manufacturing country, has the largest electronics goods industry,
  and is often ranked among the world’s most innovative countries. The Japanese
  economy faces considerable challenges posed by a dramatically declining
  population. 

• China’s socialist market economy is the world’s second largest
  economy by nominal GDP and the world’s largest economy by PPP according to the
  IMF. China is a global hub for manufacturing and the largest manufacturing
  economy in the world as well as the largest exporter of goods in the world.
  China’s unequal transportation system—combined with important differences in
  the availability of natural and human resources and in industrial
  infrastructure—has produced significant variations in the regional economies.
  More recently, the government has struggled to contain the social strife and environmental
  damage related to the economy’s rapid transformation.

• In accordance with the One Country, Two Systems policy, the
  economies of the former British colony of Hong Kong and Portuguese colony of
  Macau are separate from the rest of China and each other. Both Hong
  Kong and Macau are free to conduct and engage in economic
  negotiations with foreign countries as well as participate as full members in
  various international economic organizations.

• The Four Asian Tigers are the economies of Hong Kong, Singapore,
  South Korea, and Taiwan, which underwent rapid industrialization and maintained
  exceptionally high growth rates between the early 1960s (mid-1950s for Hong
  Kong) and 1990s. By the 21st century, all four had developed into advanced and
  high-income economies, specializing in areas of competitive advantage. Export
  policies have been the de facto reason for the rise of the Four Asian Tiger
  economies although te approach taken has been different among the four nations.

• The term Tiger Cub Economies collectively refers to the economies
  of Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam. Four countries
  are included in HSBC’s list of top 50 economies in 2050, while Vietnam,
  Indonesia, and the Philippines are included in Goldman Sachs’s Next Eleven list
  of economies because of their rapid growth and large population. Out of these,
  Vietnam has been determined to become possibly the fastest-growing of the
  world’s emerging economies by 2020. The so-called “bamboo network” –
  a network of overseas Chinese businesses operating in these markets – has been
  critical to the countries’ economic growth.

Key Terms

G7

A group consisting of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States. These countries are the seven major advanced economies as reported by the International Monetary Fund and represent more than 64% of the net global wealth ($263 trillion).

socialist market economy

The economic model employed by the People’s Republic of China. It is based on the dominance of the state-owned sector and an open-market economy and has its origins in the Chinese economic reforms introduced under Deng Xiaoping. The ideological rationale is that China is in the primary stage of socialism, an early stage within the socialist mode of production and therefore has to adapt capitalist techniques to thrive. Despite this, the system has widely been cited as a form of state capitalism.

Four Asian Tigers

A collective name used to refer to the economies of Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea, and Taiwan, which underwent rapid industrialization and maintained exceptionally high growth rates (in excess of 7 percent a year) between the early 1960s (mid-1950s for Hong Kong) and 1990s.

Tiger Cub Economies

A collective term used to
refer to the economies of Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam, the five dominant countries in Southeast Asia. They are so named because they follow the same export-driven model of economic development pursued by the Four Asian Tigers.

bamboo network

A term used to conceptualize connections between certain businesses operated by overseas Chinese in Southeast Asia. It links the overseas Chinese community of Southeast Asia (Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, the Philippines, and Singapore) with the economies of Greater China (mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan). Overseas Chinese companies have a prominent role in the private sector of Southeast Asia and are usually managed as family businesses with a centralized bureaucracy.

One Country, Two Systems

A constitutional principle formulated by Deng Xiaoping, the Paramount Leader of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), for the reunification of China during the early 1980s. He suggested that there would be only one China, but distinct Chinese regions such as Hong Kong and Macau could retain their own capitalist economic and political systems, while the rest of China uses the socialist system.

East Asian Renaissance 

The economy of East Asia is one of the most successful regional economies of the world. The changes that turned the area into the economic power began with the Meiji Restoration in the late 19th century, when Japan rapidly transformed into the only industrial power outside Europe and the United States. Japan’s early industrial economy reached its height during World War II and its eventual defeat in the war slowed down economic development for a relatively short period of time. Japan’s economy recovered already in the 1950s and by the 1980s, the country was the world’s second largest economy.

Other East Asian countries followed with their own reforms and resulting “economic miracles” and today, East Asia is home of some of the world’s largest and most prosperous economies, including Mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan, Japan, and South Korea. Major growth factors have ranged from favorable political and legal environments for industry and commerce, through abundant natural resources, to plentiful supplies of relatively low-cost, skilled, and adaptable labor.
Local populations have rapidly adjusted to the requirements of new technologies and scientific discoveries while also demonstrating exceptional work ethics.
The region’s economic success has led the World Bank to dub it an East Asian Renaissance.

Although technically not seen as part of the East Asian Renaissance, India, associated more closely with the South Asian region, has become an equally thriving and critical Asian member of the global economy in the last several decades. For more information on India’s economic power see “India’s Growing Economy” module. 

Japan

In the three decades of economic development following 1960, Japan ignored defense spending in favor of economic growth, thus allowing for a rapid economic growth referred to as the Japanese post-war economic miracle. With average growth rates of 10% in the 1960s, 5% in the 1970s, and 4% in the 1980s, Japan was able to establish and maintain itself as the world’s second largest economy from 1978 until 2010, when it was surpassed by the People’s Republic of China.

The economy of Japan is the third-largest in the world by nominal GDP, the fourth-largest by purchasing power parity (PPP), and the world’s second largest developed economy. Japan is a member of the G7. Due to a volatile currency exchange rate, Japan’s GDP as measured in dollars fluctuates widely. Accounting for these fluctuations, Japan is estimated to have a GDP per capita of around $38,490.

Japan is the world’s third largest automobile manufacturing country, has the largest electronics goods industry, and is often ranked among the world’s most innovative countries leading several measures of global patent filings. Facing increasing competition from China and South Korea, manufacturing in Japan today focuses primarily on high-tech and precision goods, such as optical instruments, hybrid vehicles, and robotics. Japan is the world’s largest creditor nation. It generally runs an annual trade surplus and has a considerable net international investment surplus. In 2015, 54 of the Fortune Global 500 companies were based in Japan.

The Japanese economy faces considerable challenges posed by a dramatically declining population. Statistics showed an official decline for the first time in 2015, while projections suggest that it will continue to fall from 127 million down to below 100 million by the middle of the 21st century.
A mountainous, volcanic island country, Japan has inadequate natural resources to support its growing economy and large population and therefore exports goods, in which it has a comparative advantage such as engineering-oriented, research, and development-led industrial products in exchange for the import of raw materials and petroleum. Japan is among the top-three importers for agricultural products in the world next to the European Union and United States in total volume for covering of its own domestic agricultural consumption.

China

China’s socialist market economy is the world’s second largest economy by nominal GDP and the world’s largest economy by PPP according to the IMF, although China’s National Bureau of Statistics rejects this claim. Until 2015, China was the world’s fastest-growing major economy, with growth rates averaging 10% over 30 years. Due to historical and political facts of China’s developing economy, China’s public sector accounts for a bigger share of the national economy than the burgeoning private sector.

China is a global hub for manufacturing and is the largest manufacturing economy in the world as well as the largest exporter of goods in the world. It is also the world’s fastest growing consumer market and second largest importer of goods in the world. It is a net importer of services products and the largest trading nation in the world, playing the most important role in international trade. However,
Western media have criticized China for unfair trade practices, including artificial currency devaluation, intellectual property theft, protectionism, and local favoritism due to one-party oligopoly by the Communist Party of China and its socialist market economy.

China’s unequal transportation system—combined with important differences in the availability of natural and human resources and in industrial infrastructure—has produced significant variations in the regional economies of China. Economic development has generally been more rapid in coastal provinces than in the interior and there are large disparities in per capita income between regions. Three wealthiest regions are along the southeast coast. It is the rapid development of these areas that is expected to have the most significant effect on the Asian regional economy as a whole and Chinese government policy is designed to remove the obstacles to accelerated growth in these wealthier regions.

A Chinese coal miner at the Jin Hua Gong Mine, photo by Peter Van den Bossche.

One of the hallmarks of China’s socialist economy was its promise of employment to all able and willing to work and job-security with virtually lifelong tenure. Reformers targeted the labor market as unproductive because industries were frequently overstaffed to fulfill socialist goals and job-security reduced workers’ incentive to work. This socialist policy was pejoratively called the iron rice bowl.

More recently, the government has struggled to contain the social strife and environmental damage related to the economy’s rapid transformation. Battling corruption and other economic crimes as well as sustaining adequate job growth for tens of millions of workers laid off from state-owned enterprises, migrants, and new entrants to the work force have also been some of the major challenges. From 50 to 100 million rural workers were adrift between the villages and the cities, many subsisting through part-time low-paying jobs. Although the economic growth has resulted in the creation of a strong middle class, hundreds of millions remain excluded from its benefits and inequalities persist. The large-scale underemployment in both urban and rural areas and changing price policies remain a source of concern for the government as potential causes of popular resistance. The prices of certain key commodities, especially of industrial raw materials and major industrial products, are determined by the state and large subsidies were built into the price structure. By the early 1990s, these subsidies began to be eliminated, in large part due to China’s admission into the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001, which carried with it requirements for further economic liberalization and deregulation. On a per capita income basis, China ranked 72nd by nominal GDP and 84th by GDP (PPP) in 2015, according to the IMF.  

In accordance with the One Country, Two Systems policy, the economies of the former British colony of Hong Kong and Portuguese colony of Macau are separate from the rest of China and each other. Both Hong Kong and Macau are free to conduct and engage in economic negotiations with foreign countries as well as participate as full members in various international economic organizations, often under the names “Hong Kong, China” and “Macau, China.”
Both regions retain their own capitalist economic and political systems.

Four Asian Tigers

The Four Asian Tigers are the economies of Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea, and Taiwan, which underwent rapid industrialization and maintained exceptionally high growth rates (in excess of 7 percent a year) between the early 1960s (mid-1950s for Hong Kong) and 1990s. By the 21st century, all four had developed into advanced and high-income economies, specializing in areas of competitive advantage. For example, Hong Kong and Singapore have become world-leading international financial centers, whereas South Korea and Taiwan are world leaders in information technology manufacturing. Their economic success stories have served as role models for many developing countries, especially the Tiger Cub Economies (see below).

Export policies have been the de facto reason for the rise of the Four Asian Tiger economies. The approach taken has been different among the four nations. Hong Kong and Singapore introduced trade regimes that were neoliberal in nature and encouraged free trade, while South Korea and Taiwan adopted mixed regimes that accommodated their own export industries. In Hong Kong and Singapore, due to small domestic markets, domestic prices were linked to international prices. South Korea and Taiwan introduced export incentives for the traded-goods sector. The governments of Singapore, South Korea, and Taiwan also worked to promote specific exporting industries, which were termed as an export push strategy. All these policies helped these four nations to achieve a growth averaging 7.5% each year for three decades and as such they achieved developed country status.

A controversial World Bank report (see The East Asian Miracle 1993) credited neoliberal policies with the responsibility for the boom, including maintenance of export-led regimes, low taxes, and minimal welfare states. Some state intervention has been also admitted to be a factor. However, many have argued that industrial policy had a much greater influence than the World Bank report suggested. The World Bank report itself acknowledged benefits from policies of the repression of the financial sector, such as state-imposed below-market interest rates for loans to specific exporting industries. Other important aspects include major government investments in education, non-democratic and relatively authoritarian political systems during the early years of development, high levels of U.S. bond holdings, and high public and private savings rates.

Tiger Cub Economies

The term Tiger Cub Economies collectively refers to the economies of Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam, the five dominant countries in Southeast Asia. They are so named because they follow the same export-driven model of economic development pursued by the Four Asian Tigers. Four countries are included in HSBC’s list of top 50 economies in 2050, while Vietnam, Indonesia and the Philippines are included in Goldman Sachs’s Next Eleven list of economies because of their rapid growth and large population. Out of these, Vietnam has been determined to become possibly the fastest-growing of the world’s emerging economies by 2020. Similarly to China, the country’s socialist-oriented market economy is a developing planned economy and market economy. In the 21st century, Vietnam is in a period of being integrated into the global economy. It has become a leading agricultural exporter and served as an attractive destination for foreign investment in Southeast Asia. 

The Tiger Cub Economies (yellow) are five countries: Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam. Also shown are the Four Asian Tigers (red), source: Wikipedia.

The term “bamboo network” is used to conceptualize connections between certain businesses operated by overseas Chinese in Southeast Asia. It links the overseas Chinese community of Southeast Asia (Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, the Philippines, and Singapore) with the economies of Greater China (mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan). Overseas Chinese companies have a prominent role in the private sector of Southeast Asia, and are usually managed as family businesses with a centralized bureaucracy.

Overseas Chinese entrepreneurs played a prominent role in the development of the region’s private sectors. These businesses are part of the larger “bamboo network,” a network of overseas Chinese businesses operating in the markets of Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, and the Philippines that share common family and cultural ties. China’s transformation into a major economic power in the 21st century has led to increasing investments in Southeast Asian countries where the bamboo network is present.

38.3.2: Tensions in the South China Sea

Several countries have made competing territorial claims over the South China Sea, as one-third of the world’s shipping sails through its waters and it is believed to hold huge oil and gas reserves beneath its seabed, turning the territorial disputes into Asia’s most potentially dangerous source of conflict.

Learning Objective

Identify the causes of territorial disputes in the South China Sea

Key Points

• The
  South China Sea is a marginal sea encompassing an area from the Karimata and Malacca Straits to the Strait of
  Taiwan. The sea is
  located south of China, east of Vietnam and Cambodia, northwest of the
  Philippines, east of the Malay peninsula and Sumatra up to the Strait of
  Malacca in the west, and north of the Bangka–Belitung Islands and Borneo. One-third of the world’s shipping
  sails through its waters and it is believed the sea holds huge oil and gas
  reserves beneath its seabed. 
• Several countries have made competing territorial
  claims over the South China Sea. These disputes have been seen as Asia’s most
  potentially dangerous point of conflict.
  Both China and Taiwan claim almost the entire body as their own, demarcating their claims
  within what is known as the nine-dash line. Competing claims over parts of the area include Indonesia, the Philippines, Vietnam, Brunei, Malaysia, Cambodia, and Thailand.
• The
  area may be rich in oil and natural gas deposits, although estimates vary.
  The once abundant fishing opportunities within the region are
  another motivation for claims. According to studies by
  the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (Philippines), this body of
  water holds one-third of the entire world’s marine biodiversity, making
  it a very important area for the ecosystem. Finally, the area is one of the busiest shipping
  routes in the world.

• China
  and Vietnam have both been vigorous in prosecuting their claims. The
  Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in general and Malaysia in
  particular have been keen to ensure that the territorial disputes within the
  South China Sea do not escalate into armed conflicts. Joint Development
  Authorities have been set up in areas of overlapping claims to jointly develop
  the area and divide the profits equally, without settling the issue of
  sovereignty. Generally, China has preferred to resolve competing
  claims bilaterally, while some ASEAN countries prefer multi-lateral talks.

• In
  2011, China attempted to keep India away from the South China Sea waters and protested Indian-Vietnamese cooperation in the oil sector. Vietnam
  and Japan reached an agreement early in 1978 on the development of oil in the
  South China Sea, which gradually turned Vietnam into a powerful oil producer. In
  2012 and 2013, Vietnam and Taiwan clashed over what Vietnam considered
  anti-Vietnamese military exercises by Taiwan. In 2014, Indonesia imposed a policy
  threatening any foreign fishermen caught illegally fishing in Indonesian waters
  to destroy their vessels. Since then, many neighboring countries fishing
  vessels have been blown up by Indonesian authorities. The
  South China Sea had also become known for Indonesian and Filipino pirates.
• The United States and China are currently in
  disagreement over the South China Sea. The U.S. State Department voiced support for fair access by reiterating that freedom of
  navigation and respect of international law are a matter of national interest to
  the United States. China’s Foreign Ministry stated that this stand
  was “in effect an attack on China.” China has repeatedly warned the U.S. to stay out of the issue and that its involvement may lead to a military conflict.  
• The
  position of China on its maritime claims based on UNCLOS and history has been
  ambiguous, particularly with the nine-dash line map.
  China has also
  repeatedly indicated that the Chinese claims are drawn  on a historical
  basis, but the
  vast majority of international legal experts have concluded that China’s claims
  based on historical claims are invalid.

Key Terms

United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea

The international agreement that defines the rights and responsibilities of nations with respect to their use of the world’s oceans, establishing guidelines for businesses, the environment, and the management of marine natural resources. It was concluded in 1982.

Philippines v. China

An arbitration case brought by the Republic of the Philippines against the People’s Republic of China under Annex VII to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) concerning certain issues in the South China Sea including the legality of China’s “nine-dash line” claim. In 2013, China declared that it would not participate but in 2015, the arbitral tribunal ruled that it has jurisdiction over the case. In 2016, the tribunal ruled in favor of the Philippines. China has rejected the ruling, as has Taiwan.

exclusive economic zone

A sea zone prescribed by the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, over which a state has special rights regarding the exploration and use of marine resources, including energy production from water and wind. It stretches from the baseline out to 200 nautical miles (nmi) from its coast. As opposed to the territorial sea, which confers full sovereignty over the waters, this type of a sea zone is merely a “sovereign right,” which refers to the coastal state’s rights below the surface of the sea. The surface waters are international waters.

nine-dash line

A term that refers to the demarcation line used initially by the government of the Republic of China (ROC/Taiwan) and subsequently also by the government of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), for their claims of the major part of the South China Sea. The contested area in the South China Sea includes the Paracel Islands, the Spratly Islands, and various other areas including the Pratas Islands, the Macclesfield Bank, and the Scarborough Shoal. The claim encompasses the area of Chinese land reclamation known as the “great wall of sand.”

Association of Southeast Asian Nations

A regional organization comprising ten Southeast Asian states, which promotes intergovernmental cooperation and facilitates economic integration amongst its members. Since its founding in 1967 by Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand, the organization’s membership has expanded to include Brunei, Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar (Burma), and Vietnam. Its principal aims include accelerating economic growth, social progress, and sociocultural evolution among its members, alongside the protection of regional stability and the provision of a mechanism for member countries to resolve differences peacefully.

South China Sea

A marginal sea that is part of the Pacific Ocean, encompassing an area from the Karimata and Malacca Straits to the Strait of Taiwan. One-third of the world’s shipping sails through its waters and it is believed the sea holds huge oil and gas reserves beneath its seabed. Several countries have made competing territorial claims over the area.

Territorial Disputes in the South China Sea

The South China Sea is a marginal sea that is part of the Pacific Ocean, encompassing an area from the Karimata and Malacca Straits to the Strait of Taiwan (around 3.5 million sq km or 1.4 million sq mi). The sea is located south of China, east of Vietnam and Cambodia, northwest of the Philippines, east of the Malay peninsula and Sumatra, up to the Strait of Malacca in the west, and north of the Bangka–Belitung Islands and Borneo. 

The area’s importance results from the fact that one-third of the world’s shipping sails through its waters and it is believed to hold huge oil and gas reserves beneath its seabed.

Several countries have made competing territorial claims over the South China Sea. These disputes have been seen as Asia’s most potentially dangerous point of conflict. Both People’s Republic of China (PRC) and the Republic of China (ROC, commonly known as Taiwan) claim almost the entire body as their own, demarcating their claims within what is known as the nine-dash line. The area overlaps the exclusive economic zone (EEZ) claims of Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan, and Vietnam.
Competing claims include:

• Indonesia, China, and Taiwan over waters northeast of the Natuna Islands

• The Philippines, China, and Taiwan over Scarborough Shoal
• Vietnam, China, and Taiwan over waters west of the Spratly Islands, some of which are also disputed between Vietnam, China, Taiwan, Brunei, Malaysia, and the Philippines
• The Paracel Islands are disputed between China, Taiwan, and Vietnam
• Malaysia, Cambodia, Thailand, and Vietnam over areas in the Gulf of Thailand
• Singapore and Malaysia along the Strait of Johore and the Strait of Singapore

Territorial claims in the South China Sea, map by Voice of America.

The disputes include the islands, reefs, banks, and other features of the South China Sea, including the Spratly Islands, Paracel Islands, and various boundaries in the Gulf of Tonkin. There are further disputes, including the waters near the Indonesian Natuna Islands, which many do not regard as part of the South China Sea. Claimaint states are interested in retaining or acquiring the rights to fishing areas, the exploration and potential exploitation of crude oil and natural gas in the seabed of various parts of the South China Sea, and the strategic control of important shipping lanes.

Importance of the South China Sea

The area may be rich in oil and natural gas deposits although estimates vary from 7.5 billion to 125 billion barrels of oil and from 190 trillion cubic feet to 500 trillion cubic feet of gas. The once abundant fishing opportunities within the region are another motivation for claims. China believes that the value in fishing and oil from the sea may be as much as a trillion dollars.
According to studies made by the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (Philippines), this body of water holds one-third of the entire world’s marine biodiversity, making it a very important area for the ecosystem. However, the fish stocks in the area are depleted and countries are using fishing bans to assert their sovereignty claims. Finally, the area is one of the busiest shipping routes in the world. In the 1980s, at least 270 merchant ships used the route each day. Currently, more than half the tonnage of oil transported by sea passes through the South China Sea, a figure rising steadily with the growth of the Chinese consumption of oil. This traffic is three times greater than that passing through the Suez Canal and five times more than the Panama Canal.

Disputes

China and Vietnam have both been vigorous in prosecuting their claims. China (various governments) and South Vietnam each controlled part of the Paracel Islands before 1974. A brief conflict in 1974 resulted in 18 Chinese and 53 Vietnamese deaths and China has controlled the whole of Paracel since then. The Spratly Islands have been the site of a naval clash, in which over 70 Vietnamese sailors were killed in 1988. Disputing claimants regularly report clashes between naval vessels.

The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in general and Malaysia in particular have been keen to ensure that the territorial disputes within the South China Sea do not escalate into armed conflicts. Joint Development Authorities have been set up in areas of overlapping claims to jointly develop the area and divide the profits equally, without settling the issue of sovereignty. Generally, China has preferred to resolve competing claims bilaterally, while some ASEAN countries prefer multi-lateral talks, believing that they are disadvantaged in bilateral negotiations with China and that because many countries claim the same territory, only multilateral talks could effectively resolve the competing claims. For example,
the International Court of Justice settled the overlapping claims over Pedra Branca/Pulau Batu Putih, including neighboring Middle Rocks, by Singapore and Malaysia in 2008, awarding Pedra Branca/Pulau Batu Puteh to Singapore and Middle Rocks to Malaysia.

In 2011, one of India’s amphibious assault vessels on a friendly visit to Vietnam was reportedly contacted at a distance of 45 nautical miles from the Vietnamese coast in the disputed South China Sea on an open radio channel by a vessel identifying itself as the Chinese Navy and stating that the ship was entering Chinese waters. The spokesperson for the Indian Navy clarified that as no ship or aircraft was visible and thus the vessel proceeded on her onward journey as scheduled. The same year, shortly after China and Vietnam had signed an agreement seeking to contain a dispute over the South China Sea, India’s state-run explorer, Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) said that its overseas investment arm ONGC Videsh Limited had signed a three-year deal with PetroVietnam for developing long-term cooperation in the oil sector and that it had accepted Vietnam’s offer of exploration in certain specified blocks in the South China Sea. In response, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Jiang Yu issued a protest.

Vietnam and Japan reached an agreement early in 1978 on the development of oil in the South China Sea. By 2012,Vietnam had concluded some 60 oil and gas exploration and production contracts with various foreign companies. In 2011, Vietnam was the sixth-largest oil producer in the Asia-Pacific region, although the country is a net oil importer. 

China’s first independently designed and constructed oil drilling platform in the South China Sea is the Ocean Oil 981. It began operation in 2012, 320 kilometers (200 mi) southeast of Hong Kong, employing 160 people. In 2014, the platform was moved near to the Paracel Islands, which propelled Vietnam to state that the move violated their territorial claims. Chinese officials said it was legal, stating the area lies in waters surrounding the Paracel Islands, which China occupies and militarily controls.

In 2012 and 2013, Vietnam and Taiwan clashed over what Vietnam considered anti-Vietnamese military exercises by Taiwan. 

Prior to the dispute around the sea areas, fishermen from involved countries tended to enter on each other’s controlled islands and EEZ, which led to conflicts with the authorities that controlled the areas as they were unaware of the exact borders. Due to the depletion of the fishing resources in their maritime areas, fishermen felt compelled to fish in the neighboring country’s areas. After Joko Widodo became President of Indonesia in 2014, he imposed a policy threatening any foreign fishermen caught illegally fishing in Indonesian waters to destroy their vessels. Since then, many neighboring countries’ fishing vessels have been blown up by Indonesian authorities. On May 21, 2015, around 41 fishing vessels from China, Vietnam, Thailand, and the Philippines were blown up. On March 19, 2016, China Coast Guard prevented its fishermen from being detained by Indonesian authorities when the Chinese fishermen were caught fishing near the waters around Natuna, leading to a protest by Indonesian authorities. Further Indonesian campaigns against foreign fishermen resulted in 23 fishing boats from Malaysia and Vietnam being blown up on April 5, 2016. The South China Sea had also become known for Indonesian pirates, with frequent attacks on Malaysian, Singaporean, and Vietnamese vessels and for Filipino pirates attacking Vietnamese fishermen.

A map of South China Sea claims and boundary agreements, U.S. Department of Defense’s Annual Report on China to Congress, 2012.

An estimated US$5 trillion worth of global trade passes through the South China Sea and there are many non-claimant states that want the South China Sea to remain as international waters. Several states (e.g. the United States of America) are conducting “freedom of navigation” operations to promote this situation.

U.S. Position

The United States and China are currently in disagreement over the South China Sea, exacerbated by the fact that the US is not a member of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (the United States recognizes the UNCLOS as a codification of customary international law but has not ratified it). Nevertheless, the U.S. has stood by its claim that “peaceful surveillance activities and other military activities without permission in a country’s exclusive economic zone” are allowed under the convention. In relation to the dispute, former U.S. State Secretary Hillary Clinton voiced her support for fair access by reiterating that freedom of navigation and respect of international law is a matter of national interest to the United States. China’s Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi stated that the stand was “in effect an attack on China” and warned the United States against making the South China Sea an international or multilateral issue. Clinton testified in support of congressional approval of the Law of the Sea Convention, which would strengthen U.S. ability to support countries that oppose Chinese claims to certain islands in the area. Clinton also called for China to resolve the territorial dispute but China responded by demanding the U.S.  stay out of the issue. This came at a time when both countries were engaging in naval exercises in a show of force to the opposing side, which increased tensions in the region. The U.S. Department of Defense released a statement in which it opposed the use of force to resolve the dispute and accused China of assertive behavior. 

In 2014, the United States responded to China’s claims over the fishing grounds of other nations by stating that “China has not offered any explanation or basis under international law for these extensive maritime claims.” While the US pledged American support for the Philippines in its territorial conflicts with the PRC, the Chinese Foreign Ministry asked the United States to maintain a neutral position on the issue. In 2014 and 2015, the United States continued freedom of navigation operations, including in the South China Sea. In 2015, Secretary of Defense Ash Carter warned China to halt its rapid island-building. In November 2015, two US B-52 strategic bombers flew near artificial Chinese-built islands in the area of the Spratly Islands and were contacted by Chinese ground controllers but continued their mission undeterred.

