BRINGING LIGHT TO MILITARY MISCONDUCT

Although sexual harassment and assault has historically been an issue for the U.S. Military, the recent murder of Specialist Vanessa Guillen is causing many to reevalute how these issues are being handled at an institutional level.

WORDS BY BRANDON WHEELOCK | ILLUSTRATION BY AMANDA O’BRIEN

Content Warning: Story contains content involving sexual violence and assault

On June 30, 2020, entombed in concrete and scattered under the banks of a small river near Fort Hood, Texas, Spc. Vanessa Guillen was finally found after a two-month search.

Months before her death and disappearance, Guillen told her family she had been sexually harassed by a superior at her post. Her mother had urged her to report, but for fear of reprisal, Guillen declined to do so. She was later murdered—bludgeoned to death in her own place of work with a hammer by a supervisor.

Guillen’s murder was said to be shocking, horrifying, and beyond comprehension by Fort Hood command leadership and much of Congress. For those congresspeople, these “shocking” reports should not be news. It’s long been reported that nearly one-third of all female servicemembers have reported facing sexual harassment, 25% of women have been diagnosed with Military Sexual Trauma in relation to sexual harassment and assault while serving, and that for at least three decades, the number one reason women across the entirety of the Department of Defense give for not reporting a case of sexual harassment or assault is command reprisal or retaliation.

The Army and the rest of the DOD have made exceptional strides within the ranks over the years to prevent members from facing sexual harassment or assault. The DOD has implemented required annual prevention and response training and set up focus groups, and service members have been encouraged to participate in the conversation on prevention and response more than at any time in American military history.

The results of these conversations show that there is far more to be desired among its members, regardless of DOD initiatives. Among the lower ranks—where personnel eat, live, and sleep within the same facilities as each other day in and day out—the attitudes toward sexual harassment become less grave or noticed by others eager to turn a blind eye to disruptions of any kind that

would make military life even harder. Worst yet are the attitudes taken toward the victims.

The mandated annual Pentagon report by the Office of People Analytics explains how power dynamics in the military play a significant role in how safe a servicemember feels in their units. Lower-level leaders often fail to take the appropriate action, if they act at all, when addressing concerns that junior enlisted service members bring to their commands. According to the focus groups in the reports, junior officers and mid-ranking staffnoncommissioned officers will often play down the seriousness of harassment, equating it to “good-natured” fun.

Groups have also insisted that raising concerns about sexual misconduct when there is none is the same as a female service member attempting to ruin another’s career out of spite or vengefulness for poor performance. The blame is often shifted back on the accuser, with perpetrators of assault or harassment claiming it is the victim playing the role of manipulative abuser.

As retaliation is a very real threat from leaders at risk of losing their careers, the DOD still has published mandates requiring the military branches to protect victims. Maj. Katherine Headley, the director of public affairs for the Iowa National Guard, said there are several protective policies in place.

“There is a reprisal mitigation policy that is in place: when a soldier files a complaint of discrimination or harassment, a Retaliation Reprisal Plan is initiated by the commander to protect the soldier and any witnesses to the complaint,” Headley said. “There is also a discussion on retaliation protections during annual [equal opportunity] training.”

The Retaliation Reprisal Plan may include protections against responses from a superior such as extra work, threats, and unusual/previously unassigned duties.

“A soldier can also be assisted in obtaining a Military Protective Order and a command can determine if the reporting soldier desires to be transferred to another unit or the reported offender can be moved to another unit,” Headley said.

These programs only work, however, if the command is made aware of sexual harassment in the first place, and then subsequent threats of reprisal. This, the OPA report indicates, is the largest hurdle. Servicemembers complain largely that junior leaders encouraged a culture of allowing sexual harassment, and in turn discouraged taking sexual harassment complaints seriously.

Kendy Hakeman, the Military Sexual Trauma coordinator with the Iowa Veterans Affairs Central Iowa Health Care System, explains how toxic work environments, and the commanders’ blind eyes within them, have devastated survivors of MST postmilitary service.

“There are situations where people are harassed on a daily basis, and not only are they unaware if the situation will turn into something physical, but you just can’t go in and do your normal job,” Hakeman said.

Survivors express threats of coercion, a concern mirrored by the OPA’s report, and even violent repercussions for refusal to consent to sexual harassment and activity within small-units.

