May 2011

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volume x, no. 4

COLUMBIA POLITICAL REVIEW

A WAR ON WOMEN WHAT IT WOULD MEAN TO DEFUND PLANNED PARENTHOOD

BY TEHREEM REHMAN

NUCLEAR REACTIONS BY MINGMING FENG DEFENDING ATOMIC ENERGY AFTER FUKUSHIMA

TWO MONTHS LATER BY SIMONE BAZOS A PHOTO ESSAY OF THE AFTERMATH IN CAIRO

THIS IS YOUR LIFE BY ROSS PERLIN AN INTERVIEW WITH ROSS PERLIN

Sponsored [in part] by the Arts Initiative at Columbia University.

This funding is made possible through a generous gift from The GatsbyCharitable Foundation

A PUBLICATION OF THE COLUMBIA POLITICAL UNION May 2011

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volume x, no. 4

Editor-in-Chief

Mark Hay

Publisher

Iman Nanji

Managing Editors

Senior Editors

Arts Editor Staff Artists

Copy Chief

Pooja Reddy Ethan Wong Greer Feick Shane Ferro Puya Gerami Tommy Hill Leslie Huang Sarah Ngu Narayan Subramanian Anne Park Leslie Koyama Ashley Lee Ian Marshall Mary Claire Nemeth Amalia Rinehart Igor Simic

Hannah Laymon

Assistant Copy Editors

Ayushi roy Taylor Thompson

Layout Editor

Megan McGregor

Web Editor

Editor’s Note Last year when the May issue was released, former editor-in-chief Catherine Chong, now graduating, introduced me to the Review’s readership alongside her thoughts on the eruption of Iceland’s Eyjafjallajökull glacier. How fragile, Catherine mused, we all are—nature can still sweep away all of the order and peace of our world, and can do so whenever and however it should like. It is humbling when these things happen from time to time.

But when nature and humanity perpetually undermine the order of the world, the experience moves from humbling to terrifying. The horrific floods in Pakistan, the nuclear disaster in Japan, not to mention the apocalyptic droves of dead birds periodically falling from the sky—it has been an uneasy year.

Sitting at the helm of this magazine (which has undergone its own instability in the near past), making disconcerting decisions about what was news and what deserved space in the pages, it has been a strange experience. The kind of analysis this magazine does runs the risk, far too often, of taking a step into the realm of abstraction, of playing with men and events as if they were tools for our writers and readers.

Though our intentions in producing this magazine are good and noble, I often have to stop and wonder at how our words and choices play into a larger realm of discourse, and a more real realm of human suffering and hope. I can only pray that what we have done in the past year has been of use and benefit to those trying to navigate a shifting and opaque existence.

I know I am meant to give more of a pep talk in these notes (and my goodness, I have tried to keep them to lighter notes in the past). But I cannot deny the prevailing current of unease both in this issue of the magazine and in myself. Whether it’s about the issue of Planned Parenthood (pg. 6) or nuclear energy (pg. 19) or the growing nativist rhetoric in Europe (pg. 22), the world is growing nervous. It doesn’t help that the coming year is 2012.

Perhaps I’m writing this note because I am personally feeling the unstoppable sweep of external forces. My editorship ends as you read these words and I do not know, to be honest, what my future with this magazine or beyond it will be. I have my best-laid plans. But we all know what happens to those.

I have faith that incoming editor-in-chief Narayan Subramanian will do a fine job of shepherding this magazine forward, and of using it as a tool to continue to make sense of the obscure, the forgotten, the inaccessible for all of its readers. And I hope you will place that faith in him too. But for me, this is the end of the line.

My layout editor has challenged me to write a short note this month. It seems I am failing, so I will wrap it up. The future scares me. Quite a bit. The thought of a sudden lahar from Mount Rainier washing away a swath of my native Washington State is terrifying. But let’s just take a deep breath, focus on trying to make order of chaos, and march once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more.

Cindy Zhang Mark Hay Editor-in-Chief

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MAY.2011 table of contents humor 4

New Yorkers Have Issues

19

By Shane Ferro

cover story 6

By Mingming Feng A War on Women What It Would Mean to Defund Planned Parenthood

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By Tehreem Rehman

features 10

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Behind the Burqa Bans Natavism Gains Ground in Europe

By Andrew Godinich

interview Turkey Gets Engaged A New Diplomatic Powerhouse for the Middle East

By Ayushi Roy Two Months Later A Photo Essay of the Aftermath in Cairo

By Simone Bazos

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Nuclear Reactions Defending Atomic Energy after Fukushima

Gross Domestic Wellbeing Lessons on Development from Kerala, India

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This Is Your Life An Interview with Ross Perlin

modest proposal 29

Goodbye, Farewell and Amen Assessing the Case for a U.S. With drawal from South Korea

By Jake Shaner

By David Abud

COVER ART BY LESLIE KOYAMA May 2011

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NEW YORKERS HAVE ISSUES

By Shane Ferro

The following is a cache of e-mails recently declassified by the offices of New York Governor Andrew Cuomo and New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

The Review has been made aware that these e-mails were written during a particularly strong bout of indigestion and delirium brought on by a batch of Kwanzaa cakes made for both

by New York’s first-girlfriend Sandra Lee. Though the comments made by both men under the influence of particularly dubious confectionaries should be taken with a grain of salt (which is perhaps what the cakes themselves needed), the insight to be gleaned from such half-cogent interactions between high-level officials will be of infinite value to the astute student of American politics.

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Illustration by Igor Simic

[humor] To: bloomin.onion@nyc.gov From: thegreatestcuomo@nys.gov Subject: You’re uninvited to the popular kids’ table Dear Mayor Bloomberg, It’s about time for my monthly checkin to inquire about your ever-diminishing approval ratings. I just got the new numbers. What did you do to deserve these— start a war somewhere?

You are doing a terrible job at managing your public image lately. When you forgot to hire extra snowplows for the biggest blizzard in history, I didn’t say anything. Your block was amazingly clear.

You did a great job clearing a few blocks, which I thought was good enough—so odd that they happened to be so close to your place. I technically wasn’t in office yet, and I heard you had recently joined J-Date. Maybe you were a little busy to work overtime. Whatever. But this bike lane controversy is getting out of control.

You took an extra lane of traffic out of both First and Second Avenues. Have you ever tried to go to or from the east side below 14th Street by cab on a Friday night?

I’m working really hard out here to hammer out a budget that works for the poor without crapping all over Wall Street, and you are down there getting New Yorkers all pissed off about pavement, not to mention your hiring a schools chancellor who was formerly the president of the company whose biggest hit is Cosmo and who sits on the board of directors for Coca-Cola. What are her qualifications, product placement and photoshopping?

Dear Governor Cuomo, Watch it there. You may currently outrank me, but don’t think you can talk to me like that. You have the best approval ratings of any governor in the nation, but I still have more money than God. Whatever little political dynasty you come from, I will drown it in a wave of cash— make it rain. I created my own political career. I didn’t have to go crying to Daddy when I couldn’t find a job after college.

That’s what it means when Wikipedia says you were a lifelong “public servant” after graduating from Fordham, right?

It is not my fault that no one understands my vision and business acumen.

I took a chance with Cathie Black as schools chancellor. She didn’t work out.

It could be worse. I could have given it to Rebecca Black. (Thought about it too, but the timing just wasn’t right.)

New Yorkers just haven’t given me enough time. Maybe I should lobby to change term limits again. I can’t get kicked out of any more political parties, and I’m getting so close to making the whole city a playground! Bike lanes and beach chairs and snow on the sidewalk!

Why does everyone have to be so serious all the time?

P.S. I’ve just finished a biography of Napoleon, and it made me think of you for some reason. I can’t quite figure it out, but the resemblance is striking. >>>>> To:thegreatestcuomo@nys.gov From: bloomin.onion@nyc.gov Subject: I live in the city. Where did you live again?

Remember—your legacy revolves around plastic chairs on Broadway enjoyed only by tourists who don’t vote.

A. Cuomo >>>>> To: thegreatestcuomo@nys.gov From: bloomin.onion@nyc.gov Subject: BTW, do you think you could get me a date with Giada?

Cuomo, The chairs are metal. And crack all the Trump jokes you want, but you should try running for president as a single Jewish guy. America’s more likely to elect Jwoww. I hear she even has an obligatory pre-candidate autobiography out.

Speaking of reality stars, what’s up with dating Ms. Semi-Homemade?

B.Berg.

Big Mike Sent From my eyePhoney >>>>> To: bloomin.onion@nyc.gov From: thegreatestcuomo@nys.gov Subject: My daddy issues are not a joke.

Bloomie,

Sincerely, The Guy Just a Bit Higher on the Totem Pole

way rider, then let the Times catch you taking a caravan of SUVs from your front door 22 blocks to the express train. As a lawyer, I might caution you that the official legal term for that is “misleading the public.” Did you learn that trick at Harvard?

As hard as it is for me to live life as a full-time public servant in the long shadow of my father, at least I’ve got party backing. You can’t get anyone to take you seriously—not the Democrats, not the Republicans. No one who actually wants to get elected is voluntarily an “independent.” Right now you are behind in the polls to a birther with a toupee and a reality show. No wait, two birthers with reality shows. 2012 isn’t looking good for you.

You know what your problem is?

Fauxpopulism. You make a big deal about being an environmentally-friendly sub-

>>>>> To: bloomin.onion@nyc.gov From: thegreatestcuomo@nys.gov Subject: No. Mike, Why do you think my ratings are so high? All the voters watch the Food Network.

‘Drew Sent From my Crackberry

Shane Ferro, CC ’11, majors in Political Science. She often makes jokes that no one gets. She can be contacted at skf2113@ columbia.edu.

May 2011

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A WAR ON WOMEN

What It Would Mean to Defund Planned Parenthood

By Tehreem Rehman

Illustration by Leslie Koyama

We are in an economic recession. While some monetary sacrifices for governmental agencies are inevitable, the latest push to deprive Planned Parenthood of all federal funding is not solely motivated by the desire for fiscal conservatism. Instead, the burgeoning campaign against funding for Planned Parenthood is overtly purported to be a means of rectifying an existing ethical dilemma: forcing Americans to finance abortion services through their tax contributions.

However, as The Nation columnist Katha Pollitt notes, not a single penny from federal spending originally allocated for Planned Parenthood could have gone toward abortion services since the1976 passage of the Hyde Amendment,

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which prohibits the use of all federal money for abortions with some rare exceptions. What is even more preposterous about the recent claim that defunding Planned Parenthood is solely about targeting abortion services in this nation is the fact that abortions constitute a mere three percent of the services provided by Planned Parenthood.

In fact, the majority of Planned Parenthood’s activities consist of primary health services—treatment for sexually

transmitted diseases, birth control and so forth. In this way, the No Taxpayer Funding For Abortion Act, the title of the budget amendment sponsered by Mike Pence, is greatly misleading. This legislation is not merely intended to promote an anti-abortion agenda. Rather, it is part of a greater and more formidable movement to attack women’s health services nationwide.

While on the surface the bill proposed by Congressman Pence is purported to address the issue of excessive government spending, it is in actuality part of a more targeted attack on repro-

[cover story] ductive health rights within the past several months. In February 2011, Congressman Pence’s budget amendment was passed by the House of Representatives. Government funding makes up approximately one-third of the total annual revenue for Planned Parenthood, as indicated in their 2008-2009 annual report. Subsequently, the elimination of federal funding would undoubtedly take away a huge chunk of available resources for the services provided by Planned Parenthood, such as general health services like diabetes screenings and flu vaccinations, testing and treatment for sexually transmitted diseases, and specialized women’s health services such as pelvic exams and Pap tests.

