CNDI 2010 Regents Lab

Iraq Aff

Index
Index..............................................................................................................................................................................................1 *******1AC*******....................................................................................................................................................................5 1AC Inherency...............................................................................................................................................................................6 1AC Terrorism Advantage (1/.......................................................................................................................................................8 1AC Terrorism Advantage (2/.....................................................................................................................................................10 1AC Terrorism Advantage (3/.....................................................................................................................................................12 1AC Terrorism Advantage (4/.....................................................................................................................................................15 1AC Terrorism Advantage (5/.....................................................................................................................................................17 1AC Terrorism Advantage (6/.....................................................................................................................................................19 1AC Terrorism Advantage (7/.....................................................................................................................................................21 1AC Terrorism Advantage (8/.....................................................................................................................................................22 1AC Terrorism Advantage (9/.....................................................................................................................................................25 1AC International Credibility Adv (1/ .......................................................................................................................................26 1AC International Credibility Adv (2/........................................................................................................................................27 1AC International Credibility Adv (3/........................................................................................................................................28 1AC International Credibility Adv (4/ .......................................................................................................................................29 1AC International Credibility Adv (5/........................................................................................................................................30 1AC International Credibility Adv (6/ .......................................................................................................................................31 1AC International Credibility Adv (7/........................................................................................................................................32 1AC International Credibility Adv (8/ .......................................................................................................................................33 1AC Solvency (1/........................................................................................................................................................................34 1AC Solvency (2/........................................................................................................................................................................35 1AC Solvency (3/........................................................................................................................................................................36 1AC Solvency (4/........................................................................................................................................................................37 *****Alternate 1AC Advantages*****......................................................................................................................................38 Advantage ___: Stability (1/........................................................................................................................................................38 Advantage ___: Stability (2/........................................................................................................................................................39 Advantage ___: Stability (3/........................................................................................................................................................40 Advantage ___: Stability (4/........................................................................................................................................................41 Advantage ___: Stability (5/........................................................................................................................................................42 1AC Chinese Oil Advantage (1/..................................................................................................................................................43 1AC Chinese Oil Advantage (5/..................................................................................................................................................47 1AC Chinese Oil Advantage (6/..................................................................................................................................................48 1AC Chinese Oil Advantage (7/..................................................................................................................................................49 1AC Chinese Oil Advantage (8/..................................................................................................................................................50 1AC Advantage____: U.S. Power (1/.........................................................................................................................................51 1AC Advantage____: U.S. Power (2/.........................................................................................................................................52 1AC Advantage____: U.S. Power (3/.........................................................................................................................................53 1AC Advantage____: U.S. Power (6/.........................................................................................................................................56 1AC Advantage____: U.S. Power (7/.........................................................................................................................................57 1AC Advantage____: U.S. Power (9/.........................................................................................................................................59 *****Uniq/Inherency/D.A. Trick*****.....................................................................................................................................60 Key 2AC Card.............................................................................................................................................................................61 2AC W/D Inevitable Only Timetable Key...............................................................................................................................62 Uniq: W/D Inevitable..................................................................................................................................................................63 Uniq: W/D will be Delayed.........................................................................................................................................................64 Uniq: Pace of W/D = Slow..........................................................................................................................................................65 Uniq: No Withdrawal Now.........................................................................................................................................................66 Uniq: No timetable......................................................................................................................................................................67 Uniq: Wont Follow Timetable.....................................................................................................................................................68 Uniq: Loopholes = No W/D........................................................................................................................................................69 Uniq: Wont Follow Deadline......................................................................................................................................................70 Uniq: Indefinite Presence Now...................................................................................................................................................71 *****International Credibility Advantage*****........................................................................................................................75 _____________...........................................................................................................................................................................76

CNDI 2010 Iraq Aff Regents Lab ***Links***................................................................................................................................................................................76 U.S. Presence hurts Cred.............................................................................................................................................................76 ______________.........................................................................................................................................................................77 ***Impacts****..........................................................................................................................................................................77 Coop/ Terrorism (1/2)..................................................................................................................................................................78 Coop/ Terrorism (2/2)..................................................................................................................................................................79 North Korea War.........................................................................................................................................................................80 Laundry List................................................................................................................................................................................81 Soft Power Solves Ext. Multiwarrant..........................................................................................................................................82 Environment................................................................................................................................................................................83 Multilateralism 1/3.....................................................................................................................................................................84 Multilateralism 2/3......................................................................................................................................................................85 Multilateralism 3/3......................................................................................................................................................................86 SP Solves Iran (1/2).....................................................................................................................................................................87 SP Solves Iran (2/2).....................................................................................................................................................................88 US- Iran Relations.......................................................................................................................................................................89 ______________.........................................................................................................................................................................90 ***Credibility Solvency***........................................................................................................................................................90 W/D k Credibility........................................................................................................................................................................91 Withdrawal..................................................................................................................................................................................92 Timetable.....................................................................................................................................................................................93 __________________.................................................................................................................................................................94 ***A2***....................................................................................................................................................................................94 Alt Causes....................................................................................................................................................................................95 Heg..............................................................................................................................................................................................97 W/D hurts SP...............................................................................................................................................................................98 A2: SP High Now........................................................................................................................................................................99 A2: Alt Cause 2 SP....................................................................................................................................................................100 A2: SP Advantage CP...............................................................................................................................................................101 ********Terrorism Advantage********.................................................................................................................................102 ________________________...................................................................................................................................................102 *****Impacts/Add-Ons*****...................................................................................................................................................102 South Asia Add-On...................................................................................................................................................................103 Impacts: Environment (1/2).......................................................................................................................................................104 Impacts: Environment (2/2).......................................................................................................................................................106 Water Wars Impacts..................................................................................................................................................................107 Impacts: Instability....................................................................................................................................................................108 ___________________________.............................................................................................................................................109 *****Advantage Internals*****...............................................................................................................................................109 Internals: Presence Terrorism................................................................................................................................................110 Internals: US Presence Anti-Americanism/Extremism........................................................................................................112 _________________.................................................................................................................................................................113 ***** Terrorism Solvency*****..............................................................................................................................................113 Solvency: Terror/ISF.................................................................................................................................................................114 Solvency: Terror .......................................................................................................................................................................115 Solvency: Terror........................................................................................................................................................................116 Solvency: Iraqi Government......................................................................................................................................................117 _________________.................................................................................................................................................................118 *****Answers*****.................................................................................................................................................................118 AT: Terrorism Isnt a Risk/I Take My Freedoms For Granted.............................................................................................119 AT: Terrorists Wont Get Nukes/Wont Use Nukes.................................................................................................................120 AT: Terrorists Wont Get Nukes/Wont Use Nukes.................................................................................................................121 AT: Terrorism Turn...................................................................................................................................................................122 AT: Terrorism Turn...................................................................................................................................................................123 AT: Al Qaeda Takeover............................................................................................................................................................124 ********Iran Advantage********..........................................................................................................................................125 1AC Scenario (1/.......................................................................................................................................................................126

CNDI 2010 Iraq Aff Regents Lab 1AC Scenario (2/.......................................................................................................................................................................127 1AC Scenario (2/.......................................................................................................................................................................128 1AC Scenario (4/.......................................................................................................................................................................129 Turkey Solves Iran Fill-in.........................................................................................................................................................130 AT: Iran Prolif Turn..................................................................................................................................................................131 AT: Iran will invade..................................................................................................................................................................132 AT: Iranian Heg.........................................................................................................................................................................133 No Iran Invasion........................................................................................................................................................................134 *****Stability Advantage*****...............................................................................................................................................135 _________________.................................................................................................................................................................136 ****Uniqueness****................................................................................................................................................................136 Uniq: Presence = Violence Now...............................................................................................................................................137 Uniq Wall: Violence Risk High (1/2)........................................................................................................................................138 Uniq Wall: Violence Risk High (2/2)........................................................................................................................................139 Uniq: Violence High .................................................................................................................................................................140 Uniq: Civil War Now................................................................................................................................................................141 __________________...............................................................................................................................................................142 ****Interal Links****...............................................................................................................................................................142 Internals: Violence Spills-Over.................................................................................................................................................143 _______________.....................................................................................................................................................................144 **** Stability Solvency****.....................................................................................................................................................144 Solvency: Timetables k Stability...............................................................................................................................................145 Solvency: Stability (1/3)............................................................................................................................................................146 Solvency: Stability (2/3)............................................................................................................................................................147 Solvency: Stability (3/3)............................................................................................................................................................148 Solvency: Withdrawal Solves Civil War...................................................................................................................................149 Solvency: Sectarian Violence....................................................................................................................................................150 Solvency: W/D Solves Instability.............................................................................................................................................151 Solvency: Turkey Can Fill-in ...................................................................................................................................................152 _______________.....................................................................................................................................................................153 ****Impacts****......................................................................................................................................................................153 Impacts: Turkey.........................................................................................................................................................................154 Impacts: Arab-Kurdish Conflict => Civil War, Escalation.......................................................................................................155 Impacts: Instability => Oil supply disruptions..........................................................................................................................156 Iraq Stability Add-On (Economy): 2AC...................................................................................................................................157 Iraq Stability Add-On (Federalism): 2AC.................................................................................................................................158 Iraq Stability Add-On (Genocide): 2AC...................................................................................................................................159 _______________.....................................................................................................................................................................160 ****Answers****.....................................................................................................................................................................160 AT: Presence Solves Stability (1/2)..........................................................................................................................................161 AT: Presence Solves Stability (2/2)..........................................................................................................................................162 AT: Stability Now.....................................................................................................................................................................163 AT: W/D => Instability.............................................................................................................................................................164 AT: Instability Doesnt Spillover..............................................................................................................................................165 AT: W/D Hurts Credibility........................................................................................................................................................166 AT: Iraqis not Ready.................................................................................................................................................................167 AT: Moral Obligation to Stay....................................................................................................................................................168 AT: Kurdistan Violence............................................................................................................................................................169 AT: Moral Obligation to Stay....................................................................................................................................................170 *******Iraqi Credibility Stuff*******....................................................................................................................................171 W/D k Iraqi Cred.......................................................................................................................................................................171 W/D k Moderates......................................................................................................................................................................172 W/D key U.S.-Iraqi Relations...................................................................................................................................................173 *******Heg/Recruitment Advantage*******.........................................................................................................................174 Uniq: Iraq Kills Readiness.........................................................................................................................................................174 Uniq: Iraq Kills Readiness.........................................................................................................................................................175 Uniq: Power Projection Ok.......................................................................................................................................................176

CNDI 2010 Iraq Aff Regents Lab Solvency: Retention/Recruitment .............................................................................................................................................177 Internals: Personnel k Readiness...............................................................................................................................................178 Impacts: Readiness Solves Taiwan...........................................................................................................................................179 Impacts: Recruitment k Econ....................................................................................................................................................180 Impacts: Khalilzad.....................................................................................................................................................................181 Impacts: Impact Calc (1/...........................................................................................................................................................182 Impacts: Impact Calc (2/...........................................................................................................................................................183 2AC Public Support k Heg........................................................................................................................................................184 *******Oil Advantage*******................................................................................................................................................185 Uniq: China Investing Now.......................................................................................................................................................186 Links: Military Presence Key (1/2) ..........................................................................................................................................187 Links: Military Presence Key (2/2)...........................................................................................................................................188 Solvency: U.S. Pullout Solves ..................................................................................................................................................189 Impacts: Iraq = U.S.-China War................................................................................................................................................190 Impacts: Presence = U.S.-China War........................................................................................................................................193 Impacts: Oil Competition = U.S.-China War............................................................................................................................197 AT: Occupation Key to Energy Security...................................................................................................................................199 AT: Oil D.A...............................................................................................................................................................................200 AT: Oil Turn..............................................................................................................................................................................201 *******Add-ons*******.........................................................................................................................................................202 2AC Power of the Purse Add-on (1/2)......................................................................................................................................203 1AR Pres Powers Impact...........................................................................................................................................................205 2AC Japan Re-Arm Add-on......................................................................................................................................................206 2AC Afghanistan Add-on..........................................................................................................................................................207 Troops Afghanistan..............................................................................................................................................................208 2AC Iraqi Democracy Add-on (1/2)..........................................................................................................................................209 2AC Iraqi Democracy Add-on (2/2)..........................................................................................................................................210 W/D k to Iraqi Democracy........................................................................................................................................................211 2AC Taiwan Attack Add-on (1/2).............................................................................................................................................212 2AC Taiwan Attack Add-on (2/2).............................................................................................................................................214 Spending ...................................................................................................................................................................................215 Econ ..........................................................................................................................................................................................216 *****General Aff Solvency*****............................................................................................................................................217 Solvency: W/D Solves Reconstruction.....................................................................................................................................217 Solvency: Residuals Solve........................................................................................................................................................218 Solvency: Complete Withdrawal Key.......................................................................................................................................219 Solvency: Fast Withdrawal Key................................................................................................................................................220 Solvency: Current Timetable Best.............................................................................................................................................221 Solvency: Current Timetable Best.............................................................................................................................................222 Solvency: W/D Solves Econ.....................................................................................................................................................223 *****AT: Off-Case Args*****................................................................................................................................................224 AT: Deterrence D.A..................................................................................................................................................................224 2AC Training PIC......................................................................................................................................................................225 Partial Withdrawal CP...............................................................................................................................................................226 OSB Good.................................................................................................................................................................................227 AT: Troops PIC/ Need Troops to Train ...................................................................................................................................229 FYI About the Aff.....................................................................................................................................................................230 Article for Me............................................................................................................................................................................231

CNDI 2010 Regents Lab

Iraq Aff

*******1AC*******

CNDI 2010 Regents Lab

Iraq Aff

1AC Inherency
Observation One: Inherency First, Withdrawal from Iraq is INEVITABLE but the timetable is still being PUBLICLY debated
Washington Post 2/23/2k10 (U.S. plans for possible Iraq exit delay;Prospects for political instability, violence mount as elections near, pg nexis)

The U.S. military has prepared contingency plans to delay the planned withdrawal of all combat forces in Iraq, citing the prospects for political instability and increased violence as Iraqis hold national elections next month. Under a deadline set by President Obama, all combat forces are slated to withdraw from Iraq by the end of August, and there remains heavy political pressure in Washington and Baghdad to stick to that schedule. But Army Gen. Ray Odierno, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, said Monday that he had briefed officials in Washington in the past week about possible contingency plans. Odierno declined to describe the plans in detail and said he was optimistic they would not be necessary. But he said he was prepared to make the changes "if we run into problems" in the coming months. Iraqis are scheduled to go to the polls March 7 for parliamentary
elections that Iraqi and U.S. officials describe as a political milestone for the country. With less than two weeks to go in the campaign, however, concern is rising over whether the results will be undermined by political boycotts, low turnout or an increase in bloodshed. Religious enmities and rivalries are already resurfacing.

Unfortunately, the decision has already been made, Obama wont stick to his publicly announced plan hell leave troops in beyond the timetable and allow his commanders to re-classify combat troops to keep them in longer
Asia Times 2k9 (When a withdrawal is not a withdrawal, pg online @ http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/KC27Ak02.html //cndi-ef) WASHINGTON - Despite United States President Barack Obama's statement at Camp LeJeune, North Carolina, on February 27 that he had "chosen a timeline that will remove our combat brigades over the next 18 months ", a number of Brigade Combat Teams (BCTs), which have been the basic US Army combat unit in Iraq for six years, will remain in Iraq after that date under a new non-combat label. A spokesman for Defense Secretary Robert Gates , Lieutenant Colonel Patrick S Ryder, told Inter Press Service on Tuesday that " several advisory

and assistance brigades" would be part of a US command in Iraq that would be "re-designated" as a "transition force headquarters" after August 2010. But the "advisory and assistance brigades" to remain in Iraq after that date will in fact be the same as BCTs, except for the addition of a few dozen officers who would
carry out the advice and assistance missions, according to military officials involved in the planning process. Gates has hinted that the withdrawal of combat brigades would be accomplished through an administrative sleight of hand rather than by actually withdrawing all the combat brigade teams . Appearing on Meet the Press on March 1, Gates said the "transition force" would have "a very different kind of mission", and that the units remaining in Iraq "will be characterized differently". "They will be called advisory and assistance brigades," said Gates. "They won't be called combat brigades." Obama's decision to go along with the military proposal for a "transition force" of 35,000 to

50,000 troops thus represents a complete abandonment of his own original policy of combat troop withdrawal and an acceptance of what the military wanted all along - the continued presence of several combat brigades in Iraq well beyond mid-2010. National Security Council officials declined to comment on the
question of whether combat brigades were actually going to be left in Iraq beyond August 2020 under the policy announced by Obama on February 27. The term that has been used internally within the army to designate the units that will form a large part of the "transition force" is not "Advisory and Assistance Brigades" but "Brigades Enhanced for Stability Operations" (BESO). Lieutenant Colonel Gary Tallman, a spokesman for the Joint Staff, confirmed on Monday that BESO will be the army unit deployed to Iraq for the purpose of the transition force. Tallman said the decision-making process now underway involving Central Command (CENTCOM) and the army is to determine "the exact composition of the BESO".

CNDI 2010 Iraq Aff Regents Lab But the US Army has already been developing the outlines of the BESO for the past few months. The only change to the existing BCT structure that is being planned is the addition of advisory and assistance skills rather than any reduction in its combat power. The BCT is organized around two or three battalions of motorized infantry, but also includes all the support elements, including its own artillery support, needed to sustain the full spectrum of military operations. Those are permanent features of all variants of the BCT, which will not be altered in the new version to be deployed under a "transition force", according to specialists on the BCT. They say the only issue on which the army is still engaged in discussions with field commanders is what standard augmentation a BCT will need for its new mission. Major Larry Burns of the Army Combined Arms Center at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, told Inter Press Service that Army Chief of Staff General George W Casey directed the Combined Arms Center, which specializes in army mission and doctrine, to work on giving the BCTs the capability to carry out a training and advisory assistance mission. The essence of the BESO variant of the BCTs, according to Burns, is that the Military Transition Teams working directly with Iraqi military units will no longer operate independently, but will be integrated into the BCTs. That development would continue a trend already begun in Iraq in which the BCTs have gradually acquired operational control over the previously independent Military Transition Teams, according to Major Robert Thornton of the Joint Center for International and Security Force Assistance at Fort Leavenworth. General Martin Dempsey, the commander of Army Training and Doctrine Command, has issued Planning Guidance calling for further refinement of the BESO. After further work on the additional personnel requirements, Casey was briefed on the proposed enhancement of the BCT for the second time in a month at a conference of four-star generals on February 18, according to Burns. Other names for the new variant that were used in recent months but eventually dropped made it explicitly clear that it is simply a slightly augmented BCT. Those names, according to Burns, included "Brigade Combat Team-Security Force Assistance" and "Brigade Combat Team for Stability Operations". The plan to deploy several

augmented BCTs represents the culmination of the strategy of "relabeling" or "remissioning" of BCTs in Iraq that was developed by US military leaders as the surge in popularity of then-candidate Barack Obama suggested he was certain to win last year's presidential election . Late last year, General David Petraeus, the CENTCOM chief, and General Ray Odierno, the top commander in Iraq, were unhappy with Obama's campaign pledge to withdraw all US combat brigades within 16 months. But military planners quickly hit on the re-labeling scheme as a way of avoiding the complete withdrawal of BCTs in an Obama administration . The New York Times revealed on December 4 that Pentagon planners were talking about "relabeling" US combat units as "training and support" units in a December 4 story, but provided no details. Pentagon planners were projecting that as many as 70,000 US troops would be maintained in Iraq "for a substantial time even beyond 2011". That report suggested that the strategy envisioned keeping the bulk of the existing BCTs in Iraq as under a new label indicating an advisory and support mission. Gates and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen discussed a plan to re-designate US combat troops as support troops at a meeting with Obama in Chicago on December 15, according a report in the Times three days later. Gates and
Mullen reportedly speculated at the meeting on whether Iraqis would permit such "re-labeled" combat forces to remain in Iraqi cities and towns after next June, despite the fact that the US-Iraq withdrawal agreement signed in November 2008 called for all US combat forces to be withdrawn from populated areas by the end of June 2010. That report suggests that Obama

was well aware that giving the Petraeus and Odierno a free hand to determine the composition of a "transition force" of 35,000 to 50,000 troops meant that most combat brigades would remain in Iraq rather than being withdrawn, as he ostensibly promised the US public on February 27.

CNDI 2010 Regents Lab

Iraq Aff

1AC Terrorism Advantage (1/

Advantage One: Counter-Terrorism First, despite Recent Claims, U.S. Policy to Stop Al-Qaeda is FAILING they are as Strong as Ever
Daily Star News Lebanon, June 21st 2010, Al-Qaeda Still on the March, http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=1&article_id=116194&categ_id=17#axzz0ruGRqQ2N Since then, US authorities have fed their public with sound bites designed to reassure their constituencies that their dollars were well spent. All is under control, no doubt, and yes, bad guys will be vanquished. Facts

on the ground, however, speak of another, alarming, reality: Al-Qaedas presence does not seem to have dwindled one bit. One might be tempted to find extravagant explanations. Perhaps a corrupt government has simply
pillaged the funds? Could the US anti-terrorism policy even have been deliberately designed to allow keep Al-Qaeda alive in order to provide the American military complex with a thriving market? Explanations of policy failures are,

unfortunately, rarely as convoluted. In this case, the failure to thwart Al-Qaedas spectacular rise is more likely to be no more than the predictable effect of a policy poorly designed from day one. And, Extended U.S. Presence is having the OPPOSITE effect intended it fuels terrorism, generates a new recruiting tool, and only makes Al-Qaeda Stronger
Byman and Pollack 2k8 (Daniel L. Byman is the director of the Center for Peace and Security Studies at Georgetown University and an associate professor in the School of Foreign Service. Kenneth M. Pollack is the director of research at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution. He has served previously as a Persian Gulf military analyst at the Central Intelligence Agency, Iraq's Long-Term Impact on Jihadist Terrorism, pg online @ http://ann.sagepub.com/cgi/reprint/618/1/55.pdf)

The U.S. war in and occupation of Iraq has benefited the wider al Qaeda movement in many ways, including providing a recruiting tool. As Michael Scheuer, the former head of the CIAs bin Laden unit, sarcastically noted, If Osama was a Christianits the Christmas present he never would have expected (CBS News
2004). In the heart of the Muslim world, with more than one hundred thousand U.S. troops occupying the country for a long period of time, Iraq has become the focus of the media throughout the world and especially the Middle

East. Arab and Muslim communities are united in their belief that the U.S. intervention is an attack on Islam and represents an attempt to subjugate a powerful Arab state. A study by Peter Bergen and Paul
Cruickshank found that the Iraq War has generated a stunning sevenfold increase in the yearly rate of fatal jihadist attacks, amounting to literally hundreds of additional terrorist attacks and thousands of civilian lives lostand that figure includes not only a surge in attacks in Iraq itself, but also an increase in the rest of the world (Bergen and Cruickshank 2007, 1-6).

Not surprisingly, Iraq has been at the center of al Qaedas fund-raising and recruitment efforts. Fighting the United States is tremendously popular among radical and even mainstream Islamist circles and proof of
bin Ladens far enemy theory: that for Muslims, the misdemeanors or even high crimes of their own governments (the near enemy) are overshadowed by those of faraway Washington.2 Within the broader Salafi community, Iraq proved an enormous public relations boon to al Qaeda. Many Salafists have condemned al Qaeda for being excessively violent and political, and in particular for its willingness to declare jihad at the drop of the hat. Even shaykhs critical of al Qaeda, however, see the struggle in Iraq as a legitimate defensive jihad, even in countries that are close allies of the United States. For example, in November 2004, twenty-six leading Saudi clerics wrote an open letter to the Iraqi people calling for a defensive jihad against the United States in Iraq (Jones 2005). Iraq has fostered a new brand of

jihad, providing a place where budding Salafi insurgents gain combat experience and forge lasting bonds that will enable them to work together in the years to come, even if they leave Iraq. Former French defense official Alexis Debat (2004, 22) contended that al Qaeda seeks to turn Iraq into what Afghanistan was before

CNDI 2010 Regents Lab

Iraq Aff

autumn 2001: a public relations windfall for their ideologues, a training ground for their rookies, and
even a safe-haven for their leadership. Indeed, it is no small irony that some of those who launched attacks on U.S. and Afghan forces in Afghanistan appear to have trained in Iraq. Although it is unclear how many of those trained and blooded in Iraq have been killed in the fighting in Afghanistan, especially when the tide turned against them in 2007, some percentage had already departed Iraq and others may flee elsewhere even if U.S. counterinsurgency operations continue to scour Iraq of the Salafi militant presence.

Well Isolate Two Scenarios: First is Nuclear Terrorism

CNDI 2010 Regents Lab

Iraq Aff

1AC Terrorism Advantage (2/

First, the risk of Nuclear Terrorism is high use would cause nuclear retaliation, and trigger a new arms race rational reactions dont apply and all experts go aff
Rhodes 12-14-09 (Richard, affiliate of the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University, Former visiting scholar at Harvard and MIT, and author of The Making of the Atomic Bomb which won the Pulitzer Prize in Nonfiction, National Book Award, and National Book Critics Circle Award. Reducing the nuclear threat: The argument for public safety http://www.thebulletin.org/web-edition/op-eds/reducing-the-nuclear-threat-theargument-public-safety) The response was very different among nuclear and national security experts when Indiana Republican Sen. Richard Lugar surveyed PDF them in 2005. This group of 85 experts judged that the possibility of a WMD attack against a city or other target somewhere in the world is real and increasing over time. The median estimate of the risk of a nuclear attack somewhere in the world by 2010 was 10 percent. The risk of an attack by 2015 doubled to 20 percent median. There was strong, though not universal, agreement that a nuclear attack is more likely to be carried out by a terrorist organization than by a government. The group was split 45 to 55 percent on whether terrorists were more likely to obtain an intact working nuclear weapon or manufacture one after obtaining weapon-grade nuclear material. The proliferation of weapons of mass destruction is not just a security problem, Lugar wrote in the reports introduction. It is the economic dilemma and the moral challenge of the current age. On September 11, 2001, the world witnessed the destructive potential of international terrorism. But the September 11 attacks do not come close to approximating the destruction that would be unleashed by a nuclear weapon. Weapons of mass destruction have made it possible for a small nation, or even a sub-national group, to kill as many innocent people in a day as national armies killed in months of fighting during World War II. The bottom line is this, Lugar concluded: For the foreseeable future, the United States and other nations will face an existential threat from the intersection of terrorism and weapons of mass destruction. Its paradoxical that a diminished threat of a superpower nuclear exchange should

somehow have resulted in a world where the danger of at least a single nuclear explosion in a major city has increased (and that city is as likely, or likelier, to be Moscow as it is to be Washington or New York). We tend to think
that a terrorist nuclear attack would lead us to drive for the elimination of nuclear weapons. I think the opposite case is at least equally likely: A terrorist nuclear attack would almost certainly be followed by a retaliatory nuclear

strike on whatever country we believed to be sheltering the perpetrators. That response would surely initiate a new round of nuclear armament and rearmament in the name of deterrence, however illogical.
Think of how much 9/11 frightened us; think of how desperate our leaders were to prevent any further such attacks; think of the fact that we invaded and occupied a country, Iraq, that had nothing to do with those attacks in the name of sending a message.

Failure to Combat Al-Qaeda in the Middle East Causes Extinction of Civilization

Jerusalem Post 2k4 (David Rudge, Terror expert: Worst is yet to come; [Daily Edition], 5-12-2004, p.06, Proquest)

Global terrorism is on the rise and is likely to continue unabated for the next 100 years , according to Prof.
Yonah Alexander, one of the world's leading analysts on the subject. Alexander, director of the Inter-Universities Center for Terrorism Studies, also believes it is only a matter of time before groups like al-Qaida use non-coventional weapons as part of attempts to promulgate their ideology and undermine western society. In this respect, he anticipates that al-Qaida's next theater of operations will be Europe, where the organization has established a widespread base and network. "If you ask me whether the worst is yet to come, the answer is definitely yes," Alexander told The Jerusalem Post prior to giving a lecture as guest speaker at the University of Haifa's National Security Studies Center. "We can expect to see an escalation in terrorism on a global scale with a continuation of conventional acts of terror, such as suicide bombings and shooting, as well as mega-terror like September 11 in the US and March 11 in Spain. "There will also be a move towards the use of non- conventional weapons: biological, chemical, nuclear as in dirty bombs, and cyber- terrorism, whereby perpetrators will try to disrupt power supplies and

10

CNDI 2010 Iraq Aff Regents Lab air traffic, for example, at the touch of a button." Alexander, who is based in the US and Israel, has studied the subject of terrorism in the Middle East and the global arena for over 40 years and has published over 100 books on the issue. The center he heads is a consortium of universities and think-tanks in some 30 countries. He said there had already been indications of future trends by terrorist organizations such as the anthrax attacks in the US after September 11, 2001, reports that al-Qaida was trying to produce ricin and, in Israel, the abortive attempt to blow up the Pi Glilot fuel and gas storage depot. "According to the studies we have conducted, we can expect a continuation of bus bombings like the ones that have occurred in Israel, as well as attempts to strike at chemical plants and infrastructure targets and super- terrorism with non-conventional weapons," said Alexander. The supposition that international terrorism will expand and escalate is based, according to Alexander, on factors such as the spread of radical theological ideology, racial intolerance, ethnic and religious differences and, especially in Africa, tribal rivalries, as well as extremist nationalism and separatism. Furthermore , he cited the numerous disputes and conflicts throughout the world, such as those in Chechnya, Kashmir, Afghanistan, the Middle East, and South America, as well as the gap between developed nations and poorer countries. "Other important factors include the intensification of the link between terrorism and organized crime, and the education of hatred, including antiSemitism, that we see all the time on various Internet sites," said Alexander. "The problem here is that children are being brought up to hate and they will pass this on to their children and so forth, which is why we don't see an end to terrorism in the next 100 years. "Should we be concerned about the future? Yes, we should, because of the motivation of terrorists, their ideologies, the availability of funds, the proliferation of conventional and non- conventional weapons, the intrinsic vulnerability of democratic societies and the high cost of trying to counter terror. "What concerns many is the expansion of international networks as seen after the Madrid bombings, when links were discovered between Spanish citizens and people in North Africa, Asia, and with various other groups like Hamas. "It would be a grave mistake, however, to say that Islam is generating this terror. In fact, Islam has been hijacked and taken hostage by extremists who are using it to serve their own interests." Alexander, in his lecture, posed the questions of whether nations should submit to terrorism and whether civilization would survive in the event of the use of non- conventional weapons. In the first case, he maintained that submission only serves to encourage terrorists and their leaders and boost their motivation, while survival would depend on nations taking all necessary steps to reduce the risks, including international intelligence cooperation. "Dealing with

terrorism requires a broad range of responses, starting with clear and coherent policies. It is necessary to have quality intelligence, as well as law enforcement, the military, and the means to counter technological and cyber-terrorism," said Alexander. "We also need an educational response because the children of today will be the terrorists of tomorrow. Unless we can defuse the extremist ideological and theological elements and their propaganda, the measures won't work. "We have to deal with the root causes and try to
improve economic and social conditions - a sort of global Marshall plan - but first it is necessary to deal with the terror leadership. "To this end some innocent civilians might be harmed but, make no mistake, this is war and to fight it nations have to pool their resources. No nation can deal with the problem unilaterally. "In the past, terrorism was regarded as a tactical rather than a strategic threat but it has become a permanent fixture and a challenge to the strategic interests of nations. "In fact," said Alexander, "it represents the most threatening challenge to civilization in the

21st century. The question of survival will depend to a great extent on how civilized society tackles this threat."

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And, ONLY the plan can free up resources necessary to counter terrorism outside Iraq and Ensure our Counter-Terrorism Strategy is Effective
Preble 2k4 (Report Of A Special Task Force Christopher Preble, Director Exiting Iraq:Why The U.S. Must End The Military Occupation And Renew The War Against Al Qaeda, pg 21-33) A number of experts agree that Iraq has diverted resources from the fight against Al Qaeda. Flynt Leverett, a former CIA analyst and Middle East specialist on the Bush National Security Council, said that Arabic-speaking

Special Forces personnel and CIA officers were pulled out of Afghanistan in March 2002 to prepare for the Iraq invasion. Pat Lang, former head of Middle East and South Asia intelligence at the Defense Intelligence Agency, pointed out, When you commit as much time and attention and resources as we did in Iraq, . . . then you subtract what you could commit to the war on terrorism. 62 Current intelligence officials, while denying that Iraq has had a negative effect on the war on terror, acknowledge that there has been a shortage of experts and that the intelligence community is struggling to meet the challenge. According to a report in the Los Angeles Times,
current and former intelligence officers said the agency was confronting one of the most difficult challenges in its history. I think theyre just sucking wind, said one former officer. 63 We may never know the extent to which the quality of intelligence collection and analysis has suffered in the process. In February 2004, the Pentagon reported that a special task force created to hunt for senior Iraqi insurgents had redirected its attention to bin Laden and other senior Taliban and Al Qaeda officials. Task Force 121, which included personnel from the Armys Delta Force and the Navy SEALs, accompanied the unit from 4th Infantry Division that captured Saddam Hussein on December 13, 2003.64 Although that shift was good news, subsequent unrest in Iraq threatens to draw those forces back into Iraq, away from the antiAl Qaeda hunt. Iraq, Terrorism, and the WMD Threat The prospect that anti-American terrorists could get nuclear weapons is perhaps the greatest threat to U.S. national security. The Bush administration has advanced the notion that its action against Husseins Iraq will deter other nations that may be in the process of developing nuclear weapons programs. Pointing to Libyas decision to end its WMD program, President Bush in his January 2004 State of the Union speech stated that for diplomacy to be effective, words must be credible, and no one can now doubt the word of America.65 The president implied that the fate of the Iraqi regime persuaded Libyan dictator Moammar Gaddafi to discard his nuclear ambitions. The administration has made similar suggestions with respect to Iran and North Korea. It is possible that the U.S. action in Iraq has made some nations rethink their plans for acquiring WMD. Nuclear proliferation expert Joseph Cirincione wonders, however, whether the United States has been able to work out deals with Iran and Libya, two of the most difficult regimes in the world, because [those countries] feared that they were next in the Bush administrations cross hairs, or because the United States is so tied down in Iraq that the administration finds it necessary to seek diplomatic solutions?66 Cirincione believes the latter, arguing that Irans willingness to negotiate has much more to do with engagement by European nations than with American belligerence. In fact, Iran may yet be hedging its bets against future U.S. threats, and it is far from clear that it has indeed given up its nuclear program.67 Meanwhile, former U.S. senator Gary Hart shed further light on Libyas apparent about-face in a Washington Post op-ed in January 2004. Hart detailed how Gaddafis regime was willing to negotiate its WMD program away more than a decade ago.68 Flynt Leverett, a former official at the National Security Council and a Middle East expert at the Brookings Institution, confirms that the Libyan move followed years of negotiations and that the specific deal concerning its WMD program was agreed to before the start of the Iraq war.69 In addition, North Korea, an avowed member of the nuclear club, has not stepped back from its nuclear brinkmanship. While the United States invaded Iraq, drove Saddam into hiding, and finally captured him, North Korea continued its nuclear program. In January 2004, a top North Korean official told a group of Americans invited to visit the Norths nuclear facilities, Times not on your side, as time goes by, we are increasing our arsenal.70 Although its claims to possess actual nuclear weapons have not been verified, the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea appears to have reprocessed thousands of spent fuel rods during the past year, sufficient for the production of several nuclear bombs.71 Almost a year after America waged preemptive war against Iraq to rid the world of a regime purported to possess WMD, the advertised gains of a belligerent strategy have not materialized. There is a growing perception around the world that possession of such weapons may be the only way to deter American belligerence. North Korea and Iran have either brazenly continued to expand their nuclear programs or have bought time through negotiation for future development of nuclear weapons. In May 2003 a U.S. congressional delegation visited North Korea. According to Curt Weldon, a Republican representative from Pennsylvania who headed the delegation, North Korea said that it was developing its nuclear weapons as a response to what they saw happened [sic] in Iraq, with the U.S. removing Saddam Hussein from power.72 The leaders there, and possibly in Iran as well, may have determined that Iraqs

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CNDI 2010 Iraq Aff Regents Lab quick collapse derived from its lack of WMD. The Iraq war has given other nations new incentives to acquire the deterrent that Iraq lacked. Many people around the globe suspect that the Iraqi WMD threat was overplayed all along. Wolfowitz suggested that policymakers settled on the one issue that everyone could agree on which was weapons of mass destruction as the core reason for going to war.73 Both the White House and Tony Blairs government in the United Kingdom have established special commissions to investigate why the prewar intelligence on Iraqs WMD programs was so faulty. Although it is proper to review history to glean lessons for the future, policy should be focused on the here and now. If indeed the American invasion of Iraq was aimed at overthrowing Saddam and separating him from hisWMDarsenal, then that job is done. Saddam Hussein is in custody, and, even accepting the increasingly dubious assumption that he recently had his hands on terror weapons, he cannot possibly deploy such weapons from a jail cell. Much of the U.S. force looking for WMDs has been withdrawn from Iraq or reassigned to other missions. If the United States wants the rest of the world to

believe that the Iraqi invasion was a defensive war aimed at reducing the threat posed by WMD, it should consider its job done and end the occupation as soon as possible . Instead, by continuing with the military occupation of Iraq, the United States plays into suspicions that its actions were somehow driven by a desire to negotiate lucrative reconstruction contracts, gain control over oil, or achieve other imperial designs.
That perception, however unfair, directly aids Al Qaeda and other anti-American terrorists who will use specious accusations of American perfidy to attract new recruits.74 The continued U.S. occupation of Iraq also serves to distract Americans from an even bigger threat. While America has been focused on the Iraq occupation, the proliferation of Pakistani nuclear technology to Iran, North Korea, Libya, and possibly Saudi Arabia has been going on under the radar. The recent revelations about Irans and Libyas nuclear programs have shown that Pakistani centrifuge technology was leaked to both nations. Pakistani nuclear technology was also shipped to North Korea as recently as last year.75 The presence of U.S.

forces in Iraq does not contribute measurably to the elimination of the WMD threat. On the contrary, the failure to locate such a threat emanating from Iraq sends troubling signals about U.S. intentions to many nations. An acknowledgement that WMD have not been found in Iraq, and a subsequent end to the occupation along with a more serious approach to the actual WMD dangers around the world, is more likely to secure peace for Americans than the current policy that ignores the worst threats. Diversion and Distraction The U.S.-led invasion and occupation of Iraq undermine the fight against radical Islamic terrorists. Instead of weakening such groups, it aids bin Laden in his quest to marshal the various and competing Islamic factions around the world in a common war against the West. President Bush has repeatedly stated that the war
on terrorism is not a war on Islam. And yet, by characterizing the war in Iraq as part of the wider war on terrorism, the president may inadvertently foment the very clash of civilizations he wishes to avoid. Al Qaeda terrorists seized upon the U.S. military presence in Saudi Arabia as a twisted justification for their acts of violence, beginning in the mid-1990s. Those avowed enemies of the West have now been joined by new groups, incensed by the presence of U.S. troops in and near Muslim holy sites in Iraq. They seethe at inadvertent transgressions of Islamic faith and custom. Non-Arab Muslims, even those who are unsympathetic to bin Ladens radical interpretation of Islamic law, perceive the presence of American forces in Baghdad, once the capital of the Islamic caliphate, as a humiliating affront to Islam; many Arabs view the American military presence in that historic city, long a center of Arab culture, as an insult to all Arabs. Indeed, Ibrahim M. Abu-Rabi, professor of Islamic studies and codirector of the Macdonald Center for the Study of Islam and Christian-Muslim relations at Hartford Seminary, predicted that the American occupation of Iraq is certainly going to enhance the position of extremist Islamist movements in the Muslim world.76 That danger was recognized by Wolfowitz, who admitted in late February 2003, before the commencement of Operation Iraqi Freedom, that anger at American pressure on Iraq and resentment over the stationing of U.S. forces in Saudi Arabia had been Osama bin Ladens principal recruiting device.77 He opined that the removal of U.S. troops from the kingdom would have positive effects throughout the region. Just lifting that burden from the Saudis is itself going to open the door to a more peaceful Middle East, Wolfowitz told an interviewer in the spring of 2003.78 Looking ahead to the post-Hussein period, Wolfowitz implied that the removal of Hussein would enable the United States to withdraw troops from the region. I cant imagine anyone here wanting to . . . be there for another 12 years to continue helping recruit terrorists.79 And yet Pentagon plans seem to call for a long-term military presence in Iraq. In early May 2004, Defense Department officials reported that they expected to keep nearly 140,000 troops in Iraq at least through the end of 2005.80 Earlier, military leaders had confided that they expected a sizable U.S. force to remain in Iraq for at least a decade. Gen. Richard Myers was even more blunt, telling reporters in April 2004 that a U.S. troop presence in Iraq might extend for decades.81 Bogged down in a long-term military occupation in Iraq, America faces the prospect of having to combat a perpetually increasing number of new enemies , even as tremendous resources

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CNDI 2010 Iraq Aff Regents Lab are already being expended to fight existing enemies. Jeffrey Record, a professor at the U.S. Air Forces Air War College, warns that the global war on terrorism as currently defined and waged is dangerously indiscriminate and ambitious and strategically unfocused.82

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Scenario 2 is Al-Qaeda in Iraq First, Terrorism in Iraq is UNIQUELY disastrous an attack on an Oil Line Could Cause MASSIVE Environmental Contamination and Destroy Freshwater for the ENTIRE Region
Ali Mohamed Al-Damkhi, Associate Professor of Environmental Sciences at (PAAET). Rana Abdullah Al-Fares is an Assistant Professor of Civil Engineering at the College of Engineering & Petroluem, Kuwait University, Terriorist Threats to The Enviroment in Iraq and Beyond, Volume 10, Number 1, February 2010, http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/global_environmental_politics/v010/10.1.al-damkhi.html The Danger of Environmental Terrorism in Iraq Environmental terrorism is a world-wide concern and potential scenarios of politically-motivated environmental destruction have been identified in regions as diverse as northern Africa, central Asia, India, and Indonesia. 6 Among all of these troubled regions, however, the situation in the Middle East, and especially in Iraq, remains unique. This is a region that is in the midst of protracted human and ecological trauma, as the destructive technologies used in the 1991 and the 2003 Gulf Wars have created long-term contamination and ongoing health problems. Further harms occur on a regular basis from small-scale insurgent attacks on infrastructure, which release a steady stream of petroleum and other contaminants into the environment . In spite of the high-tech surveillance carried out by Iraqi and American forces in an attempt to defend industrial installations, successful attacks on oil facilities have led to losses that, in economic terms, have been measured in the billions of US dollars during each of the last several years. 7 The immediate aim of such attacks is to create logistical difficulties for the new regime. However, long-term impacts on environmental sustainability and civilian health may be their most

profound legacy. The incidental oil spills and fires resulting from this destruction have already polluted water sources and agricultural areas, displacing and impoverishing thousands of people. Most disturbingly, the continuing success of attacks on infrastructure in Iraq has proven that industrial facilities in that nation are vulnerable to organizations or individuals intent on creating ecological disasters. Nearly 500 separate
attacks have been carried out on Iraqi industrial facilities since 2003, including attacks on major oil terminals in Baghdad, Basra, and Kirkuk. 8 Insurgent groups have not yet made attempts to specifically target the environment during the course of these attacks or to create a widespread disaster like the 1991 catastrophe in Kuwait, but this is not beyond the bounds of possibility. Further, the changing situation in the region may increase both the willingness and capacity of certain groups to hold the environment hostage . 9 Unfortunately, the tragedy in Kuwait left an indelible impression in the region. It showed the amount of destructive impact that can be had by targeting the environment, even and perhaps especially when the perpetrators are constrained to using hasty and improvised techniques. In Iraq, the fact that many of the combatants call the region home has acted as a powerful restraining factor. Both personal reluctance and the requirements of political efficacy have helped to reduce the likelihood of aggressive environmental destruction within the country. Unfortunately, however, an increasing sense of desperation on the part of some individuals will lead to a reevaluation of these costs as the political capital of the insurgency continues to wane. Combined with the proven inability of the new regime to protect industrial installations and a sense of tactical opportunity due to the withdrawal of international military forces, recent developments in the region only increase the likelihood of a large-scale event. Potential scenarios for such an attack are grim. Iraq produces much more oil than Kuwait and a release from a central terminal in Iraq could be devastating. In addition, individual wells in Iraq are much larger and run at significantly higher pressures than did the Kuwaiti wells that were destroyed in 1991. Some individual wells in the northern region of Kirkuk are among the largest in the world and would

burn with a ferocity unseen in Kuwait. A further threat is to be found in the proximity of Iraqi oil installations to the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. These vital waterways and their alluvial basin are extremely important to the ecology of the entire region; they also contain a large part of the fresh water available for human consumption in the Middle East. A major release into these rivers would be an unprecedented catastrophe. The firefighters and clean-up teams who responded to the tragedy in Kuwait were assisted
by the relatively accessible terrain of that country and by the ready availability of water from the Arabian Gulf. Iraq's oil fields, in contrast, stretch throughout a much larger region. Many significant wells are located in remote and mountainous

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CNDI 2010 Iraq Aff Regents Lab areas, which would complicate efforts to extinguish fires or to cut off spills. And while the military situation in Kuwait was completely stabilized just after the environmental destruction began, in Iraq the ability to respond to a significant event would be hampered by ongoing hostilities. Finally, the emergency response in Kuwait was carried out in an organized and decisive fashion. The complex political situation in Iraq leaves much uncertainty as to who would have the will and resources to orchestrate a response to a sudden environmental catastrophe. For all of these reasons, Iraq stands as

one of the most likely and worrisome potential sites for sudden environmental destruction in the world today. Preventing Environmental Terrorism The increasing likelihood and potential scope of sudden, politically-motivated acts of environmental destruction creates another layer of concern beyond the already-problematic effects of gradual environmental degradation caused by unsustainable expansion. A major occurrence, or series of occurrences, of environmental terrorism in Iraq could produce one of the worst ecological disasters in human history. The destructive effects of such an event would far outlive the immediate conflicts, and they would further disrupt efforts toward achieving stability, sustainability, and justice in the region, thus contributing to additional political turmoil and further threats of violence . What can be
done to prevent such an occurrence, in Iraq or elsewhere? It is the intent of this essay to provoke further discussion and research toward resolving this issue. Inroads need to be made both from a security/policy angle and through broader efforts toward social development, justice, and education. This final section outlines some initial directions and examples for consideration.

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And, this is the MOST important Biological Hot Spot in the World Disruption Here will Affect the Rest of the Planet
Gardner 2k3 (Vice Dean and Professor of Law, Stetson University College of Law, Gulfport, Florida. The author is the Vice Chair of the U.S. National Ramsar Committee and was a member of the United States Delegation to the Eighth Meeting of the Conference of the Contracting Parties to the Ramsar Convention, Perspectives on Wetlands and Biodiversity: International Law, Iraqi Marshlands, and Incentives for Restoration, Colorado Journal of International Environmental Law and Policy, pg nexis//cndi-ef) The Mesopotamian Marshlands are primarily located near the confluence of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers. The marshlands consist of three major units: the Al Hammar Marshes (largely south of the Euphrates); the Central Marshes (situated north of the confluence of the Tigris and Euphrates); and the Al Hawizeh Marshes (east of the Tigris, spanning the Iraq-Iran border). n66 The marshland has been the home of ancient civilizations, including the Sumerians, dating back more than 5,000 years; it is considered the likely site of the biblical "Garden of Eden." n67 The most recent inhabitants, the Ma'dan, also known as the Marsh Arabs, are primarily Shi'ite Muslim and have a population of 350,000 to 500,000. n68 The UNEP report describes the marshlands as " one of the world's most significant wetlands and a biodiversity centre of global importance." n69 The World Wildlife Fund listed the marshlands in the Global 200,

which ranks the Earth's "most biologically outstanding" habitats that are "crucial to the conservation of global biodiversity." n70 The Mesopotamian Marshlands have suffered from a decline in water quantity and quality
because of dam construction and agricultural activities. n71 Turkey's Southeast Anatolia Development project, which includes the Attaturk Dam, has resulted in unprecedented control of the [*11] Tigris and Euphrates. n72 For example, by 2001, Turkish dams on the Euphrates had a total storage value of 90.9 billion cubic meters (BCM), which is approximately "three times the average 30.7 BCM annual discharge of the Euphrates at the Syrian border." n73 Dams and irrigation projects in Syria, Iraq, and Iran also have contributed to the marshlands' desiccation. n74 The most precipitous decline, however, occurred in the early 1990s when Iraq began "a massive hydro-engineering programme" with the specific objective to drain the marshlands. n75 Unlike other water projects in the region, the Iraqi government's effort to drain the remaining marshlands was punitive in nature, designed "with the singular purpose of destroying the Marsh Arab people." n76 The Ma'dan were targeted because they were Shi'ite Muslim, a group subject to persecution under the Saddam Hussein regime. n77 The Ma'dan provided shelter to critics of the Iraqi government and participated in the uprising against Saddam Hussein in 1991 after the first Gulf War. n78 Sadly, the Iraqi government's drainage projects were brutally effective. A drainage canal known as Saddam River, which cut through the Al Hammar Marsh, was created by crews working non-stop for nine months. n79 Other dams, dikes, and canals, such as the Umm-al-Maarik ("Mother of Battles River") and Wafaa lil-Qaid ("Fidelity to the Leader"), also diverted water from the Al Hammar Marsh. n80 The Central Marshes were similarly drained through the use of canals that "effectively act as a moat structure preventing any replenishment" of the area. n81 The Al Hawizeh Marshes began to decline in 1994 after Iraq diverted two distributaries of the Tigris, the Al Musharrah and Al Kahla. n82 Further harm has occurred to the Al Hawizeh Marshes as a result of Iran's construction of a dam on the Karkheh River, the area's other source of replenishment. n83 The UNEP report characterizes the [*12] impacts as "extraordinary:" the once-extensive marshlands no longer exist. Only minor and fragmented parcels remain. The Central and Al Hammar Marshes are now dry land. The former permanent lakes of the Central Marshes (Al Zikri, Um Al Binni, etc.) have dried up; leaving behind vast stretches of salt crusts. Al Hammar, formerly the largest Lake in the lower Euphrates, has also been completely drained and is now covered with evaporates. Most of the transboundary Al Hawizeh Marsh in Iraq has been transformed into barren land. Only a small northern section remains and its shorelines are in steady retreat. The Mesopotamian marshlands have effectively been relegated to the history books, a landscape of the past. n84 The destruction of the marshlands also effectively relegated the Ma'dan way of life to the past. The approximate half-million Marsh Arabs are "essentially now a refugee population," n85 displaced elsewhere in Iraq and in Iran. n86 Various international organizations have called for the restoration or rehabilitation of the Mesopotamian marshlands. n87 The Iraq Foundation launched the Eden Again Project, to develop a comprehensive restoration plan for the marshlands. n88 In June 2002, the Iraq Foundation began to assemble an International Technical Advisory Panel (ITAP) of wetland experts as part of the project. n89 The ITAP convened in California in February 2003 and issued a report on the scientific challenges associated with restoration efforts. n90 The ITAP's principal point of consensus was that partial restoration is "technically feasible and worthwhile." n91 Nevertheless, the ITAP emphasized that water quality and quantity issues would complicate any such efforts. n92 Due to the presence of salt and contaminants in the soil of some marshland areas, the ITAP warned that "uncontrolled release of water ...

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CNDI 2010 Iraq Aff Regents Lab could result in the spread of contaminants that would further [*13] aggravate these problems." n93 The most significant obstacle, however, is the availability of a sufficient amount of water . n94 As such, the ITAP noted that the agreement of local stakeholders and international cooperation were necessary to resolve this matter. n95 A meeting of wetland experts, NGO representatives, and development officials sponsored by UNEP in May 2003 yielded similar recommendations, calling for international collaboration to assist with restoration activities. n96 Some restoration is already occurring on an ad hoc basis. For example, in April 2003, a small portion of the Al Hammar marsh near Zayad received water from the Euphrates when an Iraqi irrigation official, with the aid of a United States military escort, opened a dam. n97 The irrigation official appeared to be acting largely on his own initiative, since the Iraqi government had ceased to function. n98 The Washington Post reported that the official did so because he "felt [he] needed to do whatever [he] could to restore what Saddam destroyed." n99 A local sheik described the renewed marsh as a "gift from God." n100

The Impact is Global Extinction

Takacs, Environmental Humanities Prof @ CSU Monteray Bay, 1996 (David, The Idea of Biodiversity: Philosophies of Paradise pg. 200-201) So biodiversity keeps the world running. It has value and of itself, as well as for us. Raven, Erwin, and Wilson oblige us to think about the value of biodiversity for our own lives. The Ehrlichs rivet-popper trope makes this same point; by eliminating rivets, we play Russian roulette with global ecology and human futures: It is likely that destruction of the rich complex of species in the Amazon basin could trigger rapid changes in global climate patterns. Agriculture remains heavily dependent on stable climate, and human beings remain heavily dependent on food. By the end of the century the extinction of perhaps a million species in the Amazon basin could have entrained famines in which a billion human beings perished. And if our species is very unlucky, the famines could lead to a thermonuclear war, which could extinguish civilization. 13 Elsewhere Ehrlich uses different particulars with no less drama: What then will happen if the current decimation of organic diversity continues? Crop yields will be more difficult to maintain in the face of climatic change, soil erosion, loss of dependable water supplies,

decline of pollinators, and ever more serious assaults by pests. Conversion of productive land to wasteland will accelerate; deserts will continue their seemingly inexorable expansion. Air pollution will increase, and local climates will become harsher. Humanity will have to forgo many of the direct economic benefits it might have withdrawn from Earth's wellstocked genetic library. It might, for example, miss out on a cure for cancer; but that will make little difference. As ecosystem services falter, mortality from respiratory and epidemic disease, natural disasters, and especially famine will lower life expectancies to the point where cancer (largely a disease of the elderly) will be unimportant. Humanity will bring upon itself consequences depressingly similar to those expected from a nuclear winter. Barring a nuclear conflict, it appears that civilization will disappear some time before the end of the next century - not with a bang but a whimper.14

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Moreover, Experts Agree these water shortages would IMMEDIATELY escalate to Water Wars and Middle Eastern Collapse
Christian Science Monitor 99 (What could float - or sink peacemaking, pg nexis//cndi-ef) After all, destroying an enemy's water and its sources has been a strategic aim in every war fought in the Mideast during the past two generations. And severe water shortages here - the Middle East is experiencing its driest spell in 50 years - could complicate any talks. "If we solve every other problem in the Middle East but do not satisfactorily resolve the water problem, our region will explode," once warned the late Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, one of the architects of the Mideast peace process. As crops shrivel, river and reservoir levels drop,

and new dams and competing claims loom, experts are striving to cope with dwindling water resources. "The Malthusian specter is real in the Middle East," says Thomas Stauffer, a Washington-based Mideast water and energy analyst. Water resources are "fully utilized," while the population continues to grow - ingredients the economist Malthus predicted would lead to conflict. "The consequences are profound. Scarcity means conflict, so oil wars are less likely than water wars." His concerns are echoed by the results of a twoyear study carried out by the US National Academy of Sciences alongside Israeli, Jordanian, and Palestinian water experts. "Fresh-water supplies in the Middle East now are barely sufficient to maintain a quality standard of living," said Gilbert White, a University of Colorado geographer who led the team. Increasing water use
across the largely arid region, the team found, guarantees that "the area's inhabitants will almost assuredly live under conditions of significant water stress in the near future." Already, at least 400 million people live in regions with severe water shortages. Within 50 years, that figure is expected to soar to 4 billion. There is no more water on the planet than there was 2,000 years ago, when the population was just 3 percent what it is today. " Our concerns about global warming are trivial compared to the issues that we face over water," a senior official of NASA's Earth Sciences Directorate has said. Headwaters of strife Among the first to recognize that water and its sources were strategic assets to fight for - or to target - were the Zionist Jews who created Israel in 1948. As early as 1919, they claimed that the "minimum requirements" for a viable Jewish state were "dependent" on controlling the headwaters of the Jordan River, Mt. Hermon on the Golan Heights, and Lebanon's Litani River. In the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, Israeli troops captured most of those sources, and in 1978 and 1982 made bids to control the Litani. Israel for decades has been pumping 80 percent of the water from the aquifer that was mostly under the occupied West Bank, and Palestinians have been prohibited from drilling any new wells themselves. Today fully half of Israel's water supply comes from territory captured in 1967. "That represents $ 1 billion a year in opportunity costs for Israel," says Mr. Stauffer. "That is 1 billion reasons why it is a casus belli [pretext for war]." The imbalance has been acute, with Israelis using many times more water than Palestinians in the territories. In one reported example, Hebron water officials say that the 5,000 Israeli settlers in the Hebron region receive 17,000 cubic meters of water a day, while the 400,000 Palestinians in the city get a total of just 7,000 cubic meters. " The problem of dealing with water is that everyone is in crisis now," says Gershon Baskin, the head of the Israel/Palestine Center for Research and Information in Bethlehem, which presented a policy paper to Mr. Barak spelling out how being "generous" on the water issue will "pay off for Israel 10-fold." "I'm concerned that pressure of the drought could affect negotiators, so that they might miss the forest for the trees and not be forthcoming on water," he says. Handing back the Golan is a tougher case: "That's the drinking water for Israel," Mr. Baskin says. "It's impossible to give up the Golan without a water rights deal with Syria." The case of Jordan Already at peace with Israel is Jordan, which - lacking both water and cash to fund alternatives - is among the 10 most water-poor nations on earth. Water shortages here are chronic, with running water in the capital sometimes limited to one day per week. Other desert nations like Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states, which have even less water, can turn their "oil into water" by paying the high costs of desalination plants. A series of joint water measures are part of Jordan's peace deal with Israel, and Syria is also providing water to Jordan. Part of the problem is that half Jordan's water is "unaccounted for," 60 percent of that through system leaks. The government is now moving to curb overuse of aquifers, and a big fossil water deposit has not yet been tapped. Donors - especially the United States Agency for International Development - are making vigorous efforts to rehabilitate the water infrastructure. The $ 60 million USAID program also rehabilitates springs and wells that will provide for 400,000 people. For thirsty Jordan, this is good news. But regionwide, high birthrates mean that renewable water resources have dropped precipitously. Jordan is the hardest hit. In 1960, each Jordanian had available 529 cubic meters of water. By 1990, that figure had halved to 224 cm. The estimate for the year 2025

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CNDI 2010 Iraq Aff Regents Lab is just 91 cm per person. "Now we are shouting that we have little water, at 170 cubic meters this year," says a Jordanian water engineer. "Imagine: what will we do when we have only half of that amount?" The Euphrates and Tigris The same question is being asked in Syria and Iraq, downstream from the source in Turkey of the Euphrates and Tigris Rivers. The source of tension has been Turkey's massive Southeast Anatolian Development Project (GAP), a $ 32 billion network of 22-dams and 19 hydroelectric projects that, at a cost of $ 32 billion, is designed to bring electricity and irrigation water to the poor southeast and cover one-fourth of Turkey's future electricity needs. But Syria and Iraq are watching their water levels drop. By one account, the flow from the Euphrates has been cut in half since the 1970s. This dip has made Iraq's portion of water, year by year, increasingly salty. When the largest piece of the puzzle, the Ataturk Dam was being built in 1984, Syria responded by supporting Kurdish rebels of the Kurdistan Worker's Party to show its distaste. Turkey has asserted the right to use its waters as it pleased. And in 1990 there was reportedly high-level talk about cutting off Iraq's flow of water to punish Baghdad for invading Kuwait. "Water is a weapon," the Ataturk Dam site supervisor has declared. "We can stop the flow of water into Syria and Iraq for up to eight months without overflowing our dams, in order to regulate the Arab's political behavior."

Water Wars Escalate and Go Nuclear

NASCA 06 (National Association for Scientific & Cultural Appreciation Water Shortages Only A Matter Of Time. http://www.nasca.org.uk/Strange_relics_/water/water.html) Water is one of the prime essentials for life as we know it. The plain fact is - no water, no life! This becomes all the more worrying when we realize that the worlds supply of drinkable water will soon diminish quite rapidly. In fact a recent report commissioned by the United Nations has emphasized that by the year 2025 at least 66% of the worlds population will be without an adequate water supply. As a disaster in the making water shortage ranks in the top category. Without water we are finished, and it is thus imperative that we protect the mechanism through which we derive our supply of this life giving fluid. Unfortunately the exact opposite is the case. We are doing incalculable damage to the planets capacity to generate water and this will have far ranging consequences for the not too distant future. The United Nations has warned that burning of fossil fuels is the prime cause of water shortage. While there may be other reasons such as increased solar activity it is clear that this is a situation over which we can exert a great deal of control . If not then the future will be very bleak indeed! Already the warning signs are there. The last year has seen devastating heatwaves in many parts of the world including the USA where the state of Texas experienced its worst drought on record. Elsewhere in the United States forest fires raged out of control, while other regions of the globe experienced drought conditions that were even more severe. Parts of Iran, Afgahnistan, China and other neighbouring countries experienced their worst droughts on record. These conditions also extended throughout many parts of Africa and it is clear that if circumstances remain unchanged we are facing a disaster of epic proportions . Moreover it will be one for which there is no easy answer. The spectre of a world water shortage evokes a truly frightening scenario. In fact the United Nations warns that

disputes over water will become the prime source of conflict in the not too distant future. Where these shortages become ever more acute it could forseeably lead to the brink of nuclear conflict. On a lesser scale water, and the price of it, will acquire an importance somewhat like the current value placed on oil. The
difference of course is that while oil is not vital for life, water most certainly is! It seems clear then that in future years countries rich in water will enjoy an importance that perhaps they do not have today. In these circumstances power shifts are inevitable, and this will undoubtedly create its own strife and tension. In the long term the implications do not look encouraging. It is a two edged sword. First the shortage of water, and then the increased stresses this will impose upon an already stressed world of politics. It means that answers need to be found immediately. Answers that will both ameliorate the damage to the environment, and also find new sources of water for future consumption. If not, and the problem is left unresolved there will eventually come the day when we shall find ourselves with a nightmare situation for which there will be no obvious answer.

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And, Even if the Conflict stays in the Middle East, that still wipes out the planet
Hoffman 2k6 (Staffwriter, 'Nuclear winter' looms, experts say, Inside Bay Area (California), pg nexis//cndi-ef) Researchers at the American Geophysical Union's annual meeting warned Monday that even a small

regional nuclear war could burn enough cities to shroud the globe in black smoky shadow and usher in the manmade equivalent of the Little Ice Age. "Nuclear weapons represent the greatest single human threat to the planet, much more so than global warming," said Rutgers University atmospheric scientist Alan Robock. By dropping imaginary Hiroshima-sized bombs into some of the world's biggest cities, now swelled to tens of millions in population, University of Colorado researcher O. Brian Toon and colleagues found they could generate 100 times the fatalities and 100 times the climate-chilling smoke per kiloton of explosive power as all-out nuclear war between the United States and former Soviet Union. For most modern nuclear-war scenarios, the global impact isn't nuclear winter, the notion of smoke from incinerated cities blotting out the sun for years and starving most of the Earth's people. It's not even nuclear autumn, but rather an instant nuclear chill over most of the planet, accompanied by massive ozone loss and warming at the poles. That's what scientists' computer simulations suggest would happen if nuclear war broke out in a hot spot such as the Middle East, the North Korean peninsula or, the most modeled case, in Southeast Asia. Unlike in the Cold War, when the United States and Russia mostly targeted each other's nuclear, military and strategic industrial sites, young nuclear-armed nations have fewer weapons and might go for maximum effect by using them on cities, as the United States did in 1945. "We're at a perilous crossroads," Toon said. The spread of nuclear weapons worldwide combined with global migration into dense megacities form what he called "perhaps the greatest danger to the stability of society since the dawn of humanity." More than 20 years ago, researchers imagined a U.S.-Soviet nuclear holocaust would wreak havoc on the planet's climate. They showed the problem was potentially worse than feared: Massive urban fires would flush hundreds of millions of tons of black soot skyward, where -- heated by sunlight -- it would soar higher into the stratosphere and begin cooking off the protective ozone layer around the Earth. Huge losses of ozone would open the planet and its inhabitants to damaging radiation , while the warm soot would spread a pall sufficient to plunge the Earth into freezing year-round. The hundreds of millions who would starve exceeded those who would die in the initial blasts and radiation.

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And, ONLY the plan can Stop Terrorism and Specifically Al-Qaeda in its tracks Failure to End Military Presence Guts Resources, Intelligence, and Logistics and Provides a Breeding Ground and Recruitment Tool that Makes NEW attacks inevitable
Preble 2k4 (Report Of A Special Task Force Christopher Preble, Director Exiting Iraq:Why The U.S. Must End The Military Occupation And Renew The War Against Al Qaeda, pg 21-33)

Fears of U.S. strategic overstretch in the global war on terrorism, and of the U.S. occupation playing into bin Ladens strategy for recruiting new followers, are well-founded. According to a senior intelligence
official interviewed by the Washington Post, Islamic military organizations in North Africa and Southeast Asia, which were previously focused on overthrowing local governments, have been caught by bin Ladens vision, and poisoned by it. Claiming that the United States was now a target for those disparate groups, the unnamed official explained, That is one manifestation of how bin Ladens views are expanding well beyond Iraq.83 And although the president has argued that the war in Iraq has severely weakened the forces of global terrorism, a December 2003 report in Janes Intelligence Digest found that Al Qaeda and its affiliates continue to operate despite sanctions and travel bans and that the group is continuing to collect funds from wealthy donors, criminal enterprises, and the illegal narcotics trade.84 In testimony before Congress in late February 2004, CIA director George Tenet categorically reaffirmed that Al Qaeda posed a threat and that the terrorist network retained the ability to launch catastrophic attacks against the United States. Appearing alongside Tenet, FBI director Robert Mueller warned of attacks on subways and bridges in major cities and speculated that Al Qaeda will revisit missed targets until they succeed. Vice Adm. Lowell Jacoby, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, explained that attacks with portable, shoulderfired missiles against civilian aircraft were a significant concern for intelligence and law enforcement officials.85 A prolonged U.S. military presence in Iraq is an open invitation for a steady buildup of grassroots Muslim anger. That anger is certain to converge on the United States, all of which plays further into bin Ladens evil designs. New terrorist networks are forming all over the globe. Active recruitment by groups sharing the Al Qaeda philosophy is being reported not only in Muslim-majority nations but also across Europe, including Italy, France, Britain, and Spain. The bombings of several commuter trains in Spain on March 11, 2004, were originally attributed to the Basque separatist group ETA, but when the shadowy group Brigade of Abu Hafs al-Masri sent an e-mail to an Arabic newspaper based in London, attention focused on the possibility that Islamic terrorists had had a hand in the attacks. Spanish authorities subsequently identified six Moroccans who were believed to have carried out the attacks. One of those suspects, Jamal Zougam, was alleged to have ties to Salatin Jihadin, the group responsible for bombings in Casablanca in May 2003 that claimed the lives of 45 people. The attacks raise the specter of domestic terrorist groups making common cause with transnational entities such as Al Qaeda and posing an entirely new and deadly threat throughout Europe and beyond. Peter Beaumont and Anthony Barnett of the Guardian report that dormant networks that once recruited and fed fighters into Afghanistan have since the war in Iraq been reactivated and reorganised for a new global jihad aimed at the U.S. and its allies.86 How the Occupation Feeds Global Jihad There is an understandable impulse to want to prevent the preachers of radical Islamic ideology from recruiting would-be terrorists who may then perpetrate attacks, but the admonition to medical doctors seems more applicable: primum non nocere (first do no harm). If our counterterrorism efforts are actually contributing to a worsening perception of the U nited States by a growing number of Muslims, and if that leads to hostility toward the United States, then we have adopted a losing strategy. On at least one level, Rumsfeld himself seemed to recognize that concern. In a confidential memorandum to his staff, Rumsfeld asked, perhaps rhetorically, Are we winning or losing the Global War on Terror? and Are we capturing, killing or deterring and dissuading more terrorists every day than the madrassas and the radical clerics are recruiting, training and deploying against us? Worried that the United States lacked metrics to measure success or failure, Rumsfeld conceded, We are having mixed results with Al Qaida and we are just getting started with Ansar Al-Islam. Accordingly, he wondered whether the United States needed to fashion a broad, integrated plan to stop the next generation of terrorists.87 A winning strategy must begin with a better understanding of

the nature of the threat and then proceed to realistic measures for monitoring and containing the threat. The invasion and subsequent occupation of Iraq are based on the premise that U.S.-led regime change in the Arab world will undermine bin Ladens radical ideology. But regime change (or decapitation, the popular term used in the targeting of Saddam during the invasion) does not cure the underlying ideology of radical Islam.

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CNDI 2010 Iraq Aff Regents Lab On the contrary, such action can instead focus the energies and wrath of the subscribers to that ideology on the United States and its allies. That will be particularly true if the regime change is based on dubious national security justifications. In the 1980s and 1990s, several Islamic groups, including bin Ladens Al Qaeda, followed in the path laid out by scholars such as Syed Qutb of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood and his associate Abdallah Azzam. Those groups battled their respective regional authorities whom they perceived as oppressors. Bin Laden, however, diverged from that approach by redirecting his anger away from the corrupt regime of the House of Saud and toward the United States. He focused particular attention on the presence of U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia after the first Persian Gulf War. The September 11, 2001, attacks, as well as earlier attacks on U.S. embassies in Africa in 1998 and on the USS Cole in 2000, constituted a series of opening strikes in his war on the United States. When bin Laden created the International Islamic Front in 1998, only a few groups from Egypt, Pakistan, and Bangladesh signed up to fight in the redirected crusade.88 The Iraq invasion and the subsequent occupation, however, have changed the equation. Intense Muslim resentment of the United States is only reinforced by the perception that the U.S. invasion was motivated by greed, by a desire to control Iraqs oil resources, for construction profits for companies connected to the Bush administration, or even for a wholesale re-colonization of Iraq. Although such accusations might seem absurd on their face, even inconsequential stories, such as the reports of price gouging by U.S. subcontractors, are important not just for their scandalous import within the United States but because they seem to confirm in the minds of Muslims around the globe the malicious intentions of the United States. Aseries of events in early April 2004 precipitated an intensification and widening of the Iraqi insurgency, which threatens to accelerate the buildup of anti-American sentiment among Muslims and could ultimately inspire terrorists wedded to Al Qaedas philosophy to redouble their efforts. The events were triggered when the U.S.-led occupation authorities shut down a newspaper published by Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr and later attempted to serve a warrant for his arrest. Al-Sadrs newspaper had been publishing inflammatory articles urging readers to resist the U.S. occupation, and the relatively junior cleric has a considerable following in Baghdad and some cities and towns in southern Iraq. Al-Sadrs followers, including his armed militia, the Mahdi Army, responded to Coalition pressure on al-Sadr by carrying out attacks on U.S.-led Coalition forces and taking over key installations in several Iraqi cities. That largely Shiite uprising took U.S. officials by surprise, as Shiites had been systematically repressed by Husseins regime and had been generally supportive of U.S. aims. During the same time, clashes erupted between U.S. Marines and largely Sunni insurgents in Fallujah. Sporadic fighting culminated in the ghastly killing and mutilation of several American contractors and was followed by a U.S. military assault on the town. The attacks on Sadrs followers and on the people of Fallujah fed into one other, with the images of Iraqi casualties inflaming antiAmerican sentiments across the nation. More than a hundred American troops, and a number of civilian contractors, were killed during this period. But the losses also extended to declining American prestige as anti-U.S. insurgents at least temporarily gained control of large areas in many towns across the nation, and the American military was forced to call a temporary ceasefire in Fallujah as reports of hundreds of Iraqi civilian casualties resonated in the region. Soon after the events of early April, the leaders of two of Americas closest regional allies, President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt and King Abdullah of Jordan, expressed grave concerns about intensifying animosity toward the United States across the region. On April 20, 2004, Mubarak said, After what has happened in Iraq, there is unprecedented hatred and the Americans know it. The despair and feeling of injustice are not going to be limited to our region alone, he warned.89 A few days earlier, Jordans King Abdullah expressed similar sentiments. During a question and answer session following his speech to the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco, Abdullah explained that images of an American tank pointing at Iraqi citizens . . . [are] creating . . . in the Middle East . . . some sort of animosity that I never felt or heard about towards the United States.90 Terrorism expert Rohan Gunaratna fears that such intensifying animosity could translate into an increased threat of terrorism. Iraq is the new land of jihad and the events there are having a profound impact on the Islamic movements and Muslim societies worldwide, Gunaratna reports, and he worries that Iraq was now providing the inspiration for a new generation of terrorists .91 Even before the operations in Fallujah and the crackdown on al- Sadrs followers, the strategy for defusing anti-American resentment in Iraq seems to have been the incarceration of supposed terrorists and would-be terrorists. Many Iraqis have been detained by occupation authorities without charges being brought against them, inviting comparisons, however unfair, with the abuses of Saddams regime and condemnation by international human rights groups.92 Those comparisons seemed only more plausible with the revelation of prisoner abuse in the Abu Ghraib prison. The rhetoric used in April 2004 against U.S. occupation forces is eerily similar to that used in the past in Iraq. Some Iraqis recalled how the slogan No more Shiites after today was painted on the barrels of Iraqi tanks dispatched in 1991 to crush a nascent Shiite rebellion. After the fall of Saddam, some Shiites turned that around on their Sunni oppressors with slogans in Shiite-dominated cities in southern Iraq declaring No Baathists after today. In a stark demonstration of the extent to which traditional animosities among Iraqs religious and ethnic groups have been subsumed beneath common hostility toward American and Coalition forces, Washington Post reporters noticed, after a week of violence concentrated against the city of Fallujah, a sign declaring No more occupation after today.93 A poll taken in late March and early April 2004, before much of the fighting that took place in April and before the Abu Ghraib scandal, found that 57 percent of Iraqis wanted the occupation to end immediately, and 67 percent believed that attacks against U.S.

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CNDI 2010 Iraq Aff Regents Lab forces in Iraq were justified at least some of the time.94 An earlier ABC news poll found that nearly half of all Iraqi Arabs surveyed believed that the U.S. invasion was wrong and that it humiliated Iraq.95 The problem of rising popular opposition is unique to neither Iraq nor the U.S. militarys tactics there. Counterinsurgency operations necessitate the use of force against suspected insurgent hideouts, raising the risk of collateral casualties among innocent Iraqis. Images of those attacks, of destroyed buildings, and of dead and wounded Iraqis are quickly amplified and broadcast to the Arab and Muslim worlds by global media outlets such as Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya. Two Al Jazeera headlines from October 2003U.S. Soldiers Trigger Happy in Iraq and U.S. Occupiers Compared to Mongol Looters point to the public relations problem occupying armies face.96 Rising hostility toward the United States is not limited to Iraq. Two polls conducted around the one-year anniversary of the beginning of the war, but before the events of April and May 2004 that saw widespread violence throughout much of Iraq, confirm the negative effects that the occupation has already had on popular perceptions of the United States. According to pollsters at the Pew Research Center, A year after the war in Iraq, discontent with America and its policies has intensified rather than diminished. The poll shows that large percentages of Pakistanis, Jordanians, and Moroccans view Osama bin Laden favorably. Pew researchers also found that overwhelming majorities in Jordan and Morocco believe suicide attacks against Americans and other Westerners in Iraq are justifiable. Even in relatively liberal Turkey, 31 percent of those polled believe that the attacks are justified.97 Whereas the teachings of Taimiya, Qutb, and Azzam once found favor with only a small subset of the followers of Islam, these and other polls show that bin Ladens

struggle against the United States now resonates with tens of millions of Muslims. The danger posed by such resonance increases as the American occupation of Iraq continues and images of humiliation and
oppression are broadcast around the globe.

