When Ash Does Matter

Once upon a time International Relations just was the matter of Real Politiks, power, war and peace. But nowadays it's changed dramatically. These days the ash of volcanic eruption in Iceland has great influence on international arena. For example tens of thousands of flights have been canceled and it coasts billions of dollars for most of the airlines of the world. The funeral ceremony of Poland president held in absence of many leaders of the world. Lots of international organizations meetings including the United Nations have been postponed. Even ironically we can say FC Barcelona football team defeated against Italian team, Inter Milan, because they forced to travel by bus instead of flying by airplane. These developments clearly show that International Relations as an academic discipline is not the matter of hard power anymore and it should be studied from different aspects of human life like social, economic, environment etc. Perhaps it's better to divide international relations into some sub categories in order to not ignore the subjects like climate change or some sub-national matters. This can help the students not to confuse in IR discipline and also contributes the politicians to take into consideration some ex-trivial matters like ash!
At last we can welcome the new term of "Volcanic Ash Clouds" in politics and International Relation jargon referring to a bad situation of some phenomena. For example we can say the "Volcanic Ash Clouds" is on the Greek economy.

NPR's Dire Ramifications

Obama's foreign policy towards Iran has been changed dramatically after the Iranian presidential election. Before coming to power, Obama had declared his policy of negotiation with Iran without any pre condition but this policy changed with the allegation of Iran's outlaw behavior in its nuclear policy. Recently and after the publishing of the U.S Nuclear Posture Review the tone of president Obama towards Iran became more aggressive and he implicitly threatened Iran to nuclear attack. This did not happen in Bush Neoconservative administration. Exploring the root cause of this kind of turning point in U.S foreign policy is of the main important-which is not the task of this writing. I am going to focus here on the NPR's implication on Iran. The United States is threatening Iran while there are some non NPT members who posses nuclear weapons like Israel. Iran according to IAEA's reports has not diverted from NPT and it permanently has been declaring that it going to use the nuclear energy for peaceful purposes. This is exactly shows the double standard policy of the United States. The NPR is the breach of NPT per se and it's not only does not have the deterrence characteristics but also it is provocative and can persuade Iran to develop and change its policy toward nuclear weapon because a nuclear state has threaten to use the bomb against the country. It's obviously the threat to peace. In this case I believe that Iran has the right to bolster its defense capabilities even with non conventional weapons in order to deter the U.S possible attack. It is worth mentioning that lots of Iranian people believe that their country must acquire the nuclear weapons because it has many adversaries around the country. The new U.S policy can encourage the non nuclear states to posses the non conventional weapons. It seems that the U.S statesmen have ignored this dire ramification in their calculations.

The Evils of Iraq's Democracy

After the Iraq parliamentary election the main issue is to form the new government and electing new prime minister. The US invasion to Iraq in 2003 was due to create an ideal example for the other states of the region but immediately they recognized that the democracy in Iraq is against their interests because the Shia majority came into power which had strong relations to Iran.
The other problem in Iraq democracy has been appeared in current election where there is no party gained the necessary seats in the parliament to form the government. Iraq has the long history of dictatorship with no experience of democracy especially in this kind of it. (Parliamentary system) on the other hand there is not necessary infrastructure for the political participation for the people; the most important of them is security. It seems that this kind of political system cannot last too much because it cannot support the interest of Iraqi people at first because of it instable nature and even can endanger the stability and security of the region and the neighboring countries. This can spill over and exacerbate the interest of the United States too. The semi federalism and parliamentary system in a multi ethnic state with different religions, can divide the country into several part. (At least the Shia, Sunni and Kurd one). Clearly this is not in favor of the Iraqi people and the regional and states and even the US.
The other important issue is the fragmentation in Iraqi Shia groups. Of course the US welcomes this situation but it is a sign of Iran's miscalculation in Iraq, although the Iranian has been trying to integrate the Shia groups to form the strong government in Iraq. The bottom line is that it takes long time for Iraqi people to cope with the new political system and of course it has many side effects to the region as well.