US Side Research Articles

CHINESE SCHOLARLY PERSPECTIVES ON THE US-PROMOTED “INDO-PACIFIC” CONCEPT AND STRATEGY

This article examines the ways that China-based scholars interpret the US-promoted concept of the ‘Indo-Pacific’ and the strategy and policy advice they advance on how Beijing should engage with it. The article finds the Chinese discourse to be realist in outlook and invariably pessimistic. As such, it mirrors the debate in the West. Of considerable concern to Chinese interests is the potential impediment of China’s economic access to Southeast Asia, jeopardizing Xi Jinping’s Belt & Road Initiative. In addition, the Biden administration’s rallying tool of ‘ideology’ – liberal values – and its diplomatic ‘club strategy’ are judged as rather effective in swaying countries to the US side. Militarily, the projected danger of a ‘NATOization’ of the region stands out, suggesting significant fears that European and Indo-Pacific ‘vassals’ of the US could form a bloc against China. Most revealing is the open discussion of ‘united front’ divide-and-rule tactics, and the advocacy of ‘moderate pressure’ vis-à-vis weaker states.

Pemex’s Deepwater Ambitions Return

Pemex, Mexico’s state oil company, is laying the groundwork for a new round of deepwater exploration in the Gulf of Mexico in hopes to land a new elephant or two that could play a meaningful role in reversing the country’s downward production trajectory in the coming years. The company has seen its crude oil production cut in half since 2004 when production peaked at around 3.8 million B/D. By 2019, that number had fallen to nearly 1.8 million B/D. Levels have stabilized in recent years with the current estimate being just over 1.9 million B/D. Since taking office in 2018, Mexico President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has directed the operator to concentrate its drilling activity on less costly areas such as shallow water and onshore. Pemex is the world’s most indebted oil company with a debt load in excess of $100 billion. “We haven’t heard of any really large discovery recently,” said Diego Becerril, research manager, global analyst upstream team with Wood Mackenzie. “It’s been a couple of years since they last announced a giant discovery. They used to do it every year. “They were able to kind of control the production decline for a few years—2022 and 2023—I think by continuing to explore near areas that they already know, which in the end, doesn’t have that much prospectivity, but they can bring it online in a relatively short term and add volumes into the production portfolio. But moving forward they still need more resources. That is probably part of the reason we’re seeing a change of strategy going into deep water,” he said. The operator’s early deepwater exploration campaign in the mid-2000s was greeted with mixed results. The program yielded one known commercial gas discovery at Lakach. Other wells—Nab-1 (oil), Lalail-1 (gas), and Noxal-1 (gas)—all yielded hydrocarbons, but none of those finds were thought to be standalone development candidates. The debt burden has not prevented Pemex from planning more than $1 billion in investment in deepwater drilling to be conducted over the next several years. In February, hydrocarbons regulator CNH approved an updated plan for drilling in the Holok-Han area. The $400 million-plus investment plan follows 20 years of drilling in the area, during which 14 wells were drilled over that time—13 exploration wells and one delineation well—but no development plans emerged as a result of the program. The revised plan has Pemex drilling up to seven additional exploration wells in Holok-Han targeting Lower Eocene, Lower Pliocene, and Lower Miocene-aged reservoirs. CNH also approved plans for fresh drilling in the Perdido area. The $680 million program would see Pemex drill exploration wells in seven blocks near the US/Mexico maritime border and on trend with large finds on the US side. The bulk of the drilling would take place in 2026, likely utilizing Transocean drillship Deepwater Invictus, which will be under contract with Pemex for a 1,080-day period starting in late 2025. Pemex has identified more than 2 billion BOE in Perdido, according to CNH. The operator drilled 28 exploration wells from 2012 to 2019 in the area.

Mean and volatility spillover in Asian economies: Evidence from trade war.

This study aims to assess the mean and volatility spillover due to trade war between US and China on the Asian markets using GARCH, evidencing that portfolio opportunity exists for the investors in these markets. These markets may offer diversification benefits to investors who fear the negative ramifications of stock markets of the economies in US and China. The study creates a composite variable to test the impact of trade war. The composition of the variable is based on Bilateral Tariffs, Trade policy and Economic policy uncertainty of US only. It means the study covers the US side only for creating a trade war variable. The findings of the study reveal no mean or volatility spillover exists. The study has implications for investors and policymakers.

