Andreea Mosila | American Public University System (APUS) (original) (raw)

Papers by Andreea Mosila

Space Education & Strategic Applications, 2024

Spacefaring has emerged as a critical element of global security and strategic intelligence, play... more Spacefaring has emerged as a critical element of global security and strategic intelligence, playing a significant role in all aspects of national power: diplomacy, information, military, and economics (DIME). China's 2007 anti-satellite (ASAT) test ushered in a new era in spacefaring. China conducted a devastating direct ascent ASAT test that destroyed a weather satellite, resulting in over 3000 pieces of space debris. The unexpected nature of this test caught the international spacefaring community off guard, and gave rise to immediate concerns among spacefaring powers, prompting questions about China's intention. This was a stark reminder of the multifaceted dimensions of power associated with space exploration, encompassing all the DIME soft and hard power components. These were crucial in motivating China's decision to conduct the test and shaping the responses of other spacefaring nations. The United States and China have been competitors in space for decades. However, China's recent advancements in space and acts of aggression like the ASAT test have raised concerns with the spacefaring community. The ASAT test and other potentially disruptive activities also present a thorny warning intelligence problem, as many of these activities span national power elements. Using the theoretical framework of realism, this paper assesses the significance of China's ASAT test through the lens of DIME components to shed light on its implications on global security and propose a set of intelligence recommendations intended to prevent strategic surprises in the future.

EuropeNow, 2023

The COVID-19 pandemic challenged democratic governments and global governance alike. The rise of ... more The COVID-19 pandemic challenged democratic governments and global governance alike. The rise of populism across the globe was a significant obstacle in coordinating a successful pandemic response within nations and globally. Romania provides an excellent example of how nationalist and populist messaging significantly threatened this response. As the pandemic affected the vulnerable population economically, socially, and culturally, the populist party Alliance for the Union of Romanians (AUR) rose to power following the December 2020 parliamentary elections, securing nine percent of the vote and becoming the fourth largest party in the Romanian parliament. AUR’s aggressive antisystem, antigovernment, anti-West, and extreme nationalistic discourse based on disinformation and misinformation denigrated pandemic safety measures such as the wearing of masks or social distancing and spread COVID-19 vaccine disinformation, slowing down progress in the fight against the disease, jeopardizing the government’s authority, and leading to people’s substantial distrust in medical expertise. AUR illustrates how populist movements persisted throughout the pandemic in Europe and could significantly affect democracy there. This paper discusses the effects of populism and nationalism on the pandemic response in Romania. It includes background information on the rise of AUR and its campaign, an assessment of the threat posed by AUR, an appraisal of the policy against fake news in Romania, and recommendations for the future implementation of policies to discourage populism and “infodemic.” The research contributes to the literature that examines the impact of populist and nationalist rhetoric on global health outcomes.

Space Education & Strategic Applications

Space exploration is essential for global security and technological development, yet political l... more Space exploration is essential for global security and technological development, yet political leaders often disregard its importance. This policy paper demonstrates the role of space exploration in global security and technological development and the necessity for political support, as space exploration is costly, relying primarily on federal funding. Political support is motivated by political circumstances. When winning the space race was an important demonstration of power, political support was at its highest. However, political interest in spacefaring faded after the Cold War ended, and funding decreased. Political disinterest has global consequences. Space hazards constitute a severe global threat to planetary defense and come in different forms, such as space rocks, artificial space debris, and space weaponization. These hazards threaten satellites in orbit with a significant role in global operations, including communications, surveillance, and navigation. Additionally, n...

Space Education and Strategic Applications Journal, 2023

pace exploration is essential for global security and technological development, yet political le... more pace exploration is essential for global security and technological
development, yet political leaders often disregard its importance.
This policy paper demonstrates the role of space exploration in
global security and technological development and the necessity
for political support, as space exploration is costly, relying primarily
on federal funding. Political support is motivated by political
circumstances. When winning the space race was an important
demonstration of power, political support was at its highest. However,
political interest in spacefaring faded after the Cold War ended,
and funding decreased. Political disinterest has global consequences.
Space hazards constitute a severe global threat to planetary
defense and come in different forms, such as space rocks, artificial
space debris, and space weaponization. These hazards threaten satellites
in orbit with a significant role in global operations, including
communications, surveillance, and navigation. Additionally, near-
Earth objects such as asteroids or comets seriously threaten global
security. A catastrophic impact of a near-Earth object could threaten
life on Earth and even become an extinction event. The national
space program also plays an important role in mitigating climate
change, a significant current threat to global security. Therefore,
setting the right direction for the space program and ensuring sufficient
funding for spacefaring is essential to global security. Using
qualitative secondary analysis and the causal explanation method,
this policy paper analyzes political support by comparing NASA’s
budget and national space policies over several decades and how
funding affects technological advances and development. The paper
concludes by generating policy recommendations to establish
the optimal conditions for a national space program to thrive and
fulfill its role in maintaining global security.

