International Relations and Diplomacy (ISSN 2328-2134) Volume 6, Number 9,2018

International Relations
and Diplomacy
Volume 6, Number 9, September 2018 (Serial Number 60)
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International Relations
and Diplomacy
Volume 6, Number 9, September 2018 (Serial Number 60)
Contents
Egypt’s Port Construction
Features of Egypt’s Water Transportation and China’s Participation in Egypt’s Port

Construction 469
ZHAO Jun, HU Yu
Donald Trump’s Trade Policy
US President Donald Trump’s Twitter Analysis and His Trade Policy Agenda 476
Hikari Ishido, Yuki Tashiro, Richard Liang
Global Radicalization
Global Radicalization and the San Bernardino Attack―Evolving Extremist U.S. Domestic
Threat 500
Thomas M. Fitzpatrick
Youth Public Organizations
Youth Public Organizations in European Integration Processes of Ukraine 507

Olena Aleksandrova, Oksana Salata
Political Violence
Violence in the Political Construction of Trotskyism 518

Dibyajit Mukherjee
International Relations and Diplomacy, September 2018, Vol. 6, No. 9, 469-475
doi: 10.17265/2328-2134/2018.09.001
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Features of Egypt’s Water Transportation and China’s

Participation in Egypt’s Port Construction*
ZHAO Jun
Shanghai International Studies University, Shanghai, China
HU Yu
Shanghai Customs College, Shanghai, China
There are four distinctive features in Egypt’s port construction and maritime transportation: Egypt’s port
construction and maritime transportation is a vital part of the international shipping system; maritime transportation
is an important backbone industry in Egypt; Egypt’s port construction propels its domestic economy and
international interaction; and the capacity for ocean shipping still needs upgrading. China’s participation in Egypt’s
port construction is, on one side, the further demand of China’s economic globalization, and on the other side, it is
an outcome of the beneficial interactions between China and Egypt. Egypt’s port construction has started a new
chapter ever since Abdel Fattah al Sisi assumed power. As opportunities and risks coexist in China’s participation
in Egypt’s port construction, only when we are fully aware of the risks and make scientific decisions based on
China’s own strengths can we effectively participate in Egypt’s port construction to yield a win-win result.
Keywords: the Belt and Road Initiative, Egypt’s port construction, risk prevention
The location of Egypt makes it a key juncture of the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st Century
Maritime Silk Road, so the importance of Egypt’s role in China’s promotion of the Belt and Road Initiative
shall not be underestimated. Currently, port construction in Egypt is merging as a new investment hotspot of
Chinese enterprises; therefore, how to seize the opportunities to effectively invest in Egypt’s port construction
while avoiding risks is a meaningful topic.
Basic Features of Egypt’s Port Construction and Maritime Transportation

To ancient Egyptians, the Nile was their lifeblood that formed a well-developed network of water routes
and thus port construction became an essential part of people’s life and production (Patridge, 1996, pp.
171-172). With the arrival of Mediterranean era, the water transportation and port construction of Egypt entered
a new phase of marine shipping which was marked by the completion of the Port Alexandria. It meant the
co-existence of the river system and the marine system at the time. In recent times, the historic operation of the
Suez Canal and the Aswan Dam have joined the Nile with the Red Sea and the Mediterranean Sea, which has
formed the framework for today’s convenient waterway transportation in Egypt and laid a solid foundation for
*
Acknowledgement: This paper is part of a Research Project funded by China Ministry of Education Social Science Foundation
entitled “The Coordination among Great Powers in the Middle East: China’s Participation in Hot Issues (No.16JJDGJW012)”.
ZHAO Jun, Ph.D., associate professor, Middle East Studies Institute, Shanghai International Studies University, Shanghai,
China.
HU Yu, Ph.D., assistant professor, Shanghai Customs College, Shanghai, China.
470 FEATURES OF EGYPT’S WATER TRANSPORTATION AND CHINA’S PARTICIPATION
the sustainable development of its port construction. At the moment, there are four distinctive features in
Egypt’s port construction and maritime transportation.
Firstly, Egypt’s port construction and maritime transportation is a vital part of the international shipping
system. The country’s 2,500-kilometer coastline enables it to rank among the countries with the most ports in
the world and turns it into one of the major international logistics centers. The ports in Egypt are mainly located
around the Red Sea, the Mediterranean Sea, and the Gulf of Aqaba, among which over 100 have public codes
and 59 can serve as maritime ports (Maritime Transport Sector, n.d.). The major ports include Port
Alexandria—the biggest port in Egypt as well as in Africa and the largest freight transfer station in the country,
Port Said, Port Damietta, and the Port of Suez. The Suez Canal, a well-known international navigation route for
connecting Asia, Europe, and Africa, holds 14% of the total volume of international sea-borne freight traffic
(Egypt Economic Development Conference, 2015) and 8% of international trade shipments (Ayyub, 2014).
According to the “Global Competitiveness Index (2017-2018)” issued on the World Economic Forum, the
global competitiveness of Egypt’s port infrastructure ranks 41 among 137 countries and regions (World
Economic Forum, 2018). Meanwhile, Port Said and Port Alexandria rank 49 and 87 in terms of annual holding
capacity on the Lloyd’s List of the top 100 international ports, with a capacity of 3.0359 million TEUs and
1.6336 million TEUs respectively (Lloyd List, 2017).
Secondly, maritime transportation is an important backbone industry in Egypt that plays a key role in the
development of national economy and exerts profound influence on other industries, such as tourism and trade.
As ports are the main channels for the transportation of imported and exported commodities, the Suez Canal is
one of the major resources of Egypt’s fiscal revenue and regarded as “the lifeblood of Egypt”. In 2016, the
ports in Egypt earned a surplus of 6.24 billion Egyptian pounds, to which Port Alexandria made the greatest
contribution with 6,750 million Egyptian pounds. It was followed by the Maritime Security Bureau, 2,420
million Egyptian pounds, and the Red Sea ports, 1,500 million Egyptian pounds. The revenue of the Suez Canal
usually accounts for around 2% of Egypt’s GDP (In 2011, it rose up to 3.1% due to the political unrest) and the
direct foreign investments it attracts even makes up 8% of the total volume (The Egyptian Center for Economic
Studies, n.d.). The revenue gained by the operation of the Suez Canal reached 5.1 billion US dollars in the
fiscal year 2016 (Egypt Central Bank, 2017) and it went up to 5.3 billion US dollars in the fiscal year 2017
(Zheng, 2018). To a degree, the economic security of Egypt relies on its waterborne transportation.
Thirdly, Egypt’s port construction propels its domestic economy and international interaction. The
construction and development of the ports considerably advances the process of Egypt’s globalization and
marketization and strengthens the ties between Egypt and other countries, bringing more opportunities of
economic and trade cooperation. At the same time, the advantageous geographical location of Egypt and its
well-developed ports have made it a key passage for the maritime transportation between the countries
surrounding the Mediterranean Sea and the Asian countries. Besides, export of goods heavily relies on the
capacity of port transportation; therefore, port construction and development can also drive the construction of
infrastructures like railways, roads, etc., propel the development of logistics, and strengthen the interaction
between Egypt’s domestic economy and the global market.
Fourthly, although the infrastructures of the ports have been constantly advanced, the capacity for ocean
shipping still needs upgrading. The recent years have witnessed continuous progress in Egypt’s port annual
holding capacity. By the end of 2017, its annual holding capacity has reached 1,470 million tons, 7.10 million
TEUs, and the total area of warehouses has risen to 6.5273 million square meters, which has basically solved
FEATURES OF EGYPT’S WATER TRANSPORTATION AND CHINA’S PARTICIPATION 471
the disturbing problem of cargo backlog (Maritime Transport Sector, 2018). However, the transportation
capacity of the registered vessels in Egypt is far from being satisfactory. The number of the registered vessels
owned by Egyptian companies has climbed from 132 in 1995 to 151 in 2016 with a total tonnage of 1.6 million
tons. But with 36 vessels that can no longer be operated due to various reasons, the rest 115, among which 45
are capable of global shipping and 70 are used for regional shipping, only have a total storing capacity of 1.424
million tons (Maritime Transport Sector, n.d.).
China’s Current Participation and Its Significance

Egypt is the first country in Arica and also the first among Arab countries to establish diplomatic ties with
China. For a long term, China and Egypt have maintained friendly political and economic relations, but it is
quiet recently that Chinese enterprises have obtained contracts and directly participated in sea port construction
in Egypt.
China Harbour Engineering Company (hereinafter referred to as “China Harbour”) is the first Chinese
company to sign port construction contracts with Egypt and plays the role as a model for its successful
participation. In September 2008, China Harbour was awarded two construction contracts, one on the
construction of Port Said Phase II (contract value: 220 million USD) (Xu, 2008) and the other on the dredging
project for Port Damietta (contract value: 160 million USD) (Xu, 2008). In July 2012, China Harbour signed a
concession agreement with the Red Sea Port Office and the Wharf Investment Company of Port Adabiya,
namely the BOT (Build-Operate-Transfer) contract (on the dry bulk wharf construction project of Port Adabiya
in the Red Sea). The project was initially launched by China Harbour and attracted investments from Saudi
Arabian companies including the Dena Bms Co., Ltd. Holding 5% of performance shares, China Harbour was
designated as the EPC contractor (China Ministry of Commerce, 2012). In March 2015, China Harbour
participated in the extension project of Ain El Sokhna Port and Port Damietta as the main contractor and
operator (contract value: 6 billion USD), which was a major breakthrough in Chinese enterprises’ participation
in Egypt’s port construction.
In general, China’s direct investments in Egypt’s port construction are limited and Chinese enterprises’
participation is confined to service projects and support facility construction, which means China’s
participation in Egypt’s port construction is, in terms of both investment scale and value, still on the initial
stage. Nevertheless, the participation is of profound significance.
In the sight of Egypt, the strategic benefits it can gain from China’s participation in port construction at
least cover the following three aspects: First, it can help relieve the money crunch to certain extent. Since Abdel
Fattah al Sisi assumed power, the direct investments attracted to Egypt is no more than 10 billion USD each
year, seriously baffling Egypt’s economic and social development. Under the circumstances, China’s
investment and participation in port construction will not only propel Egypt’s economic growth but improve the
international environment for its development, as more external investments, investments from China in
particular, will be attracted. Second, it can produce the merits of scale economy. The developments of the
China and Egypt are not at the same rate, but their industrial structures can complement each other. Port
construction will further expand both countries’ markets and room for economic growth by promoting more
flexible exchanges of materials and products. Third, it can help realize Egypt’s strategic target of “balancing
great powers”. The “power balancing” strategy has been implemented by Egypt for a long term with a view to
safeguarding its own interests in the Middle East by keeping a balance among the various forces in the area and
maintaining a harmonious coexistence of them. This is a special approach adopted by Egypt to handle its
international relations. That China is allowed to participate, jointly with the United Arab Emirates, in port
construction is one of the results of the strategy which aims to maintain Egypt’s influence on the regional and
even the world’s situation.
From China’s point of view, its participation in Egypt’s port construction bears substantial significance.
On the one side, it contributes to the construction of the “21st Century Maritime Silk Road” whose success
heavily relies on the development of key ports on the route. Only when the smooth, safe, and effective transport
is secured can a network of the markets of ASEAN, South Asia, West Asia, North Africa, and Europe be
established. China’s all-round participation in the construction of ports and surrounding infrastructures of Egypt,
one of the major markets in the network, can substantially promote the process of “Maritime Silk Road”
program. On the other hand, China’s investment and participation in Egypt’s port construction set a foundation
for the two countries’ further political and economic cooperation. With regard to economy, China’s cooperation
with Egypt calls for diversified investing channels and co-work programs. By investing and participating in
overseas port construction, China aims to promote its cooperation with key port cities along the Maritime Silk
Road in developing industrial zones adjacent to ports, so as to lay the groundwork for international production
capacity. Hence, China’s investment and participation in Egypt’s port construction, in co-operation and with a
proper division of labour, has improved the infrastructures of both the ports and the industrial zones and paced
up the bilateral productivity cooperation. What’s more, port construction and development is a long-term
source of economic growth for Egypt; therefore, China’s active participation in the area has a great practical
significance to Egypt government.
Opportunities and Challenges

By now, Egypt has been one of the most supportive countries for the Belt and Road Initiative which is
believed to be a great opportunity for Egypt’s growth in the international community. Therefore, the Sisi
government has been making positive effort to promote the program cooperation with China. In January 2016，
Egypt and China signed “The Five-Year Program for the Strengthening of the Overall Strategic Partnership
Between China and Egypt”, in which both parties agreed to intensify cooperation in infrastructure construction
in the framework of the Belt and Road Initiative, port construction included. In May 2017, Mr. Xi Jinping,
Chairman of People’s Republic of China, put forward a proposal to establish a maritime transportation network
and received positive response from Egypt in the Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation. In
September of the same year, Mr. Abdel Fattah al Sisi, the president of Egypt, visited China and declared his
support for the Belt and Road Initiative. In February 2016, the Egyptian government issued its long-term plan,
“Sustainable Development Strategy: Egypt’s Vision 2030 and Planning Reform”, in which the Suez Canal
mega project was put on the top of the list and maritime and river transportation were discussed respectively as
independent projects. The plan provides a strong driving force for port construction in Egypt and brings new
opportunities for Chinese investment. However, due to the special strategic location of Egypt and the political
sensitivity of port construction participation, which may be interpreted as an attempt to control the Suez Canal,
China should be fully aware of the potential risks involved and make sensible decisions.
First, geopolitical risks shall be taken into consideration. Owing to its unique geographical location, Egypt
has long been the focus of all powers who intend to gain political and economic advantages in the area. As the
Unites States, the European Union, and other countries all want to defend their own interest in Egypt, the
construction and the use of port included, they are highly sensitive to any cooperation in the framework of the
Belt and Road Initiative. Besides, the confrontation between Saudi Arab and Iran intensifies regional tension
and deepens the division of the Islamic World, which may result in the collapse and reconstruction of regional
political pattern. Meanwhile, the geopolitical conflicts and clashes thus caused may get China drawn into
unknown political risks in the process of participating port construction. Moreover, the conflict between
Palestine and Israel, the nuclear issue of Iran, ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and al Shams), and other unstable
factors among Egypt’s neighboring countries, including Syria, Iraq, Libya, and Yemen, may adversely affect
Egypt’s social stability and pose threats on the cooperation between China and Egypt in the areas of trade,
investment, construction contracts, and so forth.
Second, the economic risks cannot be neglected. Currently, Egypt is adopting a proactive fiscal policy and
a loose monetary policy with a view to stimulating economic growth. At the same time, it receives substantial
financial aids from Gulf Cooperation Council members and IMF (International Monetary Fund). Though its
economic risks are in decline in the short term, we cannot neglect the vulnerability in Egypt’s economic growth
due to its excessive dependence on external support. The long-term economic prospect is not optimistic. On the
one hand, there are risks in commercial environment. The infrastructure construction in Egypt is in need of
improving, electricity supply in particular，and the port construction projects open to foreign investments are
mostly of great difficulty and with limited profits, while those low-risk, high-return projects are usually
designated to domestic enterprises or military troops. On the other hand, there are investment risks caused by
the problems of policy inconsistency, fluctuation of exchange rates, etc. Besides, there is no getting around the
facts that the payback period of investment in port construction is long, the cost of investment is relatively high,
and most of the well-developed ports have already been taken over by the giant terminal operators.
What’s more, China’s participation in port construction has to face security risks including social unrest
and terrorism in Egypt. Though social contradictions have been reduced since SISI’s assumption of power, the
structural contradiction remains acute, leading to occasional mass demonstrations, strikes, and riots. In addition,
ISIS cannot be completely eliminated in a short term. Despite the heavy losses it has suffered, ISIS is adopting
a strategy of remaining dormant within Egypt while spreading influence outside, which poses a grave threat to
the social security of Egypt as well as the safety of Chinese people and enterprises in the country.
Moreover, there are legal risks out of the corruption of judicature and the imperfection of legal system
resulted from political chaos. After the establishment of SISI’s government, Egypt has passed a series of laws
relating to investment, including Corporate Law, Bidding Law, Capital Market Law, Land and Real Property
Law, Insurance Law, Electricity Law, Maritime Law, Commercial Law, and New Investment Law. But in the
process of law implementation, there emerge the problems of ignorance of foreign fund protection and poor
performance in law implementation. Apart from the problems mentioned, the sector interest bias and lack of
coordination in Egyptian government make it fail to meet foreign investors’ demand of unifying and
streamlining the examination and approval procedures (Wu, 2015).
Suggestions
On account of what have been discussed, sensible judgments and reasonable measures shall be made and
taken based on a comprehensive and careful assessment of the situation in the process of China’s participation
in Egypt’s port construction.
First of all, we shall grab the present strategic opportunity, as China has at least two advantages over other
countries at the moment. One is the mutual trust shared by China and Egypt, contrasted with the uncertainty
characterizing Egypt’s relations with America and Russia. This is the result of Egypt’s adjustments in
diplomatic strategy. The other is the fact that China is the largest trade partner of Egypt at present and its direct
investment in the country is continuously mounting. Under the circumstance, China can further refine and carry
out the plans in “The Five-Year Program for the Strengthening of the Overall Strategic Partnership Between
China and Egypt” so as to create a better environment for its investment and participation in port construction.
Besides, we shall make full preparation. In the first place, apart from reminding investors of the possible
risks, authoritative departments need to publicize the latest news about China’s investments in Egypt, helping
Chinese investors make right decisions and clearing their unnecessary doubts and concerns. Secondly, China’s
investments in Egypt shall not be confined to the construction of port itself, as port construction is a systematic
program. In terms of project selection, it is highly suggested that investors take part in the infrastructure-related
projects, such as express railway, tunnel construction, light rail train, express road, ship building, port operation,
and port equipment. And authoritative departments can offer financial support to key projects through Silk
Road Fund and AIIB (Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank). Thirdly, Chinese investors shall make full use of
the preferential measures and simplified procedures according to the New Investment Law, and investment
priorities shall be given to the areas and industries supported by Egyptian government. In addition, all disputes
arising from investment projects are supposed to be settled friendly and timely within Egypt by resorting to the
help of the newly established units in accordance with the New Investment Law.
Last but not least, we shall enhance the ability of risk management and control. An advanced risk
assessing-warning system and a protection mechanism shall be established to provide Chinese enterprises with
long-term risk warning. For instance, we can set up particular institutes to research on the situation of Egypt’s
security so as to make assessments and issue warnings regularly. We can also establish a coordination
mechanism through local Chinese Embassy or Consulate who will collect security information and coordinate
emergent actions to offer guidance on or take control over the security management of Chinese enterprises and
their staff. Meanwhile, we can seek diversified channels to communicate with Egyptian government, including
the talks between Chinese Embassy and central government, communications between Chinese Consulate and
regional government, as well as opinion exchanges between Chinese enterprises and local non-governmental
organizations. Finally, Chinese enterprises in Egypt shall be staffed by specialized personnel responsible for the
prevention and handling of emergencies, and the enterprises need to cooperate with Chinese Consulate in
enterprise assessment so as to enhance the capability to withstand risks.
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doi: 10.17265/2328-2134/2018.09.002
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US President Donald Trump’s Twitter Analysis and His Trade

