Political science, economics, data science, and environmentalism
Armenia is sending a delegation to Antalya, Turkey on March 1 to participate in a diplomacy forum, and Macron went to Armenia yesterday as Armenia announced it has frozen its participation in the Collective Security Treaty Organization, a paper tiger Russia set up as an “alternative” to NATO but so far has been rather toothless.
I hope Armenia and Turkey can normalize relations with Turkey on Friday, followed by Georgia, Ukraine, Armenia, and Moldova (GUAM) joining NATO soon.
Why does NATO exist? Let’s look at history.
In 1800, there were only a handful of democracies in the world. The United States and France, though France, were in decline. The United States had a massive slave population, so by modern standards, the United States was not a democracy. There were no democracies to be allied to.
Fast forward 100 years, and slavery had been ended in most of the world. Most of Africa was colonized by Europe. But most countries in Europe were still monarchies. Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Russia dominated Eastern Europe. There was not a lot of room on the world stage for making big alliances of democracies. Only around 10 countries scored 8 or higher on the Polity IV scale.
The first real wave of democracy happened after the First World War, but it was pretty limited in scope, and in the 1930s, everything came crashing down.
But since 1945, there has been a steady increase in the number of countries that are democracies. Countries in Western Europe were starting to form stable democratic systems. But as these were forming there was a series of events which deeply concerned democracies in Western Europe:
The Soviets conquered Bulgaria after being under Nazi occupation. They didn’t have an election until the 1990s.
So basically, from 1945 to 1946, the Soviet Union used fraudulent elections (or no elections at all, in the case of Bulgaria) to take over countries politically. In 1947 and 1948, they used a coup d’etat to conquer Czechoslovakia and Hungary. In response to this threat, most remaining European democracies chose to form NATO. Following the establishment of a totalitarian one-party state in East Germany, they refused to negotiate with the Soviets because they feared more “neutral countries” would find themselves with coups in the future.
That is why NATO was founded. The Soviet Union made a very real threat of attacking sovereign states in Europe, and most states joined NATO in response. Finland was promised neutrality if it did not join NATO, and the Soviet Union kept that promise. We had learned in the 1930s that if we did not stand together as democracies (which was the first wave of democratization), what would happen? We were knocked out one by one. Isolationism in the United States and other countries did not create peace; it only led to the worst war in the history of the world.
NATO exists to prevent another world war.
After NATO prevented further incursions into Europe, the Soviet Union moved to Asia:
Castro is an exception because he was homegrown. He was not put in power by the Soviet Union.
However, it was clear in the Cold War that membership in NATO or the Rio Pact protected countries from being invaded, like Vietnam, Korea, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary. It is certain, based on statements made by Soviet leaders, that if it were not for these alliances, the Soviet Union would have pushed further.
In 1955, the United States, France, the United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand signed a collective security agreement with Pakistan, the Philippines, and Thailand. This was called the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization. This is the entire reason the United States was at war in Vietnam.
After the Vietnam War was over, the Soviet Union spread between Ethiopia and Afghanistan. Constant war and poor economic mismanagement led to an economic meltdown. After the fall of the Soviet Union Russia’s economy was in shambles, with former state assets now concentrated in the hands of their new ruling class, the oligarchs.
The Soviet Union collapsed, China was weak, and the United States was the undisputed world power. No one else came close. As a result, there was relative peace. The Bosnian war in the 1990s was horrific, and there were continued wars in Africa, states with low levels of economic development and major internal problems. but these were limited in scope to small regions. Only two wars in the 1990s killed over 100,000 people, the First Congo War and the Eritrean-Ethiopian War. Historically, these are extremely low numbers. By historical standards, it was the most peaceful decade in history.
This chart from ourworldindata.org makes the chart very clear. The Russian Invasion of Ukraine is the deadliest interstate conflict since the fall of the Soviet Union.
