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Two weeks ago, India launched its Mangalyaan mission to Mars. The mission, which will take ten months to reach Mars, is intended to study the Martian atmosphere and conduct scientific tests to determine if any forms of life exist on the Red Planet. If India’s mission is successful, it would become the first Asian nation to launch a successful Martian mission and it would become the first nation to successfully reach Mars in its first mission attempt. Success would also increase the prominence of the Indian space program, which launched a successful lunar mission in 2008. Since China is considered the preeminent space power in Asia, having already placed a men and women in Earth’s orbit and having more powerful rockets than India, analysts are speculating that India’s Mars mission could inaugurate a space race between both powers, setting the tone for twenty-first century space exploration.
This topic brief will describe India’s Mars mission and compare it to other Asian nations that have pursued a space exploration, assess how the Mars mission can enhance India’s international profile, and then assess the status of the Asian space race.
Readers are also encouraged to use the links below and in the related R&D to bolster their files about this topic.
Last Tuesday, voters in Virginia and New Jersey participated in off-year gubernatorial elections and voters in New York City elected a new mayor. All three campaigns were watched closely by the national media to provide information on 2016 presidential aspirations, the fallout over Obamacare’s technical glitches and broken promises, and to gauge the enthusiasm of voters for conservatism or liberal ideas. Off-year elections are typically under covered by the media, but this year was different because of Virginia’s emergence as a swing state in the last two presidential elections, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie positioning himself for the Republican presidential nomination in 2016, and New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg stepping down after three terms. Due to this importance, extempers can expect to see some questions about these races in the coming weeks..gif/490px-New_Saudi_Arabia's_traffic_sign_(women2drive).gif)
Two weeks ago, women in Saudi Arabia staged a protest against the country’s ban on female driving. The campaign that launched the protest, called Women2Drive, began in 2011 and has attempted to place pressure on the Saudi government to lift what they feel is an onerous restriction on women. Saudi Arabia is one of the world’s largest oil producers and a key American ally in the Middle East. Extempers often receive questions about Saudi Arabia concerning terrorism, the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, Iran’s nuclear ambitions, and oil issues, but the issue of women’s rights may soon factor into those rounds as well. Saudi Arabia is one of the more conservative states in the Middle East and is still run by a king, with no elected national legislature. The kingdom staved off the unrest of the 2011 Arab Spring, but the government is worried that issues like women’s rights may harm the kingdom’s international profile and lead to larger protests against it in the near future.
On October 1st, the federal government launched healthcare.gov, which allowed for Americans in 36 states to find healthcare policies that were congruent with the requirements of the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare. By March 31st, all Americans are required to purchase health insurance or pay a fine. Although conservatives challenged this individual mandate in court shortly after the Affordable Care Act was signed into law in March 2010, the Supreme Court found it constitutional last summer as a tax. President Obama hoped that the national exchange would lead to millions of Americans signing up for health insurance and that it would generate good press for his landmark achievement. However, the website has been riddled with problems, ranging from individuals being unable to create accounts to access the exchange to time outs to slow browsing speed. States that are running their own exchanges, like Washington, Kentucky, and California have also experienced some technical difficulties. Conservative critics have seized on the problems of healthcare.gov to bolster their political fortunes after the government shutdown and if these problems are not fixed it could imperil the Affordable Care Act.
Last Thursday, President Barack Obama signed an agreement to end the first government shutdown in nearly twenty years. The shutdown, which lasted sixteen days, coincided with another debt ceiling crisis since the Treasury Department’s borrowing authority needed to be raised by October 17th. The threat of not raising the debt ceiling is what compelled Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell to craft a compromise piece of legislation that passed the Senate and House last week. However, their compromise creates the possibility of another government shutdown in January and another debt ceiling crisis in February.
On September 22nd, German voters handed Chancellor Angela Merkel her biggest electoral triumph and put her in a position to lead her third consecutive government. Merkel’s center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and its sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU) took 41.5% of the vote. The Social Democratic Party (SPD) took second place with 25.7% of the vote and the communist leaning Left Party took 8.6% of the vote. However, the CDU/CSU only won 311 seats in the 630 seat German Bundestag, which leaves it five seats shy of a majority. The CDU/CSU’s coalition partner, the Free Democratic Party (FDP) failed to win representation in parliament for the first time since 1949, so the CDU/CSU must now enter into a coalition with the SPD or the Green Party, which took 8.4% of the vote, to govern the country. A failure to form a new coalition would inaugurate new elections. The German election was watched closely by European political observers because Germany’s economy is the largest in Europe and it guides a great deal of European Union (EU) policy. A Merkel defeat might have spelled significant changes for how the EU is handling debtor countries like Greece and further complicated the process of European integration. Her victory shows that German voters have endorsed her handling of the German economy through the euro zone crisis that began in 2010.
