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Emory Political Review 

Volume VIII, Issue 2 

INSIDE 

What Health Care Boils Down To 

Why Hamas is so successful in Palestine 

The Daily Show, The Colbert Report, and Politics 

2009 Year in Review 

The Future of U.S. Power

2 

EPR 

Volume VIII, No. 2 

Editors-in-Chief 

Executive Editor 

Senior Copy 

Editor 

Copy Editors 

Senior Layout 

Editor 

Story Editors 

Website 

Christina Yang 

Lilly Zhong 

Grant Wallensky 

Andrew Hull 

Amanda L. Carey 

Kristin Bielling 

Lindsey Bomnin 

Sara Hagey 

Monroe Hammond 

James Hamraie 

Elizabeth Janszky 

Eddie Lopez-Lugo 

Kathryn Madison 

Victor Rudo 

Hali Michele Stokes 

Laura D. Withers 

Gregoire E. Taillet 

Monroe Hammond 

David Michaels 

Anuj Panday 

Peter Rasmussen 

Mishal Ali 

Shalini Ramachandran 

Letter from the Editors 

Well, there goes another year. 2009 will be remembered as 

the year the death of Michael Jackson united the world, whilst 

the murder of abortionist Dr. George Tiller divided our nation. 

While Iran filled its streets with protestors decked in green, the 

People’s Republic of China celebrated its 60th anniversary in 

a haze of red and yellow. Although South Carolina Governor 

Mark Sanford made extramarital affairs international, Tiger 

Woods reintroduced the word “harem” to the 21st century. To 

say the least, it’s been quite a year for the average American, 

the politician, and the celebrity. 

The year started off with a bang. It brought us our first African 

American president, our first Hispanic Supreme Court Justice, 

and the real possibility of redeeming America’s image in the 

eyes of the international community. But the positives were 

soon overshadowed by such problems as rising unemployment, 

growing international security threats, and the relentless 

worldwide recession. Indeed, no place was left untouched by 

the headlines of 2009, including our own Emory University. 

Students dealt with rising tuition, cuts in club funding, and the 

“Swine ‘09.” 

This issue covers everything from the U.S. as a world power to 

the prospects of democracy in Iraq to the new possibilities the 

FIFA World Cup brings to South Africa. And though we may 

not have as many articles as Tiger Woods has mistresses, we 

hope that the articles we do have will provide you, the reader, 

with a greater understanding of some of our world’s important 

happenings. 

With the onset of 2010, Emory Political Review — along with 

the rest of the world — is looking to revamp itself. We are 

launching our new and refurbished website, in which we hope 

to incorporate new media forms (think Huffington Post and 

Twitter feeds). To make up for budget cuts, we are looking into 

advertising. And of course, we always welcome new writers, 

new stories, and new readers. Here’s to 2010. 

- Christina and Lilly 

This issue’s layout was done by 

Christina Yang 

Editor’s Note: Unless otherwise noted, art is either 

created by C. Yang or taken from Photos.com, Google 

Images or Wikipedia. All art from Wikipedia is part of 

the public domain and is used under fair use.

january 2010 

Current Affairs 

4-5 Dissecting Health Care 

Spotlight 

6 

Democracy in Iraq? 

Nation 

7 

8 

9 

Should We End the Fed? 

The Future of Global 

Non-Proliferation 

The Scope of Executive Power 

14-15 America’s Failed War on Drugs 

16-17 

The Right to Bear Arms: 

McDonald v. Chicago 

Cover Story 

10-13 U.S. Hegemony Challenged? 

Foreign Affairs 

18-19 

20-21 

22-23 

24 

25 

Special 

26-27 

The Impact of War and 

Terror on Pakistan 

Russia Resurgent 

The Hearts and Minds of 

Palestine 

2010 FIFA World Cup: 

More than Just a Game 

Comedy in Compaigns 

Year in Review

Current Affairs 

EPR 

By: Lilly Zhong and Christina Yang 

Health Care 

Starting from the beginning of 

2009, plans for a major overhaul 

of the American health care system 

have rumbled onward, gaining steam and 

momentum toward the end of the year. 

Democrats and Republicans have argued 

vigorously over health care reform, with 

the two sides bearing almost irreconcilable 

views. Democrats view health care 

reform as a major step in giving millions 

of uninsured Americans coverage and in 

cutting the costs of health care overall. Republicans 

staunchly oppose the government 

playing such a large role in the health care 

system, claiming that the proposed reforms 

will weaken the insurance coverage of those 

who already have it. However, as debates over 

the public option, “death panels,” and abortion 

coverage rage on, President Obama has 

remained true to his campaign promise to push 

for universal health care, and results are coming 

in. Despite almost unanimous opposition 

by the Republicans, what began as—and still 

remains—a hotly debated topic has finally been 

consolidated into a concrete form. On November 

7, 2009, a version of the health care bill passed 

the House, with a 220 to 215 vote. On December 

24, 2009, the Senate also passed a version of 

health care reform, albeit with some differences 

from the House edition and along party lines, in 

the first Christmas Eve Senate vote since 1895. 

So what now? The next step is for two 

versions of the bill to go to a conference committee, 

in which the House and the Senate must combine 

the two forms and agree on a final version. Though 

some major disparities (e.g. the public option) 

exist, the current outlines contain some common 

stipulations. To expand coverage, a greater number 

of low-income people would become eligible for 

Medicaid, and subsidies would be provided to some 

middle-income individuals to help them buy insurance. 

Insurance companies would be prohibited from 

denying coverage to individuals based on preexisting 

conditions, and insurance exchanges, where people and 

small businesses can essentially “shop” for insurance, 

would be created. Individuals who are currently under 

employer insurance (about 160 million) would remain 

that way, and almost everyone would be required to get 

insurance or else face certain penalties. To help decipher 

the ins and outs of health care reform, here’s a look at the 

specifics of what may be in the final version of the bill. 

Information taken by the New York Times 

4 • EPR Winter 09-10 •

EPR 

Now...what’s the difference? 

Cost 

Public Option 

Individual 

Requirements 

Employer 

Requirements 

Issue House Senate 

Would cost $1.1 trillion over a decade, 

which surpasses Obama’s $900 billion 

decade spending cap. 

Includes a government-run insurance 

program that offers plans competitive with 

the private market. The government would 

negotiate rates with health care providers. 

Requires the majority of people to get 

health insurance or pay a penalty of up to 

2.5 percent of their income. In addition to 

subsidies for the poor, this plan extends 

coverage to approximately 36 million 

Americans. 

Employers are required to contribute to 

health insurance for employees. However, 

businesses with payrolls under $500,000 

are exempt, which is approximately 86 

percent of all American businesses. 

Would cost $871 billion over a decade, reducing the deficit 

by $132 billion, and possibily an additional reduction of 

approximately $1.3 trillion over the second decade, according 

to estimates by the Congressional Budget Office. 

Does not include a public option. Instead, the Office of 

Personnel Management, which supervises health plans for 

federal workers, would oversee national plans offered in 

the health insurance exchanges. 

Requires most people to either have health insurance or 

pay a penalty, which begins at $95 in 2014 and increases 

to $750 two years later. 

Employers are not required to provide health insurance. 

However, companies with over 50 employees will be 

charged with a penalty for any employee whose health 

insurance the government ends up subsidizing. 

Financial Assistance 

New Taxes 

Abortion 

Medicare Changes 

Includes subsidies to help those making 

up to 400 percent of the federal poverty 

level pay for health insurance premiums. 

Medicaid eligibility would be expanded 

for low-income families and individuals, 

as well as cover new preventive services, 

and increase payments for check-ups. 

The wealthiest Americans (individuals 

making over $500,000 and families 

making above $1 million) would pay a 

surcharge on a portion of their income. 

The new public option does not cover 

abortion except in cases of rape, incest, or 

threat to the life of the pregnant woman. 

Also bans people from using government 

subsidies to purchase private plans with 

abortion coverage. 

Reduces Medicare spending by approximately 

$440 billion over a decade by 

reducing payments to private insurance 

plans that serve Medicare patients and by 

requiring hospitals and other health care 

providers to operate more efficiently. The 

plan also includes several new benefits for 

seniors, including more preventive care 

services. 

Includes subsidies to help cover those making up to 400 

percent of the federal poverty level (presently, $88,000/ 

year for a family of four) and expands Medicaid to include 

those making 133 percent of the federal poverty level. 

Imposes a 40 percent tax on high-cost insurance plans 

(valued over $8,500 per individual and $23,000 per family). 

A 10 percent tax on indoor tanning services will be 

enacted, which is expected to raise $2.7 billion in the first 

decade. Also increases Medicare payroll taxes from 1.45 

to 2.35 percent on individuals earning $200,000 a year and 

couples earning $250,000. 

Creates a “firewall” to prevent federal subsidies from going 

toward abortion coverage. In plans covering abortion, 

beneficiaries would have to pay for it separately, and those 

funds would have to be kept in a separate account from 

taxpayer money. 

Reduces Medicare spending by approximately $395 billion 

over ten years, including cuts to private insurance 

plans. In 2010, Medicare beneficiaries will also receive 

$500 towards paying for prescription drugs not currently 

covered because of cost, falling into the so-called “doughnut 

hole.” 

Information supplied by the National Public Radio 

(http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=120068329) 

• EPR Winter 09-10 • 

5

Spotlight 

Since the fall of the Ottoman Empire, the Arab 

states have been a breeding ground for autocracies 

and illiberal democracies. With one 

or two exceptions in the Middle East, a democracy 

resembling those of Western Europe or the United 

States has not even been considered by Arab leaders, 

in spite of a globalizing international community 

that is beginning to reflect its “Americanism.” But 

why has the Arab world been so reluctant to adopt 

a system of government that can potentially grant 

its citizens’ personal freedoms and opportunities for 

prosperity? Theorists such as Michael Ross place 

blame on the method in which Arab states spend their 

oil revenues. Others like Alfred Stepan believe that 

the biggest obstacle is not Islam, but rather something 

“Arab,” since there are states, such as Indonesia 

and Pakistan, that have developed and consolidated 

democracies in spite of an overwhelmingly Muslim 

population. However, this examination’s focus is on 

Iraq, a state recently freed from a tyrannical regime, 

which has raised many questions, not only about the 

date for U.S. withdrawal but also the date for the consolidation 

of a democratic system. 

Is democracy even fit for Iraq? At the 

moment, the answer is no. Despite the progress its 

parliamentary government has made, Iraq still has 

many issues to resolve. Although problems such as 

guerilla-style insurgency and the established animosity 

between ethnic and religious groups still exist but 

can be solved, people may forget about the challenges 

remaining after the violence has quelled. Democracy 

will not be suitable for the developing state if the potential 

for disproportional representation continues to 

exist, if the issue of “stateness” still thrives, and if 

Iraq remains the oil-dependent state that it is. This investigation 

will explain why the development of this 

democracy can breakdown altogether on account of 

these issues. 

According to Oxford University’s Zhidas 

Daskalovski, a “stateness problem” is a complication 

in politics and society where groups quarrel over 

where a region’s boundaries are drawn, who gets what 

resources, and which inhabitants can become citizens. 

A wide array of languages, religions, and ethnicities 

EPR 

DEMOCRACY IN 

By: Robert “Bobby” Santos 

IRAQ? 

6 • EPR Winter 09-10 • 

can be the cause of this complication. Thus, Iraq 

has a stateness problem. To begin with, Iraq is a 

multi-ethnic and heterogeneous country consisting 

of Arabs, Kurds, and other minority groups 

who aim to conquer one another for the control 

of resources and power. Northwestern University’s 

Edward Gibson claims that even when 

Iraq is rid of all violence, the consolidation of 

democracy would still be in jeopardy because of 

the renewal of constituents’ hostile attitudes towards 

one another. The reason being is that the 

government has to decide who is a citizen and 

who is an outsider to Iraq. Although the obvious 

answer would be to just make everyone living 

within the borders a naturalized citizen, in reality 

it is not that simple. While Iraq is known to 

be an Arab-dominated state, the Kurds struggle 

to be a small, but crucial minority. The two 

groups have engaged in not only a psychological 

and cultural war, but also in a war over competition 

for water, fertile land (Iraq is 50-60% 

desert), and oil. So what would happen when 

their parliament is seated by a huge majority of 

Pan-Arabic nationalists or pro-Kurdish policymakers? 

Clearly, the politicians in Baghdad will 

do what they can to support their own ethnic or 

religious groups, however, what will become of 

those groups that are not represented at all in 

government? The democratization is threatened 

when civil liberties and representation are not 

granted to some of the state’s inhabitants. 

