Twenty children lost their lives today in the Newport killings but, in the same day, 18,000 died of starvation, and even more died of preventable diseases. With the recent shooting in Connecticut many Americans have called for stricter gun control as they did after the Aurora shootings. Is this really feasible though? Presidential hopefuls from both parties must succumb to the NRA for campaign money. In the year leading up to the presidential election in 2012, gun control was mentioned only three times by either candidate. Although both supported controlling guns ideologically, even liberal Obama cannot feasibly expect to go against the NRA.

At the moment, the Newport killings are at the top of everyone’s minds because whenever something of this nature happens in developed countries it makes a much bigger impact. Why is it that the death tolls to preventable diseases in children, usually over 1000 times as high as the death toll in the Newport Massacre daily, are forgotten? Why is it that the poor and vulnerable in third world countries are dehumanized to the point that, for most Americans and those living in most developed countries, they seemingly don’t exist?

Clearly, the Newport massacre was sad and touched those from all across the world, including me. Instead of focusing on gun control, though, why not focus on the issues plaguing the world today that can be controlled. The United States will likely never be able to amend the second amendment because of conservative nationalists who uphold the sanctity of the Constitution. It can, however, work to solve its war on poverty.

The United States offers hefty foreign aid to developing nations to combat poverty but too often the despots ruling these underdeveloped nations  steal the aid their people so vitally need. The United States neither mandates that these nations work to solve corruption neither does it distribute the aid itself to ensure the aid is efficiently used. Obviously, there is no way that the United States will be able to solve global poverty: it is simply too large an issue. However, it is clearly much easier to save twenty lives per day from poverty than from gun violence in the United States. Efficient foreign aid distribution would enable the United States to save far more lives than that.

I would like to end by saying that I am not dehumanizing those who lost their lives in Connecticut today; I am simply saying that we should be equally concerned with those who die unjustly every day and tackle the issues that are possible to solve. My heart and prayers go out to all who lost their lives in Newport today as well as those who have lost their lives from preventable diseases which are just that- preventable.

With its recent successful satellite launch displaying its ability to develop ballistic missiles, North Korea appears to be a threat to the United States and its neighbors. Digging deeper, though, it becomes apparent that North Korea has neither the intent nor the capabilities to pose a threat to world peace.

            This is, after all, the same nation that declared it could launch missiles on Hawaii only to be humiliated when its missiles fell into the ocean 300 miles off the North Korean coast. The same nation whose satellite crashed within minutes in a similar launch in April this year. The same nation that was forced to shut down its primary nuclear reactor in Yongbyon after technical problems. Such a lack of consistency means that even if North Korea develops nuclear capabilities, it will be deterred from using them on the off chance that its missiles fail and it thrusts itself into war without attaining the desired blow.
            Currently, it is unclear just how much enriched uranium and plutonium the DPRK produces, but what is clear and more important is that its conventional military strength is very limited. North Korea will not use nuclear weaponry;  Kim Jong-un is a smart man who clearly understands that if he uses nuclear weapons, he will lose the support of Russia and China and it will face the wrath of the international community. At most, North Korea could possibly engage in a limited conventional warfare with one of its enemies if provoked as such a war would not merit international condemnation; it would be able to retain its alliances in a limited war.

            Additionally, at the moment, North Korea has no reason to attempt even a conventional attack on its enemies Japan, South Korea, or the United States. The United States has served as a model of the imperialist threat for North Korea although of late, the United States has ended its imperialism. The United States has also scaled back its aid and military intervention in South Korea. South Korea has been willing of late to make great concessions and has worked towards national unification, a goal North Korea shares. Japan has recently had territorial disputes with North Korean allies, but it now has diplomatic relations with the DPRK.

            Clearly, North Korea’s nuclear program is erratic and, even if it does miraculously attain nuclear potential, its international isolation will render it unlikely to risk destruction over an isolated nuclear attack. The United States and the rest of the international community should not be overly concerned by these developments and above all else, they should refrain from taking hasty action. In the past, the United States has offered North Korea food aid after similar displays of hostility.

            However, it is precisely this food aid that undermines sanctions, ensures enough popularity for the regime to stay in place, and makes North Korea wealthy enough to continue its nuclear program. American aid can only flow to North Korea conditionally on conditions favorable to the United States such as North Korea opening itself to IAEA inspections, instituting political reforms, and patching up relations with South Korea. The era of appeasement is over; in order to either decisively break North Korea’s regime or coerce it into reforms, the United States and the world at large will require a stricter policy towards the “Democratic” “People’s” “Republic” of Korea. 

Recent developments in Egypt are troubling. Just a couple of weeks ago, Egyptian leader Morsi gave himself sweeping powers in a decree. He recently gave up those measures but is now pushing an equally undemocratic measure: attempting to push his Constitution through a referendum. Essentially, as Morsi is the leader of the legislative branch, the Constitution is based entirely on his platform of alienating minority religious sects and secularists. Unfortunately, with the rampant nationalism and support for Islamism in Egypt, it appears that such an unrepresentative Constitution will pass in the upcoming referendum.

