Arguementative essay

Why care about other countries far away from us?

An earthquake occurs in Japan. This leads to a nuclear incident that may leak radioactive waste, polluting food and water sources, affecting our world's food and water.

The sheer magnitude of events in other countries is undeniable. From economic recessions to air pollution, time and time again the world proves the flaw in globalisation: No country can stand alone. It is precisely because of this that it is of utmost importance that we care about foreign countries.

Some may argue against being concern about foreign situations; there are three main reasons for this:

• Their economy is strong, surviving economic recessions is not a problem.
• They are in a large country, the sheer land mass and people will survive even if isolated from the world.
• Incidents like nuclear accidents will not affect them significantly.

In actual fact, these views are very much nieve, and survivability of countries depend on the rest of the world. A good example would be the 2008 sub-prime crisis, countless established banks all over the world closed down. This is because the U.S. is a large country and its actions affect the rest of the world. Its a known fact that economic situations affect other countries. For example, the E.U. was badly affected because of Greece's sudden economic collapse. Currency value is basically your money versus the money of other countries. With bonds of companies being sold all over the world, we will all go down together. The effects of globalisation has made the boundaries between sucess and disaster spread well beyond the borders of one's country.

Regardless of how large your country is, or how rich it is, survivability is very much dependent on other countries. In the modern world like ours, to isolate oneself in hopes of preventing the problems caused by globalisation will only lead to a backward civilisation that heavilly lacks in resourcesother that its own. In our globalised world new technology is constantly being shared around the world and, what is produced in one country is needed in the other; That is how countries like Singapore make profit. Thus, it is impossible to be on par with the rest of the world when it comes to isolation.

Finally, nuclear incidents and pollution cases do affect the rest of the world. Looking at the Chernobyl incident, we can see how a nuclear power point can cause the nuclear remnants to pollute the world. Even nuclear detectors in America also detected the radioactive presence. Using a more local example, when Indonesia burns their trees, Malaysia and Singapore get the haze. This shows how the world is affected by foreign disasters, which brings me to the point that in disasters such as Japan's current quake/tsunami/nuclear crisis, all the countries stand by, ready to help.

Even so, there is only this much we can do to care about the welfare of other countries. Whether our effort is of use or wasted, ultimately still depends on the country itself. The Myanmar cyclone, for example, shows how the government is reluctant to accept foreign help, thus wasting our care and concern for the victims.