Even the American War on Terror, which started in 2001, is the period with the fewest deaths in global conflict overall and doesn’t come even close to the Eritrean-Ethiopian War in 1999 and 2000. Fatalities started to increase with the Arab Spring in the 2000s, but despite immense population growth, there were only 100,000 deaths per year globally. 100,000 out of 6 billion people in 2010 was the equivalent of 30,000 people per year in 1930 when there were only 2 billion people worldwide. For comparison, the Holocaust killed approximately 1 million people per year on average, the Great Leap Forward killed 11 million people per year in 1960, and World War II killed over 12 million people per year.
Despite our globalized world and the War on Terror, the 2000s were incredibly peaceful by historical standards, and the 2010s were still well below historical averages. We have not seen a war that killed over 0.1% of the world’s population per year since the Great Leap Forward.
In other words, NATO and the Rio Group work.
We had 30 years, which were incredibly peaceful by historical standards, since the fall of the Soviet Union.
But in 2020, something changed. Donald Trump, while insulting our allies and showing signs he didn’t have the same feelings of solidarity with America’s democratic allies, signed a treaty with the Taliban, completely bypassing the legitimate government of Afghanistan in preparation for a withdrawal from the country.
We had been in Afghanistan for 20 years. This is true. 212,000 people were killed over 20 years, the highest estimate. That is 10,000 people per year. In exchange, Afghanistan was relatively free, and girls went to school. The Afghanistan War was ongoing during the most peaceful decade in history.
We threw it all away.
Biden fulfilled the negotiations with the terrorists and withdrew from Afghanistan on 30 August 2021. The Taliban took over the country immediately. Women were pushed out of work and school within weeks.
But we had peace, something so many Americans wanted. Biden gave a speech claiming we weren’t going to worry ourselves about foreign affairs and focus on our dire problems at home. Americans cheered.
From 2014 until 2022, there was a sleeping conflict in Ukraine since Russia had control of the Donbas, Luhansk, and Crimea. On 24 February 2022, less than 5 months after the US withdrawal from Afghanistan and the fateful speech of American withdrawal, the Russian army invaded further into Ukraine.
Biden and Trump had claimed they would not focus on external affairs.
Putin had called their bluff.
The United States has sent Ukraine far less than they need to expel Russians fully from their territory. We have forbidden them from attacking Russian military installations inside Russia.
Billions of dollars have been sent to Ukraine, but not nearly enough to fully repel the Russian invaders and send them either back to Russia or to hell.
There were few interstate conflicts because the United States went in and created a ceasefire any time they got out of hand. Also, who was going to start an armed conflict in the 1990s? Russia was very weak. China had not built up its military. We saw terrorism from the Gulf States, but aside from that, there were no countries with the economic and military strength to invade democracies. China was developing and deeply intertwined with the US and EU. It still is. Russia was economically weak. There was a credible threat to the attacker that the United States was defending the defending nation, which was enough.
But this is Trump’s legacy, and Biden has refused to reverse it. The credible threat of the United States defending attacked nations is far weaker than in the past. The only way to get it back is to return to our policy of credible retaliation toward aggressor countries.
Bush fueled the flames of the argument that the United States is not a trustworthy partner when we invaded Iraq. But there was no one to oppose us, and no one liked Saddam Hussein anyway. Saddam Hussein was guilty of genocide. The biggest concern is it diverted resources from Afghanistan, and Bush lied about the initial reasons why he started the war. Iraq was then overrun by terrorists, where at least it had been stable albeit authoritarian under Saddam Hussein.
The main challenge for the United States in foreign policy over the next 10 years is rebuilding trust. We need to defend Ukraine to the point where they defeat the Russians and then let them and Georgia into NATO as soon as possible to prevent further Russian aggression. We need to push for a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by the end of this year for two main reasons. The first and obvious reason is the inhumane treatment of Palestinians needs to end. The other reason is it weakens the United States in foreign policy. Both reasons are important.
We are in a wave of protectionism/nationalism (the two go hand in hand) right now, which has been spearheaded by a large number of anti-democratic politicians and fools. This needs to be reversed.
Defend our allies, support democratization, and build complex interdependent trade webs worldwide. That is the only path to a bright future I can see.
In light of the Invasion of Ukraine, it is the same situation we were in in 1945. Same challenges. Same solution.
We are standing at a crossroads where our leaders must decide what future we want.
