One thing we have not been able to do is to put the entire story into one large framework to try to understand it all. We focus on theories that explain certain aspects. For example, do democracies go to war less with each other than non-democracies? Is terrorism rational? Is it better for the world if a highly insecure state gets a nuclear weapon or not?

Yet there is seldom a framework that puts all the topics and theories into one large vision. Why? Well there is a lot of concern that any one perspective may reduce the complexity of the world too much. It may take what is so exciting about this field of study (its unyielding complexity) in an attempt to make it digestible.

And yet, the world is moving and changing so readily, we cannot also get lost in too many rabbit holes and still keep and eye on what matters most.

My goal in this course is to offer you a framework for understanding the world - not as a means for oversimplifying it for you (though some will say this is the case). Instead, I think a framework helps us to take note of where we are to allow us to dive deeply into certain material while still knowing what matters most and to get our bearings when we come back up for breath.

What are the key components of any board game?

Throughout this course I will explain the world in a manner by which I might sit across from you on a Game Night explaining a new board game.

Unsurprisingly, the first thing we will look at is the board itself. In International Affairs, the board is Earth, or what we refer to as the International System. This system is filled with key resources we all need to survive (e.g. land and water). Players are the more than seven billion people on this earth, each taking up their own place on the board and seeking to acquire the basic resources need to survive.

Players join together in teams, called States. Known colloquially as countries, states are the political units that are granted certain areas on the board with resources within those territories. States as teams are the key units in this game. These units must decide what winning looks like, what strategies they will choose to try to win, and how decisions get made within the group.

Like so many actual teams, we will also discuss how some players within one team may have allegiances to another team. For example, my youngest always likes for me to win - even if he is playing against me (a sentiment I try to treat with deep respect when I destroy his team in any competitive game).

In the real international system, sometimes players do not feel close to the teams for which they are members. Other times, teams feel no allegiance to the players as well. And still other times, players on different teams form alliances that stretch across team boundaries, weakening the old teams in hopes for forming new ones.

Objectives. The objective of most board games is to "win." As some people have a hard time articulating their goals in life, teams (and teams of millions of people collectively called states) have a hard time describing what "winning" in this world looks like. Some focus on basic survival as the goal. My oldest is like this. He spends an entire game of Parcheesi blocking any one else from reaching the goalpost. When I explained to him that he wasn't winning, he thoughtfully responded, "Yes, but I am not losing either."

Other teams want more. Some want total global domination. Others do not want to dominate, but instead they seek to get wealthier than they were yesterday. Still others view "winning" as achieving a common goal for all the teams everywhere.

Strategies. Unlike most games, the game of World Politics does not allow teams to take turns. Instead, interactions are more fluid. That said, these interactions must be considered even more carefully. Each Team tends to be able to articulate a grand strategy that focuses on how they can take steps toward their goals (defined above). Teams will also have more specific foreign policy strategies that focus on how they interact with other teams specifically. Finally, teams will have different domestic strategies for making decisions within the state, implementing them, and reviewing the success of failures of past strategies.

Rounds: Finally, the course is called global Issues, but the issues are just the challenges built into the game that each team must face. For the purposes of a game, one could view the different issues facing teams as rounds with certain challenges, and strategies used to address those challenges, present in each round.

Sometimes those issues arise from within states (e.g. domestic unrest), sometimes they arise from conflicts with other states (e.g. war), and some issues are common problems facing many or all team at once (e.g. COVID-19). Each module will examine key issues facing some or all teams in the international system today.

Believe it or not, the discipline of International Affairs has some pretty awesome tools for explaining the board, teams, goals, and strategies of more than seven billion individual players worldwide. So, let's get started.

Ok, so what do we know so far? If we use the board game analogy, the board is Earth and Earth has been divided politically into more and more political units over time. After the Peace of Westphalia these units, today called states, were granted sovereignty, or the freedom to rule exclusively within their territory. This principle, or rule, of sovereignty means each team can determine what is best for their territory and people within that territory. It also implies that states should not interfere with other state's territories or people. A second rule of the system is that - since states are the primary units across the board - there is no higher unit of authority above states. This is the principle of anarchy.

To continue our analogy, each of you (and the other nearly 7.6 billion people on Earth) are individual players in the game. Some of you may be a member of only one team (a citizen). Some of you may be players on multiple teams (e.g. dual citizenship). Still, others may be a member of one team but located within the territory of another team, either temporarily (e.g. on a visa) or more permanently.