Policy Agenda∗
Hikari Ishido, Yuki Tashiro, Richard Liang

Chiba University, Chiba City, Japan
This paper makes a text analysis of the US President Donald Trump and his trade policy agenda at the national and
international levels, followed by evidence-based statistical analyses of US trade. The results of President Trump’s
twitters reveal that overall, President Donald Trump’s remarks contain his “populism” characterized by the use of
easy-to-understand words as well as simple rhetoric, as shown most symbolically in the phrase “make America
great again”. This is what is meant by “populism”, an important character of his administration (at the “meso” level)
which exerts a large impact on the global (or “macro”) political and economic landscape. Such large-scale impacts
can be generated by “micro” (individual level) remarks by President Trump. In more concrete terms, his micro
(individual) speeches will influence his meso (national) level policy as well as the macro (NAFTA) level policy
stance of the US. All these levels are interconnected in a sensitive way. NAFTA as a regional integration among the
three nation states is actually under a significant influence from meso as well as micro interactions, and President
Trump’s punitive trade stance may hit Chinese export negatively. Due consideration to the cross-hierarchical
linkages is indeed a practical viewpoint when discussing the current, rather US-dominated trade deals.
Keywords: Donald Trump, Twitter, America first, trade policy, text mining
Background and Setting

This paper makes a text analysis of the newly elected US President Donald Trump and his trade policy
agenda at the national and international levels. The focus is of utmost importance since the US trade policy
affects other nations’ trade regime to a great extent.
Indeed, there is a sort of hierarchical structure in the global society with the US at an important center.
Several layers are then nested, since Trump’s remarks have been reshaping people’s inward-looking mindset
away from embracing open trade and instead cherishing the value of “America First”; this trend then gives a
boost to the Trump administration’s further promotion of domestic-oriented policy.
It is an analytical conduct to give names to what seems to be the subjects of each level, such as individual
→ household → ethnic or local government → nation → regional integration body → super national system
and international norms and to discuss the interaction only within each hierarchy. As usual, there are limitations
to capture the reality of the global society with this approach, and it is impossible for various actions and ideas
∗
Acknowledgement: This work was supported by JSPS KAKENHI Grant Number 16H06548 (Political/Economic Regional
Integration).
Hikari Ishido, Ph.D., professor, Faculty of Law, Politics and Economics, Chiba University, Chiba City, Japan.
Yuki Tashiro, B.A., research fellow, Faculty of Law, Politics and Economics, Chiba University, Chiba City, Japan.
Richard Liang, M.Sc., research fellow, Faculty of Law, Politics and Economics, Chiba University, Chiba City, Japan.
DONALD TRUMP’S TWITTER ANALYSIS AND HIS TRADE POLICY AGENDA 477
to be unpredictable among individuals’ actions, part of the meso connecting micro and macro, and micro
“individual.” In other words, the US President Donald Trump’s remarks, mostly done through tweets, can have
a great influence on the meso (the US national) and the macro (global) levels in the form of the prevalence of
“my country first”, or “populism” put simply.
With the above observation (interactions among micro, meso, and macro levels) in mind, this paper makes
a text mining analysis of Trump’s Twitter-based remarks. For the period of April-July 2017, within the first
term of Donald Trump’s US presidency, there are totally 577 items of tweets (12,954 words in total) extracted
for this study. This section investigates Trump’s sentiments from these contents. And by conducting a
comparative static analysis on his observed words, this study tries to provide related implications on Trump’s
domestic and international policies using a text analysis tool.
Text Mining Analysis of Trump’s Policy Speeches

This paper uses the tool for text mining analysis which was developed by Nippon Telegraph and
Telephone (NTT) Mathematical Systems (Japan). Generally speaking, text mining or text analytics means
turning unconstructed text data into high-quality information or actionable knowledge (Zhai, 2018), which can
be used for optimal decision-making. By applying a specific algorithm, we can extract meaningful information,
which could be very useful. Among all of these, content analytics is widely applied in social science studies
(Yu, 2015). It classifies those words in a prepared document by detective encoding rules to give them a new
order. 1 Content analysis shows great value in observing change of public opinions (Stemler, 2001).
As Trump has been making extensive use of social networking services, most notably the Twitter service,
we have extracted his tweets for language analysis. Natural language processing (NLP) requires common sense
knowledge (e.g., about trade policy and its status). NLP based on statistical methods can be done using his
tweet texts and is the main topic here. In this study, we are going to use statistical NLP as the basis and we will
have humans for help as needed in various ways.
Content Analysis of Mr. Trump’s Twitter

Word Frequency Analysis
Figures 1 and 2 show the results of word frequency analysis. Take a glance at these two figures, in contrast
with tweets before getting elected (which is displayed in Figure 1), the tone of Trump’s tweets in his first
presidency term is changing a bit. During October 2016, “Clinton” was the most frequent word on the list.
After the election, “Clinton” was obviously no longer a byword Trump talked about all day; instead, he seemed
to turn his interest into lambasting mainstream media and spent more time on it. In Figure 2, we can see there
are words like “fake”, “news”, and “medium” from his tweets. On the contrary, Trump spoke highly of the
FOX News Network and gave an interview on the show “Fox & Friends” where he talked about Obama care.
Also, in Figure 1, Trump’s tweets mentioned the traditional phrase “Drain the swamp”, which is a major
slogan unveiled for Trump’s campaign on October 2016, implying Trump’s commitment to promote tougher
ethics reforms to eliminate the influence of lobbyists and corruptions incurred. It seems that Trump as an
outsider before the election was willing to totally change the political atmosphere in the capital of the US,
1
Usually, the setting up of a dictionary is a part of the content analysis, and those collections of words or dictionary can help you
look up and extract specific words out of the documents, and then conduct statistical analysis on them, such as frequency analysis,
matching and so forth.
478 DONALD TRUMP’S TWITTER ANALYSIS AND HIS TRADE POLICY AGENDA
cleaning up all the corruptions, cronyism, and backstage dealings 2. In this sense, this slogan aroused a great
influence on the US because it appealed to the will of a large population. To some extent, the fast spread of this
slogan successfully helped Trump’s campaign win wide support among voters. Indeed, such a promise had
been made by Trump’s predecessor, Barrack Obama, who had carried out a policy to ban lobbying post-service.
Trump therefore mentioned this again and no matter whether it would happen or not, this slogan triggered echo
with voters. Responding to psychological demands of the majority, Trump did implement some measures, e.g.,
an executive order on a five-year revolving-door ban. However, some critics still pointed out there is a lack of
records on his effort to promote a five-year lobbying ban, which is seen as even more aggressive than Obama’s
two-year ban 3. However, trump’s cabinet was criticized as the “richest in history” and the “least educated” in
around 25 years (Lynch, 2017), which partially went against Trump’s “corruption fighter” public image, and
after Trump took the office, the number of registered lobbyists became even larger than that of a year ago
(Overby, 2017). So far, Trump’s promise has met with incredulity within the country. Corresponding to the
skepticism, Trump has not given any further measures.
In Figure 1, several words, such as “election”, “Clinton”, “email”, “win”, and “thank” come out a lot of
times, while those words cannot be seen from the second graph (see Figure 2) again. It seems that Trump
stopped talking about Clinton’s issue after he got elected. With the undergoing of Clinton’s issue on her email,
Trump’s approval rate surpassed Clinton’s for the first time before the election. To some extent, Clinton’s
email controversy was a main cause leading to her failure in this presidential election. At that time, Trump’s
team made good use of the opponent’s weakness and gave a fatal blow. By comparing the difference between
before and after the election, we can see the utilization of Clinton’s email controversy was more like a good
campaign strategy for Trump to get elected later.
Figure 1. Word frequency (one month before the election).
2
See Has Trump drained the swamp in Washington? By Theodoric Meyer.
https://www.politico.com/story/2017/10/19/trump-drain-swamp-promises-243924.
3
For example, some restrictions were removed, see
https://www.politico.com/story/2017/01/trump-lobbying-ban-weakens-obama-ethics-rules-234318.
Figure 2. Word frequency (after the election).
Analysis of Positive and Negative Words

