The Student's Friend, Part 2

LOCATIONS: Israel, Palestine, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Sudan, Serbia

LOCATIONS: Israel, Palestine, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Afghanistan, Sudan, Serbia

173. new world order
..............At the dawn of the 21st century, the Cold War was over; democracy and capitalism had won. There was no longer a balance of power in the world; America was alone at the top. President George Bush, Sr. said there was a "new world order," and it looked promising. But all too soon, Cold War fears were replaced by new ones like terrorism and global warming.
..............Another new fear may be starting to haunt Western nations: the possibility of losing their dominant position in the world that began with the age of European imperialism. Today when the West looks east, it sees a new reality. Where the West once saw colonies, it now sees nations like Japan, China, and India growing steadily stronger -- perhaps strong enough to one day challenge the dominance of the West.
..............One major fear left over from the Cold War is the spread of nuclear weapons, termed "nuclear proliferation." Nine countries are known to have, or believed to have, nuclear weapons. Although the United States is unwilling to give up its large nuclear arsenal, the U.S. has told other nations, particularly North Korea and Iran, that they are not permitted to have nuclear weapons. The U.S. does not object to nuclear weapons in the hands of its friends such as Israel, India, and Pakistan. The nine nuclear nations are the U.S., Britain, Russia, France, China, India. Pakistan, Israel, and North Korea.

174. China
..............According to Time magazine, China is once again a superpower. With the world's largest population, labor force, and consumer markets, China's economy has boomed since China opened its markets to capitalist-style competition in the 1980s. Meanwhile, China's authoritarian government continues to deny Chinese citizens basic human rights such as freedom of speech and religion. China proves that a nation does not need a democratic government in order to have a successful capitalist economy.
..............Relations between the United States and the People's Republic of China have always been tense due to their differing political systems, friction over the future of Taiwan, and perhaps because China still resents that it was pushed around by Western powers during the age of imperialism. Nonetheless, the Chinese and American economies are closely linked. China sells billions of dollars in goods to the United States annually, while the U.S. government has been accumulating billions of dollars in debt to China. American officials aren't sure whether to consider China a friendly trading partner or a future threat as China's economy and military grow, and the U.S. and China compete for limited resources like oil.

175. globalism
..............The world is being drawn together as never before by international trade, communications, and mass media, a phenomenon termed globalism. Major industries now do business in what amounts to a single global trading market. The labor market is becoming global too as Western companies try to increase profits by outsourcing work to lower-paid foreign workers. Many people believe globalism is a good thing -- that the more often countries trade and communicate with one another, the less likely they are to go to war. In Europe, for example, nations that were bitter enemies during two world wars are now partners in the European Economic Union, which has adopted a common currency called the "Euro."
..............Other observers have concerns about globalism. Will countries lose their distinct identities in a world dominated by Americanized Western culture? Another concern is that the rich industrialized nations of the world are controlling the global economy, consuming the world's resources, polluting the Earth, and leaving little behind for the poorer countries, a global case of the "haves" versus the "have-nots."

176. extreme poverty
..............Gandhi said, "Poverty is the worst form of violence." A challenge facing the 21st Century is the growth of extreme poverty. The gap between rich and poor is widening as the rich nations get richer and the poor nations get poorer. Economist Jeffrey Sachs reported to the United Nations that more than eight million people die every year "because they are too poor to stay alive." The U.N. has established a goal of eliminating extreme poverty by the year 2025. For several decades the world's wealthier nations have pledged .07 percent of their national incomes to reduce poverty, enough to reach the U.N. goal. So far, only a handful of nations have kept their promises. The U.S. contributes .01 to .02 percent.
..............While helping the world's poor may seem like an act of simple kindness, it may also be in the best interests of the wealthier nations. James Wolfensohn, former president of the World Bank, observed that poverty creates conflict that may lead to warfare and terrorism. He said, "There isn't a wall around the United States or any of the developed countries...If you have inequity on a global scale, if you have people who are dissatisfied and unhappy, these are the breeding grounds of discontent." According to Wolfensohn, reducing poverty is the best way to bring peace to the world.