“Every day they know they’re going to go to work and meet people that expose them to pornography … or will say awful, disgusting things to them every day and make jokes around them,” Hakeman said. “It’s not okay. Work is supposed to be a safe place for people.”

Coupled with the scarce, non-concrete evidence that comes from reported cases, this misogynistic narrative has become exceedingly commonplace. It is also one tolerated, and now feared, by male servicemembers, which further drives leaders to take harassment reports with a grain of salt.

In the case of Guillen, this culture was reportedly the exact reason she did not come forward with sexual harassment complaints against her supervisor. In the weeks prior to her disappearance, Guillen had expressed to her mother that remaining quiet would be safer than potentially invoking her command’s wrath.

In the same time frame as her murder, the DOD reported a 3% increase in annual sexual assault reporting. Considering that the military allows servicemembers to make restricted reports, or reports that allow the victim medical and command aid but do not initiate a criminal investigation, it is not known whether the amount of crime increased as well. For those who have faced MST or harassment while in the service, Hakeman adamantly stressed a message of hope for survivors. “Having people know this is YES, IT IS HARD WORK, BUT SIMPLY REACHING OUT AND “ important,” Hakeman ASKING FOR HELP IS said. “Yes, it is hard SUCH A BETTER THING work, but simply reaching out and TO DO THAN THINK WE asking for help is such CANNOT HELP a better thing to do KENDY HAKEMAN, MILITARY SEXUAL TRAUMA COORDINATOR FOR than think we cannot IOWA VETERANS AFFAIRS CENTRAL IOWA HEALTH CARE SYSTEM help. Yes, if people engage, there is success [in recovery.]”

Despite congressional inquiries, increased training, and revisions to existing policy, the OPA estimates that until junior leaders are held accountable for encouraging cultures of sexual harassment to exist, sexual harassment and assault rates will likely continue to remain excruciatingly high.

INTERNATIONAL INTERNATIONAL COVID-19 RESPONSES

Countries around the world have met COVID-19’s spread with a variety of measures, and some have produced better results than others.

WORDS BY SOPHIE GLOO | ILLUSTRATION BY AMANDA O’BRIEN

The World Health Organization classified the global spread of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) as a pandemic on March 11, 2020. This launched a collaborative response effort from countries around the world to address the spread of the virus on a global scale. More than a year later, the WHO has reported more than 122 million confirmed cases of COVID-19 and close to 3 million deaths internationally. The last year has fostered debate around how to best respond to the ongoing pandemic.

Today, it is clear that strict and timely adherence to international guidelines and the implementation of country-specific guidelines have proven to be the most effective strategies in managing COVID-19 at both a national and international level.

In January 2020, WHO released a comprehensive set of guidelines that focused largely on infection prevention and control in an effort to reduce the spread of the virus. These guidelines encouraged governments to enforce preventative measures such as “physical distancing, wearing a mask, keeping rooms well ventilated, avoiding crowds, cleaning … hands, and coughing into a bent elbow or tissue.” Each country, in turn, developed its own response plan for addressing the pandemic based on the guidelines outlined by WHO.

However, some countries were more proactive in their response than others. Countries like Australia and China were swift to enforce and follow WHO guidelines, even implementing their own country-specific guidelines early on in the pandemic. In contrast, countries like the U.S. and the U.K. responded to the coronavirus outbreak with less urgency, taking longer to carry out WHO guidelines, and failed to enact their own guidelines when case numbers first began to increase.

Data for the number of positive coronavirus cases by country, as reported by WHO, shows a notable relationship between lower case numbers and countries where governments responded swiftly and enforced strict adherence to pandemic guidelines. The opposite is true for those countries that took a more laissez-faire approach to their pandemic response and were much slower in instituting country-specific guidelines.

A prime example of proactive pandemic response is Australia. Australia is one of the few countries that was able to craft a quick and effective pandemic response, which has led to a dramatic reduction in the nation’s overall number of positive cases. The Australian Department of Health focused its COVID-19 response on isolating virus outbreaks so as to minimize the number of new cases. In an effort to reduce the spread of the virus, the country enforced restrictions on both international and domestic travel and implemented one of the tightest government-mandated national lockdowns in the world.