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Fortunately, a Quick Withdrawal Undermines the Message of Terrorists and Cuts off a CRITICAL recruiting Tool Solves Terrorism
Christopher Preble, Director of Forgein Policy at The Cato Insitute, August 4th 2004, Exiting Iraq and Renewing the War on Al Qudea, http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=2770 But the United States need not retain troops in Iraq to protect our vital security interests there. America's capacity for projecting our power around the world is truly unprecedented. Just ask the Taliban, who

learned that the United States need not have troops stationed within a given country, or even in the vicinity of a given country, to annihilate an odious regime that threatened the safety and security of Americans. An orderly withdrawal by U.S. forces can be touted for what it is: a victory for both the United States and Iraq, the logical conclusion to action that resulted in the removal of a brutal dictator. The United States can then use withdrawal from Iraq to its own advantage by countering propaganda by the likes of bin Laden, and other anti-American extremists, who characterize the American occupation as a vehicle for asserting U.S. dominance in the region. By withdrawing militarily from Iraq, the United States will be broadcasting to the world--in particular the Arab and Muslim worlds--that the United States has no plans to take control of Middle East oil or to otherwise impose its will on the region's populace. Such a message will seriously undermine the terrorists' most effective recruitment tactics. It will also undermine the terrorists' tortured claims that their acts of violence against heroic Iraqis who have willingly cooperated with Coalition forces somehow serve the interests of Iraqis. Such claims were always tenuous: They would be absurd on their face in the absence of a foreign occupation force seen as thwarting the wishes of the Iraqi people.

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Advantage 2: U.S. Credibility First, U.S. Soft Power is Recovering, but Obama MUST stay strong and credible His Credibility on Iraq is the critical access point to prevent multiple scenarios for Global Destruction
Quelch et al 2k9 (John A. Quelch is the Lincoln Filene Professor at Harvard Business School. Katherine E. Jocz is a Senior Research Associate at Harvard Business School, Can Brand Obama Rescue Brand America?, The Brown Journal of World Affairs, Fall 2009, pg nexis//cndi-ef)
In the period following World War II, the United States assumed the leadership mantle in the free world, and, after the fall of the Soviet Union, in virtually the entire world. The nation, backed by a majority of its politicians and citizens, aspired to be not just a powerful leader but also a respected leader, admired for its actions, policies, and values. Citizens and governments of other nation-states, to a greater or lesser degree, judged the United States favorably on the three major dimensions of nation-state leadership: military, moral, and economic. Military strength, combined effectively with soft power, translated into diplomatic effectiveness. Core moral values associated with the United States were appreciated and perceived to guide the nation's actions and the attitudes and behaviors of its people . The economic and

Over the eight years of the administration of President George W. Bush, however, the United States' positive image as global leader declined precipitously in all three dimensions.1 Citizens in other countries lost respect for the United States, and, as a result, their political leaders had more latitude not to follow or even to publicly question or oppose the United States. Anti-American sentiment, always present among the European elites, became the public norm. During the 2008 American U.S. presidential campaign, restoring the image of the United States abroad was a central theme of candidate Barack Obama.2 Within days of taking office, the Obama administration set about doing so. Within months, the enormous goodwill generated by the election of Obama and the repudiation of his predecessor's policies translated into more favorable perceptions. But will the newly regained popularity persist? Or will the lingering effects of Bush's legacy and the calamitous global economic situation, widely thought of as having originated in the United States , overwhelm all efforts to fix the nation's reputation ?
financial strength of the United States, which currently accounts for more than one-fourth of world GDP, led an integrated, rising global economy. Plummeting Esteem Polls taken by the Pew Research Center reveal a precipitous erosion of favorable views of the United States during the Bush years.3 Even among allies, and despite small upticks in 2008, positive views were far below the levels polls reported in 1999 and 2000. A poll commissioned by the BBC World Service in 2007 also yielded bleak results: among 26,000 people questioned across the 25 largest countries, more than 52 percent thought that the United States had a "mostly negative" influence on the world.4 In another survey, the majority of respondents thought the United States could "not be

negative perceptions reflected a decline in America's military strength, moral leadership, and economic leadership. Under Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, America's relative military
trusted;" for example, in neighboring Latin America, 84 percent of Argentines and 80 percent of Peruvians agreed it could not be trusted.5 These strength grew with the peaceful conclusion of the Cold War. The latter won the first Gulf War with an impressive coalition of allies. President Bill Clinton husbanded military power by limiting military

The attacks on 9/11 revealed vulnerability that eight years of follow-up conflict only aggravated. The George W. Bush administration's military response began in Afghanistan and then moved on to stall in Iraq (which impaired the ability to concentrate on Afghanistan and secure its
entanglements. peace and stability). The "coalition of the willing" never matched the coalition arranged for the First Gulf War and dwindled to nominal participation by a few countries. U.S. military leadership did not make

. The United States ranked high as a warmonger and low as a peacemaker. The military operations in Iraq, along with the rendition of alleged terrorists to foreign governments known to practice torture, and the detention and torture of prisoners in Guantanamo and secret CIA jails, remain deeply unpopular abroad on moral grounds . Indeed, many in Europe consider these acts to be war crimes. The refusal of the U.S. government to the International Criminal Court has not helped . Taking military and moral leadership together, the United States acquired a reputation, personified by President Bush, of being arrogant, selfish, a bully, a unilateral militarist, and anti-Muslim, anti-Arab crusader, not to mention a threat to global peace. The president's unyielding stance and with-us-orthe world a safer place in the view of many Pew survey respondents against-us attitude outweighed modest public diplomacy efforts by the State Department to win hearts and minds. In fairness, Bush publicly defended and protected American Muslims after 9/11, notably speaking against racial profiling, but won few points overseas for doing so. Former Bush Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage has said that, after 9/11, the United States exported fear and anger, rather than hope and optimism.6 As Armitage suggested, the United States' image as a global leader does not rest solely on overseas military actions and foreign policies. It also reflects American core values and U.S. economic leadership. Throughout the post-World War II period, the United States exported free-market policies and economic growth as well as popular culture. Abroad and at home, the United States stood for individual rights, impartial justice, and fulfillment of the American Dream of hope, prosperity, and opportunity. In the 1990s, views of the United States were mainly positive. According to U.S. State department data from 1999 and 2000, for example, public opinion in Indonesia, Morocco, and Turkey was 75 percent, 77 percent, and 62 percent favorable, respectively, versus 30 percent, 49 percent, and 12 percent in the Pew 2005/2006 data.7 Under Bush, the United States' reputation for human rights was diminished by the suspension of habeas corpus for military detainees and passage of the Patriot Act allowing secret monitoring of its citizens. Money and attention spent on wars took away resources that could have been directed at social problems in the United States, infamous for its high rates of capital punishment (fifth among countries in the number of executions) and incarceration (one out of every 100 citizens behind bars; one of every 31 adults either in prison, on probation or on parole; one of every 9 black males between ages 20 and 34 in jail).8 In mid-2008, a United Nations Special Rapporteur rebuked the country for problems with the military justice system and unfair applications of the death penalty.9 The grossly inadequate response to the destruction of a major American city by Hurricane Katrina raised questions about racial discrimination and government competence. Additionally, from the standpoint of a secular Western Europe with Enlightenment values, America's reputation for religious tolerance became enmeshed with the fundamentalist religious right and a disdain for science, as evidenced by controversies over teaching evolution or supporting stem-cell research, while from the standpoint of Islamic theocracies, religious freedom continued to represent moral decadence. International exchanges and person-to-person contacts are powerful determinants of national image. People who have visited the United States or interacted with Americans are much less likely to view it negatively.10 However, following 9/11, tougher restrictions meant that many foreigners lost the opportunity to experience posi tive aspects of the United States. As recently as fall 2008, Europeans and Australians seeking student visas could expect delays of two to three months; the wait was longer for Chinese, Indians, Middle Easterners, and Russians. U.S. universities, once the first choice of foreign students, particularly of those studying science and engineering, lost ground to those in the United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia.11 Thanks to the current global economic crisis, the United States' economic leadership declined as well. Developed countries, in particular, blame the United States for the financial contagion that has left no corner of the world untouched.12 Reacting, in part, to the business community's outcry over the Sarbanes-Oxley legislation to improve corporate governance following the Enron debacle, the Bush administration adopted a hands-off approach to regulation of financial services and markets. The deterioration of the quality and quantity of government oversight and regulation proved to be no match for the financial engineering creativity of Wall Street. U.S.-led economic globalization was already being discredited, as poor countries grew relatively poorer during the Bush years.13 Countries that opened markets in accord with the so-called "Washington Consensus" promoted during the 1990s to reform developing countries experienced significant economic shocks.14 And, according to Pew polls, although the economic globalization promoted by America received widespread support during the past decade, growing concerns emerged about the global impact of the widening gap between rich and poor, the environmental consequences of economic growth, and the spread of American culture. Instead of seeking to repair the image of the United States as the largest contributor to greenhouse gas emissions, the Bush administration not

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only declined to lead the effort to devise solutions, but also backed away from the multilateral Kyoto Protocol to deal with climate change. On the positive side, most negative feelings were directed toward the U.S. government and leaders, not the its people or democracy, which, after all, surprised the world with the election of Obama.15 U.S. humanitarian assistance in Africa, including public-health measures, is appreciated, and President Bush deserves credit for his leadership role. U.S. technologies and products are admired. Although much of the world rejects most of the policies of the Bush administration, there

The election of President Obama presented an opportunity to wipe the slate clean of the previous administration's failings. The task was immeasurably aided
remains a desire for a reformed United States to play an important, cooperative role in dealing with global problems.16

by the convergence of the new leader's image with positively viewed aspects of the country. Obama represents such core U.S. values as uplift, hope, opportunity, tolerance, and community. To the millions of people around the world who closely followed the presidential election and applauded the result, he represents a clean break from the past, a new respect for other cultures, and a willingness to listen to and cooperate with others. Does Image Matter? With all the pressing problems facing the new administration, should it be particularly concerned about improving the United States' image? What difference does it make if the country is perceived favorably or not? There are at least three reasons. First, the United States needs supporters. Problems such as climate change, economic stability, and terrorism are so complex that no government can solve them alone . A United States perceived as good intentioned and

trustworthy commands cooperation from other governments. Through soft power, it achieves its goals by sharing effort. Moreover, moral leadership lends legitimacy to hard power. If the United States appears to
act based on values such as human rights, the rule of international law, or peace making, as opposed to, say, selfishly securing oil reserves, the world will be more likely to respect its foreign interventions. Further, although esteem is not a zero-sum gain, the United States is more able to accomplish its goals if it has deeper and broader appeal than other major powers. Currently, Russia and Vladimir Putin are viewed unfavorably.17 China is viewed with some apprehension: Pew favorability ratings for China have fallen since 2002,
particularly in Europe and in neighboring India, Japan, and Russia. However, China is expected by many to replace the United States as the top economic power-sooner rather than later given the current financial situation. Western Europe may gain in appeal: a Gallup survey that interviewed nearly 50,000 people in more than 60 countries in 2005 found that citizens nominated the following tasks as the top priority for political leaders: closing the gap between rich and poor, economic growth, protecting the environment, and eliminating poverty.18 These priorities represent a closer fit with the agenda of the social democracies of Western Europe than with the free-market philosophy of the United States during the last decade. A second reason to be concerned about image is that perception, in part, shapes reality. To treat unfavorable views as either irrelevant or unjustified is to willfully ignore sentiments that can make or break foreign or domestic policies

cooperation from governments in the Middle East to combat of their populations. The United States cannot convince other nations and peoples that it has their best interests at heart unless it takes steps to open up a genuine dialogue with other governments. Better understanding achieved through a willingness to listen to the perspectives of friends and foes can only improve foreign policy. Third, in February 2009, Dennis Blair, the new Director of National Intelligence, told Congress that the most urgent near-term threat facing the United States now is not terrorism
but the global economic crisis, which threatens to destabilize governments and damage U.S. strategic interests. Blair testified that the crisis has harmed America's reputation and "increased questioning of U.S. stewardship of the global economy."19 Clearly, the crisis has aggravated international hostility to U.S. style capitalism and free-market doctrines and created a more difficult climate for American businesses Nevertheless, other nations cannot solve critical problems without the U nited States, which, despite its failings, remains the necessary leader. Nor can they afford to wait for hard proof of changed policies and actions by the United States on a wide range of military/diplomatic, moral, and economic issues before they decide to follow its lead. In this situation , the atmosphere for cooperative action is closely attuned to the image and tone projected by President Obama and his administration. Beginnings of an Image Reversal The act of electing a president who represents a distinct difference from the policies and attitudes of George W. Bush promises to be a game-changer in reversing the negative image of the United States. Obama was not part of the preceding eight years, either as part of the Bush administration or as a senior member of the Democratic Congressional opposition. Many around the world did not abroad. believe the United States would ever elect a member of an ethnic minority, particularly an African-American, as president-after all, rarely has that happened in any country in free and open elections. Dramatically changing the national leader, not just the political party, but the tone and personality of the country, invited citizens around the world to give the United States another chance. It permitted people to view the former president as a temporary aberration, rather than a true representation of a country that had built up a strong positive reputation over many decades. According to a poll commissioned by the BBC World Service and conducted by the University of Maryland, the United States received some immediate improvements in its image following the 2008 presidential election. (The survey polled 13,575 people in 26 countries in the ten weeks ending 1 February.) Note, though, that ratings were still mainly negative (40 percent of ratings were positive as compared to 35 percent under Bush; 43 percent were negative versus 47 percent previously).20 Subsequent polls revealed extraordinary esteem for Obama. A WorldPublicOpinion. org Poll, released in July 2009, and conducted in countries representing 62 percent of world population, indicated that Obama inspires more confidence than other world leaders by far to "do the right thing regarding world affairs;" on average, 61 percent of publics, excluding Americans, expressed confidence in Obama, followed by 40 percent for United Nations leader Ban Ki-moon.21 In a Pew poll conducted during Spring 2009 and released in July, in all but two of the 25 surveyed foreign nations or territories, public confidence in Obama to "do the right thing in world affairs" jumped by double-digit percentage points over views of Bush in 2008 (in Israel there was a 1 percent decrease). In 9 countries, the change was more than 50 percentage points, topped by an increase in Germany of 79 points.22 In a Gallup poll, approval "of the job performance of the leadership of the United States" by respondents in 10 Arab countries rose by three to 23 percentage points from June 2008 to March 2009.23 High global confidence in Obama appears to have helped the image of the United States. In the Pew poll, U.S. favorability ratings improved considerably from the Bush years. Opinion of the United States even in the Middle East was up from 2008.

. The United States requires terrorism. More than that, it requires the support

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And, failure to carry-out his withdrawal on the announced timetable guts his credibility and Overall U.S. Soft Power Obamas Actions Must match his words to preserve his international credibility
Quelch et al 2k9 (John A. Quelch is the Lincoln Filene Professor at Harvard Business School. Katherine E. Jocz is a Senior Research Associate at Harvard Business School, Can Brand Obama Rescue Brand America?, The Brown Journal of World Affairs, Fall 2009, pg nexis//cndi-ef)

Nevertheless, across the board, favorable views of the U.S. image lagged well behind confidence in Obama and left considerable room for further improvement. In a WorldPublicOpinion.org poll,
on average, 41 percent of people said the United States is "playing a mainly negative role in the world" versus 39 percent saying it is playing a mainly positive role.24 On specific issues of how the United

foreign publics are waiting to see if a change in the tone of U.S. leadership will translate into concrete results.
States uses its power, treats other countries, approaches climate change, or exerts economic influence, opinions were more negative than on the question of overall image. These data suggest that Steps Taken by the New Administration The improvements in the United States' global image result from a combination of relief that the Bush administration tone and policies are gone, widespread admiration for the new president, and, importantly, active image management by the new administration. Obama deliberately and quickly moved to transfer the best attributes associated with brand Obama to brand America, thereby affording the country an opportunity to regain significant esteem. Reflecting this priority, the president made five overseas trips to 14 countries, within the first six months of taking office. With regard to foreign policy, the rhetoric of the new administration immediately signaled changed intentions and a new tone. Banishing Bush's "axis of evil" and curtailing the term "war on terror," Obama told reporters that words matter in the "enduring struggle against terrorism and extremism" and that it is important to recognize that terrorist organizations are not the broader Arab or Muslim community.25 In his inaugural speech, Obama directly addressed the Muslim world: "we seek a new way forward, based on mutual interest and mutual respect," and, in an interview the following week on Al-Arabiya TV network, "Americans are not your enemy."26 In contrast to U.S. leaders telling the world what to do, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's first overseas trip, in February, to the Pacific Rim, was billed as a listening tour in which her schedule included town hall events, television shows, and meetings with journalists and community leaders as well as heads of state.27 That Clinton and Obama buried their political rivalry spoke to the virtues of U.S. democracy. It also helped that Clinton herself symbolizes a pre-Bush, friendlier United States. On Obama's first trip overseas, to the G20 and NATO summits, followed by a symbolically important visit to predominantly Muslim Turkey, his frequently repeated message that the United States needed to respect and partner with other nations was well-received and seemed to achieve an extra measure of credibility through the president's personal popularity and political skills. During a widely reported town hall meeting in Strasbourg, France, the president apologized for the deterioration of relationships with European nations, but talked about the problem as a two-way street: "Instead of seeking to partner with you to meet common challenges, there have been times when America has shown arrogance and been dismissive, even derisive. But in Europe, there is an anti-Americanism that is at once casual but can also be insidious."28 This type of balanced statement managed to reclaim U.S. moral leadership rather than being seen as groveling for European friendship. In Turkey, he deployed brand Obama to signal more respect from the United States to Muslims everywhere, saying that the country was "not at war with Muslims" and that many Americans "have Muslims in their family, or have lived in a Muslim-majority country," and, to applause, "I know because I am one of them."29 A major speech delivered in the heart of the Arab world, in Cairo on 4 June 2009, continued the work of bridging divisions between Islamic countries and the West. Via a straightforward accounting of U.S. history with Iran, Iraq, and the Israel-Palestine conflict, accompanied by a strong commitment to pursuing terrorists and supporting democracy, religious tolerance, and women's rights, it also sought to reclaim U.S. moral authority.30 In the Pew survey, pre- and post-speech responses could be compared for several Middle East countries. Findings were mixed, perhaps in part because the post-speech interviews may have taken place before the import of the speech filtered through. In Turkey, the speech had little impact on the already poor views of the United States or tepid expectations of Obama. In Israel, ratings of the United States and of confidence in Obama to do the right thing in world affairs dropped. In the Palestinian territories, however, they improved.31 The road to an improved U.S. image and better relations in the Middle East

." If the glow from Obama's election and gestures of outreach is not to fade, the administration must fix the three major blemishes on the United States' image: the festering problems of Iraq and Afghanistan, the violation of international laws and conventions symbolized by Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo, and the U.S.-originated recession that has infected the entire global financial system. To regain respect for U.S. leadership, Obama has taken steps on all three fronts, but will he succeed? The administration made a number of specific commitments that attracted worldwide attention. On the second full day of his administration, Obama signed orders to close the prison camp at Guantanamo Naval Base in Cuba within a year and to end secret CIA jails. He also disavowed torture and rejected the "false choice between our safety and our ideals."32 As reported around the globe, these policies represented dramatic change from the widely reviled policies of his predecessor. Five and a half weeks later, Obama announced the long-awaited
clearly will be a long one, as the president realistically noted in the Cairo speech with the remark that "no single speech can eradicate years of mistrust

beginning of the end of the war in Iraq with a plan to withdraw combat troops by August 2010, leaving behind an interim residual force of 50,000, to be withdrawn by the end of 2011. Most countries understand that extricating the United States from Iraq will take a year or more. They will likely give America points so long as it shows progress and does not reverse its commitment to leave. Offsetting the drawdown in Iraq, however, was Obama's plan to build up troops
in an increasingly unstable Afghanistan, starting with an increase of 17,000 plus 4,000 more for training. During his March overseas trip, he pushed NATO and Turkey to commit more troops to Afghanistan. Although NATO agreed to send 5,000 additional troops, and expressed support for the new U.S. plans, members remained cautious about extra commitments beyond the 42,000 troops that are augmenting the U.S. forces of 67,000. A comprehensive review of the mission in Afghanistan, including development of a clear exit strategy, remains in progress and will be essential for rallying allies. The administration does not have the luxury to take its time when it comes to the economic crisis. There is an immediate need to shore up financial stability and the potential for universal hardship if efforts fail. Unlike with foreign and military policy, much of the harm to the United States' image caused by the economic crisis has little to do with actions by government officials. To be sure, lax regulations and ineffective enforcement contributed to the problem, but the lion's share of the blame goes to greedy, careless, or unscrupulous private-sector executives. Misdoings in parts of the financial system triggered a massive chain of failures that eventually damaged the entire economy. The administration recognizes that the United States, even if it was the principal perpetrator, cannot solve the economic crisis alone. Monetary policy and fiscal stimulus must be coordinated worldwide if the whole is to be greater than the sum of the parts. All this means that, among the many steps taken to address the crisis, there are few, if any, decisive or painless actions the Treasury Department or the Federal Reserve can point to as fixing the damage and repairing the United States' image. At best, the U.S. government, helped by China and a reluctant Europe, can keep the system from collapsing in the short term. Given the uncertain consequences of the stimulus package signed in February, and the deep unpopularity of emergency measures to bail out Wall Street firms, the administration is unlikely to earn credit any time soon for its efforts. The "Buy American" provision contained in the stimulus bill did not help the nation's image with trade partners, applicable to iron and steel used in public works. The G20 summit was a positive development in fighting the economic crisis, in that the United States, Britain, France, and Germany all left with some of what they hoped to achieve going in. Germany and France blocked the U.S. and British request for a $1 trillion dollar stimulus plan, but agreed to funnel that amount to the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank in order to boost trade. France and Germany secured U.S. agreement to take a step toward greater regulation of the global financial system by opening up secretive tax havens around the world.33 Unfortunately, at the July G8 meeting, no clear strategy emerged for dealing with the ongoing crisis. The G8 leaders failed to agree on assessments of the global economy or steps to improve world financial stability. In the end, they issued a statement that the situation is uncertain and significant risks remain, while disagreeing on whether and when to pull back or increase fiscal and monetary stimuli.34 That leaves the burden on the United States to rebuild the economic dimension of global leadership. A Supporting Role for Public Diplomacy America's image is formally the province of the State Department. Officials in charge of public diplomacy try to "promote greater appreciation and understanding of U.S. society, culture, institutions, values and policies" among global audiences through exchanges, cultural programs, seminars, publications, and radio and television networks, web sites, and other means.35 Under the Bush administration, these efforts suffered from staff shortages and inadequate funding after a 1999 merger with the United States Information Agency.36 In many key countries, the influence of State dwindled in comparison with Pentagon strategic communication activities. Pointing to a 24 percent drop in public diplomacy staffing from FY 1996 to 2008, the American Academy of Diplomacy issued recommendations for the State Department to cover the employment shortfall, create additional positions, increase the program budget, and significantly expand training.37 For 2009, the Governmen

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Accountability Office put improving the U.S. image abroad as number 5 on a list of 13 urgent issues for Obama and the 111th Congress.38 Public diplomacy should be supported, but is a relatively small part of an image overhaul and cannot be effective until behavioral changes on the part of the U.S. administration are evident. Concrete applications could include working with influential Muslim leaders who believe in progress and peace and the possibility of mutual interests or cooperating with other nations to deal with climate change and other vital issues. Going forward, Secretary of State Clinton's role will be critical in conveying the Obama administration's philosophy that world leadership is not simply a matter of hierarchical hard power through military superiority but requires collaborative soft power through listening and partnership. Within the State Department, Clinton will need to ensure that both formal government-to-government diplomacy and public diplomacy exemplify this view. Before promoting exchange programs, the State Department should work on visa problems and how immigration officials interrogate visitors. Importantly, Obama and Clinton must bring a greater level of professionalism to the selection of ambassadors. Previous administrations have not served U.S. overseas interests, or its image, by appointing as ambassadors friends and major donors who haven't even set foot in the countries to which they are named. Reportedly, a Bush ambassadorial appointee to a European country was not sure where on the map that country was before being posted there.39 Like his predecessors, Obama has rewarded a number of political supporters with ambassadorial posts. Not all non career-diplomats are unqualified-for instance, Republican Utah Governor Jon M. Huntsman Jr., who is fluent in Chinese, is a good pick as Ambassador to China. However, following the recommendations of the American Foreign Service Association and American Academy of Diplomacy to boost experienced civil-service appointees to 90 percent, up from the prevailing level of 70 percent, would be a significant positive step. A Possible Backlash? As President Obama and his team set about refashioning the United States' image and policies, they must ensure that promises do not far outstrip the ability to deliver on them. In the age of the internet, where the entire world is increasingly interconnected and information is transparent

any discrepancies between

America's image and its reality will soon surface.

Although the decision to close Guantanamo was hailed by many, for others it was too little, too late. The actual closure will not occur until a year after the announcement, and the United States faces an impasse concerning where to place some of the detainees. In the Muslim world, especially, closing the base and no longer using the "enemy combatant" terminology are viewed with suspicion as mere cosmetic gestures. It is also very unlikely that officials in the Bush administration responsible for the detention and torture policies and bypassing the Geneva Conventions will be held accountable, given the Obama administration's disinclination to pursue criminal investigations. Europeans may have a less lenient attitude. Likewise, domestically and internationally. Obama's commitment to leaving 50,000 troops in Iraq through 2011 does not promise the kind of change that those who cheered candidate Obama at the Berlin rally in July 2008 believed in. Less than a month after the timetable was

the U.S. presence in Iraq and Afghanistan will be a continued irritant,

The United States must try to leave a stable Iraq but any backtracking on troop reductions will inflame critics of the war and further stain its image. In Afghanistan, recurrent air strikes killing civilians have fueled resentment against U.S. and NATO forces. So far, the justifications for being there are more
announced, Iraq's prime minister Nouri al-Maliki said he would not approve withdrawals of U.S. troops from areas of Iraq that are less than 100-percent secure. convincing to the world than was the decision to invade Iraq, but support from allies is waning. According to a poll conducted in July 2009, among the NATO members, 55 percent of respondents in West European countries and 69 percent in Eastern Europe want to reduce or remove their soldiers from Afghanistan.40 In the United States, economic woes have dampened any appetite to step up operations in Afghanistan, which will necessarily involve Pakistan as well. However, the most significant thing Obama could do to reshape U.S. foreign policy is to capture Osama bin Laden after eight fruitless years. If he were to capture and bring to justice the perpetrator of the 9/11 attacks, the United States could then close that chapter in its history and perhaps reopen dialogue with many parts of the Arab world that the pursuit of al-Qaeda and the Iraq war have closed off. The ongoing engineering of the global economic recovery will continue to open up cracks in the United States' once formidable financial reputation. It is clear that the United States is dependent upon China to continue buying Treasury bonds, and it is humiliating to have China publicly seek assurances that such investments are sound and propose a new international currency to substitute for the dollar. European countries are resisting U.S. pressure to participate in a two-percent of GDP stimulus plan, both because the United States caused the problem and because they have a better social safety net in place and therefore feel less pressure to create jobs quickly. The Czech prime minister, while serving as European Union president, went so far as to call the Obama administration's economic stimulus plan "a road to hell."41 In the long run, the administration's intention to develop a more effective regulatory framework may earn kudos from abroad. But if the private sector resumes business as usual, or calls for greater trade protectionism and anti-immigration measures, the U.S. image is unlikely to improve. The political, military, and economic missteps of the last eight years undercut the United States' ability to lead in international affairs. This March, even United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon alluded to the United States as a "deadbeat" donor to the organization.42 Its soaring budget deficit may well constrain the foreign aid and development budget and the hope of investing in more anti-poverty programs as a bulwark against extremists. Meanwhile, China

. A significant challenge facing the president and the administration is deciding when and how to employ the political capital derived from Obama's positive image. Obama's brand capital is high, but there is limited capital to use. For example, should Obama have used
stands to improve its image, especially in emerging markets. There is a danger that the United States may never regain the influence it once had his equity to back the Iranian opposition following the disputed elections? The answer could be that he is still building U.S. equity by not berating Ahmadinejad and endorsing the other side (which the prior

the distraction of the economic downturn and an ambitious agenda place competing demands on his political capital. Right now, Obama's personal reputation is holding up the reputation of the American brand. So are his promised changes to previous policies and expressed desire to create relationships with other countries characterized by mutual respect and partnership, which could, for example, include Russia and the United States leading by example on arms control . Rhetoric and public diplomacy can buy time, but neither strategy can trump tangible action. As John Ruskin said, "Great nations write their autobiographies in three manuscripts-the book of their
administration likely would have done). Domestically, deeds, the book of their words, and the book of their arts."43 How long can Obama win on tone before he has to deliver results? Assuming no further major deterioration of the economic system, he has at least a year before people will become impatient. He is viewed as being entitled to a longer honeymoon period than normal as a result of the number and magnitude of the problems he inherited that were not created

. If Obama fails to show significant progress on changed policies within a year, public opinion ratings could fall as quickly as they rose. Much of the world still wants the United States to be its better self, an indispensable power and beacon of hope. However, a fresh recurrence of disenchantment with would empower politicians elsewhere to oppose, ignore, or humor the United States and would weaken its geopolitical stature in the long term. U.S. allies should realize that they must help the nation reclaim its positive image. The United States cannot lead alone, but the rest of the world cannot solve problems without the United States. Sustained criticism of the United States while the nation and Obama are trying to change things may result in a backlash among Americans and citizens of allied countries that could give rise, especially given current economic circumstances, to a new wave of isolationism and protectionism.
on his watch

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Absent Strong Leadership, and Decisiveness in the Face of Adversity by Obama, the U.S. Will Lose Control of its Foreign Policy
Bolton 09 [John R. Bolton (Former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations), - Senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, The danger of Obama's dithering, Los Angeles Times, October 18, 2009, pg. http://articles.latimes.com/2009/oct/18/opinion/oe-bolton18] Weakness in American foreign policy in one region often invites challenges elsewhere, because our adversaries carefully follow diminished American resolve. Similarly, presidential indecisiveness, whether because of uncertainty or internal political struggles, signals that the United States may not respond to international challenges in clear and coherent ways. Taken together, weakness and indecisiveness have proved historically to be a toxic combination for America's global interests. That is exactly the combination we now see under President Obama. If anything, his receiving the Nobel Peace Prize only underlines the problem. All of Obama's campaign and inaugural talk about "extending an open hand" and "engagement," especially the multilateral variety, isn't exactly unfolding according to plan. Entirely predictably, we see more clearly every day that diplomacy is not a policy but only a technique. Absent presidential leadership, which at a minimum means clear policy direction and persistence in the face of criticism and adversity, engagement simply embodies weakness and indecision. Obama is no Harry Truman. At best, he is reprising Jimmy Carter. At worst, the real precedent may be Ethelred the Unready, the turn-of the-firstmillennium Anglo-Saxon king whose reputation for indecisiveness and his unsuccessful paying of Danegeld -literally, "Danish tax" -- to buy off Viking raiders made him history's paradigmatic weak leader. Beyond the disquiet (or outrage for some) prompted by the president's propensity to apologize for his country's pre-Obama history, Americans increasingly sense that his administration is drifting from one foreign policy mistake to another. Worse, the current is growing swifter, and the threats more pronounced, even as the administration tries to turn its face away from the world and toward its domestic priorities. Foreign observers, friend and foe alike, sense the same aimlessness and drift. French President Nicolas Sarkozy had to remind Obama at a Sept. 24 U.N. Security Council meeting that "we live in the real world, not a virtual one."

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Moreover, a Weak Obama makes global wars inevitable. One test of resolve will open the floodgates
Hanson 09 [Dr. Victor Davis Hanson, Senior Fellow in Residence in Classics and Military History @ Hoover Institution, Stanford University Change, Weakness, Disaster, Obama: Answers from Victor Davis Hanson, Interview with the Oregon Patriots, Resistnet.com, December 7, 2009 at 3:52pm, pg. http://www.resistnet.com/group/oregon/forum/topics/change-weakness-disaster-obama/showLastReply.] BC: Are we currently sending a message of weakness to our foes and allies? Can anything good result from President Obamas marked submissiveness before the world? Dr. Hanson: Obama is one bow and one apology away from a circus. The world can understand a kowtow gaffe to some Saudi royals, but not as part of a deliberate pattern. Ditto the mea culpas. Much of diplomacy rests on public perceptions, however trivial. We are now in a great waiting game, as regional hegemons, wishing to redraw the existing landscape whether China, Venezuela, Iran, North Korea, Pakistan, Syria, etc. are just waiting to see whos going to be the first to try Obama and whether Obama really will be as tenuous as they expect. If he slips once, it will be 1979 redux, when we saw the rise of radical Islam, the Iranian hostage mess, the communist inroads in Central America, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, etc. BC: With what country then Venezuela, Russia, Iran, etc. do you believe his global repositioning will cause the most damage? Dr. Hanson: I think all three. I would expect, in the next three years, Iran to get the bomb and begin to threaten ever so insidiously its Gulf neighborhood; Venezuela will probably cook up some scheme to do a punitive border raid into Colombia to apprise South America that U.S. friendship and values are liabilities; and Russia will continue its energy bullying of Eastern Europe, while insidiously pressuring autonomous former republics to get back in line with some sort of new Russian autocratic commonwealth. Theres an outside shot that North Korea might do something really stupid near the 38th parallel and China will ratchet up the pressure on Taiwan. Indias borders with both Pakistan and China will heat up . I think we got off the back of the tiger and now no one quite knows whom it will bite or when.

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Independently, Soft Power is Necessary to Avoid Multiple Scenarios for Extinction
Barlow, Director of the Berglund Center for Internet Studies, holds the Matsushita Chair of Asian Studies at Pacific University, Ph.D. in history from UC Berkeley, 2K2 (Jeffrey, March, American Power, Globalism, and the Internet: Editorial Essay, The Journal of Education, Community and Values, http://bcis.pacificu.edu/journal/2002/03/editorial.php#6) Much of Nyes analysis is intended to make a relatively simple point: That the United States is indefinitely

unchallengeable in terms of its hard power; but soft power is growing steadily more important in a networked world, and is the more frangible of American sources of power. There will be a natural process that somewhat vitiates the
impact of American soft power in any event as other information economies mature. For example, by 2010, Nye argues, there will be more Chinese Internet users than American ones.8 While American sites will remain very attractive, because of the fact that English has become the worlds second language, China too sits at the center of a linguistic empire that not only embraces the worldwide Diaspora of Chinese people, but has also in the past embraced much of East Asia including Korea, Japan, Vietnam, and other nations. .05. A Dichotomy or a Transition? (Return to Index) Nyes position intersects at several points with the analysis of Manuel Castells, sociologist and the author of the encyclopedic multi-volume work, The Information Age: Economy, Society, and Culture.9 Nyes argument follows in time upon that of Castells in that Castells wrote in 1996, Nye after September 11, 2002. But Nyes position is ultimately grounded in an earlier tradition of realist definitions of power: Power used to be in the hands of princes, oligarchies, and ruling elites; it was defined as the capacity to impose ones will on others. Modifying their behavior. This image of power does not fit with our reality any longer10 Castells spends far more time than does Nye considering the Information Age. In doing so, he perhaps has the advantage in contextualizing American power. His argument is also far more dynamic. To Castells, the Information Age is an ongoing process, which he considers from a number of perspectives. Nye believes that there are two dichotomous kinds of power: hard and soft. For Castells, there are not two kinds of power, but a still incomplete transition from one kind of power to another. For Castells, power is being permanently transformed; Nyes hard power is eroding: states, even the most powerful one, the United States, now live in an environment marked by a decentralized net of local terror equilibria. 11 In the past, during the Cold War, several major states and their allies established an equilibrium based upon

Following the collapse of the Soviet Union the United States then enjoyed a brief period of near absolute dominance. . 06. American Power Following 9-11(Return to Index) But global processes had already distributed a variety of weapons of mass destruction among major and minor powers, and more importantly, among non-state actors as well. September 11, 2002, revealed the vulnerabilities of even the greatest of powers to non-state actors. The devastating effect of the low-cost and relatively simple improvised weapons that were used then suddenly illuminated a terrible new world. The use of a bacteriological weapon, Anthrax, then followed quickly upon the trauma of 9-11---so quickly that historians may well treat the two events as one. This attack revealed an additional and, to many, even more terrifying vulnerability and again showed the new power of nonstate actors. Castells refers to these sorts of weapons, including chemical and biological ones, as well as the feared low-yield dirty nuclear devices sometimes referred to as suitcase bombs as veto technologies and presumes that this new decentralized web of great and small states and non-state actors will require constant small interventions by many different powers to maintain a relative peace. This seems to be an apt description of events since September 11 as a variety of alliance s, states, and international organizations have joined the campaign against terrorism. There are, then, many indications that Castells is, to a considerable degree at least, correct in his analysis of state power in the Information Age, and
mutual assured destruction; this prevented any one power from dominating the global political or economic system, but it also protected each of the major states from the others. Nye wrong. State power is evolving toward a decentralized fabric, like all else in the Information Age. .07. The Limitations of the Networked International System (Return to Index) There are also many indications that some in the American policy-making institutions understand the implications of a world like that described by Castells. Recently (March, 2002), the Pentagon report The Nuclear Posture Review discussed conditions under which the United States might use nuclear weapons. This analysis immediately attracted a great deal of attention because it suggested the first-strike employment of nuclear weapons against non-nuclear powers. Since the end of World War II such use has been presumed to be outside the parameters of civilized warfare, and particularly outside American nuclear doctrine. But times have changed. As stated by one reporter, Michael Gordon, Another theme in the report is the possible use of nuclear weapons to destroy enemy stocks of biological weapons, chemical arms and other arms of

The limitation in the current international system is most critically, from an American point of view, that it tends to restrain unilateral American action. As a result, great attention necessarily must be paid to alliances and coalition building. But if anything terrifies the international community it is the specter of nuclear war, or the possibility of a return to a Cold War system with its attendant enormous expenses and the inherent threat of destruction.
mass destruction. 12 These are, of course, precisely the veto technologies listed by Castells.13

probably

.08. The Nuclear Posture Review (Return to Index) The Nuclear Posture Review represents the Bush administrations attempt to break the bonds that presently restrains American power: first-strike use of
nuclear weapons effectively removes the need to consult allies. It amounts to an attempt to restore the brief period of absolute domination (and absolute security) enjoyed by the U.S. following the fall of the Soviet Union, before we had become aware of the terrible new forces that could be employed by rogue states and criminal organizations such as Al Quaeda. If the United States were to be successful in putting the terrorist genie back in the bottle by threatening nuclear strikes on states that both harbor terrorists and possess weapons of mass destruction, including most especially chemical and bacteriological ones, then Nye is, perhaps, correct: There are two sorts of power and the United States can continue to enjoy a near monopoly of classical hard power. But Nye, like Castells, recognizes that

under

the influence of the information revolution and globalization, world politics is changing in a way that means Americans cannot achieve all of their international goals acting alone .14 The uproar, both domestic
and international over the implications of the Nuclear Policy Review is evidence of the essential accuracy of Castells analysis.15 Once again, the United States has discovered the limits of state autonomy in a networked

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1AC International Credibility Adv (8/

Finally, Our Credibility Affects ALL of Our Soft Power We MUST Get out of Iraq and Change Our Military Policy to Preserve Soft Power Extensions of the Status Quo and Your Soft Power Counterplans CANT do the job
Nye 2k4 (Joseph, dean of the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, is also a former chairman of the CIAs National Intelligence Council, When Hard Power Undermines Soft Power, pg online @ http://www.digitalnpq.org/archive/2004_summer/nye.html //cndi-ef) NPQ | In your recent book, Soft Power, you wrote: Politics has become a contest of competitive credibility. The world of traditional power politics is typically about whose military or economy wins. Politics in an information age may ultimately be about whose story wins. No WMD have been found in Iraq. The occupation is deteriorating. Then there are the photos of abused and tortured Iraqi prisoners. Has Americas story lost? Joe Nye | Im afraid so. We are losing credibility. The story we told about why we went into Iraqto find and destroy WMD has turned out to be very thin. Part of that story was also about bringing democracy and human rights to Iraq. Instead, the story that has emerged is documented in those photos, which shattered US credibility. All this has been very costly to American soft powerour power of attraction as an open, democratic society and market economyas opinion polls throughout the world show. American standing has lost 30 points on average in European countries including our supposed allies such as Britain, Spain and Italysince the end of the Clinton administration. Weve done much worse in the Islamic world. In Indonesia, the largest Muslim country, three-quarters of those polled had a positive image of the US in 2000. Now, since the Iraq war, that has tumbled to 15 percent. Polls show that more people in Jordan and Pakistan are attracted to Osama bin Laden than George W. Bush, which is worrying since these are frontline states in the struggle against Al Qaeda. NPQ | Is this the worst crisis of American soft power in your memory? Nye | It is analagous to Vietnam. We have to remember how unpopular the US was toward the end of the Vietnam War. My Lai, the massacre of women and children, was worse than what has happened at Abu Ghraib. Yet, within a decade, America had recovered from the loss of soft power. But we did it by changing our policy and projecting new policies, such as President Jimmy Carters focus on human rights in foreign policy. So, it is possible to recover. It wont be easy. And it wont be possible without a change in policy. Above all, to recover in the Middle East, we have to return to the kind of push for Middle East peace that nearly came to fruition under Bill Clinton. That is a litmus test. Were also going to have to live up to our values by not only punishing corporals for the Abu Ghraib abuses. Were going to have go higher up the chain of command
to assign responsibility. The fact that we, as an open democracy, are willing to criticize ourselves and take corrective action, is a critical saving grace of the American way; it will restore our credibility like nothing else. Beyond this, the US needs to be more consultative with other countries and again engage multilateral institutions. A great deal of the loss of American soft power is because others feel we dont

. In short, the damage is reparable. If people were repelled by American culture, that would be hard to change. If they are repelled by our policies, we can change those. It is
take into account their interests in our actions. Arrogance and unilateralism in American foreign policy has cost us

the fund of good will that comes out of our culture that can turn things around.
NPQ | That may have been more true at an earlier time in American history. But todays postmodern mass culture is hardly appealing to those in the socially conservative Muslim world. When Janet Jackson exposed her breast at the Super Bowl, it was hard enough for many American parents to take, no less an ascetic cleric like Ayatollah Sistani, the Shiite leader in Iraq. Nye | American popular culture can be repulsive as well as attractive. It is only soft power where it has a positive effect. The mullahs who run Iran are no doubt horrified at Hollywood movies in which divorced women wear bikinis and go to work every day. But, Iranian teenagers want nothing more than a Hollywood video to watch in the privacy of their home. NPQ | Thats a good thing or a bad thing? Nye | The point is that not all people, even in conservative Islamic countries, are necessarily repelled by American popular culture. Moreover, a lot of American soft power comes from our higher culture such as education and exchange programs. The

| Would you say that Americas soft power is in crisis today because it has been undermined by hard power? Nye | The way we have gone about using our hard power has undermined our soft power. If we had been less impatient and more consultative going into Iraq, we would have done less damage. We can now see that the devaluation of soft power can undermine hard power. Because of American arrogance, the democratic Turkish parliament refused to see the war as legitimate and wouldnt allow US troops to launch from their soil. That undermined the hard power strategy of the US in a very concrete way. Success comes not from hard power or soft power, but by their effective combination. NPQ | What can public diplomacy do to reverse this crisis of American soft power? Nye | The basic rule of advertising is that you cant sell a lousy product. It will indeed be hard to sell America to the world again unless we change our policies.
vast majority of foreign students who study in the US return home with a positive estimation of American life. NPQ

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1AC Solvency (1/

Obama has made Promises about withdrawal and reduction of U.S. Military Presence failure to keep them will gut his credibility, invite Terrorism and Make Iraqi Stability Impossible by Showing Weak U.S. Resolve
Jarrar 2k10 (Dont reward violence in Iraq by extending U.S. troop withdrawal deadline, pg online @ http://www.progressive.org/mpjarrar052510.html) President Obama should not bow to the Beltway voices urging him to keep U.S. troops longer in Iraq. At a speech at West Point on Saturday, May 22, Obama said: We are poised to end our combat mission in Iraq this summer. His statement, which the cadets greeted with applause, is a reaffirmation of his pledge to have all U.S. combat forces leave Iraq by Aug. 31. Any remaining armed forces are required to leave Iraq by the end of 2011 in accordance with the binding bilateral Security Agreement, also referred to as the Status of Forces Agreement. But Washington

pundits are still pushing Obama to delay or cancel the U.S. disengagement, calling on him to be flexible and take into consideration the recent spike of violence in Iraq. Hundreds of Iraqis have been killed
and injured during the last few months in what seems to be an organized campaign to challenge U.S. plans. While most Iraqis would agree that Iraq is still broken, delaying or canceling the U.S. troop removal will definitely not be seen as flexibility, but rather as a betrayal of promises. Iraqis believe that prolonging the military

occupation will not fix what the occupation has damaged, and they dont think that extending the U.S. intervention will protect them from other interventions. The vast majority of Iraqis see the U.S. military presence as a part of the problem, not the solution. Linking the U.S. withdrawal to conditions on the ground creates an equation by which further deterioration in Iraq will automatically lead to prolonging the U.S. military presence. Some of the current Iraqi ruling parties want the U.S. occupation to continue because they have been benefiting from it. Some regional players, including the Iranian government, do not want an independent and strong Iraq to re-emerge. And other groups, including Al Qaeda, would gladly see the United States stuck in the current quagmire, losing its blood, treasure and reputation. Connecting the pullout to the prevalent situation would be an open invitation to those who seek an endless war to sabotage Iraq even further, and delaying it will send the wrong message to them . By contrast, adhering to the current time-based plan would pull the rug from under their feet and allow Iraqis to stabilize their nation, a process that may take many years but that cannot begin as long as Iraqs sovereignty is breached by foreign interventions. If the Obama administration reneges on its plans, it will effectively reward those responsible for the bloodshed and further embolden them. Such a decision would most likely have serious ramifications for the security of U.S. troops in Iraq, and will impede the security and political progress in the country. And delaying the U.S. pullout will not only harm the U.S. image around the world, which Obama has been trying hard to improve, but it will also be the final blow to U.S. credibility in Iraq . The mere promise of a complete withdrawal has boosted Iraqi domestic politics and enhanced the U.S. perception in the country. Unless Obama delivers on his promises, many of these achievements will be lost, and Iraq will be sent back to square one

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1AC Solvency (2/

And, failure to re-affirm an immediate timetable for withdrawal guts Obamas International Credibility and Ensures Widespread Violence and Instability by Re-affirming and Strengthening Al-Qaeda
Leaver et al 2k10 (Erik, is a research fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies, Raed Jarrar is a senior fellow on the Middle East at Peace Action. Sliding Backwards on Iraq?, Foreign Policy In Focus, pg online @ http://www.fpif.org/articles/sliding_backwards_on_iraq //cndi-ef)

Consequences of Waffling An Obama flip-flop on the timetable for withdrawing U.S. troops would have serious consequences in the United States and Iraq. The U.S. global image will be tarnished, Obama's credibility will be called into question, and the administration will likely lose what little global political capital it gained in the last year. But reneging on withdrawal would have the gravest consequences in Iraq. The Bush administration adopted a conditions-based withdrawal plan. The mantra was "as Iraqis stand up, we will stand down." But such plans for "condition-based" withdrawal create the very deteriorating conditions that lead to an extension of the military occupation. Unfortunately, there is considerable support both inside and outside Iraq for the continuation of U.S. occupation . Some groups, such as the Iraqi
ruling parties or the military industrial complex in the United States, believe occupation is in their self-interest. Others, such as al-Qaeda, hope to cripple the United States by keeping it engaged in a conflict that takes an enormous toll on human lives, money, and global reputation. And Iran and other regional players fear the reemergence of a strong, independent, and united Iraq. Obama's current plan is based on two sets of time-based deadlines that

avoid the pitfalls of a conditions-based withdrawal. Obama's plan to withdraw combat forces by August 31, 2010 and Bush's bilateral agreement for the withdrawal of all troops and contractors by December 31, 2011 both put the responsibility for military, economic, and political security squarely where it should be: on Iraqis. Adding more years to the U.S. occupation , as Ricks suggested, or delaying the withdrawal of combat forces, as Odierno has suggested, will cost the United States hundreds of billions more dollars and result in the deaths of countless more U.S. soldiers and Iraqi civilians . Most importantly, it won't bring Iraq any closer to being a stable and prosperous country. On the eve of Iraq's March 7 elections, the president needs to reaffirm the U.S.-Iraqi withdrawal agreement and issue a clear warning to military officers who seek to take the war into their own hands.

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1AC Solvency (3/

And, ONLY the Plan can ensure Long-Term U.S.-Iraqi Cooperation and Stability Your Stability Turns arent Relevant in a world of U.S. Withdrawal
Hanna 2k10 (Michael Wahid, Fellow and program officer at the Century Foundation, Stay the Course of Withdrawal: When Should the U.S. leave Iraq? Foreign Affairs, http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/66188/michael-wahidhanna/stay-the-course-of-withdrawal)

The past months have shown that violence levels are remaining on a positive overall trajectory even during a critical and tense moment of transition. Although Baghdad witnessed a series of spectacular terrorist attacks in the summer and fall that targeted symbols of government, the sensitive period of campaigning, voting, and vote counting has not seen such devastating attacks or coordinated insurgent activity. This is particularly noteworthy, coming at a time when the ISF has taken greater responsibility and when terrorists would be especially motivated to undermine the political process by executing spectacular attacks. Despite all this, the ISF continues to have glaring deficiencies in the realms of logistics, intelligence, air power, and border control. In light of these shortcomings, it is possible that Iraqi leaders may request security assistance that goes beyond the scope of the current binding framework to include help controlling airspace and borders,
defending critical maritime oil infrastructure, and conducting counterterrorism operations. Under the terms of the security agreement, any such request for assistance would have to be initiated by the Iraqi government, not the United States. If Iraq makes such a request, the Obama administration should give it a fair hearing, balancing any possible future commitments with other pressing U.S. concerns around the world and considering the potential radicalizing effects of a continued U.S. presence. This would rule out a South Koreastyle military commitment or the establishment of permanent military bases, which would be anathema to Iraqs emerging political culture and unwise in light of current Middle Eastern realities. Instead, such a mission would be limited to temporary advice, assistance, and support, all of which would be contingent on ISF self-sufficiency. At a minimum, such a mission would require an Office of Security Cooperation based in the U.S. embassy, which would be similar to other arrangements Washington has in other regional capitals, where teams of fewer than 1,000 uniformed military personnel manage foreign military sales and limited training programs. Even the upper limit of any such effort -- possibly including military transition teams (small groups of U.S. forces that live with and train Iraqi counterparts), air support, and intelligence programs -- would be temporary in nature, restricted in size to under 10,000 troops, and not intended to establish a strategic beachhead from which to project U.S. power. Policymakers and analysts too often measure U.S. influence in Iraq according to troop levels. In fact, the United States has

become better able to develop a productive relationship with Iraq by abiding by the terms of the security agreement in good faith -- which means reducing troop levels and withdrawing from Iraqi population centers, as the U.S. military did last June. Because of these actions, the U.S. presence was a relatively minor issue in last months elections, whereas in the recent past it was the central issue that drove Iraqi politics and fueled a broad-based insurgency. U.S.-Iraqi cooperation is only sustainable if Iraqis do not fear long-term U.S. plans. The United States will be able to play a stabilizing diplomatic role in Iraqs ongoing political transition only if Washington and Baghdad continue along the path of normalizing bilateral relations. In this sense, it is the very act of withdrawal that will allow the United States to become a strategic partner for the emerging Iraqi state.

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1AC Solvency (4/

And, Scheduled withdrawal is key to stability- Iraqi governments legitimacy depends on an end to the American occupation.
Conyers, Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, 10 [3/7/2010; John Conyers Jr.; Opposing view: Stick to troop timetable; http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/editorials/2010-03-05-editorial05_ST1_N.htm] USA Today;

All parties, political and otherwise, currently operating in Iraq are relying on the U.S. to follow through on this mutually negotiated troop removal timeline. The fledgling government in Baghdad has derived much of its legitimacy from the Iraqi people by appearing to stand up to the American occupation and by providing internal security independent of U.S. forces. Moreover, various political, regional and ethnic factions have been operating under the assumption that the American presence was nearing its end. With this understanding, they have been negotiating the political arrangements that will lay the foundation for long-term stability in Iraq. The success of these efforts could be threatened by our failure to live up to the withdrawal timetable outlined in the agreement. A peaceful, stable government in Iraq can only be achieved when its citizens are focused on the future of their country instead of on an unending military occupation.

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*****Alternate 1AC Advantages***** Advantage ___: Stability (1/

Advantage ____ is Iraqi Stability: And, a Reversal Of U.S. Withdrawal Plans Would Destabilize The Country Ensuring Sectarian Violence And Civil War
Hanna 2k10 (Michael Wahid, Fellow and program officer at the Century Foundation, Stay the Course of Withdrawal: When Should the U.S. leave Iraq? Foreign Affairs, http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/66188/michael-wahidhanna/stay-the-course-of-withdrawal //cndi-ef) Taking an overly pessimistic view of the current political environment and appraising the ISFs progress stringently, some U.S. commentators have recently been urging the Obama administration to reconsider its timeline, suggesting that its implementation would destabilize Iraq at its moment of greatest vulnerability. But this allegedly realist view of Iraqs current predicament is decidedly unrealistic about the country it purports to describe. Indeed, for Washington to seek to abrogate its withdrawal commitments -- and thereby suggest

that an extended occupation is back on the agenda -- would not enhance security but would undercut the Iraqi government and risk spurring renewed violence. There is simply no political space for such an eventuality. Moreover, these commentators misunderstand the role of U.S. troops in Iraq, which focuses on training, advising, and assisting the ISF -- tasks that, given the ISFs increasing independence, can be carried out by the residual
U.S. troops envisioned.

This instability would trigger an Iraqi civil war that draws in the entire region
Fahim 2k5 (Ashraf, Aug 20, 2005, Iraq at the gates of hell, http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/GH20Ak01.html) Given all this grist, how might the dark mill of civil war begin turning in Iraq? It might simply develop out of a continuing, steady rise in the vicious cycle of revenge killings. Alternatively, a sudden breakdown of

the political process could lead each sect to quickly assert its interests by force: the Kurds attempting to seize Kirkuk, for example, or Arab Sunnis and Shi'ites fighting for control of the mixed Sunni-Shi'ite towns south of Baghdad - all of which would entail ethnic cleansing. Further ideological and interdenominational
divisions would also arise. Inter-Shi'ite rivalries were recently on display in the southern town of Samawa, where supporters of SCIRI and influential cleric Muqtada al-Sadr clashed. Muqtada espouses a brand of Iraqi and Islamic nationalism that could lead his Mehdi Army to side with those opposed to federalism if civil war did erupt. And then there are the neighbors. As professor Juan Cole, an expert in Iraq and Shi'ism, recently wrote in the Nation: "If Iraq fell into civil war

between Sunnis and Shi'ites, the Saudis and Jordanians would certainly take the side of the Sunnis, while Iran would support the Shi'ites." In essence, a civil war would see the eight-year Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s replayed on Iraqi territory. To complicate matters, any Kurdish success would draw in Turkey. Beyond Iraq, a civil war could destabilize the Gulf, and thereby the world economy. Sunni-Shi'ite tensions could be kindled in states like Bahrain, Kuwait and most importantly, Saudi Arabia , where an occasionally restive
Shi'ite population forms a majority in the eastern part of the country (where all the oil is).

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Advantage ___: Stability (2/

And, this Civil War will Spill-Over Engulfing the Entire Middle East and Spawning Secessionist Civil Wars
Byman and Pollack 2k6 (Daniel L. Byman is director of Georgetown University's Center for Peace and Security Studies. Kenneth M. Pollack is research director at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution, What Next?, Washington Post, pg online @ http://www.washingtonpost.com/wpdyn/content/article/2006/08/18/AR2006081800983.html) The consequences of an all-out civil war in Iraq could be dire . Considering the experiences of recent such conflicts, hundreds of thousands of people may die. Refugees and displaced people could number in the millions. And with Iraqi insurgents, militias and organized crime rings wreaking havoc on Iraq's oil

infrastructure, a full-scale civil war could send global oil prices soaring even highe r. However, the greatest threat that the United States would face from civil war in Iraq is from the spillover -- the burdens, the instability, the copycat secession attempts and even the follow-on wars that could emerge in neighboring countries. Welcome to the new "new Middle East" -- a region where civil wars could follow one after another, like so many Cold War dominoes. And unlike communism, these dominoes may actually fall. For all
the recent attention on the Israeli-Hezbollah conflict, far more people died in Iraq over the past month than in Israel and Lebanon, and tens of thousands have been killed from the fighting and criminal activity since the U.S. occupation began . Additional signs of civil war abound. Refugees and displaced people number in the hundreds of thousands. Militias continue to proliferate. The sense of being an "Iraqi" is evaporating. Considering how many mistakes the United States has made in Iraq, how much time has been squandered, and how difficult the task is, even a serious course correction in Washington and Baghdad may only postpone the inevitable. Iraq displays many of the conditions most conducive to spillover. The country's ethnic, tribal and religious groups are also found in neighboring states, and they share many of the same grievances. Iraq has a history of violence with its neighbors, which has fostered desires for vengeance and fomented constant clashes. Iraq also possesses resources that its neighbors covet -- oil being the most obvious, but important religious shrines also figure in the mix -- and its borders are porous. Civil wars -whether in Africa, Asia, Europe or the Middle East -- tend to spread across borders. For example, the effects of the Jewish-Palestinian conflict, which began in the 1920s and continued even after formal hostilities ended in 1948, contributed to the 1956 and 1967 Arab-Israeli wars, provoked a civil war in Jordan in 1970-71 and then triggered the Lebanese civil war of 1975-90. In turn, the Lebanese conflict helped spark civil war in Syria in 1976-82.

Those Go Nuclear
Steinbach 2k2 (John, DC Iraq Coalition, Israeli Weapons of Mass Destruction: A Threat to Peace, March 2002, http://www.wagingpeace.org/articles/2002/03/00_steinbach_israeli-wmd.htm) Meanwhile, the existence of an arsenal of mass destruction in such an unstable region in turn has serious implications for future arms control and disarmament negotiations, and even the threat of nuclear war. Seymour Hersh warns, "Should war break out in the Middle East again,... or should any Arab nation fire missiles against Israel, as the Iraqis did, a nuclear escalation, once unthinkable except as a last resort, would now be a strong probability."(41) and Ezar Weissman, Israel's current President said "The nuclear issue is gaining momentum (and the) next war will not be conventional."(42) Russia and before it the Soviet Union
has long been a major (if not the major) target of Israeli nukes. It is widely reported that the principal purpose of Jonathan Pollard's spying for Israel was to furnish satellite images of Soviet targets and other super sensitive data relating to U.S. nuclear targeting strategy. (43) (Since launching its own satellite in 1988, Israel no longer needs U.S. spy secrets.) Israeli nukes aimed at the Russian heartland seriously complicate disarmament and arms control negotiations and, at the very least, the unilateral possession of nuclear weapons by Israel is enormously destabilizing, and dramatically lowers the threshold for their actual use, if not for all out nuclear war. In the words of Mark Gaffney, "... if the familar pattern(Israel refining its weapons of mass destruction with U.S. complicity) is not reversed soon - for whatever reason

- the deepening

Middle East conflict could trigger a world conflagration." (44)

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Advantage ___: Stability (3/

Moreover, Escalation of Violence will result in a Middle Eastern War with Nuclear Weapons this will invite China to Invade Taiwan
Corsi 2k7 (Jerome, Phd Pol Sci @ Harvard, War with Iran is imminent, pg online @ http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp? ARTICLE_ID=53669 //cndi-ef) Truthfully, we are already at war with Iran. My concern stems from the realization that the internal politics in Iran may be such that Ahmadinejad cannot allow a massive U.S. military build-up in the region without making some kind of a response. With Iraq's borders as open as is our southern border with Mexico, Iran has now sent into Iraq a sufficient number of terrorists and arms to create a real civil war. Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi militia, which featured so prominent in the Shi'ite rejoicing that reduced Saddam's hanging to a partisan event , is an Iran-funded creation. Ahmadinejad cannot afford to see a strengthened U.S. military destroy Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi army. If a

broader war breaks out in Iraq, Olmert will certainly face pressure to send the Israel military into the Gaza after Hamas and into Lebanon after Hezbollah. If that happens, it will only be a matter of time before Israel and the U.S. have no choice but to invade Syria. The Iraq war could quickly spin into a regional war, with Israel waiting on the sidelines ready to launch an air and missile strike on Iran that could include tactical nuclear weapons. With Russia ready to deliver the $1 billion TOR M-1 surface-to-air missile defense system to Iran, military leaders are unwilling to wait too long to attack Iran. Now that Russia and China have invited Iran to join their Shanghai Cooperation Pact, will Russia and China sit by idly should the U.S. look like we are winning a wider regional war in the Middle East? If we get more deeply involved in Iraq, China may have their moment to go after Taiwan once and for all. A broader regional war could easily lead into a third world war, much as World Wars I and II began. That Conflict Goes Nuclear
Adams 2k9 (Jonathon, reporter for global post and newsweek on China and Taiwan, 3/31/09, Global Post, The dragon sharpens its claws, http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/china-and-its-neighbors/090331/the-dragon-sharpens-its-claws) TAIPEI It's the stuff of dark sci-fi scenarios; the war that nobody wants. But the most recent Pentagon report

on China's military power released last week shows how high the stakes have become, in the unlikely event the United States and China ever do come to blows. China has the world's fastest-growing military.
It is building state-of-the art fighter jets, destroyers, and anti-ship missiles worth billions of dollars. It's just confirmed it will build an aircraft carrier. And according to the Pentagon, it's now fielding a new nuclear force able to "inflict significant damage on most large American cities." Most disturbing, Chinese military officials have publicly threatened to use that capability against the United States in a conflict over Taiwan. "China doesn't just threaten war, it threatens nuclear war," said John Tkacik, a China expert and former U.S. diplomat, at a forum in Taipei last weekend. "This is the kind of thing that rattles cages in the U.S." For now, Taiwan is

the only plausible cause of military conflict between the world's superpower and the rising Asian giant

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Advantage ___: Stability (4/

And Results in Extinction
Straits Times 2k (Ching Cheong, East Asia Correspondent The Straits Times, No one gains in war over Taiwan, 6-25-2000) A cross-strait conflict, even at the lowest end of the intensity scale, will suffice to truncate, if

not to reverse, the steep GNP growth trends of the past few years. Other than the quantifiable losses from disrupted trade flows, there is also the longer-term
damage to consider. For example, it took Taiwan almost three decades to establish itself as the third largest producer of information technology (IT) products in the world. It is now the island's single largest foreign exchange earner. The Sept 21 earthquake last year demonstrated the risk involved in Taiwan's dependence on the IT industry. A few days of power blackouts disrupted chip-manufacturing operations on the island, which in turn sent prices of these components soaring worldwide. Not surprisingly, a scramble followed for alternative sources of supply. A blockade lasting three months will devastate the industry in Taiwan. Similarly, it has taken China more than two decades to establish itself as the second largest recipient of private direct investment. In recent years, such investment has amounted to more than 20 per cent of China's total capital formation. A capital outflow will follow if there is trouble across the strait. Other than China and Taiwan, Japan's economy is likely to be hurt too if the blockade disrupts its "lifeline" -the sea lane through which flows its supplies of oil and other commodities. Though no physical loss will be incurred, the blockade will force up prices across the board as Japan is so dependent on this sea lane. The Asean region stands to gain in the short run. Those with strong IT industries, like Singapore and Malaysia, will carve a big slice from what was previously Taiwan's share. Similarly, as investment flees China, the Asean countries might be able to intercept this flow and benefit thereby. Politically, the blockade is likely to provoke Sino-phobia in the region. Japan's rightwing forces will seize this golden opportunity to demand a revision of the post-war Constitution prohibiting its rearmament. Asean countries having territorial disputes with Beijing in the South China Sea will beef up their defence budgets. Ethnic Chinese population in these countries may have to contend with increased suspicion or worse as Sino-phobia rises. The US stands to gain. So long as its stays on the sidelines, it does not lose the Chinese

THE medium intensity scenario postulates a situation in which Beijing wages a war against Taiwan. The objective here is to obliterate its military capability which is seen as underpinning its independence movement. The outcome: Taiwan is brought to its knees but only after widespread death and destruction have been inflicted on the island and the coastal provinces of China. In this scenario, the US while feeling obliged to support Taiwan militarily is not party to a full-scale war with China. Washington's
market. At the same time its defence industry gains as countries in the region start stocking up on arms in anticipation of trouble. DESTROYING THE TAIWAN MILITARY primary concern would be to keep it to a "limited war" to prevent hostilities from spinning out of control. Limited though it may be, the war will set back the economies of China and Taiwan by at least two to three decades. All the short-term gains enjoyed by the Asean countries in the low-intensity scenario will be nullified as the conflict intensifies. In this medium-intensity scenario, no one gains. Politically, all

THE highintensity scenario postulates a cross-strait war escalating into a full-scale war between the US and China. If Washington were to conclude that splitting China would better serve its national interests, then a fullscale war becomes unavoidable. Conflict on such a scale would embroil other countries far and near and -horror of horrors -raise the possibility of a nuclear war. Beijing has already told the US and Japan privately that it
countries are forced to take sides. This decision is particularly hard to make in those countries having a sizeable ethnic-Chinese population. THE DOOMSDAY SCENARIO

considers any country providing bases and logistics support to any US forces attacking China as belligerent parties open to its retaliation. In the region, this means South Korea, Japan, the Philippines and, to a lesser extent, Singapore. If China were to retaliate, east Asia will be set on fire. And the conflagration may not end there as opportunistic powers elsewhere may

try to overturn the existing world order. With the US distracted, Russia may seek to redefine Europe's political landscape. The balance of power in the Middle East may be similarly upset by the likes of Iraq. In south Asia, hostilities between India and Pakistan, each armed with its own nuclear arsenal, could enter a new and dangerous phase. Will a full-scale Sino-US war lead to a nuclear war? According to General Matthew Ridgeway,
commander of the US Eighth Army which fought against the Chinese in the Korean War, the US had at the time thought of using nuclear weapons against China to save the US from military defeat. In his book The Korean War, a personal account of the military and political aspects of the conflict and its implications on future US foreign policy, Gen Ridgeway said that US was confronted with two choices in Korea -truce or a broadened war, which could have led to the use of nuclear weapons. If the US had to resort to nuclear weaponry to defeat China long before the latter acquired a similar capability, there is little hope of winning a war against China 50 years later, short of using nuclear weapons. The US estimates that China possesses about 20 nuclear warheads that can destroy major American cities. Beijing also seems prepared to go for the nuclear option. A Chinese military officer disclosed recently that Beijing was considering a review of its "non first use" principle regarding nuclear weapons. Major-General Pan Zhangqiang, president of the military-funded Institute for Strategic Studies, told a gathering at the Woodrow Wilson International Centre for Scholars in Washington that although the government still abided by that principle, there were strong pressures from the military to drop it. He said military leaders considered the use of nuclear weapons mandatory if the country risked dismemberment as a result of foreign intervention. Gen Ridgeway said that should that come to pass, we would see the destruction of civilisation. There would be no victors in such a war. While the prospect of a nuclear Armaggedon over Taiwan might seem inconceivable, it cannot be ruled out entirely, for China puts sovereignty above everything else.

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Advantage ___: Stability (5/

Immediate withdrawal leads to other countries support: solves regional stability
Odom 8 William E. Professor at Yale and a Senior Adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies 2008 [Rush To The Exit http://heinonline.org/HOL/Page?handle=hein.journals/fora87&div=63&g_sent=1#739] The United States cannot prevent more chaos by remaining longer. Preventing it is simply not an option. The United States can, however, remove the cause of disorder by withdrawing its forces sooner rather than later. That is the only responsible option. I was convinced that Simon understood this until he began speaking of "a top-down approach to reconciliation" to be implemented "under UN auspices
and led by a credible special envoy." Why should a UN special envoy move into the U.S.-guarded Green Zone as long as insurgents and militias occasionally fire mortar rounds and rockets into it? Some sort of UN-led effort may eventually become possible, but it is not likely as long as U.S. forces remain. And even a UN envoy could not "reconcile" Iraq's warring factions "from the top down." Simon does understand

United States' departure will force other countries, especially in Europe, to reconsider their hands-off policies toward Iraq. It will also lead Iraq's neighbors to rethink their hands-on policies. They all want stability there, but some are meddling in ways that exacerbate instability. Once U.S. forces leave, instability may be even less in their interests. Thus, the faster U.S. forces depart, the greater the shifts in other countries' policies will be. A two-year schedule for removing U.S. forces, as Simon proposes, would fail to achieve most of this shock effect. After recognizing the breakout potential of withdrawal, Simon effectively reembraces strategic paralysis. Otherwise, he would not insist that
that the Iraq's tribal fragmentation must be overcome by means other than civil war and violence. He recognizes that U.S. legitimacy for sponsoring such an effort has been lostif it ever existed and so he wants to

a multilateral substitute involving the UN. Its prospects for success, however, are dubious in the extreme. If it consists only of Western countries, it will never be seen as legitimate, only as a Crusade in another form. If it includes countries from
try the region, they are unlikely to agree on fundamental issues about the kind of Iraq they will permit. Moreover, a UN entity's military component would prove far less effective in dealing with insurgents, militias, and the Ministry of Interiors death squads. Its weakness would invite violence, not reduce it. And neighboring countries would support militant resistance for their own interests. Tribalism will not be subdued in a couple of years, or even a couple of decades. Two well-known British officials in the 1920s, fluent in Arabic and deeply knowledgeable about the Arabs, T. E. Lawrence and Gertrude Bell, slowly

The larger Sunni-Shiite sectarian divide, although often overemphasized, has been made far more serious as a result of the U.S. occupation and the holding
relinquished their hopes for such an outcome in Iraq. And the fragmentation there today is not just along tribal lines. of democratic elections before a political consolidation was achieved. Kurdish separatism is probably as strong as it has ever been. These divides arc unlikely to be bridged by any means other than a civil war fought to a decisive conclusion. This reality indicates that Iraq's eventual rulers are not now in the Green Zone, and when they one day occupy the capital, all foreign elements will be gone.

Association with U.S. forces contaminates any would-be Iraqi regime.

A UN entity would not overcome that handicap; at best, it could only sustain political instability and abet conflict. Simon also argues that logistical imperatives require at least two years for the withdrawal of U.S. forces. That is probably true if all U.S. weapons and materiel are to be removed, but much of it is not worth the costs of hauling it back to the United States. Vast numbers of trucks and other equipment withdrawn from Kuwait in 1991 have never been used again and

. If the highest priority is given to the withdrawal of personnel, not materiel, the required time can be dramatically shortened. Other factors favor speed. Retrograde movements in war arc risky affairs. They must be made when one has lost the initiative or when one's own forces are poorly deployed, which means the opponent has the advantage. More time favors the opponent even more. More speed reduces his opportunities . Speed would also improve diplomacy abroad and boost public morale at home. In the very best circumstances, uncertainties abound during strategic withdrawals. Most critical in the long run is recognizing that the primary U.S. strategic interest in this part of the world was and still is regional stability. That means subordinating the outcome in Iraq to the larger aim. Getting out of the paralysis in Iraq, chaotic or not, is the sine qua non of any sensible strategy for restoring regional stability.
have been left in costly storage to rust. At least a thousand five-ton trucks can be found stored in Italy today, unused yet costing money to retain

And, Scheduled withdrawal is key to stability- Iraqi governments legitimacy depends on an end to the American occupation.
Conyers, Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, 10 [3/7/2010; John Conyers Jr.; Opposing view: Stick to troop timetable; USA Today; http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/editorials/2010-03-05-editorial05_ST1_N.htm]

All parties, political and otherwise, currently operating in Iraq are relying on the U.S. to follow through on this mutually negotiated troop removal timeline. The fledgling government in Baghdad has derived much of its legitimacy from the Iraqi people by appearing to stand up to the American occupation and by providing internal security independent of U.S. forces. Moreover, various political, regional and ethnic factions have been operating under the assumption that the American presence was nearing its end. With this understanding, they have been negotiating the political arrangements that will lay the foundation for long-term stability in Iraq. The success of these efforts could be threatened by our failure to live up to the withdrawal timetable outlined in the agreement. A peaceful, stable government in Iraq can only be achieved when its citizens are focused on the future of their country instead of on an unending military occupation.

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Iraq Aff

1AC Chinese Oil Advantage (1/

Advantage _____: Chinese Oil First, China is racing to secure Oil Deals in Iraq their presence is inevitable
Newsweek 5/13/2k10 (China Races to Secure Middle East Oil Deals, nations/2010/05/13/china-races-to-secure-middle-east-oil-deals.html) http://www.newsweek.com/blogs/wealth-of-

China is racing to secure Middle East oil deals, putting it on a possible collision course with U.S. interests in the world's most volatile region. China is now the biggest importer of Saudi oil, the second-biggest of Iranian oil, and the largest player in the Iraqi oil game . China is "being very aggressive," says Jon Alterman,
director of the Middle East program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "They're putting a lot of money on the bet that having ownership of oil fields is a better guarantee of supply than buying oil on the open market." Beijing is betting big in Iraq, which many Western companies are avoiding. In November, the Chinese National Petroleum Co. (CNPC) won a large stake in a $15billion deal to develop the Rumaila oil field in southern Iraq, thought to be the second largest in the world. That followed a $3billion deal to develop the Ahdab oil field in 2008. And two other Chinese firms just closed a deal on a large oil field in eastern Iraq. Chinese companies have also shown much greater willingness to take on risk by placing their own nationals in war zones: CNPC has an office in Baghdad partly led by Chinese nationals. China is also ramping up its ties to Iran as many Western firms pull out. Last summer, China signed $8billion in oil and gas deals with Tehran. It's also increased sales of gasoline to Iran, which has a lot of oil but few working refineries or stable gas suppliers. In fact, China is now Iran's biggest economic partner, with more than $21 billion in annual trade.