177. Third World economic development
..............The world's poorest countries are termed developing nations or the Third World. Most are in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, and most are former colonies. Many of these countries are still struggling to find economic models that will work for them. Three basic models have been tried.
Early capitalist economies such as those in the United States and Great Britain developed with little government control. Governments allowed the free market forces of Adam Smith's "invisible hand" to control economic development. In the Third World, India adopted this laissez faire capitalist model.
..............The Soviet Union and China did just the opposite. Communist governments completely controlled their nations' economies. Government owned the factories and decided what products would be produced at what price by whom. Such command economies did not prove successful over the long term.
..............Japan chose a middle ground. Authoritarian Japanese governments adopted capitalism, but they directed the economy by promoting some industries and discouraging others. After World War II, Japan rebuilt its shattered economy by developing industries like textiles that depended on large numbers of unskilled workers. As the skills and wages of Japanese workers grew, textile jobs moved to countries where labor costs were lower, and Japan went into heavy manufacturing such as motorcycles and cars. Next, Japan moved into high-tech industries like electronics and computers. Japan's successful strategy became the development model for other Asian countries including South Korea, Taiwan, and later China.

178. Latin America
..............Western nations have long dominated the smaller economies of Latin America. Latin American countries followed the classic colonial pattern of exporting food and raw materials in exchange for manufactured goods. These arrangements benefited the white elites who control business and government in Latin America but comprise less than two percent of the population. The poor, many of them Indians, received little. The lack of a sizeable middle class might help to explain why economic progress in Latin America has lagged behind that of the U.S. and Canada. Since the late 1990s, Latin America has been experiencing its greatest period of economic growth and political stability since gaining independence.
..............During the Cold War, when political movements tried to improve conditions for Latin America's poor, the U.S. often saw these moves as communist threats. In the early 1950s, Guatemala had a democratic government that took unused land from the giant American-owned United Fruit Company and gave the land to peasants. In response, the U.S. arranged the overthrow of Guatemala's government -- one of several Latin American governments overthrown with U.S. help. The U.S. acquired a reputation for supporting wealthy elites and right-wing dictatorships while opposing better living conditions for the poor. Recently, anti-American leaders have come to power in several Latin American countries promising to take control of their nations' resources to help the poor. President Hugo Chavez of oil-rich Venezuela has complained that "the U.S. government sees itself as the owner of the world."

179. Africa
..............Africa is the world's poorest continent. Unstable governments have slowed Africa's economic progress because foreign businesses are reluctant to invest their money where conditions are not secure.
..............During the Scramble for Africa in the late 1800s, the great powers of Europe carved Africa into artificial new countries that included people of various ethnic groups. When these countries gained independence in the mid-1900s, they had not existed long enough for national feeling to overcome ethnic divisions. Africa's newly independent nations had little or no experience in self-government, yet they had to contend with tough problems like ethnic conflict, poverty, and corruption. Most governments failed.
..............Ethnic violence remains a problem; it led to genocide in Rwanda in the mid-1970s and to genocide in the Darfur region of western Sudan today. Ethnic violence can also disrupt farming and food distribution causing famine. If these troubles weren't enough, Africa is plagued by the world's worst epidemic of AIDS, which can hurt African economies due to high medical costs and the loss of productive workers.
..............Still, there are signs of hope in Africa. Some authoritarian states have given way to more democratic forms of government, and some African countries are making progress in fighting the plague of AIDS.

180. ethnic cleansing
..............Ethnic violence is nothing new. Ethnic hatred led to the Crusades and the European Wars of Religion; it triggered World War I, and it fueled World War II. In 1999, the world identified a new type of ethnic violence when Serbia was accused of ethnic cleansing in the Serbian province of Kosovo. Christian Serbs were brutally forcing Muslims out of Serbia, killing many Muslims in the process.
..............At the urging of American President Bill Clinton, NATO approved U.S. air strikes against Serbian forces that stopped the ethnic cleansing in Kosovo. Did the U.S. have the right to interfere in the internal affairs of Serbia? Does the world have a moral responsibility to stop atrocities like genocide and ethnic cleansing? Who decides when war will be waged to enforce morality? Should it be international organizations like the United Nations or NATO or individual countries like the U.S. or China?

