The Red Folder

Archived from July 1, 2024.

Key stories for the week, brought to you by Lindsey Zhao and the Red Folder team.

Reading for the sake of reading sucks. Telling yourself to read to win a round is nice but ineffective. This condensed news brief helps you understand current domestic and international issues, analyze the news, and gives you opportunities to read more.

Publishing since January 2024.

International Stories

4 key international stories for the week:

1) I-ran to the Polls to Vote: The 2024 Iranian Presidential Election Daniel Song

Despite 59% of Iranian adults having a Bachelor’s Degree or higher, its pilots could use a little more education after a helicopter carrying Iran’s President, Ebrahim Raisi, and the country’s foreign minister crashed in May 2024, killing both men. To officially elect the new president of Iran, the government called snap elections for president. The president of Iran is much less powerful than the Supreme Leader, but is still influential as they can set domestic policy and influence foreign policy.

After first round results have been announced with no candidats reaching an absolute majority, a runoff has been scheduled for July 5th.

The election process in Iran, an Islamic theocracy, is tightly controlled by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and his allies in the Iranian government. In this election, Iran’s Guardian Council, a committee of 12 jurists and clerics, whittled an initial list of 80 presidential candidates down to six, disqualifying seven women and a former president and many other government officials. Four candidates are still in the race. The Guardian Council is controlled by conservative hard-line allies of Ayatollah Khamenei and only approved candidates likely to support the regime’s existing policies.

The two remaining candidates who have advanced to the runoff are Saeed Jalili and Masoud Pezeshkian. Pezeshkian got 10.4 million votes while Jalili received 9.4 million. Jalili is an ultraconservative hard-liner. He is considered the most extreme of the candidates and opposes any negotiations or rapprochement with the United States and refuses to compromise on any regime policy. In his role representing Iran in negotiating the 2015 Nuclear Deal with the Obama administration, he refused to make any concessions to the US. He is also a veteran of the 1980s Iran-Iraq war and has respect among Iran’s conservatives, being called a “Living Martyr” after losing a leg in combat.

Dr. Masoud Pezeshkian is a surgeon and former Member of Parliament and health minister. He is the only reformist moderate candidate. Pezeshkian was endorsed by the moderate former President Mohammad Khatami, and he has expressed openness to nuclear negotiations with the United States as a way to revive Iran’s moribund economy.

One of the key issues in this election is the hijab law. The longstanding law requires women to cover their hair and dress modestly. However, women’s rights activists view the law as oppressive and unfair to women. Under former President Ebrahim Raisi, the government’s Morality Police cracked down and arrested women who violated the law. Some female voters support Pezeshkian because he is the only candidate to oppose laws restricting women’s dress. He has also criticized the Morality Police for its harsh tactics.

Over 60% of voters did not turn out to vote in a move of protest against the regime. Dr. Sanam Vakil, the director of Chatham House’s Middle East and North Africa program, explained that the low turnout can be seen as a “Protest in its own right: A very widespread choice to reject what’s on offer — both the candidates and the system.” Dr. Vakil also said, “That tells us a lot about public opinion and apathy, frustration. It sort of brings it all together.” With all the conservatives aligning and endorsing Jalili, Pezeshkian will need high turnout from women and moderate voters apathetic about the election to have a shot at winning.

Read more here

3) The Climate Crisis is Now Justin Palazzolo

Manipur, India, 53 degrees Celsius. Mohenjo-Daro, Pakistan, 49 degrees Celsius. Kayes, Mali, 48.5 degrees Celsius. Sanbao in China’s Xinjiang Province, 52.2 degrees Celsius. Individually all of these temperatures are above 110 degrees Fahrenheit; it is clear that the world is experiencing a heat wave where record temperatures are no longer extraordinary but expected.

According to the EU Climate Agency, Earth has now shattered global temperature highs for the 9th straight month in a row, showing the current heat wave that has encompassed East and South Asia, the Middle East, the Sahel, and parts of Latin America and Europe are parts of a concerning and increasingly pronounced trend.

When we think of natural disasters, heat waves don’t exactly spring to mind. Instead, we often consider hurricanes, tornadoes, or earthquakes. However, according to the NWS, heat waves have become the deadliest ‘natural disaster’ in the United States over the last 30 years, and this global one has proved its lethality. During this year’s Hajj pilgrimage over 1300 people died from soaring temperatures in Mecca. Temperatures were estimated to peak between 46 and 49 degrees Celsius (117F and 120F) during Hajj itself causing deaths primarily due to heatstroke.