This makes the Aff the ONLY way to Avoid Conflict Long-term Failure in Iraq or Permanent U.S. Presence are the ONLY Scenarios that Makes China Willing to Escalate Yoshihara and Sokolski 2k2 (Toshi Yoshihara is Research Fellow at the Institute for Foreign Policy Analysis, and a doctoral degree candidate at The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy. Richard Sokolsky is Distinguished Research Fellow at the Institute for National Strategic Studies, National Defense University, and was formerly Senior Fellow at RAND. He is co-author of Persian Gulf Security: Improving Allied Military Contributions and The Role of Southeast Asia in U.S. Strategy Toward China, both published by Rand in 2000, The New World Disorder: The United States and China in the Persian Gulf: Challenges and Opportunities, The Fletcher Forum of World Affairs Winter/Spring, 2002, pg nexis)

Viewed against the backdrop of American political and military dominance, Beijing's inability to secure its energy supplies in the Persian Gulf has heightened Chinese insecurities and increased prospects for competition between the United States and China. Historically, China's strategic interest in the Gulf has been
relatively negligible. During the Cold War, the Middle East was a peripheral arena of ideological confrontation for China. n10 In the 1990s, China's relative indifference dissipated as energy security began to demand strategic attention in Beijing. This shift in attitude resulted from China's continuing economic success, which unleashed an insatiable appetite for energy resources to fuel the nation's growth. Tremendous surges in demand for energy supplies have slowly outstripped China's declining domestic output. In 1993, China became a net importer of oil for the first time. By 2000, China imported 1.4 million barrels per day, constituting 30 percent of China's total oil consumption. n11 In the late 1990s, the Middle East provided approximately half of these imports, and that share will likely grow. n12 Given China's long-standing insistence on self-reliance, the growing proportion of foreign-supplied oil, particularly from the Persian Gulf, has triggered acute anxieties. Moreover, the volatility of the region has further heightened Chinese fears of unexpected, large-scale, and prolonged disruptions to energy supplies. As a result, energy security in the Gulf has become a central component of China's economic and strategic thinking. The dim prospects for exploiting alternative

sources of energy have exacerbated China's unenviable position, ensuring that the country's dependence on Middle Eastern energy supplies and its attendant insecurities will only grow in the coming years. China's
indigenous energy resources are limited: its most productive oil fields in the east are already drying up and daunting technological and political challenges stand in the way of extracting oil reserves from Xinjiang Province. n13 The promise of oil transported from the heartland of Eurasia to China through continental pipelines also remains elusive due to formidable technical, logistical, financial, and political obstacles. The potential costs of exploiting the seabed of the South China Sea

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CNDI 2010 Iraq Aff Regents Lab also out-weigh the benefits. Oil exploration in the South China Sea has thus far yielded disappointing results. Furthermore, some major Southeast Asian states, such as Vietnam, the Philippines, Indonesia, and Malaysia, contest Chinese claims over large swaths of the area. As such, without substantial joint agreement among the parties to the territorial dispute, China's

exploration of the area could heighten [*68] regional tensions and the potential for conflict. Should China's aggressiveness in pursuing its energy-related interests trigger a backlash, China risks confronting a united front among Southeast Asian nations, a confrontation that may include U.S. involvement. Given these unpalatable choices, the Persian Gulf will remain the most viable energy source in the short- to medium-term. Over the longer term, a more promising area for oil imports is the untapped
potential in the Russian Far East. Beijing and Moscow have already entered into feasibility talks on oil pipelines from Irkutsk to Beijing worth $ 1.7 billion that promise a supply of 400,000 barrels of oil per day. The fate of this pipeline, and others, remains uncertain thus far. From Beijing's perspective, America's unrivaled influence and substantial military presence in the Middle East represents a double-edged sword for China's energy security. On the one hand, without incurring any costs, China benefits from the stability that U.S. military forces bring to the region. On the other hand,

Beijing fears that it could be held hostage to American threats to deny China's access to oil during confrontations with the United States over other disputes. n14 With the rise of Chinese nationalism, the notion that the supply of oil could be subject to Washington's goodwill chafes Beijing and adds to its insecurity. However, the practicality of an oil embargo is highly questionable. Cutting off oil supplies to a major power
would be difficult to justify politically to the international community. In addition, as the current sanctions against Iraq demonstrate, monitoring supply routes that span the Persian Gulf, the Indian Ocean, the South China Sea, and the western Pacific would be a logistical nightmare. The attendant short-term shock to prices might also hurt more oil-dependent allies such as Japan. In short, Chinese concerns regarding America's military dominance in the Gulf are largely psychological; short of a major Sino-American war, there is almost no rationale for the United States to block the flow of oil to China. Nevertheless, for Beijing, energy security in the Persian Gulf demonstrates both the benefits of American power and China's potential vulnerabilities to U.S. global dominance. Beijing must also engage in a delicate balancing act in its relations with the GCC states, Iraq, and Iran--all of whom are important oil suppliers to China. As mentioned above, Iraq and Iran are locked in an unending rivalry for regional dominance. The GCC states collectively fear the hegemonic ambitions of Iran and Iraq. Within the GCC, divergent threat perceptions often put the Gulf regimes at odds with each other. For example, Saudi Arabia fears Iraq while the United Arab Emirates has its gaze locked firmly on Iran. Managing this complex web of relations [*69] without harming Beijing's oil interests will be an increasingly important and difficult task as its dependence on imports increases. Chinese ties with Iraq and Iran in particular heighten suspicions and alarm among the Gulf states. Coping with these regional relations has proved far more difficult for China than for the United States. All of the GCC states depend on America's security commitments for their survival and have shown little inclination to assert independent policies or to break away from their associations with the United States. So long as Iran and Iraq continue to pose credible threats to their security, they will continue to rely on Washington's military power as a credible deterrent. In contrast, China does not enjoy the level of influence and capabilities that the U.S. does, further complicating its foreign policy. It is no surprise,

then, that energy security has occupied an increasingly central place in Chinese strategic thinking. It has further reinforced China's need to secure its position as a major player in the Gulf. Indeed, while China is a
relative latecomer to the Gulf in oil exploitation, it has rapidly internationalized the reach and scope of its national oil enterprises in recent years. After the collapse of oil prices in 1996, China began to penetrate the region as states were forced to open up their markets to foreign competition in oil production. In early 2001, the China Petro-Chemical Corporation (SINOPEC) and the National Iranian Oil Company agreed to operate jointly an oil and gas exploration project in ZavarehKanshan. SINOPEC is also involved in upgrading Iran's refinery facilities in Tehran and Tabriz. n15 In 1997, the China National Petroleum Corporation secured a 22-year, $ 1.26 billion contract to develop jointly half of Iraq's al-Ahdab oil field after the sanctions are lifted. This dramatic move, along with similar deals in Kazakhstan and Russia only four years after China began to import oil, surprised many observers. n16 Beijing has also sealed successive rounds of UN-approved oil-forfood contracts with Iraq, and is eyeing further cooperation with Gulf countries, particularly Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. ARMS SALES TO THE GULF Beijing and Washington remain at odds over China's pattern of arms sales and related technology transfers, particularly in the area of weapons of mass destruction (WMD). Indeed, past disputes over nonproliferation have threatened to rupture China-U.S. relations. Beijing has delivered arms to prominent rogue states (Iran and Iraq) and moderate Gulf states (Saudi Arabia and Kuwait). The capabilities that China has transferred include a wide range of conventional arms, technologies related to the development and production of nuclear, biological, and chemical (NBC) weapons, as well as technologies for producing ballistic/cruise missiles. From 1993 to 2000, China delivered $ 2 billion worth of armaments to the region, including artillery pieces, a guided-missile boat, surface-to-air missiles, and antiship missiles. n17 Even more worrying, over the past two decades China has [*70] exported NBC technologies and related

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CNDI 2010 Iraq Aff Regents Lab delivery systems. In this realm of unconventional military capabilities, China has delivered to Iran: (1) entire factories and supplies of dual-use items that can produce chemical and biological weapons; (2) nuclear technology and know-how for civilian nuclear programs; and (3) assistance in the indigenous production of long-range ballistic missiles. n18 Given the genuine threat that rogue nations pose to U.S. forces deployed in the Persian Gulf, such proliferation has been a core source of contention in Sino-American relations. For example, Tehran has purchased anti-ship missiles from China that can threaten shipping and U.S. naval forces passing through the Strait of Hormuz. Despite a series of promises not to violate arms control agreements, China has repeatedly broken its pledges to the United States. n19 Why would China risk undermining an arguably far more critical bilateral relationship with a superpower for what appears to be short-term gains? The fact is that potential financial benefits motivate China to pursue a relatively lax arms sales policy. The Middle East, one of the most militarized regions in the world, has been and remains a lucrative arms market for China. Regional rivalries between the GCC states, Iran, and Iraq--as well as intra-GCC competition--have spurred demand. As China has been willing to proliferate particularly sensitive military technologies and weapons of mass destruction, those denied hardware from the West have turned to Beijing. This pattern of interaction has enabled Beijing to capture a "niche" market that other governments have been unwilling to penetrate. But it is not just the lure of profit that drives these sales: they also serve China's strategic interests. Anticipating the demise of America's dual containment policy against Iran and Iraq, Beijing has relied on proliferation in the hopes of earning preferential terms on oil concessions or discouraging attempts to deny access to oil. Conversely, some Gulf regimes have also exploited the promise of hard currency to secure political compromises from China. For example, Kuwait, eager to curry favorable Chinese votes in the Security Council to keep Iraq contained, has agreed to purchase arms from China. Most important, arms sales are tied directly to broader developments in Sino-American relations. In zero-sum game terms, arms sales complement Beijing's geopolitical maneuvers to undermine American standing in the Middle East. China's arms sales to rogue states not only help cement ties with major oil producers, but also represent powerful symbolic gestures of defiance against U.S. dominance. Similarly, the Gulf states have turned to China to signal their displeasure at certain U.S. policies or to obtain support when it is not forthcoming from the United States. For example, Saudi Arabia purchased Chinese ballistic missiles partially as a response to Washington's refusal to sell missiles or fighter aircraft to the kingdom. Beijing has also relied on the threat of proliferation as a counterweight to U.S. policies that threaten China's interests. Most recently, American plans to sell a robust arms package to Taiwan and the potential delivery of theater missile defense systems to [*71] the island in the future have compelled China to invoke its right to transfer weapons technologies to unidentified third parties. While Chinese arms sales to the Gulf have served both as an end (by creating profits) and a means (by enhancing its status while undermining American influence), the proliferation of weaponry has thus far demonstrated limited utility. China has made only modest inroads, which peaked during the Iran-Iraq War. Despite the financial appeal of cheap Chinese weaponry, they do not provide the level of sophistication that many Gulf states have come to expect. China is not and has never been a serious competitor against Western suppliers in profitable bigticket conventional items such as modern fighter aircraft. Russia has also emerged as a major competitor with cheap but significantly more sophisticated equipment. Since the late 1980s, the transfer of Chinese conventional arms has steadily declined. From 1987 to 1997, arms sales to the Middle East collapsed from $ 1.5 billion to $ 400 million in 1997 constant prices. n20 The value of arms deliveries in current U.S. dollars to the Middle East declined from $ 1.2 billion during the 1993-1996 period to $ 800 million during the 1997 to 2000 period. n21 During these two periods, military sales to Iran dropped from $ 900 million to $ 400 million. n22 As a result, the revenues generated from arms sales worldwide now account for a negligible percentage of China's overall export earnings. n23 While much of the profits are invested back into China's military modernization accounts, the persistent rise in the defense budget in the past few years has reduced the relative importance of the benefits of Chinese arms sales. China should also be concerned that its arms sales policy could backfire, undermining its broader strategic interests in the region. For one thing, allowing WMD-related weapons to fall into the hands of rogue states with undisguised ambitions for regional dominance is highly destabilizing, to say the least. If Tehran were to acquire NBC capabilities, it would be able to coerce its neighbors or directly threaten American forward-deployed forces. The potential for such a nightmare scenario to become reality has a direct impact upon China's energy security concerns. China's arms transfers also risk provoking the United States, who could impose sanctions, further straining bilateral relations to the detriment of Chinese commercial interests. The threat of sanctions is credible, because Washington has often relied on this blunt instrument to deter or punish proliferation behavior. Finally, Chinese sales of advanced conventional weaponry to Iraq and Iran undermine its image among the moderate Arab regimes (such as Saudi Arabia and Kuwait), which are crucial suppliers of oil for China. Hence, arms sales represent a double-edged sword for Beijing. [*72] It remains somewhat unclear what role arms sales will play in China's overall strategy in the future. Despite the unwelcome trend toward selling unconventional weaponry during the past decade, there are some hopeful signs that China may be reversing its course. This apparent policy reversal may be linked to its recognition that arms sales hurt China's energy security interests and international image. In fact, recent actions point to this understanding. In 1997 and 1998, China pledged not to proliferate nuclear and missile technologies to Iran, and agreed to apply export restrictions on missile technologies in November 2000. n24 At the same time, however, there remains some compelling evidence of Chinese non-compliance. In July 2001, Washington formally issued a protest to Beijing on the continued proliferation of missile technologies to Pakistan and Iran. n25 IMPLICATIONS

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CNDI 2010 Iraq Aff Regents Lab FOR U.S. POLICY These three main drivers of Chinese policy in the Gulf--geopolitics, energy security, and arms sales-reflect disparate agendas that often clash with one another. The conflict of interests between arms sales and energy security is the most prominent example. As noted above, the potential instability that WMD sales could unleash would prove harmful to China's energy security, and rising tensions in Sino-American relations or American economic retaliation for such sales would hurt China's strategic and economic interests. Because of these conflicting interests, Beijing must carefully weigh the tradeoffs of any policy and organize them accordingly. How might China prioritize its policy agenda? The financial and political benefits of arms sales have been ambiguous at best. While fiery rhetoric often accompanies discussions of multipolarity, China does not yet possess the capacity to challenge American interests worldwide. It would appear, then, that energy security offers the most tangible and immediate benefits to China. China's comprehensive power depends largely on its economic vitality. Moreover, with the decline of ideology, economic success has become the only viable tool for maintaining the legitimacy of the Chinese Communist Party, as well as the stability of domestic political and social structures. Consequently, the energy resources that fuel China's economy will ultimately exert greater influence over China's Gulf policy. What are the U.S. policy implications of China's obsession with energy security? The preceding assessment of Chinese interests suggests that China's threat to American interests will be low to moderate in the next 10 to 15 years. While China [*73] is wary of America's potential capability to exercise a military veto over Chinese access to energy resources, there is significant overlap of interests between Beijing and Washington. Energy security is vital to China, the United States (in terms of global price stability), and America's allies in Europe and the Asia-Pacific. China recognizes that the United States has and will continue to play a stabilizing political and military role in the region. Accordingly, China will likely continue to support some U.S. policies, such as preventing the rise of a hegemon. In the event of a second Gulf war, China would be unlikely either to endorse openly any coalition action or actively resist one in the UN Security Council (a position it took during the 1991 Gulf War). Beijing's energy security stakes are sufficiently high that China would oppose the forcible occupation of vast swaths of territory in the Arabian Peninsula by either Iraq or Iran. It is doubtful, however, that Chinese opposition would go beyond rhetoric to include military participation in or support for a U.S.-led coalition operation. There are those in the United States who worry that China might be able to intervene militarily in the Gulf in the future. n26 How plausible is such a scenario? China has no doubt embarked on an aggressive naval modernization program that could significantly improve its ability to project power beyond its shores. However, several geopolitical and military considerations would severely constrain China's military options. First, there are tremendous opportunity

costs associated with an ambitious venture into the Persian Gulf that would amount to a strategic overreach. Over the next 10 to 15 years, China must contend with many other critical security concerns that are likely to
occupy its attention. The volatility of cross-strait relations, the dangers of Korean unification, the uncertain future path of Japan, and the rise of India on China's southern flank are just a few of the major issues that will continue to dominate Chinese military strategy and thinking. China is not likely to expend military resources for the Gulf at the expense of the above exigencies. An expeditionary force is simply incompatible with China's narrower security interests, particularly concerning the unresolved Taiwan question. Second, China does not have the military capability to impose its will in the Gulf. Most of China's more modern surface combatants and submarines are based in the East Sea Fleet for a Taiwan Strait contingency. The ships of the South Sea Fleet only have a limited capacity to patrol the South China Sea. Moreover, China possesses few modern ships and naval aircraft that can perform the necessary tasks of a blue-water navy. Ultimately, China will need to develop and deploy several aircraft carrier groups to project meaningful naval power in the Persian Gulf. Thus far, Beijing has not embarked on such an ambitious modernization plan. Even if China pursues such an option in the next decade, most of the carriers would likely be dedicated to a cross-strait contingency if the Taiwan question remains unresolved. In other words, Beijing recognizes that there is little that it could do to oppose U.S. military

preponderance in the Gulf, a fact which further undercuts the rationale for developing force-projection capabilities for the region. [*74] There are several "wild card" scenarios that could alter China's calculus. First, the analysis above suggests that America's political and military position in the Gulf is a major determinant of how China will define its long-term role in the Gulf. Should Washington falter, the strategic vacuum in the wake of a U.S. withdrawal could bring about tremendous instability that would harm China economic interests. In such a scenario, Beijing would then be confronted with a particularly acute quandary if it did not possess the capabilities to assert or defend its interests in the Gulf. Second, U.S. relations with Iran and Iraq
over the next decade could fundamentally reshape the political map for China. Should a U.S.-Iranian rapprochement come to fruition, China's ability to pit Tehran against Washington would diminish significantly. Third, internal changes in Iraq, Iran, and the GCC states could have major policy consequences for Beijing. The triumph of reformers in Iran or the rise of a moderate regime in Iraq could limit China's ability to maneuver against the United States.

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Iraq Aff

1AC Chinese Oil Advantage (5/

And, Oil Competition reduces the ability to manage miscalculations and inevitably causes escalation to U.S.-China War
Hatemi 2k7 (Peter, Professor at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Oil and Conflict in Sino-American Relations, China Security, Summer, Volume 3, Number 3//cndi) Because the economies of both the United States and China depend heavily on imported energy - primarily

oil - the advent of a zero-sum situation where global demand exceeds supply could create a potential casus belli. Rising Chinese demand for oil imports will at some point create pressure on the global supply, and continued expansion of its imports will likely impinge on the U.S. ability to sustain its own import demand.28 If a situation occurs where China thinks its national interests depend on its ability to increase its share of total imports and
where the United States concludes that its national interests demand that it prevent China from making further inroads into its share of total imports, conflict is likely. In some cases, the search for new resources will manifest itself in the form of imperial expansion with the state conquering neighboring territories and establishing overseas colonies.29 In other cases the search may take a less overtly military form and manifest itself in efforts to open up new markets, dominate current markets, obtain critical supply concessions or establish new trade networks. So long as resources are finite, both efforts to seize control of new supplies or to obtain them through the market are likely to generate conflict. Lateral

pressure increases the potential for major powers to come into conflict, especially when competing states spheres of influence in resource-rich peripheral regions begin to overlap. An important consequence of lateral pressure is the action-reaction process wherein one antagonistic activity (perceived or real) leads to a counteraction by the competing state. Activities that may be generated by one state due to considerations other than resource security, but that affect the resource security of another state, could also be perceived as a threat even though no threat was intended. The most important of these
interactions is when the expanding activities and interests of two high-capability, high-lateral pressure states, such as the United States and China, collide. If the activities of either nation are perceived as threatening, the two may be caught in a security dilemma, wherein reciprocation of antagonistic actions may lead to war.30

That goes nuclear

Johnson 01 (President of the Japan Policy Research Institute) [Chalmers, Time to Bring the Troops Home, The Nation, (May 14, 2001 issue), pg. http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20010514&c=1&s=johnson] China is another matter. No sane figure in the Pentagon wants a war with China, and all serious US militarists know that China's minuscule nuclear capacity is not offensive but a deterrent against the overwhelming US power arrayed against it (twenty archaic Chinese warheads versus more than 7,000 US warheads). Taiwan, whose status constitutes the still incomplete last act of the Chinese civil war, remains the most dangerous place on earth. Much as the 1914 assassination of the Austrian crown prince in Sarajevo led to a war that no one wanted, a misstep in Taiwan by any side could bring the United States and China into a conflict that neither wants. Such a war would bankrupt the United States, deeply divide Japan and probably end in a Chinese victory, given that China is the world's most populous country and would be defending itself against a foreign aggressor. More seriously, it could easily escalate into a nuclear holocaust. However, given the nationalistic challenge to China's sovereignty of any Taiwanese attempt to declare its independence formally, forward-deployed US forces on China's borders have virtually no deterrent effect.

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1AC Chinese Oil Advantage (6/

And, Chinese Entry In Iraq is Essential Provides Long-Term Stability, Ensures U.S.-China Cooperation, and Doesnt Challenge U.S. Hegemony
Frederic Wehrey Dalia Dassa Kaye Jessica Watkins Jeffrey Martini Robert A. Guffey 2010 (Project Air FORCE Prepared for the United States Air Force The Middle East After the Iraq War The Iraq Effect http://www.rand.org/pubs/monographs/2010/RAND_MG892.pdf) China as an Extraregional Power in the Gulf. While the war in Iraq has created opportunities for the expansion

of Chinese influence in the Gulf, it should not be assumed that Chinas advance will necessarily come at the expense of American interests in the region. In fact, American and Chinese interests intersect on many issues, most notably in terms of fostering the regional stability necessary for the free flow of the regions oil and gas production. The interruption of energy supplies is not in the interest of either state, and on this front there is considerable room for Sino-American cooperation. Moreover, although China has shown greater initiative since the onset of the Iraq War in cultivating ties with Middle East energy producers , its role in the regional balance of power remains peripheral. That is to say, while Chinas status as a permanent member of the UN Security Council necessarily involves China in regional disputes, China has not made a significant effort to enhance its political role in the Middle East or offer itself as an alternative balancer to the United States in regional security. Indeed, its growing but still limited ability to project military power outside its neighborhood leaves China as more economically significant than militarily significant in regional affairs. Given this backdrop, the extent of Chinas influence in the Middle East is likely to turn in large part on the degree to which the United States is able to improve its strategic position through the stabilization of Iraq. Thus, should the regional security environment improve freeing up American forces and enhancing the U.S. ability to project its influencethis would certainly help keep China within the framework of a complimentary role in which it works to
strengthen the U.S. led regional security order. On the other hand, perceptions of U.S. weakness or a future push by China to move the international system toward multipolarity could lead China to play a spoiler role in regional affairs.

And, Strong U.S. Sino relations and cooperation prevents extinction. Cooperation is the only way to solve economic stability, terrorism, crime, prolif, and disease spread.
Wenzhong, PRC Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 2-7-2K4 (Zhou, Vigorously Pushing Forward the Constructive and Cooperative Relationship Between China and the United States, http://china-japan21.org/eng/zxxx/t64286.htm) China's development needs a peaceful international environment, particularly in its periphery. We will continue to play a constructive role in global and regional affairs and sincerely look forward to amicable coexistence and friendly cooperation with all other countries, the United States included. We will continue to push for good-neighborliness, friendship and partnership and dedicate ourselves to peace, stability and prosperity in the region. Thus China's development will also mean stronger prospect of peace in the Asia-Pacific region and the world at large. China and the US should, and can, work together for peace, stability and prosperity in the region. Given the highly complementary nature of the two economies, China's reform, opening up and rising economic size have opened broad horizon for sustained China-US trade and economic cooperation. By deepening our commercial partnership, which has already delivered tangible benefits to the two peoples, we can do still more and also make greater contribution to global economic stability and prosperity. Terrorism, cross-boundary crime, proliferation of advanced weapons, and spread of deadly diseases pose a common threat to mankind. China and the US have extensive shared stake and common responsibility for meeting these challenges, maintaining world peace and security and addressing other major issues bearing on human survival and development. China is ready to keep up its coordination and cooperation in these areas with the US and the rest of the international community. During his visit to the US nearly 25 years ago, Deng Xiaoping said, "The interests of our two peoples and those of world peace require that we view our relations from the overall international situation and a long-term strategic perspective." Thirteen years ago when China-US relations were at their lowest ebb, Mr. Deng said, "In the final analysis, China-US relations have got to get better." We are optimistic about the tomorrow of China-US relations. We have every reason to believe that so long as the two countries view and handle the relationship with a strategic perspective, adhere to the guiding principles of the three joint communiqus and firmly grasp the common interests of the two countries, we will see even greater accomplishments in China-US relations.

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1AC Chinese Oil Advantage (7/

And, U.S. Withdrawal Stabilizes Iraq and Allows Chinese Aid and Oil Revenues to Develop the Iraqi Economy
Yushi 2k6 (Mao the director of the Unirule Institute of Economics. Previously, he worked at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and has been a visiting scholar at Harvard University. In November 2004, Mao was elected by the International Business Review as one of the ten most influential economists in China. He is widely published on energy and environmental economics, transportation, policy reform and poverty alleviation, Politics vs. Market, China Security, Summer 2006, pg online @ http://www.chinasecurity.us/index.php? option=com_content&view=article&id=242%3A-politics-vs-market&catid=62%3Aissue-3&lang=en //cndi-ef) Until recently, China has been an economically weak country. Its share of the world market was very small and China was essentially a bystander of the global system. Now, however, the situation is significantly different. In 2004, the worlds crude oil trading volume totaled 1.85 billion tons, with China accounting for 6.5 percent of it. The United States accounted for 27 percent and Japan 11.2 percent. In the iron ore and timber markets, Chinas share of global trading was even higher. China is rapidly transforming from an onlooker into a full-fledged participant. Such a change naturally grants China both more rights and more responsibilities in sustaining the world market. In the past, such rights and duties were undertaken by the countries with the biggest market shares, particularly the United States. China often sought to challenge this status quo. No more.

China has a deep stake in protecting the global order, though its role as a key player has yet to be fully realized. vThe global oil markets, particularly in the Middle East, along with their transportation routes, urgently need protection. At present, the United States assumes this role of guarantor almost exclusively.
Undoubtedly, the U.S. deployment of aircraft carriers to safeguard the sea lanes of communication has greatly benefited Japan, Taiwan, New Zealand, as well as the Chinese mainland and India. But the political issues in the Middle East are fiendishly complex and cannot be undertaken by any one country alone . China has an important role

to play by helping them achieve economic stability and improving peoples lives. This is particularly true in Iraq, where the United States is in a crucial dilemma. If China helps build power plants, highways, ports, and transportation pipelines in a cooperative manner, not only will Chinese businesses possibly profit from the construction contracts, but it will bring social stability as well as increased oil production and exports. The United States should not oppose such acts, and would probably be grateful. Others in the region have problematic relations with the United States, while China enjoys greater acceptance by various governments. Why shouldnt China take full advantage of this by providing economic assistance to these countries? All of these issues are deeply integrated with oil security, and China should fully participate. So, what is the most important task facing political leaders all over the world? It is to protect and sustain the global market. For without it, there will be no alternative to allocating global resources other than going to war.

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1AC Chinese Oil Advantage (8/

Finally, there is no alternative to the plan failure to allow China to Access Iraqi Oil Spurs Chinese Disruption of Traditional U.S. Oil Access Points Causing Conflict
Hatemi 2k7 (Peter, Professor at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Oil and Conflict in Sino-American Relations, China Security, Summer, Volume 3, Number 3//cndi)

Whereas Chinas previous moves to secure an energy supply took the traditional political form of laying claim to disputed territory (e.g., the South China Sea area), the more recent search for oil has shifted to one based on commercial means. Chinese oil companies began making significant overseas purchases in the early 1990s
which have, ironically, been made possible in part by the influx of dollars resulting from Chinas growing trade surplus with the United States.43 Prior to the Iraq War, China had oil investments in over 20 countries.44 The U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 set back Chinas quest to import oil from the country . Even though U.N. sanctions in place prior to the war prevented China from exporting oil from Iraq, the Chinese had struck a deal in 1997 under the assumption that the sanctions would ultimately be lifted.45 Once it had toppled that regime, the U.S.-controlled interim authority froze negotiations on contracts signed by Saddam Husseins government.46 This freeze sparked more intense Chinese oil activity, as Iraqi oil had been a major part of Chinas long-term energy plan.47 Since 2003, Chinas four major energy firms, China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC Ltd.), China National Petroleum Corporation, Sinopec and PetroChina, have struck deals with countries in Africa, the Middle East, South America and Central and East Asia. By early 2006, Chinese firms had entered into various sorts of oil ventures in over 50 countries worldwide. Perhaps more significantly, Chinese companies entered into contracts with Vietnamese and Filipino companies that involved joint exploration of the areas in the disputed Spratly Islands region. As Chinas international

oil companies activities expanded, they entered into regions where American and European oil companies have long been entrenched. In certain respects, the United States and China draw the bulk of their oil imports from different sources. Close to half of U.S. imports arrive from Canada, Mexico and Latin America and an additional quarter from the Middle East. On the other hand, over 25 percent of Chinas oil
comes from fields in Asia and nearly 40 percent from the Middle East. Both, however, draw heavily on Sub-Saharan Africa, where Chinese companies have been aggressively pursuing new sources of oil in the Bight of Benin, the Sahel and in East Africa, a region largely unexplored until now where early reports indicate significant oil deposits.48 Recent Chinese

ventures in Latin America, including Venezuela, encroach on an area long dominated by the United States. Chinese investments in oil interests and pipelines in Canada designed to channel oil to Pacific ports for export to China could divert supplies away from the United States. Chinese companies efforts to
expand their stake in Central Asia have also created tensions with Western oil companies. A competitive commercial environment among oil companies need not give rise to the geo-strategic stresses assumed in lateral pressure theory. Nevertheless, the simple fact that oil companies from China and the United States now rely on aging

producers means there is greater pressure to find new sources. They are vying for a larger slice of a shrinking pie as the number of countries that have not reached peak production is limited (see Appendix).This implies that competition is likely to intensify in Iraq, United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, who are believed to remain below peak, and in Central Asia, where Khazakstan, Azerbaijan and Uzbekistan
continue to expand production. Outside of these regions, only Bolivia, Vietnam and Thailand are currently experiencing growth in production.

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Advantage ____ is U.S. Power: Keeping forces in Iraq Collapses U.S. Hegemony Well Isolate 3 Internal Links First Readiness The war has collapsed readiness and our combat equipment
Burner, et al 2008 (Darce, candidate for US House, Washington, along with a group of United States Democratic congressional candidates, retired military officers and national security professionals http://burner.3cdn.net/20f4382dfab715f445_qvm6ibjk6.pdf To End The War In Iraq A Responsible Plan) Throughout our history, the strength and professionalism of the U.S. Military have been instrumental in preserving our countrys liberty and democracy. Superb training and personnel plus the best equipment the world made quick

and decisive response possible. Our capacity to respond with overwhelming force has been a powerful deterrent. Our military capabilities and readiness, however, have been deeply damaged by this war. Both our troop and our military equipment have been seriously depleted. Our forces are stretched so thin that we are unprepared to defend our country. 6 Many of our best and brightest officers are choosing to leave military service. 7 Under the grinding strain of constant wartime use, a dangerously high percentage of our military equipment is damaged, gone, or unavailable to units who might need it. 8 Our dependence on private military contractors9 and the politicization of some of the upper echelons of the military compromise the professionalism which had been a hallmark of our forces0. And the nationalization of the state National Guards
presents a further threat by hampering our ability to respond to emergencies at home.

Thats key to hegemony and deterrence

Spencer 2k (Jack, the Research Fellow in Nuclear Energy Policy at The Heritage Foundation's Roe Institute for Economic Policy Studies, bachelor's degree in international politics from Frostburg State University and his master's degree from the University of Limerick in Ireland. While in Limerick, he also began research towards his doctorate in international relations and national security, The Facts About Military Readiness, pg online @ http://www.heritage.org/Research/Reports/2000/09/BG1394-The-Facts-About-Military-Readiness) The evidence indicates that the U.S. armed forces are not ready to support America's national security requirements. Moreover, regarding the broader capability to defeat groups of enemies, military readiness has been declining. The National Security Strategy, the U.S. official statement of national security objectives,3 concludes that the United States "must

have the capability to deter and, if deterrence fails, defeat large-scale, cross-border aggression in two distant theaters in overlapping time frames."4 According to some of the military's highest-ranking officials, however, the United States cannot achieve this goal. Commandant of the Marine Corps General James Jones, former Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Jay Johnson, and Air Force Chief of Staff General Michael Ryan have all expressed serious concerns about their respective services' ability to carry out a two major theater war strategy.5 Recently retired Generals Anthony Zinni of the U.S. Marine Corps and George Joulwan of the U.S. Army have even questioned America's ability to conduct one major theater war the size of the 1991 Gulf War.6 Military readiness is vital because declines in America's military readiness signal to the rest of the world that the United States is not prepared to defend its interests . Therefore, potentially hostile nations will be more likely to lash out against American allies and interests, inevitably leading to U.S. involvement in combat. A high state of military readiness is more likely to deter potentially hostile nations from acting aggressively in regions of vital national interest, thereby preserving peace.

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1AC Advantage____: U.S. Power (2/

Second, Lack of Public Support and Overstretch Iraq has Overstretched the Military and Gutted Public Support for the Military Actions - Inviting Challengers, Decreasing Support for Intervention, and Alienating Allies
Hadar 2k7 (Leon, Cato Institute research fellow in foreign policy studies, Pax Americana or Primus Inter Pares?, July 20, 2007, Cato Institute, http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=8500 //cndi-ef)
Hobbled hegemon The magazine calls the United States a "hobbled" hegemon and concludes that while the problems in Iraq may have weakened the United States, it is still likely to remain the "dominant superpower." Much of the support for the America-Is-Still-Number-One thesis, which not surprisingly is also very popular among members of the foreign policy establishment in Washington after all, who really wants to be a member of an elite in charge of a declining power? is based on numbers. The United States has the largest and most advanced economy and the largest and most powerful military. Even those who are doing a lot of cheerleading for China these days agree that that country will not become the world's largest economy before 2050 and even that proposition is very "iffy." No challengers And no one expects any of the United States' potential global rivals (the European Union, Russia, China and India) to overspend the United States on defense and overtake it in the military sphere any time soon. It just ain't gonna happen. And notwithstanding the advances that the Chinese, Indians and the Europeans are making in science and technology, the United States' open and dynamic free-market economy as well as its impressive elite universities and research institutions help it to maintain its status as the world's center of scientific and technological creativity. U.S.-led wars It can therefore be accepted as an

there is no great power or even a combination of powers that is ready to challenge the United States for global supremacy at this time in history. At the same time, one cannot deny that the U.S.-led wars in the Arc of Instability ranging from the Middle East to South Asia, including Iraq and Afghanistan have overstretched the U.S. armed forces. In fact, it has reached a point at which the United States would find it very costly, if not impossible, to fight and win other military conflicts. Indeed, one does not have to be a military expert to figure out that the decisions by North Korea and Iran to challenge the U nited States over the nuclear issue reflected their conclusion that the U.S. Army and Marines are not ready to fight in a ground war and do regime change la Iraq in other parts of the
axiom that world. Global cop In order to maintain its position as a global cop by responding 24/7 to 911 international calls, oust "rogue regimes," fight wars in several areas of conflict and deploy hundreds of thousands

, given the Iraq experience, the American people are no longer ready to provide their government with the money and the manpower it needs to secure its hegemonic position. Domestic discontent Meanwhile, there are pundits who suggest that "if only" the Bush Administration had done this (deploying
of troops to conduct counter-insurgency and do "nation building," the United States would have to recruit many more soldiers. However more troops) or that (doing more planning for the occupation), the United States would have been marching towards victory in Iraq. What has undeniably emerged on this front is the huge gap between the pundits' conception of U.S. national interest (that the United States has the right and the obligation to use its power to achieve "regime changes" and do "nation building") and the one shared by the general public. The latter believes it has the right and the obligation to use its power to respond to a clear and present danger to its security and preferably through short and relatively cheap wars). Costly

costly interventions like the war in Iraq are only helping to erode the U.S. public's willingness to support military engagements abroad and increase isolationist sentiments at home . At the same time, the failure in Iraq is also making it more difficult for the United States to win support from likely allies while playing into the hands of potential rivals. Ultimately, it is the application of the law of diminishing returns in
interventions If anything

the use of military power by a great power. Few allies If one moves beyond the point of conducting a war of necessity and becomes engaged in a war of choice, rising costs in terms of casualties and money weaken the ability of the great power to maintain its dominant status. The emerging consensus on the war in Iraq in Washington assumes that, even under the best-case scenario, the Americans would have no choice but to withdraw most of their troops

from Iraq while perhaps keeping a small number of troops in isolated military bases to provide limited support and training for the Iraqi forces. More likely, the United States will have to redeploy
its troops from Iraq and protect its interests in the Persian Gulf through a quick reaction force and over-the-horizon presence of the U.S. military. Protecting U.S. interests Moreover, Washington would need to work in tandem with other regional actors, including Iran and Syria, and other global powers to maintain the stability in the Persian Gulf and the entire Middle East. And if the United States wants other global powers to share in the burden of policing the Middle East and other parts of the world, it would need to share the process of decision-making with them. Giving up the driver's seat It cannot continue to occupy the driver's seat and ask the Europeans, Russians or Chinese to help in navigating from points A to point B and to check the tires and to change the oil. These powers are going to demand to have more of a say on where points A and B are and perhaps even insist on occupying the driver's seat when it comes to their spheres of influence: China in East Asia, Russia in its "near abroad" and Europe in the Middle East. In fact, Washington has an interest in encouraging the Europeans to play a more activist diplomatic and military role in the Middle East so as to discourage them from continuing to do "free riding" on

domestic resistance and rising global challenges will make it more and more difficult for Washington to secure its military hegemony on its own. As a consequence, the notion of a U.S. monopoly in the international system will be replaced with the concept of oligopoly. Monopoly to oligopoly The choice that Washington will face in the aftermath of Iraq is between continuing to strive for strategic dominance in a way that ignites more opposition at home and resistance abroad or working together with other powers to contain threats to the international system. In that case, the United States will still be first among equals (or primus inter pares) which
U.S. power in that region. Still Number One All in all, while the United States will probably remain Number One for quite a while, it is becoming clear that

is the next best thing to being Number One.

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Third, Retention Retention is failing and only a withdrawal from Iraq Solves
Kagan 2k6 (Frederick, The U.S. Military's Manpower Crisis, pg online @ http://www.aei.org/article/24584 //ghs-ef)

Bush's quality-of-life initiatives, meanwhile, made the prospect of increasing troop levels even more distant by dramatically raising the cost of such increases, and by raising the cost of even maintaining current
ground-force levels, these initiatives made that less likely too. According to a recent report by the Government Accountability Office, the cost of compensation for the active-duty military has risen by 29 percent since 2000, driven in large measure by a 69 percent increase in military health-care expenses. It now costs an average of $112,000 to maintain one service member on active duty for one year, and the total annual compensation cost for the active-duty force, which was $123 billion in 2000, had grown to $158 billion by 2004. Such numbers make it all too easy to argue that personnel increases are just too expensive. This is not to argue that quality-of-life improvements were not necessary to help the military retain its senior personnel; they were. But they were not sufficient to address the general manpower shortage. The

quality of life enjoyed by U.S. troops is affected just as dramatically by the length of their combat tours as it is by their housing, salaries, and health care. Solving one problem at the expense of the other is unlikely to succeed--indeed, it has not: high numbers of young officers have begun leaving the force despite the new incentives. Over the long term, it seems certain that the repeated and back-to-back deployments made necessary by the military's ground-troop shortage will erode morale (and therefore recruiting and retention rates) faster than quality-of-life improvements will restore it. Maintaining a skilled, motivated volunteer military
requires addressing both aspects of the problem. New weapons systems, meanwhile, are not necessarily any cheaper than new troops. As the cost of service members has increased in recent years, so has the price of new technology. The projected unit cost of the F-22, for example, has risen from $149 million in 1991 to $345 million today. It will cost approximately $63 billion--or 40 percent of the annual compensation cost (based on 2004 figures) of all active-duty personnel--to purchase the 178 F-22 aircraft now in the defense program. This price tag does not include the costs of R & D, modernizing the aircraft (the design of which began in 1986), arming it, or flying it. And all this is for a single weapons system. The current defense budget also includes plans to procure the F-35 Joint Strike fighter and to accelerate the development of a long-range manned bomber as well. The Nature of War In its five years in office, the Bush administration has avoided improving the human capabilities of the military--and the crisis has grown steadily worse. The long-term deployment of U.S. soldiers to Iraq and Afghanistan has taken a severe toll on the ground forces. Combat tours, which lasted six months in the 1990s, have been extended to a full year for most army troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. Many soldiers in the active force (and in the National Guard and the Reserves) have already been deployed twice and are now facing their third tour. Although reenlistment

rates have remained high, recruitment rates have fallen dangerously, morale has dropped in some units, and some experts, such as retired General Barry McCaffrey, warn that "the wheels are coming off" the army as it struggles to sustain a large deployment with insufficient personnel. Unless the United States rapidly withdraws from Iraq, moreover, there is no sign of relief on the horizon. Although the administration
has permitted the army to maintain nearly 30,000 extra soldiers in its ranks for the past several years, the president's budget for next year requires the army to shed those additional troops. And the ground forces proposed both in that budget and in the 2006 Quadrennial Defense Review would support a long-term deployment of only about 18 brigade combat teams (each comprising about 3,500 troops). At the height of the campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan, by contrast, the United States had more than 20 brigade combat teams deployed to combat zones, and even these were not enough to pacify and rebuild those countries. It is hardly a secret that the U.S. Army and the Marine Corps are short on troops; senior officers and analysts regularly refer to the problem when discussing operations in Iraq and Afghanistan or when explaining U.S. options--or the lack thereof. Lieutenant General John Vines, who stepped down as commander of U.S. ground forces in Iraq at the beginning of this year, has pointed out that many U.S. soldiers are now on their third or fourth tour of duty in Iraq. "The war has been going on nearly as long as the Second World War and we're asking a lot of the forces," he said in April. What is hard to understand is why Washington has steadfastly refused to address the issue. The explanation seems to stem from two beliefs, deeply held by top members of the Bush administration, about how war works. The first is the notion, shared by most RMA enthusiasts, that war is fundamentally about killing people and destroying things. The second is the conviction that military preparations should be guided by the business principle of investing in success. The basic flaw in both beliefs is that they take

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CNDI 2010 Iraq Aff Regents Lab parts of the problem to be the whole. Consider the first concept. The major priority of the current "information revolution" in warfare is to enable the military to locate, identify, track, target, and destroy enemy weapons systems--from aircraft and radar installations to individual soldiers. All of the services' "transformational" programs, including the army's Future Combat Systems program (a network of manned and unmanned systems), emphasize the sensors they will deploy. The aim, clearly articulated on a number of occasions, is to gain "near-perfect" intelligence--that is, a nearly complete understanding of where the enemy's forces are so that they can be eliminated. In fact, with a few exceptions, all of the new sensor and intelligence systems the Pentagon is now developing are designed to locate and identify enemy systems--not to interact with them. The distinction is important. Under the old system (still in use in Iraq today), U.S. units seeking intelligence about the enemy did not confine themselves to halting nearby and observing the enemy's disposition. Armored or motorized cavalry formations would actually attack the enemy before them (as the Second Armored Cavalry Regiment did during the Gulf War, in 1991, and as the cavalry of the Third Infantry Division did repeatedly in 2003). The goal of such attacks was threefold: to locate and identify the enemy, to determine its intentions, and to set the terms of the ensuing battle. The second of these tasks-determining the enemy's intentions--is particularly hard for the new sensor-shooter systems being promoted by RMA enthusiasts to do. As military strategists have long understood, simply bombing an enemy force (as the new technology would do) does not necessarily force it to reveal its intended course of action. Troops under bombardment take cover in various ways; they rarely respond by attempting to execute the attacks, defenses, or movements they had initially been preparing for. Bombing enemy troops thus yields far less information than actually engaging them on the ground. Some RMA advocates might argue that it does not matter; if the enemy's troops are all dead, what difference does it make what they were planning? That view would be valid if the aim of war were the literal annihilation of the enemy's military, or if one could be sure that using airpower to destroy a certain proportion of the enemy's armed forces would force the enemy to surrender. The problem is that actual enemies rarely cooperate. The record of attempts to compel governments to surrender by such methods is not a good one. The Germans tried it against the British in 1918 and again in 1940-41 and failed. The United States tried it against North Vietnam (most intensely in 1972) and also failed. It is true that on several occasions the United States has seemed to win a conflict through airpower alone--but in such cases, it has generally either had the support of indigenous allied forces or backed up the bombing with the threat of a ground invasion. Thus, although U.S. airpower achieved victory in Bosnia in 1995, it did so only with the support of a Croatian land offensive; in Kosovo in 1999, the Serbs only capitulated when rumors began to circulate of an impending U.S. ground attack; and the Afghan campaign of 2001 required the support of the Afghan Northern Alliance and Pashtun tribes in the south. Moreover, 39 days of bombing in 1991 did not make Saddam Hussein surrender, nor did the "shock and awe" campaign of 2003, which struck several thousand targets with precision-guided munitions within a few days. Large-scale ground invasions were needed in both cases. Why has airpower alone almost always failed to force enemies to surrender? The reason is actually fairly simple. The destruction or partial destruction of a military, by itself, places a state's ability to perform its core functions at risk, but it does not destroy that ability permanently. Militaries can be rebuilt. Shattered infrastructure can be repaired. Even losses in population can be made good over time. State leaders canny enough to think in such terms--as many U.S. opponents have been--are not readily persuaded to surrender simply by the partial destruction of their militaries. The occupation of an enemy's land with ground forces is a different story entirely. A state under aerial bombardment need only survive until the bombardment stops. A state under occupation, however, risks never regaining control of its territory. Worse still, an occupying force can usurp the basic functions of a state by, for example, governing territory and reorganizing the mobilization of resources to achieve different objectives. Occupied or partially occupied states may not be able to reverse such reorganizations. This is especially true of authoritarian governments, which cannot survive without the physical control of their populations. Occupying an enemy's territory thus places the core purposes of that enemy's state at much greater and more imminent risk than mere bombing. Many of the United States' foes, moreover, can comfort themselves with the knowledge that any U.S. bombing will likely be precise and calculated to do minimal collateral damage. The decision to develop a method of war that relies for success primarily on identifying and destroying targets rather than occupying territory therefore reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of war itself. Such a method focuses too much effort on what should be a subordinate part of war--destruction--and ignores other critical aspects of war, without which that destruction itself has little meaning. The Business of War The Bush administration's preference for military solutions that emphasize identifying and destroying targets stems from its second mistaken conviction about the nature of war: its faith in the applicability of the business model to military matters. In business, profitable companies reinforce success rather than failure. If one product line is working well while another is not, businesses often shut down the latter and devote more resources to the former. One recent example is Dell's announcement that it will move away from selling personal computers, even though this was the original core of the company's business model. The Bush administration enshrined this principle as a central element of its militarytransformation agenda early on by adopting the concept of "network-centric warfare." Developed by a team of retired military officers, the idea was to apply the lessons of the "information revolution" in business to war. In books and articles written in the late 1990s (before the stock-market crash), advocates of network-centric warfare, such as Admiral Arthur Cebrowski, cited companies such as Dell, American Airlines, Cisco Systems, and others to illustrate the competitive advantages that the extensive application of information technology gave to business--and could give to the military. Then,

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CNDI 2010 Iraq Aff Regents Lab in October 2001, Rumsfeld created the Office of Force Transformation to coordinate all aspects of military transformation and put Cebrowski in charge. Since Cebrowski's appointment as director of this new office, the Bush administration has steadily applied this business model to warfare. Already, the change has borne fruit. The U.S. armed forces are now extremely good--and far better than the competition--at locating and destroying targets from thousands of miles away. At the level of soldiers fighting other soldiers, the advantage is less pronounced: in Iraq, the enemy has been able to kill a number of U.S. soldiers, although it has been virtually incapable of preventing the U.S. military from either striking any target it chooses or retaliating in kind. From a business perspective, then, it seems to make sense to reduce investment in soldiers and increase investment in target-and-strike systems, since these yield what looks like a higher marginal return. This is precisely the logic that a number of supporters of network-centric warfare have used to argue their case. The problem with this approach is that unlike a corporation a military cannot safely decide that it will not compete in certain "markets," such as land warfare. Nor can it necessarily rely on "profits" in the airpower "market" to offset "losses" in ground combat. And given the fact that victory in most wars requires the occupation of the enemy's territory, or at least a convincing threat of occupation, the U.S. military must continue to compete in the land-power "market," however poor the "marginal returns" of land combat might be compared to those of combat using airpower. "Reinforcing success" by reallocating resources away from ground forces (and from those elements of the ground forces that provide capabilities different from airpower) will only create vulnerabilities that enemies will exploit. This is especially so given the very different nature of competition in war versus in business. Businesses compete against one another but do not attempt to infiltrate and physically, psychologically, or organizationally destroy one another. Success is measured in profit, and profit can frequently be better raised by increasing internal efficiency rather than by harming a competitor. In business, efficiency directly translates into success. The same is not so in war. After all, military organizations are designed to destroy one another as a prerequisite to achieving some larger purpose. Efficiencies within a military organization do not contribute to the attainment of this goal directly. They do so only indirectly, by freeing up resources that may or may not be used to achieve the objective. But how those freed-up resources are used, not the efficiency of that use, is the only measure that will actually tell in conflict. The competition between military organizations is therefore central to war in a way that competition between companies is not central to business. If one military opts out of a "market," it simply creates a vulnerability that another military can--and inevitably will--use to harm it. The True Worth of Land Power Ground forces perform a wide variety of tasks. It is the ability to control territory and populations, however, that is land power's unique contribution to war in this high-tech age. Only soldiers

are discriminating enough, in terms of both judgment and the capabilities of their weapons, to mix with an enemy's population, identify the combatants intermingled with that population, and accomplish the critical tasks of governance and reorganization that are so essential in persuading an enemy government to surrender. These are not functions that can be usurped by airpower, by computerization, or by mechanization in any way--at least not until robots with real cognitive abilities can be fielded. In the meantime, military occupation and population
control will remain human endeavors and will be less amenable to technological enhancement than any other aspect of war. It has long been true that one soldier with a radio (and access to artillery or air support) can kill a large crowd. If the aim is to control that crowd without killing it, however, hundreds of soldiers are required, no matter how good their technology. The size of the ground force needed to control conquered territory is determined by the size of that territory, the density of its population, and the nature and size of the resistance, not by the nature of the soldiers' weapons. When it comes to reorganizing or building political, economic, and social institutions, there is no substitute for human beings in large numbers. The idea that technological improvements in the U.S. ground forces, such as the army's Future Combat Systems, will be able to reduce dramatically the number of soldiers necessary for missions similar to those in Iraq or Afghanistan is therefore illusory and unrealistic. As long as war remains a process of human beings interacting with one another--as all irregular warfare is--the land-power "market" will require a heavy investment in people. This need has been clearly borne out

in the struggle in Iraq, where coalition success has rested entirely on the interaction between coalition troops and Iraqis. Airpower and long-range land-based firepower have been helpful in killing insurgents quickly and with minimal collateral damage, but they have played an entirely supporting role. The speed with which Iraqi soldiers can be trained; the number of villages in which the coalition can conduct its strategy of "clear, hold, build"; and the ability of coalition troops to restore and defend Iraqi infrastructure, polling places, and borders have been directly proportional to the number of coalition soldiers in Iraq, not to the quality of their equipment. And there is no reason to imagine that this situation will change in any future counterinsurgency or stability operation. The recently released Quadrennial Defense Review insisted that the U.S.
military should remain able to conduct such operations in the future on a large scale and for prolonged periods. Making that possible, however--not to mention ensuring U.S. preeminence in conventional warfare--means maintaining large ground forces. Indeed, Washington will need a large pool of trained and ready soldiers for all sorts of conflicts at every point along the spectrum for decades to come.

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1AC Advantage____: U.S. Power (6/

Strong troop levels are key to overall hegemony
Kagan and OHanlon 7. 4.24.07. The Case for Larger Ground Forces American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research. Frederick W. Kagan is a resident scholar at AEI. Michael O'Hanlon is a senior fellow and Sydney Stein Jr. Chair in foreign policy studies at the Brookings Institution. http://www.aei.org/article/26017

We live at a time when wars not only rage in nearly every region but threaten to erupt in many places where the current relative calm is tenuous. To view this as a strategic military challenge for the United States is not
to espouse a specific theory of Americas role in the world or a certain political philosophy. Such an assessment flows directly from the basic biparti- san view of American foreign policy makers since World War II that overseas threats must be coun- tered before they can directly threaten this coun- trys shores , that the basic stability of the international system is essential to American peace and prosperity, and that no country besides the United States is in a position to lead the way in countering major challenges to the global order. Let us highlight the threats and their conse- quences with a few concrete examples, emphasiz- ing those that involve key strategic regions of the world such as the Persian Gulf and East Asia, or key potential threats to American security, such as the spread of nuclear weapons and the strengthening of the global Al Qaeda/jihadist movement. The Iranian government has rejected a series of international demands to halt its efforts at enriching uranium and submit to inter- national inspections. What will happen if the USor Israeligovernment becomes convinced that Tehran is on the verge of fielding a nuclear weapon? North Korea, of course, has already done so, and the ripple effects are beginning to spread. Japans recent election to supreme power of a leader who has promised to rewrite that countrys constitution to support increased armed forces and, possibly, even nuclear weapons may well alter the delicate balance of fear in Northeast Asia fundamentally and rapidly. Also, in the background, at least for now, Sino- Taiwanese tensions continue to flare, as do ten- sions between India and Pakistan, Pakistan and Afghanistan, Venezuela and the United States, and so on. Meanwhile, the worlds noninterven- tion in Darfur troubles consciences from Europe to Americas Bible Belt to its bastions of liberal- ism, yet with no serious international forces on offer, the bloodletting will probably, tragically, continue unabated. And as bad as things are in Iraq today, they could get worse. What would happen if the key Shiite figure, Ali al Sistani, were to die? If another major attack on the scale of the Golden Mosque bombing hit either side (or, perhaps, both sides at the same time)? Such deterioration might con- vince many Americans that the war there truly was lostbut the costs of reaching such a conclusion would be enormous. Afghanistan is somewhat more stable for the moment, although a major Taliban offensive appears to be in the offing. Sound US grand strategy must proceed from the recognition that, over the next few years and decades, the world is going to be a very unsettled and quite dangerous place, with Al Qaeda and its associated groups as a subset of a much larger set of worries. The only serious response to this international environment is to develop armed forces capable of protecting Americas vital interests throughout this dan- gerous time. Doing so requires a military

capa- ble of a wide range of missionsincluding not only deterrence of great power conflict in dealing with potential hotspots in Korea, the Taiwan Strait, and the Persian Gulf but also associated with a variety of Special Forces activities and stabilization operations. For todays US military, which already excels at high technology and is increasingly focused on re-learning the lost art of counterinsurgency, this is first and foremost a question of finding the resources to field a large-enough standing Army and Marine Corps to handle personnelintensive missions such as the ones now under way in Iraq and Afghanistan.

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1AC Advantage____: U.S. Power (7/

And, Decline in U.S. hegemony sparks nuclear wars in every key region---no viable replacement
Kagan 7 Robert Kagan, senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and senior transatlantic fellow at the German Marshall Fund, August-September 2007, End of Dreams, Return of History, Hoover Policy Review, online: http://www.hoover.org/publications/policyreview/8552512.html Finally, there is the United States itself. As a matter of national policy stretching back across numerous administrations, Democratic and Republican, liberal and conservative, Americans have insisted on preserving regional predominance in East Asia; the Middle East; the Western Hemisphere; until recently, Europe; and now, increasingly, Central Asia. This was its goal after the Second World War, and since the end of the Cold War, beginning with the first Bush administration and continuing through the Clinton years, the United States did not retract but expanded its influence eastward across Europe and into the Middle East, Central Asia, and the Caucasus. Even as it maintains its position as the predominant global power, it is also engaged in hegemonic competitions in these regions with China in East and Central Asia, with Iran in the Middle East and Central Asia, and with Russia in Eastern Europe, Central Asia, and the Caucasus. The United States, too, is more of a traditional than a postmodern power, and though Americans are loath to acknowledge it, they generally prefer their global place as No. 1 and are equally loath to relinquish it. Once having entered a region, whether for practical or idealistic reasons, they are remarkably slow to withdraw from it until they believe they have substantially transformed it in their own image . They profess indifference to the world and claim they just want to be left alone even as they seek daily to shape the behavior of billions of people around the globe. The jostling for status and influence among these ambitious nations and would-be nations is a second defining feature of the new post-Cold War international system. Nationalism in all its forms is back, if it ever went away, and so is international competition for power, influence, honor, and status. American predominance prevents these rivalries from intensifying its regional as well as its global predominance. Were the United States to diminish its influence in the regions where it is currently the strongest power, the other nations would settle disputes as great and lesser powers have done in the past: sometimes through diplomacy and accommodation but often through confrontation and wars of varying scope, intensity, and destructiveness. One novel aspect of such a multipolar world is that most of these powers would possess nuclear weapons. That could make wars between them less likely, or it could simply make them more catastrophic. It is easy but also dangerous to underestimate the role the United States plays in providing a measure of stability in the world even as it also disrupts stability. For instance, the United States is the dominant naval power everywhere, such that other nations cannot compete with it even in their home waters. They either happily or grudgingly allow the United States Navy to be the guarantor of international waterways and trade routes, of international access to markets and raw materials such as oil. Even when the United States engages in a war, it is able to play its role as guardian of the waterways. In a more genuinely multipolar world, however, it would not. Nations would compete for naval dominance at least in their own regions and possibly beyond. Conflict between nations would involve struggles on the oceans as well as on land. Armed embargos, of the kind used in World War i and other major conflicts, would disrupt trade flows in a way that is now impossible. Such order as exists in the world rests not merely on the goodwill of peoples but on a foundation provided by American power. Even the European Union, that great geopolitical miracle, owes its founding to American power, for without it the European nations after World War II would never have felt secure enough to reintegrate Germany. Most Europeans recoil at the thought, but even today Europe s stability depends on the guarantee, however distant and one hopes unnecessary, that the United States could step in to check any dangerous development on the continent. In a genuinely multipolar world, that would not be possible without renewing the danger of world war. People who believe greater equality among nations would be preferable to the present American predominance often succumb to a basic logical fallacy. They believe the order the world enjoys today exists independently of American power. They imagine that in a world where American power was diminished, the aspects of international order that they like would remain in place. But that s not the way it works. International order does not rest on ideas and institutions. It is shaped by configurations of power. The international order we know today reflects the distribution of power in the world since World War ii, and especially since the end of the Cold War. A different configuration of power, a multipolar world in which the poles were Russia, China, the United States, India, and Europe, would produce its own kind of order, with different rules and norms reflecting the interests of the powerful states that would have a hand in shaping it. Would that international order be an improvement? Perhaps for Beijing and Moscow it would. But it is doubtful that it would suit the tastes of enlightenment liberals in the United States and Europe. The current order, of course, is not only far from perfect but also offers no guarantee

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CNDI 2010 Iraq Aff Regents Lab against major conflict among the world s great powers. Even under the umbrella of unipolarity, regional conflicts involving the large powers may erupt. War could erupt between China and Taiwan and draw in both the United States and Japan. War could erupt between Russia and Georgia, forcing the United States and its European allies to decide whether to intervene or suffer the consequences of a Russian victory. Conflict between India and Pakistan remains possible, as does conflict between Iran and Israel or other Middle Eastern states. These, too, could draw in other great powers, including the United States. Such conflicts may be unavoidable no matter what policies the United States pursues. But they are more likely to erupt if the United States weakens or withdraws from its positions of regional dominance. This is especially true in East Asia, where most nations agree that a reliable American power has a stabilizing and pacific effect on the region. That is certainly the view of most of China s neighbors. But even China, which seeks gradually to supplant the United States as the dominant power in the region, faces the dilemma that an American withdrawal could unleash an ambitious, independent, nationalist Japan. In Europe, too, the departure of the United States from the scene even if it remained the worlds most powerful nation could be destabilizing. It could tempt Russia to an even more overbearing and potentially forceful approach to unruly nations on its periphery. Although some realist theorists seem to imagine that the disappearance of the Soviet Union put an end to the possibility of confrontation between Russia and the West, and therefore to the need for a permanent American role in Europe, history suggests that conflicts in Europe involving Russia are possible even without Soviet communism. If the United States withdrew from Europe if it adopted what some call a strategy of offshore balancing this could in time increase the likelihood of conflict involving Russia and its near neighbors, which could in turn draw the United States back in under unfavorable circumstances. It is also optimistic to imagine that a retrenchment of the American position in the Middle East and the assumption of a more passive, offshore role would lead to greater stability there. The vital interest the United States has in access to oil and the role it plays in keeping access open to other nations in Europe and Asia make it unlikely that American leaders could or would stand back and hope for the best while the powers in the region battle it out. Nor would a more even-handed policy toward Israel, which some see as the magic key to unlocking peace, stability, and comity in the Middle East, obviate the need to come to Israel s aid if its security became threatened. That commitment, paired with the American commitment to protect strategic oil supplies for most of the world, practically ensures a heavy American military presence in the region, both on the seas and on the ground. The subtraction of American power from any region would not end conflict but would simply change the equation. In the Middle East, competition for influence among powers both inside and outside the region has raged for at least two centuries. The rise of Islamic fundamentalism doesn t change this. It only adds a new and more threatening dimension to the competition, which neither a sudden end to the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians nor an immediate American withdrawal from Iraq would change. The alternative to American predominance in the region is not balance and peace. It is further competition. The region and the states within it remain relatively weak. A diminution of American influence would not be followed by a diminution of other external influences . One could expect deeper involvement by both China and Russia, if only to secure their interests. 18 And one could also expect the more powerful states of the region, particularly Iran, to expand and fill the vacuum. It is doubtful that any American administration would voluntarily take actions that could shift the balance of power in the Middle East further toward Russia, China, or Iran. The world hasn t changed that much. An American withdrawal from Iraq will not return things to normal or to a new kind of stability in the region. It will produce a new instability, one likely to draw the United States back in again. The alternative to American regional predominance in the Middle East and elsewhere is not a new regional stability. In an era of burgeoning nationalism, the future is likely to be one of intensified competition among nations and nationalist movements. Difficult as it may be to extend American predominance into the future, no one should imagine that a reduction of American power or a retraction of American influence and global involvement will provide an easier path.

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1AC Advantage____: U.S. Power (9/

Our hegemony is unmatached No counterbalancing, countries are lining up behind us
Krauthammer, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Distinguished Commentary, columnist for the Washington Post, and has received awards from the Center for Security Policy and American Enterprise Institute, 2K3 (Charles, The Unipolar Moment Revisited, The National Interest, Winter, 2002/2003) The result is the dominance of a single power unlike anything ever seen. Even at its height Britain could always be seriously challenged by the next greatest powers. Britain had a smaller army than the land powers of Europe and its navy was equaled by the next two navies combined. Today, American military spending exceeds that of the next

twenty countries combined. Its navy, air force and space power are unrivaled. Its technology is irresistible. It is dominant by every measure: military, economic, technological, diplomatic, cultural, even linguistic, with a myriad of countries trying to fend off the
inexorable march of Internet-fueled mtv English. American dominance has not gone unnoticed. During the 1990s, it was mainly China and Russia that denounced unipolarity in their occasional joint communique s. As the new century dawned it was on everyone's lips. A French foreign minister dubbed the United States not a superpower but a hyperpower. The dominant concern of foreign policy

September 11 heightened the asymmetry. It did so in three ways. First, and most obviously, it led to a demonstration of heretofore latent American military power. Kosovo, the first war ever fought and won exclusively from the air, had given a hint of America's quantum leap in military power (and the enormous gap that had developed between American
establishments everywhere became understanding and living with the 800-pound American gorilla. And then and European military capabilities). But it took September 11 for the United States to unleash with concentrated fury a fuller display of its power in Afghanistan. Being a relatively pacific, commercial republic, the United States does not go around looking for demonstration wars. This one was thrust upon it. In response, America showed that at a range of 7,000 miles and with but a handful of losses, it could destroy within weeks a hardened, fanatical regime favored by geography and climate in the "graveyard of empires." Such power might have been demonstrated earlier, but it was not. "I talked with the previous U.S. administration", said Vladimir Putin shortly after September 11, and pointed out the bin Laden issue to them. They wrung their hands so helplessly and said, 'the Taliban are not turning him over, what can one do?' I remember I was surprised: If they are not turning him over, one has to think and do something.6 Nothing was done. President Clinton and others in his administration have protested that nothing could have been done, that even the 1998 African embassy bombings were not enough to mobilize the American people to strike back seriously against terrorism. The new Bush Administration, too, did not give the prospect of mass-casualty terrorism (and the recommendations of the Hart-Rudman Commission) the priority it deserved. Without September 11, the giant would surely have slept longer. The world would have been aware of America's size and potential, but not its ferocity or its full capacities. (Paul Kennedy's homage to American power, for example, was offered in the wake of the Afghan campaign.)

Second, September 11 demonstrated a new form of American strength. The center of its economy was struck,
its aviation shut down, Congress brought to a halt, the government sent underground, the country paralyzed and fearful. Yet within days the markets reopened, the economy began its recovery, the president mobilized the nation, and a united Congress immediately underwrote a huge new worldwide campaign against terror. The Pentagon started planning the U.S. military response even as its demolished western fac ade still smoldered. America had long been perceived as invulnerable. That illusion was shattered on September 11, 2001. But with a demonstration of its recuperative powers- an economy and political system so deeply rooted and fundamentally sound that it could spring back to life within days -that sense of invulnerability assumed a new character. It was transmuted from impermeability to resilience, the product of unrivaled human, technological and political reserves. The third effect of September 11 was to accelerate the realignment of the current great powers, such as they are, behind the United States. In 1990, America's principal ally was nato. A decade later, its alliance base had grown to include former members of the Warsaw Pact. Some of the major powers, however, remained uncommitted. Russia and China flirted with the idea of an "anti-hegemonic alliance." Russian leaders made ostentatious visits to pieces of the old Soviet empire such as Cuba and North Korea. India and Pakistan, frozen out by the United States because of their nuclear testing, remained focused mainly on one another. But after September 11, the

bystanders came calling. Pakistan made an immediate strategic decision to join the American camp. India enlisted with equal alacrity, offering the United States basing, overflight rights and a level of cooperation unheard of during its half century of Nehruist genuflection to anti-American non-alignment. Russia's Putin, seeing both a
coincidence of interests in the fight against Islamic radicalism and an opportunity to gain acceptance in the Western camp, dramatically realigned Russian foreign policy toward the United States. (Russia has already been rewarded with a larger role in nato and tacit American recognition of Russia's interests in its "near abroad.") China remains more distant but, also having a coincidence of interests with the United States in fighting Islamic radicalism, it has cooperated with the war on terror and muted its competition with America in the Pacific . The realignment of the fence-

sitters simply accentuates the historical anomaly of American unipolarity. Our experience with hegemony historically is that it inevitably creates a counterbalancing coalition of weaker powers, most
recently against Napoleonic France and Germany (twice) in the 20th century. Nature abhors a vacuum; history abhors hegemony. Yet during the first decade of American unipolarity no such counterbalancing occurred. On the contrary, the great powers lined up behind the United States, all the more so after September 11.

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*****Uniq/Inherency/D.A. Trick*****

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Key 2AC Card

***Obama will change the timetable as it gets closer hell say one thing but do another if forced, hell position troops right outside of Iraq for Deterrent Effect
Schwartz 3/21 (Will the U.S. Military Leave Iraq in 2011?, pg online @ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-schwartz/will-theus-military-leav_b_498579.html) Will US troops leave Iraq in 2011? I was asked recently by a friend what I thought would happen when the deadline for troop withdrawal from Iraq (December 2011) arrived. Here is my response, for what it is worth: Like so many others who have been following the recent developments in Iraq, I do not have a settled opinion on what will happen to the US military presence there between now and the end of 2011 , when the Status of Forces Agreement calls for the withdrawal of all troops (not just "combat" troops). For me, the (so far) definitive statement on this question by Obama was his 2006 election campaign statement at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, where he firmly asserted

the need to maintain a (approximately 50,000 strong) US "strike force" in or near Iraq to guarantee US interests in the Middle East, to allow Washington to move quickly against jihadists in the region, and to make clear to "our enemies" that the US will not be "driven from the region." (I am attaching that document, which I still think is the most explicit expression of his thinking on this issue.) In that statement he said that this force could be stationed in Iraq, perhaps in Kurdistan, or in a nearby country (despite the absence of nearby candidates). Since taking office he has neither reiterated nor repudiated this policy, but his actions have made it very clear that he is unwilling to sacrifice the 50k strike force, even while he has also said he would abide by the SOFA and remove all troops from Iraq by the end of 2011. In the meantime, Gates and various generals have released hedging statements or trial balloons (see the recent Tom Dispatch article by Engelhardt) saying that the 2011 deadline might be impractical and that various types of forces might stay longer , either to provide air power, to continue training the Iraq military, or to protect Iraq from invasion. Any or all of these could translate into the maintenance of the 50k strike force as well as the five (previously labeled as) "enduring bases." Moreover,
while there has been considerable coverage of the vast project undertaken by the U.S. military to remove the billions of equipment from Iraq, I have seen no reports of any dismantling of the five "enduring bases" and, as Engelhardt reports, continued effort to expand the already record-breaking Embassy to accommodate additional hundreds of administrators above the original 1000 projected US officials there. Another sign that the Obama administration intends to

maintain a significant military presence in Iraq after 2011 is the continued insistence that Iraqi "democracy" must be guaranteed. In "Washington speak," this means that the government of Iraq must be an ally of the United States, a condition that has been iterated and reiterated by all factions (GOP and Democrat) in
Washington, since the original invasion. Given the increasing unwillingness of the Maliki administration to follow US dictates (for example, on oil contracts, on relations with Iran, and on relations with Anbar and other Sunni provinces), the removal of troops would allow Maliki even more leeway to pursue policies unacceptable to Washington. Thus, even if Maliki succeeds himself in the Premiership, the US may need troops to keep the pressure on him. If he does not succeed himself, then the likely alternate choices are far more explicit in their antagonism to integration of Iraq into the US sphere of interest. (Even Iyad Allawi -- the leader of the major contender for a parliamentary plurality -- who was once a US client premier, has voiced stronger and stronger opposition to tight relations with the US.). The Obama administration would then be left with the unacceptable prospect that withdrawal would result in Iraq adopting a posture not unlike Iran's with regard to US presence and influence in the Middle East. All in all, there are myriad signs that withdrawal of U.S. troops might result in Iraq breaking free from U.S. influence and/or deprive the United States of the strong military presence in that part of the Middle East that both Bush and Obama advocated and have struggled to establish. Until I see some sign that the five

bases are going to be dismantled, I will continue to believe that the US will find some reason -- with or without the consent of the Iraqi government -- to maintain a very large (on the order of 50k) military force there.

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2AC W/D Inevitable Only Timetable Key

And, Withdrawal is inevitable the only question is over the timetable, and whether residuals will stay
E.J. Dionne, journalist, The Real Iraq Debate, THE WASHINGTON POST, 6-26-07, p. A21. Quietly, the real debate over Iraq is beginning. It's not about whether the United States

should pull out troops. That is now inevitable. The real challenge is to figure out the right timetable for withdrawal, whether a residual force should be left there and which American objectives can still be salvaged. This is not the debate President Bush wants to have come September, when a slew of reports will be issued assessing the
results of the troop surge. Already, the administration is preparing the ground for kicking the real choices into next year. Where once the White House seemed to be saying, "Give us until September," its spokesmen now seem to be insisting that we won't know much by then after all. "If you want a definitive judgment, I've warned from the very beginning about expecting some sort of magical thing to happen in September," White House press secretary Tony Snow said earlier this month. All we'll have then, he said, is "a little bit of a metric to see what happens when you have all the forces in place for the Baghdad security plan." "A Little Bit of a Metric" -- sounds like a song that Snow's rock band might play. The facts are these: We do not have enough troops to commit to Iraq to turn things around militarily, and the political situation is too fractured to give rise to a sudden burst of cooperation between Shiites and Sunnis . Colin Kahl, a nonresident fellow at the Center for a New American Security (CNAS), a middle-of-the-road think tank that launches formally tomorrow, sees the American saga in Iraq as the Goldilocks story in reverse. We sent a large enough contingent of troops to give the United States responsibility for security but too few to keep order. "Not hot enough, not cold enough, just wrong," Kahl says. Time is running out, because most Americans no longer believe the administration's promises that the commitment in Iraq will turn out well if only we are patient. This is why we need to begin planning our withdrawal now rather than waiting until the Army and the reserves hit the breaking point. Oddly, President Bush has more of an interest in this than anyone. "The more time passes, the more our options narrow," says Kurt Campbell, the chief executive and co-founder of CNAS. "Left unchallenged, the president would fight to exhaustion, and we can't afford to fight to exhaustion." In one of its inaugural reports, CNAS suggests reducing the American presence in Iraq by 100,000 troops between now and the beginning of 2009. But it would keep 60,000 troops in Iraq for four years beyond that, not only to train the army but also to work with "tribal, local and provincial leaders" who are fighting al-Qaeda. It is not clear to me that a lengthy commitment of that sort is either possible or desirable. But the report, written by James Miller and Shawn Brimley, has the virtue of defining three sensible goals for American policy: to prevent the establishment of al-Qaeda havens in Iraq; to prevent a regional war; and to prevent genocide. Miller defines the right objective for those who want to end the war: "There should be a much better plan for withdrawal than there was for entry." Indeed. That's why it's also useful that yesterday, the Center for American Progress, a center-left think tank, released its own plan for a much more rapid withdrawal. The center's plan would have all American troops out of Iraq before the end of 2008, except for a force of 8,000 to 10,000 in the Kurdish area for an additional year. The United States owes a serious commitment to the Kurds, both for historical reasons and for the help they have given America in this conflict. Lawrence J. Korb, a senior fellow at Center for American Progress, argues that "the quicker you get out, the quicker you can recapture control of your policy in the area." And the longer the United States stays, the greater will be the damage to our armed forces. "You're ruining your ability to confront the global terrorist threat," he says. "You're ruining the Army." Up to now, the administration has insisted that the only question in the Iraq debate is whether to withdraw. These two reports lay out

the parameters for the argument we need now: how to end a disastrous war in a way that best serves America's long-term interests. The president would be better served if he entered the new debate. If he ignores it, it will pass him by.

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Uniq: W/D Inevitable

Withdrawal inevitable- the timeframe must be immediate
Christopher Preble et al, 2004 (Director of foreign policy studies at CATO; Exiting Iraq: Why the U.S. must end the military occupation and renew the war against Al Qaeda, p. 57, CB) And eventually we will have to leave. Americans sensibly oppose open-ended military commitments

abroad; it is folly to presume that they will shoulder the burdens of an occupation of Iraq indefinitely. It is equally foolish to believe that Iraqis living under the occupation wont someday expel us from their countryon their terms, not on ours. Given that an American withdrawal from Iraq would ultimately be necessitated by the loss of domestic public support, and given that the Iraqi people are sure to become increasingly emboldened in their demands that the occupation come to an end, American policymakers are confronted today with a clear choice. They can commit themselves to an orderly, voluntary withdrawal, now, on our terms; they can accede to a withdrawal in the future, on the jihadis terms; or they can commit themselves, the American public, and the American military to an indefinite occupation regardless of the costs and risks. The third option serves no ones interests. Between the first two, the choice is
clear. We must establish a plan for military withdrawal from Iraq. And we must adhere to that plan.

Delay in Iraqi withdrawal is inevitable

Alaaldin February 26 2010 (Ranj [a Middle East political and security risk analyst based at the London School of Economics and Political Science. He visits the Middle East regularly and as part of his recent work on Iraq has visited the country on a number of fact-finding missions.] Leaving Iraq troops on standby: Although the US president has pledged to pull out all combat troops, lingering brigades could become a security fixture http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/feb/26/iraq-us-troops-standby)

Yesterday came the first signs of the inevitable in Iraq: a prolonged presence of US troops beyond the status of forces agreement deadline of 2011. President Obama has promised to get all combat troops (ie most of
those still in the country) out of Iraq by August this year. But Thomas Ricks of Foreign Policy magazine has revealed that the top US military commander in Iraq, General Ray Odierno, has asked Obama to keep a combat force in the north for longer than that. Odiernos request suggests that a somewhat flexible approach will be taken towards the remaining 40,000 to 50,000 troops. The general has asked for a combat brigade to remain in Kirkuk, the ethnically mixed, oil-rich and volatile disputed territory. But the problem of Kirkuk will not be resolved by the end of 2011 and it may never be peacefully resolved at all (see the Falklands, the other oil-rich disputed territory that has had historic battles fought over it, where disputes exist over the rights to its oil and also where the UN, as with Kirkuk, has been called to look into). If

Obama does indeed give his approval then it is likely to be a reflection of the US troop presence in Iraq over the next five, possibly 10, years. Yet, we may well be seeing the South Korea-style permanent military presence taking root here, both as a counter-measure against the impenetrable Iranian influence in the country as well as
a measure to keep the peace; since Kirkuk could decide whether Iraq collapses or survives, a prolonged military presence in Iraq focused around the province, as well as other northern areas like Mosul and Diyala where joint US-Kurd-Arab military patrols have been initiated can be justified.

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Uniq: W/D will be Delayed

Withdrawal will be delayed in the status quothe military is worried about recent violence
The Guardian in 5/12 (Martin Chulov; Iraq violence set to delay http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/may/12/iraq-us-troop-withdrawal-delay, CB) US troop withdrawal;

The White House is likely to delay the withdrawal of the first large phase of combat troops from Iraq for at least a month after escalating bloodshed and political instability in the country. General Ray Odierno, the
US commander, had been due to give the order within 60 days of the general election held in Iraq on 7 March, when the cross-sectarian candidate Ayad Allawi edged out the incumbent leader, Nouri al-Maliki. American officials had been prepared for delays in negotiations to form a government, but now appear to have balked after Maliki's coalition aligned itself with the theocratic Shia bloc to the exclusion of Allawi, who attracted the bulk of the minority Sunni vote. There is also concern over interference from Iraq's neighbours, Iran, Turkey and Syria. Late tonight seven people were killed and 22 wounded when a car bomb planted outside a cafe exploded in Baghdad's Sadr City, a Shia area, police and a source at the Iraqi interior ministry said. The latest bomb highlights how sectarian tensions are rising, as al-Qaida

fighters in Iraq and affiliated Sunni extremists have mounted bombing campaigns and assassinations around the country. The violence is seen as an attempt to intimidate all sides of the political spectrum and press home the message to the departing US forces that militancy remains a formidable foe. Odierno has kept a low profile since announcing the deaths of al-Qaida's two leaders in Iraq, Abu Omar al-Baghdadi and Abu Ayub alMasri, who were killed in a combined Iraqi-US raid on 18 April. The operation was hailed then as a near fatal blow against al-Qaida, but violence has intensified ever since. All US combat forces are due to leave Iraq by 31 August, a date the Obama administration is keen to observe as the president sends greater reinforcements to fight the
Taliban in Afghanistan a campaign he has set apart from the Iraq war, by describing it as "just". Iraqi leaders remain adamant that combat troops should leave by the deadline. But they face the problem of not having enough troops

to secure the country if the rejuvenated insurgency succeeds in sparking another lethal round of sectarian conflict. "The presence of foreign forces sent shock waves through Iraqis," said Hoshyar Zebari, the foreign minister. "And
at the beginning it was a terrifying message that they didn't dare challenge. But then they got emboldened through terrorism and acts of resistance. And as the Americans are leaving, we are seeing more of it." Zebari said Iraq's neighbours were taking full advantage of the political stalemate. He also hinted that they may be directly backing the violence. "They too have been emboldened, because we haven't been able to establish a viable unified government that others can respect," he said. "In one way or another, Iran, Turkey and Syria are interfering in the formation of this government. "There is a lingering fear [among some neighbouring states] that Iraq should not reach a level of stability. The competition over the future of Iraq is being played out mostly between Turkey and Iran. They both believe they have a vested interest here." The withdrawal order is eagerly awaited by the 92,000 US troops still in Iraq they mostly remain confined to their bases. This month Odierno was supposed to have ordered the pullout of 12,500, a figure that was meant to escalate every week between now and 31 August, when only 50,000 US troops are set to remain all of them non-combat forces. US patrols are now seldom seen on the streets of Baghdad, where the terms of a security agreement between Baghdad and Washington are being followed strictly: this relegates them to secondary partners and means US troops cannot leave their bases without Iraqi permission. US commanders have grown accustomed to being masters of the land no longer, but they have recently grown increasingly concerned about what they will leave behind. Zebari said: "The mother of all mistakes that they made was changing their mission from liberation to occupation and then legalising that through a security council resolution." Earlier this week, Allawi warned that the departing US troops had an obligation enshrined in the security agreement and at the United Nations security council to safeguard Iraq's democratic process. He warned of catastrophic consequences if the occupation ended with Iraq still politically unstable.

