Historic Geography; Geographic History

Scandinavian Pirates in the 8th through 11th Centuries: Why Become a Viking?

2012-03-17T22:49:00.000-04:00

In 789 CE, Scandinavian pirates were sighted from Portland, the first such sighting off the coast of England. Over the next three hundred years, these Scandinavians would become known as “the Northmen,” stemming from Norsemen, and today are referred to as Vikings. During that time they would continually increase their presence in and influence on the European continent, along with what would become Great Britain. This was despite the rising power of Anglo-Saxon kingdoms in England; despite the consolidation of power on the continent by Charlemagne; and despite the view of the English that these individuals were mere barbarians, much like the English had been only a few decades prior. To understand why the Scandinavians would have chosen to carry out such an activity, it must concurrently be shown why they were able to do so, for necessarily it is the case that capability is a driving factor in going “a-Viking.” It also must be shown why these individuals chose to go exploring when others who were just as capable refrained. In the eighth through eleventh centuries, outside of their ability to do so, Scandinavians were attracted to this form of migration due to their capability to do so, environmental factors relating to climate and topography, social factors relating to cultural ties, political factors stemming from the rise of royal power, and economic factors based on the burgeoning trade in the Baltic Sea.

Two of the main factors taken into account in any investigation are opportunity and motive. There must be evidence for both in order to answer the question as toward why something occurred. When investigating the migration of Scandinavians throughout Europe, the same two items must be discussed. Opportunity, in this case, is the capability of these individuals to travel from the Scandinavian region in the Baltic to England, France, Germany, Spain, and farther. In addition, the Scandinavians had to be able to deal with the power that a King’s army would have in stopping them from raiding. The solution to both issues was in the designing and building of the Scandinavians’ ships. Thanks to their use of the ships as tombs historians have a better understanding of these crafts than of most other vessels from the period. One of the most celebrated designs was known as the Long Serpent. She was about 165 feet long, had 34 benches for oar-men, and could house nearly 400 men (i). Furthermore, like all theories about what these ships would have looked like based on those designs left in tombs, she was pointed at each end (rather than flat in the back) in order to allow for swiftly sailing forward or backward without rotating the whole ship (ii). This allowed the Vikings to pull up to an unsuspecting shore at dawn, raid a village swiftly, board their ship with whatever loot they could carry, and leave before the King’s army could even mobilize. These ships were so good at travelling at high speeds over great distances that some Vikings did so by accident. The best example is when Leif Erikson accidently discovered Vinland (in North America), having evidently been blown off course all the way across the Atlantic (iii). In addition, the Scandinavians had a huge supply of lumber and iron with which to build many ships inexpensively, allowing for many individuals to partake in such excursions. But, the ability to do something does not necessitate that it be done. Having established that the Scandinavians had the opportunity to go a-Viking, motive must be established in order to explain their actions.

While many nation’s economic systems during the 8^th through 11^th centuries were in some way connected to overseas trade (perhaps left over from the emphasis of inter-Mediterranean trade by the Romans), the maritime commercial activity in the North and Baltic Seas was in striking contrast to the mainly agricultural economies on the continent and in England (iv). Theirs was a maritime trade based on goods discussed above like lumber and iron found in the Baltic region itself, but also on booty captured in England, France, and Russia. This loot was taken back to Norway, Sweden, or Denmark and traded between groups of Scandinavian barbarians. As Henry Pirenne points out, “the Vikings, in fact, were pirates, and piracy is the first stage of commerce.” Case-in-point: when the era of raids ended, the Scandinavians simply became merchants (v). Thus, the economy of the Vikings relied on the continual taking of goods from foreign lands and trading them with one another. To be successful outside of agricultural pursuits, one could turn to very few professions other than going a-Viking. If ones land became non-arable or one had no land at all, there was no economic fabric to fall safely into. Rather, Scandinavians turned to pillaging in order to experience economic success. While this travelling-thievery may have begun between Sweden, Norway, and Denmark, it was not long before the Vikings began exploring farther and farther from their home bases. Discovering the increased prices associated with rare goods from farther away provided an extra incentive to travel greater and greater distances. Thus, economic benefit was directly associated with the act of going a-Viking, and created a positive feedback loop that encouraged the behavior and became a major motivator in brining people off the farm and onto the oars.

Economic benefit was not the only motivational factor for Scandinavians that took to the seas, however. They were also motivated by political necessity. When Eirik the Red was outlawed for the murder of two individuals it drove him to “seek out the land that Gunnbjorn, the son of Ulf Crow, had seen when he was driven off course westward" (vi). In this way, expeditions were a manner in which individuals could maintain some sort of livelihood even after having been been thrown off of their land and out of their country. It provided means for gathering political support against enemies—using the promise of loot to secure alliances—and means for taking care of oneself without fear of starvation or poverty. So long as one could row and fight, there was hope. This was increasingly important in an era where one’s ties to society were becoming more and more meaningful. With the advent of “the Thing,” ones relations to those around him became more formalized, and became more important. When a matter came up for debate, the final say was, in theory, a one-man-one-vote system. No other voting system would reinforce creating a web of alliances better, as only the act of going a-Viking could do for those without political clout. This was not the only socio-cultural motivator the Vikings had for travel.

In addition to the reinforcement of political ties, travel allowed for Scandinavians to see family members and friends despite being separated from time to time by great distances. As with many of the motivating factors, this draw to reconvene with family and friends was experienced by Leif Erikson as well. Upon stopping at Norway after first discovering Vinland, Leif travelled back to his family homestead in Greenland (vii). It was advantageous for Vikings to be able to return to homesteads year after year or even every few years. Returning to a successful agricultural region allowed them stability and somewhat guaranteed sustenance. It also benefited the individuals who stayed at the homesteads. The Vikings brought in goods and funds, and increased the interest in keeping the agricultural economy working (they relied at least partially on this regular source of food and shelter). Thus, a symbiotic relationship was created between the homesteads and the Vikings, reinforcing the act of piracy by providing familial and cultural-economic benefits.

A final motivating factor that some historians have pointed to is the changing climate in Greenland. Decreasing temperatures brought about by the Little Ice Age resulted in the migration by the Norse into more welcoming areas (viii). Temperature differences between Scandinavia and other regions as nearby as England and the western continent were great enough to motivate individuals to migrate. The topography of the regions, which are largely related to their temperatures, also would have driven individuals to re-locate to more attractive regions. This would have been especially true when ones entire way of life and economic success—their ability to farm—was reliant on the topography of where they lived.

The goal of historians must not only be to prove why a group of peoples took part in an activity, but also to say why other groups would have refrained from doing so. To do so, one must turn to those groups of Europeans who changed their way of life and did not turn to the piracy and barbarism that the Vikings took up. The main characteristic that separates the Scandinavians from their non-Viking counterparts is the advent of Christianity. With the spread of organized religion, acts such as raiding, pillaging, and murder became outlawed and morally frowned upon. Furthermore, because of the spread of Christianity and the use of it by rulers to keep their followers in check, there was much less room for these Europeans to live outside the world of organized Christianity. In Scandinavian society, stepping outside of any organized societal bounds did not end one’s ability to survive. Rather, the ability for these types of individuals to turn to piracy and maritime trade emphasizes the difference between the two societies in existence at this time: the Christian world of morality and civilization contrasted with the Norse world of barbarianism and savagery. Both were capable and had motivations to go a-Viking. The latter, however, did not have any societal check like Christianity to hold them back from setting sail for the unknown.

It has been shown that the Scandinavians had the means to, multiple reasons for, and no major drawback to going exploring and pillaging. The Scandinavians had the natural resources—both physical and intellectual—to create ships capable of carrying dozens of men that could travel great distances at high speeds. They had motivating factors stemming from their social make-up, the ramifications of their political setting, the economic underpinnings of the Scandinavian world, and the impending climatic crisis in Greenland. Finally, they were not impeded by a societal constrict such as the difficulty in living outside of the Christian faith found in other parts of Europe. These reasons made the Scandinavians in the 8^th through 11^th centuries capable and motivated to leave the shores of Norway, Denmark, and Sweden and find their way to the shores of many European countries and even North America.

i. Rodgers, William L. Naval Warfare Under Oars. 72-75.

ii. Vinland Sagas. “Ships.” 75-78.

iii. Vinland Sagas. “Eirik the Red’s Saga.” 34-35.

iv. Pirenne, Henry & I. E. Clegg. Economic and Social History of Medieval History. 20.

v. Pirenne, Henry. 21.

vi. Vinland Sagas. “Eirik the Red’s Saga.” 26-27.

vii. The Vinland Sagas. “Eirik the Red’s Saga.” 35.

viii. Lewis, Richard. “Climate helped drive Vikings from Greenland.” Brown University Press Release. http://news.brown.edu/pressreleases/2011/05/Vikings. May 30, 2011.

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From Snow Ball to Water Balloon, Earth Takes Care of Itself

2012-03-08T12:07:00.002-05:00

Yesterday a professor of mine pointed out the Earth's incredible ability to take care of itself, and mankind's ability to do the same. Humans more than any other species, he argued, have been able to settle all parts of the world and endure through every consequent hardship. Our species has been able to survive the continuing changing of the planet, and the planet has been able to continue taking care of itself the whole time.

Take, for example, a period 800 million years ago. At this time, the continents were all focused much closer to the equator, rather than in the mid-latitudes. The ramifications of this land-switch are huge. Water absorbs heat at a much greater intensity than does land; land reflects the sun's rays to a great extent. Today, 30% of the sun's energy is reflected back into space because the most direct and intense sunlight hits the area between the tropics, which is comprised mostly of water. If land masses covered the tropical region, as they did 800 million years ago, a significantly more amount of the sun's energy would have been reflected into space. The result would be temperature reductions the likes of which we can hardly imagine. As patches of snow and ice began to form, the reflected even greater amounts of sunlight than the land did. The negative feedback loop results in relatively rapid temperature declines. This period of Earth's history is referred to as the snow ball Earth because the entire planet became covered in snow and ice.

How does the Earth recover itself? The healing starts with internal processes. Lava, bubbling up from the Earth's core, melts through the snow and ice in the form of volcanoes. This molten rock carries with it tons of carbon dioxide. The carbon dioxide slowly fills the atmosphere because there is nothing to absorb it or get rid of it--now plants to consume it and create oxygen, no oceans to absorb it. Now, the heat reflecting off of the snow and ice is captured by the carbon dioxide, much like today's green house effect. The atmosphere begins to warm and, consequently, snow and ice begin to melt. As the ice turns to ocean, more heat is absorbed because of the ocean's better ability to take in heat than ice's. This sets up a positive feedback loop which results in increasing temperatures (heat melts ice, ice turns to water, water absorbs more heat, heat melts ice...). Furthermore, the water is now able to begin absorbing the carbon dioxide and reduce the green house effect, coinciding with the Earth's ability to absorb more heat as the continents had shifted away from the equator.