On the one hand, we can have a future where we might make right. Israel has more weapons than Palestinians, so they have the right to kill them all. Russia has nukes, and Ukraine does not, thanks to Bill Clinton. Russia has the right to rape as many Ukrainian girls as they please. Ukraine is a smaller country; they cannot attack Russia. The United States cannot get involved because Russia, with an economy and population of less than a quarter the population of NATO, is going to threaten us with nuclear bombs. They have the might that makes them right.
If China attacks Taiwan, that is their right. North Korea has the right to reclaim South Korea. If Israel is overpowered by Arab states, then that is just how it is.
Oh wait, but we also have a level of white supremacy on top of this, so even though Israel is small, they are right because they are white.
So white supremacy is the first priority, and then they might make right on top of white supremacy. This fully explains the foreign policy of the Biden administration. Beyond white supremacy, we have a large bipartisan consensus of nationalism in United States foreign policy. This leads to travel visas for citizens from other NATO member states. A resistance towards free trade with Europe, except if it is just the United States enforcing our ridiculous copyright law on other countries into a global law.
The world of that future is where Russia will eventually attack NATO. America will leave NATO, and Europe does not yet have the focus on domestic military manufacturing to counter Europe by itself, or so we like to tell ourselves.
Europe doesn’t spend enough on their militaries because they are so busy being socialists.
Russia is going to utterly destroy Europe after they finish Ukraine.
We can only stand by as people are massacred, and countries that are improving are invaded and turned into puppet states. We are too weak.
Or that’s the narrative I have been seeing in the media.
If we look at real data, we find that Russia spends 4% of its GDP on military, while Germany and France are below 2% targets. Russia has a larger population than either, so Europe is screwed. Right?
But that is not the case. China has the world’s largest GDP at $35 trillion and the United States has the second largest GDP at $28 trillion. The European Union has a GDP of $25 trillion. Russia has a GDP of $5 trillion.
Russia’s 4% of its GDP comes out to only $86 billion in total military expenditure. Germany and France together come out to $109 billion. If you add up the military expenditure of the 14 highest expenditure states in the European Union, there is a total of $308.1 billion. Over 3.5 times larger than Russia’s military expenditure.
If Turkey, the United States, and the United Kingdom are added in, we have a military expenditure 14.5 times the size of Russia’s military expenditure. That is $1.26 trillion. Global military expenditure is $2.2 trillion. Over half of all military expenditure is from NATO countries.
My point is that we have the power to defeat Russia fully and make the world a safer place. We do not need to support Israeli aggression and we have the power to force them to come to a solution with Palestinians whether they want to or not.
The United States has military alliances with countries in North America, South America, Europe, Asia, and Oceania. These include countries as populous as Brazil and as rich as Luxembourg and economies the size of Japan, the United Kingdom, and Germany. All of these countries are democracies or were when we signed the treaty. We also have defense pacts with Uruguay, Estonia, Iceland, and Haiti. We have military relationships with democracies large and small, rich and poor. None of these countries are going to be attacked.
One country that is missing from our long list of military allies, however, is Israel.
The United States sends a massive amount of military aid to Israel, but we are not obligated to come to their aid. If Israel was bombed with a nuclear bomb in retaliation for the genocide in Gaza, the United States would be under no obligation to come to their aid.
Israel is not part of any treaty that would place it as a prospective member of any alliance of the United States besides the OECD. Aside from the OECD, the United States and Israel have no official ties beyond the aid that is sent there to get the vote of evangelicals.
But we all know America is getting less religious, and the desire for an actual solution to the Israeli-Palestinian war is growing. It is just a matter of time before the United States has a president who does not support sending Israel blank checks without solving the crisis.
Ukraine, however, is a totally different story. It is a member of the Council of Europe, Baku Initiative, GUAM, an observer of the Southeast European Cooperative Initiative, and the Council of the Baltic Sea States. Ukraine has been actively seeking out closer relations with democracies for 20 years now, and that is their right as a sovereign nation.
I love this map because it clearly describes the political situation in Europe. Ukraine, Moldova, and Georgia need NATO membership. They can then utilize history, legislative examples, and experts from their allies (which includes the United States) to root out corruption and democratize further. The advantage they have of being so late to the democratization game is we know what works. They don’t need to experiment with many of their challenges because these problems are solved.
