The Yegiora Files

The video above explains the One Belt One Road Initiative. It is a foreign policy designed to promote cooperation between China and many other countries. PNG has signed the One Belt One Road Initiative Memorandum of Understanding as per the report on the China Daily: "Xi said bilateral cooperation is standing at a new starting point with Papua New Guinea officially joining the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank and the two countries signing a memorandum of understanding on Belt and Road cooperation, the first of its kind between China and a Pacific island nation."   PNG has not only signed the BRI MOU but also joined the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB). As such, I agree with President Xi that PNG is stepping into a new frontier. PNG has a huge potential in agriculture but lacks capital and infrastructure. For example, the highlands provinces can grow vegetables well. Provinces like Western Highlands grow well potatoes and cabbages. The potatoe...

No that I am done with assessment it is time to move onto planning for next semester. Next semester, I will be teaching only two units: IR333 Foreign Policy Analysis IR432 Geopolitics in Asia-Pacific The other unit on the program is IR204 PNG Foreign Policy. This unit was a second year unit initially but during our program review we moved it to fourth year. The rationale for the move is based on the logic that a student must first have a strong understanding of the theories, roles and functions of international organizations, the politics of international law and foreign policy including security before talking about PNG's foreign policy. This is captured in our logical arrangement of IR units: IR202 Theories of International Relations IR203 International Organizations IR302 International Law in International Relations IR333 Foreign Policy Analysis IR431 International & Regional Security IR432 Geopolitics in Asia-Pacific IR204 PNG Foreign Policy Regardless of t...

This model centers on the fact that different bureaucracies have different standard operating procedures. These procedures are made in order to allow day to day operations to be carried out. Thus, a foreign policy decision is made based on these standard operating procedures. It is hard for a bureaucracy to make a decision or let alone function out of character or contrary to their standard operating procedure. The reading Chapter 4: Foreign policy shares a straight forward explanation of the OPM: "An alternative to the rational model of decision making is the organizational process model. In this model, foreign policy decision makers generally skip the labor-intensive process of identifying goals and alternative actions, relying instead for most decisions on standardized responses or standard operating procedures. For example, the U.S. State Department everyday receives more than a thousand reports or inquiries from its embassies around the world and sends out more than a ...

John Stuart Mill was a famous British political philosopher who contributed to the advancement of our modern society. We need to go back to his argument on the 'harm principle' if we want to have a deeper political understanding of the Facebook debate in PNG. In UPNG, when I first attended Alphonse Gelu's course titled 'The State', we talked about the 'harm principle' . I did not develop a firm understanding of the notion, initially.  But later, when I attended Alphonse Shaun's class on 'Social Political Philosophy'. I began to make sense of what these great political philosophers were saying and how their political philosophies influenced the foundation of our modern society. According to the video (below) from YouTube, Mill argued that free speech is important. What people are saying on Facebook at the moment according to Mill is not harm. Such dissent offends others (but not all) and keeps those who are offended on their intell...

We began by looking at human security issues 1, 2 and 3. In this post we will look at the other 4 human security issues. These 7 human security issues outlined by Lawson are connected to the 4 major theories of international relations in one way or another. The fourth issue is environmental security. Lawson (2012) states that the protection against pollution and depletion is the essence of environmental security. Pollution of our atmosphere, fresh waterways, sea and land is considered a threat to human survival. Pollution has a chain reaction feature, causing the depletion of other resources. People living along the Ramu river and its tributaries located near the nickel and cobalt mine are scared of poisonous chemicals in the waterways. The various tributaries and the big Ramu river are a vital source of food for the people. These fresh waterways contain fish and prawns which are important sources of protein. If the waterways are polluted, then the chemicals will reduce th...

Griffiths, O’Callaghan and Roach (2008) shared the basic logic of the concept of security which is to be safe from harm. The scholars shared with us that for realist the state is the primary unit of analysis in international relations. Hence, the key motive of states is to protect their sovereignty. Such a view is called the traditional state-centered approach. North Korea’s nuclear ambition is harmful to South Korea. A nuclearized North Korea will have the fire power to invade South Korea. This will be a serious threat to South Korea’s sovereignty. Thus, South Korea needs the help of its allies like America to counter the North Korean nuclear threat or enhance its security. One important trend that we need to note is the shift from the traditional state-centric approach to a more expansive understanding of the concept of security, as outlined by Griffiths, O’Callaghan and Roach (ibid.). These scholars gave two reasons for the shift: First being the fact that most violent conflict...

Yesterday, I suggested to those of you who took IR202 this semester to engage in a profiling exercise. I suggested that you should profile the teaching staff in the department. I told you that this is one way of understanding what we do in the various units we teach. Profiling according to Merriam-Webster is the act or process of extrapolating information about a person based on known traits or tendencies. Thus, the challenge is on you to collate information about us in order to better understand our teaching and learning plan or what we do in our units. We did the same for international relations scholars. You all were assigned a scholar and asked to extrapolate information about the scholar in relation to his or her theoretical premises.  For my case, by now most of you should know that I am big on reading. I want my students to read and read a lot. I believe that knowledge is contained in the many books in the library and other electronic reading resources at your disposa...