181. the Arab-Israeli conflict
..............When the Ottoman Empire dissolved after World War I, Britain took control of much of the Middle East and encouraged Jews to immigrate to their ancient homeland in Palestine, an Arab region at the eastern end of the Mediterranean Sea. After World War II, Britain left the region, and Jews seized over two-thirds of Palestine to form their new nation of Israel. Neighboring Arab countries did not recognize Israel's right to exist, and they tried to destroy the new Jewish state in a series of wars that stretched from the 1940s to the 1970s. Israel won the wars and took over all of Palestine. Today Israel faces violence from those who want Palestinians to regain their homelands, or those who want a free Palestinian state.
..............Anger is also directed at the U.S. for playing a key role in establishing the nation of Israel and for strongly supporting Israel since. America faces a difficult balancing act in the Middle East -- trying to support democratic and Jewish Israel while trying to stay friendly with authoritarian Arab governments that dislike Israel but have large oil supplies that America wants. Meanwhile, poverty, hopelessness, and a history of Western imperialism contribute to Arab resentment against rich Western nations. Angry young men have been willing to kill and be killed in terrorist attacks aimed at Israel and the West.

182. Iran
..............In 1951, a democratic government in Iran voted to take control of its oil industry from the British. In response, the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (spy agency) secretly organized the overthrow of Iran's leader and replaced him with a monarch, the shah. This was the first of several times that U.S. leaders used the CIA to harm or overthrow foreign governments without the knowledge of the American people. For 25 years, the shah supplied the U.S. with Iranian oil and a base of operations in the Middle East.
..............The shah's harsh dictatorship angered many Iranians, and his efforts to Westernize Iran were seen as threats to Muslim culture. Popular uprisings ended in a revolution that overthrew the shah in 1979. The shah was replaced by a radical Muslim government that despised the U.S. for its long-time support of the shah. When the shah arrived in the U.S. for medical treatment, Iranians feared the U.S. might try to return the shah to power again. Demanding that the shah be turned over to Iran, a group of young Iranian revolutionaries stormed the U.S. embassy in Iran and took 52 Americans hostage for over a year.
..............The leader of neighboring Iraq, Saddam Hussein, took advantage of the hostage crisis to attack Iran. The U.S. supported Iraq's invasion of Iran, but when Hussein invaded Kuwait a decade later, the U.S. crushed Iraq in the Persian Gulf War. America still has a terrible relationship with Iran; the U.S. is accusing Iran of making nuclear weapons, but Iran says it only wants to make nuclear power plants.

183. terrorism
..............The Islamic revolution against the shah in Iran marked the emergence of a new political force, Islamic fundamentalism. Fundamentalists tend to believe that people should adopt basic religious values and that religion should influence government policies. Fundamentalists also tend to be intolerant of other religions. Christian fundamentalism grew in the United States during the same period.
..............Muslim extremists have used Islamic fundamentalism to justify violent acts including the terrorist attacks that killed some 3,000 people at the World Trade Center in New York City and the Pentagon in Washington on September 11, 2001. Following the 9-11 attacks, President George W. Bush declared a "war on terrorism," and he launched an invasion of Afghanistan, which was home to al Qaeda, the terrorist organization believed responsible for 9/11. The U.S. continues to search for al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. Although the U.S. war on terrorism is aimed largely at Muslim extremists, terrorism may take other forms. In 1995, American anti-government terrorists killed 168 people with a truck bomb at the federal building in Oklahoma City. The term terrorism usually refers to attacks against civilians that are not conducted by a government.

184. Iraq
..............In 2003, the United States invaded Iraq and overthrew the government of President Saddam Hussein. The Bush administration was following a new policy of preemptive war, which means the U.S. may attack a country that has done nothing to threaten or harm America if U.S. leaders feel the country might want to harm America in the future. Bush said Iraq had weapons of mass destruction that threatened the U.S., and he indicated that Hussein was involved in the 9/11 terrorist attacks. When it was learned that that neither was true, the Bush administration said the war was still necessary to bring democracy to Iraq. Critics of the war said the U.S. was more interested in control of Middle Eastern oil.
..............The United Nations, NATO, and most countries did not support the U.S. invasion. It hurt American relations with important allies, and it turned worldwide Muslim opinion against the U.S. The war is costing more in lives and money than expected, and it has triggered ethnic warfare between Sunnis and Shi'as in Iraq. As happened earlier in Vietnam, Latin America, and Iran, U.S. intervention in Iraq had unforeseen negative consequences. Some historians argue that U.S. leaders have not been sufficiently aware that invading foreign countries and overthrowing foreign rulers may hurt America in the long run.