In response to Rex Tillerson’s comments on blocking access to man-made islands in the South China Sea, in January 2017, the Communist Party-controlled Global Times warned of a “large-scale war” between the U.S. and China, noting, “Unless Washington plans to wage a large-scale war in the South China Sea, any other approaches to prevent Chinese access to the islands will be foolish.”

Independent Analysis

The position of China on its maritime claims based on UNCLOS and history has been ambiguous, particularly with the nine-dash line map. For example, in 2011, China stated that it has undisputed sovereignty over the islands and the adjacent waters, suggesting it is claiming sovereignty over its territorial waters, a position consistent with UNCLOS. However, it also stated that China enjoys sovereign rights and jurisdiction over the relevant waters along with the seabed and subsoil contained in this region, suggesting that China is claiming sovereignty over all of the maritime space (includes all the geographic features and the waters within the nine-dash line). China has also repeatedly indicated that the Chinese claims are drawn  on a historical basis. 

The vast majority of international legal experts have concluded that China’s claims based on historical claims are invalid. For example, in 2013,
the Republic of the Philippines brought an arbitration case against the People’s Republic of China under Annex VII to UNCLOS, concerning certain issues in the South China Sea including the legality of China’s “nine-dash line” claim (Philippines v. China, known also as the South China Sea Arbitration). China declared that it would not participate in the arbitration but in 2015, the arbitral tribunal ruled that it had jurisdiction over the case, taking up seven of the 15 submissions made by the Philippines. In 2016, the tribunal ruled in favor of the Philippines. It clarified that it would not “…rule on any question of sovereignty over land territory and would not delimit any maritime boundary between the Parties.” The tribunal also confirmed that China has “no historical rights” based on the “nine-dash line” map. China has rejected the ruling, as has Taiwan. 

38.3.3: The Koreas in the Modern Day

Tensions between South Korea and North Korea continue to escalate as the countries never signed a peace treaty after the Korean War and thus formally remain at war, with each incident potentially triggering a military conflict.  

Learning Objective

Summarize the remaining tensions between North and South Korea and how the two countries have developed

Key Points

• In 1998,
  South Korean President Kim Dae-jung announced the so-called Sunshine Policy
  towards North Korea. The main aim of the policy was to soften North Korea’s
  attitudes towards the South by encouraging interaction and economic assistance.
  In 2000, the first Inter-Korean Summit between Kim Dae-jung and
  Kim Jong-il took place. As a result, Kim Dae-jung was awarded the Nobel Peace
  Prize.
• The June 15 North–South
  Joint Declaration the two leaders signed during the first South-North
  summit stated that they would hold the second summit at an appropriate time. It
  was originally envisaged that the second summit would be held in South Korea,
  but that did not materialize. In 2007, South Korean President
  Roh Moo-hyun and North Korean leader Kim Jong-il signed the peace declaration.
  The document called for international talks to replace the Armistice that ended the Korean War with a permanent peace treaty.
• In 2008, the new
  president of the South Lee Myung-bak and his Grand National Party took a
  different stance to North Korea, and the South Korean government stated that any
  expansion of the economic cooperation at the Kaesong Industrial Region would
  only happen if the North resolved the international standoff over its nuclear
  weapons. In 2010, the
  South Korean Unification Ministry officially declared the Sunshine Policy a
  failure, thus bringing it to an end.
• In
  2011, the supreme leader of North Korea Kim Jong-il died from a heart attack.
  His youngest son Kim Jong-un was announced as his successor. Under Kim Jong-un, North
  Korea has continued to develop nuclear weapons. In 2016,
  Kim Jong-un stated that North Korea would “not use nuclear weapons first
  unless aggressive hostile forces use nuclear weapons to invade on our
  sovereignty.” However, on other occasions, North Korea has threatened
  “preemptive” nuclear attacks against a U.S.-led attack. Under Kim Jong-in, extreme human rights abuses and food insecurity remain major issues in North Korea. 
• Over the last years,
  several incidents have contributed to the growing tensions between South Korea
  and North Korea, including sinking of a South Korean ship caused by a North Korean torpedo, North Korea launching a scientific and technological satellite that reached
  orbit, and North Korea planting planting a mine that went off at
  the Korean Demilitarized Zone, wounding two South Korean soldiers. 
• In 2016, North Korea
  carried out its fifth nuclear test as part of the state’s 68th anniversary
  since its founding. South Korea responded with a plan to assassinate Kim
  Jong-un. In February 2017, Kim
  Jong-nam, the eldest son of Kim Jong-il and half-brother of Kim Jong-un who
  from 1994 to 2001 was considered the heir apparent to his father, died after
  being attacked with a chemical weapon at the Kuala Lumpur International Airport. Kim Myung-yeon, a spokesperson for
  South Korea’s ruling party, described the killing as a “naked example of
  Kim Jong-un’s reign of terror.”

Key Terms

June 15th North–South Joint Declaration

An agreement adopted between leaders of North and South Korea in June 2000 after various diplomatic meetings between the North and the South. As a result of the talks, numerous separated families and relatives from the North and the South had meetings with their family members in Pyongyang and Seoul. Ministerial talks and North-South military working-level talks also followed in the second half of the year. North-South Red Cross talks and the working-level contacts for the North and South economic cooperation also took place.

North Korean famine

A famine that killed somewhere between 240,000 and 3.5 million North Koreans between 1994 and 1998. It stemmed from a variety of factors. Economic mismanagement and the loss of Soviet support caused food production and imports to decline rapidly. A series of floods and droughts exacerbated the crisis. The North Korean government and its centrally planned system proved too inflexible to effectively curtail the disaster.

Korean Demilitarized Zone

A highly militarized strip of land running across the Korean Peninsula. It was established at the end of the Korean War to serve as a buffer zone between the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea) and the Republic of Korea (South Korea). It is a de facto border barrier that divides the Korean Peninsula roughly in half. It was created by agreement between North Korea, China, and the United Nations in 1953.

Sunshine Policy

The foreign policy of South Korea towards North Korea from 1998 to 2008. Since its articulation by South Korean President Kim Dae-jung, the policy resulted in greater political contact between the two states and some historic moments in inter-Korean relations.

Sunshine Policy

In 1998, South Korean President Kim Dae-jung announced the so-called Sunshine Policy towards North Korea.
The main aim of the policy was to soften North Korea’s attitudes towards the South by encouraging interaction and economic assistance. The national security policy had three basic principles: no armed provocation by the North will be tolerated, the South will not attempt to absorb the North in any way, and the South actively seeks cooperation. Despite a naval clash in 1999, in 2000, the first Inter-Korean Summit between Kim Dae-jung and Kim Jong-il took place. As a result, Kim Dae-jung was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. The summit was followed by the reunion of families divided by the Korean War. The same year, the North and South Korean teams marched together at the Sydney Olympics. Trade increased to the point where South Korea became North Korea’s largest trading partner. In 2003, the Kaesong Industrial Region was established to allow South Korean businesses to invest in the North. U.S. President George W. Bush, however, did not support the Sunshine Policy and in 2002 branded North Korea as a member of an Axis of Evil.

The June 15 North-South Joint Declaration

that the two leaders signed during the first South-North summit stated that they would hold the second summit at an appropriate time. It was originally envisaged that the second summit would be held in South Korea, but that did not materialize. South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun walked across the Korean Demilitarized Zone in 2007 and traveled on to Pyongyang for talks with Kim Jong-il. The two sides reaffirmed the spirit of the June 15 Joint Declaration and had discussions on various issues related to realizing the advancement of South-North relations, peace on the Korean Peninsula, common prosperity of the people, and the unification of Korea. South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun and North Korean leader Kim Jong-il signed the peace declaration. The document called for international talks to replace the Armistice which ended the Korean War with a permanent peace treaty.

The first and last page of the June 15 Declaration on display at the Unification Observatory in Paju, South Korea

The declarations states, “In accordance with the noble will of the entire people who yearn for the peaceful reunification of the nation, President Kim Dae-jung of the Republic of Korea and National Defense Commission Chairman Kim Jong-il of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea held a historic meeting and summit talks in Pyongyang from June 13 to 15, 2000.”

In 2008, however, the new president of the South, Lee Myung-bak and his Grand National Party took a different stance to North Korea, and the South Korean government stated that any expansion of the economic cooperation at the Kaesong Industrial Region would only happen if the North resolved the international standoff over its nuclear weapons. Relations again chilled, with North Korea making military moves such as a series of short range ship-to-ship missile tests. South Korea’s response to the nuclear test included signing the Proliferation Security Initiative to prevent the shipment of nuclear materials to North Korea. In November 2010, the South Korean Unification Ministry officially declared the Sunshine Policy a failure, thus bringing the policy to an end.

Kim Jong-un’s Rule

In 2011, the supreme leader of North Korea Kim Jong-il died from a heart attack. His youngest son Kim Jong-un was announced as his successor.
In December 2011, the leading North Korean newspaper Rodong Sinmun announced that Kim Jong-un had been acting as chairman of the Central Military Commission and supreme leader of the country. In 2012, a large rally was held by Korean People’s Army in front of Kumsusan Memorial Palace to honor Kim Jong-un and demonstrate loyalty.

North Korea’s cult of personality around Kim Jong-un was stepped up following his father’s death. 

Under Kim Jong-un, North Korea has continued to develop nuclear weapons. In 2013, Kim Jong-un announced that North Korea will adopt “a new strategic line on carrying out economic construction and building nuclear armed forces simultaneously.” According to several analysts, North Korea sees the nuclear arsenal as vital to deter an attack, but it is unlikely that the country would launch a nuclear war. In 2016, Kim Jong-un stated that North Korea would “not use nuclear weapons first unless aggressive hostile forces use nuclear weapons to invade on our sovereignty.” However, on other occasions, North Korea has threatened “preemptive” nuclear attacks against a U.S.-led attack. As of 2016, the United Nations has enacted five cumulative rounds of sanctions against North Korea for its nuclear program and missile tests.

Human rights violations under the leadership of Kim Jong-il were condemned by the UN General Assembly. Press reports indicate that they are continuing under Kim Jong-un. The 2013 report on the situation of human rights in North Korea by United Nations Special Rapporteur Marzuki Darusman proposed a United Nations commission of inquiry to document the accountability of Kim Jong-un and other individuals in the North Korean government for alleged crimes against humanity. The report of the commission of inquiry was published in 2014 and recommends making him accountable for crimes against humanity at the International Criminal Court.

A 2013 study reported that communicable diseases and malnutrition are responsible for 29% of the total deaths in North Korea. This figure is higher than that of high-income countries and South Korea, but half of the average 57% of all deaths in other low-income countries. Infectious diseases like tuberculosis, malaria, and hepatitis B are considered endemic as a result of the North Korean famine (1994-1998).
The famine had a significant impact on the population growth rate, which declined to 0.9% annually in 2002 and 0.53% in 2014.
In 2006, the World Food Program (WFP) and the Food and Agriculture Organization estimated a requirement of 5.3 to 6.5 million tons of grain in aid when domestic production fulfilled only 3.8 million tons. The country also faces land degradation after forests stripped for agriculture resulted in soil erosion. In 2008, a decade after the worst years of the famine, total production was 3.3 million tons (grain equivalent) compared with a need of 6 million tons. 37 percent of the population was deemed to be insecure in food access. Weather continued to pose challenges every year, but overall food production has grown gradually. In 2014, North Korea had an exceptionally good harvest, 5.08 million tonnes of cereal equivalent, almost sufficient to feed the entire population. While food production has recovered significantly since the hardest years of 1996 and 1997, the recovery is fragile, subject to adverse weather and year-to-year economic shortages. 

North Korea’s GDP per capita has been less than $2,000 in the late 1990s and early 21st century.

Inter-Korean Relations Today

In recent years, several incidents have contributed to the growing tensions between South Korea and North Korea. In 2010, a South Korean ship with a crew of 104 sank in the Yellow Sea. Forty-six individuals died and 58 were rescued. A team of international researchers investigating the incident concluded that the sinking was caused by a North Korean torpedo. North Korea rejected the findings. South Korea agreed with the findings and President Lee Myung-bak declared that Seoul would cut all trade with North Korea as part of measures primarily aimed at striking back at North Korea diplomatically and financially. North Korea denied all such allegations and responded by severing ties between the countries and announced it abrogated the previous non-aggression agreement. The same year, North Korea’s artillery fired at South Korea’s Yeonpyeong island in the Yellow Sea and South Korea returned fire. The town was evacuated and South Korea warned of stern retaliation, with President Lee Myung-bak ordering the destruction of a nearby North Korea missile base if further provocation should occur.

Just two months later, North Korea launched a scientific and technological satellite and it reached orbit. The United States moved warships to the region. In 2013, tensions between North Korea and South Korea, the United States, and Japan escalated following the United Nations Security Council Resolution 2087, which condemned North Korea for the launch of the satellite. The crisis was marked by extreme escalation of rhetoric by the new North Korean administration under Kim Jong-un and actions suggesting imminent nuclear attacks against South Korea, Japan, and the United States.

In 2015, Kim Jong-un, in his New Year’s address to the country, stated that he was willing to resume higher-level talks with the South. However, in August 2015, a mine went off at the Korean Demilitarized Zone, wounding two South Korean soldiers. The South Korean government accused the North of planting the mine, which the North denied. Since then South Korea started propaganda broadcasts to the North. The same month, North Korea fired a shell on the city of Yeoncheon. South Korea launched several artillery rounds in response. Although there were no casualties, it caused the evacuation of an area of the west coast of South Korea and forced others to head for bunkers. The shelling caused both countries to adopt pre-war status, and a talk that was held by high-level officials in the Panmunjeom to relieve tensions. While talks were going on, North Korea deployed over 70 percent of their submarines. Talks, however, concluded when both parties reached an agreement and military tensions were eased.

The Conference Row in the Joint Security Area of the Korean Demilitarized Zone, looking into South Korea from North Korea

When the Korean War ended, the country was devastated, but the division remained. North and South Korea continued a military standoff with periodic clashes. The conflict survived the collapse of the Eastern Bloc of 1989 to 1991. The U.S. maintains a military presence in the South to deter an attack from the North. In 1997, US President Bill Clinton described the division of Korea as the “Cold War’s last divide.”

In 2016, North Korea carried out its fifth nuclear test as part of the state’s 68th anniversary since its founding. South Korea responded with a plan to assassinate Kim Jong-un.

In February 2017, Kim Jong-nam, the eldest son of Kim Jong-il and half-brother of Kim Jong-un who from 1994 to 2001 was considered the heir apparent to his father, died after being attacked by two women in Malaysia with VX nerve agent (a chemical weapon) during his return trip to Macau, where he lived in exile, at the Kuala Lumpur International Airport. Kim Myung-yeon, a spokesperson for South Korea’s ruling party, described the killing as a “naked example of Kim Jong-un’s reign of terror.” The South Korean government accused the North Korean government of being responsible for Kim Jong-nam’s assassination and drew a parallel with the execution of Kim Jong-un’s own uncle and others. The government later held an emergency security council meeting where they condemned the murder of Kim Jong-nam. The acting President of South Korea, Hwang Kyo-ahn said that if the murder of Kim Jong-nam was confirmed to be masterminded by North Korea, it would clearly depict the brutality and inhumanity of the Kim Jong-un regime.

38.3.4: India under Modi

India under Modi, its right-wing, nationalistic Prime Minister, has gone through numerous neoliberal reforms that contribute to its impressive economic growth, pleasing businesspeople and industrialists but widening inequalities between the wealthy and the poor and highlighting the ongoing challenges of poverty, corruption, and gender violence.

Learning Objective

Explain who Narendra Modi is and the status of India in the 21st century

Key Points

• Narendra
  Modi is current Prime Minister of India (March 2017). He is a member of the
  Bharatiya Janata Party and of the Rashtriya
  Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), a right-wing, Hindu nationalist, paramilitary volunteer
  organization. Modi
  was appointed chief minister of Gujarat in 2001. His administration has been
  considered complicit in the 2002 Gujarat riots. In 2012, Modi was cleared of
  complicity in the violence by a Special Investigation Team (SIT) appointed by
  the Supreme Court of India, but the question remains controversial. 
• Modi
  led the BJP in the 2014 general election, which gave the party a majority in
  the parliament. The
  economic policies of Modi’s government focused on privatization and liberalization
  of the economy based on a neoliberal framework. Modi updated India’s
  foreign direct investment policies to allow more foreign investment in several
  industries, including defense and the railways. Other reforms included
  removal of many of the country’s labor laws to make it harder for workers to form
  unions and easier for employers to hire and fire them. These reforms met with
  support from institutions such as the World Bank, but opposition from scholars and unions. 

• In
  2014, Modi introduced the Make in India initiative to encourage foreign
  companies to manufacture products in India with the goal of turning the
  country into a global manufacturing hub. In 2015, he launched a program intended to develop 100 smart cities and the
  Housing for All By 2022 project, which intends to eliminate slums in India by
  building about 20 million affordable homes for India’s urban poor.

• Modi’s
  government reduced the amount of money spent by the government on healthcare
  and launched a New Health Policy, which emphasizes the role of private
  healthcare.
  He also launched the Clean India campaign
  (2014) to eliminate open defecation
  and manual scavenging. As part of the program, the Indian government began
  constructing millions of toilets in rural areas and encouraging people to use
  them.

• In naming his cabinet, Modi renamed the Ministry
  of Environment and Forests the Ministry of Environment, Forests, and Climate
  Change. In the first budget of the government, the money allotted to this
  ministry was reduced by more than 50%. The new ministry also removed or diluted
  a number of laws related to environmental protection.
• Massive corruption, widespread poverty, and violence against girls and women constitute some of the greatest challenges in 21st-century India.
  According to the 2014 revised World Bank
  methodology, India had 179.6 million people below the poverty line, which means
  that with 17.5% of total world’s population, India had 20.6% share of
  world’s poor. Findings
  from the World Economic Forum have repeatedly indicated that India is one of
  the worst countries in the world in terms of gender inequality.

Key Terms

Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh

A right-wing, Hindu nationalist, paramilitary volunteer organization in India widely regarded as the parent organization of the ruling party of India, the Bharatiya Janata Party. Founded in 1925, it is the world’s largest non-governmental organization that claims commitment to selfless service to India.

Bharatiya Janata Party

One of the two major political parties in India, along with the Indian National Congress. As of 2017, it is the country’s largest political party in terms of representation in the national parliament and state assemblies and the world’s largest party in terms of primary membership. It is a right-wing party with close ideological and organizational links to the Hindu nationalist Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh.

2002 Gujarat riots

A three-day period of inter-communal violence in the western Indian state of Gujarat in 2002. Following the initial incident, there were further outbreaks of violence in Ahmedabad for three weeks. Statewide, there were further outbreaks of communal riots against the minority Muslim population for three months.
The Chief Minister of Gujarat at that time, Narendra Modi, has been accused of initiating and condoning the violence as have police and government officials who allegedly directed the rioters and gave them lists of Muslim-owned properties.

Narendra Modi

Narendra Modi (b. 1950) is current Prime Minister of India (March 2017), in office since May 2014. He was the Chief Minister of Gujarat from 2001 to 2014. He is the Member of Parliament for the Varanasi district (Utter Pradesh), a member of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP; one of the two major political parties in India, along with the Indian National Congress), and member of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS),  a right-wing, Hindu nationalist, paramilitary volunteer organization in India widely regarded as the parent organization of the BJP. 

Born to a Gujarati family in Vadnagar, Modi helped his father sell tea as a child and later ran his own stall. He was introduced to the RSS at age eight, beginning a long association with the organization. He left home after graduating from school, partly because of an arranged marriage, which he did not accept. Modi traveled around India for two years and visited a number of religious centers. In 1971 he became a full-time worker for the RSS. During the state of emergency imposed across the country in 1975, Modi was forced to go into hiding. The RSS assigned him to the BJP in 1985 and he held several positions within the party hierarchy until 2001, rising to the rank of general secretary.

India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2015

Modi was also declared winner of the Time magazine reader’s poll for Person of the Year in 2014, a feat which he repeated again in 2016. Forbes Magazine ranked him the 15th Most Powerful Person in the World in 2014 and the 9th Most Powerful Person in the World in 2015 and 2016. In 2015, Modi was one of Time‘s “30 Most Influential People on the Internet” as the second most-followed politician on Twitter and Facebook. In the same year he was ranked fifth on Fortune Magazine‘s first annual list of “World’s Greatest Leaders.”

Modi was appointed chief minister of Gujarat in 2001. His administration has been considered complicit in the 2002 Gujarat riots, a three-day period of inter-communal violence. Following the initial incident, there were further outbreaks of violence in Ahmedabad for three weeks. Statewide, communal riots against the minority Muslim population occurred for three months. According to official figures, the riots resulted in the deaths of 790 Muslims and 254 Hindus. 2,500 people were injured non-fatally and 223 more were reported missing. There were instances of rape, children being burned alive, and widespread looting and destruction of property. Modi has been accused of initiating and condoning the violence as have police and government officials who allegedly directed the rioters and gave them lists of Muslim-owned properties. In 2012, Modi was cleared of complicity in the violence by a Special Investigation Team (SIT) appointed by the Supreme Court of India. The SIT also rejected claims that the state government had not done enough to prevent the riots. The Muslim community reacted with anger and disbelief. In 2013, allegations were made that the SIT had suppressed evidence, but the Supreme Court expressed satisfaction over the SIT’s investigations. While officially classified as a communalist riot, the events have been described as a pogrom by many scholars. Other observers have stated that these events met the legal definition of genocide and called it an instance of state terrorism or ethnic cleansing. 

India Under Modi

Modi led the BJP in the 2014 general election, which gave the party a majority in the parliament, the first time a single party had achieved this since 1984. Credited with engineering a political realignment towards right-wing politics, Modi remains a figure of controversy domestically and internationally over his Hindu nationalist beliefs and his role during the 2002 Gujarat riots, cited as evidence of an exclusionary social agenda.

The economic policies of Modi’s government focused on privatization and liberalization of the economy based on a neoliberal framework. Modi updated India’s foreign direct investment policies to allow more foreign investment in several industries, including defense and the railways. Other reforms included removing many of the country’s labor laws to make it harder for workers to form unions and easier for employers to hire and fire them. These reforms met with support from institutions such as the World Bank, but opposition from scholars within the country. The labor laws also drew strong opposition from unions. The funds dedicated to poverty reduction programs and social welfare measures were greatly decreased by the Modi administration. The government also lowered corporate taxes, abolished the wealth tax, reduced customs duties on gold and jewelry, and increased sales taxes. 

In 2014, Modi introduced the Make in India initiative to encourage foreign companies to manufacture products in India, with the goal of turning the country into a global manufacturing hub. Supporters of economic liberalization supported the initiative, while critics argued it would allow foreign corporations to capture a greater share of the Indian market. To enable the construction of private industrial corridors, the Modi administration passed a land-reform bill that allowed it to acquire private agricultural land without conducting social impact assessment and without the consent of the farmers who owned it. The bill was passed via an executive order after it faced opposition in parliament, but was eventually allowed to lapse. In 2015, Modi launched a program intended to develop 100 smart cities, which is expected to bring information technology companies an extra benefit of ₹20 billion (US$300 million). Modi also launched the Housing for All By 2022 project, which intends to eliminate slums in India by building about 20 million affordable homes for India’s urban poor.

Modi’s government reduced the amount of money spent by the government on healthcare and launched a New Health Policy, which emphasizes the role of private healthcare. This represented a shift away from the policy of the previous Congress government, which had supported programs to assist public health goals, including reducing child and maternal mortality rates. Modi also launched the Clean India campaign (2014) to eliminate open defecation and manual scavenging. As part of the program, the Indian government began constructing millions of toilets in rural areas and encouraging people to use them. The government also announced plans to build new sewage treatment plants.

India Exports by Product (2014) from Harvard Atlas of Economic Complexity

Modi’s reformist approach has made him very popular with the public.
At the end of his first year in office, he received an overall approval rating of 87% in a Pew Research poll, with 68% of people rating him “very favorably” and 93% approving of his government. At the end of his second year in office, an updated Pew Research poll showed Modi continued to receive high overall approval ratings of 81%, with 57% of those polled rating him “very favorably.”

Notable Indian exports include refined petroleum oils, diamonds, gold, jewelry of precious metal, rice, and cars.

In naming his cabinet, Modi renamed the Ministry of Environment and Forests the Ministry of Environment, Forests, and Climate Change. In the first budget of the government, the money allotted to this ministry was reduced by more than 50%. The new ministry also removed or diluted a number of laws related to environmental protection. These included no longer requiring clearance from the National Board for Wildlife for projects close to protected areas and allowing certain projects to proceed before environmental clearance was received. Modi also relaxed or abolished a number of other environmental regulations, particularly those related to industrial activity. A government committee stated that the existing system only created corruption and that the government should instead rely on the owners of industries to voluntarily inform the government about the pollution they were creating. In addition, Modi lifted a moratorium on new industrial activity in the most polluted areas. The changes were welcomed by businesspeople, but criticized by environmentalists.

Challenges in 21st-Century India

Corruption
has been one of the pervasive problems affecting India.
In 2015, India was ranked 76th out of 168 countries in Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index. The largest contributors to the corruption are social welfare programs and social spending schemes enacted by the Indian government. The media have widely published allegations of corrupt Indian citizens stashing millions of rupees in Swiss banks. Swiss authorities, however, denied these allegations, which were subsequently proven in 2015-2016. The Indian media is mainly owned by corrupt politicians and industrialists who also play a major role in most of these scams, misleading public with wrong information and using media for mud-slinging their political and business opponents. The causes of corruption in India include excessive regulations; complicated tax and licensing systems; numerous government departments, each with opaque bureaucracy and discretionary powers; a monopoly of government-controlled institutions on certain goods and services, and the lack of transparent laws and processes.

Poverty in India continues to be a critical issue, despite having one of the fastest growing economies in the world. According to Global Wealth Report 2016 compiled by Credit Suisse Research Institute, India is the second most unequal country in the world with the top one percent of the population owning nearly 60% of the total wealth. Another urgent problem facing India’s economy is the sharp and growing regional variations among its different states and territories in terms of poverty, availability of infrastructure, and socio-economic development. Six low-income states – Assam, Chhattisgarh, Nagaland, Madhya Pradesh, Odisha, and Uttar Pradesh – are home to more than one-third of India’s population. Severe disparities exist among states in terms of income, literacy rates, life expectancy, and living conditions. Following Modi’s liberalization, the more advanced states have been better placed to benefit from reforms, with well-developed infrastructure and an educated and skilled workforce that attract the manufacturing and service sectors. There is a continuing debate on whether India’s economic expansion has been pro-poor or anti-poor. Studies suggest that the economic growth has been pro-poor and has reduced poverty in India although the statistics continue to paint a dire picture.
According to the 2014 revised World Bank methodology, India had 179.6 million people below the poverty line, which means that with 17.5% of total world’s population, India had 20.6% share of world’s poor.

Women in India continue to face numerous problems, including violent victimization through rape, acid throwing, dowry killings, marital rape, and the forced prostitution of young girls. In 2012, the Thomson Reuters Foundation ranked India as the worst G20 country in which to be a woman.
Although this report has faced criticism for inaccuracy,
findings from the World Economic Forum have repeatedly indicated that India is one of the worst countries in the world in terms of gender inequality.

