Debate: Identifying the Winners

Our final live session involved a debate between two teams, both of which were tasked with identifying the biggest threat to the United States. I was a member of "Team 2" and we identified various internal threats as the largest threat to the future of the United States. "Team 1" summarized the largest threat to the United States as being economic in nature. While both teams presented a persuasive argument, I agree with my team that the greatest threat is internal.

Even a quick glance at American politics can shed quite a bit of light on our argument. The American electorate is increasingly polarized. Under normal circumstances, each of the two major political parties is somewhat moderate, but it is alarming to see that even the two major parties are drifting apart.

Additionally, we are not preparing upcoming generations to be prepared to handle these issues. Our schools are increasingly taking on new requirement that ultimately do not help to educate students. Our high schools are sending students to college and into the world who haven't learned to think critically and make sound decisions.

Indeed, the economy is a major concern regarding the future of the United States, but until we can come together and prepare future generations to make more educated decisions about how we want to handle economic issues, we really have no hope.

Team 2 definitely presented a valid argument and continue to agree that the greatest threat to the future of the United States comes from within.

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The Debate

In our in-class debate, there were two very different sides on Team 1 and 2. Team 1 was more concerned about the external threats of emerging economies, while Team 2 was worried about the increasing fractionalization of the US government.

Though I may be a bit biased, I fully agree with Team 1. The US government has withstood worse domestic struggles and political strife and made it out just fine. Domestic politics rarely have strong bearing on the international level unless serious violations are occurring, and while the US political situation is far from ideal at the moment, it will certainly not plunge the US into the Dark Ages if things do not go as expected. We have a sophisticated (if somewhat broken...) political system to account for these types of things, and the reality is that almost all nations have internal political strife.

I agree with my teammates that the fact that we can have this type of discourse is a sign of a functional democracy. We have the resources to deal with a less-than-ideal political climate, however, "the rise of the rest" is something new in our history that we haven't prepared for. Underscoring this threat would be a mistake.

The debate was a little back and forth repackaging of the same thing but in a different light.  Team one made some fair points about the economy, but, in the end, their points went under the umbrella of our team’s overall stance of internal conflict as the U.S.’s biggest threat.  There really was no defense against the Team 2 offense.  If the government shuts down and decided to take its drama overseas, which it has done in the past, it could effect everything.  Economy, government and policies are all connected. 

At some point we were all wondering what came first the chicken or the egg.  Can the economy be separate from everything else?  I do not think so and I do not believe the other team made a very strong case to counter our argument, but it is true that no one can truly predict the future.  Who knows? America may very well survive the outcome of this year’s election.

Team two won the debate.

Celebrity Intervention

A recent discussion in class focused on celebrity intervention in global crises, and much of the discussion was about "why" they feel the need to get involved and about their effectiveness.

I had several thoughts on this topic. First of all, I feel like celebrities overstep their boundaries in many cases. They approach many crises and issues with a very superficial understanding of the matter. If I learned anything at all earning my B.S. in political science, it was that I previously had an extremely elementary understanding of international issues and was better served learning more about the issues before voicing my opinions. Celebrities would do right learning this important lesson. International affairs are seldom black and white and most of the time the truth of the situation --and a solution-- is found in the gray area. Celebrities who get involved often bring a matter to public attention, but the issue is only presented in a very superficial and overly-simplified version. This draws attention to the issue, and the public usually grows angry because they "don't understand why we don't just do something since the solution is so clear." Unfortunately, the solutions are rarely so simple.

I think that celebrities get involved because they have an inflated view about the reach of their voice, or maybe just a large ego. "I'm a celebrity. People care about what I say." Unfortunately, in the United States, many people do care about what they say. I raised the point in class that it's ironic that when we want learn about an issue we turn to the celebrity "voice." Why don't Americans look to the experts on issues? If we want to learn about refugee crises, why turn to Angelina Jolie when we could turn to any one of the scholars who spend a lifetime studying refugee crises and have a much clearer understanding of this issue. A quick browse on the website www.looktothestars.org is evidence enough of this point. The mere existance of the above mentioned website it ample evidence of my point. We in the United States look to celebrities for guidance, rather than the experts.

