scholarly journals Military Coup in Burma Draws International Condemnation and Pressure

2021 ◽  
Vol 115 (3) ◽  
pp. 558-567

On February 1, 2021, the military in Burma overthrew the democratically elected government, declared a one-year state of emergency, and installed Senior General Min Aung Hlaing as the head of government. Since the coup, the military has cracked down on protestors, killing over 800 people and detaining many more. Numerous countries and international organizations, including the United States and the United Nations, have condemned the coup and ensuing violence and called for the restoration of a democratic government. The United States and other countries have also imposed rigorous sanctions on the Burmese military, its officials and affiliated corporations, and social media companies have imposed content restrictions to prevent the spread of pro-military propaganda.

2021 ◽  
pp. 293-314
Author(s):  
David P. Fidler

Russian meddling in the 2016 elections in the United States sparked debates in liberal democracies about how to counter foreign election interference. These debates reveal the seriousness of the threat and the complexity of responses to it, including how to protect voting systems and what actions social media companies should take against disinformation. This chapter argues that international anarchy changes in ways that leading theories of international relations do not capture. The chapter develops the concept of “open-source anarchy” to understand how anarchy changed after the Cold War and to analyze why foreign election interference has gained prominence during the second decade of the twenty-first century. In open-source anarchy, changes in the structure of material power, technologies, and ideas permit less powerful states and nonstate actors to affect more directly and significantly how anarchy functions. The concept helps explain how Russia exploited the internet and social media to interfere in elections in the United States—the world’s leading democracy, foremost source of technological innovation, and most powerful country. Open-source anarchy also illuminates the struggles that the United States and other democracies have experienced in preventing, protecting against, and responding to foreign election interference.


Author(s):  
Matias Spektor

The John F. Kennedy administration took a bet on the incoming president of Brazil, João Goulart, as he took office on September 8, 1961. Goulart was not a radical socialist, but his opponents portrayed him as an unpredictable nationalist who might unadvisedly fuel the flames of social upheaval and radical revolution, turning Brazil into a second Cuba. Yet, the White House estimated that Goulart was someone they could do business with and sympathized with the idea of Reformas de Base (Goulart’s program of “basic reforms”), which included the extension of labor protections to rural workers, redistributive agrarian reform, and universal suffrage. United States support for Goulart materialized in the form of economic aid, financial assistance via the IMF, and development assistance via the Alliance for Progress partnership. Within a year, however, the tide turned as Goulart failed to comply with American demands that he ban leftists from his cabinet. In a matter of months in 1962, the White House abandoned any hopes of engagement with the Brazilian president. While the crisis that led to Goulart’s fall in March 1964 was the making of domestic political actors within Brazil—as was the military coup to unseat the president—the likelihood and success rate of the golpe grew as the United States rolled out successive rounds of targeted actions against Goulart, including diplomatic and financial pressure, threats of abandonment, support for opposition politicians, collusion with coup plotters, signaling future military support for the plotters in the eventuality of civil war, and the granting of immediate diplomatic recognition for the incoming authoritarian military leaders after the coup. After Goulart, Brazil remained under authoritarian rule for two consecutive decades.


1980 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 365-396 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. A. MacDonald

In Argentina during World War II the US stepped outside the limits of the Good Neighbor policy proclaimed by the Roosevelt administration in 1933 and attempted to overthrow the government of a major Latin American power.1Between 1941 and 1945 Argentina was not only treated differently from the rest of Latin America by the United States, but was also singled out for harsher treatment than other neutrals, despite its large material contribution to the Allied cause. In 1944 Washington was readier to compromise with Franco's Spain, a country whose Axis connections were notorious, than it was to seek a settlement with the government in Buenos Aires.2The purpose of this paper is to examine the development of US interference in Argentine affairs after Pearl Harbor and the reasons for US hostility to the rise of Perón following the military coup of June 1943.