38.4: Africa in the 21st Century

38.4.1: Sudan and the Conflict in Darfur

A major armed conflict in the Darfur region of Sudan began in 2003 when the Sudan Liberation Movement and the Justice and Equality Movement rebel groups accused the government of Sudan of oppressing Darfur’s non-Arab population, leading to the massive humanitarian crisis in a country ravaged by civil wars for decades.

Learning Objective

Discuss the controversy over the events in Darfur

Key Points

• The
  War in Darfur is a major armed conflict in the Darfur region of
  Sudan that began in 2003 when the Sudan Liberation Movement and the Justice and Equality Movement rebel
  groups began fighting the government of Sudan, which they accused of oppressing
  Darfur’s non-Arab population. Other factors at the roots of the event were conflicts between semi-nomadic livestock herders and those who practice
  sedentary agriculture, water access, and the Second Sudanese Civil War.
• In
  response, the government mounted a campaign of aerial bombardment supporting
  ground attacks by an Arab militia, the Janjaweed. The government-supported
  Janjaweed were accused of committing major human rights violations, including
  mass killing, looting, and systematic rape of the non-Arab population of
  Darfur. They have frequently burned down whole villages, driving the surviving
  inhabitants to flee to refugee camps, mainly in Darfur and Chad. 
• The Government of
  Sudan and the SLM of Minni Minnawi signed a Darfur Peace
  Agreement in 2006, but since only one rebel group subscribed to the
  agreement, the conflict continued. The 2011 Darfur Peace Agreement, also known as the Doha Agreement, was
  signed between the government of Sudan and the Liberation and Justice Movement. Although the conflict is considered resolved, civil conflicts in Sudan continue. 
• Immediately after the
  Janjaweed entered the conflict, rapes of women and young girls were reported at a
  staggering rate. Multiple
  casualty estimates have been published since the war began, ranging from
  roughly 10,000 civilians (Sudan government) to hundreds of thousands.
  In
  2004, United States
  Secretary of State Colin Powell declared the Darfur conflict to be genocide although experts continue to disagree over whether the war crimes committed during the conflict fall into that category.

• International
  attention to the Darfur conflict largely began with reports of war crimes by
  Amnesty International and the International Crisis Group in 2003. However,
  widespread media coverage did not start until the outgoing United Nations
  Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator for Sudan, Mukesh Kapila, called Darfur
  the “world’s greatest humanitarian crisis” in 2004. In
  2008, the International Criminal Court filed ten charges of war crimes against Sudan’s President Omar al-Bashir. 

• In
  2011, a referendum was held to determine whether South Sudan should become an
  independent country and separate from Sudan. South Sudan, with the majority of the population adhering either to
  indigenous religions or Christianity, formally became independent from Sudan
  (predominantly Muslim). The country continues to be ravaged by civil wars, is the least developed country in the world, and faces a massive humanitarian crisis.  

Key Terms

War in Darfur

A major armed conflict in the Darfur region of Sudan that began in 2003 when the Sudan Liberation Movement and the Justice and Equality Movement rebel groups began fighting the government of Sudan, which they accused of oppressing Darfur’s non-Arab population. As of 2017, the war is nominally resolved. 

Second Sudanese Civil War

A conflict from 1983 to 2005 between the central Sudanese government and the Sudan People’s Liberation Army. Although it originated in southern Sudan, the civil war spread to the Nuba mountains and Blue Nile. It lasted for 22 years and is one of the longest civil wars on record. The war resulted in the independence of South Sudan six years after it ended.

South Sudanese Civil War

A conflict in South Sudan between forces of the government and opposition forces. In 2013, President Kiir accused his former deputy Riek Machar and ten others of attempting a coup d’état. Machar denied trying to start a coup and fled. Fighting broke out, igniting the civil war. Ugandan troops were deployed to fight alongside South Sudanese government. The United Nations has peacekeepers in the country as part of the United Nations Mission in South Sudan.

Janjaweed

A militia that operate in western Sudan and eastern Chad. Using the United Nations definition, it comprised Sudanese Arab tribes, the core of whom are from the Abbala (camel herder) background with significant recruitment from the Baggara (cattle herder) people. This UN definition may not necessarily be accurate, as instances of members from other tribes have been noted.

War in Darfur

The War in Darfur is a major armed conflict in the Darfur region of Sudan that began in 2003 when the Sudan Liberation Movement (SLM or Sudan Liberation Army – SLA) and the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) rebel groups began fighting the government of Sudan, which they accused of oppressing Darfur’s non-Arab population.
Several other factors have been identified at the roots of the present conflict. One involves the land disputes between semi-nomadic livestock herders and those who practice sedentary agriculture. Water access has also been a major source of the conflict. The Darfur crisis is also related to the Second Sudanese Civil War, raged in southern Sudan for decades between the northern, Arab-dominated government and Christian and animist black southerners. 

The region became the scene of a rebellion in 2003 when the JEM and the SLM accused the government of oppressing non-Arabs in favor of Arabs. The government was also accused of neglecting the Darfur region. In response, it mounted a campaign of aerial bombardment supporting ground attacks by an Arab militia, the Janjaweed. The government-supported Janjaweed were accused of committing major human rights violations, including mass killing, looting, and systematic rape of the non-Arab population of Darfur. They have frequently burned down whole villages, driving the surviving inhabitants to flee to refugee camps, mainly in Darfur and Chad. By mid-2004, 50,000 to 80,000 people had been killed and at least a million driven from their homes, causing a major humanitarian crisis in the region.

The Government of Sudan and the SLM of Minni Minnawi signed a Darfur Peace Agreement in 2006. Only one rebel group, the SLM, subscribed to the agreement. The JEM rejected it, resulting in a continuation of the conflict. The agreement included provisions for wealth sharing and power sharing and established a Transitional Darfur Regional Authority to help administer Darfur until a referendum could take place on the future of the region. The leader of the SLM, Minni Minnawi, was appointed Senior Assistant to the President of Sudan and Chairman of the transitional authority in 2007.

In 2010, representatives of the Liberation and Justice Movement (LJM), an umbrella organization of ten rebel groups formed that year, started a fresh round of talks with the Sudanese Government in Doha, Qatar. A new rebel group, the Sudanese Alliance Resistance Forces in Darfur, was formed and the JEM planned further talks. These talks ended without a new peace agreement, but participants agreed on basic principles, including a regional authority and a referendum on autonomy for Darfur. In 2011, the leader of the LJM, Tijani Sese, stated that the movement had accepted the core proposals of the Darfur peace document proposed by the joint-mediators in Doha.
The 2011 Darfur Peace Agreement, also known as the Doha Agreement, was signed between the government of Sudan and the LJM. This agreement established a compensation fund for victims of the Darfur conflict, allowed the President of Sudan to appoint a vice president from Darfur, and established a new Darfur Regional Authority to oversee the region until a referendum can determine its permanent status within the Republic of Sudan. The agreement also provided for power sharing at the national level.

Map of Sudan (Darfur on the left), 2011

One side of the conflict is composed mainly of Sudanese military and police and the Janjaweed, a Sudanese militia group recruited among Arabized indigenous Africans and a small number of Bedouin of the northern Rizeigat. The majority of other Arab groups in Darfur remained uninvolved. The other side is made up of rebel groups.

Social Impact of War

Immediately after the Janjaweed entered the conflict, the rape of women and young girls, often by multiple militiamen and throughout entire nights, was reported at a staggering rate. Children as young as 2 years old were victims, while mothers were assaulted in front of their children. Young women were attacked so violently that they were unable to walk following the attack. Non-Arab individuals were reportedly raped by Janjaweed militiamen as a result of the Sudanese government’s goal to completely eliminate black Africans and non-Arabs from Darfur. 

Multiple casualty estimates have been published since the war began, ranging from roughly 10,000 civilians (Sudan government) to hundreds of thousands. In 2005, the UN’s Emergency Relief Coordinator Jan Egeland estimated that 10,000 were dying each month, excluding deaths due to ethnic violence. An estimated 2.7 million people had been displaced from their homes, mostly seeking refuge in camps in Darfur’s major towns. In 2010, the Center for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters published an article in a special issue of The Lancet. The article, entitled Patterns of mortality rates in Darfur conflict, estimated with 95% confidence that the excess number of deaths is between 178,258 and 461,520 (with a mean of 298,271), with 80% of these due to disease.

In 2004, in testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee,  United States Secretary of State Colin Powell declared the Darfur conflict to be genocide. However, in 2005, an International Commission of Inquiry on Darfur, authorized by UN Security Council Resolution 1564 of 2004, issued a report stating that “the Government of the Sudan has not pursued a policy of genocide.” Nevertheless, the Commission cautioned, “The conclusion that no genocidal policy has been pursued and implemented in Darfur by the Government authorities, directly or through the militias under their control, should not be taken in any way as detracting from the gravity of the crimes perpetrated in that region. International offences such as the crimes against humanity and war crimes that have been committed in Darfur may be no less serious and heinous than genocide.” In 2007, the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued arrest warrants against the former Minister of State for the Interior, Ahmad Harun, and a Janjaweed militia leader, Ali Kushayb, for crimes against humanity and war crimes. In 2008, the ICC filed ten charges of war crimes against Sudan’s President Omar al-Bashir, three counts of genocide, five of crimes against humanity, and two of murder. Prosecutors claimed that al-Bashir “masterminded and implemented a plan to destroy in substantial part” three tribal groups in Darfur because of their ethnicity. In 2009, the ICC issued a warrant for al-Bashir’s arrest for crimes against humanity and war crimes, but not genocide. This is the first warrant issued by the ICC against a sitting head of state.

Internally displaced persons’ camp providing shelters to the victims of the Darfur conflict. 

Estimates of the number of human casualties range up to several hundred thousand dead, from either combat or starvation and disease. Mass displacements and coercive migrations forced millions into refugee camps or across the border, creating a humanitarian crisis.

International Response

International attention to the Darfur conflict largely began with reports of war crimes by Amnesty International and the International Crisis Group in 2003. However, widespread media coverage did not start until the outgoing United Nations Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator for Sudan, Mukesh Kapila, called Darfur the “world’s greatest humanitarian crisis” in 2004. Organizations such as STAND: A Student Anti-Genocide Coalition, later under the umbrella of Genocide Intervention Network, and the Save Darfur Coalition emerged and became particularly active in the areas of engaging the United States Congress and President.

It is expected that al-Bashir will not face trial until he is apprehended in a nation which accepts ICC jurisdiction, as Sudan is not a party to the Rome Statute, which it signed but did not ratify. The Sudanese government has announced that the Presidential plane would be accompanied by jet fighters. However, the Arab League announced solidarity with al-Bashir. Since the warrant, he has visited Qatar and Egypt. The African Union also condemned the charges. Some analysts argue that the ICC indictment is counterproductive and harms the peace process. Only days after the ICC indictment, al-Bashir expelled 13 international aid organizations from Darfur and disbanded three domestic aid organizations. In the aftermath of the expulsions, conditions in the displaced camps deteriorated.

South Sudan

The Second Sudanese Civil War was a conflict from 1983 to 2005 between the central Sudanese government and the Sudan People’s Liberation Army. It was largely a continuation of the First Sudanese Civil War of 1955 to 1972. It is one of the longest civil wars on record (22 years). A peace agreement was signed in 2005 and one of its promises was the autonomy of the south within the next six years, followed by a referendum on independence.

In 2011, a referendum was held to determine whether South Sudan should become an independent country and separate from Sudan. 98.83% of the population voted for independence. South Sudan, with the majority of population adhering either to indigenous religions or Christianity, formally became independent from Sudan (predominantly Muslim), although certain disputes still remained, including the division of oil revenues, as 75% of all the former Sudan’s oil reserves are in South Sudan. South Sudan continues to be ravaged by civil wars, with tens of thousands displaced. The fighters accuse the government of plotting to stay in power indefinitely, not fairly representing and supporting all tribal groups while neglecting development in rural areas. Inter-ethnic warfare that in some cases predates the war of independence is widespread.

In 2013, a political power struggle broke out between President Kiir and his former deputy Riek Machar, as the president accused Machar and ten others of attempting a coup d’état. Fighting broke out, igniting the South Sudanese Civil War. Up to 300,000 people are estimated to have been killed in the war, including in massacres. Although both men have supporters from across South Sudan’s ethnic divides, subsequent fighting has been communal, with rebels targeting members of Kiir’s Dinka ethnic group and government soldiers attacking Nuers. About 3 million people have been displaced in a country of 12 million, with about 2 million internally displaced and about 1 million fleeing to neighboring countries, especially Kenya, Sudan, and Uganda.

Ravaged by conflicts, South Sudan has the least developed economy in the world and
is acknowledged to have some of the worst health indicators in the world. About half the population does not have access to an improved water source, defined as a protected well, standpipe, or a handpump within 1 km. In 2017, South Sudan and the United Nations declared a famine in parts of the country, with the warning that it could spread rapidly without further action. The UN World Food Program notes that 40% of the population of South Sudan, 4.9 million people, need food urgently.

38.4.2: Nigeria and Boko Haram

Boko Haram is an Islamic extremist group based in northeastern Nigeria, which pledged its allegiance to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. Since 2009 it has been trying to overthrow the Nigerian government to establish an Islamic state. 

Learning Objective

Account for the rise of Boko Haram in Nigeria

Key Points

• Boko Haram is an Islamic extremist group
  based in northeastern Nigeria, also active in Chad, Niger, and northern
  Cameroon. Mohammed Yusuf founded it in
  2002 when he
  established a religious complex and school that attracted poor Muslim families
  from across Nigeria and neighboring countries. The center had the political
  goal of creating an Islamic state and became a recruiting ground for jihadists.
  By denouncing the police and state corruption, Yusuf attracted followers from
  unemployed youths.
• The
  government repeatedly ignored warnings about the increasingly militant
  character of the organization. Yusuf’s arrest elevated him to hero status. Stephen Davis, a former Anglican clergyman who has negotiated with Boko
  Haram many times, blames local Nigerian politicians who support local bandits
  to make life difficult for their political opponents. In
  particular, Davis has blamed the former governor of Borno State, Ali Modu
  Sheriff, who initially supported Boko Haram.
• Boko
  Haram seeks the establishment of an Islamic state in Nigeria. It opposes the
  Westernization of Nigerian society and the concentration of the wealth of the
  country among members of a small political elite. The
  sharia law imposed by local authorities may have promoted links between
  Boko Haram and political leaders. The group had alleged links to al-Qaeda, but
  in March 2015, it announced its allegiance to the Islamic State of Iraq and the
  Levant.
• Boko Haram conducted its operations more or less
  peacefully during the first seven years of its existence. That changed in 2009
  when the Nigerian government launched an investigation into the group’s
  activities following reports that its members were arming themselves. Since then, Boko Haram has been attempting to overthrow the Nigerian government through various militant, including terrorist, strategies. 
• Boko
  Haram began to target schools in 2010, killing hundreds of students by 2014. A
  spokesperson for the group said such attacks would continue as long as the
  Nigerian government continued to interfere with traditional Islamic education.
  Boko Haram has also been known to kidnap girls, who it believes should not be
  educated, and use them as cooks or sex slaves. In
  2014, Boko Haram kidnapped 276 female students from the Government Secondary
  School in the town of Chibok in Borno. As of January 2017, 195 of the 276 girls were still in
  captivity. 
• The Nigerian government’s response has revealed the political and military weaknesses of the state apparatus and as of March 2017, Boko Haram continues its terrorist activities. While human rights abuses committed by Boko Haram are widely known, the conflict has also seen numerous human rights
  abuses conducted by the Nigerian security forces in an effort to control the
  violence, as well as their encouragement of the formation of numerous vigilante
  groups.

Key Terms

Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant

A Salafi jihadist extremist militant groups led by and
mainly composed of Sunni Arabs from Syria and Iraq. In 2014, the group
proclaimed itself a caliphate, with religious, political, and military
authority over all Muslims worldwide. As of March 2015, it had control over
territory occupied by ten million people in Syria and Iraq and nominal
control over small areas of Libya, Nigeria, and Afghanistan. It also operates
or has affiliates in other parts of the world, including North Africa and South
Asia.

al-Qaeda

A militant Sunni Islamist multi-national organization founded
in 1988 by Osama bin Laden, Abdullah Azzam, and several other
Arab volunteers who fought against the Soviet invasion of
Afghanistan in the 1980s. It has been widely designated as a terrorist
group.

Boko Haram

An Islamic extremist group based in northeastern Nigeria, also active in Chad, Niger and northern Cameroon. The group had alleged links to al-Qaeda, but in March 2015, it announced its allegiance to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). It was ranked as the world’s deadliest terror group by the Global Terrorism Index in 2015.

sharia

The religious law forming part of the
Islamic tradition. It is derived from the religious precepts of
Islam, particularly the Quran and the Hadith. In Arabic, the term refers
to God’s divine law and is contrasted with fiqh, which refers to its
scholarly interpretations. Its application in modern times
has been a subject of dispute between Muslim traditionalists and reformists.

Origins of Boko Haram

Boko Haram is an Islamic extremist group based in northeastern Nigeria, also active in Chad, Niger, and northern Cameroon.
Mohammed Yusuf founded the sect that became known as Boko Haram in 2002 in Maiduguri, the capital of the northeastern state of Borno. He established a religious complex and school that attracted poor Muslim families from across Nigeria and neighboring countries. The center had the political goal of creating an Islamic state and became a recruiting ground for jihadists. By denouncing the police and state corruption, Yusuf attracted followers from unemployed youths. It has been speculated that Yusuf founded Boko Haram because he saw an opportunity to exploit public outrage at government corruption by linking it to Western influence.

The government repeatedly ignored warnings about the increasingly militant character of the organization. The Council of Ulama advised the government and the Nigerian Television Authority not to broadcast Yusuf’s preaching, but their warnings were ignored. Yusuf’s arrest elevated him to hero status. Borno’s Deputy Governor Alhaji Dibal has reportedly claimed that al-Qaeda had ties with Boko Haram, but broke them when they decided that Yusuf was an unreliable person. Stephen Davis, a former Anglican clergyman who has negotiated with Boko Haram many times, blames local Nigerian politicians who support local bandits to make life difficult for their political opponents. In particular, Davis has blamed the former governor of Borno State, Ali Modu Sheriff, who initially supported Boko Haram but no longer needed them after the 2007 elections, when the group became much more powerful.

Boko Haram seeks the establishment of an Islamic state in Nigeria. It opposes the Westernization of Nigerian society and the concentration of the wealth of the country among members of a small political elite, mainly in the Christian south of the country. Nigeria is Africa’s biggest economy, but 60% of its population of 173 million (2013) live in dire poverty. The sharia law imposed by local authorities, beginning with Zamfara in 2000 and covering 12 northern states by late 2002, may have promoted links between Boko Haram and political leaders.

The group had alleged links to al-Qaeda, but in March 2015, announced its allegiance to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL or ISIS) and since then
publicly uses the name “ISIL-West Africa Province” or its variants.

Boko Haram Insurgency

Boko Haram conducted its operations more or less peacefully during the first seven years of its existence. That changed in 2009 when the Nigerian government launched an investigation into the group’s activities following reports that its members were arming themselves. Prior to that, the government reportedly repeatedly ignored warnings about the increasingly militant character of the organization, including those from a military officer. When the government came into action, several members of the group were arrested in Bauchi, sparking deadly clashes with Nigerian security forces that led to the deaths of an estimated 700 people. During the conflict with the security forces, Boko Haram fighters reportedly “used fuel-laden motorcycles” and “bows with poison arrows” to attack a police station. The group’s founder and then-leader Mohammed Yusuf was killed during this time while still in police custody. After Yusuf’s killing, Abubakar Shekau became the leader and held this
position until August 2016, when he was succeeded by Abu Musab al-Barnawi,  the first surviving son of Mohammed Yusuf.
The group suffered a split in 2016 and Shekau and his supporters continued to operate independently.

Wounded people following a bomb attack by Boko Haram in Nyanya, in April 2014

After its founding in 2002, Boko Haram’s increasing radicalization led to a violent uprising in 2009. Its unexpected resurgence following a mass prison break in 2010 was accompanied by increasingly sophisticated attacks, initially against soft targets, and progressed in 2011 to include suicide bombings. The government’s establishment of a state of emergency in 2012, extended in the following year to cover the entire northeast of Nigeria, led to an increase in both security force abuses and militant attacks.

The photograph shows two bleeding wounded men on the ground.

After the killing of Yusuf, the group carried out its first terrorist attack in Borno in 2010, which resulted in the killing of four people. Since then, the violence has only escalated in terms of both frequency and intensity. In 2010, a Bauchi prison break freed more than 700 Boko Haram militants, replenishing their force. In 2011, a few hours after Goodluck Jonathan was sworn in as President of Nigeria, several bombings purportedly by Boko Haram killed 15 and injured 55. The same year, Boko Haram claimed to have conducted the Abuja police headquarters bombing, the first known suicide attack in Nigeria. Two months later the United Nations building in Abuja was bombed, signifying the first time that Boko Haram attacked an international organization. By early 2012, the group was responsible for over 900 deaths. In 2013, Nigerian government forces launched an offensive in the Borno region in an attempt to dislodge Boko Haram fighters after a state of emergency was called. The offensive was initially successful but eventually failed. 

Chibok Schoolgirls Kidnapping

Boko Haram began to target schools in 2010, killing hundreds of students by 2014. A spokesperson for the group said such attacks would continue as long as the Nigerian government continued to interfere with traditional Islamic education. Boko Haram has also been known to kidnap girls, who it believes should not be educated, and use them as cooks or sex slaves.

In 2014, Boko Haram kidnapped 276 female students from the Government Secondary School in the town of Chibok in Borno. Fifty-seven of the schoolgirls managed to escape over the next few months and some have described their capture in appearances at international human rights conferences. A child born to one of the girls and believed by medical personnel to be about 20 months old also was released, according to the Nigerian president’s office. Newspaper reports have suggested that Boko Haram was hoping to use the girls as a negotiating pawns in exchange for some of their commanders in jail. In 2016, one of the missing girls, Amina Ali, was found. She claimed that the remaining girls were still there, but that six had died.
As of January 2017, 195 of the 276 girls were still in captivity. Furthermore, thousands of other children have disappeared in the nearby regions. Despite the high-profile campaign #BringBackOurGirls, international efforts to free the kidnapped girls have failed. 

Parents of some of the victims of the 2014 Chibok kidnapping mourn their losses

Parents and others took to social media to complain about the government’s perceived slow and inadequate response. The news caused international outrage against Boko Haram and the Nigerian government. On April 30 and May 1, 2014 protests demanding greater government action were held in several Nigerian cities. Most parents, however, were afraid to speak publicly for fear their daughters would be targeted for reprisal.

The photograph shows three men in a crowd crying and praying.

Government’s Response

The Nigerian military is, in the words of a former British military attaché speaking in 2014, “a shadow of what it’s reputed to have once been.” They are short of basic equipment, morale is said to be low, and senior officers are alleged to be skimming military procurement budget funds intended to pay for the standard issue equipment of soldiers. In 2013, the Nigerian military shut down mobile phone coverage in the three northeastern states to disrupt the Boko Haram’s communication and ability to detonate improvised explosive devices (IEDs). The shutdown was successful from a military-tactical point of view but it angered citizens in the region and engendered negative opinions toward the state and new emergency policies. While citizens and organizations developed various coping and circumventing strategies, Boko Haram evolved from an open network model of insurgency to a closed centralized system, shifting the center of its operations to the Sambisa Forest. This fundamentally changed the dynamics of the conflict.

In mid-2014, Nigeria was estimated to have had the highest number of terrorist killings in the world over the past year, 3477 killed in 146 attacks. The governor of Borno, Kashim Shettima noted in 2014: “Boko Haram are better armed and are better motivated than our own troops. Given the present state of affairs, it is absolutely impossible for us to defeat Boko Haram.”

In 2015, it was reported that Nigeria had employed hundreds of mercenaries from South Africa and the former Soviet Union to assist in making gains against Boko Haram. U.S. efforts to train and share intelligence with regional military forces is credited with helping to push back against Boko Haram, but officials warn that the group remains a grave threat. As of March 2017, Boko Haram continues suicide bombings and other terrorist strategies.

The conflict has also seen numerous human rights abuses conducted by the Nigerian security forces in an effort to control the violence as well as their encouragement of the formation of numerous vigilante groups. Amnesty International accused the Nigerian government of human rights abuses after 950 suspected Boko Haram militants died in detention facilities run by Nigeria’s military Joint Task Force in 2013. Furthermore, the Nigerian government has been accused of incompetence and supplying misinformation about events in more remote areas. 

Human Rights Watch has also reported that Boko Haram uses child soldiers, including 12-year-olds. According to an anonymous source working on peace talks with the group, up to 40 percent of the fighters in the group are underage. The group has forcibly converted non-Muslims to Islam.

38.4.3: Somalia’s Challenges

Somalia has been ravaged by the ongoing civil war, political instability, and droughts and famines. This has made it one of the least developed and most fragile states in the world, where most residents—particularly girls and women—are constantly at a risk of losing health or life. 

Learning Objective

Analyze why Somalia is often considered a failed state

Key Points

• Somalia
  is a country located in the Horn of Africa, with an estimated population of
  12.3 million. The
  Supreme Revolutionary Council seized power in 1969 and established the Somali
  Democratic Republic. Led by Mohamed Siad Barre, the government collapsed in
  1991 as the Somali Civil War broke out. During this period, due to the absence of a
  central government, Somalia was a failed state. This term refers to a political
  body that has disintegrated to a point where basic conditions and
  responsibilities of a sovereign government no longer function properly. 
• The
  early 2000s saw the creation of fledgling interim federal administrations. The
  Transitional National Government (TNG) was established in 2000, followed by the
  formation of the Transitional Federal Government (TFG) in 2004, which
  reestablished national institutions such as the military. In 2006, the TFG,
  assisted by Ethiopian troops, assumed control of most of the nation’s southern
  conflict zones from the newly formed Islamic Courts Union (ICU) . This Islamist organization assumed control of much of the southern
  part of the country and promptly imposed sharia law.

• Following
  this defeat, the ICU splintered into several different factions. Some of the
  more radical elements, including Al-Shabaab, regrouped to continue their
  insurgency against the TFG and oppose the Ethiopian military’s presence in
  Somalia.  By
  mid-2012, the insurgents lost most of the territory that they had seized.

• In 2011–2012, a political process providing benchmarks for the establishment of
  permanent democratic institutions was launched. Within this administrative
  framework a new provisional constitution was passed in 2012, reforming Somalia as a federation. Following the end of the TFG’s interim mandate, the
  Federal Government of Somalia, the first permanent central government in the
  country since the start of the civil war, was formed and a period of
  reconstruction began. 

• By
  2014, international stakeholders and analysts
  have begun to describe Somalia as a fragile state making some
  progress towards stability. A fragile state is a low-income country
  characterized by weak state capacity and/or weak state legitimacy, leaving
  citizens vulnerable to a range of shocks.
  As
  the war continues, the country is facing a plethora of challenges
  caused not only by the decades of fighting but also by hostile environmental conditions. 