Figure 3 demonstrates the positive words with frequencies. In Trump’s tweets, we can see before the
election, because he was always repeating his strong slogan in twitter, those words in the slogan appeared with
highest frequency as usual. Trump also mentioned “poll”, “crowd”, “order”, “rally”, and “supporters” in
positive expressions. Compared with Clinton, Trump expressed his gratitude to voters in a better way, more
directly and more times. This is the advantage of a personal Internet media, and it makes Trump closer to his
supporters, at least, it gives people such a feeling by doing so. Other positive expressions are used in
compliment on his policy, which can be seen form words, like “border”, “job”, etc.
Figure 4 shows positively evaluated words by the order of frequency. Regarding the analysis on positive
and negative meaning of words, high-frequency words with positive indications are mostly shown by this
Figure. Here, except for “people” and “deal”, other words are only of positive meanings, such as “justice”,
“optimism”, “honor”, and “luck”. Meanwhile, there are many words for things Trump has given positive
comments on, e.g., veteran, Israel, Trump’s pick to lead the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the
Falcons (sports team), American, etc.
By contrast, from the perspective of publicity, we can see Twitter played a very useful role in Trump’s
campaign and after his election; it immediately became a good promotion instrument for advertising Trump’s
policies. It is free but powerful. By using Twitter, Trump’s advertisement tended to be more efficient and
effective than Clinton’s. We can guess, in the near future, his every word will still be augmented by this media,
that will be good for the monitoring of his presidential work on one hand, and on the other hand, he will have a
greater influence on the public than his predecessors.
Figure 3. Positively evaluated words (one month before the election).
Figure 4. Positively evaluated words (after the election).
As for Figure 5, Trump made negative comments about his opponent (Clinton), particularly, on traditional
media (Cable News Network [CNN]) and Obama care. Trump focus his criticizes on Democrats and everything
relevant with that during this period.
As for Figure 6, negative words are plotted in terms of their frequency. The negative word appearing the
most frequently is “Obamacare”. Obviously, it became a hotspot when Trump and the congress passed the bill
to replace and repeal Obamacare on May, and therefore surrounding this topic, there was a great deal of
discussions online that Trump tweeted and criticized this for many times, making it a high frequency word.
Behind “Obamacare” is “immigration”. Since getting elected, Trump has promoted his immigration policies for
several times to ban immigrations. Further, Trump also harshly criticized “NATO”, and that is why we can find
NATO on this chart. We can find “fake” again, showing Trump’s negative attitude towards mainstream media
again.
Figure 5. Negatively evaluated words (one month before the election).
Figure 6. Negatively evaluated words (after the election).
By comparison, the negative expressions became more frequent after the election. As a new president and
fresh man in Washington, Trump’s administration was facing many challenges as imagined before. Trump then
transferred his focus from his opponent to some new affairs. To be specific, he turned to criticize Obama’s
immigration policy and health care policy with full fire, meanwhile the mainstream media were regarded as
accomplice of the democrats, and the fight between them lasts to today. The relationship between the president
and media seems to have no possibility of restoration so far.
Figure 7. Network Analysis (before the election).
Network Analysis
Next, the word linkage analysis is made, as in Figures 7 and 8, showing the relationship of words circled.
Those words at the beginning of arrows are the ones giving positive or negative evaluations; those at the end of
arrows are the ones receiving evaluations. The word “great” is now associated with more words than before,
implying Trump used this word more often in his tweets. With the emergence of new incidents, a variety of
new words were also being used.
From Figure 7, one central word connects with a bunch of others. Positive and negative words account for
half and half respectively. “Bad” is always being paired with “Obamacare”, “Clinton”, and “rating” again, the
simultaneous occurrence of those words is another fierce attack to democrats. By contrast, Trump made
positive comments to his own rally and never hid his real feelings or praise towards supporters by tweeting with
words, such as “great”, “fantastic”, “beautiful”, etc. In this way, his image was improved a bit and attracted
more attention from the crowd. On the other hand, he showed his confidence by encouraging supporters and
praised himself even when he performed not so well in the debate. To this point, as an experienced public
character, Trump is adept at advertising himself, which may be one of his capacities fostered during his
business career. He always emphasized himself as being rich and powerful and tried to educate the public that
he is a successful businessman and he could get success in every area he could enter.
Figure 8. Network analysis (after the election).
From Figure 8, we can see the change. Trump seemed to become less aggressive than he was before the
election. The number of positive words was increasing significantly. He began to speak something good in
public and wanted to change his former image of cynicism. As a leader of such a divided society, dealing with
so many people who are against him, Trump had to tone down his unscrupulous statements. He wanted to unify
the broken country together and gain universal trust from the public. Changes can be easily observed in tweets,
negative words were disappearing, and more positive statements were proposed to conciliate the anger groups.
Trump firstly should wield his power and start a true presidency, and make himself a reasonable person, which
means less aggressive.
Then, magnifying the central word in both network maps, the relationship would be seen more clearly. In
Figure 9, we enlarge a part of the whole map centered with “great”, and then in Figure 10, we talk about the
negative side.
From the word “great” in Figure 9 (the part for “great” magnified), there are so many relevant words
shown around it, some of which refer to specific objects, for example, veteran, Israel, security, evening, crowd,
etc., and some others refer to specific adjectives, such as “fantastic”, “success”, “wonderful”, and so on. From
the objectives side, we can see Trump’s positive comments on the issue of veterans, and his positive attitude
towards maintaining good US-Israel relations, and as well as to keep the US security in his way. Having said
that, the much higher frequency of the central word “great” signifies that instead of using intricate logic
concerning those policy agendas, President Trump simply wants to appeal to the people of the US by pledging
to make America “great” again.
Figure 9. Network analysis (with the part for “great” magnified).
Figure 10 focuses on networking of negative words. “Wrong” emerged with “poll”, which implies he
condemned the poll as a fraud with a lack of transparency. “Illegal” appeared with “immigrant” and “acts”
again, in consistent with our above analysis that Trump kept promoting his immigration policy to ban
immigrations from certain countries. “Dead” is associated with “Ocare” is from Trump’s twitter by which
Trump announced Obamacare was dead as he achieved his goal of “let it fail”.
Figure 10. Network analysis (with the part for negative evaluations magnified).
After the election, Trump had to deliver on his promise to the people. As he took the office, he at once
undertook every method to eliminate the political remains left by his predecessor, and began to advertise his
policies as before, again influenced the public opinion on all hot affairs, and which always gained a lot of
attention not only from domestic but also international sources. For instance, when he started controlling
immigration and promoting the ban on selected Muslim countries, opposition grew very fast countrywide, and
panic aroused.
Figure 11. Network analysis augmented with positive words (before the election).
Additionally, we applied the same method of network mapping for before-election data to find some
differences. In Figure 11, enlarging the positive words makes it clear to see what Trump said something good
about. Again, Trump showed his talent in seeking support from the mess. It is believed that during the 2016
general election, Trump’s team functioned very well in propaganda and utilized new media skillfully. Trump
has his natural advantage in political campaigns not only because he has extensive experience in being a TV
star and using up-to-date social media. As for personal factors, Trump’s way of talking seemed to be more
acceptable. It showed that Trump has simple answers for everything. Intuitive answers with excessive
self-confidence makes Trump’s speech very popular and spread worldwide very fast. In the digital age, short
answers to complicated questions could be more welcomed and more suitable for web communication, and
Trump was answering every question with conspicuous words in his special way, which easily attracts great
attention. So, on this networking map, we can see Trump used many simple words to express his feeling to the
public, trying to assure the audience that he has faith to make every success for this country and he is a trustful
person. On the other hand, people have been fed up with the establishment, represented by both the Grand Old
Party (GOP) and the Democratic party. The more heavily Trump criticized the current politics, the more
popular he becomes. For this reason, severe criticisms by mainstream media even improved Trump’s condition
and promoted his campaign and made Trump’s support rate go higher and higher. More importantly, it is
widely believed that Trump talked about things that people have been afraid to say. Factual errors can be easily
found in his statements, but the audience always shows incredible and greater tolerance for his mistakes, and
that is not the same case for other candidates. We can see the augment part on those negative words, from
Figure 12 again, we see “immigration” paired with “illegal” and “criminal” coexists with “enterprise”. All
those fallacies committed by his statement were ignored and he successfully set himself as a truth teller and
fearless fighter only because many people think of him as their spokesman for speaking out what they have at
the bottom of the heart but dare not to say. Trump took advantage of this and enjoyed making comments on
everything he dislikes without restraint at this stage.
Figure 12. Network analysis with the part for negative evaluations magnified (before the election).
Focus-Word Analysis
From Figure 13 on focus-word analysis, what is so-called Obamacare is in a network consisted by
keywords showing by that graph including “death” and “deductible”. Trump accused democrats as being
“obstructionist” when he tried to pass a health care bill to replace Obamacare, so this word appeared
simultaneously with “Obamacare”. And we can see two words “spiral” and “death”, which are interplaying and
linked with “Obamacare” within a similar distance. Indeed, “death spiral” is a phrase said by Trump, when he
described Obamacare as a “death spiral”. “Deductible” and “Premium” are appearing, and at the same time, the
word “Deductible” is much closer to “Premium” than “Obamacare”, because “deductible premium” is a phrase,
quoted by Trump to advertise his health care plan for the people of the US.
Figure 13. Focus words analysis (with “ObamaCare” as the focus).
As for Figure 14, “great” as the central word directly links words, such as “crowd”, “winner”, “champion”,
“tonight”, “veteran”, “enthusiasm”, and so on. In contrast with the previous result, there are some new words
appearing, for example, there is a name “Gorsuch”, who actually is the justice of the Supreme Court of the US
nominated by Donald Trump in April of 2017 4, which is a big political success for him.
Figure 14. Focus words analysis (with “great” as the focus).
In Figure 15, in addition to the pet phrase “make America great again”, there are some new phrases
“supreme” (court) and “center”, which is evident of the isolationism held by the Trump’s government.
4
See
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-court-gorsuch/trumps-supreme-court-appointee-gorsuch-plots-rightward-course-idUSKBN1EE0IJ.
Figure 15. Focus words analysis (with “America” as the focus).
Trade Agenda
To make America great again, Trump has spent most of his time to express his own view about the US
trade policy. US has been experiencing an increasingly significant expansion of trade deficit for last 20 years
and which seems to be continued for coming years (see Figure 16).
From a simple theoretical view, it is a common sense that in an open economy, the economic output Y,
referring to GDP is the summation of consumption (C), investment (I), government purchase (G), and net
export (NX) which represents the difference of export (EX) minus import (IM), and it gives: Y = C + I + G + EX
– IM. Moving EX to the left-hand side, it then becomes Y + IM = C + I + G – EX. Based on Trump’s view, with
all the components on the right-hand side held constant, then a growing import on the left-hand side will make
Y a smaller value for the total equivalence. However, the coupling effects cannot be ignored in this case that an
increasing import (IM) could lead to a movement of other items, such as C and EX in two different directions.
That is to say, there could be a coexistence of a larger value of I and smaller value of EX, or a larger I and
larger C at the same time. Bearing this in mind, the output Y would not have to be affected significantly and an
increasing of Y might be achieved.
Figure 16. Current account balance, NAFTA (US dollars per capita).
Source: World Economic Outlook, IMF DataMapper,
http://www.imf.org/external/datamapper/BCA@WEO/CAN/MEX/USA/CAN/MEX/USA?year=1984.
No matter whether it is from the international economics or political perspective, the election of Trump
can be a turning point of the US-leading international system. His administration has set the direction of trade
policy based on the principal of “Put America First”. In January of 2017, Trump enacted an executive order to
withdrawal the US from the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) shortly after he took the office, which was the first
step carried out by Trump to fulfill his campaign promise and policy. Later, he called for a renegotiation with
Canada and Mexico on the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and tried to eliminate the deficit
and create more domestic employment by doing so. Indeed, during his campaign, he had already claimed to
impose a higher tariff on Mexico’s export to the US and use such tariff income to finance the construction
project of border walls between the two countries. Trump also mentioned China as the biggest rival on the field
of trade to the US, ascribed enormous trade deficit to China’s unfair trade practices including the manipulation
of currency exchange rates. In his tweets, from November 30, 2016 to December 4, 2017, Trump mentioned
China more than 40 times and many of which are about how China took advantage of the US and deteriorated
the US-Sino trade relations. These facts partially demonstrated that Trump was abandoning what his
predecessors did and leading America to be a protectionist country.
We applied clustering analysis on Trump’s tweets about trade issues. From a clustering analysis, we
captured four groups (see Figure 17), “China” is clustered with “deficit” and “job”, and “NAFTA” is with “deal”
all the time. “Mexico” is close to “border” and “kill”.
50
40
30
Cluster Dendrogram
Height
20
10
mexico
obama
countri
border
center
leader
deficit
make
china
world
trade
great
must
nafta
mani
good
want
deal
new
bad
0
fair
job
kill
d
hclust (*, "ward.D")
Figure 17. Word clustering analysis on Mr. Trump’s tweets about trade issues.
Source: Mr. Trump’s tweets from November 30, 2016 to December 4, 2017.
Trump never admits he is an opponent to free trade. Trump emphasized it is the unfair trade that he objects
to and he is a keen advocate of fair and smart trade. Trump’s idea of fair trade is totally based on pursuing
“fairer” trade balance, and put American’s interest as priority, creating job opportunities, strengthening the
competitiveness of manufacturers, and further improving the economic growth in the US. Taking TPP as an
example, there are several reasons why Trump show objections towards it: Firstly, he thinks of it as bad “deals”
which may cause “mounting trade deficits and a devastated manufacturing base” (Schott, 2017). Secondly,
Trump also thinks the cost is much larger than the benefit for America joining the TPP. And that the TPP
would make China and other non-TPP countries free riders (Schott, 2017). Regarding these flaws, Mr. Trump
preferred to adopt other instruments that can protect the US’ trade interests better than joining the TPP, i.e.,
bilateral trade agreements. However, it may not be the whole story and there could be a few differences
between the real case and Trump’s understanding. First, although the relationship between free trade and
employment is at times confusing and hard to figure out, it is too thoughtless to conclude that trade is the only
answer to the problem of why unemployment and declining of industries took place in the US during past
decades. For example, there is no doubt we witnessed a large-scale of job loss among American workers to
competition with China. In total, however, the trade between these countries even improved employment level.
Different from the traditional sectors, the export sectors associated with China brought a great deal of jobs
during past years. It is reported that 350,000 and more new jobs supported by exports to China during
2009-2014 (Donnan, 2016). As for the trade deficit, Trump attributed that to unfair trade and he has his own
definition and understanding of fair trade again. For instance, Trump once blamed Japan as making it
impossible for American car makers to sell cars in their market, while exporting and selling a big number of
cars to the US, which is unfair trade. This is only because he had imperfect understanding of the US-Japan
automotive trade. Japan had already eliminated tariffs and barriers on car imports since 1978; in contrast, the
US has been maintaining tariffs on vehicle imports from Japan, 2.5% for cars and 25% for trucks (Japan
Automobile Manufacturers Association, 2016). Additionally, Japan also had voluntary export restraint (VER)
on car exports since 1981 and welfare of American consumers was reduced (Feenstra, 1984). Thus, Trump
cannot draw a simple conclusion that it is unfair trade between US and Japan damaged Americans’ interest
based on such knowledge, especially, he has little knowledge that Japan’s car makers have invested in the US
and created many jobs for years (Blake, 2017). Anyway, Trump still only drew hasty conclusions about the US
commitments and gains from trade agreements. In contrast with his belief, reciprocal concessions in each
market from many countries for lowering the barrier for American firms to get better access to Japanese,
Vietnamese, and other TPP markets should be incorporated into each trade deal, and that is a reason why
America made a great deal of gain from free trade, and which could induce even greater welfare than the
commitment costs for the US. Further, TPP would have already made so-called commitment cost low enough
to draw the US over to join in (Schott, 2017). As for the concern that China acts as a free rider, Trump did give
a good answer to his own question. On the contrary, TPP itself could become an effective instrument to stop
other non-TPP members from taking a free-ride action. Rules of origin has given criteria for commodities to
qualify for preferential tariffs, if they are not qualified, then the most favored nation (MFN) principal will be
applied, and a considerable tariff will be imposed as well, but Trump thought origin rules have made the US
yield too much for foreign countries, even more than NAFTA (Schott, 2017).
So far, Trump’s trade agenda in flavor of protectionism and conservatism was not fully implemented.
Trump had many campaigns where he promised voters that he would reverse the trade condition with other
countries, such as China, Mexico, etc., but he would encounter more barriers in initiating his policies. In
Trump’s view, free trade is not equal to fair trade. Up to now, Trump has promised to tear down NAFTA,
which he called a bad deal, and set up trade barriers between US and China to turn it into being a fair
competition.
Trump and NAFTA Renegotiation
When Trump talks about trade issues, NAFTA is absolutely a key word. His Twitter frequently includes
“trade”, and NAFTA and Mexico can be easily found on that list.
During the past 23 years, NAFTA has been making great influences on the northern American
economy—Canada, US, and Mexico. As a big step of trade liberalization, NAFTA lowered import tariffs for
most traded goods to zero between the three members. Investments barriers were eliminated as well to prompt
capital movements. Protection of intellectual property rights and rules of origin help protect the member
countries’ common interest and enhance free trade 5.
We can observe a dramatic leap of trade value consequently after NAFTA took in force. The trade value
of US with Canada and Mexico has been tripled, which was $340 billion in 1993 and $ 1.2 trillion in 2016.
Respectively, bilateral trade value between Canada and the US had reached $549.24 billion, 2.6 times of which
in 1993, and for the same period, the trade value between the US and Mexico reached $527.82 billion, implying
6.4 times the size of such value in 1993 (Li, 2017). Value of investments also achieved a historical high; by
2016, the US investment in Mexico has become $87.6 billion, and the number for Canada is $363.9 billion
5
See examples from https://www.thebalance.com/advantages-of-nafta-3306271 and
https://www.export.gov/article?id=NAFTA-An-Overview.
(Statista, 2017); by 2015, the US has received investments of $286 billion from NAFTA members as total
(Bergsten & de Bolle, 2017). It makes Canada now the second trading partner and Mexico the third to US and
Canada together with Mexico account for about 30% of the US’ total trade in commodities and services during
rent years 6. Interdependence has been built among three economies, and the economic tie between them has
become much stronger and tighter. That is to say, Mexico’s economy is highly dependent on the US’ economy
today. Under a supply chain network formed then, US-Canada and US-Mexico trade of components also take
an account for a large proportion in total, for example, 40% of US imports from Mexico were used in
production process, and 75% components were exported from the US to Mexico (The US Chamber of
Commerce, 2014). From the industrial level, manufacturing industries in these three members is highly related
with each other by fast development in trade of components. In a nutshell, NAFTA has told us a beautiful story
for all of them: the US got Canada and Mexico’s market and expanded business; Canada gained a benefit from
increasing exports and outward foreign direct investments (OFDIs), and Mexico had foreign capitals and
received technologies and so on.
From the view of employment, then it turns out a different story. Studies have showed that the US
unemployment rate was significantly smaller after the NAFTA took into force and trade with Canada and
Mexico supported about 14 million job opportunities in the United States (The US Chamber of Commerce,
2017). According to the US Labor Department, about 414,000 jobs were replaced during the period of
1994-2002 caused by the NAFTA in effect, 2% of the total during that time (Hufbauer & Schott, 2017).
According to an Economic Policy Institutes’ study, there was net displacement of 682,900 US jobs by 2010
(Hufbauer & Schott, 2017). So, it seems that the severe unemployment is partially induced by the NAFTA, and
job displacement happened with higher possibilities in those states which today are being called the “rust belt”
area. Generally, NAFTA affected American workers through several ways. Firstly, Mexico absorbed enormous
jobs, as a result, jobs move from the US to Mexico. People working for manufacturing and living along the
border suffered a huge loss for this reason. There is a large population of unemployed, and unemployed
workers easily bought the theory that Mexicans robbed their jobs. Another impact of the NAFTA tells us that
the bargaining power of trade union became weaker (Singh & Dasgupta, 2011), that is to say, forming NAFTA
in effect may be one reason to explain why employers are more powerful in deciding whether they want to give
a person a job and how much they are willing to pay for this. More, workers will find there are more difficulties
having a larger amount of salary and only holding less bargaining power to confront the corporate side, and
then workers had to accept less payment and a lower standard of living. Thirdly, NAFTA has led to a large
amount of unemployment in Mexican agricultural sector and minor business in some other sectors; then,
through a dislocation of such work forces mentioned above, it stimulates a significant increase of the
population of illegal workers in the US. Those newcomers from Mexico induced more competitions into the US
labor market (Singh & Dasgupta, 2011). This reason can also be used to explain why the wage level became
lower in the US, particularly wage level for unskilled workers. In this sense, such competition brought by these
undocumented workers further made the US workers’ situation even worse. The last but not the least, under
NAFTA, a flow of benefits has the same direction as the flow of investments. Thus, benefit or welfare of trade
was not distributed equally to different social classes within the recipient country and the gap between rich
countries and poor countries is still great. In this case, the current economic framework seems to do nothing
6
See https://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/statistics/highlights/toppartners.html.
with wage convergence between member countries. On the other hand, the Figure 18 describes that the GDP
per capita differed much between three nation states. It implies the economic contribution of NAFTA is totally
different, and per capita GDP of US witnessed the largest increase during two past decades.
However, if Trump wanted to solve this problem just by abandoning the NAFTA, then it would be a
disaster and the problem cannot get solved. Without NAFTA or with a branch of total tariffs implemented by
the US, the scenario will be totally different. Withdrawal from NAFTA may drive the US into a worse
condition by burdening American firms and residences, and the current supply chain network may be
undermined as well. If that is the case, the US consumers and firms would be the biggest victims and the US
economy could be more vulnerable than people imagine. By estimation, tariff rate for imports from Mexico
may rise to 3.7%, and the tariff for exports from US to Mexico will become 7.4% on average (Kolb &
Cimino-Isaacs, 2017). Without NAFTA, US exporters will find it getting much more difficult to conduct export.
No matter what perspectives we have, the idea of eliminating NAFTA is likely to be a rather harmful way to
deal with the current issue and solve trade deficit, since it makes nothing to do with the motivation to lower the
trade deficit; instead, it may lead to a much larger deficit for countries. One core point Trump may not
understand is that the trade agreements themselves are not the main cause of US’ big trade deficit. Without the
free trade agreements, the situation could be much worse than it is now, and a predicted higher tariff would not
do good to a smaller deficit. Changes could be done to the current clauses to improve US citizens’ benefit and
protect the national economic interest; by doing so, it can be much better than giving up an opportunity for a
long-lasting free trade agreement anyway. After all, a renegotiation on NAFTA was discussed and carried out
by Trump’s administration.
The idea of revising NAFTA is not Trump’s innovation; Obama proposed it before during his
administration 7. After being elected, aiming for a reduction of the US trade deficit, the Trump administration
called for the US-NAFTA renegotiations. It began on August 16, 2017, and currently the latest round of
renegotiation has been held. There are several measures that can be applied, including to eliminate unfair
subsidies, create new chapters for labor and environment, and so on (Bédard, Nelson, & Sharma, 2017).
Updating the current agreement and leading trade towards a right direction is the focus.
Among all missions, it is worthy to note the issue of e-commerce is given a high priority, making a
so-called E-NAFTA become possible. E-commerce and digital trade are now some innovative points attracting
widely attentions, shedding light on the updated version of NAFTA, modernizing the NAFTA for today’s
economy. There are several ways to promote the e-commerce and digital trade in the proposed new NAFTA,
including to encourage governments to stimulate free flow of information, prevent data localization, open
digital markets, and so on (Aaronson , 2017). There is no doubt that today’s economy is inseparable with the
web and ICT technologies, from the app economy, artificial intelligence, sharing economy, online payment
system to application of big data, machine learning, and Internet of things (IoT), leading today’s business to a
different style. In this regard, the Internet sector in the US has been already accounted for 6% of the total GDP
and a growing proportion of employment (News Room, 2015), and trade in services created an enormous
surplus for America, as digital trade has gained great benefit for the US that the surplus is assumed to be $159
billion (Lynch, 2017). Besides, manufacturers earned profits by making a good use of online channels.
Similarly, although the market in Canada is not as large as the US, Canada is catching up with it during these
7
See from https://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/feb/19/barack-obama-stephen-harper-canada-visit.
years. Retails e-commerce revenue in Canada is estimated to be US$ 20.2 billion by 2017 and may go up to
US$ 28.66 billion by the year of 2021 (Statista, 2018). It reveals that 80% of Canadians had at least one-time
online shopping in 2016 (Canada Post, 2017) and 10% of them purchasing products from online retailers once
per week in January 2016, who are recognized as frequent online buyers (Statista, 2018). A large proportion of
online spending is for foreign goods and services, especially purchase from the US and China, which further
stimulated cross-border trade.
A steady growth trend of B2C e-commerce can be observed in Mexico, too; it reveals that turnover of
ecommerce in Mexico has grown by a two-digit rate of 31% from 2012 to 2016, making this country the largest
ecommerce market among Latin America countries (Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, 2017). However,
compared with Canada and the US, the Mexican market is still in her infant period and the value of online
shopping is much smaller to those in the US and Canada, recorded at US$ 4.56 billion for the year of 2016
(Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, 2017). Responding to this, e-commerce in North America is playing a
crucial role to regional economic growth, has potential for future prosperity, and makes three countries
prioritize this issue in their to-do list. One main objective of the renegotiation is to eliminate current barriers of
digital trade, for example, many governments require foreign enterprises comply with regulations of
localization of data for national security purposes and economic interests. In the age of big data, multinational
enterprises are heavily dependent on information transfer, a freer transfer of data without too much foreigner
governmental intervenes thus become a concern, and about this viewpoint, debates between governments is
foreseeable. Hence, protection of cross-border data flow and prevention of data localization should be
incorporated into the agenda, and perhaps there should be a common space for such a talk between three
countries (Aaronson , 2017).
If the new NAFTA forbids excessive data protection, some big names, such as Amazon, e-bay, Google,
and Microsoft would be more advantageous and further increase their profit, and may offer more jobs to
Americans and further narrow trade deficit by undertaking more cross-border trading with Mexicans and
Canadians. As expected, the US would be the biggest beneficiary of a new NAFTA chapter on facilitation of
E-NAFTA because of their obvious comparative advantage of trade embodied by advanced ICT technologies
and those US-based Internet services providers in Silicon Valley. On the other hand, inconformity of product
regulations, licensing requirements, and conformity assessment among countries might make it very hard to put
into practice, and regulatory cooperation need to be done. Mexican and Canadian government may also
consider information security and economic interest in this field. Canadian government may be worried about a
freer flow on cross-border products because they prefer their residences buy “Made in Canada” to buying US
products from US platforms. From Mexico’s concern, although burgeoning ecommerce experienced fast
development, they still are concerned about the consequence of a freer online commerce that would open a
back door for products made in other developing countries. If the boom of ecommerce opens the door for those
cheap products from other part of the earth, then some weak industry in Mexico will encounter greater
competitions, which is a disadvantageous influence (Angulo, 2017).
Figure 18. GDP per Capita, NAFTA (US dollars per capita).
Source: Retrieved from World Economic Outlook, IMF DataMapper,
http://www.imf.org/external/datamapper/NGDPDPC@WEO/CAN/MEX/USA/CAN/MEX/USA?year=1984.
From the view of Mexico and Canada, a sustainable low tariff level for export to the US is important and
through a stable trade agreement can they keep exporting merchandises across the border as they have been
doing for decades, as both of Mexico and Canada have economic sectors which are overly dependent on trade
with the US.
Trump’s threats of pulling the US out of NAFTA pressured the trilateral talks. During the 6th round, only
one chapter was concluded, only little progress achieved up to now. NAFTA talks have been ready for the 7th
round, and there are still many goals that cannot be reached. Perhaps it is still a long way for multilateral talks
in the future. There could be some results: First, if three countries failed in renegotiation, Trump has the power
to push the US to withdraw from the current trade pact. Second, a revised trade pact would come into being in
replacement of the current one.
Trump and the US-China Trade War
As his campaign promised, Trump wants to fix the unbalanced trade relationship with China. Currently, a
possible trade war seems to be approaching between these two powerful economies after he signed the
presidential memorandum in March of 2018 stating Washington will impose tariffs of $60 billion on China’s
goods imports based on investigation claiming China’s violations of intellectual property rights. After Trump
rejected to admit China as a market economy, he called China a currency manipulator, the announcement of
levying such a tariff is another anti-China action taken by Trump’s administration. Beijing responded to
Washington with their strong opposition and expressed their resolution to hit back via tough measures,
condemned the US for ignoring the regulations and aggression against China’s proper rights. In addition to
verbal protests, China also determined to slap punitive tariffs on $3 billion in American imports of goods
ranged from agricultural products to steel pipes as retaliation. Meanwhile, China may seek for legal actions and
an open bilateral dialogue with America for possibly settling this dispute.
US-China trade conflict is essentially a rivalry for the unique role of leadership of international trade order.
China’s extraordinary rise over recent years has challenged the current international trade order which has been
established and enhanced by the Western world for a long period of time. On the surface, US-China dispute
looks like an economic conflict, while this coming trade war literally implies a deeper contradiction that is not
only about economic issues but hegemonic dimensions. The interesting part is that the two parties have
switched their roles with each other in the new round of game where the US casts a conservative gesture and
China looks more like a supporter of free trade.
Of course, China will defend for her benefit and challenge the ongoing system. China’s economic success
is inseparable from being integrated into the global value chain and trade system. Thanks to globalization and
open policy, can China access the global market and become a vital part of the whole network. Today’s China
even shows greater potential and ambitions in burgeoning industries. Industrial updating will consolidate
China’s advantage in bilateral trade. Thus, China is less likely to have a trade war with US at this point in time.
On the other hand, free trade does not necessarily mean fair trade. From the US’ perspective, China has
been playing the game unfairly in many ways including forced technology transfer from US firms and
questioned severe theft of intellectual property rights. More, many believe that China’s unfair trade practice
harms the US economy and further make damage to the established international trade order. Indeed, the US
has long criticized China for unfair trade practices and failure to fulfill promises, but those problems remain to
be solved. That is the main reason why Trump’s administration must carry on strong measures to protect core
interest of Americans.
Economic ties have been increasingly strong between US and China so far, to be more specific,
complementarities have set the tone for the US-China trade relationship, though China’s export is evolving
after experiencing a long-term adjustment of industrial structure. During the past decade, trade interdependence
level was growing steadily with a fast expanding trade volume. Vertical specification explained a large
proportion of interindustry trade, but now China tends to export more capital products instead of labor-intensive
products (Caporale, A.Sova, & R.Sova, 2015).
Generally speaking, Trump’s punitive means may hit Chinese export severely. Now, both US and China
are just taking their first step carefully by imposing tariffs on limited types of goods which seemingly are not so
influential on bilateral trade. There might be a talk between China and the US before the condition worsens,
and both sides will exercise great restraint, and solve it peacefully.
Regarding an increasing regional political tension, it is unlikely that Trump wants to use such strategy to
threaten Beijing to give up their current diplomatic policy towards North Korea and force China to be more
cooperative, because before this issue, Trump has emphasized the US cannot expect to depend on China in
solving the North Korea problem. In his mind, the US should take all measures possible to handle the “hot
potato” on their own and he is very confident with it. From this view, starting a trade war between China and
US may be a decision after a great deal of thought, and this time, Trump’s administration seems to be doing it
for real. Trump’s action has both positive and negative effects for the US economy. If the trade war came into
being, then it will take a longer time to be ceased.
Conclusion
Overall, Donald Trump’s remarks on Twitter reveal his “populism” characterized by the use of simple
words and simple rhetoric, as shown most symbolically in the phrase “make America great again”. The text
mining method applied in this paper discloses Donald Trump’s method of appealing to people’s heart simply
and directly; this indeed is what is meant by “populism”, an important character of his administration (at the
meso level) which exerts a large impact on the global (or macro) political and economic landscape. Most
importantly, such large-scale impacts can be generated by micro (individual level) remarks by Donald Trump.
Put differently, the macro, meso, and micro interaction, as shown in Figure 19, can be observed by analyzing
Donald Trump’s Twitter texts. In concrete terms, his micro (individual) speeches will influence his meso
(national) level policy as well as the macro (NAFTA) level policy stance of the US. All these levels actually are
interconnected. NAFTA as a regional integration among the three nation states is actually under a significant
influence from meso as well as micro interactions.
Macro (global) level atmosphere of populism (“people first”)
Meso (national) level policy of “make America great again”
Micro (individual) level Tweets by the US President Donald Trump