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Uniq: Pace of W/D = Slow

Us is slow to withdraw, continued presence will hurt
Associated Press, May 11th 2010, U.S reviewing Iraq Pullout Pace, http://www.denverpost.com/war/ci_15061899 American commanders, worried about increased violence in the wake of Iraq's inconclusive elections, are now reconsidering the pace of a major troop pullout this summer, U.S. officials said Tuesday. The withdrawal of the first major wave of troops is expected to be delayed by about a month , the officials said. Waiting much longer could endanger President Barack Obama's goal of reducing the force level from 92,000 to 50,000 troops by Aug. 31. More than two months after parliamentary elections, the Iraqis have still not formed a new government, and militants aiming to exploit the void have carried out attacks like Monday's bombings and shootings that killed at least 119 peoplethe country's bloodiest day of 2010. The threat has prompted military officials to look at keeping as many troops on the ground, for as long as possible, without missing the Aug. 31 deadline. A security agreement

between the two nations requires American troops to be out of Iraq by the end of 2011. In Baghdad and Washington, U.S. officials say they remain committed to the deadline, which Obama has said he would extend only if Iraq's security deteriorates. Getting out of Iraq quickly and responsibly was among Obama's top campaign promises in 2008. Extending the deadline could be politically risky back homebut so could anarchy and a bloodbath following a hasty retreat. Two senior administration officials said the White House is closely watching to see if the Aug. 31 date needs to be pushed backif only to ensure enough security forces are in place to prevent or respond to militant attacks. Both spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the administration's internal discussions. Already, the violence, fueled by Iraq's political instability, will likely postpone the start of what the top U.S. commander in Iraq, Army Gen. Ray Odierno, has called the
withdrawal "waterfall"sending home large numbers of troops in a very swift period.

US plans to withdraw have been slowed

Associated Press, May 11th 2010, U.S reviewing Iraq Pullout Pace, http://www.denverpost.com/war/ci_15061899 At the Pentagon, "there's been a renewed focus on Iraq lately ," said the senior military official there. He said all options were being considered, including later delays, adding that "we need to get out in an appropriate way ... not completely tied to a timeline." Maj. Gen. Stephen Lanza, the top U.S. military spokesman in Iraq, said Tuesday that troops "are on track" to draw down by the president's Aug. 31 deadline, but he would not discuss whether the pace was being slowed. Although "there is still work to be done here," Lanza noted that overall violence across Iraq is lower than it has been in years. "There are still terrorists who wish to disrupt Iraq's forward progress and Monday's attacks are an example of that," Lanza said. Shortly before the election, there were 96,000 U.S. troops in the country. About 4,000 troops were sent home in Aprilincluding military dentists, postal workers, truck drivers and other support personnel. As of last week, there were about 92,000 U.S. troops in Iraq, meaning an average of 10,500 a month would have to be pulled out. Odierno can wait only so long to start the "waterfall." Keeping tens of

thousands of soldiers in Iraq until the last minute will create a logistical nightmare with a limited number of planes, trucks and ships available to get troops and equipment out.

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Uniq: No Withdrawal Now

US will maintain Iraq presence nowstrategic goals mean timetables will be extended indefinitely
Shiyyab, 9 (Mohammad K., former Commander, Jordanian Air Force; Security Advisor, World Security Network, Enhancing Security In The Middle East: The Challenges Of Regional Cooperation, WSN Cooperative Monitoring Center, Amman, http://www.springerlink.com/index/R365425402365P5G.pdf) Recent opinion polls show that ending the Iraq war is one of the main demands of American voters from their choice of presidential candidates. However, the declaration of Mr. Bush on his January 2008 visit to Kuwait that the

presence of US troops in Iraq was not a short-range venture, signalled that the US military presence in Iraq will continue during the next US presidency and may well extend more than a decade. This led some political analysts to believe that the US is pursuing aims that are much more bigger than peace in Iraq. The US is keen on making Iraq its main military base in the Middle East. Controlling strategic oil resources of the Middle East region, supporting Israel, facilitating weapons exports to the region, and shaping the access of its European and Asian rivals to regional energy resources all belong to the US agenda for prolonging its
presence in Iraq.

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Uniq: No timetable
Obama will not withdraw troops on time further occupation
Swanson May 13 2010 (David, author of "Daybreak: Undoing the Imperial Presidency and Forming a More Perfect Union" Swanson holds a master's degree in philosophy from the University of Virginia. He has worked as a newspaper reporter and as a communications director, with jobs including press secretary for Dennis Kucinich's 2004 presidential campaign, media coordinator for the International Labor Communications Association, and three years as communications coordinator for ACORN, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now. Obama Scraps Iraq Withdrawal David Swanson http://www.davidswanson.org/node/2677) So, we elected a president who promised a withdrawal from Iraq that he, or the generals who tell him what to do, is now further delaying. And, of course, the timetable he's now delaying was already a far cry from what he had promised as a candidate. What are we to think? That may be sad news, but what could we have done differently? Surely it would have been worse to elect a president who did not promise to withdraw, right? But there's a broader framework for this withdrawal or lack thereof, namely the SOFA (Status of Forces Agreement), the unconstitutional treaty that Bush and Maliki drew up without consulting the U.S. Senate. I was reminded

of this on Tuesday when Obama and Karzai talked about a forthcoming document from the two of them and repeatedly expressed their eternal devotion to a long occupation. The unconstitutional Iraq treaty (UIT) requires complete withdrawal from Iraq by the end of next year, and withdrawal from all Iraqi cities, villages, and localities by last summer. Obama's latest announcement doesn't alter the lack of compliance with the latter requirement. Nor does it guarantee noncompliance with the former. But it illustrates something else, something that some of us have been screaming since the UIT was allowed to stand, something that pretty well guarantees that the US occupation of Iraq will never end. Top commanders reconsidering troop withdrawals now
Associated Press 2010 (May 11th http://rawstory.com/rs/2010/0511/reconsidering-pace-iraq-withdrawal/)

American commanders, worried about increased violence in the wake of Iraq's inconclusive elections, are now reconsidering the pace of a major troop pullout this summer, U.S. officials said Tuesday. The withdrawal of the first major wave of troops is expected to be delayed by about a month, the officials
said. Waiting much longer could endanger President Barack Obama's goal of reducing the force level from 92,000 to 50,000 troops by Aug. 31.

More than two months after parliamentary elections, the Iraqis have still not formed a new government, and militants aiming to exploit the void have carried out attacks like Monday's bombings and shootings that
killed at least 119 people the country's bloodiest day of 2010.

Obama extending timetable for withdrawal

Thomma February 27, 2009 (Steven Obama to extend Iraq withdrawal timetable; 50,000 troops to stay) WASHINGTON Amid complaints from his own party that he's moving too slowly to end the

war in Iraq, President Barack Obama will announce Friday that U.S. combat troops will be withdrawn by Aug. 31, 2010, but that as many as 50,000 Marines and soldiers would remain until the end of 2011. Obama will announce his plans during a visit with troops at Camp Lejeune, N.C., where he'll also visit with Marines who are being deployed to Afghanistan, senior administration officials said. As he moves to draw down the war in Iraq after six years and more than 4,200 U.S. dead, he's also moving to escalate the U.S. military presence in Afghanistan. The 18-month timetable for withdrawing combat troops from Iraq is two
months longer than he promised during his campaign. Aides who spoke on condition of anonymity to speak frankly said that military commanders wanted the extra time. "The president found that compelling," said one senior administration official. The pace of the drawdown will be left to commanders and determined by events on the ground as well as politics in Washington. Although U.S. and Iraqi casualties have dropped sharply, and recent provincial elections were held without major incidents, it's not clear whether Iraq's rival factions and their militias have abandoned violence or are merely biding their time.

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Uniq: Wont Follow Timetable

Obama will not follow the timetable
Malensek 2008 (Scott, author of: Black Rain For Christmas, The Secret War in South Asia, Sixth Fleet Under: Aircraft Carrier Combat in The Eastern Mediterranean, ; Hes also written several books on the Global War on Terror and Iraq under the pen name, Sam Pender. These books include: Iraqs Smoking Gun, The Ignored War, Americas War With Saddam, How Did It Come To This?, and Saddams Ties to Al Qaeda July 22nd, 2008 http://www.floppingaces.net/2008/07/22/obama-abandons-commitment-to-iraq-withdrawal-timetable/ Obama Abandons Commitment to Iraq Withdrawal Timetable)

By dismissing out of hand the absoluteness of a calender date by which all Americans will be out of Iraq, Senator Obama has just capitulated the political lefts dogma for the past six years (a debate that
started in 2002 before the invasion in 2003). Since the time of the DLC Conference in early 2002, Democrats have demanded a deadline for the war, a schedule, and President Bush has resisted. Instead, President Bush has offered various plans for Iraq which since 2003 have included benchmarks which would enable US forces to withdraw; actual accomplishments rather than some sort of pass/fail political challenge based on dates on a calender.

Senator Obama no longer sees the dates on a calender as the important thing. Now, contrary to his own partys demands since 2002, he will base his own Iraq policy on a bigger picture than gotcha-politics (the only thing that dates on a calender were really intended). Sofa is meaningless loopholes like PMCs make military presence endless
Weil June 30, 2009 (Janet, staff member based in San Francisco. Her nephew is preparing to be deployed to Afghanistan in November. http://seminal.firedoglake.com/diary/6037 Moving Chess Pieces: The Illusion of Withdrawal in Iraq) Today, all U.S. troops must be withdrawn from Iraqi cities, including U.S. bases in Baghdad, according to the Status Of Forces Agreement (SOFA) between the U.S. and Iraq. The Iraqi government will also take legal responsibility for the actions of U.S. troops and have legal jurisdiction over American soldiers who commit crimes off-base and off-duty, and the SOFA will grant permission to U.S. troops for military operations, as well as ban the U.S. from staging attacks on other countries from Iraq. While it may seem like a step forward toward ending the six-year occupation of Iraq, the Pentagon is doing what it can

to dodge or play down these SOFA stipulations. In recent weeks, it has been re-classifying bases and troops, hiring corporate security mercenaries, and preventing Iraq from having jurisdiction over those actions. Itll get away with it too, as Congress never ratified the SOFA, and because many are justifying further occupation under the banner of keeping Iraq secure. Leading up to the June 30th deadline, the Pentagon has been playing shell games with bases and with soldiers. City limits have been modified to exempt bases from the agreement and soldiers who have moved out of cities are now encircling them. As Erik Leaver points out in his article A Withdrawal in Name Only, three thousand troops stationed at the FOB Falcon, located within Baghdad, will not be moving, because Iraqi and American military officials simply decided it wasnt within the city limits. And thousands of troops in bases sleeping outside the cities will continue to serve in support and advisory roles in the day.
And while troops may be moving out of the cities, they are not moving out of the country just yet. The military has been expanding and building new bases in rural areas to accommodate the movement of soldiers, and Congress just passed a bill that includes more funding for military construction in Iraq. In reality, only 30,000 troops have left Iraq since

September last year and 134,000 troops still remain. But the 132,000 military contractors in Iraq are the real loophole. How do they fit into the withdrawal plan? How many of them will stay past June 30th? Or past 2011? Military contractors have been used extensively in the War in Iraq to evade legal accountability and hide the true cost and body count of the war. In fact, mercenaries may be on the rise and will spark additional violence in the country.

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Uniq: Loopholes = No W/D

the Iraq withdrawal is a farce enormous loopholes make the occupation endless
Leaver and Atzmon, June 25, 2009 (Erik, Policy Outreach Director for Foreign Policy In Focus and is a Research Fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies and Daniel, researcher at the institute for policy studies A Withdrawal in Name Only http://original.antiwar.com/leaver-atzmon/2009/06/24/a-withdrawal-in-name-only/) On November 17, 2008, when Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari and U.S. ambassador Ryan Crocker signed an agreement for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq, citizens from both countries applauded. While many were disappointed about the lengthy timeline for the withdrawal of the troops, it appeared that a roadmap was set to end the war and occupation. However, the first step withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraqi cities by June 30, 2009 is

full of loopholes, and tens of thousands of U.S. soldiers will remain in the cities after the "deadline" passes. The failure to fully comply with the withdrawal agreement indicates the United States is looking to withdraw from Iraq in name only, as it appears that up to 50,000 military personnel will remain after the deadline. The United States claims its adhering to the agreement, known as the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA), even with so many troops being left in the cities. But the United States is changing semantics instead of policy. For example, there are no plans to transfer the 3,000 American troops stationed within
Baghdad at Forward Operating Base Falcon, because commanders have determined that despite its location, its not within the city. The original intent of moving troops out of the cities was to reduce the U.S. military role and

send the message to Iraqis that the United States would be leaving the country soon. But troops that are no longer sleeping in the cities will still take part in operations within Iraqi cities; they will serve in "support" and "advisory" roles, rather than combat functions. Such "reclassification" of troops as military trainers is another example of how the United States is circumventing the terms of the SOFA agreement. The larger loophole in the agreement is the treatment of military contractors. There has been little mention of
the 132,610 military contractors in Iraq. Of these, 36,061 are American citizens, according to a recent Department of Defense report. Since September 2008, only 30,000 troops have left Iraq. The 134,000 soldiers that remain are just slightly below the number of troops that were in Iraq in 2003. These numbers are likely to remain well above 100,000 until 2010. Instead of

sending soldiers stationed in cities home, the military has been expanding and building new bases in rural areas to accommodate soldiers affected by the June 30 deadline. And Congress just passed a warspending bill that includes more funding for military construction inside Iraq. The implications of the June 30 pullout are manifest: As Iraqis grapple with increasing responsibility for the security of their country and American military leaders search for avenues to project their influence, withdrawal from urban areas will set important precedents for the proposed full withdrawal of American forces. The ability of Iraqi and U.S. commanders to subvert the SOFA and extend the stay of U.S. troops in Iraqi cities past the June 30 deadline does not bode well for the other withdrawal deadlines laid out in the agreement. Moreover, the vague language of the agreement lends itself to the possibility that U.S. forces will remain in Iraq past the December 31, 2011 deadline.

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Uniq: Wont Follow Deadline

Obama is going to extend the troop deployments past the deadline
Swanson 10 (David, May 13th 2010, Independent journalist and author, the public record Obama Scraps Iraq Withdrawal http://pubrecord.org/special-to-the-public-record/7615/obama-scraps-iraq-withdrawal/) So, we elected a president who promised a withdrawal from Iraq that he, or the generals who tell him what to do, is now further delaying. And, of course, the timetable hes now delaying was already a far cry from what he had promised as a candidate. What are we to think? That may be sad news, but what could we have done differently? Surely it would have been worse to elect a president who did not promise to withdraw, right? But theres a broader framework for this withdrawal or lack thereof, namely the SOFA (Status of Forces Agreement), the unconstitutional treaty that Bush and Maliki drew up without consulting the U.S. Senate. I was reminded of this on Tuesday when Obama and Karzai talked about a forthcoming document from the two of them and repeatedly expressed their eternal devotion to a long occupation. The unconstitutional Iraq treaty (UIT) requires complete withdrawal from Iraq by the end of next year, and withdrawal from all Iraqi cities, villages, and localities by last summer. Obamas latest announcement doesnt alter the lack of compliance with the latter requirement. Nor does it guarantee noncompliance with the former. But it illustrates something else,

something that some of us have been screaming since the UIT was allowed to stand, something that pretty well guarantees that the US occupation of Iraq will never end. Imagine if Congress funded, defunded, oversaw, and regulated the military and wars as required by our Constitution. Imagine if the president COULDNT simply tell Congress that troops would be staying in Iraq longer than planned, but had to ask for the necessary funding first. Heres the lesson for this teachable moment: Persuading presidents to end wars only looks good until they change their mind. Cutting off the funding actually forces wars to end. When the US
peace movement refused to challenge the UIT, it left Bushs successor and his successors free to ignore it, revise it, or replace it. Congress has been removed from the equation. If Obama decides to inform Congress that the occupation of Iraq will go on into 2012, Congress response will be as muted as when the Director of National Intelligence informed Congress that killing Americans was now legal. And what can Congress say? It had no role in ratifying the UIT in the first place.

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Uniq: Indefinite Presence Now

US will use loopholes in the SOFA agreement to maintain a military presence indefinitely
Jamail June 23 2010 (Dahr Jamail an American journalist who is best known as one of the few unembedded journalists to report extensively from Iraq during the 2003 Iraq invasion Iraq: Operation Enduring Occupation http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=18204)

The Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) between the Iraqi and US governments indicate an ongoing US presence past both the August 2010 deadline to remove all combat troops, and the 2011 deadline to remove the remaining troops. According to all variations of the SOFA the US uses to provide a legal mandate for it's nearly 1,000 bases across the planet, technically, no US base in any foreign country is "permanent." Thus, the US bases in Japan, South Korea and Germany that have existed for decades are not "permanent." Technically. Most analysts agree that the US plans to maintain at least five "enduring" bases in Iraq. Noted US writer, linguist and political analyst Noam Chomsky, said, "Bases [abroad] are the empire. They
are the point of projection of power and expansion of power." Chalmers Johnson, author and professor emeritus of UC San Diego commented, "In a symbolic sense [bases] are a way of showing that America stands there watching." Longtime defense analyst from George Washington University, Gordon Adams, told The Associated Press that in the broader context of reinforcing US presence in the oil-rich Middle East, bases in Iraq are preferable to aircraft carriers in the Persian Gulf. "Carriers don't have the punch. There's a huge advantage to land-based infrastructure. At the level of strategy it makes total sense to have Iraq bases." According to Professor Zoltan Grossman of The Evergreen State College, who has been researching military bases and participating in the global network against foreign bases for several years, the US has no intention of releasing control of its bases in Iraq. The Pentagon , he believes, has many old tricks to mask a military presence and armed pressure. In an interview with Truthout he observed: "Since the Gulf War, the US has not just been building the bases to wage wars, but has been waging wars to leave behind the bases. The effect has been to create a new US military sphere of influence wedged in the strategic region between the E.U., Russia and China. The Pentagon has not been building these sprawling, permanent bases just to hand them over to client governments." Grossman's prediction for Iraq: "Look for a Visiting Forces Agreement - of the kind negotiated with the Philippines -

that allows supposedly 'visiting' US forces unrestricted access to its former bases. Similarly, constant joint military exercises can keep US troops continually visible and intimidating to Iraqis. Even after 2011, nothing in the Iraq Status of Forces Agreement prevents US bombers (stationed in Kuwait and elsewhere) from attacking Iraqi targets whenever they want, just as they did between 1991 and 2003. Nothing prevents the type of missile or Special Forces attacks like we're seeing in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia. Nothing prevents CIA or contractors from participating in Iraqi missions or intelligence operations." Adding credence to this, we have Article 6 of the US/Iraqi SOFA discussing "agreed facilities," Article 27 mentions "mutually agreed ... military measures" after 2011 and Article 28 talks of a scenario where Iraq is able to "request" US security in the International Zone (Green Zone .) Gray Language Chapter six of the 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review Report stated: "In February 2009, President Obama outlined the planned drawdown of US forces in Iraq to 50,000 troops and the change in mission by August 31, 2010 . By this
time, US forces will have completed the transition from combat and counterinsurgency to a more limited mission set focused on training and assisting the Iraqi Security Forces ($2 billion has already been set aside for this for FY2011); providing force protection for US military and civilian personnel and facilities; and conducting targeted counterterrorism operations and supporting US civilian agencies and international organizations in their capacity-building efforts." The report further clarifies that US troop drawdowns "will occur in accordance" with the SOFA, but that "the pace of the drawdown takes into consideration Iraq's improved, yet fragile, security gains" and "provides US commanders sufficient flexibility to assist the Iraqis with emerging challenges." On May 15, 2006, Gen. John Abizaid, overseeing US military operations in Iraq at the time, said, "The United States may want to keep a long-term military presence in Iraq to bolster moderates against extremists in the region and protect the flow of oil." On March 12, 2010, Maj. Gen. Tony Cucolo, the commander of US troops in Northern Iraq, told reporters during a conference call that it might be

necessary to keep combat troops involved in the security mechanism that maintains peace between Iraqi national and Kurdish regional forces beyond the August deadline. The National Security Strategy for US
Missions abroad proposes to "Ignite a new era of global economic growth through free markets and free trade and pressing

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CNDI 2010 Iraq Aff Regents Lab for open markets, financial stability, and deeper integration of the world economy." This fits perfectly with the policy outlined by the Quadrennial Defense Review Report, which says there is a stated ability for the US military to fight "multiple overlapping wars" and to "ensure that all major and emerging powers are integrated as constructive actors and stakeholders into the international system." Such gray language and loopholes in policy documents have been common

since the US invaded Iraq seven years ago. This has not changed with the SOFA. "The likelihood of the US planning to keep troops in Iraq after December 31, 2011 has to be measured in the context of the history of US violations of other countries' sovereign territory, airspace, etc.," Phyllis Bennis, director of the New Internationalism Project with the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, DC, explained to Truthout. "At the moment, this is perhaps most obvious in Pakistan - where the US has been routinely attacking alleged Taliban or al Qaeda supporters with both air and [limited] ground troops in Pakistani territory despite the stated opposition of the Pakistani government which is nominally allied to the US." "The early public
discussions of 're-missioning' combat troops, changing their official assignment from combat to 'training' or 'assistance,' thus allowing them to remain in Iraq after the August 2010 deadline for all combat troops to be removed from the country, provides the model for how such sleight of language will occur," Bennis said, adding, "It may or may not be linked to a future 'need' for US troops to remain to protect the increasing numbers of US government civilians assigned to Iraq as the official number of troops decreases." Bennis explained that the language of the SOFA is grounded in the claim

that Iraq is a sovereign nation and that the government of Iraq is choosing freely to partner with the US government. But the reality, according to Bennis, is that the SOFA was negotiated and signed while Iraq was (and continues to be today) a country occupied and controlled by the United States. Its government is and was at the time of the SOFA's signing dependent on the US for support. In Article 27 of the SOFA, the text stated, "in the event of any external or internal threat or aggression against Iraq that would violate its sovereignty,
political independence, or territorial integrity, waters, airspace, its democratic system or its elected institutions, and upon request by the Government of Iraq, the Parties shall immediately initiate strategic deliberations and, as may be

mutually agreed, the United States shall take appropriate measures, including diplomatic, economic, or military measures, or any other measure, to deter such a threat." While the agreement is ostensibly binding only for three years, Article 30 permits amendments to the SOFA, which could, of course, include extending its timeframe - and with the Iraqi government still qualitatively dependent on US support, this appears likely. The same is true for Article 28, which states, "The Government of Iraq may request from the United States Forces limited and temporary support for the Iraqi authorities in the mission of security for the Green Zone." She concluded: "There is no question that the US has wanted for many years to establish and maintain military bases in Iraq, whether or not they are officially designated as "permanent." I do not believe the Pentagon is prepared to hand them all over to Iraq, despite the language in the agreement mandating exactly that. Instead, I think the formal arrangement following expiration of the current SOFA may be through some sort of officially "bilateral" agreement between Washington and Baghdad, allowing for the US to "rent" or "lease" or "borrow" the bases from an allegedly "sovereign" government in Iraq on a long-term basis. The likelihood of this increases with the growing number of statements from US military and political officials hinting broadly at the possibility of a long-term presence of US troops in Iraq after December 31, 2011, "if the sovereign government of Iraq should request such an idea..." Faculty Director of the Undergraduate College of Global Studies at Stony Brook
University in New York, Professor Michael Schwartz, has written extensively on insurgency and the US Empire. He pointed out to Truthout that President Obama's "... actions have made it very clear that he is unwilling to sacrifice the

50,000-strong strike force, even while he has also said he would abide by the SOFA and remove all troops from Iraq by the end of 2011. In the meantime, Gates and various generals have released hedging statements or trial balloons saying that the 2011 deadline might be impractical and that various types of forces might stay longer, either to provide air power, to continue training the Iraq military, or to protect Iraq from invasion. Any or all of these could translate into the maintenance of the 50k strike force as well as the five 'enduring bases.'" That the Obama administration intends to maintain a significant military presence in Iraq after 2011 is obvious from its continued insistence that in Iraq "democracy" must be guaranteed. Schwartz explained: "In Washington speak this means that the government of Iraq must be

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an ally of the United States, a condition that has been iterated and reiterated by all factions (GOP and Democrat) in Washington, since the original invasion. Given the increasing unwillingness of the Maliki administration to follow US dictates (for example, on oil contracts, on relations with Iran, and on relations with Anbar and other Sunni provinces), the removal of troops would allow Maliki even more leeway to pursue policies unacceptable to Washington. Thus, even if Maliki succeeds himself in the Premiership, the US may need troops to keep
the pressure on him. If he does not succeed himself, then the likely alternate choices are far more explicit in their antagonism to integration of Iraq into the US sphere of interest ... the Obama administration would then be left with the unacceptable prospect that withdrawal would result in Iraq adopting a posture not unlike Iran's with regard to US presence and influence in the Middle East." His grim conclusion: "All in all, there are myriad signs that withdrawal of US troops might

result in Iraq breaking free from US influence and/or deprive the United States of the strong military presence in that part of the Middle East that both Bush and Obama advocated and have struggled to establish. Until I see some sign that the five bases are going to be dismantled, I will continue to believe that the US will find some reason - with or without the consent of the Iraqi government - to maintain a very large (on the order of 50k) military force there." Expanding the Base The US embassy in Iraq, already the largest diplomatic compound on the planet and the size of the Vatican City, is now likely to be doubled in size. Robert Ford, the deputy chief of mission in Baghdad, told reporters in January, "If Congress gives us the
money we are asking for, this embassy is going to be twice the size it is now. It's not going down, it's getting bigger." In 2005, The Washington Post reported: "An even more expensive airfield renovation is underway in Iraq at the Balad air base, a hub for US military logistics, where for $124 million the Air Force is building additional ramp space for cargo planes and helicopters. And farther south, in Qatar, a state-of-the-art, 104,000-square-foot air operations center for monitoring US aircraft in the Middle East, Central Asia and Africa is taking shape in the form of a giant concrete bunker ... the US military has more than $1.2 billion in projects either underway or planned in the Central Command region - an expansion plan that US commanders say is necessary both to sustain operations in Iraq and Afghanistan and to provide for a long-term presence in the area." Lt. Gen. Walter E. Buchanan III, who oversees Central Command's air operations pointed out, "As the ground force shrinks, we'll need the air to be able to put a presence in parts of the country where we don't have soldiers, to keep eyes out where we don't have soldiers on the ground." In 2007 in a piece titled "US Builds Air base in Iraq for the Long Haul" NPR reported, "The US military base in Balad, about 60 miles north of Baghdad, is rapidly becoming one of the largest American military installations on foreign soil ... The base is one giant construction project, with new roads, sidewalks, and structures going up across this 16-square-mile fortress in the center of Iraq, all with an eye toward the next few decades." It is

so big that, "There is a regular bus service within its perimeter to ferry around the tens of thousands of troops and contractors who live here. And the services are commensurate with the size of the population. The Subway
sandwich chain is one of several US chains with a foothold here. There are two base exchanges that are about as large as a Target or K-Mart. Consumer items from laptop computers to flat-screen TV's to Harley Davidson motorcycles are available for purchase." The report added, "Several senior military officials have privately described Balad Air Base, and a few other large installations in Iraq, as future bases of operation for the US military." The term used is "lily pad," a description of the military jumping from base to base without ever touching the ground in between. In September 2009 The New York Times reported about Balad: "It takes the masseuse, Mila from Kyrgyzstan, an hour to commute to work by bus on this sprawling American base. Her massage parlor is one of three on the base's 6,300 acres and sits next to a Subway sandwich shop in a trailer, surrounded by blast walls, sand and rock. At the Subway, workers from India and Bangladesh make sandwiches for American soldiers looking for a taste of home. When the sandwich makers' shifts end, the journey home takes them past a power plant, an ice-making plant, a sewage treatment center, a hospital and dozens of other facilities one would expect to find in a small city. And in more than six years, that is what Americans

have created here: cities in the sand.... Some bases have populations of more than 20,000, with thousands of contractors and third-country citizens to keep them running." Camp Anaconda, as the Balad base
is named, also has an Olympic-sized swimming pool. The bottling company there provides seven million bottles of water a month for those on base. This base also contains two fire stations and the single busiest landing strip in the entire Defense Department. A 2006 Associated Press story, "Elaborate US Bases raise long-term questions," gave the following account: "[At Balad] the concrete goes on forever, vanishing into the noonday glare, 2 million cubic feet of it, a mile-long slab that's now the home of up to 120 US helicopters, a "heli-park" as good as any back in the States. At another giant base, al-Asad in Iraq's western desert, the 17,000 troops and workers come and go in a kind of bustling American town, with a Burger King, Pizza Hut and a car dealership, stop signs, traffic regulations and young bikers clogging the roads. The latest budget also allots $39 million for new airfield lighting, air traffic control systems and upgrades allowing al-Asad to plug into the Iraqi electricity grid - a typical sign of a long-term base. At Tallil, besides the new $14 million dining facility, Ali Air Base is to

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CNDI 2010 Iraq Aff Regents Lab get, for $22 million, a double perimeter security fence with high-tech gate controls, guard towers and a moat - in military parlance, a "vehicle entrapment ditch with berm." Truthout contacted renowned journalist and filmmaker John Pilger for his views: "Like Afghanistan, the occupation of Iraq is more a war of perception than military reality. I don't

believe the US has the slightest intention of leaving Iraq. Yes, there will be the "drawdown" of regular troops with the kind of fanfare and ritual designed to convince the American public that a genuine withdrawal is happening. But the sum of off-the-record remarks by senior generals, who are ever conscious of the war of perception, is that at least 70,000 troops will remain in various guises. Add to this
up to 200,000 mercenaries. This is an old ruse. The British used to "withdraw" from colonies and leave behind fortress-bases and their Special Forces, the SAS. "Bush invaded Iraq as part of a long-term US design to restore one of the

pillars of US policy and empire in the region: in effect, to make all of Iraq a base. The invasion went badly wrong and the "country as base" concept was modified to that of Iraq indirectly controlled or intimidated by a series of fortress-bases. These are permanent. This is also the US plan for Afghanistan. One has
to keep in mind that US foreign policy is now controlled by the Pentagon, whose man is Robert Gates. It is as if Bush never left office. Under Bush there was an effective military coup in much of Washington; the State Department was stripped of its power; and Obama did as no president has ever done: he brought across from a previous, discredited administration the entire war making bureaucracy and gave it virtually unlimited power. The only way the US will leave is for the resistance to rise again, and for Shiites and Sunni to unite; I think that will happen."

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*****International Credibility Advantage*****

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_____________ ***Links*** U.S. Presence hurts Cred

US presence in Iraq effect global standing
The Iraq Study Group Report , December 6th 2006, The Way Forward, A New Approach, pg.31-32 online @ http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/WSJ-iraq_study_group.pdf Current U.S. policy is not working, as the level of violence in Iraq is rising and the government is not advancing national reconciliation. Making no changes in policy would simply delay the day of reckoning at a high cost.

Nearly 100 Americans are dying every month. The United States is spending $2 billion a week. Our ability to respond to other international crises is constrained. A majority of the American people are soured on the war. This level of expense is not sustainable over an extended period, especially when progress is not being made. The longer the United States remains in Iraq without progress, the more resentment will grow among Iraqis who believe they are subjects of a repressive American occupation. Presence in Iraq hurt credibility, Withdraw K2 deterring terrorists Oliker, et atl 2k7
(Olga Oliker, Keith Crane, Audra K. Grant, Terrence K. Kelly, Andrew Rathmell, David Brannan Rand Corporation. 2007, U.S Policy options For Iraq, pg online @ http://www.rand.org/pubs/monographs/2007/RAND_MG613.pdf)

force would be infeasible and picking a winner or partition would likely lead to outcomes detrimental to U.S. and Iraqi interests, the United States may be best served by withdrawing its troops. The strongest argument against withdrawal is that U.S. and other Coalition forces are preventing a bad situation from becoming worse. Those who argue that U.S. forces must remain in Iraq predict that their departure would cause even
greater violence, followed by the creation of terrorist safe havens and an arena in which Iraqs neighbors would vie for influence. 8 Some argue that withdrawal would have high costs in terms of a loss in U.S. credibility. 9 They say that withdrawal might encourage insurgents elsewhere to battle forces, U.S. or not, engaged in peace enforcement operations rather than to seek accommodation with domestic foes. They also believe that withdrawal would reduce U.S. credibility with current or potential partners or allies around the globe, as the United States would be perceived as not adhering to its commitments. 10 The credibility of promises by the United States to defend Arab states, especially those situated around the Persian Gulf, is of particular concern. Opponents of withdrawal also cite the dangers posed to other U.S. policy interests. Withdrawal from Iraq could be viewed as reinforcing perceptions that Iran has bested the United States in Iraq and is in a position of rising regional power. 11 Some argue that withdrawal would set back the attainment of U.S. goals of a peaceful Middle East and the spread of democracy in the region. Each of these arguments has weaknesses.

Credibility is not enhanced by adhering to a losing strategy; nor are other U.S. goals in the Middle East. Iraq has already become a training ground for terrorists and a cause clbre for radical Islamists. U.S. withdrawal would eliminate a primary draw for foreign fighters the opportunity to fight against and kill Americans.

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______________ ***Impacts****

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Coop/ Terrorism (1/2)

Soft power builds alliances, checks counterbalancing, maintains domestic support externally this solves terrorism
Jervis 09 professor of international politics at Columbia University. (Robert, Unipolarity: A Structural Perspective, World Politics Volume 61, Number 1, January 2009 Limits on Power: Change in or of the System? To say that the system is unipolar is not to argue that the unipole can get everything it wants or that it has no need for others. American power is very great, but it is still subject to two familiar limitations: it is harder to build than to destroy, and success usually depends on others decisions. This is particularly true of the current system because of what the U.S. wants. If Hitler had won World War II, he might have been able to maintain his system for some period of time with little cooperation from others because all he wanted was to establish the supremacy of the Aryan race. The U.S. wants not only to prevent the rise of a peer competitor but also to stamp out

terrorism, maintain an open international economic system, spread democracy throughout the world, and establish a high degree of cooperation among countries that remain juridically equal. Even in the military arena, the U.S. cannot act completely alone. Bases and overflight rights are always needed, and support from allies, especially Great Britain, is important to validate military action in the eyes of the American public. When one matches American forces, not against those of an adversary but against the tasks at hand, they often fall short.54 Against terrorism, force is ineffective without excellent intelligence. Given the international nature of the threat and the difficulties of gaining information about it, international cooperation is the only route to success. The maintenance of international prosperity also requires joint efforts, even leaving aside the danger that other
countries could trigger a run on the dollar by cashing in their holdings. Despite its lack of political unity, Europe is in many respects an economic unit, and one with a greater gdp than that of the U.S. Especially because of the growing Chinese economy, economic power is spread around the world much more equally than is military power, and the open economic system [End Page 210] could easily disintegrate despite continued unipolarity. In parallel, on a whole host of problems such as aids, poverty, and international crime (even leaving aside climate change), the unipole can lead and exert pressure but cannot dictate. Joint actions may be necessary to apply sanctions to various unpleasant and recalcitrant regimes; proliferation can be stopped only if all the major states (and many minor ones) work to this end; unipolarity did not automatically enable the U.S. to maintain the coalition against Iraq after the first Gulf War; close ties within the West are needed to reduce the ability of China, Russia, and other states to play one Western country off against the others. But in comparison with the cold war era, there are fewer incentives today for allies to cooperate with the U.S. During the earlier period unity and close coordination not only permitted military efficiencies but, more importantly, gave credibility to the American nuclear umbrella that protected the allies. Serious splits were dangerous because they entailed the risk that the Soviet Union would be emboldened. This reason for avoiding squabbles disappeared along with the USSR, and the point is likely to generalize to other unipolar systems if they involve a decrease of threats that call for maintaining good relations with the superpower. This does not mean that even in this particular unipolar system the superpower is like Gulliver tied down by the Lilliputians. In some areas opposition can be self-defeating. Thus for any country to undermine American leadership of the international economy would be to put its own economy at risk, even if the U.S. did not retaliate, and for a country to sell a large proportion of its dollar holding would be to depress the value of the dollar, thereby diminishing the worth of the countrys remaining stock of this currency. Furthermore , cooperation often follows strong and essentially unilateral action. Without the war in Iraq it is not likely that we would have seen the degree of cooperation that the U.S. obtained from Europe in combating the Iranian nuclear program and from Japan and the PRC in containing North Korea. Nevertheless, many of the American goals depend on persuading others, not coercing them. Although incentives and even force are not irrelevant to spreading democracy and the free market, at bottom this requires people to embrace a set of institutions and values. Building the world that the U.S. seeks is a political, social, and even psychological task for which unilateral measures are likely to be unsuited and for which American military and economic strength can at best play a supporting role . Success requires that others share the American vision and believe that its leadership is benign. [End Page 211]

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Soft Power Declining its Critical to Solve Multiple Scenarios for extinction
Nye 2004 (Joseph, former Assistant Secretary of Defense and Dean of Harvard Universitys John F. Kennedy School of Government, The Decline of Americas Soft Power: Why Washington Should Worry, May/June 2004, Foreign Affairs 83: 3, 16-20) Anti-Americanism has increased in recent years, and the United States soft powerits ability to attract others by the legitimacy of U.S. policies and the values that underlie themis in decline as a result. According to Gallup International polls, pluralities in 29 countries say that Washingtons policies have had a negative effect on their view of the United States. A Eurobarometer poll found that a majority of Europeans believes that Washington has hindered efforts to fight global poverty, protect the environment, and maintain peace. Such attitudes undercut soft

power, reducing the ability of the United States to achieve its goals without resorting to coercion or payment. Skeptics of soft power (Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld professes not even to understand the term) claim
that popularity is ephemeral and should not guide foreign policy. The United States, they assert, is strong enough to do as it wishes with or without the worlds approval and should simply accept that others will envy and resent it. The worlds only superpower does not need permanent allies; the issues should determine the coalitions, not vice-versa, according to Rumsfeld. But the recent decline in U.S. attractiveness should not be so lightly dismissed. It is true that the United States has recovered from unpopular policies in the past (such as those regarding the Vietnam War), but that was often during the Cold War, when other countries still feared the Soviet Union as the greater evil. It is also true that the United States sheer size and association with disruptive modernity make some resentment unavoidable today. But wise policies can reduce the antagonisms that these realities engender. Indeed, that is what Washington achieved after World War II: it used soft-power resources to draw others into a system of alliances and institutions that has lasted for 60 years. The Cold War was won with a strategy of containment that used soft power along with hard power. The United States cannot confront the new threat of terrorism without the cooperation of other countries. Of course, other governments will often cooperate out of self-interest. But the extent of their cooperation often depends on the attractiveness of the United States. Soft power, therefore, is not just a matter of ephemeral popularity; it is a means of obtaining outcomes the United States wants. When Washington discounts the importance of its attractiveness abroad, it pays a steep price. When the United States becomes so unpopular that being pro-American is a kiss of death in other countries domestic politics, foreign political leaders are unlikely to make helpful concessions (witness the defiance of Chile, Mexico, and Turkey in March 2003). And when U.S. policies lose their legitimacy in the eyes of others, distrust grows, reducing U.S.leverage in international affairs. Some hard-line skeptics might counter that, whatever its merits, soft power has little importance in the current war against terrorism; after all, Osama bin Laden and his followers are repelled, not attracted, by American culture and values. But this claim ignores the real metric of success in the current war, articulated in Rumsfelds now-famous memo that was leaked in February 2003: Are we capturing, killing or deterring and dissuading more terrorists every day than the madrassas and the radical clerics are recruiting, training and deploying against us? The current struggle against Islamist terrorism is not a clash of civilizations; it is a contest closely tied to the civil war raging within Islamic civilization between moderates and extremists. The United

States and its allies will win only if they adopt policies that appeal to those moderates and use public diplomacy effectively to communicate that appeal. Yet the worlds only superpower, and the leader in the information revolution, spends as little on public diplomacy as does France or the United Kingdomand is all too often outgunned in the propaganda war by fundamentalists hiding in caves.

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North Korea War

Extinction
Africa News 99 [Pat Fungamwango, Third world war: Watch the Koreas, Oct 25, LN] If there is one place today where the much-dreaded Third World War could easily erupt and probably reduce earth to a huge smouldering cinder it is the Korean Peninsula in Far East Asia. Ever since the end of the savage three-year Korean war in the early 1950s, military tension between the hard-line communist north and the American backed South Korea has remained dangerously high. In fact the Koreas are technically still at war. A foreign visitor to either Pyongyong in the North or Seoul in South Korea will quickly notice that the divided country is always on maximum alert for any eventuality. North Korea or the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) has never forgiven the US for coming to the aid of South Korea during the Korean war . She still regards the US as an occupation force in South Korea and wholly to blame for the non-reunification of the country. North Korean media constantly churns out a tirade of attacks on "imperialist" America and its "running dog" South Korea. The DPRK is one of the most secretive countries in the world where a visitor is given the impression that the people's hatred for the US is absolute while the love for their government is total. Whether this is really so, it is extremely difficult to conclude. In the DPRK, a visitor is never given a chance to speak to ordinary Koreans about the politics of their country. No visitor moves around alone without government escort. The American government argues that its presence in South Korea was because of the constant danger of an invasion from the north. America has vast economic interests in South Korea. She points out that the north has dug numerous tunnels along the demilitarised zone as part of the invasion plans. She also accuses the north of violating South Korean territorial waters. Early this year, a small North Korean submarine was caught in South Korean waters after getting entangled in fishing nets. Both the Americans and South Koreans claim the submarine was on a military spying mission. However, the intension of the alleged intrusion will probably never be known because the craft's crew were all found with fatal gunshot wounds to their heads in what has been described as suicide pact to hide the truth of the mission. The US mistrust of the north's intentions is so deep that it is no secret that today Washington has the largest concentration of soldiers and weaponry of all descriptions in south Korea than anywhere else in the World, apart from America itself. Some of the armada that was deployed in the recent bombing of Iraq and in Operation Desert Storm against the same country following its invasion of Kuwait was from the fleet permanently stationed on the Korean Peninsula. It is true too that at the moment the North/South Korean border is the most fortified in the world . The border line is littered with anti-tank and anti-personnel landmines, surface-to-surface and surface-to-air missiles and is constantly patrolled by warplanes from both sides. It is common knowledge that America also keeps an eye on any military movement or build-up in the north through spy satellites. The DPRK is said to have an estimated one million soldiers and a huge arsenal of various weapons. Although the DPRK regards herself as a developing country, she can however be classified as a super-power in terms of military might. The DPRK is capable of producing medium and long-range missiles. Last year, for example, she testfired a medium range missile over Japan, an action that greatly shook and alarmed the US, Japan and South Korea. The DPRK says the projectile was a satellite. There have also been fears that she was planning to test another ballistic missile capable of reaching North America. Naturally, the world is anxious that military tension on the Korean Peninsula must be defused to avoid an apocalypse on earth. It is therefore significant that the American government announced a few days ago that it was moving towards normalising relations with North Korea.

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Laundry List
SOFT POWER IS KEY TO SOLVE A LITANY OF GLOBAL PROBLEMS, INCLUDING DISEASE, CLIMATE CHANGE, AND TERRORISM
Joseph Nye, Distinguished Professor at Harvard and Former Dean of the Kennedy School of Government, Recovering American Leadership, Survival, March 2008 Still, the United States should guard against taking its soft-power resources for granted , as modern challenges to its leadership and security are of a different sort than they used to be . The contemporary information revolution and its attendant brand of globalisation are transforming and shrinking the world. At the beginning of this new century, these two forces combined to increase American power. But with time, technology will spread to other countries and peoples, and Americas relative pre-eminence will diminish. For example, at the beginning of this century, the American twentieth of the global population represented more than half of the worlds Internet users. Today that share has already declined. At some point in the future, the Asian cyber-community and economy will loom larger than their American counterparts. Even more important, the information revolution is creating virtual communities and networks that cut across national borders. Transnational corporations and non-governmental actors (terrorists included) will play larger roles in world affairs. Many of these organisations will have soft power of their own as they attract citizens into mixed coalitions that cut across national boundaries. It is worth noting that a coalition based on nongovernmental organisations created a land-mine treaty over the opposition of the strongest bureaucracy in the worlds strongest country. And a surprise attack by a transnational, non-governmental organisation killed more Americans in September 2001 than the government of Japan did in its surprise attack in 1941. The events of 11 September were a symptom of the deeper changes occurring in the world. Technology has been diffusing power away from governments and empowering individuals and groups to play roles in world politics, including wreaking massive destruction, that were once reserved to governments. Privatisation has been increasing, and terrorism is the privatisation of war. Globalisation is shrinking the distance between peoples, and events in faraway places like Afghanistan can have great impact on American lives. The problem for American leadership in the twenty-first century is that there are ever more things outside the control of states, even the most powerful one. Although the United States does well on the

traditional measures of power resources, every year there is more going on in the world that those resources cannot address. Under the influence of the information revolution and globalisation, world politics is changing in a way that means Americans cannot achieve all their international goals alone. For example, international financial stability is vital to the prosperity of Americans, but the United States needs the cooperation of others to attain it. Likewise, global climate change will affect Americans quality of life, but the United States cannot manage the problem by itself. Last year China, which adds two new coal-fired generating plants each week, may have overtaken the United States as the largest emitter of greenhouse gases. And in a world where borders are becoming more porous than ever to everything from drugs to infectious diseases to terrorism, Washington must work with others and mobilise international coalitions to address these new security threats.

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Soft Power Solves Ext. Multiwarrant

Soft power is key to solving pandemics, economic collapse, nuclear war, and nuclear terrorism.
Nye, Professor and Former Dean Of Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, and Armitage, deputy secretary of state from 2001 to 2005, both are co-chairs of the CSIS Commission on Smart Power, 2007 [Joseph and Richard, CSIS Reports A Smarter, More Secure America, http://www.csis.org/component/option,com_csis_pubs/task,view/id,4156/type,1/, 11/6] The information age has heightened political consciousness, but also made political groupings less cohesive. Small, adaptable, transnational networks have access to tools of destruction that are increasingly cheap, easy to conceal, and more readily available. Although the integration of the global economy has brought tremendous benefits, threats such as

pandemic disease and the collapse of financial markets are more distributed and more likely to arise without warning. The threat of widespread physical harm to the planet posed by nuclear catastrophe has existed for half a century, though the realization of the threat will become more likely as the number of nuclear weapons states increases. The potential security challenges posed by climate change raise the possibility of an entirely new set of threats for the United States to consider. The next administration will need a strategy that speaks to each of these challenges. Whatever specific approach it decides to take, two principles will be certain: First, an extra dollar spent on hard power will not necessarily bring an extra dollars worth of security. It is difficult to
know how to invest wisely when there is not a budget based on a strategy that specifies trade-offs among instruments. Moreover, hard power capabilities are a necessary but insufficient guarantee of security in todays context. Second, success and failure will turn on the ability to win new allies and strengthen old ones both in government and civil society. The key is not how many enemies the United States kills, but how many allies it grows. States and non-state actors who improve their ability to draw in allies will gain competitive advantages in todays environment. Those who alienate potential friends will stand at greater risk. China has invested in its soft power to ensure access to resources and to ensure against efforts to undermine its military modernization. Terrorists

depend on their ability to attract support from the crowd at least as much as their ability to destroy the enemys will to fight.

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Environment
[ ] Soft power stops environmental collapse were on the brink of extinction. Err on the side of irreversibility
Michael Closson 8/4/2004 Executive Director of Acterra, a Regional Environmental Organization based in Palo Alto; Palo Alto Weekly, http://www.paloaltoonline.com/weekly/morgue/2004/2004_08_04.ehrlich04ja.shtml) The Ehrlichs' basic premise is that our natural environment is rapidly degrading as evidenced by a number of interrelated trends such as global climate change, the loss of biodiversity and the spread of toxic chemicals . If we allow

these trends to persist, our life support systems will be seriously eroded, imperiling society's ability to sustain itself. In other words, human beings are on a collision course with the natural world. Since the above circumstance is human-induced, it is imperative for us to alter our collective behavior if we want our children and their children to have a viable future. Three primary forces drive this unsustainable trend, according to the authors: population expansion, conspicuous consumption (by the wealthy), and the use of inappropriate technologies. We inhabit a relatively small planet containing a finite amount of natural resources. Yet we - especially Americans - consume resources such as oil, forests and fresh water as if they are plentiful. Closely related
to this profligate consumption and its environmental impacts is our choice of technologies. Our continuing dependence on fossil fuels is particularly problematic given the fact that they - and their associated chemicals and plastics - are related, directly or indirectly, with most of the human activities that wreak environmental havoc. Exacerbating both of the above is the growing number of people inhabiting the Earth. With a much smaller global population, the environmental effects of conspicuous consumption and destructive technologies would be less dramatic. But with the world's human population over six billion and likely to peak at 10 billion sometime this century, many observers think that we already exceed the Earth's capacity. The situation is dire, the authors write: "In some respects, it is almost as if society had a death wish, because in the end even the well-buffered rich will pay a huge cost for the environmental consequences of (our) technological choices. A culture dominated by short-term greed is preventing us from even starting on the task of steering us away from the collision course with nature." How do we turn this situation around? How do we learn to live in harmony with rather than in opposition to our natural environment? The authors believe that the United States has a major leadership role to play in this great turning . Not only is our country the most powerful

and affluent nation on the face of the Earth, our society is the largest engine of global ecological destruction. For example, with fewer than 5 percent of the world's population, we consume 23 percent of the energy produced - the vast bulk of it generated by burning fossil fuels. Shifting onto a sustainable path will
not be easy. Many of us are locked into increasingly dysfunctional attitudes and behaviors reflected in our giant SUVs, mega houses and large families. And, the greater our wealth, the more we consume and the larger our environmental impacts. To select an example close to home, according to a recent study by the group Sustainable San Mateo County, per capita electricity use in the affluent town of Atherton is 5.5 times that of the nearby lower income community of East Palo Alto. The Ehrlichs' prescription for change is multi-faceted but hinges on educating broad segments of the public about the nature and extent of the challenge we confront and strategies for remedying the situation. They go into some detail on ways to restructure our government to reduce the inordinate power of moneyed interests - particularly multinational corporations and facilitate a return to truly representative democracy. In addition, they stress the importance of the United States leading by example and using the "soft power" of diplomacy and foreign aid rather than the militaristic strategies currently in vogue in Washington. And a good deal of this leadership should be devoted to reducing the vast disparities of wealth that fuel both environmental destruction and political unrest, including -- not incidentally -- terrorism.

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Multilateralism 1/3
[ ] Commitment to multilateralism is vital to prevent counter-balancing and overstretch which destroy US leadership
Jakub Grygiel George H. W. Bush Chair in International Relations at Johns Hopkins University February 8, 2006 Imperial Allies Orbis, Volume 50, Issue 2 (ScienceDirect) But the fact that the United States has achieved overwhelming power does not mean that it doesnt need , and should not seek, alliances. Solitude is dangerous for empires, and alliances continue to be crucial for the United States for two reasons. First, by having allies, the United States can economize its own forces. Allies can fulfill crucial tasks from peacekeeping to protecting sea lanes and checking the rise of potential regional competitors. By doing so, they will reduce utilization of American forces. For example, the United States will need allies such as Japan and Taiwan, as well as India and some of the Central Asian states, to contain the rising power of China. China will have to devote some of its forces to paying attention to U.S. allies such as India, thus limiting its ability to threaten U.S. interests in the Pacific. By relying on these allies to curb China's ambitions, the United States can limit its own expenditure of power in the region and avoid the danger of having most of its forces absorbed in the Pacific, to the detriment of its global interests.6 The United States will also continue to benefit from European and other allies supplying much-needed manpower to garrison trouble spots from Afghanistan to the Balkans, thereby reducing the risk of American military overstretch. There are currently about 8,000 non-U.S. troops under NATO command in Afghanistan (more than two hundred are from non-NATO members, such as Macedonia and Sweden, while the United States has about 20,000 troops there), and 7,000 soldiers under eufor (the eu-led force) in Bosnia. While these and other military deployments of allies cannot substitute for U.S. involvement, they do free American resources from carrying out some tasks so that they can direct their efforts elsewhere (e.g., to a more aggressive search for Taliban and Al Qaeda elements in Afghanistan) . The second, and perhaps most important, reason the United States needs alliances is that allies are less likely to challenge its supremacy. If the United States chooses to be a solitary power, it will invite the rest of the world to coalesce against it. Challengers will arise faster and more numerously if the empire leaves states outside of its protective and beneficial mantel. Alternatively, the United States can actively seek alliances with other states, which as allies will have fewer incentives to upset the status quo (i.e., American supremacy). If a state is not given the choice of allying with the empire, it will be more likely to seek the support of others to balance against it, if only because there is no benefit to be gained from the empire's existence. Obviously, building alliances with states that for a variety of reasons have as their main

strategic goal weakening the United States will not eliminate their desire to do so. This is why multilateral or international organizations that include all sorts of states do not fully protect U.S. national security interests. Because there is no political settlement short of a U.S. defeat that would satisfy the purported objectives
of these states (just think of Iran or China), bringing them into some sort of alliance or institution with the United States will not reduce their drive to achieve that goal.7 The possibility of an alliance with Washington will, however, have an impact on those states that are more concerned with their own security and economic welfare than with dethroning the United States. For such states, a U.S. alliance offers protection (e.g., the Baltic states or South Korea), hopes of economic and political benefits (e.g., Poland and Italy), and often domestic stability (e.g., Macedonia or Albania). Developing such alliances unabashedly serves the United States interests. It limits the rise of new enemies that, however small, can be a dangerous distraction and divert U.S. resources. In fact, for these states, the alternative to allying with the United States is seeking the support of other powers. For example , without American support, Poland may pursue an increasingly Francophile, or Ukraine an increasingly Russophile, course, strengthening the anti-U.S. bloc in Europe. In Asia, the United States withdrawal from its commitments to Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan would lead some states to a more accommodating policy toward China, increasing that nation's sphere of influence to the detriment of American interests.

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Multilateralism 2/3
[ ] US decline wont be peaceful itll explode into global chaos & WMD conflicts mending our image is vital
Zbigniew Brzezinski 2005 National Security Advisor in the Carter Administration, Professor of Foreign Policy at Johns Hopkins University The Choice: Global Domination or Global Leadership p. 2-4

History is a record of change, a reminder that nothing endures indefinitely. It can also remind us, however, that some things endure for a long time, and when they disappear, the status quo ante does not reappear. So it will be with the current American global preponderance. It, too, will fade at some point, probably later than some wish and earlier than many Americans take for granted. The key question is; What will replace it? An abrupt termination of American hegemony would without doubt precipitate global chaos, in which international anarchy would be punctuated by eruptions of truly massive destructiveness. An unguided progressive decline would have a similar effect, spread out over a longer time. But a gradual and controlled devolution of power could lead
to an increasingly formalized global community of shared interest, with supranational arrangements increasingly assuming some of the special security roles of traditional nation-states. In any case, the eventual end of American hegemony will not involve a restoration of multipolarity among the familiar major powers that dominated world affairs for the last two centuries. Nor will it yield 10 another dominant hegemon that would displace the United States by assuming a similar political, military, economic, technological, and sociocultural worldwide preeminence. The familiar powers of the last century are too fatigued or too weak to assume the role the United States now plays. It is noteworthy that since
1880, in a comparative ranking of world powers (cumulatively based on their economic strength, military budgets and assets, populations, etc.), the top five slots at sequential twenty-year intervals have been shared by just seven states: the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Russia, Japan, and China. Only the United States, however, unambiguously earned inclusion among the top five in every

major European powers Great Britain, Germany, and Franceare too weak to step into the breach . In the next two decades, it is quite unlikely that the European Union will become sufficiently united politically to muster the popular will to compete with the United States in the politico-military arena. Russia is no longer an imperial power, and its central challenge is to recover socioeconomically lest it lose its far eastern territories to China. Japan's population is aging and its economy has slowed; the conventional wisdom of the 1980s that Japan is destined to be the next "superstate" now has the ring of historical irony. China, even if it succeeds in maintaining high rates of economic growth and retains its internal political stability (both are far from certain), will at best be a regional power still constrained by an impoverished population, antiquated infrastructure, and limited appeal worldwide. The same is true of India, which additionally faces uncertainties regarding its long-term national unity. Even a coalition among the abovea most unlikely prospect, given their historical conflicts and clashing territorial claimswould lack the cohesion, muscle, and energy needed to both push America off its pedestal and sustain global stability. Some leading states, in any case, would side with America if push came to shove. Indeed, any evident American decline might precipitate efforts to reinforce America's leadership. Most important, the shared resentment of American hegemony would not dampen the clashes of interest among states. The more intense collisionsin the event of America's declinecould spark a wildfire of regional violence, rendered all the more dangerous by the dissemination of weapons of mass destruction. The bottom line is twofold: For the next two decades, the steadying effect of American power will be indispensable to global stability, while
one of the twenty-year intervals, and the gap in the year 2000 between the top-ranked United States and the rest was vastly wider than ever before.'1 The former

the principal challenge to American power can come only from withineither from the repudiation of power by the American democracy itself, or from America's global misuse of its own power. American society, even though rather parochial in its intellectual and cultural interests, steadily sustained a protracted worldwide engagement against the threat of totalitarian communism, and it is currently mobilized against international terrorism. As long as that commitment endures, America's role as the global stabilizer will also endure. Should that commitment fade either because terrorism has faded, or because Americans tire or lose their sense of common purposeAmerica's global role could rapidly terminate. That role could also be undermined and delegilimaled by the misuse of U.S. power. Conduct that is perceived worldwide as arbitrary could prompt Americas progressive isolation, undercutting not America's power to defend itself as such, but rather its ability to use that power to enlist others in a common effort to shape a more secure international environment.

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Multilateralism 3/3
[ ] Transition wars cause extinction
Joseph Nye former assistant secretary of defense and president of Harvard's Kennedy school of government 1990 Bound To Lead: The Changing Nature Of American Power, p. 16-17 DOES IT MATTER? Some suggest that the current debate on American decline should be regarded as a register of mass psychology and popular fads rather than an analysis of power.''2 Others ask why Americans should worry about power. Why not focus solely on wealth and live as well as Swedes or Canadians ? The short answer is that the United States is not in the same geopolitical position as Sweden or Canada. It cannot afford a free ride in world politics. If the largest country in a world of nation-states abdicates leadership (as the United States did in the 1920s), the results can be disastrous for all. In an assessment of the debate about American decline, British scholar Susan Strange concludes that "we are all in agreement ... on the critical nature of the present end-of-century decade. We share a common perception that mankind ... is standing at a fork in the road. ... In the last resort, it may be that this common concern is more significant than the differences of interpretation."4' DECLINE AND WAR Perceptions of change in the relative power of nations are of critical importance to understanding the relationship between decline and war. One of the oldest generalizations about international politics attributes the onset of major wars to shifts in power among the leading nations. Thus Thucydides accounted for the onset of the Peloponnesian War which destroyed the power of ancient Athens. The history of the interstate system since 1500 is punctuated by severe wars in which one country struggled to surpass another as the leading state.44 If, as Robert Gilpin argues, "international politics has not changed fundamentally over the millennia ," the implications for the future are bleak.45 And if fears about shifting power precipitate a major war in a world with 50,000 nuclear weapons, history as we know it may end.

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SP Solves Iran (1/2)

A soft-power strategy is vital to eliminating Irans threat to global stability
Doran and Glassman 2010 (Michael, professor at NYU Wagner school, and James K., editorialist, journalist, diplomat and author; Wall Street Journal, The Soft Power Solution in Iran, 1-21) Al Qaeda bombers on U.S. airliners need prompt attention, but it is Iran, a supporter of terrorism now developing the capacity to fire nuclear-tipped missiles, that may pose the greatest threat to global stability and American security. That threat can be diminished three ways: by military action, by compromise by Irans regime, or by a new, less bellicose government taking power in Tehran. The first two appear unlikely, but the third, at least since protests broke out last June after the presidential election, seems more and more realistic. Yet so far the United

States and its allies have shrunk from seriously encouraging that third way.
anywayto little effect

Immediately after the post-election Green Revolution protests began in Iran, some policy makers argued that overt U.S. support would allow the regime to claim that those in the opposition were somehow our agents. Even with no evidence, the regime did that

. So how can the U.S. support the opposition? The key is strategic communications that integrate words and deeds to achieve a major political goalin this case, changing the character of the Iranian leadership. Everything that we do, everything that we sayand everything that we dont do and dont sayshould be coordinated to meet this goal. Such a policy would have four separate tasks: Provide moral and educational support for the Green Revolution. Here third parties, rather than the U.S. government, should play the main role. Dissidents should be reminded that others have succeeded on the same path they are travelling. We should, for instance, publicize reports on what worked in Ukraine or Georgia, spread testimony by leaders like the Czech Republics Vaclav
Havel, and distribute, in Farsi, guides to nonviolent change like Gene Sharps From Dictatorship to Democracy and Peter Ackermans A Force More Powerful. Its time to dub into Farsi documentaries on

Tighten sanctions on the Iranian economy and publicize the connection between regime belligerence and economic malaise. Despite Irans oil wealth, the economy has for years been in miserable shape thanks to bad management, corruption and the squandering of funds on Arab terrorist groups and the nuclear program . The slogans of the protestors demonstrate that they are connecting the dots between the regimes foreign policy and economic privation. Do all we can to increase communications within Iran, as well as between Iran and the outside world. Opposition movements succeed through sharing and disseminating information. Broadcasting by the taxpayer-funded Radio
the fall of Ceausescu, Milosevic and Pinochet; the transitions in South Africa and Poland; and the achievements of the U.S. civil-rights movement

Farda and Voice of America satellite TV should be ramped up, and we should encourage the U.K. to do the same with the BBC. We also should vigorously protest attempts by Iran to jam broadcast signals in defiance of international law, back private mediafrom satellite TV pitched at young people to cell-phone messaging to social networkingand help Iranians get the technology to overcome regime attempts

, we should refute, in campaign style, the four key propositions of Iranian propaganda. These are that the reformers are unrepresentative and unpatriotic; that the U.S. is in decline and wants to cut a deal with Iran and extricate itself from the Middle East; that Irans nuclear program will advance the country technologically; and that international opposition to the program is a Western plot to keep Iran, as a Muslim nation, poor and backward. For this last task, Americas comparative advantagesour technology and imaginationare the best tools. For example, to counter the claim that the West wants to hold Iran back, the U.S. government, using a private foundation, could rally CEOs in Silicon Valley (and Japan, India and Indonesia, for that matter) to offer Iranian engineering students seminars on high-tech entrepreneurship. We could saturate the airwaves of Iran with messages from, say, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger seeking
to block and censor. Finally

applicants for the seminars. The Iranian government would likely oppose such a program and the message would be: Your regime, not the West, wants to keep you down. Similarly, we should be using all our tools, including intelligence,

to track the individuals responsible for cracking down on the protesters, and to publicize their identities. Naming and shaming perpetrators would put the regime on the defensive and assure the protesters that their sacrifice will not be forgotten. As we know from Soviet dissidents, moral support works. A serious strategic communications program for Iran could have dozens, even hundreds, of programs like these. It should extend across government agencies with clear leadership and include private-sector participation.
Too often in foreign policy our interests demand that we compromise our core values. With Iran, however, we have been blessed with remarkable luck: Our strategic and moral imperatives stand in perfect alignment. And Iranians

like Americans. The Iranian challenge appears more amenable than any other serious national threat to a soft-power solution. Lets get going.

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SP Solves Iran (2/2)

Soft power key to solve Iran nuclearization
Saikal 10 (Amin Saikal is professor of political science and director of the Centre for Arab and Islamic Studies (the Middle East and Central Asia) at the Australian National University.The Canberra Times, 3/2/10, "Iran receptive to the right kind of international persuasion", lexis)

This group, which has thrived on their anti-US and anti-Israeli posture, would view a military attack as a gift that they could manipulate to whip up Shi'ite religious fanaticism and invoke fierce Iranian nationalism in order to rally public support for the regime and suppress the moderate Islamist opposition to the regime which has gained momentum since the disputed results of last year's presidential election. No easy choices really exist in dealing with Iran's nuclear program. Ultimately, what could possibly work is a policy of a smart diplomatic and economic pressure, accompanied with policies that could alleviate the fears that Iran holds because of the traditional US policy of regime change and Israel's military supremacy. A combination of these could prompt Iran to negotiate a mutually acceptable nuclear deal in the context of a wider regional regime of arms control to include Israel. The Iranian regime may find a nuclear deal and
rapprochement with the US in such a wider context advantageous for two important reasons. The first is that it would result in the lifting of all sanctions against Iran and therefore flow of foreign investment and high technology into the Iranian economy that the regime needs to improve badly. The second is that by re- establishing the US-Iranian relations it

would undercut the importance of Israel and many surrounding Arab countries in the US regional strategic calculations, for Iran would be a bigger economic and strategic prize for the US than any of those states.

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US- Iran Relations

Soft power key to US-Iran relz
Daily Telegraph 9 (Charles Moore, 6/20/09, "Obama needs to be forceful in using 'soft power' against Iran", lexis)

It was because of the importance of soft power that the wider world welcomed the election of Barack Obama. The Bush era did not make them reject American leadership: it made them look for leadership of a different kind. The first black President, and his silver tongue, would embark on a new, better conversation with humanity. In a way, Mr Obama has done so. He is polite, eloquent, dignified. But where is he leading? His two main speeches to Muslim audiences have been essentially works of apology. The US is not at war with Islam, he said in Turkey. In Egypt this month, he blamed colonialism and the Cold War, claimed that "Islam has always been part of America's story'', and spoke of Islam having been "revealed'' in Arabia, as if he thought its inspiration really was divine. If I were a politically minded anti-western Muslim, I would have detected weakness in these speeches, and pushed harder for my cause. If, on the other hand, I had been one of the millions of people in Muslim countries who, however religious, do not want to be ruled by the clergy or by other zealots, I would have been disappointed. Behind the President's talk of dialogue was
a rather flabby adherence to the status quo. Almost nothing against terrorists like Hamas, strangely gentle words about Iranian nuclear ambitions. The improperly elected extremist Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who literally keeps a seat at the cabinet table vacant for the return of the Mahdi, would have slept slightly easier. Israel's Benjamin Netanyahu, who is fairly elected and fills his cabinet according to the mere earthly rules of proportional representation, was the one made to sweat. Now that cheated voters are on the streets of Tehran, Mr Obama's offer of a ''grand bargain'' with the dictatorship looks even weaker. The trouble is that Mr Obama's version of soft power appears more soft than powerful. It reflects a psychological puzzle about Western culture. Never before has our "unconscious'' soft power been stronger. Technology, telecoms, the internet, films, music, the rise of the English language - all mean that the West dominates the world almost without thinking. A third of Iranians own mobile phones, and you can be confident that they are the third least friendly to Mr Ahmadinejad. They know how much this soft power matters. A new breed of ''hacktivists'' are launching do-it-yourself cyber attacks on Iranian government websites. But

when we in the West get to "conscious'' soft power, we lose our nerve. Why don't we do more to produce "political entrepreneurs'' to help people develop popular movements, build websites, learn more about the rule of law? And where are the government-sponsored systems that confidently promote our way of life? Recently, the British ambassadors in Bulgaria and Poland put out public messages promoting gay rights there. But in places where there is a much greater oppression of all people, gay or straight, in the name of Islam, British public policy is far more cautious. One of our best innovations is the
BBC's Persian TV service, but it only began this year. The West hesitates. Yet modern history contains several examples of successful soft power. After the war, the Marshall Plan rebuilt Europe economically and politically, often, in places like Italy, seeing off Communism. In the 1980s, Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher and Pope John Paul II transformed

the East/West confrontation from a balance of fear to a Cold War of ideological movement, supporting citizens in oppressed countries who wanted to tear down the walls that held them in. We helped them, and they won. For 30 years, the Iranian regime, for all its incompetence, has successfully exerted soft and hard power against us. It has been almost the chief opponent of Western values. It sponsors terrorism. Its president denies the Holocaust and works to get the Bomb. But Iran is also a country with a young, increasingly educated, frustrated population - millions of people who would rather have politics like ours than be ruled by clerics with God on their lips and 80 per cent of the national resources in their pockets. We have found far too few "soft'' ways to help them. If we did so, we would be assisting what may well be the most important shift now taking place in the world. Soft power key to middle east relz The Advertiser July 23, 2009 ((Australia) Thursday Faux pas on front line) His power was gone, he had no weapons of mass destruction and he was just terrified of Iran. The U.S. went in anyway, destroyed the country, set up a doomed administration and so outraged Islamists that Iraq and Afghanistan became centres of terrorism. The world could see the rationality of the
invasion of Afghanistan, but not finishing the job and letting Osama bin Laden escape for the sake of invading Iraq arguably was the greatest war blunder in living memory. The Middle East now is a basket case and the mess is spreading.

We lost the war in Iraq. Terrorism won. The greatest weapon we have is our soft power of communications, institutions, culture and smart diplomacy. Bin Laden wants war because he fears that soft power. War is the only thing he has to distract us from using it. He would love Andrew Bolt.

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______________ ***Credibility Solvency***

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W/D k Credibility
Withdrawal from Iraq key to US credibility
William C. Martel, 09 (Author of Victory in War, is an associate professor of international security studies at The Fletcher School at Tufts University; Pull back, no matter what, USA TODAY July 1, 2009, Lexis; CB) Nevertheless, there are several reasons why the United States should continue its stated policy of withdrawing combat forces from Iraq's urban areas, no matter what: *First, America's commitment is sacrosanct. When the U.S.-Iraq security agreement went into effect on Jan. 1, we agreed to withdraw combat troops from Iraqi cities and towns by Tuesday -- and withdraw all combat forces by the end of August 2010 and

all U.S. forces by the end of 2011. States that renege on such public commitments devalue their very credibility. Washington cannot afford to give states the opportunity to believe our pledges do not bear close scrutiny. *Second, strictly adhering to withdrawal could strengthen Iraq by telling insurgents and Iran's leaders that Baghdad intends to defend itself against forces that seek to rip it apart. A crucial test of democracy is whether the state can and will defend itself. If Iraq cannot, then it is doomed to fail. Because failure is not an option for Iraqis, they must successfully manage the withdrawal of U.S. forces. *Third, withdrawal demonstrates the United States is confident that Iraq's government and army can succeed. Signaling Washington's doubts about Iraq's leadership under Prime Minister alMaliki Enhanced Coverage Linking al-Maliki would instantly undermine Iraq's government. *Fourth, withdrawal has geostrategic benefits well beyond Iraq. It reassures the Middle East that the U.S. has no imperial ambitions to conquer and exploit Iraq. Reinforcing Washington's message that our word is our bond has immense dividends for restoring America's tattered image abroad. While U.S. policymakers rightly worry about Iraq's future, we cannot renege on withdrawal without weakening Iraq, strengthening insurgents and undermining our credibility. Even invoking an "escape clause"
should Iraq descend into catastrophe carries great strategic risks. Admittedly, Iraq faces extraordinary risks as U.S. combat forces withdraw, but it is time for Iraqis to take charge. In the end, we gave Iraqis a historic opportunity. Whether they can build a democracy remains the great unresolved question.

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Withdrawal
Withdrawal of troops from Iraq can restore confidence in the US and Obama.
Rubin 2010 (Wall Street Journal, James P., former diplomat and journalist, professor at Columbia in the School of International and Public Affairs, Obamas Foreign Policy Success June 12, 2010) http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704575304575297002717908716.html? mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEFTTopOpinion

The Obama administration is an unreliable friend and a faint-hearted adversary. U.S. allies in Europe no longer treasure their ties to the United States. Turkey defies us without paying a price. China's leaders question our fortitude. Iran's nuclear weapons program continues unchecked . So chants a chorus of
Republican critics. President Obama's latest mistake, of course, is to support a U.N. resolution that condemns the Israeli actions that resulted in the death of nine people on the aid flotilla sailing to Gaza. Have the critics forgotten what

happened to respect for the U.S. as a result of eight years of the Republicans having their way on foreign policy? In international affairs, context matters. The Bush administration repudiated global rules on climate change, treatment of prisoners, and arms control. It rejected the value of alliances, bungling diplomacy before the Iraq war and mismanaging the war's execution. These actions left America isolated. As a result, by 2009 allies were less likely to support Washington's policies. Adversaries, observing this new U.S. isolation and watching our military's six-year struggle in Iraq and eight-year fight in Afghanistan, were far less intimidated.
Nothing Mr. Obama has done or not done in the last 18 months even remotely compares to the damage wrought by his predecessor to America's international standing and deterrent power. On the contrary, the Obama administration has restored strained alliances and friendships around the world, while weakening the likes of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Iran and Hugo Chvez in Venezuela. Several studies of international attitudes demonstrate that the election of Mr. Obama, with his call for partnership, respect for international rules on prisoners, and acceptance

of the responsibilities associated with climate change, transformed America from a lonely superpower often seen as a threat to international order back into an indispensable leader in Europe, Asia and the Middle East. For example, a 2009 Pew Foundation poll found dramatic increases in U.S. favorability ratings (compared to
2008) across Europe and parts of Asia. True, the world in 2010 is different than after the fall of Communism, when America's ability to affect events was at its height. Now power has been redistributed to the East with the rise of China and India; and the greater Middle East is in turmoil, with chaos and terrorism in Afghanistan and Pakistan and the rise of Shiite influence in Iraq, Hamas in Gaza, and Hezbollah in Lebanon. So, yes, countries like Turkey no longer follow the American line the way they did in the past. And yes, managing China's rise is more difficult. But the talk of penalizing Turkey and of threatening China to accommodate Washington's interests is unrealistic. The best way to restore U.S. influence is to adjust to a changing world. Along with a successful withdrawal of U.S. forces from a relatively stable Iraq and good results from the surge in Afghanistantwo big ifsthat means modernizing our alliances, reorienting

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Timetable
Obama risks losing credibility by looking for loopholes within the withdrawal agreement
Steele 2010 (Jonathan, Defeat in Iraq: The Challenges for Obama and the Region, Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding, 4: 1, 23-34) http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17502970903086768

How could Obama repair the damage, not just in Iraq but throughout the Middle East? His central task would be to extract the US from Iraq with dignity. There were major uncertainties in the positions he announced during the election campaign. He talked of keeping residual forces in Iraq for an unspecified number of years. Their mission would be to hunt Al-Qaeda militants, train the Iraqi army and protect the vast US embassy which Bush planned to have a staff of 3,000. Officials on Obamas team said the residual force could number as many as 50,000 troops. The withdrawal agreement which Maliki signed with the Americans, a few days after Obamas victory, contained clauses which allowed the US to keep forces for all three of Obamas missions but only if new arrangements were negotiated. Obama would lose much of the credit he won for his opposition to the Iraq war if he became entangled in a messy argument with Iraqis over the terms of the agreement. The Iraqi government and parliament had managed to get Bush to accept a deadline for a final exit.
They rejected Gatess notion of a long and enduring presence or the analogy of Japan and South Korea, where the US has retained bases for decades. They could expect no less from Obama.

