POLS 170 Blog Group 5

  Eli Webb IR Blog Post #4 Global Justice The readings on November 15th about Global Justice were very intriguing as we discussed the role the United States has around the world and the power we have in terms of institutional, structural, and productive. In terms of Nhina Le’s article on whether or not human rights are universal or culturally relative, the United States many times has overstepped their powers and decided to interfere with other countries' cultural ideas. People might consider this a good thing, others might see it as bad. Considering the question asked for the second analytical paper about non-governmental organizations and if their benefits outweigh the problems they cause, I would view the United States in a similar category when they try to interfere with other countries. Some instances it is absolutely worth the interference, like in the case of the Muslim treatment in China today, or the apartheid in South Africa, however, instances like Vietnam and Cuba a...

       In Nhina Le’s article, Are Human Rights Culturally Relative Or Universal, she lists and describes the ways in which the American Anthropological proves the proposed doctrine Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) to be culturally biased, and thus not universal. There were four claims made, and all of which have something to do with different people of different backgrounds seeing things differently. For example, one of the claims of culture bias pertained to culture practices which the article quotes, “Fourth, some rights that the UDHR recognizes, such as the right of private ownership of the means of production, equality, and marriage and religious freedoms, are at odds with traditional practices and norms in non-Western societies” (Le, 204).  This claim shows how the UDHR, based on American and Western European philosophies, values their practices as “proper” and non-Western as “improper”. I agree with the argument against the UDHR being universal...

  For this blog post, I wanted to further explore the question that I used in my last analytical essay: Is a world without nuclear weapons desirable?  In my essay, I concluded that a world without nuclear weapons is in fact desirable as it is impossible to remove the knowledge of their existence as an assembly, therefore a world without nuclear weapons cannot be undesirable, as it is impossible.  I also concluded that by removing these devices, it would only promote  their secret assembly and storage, which could lead to hostility and promote the misuse of nuclear power.  I felt like this question highlighted a lot of the problems that arise on an international scale and how difficult it is to implement global governance.  I think that this question also highlights how technological  developments can change how interactions between different nations occur and alter the way in  which nations act and react.  I feel like this question extends be...

  Thomas White Professor Shirk International Politics 11-29-2021 Personal Experience with Terrorism     Terrorism is the greatest threat to immediate security in the 21st century. Defined by the FBI as two different concepts, there is both international and domestic terrorism. In class, international terrorism was obviously discussed more, and that is something that most in the US think less about, both because it less often affects their daily lives and also because the US government does not want to draw attention to actions they take that may be considered international terrorism. Domestic terrorism will be the topic of this Blog Post, both my personal experience with it and how a community can deal with its aftermath.     Terrorism is a concept that is impossible to fully understand until it affects you or someone in your community. Oftentimes, the media creates a narrative of sympathy for victims instead of empathy, where individuals are meant to...

  How will the US return to the World Health Organization affect the spread of the new  Omicron Variant of Coronavirus? In July of 2020, President Donald Trump drafted a letter to the United Nations declaring US intention of exiting the World Health Organization. Despite different claims of the reasoning behind the withdrawal, that the withdrawal had to do with the huge amounts of funding the organization required, it’s poor handling of the pandemic, or even just a protectionist attitude towards his own people, Trump’s declaration marked an important moment in the Pandemic. It pointed to the idea that the WHO had been “slow to respond to the pandemic,” and “too ‘China-centric,’” and that the US need not pay so much to be a part of such an organization. ( NPR ) But critics of this withdrawal, including Senator Bob Menendez of New Jersey, claimed that all it did was leave “Americans sick and America alone.” Due to critiques like this, President Joe Biden moved to rejoin the WH...

       The United Nations is an intergovernmental organisation that promotes peace around the globe through aid, action, commitments, and support. Its mission is to maintain international peace and security. Although, through looking at various interventions in the UN’s history, it can be seen that this supposedly harmonising organisation has claimed peace in areas even when it has not been fully reached. In one of my classes, we look into how media portrays events incorrectly especially in regards to feeding into the White superiority complex, ignoring colonialist histories, and not blaming external countries and organisations for ultimately harmful interventions. While looking for such a document to critique, I came across an article by the UN titled “Their 15-year mission a success, the UN peacekeepers depart a stable and grateful Liberia”. With some knowledge of Liberia’s present, it can be deduced that it is not in a stable or peaceful state. After the two d...

  In Abdelal and Ruggie’s writing, The Principles of Embedded Liberalism: Social Legitimacy and Global Capitalization , the regulation of world trade after the free trade years after World War II, or from 1945-1970, was a huge topic of debate. Embedded liberalism is the core theory of Abdelal and Ruggie’s article, as it is to protect trade from being dominated by a select number of powerful nations. An organization that embedded liberalism is shown is the World Trade Organization that we as a class discussed. As a trading system it has involvement from most countries, with the non-members being around ten to fifteen third-world countries, and it has economic advantages to the United States. However, the World Trade Organization really is only beneficial to the multinational corporations themselves, and not necessarily the smaller, underdeveloped nations involved.      I see the World Trade Organization similarly to the recent Netflix show “Squid Game” . In the show, ...