Congressman Pence and other supporters of the bill decried giving Planned Parenthood $368.2 million in federal and local funds within the last fiscal year as unethical solely because Planned Parenthood also offers its clients abortion services. However, Congressman Pence and other amendment supporters are assuming erroneously that the organization directly uses its federal funding for abortion services rather than for the myriad of other educational and health services it provides to clients. Furthermore, as Congressman Jerry Nadler (D-NY) argued, since the budget amendment can be viewed as a “bill of attainder” that targets a specific group, it can be deemed unconstitutional since Article I, Section 9 says that “no bill of attainder or ex post facto law shall be passed.” Congressman Nadler asserted that “if Planned Parenthood or anyone else is doing terrible things and ought to be punished, that’s up to the courts” and not a questionable piece of legislation. The fact that Congressman Pence has previously tried to reduce Title X funding for abortion services suggests that his recent amendment is not just a response to the recession. Rather, cloaked in the language of economic necessity, the amendment is a vicious assault on women’s health services.

Yet, Congressman Pence is not the only politician who is striving to take advantage of dire economic conditions to permanently cripple organizations

that provide reproductive health services in this country. For instance, Congressman Chris Smith (R-NJ) originally proposed the No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act, in which he pushed to further restrict the exceptions to the Hyde Amendment for federal funding of abortions— rape and incest. He strived to achieve this by claiming that only victims of incest under the age 18 and women subject to “forcible rape” would be eligible for federal aid in paying for abortions. Requiring evidence of physical harm denies victims of statutory or drug rape any federal funding for abortion services. Steph Sterling, a lawyer and senior adviser to the National Women’s Law Center, declared that “this bill takes us back to a time when just saying ‘no’ wasn’t enough to qualify as rape.” The bill went on to bar the use of tax benefits to fund abortions. Thus, women seeking an abortion would no longer be able to use money from a taxexempt health savings account (HSA) or have the cost of the abortion deducted as a medical expense. While Congressman Smith was forced to drop the term “forcible rape” from his bill due to heavy criticism, the substantial amount of political support that this bill had acquired raises great alarm.

What is even more disconcerting is that whereas Congressman Pence’s budget amendment had targeted Planned Parenthood, other Republicans are now

proposing to eliminate Title X funding altogether. Title X is the sole source of federal funds exclusively allocated for family planning and reproductive health.

It was initially established by President Richard Nixon in 1970, and, according to the Department of Health and Human Services, in 2008, an estimated “5 million women and men received services through 4,500 community-based clinics,” inside such as Planned Parenthood clinics. Nonetheless, many prominent Republican presidential candidates, such as Sarah Palin and Mitt Romney, have publicly exclaimed that defunding Planned Parenthood will be one of the main components of their respective campaign platforms. The overarching impetus behind the push to defund Planned Parenthood is clearly more a political condemnation of the necessity of women’s health services rather than some sort of economic pragmatism.

Simply put, limiting the availability of reproductive health services for women would serve as an implicit attack on Americans’ claimed right to health care.

According to the president of Planned Parenthood, Celine Richards, “the real impact of eliminating the Title X program is that millions of women across the country will lose access to basic primary and preventive health care, such as lifesaving cancer screenings, contraception, STI testing and treatment, and

Illustration by Leslie Koyama May 2011

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annual exams. In fact, six in ten women who access care from a family planning health center consider it to be their main source of health care.” The danger of limited accessibility to women’s health and other general health services through a cut in funding is analogous to the current situation of Americans on Medicaid, who theoretically have health insurance due to their low incomes but are unable to find any specialist willing to see them. Budgetary cuts to the Medicaid program induced abysmally low rates of reimbursement jointly provided by the state and federal governments to physicians seeing Medicaid patients.

Increased restrictions on funding for reproductive services would inevitably result in a rise of unwanted pregnancies, and subsequently, compel the government to spend more on welfare programs in the long run. About 65 percent of patients who use the services available at Planned Parenthood clinics are considered to be of a low-income background. Welfare spending currently makes up 29 percent of federal spending, and major areas of welfare programs such as unemployment, housing, and family and children would be indirectly impacted by the existence of more women with children they cannot afford to raise. It is thus not surprising that, according to Planned Parenthood, more than ninety percent of the care its health centers provide is preventative, which includes family planning services.

According to the Guttmacher Institute, “every public dollar invested in family planning in Ohio saves taxpayers a minimum of $4.13 in Medicaid costs for prenatal care, delivery and postnatal care associated with an unintended pregnancy.” It is important to stress, however, that the repercussions of defunding Planned Parenthood lie beyond adverse economic effects.

All the recent legislation that involves the issue of federal funding for abortions ultimately affects low-income women who would lose autonomy over their own bodies. This scenario resulted from the failure of the abortion rights movement to pay sufficient attention to the specific plights of women of color or of lowincome. In the 1970s, not only did these women not benefit from the most recent technological advances in birth control, they were even denied equal ac-

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cess to basic reproductive rights, such as the right to an abortion, mainly because of their socioeconomic backgrounds.

Consequently, while significant legal strides have indeed been made for reproductive rights in this nation, they have not equally benefited all women due to class or ethnic variances. The recent call for defunding Planned Parenthood, a major source of reproductive health services for low-income women, would exacerbate this problem.

Leaders of the abortion rights campaign appealed to the conception of birth control methods, such as abortion, as emancipatory for women by ignoring the contrasting plight of working-class women of color. The middle-class white women who spearheaded the abortion rights campaign viewed birth control as a means of liberating themselves from the isolating domestic sphere of the housewife. On the other hand, black women did not have the same luxury as the middle-class white women that of viewing jobs as mainly a venue for leaving behind the drudgery of household work. This was evident during the 1950s, when black women made up the highest percentage of married women compelled by dire economic circumstances to seek work outside the household. The 1970s abortion rights campaign merely invoked a privileged entitlement to access to abortion services by pushing for the practice’s legalization—ultimately failing to advocate sufficiently for the right to choose to have an abortion or to ensure that a women could pursue that option regardless of her socioeconomic background.

The current push for defunding Planned Parenthood can thus be seen as a consequence of the abortion rights campaign’s failure to adequately convey, by pushing for access to abortion services for anyone in any economic bracket, how the ability to decide to attain an abortion is in itself an indispensable right— a right that will be blatantly denied to women from lower-class backgrounds all over this nation if the defunding efforts prove to be successful.

Even the strides we made through Roe v. Wade have had limited success.

The main achievement of that court decision was to forbid the federal government to directly prevent women from obtaining an abortion due to the

right to privacy. However, what it failed to do was simultaneously acknowledge that a complete “laissezfaire” approach wasn’t adequate either, as it precluded the acknowledgment of “reproductive freedom” as a fundamental human right in itself, a phrase said to be coined by feminist and pro-choice activist Gloria Steinem. Subsequently, ensuring equal access to abortion, which is also being undermined by recent legislation, was never made a priority as it should have been. Even now, 84 percent of all counties in the United States have no provisions for abortion services, and this percentage increases to a whopping 95 percent for rural counties.

In 1929, a local Planned Parenthood chapter was established in Philadelphia in response to a tragic situation: 15 percent of women in Philadelphia were dying in childbirth solely due to botched abortions. Stripping Planned Parenthood clinics from essential funding today would trigger similar trends in our society. It is time that Americans stand together with Planned Parenthood and rectify the mistakes that women’s rights leaders before us made. A legal right to an abortion should no longer be deemed sufficient. It is imperative that we ac-

[cover story]

knowledge that the ability to choose whether or not to have an abortion regardless of one’s income is an indisputable right of all women in this nation.

Nonetheless, a failure to actively resist these legislative efforts would clearly generate a drastic reduction in the financial support of women’s health services in this nation. More importantly, it would also loudly declare that a woman’s state of health is not significant enough to be carefully preserved in the face of some tough economic circumstances.

Tehreem Rehman, CC ’13, is majoring in Women’s and Gender Studies with a concentration in biological sciences. She has of late developed an interest in health policy and issues of access to healthcare services within urban communities. She can be reached at tr2284@columbia.edu.

Illustration by Leslie Koyama May 2011

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TURKEY GETS ENGAGED A New Diplomatic Powerhouse for the Middle East

By Ayushi Roy

On November 29, 2010, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan received an international human rights award named for Colonel Muammar Gadhafi in the Libyan capital of Tripoli. The award was a sign of international appreciation of Turkey’s foreign policy and domestic leadership in promoting “peace, justice and human rights.” In his acceptance speech during the award ceremony, Erdogan stated that the prize will further strengthen and support his struggle for human rights for people in the Middle East and all around the world. He explained Turkey’s drive to strive for peace through the Alliance of Civilizations initiative under the United Nations and continue negotiations with the European Union in an attempt to carry universal values to Turkey and the region.

As Erdogan noted, “All regional states would benefit from peace, harmony and stability. Everyone must be sure of one thing: Whatever we want for ourselves, we also want for others.”

From a puppet of the EU’s modernization wishes to a mediator and peace-

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keeper all in one, Turkey has thus far dealt well with the challenges presented by its inherited geographical location between Europe and the Middle East. In just 88 years, Turkey has progressed from the distraught remnant of a fallen empire to a global player in foreign affairs as the Middle East’s intermediary window to the West.

Looking forward, not even the instability and violence in Libya has dampened Turkey’s spirit. Instead its recent courage in picking up the weakening reins of Western efforts in the Middle East has ultimately strengthened Turkey’s political clout in international diplomacy—especially as it flexes new muscles in politically unstable Libya.

The North African state is caught in an ongoing, violent civil war between rebels—the Transitional National Council based in Benghazi—seeking to overthrow current Libyan leader Colonel Muammar Gadhafi and pro-Gadhafi forces. The seeds of Turkey’s friendly ties with Libya were sown during a US

arms embargo following Turkey’s invasion of Cyprus in 1974, when Libya provided Turkey with spare parts to operate US-made jets. Since then, Turkish builders have become a mainstay of foreign business in Libya, despite an influx of Chinese, Russian and other immigrants.

Today, Turkey has both an embassy in Tripoli, still up and running, and a functioning consulate in Benghazi, thus serving as an intermediary for the United States, Britain, Italy and Australia, none of whom have active embassies in Libya at the moment. As such, Turkish engagement in Libya has given it an upper hand in international diplomacy, renewed reason to maintain relations with the Middle East, and the welcomed status of a vital partner for the West.

Starting in 1453 and for almost five

[features] hundred years afterwards, Istanbul was the seat of power for an empire that maintained accord between Jews, Muslims and Christians in the Holy Land.

But since the fall of the Ottoman Empire and the founding of modern Turkey in 1923, the secular Turkish state has shied away from any involvement with the greater Muslim world, instead orienting its foreign policy toward the West. There is a historic echo in Turkey’s recent “neo-Ottoman” influence in the Middle East, as it is being tapped to provide the troops to keep the peace between Israel and Palestine, Syria and Jordan, and Arab players and the West.