• According
  to the Central Bank of Somalia, about 80% of the population is nomadic or
  semi-nomadic pastoralists. The UN notes
  that extreme “inequalities across different social groups” are
  widening and continue to be “a major driver of conflict.” Droughts
  and resulting famines continue to ravage the country. Somalia is also consistently ranked as one of the worst places in the world to live for a woman. 

Key Terms

Transitional Federal Government

The internationally recognized government of the Republic of Somalia until August 2012, when its tenure officially ended and the Federal Government of Somalia was inaugurated. It was established as one of the Transitional Federal Institutions (TFIs) of government as defined in the Transitional Federal Charter (TFC) adopted in 2004 by the Transitional Federal Parliament (TFP).

Al-Shabaab

A Salafist jihadist fundamentalist group based in East Africa. In 2012, it pledged allegiance to the militant Islamist organization Al-Qaeda. In February of the year, some of the group’s leaders quarreled with Al-Qaeda over the union and quickly lost ground.
The group describes itself as waging jihad against “enemies of Islam,” and is engaged in combat against the Federal Government of Somalia and the African Union Mission to Somalia (AMISOM).

Somali Civil War

An ongoing civil war taking place in Somalia that grew out of resistance to the Siad Barre regime during the 1980s. By 1988–90, the Somali Armed Forces began engaging various armed rebel groups, including the Somali Salvation Democratic Front in the northeast, the Somali National Movement in the northwest, and the United Somali Congress in the south. The clan-based armed opposition groups eventually managed to overthrow the Barre government in 1991, but the war continues.

failed state

A political body that has disintegrated to a point where basic conditions and responsibilities of a sovereign government no longer function properly. The Fund for Peace notes the following characteristics: loss of control of its territory or of the monopoly on the legitimate use of physical force therein; erosion of legitimate authority to make collective decisions; inability to provide public services; and inability to interact with other states as a full member of the international community.

Islamic Courts Union

A group of sharia courts that united themselves to form a rival administration to the Transitional Federal Government (TFG) of Somalia, with Sharif Sheikh Ahmed as their head. Western media often refer to the group as Somali Islamists.

fragile state

A low-income country characterized by weak state capacity and/or weak state legitimacy, leaving citizens vulnerable to a range of shocks.

Somalia: Background

Somalia is a country located in the Horn of Africa, with an estimated population of 12.3 million. Around 85% of its residents are ethnic Somalis and the majority are Muslim. In antiquity, Somalia was an important commercial center and during the Middle Ages, several powerful Somali empires dominated the regional trade. In the late 19th century, the British and Italian empires gained control of parts of the coast and established the colonies of British Somaliland and Italian Somaliland. Italy acquired full control of the northeastern, central, and southern parts of the area. Italian occupation lasted until 1941, yielding to British military administration. British Somaliland would remain a protectorate, while Italian Somaliland became a United Nations Trusteeship under Italian administration in 1949. In 1960, the two regions united to form the independent Somali Republic under a civilian government.

The Supreme Revolutionary Council seized power in 1969 and established the Somali Democratic Republic. Led by Mohamed Siad Barre, the government collapsed in 1991 as the Somali Civil War broke out. Various armed factions began competing for influence in the power vacuum. During this period, due to the absence of a central government, Somalia was a failed state. The term
refers to a political body that has disintegrated to a point where basic conditions and responsibilities of a sovereign government no longer function properly.
Common characteristics of a failed state include a central government so weak or ineffective that it is unable to raise taxes or other support and has little practical control over much of its territory (hence there is a non-provision of public services). As a result, widespread corruption and criminality, the intervention of non-state actors, the involuntary movement of populations, and sharp economic decline can occur. In the 1990s, Somalis returned to customary and religious law in most regions. Some autonomous regions, including the Somaliland and Puntland, emerged.

Path to Central Government  

The early 2000s saw the creation of fledgling interim federal administrations. The Transitional National Government (TNG) was established in 2000, followed by the formation of the Transitional Federal Government (TFG) in 2004, which reestablished national institutions such as the military. In 2006, the TFG, assisted by Ethiopian troops, assumed control of most of the nation’s southern conflict zones from the newly formed Islamic Courts Union (ICU), which subsequently splintered into more radical groups.
The ICU is an Islamist organization, which assumed control of much of the southern part of the country and promptly imposed sharia law.

Following this defeat, the ICU splintered into several different factions. Some of the more radical elements, including Al-Shabaab, regrouped to continue their insurgency against the TFG and oppose the Ethiopian military’s presence in Somalia. Throughout 2007 and 2008, Al-Shabaab scored military victories, seizing control of key towns and ports in both central and southern Somalia. By 2009, Al-Shabaab and other militias managed to force the Ethiopian troops to retreat, leaving behind an under-equipped African Union peacekeeping force to assist the TFG’s troops.

Due to a lack of funding and human resources, an arms embargo that made it difficult to reestablish a national security force, and general indifference on the part of the international community, Somali President
Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed found himself obliged to deploy thousands of troops from Puntland to Mogadishu to sustain the battle against insurgent elements in the southern part of the country. In 2008, Ahmed announced his resignation, expressing regret at failing to end the country’s 17-year conflict as his government had been mandated to do. He also blamed the international community for its failure to support the government.

By mid-2012, the insurgents lost most of the territory that they had seized. In 2011–2012, a political process providing benchmarks for the establishment of permanent democratic institutions was launched. Within this administrative framework a new provisional constitution was passed in 2012, which reformed Somalia as a federation. Following the end of the TFG’s interim mandate, the Federal Government of Somalia, the first permanent central government in the country since the start of the civil war, was formed and a period of reconstruction began. 

A Somali woman and child at a relief center in Dollow on the Somalia-Ethiopia border

In combination with the ongoing civil war, the 2011-2012 drought and famine resulted in a refugee crisis.
By September 2011, more than 920,000 refugees from Somalia had reportedly fled to neighboring countries, particularly Kenya and Ethiopia. At the height of the crisis, the UNHCR base in Dadaab, Kenya hosted at least 440,000 people in three refugee camps, although the maximum capacity was 90,000. More than 1,500 refugees continued to arrive every day from southern Somalia, 80 percent of whom were women and children. UN High Commissioner for Refugees spokeswoman Melissa Fleming said that many people had died en route.

Fragile State

By 2014, Somalia was no longer at the top of the fragile states index, dropping to second place behind South Sudan. International stakeholders and analysts have begun to describe Somalia as a fragile state making some progress towards stability.
A fragile state is a low-income country characterized by weak state capacity and/or weak state legitimacy leaving citizens vulnerable to a range of shocks. As the war continues as of March 2017, the country is facing a plethora of challenges caused not only by the decades of fighting, mismanagement, and political chaos, but also by hostile environmental conditions. 

Despite the civil war, Somalia has maintained an informal economy based mainly on livestock, remittance/money transfers from abroad, and telecommunications. Due to a dearth of formal government statistics, it is difficult to determine the actual condition of the Somali economy. Unlike the pre-civil war period when most services and the industrial sector were government-run, there has been substantial, albeit unmeasured, private investment in commercial activities. This has been largely financed by the Somali diaspora and includes trade and marketing, money transfer services, transportation, communications, fishery equipment, airlines, telecommunications, education, health, construction, and hotels. Somalia has some of the lowest development indicators in the world. According to the Central Bank of Somalia, about 80% of the population are nomadic or semi-nomadic pastoralists who keep goats, sheep, camels, and cattle. The nomads also gather resins and gums to supplement their income. The UN notes that extreme “inequalities across different social groups” are widening and continue to be “a major driver of conflict.”

Droughts and resulting famines continue to ravage the country. Between mid-2011 and mid-2012, a severe drought affected the entire East Africa region, causing a severe food crisis across Somalia, Djibouti, Ethiopia, and Kenya that threatened the livelihood of 9.5 million people. Many refugees from southern Somalia fled to neighboring Kenya and Ethiopia, where crowded, unsanitary conditions together with severe malnutrition led to a large number of deaths. The food crisis in Somalia primarily affected farmers in the south rather than the northern pastoralists. Human Rights Watch (HRW) consequently noted that most of the displaced persons belonged to the agro-pastoral Rahanweyn clan and the agricultural Bantu ethnic minority group. The United Nations officially declared famine in two regions in the southern part of the country, the first time a famine had been declared in the region by the UN in nearly thirty years. Tens of thousands of people are believed to have died in southern Somalia before famine was declared. This was mainly a result of Western governments preventing aid from reaching affected areas to weaken the Al-Shabaab militant group against whom they were engaged. The food crisis in southern Somalia was no longer at emergency levels by the beginning of 2012.

In 2011, Maryan Qasim, a medical doctor, former minister for women’s development and family affairs, and an adviser in the TFG, wrote a column for The Guardian titled “The women of Somalia are living in hell.” In it, she professed to be “shocked” that Somalia was ranked 5th worst place in the world to be a woman, arguing that the country is “the worst [place] in the world” for women. She notes that it is not the war but being pregnant that constitutes the greatest risk for women’s life. The lack of medical care and infrastructure puts pregnant women at risk of death, the rate of which is higher only in Afghanistan. She concludes, “Add to this the constant risk of getting shot or raped, as well as the ubiquitous practice of female genital mutilation (FGM) – something 95% of girls aged 4 to 11 face – make women’s lives in Somalia almost unlivable.”

Young Somali women at a community event in Hargeisa

According to a 2005 World Health Organization estimate, about 97.9% of Somalia’s women and girls underwent female genital mutilation, a premarital custom mainly endemic to Northeast Africa and parts of the Near East. Encouraged by women in the community, it is primarily intended to protect chastity, deter promiscuity, and offer protection from assault.

As of March 2017, a new wave of drought ravages Somalia. It has left more than 6 million people, or half the country’s population, facing food shortages with several water supplies becoming undrinkable due to the possibility of infection. In February 2017, a senior United Nations humanitarian official in Somalia warned of a famine in some of the worst drought-affected areas without massive and urgent humanitarian assistance. He also stated that the omission of such an immediate response “will cost lives, further destroy livelihoods, and could undermine the pursuit of key state-building and peacebuilding initiatives.” In March 2017, UN Secretary-General António Guterres urged a massive scale-up in international support to avert a famine.

38.4.4: South Africa’s Economic Growth

The South African economy has recorded impressive growth, which in 2011 enabled the country to join the prestigious BRIC group. However, the country continues to struggle with many challenges, including high unemployment, a public health crisis, and one of the highest rates of income inequality in the world. 

Learning Objective

Explain why South Africa was added to the BRIC bloc of countries.

Key Points

• BRICS
  is the acronym for an association of five major emerging national economies:
  Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa. Originally the
  first four were grouped as BRIC.
  The BRICS members are developing or newly industrialized countries,
  distinguished by their large, sometimes fast-growing economies and
  significant influence on regional affairs. In
  2010, South Africa joined the BRIC
  grouping, after
  being formally invited by the BRIC countries. The group was
  renamed BRICS – with the “S” standing for South Africa – to reflect
  the expanded membership. 
• The
  economy of South Africa is the largest in Africa. South Africa accounts
  for 24 percent of Africa’s gross domestic product and is ranked as an
  upper-middle-income economy by the World Bank – one of only four such countries
  in Africa. Since 1996, at the end of over 12 years of international
  sanctions, South Africa’s GDP has almost tripled to $400 billion and foreign
  exchange reserves have increased from $3 billion to nearly $50 billion,
  creating a diversified economy with a growing and sizable middle class within
  two decades of establishing democracy and ending apartheid.
• After
  1994, government policy brought down inflation, stabilized
  public finances, and attracted foreign capital. However, economic growth was
  still subpar until 2004, when it picked up significantly. Both
  employment and capital formation increased. During the presidency of Jacob Zuma, the government has begun to increase
  the role of state-owned enterprises.
• Unlike most of the world’s formerly poor and now
  developing countries, South Africa does not have a thriving informal economy.
  Only 15% of South African jobs are in the informal sector. Mining
  has been the main driving force behind the history and development of Africa’s
  most advanced economy. South Africa is one of
  the world’s leading mining and mineral-processing countries.
  The
  agricultural industry contributes around 10% of formal employment, relatively
  low compared to other parts of Africa, contributing around 2.6% of GDP. 

• The
  manufacturing industry’s contribution to the economy is relatively small,
  providing just 13.3% of jobs and 15% of GDP. Labor costs are low, but not
  nearly as low as in most other emerging markets, and the cost of the transport,
  communications, and general living is much higher. Over the last
  few decades, South Africa and particularly the Cape Town region has established
  itself as a successful call center and business process outsourcing
  destination. Tourism also creates a substantial percentage of jobs in the country. 

• High
  levels of unemployment, income inequality, growing public debt, political
  mismanagement, low levels of education, no reliable access to electricity, and
  crime are serious problems that have negatively impacted the South African
  economy. In 2016, the top five challenges to doing business in the country were
  inefficient government bureaucracy, restrictive labor regulations, a shortage
  of educated workers, political instability, and corruption. South Africa continues to have a relatively high rate of poverty and
  is ranked in the top 10 countries in the world for income inequality.

Key Terms

apartheid

A system of institutionalized racial segregation and discrimination in South Africa between 1948 and 1991, when it was abolished. The country’s first multiracial elections under a universal franchise were held three years later in 1994. Broadly speaking, the system was delineated into petty, which entailed the segregation of public facilities and social events, and grand, which dictated housing and employment opportunities by race.

G-20

An international forum for the governments and central bank governors from 20 major economies. It was founded in 1999 with the aim of studying, reviewing, and promoting high-level discussion of policy issues pertaining to the promotion of international financial stability. It seeks to address issues that go beyond the responsibilities of any one organization.

BRICS

The acronym for an association of five major emerging national economies. Its members are leading developing or newly industrialized countries, distinguished by their large, sometimes fast-growing economies and significant influence on regional affairs. All five are G-20 members.

BRICS

BRICS is the acronym for an association of five major emerging national economies: Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa. Originally the first four were grouped as BRIC, before the induction of South Africa in 2010. The BRICS members are leading developing or newly industrialized countries, distinguished by their large, sometimes fast-growing economies and significant influence on regional affairs. All five are G-20 members. Since 2009, the BRICS nations have met annually at formal summits. In 2015, the five BRICS countries represented over 3.6 billion people, or half of the world population. All five members are in the top 25 of the world by population and four are in the top 10. The World bank expects BRICS growth to pick up to 5.3% in 2017. Bilateral relations among BRICS nations have mainly been conducted on the basis of non-interference, equality, and mutual benefit.

In 2010, South Africa began the formal process of admission to join the BRIC grouping, becoming a member at the end of that year and joining officially in 2011 after being formally invited by the BRIC countries. The group was renamed BRICS – with the “S” standing for South Africa – to reflect the expanded membership. 

Leaders of the BRICS nations at the G-20 summit in Brisbane, 2014

In April 2011, South Africa formally joined the Brazil-Russia-India-China (BRICS) grouping of countries, identified by President Zuma (first right) as the country’s largest trading partners and also the largest trading partners with Africa as a whole. Zuma asserted that BRICS member countries would also work with each other through the UN, the Group of Twenty (G20) and the India, Brazil, South Africa (IBSA) forum.

South African Economy in the 21st Century

The economy of South Africa is the largest in Africa. South Africa accounts for 24 percent of Africa’s gross domestic product and is ranked as an upper-middle-income economy by the World Bank – one of only four such countries in Africa. Since 1996, at the end of over 12 years of international sanctions, South Africa’s GDP has almost tripled to $400 billion and foreign exchange reserves have increased from $3 billion to nearly $50 billion, creating a diversified economy with a growing and sizable middle class within two decades of establishing democracy and ending apartheid. The nation is the only African member of the G-20.

After 1994, three years after apartheid was abolished and the year of first interracial elections, government policy brought down inflation, stabilized public finances, and some foreign capital was attracted. However, growth was still subpar, but increased significantly in 2004 when both employment and capital formation increased. During the presidency of Jacob Zuma (elected in 2009 and reelected in 2014), the government has begun to increase the role of state-owned enterprises. Some of the biggest state-owned companies are Eskom, the electric power monopoly, South African Airways (SAA), and Transnet, the railroad and ports monopoly. Some of these state-owned companies have not been profitable, which has required bailouts totaling 30 billion rand ($2.3 billion) over 20 years.

South Africa has a mixed economy (consisting of a mixture of markets and economic interventionism). Unlike most of the world’s formerly poor and now developing countries, South Africa does not have a thriving informal economy. Only 15% of South African jobs are in the informal sector, compared with around half in Brazil and India and nearly three-quarters in Indonesia. The OECD attributes this difference to South Africa’s widespread welfare system. 

Mining has been the main driving force behind the history and development of Africa’s most advanced economy. Large-scale and profitable mining started with the discovery of a diamond in 1867 and in the 21st century, South Africa is one of the world’s leading mining and mineral-processing countries. Although mining’s contribution to the national GDP has fallen from 21% in 1970 to 6% in 2011, it still represents almost 60% of exports. The mining sector has a mix of privately owned and state-controlled mines.

The agricultural industry contributes around 10% of formal employment, relatively low compared to other parts of Africa, contributing around 2.6% of GDP. Due to the aridity of the land, only 13.5% can be used for crop production and only 3% is considered high potential land. The sector continues to face problems, with increased foreign competition and crime being two of the major challenges. The government has been accused of either putting in too much effort or not enough effort to tackle the problem of farm attacks as opposed to other forms of violent crime.

The manufacturing industry’s contribution to the economy is relatively small, providing just 13.3% of jobs and 15% of GDP. Labor costs are low, but not nearly as low as in most other emerging markets, and the cost of the transport, communications, and general living is much higher. The South African automotive industry accounts for about 10% of South Africa’s manufacturing exports, contributing 7.5% to the country’s GDP. BMW, Ford, Volkswagen, Daimler-Chrysler, General Motors, Nissan, and Toyota all have production plants in South Africa. There are also about 200 automotive component manufacturers in South Africa and more than 150 others that supply the industry on a non-exclusive basis.

The domestic telecommunications infrastructure provides modern and efficient service to urban areas, including cellular and internet services. Over the last few decades, South Africa and particularly the Cape Town region has established itself as a successful call center and business process outsourcing destination. With a highly talented pool of productive labor and with Cape Town sharing cultural affinity with Britain, large overseas firms such as Lufthansa, Amazon.com, ASDA, the Carphone Warehouse, Delta Airlines, and many more have established inbound call centers within Cape Town.

South Africa is also a popular tourist destination. According to the World Travel & Tourism Council, travel and tourism support around 10% of jobs in the country. 

Canal Walk shopping center in Cape Town

While this modern shopping mall serves as evidence that South Africa is becoming economically prosperous, the high levels of unemployment and inequality are considered by the government and most South Africans to be the most salient economic problems facing the country. These issues, and others linked to them such as crime, have in turn hurt investment and growth, consequently having a negative feedback effect on employment.

Challenges

South Africa has an extreme and persistent high unemployment rate of over 25%, which interacts with other economic and social problems such as inadequate education, poor health outcomes, and crime. The poor have limited access to economic opportunities and basic services. The official unemployment rate, although very high by international standards, still understates the magnitude of the problem because it includes only adults who are actively looking for work, excluding those who have given up looking for jobs. Only 41% of the population of working age has any kind of job (formal or informal). This rate is 30% lower than that of China and about 25% lower than that of Brazil or Indonesia.  

There has been substantial human capital flight from South Africa in recent years. South Africa’s Bureau of Statistics estimates that between 1 million and 1.6 million people in skilled, professional, and managerial occupations have emigrated since 1994 and that for every emigrant, 10 unskilled people lose their jobs. Among the reasons cited for wishing to leave the country were declining quality of life and high levels of crime. Furthermore, the government’s affirmative action policy was identified as a factor influencing the emigration of skilled white South Africans. The results of a 1998 survey indicate that skilled white South Africans are strongly opposed to this policy and the arguments advanced in support of it.

Refugees and immigrants from poorer neighboring countries, including the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Malawi, and others, represent a large portion of the informal sector. With high unemployment levels among poorer South Africans, xenophobia is prevalent and many South Africans feel resentful of immigrants who are seen as depriving the native population of jobs. Although many South African employers have employed migrants from other countries for lower pay than South African citizens, especially in the construction, tourism, agriculture, and domestic service industries, many immigrants continue to live in poor conditions.

According to a 2015 UNAIDS Report, South Africa has an estimated 7 million people living with HIV, more than any other country in the world. A 2008 study revealed that HIV/AIDS infection in South Africa is distinctly divided along racial lines: 13.6% of black South Africans are HIV-positive, whereas only 0.3% of white South Africans have the disease. Most casualties have been economically active individuals, resulting in AIDS orphans who in many cases depend on the state for care and financial support. It is estimated that there are 1,200,000 orphans in South Africa.

High levels of unemployment, income inequality, growing public debt, political mismanagement, low levels of education, no reliable access to electricity, and crime are serious problems that have negatively impacted the South African economy. In 2016, the top five challenges to doing business in the country were inefficient government bureaucracy, restrictive labor regulations, a shortage of educated workers, political instability, and corruption, while the country’s strong banking sector was rated as a strongly positive feature of the economy. South Africa continues to have a relatively high rate of poverty and is ranked in the top 10 countries in the world for income inequality.

38.4.5: Health Crises

Health crises in Africa have stemmed from outbreaks of deadly diseases such as HIV/AIDS, malaria, and Ebola, but have also been caused and intensified by poverty, malnutrition, ongoing civil wars, and environmental disasters linked to famines.

Learning Objective

Analyze some of the health crises that have ravaged Africa

Key Points

• A
  public health crisis is a difficult situation or complex
  health system that affects humans in one or more geographic areas, from a
  particular locality tompass the entire planet. Health crises generally
  have significant impacts on community health, loss of life, and the economy.
  They may result from disease, industrial processes, environmental disasters, or
  poor policy. Africa continues to be ravaged by multiple health crises.
• HIV/AIDS
  is a major public health concern in many parts of Africa.
  Although the continent is home to about 15% of the world’s population,
  over 67% of the infected in 2015, more than 25.5 million individuals, were Africans. Out of
  this number, nearly 19 million lived in eastern and southern Africa, while 6.5
  million lived in western and central Africa.
  High-risk
  behavior patterns have been cited as being largely responsible for the
  significantly greater spread of HIV/AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa than in other
  parts of the world.
  In
  2015, UN reported that the leading cause of death among HIV-positive persons is
  tuberculosis.
• In 2015, there were 296 million cases of malaria
  worldwide resulting in an estimated 731,000 deaths. Approximately 90% of
  both cases and deaths occurred in Africa. In Africa, malaria is estimated
  to result in losses of US$12 billion a year due to increased healthcare costs,
  lost ability to work, and negative effects on tourism. Although malaria is presently endemic not
  only in sub-Saharan Africa but also in a broad band around the equator, which
  includes many parts of the Americas and Asia, 85–90% of malaria fatalities
  occur in sub-Saharan Africa.
• The
  West African Ebola virus epidemic (2013–2016) was the most widespread outbreak
  of Ebola virus disease (EVD) in history—causing major loss of life and
  socioeconomic disruption in the region, mainly in Guinea,
  Liberia, and Sierra Leone, with minor outbreaks occurring elsewhere. It caused
  significant mortality, with the fatality rate reported at slightly
  above 70% although the rate among hospitalized patients was 57–59%.
• A number of regions in Africa have experienced environmental disasters
  that led to food crises and famines.
  A major culprit continent is drought, which in combination with ongoing civil
  wars may produce disastrous results. An acute shortage of food or famine affected Niger (2006), the countries in the Horn of Africa (Somalia, Djibouti, and
  Ethiopia), asnortheastern Kenya (2006), Africa’s Sahel region and many
  parts of the neighboring Senegal River Area (2010), and entire East Africa (2011-2012). As of March 2017, Somalia and South Sudan
  are experiencing severe droughts and experts estimate famines will affect
  millions of people in both regions. 
• In
  addition to recurrent food crises, malnutrition and poverty are endemic problems that
  affect the health of massive numbers of Africans across the continent, with particularly tragic impact on children and women. Children’s health and maternal health indicators are particularly alarming in sub-Saharan Africa. 

Key Term

health crisis

A difficult situation or complex health system that affects humans in one or more geographic areas, from a particular locality to the entire planet. It generally has significant impacts on community health, loss of life, and the economy. It  may result from disease, industrial processes, environmental disasters, or poor policy.

Health Crises in Africa

A public health crisis is a difficult situation or complex health system that affects humans in one or more geographic areas, from a particular locality to the entire planet. Health crises generally have significant impacts on community health, loss of life, and the economy. They may result from disease, industrial processes, environmental disasters, or poor policy.
Africa continues to be ravaged by multiple health crises, some of which are systemic (e.g., consistently high rates of maternal and infant deaths caused by lack of proper health care or poor nutrition), recurrent (e.g., famines caused by droughts), or caused by an outbreak of a particular diseases (e.g., malaria, Ebola, HIV/AIDS).

HIV/AIDS

HIV/AIDS is a major public health concern and cause of death in many parts of Africa. Although the continent is home to about 15%  of the world’s population, over 67% of the infected, more than 25.5 million individuals, were Africans according to data collected by the World Health Organization (WHO) and UNAIDS in 2015. Out of this number, nearly 19 million lived in eastern and southern Africa, while 6.5 million lived in western and central Africa (North Africa, grouped with the Middle East, recorded 230 thousand infected).  In the most affected countries of sub-Saharan Africa, AIDS has raised death rates and lowered life expectancy among adults between the ages of 20 and 49 by about 20 years. In fact, the life expectancy in many parts of Africa is declining, largely as a result of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, with life expectancy in some countries as low as 34 years.

High-risk behavioral patterns have been cited as largely responsible for the significantly greater spread of HIV/AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa than in other parts of the world. Chief among these are traditionally liberal attitudes espoused by many communities toward multiple sexual partners and sexual activity before or outside marriage. HIV transmission is most likely in the first few weeks after infection and the risk is increased when people have more than one sexual partner in the same time period. Within the cultures of sub-Saharan Africa, it is relatively common for both men and women to have concurrent sexual relations with more than one person. In addition, lack of AIDS-awareness education provided to youth and no access to proper health care contribute to the high rates of infections and deaths. Even if medical facilities are available, patents on many drugs have hindered the ability to make low-cost alternatives.

In 2015, UN reported that the leading cause of death among HIV-positive persons is tuberculosis; synergy between HIV and tuberculosis, termed a co-epidemic, is deadly. One in three HIV-infected individuals die of tuberculosis. “Tuberculosis and HIV co-infections are associated with special diagnostic and therapeutic challenges and constitute an immense burden on healthcare systems of heavily infected countries.” In many countries without adequate resources, the tuberculosis case rate has increased five to ten-fold since the identification of HIV. Without proper treatment, an estimated 90% of persons living with HIV die within months after contracting tuberculosis. 

An HIV/AIDS educational outreach session in Angola, photo by USAID Africa Bureau.

One of the greatest problems faced by African countries that have high prevalence rates is “HIV fatigue.” Africans are not interested in hearing more about a disease that has been debated for decades now. To address this, novel approaches are required. Yet lack of awareness and education remain a huge issues, especially among youth. 

Malaria

Malaria is a mosquito-borne infectious disease affecting humans and other animals.
The disease is widespread in the tropical and subtropical regions that exist in a broad band around the equator, including much of sub-Saharan Africa, Asia, and Latin America. In 2015, there were 296 million cases of malaria worldwide resulting in an estimated 731,000 deaths. Approximately 90% of deaths occurred in Africa, where malaria is estimated to result in losses of US$12 billion a year due to increased healthcare costs, lost ability to work, and negative effects on tourism.