In an interesting side note, it has recently been put forward that the continents are currently shifting northward, and that they will all (save for Antarctica) meet around the north pole. The ramifications here, opposite of the situation described above, would be increasing temperatures. The water at the equator would absorb even greater amounts of heat and spread them throughout the globe. While this scenario is far in the future, the effects of its progress are already affecting us as temperatures have been on the rise since the snow ball began to melt some hundreds of millions of years ago.

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Brinkmanship and the Cuban Missile Crisis

2012-01-31T23:06:00.001-05:00

Why the Kennedy Administration Took the US to the Edge Before Saving it from Falling

On October 14, 1962 an American U2 spy plane flying over Cuba captured images of offensive military weapons. The missiles caught on film were being delivered to Cuba by the Soviet Union. This was despite numerous promises from both the First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Nikita Khrushchev, and Ambassador to the United States, Anatoly Dobrynin, that their country was only supplying the Cubans with defensive weapons to ensure that the United States did not intervene in the Cuban rebellion. The Soviet aid to Cuba against the United States’ interests was not unfounded. In fact, the United States had involved themselves in internal Cuban affairs the previous year when they attempted to fuel a counter-revolution in the CIA’s Bay of Pigs invasion. But, these images showed offensive weapons systems capable of attacking the United States directly, unlike those defensive weapons that the United States had previously allowed the Soviets to place in Cuba. The resulting diplomatic conflict, known as the Cuban Missile Crisis, escalated closer to the point of nuclear attack than any other event during the Cold War. A simple timeline of events can show why the conflict began. After the Cuban revolutionaries took over, they aligned themselves with the Soviet Communists. The United States immediately took issue with this and began forming plans for overthrowing the Communist regime. Wanting to maintain a foothold in the Western Hemisphere, the Soviet Union knew they needed to protect the Cubans and thus made a deal with Fidel Castro, the leader of the Cuban communist regime, to provide Cuba with defensive weapons in case of a U.S. invasion. The U.S. government had not challenged Soviet aid in the form of defensive weapons, but maintained that if the Soviet Union were to provide offensive arms (those capable of harming the United States mainland directly) they would be forced to react. For that reason, when President Kennedy and his administration received the intelligence reports about the missiles and launch sites being put in place, they were forced to react in some manner, or lose face internationally and fall further behind in the Cold War (believing at the time that they were already behind). Furthermore, the main reason that the conflict escalated to such an extreme can be easily analyzed: both sides were taking the conflict as close to the edge of nuclear war without being willing to actually enter into it. This practice was known as Brinkmanship and was the main factor leading to the dangerous level of escalation. The only question remaining, it would seem, is why the Kennedy administration chose to drive head-on toward the Soviet Union with world annihilation as the only feasible outcome. The Cuban Missile Crisis escalated to the precipice of nuclear strike due to the Kennedy Administration’s strategy of Brinkmanship. By looking to the period leading up to the Cuban Missile Crisis and the period following it, one can best determine the factors that led the Kennedy Administration to use Brinkmanship in the Fall of 1962: historical precedence for Brinkmanship and against its opposite, fears that Khrushchev was using Cuba to leverage other more prescient issues, and a deep mistrust of the Soviets by the United States. Strong Thesis (though this paragraph seems unnecessarily wordy/repetitive towards the end)

To begin the discussion on why Brinkmanship was used by the Kennedy Administration, it should first be shown to have been an integral reason that the Cuban Missile Crisis reached such a dangerous level. Despite historical justifications, wider diplomatic ramifications, and a level of fear that combined to make Kennedy feel like he had no other option than Brinkmanship, it was when he (and Khrushchev) stepped back from the game of chicken that the crisis was averted. Right when tensions were at their highest, Kennedy sent his brother Robert to end the spiraling of threat and counter threat. Rather than make another attempt at threatening their way to forcing the Soviets out of Cuba, the U.S. government under Kennedy abandoned the strategy of Brinkmanship for one of more open and diplomatic negotiations. Hindsight is perhaps one of the best indicators of whether a strategy employed was positive or negative. In the moment, the Kennedy administration could not have easily realized the kind of affect their strategy of Brinkmanship was having on the negotiations. But, history can show us that as soon as the U.S. eased their aggressiveness with the Soviets and treated the Soviet Union like a country that deserved to be talked to, rather than one that could be threatened into doing what the U.S. wanted, the crisis was averted. While this argument for Brinkmanship being a major factor in escalating the crisis to the point of nuclear strike is largely supposition, it cannot be ignored. History is an empirical science (one based on observed phenomena) in which the events themselves can be used to analyze the period. The Kennedy Administration used Brinkmanship and the Cuban Missile Crisis escalated to the edge of nuclear war. The Kennedy Administration abandoned the strategy of ‘all-or-nothing,’ ‘threaten until we get our way’ diplomacy and succeeded in dissolving the entire ordeal. As soon as Brinkmanship was taken out of the equation, there was no crisis. Thus, it can be inferred that Brinkmanship played an integral roll in the escalation of the events to the edge of nuclear crisis. Having satisfactorily established its role, one can turn to the issue at hand: why Brinkmanship was the chosen strategy for the Kennedy Administration in the Fall of 1962.

Brinkmanship’s use prior to the Cuban Missile Crisis helps show why it was used in 1962 and how it caused rapid escalation of the Crisis. Brinkmanship was a concept coined by Secretary of State John Foster Dulles under President Eisenhower. In an article for Life Magazine, Dulles defined the policy as “the ability to get to the verge without getting into the war.”1 The strategy was to continually push whatever the issue was closer and closer to the edge without tipping it over into nuclear conflict. By always appearing as if on the verge of attack, countries implementing Brinkmanship were able to use that threat as a negotiating advantage. More so than President Truman did, Dulles and Eisenhower employed this strategy of nuclear threat in the early 1950s successfully during the Korean War. President Truman had attempted to dissuade the Chinese with nuclear threat while he was in office. On November 30, 1950—forty-five days after the Chinese intervention into Korea—he held a press conference in which he made allusions to attacking the Korean People’s Army with nuclear arms after the Chinese People’s Volunteer Army had forced the U.N. out of North Korea.2 According to historians, these allusions were indeed “based on contingency planning to use the bomb, rather than the faux pas so many assumed it to be.”3 However, the Truman Administration was not as adept as the Eisenhower-Dulles duo would be in using Brinkmanship to gain diplomatic concessions from foreign nations. Upon entering the White House, Eisenhower and Dulles would make it known that the U.S. considered “the atomic bomb as simply another weapon in [the United States’] arsenal” and should be “as available for use as other weapons.”4 At perhaps the high point of conflict in the Korean War, Dulles got word to China through India that “if the war continued, the U.S. would lift the self-imposed restrictions on its actions and hold back no effort or weapon to win.”5 The obvious implication was that the United States would unleash nuclear attack if negotiations were not made. Thirty-nine days later, a truce had been signed. It seemed clear to Dulles, and later to the American people, that deterrence through moving to the edge of attack (i.e. Brinkmanship) was a positive strategy for dealing with conflicts in the Cold War. An article published in 1956 concurs, pointing to Dulles’s “policy of boldness,” which “preserved peace” when the “U.S. was brought perilously close to war.”6 This sequence of events gave the impression that Brinkmanship was the method of choice for dealing with the Communists and would lead the Kennedy Administration to implement it in 1962. But it was only one of the two historical lessons that would lead the Kennedy Administration to employ the strategy of Brinkmanship and refuse to back down—leading to the swift intensification of the Cuban Missile Crisis.

The second lesson from the past that lead Kennedy toward Brinkmanship was Munich and the appeasement of Hitler. It was at that conference that the world learned what happens when forces are allowed to do what they please—that what may appear to be nuances in diplomacy can turn to reveal devastating consequences. The opposite of appeasement is striking back immediately when an enemy makes an unacceptable move. Drawn out a thought further, by threatening an immediate strike in reaction to any unfavorable action, a nation can prevent an enemy from taking that action in the first place. Thus, a country must always be on the verge of striking and starting nuclear war in order to prevent another nation from acting out of line—deterrence in the form of Brinkmanship. Kennedy grew up with the legacy of Munich and the diplomatic theories that countered and corrected it. Kennedy believed that “the 1930s taught us a clear lesson: aggressive conduct, if allowed to go unchecked and unchallenged, ultimately leads to war.”7 By allowing Hitler to take small chunks, the representatives at Munich failed to quell the beast before it woke. Kennedy learned from the mistakes of these diplomats and saw more rapid, dramatic reaction as the only way to deal with an enemy taking action in an attempt to garner influence and power. This would lead him to view the Soviet involvement in Cuba skeptically and make him believe that drawing a hard-line with the Soviets by taking the conflict to the very edge of war was the best, if not only, course of action. Good

Thus, these two historical lessons resulted in a strong belief by the Kennedy administration that they must take the issue of missiles in Cuba to the extreme and threaten the Soviet Union in the most serious manner possible. Brinkmanship was the only step to be taken if the Soviets were to take them seriously and back down. Kennedy stated in his October 22 speech, seven days after being informed of the missiles in Cuba, that the United States must not “shrink from that risk [of nuclear war] at any time it must be faced.”8 Kennedy put forward the idea that the U.S. must remain vigilant and constantly prepared for war at any moment. Unfortunately, the Soviets were employing the same technique. Khrushchev had recently lost face in Europe by making nuclear threats due to issues in Berlin but then allowing deadlines he had set to pass without attack. He could not suffer another publicity blow so easily, and therefore pushed the issue just as forcefully toward the edge as Kennedy. The result, as one historian has pointed out, was the game theory strategy of chicken. In this scenario, neither player wishes to yield to the other, but the worst outcome occurs when neither player does yield.9 The historical reasons for Kennedy’s use of the strategy have been made clear. However, the then-present concerns must also be discussed in order to understand the thinking that lead to the use of Brinkmanship. Work on transitions (consider introducing questions that you still seek to answer)