This is the real world we are in. NATO countries spend the majority of global military expenditure. No one can seriously harm NATO. With this great power, we can assist people around the world in creating a more just and peaceful world. That is the future I want to live in.
So I have a dataset that I have curated from public data over the last 7 years and continuously updated with the latest data. I include data focusing on political economics (look at this blog, surprised?) and it includes lots of variables. For this regression, I handpicked the following statistics:
My data confirms what has been published in Scientific American in an even more thorough study. Income inequality is the biggest driver to homicide.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/income-inequalitys-most-disturbing-side-effect-homicide/
This helps explain why gun control has a much smaller effect than one would expect.
The impact of inequality on homicide (and we know that is the causal direction based on peer-reviewed studies, far more thorough than my messing around with python) is so strong that even if we use the same formula and put inequality as our dependent variable we see this:
OK. So we know that if we really want to reduce our homicide rate, we need to reduce our inequality rate.
Off the top of my head, policies I can think of which will help reduce inequality include:
This article from the Michigan Journal of Economics points out how increasing the minimum wage will reduce inequality: https://sites.lsa.umich.edu/mje/2022/02/08/rising-economic-inequality-in-the-us-key-statistics-and-root-causes/
Which makes sense. It also benefits the budget. Increasing the minimum wage means more money comes from employers’ pockets, and less money needs to come from the government to support people in poverty.
A new open-access paper from the International Labour Organization finds that the main driver of inequality in the United States is a drop in productivity growth. https://www.ilo.org/global/publications/working-papers/WCMS_912336/lang–en/index.htm
Other factors help explain the difference between income groups, skilled vs unskilled, but only productivity growth explains the gaps within each of those two classes.
Why is productivity slowing down? According to researchers at Oxford, the slowdown has been seen across developed countries, not just in the United States, and has occurred due to various factors. The bulk of the slowdown happened between 2005 and 2010, or around the time the oldest Baby Boomers were starting to retire. The drop was sudden, and within 5 years, the average productivity growth rate across the countries they studied had declined from around 2% to 1%. No single factor can explain the reduction in productivity growth rates.
Inequality is a complex topic that receives a lot of research from many hard-working professionals. Teasing out the underlying causes is challenging; the most difficult portion, of course, is finding the data you need to find the reality behind the truth, and there is always the risk of having underlying variables. Whether you are doing statistical analysis or a controlled A B experiment, this will always be true. More research will certainly be done, but we do have more than enough research to know where to start, and the 5 proposals I have in this article are a good place to start.
Makes it clear which side Republican states are on.
I didn’t like the Wikipedia map of capital punishment because it didn’t include US states and the US has a moratorium on federal executions thanks to Biden.
UK and Germany back a sustainable ceasefire
So why can’t the United States?
David Cameron is the foreign minister of the United Kingdom. Yes, the same Prime Minister who led Britain into its largest foreign policy debacle since the colonial era.
I disagree with David Cameron on most issues. He was a horrible Prime Minister but is right in calling for a ceasefire.
This leads to where the United States political sphere is so far right wing on foreign relations that we struggle to support Ukraine with enough aid for them to win the war. Our Presidents have consistently thrown Ukraine under the bus, first with the Budapest Memorandum in 1994, which forced Ukraine to give up weapons without the same being done by Russia. In 2012, when Romney rightfully declared Russia as our most important geopolitical foe, Obama incorrectly claimed Romney was living in the past. This was 4 years after the invasion of Georgia, 20 YEARS after the Chechen War, and obviously wishful thinking by President Obama. Obama told Putin directly that Ukraine was not a strategic priority. We threw them under the bus further with the Minsk Agreement, which led to a ceasefire without a total victory for Ukraine.
Not to say European leaders have been perfect. Angela Merkel was the primary reason why Ukraine and Georgia were denied NATO membership in 2008.