Iraq also has a Shiite Islamic majority 

that thrives on the idea of transforming the state 

in order to resemble an Iranian theocracy. Even 

after Saddam Hussein’s execution, many Shiite 

extremist groups continue to resort to violent 

measures in retaliation for their religious oppression 

under Hussein’s regime. Furthermore, 

these measures are caused by numerous factors, 

such as the fear of being subjected to a Sunnidominated 

government, the embracement of 

secularism, or the idea that democratizing-Iraq 

is a puppet of an American and imperialistic foreign 

policy. It is important that these extremist 

groups receive a voice in government. Doing so 

can be the solution to the violence presently being 

encountered. 

Iraq also has an oil problem. As mentioned 

earlier, UCLA professor and political scientist 

Michael Ross claims in “Does Oil Hinder 

Democracy?” that oil has been sustaining the 

existence of authoritarian regimes. Even when a 

democratic system is being experimented with, 

Iraqi officials are responsible for re-distributing 

these massive oil revenues not only to the development 

of the state, but also to the micro-development 

of the people. With all of the corruption 

discovered in almost all bureaucratic levels 

of government, responsible redistribution will 

continue to be an ongoing challenge. The global 

demand for oil causes the Iraqi government 

to lease out its petroleum-rich land to foreign 

companies in exchange for massive revenues. 

However, because the government depends on 

only these revenues and not the tax revenues of 

its citizens, it chooses to remain independent 

of that sovereign authority citizens have over 

their democratic governments. Therefore, without 

any taxes for citizens to pay, there are no 

means of obtaining representation or accountability 

from the higher authorities. Furthermore, 

a government without any responsibilities to the 

people is free to subjugate any social or political 

movements that call for a change from the 

status quo. Policymakers can also choose not to 

acknowledge a minority or majority’s need for 

representation without any penalty of law. For 

the sake of democracy’s consolidation, the Iraqi 

government must find new ways to obtain revenues 

and new ways to spend those revenues instead 

of relying on an unstable commodity, like 

oil. 

An established democracy in Iraq is 

not going to be possible under current conditions. 

The apparent ethnic and religious schisms 

in its society are what drive the corruption, repression, 

and exploitation levels beyond control. 

The constant acts of violence must be put to end 

before the government can responsibly spend 

for the betterment of its citizens rather than on 

its defense budget. It is also time to diversify 

Iraq’s income with not only oil, but also with tax 

revenues and the capital gained from exports. 

When the government re-distributes the wealth 

to the people, both the government and citizens 

will also develop. Once Iraqi society modernizes, 

the middle-classes can also begin demanding 

accountability and representation. Despite 

their long history of clashing, ethno-religious 

groups must share the valuable resources impartially 

divided by the government in order to rid 

themselves of the stateness problem. One way 

to do this is to establish an equality in the political 

arena where diverse groups can compromise 

with each other over what would be proportionally 

fair due to the scarcity of resources and the 

irregular ratios of one ethnic/religious group to 

another. If all ends well here, then perhaps in 

the near future other Arab states can follow by 

example. EPR 

Robert “Bobby” Santos is a junior in 

the College and majoring in Political 

Science

Nation 

EPR 

Should 

We End 

the Fed? 

By: Ted Keast 

When the American economy collapsed 

at the end of 2008, many 

experts, as well as then-President 

George W. Bush, blamed Wall Street for its 

greed, claiming that they “got drunk” with power. 

In response, economist and current Senate 

candidate Peter Schiff was quoted, “Of course 

they got drunk. Wall Street got drunk, Main 

Street got drunk, the whole country was drunk. 

But who gave them the alcohol?” Schiff, who 

is vying for a Republican nomination to oppose 

Senator Chris Dodd in Connecticut, is one of the 

leaders of the End the Fed Movement, a growing 

protest of the Federal Reserve’s involvement 

in the United States economy. The answer to his 

question of who encouraged corporations to 

hedge risky bets and individuals to overextend 

themselves, is the U.S. Federal Reserve. But 

what causes Schiff and many others to question 

the Federal Reserve’s policies? After all, 

the media, as well as the current administration, 

claimed that corporate greed coupled with 

bad economic policies of the Bush era were 

primary causes for the depression, while Ben 

Bernanke’s, Chairman of the Federal Reserve 

System, and the Federal Reserve’s roles in the 

crisis went relatively unquestioned. Bernanke 

was reappointed by President Barack Obama 

to continue the policies that were partly responsible 

for the nation’s economic crisis. 

So, what was it about Bernanke’s policies 

that were so detrimental to the U.S. economy? 

And if they were so detrimental, why was 

he rewarded with Obama’s reappointment? Part 

of the role of the Fed is to influence the United 

State’s monetary and credit policies by controlling 

interest rates. This is done by either selling 

U.S. securities to decrease the money supply, 

or by buying them to increase it. Before the financial 

crisis, the Allen Greenspan-led Federal 

Reserve had been encouraging credit spending 

by keeping U.S. interest rates artificially low for 

years. This encouraged borrowing rather than 

saving, creating a credit economy that does not 

encourage real growth. Only a small number 

of politicians and economists have acknowledged 

the Federal Reserve’s role in creating 

credit bubbles. This included the housing market 

bubble which, when it burst in 2008, helped 


to cause the already troubled economy to spiral 

downward. 

The artificially low interest rates 

encouraged the private sector to take risky investments, 

and the same people who set those 

interest rates are currently in charge of restoring 

our economy. The remedy to our economic 

problems that Bernanke has given is to keep the 

low interest rates. Obama has also echoed the 

idea that the key to restoring our economy lies in 

restoring the credit system in the United States. 

However, if the United States’ interest rates remain 

close to zero, the Federal Reserve’s target, 

we run into the same problems that caused 

the recession in the first place: a system that is 

based too much on credit wealth rather than actual 

wealth. Low interest rates and Bernanke’s 

policies actually encourage reckless spending 

and bubble growth, rather than meaningful economic 

growth through saving. 

If the Federal Reserve’s actions are so 

harmful, why does the United States keep such 

a system? And if Bernanke and Greenspan’s 

policies have adversely affected the economy, 

why did they hold their jobs for so long? Part 

of the reason lies in the longevity of the Federal 

Reserve. Established in 1913 to prevent bank 

runs, the Federal Reserve is more or less universally 

accepted as the national bank of the United 

States. Economists are accustomed to the system, 

and its policies are rarely questioned. To 

question its establishment or its policies after 

nearly one hundred years would be similar to 

questioning the Supreme Court or the Congress—only 

the Federal Reserve is not a branch 

of government. Another reason that Bernanke 

has been one of the staff members in Washington 

who lasted through the Bush administration 

is because the Federal Reserve’s policies are 

popular. Because it is not politically acceptable 

for interest rates to go sky high, which would 

certainly occur if the free market would determine 

interest rates in a country where saving 

money is discouraged, it is not advisable for 

the Federal Reserve to change policies. There 

are few politicians who want to encourage the 

American people to spend less, which is what 

would be most advantageous for the economy. 

The original intent of the Federal Reserve was 

to make it a non-politicized institution. The 

president’s right to appoint the chairman was 

designed to keep the Federal Reserve free from 

the political process. However, the reappointment 

of Ben Bernanke by Obama, even after 

his failed policies during the Bush era, shows 

that the Federal Reserve has in fact become 

politicized. Because Bernanke came out of the 

crisis relatively blame-free, and even praised by 

some economists, it was a politically safe move 

to keep him as chairman. Obama would rather 

keep Bernanke as chairman than put himself under 

scrutiny for appointing a new chairman. 

Finally, what should be the solution to 

the problems of the Federal Reserve? If the free 

market is allowed to wholly determine interest 

rates, economic growth in the United States will 

be stifled. However, under the status quo, the 

Federal Reserve is encouraging more economic 

bubbles that will eventually pop, and the country 

will be doomed to face recessions in the future 

that could be potentially worse than the current 

crisis. So, is it time to “End the Fed,” as many 

people are starting to say? Probably not. Many 

of the consequences of such an action would be 

too uncertain. However, the United States faces 

the need to call into question the policies of an 

economic interventionist institution that has become 

too politicized, and whose policies aided 

in causing the current recession. EPR 

Ted Keast is a junior and majoring in 

Finance at the Business School. 

7

Nation 

One of the most controversial parts of 

the global arms control agenda has 

been the Comprehensive Nuclear Test 

Ban Treaty (CTBT), an international agreement 

that prohibits nuclear explosion tests. More than 

a decade after the United States Senate failed to 

approve the treaty, the growing perils of modernizing 

arsenals and the spread of nuclear materials 

to state and non-state actors has increased 

radically. The CTBT is a valuable tool in the 

global non-proliferation strategy because without 

testing nuclear weapons, states would have 

no confidence in the success of the weapons 

they were developing, slowing down or even 

halting the horizontal and vertical spread of 

nuclear weapons. However, despite adoption by 

the United Nations General Assembly in 1996, 

resistance from previously neutral states on this 

topic has prevented the test ban from entering 

into force. 

Although approximately 150 states 

have ratified the treaty, several nations referred 

to as “key hold-out states,” whose ratification 

is deemed as the last obstacle to treaty’s global 

adoption, have refrained from jumping on board 

the global non-testing regime. These nations are 

the United States, China, Indonesia, Iran, North 

Korea, India, Pakistan, Israel, and Egypt. While 

United States’ ratification would not directly 

cause the treaty system to immediately go into 

effect (known as “entry into force”), its ratification 

would lead to a domino effect in the international 

community, creating pressure to get the 

remaining hold-out states to ratify it. Indonesia, 

EPR 

The Future of Global Non-Proliferation 

By: Marta Chlistunoff and 

Elena R. Kuenzel 

for example, has publicly declared that it will 

ratify the treaty as soon as the U.S. does. In the 

case of China, many believe that security concerns 

over nuclear parity with the United States 

prevent China’s ratification. However, if the 

U.S. decides to ratify, it could represent a concrete 

commitment to non-testing, which could 

give China confidence that their own ratification 

would not put them at any sort of geopolitical 

disadvantage. Similarly, U.S. ratification could 

put strong pressure on India, Iran, North Korea 

and the others to sign. 

Luckily, even if entry into force 

doesn’t occur in the short term, U.S. ratification 

would still yield substantial benefits. While 

Obama’s speeches on security are full of resolve 

for stopping the proliferation of weapons of 

mass destruction, it is impossible to solve proliferation 

without cooperation from the international 

community. Without ratifying the test ban, 

this cooperation will be difficult to achieve. The 

2005 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) 

Review Conference established thirteen steps 

that the international community could take 

to bolster the NPT. First and foremost among 

these was the entry into force of the CTBT. Recent 

statements by sixteen non-nuclear weapon 

states that will be taking part in the 2010 Review 

Conference reflect that this first step is still 

a relevant concern in assuring these non-nuclear 

nations that the nuclear weapon states will limit 

the expansion of their nuclear arsenals. In fact, 

Obama’s overall non-proliferation promises 

look hollow and hypocritical to the rest of the 

world in light of not also ratifying the CTBT. 

The U.S. is essentially asking other nations to 

not build up and instead relinquish their nuclear 

arsenals, while the U.S. actively retains the legal 

right to test and improve its nuclear stockpile 

if need be. This nuclear hypocrisy shatters 

global non-proliferation cooperation since the 

U.S. is not seen as a credible partner. It prevents 

countries from working with the United States 

on important actions like ramping up sanctions 

against Iran or North Korea or working to reshape 

the nuclear fuel cycle by strengthening 

safeguards of the International Atomic Energy 

Agency. 

Another equally important benefit 

is the effect that U.S. ratification of the CTBT 

would have on the International Monitoring 

System (IMS). Absent entry into force, ratification 

of the test ban would ensure an increase in 

funding the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Organization, 

which uses its funding to sustain and 

expand mechanisms that monitor seismic activity 

and detect nuclear testing. The benefit of this 

is two-fold. First, due to its supreme monitoring 

8 • EPR Winter 09-10 •

capabilities which allow for differentiation between 

the seismic activity observed during an 

earthquake and the activity felt during a nuclear 

explosion test, the system allows CTBT signatories 

to effectively verify compliance with the 

tenets of the treaty and take counter-measures 

against nations who try to proliferate. Second, 

the increase in support and funding for the IMS 

would also facilitate the early detection of natural 

disasters. Scientists involved in the development 

of IMS have indicated that due to the 

high level of sensitivity enjoyed by the system, 

seismic activity created by an imminent natural 

disaster, such as a tsunami or a volcanic eruption, 

could easily be identified and action could 

be taken much more quickly to evacuate the area 

and limit the monumental amount of life that 

could be lost. Such developments become readily 

important in the face of intensifying weather 

fluctuations and the increased incidence of large 

tropical storms that have been experienced in 

recent years. 

