1.1: Why Study World Politics?

The 9/11 attack (dogonnews.com) [photo of World Trade Center buildings fire and explosion]

Unit 1 - Introduction

Why Should Americans Study World Politics?

1. It can kill you. That’s why you have to take your shoes off at the airport - world politics could hijack or blow up your plane. Or you could be at your desk minding your own business in the World Trade Center on 9/11 when two planes hit the buildings. Or you could be at a party in San Bernardino or a night club in Orlando when Internet-inspired crazies come in and start shooting. Or you could be walking down a sidewalk when an Islamic State wannabe drives a truck into the crowd.

Active duty military, reservists and members of the National Guard are still going to Afghanistan and Iraq, where roadside bombs, car bombs, suicide bombs, shootings and other attacks have killed thousands of U.S. soldiers and marines and wounded many more.

2. It costs you money. Even if you don't get directly involved in a war, you help pay for it with your taxes. The military consumes over $700 Billion a year, 20% of our national budget. The Department of Homeland Security spends another $38 billion.

3. It affects your job. You could lose your job if the company moves it to China, India or Mexico. Several million jobs moved overseas in recent years as companies reduced or closed their U.S. plants and offices. On the other hand, you could get a raise if your company makes successful exports. Hollywood and U.S. farmers could not survive without their exports. Seattle depends on Boeing, which is the largest exporter in the U.S. Many of the big corporations in the Fortune 500 make more than half their sales overseas. They are hiring, but not in the U.S.

4. It affects your shopping. When we buy Chinese-made cell phones or Mexican-made jeans, we save money. When we buy strawberries in the winter, they didn't come from the U.S. We depend on cheap oil imports to fuel our SUVs. Most of the clothing, shoes, video recorders and TVs sold in the U.S. are made overseas. People love to buy cheap imports, even as they complain about jobs moving overseas.

5. It affects your health. In 2016, all branches of Genki Sushi in Hawaii were closed after hundreds of people caught Hepatitis from raw scallops imported from the Philippines. (An estimated 15 percent of the U.S. food supply is imported, including 50% of fresh fruits, 20% of fresh vegetables and 80% of seafood, and only 5% of imported food is inspected.) Meanwhile, pollution respects no man-made boundaries. Dust from the Gobi Desert becomes heavily polluted as it blows across China. Then it blows across the Pacific to land on snow in the Rocky Mountains, contaminating American water. Twenty-five percent of the smog in L.A. comes from China and five percent of the smog in Honolulu comes from L.A. Acid rain from the American Midwest and Germany destroys forests in Canada and Scandinavia. Smoke from huge forest fires in Indonesia spreads all over Southeast Asia.

In another dimension, increased trade and travel means local diseases are carried to new places. The corona virus spread all over the world in a few months. Zika spread from Brazil all over the Americas. Ebola spread from West Africa. African Swine Flu has spread all over the globe, requiring the killing of millions of pigs. Various bird flus from China have killed hundreds of people around the world. The latest H9N9 version has a human mortality rate of 25% and is more infectious. AIDS is also a global disease. West Nile disease is now established throughout the U.S. Drug-resistant TB is spreading from Russia. MERS (Middle East Respiratory Syndrome) is spreading from Saudi Arabia. Furthermore, invasive species hitch rides on planes and ships - brown tree snakes from the Solomon Islands kill birds and attack babies in Guam, zebra mussels from Russia and Ukraine choke the Great Lakes, and Asian carp invade U.S. rivers.

6. The world is becoming more and more globalized, more and more quickly. Twenty-four percent of NBA players and 27% of Major League Baseball players are foreign born. Half of KFC’s sales are in China. There are huge amounts of international trade, international organizations, international culture and international travel. Today, 30% of the US economy is trade. In many countries it is more. Big ships and planes carry more people and more goods faster and cheaper. Indeed, travel is the world’s largest industry. There are thousands of non-state actors like Amnesty International, Greenpeace, Islamic State and Facebook that are engaging large countries. The K-Pop group BTS had three #1 hits in the U.S. in 2019 and brought in $4.3 billion. PSY’s Gangnam Style has had 3 billion views since it went up on YouTube in 2012. American movies play everywhere, and Indian, Iranian, Japanese and other movies are also finding overseas audiences. South Korean, Mexican, Turkish and Brazilian TV dramas play all over the world. The Beverly Hills Hotel is facing a boycott because of the conservative anti-gay Islamist policies that its owner, the Sultan of Brunei, has imposed in his home country in Southeast Asia. Many other American businesses are also owned by foreign companies. Facebook, WhatsApp, Twitter, Instagram, texting and blogs make it ordinary to communicate quickly and easily to people thousands of miles away, coordinate revolutions at home, foment lynchings, riots and genocide, or find and arrest government critics.

Whether we like it or not, world politics affects us greatly. So it is a good idea for us to know what is going on out there.