The stances of Obama, Merkel, Hollande, and Biden on Ukraine have consistently been weak and have bred a major human rights catastrophe. McCain and Romney might have had horrible tastes in vice presidential candidates and horrible domestic policy proposals, but they were correct regarding their views on Putin.
Biden has consistently gone with the line not to “provoke” Russia. He has denied the long-range missiles to Ukraine which would give Ukraine the tools necessary to defeat Russia and get back Crimea, all while sending Israel more than they ask for.
Ukraine uses the few long-range missiles European nations have given them to blow up warships.
Israel uses long-range missiles to blow up hospitals, schools, and apartments.
The two countries have nothing in common.
Israel is more corrupt, less democratic, and less free than Ukraine. Ukraine does not have millions of stateless people living within its effective borders who are regularly harassed, tortured, and murdered by their occupiers.
Ukraine is a natural ally of the United States.
They couldn’t be more different.
Damn the rankings of Israel; go with how they rank the Occupied Palestinian Territories, which are de facto under Israeli control. That is the true ranking of Israel. Palestine/Israel is ranked lower than Afghanistan on the World Press Freedom Index. If one were to give North Korean leaders their own separate ranking, it would also soar up in the rankings. Israel and Palestine should be combined in human rights rankings.
Russian escalation of wars on their borders violates the sovereignty of Ukraine and Georgia. Biden and Obama’s timidness in their European relations is the root cause of this war.
The right policy is this:
I made a spreadsheet of 63 of the worst wars and genocides in the history of the world. Wars and Genocides If you sort the list by casualties per year, World War II was the most deadly conflict in the history of the world at 12.2 million per year, not including the Holocaust. The Great Leap Forward was the deadliest democide in the history of the world, with 11.25 million killed per year. The third deadliest conflict in history by casualties per year was the Holodomor, with 7.5 million people killed in only one year. World War I came in 4th place with 5 million per year. 5th place is the Rwandan genocide of 1994, which killed 1.2 million people over 3 months, or 4.7 million per year.
The Holodomor was among the deadliest conflicts in the history of the world.
Russia will do it again if given the chance.
Russia can never rule Ukraine again.
Slava Ukraine.
Read this Foreign Policy Article for more information: https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/07/11/obama-russia-ukraine-war-putin-2014-crimea-georgia-biden/
A response to How the EU Failed the Western Balkans by TLDR News.
The reason the Western Balkans have not joined the European Union is simple: the remaining Western Balkan states have not finished closing their accession chapters to join the European Union.
If we use the Democracy Index, Montenegro, Albania, and Macedonia all had scores under 6 until 2021. Bosnia still has a democracy score under 6. Croatia, Romania, and Bulgaria were to join because they met the acquis, and their democracy scores were well over 6. A country can’t have a democracy score under 6 and meet all the acquis to join the European Union.
Joining the European Union is not as simple as paying a fee to enter a nightclub and then entering. The European Union is far more than just a military alliance like NATO. It is a complex international organization collaborating across every possible realm of political and economic regulation, which is far more than just a zone for free travel. A lot of decisions the European Union makes require unanimity between members. I personally believe this is a weakness of the European Union, and the bar should be brought down to a 2/3 majority, so if one Hungary abstains from a decision every other country agrees on that, they are unable to block the entire bloc. We have seen with Brexit that leaving the European Union just because you don’t like anti-money laundering laws is a foolish decision, and if there is a problem with a law, you need to use your words and reasoning to block it.
Because of the nature of how the European Union works and the vast number of laws that are made across every aspect of life, it makes sense for joining the European Union to have a high bar; we do not want the European Union to look like Mercosur (for example), where member states are getting suspended but instead for membership to be forever. Keep membership in NATO relatively easy to get with a lower bar, but European Union membership needs to remain restricted to countries with the highest stability level.