Meeting Ourselves or Other Sides of Us?—Meta-Analysis of the Metaverse

We were promised that the Metaverse would revolutionize our lives, social interactions, work, and business. However, how and when will this happen? We have seen the growth and development of technology, but there is no agreement or prediction about a specific time, and we can only follow the how question. To investigate more leads about this concept, we considered a main research question: How is the Metaverse actually being perceived? This question is connected with three objectives: to verify how the Metaverse is being represented and characterized, identify the main dimensions that facilitate or influence the acceptance of the Metaverse, and identify the leading technologies that suit the Metaverse concept. This study consisted of a documental analysis—or meta-analysis—of fifty of the most relevant scientific papers (taking into account some inclusion criteria) published in the last three years, using the Leximancer software to create concept maps to illustrate the main concepts and themes extracted from the articles to understand their associations or relations with the Metaverse concept. This study provided us with essential findings about how this concept has been perceived and allowed us to answer our objectives, contributing to a scientific discussion on the topic, and provided some valid suggestions for future research, which is already in progress. It also provided new leads on approaching this concept in development.

Hostile Terrain 94, Installation, and Meditative Explorations of the US-Mexico Borderlands

In the fall semester of 2021, we organized and curated the participatory art project Hostile Terrain ‘94 at the University of Alabama. The project, conceived and developed by the Undocumented Migration Project, consists of ∼3,200 toe-tags carrying information of deceased migrants found on the US side of the US-Mexico border in the Sonoran Desert. They produce a map of tremendous death. The project allowed participating institutions to make their own decisions regarding how to coordinate the creation of the material and staging and curation of the final exhibition. Apart from its importance as a way of engaging a public with the often-unseen consequences of US border policy and policing, it is also an experiment in collaborative art making. What kind of experience did we want to structure for those taking part in creating the materials? How were we going to stage the encounter with the finished materials? We discuss organizing the creation of materials, setting up the installation, and the period when the project was open to the public to highlight two elements that were of special importance in the process: the subject position engaged by the project, and the meditative practice proposed by the installation.

A Comparison of Two Macroinvertebrate Multi-Plate Sampling Methods to Inform Great Lakes Monitoring and Remediation Efforts.

Hester-Dendy (HD) multi-plate samplers have been widely used by state and federal government agencies for bioassessment of water quality through use of macroinvertebrate community data. To help guide remediation and restoration efforts at the Niagara River Great Lakes Area of Concern site, a multi-agency study was conducted in 2014 to assess the contribution of seven major urban tributaries on the US side of the river toward the impairment of the Niagara River. As part of this study, macroinvertebrate communities were sampled using two co-located versions of HD samplers: one version used by the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (NYSDEC) and another by the US Environmental Protection Agency Office of Research and Development. Samplers were deployed in tributaries in highly developed watersheds with high percent impervious surface. The two sampling methods varied in terms of number and size of plates, between-plate spacing, and deployment method. Comparison of the similarity/grouping of communities with multivariate ordination techniques, Nonmetric Multidimensional Scaling and Multi-Response Permutation Procedure, showed that both methods were able to detect differences in communities at stations, despite some grouping by month and method. The indices and metrics derived from the two HD methods were found to give comparable but not identical assessments of water quality. Despite their differences, the methods were robust with respect to water quality categories derived from indices used nationally (HBI) and by NY state (BAP). For the common richness metrics, total taxa and EPT richness, there was no statistical difference between means from 3 samplings. Some metrics, especially percent tolerant collector-gatherer individuals, did show significant differences at certain stations. Indicator Species Analysis showed some taxa associated with each method. The observed community differences were thought mostly due to the difference in sampler deployment position.

Scientific diasporas and the advancement of science diplomacy: The InFEWS US-China program in the face of confrontational "America First" diplomacy.