Figure 19. An interactive “field” among macro, meso, and micro
Note. The arrows indicate a causal direction.
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doi: 10.17265/2328-2134/2018.09.003
D
DAVID PUBLISHING
Global Radicalization and the San Bernardino Attack―Evolving

Extremist U.S. Domestic Threat
Thomas M. Fitzpatrick
Husson University, Bangor, ME, USA
The focus of this paper is the process of radicalization of the San Bernardino attackers and their source of
inspiration and affiliations. The literature on the pathway to terrorism and jihad appears to agree that pathways and
triggers are varied and many with no clear set of traits that one can identify to predict individual paths to jihadism,
in short, it is an idiosyncratic process. So, while the psychological profiling of high risk jihadist individuals has yet
to be fruitful, the psycho/sociological behaviors associated with jihadism appear to offer greater promise. This
paper will divide into four actions: their pathway to radicalization, affiliations/relations, source of inspiration, and
the conclusion.
Keywords: San Bernadino, attack, Islamic terrorism, jihad, radicalization
Pathways to Radicalization
According to some family and friends, this couple offered few signals that they had begun the journey
down the path of radicalization, jihad, shahid or martyrdom, and terrorist violence. It should be noted that this
is a relatively common posture adopted by family members during the post attack phase under the pressure and
embarrassment of investigations by government and the media; it may be accurate or it may be a posture to
avoid accusations of complicity and legal liability. In assessing the pathways of these two individuals born on
two separate continents, yet each converging on the path to violent jihad with one another in San Bernardino on
Dec. 2nd 2015, “As early as the end of 2013 [they] were talking to each other about jihad and martyrdom
before they became engaged and married and were living in the US”, Comey told the senators, adding that
“investigators did not yet know whether their online courtship had been arranged by any sort of foreign terror
organization or if it developed naturally on its own” (Vice Dec, 2015, p. 1). Director Comey did note that their
individual paths of radicalization had begun years before they met, “the two were inspired by foreign terror
groups that likely predated the rise of ISIS … but these two killers were starting to radicalize toward
martyrdom and jihad as early as 2013” (Vice Dec, 2015, p. 1).
Below is a time line offering a perspective on the individual radicalization of Farook and Tashfeen before
they met and after they married. One could make the case that Farook and his neighbor constituted a terrorist
“cell” as they had planned an attack in 2012 but disengaged when the press reported the arrests in Los Angles
of jihadist terrorists. Farook’s marriage to Tashfeen brought together two like-minded individuals who acted as
one, much like the brothers Tamerland Tsarnev and Jokar Tsarnev of the Boston Bombing. The author would
characterize these terrorists as “lone wolves”.
Thomas M. Fitzpatrick, Dr., Professor, College of Business, Husson University, Bangor, ME, USA.
GLOBAL RADICALIZATION AND THE SAN BERNARDINO ATTACK 501
Attack
Black Box Radicalization Marriage 2014 Trigger
12/15
mutual validation
Birth of baby
no impact 2015
Figure 1. San Bernadino radicalization process model.
Two continents apart Farook and Tashfeen embarked on their individual paths of radicalization
independently; she in Pakistan and Saudi Arabia and he in San Bernardino and until their rampage nothing truly
brought them on to the radar of law enforcement or intelligence agencies. They were as the literature suggests
ordinary or “normal” Farook is a middle class government employee and Taskfeen attended a fundamentalist
girl’s school and was enrolled at a School of Pharmacy in Pakistan. Six months before their attack and their
physical de-radicalization, they had become parents and left an infant orphaned as they pursued violent jihad
and martyrdom. The concept of the “Black Box” has been coined as metaphor for thought process that leads to
radicalization, extremism, violent jihadism, and shahid or martyrdom. So far, no one has been able to crack the
“Black Box” and decipher its contents to make predicting terrorist behavior possible. One would think that a
six-month-old baby would have acted as a cognitive opening to break the process of radicalization to violent
jihad and cause Farook and Tashfeen to disengage psychologically and physically from jihad, but alas no.
Categorizing a social profile of the attackers employing Nesser’s terrorist typology is difficult if not
impossible based upon the information currently available as the investigation is only two months old (Peter,
2006).
502 GLOBAL RADICALIZATION AND THE SAN BERNARDINO ATTACK
Entrepreneur Protege'
Misfit Drifter
Figure 2. Nesser’s Terrorist Typology.
In the case of “lone wolves”, you are likely to find a combination of these typologies presented to one
degree or another. Farook due to conflict identity issues could be characterized as a misfit not genuinely
accepting the culture and country of his birth. He had some of the characteristics of an entrepreneur as he
attracted a recruit to his “cell” and conceived and planned an attack. Tashfeen has a longer history of radical
Islamic grooming and she was educated at a fundamentalist girl’s school in Saudi Arabia (the historic
birthplace of Salafism and Wahabism) and then returned to Pakistan to attend college and affiliated with
Pakistan’s notorious Red Mosque. It would be difficult to place her in the misfit or drifter category, so it
appears that she falls somewhere in the range of Protégé’ to entrepreneur.
Entrepreneurs, “who embrace Islamism through intellectual processes and proactively recruit and socialize their cadre.
Protégés, “who are similar to the entrepreneurs and appear to become radicalized through a combination of loyalty to the
entrepreneur and intellectually justified activism”. Misfits, “who typically join the group due to a combination of loyalty to
friends and to cope with personal problems such as troubled backgrounds and/or criminal records”, drifters, “whose
dominant motivations for joining appear to relate to social commitments, elements of youth rebellion, or a search for
adventure”. (Peter, 2006, p. 4)
As one reviews the literature on the process of radicalization, extremism, jihadism, and finally violent
terrorism, it becomes apparent that the path is genuinely an individual one where the process and the pace to
becoming a jihadist terrorist do not fit a timetable or template, in short, it is unique to the individual, time, and
place. For some, it takes years and others months maybe sufficient. “However, there does not appear to be a
fixed sequence of ‘radicalization stages’ that an individual travels through which ultimately results in the
decision to resort to terrorist violence” (Huffman, 2015). It is evident from the literature that that no clear
template of psycho/social motivation can be laid over an individual to provide confirmation that they are on the
path of radicalization, extremism, and ultimately violent jihadist behavior.
The literature suggests that an incomplete “identity” or as it is termed “fragmented psychosocial identify”
is the precursor or cognitive opening that can launch an individual on their individual pathway to radicalization.
Quintan Wiktorowicz’s theory of a cognitive opening “cognitive openings” which render individuals “more receptive
to the possibility of alternative views and perspectives. If the individual is exposed to a compelling ideology during this
period of relative openness to new ideas, the potential for radicalization is increased. (Huffman, 2011, p. 11)
There are however behaviors that would suggest that an individual might be a candidate for further scrutiny and
perhaps observation; are they affiliating with individuals or mosques that would be considered extreme, travel
patterns domestic, and international, manner of dress and demeanor, social media consumed, direct statements
indicating militancy, acquisition of the means (guns/weapons), and any statements of admiration/support of
terrorist events. The over-arching challenge for government agencies both law enforcement and intelligence is
the limited resources available to them and the exponential growth of potential “lone wolves”. In one
congressional interview, FBI Director James Comey was quoted as saying that “it takes up to 19 agents to
monitor a single individual 24 hours a day” (James Comey, 2016 Fox News).
One anectodal footnote is that in the aftermath of a “lone wolf” jihadist attack almost invariably the
individual has held up red flags about their support or belief in jihad or support of their perceived oppression
struggle, whether you are talking about San Bernadino, Fort Hood, Boston Bombing, or the attempted attack in
Dallas. These signals are missed or ignored and never reported to authorities for consideration. The neighbors
of Farook and Tashfeen were more afraid of being considered politically incorrect (Islamaphobic) than they
were concerned about the unusual or suspicious behavior they observed.
Figure 3. Relational radicalization model.