Though politics is really about players, our international system channels the wants, needs, and hopes of billions of people through decision-making channels called states. Decisions made by states are thus considered legitimate in the international system. This does not mean people cannot act independently of the state. They do all the time. But the rules of the international system recognize the actions of states as the only legitimate actions.

Take the example of one definition for the modern state posited by a renowned political sociologist, Max Weber (pronounced "Vaber"). Weber determined the defining characteristic of a state to be its "monopoly on the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory.”

Now, from my perspective, this is an extremely problematic definition as (1) a state has more legitimacy than simply how it uses physical force, (2) our state specifically (i.e. the U.S.) has strong prohibitions against the use of physical force within our territory by our government (e.g. no standing armies within the territory), and (3) the role of players and teams is a dynamic one built on trust and power. If your Team uses physical force within the territory against its players, this is no longer considered legitimate in the international system.

So, why do I mention this definition? For two reasons. First, I want to demonstrate that though sovereignty and anarchy are our guiding rules, there are other norms (e.g. patterns of perspectives) that shift and change over time. Players, over time, have come to see their state as a legitimate protector from threats but more through the rule of law (e.g. judicial punishment) than physical violence. Moreover, over time and across the globe, players expect much more from their states than simple protection. We will discuss this in more detail below. A second reason I bring this definition up is that, though the focus has changed, the state is still seen as having a legitimate monopoly on authority. Sates have the authority to pass laws within a territory and issue decisions when those laws are not followed. States are seen as the legitimate "voice" of the Team. Even today, in our divided political atmosphere, our "teams" diplomats around the world are the official voice for our 328.2 million players.

How many states exist in the international system?

What are the criteria for statehood?

Statehood includes four historical criteria: (1) territory, (2) a permanent population, (3) political authority, and (4) the capacity to enter into relations with the other states. Let's take each of these in turn.

1. Territory

A territory is necessary for statehood to be met. Some states have vast territories. For example, Russia has the world's largest territory, covering an expanse of over 6.6 million square miles and stretching across nine different time zones. Meanwhile, the smallest country in the world is Monaco. Located on the Mediterranean and surrounded by France, Monaco is only 0.75 square miles of country jealously claimed and guarded by the Grimaldi family since the 13th century. When people use the term country most narrowly, they are speaking of a state's country-side, its landmass.

2. Permanent Population

A territory is only one criterion needed for statehood to be met. A second criterion needed is a permanent population (i.e. players who do not leave the team). Some players, of course, are allowed to leave the team either temporarily or permanently. There must, however, be a sufficient group of people within the territory that remain and are committed to the state. As noted previously, the states with the largest populations are China (1.393 billion) and India (1.353 billion). The state with the smallest population is Nauru, an island nation in the Pacific Ocean, with only 10,000 permanent residents that stretch across an 8 square-mile wide island.

3. Political Authority

All 193 states fall along a spectrum of political authority. Some states are collectively known as authoritarian states. These states, or teams, imbue only a small number of players with the legitimacy to make decisions for the state. As an example, North Korea imbues Kim Jong-un* with the authority to make decisions for the entire state (though I would argue that he relies on a small group of other players within the military as well). Other states are considered democracies if they offer more players a chance to determine who will be making decisions for their team, to solicit input when making decisions from the other players, and to have regular opportunities to replace leaders in the team (e.g. via elections). There is SO MUCH to discuss political authority within International Affairs, so be patient as we will come back to these concepts again in Module Five.

* Note: We will discuss the controversial role of Kim Jong-un and his recent disappearance in Module Six.

4. Capacity to Enter into Relations With Other States

The fourth and final criterion is by far the vaguest. After all, do I have the capacity to relate to Beyonce if I like her picture on Instagram (which I often do)? No, not necessarily. The problem with this criterion that capacity is a rather subjective term. In practice, there are two ways to look at this capacity criterion: the declarative approach and the constitutive approach.

The declarative approach to my friendship with Beyonce would look like this: "Beyonce and I are friends." That's it. If I declare my state to exist, my team to be made, and me to be a (best) friend of a Beyonce, then it is so. You can see how this might become rather problematic. As just one example, the events surrounding the Declaration of Independence for the United States did not end with those words penned and signed. Spoiler alert: there was still a really bloody war that had to be fought afterward.