Mustafa Kemal Ataturk founded the modern Turkish state in 1923. Following the defeat of the Ottoman Empire in World War I, he led the Turkish national movement in the Turkish War of Independence and established a provisional government in Ankara. After his military campaigns helped Turkey attain independence, he embarked upon a program of political, economic and cultural reforms. Ataturk formulated six principles, the “Six Arrows” of Kemalism, to shape the domestic and foreign policy of the new Republic of Turkey after the fall of the Ottoman empire—Republicanism, Populism, Secularism, Revolutionism, Nationalism and Statism. Ataturk’s Kemalist doctrine, which brought stability to a frenzied Turkey by transforming the former Ottoman empire into a modern, secular state modeled after the Western European powers, has been the defining ideology in Turkey every since.

Turkish emulation of European countries spurred the removal of religion from government processes and ultimately led to the strict removal of religion from the public sphere (especially in the education system), in an effort to copy laïcité, the French model of secularism. Along with establishing direct government by the assembly with representative democracy and parliamentary sovereignty and adopting the Turkish constitution of 1924, one of the most significant steps in the development of the new Turkish nation-state was Kemal’s abolishment of the Islamic caliphate in 1924. The caliphate was the core political concept for the majority of believers in Sunni Islam, and Kemal feared it would create a rupture in governance with the new republic on one side and an Islamic

form of government with the caliph on the other. His removal of the sultanate and caliphate was the first step in his extensive effort to separate governmental and religious affairs—an advancement few other Muslim-majority Middle Eastern nations have not made to this day.

Turkey’s secularism brought it closer to the West and eventually prompted a cycle of European-modeled development. From Ataturk encouraging Turks to abandon traditional garb for modern European attire to his replacing the entire Arabic alphabet with a Roman script for the Turkish language, the Kemalist vision of a western European order dictated both domestic and foreign policies.

Turkey’s increased closeness with Western orders paved the way for its 1963 Association Agreement with the European Economic Community (EEC), which later evolved into the modern-day European Union in 1992. Kemalist reforms Turkey towards closer relations with the West and the US. However, Turkey’s desire to be included was not supported by western Europe. 36 years after the Association Agreement, Turkish status as an entry candidate—a starting step on the way to membership––was approved by the members of the European Union. Yet Turkey continued to make changes to keep up with the red ribbon of EU membership that had been pushed farther and farther away. Turkey, like a loyal lapdog of the EU, willingly shirked its Muslim identity and backed away from its Middle Eastern neighbors, all for economic and political union with the western Club.

In hopes of meeting the EU’s growing number of criteria, each turkish prime Minister has built on the economic liberalization reforms of his predecessors and provided greater freedoms for Turkey’s minority ethnic groups. Representatives of the largest ethnic minority, the Kurds, deemed

to be a source of instability and terrorism, were even given government positions so that the Turkish ethnic majority would not be blamed, as it has been historically, for stifling free speech. But Turkey’s efforts have been for naught.

Turkey has been vying for membership for 48 years. In that time, less economically stable states such as Romania and Bulgaria—both predominantly Christian—have made it into the club.

As Dr. Charles Freilich, an International Security Program Senior Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School of Governments, explained, the European Union was primarily wary of having a Muslim country in the union. Turkey is well aware of this and has raised the probing question: “Is the EU a Christian club or is it the address of a community of developed civilizations?”

While the EU has had difficulty accepting Turkey’s identity incorporating traits of both East and West, the ex-Ottoman Empire has recently begun to make sense ofits unique position as a Muslim democracy. One of the most conspicuous results: a stark difference in foreign policy from westward orientation to recent eastern engagement. A country previously close to invisible in the Middle East due to its focus on Western relations, Turkey has now begun to increase its foothold in the region. The convergence of three main factors—the failures of the West and Arab players to improve their relations, Turkey’s new embrace of its Muslim population and its re-engagement with its Middle Eastern neighbors—has prompted Ankara to restore some of the

Illustration by Ashley Lee May 2011

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regional clout enjoyed by its Ottoman forebears.

First under the late Turgut Özal, who served as prime minister and president in the late ’80s and early ’90s, and more prominently since 2002 under the Justice and Development Party (AKP), Turkey has once again become more involved in the greater Middle East. This recent “neo-Ottoman” foreign policy— focused upon expanding involvement in the Middle East—is a twist away from the party’s traditional support for Kemalism and drive for recognition by the EU. One of Turkey’s initiatives of engagement in the Middle East has been the significant increase of its economic investment in the region. In 2009, nearly 20 percent of Turkey’s exports went to the Middle East, some $19.2 billion worth of goods, compared with 12.5 percent in 2004. Mehmet Simsek, Turkey’s minister of finance, told the Financial Times of “concerted efforts” to boost ties with Gulf countries by increasingly investing in infrastructure projects throughout the Middle East, such as building highways, bridges, and airports. Turkey-based contractors have constructed the Arbil International Airport (opened in 2010) and multiple banks in Iraqi Kurdistan in an effort to signify improved relations with the Kurdistan region, especially as it becomes a strategic player in both Iraq and the Middle East.

Since its election in 2002, the AKP has also renewed political relations across the Middle East, establishing new foreign consulates and promoting itself as a mediator in long-standing conflicts.

It achieved a breakthrough in May 2010 by bringing together Syria and Israel for their first direct talks in eight years. In 2008, it helped resolve the dangerous presidential standoff in Lebanon. In recent years, Ankara has taken a more active approach toward the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, sent troops to the NATO mission in Afghanistan, contributed to UN forces in Lebanon, assumed a leadership position in the Organization of Islamic Conference, attended several Arab League conferences; established closer ties with Iran, Iraq, and Syria; and begun to mediate the international debate on Iranian nuclear proliferation. Still, the modern-day turmoil in Libya has proved to be the real test of Turkey’s international diplomacy and clout.

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Amidst the chaos in Libya, Turkey has been walking a tightrope between its international obligations as a member of NATO and its regional ties to its neighbors and allies in the Middle East. The Turkish government, which is playing an increasingly important regional role and has the second-largest military within NATO, has been at the center of the discussion about the alliance with Libya.

Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan publicly clashed with French President Nicolas Sarkozy for staging the first air strikes against Libyan targets and killing innocent civilians. Erdogan has warned that a drawn-out conflict risked turning the country into a “second Iraq” or “another Afghanistan” with devastating repercussions for both Libya and the NATO states leading the intervention.

“If needed, we will set up humanitarian aid corridors there, those people need food, medicine, water and compassion,” said Egemen Bagis, Turkey’s chief EU negotiator. “We can’t leave our brothers there.” The very fact that Bagis openly addresses Libya as a brother in the midst of EU tensions, despite the Libyan political turmoil, reveals the historical integrity of Turkey’s relationships.

Not only is Turkish backing for Libya a result of Libya’s prior support of Turkey, but it is also a result of Turkey’s renewed engagement in the Middle East.

Particularly, they are making huge economic investments in the region. Turkish contractors in Libya were involved in 214 building projects worth more than $15 billion before the chaos, according to Turkey’s foreign trade minister, Zafer Caglayan. The bilateral trade balance was $2.4 billion in favor of Turkey and the two countries have recently waived the requirement for travel visas to boost that trade.

Yet Turkey has been supporting Libya far beyond its bilateral relations.

On the international level, Turkey has also contributed four frigates and one submarine to the enforcement of the UN arms embargo on Libya. Erdogan did not rule out the possibility of sending peacekeepers to Libya but insisted the Turkish soldiers would not aim guns at fellow Muslims.

Especially since Turkey has a more legitimate interest in the region, the Erdogan administration has begun to seek a genuine ceasefire, an end to outside

interference and a negotiated political settlement. Thus far, Turkey has insisted that the rules of engagement in Libya must be restricted to protecting civilians, enforcing the UN arms embargo and nofly zone and providing humanitarian aid, excluding any further NATO air strikes against Gadhafi’s ground forces.

In an exclusive interview with The Guardian, Erdogan said that talks were still under way with Gadhafi’s government and the Transitional National Council. In the meantime, as a member of NATO, Turkey has accepted the task of controlling the air and sea corridor between Benghazi and Crete. On the ground, Turkey has already fulfilled its third agreement with NATO to assume control of the rebel-held Benghazi harbor and airport for the delivery of humanitarian aid. Clearly, the confluence of Turkey’s own stability, geographic location, and newfound engagement with the Middle Eastern region are enabling it to make headway toward striking a balance between Libyan and Western relations and forging a place for itself at the international diplomatic table.

The ex-Ottoman Empire has lived up to its geographic straddle of Europe and Asia by providing a bridge in terms of religion, government structure, economic investment, and military support.

However, with Libya potentially devolving into a second Iraq War the time has come for Turkey to test its role as a peacebroker between East and West.

In the past few years, Turkey has reemerged in the headlines without the phrase “European Union.” From Time magazine’s prediction in January 2009 that Turkey would become a “key player in Gaza peace,” to The Economist calling Turkey “The Great Mediator” in August of 2010, Turkey is emerging as a regional power in the Middle East. The strength it developed during its period of EU reforms has given Turkey the status and confidence to oversee Libyan affairs and potentially serve as a mediator between the West and the Middle East for years to come.

Ayushi Roy, CC ’14, is a potential History major. She has a strong interest in studying the intersection between Islam and democracy in the non-Arab world. She can be reached at akr2131@columbia. edu.

[features]

TWO MONTHS LATER

A Photo Essay of the Aftermath in Cairo Essay by Simone Bazos, Photos by Simone Bazos and Mitch Sweson

The pyramids are the only Wonder of the Ancient World still standing. For most people, they are an exotic symbol of Egypt and the ancient mythos the name of that nation conjures up—the embellished and aggrandized tales of curses, ancient gods, slavery and hidden treasure that captivate children the world over. But when I visited Egypt in March, I did not see the pyramids—not even from a distance.

I was more captivated by the mysteries of the very recent past. I spent two weeks wandering around Tahrir Square in Cairo, the center of the Jasmine Revolution, warding off hibiscus salesmen and increasingly desperate pyramid tour guides. Tahrir is the Arabic word for “freedom,” and fittingly tangible signs of the recent political transformation were everywhere. I was in Egypt only one month after Mubarak stepped down from his thirty-year run as president, and I had the sense that the streets of Cairo were full of hope and pride. Revolutionary graffiti completely covered the walls around the main square. Tags included, “unity for Egypt,” “freedom,” “democracy,” “fuck Mubarak” and “Facebook!” underneath the symbols of the Coptic cross and the Muslim star and crescent. The sun-faded 1960s cars that are common in Egypt sported fresh “JAN25” bumper stickers.

Egyptian flags were also ubiquitous.

Not only were there physical cloth and paper flags hanging on buildings, but people had painted everything from trashcans to trees in the national colors—red, white and black. I went to visit a friend for dinner in Cairo and we admired the view of the city from his rooftop—old, crumbling stone homes with silhouettes of laundry lines and a sea of satellite dishes. On the

neighboring roof there were children practicing what is known as “pigeon flipping.” They used a series of pigeon calls and coos and skillfully twirled and waved an Egyptian flag as a net, in hopes of enticing birds to cook and eat.

I soon realized that my initial feelings of hopefulness for Egypt’s political situation were only based on cursory observations as an American divorced from the recent events. After a week in Cairo, I became more sensitive to underlying tensions.