In Pakistan, the situation is also critical, with 568 people dying in 5 days through June 25th this year in the city of Karachi with hundreds also dead across India. Individually these cases are mass-casualty events with direct causality with the heat wave that has struck this summer. However, taken globally this heat wave has the potential to kill on the magnitude of a small conflict; with temperatures being even higher than last year during which a European heat wave killed 61000 people as the elderly dropped dead in their own homes.

The current heat wave is merely another manifestation of the climate crisis that has only worsened over the last decade. Undoubtedly the burning of fossil fuels has raised global temperatures causing seasonal heat waves to become noticeably hotter, however, it also supercharges heat waves by causing a positive feedback loop. Rising temperatures dry out the ground by raising temperatures which allows the air above the ground to heat faster and rise upwards and dry out the ground even further. This traps areas in heat domes where high pressure traps and warms air causing heat waves to hang over areas and become significantly worse. That is why 2023’s summer heat wave, which saw 2000 temperature records broken, was deemed “virtually impossible” if climate change did not influence it. Therefore the 9-month trend of record temperatures means that the climate crisis is felt through every summer heat wave that is significantly hotter than the preceding one.

The impact of these waves is felt through global agriculture which has been struggling under the weight of rising temperatures. Climate-driven heat waves have worsened droughts by drying out arable land via the aforementioned feedback loop making significant droughts 100 times more likely. In Somalia, over the last two years, there have been 5 consecutive failed rain seasons perpetuating the worst drought in the nation’s history, displacing over 1.2 million people and exacerbating the civil conflict that has hit the nation by causing tribal conflict over water and food. In Egypt, temperatures between 50-55 degrees Celsius have caused some farmers in Upper Egypt to lose an estimated 40% of their harvest due this year to extreme temperatures. Iraq’s ancient Euphrates River is drying up, losing half its annual flow in recent years. The country’s irrigation system is built around the Euphrates, and without it, the agricultural system could fail. Overall, if the status-quo level of emissions continues nearly 250,000 preventable deaths will happen each year due to hunger and disaster as thousands of acres of arable farmland turn to desert.

Our global leaders have mastered the art of pretending to care about climate change. After all, when the phrase “Billionaires descend on Sun Valley in private jets to talk about climate change” isn’t a classroom lesson in situational irony but an actual news headline, the posturing ultimately becomes self-evident. However, our leaders should ditch their mastery of pretending and pick up the slack in policymaking, especially since millions of lives hang in the balance of 2024’s climate crisis.

Read More Here:

4) Bombshells and Bullet Holes: Ukraine and Taiwan Rowan Seipp

It is no secret that the United States is a global superpower. That means that the United States has interests all over the world. Over the last decade, two areas have become especially important to the United States, and the rest of the world. In 2022 Russia launched a brutal invasion of Ukraine. This was the culmination of about three decades of tension. On the other side of the world, China has built up a stronghold around Taiwan. At first, those two conflicts seem to be very independent from one another. Scratch under the surface and these two conflicts have many similarities. This article explores the interconnectedness of the two conflicts, and why both depend on each other.

At first, the similarities appear to be obvious; both are small “nations” that are considered adversarial by two powerful autocracies (Russia & China). Until 2022 they both had a final similarity, the autocrats were threatening to invade. In February of 2022 Russia “jumped the gun” and launched an invasion. This wouldn't be an issue if Russia had won within a month. The best part was that they almost got there. By March, the Russian army was stopped within just a few miles of Ukraine’s capital Kyiv. However, it is the Russian military failure to capture a major metropolis within a few days that led to the current stalemate. That stalemate scares China.

In the 20th century, Chiang Kai Shiek took his nationalist followers to the island of Taiwan. Since that move, the Chinese mainland has considered Taiwan a “breakaway province” and Chinese political rhetoric has been very hawkish, constantly saying they will invade. However, Taiwan presents unique issues. Taiwan is an island comparable to the size of the Netherlands. This means that an amphibious assault is very difficult.

Then we get to the link between the two. Russia’s failure to capture Ukraine has scared China. China can see the power that a small nation with powerful financial backers has. Because of Ukraine, China knows that they can't just launch an invasion, not just because Ukraine has shown how difficult invading a sovereign nation is, but because of the methodology that an invasion would force. Amphibious landings add a moment of uncertainty to any potential invasion. China's fear of a similar embarrassment to Russia is amplified because of the only possible way to attack Taiwan. To militarily attack Taiwan, China would have to land a lot of soldiers on very narrow beaches while being shelled by American military weapons. It’s not just because of the certain massive loss of life, but also because of the potential international embarrassment that China could face, that deters them from attacking.

Both international conflicts share similar circumstances; however, as long as Russia is unable to conquer Ukraine, China will continue to get scared. A fearful China is good for the United States and our strategic interests.