Over time, the constitutive approach has gained in popularity. This approach requires acceptance by the other states (or Beyonce) for the declaration to have any bearing. As an example, after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, sixteen entities declared themselves states. They drew their new territories on maps, wrote and voted on constitutions, created new institutions of government, and adopted new flags. Yet, not all the cool kids (i.e. existing states) were willing to accept them without more.

In 1991, the European Union (it was called the European Community then, but it would change its name a year later) wrote a list of guidelines of criteria that an entity should possess if they wished to be recognized by others as states. These guidelines included respect for other states' borders (i.e. adherence to the principle of sovereignty), laws that protect basic human rights, and laws and practices that were democratic rather than authoritarian.

Today, the new measurement for the "capacity" criterion statehood is membership into the world's largest international organization, the United Nations (more below).

When and where were these criteria for written down?

Though the principle of sovereignty created the concept of statehood in the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, the criteria for statehood mentioned above (i.e. territory, a permanent population, political authority, and the capacity to enter into relations with other states) was not actually written into a treaty and signed by states until 1933.

Yep, you read that right. States showed up 285 years after they came into existence de facto to discuss, agree upon, and then sign a treaty stating that they - states - in fact, existed. International law is really funny that way. Because states are the legitimate political authority in the international system, they got to exist even before they all made a rule stating that they existed.

The Montevideo Convention is the name of the treaty that was signed in 1933. Why? It was signed in Montevideo, Uruguay, and it was agreed to after states held a convention. The reason for this was political.

During the 1930s, the negative impact of the Great Depression had spread worldwide and some states that had chosen to align with the United States starting considering dabbling in Communism instead. To stave off this switch, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt presented his “Good Neighbor Policy,” in which the U.S. would promise not to intervene in the domestic affairs of Central and South American states. In return, these states promised to remain allies to the United States (and keep provided an export market for goods the U.S. producers desperately wanted to sell during the Great Depression).

For the United States part, it did continue to intervene in the domestic affairs of Central and South American states, which we will discuss in more detail in Module Seven.

Who gets to decide statehood? The short answer is the United Nations. United Nations membership (unlike some other international organizations we will discuss) is universal. This means, as its Charter states, that any “peace-loving States” can be admitted to the organization, and currently, every state is a UN member.

Israel is a good example. Israel declared itself a state on May 14th, 1948. The United Nations accepted Israel as a member, however, on May 11, 1949. If you are Israel or anyone who is a proponent of the declarative approach, May 14th, 1948 is Israel's birth date. However, if you are a proponent of the constitutive approach, May 11, 1949, is the date that Israel became a state.

3. General Assembly: If the Council recommends the state for admission, then the General Assembly (i.e. the legislative organ of the United Nations in which every state gets one vote) must reach a two-thirds majority for the state to gain membership. If a resolution passes, then the state automatically becomes a member that day.

An Extreme Example

If the link above does not work, please try this one:

https://www.wevideo.com/view/1725488105

International organizations are entities comprised of states that meet three criteria: an establishing treaty, organs, and member-states. Each international organization has some establishing treaty made among its members that details its purpose and structure (and the states’ rights and duties as members). Examples include the United Nations Charter, the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, and the Treaty of Rome for the European Union.

In American politics, the divisions in government are called branches. In international organizations, various parts of the organization are called organs. Some international organizations only function with one organ, while others have many more. For illustration below, I will use the organs of the United Nations.

The United Nations’ General Assembly serves as the United Nations' legislative organ and is responsible for making rules that bind to United Nations members. Though created multilaterally, however, General Assembly laws are not considered treaties, which are negotiated and assigned directly by governments instead of voted on within the United Nations structure. However, laws made by the General Assembly can be seen as sources of essential norms within the international community as they require at least 97 states to vote in favor of the law to be put in place.

The executive organs in international organizations are in charge of the executive functions of the international organization. Though technically, two United Nations organs could be considered executive organs - the Security Council and the Economic and Social Council (or EcoSoc) - the former is considerably more powerful than the latter.