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__________________ ***A2***

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Alt Causes
Plan is key- US democracy acts as a means to increase our soft power by correcting mistakes like Iraq
Nye, 04 [ Joseph Jr. Can America recover its soft power after Abu Gharib?, Yale Global, July 29, Joseph S. Nye, Jr. served as the United States Assistant Secretary of Defense under the Clinton administration. He is distinguished service professor at Harvard Universitys Kennedy School of Government] Of course, even the best advertising cannot sell a poor product. We will need to improve our policy product as well.

Recovery of American soft power will depend on policy changes such as finding a political solution in Iraq, investing more heavily in advancing the Middle East peace process, and working more closely to involve allies and international institutions. More specifically, we will have to deal with the abuses that were exposed at Abu Ghraib. Fortunately, we have begun to do that. Whatever our flaws as an occupying power, the symbolism of Abu Ghraib did not reduce the United States to the moral equivalent of the tyrant it replaced. Democracy matters. American abuses were widely published and criticized in our free press for all to see . Congressional hearings have made officials testify in
public. And the American Supreme Court has asserted its independence from the executive branch by recently ruling that detainees at Guantanamo Bay and in military brigs in the United States must have

Even when mistaken policies reduce our attractiveness, our ability to openly criticize and correct our mistakes makes us attractive to others at a deeper level. Vietnam is a good example. When protesters overseas were marching in the streets against the Vietnam War, they did not sing The Internationale, but rather Martin Luther Kings We Shall Overcome. And that remains the best hope for those of us who believe that the United States can recover its soft power even after Iraq and Abu Ghraib.
access to legal representation. One of the greatest sources of American soft power is the openness of our democratic processes

Even if soft power is disintegrating in the status-quothe US can easily come back stronger
Kapoor, 2007 (Mini, writer for Indian Express, What the World is reading, July 2, Indian Express, http://www.indianexpress.com/story/203475.html) It is currently the stuff of bestseller lists: is the United States in imperial decline? The Economists position is clear: Still No 1, says its cover (June 28). Consider these statistics. It accounts for 27.5 per cent of the worlds GDP, but 45.7 per cent of global military spending of $1.2 trillion. But it is nevertheless a military power at full stretch: What seem out of the question for the foreseeable future are the medium-scale wars of choice. Furthermore: The dilemma for the

Pentagon is how to improve its ability to fight todays insurgencies while preparing for tomorrows conventional threats. These include Russia and China, the country that most worries the Pentagon. Iran, Venezula, North Korea remain defiant. The sense of waning power is strengthened by worries about financial centres elsewhere gaining dominance and Americas soft power being depleted by images of Guantanamo Bay. This, however, is a call to renewal and not a sign of decline , according to the leader: (From) the perspective of relative rather than absolute supremacy, a superpowers strength lies as much in what it can prevent from happening as in what it can achieve. Even today, Americas negative power is considerable. Very little of any note
can happen without at least its acquiescence In all sorts of areas be it the fight against global warming or the quest for an Arab-Israeli peace America is quite simply indispensable. The forecasts for the US: It will bounce back stronger again.

Current declines in soft-power are short-termAmerica is being underestimated

The Economist, 2007 (A weekly news and international affairs publication, Pentagon stretched to the limit over war: But America corrects itself; under pressure from voters, Bush has rediscovered multilateralism, June 30, http://www.hamiltonspectator.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer? pagename=hamilton/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1183177981096&call_pageid=1020420665036&col=11121 88062620) As for soft power, Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay, America's slowness to tackle climate change and its neglect of the Palestinians have all, rightly or wrongly, cost it dearly. Polls show that ever fewer foreigners trust America, and some even find China's totalitarians less dangerous. Yet America is being underestimated. Friends and enemies have mistaken the short-term failure of the Bush administration for deeper weakness. Neither American hard nor soft power is fading. Rather, they are not being used as well as they could be . The opportunity is greater than the threat. It is hard to deny that America looks weaker than it did in 2000. But is that really due to a tectonic shift or to the errors of a single administration? Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld reversed the wise Rooseveltian doctrine, "Speak softly and carry a big stick." After Sept. 11, the White House talked up American power to an extraordinary degree.

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Heg
The disastrous effects of using hard power in Iraq eviscerates US soft power
Zoysa, 2005 [Richard de, June-Sept. Americas Foreign policy: Manifest Destiny or Great Satan?, Contemporary Politics, Vol. 11]
The founding convictions of the US are to help the afflicted, defend the peace, and confound the designs of evil men. 56 Soft power and winning hearts and minds, though important, can never be a

. The soft power dimension is directed at removing legitimacy from the enemy by attacking the sources of its support through funding and recruits. This is a long term ongoing objective while in the short term Al-Qaeda and others can be disrupted by preventing the mounting of successful attacks in what used to be called search and destroy missions, though whether total victory can ever be achieved is doubtful as the nature of global terrorism is so indeterminate and diffuse with no distinct territory at stake. The danger of relying exclusively on the latter is that it may well create martyrs by inadvertently causing innocent civilian casualties thus furthering more recruitment in an endless cycle, made worse if moral equivalence is deduced and appears credible.57 Critics of the Bush administration argue that war in Iraq has created the very problem a recruiting ground for terror the war was meant to destroy. One distinguished commentator
substitute for the hard slog of military engagement and intelligence gathering in the struggle to counter terrorism

declares the war on terrorism an egregious error, as war creates its own psychosis within a media-stoked frenzy, counterproductive to the patient, secretive and covert intelligence gathering so necessary to success. It also offers the

terrorists a combative status as military equals in which governments can easily lose their moral authority through the careless bombing of innocents no matter how worthy the objective.58 Equally the idea of a
generic form of terrorism creates a misleading picture, as the specific objectives and acts of the varied terrorist groups differ so widely some seek religious purity, others land and nation status or perhaps simple martyrdom. Some organizations overlap and collaborate, but many need to be understood and combated as a specific and 150 Richard de Zoysa sui generis problem which the war on terrorism

and multilateral sources of support, including intelligence gathering, are vital for any US-led force upholding the rule of international law and securing legitimacy.
obscures and conflates

. Diplomatic

Soft Power outweighs hard power

Klarevas 2004 (Louis , Defense Analysis Intitute Research Fellow at the Hellenic Observatory, Political Realism, The Harvard International Review, Vol. 26, Fall, http://hir.harvard.edu/articles/1252/3/) Comprehending the complexities of world politics in this post-September 11 era, however, requires far more than just a superficial acknowledgement that more issues and more actors are involved in international relations. Policiesboth foreign and domesticmust be re-oriented to accommodate the changing trends and technologies. For starters, leaders and statesmen must grasp on a day-to-day basis that soft power is the resource that gets you more bang for your buck. That is, in todays world, leaders can accomplish far more in international affairs by attracting others to their positions than they can by coercing them into tolerating their policies . Goals

are more easily met and accepted by promoting them through legitimate institutions rather than by forcing them on others out of the barrel of a gun. To be fair, hard power matters. But soft power must be recognized
as hard powers significant other.

Hard power alone undermines hegemony

Northam, NPR Writer, 3/13/07 (Jackie, Buh Team Explores Use of Soft Power, NPR Morning Edition) www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=9096714 After the Cold War, the U.S. emerged as the lone superpower. Edwin Luttwak, a senior advisor at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, says this military superiority can create its own problems. "The irony of power is that power evokes resistance," Luttwak said. "And if you're not careful, it evokes so much resistance that you end up being powerless." Francis Fukuyama of the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, says the

whole nature of power itself needs to be re-examined in the context of increased terrorism, and the insurgency in Iraq. "The way you're trained to think about power is just different in the 21st century," Fukuyama said.
"And it has to do with this world of weak states and trans-national actors that just makes the old rules much less applicable." But one rule hasn't changed. If you're going to use hard or military power, you better win, says William Martel, an associate professor of international security studies at the Fletcher School at Tufts University. "If you don't get it right , you

undermine the sense to which other societies respect and fear you [encouraging] other states to challenge you," Martel said.

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W/D hurts SP
Presence in Iraq hurt credibility, Withdraw K2 deterring terrorists
Oliker, et atl 2k7 (Olga Oliker, Keith Crane, Audra K. Grant, Terrence K. Kelly, Andrew Rathmell, David Brannan Rand Corporation. 2007, U.S Policy options For Iraq, pg online @ http://www.rand.org/pubs/monographs/2007/RAND_MG613.pdf) If overwhelming force would be infeasible and picking a winner or partition would likely lead to outcomes detrimental to U.S. and Iraqi interests, the United States may be best served by withdrawing its

troops. The strongest argument against withdrawal is that U.S. and other Coalition forces are preventing a bad situation from becoming worse. Those who argue that U.S. forces must remain in Iraq predict that their
departure would cause even greater violence, followed by the creation of terrorist safe havens and an arena in which Iraqs neighbors would vie for influence. 8 Some argue that withdrawal would have high costs in terms of a loss in U.S. credibility. 9 They say that withdrawal might encourage insurgents elsewhere to battle forces, U.S. or not, engaged in peace enforcement operations rather than to seek accommodation with domestic foes. They also believe that withdrawal would reduce U.S. credibility with current or potential partners or allies around the globe, as the United States would be perceived as not adhering to its commitments. 10 The credibility of promises by the United States to defend Arab states, especially those situated around the Persian Gulf, is of particular concern. Opponents of withdrawal also cite the dangers posed to other U.S. policy interests. Withdrawal from Iraq could be viewed as reinforcing perceptions that Iran has bested the United States in Iraq and is in a position of rising regional power. 11 Some argue that withdrawal would set back the attainment of U.S. goals of a peaceful Middle East and the spread of democracy in the region. Each of these arguments

has weaknesses. Credibility is not enhanced by adhering to a losing strategy; nor are other U.S. goals in the Middle East. Iraq has already become a training ground for terrorists and a cause clbre for radical Islamists. U.S. withdrawal would eliminate a primary draw for foreign fighters the opportunity to fight against and kill Americans. Rivals dont change strategies because of credibility lost in other areassecurity guarantees dont spill over
Simon, 7 (Steven, Senior Fellow in Middle Eastern Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, America and Iraq: The Case for Disengagement, Survival 49:1, 61-84, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00396330701254537)

Influential policymakers and experts argue that irrespective of whether Iraqs root problems are external or internal, a robust and sustained US military commitment to Iraq is inextricably linked to the broader credibility of the United States as a security guarantor. From this standpoint, reputation is the cornerstone of deterrence, and disengagement from Iraq before it is stabilised would inevitably invite new challenges to US interests. The historical record, however, suggests that credibility is not cumulative . In reality, rivals constantly reevaluate each others capabilities in the overall context of the prevailing strategic environment. They do not, typically, launch dramatic challenges to their competitors on the basis of what their rival did or did not do in the past and under different circumstances. Admittedly, this is truer of states than of terrorist
organisations of Hamass or al-Qaedas ilk, which tend to project episodes from their respective enemies past onto the present in a rigidly simplistic way.

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A2: SP High Now

Credibility low now- Extend both pieces of Quelch 09 evidence Multiple warrants Bushs policies devastated credibility and US presence in Iraq hurts any chance Obama has to improve Americas world image other countries dont have a commitment to back the US in the status quo because they see current troops in Iraq as a lack of progress Collapse of our soft power is inevitableObama credibility is tied to withdrawal failure to stick to his guns will devastate him in August, thats the Asian Times and Leaver Quelch says backtracking means other countries will refuse to cooperate with the US Bolton 09 proves that presidential indecisiveness ruins our alliances - our allies perceive that Obama wont act internationally

US presence in Iraq is effecting its global standing and creating backlash

Oliker, et atl 2k7 (Olga Oliker, Keith Crane, Audra K. Grant, Terrence K. Kelly, Andrew Rathmell, David Brannan Rand Corporation. 2007, U.S Policy options For Iraq, pg online @ http://www.rand.org/pubs/monographs/2007/RAND_MG613.pdf) If overwhelming force would be infeasible and picking a winner or partition would likely lead to outcomes detrimental to U.S. and Iraqi interests, the United States may be best served by withdrawing its

troops. The strongest argument against withdrawal is that U.S. and other Coalition forces are preventing a bad situation from becoming worse. Those who argue that U.S. forces must remain in Iraq predict that their
departure would cause even greater violence, followed by the creation of terrorist safe havens and an arena in which Iraqs neighbors would vie for influence. 8 Some argue that withdrawal would have high costs in terms of a loss in U.S. credibility. 9 They say that withdrawal might encourage insurgents elsewhere to battle forces, U.S. or not, engaged in peace enforcement operations rather than to seek accommodation with domestic foes. They also believe that withdrawal would reduce U.S. credibility with current or potential partners or allies around the globe, as the United States would be perceived as not adhering to its commitments. 10 The credibility of promises by the United States to defend Arab states, especially those situated around the Persian Gulf, is of particular concern. Opponents of withdrawal also cite the dangers posed to other U.S. policy interests. Withdrawal from Iraq could be viewed as reinforcing perceptions that Iran has bested the United States in Iraq and is in a position of rising regional power. 11 Some argue that withdrawal would set back the attainment of U.S. goals of a peaceful Middle East and the spread of democracy in the region. Each of these arguments

has weaknesses. Credibility is not enhanced by adhering to a losing strategy; nor are other U.S. goals in the Middle East. Iraq has already become a training ground for terrorists and a cause clbre for radical Islamists. U.S. withdrawal would eliminate a primary draw for foreign fighters the opportunity to fight against and kill Americans.

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A2: Alt Cause 2 SP

Extend Nye in 04, soft power is nothing more than a contest of credibility, when the president and country have less credibility, it makes the USs democracy and free market economy less appealing and other countries are less likely to cooperate with the US Additionally, Nye says that our soft power is declining now, and he isolates Iraq as the root cause. There were no WMDs in Iraq and the occupation has only deteriorated. Our second piece of Quelch evidence says that the only way for Obamas administration to be credible is for him to fix the problem in Iraq, and backtracking only further ruins his image. Lack of progress causes backlash, isolationism, and protectionism from other countries.

Plan is key- US democracy acts as a means to increase our soft power by correcting mistakes like Iraq
Nye, 04 [ Joseph Jr. Can America recover its soft power after Abu Gharib?, Yale Global, July 29, Joseph S. Nye, Jr. served as the United States Assistant Secretary of Defense under the Clinton administration. He is distinguished service professor at Harvard Universitys Kennedy School of Government] Of course, even the best advertising cannot sell a poor product. We will need to improve our policy product as well.

Recovery of American soft power will depend on policy changes such as finding a political solution in Iraq, investing more heavily in advancing the Middle East peace process, and working more closely to involve allies and
international institutions. More specifically, we will have to deal with the abuses that were exposed at Abu Ghraib. Fortunately, we have begun to do that. Whatever our flaws as an occupying power, the symbolism of Abu Ghraib did not reduce the United States to the moral equivalent of the tyrant it replaced. Democracy matters. American abuses were widely published and criticized in our free press for all to see . Congressional hearings have made officials testify in public. And the American Supreme Court has asserted its independence from the executive branch by recently ruling that detainees at Guantanamo Bay and in military brigs in the United States must have access to legal representation. One of the greatest sources of American soft power is the openness of our democratic processes. Even

when mistaken policies reduce our attractiveness, our ability to openly criticize and correct our mistakes makes us attractive to others at a deeper level. Vietnam is a good example. When protesters overseas were marching
in the streets against the Vietnam War, they did not sing The Internationale, but rather Martin Luther Kings We Shall Overcome. And that remains the best hope for those of us who believe that the United States can recover its soft power even after Iraq and Abu Ghraib.

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A2: SP Advantage CP
Solvency deficit: Nye says that credibility is the key internal to soft power, when the president and country have less credibility, it makes the USs democracy and free market economy less appealing and other countries are less likely to cooperate with the US. Additionally, Nye isolates Iraq as the root cause of our declining soft power. There were no WMDs in Iraq and the occupation has only deteriorated. Quelch evidence says only way for Obama to be credible is for him to fix the problem in Iraq, and backtracking only further ruins his image. Lack of progress causes backlash, isolationism, and protectionism from other countries

And, Plan is key- the ONLY way to solve soft power is changing military policy, and admitting past issues like Iraq
Nye, 04 [ Joseph Jr. Can America recover its soft power after Abu Gharib?, Yale Global, July 29, Joseph S. Nye, Jr. served as the United States Assistant Secretary of Defense under the Clinton administration. He is distinguished service professor at Harvard Universitys Kennedy School of Government] Of course, even the best advertising cannot sell a poor product. We will need to improve our policy product as well.

Recovery of American soft power will depend on policy changes such as finding a political solution in Iraq, investing more heavily in advancing the Middle East peace process, and working more closely to involve allies and
international institutions. More specifically, we will have to deal with the abuses that were exposed at Abu Ghraib. Fortunately, we have begun to do that. Whatever our flaws as an occupying power, the symbolism of Abu Ghraib did not reduce the United States to the moral equivalent of the tyrant it replaced. Democracy matters. American abuses were widely published and criticized in our free press for all to see . Congressional hearings have made officials testify in public. And the American Supreme Court has asserted its independence from the executive branch by recently ruling that detainees at Guantanamo Bay and in military brigs in the United States must have access to legal representation. One of the greatest sources of American soft power is the openness of our democratic processes. Even

when mistaken policies reduce our attractiveness, our ability to openly criticize and correct our mistakes makes us attractive to others at a deeper level. Vietnam is a good example. When protesters overseas were marching
in the streets against the Vietnam War, they did not sing The Internationale, but rather Martin Luther Kings We Shall Overcome. And that remains the best hope for those of us who believe that the United States can recover its soft power even after Iraq and Abu Ghraib. Perm: do both Solvency deficit, the CP cant solve our key internals to terrorism. Our first piece of Preble 04 evidence says that our presence in Iraq uses resources necessary to fight the war on terror, ONLY the plan can free up these resources to counter terrorism outside Iraq and ensure that our Counter-Terrorism Strategy is effective The second piece of Preble evidence indicates that the US presence in Iraq fuels resentment that provides a breeding ground for terrorism and acts as a recruitment tool that makes future terrorist attacks inevitable This terrorism in Iraqi is uniquely bad, Al-Damkhi says that an attack on an oil line in the region will devastate the ecosystem and destroy all fresh water Ecological destruction of Iraqs unique habitats ruins biodiversity, thats Gardner, and Takacs says this causes extinction from famines and resource wars that will go nuclear CSM says lack of water in Iraq immediately escalates into water wars throughout the Middle East, no one would hesitate at using nuclear weapons because its a matter of survival. insert add-on soft power cant solve here-

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********Terrorism Advantage******** ________________________ *****Impacts/Add-Ons*****

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South Asia Add-On

A. US withdrawal from Iraq is key to solve terrorism: disproves Al Qaeda propaganda and perception of US conquest
Christopher Preble Director of foreign policy studies at CATO; et al, 2004 Exiting Iraq: Why the U.S. must end the military occupation and renew the war against Al Qaeda, p. 56, CB Such a proposition is untenable. According to a letter attributed to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian with alleged ties to Al Qaeda, the terrorists ability to operate in Iraq will likely diminish once the government is handed over to

the Iraqis. Far from looking on an American military withdrawal as an opportunity to establish a strong base of operations, Al-Zarqawi worried about such a withdrawal and about the transition to an army and police force populated by people connected by lineage, blood and appearance to their fellow Iraqis.151 The United States should therefore use withdrawal from Iraq to its own advantage, first, by reassigning resources to fight against Al Qaeda, but also by explicitly countering propaganda by the likes of al-Zarqawi, bin Laden, and other anti-American extremists who characterize the American occupation as a vehicle for asserting U.S. dominance in the region. A smart power cuts its losses and recognizes that its security is not dependent on perfection. Our policy should be oriented toward achieving an acceptable end, one that safeguards American vital security interests at minimal cost and risk, because any attempt to get things right in Iraq will inevitably lead to the perpetuation of our stay in that troubled country. Getting things right means getting out of Iraq before we suffer further losses of blood and treasure and a further diminution of our political standing abroad. By withdrawing militarily from Iraq, the United States will be broadcasting to the worldin particular the Middle Eastern and Muslim areasthat the United States has no plans to take control of Middle Eastern oil or to suppress the aspirations of the regions population. But at the same time, the United States must reaffirm its intentions and capability to protect Americans from threats, including the overthrow of governments found to be supporting antiAmerican terrorists. The jihadis might try to tout a U.S. troop withdrawal as a moral victory. That message could be countered with a far more emphatic statement of our own: We have liberated the people of Iraq from an oppressive tyrant. Now we are coming for you. But although that message might sell in the near future, it becomes less and less convincing as the U.S. occupation stretches from a year to several years. It will be a greater strategic victory for the jihadis if we stay. B. That Solves South Asian Conflict
Straits Times 2005 Stake in the Middle East, pg nexis//cndi-ef Engaging the Middle East politically is obviously important as well. Paralleling the growth of trans-national trade and economic organisations is the spread of international Islamic networks that bind South-east Asia and the Middle East together. Many of these networks are benign, but radical ideas have seeped into this region

through the curricula of some religious schools and the abuse of Islamic charities. Extremism threatens many Middle Eastern governments in much the way that it seeks to subvert secular or moderate Muslim states in this region. The challenge of the times is to distinguish and distance the humane, enlightened and progressive message of Islam from the insurrectionary form that it has taken in the hands of radicals and fanatics. Mainstream governments in both the Middle East and South-east Asia are pitted against a radical, but powerful, fringe. How Middle Eastern governments and civil society handle this problem is of crucial importance in this part of the world. Engaging each other in a dialogue of civilisations is a key way of
preventing extremists from fuelling the clash of civilisations that will destroy the achievements made in both regions.

C. Asian Instability Risks Nuclear War

Paul Kennedy, Professor, History, Yale University, 21st CenturyDialogues on the Future/Globalizations Sway in Evolution fo States Put in Focus, THE DAILY YOMIURI, January 10, 2k, p. 1. Kennedy: I do not think that we should discuss only positive aspects of globalization. Today, there is an arms race going

among many Asian countries. There is also a nationalist passion at work in the region. All this comes with incredible pressure in the form of environmental problems, population growth and ethnic violence. This might well mean that some nuclear weapons could be let off in Asia, while a very big war could occur in the area by 2010 or 2015.

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Impacts: Environment (1/2)

[ ] The Tigris and Euphrates are critical biodiversity hot-spots destruction puts life on Earth at risk
Miami Herald 1995 Ecological Time Bombs Ticking In Persian Gulf Tankers, Drained Marshes Raise Fears, pg nexis) An indelible image from the Persian Gulf War: billowing black smoke from some of the 613 oil wells set on fire by a retreating Iraqi army. Now put those memories aside, for nearly five years after the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, the Persian Gulf faces ecological dangers that overshadow the Gulf War's. Experts call one a time bomb: Divers have determined at least one of the oil tankers sunk off Iraq during the war may be in imminent danger of leaking. The United Nations hopes to oversee a rescue operation in coming weeks of one ship carrying 700,000 barrels of crude. A second menace may haunt the region for much longer: Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's systematic draining of vast stretches of marshlands in southern Iraq, where the Tigris and Euphrates rivers merge into the Shatt Al Arab river. The marshes act as the Gulf's life source -- spawning grounds for fish; an ideal habitat for migratory birds; and a natural filter for the northern Gulf. Oily water flows in, the pollutants fall to the mucky bottom, and cleansed water flows back into the Gulf. Hussein says he has drained the marshes for decades to create the Third River, a canal that flows between the Tigris and the Euphrates -- an American consultant's idea in the 1950s to reclaim agricultural land that would otherwise be desert. But the draining intensified during his slash-and-burn campaign against anti-Hussein Shiite guerrillas who have taken refuge in the marshes. Hussein may have another motive: Beneath the marshes are large oil fields -- perhaps a third of Iraq's known oil reserves. Satellite photographs show that Iraq has dried up 90 percent of the marshland that existed 20 years ago. One group that studied the marshes last year, the London- based Amar Appeal, said the impact on climate and biological diversity is comparable to that of the destruction of rain forest in parts of Latin America. Several species of animals that lived in the marshes, including the smooth-coated otter and Indian-crested porcupine, are thought to be extinct due to the draining. And the effects of the draining may be being felt in the Gulf. Last winter, Kuwait reported a sharp drop in the millions of migratory birds passing through the area. And Kuwaiti and Iranian fishermen have reported an 80 to 90 percent drop in fish catch over the past 18 months. "It's almost like we have nothing to catch," said Mohammed Al-Najdi, vice president of the Kuwait Association of Fishermen. "From what we hear, the marshes are almost completely dry. That's our main concern. The fish will have nowhere to lay their eggs. This upcoming season is the last chance for us. If we fail again, the majority of the fishermen will go out of business." To be sure, the Persian Gulf has long been far from pristine. This is the Main Street of petroleum, a passageway for nearly two-thirds of all the oil in the world. And with traffic come accidents. Large oil spills are not uncommon. The eight-year war between Iran and Iraq in the 1980s polluted the waters terribly, especially after both sides began going after the other's oil tankers in a campaign to shut down their income. The 1991 war to drive Iraq out of Kuwait saw more ships go down, and today an estimated 180 ships litter the bottom of the Gulf and the Shatt Al Arab. Two dozen of the ships are oil tankers. But pollution is also is a more prosaic issue. Each day, an estimated 20,000 barrels of oil spill into the Gulf from tanker loading, ballasting operations and oil exploration. On some stretches of shoreline, notably in Saudi Arabia and parts of Iran and the United Arab Emirates, any child sinking a shovel in the sand will discover soft black tar only pail-deep . "A lot of our shores are full of chunks of tar," said Hamid Reza Ghaffarzadeh, program officer for the United Nations Development Program in Tehran. Ghaffarzadeh shifted uneasily in his seat. "I very much fear for the future of the Persian Gulf," he said. "The two regional wars tremendously added to the pollution. But there are many other problems. It's a very busy sea. And for historical reasons, regional cooperation is very difficult." "There's another problem too," he said. "The international community believes that the countries here are rich enough to clean it up themselves. So they won't give money. But if the countries aren't cooperating, nothing will get done." Such problems are obvious at the Regional Organization for the Protection of the Marine Environment, headquartered in Kuwait, which includes Iran, Iraq and all the Arab nations on the Gulf. That creates difficulties. Iraq objects to any cleanup of the sunken oil tankers, which were sunk by U.S. forces at the very end of the Gulf War. The most worrisome situation involves the Amuriyah, one of four oil tankers sunk by U.S. forces in and near Um Qassar, an Iraqi port just north of the border with Kuwait, in the final

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CNDI 2010 Iraq Aff Regents Lab days of Operation Desert Storm. A team from the London-based International Marine Organization examined the ship a year ago and found that it could split open at any time. "You kind of need Iraq to give the United Nations approval to clean it up," said a Western diplomat based in Kuwait City. "The Amuriyah is sitting there right on the border of Iraq and Kuwait. It's a time bomb. It's tick, tick, ticking ." The United Nations Security Council approved a plan in March to salvage the wreck. But the privately funded project has been on hold largely because of delicate political considerations surrounding the U.N. embargo of Iraqi oil exports, according to diplomats and U.N. sources. Kuwait waits nervously. "That ship is practically cracking," said Abdul Rahman Al- Awadhi, sitting in his Kuwait City office, which has an oversize string of turquoise worry beads hanging on the wall. Awadhi is executive secretary of the regional marine environmental group. "If it breaks down, all the oil is coming here." Perhaps. Environmentalists say that if Amuriyah's oil leaks, the oil may enter Kuwait City's bay, but is more likely to flow along currents to the shores of Saudi Arabia -- just like the other huge Gulf War spills. John Ostergaard, part of the International Marine Organization team that evaluated the sunken tankers, said the Amuriyah's superstructure burned when it was bombed. Tank section No. 2 -- the part with the estimated 700,000 barrels -- lies about 45 feet below the surface. "The

steel itself is exposed to the environment and therefore the corrosion is going faster than if it just sank from a naval accident," Ostergaard said. "We recommended that the oil be taken out immediately." That was a year ago.
There is some hope for the future of the Gulf environment. In the Gulf emirate of Oman this spring, Gulf countries held a conference to discuss minimizing pollution from tankers and building facilities in ports for ballasting -- the flushing of oily water from the tankers' holds. "It seems that the countries are also becoming more and more concerned," Ostergaard said. But environmentalists worry that disaster could strike at any time, or that, in the case of Iraq's marshlands, disaster is already under way. "These accidents and troubles let us realize how precious the Gulf is," said Shaker Khamdan, an ecologist at the Environmental Protection Committee in Bahrain, an island whose inhabitants once live off a now diminished pearling industry. "For generations, we lived very closely with the sea. Oil brought prosperity, but it also endangered the treasure that we've had for hundreds of years."

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Impacts: Environment (2/2)

[ ] Failure to Prevent Environmental Collapse Causes Complete Human Extinction

John Cairns, Prof. of biology at Virginia Tech, Goals and Conditions for a Sustainable World 1998 http://www.intres.com/esepbooks/CairnsEsepBook.pdf) Sustainable use of the planet will require that the two components of human societys life support system technological and ecological be in balance (Cairns, 1996). Holmberg et al. (1996) state the situation superbly: "A long-term sustainable society must have stable physical relations with the ecosphere. This implies sustainable materials exchange between the society and the ecosphere as well as limitations on societys manipulation of nature." At present, persuasive signs indicate that the tech- nological system is damaging the integrity of the ecological life support system (Cairns, 1997). By monitoring the condition or health of both systems, a benign coevolution of human society and natural systems would be possible (Cairns, 1994; 1995). However, sustainable use of the planet will require environmental management on unprecedented temporal and spatial scales. The attainment of sustainability faces considerable obstacles. A societal distrust of scientific evidence has arisen that ranges from a belief that science does not differ from other ways of knowing to a total misunderstanding of how science works. Also, one common belief is that quality of life is more closely associated with consumption or affluence than with environmental quality, and, consequently, that a maintenance of affluence is to be preferred over the maintenance of natural systems. This false choice arises from human societys failure to

recognize its dependence on natural systems for essential ecological services, such as maintenance of breathable air, drinkable water, the capture of energy from sunlight, and the provision of arable soils
(e.g., Daily, 1997). Possibly, the same human ingenuity that people have relied on to solve local resource limitations could also be used to develop an environmental ethos that will enable humans to conserve the ecological capital (old growth forests, species diversity, topsoil, fossil water, and the like) upon which they now depend. Humankind has survived thus far by meeting short-term emergencies as they occurred. However, humans supposedly can be distinguished from other species by their awareness of the transience of individual lives and their own mortality. Extending this awareness to the possibility of human extinction might be enlightening. Wilson (1993) asks "Is humanity suicidal?": The human species is, in a word, an environmental hazard. It is possible that intelligence in the wrong kind of species was foreordained to be a fatal combination for the biosphere. Perhaps a law of evolution is that intelligence usually extinguishes itself. If human society destroys, by its own actions, the living components of Earth that maintain an environmental state favorable to human

survival, human society hastens its own extinction. Protection of these ecological services extends the time that the human species can survive on Earth. By regulating the use of ecosystem services to a rate that does
not destroy the ability of natural systems to produce them, more humans will live better lives over time. Towards this end, a number of steps can be undertaken.

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Water Wars Impacts

Water Wars Will Escalate, Threatening BillionsMiddle East is a tinderbox for water conflict
Scott Peterson, staffwriter, What Could Floator SinkPeacemaking, THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR, July 14, 1999, p. 1. With Israel's new Prime Minister Ehud Barak promising to restart peace with the Palestinians and Syria, the issue of water often forgotten by outsiders, but all-important in the parched Holy Land - will take center stage. After all, destroying an enemy's water and its sources has been a strategic aim in every war fought in the

Mideast during the past two generations. And severe water shortages here - the Middle East is experiencing its driest spell in 50 years - could complicate any talks. "If we solve every other problem in the Middle East but do not satisfactorily resolve the water problem, our region will explode," once warned the
late Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, one of the architects of the Mideast peace process. As crops shrivel, river and reservoir levels drop, and new dams and competing claims loom, experts are striving to cope with dwindling water resources. "The Malthusian specter is real in the Middle East," says Thomas Stauffer, a Washington-based Mideast water and energy analyst. Water resources are "fully utilized," while the population continues to grow - ingredients the economist Malthus predicted would lead to conflict. "The consequences are profound. Scarcity means conflict, so oil wars are less likely than water wars." His concerns are echoed by the results of a two-year study carried out by the US National Academy of Sciences alongside Israeli, Jordanian, and Palestinian water experts. "Fresh-water supplies in the Middle East now are barely sufficient to maintain a quality standard of living," said Gilbert White, a University of Colorado geographer who led the team. Increasing water use across the largely arid region, the team found, guarantees that "the area's inhabitants will almost assuredly live under conditions of significant water stress in the near future." Already, at least 400 million people live in regions with severe water shortages. Within 50 years,

that figure is expected to soar to 4 billion. There is no more water on the planet than there was 2,000 years ago, when the population was just 3 percent what it is today. "Our concerns about global warming are trivial compared to the issues that we face over water," a senior official of NASA's Earth Sciences Directorate
has said.

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Impacts: Instability
[ ] Water shortages destroy Iraqi stability

Will Rogers, researcher with the Natural Security program at the Center for a New American Security, a nonpartisan, non-profit national security think tank in Washington, DC., June 21, 2010, Could water undermine the American game plan for Iraq? Does a bear..., http://ricks.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2010/06/21/could_water_undermine_the_american_game_plan_for_iraq_does_a_ bear In Iraq, a country where one in four citizens do not have access to safe drinking water - let alone enough water to irrigate their crops -- water shortages could drown any hope of long-term, meaningful reconciliation between the Iraqi people and the government. Many Iraqis have been pleading to Baghdad to devote more resources to shore up the country's crumbling infrastructure and unsustainable water management policies in order to effectively tackle the chronic water challenges that have been exacerbated by four-years of drought. "If our government was good and strong, we would get our [water] rights," one Iraqi told The New York Times recently. Ali Baban, Iraqi Minister of Planning and Development Co-operation, warned last July that Iraq's intense drought conditions could push the frail state to a breaking point. "We have a real thirst in Iraq. Our agriculture is going to die, our cities are going to wilt, and no state can keep quiet in such a situation," he cautioned. But with the government still in limbo after the recent March 7 election, it is unlikely that Baghdad will have the capability or capacity to address these water woes anytime soon. Acute water shortages continue

to shape internal security dynamics, forcing Iraqis to flee their native communities in search of better resources. Iraq's Minster of Water, Dr. Abdul Latif Jamal Rashid, stated last year that more than 300,000 marshland residents were forced to flee their drought stricken communities in recent years. To make matters worse, in provinces where access to water is slightly better, the tattered infrastructure of pipes prevents much of that water from reaching Iraqis in their homes, forcing them to rely instead on water trucks from the International Committee of the Red Cross and other NGOs to supply fresh water. Iraq was once a paradise, the wheat basket
of the Middle East, with lush marshes and river ways that sustained a vibrant agricultural community and fresh-water fisheries. Even today, while agricultural production accounts for only 10 percent of Iraqi GDP, it has long been a hallmark of Iraq - producing wheat for world renowned German beers and the region's most popular varietal rice, Anbar rice. In recent years, many of Iraq's crops have been left parched and its fragile agricultural industry in disarray leaving Iraqi farmers in a veritable dustbowl. Barley and wheat production has declined up to 95 percent in provinces that rely on rain-fed irrigation, while total barley and wheat production declined by more than half last year. Meanwhile Iraq's date industry - once the world's leading exporter - is dwindling. At its height in the 1980s, Iraqi date farmers produced 600,000 tons of dates; in 2008, production dropped to 281,000 tons with production continuing to decline as drought worsens. Regional politics and perennial drought throughout much of the Middle East have not helped Iraq navigate its water crisis either. Voluntary commitments from neighboring Iran, Turkey and Syria to increase water flow from upstream dams and reservoirs have been made over the last several years, but Iraq has not seen much increase in downstream water flow. The lack of credibility in the new government may also be hampering its ability to get its neighbors to execute on those commitments. While much attention is understandably on Afghanistan, U.S. national security policymakers should be aware of the challenges that could shape the future security environment in Iraq - especially as the new government in Baghdad struggles to stand on its own. Water shortages alone won't cause a resurgence of violence, but the issue could be the straw that breaks the back of a (weak) fledgling government. As the United States looks ahead for opportunities to ensure long-term stability in Iraq, access to water may well be critical to the new Iraqi government's credibility and our ability to responsibly withdraw. Could 2010 really be the year that Iraq begins to unravel? Maybe. Maybe not. But one thing is clear : the broad outlines of a post-occupation Iraq are

beginning to take shape, and some of the acute challenges that have been marginalized in the post-war years could increasingly undermine Baghdad's credibility and long-term stability. If left unaddressed, water shortages could very well leave Baghdad hanging out to dry -- and us, too.

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___________________________ *****Advantage Internals*****

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Internals: Presence Terrorism

[ ] US military presence in Iraq is the primary cause of terrorismit allows organizations like Al-Qaeda to frame their actions in terms of defending against invaders
Christopher Layne, D., chair of intelligence and national security at Texas A&M, 2009 (, Ph. Americas Middle East grand strategy after Iraq: the moment for oshore balancing has arrived, Review of International Studies 35, 5-25) Terrorist organisations like Al-Qaeda are non-state actors, and as such, they are not, strictly speaking, engaged in balancing the US (because balancing is a form of state behaviour). Yet, at the same time, the actions of groups like Al-Qaeda reect some of the key attributes of balancing. After all, beyond connoting the idea of counterweight, balancing also signies opposition, or resistance, to a hegemon. Terrorists may not be able to balance against the US, but they can engage in a related form of activity aimed at undermining American primacy by raising its costs. Organisations like Al-Qaeda may be non-state actors, but their actions are of a kind frequently found in international politics: the use of violence against a state(s) to attain clearly dened political objectives. Indeed the use of violence for such purposes is the hallmark of terrorism. As Bruce Homan says, terrorism is about power: the pursuit of power, the acquisition of power, and the use of power to achieve political change.38 Terrorism, moreover, is fundamentally an asymmetric form of conict, because it is an instrument that the weak use against the strong.39 From this perspective, the 9/11 assault on the US was not a random, senseless, irrational act of violence. In fact, the 9/11 attack was in keeping with the Clausewitzian paradigm of war: force was used against the US by its adversaries to advance their political objectives. As German military strategist Carl von Clausewitz himself observed, War is not an act of senseless passion but is controlled by its political object.40 Here, President Bushs endlessly reiterated claim that the US was attacked because Islamic radicals hate us because of our freedom betrayed a complete misunderstanding of the dynamics that underpin the clash between the US and Middle Eastern terrorists. For sure, there are Islamic radicals who, indeed, do hate the US for cultural, religious, and ideological reasons. But that is not why the US is a target for Islamic terrorists. 9/11 represented a violent counterreaction to Americas policies in the Middle East especially its drive to dominate the region both geopolitically and culturally. As Michael Schuerer who headed the CIA analytical team monitoring Osama bin Laden and Al-Qaeda says, it is dangerous for the US to base its strategy for combating terrorism on the belief that Muslims hate and attack us for what we are and think rather than for what we do.41 In a similar vein, Richard K. Betts observed following the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center that, It is hardly likely that Middle Eastern radicals would be hatching schemes like the destruction of the World Trade Center if the US had not been identied so long as the mainstay of Israel, the Shah of Iran, and conservative Arab regimes and the source of a cultural assault on Islam.42 It is the US attempt to impose its primacy and preferences on the Middle East that fuels groups like Al-Qaeda and fans Islamic fundamentalism. Terrorism is a form of blowback against Americas preponderant role in international aairs. Despicable and brutal though it was, the 9/11 attack was undertaken with cool calculation to achieve well-dened geopolitical objectives. Underscoring this point, Scheurer observes that, In the context of ideas bin Laden shares with his brethren, the military actions of Al-Qaeda and its allies are acts of war, not terrorism . . . meant to advance bin Ladens clear, focused, limited, and widely popular foreign policy goals . . ..43 Specically, Al-Qaeda wants to compel the US to remove its military presence from the Persian Gulf, and force Washington to alter its stance on the IsraeliPalestinian conict.44 AlQaedas leaders also apparently hoped that the September 11 attacks would provoke a US overreaction, and thereby trigger an upsurge of popular discontent in the Islamic world that would lead to the overthrow of the Saudi monarchy and other proAmerican regimes in the Middle East (Egypt, Pakistan, and Jordan, for example) and their replacement by fundamentalist Islamic governments.45 In other words, Al-Qaeda seeks to undermine US primacy, and thereby compel changes in Americas Middle Eastern grand strategy. The US presence on the ground in the Middle East also incites terrorists to attack American interests. In his study of suicide terrorist groups, Pape has found that what nearly all suicide terrorist attacks have in common is a specic secular and strategic goal: to compel modern democracies to withdraw military forces from territory that the terrorists consider to be their homeland.46 Al-Qaeda ts this pattern, and one of its principal objectives is the expulsion of American troops from the Persian Gulf and the reduction of Washingtons power in the region.47 Here, the Bush administrations inexible determination to maintain a long-term American military presence in Iraq is exactly the wrong policy to reduce terrorism. The Bush administration, of course, claimed that the US is ghting terrorism in Iraq. To make this point, it has grossly exaggerated the links between the insurgent group Al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) and Osama Bin Ladens Al-Qaeda organisation and, hence in a blatant prevarication tied AQI and the war in Iraq to 9/11.48 Bush repeatedly asserted that, in Iraq the US is ghting the same terrorists who attacked the US on 9/11. Of course, this claim overlooked the fact that AQI came into existence only after the March 2003 US invasion of Iraq, and that its links with Bin Ladens Al-Qaeda are, at best, tenuous. The Bush administrations deliberate fabrications were designed to win Congressional and public support for a prolonged surge.49 When it rst announced the surge, the administration said it would last through 2007. Instead it lasted well into 2008, and it is likely that there will be more US forces in Iraq in January 2009 than there were prior to the surge. And, even when the surge itself has ended, any draw-down of US forces will take

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CNDI 2010 Iraq Aff Regents Lab place gradually.50 General David Petraeus, who served as senior American commander in Iraq during the surge and now heads CENTCOM (the US military command with overall responsibility for the Middle East) has repeatedly emphasised that the US commitment to Iraq is long-term in nature, and American military planners are preparing for a long-lasting postoccupation US presence there.51 In fact, it is clear that the Bush administration never intended to withdraw from Iraq militarily and aimed for the US to retain permanent US military bases there. President Bush all but conrmed this in May 2007 when he said that he wanted the US to play the same kind of role in Iraq that it has in South Korea since the end of the Korean War.52 What will happen under the new US administration is unclear. During 2008, the government of Iraqi Nouri al-Maliki indicated that Baghdad wanted to set a timeline for US troop withdrawals. The Iraqi government refused to accede to the Bush administrations desire to negotiate a long-term security agreement that would allow the US to maintain permanent bases in Iraq. Although the Bush administration had strongly opposed any suggestions that there should be a xed timetable for US withdrawal from Iraq in July 2008, Bushs position seemed to soften and the administration said the US would support a time horizon for US troop withdrawals from Iraq as an aspirational goal.53 What the new US administration will do about the US presence in Iraq is an open question, but based on the positions taken by Senator Barak Obama (D. Ill.) and Senator John McCain (R. Ariz.) during the 2008 US presidential campaign, it seems certain that there will be a signicant American military presence in Iraq for some time to come. Instead of reducing American vulnerability to terrorism, the presence of US troops in Iraq and the Middle East increases it by reinforcing the widespread perception in the Islamic world that the US is pursuing a neo-colonial policy in the Middle East in furtherance of its own imperial ambitions. The huge US politico-military footprint in the Middle East region including Iraq is, along with Americas policy on the Israel/Palestinian issue, the primary driver of Middle Eastern terrorism. The administrations overall policy in the Middle East has inamed anti-American sentiment, and turned the entire region into a source of recruits for various radical terrorist groups. Instead of solving this problem, staying in Iraq will exacerbate it.

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Internals: US Presence Anti-Americanism/Extremism

[ ] Presence increases extremism and anti-Americanism
Ted Galen Carpenter Vice President, Defense and Foreign Policy Studies Cato Institute January 11, 2007 Escaping the Trap: Why the United States Must Leave Iraq http://www.cato.org/testimony/ct-tgc01112007.html The Consequences of Staying in Iraq Leaving Iraq is clearly not cost-free, but the

costs (both tangible and intangible) of a prompt exit must be measured against the costs of staying the course . Moreover, even if the United States absorbs the costs of a prolonged mission, there is no certainty that anything resembling victory resides at the end of that effort. Indeed, most of the indicators suggest that we would be merely delaying defeat.
Damage to Americas Standing in the World Even the September 2006 National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq conceded that the U.S. occupation of Iraq had served as a focal point and inspiration for Muslim extremists . Equally worrisome, it had also served as a training arena for such militants to hone their military and terrorist

skills. An Al Qaeda letter intercepted by the U.S. military indicates that the organization itself regards a continued U.S. military presence and, consequently, a long war in Iraq as a boon to its cause . A December 2006 Zogby poll of populations in five Arab nations reveals just how much anti-U.S. sentiment has increased throughout that region. Opinions of the United States, which were already rather negative, have grown significantly worse in the past year. Outside the Arab world, there also has been a hardening of attitudes toward the
United States. Even among long-standing friends and allies (in such places as Europe and East Asia), the United States is viewed in a significantly more negative light. The longer we stay in Iraq, the worse those problems will become.

] US Presence in Iraq enables terrorists and undermines credibility

David Boaz executive vice president of the Cato Institute 2005 Iraq and the Persian Gulf: Getting Out, Staying Engaged CATO handbook on policy

It is in Americas strategic interest to end the military occupation of Iraq at the earliest possible date, because a long-term military presence in the country undermines many of the goals that we are hoping to achieve there. A U.S. military occupation is a lightning rod that enables anti- American terrorists to expand their operations against the American troops in their neighborhood and ultimately to Americas shores. Further, the presence of U.S. military garrisons in Iraq weakens the forces of democratic reform by undermining the indigenous governments authority and credibility. Finally, because any attempt to impose democracy by force is likely to fail, our presence in Iraq weakens the United States as a nation, diverting our resources and making the United States less capable of responding to genuine threats to U.S. security elsewhere in the world. Regardless of whether the decision to invade Iraq in 2003 was right or wrong, it be undone now,
and policymakers are responsible for crafting a strategy that minimizes the risks to U.S. security, especially the risk of terrorist attacks against the United States.

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_________________ ***** Terrorism Solvency*****

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Solvency: Terror/ISF
[ ] Withdrawal eliminates terrorism in Iraq- Iraqi security forces take over

Christopher Preble Director of foreign policy studies at CATO et al, 2004 Exiting Iraq: Why the U.S. must end the military occupation and renew the war against Al Qaeda, p. 40, CB

Supporters of the military occupation of Iraq might characterize such sacrifices as necessary to prevent even larger attacks on Americans in the United States. But, as this report has noted, Iraq was never before a central front in the war on terrorism. To presume that the jihadis crossing into Iraq to wage holy war against the agents of the United States would be content to conduct such attacks only there, and would not also continue to plan attacks in the United States and elsewhere, is to presume that there is a fixed number of terrorists in the world whom we can eliminate. That way of thinking ignores that the American presence itself is giving rise to the creation of an entirely new group of would-be suicide bombers. Meanwhile, attacks on Iraqi collaborators continue to rise. As the American military has fortified itself against attacks and adopted new tactics to deal with the threat of terrorism and guerrilla fighting, terrorists have shifted their attention to softer targetscivilians who cooperate with occupation forces. A handful of suicide
bombers have conducted attacks in crowded assemblies or outside popular hotels. Iraqis brave enough to volunteer for police or other security related professions appear to be a favored target.121 Many of the attacks on Iraqi security personnel claim the lives of innocent bystanders. A coordinated attack by at least five suicide bombers outside four different policy stations in the southern city of Basra on April 21, 2004, killed 73 Iraqis, including at least 20 children.122 Beginning in April 2004, a spate of attacks on civilian-run supply convoys claimed the lives of dozens of civilian contractors, and many more foreign nationals were kidnapped or killed by opponents of the military occupation. Ending the U.S. occupation of Iraq and

empowering Iraqis to take control of their own securityagainst both foreign and domestic threats would undermine the terrorists tortured assertions that their acts of violence are being perpetrated against Iraqis in the interest of Iraqis. Such claims would be absurd on their face in the absence of a foreign military occupation perceived to be thwarting the desires of the Iraqi people

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Solvency: Terror
[ ] Withdrawal is key to reduce terrorismmainstream elements will purge jihadis
Steven Simon, Senior Fellow in Middle Eastern Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, 2007 America and Iraq: The Case for Disengagement, Survival 49:1, 61-84, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00396330701254537

Upon the departure of US forces, the more mainstream elements of the insurgency seem likely to turn against the smaller jihadi groups whose ferocity has thus far given them a disproportionately large role. There is a precedent for this process in Algeria during the mid-to-late 1990s , when local village militias death squads were raised to challenge the Armed Islamic Group (GIA). The creation of the Anbar Salvation Council, an Iraqi tribal group funded largely by the United States, might well develop in the way that Algerian anti-jihadi groups did a decade ago. At the same time, the Salafi element within the insurgency will focus more intensely on its Shia enemy within Iraq. This trajectory is not guaranteed , however, and there remains a serious chance that an al-Qaeda-linked Salafist organisation might dominate the Sunni provinces for an indefinite period. Thus, the cities of western Iraq might still become safe havens for al-Qaeda operatives who steer clear of confrontations with other insurgents and take advantage of the relative safety of their neighbourhoods, the availability of transit routes in and out of Iraq, and the abundance of materiel to stage attacks outside of Iraq. This raises the question of whether the continued long-term presence of five US combat brigades, the current planning estimate, is the best way to counter the threat. If the deployment of troops to Anbar, a fiercely nationalistic region, is indeed a spur to violence, than the continued presence of US forces is likely to be counter-productive. Instead, the United States should continue to work closely with groups like the Anbar Salvation Council, and to build up local Sunni police organisations that can gather and act on intelligence regarding Sunni extremists. This is essentially an intelligence and law-enforcement task. The availability of highly mobile, specialised US forces at bases in Jordan could support the operations of indigenous units once the bulk of US combat forces have been withdrawn from Iraq. Until then, the United States could
profitably use the interval to train and support local units for the counter-terrorism mission.

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Solvency: Terror
[ ] Removing Iraq military presence is key to solving global terrorism
Densie BostDroff, , Professor of Communication and Associate Dean for Wooster Ohio, Summer 2009 Judgement, Expirence and Leadership, Vol. 12 Number 2, online, http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/rhetoric_and_public_affairs/v012/12.2.bostdorff.html

U.S. involvement in Iraq actually was perpetuating acts of terrorism against the United States. According to Paul, the presence of U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia during the first Gulf War against Saddam Hussein "was one of the [End Page 231] three reasons given for the attack on 9/11. So why leave them in the region?" Furthermore, he suggested that our continued intervention in Iraq and elsewhere might lead to other acts of terrorism. Paul explained, "They don't want our troops on the Arabian Peninsula. We have no need for our national security to have troops on the Arabian Peninsula, and going into Iraq and Afghanistan and threatening Iran is the worst thing that we can do for our national security."
He also went one step further to argue that

] US Presence in Iraq breeds terrorism- increased receptiveness to anti-Americanism

David Boaz executive vice president of the Cato Institute 2005 Iraq and the Persian Gulf: Getting Out, Staying Engaged CATO handbook on policy

The American military occupation of Iraq is not merely costly and burdensome for the United States; it is detrimental to fighting the war on terrorism. Bringing an end to the occupation and withdrawing militarily from Iraq will maximize Americas ability to refocus its military and intelligence assets on the fight against those terrorists who present the gravest danger to American securityspecifically, Al Qaeda and other anti-American terrorist groups with global reachwhile minimizing the risks to vital U.S. national security interests.
The Occupation of Iraq Is Counterproductive to Addressing the Terror Threat Most proponents of a long-term military occupation of Iraq seem to disregard the detrimental effect that the occupation is having on the U.S.- led war against terrorism. By staying in Iraq, the United States sends a grim and misleading message to the rest of the world that Washington is using the occupation as a vehicle for asserting its dominance in the Middle East and imposing its will on the regions populace. The killings of Iraqis, including the inadvertent killings of Iraqi

civilians, create new jihadis from the ranks of a population that had previously been largely unreceptive to Osama bin Ladens radical message. But even if our forces never fired a shot in anger at Iraqi citizens, the mere presence of our forces in Iraq would be seen as humiliating. Humiliation breeds contempt. And contempt breeds terrorism. The jihadis will certainly claim that the American withdrawal represents a victory for their
side, but it would be the height of irresponsibility for U.S. policymakers to allow that misperception to take hold. An American military withdrawal would not, and must not, signal that the United States has chosen to ignore events in Iraq. Instead, the withdrawal of U.S. forces must be coupled with a clear and unequivocal message to the

people and elites of Iraq: do not threaten the United States; do not support anti- American terrorists; do not develop weapons of mass destruction. If you do, we will be back. Anyone who questions U.S. willingness and resolve to use force need only be reminded of the fate of the Taliban. The end of the U.S. military occupation actually weakens the terrorists over the long term because Al Qaeda and other anti-American terrorist groups have used the U.S. occupation as a vehicle for promulgating their message of hatred and violence. In short, our occupation emboldens the forces of terror. The United States must use withdrawal from Iraq to its own advantage by countering propaganda by the likes of Osama bin Laden and other
anti-American extremists who argue that the United States planning to take control of Middle Eastern oil or to otherwise consolidate its control in the region.

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Solvency: Iraqi Government

[ ] Withdrawal empowers Iraqi Government and propel international anti-terrorist ideals
Christopher Preble, Director of Forgein Policy at The Cato Insitute, August 4th 2004, Exiting Iraq and Renewing the War on Al Qudea, http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=2770

First, the removal of U.S. troops would not, and must not, signal that the U nited States has chosen to ignore events in Iraq. Instead, the withdrawal must be coupled with a clear and unequivocal message to the people of Iraq: do not threaten us; do not support anti-American terrorists; do not develop weapons of mass destruction. If you do, we will be back. This message must be communicated publicly because it is the same message that must be understood throughout the international community. Other countries should have nothing to fear from the United States if they disavow support for terrorist groups that aim to kill American citizens. Second, those same terrorists who have already demonstrated the capability and the intention of harming Americans must understand that they still have much to fear. By ending the military occupation of Iraq, and by redirecting our nation's resources to the fight against al Qaeda, the United States will again be engaging the terrorists on our terms, not theirs. That message can be delivered by a Tomahawk cruise missile or an
assassin's bullet. Bin Laden and his ilk may be on the run, but they are not yet destroyed. If nothing else, a renewal of the campaign against al Qaeda will once and for all reveal the absurdity of any claims that they (the terrorists) have us (the United States) on the run. Iraqis are demanding a swift end to the military occupation of their country.

Americans should welcome such expressions of independence and self-reliance. Saddam's murderous rule might have broken their collective will. It might have left behind a legacy of powerlessness and despair. Instead, we see a proud people determined to take immediate control of their destiny. We should embrace this sentiment, and empower the Iraqis to defend their country. [ ] US withdrawal shifts peace-keeping operations to Iraq and its neighbors

Carl Conetta, Project on Defense Alternatives Briefing Memo, January 18th 2007, Resolving Iraq: Progress depends on a short timeline for US troop withdrawal, http://www.comw.org/pda/fulltext/0701bm40.pdf

Iraqs Sunni and Shia neighbors can play a unique and pivotal role in stabilizing Iraq by cooperating to end intercommunal strife. And the United States should facilitate this cooperation. On the ground, foreign advisors and troops may serve to train and assist indigenous forces as well as monitor military developments. In some areas, they may share primary responsibility for security. US and UK troops, however, should constitute only a small minority of the foreign contingent, mostly serving in support capacities. Most of the foreign military personnel inside Iraq, and all of those serving as front-line troops, should come from Arab-speaking and Muslim states -- preferably from states noncontiguous with Iraq. For instance: Egypt, Morocco, the UAE, and Oman together should be able to deploy 60,000 ground troops, if
supported. (Several of them together deployed nearly this many for the 1991 Gulf War. In aggregate, their ground forces are larger than Americas.) Military and police training and development efforts might draw from a broader roster. Of course, any new international force in Iraq should operate under a clear status of forces agreement with the Iraqi

government. As a confidence-building measure, all states participating in the security mission should agree to forego unilateral security-related efforts in Iraq. Instead, all efforts should be channeled through the international mission. Moreover, Iraq and its neighbors should agree to exchange substantial military observer missions.

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_________________ *****Answers*****

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AT: Terrorism Isnt a Risk/I Take My Freedoms For Granted

1. Extend 1AC Daily Star News Lebanon: their evidence is just feel-good propaganda: Al Qaeda in Iraq is stronger than ever. Prefer our ev: its predictive 2. Al Qaeda in Iraq is still a serious threatposes a serious threat to Iraqi stability
Department Of Defense Report to Congress In accordance with the Department of Defense Supplemental Appropriations Act 2008 November 4, 2009 Measuring Stability and Security in Iraq http://www.defense.gov/pubs/pdfs/9010_Report_to_Congress_Nov_09.pdf Al Qaeda in Iraq AQI remains resilient despite facing significant hardship in northern Iraq, with Ninewa Province remaining the groups logistical and support center . Improved security, combined with U.S. forces and ISF operations, continue to degrade AQIs leadership and operational capabilities and have reduced foreign fighter movement into Iraq. However, AQI has remained viable by evolving into a more indigenous organization, increasingly

relying on Iraqis for funding and manpower. Despite significant leadership losses and a diminished presence in most population centers, AQI continues to conduct periodic, targeted, HPAs , albeit at a reduced rate. AQI is increasingly focusing its rhetoric and its attacks against Iraqis, including the GoI, ISF, and Shia and minority civilians, in an effort to discredit the GoI and incite sectarian violence as U.S. forces draw
down. In upcoming months, AQI may attempt to take advantage of political and security changes, including detainee releases and ISF responsibility for security, in an effort to reassert its presence in some areas of Iraq. AQI remains the primary instigator for ethnosectarian violence, and it will seek to capitalize on Sunni disenfranchisement and

Arab-Kurd tensions. Prefer the DoD evidence: its from a report to Congress and is more qualified than any of their authors 3. Extend 1AC Byman and Pollack: US occupation in Iraq has drastically improves Al Qaeda recruitment and has been for 7 years: its seen as a new Crusade 4. Its try or die: jihadist terrorism causes the end of the world as we know it and environmental catastrophe: outweighs all their impacts: thats 1AC Jerusalem Post and Al-Damkhi 5. Our evidence is not only predictive but specific: prefer our specific scenarios that account for terrorists specific capabilities over generalized feel-good propaganda fuzz

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AT: Terrorists Wont Get Nukes/Wont Use Nukes

1. Experts agree terrorism will go nuclear: prefer our evidence its more qualified
Chuck Freilich, former Deputy National Security Adviser in Israel, Senior Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School, Adjunct Professor at NYU, 2010, The Armageddon Scenario: Israel and the Threat of Nuclear Terrorism, The Begin-Sadat Center For Strategic Studies Bar-Ilan University, Mideast Security and Policy Studies No. 84, Google Scholar, http://strateias.org/nuclear.pdf)

According to reports since 2003, the threat of nuclear terrorism is growing. For example, the 2003 US National Strategy for Combating Terrorism warned that the risk of nuclear terrorism has increased significantly and that it posed one of the greatest threats to the national security of the US and its allies. The 2006 report stressed that weapons of mass destruction (WMD) terrorism poses one of the gravest threats. The 2008 report of the Congressionally appointed Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferation and Terrorism warned that the danger of nuclear terrorism is growing and, in the absence of urgent and decisive international action, that nuclear or biological terrorism is likely to occur somewhere in the world by the end of 2013. Presidents George Bush and Barack Obama have both termed nuclear terrorism the greatest
threat facing the United States. Indeed, President Obama will even convene a global summit focusing on the threat of nuclear terrorism in April 2010. The Director of National Intelligence, John Michael McConnell, testified before Congress in February 2008 that al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups continue to seek nuclear weapons.3 Former US

Secretary of Defense William Perry has warned that the probability of a nuclear terrorist attack in the next 10 years exceeds 50 percent, a view shared by Harvard expert Graham Allison.4 US Defense Secretary
Robert Gates stated in January 2010 that "the thought of a terrorist ending up with a weapon of mass destruction, especially nuclear"5 would keep him awake at night. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has documented 18 cases of theft involving weapons-usable plutonium or highly enriched uranium (HEU),6 and there have been hundreds of proven cases of theft of nuclear materials around the world. In the 12-month period ending June 30, 2008, nearly 250 thefts of nuclear or radioactive materials were reported, although the amounts were small, prompting the head of the

IAEA to warn that the possibility of terrorists obtaining nuclear or other radioactive materials remains a grave threat.7 During 2007-2008, al-Qaeda and the Taliban are reported to have launched three terrorist attacks against
Pakistani nuclear sites.8

2. Extend 1AC Preble: US presence backs extremist acts that their evidence wouldnt account for 3. Multiple scenarios for acquisition
Chuck Freilich, former Deputy National Security Adviser in Israel, Senior Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School, Adjunct Professor at NYU, 2010, The Armageddon Scenario: Israel and the Threat of Nuclear Terrorism, The Begin-Sadat Center For Strategic Studies Bar-Ilan University, Mideast Security and Policy Studies No. 84, Google Scholar, http://strateias.org/nuclear.pdf)

Terrorist organizations might acquire the fissile materials needed to construct a nuclear device , and less likely an entire bomb, in the following manners: Official governmental supply. The main threats today are primarily from Pakistan and North Korea, with Iran in the near future and possibly Syria and other states in the longer term. Illicit sales by rogue elements within governments, militaries, and nuclear industries. Pakistan is currently the primary source of concern in this regard, but Iran and Russia are also possibilities. Loss of control over existing arsenals and stockpiles in the event of regime collapse. Pakistan is again the primary source of concern at this time. Iran is a threat in the future, especially following the dramatic unrest in 2009. Insufficiently guarded facilities,21 as in Russia, where thousands of nuclear bombs and large stockpiles of fissile materials remain. The international black market. Theft of nuclear materials. Acquisition of nuclear materials or a bomb by force.22 Rise of radical new regimes. The threat of nuclear terrorism is real. The danger of a terrorist group acquiring a nuclear device can no longer be ignored.

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AT: Terrorists Wont Get Nukes/Wont Use Nukes

4. Nuclear jihadist terrorism is a serious threatnuclear materials have gone missing and terrorists are capable of striking
Michael Rhle Senior Policy Adviser in NATO 1/7/2008 The Nuclear Dimensions of Jihadist Terrorism http://www.aicgs.org/documents/advisor/ruehle0108.pdf

The simplest option would be the release of radioactive material in densely populated areas. In 1987, near the Brazilian city of Goiania, some scrap metal scavengers broke into an abandoned radiological hospital and removed a container with highly radioactive caesium. In the weeks that followed, several people died, many more suffered serious health problems, and several contaminated buildings had to be dismantled. The Goiania incident was an accident, not a terrorist act. But it indicates what could happen if terrorists had radioactive material at their disposal. Given the significant amount of such material that has gone missing from hospitals, power plants, etc., some experts believe that certain terrorist groups may already possess enough of it to stage an attack of that kind. Another plausible option would be an attack on a nuclear power plant. Since 1972, when the hijackers of a United States (US) passenger plane threatened to crash the airliner into a nuclear reactor in Tennessee , this scenario has acquired considerable credibility. And 9/11 further highlighted this risk. Another scenario is the use of a so-called radiological dirty bomb, in which non-fissile but highly radioactive material is mixed with a conventional explosive, such as TNT. The detonation disperses the radioactive material, causing relatively few casualties, but contaminating wide areas. If such a bomb was exploded in a major city, the long-term radiation effects would make entire parts of that city uninhabitable, causing enormous economic damage . For this reason, the radiological bomb has been labelled a weapon of mass disruption rather than mass destruction. The design challenges of such a device are considered to be modest. Moreover, in March 2002 US authorities arrested a man suspected of working on such designs for al Qaida. And in November 2007 Slovak authorities seized uranium powder that was enriched enough for use in a radiological bomb. All this has led many experts to conclude that for those bent on waging nuclear jihad, the dirty bomb could well be the most readily accessible option . And what about
Nuclear terrorism can have many faces. the real nuclear bomb? Tabloid articles about building a nuclear device from blueprints available on the internet are way off the mark. Up to now, the capability to build a nuclear device has been widely believed to rest with state actors only. The elaborate technical infrastructure required is simply not available to non-state actors, no matter how much money they might have at their disposal. Thus, even though al Qaida may have recruited several experienced nuclear physicists, it remains doubtful whether they could build a fission bomb. Even if terrorists were to obtain a fully fledged weapon, they would have to overcome its secure command and control features. Moreover, it appears that some of al-

Such difficulties might be overcome, however, if terrorists could acquire a functional nuclear weapon from a like-minded regime. This scenario may strike many observers as highly unlikely, yet it can no longer be entirely dismissed. Cash-strapped North Korea has already hinted that it might consider the sale of nuclearcapable missiles a legitimate source of income. And 2004 reports about the commercial nuclear smuggling network run by the entrepreneurial Pakistani metallurgist A. Q. Khan revealed the existence of a secret market, unconstrained by political or ideological inhibitions. Khan reportedly supplied Libya, North Korea, Iran and other
Qaidas attempts to obtain nuclear material on the black market failed precisely because the customers limited nuclear expertise made them easy victims for swindlers.

customers with weapons designs and components rather than fully fledged weapon systems, yet future dealers might go even further. Finally, the debate about a possible Talibanization of Pakistan, where religious radicals might take over the state and its nuclear arsenal, has raised the spectre of a jihadist nuclear power.

5. Extend 1AC Rhodes: says nuclear terrorism is not only possible but likely: prefer it: hes from the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University 6. Even if they can diminish a risk of nuclear terrorism, they wont be able to outweigh environmental terrorism: terrorism in Iraq is uniquely capable of destroying the global biosphere thats Gardner in 03

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AT: Terrorism Turn

[ ] No risk of Terrorism after withdrawal Iraqi enforcement of anti-terror measures
Ted Galen Carpenter, Vice Preside of Defense and Foreign Studies at the Cato Institute, January 28 2007, Myth of an Al Qaeda Takeover of Iraq, http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=7353Mesopotamia

The notion that a Shiite-Kurdish-dominated government would tolerate Iraq becoming a safe haven for al Qaeda is improbable on its face. Even if U.S. troops left Iraq, the successor government would continue to be dominated by Kurds and Shiites, since they make up more than 80 percent of Iraq's population. And, in marked contrast to the situation under Saddam Hussein, they now control the military and police. At best, al Qaeda could hope for a tenuous presence in predominantly Sunni areas of the country while being incessantly stalked and harassed by government forces -- and probably hostile Iraqi Sunnis as well. That doesn't exactly sound like a reliable base of operations for attacks on America. Senator Chuck Hagel, a Republican of Nebraska, has it right. "I have never been persuaded to believe that whether we stay there six months, a year, or two years, that if we would leave, that somehow Iraq would turn into a haven for terrorists." His skepticism is well placed. The notion of al Qaeda using Iraq as a sanctuary is a specter -a canard that the perpetrators of the current catastrophe use to frighten people into supporting a fatally flawed, and seemingly endless, nation-building debacle. [ ] Shut upthe terrorists won when we invaded Iraqeither way, loss of credibility outweighs the potential of backlash
Steven Simon, Senior Fellow in Middle Eastern Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations 2007 America and Iraq: The Case for Disengagement, Survival 49:1, 61-84, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00396330701254537

Whether the United States stays or goes, global jihadis and their supporters will believe that they have already won twice over: first by virtue of the intervention, which confirmed their narrative, and secondly by creating the appearance of having thwarted Washingtons allegedly imperial designs. A US decision to disengage militarily from Iraq will reaffirm these beliefs. However, given the size of the propaganda victory the United States has already conferred on Islamic extremists, and the way that US military operations continue to confirm the jihadi worldview, a decision to remain in Iraq so as to avoid emboldening radicals is quixotic. As for the administrations concern that disengagement would weaken the resolve of regional states to counter the jihadi threat, chaos in Iraq has been used by Sunni governments in the region to justify their resistance to reform and to legitimise repression. A loss of will , therefore, is scarcely the problem. The more pressing issue is the effect of back-pedalling on reform on the growth of radicalism. Even if rival states such as Syria and Iran, or global jihadis, are momentarily emboldened by a managed American disengagement, the central question is whether that cost would outweigh the blow to American credibility from floundering ineffectually in Iraq while supplying the Muslim world with iconic images of weakness and cruelty. If a viable Iraqi political centre is unachievable in the meaningful future, the answer must be no.

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[ ] Withdrawal can only decrease terrorismUS presence unifies Sunni opposition and AQI
Christopher Layne, Ph.D., chair of intelligence and national security at Texas A&M 2009 Americas Middle East grand strategy after Iraq: the moment for oshore balancing has arrived, Review of International Studies 35, 5-25 President George W. Bush repeatedly characterised Iraq as the central front in the so-called war on terrorism, and argued that if we fail there [Iraq], the enemy will follow us here.26 In his view, the conict in Iraq is not civil war; it is pure evil. Claiming that we have an obligation to protect ourselves from that evil, Bush said US policy in Iraq boiled down to one thing: Were after Al-Qaeda.27 The administrations claims, however, were disingenuous: American withdrawal from Iraq would not increase the terrorist threat to the American homeland. First, Al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) has only tenuous links to Osama bin Ladens Al-Qaeda organisation. Second, AQI has an extremely ambivalent relationship with the indigenous Sunni insurgents. The Sunni insurgents resent AQI because it uses foreign jihadists to conduct suicide bombings, and because it indiscriminately attacks civilian targets. To the extent AQI and the other Sunni insurgents groups collaborate it is their common hostility to the American occupation that binds them. If US troops were to withdraw, it is likely that the other Sunni insurgents would try to drive AQI out of Iraq (while also contesting the Shiites for political supremacy). Indeed, the major reason violence in Iraq has subsided since late 2006 is not because of the surge of US combat forces, but rather because large segments of the Sunni population (including former insurgents) turned against AQI. For these reasons, most US intelligence ocials and outside experts have rejected the argument that an American withdrawal would result in Iraq becoming a base for operations against the US.28 Moreover, bin Ladens Al-Qaeda does not need bases in Iraq in order to launch operations against the US because it already has a sanctuary in the region along the Pakistan-Afghanistan frontier that it is using to reconstitute its capabilities.29 Indeed, in July 2007 in a National Intelligence Estimate on the terrorist threat to the US, and in Congressional testimony, senior US intelligence ocials warned that Al-Qaeda has taken advantage of this safe haven to train its operatives and plan new attacks.30 If the US really is worried about Al-Qaeda striking the US, instead of focusing on Iraq its strategic eorts should be concentrated on defeating the resurgent Taliban in Afghanistan and even more getting Pakistan to crack-down on the Taliban and Al-Qaeda forces operating in Waziristan and the Northwest Frontier province not on Iraq.31

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AT: Al Qaeda Takeover

1. Plan solves: removes their most effective recruitment strategy. Al Qaeda may see short-term gains but not enough to get any impacts and Al Qaeda in Iraq will die shortly after Thats Byman 2. Al-Qaeda cant take over- logistics and public opinion
Ted Galen Carpenter Vice President, Defense and Foreign Policy Studies Cato Institute January 11, 2007 Escaping the Trap: Why the United States Must Leave Iraq http://www.cato.org/testimony/ct-tgc01112007.html Allegation: Al-Qaeda Would Take Over Iraq Administration officials and other supporters of the war have

warned repeatedly that a "premature" withdrawal of U.S. forces would enable Al-Qaeda to turn Iraq into a sanctuary to plot and launch attacks against the United States and other Western countries. But Al-Qaeda taking over Iraq is an extremely improbable scenario. The Iraq Study Group put the figure of foreign fighters at only 1,300, a relatively small component of the Sunni insurgency against U.S. forces. It strains credulity to imagine 1,300 fighters (and foreigners at that) taking over and controlling a country of 26 million people . The challenge for Al-Qaeda would be even more daunting than those raw numbers suggest. The organization does have some support among the Sunni Arabs in Iraq, but opinion even among that segment of the population is divided. A September 2006 poll conducted by the Program on International Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland found that 94 percent of Sunnis had a somewhat or highly unfavorable
attitude toward Al Qaeda. As the violence of Al Qaeda attacks has mounted, and the victims are increasingly Iraqis, not Americans, many Sunnis have turned against the terrorists. There have even been a growing number of reports during the past year of armed conflicts between Iraqi Sunnis and foreign fighters. The PIPA poll also showed that 98 percent of Shiite respondents and 100 percent of Kurdish

The notion that a Shiite-Kurdish-dominated government would tolerate Iraq becoming a safe haven for Al Qaeda is improbable on its face. And even if U.S. troops left Iraq, the successor government would continue to be dominated by the Kurds and Shiites, since they make up more than 80 percent of Iraqs population and, in marked contrast to the situation under Saddam Hussein, they now control the military and police. That doesnt suggest a reliable safe haven for Al Qaeda.
respondents had somewhat or very unfavorable views of Al Qaeda

3. Extend 1AC Preble: the plan solves Al Qaeda recruitment. Withdrawal would directly contradict Bin Ladens recruitment claims of US imperialism: withdrawal would simultaneously stops recruitment and erodes 4. The benefits of withdrawing from Iraq outweigh the perception of US weakness
Ted Galen Carpenter Vice President, Defense and Foreign Policy Studies Cato Institute January 11, 2007 Escaping the Trap: Why the United States Must Leave Iraq http://www.cato.org/testimony/ct-tgc01112007.html Allegation: The Terrorists Would Be Emboldened Worldwide In urging the United States to persevere in Iraq, President Bush has warned that an early military withdrawal would encourage Al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations. Weak U.S. responses to challenges over the previous quarter century, especially in Lebanon and Somalia, had emboldened such people, Bush argues. Hawkish pundits have made similar allegations. It is a curious line of argument with ominous implications, for it assumes that the United States should have stayed in both countries, despite the military debacles there. The mistake, according to that logic, was not the original decision to intervene but the decision to limit American losses and terminate the missions. That is a classic case of learning the wrong lessons from history. Yes, Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups apparently concluded that the Lebanon and Somalia episodes showed that U.S. leaders and the American people have no stomach for enduring murky missions that entail significant casualties. They are likely to draw a similar lesson if the United States withdraws from Iraq without an irrefutable triumph. That is why it is so imperative to be cautious about a decision to intervene in the first place. Military missions should not be undertaken unless there are indisputably vital American security interests at stake. A decision to withdraw and leave Iraq to its own fate is

not without adverse consequences. Americas terrorist adversaries will portray a pull-out as a defeat for U.S. policy. But the cost of staying on indefinitely in a dire security environment is even worse for our country. President Bush and his advisors need to consider the possibility that the United States might stay in Iraq for many years to come and still not achieve its policy goals. And the costs, both in blood and treasure, continue to mount.