Kennedy (and arguably Khrushchev) feared giving in to the other side due to feeling a need to gain a diplomatic advantage in other areas of greater importance—or at least to prevent the enemy from gaining such an advantage. The strategy of slowing the Soviets in order to allow for the United States’ own advantages was nothing new for the U.S. In 1950, the United States National Security Council issued a report under President Truman. The report, titled NSC-68, was designed in part to stand up to “further expansion of the Soviet system” and to bring about “retraction of the Kremlin’s control and influence.”10 This policy came into play for the Kennedy Administration prior to the Cuban Missile Crisis. Kennedy refused to allow the Soviet Union to unify East and West Germany and thus contained the Communist threat east of the border. The erection of the Berlin Wall, though a defeat for the democratic cause, was better than nuclear war or the spread of communism to West Germany. Now, Kennedy needed to again contain the Communist threat by disallowing the Soviets from gaining a diplomatic advantage through Cuba. Early on in the crisis, it was suggested to the President by Secretary of State Rusk that while both sides had the capabilities for a nuclear strike against one another, Khrushchev “knows that [the United States] don’t really live under the fear of his nuclear weapons to the extent that [the Soviets have] to live under fear of ours.” Rusk backed up this argument using the fact that “we have nuclear weapons nearby [in relation to the Soviet Union], in Turkey and places like that.”11 The implication is that Khrushchev was using Cuba to gain some sort of leverage in matters concerning U.S. weapons in Turkey and other nearby regions. Furthermore, Rusk puts forward his belief that “Berlin is very much involved in this” and that perhaps Khrushchev plans to “bargain Berlin and Cuba against each other.”12 Again, matters in other parts of the world were seen as tied directly to the result of the conflict in Cuba. For this reason, not only the outcome of the conflict, but the nature of the conflict itself was of the utmost importance. Not only did the Kennedy Administration need to be concerned with the ramifications of backing down and allowing the Soviets to control the Caribbean island, it also had to worry about what appearing weak during the conflict itself would mean for Communist interests in Europe and Asia. Therefore, they had to remain on the brink of nuclear strike or else allow the Soviets to think they could take advantage of the Cuban-situation in other parts of the world (i.e. in Berlin or Turkey). Brinkmanship was the only option to maintain this type of pressure on the Soviet Union and keep them from stepping out of line in Berlin and Turkey, and so the Kennedy Administration saw no alternative to it when choosing a strategy to use during the crisis.

In addition to the positive image of Brinkmanship in the preceding decade and the need to maintain an edge over the Soviets in Berlin and Turkey, the strategy was employed by the Kennedy Administration out of fear of the Soviet Union. According to one account of the Crisis, the “fear [of a Soviet attack] was so profound that it gave rise to the fatalistic fantasy that nuclear war had already commenced.” The author of the account attributes to this fear the “escalatory spiral of threats and counterthreats [sic] that nearly brought on a nuclear holocaust.”13 This spiral of threats is discussed in regard to psychological fears in Amitai Etzioni’s The Kennedy Experiment. In that work, Etzioni writes that “a high level of hostility,” like the movement of missiles into Cuba by the Soviet Union, causes a level of fear that “generates psychological blocks,” preventing either side from being able to negotiate positively. This fear can lead to “a rigid adherence to a policy chosen under earlier conditions,” such as the Brinkmanship of previous presidencies and a feeling that “whatever the adversary offers is…[him] seeking to advance his own goals and as a trap for us.”14 Both of these side effects of their fear help show why Brinkmanship was the chosen method for the Kennedy Administration during the Cuban Missile Crisis. The psychological block of reverting to policy made under previous conditions harkens back to the previous argument of historical precedence. Above, the historical success of Brinkmanship was argued to provide reasoning for the Kennedy Administrations use of it. Here, it is seen that there is a less conscious reasoning at play, as well; when the United States became threatened and fearful, it was their natural, psychological response to revert to policies put in place by previous presidents. The second point, wherein every action being taken by a foe is seen as in the enemy’s interest and against the interests of the other nation, also supports the argument for Brinkmanship. If everything an enemy nation does is in its interest and is harmful to one’s own country, then one should do what it can to prevent that nation from getting anything that it wants. As discussed, nuclear threat was, at the time and perhaps presently, the most powerful weapon in persuading a country to change course. The Kennedy Administration was aware of the fear that a nuclear threat would cause. For that reason, if they were going to prevent the Soviets from accomplishing anything, they felt they needed to show the Soviets that they were on the brink of implementing such a strike. Brinkmanship did just that. It forced the Soviets to view any action that they might take as causing a nuclear retaliation by the United States. The extreme level of fear that permeated American society, causing citizens to rush out to buy canned goods and prepare their basements for fallout, brought the Kennedy Administration to employ Brinkmanship due to unconscious psychological factors and a need to prevent the Soviets from taking any action at all.

The successful history of Brinkmanship and the failed history of its opposite, the present diplomatic situation for the Kennedy Administration, and the outcome of the Cuban Missile Crisis have all been examined. This process of research has brought about the conclusion that Brinkmanship was a major player in the escalation of the Crisis and was used for three major reasons: the image of its success in history under Eisenhower, the necessity to maintain an advantage in concurrent diplomatic issues, and the psychological factors affecting the Kennedy Administration at the time. Without the success of Brinkmanship during previous conflicts and the failure of its opposite, other areas of diplomatic contention to worry about, and a deep-seeded fear affecting the psyche of those involved, Brinkmanship might not have been used during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Without Brinkmanship, there might not have been much of a crisis at all.

1 -- Shepley, James. “How Dulles Averted War.” January 16, 1956. Life Magazine. Volume, Issue.

2 -- Truman, Harry S. Presiden’ts News Conference. November 30, 1950. http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=13673#axzz1eyAihnc7. The American Presidency Project: Document Archive. University of California Santa Barbara.

3 -- Cumings, Bruce. The Origins of the Korean War. 1990.

4 -- NSC 162 2. “United States Objectives and Programs for National Security.” October 30, 1953.

5 -- Shepley, James. “How Dulles Averted War.”

6 -- Ibid.

7 -- Kennedy, John F. “Address on the Buildup of Arms in Cuba.” October 22, 1962. http://millercenter.org/president/speeches/detail/3372. Miller Center. University of Virginia.

8 -- Kennedy, John F. Address on the Buildup of Arms in Cuba.

9 -- Russell, Bertrand W. Common Sense and Nuclear Warfare. London: George Allen & Unwin. 1959.

10 -- NSC-68. “United States Objectives and Programs for National Security.” April 14, 1950.

11 -- Transcript of Meeting at the White House. October 16, 1962. Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961-1963. Volume XI: Cuban Missile Crisis and Aftermath, Document 18. Office of the Historian, U.S. Department of State. http://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1961-63v11/d18.

12 -- Ibid.

13 -- Blight, James G. The Shattered Crystal Ball: Fear and Learning in the Cuban Missile Crisis.

14 -- Etzioni, Amitai. The Kennedy Experiment. The Western Political Quarterly. University of Utah. Volume 20, No. 2. June 1967. Pg 361-362. http://www.jstor.org/stable/445410

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The Earth is Flat

2012-01-30T13:31:00.001-05:00

Well, sort of.

We all know the continents and oceans do not lay on a flat surface spread out in a rectangle like the maps hanging in our classrooms or offices. The planet Earth is a sphere floating in space, created by increasing gravitational forces pulling more and more matter in toward the center. In fact, the Earth is still shrinking at an extremely minute rate, causing us to slow down (aided in this process by another factor that I will save for a later post). The point is that we are not a flat projection of mass as depicted in our maps' best attempt to display the world.

So how can a geographer accurately say that the world is flat? Well, perhaps we should clarify what we mean by flat in this discussion. When we use the term flat, what we're really saying is that the Earth is virtually perfectly smooth.

If one were to ask you to choose a common sports ball to describe the shape and surface of the Earth, what would your initial reaction be? Surely a football or rugby ball (for those readers outside of North America) would immediately be ruled out; neither are anywhere near spherical enough. Maybe a basketball. There are tons of dimples to display the changing rises and falls of the surface and it is made of multiple "plates" sewn together. Or maybe a baseball or soccer ball? Both have seams that could depict the tectonic seams or the valleys and mountains of the Earth.

Had you taken any of these responses as valid, you would be misunderstanding one of the most important geographic concepts: scale. Image the Earth as it is floating in space. At this point, the diameter of the Earth is roughly 13,000 km. The height of Mt. Everest is around 9 km and Mariana Trench is about 11 km deep. Let's take this Earth and photo-copy it down proportionally to 13 km or 13,000 meters in diameter. Everest is now .009 km or 9 meters tall and Mariana is now .011 km or 11 meters deep. Now, let's photo-copy it down again so that the Earth is only 13 meters in diameter. You could now fit the entire globe in a small gymnasium. Everest is now .009 meters or 9 millimeters tall and the Mariana is now .011 meters or 11 millimeters tall. If you can imagine such a globe hanging over the center of a basketball court, you can understand how difficult it would already be to pick out a 9 millimeter rise or an 11 millimeter dip.

Now let's take the final jump. Let's make the Earth into the biggest of the balls that we suggested, a basketball. Our current 13 meter Earth is 13,000 millimeters in diamater. A standard basketball has a diameter only 2% of that size. This would make our 9 millimeter Everest into a .18 millimeter mass on its surface and the Mariana into a .22 millimeter dip. This makes Everest as tall as the thickest standard paper and the Mariana just slightly deeper.

So while many maps and globes depict the rises and falls of the surface rather dramatically, the reality is that the Earth is rather smooth. So which sports ball would I go with if asked that question? A billiards ball is probably the most accurate depiction of our flat (smooth) Earth.

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Melting Permafrost: Global Warming's Tipping Point

2012-01-23T00:46:00.005-05:00

According to recent research, global warming is having a strong effect on permafrost in the Northern Hemisphere, and the permafrost is having an even greater effect on global warming. Namely, global warming is causing the permafrost, frozen solid for thousands of years, to melt. In addition to the resulting changes in the make-up of the environment—new types of vegetation and drastically different soil consistencies, among others—there is a farther-reaching outcome of the melting permafrost. As it melts, the permafrost is expected to release carbon dioxide and methane into the air in amounts of up to 35 percent of today’s annual human emissions. The major issue at hand is not a rapid release of green house gases, but rather that once the permafrost begins to melt, a positive feedback loop will be created: global warming will melt the permafrost, the melted permafrost will result in additional green house gases, which will increase global warming even more. This is due to the fact that while the carbon dioxide and methane will be released somewhat slowly, the melting of the permafrost will cause global warming to continue on its own even if all human actions are ceased. Furthermore, it is estimated that two and a half times the amount of carbon in the atmosphere is currently stored in permafrost around the world. The result of these gases being released, even slowly, would be to bring global warming to an irreversible point.