Though fifteen members of the UN Security Council (UNSC) at any given time, ten rotate off after two years. The five permanent members have been on the Council since the United Nations’ inception. They include the United States, China, Russia, France, and the United Kingdom. To pass a vote in the UNSC, these five states must concur, meaning any of these members can choose to veto actions by the Council and indirectly the United Nations as a whole. This Council has the power to impose diplomatic measures against states (e.g., suspend membership to the United Nations), enact economic sanctions against states (e.g., forbidding trade between a given state and all other members of the United Nations, which is everyone), and even intervening militarily (much more on this later).

And many international organizations have organs that help states arbitrate disputes as they arise between (or among) states. The United Nations has the International Court of Justice (ICJ). The ICJ’s rulings are binding upon member-states, though we will examine times in which the United States chose not to listen.

Though we do not have a secretariat branch in the American government, the executive bureaucracy could be considered an equivalent. As noted (right), much of the government's work occurs within the executive branch’s bureaucracy. For an international organization, the secretariat serves as the headquarters or central office. Those working within the secretariat must carry out the mission of the international organization day-to-day.

And, lastly, international organizations have states as their full members. These international organizations can offer universal membership, such as the UN, or more exclusive membership. For example, the regional international organizations, such as the EU, African Union (AU), Organization of American States (OAS), and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), all require a state to be geographically located within a given region to qualify for membership. The United Nations, as noted above, has 193 full member-states.

It also offers Permanent Observer status to two entities: the Holy See and Palestine.¹ Though the Permanent Observer’s role is not included in the UN Charter, the Secretary-General to the UN began accepting observers after World War II before them becoming members. The Holy See was granted its role formally as Observer in 2004, though it had been a sitting observer in the General Assembly since 1964. The General Assembly voted to recognize Palestine as an Observer in 2012.

Below is the story of Kiribati (pronounced "Kiribas"), an island nation in the Pacific Ocean. If sea levels continue to rise, Kiribati may no longer have a territory to call its own. The Republic of Kiribati⁴ is a state consisting of 21 inhabited islands and 12 atolls (uninhabited hardened coral reefs) located northeast of Australia in the Oceania region. Prior to the British, the islanders were army migrants from Southeast Asian (around 3000 BCE) and later ethnic Samoans (beginning around the 14th century).

In the 19th century, the British conquered the island nation, naming it the Gilberts, and began extracting phosphates (a key ingredient in the modern industrialized agricultural revolution occurring at the time). As a colony, the British administered the Gilbert Islands and Ellice Islands (later the state of Tuvalu) together. However, religious missionaries to the Gilberts brought Catholicism to these islands, while Protestant missionaries settled in the Ellice Islands. As a result, the two island chains viewed each other as ethnically and religiously at odds.

During World War II, the Japanese occupied one of the key islands for phosphate, Banaba, interning, killing, and deporting most of its inhabitants. After the war, the British government resettled many of the remaining Banabans on a small island in Fiji (more than 1,000 miles from their home). Though the British claimed the Banabams could not return home to their island due to devastation caused by the Japanese during war, the British continued to mine phosphates on the island.

By the mid-1970s, Britain divided the two territories into distinct colonial holdings. In an unprecedented move, the inhabitants of the Gilberts launched civil actions against the United Kingdom in the British court system. They sued the colonial power, seeking a greater share in the profits of phosphate mining and funding to address the environmental impact of this extractive sector (phosphorus mining removes vegetation and erodes soil in order to extract the rock below as well as creates pollutant runoff). With decreasing phosphorus yields and an expensive trust payment in lieu of future litigation, Britain ultimately acquiesced to independence for the Gilbert Islands. In 1979, the Gilbert Islands became the Republic of Kiribati, (kiribas is the indigenous pronunciation of the name “Gilbert”).

After independence, the government formed a presidential system with a unicameral legislative branch with less than fifty representatives. With few agricultural resources and exhausted phosphate mines, the Republic of Kiribati focuses primarily on fishing and remittance for seafarers. With the increased competition in these two sectors (especially from laborers from Indonesia and the Philippines) over the past few decades, Kiribati must rely more heavily on foreign aid.

The United States estimates that nearly one-third Kiribati's finances are funded through aid from eight entities: the European Union, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Canada, the United States, the Asian Development Bank, and Taiwan. Beginning in the 1990s, Japan constructed a satellite station in Kiribati. In exchange for financial aid from Taiwan, Kiribati recognizes the Republic of China (i.e., China’s ousted government that now resides on the island of Taiwan). British Petroleum also leases oil-rig space in Kiribati’s exclusive maritime economic zone.