While the country’s willingness to adhere to WHO guidelines has certainly played a role in its successful pandemic response, Australia has been able to keep its case numbers low and begin the slow return to life before COVID-19 because of the strict and immediate enforcement of a country-specific response plan at the beginning of the pandemic.

Another country that took a proactive approach in its response to COVID-19 is China. It is hard to get a clear understanding of what exactly China did in the early stages of its pandemic response because of heavy censorship from the Chinese government; however, the country’s response was strict, fast, and effective in its enforcement. China was the first country to be hit by the pandemic after the first reported case of COVID-19 was discovered in the Chinese city of Wuhan. Because of this, the country’s response plan was instituted almost immediately, focusing its response on containing the virus in Wuhan and its nearby cities.

The Chinese government moved to completely isolate the city, closing airports, suspending public transportation, and instituting strict quarantine measures in a lockdown. Contact tracing and outbreak containment made up the bulk of China’s early pandemic response. As the virus spread, the country sought to address longterm prevention measures and apply its response plan on a national scale. Like Australia, the speed and effectiveness of China’s initial pandemic response helped drastically reduce the country’s number of positive coronavirus cases.

Unlike the proactive pandemic responses from China and Australia, the U.S. serves as an example of a country that did not respond well to the pandemic, and is still feeling the consequences of its poor response. According to WHO, the U.S. currently leads

the world in its number of confirmed coronavirus cases by a landslide, with over 30 million confirmed cases. One of the biggest issues with the U.S. government’s pandemic response was that it was slow in its implementation of country-specific guidelines. It was also not particularly strict in its enforcement once it did adopt its own guidelines.

Compared to the lockdowns in China and Australia, the U.S. was much more lax in its measures and did not enforce these measures for an extended period of time. Enforcement of pandemic guidelines was largely left up to individual states, making the country’s overall response even messier because there was so much inconsistency. Some states enforced mandatory mask mandates and quarantine guidelines before things got worse, while others waited months before instituting any sort of official mandates. Like China, the U.S. focused on contact tracing. But unlike Australia, there was never any effort to restrict interstate travel, causing national case numbers to skyrocket and making it difficult to contain virus outbreaks. On top of all of this, the issue of COVID-19 in the U.S. was, and continues to be, highly politicized, which has complicated the country’s pandemic response significantly.

Like the U.S., the U.K. had a less-than-ideal pandemic response, and it continues to struggle because its initial response was handled so poorly. The biggest issue with the U.K.’s COVID-19 response was that there was very little government enforcement. The U.K. outlined restrictions for international travel and encouraged people to wear masks in public and stay at home, but there was no effort to enforce any strict national lockdown measures until after case numbers began to increase.

“[The government] said that you would be fined for doing certain things like grocery shopping with more than two people or crossing the borders,” said Finlay Kelly, a college student from Nottingham, England. “But I don’t think there was ever any follow up for those who broke the rules. BUT THE RESPONSE ALWAYS FELT TOO LATE AND TOO SLOW, WHICH “ Restrictions haven’t IS WHY I THINK THE ever been consistent, VIRUS HIT US SO HARD and I personally do FINLAY KELLY, STUDENT not believe that they have ever been ‘strictly enforced.’”

When the U.K. finally did enforce a mandatory lockdown, Kelly said the government was quick to relax these measures, leading to a spike in positive case numbers.

“If we had just done the lockdown correctly and kept at it the first time, I think we could have done what New Zealand and Australia did, seeing as we’re also on an island,” Kelly said. “But the response always felt too late and too slow, which is why I think the virus hit us so hard.”

Failure to institute a stringent pandemic response early on has forced the U.K. to implement lockdown measures three separate times. As a result, the U.K. has had multiple waves of cases, which make up the majority of its 4 million reported positive case numbers. The U.K. is currently still in its third lockdown as of April 16, and according to Boris Johnson, restrictions are set to be lifted in June if the case numbers are low enough.

Pandemics are inevitable, but there are things that can be done in order to prepare for them ahead of time, reduce their spread, and save lives. The varied international responses to COVID-19 serve as examples of how pandemic responses should and shouldn’t be handled moving forward. This past year has highlighted how a country’s failure to address a pandemic early on, coupled with a lack of strict and consistent government enforcement, can have a deadly impact. It has also demonstrated just how important it is for countries to respond with speed and stringency in order to mitigate issues before they worsen, which is an essential part of an effective pandemic response. For more information regarding the international response to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, visit the World Health Organization website at www.who.int/.

