GES 1980 Final Exam
(50 points)
This is a take-home exam. You may use any notes, books or other available resources to complete the exam. You may work together with a partner and turn in a single exam. Be sure to include both names on your exam.
FORMAT: Your responses must be typed, double-spaced and not exceed a total of 3 pages.
Read each question carefully, and answer the question asked!
Be sure to include specific information to support your answers.
If you use resources other than the textbook and class notes, include a bibliography.
Quoted material must be in quotation marks and cited; otherwise, it’s plagiarism.
To conserve resources, I encourage you to use 2-sided printing if possible.
DUE: No later than 9:00 AM Thursday May 10 – COB 2019 (you may turn it in earlier)
1. There is an international discussion in progress about expanding the United Nations Security Council to better represent 21st century realities (see the excerpts on back of this page). Arguments for reorganization include the need for greater representation for developing countries and underrepresented regions as well as the evolving importance of countries as a result of demographic and economic changes.
Would you support a change in the current permanent members (those who have veto power) of the Security Council?
If so, which countries would you add and/or remove? Why?
If not, why not? What countries did you consider adding, and why did you decide against it?
Your discussion should include specific countries that might be considered as possible permanent members and why they do or do not warrant permanent membership in the Security Council.
Defend your answer based on what you know about the geographic – cultural, demographic, economic, and geopolitical – realities of today’s world. (20 points)
2. The map on the “Announcements” page of the class web site* depicts the global distribution of a certain geographic attribute/element/feature. What attribute is being mapped?
Defend your answer by discussing countries from at least 3 different regions of the world in the context of the identified attribute – not only that a country or region is high or low but also why it is high or low.
* http://www.uccs.edu/~faculty/chuber/ges198/announcements.html
(25 points)
3. The cartoon below reflects one of the key concepts in geography. In 1 word what is it? (5 points)
The Security Council has primary responsibility, under the Charter, for the maintenance of international peace and security. The Council is composed of five permanent members — China, France, Russian Federation, the United Kingdom and the United States — and ten non-permanent members.
Ten non-permanent members, elected by the General Assembly for two-year terms are not eligible for immediate re-election. The number of non-permanent members was increased from six to ten by an amendment of the Charter which came into force in 1965.
Each Council member has one vote. Decisions on procedural matters are made by an affirmative vote of at least nine of the 15 members. Decisions on substantive matters require nine votes, including the concurring votes of all five permanent members. This is the rule of "great Power unanimity", often referred to as the "veto" power.
(http://www.un.org/Docs/sc/)
Warren Hoge. Nov 28, 2004. (excerpts)
No institutional concern at the United Nations has been studied more with less to show for it than the need to broaden the membership of the 15-nation Security Council to reflect the world of today rather than the one that existed at the Council's inception nearly 60 years ago.
The Security Council is action central at the United Nations, the one body that can pass resolutions binding on all 191 members and cut through the delay and obfuscation that can thwart decision-making elsewhere in the ranks.
Yet its composition is indisputably out of date. Its definitive authority -- the right to cast a veto -- is in the hands of the post-World War II powers of the United States, Britain, France and Russia, as well as China….
Changes in the composition of the Security Council must be approved by two-thirds of the 191 United Nations members and ratified by the legislatures of two-thirds of those governments, including those of all five permanent Council members.…
The Council was last expanded, to 15 from 11, in a 1963 General Assembly vote that took effect in 1965. In 1971, Communist China took over the permanent seat on the Council that had been occupied by the Nationalist Chinese. …