Great Power Political Convergence and UN Reform: Solving the Democratic Deficit

Journal of Political Risk, Vol. 7, No. 4, April 2019

A bronze sculpture titled “Non-Violence” by Swedish artist Carl Fredrik Reuterswärd stands to the north of the United Nations Building in New York. It depicts the knotted barrel of a Colt Python .357 Magnum. Reuterswärd designed the sculpture following the murder of songwriter John Lennon. Source: Mira via Flickr.

Anders Corr, Ph.D.
Publisher of the Journal of Political Risk

The international system operates across military, economic, and diplomatic hierarchies of states situated in competing alliances and international organizations. The major powers assert the predominance of influence in these alliances and international organizations, leading to a severe and global democratic deficit. Huge numbers of people, most notably the approximately 18% of the world’s population living in China, and 2% of the population living in Russia, have no democratically-appointed representation at the United Nations or influence in the world’s most important alliance systems.

The global democratic deficit leads to critical inefficiencies and unfair policies. States use unequal access to military, wealth, and knowledge resources to influence international organizations and alliance systems for individual state gains that lead to global inefficiencies and trade-offs where individual major power goals contradict the public good, or the national interests of other states. Perhaps the most dangerous such inefficiency is the rising risk of nuclear war, as countries like the U.S. and China compete to impose their competing visions of the future on the world.

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Tariff Benefits Will Exceed Costs When National Goals Are Met

Journal of Political Risk, Vol. 7, No. 3, March 2019 

US President Donald Trump, with US Congressman Sean Duffy (R). Trump spoke about the unfair trade practices at play in the world. Source: Public domain.

William R. Hawkins

International Economics and National Security Consultant

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China’s Heavy 5G Hand in the Classroom: Combining its Social Credit Score with the latest IT by 2020

Journal of Political Risk, Vol. 7, No. 2, February 2019

Young students at their desks all with mobilephones. The mobilephone has become seen as a ‘must have’, an item of necessity among the Chinese people and China as the world’s largest country is now recognised to have the most mobilephone users. Source: Pixabay.

Victor Mair, Ph.D.

University of Pennsylvania

I recently had a good, long talk with a young American who is teaching at a major Chinese university on behalf of a top American university.

He kept saying that life in China now is becoming more and more “intense” (he repeated that word many times).  The politicization of life is felt in countless ways.

He said that the Communist Party Secretary of his school marched into his classroom one day without announcing it ahead of time and without even saying anything to him when she barged in.  She started inspecting everything he’d written on the blackboards and that the students had written in their notebooks.  She had her camera out and was taking pictures the whole while.

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THE BATTLE FOR WEST PAPUA

Journal of Political Risk, Vol. 8, No. 1, January 2019 

Ben Bohane

Photojournalist

Supporters carry West Papuan leader Benny Wenda through Port Vila, Vanuatu, during a visit on December 1, 2016. Pacific island countries across the region are growing in solidarity with the West Papuan independence movement, according to the author. Credit: Ben Bohane.



Reports of the Indonesian military using white phosphorous munitions on West Papuan civilians in December are only the latest horror in a decades-old jungle war forgotten by the world. But new geopolitical maneuvering may soon change the balance of power here, prompting regional concern about an intensifying battle for this rich remote province of Indonesia. It is time for the US and Australia to change policy, complementing Pacific island diplomacy, or risk a major strategic setback at the crossroads of Asia and the Pacific.

Once again, Papuan highlanders have fled their villages into the bush where they are starving and being hunted by Indonesian security forces.

Fighting between OPM (Free Papua Movement) guerrillas and the Indonesian military has increased in recent months creating a fresh humanitarian crisis in a region cut off from the world: Indonesia prevents all foreign media and NGOs from operating here. This makes West Papua perhaps the only territory besides North Korea that is so inaccessible to the international community.

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How China Interferes in U.S. Elections

Journal of Political Risk, Vol. 7, No. 10, October 2018 

US President Donald Trump in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building (EEOB). He appeared with the Secretary of Transportation Elaine Chao and Stephen A. Schwarzman, Chairman, CEO and Co-Founder of Blackstone, in the EEOB on April 11, 2017 in Washington, DC. Mr. Trump spoke during a strategic and policy discussion with the CEOs. Source: Trump Whitehouse Archives via Flickr.

Anders Corr, Ph.D.

Publisher of the Journal of Political Risk

China is powerfully influencing U.S. elections, as President Donald Trump alleged, but one will not necessarily find a Chinese intelligence agent stuffing ballot boxes in the local City Hall, or tampering with a voting booth. Facebook and Twitter claim they found no coordinated messages from the Chinese government. Bloomberg news and three digital security firms all claimed they found no evidence of digital or web-based misinformation campaigns. They apparently don’t count China’s ongoing anti-Trump propaganda, available through state-run media like China Daily and radio stations in the U.S. Nor do they count a new China-linked propaganda film advertised on Facebook, called “Better Angels“.

Plus, China’s immense wealth gives it more sophisticated and effective means to influence the general public, districts that voted for Republicans, the candidates themselves, the businesses that fund candidate elections, the universities and think tanks that hire politicians after they leave office, and the news media that voters will rely upon to choose their representatives on November 6, 2018. That is a far more powerful set of tools than anything the Russians used in 2016.

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