This week’s topic came brings us back to the Leviathan and the true power of the state.  What I found interesting about this was the concept of a state’s finite time as the proverbial top dog.  In the lecture, the professor makes the point that not all states stay exactly where they are and it is true.  States that were once weak or behind the times are now big powers or bigger than they once were and strong powers are either not as powerful as they once were or one of the weakest of powers.

This brings me to the idea of America as one of the high rollers of the international community.  The country lost its top credit rating, so many large companies are selling their businesses to China, and, in fact, China owns a lot of prime land in America.  Plus, China holds the bill for most of America’s loans.  In an old class back in high school (maybe college), a teacher posed and interesting point about how the U.S. has been likened to the Roman Empire and he asked us if we thought the same.  If we did, we had to explain whether or not America was heading to a fall, like its Roman predecessor. 

My answer to that question is that in some ways there are similarities to America and Rome.  That includes the presumption that we know what is best for other countries and cultures.  We have a bad history on that front.  However, are we falling?  That, I do not know.  From a big picture standpoint, America is like a hormonal teenager that is finally starting to see that it is not the center of the universe and bad things can and will reach across the big blue sea and find you.  Other powers are emerging from all over and attacks from foreign powers on mainland is something the rest of the world is accustomed to. 

This all goes back to the question of whether or not we now have a global community.  It is hard to say we do not with technology, international businesses, and NGO’s that find ways to grab the world’s attention and show what we could never see in our backyards.

"Let China sleep, for when she wakes, she will shake the world" - Napoleon

This week's readings on the rise, fall, and role of great powers were extremely interesting and enlightening. The US's role as a hegemon on the international stage has been widely debated and contested, and as all empires must fall, the world is looking to see which state will be the next great hegemon. With the world's largest population and one of the largest, if not the largest, economy in the world, China has seemed a more and more likely candidate in the past decade.


However, many scholars don't see this as a likely outcome. In his article "Hegemonic transition in East Asia? The dynamics of Chinese and American power" Mark Beeson outlines several reasons behind China's meteoric rise to power, such as favorable US foreign policy, multilateral regional engagement, realist military policy, and "soft-balancing" their foreign policy toward cooperative international behavior. While these policies may have encouraged their strong economic growth, Beeson argues that they have their limits when it comes to complete international hegemony. Beeson cites China's lack of cohesive values and vision, the US's continued dominance over international financial institutions, and China's own limit when it comes to finite resources in economic development as reasons why China isn't quite ready to take on the role of hegemon.


Though China may not be on the path to hegemony yet, the US-China relationship is one of the most important bilateral international relationships that exists today. This strategic economic partnership is responsible for China's booming economy and the US's reliance on consumerism. As both economies continue to grow, it will be interesting to see what the future holds.








Beeson, Mark. "Hegemonic Transition in East Asia? The Dynamics of Chinese and American Power." Review of International Studies Rev. Int. Stud. 35.01 (2009): 95-112. Web

Non-state actors and norm development

This week, we looked at the Risse and Sikkink article and how human rights norms turn into domestic practices for nations. Risse and Sikkink present a spiral model of stages nations go through in human rights norm development - repression, the first stage of human rights violation, denial, to other states, tactical concessions, in which the violators appease other states in order to get what they way, prescriptive statues, in which human rights norms begin to take hold, and rule-consistent behavior, in which the violator finally has their human rights norms in line with the rest of the world. It was an interesting look at how other nations and non-states actors institutionalize norms across the world and how and why violators go about implementing these norms. It brings us back to the first few weeks of class where we talked about ideas vs. interest in policy decisions. We agreed that these two were intertwined, and in this, we can see how interests can evolve into ideas.

These ideas are incredibly powerful, and for my memo this week, I examined the ONE campaign, an extremely influential poverty alleviation NGO. ONE's message, propagated by various celebrities and its millions of volunteers around the world, has inspired new legislation, new grants, and billions of dollars in aid to the world's poorest nations. While an organization as solid as ONE is hard to critique, I suggested they empower their volunteer base to do more direct lobbying with their elected officials to turn ONE's ideas and goals into even more concrete legislation. Even though ideas are powerful, influencing those who have the power to make a direct change is incredibly important.

The global public sphere is an incredibly powerful motivator in international relations policy today
as ideas and information can spread around the globe in seconds. If nations want a spot on the international stage, staying in line with global norms is incredibly important for security, economic and political reasons.