Natalie Sanchez History Benchmark Q3

For this project, I researched the countries of Taiwan and Armenia. Taiwan is an island to the south east of the Chinese mainland, while Armenia was one of the first European countries to adopt Christianity as its official religion. Both of these countries have similar problems like irreversible environmental damage of its environment, they both have a past with hostile neighbors who have tried to overthrow both nations, and both have presidents who are not putting as much importance into environmental policies as they should be. The difference is that Taiwan keeps connections with its hostile neighbor China, because it benefits the island’s trade levels, while Armenia has not communication with Azerbaijan because of their dispute over territory. Another difference is that Taiwan is much more industrialized than is Armenia. This puts Taiwan on a higher range in the trade category, but on a  lower range on the Environmental soundness category. Armenia is less industrialized and relies on mining  for trade, putting them lower on both the trade and the environmental soundness categories. In essence, both countries have their kinks to work out. Though they continue to stand as nations, they must first resolve these small problems in order to avoid collapsing.

My process of this project was very tedious. Because of family circumstances, I am currently living in my grandmother’s house with no internet access, and was there fore obligated to use a smart phone for most of my research. I spent most of my free time these past two days researching these two countries and incorporated the information that I used for my “global trade, local cost” blog post in my benchmark for Taiwan’s information. I tried as hard as I can to fit this benchmark into my free time, but had so many things going on, that it was difficult to get a lot of information for the project in my work periods. 

The Five points framework helped me because it gave me a guideline to follow for my research of the two countries. The easiest point on the framework was the climate and environmental damage category. There is a lot of information out there about the steps that international countries are taking build a greener environment. The hardest point on framework to research was the hostile neighbor category. Most of the hostile relationships of these two countries occurred many years ago. It was hard to find credible resources for this information, as most of these disputes are either settled or looked over currently. 

If I could do this project one more time, I would start it earlier. As mentioned, I had a lot of work to do during the transcourse of this project, and feel as though if I would have started earlier, I could have finished earlier and saved myself some last minute stress. I would have started my research of Armenia a little earlier, as I did Taiwan. Prior research of Taiwan helped me in the process of completing this project, so I feel like I should have done the same for Armenia.

This project got me thinking about or Collapsibility range. The United States has friendly neighbors, and has friendly trade partners, but also has a lot of debt to countries like China. We also are a large nation, which put us to an advantage. We are also taking measures to create a greener environment and give voice to the people for modifications of law and government. I feel like the United States is pretty stable, accept for our trade patterns. If we don’t pay back our debt and start to take care of the resources that we have (we can’t use too much of our resources), we might collapse.