Global Security Concerns Questions and Answers

Answer: B

The correct code is i-c, ii-a, iii-b, iv-d.

• Afghanistan: the Pashtuns, its largest ethnic group.
• Turkey: the Kurds, concentrated in the south-east.
• Canada: the Québécois, the French-speaking people of Quebec.
• Nigeria: the Yoruba, one of its three largest groups, in the south-west.

The other codes put the Kurds in Nigeria, the Québécois in Turkey or the Yoruba in Afghanistan, which do not match.

Answer: D

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights is the authoritative statement of the basic rights to which all are entitled.

Adopted by the UN General Assembly on 10 December 1948, the Declaration sets out civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights belonging to every human being 'without distinction of any kind'. It was proclaimed as a common standard of achievement for all peoples and nations.

It is not specifically about prisoners of war (covered by the Geneva Conventions), the duties of indigenous peoples, or colonial peoples (the subject of the 1960 Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples).

Answer: C

NATO stands for the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation.

It was founded by the North Atlantic Treaty signed in Washington on 4 April 1949 by twelve states, including the USA, Canada, Britain and France. Its core is Article 5, under which an armed attack on one member is considered an attack on all.

The other expansions are invented: there is no 'North Armament', 'North American Territorial' or 'Northern Alliance Terrorist' organisation behind the acronym.

Answer: A

The keyed order is (d), (b), (a), (c): IBRD, IMF, GATT, WTO.

The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development and the International Monetary Fund were both created at the Bretton Woods Conference in July 1944 and came into existence in December 1945. The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade was signed in 1947 and took effect in 1948. The World Trade Organization replaced it on 1 January 1995.

So the two Bretton Woods institutions come first, then GATT, then the WTO. Every other code puts the WTO or GATT before the Bretton Woods bodies.

Answer: D

Self-determination was conceived as the political independence of ethnic or national communities.

The principle, championed by Woodrow Wilson and Lenin around the First World War, holds that a people or nation has the right to determine its own political status, typically by forming its own state. It guided the redrawing of European borders after 1918 and was later written into the UN Charter.

It was later applied to colonies in the era of decolonisation, but it was conceived for nations and peoples generally, not only colonies. It is about political status, not economic policy, and it is the opposite of a defence of colonialism.

Answer: A

The statement was made by David King.

Sir David King, then the British government's Chief Scientific Adviser, wrote in the journal Science in January 2004 that climate change is the most severe problem the world faces, more serious even than the threat of terrorism. The remark drew wide attention.

Colin Gray is a strategic theorist, Rajendra Pachauri chaired the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and Sunita Narain is an Indian environmentalist; none of them is the source of this remark.

Answer: B

The phrase is Régis Debray's.

The French writer Régis Debray, once a companion of Che Guevara, inverted Marx's famous description of religion as 'the opium of the people', calling religion instead a vitamin for the weak: a source of strength for people under pressure, not merely a sedative.

Marx's own phrase was 'opium', not 'vitamin'. Nasution was an Indonesian general and writer on guerrilla warfare, and Ho Chi Minh a Vietnamese revolutionary leader.

Answer: D

The main cause of jihadi terrorism is the use of violence in the name of Islamic radicalism.

Jihadi terrorism is driven by a radical ideology that interprets jihad as armed struggle against those it regards as enemies of Islam, and justifies violence against civilians in religious terms. Groups such as al-Qaeda and ISIS are the leading examples.

Communism is unrelated to it. Globalisation and the spread of arms may help terrorist networks to operate, but they are enabling conditions, not the cause that defines this kind of terrorism.

Answer: C

The Senkaku islands are disputed between Japan and China.

The uninhabited islands, called Diaoyu by China, are administered by Japan and claimed by China (and also by Taiwan). They lie in the East China Sea, which the paper places in the Pacific Ocean, near important fishing grounds and possible energy reserves, and have been a recurring flashpoint since 2012.

South Korea's island dispute is with Japan, over Dokdo (Takeshima), and Malaysia and Singapore disputed Pedra Branca, which the International Court of Justice decided in 2008. Neither involves the Senkakus.

Answer: C

'Terrorism is theatre' was said by Brian Jenkins.

Brian Michael Jenkins of the RAND Corporation wrote in 1974 that terrorism is theatre: terrorist attacks are staged for the audience that watches, not just for the victims, and 'terrorists want a lot of people watching, not a lot of people dead'.

Max Weber, Noam Chomsky and the name printed as 'Richard Jarvis' are not the source of the phrase; Chomsky wrote on state terrorism, and Weber on the state's monopoly of legitimate violence.