In terms of dealing with the issue, the biggest concern at present is the uncertainty that scientists and politicians are dealing with. The number of uncertainties is worrisome. Scientists are unsure how much of the carbon could be released as methane. Conservative estimates project that even a small percent of methane could be as detrimental to the environment as the larger amounts of carbon dioxide. As a recent New York Times article states, “Methane is especially potent at trapping the sun’s heat, and the potential for large new methane emissions in the Arctic is one of the biggest wild cards in climate science.” A major component of the issue is that it is still a wild card, especially to politicians. According to a recent GreenWire Article, Democrats have tried to get Republicans to call meetings on the subject but they have continually refused, especially since the EPA was stripped of its power to regulate green house gas emissions. While the Democrats would probably lean on the side of taking action even while the information remains incomplete, they would understand the Republican position of inaction more if Republicans were also trying to increase the amount of information known. That is to say, that if the Republicans were simply waiting for more information to be gathered, the Democrats could respect their position. However, the Republicans are refusing to call meetings on the subject and are disallowing any government funding to be spent in trying to expand the knowledge base on the topic.

In my opinion, the melting permafrost represents the tipping point that should finally force the world to react to global warming. It is an aspect of global warming about which no one can say “we’ll just deal with it later.” If we do not deal with the melting Arctic in an immediate fashion, no generation after us will have the capability to do anything about it. In fact, they will have their options regarding global warming itself reduced drastically: the issue of global warming will rapidly become one of not only cutting back human emissions to zero, but also reversing the effects of our past actions in order to remove the emissions that will be naturally occurring. If the nations of the world do not act to change the direction that the Arctic is headed, there will be nothing left for anyone to do to stop the warming of the Earth.

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Globalization Works Both Ways: Thai Floods

2011-11-06T16:35:00.000-05:00

Thirty years ago, if someone said that a flood in Thailand would cause a 10% increase in external hard drives, they would get a lot of strange looks. Many would ask where Thailand was and what it had to do with hard drives. In fact, for many, the image of Thailand remains one of a land of temples, beaches, and smiles, as reinforced by their tourism industry. The reality is that, over the past thirty years, Thailand has industrialized rapidly and become a country of integral importance for two major global industries: computers and cars.

Those floodwaters did come, and the country is racing to deal with displaced families and damage. Amid the social struggle to find homes and food for the population, another struggle is going on in Bang Pa-in. A facility there owned by Western Digital produces 25% of the world's "sliders," an important component of hard-disk drives. Or at least it did until the floodwaters came.

Two geographic factors are coming into play here. The first is obvious: the location of facilities in relation to waters that tend to rise and the spread of the floodwater over increased areas. Location, location, location is the mantra of many a business tycoon but its importance cannot be over-emphasized when companies move overseas. They often do not spend the time or money discovering the best location because the whole purpose is to move quickly and save the maximum amount of money possible. The result is that, while they get the cheapest location and the lowest wages, they aren't always prepared for other geographic factors to cause problems like flooding or poor road conditions.

The second geographic factor is a term thrown around much too loosely, but that is appropriate here: globalization. Often the term is used in such a way that it's general meaning overshadows the local and particular factors that are crucial to truly understanding its effects. The current situation in Thailand is perfect for illustrating this effect. Globalization is not just McDonalds in Tokyo or Coca-Cola in Niger. It's also Western Digital in Thailand. It does not only open up foreign markets to Western branding and consumerism, it opens up the West to the problems that the rest of the world are still facing. This isn't meant to say that the "rest" of the world is backward or failing; rather, it means to assert that much can be done to help other parts of the world by continuing the spread of industrialization and production overseas.

I have discussed in a separate article the effects of globalization on flattening the values and beliefs accepted around the world. In that article, I put forward the idea that forcing neoliberalization of the world is unfair and destroys traditional cultures in pursuit of economic gain. In this present article I do not mean disagree with that. I do not wish for increased involvement overseas in the kind that forces a cultural change as some forms of economic development are based on (see China's major growth in consumerism to keep up with the economic model it adapted from the West). Rather, simple industrialization and infrastructural development would be of great benefit to many populations and would not force them to change their values. While increased foreign involvement necessarily causes some sort of societal changes due to the transfer of values associated with any relationship, there are some methods for economic development overseas that damage cultural traditions and some that bolster them, allowing them to grow alongside the economic benefits.

The floods in Thailand remind us that globalization works both ways. It must be remembered that spreading of economic benefit over a great geographic area comes with the spreading of economic risk over that same area, and over one that we are not usually quite as familiar with. While the connections of the world are becoming more numerous and many regions are becoming more interconnected, our understandings of other regions has not quite kept up or advanced as much as it should have. We use globalization to claim a "flattening," but that causes us to ignore the fact that there are differences that need to be recognized and handled delicately if globalization itself is to succeed.

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The United States: Brute Force Waning, Smart Power Waxing

2011-11-03T11:07:00.001-04:00

The U.S. will be entirely out of Iraq by the end of the year. During the Arab spring six months ago, it played only a peripheral role in Libya. Now, it looks like Asian funds will be bailing out the European Union's financial crisis. The New York Times reports that these are signs of "the relative decline of the United States as an international force."

This isn't out-rightly wrong. In terms of realist power and "direct" influence, the U.S. perhaps isn't as big of a player as it once was. The realist school of thought in the field of international affairs focuses on military and economic power, specific and direct action by one nation in another. This is exactly the kind of influence the United States is shying away from. Rather than direct military intervention in nations such as Libya, Obama and Clinton worked behind the scenes. They gained UN sanctions, got pledges from other nations to take on the brunt of the work (to satisfy Congress), and Clinton worked personally with local rebels to create a support system of indirect influence which allowed the rebels to rise with minimal internal conflict.

The New York Times article quotes a former Commerce Department Official who argues that "we are in this situation of feeling overexposed and overburdened precisely because we had such an appetite before for unilateralism and triumphalism." But this "silver-lining," as the article calls it, is not the true advantage of exchanging direct action for indirect influence. The international affairs community largely recognizes that a power that can get what it wants through cooperation and attraction is more powerful than that which must forcefully act upon a nation in order to get what it wants from them. Soft power--that of diplomacy, negotiations, and social discourse--is more powerful and important than hard power--military deployment or economic sanctions.

While the majority of the United States population might not have yet grasped this idea, thinking that only if they could militarily conquer a nation then they are stronger than them, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton certainly has. In a recent Time Magazine article, she has described the current era as "the age of participation" and says "the challenge...is to figure out how to be responsive, to help catalyze, unleash, channel the kind of participatory eagerness that is there." This idea of releasing "participation" hearkens to the Arab Spring that saw social media liberating Middle Eastern populations from the control of their governments. To that end, the State Department now has 192 Twitter feeds and 288 Facebook accounts.

More important, in my opinion, is her view of the United States as a catalyst. Extending the biological metaphor: no longer is the use the actual factor taking part in the reaction, but rather has the properties that allow and, in fact, set off the changes that are already ready to occur. It is no longer the presence of the United States that creates the situation for a reaction; nor is it there place to take part in that reaction any longer. Instead, the situation for a reaction has already been created and the United States is simply setting off the reaction that is already ready to occur.

Clinton perhaps sounds a little idealistic when quoted in Time: "As we look to how we manage the Arab Spring, we are trying to influence the direction with full recognition that we don't have ownership and we don't have control. And there's a lot that's going to happen that is unpredictable. But we want to lead by our values and our interests in ways that, regardless of the trajectory over the next decade, people will know the United States was on the side of democracy, on the side of the rule of law." But if the United States can prove to the world that its values and indirect influence are as powerful as its guns are, it will maintain its position as a hegemony even as the military and economic power of competing countries begin to match it. The Time Magazine article called this rising influence "smart power" and I don't see anything more intelligent than taking advantage of it.

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Wear a Jimmy Hat, Save the Big Cat: The Environmentalist Perspective on Population Growth

2011-11-02T10:59:00.000-04:00

The New York Times ran an article online on Monday about the Center for Biological Diversity's move to tie population growth directly to environmental problems. This is considered a rash strategy based on the commonality of “getting caught up in the bruising politics of reproductive health.” Since 1978, when child-bearing issues became serious concerns of the state with the introduction of China's one child policy, issues of reproduction have become too hot-button for environmentalists to concern themselves with.

But the Center for Biological Diversity is tired of sitting on the sideline as the population grows, “accelerating the global extinction crisis for animals and plants imperiled by overpopulation’s effects on habitat, water, air and other natural resources.” They have begun a new campaign called “7 Billion and Counting” to combat not only the effects of population growth on the environment and on endangered species, but also to combat the population growth itself. This is being done by holding local events to bring population issues out into the light, encouraging individuals to write letters to their local newspapers, spreading word online, and by handing out endangered species condoms. These condoms depict endangered animals along with phrases relating the use of a condom (and therefore the prevention of population-growth) to preventing the further extinction of these animals.

The Center argues that “as the world’s population grows unsustainably, so do its unyielding demands for water, land, trees and fossil fuels—all of which come at a steep price for already endangered plants and animals.” As the graph here shows, right along with the massive population growth there has been extreme increases in extinction numbers. While direct causation can be no more than induced, it is the first instance of such extinction growth that has not been accompanied by extraordinary geological or cosmic changes.

Two concerns can be drawn out of the Center for Biological Diversity's argument. The first is that population growth over the next thirty-five years (and more) is going to occur most largely in areas that the Center does not concern itself with. The United States fertility rate has already fallen to below replacement level (currently at 2.0). While population is expected to continue to grow due to immigration, the growth in the developed world is nothing compared to that of undeveloped nations, especially Africa. While the environmental impact of the developed world is greater than that of Africa or still-developing countries, all of the population decline that is going to occur in the developed regions has happened. The populations of Africa can be better controlled and fertility can be brought down. But not if companies such as the Center for Biological Diversity busy themselves with bringing down the fertility rates of nations like the United States that have already fallen to the lowest rates they should expect to see. Rather, they need to answer to the second concern I have with their new program.

This second concern is that by trying to reduce the population, the Center gives up on persuading people to care more or to change their lifestyles in order to help the endangered species. Even if population growth is slowed through fertility rate to 1.5, which could result in a 10% carbon emissions drop by 2050, these changes will be combated by population increase due to immigration rates. The net gain is next to nothing. Rather, if the fertility rate is allowed to run its natural course but policy is changed in order to reduce the effect of every individual to near zero, then it won't matter what number the population hits as long as policy keeps up with growth.

Of course, the Center does not put forward population control as its only strategy. They also wish to change governmental policy and individual effect in order to reduce the overall result of humans on the environment. But by providing the crutch of blaming population growth, it gives individuals who drive gas-guzzlers but only have one child a way to skirt the blame for environmental damage and increased extinction.