The challenges and consequences of climate change have brought together governments around the world to advance scientific knowledge and programmatic actions to develop mitigation strategies while promoting sustainable development. The United States and China—the countries with the highest science expenditures globally—have historically developed a range of joint international research collaborations. However, under the “America First” agenda put forth by the Trump Administration, bilateral diplomatic relations with China reached their highest confrontational peak. Under this scenario science diplomacy served as a catalyst to maintain scientific collaborations between both countries. In 2018, the US National Science Foundation and the China National Natural Science Foundation launched the InFEWS US-China program to promote collaborations to expand food, energy, and water nexus (FEW Nexus) research and applications. Over the past four years, 20 research projects have been awarded from the US side and 47 publications have been reported as research output. By carrying out a descriptive analysis of the InFEWS US-China research and scholarly outputs, we find evidence of the crucial role played by the Chinese scientific diaspora who led 65% of the projects awarded. We find that there is a generally good understanding of the interdependencies between FEW systems included in the project abstracts. However, in the InFEWS US-China scholarly outputs generated to date, there is a lack of usage of a clear FEW Nexus theoretical framework. Further research should address intentional policies that enhance the involvement of scientific diasporas in their home countries to better address climate, sustainability, and development challenges.

Borderlands Curanderos: The Worlds of Santa Teresa Urrea and Don Pedrito Jaramillo by Jennifer Koshatka Seman

Reviewed by: Borderlands Curanderos: The Worlds of Santa Teresa Urrea and Don Pedrito Jaramillo by Jennifer Koshatka Seman Spencer Dew Jennifer Koshatka Seman, Borderlands Curanderos: The Worlds of Santa Teresa Urrea and Don Pedrito Jaramillo (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2021) "Un Problema Para La Medicina"—"A Problem for Medicine"—ran one headline about curandera Teresa Urrea in the last decade of the nineteenth century. The phrase offers a useful entry point to this book, which approaches the healing practices of Teresa Urrea and Don Pedrito Jaramillo as medicine "from below," treating "ethnic Mexicans and Indigenous people faced with increasingly oppressive, exclusionary, and violent state power" (11). Reading the reception of these curanderos—by various factions of supporters as well as critics—Seman shows how borderlands healing practices troubled conceptions of medicine and modernity, race and national identity, even state power and capitalist logic (4). Seman reveals curanderismo to be a dynamic cultural practice and a transatlantic product as much as a New World indigenous one (with roots in Greek, Arabic, and European concepts, too), and situates shifting understandings of curanderismo within broader changes in thinking about "science" and "medicine" (from understandings of the body's electricity or magnetism to beliefs in the scientific nature of spiritualism to theories of "tropical medicine" used to justify colonialist exploitation). Neither medicine nor religion exists in isolation from state power and social structures that seek to categorize and contain, as Seman shows with impressive finesse and with a clear articulation of context that [End Page 131] allows non-experts and undergraduates to understand the historical importance of Porfirista intellectuals in exile or the Catarino Garza Rebellion. Indeed, what is most striking about the two figures Seman focuses on is how central they can be to many historical debates and trends—and how protean they are to their varied audiences. Urrea—depending on who one asked—was a curandera, an espiritista medium, a critic of Catholic leadership, and a "sad-eyed Mexican girl" whose "lovely, slender" hands were fetishized by the press (65). She was also Santa Teresa, the "Mexican Joan of Arc" who inspired an uprising of indigenous Yaqui, and, from the US side of the border, the author of revolutionary tracts against the Mexican government. As an example of the multiple and entangled roles assumed and imposed upon Urrea, the Mexican journal that published "Un Problema Para La Medicina" was a Spiritist journal, and the article's author, an American Spiritist and medical doctor, intended the headline as a celebratory note. He argued that Urrea, like various other historical faith healers, including Jesus, was here to alleviate human suffering; she presented a "problem" for institutionalized, professional medicine in that she healed not as a result of elite training and in exchange for pay, but, rather, via the work of spirits and the manipulation of "magnetic fluid" (36). Similarly, when, in 1901, the American Medical Association (AMA) charged Texas-based curandero Don Pedrito Jaramillo with fraud, this was an attempt to protect a kind of monopoly—over knowledge but also the right to practice—over what counted as medicine and how healing could be regulated by law. It was also an attack on a healthcare provider who depended on "an economy of reciprocity." Refusing to profit off his abilities, Jaramillo was perhaps an even greater threat to the model of medicine-as-industry represented by the AMA. The AMA's perpetuation of coloniality is less visibly striking than the massacre of indigenous Yaqui—Teresita rebels rallying under the name of Urrea—whose corpses were stacked for a photograph outside the Nogales customs house in August of 1896. Seman pairs this image, early in her book, with a similar souvenir photograph of corpses: bodies in a mass grave at Wounded Knee, 1891, laying out in gut-wrenching black-and-white the stakes of alternative cultural "scripts" for healing and showing colonialist violence at its most immediate (101). Similarly powerful is this book's concluding chapter, which insists that these healers "are more than mere cultural footnotes to history" by situating their legacies in the context of the contemporary borderlands politics, alongside the ongoing colonialist expansion and displacement of natives that is El Paso's...