185. biotechnology
..............Biotechnology is a term for technologies that can change how plant or animal life functions. Recent advancements in science are taking biotechnology into new and unfamiliar territory that holds great promise for improving human life but also poses difficult questions about the future of human life.
..............Genetic engineering is the field of biotechnology that deals with genes, the building blocks in the cells that determine what we are: whether we are tall or short, have brown eyes or blue, or are likely to get Alzheimer's. Doctors have begun to treat disease by using drugs to modify or repair human genes, and soon it may be possible to develop gene-based treatments for nearly every disease, allowing people to live longer and healthier lives. But the same technology may make it possible to modify genes such as those for skin color, muscle mass, and intelligence. Will people be tempted to alter their children to make them smarter and more attractive? Is it morally acceptable for humans to modify human life in this way? If such technologies are developed, will it be possible to prevent people from using them?

186. capitalism
..............Although capitalism looked like a failure during the Great Depression, it survived, and most countries today have capitalist economic systems. To prevent another depression, Western governments tightened regulation of businesses, banks, and the stock market after World War II. Governments also embraced the economic theories of John Maynard Keynes, who offered an updated version of capitalism.
..............Unlike Adam Smith, Keynes said government should interfere in the economy. Keynes believed government could stabilize the economy by raising or lowering taxes or government spending. He said, for example, that depressions could be avoided by increasing government spending, which would create more jobs, which would increase demand for goods, which would stimulate industrial production. Keynes also believed that governments should ease the harshest aspects of capitalism by providing citizens with a "safety net" of programs to meet basic needs -- programs like welfare, Social Security and Medicare.
..............In today's global capitalist economy, money flows to countries where wages are lower, which has the effect of gradually leveling incomes across nations. Workers in China and India are making more money than in the past, while American workers on average are earning less. Meanwhile, within the U.S., the income gap is growing wider between America's wealthiest citizens and its lower and middle classes.

187. democracy
..............Although most countries claim to be democracies, true democracy is not easy to achieve or maintain. Evidence from Japan and South Korea suggests that authoritarian governments may become more democratic over time. Democracy appears to work best in societies with traditions of open expression, which might help to explain why democracy is struggling in the republics of the former Soviet Union.
..............Democracy faces serious challenges even in the world's oldest democracy. Perhaps the greatest threat facing American democracy today is the huge sums of money needed to win election campaigns. This creates a situation in which large campaign contributors can influence the votes of elected officials.
..............Biologists say selfishness is built into our genes. Politicians are no different from the rest of us; they seek wealth and power and try to hide their misdeeds. Democracy can succeed only when government is being watched by a free and active press and by citizens with a realistic understanding of the world. Thomas Jefferson said, "The people are the ultimate guardians of their own liberty." He believed the study of history could give Americans the knowledge they need to think for themselves and maintain their democracy. In America's democracy, citizens can have a big impact. It wasn't the U.S. government that started the civil rights movement or stopped the Vietnam War. It was the people.

188. the environment
..............Our last issue is the biggest. If humans destroy the earth's environment, nothing else matters. Our environment is a complex system of interactions between the atmosphere, weather, chemical compounds, and human activity. Humans appear to be upsetting this balance through overpopulation and pollution. Scientists agree that human activity is contributing to global warming, which is changing the earth's environment, melting polar ice, raising ocean levels, and causing a great die-off of the earth's species.
..............The U.S. is the world's largest polluter and the only major industrial nation that declined to approve the Kyoto agreement to limit the production of greenhouse gasses. These are pollutants such as carbon dioxide from cars and power plants that collect in the atmosphere and trap the sun's heat like a greenhouse. American leaders are concerned that limiting greenhouse gasses could be bad for business, but others say the U.S. could develop a profitable new industry in technologies to reverse global warming.
..............Although people may be selfish by nature, biologists have found evidence that humans can overrule their selfish genes if they wish to. What will future historians say about America? Will they see the U.S. as just another selfish superpower? Or will they say that America was able to overcame short-term self-interest in order to protect the long-term well being of our nation and our planet? More than two centuries ago, the United States showed the way to a better world. Can America do it again?

© 2007 Michael G. Maxwell