On closer observation, the atmosphere began to feel like New York in the months following the attacks of September 11, 2001—a volatile mix of misguided pride and fear. It seems that many Egyptians were not caught up in a tide of nationalism but were merely struggling to carry on with daily life. During the revolution, the stone tiles that had once made up the sidewalks of Tahrir Square had been violently torn from their bases to serve as makeshift ammunition against pro-regime thugs. The walkways are now sand and have turned a red-gray hue from the heavy foot traffic. There are still tanks with armed soldiers guarding the city, serving as check points at night for the city-wide curfew which changes on a daily basis. It is not uncommon to find the square drenched from last night’s water cannon riot control. There are still protests. I witnessed people climbing trees and street lights, waving giant flags and chanting demands to their toppled government. The message behind these protests was unclear—some Egyptians said they were protesting for “faster internet” and others told me they just wanted “change.”

I never felt unsafe at any point dur-

ing my trip. However, I did feel unnerved when a hibiscus salesman in a local market called me an “American spy” and started following me down the street after I politely declined to enter his shop.

It is no secret that street vendors in the Middle East can be aggressive in their attempts to bait foreign tourists into their stores, using an armory of calls and tricks (not unlike the children who tried to “flip” pigeons with their Egyptian flags).

But since the revolution, Egypt’s tourism industry has plummeted by over 25 percent and will not recover for some time, leaving the usually mildly aggressive salesmen even more on the edge.

The immediate area around Tahrir Square is slowly being rebuilt. McDonald’s was among the first restaurants to reopen, and a Hardee’s is on its way. I hear that the national museum will also soon reopen—when I was there it was just a parking lot for bombed-out cars with a snack stop for soldiers in tanks. Since my return home, there have been reports of more violence and deaths in Tahrir. The impatience of the people, who helped spark one of the world’s fastest revolutions, is unyielding. I want to have great hope for Egypt, and part of me truly does, but based on what I’ve observed, it will be a long road to the next election scheduled for September.

Simone Bazos, GS ‘12, and Mitch Swenson are a dynamic writing team based out of New York and Cairo. Simone studies American Studies and African studies at Columbia, and Mitch studies journalism at the American Univerisity in Cairo.

They have published several pieces about the revolution in Cairo and write for and manage www.n0t.nu.

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[features]

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GROSS DOMESTIC WELLBEING

Lessons on Development from Kerala, India

By David Abud

When India gained its independence, the southern state of Kerala promised to be nothing but a headache for the new nation.

Near the bottom in almost every indicator of development—literacy, health, general wellbeing—the state was a basket case. Yet over the span of fifty years everything had turned around, and suddenly officials in the state capital of Thiruvananthapuram could boast some of the highest scores in general well-being not just in India but in the world. The state’s human development index score (measuring health, education, quality of life, etc. on a scale from zero to one), sitting at .83, outstrips the Indian average of .52 and surpasses many developed nations scores as well (even Germany’s score is only .89, not much higher). And this small, developing state has managed to reach parity in literacy, in health, and in education with developed nations despite its comparatively abysmal gross domestic product per capita, thus defying all conventional wisdom stating that HDI scores will rise only after GDP increases. Political scientists, economists and sociologists alike call it the “Kerala phenomenon.”

Most developing nations—Mexico, Brazil, China, Kenya, and a host of others— have taken the prevailing logic to heart, striking a Faustian bargain and cashing in their free speech, basic health care, education and human rights for economic gains in blind faith that money will be able to buy back what they traded away. But Kerala never tried to bargain away these basic assets. All citizens have a right to primary education and access to secondary and ter-

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Illustration by Mary Claire Nemeth

[features] tiary education. Kerala, which used to have a literacy rate of 47 percent in 1951, now has a literacy rate above 90 percent, compared to the average of 65 for the rest of India.

At an average of 77 years, its life expectancy is closer to America’s 78 than India’s 64. This emphasis on education has been matched by a commitment to a free, open and tolerant society as well as a vocal and critical media. Kerala has more newspapers

available per citizen than any other Indian state, and newspaper circulation reaches more citizens than any other state in India.

Thus, a strong educational base and a large media presence have bred a population that is politically aware and a government that is more transparent than that of most other Indian states. Government accountability and the access to a podium this has crafted for Keralites has proven a stronger

tool for pushing forand attaining high levels of wellbeing forthe masses than the GDP-driven schemesof other developing states.

The Keralite education system and media have forged a culture of egalitarianism and tolerance. Most Indian states, in the quest for an impressive GDP per capita, have set equality issues on the sidelines, and, as a result social tensions and gaps rage on. Kerala has a more even income distribution than a majority of Indian states, and has a series of anti-poverty and income redistribution measures in effect to combat economic inequality. Over the past half-century, Kerala has discredited the caste system, discouraged the practice of sex-selective abortions and infanticide and erased much of the social stigma that runs rampant in the remainder of India.

Not everything is rosy, however, on the sandy beaches of the southern Indian state.

A closer look at its economy reveals some startling dissapointments. Its HDI is high by any standards, and at first glance it seems that Kerala has achieved high GDP growth.

Yet Kerala’s actual growth rate figures show that 20 percent of the state’s GDP is made up of remittances—money which Keralite immigrants send back home. The figure for the rest of India is only three percent, meaning that any growth seen in Kerala’s GDP is flimsy, contingent on a generation in exodus from their homeland. At home, in 2010, 13 percent of Keralites were unemployed. Among women and 19- to 29-yearolds, close to 50 percent are jobless. Worse, of those seeking employment, a vast majority have high school or professional degrees; only 14 percent of job-seekers are unskilled laborers. The industry that should be there to accommodate the educated masses has failed to materialize, pushing the greatest human potential for the state’s future out of Kerala—the greatest aid to brain drain.

It is estimated that 10 percent of Kerala’s population lives outside of Kerala, and if job opportunities do not change, the high education and aspirations of the state will help that number to grow. Kerala’s high HDI levels cannot continue unfetered in the face of such glaring and amassing economic woes.

The infrastructure is in place, but if the minds and money produced by and meant to perpetuate it fly away forever, it will all come tumbling down.

But given that conventional models of development have fallen short, the Kerala model—empowering an open and egaliMarch 2011

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tarian state to seek self-improvement and well-being—deserves some careful attention. Developing nations must examine Kerala’s flaws and overcome them in order to best move forward. To save all that it has made and correct its model of development into something more sustainable and replicable, Kerala now has to find a way to put the vast human capital it has created into effect. Instead of solely focusing on GDP growth or human development, a better model demands moderation and sequencing. Developing countries should look to the Kerala model early in its implementation of economic and social programs. Once a nation’s HDI closes in on .8, the country should shift its focus to economic growth by opening markets and offerring incentives to entrepreneurs and businesses, attracting the ventures and jobs that will trap the minds and money healthy and strong society has produced.

The first and most important social infrastructural step for a nation to take, though, is to develop its education system.

Obviously, for developing countries this means increasing the literacy rate by establishing more schools, training more reliable teachers and widening access to these institutions. However, access requires those the state seeks to educate to be healthy and prosperous enough to attend schools. Once coupled with a strong and free media, this educational system will help to eliminate negative social constructs, corruption and human rights abuses, making the state an attractive and stable location for businesses and citizens alike. Once this has been achieved, the government must promote, through education and social campaigns, a socially and economically egalitarian society. The more tolerant, free and open the society becomes, the better the country will be able to build its human capital and, eventually, a productive, high-GDP economy based upon those strong and educated workers.

Finally, the government of a developing state following the ideal Kerala model must be democratically elected. More than that, though, the voting citizens need to be willing to experiment with different philosophies of governance and courageous enough to drive towards innovative political structures and initiatives that the state itself may not be bold or savvy enough to implement from within. It is through this acceptance of different ideas that Kerala was able to create one of the first demo-

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cratically elected, longest-lasting and most successful communist governments in the world. Kerala has been so successful at generating a high HDI because it has a government focused on benefitting the people, whereas the democratic governments in other developing countries and states in India are more focused on benefitting businesses. Before the communist government, Kerala had been a princely state with high levels of inequality and almost no political representation for the lower classes. Only after the election of the Communist Party in 1957 was Kerala able to make impressive strides in education, economic equality, health, social tolerance and quality of life.

This reform in politics, after education and an open media, is the most important move that the state can make to solidify the gains of the Kerala model.

A state seeking to adopt the Kerala model need not necessarily have a communist government, but it must have a democratic government unburdened by capitalist interests and instead focused on serving the people of the state. In Kerala the ruling parties have been willing to experiment with a form of government separate from the rest of India and different schemes in order to achieve a high HDI. This was a lucky break, but in other states seeking to emulate Kerala, opposition parties and voices of criticism must not only be present, but encouraged to push for political innovation. The mix of education and recognition of civic obligation in Kerala has led to some of the highest voter turnouts in India—75 percent in the April 2011 parliamentary elections. A static government or political party that is not backed by the people will not be able to achieve the success which Kerala has experienced.

After these reforms have taken root and become effective (a process which probably will take at least a few decades), it is imperative that the government then initiates a more vigorous GDP-driven growth scheme. Kerala has taken some steps towards economic liberalization, but more needs to be done. Although there is some debate whether economic liberalization is the best method for growth. The fact remains that encouraging and incentivizing private investment is necessary for a state to reduce unemployment, increase GDP and put its human capital to use. Market liberalization does not have to be as intense as the 1980 and 1991 reforms of India, or the free-market reforms in China. In-

stead, Kerala should seek to reproduce the incentivized-business development models pursued in the United States and the Nordic countries. In order to grow,Kerala must encourage entrepreneurs, as well as larger multinational companies to settle in the region. This reform is imperative—without openness to conduct business in the state, Kerala’s human capital will only leave for better opportunities elsewhere and slowly draw the states’ high HDI away with them.

These reforms are not meant to be a panacea, nor should they be seen as a cry for a new kind of communist revolution.

The fact is that, regardless of the economic shortcomings of both Kerala and the Kerala model, it seems to have worked reasonably well. Although Kerala has many social and economic problems, the obstacles it faces are less crippling than the human rights abuses, disregard for locals of unbridled multinational corporations, illiteracy, unreliable health care, repressed media and crippling, inescapable poverty the majority of developing countries experience today. Keralites are poor and jobless, but at least they are healthy and educated and can stand up for their rights. This cannot be said for the rest of the Indian states, China, South Africa or Brazil, to name a few. As for the economic problem, this is a simple matter of, through staggered and reasonable GDP-focused growth, raising standards of living and opportunities for the vast human potential which Kerala has created. Keralites should not fear opening their economy as a chance for capitalist interests to infiltrate their ranks and sabatoge the progress they have made—their political activism and awareness, empowered through an unwavering media voice, would never allow such a fall from grace to set in upon the state. Nor should other states fear to pursue the Kerala model, even in a modified form. Though the experiment in south India has not reached the apogee of its potential, and though the conventional development model’s GDP focus has some merits, the promise of Kerala for the benefit of humankind more than merits its serious consideration.

David Abud, CC ’14, hails originally from Mexico. He went to school in India but now lives in Cleveland. He is interested in countries in the Middle East, Latin America, and South Asia, and hopes to study Economics and Political Science. He can be reached at dra2116@columbia.edu.

[features]

NUCLEAR REACTIONS

Defending Atomic Energy after Fukushima

By Mingming Feng

Illustration by Ian Marshall

Although the worst has arguably passed at Fukushima, the dangers posed by Japan’s recent nuclear disaster have not yet passed.