Despite all of these benefits to U.S. 

ratification of the CTBT, significant domestic 

political obstacles remain. During the first attempt 

to achieve U.S. ratification in 1992, the 

treaty received substantial opposition from 

members of Congress who resisted the treaty 

due to their suspicions that it did not have sufficient 

and credible verification mechanisms. 

Over the past seventeen years, some of the concerns 

about the implementation of the treaty’s 

standards have been alleviated as the IMS has 

been strengthened, and new technology for 

monitoring has been developed. Unfortunately, 

in spite of these advancements, a substantial 

number of lawmakers still maintain a united 

front against this non-proliferation measure because 

of ideological reasons. 

Congressional focus on maintaining a 

credible deterrent via nuclear modernization is 

bolstered by retaining the right to legally test. 

This attitude has subsisted even though a moratorium 

on nuclear testing has been in place for 

over a decade. Regrettably for United States’ 

non-proliferation goals, this moratorium is not 

legally binding in the same way that CTBT 

ratification would be and does not preclude the 

ability to test without adverse reactions from 

the international community. Nevertheless it appears 

likely that if the CTBT comes up for vote 

in the Senate in 2009, opposition may remain as 

strong as it was in the 1992. In order to create 

momentum for passage, Obama and Secretary 

of State Hillary Clinton have indicated that they 

plan to delay introduction until after the Nuclear 

Posture Review, which is to be held within the 

next year. They hope that this will result in further 

support of Obama’s non-proliferation initiatives, 

including the CTBT. EPR 

Freshman Marta Chlistunoff is an International 

Studies and Chemistry double 

major. Elena R. Kuenzel is a freshman 

and double majoring in International and 

Women’s Studies major 

EPR 

The Scope of Executive 

By: Stephanie J. Bennett 

When the executive branch uses national 

security threats as an excuse 

to impose unilateral action, how 

much power should the president really have? 

From President Ronald Reagan’s 1983 invasion 

of Grenada to President George H. W. Bush’s 

deployment of troops to Panama in 1989, the 

scope of the executive branch’s power has 

grown far beyond what the framers of the 

Constitution intended. Even before Abraham 

Lincoln’s blockade of federal ports, presidents 

have sought to increase their power, especially 

in regard to the commitment of troops and the 

imposition of unilateral action. The U.S. Constitution 

provides for a separation of powers 

between branches, and shared influence over 

foreign and domestic actions. Presidents have 

used numerous reasons to justify bypassing 

the legislative branch. Whether those reasons 

are valid or 

detrimental 

to the wellbeing 

of the 

A m e r i c a n 

people remains 

in 

q u e s t i o n . 

During times 

of perceived 

threats to the 

security of 

the United 

States, many 

p r e s i d e n t s 

have used 

their title of 

Commander 

in Chief of the Army and Navy to deliberately 

further their pursuit for power. Presidents 

have maintained over time that they are able 

to act quickly and efficiently during a national 

security emergency. Executive orders 

allow decisions to fall into the hands of one 

man, instead of the 435 men and women of 

Congress. Additionally, the executive branch 

typically acts swiftly, a trait Congress often 

fails to possess due to legislative obstacles, 

such as the review of legislation by committees 

and voting in both the House of Representatives 

and the Senate. The president’s 

ability to act quickly lends itself to possible, 

and likely, violations of the War Powers Resolution. 

Especially during the responses to perceived 

national security threats, the President 

may violate the War Powers Resolution or, in 

some cases, precipitate the wrath of Congress. 

The War Powers Resolution requires 

that “the president in every possible instance 

shall consult with Congress before introducing 

United States Armed Forces into hostilities 


POWER 

or into situations where imminent involvement 

in hostilities is clearly indicated by the circumstances” 

(§ 1542). It also requires reporting and 

consultation by the president to Congress. Especially 

in a time when national security threats 

prevail on the minds of U.S. citizens, it is vital 

that the president and Congress work together for 

the benefit and protection of the United States. 

Recently, Presidents have violated the 

War Powers Resolution in numerous ways. President 

Bill Clinton launched a missile attack in 

1993 against the Iraq Intelligence Headquarters 

without the consent of Congress. Additionally, 

some have argued that President George W. Bush 

violated the War Powers Resolution by using the 

assumption that Iraq contained weapons of mass 

destruction as a reason to invade, even when that 

postulation was later determined to be incorrect. 

The framers intended for the Constitution 

to 

separate the 

legislative, 

judicial, and 

e x e c u t i v e 

b r a n c h e s . 

When the 

p r e s i d e n t 

o v e r s t e p s 

his inherent 

powers and 

challenges 

the Constitution, 

he 

risks other 

b r a n c h e s 

ex c e e d i n g 

their boundaries 

as well. If branches become concerned 

with gaining and consolidating power, they may 

disregard the well-being of the American people. 

While it is true that the president is more 

efficient in dealing with a national security 

emergency than Congress, where should we, 

as American citizens, draw the line of executive 

privilege? The Constitution does not offer 

much help in this matter, especially considering 

its ambiguities, and the courts have been reluctant 

to intervene in struggles of power between 

the president and Congress, often holding that 

the issues raised are political, and not judicial 

in nature. Citizens of the United States must 

decide when the president has gone too far and 

transformed our democracy into a dictatorship. 

We, as citizens, have the ability, through voting 

and demanding action by our legislators, as 

well as judicial means, to ensure the sanctity of 

legislation and the United States Constitution. 

Senior Stephanie Bennett is a double 

major in International Studies and 

English. 

EPR 

9

Cover Story 

EPR 

U.S. Hegemony 

Challenged? 

Point/Counterpoint 

• EPR Winter 09-10 •

U.S. Hegemony is 

Sustainable 

By: Anuj Panday 

EPR 

Has the American Era ended? Intellectual 

commentators, government officials, 

and the media elite seem to think so. 

Frightening prophecies pervade the headlines. 

Last year, a New York Times Magazine cover 

story, titled “Waving Goodbye to U.S. Hegemony,” 

argued that the United States’ “standing 

in the world remains in steady decline.” 

Roger Altman, a former deputy secretary of the 

Treasury, has written that the financial crisis 

“has inflicted profound damage on...[the United 

States’] standing in the world.” This recent 

scare is characterized by stories of the “rise of 

the rest” that focuses on the diffusion of economic 

power outside of the U.S. to rising powers, 

such as China and India. This argument, 

however, overestimates the degree to which 

this is happening and overlooks the enormous 

inequality of power between the U.S. and others. 

With a leading position in all indicators of 

power, the United States will remain the world’s 

lone superpower for a long time to come. 

Declinism, a recently developed term 

for this phenomenon, is not new. Proponents 

of this theory have been vocal since the U.S. 

inherited its coveted status in the post-World 

War II era. In the 1950s, Sputnik spurred the 

collapse myths. In the 60s, it was the “missile 

gap.” The 70s saw unprecedented challenges: 

oil shocks, failure in Vietnam, deep recessions, 

and victories by Soviet-endorsed regimes in 

Africa, Asia, and Latin America. The 80s saw 

rapid growth in the Japanese economy along 

with what historian Paul Kennedy called “imperial 

overstretch,” where the economic burdens 

and security interests of an expanding empire 

eventually outstrip its capacity to manage those 

burdens or defend its interests. Each of these 

scares was well-founded and potentially indicated 

the coming of real change in the power 

distribution. At the end of each period, however, 

the United States emerged in a position with its 

power even further entrenched. According to 

Dartmouth Professor Wohlforth, “It is impossible 

to know for sure whether or not the scare 

is for real this time — shifts in the distribution 

of power are notoriously hard to forecast.” 

The problem lies in the confusion of 

what constitutes leadership. Defining power as 

the ability to resolve any global dilemma guarantees 

frequent alarmism. The more powerful 

the United States becomes, the greater the 

number of problems in the international arena 

it is expected to solve. The result is a perpetually 

elevating standard for what it takes to be 

the dominant power. It must be understood that 

no empire is impervious to errors. The United 

States failed in Vietnam and failed to overthrow 

Fidel Castro, yet seems to have maintained its 

leadership status in spite of those failures. Britain 

at the height of its power could not stop 

the loss of the American colonies. Alexander 

the Great failed in Afghanistan, but created a 

massive empire nonetheless. Failure in Iraq or 

Afghanistan does not forecast complete doom. 

What makes the odds even better 

for the United States than any previous power 

is that all the fundamental aspects of national 

power are concentrated in the United States to a 

degree never before experienced in history. The 

U.S. spends close to four percent of its gross 

domestic product (GDP) on the military and 

“Our power, 

shaped in part 

by our adaptability, 

will 

allow us to 

weather the 

crisis better 

than other nations.” 


accounts for 47 percent of the world’s military 

spending. The U.S. has invested large sums in 

institutional capital, technological capacity, and 

military research and development, all of which 

give us great qualitative and quantitative edges 

in military superiority. The U.S. will remain the 

only nation that can project its military power 

in any area of the world due to its uncontested 

supremacy on land, sea, and in air. Previously, 

no other country has had such unchallenged 

dominance of these areas. Established military 

presence in all regions of the globe cements 

U.S. influence everywhere — it allows for responsiveness 

and elasticity to deal with multiple 

contingencies simultaneously. It is this military 

supremacy, combined with an extraordinary 

economic capacity that gives the United States 

its unique advantage. Over time, the U.S. has 

achieved an ever-increasing amount of economic 

power with arguably more natural resources, 

developed industry and infrastructure, and intellectual 

capital than any other nation. These 

capabilities create extraordinary flexibility and 

large, untapped pools of power. In the instance 

of a peer competitor, the U.S. can increase its 

capabilities by devoting more resources to 

military primacy. Despite all the talk about the 

current economic crisis eroding our economic 

power, in 2008 our share of the world product, 

as documented by the International Monetary 

Fund (IMF), was 27 percent. In that year, the 

United States had a quarter of the world’s economic 

power and the world’s most competitive 

industries. Our power, shaped in part by our 

adaptability, will allow us to weather the crisis 

better than other nations. China and Russia have 

experienced worse economic slowdowns than 

the U.S., and leaders such as Gordon Brown 

and Angela Merkel are looking to the United 

States for more guidance through the recession. 

Declinists, proponents of the declinism 

theory, also point to the increasing deficit 

and the decline of the dollar. Neither is much 

of a problem for the United States. The dollar 

will remain the world’s reserve currency and 

we will serve as the lender of last resort for a 

long time to come. The federal budget deficit is 

fixable: increasing taxes and controlling costs 

can put the budget back on track. Increased 

spending during the Great Depression helped 

to solve the financial crisis of that time and 

prepared the U.S. for World War II, in a time 

when budget deficits were a larger percent of 

the GDP than now. The deficit lies partially 

outside of the United States’ control. China 

and Japan hold a large portion of the debt and 

are dependent on exports to the United States. 

They must continue purchasing dollars to ensure 

their currencies are weak against it, thereby 

maintaining competitive export potential. 

Indeed, globalization strengthens, not 

weakens, U.S. power. American universities 

attract the best minds from all over the world, 

creating the foundation for an innovative and 

adaptive society. We have remained the head 

of the world’s most popular political philosophy, 

democracy, which is widely viewed as 

the most legitimate form of leadership. Even 

powerful autocratic nations must at least pay 

lip service to democratic ideals such as voting 

and human rights. We also remain at the center 

of the world’s institutional system. The United 

States plays central roles in many world organizations, 

such as the World Trade Organization 

(WTO), the United Nations (UN), and the 

North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). 

As extensions of American ideology and values, 

they serve to enhance and channel U.S. 

authority. For example, the WTO has dispute 

mechanisms for facilitating free trade, which 

is consistent with American ideals and is the 

cornerstone for American economic growth. 

No other empire in history has had the advantages 

that multilateral institutions provide. 

Institutions also legitimize U.S. 

leadership. These mechanisms for global gov- 

11

EPR 

ernance create a benign face for U.S. power 

because others believe in the United States’ 

commitment to common rules and norms. 

Even President George W. Bush’s aggressive 

unilateralism did not permanently damage the 

U.S. image. President Barack Obama offers 

a fresh start and can help redefine America’s 

reputation and show the world that we have 

renounced Bush’s exceptionalism. Robert Kagan, 

senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment 

for International Peace, has repeatedly argued 

that the rise of great power autocracies pushes 

strong democracies back in the direction of 

the United States. Allies are pursuing policies 

that reflect great concern about Russia’s and 

China’s increasing influence. Strengthened alliances 

allow the United States to rely on allies, 

economize forces, and share burdens. 

