Program in Arms Control & Domestic and International Security


 
 

ii 
 

Letter from the Editor 
 
Dear reader, 
 On behalf of the IJOIS Editorial Board, the Program in Arms Control & Domestic and 
International Security, the University Library, and the supportive academic community of the 
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, we would like to thank you for reading the third 
issue of Illini Journal of International Security (IJOIS)! IJOIS is a peer-reviewed academic 
journal that was founded in September 2015 by undergraduate students at the University of 
Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. We publish exceptional papers on topics within international 
security or foreign affairs. 
 For our fifth issue of the journal, we are excited to publish outstanding undergraduate 
papers that explore some of the most pressing issues within international security and foreign 
affairs, covering a wide range of topic areas and geographical regions. In “The People’s Republic 
of China’s Security Dependence on Semi-Autonomous Territories,” Kathleen Richardson 
explores how the People’s Republic of China’s recent policies have negatively affected their 
grand strategy in East Asia. Traveling west, we focus in on the Middle East with “A Case of 
Mistaken Identities: The Real Friends and Foes in the War in Afghanistan” and “A Return to 
Insurgency in Iraq: The Islamic State’s transition to insurgency and the Iraqi mistakes that have 
aided it.” 
 In “A Case of Mistaken Identities: The Real Friends and Foes in the War in 
Afghanistan,” Siddharth Singh Chaudhari gives insight into why Pakistan supports the Afghan 
Taliban and the implications for the United States and Afghan governments. In Zachary Cleary’s 
“A Return to Insurgency in Iraq: The Islamic State’s transition to insurgency and the Iraqi 
mistakes that have aided it,” he explores the how the Islamic State transitioned to Iraq after the 
destruction of their caliphate and the what this means for the Iraqi government.  

Moving northeast, we look into how the annexation of Crimea and Russian aggression 
along Ukraine’s eastern boarder goes against the 1994 Budapest Memorandum and explore the 
view that Ukraine is in a better position than that if they had not agreed to the memorandum in 
“Empty Promises: The Denuclearization of Ukraine and its Effects Twenty Years Later” from 
Paisley Ann Meyer. 

Zooming out to see a more global perspective, Madison Johnston reviews the evolution 
of intelligence gathering methods between the 1800’s to the Cold War era and what this means 
for concerns and arguments of these methods in “The Paradigm Shifts in Intelligence: From 1800 
to Present.” 

These exceptional undergraduate papers present novel arguments on a wide array of 
issues within international security and foreign affairs. We hope that these papers will challenge 
and inform our readers, spark discussion, and encourage undergraduate students to explore these 
pressing issues or pursue international studies further. We hope you enjoy reading! 
 
Christopher Szul 


	Letter from the Editor