Malthaner and Lindekilde (2015, p. 11) offered a non-linear view of the radicalization of lone wolves or
what might be misnamed as self-radicalizers with their paper “Analyzing Pathways of Lone-Actor
Radicalization: A Relational Approach”. In reviewing the elements of the model above, they appear to serve
effectively in a forensic assessment of the relational pathways to violent radicalization for Farook and
Tashfeen.
School/Mosque:
Tashfeen Malik is known to have studied in Multan but US officials now say she is linked to the notorious Red
Mosque in Islamabad, the capital of Pakistan. Its chief cleric has publicly said he supports ISIS US officials told their
Pakistani counterparts today that Tashfeen Malik was linked to the country's most notorious mosque. (Hussain, 2012, p. 1)
Radical Comrade: Tashfeen and Farook met on line and began their courtship and radicalization
affirmational process via the web. Later, they would meet in Saudi Arabia and subsequently marry. Their union
is not only marriage but also political ideology that gave them a powerful “mutual validation” of their jihadist
values.
Radical Group/Friend: This is harder to determine but they did pledge allegiance to ISIS (Islamic State of
Iraq and Levant) and Farook had created his own “cell” of sorts with his recently converted neighbor Enrique
Marquez purchasing the guns in 2011 used in the attack and together planning an earlier attack in 2012 they
disengaged from out of fear of arrest. Marquez indicated that they had formulated plans to attack Riverside
Community College in 2012 but abandoned the plans after another group was arrested in LA.
Family: Farook’s mother lived with them and it is hard to imagine that she did not have some inkling or
see the preparations before the attack. Father claims ignorance while other family members indicated that they
saw a change in Farook’s appearance and intensity of his belief system. Tashfeen’s father was said to be
heartbroken but she attended a fundamentalist school in Saudi Arabia and the radical Red Mosque in Pakistan,
so within the context of a Radical Milieu that her changes could go unnoticed is dubious.
Workplace: For Farook may have served as a “trigger” event with it being noted that he argued with a
Jewish co-worker a few weeks before the attack.
Colleague Kuuleme Stephen said that when she had called Thalasinos at work he told her he was having a heated
discussion with Farook about Islam who had told him Islam was a peaceful religion and that Americans do not understand
Islam.
But it should be noted that attack was well-planned and materials gathered years, months, and weeks in advance
in preparation for a jihadist attack.
Virtual Community: Malik pledged her allegiance to the leader of ISIS in a Facebook post, according to
three U.S. officials familiar with the shootings. FBI investigators found evidence of private communications
between Tashfeen and Farook on the Internet and FBI Director Comey indicated that both were active were
“consuming poison on the Internet and both had become radicalized "before they started courting or dating
each other online and before the emergence of ISIL” (Wikipedia, 2015).
Political sociologists offer a theory of cognitive openings based on identity conflict or perhaps crisis that
occurs for second generation Muslims attempting to adapt or reconcile their duality of being Muslim and born
in the West. “Political sociology suggests that Islamist radicalization in Europe occurs when second and third
generation Muslim immigrants experience a ‘conflict of identity’ resulting from the dissolution of traditional
identities and communities through processes of globalization and migration” (Huffman, 2010, p. 14). It occurs
to the author that individuals with conflict identity or recent converts to Islam may feel a stronger need to
demonstrate the strength of their commitment to their beliefs, group identity, or heritage through extremism and
violence that well-adjusted individuals do not.
San Bernadino Attack Timeline

The San Bernardino attack spanned seconds, minutes, and hours. The duration of the shooting was minutes.
The first patrol units arrived in minutes. More than 10 hours passed between the report of shots fired and the
building being cleared for investigators. The coordination and rapid response taken within a matter of minutes are
commendable. Stopping the threat within a matter of hours is admirable. The aftermath and recovery take time.
Investigations and recovery continued after the attack. Which time intervals were most significant and how can
incident commanders, SWAT (Special Weapons and Tactics) personnel, and other officers understand and
manage time as an incident unfolds?
San Bernardino attack timeline (as cited in the critical incident response review, Cotter, 2016) as follows:
 10:58 a.m. First report of five rounds heard in the 1,300 block of South Waterman Avenue.
 10:59 a.m. Report of three suspects armed with assault rifles wearing all black clothing.
 11:00 a.m. Two patrol units dispatched.
 11:04 a.m. First unit arrives on scene (Lieutenant Mike Madden).
 11:06 a.m. Lieutenant, detective, motor, and patrol officer form a contact team and make entry.
 11:09 a.m. San Bernardino Police Department SWAT arrives with 12 operators and a tactical medic (six
more arrive later).
 11:15 a.m. Triage area established at South Park Center and Waterman Avenue.
 11:17 a.m. First floor secured. Patient evacuation to triage area.
 11:26 a.m. Roof cleared.
 11:30 a.m. Directed Probation to set up containment area for those exiting Building #1.
 11:31 a.m. Secondary sweep of building.
 11:33 a.m. possible device found on 2nd floor office (roller luggage bag out of place).
 11:46 a.m. San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department EOD on scene.
 11:51 a.m. EOD determined device was suspicious.
 11:56 a.m. SBCSD Special Enforcement Division cleared Building #1.
 12:24 p.m. Inland Valley Regional SWAT team to 2nd floor of Building #1 to clear and evacuate.
 12:38 p.m. Unified tactical command post established with SBPD, SBCSD, and Inland Valley SWAT team.
The FBI joined later but was on standby to assist if needed at other locations.
 1:42 p.m. Robot deployed to X-ray suspicious package.
 2:22 p.m. X-ray complete, device deemed safe.
 2:35 p.m. SBCSD completes search and evacuation of Buildings #1 and #2.
 3:02 p.m. Redlands Police Department in 100mph pursuit of unrelated stolen car that terminates half a mile
from command post.
 3:02:17 p.m. SBPD narcotic unit flagged down Redlands Police Department sergeant.
 3:08:19 p.m. SBPD narcotics and Redlands Police Department following suspect vehicle eastbound
between San Bernardino Avenue and Richardson.
 3:08:43 p.m. Shots fired while officers attempt to stop suspect vehicle.
 3:09 p.m. Suspect in custody from the Redlands Police Department stolen vehicle pursuit (orange show road
and arrowhead).
 3:09:22 p.m. Suspects stop and gun battle ensues (1795 East San Bernardino Avenue).
 3:12 p.m. Bearcat (armored vehicle) requested.
 3:12:57 p.m. ***Officer Down *** Narcotics officer shot in left thigh with 0.223 round at corner of Shedden
and San Bernardino.
 3:14:53 p.m. Shooting stops.
 3:19 p.m. SED units searching for potential third suspect seen running from the area of the SUV.
 3:19 p.m. Bearcat on scene.
 5:08 p.m. Explosive devices located on 1st floor primary building.

 7:36 p.m. Device removed for destruction.
 7:54 p.m. Device #1 detonated/rendered safe.
 9:29 p.m. Building clear and released to investigators
Conclusion
The topic of radicalization, extremism, and violent jihadist expression will likely remain a hot topic for the
foreseeable future with each new event providing additional fuel to research and theorizing on the reasons why
an individual chooses the pathway to violence and martyrdom. In much the same way that human criminality
has some markers or red flags that are observable; it might suggest that the “recurrent mechanisms” of Islamic
radicalization and extremist jihadism might serve as benchmarks for addressing it. So, what would a checklist
of recurrent mechanisms look like; born or converted to Islam, activity on Jihadist websites, affiliation and
contact with Jihadists domestically, internationally or virtually, travel to Jihadist hotspots, change in behaviors
and physical appearance, extremist pronouncements, declaring allegiance to an Islamic terrorist organization
and finally participation in a terrorist attack. All of these characteristics quickly fall into place forensically in
the aftermath of a jihadist attack, but prior to the attack assembling these elements into a cogent and coherent
picture is a daunting if not impossible task to achieve at a 100% success rate.
References
Armey, G. (2016). Islamist terrorism: Getting to grips with the post jihad world. UK Independent. Retrieved from
https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/features/islamist-terrorism-getting-to-grips-with-the-post-jihad-worl
d-a6812696.html
Cotter, H. R. (2016). Lessons from the San Bernardino terror attack timeline. Retrieved from
https://www.policeone.com/police-products/body-armor/articles/245726006-Lessons-from-the-San-Bernardino-terror-attack-
timeline/
Eric, T., & Asif, S. (2015). HuffPost politics, San Bernardino shooters radicalized at least 2 years ago. FBI Directors Says,
12/09/15.
Huffman, A. (2011). Homegrown terrorism in the United States: Comparing radicalization trajectories in Britain and America.
Retrieved from https://repository.library.georgetown.edu/bitstream/handle/10822/553516/huffmanAlexia.pdf?sequence=1
Krisnadev, C. (2015). The long radicalization of the San Bernadino shooters. The Atlantic. Retrieved from
https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2015/12/san-bernardino-shooting/419223/
Malthaner, S., & Lindekinlde, L. (2015). Analyzing Pathways of Lone-Actor Radicalization: A Relational Approach. Retrieved
from http://dpsa.dk/papers/LindekildeMalthaner_Analyzing%20Pathways%20of%20Lone%20Actor%20Radicalization_19.10.2015.pdf
Mark, B., & Sari, H. (2015). San Bernadino shooter spent years steeped in extremism before attack. The Washington Post,
12/18/15.
Nesser, P. (2016). Dynamics of jihadist cell structures in Europe/UK. Retrieved from
https://www.academia.edu/5439184/Dynamics_of_Jihadist_cell_structures_in_Europe_and_UK
Shakman, P. D. (2015). US News. The Evolving Extremist Threat, 12/07/15.
WikiPedia. (2015). San Bernadino attack. Retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015_San_Bernardino_attack 2015
doi: 10.17265/2328-2134/2018.09.004
D
DAVID PUBLISHING
Youth Public Organizations in European Integration Processes of

Ukraine
Olena Aleksandrova, Oksana Salata

Borys Grinchenko Kyiv University, Kyiv, Ukraine
It is described in the article the participation of Ukrainian youth NGOs in the process of European integration; the
stages of the formation and development of youth NGOs, that revealed the pattern in their creation connected with
the appropriate transformation of the values of modern Ukrainian youth. Pointed out that the formation of value
orientations of Ukrainian youth took place with the development and consolidation of democratic values in
Ukrainian society. Underlined the issue of solving problems of the formation and implementation of the state youth
policy in Ukraine, participation of young people and youth associations in the processes of state building and
development of a democratic society. It is proved that youth is an important factor in social and political processes
in Ukraine and the most active participant in the state social and political life. The character of modern youth
movements and the influence on informal youth initiatives on society are revealed. Some specific features of the
development of modern youth public organizations in Ukraine and their involving in the process of
decentralization-participation of young people in the activities of local government bodies, at all levels are outlined.
The role of international organizations in supporting the youth organizations of Ukraine and involving the younger
generation in international projects is shown, which also promoted the more active integration of Ukrainian society
into the European community.
Keywords: Youth NGOs, civil society, European integration, political initiative
Introduction
Integration of Ukrainian youth into global and European community is an important issue of state policy.
Youth in modern Ukraine is a generating force that seeks radical changes in all spheres of life: economic, social,
political, spiritual—especially in the fields of science and education. This is precisely why the society and state
have to ensure a leading and innovative participation of young people in state building processes, create
conditions for meeting their spiritual and cultural needs, and afford equal opportunities for unveiling a
professional, creative, and intellectual potential of the younger generation. The urgent need of today is gaining
social experience by youth, achieving their competitiveness in the labor market and developing an ability of
young people to live in civil society. The development stability of the Ukrainian state can be achieved through
support to young families, high-quality education of the younger generation, formation of universal value
orientations of young people, and instilling civic consciousness in youth.
Olena Aleksandrova, Doctor of Philosophical Sciences, professor, Dean of the Faculty of History and Philosophy, Borys
Grinchenko Kyiv University, Kyiv, Ukraine.
Oksana Salata, Doctor of Historical Sciences, professor, Borys Grinchenko Kyiv University, Kyiv, Ukraine.
508 YOUTH PUBLIC ORGANIZATIONS IN EUROPEAN INTEGRATION PROCESSES
Literature Review
The issue of youth public organizations and youth policy has been examined by numerous Ukrainian
researchers, specifically by Polovynecz (2010), Kulik (1990; 2000), Golovonko (1997), Verbecz (1999),
Karetna (2012), Kornievskyi and Yakushyk (1997), and Orlenko (2016). In their works, the above researchers
address the issues of formation and implementation of the state youth policy in Ukraine and participation of
young people and youth associations in the processes of state building and development of democratic society.
Thus, Polovynets (2010) considered youth a social factor in the formation of civil society in Ukraine and the
most active participant in public and political life. Kulik (2000) explored the nature of present-day youth
movements and an impact of informal youth initiatives on society. The experience of the youth movement of
the Ukrainian Diaspora is analyzed in the work by Golovonko (1997). In his scientific articles, Verbets (1999)
covered the development of national consciousness of young people and realization of the youth potential in
state building processes. Karetna’s (2012) works showed the role of youth in the transformation processes of
the social and economic spheres. Various aspects of the issue under review are dealt with in the work by
Kornievskyi and Yakushyk (1997) “Youth Movement and Political Associations in Modern Ukraine”.
Orlenko’s (2016) thesis research “Institutionalization of Youth Public Organizations in the Modern Political
Process of Ukraine” also deserves attention.
In general, according to most researchers, the current European integration course of Ukraine is possible
subject to an active involvement of youth in these processes. Under today’s adverse conditions, it is the state
which actively encourages the integration of young people into global and European community.
Legislative Support of Participation of Youth Organizations in European Integration Processes
The major directions of involving Ukrainian youth in European integration processes are outlined, in the
first place, in Law of Ukraine “On National Youth Support Program for 2004-2008” as of 18.11.2003, where
European integration of the younger generation became one of the main clauses, namely:
 initiating the development of draft international agreements in the field of youth policy and securing their
implementation;
 regulation of the state policy in the field of external labor migration with the countries where young people
of Ukraine come to for temporary work;
 expansion of opportunities for professional development and training of talented youth abroad through
financial support of special international programs;
 promotion of international youth exchange among twinned cities, educational institutions, youth public
organizations and their unions;
 expansion of international youth tourism in Ukraine;
 organization and holding of international art exhibitions, music, folklore and theater festivals,
competitions and concerts as well as international scientific, information, and methodological and other events
for young people;
 development and implementation at the state level of a program for learning foreign languages by citizens
of Ukraine;
 promotion of the entry of national youth and children’s public organizations and their unions into world
and European youth entities;
 support to international programs of youth and children’s public organizations and their unions;
YOUTH PUBLIC ORGANIZATIONS IN EUROPEAN INTEGRATION PROCESSES 509
 assistance in setting up European youth centers;

 promotion of international youth cooperation in border areas;
 support to youth and children’s public organization programs of for cooperation of young people of
Ukraine with the Ukrainian Diaspora.
The development of Ukrainian society largely depends on how effectively young people exercise their
rights to protect their interests. Ukraine has experienced a short (only 27 years) period of social and political
life in which young people and youth organizations took quite an active part. Legislation aimed at regulating
the activities of youth organizations consolidates virtually all democratic principles and mechanisms for their
statutory activities. The specifics of the youth organization operation, especially in the recent decades, is
primarily associated with the processes of formation of civil society and Euro-Atlantic integration of Ukraine as
well as the expansion of foreign grant programs and youth initiatives in the territory of the Ukrainian state.
In 2014, the political system of Ukraine entered a new phase of its development when democratic
institutions have been gradually consolidating their positions in society. The vision of the role of the state in
regulating the activities of public organizations and encouraging youth activity aimed at maintaining the
integrity of the country has been also changing. A good example of the above is Resolution No. 148 “On
Approval of State Target Program ‘Youth of Ukraine’ for 2016-2020” of the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine,
dated February 18, 2016.
The purpose of the program is to create favorable conditions for development and self-realization of
Ukrainian youth and formation of its civic stand.
The approximate amount of funding for the program is UAH 501,284.68 thousand, including UAH
210,142.1 thousand from the state budget, UAH 277,882.58 thousand owing to local budgets, and UAH 13,260
thousand from other sources.
Objectives of the Program are as follows:
1. Formation of civic stand and national-patriotic education of youth.
2. Popularization and promotion of a healthy and safe lifestyle as well as health culture among young
people.
3. Acquisition by young people of knowledge, skills, and other competencies outside the education system
(development of non-formal education).
4. Creation of an environment for youth employment (primary and secondary employment as well as
self-employment of young people).
5. Creating conditions for provision of housing to young people.
6. Partner support to young people living in the temporarily occupied territory of Ukraine and internally
displaced persons.
7. Financial support to youth and children’s public organizations.
8. Promotion of international youth cooperation.
Stages of Formation and Development of Youth Public Organizations