| Country | Submitted | Accession / | Length of accession | Years |
| Kosovo Kosovo[20] | 14 December 2022 | [21]Applicant | 425 | 1.16 |
| Moldova Moldova | 3 March 2022 | [16] Negotiating | 711 | 1.95 |
| Georgia (country) Georgia | 3 March 2022 | [17]Candidate | 711 | 1.95 |
| Ukraine Ukraine | 28 February 2022 | [16] Negotiating | 714 | 1.96 |
| Finland Finland | 18 March 1992 | 1 January 1995 | 1019 | 2.79 |
| Sweden Sweden | 1 July 1991 | 1 January 1995 | 1280 | 3.51 |
| Austria Austria | 17 July 1989 | 1 January 1995 | 1994 | 5.46 |
| Greece Greece | 12 June 1975 | 1 January 1981 | 2030 | 5.56 |
| Denmark Denmark | 11 May 1967 | 1 January 1973 | 2062 | 5.65 |
| Republic of Ireland Ireland | 11 May 1967 | 1 January 1973 | 2062 | 5.65 |
| United Kingdom United Kingdom | 10 May 1967 | 1 January 1973 | 2063 | 5.65 |
| Slovenia Slovenia | 10 June 1996 | 1 May 2004 | 2882 | 7.90 |
| Bosnia and Herzegovina Bosnia and Herzegovina | 15 February 2016 | [16] Candidate | 2919 | 8.00 |
| Czech Republic Czech Republic | 17 January 1996 | 1 May 2004 | 3027 | 8.29 |
| Lithuania Lithuania | 8 December 1995 | 1 May 2004 | 3067 | 8.40 |
| Estonia Estonia | 24 November 1995 | 1 May 2004 | 3081 | 8.44 |
| Spain Spain | 28 June 1977 | 1 January 1986 | 3109 | 8.52 |
| Latvia Latvia | 13 September 1995 | 1 May 2004 | 3153 | 8.64 |
| Portugal Portugal | 28 March 1977 | 1 January 1986 | 3201 | 8.77 |
| Slovakia Slovakia | 27 June 1995 | 1 May 2004 | 3231 | 8.85 |
| Poland Poland | 5 April 1994 | 1 May 2004 | 3679 | 10.08 |
| Hungary Hungary | 31 March 1994 | 1 May 2004 | 3684 | 10.09 |
| Croatia Croatia | 21 February 2003 | 1 July 2013 | 3783 | 10.36 |
| Bulgaria Bulgaria | 14 December 1995 | 1 January 2007 | 4036 | 11.06 |
| Romania Romania | 22 June 1995 | 1 January 2007 | 4211 | 11.54 |
| Malta Malta | 16 July 1990 | 1 May 2004 | 5038 | 13.80 |
| Cyprus Cyprus | 3 July 1990 | 1 May 2004 | 5051 | 13.84 |
| Serbia Serbia | 22 December 2009 | [21]Negotiating | 5165 | 14.15 |
| Albania Albania | 28 April 2009 | [15]Negotiating | 5403 | 14.80 |
| Montenegro Montenegro | 15 December 2008 | [21]Negotiating | 5537 | 15.17 |
| North Macedonia North Macedonia[G] | 22 March 2004 | [15]Negotiating | 7266 | 19.91 |
| Turkey Turkey | 14 April 1987 | [31][32][21]Frozen negotiations | 13453 | 36.86 |
As we can see, the time for countries to join the European Union ranges from 2 years in Finland, which is an exceptional case, as we can classically see in every social and economic development metric. Romania and Bulgaria are just at the cusp of being predicted on whether they are good candidates for Schengen membership in the regressions I have run.
The current candidates in the Balkans score around the same level as Romania and Bulgaria on the Corruption Perceptions Index. While they want the Balkans to join the European Union, European leaders are also wary of letting countries join when these systemic problems exist. They must deal with these problems before European Union membership is possible.
The freedom of the press in these countries is in line with other Eastern European member states of the European Union. There is little work to be done there to close the chapters. They all score better than Israel, for example. There is good reason to be optimistic of them joining in the future.
There is no appetite to join the European Union in Iceland and Norway; they already have the benefits of Schengen, and there is no desire for deeper integration with the bloc. Russia and Belarus obviously cannot join, and Turkey meets the mark on basically none of the acquis. The Swiss are already Schengen members and do not wish to join further. Microstates of Monaco, Liechtenstein, San Marino, and Vatican City already have freedom of movement. Vatican City cannot join because it is an authoritarian regime. The only remaining potential candidates are already candidates, and the annual reports on their accession status make it very clear which hurdles need to be cleared before they can join. The only country in Europe that could join quickly at this point and has the appetite for it is the United Kingdom.