There is no one country that can take 

the place of the United States. Although there 

is much buzz about the so-called BRIC (Brazil, 

Russia, India, China) nations growing in development 

and power, no one has the economic or 

technological capabilities to replace the United 

States. Looming on the horizon is the rapidly 

growing eastern powerhouse: China. Its economy 

is growing, inequality is decreasing, it holds 

a large chunk of U.S. debt, and it is modernizing 

its military rapidly. China is predicted to 

become a peer competitor to the United States 

in terms of economic leverage by 2020. If these 

predictions hold true, China is likely to have 

half the world product of the United States, as 

calculated by American political scientists. The 

problem here is that economic trends are an ineffective 

way to predict power transitions. Japan 

was projected to outstrip U.S. economic production 

given projections in 1989, but it is now 

only just recovering from its economic downturn 

in the early 1990s. In fact, between 2007 

and 2009, Chinese economic growth has halved 

from 12 percent to 6 percent, proving that its 

incredible growth is dependent on foreign 

economies. Benjamin Joffe, a noted consultant 

in China, declares, “China is a place where 

the rest of the world essentially rents workers 

and workspace at deflated prices and distorted 

exchange rates. The Chinese economy is extremely 

dependent on exports — they amount 

to two-fifths of China’s GDP — and hence vulnerable 

to global economic downturns.” China 

is still plagued by massive amounts of poverty, 

fractured infrastructure, domestic upheavals, 

pollution, disease problems, and an aging population 

that can significantly alter the trajectory 

of economic growth rates. These problems will 

put new pressures on government spending 

and will create new social upheavals. Costly 

fixes will restrict spending on the military and 

constrain modernization efforts. India faces 

similar problems along with massive corruption, 

colossal linguistic barriers and tremendous 

ethnic fragmentation. Russia appears to be fading 

into irrelevance. Its nuclear stockpile is antiquated 

and its military forces are crumbling. 

Its economy relies on oil exports, which makes 

it too vulnerable to the unpredictable swings in 

global oil prices. Brazil, while no doubt experiencing 

significant growth and development, 

still lags far behind the United States in military 

power, per capita GDP and industrial output. 

Indeed, the United States, even if it weakens a 

little bit, remains far more powerful than any 

other country, therefore ensuring dominance. 

The United States will see many more 

years at the helm of the international system. 

Lots of things can and will go wrong. But no 

one failure internationally is enough to topple 

the gigantic lead in power that the United States 

possesses both militarily and economically. The 

demand for U.S. leadership has never been higher; 

the United States has pacified any fears of its 

potentially threatening stature by exporting a 

culture of transparency and benevolence. As the 

only country capable of leading such a chaotic 

world, the U.S. will remain the sole superpower. 

Anuj Panday is a sophomore in the 

EPR 

College and majoring in International 

Studies 

12 • EPR Winter 09-10 • 

U.S. Hegemony is 

Unsustainable 

By: James Hamraie 

The election of President Barack Obama, 

the withdrawal of troops from forward 

deployment in Iraq, and the mending 

of ties with foreign nations that were alienated 

during the War on Terror, have helped to create 

an atmosphere of optimism for the continued 

primacy of the United States as the leading nation 

in the international arena. This optimism, 

however, is premature. Despite the perceptual 

stability of U.S. dominance over the past two 

decades, the continuation of its primacy will inevitably 

decline. 

This claim is neither extreme nor unprecedented. 

History is ripe with examples that 

show that all great empires collapse. The fall of 

Rome, Britain, the Mongols, the Han Dynasty, 

and the Byzantine Empire show that changes 

in the balance of power are quite frequent. An 

analysis of the structure of unipolarity combined 

with a focus on recent events shows that a

number of issues in all sectors of power, including 

economic, military, and diplomatic sectors, 

limit the ability of the United States to prevent 

counter-balancing and the weakening of power 

projection, eventually causing a shift to a world 

where the United States shares the stage with 

rising powers. 

Economic woes have affected the 

ability of the United States to maintain its supremacy. 

The recent financial crises, the erosion 

of U.S. competitiveness in business and education, 

and the declining purchasing power of the 

dollar have created domestic turmoil and dented 

the leading view of U.S. dominance among international 

allies. These factors, coupled with 

dependence on foreign oil and energy resources, 

are weakening U.S. flexibility and allowing foreign 

nations with exploding economies, such as 

China and India, to close the gap. For example, 

if China’s booming growth continues, then China’s 

total GDP would be 2.5 times that of the 

United States. A weaker economy has high domestic 

dissatisfaction contributing to a greater 

urgency to focus on national issues instead of 

international affairs. It is essential for the United 

States to maintain its flexibility in international 

EPR 

involvement and conflict resolution because it 

lends the impression that the U.S. does not have 

its hands tied and that the U.S. military is still 

extremely powerful. A strong economy also 

lessens the amount of domestic spending on 

social services and foundation-level economic 

stimulus and allows for greater allocation of resources 

into research and development of new 

military technologies and upkeep of military 

supplies. Both of these factors are essential for 

conventional combat readiness and warfare, and 

allow the U.S. armed forces to sustain their lead 

over other nations. 

Diplomatic woes arise from the United 

States’ diminished image. Although the War 

on Terror initially forged alliances and international 

sympathy, the unilateral policy decisions, 

human rights abuses, and exceptionalism 

that followed transformed the perception of the 

United States from a benevolent world power to 

an international bully willing to neglect multilateral 

solutions in favor of ad-hoc cowboy diplomacy. 

The abuses of Abu Ghraib, arguments 

over the Kyoto Protocol and global warming, 

and the invasion of Iraq are only a few examples 

of policies that have spurred heavy disdain and 


lasting animosity with both allies and hostile 

nations. Although Obama’s election has caused 

many foreign countries to begin changing their 

attitude towards the United States and public 

polls have illustrated a stronger approval rating 

of the United States, there are still major issues 

that need to be settled. The U.S. has failed to 

take concrete action on a majority of issues that 

the international community has been asking the 

United States to follow through on for over a decade. 

These include the ratification of the Comprehensive 

Test Ban Treaty, the Law of the Sea 

Treaty, and the Rome Statute of the International 

Criminal Court. Being a world leader requires 

more than raw power. Sustaining alliances and 

goodwill with other nations is essential. Additionally, 

if the United States can convince other 

nations to comply with its wishes, it can lower 

the costs of shaping the global stage to reflect 

its interests. This arrangement, coupled with the 

evolving balance of power, can cause other nations 

to support the U.S. and oppose its potential 

challengers. For instance, the changing security 

dynamics in East Asia show that self-interest is 

spurring countries to be less willing to oppose 

neighbors on important issues or strategic circumstances. 

This is due to a fear of losing economic 

and trading ties, despite a long history 

of cooperation and positive relations with the 

United States. 

Imperial overstretch, domestic costs 

of forward deployment, fighting capability, 

and overburdening security and humanitarian 

commitments has caused a decline in military 

power, the lifeline of U.S. global dominance. 

The growing strength of foreign militaries exacerbates 

the effect of these problems. The 

post-Cold War apex of American power has 

begun to erode while other nations with larger 

populations are training substantial military 

forces with increasingly sophisticated technology. 

Recent events illustrate the implication of 

these factors on the decline of U.S. power and 

the growing strength of potential global rivals. 

India and China are economic powerhouses, 

whose growth has allowed for greater modernization. 

Despite the military edge currently 

held by the U.S., domestic sentiment has drifted 

away from an overwhelming focus on defense 

spending since the invasion of and subsequent 

public backlash from Operation Iraqi Freedom. 

Additionally, China’s expanding naval forces, 

such as the nuclear-armed submarines, are 

lessening the effect of U.S. nuclear supremacy 

and first-strike leverage. Furthermore, in other 

important global regions, Brazil is vying for regional 

hegemony, China is building security and 

economic ties with African nations, and Russia 

is legitimizing interventionist policies with the 

invasion of Georgia and fiery rhetoric over national 

expansion and national missile defense. EPR 

James Hamraie is a sophomore in the 

College and majoring in International 

Studies. 

13

Nation 

EPR 

America’s Failed War on Drugs 

By: David Michaels 

It is no secret that the “War on Drugs” in 

the United States has been an abysmal failure. 

Since its birth during Richard Nixon’s 

presidency, and its escalation under the Reagan 

administration, the federal government’s crackdown 

on narcotics has morphed into a modern 

day battle against our own lower class. Liberals 

are not the only ones calling out its faults; 

instead, observers on both sides of the spectrum 

have come to grips with its ineffectiveness. 

Conservative minds have admitted that our drug 

policy is neither cost-effective nor a deterrent 

of abuse, including the late William F. Buckley, 

who conceded the merits and inevitability 

of legalization of marijuana in a 1996 issue of 

National Review. 

In May, President Barack Obama’s 

Director of National Drug Control Policy, Gil 

Kerlikowske, finally became one the first highranking 

officials to publicly speak out against 

the idea of labeling federal policy as a “War on 

Drugs.” His emphasis on rehabilitation rather 

than incarceration is an idea that should have 

been acknowledged long ago. 

While it is a relief to finally hear those 

words from the administration, it remains difficult 

to be optimistic about real change when the 

federal government alone will spend $22 billion 

in 2009 to enact the same ineffective policies 

as before. That is an absurd amount, especially 

given the record budget deficit, and threatens 

more important expenditures, such as education. 

For all of our spending on the drug war, the 

United States still has one of the highest rates 

of narcotic consumption in the world for nearly 

every illicit drug, according to the United Nations’ 

World Drug Report in 2009. And of the 

$64 billion worth of narcotics sold in the U.S. 

in any given year, less that 1 percent of that is 

ever seized by the Drug Enforcement Administration. 

One of the most visible problems with 

our current drug policy is its contribution to the 

overcrowding of our prisons. Approximately 

one in every 31 U.S. adults is in a community-based 

corrections facility that is focused on 

rehabilitation, and one out of every 100 is incarcerated 

in a county jail or state prison. To give 

a better idea of how this measures against other 

nations, The United States contains five percent 

of the world population but has 25 percent of 

the world’s prisoners. That is the highest incarceration 

rate in the world. This overcrowding 

strains our tax dollars and law enforcement 

resources, while additionally increasing prison 

violence. But more importantly, it reduces the 

effectiveness of our corrections process. 

The increase in prison overcrowding 

has many causes, but it is certainly correlated to 

the drug war. Approximately 

20 percent of state prisoners 

and over 50 percent of federal 

prisoners are incarcerated for 

drug charges. Additionally, 

those that are prosecuted for 

drug offenses are overwhelmingly 

involved in drugs at the 

less potent end of the spectrum. 

In 1998, a whopping 79 

percent of all DEA convictions 

involved either marijuana or 

cocaine. 

Given the state of 

our corrections system, it is 

absurd to waste limited resources 

on incarcerating nonviolent 

drug offenders. And 

in states with “three strikes 

laws,” a person with three 

felony drug offenses can face 

up to life in prison. Not only is 

this warranted, but does it really 

do anything to fix the drug 

problem? 

Over-incarceration 

creates problems that go beyond 

prison overcrowding. 

Our eagerness to lock-up drug 

offenders leads to an endless 

cycle where the judicial system 

does nothing to help inner-city 

kids who are caught in 

drug use and the dealing trade 

at an early age. These children 

are arrested and processed 

through the system at a young 

age, and are then released on 

the street without an education 

or job training, just a criminal 

record. Such a system does 

nothing to address the issue 

that one out of every 15 African-Americans 

is incarcerated, 

and that 44.8 percent of drug 

offenders in state prisons are black. 

Our drug policy continues to attack 

users and lower-level dealers, but it does nothing 

to address the institutional problems in our 

corrections process that encourage the drug 

trade and incarcerate the same people again and 

again. It is illogical to imprison the individual 

players in the drug trade without doing anything 

to fix the conditions that allow these players to 

enter the game in the first place. While Kerlikowske’s 

words give hope for a change in attitude, 

the Obama administration has yet to put 

its money where its mouth is. One campaign 

promise that Obama has gone back on is to use 

federal funding for a needle exchange program. 

The program would drastically reduce the risk 

of HIV and AIDS among drug users by allowing 

them to exchange used syringes for clean 

ones. Despite Obama’s pledge of support for 

the program, no funding for it showed up in 

his budget proposal. By simplistically viewing 

drugs as taboo, the government is abandoning 

its own struggling citizens by prioritizing senseless 

ethical concerns over the own well-being of 

its citizens. 