As the global climate continues to warm, the World Bank warns that Kiribati and its more than 100,000 inhabitants will be among the most vulnerable states as waves further erode any habitable land and saltwater salinates any available groundwater and dries out any available cropland.

While world powers have summit meetings to negotiate treaties on how to reduce and mitigate the effects of carbon emissions, the i-Kiribati (pronounced ee-kiribas) are debating how to survive as a nation-state. One option the Kiribati government has promoted is “migration with dignity.” These programs aimed at preparing the i-Kiribati people for employment in other places, such as financing educational opportunities and career in Australian for people to work in healthcare and human services.

A second step the government has taken is to purchase land in Fiji. In 2014, Kiribati purchased nearly 6,000 acres in Fiji for an estimated $9.3 million. Unlike the Fijian island of Rabi, where earlier -Kiribati were displaced, this tract of land is in a more forested mountain region of the second largest island in Fiji, Vanua Levu, where the new residents are attempting to cultivate taro and coconut.

And finally, with the help of a pioneering Japanese company, Kiribati is also considering the creation of the world's first floating nation-state. One Tokyo-based engineering company, called Shimizu, is devising plans for connected "cities" they say would act like "lily pads." These "cities" would be tethered to the ocean floor and then float on the surface of the water. Each island would be nearly two miles across and would have towers with residential units and shops and a central shaft where inhabitants can cultivate fruits and vegetables (see Figure 3.1).

The head of the scheme, Masayuki Takeuchi, says, "It would be a city immune to earthquakes and tsunamis as well as saving the islands from rising sea levels.” The estimated cost of this project, however, would be more than $390 billion. That is almost 3,000 times Kiribati's annual GDP. Though the government of Kiribati does not know where the money might come from, it admits that Kiribati must find a radical solution to exist. And if Kiribati no longer has islands to call home, many wonder whether its status as a state could be in jeopardy as well.

Climate Change is "Natural" (Partly)

Have you have ever heard someone say, "The Earth has been heating a cooling for eons before humans came into existence, so how can climate change be man-made"? Well, if you did, please know that these people are right to some extent. The Earth's climate has gone through long periods of warming and cooling long before we came on the scene.

There have been periods in the Earth's history in which the global temperature on average was much warmer than they are today. For example, during the Eocene Epoch (seen below and beginning around 55.8 million years ago), there were millions of years in which there were no glaciers and tropical plans and crocodiles at the poles. Then all of a sudden (if you measure things in million of years), the climate of the earth began to cool and by the onset of the Pleistocene Epoch, the Earth had entered the Ice Age. And now again, we are in a warming period known as the Holocene Epoch.

The Earth's position in space relative to the Sun may best be described used an analogy. Think about the Earth as a really fast square (circle?) dancer, swirling around his/her partner (the sun). As the Earth circles around its partner, it also twirls. This we know.

So, why has the Earth gone through long periods of warming and cooling? Well, it has to do with two factors.

The first factor is the way the Earth moves in space (a combination of movements collectively known as the Milankovitch cycles) relative to the Sun. The Milankovitch cycles include three different phenomena: eccentricity, obliquity, and precession.

However, there are three more components of this this dance move that impact the Earth's overall climate significantly. First, the Earth does not revolve around the Sun consistently in perfect circles. Instead, sometimes the gravitational forces from others on the dance floor (looking at you, Moon, Saturn, and Jupiter) cause the Earth to have an oblong rotation at times, and a nearly perfect circular ones at others. This is known as eccentricity. In fact, every 100,000 years the Earth's orbit changes from circular to elliptical and then takes 100,00 years to change back to circular again.

The Earth is not only pulled around by other forces than its partner, it also is doing so (again, while twirling around). Moreover, the Earth is suffering from being a little top heavy as its northern hemisphere has more mass on its southern half thanks to all that northern landmass. As a result, the Earth has a slight tilt to it as it rotates, which changes which surface areas of the Earth may see longer periods of sunlight than others. This phenomenon is called obliquity. Obliquity is the concept that describes the tilt of the Earth's axis in relation to its orbital plane, which shifts from around 22.1 to 24.5 degrees around every ~41,000 years. When the earth’s tilt is more pronounced, the sunlight exposure in the northern hemisphere is more pronounced (creating warmer seasons than if the tilt is more slight).