1980'lerde Japonya-ABD İlişkisi ve Dünya Yarı İletken Konseyinin Kuruluşu

Integrated circuits (ICs or microchips) are used in high-tech consumer electronics such as computers and automobiles. In the history of IC manufacturing, the 1980s featured rapid improvement and spreading of the chip manufacturing technology around the globe. This led to the United States manufacturers which had been the incumbent leaders so far to face new competition. The Japanese manufacturers had effectively captured both the US and world market by the mid-1980s. In reaction, the US manufacturers filed complaints to the Office of the US Trade Representative leading to an official protective initiative. Under the threat of being cut out of the largest electronics market at the time, Japan agreed to sign the 1986 Japan-US Semiconductor Agreement, with significant demands placed on its industry. The agreement was renewed in 1991 and in 1996, the expectation on the US side was another renewal. Instead, Japan proposed founding the World Semiconductor Council (WSC). This major framework change from a bilateral agreement between governments to a multilateral forum of private sector representatives begets the question of “why.” This paper presents a historical analysis of the factors that led to the Japanese proposal for foundation of the WSC. In this analysis, explanation factors are divided into international and domestic factors from the viewpoint of Japan. It is concluded that the effect of the US diplomatic advantage in the 1986 agreement and Japan’s own domestic political economic transformation culminated in the WSC proposal.

Aid, Securitization, and Defense Agreements “Securitization is not something that the West has done to Africa, but rather a set of policy imperatives that some African governments have actively pursued. African governments are thus not victims of securiti

What makes African nations reach out to make pacts with their neighbors and the international community, or to militarize? Fisher and Anderson (2015) claim that African governments readily embrace militarization after internal strife and civil wars and that after 9/11, security agreements with the United States re-enforce this already occurring ‘illiberal’ state building phenomena in Africa; encouraging military security regimes. The cause de jour of this predicament from the US side being fear of terrorist elements spreading across the African continent from Asia and the Middle East all the way to Europe and the United States.[1] A nascent study by Le Van (2010) implies that countries in Africa receiving higher aid packages from the U.S. might be more likely to react positively to the presence of the United States Africa Command (AFRICOM)—the US’s newest theater command—and to be more likely to cooperate in international agreements on security and trade.[2]
 

First data on water mite (Acari, Hydrachnidia) assemblages of Point Rosa Marsh, Harrison Township, Michigan, USA,and their use as environmental bioindicators of aquatic health

Water mites are aquatic arachnids that have been used in Europe and Central America as bioindicators of ecological health in various freshwater ecosystems (including bogs). Water mites can be found in high densities in the Laurentian Great Lakes and adjacent habitats. Although they are abundant, water mites are generally not used in the assessment of aquatic habitats in the Great Lakes and are usually assigned to the “other” category in macroinvertebrate assessments. This is despite evidence of their utility as aquatic bioindicators. In the present study we consider water mites as bioindicators of the environmental health of Point Rosa marsh, a threatened marsh found on the US side of transboundary Lake St. Clair. The abundance of water mites in Point Rosa Marsh increased from 2017 to 2019 as lake water levels increased. Although increasing water levels in Lake St. Clair can be considered a negative event due to loss of irreplaceable coastal habitat by erosion with potential economic impacts, this present study indicates that water mite populations in Point Rosa Marsh increased during the same period (2017 to 2019). As a result of our study we: update the biodiversity of water mites from Lake St. Clair with new records compared to the last report from the lake over 45 years ago, first report on water mite assemblages at Point Rosa marsh at the Lake St. Clair Metropark on Lake St. Clair and the first demonstration of water mites used as bioindicators in the habitats of the Laurentian Great Lakes.