A different approach needs to be 

taken. The U.S. needs to actually focus on re- 

14 • EPR Winter 09-10 •

habilitating drug users instead of just talking 

about change. The first step is in this process 

is to decriminalize drug possession. Instead of 

wasting money on prosecuting and jailing nonviolent 

offenders, they should be sent to rehab 

facilities to curb their addiction. This course of 

policy was adopted by Portugal in 2001. The 

government eliminated all criminal penalties 

for individual drug possession, and the results 

have been extremely successful. In its first five 

years, drug use rates declined significantly, especially 

among teenagers. All drug use in seventh 

to ninth graders dropped from 14.1 percent 

EPR 

to 10.6 percent. Overall marijuana use in all 

people over the age of 15 is down to 10 percent, 

which is the lowest rate in the European 

Union and nearly a quarter of what that rate 

is in the U.S. Additionally, the HIV infection 

rate in Portugal’s drug users has declined by 17 

percent. Meanwhile, the number of individuals 

that were treated for drug addiction doubled. 

Additionally, the U.S. needs to explore 

more unconventional treatment methods 

that have been proven to work better than our 

current rehabilitation methods. A current study 

in Great Britain has discovered that one of the 


best ways to treat heroin addicts is to remove the 

drug users from the streets and give them supervised 

daily injections in a medical clinic. The 

program has drastically reduced illegal heroin 

use by 75 percent and eliminated two-thirds of 

heroin related crime. This new treatment approach, 

which also includes addiction counseling, 

is only about one-third of the amount that it 

annually costs to place these individuals in jail. 

A program such as this could have great success 

in America, but it will never develop as long as 

we let our fear of reform cloud our judgment. 

While it is important to improve 

treatment, it is even more essential to focus on 

eliminating the black market created by the drug 

trade. Just as prohibition in the 1920s led to a 

rise in organized crime and mob violence, our 

drug policy has created a culture of gangs that 

wreak havoc on urban society. As economists 

like Milton Friedman have pointed out, the 

black market violence results from a simple case 

of reducing drug supply to a much lower level 

than the demand. The reality is, when taking into 

account the gang wars that result from the underground 

drug economy, more people die from 

the effects of the war on drugs than are actually 

dying from drug use itself. 

Critics of drug policy reform will 

claim that making harmful drugs more widely 

available to the public will create more drug 

addicts. However, historical precedence shows 

that this is not the case. After prohibition, the 

amount of alcohol purchases as a percentage of 

total national consumption increased for three 

years before steadily declining over the next 50 

years to nearly half the level it was at when the 

18th Amendment was repealed. Whether drugs 

are illegal or not, those that want to use drugs 

will be able to access them one way or another. 

The novelty of their legalization would only be 

a short-term effect. 

Loosening our drug regulation reduces 

black market violence both domestically and 

in nations such as Mexico, where cartel violence 

has led to thousands of murders and police corruption. 

This violence spills across our borders 

and into hub cities, such as Atlanta, where drug 

traffickers have been tied to increases in murder 

and kidnapping cases. Additionally, cutting off 

black market drugs reduces funds for the Taliban 

and other corrupt groups in Afghanistan, the nation 

where over 90 percent of the world’s supply 

of heroin comes from. 

It is important to note that by decriminalizing 

drugs, the government is not advocating 

drug use in any way. But the strength of the 

black market combined with the factors of overcrowded 

prisons and urban decay makes it obvious 

that our current stance on drugs has failed. 

It is time to wave the white flag on a war that 

has ripped apart our own communities, and reform 

our drug policy from mindless punishment 

to sensible, safe, and effective treatment that is 

accessible to everyone. EPR 

Sophomore David Michaels is a double 

major in Political Science and Journalism. 

15

Nation 

EPR 

The Right to 

Bear Arms: 

McDonald v. Chicago 

By: Andrew Hull 

With the monumental decision of D.C. 

v. Heller being determined by a 5-4 

vote in the U.S. Supreme Court, it 

would seem like the guns rights activists have 

won their constitutional battle. The District of 

Columbia’s gun ban was performed in an area 

under the exclusive governance of the federal 

government; its overturning indirectly implied 

that the federal government is constitutionally 

forbidden to abridge an individual’s right to bear 

arms. 

What about a city like Chicago, 

though? The question now facing the Supreme 

Court in the case McDonald v. Chicago, concerning 

the constitutionality of a handgun ban in 

Chicago, is whether or not the Second Amendment 

applies to the states. It looks like the proponents 

of an individual’s right to bear arms 

16 • EPR Winter 09-10 •

have only finished half the race. 

Although the Second Amendment as 

first drafted does not protect the right 

from the states, there can be a constitutional 

argument made for the right being 

indeed saved from the states. The argument 

is known “incorporation” and it 

finds its basis in two different parts of 

the 14th Amendment: the Privileges or 

Immunities Clause (§1, Cl. 2) and the 

adjacent Due Process Clause (§1, Cl. 3). 

Incorporation, as broadly defined, is the 

extension of the rights written in the Bill 

of Rights against the states. 

It would appear that the 

Privileges or Immunities Clause would 

be the best basis for this incorporation, 

as it says, “No State shall make or enforce 

any law which shall abridge the 

privileges or immunities of citizens of 

the United States.” It seems to imply the 

barring of creating a law that abridges 

the rights of a citizen as found in the Bill 

of Rights. This view is probably given 

its best defense by Justice Hugo Black 

in his dissenting opinion in Adamson v. 

California in which he includes an exhaustive 

list of excerpts from congressional 

debate during the drafting the 

14th Amendment supporting this interpretation. 

This robust sounding 

clause, however, has been curiously 

dormant in constitutional law for most 

of the clause’s existence. In 1873, the 

Supreme Court dispelled this reading of 

§1, Cl. 2. “Slaughterhouse Cases”. Instead, 

the Supreme Court has preferred 

to use the much more controversial and 

legally complex Due Process Clause, 

which reads, “…nor shall any State 

deprive any person of life, liberty, or 

property, without due process of law.” 

The phrase “due process” has a long 

and complex history stretching back to 

the Magna Carta. Without becoming 

too bogged down in legal history, it means that 

a legal system has to respect certain rights of a 

person while prosecuting them for a crime. 

The easiest example of due process is 

that in order to be convicted of a crime, a person 

has to be found guilty by a jury of his or her 

peers. The Supreme Court has used this clause 

to selectively incorporate the Bill of Rights 

against the states. Rather than broadly applying 

the Bill of Rights to the states, like the Supreme 

Court would have done under the Immunities 

Clause, it instead decides each of the individual 

rights contained in the first ten amendments on 

a case-by-case basis. In order for a right to be 

incorporated, the right has to be “implicit in 

the concept of ordered liberty,” a “fundamental 

right,” according to the Supreme Court’s ruling 

in the 1968 case Duncan v. Louisiana. Until this 

point, most of the rights in the Bill of Rights 

have been considered “fundamental rights” 

EPR 

and have been applied to states through a long 

patchwork of cases. The exception is the Second 

Amendment, which is why McDonald v. 

Chicago is such an important case. 

McDonald v. Chicago is actually one of several 

cases that were spawned post-Heller as a test 

case for incorporation. Other similar cases include 

NRA v. Chicago, Guy Montag Doe v. San 

Francisco Housing Authority, Nordyke v. King, 

and Maloney v. Rice. What makes McDonald 

unique as well as a potentially landmark case 

is that it explicitly calls for the overturning of 

the Slaughterhouse Cases and the restoration of 

the “full meaning” of the Privileges or Immunities 

Clause. McDonald’s Petition for Certiorari 

states: 

More critically, owing to the Fourteenth Amendment’s 

plain text, original purpose, and original 

public meaning, this Court should also hold the 

Second Amendment is incorporated through the 

Fourteenth Amendment’s Privileges or Immunities 

Clause. Although consensus regarding this 

provision’s full meaning will likely remain elusive, 

there is now near uniform agreement that 

this Court’s decision in The Slaughter-House 

Cases, 83 U.S. (16 Wall.) 36 (1873), which all 

but eviscerated the Privileges or Immunities 

Clause, was wrongly decided. Given the profound 

scope of Slaughter-House’s error, and the 

confusion it has spawned in Fourteenth Amendment 

jurisprudence, overruling Slaughter-House 

remains imperative. The unique interplay between 

the Second and Fourteenth Amendments 

makes this the ideal case in which to do so (17). 

Ruling in favor of McDonald, then, could not 

only incorporate the Second Amendment to 

the states, but also overturn the Slaughterhouse 

Cases. This would be a reversal of monumental 

proportions because the Privileges and Immunities 

Clause could then be used, with one 

broad stroke, to incorporate the entirety of the 

first eight amendments of the Bill of Rights. The 

wish of Black, who championed this totalistic 

or “mechanical” incorporation, would finally be 

fulfilled. The process of selective incorporation, 

which uses rather vague and undemanding criteria, 

would become obsolete, as a right would not 

have to be considered “fundamental” to qualify 

for incorporation. This ramification has resulted 

in the support of many liberal legal theorists, 

who have interests in other rights aside from 

those included in the Second Amendment. 

The reevaluation, though perhaps not the rejuvenation 

that Black supported, of the Privileges 

and Immunities Clause also has the support of 

many conservatives, most notably Justice Clarence 

Thomas who lamented on the state of the 

clause in his dissent in Saenz v. Roe: 

“ As The Chief Justice points out, ante at 1, it 

comes as quite a surprise that the majority relies 

on the Privileges or Immunities Clause at all in 

this case. That is because, as I have explained supra, 

at 1-2, The Slaughter-House Cases sapped 


the Clause of any meaning. … Because I believe 

that the demise of the Privileges or Immunities 

Clause has contributed in no small part to the 

current disarray of our Fourteenth Amendment 

jurisprudence, I would be open to reevaluating 

its meaning in an appropriate case.” 

An issue remains, however, if McDonald were 

to win his case: the status of the Fourteenth 

Amendment’s Due Process clause, the clause 

originally used to facilitate incorporation. Both 

the Immunities and the Due Process clauses 

would then be interpreted to protect the rights 

of people against the states, with the Immunities 

Clause being far stronger in this case. The Due 

Process clause would then seem to be redundant 

and utterly useless given the Due Process 

clause in the Fifth Amendment, but this may not 

be the case. While the Fifth Amendment’s Due 

Process clause protects the same abstract right 

as the 14th Amendment’s Due Process Clause, 

the Fifth Amendment’s meaning would be restricted 

when incorporated through the Privileges 

and Immunities Clause to protecting only 

citizens. This is because the objects protected 

in the Immunities Clause are “citizens,” not the 

broader noun “persons” that is in both of the 

Due Process Clauses. The Fourteenth Amendment’s 

Due Process Clause, however, protects 

all persons’ due process rights explicitly against 

the states. This makes it broader than the Fifth 

Amendment’s Due Process Clause as incorporated 

through the Immunities Clause. 

It then appears that a ruling in favor 

of McDonald would accomplish several constitutional 

progressions. The Supreme Court 

would first, with even the narrowest ruling, finally 

incorporate the Second Amendment and 

overturn a century and a half of contradicting 

case law. At its most ambitious, it would restore 

the Privileges and Immunities Clause from the 

constitutional gutting it received during the 

Slaughterhouse Cases. This would result in the 

automatic incorporation of not only the Second 

Amendment, but also all other rights that have 

not yet been formally incorporated: The right 

to petition for redress of grievances in the First 

Amendment, the right to indictment by a grand 

jury in the Fifth Amendment, the protection 

against excessive bails and fines in the Eighth 

Amendment, and the entirety of the Third and 

Seventh Amendments. McDonald v. Chicago 

is a case that, while at first glance is simply 

the next constitutional step after the individual 

rights reading of the Second Amendment in 

D.C. v. Heller. However, it could also be something 

of a new beginning in the Supreme Court’s 

jurisprudence. Black’s vision for the Privileges 

and Immunities clause, more than 60 years in 

the making, may finally be realized through Mc- 

Donald v. Chicago. EPR 

Andrew Hull is a sophomore in the College 

and a double major in Philosophy 

and Classical Civilization 

17

Foreign affairs 

EPR 

The Impact of 

War and Terror 

on Pakistan 

By: Mishal M. Ali 

Situated between Afghanistan, a country 

torn apart by war, and India, a longtime 

enemy allied with the United States, Pakistan 

has been an enigmatic actor in South Asian 

politics over the last decade. Since the U.S. 

invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, Pakistan has 

been scrutinized by the international community, 

which has offered both praise and admonishment 

for its role in the conflict. This article 

looks at the impact of the war on Pakistan’s civil 

society by exploring public attitudes towards the 

United States and Islamic extremism. 

The Beginning 

Pakistan has been a volatile actor 

in South Asia since its founding in 1947. Post 

independence, it has seen multiple upheavals 

- from dictatorial and military governments to 

parliamentary democracy and everything in between. 

