A war of frustration: Saddam Hussein’s use of nerve gas on civilians at Halabja (1988) and the American response

The large-scale use of chemical weapons in conflict dates to World War I, but international regulations kept its use in check until Saddam Hussein’s decision to implement it throughout the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s. The consistent use of poison gas and repeated lack of international intervention allowed Saddam to murder thousands of Kurdish citizens in Halabja on March 16, 1988. This paper admits Saddam Hussein committed heinous acts of human rights violations and war crimes, but argues he was forced to make these horrific decisions by an unyielding adversary in the Ayatollah Khomeini, abandoned by an ineffective United Nations Security Council still locked in Cold War logic, and ignored by a passive United States government. This paper utilizes declassified CIA documents, newspaper articles, statements from United States and Iraqi government officials and servicemen, and scholarly studies to add a new argument to the historiography surrounding Saddam Hussein’s war-time decision-making

Corporate social responsibility in the oil industry in Iraq

This thesis examines Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) in the context of International Oil Companies operating in Iraq. International oil companies are the focus for examining CSR because the oil and gas industry is the backbone of the Iraqi economy and the primary source of government revenue. Corporate social responsibility requires corporations to act as good corporate citizens. At the very minimum, corporations, in addition to complying with their legal obligations, should be responsible for negative externalities created by their activities; otherwise the community bears these costs rather than the corporation. Corporations should act responsibly to avoid negative impacts of its activities on society, its employees, the natural environment as well as respecting human rights, and taking measures to combat corruption and bribery. This is justified according to the key theories of corporate governance. It is now generally accepted that, according to stakeholder theory, corporations should take into account the interests of stakeholders who may be seriously harmed by the corporation’s activities. Although the primary concern of corporations is to maximise profits for the shareholder, modern elaborations of the shareholder primacy theory, namely enlightened shareholder value and enhanced shareholder welfare, now recognise that recognising stakeholder interests is important for a corporation’s long-term sustainable development. Consequently, directors, in for example, the UK and the US are required to promote the long-term success of the company taking into account the concerns and interests of relevant stakeholders and the social and environmental impact of the company’s activities. Putting aside negative externalities, CSR does not require corporations to contribute to social welfare in ways that do not advance the long-term sustainability or reputation of the corporation. The thesis argues that, for Iraq, a broader conception of CSR should be used to require International Oil Companies to positively contribute to community welfare by assisting with local infrastructure, training and local content. This is because Iraq and its citizens have not fairly shared in Iraq’s oil wealth. The thesis argues that Iraq can learn from other developing countries which, rather than relying on voluntary CSR, have legislatively required large corporations (and International Oil Companies) to contribute to development and social welfare. This approach recommends imposing legal obligations on International Oil Companies through oil contracts and where possible by legislation. This approach recognises the limitations of CSR based on voluntary conduct and its principal concerns with negative externalities. The thesis proposes a framework for implementing CSR in the oil industry which responds to the Iraqi context and makes recommendations for future policies and the imposition of legal obligations on International Oil Companies not only to avoid negative externalities but requiring them to positively contribute to social welfare

Water supply and water quality: Putting together how natural and human factors affect these, using satellites

This dissertation explores the interplay of human and natural factors upon water resources in the Chesapeake Bay, the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, and the marshes of southern Iraq. I used high-quality but expensive-to-collect fieldwork data of water status. I combined that data with regularly-produced satellite images covering large sections of the earth. Combining high-quality fieldwork data with global, continuous satellite data can produce datasets that are richer than the sum of their two parts. I first studied the effect of storms on water quality in the Chesapeake Bay by using a relationship between satellite-measured red light reflectance and ground measurements of total suspended solids (TSS). This resulted in viable reflectance-TSS relationships for five major Western Shore rivers. Modeling a single reflectance-TSS relationship for the entire estuary produced poorer models with less significance compared to treating each channel separately. After studying the aftermath of 2800 rain events, I found some evidence that higher rainfall corresponds to a lower distribution of TSS concentrations one day following the storm in forested, compared to urban, watersheds. In chapter 2, I studied how conflicts and drought disrupt water supply on dams and barrages along the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. I used a satellite-based algorithm, the normalized difference water index (NDWI), to monitor changes in the extent of surface reservoirs (1985-present). The most sudden changes in water supply occurred during conflict, but conflict was not often a cause of the greatest absolute changes to reservoir area. In chapter 3, I again used NDWI and similar algorithms to examine how the seasonal cycle of marshes at the southern end of the Tigris and Euphrates has been affected by drought, development, and conflict. I found some evidence that the yearly timing of the marsh peak size has become more variable after exposure to these stressors. No matter the stressor – from storms to drought to war – water quality and supply are highly affected by human and natural factors. In combination with ground information, satellite data can fill in data gaps and offer further insights.Doctor of Philosoph

The Montclarion, November 07, 2002

Student Newspaper of Montclair State Universityhttps://digitalcommons.montclair.edu/montclarion/2114/thumbnail.jp

Memory, promise, and imagination in Iraqi Kurdistan : leadership in education policy development

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Explaining military effectiveness : political intervention and battlefield performance

