Information Reports
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Monthly Archives: November 2018
Paris, Buenos Aires, and START
Russian President Vladimir Putin and U.S. President Donald Trump shook hands briefly at the centennial World War I commemoration in Paris on November 12, 2018. They had a short discussion about Syria, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and North Korea (“Putin says had…”). Though the leaders planned a meeting, they ultimately postponed the meeting until the Buenos Aries G20 summit on the weekend of November 30 (Jackson). Trump said he wants to discuss Russian collaboration in Syria and denuclearizing North Korea. Putin wants to discuss the recent U.S. pull out from 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty and “the future of the 2011 New START arms-reduction agreement” (Jackson, “Putin: Arms control…”).
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Monthly Archives: November 2018
The Rockets and the Resignation
Fighting between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip this past week is culminating in a series of Israeli political changes that could produce another major conflict between the two sides.
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Monthly Archives: November 2018
Central America in the News
“Mexico mothers search for mass graves after tip-off” BBC News. Nov. 6, 2018 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-46110115
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Monthly Archives: November 2018
Georgian Elections
On October 28, 2018, the Republic of Georgia held the first round of its final presidential election with a direct vote before transitioning to a parliamentary system. The election turned into a run-off between Salome Zurabishvili, ruling Georgian Dream party candidate, and Grigol Vashadze, candidate of former Georgian leader Mikheil Saakashvili’s party United National movement, each garnering 38.6 percent and 37.7 percent of the vote (De Waal). French-born Zurabishvili served as Saakashvili’s foreign minister in 2004 before joining an opposing party. She has driven away voters by making comments intolerant of ethnic minorities. Most likely, opposition candidate Vashadze will win as he gathers votes from smaller parties dissenting the Georgian Dream party. These dissent votes suggest “opposition consolidation for the 2020 parliamentary elections” will reshape the future political landscape (“Presidentials: Expert Assessments in Tbilisi”).
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Monthly Archives: November 2018
American Counter-narcotics
The war on drugs is decades old. Numbers of usage and production have remained steady or even grown. In order for a major shift to occur the United States should implement the following changes to its counternarcotics policy.
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Monthly Archives: November 2018
Violence in Nigeria: Clashes Between Armed Forces and Shia Muslims
Over the last half decade, there have been several incidents of violence between Nigerian security forces and the Shia group known as the Islamic Movement of Nigeria (IMN). The IMN, are led by the cleric Ibrahim El-Zakzaky. Originally from the northern city of Zaria, El-Zakzaky is a self-professed admirer of the Iranian Islamic Revolution and critic of the Nigerian government. He travelled to Iran in 1980 in order to become a cleric and be able to bring Shi’ism to Nigeria (Campbell 2018). From the 1990s onward, El-Zakzaky has attracted thousands of followers as he promotes the widespread adoption of Islamic law by the Nigerian government, with the ultimate goal of turning it into an Islamic Republic.
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Monthly Archives: November 2018
Human Trafficking in Latin America Part 2
Human trafficking is a world-wide problem that has taken on many forms. As discussed
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Monthly Archives: November 2018
INF Treaty
In December 1987, U.S. President Ronald Reagan and Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev signed the U.S.-Russian Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty. The treaty “prohibited the United States and the Soviet Union from possessing, testing and deploying ground-launched cruise and ballistic missiles of ranges between 500 and 5,500 kilometers” and required both countries to destroy a specified number of nuclear missiles (Cameron). In July 2014, U.S. State Department reported Russia violated the treaty. In February 2017, the United States accused Russia of deploying a nuclear system, a further treaty violation, and attempted to coerce Russia into compliance with sanctions.
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Monthly Archives: November 2018
The Delicate State of Affairs in Syria
Syria is an incredibly strategic theater for the United States and the international community, but recent events threaten to create interstate conflict, disunity among US allies, and major humanitarian crises (Agence France-Presse 2018).
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Monthly Archives: November 2018
Human Trafficking in Latin America
One of the most egregious crimes of the 21st century is human trafficking. This phenomena is not new, but it has increased in scope and scale in the past several years as international travel and technological development have increased to be able to hide it better and spread it more rapidly. Latin America remains one of the most troubled regions of human trafficking, as heavy migration and a lack of anti-trafficking laws has permitted widespread sexual slavery and human smuggling [1]. This report focuses on trafficking in northern Latin America, from Central America to Mexico and into the United States.
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Monthly Archives: October 2018
Chinese Loans: A Low Conditionality Trap?
Chinese low conditionality approach to infrastructure loans in Africa has been billed as a great opportunity for developing nations in the region to achieve economic development and growth that would otherwise not be possible. However, despite representing what one Ugandan economist described as an “unrivalled willingness to avail unconditional capital to Africa”, China’s extensive penetration in Africa by way of development-oriented loans comes with a significant amount of risk, both for the host nations as well as the United States and the West (Madowo, 2018).
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Monthly Archives: October 2018
The Case of Khashoggi: The Middle East's Pandora's Box
The already turbulent politics of the Arab Gulf are being wracked by the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, who was killed in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, allegedly after being tortured (Kempe 2018; Alsharif et al. 2018). Responsibility for the murder may reach all the way up to Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad Bin Salman, also referred to as MbS (Riedel 2018; Kirkpatrick, Malachy, Hubbard, and Botti 2018; El-Ghobashy and Fahim 2018). Different countries are experiencing diverse effects of the situation.
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Monthly Archives: October 2018
Macedonia's Ascent to NATO and the EU
On October 20, 2018, Macedonia (the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia or FYROM) moved a step closer to joining NATO after two-thirds of its parliament approved a name change for the country–from Republic of Macedonia to North Macedonia. Macedonia is moving to change its name to North Macedonia to resolve a 27 year dispute with Greece. In September, over 90% of voters approved the name change, but boycott efforts led to less than a 50% voter turnout, passing the issue to Macedonia’s parliament. Despite parliament’s approval, the name change is still subject to future votes and Greece’s ratification.
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Monthly Archives: October 2018
Latin America in the News October 22
This week’s news in Central America:
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Monthly Archives: October 2018
The History of American Counter Narcotics Operations in Latin America
In 1971, the thralls of the Vietnam war, President Nixon declared a new type of war: “The War on Drugs.” Ever since, the United States has fought to reduce both supply of and demand for illegal drugs.[i] Despite recent initiatives decriminalizing marijuana in many states and Canada’s new law legalizing cannabis, illegal drug use, convictions in the United States, and violence both in Mexico and throughout the numerous drug corridors is up.[ii] The history of the War on Drugs illustrates the difficulty in responding to the issue, and the complexity of possible answers.
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