Once we look at this, I don’t believe there is any appetite for future expansion of the bloc. Croatia joined the Schengen Area only one year ago. Romania and Bulgaria will partially join Schengen on March 31st, and they are expected to fully join Schengen this year or next year once they convince the Austrians to stop stonewalling their accession.
There is no appetite for future expansion from Iceland and Norway; they already have the benefits of Schengen, and there is no desire to have deeper integration with the bloc. Russia and Belarus obviously cannot join, and Turkey meets the mark on basically none of the acquis. The Swiss are already Schengen members and do not wish to join further. Microstates of Monaco, Liechtenstein, San Marino, and Vatican City already have freedom of movement. Vatican City cannot join because it is an authoritarian regime. The only remaining potential candidates are already candidates, and the annual reports on their accession status make it very clear which hurdles need to be cleared before they can join. The only country that could join quickly at this point and has the appetite for it is the United Kingdom.
I want all of the Western Balkans to join the European Union. But for that to happen, they need to meet all of the acquis to join. My advice to them is to look at where they made progress in the components of the Economist’s Democracy Index and work on reforming the areas where their scores are not as high as those of European Union members. As these reforms are made, petition the European Union to analyze their progress and close chapters one by one as these improvements happen. Montenegro, which currently has the highest democracy score of the Balkan states that have not accomplished membership yet, should go to the European Union and work on negotiating to close the acquis chapters. They can talk directly to the governments of existing European Union member states and get support from member states. Much progress has been made in Montenegro in the last few years. For that, the European Union should continue the good process to ensure that all countries that join the bloc meet the requirements to ensure successful integration and continued stability of the bloc. According to the European Union, there are still chapters in each candidate country that require further preparation. Improving these areas through domestic legislation is the proven way to accomplish European Union membership. Internal reform is the necessary next step to EU membership. There are no shortcuts to membership, and there should not be any shortcuts to membership.
Once the chapters are closed, they can focus on lingering disputes with their neighbors with European Union membership while lobbying other European Union member states, particularly Germany and France, to lobby on their behalf towards EU enlargement. Trying to get the support of Croatia, Romania, Bulgaria, and Greece before closing the acquis chapters is premature.
It is clear what the future holds. The remaining Balkan states need to meet the acquis, and they will join the European Union.
References:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Economist_Democracy_Index
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_Perceptions_Index
I want a world where everyone in the world has the opportunity to succeed in life, where the only barrier is themselves. I understand this is a long way to go, but there are specific policies we can do to improve lives around the world.
Social policy
Economic policy
Foreign policy
Also, regarding Israel killing its citizens in Gaza. Murdering Jews in cold blood is considered anti-semitic where I come from.
All of this is why, while I will vote for Biden over Trump, I don’t think either candidate is good. Biden is a bad candidate, he is just better than Trump.
Every day when I scroll on Instagram I see pictures from the American Friends Service Committee and the UU Service Committee streaming out of Gaza of children getting blown up by American bombs being shot by the Israelis.
I also see the same thing from Russians blowing up Ukrainian grandmothers.
Why is it that you can send money to Israel, which is killing children, while you struggle to send weapons to Ukraine, which was invaded by a vicious fascist dictatorship? You make me wish we had ranked voting so I could vote you out.
My great-grandmother did not flee Nazi Germany so that her descendants could watch our country send weapons to a country which is killing children as we practically stand idly by as the Russians invade a sovereign country. Not only that but as Ukrainians watch their grandmothers be murdered by Russian pigs you have the audacity to ask them not to blow up military installations in Russia. The nerve.
I know you wish you could close off our borders to foreigners, put up steep tariffs, and just subsidize every business with tax money. The reality is this will not work. The United States has a moral obligation to stand up for human rights in Afghanistan, Palestine, and Ukraine. Ukraine has made their demands very clear. They want to be members of NATO to protect themselves. We owe them that after the brutality they have undergone.