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NY Times Article

Center for Biological Diversity website

A World of Blue, Green, and Gray: The Demographics of Aging

2011-11-01T11:49:00.000-04:00

Never before in human history has our planet contained so many older people, or such a large percentage of them. This has not always been the case. As late as 1930, America's older population numbered less than 7 million, only 5.4% of the population. Today, one out of every 9 Americans is "old." Another former youth turns 50 every 8 seconds. Those age 65 and older now exceed 35 million, a number poised to explode. January 2011 ushered in the first of approximately 77 million Baby Boomers, born from 1946 through 1964 and are surging toward the gates of retirement. The latest U.S. Census Bureau brief on data from the 2010 Census shows seniors increasing faster than younger populations, raising the nation's median age from 35.3 in 2000 to 37.2 in 2010, with seven states having a median age of 40 or older.

Between 2000 and 2010, the 45 to 64 population grew 31.5 percent to 81.5 million, and now makes up 26. 4 percent of the total U.S. population. This rapid growth is due to aging of the Baby Boom generation. Each year more than 3.5 million Boomers turn 55.Their swelling numbers predict that, by 2012, America's 50 and older population will reach 100 million. And according to the UN Population Division, 1 in 5 people are expected to be 65 or older by 2035. This dramatic growth in numbers and proportions, increased life expectancies, and energetic life styles, now enables us to live 20 to 25% of our lives in active retirement. Moreover, today's physically and intellectually active younger generations predict that tomorrow's elderly population will be better educated, healthier, culturally literate and, as individuals, more discerning consumers.

So what's the big deal? The United States seems to be more than prepared to handle a large old population, right? We have programs like Social Security and Medicare that are designed for this very purpose. Well that sounds just fine until one looks at Europe and Japan, the rest of the West at roughly the same point in the demographic transition as the US. These nations, too, have upside-down population pyramids (heavy on top in the older ages, thinner on the bottom in youth) and also have many social programs designed to take care of them. But, as these nations have found out and as the US will have to deal with, it's not quite as simple as it seems it should be.

Europe and Japan's biggest concern, as major economic powers, is there declining working-age population. Japan currently has a ratio of 3 workers to every 2 retirees, but that number will get closer to 1:1 as more individuals retire. With a falling working-age concentration, both regions will have to deal with the inverse effect of the demographic dividend (discussed with regard to Ireland here) and will enter a time of economic difficulty. Not only will there be a smaller percentage of the population working, but there will be a larger percentage of the population dependent on those fewer workers. The result is unsustainable and will necessitate policy changes.

This is the same fate that the United States faces as it enters the era of retiring boomers. While Social Security looks like it will be able to sustain the blow from the coming retirees, changes will need to be made if it is to still be standing in forty years when the boomers have passed on. Furthermore, the nation needs to figure out how it will balance a graying population's needs with those of a working-age population in the midst of a recession. While it will be the greatest struggle for this generation, the United States at least has the examples of Japan and Europe to aid it in handling its aging population.

Source of Data: http://transgenerational.org/aging/demographics.htm#ixzz1cCunt5P4

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How to Remember Five of Those Presidents that Always Slip Your Mind

2011-10-29T16:08:00.000-04:00

William Howard Taft

You can't spell Taft without "fat" and Bill was big. Hand-picked by Teddy Roosevelt, Taft was the 27th President of the United States, and by far the largest at 330 lbs. In fact, Taft was so large that he once got stuck in the Presidential bathtub. It took four men to lift him from the tub, after which a new tub was put in place and a photo was taken with it of the four men who had lifted Taft out of the original: all four could fit inside the new one. So remember, you can't spell Taft without fat; and William Howard Bath. Don't feel too bad for it though, he made up for it by being the only President to go on to become the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.

Harrison, Taylor, and Garfield

These three are perhaps the most easily forgotten Presidents: all three of them served less than half of a term in office. Using the first letter of each of their names, the acronym HTG can be made standing for "Half-Term Guys." William Henry Harrison lasted the least amount of time: 31 days after his inauguration in 1841 he died of pneumonia. In fact, he had caught the cold while giving that very speech. Wanting to show he was tough, he delivered his two hour inauguration speech (the longest in US history) in the freezing rain without an over-coat or a hat. The result? His only act as President was to call a special session of Congress.

Zachary Taylor's death has much more uncertain causes. He took office in 1849 and died July 9, 1850. Five days previous Taylor had suffered from heat exhaustion while attending the groundbreaking ceremony for the Washington Monument, eating an entire bowl of berries and drinking a whole pitcher of milk to ease his stomach. Many point to this strange diet as a cause for his ailment but the death still has no official cause: bilious diarrhoea and bilious cholera are the two theories with the most weight.

James Garfield's assasination is equally as strange as Taylor's suicide-by-cherrys-and-milk but much less his fault. For four months after he was inaugurated, Garfield had a stalker, a man by the name of Charles Guiteau. A self proclaimed Stalwart, Guiteau was a firm believe in the political machine and thought then when an individual aids a politician rise to power that individual deserves to be rewarded with a position of power. For a reason that historians have been unable to determine, Guiteau believed he had single-handedly brought Garfield into the presidency, and expected to be rewarded with an ambassadorship to France. Four months later when he hadn't been appointed, he followed Garfield to Williams College and shot him twice as he walked through the Sixth Street Station of the

Baltimore and Potomac Railroad.

James K. Polk

Polk is easily forgotten or mixed up with that group of presidents between Jackson and Lincoln, but he should be more notable, as he was the strongest president between those two. He not only fought back against Britain with regard to territorial lines between the US and Canada, but lead the nation to a sweeping victoria in the Mexican-American War. Every time he was poked by a foreign nation trying to step on the toes of his burgeoning nation, he reacted immediately and refused to back down. To remember his ability to fight back when threatened, just remember don't poke Polk.

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7 Billion (Strong?)

2011-10-28T04:32:00.000-04:00

The Economist reported in their October 22 issue on the global population growth which has resulted in the upcoming birth of the 7 billionth living person. That child is to be identified this weekend on October 31, Halloween. Has the UN chosen this date based on the numbers alone, or are they trying to draw a connection between the US holiday of fear and the massive growth in the human population?

Problems associated with population growth are asserted any time the topic is discussed. As is pointed out in the article, increased population causes strain on scarce resources such as food supply. The World Bank points out that global food production will have to rise by about 70% between now and 2050 to feed the 9 billion people projected to inhabit the Earth by then. But this is the talk of Malthusians and fans of direct population control; perhaps there is another explanation.

The article, either purposefully or simply through an act of being too vague, makes it seem like a one-child policy is the only way a state can push fertility down. The reality is that much smaller state actions can have much larger effects. In Ireland, by legalizing contraceptives the government was able to send fertility down rapidly (as I have discussed here). In other nations, it takes a changing in the attitude about traditional family values. The point is, there is more than forcing a couple to conform to the state's idea of a perfect family that the government of a nation can do to limit population. But is that the only option? As the author points out, "the impact humans have on the earth and on each other can change."

What's really going on here is just a continuation of a debate that has gone on between observers of demography for centuries. In the late 1700s and early 1800s, Thomas Malthus published six editions of his An Essay on the Principle of Population. His work claimed that the earth could support a limited number of human beings and that this number would have to be checked by war, famine, and disease if it were to keep from growing so large as to fail due to size alone.

Malthusians, as his supporters have become known as, are argued against by "cornucopians." This second group's most notable supporter is Julian Simon. Simon was an economist who argued that natural resources and population growth together create continual economic benefits. That, as populations grow, they enable developments that increase economic resources and create an environment more suitable for living. This, in turn, spurs further population growth, and the cycle continues. His ideas are best supported by the Green Revolutions in agriculture which allowed for large population booms in the late-1800s and mid-1900s.

Today, population is blamed for numerous global problems. One of the major fears is the carbon emissions that will come along with the massive population growth. All some people seem to be able to think is, imagine all the additional cars emitting fumes. But the reality is that the poorest half of the world produces only 7% of carbon emissions, while the richest 7% produce half the carbon. Meaning that the problem lies in stable-population nations (China, Europe, the US). In addition, the majority of all population growth is going to occur in these poorer nations (especially Africa) where emissions levels are low already. While it would be a great idea for the world to start looking at keeping population levels low, it cannot be argued that lowering fertility in the fastest growing regions would do much to help. Population is not the policy that needs to be addressed in this instance.

In fact, the article goes to lengths to argue that "reducing population growth any more quickly than it is falling anyway may not make much difference" in terms of feeding the population, effecting the environment, or causing violence. As stated above, it would take a 70% improvement in food production to feed the 9 billion mouths looking for food in 2050. While that may seem like a large number, in the past four decades the world has increased food production by over 350%. The problem isn't that there are too many people, but rather that farm productivity is beginning to flatten out; put economically, the issue is with the supply, not the demand. With water and arable land resources dwindling, if current population levels were held constant, the world would still need to improve food production 25% to continue feeding itself through 2050. As with the environmental issue discussed above, the problem lies in policy regarding food-resource-scarcity and not with increased demand.

Violence is the issue that most people probably flock to as a major issue. As populations become more dense, we must begin to fight more. The truth, however, is that, despite record population growths that peaked in the 1960s, "historically, we've never had it this peaceful." That is according to an article in the Huffington Post which discusses three new books that pose that thesis. In one, the author claims that "the decline of violence may be the most significant and least appreciated development in the history of our species." It seems that, while our populations have been increasing, and we have been exposed to more of the violence occurring around the world (that is, we see more of it on television and in the newspaper than we may have ever before), the numbers show us that overall violence has been on the decline. The Economist asserts that population growth and violence are not directly connected at all: "these patterns [of decreasing violence and war] do not seem to be influenced...by the relentless upward pressure of population." Rather, increases in violence may stem from strained resources, or other outside factors that have their own sets of policy that can be changed to reduce violence.

Shown through a discussion of numerous false-cause fallacies regarding population growth, one can see that as the global population rises, there are other factors to consider when problems need to be solved. It would be easy to blame population growth for problems caused by humans: humans cause problems, therefore more humans cause more problems. But this is logically invalid and only leads to policies that, in the end, will fail and leave the world farther behind in such critical issues as energy consumption, food distribution, and the management of violence.

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The World is NOT Flat: The Geography and History that Friedman's Economics Left Out

2011-10-27T15:06:00.000-04:00

A professor of mine recently cringed at the discussion of Thomas Friedman's best seller The World is Flat. The book discusses how "free market globalization an rapid technological changes have produced a world of digitlization, virtualization, and automation of almost everything" and argues that "this new era of globalization will prove to be such a difference in degree that it will be seen, in time, as a difference in kind." Friedman believes that this change in how the world relates has made the world "flatter" or more level and equal. He lays out two ways that countries will (or must) conform in order to get an advantage from this flattening.