The WHO estimates that in 2015 there were 214 million new cases of malaria resulting in 438,000 deaths. Others have estimated the number of cases at between 350 and 550 million. The majority (65%) occur in children younger than age 15. In sub-Saharan Africa, maternal malaria is associated with up to 200,000 estimated infant deaths yearly. Efforts at decreasing the disease in Africa since the turn of millennium have been partially effective, with rates dropping by an estimated 40% on the continent. Although malaria is presently endemic not only in sub-Saharan Africa but also in a broad band around the equator, which includes many parts of the Americas and Asia, 85–90% of malaria fatalities occur in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Ebola

The West African Ebola virus epidemic (2013–2016) was the most widespread outbreak of Ebola virus disease (EVD) in history—causing major loss of life and socioeconomic disruption in the region, mainly in Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone, with minor outbreaks occurring elsewhere. It caused significant mortality, with a fatality rate reported at slightly above 70% although the rate among hospitalized patients was 57–59%. Small outbreaks occurred in Nigeria and Mali and isolated cases were recorded in Senegal. The number of cases peaked in October 2014 and then began to decline gradually following the commitment of substantial international resources. In March 2016, the WHO terminated the Public Health Emergency of International Concern status of the outbreak. Subsequent flare-ups occurred.

The outbreak left about 17,000 survivors of the disease, many of whom report symptoms termed post-Ebola syndrome, often severe enough to require medical care for months or even years. An additional cause for concern is the apparent ability of the virus to “hide” in a recovered survivor’s body for an extended period of time and then become active months or years later, either in the same individual or in a sexual partner. In December 2016, the WHO announced that a two-year trial of the rVSV-ZEBOV vaccine appeared to offer protection from the strain of Ebola responsible for the West Africa outbreak. The vaccine has not yet had regulatory approval, but it is considered so effective that 300,000 doses have already been stockpiled.

An Ebola treatment unit in Liberia, photo by CDC Global End.

In June 2014, it was reported that local authorities did not have the resources to contain the disease, with health centers closing and hospitals becoming overwhelmed. There were also reports that adequate personal protection equipment was not provided for medical personnel. The Director-General of MSF said: “Countries affected to date simply do not have the capacity to manage an outbreak of this size and complexity on their own. I urge the international community to provide this support on the most urgent basis possible.”

Food Shortages 

Since 2000, a number of regions in Africa have experienced environmental disasters that led to food crises and famines. For example, a severe localized food security crisis occurred in some regions of Niger from 2005 to 2006. It was caused by an early end to the 2004 rains, desert locust damage to some pasture lands, high food prices, and chronic poverty. In the affected area, 2.4 million of 3.6 million people were considered highly vulnerable to food insecurity. An international assessment stated that of these, over 800,000 faced extreme food insecurity and another 800,000 in moderately insecure food situations were in need of aid.

The crisis had long been predicted after swarms of locusts consumed nearly all crops in parts of Niger during the 2004 agricultural season. In other areas, insufficient rainfall resulted in exceptionally poor harvests and dry pastures, affecting both farmers and livestock breeders. The fertility rate in Niger is the highest in the world at 7.6 children per woman. The consequence is that population of Niger is projected to increase tenfold in the 21st century to more than 200 million people in 2100. Experts predict population growth-induced famines in the 21st century, because the agricultural production cannot keep up with the population growth.

A major culprit of food shortages on the continent is drought, which in combination with ongoing civil wars may produce disastrous results.
In 2006, an acute shortage of food affected the countries in the Horn of Africa (Somalia, Djibouti, and Ethiopia) as well as northeastern Kenya. The United Nations’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimated that more than 11 million people in these countries were affected by widespread famine, largely attributed to a severe drought and exacerbated by military conflicts in the region. A large-scale, drought-induced famine occurred in Africa’s Sahel region and many parts of the neighboring Senegal River Area from February to August 2010. It is one of many famines to hit the region in recent times. The Sahel is the ecoclimatic and biogeographic zone of transition between the Sahara desert in the north of Africa and the Sudanian savannas in the south. Similarly, between July 2011 and mid-2012, a severe drought affected the entire East Africa region. Said to be “the worst in 60 years,” the drought caused a severe food crisis across Somalia, Djibouti, Ethiopia, and Kenya that threatened the livelihood of 9.5 million people. Many refugees from southern Somalia fled to neighboring Kenya and Ethiopia, where crowded, unsanitary conditions and severe malnutrition led to a large number of deaths. Other countries in East Africa, including Sudan, South Sudan, and parts of Uganda, were also affected by a food crisis. As of March 2017, Somalia and South Sudan are experiencing severe droughts and experts estimate famines will affect millions of people in both regions. 

In addition to recurrent food crises, malnutrition is an endemic problem that affects massive numbers of Africans across the continent, which has had a particularly tragic impact on children.
Globally, more than one third of under-5 deaths are attributable to malnourishment. In Africa, some progress has been registered over the decades but the situation in some regions remains dire. Sub-Saharan Africa accounted for 3,370,000 deaths of children under 5 in 2011 (WHO, 2012), which corresponds to 9,000 children dying every day and six children dying every minute. Out of 3 million neonatal deaths worldwide, approximately 1.1 million are found in sub-Saharan Africa (WHO, 2012). 

Given that vitamin A is critical for proper functioning of the visual system and for maintaining immune defenses, its deficiency remains a public health issue. In Africa, vitamin A deficiency contributes to 23% of child deaths. In 2009, the prevalence of low serum retinol, associated with vitamin A deficiency, was 37.7% in Ethiopia, 49% in the Congo, and 42% in Madagascar. The immediate causes of this deficiency are the low rates of consumption of animal products, the poor bioavailability of vitamin A in cereal-based diets, the consumption of green leaves with low lipid content, and an increased bodily demand for vitamin A owing to the infections that frequently affect African children.

There are equally disturbing levels of zinc deficiencies, which has seriously adverse effects on growth, the risk and severity of infections, and level of immune function. Although the actual prevalence is unclear, zinc deficiency is recognized as one of the main risk factors for morbidity and mortality. It contributes to over 450,000 deaths per year among children under 5 years, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa. It affected 57% of children under 5 in Senegal, 72% in Burkina Faso, and 41.5% in Nigeria in 2004. The main causes of this deficiency in children are a lack of zinc-rich easily absorbed foods (such as meat, poultry, and seafood) and the over-consumption of foods that inhibit zinc absorption, such as cereals, roots, and tubers, which are among Africa’s staples.

Anemia is quite prevalent in Africa, especially among young children, due mainly to a diet that is low in animal-based foods. In 2006, about 67.6% of children under 5 and overall 83.5 million children were anemic. Through its effects on metabolic processes, iron deficiency retards growth and development. It impairs the immune response and increases susceptibility to infection, delays motor development, and diminishes concentration (impairing cognitive and behavioral capacities). It therefore prevents 40-60% of African children from attaining their full mental capacities. Moreover, of the 26 health risks reported by the WHO Global Burden of Disease project, iron deficiency is ranked ninth in terms of years of life lost.

Maternal Health

According to a UN report,

A woman’s chance of dying or becoming disabled during pregnancy and childbirth is closely connected to her social and economic status, the norms and values of her culture, and the geographic remoteness of her home. Generally speaking, the poorer and more marginalized a woman is, the greater her risk of death. In fact, maternal mortality rates reflect disparities between wealthy and poor countries more than any other measure of health. A woman’s lifetime risk of dying as a result of pregnancy or childbirth is 1 in 39 in Sub-Saharan Africa, as compared to 1 in 4,700 in industrialized countries.

The risk for maternal death (during pregnancy or childbirth) in sub-Saharan Africa is 175 times higher than in developed countries and risk for pregnancy-related illnesses and negative consequences after birth is even higher. Poverty, maternal health, and outcomes for the child are all interconnected. Poverty is detrimental to the health of both mother and child.

38.5: The Americas in the 21st Century

38.5.1: Brazil’s Economic Success and Corruption Woes

Brazil, a member of the BRICS group, had one of the world’s fastest growing major economies until 2010, with its economic reforms giving the country new international recognition and influence.

Learning Objective

Connect the allegations of widespread corruption to Brazil’s economic growth in the 2000s

Key Points

• In 1985, Brazil entered its contemporary era, ushering in a period of re-democratization after decades of dictatorships and military rule.
• The adoption of Brazil’s current Constitution in 1988 completed the process of re-establishment of the democratic institutions. Since then, six presidential terms have elapsed, without rupture to the constitutional order.
• In 2002, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of the PT (Workers’ Party) won the presidency with more than 60% of the national vote.
• His presidency was characterized by major economic growth, increased international prestige, and numerous corruption scandals.
• Despite these scandals, Lula’s popularity rose to a record of 80%, the highest for a Brazilian president since the end of the military regime.
• One major mark of Lula’s second term were his efforts to expand Brazil’s political influence worldwide, including Brazil’s membership in G20, a global discussion forum of major powers.
• On October 31, 2010, Dilma Rousseff, also from the Worker’s Party, was the first woman elected President of Brazil, with her term beginning on January 1, 2011.
• Sparked by indignation and frustrations accumulated over decades (against corruption, police brutality, inefficiencies of political establishment, and public service), numerous peaceful protests erupted in Brazil from the middle of first term of Rousseff.
• Amidst political and economic crises, evidence that politicians from all main political parties were involved in several bribery and tax evasion schemes, and large street protests for and against her, Rousseff was impeached by the Brazilian Congress in 2016.
• She was succeeded by Vice President Michel Temer.

Key Terms

Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva

A Brazilian politician who served as President of Brazil from January 1, 2003 to January 1, 2011. He is a founding member of the Workers’ Party (PT – Partido dos Trabalhadores). He is often regarded as one of the most popular politicians in the history of Brazil and, at the time of his mandate, one of the most popular in the world. Social programs like Bolsa Família and Fome Zero are hallmarks of his time in office. He played a prominent role in recent international relations developments, including the nuclear program of Iran and global warming, and was described as “a man with audacious ambitions to alter the balance of power among nations.”

Dilma Rousseff

A Brazilian economist and politician who was the 36th President of Brazil from 2011 until her impeachment and removal from office on August 31, 2016. She is the first woman to have held the Brazilian presidency and previously served as Chief of Staff to President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva from 2005 to 2010.

G20

An international forum for the governments and central bank governors from 20 major economies. It was founded in 1999 with the aim of studying, reviewing, and promoting high-level discussion of policy issues pertaining to the promotion of international financial stability. It seeks to address issues that go beyond the responsibilities of any one organization. The participating heads of government or heads of state have periodically conferred at summits since their initial meeting in 2008, and the group also hosts separate meetings of finance ministers and central bank governors.

Background: Re-Democratization of Brazil

Leading up to the 21st century, Brazil saw a return to democratic rule after a period of dictatorship during the Vargas Era (1930–1934 and 1937–1945) and a period of military rule (1964–1985) under Brazilian military government. In January 1985 the process of negotiated transition towards democracy reached its climax with the election of Tancredo Neves of the PMDB party (the party that had always opposed the military regime) as the first civilian president since 1964. He died before being sworn in, and the elected vice president, José Sarney, was sworn in as president in his place.

In 1986 the Sarney government fulfilled Tancredo’s promise of passing in Congress a Constitutional Amendment to the Constitution inherited from the military period, summoning elections for a National Constituent Assembly to draft and adopt a new Constitution for the country. The Constituent Assembly began deliberations in February 1987 and concluded its work on October 5, 1988.

The adoption of Brazil’s current Constitution in 1988 completed the process of re-establishment of the democratic institutions. The new Constitution replaced the authoritarian legislation that still remained in place and that had been inherited from the days of the military regime.

In 1989 the first elections for president by direct popular ballot since the military coup of 1964 were held under the new Constitution, and Fernando Collor was elected. Collor was inaugurated on March 15, 1990. With the inauguration of the first president elected under the 1988 Constitution, the last step in the long process of democratization took place, and the phase of transition was finally over.

Since then, six presidential terms have elapsed, without rupture to the constitutional order: the first term corresponded to the Collor and Franco administrations (Collor was impeached on charges of corruption in 1992 and resigned the presidency. He was succeeded by Franco, his vice president.); the second and third terms corresponded to Fernando Henrique Cardoso’s administration; the fourth and fifth presidential terms corresponded to Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s administration; and the sixth term corresponded to Dilma Rousseff’s first administration. In 2015, Mrs. Rousseff started another term in office, due to end in 2018, but was impeached for violations of budgetary and fiscal responsibility norms in 2016.  She was succeeded by Vice President Michel Temer.

Lula Administration

In 2002, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of the PT (Workers’ Party) won the presidency with more than 60% of the national vote. In the first months of his mandate, inflation rose perilously, reflecting the markets’ uncertainty about the government’s monetary policy. However, the markets’ confidence in the government was promptly regained as Lula chose to maintain his predecessor’s policies, particularly the continuation of Central Bank’s task of keeping inflation down. After that, the country underwent considerable economic growth and employment expansion. On the other hand, Lula’s mainstream economic policies disappointed his most radical leftist allies, which led to a breakdown of the PT (Workers’ Party) that resulted in the creation of the PSOL (Socialism and Liberty Party).

Several corruption scandals occurred during Lula’s presidency. In 2005, Roberto Jefferson, chairman of the Brazilian Labour Party (PTB), was implicated in a bribery case. As a Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry was set up, Jefferson testified that the members of parliament were being paid monthly stipends to vote for government-backed legislation. Later, in August of the same year, after further investigation, campaign manager Duda Mendonça admitted that he had used illegal undeclared money to finance the PT electoral victory of 2002. The money in both cases was found to have originated from private sources as well as from the advertising budget of state-owned enterprises headed by political appointees, both laundered through Duda’s Mendonça advertising agency. The collection of these incidents was dubbed the Mensalão scandal. On August 24, 2007, the Brazilian Supreme Court (Supremo Tribunal Federal) accepted the indictments of 40 individuals relating to the Mensalão scandal, most of whom were former or current federal deputies, and all of whom were still allies of the Brazilian president.

The loss of support resulting from these scandals was outweighed by the president’s popularity among the voters of the lower classes, whose income per capita rose as a consequence of both higher employment, expansion of domestic credit to consumers, and government social welfare programs. The stable and solid economic situation of the country, which Brazil had not experienced in the last 20 years, with fast growth in production both for internal consumers and exportation as well as a soft but noticeable decrease in social inequality, may also partially explain the high popularity of Lula’s administration even after several scandals of corruption involving important politicians connected to Lula and to PT. Hence Lula’s re-election in 2006: After almost winning in the first round, Lula won the run-off against Geraldo Alckmin of the PSDB (Brazilian Social Democracy Party) by a 20 million vote margin.

Following Lula’s second victory, his approval ratings started to rise again (fueled by the continuity of the economic and social achievements obtained during the first term) to a record of 80%, the highest for a Brazilian president since the end of the military regime. The focus of Lula’s second term was to further stimulate the economy by investments in infrastructure and measures to keep expanding the domestic credit to producers, industry, commerce, and consumers alike.

Another mark of Lula’s second term was his efforts to expand Brazil’s political influence worldwide, specially after G20 (from which Brazil and other emerging economies participate) replaced the G8 as the main world forum of discussions. Lula is an active defender of the Reform of the United Nations Security Council, as Brazil is one of the four nations (the others being Germany, India, and Japan) officially coveting a permanent seat in the council. Lula also helped orchestrate Brazil’s membership in BRICS, the acronym for an association of five major emerging national economies: Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa.

Lula is also notorious for seeing himself as a friendly, peacemaker conciliator Head of State, managing to befriend leaders of rival countries from the likes of Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama from the United States to Venezuelan leader Hugo Chávez, Cuban former president Fidel Castro, the President of Bolivia Evo Morales, and lastly, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, fueling protests inside and outside the country due to Ahmadinejad’s polemical anti-Semitic statements. Lula took part in a deal with the governments of Turkey and Iran regarding Iran’s nuclear program despite the United States’ desire to strengthen the sanctions against the country, fearing the possibility of Iran developing nuclear weapons.

President Luíz Inácio Lula da Silva (2003–2010)

President Lula is often regarded as one of the most popular politicians in the history of Brazil and, at the time of his mandate, one of the most popular in the world. Social programs like Bolsa Família and Fome Zero are hallmarks of his time in office.

Close-up photo of President Luíz Inácio Lula da Silva in front of a Brazilian flag.

Rousseff Administration

On October 31, 2010, Dilma Rousseff, also from the Worker’s Party, was the first woman elected President of Brazil, with her term beginning on January 1, 2011. In her winning speech, Rousseff, who was also a key member in Lula’s administration, made clear that her mission during her term would be to keep enforcing her predecessor’s policies to mitigate poverty and ensure Brazil’s current economic growth.

On June 2011, Rouseff announced a program called “Brasil Sem Miséria” (Brazil Without Poverty). With the ambitious task of drastically reducing absolute poverty in Brazil until the end of her term, which currently afflicts 16 million people in the country or a little less than a tenth of the population. The program involves broadening the reach of the Bolsa Família social welfare program while creating new job opportunities and establishing professional certification programs. In 2012, another program called “Brasil Carinhoso” (Tenderful Brazil) was launched with the objective to provide extra care to all children in the country who live below the poverty threshold.

Although there was criticism from the local and international press regarding the lower-than-expected economic results achieved during her first term ahead of the government and the measures taken to solve it, Rouseff’s approval rates reached levels higher than any other president since the end of the military regime, until a wave of protests struck the country in mid 2013 reflecting dissatisfaction from the people with the current transport, healthcare, and education policies, among other issues that affected the popularity not only of the president, but several other governors and mayors from key areas in the country as well.

In 2014, Rousseff won a second term by a narrow margin, but was unable to to prevent her popularity from falling. In June 2015, her approval dropped to less than 10% after another wave of protests, this time organized by opposition who wanted her ousted from power, amid revelations that numerous politicians, including those from her party, were being investigated for accepting bribes from the state-owned energy company Petrobras from 2003 to 2010, during which time she was on the company’s board of directors. In 2015, a process of impeachment was opened against Rousseff that culminated with her temporarily removal from power in May 12, 2016 with Vice President Michel Temer assuming power temporarily until the final trial was concluded in August 31, 2016, when Rousseff was officially impeached and Temer was sworn in as president for the remainder of the term. During the impeachment process, Brazil hosted the 2016 Summer Olympics.

President Dilma Rousseff (2011-2016)

Dilma Rousseff is a Brazilian economist and politician who was the 36th President of Brazil from 2011 until her impeachment and removal from office on August 31, 2016. She is the first woman to have held the Brazilian presidency.

Photo of President Dilma Rousseff (2011-2016).

38.5.2: Venezuela and Chavismo

Under the presidency of Hugo Chávez from 1999 to 2013, Venezuela saw sweeping and radical shifts in social policy, marked by a move away from the government officially embracing a free market economy and neoliberal reform principles and a move towards the government embracing socialist income redistribution and social welfare programs.

Learning Objective

Summarize the defining characteristics of Chavismo

Key Points

• With many Venezuelans tired of politics in the country, the 1998 elections had the lowest voter turnout in Venezuelan history, with Hugo Chávez winning the presidency on December 6, 1998 with 56.4% of the popular vote.
• Following the adoption of a new constitution in 1999, Chávez focused on enacting social reforms as part of his “Bolivarian Revolution.” 
• Using record-high oil revenues of the 2000s, his government nationalized key industries, created participatory democratic Communal Councils, and implemented social programs known as the Bolivarian Missions to expand access to food, housing, healthcare, and education.
• Venezuela received high oil profits in the mid-2000s and there were improvements in areas such as poverty, literacy, income equality, and quality of life occurring primarily between 2003 and 2007. 
• At the end of Chávez’s presidency in the early 2010s, economic actions performed by his government during the preceding decade such as deficit spending and price controls proved to be unsustainable, with Venezuela’s economy faltering while poverty, inflation, and supply shortages in Venezuela increased. 
• Chávez died of cancer on March 5, 2013 at the age of 58, and was was succeeded by Nicolás Maduro (initially as interim president before he narrowly won the 2013 presidential election).
• Maduro continued many of the policies of Chávez, leading to hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans protesting over high levels of criminal violence, corruption, hyperinflation, and chronic scarcity of basic goods due to policies of the federal government.

Key Terms

Hugo Chávez

A Venezuelan politician who served as the 64th President of Venezuela from 1999 to 2013. He was also leader of the Fifth Republic Movement from its foundation in 1997 until 2007, when it merged with several other parties to form the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV), which he led until 2012. Following the adoption of a new constitution in 1999, he focused on enacting social reforms as part of the Bolivarian Revolution, which is a type of socialist revolution. Using record-high oil revenues of the 2000s, his government nationalized key industries, created participatory democratic Communal Councils, and implemented social programs known as the Bolivarian Missions to expand access to food, housing, healthcare, and education.

Nicolás Maduro

A Venezuelan politician who has been the 65th President of Venezuela since 2013. Previously he served under President Hugo Chávez as Minister of Foreign Affairs from 2006 to 2013 and as Vice President of Venezuela from 2012 to 2013.

Chavismo

A left-wing political ideology that is based on the ideas, programs, and government style associated with the former president of Venezuela, Hugo Chávez. It combines elements of socialism, left-wing populism, patriotism, internationalism, bolivarianism, post-democracy, feminism, green politics, and Caribbean and Latin American integration.

Bolivarian Revolution in Venezuela

The Bolivarian Revolution is a leftist social movement and political process in Venezuela that was led by late Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez, the founder of the Fifth Republic Movement and later the United Socialist Party of Venezuela. The “Bolivarian Revolution” is named after Simón Bolívar, an early 19th-century Venezuelan and Latin American revolutionary leader, prominent in the Spanish American wars of independence in achieving the independence of most of northern South America from Spanish rule. According to Chávez and other supporters, the “Bolivarian Revolution” seeks to build a mass movement to implement Bolivarianism, popular democracy, economic independence, equitable distribution of revenues, and an end to political corruption in Venezuela. They interpret Bolívar’s ideas from a socialist perspective.

Hugo Chávez

Hugo Chávez, a former paratroop lieutenant-colonel who led an unsuccessful coup d’état in 1992, was elected President in December 1998 on a platform that called for the creation of a “Fifth Republic,” a new constitution, a new name (“the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela”), and a new set of relations between socioeconomic classes. In 1999, voters approved a referendum on a new constitution and in 2000, re-elected Chávez, also placing many members of his Fifth Republic Movement party in the National Assembly. Supporters of Chávez called the process symbolized by him the Bolivarian Revolution and were organized into different government-funded groups, including the Bolivarian Circles. Chávez’s first few months in office were dedicated primarily to constitutional reform, while his secondary focus was on immediately allocating more government funds to new social programs.

However, as a recession triggered by historically low oil prices and soaring international interest rates rocked Venezuela, the shrunken federal treasury provided very little of the resources Chávez required for his promised massive populist programs. The economy, which was still staggering, shrunk by 10% and the unemployment rate increased to 20%, the highest level in since the 1980s.

Chávez sharply diverged from previous administrations’ economic policies, terminating their practice of extensively privatizing Venezuela’s state-owned holdings, such as the national social security system, holdings in the aluminum industry, and the oil sector. Chávez worked to reduce Venezuelan oil extraction in the hopes of garnering elevated oil prices and, at least theoretically, elevated total oil revenues, thereby boosting Venezuela’s severely deflated foreign exchange reserves. He extensively lobbied other OPEC (Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries) countries to cut their production rates as well. As a result of these actions, Chávez became known as a “price hawk” in his dealings with the oil industry and OPEC. Chávez also attempted a comprehensive renegotiation of 60- year-old royalty payment agreements with oil giants Philips Petroleum and ExxonMobil. These agreements had allowed the corporations to pay in taxes as little as 1% of the tens of billions of dollars in revenues they were earning from their extraction of Venezuelan oil. Afterwards, Chávez stated his intention to complete the nationalization of Venezuela’s oil resources.

In April 2002, Chávez was briefly ousted from power in the 2002 Venezuelan coup d’état attempt following popular demonstrations by his opponents, but he was returned to power after two days as a result of demonstrations by poor Chávez supporters in Caracas, as well as actions by the military.

Chávez also remained in power after an all-out national strike that lasted from December 2002 to February 2003, including a strike/lockout in the state oil company PDVSA. The strike produced severe economic dislocation, with the country’s GDP falling 27% during the first four months of 2003, and costing the oil industry $13.3 billion. In the subsequent decade, the government was forced into several currency devaluations. These devaluations have done little to improve the situation of the Venezuelan people who rely on imported products or locally produced products that depend on imported inputs, while dollar-denominated oil sales account for the vast majority of Venezuela’s exports. The profits of the oil industry have been lost to “social engineering” and corruption, instead of investments needed to maintain oil production.

Chávez survived several further political tests, including an August 2004 recall referendum. He was elected for another term in December 2006 and re-elected for a third term in October 2012. However, he was never sworn in for his third term due to medical complications. Chávez died on March 5, 2013 after a nearly two-year fight with cancer. The presidential election that took place on April 14, 2013, was the first since Chávez took office in 1999 in which his name did not appear on the ballot.

Chavez’s ideas, programs, and style form the basis of “Chavismo,” a political ideology closely associated with Bolivarianism and socialism of the 21st century, which continued but declined after his death. Internationally, Chávez aligned himself with the Marxist–Leninist governments of Fidel and then Raúl Castro in Cuba, and the socialist governments of Evo Morales (Bolivia), Rafael Correa (Ecuador), and Daniel Ortega (Nicaragua). His presidency was seen as a part of the socialist “pink tide” sweeping Latin America. Chávez described his policies as anti-imperialist, being a prominent adversary of the United States’s foreign policy as well as a vocal critic of U.S.-supported neoliberalism and laissez-faire capitalism. He described himself as a Marxist. He supported Latin American and Caribbean cooperation and was instrumental in setting up the pan-regional Union of South American Nations, the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States, the Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas, the Bank of the South, and the regional television network TeleSUR.

Hugo Chávez

Chávez holds up a miniature copy of the 1999 Venezuelan Constitution at the 2005 World Social Forum held in Porto Alegre, Brazil.

Chávez holds up a miniature copy of the 1999 Venezuelan Constitution at the 2005 World Social Forum held in Porto Alegre, Brazil.

Nicolás Maduro

Nicolás Maduro has been the President of Venezuela since April 14, 2013, after winning the second presidential election after Chávez’s death with 50.61% of the votes against the opposition’s candidate Henrique Capriles Radonski, who had 49.12% of the votes. The Democratic Unity Roundtable contested his election as fraudulent, and as a violation of the constitution. However, the Supreme Court of Venezuela ruled that under Venezuela’s Constitution, Nicolás Maduro is the legitimate president and was invested as such by the Venezuelan National Assembly.

Beginning in February 2014, hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans have protested over high levels of criminal violence, corruption, hyperinflation, and chronic scarcity of basic goods due to policies of the federal government. Demonstrations and riots have left over 40 fatalities in the unrest between both Chavistas and opposition protesters, and has led to the arrest of opposition leaders such as Leopoldo López and Antonio Ledezma. Human rights groups have strongly condemned the arrest of Leopoldo López.