There is generally a pattern in the setting up of youth public organizations, which is associated with a
corresponding transformation of modern Ukrainian youth values. The formation of value orientations of
Ukrainian youth was of saltatory nature and varied from order to chaos, i.e., from a long chaotic to short
ordered state of Ukrainian society:
From the “Revolution on Granite” to the “Orange Revolution”

Stage I—from minimization of social changes and the absence of large-scale conflicts in violent forms
(1991-1994—order) through the formation of a double institutional system in the economy (1994-2003—chaos)
to the “Orange Revolution” (the late 2004-2005—order) that was underpinned by a contradiction between the
existing institutional system and needs of active segments of the population, including opposition political
elites which had failed to find their place in power. The basis for a coordinated liaison of those active segments
of the population was the realization that society had seen no changes which could be qualified as progress or
achievements while ideological principles of the short-term consensus were European democratic values.
It should be noted that the ordered actions in the first years of Ukrainian independence were preceded by
“chaos” in value orientations of Ukrainian sodium and contradictions in identifying future vectors of its
development. In the late 1980s-early to 1990s, it was the student movement that markedly manifested itself in
the political struggle which resulted in the proclamation of the Act of State Independence of Ukraine in 1991.
Below is given a short retrospective of those events.
The student movement was most developed in the western regions of Ukraine. Its first manifestation was
the creation of “Student Brotherhood” in May 1989 on the initiative of students of the Lviv University. In
December 1989, a new student organization—the Ukrainian Student Union (USU)—was set up at the founding
congress in Kyiv.
One of the first actions of the Ukrainian Student Union and “Student Brotherhood” was the organization of
a youth strike in February 1990 in response to the arrest of Kyiv students (Melnykov, 2005), which was later
called the “Revolution on Granite”. The political environment in the Republic at the time became particularly
acute due to drafting a treaty of the union. Recognizing the seriousness of the situation in the republic and the
inability of the parliament to resolve that issue in the interests of the sovereign state, members of the Ukrainian
Student Union and “Student Brotherhood” began an unprecedented action in the political history of Ukraine on
October 2, 1990—a protest that took the shape of a political hunger strike in the October Revolution Square
(nowadays—the Independence Square (Maidan)) in Kyiv. Among the protesters’ demands to the Verkhovna
Rada of the Republic were: calling new elections to the Verkhovna Rada on a multi-party basis; dropping the
demands of the center as to signing the treaty of the Union, etc. (Kulik, 1990).
The political protest action of students through the hunger strike became an important event in the struggle
for democratic transformations and striving of young people for decisive radical changes in society. In his book
Generation of the “Velvet Revolution”, Oles Doniy, an activist of the Revolution on Granite, a fifth-year
student of the History Faculty of the Kyiv University and the Chairman of the Ukrainian Student Union at the
time, writes:
The student hunger strike became a symbol of the birth of new society. It was October 1990, when young people
acted as a completely independent political force and succeeded, which became the starting point rather than August 1991,
completely divorced from reality, or hectic December 1991. It was in October of 1990 when it was recognized that “the
generation of 1990” acted as a separate historical and social group. (Donij, 1999, p. 24)
Having worked up some prerequisites for adoption of an Act of Declaration of Independence of Ukraine on
August 24, 1991, the student protest movement exhausted itself for 10 years. In broad terms, one may say that
youth public organizations in Ukraine were springing up over the period from the late 1980s to mid-1990s.
The late 1990s-early to 2000s saw the development of youth entities in Ukraine, which covered both the
level of regional youth parliaments, youth administrations of regions, districts and the level of cities, towns,
youth councils, and youth municipalities. An example of activity of such youth entity at the level of a city is the
Mykolaiv youth municipality set up in October 2000 as a union of youth organizations, which comprised
representatives of 23 youth organizations, student labor unions, and student self-government bodies.
Specifically, the youth municipality objectives comprised the following: ensuring young citizens’
influence on decision-making by all state authorities and local self-government; drawing attention to the
importance of active youth participation in the political life of Ukraine; assistance in implementation of the
youth policy in Mykolaiv; and lobbying and protection of the rights of youth in adopting regulatory documents
by state authorities and local self-government.
Authority and respect in various fields of youth activity over that period were gained by such new national
youth public organizations and associations of student self-government bodies as “All-Ukrainian Student
Council”, “Student Council of Kyiv”, “Foundation of Regional Initiatives”, “Student Republic”, “Youth
Education”, “Debate Academy”, “Youth Nationalist Congress”, “Board of Young Managers and Lawyers”,
“European Youth of Ukraine”, “Union of Initiative Youth”, and some other (Kulik, 2000).
At the end of 2000 and during 2001, Ukrainian students demonstrated their active protest potential again.
It was at that time that a campaign of protests of opposition forces began, which went down in the history of
Ukraine under the name “Ukraine without Kuchma”. The opposition clearly outlined the purpose of the
organization of mass protests of citizens, focusing on two fundamental things: firstly, changes in the system of
power, which was characterized as authoritarian; secondly, an early resignation of President L. Kuchma. The
action “Ukraine without Kuchma” was supported by 24 political parties (both nationalist and some left-wing
parties) and public organizations, including the Ukrainian Communist Youth Union, the Ukrainian Student
Union and “Student Brotherhood”. An appeal to Ukrainian youth from the senior companions who had taken
part yet in the hunger strike in 1990 was spread through student and other network channels of communication
as well as media. In particular, it accused the regime of a scanty size of student scholarships, corruption in the
educational system, conditions which forced graduates to travel abroad etc. In the end, young people were
called for supporting the elimination of L. Kuchma’s regime (2016).
The authors of this article agree that the protests of 2001 were a certain rehearsal, a try-on of forces of the
students who had taken no active part in the social and political life of the country by that time since the
“Revolution on Granite”. However, a few months before the presidential elections of 2004, when there had
been no united orange movement, there had come into sight a civil campaign called “Pora”, which tried to stir
up society with its original actions. Some political analysts compared the Ukrainian “Pora” with the Serbian
“Otpor”, Georgian “Kmara”, Albanian “Myaft”, and Belarussian “Zubr” and predicted the Serbian or Georgian
scenarios for Ukraine (Guzo, 2005). Young people from the Ukrainian “Pora”, most of whom were students of
Ukrainian universities, organized outdoor actions, campaigning for no presidential candidate but urging people
to be vigilant and authorities honest (Palagnyuk, 2013).
Thus, during 2004, the apathy of youth organizations to politics passed, which marked a new “activist
period” for the younger generation. The political involvement of young people during the presidential
campaign of 2004 manifested itself in the electoral activity as well as protest behavior. It was during that period
that many youth organizations were registered, such as the above “Pora” and “Youth Ukraine”, most of them
supporting European democratic values. In addition, territorial consolidation of youth from various regions of
Ukraine was in progress at the time. Representatives of the youth who stood at the Maidan or vice versa were
its ardent opponents turned into leaders of youth public organizations to continue upholding their interests.
After the “Orange Revolution” and Before the “Revolution of Dignity”
Stage II (2006-2013—chaos) began with the return to the pre-revolutionary level in the course of
democratization, which again resulted in manifestation of the ambivalence of mass consciousness in all spheres
of human life. That trend gained noticeable strength due to the final convergence of the financial and economic
oligarchy with bureaucracy and achieved momentum in the context of the global financial and economic crisis.
During that period, there was close cooperation between political parties and youth organizations
progressively observed in political space of Ukraine. Specifically, the well-tried mechanism of setting up party
youth structures which statutory documents were guided by ideological foundations of political parties was
actively used. Such organizations as “Ukrainian Social Democratic Youth”, “People’s Democratic Youth
League”, “Molodoy Rukh”, “Young Democrats”, “Union of Agrarian Youth”, “Youth of Regions of Ukraine”,
“Batkivshchyna Molodaya”, and many other were clearly set to achieve their goals together with those political
parties that were their strategic partners (Kerbal, 2008). That trend in activities of youth organizations resulted
in the fact that young people taking their political lead from a party with its already backward ideas and
activities were unable to make a breakthrough and offer real changes.
Another characteristic of that period is a wider involvement of youth in local decision-making. The most
influential youth organizations at the local level include the following: “Youth Center ‘Initiative’ (the city of
Kharkiv), Youth Public Organization (hereinafter YPO) “Ukrainian Youth League” (the city of Bila Tserkva),
YPO “Youth Executive Committee” (the city of Kerch), “Youth Discussion Center” (the city of Donetsk), YPO
“Leadership” (the city of Zhytomyr), YPO “Youth Union” (the city of Kyiv), YPO “Unity” (the city of
Ternopil), YPO “Regional Initiatives Fund” (the city of Sumy), the Youth Initiative Center “Totem” (the city of
Kherson), the YPO “Youth Perspectives Center” (the city of Khmelnytskyi), and other (Guczalova, 2012).
Assessing the activities of those organizations, it would be fair to point out that to begin with, they tried to
involve young people in active actions, and carry out educational work for local community awareness of their
rights. Such priorities as promoting positive changes in society and solving urgent problems of civil society
development in a particular area still remain relevant at the present development stage of Ukrainian society.
International organizations supporting youth organizations and involving the younger generation in
international projects that will contribute to a more active integration of Ukrainian society into European
community have also begun to effectively operate in Ukraine. Among such organizations the most active are
the Association “European Youth Parliament—Ukraine” (the city of Kyiv), “Association of Students of
Europe—Dnipro” (the city of Dnipro), “Talents of the Third Millennium” (the city of Kharkiv), etc.
Ukrainian researchers single out the following youth organizations over that period by the directions and
types of their activities (Guczalova, 2012):
 consultancy (“Ukrainian Youth Information Agency”);
 assistance to other non-governmental organizations (National Youth Center “Environmental Initiatives”);
 influence on the legislative system (Ukrainian Union of Young Deputies, public organization “Guardians
of Law”);
 civil society development (All-Ukrainian Youth Public Organization “Ukraine-XXI”);
 European integration (“Ukrainian Association of European Studies”).
From the “Revolution of Dignity” to the Present