As the world watched with bated breath, a catastrophic nuclear meltdown was closely averted, but only by pouring tons of seawater into the reactors and hoping for the best. Recently, aftershocks of magnitudes reaching 7.1 threatened to destabilize the nuclear reactors and create fissures in the containment, releasing toxic water in the surrounding environs. The worst may be over, but the story hardly ends here.

The economic costs and the loss of human life in the Tohoku region are immense.

But the fallout from this disaster extends far beyond Japan’s borders. In the wake of the catastrophe, a number of countries have begun to re-evaluate their own nuclear energy policies. Germany has shut down seven of its oldest nuclear energy facilities. Adinarayana Gopalakrishnan, who once led India’s Atomic Energy Regulatory Board, has said, “In view of the vast nuclear devastation we are observing in Japan, I would strongly urge the [Indian]

government not to proceed with the Jaitapur [Nuclear Power Plant] project…” Closer to home, many Americans are expressing similar misgivings about their own nuclear power facilities. Given the recent disaster, these misgivings are understandable. But to discard nuclear energy entirely would be to let impulse and fear override empirical evidence.

Certainly, there are precautions to be taken with the use of nuclear energy. As it now stands though, nuclear energy remains one of the safest and renewable energy sources available.

And to let existing qualms stand in the way of nuclear adoption and deeper research would be a travesty in a world increasingly uncertain about its energy future.

Alternative energy sources are crucial to the needs of a rapidly developing world economy. Traditional, non-renewable energy sources, including fossil fuels, simply cannot sustain the levels of consumption we as a have now reached. Such an assertion should come as a surprise to no one. But the sad political reality within many countries today seems to ignore this fact. Most of the energy

produced in the US is derived from fossil fuels, but the future cannot realistically rest on the premise of a never-ending supply. Beyond their shrinking availability, fossil fuels are notorious for the pollution they release into the atmosphere. But these challenges have not impeded the advocates of fossil fuels. Many have instead conducted new research into ways to mitigate the polluting effects of fossil fuel use. While these efforts are encouraging, they should not be viewed as a substitute for pursuing energy sources with greater promise for the future.

Although there are certainly legitimate concerns about using nuclear energy, it is an alternative with great potential and depths to be plumbed. The US uses nuclear energy for twenty percecnt of its electricity. With over 800 net megawatt-hours, it is the country with the most nuclear energy capacity. This is commendable, but the country should take note of its peers. Eighty percent of France’s electricity is generated through nuclear energy—400 net megawatt-hours in a country one-fifth of the US’s size.

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Perhaps the most obvious argument in favor of going nuclear is the amount of pollution averted through the use of nuclear energy as opposed to fossil fuels. Even given the relatively small portion of power generated by nuclear energy in the US, the reduced levels of pollution are striking. According to the Nuclear Energy Institute, “US emissions of [sulfur dioxide] and [nitrogen oxide] would have been 2 million tons and 560,000 tons higher, respectively, if fossil fuels had generated the electricity produced by America’s 104 nuclear power plants.” The production of these gases is monitored and capped by the Environmental Protection Agency because high levels are potentially harmful to human health. But despite the obvious benefits, serious questions remain about the viability of nuclear power. Among the most pertinent are those concerning the storage of nuclear waste.

Currently, steps are being taken to mitigate the potentially harmful effects of improperly managed nuclear waste. Nuclear facilities in the U.S. are operating under what the Nuclear Energy Institute calls an “integrated management approach.” Spent nuclear fuel, of relatively low radioactivity, is stored in the plants themselves. The waste is currently being stored in seventy different sites across the U.S. But once the used fuel is recycled, the radioactivity level rises considerably. The U.S. has not yet recycled any of its fuel, but it plans to store the highly radioactive recycled waste in deep geologic repositories. In 2008, the NRC submitted a license application for the repository to be located at Yucca Mountain, Nevada. While acceptance is still pending, other approaches are being explored.

The number of energy scientists making advances in the field of nuclear energy should be cause for hope. As part of the Department of Energy, the Nuclear Energy Research Initiative has been working on various projects to increase the efficiency and safety of nuclear power plants. These projects include, to name a few, the Next Generation Nuclear Plant, which focuses on new design and analysis methods; the Supercritical Water-cooled Reactor, which tests the possibility of using a Light Water Reactor to produce low-cost electricity; separation, which will aid in spent fuel treatment processes; and transmutation science engineering, which explores the possibility of using long-lived, highly radioactive elements (such as plutonium) in fission processes. Also, creating as much isolation as possible and choosing strategically located waste repositories will go a long way

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in ensuring the safety of Americans. This is indeed the intention of the Yucca Mountain repository, but it has not yet been used. In the meantime, the various storage facilities around the country are not all in ideal locations. Of most concern to New Yorkers is the Indian Point facility, thirty miles north of the city.

For better or for worse, the uncertainties over nuclear energy do not end here. In an age when terrorism ranks as one of the top national concerns, a number of analysts view nuclear energy sites as potential security threats. Other unpredictable catastrophes —and the Japan disaster is a case in point— remain. Referring to the situation in Japan, Nils J. Diaz, former leader of the NRC has said that “a comprehensive nuclear power plant safety program developed in the United States after the Sept. 11 attacks would have prevented a similar accident at any of the nation’s nuclear facilities.” Despite Mr. Diaz’s assurances, many fear the potential vulnerability, viewing nuclear power plants as prime targets for the arbitrary forces of terrorist attacks. As a Western nuclear executive noted to the New York Times in response to the volatile situation in Japan, “It’s a little like pulling a thread out of your tie. Any breach gets bigger.” The idea that a nuclear disaster could spin out of control very quickly and become something too big to handle is alarming for experts and civilians alike, but simply dwelling on the hypothetical short-term crisis instead of on the long-term solutions is not a fair assessment of nuclear energy. The United States Energy Information Administration states that the risk of widespread contamination and radioactivity due to an uncontrolled nuclear reaction is “very small due to the diverse and redundant barriers and numerous safety systems at nuclear power plants, the training and skills of the reactor operators, testing and maintenance activities, and the regulatory requirements and oversight.”

The criticisms of nuclear energy should be given consideration in any discussion of our planet’s energy future.

Acknowledgement of such concerns could indeed prevent a future energy disaster. But the fact remains that fossil fuel usage, regardless of strategies to limit its environmental impact, remains a short-term solution. Nuclear energy

is a possibility for the long-term.

In order to realize this possibility, nuclear energy needs to be supported through scientific research, and, more importantly, through public policy. While this always comes as unwelcome news, additional funds must be allocated to nuclear energy research.

In the recent congressional budget battle, the Republican Party had initially proposed a seventy percent cut in clean energy spending —which would strike a serious blow to the potential of nuclear energy in the short-term.

While that measure did not pass, it raises questions about the contingency of science upon congressional majorities. The Nation’s Mark Hertsgaard reported on April 14,“By pushing so hard for restrictions on the EPA, Republicans made it clear that they view the climate issue as a political winner—red meat for their right-wing base and corporate donors alike.” Politicization of the future of nuclear energy is perhaps inevitable due to funding concerns, but, given the need for an alternative to fossil fuel use, the rejection of nuclear energy as a viable option is

[features] cause for serious concern. The Republicans may see the rejection of nuclear energy as a leveraging tool, simply a way to garner votes, but to deny the issue the seriousness it deserves is to jeopardize the long-term viability of our energy-reliant society.

And while it is crucial that new strategies be researched, we must not forget our existing plants. Outdated machinery, technology and security measures demand our immediate attention. The aging and obsolescence of nuclear plants and their various components happens inevitably, and there are always choices to be made as to when parts should be replaced or updated. Not everything needs to happen at once, but the government should have a progression of refurbishments on the agenda. Among other areas of improvement, the World Nuclear Association notes that “older reactors have analogue instrument and control systems, and a question must be faced

regarding whether these are replaced with digital in a major mid-life overhaul, or simply maintained.” Maintenance is fine, but it should be accompanied by a calculated intention of replacement.

While these steps must be taken to encourage the expansion and improvement of the nuclear industry, they should not obscure the deeper underlying contradiction of our energy-dependent society.

We are living in an age of limits, one that cannot possibly sustain over-consumption and unbounded luxury. According to the EIA, despite federal energy efficiency standards that have reduced the amount of energy required to run a given appliance, recent decades have witnessed the entrance of a glut of such appliances into American households, offsetting any gains made by the new standards. For example, “The number of US households grew by 34.5

million from 1978 to 2009. The share of households that have central air conditioning nearly tripled.” The sobering reality is that while nuclear energy should be exploited, not even innovation can keep up with American lifestyles. Finding alternative energy sources is certainly one side of the equation, but on the other side, civilians must play their part and re-examine their consumption habits. Often lost in these energy debates is the question of how to reduce our energy use while we make existing use greener. The difficult reality is that today’s energy troubles can be solved by neither reduced consumption nor nuclear adoption alone. A concerted policy that combines the two efforts is our only viable option.

Mingming Feng, CC’14, has not decided upon a major, but she is looking into Political Science or History. She can be reached at mf2719@ columbia.edu.

Illustration by Ian Marshall

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BEHIND THE BURQA BANS Natavism Gains Ground in Europe

By Andrew Godinich

“I don’t want the country of my grandchildren and great-grandchildren to be largely Muslim, or for Turkish or Arabic to be spoken in large areas, that women will wear headscarves and the daily rhythm is set by the call of the muezzin. If I want to experience that, I can just take a vacation in the Orient.” Enter Thilo Sarrazin, a former member of the German central bank and the author of the 2010 “Deutschland schafft sich ab” (Germany Does Away With Itself). His book, replete with “facts” showing how Turkish immigrants are destroying the fabric of German society and “statistics” proving their intellectual inferiority, is just one striking example of a phenomenon that has swept across Western Europe: the spectacular resurgence of nativism. Sarrazin paints a picture of a Germany fighting to preserve a grand national heritage against a modern-day Ottoman invasion of barbarian infidels. He is not alone. Europe, the proud home of classical liberalism, has seen its people and leaders embrace a hard-line nativist stance against minority groups.

What is more surprising than Sarrazin’s provocative rhetoric is its widespread acceptance and popularity; His book is, as of this writing, number one on Germany’s bestseller list. Sarrazin’s book is disturbingly popular for a nation with strong anti-hate speech laws and vivid memories of the Holocaust and past racial and religious tensions. As one might anticipate, the publication has generated a storm of controversy at home and abroad. In the late summer of 2010, German Chancellor Angela Merkel condemned the book’s remarks and joined the chorus of (largely non-German) voices calling for Sarrazin’s resignation. For a moment, it seemed as if Europe would not stand for such backwards rhetoric from such

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a high-powered politician. But in a surprise twist, it was Merkel who found herself the target of international condemnation just weeks later for her ringing declaration that “[in Germany] multiculturalism has failed.”

Germany’s leaders are not soloists in this chorus of jingoist rhetoric: the leaders of France, the United Kingdom, Italy, Sweden and the Netherlands have all expressed similar nativist sentiments. This represents a marked departure from the idyllic progressive toleration often touted by the Old World.

Anti-immigrant and pro-nativist speech has become part of the everyday in western European politics.