In the 2015 Venezuelan parliamentary election, the opposition gained a majority.

The following year, in a July 2016 decree, President Maduro used his executive power to declare a state of economic emergency. The decree could force citizens to work in agricultural fields and farms for 60-day (or longer) periods to supply food to the country. Colombian border crossings have been temporarily opened to allow Venezuelans to purchase food and basic household and health items in Colombia in mid-2016. In September 2016, a study published in the Spanish-language Diario Las Américas indicated that 15% of Venezuelans are eating “food waste discarded by commercial establishments.”

38.5.3: Democracy in Chile and Argentina

Chile and Argentina both transitioned from military dictatorships to democratic regimes in the 1980s, leading to relative political stability in both countries in the 21st century.

Learning Objective

Evaluate the democratic systems currently in place in Chile and Argentina

Key Points

• Chileans elected a new president and the majority of members of a two-chamber congress on December 14, 1989, thus ending the rule of the oppressive military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet.
• Christian Democrat Patricio Aylwin, the candidate of a coalition of 17 political parties called the Concertación, received an absolute majority of votes (55%).
• The Concertación coalition has continued to dominate Chilean politics for the last two decades: Aylwin was succeeded by another Christian Democrat, Eduardo Frei Ruiz-Tagle (son of Frei-Montalva), leading the same coalition for a 6-year term.
• Center-right investor and businessman Sebastián Piñera of the National Renewal assumed the presidency on March 11, 2010, after Bachelet’s term expired, with Bachelet returning to office once again after his term limits ended.
• On October 30, 1983, Argentines went to the polls to choose a president; vice-president; and national, provincial, and local officials in elections deemed by international observers to be fair and honest, thus beginning the country’s transition to a democratic government.
• Since then, Argentina had seen several democratically elected presidents, including Carlos Menem, who embraced neo-liberal policies, and De la Rúa, who kept Menem’s economic plan despite economic crisis, which led to growing social discontent.
• Néstor Kirchner was elected as the new president in 2002, boosting neo-Keynesian economic policies and ending the economic crisis, attaining significant fiscal and trade surpluses, and steep GDP growth.
• He did not run for reelection, promoting instead the candidacy of his wife, senator Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, who was elected in 2007 and reelected in 2011.
• On 22 November 2015, after a tie in the first round of presidential elections on 25 October, Mauricio Macri became the first democratically elected non-radical or peronist president since 1916.

Key Terms

Trial of the Juntas

The judicial trial of the members of the de facto military government that ruled Argentina during the dictatorship of the Proceso de Reorganización Nacional (el proceso), which lasted from 1976 to 1983.

Peronist

A person who follows the Argentinian political movement based on the ideology and legacy of former President Juan Domingo Perón and his second wife, Eva Perón. The Justicialist Party derives its name from the concept of social justice. Since its inception in 1946, candidates from his party have won 9 of the 12 presidential elections from which they have not been banned. As of 2016, Perón was the only Argentine to have been elected president three times.

Concertación

A coalition of center-left political parties in Chile, founded in 1988. Presidential candidates under its banner won every election from when military rule ended in 1990 until the conservative candidate Sebastián Piñera won the Chilean presidential election in 2010. In 2013 it was replaced by the New Majority coalition.

“disappearances”

In international human rights law, this occurs when a person is secretly abducted or imprisoned by a state or political organization or by a third party with the authorization, support, or acquiescence of a state or political organization, followed by a refusal to acknowledge the person’s fate and whereabouts, with the intent of placing the victim outside the protection of the law.

Chile’s Transition to Democracy

The Chilean transition to democracy began when a constitution establishing a transition itinerary was approved in a vote. From March 11, 1981 to March 1990, several organic constitutional laws were approved leading to the final restoration of democracy. After the 1988 plebiscite, the 1980 Constitution, still in force today, was amended to ease provisions for future amendments to the constitution, create more seats in the senate, diminish the role of the National Security Council, and equalize the number of civilian and military members (four members each).

Christian Democrat Patricio Aylwin served from 1990 to 1994 and was succeeded by another Christian Democrat, Eduardo Frei Ruiz-Tagle (son of Frei-Montalva), leading the same coalition for a 6-year term. Ricardo Lagos Escobar of the Socialist Party and the Party for Democracy led the Concertación (a coalition of center-left political parties in Chile, founded in 1988) to a narrower victory in the 2000 presidential elections. His term ended on March 11, 2006 when Michelle Bachelet of the Socialist Party took office. Center-right investor and businessman Sebastián Piñera, of the National Renewal, assumed the presidency on March 11, 2010 after Bachelet’s term expired.

Part of the transition from the military dictatorship to democracy entailed investigating the human right’s abuses under the previous regimes. In February 1991 Aylwin created the National Commission for Truth and Reconciliation, which released in February 1991 the Rettig Report on human rights violations committed during the military rule. This report counted 2,279 cases of “disappearances” that could be proved and registered. Of course, the very nature of “disappearances” made such investigations very difficult. The same issue arose several years later with the Valech Report released in 2004, which counted almost 30,000 victims of torture, among testimonies from 35,000 persons.

Chile in the 21st Century

The Concertación has continued to dominate Chilean politics for last two decades. Frei Ruiz-Tagle was succeeded in 2000 by Socialist Ricardo Lagos, who won the presidency in an unprecedented runoff election against Joaquín Lavín of the rightist Alliance for Chile.

In January 2006 Chileans elected their first female president, Michelle Bachelet, of the Socialist Party. She was sworn in on March 11, 2006, extending the Concertación coalition governance for another four years.

Chile signed an association agreement with the European Union in 2002; signed an extensive free trade agreement with the United States in 2003, and signed an extensive free trade agreement with South Korea in 2004, expecting a boom in the import and export of local produce and expecting to become a regional trade-hub. Continuing the coalition’s free-trade strategy, in August 2006 President Bachelet promulgated a free trade agreement with the People’s Republic of China (signed under the previous administration of Ricardo Lagos), the first Chinese free-trade agreement with a Latin American nation; similar deals with Japan and India were promulgated in August 2007. In October 2006, Bachelet promulgated a multilateral trade deal with New Zealand, Singapore and Brunei, the Trans-Pacific Strategic Economic Partnership (P4), also signed under Lagos’ presidency. Regionally, she has signed bilateral free-trade agreements with Panama, Peru, and Colombia.

After 20 years, Chile went in a new direction marked by the win of center-right Sebastián Piñera in the Chilean presidential election of 2009–2010. On February 27, 2010, Chile was struck by an 8.8 MW earthquake, the fifth largest ever recorded at the time. More than 500 people died (most from the ensuing tsunami) and over a million people lost their homes. The earthquake was also followed by multiple aftershocks. Initial damage estimates were in the range of US$15–30 billion, around 10 to 15 percent of Chile’s real gross domestic product. 

Chile achieved global recognition for the successful rescue of 33 trapped miners in 2010. On August 5, 2010 the access tunnel collapsed at the San José copper and gold mine in the Atacama Desert near Copiapó in northern Chile, trapping 33 men 2,300 feet below ground. A rescue effort organized by the Chilean government located the miners 17 days later. All 33 men were brought to the surface two months later on October 13, 2010 over a period of almost 24 hours, an effort that was carried on live television around the world. 

Good macroeconomic indicators failed to halt the social dissatisfaction claiming for a better and fairer education, which was traced to massive protests demanding more democratic and equitable institutions and a permanent disapproval of Piñera’s administration.

Due to term limits, Sebastián Piñera did not stand for re-election in 2013, and his term expired in March 2014 resulting in Michelle Bachelet returning to office. In 2015 a series of corruption scandals became public, threatening the credibility of the political and business class.

Presidents of Chile

Five presidents of Chile since Transition to democracy (1990–2018), celebrating the Bicentennial of Chile.

Photo of the five most recent presidents on Chile standing side by side, waving Chilean flags.

Contemporary Era in Argentina

Argentina also experienced a transition from a military dictatorship to a democracy in the 1980s. Raúl Alfonsín won the 1983 elections campaigning for the prosecution of those responsible for human rights violations during the military dictatorship. The Trial of the Juntas and other martial courts sentenced all the coup’s leaders but, under military pressure, Alfonsín also enacted the Full Stop and Due Obedience laws, which halted prosecutions further down the chain of command. The worsening economic crisis and hyperinflation reduced his popular support and the Peronist Carlos Menem won the 1989 election. Soon after, riots forced Alfonsín to an early resignation.

Menem embraced neo-liberal policies: a fixed exchange rate, business deregulation, privatizations ,and dismantling of protectionist barriers normalized the economy for a while. He pardoned the officers who had been sentenced during Alfonsín’s government. The 1994 Constitutional Amendment allowed Menem to be elected for a second term. The economy began to decline in 1995, with increasing unemployment and recession; led by Fernando de la Rúa, the UCR (Radical Civic Union, a centrist social-liberal political party) returned to the presidency in the 1999 elections.

De la Rúa kept Menem’s economic plan despite the worsening crisis, which led to growing social discontent. A massive capital flight was responded to with a freezing of bank accounts, generating further turmoil. The December 2001 riots forced him to resign. Congress appointed Eduardo Duhalde as acting president, who repealed the fixed exchange rate established by Menem. By the late 2002 the economic crisis began to recess, but the assassination of two protestors by the police caused political commotion, prompting Duhalde to move elections forward. Néstor Kirchner was elected as the new president.

Boosting the neo-Keynesian economic policies laid by Duhalde, Kirchner ended the economic crisis attaining significant fiscal and trade surpluses, and steep GDP growth. Under his administration Argentina restructured its defaulted debt with an unprecedented discount of about 70% on most bonds, paid off debts with the International Monetary Fund, purged the military of officers with doubtful human rights records, nullified and voided the Full Stop and Due Obedience laws, ruled them as unconstitutional, and resumed legal prosecution of the Juntas’ crimes. He did not run for reelection, promoting instead the candidacy of his wife, senator Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, who was elected in 2007 and reelected in 2011.

On November 22, 2015, after a tie in the first round of presidential elections on October 25, Mauricio Macri won the first ballotage in Argentina’s history, beating Front for Victory candidate Daniel Scioli and becoming president-elect. Macri is the first democratically elected non-radical or peronist president since 1916, although he had the support of the first mentioned. He took office on December 10, 2015. In April 2016, the Macri Government introduced austerity measures intended to tackle inflation and public deficits.

Cristina Fernández and Néstor Kirchner

Cristina Fernández and Néstor Kirchner during the bicentennial of Chile. The couple has occupied the presidency of Argentina for 12 years, he from 2003 to 2007 and she from 2007 to 2015.

Photo of Cristina Fernández and Néstor Kirchner during the Bicentenario. She is standing on the left, holding her hand to her chest, he is standing next to her, hands folded in front of him.

38.5.4: Mexico’s Transition to True Democracy

The Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI), the political party that controlled national and state politics in Mexico since 1929, was finally voted out of power in 2000 with the election of Vicente Fox Quesada, the candidate of the National Action Party (PAN).

Learning Objective

Determine to what extent Mexico has achieved a democratic political system

Key Points

• A new era began in Mexico following the fraudulent 1988 presidential elections.
• The Institutional Revolutionary Party barely won the presidential election, and President Carlos Salinas de Gortari began implementing sweeping neoliberal reforms in Mexico. 
• These reforms required the amendment of the Constitution, especially curtailing the power of the Mexican state to regulate foreign business enterprises, but also lifted the suppression of the Roman Catholic Church in Mexico. 
• Mexico’s economy was further integrated with that of United States and Canada after the North American Free Trade Agreement or NAFTA agreement began lowering trade barriers in 1994. 
• Seven decades of PRI rule ended in 2000 with the election of Vicente Fox of the Partido Acción Nacional (PAN). 
• His successor, Felipe Calderón, also of the PAN, embarked on a war against drug mafias in Mexico, one which has resulted in tens of thousands of deaths. 
• In the face of extremely violent drug wars, the PRI returned to power in 2012, promising that it had reformed itself.

Key Terms

North American Free Trade Agreement

An agreement signed by Canada, Mexico, and the United States, creating a trilateral trade bloc in North America. The agreement came into force on January 1, 1994. It superseded the Canada–United States Free Trade Agreement between the Canada and the United States. The goal of the agreement was to eliminate barriers to trade and investment between the United States, Canada, and Mexico. The implementation of the agreement on January 1, 1994 brought the immediate elimination of tariffs on more than one-half of Mexico’s exports to the United States and more than one-third of U.S. exports to Mexico.

Zapatista Army of National Liberation

A revolutionary leftist political and militant group based in Chiapas, the southernmost state of Mexico. Since 1994 the group has been in a declared war “against the Mexican state” and against military, paramilitary, and corporate incursions into Chiapas. This war has been primarily defensive. In recent years, it has focused on a strategy of civil resistance. The group’s main body is made up of mostly rural indigenous people, but includes some supporters in urban areas and internationally.

Institutional Revolutionary Party

A Mexican political party founded in 1929 that held power uninterruptedly in the country for 71 years from 1929 to 2000.

Background: Decline of the PRI

A phenomenon of the 1980s in Mexico was the growth of organized political opposition to de facto one-party rule by the Institutional Revolutionary Party (Spanish: Partido Revolucionario Institucional or PRI), which held power uninterruptedly in the country for 71 years from 1929 to 2000. The National Action Party (PAN), founded in 1939 and until the 1980s a marginal political party and not a serious contender for power, began to gain voters, particularly in Mexico’s north. They made gains in local elections initially, but in 1986 the PAN candidate for the governorship of Chihuahua had a good chance of winning.

The 1988 Mexican general election was pivotal in Mexican history. The PRI’s candidate was Carlos Salinas de Gortari, an economist who was educated at Harvard and who had never held an elected office. Cuauhtemoc Cárdenas, the son of former President Lázaro Cárdenas, broke with the PRI and ran as a candidate of the Democratic Current, later forming into the Party of Democratic Revolution (PRD). The PAN candidate Manuel Clouthier ran a clean campaign in long-standing pattern of the party.

The election was marked by irregularities on a massive scale. The Ministry of the Interior administered the electoral process, which meant in practice that the PRI controlled it. During the vote count, the government computers were said to have crashed, something the government called “a breakdown of the system.” One observer said, “For the ordinary citizen, it was not the computer network but the Mexican political system that had crashed.” When the computers were said to be running again after a considerable delay, the election results they recorded were an extremely narrow victory for Salinas (50.7%), Cárdenas (31.1%), and Clouthier (16.8%). Cárdenas was widely seen to have won the election, but Salinas was declared the winner. There might have been violence in the wake of such fraudulent results, but Cárdenas did not call for it, “sparing the country a possible civil war.” Years later, former Mexican President Miguel de la Madrid (1982–88) was quoted in the New York Times stating that the results were indeed fraudulent.

Salinas embarked on a program of neoliberal reforms that fixed the exchange rate, controlled inflation, and culminated with the signing of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which came into effect on January 1, 1994. The same day, the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) started a two-week-long armed rebellion against the federal government, and has continued as a non-violent opposition movement against neoliberalism and globalization.

In 1994, Salinas was succeeded by Ernesto Zedillo, followed by the Mexican peso crisis and a $50 billion bailout by the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Major macroeconomic reforms were initiated by President Zedillo, and the economy rapidly recovered and growth peaked at almost 7% by the end of 1999.

President Vicente Fox Quesada (2000–2006)

Emphasizing the need to upgrade infrastructure, modernize the tax system and labor laws, integrate with the U.S. economy, and allow private investment in the energy sector, Vicente Fox Quesada, the candidate of the National Action Party (PAN), was elected the 69th president of Mexico on July 2, 2000, ending PRI’s 71-year-long control of the office. Though Fox’s victory was due in part to popular discontent with decades of unchallenged PRI hegemony, Fox’s opponent, president Zedillo, conceded defeat on the night of the election—a first in Mexican history. A further sign of the quickening of Mexican democracy was the fact that PAN failed to win a majority in both chambers of Congress—a situation that prevented Fox from implementing his reform pledges. Nonetheless, the transfer of power in 2000 was quick and peaceful.

Fox was a very strong candidate, but an ineffective president who was weakened by PAN’s minority status in Congress. Historian Philip Russell summarizes the strengths and weaknesses of Fox as president:

Marketed on television, Fox made a far better candidate than he did president. He failed to take charge and provide cabinet leadership, failed to set priorities, and turned a blind eye to alliance building….By 2006, as political scientist Soledad Loaeza noted, ‘the eager candidate became a reluctant president who avoided tough choices and appeared hesitant and unable to hide the weariness caused by the responsibilities and constraints of the office. …’ He had little success in fighting crime. Even though he maintained the macroeconomic stability inherited from his predecessor, economic growth barely exceeded the rate of population increase. Similarly, the lack of fiscal reform left tax collection at a rate similar to that of Haiti….Finally, during Fox’s administration, only 1.4 million formal-sector jobs were created, leading to massive immigration to the United States and an explosive increase in informal employment.

President Felipe Calderón Hinojosa (2006–2012)

President Felipe Calderón Hinojosa (PAN) took office after one of the most hotly contested elections in recent Mexican history; Calderón won by such a small margin (.56% or 233,831 votes) that the runner-up, Andrés Manuel López Obrador of the leftist Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), contested the results.

Despite imposing a cap on salaries of high-ranking public servants, Calderón ordered a raise on the salaries of the Federal Police and the Mexican armed forces on his first day as president.

Calderón’s government also ordered massive raids on drug cartels upon assuming office in December 2006 in response to an increasingly deadly spate of violence in his home state of Michoacán. The decision to intensify drug enforcement operations led to an ongoing conflict between the federal government and the Mexican drug cartels.

President Enrique Peña Nieto (2006-Present)

On July 1, 2012, Enrique Peña Nieto was elected president of Mexico with 38% of the vote. He is a former governor of the state of Mexico and a member of the PRI. His election returned the PRI to power after 12 years of PAN rule. He was officially sworn into office on December 1, 2012.

The Pacto por México was a cross party alliance that called for the accomplishment of 95 goals. It was signed on December 2, 2012 by the leaders of the three main political parties in Chapultepec Castle. The Pact has been lauded by international pundits as an example for solving political gridlock and for effectively passing institutional reforms. Among other legislation, it called for education reform, banking reform, fiscal reform, and telecommunications reform, all of which were eventually passed. Most importantly, the Pact wanted a revaluation of PEMEX. This ultimately resulted in the dissolution of the agreement when in December 2013 the center-left PRD refused to collaborate with the legislation penned by the center-right PAN and PRI that ended PEMEX’s monopoly and allowed for foreign investment in Mexico’s oil industry.

Enrique Peña Nieto

Current Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto with President of China Xi Jinping

Photo of President Enrique Peña Nieto with President of China Xi Jinping, standing, looking at each other with smiles, toasting with a glass of white wine.

38.5.5: Drug Cartels

Drug cartels have been a major force in contemporary Latin America, sometimes rivaling the power of some nations’ governments and military, and causing hundreds of thousands of deaths through violence between competing cartels and between cartels and governments.

Learning Objective

Examine the powerful role drug cartels play across Latin America

Key Points

• A drug cartel is any criminal organization with the intention of supplying drug trafficking operations, and can range from loosely managed agreements among various drug traffickers to formalized commercial enterprises with billions of dollars in annual profits.
• Drug cartels came to power in the 1970s and 80s, controlling the vast majority of illegal drug trafficking throughout Latin America and the United States.
• Pablo Escobar with his Medellín Cartel supplied an estimated 80% of the cocaine smuggled into the United States at the height of his career, turning over US $21.9 billion a year in personal income.
• Each year from 1982 to 1992 Forbes magazine ranked Escobar as one of the top ten most powerful people in the World and he was considered by the Colombian Government and the U.S. Government to be “The unofficial dictator of Colombia.”
• The Mexican drug cartels began with Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo (“The Godfather”), who founded the Guadalajara Cartel in 1980 and controlled most of the illegal drug trade in Mexico and the trafficking corridors across the Mexico–U.S. border throughout the 80s.
• Since then there have numerous cartels, often violently vying for power, with one of the largest in recent years being the Gulf Cartel.
• The Mexican Drug War is an ongoing war between the Mexican Government and various drug trafficking syndicates, started in 2006 when the Mexican military began to intervene in drug trafficking violence.
• Estimates set the death toll of the Mexican Drug War above 120,000 killed by 2013, not including 27,000 missing.

Key Terms

Pablo Escobar

A Colombian drug lord, drug trafficker, and narco-terrorist. His cartel supplied an estimated 80% of the cocaine smuggled into the United States at the height of his career, turning over US $21.9 billion a year in personal income. He was often called “The King of Cocaine” and was the wealthiest criminal in history, with an estimated known net worth of US $30 billion by the early 1990s (equivalent to about $55 billion as of 2016), making him one of the richest men in the world at his prime.

Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo

A convicted Mexican drug lord who formed the Guadalajara Cartel in the 1980s, and controlled almost all of the drug trafficking in Mexico and the corridors along the Mexico–U.S. border.

drug cartel

Any criminal organization with the intention of supplying drug trafficking operations. They range from loosely managed agreements among various drug traffickers to formalized commercial enterprises.

Drug Cartels

A drug cartel is any criminal organization with the intention of supplying drug trafficking operations. They range from loosely managed agreements among various drug traffickers to formalized commercial enterprises. The term was applied when the largest trafficking organizations reached an agreement to coordinate the production and distribution of cocaine. Since that agreement was broken up, drug cartels are no longer actually cartels, but the term stuck and it is now popularly used to refer to any criminal narcotics related organization.

The basic structure of a drug cartel is as follows:

• Falcons (Spanish: Halcones): Considered the “eyes and ears” of the streets, the “falcons” are the lowest rank in any drug cartel. They are responsible for supervising and reporting the activities of the police, the military, and rival groups.
• Hitmen (Spanish: Sicarios): The armed group within the drug cartel, responsible for carrying out assassinations, kidnappings, thefts, extortions, operating protection rackets, and defending their plaza (turf) from rival groups and the military.
• Lieutenants (Spanish: Lugartenientes): The second highest position in the drug cartel organization, responsible for supervising the hitmen and falcons within their own territory. They are allowed to carry out low-profile executions without permission from their bosses.
• Drug lords (Spanish: Capos): The highest position in any drug cartel, responsible for supervising the entire drug industry, appointing territorial leaders, making alliances, and planning high-profile executions.

It is worth noting that there are other operating groups within the drug cartels. For example, the drug producers and suppliers, although not considered in the basic structure, are critical operators of any drug cartel, along with the financiers and money launderers. In addition, the arms suppliers operate in a completely different circle, and are technically not considered part of the cartel’s logistics.

Mexican Drug Cartels

Origins

The birth of most Mexican drug cartels is traced to former Mexican Judicial Federal Police agent Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo (“The Godfather”), who founded the Guadalajara Cartel in 1980 and controlled most of the illegal drug trade in Mexico and the trafficking corridors across the Mexico–U.S. border along with Juan Garcia Abrego throughout the 1980s. He started off by smuggling marijuana and opium into the United States and was the first Mexican drug chief to link up with Colombia’s cocaine cartels in the 1980s. Through his connections, Félix Gallardo became the point man for the Medellín Cartel, which was run by Pablo Escobar. This was easily accomplished because Félix Gallardo had already established an infrastructure that stood ready to serve the Colombia-based traffickers.

There were no cartels at that time in Mexico. Félix Gallardo oversaw all operations; there was just him, his cronies, and the politicians who sold him protection. However, the Guadalajara Cartel suffered a major blow in 1985 when the group’s co-founder Rafael Caro Quintero was captured and later convicted for the murder of DEA agent Enrique Camarena. Félix Gallardo afterwards kept a low profile and in 1987 he moved with his family to Guadalajara.

“The Godfather” then decided to divide up the trade he controlled, as it would be more efficient and less likely to be brought down in one law enforcement swoop. In a way, he was privatizing the Mexican drug business while sending it back underground, to be run by bosses who were less well known or not yet known by the DEA. Gallardo convened the nation’s top drug traffickers at a house in the resort of Acapulco where he designated the plazas or territories.

The Tijuana route would go to the Arellano Felix brothers. The Ciudad Juárez route would go to the Carrillo Fuentes family. Miguel Caro Quintero would run the Sonora corridor. The control of the Matamoros, Tamaulipas corridor—then becoming the Gulf Cartel—would be left undisturbed to its founder Juan García Ábrego. Meanwhile, Joaquín Guzmán Loera and Ismael Zambada García would take over Pacific coast operations, becoming the Sinaloa Cartel. Guzmán and Zambada brought veteran Héctor Luis Palma Salazar back into the fold. Félix Gallardo still planned to oversee national operations, as he maintained important connections, but he would no longer control all details of the business.

Félix Gallardo was arrested on 8 April 1989.

Gulf Cartel

The Gulf Cartel (Cartel del Golfo or CDG), based in Matamoros, Tamaulipas, has been one of Mexico’s two dominant cartels in recent years. In the late 1990s, it hired a private mercenary army (an enforcer group now called Los Zetas), which in 2006 stepped up as a partner but, in February 2010, their partnership was dissolved and both groups engaged in widespread violence across several border cities of Tamaulipas state, turning several border towns into “ghost towns.”

The CDG was strong at the beginning of 2011, holding off several Zetas incursions into its territory. However, as the year progressed, internal divisions led to intra-cartel battles in Matamoros and Reynosa, Tamaulipas state. The infighting resulted in several arrests and deaths in Mexico and in the United States. The CDG has since broken apart, and it appears that one faction, known as Los Metros, has overpowered its rival Los Rojos faction and is now asserting its control over CDG operations.

Mexican Drug War

The Mexican Drug War is the Mexican theater of the United States’ War on Drugs, involving an ongoing war between the Mexican Government and various drug trafficking syndicates. Since 2006, when the Mexican military began to intervene, the government’s principal goal has been to reduce the drug-related violence. Additionally, the Mexican government has claimed that their primary focus is on dismantling the powerful drug cartels, rather than on preventing drug trafficking, which is left to U.S. functionaries.

Although Mexican drug cartels, or drug trafficking organizations, have existed for several decades, their influence has increased since the demise of the Colombian Cali and Medellín cartels in the 1990s. Mexican drug cartels now dominate the wholesale illicit drug market and in 2007 controlled 90% of the cocaine entering the United States. Arrests of key cartel leaders, particularly in the Tijuana and Gulf cartels, has led to increasing drug violence as cartels fight for control of the trafficking routes into the United States.

Although violence between drug cartels had been occurring long before the war began, the government held a generally passive stance regarding cartel violence in the 1990s and early 2000s. That changed on December 11, 2006, when newly elected President Felipe Calderón sent 6,500 federal troops to the state of Michoacán to end drug violence there (Operation Michoacán). This action is regarded as the first major operation against organized crime, and is generally viewed as the starting point of the war between the government and the drug cartels. As time progressed, Calderón continued to escalate his anti-drug campaign, in which there are now about 45,000 troops involved in addition to state and federal police forces. In 2010 Calderón said that the cartels seek “to replace the government” and “are trying to impose a monopoly by force of arms, and are even trying to impose their own laws.”

As of 2011, Mexico’s military captured 11,544 people who were believed to have been involved with the cartels and organized crime. In the year prior, 28,000 individuals were arrested on drug-related charges. The decrease in eradication and drug seizures, as shown in statistics calculated by federal authorities, poorly reflects Calderón’s security agenda. Since the war began, over forty thousand people have been killed as a result of cartel violence. During Calderón’s presidential term, the murder rate of Mexico increased dramatically.