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********Iran Advantage********

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1AC Scenario (1/

First, U.S. Presence and Strategy has FAILED it has incited Iran to Fuel Insurgencies in Iraq and Strengthened Irans Quest for Regional Hegemony and Counterbalancing
Maloney 2k8 (Senior Fellow, Foreign Policy, Saban Center for Middle East Policy, How the Iraq War Has Empowered Iran, pg online @ http://www.brookings.edu/opinions/2008/0321_iraq_maloney.aspx //cndi-ef) March 21, 2008 The contrast between Ahmadinejads triumphal reception and Cheneys furtive and fortified stopover speaks volumes about the strategic legacy of the Bush Administrations decision to use military force to remove the bloody dictatorship of Saddam Hussein. Of the many American illusions and delusions surrounding this war, the Administrations calculations with respect to Iran were among the most wildly off base . Instead of

generating a liberal, secular democracy whose reverberations would drive out Irans clerical oligarchs, the disastrous Bush policies fostered a sectarian Iraq that has helped empower Iranian hardliners . Rather than serving as an anchor for a new era of stability and American preeminence in the Persian Gulf, the new Iraq represents a strategic black hole, bleeding Washington of military resources and political influence while extending Irans primacy among its neighbors. Like so much else that went wrong in Iraq, the post-war dynamic
between Baghdad and Tehran should have been easy to foresee. Irans leaders cultivated enduring ties with all the significant Iraqi opposition groups over the course of their long adversarial relationship with Saddam Hussein. None of these groups could have been considered wholly-owned clients of the Islamic Republic, but their varying degrees of intimacy with and fealty toward Tehran almost universally surpassed their tactical cooperation with Washington in the run-up to the war and its aftermath. Moreover, as the only organized political forces in the post-war period, the Shia and Kurdish oppositionists

were uniquely positioned to take advantage of the power vacuum, facilitated in no small part by retention of their militias. American officials relied upon the expectation that the two countries nationalist identities would outweigh any sectarian cohesion, a conclusion supported by the experience of the eight-year Iran-Iraq war. But the U.S. failed to anticipate that in post-war Iraq, sectarian and nationalist interests have been largely conflated for the newly-dominant Shia and Kurds, propelling their leaders to
utilize the benefits of an alliance with Tehran to entrench their own positions. Moreover, the Bush Administration appears to overestimated the significance of ideology in framing Irans approach to the new Iraq, hoping that a heavy-handed effort to export the Islamic revolution would alienate Iraqis. Instead, Tehran has behaved far more prudently, opting to

support a democratic framework that privileges Irans allies in Iraq. At the same time, Tehran has sought to increase the cost of a continued American presence in Iraq through support to insurgents , in order to maximize its own position within the country and leverage vis--vis Washington. Irans strategic and financial investments in
Iraq reflect the regimes deeply-held conviction that Tehran has an existential interest in ensuring a friendly government in Baghdad, one that is no longer capable of threatening Iran directly or on behalf of the international community. For Irans post-revolutionary leaders and society, the 1980-88 war represents the single most influential formative experience, inculcating a persistent sense of strategic vulnerability and a willingness to do whatever necessary to ensure the survival of both the Iranian nation and the Islamic state. This worldview underlies Tehrans assiduous and wide-ranging extension of influence in postwar Iraq. As developments repeatedly refuted its initial assumptions about the dynamics between Iraq and Iran, the Bush Administration at first sought refuge in denial, absurdly predicting that each new carefully-orchestrated leadership transition in Iraq would generate more distance between Tehran and Baghdad. More recently, the Administration has moved more forcefully, seeking aggressively to obstruct

ultimately the real means of protecting Iraqs sovereignty from intrusive neighbors does not involve expanding U.S. presence and responsibility within the country. In the long term, Iraqi leaders will only begin to differentiate themselves from Tehran when they are forced to grapple independently with the painful alternatives of governing and assume greater responsibility for their countrys security. In addition, the broader American strategy appears fated to repeat the sort of ill-informed misapprehensions that informed the Bush Administrations initial steps in Iraq. In response to growing regional trepidations about Irans activities in Iraq, Lebanon and Palestine, Washington has
Iranian support to militias and insurgents. These actions are necessary to ensuring greater security for American forces in Iraq, but

endeavored to transform a strategic deficit into an advantage. The concept was catalyzed by the July 2006 war in Lebanon, which Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice characterized at the time as the birth pangs of a new Middle East. Rice was widely lambasted for her tin ear, but the rhetoric signaled the Administrations decision to embark on building a new platform for Americas role in the region. Initiatives such as the Gulf Security Dialogue and GCC-plus-two discussions (Egypt and Jordan) were intended to capitalize on Sunni Arab concerns about the rising tide of Iranian influence to leverage a more assertive posture vis--vis Tehran in exchange for their support for a revived Arab-Israeli peace process.

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1AC Scenario (2/

Its all-about perception regardless of U.S. Policies or Intent Failure to remove all U.S. Troops will drive Iranian Weapons Acquisitions and attempts at Hegemony
Christopher Forrest, Major, USAF MA in international relations Tufts University 2009 Coercive Engagement A Security Analysis of Iranian Support to Iraqi Shia Militias http://handle.dtic.mil/100.2/ADA500083 The Perceived Security Threat (The Security Dilemma) Irans support for Iraqi Shia militia groups is also

partially explained as the natural result of Iranian perceptions of the security threat it faces. In Irans eyes, the large number of US forces in the region, increasingly hostile US rhetoric, the arming of its proximate neighbors, and the lack of security for Shia groups in Iraq, all constitute significant threats to its security. In the face of such threats, Iran seeks to increase its own security by arming and supporting Iraqi Shia groups in hopes that this will decrease its vulnerability. This causal factor draws heavily on Robert
Jervis concept of the security dilemma which can develop between two actors. Jervis describes the security dilemma as a cyclic process in which actions taken by one actor to increase its security may be perceived by the other actor as aggressive or threatening, causing that actor to take actions to strengthen its own security.20 A point to emphasize about the dilemma is that it is based not only on objective events and actions but also on subjective perceptions by each actor. Jervis writes, Decision makers act in terms of the vulnerability they feel, which can differ from the actual situation; we must therefore ex amine the decision makers subjective security requirements.21 In this light, US actions and policies should be

viewed not only from the objective stand point of how they alter Irans actual security situation but also by how they affect Irans subjective perceptions of its own security and vulnerability. From an Iranian point of view, what might be perceived as a threat requiring additional security actions /? Iran faces threats on three distinct fronts: large numbers of forward-deployed US forces in the region, increas ing arms procurement by its neighboring states, and Sunni-Shia sectarian conflict in Iraq threatening its ideological foothold in that state . While the United States is slowly drawing down its forces in Iraq, it is likely that 150,000 forward-deployed, combat-capable soldiers in Iraq in close geo graphic proximity to Irans western border are perceived as a legitimate security threat to the Iranian leadership.22 For example, a January 2007 World Public Opinion Poll
found that 73 percent of Iranians interviewed viewed US bases in the Middle East as a threat to Iran, with 44 percent responding that it was a major threat. Furthermore, 47 per cent of respondents viewed bases in the region as US attempts to achieve political and military domination to control Middle East resources. Only 10 percent of respondents viewed US bases and forces in the region as efforts to protect America from terrorists.23 The second threat Iran faces is from increasing arms procurements by its neighboring countries. US efforts to contain Iran have resulted in a steady and

increasing flow of weapons and financial support from the United States to a number of Irans geographic neighbors and rival Sunni states. In his January 2007 speech announcing the start of surge operations
in Forrest.indd 106 4/30/09 12:44:16 PM Baghdad, President Bush announced that he would deploy an additional aircraft carrier group to the Persian Gulf and extend the deployment of Patriot antimissile batteries reportedly stationed in Kuwait and Qatar.24 Along the same line, Vali Nasr and Ray Takeyh note that in May of 2007, Vice President Dick Cheney announced a new direction of US foreign policy when he declared that well stand with others to prevent Iran from gaining nuclear weapons and dominating this region.25 As part of this new strategy, the US has provided a $20 billion arms package to Saudi Arabia and the Gulf emirate states with the primary objective of enabling these countries to strengthen their defenses and therefore to provide a de terrence against Iranian expansion and Iranian aggression in the future.26 In addition, the United States has sold the Saudis a number of sophis ticated weapons systems, such as Apache helicopters, upgraded PAC-3 Patriot missiles, guidance systems, and theatre cruise missiles.27 From an Iranian point of view, the rapid arms procurement by neighborinstates must be perceived as an increased threat to its security.

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And, Iranian Hardliners will destabilize Iraq and Cause World-Wide Terrorism
Phillips 2k6 (U.S. Policy and Iran's Nuclear Challenge Testimony of James Phillips before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, 5/18, pg online @ http://www.heritage.org/Research/Testimony/US-Policy-and-Irans-Nuclear-Challenge)

Ahmadinejad's vehement return to Khomeini's radical line has been accompanied by a purge of pragmatists and reformers within the regime. Forty of Iran's senior ambassadors have been recalled from overseas
posts, including diplomats who were involved in the EU-3 negotiations in Britain, France, Germany, and at the United Nations in Geneva. Ahmadinejad has appointed many of his Revolutionary Guard cronies to key positions throughout the government. Iran also has been increasingly aggressive in stirring up trouble inside Iraq. In October, the British government charged that the Iranians had supplied sophisticated bombs with shaped charges capable of penetrating armor to clients in Iraq who used them in a series of attacks on British forces in southern Iraq. Iran also has given discreet support to insurgents such as Moqtada al-Sadr, who twice has led Shiite uprisings against coalition forces and the Iraqi government. Iranian hardliners undoubtedly fear that a stable democratic Iraq would present a dangerous alternative model of government that could undermine their own authority . They know that Iraq's pre-eminent Shiite religious leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, whose religious authority is greater than that of any member of Iran's ruling clerical regime, rejects Khomeini's radical ideology and advocates traditional Shiite religious doctrines. Although Iran continues to enjoy considerable influence with many Iraqi Shiites, particularly with Iraq's Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq and the Dawa Party, the moderate influence of Sistani dilutes their own

revolutionary influence. Therefore, Tehran plays a double game in Iraq, using the young firebrand alSadr to undermine Sistani and keep pressure on the U.S. military to withdraw, while still maintaining good relations with Shiite political parties who revere Sistani and need continued American support. In addition to its destabilizing role in Iraq, Iran continues to be the word's leading sponsor of ter rorism. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice recently called Iran "the central banker" of international terrorism. It has close ties to the Lebanon-based Hezballah terrorist group, which it organized and continues to finance, arm, and train. Tehran also has supported a wide variety of Palestinian terrorist groups, including Fatah, Hamas, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, as well as Afghan extremists such as Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. Iran was involved in the 1996 Khobar Towers bombing, which killed 19 American military personnel deployed in Saudi Arabia. Moreover, Iran reportedly continues to give sanctuary to elements of al-Qaeda, including at least one of Osama bin Laden's sons, Saad bin Laden, and Saif al-Adil, a top operations coordinator. This long and deep involvement in terrorism, continued hostility to the United States, and repeated threats to destroy Israel, provide a strong warning against the dangers of allowing such a radical regime to develop nuclear weapons.

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And, Turkey will Ensure Iran doesnt fill-in and dominate the post-U.S. Iraqi Theatre too many issues at stake
Bar et al 2k10 (Dr. Shmuel Bar, Director of Studies, Institute for Policy and Strategy, US Presence in the Middle East: Trends and Scenarios, A Working Paper in Preparation for the Herzliya Conference 2010, pg online @ http://www.herzliyaconference.org/_Uploads/3032TrendUS_transedit.pdf //cndi-ef) Even in the best possible scenario of the elections, it does not seem that the results will facilitate the withdrawal. The US is at a severe disadvantage in not trying to influence the election results, while Iran is investing enormous efforts in acquiring support. Therefore, the election results may lead to the emergence of the pro-Iranian forces (mainly those related to Muqtada al- adr and his allies). Under these circumstances, the US would have to engage with Iran in order to guarantee an orderly withdrawal process. The grand bargain that Tehran will attempt to conclude would probably include an Iranian commitment to allow the US withdrawal to be conducted in a dignified manner in return for the US to refrain from attacking Iran and to prevent Israel from attacking Iran and having the International economic boycott removed from it. Such a development would severely damage the image of the US among the Sunni countries, as a future source of reliance against Iran. However, the Iraqi theatre will not be controlled solely by Iran. Since the war, we have witnessed that all the Sunni countries surrounding Iraq have developed their own areas of influence and nurtured relationships with groups inside Iraq. Turkey may serve as a moderating and counterbalancing factor to Iran. Even if

Turkey now seems as if courting Iran, Ankaras interest is to influence the upcoming events in Iraq following the withdrawal and to moderate (or contain) the Iranian influence . Today there are already close ties between Turkey and Iraqi Kurdistan, and between the Turks and Shiite delegate such as Muqtada al- adr and others. The US may encourage this trend as a preferable alternative to Iranian influence. Finally, Quick withdrawal is the best policy, it furthers regional stability and reduces the threat from Iran
General William Odom, April 2, 2008 (Testimony Before The Senate Foreign Relations Committee On Iraq, http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article19671.htm) The only sensible strategy is to withdraw rapidly but in good order. Only that step can break the paralysis now gripping US strategy in the region. The next step is to choose a new aim, regional stability, not a meaningless victory in Iraq. And progress toward that goal requires revising our policy toward Iran. If the president merely renounced his threat of regime change by force, that could prompt Iran to lessen its support to Taliban groups in Afghanistan. Iran detests the Taliban and supports them only because they will kill more Americans in Afghanistan as retaliation in event of a US attack on Iran. Irans policy toward Iraq would also have to change radically as we withdraw. It cannot want instability there. Iraqi Shiites are Arabs, and they know that Persians look down on them. Cooperation between them has its limits. No quick reconciliation between the US and Iran is likely, but US steps to make Iran feel more secure make it far more conceivable than a policy calculated to increase its insecurity. The presidents policy has reinforced Irans determination to acquire nuclear weapons, the very thing he purports to be trying to prevent.

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Turkey Solves Iran Fill-in

US Withdrawal would improve relations in Iraq and Spur middle east economic growth
Henri J. Barkey, Professor of international relations at Lehigh University, May 2010, (USIP Special Report pg online @ http://www.carnegieendowment.org/files/USIP_SR_Turkey_Iraq.pdf ) On the political front, with the impending drawdown of U.S. forces from Iraq, the United States can work with Turkey in a number of ways. First, it should help keep the Turkish-KRG relationship on track. Turkey made an

important move in announcing its intent to build a consulate in Erbil, thereby ending suspicions and hearsay that Ankara would not accept the post-2003 federal character of Iraq. The United States should follow suit to dispel any lingering notions, especially among Kurds and Iraqi Sunnis, who for different reasons fear or believe that Iraqi federalism is reversible. In conjunction with this move, the Obama administration has an interest in improving the democratic character of the north. Only recently has the United States begun to focus on governance issues in the KRG, presumably because in contrast to other areas of Iraq, the Iraqi north has been an island of relative stability. The more Ankara and Erbil can work together, the more robust the KRG will be and the less influence Iran will have there. It is also imperative that the United States open a consulate in Erbil to
show support to the KRG and to better implement some of the proposed reforms. Second, the United States should emphasize that it does not wish to leave a PKK presence in the KRG after its departure. This is tricky as it requires the Turkish government to push ahead with its own domestic Kurdish opening, which would enable PKK fighters to return home or disperse. The U.S. position has to be crafted in a way to put pressure on all parties: on the KRG to further cut off PKK forces from resupply; on the PKK to make clear that as long as Americans are in Iraq, there can be a

relatively orderly process of demilitarization; and finally on Turkey to use both the U.S. presence and withdrawal process as an opportunity to come to a resolution of its Kurdish problem. The United States
ought to engage Turkey on its domestic Kurdish opening, something it has assiduously avoided; with signs that this is faltering, the collapse of this initiative would deal a potentially fatal blow to the burgeoning Turkish-KRG relations by reenergizing ethnic divisions on both sides of the border and in Kirkuk in particular, thereby undermining overall relations with Iraq. Third, U.S. diplomats should be more inclusive of their Turkish counterparts in Iraq during this period of transition. The Turks have aggressively courted the different communities in Iraq and will likely have

better relations with the Sunnis and Shia than will the United States. The Americans, unlike the neighboring Turks, will be leaving Iraq and the Turks are resolutely attempting to mold Iraq and the region in their own image. Therefore, the United States must achieve greater coordination with Turkey. In the end, a greater Turkish buy-in will also help balance the Iranians in Iraq and the region. On the economic and natural resource fronts, Turkey is by far the most prosperous and industrialized of all of Iraqs neighbors. It offers transit routes to and from Western markets, as well as an exit to the Mediterranean for Iraqi hydrocarbons.

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AT: Iran Prolif Turn

No impacteven if Iran proliferates, US deterrence means they wont set off arms races, go to war or give WMD to terrorists
Layne, 2009 (Christopher, Ph.D., chair of intelligence and national security at Texas A&M, Americas Middle East grand strategy after Iraq: the moment for oshore balancing has arrived, Review of International Studies 35, 5-25) Of course, hard-line US neoconservatives reject this approach and argue that a nuclear-armed Iran would have three bad consequences: there could be a nuclear arms race in the Middle East; Iran might supply nuclear weapons to terrorists; and Tehran could use its nuclear weapons to blackmail other states in the region, or to engage in aggression. Each of these scenarios, however, is improbable.24 A nuclear Iran will not touch off a proliferation snowball in the Middle East. Israel, of course, already is a nuclear power. The other three states that might be tempted to go for a nuclear weapons capability are Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey. However, each of these states would be under strong pressure not to do so, and Saudi Arabia lacks the industrial and engineering capabilities to develop nuclear weapons indigenously. Notwithstanding the Bush administrations hyperbolic rhetoric, Iran is not going to give nuclear weapons to terrorists. This is not to deny Tehrans close links to groups like Hezbollah and Hamas. However, there are good reasons that states even those that have ties to terrorists draw the line at giving them nuclear weapons (or other WMD): if the terrorists were to use these weapons against the US or its allies, the weapons could be traced back to the donor state, which would be at risk of annihilation by an American retaliatory strike.25 Irans leaders have too much at stake to run this risk. Even if one believes the administrations claims that rogue state leaders are indierent to the fate of their populations, they do care very much about the survival of their regimes, which means that they can be deterred. For the same reason, Irans possession of nuclear weapons will not invest Tehran with options to attack, or intimidate its neighbours. Israels security with respect to Iran is guaranteed by its own formidable nuclear deterrent capabilities. By the same token, just as it did in Europe during the Cold War, the US can extend its own deterrence umbrella to protect its clients in the region Saudi Arabia, the Gulf states, and Turkey. American security guarantees not only will dissuade Iran from acting recklessly, but also restrain proliferation by negating the incentives for states like Saudi Arabia and Turkey to acquire their own nuclear weapons. Given the overwhelming US advantage in both nuclear and conventional military capabilities, Iran is not going to risk national suicide by challenging Americas security commitments in the region. In short, while a nuclear-armed Iran hardly is desirable, neither is it intolerable, because it could be contained and deterred successfully by the US.

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AT: Iran will invade

[ ] Iran wont invade Iraqboth sides fear a repeat of the war in 1980
Perry, Ph.D. in information technology, 2009 [Walt L. Perry; Withdrawing from Iraq: alternative schedules, associated risks, and mitigating strategies; Published by RAND/National Defense Research Institute; p.81-82]

The U.S. withdrawal from Iraq is unlikely to lead to overt Iranian military intervention. Iran and Iraq appear to have settled disputes regarding the Shat al-Arab waterway, which historically has been a great source of tension between the two nations. In any case, the two countries would be loath to repeat a conflict like the disastrous lran-Iraq 'War of 1980-1988,which led to hundreds of thousands of casualties on both sides

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AT: Iranian Heg.

[ ] Turn: US Presence in Iraq causes Iran to support Iraqi Shia militia in order to counterbalance US influence.
Christopher Forrest, Major, USAF MA in international relations Tufts University 2009 Coercive Engagement A Security Analysis of Iranian Support to Iraqi Shia Militias http://handle.dtic.mil/100.2/ADA500083 Cause #1: Perceived Changes in the Balance of Power Irans support for Iraqi Shia militias is partially explained

by its percep tion of changes in the balance of power in the region. Iran desires to be, and sees itself as, a growing regional power. US efforts to stop this power growth are causing Iran to counter with increased support of the Shia militias inside Iraq. This causal factor draws heavily on the IR theory of structural
realism, pioneered by Kenneth Waltz, as well as balance of threat theory by Stephen Walt. Using this construct, Waltz determines that in a unipolar system, such as exists today with US dominance, other states will engage in power-balancing activities in attempts to push the system away from unipolarity and to maximize their own powers.4 He argues, Aside from specific threats it may pose, unbalanced power leaves weaker states feeling uneasy and gives them reason to strengthen their positions, and balances disrupted will one day be restored.5 In this regard, Iranian support of Iraqi Shia militias

can be seen as a logical attempt to balance what Iran sees as the unchecked power of the United States in the region. Irans support of these militias is likely to increase if it sees an opportunity to take advantage of declining
US power in the region and advance its own. Stephen Walt builds on Waltzs argument and introduces the concept of balance of threat theory, which explains that a state is more likely to en gage in power-balancing actions against states it sees as overtly threatening. This theory, in particular, offers insight into why Iran is offering support to Iraqi Shia militias. In a unipolar system, Iran sees the United States as a threat to its security interests in the region and will take actions to balance its power. One such action is to increase support to Iraqi Shia groups op posing the US presence in Iraq. Furthermore, Iran sees US presence and influence in Iraq as overtly threatening to its own security and will take actions, perhaps aggressively, to balance this threat. By looking through the lens of structural realist theory , it becomes

in creasingly clear that the US invasion and occupation of Iraq opened up a strategic opportunity (and necessity) for Iran to balance US power in the region. Its support of Iraqi Shia militia groups, such as the Badr
Brigade and the Mahdi Army, is a relatively high-benefit, low-cost method of in creasing its own power at the expense of US power. Ted Carpenter and Malou Innocent argue that Americas removal of Saddam Hussein as the principal strategic counterweight to Iran paved the way for an expansion of Irans influence. The United States now faces the question of how it can mitigate potential threats to its interests if Iran succeeds in consolidating its new position as the leading power in the region.6 They note that prior to the Iraq War, traditional balance-of-power realists predicted that Iran would act to undermine Americas position in occupied Iraq and be the principal geostrategic beneficiary from Iraqs removal as a regional counter weight. Neoconservatives predicted the Iranian regime would probably collapse and, even if it did not, Tehran would have no choice but to accept US dominance. But as a result of Washingtons policy blunders, Iran is now a substantially strengthened actor.7 The desire to balance what Iran perceives as hostile US power in the region in part explains why the regime uses direct-support options. How ever, in addition to direct support, there is also strong evidence of indirect support to other social, civil, and political organizations in Iraq that serve a similar purpose. In this regard, Iranian support is the result not only of its desire to balance US power, but also to gain power amongst its regional neighbors through the spread and influence of the Shia sect of Islam. Iran is the largest Shia country in the world with over 70 million people, 90 percent of whom are Shiite.8 In contrast, many of its Muslim neighbors are Sunni.

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No Iran Invasion
Iran wont invade Iraqboth sides fear a repeat of the war in 1980
Perry, Ph.D. in information technology, 2009 [Walt L. Perry; Withdrawing from Iraq: alternative schedules, associated risks, and mitigating strategies; Published by RAND/National Defense Research Institute; p.81-82]

The U.S. withdrawal from Iraq is unlikely to lead to overt Iranian military intervention. Iran and Iraq appear to have settled disputes regarding the Shat al-Arab waterway, which historically has been a great source of tension between the two nations. In any case, the two countries would be loath to repeat a conflict like the disastrous lran-Iraq 'War of 1980-1988,which led to hundreds of thousands of casualties on both sides The Sunnis are tied to the United States- serve to block Iran from Iraq
Stratfor, 10; (World leading analysts in global intelligence Special Report: The U.S. Withdrawal From Iraq, Stratfor Global Inteligence; March 5, 2010, http://agonist.org/files/active/2/IRAQ_WITHDRAWAL.pdf, CB) In either case, the future of the Sunnis is intrinsically tied to U.S. withdrawal plans. Sunnis do not want to

see the United States leave Iraq, and they can respond to Shia provocations to slow down the U.S. withdrawal. The United States and its allies among the Sunni Arab states, particularly Saudi Arabia and Turkey, also want to make sure Sunnis represent a sufficient bulwark against Iran. The only way that can happen is if external forces empower the Sunnis enough that they can provide sufficient political leverage against the Shia. A number of factors stand in the way of achieving this objective. There exist stark internal divisions between Sunnis who had been working with the United States to topple the Baathist regime and then
were part of the emerging post-Baathist system (such as Vice President Tariq al-Hashimis former political affiliation, the Iraqi Islamic Party) and those that joined it after the end of the Sunni insurgency (such as the Awakening Councils and the groups that have spun off from them). Sunni groups also are politically scattered, having aligned themselves with several major political blocs, including those led by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and the former interim prime minister, Iyad Allawi. Moreover, Sunnis are internally divided in their alliances with regional players such as Saudi

Arabia, Syria, and Turkey. These differences play a key role in preventing the Sunnis from being able to counter the Shia and their patrons in Tehran. But perhaps the biggest obstacle is that the Sunnis are caught between
the Shia to the south and the Kurds to the north, especially with most energy reserves being outside the Sunni heartland of central Iraq. The Shia, being the overwhelming majority in the country, control both the oil-rich south and Baghdad, while Kurdistan is pushing farther south and contesting some areas with the Sunnis. The challenge for the United States is

to manage this two-front struggle and help the Sunnis increase their influence. An empowered Sunni bloc will help both with Washingtons short-term effort to exit Iraq and in the long term, when the decreased U.S. military presence will afford it less leverage.

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*****Stability Advantage*****

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_________________ ****Uniqueness****

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Uniq: Presence = Violence Now

US Iraq Presence is causing circular violence
Carl Conetta, Project on Defense Alternatives Briefing Memo, January 18th 2007, Resolving Iraq: Progress depends on a short timeline for US troop withdrawal, http://www.comw.org/pda/fulltext/0701bm40.pdf Should Iraqs leaders decide to foreclose the hope of progress, the United States should withdraw its current mission

and assume a regional posture that aims to contain and manage the effluent from a distance. A deepening of Iraqi civil conflict might ensue at least for a time or it might not. Either way, a largescale US military occupation of indefinite duration is not a cost-effective way of hedging against this eventuality. Air, naval, and ground force deployments outside Iraq comprising 50,000 personnel would comprise a very substantial deterrent and rapid response capability should the preferred course as outlined above prove impracticable. In addition, regional diplomacy should address a Plan B contingency, so that concerned nations might coordinate their responses and minimize the possibility of a broader war. Concerned nations should also make provisions for humanitarian relief and the care of refugees. Seeing our way clear of the Iraq disaster and avoiding similar debacles in the future requires that US national leadership reject the wars originating error: the conviction that one nation might easily compel profound political, economic, and social transition in another at the point of a gun.

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Uniq Wall: Violence Risk High (1/2)

Violence is High and will continue a) sectarian violence
Biddle 09 (Stephan, May 2009, Council on Foreign Relations Reversal in Iraq, pg 1-3, www.cfr.org/content/publications/.../CPA_contingencymemo_2.pdf) Renewed Sectarian Violence The cease-fires that ended large-scale civil violence in Iraq are especially fragile because they are radically decentralized: there are over two hundred separate parties to local, bilateral agreements that were reached mostly between individual factions of former combatants and the U.S. military. These parties include the mostly Sunni Sons of Iraq (SOI) groups (many of whom are essentially former insurgents), and a variety of erstwhile Shiite militias (especially Muqtada al-Sadrs Jaish al Mahdi); the Iraqi government was rarely an explicit partner in the negotiations. The result is a patchwork quilt in which former rivals , who retain their weapons, their organizations, and often their leaders, coexist uneasily in close proximity under the terms of deals reached with local U.S. military authorities over the course of 2007. Renewed sectarian violence remains a serious threat in this environment. Parties to intense ethnosectarian warfare do not just forget the mass violence of the past overnight. Rarely can they simply live together without fear in the immediate aftermath, and the cease-fires decentralized nature creates many independent actors and many potential flashpoints for violence among wary and distrustful former combatants.

With over two hundred separate participant parties, some will surely stretch the terms of their agreements to see what they can get away with; some will be simple criminals or exploitative opportunists; most
will be suspicious of others intentions. Even innocent activity by former enemies can easily be misread as threatening, risking preemptive or retaliatory violence in self-defense. The net result is literally dozens to hundreds of possible opportunites for greed, miscalculation, misperception, fear, or accident among armed, wary former combatants to spark local violence. And local violence creates an incentive for retaliation, which creates an incentive for

counterretaliation, risking an escalatory spiral that can pull in neighboring actors and threaten systemic collapse of todays cease-fires nationally. Less than two years ago, Iraq was convulsed by sectarian warfare; the combina2
tion of recent memory and a complex patchwork quilt of armed former combatants under such conditions poses an inherent risk of renewed violence. This does not make renewed warfare inevitable or todays cease-fires a mere breathing spell, however. These cease-fires reflect a fundamental shift in the parties interest calculus following Sunni defeat by Shiite militias in 2006 and the U.S. surge of 2007the combatants stood down because the underlying strategic reality of Iraq changed to make this the superior course, and objective military conditions continue to favor cease-fire over open warfare. This gives Iraq an important chance for sustainable stability. But a chance is not a guarantee, and the decentralized nature of the stand-down creates a danger of catalytic violence even when cease-fire is in the objective interest of most actors. Todays apparent sectarian calm cannot safely be assumed to be permanent , and policy choices by the U.S. and the government of Iraq could be important in determining whether the risk of renewed sectarian violence is realized.

b) Attempted Dictatorship
Biddle 09 (Stephan, May 2009, Council on Foreign Relations Reversal in Iraq, pg 1-3 www.cfr.org/content/publications/.../CPA_contingencymemo_2.pdf) Reversion to Dictatorship The decentralized nature of todays cease-fires provides an ideal opportunity for a prospective dictator to accumulate power by salami slicingessentially picking off isolated rivals one at a

time under the cover of law enforcement. This enables a would-be dictator to keep the threat to the others apparently low at any given time, exploit the collective action problems inherent in such a large,
diverse array of players, and perhaps disarm enough rivals and amass enough power to defeat the others by the time they can come together in response. Whether Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki would be tempted to do this can only be speculated. Maliki is clearly interested in consolidating Iraqi government power and authority. This may be due to a benign desire for a pluralist, constitutional democracy with a monopoly of legitimate force under the law. But it may also be due to a malign desire for dictatorial power in an authoritarian state. Washington probably cannot know Malikis real intentions indeed he may not yet know himself. It is entirely plausible that he is now opportunistically testing the waters while reevaluating his goals along the way in light of the results at each stage. But even a well-intentioned prime minister who knows the regions political history must surely be considering the possibilities, at least: if he does not seek dictatorial powers himself, others may, and finishing second in a race to seize power

. An Iraqi dictatorship would obviously be undesirable. But a bigger problem would be a failed attempt. Overreach or miscalculation that galvanizes Sunni opposition could easily rekindle large scale violence. Maliki has already undertaken several rounds of crackdowns against individual SOI
could be fatal groups and their leaders over the last year, justifying the action as law enforcement activity to police misbehavior by isolated bad actors. Maliki is astute enough to begin with the worst of the SOIs, enabling benign interpretations by the United States and a degree of support or at least tolerance from Multi- National Force-Iraq (MNF-I). But other SOI leaders are clearly concerned that darker motives are at work, and they would be fools not to worry. A plausible interpretation of the recent uptick in terrorist violence is that some Sunni SOI leaders are trying to send a message to Malikiand the United Statesthat there are costs in threatening their interests or abandoning them to their fates.1 Perhaps Maliki can modulate his crackdowns to prevent nontargeted SOIs (or Shiite militias, who face similar incentives) from returning to large-scale violence. But the complexity of the situation, coupled with growing unease among remaining SOIs who face greater danger as their peers are whittled away, creates a serious risk that Maliki could miscalculate or overreach, driving the survivors into open violence in self-defense

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Uniq Wall: Violence Risk High (2/2)

c) Kurdish- Arab Conflict
Biddle 09 (Stephan, May 2009, Council on Foreign Relations www.cfr.org/content/publications/.../CPA_contingencymemo_2.pdf) Kurdish-Arab Conflict While Kurdish-Arab tensions could erupt into Reversal in Iraq, pg 1-3

violence and escalate for several reasons, the contested nature of Kirkuk is clearly the most dangerous. Kirkuks economic importance, its history of forced resettlement and thus disputed property rights, and its location on the fault line of Kurdish expansionism and Arab resistance make it a natural flash point. And the Kurdish Pesh Merga militias
legal status encourages Kurds to use it to defend disputed claims in ways that put it in close proximity with government forces of mostly Arab makeup under conditions of high tension and low trust. Both the Kurds and the Iraqi government are now holding to uncompromising positions and using a threat of violence to coerce the other into concessions; even if neither actually intends to use force, this tense game of chicken could easily result in unintended escalation under such conditions. Arab-Kurdish violence over Kirkuk, moreover, could catalyze wider fighting elsewhere. Turkey would fear the implications of Kurdish control over Kirkuk for separatist sentiments in Kurdistan and southern Turkey, and could well intervene to prevent this. And Arab-Kurdish conflict works to the advantage of al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI), Iraqs most violent internal faction. AQI has been exploiting local Sunni fears of Kurdish overlordship in Mosul to enable AQI terrorist cells there to survive against U.S. and Iraq government pressureMosuls Sunni Arabs see AQI coethnics as allies against the Kurds, and they distrust a Shiite-controlled government to respect their interests, hence some have sheltered AQI in ways that Sunnis elsewhere had mostly ceased to do by late 2007. An outbreak of violence over Kirkuk could lead other Sunnis along the Arab-Kurdish fault line to rely on AQI for defense, which could expand its base of operations and lead to a spillover beyond Iraqs north as the group regains strength and freedom of operation.

d) Israel Iran Conflict

Biddle 09 (Stephan, May 2009, Council on Foreign Relations Reversal in Iraq, pg 1-3 www.cfr.org/content/publications/.../CPA_contingencymemo_2.pdf) Spillover from Israeli-Iranian Conflict An escalation of Israeli-Iranian tensions over Irans nuclear program could also precipitate renewed conflict in Iraq. Many believe that Israel could attempt a preemptive attack on Iranian nuclear facilities if Tel Aviv concludes that only this could deny Iran the bomb. If so, Iran would probably treat the United States as complicit and retaliate against U.S. interests globally. Among these interests are U.S. military and civilian personnel in Iraq. Iran is reported to have built and retained a large covert paramilitary and intelligence infrastructure in Iraq partly in order to hold at risk U.S. targets there; if so, these hostages could be struck in the event of an Israeli attack. In addition to direct attacks on Americans by Iranian agents in Iraq, Iran could conclude that an American-allied Iraqi

government had become intolerable. This could lead to Iranian pressure on client militias within Iraq to return to active violence as a means of imposing costs on the U.S. and preventing the use of a stable Iraq as a base for
American action against Iran.

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Uniq: Violence High

US isnt giving Iraq security, which impedes political and economic growth
The Iraq Study Group Report , December 6th 2006, The Way Forward, A New Approach, pg.31-32 online @ http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/WSJ-iraq_study_group.pdf There is no guarantee for success in Iraq. The situation in Baghdad and several provinces is dire. Saddam Hussein has been removed from power and the Iraqi people have a democratically elected government that is broadly representative of Iraqs population, yet the government is not adequately advancing national reconciliation, providing basic security, or delivering essential services. The level of violence is high and growing. There is great

suffering, and the daily lives of many Iraqis show little or no improvement. Pessimism is pervasive. U.S. military and civilian personnel, and our coalition partners, are making exceptional and dedicated efforts
and sacrificesto help Iraq. Many Iraqis have also made extraordinary efforts and sacrifices for a better future. However, the ability of the United States to influence events within Iraq is diminishing. Many Iraqis are embracing sectarian identities. The lack of security impedes economic development. Most countries in the

region are not playing a constructive role in support of Iraq, and some are undercutting stability. Iraq is vital to regional and even global stability, and is critical to U.S. interests. It runs along the sectarian fault lines of Shia and Sunni Islam, and of Kurdish and Arab populations. It has the worlds second-largest known oil reserves. It is now a base of operations for international terrorism, including al Qaeda. Iraq is a centerpiece of American foreign policy, influencing how the United States is viewed in the region and around the world. Because of the gravity of Iraqs condition and the countrys vital importance, the United States is facing
one of its most difficult and significant international challenges in decades. Because events in Iraq have been set in motion by American decisions and actions, the United States has both a national and a moral interest in doing what it can

to give Iraqis an opportunity to avert anarchy.

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Uniq: Civil War Now

Iraq is in a civil war now
Carpenter 2006 (Ted Galen Carpenter is vice president for defense and foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute, June 9, 2006, http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=6434 With Zarqawi's Death, U.S. Should Exit Iraq) Indeed, the primary component of the violence in Iraq is no longer an insurgency directed against U.S. occupation forces and security personnel of the embryonic Iraqi government. Instead, the dominant factor is now tit-fortat sectarian violence between Sunnis and Shiites. The elimination of Zarqawi will have little impact on that problem. Both the Bush administration and the American people need to recognize just how bad the

sectarian violence in Iraq has become. In May there were some 1,400 confirmed deaths in Baghdad alone. While Baghdad is perhaps the most turbulent portion of Iraq, it is hardly the only scene of sectarian killings. One media report indicates that there have been more than 6,000 civilian deaths in the first five months of 2006. That comes out to an average of approximately 40 per day . Moreover, there are indications that a significant number of deaths are never reported to authorities. The death toll must be put in context. Iraqs population is a mere 25 million. If that same pace of political violence was taking place in the United States, it would mean nearly 500 killings per day, or more than 180,000 a year. If that degree of carnage was going on, no one would be debating whether America was experiencing a civil war. The reality is that Iraq has already slipped into, at the very least, a low-intensity Sunni-Shiite civil war. Americans need to ask why they should want their military personnel to try to play the role of referee in such an environment. Zarqawis death should remove the last excuse for staying the course in Iraq. Weve overthrown Saddam Hussein, enabled the Iraqi people to create a new constitution, presided over the election of a new government, and now killed the leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq. Enough is enough. At some point, the Iraqi people need to stand on their own feet and decide whether they will cooperate in governing the country or whether they will wage an increasingly bloody sectarian war. If they choose the latter, America does not have
a dog in that fight.

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__________________ ****Interal Links****

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Internals: Violence Spills-Over

US withdrawal gets more difficult and costly daily- violence will spill over into the entire region
Christopher Preble et al, 2004 (Director of foreign policy studies at CATO; Exiting Iraq: Why the U.S. must end the military occupation and renew the war against Al Qaeda, p. 56, CB)

For the United States to remain tied to the fortunes of the government of Iraq places our country, and our citizens, in a no-win situation. In stating its preference for democracy, but in opposing the democratic impulses of the Shiite majority and the Kurds desire for autonomy, the United States already finds itself on a collision course with the wishes of millions of Iraqis. Forced to juggle various and clashing commitments, Americans, both in Iraq and abroad, could become targets for all unsatisfied Iraqis, Shiite
or Sunni, Arab or Kurd. Successive American administrations, whether headed by Republicans or Democrats, would have two choices: reinforcement of a losing strategy or an ignominious exit. Given the certain political criticism that

would be leveled against any government that sold out to terrorists in Iraq and elsewhere, it is easy to see how every month, every year, that the U.S. military remains in Iraq will make it more difficult and more costly for the United States to extract itself. America would then face the choice of extending its military commitments in Iraq to the entire region, which would increase the potential for military confrontations with Iran, Syria, and even Turkey, or leaving the country with the Iraqi guerrillas jeering at us a situation reminiscent of the Soviet and Israeli withdrawals from Afghanistan and Lebanon, respectively, or the
U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam.

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_______________ **** Stability Solvency****

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Solvency: Timetables k Stability

[ ] Timetables key to force Iraqi government accountability and effectiveness
Anthony H. Cordesman (Burke Chair on strategy- Center for strategic and international studies), Aug 22, 2008, (Conditions- based U.S. Withdrawals from Iraq, http://csis.org/publication/conditions-based-us-withdrawals-iraq)

There is nothing wrong with setting broad goals for withdrawing U.S. forces from Iraq. The U.S. wants to leave as soon as this is feasible, and Iraqis have long wanted us to leave. At least since 2004, Iraqs Kurds have been the only group in Iraq that showed a consistent desire for the U.S. to stay. It also is impossible to be certain that the risks of early withdrawal will really be greater from the risks of staying. It is at least possible that acting on early timelines will force Iraqis to move towards political accommodation, to take hard decisions, and become more effective. In fact, if all goes well in Iraq, deadlines like 2011 may prove practicalparticularly if such deadlines do not preclude a large number of U.S. military advisors.

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Solvency: Stability (1/3)

US troops in Iraq destabilizes the region- Anti US sentiment
Christopher Preble et al, 2004 (Director of foreign policy studies at CATO; Exiting Iraq: Why the U.S. must end the military occupation and renew the war against Al Qaeda, p. 44, CB) On a slightly broader level, others may contend that the presence of the U.S. military in Iraq is a stabilizing

influence throughout the entire region. Stability in the Middle East is particularly crucial, given that military conflict can and has disrupted oil flows, with detrimental short-term economic consequences for the United States.129 But experience shows that U.S. military forces are themselves a destabilizing influencetheir mere presence is a lightning rod for dissent, and radicals use this issue to whip up antiAmerican and anti-Western sentiment. Quick withdrawal from Iraq K2 stability
Carl Conetta, Project on Defense Alternatives Briefing Memo, January 18th 2007, Resolving Iraq: Progress depends on a short timeline for US troop withdrawal, http://www.comw.org/pda/fulltext/0701bm40.pdf Iraqs best hope for peace resides in a quick withdrawal of almost all US military forces from the country and their replacement by a new and smaller multinational force. Quick and almost all means a reduction to no more than a few thousand US troops by mid-March 2008 the fifth anniversary of the wars onset. Between

now and then, the emphasis should shift to training Iraqi forces, redefining the security mission, and handing it off to the new international coalition. Those few US troops remaining in Iraq after March 2008 should constitute a minority contingent within a multinational security assistance mission comprised principally of participants from Arab and Muslim nations. The United States might also maintain a deterrent force
in the region (but outside Iraq) comprising a ground force component of no more than 15,000 soldiers and marines (including those afloat). Iraq will continue to need substantial external assistance and support. However, a new multinational

framework is essential. The current one which rests on US military power and entails American predominance in key areas of Iraqi life and governance is provocative and untenable. The Iraqi government will continue to suffer legitimacy problems until it becomes fully disentangled from the American mission.

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Solvency: Stability (2/3)

Withdrawal of Iraqi troops is key to maintain peace Lebanon proves
Romberg 2009 (Bennett Romberg is a foreign policy writer and consultant based in Los Angeles, California, served in the U.S. State Department's Bureau of Politico-Military Affairs in 1989-90.The Precedents for Withdrawal. By: Romberg, Bennett, Foreign Affairs, 00157120, Mar/Apr2009, Vol. 88, Issue 2) The U.S. intervention in Lebanon in the early 1980s presents the closest parallel to Iraq today . A country torn by sectarian violence since 1975, Lebanon saw an even more complex array of contestants-- Christian,

Druze, Shiite, and Sunni militias, along with the Iranians, the Israelis, the Palestinians, and the Syrians-pitted against one another. Attempting to promote a modicum of order, the United States and its Western allies stepped into the fray. In 1982, the Lebanese civil war, which had already cost tens of thousands of lives, reached a
new stage: Israeli forces invaded Lebanon to expel the leadership of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), which had taken refuge in Beirut. As the nightly news televised graphic images of Israel's bombing of the Lebanese capital, the Reagan administration fashioned a plan to halt the violence. Its solution was to create a multinational peacekeeping force that would promote the departure of all foreign armies from Lebanon, starting with that of the PLO. For the residents of Beirut, the arrival of U.S., French, and Italian soldiers in late August 1982 was a welcome reprieve from the constant violence. The PLO leadership soon left Lebanon, and U.S. forces followed suit on September 10. The job seemed finished. But peace failed to follow the parting, and the score settling began. Syrian agents assassinated the newly elected Lebanese president, Bashir Gemayel, on September 14. With their Lebanese ally dead, Israeli forces entered Beirut and transported members

of Gemayel's militia to clean out PLO fighters in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps, in southern Lebanon. The resulting massacre of hundreds of innocent civilians sickened outsiders, including Ronald
Reagan, who ordered the reinsertion of U.S. and allied forces to help the Lebanese government restore stability. The effort proved quixotic. Because it supported the Christian-dominated government, the United States found itself

in the bull's-eye of local Shiites and Druze, the Syrians, and the Iranian Revolutionary Guards. To the contending parties, the U.S. military had become just another militia. Inevitably, the United States' enemies began to hit their targets. A van carrying explosives destroyed the U.S. embassy in April 1983, and the multinational forces soon came under attack, too. Offshore, U.S. naval forces responded with their big
guns against enemy sites. Reagan dug in his heels further, announcing that terrorism would not drive the United States out of Lebanon. That Moscow might take advantage of a U.S. withdrawal also weighed heavily on his mind. The notion that

saving Lebanon was worth losing U.S. lives began to fade, however, after a series of attacks: the bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks, which killed 241 U.S. troops, and then the downing of U.S. military aircraft and the loss of additional marines elsewhere. Reagan put on a determined public face. In a
February 4, 1984, radio address, he called on the American people to remain stalwart: "Yes, the , situation in Lebanon is difficult, frustrating, and dangerous. But that is no reason to turn our backs on friends and to cut and run." But three days later, his advisers decided to do just that, and Reagan meekly agreed. Explaining the about-face, which the White House press office called a "decisive new step," John Poindexter, then deputy national security adviser, told reporters that "the immediate fighting in the streets of Beirut is a problem for the government of Lebanon and the Lebanese armed forces to control." Lebanon's civil war would continue for the rest of the decade. Its conclusion, brokered by the Arab League, ended the general mayhem, but it did not prevent years of political instability, the presence of Syrian forces in the country until 2005, and the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah war. The intensity of Lebanon's sectarian conflict and the difficulty of ending it previewed what the United States would later confront in Iraq. But there is one clear difference: after suffering some

hard knocks, the Reagan administration conceded that cutting its losses was a better tack than staying the course. The decision saved Washington from becoming the piata in a civil conflict that the United States could not resolve.

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Solvency: Stability (3/3)

Immediate withdrawal key to peace multiple empirical examples prove
Romberg 2009 (Bennett Romberg is a foreign policy writer and consultant based in Los Angeles, California, served in the U.S. State Department's Bureau of Politico-Military Affairs in 1989-90.The Precedents for Withdrawal. By: Romberg, Bennett, Foreign Affairs, 00157120, Mar/Apr2009, Vol. 88, Issue 2)

The United States' experiences in Vietnam, Cambodia, Lebanon, and Somalia have much to teach about the risks and benefits of staying the course in conflict-torn countries such as Iraq. In the end, U.S. decisionmakers approached each intervention hopeful that it would serve the national interest. But when the situations soured--when local populations failed to resolve their differences, when the mounting U.S. casualties started to appear needless,

when policymakers failed to identify vital national interests that an on-the-ground presence would protect, and when no clear exit strategy emerged-- Washington called it quits. Despite much foreboding, the United States' exits in these examples better served its interests than soldiering on would have. By no
means did these retreats bring peace to the regions in question; in fact, civil conflict often worsened, and the turmoil resulting from the power vacuum frequently lured neighboring states into interventions of their own. In each of the cases, the interventions--Cambodia's and China's in Vietnam, Syria's in Lebanon, and Ethiopia's in Somalia--ultimately proved to be more than the interveners could bear. And in each case, the interveners, like the United States before them, eventually gave up and withdrew, leaving the task of rebuilding to the intervened. Southeast Asia became politically and economically stable, whereas Lebanon and Somalia are still works in progress. After the United States left, Lebanon continued to stumble but managed its affairs; Somalia remains in tatters, with neighboring states and international organizations attempting to impose order. But however undesirable the aftermaths of U.S. withdrawals for the local populations, Washington, staying in the background, found itself better off. Of course, the United States did not come out of these events entirely unscathed; its failed interventions hurt its credibility. (Indeed, Islamic fundamentalists have taken advantage of U.S. retreats to raise the fervor of their followers.) In an era dominated by fears that the dominoes would fall after the United States withdrew from Vietnam, Washington's failure in Indochina, as Henry Kissinger later argued, did give "psychological impetus" for subsequent Cuban and Soviet interventions in Africa and Afghanistan. But history ended up working to

the United States' advantage. Heeding the lessons of Southeast Asia for the remainder of the Cold War, Washington adopted a nimble strategy to keep boots off the ground in new hotspots in Asia and Africa, choosing to support local proxies instead of intervening itself. Applied to the Soviet Union's war in Afghanistan, the tactic defeated the Kremlin on the battlefield, adding to an increasingly unbearable set of economic and political stresses that ultimately led to the demise of the Soviet Union itself. It would be unwise to rely on the possibility of such favorable twists of fate in Iraq to overcome the reputational costs of leaving. For Washington, one important legacy of its searing Iraq experience will hopefully be a reinvention of the nimbleness it demonstrated after Vietnam: applying force more wisely and with more nuance, supporting proxies, using diplomacy, and exercising soft power. Unfortunately for Iraq, what the cases
examined here consistently suggest is that whenever the United States does withdraw, the country's sectarian violence will likely intensify. Whether neighbors will intervene militarily remains uncertain, but Iraq, which is now more experienced at resistance, should be no less frustrating to intervenors than countries in similar situations have been in the past. Regardless of whether regional troubles will affect Iraq, ultimately it will be the Iraqis who will define their own future in their own way. Given the country's deep divisions, the likely outcome will look more like the periodically erupting Lebanon than the longstable Vietnam. Washington is now left with a choice about Iraq. It can stick to the agreed timetable and leave in 2011 (perhaps allowing leeway for an extension through a mutual U.S.-Iraqi agreement) or it can withdraw much sooner. At least two templates might inform the decision. On the one hand, Nixon's "peace with honor" formula would try to save the United States' reputation by prolonging its stay, spending more blood and treasure, and wagering that Iraqization will outperform Vietnamization. On the other hand, Washington can swallow its pride and follow the lessons of

Vietnam, Cambodia, Lebanon, and Somalia: when internal political dysfunction overwhelms external attempts at stabilization, getting out sooner rather than later is the United States' best chance to protect its interests.

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Solvency: Withdrawal Solves Civil War

Civil War in Iraq Inevitable, must withdrawal now
Capitol News Connections, June 20th 2010, Should US Troops Withdraw From Iraq, http://www.helium.com/debates/97678-should-us-troops-withdraw-iraq-wider-regional-conflict-ethniccleansing/side_by_side Ethnic cleansing has long been a part of this ancient civil battle between the three major sects in Iraq. Only the Iraqi's can change their ways and only the Iraqi's can install a true Democracy. Even with the United States maintaining a presence in Iraq, the regional conflict will widen and ethnic cleansing will ensue. If three people are fighting and a forth stays to stop the fight, if just becomes four people fighting. As go individuals, so go nations. Not withdrawing our innocent troops will only serve to continue to add the blood of the United States soldiers to the bloodbath of Iraq. We have a situation where three "tribes" or "sects" of Iraqi's vie for control of the country. Any installation of a Democracy is a false hope that will bear no fruit. A Democracy would put the religious sect with the largest congregation in control. Each individual "sect" will vote its own for the leader(s) and the largest sect will always win. Most people in the United States do not understand the true mentality of this

religious government. Especially a religious governing whereby the killing of "infidels", even in mass genocide, is permitted. Democracy, by its very nature, must come from within. Yes, a withdrawal of United States troops will bring an immediate and wider regional conflict. Surrounding nations will join this
conflict according to their best interests. Ethnic cleansing will not only result, it is the only feasible way that one sect can rule without constant uprisings of the other sects. U.S. forces kept in Iraq will not prevent the inevitable; only deter

the onslaught for a time. Keeping a presence of troops in Iraq is the United States holding itself emotional hostage. Extending time as an attempt to "save face" and not feel blame for events to come. Yes, a troop withdrawal will widen regional conflict and this conflict will come with ethnic cleansing. The choice is simply how many troops sent by the United States must be killed before the inevitable withdrawal takes place.

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Solvency: Sectarian Violence

The US withdrawal is key to stabilize the region and prevent sectarian violence
Steele 2010 (Jonathan, Defeat in Iraq: The Challenges for Obama and the Region, Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding, 4: 1, 23-34) http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17502970903086768) Questions about Iraqs medium-term stability remain. Most Sunni leaders seem to have reconciled

themselves to having a Shia-led government for the foreseeable future. They see their task not as trying to overthrow it, but as pressing it to be inclusive, fair and non-sectarian. The risk of a new outburst of Sunni versus Shia violence cannot be discounted, if the Shia-led government frustrates legitimate Sunni demands for a fair share of government jobs and reconstruction money. But most Iraqis are tired of the bloodletting of 2006 and 2007 and would not easily sanction another round of it. In early 2009, the greater threat was that Arabs and Kurds might come to blows. Tensions were growing over the oil-rich region of Kirkuk and the various districts of Nineveh province around Mosul, which the Kurds claim as historically theirs.
Iraqs federal constitution planted several mines which could explode during negotiations between Baghdad and the Kurdistan regional government over sharing taxes, oil revenues and other wealth. A violent flare-up over Kirkuk

could precipitate moves by the Kurds to secede, leading to the countrys collapse into a Kurdish north and an Arab south. Apocalyptic scenarios are easily drawn. Pessimistic forecasts tend to be described as realism, while
those who make the opposite case often stand accused of naivety. In policy-making circles the default option is that worse is more probable than better. Iraq suggests this may be wrong. Whatever apprehension there may be in some

quarters, the evidence of 2008 is that life has improved for Iraqis as they begin to assume the US is finally leaving.

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Solvency: W/D Solves Instability

Commitment to withdrawal is the only way to solve conflict in the Middle East and withdrawal doesnt cause further instability
Riedel and Berger 07 (Bruce, Senior Fellow, Foreign Policy, Saban Center for Middle East Policy Samuel Berger, National Security Adviser. Samuel, National Security Advisor, July 23, 2007 America Must Pull Out of Iraq to Contain Civil War, http://www.brookings.edu/opinions/2007/0723iraq_riedel.aspx)

A clear US commitment to a complete, irreversible withdrawal from Iraq may now be the only way to develop a regional concert of powers that could work with Iraqis to try to stabilize the country and cauterize the conflict. The continuing US and British occupation is a roadblock to that co-operation. The galvanising impact of a decision to depart unequivocally can be the last best chance at preventing the conflict from boiling over beyond Iraq to the whole region. How we design and implement our departure is our last significant remaining
leverage. There is no guarantee that this will work, but geopolitical self-interest may encourage wary co-operation from Iraq's neighbours. Iran does not need to invade Iraq to have influence there. The Saudis and Jordanians do not have the military capability to invade. The Syrians are not interested and, in spite of some sabre-rattling, the Turks do not need more Kurds to try to pacify. Focusing on ending the occupation and bringing order in its wake may be the best chance left to end our involvement while keeping the civil war contained to Iraq.

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Solvency: Turkey Can Fill-in

Turkeys interests in Iraq will check for US withdrawal
Henri J. Barkey, Professor of international relations at Lehigh University, May 2010, (USIP Special Report pg online @ http://www.carnegieendowment.org/files/USIP_SR_Turkey_Iraq.pdf ) In the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, meanwhile, two diplomats played an important role in convincing the military that a change in policy in Iraq was in Turkeys best interests. Murat zelik, the special Iraq coordinator and current ambassador to Baghdad, and Feridun Sinirliolu, former deputy undersecretary for Middle East affairs and current undersecretary, have regional credentials and, perhaps more importantly, were perceived by all to be independent thinkers and actors. In short, they were very dependable because they were not seen as being pro-AKP. Both had to work the system and the mutual suspicions that the AKP and the military had for each other. Turkeys new Iraq policy contains defensive and expansionist elements. It is defensive insofar as it continues to be constructed on a platform of containment of Kurdish nationalism. This has always been Ankaras first concern, dating almost to 1926 when it consented to Mosuls integration into Iraq. It is also expansionist in that it seeks to maximize Turkish influence throughout the region and Iraq in particular, with an eye to earning a status commensurate with what Turks think they deserve. Because Iraqs future will have an inordinate amount of influence on how the

region evolves, Turkey has an interest in shaping the future of Iraq. In addition to diplomatic and security considerations, Ankara is also attracted to the economic opportunities offered by Iraq and the region. Oil-rich Iraq is a source for hydrocarbons and a market for Turkish manufactured goods. During the Iran-Iraq War,
both Iran and Iraq struggled with uncertain trade partners and relied heavily on Turkey as their source for various products and as a conduit to the rest of the world. Conditions have changed, but the fundamental importance of Iraq as a market for Turkey remains. Turkish trade with Iraq amounts to $10 billion half of which is estimated to be with the KRG.21

US withdraw from Iraq is best for Turkey and Iraqi Relations

Henri J. Barkey, Professor of international relations at Lehigh University, May 2010, (USIP Special Report pg online @ http://www.carnegieendowment.org/files/USIP_SR_Turkey_Iraq.pdf ) U.S.-Iraqi relations are anything but predictable at this stage. Since World War II, the United States and Iraq have never enjoyed close relations. There is no deep history of solidarity or deeply held shared values on which to build a new relationship. In fact, the U.S.-Iraq relationship has been fraught with mistrust, and successive generations of Iraqi leaders, while wanting the approval and economic attention of the West, have felt ambivalence if not hostility toward the United States and its global influence.24 While the impact of the occupation and the American investment in blood and treasure will continue to figure in the bilateral relationship, Iraqi leaders have every incentive

to demonstrate their independence from Washington. Resentment against the United States among important Iraqi groups will endure for a long time to come. The Sunnis in particular will continue to blame their
downfall as the masters of Iraq on the United States. Irrespective of American deeds, future entanglements the Sunnis may have with other Iraqi parties will also be blamed on Washington. Even the Shia, who gained power following the end of the Saddam regime, harbor deep bitterness for their abandonment in the 1990s and the poor execution of the wars aftermath; some may even see the Americans as the only obstacle to a complete takeover of Iraq. The likelihood of future antagonisms between the Shia and the United States cannot be discounted. Future Iraqi prime ministers will undoubtedly learn from Nouri al-Malikis experience in 2008, when he initiated a major operation in Basra against the Mahdi Army without informing the U.S. military authorities. Despite being forced to call in American support to extract his forces from an embarrassing defeat, his perceived independence constituted an important 15 factor in his emergence as a powerful national figure. Therefore, the United States, despite its continuing imposing presence in Iraq, will have to

tread carefully there. In Turkey, Washington has a potential ally in Iraq with which it sees eye-to-eye on most medium-term issues. Although Turkish intentions and aspirations in the long run may not always coincide with those of the United States, in the interim, both countries will need each other in Iraq. All partiesWashington, Ankara, Baghdad, and even Erbilwant to see a transition toward a stable and unified Iraqi political entity that is pluralistic and improves the economic lot of its people. To this end, there are three principal areas in which the United States and Turkey can work togetherthe realms of politics, economics, and natural resources.

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_______________ ****Impacts****

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Impacts: Turkey
Iraq instability spills over to TurkeyKurdistan split emboldens violent groups
Barkey, 2010 (Henri, IR prof at Lehigh University, senior associate at Carnegie Endowment, Turkeys New Engagement in Iraq, May, United States Institute of Peace, http://www.usip.org/files/resources/SR237_Turkey%27s%20New %20Engagement%20in%20Iraq.pdf) The advent of the Obama administration confirmed and accelerated the Bush Administrations decision to withdraw from Iraq. This decision, taken without any assurance that the new regime in Baghdad will survive and not perish under the weight of sectarian, ethnic, and regional rivalries, is as transformative as the initial decision to invade. The regional powers, which had to anticipate the effects of an Iraq that conformed to the American imagination, now have to contend with an uncertain future in Iraq. This uncertainty is even greater because the United States may decide to pull out sooner than expected or be asked to leave earlier by the Iraqis themselves.2 An unstable Iraq is likely to export its instability to the region. Whether such exports take the form of fundamentalist or jihadist organization and violence or nationalist stirrings, the repercussions will create opportunities for both regional cooperation and rivalries that may exacerbate conditions on the ground. Even if Iraq managed to emerge as a stable statealbeit one with limited influence in the medium term as it rebuilds from years of war and ravagethe fact of the matter is that the United States and the countries of the region would continue to pursue policies predicated on warding off the worst. For Turkey, which has been consistent and insistent in defending the territorial integrity of Iraq, the prospect of an Iraq that becomes unglued would set in motion a series of intolerable repercussions. First, the probability of Kurdish independence and of the expansion of the Kurdish region to encompass Kirkuk, both the governorate and the city, would greatly increase. Turkey has long objected to Kirkuks incorporation into the KRG. With Kirkuks oil resources, its inclusion could embolden Iraqi Kurds to declare independence and set into motion irredentist claims throughout the region. Despite improvements in Ankara-Erbil relations, such developments

would be seen as destabilizing to Turkey and would trigger violence between Kurds and other ethnic groups, primarily Arabs and Turkmen, that could spill over into Turkey . Second, an unglued Iraq could allow the heavily armed groups experienced at fighting a conventional army to export many of their fighters to neighboring countries, such as Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Syria, and even Turkey. The export of fighters would create further unrest that would undermine Turkish economic and diplomatic interests in the region. Third, greater unrest and instability on Turkeys borders would serve as a disincentive for EU members to accept
Turkey as a full member of that organization.

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Impacts: Arab-Kurdish Conflict => Civil War, Escalation

[ ] An Arab-Kurdish conflict would quickly escalate into all-out civil war and draw in outside parties.
Perry, Ph.D. in information technology, 2009 [Walt L. Perry; Withdrawing from Iraq: alternative schedules, associated risks, and mitigating strategies; Published by RAND/National Defense Research Institute; p.81-82]

The greatest threat to lraqi stability and security comes from an Arab-Kurdish armed conflict over contested areas. The potential threat posed by this scenario is high because of the substantial fighting capabilities possessed by each side. The Peshmerga are a capable fighting force by regional standards , and they could easily be augmented. The ISF are becoming increasingly capable. Thus, should fighting break out between the two factions, it could easily escalate to what amounts to all-out civil war. There are a
number of points of friction between the two sides that could spark an incident, which in turn could lead to major fighting.

Turkey could be drawn in; indeed, this is the principle concern regarding the possibility of major armed intervention into Iraq from outside the country.

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Impacts: Instability => Oil supply disruptions

[ ] Instability in the Persian Gulf risks major oil disruptionsempirical evidence proves
Crane, Ph.D. and M.A. in economics; B.A. in international studies, 2009 [Keith Crane, Andreas Goldthau, Michael Toman, Thomas Light, Stuart E. Johnson, Alireza Nader, Angel Rabasa, Harun Dogo; Imported Oil and U.S. National Security; RAND; http://www.rand.org/pubs/monographs/2009/RAND_MG838.sum.pdf] Most of the worlds oil reserves are located within Russia, other former Soviet republics, and the member states of OPEC, especially the countries of the Persian Gulf (Figure 2.5). Global oil supplies from these countries have been frequently disrupted because of instability and conflict. In the Persian Gulf, wars have stopped production in one or more countries in each of the past three decades . Iranian production plummeted in

the aftermath of the 1979 revolution. Insurgency, political instability, and strikes have periodically brought oil production to a halt in Nigeria and Venezuela. Few other commodities as important as oil have been so subject to disruption from war and political turmoil. Supply lines for oil are long, involving
pipelines and supertankers that pass through narrow maritime passages, such as the Strait of Hormuz, the Strait of Malacca, and the Bosporus and the Dardanelles. Terminals and refineries represent points of potential vulnerability.

While pipelines can be put back into service relatively quickly, large oilhandling and -processing facilities could take many months to be repaired. Some commentators argue that dependence on unstable and potentially hostile foreign suppliers and potentially vulnerable supply routes increase the risk that supplies of oil to the United States might be curtailed. Some commentators have also been concerned that supply disruptions could lead to shortages of fuel available to the U.S. military. However, the ability of even the most politically motivated government of a major oil-exporting country to sustain a prolonged reduction in oil output is open to question. Production did stop after the Iranian Revolution but the ayatollahs resumed production
as quickly as possible; Iran has tended to produce at maximum capacity. Because oil export revenues account for such a large share of the Iranian governments budget revenues and the incomes of residents, a sustained cutoff in export revenues is not financially feasible. Radical regimes have not been willing to cut oil production because they need the revenue.

] Major oil supply disruption kills the US economy.

Crane, Ph.D. and M.A. in economics; B.A. in international studies, 2009 [Keith Crane, Andreas Goldthau, Michael Toman, Thomas Light, Stuart E. Johnson, Alireza Nader, Angel Rabasa, Harun Dogo; Imported Oil and U.S. National Security; RAND; http://www.rand.org/pubs/monographs/2009/RAND_MG838.sum.pdf]

The gap between U.S. production and consumption is so large that eliminating it would entail extraordinarily costly changes to patterns of consumption and production of fuels. Moreover, even if total
U.S. imports were cut sharply, the price of oil in the United States would still be determined by global, not national, shifts in supply and demand. A large, extended reduction in the global supply of oil would trigger a sharp rise in the price of oil and lead to a sharp fall in economic output in the United States, no matter how much or how little oil the United States imports.

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Iraq Stability Add-On (Economy): 2AC

Iraq Instability Tanks Global Economy
BUSINESS WEEK, staff, Victory Brings Greater Challenges, n. 3829, April 21, 2003, p. 118. The images are breathtaking -- Iraqis tearing down a huge statue of Saddam Hussein and celebrating their freedom. They echo nothing less than the fall of the Berlin Wall. As these pictures of liberation flash through the Middle East and Europe, the opportunity for the U.S. to build support for its goal of transforming Iraq into a prosperous democracy is at hand. The stakes for this mission are huge. If the U.S. succeeds at reshaping Iraq, it could transform the Middle East, curb terrorism, and bolster prosperity throughout the world. If it fails, a virulent form of anti-Americanism could undermine the global economy (page 34). At issue is the very multilateral economic system upon which business so deeply depends. The Bush Administration should take this moment of triumph to reach out to those who opposed its policy. This is what global leadership is all about. Bringing in the U.N. and European countries to help rebuild Iraq would go a long way toward diffusing the deep anti-Americanism so prevalent in the Middle East. This is precisely what happened in Afghanistan, to America's benefit. It may be that Washington feels too betrayed by the U.N. to allow it to play a predominant role in postwar Iraq. But the U.N. can, and should, have a significant role in distributing food, training police, rebuilding legal and financial systems. And it would benefit the U.S. if the U.N. played some part in the process of selecting Iraqis for the interim government. The last thing the U.S. needs is for the Middle East to see ''Made in the USA'' stamped on the Iraqi political system. It would leach away all legitimacy. Extinction T.E. Bearden, Fellow, Alpha Foundations Institute for Advaned Study & Director, Association of Distinguished American Scientists, The Unnecessary Energy Crisis: How to Solve It Quickly, ADAS POSITION PAPER: SOLUTION TO THE ENERGY CRISIS, June 12, 2K. Available from the World Wide Web at: www.cheniere.org/techpapers/Unnecessary%20Energy%20Crisis.doc, accessed 8/20/04. History bears out that desperate nations take desperate actions. Prior to the final economic collapse, the stress on nations will have increased the intensity and number of their conflicts, to the point where the arsenals of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) now possessed by some 25 nations, are almost certain to be released. As an example, suppose a starving North Korea {2} launches nuclear weapons upon Japan and South Korea, including U.S. forces there, in a spasmodic suicidal response. Or suppose a desperate China whose long range nuclear missiles can reach the United States attacks Taiwan. In addition to immediate responses, the mutual treaties involved in such scenarios will quickly draw other nations into the conflict, escalating it significantly. Strategic nuclear studies have shown for decades that, under such extreme stress conditions, once a few nukes are launched, adversaries and potential adversaries are then compelled to launch on perception of preparations by one's adversary. The real legacy of the MAD concept is this side of the MAD coin that is almost never discussed. Without effective defense, the only chance a nation has to survive at all, is to launch immediate fullbore pre-emptive strikes and try to take out its perceived foes as rapidly and massively as possible. As the studies showed, rapid escalation to full WMD exchange occurs, with a great percent of the WMD arsenals being unleashed . The resulting great Armageddon will destroy civilization as we know it, and perhaps most of the biosphere, at least for many decades.

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Iraq Stability Add-On (Federalism): 2AC

INSTABILITY GUTS GLOBAL FEDERALISM
Dawn Brancati, visiting scholar at the Center for the Study of Democratic Politics at Princeton University, WASHINGTON QUARTERLY, Spring 2004, p. http://www.twq.com/04spring/docs/04spring_brancati.pdf.

A civil war in Iraq may even undermine support for the concept of federalism more generally, which is significant given the number of countries also considering federalism, such as Afghanistan and Sri Lanka, to
name just two.

FEDERAL DIVISION OF POWERS IS KEY TO SUCCESFUL SPACE COLONIZATION

Elias 90 (George Henry, Ph.D, Engineering @ U.C. Berkeley. Breakout into Space: Mission for a Generation, 1990 page 63) The structure of the Constitution and our experience with state governments give us two other advantages

in expansion off-planet. The federal structure of the Constitution is ideal for governing new territories. New settlements can concentrate on solving the complex problems of frontier life without the distractions of foreign affairs and a variety of other issues that are better handled by a central government. For its part, Washington will tend not to interfere in the loval affairs of space settlements, as it tends not to interfere in state and local government now. By so doing, it will avoid the disastrous mistakes of the French and Spanish governments, whose excessive intervention in their sixteenth-century colonies proved ruinous. The success and experience this nation has had in fashioning fifty state governments is also important in the development of space communities. The tripartite division of powers, bicameral legislatures, and the town/country system of local administration established in most states define clear models for future governmentmakers. No other people can claim such expertise in self-rule. IMPACT IS EXTINCTION
DAILY RECORD, staff, July 8, 2002, LN.

THE Earth will be so gutted, wrecked, over-exploited and the barren seas so fished out that we will have to find a new planet - or even two - by 2050. Environmentalists at the World Wildlife Fund say we have just another half century of luxury living left before the Earth becomes a spent husk. By that time, we will either have to colonise space or risk human extinction as population and consumption expand.

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Iraq Stability Add-On (Genocide): 2AC

Instability Risks Genocide
Fred Kagan, American Enterprise Institute, CHOOSING VICTORY: A PLAN FOR SUCCESS IN IRAQ, January 5, 2007, http://www.aei.org/publications/pubID.25396/pub_detail.asp American forces in Iraq today are engaged in the pivotal struggle of our age. If the United States allows Iraq to slide into full-scale civil war, characterized by the collapse of the central government and the widespread mobilization of the population in internal conflict, the consequences will be epochal. Internal strife in Iraq has already generated a large displaced population within the
country and significant refugee flows into neighboring lands. Those neighbors, both Sunni and Shia, have already made clear their determination to enter Iraq and its struggles if America withdraws and the conflict escalates into greater sectarian violence or civil war. Iraqs diverse neighbors, however, have opposing interests in how the conflict is settled. Consequently, failure in Iraq now will likely lead to regional war, destabilizing important states in the Middle East and creating a fertile ground for terrorism. Success in Iraq, on the other hand, would transform the international situation. Success will give the United States critical leverage against Iran, which is now positioning itself to become the regional hegemon after our anticipated defeat. It will strengthen Americas position around the world, where our inability to contain conflict in Iraq is badly tarnishing our stature. And success will convert a violent, chaotic region in the heart of the Middle East and on the front line of the Sunni-Shiite divide into a secure state able to support peace within its borders and throughout the region. There can be no question that victory in Iraq is worth considerable American effort or that

defeat would be

catastrophic. Some now argue that victory is beyond our grasp. America cannot (or should not) involve itself in civil,
sectarian conflicts, they say, and the troops required to control such conflicts are larger than the U.S. military could possibly deploy. Neither of these arguments is valid. The United States has faced ethno-sectarian conflict on at least five occasions in the past fifteen years. In Somalia, Afghanistan, and Rwanda, successive American administrations allowed the conflicts to continue without making any serious attempts to control or contain them. The results have been disastrous.

Inaction

in Afghanistan in the 1990s led to the rise of the Taliban and its support for Osama bin Laden and al Qaedaand therefore indirectly to the 9/11 attacks. Inaction, indeed humiliation, in Somalia led to a larger civil war in which radical Islamists took control of most of the country by the end of 2006. In late December, the conflict took a new turn as Ethiopian troops invaded Somalia in support

Rwanda, civil war and genocide also spread, involving Congo and, indeed, much of sub-Saharan Africa in widespread conflict and death. One clear lesson of postCold War conflicts is that ignoring civil wars is dangerous and can generate
of the internationally recognized transitional government. A civil war has become a regional war, as civil wars often do. In grave, unintended consequences for Americas future security. The United States has recently intervened, along with its allies, to control ethnically and religiously motivated civil wars on two occasions, however: in 1995 in Bosnia and in 1999 in Kosovo. Both efforts were successful in ending the violence and creating the preconditions for peace and political and economic imperfect: much of the ethnic cleansing had already been accomplished in both areas before the United States intervened with armed force. In the Balkans, however, the levels of violence and death as a proportion of the population were much higher than they have been in Iraq. Additionally, the armed forces of the states neighboring Bosnia and Kosovo were much more directly involved in the struggle than those of Iraqs neighbors. Above all, the introduction of U.S. and European forces in strength in Bosnia and Kosovo has ended the killing and prevented that conflict from spreading throughout the region, as it threatened to do in the 1990s

. It

is possible to contain ethno-sectarian civil wars, but only by ending them. The United States has the military power necessary to control
the violence in Iraq. The main purpose of the report that follows is to consider in detail what amount of armed force would be needed to bring the sectarian violence in Baghdad down to levels that would permit economic and political development and real national reconciliation. Before turning to that consideration, however, we should reflect on the fact that the United States between 2001 and 2006 has committed only a small proportion of its total national strength to this struggle. There are more than 1 million soldiers in the active and reserve ground forces, and only 140,000 of them are in Iraq at

Outweighs
B. Harff-Gur, Professor, Northwestern, Humanitarian Intervention as a Remedy for Genocide, 1981, p. 40. One of the most enduring and abhorrent problems of the world is genocide, which is neither particular to a specific race, class, or nation, nor is it rooted in any one, ethnocentric view of the world. Prohibition of genocide and affirmation

of its opposite, the value of life, are an eternal ethical verity, one whose practical implications necessarily outweigh possible theoretical objections and as such should lift it above prevailing ideologies or politics. Genocide concerns and potentially effects all people. People make up a legal system, according to Kelsen.
Politics is the expression of conflict among competing groups. Those in power give the political system its character, i.e. the state. The state, according to Kelsen, is nothing but the combined will of all its people. This abstract concept of the state may at first glance appear meaningless, because in reality not all people have an equal voice in the formation of the characteristics of the state. But I am not concerned with the characteristics of the state but rather the essence of the state the people.

Without a people there would be no state or legal system. With genocide eventually there will be no people. Genocide is ultimately a threat to the existence of all. True, sometimes only certain groups are targeted, as in Nazi Germany. Sometimes a large part of the total population is eradicated, as in contemporary Cambodia.
Sometimes people are eliminated regardless of national origin the Christians in Roman times. Sometimes whole nations vanish the Amerindian societies after the Spanish conquest. And sometimes religious groups are persecuted the Mohammedans by the Crusaders. The culprit changes: sometimes it is a specific state, or those in power in a state; occasionally it is the winners vs. the vanquished in international conflicts; and in its crudest form the stronger against the weaker. Since virtually every social group is a potential victim, genocide is a universal concern.

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_______________ ****Answers****

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AT: Presence Solves Stability (1/2)

U.S. presence has no positive leverage and extending our stay just angers Iraqis
Lynch, 10 [Marc, Associate Professor of Political Science and the Director of the Institute for Middle East Studies at the Elliott School of International Affairs at George Washington University, 2/23/2010, Iraq contingencies, Foreign Policy, http://lynch.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2010/02/23/iraq_contingencies] The drawdown will probably matter considerably less than people expect. With the new SOFA-defined rules of engagement, U.S. forces have already stopped doing many of the things associated with the "surge." The Iraqi response

to American efforts on the de-Baathification circus demonstrate painfully clearly that the nearly 100,000 troops still in Iraq gave very little leverage on an issue which the U.S. at least publicly deemed vital -- a
point made very effectively by Ambassador Hill at the Council on Foreign Relations last week. The sharp backlash against even the measured criticisms by U.S. officials offers an important lesson: Doing the sorts of assertive things which

may please Obama's critics are highly likely to spark a negative reaction among Iraqis, generating more hostility to the U.S. role without actually accomplishing anything. The U.S. is wise to avoid them. That doesn't mean that things are rosy. The de-Baathification circus has demonstrated the fragility of Iraqi institutions, and helped to reignite sectarian resentments and fears (many Sunnis feel targeted, while many Shia are being treated to an endless barrage of anti-Ba'athist electoral propaganda). There's very much a risk of long, drawn-out coalition talks after the election. It isn't certain how a transition from power will go, should Maliki's list lose, given the prime minister's efforts to centralize power in his office
over the last few years. There may well be a spike in violence by frustrated losers in the elections. If there's massive fraud on election day, things could get ugly. The elections, already marred by the deBaathification fiasco, may well end up producing a new Parliament and government which doesn't really change much. There are big, long-deferred issues to confront after the elections, such as the Article 140

But none of those issues would be resolved by an American effort to delay its military drawdown. They generally fall into the "sub-optimal" rather than the "catastrophic" category. An American decision to delay the drawdown would not likely be welcomed by Iraqis in the current political environment. Nor would it generate more leverage for the U.S. over internal Iraqi affairs. Iraq's future is not really about us, if it ever was -- not a function of American military levels, commitment, or caring, but
referendum over Kirkuk

rather of internal Iraqi power struggles and dynamics.

