Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes
During the early morning hours of Thursday (local time), Russia began its long-threatened and unprovoked invasion of Ukraine, the first instance of war between two sovereign nations in Europe since the end of the Second World War. Vladimir Putin’s order to initiate a “special military operation” against Ukraine has finally, for those who had any […]
Estimated Reading Time: 4 minutes
In 1899 Joseph Conrad published his fictional account of a trip up the Congo River into the Congo Free State, nineteenth century Africa’s colonial “Heart of Darkness.” In 1979, Francis Ford Coppola adopted Conrad’s work to his film Apocalypse Now, which moved the story from the Congo to Vietnam and Cambodia during the Vietnam War. […]
Estimated Reading Time: 4 minutes
The American historian Daniel J. Boorstin (1914 – 2004) once wrote, “History should be our Cautionary Science” and argued we should not “underestimate the probability of the unexpected” in gaining an understanding of past events¹. This not to argue that we should disregard the probability of expected outcomes based on the demonstrated past performance of individuals […]
Estimated Reading Time: 2 minutes
On Monday afternoon, while audiences around the world watched the unfolding of the evacuation of Kabul, President Biden offered the American people the rationale behind his decision to order the end of America’s commitment to its longest war. The story isn’t over, of course; six thousand U.S. military personnel have been ordered to Afghanistan to […]
Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes
On July 21, the White House released its new U.S Strategy for Addressing the Root Causes of Migration in Central America (Root-Causes-Strategy.pdf (whitehouse.gov). As Vice President Harris emphasized in her cover message, “the root causes of migration run deep—and migration from the region has a direct impact on the United States. For that reason, our […]
Estimated Reading Time: 2 minutes
This series of articles began with a number – 891,213 encounters with undocumented aliens reported by the Border Patrol on the southern U.S. border during the first nine months of this fiscal year. That number was followed by a statement by Vice President Harris that she would focus her attention on determining the “root causes” […]
Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes
The third article in this series examines the “root causes” of migration from Guatemala and El Salvador. So far this fiscal year, the Border Patrol reports having encountered 153,478 people from Guatemala and 49,845 from El Salvador on the southern border (Southwest Land Border Encounters (By Component) | U.S. Customs and Border Protection (cbp.gov). Much […]
Estimated Reading Time: 2 minutes
This is the second in a series of articles exploring the “root causes” of the migrant crisis on the southern U.S. border, focusing on the four largest identified sending countries – Mexico, Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador. From the beginning of the current fiscal year on October 1, 2020, through June 3, 2021, Border […]
Estimated Reading Time: 2 minutes
Numbers alone do not tell the whole story of the migrant crisis on the southern border, but they do tell a lot. According to official statistics released by U.S. Customs and Border Protection, from the beginning of the current fiscal year on October 1, 2020, through June 3, 2021, Border Patrol agents reported 891,213 encounters […]
Estimated Reading Time: 2 minutes
The concept of national sovereignty is central to the contemporary international system. One of the generally accepted aspects of national sovereignty is the ability of a government to exercise control of its national territory within defined borders, and to control who crosses those borders, where, and when. The United States shares a nearly 2,000-mile border […]