The ubiquitous yet oft-dismissed Dutch politician Geert Wilders became a surprise kingmaker in the Netherlands after last year’s snap elections, in spite (or because) of his inflammatory rhetoric claiming that Islam is “the ideology of a retarded culture.” His claims have landed him in some legal troubles, but his position in the Dutch government is secure, and that of his young Party for Freedom (six years old and the third-largest player in the Dutch Parliament).

Marine Le Pen, who recently assumed the mantle of France’s National Front from her father (a man who publicly doubted the authenticity of the Holocaust), leads incumbent Nicolas Sarkozy in polling for next year’s presidential race. Recent photo ops for Marine have included a visit to a repatriation center to lecture soon-to-be deported North Africans on French values. Le Pen’s action cuts to the core of the issue: the belief that these immigrants are not only illegal but also unEuropean. As such, they must be instructed in “French” values to assimilate into French society and abandon the un-European ideals of their native cultures.

Even the cozy Scandinavian welfare states are not immune: Sweden saw the Sverigedemokraterna, a party rooted in opposition to immigration, take a high of 20 seats in the most recent parliament.

The list goes on and on. Far-right and anti-immigration parties, once doomed to languish on the fringes of a societies that condemned their radical views, have seen a meteoric rise in their political fortunes.

Furthermore, this rise has happened virtually overnight, rapidly moving to the mainstream of political discourse. Coupled with a traditional backlash against outsiders in times of economic hardship—recall Weimar Germany’s Jews or Italy’s Albanians—where immigrant groups are characterized as relying on welfare (pilfering hardworking Europeans’ tax dollars) and stealing “European” jobs, nativist sentiment has been magnified and translated into political power.

This has been readily apparent both in recent political discourse and at the polls.

One German TV survey (N-TV) found that 95 percent of its respondents agreed with the arguments expressed in Sarrazin’s book. But this many Germans did not spontaneously coalesce around the idea that “Islam is detrimental to German society.” The popularity of Sarrazin’s rhetoric reflects a deep-seated distrust for non-German cultures and speaks to a reflexive need to reaffirm a national identity in the midst of a perceived cultural onslaught by “non-European” groups. To varying degrees, this national identity has been equated with race. In short, western Europe is having an identity crisis.

Unfortunately, governments are responding to this crisis not by increased inclusivity but rather by a militant defense of the idea of a “western Christian” Europe, a Europe that is

[features] quietly disappearing.

In the words of the German Interior Minister Hans-Peter Friedrich, Germany confirms to the “western Christian origin of our culture.” In his view, the country has little room for those who choose to follow practices outside the pervading “western Christian” milieu. This was the feeling echoed by Chancellor Merkel in her recent condemnation of multiculturalism in Germany.

In the US, where the idea of the national melting pot has become part of the national mythos, Merkel’s words seemed ignorant at best and racist at worst. However, Europe has seemingly clasped onto its “Western Christian” identity with a jealous grasp. 2010 saw the French president’s forced deportation of Roma “squatters” from France and the passage of the now infamous burqa ban, which was recently put into effect. Both of those actions were popular domestically— only one legislator voted against the ban in the French National Assembly. February saw British Prime Minister David Cameron echoing Merkel’s comments, stating that “state multiculturalism” was a mistake and advocating “a stronger national identity,” followed by an announcement of increased visa restrictions on foreigners seeking to study in Britain. These leaders have all assumed strong pro-nativist stances that are wellreceived by their respective electorates—69 percent of French surveyed supported the

Roma deportation, and 54 percent agreed that immigration posed a problem for Britain.

To be sure, the racial makeup of these countries is changing quickly. The population of European Muslims will increase by about 35 percent by 2030, a demographic shift that will alter the makeup and feel of Europe as we know it. Given that the “native” European populations have declining birthrates, the Europe of tomorrow will not be the predominately white Christian Europe of yesteryear. Britain, due to its colonial past, already has a sizeable percentage of minorities (albeit not on par with the percentage of minorities extant in the United States).

However, France, Germany and other European countries have only begun to experience the arrival of ethnic minorities en masse relatively recently. The reason for the upsurge in nativist rhetoric must lie in part with this development. Europe is changing, and “native” Europeans are not happy about it.

Similar nativist policies proliferated in American history in the nineteenth century.

Xenophobic immigration parties and laws (such as the Know-Nothing Party and the Ku Klux Klan) were reactions to immigration that challenged the more established AngloProtestant order. However, there are several key differences between the events throughout American history and the contemporary predominance of nativist rhetoric in western Europe.

The firestorm over immigration in Arizona sparked the most recent largescale American dialogue on domestic racial tensions. Although many would characterize the Arizona immigration debacle as racist, Governor Jan Brewer and other proponents of legislation aimed at active deportation by making it a crime not to carry immigration documents at all times explicitly denied a racial basis for the law. Whether or not racism played a role in its passage, the rhetoric used by the law’s proponents denotes a sensitivity towards race issues and a need (nonexistent in European discourse) to avoid explicit racism.

Furthermore, the Arizona debate hinged on illegal immigration, while the European one focuses on all immigration and the assimilation of these groups. Regardless, a federal court ruled that the law unavoidably invited racial bias and struck it down: American sensitivities towards race prevailed. Contrast this with France’s burqa ban, which prohibits face veiling in general, but in practice targets only Muslims. This differentiates the American integrationist dialogue from that occurring in Western Europe, which privileges the preservation of an ethno-cultural national identity.

However, the debate over the alleged “cultural Islamic threat” represented by the socalled “ground zero” mosque and the “Muslim congressional hearings” held earlier this year

by US Representative Peter King (R-NY) have recently challenged America’s position as a

Illustration by Amalia Rinehart, Inked by Anne Park May 2011

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Illustration by Amalia Rinehart

more accepting society than its counterparts across the pond. Like Germany and France, the US is not immune to the politicization of Islamophobia.

Yet the American experience with Islamophobia is distinct from that of the Europeans. Although a majority of Americans opposed the “ground zero mosque,” polls have shown that a still larger majority of Americans (69 percent) would be fine with having a mosque built in their neighborhoods. Beyond that, more Americans today hold positive views of Islam than negative (46 percent compared to 26 percent). Nativist rhetoric does not dominate the debate here. And as for Representative King, his anti-Islamic remarks and hearings represent an isolated case of Islamophobia that was condemned by politicians on both sides of the aisle.

Furthermore, he is just one of 435 members in the House of Representatives.

The American Geert Wilderses and

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Sarrazins have failed to achieve mainstream political prominence. Politicians advocating the superiority and racial of cultural groups do not exist at the highest levels of government today. However, a cursory glance into our recent past shows us that this was not always the case. Something changed. No longer overwhelmingly Northern European and Protestant, the US is now one of the most diverse nations on earth, representing a mindboggling mix of races and religions. This has resulted in a population that is accustomed to diversity, a trait which is itself American.

Virtually every American can trace his or her lineage back to immigrants. This is in stark contrast to the “native” Europeans who have no such immediate migrant roots. While issues of race and cultural superiority in America have boiled over several times in the last century, the unique perspective created

by America’s youth and perpetual immigrant experience has led to fundamentally less angst

and identity crisis than Europeans have shown in the face of the increasing and incredibly diverse immigration of recent years. This is to say that American identity is built on civic principles rather than shared ethnicity and is thus more adaptable to demographic change.

Still, the ethnic homogeneity of Western Europe is changing—huge movements of Muslims and eastern Europeans into the West are challenging traditional perceptions of identity and place. Western Europe is no longer solely the realm of the white Christian.

This state of affairs has resulted in a backlash against immigrants, institutionalized by immigration quotas and nativist rhetoric by prominent politicians—witness the ongoing squabbles within the European Union over who has to deal with the thousands of North African political refugees. This should not come as a surprise. The notion of the nationstate, whereby an ethnic group claims a fixed geographic territory as its sole domain, grew from the roots of European countries—France has always been its paradigm. In essence, nativism is in direct response to perceived “attacks” on the nation-state by growing numbers of non-nationals clinging to foreign ways.

These tendencies are not endemic to Europe. Times of economic or demographic crisis have been shown to exacerbate existing racial tensions. But the demographic changes occurring in Europe will not slow down anytime soon, and it will be vital for the continent to come to terms with its new multiracial composition and the attendant new values of these new citizens. In time, the power of nativism in politics may fade in the face of this increased diversity and contact between natives and immigrants, as it has in America.

However, fears of increased racial tensions will persist for the time being, generating more burqa bans and royalties for bigoted authors. Leading politicians will engage in brash nativist rhetoric for the foreseeable future. The week this publication went to press, the True Finns, an anti-immigration, anti-EU party, grabbed power in Finland, one of Europe’s most politically stable countries.

It would seem that Europe fancies itself the home of progressivism and liberalism, but only so long as those progressives find themselves within a comfortable majority.

Andrew Godinich, CC ’13, majors in sociology and Portuguese studies, because he enjoys disappointing his parents. His secret is tiger’s blood. He can be reached at atg2121@ columbia.edu.

[interview]

THIS IS YOUR LIFE An Interview with Ross Perlin

Right now you are probably

worrying

about how to find an internship.

Or

after

finding one you are stressing over how to make ends meet on a sub-minimum wage salary (or no salary at all). Getting caught up in the angst of it all, it is difficult to step back and ask, “Why is the internship process so miserable? And what does it all mean?� Ross Perlin, author of the first major book to broach the subject, Intern Nation: How to Earn Nothing and Learn Little in the Brave New Economy (new from Verso), sat down with the Political Review to discuss internships and

Illustration by Anne Park

their place in the modern economy.

May 2011

25

Columbia Political Review: Why did you write this book?

Ross Perlin: The project goes back to some extent… I was nervous that I hadn’t had an internship. I was 23 and I hadn’t done it and I knew it was a right of passage that seemingly all of my friends had done. And I took it [an internship] and I spent about four or so months there. It was a pretty banal experience. It was not exciting. It was not deeply troubling. But it kind of slowly dawned on me: I slowly began to wonder why I was doing it… I began to wonder, if I didn’t have that scholarship… would I have been able to do this? And I saw that we were a world unto ourselves… and I just began to wonder about this whole phenomenon.

Where had it stemmed from, why had it become naturalized in our generation to give up your labor for free? At first I was just looking for something to read… and I couldn’t find anything. There’s one article from the 1990s in The Baffler, but otherwise you’re looking at the standard, boring ‘Summer is here! People are doing internships!” piece in USA Today. But nothing substantial, nothing questioning it.

So I decided I would write something and as I began to see the connections to a variety of issues to the changes in educational practices, to global forms of businesses, to other forms of so-called contingent labor like temping and freelancing and all of these things that exploded in the last 30 to 40 years… I felt ‘There’s a book here,’ and that actually internships represented a kind of keyhole through which actually a number of things about our generation and about our economy and society would become clear.

CPR: When you talk about the cases that came up sixteen years ago and last year [court cases by interns against the companies employing them] and some of the recent legislation [promises of a war on internships by President Barack Obama last year], the six-point checklist [a test by the department of labor to determine whether an internship should be paid or unpaid] and things like this, you’ve got to ask: Why wasn’t there a book already? Why did you get to be the lucky guy to pick up the contract to write a piece of pop sociology that should have been written maybe fifteen years ago?