TurnInstability is a reason to leaveit proves that US presence is ineffective

Dodge, 10 (Toby, Senior Consulting Fellow for the Middle East at the IISS and Reader in International Politics at Queen Mary, University of London, The US and Iraq: Time to Go Home, March 25, Survival 52:2. 129-140, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00396331003764660)

A final reason for the removal of the US military presence in Iraq is the sheer number of problems now facing the country: the weak and highly politicised rule of law, the profound corruption that finds protection at the highest levels of the Iraqi political elite, and the dominance of that unpopular and formally exiled elite all have origins in decisions taken either in Washington itself or by American diplomats working for
the Coalition Provisional Authority and their successors operating in the Green Zone from 2003 until 2007. After a military presence of seven years, the argument that an extended commitment of another two or three years will fix the problems created under occupation does not stand up to scrutiny. If the US presence has failed to

create a stable, sustainable post-war settlement in Iraq by now, why would the continued presence of 50,000 troops after 2011 make a difference?

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AT: Presence Solves Stability (2/2)

Maintaining presence cant solve stabilitycurrent state-building forces are overstretched and public opinion makes increases impossible
Simon, 7 (Steven, Senior Fellow in Middle Eastern Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, America and Iraq: The Case for Disengagement, Survival 49:1, 61-84, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00396330701254537)

The US Army and Marine Corps are too compact to meet the labour-intensive challenge of state building in Iraq. This is true as well for the State Departments civilian resources. To foster reconstruction of a country with 28.8 million people, the United States has authorised 167 non-Department of Defense civilians, alongside 178 soldiers, to work in provincial reconstruction teams . It has managed to fill 116 of
these civilian positions. For a perspective on this commitment, consider Vietnam in 1969 then a country of 18m when the State Department had 1,700 personnel alongside 6,400 troops in Civil Operations and Revolutionary Development Support teams, the equivalent of todays provincial reconstruction teams. The presidents declared intention to double the

small number of teams in Iraq shows an awareness of the importance of reconstruction, but seems oblivious to the difficulty the State Department has faced in recruiting qualified officers for service in Iraq. In the late 1960s, one of every 25 State Department or US Agency for International Development employees was in Vietnam; in Iraqs reconstruction teams, the ratio is one to 333. The level of reconstruction assistance tells the same story. The presidents pledge of more than $1 billion in additional funds represents a mere rounding error compared to previous allocations, and seems unrelated to the magnitude of current needs .
Again, for comparison, the United States spent 2% percent of gross domestic product on economic and military assistance to Vietnam, but less than 0.2% for Iraq.2 If the consequences of defeat in Iraq are in fact incalculable, as Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates has told Congress, the gap between the presumed strategic stakes and the US level of effort is striking. Lamentably, the erosion of public support for the war and confidence in the presidents judgement have virtually ruled out the possibility of bridging the chasm between resources and requirements.

US military not key to checking violence in Iraq

The Iraq Study Group Report , December 6th 2006, The Way Forward, A New Approach, pg.31-32 online @ http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/WSJ-iraq_study_group.pdf The use of force by the government of Iraq is appropriate and necessary to stop militias that act as death squads or use violence against institutions of the state. However, solving the problem of militias requires national reconciliation.

Dealing with Iraqs militias will require long-term attention, and substantial funding will be needed to disarm, demobilize, and reintegrate militia members into civilian society. Around the world, this process of
transitioning members of irregular military forces from civil conflict to new lives once a peace settlement takes hold is familiar. The disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration of militias depends on national reconciliation and on confidence-building measures among the parties to that reconciliation. Both the United Nations and expert and experienced nongovernmental organizations, especially the International Organization for Migration, must be on the ground with appropriate personnel months before any program to disarm, demobilize, and reintegrate militia members begins. Because the United States is a party to the conflict, the U.S.

military should not be involved in implementing such a program. Yet U.S. financial and technical support is crucial.

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AT: Stability Now

Extend the 1AC Christian Science Moniter evidence. Its from May and it lists specific attacks that have occurred recently. And, even after elections, the country is still mired in a recount demanded by Maliki. Even if there is some stability now, if we fail to withdraw correctly, there will be civil war and mass violencethats our Hanna evidence. Therefore, withdrawing is key to maintaining stability. a. Terrorists who oppose Iraqi democracy are instigating violence and instability.
The Financial Times, 4/6 [Andrew England; Attacks raise doubts about Iraq stability; http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/ac66e73c-4160-11df-adec-00144feabdc0,s01=1.html] A series of bomb blasts in residential areas of Baghdad killed at least 35 people yesterday and wounded more than 150 others - the latest in a string of deadly attacks that have raised concerns about the stability of the fragile nation. The attacks targeted buildings in predominantly Shia and mixed neighbourhoods, just two days after three suicide bombs exploded near embassies killing more than 40 people. Another 24 people were shot on Friday after assailants wearing military uniforms raided an Arab Sunni village south of Baghdad. The upsurge in violence has taken place against a backdrop of protracted negotiations between the political groups that contested Iraqs March 7 election as they attempt to thrash out deals to form the next government. Iraqiya, a secular coalition led by Iyad Allawi, gained a narrow victory at the polls, winning two more seats than State of Law, an alliance headed by Nouri al-Maliki, the prime minister. But with no group close to a majority in the 325-member parliament, who leads the next administration will be determined by which movement is able to form alliances with other blocs. The political wrangling is expected to take months, amid concerns that extremists seeking to undermine the state and the political process will try to take advantage of the uncertainty. "This is blamed on the power vacuum of course, and on how democracy is being raped in Iraq," Mr Allawi told The Associated Press. "Because people are sensing there are powers who want to obstruct the path of democracy, terrorists and al-Qaida are on the go." After the last election in 2005, an escalation of sectarian violence dragged the country to the brink of full-blown civil war. There have been significant security gains over the past 18 months, but Iraq remains riddled with divisions and mistrust. Philip Frayne, a US embassy spokesman, said the US did not see the latest bout of violence the worst since January as a parallel to the period of sectarian strife. We are always concerned when there are terrorist attacks and when there are killings like there was at the village south of Baghdad on Friday, he said. We watch the situation very closely but we are far from the point where we are going to start to panic or anything. Joost Hiltermann, an analyst at the International Crisis Group, said the reaction of the politicians would be critical as they horsetrade over the next government. The longer it goes on the greater the opportunity for these extremists to trigger something bigger, he said. So far no one has gone for the bait, but the danger is someone sooner or later will, in the sense of starting the blame game.. That is the key: will the political leaders be mature and wise enough to see what is happening and rise above it. Large scale attacks in Iraq are routinely blamed on al-Qaeda militants and former members of Saddam Husseins Baath party.

b. Byman and Pollack from the 1AC say that only our aff solvesUS presence only fuels more terrorist attacks and violence.

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AT: W/D => Instability

.Byman and Pollack from the 1AC say that only US presence only fuels more terrorist attacks and violence. Withdrawing is only way to stop terrorist propaganda claims. This turns and takes out all of their claims. Extend Hanna from the 1ACWithdrawing risks instability in the region by undercutting the Iraqi government. Withdrawal is empirically proven create regional stability. Prefer historical ev.
Ramberg 09 (Bennett, April 2009, PhD, John Hopkins, nationally recognized expert on nuclear weapons proliferation, terrorism and international politics, has been a foreign policy analyst and/or consultant to the Department of State (Bureau of Politico-Military Affairs), U.S. Senate, Nuclear Control Institute, Henry Stimson Center, Global Green and Committee to Bridge the Gap, Foreign Affairs, The Precedent for Withdrawal, http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/64651/bennett-ramberg/the-precedents-for-withdrawal) In November 2008, the governments of the United States and Iraq agreed that U.S. troops would leave Iraq by 2011 -- eight years after the U.S. invasion. For some, this is much too soon. These critics argue that events on the ground, not an artificial deadline, should govern the pullout and that, in any case, a residual force should remain for decades. But as Washington ponders how long to stay in Iraq, it would do well to examine the strategic impact of the United States' withdrawal from other conflict-riven countries: Vietnam and Cambodia in the 1970s, Lebanon in the 1980s, and Somalia in the 1990s. Even though Washington's commitment to these situations differed in its degree,

disengagement eventually proved to be the right policy for the United States. Abandonment damaged Washington's credibility at first, but it was the best way to protect U.S. interests in the long run . The
dominoes did not fall after the United States left Southeast Asia; Moscow did not fill the power vacuum in Lebanon; Washington has been largely unaffected by the failed state of Somalia. In each case, after the United States exited,

its adversaries became preoccupied with consolidating power and embroiled themselves in conflicts with neighboring countries. A regional stability of sorts emerged, leaving Washington's vital interests intact .
For the people of Vietnam, Cambodia, Lebanon, and Somalia, U.S. withdrawal may have been a mixed blessing. But from the United States' perspective, the costs of withdrawal were less than those of staying and lower than what had been feared.

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AT: Instability Doesnt Spillover

Fahim from the 1AC indicates that instability would cause a civil warIraq is incredibly fragile. Extend the 1AC Byman and Pollack ev. The current ethnic tensions will break into all-out civil war, and this means that secession attempts and regional violence will cause more instability. Iraqs porous borders mean that Iraqs neighbors will be inevitably be drawn in. Iraqi civil war causes terrorism, wars throughout the region, destabilizing refugee crises, and prompts disastrous interventions by outside powers.
Byman, Senior Fellow, Foreign Policy, Saban Center for Middle East Policy, 2007 [Daniel L. Byman; Kenneth M. Pollack; May-June 2007; Keeping the Lid On Iraq's Civil War; The National Interest; http://www.brookings.edu/articles/2007/05iraq_byman.aspx] The collapse of Iraq into all-out civil war would mean more than just a humanitarian tragedy that could easily

claim hundreds of thousands of Iraqi lives and produce millions of refugees. Such a conflict is unlikely to contain itself. In other similar cases of all-out civil war the resulting spillover has fostered terrorism, created refugee flows that can destabilize the entire neighborhood, radicalized the populations of surrounding states and even sparked civil wars in other, neighboring states or transformed domestic strife into regional war. Terrorists frequently find a home in states in civil war, as Al-Qaeda did in Afghanistan. However, civil wars just as often breed new terrorist groups-Hizballah, the Palestine Liberation Organization, the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat of Algeria, and the Tamil Tigers were all born of civil wars. Many such groups start by focusing on local targets but then shift to international attacks-starting with those they believe are aiding their enemies in the civil war. This process is already
underway in Iraq; the 2005 hotel bombings in Amman, Jordan were organized from Iraqi territory. Iraq-based groups are also inspiring others to emulate their targets and tactics. As they regularly do in Iraq, jihadist terrorists have tried to strike Saudi Arabia's oil infrastructure, a switch from the jihadists' past avoidance of oil targets. Moreover, their Improvised Explosive Device technologies are showing up in

. In turn, an ongoing civil war can contribute to the radicalization of populations in neighboring countries. Already, the war has heightened Shi'a-Sunni tension throughout the Middle East. In March 2006, after Sunni jihadists bombed
Afghanistan.1 Suicide bombing, heretofore largely unknown in Afghanistan, is also now a regular occurrence, with the Iraq struggle providing a model to jihadists in Al-Qaeda's former home the Shi'i Askariya Shrine in the northern Iraqi city of Samarra, over 100,000 Bahraini Shi'a took to the streets in anger. Bahraini Shi'a are simultaneously horrified at the suffering of their co-religionists in Iraq

And as Iraq descends into further violence, the numbers of refugees will likely increase exponentially. Iraq has already generated roughly two million refugees with another one million internally displaced. These represent large groupings of embittered people who can serve as a ready recruiting pool for armed groups still waging the civil war.
and emboldened by their political successes. As one Bahraini Shi'a politician noted, "Whenever things in Iraq go haywire, it reflects here."2 And as the wars in Africa's Great Lakes region show, foreign countries where refugees find shelter can become caught up in the civil war. At times, the refugees simply bring the war with them: The fighters mingle with non-combatant refugees and launch attacks back in their home countries, while those who drove them out continue the fight against the refugees in their new bases. Neighboring governments may try to defend refugees on their soil from attacks by their enemies or at times exploit the refugees as a proxy for the governments' own ambitions. Moreover, large refugee flows can overstrain the economies and

Then there is the "demonstration effect" caused when a civil war involves one group seeking separation or independence as the solution to its problems. Sometimes, other groups in similar circumstances (either in the state in civil war or in neighboring countries) follow suit if the first group appears to have achieved some degree of success. Thus Slovenia's secession from Yugoslavia started the first of those civil wars, but it also provoked Croatia to declare its independence, which forced Bosnia to follow suit-and in both of the latter cases Serb enclaves within both countries sought to secede from the seceding state and join with Serbia. All the problems created by these and other forms of spillover often provoke neighboring states to intervene-to stop terrorism as Israel tried repeatedly in Lebanon, to halt the flow of refugees as the Europeans tried in Yugoslavia and the Iranians in Afghanistan, or to end (or respond to) the radicalization of its own population as Syria did in Lebanon. These interventions usually turn out badly for all involved. Iraq is already seeing both actual intervention and threats of intervention. Iran has hundreds, or perhaps thousands, of intelligence and paramilitary personnel in Iraq and is arming an array of Iraqi groups. Leaders of Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Jordan have all threatened interventions of their own, both to mollify
even change the demographic balances of small or weak neighboring states, upsetting what is often a delicate political balance.

Iran has nuclear weapons and Steinbach indicates that any serious conflict in the future would result in a nuclear war. The release of nuclear weapons would mean that China invades Taiwan, and this conflict goes nuclear, resulting in extinctionthats Corsi, Adams, and Straits Times.

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AT: W/D Hurts Credibility

Extend Odom from the 1AC. The UN and the USs allies dont want to be in Iraqtheyve already withdrawn. Pulling out before the situation gets worse avoids getting blamed for a potentially worse situation. There is no other alternative. Extend Quelch et al in 2k9If Obama sticks to his timetable, the US will gain a significant amount credibility. Any alternative risks backlash from all sides. There is no way the US is going to win the war in Iraq. Withdrawing will be seen as the best option and shows solidarity with our allies

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AT: Iraqis not Ready

US troop presence only encourages dependence on US forces. The US must leave to bolster Iraqi confidence and independence. Quick Withdrawal key to Iraqi Fill-in
Christopher Preble et al, 2004 (Director of foreign policy studies at CATO; Exiting Iraq: Why the U.S. must end the military occupation and renew the war against Al Qaeda, p. 66, CB)

The United States should follow up its military victory and the recognition of a new Iraqi government with a swift but orderly troop withdrawal from Iraq. As has been documented at length above, a permanent American military presence in Iraq is unnecessary. The surest way to turn a short-term military victory into a punishing and costly defeat would be to overstay our welcome.158 There are many indications that our welcome has already worn thin. President Bush admitted in April that the Iraqis were not happy theyre occupied. I wouldnt be happy if I were occupied either.159 Resentment of the occupation lingers and grows. Attacks continue on both Coalition forces and Iraqis accused of collaborating with the occupation. American policy must be directed toward ensuring that this resentment does not spread. Many Iraqi citizens will allow the Coalition forces to carry forward an interim plan for stabilizing the Iraqi government, but they will not do so if they see the process as merely legitimizing a continued military occupation. That is why the Bush administration must move beyond its vague assurancessuch as the presidents pledge
that American forces would remain in the country as long as is necessary, and not one day more160by publicly renouncing calls for a long-term occupation and by committing to a formal plan for withdrawal.

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AT: Moral Obligation to Stay

[ ] US forces do nothing to help the Iraqi people, and we also have a moral obligation not to waste lives- staying the course is immoral.
Ted Galen Carpenter Vice President, Defense and Foreign Policy Studies Cato Institute January 11, 2007 Escaping the Trap: Why the United States Must Leave Iraq http://www.cato.org/testimony/ct-tgc01112007.html Allegation: Leaving Iraq Would Betray a Moral Obligation to the Iraqi People. In addition to their other objections, opponents of withdrawal protest that we will leave Iraq in chaos, and that would be an immoral action on the part of the United States. Even some critics of the war have been susceptible to that argument, invoking the so-called Pottery Barn

principle: "You broke it, you bought it." There are two major problems with that argument. First, unless some restrictions are put in place, the obligation is seemingly open-ended. There is little question that chaos might increase in Iraq after U.S. forces leave, but advocates of staying the course do not explain how the United States can prevent the contending factions in Iraq from fighting the civil war they already seem to have started. At least, no one has explained how the United States can restore the peace there at anything resembling
a reasonable cost in American blood and treasure. Leaving aside the very real possibility that the job of building a stable democracy might never be done, the moral obligation thesis begs a fundamental question: What about the moral obligation of the U.S. government to its own soldiers and to the American people? There is clearly an obligation not to waste either American lives American tax dollars. We are doing both in Iraq . Staying the course is not a moral

strategy; it is the epitome of an immoral one.

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AT: Kurdistan Violence

Kurdistan is stable nowindependence and the Peshmerga prevent insurgent infiltration
Carpenter, 9 (TG, The Guardians lead correspondent in Iraq, Middle East Vortex: An Unstable Iraq and Its Implications for the Region, Mediterranean Quarterly, 20.4, Fall, 22-31, Project Muse) Thanks to US assistance, Kurdistan has enjoyed de facto independence since the end of the Persian Gulf War in 1991. When Washington began to enforce a no-fly zone over northern Iraq, the Kurds took advantage of that protection to establish and consolidate their regions self-rule. Unable to bring his air power to bear, Saddam Hussein could not reassert Baghdads control, since the Peshmerga was more than a match for Iraqi ground forces. More recently, the Peshmerga have been strong enough to prevent infiltration by al Qaeda or Iraqi Arab Sunni and Shiite militias. That relatively stable security environment has enabled Kurdistan to enjoy solid economic growth in contrast to the rather dismal situation in the rest of Iraq. A construction boom has taken place in Kurdish cities, and Western firms in an assortment of industries seem eager to invest in Kurdistan .6 The current global economic recession has slowed the process, but just modestly. Foreign investment interest is most pronounced with regard to Kurdish oil production, but it extends to other economic arenas as well. It is especially revealing that companies wishing to do business in Kurdistan normally work through the regional government, not Baghdad. Despite vehement complaints from Iraqi leaders (and US occupation authorities), the Kurdish government continues to sign multimillion-dollar agreements with various Western companies.7 In addition, Iraqi Kurdistan is building its own oil refineries, a step that gives it further independence from Baghdad on energy issues.8

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AT: Moral Obligation to Stay

[ ] US forces do nothing to help the Iraqi people, and we also have a moral obligation not to waste lives- staying the course is immoral.
Ted Galen Carpenter Vice President, Defense and Foreign Policy Studies Cato Institute January 11, 2007 Escaping the Trap: Why the United States Must Leave Iraq http://www.cato.org/testimony/ct-tgc01112007.html Allegation: Leaving Iraq Would Betray a Moral Obligation to the Iraqi People. In addition to their other objections, opponents of withdrawal protest that we will leave Iraq in chaos, and that would be an immoral action on the part of the United States. Even some critics of the war have been susceptible to that argument, invoking the so-called Pottery Barn

principle: "You broke it, you bought it." There are two major problems with that argument. First, unless some restrictions are put in place, the obligation is seemingly open-ended. There is little question that chaos might increase in Iraq after U.S. forces leave, but advocates of staying the course do not explain how the United States can prevent the contending factions in Iraq from fighting the civil war they already seem to have started. At least, no one has explained how the United States can restore the peace there at anything resembling
a reasonable cost in American blood and treasure. Leaving aside the very real possibility that the job of building a stable democracy might never be done, the moral obligation thesis begs a fundamental question: What about the moral obligation of the U.S. government to its own soldiers and to the American people? There is clearly an obligation not to waste either American lives American tax dollars. We are doing both in Iraq . Staying the course is not a moral

strategy; it is the epitome of an immoral one.

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*******Iraqi Credibility Stuff******* W/D k Iraqi Cred

Withdrawal key to maintain Iraqi government and credibility- demonstrates attention to state affairs
Christopher Preble et al, 2004 (Director of foreign policy studies at CATO; Exiting Iraq: Why the U.S. must end the military occupation and renew the war against Al Qaeda, p. 59, CB) Those specific security aims for the new government in Iraq can be achieved within a relatively short

period of time and must be communicated to that government before, and after, the American military withdrawal. Indeed, we hasten to add, a U.S. military withdrawal should not signal a lack of attention to the affairs of state in Iraq. Eliot Cohen alleged that an American withdrawal would encourage the insurgents to believe
that a humiliating American exit will improve the chances that the United States would stay out of that part of the world for good.153 It would be the height of irresponsibility for any American leader to allow that misperception to take hold. An

American military withdrawal would not, and must not, signal that the United States has chosen to ignore events in Iraq any more than the American withdrawal from any other part of the world signals an inability or an unwillingness to actively defend vital American interests.

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W/D k Moderates
Withdrawal shows U.S. Commitment to Iraq Strengthens Iraqi Moderates
Christopher Preble et al, 2004 (Director of foreign policy studies at CATO; Exiting Iraq: Why the U.S. must end the military occupation and renew the war against Al Qaeda, p. 60, CB)

Genuine sovereignty for a new government in Iraq can be achieved only when American military personnel are removed from the country. Anything short of that will forever leave the impression that the new government does not serve the people of Iraq. A handover of political sovereignty that does not also include the removal of U.S. military personnel from the country is no more than a fig leaf. That is true
even if the handover is accompanied by the superficial trappings of international legitimacy, such as membership in international organizations and recognition of new national symbols. Such a handover might be suitable for

temporarily calming U.S. domestic fears of a quagmire in Iraq, but such half measures will hardly satisfy the wishes of the Iraqi people. They know that genuine sovereignty is derived from the ability to defend ones
country from threats, both internal and external. They will not be satisfied with merely replacing the tyrannical autocracy of a native Iraqi with a government exercising only partial sovereignty and therefore perceived as serving the wishes of a foreign power. Every day that the United States remains in Iraq in pursuit of a particular system of

government, the moderates will grow weaker and the extremists will become emboldened. Instead of trying to control the various steps of the process in an attempt to engineer a perfect result, the United States should studiously avoid placing preconditions on the Iraqis that will slow progress toward selfgovernment. American policymakers in Washington and in Iraq must direct all military and diplomatic efforts toward turning Iraq over to the Iraqi people promptly. To do so, Washington should take the
following steps.

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W/D key U.S.-Iraqi Relations

Sustained US troop presence risks alienation top military officers agree
Pilkington 2009 (Ed, the Guardian's New York correspondent. He is a former national and foreign editor of the paper, and author of Beyond the Mother Country http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jul/30/iraq-memo-reese-usawithdrawal US should declare victory and leave Iraq, says top military officer)

A top US military officer in Baghdad has stirred controversy by arguing in a confidential memo that the American presence in Iraq has outlived its welcome and that it was time "for the US to declare victory and go home". The memo, leaked to the New York Times, was written by Colonel Timothy Reese who calls for all US troops to be pulled out of Iraq by August next year. He draws on the adage "Guests, like fish, begin to smell after three days," adding: "Since the signing of the 2009 security agreement, we are guests in Iraq and after six years in Iraq, we now smell bad to the Iraqi nose." Under that Status Force Agreement, the US has agreed with the Iraqi government to complete withdrawal by the end of 2011. Though the numbers of troops pulled out
so far is limited, the US military has begun to quit Baghdad and other Iraqi cities. The disclosure of the Reese memo comes a day after the US defence secretary Robert Gates said that the pull-back from Iraq could be sped up slightly with the inclusion of an extra brigade of about 5,000 troops by the end of this year on top of the two already planned. But that still leaves most US troops still inside Iraq at the time of the sensitive Iraqi elections in January. Reese, an author of the official US army history of the Iraq war and a current adviser to the Iraqi military in Baghdad, is double-headed in his memo. He warns that there are still big problems within the Iraqi security forces, from corruption to ongoing political pressure from Shia politicians. He also reports that since the US withdrawal of combat troops from Baghdad, there has been a

"sudden coolness" shown by Iraqi military leaders towards US advisers. Iraqi units were now less willing to work with the Americans in joint operations. Nonetheless, he goes on to argue that staying on will only foment further resentment among Iraqis.

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*******Heg/Recruitment Advantage******* Uniq: Iraq Kills Readiness

U.S Iraq involvement hurts readiness
Lawerence Kaplan, Editor of World Affairs, War Finds Us, March 2010 NEED TO RE-CITE!!! (MAC) Where all this leads is clear. The war on terror, or whatever phrase one prefers, will constrain American national security policy as much or even more than the Cold War did (dtente, containment, and the panoply of other tools used to deter the Soviet Union simply do not apply to al-Qaeda). Regardless of their own preferences, future

presidential administrations will be presented with challenges that they could hardly have anticipated, and to which they will be obliged to respond. The U nited Nations will not be able to. Europe will not be able to. Either the United States will respond, or no one will. This is not to say that Washington needs no grand
strategy, or that it ought to contend with challenges on a case-by-case basis. Quite the contrary, candor and paying due respect to reality means acknowledging that a mere change of presidential administration will not sweep up the legacy of the past 4 years, much less the past century. There will be no respite at home because there will be no respite abroad. This is a

burden that will shackle the next administration and the one after that, and it will have profound and lasting consequences for Americas defense establishment, which is unlikely to shrink anytime soon. To paraphrase one of the founding fathers of our last foe, Leon Trotsky, Americans may not be interested in war, but war is most certainly interested in them. US Presence consumes too many troops-hurts readiness
The Iraq Study Group Report , December 6th 2006, The Way Forward, A New Approach, pg.31-32 online @ http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/WSJ-iraq_study_group.pdf Sustained increases in U.S. troop levels would not solve the fundamental cause of violence in Iraq, which is the absence of national reconciliation. A senior American general told us that adding U.S. troops might temporarily help limit violence in a highly localized area. However, past experience indicates that the violence would simply rekindle as soon as U.S. forces are moved to another area. As another American general told us, if the Iraqi

government does not make political progress, all the troops in the world will not provide security. Meanwhile, Americas military capacity is stretched thin: we do not have the troops or equipment to make a substantial, sustained increase in our troop presence. Increased deployments to Iraq would also necessarily hamper our ability to provide adequate resources for our efforts in Afghanistan or respond to crises around the world.

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Uniq: Iraq Kills Readiness

Continued US presence hurts readiness
The Iraq Study Group Report , December 6th 2006, The Way Forward, A New Approach, pg.31-32 online @ http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/WSJ-iraq_study_group.pdf The United States should not make an open-ended commitment to keep large numbers of American troops deployed in Iraq for three compelling reasons. First, and most importantly, the United States faces other security

dangers in the world, and a continuing Iraqi commitment of American ground forces at present levels will leave no reserve available to meet other contingencies. On September 7, 2006, General James Jones, our
NATO commander, called for more troops in Afghanistan, where U.S. and NATO forces are fighting a resurgence of al Qaeda and Taliban forces. The United States should respond positively to that request, and be prepared for other security contingencies, including those in Iran and North Korea. Second, the long-term commitment of American ground

forces to Iraq at current levels is adversely affecting Army readiness, with less than a third of the Army units currently at high readiness levels. The Army is unlikely to be able to meet the next rotation of troops in Iraq
without undesirable changes in its deployment practices. The Army is now considering breaking its compact with the National Guard and Reserves that limits the number of years that these citizen-soldiers can be deployed. Behind this shortterm strain is the longer-term risk that the ground forces will be impaired in ways that will take years to reverse. And finally, an open-ended commitment of American forces would not provide the Iraqi government the

incentive it needs to take the political actions that give Iraq the best chance of quelling sectarian violence. In the absence of such an incentive, the Iraqi government might continue to delay taking those difficult actions. While it is clear that the presence of U.S. troops in Iraq is moderating the violence, there is little evidence that the long-term deployment of U.S. troops by itself has led or will lead to fundamental improvements in the security situation. It is important to recognize that there are no risk-free alternatives available to the United States at this time. Reducing our combat troop commitments in Iraq, whenever that occurs, undeniably creates risks, but leaving those forces tied down in Iraq indefinitely creates its own set of security risks.

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Uniq: Power Projection Ok

US troop presence in Iraq is unnecessary for security- The US has near limitless power projection
Christopher Preble et al, 2004 (Director of foreign policy studies at CATO; Exiting Iraq: Why the U.S. must end the military occupation and renew the war against Al Qaeda, p. 43, CB)

The military occupation of Iraq is not vital to U.S. security. We need not station our forces in the midst of a hostile landscape in perpetuity in order to safeguard U.S. vital security interests. That lesson was driven
home during the last war. The American bases in Saudi Arabiathe same bases that had generated the resentment and anger that fed the radical Islamists movementwere unnecessary. Hundreds of sorties were flown by aircraft launched from bases located thousands of miles away from the target area. We know of aircraft launching from the United Kingdom

and tiny Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean. Even more incredible, a number of bombing missions were conducted by aircraft flying round-trip from the United States.125 Clearly, the American militarys capacity for projecting power knows few limits. With the removal of Saddams regime, no sensible person is contemplating another ground invasion of any country in the region. Therefore, there is no strategic rationale for retaining American forces in Iraq.

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Solvency: Retention/Recruitment
Quick Withdrawal key to Boost Recruitment and Retention
Preble 2004 (Christopher, director of foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute and a member of the Coalition for a Realistic Foreign Policy, Wisest Move: Leave Soon March 19, 2004) http://www.cato.org/research/articles/preble-040319.html There are three primary reasons for ending the U.S. military occupation of Iraq. First, our military presence weakens liberal democratic forces in Iraq. It may be unfair to characterize the new government in Iraq as a U.S. puppet, but such sentiments are widespread. It will be more difficult to prove the government's legitimacy if it is seen as

dependent upon U.S. forces for its survival. Second, a military presence in Iraq is not needed to protect U.S. security interests, and such a presence is costly. The Bush administration hopes to conceal these costs -- $3 billion to $4 billion a month -- until after the November election. Meanwhile, we risk undermining the strength and credibility of our armed forces by spreading them too thin. These costs will be measured in faltering recruitment and retention rates. And then there is the incalculable cost of the dead and wounded . Finally, the military occupation of Iraq is not merely unnecessary and costly. It is counterproductive in the fight against the terrorists who pose the greatest threat to us: al-Qaeda and its affiliated groups. By withdrawing from Iraq, the United States would be broadcasting to the world, in particular Arab and Muslim populations, that America has no plans to seize control of Middle East oil or to suppress the peaceful aspirations of the region's population. Withdrawal would undermine the credibility of anti-American propaganda that characterizes the occupation as a vehicle for U.S. dominance in the region. In other words, the United States
should leave Iraq precisely because it is what the Iraqis want and what the terrorists fear. At the same time, the Bush administration must communicate to the people of Iraq: "We have withdrawn militarily from your country, but that does not mean that we will ignore what you do. Do not harbor al-Qaeda or other anti-American terrorist groups, or we will be back." The message would be even simpler, and more chilling, for al-Qaeda and its ilk: "Now we are coming for you. Our ability to find and destroy you -- wherever you may be -- is enhanced by the elimination of our costly and burdensome occupation in Iraq." An orderly exit by U.S. forces can be touted for what it is: a victory for the United States and Iraq, the logical conclusion to action that removed a brutal dictator. Therefore, the Bush administration should commit to a formal plan for military withdrawal that would have all U.S. forces out of the country within one year of the handover of political sovereignty: July 1, 2005. Military presence is too costly and fuels anti-U.S. propaganda.

Withdrawal key to future recruitment- Iraq places too much pressure on troops
Christopher Preble et al, 2004 (Director of foreign policy studies at CATO; Exiting Iraq: Why the U.S. must end the military occupation and renew the war against Al Qaeda, p. 37, CB) The solution to the problem, so far, is primarily to impose greater and greater burdens on our men and women in uniform. This, too, is unsustainable. The Bush administration should be reducing the number of missions that our armed forces are expected to complete. Instead, the administration keeps adding to the militarys alreadylong to-do list. The true costs of a

U.S. military occupation of Iraq must therefore also include the known and projected stresses that such an operation places on our all-volunteer force. Military planners are always mindful of the pace at which operations are conducted and the frequency with which our troops are shifted from mission to mission and place to place. Ending the U.S. military occupation of Iraq would go a long way toward reducing the operational tempo (or op tempo, for short) for our forces. Relieving op tempo burdens will reduce the unseen and immeasurable hardships for our troops, including family separation, and may help to avert future recruitment and retention problems.

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Internals: Personnel k Readiness

Personnel are key to maintaining readiness to respond the threats
Michele Flournoy. 2.19.08 Center for a New American Security, Strengthening the Readiness of the U.S. Military, Prepared Statement of Michle A. Flournoy, testimony to the House Committee on Armed Services. http://militarylies.typepad.com/military_lies/reserves/ At the same time, the United States must prepare for a broad range of future contingencies, from sustained,

small-unit irregular warfare missions to military-to-military training and advising missions to high-end warfare against regional powers armed with weapons of mass destruction and other asymmetric means.
Yet compressed training times between deployments mean that many of our enlisted personnel and officers have the time to train only for the missions immediately before them--in Iraq and Afghanistan--and not for the missions over the horizon. These just-in-time training conditions have created a degree of strategic risk, which the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff noted in his recent posture statement. As we at the Center for a New American Security wrote in our June, 2007 report on the ground forces, the United States is a global power with global interests, and we need our armed forces to be ready to respond whenever and wherever our strategic interests might be threatened. The absence of an adequate strategic reserve of ready ground forces must be addressed on an urgent basis. Readiness is the winning combination of personnel, equipment, and training in adequate quantity and quality for each unit. Each of these components of readiness has been under sustained and increasing stress over the past several years. For the ground forces, the readiness picture is largely--although not solely-- centered on personnel while the Navy and the Air Force's readiness challenges derive primarily from aging equipment. The Army continues to experience the greatest

strain and the greatest recruitment challenges.

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Impacts: Readiness Solves Taiwan

Credible military forces are needed to deter an attack on Taiwan
Moore, Director of the International Studies Center at the Heritage Foundation 98 (Thomas, Heritage Foundation Reports, NATIONAL DEFENSE; Restoring Military Strength) Regional Security. Possible near-term threats to vital U.S. national interests also include the potential reestablishment of an expansionist dictatorship in Russia, military adventurism by Iran or Iraq, attacks by North Korea against South Korea, or militarily threatening moves by China against Taiwan (see Chapters 15 and 16). A defense posture capable of countering these threats can be maintained at far less cost than the Cold War demanded. Both Congress and the Clinton Administration, however, have not maintained the necessary defenses. Instead, both have presided over a period of decline in U.S. military capabilities and confusion in U.S. defense policy. To protect its security in critical regions, the United States will continue to rely upon its traditional alliances and its " forward presence," that is, the stationing of military forces close to the scene of potential challenges to vital interests. Forward Presence.

Closely tied to the need to sustain alliances is the need to maintain combat-ready forces that are forwarddeployed and ready to deter aggression in regions vital to U.S. interests. Today, the United States maintains approximately 100,000 soldiers and airmen in Europe, down from the Cold War levels of approximately 550,000, and 100,000 in the Asia-Pacific region. Any substantial cuts from these levels could signal weakness or lack of commitment to regional allies of the United States and invite aggression and conflict. Forward presence also depends on the ability to pre-position weapons and equipment, maintained in a high state of combat readiness, so that reinforcements based in the United States can fly in quickly, fall in on their equipment, and drive immediately to the battlefield. Power Projection. As the 1991 Persian Gulf War demonstrated, the United States must be able to project combat power quickly from the continental United States into areas of conflict, either to defeat
or deter an aggressor like Saddam Hussein. This means a substantial investment in logistics support and in fast sealift and heavy airlift capabilities. The ability to send combat-ready forces quickly into battle not only acts as a deterrent, but also has allowed the United States to reduce its forward-deployed forces in Europe and Asia to more affordable levels.

That Conflict Goes Nuclear

Adams 2k9 (Jonathon, reporter for global post and newsweek on China and Taiwan, 3/31/09, Global Post, The dragon sharpens its claws, http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/china-and-its-neighbors/090331/the-dragon-sharpens-its-claws) TAIPEI It's the stuff of dark sci-fi scenarios; the war that nobody wants. But the most recent Pentagon report on

China's military power released last week shows how high the stakes have become, in the unlikely event the United States and China ever do come to blows. China has the world's fastest-growing military.
It is building state-of-the art fighter jets, destroyers, and anti-ship missiles worth billions of dollars. It's just confirmed it will build an aircraft carrier. And according to the Pentagon, it's now fielding a new nuclear force able to "inflict significant damage on most large American cities." Most disturbing, Chinese military officials have publicly threatened to use that capability against the United States in a conflict over Taiwan. "China doesn't just threaten war, it threatens nuclear war," said John Tkacik, a China expert and former U.S. diplomat, at a forum in Taipei last weekend. "This is the kind of thing that rattles cages in the U.S." For now, Taiwan is

the only plausible cause of military conflict between the world's superpower and the rising Asian giant

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Impacts: Recruitment k Econ

Recruitment and retainment efforts are key to economic recovery
Donnelly, 9. resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, 2009 (Tom, Jan 13th, The Defense Stimulus, http://www.aei.org/publications/filter.all,pubID.29193/pub_detail.asp, 1/13/2009) A key part of the answer on the spending side of the equation is increased defense spending, by at least $20 billion per year, particularly on procurement and personnel. These kinds of expenditures not only make economic

good sense, but would help close the large and long-standing gap between U.S. strategy and military resources. If bridges need fixing, so too do the tools with which our military fights. A critical element in any recovery will be strengthening the foundations of the globalized economy, built upon U.S.
worldwide security guarantees. Defense expenditures would help close the large and long-standing gap between U.S. strategy and military resources. There is a strong historic correlation between defense spending and past recoveries. Increasing defense spending now would also satisfy the stimulus principles advanced by President-elect Obama: Military service and employment in the defense industry are jobs "that pay well and can't be outsourced according to mainstream economists: Government should spend where private resources are slack; though the defense industry was trimmed down in the 1990s, there is tremendous excess capacity in major sectors like aircraft and shipbuilding. Defense spending would also meet other critical benchmarks: Domestic content: Direct employment in the U.S. aerospace industry--an imperfect but indicative measure of defense employment-stands at more than 650,000 jobs, a number that grew by 10,000 in 2008. All major weapons systems are made in the U.S. and have a huge secondary effect. The F-18 fighter, for example, relies on 445 suppliers and has as total economic effect of an estimated $4.6 billion per year. Nationwide effect: Major programs depend upon a nationwide manufacturing base. Lockheed Martin is the prime contractor on the F-22 fighter, but the program is the effort of 1,000 suppliers who employ 95,000 people--including an efficient, unionized manufacturing workforce--in 44 states. Bring forward or extend previously funded projects. There is ample opportunity to preserve "hot" production lines that face termination--such as the F-22--or to extend "warm" lines. Boeing is on the verge of issuing a "stop work" order to its suppliers for the C-17 cargo aircraft (a workhorse in Iraq, Afghanistan and around the world) and we are only using half of the country's shipbuilding infrastructure to build one Virginia class (SSN-744) submarine a year, while defense requirements make it clear that we will need more submarines, not less, in the years ahead. Timely spending. As former director of the National Economic Council Lawrence Lindsey has

."

Defense investments also meet the definition of a sensible stimulus

. Defense procurements have very high "spend rates," and almost all personnel spending occurs in the year of appropriation. These are quickreturn investments. Strength for the future. Defense manufacturing is among the most competitive elements in the U.S. manufacturing sector. Foreign military sales in 2008 were $32 billion, up from $24 billion in 2007--more than twice the level of Russian defense exports and five times that of Great Britain or France. The defense sector is also the source of much technological innovation--the Internet is the product of defense research and
written, defense programs more than meet the "shovel ready" threshold set for infrastructure projects in the stimulus package

development--and the home of a highly-educated, American workforce, led by engineers. Inherent value. Economist Martin Feldstein has argued that the stimulus spending needs to be directed toward projects "that should be done anyway." The gap in military spending of the past 15 years --more than $150 billion in deferred projects in the 1990s alone--has created a "defense deficit" that has resulted in a wholesale obsolescence in front-line systems: U.S. troops are still fighting with planes, ships and land combat vehicles designed in the late 1970s and purchased during the Reagan buildup. Larger public good. The value of American global leadership in an era of economic and geopolitical

uncertainty cannot be stressed too highly. The security of worldwide commerce depends upon safe, cheap and uninterrupted flows of goods and service through a variety of "commons "--the seas, air, space and cyberspace--that are protected every day by U.S. military forces. Their presence helps to preserve the industrial world's
access to natural resources and protect the interests of allies and trading partners. By any measure, defense should comprise a vital component of any stimulus package. This is a matter of economic good sense and, frankly, fairness to the men and women serving our country in a time of war. The Pentagon can intelligently and easily support $20 billion in additional spending per year; critically, this would continue the program to expand the Army, which will remain stretched by deployments to Afghanistan and Iraq, by 30,000 soldiers per year. Such investments would not only create thousands of jobs across the country--and preserve jobs at risk from premature program terminations--but promote American exports and create a secure environment for global economic recovery. Six Modest Proposals for a Defense Stimulus As will be the case with all stimulus spending proposals, it will be necessary to integrate defense stimulus plans with the normal Pentagon budget process to minimize programmatic mischief and ensure the best value for the taxpayer. Nonetheless, based upon the Defense Department's current budgets and five-year plan, it is possible to suggest obvious areas where additional spending makes sense; adding $20 billion to the baseline defense budget, approximately $520 billion for 2009, is an increase of less than 4 percent, an easily "digestible" amount. Potential additions include: The Army's "Grow the Force" initiative . Recruiting and training an additional 20,000 soldiers per year would cost about $3.5 billion. The pace of current operations--

driven by the requirements of Afghanistan and Iraq--has proved the need for more troops.

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Impacts: Khalilzad
Withdrawl sparks global power wars in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East, economic collapse, proliferation, and nuclear war
Khalilzad, Policy Analyst at the Rand Corporation, 95 (Zalmay, Losing the Moment?: The United States and the World after the Cold War, The Washington Quarterly, Spring) What might happen to the world if the United States turned inward? Without the United States and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), rather than cooperating with each other, the West European nations might compete with each other for domination of East-Central Europe and the Middle East. In Western and Central Europe, Germany -- especially since unification -- would be the natural leading power. Either in cooperation or competition with Russia, Germany might seek influence over the territories located between them. German efforts are likely to be aimed at filling the vacuum, stabilizing the region, and precluding its domination by rival powers. Britain and France fear such a development. Given the strength of democracy in Germany and its preoccupation with absorbing the former East Germany, European concerns about Germany appear exaggerated. But it would be a mistake to assume that U.S. withdrawal could not, in the long run, result in the renationalization of Germany's security policy. The same is also true of Japan. Given a U.S. withdrawal from the world, Japan would have to look after its own security and build up its military capabilities. China, Korea, and the nations of Southeast Asia already fear Japanese hegemony. Without U.S. protection, Japan is likely to increase its military capability dramatically -- to balance the growing Chinese forces and still-significant Russian forces. This could result in arms races, including the possible acquisition by Japan of nuclear weapons. Given Japanese technological prowess, to say nothing of the plutonium stockpile Japan has acquired in the development of its nuclear power industry, it could obviously become a nuclear weapon state relatively quickly, if it should so decide. It could also build long-range missiles and carrier task forces. With the shifting balance of power among Japan, China, Russia, and potential new regional powers such as India, Indonesia, and a united Korea could come significant risks of preventive or proeruptive war. Similarly, European competition for regional dominance could lead to major wars in Europe or East Asia. If the United States stayed out of such a war -- an unlikely prospect -- Europe or East Asia could become dominated by a hostile power. Such a development would threaten U.S. interests. A power that achieved such dominance would seek to exclude the United States from the area and threaten its interests-economic and political -- in the region. Besides, with the domination of Europe or East Asia, such a power might seek global hegemony and the United States would face another global Cold War and the risk of a world war even more catastrophic than the last. In the Persian Gulf, U.S. withdrawal is likely to lead to an intensified struggle for regional domination. Iran and Iraq have, in the past, both sought regional hegemony. Without U.S. protection, the weak oil-rich states of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) would be unlikely to retain their independence. To preclude this development, the Saudis might seek to acquire, perhaps by purchase, their own nuclear weapons. If either Iraq or Iran controlled the region that dominates the world supply of oil, it could gain a significant capability to damage the U.S. and world economies. Any country that gained hegemony would have vast economic resources at its disposal that could be used to build military capability as well as gain leverage over the United States and other oilimporting nations. Hegemony over the Persian Gulf by either Iran or Iraq would bring the rest of the Arab Middle East under its influence and domination because of the shift in the balance of power. Israeli security problems would multiply and the peace process would be fundamentally undermined, increasing the risk of war between the Arabs and the Israelis. The extension of instability, conflict, and hostile hegemony in East Asia, Europe, and the Persian Gulf would harm the economy of the United States even in the unlikely event that it was able to avoid involvement in major wars and conflicts. Higher oil prices would reduce the U.S. standard of living. Turmoil in Asia and Europe would force major economic readjustment in the United States, perhaps reducing U.S. exports and imports and jeopardizing U.S. investments in these regions. Given that total imports and exports are equal to a quarter of U.S. gross domestic product, the cost of necessary adjustments might be high. The higher level of turmoil in the world would also increase the likelihood of the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and means for their delivery. Already several rogue states such as North Korea and Iran are seeking nuclear weapons and long-range missiles. That danger would only increase if the United States withdrew from the world. The result would be a much more dangerous world in which many states possessed WMD capabilities; the likelihood of their actual use would increase accordingly. If this happened, the security of every nation in the world, including the United States, would be harmed.

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Impacts: Impact Calc (1/

Our impact outweighs: Little A: Magnitude U.S. dominance prevents their impacts from escalating and its more likely that their impacts happen in a world without U.S. power. Little B: Timeframe The impact happens almost overnight
Brzezinski, Former Secretary of State, 2K4 (Zbigniew, The Choice: Global Domination or Global Leadership) In reflecting on the security implications of this new reality, it is important to bear in mind the points made earlier. America is the world-transforming society, even revolutionary in its subversive impact in sovereignty-based international politics. At the same time, America is a traditional power, unilaterally protective of its own security while sustaining international stability not only for its own benefit, but for that of the international community as a whole. The latter task compels U.S. policymakers to concentrate on the more traditional U.S. role as the linchpin of global stability. Despite the new realities of global interdependence and the mounting preoccupation of the international community with such new global issues as ecology, global warming, AIDS, and poverty, the argument that American power is uniquely central to world peace is supported by a simple hypothetical test: What would happen if the U.S. Congress were to mandate the prompt retraction of U.S. military power from its three crucial foreign deploymentsEurope, the Far East, and the Persian Gulf? Any such U.S. withdrawal would without doubt plunge the world almost immediately into a politically chaotic crisis, In Europe, there would be a pell mell rush by some to rearm but also to reach a special arrangement with Russia. In the Far East, war would probably break out on the Korean Peninsula while Japan would undertake a rash program of rearmament, including nuclear weapons. In the Persian Gulf area, Iran would become dominant and would intimidate adjoining Arab states. [P. 17]

And, Withdrawl leads to global instability that pulls the U.S. into nuclear wars
Hirsh, Former Editor of Newsweek, 2K3 (Michael, At War With Ourselves: Why America is Squandering its Chances to Build a Better World)
Yes, it is possible. But first we must cross a psychological threshold our- selves. We need to grasp what many other nations already understand: the meaning of America in today's world. Despite a century of intense global engagement, America is still something of a colossus with an infant's brain, unaware of the havoc its tentative, giant-sized baby steps can cause. We still have some growing up to do as a nation. One of my favorite movies has always been ft's a Wonderful Life. Like everyone, I'm a sucker for the sentiment. But I also thought the conceit was ingenious: What if we could all be granted, like Jimmy

. Suppose, with the end of the Soviet Union, America had mysteriously disappeared as well or, more realistically, had retreated to within its borders, as it had wanted to do ever since the end of World War II. What would a Jeffersonian America, withdrawn behind its oceans, likely see unfolding overseas? Probably a restoration of the old power jostle that has sent mankind back to war for many millennia. One possible scenario: Japan would have reacquired a full-scale military and nuclear weapons, and would have bid for regional hegemony with China. Europe would have had no counterbalance to yet another descent into intraregional competition and, lacking the annealing structure of the postwar Atlantic alliance, may never have achieved monetary union. Russia would have bid for Eurasian dominance, as it has throughout its modern history. Most important of all, the global trading system, which the United States virtu- ally reinvented after World War II (with some help from John Maynard Keynes and others), would almost certainly have broken down amid all these renewed rivalries, killing globalization before it even got started. That in turn would have accelerated many of the above developments. A war of some kind would have been extremely likely. And given the evidence of the last century, which shows that America has been increasingly drawn into global conflicts, the U.S. president would be pulled in again- but this time in a high-tech, nuclearized, and very lethal age of warfare. America has a unique
Stewart's George Bailey, a look at the world without us? I think it's useful to apply the same conceit to the one- uberpower world

opportunity to thwart history's most ruthless dictate: that nations are ever fated to return to a state of anarchy and war. It has a unique opportunity do what no great power in history has ever done-to perpetuate indefinitely the global system we have created, to foster an international community with American power at its center that is so secure that it may never be challenged. But this can be done only through a delicate balancing of all our tools of power and influence. And it can be done only by bridging the ideological gulf that continues to divide Americans over our place in the world. 10-11

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Impacts: Impact Calc (2/

Hegemony is critical to world peace and stability
Wiarda, Professor at the National War College, 96 (Howard, US Foreign and Strategic Policy in the Post-Cold War Era, p. 227) The preceding chapters have highlighted not only the diverse geopolitical regions of the world but also the varied, often vital. US interests and reasons for remaining involved in all of them. What may perhaps be most striking to the reader is not just the amount and variety of US interests but how in each of these areas governments and peoples look to the United States to lead, to serve as an honest broker, as not only the worlds strongest power but also its most trustworthy. One cannot conceive of a unified European defense policy without the United States: the Russian aid program would surely collapse without the United States: and in Asia the United States is seen as the balancing force keeping China, Japan, and the two Koreas away, potentially, from each others throats. The peace process in the Middle East has no chances of success without the United States: and humanitarian assistance in Africa would surely dry up if the United States were not involved and so on. It is clear that both US interests and the worlds interests demand that we remain a major player in that world. But we are in a new era, which demands that all those interests be redefined, sorted out, and reformulated. Both we and the rest of the world need to recognize that fact. US foreign policy and its global interests obviously cannot be abandoned but they do need to be reconstructed.

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2AC Public Support k Heg

Keeping Boots on the Ground in Iraq Alienates the Public Support for the Military
Dunlap 2k6 (Maj. Gen. Charles J. Dunlap Jr. s the deputy judge advocate general of the Air Force. He has more than 30 years service and is a distinguished graduate of the National War College. He has served in Korea and has deployed for numerous operations in the Middle East and Africa, Americas asymmetric advantage, pg online @ http://www.afji.com/2006/09/2009013) Even if the numbers could be assembled, boots on the ground carry significant emotional costs. As television

screens fill with heartbreaking stories of dead and wounded soldiers and their families, such images over time often create political limitations as to how long a democratic society will sustain an operation like that in Iraq. This is true even though the casualty rates are, in purely historic military terms, relatively low. This media effect is a fundamental change from earlier eras. There is also a dark side. Stephen Ambrose observed in his book Americans at War that when you put weapons in the hands of young men at war, sometimes terrible things happen that you wish had never happened. Ambrose notes that atrocities such as My Lai were not an aberration but, sadly, a universal aspect of war, from the time of the ancient Greeks up to the present. The problem is exacerbated when the insurgency embraces ruthless methods that make even the most innocent-looking grandfather (and even more tragically, a child) a potential suicide bomber. Fear, frustration and youth mixed with firepower are a deadly combination and can produce dreadful results. What is more is that relentless reporting by globalized news outlets turns such incidents into strategic catastrophes. When thousands of troops are on the ground fighting an insurgency such as that in Iraq, it is, regrettably, all but inevitable that you will have situations such as Abu Ghraib and Hadithah arise from time to time horrific and tragic, but predictable and even unavoidable. Yet, to a degree unprecedented in past conflicts, real and perceived illegalities are subject to exploitation not just by adversaries but also by legitimate political opponents. Regardless, the result is an erosion of the public support that democracies need to conduct any kind of protracted military operation.
The point is that, again, information-age realities limit boots-on-the-ground options.

Lack of public support forces isolationism that collapses primacy

Richard K. Betts (Arnold Saltzman Prof War and Peace Studies Columbia, SIPA), 2005, International Affairs, The Political Support System for American Primacy. 81(1), 1-14.

There is dissent in the United States from the enthusiasm for exploiting primacy, but the dissenters have been unable to capture a base big enough to exert political leverage. Primacy has so far been popular among Americans and tolerated by foreignersbecause of the balance between moral and material interests. Americans have long been able to indulge moral interests (for example, promotion of values such as democracy and human rights) because Americans margins of material power and security are so large that it is often easy to do so at low cost, and if mistakes are made they rarely hurt them much. In terms of material costs and benefits, Americans are happy to intervene abroad if the benefits for foreigners and American amour propre are high while the costs in American blood and treasure are low. In this, and in the conditional approval
conferred by other major states (when US control proceeds under the norms and forms of international consultation and cooperation with international institutions), we see the global hegemony of classic liberal ideology, and political globalization as western hegemony within which the United States is dominant . The liberal values that Americans used to think of as part of their national exceptionalism have now permeated the identity, policies and diplomacy of the rest of the developed world. In the twenty-first century the old realist norms of balance-of-power

politics traditionally associated with European diplomacy, and rejected by Wilsonian idealism, now have scarcely more overt respect in other rich countries than they do in the United States . Periodically, however, material interests
diverge from moral motives. This happens with greatest impact when costs are miscalculated because US leaders confuse power in terms of material resources (economic and military) with power to bring

Failure has been all that modifies ambitious objectives, and it may be all that restrains the exercise of US primacy. (The exception is the war on terror, where a future failure
about political reform in non-western societies (such as South Vietnam, Somalia or Iraq).

against Al-Qaeda and its ilk could lead not to retrenchment but to increased American ferocity.)

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*******Oil Advantage*******

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Uniq: China Investing Now

And, China Investing in Iraq Now leading oil consumer
Middle East Economic Digest 3/19/2k10 (00477230, 3/19/2010, Vol. 54, Issue 12, pg ebsco//cndi-ef)

China is now the biggest investor in Iraq's post-war oil and gas sector, giving it control of close to one fifth of the reserves that have been auctioned over the past year. According to MEED research, China is spending a total of $577m in signing-on fees to give it access to an estimated 24 billion barrels of oil , or about 18 per cent of the reserves on offer. Chinese investment doubles the US' signing-on fees, which has committed $296m to control about 12 billion barrels of oil. Iraq's two oil and gas licensing rounds have attracted considerable interest from the key players in China's energy sector. Most recently, a Chinese consortium of China National
Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC) and Sinochem Corporation signed an initial agreement with the Iraq Oil Ministry on 8 March to develop the Missan oilfield complex (MEED 9:3:10). In early March, the consortium accepted a fee of $2.30 for every additional barrel of oil produced at the 2.5-billion-barrel field in southern Iraq. The complex was included in Baghdad's first bid round but received only one bid, from the Chinese consortium, which was rejected. The complex currently produces 100,000 barrels of oil a day (b/d). The government has set a plateau production target of 450,000 b/d. In terms of investment, China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) has been the most active Chinese company. In June last year, it secured the 17-billion-bar-rel Rumaila field, as an almost equal partner with the UK's BR And six months later in December last year, it took a 50 per cent share as the operator of the 4. 1-billion-barrel Halfaya field with Malaysia's Petronas and France's Total. CNPC and its partners will have to invest heavily in the three fields as they are required to more than triple production to 3.8 million b/d, from about 1 million b/d currentiy. The partners for the Rumaila field have already said they will invest $15bn over the 20-year life of the contract. CNPC also has a stake in a $700m deal for the Al-Ahdab field, which was revived in March 2009 by China's Al-Waha Petroleum, a joint venture with another Chinese company, Zhen-hua Oil Company. CNPC originally signed the deal in 1997 under the Saddam regime but suspended the project due to UN sanctions. The company estimates the field will produce 110,000 b/d over the next 20 years (MEED 25:3:09). Another Chinese firm Sinopec has also signed a series of deals with the semi-autonomous Kurdistan Regional Government. As a result, Sinopec was blacklisted from Iraq's licensing roimds. China is not the only Far Eastern investor in Iraq's oil, and together with Malaysia, South Korea and Japan, the region has contributed 44 per cent, almost half the total signing-on fees paid to Baghdad. According to analysts, government-controlled companies from China and other Far

Eastern countries have generally shown a greater willingness to accept greater risks and lower profits than their Western counterparts. "They have no shareholders to placate, and a political mandate to hunt down and secure as many barrels of oil as possible," says Samuel Ciszuk, Middle East analyst at IHS Global
Insight.

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Links: Military Presence Key (1/2)

China is hesitant to go to Iraq as long as U.S. troops remain
CHRISTIE (Ed.), FRANCOIS, URBAN, WIRL December 2009 (Edward Hunter, Joseph, Waltraut, Franz FIW Project Report http://www.fiw.ac.at/fileadmin/Documents/Publikationen/Studien_II/SI03.Studie.China__s_oil.pdf) Chinas incomplete line of reasoning was reported in a milder form in Washington Post (2005) and is

worth citing at length. In that article a number of Chinese scholars and other experts were interviewed. Pan Rui, an international relations expert at Fudan University in Shanghai, stated: Iraq changed the [Chinese] governments thinking [] The Middle East is China's largest source of oil. America is now pursuing a grand strategy, the pursuit of American hegemony in the Middle East. Saudi Arabia is the number one oil producer, and Iraq is number two [in terms of reserves]. Now, the United States has direct influence in both countries. Zhu Feng, a security expert at Beijing University, stated: Many people argue that oil interests are the driving force behind the Iraq war. For China, it has been a reminder and a warning about how geopolitical changes can affect its own energy interests. So China has decided to focus much more intently to address its security. Tong Lixia, an energy expert at the Chinese Academy of International Trade and Economic Cooperation stated: The turning point in China's energy strategy was the Iraq war. After 2003, both the companies and the government realized China could not rely on one or two oil production areas. It's too risky. All in all, the Chinese leadership may have believed that the US was seeking hegemony over the Middle East, but another matter was whether the Chinese leadership believed that US hegemony over such a large region is at all possible. Barack Obamas arrival in
office in 2009, and the access that Chinese NOCs have received to bid for Iraqi oil fields may have allayed the worst fears.

On the other hand, a more moderate description of Chinas views about oil security in the Middle East also appears through the cracks. As stated by Tong Lixia, the realisation was that relying too heavily on the Middle East is too risky in general (which in recent years was certainly true). US withdraw from Iraq causes China to fill in the gap guaranteeing Chinese access to oil
GLAIN FEBRUARY 10, 2010 (STEPHEN, "China's New Free-Market Energy http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/02/10/chinas_new_free_market_energy_policies?page=0,1) Policies"

China would not be the first oil-hungry industrializing country to transform itself from a zero-sum energy consumer to a net-sum energy player. During the first half of the last century, imperial Britain and France cut deals with pliant governments in the Middle East, which they duly carved up at the end of World War I for control of the region's oil riches. At the same time, U.S. oil companies won concessions to drill wells in Saudi Arabia and enjoyed de facto control of that kingdom's vast petroleum reserves as late as the 1950s. Today, the developed world is no longer concerned with actual control of reserves for the sake of energy security. Rather, it buys virtual supplies in the commodities
exchanges of Paris, London, and Chicago and puts faith in the market for delivery. A landmark Pentagon study on Beijing's energy policies, circulated in August 2004, offered a stark outlook for an age of finite

. Unlike Western countries, content to let the market sort out their energy needs, "Asians generally and Chinese specifically equate energy security with physical possession or control" of reserves, the report said. Faced with uncertainty of supply, the report warned, China might seize oil fields in the Russian Far East. It would exploit a vacuum created by a U.S. withdrawal from Iraq and "establish deep strategic relationships with Iran, Iraq, and particularly Saudi Arabia." A minority view represented in the report allowed for a different outcome -- that China might accelerate the pace at which it adopts market-based solutions to its energy demands: "The fact that so much of the oil is too far from China for economical delivery will likely increasingly force Chinese oil executives to use swapping and other mechanisms common in the sophisticated world oil market." Western countries were not always so benign when it came to energy security, nor are "Asians" preternaturally aggrandizing. As events over the last several months reveal, China's energy companies are turning to the free market, not despite some
fuel resources and a voracious Chinese economy

atavistic or Confucian hoarding instinct, but because it makes sense.

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Links: Military Presence Key (2/2)

U.S. pullout results in Chinese purchase of Iraqi oil
KEITH BRADSHER New York Times June 30, 2009 ([The Hong Kong bureau chief of The New York Times since 2002, Washington correspondent from 1991 through 1995, won the George Polk Award for national reporting for his coverage of sport utility vehicles in 1997 and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize the same year. won the Society of Publishers in Asia award for explanatory reporting in 2006 As Iraq Stabilizes, China Bids on Its Oil Fields http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/01/business/global/01chinaoil.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1&ref=global-business) Few Americans or Iraqis may have expected China to emerge as one of the winners in Iraqi oil, particularly after six years of war. But signs of stability in Iraq this year, and a planned American military pullout from Iraqi cities on Tuesday, happened to coincide with an aggressive Chinese push to buy or develop overseas oil fields. The Chinese companies have been interested in Iraq, said David Zweig, a specialist in Chinese natural resource policies at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. They were interested in Iraq before the war, and now that

things have improved somewhat there, its on their agenda.

Some experts contend that the West should not be concerned about a substantial Chinese presence in Iraqi oil fields, because it gives China greater stake in improving stability in the region. If you want China to be a responsible stakeholder in the world, you need to let China buy stakes in the world, said Mark P. Thirlwell, the program director for international economics at the Lowy Institute for International Policy in Sydney, during a speech in Hong Kong on Tuesday. The Iraqi government originally tried last year to award oil fields to Western companies through a no-bid process. That prompted objections from a group of United States senators, who wanted greater transparency, and the plan was replaced with the auction, which had the effect of letting Chinese companies play a much larger role. Chinas leaders were surprised by the steep rise in commodity prices early last year, which exposed the vulnerability of their countrys huge manufacturing sector to high raw material prices. When oil prices plunged in the autumn, China began buying, importing and storing oil in huge quantities, helping to drive a partial rebound in world oil prices in spring. And China stepped up its hunt to acquire foreign oil. Chinese officials, economists and advisers have been almost unanimous in recent weeks in saying that their country needed to invest more in natural resources, while also voicing concerns about the long-term creditworthiness of the United States and the buying power of the dollar. China has $2 trillion in foreign exchange reserves, mostly invested in dollar-denominated bonds, and has been looking for ways to diversify gradually into other assets like commodities, said a Chinese government adviser who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the secrecy of Chinese reserve policies. Chinas central bank, the Peoples Bank of China, called Friday for the development of an international currency other than the dollar

Philip Andrews-Speed, a specialist in Chinas oil industry at the University of Dundee in Scotland, said Iraq was clearly attractive for China and its oil industry All, or nearly all, oil companies who have the courage want to be in Iraq because of the large size of the proven resource base and the potential for new discoveries, he wrote in an e-mail message. So, in this respect, the Chinese are part of the herd. Chinese oil companies have been particularly
that would be a safe repository of value, in the latest sign of Chinas search for other ways to invest its international reserves

interested in buying oil fields ever since crude prices plunged late last summer, because that dragged down the cost of the fields as well, Mr. Andrews-Speed wrote. And with their experience in some of the most turbulent countries in Africa, Chinese oil companies may have the ability to cope with the unpredictability of Iraq. They may be no more competent at managing these risks than other companies, but they do seem to be prepared to accept a higher level of risk, he wrote, citing Chinas willingness to do business in Sudan. Chinese companies have suffered a series of setbacks in their

efforts to buy natural resources companies in industrialized countries, from Cnoocs unsuccessful bid for Unocal in the United States four years ago to Chinalcos failed attempt this spring to acquire a $19.5 billion stake in Rio Tinto of Australia. Those setbacks, driven partly by political objections in Washington to the
Unocal transaction and in Canberra to the Rio Tinto deal, have forced Chinese companies to show more interest in resources in less stable countries like Iraq. Its really hard for them to do anything in the developed world, including Australia, Mr. Thirlwell said in an interview on Tuesday. Driving Chinas interest is the countrys voracious thirst for oil. As recently as the early 1990s, China was a net exporter of oil because of production mainly from aging oil fields in the northeastern corner of the country. But Chinas oil consumption has soared since then, thanks to an economic boom and climbing car sales that have produced traffic jams in big cities. China surpassed the United States this year as the worlds largest car market, partly because China has weathered the global economic downturn better than the United States; Chinas oil consumption reached 8 million barrels a day last year, up from 4.9 million in 2001, according to a statistical review from BP, the British oil company. Oil production has grown much more slowly, as older oil fields have run dry. New fields, either offshore or in western China, have barely replaced them. China produced 3.8 million barrels a day of oil last year, up from 3.3 million barrels per day in 2001, which still left the country dependent on imports for more than half its oil. Iraq has the worlds thirdlargest proven reserves, after Saudi Arabia and Iran. Many geologists say that the true oil resources of Iraq are even greater than official statistics suggest, because Iraqs oil industry has suffered from decades of disruption and underinvestment. Many oil fields have not been fully explored as a result. Addax has oil licenses in two oil fields in northern Iraq, the Taqtaq and Sangaw North fields, both near Kirkuk, and its drilling has already struck large quantities of oil repeatedly in the Taqtaq field.

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Solvency: U.S. Pullout Solves

And, U.S. pullout results in Chinese purchase of Iraqi oil
KEITH BRADSHER New York Times June 30, 2009 ([The Hong Kong bureau chief of The New York Times since 2002, Washington correspondent from 1991 through 1995, won the George Polk Award for national reporting for his coverage of sport utility vehicles in 1997 and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize the same year. won the Society of Publishers in Asia award for explanatory reporting in 2006 As Iraq Stabilizes, China Bids on Its Oil Fields http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/01/business/global/01chinaoil.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1&ref=global-business) Few Americans or Iraqis may have expected China to emerge as one of the winners in Iraqi oil, particularly after six years of war. But signs of stability in Iraq this year, and a planned American military pullout from Iraqi cities on Tuesday, happened to coincide with an aggressive Chinese push to buy or develop overseas oil fields. The Chinese companies have been interested in Iraq, said David Zweig, a specialist in Chinese natural resource policies at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. They were interested in Iraq before the war, and now that

things have improved somewhat there, its on their agenda.

Some experts contend that the West should not be concerned about a substantial Chinese presence in Iraqi oil fields, because it gives China greater stake in improving stability in the region. If you want China to be a responsible stakeholder in the world, you need to let China buy stakes in the world, said Mark P. Thirlwell, the program director for international economics at the Lowy Institute for International Policy in Sydney, during a speech in Hong Kong on Tuesday. The Iraqi government originally tried last year to award oil fields to Western companies through a no-bid process. That prompted objections from a group of United States senators, who wanted greater transparency, and the plan was replaced with the auction, which had the effect of letting Chinese companies play a much larger role. Chinas leaders were surprised by the steep rise in commodity prices early last year, which exposed the vulnerability of their countrys huge manufacturing sector to high raw material prices. When oil prices plunged in the autumn, China began buying, importing and storing oil in huge quantities, helping to drive a partial rebound in world oil prices in spring. And China stepped up its hunt to acquire foreign oil. Chinese officials, economists and advisers have been almost unanimous in recent weeks in saying that their country needed to invest more in natural resources, while also voicing concerns about the long-term creditworthiness of the United States and the buying power of the dollar. China has $2 trillion in foreign exchange reserves, mostly invested in dollar-denominated bonds, and has been looking for ways to diversify gradually into other assets like commodities, said a Chinese government adviser who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the secrecy of Chinese reserve policies. Chinas central bank, the Peoples Bank of China, called Friday for the development of an international currency other than the dollar

Philip Andrews-Speed, a specialist in Chinas oil industry at the University of Dundee in Scotland, said Iraq was clearly attractive for China and its oil industry All, or nearly all, oil companies who have the courage want to be in Iraq because of the large size of the proven resource base and the potential for new discoveries, he wrote in an e-mail message. So, in this respect, the Chinese are part of the herd. Chinese oil companies have been particularly interested in
that would be a safe repository of value, in the latest sign of Chinas search for other ways to invest its international reserves.

buying oil fields ever since crude prices plunged late last summer, because that dragged down the cost of the fields as well, Mr. Andrews-Speed wrote. And with their experience in some of the most turbulent countries in Africa, Chinese oil companies may have the ability to cope with the unpredictability of Iraq. They may be no more competent at managing these risks than other companies, but they do seem to be prepared to accept a higher level of risk, he wrote, citing Chinas willingness to do business in Sudan. Chinese companies have suffered a series of setbacks in their efforts to

buy natural resources companies in industrialized countries, from Cnoocs unsuccessful bid for Unocal in the United States four years ago to Chinalcos failed attempt this spring to acquire a $19.5 billion stake in Rio Tinto of Australia. Those setbacks, driven partly by political objections in Washington to the Unocal
transaction and in Canberra to the Rio Tinto deal, have forced Chinese companies to show more interest in resources in less stable countries like Iraq. Its really hard for them to do anything in the developed world, including Australia, Mr. Thirlwell said in an interview on Tuesday. Driving Chinas interest is the countrys voracious thirst for oil. As recently as the early 1990s, China was a net exporter of oil because of production mainly from aging oil fields in the northeastern corner of the country. But Chinas oil consumption has soared since then, thanks to an economic boom and climbing car sales that have produced traffic jams in big cities. China surpassed the United States this year as the worlds largest car market, partly because China has weathered the global economic downturn better than the United States; Chinas oil consumption reached 8 million barrels a day last year, up from 4.9 million in 2001, according to a statistical review from BP, the British oil company. Oil production has grown much more slowly, as older oil fields have run dry. New fields, either offshore or in western China, have barely replaced them. China produced 3.8 million barrels a day of oil last year, up from 3.3 million barrels per day in 2001, which still left the country dependent on imports for more than half its oil. Iraq has the worlds thirdlargest proven reserves, after Saudi Arabia and Iran. Many geologists say that the true oil resources of Iraq are even greater than official statistics suggest, because Iraqs oil industry has suffered from decades of disruption and underinvestment. Many oil fields have not been fully explored as a result. Addax has oil licenses in two oil fields in northern Iraq, the Taqtaq and Sangaw North fields, both near Kirkuk, and its drilling has already struck large quantities of oil repeatedly in the Taqtaq field.