Photo taken byHtin Linn Aye.Creative Commons THE UNFOLDING Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.

HUMANITARIAN CRISIS IN MYANMAR

After a long history of military coups, the Rohingya crisis, and possible intervention, how has Myanmar taken center stage internationally?

WORDS BY KIARA FISH | DESIGN BY LILA JOHNSON

In February 2021, Myanmar took international headlines by force when a military-backed coup foiled Myanmar’s shortlived experiment with democracy. To understand the significance of this moment, it is important to understand the history of Myanmar. Once a British colony that gained independence in 1948, what was then known as Burma formed itself as a parliamentary democracy. This was short-lived: in 1962, Gen. Ne Win led a military-backed coup and seized power for nearly 30 years until 1988.

Burma found itself embracing isolationist policies that were detrimental to its economy, leading to the widespread participation of its citizens in black market operations. In response to deteriorating economic conditions, students began kicking off protests, which were met with violent force. In 1988, 3,000 protestors were killed and many more were displaced. Following these events, Ne Win stepped down from power in 1989, and the new military regime changed its name from the Union of Burma to the Union of Myanmar. The reason for the name change came from the association of Burma with the Burman ethnic majority—the name Myanmar was found to be more inclusive.

Saffron Revolution & A New Government

In 2007, a combination of factors led to tensions boiling over and the Saffron Revolution, an event coined for the saffroncolored robes worn by Buddhist monks who participated, to begin. There are many reasons for the revolution—one being a price hike in fuel. Following these protests, shifts in Myanmar occurred. In 2008, a new constitution pushed forward by the military junta gave the military power even under civilian rule. This constitution is still in effect today, even after the military junta unexpectedly dissolved in 2011. The 2011 dissolution led to Prime Minister Thein Sein becoming president and set the stage for Aung San Suu Kyi to eventually take power.

Suu Kyi is most known for becoming a popular figure who resisted the military junta in power. After being arrested for participating in the protests, she was placed on house arrest for over 15 years, finally securing freedom in 2010. A notable

achievement came in the form of securing the Nobel Peace Prize while still confined to her home. Suu Kyi has received criticism and backlash for appeasing the military faction of her government by downplaying the violent mistreatment of its Rohingya minority population. The International Court of Justice, a top UN Court, ruled that the Rohingya have suffered at the hands of an ethnic genocide.

Rohingya Crisis

In order to understand the current humanitarian crisis unfolding in Myanmar, it is important to understand the country’s unique ethnic makeup. Iowa’s United Nations Cedar Valley Chapter President Ed Gallagher shed some light on the diverse ethnic make-up of Myanmar. He explained that many of the refugees from Myanmar who live in Waterloo practice Christianity. According to the Council of Foreign Relation’s data collection, 68% of the country is made up of “Burman’’ peoples and they occupy the top tier of Myanmar’s society, including ranking members of the military. 9% of the population is Shan, 7% Karen, 4% Rakhine, 3% Chinese, 2% Mon, 2% Indian, and 5% other. This is important, as citizenship is largely based upon ethnicity, and these ethnic divides have led to internal and civilian conflicts that have left tens of thousands dead in the nation. Other human rights abuses have been reported such as forced labor, torture, rape, and the use of child soldiers.

In fact, ethnicity is so central to being a citizen of Myanmar that only ethnic groups that were present in 1823, before Britain ruled parts of the country, are full citizens, according to the 1982 Citizenship Law. This is why the Rohingya people, as a minority Muslim ethnic group, living in Myanmar have found themselves stateless and unrecognized as citizens before the law. They also do not have the full protections of the constitution offered to them, which protect citizens from discrimination, equal opportunity, and freedom of expression. Of the nearly one million people who have fled Myanmar, most of them Rohingya, many find themselves facing extreme violence at the hands of the state military, known as the Tatmadaw. The Gambia filed a lawsuit against Myanmar for committing ethnic cleansing against the Rohingya, which the nation’s leaders have denied.