RP: True, ture. Many millions of people have been through unpaid internships at this point. It’s been so naturalized that people don’t even realize that their parents… let alone their grandparents didn’t do this. And so people just took it so much for granted

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and anyone who poked at it a little bit deeper would have been maybe a little mystified, because there’s not a widely accepted definition of what an intern is. There aren’t many good statistics. I ran into that wall when I started research and said, actually there’s not much to go on here, how am I going to do this? So it led naturally to the decision… [that] it was going to be more impressionistic.

One thing was naturally to ask what’s the history of this, and nobody has written what’s the history of this except for knowing that this came from the medical profession in some sense. But… nobody had filled in that intermediate chunk, so it was about drawing out that genealogy and framing the topic. But ultimately that was the most exciting thing about doing this was that you actually set the agenda in some sense, set out what the major questions are and hopefully set up more stuff, prompt people to collect statistics, prompt people to write counterarguments and counter-theses.

CPR: Throughout your book one looks at the statistics that you do bring up and they’re extremely wishy-washy numbers. It begs the question: If it’s in the interest of the people who control these sorts of numbers to keep them very hush hush… how do people dig deeper than that in the future?

RP: The gold standard in terms of statistics about the labor market is to have something tracked by the Bureau of Labor Statistics in D.C. And it’s my hope … that the BLS would take an interest in this and start tracking it.

Even then it’s going to rely on some selfreporting either by interns or by employers and it’s going to require a better definition of intern.

But there is, as you say, some good information that is out there that is not being released—particularly what colleges and employers collect about their own situations…

Even though this is a subject that deeply concerns the academic world, of course there aren’t any academics who research it.

Of course labor studies departments in general are small and getting smaller. But in the process of writing this I met a few students [researching intern labor]… so I think there might be more and more bubbling up.

CPR: But it seems like it’s going to require a big norms change for interns themselves.

Right now there’s a huge incentive for them to not report because of the desperate urge to keep even a really shitty internship. So how do you tackle that … sense of a need to have an internship and that sense of a need to jealously protect what, by means of merit

or by means of connections, you’ve gotten for yourself?

RP: I think it’s true that getting detailed information… is difficult. Just as it was difficult for me to get people to go on the record because students and young people don’t want to alienate these employers when, in some cases, the only thing they’re supposed to get out of the internship at all is a letter of reference of a good recommendation. They don’t want to endanger that. So that deeper data is still going to be hard to get unless you begin to have really protective, rigorous, anonymized surveys… People would be willing to report at least the bare facts: Did you have an internship? Was it paid? What was the situation? But there hasn’t been any kind of effort that’s been well funded enough or widespread enough. Even to have a Yelp of internships or a website of internship reviews would be a huge thing and a number of websites have tried to do this, but it’s all been fragmented and there’s no one place to go.

CPR: One of the huge things… is the transitory nature of internships and especially abuse by start-ups of interns. And that’s got to corner… enough of intern positions through start-up abuse, one-time positions, transitioning or dying companies, things like this—it’d be hard to track that.

RP: The transitory nature of the thing is what makes it particularly hard to study and what makes it particularly hard to organize interns and develop a community of interest around this topic. But a lot of things are like that in today’s economy. There’s a lot more churn in every respect. Companies with very short-term business models that come and go and reform and recombine… and to keep track of it all, to make any sort of larger statements about it is a serious challenge… for anybody.

CPR: This draws us into the … economics of internships. When we talk about how difficult it can be to afford an internship, sometimes having to pay to work, I was thinking about the situation… of different economic brackets where for some it’s really only feasible if they go back and live with their parents. That limits the internships they have access to. It, not even by connections, but by proximity and situation over merit, privileges a certain class of individual. So what, in the long term, does that do to class divides, race divides in America?

RP: If internships are to rise up in public consciousness as a serious question of public

[interview] policy, this has to be the pressing concern. In the US, unfortunately, the focus is still on sob stories of this individual or this kid, or especially on stories of particular abuse, like: this person had to carry their boss’s urine sample to the doctor, this person had to disinfect all the doorknobs. And those stories do capture people’s imagination, but the subtler story is what you’re talking about: increasing social inequality because of internships as one more glass ceiling, one more barrier to entry.

If you’ve made it to college—a significant percentage of young Americans don’t— if you’re at a community college, you’re much less likely to be able to do an internship. And if you’re much less likely to be able to do an internship, you’re much less likely to enter the ranks of the white-collar world.

It’s not that you have to have a white-collar job to survive, but increasingly, as we allow the last vestiges of our manufacturing base to disappear, the white-collar world, it’s definitely where the commanding heights of the economy are. I argue that internships have become this gateway into the white-collar world and, as you say, it usually requires thousands of dollars… to do an unpaid internship just because of the living expenses, just because of the cities where they’re concentrated, not to mention the opportunity costs of not being able to earn money during those hours.

And the other piece of it is that the professions where internships have become completely a requirement or a right of passage that you have to go through—these fields like politics, media, fashion, film, that are hugely influential professions and shape the society. So the composition of those professions, I would argue, is either changing, skewing even more towards more uppermiddle class profiles, or internships… another mechanism by which elites are cementing themselves in these sorts of positions.

CPR: If you were to tackle them [internships] and pull out that little Jenga™ block from the bottom of so many forces of American industry, what happens if all the interns disappear? You think about jobs returning.

But at the same time you wonder what it would cost those companies, what it would mean for small companies, startups, to the whole economy.

RP: That’s a huge question and nobody knows the answer. We’ll have to see what an intern strike would bring or some immediate possibility of enforcement of law. It’s unlikely that internships would disappear overnight … but I do think a consequence would be job creation. There’s no question in my mind that

interns are displacing regular workers and to some extent shooting themselves in the foot because in particular the people who are displaced would be entry-level employees. I do think that students after graduating would find more entry-level jobs available to them [if internships vanished].

On the other hand, would some capacity and work just disappear? Absolutely. I think the number of firms, companies, organizations that would just fold would be pretty small. But they would either have to make the hires, or in some cases their capacities would just be reduced. Which wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing because some of these organizations are trying to use interns to bat above their weight. But … your activities should probably reflect you weight. In some sense it would restore a certain amount of efficiency and honesty to certain sectors.

I tend to think that internships involve a lot of waste—waste of people’s time, waste of an opportunity also, and that… any organization has money on the line when they’re paying somebody. They’re more likely to make efficient use of that [person]. Likewise people, when they’re being paid, they’re much more likely to value their own work.

They’re much more likely to be invested in what’s going on. Economies that rely on substantial amounts of unpaid labor or barely paid labor are rife with inefficiency and rife with a kind of dispirited feeling.

CPR: One thing that you’ve been getting at throughout here is that there’s a huge trend in the new economy towards blurred lines… between definitions of what you do, where you work, what your mission is. You’re calling in a way for a move back towards firm definitions and delineations [defining internships and enforcing those strict definitions]—sort of beating ceaselessly back against the current in many ways. How do you convince people to actually go in for that?

RP: I’m a New Dealer, personally. For me, the high point in American political history comes in the 1930s and comes with the rationalization and the humanization of working conditions in America and the great rise of the middle class that comes after that. And it’s true—I think there’s an old-fashioned impulse in me that rebels against the in some ways complete craziness and complete disorganization of this brave new economy… in which everything is free form and should be unregulated and wild. There’s a lot of startups, even the idea of the career beings to dissolve, there’s no regular employment and all that stuff is seen to erode and everybody is just moving from project to project: to some

extent that does call for new ideas.

In Europe there’s that idea of ‘flex security,’ that neologism of the idea of actually having security within flexibility, that the role of governments can be to help manage the flexibility that is such an important component of the new economy. By tiding people over as they’re between projects if everything is abut going from project to project. Reconstituting the social safety net for the kind of churn that we have today. But to some extent I still think that the old models still do apply in some ways and the ideals of standard employment, of a nine to five, of staying with an organization or a firm for a substantial period of time and even having a single career ark—not only do I think those things can be good for society overall for a general sense of social stability and a general sense of social equality, but I also think that a lot of what are touted as massive, impersonal economic shifts are companies trying to save a buck, or they’re excuses.

One classic example is: if you look at the claims of companies you would see, ‘Wow, contracting is booming, there are so many independent contractors now, that’s a feature of our economy.’ But the federal government has found that it’s mostly a massive tax dodge, that 30 percent of American companies (I think is the statistic) were misclassifying regular workers who work for their companies … purposefully as independent contractors for tax purposes and for purposes of paying for healthcare and things like that.

It’s not that the old model has totally disappeared. It’s not that all of that was totally irrelevant necessarily. It’s that it’s been in the interest of companies to proclaim all of this flexibility and all of these new changes to save money.

CPR: You think about some of the pressure that would be put on any attempt to define what an intern is. There will have to be exceptions to the definition—things that approximate an apprenticeship or under certain situations might not need to be paid. But how do you create a definition that can be flexible, but won’t be swiss-cheesed full of loopholes that can be manipulated?

RP: I don’t know. Although I see the benefits of trying to forge a definition—certainly the benefits of trying to make this a public policy issue, of trying to track it—it could… trigger a huge fight between the different interested parties. To me the six-point test, even though it’s from the 1940s, in many ways can still apply. The basic sense that, if this is really about training… then that—not paying May 2011

27

that for that delimited period of time—I can see that in some cases, and that’s what the original Supreme Court case was about.

Otherwise… interns are workers. Yes, it’s clearly a category of young worker, it’s a transitional period, but… part of what I try to do in the book, even in the language of the book is reinforce that interns are workers. They’re working, and they need to be seen as such instead of being seen as students, or flunkies, or minions, or just being almost invisible.

What I would like to see happen is for people to have a greater consciousness of what work product is and interns as workers.

CPR: We’re talking about a difficult issue that’s just in its infancy, so it’s difficult to talk about a long game, or even first steps. But if you did have to name a first step, if you had to name where we go from here, further study aside … what’s the first big step?

RP: [Long pause] The most important step— well, I’ll give two … but it’s going to take time.

A change in mentality, and maybe it takes time, maybe it involves going back in time, maybe forward—is to reestablish the basic equation that work brings wages. That mentality has to be reestablished.

In the meantime, probably the first concrete step is enforcement of the existing law.

I think it’s generally adequate enough—this is a controversial point. I think that the Department of Labor, probably with a relatively small number of high-profile cases… or just by being a little more active, just doing a little bit, could spook some of the worst offenders out of doing what they do. Even just a year ago… I know of companies that then changed to paid internships as a result [of slightly increased efforts]. They saw something in the New York Times, they heard that the government might do something, the law came in front of some people and they said, ‘Wow, we’re a multi-billion dollar company, we’re not even paying minimum wage. And if this got out there could really be some trouble. And really this is not a big deal.

It costs us almost nothing. And this is a silly risk we’re taking.’ So I think even that was enough to prompt a little bit of movement.

Even if the Department of Labor took a little more activist posture, that would be a very important first step and would help change the culture.

CPR: There was a good story from, I think she was an assistant back when that meant something more than just doing paper work, and she was at a publishing house. And they had her read manuscripts now and then and

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she read a manuscript and saved it from the trash pile and fought for it in meetings and got her way and it turned out to be One Flew over the Coocoo’s Nest. You’ve got to imagine that by avoiding these training aspects and focusing in on having this huge demarcation between who’s a worker and who’s doing menial internship work… there’s a loss that might transfer into profit losses for companies.