Medellín Cartel

The Medellín Cartel was a Colombian drug cartel originating in the city of Medellín. The drug cartel operated from the mid-1970s until the early-1990s in Bolivia, Colombia, Honduras, Peru, and the United States, as well as in Canada and Europe. It was founded and run by Ochoa Vázquez brothers Jorge Luis, Juan David, and Fabio, together with Pablo Escobar, Carlos Lehder, and José Gonzalo Rodríguez Gacha. By 1993, the resistance group, Los Pepes (or PEPES), controlled by the Cali Cartel, and the Colombian government, in collaboration with the Cali Cartel, right-wing paramilitary groups, and the U.S. government, had dismantled the Medellín Cartel by imprisoning or assassinating its members.

At the height of Pablo Escobar’s reign of the Medellín Cartel, and for 20 years, Pablo Escobar was the most powerful and richest drug lord in the world. And for 25 years, Escobar was also the most violent, ruthless, deadliest, dangerous, and feared drug lord in the World. From 1981-1993, Pablo Escobar was the 7th richest person in the World, Escobar had an astronomical and amazing net worth of $30-$42 Billion (which is equivalent to $107 Billion as of 2017). Escobar became Colombia’s top drug kingpin in 1976, but he became the world’s top drug kingpin in 1981, around that time Pablo Escobar became the most powerful and dangerous man in Colombia, and during Pablo Escobar’s regime, the Medellín Cartel became bigger and more powerful than the Colombian Government.

Escobar had more power, man power, weapons, influences, resources, and reach than the Colombian  government and the Colombian military. For almost 2 decades, Escobar was responsible for ordering hundreds of atrocities, such as 1,300 bombings all over Colombia. Escobar’s most notorious bombings were the Avianca Flight 203 bombing, which killed 110 people; the DAS Building bombing, which killed 75 people and severely injured over 1,800 people; a truck bomb that killed a total of 489 people and severely injured 3,000 people; a bus bomb that killed a total of 260 people and wounded around 1,000 people;  a series of 7 car bombs in the same day, which killed a total of 194 people and injured nearly 800 people; and a car bomb that killed 137 adults, 112 children, and severely injured 600 more people. Over a 20 year period, Escobar ordered the murders of at least 110,000 people.

Pablo Escobar

At the height of his reign of the Medellín Cartel, and for 20 years, Pablo Escobar was the most powerful and richest drug lord in the world.

A mugshot of Pablo Escobar, smiling.

38.5.6: The United States in the 21st Century

The beginning of the 21st century saw the September 11 attacks by Al-Qaeda, subsequent U.S. invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, and in 2008,  the worst U.S. economic crisis since the Great Depression.

Learning Objective

Describe the role of the United States in the 21st century

Key Points

• The 21st century in American began with the highly-contested election of Republican George W. Bush.
• The September 11 terrorist attacks occurred eight months into Bush’s first term as president, to which he responded with what became known as the Bush Doctrine: launching a “War on Terror,” an international military campaign that included the war in Afghanistan in 2001 and the Iraq War in 2003.
• In 2008, the unpopularity of President Bush and the Iraq war, along with the 2008 financial crisis, led to the election of Barack Obama, the first African-American President of the United States.
• Obama’s domestic initiatives included the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, which by means of large reforms to the American healthcare system, created a National Health Insurance program. 
• President Obama eventually withdrew combat troops from Iraq, and shifted the country’s efforts in the War on Terror to Afghanistan, where a troop surge was initiated in 2009. 
• In 2010, due to continued public discontent with the economic situation, unemployment, and federal spending, Republicans regained control of the House of Representatives and reduced the Democratic majority in the Senate.
• On November 8, 2016, GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump defeated Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton to become the President-elect of the United States, taking office on January 20, 2017.

Key Terms

George W. Bush

An American politician who served as the 43rd President of the United States from 2001 to 2009. He was also the 46th Governor of Texas from 1995 to 2000. The September 11 terrorist attacks occurred eight months into his first term as president. He responded with what became known as the Bush Doctrine: launching a “War on Terror,” an international military campaign that included the war in Afghanistan in 2001 and the Iraq War in 2003. He also promoted policies on the economy, health care, education, Social Security reform, and amending the Constitution to prohibit same-sex marriage.

Barack Obama

An American politician who served as the 44th President of the United States from 2009 to 2017. He is the first African American to have served as president, as well as the first born outside the contiguous United States. During his first two years in office, he signed many landmark bills. Main reforms were the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act; the Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act; and the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell Repeal Act of 2010.

Great Recession

A period of general economic decline observed in world markets during the late 2000s and early 2010s. The scale and timing of the recession varied from country to country. In terms of overall impact, the International Monetary Fund concluded that it was the worst global recession since World War II.

9/11

A series of four coordinated terrorist attacks by the Islamic terrorist group al-Qaeda on the United States on the morning of Tuesday, September 11, 2001. The attacks killed 2,996 people, injured over 6,000 others, and caused at least $10 billion in property and infrastructure damage and $3 trillion in total costs.

George W. Bush

In 2000, Republican George W. Bush was elected president in one of the closest and most controversial elections in U.S. history. Early in his term, his administration approved education reform and a large across-the-board tax cut aimed at stimulating the economy. Following the September 11 attacks in 2001, the United States embarked on the Global War on Terrorism, starting with the 2001 war in Afghanistan. In 2003, the United States invaded Iraq, which deposed the controversial regime of Saddam Hussein, but also resulted in a prolonged conflict that would continue over the course of the decade. The Homeland Security Department was formed and the controversial Patriot Act was passed to bolster domestic efforts against terrorism. In 2006, criticism over the handling of the disastrous Hurricane Katrina (which struck the Gulf Coast region in 2005), political scandals, and the growing unpopularity of the Iraq War helped the Democrats gain control of Congress. Saddam Hussein was later tried, charged for war crimes and crimes against humanity, and executed by hanging. In 2007, President Bush ordered a troop surge in Iraq, which ultimately led to reduced casualties.

9/11 and the Iraq War

On September 11, 2001 (“9/11”), the United States was struck by a terrorist attack when 19 al-Qaeda hijackers commandeered four airliners to be used in suicide attacks. They intentionally crashed two into both twin towers of the World Trade Center and the third into the Pentagon, killing 2,937 victims—206 aboard the three airliners, 2,606 who were in the World Trade Center and on the ground, and 125 who were in the Pentagon. The fourth plane was re-taken by the passengers and crew of the aircraft. While they were not able to land the plane safely, they were able to re-take control of the aircraft and crash it into an empty field in Pennsylvania, killing all 44 people including the four terrorists on board, thereby saving whatever target the terrorists were aiming for. All in all, a total of 2,977 people perished in the attacks. In response, President George W. Bush on September 20 announced a “War on Terror.” On October 7, 2001, the United States and NATO then invaded Afghanistan to oust the Taliban regime, which had provided safe haven to al-Qaeda and its leader Osama bin Laden.

9/11

The former World Trade Center in Lower Manhattan during September 11 attacks in 2001 before their collapse.

The former World Trade Center in Lower Manhattan during September 11 attacks in 2001. Both are on fire and smoking heavily.

The federal government established new domestic efforts to prevent future attacks. The controversial USA PATRIOT Act increased the government’s power to monitor communications and removed legal restrictions on information sharing between federal law enforcement and intelligence services. A cabinet-level agency called the Department of Homeland Security was created to lead and coordinate federal counter-terrorism activities. Some of these anti-terrorism efforts, particularly the U.S. government’s handling of detainees at the prison at Guantanamo Bay, led to allegations against the U.S. government of human rights violations.

In 2003, from March 19 to May 1, the United States launched an invasion of Iraq, which led to the collapse of the Iraq government and the eventual capture of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, with whom the United States had long-standing tense relations. The reasons for the invasion cited by the Bush administration included the spreading of democracy, the elimination of weapons of mass destruction, and the liberation of the Iraqi people. Despite some initial successes early in the invasion, the continued Iraq War fueled international protests and gradually saw domestic support decline as many people began to question whether or not the invasion was worth the cost.

In 2008, the unpopularity of President Bush and the Iraq War, along with the 2008 financial crisis, led to the election of Barack Obama, the first African-American President of the United States. After his election, Obama reluctantly continued the war effort in Iraq until August 31, 2010, when he declared that combat operations had ended. However, 50,000 American soldiers and military personnel were kept in Iraq to assist Iraqi forces, help protect withdrawing forces, and work on counter-terrorism until December 15, 2011, when the war was declared formally over and the last troops left the country.

Great Recession

In September 2008, the United States, and most of Europe, entered the longest post-World War II recession, often called the “Great Recession.” Multiple overlapping crises were involved, especially the housing market crisis, a subprime mortgage crisis, soaring oil prices, an automotive industry crisis, rising unemployment, and the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. The financial crisis threatened the stability of the entire economy in September 2008 when Lehman Brothers failed and other giant banks were in grave danger. Starting in October, the federal government lent $245 billion to financial institutions through the Troubled Asset Relief Program, which was passed by bipartisan majorities and signed by Bush.

Following his election victory by a wide electoral margin in November 2008, Bush’s successor, Barack Obama, signed into law the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, which was a $787 billion economic stimulus aimed at helping the economy recover from the deepening recession. Obama, like Bush, took steps to rescue the auto industry and prevent future economic meltdowns. These included a bailout of General Motors and Chrysler, putting ownership temporarily in the hands of the government, and the “cash for clunkers” program, which temporarily boosted new car sales.

The recession officially ended in June 2009, and the economy slowly began to expand once again. The unemployment rate peaked at 10.1% in October 2009 after surging from 4.7% in November 2007, and returned to 5.0% as of October 2015. However, overall economic growth has remained weaker in the 2010s compared to expansions in previous decades.

Recent Events

From 2009 to 2010, the 111th Congress passed major legislation such as the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act; the Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act; and the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell Repeal Act, which were signed into law by President Obama. Following the 2010 midterm elections, which resulted in a Republican-controlled House of Representatives and a Democratic-controlled Senate, Congress presided over a period of elevated gridlock and heated debates over whether or not to raise the debt ceiling, extend tax cuts for citizens making over $250,000 annually, and many other key issues. In the fall of 2012, Mitt Romney challenged Barack Obama for the presidency. Congressional gridlock continued as Congressional Republicans’ call for the repeal of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act—popularly known as “Obamacare”—along with other various demands, resulted in the first government shutdown since the Clinton administration and almost led to the first default on U.S. debt since the 19th century. As a result of growing public frustration with both parties in Congress since the beginning of the decade, Congressional approval ratings fell to record lows, with only 11% of Americans approving as of October 2013.

Obamacare

President Barack Obama signing the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (“Obamacare”) in 2010.

Several men and women standing around President Obama signing the Affordable Care Act sitting at a desk.

Other major events that have occurred during the 2010s include the rise of new political movements, such as the conservative Tea Party movement and the liberal Occupy movement. There was also unusually severe weather during the early part of the decade. In 2012, over half the country experienced record drought and Hurricane Sandy caused massive damage to coastal areas of New York and New Jersey.

The ongoing debate over the issue of rights for the LGBT community, most notably that of same-sex marriage, began to shift in favor of same-sex couples, and has been reflected in dozens of polls released in the early part of the decade. In 2012, President Obama became the first president to openly support same-sex marriage, and the 2013 Supreme Court decision in the case of United States v. Windsor provided for federal recognition of same-sex unions. In June 2015, the United States Supreme Court legalized gay marriage nationally in the case of Obergefell v. Hodges.

Political debate has continued over issues such as tax reform, immigration reform, income inequality and U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East, particularly with regards to global terrorism, the rise of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, and an accompanying climate of Islamophobia.

After unprecedented media coverage and a hostile presidential campaign, businessman Donald Trump defeated former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election, leading to Republicans gaining control of all branches of government. His first weeks in office have largely been characterized by a series of executive orders restricting abortion rights and the effects of the Affordable Care Act, the construction of the pipelines in North Dakota and a wall along the Mexican-American border, and the refusal to admit citizens of several Muslim majority countries. 

38.6: Global Concerns

38.6.1: The International Framework in the 21st Century

Although international relations in the 21st
century are increasingly characterized by the formation of international and
regional institutions, their effectiveness alongside the sovereign actions of
states has been questioned.

Learning Objective

Characterize the international system as it
stands today

Key Points

• The beginning of
  the 21st century has thus far been marked by the rise of a global economy and
  Third World consumerism, mistrust in government, deepening global concern over
  terrorism, and an increase in the power of private enterprise.

• The United
  States emerged as the sole superpower after the Cold War, but China simultaneously
  began its rise and the BRICS countries aimed to create more balance in the
  global political and economic spectrum.

• After the Cold
  War, the UN saw a radical expansion in its peacekeeping duties, taking on more
  missions in ten years than it had in the previous four decades. 

• Though the UN
  Charter had been written primarily to prevent aggression by one nation against
  another, in the early 1990s the UN faced a number of simultaneous, serious
  crises within nations such as Somalia, Haiti, Mozambique, and the former
  Yugoslavia that tested its founding principles and institutional effectiveness.

• The World Trade
  Organization (WTO) is an intergovernmental organization that regulates
  international trade. Due to an impasse in negotiations within the WTO between
  developed and developing countries, there have been an increasing number of
  bilateral free trade agreements between governments.

• The renewed academic interest in regionalism, the emergence of new
  regional formations, and international trade agreements like NAFTA and the
  development of a European Single Market demonstrate the upgraded importance of regional
  political cooperation and economic competitiveness.

Key Terms

confidence- and security-building measures

Actions taken to reduce fear of attack by two or more parties in a situation of tension with or without physical conflict.
Confidence- and security-building measures emerged from attempts by the Cold
War superpowers and their military alliances (the North Atlantic Treaty Organization
and the Warsaw Pact) to avoid nuclear war by accident or miscalculation.
However, these measures also exist at other levels of conflict and in different
regions of the world.

Short Twentieth Century

Originally proposed by Ivan Berend of the
Hungarian Academy of Sciences but defined by Eric Hobsbawm, a British Marxist
historian and author, this term refers to the period between 1914 and
1991, the beginning of World War I and the fall of the Soviet
Union.

BRICS

The acronym used to refer to an association of five
major emerging national economies: Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa.

The beginning of the 21st
century has thus far been marked by the rise of a global economy and Third
World consumerism, mistrust in government, deepening global concern over
terrorism, and an increase in the power of private enterprise. The long-term
effects of increased globalization are unknown, but there are many who are
concerned about its implications. The Arab Spring of the early 2010s led to
mixed outcomes in the Arab world. The Digital Revolution, which began around
the 1980s, continues into the present. Millennials and Generation Z are
coming of age and rising to prominence during this century as well. 

In contemporary history, the
21st century essentially began in 1991 (the end of the Short Twentieth Century)
with the United States as the sole superpower in the absence of the Soviet
Union, while China began its rise and the BRICS countries aimed to create more
balance in the global political and economic spectrum.

BRICS Countries

Countries highlighted in green include all BRICS countries:  Brazil, Russia, India, People’s Republic of China, and South Africa.

United Nations

After the Cold War, the UN
saw a radical expansion in its peacekeeping duties, taking on more missions in
ten years than it had in the previous four decades. Between 1988 and 2000, the
number of adopted Security Council resolutions more than doubled, and the
peacekeeping budget increased more than tenfold. The UN negotiated an end to
the Salvadoran Civil War, launched a successful peacekeeping mission in
Namibia, and oversaw democratic elections in post-apartheid South Africa and
post-Khmer Rouge Cambodia. In 1991, the UN authorized a U.S.-led coalition that
repulsed the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. Brian Urquhart, Under-Secretary-General
from 1971 to 1985, later described the hopes raised by these successes as a
“false renaissance” for the organization given the more troubled
missions that followed.

Though the UN Charter was written primarily to prevent aggression by one nation against another, in
the early 1990s the UN faced a number of simultaneous, serious crises within
nations such as Somalia, Haiti, Mozambique, and the former Yugoslavia. The UN
mission in Somalia was widely viewed as a failure after the U.S. withdrawal
following casualties in the Battle of Mogadishu, and the UN mission to Bosnia
faced “worldwide ridicule” for its indecisive and confused mission in
the face of ethnic cleansing. In 1994, the UN Assistance Mission for Rwanda
failed to intervene in the Rwandan Genocide amid indecision in the Security
Council.

Beginning in the last decades
of the Cold War, American and European critics of the UN condemned the
organization for perceived mismanagement and corruption. In 1984, U.S. President
Ronald Reagan withdrew his nation’s funding from UNESCO (the United Nations
Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, founded 1946) over
allegations of mismanagement, followed by Britain and Singapore. Boutros
Boutros-Ghali, UN Secretary-General from 1992 to 1996, initiated a reform of
the Secretariat, reducing the size of the organization. His successor,
Kofi Annan (1997–2006), initiated further management reforms in the face of
threats from the United States to withhold its UN dues.

In the late 1990s and 2000s,
international interventions authorized by the UN took a wider variety of forms.
The UN mission in the Sierra Leone Civil War of 1991–2002 was supplemented by
British Royal Marines, and the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 was overseen by
NATO. In 2003, the United States invaded Iraq despite failing to pass a UN
Security Council resolution for authorization, prompting a new round of
questioning of the organization’s effectiveness. Under the eighth
Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon, the UN has intervened with peacekeepers in crises
including the War in Darfur in Sudan and the Kivu conflict in the Democratic
Republic of Congo. During this time, the UN has also sent observers and
chemical weapons inspectors to Syria during its civil war. In 2013, an internal
review of UN actions in the final battles of the Sri Lankan Civil War in 2009
concluded that the organization had suffered “systemic failure.”
Additionally, 101 UN personnel died in the 2010 Haiti earthquake, the worst loss
of life in the organization’s history. 

The Millennium Summit was
held in 2000 to discuss the UN’s role in the 21st century. The three-day meeting was the largest gathering of world leaders in history and
culminated in the adoption by all member states of the Millennium Development
Goals (MDGs), a commitment to achieve international development in areas such
as poverty reduction, gender equality, and public health. Progress towards
these goals, which were to be met by 2015, was ultimately uneven. The 2005
World Summit reaffirmed the UN’s focus on promoting development, peacekeeping,
human rights, and global security. The Sustainable Development Goals were
launched in 2015 to succeed the Millennium Development Goals.

In addition to addressing
global challenges, the UN has sought to improve its accountability and democratic
legitimacy by engaging more with civil society and fostering a global
constituency. To enhance transparency, the UN held its first
public debate between candidates for Secretary-General in 2016. On January 1,
2017, Portuguese diplomat António Guterres, who previously served as UN High
Commissioner for Refugees, became the ninth secretary-general. Guterres has
highlighted several key goals for his administration, including an emphasis on
diplomacy for preventing conflicts, more effective peacekeeping efforts, and
streamlining the organization to be more responsive and versatile to global
needs.

World Trade Organization

WTO members and observers

Green countries are members, blue countries are members that are dually represented by the European Union, yellow countries are observers, and red countries are non-members.

The World Trade Organization
(WTO) is an intergovernmental organization that regulates international trade.
The WTO officially commenced on January 1, 1995, under the Marrakesh Agreement
signed by 123 nations on April 15, 1994, replacing the General Agreement on
Tariffs and Trade (GATT), which commenced in 1948. The WTO deals with
regulation of trade between participating countries by providing a framework
for negotiating trade agreements and a dispute resolution process aimed at
enforcing participants’ adherence to WTO agreements, which are signed by
representatives of member governments and ratified by their legislatures. Most
of the issues that the WTO focuses on derive from previous trade negotiations,
especially from the Uruguay Round (1986–1994).

The WTO is attempting to
complete negotiations on the Doha Development Round, which was launched in 2001
to lower trade barriers around the world with an explicit focus on facilitating
the spread of global trade benefits to developing countries. The conflict
between free trade on industrial goods and services but retention of
protectionism on farm subsidies for developed countries’ domestic agricultural
sector and the substantiation of fair trade on agricultural products (requested
by developing countries) remain the major obstacles. This impasse has made it
impossible to launch new WTO negotiations beyond the Doha Development Round. As
a result, there have been an increasing number of bilateral free trade
agreements between governments. Adoption of the Bali Ministerial Declaration,
which for the first time successfully addressed bureaucratic barriers to
commerce, passed on December 7, 2013, advancing a small part of the Doha Round
agenda. However, as of January 2014, the future of the Doha Round remains
uncertain.

Regional Integration

Regional integration is a
process by which neighboring states enter into agreements to upgrade
cooperation through common institutions and rules. The objectives of the
agreement could range from economic to political to environmental, although it
has typically taken the form of a political economy initiative where commercial
interests are the focus for achieving broader sociopolitical and security
objectives as defined by national governments. Regional integration has been
organized either via supranational institutional structures, intergovernmental decision-making, or a combination of both.

Past efforts at regional
integration have often focused on removing barriers to free trade within regions,
increasing the free movement of people, labor, goods, and capital across
national borders, reducing the possibility of regional armed conflict (for
example, through confidence- and security-building measures), and adopting
cohesive regional stances on policy issues, such as the environment, climate
change, and migration.

Since the 1980s,
globalization has changed the international economic environment for
regionalism. The renewed academic interest in regionalism, the emergence of new
regional formations, and international trade agreements like the North American
Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the development of a European Single Market
demonstrate the upgraded importance of regional political cooperation and
economic competitiveness. The African Union was launched on July 9, 2002, and a
proposal for a North American region was made in 2005 by the Council on Foreign
Relations’ Independent Task Force on the Future of North America. In Latin
America, however, the proposal to extend NAFTA into a Free Trade Area of the
Americas that would stretch from Alaska to Argentina was ultimately rejected by
nations such as Venezuela, Ecuador, and Bolivia. It has been superseded by the
Union of South American Nations (UNASUR), which was constituted in 2008.

Regionalism contrasts with
regionalization, which is, according to the New Regionalism Approach, the
expression of increased commercial and human transactions in a defined
geographical region. Regionalism refers to an intentional political process,
typically led by governments with similar goals and values in pursuit of the
overall development within a region. Regionalization, however, is simply the
natural tendency to form regions, or the process of forming regions, due to
similarities between states in a given geographical space.

38.6.2: The Environment

The international community’s efforts to combat
climate change have often been frustrated by the economic concerns of member
states.

Learning Objective

Evaluate the efforts made by the global
community to combat climate change

Key Points

• Global warming
  and climate change are terms for the observed century-scale rise in the average
  temperature of the Earth’s climate system and its related effects.
• Most countries
  participate in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate
  Change (UNFCCC), which commits state parties to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions
  based on the premise that global warming exists and human-made CO2 emissions
  have caused it.
• The current
  state of global warming politics is frustration over a perceived
  lack of progress within the UNFCCC, which has existed for 18 years but has
  been unable to curb global GHG emissions.
• The Kyoto
  Protocol is an international treaty that extends the 1992 UNFCCC based on the
  principle of common but differentiated responsibilities, placing the obligation
  to reduce current emissions on developed countries on the basis that they are
  historically responsible for the current levels of GHGs in the atmosphere.
• Of the 192
  parties to the Kyoto Protocol, only 37 countries have binding targets within
  the framework of the Protocol, and only seven of the 37 countries have ratified
  their obligations within this framework.

• The Paris Agreement is an agreement within the UNFCCC dealing with GHG
  emissions mitigation, adaptation, and finance to be implemented starting in the
  year 2020. It is the world’s first comprehensive climate agreement and has been
  described as an incentive for and driver of fossil fuel divestment.

Key Terms

fossil fuel
divestment

The removal of investment assets, including
stocks, bonds, and investment funds, from companies involved in extracting
fossil fuels in an attempt to reduce climate change by tackling its ultimate
causes.

greenhouse gas

A gas in the atmosphere that
absorbs and emits radiation within the thermal infrared range. This process is
the fundamental cause of the greenhouse effect, which warms the planet’s
surface to a temperature above what it would be without its atmosphere.

Global warming and climate
change are terms for the observed century-scale rise in the average temperature
of the Earth’s climate system and its related effects. Multiple lines of
evidence show that the climate system is warming. Many of the observed changes
since the 1950s are unprecedented over tens to thousands of years.

Global Land-Ocean Temperature Anomaly

Land-ocean temperature index, 1880 to present, with base period 1951-1980. The solid black line is the global annual mean and the solid red line is the five-year lowess smooth, i.e. a non-parametric regression analysis that relies on a k-nearest-neighbor model. The function is evaluated using a fraction of data corresponding to a ten-year window of data, giving an effective smoothing of approximately five years. The blue uncertainty bars (95% confidence limit) account only for incomplete spatial sampling. The graph shows an overall long-term warming trend.

UNFCCC

Most countries participate in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change
(UNFCCC), which commits state parties to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions
based on the premise that (a) global warming exists and (b) human-made CO2
emissions have caused it. The ultimate objective of the Convention is to
prevent dangerous human interference of the climate system. As stated in the
Convention, this requires that GHG concentrations are stabilized in the
atmosphere at a level where ecosystems can adapt naturally to climate change,
food production is not threatened, and economic development can proceed in a
sustainable fashion. The Framework Convention was agreed in 1992, but since
then, global emissions have risen.

The current state of global
warming politics is frustration over a perceived lack of progress
within the UNFCCC, which has existed for 18 years but has been unable to
curb global GHG emissions. Todd Stern—the U.S. climate change envoy—has expressed
the challenges with the UNFCCC process as follows, “Climate change is not
a conventional environmental issue … It implicates virtually every aspect of
a state’s economy, so it makes countries nervous about growth and development.
This is an economic issue every bit as it is an environmental one.” He
went on to explain that the UNFCCC as a multilateral body can be an inefficient
system for enacting international policy. Because the framework includes
over 190 countries and negotiations are governed by consensus, small
groups of countries can often block progress. As a result, some have argued
that perhaps the consensus-driven model could be replaced with a majority vote
model. However, that would likely drive disagreement at the country level
by countries who do not wish to ratify any global agreement that might be
governed via majority vote.

Annual GHG emissions by sector, 2010

AFOLU stands for “agriculture, forestry, and other land use.” Emissions are given as a percentage share of total emissions measured in carbon dioxide-equivalents, using global warming potentials from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) 2nd Assessment Report.

The graph shows that 25% of direct emissions can be attributed to electricity and heat; 24% to agriculture, forestry, and other land use; 6.4% to buildings; 14% to transport; 21% to industry; and 9.6% to other energy. It also shows that, of the electricity and heat production, 12% of indirect carbon dioxide emissions can be attributed to buildings; 11% can be attributed to industry; and 2.6 can be attributed to other.

Kyoto Protocol

The Kyoto Protocol is an
international treaty that extends the 1992 UNFCCC. The Kyoto Protocol was
adopted in Kyoto, Japan, on December 11, 1997, and entered into force on
February 16, 2005. There are currently 192 parties to the Protocol. The
Protocol is based on the principle of common but differentiated
responsibilities: it puts the obligation to reduce current emissions on
developed countries on the basis that they are historically responsible for the
current levels of GHGs in the atmosphere. This is justified on the basis that
the developed world’s emissions have contributed most to the accumulation of GHGs
in the atmosphere, per-capita emissions (i.e., emissions per head of
population) were still relatively low in developing countries, and the
emissions of developing countries would grow to meet their development needs.