            Additionally, recent intelligence shows that this ‘neutral’ state able to broker peace between Hamas and Israel aided and abetted the sale of Fajr5 deadly nuclear weapons from Sudan to Hamas during the hostilities. It is simply unacceptable for a nation to support nuclear proliferation, especially to a notable terrorist organization like Hamas. Morsi’s ties with the Muslim Brotherhood, the overarching organization of terrorist factions such as Fatah and Hamas ruling parts of Palestine indicate that in the future Egypt will serve to provoke and intensify intensities in the Middle East.

            What can the United States do to engage or respond to Morsi, an Egyptian leader who appears almost certainly to be a future despot like Mubarak, the man he replaced in the Arab Springs?

            The United States will have to accept the autocracy in Egypt; attempting to shape the government to form a balance of powers will be a grave violation of national sovereignty.

            However, Egypt presents a huge risk to its neighbors in the volatile Middle East. Sanctions are a viable course of action; they would be able to combat Morsi’s humanitarian violations and Egypt’s support of nuclear proliferation. However, sanctions alone would be unlikely to motivate Morsi. In fact, unwarranted sanctions could lead to greater nationalism, anti-American sentiment, and support for Morsi’s platform in Egypt and around the Middle East.

            The best tool for the United States is engagement. By encouraging free trade between the two nations and maximizing U.S. investment into Egypt, the United States will be able to leverage Egypt’s economic dependence on the United States to gain political influence in the nation. This policy of engagement has worked well for the United States in the past. It enabled the U.S. to turn the once decidedly anti-American nations of Russia and China to allies. 

            On the other hand, hostile nations that the United States refused to engage, most notably North Korea and Cuba, have developed greater friction with the United States and have been able to retain autocracy, human rights abuses, and hostility in their isolated states.

            Of course, engagement with an ideological enemy will prove difficult. Obama, already labeled by many Republicans as an appeaser of the enemy (i.e. Islamism, nuclear weapons proliferation, and terrorism) could face losses in popularity of his foreign policy platform. As such, even with strong economic relations, Obama will have to condemn all of Egypt’s human rights violations. In essence, the United States would maintain a relationship with Egypt similar to that it has with Pakistan. As Egypt is far less powerful than ideological enemies such as Russia, the United States would be able to have a firmer hand in dealing with Morsi.

            Clearly, the United States faces a huge threat from Egypt. The U.S. must disavow with its courses of action for other hostile Middle Eastern nations (i.e. penal measures) and instead adopt a policy of economic engagement to gain greater leverage over Egypt. 

A common theme in developing nations, especially in the Indian subcontinent is budget deficits as a result of inefficient tax collection. Much of this issue stems from the rich businessmen and corrupt government officials who evade their taxes. In a way, though, the upper class in the region is justified. In South Asia, tax codes are extremely progressive because the vast majority of the population is impoverished. In Pakistan, for example, about 2% of working adults pay income tax.

However, another issue is that the tax codes have a lot of unnecessary exemptions. For example, in much of Southern Asia, farmers, regardless of their income, are exempted from paying taxes. Thus, with such little tax revenue collected, as low as 9% of GDP in Pakistan, many evade taxes because they rightfully believe that they will have little benefit from the limited state services.

Such exemptions pander to special interest groups, in particular farmers, but they have a devastating impact on the tax system in the countries. It leads many South Asian nations to depend on foreign aid to close up their deficit each year. The issue is that any party that seeks to make the tax codes more regressive in these nations will lose popularity from the poor agrarian masses. The farmers and other middle class individuals are too short-sighted to recognize that a more efficient tax code will actually benefit them in the long run.

A similar taboo plagues the United States. Both the Republican Party and the Democrat Party, in the face of a 1 trillion dollar annual deficit, refuse to increase taxes on the majority of Americans for fear of losing their support base. The Democrat Party has managed to get support for taxes for the top 2% of income earners could only because of support from the 98% who will benefit from increased state revenue.

In the United States, of course, tax evasion is less of an issue because of better law enforcement and, more importantly, a larger percentage of working Americans (53%) paying income tax. The United States, though, is similar to South India in that the majority of people are too short-sighted to support higher taxes on the masses even in light of crumbling social welfare systems like Medicare and Social Security.

For South India, the solution is quite simple. Since foreign aid is allowing such deficits to occur, the international community should make foreign aid conditional upon an expanded and more efficient tax code. For the United States, though, reforms will have to be internal. Although neither party will support a platform of increasing taxes for the majority of society, the fiscal cliff compromise presents a good opportunity to finally increase taxes on the middle class. As a bipartisan compromise, both parties would be able to absolve themselves of the blame for such a surely unpopular arrangement if taxes were increased under the fiscal cliff.