The roots of uprooting: migrant oral history and internationalist solidarity

ABSTRACT This article explores a transnational oral history project on migrant justice which I developed in collaboration with refugee organizers in Greece and students in my course ‘Borders and Migration’ at the University of Utah. In the project, US-based and Greece-based im/migrant communities exchange oral histories with each other on their struggles and experiences. I argue that this exchange shed light on avenues for building internationalist solidarity among migrant justice movements worldwide. The project made visible some common ‘roots of uprooting,’ namely the ways in which structures of capitalism and imperialism have uprooted disparate peoples from their homelands. I thus argue that freedom of movement and freedom from uprooting emerge as twin struggles in these oral histories. I then explore the ways that both sides of the exchange underscored that community need not be defined by citizenship papers or lack thereof, by (militarized) national borders, or by people’s particular ethnic identity. Rather, participants spoke to each other of steadfastly building strong, meaningful communities based on mutual aid despite their presence being deemed illegal or otherwise illegitimate. These included a direct-action squat by refugees of a vacant hotel in Athens as well as other forms of community building by DACAmented youth on the project’s US side. I ultimately argue that these acts help light the way to a world not based on profit and its tendency to displace people, but rather based on sharing resources in solidarity. The latter roots people together instead of uprooting them from homes and from one another.

Sledgehammer: How Breaking with the Past Brought Peace to the Middle East

Sledgehammer: How Breaking with the Past Brought Peace to the Middle East

Racing for America: The Horse Race of the Century and the Redemption of a Sport

Racing for America covers the events and the lives of the characters leading up to the “International Race,” a 1923 horse race held in New York that had the largest purse in horse racing history at the time: $100,000. The two-horse race, or “match race,” was between the 1923 American Kentucky Derby and Belmont Stakes winner Zev and 1923 British Derby winner (referred to throughout the book as the “Epsom Derby” or “English Derby” to lessen confusion with the Kentucky Derby) Papryus. Both were considered the top horses in their countries at the time. The title “Racing for America” comes from a quote from Zev's owner Harry Sinclair, emphasizing the importance of the nationality of the horse to American pride, while “Race of the Century” was the name given to the race by newspapers of the time (albeit it was early in the twentieth century). “The Redemption of a Sport” refers to declining interest in horse racing in the United States—it was considered a corrupt sport—and that this particular race brought some respectability and excitement back to horse racing in America.Racing for America is authored by James C. Nicholson, editor of the series Horses in History (a series of which this book is a part), and author of many other horse racing history books. The work starts out with a jam-packed introduction, explaining all the characters and the context of the tale to come throughout the rest of the book. Despite this being a nonfiction work, it reads like an epic novel, with death, drama, and lots of violence (examples include a jockey stabbing an owner, a trainer smashing another trainer's face with a cane, an angry lover throwing ducks at and shooting a politician, and a possibly suspicious stable fire that killed forty-two horses). The important jockeys, trainers, owners, and horses in the story are explained from their origins, their rise in the ranks of their professions, and the path for each to come together builds a story of intrigue and sometimes chance. The writing is entertaining and never dry.In Zev's story, the characters include Harry Sinclair (of Sinclair Oil), the owner of Zev embroiled in the Teapot Dome scandal, trainer Sam Hildreth, breeder/trainer John Madden, and jockey Earl Sande. Other important characters discussed in the American part of the story include United States president Warren G. Harding and the famous horse Man O’ War, a precursor to Zev in America in popularity. Papryus's story is shared in less detail, excitement, or scandal. The rumor that Papryus was a beer-drinking horse caused a commotion during US Prohibition, and he was sent overseas to the race in deluxe accommodations on a ship, and some detail is shared on his jockey Steve Donoghue and owner Ben Irish. But the British side of the story Nicholson provides is much shorter than the attention given to the US side. All this background leads to the International Race, which led to large-purse intercontinental horse races such as the Breeders’ Cup that are held today. The work gives most of the last third of the book to the few weeks before the race when both horses were in the United States, the race itself, and the aftermath of the race in both countries for the sport and the two horses and their surrounding characters.This work is accessible to those not familiar with horse racing history or United States history of the 1910s and 1920s: enough context is given of the United States politics of the time, particularly how politics affected the mood of the American people and anti-gambling and anti–horse racing laws of the time. To follow the book and the descriptions of races, it does help to know a little about horse racing—the explanations of furlongs and mounts and detailed race descriptions assume some knowledge, but lesser-known horse terms like “windsucking,” “cribbing,” and a horse's “frog” are helpfully explained. Many of the issues of concern today are repeating themselves from the era of this book: concern about national pride, the idea that a racetrack is filled with degenerate characters and corruption, and drugs and overtraining in the health of racehorses.The sources to support the story are strong: pages 187 to 218 are full of detailed footnotes, heavy on quotes from many different US newspapers and magazines of the time. The footnotes are followed by a multi-page bibliography and index. There are some pictures throughout the work of the important characters, although the descriptions and actions of the characters in the text are picturesque enough to not necessarily need the pictures.