Stage III began with the “Revolution of Dignity” (the late 2013-the early 2014—a short-term conditional
order which was manifested in the coordinated liaison of pro-European political forces) whose ideological
benchmarks were again the values of European democracy. That stage has been lasting till today (the
mid-2014-2018—chaos) and features external aggression and destruction in the economy, which has not only
caused a deep economic crisis but also exacerbated the binarity of value orientations of young people.
At the beginning of 2014, there were 5,450 youth organizations i.e. their number grew 9.3 times from
1995 to 2012: from 24 to 224 in 2012 and 24 times in 2013 alone (2014).
A continuous increase in the number of youth organizations over the recent five years marked the
beginning of the modern period of their development in Ukraine. According to Fishchuk (2012), such activity
indicates the desire of young people to participate in an organized youth movement and therefore claim state
support for their initiatives. Saying that, Ukraine’s achievements regarding the growing involvement of youth
organizations in political processes should not be aggrandized. Youth public organizations as a form of
manifestation of youth social activity have been experiencing together with the Ukrainian state a difficult
period of economic and socio-political transformations. The organized youth movement in Ukraine continues to
develop, institutionalize, and form a developed multi-level system from national to city and district
organizations, improving liaison mechanisms both in the horizontal of communications and with the vertical of
power. Today, in common with the initial stage of formation (the 1990s), organizations, by their existence,
conflict with no provision of the national strategy for youth policy development of Ukraine but unfortunately
often depend on it.
In addition to socio-political youth organizations that influence public opinion, there are also radical
destructive youth public organizations in Ukraine, which prove themselves to be very “unstable” and
sometimes sharp in their statements and actions. Crisis phenomena in the policy and social development of
Ukraine contributed to the activation of their operation. It should be noted that the social basis of such
organizations is marginal youth (Fishchuk, 2012).
Today, there is also such negative phenomenon observed as the setting up and operation of public
organizations for the sake of securing foreign grants and their misuse. As a consequence, despite the existence
of hundreds of youth public organizations in each Ukrainian city, the majority of local real-life problems have
not yet been solved.
At the same time, contemporary Ukrainian politicians often underestimate and deliberately underrate the
importance of proposals made by youth public organizations in respect of many socially significant problems,
forgetting that in this way the state and its institutions can maximally contribute to meeting the needs and
demands of the whole younger generation. In addition, representatives of the Ukrainian political elite are
unwilling to distinguish between such associations which feature specificity and diversity, perceiving all youth
organizations as political entities, although Ukrainian society may have as many youth organizations as group
youth interests.
It should be mentioned that due to the fact that there is a very great number of youth public organizations,
the authorities (both local and state) should have differentiated approaches and mechanisms of cooperation with
each of the variety. Building on works of such scientists as Kulik (2000), Polovynets (2010), and Golovonko
(1997), the authors of this research have improved the classification of youth organizations, proceeding from
the present-day realities of Ukrainian society development (the data source of legally registered national youth
public organizations is the Ministry of Ukraine for Family, Youth and Sports):
 youth political organizations (the Association of Interns of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine; Democratic
Transformations of Ukraine; Liberal Youth Association; Young People’s Movement; National Democratic
League of Youth; Organization of the Republican Christian Party “Republican Christian Youth”; Social
Democratic Youth Alliance of Ukraine; Social-Democratic Youth of Ukraine; Socialist Youth Congress;
Agrarian Youth Union; Ukrainian Social Democratic Youth; Christian Democratic Youth of Ukraine and
other);
 youth professional associations (the Agrarian Youth Union, Association of Young Doctors of Ukraine;
Association of Future Lawyers of Ukraine; Association of Young Entrepreneurs of Ukraine; Association of
Youth Labor Unions of Ukraine; All-Ukrainian Association of Young Scientists; All-Ukrainian Council of
Young Scientists and Specialists; All-Ukrainian Union of Young Entrepreneurs and Businessmen; National
Youth Pedagogical Council of Ukraine; League of Parliamentary Assistants; Youth Academy of Sciences;
Youth Marine League of Ukraine (the city of Sevastopol); Young Agrarians Union of Ukraine; Union of Young
Civil Servants of Ukraine; Union of Creative Youth of Ukraine “Liga Artis”; Ukrainian Youth Information
Agency; Ukrainian Union of Young Deputies; Ukrainian National Union of Young Lawyers);
 organizations by interests (the Association of Guides of Ukraine; Association “KVN of Ukraine”;
Association of Young Deputies of Ukraine; Association of Youth Organizations of Ukraine “Spectrum”;
All-Ukrainian Association of Youth Cooperation “Alternative-B”; All-Ukrainian Public Association “New
Generation”; All-Ukrainian Youth Public Organization “International Cooperation Club “Mandry”;
All-Ukrainian Union of Public Organizations “Scouts of Ukraine”; All-Ukrainian Youth Public Organization
“Youth of the Third Millennium”; All-Ukrainian Youth Public Organization “Youth Initiatives Center School
of Leaders”; All-Ukrainian Union of Youth Public Organizations USMO; All-Ukrainian Youth Public
Organization “Youth Solidarity”; Moloda Prosvita (Youth Education); Youth Information Center
“Euro-26-Zarevo”; PLAST—National Scout Organization of Ukraine; Council of Young Entrepreneurs of
Ukraine; Ukrainian Youth Foundation of Political and Legal Research “MATEZIS”; Center for Support of
Rural Youth; Ukrainian Children and Youth Association “SICH”);
 national-cultural and sports organizations (the All-Ukrainian Association of Young Folklore Researchers;
Youth Nationalist Congress; All-Ukrainian Youth Organization “Siaivo”; All-Ukrainian Youth Art Center
“Perlyny Sezonu”; Public Organization “Muza”; Ukraine—Festival; Modern Choreography and Vocal
Federation “Premier League”; Snowboarding and Ski Tour Federation of Ukraine);
 student organizations (the All-Ukrainian Council of Students; All-Ukrainian Public Association “Student
Brotherhood”; Association of Student Youth “Zarevo”; All-Ukrainian Association of Political Science Students,
Ukrainian Student Union);
 subculture of modern youth (“hippie”, “emo”, “Goth”, “punk”, et al.) (Kulik, 2000);
 organizations which contribute to solution of social problems (the All-Ukrainian Youth Public
Organization “Promotion Union of Youth Housing Crediting”; All-Ukrainian Youth Hostel Association; Public
Organization “Institute of Drug Abuse and Drug-Related Crime Problems”; Youth for Tax Reforms; Youth
against Corruption; New Initiatives of Youth; Association of Human Rights Organizers of Students of Ukraine,
All-Ukrainian Youth Association “Youth for Welfare”) ;
 environmental organizations (Green Energy of the Future “Laboratory of Ideas”, a student public
organization set up in Ivan Franko National University of Lviv);
 volunteer organizations. This classification can be supplemented with volunteer organizations as their
members and/or founders are mostly young people. They became most active after 2014. Today there are about
250 legally registered volunteer organizations in Ukraine, the most influential, according to the Ministry of
Information Policy of Ukraine, being (2018): the Coordination Center of the city of Kyiv, SOS Army,
All-Ukrainian Association “Patriot”, Army Charity Fund “Come Back Alive”, DemAlians “Help”, Volunteer
Association “Everyone can Help”, Charity Fund “Phoenix Wings”, “Support the Army of Ukraine, Come Back
Alive, Volunteers without Borders.
The main lines of volunteer organizations’ activities are: (1) social, psychological, information, and legal
support to families of soldiers of the Antiterrorist Operation (ATO) in the east of Ukraine and soldiers who
were injured as a result of hostilities, training in psychological self-help; (2) assistance to internally displaced
persons, those who suffered in the ATO zone (the wounded and tortured), families of victims, humanitarian
assistance in the ATO zone (food, clothing, household essentials, and medicines), assistance to social groups
which are neglected due to military actions (dwellers of children’s homes, boarding schools, shelters for the
elderly, rehabilitation centers, etc.); (3) involvement of citizens and representatives of business community in
organization of first-line material and technical support to the Armed Forces of Ukraine and law enforcement
agencies fighting in the East of Ukraine—purchase of necessary military ammunition, means of protection,
communication and intelligence, uniforms and food as well as their delivery directly to the front; and (4)
assistance in resettlement and employment to people forced to move.
As to the characteristics of each of the above types, at the present stage youth organizations in Ukraine
feature some general trends in developing objectives of their activities, which are recorded in their statutes. In
most cases, they choose the following priority goals: development of civic initiatives; protection of rights and
representation of interests of young people; socio-political as well as information and analytical activities;
educational activities; involvement of active youth in decision-making by local authorities.
Local and regional organizations have great prospects in local political processes of Ukraine. Such
prospects are building up despite the growth of state support to local self-government and delegation of a direct
decision-making power to local communities.
The most typical mechanisms of youth organizations involvement in political processes are:
 establishment of mutually beneficial relations with authorities (local, regional and state);
 creation and effective operation of all possible forms of youth local self-government (youth
municipalities);
 involvement of representatives of youth organizations as advisers-consultants in activities of authorities
and special committees;
 pinpointing attention of authorities upon existing problems at the national or local levels;
 development and implementation of YPOs’ own proposals aimed at solution of socially important issues;
 introduction of amendments in legislation in the form of proposed drafts of respective documents;
 carrying out statutory activities of organizations, quality control and reporting on implementation of state
or local social programs;
 liaison of youth organizations with each other;
 cooperation with organizations, societies, and youth entities for sharing positive experiences and
establishing dialogue.
Conclusion
To sum up, it is necessary to outline some characteristic features of the development of modern youth
public organizations in Ukraine. In the context of democratic value development in Ukrainian society, it is
becoming possible to set up an ever growing number of youth organizations. These organizations are gradually
acquiring the rights to influence the legislative system and the process of European integration in Ukraine. Thus,
today it is important that youth organizations should be involved in the decentralization process—youth
participation in local self-government at all levels. With the above in view, it is promising to examine the role
of young people in the formation and operation of local governments in Ukraine.
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“Youth of Ukraine” for 2016-2020 and amending certain resolutions of the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine. (2016).
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doi: 10.17265/2328-2134/2018.09.005
D
DAVID PUBLISHING
Violence in the Political Construction of Trotskyism
Dibyajit Mukherjee
University of Calcutta, Kolkata, India
Often the most brutal explosions of violence are admissions of impotence. Keeping this in mind, the author would
like to bring to light the political terror of Joseph Stalin which was systematically disseminated on the Socialist
Opposition lead by Leon Trotsky. In order to understand the brutal nature of the false trials and the numerous
murders in the name of revolution, it is imperative to understand the degeneracy of the Soviet Union which has
been analyzed very dialectically by Leon Trotsky. Paul Le Blanc notes that the socialism in one country perspective
caused for all practical purposes a downgrade in the seriousness with which the Communist International was taken.
Initially, established by Lenin and his comrades to build parties in countries all over the world, this theory was now
being vulgarized and being transformed into a tool for the foreign policy of the bureaucratic brand of socialism
which was being practiced by the Soviet Union. It is because of this theory that people who are not aware of the
history and do not have a proper knowledge of dialectical analysis fail to analyze the Soviet Union. My paper talks
about the violent construction of the myth of Trotskyism as a signifier signifying the betrayal to the big br(other)
that is Stalin and exposing the bankruptcy and impotence of Stalinism.
Keywords: degeneration of the Soviet Union, political falsification, myth of Trotskyism
Lying and forgery were inherent in the very situation of the Soviet bureaucracy. In words, it fights for communism. In
actual fact, it fights for its own income, its privileges and its power. With the fear and malice of a social parvenu, it
exterminates all oppositionists. In order to justify this ferocious terror in the eyes of the people, it is forced to ascribe to its
victims ever more monstrous and fantastic crimes.-Trotsky (Rogovin, 2009, p. 189)
Slavoj Zizek, in his book Violence notes that outbursts of impotent violence are fundamentally reactive, a
reaction to some disturbing intruder 1 . In the case of Stalinism, which was the dialectical (not logical)
development of Bolshevism, this disturbing intruder was Leon Trotsky 2 representing the ideas of
Revolutionary Internationalism against the slogan socialism in one country. His role in the Russian Revolution
was so immense that even Stalin wrote in his pamphlet The Role of the Most Eminent Party Leaders, on 6th
November 1918, which appeared in the Pravda 3:
All the work of practical organization of the insurrection was conducted under the immediate leadership of the
chairman of the Petrograd Soviet, Trotsky. It is possible to declare with certainty that the swift passing of the garrison to
Dibyajit Mukherjee, M.A.,M.Phil, assistant professor, Institute of Engineering and Management (I.E.M), University of Calcutta,
Kolkata, India.
1
Quoted from https://socialecologies.wordpress.com/2013/02/26/slavoj-zizek-on-violence/.
2
Trotsky became Stalin’s nemesis and his left opposition can be seen as the intruder as it continued its criticism on the revisionist
Stalinist policies. Abraham Ascher on page 109 of his book The Russian Revolution writes that at a meeting of the Central
Committee of the Bolshevik Party Lenin put forward Trotsky’s name for election as the chairman of the People’s Commissars, the
highest position in the new government. Trotsky had refused it saying that Lenin had been the real strategist who made Lenin go
on to say “there is no better Bolshevik than Trotsky”.
3
This text was later banned by Stalin.
VIOLENCE IN THE POLITICAL CONSTRUCTION OF TROTSKYISM 519
the side of the Soviet and the bold execution of the work of the Military Revolutionary Committee, the party owes
principally and above all to comrade Trotsky. (Wollenberg, 2010, p. 96)
The defeat of the German revolution led to the isolation of the Soviet Union and its backwardness was
responsible for the rise of a privileged bureaucracy which wanted to conserve their newly attained political
power which was, in principle, an antagonism to the democratic soviets that had been formed keeping in mind
the example of the Paris Commune 4. The main opposition that was being faced by the bureaucracy was from
the camp of Trotsky who was carrying on the struggle which Lenin had instigated during the latter’s last phase.
Lenin clearly talked about removing Stalin from the post of General Secretary. This can be seen in his letter:
Stalin is too rude and this defect, although quite tolerable in our midst and in dealings among us Communists,
becomes intolerable in a Secretary General. That is why I suggest that the comrades think about a way of removing Stalin
from that post and appointing another man in his stead who in all other respects differs from Comrade Stalin in having
only one advantage, namely, that of being more tolerant, more loyal, more polite and more considerate to the comrades,
less capricious, etc. (Lenin, 1977, p. 676)
In an article named “How We Should Reorganize the Workers and Peasants Inspectorate”, Lenin
connected the question to the bureaucratic deformation of the worker’s state apparatus. He wrote:
With the exception the People’s Commissariat of Foreign Affairs, our state apparatus is to a considerable extent a
survival of the past and has undergone hardly any serious change. It has only been slightly touched up on the surface, but
in all other respects it is a most typical relic of our old state machine. (Woods, 2007, p. 190)
Yuri A. Buranov, a professor of history of the Department of Research at the former Central Archives of
the CPSU, published a book called Lenin’s Will, which republishes hitherto unknown material connected with
Lenin’s last struggle against Stalin. Allan Woods notes that despite his crippling illness, Lenin was planning to
launch an attack on Stalin’s faction at the Twelfth Congress:
From December 23 to 31, writes Buranov, “Lenin kept working diligently on his report for the CC at the Twelfth
Congress. Buranov reproduces a letter from Kamenev to Stalin written on or shortly after December 22, 1922:
Dear Joseph,
Tonight, Trotsky phoned me, saying that he had received a note from Starik (The Old Man Lenin), who, though he is
happy with the congressional resolution on Vneshintorg (The Ministry of Foreign Trade), wants Trotsky to deliver a report
on this question to a faction of the Congress and to prepare the ground to put this question to the Party Congress.
Stalin replied immediately in terms that betray his alarm:
Comrade Kamenev!
I have received your note. I think we should confine ourselves to the statement in your report without bringing up this
faction. How did Starik manage to organize this correspondence with Trotsky? (Woods, 2007, p. 196)
Therefore, it is clear that Lenin wanted to form a bloc with Trotsky to combat the ugly head of
bureaucracy which was notoriously raising its head but this did not materialize because Lenin was laid to rest
by a third and catastrophic stroke which left him incapacitated and paralyzed. Taking advantage of this position,
Stalin with his intimate circle deliberately concealed Lenin’s last documents from Trotsky who then became the
4
The Paris Commune of 1871 was one of the greatest and most inspiring episodes in the history of the working class. In a
tremendous revolutionary movement the communards replaced the capitalist state with their own organs of political power until
their downfall in the last week of May. Lenin and Trotsky modeled the Russian Revolution on the Paris Commune. Later
revolutions in China, Cuba, and Vietnam were modeled not on the Paris Commune but on the Stalinist bureaucracy of the
U.S.S.R.
520 VIOLENCE IN THE POLITICAL CONSTRUCTION OF TROTSKYISM
target of a malicious campaign of disinformation organized by the apparatus. The myth of Trotskyism 5 was
invented in an attempt to drive a wedge between Lenin and Trotsky and the process of this construction of the
myth involved a violent process which was the expression of the triumph of the counter revolution. The change
that had taken place after the death of Lenin has been very beautifully summarized by Victor Serge in his book
From Lenin to Stalin:
Everything has changed. The aims: from international social revolution to socialism in one country. The political
system: from the workers’ democracy of the soviets, the goal of the revolution, to the dictatorship of the general secretariat,
the functionaries and the GPU. The party: from the organization, free in its life and thought and freely submitting to
discipline, of revolutionary Marxists to the hierarchy of bureaus, to the passive obedience of careerists. The Third
International: from a mighty organization of propaganda and struggle to the opportunist servility of Central Committees
appointed for the purpose of approving everything, without shame or nausea. The leaders: the greatest militants of October
are in exile or prison. The ideology: Lenin said, “We shall see the progressive withering away of the state, and the soviet
state will not be a state like the others but a vast workers’ commune…” Stalin proclaims that “we advance toward the
abolition of the state by way of the strengthening of the state”. (Serge, 1974, p. 57)
The politics of deceit therefore is what the author wants to relate to as the powerlessness of Stalinism 6 to
its Leninist counterpart which was being represented in the politics of the left opposition spearheaded by
Trotsky, who correctly termed the Soviet Union as a degenerated worker’s state. The violence of this
degeneration can be summed up by another reference to the words of a factory worker who said:
They are squeezing us, and how! 25 percent increase in the productivity of labor and 1.9 percent increase in wages.
For three years, wages have not varied, though production has very much increased. Five men to the brigade instead of six,
without change of equipment. The system of bonuses is applied in such a way that allowing for 20 to 30 percent a month,
they should be paid every six months, but in reality, no one hopes to receive any. We live on 55 rubles a month. (Serge,
1974, p. 63)
Distinction however has to be made between what is the exact nature of the violence imposed during a
revolution and the structure of violence during the triumph of the counter revolution. It should be noted that
revolution which was made in October 1917 was literally a bloodless revolution 7. It was what followed after,
that scenes became the sight for the blood bath which began with the attack on the newly formed Soviet State
by 21, so-called, democratic countries. It was here that Trotsky precisely built the militia style Red Army from
the scraps of the peasantry. In his reminisces of Lenin, Maxim Gorky talked about a conversation which he had
with the former. When in the course of it, he mentioned the hostility shown by certain Bolshevists to Trotsky,
Lenin banged his fist upon the table and said: “Show me another man who could have practically created a
model army in a year and won the respect of the military specialists as well. We have got such a man! We have
got everything!” (Wollenberg, 2010, p. 103).
The Marxist project always had its roots in Internationalism. The most interesting element is that the
theory of socialism in one country which was the slogan representing the interests of the bureaucracy was not
5
John Molyneux defines Trotskyism in five pillars. The first pillar stands for his theory of permanent revolution as opposed to
the two-stage theory, the second pillar depicts his Internationalism, the third is his theory of Fascism as representing the
petit-bourgeois frustration in Capitalism and the failure of social democracy, the fourth is his theory of the United Front as
opposed to the popular front, and lastly is his Marxist indictment of the bureaucratic stagnation of the U.S.S.R.
6
Trotsky in a short video made in Mexico 1937 defines Stalinism as the irresponsible despotism of the bureaucracy over the
people.
7
The power base of the Provisional Government had shrunk practically to nothing. Even the conservative regiments drafted in
from the front became infected by the mood of revolution Petrograd. The support for the provisional government in the capital
collapsed immediately after the workers began to move. The insurrection in Petrograd was virtually a bloodless affair.
supported by Stalin himself. In February 1924, Stalin wrote in his Foundations of Leninism:
…can the final victory of socialism in one country be attained, without the joint efforts of the proletariat of several
advanced countries? No, this is impossible…For the final victory of socialism, for the organization of socialist production,
the efforts of one country, particularly of such a peasant country as Russia, are insufficient. For this the efforts of the
8
proletarians of several advanced countries are necessary.
But within nine months, we have the birth of an alternate discourse where the same man says: “The party
always took at its starting point the idea that the victory of socialism in that country and that task can be
accomplished with the forces of a single country”. 9
This trait of Stalin can be highlighted in a conversation between Kamenev and Bukharin when the former
told the latter: “Stalin is a Genghis Khan, an unscrupulous intriguer, who sacrifices everything else to the
preservation of his power…He changes his theories according to whom he needs to get rid of next” (Radzinsky,
1997, p. 235).
To preserve the power of this bureaucratic tendency a political construction was necessary which would define
Trotskyism as an enemy to this tendency and which would be represented as enemy of the ruling caste and
therefore an enemy of the Soviet Union. The violent process of falsification has been summed up aptly by Trotsky:
Tens of thousands of thousands of newspaper articles in tens of millions of copies, the transcripts of innumerable
indictment speeches, popular pamphlets in press runs in the millions, and thick books have spread and continue to spread
from day to day the most repulsive lies which the thousands of hired writers, without conscience, without ideas and
without imagination are capable of preparing. (Rogovin, 2009, p. 189)
Letters from Radek, Piatakov, Preobrazhensky, Rakovsky, and Eltsin would do justice to this case.
Preobrazhensky in his letter dated December 29th, 1927, writes:
I confirm everything brought out in the above document. Only Lashevich said: “We invented Trotskyism ourselves,
etc” without using the words “together with you”. Because as I recall it, the two Leningrad comrades were quite honestly
perturbed about Trotskyism and could hardly have been informed of the entire plan of the struggle against neo-Trotskyism
from its inception… (Trotsky, 1972, p. 92)
Piatakov in his letter to Trotsky, on 2nd January 1928, had written:

Dear Leon Davidovich:
You ask me to inform you what I am able to recall about the speeches of Lashevich and Zinoviev on the occasion of a
discussion with Leningrad comrades on “Trotskyism” which took place at Kamenev’s home. I no longer remember all that
was said. But since I have always been deeply disturbed by the question of so-called Trotskyism, and since the attitude of
the opposition of 1925-1926 towards this question was always of enormous political interest to me, I remember quite
clearly what Zinoviev and Lashevich said to us. I do not recall the exact words but the sense of what they said I remember
well, namely: “Trotskyism” had been invented in order to replace the real differences of opinion with fictitious differences,
that is, to utilize past differences which had no bearing upon the present but which were resurrected artificially for the
definite purpose mentioned above. This was told to the comrades from Leningrad who were wavering on the question of
Trotskyism and to whom it had to be explained how and why the legend of Trotskyism had been created. (Trotsky, 1972, p. 94)
Karl Radek’s letter, written on 25th December, 1927, throws light on how Stalin, together with Kamenev
8
If we read the works of Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Trotsky we would see that everywhere they talk about the International Unity
of the Working Classes. Even Stalin did not believe that socialism in one country is a Marxist slogan.
9
The slogan represented the essence of conservatism which characterized the bureaucracy.
and Zinoviev had agreed to utilize the old differences 10 between Trotsky and Lenin so that Trotsky could be
prevented from the leadership. The letter says:
But I was present at the conversation with Kamenev when L. B. [Kamenev] said he would openly declare at the
Plenum of the Central Committee how they, that is Kamenev and Zinoviev, together with Stalin, decided to utilize the old
disagreements between Trotsky and Lenin so as to keep comrade Trotsky from the leadership of the party after Lenin’s
death. Moreover I have heard repeated from the lips of Zinoviev and Kamenev the tale of how they had invented
Trotskyism as a topical slogan. (Trotsky, 1972, p. 95)
C. G. Rakovsky in his in his letter dated December notes:

Dear Leon Davidovich:
I was not present at the conversation to which you refer. However, on my return in the autumn I heard from you—as
well as from Preobrazhensky in Paris—concerning both the conversation with Zinoviev and Lashevich’s remarks in
particular. Both of them (Zinoviev and Lashevich) stated themselves that the argument from “Trotskyism” and the
“permanent revolution” was dragged in by the hair for the sole purpose of discrediting the 1923 Opposition.
With greetings
C. Rakovsky (Trotsky, 1972, p. 95)
V. Eltsin in his letter dated on 2nd January, 1928 noted:

To a question put by Leon Davidovich as to whether the discussion against “Trotskyism” would have taken place if
The Lessons of October had not appeared, Zinoviev replied: Certainly, it would have taken place, for the plan to begin this
discussion was already decided upon in advance and they were only looking for a pretext. None of the supporters of the
1925 group who were present raised any objections to this. Everyone received this information of Zinoviev’s as a generally
known fact. (Trotsky, 1972, p. 96)
Slowly and steadily all the members of Lenin’s Politburo, with the exception of Stalin were framed as
conspirators and traitors—even when power was concentrated in their own hands. According to the picture
presented at the trial, the greatest Soviet diplomats and politicians namely—Rakovsky, Krestinsky, Karakhan,
Iurenev, and Bogomolov had served foreign intelligence services. The overwhelming majority of people’s
commissars of the U.S.S.R. and all the heads of government for 30 union and autonomous republics who had
been advanced by national liberation, according to Rogovin had tried to dismember the Soviet Union and place
its people under the yoke of fascism. This almost resembled the theme of hopelessness and the macabre dance
of absurdity as seen in Samuel Beckett’s theatre as one must remember that it was Stalin who had previously
lent critical support to the Kerensky government, who wanted to have a mutual understanding with Kornilov
the potential Russian fascist. 11 The allegations were very incongruous. For example, all the heads of industry,
transport, agriculture, and finance were almost entirely saboteurs. People who had given the revolutionary
movement 30, 40, even 50 years, such as Rakovsky, was supposed to have conducted subversive work for the
sake of restoring capitalism.
10
At the 1903 Congress, it is true that Trotsky found himself in the camp of the opponents of Lenin but it is also true that
Plekhanov who was to become the future social patriot stood together with Lenin. Allan Woods on page 42 of his book Lenin and
Trotsky: What They Stood for, writes that the differences caught everyone by surprise including Lenin himself. In later years
Trotsky who was always honest in relation to his mistakes admitted his hamartia and stated that Lenin was correct in his view of
the Party.
11
General Lavr Kornilov was an adventurer who unlike most other members of the officer caste was not an aristocrat but the son
of a Cossack smallholder. Personally, he was brave but he was also a maverick with a habit of disobeying orders. He was narrow
in his outlook, a political illiterate and believed that everything in Russia could be solved by a whiff of the grapeshot and the crack
of an officer’s whip.
In preparing for the massive purges, Stalin promoted the idea of a new constitution which would be the
most democratic in the world. His plan was to present world public opinion with the picture of a country which
after harsh years of struggle and deprivations had finally begun to raise the welfare of its people and allow
democracy to flourish. Against this optimistic background, the diabolical figures of the Trotskyists were
supposed to appear sinister as they destroyed the economy, organized famine and poisoned the workers.
Rogovin notes that resting on the totalitarian apparatus and unlimited material resources, Stalin conceived a
unique plan: to do violence to the world’s conscience and with the approval of all mankind to deal once and for
all with any opposition to the Kremlin clique. Trotsky pointed out that no statistical calculations are able to give
an exhaustive portrayal of the process of the economy, politics, and culture, which in the final analysis are
relations between people and social groups. The Moscow Trials had proved to be judicial tragedies which
reveal the unbearable relations existing at that time. The Stalinist regime had resorted to organized violence
which had transformed the social relations which had been generated by the October Revolution. According to
Trotsky:
No class ever in history has concentrated in its hands in such a short time such wealth and power as the bureaucracy
has done during the period of the two five-year plans. But by doing so it has placed itself in increasing contradiction to the
people who have passed through three revolutions and overturned the tsarist monarchy, nobility and bourgeoisie. The
Soviet bureaucracy is now concentrating within itself, in a certain state, the traits of all these overthrown classes without
having either their social roots or their traditions. It can defend its monstrous privileges only through organized terror, just
as it can base its terror only on false accusations and frame ups. (Rogovin, 2009, p. 115)
It is important to mention the drastic change in the composition of the Central Committee which will
throw a light on the transformation to the totalitarian state that the Soviet Union was tending towards. A
Bolshevik member named Postyshev had said to Vareikis that
if the price of saving socialism is the execution of the party which guided its construction and imprisonment for
millions who built it, then I spit on such socialism. In addition, we still have not constructed socialism…Yes, Ilich said that
we have all that is necessary to build socialism but Stalin has proved that we also had, it turns out, everything necessary to
create a one-person tyranny which depends on executioners from the NKVD, prostitutes from the party and criminals from
society. (Rogovin, 2009, p. 183)
Rogovin notes:
In the 1950s, the former oppositionist S. Smirnova told how in the summer of 1937, Miagkova, as well as other
Trotskyists, were brought to Magadan from the distant camps in order to face new charges. They put the prisoners in a
large barrack with two-tiered bunks. At night, a team of guards would appear in the barracks and read a list of those
sentenced. On one of those nights, they called out Miagkova’s name. The last letter from Miagkova to her relatives is dated
the eighteenth of September. A month later she was sentenced to death on the following charges: while in prison camp she
systematically established contact with imprisoned Trotskyists…At the end of 1937, massive measures began to be taken
to liquidate the organizers and instigators of delays among the Trotskyists…The camp administration was given an
assignment to create a particularly harsh regime for the Trotskyists. Insofar as the Trotskyists did not conceal their
convictions and carried out collective acts of protest, they were subjected to savage extermination on orders from Moscow.
(Rogovin, 2009, p. 277)
The Moscow Trials were theatrically staged to justify this design. It was the harsh and ruthless squashing of
the opposition that represented Marxist-Leninist principles of workers democratic distribution of production and
Internationalism. Deutscher in a chapter named “The Hell-Black Night” in his book The Prophet Outcast talks
about an eye-witness account by an inmate at the Vorkuta concentration camp of the last activities the Trotskyists:
There were he says in his camp alone about a thousand old Trotskyists, calling themselves Bolshevik-Leninists.
Roughly five hundred of these worked at the Vorkuta colliery. In all the camps of the Pechora province there were several
thousands of orthodox Trotskyists, who had been in deportation since 1927 and remained true to their political ideas and
leaders till the end…One morning, towards the end of March 1938, twenty-five men mostly leading Trotskyists, were
called out, given a kilogram of bread each, and ordered to collect their belongings and prepare for a march. After a warm
leave-taking with friends, they left the shanties; there was a roll call and they were marched out. In about fifteen or twenty
minutes a volley was suddenly fired about a half kilometer from the shanties, near the steep bank of a little river, the upper
Vorkuta. Then a few disorderly shots were heard, and silence fell. (Deutscher, 1963, p. 417)
Trotsky in his essay “Psychoanalysis and Marxism” contained in his book In Defence of Marxism
conspicuously illustrates with the help of an image of a mechanic, what was required to be done after the
triumph of the bureaucracy. He says that:
When an emotional mechanic considers an automobile in which, let us say, gangsters have escaped from police
pursuit over a bad road and finds the frame bent, the wheels out of line and the motor partially damaged he might quite
justifiably say: “It is not an automobile—devil knows what it is! Such an estimate would lack any technical and scientific
value, but it would express the legitimate reaction of the mechanic at the work of the gangsters. Let us suppose, however,
that this same mechanic must recondition the object which he named devil-knows-what-it-is. In this case he will start with
the recognition that it is a damaged automobile before him. He will determine which parts are still good and which are
beyond repair in order to decide how to begin work. The class-conscious worker will have a similar attitude toward the
U.S.S.R. He has full right to say that the gangsters of the bureaucracy have transformed the workers’ state into
“devil-knows-what-it-is”. But when he passes from this explosive reaction to the solution of the political problem, he is
forced to recognize that it is damaged, but which still continues to run and which can be completely reconditioned with the
replacement of some parts. (Trotsky, 1972, p. 31)
The terror that was launched on the Marxist oppositionists in the Soviet Union led by Trotsky as its spear
was therefore the violence of a kind of impotence of the working class to capture power in Germany and other
parts of Europe which led to the alienation and consequent degeneration of the worker’s state and Stalinism
was the dialectical product of this degeneration. This impotence was noted by Trotsky when he said that
Stalinism was rooted in the backwardness of Russia and the congenital incapacity of the proletariat to become
the ruling class. Here, Trotskyism was constructed, made a myth and installed in the people’s minds by
distortion and falsification of history and the most terrorizing purges that 20th century was witness to. In
November 1937, Stalin gave his directive to Dimitrov that “Trotskyists must be driven out, shot and destroyed.
They are world-wide provocateurs and the most vicious agents of fascism” (Rogovin, 2009, p. 306). It would
be a mistake to think that the totalitarian caricature of bureaucratic socialism as the failure of Communism as
the main victims of this purge were communists. Rogovin in his book gives a statistical data of the number of
repressed communists:
At the time of the Seventeenth Congress (February 1934) the party had 1,872,488 members and 935,298 candidate
members; at the time of the eighteenth congress (March 1939) there were 1,588,852 members and 888,814 candidate
members. If in 1934-1938, there had not been mass party purges and repressions, and all candidates had been promoted to
full members of the party, then by the time of the eighteenth congress the party would have had around 2.8 million
members…Since most of the people expelled from the party in 1933-1938 were subjected to political repression, it is not
hard to come to the conclusion that the communists made up according to the most conservative calculations, more than
half of the victims of the Great Terror. (Rogovin, 2009, p. 449)
Isaac Deutscher in his book The Prophet Outcast: Trotsky 1929-1940 goes on to say:
For over ten years Stalin had kept the Trotskyists behind bars and barbed wire, and subjecting them to inhuman
persecution, demoralized many of them, divided them and almost succeeded in cutting them off from society. By 1934
Trotskyism seemed to have been stamped out completely. Yet two or three years later Stalin was more afraid of it than
ever. (Deutscher, 1963, p. 413)
Trotsky was thus accurate when he analyzed that to establish the regime which is correctly called Stalinist,
what was needed was not the Bolshevik party but the extermination of the Bolshevik Party (Deutscher, 1963, p.
449). These brutal explosions of violence can thus be seen born out of the impotence of the bureaucracy to
cause of proletarian and worker’s emancipation. The perspective of socialism in one country caused for all
practical purposes a downgrade in the seriousness with which the Communist International was taken. Initially
established by Lenin and his comrades to build parties all over the world, this theory was now being vulgarized
and being transformed into a tool for the foreign policy of the above mentioned bureaucratic brand of socialism.
The construction of Trotskyism in a violent process was thus the crystalline expression of the impotence of
Stalinism.
References
Ascher, A. (2014). The Russian Revolution. London: One World Publishers.
Deutscher, I. (1963). The prophet outcast: 1929-1940. New York: Vintage Books.
Lenin, V. (1977). Selected works. Moscow: Progress Publishers.
Rogovin, Z. V. (2009). Stalin’s Terror of 1937-1938: Political genocide in the U.S.S.R. Illinois: Mehring Books.
Radzinsky, E. (1997). Stalin. New York: Anchor Books.
Serge, V. (1974). From Lenin to Stalin. New York: Monad Press.
Trotsky, L. (1972). The Stalin school of falsification. New York: Pathfinder Press.
Trotsky, L. (2012). In defence of Marxism. Delhi: Aakar Publishers.
Woods, A. (2007). Lenin and Trotsky: What they really stood for. Delhi: Aakar Publishers.
Wollenberg, E. (2010). The Red Army. Scottsdale: Prism Key Press.

International Relations and Diplomacy (ISSN 2328-2134) Volume 6, Number 9,2018

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International Relations and Diplomacy (ISSN 2328-2134) Volume 6, Number 9,2018

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International Relations

David Publishing Company

Aims and Scope:

David Publishing Company

David Publishing Company

Editorial Board Members of International Relations and Diplomacy:

Features of Egypt’s Water Transportation and China’s Participation in Egypt’s Port

Donald Trump’s Trade Policy

Youth Public Organizations

Youth Public Organizations in European Integration Processes of Ukraine 507

Violence in the Political Construction of Trotskyism 518

Features of Egypt’s Water Transportation and China’s

Basic Features of Egypt’s Port Construction and Maritime Transportation

China’s Current Participation and Its Significance

Opportunities and Challenges

US President Donald Trump’s Twitter Analysis and His Trade

Hikari Ishido, Yuki Tashiro, Richard Liang

Background and Setting

Text Mining Analysis of Trump’s Policy Speeches

Content Analysis of Mr. Trump’s Twitter

Figure 1. Word frequency (one month before the election).

Figure 2. Word frequency (after the election).

Analysis of Positive and Negative Words

Figure 3. Positively evaluated words (one month before the election).

Figure 4. Positively evaluated words (after the election).

Figure 5. Negatively evaluated words (one month before the election).

Figure 6. Negatively evaluated words (after the election).

Figure 7. Network Analysis (before the election).

Figure 8. Network analysis (after the election).

Figure 9. Network analysis (with the part for “great” magnified).

Figure 13. Focus words analysis (with “ObamaCare” as the focus).

Figure 14. Focus words analysis (with “great” as the focus).

Figure 15. Focus words analysis (with “America” as the focus).

Macro (global) level atmosphere of populism (“people first”)

Meso (national) level policy of “make America great again”

Micro (individual) level Tweets by the US President Donald Trump

Global Radicalization and the San Bernardino Attack―Evolving

Keywords: San Bernadino, attack, Islamic terrorism, jihad, radicalization

Figure 1. San Bernadino radicalization process model.

Figure 2. Nesser’s Terrorist Typology.

Figure 3. Relational radicalization model.

San Bernadino Attack Timeline

 5:08 p.m. Explosive devices located on 1st floor primary building.

Youth Public Organizations in European Integration Processes of

Olena Aleksandrova, Oksana Salata

Keywords: Youth NGOs, civil society, European integration, political initiative

 assistance in setting up European youth centers;

Stages of Formation and Development of Youth Public Organizations

From the “Revolution on Granite” to the “Orange Revolution”

From the “Revolution of Dignity” to the Present

Violence in the Political Construction of Trotskyism

Keywords: degeneration of the Soviet Union, political falsification, myth of Trotskyism

Piatakov in his letter to Trotsky, on 2nd January 1928, had written:

C. G. Rakovsky in his in his letter dated December notes:

C. Rakovsky (Trotsky, 1972, p. 95)

V. Eltsin in his letter dated on 2nd January, 1928 noted:

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