In Pakistan, political power is divided 

into three main sectors. The first sector is the 

civilian government, led by Asif Ali Zardari 

since September of 2008. The second sector is 

the military, which many argue holds the most 

political influence. The third branch of power is 

the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). 

The power of the ISI, like the Central Intelligence 

Agency in the United States, is hard to 

measure due to its secrecy. 

The inability of Western governments 

to understand Pakistani politics is a reflection 

of the complexity of Pakistani society. On one 

hand, Pakistan has never been able to become a 

major economic player in the region in the way 

India has. On the other hand, it has been noticed 

for obtaining nuclear weapons. Many Pakistani 

people are willing to support the United States 

in exchange for economic and strategic aid, but 

Pakistanis have not forgotten that the U.S. lent 

support to the Mujahedeen during the Afghan- 

Soviet War. In the eyes of many Pakistanis, the 

United States has had a longtime unwelcome 

hand in their country’s politics by supporting repressive 

governments, such as that of Muhammad 

Zia-Ul-Haq, and in attempting to affect 

election outcomes in other cases. 

Prior to 9/11, the main political problem 

that Pakistan faced was the dispute with 

India over control of Kashmir, a territory that 

spans the northern borders of both countries, as 

well as southern China. The international border 

between India and Pakistan in this region 

has been disputed since the partition of India 

and Pakistan in 1947. Before 9/11, Pakistan’s 

ISI was also accused of supporting the Taliban 

in Afghanistan—an accusation that gained enormous 

political significance for the country in response 

to the 9/11 terrorist attacks. 

The Response to 9/11 and the War on Terror 

After 9/11, Pakistani President Musharraf 

reluctantly aligned himself with the United 

States, pledging that he would cooperate with 

U.S. efforts to eradicate the Taliban. Many communities 

were incensed by the government’s 

stance. The Pashtun ethnic community in Pakistan, 

most of which resides near the border with 

Pakistan, has extensive social links with Afghani 

Pashtuns. The Pashtuns understood Musharaf to 

say that he would stand for the killing of many 

of their brothers and relatives. Other Pakistanis, 

particularly those from non-Pashtun ethnic 

groups, viewed their country’s partnership with 

the United States as essential. 

Maybe the most telling statement 

about U.S.-Pakistani relations at the time came 

from a memoir recently written by Musharraf 

titled, In the Line of Fire. In the book Musharraf 

alleges that the day after the attacks he received 

a phone call from U.S. Secretary of State Colin 

Powell and was told, “you are either with 

us or against us.” The next day, according to 

Musharaff’s account, Deputy Secretary Richard 

Armitage “told the director general [of the ISI] 

not only that we had to decide whether we 

were with America or with the terrorists, but 

that if we chose the terrorists, then we should 

be prepared to be bombed back to the Stone 

Age.” If Musharraf’s allegations are true, it 

is easy to see why many Pakistanis see the 

United States in a negative light. 

Impact of Afghanistan War on Pakistan 

Although Pakistan has been politically 

unstable since its founding, the amount 

of internal violence it has suffered since the 

beginning of the U.S. war on terrorism is unprecedented 

in the country’s history. This is 

due to the increasing influence of Al Qaeda in 

Pakistan. 

A concise summary of the problems 

Pakistan faces as a result of the U.S. intervention 

in Afghanistan comes from noted Pakistani 

scholar M. Nasrullah Mirza who states, 

“An influx of millions of Afghan refugees [has] 

resulted in small arms proliferation, drug trafficking 

and increased sectarianism. Furthermore, 

foreign militants have been able to infiltrate 

through Pakistan’s porous borders.” 

The political problems identified by 

Mirza have resulted in intensified public attitudes 

about religious extremism and foreign 

policy. In a 2009 study by the non-partisan International 

Republican Institute, 90 percent of 

Pakistanis agreed that religious extremism is 

a major problem in Pakistan, whereas only 63 

percent agreed with the same statement in 2007. 

In 2006, the study found that 43 percent of Pakistanis 

had a favorable opinion of U.S.-Pakistani 

cooperation in fighting terrorism, as compared 

with 18 percent in 2009. 

The annual terrorism report published 

by the U.S. State Department notes that there 

were 1,839 terrorist incidents in 2008—a fourfold 

increase from 2006. Although most of these 

incidents took place near the border with Afghanistan, 

many others, like the assassination of 

former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto and the 

18 • EPR Winter 09-10 •

EPR 

attacks on the Sri Lankan national cricket team, 

happened in the eastern part of the country, distant 

from conflict zones. 

So, what does this mean? First, it 

means that Al Qaeda and other sympathetic 

organizations are attacking with greater sophistication 

and finding many civilians who are 

sympathetic to their cause. What is less obvious 

is the role of local police and the ISI in these attacks. 

Pakistan is notoriously corrupt, and many 

of these attacks cannot happen without bribes 

and favors. For example, Pakistan is still facing 

corruption on a national level today. In a report 

given to Zardari by Pakistan’s Auditor General, 

the Ministry of Foreign Affairs was identified 

as having financial irregularities of $5 million 

(U.S.) in 2007-2008. Pakistani corruption is 

not only a problem at the national level but also 

stems down to the local level where police are 

often paid off to “keep quiet” about illegal activities. 

Proposed Solutions to the problem 

Experts have proposed different ways 

of helping Pakistan combat its growing threats. 

Mustafa Malik, writing in Middle East Policy, 

agrees that the Obama administration’s decision 

to send Pakistan $1.5 billion in aid over the next 


five years will only help reduce violence if it is 

distributed in a way that targets the lower economic 

classes of society. Even if aid is distributed 

properly, Malik also contends the money will 

do nothing to reduce anti-American sentiment 

in the region. To do that, he says, the U.S. must 

withdraw its troops from Afghanistan. Along 

with the economic aid, the legislation itself 

requires that President Barack Obama inform 

Congress in detail of his Pakistani strategy. It 

also requires Secretary of State Hillary Clinton 

to update him on progress of the strategy every 

six months. 

Nasreen Akthar, a Pakistani lecturer 

and scholar suggests that “building a safe society, 

functional state institutions, and reviving 

the economy of Afghanistan would bring tremendous 

benefit to all its neighbors” because 

of the potential for economic integration with 

Afghanistan. Many experts have suggested that 

resolving the Kashmir dispute with India will 

benefit both countries economically and free up 

resources that are spent on the conflict. 

The most important thing the Pakistani 

government can do for itself is to convince 

its people that this is their war. Pakistan is a very 

weak state, and many believe that Pakistan will 

not have the institutional capacity to handle extremist 

organizations if the United States were 

to withdraw from Afghanistan. Without the support 

of Pakistani citizens, whether they are from 

the Sindh province in southern Pakistan or from 

the northwest Frontier Province, the government’s 

efforts will be stymied. 

The only way for the Pakistani government 

to find its way out of its current situation 

is to establish transparency and accountability 

in all three of its main power sectors. This will 

be difficult, given that all three branches have 

a long tradition of corruption. If Pakistan is to 

become a stable state, it will need help from its 

regional neighbors—India included. Pakistan 

needs to make a meaningful attempt to end the 

Kashmir conflict and show India that greater security 

in Pakistan will lead to a more secure India, 

as well as a more stable South Asia. While 

Pakistan has been seen as an enigmatic actor, its 

actions may be the difference between winning 

and losing the battle against Islamic extremism 

in South Asia. EPR 

Mishal M. Ali is a senior in the College and 

a Political Science and Economics double 

major. 

19


Russia 

Resurgent? 

EPR 

By: Peter Wolf (with special thanks to 

Prof. T.F. Remington) 

A 

little over ten years ago, Russia 

was regarded as the “sick man” of 

Europe. It was a Pandora’s box of 

problems: ethnic strife, crippling 

poverty, a tortured economy, soaring rates of 

alcoholism, drug use, and AIDS, and an ineffective 

government fraught with endemic corruption. 

One could hardly believe it to be the same 

country that had once so strongly contended for 

world dominance. 

But when we look at Russia today, 

one word continues to crop up, over and over 

again: “Resurgent.” And indeed, the adjective 

is well-deserved. Russia has emerged from the 

dark, uncertain days of the post-Soviet collapse 

as a vigorous and, prior to the recent economic 

downturn, economically dynamic country determined 

to reassert its role as a major player 

on the world stage. This reality is nowhere more 

apparent than in the realm of European affairs. 

Yet, for all of this newfound strength, clout, and 

wealth, this resurrected bear may not be as sturdy 

as many might believe. 

To fully understand the future of Russo-European 

relations, one must look at these 

blocks’ rather complicated past. Like most other 

countries, Russia’s foreign policy is dictated by 

its national interest, yet never before in history 

have these interests been more opaque. Under 

both the tsars and Soviets, the cornerstone of 

Russian foreign policy had a common theme: 

dominance: dominance over what Russia refers 

to as its “near-abroad,” the independent 

states that emerged after the collapse of the 

USSR. Justification for Russian dominance has 

come in many guises throughout history: Pan- 

Slavism, the defense of the Orthodox faith, dubious 

claims of continuity with the Byzantine 

Empire, and, in more recent memory, Russia’s 

self-anointed role as the leader of International 

Communism. 

Today, each of these dogmas has been 

largely discredited and for once, Russia faces 

the realm of global politics without the backing 

of an ideology with internationalist appeal. Yet 

as early as 2001, despite the manifold weakness 

of his country at the time, President Vladimir 

Putin asserted Russia’s right to have major influence 

in its “near abroad,” declaring the region 

to be within his country’s “sphere of influence.” 

20 • EPR Winter 09-10 •

EPR 

Too many European countries that once lay under 

direct Russian control, Putin’s words, while 

by no means novel, were nonetheless worrisome. 

In 2004, the traditionally Russophobic 

Baltic republics of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania 

joined both NATO and the European Union, 

a move which may very well have been partly 

motivated by the protection these organizations 

offer against any possible Russian aggression. 

Yet Europe in general has so far been unsure of 

how to respond to this new Russia. It is unused 

to a Kremlin that no longer desires dominance, 

but rather influence instead. Moreover, Russia 

now also has firm control over Europe’s energy 

supplies: the European Union (EU) presently 

imports nearly half of its natural gas and 30 percent 

of its oil from Russia, and Russia has been 

far from shy in taking advantage of this fact. In 

a report issued by the Swedish Defense Agency 

in 2007, 55 incidents involving Russian energy 

suppliers, including cut-offs, explicit threats, 

coercive price policy, and certain takeovers, 

were listed since 1991, most of which were determined 

to have “both political and economic 

underpinnings.” 

Along with showcasing its formidable 

skills at this game of petropolitics, Russia has 

also proven itself very adept at playing EU members 

off of one another. Italy and Germany, two 

of Russia’s largest trading partners, have consistently 

defended Russian actions, even over such 

issues as blatant as Russia’s “accidental” shutoff 

of EU gas supplies after a row with Ukraine over 

gas transport earlier this year. France has also 

begun to take a more conciliatory tone towards 

Moscow. During the controversial 2008 South 

Ossetia War, the United Kingdom was the only 

Western European nation to condemn both Russia’s 

overly-aggressive response and Georgia’s 

recklessness, while Germany, Italy, and others 

issued statements critical of Georgia and largely 

sympathetic to Russia. This instance is perhaps 

one of the most visible illustrations of the EU’s 

disjointed stance towards Russia. 

Many could take, and have taken, 

these circumstances as proof that Russia has reemerged 

as a neo-imperialist power bent on a 

policy of coercion and adventurism. The reality 

of the situation, however, is vastly different. Far 

from seeing itself as a reborn superpower, Russia 

is vividly aware of the distrust with which 

it is seen by other countries, and it knows what 

sort of alarms the idea of Russian expansionism 

sets off in the rest of the world. When South Ossetia 

and Abkhazia asked to be absorbed into 

Russia in the wake of the Georgian War, they 

were instantly denied. The breakaway republics 

of Transnistria and Nagorno-Karabakh were 

met with the same icy dismissal when they too 

asked for integration into the Russian Federation. 

These so-called “frozen conflicts” have no 

foreseeable end, largely due to the fact that it is 

in Russia’s best interest to keep them alive so 

that they may be used as pressure points whenever 

Russian interest calls for it. 


In recent years, this intense selfawareness 

has been coupled with increased 

Russian anxiety regarding its neighbors. Although 

they are both members of the Shanghai 

Cooperation Organization (a sort of Eurasian 

NATO), Russia has become wary of China and 

its efforts to dominate the security pact, since 

Central Asia is an area of high Russian focus as 

well. There, Russia must compete with China, 

and to some degree the United States as well, 

for power and influence amongst the newlyindependent, 

savvy, and immensely energy-rich 

republics of Central Asia. 