The Protocol’s first
commitment period started in 2008 and ended in 2012. A second commitment period
was agreed on in 2012, known as the Doha Amendment to the protocol, in which 37
countries have binding targets: Australia, the European Union (and its 28
member states), Belarus, Iceland, Kazakhstan, Liechtenstein, Norway,
Switzerland, and Ukraine. Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Ukraine have stated that
they may withdraw from the Protocol or not put into legal force the Amendment
with second-round targets. Japan, New Zealand, and Russia have participated in
Kyoto’s first round but have not taken on new targets in the second commitment
period. Other developed countries without second-round targets are Canada
(which withdrew from the Kyoto Protocol in 2012) and the United States (which
has not ratified the Protocol). As of July 2016, 66 states have accepted the
Doha Amendment, while entry into force requires the acceptance of 144 states.
Of the 37 countries with binding commitments, seven have ratified.

Paris Agreement

The Paris Agreement is an
agreement within the UNFCCC dealing with GHG emissions mitigation, adaptation,
and finance to be implemented starting in the year 2020. The language of the
agreement was negotiated by representatives of 195 countries at the 21st
Conference of the Parties of the UNFCCC in Paris and adopted by consensus on
December 12, 2015. It was opened for signature on April 22, 2016, (Earth Day) at
a ceremony in New York. As of December 2016, 194 UNFCCC members have signed the
treaty, 136 of which have ratified it. After several European Union states ratified
the agreement in October 2016, enough countries had ratified
the agreement that produce enough of the world’s GHGs for it to
enter into force. The agreement went into effect on November 4, 2016.

The aim of the convention is
described in Article 2. It outlines a goal of “enhancing the implementation” of
the UNFCCC via the following means:

• Holding increases in global
  average temperatures to below 2 °C above pre-industrial levels while pursuing
  efforts to limit these increases to 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels

• Increasing adaptability to
  the adverse impacts of climate change while fostering climate resilience and
  low GHG emissions in a manner that does not endanger food production

• Encouraging finance flows
  that are consistent with low GHG emissions and climate-resilient development.

The Paris Agreement is the world’s first comprehensive climate agreement
and has been described as an incentive for and driver of fossil fuel
divestment.

38.6.3: Nuclear Proliferation

Five countries are recognized as nuclear weapons states and four other countries have acquired or are presumed to have
acquired nuclear weapons after the passage of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation
Treaty.

Learning Objective

List the countries that currently control
nuclear weapons

Key Points

• Nuclear
  proliferation is the spread of nuclear weapons, fissionable material, and
  weapons-applicable nuclear technology and information to nations not recognized
  as “Nuclear Weapon States” by the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
• Four countries
  besides the five recognized nuclear weapons states have acquired or are
  presumed to have acquired nuclear weapons: India, Pakistan, North Korea, and
  Israel.
• The United
  States was the first and is the only country to have used a nuclear weapon in
  war, deploying two bombs against Japan in August 1945.
• Early efforts to
  prevent nuclear proliferation involved intense government secrecy, the wartime
  acquisition of known uranium stores (the Combined Development Trust), and at
  times even outright sabotage.
• Earnest
  international efforts to promote nuclear non-proliferation began soon after
  World War II when the Truman Administration proposed the Baruch Plan of 1946,
  which proposed the verifiable dismantlement and destruction of the U.S. nuclear
  arsenal, the only nuclear arsenal in the world at that time.
• In 1968,
  governments represented at the Eighteen Nation Disarmament Committee (ENDC)
  finished negotiations on the text of the NPT, which entered into force in March
  1970.

• Since the
  mid-1970s, the primary focus of non-proliferation efforts has been to maintain
  and even increase international control over the fissile material and
  specialized technologies necessary to build such devices as these are the
  most difficult and expensive parts of a nuclear weapons program.

Key Term

Nuclear proliferation

The spread of nuclear weapons, fissionable
material, and weapons-applicable nuclear technology and information.

Nuclear proliferation is the
spread of nuclear weapons, fissionable material, and weapons-applicable nuclear
technology and information to nations not recognized as “Nuclear Weapon States”
by the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, also known as the
Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). Proliferation has been opposed by many
nations with and without nuclear weapons, the governments of which fear that as
more countries obtain nuclear weapons, the possibility of nuclear war (up to
and including the so-called “countervalue” targeting of civilians with nuclear
weapons) will also increase, leading to the destabilization of international or
regional relations and potential infringements upon the national sovereignty of
states.

Four countries besides the
five recognized nuclear weapons states have acquired, or are presumed to have
acquired, nuclear weapons: India, Pakistan, North Korea, and Israel. None of
these four is a party to the NPT, although North Korea acceded to the NPT in
1985 and then withdrew in 2003, then proceeded to conduct
announced nuclear tests in 2006, 2009, 2013, and 2016. One critique of the NPT
is that it is discriminatory in recognizing as nuclear weapon states only those
countries that tested nuclear weapons before 1968 and requiring all other
states joining the treaty to forswear nuclear weapons.

Research into the
development of nuclear weapons was undertaken during World War II by the United
States (in cooperation with the United Kingdom and Canada), Germany, Japan, and
the USSR. The United States was the first and is the only country to have used
a nuclear weapon in war, deploying two bombs against Japan in August 1945. Following
their WWII losses, Germany and Japan ceased involvement in any nuclear
weapon research. In August 1949, the USSR tested a nuclear weapon. The United
Kingdom tested a nuclear weapon in October 1952. France developed a nuclear
weapon in 1960. The People’s Republic of China detonated a nuclear weapon in
1964. India exploded a nuclear device in 1974, and Pakistan conducted a series
of nuclear weapon tests in May 1998, following tests by India earlier that
month. In 2006, North Korea conducted its first nuclear test.

Fat Man

A mock-up of the Fat Man nuclear device. Source: US Department of Defense.

Non-proliferation Efforts

Early efforts to prevent
nuclear proliferation involved intense government secrecy, the wartime
acquisition of known uranium stores (the Combined Development Trust), and at
times even outright sabotage—such as the bombing of a heavy-water facility
thought to be used for a German nuclear program. None of these efforts were
explicitly public because the weapon developments themselves were kept secret until
the bombing of Hiroshima. Earnest international efforts to promote nuclear
non-proliferation began soon after World War II when the Truman Administration
proposed the Baruch Plan of 1946, named after Bernard Baruch, America’s first
representative to the United Nations Atomic Energy Commission (UNAEC). The
Baruch Plan, which drew heavily from the Acheson–Lilienthal Report of 1946,
proposed the verifiable dismantlement and destruction of the U.S. nuclear arsenal after all
governments had cooperated successfully to accomplish two things: 

1. the establishment of an international
   atomic development authority, which would actually own and control all
   military-applicable nuclear materials and activities, and 

2. the creation of a system
   of automatic sanctions, which not even the UN Security Council could veto, and
   which would proportionately punish states attempting to acquire the capability
   to make nuclear weapons or fissile material.

Baruch’s plea for the destruction
of nuclear weapons invoked basic moral and religious intuitions. In one part of
his address to the UN, Baruch said, “Behind the black portent of the new
atomic age lies a hope which, seized upon with faith, can work out our
salvation. If we fail, then we have damned every man to be the slave of Fear.
Let us not deceive ourselves. We must elect World Peace or World
Destruction…. We must answer the world’s longing for peace and
security.” With this remark, Baruch helped launch the field of nuclear
ethics, to which many policy experts and scholars have contributed.

Although the Baruch Plan
enjoyed wide international support, it failed to emerge from the UNAEC because
the Soviet Union planned to veto it in the Security Council. Still, it remained
official American policy until 1953, when President Eisenhower made his Atoms for
Peace proposal before the UN General Assembly. Eisenhower’s proposal led
eventually to the creation of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in
1957. Under the Atoms for Peace program thousands of scientists from around the
world were educated in nuclear science and then dispatched home, where many
later pursued secret weapons programs in their own countries. Since its founding
by the United Nations in 1957, the IAEA has promoted two sometimes
contradictory missions: on the one hand, the Agency seeks to promote and spread
internationally the use of civilian nuclear energy; on the other hand, it seeks
to prevent, or at least detect, the diversion of civilian nuclear energy to
nuclear weapons, nuclear explosive devices, or purposes unknown. The IAEA now
operates a safeguards system as specified under Article III of the NPT, which
aims to ensure that civil stocks of uranium and plutonium, as well as facilities
and technologies associated with these nuclear materials, are used only for
peaceful purposes and do not contribute in any way to proliferation or nuclear
weapons programs. It is often argued that proliferation of nuclear weapons has been prevented by the extension of assurances and mutual
defense treaties to these states by nuclear powers, but other factors such as
national prestige or specific historical experiences also play a part in
hastening or stopping nuclear proliferation.

Flag of the IAEA

The International Atomic Energy Agency was created in 1957 to encourage peaceful development of nuclear technology while providing international safeguards against nuclear proliferation.

Efforts to conclude an
international agreement to limit the spread of nuclear weapons did not begin
until the early 1960s, after four nations (the United States, the Soviet Union,
the United Kingdom, and France) had acquired nuclear weapons. Although these
efforts stalled in the early 1960s, they renewed once again in 1964 after
China detonated a nuclear weapon. In 1968, governments represented at the
Eighteen Nation Disarmament Committee finished negotiations on the text of
the NPT. In June 1968, the UN General Assembly endorsed the NPT with General
Assembly Resolution 2373 (XXII), and in July 1968, the NPT opened for signature
in Washington, D.C., London, and Moscow. The NPT entered into force in March
1970.

Since the mid-1970s, the primary focus of non-proliferation efforts has
been to maintain and even increase international control over the fissile
material and specialized technologies necessary to build such devices, because
these are the most difficult and expensive parts of a nuclear weapons program.
The main materials whose generation and distribution is controlled are highly
enriched uranium and plutonium. Other than the acquisition of these special
materials, the scientific and technical means for weapons construction to
develop rudimentary but working nuclear explosive devices are considered within the reach of most if not all industrialized nations.

38.6.4: The Developing World

Although developing countries’ economies have tended
to demonstrate higher growth rates than those of developed countries, they tend
to lag behind in terms of social welfare targets.

Learning Objective

Describe some of the challenges faced by
developing countries

Key Points

• A developing
  country is
  a nation or a sovereign state with a less developed industrial base and low
  Human Development Index (HDI) compared to other countries.
• Economic
  development originated as a global concern in the post-World War II period of
  reconstruction. It is related to the concept of international aid, but distinct
  from disaster relief and humanitarian aid.
• International
  development projects may consist of a single transformative project to address
  a specific problem or a series of projects targeted at several aspects of
  society.
• The launch of
  the Marshall Plan was an important step in setting the agenda for international
  development, combining humanitarian goals with the creation of a political and
  economic bloc in Europe allied with the U.S.
• In terms of
  international development practice on the ground, the concept of community
  development has been influential since the 1950s.
• By the late
  1960s, dependency theory arose, analyzing the evolving relationship between the
  West and the Third World.
• In the 1970s and
  early 1980s, the modernists at the World Bank and IMF adopted neo-liberal ideas
  of economists such as Milton Friedman or Bela Balassa, implemented
  in the form of structural adjustment programs, while their opponents were
  promoting various bottom-up approaches.
• By the 1990s,
  some writers and academics felt an impasse had been reached within development
  theory, with some imagining a post-development era.
• While some
  critics have been debating the end of development, others have
  predicted a development revival as part of the War on Terrorism.

Key Terms

modernization theory

A theory used to explain the process of
modernization within societies using a model of progressive transition from
pre-modern or traditional societies to modern society. The theory
assumes that with assistance, so-called traditional societies can be developed
in the same manner as currently developed countries.

appropriate technology

An ideological movement and its manifestations
encompassing technological choice and application that is small-scale,
decentralized, labor-intensive, energy-efficient, environmentally sound, and
locally autonomous.

dependency theory

The notion that resources flow from periphery
or poor underdeveloped, states to a core of wealthy states, enriching
the latter at the expense of the former.

A developing country is a nation or a
sovereign state with a less developed industrial base and low Human Development
Index (HDI) relative to other countries. There are no universally agreed-upon
criteria for what makes a country developing versus developed and which
countries fit these two categories, although there are general reference points
such as a nation’s GDP per capita compared to other nations. In general, the
term “developing” describes a currently observed situation and not a
dynamic or expected direction of progress. Since the late 1990s, developing
countries have tended to demonstrate higher growth rates than the developed
ones.

2014 UN Human Development Report Quartiles

Dark blue countries are considered very highly developed. Medium blue countries are considered highly developed. Light blue countries are in the process of developing. Powder/near white countries are undeveloped. There is not enough data for countries that are colored gray.

History and Theory

Economic development
originated as a global concern in the post-World War II period of
reconstruction. In President Harry Truman’s 1949 inaugural speech, the
development of undeveloped areas was characterized as a priority for the West. The
origins of this priorities can be attributed to:

• the need for reconstruction
  in the immediate aftermath of World War II;

• the legacy of colonialism in
  the context of the establishment of a number of free trade policies and a
  rapidly globalizing world;

• the start of the Cold War
  and the desire of the U.S. and its allies to prevent satellite states from
  drifting towards communism.

The launch of the Marshall
Plan was an important step in setting the agenda for international development,
combining humanitarian goals with the creation of a political and economic bloc
in Europe allied to the U.S. This agenda was given conceptual support
during the 1950s in the form of modernization theory as espoused by Walt Rostow
and other American economists. Changes in the developed world’s approach to
international development were further necessitated by the gradual collapse of
Western Europe’s empires over the following decades because newly independent
ex-colonies no longer received support in return for their subordinate role to
an imperial power.

By the late 1960s,
dependency theory arose, analyzing the evolving relationship between the West
and the Third World. Dependency theorists argue that poor countries have
sometimes experienced economic growth with little or no economic development
initiatives, such as in cases where they have functioned mainly as
resource-providers to wealthy industrialized countries. As such, international
development at its core has been geared towards colonies that gained
independence with the understanding that newly independent states should be
constructed so that the inhabitants enjoy freedom from poverty, hunger, and
insecurity.

In the 1970s and early
1980s, the modernists at the World Bank and IMF adopted the neo-liberal ideas of
economists such as Milton Friedman or Bela Balassa, implemented in
the form of structural adjustment programs, while their opponents promoted various bottom-up approaches ranging from civil disobedience and critical
consciousness to appropriate technology and participatory rural appraisal.

By the 1990s, some writers
and academics felt an impasse had been reached within development theory, with
some imagining a post-development era. The Cold War had ended, capitalism had
become the dominant mode of social organization, and UN statistics showed that
living standards around the world had improved significantly over the previous
40 years. Nevertheless, a large portion of the world’s population was still
living in poverty, their governments were crippled by debt, and concerns about
the environmental impact of globalization were rising. In response to the
impasse, the rhetoric of development has since focused on the issue of poverty,
with the meta-narrative of modernization replaced by shorter term visions
embodied by the Millennium Development Goals and the Human Development approach,
which measures human development in capabilities achieved. At the same time,
some development agencies are exploring opportunities for public-private
partnerships and promoting the idea of corporate social responsibility with the
apparent aim of integrating international development with the process of
economic globalization. 

IMF Developing Countries Map, 2014

Dark green countries
represent developing economies according to the IMF; light green countries
are developing economies out of scope of the IMF; red countries have graduated to the status of a developed economy within recent history; blue countries are newly industrialized economies.

Critics have suggested that
such integration has always been part of the underlying agenda of development. They
argue that poverty can be equated with powerlessness, and that the way to
overcome poverty is through emancipatory social movements and civil society,
not paternalistic aid programs or corporate charity. This approach is embraced
by organizations such as the Gamelan Council, which seeks to empower
entrepreneurs through micro-finance initiatives, for example. While some critics
have been debating the end of development, however, others have predicted a
development revival as part of the War on Terrorism. To date, wever, there is
limited evidence to support the notion that aid budgets are being used to
counter Islamic fundamentalism in the same way that they were used 40 years ago
to counter communism.

Policy

International development is
related to the concept of international aid, but distinct from disaster relief
and humanitarian aid. While these two forms of international support seek to
alleviate some of the problems associated with a lack of development, they are
most often short-term fixes — not necessarily long-term solutions.
International development, on the other hand, seeks to implement long-term
solutions to problems by helping developing countries create the necessary
capacity needed to provide such sustainable solutions to their problems. A
truly sustainable development project is able to carry on indefinitely
with no further international involvement or support, whether it be financial
or otherwise.

In its broadest sense,
policies of economic development encompass three major areas:

• Governments undertaking broad economic objectives such as price stability, high employment, and
  sustainable growth. Such efforts include monetary and fiscal policies,
  regulation of financial institutions, trade, and tax policies.

• Programs that provide
  infrastructure and services such as highways, parks, affordable housing, crime
  prevention, and K–12 education.

• Job creation and retention
  through specific efforts in business finance, marketing, neighborhood
  development, workforce development, small business development, business
  retention and expansion, technology transfer, and real estate development. This
  third category is a primary focus of economic development professionals.

International development
projects may consist of a single transformative project to address a specific
problem or a series of projects targeted at several aspects of society.
Promoted projects involve problem solving reflecting the unique
culture, politics, geography, and economy of a region. More recently, the focus
in this field has been projects that aim towards empowering women, building
local economies, and caring for the environment. In the context of human
development, projects usually encompass themes of foreign aid, governance,
healthcare, education, poverty reduction, gender equality, disaster
preparedness, infrastructure, economics, human rights, the environment, and
issues associated with these.

In terms of international
development practice on the ground, the concept of community development has
been influential since the 1950s. The United Nations defines
community development as “a process where community members come together to
take collective action and generate solutions to common problems”. It is a
broad term given to practices aiming to build stronger and more resilient local
communities. Community development is also a professional discipline and is
defined by the International Association for Community Development (IACD), the
global network of community development practitioners and scholars, as “a
practice-based profession and an academic discipline that promotes
participative democracy, sustainable development, rights, economic opportunity,
equality and social justice, through the organization, education and
empowerment of people within their communities, whether these be of locality,
identity or interest, in urban and rural settings”. Community development
practitioners, using a myriad of job titles, are employed by governmental and
non-governmental organizations to build the capacity of vulnerable people to
engage in development projects and programs. According to the IACD, there are
national networks of community development practitioners in many countries,
several hundred graduate programs training practitioners, and an extensive
canon of research and scholarship, including the international Community
Development Journal.

The promotion of regional
clusters and a thriving metropolitan economy has grown in importance among
economic development professionals. In today’s global landscape, location is
vitally important and becomes key to obtaining and maintaining competitive
advantage. International trade and exchange rates are also key issues in economic
development. Currencies are often either undervalued or overvalued, resulting
in trade surpluses or deficits.

International Economic
Development Council

With more than 20,000 professional economic developers employed
worldwide in this highly specialized industry, the International Economic
Development Council (IEDC) headquartered in Washington, D.C. is a non-profit
organization dedicated to helping economic developers do their jobs more
effectively while raising the profile of the profession. With over 4,500
members across the U.S. and internationally, IEDC membership represents the
entire range of the profession ranging from regional, state, local, rural,
urban, and international economic development organizations to chambers of commerce, technology development agencies, utility companies,
educational institutions, consultants, and redevelopment authorities. Many
individual states also have associations comprising economic development
professionals who work closely with IEDC.

38.6.5: Reactions against Globalization

The uneven spread of globalization’s
benefits caused an anti-globalization movement to rise at the end of the 20th
century.

Learning Objective

Outline some of the criticisms of globalization

Key Points

• The broad
  consensus among economists is that free trade is a large and unambiguous net
  gain for society. However, some opponents of globalization see the phenomenon
  as a promotion of corporate interests.
• The global
  economic crisis of 2007-2008, the worst financial crisis since the Great
  Depression, can be credited partially to neo-liberal globalization.
• Globalization
  has fueled the rise of transnational corporations, and their power has vaulted
  to the point where they can now rival many nation states.
• Multinational
  corporations often benefit from globalization while poor, indigenous locals are
  negatively affected.
• Globalization sometimes
  requires a country to give up some sovereignty for the sake of executing
  Western ideals.

• International trade in petroleum products has expanded significantly through
  globalization and the spread of invasive species has also been facilitated by
  improvements in global transport.

Key Term

xenophobia

The fear of that perceived to be foreign or strange.

Reactions to processes
contributing to globalization have varied widely with a history as long as
extraterritorial contact and trade. Proponents of economic growth, expansion,
and development generally view globalizing processes as desirable or
necessary to the well-being of human society. Not everybody affected by
globalization believes there are benefits to its spread, however. Many
individuals within the anti-globalization movement have witnessed unrest within
their home communities and the world at large and questioned the basis for
continuing the trend due to the sustainability of long-term and continuous
economic expansion, the social structural inequality caused by these processes,
and the colonial, imperialistic, or hegemonic ethnocentrism that
underlie such processes. Critics argue that globalization requires nations to
give up their political, economic, and cultural sovereignty and adapt to
Western ways. 

Xenophobia can and has
manifested itself in many ways as a result of globalization, involving the
relations and perceptions of an in-group towards an out-group, including a fear
of losing identity, suspicion of activities, aggression, and the desire to
eliminate another group’s presence to secure a presumed purity. While globalization
has eased the flow of international trade and contributed to greater
efficiency within market economies, it has also been partially to blame for
global economic crises. Additionally, globalization is not simply an economic
project–it also heavily influences the world environmentally, politically, and
socially. While the forces of globalization have led to the spread of Western-style
democracy, this has been accompanied by an increase in inter-ethnic tension and
violence as free market economic policies combine with democratic processes of
universal suffrage as well as an escalation in militarization to impose democratic
principles as a means to conflict resolution.

Monument to Multiculturalism

Monument to Multiculturalism by Francesco Perilli in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Four identical sculptures are located in Buffalo City, South Africa; Changchun, China; Sarajevo, Bosnia; and Sydney, Australia.

Public Opinion

A 2005 study by Peer Fiss
and Paul Hirsch found a large increase in articles negative towards
globalization in the years prior. In 1998, negative articles outpaced positive
articles by two to one. In 2008, Greg Ip claimed this rise in opposition to
globalization could be explained, at least in part, by economic self-interest. The
number of newspaper articles showing negative framing rose from about 10% of
the total in 1991 to 55% of the total in 1999. This increase occurred during a
period when the total number of articles concerning globalization nearly
doubled.

A number of international
polls have shown that residents of Africa and Asia tend to view globalization
more favorably than residents of Europe or North America. In Africa, a Gallup
poll found that 70% of the population views globalization favorably. The BBC
found that 50% of people believed that economic globalization was proceeding
too rapidly, while 35% believed it was proceeding too slowly. In 2004, Philip
Gordon stated that “a clear majority of Europeans believe that globalization
can enrich their lives, while believing the European Union can help them take
advantage of globalization’s benefits while shielding them from its negative
effects”. The main opposition within the EU consisted of socialists,
environmental groups, and nationalists. Residents of the EU did not appear to
feel threatened by globalization in 2004. The EU job market was more stable and
workers were less likely to accept wage/benefit cuts. Social spending was much
higher than in the U.S. In a 2007 Danish poll, 76% of respondents said that
globalization was a good thing. Yet a 2016 referendum vote on whether to leave
or stay within the UK saw a majority of British voters opting to withdraw from
the EU.

Fiss and Hirsch also surveyed
U.S. opinion in 1993 and found that more than 40% of
respondents were unfamiliar with the concept of globalization. When the survey
was repeated in 1998, 89% of the respondents had a polarized view of
globalization as being either good or bad. Polarization increased dramatically
after the establishment of the WTO in 1995; this event and subsequent protests
led to a larger scale anti-globalization movement. Initially, college-educated
workers were likely to support globalization. Less educated workers, who were more
likely to compete with immigrants and workers in developing countries, tended
to be opponents. The situation changed after the financial crisis of 2007.
According to a 1997 poll, 58% of college graduates said globalization had been
good for the U.S. By 2008 only 33% thought it was good. Respondents with high
school education also became more opposed.

Economics

The literature analyzing the
economics of free trade is rich with information on its theoretical and empirical effects. Though it creates winners and losers,
the broad consensus among economists is that free trade is a large and
unambiguous net gain for society. However, some opponents of globalization see
the phenomenon as a promotion of corporate interests. Many claim that the
increasing autonomy and strength of corporate entities shapes the political
policies of countries, crowding out the moral claims of poor and working
classes as well as environmental concerns. For example, globalization allows
corporations to outsource manufacturing and service jobs from high-cost
locations, creating economic opportunities with the most competitive wages and
worker benefits, which critics say disadvantages poorer countries. 

While it is true that free
trade encourages globalization among countries, some countries try to protect
their domestic suppliers. The main export of poorer countries is usually
agricultural productions. Larger countries often subsidize their farmers (e.g.,
the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy), which lowers the market price for foreign
crops. Thus, globalization can be described as an uneven process due to the
global integration of some groups alongside the marginalization or exclusion of
others. 

Additionally, the global
economic crisis of 2007-2008, the worst financial crisis since the Great
Depression, can be credited partially to neo-liberal globalization. Although
globalization promised an improved standard of living, it has actually worsened
the financial situation of many homes and has made the financial crisis global
through the influences of international financial institutions such as the
World Bank. Globalization limits development and civilization to a path that
only leads to a Western and capitalistic system. Because of the political and
structural differences in countries, the implementation of globalization has
been detrimental for many countries.

Politics

Globalization has fueled the
rise of transnational corporations, and their power has vaulted to the point
where they can now rival many nation states. Of the world’s 100 largest
economies, 42 of them are corporations. Many of these transnational
corporations now hold sway over many nation states as their fates are
intertwined with the nations where they are located. Transnational
corporations could offer massive influence regarding the Third World and bring
about more pressure to help increase worker salaries and working conditions in
sweatshops. On account of doing business globally, transnational corporations
have a huge influence in many nation states.

In the process of
implementing globalization in developing countries, the creation of winners and
losers is often predetermined. Multinational corporations typically benefit from
globalization while poor, indigenous locals are negatively affected. Globalization
can be seen as a new form of colonization, as economic inequality and the rise
in unemployment have followed its implementation. Globalization has been
criticized for benefiting those who are already large and in power at the risk
and growing vulnerability of the countries’ indigenous population. Furthermore,
globalization is non-democratic, as it is enforced through top-down methods.

Globalization requires a
country to give up some sovereignty for the sake of executing Western ideals. As a result, sovereignty is safest with those whose views and
ideals are being implemented. In the name of free markets and with the promise
of an improved standard of living, countries give up their political and social
powers to international organizations. Thus, globalization carries the
potential to raise the power of international organizations at the expense of
local state institutions, which must in turn diminish in influence.

Environmental Impacts

International trade in
petroleum products has expanded significantly through globalization. There is also a corresponding
increase in activities within the petroleum industry to meet the ever-increasing demand for petroleum products. As a result, it gives rise to further
environmental pollution. Petroleum is toxic to almost all forms of life and its
extraction fuels climate change, including air pollution, water pollution,
noise pollution, land degradation, and erosion. As international commerce
develops new trade routes, markets, and products, the spread of invasive
species is also facilitated. On account of the development of larger and faster
forms of transport, commercial trade propels rising annual and cumulative rates
of invasion.