The Brokenhearted Sovereigntist

The Brokenhearted Sovereigntist

Greenland (1940) as an Instance of Pickwickian ‘Cooperation’ Between King’s Ottawa and Roosevelt’s Washington

The German invasion of Norway and Denmark in April 1940, which is usually regarded as marking the end of the so-called Phoney War between Germany and the Allies, also led to a short-lived diplomatic stand-off between the United States and Canada. The tension stemmed primarily from misapprehensions in both North American countries over what should be done about Greenland, the Danish colony whose political and legal status had suddenly been placed in question by the German move. It soon subsided, but in the process it resulted in a pronounced overreaction by some on the US side of the dispute. The quarrel largely took place behind the scenes and has attracted relatively little attention from historians. In fact, although the US government mostly got its way at the expense of Canada, the Greenland episode was presented by Prime Minister Mackenzie King as an instance of diplomatic cooperation to the benefit of both countries – a view that has been repeated by later commentators. If the episode really did represent an instance of close cooperation between Canada and the United States, then it was only in a Pickwickian sense, that is, one in which the reality of the situation was very different from the roseate view offered by its apologists.

In an era of economic integration, the implications of the border wall on Mexico's economy

AbstractIn an era when countries have become politically, technologically, and economically interdependent, global integration has continued to grow. Whereas technology and monetary funds move relatively seamlessly across national borders, the movement of people continues to be problematic. Ethnic and nativist tensions continue to grow, complicating the idea of global and economic integration. As globalization continues to spread, barriers that once fell are now being extended or constructed. One such example is the flourishing economic integration between the United States and Mexico, even as on the US side of the border demands have also grown for extending the border wall. Given that economic integration is a key economic and political agenda for both the United States and Mexico, this study examines the implications of the border wall on economic integration. Specifically, does the border wall undermine the goal of economic integration for Mexico?

A Gift for a President

Summary Gifts to US Presidents from foreign leaders between 2001 and 2016 are analysed in this essay, to assess the motivation behind the choice of gift against the background of the regulated character of the transaction through the Foreign Gifts and Decorations Act. Seven strategies are identified: showcasing the culture of the gifting country; highlighting the bilateral relationship; praising US culture and values; praising or appealing to the interests of the President; offering a nice gift; impressing through a lavish gift and supporting the luxury exports of the gifting country. The first three strategies acknowledge the regulated character of the gift exchange, the next three try to mask it in a focus on the personal and the seventh combines elements of both. Prior co-ordination with the US side sometimes influences the choice of gift.

A History of Latinx Immigrant Activism

A History of Latinx Immigrant Activism

The Body in the Mirror: Breast Cancer, Liminality and Borderlands

ABSTRACT Breast cancer is the most common cancer among women worldwide, and has a high mortality rate in northern Mexico. Its high rates present one of the principal health challenges of the California-Baja California border region. We employed “entangled” ethnography and interpretative phenomenological methods to explore breast cancer experiences among a group of Mexican immigrant women living on the US side of this border. We explore their trajectory from biographical disruption to biographical renewal. The entangled ethnographic approach includes reflections of the first author’s experience as a genetic breast cancer survivor.