This paper was submitted for “Global Studies 100B: Globalization – Contemporary Issues” with Professor Russell Burgos, Professor David Rigby, Professor Dominic Thomas and Aron Ballard in Spring 2009.

Globalization has increased communication and decreased transportation costs throughout the past decade, enabling countries to prosper and thrive. Why, then has African been left behind? This answer, multifaceted and complex, is crucial to understanding how Africa can develop further and catch up with the rest of the world. It has been proposed that regionalization, economic and political, is the solution for Africa. However, it is impetuous to prescribe a solely regional solution that depends on the security and stability on a domestic level. In the past, regional integration in Africa has been repeatedly met unsuccessfully due to domestic failures. Insecurities on the domestic level must be faced before regional integration can occur. In the past, different regions have pursued different goals of integration based on its own economic interests, rather than as a single vision intended for development of the continent as a whole. There are two possible solutions for Africa to begin the path towards development that is inclusive of quelling the domestic insecurities and also uniting the goals of the continent. First is creating an outwardly oriented economic model that promotes global integration, and second, a more open, democratic polity. Both factors are necessary as political security is a precursor for economic stability and both factors are manifested in the New Partnership for African Development (NEPAD).

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This paper was submitted for “Political Science 20: World Politics” with Professor Richard Anderson in Spring 2009.

Realism rests on the assumption that the international system is anarchic, where the key actors are sovereign nation-states who must guarantee their own security in a constant struggle for power. Given that there is no legitimate and universal international system that can guarantee the safety of any one nation, states, as rational actors, must do what they can to ensure their survival in this security dilemma. (Nau, 2009, pg. 30-31) While there are many causes of war, the most dominant is the conscious, rational choice by these insecure states in attempting to attain security and power. This is, by no means, a universal barometer for the cause of war. As I delve deeper into each level, each action becomes more nuanced and other causes also affect the decisions. However, within different levels of analysis, the quest for power is still the dominant and overarching goal of the state and state actors leading up to World War I, World War II and the Cold War.

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This column was first published in the UCLA Daily Bruin on April 28, 2009.

Imagine: It’s 2059. You’re in the Guiyu of Guangdong Province, China, strolling the streets. The air is crisp and the grass green. The cafe-lined streets are littered with people chatting and typing away on their laptops.

Actually, at this rate, the only thing Guiyu will be littered with is electronic waste, or e-waste, an umbrella term for discarded electronic devices.

Instead of the idyllic image of Guiyu above, the town is the main center of exported e-waste, in China.

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This paper was submitted for “Political Science 20: World Politics” with Professor Richard Anderson in Spring 2009.

In the international system, there are various lenses or perspectives to view war and conflict and the intentions or rationale behind it. There are three dominant perspectives that exist: the realist, liberal and identity perspectives. I will focus on the realist and liberal perspectives only. In War and Peace in Zaire/Congo: Analyzing and Evaluating Intervention 1996-1997 , the analysis of United States and French intervention or lack thereof is explained through a mix of the realist and liberal perspectives, noting both the power struggle in Central Africa and the economic interests and failed negotiations.

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This column was first published in the UCLA Daily Bruin on April 3, 2009.

I’ve always wanted to be a meteorologist.

The forecast? Cloudy. Well, the technological forecast, anyway. The next big Internet innovation is cloud computing.

In this case, the “cloud” represents the intricacies of all of the interconnected computers on the Internet. Cloud computing is a way to store your data on the Internet and make it accessible anywhere, through any computer.

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