Karen_A._Mingst,_Ivan_M._Arregu_n-Toft]_Essentia

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The Impact of Transnational Issues 433

we look more deeply at how economic and military power are generated within states,
we see that these transnational crimes deeply affect state power, especially including
public health systems and economic and military power.
In sum, international relations theorists increasingly recognize that transnational
crime has more than a marginal impact on the interstate system, although they may
disagree about the root causes of this transnational issue and its relative significance.


the Impact of transnational Issues


As an unexpected consequence of advances in communications technology, trans­
national issues like the environment, world health, and or ga nized crime have advanced
from tertiary and moral issues to primary and vital interests. Before World War II,
developed states might have viewed more active economic, health infrastructure, and
human rights interventions as morally desirable but either risky or unnecessary for rea­
sons of state. Since the late 1970s, however, transnational issues such as or ga nized
crime, terrorism, pandemics, natu ral disasters, and refugees from these disasters have
tended to affect the developed world much more directly. Transnational issues have
become issues because morality­ based arguments for intervention to redress damages
have increasingly transitioned into interest­ based arguments for undertaking the same
interventions. Transnational issues have effects on four major areas of international rela­
tions theory and practice.
First, the interconnectedness of the many sub­ issues within health, environment,
human rights, and transnational law enforcement affects international bargaining.
When states choose to go to the bargaining table, a multiplicity of issues is often at
stake, and states may be willing to make trade­ offs between issues to achieve a desired
result. For example, in the aftermath of the 1973 oil embargo and in the face of supply
shortages, the United States was willing to negotiate with Mexico on cleaning up the
Colorado River. The United States built a desalination plant at the U.S.­ Mexico bor­
der and helped Mexican residents reclaim land in the Mexicali Valley for agriculture.
To win an ally in the supply of petroleum resources, the United States made this major
concession and also accepted responsibility for past legal violations.
Other issues, however, are less accommodating to negotiation, particularly if key
concerns of national security are at stake. The United States was unwilling to compro­
mise by signing the Anti­ Personnel Land Mine Ban Convention because of the secu­
rity imperative to preserve the heavi ly mined border between North and South Korea.
Supporters of the treaty framed the argument in human rights terms: innocent indi­
viduals, including vulnerable women and children, are being killed or maimed by such
weapons, which must be eliminated. Yet in this case, the United States deci ded not
to sign the treaty because of Korean security. Although some states, eager for U.S.

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