However, this situation does not mean 

that Russia has turned its back on Europe. Far 

from it, since the Ukraine is an ever-present 

concern to Russia. The Kremlin believes that 

Ukrainian admission to the EU or NATO would 

severely jeopardize Russian national security 

and is actively working to prevent any such 

event from occurring. 

The Ukraine has become more and 

more a source of contention in the years following 

the Orange Revolution of 2004-2005. Since 

2008, the government has become cripplingly 

polarized, with Viktor Yushchenko’s flagging 

pro-Western faction competing with the increasingly-popular 

blocs led by Yulia Tymoshenko 

and Viktor Yanukovych, both of which favor 

rapprochement with Russia. 

Political quagmire aside, Ukraine also 

faces a crisis of national unity. Ukrainians in the 

eastern part of the country much more readily 

identify with Russia and Russian culture than 

with that of their homeland. This situation is 

especially true in the strategically vital Crimea, 

which has flirted with secession, wherein 58 

percent of the populace is ethnically Russian 

and 77 percent report Russian as their native 

language. Of particular note is the fact that the 

Russian government has been distributing passports 

to Ukrainians in the south and east. This 

act is especially ominous not only because of 

Russia’s declared policy of militarily intervening 

to protect Russian citizens abroad, but also 

because many South Ossetians were issued Russian 

passports in the months leading up to the 

Georgian War. 

It is undeniable that the future holds 

great potential for conflict between Russia and 

the West. The reality of the situation, however, 

is not that Russia has reemerged to bully 

and browbeat its way to supremacy, but rather 

it is trying to find its place in a rapidly changing 

world. Its attempts have so far been at once 

clumsy and deft, promising and suspicious. The 

bear has reawakened to a world much changed 

from the one it left. It is defensive, anxious, and, 

above all, unsure; therefore, we must treat it 

with caution. EPR 

Peter Wolf is a freshman in the college 

and is undeclared. 

21


EPR 

The Hearts and Minds of 

Palestine 

22 • EPR Winter 09-10 •

By: Jonathan Silberman 

EPR 

For years, Hamas has been labeled a terrorist 

organization by the European 

Union and the United States, among 

others. The group’s own charter says that it is 

waiting to “obliterate [Israel]” and that there is 

no solution except, “…jihad. Initiatives, proposals 

and international conferences are all a waste 

of time and vain endeavors.” Yet Hamas won a 

2006 democratic, parliamentary election, and 

polls conducted by the Palestinian Center for 

Policy and Survey Research as late as March 

2009 showed the organization winning 47 percent 

of the vote if an election were held at that 

time. 

How has an organization labeled by 

the outside world as a terrorist organization 

gained popularity? It is easy to dismiss Hamas’ 

popularity, but it is much harder to take a step 

back and try to figure out why Hamas has 

gained the support of ordinary, everyday Palestinian 

people. 

Hamas’ first and most resonant message 

in its 2006 campaign was that it would end 

the corruption that has plagued the Palestinian 

Authority (PA). The Fatah Party had run the 

entire PA until its defeat in the 2006 elections, 

where corruption was a substantial reason for 

it’s loss. The Fatah leader, Mahmoud Abbas, is 

a great example of this; he lives in a stone mansion 

with extensive security. This, of course, is 

nothing compared to the $1.3 billion net-worth 

of Hamas’ former leader Yasser Arafat at the 

time of his death. Most of that fortune was made 

by transferring funds designated to help the 

people living inside the PA into his own private 

accounts. Even though 47 percent of the West 

Bank and 80 percent of the Gaza strip live on 

under $2 a day, Fatah’s oldest leaders made a 

fortune creating monopolies, draining aid, grabbing 

properties, and making protection rackets. 

Perhaps even more alarming was that while all 

government workers received full pay under Fatah, 

20 percent did not show up to work. 

Hamas’ promises in 2006 were simple 

and effective. The organization agreed to 

require all government institutions and departments 

to open their records, including financial 

records, which had been private under Fatah. 

It promised that all institutions would keep accurate 

records of their actions. Hamas also said 

it would set up complaint departments for each 

department of Government that worked with the 

Attorney General’s office. Hamas has not been 

as effective in fighting corruption, as its promises 

would make it appear. Many problems have 

arisen within its government. However, Hamas 

is still seen as less corrupt than Fatah. 

As a result of Fatah’s corruption, 

money that should have been spent on public 

services was not, and among other things, 

the health infrastructure was underdeveloped. 

Hamas stepped up and filled the void to the best 

of its abilities by creating the Scientific Medical 

Association in 1997. The Scientific Medical 

Association coordinates the activities of various 

medical centers and blood bank that Hamas has 

set up in the Palestinian Authority. These medical 

centers are willing to treat anyone at lower 

rates than other medical clinics, or for free if 

a person is unable to pay. The medical centers 

are also popular because the doctors are “good 

Muslims” and are trusted by some of the more 

religious Palestinians. One example of a medical 

facility is the Jaffa Medical Center. It is a 

five-story hospital with three floors devoted to 

outpatient clinics. There is a dental facility, a 

large x-ray room, two operating rooms, and surgical 

and medical wards, among other services 

for men and women. One-third of the doctors 

there are female, so female patients can be treated 

by doctors of the same sex. Another example 

“Hamas has been 

successful at social 

services because 

they see 

what the people 

need and try to 

provide it.” 


of a clinic is the Al Quds clinic in the southern 

part of the Gaza strip. This clinic contains pediatrics, 

maternal, orthodontics, and post-surgical 

care, and now reaches 400 people a month. 

Another service that was lacking in 

the PA was providing food for those who cannot 

afford it. Hamas is willing to give food and cash 

to anyone who asks for it. Hamas and its affiliated 

organizations operate dozens of food banks 

and soup kitchens. In 2001, one Hamas-affiliated 

charity provided 33 percent of total food and 

cash assistance, while its umbrella organization 

provided another 21 percent. In the alleys near a 

refugee camp, families receive $40 to $100 per 

month, along with beans, flour, eggs, and other 

essential foods. One Palestinian-Christian said 

that Hamas was so popular because you would 

wake up and “find a box of [food] staples like 

oil and sugar here on the sidewalk.” Hamas provided 

food baskets for people shortly before the 

2006 elections. More recently, it has provided 

free iftar, the meal that breaks the Ramadan fast, 

to some residents of East Jerusalem. Hamas also 

provided cash to people who were hurt during 

Israel’s recent operation in the Gaza strip. 

Hamas has been successful at social 

services because they see what the people need 

and try to provide it. While Hamas’ latest outreach 

effort may seem surprising, even astonishing, 

to some, it is just another example of 

Hamas providing a needed social service. The 

group has now entered into matchmaking. In 

the conservative Islamic community of the Gaza 

strip, women are supposed to marry young and 

are matched to husbands through their mothers. 

However, many women in their mid-twenties, 

who are old by Gaza’s standards, are still single 

and their families have given up trying to find 

matches. So Hamas has set up a service, Tayseer 

Association for Marriage and Development, 

where single women can apply to be matched 

with a suitable husband. Men and women both 

fill out a questionnaire and then apply to Tayseer 

to be matched. Tayseer tries to find similar 

matches on the questionnaires and then sets 

up a meeting for the couple through employers 

or mutual friends. If the meeting goes well, the 

man will tell his family to visit the woman’s 

family and hopefully the two can be married. 

Hamas has arranged at least 40 marriages in the 

two years since it first opened the Tayseer Association. 

Despite its social work, Hamas is a 

terrorist organization and should be stopped. 

As Harvard Law Professor Allan Dershowitz 

wrote, “Hamas leaders have echoed the mantra 

of Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah 

that, ‘we are going to win because they love 

life and we love death.’” Hamas launches rockets 

from schools, playgrounds, and hospitals in 

the Gaza strip at Israeli schools, playgrounds, 

and hospitals; they hides rockets, missiles, and 

other weapons in mosques and other civilian locations; 

Hamas militants do not wear uniforms 

so they cannot be distinguished from civilians; 

Hamas’ actions are intended to increase the 

deaths of Israelis and to create a situation where 

any response from Israel would create as many 

dead Palestinian civilians as possible, which 

Hamas considers to be good publicity; Hamas 

uses summer camps to indoctrinate hate of Israel, 

militancy, and support for themselves; the 

camp teaches skills that will prepare children 

to kill Israelis; Hamas’ schools refuse to teach 

what happened during the Holocaust, and instead 

teach that it is a Jewish fabrication and a 

political issue. 

Elections are now overdue in Palestine, 

as they were scheduled for January 2010 

but are likely to be delayed. Hamas is losing in 

current polls and has declared that they will take 

action against anyone trying to vote in the Gaza 

strip. Meanwhile, Fatah’s leader Mahmoud Abbas 

has claimed he will not run for re-election 

and will soon step down as leader of the PA. 

Other top Fatah officials are talking of resigning 

because the peace process has still failed to create 

a Palestinian state. These are very uncertain 

times in the Palestinian Administration, but we 

can be certain of one thing: that Hamas’ role as 

a central player in Palestinian politics will continue 

to make it a major power in the Middle 

East for years to come. EPR 

Freshman Jonathan Silberman is a 

Political Science major in the College. 

23


EPR 

2010 FIFA World Cup: 

More than Just a Game 

By: Amanda Mac 

Next June, South Africa will make history by 

becoming the first African country to host 

soccer’s most prestigious tournament: the 

FIFA World Cup. Hosting a first-class international 

event represents a chance for the world to witness a 

special part of Africa that is normally overshadowed 

by headlines about war, disease, and poverty. 

Positive news about Africa is largely absent 

from news media reports. This is not because 

positive news does not exist, but because it is not 

covered. For example, the media constantly reports 

discouraging HIV/AIDS statistics but overlooks 

stories such as Namibia’s massive improvements 

in providing antiretroviral therapy (coverage is up 

from just 1 percent in 2003 to 88 percent in 2007). 

Although reports on violence and human suffering 

in Africa bring awareness to a misunderstood 

and underrepresented continent, 

many journalists sensationalize 

these problems. Positive change in 

Africa does not happen overnight, but 

journalists tend to focus on timely controversies 

over gradual improvements. 

For instance, Mozambique, a formerly 

war-torn country in southern Africa, 

has averaged an impressive eight percent 

growth rate for nearly a decade. 

This news, however, remarkable as it 

is, will probably never make headlines. 

Africa is not just huts and 

warriors, nor is it a static, unchanging 

place. People often forget that many 

African nation-states are still quite 

young and face a unique set of problems 

that are both directly and indirectly tied to the 

continent’s colonial past. Gaining independence was 

a messy process for many African states. 

When the imperial powers decolonized in 

a hurry, the newly-independent states had few tools 

to deal with the consequences of years of destruction. 

Neocolonialism and the lingering effects of 

colonialism were some of the greatest obstacles to 

development in Africa. Groups like the International 

Monetary Fund (IMF) now echo the domination and 

coercion tactics practiced by some colonial powers. 

Rather than criticizing development failures, people 

should consider the enormity of the challenges facing 

Africa today. Of the 25 lowest ranked countries 

on the United Nations Human Development Index 

rankings, all but two are African nations. With such 

enormous development gaps to close, it will take patience 

and dedication to make the necessary changes 

to improve these countries’ standings. We must reform 

our thinking and realize that although there are 

many challenges for the citizens in Africa, there are 

also many opportunities. 

Contemporary Africa is as modern and 

diverse in its social, cultural and political environments 

as any other country. People often forget that 

many of the activities we consider to be staple 

parts of our culture are not solely ours. Music, 

film, and sports are not exclusively Western 

forms of entertainment. The universality of arts 

and sports brings together people of many different 

backgrounds and environments. A group 

of teenagers in London can listen to the same 

music as a group of teenagers in Shanghai. Likewise, 

a game of soccer played in an American 

neighborhood is the same as a game played in 

South Africa. 

Bringing the World Cup to South Africa 

is an extremely expensive undertaking that 

will cost billions of dollars. However, this massive 

expenditure comes with promise of a high 

return on the money invested in development. 

Stadiums, roads, and railroads are investments 

24 • EPR Winter 09-10 • 

for South Africa’s future that will remain for 

many years after the World Cup ends. 

As with any other important international 

event, there has been some controversy 

around the 2010 World Cup. This past July, for 

instance, stadium construction workers went 

on strike, demanding better compensation and 

benefits. Additionally, other protestors have 

accused the South African government of putting 

too much focus on spending on World Cup 

preparations while neglecting important social 

issues like health care. Human rights groups 

have alleged that evictions related to World Cup 

construction are a thinly veiled attempt to hide 

poverty from visitors who will attend the tournament. 