I am sick and tired of you sending weapons to Israel which then go to blow up hospitals, murder children at point blank range, and then you have the nerve to defund the UNRWA, one of the only agencies which actually helps civilians in Gaza. This is because of unsubstantiated claims a few members are involved with Hamas. Remove the people helping Hamas, and continue to provide aid to the Palestinians in Gaza. This is not complicated. This is what every human rights organization in the world is calling on you to do.
For comaprison, a bunch of United States State Department staffers granted visas to the terrorists who attacked us on 9/11. Are you going to defund the State Department? Defunding an entire humanitarian agency because a few staffers violated the law is absurd.
Your policies in Afghanistan and Palestine are pure evil. Your policies in Ukraine are almost as bad as how Neville Chamberlain responded to the Anschluss. Your border policy without pushing for fixing our work visa laws which George W. Bush broke is inhumane.
Your commitment to human rights is as bad as Bush and Trump. I wish we had ranked voting so I could vote against you this November, but everything you do which I oppose is just as bad as George W. Bush and Trump. There are a few issues where you are still better than them on domestic issues, but I pray to God that your caucus will be slaughtered in the primaries.
Under your leadership we live in a world where right wing extremists like Netanyahu and Putin are more emboldened than at any other point in my lifetime. It is only a matter of time until another terrorist attack strikes either India, the European Union, or the United States and the terrorists will be funded once again by people in Saudi Arabia (according to your friend Hillary Clinton) and other Gulf States, and they are being trained in Afghanistan right now. This is your legacy.
If Ukraine falls, NATO will look weak, and Taiwan will be invaded. The United States has the resources to give Ukraine total victory. I don’t know if we have the resources to wage a three front war in Europe, Korea, and Taiwan. That is the future if Ukraine does not have total victory.
We tried appeasement with Putin in 2014. People said that giving him Crimea, the Donbass, and Luhansk would be enough and that he wouldn’t continue. People said the same thing when the Anschluss happened. These ideas were fully discredited in 1939 and have no place in politics. It is utterly absurd that these views still have an ear in modern politics.
Please consult with human rights organizations. Your foreign policy stinks. There is still time to turn this ship around.
Cut off all non-humanitarian aid to Israel. Either recognize Palestine as a foreign country and get them UN membership or demand Israeli citizenship for all Palestinians. This Bantustan-like system in the region is not working.
Give Ukraine everything they need to stop the Russian invasion to both save Ukrainian lives. We cannot afford a World War.
We need to stop climate change. I feel like everyone knows this.
The easiest, cheapest, and fastest way to do this is through a carbon tax, even before accounting for the double dividend.
But why? Why can’t we regulate our way out of climate change without carbon pricing?
Source: EPA
Transportation is the largest source of greenhouse gas emissions. The largest source is from light-duty vehicles. So around 15% of total US emissions come from light-duty vehicles, AKA personal vehicles. We need to reduce the need to drive and increase the use of carbon neutral transportation. We need more trains everywhere. We need to nationalize our rails and increase public transportation as we build dense walkable neighborhoods. Most trips are short, and can be replaced by more sustainable modes of transportation. As we build these substitutes, a carbon tax will increase the cost of burning fossil fuels while the dividend puts money in people’s pockets which will help them buy renewable vehicles if they live somewhere where mass transit is insufficient.
Source: EPA
Electricity is the second largest emitter. Individuals cannot personal responsibility our way out of reducing emissions from generating electricity. While subsidies help in constructing new electricity generation, any reduction in existing emissions, which is the priority, will be filtered through the substitution effect, significantly reducing the efficiency of subsidies to bring coal plants offline.
Make a deadline to turn systems off? I love deadlines. I love the whooshing sound they make as they pass by.
The only realistic way is to charge people and companies every time we burn fossil fuels.
The same logic for the electricity production problem applies to industry. I fear subsidies will increase output more than reduce emissions. There’s a 50% chance I am right on this prediction. Depends on the margins.
Commercial and residential is from things like natural gas heating our homes. We can ban natural gas and propane in new homes. The carbon tax will deal with already existing installations of natural gas and heating.
The carbon tax will also deal with agriculture emissions.
We need a carbon tax.