Global Security and Intelligence Studies

S a high bar for calling a political leader “transformational,” I define such a leader as “one wh... more S a high bar for calling a political leader “transformational,” I define such a leader as “one who plays a decisive role in introducing systemic change, whether of the political or economic system of his or her country or (more rarely) of the international system.”1 The term “transformational” has a positive connotation, suggesting that fundamental change has produced a better system than that it replaced. Transformational leadership may, therefore, be distinguished from revolutionary leadership, even though revolutions may also generate systemic change. Revolution, as the term is commonly understood, involves a regime’s violent overthrow. More often than not, it replaces an authoritarian regime with another form of authoritarianism.2 Mikhail Gorbachev, by temperament and conviction a reformer rather than a revolutionary, became in a period of less than seven years an outstanding example of a transformational political leader. He achieved this while diluting the absolute authority and ceding many of the powers that had belonged to the party General Secretaryship. To a far greater extent than any of his predecessors in that office, he relied on his political skills and powers of persuasion. When he faced stiff opposition to political reform in 1987-88, he radicalized his agenda rather than back down, though there were other occasions when his acute political antennae led him to take a step back before moving two steps forward. It was in mid-1988 that he began making the Soviet political system qualitatively different from what it had been hitherto. He pushed through the Nineteenth Conference of the

Global Security & Intelligence Studies, 2022

The peaceful end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union under the leadership of ... more The peaceful end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet
Union under the leadership of Mikhail Gorbachev surprised theorists
of international politics, who failed to predict that the five decades-
long conflict would end abruptly and peacefully. The element
of surprise was Gorbachev, an uncharacteristic Soviet leader with
Western thinking. His new thinking liberalized the Soviet system,
brought historic changes to Eastern Europe, ended the Cold War,
and dissolved the Soviet Union. To explain this chain of events, realists
pointed to Gorbachev’s foreign policy ideas causing the economic
decline of the Soviet Union. Constructivists assumed that
Gorbachev’s plan to restructure the Soviet economic and political
system and create a peaceful international order was the leading
cause, while liberals blamed the liberalization of the domestic Soviet
system and democratic peace. The peaceful end of the Cold War was
heavily influenced by human behavior, a complex variable to predict.
Gorbachev’s upbringing in the province and his Moscow education
created an unusual Soviet operational code: a leader interested in cooperation
and peacemaking, development rather than destruction,
and willing to pursue an interdependent foreign policy. This paper
examines Gorbachev’s psychological traits to explain his role in the
peaceful end of the Cold War.

Keywords: Gorbachev, Cold War, Soviet Union, operational code,
political psychology

Saturn has been a source of interest and fascination for centuries. Besides its rings, one of th... more Saturn has been a source of interest and fascination for centuries. Besides its rings, one of the most spectacular planetary features seen in the solar system, Saturn has several moons that present a potential habitable environment. Some of these moons have liquid water or an impressive atmosphere worth studying in-depth. This particular interest in Saturn led to a mission conducted by the biggest interplanetary unmanned probe ever built: the Cassini-Huygens mission. Once inserted into Saturn’s orbit in 2004, the scientific instruments on board Cassini, particularly the Composite Infrared Spectrometer (CIRS), have collected an impressive amount of data leading to many new scientific discoveries. The only other mission to ever study Saturn was Voyager. Equipped with the Infrared Interferometer Spectrometer and Radiometer (IRIS), considered a state of the art instrument in the seventies, Voyager was able to collect fascinating but insufficient data about Saturn. Cassini’s role was to perform an in-depth study based on the data collected by Voyager. This study is a comparison between the results of the two spectrometers, with the purpose to demonstrate that the Cassini spectrometer generated much more data and results than the Voyager spectrometer.

The existence of judicial restraint and judicial activism is very debatable in the judicial world... more The existence of judicial restraint and judicial activism is very debatable in the judicial world. However, to categorize justices as being either consistent in their decision or being biased on a case by case basis is an overgeneralization. While it is true that in many cases justices vote by party lines, the Supreme Court has also seen many cases in which the decisive vote was cast against party ideology. While consistency in decision-making is not always possible for a variety of reasons, it is also fair to assume that each justice votes in alignment with his or her conscience. This paper analyzes several cases connected to judicial restraint and judicial activism to demonstrate that a clear pattern in decision-making is impossible to determine, and that a correct evaluation can only be made on a case by case basis.