One major controversy, for example, 

involves the South African government’s plan to 

move approximately 20,000 residents from the 

Joe Slovo Informal Settlement in Cape Town 

to a housing district in the impoverished Delft 

Township on the outskirts of the city. South Africa 

has so far dealt with these problems tactfully 

and insisted that preparations will be completed 

on time. 

Next year’s World Cup also presents 

an opportunity for change outside of the political 

realm. People often forget that anyone can 

drive social change, not just politicians. Lawmaking 

is not the only way of problem-solving. 

The indispensable, but sometimes subtle, power 

of the people is too often overshadowed by political 

muddle. Although officials and administrators 

brought the World Cup to South Africa, 

ordinary people from inside the country will 

bring a special and profound meaning to the 

tournament itself. 

Hosting the World Cup is a first for 

South Africa, but the idea of using sports to 

unite people is not new. In 1995, only a year after 

the end of apartheid, Nelson Mandela made a 

decision to try to bring the Rugby World Cup to 

his country. For him, it was not only an opportunity 

to turn the international community’s eyes 

on the new, democratic South Africa, but it was 

also a chance to take a major step in bringing 

together a once broken country. Rugby in South 

Africa was a symbol of white power during 

the Apartheid days, so the decision to host the 

rugby World Cup was a major turning point in 

post-Apartheid reconstruction. Mandela viewed 

the tournament as an opportunity to reconcile 

South Africa’s whites and blacks, urging 

people of all colors to support the 

Springboks under the mantra, “One 

Team, One Nation.” 

As the Springboks claimed 

more and more victories, public support 

for the team skyrocketed. At the final, 

South Africans eagerly watched the 

Springboks play a fierce game against 

New Zealand where they finally won in 

overtime. As the entire stadium erupted 

in excitement, South Africa’s first black 

President made his way onto the field. 

With the crowd chanting, “Nelson, 

Nelson!” he mounted the platform and 

turned to face the people of South Africa. 

When Mandela presented the trophy 

to Springbok team captain Francois 

Pienaar, the captain replied, “No, Mr. President. 

Thank you for what you have done,” a sign of 

the unifying power of the game. Beyond the stadium, 

in townships and villages all across South 

Africa, blacks and whites joined each other in 

celebration of their country’s win. When asked 

at the trophy ceremony what he thought of the 

fans cheering in the stadium, team captain, Pienaar 

said that the 65,000 South Africans in the 

stadium were only a fraction of the 43 million 

South Africans who stood behind them on that 

day. 

In 2010, the international community 

will get a chance to witness an even greater, 

more advanced, and more unified South Africa 

than it saw in 1995. People will see the progress 

the country has made and get a glimpse of the 

bright future that is possible for the region. It is 

time for the world to revolutionize its thinking 

on Africa and developing nations. We must stop 

thinking of Africa only in terms of what sets us 

apart from it and instead think of what unites us. 

EPR 

Sophomore Amanda Mac is an International 

Studies and Global Health double major.

Pop Culture 

EPR 

Comedy in Campaigns 

By: Rui Zhong 

It can be said quite ironically that the media’s 

fixation on politics is old news. However, an 

emerging trend in the world of politics is not 

what the media focuses on, but how it is able to 

change the game of politics itself. 

For many years, politicians have always 

been attempting to develop methods in 

capturing one particularly slippery demographic 

during national elections: the youth vote. Thus, 

in recent years, the shows of late-night comedians, 

such as The Colbert Report and The Daily 

Show have begun to exert influence over the 

game of campaigning, most notably over young 

voters, as well as the entire American political 

culture. 

Although The Daily Show and The 

Colbert Report both help attract attention to 

campaigns, news, and politics, for their niche 

audience of under-30s, their formats and messages 

about politics differ. 

Jon Stewart of The Daily Show focuses 

on news events and the media’s approach 

on politics. With a format imitating those of 

prime-time news networks, he and his motley 

team of correspondents face elections, scandals, 

and policies with a sarcastic edge that is light on 

political correctness and heavy on 

the uncomfortable truth. 

Contrasting the wisecracking 

Stewart is the blustery, 

self-centered persona of Stephen 

Colbert. In his show, The Colbert 

Report, Colbert delves into the aspect 

of personality and charisma 

in politics, parodying a blowhard 

conservative pundit with very 

skewed world views and a stereotypical 

American stubbornness 

against facts. He instead works by 

the idea of “truthiness”, favoring 

gut instinct and stale jingoisms to 

solve essentially any problem that 

America faces. 

Although these comedians 

assure the media from time to 

time that their primary business is 

funny, there is inevitable influence 

stemming from these Comedy 

Central programs into real-world 

politics. Both Colbert and Stewart 

regularly host interviews with 

hopeful politicians and activists; 

their evening shows are booked 

with Senators, prominent political 

authors, and candidates for key 

elections. 

During the 2008 election 

season, Stewart was able to host both 

presidential candidates, Senator John McCain 

and then-Senator Barack Obama to voice viewpoints, 

while Colbert had Democratic presidential 

candidates then-Senator Hillary Clinton and 

then-Senator John Edwards during the fierce 

three-way Democratic primary in the spring and 

summer of 2007. As the general election of November 

2008 approached, Colbert and Stewart 

had their say in situations such as the introduction 

of Sarah Palin as the Vice-Presidential Candidate 

for the Republican Party, the Presidential 

and Vice-Presidential Debates, and finally their 

joint coverage of the historic election night itself, 

of which Barack Obama emerged president-elect. 

2008’s election season is shown primarily 

as a season in which the youth vote was 

significant in determining results. With shows 

such as The Daily Show and The Colbert Report 

spurring the interests of recently enfranchised 

voters, information is far more accessible to the 

young voter than it has been in the past, working 

in tandem but not cooperatively with efforts 

such as MTV’s “Rock the Vote.” 

What differentiates the strategy of 


these new pseudo-pundits than past efforts to get 

young voters out to the polls? The answer lies 

in the idea of entertainment. Although the idea 

of 73-year old Senator and former presidential 

candidate John McCain speaking to 20-somethings 

in a New York studio seems ineffective 

and dry, comedy can simultaneously be effective 

in drawing attention to issues and keeping them 

on the issues. During the 2008 season, one particularly 

striking moment is Stewart’s interview 

of McCain, when he discussed the politicians’ 

changing tactics in regards to his traditional role 

as a ‘maverick’ of the Republican Party. When 

the moment calls for it, there is seriousness in 

the policies and politics that he discusses. 

In the case of Colbert, a similar trend 

of mobilization occurs. His exaggerated approach 

to campaigns and policies in effect 

humanizes the veritable flaws of politicians 

and pundits, providing a simultaneously lighthearted 

yet poignant observation of the quirks 

of news and politics. 

The impact that comedians can have 

on the American political culture, especially 

popular culture, is to reformat it to be approachable 

by the public, especially the youth. Although 

the observations made on shows such as 

the Daily Show and the Colbert Report are first 

and foremost funny, they can be, at the same 

time, meaningful in stirring interest in public 

policy. EPR 

Rui Zhong is a freshman in the College. 

She is double majoring in Political Science 

and East Asian Studies. 

25

Special 

EPR 

“King of Pop” 

Michael Jackson 

dies (50) 

25 

EPR 

2009 YEAR 

2 

G20 Summit 

$500 billion made available 

to IMF, $100 billion to World 

Bank; G20 to move against 

territorially-based tax havens 

Noted abortionist Dr. George 

Tiller is shot and killed at the 

31 

Reformation Lutheran Church in 

Wichita, Kansas 

GM declares 

bankruptcy 

1 

Swearing in of 

44th President, 

20 

Barack Obama 

in REVIEW 

By: Grant Wallensky 

Compiled by: Lilly Zhong and Christina Yang 

30 

Chrysler declares Chapter 

11 Bankruptcy 

The first of the “Big Three” 

to declare bankruptcy after 

bailouts fail to sustain it, its 

equity ownership is now split 

between U.S. and Canadian 

governments, Fiat, and the 

United Auto Workers Union 

retiree medical fund. 

Sen. Ensign 

admits affair 

16 

Gov. 

Sanford 

24 

admits 

affair 

Jan. Feb. March April May June 

15 

29 

Milorad 

Blagojevich 

removed 

as Illinois 

Governor 

Isreali 

Election 

Benjamin 

Netanyahu 

of Likud 

appointed 

Prime 

Minister 

10 

14 

Stimulus Bill signed 

into law 

The American Recovery 

and Reinvestment Act is 

nominally valued at $787 

billion. 

American International 

Group (AIG) bonus 

controversy15 

American journalists 

Arlen Spector 

Euna Lee and Laura 

17 

(Senator-PA) 

Ling are detained by 

switches party 28 

North Korea 

affiliation 

In June, they are sentenced 

to 12 years of hard labor. 

On August 5th, Kim Jong-il 

pardoned the two women after 

former president Bill Clinton 

publicly arrived in North Korea 

unanncounced. 

2 

Hijacking of Maersk 

Alabama by Somali 

Pirates 

Ship, crew and captain 

rescued by April 12; 

attempted hijacking 

Nov. 18 is repulsed 

successfully 

North Korean Second 

Nuclear Test (underground) 

25 

Bernard Madoff 

sentenced to 150 years 

in prison 

Waxman-Markey 

passes House 

Cap-and-Trade bill 

currently stalled in 

Senate 

Iranian election and 

“Twitter Revolution” 

12 

Ahmadinejad wins 

another term in office, 

opposition candidate 

Mousavi cries foul, 

protests and worldwide 

condemnation of the 

use of violence against 

protestors lasts a few 

weeks 

26 

29 

26 • EPR Winter 09-10 •

Cash 4 Clunkers 

claims processing 

24 

begins 

7 

Al Franken 

assumes office 

Sarah Palin steps down 

as Minnesota 

as Alaskan Governor 

Senator 26 

EPR 

July August Sept. Oct. Nov. Dec. 

17 

Barack Obama calls arrest of 

Gates “teachable moment” 

22 

Broadcast journalist 

and CBS Evening 

News anchorman 

Walter Cronkite dies 

(92) 

8 

Sotomayor sworn in 

The Supreme Court’s 

first Hispanic justice 

and third female justice 

11 

30 

Founder of 

Special Olympics 

Eunice Shriver 

dies (88) 

60th Anniversary of 

People’s Republic of 

China 

Japanese Election 

Yukio Hatoyama’s Democratic 

Party of Japan defeats Liberal 

Democratic Party, the latter’s 

second defeat since 1955. 

Actor Patrick 

Swayze dies (57) 

14 

1 

9 

24 

Dubai defaults 

Dubai World 

26 

announces intention 

to delay 

debt payments; 

all markets 

decline briefly. 

Chicago eliminated 

from the first ballot in 

2 

IOC voting. 

Announcement 

that Khalid Sheik 

13 

Mohammed to be 

tried in NYC 

Exchange of fire off 

Korean peninsula 

10 

Gubernatorial United States Elections 

Republicans win gubernatorial elections in 

VA, NJ; Democrats claim victory in NY-23 

President Obama declares 

H1N1 (swine) flu a national 

emergency 

As of Nov. 14, the CDC 

estimates that in the U.S. 

alone there had been 

9,820 deaths caused by 

swine flu 

3 

Saudi Arabia 

and Iran begin 

proxy war 

Fort Hood 

Shootings 

5 

5 

President Obama wins 2009 

Nobel Peace Prize 

Strategic 

Arms 

Reduction 

Treaty 

extended 

5 

1 

1 

Afghanistan troop 

surge 

President Obama 

calls for 30,000 

more troops 

CA mammogram 

subsidies for middle 

aged women ends 

Landmark health 

care bill passed 

(60-39) 24 

Tiger Woods 

involved in 

27 

early-morning car 

accident Diane Sawyer 

is the new 

21 

ABC World 

News anchor 

Perpetrator of the 2002 D.C. 

Beltway Sniper Attacks, 

claiming 10 lives, John Allen 

Muhammed is executed (48) 

Abu Dhabi bails 

14 out Dubai 

United States Senator 

Edward “Ted” Kennedy 

dies (77) 

25 

United States 

scraps Missile 

Defense System 17 

for E. Europe 

“PelosiCare” 

passes House 7 

Environmental 

Protection Agency 

7 

classifies CO2 as 

pollutant 

“The Godfather of 

neo-conservatism” 

18 

Irving Kristol dies 

(89) 

“Balloon Boy Hoax” 

15 

17 

19 

Federal Reserve 

Transparency 

Act 

“ClimateGate” 

The Climactic 

Research Unit in the 

University of East 

Anglia is hacked, 

its data released; 

climate skeptics 

immediately accuse 

the CRU of data 

manipulation 


27

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