First, the state has to stimulate innovation and structure a regulatory environment favorable to entrepreneurialism and to personal accountability and responsibility. This is a top-down format for creating economic success: the construction of a good business climate by the government. Second, there has to be a parallel shift in bottom-up, grass-roots cultural understandings. This point argues that the society itself has to adhere to the values of successful nations that are already flat (it is hard to argue that he is discussing any region other than the West): "hard work, thrift, honesty, patience, and tenacity." The nations must also be "open to change, new technology, and equality for women." As David Harvey summarizes, "everyone has to embrace contemporary bourgeois virtues and a neoliberal work ethic if they and the countries they inhabit are to succeed in today's competitive environment...We all have to become the same everywhere in order to qualify for admission to the regime of universal rights and benefits."

Friedman's depiction is a hyped-up caricature of the neoliberal world-view that currently reigns supreme. My professor's cringing represents the disagreement with this caricature in the realm of geographic academia. The world is most certainly not flat. Not only in the obvious sense--mountains, valleys, etc--but, more importantly, the world is incredibly uneven in terms of demographic characteristics. Harvey breaks down Friedman's claim into three necessary conditions for the institutional framework in which the universal virtues of liberty and freedom can be realized: a universal system of private property rights, free markets, and free trade. While it would be difficult to argue that the presence of these qualities in a society are always detrimental to economic growth, it is ignorant of Friedman to argue the inverse: that the presence of these qualities in a society are always beneficial to economic development.

Looking at private property, two case studies are beneficial to our discussion. The first, Peru, is a nation that was struggling with poverty and a poor economy. Then, Hernando de Soto, "brilliant and innovative" according to Friedman, came along and argued that the main barrier to development was the lack of clear title ownership of assets, particularly land and housing. This idea was implemented under de Soto's government and then by the World Bank. The result? Virtually nothing: the one tangible effect was that adults worked more hours and children worked fewer. While the World Bank celebrated this success, the economy was no better off in the end. The other case study is a bit more broad. It claims simply that all the while (a century or more) that Britain dominated the world of industrial capitalism, indeed dominated the global economy itself, the crown, the church, the Oxford and Cambridge colleges, and a few aristocratic families controlled around two-thirds of the land. The inductive conclusion is meant to be that if private property rights are so important to economic development, and 2/3 of the land in Englad was in very few hands, then England should not have been the most economically superior nation in the world. And yet they were.

GDP and Growth Rate for Iraq from 2003-2009

Moving on to free markets and free trade, Harvey points to the Middle East as the counterpoint to Friedman's belief that these economic factors are the road map to success (read: flatness). In 2003, the United States mandated the privatization of all state-owned assets and enterprises in occupied Iraq, full ownership rights of Iraqi businesses by foreign firms, the opening of Iraqi banks to foreign control, no barriers to foreign direct investment, and the elimination of nearly all trade barriers. Surely, these policy changes satisfy Friedman's requirements for free trade and free markets, and should lead to economic growth. According to Harvey, "The attempt to impose this free-market fundamentalism on Iraq, without any regard for the country's complex social and historical structure, has contributed to the disastrous collapse of the country's political economy." This opinion is not Harvey's alone though. The entire world blames the United States for the basically broken economy of the Middle East. While it may not have been among the economic power-houses prior to invasion, the system has been crippled and, most importantly, no longer has the traditional pathways with which to work in.

Harvey does not, and I would not here, argue that Friedman's ideas about what would help the poorest economies are ridiculous. Government involvement in creating an environment beneficial to businesses is something that any nation can gain from to a certain degree. Furthermore, a change in the mental state of citizenry that makes them harder workers or more efficient members of the economy as a whole clearly has positive effects on that nation's success. But Friedman's assertion that these changes needed to be made "flatly" takes the line of reasoning too far. His argument erases any geographical, anthropological, and historical differences in order to state that all regions need to work toward the neoliberal economic ends. But not all nations benefit from these sorts of policy changes--as has been shown here and as can be seen in other contemporary examples (Latin America, Eastern Europe). The truth is that the geographic differences, what makes each region of people different from one another, must be taken into account when the economic policy that will be successful for them is determined. Without those factors being taken into account, the world will indeed flatten out in terms of policy. But the differences in wealth and economic success will be more jagged and irregular than anything the world has known.

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Global Borders: An Impending Geographic Issue

2011-10-26T15:22:00.000-04:00

Borders are a major factor in both history and geography. From the seemingly continuous conflicts over territory in Europe from the 1700's through World War II up through issues today in India and Africa about arbitrarily drawn borders still in place from colonization.

Borders are important for two major reasons. The first stems from ideas of nationalism. By putting up a border, one is able to distinguish between their countrymen and those of another nation, even if the pair are right next to one another. This distinction, while seemingly superficial, is very important to the power of nationalism. With no way to definitively separate one's group from another, any claims about being inherently better have to be broken down into "the group that I clearly represent" (which may not include the entire country) are better than "you." In reality, these individuals want to say that "all individuals from my country" are better than "all individuals from your country." For better or for worse, borders allow nationalism to carry more weight.

The second value that borders carry is in defining physical spaces. This sounds obvious at first: borders separate the physical landscape of one country from that of another. But the separation of physical spaces can have meanings much greater than this. For starters, by placing a mountain range on country X's side of the border, that nation gains a strategical advantage over their neighbor, country Y. In a real life example, Russia has been continually trying to change its borders in order to gain access to a warm-water sea-route in the Mediterranean Sea through the Black Sea (although they might be able to go a different route thanks to changing geographies, as I discuss here).

Okay, so what's the big deal? Well, while Russia's push for a warm-water port has been largely a side-issue in the conflicts that it has been brought up during, there have been conflicts where the war-aims have been very much geographic in nature. This goes beyond the "we want more land" argument for why war happens. Rather, it focuses in on the "we want that land" problem that is becoming more and more an issue in today's world. Oil, arable land, and water have been becoming seen less as universal goods with an unlimited supply and more as private commodities, albeit ones necessary for survival (while oil isn't essential to survival, it is essential for the type of survival an increasing portion of the world is willing to accept).

Thus, geographic differences don't just discuss the quantity of the land but also the quality; we don't discuss territory simply in terms of square mileage but also in how much of that land can support farming, how much available water is there per square mile, and does the land of the qualities to supply energy sources (not just oil or coal, but are the elements there for wind power, nuclear power, etc). These are the issues that nations like China are beginning to bump into. China has been investing in Africa for arable land, energy sources, and other economic goals. While this is not the type of conflict that might be expected in the future as these resources become even more scarce, it is a type of economic warfare. Buying up these areas is only tightening the grip of resource-scarcity on the rest of the World. You can read more about the China-Africa relationship here.

The Western world may largely live without having to worry about food, water, or energy. But as the recent economic crisis has shown, it doesn't take much to send the price of grain or gas souring. Unless the world can come together and take advantage of its limited resources while finding new ones, we will over-extend the Earth's capabilities and fail to survive at the current level of existence.

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The Celtic Tiger: A Lesson in Demographic Transition

2011-10-25T11:12:00.000-04:00

In geography there is a model used to depict the process of population growth that every nation is going through. It answers the question as towards why there was such massive population growth in the Western world in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The answer, it turns out, is a model that can be applied not only to developing nations but to nations in any stage of premodern and modern life.

The model depicts the crude birth and death rates on the left-Y-axis, the year on the X-axis, and the total population on the right-Y-axis. At year 0, both the crude birth rate and crude death rate are high and static. This is the pre-modern stage, where deaths are high and therefore birth rates must be high to compensate for the sporadic and indeterminable nature of death. In the second stage, urbanization and industrialization begin, bringing about advancements in healthcare and sanitation. This leads to declining death rates. However, fertility rates tend to remain high as populations are still more traditional than the industrialization around them.

Then, in stage three, industrialization matures and fertility-declining methods are introduced. Family planning becomes a function of the government, contraceptives are legalized and more dispersedly used, and the rights and education of women delay the time of initial sexual contact and marriage (which shortens their child-bearing years). Fertility thus declines roughly to the level that death rates had reached and stabilizes there in stage for: post-industrialization.

Most Western nations are at this point. The United States and most of western Europe have fertility rates right around replacement level: 2.1 children per woman (2 to account for both parents and .1 for premature deaths). Some, like Russia, have birth rates below replacement and thus are seeing population decline. This is resulting in top-heavy population pyramids that are having difficulty supporting themselves in the social welfare age that we live in. The youth population (being the minority) cannot support the graying population (the majority).

Yet other nations are still in the earlier stages. Almost all are by now at least in the second and third stages. They all have declining death rates but not all of their fertility rates are beginning to follow in this downward trend. This is most notable in Africa, where 49% of the population growth in the next 40 years will occur. Considering the economic conditions of that continent, the population growth there will only increase the percent of the world's population struggling with poverty.

Another nation with demographically-related economic conditions is Ireland. Indeed, this UK nation is a case study for one factor of the demographic condition called the demographic dividend. Demographic dividend is the economic advantage gained when a population becomes concentrated in the age groups available to the work-force. That is, the age-groups consisting of the highest percent of the population are those of the working-age. This age dispersion creates the best demographic environment for economic growth.

So why is it that Ireland is just now experiencing the economic advantages of the demographic transition despite being part of the world that went through the process the earliest? Thanks largely to its traditional Catholic nature as compared to its surrounding geography, Ireland's fertility rates declined more slowly. They were later to adopt contraceptives and family planning was less of a government issue then for other nations at an earlier time. Contraceptives were entirely illegal until 1980 and were still under strict restrictions until the 1990s and abortion is still completely illegal. At this point, the populations under 15 years old and over 65 years old were both in the vast minority. The result is that Ireland experienced the demographic dividend at a later period than those nations around it. They boomed through the 80s and 90s and were far above the Euro-area in growth all the way through 2007.

Unfortunately, this demographic phenomenon also explains why Ireland is suffering the hardest along with Greece in this recessionary period. The growth was based on an abundance of workers. With growth came bubbles in various markets like those seen in the United States and England. When the bubbles burst, the large population of available-to-work individuals became a hindrance: wages could be lowered, layoffs were easier to make, and a population of individuals who couldn't find work grew rapidly. The result is an Ireland that is struggling to stay afloat and that is weakening the whole of the European economic system instead of being the Celtic Tiger that has lead it for the past three decades.

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How Geography Determined the Destiny of Jesse James

2011-10-24T12:32:00.000-04:00

Jesse James is one of the most infamous outlaws of the American South. He is known for his involvement in the James-Younger Gang and for his assistance in numerous bank robberies. While the myth of Jesse James as the "Robinhood of the West" has made the origin of his criminal actions seem legitimized and even heroic, the truth is that a combination of geographic factors played a huge rule in bringing Jesse James off the farm and turned him into the mythical outlaw he is known as.