Current Refugee Crisis

The situation with the Rohingya population has led to thousands of refugees fleeing into surrounding areas such as Bangladesh. Gallagher asserts the conflict arising is that Bangladesh also does not want the minority Muslim population. The International Crisis Group, a branch of the UN’s refugee agency, published an article about the proposed risk that would come with returning the Rohingya to Myanmar from Bangladesh, “It would not only violate Bangladesh’s international legal obligations and jeopardize the safety of the refugees but risks triggering violence and greater instability on both sides of the border. Bangladesh and Myanmar should immediately halt the plan. The UN, including the secretary-general’s special envoy and the UN refugee agency, should continue to firmly oppose it, both in public and in private, and establish a process whereby Rohingya refugees are consulted about their future.”

Outside Intervention from China & U.S.

The history of outside intervention into the region is mutually constitutive with the country’s long history of political turmoil and strife. Once a British colony that gained independence in 1948, the region became one of the Cold War battlegrounds in the U.S.’ long waged war against communist forces. The tension to gain outside influence into the region has persisted between democratic and communist ideologues ever since.

One concern of the international community surrounds the growing influence of communist China upon the military-run government in Myanmar. International anxieties have begun to boil as Beijing has leveraged its international influence to offer military support, protect military generals who participated in the coups, and prevent an arms embargo.

The U.S.’ intervention into Myanmar is an ongoing history that recently involves the U.S. placing sanctions upon the country. The majority of which took place in the 1990s. Following Myanmar’s transition to democracy, these sanctions were lifted. However, following the coups that took place in 2021, the Biden administration has signaled that there may be targeted sanctions to come. His administration has begun a review of U.S. sanctions law as a tool to “support democracy and the rule of law,” according to a report from the Council on Foreign Relations.

As talks about outside intervention into the region continue to grow, it is important to reflect upon the historical destabilizing effects that outside intervention has had upon Myanmar throughout its history. The construction of borders following decolonization has left ethnic groups living in Myanmar without a home and has left them vulnerable to increasing violence. The crippling effects of economic sanctions, and the influence of outside political forces, have worked to destabilize the country following colonization. This is why conversations about outside intervention must be evaluated, even in the name of preserving democracy, through a more critical understanding of the realities faced from political intervention in an increasingly globalized world where the effects of colonization and Cold War violence still linger.

DON’T FEAR THE ROBOTS

Automation isn’t the end. Globalization threatens the livelihood of the workforce, but jobs aren’t being relinquished to machines.

WORDS BY GRANT MORGAN ILLUSTRATION BY AMANDA O’BRIEN

Based on artwork by Artie Rodriguez

Even before hearing the word “automation,” there is a good chance one has at least been exposed to the concept. Essentially, automation is the process of turning jobs performed by human laborers over to machines, which can work tirelessly and without break. This process, though still relatively new, has been occurring for a couple decades now. But despite this, many people are still unaware of how exactly it works, and many are starting to grow apprehensive about it.

Fear Mongering About the Robots

Since the introduction of technology into the workplace, humans have consistently been frightened about technology taking their jobs. In fact, this fright occurs so frequently that economists managed to come up with a term to describe it. The “lump of labor fallacy” is the idea that there are only a certain number of jobs within an economy and that once immigrants or robots are thrown into the mix, this will mean that native laborers will become unemployed due to rising immigrant labor and automation. However, this sentiment has proven to be erroneous. As immigrants come into a country, and as new technologies are introduced, this actually helps to create more jobs, not less. With increased immigrant labor comes increased demand, and from increased use of technology and robots comes increased productivity. Up until this point, any change in technology has never destroyed the net amount of jobs within the economy. Still, many remain scared because the economy is not continuing to grow quickly.

“The fear is that if jobs are destroyed, people will not be able to find jobs that pay them as well as the jobs they lost,” said Aaron Benanav, postdoctoral researcher of economic history at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. “The fear that people are losing good jobs and ending up in bad jobs, or that young people are unable to find good jobs in the first place, is entirely reasonable. It is BUT THAT DOESN’T REALLY HAVE TO DO AUTOMATION. IT HAS “ happening right now. But that TO DO WITH A doesn’t really have STAGNATING ECONOMY to do automation. It AARON BENANAV, RESEARCHER AT HUMBOLDT-UNIVERSITÄT ZU BERLIN has to do with a stagnating economy.”