A final phenomenon in the Milankovitch cycles is known as precession. To understand precession put yourself in the position of the Earth. You are circling a dance partner, while spinning in paths that shift from being perfectly circular at times to elliptical at others. All the while, your head is tilted slightly forward toward your partner (at times more pronounced and a times less so). Maybe some of you are more graceful than I, but it seems quite natural that all of these movements would lead the Earth to have a bit of a wobble on its axis. Imagine looking up in the middle of a dance like this. If you tried to concentrate on something on the ceiling directly above your head, you might notice yourself not always aligned directly with that focus point as you are being moved slightly off your axis. This happens to the Earth as well. The Earth moves in a wobble along its axis returning to the same point every 27,000 years.

So, if Earth is in a perfect circle around the Sun, is tilted away from the Sun, and has little wobble, this would create an ideal sunlight exposure where most of the Earth might be warmed in a relatively equal manner (e.g. think the arctic having a tropical climate during the Eocene Epoch). And, if the exact opposite situation occurs - the Earth is far away from the Sun (on an elliptical orbit), the Earth has tilted away from the Sun, and precession wobbles the Earth's so that the northern hemisphere points away from the Sun's exposure - the Earth may see long periods of cold climate in which glaciers are unable to melt (e.g. Ice Ages that occurred in the Pleistocene Epoch, or time of the woolly mammoths).

And Humans Contribute to Climate Change As Well

A second factor that has affected the longer warming of Earth's climate is the release of large amounts of greenhouse gases. Before humans, there were times in the Earth's history where tectonic plates shifted, pushing landmasses and gases trapped deep in the Earth's crust upward creating mountains and large carbon, methane, nitrous oxide, and water vapor - all which help to lock in the sun's rays and absorb its warmth within the Earth's atmosphere.

So, what is different about this time? Well, first we are - based on the Milankovitch cycle - we are in a period in which solar exposure for the Earth should be less than at other times (i.e. in a cooling period) ... and yet our Earth is warmer, not colder. Less sun should equal less warmth, but the opposite is occurring. The reason? We have been providing our own layer of warmth within our atmosphere by increasing the heat-trapping gases present within our air.

To put it in relative perspectives, at other points similar to our point in the Milankovitch cycles, our atmosphere contained on average a concentration of carbon dioxide that fluctuated from about 180 to 280 parts per million. According to NASA, since the beginning of the Industrial Age the concentration of carbon dioxide in Earth’s atmosphere has increased 47 percent, from about 280 ppm to 412 ppm. This increase in carbon dioxide emissions is directly linked to our decisions to burn carbon (e.g. plants, such as wood, and animal fossils). Fossil fuels are "often-buried combustible geologic deposits of organic materials, formed from decayed plants and animals, that have been converted to crude oil, coal, natural gas, or heavy oils by exposure to heat and pressure in the earth's crust over hundreds of millions of years," and carbon dioxide is a byproduct of these combustible materials.

The current aspects of climate change we are observing include the anomalous increase in aggregate global temperatures and the sporadic and extreme weather events that accompany a warmer overall global climate. The presence of GHGs in our atmosphere since the mid-1700s have led to an increase in global aggregate temperatures. As shown below, global average surface temperature from 1990-2019 increased by 1° Fahrenheit over the past 30 years for areas in red. And, according to the U.S.'s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), as each new year is added to the historical record it becomes one of the top 10 warmest on record in human history.

In addition to aggregate global temperatures warming, we have seen an increase in extreme and sporadic weather events. Though a global climate warming means more heat worldwide, this warmth affects different regions of the global quite differently.

Most intuitively, the warmer the Earths surface the more likely glaciers are to melt. This in turn causes a rise in sea levels, risking flooding for coastal cities and even entire islands (and states made up of exclusively of islands, which we will discuss in Week Four). With more water in the seas and warmer temperatures, there is globally a greater propensity for more water to evaporate.

Once evaporated, where does this water go? Well, as the Earth spins, it creates four jet streams (two polar and two closer to the equator) moving west to east. These streams pull water vapor from certain areas (which were always losing water, but not at higher, faster rates) and then dumps this water in areas it always had, but now at faster rates and more significant levels. The end result is areas prone to droughts get drier and face increased risks of drought, while wet, milder climates see an increase in average rainfall, thunderstorms, and hurricanes.