Robert James, Jesse's birth-father, was originally from Kentucky. A hemp farmer, Robert married at the age of 23 and migrated to Missouri, but it was no coincidence that the James family moved here. Missouri was a border state with sympathies leaning in the directions of both the North and South. But it also had the highest rate of in-migration from southern states: 75% of its population had migrated there from a more southern region. For whatever reason, Missouri was looked at as being desirable for southerners to move into. The demographic (and therefore geographic) quality of Missouri being largely southern in origin affected the decision of southerners in where to move, and, to a degree, brought the James family there in 1841. Robert James would leave for California in 1849 (two years after Jesse's birth) and die there the following year. His wife remarried Reuben Samuel in 1855.

It is crucial to the chain of events that turned Jesse James into the man and myth he would be that he was a resident of Missouri. Missouri is the traditional and most notable border-state. It is most well-known with regard to this time period for the Missouri-Compromise. Indeed, the Compromise emphasizes the geographic importance of the state. It was an agreement between states' rights activists and abolitionists that Missouri would be entered into the Union as a slave-state (along with Maine as a free-state) but that no future territory above the southern border of Missouri would be admitted as a slave-state. The result is that when the Civil War began, the state was harshly divided. Due to the heavier Union influence here than in many of the other, more southern states, there was much conflict preceding, and especially during, the war.

Thanks to these stratified opinions, organized war devolved after just a few battles into guerrilla warfare. Jesse's older brother Frank had enlisted in the Confederate Army in 1861. Having had always looked up to his brother, Jesse tried to enlist as well but was turned away for still being too young (only 14 at the time). With the warfare devolving, Frank joined a guerrilla squad in 1863 and was identified by Union soldiers. In May of that year, a Union militia force raided the James residence looking for Frank and the gang he was involved with. While Jesse had already wished to join the cause against the North, this was largely the turning point for him. The Union soldiers road into the farm firing pistols and rifles. While a few of the men silenced Jesse and his sister and mother, the others grabbed Reuben Samuel and tortured him by hanging him from a tree for some time. Struggling more to fight the Union soldiers than to save his disliked step-father, Jesse was lashed badly by the militiamen.

Meanwhile, Frank moved from gang to gang, reportedly having a hand in the notorious massacre of 200 abolitionists in Lawrence, Kansas. In the spring of 1864, Frank returned to Missouri a seasoned guerrilla soldier and member of the Taylor Gang. Seeing his brother as a hero for the South and wanting to stand up the way Frank did, Jesse joined the gang. That summer, Taylor was badly wounded and the brothers joined up with Bloody Bill Anderson. As a member of this gang, Jesse was involved in the Massacre of Centralia. The gang road into Centralia, where they killed, scalped, and stripped of their uniforms 22 Union soldiers. Wearing the uniforms they had taken, the gang waited for the arrival of an entire Union regiment to arrive on the train in town. When the more than 100 soldiers stepped off the train and into the town, the gang slaughtered them all.

The James brothers continued to be involved in such guerrilla warfare through the end of the war. By the time the war ended, the state of Missouri was in shambles. This too can largely be attributed to its location. The state was a place of intense warfare due to its location immediately between the fighting powers and as a hotbed for debate due to sympathies both North and South. Guerrilla-esque conflicts continued to ravage the land and families of the state years after the war's end. This became the perfect back-drop for carrying out crimes against state-supported institutions like the banks and railroads, leading to the legend that fighting against the state to bring money to the poor was Jesse's motivation. Which of the two came first is unsure: did James rob banks and trains because he hated the state, or does the legend claim he hated the state because he robbed banks and trains.

What is clear is that the geography plays a huge role in the creation of the legend. It brought the James family into the state of Missouri. It made this state the hotbed that would bring the James brothers into guerrilla warfare and give them the experiences they would rely on as outlaws. Finally, it created a turbulent and unstable background on which the James-Younger Gang could wreak havoc. Whether he is seen as a hero or an outlaw is something only history can determine, but geography can tell us why he is in position to be seen as either.

When Maps Shouldn't Be Maps

2011-10-23T13:02:00.000-04:00

Matthew Ericson posted an article on the 14th about the use of map-graphics that I found particularly interesting. Entitled, "When Maps Shouldn't Be Maps," the article discussed the issues that can arise by relying on graphics more often then is appropriate. That is, when the information that one wishes to convey would better be depicted in another manner.

As a geographer (and one avid enough to have a blog about it) I obviously think maps are great. Maps are useful when they pull information from (for example) a census to show us where certain ethnic groups are most populous within cities (NYC, left), when they depict information about specific places within a greater whole (counties in the U.S., center), and when stories are completely geographic in nature (the oil spill's dispersion in the Gulf of Mexico, right).

But this doesn't mean that every time an article refers to a large store of data that those numbers are best understood and explained to readers through a map. Ericson lists two concerns that he has with the use of maps in inappropriate situations: when the interesting patterns aren't geographic patterns and when the geographic data is more useful for analysis then the image is.

The center map above shows how each county in the nation voted in a recent presidential election. From this map a few somewhat interesting things can be picked out, such as the great number of blue counties in the North East or the dominance of red in the Mid-West. But, as Ericson points out, "those [geographic] differences often pale in comparison to the differences between an urban district, a suburban district and a rural district that are all next to each other in the same state." These non-geographic patterns are much more interesting based on the expected or unexpected results in those counties. Without any additional information, it is impossible to know whether these results were to be expected or not. That is why Ericson recommends the use of a table (such as the one above-right) to coincide with the map or some other form of data-extrapolating imagery.

By his second point, about the geographic data being more useful than the image, Ericson means that the data itself can be more powerful or more easily understood. Info-graphics in the form of maps attempt to show a pattern. The map on the left above does this clearly in the distinct lines between the ethnic groups (each group having its own color). The center map succeeds as well because while one could not tell the exact ratios of red to blue, the pattern of red dominance is clear. The pattern of some maps, however, are not as easy to pick out, and it becomes more beneficial to the reader if the publishing group does this for them and provides them with the resultant numbers. Rather then force the reader to try and pick out the pattern based on what they can see, and leave them with a not-so-perfect idea of what you were trying to get across, it is best if the information is provided in the most understandable way possible: in this case, a list of the facts and figures (left).

Ericson's points are strong. In a media-saturated world where numbers get glanced over while stylish maps get the attention, it is easy for magazines and television networks to jump at the opportunity to depict the nation county-by-county. But the reality is that sometimes the viewer has been done a disservice.

McKinley, Wilson, and a Kantian Ideology that would shape America (Pt. 3)

2011-10-21T14:23:00.000-04:00

This part of the discussion on the ideological reasons the United States entered into the Spanish-American War and World War I discusses an alternative theory for U.S. involvement and concludes the arguments laid out in part 1 and part 2.

The American ideology has been picked apart to show that it was a driving force in the momentum toward war more than once. But in no case could any single factor be claimed to be the only factor in the series of events which bring a nation into conflict. Kant's ideas, as incorporated into and combined with the American ideology, only go so far in describing the advancements toward the United States' involvement in the Spanish-American War and World War I. However, they certainly go the farthest in providing an all encompassing causal arrow. Americans were prideful even this early on in their history and wanted to show the power that their nation had—over and in comparison to other countries. This would instantly flag realist assumptions.

However, this idea of American dominance is not a mere opinion of the current situation (realism dictating that ideas be made based on the situation at hand), but is rather a feeling that Americans have had stretching from the founding of the nation. No matter the situation, the United States is ideologically driven to view itself as the most important and influential character. By dissecting situations and drawing the arrows back to the original source, it can be shown that other arguments are not only linked to the ideologies of the players involved in a conflict, but in fact stem directly from the ideas and feelings of those players. The series of events at play run in all directions, but begin with the ideology of nations themselves.

Having described American ideology and ideas in general, drawn causal arrows straight from there to involvement in war in 1898 and 1917, and discussed using ideology to argue against other candidates for causation, it can be concluded that the Kantian ideology of the United States leading up to and through the turn of the century was the driving force which brought it into the Spanish-American War and WWI.

Kant's discourse on infantilization and increase in moralist and legalist legitimacy based on cosmopolitanism grants us an insight into American ideology at this time. It is an ideology that viewed Cubans and Philippinos as needing liberation from Spain; that wanted to stop the German inhumanities; that wished to change the world to make it more open for self-determination and sovereignty. It was this ideology that drove Americans south into Cuba and across the ocean onto European soil and that compelled American politicians and diplomats to support intervention on the global battlefield.

McKinley, Wilson, and a Kantian Ideology that would shape America (Pt. 2)

2011-10-20T15:27:00.000-04:00

This is part 2 in my series of discussions regarding the causes that brought about the United States' involvement in the Spanish-American War and World War I. The thesis of the entire essay asserts that it is the American ideology that caused the U.S. to get involved. Part 1 introduced the American ideology. This portion discusses the conflicts themselves and how the American ideology brought the U.S into them.

When the ideology discussed in part one is used as a focus for looking at specific conflicts, one can see immediately the effect they have on American diplomacy. In 1895, conflict broke out for the second time in Cuba between nationalists there and Spain (the mother country). For three years, the United States struggled with the issue of involving themselves until they entered the fray in April 1898. President McKinley's “War Message” speech immediately preceded the decision and provides insight into the arguments for going to war with Spain. With regards to the ideology discussed above, McKinley discusses at length ideas surrounding the universality of human rights. In fact, his first reason for intervention is to go “in the cause of humanity and to put an end to the barbarities, bloodshed, starvation, and horrible miseries now existing there” while his second discusses a debt “to our citizens in Cuba to afford them that protection and indemnity for life and property which no government there can or will afford.” Furthermore, Congress passed the Teller Amendment shortly after McKinley's speech which made it explicit that the US would not establish permanent control over Cuba. These points push the importance of rights for US citizens and others equally, stating that both the humanity of the Cubans and the rights of the Americans must be maintained. In addition, McKinley lists the aim of intervention as being “to secure in the island the establishment of a stable government, capable of maintaining order and observing its international obligations, insuring peace and tranquillity and the security of its citizens as well as our own" (McKinley). The idea here is to further the universalization of law and policy—at least as the United States defines it. That is, to spread American ideas about humanity, politics, and society to other nations. By intervening and defeating Spain, the United States was able to establish in Cuba and the Philippines governments that would eventually rule independent of formal influence from any imperial power. While the political and military ramifications of this independence were beneficial to the United States, the actions that caused independence were driven by American ideas, and the American ideology of spreading those ideas. This goal would be adopted by future presidents and would lead them in similar diplomatic directions.