As Benanav notes, the only reason that people are actually afraid of automation is because they are concerned about what it could mean for their economic future. The economy offers very little protection for those who are suffering from economic precarity; thus, millions of people are in a state of constant worry about the rising abilities of technology. Automation is not scary in and of itself—it is only frightening because of the contemporary conditions of the American economy.

Is Automation Even Occurring?

Many people are associating the current shortcomings of the American economy with the supposed pernicious effects of automation, and this kind of situation has created an environment where people are erroneously assuming that automation is expanding, quite rapidly, throughout the economy. However, this basic intuitive thought is actually the furthest from the truth. As businesses and manufacturers implement new technologies which help to automate certain jobs, this process increases productivity and helps to save partially or fully on labor costs (which can be converted into investments later on). But when one delves into the productivity numbers in American manufacturing, something quite remarkable comes up.

Productivity, instead of rising precipitously since 2000, has actually fallen. According to the Conference Board of the International Comparisons of Productivity and Labor Costs, from 1974-2000, manufacturing productivity rose by 3.3%; from 2000-2017, this percentage declined to 3.2%; and while this was taking place, overall manufacturing output fell from 3.1% to 1.2%. Benanav believes what is currently transpiring has very little to do with automation and is instead mainly attributable to “a stagnating economy” and globalization.

““Globalization has made for an intensely competitive international environment where it is difficult for companies to grow very quickly,” Benanav said. “That means that whatever technological changes they implement tend to be job destroying, for the simple reason that companies can meet small increases in the demand for their products while employing fewer workers.”

Globalization, instead of delivering an economy which is able to achieve robust growth, has delivered an economy which is continuing to slow down. And as the economy slows down, and as people lose their jobs because of falling productivity and output, many people throughout the country associate this occurrence with the implementation of automation. But in reality, this is just simply not the case.

GLOBALIZATION HAS MADE FOR AN INTENSELY COMPETITIVE INTERNATIONAL ENVIRONMENT WHERE IT IS DIFFICULT FOR COMPANIES TO GROW VERY QUICKLY

AARON BENANAV, RESEARCHER AT HUMBOLDT-UNIVERSITÄT ZU BERLIN

It’s Not The Robots You Should Worry About... It’s Stagnation

Due to globalization, the world now has far more producers of goods than it did 30 years ago, and because of this, the supply of these goods has increased quite dramatically. But as this supply has increased, demand has either stagnated or fallen because of lower growth and increased inequality. As demand fails to grow and as supply continues to climb, this means that output continues to fall. In fact, according to the Conference Board of the International Comparisons of Productivity and Labor Costs, manufacturing output has actually fallen from a high 4.4% from 1950-1973 to a rather low 1.2% from 20012017. This decline in output also happens to align quite well with average GDP growth, which fell from 4.0% to 1.9% during the same respective period. Globalization has essentially created a recurring effect which continues to compound the country’s economic health and overall sustainability.

But on top of the macroeconomic effects, stagnation has created microeconomic effects where “a lot of people are very insecure in their jobs, or have trouble finding work that is satisfying,” according to Benanav. And to make matters worse, “All of these things affect young people most of all. They can’t start living on their own or get a foothold in any one place if they have to keep changing jobs, or if the jobs they get pay them very little.”

Because of globalization, the world has become far more competitive for both companies and working people. And as these effects continue to increase, the results are increasingly bleak and morbid. The biggest threat, as pointed out by Benanav, is not automation but is instead a stagnant economy which is falling to deliver real growth to both its manufacturers and its workers.

What’s Next?

For decades, automation has been used as a scare word meant to frighten people about the future of the economy. What makes this fear mongering even more pernicious is the fact that it has been successful. From academics to politicians, truck drivers to teachers, more and more people today believe that automation is an impending economic apocalypse which is going to leave millions of people behind.

The biggest threat facing the economy is not automation or robots but is instead stagnation. Out of stagnation will come increased inequality, personal disillusionment, and heightened political tensions. The future, however, though seemingly negative right now, is not set in stone. Stagnation is not inextricably linked to the economic system, but it is not going to change unless Americans collectively fight for policies which will allow for the economy to start growing effectively and equitably again. So rather than fretting about automation or driverless trucks, efforts may be better spent focusing on the real issue impacting the economic future. The ball is in America’s court now, and it cannot afford to let this opportunity slip.