RP: I think there’s a very strong business case for paid internships as opposed to unpaid. But that’s actually an aspect I hadn’t really thought about. It’d be difficult to quantify, but there’s probably something to it. On the other hand, interns are sometimes listened to and do sometimes make that kind of contribution. Interns have been at the head of bringing companies into social media. As that has become a huge deal, what’s your social media strategy … I’m a bit of a skeptic now of all that, but I think interns get sort of generationally pegged.

In any case I think the business case for paid interns is strong. You’re drawing from a wider applicant pool. They’re more likely to have those ideas. They’re more likely to be able to do those fantastic things because they’re not worried about how they’re going to support themselves and they’re not the boss’s nephew or whatever. It’s more likely to be a meritocratic system where you’re getting serious, good work out of people. [In an unpaid model] you just try to squeeze whatever you can out of them while you can because it’s an unsustainable model, whereas in a good paid internship program you can expect real boons coming out of it.

CPR: Let’s talk quickly about the connections versus meritocratic issue. It’s a slightly different topic because even if you tackle definitions of internships, even if you tackle fair pay for interns, you still have a potentially serious bias in hiring practices to handle.

RP: It just occurred to me about first steps, arguably the government itself could look at its own internship program. 50 percent are unpaid. The double standard is crazy…

What’s most egregious there is that Congress has an exemption to the Fair Labor Standards Act, essentially, for its interns.

But … the reason that that just occurred to me, because you were asking about connections. Just taking government again for a second, there are policies … that government has to follow certain fair hiring practices…

Relatively, hiring of government jobs is based on open hiring and meritocratic deci-

sions in a routinized kind of way. Do that for internships as well.

Everything else in government we expect some transparency. Government internships, forget about it… Generally, the standards for interns are low or nonexistent in terms of fair hiring practices and transparent practices. I’m not such an idealist that I believe connections will go away. I’d just like to see the role of connections in intern hiring more or less the same level of what it is for job hiring instead of off the charts much worse.

And I think that also is a culture change, because people just thing, an internship, it’s informal. People have said this kind of thing to me, people will just say, ‘I can get you an internship.’ They wouldn’t say that about a job, it would sound a little too, just …

CPR: Mafioso?

RP: Mafioso. But for an internship… all we need is a desk, we’ll just stick you at a desk and nobody needs to know. And you’d be surprised at the companies where this goes on, major companies that even have internship programs. People just feel… ‘I can just do my own little intern fiefdom here.’ So there’s also a culture change involved. But connections are not going to go away completely. But internships have been a favored vector for the use of connections. That’s partly why they’ve thrived so much. It’s part of what makes it… a glass ceiling.

CPR: You getting any flack for the book?

RP: To my surprise it’s come more from the academy, A lot of businesses just hide and they say, ‘Oh no, we’re doing a good job.’ But schools feel that this is their turf… they’ve got it under control, they’re ensuring a good experience, whereas my message is: The system is… substantially dysfunctional. And internships have grown beyond campus and represent a wider issue that we all need to have a stake in. It’s not simply their turf.

And I’ve gotten some bad reviews from people who interpret it as a right-left issue.

The book is with a left-wing press and it’s a book about labor. Even to raise the issue of labor is considered a crazy, Marxist war cry in this atmosphere. I think this is something that should be agreed upon across the political spectrum: you should be paid for work.

To me that’s just a core principle. But to some extent, especially if you begin to talk about the Fair Labor Standards Act and having the Department of Labor involved, it then can become a right-left issue.

[modest proposal]

GOODBYE, FAREWELL AND AMEN

Assessing the Case for a U.S. Withdrawal from South Korea

By Jake Shaner

Illustration by Anne Park

The relative peace that has followed the Korean War ended with an explosion in March of last year, when North Korea torpedoed a South Korean naval ship.

Eight months later, the North Korean military shelled a South Korean island on the border, claiming four lives. These attacks prompted discussions of war between the two nations for the first time in almost fifty years, a war that would inevitably involve the 28,000 US soldiers stationed in South Korea to deter North Korean aggression. American policy experts have moved beyond the discussion of how many more soldiers or airplanes to give our Korean ally. Instead, there has been a serious conversation over whether our military presence in South Korea should be reduced and whether we should be there at all. While the fears of North Korean aggression are legitimate, the US’s simplistic military strategy is ultimately ineffective and even counterproductive in deterring that aggression.

The history of the United States military presence in South Korea dates back to the end of World War II. After the occupation of Korea by the Japanese military ended, the United States and the Soviet Union decided to divide the Korean peninsula in half, with the Soviets taking the northern half and the United States the southern half. In less than ten years, the Korean states were at war with each other, quickly pulling the United States and China into the conflict. Though the fighting ended in 1953, the United States kept as many as 40,000 combat troops in South Korea. The US military has begun to withdraw many of its forces in an attempt to transition from a conventional, March May 2011

29

static military force to a more flexible, mobile one, reducing the number of combat troops in South Korea to 28,000.

However, the North Korean attack on the South Korean navy March of last year has halted the withdrawal of US forces for the foreseeable future.

Granted, the attacks last year were not significant and did not spark an allout conflict. However, when considered in conjunction with the failing health of Kim Jong-il and the pressure of neverending international economic sanctions, the attacks can be read as the beginnings of a growing hostility by the North Korean government, desperately trying to stay in power despite the structural flaws that paralyze its economy. What is more, according to Andrew Scobell and John Sanford, a research professor at the Strategic Studies Institute and a US Navy Captain, respectively, since the beginning of the Korean War, North Korea’s primary strategic goal has always been reunification under a communist government. The economic hardships that North Korea currently faces, in conjunction with the ideological differences of the two governments, make a peaceful reunification nearly impossible.

This leaves hostile coercion as the more plausible strategy for reunification.

According to Peter Huessy, a senior defense associate at the National Defense University Foundation, the presence of US troops prevents North Korean forces from invading and conquering Seoul, forcing surrender and the reunification of the two Koreas. However, the two attacks on South Korea last year question the extent to which American soldiers are effectively preventing North Korean aggression.

Unfortunately, the conventional deterrence theory that the US is employing through stationing troops on the ground has become muddied after the end of the Cold War. According to C. Dale Walton, a lecturer in international relations at the University of Reading, deterrence theory has become far too simple in a post-Cold War era. The military enemies of the United States are no longer superpowers with populations and economies to worry about but instead are dictators who only care about staying in power regardless ofr the costs. He specifically mentions Kim Jongil and highlights his slightly schizophrenic leadership style as a prime example of individuals who do not follow the rational-

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actor theory at the crux of Cold-War deterrence strategy. In 2005, North Korea entered the Six-Party Talks, which involve the US and China, agreeing to cease its nuclear development in exchange for economic aid and political concessions.

Four years later, it fired off a test rocket towards Japan and officially withdrew from the Six-Party Talks. In response, the US has cut off nearly all of its aid to North Korea and led the effort to impose tougher economic sanctions on the nation. Despite the cessation of aid, strengthening of sanctions and outcry of the international community, Kim remains insistent on developing a nuclear arsenal.

North Korea’s most threatening weapon, by far, is its nuclear program.

The current U.S. military presence has proved counterproductive in pressuring North Korea to dismantle its program.

Progress in the Six-Party-talks has been stalled for the last two years, due mainly to the reluctance of China, the only real ally of North Korea, to pressure North Korea to disassemble its nuclear program.

Since China is essential for successful negotiations, the most effective way to pressure North Korea would be to make concessions to the Chinese in return for a stronger hand in dealing with North Korea.

Doug Bandow, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute who has written extensively on North Korean issues, argues that the best concession the U.S. could make to China would be to remove their soldiers from South Korea. China currently sees the US military presence as a potential threat to their regional primacy, as should North Korea collapse, the US would probably send troops in with South Korean forces to stabilize North Korea should the state collapse. Were the United States to withdraw their soldiers, there would be no American soldiers within 100 miles of the Chinese border, sending a signal that the US intends no military harm to the Chinese homeland. This concession might give the US leverage to convince China to push for a shutdown of the North Korean nuclear program. Furthermore, if there is no potential for an invasion by joint U.S.South Korean forces, there is a strong possibility that North Korea would cave to any Chinese pressure to dismantle their nuclear program, as the absence of US troops would lessen the need for a nuclear deterrent.

Advocates of US military presence in

South Korea state that even with US troops gone, there is still the possibility of a North Korean invasion which, they argue, would most likely mean a Northern victory. The North Korean military is massive: their conventional forces compose the fourth largest army in the world, with over forty percent of their population serving in either the conventional military or some sort of paramilitary force. Most estimates put the North Korean ground forces at 1.1 million soldiers, whereas the South Korean ground forces number at about 680,000 troops.

Nevertheless, South Korea has many structural advantages should a war break out. Most importantly, its economy is a world powerhouse: if they wished, they could spend enough money on defense to eclipse the entire North Korean GDP. In addition, the ties that the south has forged throughout East Asia mean that they would receive support from the international community if a war breaks out, whereas North Korea would have to rely solely on their own nation, as the diplomatic cables leaked by Wikileaks show that China would likely not support North Korea if their regime falls. Additionally, according to Colonel Michael Davino of the US Army, the quality of the South Korean military intelligence and air forces would be more than enough to compensate for the comparatively fewer ground soldiers that they possess.

Conventional deterrence strategies may have had some success for the United States during the Cold War, but modern military threats are less like Nikita Khruschev and more like Muammar Gadhafi. In the post-Cold War era, the United States needs to re-examine its current strategy of highly populated permanent bases stationed in allied countries across the globe and decide if it is really deterring conflicts and providing necessary security measures. Although the drawdown of troops is momentarily halted due to recent attacks, the very presence of US troops may be hurting our goal of deterring North Korean advances and preserving regional stability. America should restart troops withdrawals until the last American soldier has left the Korean peninsula.

Jake Shaner, CC ’14, will likely major in philosophy and English. He can be contacted at rjs2176@columbia.edu

Call for Pitches:

October 2011 Issue The Columbia Political Review will be accepting pitches throughout the summer for the next year’s first issue. If you feel the itch or whim to write a piece for CPR in the coming year, please read on!

Any undergraduate student at the University is welcome to submit his/her idea(s) for an article. We encourage everyone, no matter their backgrounds in writing or politics, to submit a pitch if they feel passionately about a topic.

We will be accepting ideas for articles throughout the coming months—you may submit any and all pitches that come to your mind up until 11:59 PM on Friday, September 16, 2011.

Please e-mail your article ideas to pitches.cpreview@gmail.com You may submit multiple pitches. We look forward to seeing your ideas!

PITCH INSTRUCTIONS To submit a pitch for consideration, please send the following: 1. Your name, school, year, and phone number.

2. One or two sentences explaining what you want to write about and why. What is your idea, your view? Please tell us what you intend to argue—be clear and concise.

This can be just a thought that you’ve been kicking around for some time—our editorial staff will help you develop that idea into a feature article you can be proud of.

3. One or two more sentences expanding upon your idea. How do you intend to defend your opinion? How is it unique and why will it be of interest to a broad readership?

CPR has an active website for pieces that are either too short or cannot fit to the magazine’s editorial deadline. So do not worry about the length of your pitch, or the piece it may become, or your time constraints—send us your ideas and we will work with you to figure out where and how your thoughts can best turn into an article.

If you are interested in doing illustrations or photography for CPR, please send an e-mail with the subject line “Art Submission.” If you have any questions about the pitching process, the magazine, or even just the world in general, do not hesitate to e-mail us.

May 2011

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