President Woodrow Wilson was one executive that would incorporate the drive for universal human rights in his diplomatic strategy—and he too was forced into conflict in order to protect that ideal. In 1914, war broke out in Europe and once again brought about the discussion in America about how involved the nation wished to be in world affairs. For Wilson, from the beginning, the United States' mission was to “show mankind the way to liberty.” While most of the pro-war population was looking to protect economic connections in Europe, secure America's power in the Western Hemisphere, or prove the United States would not stand by while Germany sank pedestrian ships, Wilson was interested in joining the war largely for ideological post-war aims: “a peace that will win the approval of mankind” as he stated (Wilson "Address") Viewing the state of Europe, Wilson's eye drifted to the colonies held by those nations and saw disputes over territory as major instigators. In fact, in Point Five of the Fourteen Points (Wilson's aims for the post-War world) he pushed for an “absolutely impartial adjustment of all colonial claims, based upon a strict observance of the principle that in determining all such questions of sovereignty the interests of the populations concerned must have equal weight with the [nation in control].” This was a valid argument based on war aims currently under debate: Alsace-Lorraine between France and Germany; the liberation of Italians, Slavs, Romanians, Czeco-Slovaks; the creation of a free Poland; the evacuation of occupied territories. Wilson's response to this issue was ideological in its own right, and also in line with the Kantian ideas discussed above.
He believed that peoples had the rights to self-determination and sovereignty over themselves, as discussed in points six through thirteen (Wilson "Fourteen Points"). Most importantly, he believed that by intervening in the war the United States could re-write the rules of international affairs, making the protection of humanitarian rights a legal matter. While the other sentiments expressed by the American populace and touched upon by Wilson publicly may have enabled a declaration of war more feasible, it was Wilson's ideologically driven desire to be in a commanding position at the peace negotiations that brought the United States into the war.

Part 3 will discuss alternative arguments for American involvement and conclude the essay on this topic.

McKinley, William. “War Message.” State of the Union speech given to joint session of Congress. Washington, DC. April 11, 1898. U.S., Department of State, Papers Relating to Foreign Affairs (Washington), 1898, pp. 750-760.

Wilson, Woodrow. “Address of the President of the United States to the Senate.” Speech given to the United States Senate. Washington, DC. January 22, 1917. U.S., Department of State, Papers Relating to Foreign Affairs (Washington).

Wilson, Woodrow. “President Wilson's Fourteen Points.” Speech given to joint session of Congress. Washington, DC. January 8, 1918. U.S., Department of State, Papers Relating to Foreign Affairs (Washington).

McKinley, Wilson, and a Kantian Ideology that would shape America (Pt. 1)

2011-10-19T15:34:00.000-04:00

The following is the first in a three part discussion on the causes that brought about the United States' involvement in the Spanish-American War and World War I. The thesis of the essay asserts that it is the American ideology that caused the U.S. to get involved. This portion introduces the subject of the paper and lays out the ideologic argument to be made in part two.

For a nation, defining its role in the world can be the most important goal it sets out to accomplish in its history. Making its global economic, political, and social objectives clear can change relationships with every other nation on the planet and determine the course of the nation for decades. At the end of the 19^th century and into the 20^th the United States struggled to define itself on the world stage. It could follow the steps of some of its European counterparts and become a realist, imperializing nation; it could be driven by ideas of race and gender, guiding its hand against inferior nations; or it could revolve its global strategy around a central ideology providing a course for all its action. While the United States wished to demonstrate its economic, political, and military force and made decisions that were in its best interest, the basis for these interests was an ideology that overpowered all other causes of US international affairs.

This ideology stems back hundreds of years to the father of Western philosophy, Immanuel Kant. In his essay "Perpetual Peace," Kant discusses the idea of a "cosmopolitan law" which he defines as "a universal law of humanity" (Kant in Harvey 14). For the first time, ideas about laws which transcended international borders were being written down and spread. These ideas were about laws that touched the core of humanity and equalized the rights of all men, meant to include freedom of self-rule and certain economic and social freedoms. Under empire, however, these rights were clearly not universally recognized. The justification of right-violation was accomplished by treating “the indigenous population as not yet educated or mature enough to justify inclusion in the liberal regime of power and rights (Harvey 39). Thus, “infantilizing” of whole populations became common practice for Western nations, which more commonly also included the United States.

But the idea that some nations were not yet ready for self rule was counterbalanced by the idea that they one day would be. The argument by Kant goes that while progress (that is, social advancements toward the ability of peoples to rule their own nation) “may proceed differentially and unevenly...there is no waiting room to which any one people is confined" (Harvey 40). Rather, all populations are seen as having the capability to rule themselves one day and live under the universal law of humanity. Through the arguments that not all nations are fit for rule and that they are working towards that goal, Kant has largely defined Western, and therefore American, ideology. This ideology is a major driving force behind many decisions made by the American government both domestically and abroad. Discourse on the subject of eventual self-rule and the rights of the citizenry are evident in many cases of conflict involving the United States. More specifically, the United States was driven into the Spanish-American War and World War I by an ideology based on this centuries old philosophy, evident in public speeches and discourse, which, once understood, can be applied to the specific cases at hand and shown to be the major causal factors in both conflicts.

Part 2 of the series will discuss the conflicts themselves and their ideological causes.

Harvey, David. Cosmopolitanism and the Geographies of Freedom. Columbia: Columbia UP, 2009.

Fixing the Economy: A Local Issue

2011-10-18T15:28:00.000-04:00

The October issue of the Gallup Press included an excerpt from Jim Clifton's recently published book "The Coming Jobs War." The excerpt's thesis is clear: the next economic breakthrough will come from the combination of forces within the big cities, great universities, and powerful local leaders. All three of these ideas focus on the importance of that which is local, an emphasis not often seen. Politicians and policy makers tend to look for more broad, sweeping changes and policies that go beyond helping a local community. This is where they overlook an important geographic concept and important historic examples.

Geographically, one cannot assume that the entirety of a given area is the same. This doesn't just refer to the differences between the Great Plains climate and that of Florida or Texas. Nor does it speak only to a comparison of the lifestyles in densely populated regions like New York City with those in more dispersedly populated regions such as Los Angeles. Rather, it refers to both of these; it speaks to all differences between parts of the country. Laura Wood writes in her book on social geography that "spaces are organized in ways that construct and maintain social inequalities" and that we must therefore focus in on the individual "spaces" (in the form of locales) in order to create change. Clifton would certainly agree: "Fixing America's biggest problems and re-winning the world can only be accomplished one city at a time. Ultimately, all solutions are local."

More important than Clifton's agreement with this geographic concept is history's empirical examples and justification for what the concept asserts need be done. Comparisons between today's economic situation and that of the Great Depression have been seen since the failure of our institutions four years ago, and a comparison is appropriate here as well. In Bernard Sternsher's history of the Great Depression, he compiles essays that focus in on the work done at the local level to improve the overall situation of the nation. It took improvements in individual "spaces" to make the general trend for the nation to turn upward. This cannot be done with sweeping policies that do not take the geographic differences (physical, demographic, etc) into account. If areas are effected differently and in varying severities then policy makers cannot assume that they will all be helped by the same policy. The figure below shows how different parts of the nation have been affected by the depression. While most regions have seen some sort of income decline, each region has been hit differently. Furthermore, it can be seen that cities are already starting to rebound, the exact type of change needed at local levels to affect larger change nation-wide.

Geography is continuously looking to be more specific, that is, more local. History has shown that the best understanding can be had by zooming in as closely as possible on a region and understanding its individual parts. The best policy, the policy that will have the greatest effect, can only be had by understanding these individual regions and locales that need to be helped.

Source of figures: http://www.nber.org/papers/w6288.pdf

Global Climate Change's Reciprocity: A Geographic Focus

2011-10-17T23:11:00.000-04:00

The New York Times today posted an article about the opening of an Arctic sea route for Russian companies. Andrew Kramer reports that "environmental scientists say there is now no doubt that global warming is shrinking the Arctic ice pack, opening new sea lanes and making the few previously navigable routes near shore accessible more months of the year." As the geography in the region changes, the result is that companies in Russia and other countries close to the Arctic Ocean are able to take advantage of global climate change's effects and mining (perhaps literally) that region for new opportunities in commerce and trade.

This represents one of global climate change's strangest side effects: that on the geographic qualities of regions. It has produced in some nations motivating factors for increased extraction and use of fossil fuels. The most obvious of these is warmer temperatures in what used to be more tolerable regions and times of year, causing increased electric bills in the summer months (and at times year-round). As the geography of temperatures changes, it causes even individual home-owners to increase consumption of the very thing that is harming them in the long-run.

Climate change is causing changes in consumption in more dramatic ways as well. One way is by changing the physical geography of a region rather then the temporal geography as in the previous example. It is discussed in the article cited above (and here in another NYT article) that Exxon Mobile has signed an agreement with Russia to begin exploring that nation's portion of the Arctic Ocean for oil. Undoubtedly the exploration, identification and eventual extraction of fossil fuels in the Arctic will simultaneously use up tons of those fuels, while only making it so that even more of them can be burned later. The effects of global climate change have, in this case, made it so that it is easier for humans to continue feeding the flame that is overheating our planet.

More generally, reductions in the amount of ice-coverage have majore effects all on their own. Ice-free surfaces tend to absorbe more solar energy than ice-covered surfaces. Therefore, snow and ice cover have a cooling effect on the Earth. If global climate change reduces the global snow and ice cover, warming will be enhanced because more solar energy will be absorbed. As the geographic make-up of the world is changed by increasing temperatures, a downward cycle is created. Only by understanding the effects that geography has on climate change can work be done to reverse this trend.

History and Geography: An Introduction

2011-10-17T14:31:00.000-04:00

In The Shaping of America, the eminent historical geographer Donald Meinig views geography and history as complementary and interdependent, “bound together by the very nature of things.” This relationship, he states, “is implied by such common terms as space and time, area and era, places and events, pairs that are fundamentally inseparable. In practice the two fields are differentiated by the proportionate emphasis each gives to these terms.” However, he warns that it is important to realize that “geography is not just a physical stage for the historical drama, not just a set of facts about the earth. It is a special way of looking at the world. Geography, like history, is an age-old and essential strategy for thinking about large and complex matters.”

It is this idea, that geography and history are intertwined and that both play an essential role in understanding and analyzing the world, that motivate me to study the two fields simultaneously and to harness both fields herein when discussing the events of the world. Within these pages one will find discussions on current events, ramblings on recently learned material, reviews of books and articles, and any and all other thoughts or musings that this author has with regard to the topics of history and geography.

Questions and discussion is encouraged and I can be contacted using the information on the page reserved for that purpose.