Global Focus ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 150-163
Author(s):  
Bima Nur Muhammad Rizky

Aid has transformed into a promising tool of policy to spread, gain, or maintain power and influence internationally. One of the common aid institutions keeps actively promoting and pushing norms and values of democracy internationally in the United States through USAID. Upon that, one of the recipient countries to receive USAID programs in Myanmar. USAID has been focusing on and pushing democratization to occur in Myanmar and creating supporting programs to respond to the 2015 election, increasing the number of aids after the majority win of the NLD Party in the 2015 election. However, after the military coup successfully seized the government on February 1, 2021, USAID decided to shift its programs to support the civil society movement and strengthen democracy in Myanmar. Within this paper, there will be explanations of how USAID's programs after the military coup occurred in Myanmar, and why it matters to the United States not fully to halt their programs and aids of USAID. This paper will also show how USAID programs and aid to Myanmar before the coup.


2020 ◽  
Vol 16 (11) ◽  
pp. 2103-2123
Author(s):  
V.L. Gladyshevskii ◽  
E.V. Gorgola ◽  
D.V. Khudyakov

Subject. In the twentieth century, the most developed countries formed a permanent military economy represented by military-industrial complexes, which began to perform almost a system-forming role in national economies, acting as the basis for ensuring national security, and being an independent military and political force. The United States is pursuing a pronounced militaristic policy, has almost begun to unleash a new "cold war" against Russia and to unwind the arms race, on the one hand, trying to exhaust the enemy's economy, on the other hand, to reindustrialize its own economy, relying on the military-industrial complex. Objectives. We examine the evolution, main features and operational distinctions of the military-industrial complex of the United States and that of the Russian Federation, revealing sources of their military-technological and military-economic advancement in comparison with other countries. Methods. The study uses military-economic analysis, scientific and methodological apparatus of modern institutionalism. Results. Regulating the national economy and constant monitoring of budget financing contribute to the rise of military production, especially in the context of austerity and crisis phenomena, which, in particular, justifies the irrelevance of institutionalists' conclusions about increasing transaction costs and intensifying centralization in the industrial production management with respect to to the military-industrial complex. Conclusions. Proving to be much more efficient, the domestic military-industrial complex, without having such access to finance as the U.S. military monopolies, should certainly evolve and progress, strengthening the coordination, manageability, planning, maximum cost reduction, increasing labor productivity, and implementing an internal quality system with the active involvement of the State and its resources.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kerry Spitzer ◽  
Brent Heineman ◽  
Marcella Jewell ◽  
Michael Moran ◽  
Peter Lindenauer

BACKGROUND Asthma is a chronic lung disease that affects nearly 25 million individuals in the United States. There is a need for more research into the potential for health care providers to leverage existing social media platforms to improve healthy behaviors and support individuals living with chronic health conditions. OBJECTIVE In this study, we assess the willingness of Instagram users with poorly controlled asthma to participate in a pilot study that uses Instagram as a means of providing social and informational support. In addition, we explore the potential for adapting photovoice and digital storytelling to social media. METHODS A survey study of Instagram users living with asthma in the United States, between the ages of 18 to 40. RESULTS Over 3 weeks of recruitment, 457 individuals completed the pre-survey screener; 347 were excluded. Of the 110 people who were eligible and agreed to participate in the study, 82 completed the study survey. Respondents mean age was 21(SD = 5.3). Respondents were 56% female (n=46), 65% (n=53) non-Hispanic white, and 72% (n=59) had at least some college education. The majority of respondents (n = 66, 81%) indicated that they would be willing to participate in the study. CONCLUSIONS Among young-adult Instagram users with asthma there is substantial interest in participating in a study that uses Instagram to connect participants with peers and a health coach in order to share information about self-management of asthma and build social connection.


Author(s):  
Michael C. Dorf ◽  
Michael S. Chu

Lawyers played a key role in challenging the Trump administration’s Travel Ban on entry into the United States of nationals from various majority-Muslim nations. Responding to calls from nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), which were amplified by social media, lawyers responded to the Travel Ban’s chaotic rollout by providing assistance to foreign travelers at airports. Their efforts led to initial court victories, which in turn led the government to soften the Ban somewhat in two superseding executive actions. The lawyers’ work also contributed to the broader resistance to the Trump administration by dramatizing its bigotry, callousness, cruelty, and lawlessness. The efficacy of the lawyers’ resistance to the Travel Ban shows that, contrary to strong claims about the limits of court action, litigation can promote social change. General lessons about lawyer activism in ordinary times are difficult to draw, however, because of the extraordinary threat Trump poses to civil rights and the rule of law.


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