By October 1st Congress must pass legislation to fund the annual expenses of the federal government for the next fiscal year. If it does not, a government shutdown will ensue where many government operations will cease, although programs that do not receive their funding directly from the Treasury, provide for national defense, or conduct essential services will continue. Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-OH) hoped to avoid a showdown with the White House in what would be the first fiscal showdown since 2011, but Tea Party Republicans have pressured he and other members of the House Republican leadership to pass a spending measure that would fund the government in the short-term and deny funding for Obamacare, which is set to begin on October 1st with the opening of signups on state insurance exchanges. President Obama and Senate Democrats argue that the spending measure passed by the House is a non-starter and if a compromise is not reached by October 1st it would result in the first government shutdown since 1995-1996. The battle over the shutdown also touches on the nation’s credit rating, since the debt ceiling will have to be raised to avoid a potentially damaging default.
Extempers are probably filing a great deal of articles at the moment about the ongoing conflict in Syria. The United States is preparing for a possible intervention there, but it is important to go back to a conflict that also involved some of the current issues regarding Syria: a country that is under the rule of a tyrant, questions of weapons of mass destruction use, and uncertainty about who will fill the power vacuum if that tyrant is eliminated. The invasion of Iraq in March 2003 was supposed to inaugurate a process of nation building in the Middle East, whereby Iraq would be a beacon of democracy for other Middle Eastern nations. Ten years later and two years after the withdrawal of American troops, Iraq is witnessing an increase in sectarian violence, at its highest levels since 2008 and there are fears that if Iraq descends into anarchy and violence that the sacrifices of American and coalition personnel made in the 2003 invasion and occupation were for naught. The U.S. media has largely ignored Iraq over the past year, focusing most of its attention on Syria and other uprisings in the Arab world. However, this neglect is unwarranted, as Iraq could have significant implications for American foreign policy in the region.
Last Thursday, thousands of fast food workers in sixty cities went on a one-day strike to protest their inability to form unions and low wages. Organized by the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and community organizing groups and taking place a day after the fiftieth anniversary of the March on Washington, the protests captured the interest of the national media and sparked a discussion about the state of the nation’s economy, what constitutes a living wage, and the possibilities of unionizing a sector of the economy that has thus far resisted such efforts.
Since 1979, when Egypt was a signatory to the Camp David Accords with Israel, whereby Egypt normalized its relations with Israel in exchange for the Sinai Peninsula, the United States has maintained strong military and diplomatic ties with the Egypt. Today, the United States government provides an estimated $1.5 billion in aid to the Egyptian military. American foreign policy views Egypt as a bulwark against unrest in the Middle East and a constructive player in the Israeli-Palestinian dispute. However, that foreign policy view left the United States backing Egyptian strongmen like former President Hosni Mubarak, who ruled the country under a state of emergency for nearly thirty years. The Arab Spring in Egypt in 2011 ousted Mubarak and brought to power the Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamist political organization and religious social organization, which had been declared an illegal organization after it was accused of trying to assassinate Egyptian Prime Minister Gamal Abdel Nasser in 1954. After being unable to stabilize the country politically or economically, protests against the Brotherhood’s rule were launched in June, which culminated in a military coup on July 3rd that installed a provisional government headed by Supreme Constitutional Court Chief Justice Adly Mansour. In light of the military government’s recent crackdown on sit-ins launched by the Brotherhood six weeks ago to pressure the provisional government to step down, which caused the deaths of at least 600 people, the United States and the Egyptian governments are in a tricky situation. Should the U.S. end its military aid to Egypt and risk alienating its governing authorities? How would that affect the geopolitical situation in the Middle East? Also, what is the effect of this unrest on Egyptian society and is there a way for the Egyptian provisional government to put the country on the path towards peace, prosperity, and political reconciliation?