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Political Science, 2011.Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.Includes bibliographical references.The puzzle: Why do states display such remarkable variation in their military effectiveness? This question is different from asking why states win or lose wars, because military effectiveness is not synonymous with victory. States can fight very well on the battlefield but still lose: consider the Germans in both world wars. Or they can fight very poorly but still win: consider the Soviets in the Winter War against Finland in 1939-40. These discrepancies exist because war outcomes hinge on all sorts of factors besides battlefield performance. The political goals for which a war is fought, the terrain, third-party involvement, the balance of material capabilities-all can influence ultimate victory and defeat. Military effectiveness bears on these outcomes but remains distinct. It pertains to the fighting power that each side is able to generate from the resources that it possesses, separate from the question of whether that fighting power is enough to bring ultimate triumph. In thinking about the challenges of U.S. foreign policy, the distinction between victory and effectiveness is especially striking. Given its overwhelming material power, the United States is almost sure to eke out some type of conventional "victory" from whatever military operations it chooses to launch in the contemporary international environment. But the price it pays for doing so is likely to vary dramatically depending on the military effectiveness of opponents. Historically, some of the poor, weak states that America has encountered have fought much better than anticipated, such as Serbia in 1999. Others, such as Iraq in 2003, have collapsed much more rapidly than expected, despite their large armies. These sorts of startling differences in effectiveness can also be found in the militaries of U.S. coalition partners and allies, even though many are rich or have received large infusions of U.S. aid and weapons. In considering these realities, it seems evident that states vary widely in their military effectiveness and that this variation drives differences in the costs, length, and settlement of wars. In particular, states seem to display puzzling differences in their ability to generate operational- and tactical-level fighting power from their resources, a type of power that I refer to in this study as battlefield effectiveness. Battlefield effectiveness requires states to perform three key tasks: to generate cohesive military units, to train those units in the performance of basic tactics, and to endow them with the initiative and coordination needed to conduct the complex operations crucial to effectiveness in modern battle. Beyond the dilemmas of current U.S. foreign policy, even a cursory examination of the last century of warfare suggests that there is significant variation in states' abilities to perform these tasks and therefore to impose costs upon their adversaries in war. Three particular types of such variation stand out. The first is cross-national variation, that is, instances in which some national armies seem to consistently perform better than others for example, the outnumbered Israeli army consistently performing better on the battlefield than its Arab opponents in the series of conflicts between 1948 and 1973. The second type of variation is over-time within the same country-for instance, the Chinese army's excellent performances against the United States in 1950 and India in 1962, followed by a rather poor showing its smaller, weaker neighbor Vietnam in 1979. The third type of variation is across different units within the same military even in the same war-for instance, the 1991 Gulf War, in which some Iraqi units surrendered immediately upon contact with coalition forces, while others stood and fought. What can account for these differences? In trying to answer this question, the study of military effectiveness has generally focused on large structural factors such as wealth, demography, culture, and regime type. But this approach is problematic, because these variables actually behave more like constants, changing very little if at all in individual states over time. As a result, they are poorly suited to explaining much of the variation just described. For example, none of these variables could explain the over-time shifts just mentioned in Chinese performance, or the cross-unit differences in Iraqi performance in 1991, because large structural factors did not change over time or vary across different military units in these individual states. Large structural variables are important, of course, and certainly condition the overall military power one would expect a state to be able to generate. They do constitute a plausible explanation for at least some cross-national variation in battlefield effectiveness. To continue the Arab-Israeli contrast mentioned above, for example, it is probably significant that Israel was a democratic, increasingly wealthy, highly unified society facing fractious, authoritarian, and economically underdeveloped Arab opponents. Nevertheless, the mechanisms that undergird the causal power of these sorts of sweeping structural forces remain poorly understood. While there may be good reasons to think that wealth, democracy, western culture, or societal unity somehow enhance military performance, it is not entirely clear what it is about these factors that actually matters. One might just as easily suspect that authoritarian regimes should have military advantages instead, with the examples of Nazi and Wilhelmine Germany, the Soviet Union, and North Vietnam immediately springing to mind, among others. What, then, can help account for the full range of variation in states' battlefield effectiveness?by Elisabeth Rosemary Caitlin Talmadge.Ph.D

After the Spill is Gone: The Gulf of Mexico, Environmental Crime, and Criminal Law

The Gulf oil spill was the worst environmental disaster in U.S. history, and will be the most significant criminal case ever prosecuted under U.S. environmental laws. The Justice Department is likely to prosecute BP, Transocean, and Halliburton for criminal violations of the Clean Water Act and the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, which will result in the largest fines ever imposed in the United States for any form of corporate crime. The Justice Department also may decide to pursue charges for manslaughter, false statements, and obstruction of justice. The prosecution will shape public perceptions about environmental crime, for reasons that are understandable given the notoriety of the spill and the penalties at stake. In some respects, the Gulf oil spill is similar to other environmental crimes, most notably because it involves large corporations that committed serious violations because they put profits before environmental compliance and worker safety. Yet the spill\u27s most distinctive qualities make it an anomalous environmental crime: the conduct was not as egregious, the harm was far worse, and the penalties bear no relation to norms for environmental crime. The Justice Department should bring criminal charges based on the Gulf oil spill, because a criminal prosecution will deter future spills better than civil penalties alone and will express societal condemnation of the negligence that caused the spill in ways that civil enforcement cannot. But criminal prosecution of the Gulf oil spill may raise questions about the role of criminal enforcement under the environmental laws, including whether ordinary negligence should result in criminal liability as well as what the proper normative relationship should be between culpable conduct and environmental harm. Nor can criminal prosecution, without more, prevent future spills; for that to occur we must demand greater attention to safety and more rigorously enforce our drilling laws

Emerging Trends in Global Freshwater Availability

Freshwater availability is changing worldwide. Here we quantify 34 trends in terrestrial water storage (TWS) observed by the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) satellites during 2002-2016 and categorize their drivers as natural interannual variability, unsustainable groundwater consumption, or climate change. Several of these trends had been lacking thorough investigation and attribution, including massive changes in northwestern China and the Okavango delta. Others are consistent with climate model predictions. This observation-based assessment of how the world's water landscape is responding to human impacts and climate variations provides a blueprint for evaluating and predicting emerging threats to water and food security