Dear Reader:
It is with great pleasure that we present to you the 2015-16 Winter Issue of The Yale Review of International Studies. We’re proud to continue and renew our commitment to providing the best possible platform for outstanding student scholarship at Yale. Having welcomed work from around the globe in our last issue of The Review, we return in this installment to our roots: highlighting the diversity and depth of our student body’s work. The pieces we have chosen once again reflect a number of the concerns our international community faces today.
Within these pages are essays on: Eurovision and the making of queer (counter-)cultural diplomacy; the American media and government responses to the Armenian and Darfur genocides; the Bharatiya Janta Party and the state of consociational rule in India; modeling aid-driven conflict in Malian society; migration, survival, and the “disinherited” underclass in Tehran (1950-1980); using music to bridge the US-Cuban divide; and finally an essay titled “Tribal Rugs,” which examines the modern carpet industry in Afghanistan.
Joining this remarkable crop of essays are two fine commentary pieces from our editorial staff. Our Managing Editor, Stephen Mettler, writes a short piece on the need for a new US policy on North Korea. Complementing his piece is a comment on the short-sightedness of America’s pivot to Asia, authored by Harry Seavey, one of our new freshman editors, in his YRIS debut.
Working with our peers at Yale has been nothing short of an immense pleasure, and we at The Review are extremely grateful to not only those who gave us permission to publish their writing in this issue, but also to those who took the time to submit. We had an overwhelming amount of high caliber submissions this winter.
Once again, it has been our pleasure to collect these pieces and bring them together for your enjoyment. We hope you relish reading them as much as we did, and we hope you will consider submitting your own work for publication. In the meantime, we’re already getting a head start on our Spring issue: The Acheson Prize.
All the best,
The Editors
Editor-in-Chief
Andrew Tran
Executive Editor
Sophia Kecskes
Managing Editors
Lysander Christakis
Stephen Mettler
Senior Editors
Aaron Berman
Miguel Gabriel Goncalves
Erwin Li
Editors
Arvin Anoop
Pranav Bhandarkar
Jacob Fender
Zeshan Gondal
Yoojin Han
Makayla Haussler
Claire Lu
Harry Seavey
Elena Vazquez
Graphic Design
Biba Kosmerl
Benjamin Lee
Contributors
Dhruv Aggarwal
J. Y. Chua
Rhea Kumar
Christopher Malley
Stephen Mettler
Nelson Reed
Harry Seavey
Stephanie Tomasson
Adam Willems
Academic Advisors
Amanda Behm, Associate Director, International Security Studies, Yale University
Beverly Gage, Professor of History, Yale University
Charles Hill, Diplomat-in-Residence and Lecturer in International Studies, Yale University
Jolyon Howorth, Visiting Professor of Political Science, Yale University
Jean Krasno, Distinguished Fellow at International Security Studies, Yale University
Michelle Malvesti, Senior Fellow, Jackson Institute, Yale University
Nuno Monteiro, Associate Professor of Political Science, Yale University
Paul Kennedy, J. Richardson Dilworth Professor of History, Yale University
Ryan Crocker, Kissinger Senior Fellow, Jackson Institute, Yale University
Walter Russell Mead, James Clarke Chace Professor of Foreign Affairs, Bard College