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Impacts: Iraq = U.S.-China War

Struggle Over Oil Coming Now Failure by the U.S. to End its Containment Strategy in Iraq Makes a War Between the U.S. and China Inevitable
Wulei 2k3 (The following article was submitted for publication in MEES by Professor Wulei of the School of International Relations at Yunnan University, Kunming, China, Oil: The Next Conflict In Sino-US Relations? MENAFN - Middle East Economic Survey - 26/05/2003 pg online @ http://www.menafn.com/qn_news_story_s.asp?StoryId=20271 //cndief) The Iraqi issue has in fact affected China's oil security although China imports little oil from Iraq and no reports of oil imports from Iraq for the year 2002 are to be found in China's National Customs Administration. Yet, oil price rises related to Middle East tensions inevitably lift China's oil imports bill. According to customs statistics, China witnessed its first trade deficit in its foreign trade history in January 2003 due to the rise of the oil price. In January, China's import of crude oil amounted to 8.36mn tons, up 77.2% from the corresponding period last yearl, with an average import cost up by 51% resulting in a net import cost increase of $1. lObn. The rapid growth of oil imports and the rise of oil prices are the major elements behind the trade deficit. In recent years, Middle East oil exports to China have become more and more prominent even though China does not have any strategic interest in this area. Nevertheless, the Iraqi issue has posed an enormous test, the first of its kind in the new century, to China, a country attaching more and more importance to energy security. China imported a total 89.75mn tons of crude oil and oil products in 2002, out of which crude oil accounted for 69.41mn tons, up by 15.2% from the previous year with an import amount reaching $12.757bn. Oil products im-ports reached 20.34mn tons or $3.799bn. Statistical figures dearly show that nearly 60% of China's imported crude oil is from the Middle East with Saudi Arabia, Iran and Oman being the top three, or 11.53mn tons, 10.73mn tons and 8.3 lmn tons respectively, making it a total of 30.57mn tons accounting for 43.3% of Chinas import of crude oill. In other words, China imports over 700,000 b/d from the Middle East. The war on Iraq ex-posed China's import of at least 700,000 b/d to direct war threats and exposed the country's sources and chan-nels of oil imports to war risks. China was also concerned that the Iraq war would cut off oil shipments from the Gulf. Moreover, now that China's oil market is part of the international oil market, oil price rises have serious consequences for the Chi-nese economy. It is estimated by the government that the rise of the oil price by $10/6 will cut China's economic growth by 1%. For example, the international oil price rise in 2002 reduced China's GDP growth by 0.5%. In strategic terms, China had good reason to be opposed to or at least not in favor of

the US-led war against Iraq. It is concerned that a US victory over Iraq would give the US a tighter grip on Middle East oil, with oil from Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Iran, another key source of China's oil import, all increasingly contained by the US. As China's reliance on Middle East oil increases, the Middle East gets more strategically important to China, hence China's worries and concerns. The observations above give rise to the theme of this paper: Will there be any conflicts over oil between China and the US? There have been too many differences, frictions and even conflicts between the two countries. Will oil be the next one? American political and academic circles have long been concerned about China's burgeoning "oil hunger", be-lieving that China's oil "prosperity" will have a tremendous impact upon international oil security and the na-tional
interests of major Western countries. The US and other Western countries' concern about China's oil de-mand is twofold: one is that China's increasing demand for oil is likely to worsen international oil supply, stimulating oil prices to go up; the other is that China's unilateral energy diplomacy will result in the export of China's arms and military technology, thus creating regional tension and conflicts, which is harmful to international oil security. Amy Jaffe wrote in Survival that China's global pursuit of oil is affecting its attitude toward US foreign policy and, "the change to China interests and orientations also poses challenges for the West: in effect, the in-dustrialized oil-consuming countries of the US, Europe and north-east Asia must convince an ambitious, energy-hungry China that secure supply for all requires a cooperative foreign policy. So far, unfortunately, China is tak-ing a different tack. It is pursuing a decidedly bilateral approach to energy security, courting on its own behalf major oil producers such as Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Iran and the Sudan. The implications of such efforts are worrying. When oil markets are as tight as they have been in the past two years, bilateral deals can invite demands for political accommodations in exchange for stable supplies. At worst, this might mean increased demands of Chi-nese deliveries of weapons-of mass-destruction-related technology to these politically sensitive markets."2 Apart from this, China is speeding up its modernization drive, especially that of the navy, to ensure its oil transport security, causing the concern of the US and other Western nations. All these are related to oil. In the eyes of some Chinese scholars, American scholars have exaggerated the so-called Chinese oil threat, pos-sibly to nurture the atmosphere needed by the US government to contain China in its

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CNDI 2010 Iraq Aff Regents Lab energy politics in the fu-ture. Such a containment approach is more stealthy and effective and at the same time serves well Washington's overall foreign policy strategy toward China. In the early days of the George W Bush administration, US policy toward China was hard and strong and what Bush said against China was not merely repeated terminology. US politicians, congressmen and scholars, whether they are democrats or republicans, tend to push for a policy of watching and containing China. The anti-China force in the US is so strong that it will surely be reflected in the issues of energy. The 11 September events did draw the two nations doser together mainly because the US needed China's aid and assistance in its global counterterrorist campaign, but the mutual cooperation is still limited and the fundamental and structural differences are still there. Differences in political systems, ideology and values are just superfidal and traceable to history. The American element affecting China's oil security is felt more in the geopolitical struggle. In essence, as China grows stronger

and its demand for strategic resources (induding oil) gets greater, a competitive relationship between China and the US will take shape first, making geopolitical struggle inevitable. Secondly, also because of the dif-ferences in political systems, ideology and values, geopolitical struggles would probably develop into some sort of "hot war" such as frictions and conflicts, rendering China's oil supply chain under direct US political and military threat. "In the short-run, Sino-American relations are unlikely to deteriorate and may even improve. In the longer term, however, the rivalry between the two powers will probably intensify, fed by the
unforeseen consequences of recent, tragic events. "3 In a relatively long period of time, China can not be a competent rival for the US and therefore the development of Sino-US relations in general will, to a large degree, affect China's oil supply security. Since the end of the Cold War and the fall of the Soviet Union, while China's diplomacy has been aimed at en-suring and maintaining the stability and security of the Euro-Asia Continent (neighboring countries, former So-viet republics in particular), adequate attention is also diverted to the encircling trend resulting from

the US con-tainment of China by establishing and fortifying its spheres of influence along China's borderline and coastline. As the curtain of the 21st century draws open, China's diplomatic achievement is remarkable
in terms of its friendly relations with its European and Asian neighbors. Taking the advantage of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), China has established political, economic and security relations with Russia, Kazakstan, Tajikistan and other former Soviet Republics. Meanwhile, China's relationship with India has also improved without hurting its traditional friendship with Pakistan. Nonetheless, after the 11 September events, China's se-curity environment is more symbolic than realistic The US-led anti-terrorist war in Afghanistan brought US in-fluence into Central-Asian nations; agreements reached between the US and Russia on energy and other areas seem to indicate that a more cooperative relationship between the two countries has been built up with regards to issues like NATO's expansion eastwards, anti-ballistic missiles and the transfer of sensitive technology. The US has set up a bridgehead in China's southwest backyard, posing a serious direct threat to China's political, economic and military security and a potential threat to China's energy security. Under this circumstance, oil supply to China from Central Asia is much affected by the US. The Chinese government is well aware that some

American scholars and congressmen are keen on advocating such a 'China Threat" to incite Asian countries, creating tension in northeast Asia and at the same time, oblivi-ous to China's opposition, amending the US-Japan
Defense Guidelines, and expanding the sphere of US-Japanese military cooperation. All these are detrimental to China's reunification program and the stability in east Asia. After the accomplishment of containing China by the two wings, eastern and western, the US turned to strengthen its diplomatic antenna in southeast Asia in an attempt to ensure an absolute control over the oil in this area. The logical deduction is quite evident: to control oil in the Middle East and Central Asia, you have to control South Asia first because it is an important doorway to Central Asia and a sideways door to the Middle East. The control of India is the control of the throat of oil import by Asian and Pacific countries; the control of Pakistan is the control of the entrance of Central Asian oil into the Gulf. Now, the US has succeeded in seizing the initiative of the geopolitical struggle in the two important regions. To the US, the control of the Middle East and Central Asia means the control of world oil; the control of oil means the control of the world. So therefore, it is of vital importance for the US to control shipping routes from the Gulf, southward to the Arabian Sea , westward to the Indian Ocean, through the Strait of Malacca and the Strait of Taiwan and finally to China and other oil-consuming countries. The US-Japan "Defense Cooperation" has already included China's Taiwan in its coverage as a peripheral area. China, once at a loss to control the de-velopment of the Taiwan issue, will be at a loss to control entry points into the sea even within its own sover-eignty, being once again thrown into an island-rim encirclement. On the other side of the issue, the US has taken a series of military measures to ensure oil security in the Middle East and Central Asia:

keeping a large army permanently in the Middle East; maintaining military bases in the Gulf for military demonstration, deterrence and peace-keeping in peace time and for military operations in war time. If needed, enforcement
from troops stationed in Europe and East Asia is quickly available. Readjusting theatre command systems is another important step of the US military. Early in October 1999, the US Defense Department transferred the commanding power of the US

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CNDI 2010 Iraq Aff Regents Lab forces in Central Asia from the Pacific Theatre to the Central Theatre. This symbolizes the trans-formation of the US strategic focus. Today, after the US-led war on Iraq, China is more concerned over its oil security. Once the

Sino-US relationship is out of control, China's oil supply will have to face up to the possibility of being cut off by the US. The fact that China's oil import has to be undertaken in the eyes of the American military forces in the Middle East and Southeast Asia worries China most. Ever since China became a net oil importer, it has been gravely concerned over its oil security. Both being oil importers, China and the US are finding more common interests with regard to energy security. Both countries face similar problems: the exhaustion of domestic oil supply; domestic oil production falling short of demand , increasing need for oil imports and external oil security environment. Both countries hope for a stable supply and price in international oil markets. The two countries have a lot in common in terms of maintaining a reliable, safe and constant oil supply globally and preventing international oil supply from being disrupted and oil prices from
going up too sharply. Nevertheless, a huge disparity lies between their respective oil security environ-ments as viewed from such perspectives as energy structure, degree of reliance on foreign supply, security envi-ronment and related insuring measures. Generally speaking, China's oil security environment is no better than that of the US and this is one of the key reasons why China has to take a contradictory attitude toward the US. Difference In Energy Structure China is a developing country with coal as the number one option, although oil is playing an increasingly im-portant role both politically and economically in the country. At the moment, coal accounts for as much as 67% of China's energy consumption while oil accounts for less than 20% and natural gas under 3%; whereas in the US, the proportion of oil and natural gas in the energy structure are 48% and 27% respectively. Even though by 2020, China's oil consumption is expected to slowly rise to 24%, coal will still take at least 60% of market share. Little change is expected of US energy structure in 20 years to come. The conclusion is that the US is more de-pendent on oil than China is and consequently it receives more pressure in the field of oil security. Difference In Oil Consumption And Import Dependency At present, China's consumption of oil is around 3.8mn b/d, 36% of which is imported from outside the country. In the US, oil consumption is as high as 19.70mn b/d and 60% of it is dependent on imports. Based on these fig-ures, it can be inferred that the US now has more of a reason to be worried about oil security than China does. But, according to the scenarios of the International Energy Agency QEA), in 20 years' time, China's consump-tion of oil will reach limn b/d, pushing the dependence on imported oil up to 76.9%. In the corresponding pe-riod, US oil consumption will spiral up to 26mn b/d but its dependence on imported oil will remain almost what it is today4. That

is to say, in 20 years, China will have more of a reason to be worried about oil security than the US or at least equally so. Difference In The External Environment For Oil Security Though there exists a huge disparity between
the US and China in terms of the levels of economic development and oil dependence, it is difficult to say which one is better than the other in this area. As a matter of fact, in the near future, China will find itself at least equally perplexed by this problem. At present, China is getting more and more dependent on oil from the precarious Middle East

and it has to continue to do so in the foreseeable future. The US case at the moment is that of all the oil it imports, 80% is from its neighboring counties (Mexico and Venezuela, for example) and West Africa (an area also known as the Atlantic Basin) and only 20% is from the Middle East (mainly Saudi Arabia ). In the future, the US can still rely on oil imported from the countries in the Atlantic Basin. It is estimated that by 2020, the percentage of US imported oil from the Middle East will re-main almost the same as what it is now (around 20%) while for China, that percentage will rise to over 80%5. Obviously, China's external environment for
oil security will be much more serious than that of the US.

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Impacts: Presence = U.S.-China War

*****And, U.S. Military Presence in Iraq is an attempt to contain China that can ONLY End in war in Asia, Chinese Advancement in Taiwan and U.S.-China Conflict
Klare 2k6 (Michael T Klare is a professor of peace and world security studies at Hampshire College and the author of Blood and Oil: The Dangers and Consequences of America's Growing Dependency on Imported Petroleum, Asia Times, 4/20/2k6, Containing China: The US's real objective, pg online @ http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China/HD20Ad01.html //cndi-ef) Slowly but surely, the grand strategy of the Bush administration is being revealed. It is not aimed primarily at the defeat of global terrorism, the incapacitation of rogue states, or the spread of democracy in the Middle East. These may dominate the rhetorical arena and be the focus of immediate concern, but they do not govern key decisions regarding the allocation of long-term military resources. The truly commanding objective - the underlying basis for budgets and troop deployments - is the containment of China. This objective governed White House planning during the administration's first seven months in office, only to be set aside by the perceived obligation to highlight anti-terrorism after September 11, 2001; but now, despite President George W Bush's preoccupation with Iraq and Iran, the White House is also reemphasizing its paramount focus on China, risking a new Asian arms race with potentially catastrophic consequences. Bush and his top aides entered the White House in early 2001 with a clear strategic objective: to resurrect the permanent-dominance doctrine spelled out in the Defense Planning Guidance (DPG) for fiscal years 1994-99, the first formal statement of US strategic goals in the post-Soviet era. According to the initial official draft of this document, as leaked to the press in early 1992, the primary aim of US strategy would be to bar the rise of any future competitor that might challenge America's overwhelming military superiority. "Our first objective is to prevent the reemergence of a new rival ... that poses a threat on the order of that posed formerly by the Soviet Union," the document stated. Accordingly, "we [must] endeavor to prevent any hostile power from dominating a region whose resources would, under consolidated control, be sufficient to generate global power". When initially made public, this doctrine was condemned by America's allies and many domestic leaders as being unacceptably imperial as well as imperious, forcing president George H W Bush to water it down; but the goal of perpetuating America's sole-superpower status has never been rejected by administration strategists. In fact, it initially became the overarching principle for US military policy when the younger Bush assumed the presidency in February 2001. Target: China When first enunciated in 1992, the permanent-dominance doctrine did not specify the exact identity of the future challengers whose rise was to be prevented through coercive action. At that time, US strategists worried about a medley of potential rivals, including Russia, Germany, India, Japan and China; any of these, it was thought, might emerge in decades to come as would-be superpowers, and so all would have to be deterred from moving in this direction. By the time George W Bush came into office, however, the pool of potential rivals had been narrowed in elite thinking to just one: the People's Republic of China. Only China, it was claimed, possessed the economic and military capacity to challenge the United States as an aspiring superpower. Therefore perpetuating US global predominance meant containing Chinese power. The imperative of containing China was first spelled out in a systematic way by Condoleezza Rice while serving as a foreign-policy adviser to George W Bush, then governor of the state of Texas, during the 2000 presidential campaign. In a much-cited article in Foreign Affairs, she suggested that China, as an ambitious rising power, would inevitably challenge vital US interests. "China is a great power with unresolved vital interests, particularly concerning Taiwan," she wrote. "China also resents the role of the United States in the Asia-Pacific region." For these reasons, she stated, "China is not a status quo' power but one that would like to alter Asia's balance of power in its own favor. That alone makes it a strategic competitor, not the 'strategic partner' the Clinton administration once called it." It was essential, she argued, to adopt a strategy that would prevent China's rise as regional power. In particular, "the United States must deepen its cooperation with Japan and South Korea and maintain its commitment to a robust military presence in the region". Washington should also "pay closer attention to India's role in the regional balance", and bring that country into an anti-Chinese alliance system. Looking back, it is striking how this article presaged the very strategy now being implemented by the Bush administration in the Pacific and South Asia. Many of the specific policies advocated in her piece, from strengthened ties with Japan to making overtures to India, are being carried out today. In the spring and summer of 2001, however, the most significant effect of this strategic focus was to distract Rice and other senior administration officials from the growing threat posed by Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda. During her first months in office as the president's senior adviser for national-security affairs, Rice devoted herself to implementing the plan she had spelled out in Foreign Affairs. By all accounts, her top priorities in that early period were dissolving the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty with Russia and linking

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CNDI 2010 Iraq Aff Regents Lab Japan, South Korea and Taiwan into a joint missile-defense system, which, it was hoped, would ultimately evolve into a Pentagon-anchored anti-Chinese alliance. Richard Clarke, the senior White House adviser on counter-terrorism, later charged that because of her preoccupation with Russia, China and great power politics, Rice overlooked warnings of a possible al-Qaeda attack on the United States and thus failed to initiate defensive actions that might have prevented the attack. Although Rice survived tough questioning on this matter by the 9-11 Commission without acknowledging the accuracy of Clarke's charges, any careful historian, seeking answers for the Bush administration's inexcusable failure to heed warnings of a potential terrorist strike on the US, must begin with its overarching focus on containing China during this critical period. China on the back burner After September 11, it would have been unseemly for Bush, Rice and other top administration officials to push their China agenda - and in any case they quickly shifted focus to a long-term neo-con objective, the overthrow of Saddam Hussein and the projection of US power throughout the Middle East. So the "global war on terror" (or GWOT, in Pentagon-speak) became their major talking point and the invasion of Iraq their major focus. But the administration never completely lost sight of its strategic focus on China, even when it could do little on the subject. Indeed, the lightning war on Iraq and the further projection of US power into the Middle East was intended, at least in part, as a warning to China of the overwhelming might of the US military and the futility of challenging US supremacy. For the next two years, when so much effort was devoted to rebuilding Iraq in America's image and crushing an unexpectedly potent Iraqi insurgency, China was distinctly on the back burner. In the meantime, however, China's increased investment in modern military capabilities and its growing economic reach in Southeast Asia, Africa and Latin America - much of it tied to the procurement of oil and other vital commodities - could not be ignored. By the spring of 2005, the White House was already turning back to Rice's global grand strategy. On June 4, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld gave a much-publicized speech at a conference in Singapore, signaling what was to be a new emphasis in White House policymaking, in which he decried China's ongoing military buildup and warned of the threat it posed to regional peace and stability. China, he claimed, was "expanding its missile forces, allowing them to reach targets in many areas of the world" and "improving its ability to project power" in the Asia-Pacific region. Then, with sublime disingenuousness, he added, "Since no nation threatens China, one must wonder: Why this growing investment? Why these continuing and expanding arms purchases? Why these continuing robust deployments?" Although Rumsfeld did not answer his questions, the implication was obvious: China was now embarked on a course that would make it a regional power, thus threatening one day to present a challenge to the United States in Asia on unacceptably equal terms. This early sign of the ratcheting up of anti-Chinese rhetoric was accompanied by acts of a more concrete nature. In February 2005, Rice and Rumsfeld hosted a meeting in Washington with top Japanese officials at which an agreement was signed to improve cooperation in military affairs between the two countries. Known as the "Joint Statement of the US-Japan Security Consultative Committee", the agreement called for greater collaboration between US and Japanese forces in the conduct of military operations in an area stretching from Northeast Asia to the South China Sea. It also called for close consultation on policies regarding Taiwan, an implicit hint that Japan was prepared to assist the United States in the event of a military clash with China precipitated by Taiwan's declaring its independence. This came at a time when Beijing was already expressing considerable alarm over pro-independence moves in Taiwan and what the Chinese saw as a revival of militarism in Japan thus evoking painful memories of World War II, when Japan invaded China and committed massive atrocities against Chinese civilians. Understandably then, the agreement could only be interpreted by the Chinese leadership as an expression of the Bush administration's determination to bolster an anti-Chinese alliance system. The new grand chessboard Why did the White House choose this particular moment to revive its drive to contain China? Many factors no doubt contributed to this turnaround, but surely the most significant was a perception that China had finally emerged as a major regional power in its own right and was beginning to contest America's long-term dominance of the Asia-Pacific region. To some degree this was manifested - so the Pentagon claimed - in military terms, as Beijing began to replace Korean War-vintage weapons with more modern (though hardly cutting-edge) Russian designs. It was not China's military moves, however, that truly alarmed US policymakers - most professional analysts are well aware of the continuing inferiority of Chinese weaponry - but rather Beijing's success in using its enormous purchasing power and hunger for resources to establish friendly ties with such longstanding US allies as Thailand, Indonesia and Australia. Because the Bush administration had done little to contest this trend while focusing on the war in Iraq, China's rapid gains in Southeast Asia finally began to ring alarm bells in Washington. At the same time, Republican strategists were becoming increasingly concerned about growing Chinese involvement in the Persian Gulf and Central Asia - areas considered of vital geopolitical importance to the United States because of the vast reserves of oil and natural gas buried there. Much influenced by former national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, whose 1997 book The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Geostrategic Imperatives first highlighted the critical importance of Central Asia, these strategists sought to counter Chinese inroads. Although Brzezinski himself has largely been excluded from elite Republican circles because of his association with the much-despised administration of Democratic president Jimmy Carter, his call for a coordinated US drive to dominate both the eastern and western rimlands of China has been embraced by senior administration strategists. In this way,

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Washington's concern over growing Chinese influence in Southeast Asia has come to be intertwined with the US drive for hegemony in the Persian Gulf and Central Asia. This has given China policy an even more elevated significance in Washington - and helps explain its return with a passion despite the seemingly all-consuming preoccupations of the war in Iraq. Whatever the exact balance of factors, the Bush administration is now clearly engaged in a coordinated, systematic effort to contain Chinese power and influence in Asia . This effort
appears to have three broad objectives: to convert existing relations with Japan, Australia and South Korea into a robust, integrated anti-Chinese alliance system; to bring other nations, especially India, into this system; and to expand US military capabilities in the Asia-Pacific region. Since the administration's campaign to bolster ties with Japan commenced a year ago, the two countries have been meeting continuously to devise protocols for the implementation of their 2005 strategic agreement. In October, Washington and Tokyo released the Alliance Transformation and Realignment Report, which is to guide the further integration of US and Japanese forces in the Pacific and the simultaneous restructuring of the US basing system in Japan. (Some of these bases, especially those on Okinawa, have become a source of friction in US-Japanese relations, and so the Pentagon is now considering ways to downsize the most objectionable installations.) Japanese and American officers are also engaged in a joint "interoperability" study, aimed at smoothing the "interface" between US and Japanese combat and communications systems. "Close collaboration is also ongoing for cooperative missile defense," reports Admiral William Fallon, commander-in-chief of the US Pacific Command (PACOM). Steps have also been taken in this ongoing campaign to weld South Korea and Australia more tightly to the US-Japanese alliance system. South Korea has long been reluctant to work closely with Japan because of that country's brutal occupation of the Korean Peninsula from 1910-45 and lingering fears of Japanese militarism; now, however, the Bush administration is promoting what it calls "trilateral military cooperation" among Seoul, Tokyo and Washington. As indicated by Admiral Fallon, this initiative has an explicitly anti-Chinese dimension. America's ties with South Korea must adapt to "the changing security environment" represented by "China's military modernization", Fallon told the Senate Armed Services Committee on March 7. By cooperating with the US and Japan, he continued, South Korea will move from an overwhelming focus on North Korea to "a more regional view of security and stability". Bringing Australia into this emerging anti-Chinese network has been a major priority of Condoleezza Rice, who spent several days there in mid-March. Although designed in part to bolster US-Australian ties (largely neglected by Washington over the past few years), the main purpose of her visit was to host a meeting of top officials from Australia, the US and Japan to develop a common strategy for curbing China's rising influence in Asia. No formal results were announced, but Steven Weisman of the New York Times reported on March 19 that Rice convened the meeting "to deepen a three-way regional alliance aimed in part at balancing the spreading presence of China". An even bigger prize, in Washington's view, would be the integration of India into this emerging alliance system, a possibility first suggested in Rice's Foreign Affairs article. Such a move was long frustrated by congressional objections to India's nuclear-weapons program and its refusal to sign on to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). Under US law, nations such as India that refuse to cooperate in non-proliferation measures can be excluded from various forms of aid and cooperation. To overcome this problem, Bush met with Indian officials in New Delhi last month and negotiated a nuclear accord that will open India's civilian reactors to International Atomic Energy Agency inspection, thus providing a thin gloss of non-proliferation cooperation to India's robust nuclear-weapons program. If the US Congress approves Bush's plan, the United States will be free to provide nuclear assistance to India and, in the process, significantly expand already growing military-to-military ties. In signing the nuclear pact with India, Bush did not allude to the administration's anti-Chinese agenda, saying only that it would lay the foundation for a "durable defense relationship". But few have been fooled by this vague characterization. According to Weisman of the Times, most US lawmakers view the nuclear accord as an expression of the administration's desire to convert India into "a counterweight to China". The Pacific build-up begins Accompanying all these diplomatic initiatives has been a vigorous, if largely unheralded, effort by the Department of Defense (DoD) to bolster US military capabilities in the Asia-Pacific region. The broad sweep of US strategy was first spelled out in the Pentagon's most recent policy assessment, the Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR), released on February 5. In discussing long-term threats to US security, the QDR begins with a reaffirmation of the overarching precept first articulated in the DPG of 1992: that the United States will not allow the rise of a competing superpower. This country "will attempt to dissuade any military competitor from developing disruptive or other capabilities that could enable regional hegemony or hostile action against the United States", the document states. It then identifies China as the most likely and dangerous competitor of this sort. "Of the major and emerging powers, China has the greatest potential to compete militarily with the United States and field disruptive military technologies that could over time offset traditional US military advantages" - then adding the kicker - "absent US counter-strategies." According to the Pentagon, the task of countering future Chinese military capabilities largely entails the development, and then procurement, of major weapons systems that would ensure US success in any full-scale military confrontation. "The United States will develop capabilities that would present any adversary with complex and multidimensional challenges and complicate its offensive planning efforts," the QDR explains. These include the steady enhancement of such "enduring US advantages" as "long-range strike, stealth, operational maneuver and sustainment of air, sea and ground forces at strategic distances, air dominance, and undersea warfare". Preparing for war with China, in other

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CNDI 2010 Iraq Aff Regents Lab words, is to be the future cash cow for the giant US weapons-making corporations in the military-industrial complex. It will, for instance, be the primary justification for the acquisition of costly new weapons systems such as the F-22A Raptor fighter, the multi-service Joint Strike Fighter, the DDX destroyer, the Virginia-class nuclear attack submarine, and a new intercontinental penetrating bomber - weapons that would just have utility in an all-out encounter with another great-power adversary of a sort that only China might someday become. In addition to these weapons programs, the QDR also calls for a stiffening of present US combat forces in Asia and the Pacific, with a particular emphasis on the US Navy (the arm of the military least used in the ongoing occupation of and war in Iraq). "The fleet will have a greater presence in the Pacific Ocean," the document notes. To achieve this, "The navy plans to adjust its force posture and basing to provide at least six operationally available and sustainable [aircraft] carriers and 60% of its submarines in the Pacific to support engagement, presence and deterrence." Since each of these carriers is, in fact, but the core of a large array of support ships and protective aircraft, this move is sure to entail a truly vast buildup of US naval capabilities in the Western Pacific and will certainly necessitate a substantial expansion of the US basing complex in the region - a requirement that is already receiving close attention from Admiral Fallon and his staff at PACOM. To assess the operational demands of this buildup, moreover, this summer the US Navy will conduct its most extensive military maneuvers in the Western Pacific since the end of the Vietnam War, with four aircraft-carrier battle groups and many support ships expected to participate. Add all of this together, and the resulting strategy cannot be viewed as anything but a systematic campaign of containment. No high administration official may say this in so many words, but it is impossible to interpret the recent moves of Rice and Rumsfeld in any other manner. From Beijing's perspective, the reality must be unmistakable: a steady buildup of US military power along China's eastern, southern and western boundaries. How will China respond to this threat? For now, it appears to be relying on charm and the conspicuous blandishment of economic benefits to loosen Australian, South Korean, and even Indian ties with the United States. To a certain extent, this strategy is meeting with success, as these countries seek to profit from the extraordinary economic boom now under way in China - fueled to a considerable extent by oil, gas, iron, timber, and other materials supplied by China's neighbors in Asia. A version of this strategy is also being employed by President Hu Jintao during his current visit to the United States. As China's money is sprinkled liberally among such influential firms as Boeing and Microsoft, Hu is reminding the corporate wing of the Republican Party that there are vast economic benefits still to be had by pursuing a non-threatening stance toward China. China, however, has always responded to perceived threats of encirclement in a vigorous and muscular fashion as well, and so we should assume that Beijing will balance all that charm with a military buildup of its own. Such a drive will not bring China to the brink of military equality with the United States - that is not a condition it can realistically aspire to over the next few decades. But it will provide further justification for those in the United States who seek to accelerate the containment of China, and so will produce a self-fulfilling loop of distrust, competition and crisis. This will make the amicable long-term settlement of the Taiwan problem and of North Korea's nuclear program that much more difficult, and increase the risk of unintended escalation to full-scale war in Asia. There can be no victors from such a

conflagration.

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Impacts: Oil Competition = U.S.-China War

And, The focus on securing oil ensures that lack of cooperation escalates to a full geo-strategic conflict between the U.S. and China.
Hatemi, Professor at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 2K7 (Peter, Oil and Conflict in Sino-American Relations, China Security, Summer, Volume 3, Number 3) As Chinas petroleum consumption increases and dependence on imports of it deepens, Chinese companies have launched a significant worldwide drive to secure supplies. To an extent, they have looked to regimes that are unfriendly to the United States, such as Iran, Sudan and Venezuela. As the Bush Administration has branded Iran and Sudan rogue states and has an increasingly hostile relationship with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, China clearly risks being seen as part of a loose alliance of anti-American, anti-status quo states.49 More critically, American and Chinese interests will be competing for access to the same fields. In some areas China has already begun an aggressive campaign of dollar diplomacy to secure relations with potential oil exporters.50 Even in the absence of direct competition, Chinese companies aggressive pursuit of oil has created tension between Washington and Beijing. When CNOOC tried to buy California-based UNOCAL, for example, some on Capital Hill demanded the sale be blocked for national security reasons.51 More recently, President George W. Bush has warned Beijing against trying to lock up global supplies.52 The UNOCAL experience, therefore, is a likely harbinger of how commercial competition might boil over into more significant political tensions as American and Chinese companies press ahead with their search for oil.53 In short, companies from the

United States and China have already begun to jockey for position in the volatile oil fields of the Middle East, the Central Asian stans, the Americas and Sub-Saharan Africa, prompting American and Chinese diplomats to compete for the favor of these states. As a result, it seems reasonable to assume that as oil supplies tighten, SinoAmerican competition is likely to increase. Manage with Extreme Caution The basic question comes down to whether China, the classic beta state, will aggressively seek to challenge and possibly displace America, the alpha state.54 While theoretically plausible, others counter that the China Threat scenario lacks a clear casus belli a tangible trigger. There is no reason, the latter argue, why China would not rise peacefully, as the leadership in Beijing maintains it will. The point at which power transition may occur can be estimated - albeit in broad terms - as can the point at which mounting demand for imported oil may begin to create significat lateral pressures. The implications are important: lateral pressures are likely to build to significant levels well before strategic parity. If commercial competition for overseas oil supplies were to spill over into strategic tension, they would do so before China would have the military wherewithal to successfully challenge the United States. As such China would face a choice similar to the one Japan faced in 1940. Desperate to secure the oil needed to fuel its army in China, its Pacific fleet, and its economy, Japan faced the choice of acceding to a regional system (imposed on it by the European powers in the late 19th century) or challenging the United States for domination of the Pacific and making a grab for the oil resources of Southeast Asia.55 Possessing a short-term advantage in military capabilities, Japan gambled that it could knock the United States out of the war quickly. Although there may be broad parallels between Japans dilemma in 1940 and a scenario China may find itself facing in the future, this analysis is not predicting a Sino-American transitional conflict. Rather, by juxtaposing power transition and lateral pressure theories, this analysis illustrates how oil could become a major factor in Sino-American competition. In this light, two factors are salient. First, time is not on Chinas side. Assuming oil remains the primary engine for economic growth and that its demand eventually outpaces supply, it is realistic to posit that China will at some point face a choice between acquiescing to the status quo system or challenging it.56 Because we predict that China will likely confront this choice before it enters the zone of power transition, any challenge to the status quo would entail great risks. However, acquiescing to a system biased in favor of the United States would deprive China of the oil resources it needs to sustain rapid development and could leave it a stunted and likely a disgruntled second rate power for a prolonged period. Even if Beijing were to judge the odds of

winning a transitional conflict to be unacceptably low, it would set the stage for an increasingly hostile relationship between the rising and status quo power.57 Finally, acquiescing to some sort of unequal system for access to
oil does not necessarily mean that China will not ultimately reach strategic parity with the United States. Rather it simply pushes the point of parity further into the future. China could, therefore, opt for a slower transition. Second, and equally important, this analysis suggests that competition for oil could result in a significant displacement of the locus of SinoAmerican tensions. For much of the recent past the Taiwan problem has been the source of recurring tensions between Washington and Beijing and it is often assumed that it is the most likely trigger for a serious conflict.58 However, the potential source of instability between the two countries could shift as American and Chinese oil companies

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jockey for control of oil resources in Central America, the Middle East, Sub-Saharan Africa and the Americas. A
shift in Chinas strategic focus away from Taiwan and East Asia has implications for a possible Sino-American power transition. As argued earlier, while China need not match American strategic power in its entirety in East Asia, competition for oil in areas such as Sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America and the Middle East could force China to expand its force projection. Doing so would, of course, impose additional costs on China and would move the point of strategic parity further into the future. This would widen the temporal gap between the build up of critical lateral pressures and strategic parity, and place China at an even greater disadvantage if competition for oil supplies were to lead to a Sino-American confrontation. Ironically, the displacement of the locus of Sino-American competition could actually exacerbate Chinas strategic disadvantage and thus dissuade China from adopting a confrontational foreign policy. Despite this, the evidence suggests that China will probably continue to assertively pursue access to oil and that it will seek to make new inroads into areas that the United States has historically viewed as falling within its sphere of interest . The connection between lateral pressures and power parity suggests there will be a rising premium on the careful management of Sino-American relations by both Beijing and Washington. While conflict is far from inevitable,

there is still a considerable risk that inept handling could transform competition for oil into much more serious geo-strategic conflict.

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AT: Occupation Key to Energy Security

[ ] Withdrawal wont affect energy securitythe US gets its oil from Saudi Arabia.
Riedel, Masters in Diplomatic History; Former CIA agent, 9 [Bruce Riedel; July 09; The Beginning of the End in Iraq; Brookings; http://www.brookings.edu/opinions/2009/0709_iraq_riedel.aspx] Beginning with energy security, during the war in Iraq the price of oil skyrocketed and then fell back to earth.

Iraq had virtually nothing to do with either trend. The war did not produce energy security for Americans. Saudi Arabia, not Iraq, remains the key to oil production levels. Whatever happens in Iraq after the final American withdrawal will probably only have marginal impact on the global energy system.

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AT: Oil D.A.

The US does not need troops to secure Iraqi oil- The Mideast learned their lesson during the 70s
Christopher Preble et al, 2004 (Director of foreign policy studies at CATO; Exiting Iraq: Why the U.S. must end the military occupation and renew the war against Al Qaeda, p. 43, CB)

Absent strategic justifications for keeping troops in Iraq, some people point to economic or political concerns. For example, many of those who called for an end to the American military presence in Saudi Arabia, but who hoped to replace that presence with a comparable garrison in Iraq, argue that the U.S. military must remain in the region indefinitely to ensure access to the regions oil.126 But the American military presence is not essential (and might even be detrimental) to ensuring that Persian Gulf oil reaches world markets. Many Americans still shudder at the memories of the Arab oil embargoes of the 1970s. But despite popular perceptions, the economic effects of those embargoes were extremely limited, and it is highly unlikely that Arab OPEC governments would attempt a repeat of their failed policies of the 1970s.127 An explicit attempt to withhold Iraqi oil from world markets might have an economic impact, but it would be a very slight one, and the effects of such a policy would certainly be more painful for the people of Iraq than for Americans. In a report published before the start of the first Gulf War, energy economist David Henderson of the
Naval Postgraduate School referred to Iraqs oil weapon as a dud. In the worst case scenario, he estimated that the cost to the U.S. economy of Iraq withholding its oil would be at most half of one percent of our gross national product, and probably much less. The average cost amounted to $112 per person, per year.128 Those numbers were compiled nearly 14 years ago, but even if the costs were found to be twice that amount under current conditions (a purely hypothetical assumption), that would hardly constitute an economic crisis.

Case Turns the Oil D.A. Terrorism and sectarian violence are the root cause of oil issues they could destroy the Kirkuk and Ceyhan pipelines
Ariel Cohen, Ph.D. Dec 15, 2009 ([Senior Research Fellow in Russian and Eurasian Studies and International Energy Security in the Douglas and Sarah Allison Center for Foreign Policy Studies, a division of the Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute for International Studies, at The Heritage Foundation. The author wishes to thank research assistant William Schirano for assistance in preparing this paper] http://www.radicalislam.org/content/reducing-us-dependence-middle-easternoil) Poor U.S. postwar planning, coupled with Iraqi corruption, mismanagement, lack of investment, and inept technological exploitation of the existing fields, has clearly had a detrimental effect on production. However , terrorism, sabotage, and

sectarian violence are at the heart of Iraqs reduced oil production. Oil export routes are hampered as well. With both the SaudiIraq pipeline to the south and the Syrian pipeline to the west off-line, Iraq is vitally dependent on two pipelines: one from Kirkuk to the Mediterranean port of Ceyhan in the northwest and the Basra pipeline in the south. Escalating violence is further impeding oil production and cash flow for the central government in Baghdad. The fear that the situation may deteriorate further has fueled speculation that the Kurdish region in northern Iraq may decide to pursue independencea development that might invite both Turkish and Syrian military involvement. If this were to happen, Iraqs oil fields in the north (the largest in the country) and the strategic KirkukCeyhan pipeline would likely remain under a security threat for the foreseeable future.

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AT: Oil Turn

No impactother producers would fill in and markets adapt
Layne, 2009 (Christopher, Ph.D., chair of intelligence and national security at Texas A&M, Americas Middle East grand strategy after Iraq: the moment for oshore balancing has arrived, Review of International Studies 35, 5-25) Domestic instability in a major oil producing state is another threat to US interests in the Gulf. In the form of civil unrest, instability could temporarily reduce the ow of oil from an aected country, and drive up prices. However, because the oil industry is globally integrated, other oil producers would increase their own production to make-up for the lost capacity. Thus, any spike in oil prices would be temporary, and lost supplies would be replenished by other producers. In fact, past experience shows that this is precisely what happens when internal instability in an oil producing state causes a temporary disruption in oil supplies.19 Instability in any of the Gulf oil producers, of course, could bring a hostile regime to power. Here, there are two things to keep in mind. First, it is unlikely that US military intervention could forestall such an event. Indeed, it could make things even worse. Second, the economic consequences of such an event are exaggerated. In an integrated, global oil market it is immaterial whether a hostile regime would sell oil directly to the US. Because oil is fungible, all that matters is that such a regime makes its oil available to the market. The chances of an hostile regime selfembargoing its oil are very low. The reason is simple: all the major oil producers in the Gulf are economically dependent on their oil revenues. Even if a hostile regime in the Gulf wanted to embargo oil shipments to the US or the West, it could not long do so without shooting itself in the foot economically. Moreover, if a hostile regime chose to behave in an economically irrational fashion by sacricing income to achieve political or economic objectives, markets would adjust. Higher oil prices caused by an embargo would lead oil consuming states like the US both to switch to alternative energy sources, use energy more eciently, and also provide an incentive for other oil producing states to increase the supply of oil in the market. Simply put, in relatively short order the supply/demand equilibrium would return to the marketplace, and oil prices would return to their natural marketplace level.

No linkUS forward presence doesnt increase access to oiltheres only a risk it increases instability
Layne, 2009 (Christopher, Ph.D., chair of intelligence and national security at Texas A&M, Americas Middle East grand strategy after Iraq: the moment for oshore balancing has arrived, Review of International Studies 35, 5-25) Access to oil is an important US interest, and in some respects American military power plays an important role in keeping the oil owing from the Gulf. But there is no need for an on-the-ground American military presence in the Gulf and Middle East. Over-the-horizon deterrence can prevent the emergence of Gulf oil hegemon

without triggering the kind of anti-American backlash that can occur when US forces visibly are present in the region.20 Similarly, although its closure is a low-probability event, the US has an important interest in making sure
the Strait of Hormuz remains open. But this is a task that can be accomplished by American naval power. Finally, domestic instability in the Gulf oil producing states is a risk especially in Saudi Arabia. However, as Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice recently acknowledged, the Gulf and Middle East are going to be unstable regardless of what the US does.21 Certainly, US military power, and Americas heavy-handed political inuence, are not an antidote to domestic instability in the region. On the contrary, they contribute to it. This suggests that the wisest

policies for the US are to reduce its footprint in the Gulf and Middle East, and formulate a viable longterm energy strategy that minimises its vulnerability to the vicissitudes of that endemically turbulent region.22

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*******Add-ons*******

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2AC Power of the Purse Add-on (1/2)

Withdrawal key to checks and balances and Power of the Purse
Burner, et al 2008 (Darce, candidate for US House, Washington, along with a group of United States Democratic congressional candidates, retired military officers and national security professionals http://burner.3cdn.net/20f4382dfab715f445_qvm6ibjk6.pdf TO END THE WAR IN IRAQ A RESPONSIBLE PLAN)

The war has been tightly bound with undermining the Constitutional system of checks and balances. Safeguards between the branches of government and safeguards between government and the people have been eroded, with the executive branch claiming unprecedented power unchecked by either the courts or the Congress. Ending the war requires that we repair the institutions which are designed to prevent mistakes of this magnitude. The one clear war power of Congressthe power of the pursehas been neutered by the habit of paying for the war off the books in emergency supplemental bills. This prevents a transparent
discussion of where the funding for this war has been taken from and how these costs will be covered in the future, and it encourages fraud and irresponsible decision-making. Transparency and accountability will only be possible when

war funding is incorporated into the normal congressional budgeting process, forcing decision-makers to consider real trade-offs. And, Proper checks and balances are critical to preventing accidental nuclear war
Forrester, Law Professor at Hastings & Former Dean of the law schools at Vanderbilt, Tulane, & Cornell, 89 (Ray, Presidential Wars in the Nuclear Age: An Unresolved Problem, The George Washington Law Review, AUGUST, 57 Geo. Wash. L. Rev. 1636) A basic theory--if not the basic theory of our Constitution--is that concentration of power in any one person , or one group, is dangerous to mankind. The Constitution, therefore, contains a strong system of checks and balances, starting with the separation of powers between the President, Congress, and the Supreme Court. The message

is that no one of them is safe with

unchecked power. Yet, in what is probably the most dangerous governmental power ever possessed, we find the potential for world destruction lodged in the discretion of one person. As a result of public indignation aroused by the Vietnam disaster, in which tens of thousands lost their lives in military actions initiated by a succession of Presidents, Congress in 1973 adopted, despite presidential veto, the War Powers Resolution. Congress finally asserted its checking and balancing duties in relation to the making of presidential wars. Congress declared in section 2(a) that its purpose was to fulfill the intent of the framers of the Constitution of the United States and insure that the collective judgment of both the Congress and the President will apply to the introduction of United States Armed Forces into hostilities, or into situations where imminent involvement in hostilities is clearly indicated by the circumstances, and to the continued use of such forces in hostilities or in such situations. The law also stated in section 3 that [t]he President in every possible instance shall consult with Congress before introducing United States Armed Forces into hostilities or into situations where imminent involvement in hostilities is clearly indicated. . . . Other limitations not essential to this discussion are also provided. The intent of the law is clear. Congress undertook to check the President, at least by prior consultation, in any executive action that might lead to hostilities and war. [*1638] President Nixon, who initially vetoed the resolution, claimed that it was an unconstitutional restriction on his powers as Executive and Commander in Chief of the military. His successors have taken a similar view. Even so, some of them have at times complied with the law by prior consultation with representatives of Congress, but obedience to the law has been uncertain and a subject of continuing controversy between Congress and the President. Ordinarily, the issue of the constitutionality of a law would be decided by the Supreme Court. But, despite a series of cases in which such a decision has been sought, the Supreme Court has refused to settle the controversy. The usual ground for such a refusal is that a "political question" is involved. The rule is well established that the federal judiciary will decide only "justiciable" controversies. "Political questions" are not "justiciable." However, the standards established by the Supreme Court in 1962 in Baker v. Carr, 369 U.S. 186, to determine the distinction between "justiciable controversies" and "political questions" are far from clear. One writer observed that the term "political question" [a]pplies to all those matters of which the court, at a given time, will be of the opinion that it is impolitic or inexpedient to take jurisdiction. Sometimes this idea of inexpediency will result from the fear of the vastness of the consequences that a decision on the merits might entail. Finkelstein, Judicial Self-Limitation, 37 HARV. L. REV. 338, 344 (1924)(footnote omitted). It is difficult to defend the Court's refusal to assume the responsibility of decisionmaking on this most critical issue. The Court has been fearless in deciding other issues of "vast consequences" in many historic disputes, some involving executive war power. It is to be hoped that the Justices will finally do their duty here. But in the meantime

persists, fraught

the spectre of single-minded power with all of the frailties of human nature that each human possesses , including the President. World history is

filled with tragic examples. Even if the Court assumed its responsibility to tell us whether the Constitution gives Congress the necessary power to check the President, the War Powers Resolution itself is unclear. Does the Resolution require the President to consult with Congress before launching a nuclear attack? It has been asserted that "introducing United States Armed Forces into hostilities" refers only to military personnel and does not include the launching of nuclear missiles alone. In support of this interpretation, it has been argued that Congress was concerned about the human losses in Vietnam and in other presidential wars, rather than about the weaponry. Congress, of course, can amend the Resolution to state explicitly that "the introduction of Armed Forces" includes missiles as well as personnel. However, the President could continue to act without prior consultation by renewing the claim first made by President [*1639] Nixon that the Resolution is an unconstitutional invasion of the executive power. Therefore, the real solution, in the absence of a Supreme Court decision, would appear to be a constitutional amendment. All must obey a clear rule in the Constitution. The adoption of an amendment is very difficult. Wisely, Article V requires that an amendment may be proposed only by the vote of two-thirds of both houses of Congress or by the application of the legislatures of two-thirds of the states, and the proposal must be ratified by the legislatures or conventions of three-fourths of the states. Despite the difficulty, the Constitution has been amended twenty-six times. Amendment can be done when a problem is so important that it arouses the attention and concern of a preponderant majority of the American people. But the people must be made aware of the problem.

It is hardly necessary to

belabor the relative importance of the control of nuclear warfare.

A constitutional amendment may be, indeed, the appropriate method. But the most difficult issue remains. What should the amendment provide? How can the problem be solved specifically? The Constitution in section 8 of Article I stipulates that "[t]he Congress shall have power . . . To declare War. . . ." The idea seems to be that only these many representatives of the people, reflecting the public will, should possess the power to commit the lives and the fortunes of the nation to warfare. This approach makes much more sense in a democratic republic than entrusting the decision to one person, even though he may be designated the "Commander in Chief" of the military forces. His power is to

There is a recurring relevation of a paranoia of power throughout human history that has impelled one leader after another to draw their people into wars which, in hindsight, were foolish, unnecessary, and, in some instances, downright insane. Whatever
command the war after the people, through their representatives, have made the basic choice to submit themselves and their children to war.

may be the psychological influences that drive the single decisionmaker to these irrational commitments of the lives and fortunes of others, the fact remains that the behavior is a predictable one in any government that does not

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provide an effective check and balance against uncontrolled power in the hands of one human. We, naturally, like to think that our leaders are
above such irrational behavior. Eventually, however, human nature, with all its weakness, asserts itself whatever the setting. At least that is the evidence that experience and history give us, even in our own relatively benign society, where the Executive is subject to the rule of law. [*1640] Vietnam and other more recent engagements show that it can happen and has happened here. But the "nuclear football"--the ominous "black bag" --remains in the sole possession of the President. And, most important, his decision to launch a nuclear missile would be, in fact if not in law, a declaration of nuclear war, one which the nation and, indeed, humanity in general, probably would be unable to survive. The adoption of the War Powers Resolution, with clarifying amendments to cover missiles, as an explicit constitutional imperative appears wise. It would finally settle the constitutional excuses. But there is at least one major problem remaining. A situation might arise in which a decision to introduce military personnel or missiles must be made in a matter of minutes. If, for example, the President receives information which he deems reliable that a nuclear attack has been or is about to be launched against us, he may not have time to consult with Congress under the ordinary time-consuming procedures. When this ultimate hypothetical is presented to a class in constitutional law, the response is likely to take the form of nervous laughter. Yet such are the perceived realities of the world in which we now live. Even before the day of nuclear missiles, the Supreme Court in 1863 observed, albeit five to four, in the Prize Cases, 67 U.S. (2 Black) 635, 668 (1863): He [the president] has no power to initiate or declare a war either against a foreign nation or a domestic State. But by the Acts of Congress . . . he is authorized to call out the . . . military and naval forces of the United States in case of invasion by foreign nations, and to suppress insurrection against the government of a State or of the United States. If a war be made by invasion of a foreign nation, the President is not only authorized but bound to resist force by force. He does not initiate the war, but is bound to accept the challenge without waiting for any special legislative authority. And whether the hostile party be a foreign invader, or States organized in rebellion, it is none the less a war, although the declaration of it be "unilateral." (citations omitted). This passage and others in a similar vein in Supreme Court opinions give credence to the repeated argument of presidents that they have "inherent" executive authority to initiate military action and a practical state of war in emergency situations, without prior consultation with Congress and without a congressional declaration of war. It is

the essence that

this claim of executive discretion in circumstances when time is of is particularly unacceptable and hazardous to world destiny in the age of nuclear missiles.

One might be willing, along with the Supreme Court in the Prize Cases, to take a chance on the judgment of President Lincoln at the opening of the Civil War in [*1641] his personal decision to enter into hostilities in a narrow and confined military engagement far removed from public safety in general, and yet be entirely unwilling to trust a president in the nuclear age with the discretion to cast the first missile. The consequences are grossly different, so different in fact, that consideration should be given to amending the Constitution to make it clear that no one human henceforward should be entrusted with such

. High emotions, misinformation, wrong headed decisions, and even unrecognized mental incapacity are not only possible but perhaps likely in times of international crisis. Specific and workable solutions to be written into a constitutional amendment are difficult in the extreme. Any
authority. If there is any practical way in which to check the President in order to avoid the possibility of mistaken action, it should be adopted and written into the Constitution plan will have its weaknesses. The question is whether there is a plan that has less weakness than the present one of leaving it to the fragile and unpredictable judgment of one person. Obviously, it is not feasible to convene Congress for a decision as to whether the circumstances justify a declaration of war and the immediate launching of the missile. But perhaps it is not too bizarre to consider the use of three "nuclear footballs." Since the President is now able to have the "black bag" by his side at all times, it would seem feasible to require that a bag also be constantly available to a representative of the House and a representative of the Senate. Inconvenient, yes, but if the President can live with it, representatives of the Congress should also be able to do so. In this age of miracles in instant communication, the messages going to the President could be transmitted to all three at the same time, thereby prompting immediate consultation. The three, of course, would receive constant protection as the President is protected now. If one should not be available due to incapacity, the others would consult alone. My own inclination would be to require the President to receive the concurrence of at least one of the two in the President's plan of action. But for those more willing to trust the judgment of one person, the President's decision could control subject only to the safeguard of prior consultation. The representatives of the House and the Senate might well be the two majority leaders, ex officio. Otherwise, they could be elected by each body for the specific assignment. William Manchester, in his book The Death of a President, described the "bag" at one time as a thirty-pound metal suitcase containing various packets, each bearing a wax seal and signatures of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Inside one were cryptic numbers which would make [*1642] it possible for the President to set up a hot line to the prime minister of the United Kingdom and the president of France on four minutes' notice. Inside another there were codes that would launch a nuclear attack. If Manchester's descriptions are accurate, they demonstrate that prior communication is deemed possible within minutes with two other parties. It is striking, though, that the instant prior communication is with representatives of foreign nations, rather than with representatives of Congress, the coordinate branch of our own government expressly charged with the responsibility to declare war. If it is feasible to communicate on moments' notice with the British prime minister and the French president, it would appear feasible to communicate with two of our own officials nearby. Obviously, there are practical problems and uncertainties in this plan. The very idea of the "bag" itself is strange enough, and to suggest the use of three bags is stranger still. Better solutions may be found. Some have urged that the Constitution provide that the United States shall never launch another nuclear weapon. This approach puts great faith in the good will and self-restraint of others who may possess the weapon now and in the future. History gives strong support to this caution. At this time, the soundest conclusion may be simply that the problem of presidential wars should be confronted seriously. The tragic failures of leadership of

. Our great tradition of checks and balances should be applied to this most critical aspect of executive power to make war.
the past should be prevented

Billions Dead
PR Newswire, 4-29-98

An 'accidental' nuclear attack would create a public health disaster of an unprecedented scale, according to more than 70 articles and speeches on the subject, cited by the authors and written by leading nuclear war experts, public health officials, international peace organizations, and legislators. Furthermore, retired General Lee Butler, Commander from 1991-1994 of all U.S. Strategic Forces under former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Colin Powell, has warned that from his experience in many "war games" it is plausible that such an attack could provoke a nuclear counterattack that could trigger full-scale nuclear war with billions of casualties worldwide. The authors describe the immediate effects of an " accidental" launch from a single Russian submarine that would kill at least six to eight million people in firestorms in eight
major U.S. cities. With hospitals destroyed and medical personnel killed, and with major communications and transportation networks disrupted, the delivery of emergency care would be all but impossible, according to Forrow and his colleagues.

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1AR Pres Powers Impact

The plans precedent opens the door to UNLIMITED Pres Powers The Executive will use the plan to justify spending any amount of money, regardless of Congressional appropriations, to fulfill constitutional duties
Bunge, J.D. Candidate at the University of Chicago, 88 (Jonathan, Congressional Underappropriation for Civil Juries: Responding to the Attack on a Constitutional Guarantee, University of Chicago Law Review, Winter, 55 U. Chi. L. Rev. 237) Proponents of the inherent power doctrine might argue that the possibility of fiscal irresponsibility on the part of the federal courts cannot possibly have much impact on the government's overall economic health, because money spent on the courts comprises such a small percentage of the government's total budget. n36 Even assuming that the judiciary's limited needs would not pose a serious economic threat, recognizing an inherent power to appropriate funds would presage

serious economic dangers: recognizing this power in the judicary would imply the existence of a similar self-executing power in the executive branch. The same separation of powers arguments that justify the inherent spending power in the judiciary also justify an inherent [*248] spending power in the executive. If the Constitution entitles the judiciary to appropriate its own funds because the Constitution creates an independent judiciary and because otherwise the legislature, through inadequate funding, might prevent the judiciary from carrying out its constitutional function, then the Constitution must also entitle the executive to appropriate funds because the Constitution creates an independent executive and because otherwise the legislature, through inadequate funding, might prevent the executive from carrying out his or her constitutional function. Recognizing the judiciary's inherent power to appropriate public funds, then, would vest the President with the power to bypass Congress and self-execute his or her own budget demands. The President must, for example, have the power to appropriate money for the military because otherwise,
Congress might prevent the President from carrying out his or her responsibilities as commander-in-chief of the armed forces. n37 The logic of the inherent power doctrine might possibly be extended even further. If the Supreme Court, for example, recognized [*249] the inferior federal courts' inherent power to appropriate public funds, could the Court contain this precedent within the appropriation context? Or would this precedent stand for the broader proposition that the federal judiciary has the inherent power to take any action the judiciary decides it needs to take in order to meet its constitutional responsibilities? If this precedent comes to stand for this broader proposition, how could the Court deny that the Constitution also gives the President the power to take any action he or she deems necessary to fulfill his or her constitutional responsibilities, even an action explicitly proscribed by statute?

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2AC Japan Re-Arm Add-on

Withdrawal key to stop Japanese Re-Arm
Perrit 2k4 (Professor of Law and former Dean, Chicago-Kent College of Law, Illinois Institute of Technology Iraq And The Future Of United States Foreign Policy: Failures Of Legitimacy, Syracuse Journal of International Law and Commerce Summer, 2004, pg nexis) (3) The Iraq invasion and other aspects of the Bush Doctrine will encourage Japan to form another pole Japan has been one of America's most dependable allies in the post-War era. Confident that the U.S. would protect it against China and other regional threats, Japan was content to maintain a low military profile and to pursue prosperity through international trade under a Pax Americana. U.S. preoccupation with Iraq and with the campaign against terrorism show

signs of distracting it from broader strategic issues in Asia. The failure by the United States to manage relations with China effectively and the lack of engagement in dealing with North Korea's nuclear threat could encourage Japan over the long run to re-arm and to pursue an independent foreign policy. Charles
Kupchan suggests the possibility of a convergence between Japan and China, which could represent a third geo-political pole, alongside Europe and the United States. n200

Nuclear War
Ratner (nqa) 1/17/03 [Ellen, World Net Daily Executive Report]

Experts predict that with Japans high-tech, industrial economy, they could assemble a full nuclear arsenal and bomb delivery systems within three years. This would be a disaster. Not only would it trigger a new, intra-Asian arms racefor who could doubt that if Japan goes nuclear, China and North Korea would be joined by South Korea and even Taiwan in building new and more weapons? Likewise, given the memories, who could doubt that such a scenario increases the risks of nuclear war somewhere in the region? By comparison, the old Cold War world, where there were only two armed camps, would look like kid stuff.

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2AC Afghanistan Add-on

Drawing down from Iraq on time is crucial to the Afghanistan effort Staying in Iraq strains Afghan strategy and resources
Katulis 2k10 [Brian, Senior Fellow at American Progress, where his work focuses on U.S. national security policy in the Middle East and South Asia. Katulis has served as a consultant to numerous U.S. government agencies, private corporations, and nongovernmental organizations on projects in more than two dozen countries, including Iraq, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Yemen, Egypt, and Colombia, April 12, 2010, Navigating Tricky Timelines in Iraq, Center for American Progress, http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2010/04/tricky_timelines.html] Thats why it is wise for the Obama administration to continue to move forward as planned with the troop withdrawal schedule, barring an unforeseen strategic complication such as a conventional military invasion from one of Iraqs neighbors, which seems less likely, or an event such as an internal military coup, which has higher odds than a regional war. Iraqs next government may ultimately seek to modify the timeline set out in the security agreement to have all U.S. troops out of Iraq by the end of 2011, and the Obama administration should consider such a requestif it comesin the context of the full range of global security challenges America faces. Not moving forward with the planned troop

drawdown because of protracted political negotiations in Baghdad makes little strategic sense for broader U.S. national security. A delay in drawing down troops from Iraq puts more strain on a U.S. military working hard to implement a troop increase in Afghanistan. The United States should carefully monitor the situation inside Iraq as it continues the troop withdrawal outlined by the Bush administration, but it would be unwise to look for excuses to stay longer than Iraqis want. Afghan conflict causes global nuclear war
Stephen J. Morgan, Political Writer and Former Member of the British Labour Party Executive Committee, Better another Taliban Afghanistan, than a Taliban NUCLEAR Pakistan!?, 9-23-2007, http://www.freearticlesarchive .com/article/_Better_another_Taliban_Afghanistan__than_a_Taliban_NUCLEAR_Pakistan___/99961/0/ However events may prove him sorely wrong. Indeed, his policy could completely backfire upon him. As the war intensifies, he has no guarantees that the current autonomy may yet burgeon into a separatist movement. Appetite comes with eating, as they say. Moreover, should the Taliban fail to re-conquer al of Afghanistan, as looks likely, but captures at least half of the country, then a Taliban Pashtun caliphate could be established which would act as a magnet to separatist Pashtuns in Pakistan. Then, the likely break up of Afghanistan along ethnic lines, could, indeed, lead the way to the break up of Pakistan, as well. Strong centrifugal forces have always bedevilled the stability and unity of Pakistan, and, in the context of the new world situation, the country could be faced with civil wars and popular fundamentalist uprisings, probably including a military-fundamentalist coup d'tat. Fundamentalism is deeply rooted in Pakistan society. The fact that in the year following
9/11, the most popular name given to male children born that year was "Osama" (not a Pakistani name) is a small indication of the mood. Given the weakening base of the traditional, secular opposition parties, conditions would be ripe for a coup d'tat by the fundamentalist wing of the Army and ISI, leaning on the radicalised masses to take power. Some form of radical, military Islamic regime, where legal powers would shift to Islamic courts and forms of shira law would be likely. Although, even then, this might not take place outside of a protracted crisis of upheaval and civil war conditions, mixing fundamentalist movements with nationalist uprisings and sectarian violence between the Sunni and minority Shia populations. The nightmare that is now Iraq would take on gothic proportions across the continent. The

an arc of civil war over Lebanon, Palestine and Iraq would spread to south Asia, stretching from Pakistan to Palestine, through Afghanistan into Iraq and up to the Mediterranean coast. Undoubtedly, this would also spill over into India both with regards to the Muslim community and Kashmir. Border clashes, terrorist attacks, sectarian pogroms and insurgency would break out. A new war, and possibly nuclear war, between Pakistan and India could no be ruled out. Atomic Al Qaeda Should Pakistan break down completely, a Taliban-style
prophesy of

government with strong Al Qaeda influence is a real possibility. Such deep chaos would, of course, open a "Pandora's box" for the region and the world. With the possibility of unstable clerical and military fundamentalist elements being in control of the Pakistan nuclear arsenal, not only their use against India, but Israel becomes a possibility, as well as the acquisition of nuclear and other deadly weapons secrets by Al Qaeda. Invading Pakistan would not be an option for America. Therefore a nuclear war would now again become a real strategic possibility. This would bring a shift in the tectonic plates of global relations. It could usher in a new Cold War with China and Russia pitted against the

US.

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Troops Afghanistan
Obama will leave 50,000 in Iraq rest go to Afghanistan
Gearan 2009 (By Anne Gearan http://www.countercurrents.org/gearan270209.htm U.S. To Leave Residual Force Of 50,000 In Iraq After "Pullout" 27 February, 2009)

Some of the U.S. forces likely to remain in Iraq after President Barack Obama fulfills his pledge to withdraw combat troops would still have a combat role fighting suspected terrorists, the Pentagon said
Wednesday. Obama could announce his withdrawal strategy as early as Friday. He will travel that day to Camp Lejeune in North Carolina, the White House announced Wednesday. While there Obama is expected to outline a compromise

withdrawal plan that leaves behind as many as 50,000 troops for cleanup and protection operations. Although most of the fighting forces would be withdrawn in the next 18 months, some of those units could be in Iraq for years to come. An agreement forged by the Bush administration with Iraqi officials requires
removal of all U.S. forces by 2012. Defense Secretary Robert Gates has said that a holdover, or residual, force would number in the tens of thousands. His spokesman said Wednesday that assuming there is such a force, it would have three primary functions: Training and helping Iraqi forces; protecting Americans and U.S. assets in Iraq and limited counterterrorism operations in which Iraqi forces would take the lead. I think a limited number of those that remain will conduct combat operations against terrorists, assisting Iraqi security forces, Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell said. By and large youre talking about people who we would classify as enablers, support troops. Obama campaigned on ending the Iraq war, and pledged to do so in 16 months. The withdrawal timetable he is expected to approve would stretch over 19 months, counting from Inauguration Day. That means more than 100,000 troops would leave over the coming 18 months. The pullout would free up troops and resources for the war in Afghanistan, where Obama has said the threat to national security remains high. We are now carefully reviewing our policies in both wars, and I will soon announce a way forward in Iraq that leaves Iraq to its people and responsibly ends this war, Obama said in his address to Congress on Tuesday.

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2AC Iraqi Democracy Add-on (1/2)

Withdrawal key to democratic legitimacy for the Iraqi government
David Boaz executive vice president of the Cato Institute 2005 Iraq and the Persian Gulf: Getting Out, Staying Engaged CATO handbook on policy Imposing Democracy by Force Is Doomed to Failure Some of the most fervent advocates of a long-term presence in Iraq move beyond questions about terrorism and direct threats to the United States and argue that American security depends on the establishment of democracy in Iraq. For many, the creation of an Iraqi democracy is Americas primary duty after the fall of Saddam. The general reasons for the support of Iraqi democracy are twofold: first, the humanitarian idea of democracy for democracys sake and, second, the notion that democratic regimes tend not to threaten U.S. national security interests. While the rhetoric of democratization and political liberalization is used to justify a continued

military occupation of the country, the practice of occupation often entails thwarting the wishes of millions of Iraqis. The deeper problem, however, is that it is unlikely that democracy will take hold in Iraq, and certainly not in short order. Moreover, the very conditions for the formation of liberal democratic institutions are in fact undermined by the presence of foreign troops in Iraq. The handover of political sover- eignty in June 2004 left in place approximately 140,000 American soldiers. This massive foreign military presence implies a measure of coercion on the Iraqi polity, playing into legitimate concerns that the United States does not really favor self-rule for the Iraqi people but instead hopes to see the emergence of a compliant government in Iraq, imbued with an aura of democratic legitimacy . Genuine sovereignty for a new government in Iraq can be achieved only when American military personnel are removed from the country. Anything short of that end will forever leave the impression that the new government does not truly serve the people of Iraq. That is true even if the government of Iraq is afforded the superficial trappings of international legitimacy, such as membership in international organizations, and recogni- tion of new national symbols. Sovereign states must be free and indepen- dent, and this independence must include the ability of the Iraqi people to defend themselves from threats and to conduct their own foreign policy. Assuming that U.S. policymakers sincerely hope to create a self-reliant,
stable democracy in Iraq, a model that will then be exportable around the Middle East, a prolonged U.S. occupation is unlikely to do the job. Even if it were possible to export democracy at gunpoint, such a strategy entails a much greater commitment than simply overthrowing unfriendly dictators; it also requires the formulation, and subsequent stabilization, of democratic institutions. That, in turn, would require a massive commitment of will and resources that would erode Americas own political and economic health. A long-term military occupation of Iraq is unsustainable. U.S. military withdrawal therefore should not be predicated on the establishment of a liberal democratic government in Iraq. Policymakers must make a clear distinction between core U.S. national interests (in other words, those interests worth fighting for) and those goals that, while they may be worthy, are not, and should not be, the central object of U.S. foreign policy. Most Americans welcome the prospects for the emergence of a new government in Iraq, even as they recognize that the process is likely to take many years. Most believe that a liberal democratic govern- ment can eventually develop and that trade and economic interaction between Iraqis, Americans, and the rest of the international community can stimulate the process. U.S. policymakers should welcome the participa- tion of private groups and nongovernmental organizations in supporting and, where possible, encouraging institutions of civil society that promote political and economic freedom. Those goals cannot be achieved through the application of military power and are not

The United States cannot ensure that the Iraqis will elect liberal democrats to represent them. Instead of trying to dictate outcomes and create a democracy in Americas image, policymakers must allow the Iraqi people to create their own system of governance absent the pressure and humiliation of a foreign occupying army. The tasks of governing must be left to the Iraqi people. The United States for its part should encourage the widest possible representation for Iraqs religious and ethnic minorities and should not demand that the new government be organized
advanced by the maintenance of a U.S. military presence in Iraq. around a strong central authority based in Baghdad. If Iraqs disparate ethnic communities opt for some measure of autonomy, the United States should not stand in the way of a federal solution. However,

. For the United States to remain tied to the fortunes of the government of Iraq places our country, and our citizens, in a no-win situation . For
Iraqis must understand that they will have responsibility for defending themselves from both internal and external threats

example, in stating its preference for democracy, but in opposing the democratic impulses of the Shiite majority and the Kurds desire for autonomy, the United States finds itself on a collision course with the wishes of millions of Iraqis. As policymakers juggle various and clashing commitments, Americansboth in Iraq and abroad

could become a target for all unsatisfied Iraqis, Shiite or Sunni, Arab or Kurd. Every month, every year, that the U.S. military remains in Iraq only makes it more difficult and more costly for the United States to extract itself. A decision to remove all U.S. military personnel from Iraq will minimize the enormous costs and risks associated with a military occupation and could eventually set the stage for a stable and sustainable relationship between Iraq and the United States.

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2AC Iraqi Democracy Add-on (2/2)

Democratic governance is key to avert extinction prevents terrorism, genocide, and environmental destruction
Diamond, 95 [Larry Diamond, a professor, lecturer, adviser, and author on foreign policy, foreign aid, and democracy. Promoting Democracy in the 1990s: Actors and instruments, issues and imperatives : a report to the Carnegie Commission on Preventing Deadly Conflict, December 1995, http://wwics.si.edu/subsites/ccpdc/pubs/di/di.htm] This hardly exhausts the lists of threats to our security and well-being in the coming years and decades. In the former Yugoslavia nationalist aggression tears at the stability of Europe and could easily spread. The flow of illegal drugs intensifies through increasingly powerful international crime syndicates that have made common cause with authoritarian regimes and have utterly corrupted the institutions of tenuous, democratic ones. Nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons

continue to proliferate. The very source of life on Earth, the global ecosystem, appears increasingly endangered. Most of these new and unconventional threats to security are associated with or aggravated by the weakness or absence of democracy, with its provisions for legality, accountability, popular sovereignty, and openness. The experience of this century offers important lessons. Countries that govern themselves in a truly democratic fashion do not go to war with one another. They do not aggress against their neighbors to aggrandize themselves or glorify their leaders. Democratic governments do not ethnically "cleanse" their own populations, and they are much less likely to face ethnic insurgency. Democracies do not sponsor terrorism against one another. They do not build weapons of mass destruction to use on or to threaten one anothe r.
Democratic countries form more reliable, open, and enduring trading partnerships. In the long run they offer better and more stable climates for investment. They are more environmentally responsible because they must answer to their own citizens, who organize to protest the destruction of their environments. They are better bets to honor international treaties since they value legal obligations and because their openness makes it much more difficult to breach agreements in secret. Precisely because, within their own borders, they respect competition, civil liberties, property rights, and the rule of law, democracies are the only reliable foundation on which a new world order of international security and prosperity can be built.

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W/D k to Iraqi Democracy

[ ] US presence denies the legitimacy of Iraqi democracy, increasing instability
Beetham, David Professorship of Politics at the University of Leeds. 2009 'The contradictions of democratization by force: the case of Iraq', Democratization, 16: 3, 443 454 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13510340902914338 The logic of self-determinationIf the basic idea of democracy is that of self-determination that a people shoulddetermine their own affairs then it is self-contradictory to try to initiate that through a violation of their self-determination by a forcible invasion and occu- pation, compelling them to be free. Democracy shares with sovereignty the coreidea of popular self-determination, of which one is the internal, the other the exter-nal, expression. The fact that the latter does not guarantee the former, as we all know,does not excuse us ignoring the intrinsic connection between them. It is no accident that the age of democracy in the second half of the twentieth century was also the age of anti-imperialism, and the establishment of self-governing states from formerempires through popular struggle. With some exaggeration, Michael Mann writesthat nationalism is now the worlds dominant ideology. . .There is no widespreadideology legitimizing anyone else ruling over a nation-state. Since only thepeople should rule, anti-imperialism is rampant across the world.12This normative connection between democracy and the principle of nationalself-government is overlooked by those who argue either that state sovereigntyis an outmoded legal category or that it should be trumped by the principle ofdemocracy and human rights, where the latter are violated by a domestic oppressor.This argument formed apost hocjustication for the Iraq invasion by those whohave come to be known as liberal imperialists or Wilsonians in boots.13Norhave they baulked at generalizing the justication. So Tony Blair, when askedby the journalist Peter Stothard Well, if its right to get rid of Saddam, why notthe others?, replied People ask me why we dont get rid of Mugabe, why not the Burmese lot. Yes, lets get rid of them all. I dont because I cant, but when you can you should.14 And the current UK foreign secretary, David Miliband, in an Oxford University lecture castigated the left for being conicted between the desirability of the goal [sc. democracy] and its qualms about the use of military means. In fact, he went on, the goal of spreading democracy should be a great progressive project; the means need to combine soft and hard power .15 A more elaborated academic version of this argument is provided by Philip Bobbitt in his latest book, Terror and Consent, in which he argues that regimes which engage in widespread viola- tions of human rights should not be protected by sovereignty from military inter- vention on the part of what he calls states of consent.16 What this position overlooks is the fact that national sovereignty is not merely a legal category, but also a moral or normative one, and is so because of the value that people put on their own self-determination. It follows that the normative contradic- tion of coercive democratization is not just conned to the realm of ideas, as a philosophical conundrum about how a people might ever show consent to their for- cible liberation. It also has signicant practical consequences. An invading and occupying power is seen by most inhabitants to lack legitimacy, and so by exten- sion is the regime it creates, together with its occupants. And the lack of legitimacy in turn provokes resistance, intensifying insecurity,

which in turn erodes legitimacy further in a self-reinforcing cycle, as the recent history of Iraq only too clearly demonstrates. As I have argued elsewhere, the legitimacy of a regime in the eyes of its subjects is not something separate from its effectiveness; the two are inter-dependent .17 A further way in which the principle of self-determination is infringed by inva- sion and occupation lies in the subordination of the process and content of demo- cratization to the interests and priorities of the occupying powers. Iraq exemplies this in an extreme form, as US interests economic, military and political have come to set the agenda and timetable for an internal policy and evolution suppo- sedly in the hands of the Iraqis themselves. The plan to privatize Iraqs oil and place it in the hands of companies associated with the occupying powers is only the most egregious example. It also reects a distinctively US conception of democracy, as consisting of free markets and privatization plus elections, typically in that order . All that the history of US involvement in other countries since the Second World War shows is that market freedoms for US business are more import- ant than political democracy, when any conict arises between the two . In this
respect Iraq is likely to remain a client regime of the United States, whatever the formal trappings of democratic selfdetermination.

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2AC Taiwan Attack Add-on (1/2)

Chinese Military Strategists see this as a key moment failure of the U.S. to Withdraw Presents China with an opportunity to Attack Taiwan
Chase 2k7 (Michael, Chinas Assessment of the War in Iraq: Americas Deepest Quagmire and the Implications for Chinese National Security, China Brief Volume: 7 Issue: 17, pg online @ http://www.jamestown.org/single/? no_cache=1&tx_ttnews[tt_news]=4419 //ghs-ef) Chinese analysts assess that the United States has been unable to achieve its strategic objectives in Iraq despite its stunningly rapid victory over the Iraqi armed forces in Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF). Moreover, Chinese observers argue that the prolonged and brutal conflict that developed in the wake of this early victory has left the United States mired in a deepening morass from which there are few if any options for an easy exit. In the words of one Chinese commentator, since the end of major combat operations in Iraq, the United States has become bogged down in the deepest military quagmire since the end of the Cold War [1]. Consequently, Chinese observers have concluded that the Iraq war is weakening the United States militarily, economically, and diplomatically, which at least some believe may make Washington less likely to intervene with military force in other potential hotspots. Chinese Views on Political and Diplomatic Issues Chinese assessments of the war in Iraq indicate that the United States is in an extremely unenviable position at the strategic level. Chinese scholars assess that Washington is facing three critical problems: an Iraqi government incapable of producing the required results, the fragmentation of its diplomatic coalition and withdrawal of some countries troops from Iraq, and flagging domestic support for an increasingly unpopular war. First, Chinese analysts highlight the serious weaknesses of the Iraqi government. They argue that these problems must be resolved if the United States is to have any chance of achieving its strategic objectives. This requires nothing less than a broad reconciliation that would serve as a basis for progress on key issues related to national security and reconstruction. According to one Chinese researcher, "A truly effective means of resolving the Iraq issue is to enable the factions in Iraq to achieve reconciliation quickly. There will then be a foundation for resolving issues such as the stationing of foreign troops, sectarian conflicts, the infiltration of al-Qaeda and the rebuilding of infrastructure" [2]. For many Chinese analysts, however, the prospects of achieving any such reconciliation appear slim at best given the failings of the Iraqi government. According to another Chinese scholar, "the al-Maliki government has not only failed to calm down the domestic situation since coming to power, but has caused a widespread sectarian conflict, and made the country face the risk of all-out civil war and division [3]. This scholar suggests that these problems derive in large measure from the Bush administrations attempt to quickly establish a democratic government in a country that was woefully unprepared for such a transition: When Iraq was in crisis, it urgently needed a strong central government to redeem the situation, but the United States blindly grafted Western-style democracy, which gave rise to a volatile situation and an extremely unsuitable 'weak government'...the grave turmoil in Iraq shows a simple truth: blindly transplanting Western-style democracy will not bring prosperity and stability, and will only trigger new chaos and turmoil and even create a truly 'failed state'" [4]. Second, Chinese observers argue that the United States faces serious diplomatic challenges abroad. In particular, Chinese analysts assess that international support for the occupation of Iraq is waning. According to one recent commentary, "faced with the chaotic situation on the main 'counter-terrorism' battlefield of Iraq, many countries that sent troops to Iraq have withdrawn or are preparing to withdraw their forces" [5]. Most analysts, however, portray the departure of some coalition troops as more of a diplomatic problem than a military one. For example, according to a recent Peoples Daily article, "for the United States, the multinational force in Iraq has far greater strategic significance than tactical significance...for this reason, the withdrawal of any countrys troops will not affect Americas overall strategic plans and combat capability in Iraqbut looking at it from another perspective, the successive withdrawal of troops from various countries is a huge blow to the Bush administration's political influence and indicates that U.S. policy on Iraq is being increasingly called into question" [6]. Similarly, according to another recent Peoples Daily article, "although the impact of this wave of troop withdrawals from Iraq on the existing power structure is not great from a military perspective, its psychological impact is still quite large, and the 'coalition forces' are gradually turning into a 'lone force' [7]. Third, Chinese observers assess that the Bush administration confronts declining domestic support as a result of mounting casualties and lack of clear progress on the ground. Chinese newspaper reports frequently highlight U.S. public opinion polls that show the war in Iraq is becoming increasingly unpopular in the United States. In all, many Chinese observers have concluded, the United States is in serious trouble at the strategic level. They assess that Washington is becoming increasingly frustrated with the failures of the Iraqi government and is facing growing international and domestic opposition to the war. Moreover, Chinese observers have concluded that Washington is having great difficulty

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CNDI 2010 Iraq Aff Regents Lab deciding how to extricate itself from this deteriorating situation. According to another recent article in Peoples Daily, the Bush administration is facing strong internal and external pressure to withdraw, but the United States is involved too deeply, its 'responsibility' is too heavy, and it is having difficulty deciding on whether to stay or go...the facts are increasingly clear that the United States made a major strategic error in Iraq" [8]. In short, Chinese analysts paint a consistently grim picture of U.S. prospects at the strategic level. Chinese Analysis of U.S. Military Operations in Iraq At the operational level, the conflict in Iraq is more of a mixed picture from the Chinese perspective. The speed with which relatively small numbers of U.S. forces shattered the Iraqi military and overthrew Saddam Husseins regime clearly impressed Chinese military analysts, even though the outcome was never in doubt given the overwhelming superiority of the coalition forces and the weakness and fragility of the Iraqi military. Writing in April 2003, PLA General Xiong Guangkai described this early stage of the war as an extensive test of the fruits of the new U.S. military transformation and pointed out that it would yield important lessons for Chinese military modernization [9]. Indeed, OIF largely reinforced Chinas previous appraisals of the growing importance of high technology equipment, C4ISR, logistics and transportation, psychological warfare, special forces, and joint operations. In particular, Xiong argued, the key difference between other recent U.S. military operations and OIF was that the latter displayed even greater advances in U.S. military technology, especially in the areas of precision-guided weapons and C4ISR capabilities. The U.S. militarys performance in OIF thus reflected a further acceleration in the pace of the revolution in military affairs (RMA) [10]. The U.S. militarys use of high-tech equipment and advanced C4ISR technology in the Iraq War is a particular area of interest for Chinese analysts. Indeed, a number of PLA analysts are clearly seeking to apply lessons learned from the U.S. militarys use of high-tech equipment in its operations in Iraq to the transformation of the PLA. For example, Chinese authors have focused on the employment of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in multiple roles in the Iraq War and the potential lessons for the enhancement of the PLAs C4ISR capabilities [11]. Moreover, Chinese admiration for U.S. technological prowess is often intermingled with a keen interest in developing means to exploit the vulnerabilities of some of the U.S. militarys most critical high-tech capabilities. For instance, Chinese researchers have shown a particularly strong interest in the U.S. Global Positioning System (GPS) and its potential vulnerability to jamming. According to one Chinese aerospace industry researcher, The GPS system has achieved clear military success, but in a complex wartime jamming environment, its vulnerability and fragility have been progressively revealed [12]. Beyond their assessments of OIF, Chinese military analysts have also shown very strong interest in the setbacks the United States and its allies have encountered in the subsequent phase of counter-insurgency operations in Iraq. Chinese writers have also studied the tactics and operations of various insurgent groups in Iraq and how these insurgent groups have bedeviled coalition forces [13]. In contrast to Chinese analyses of the OIF phase of the war, Chinese assessments of the events of the past four years generally focus on the U.S. militarys vulnerabilities rather than its strengths. Many Chinese observers conclude that the U.S. military faces a worsening predicament on the ground in Iraq. Furthermore, they doubt that the Bush administrations troop surge is enough to turn the situation around [14]. Finally, Chinese observers assess that the resultant lack of security is one of the major problems undermining attempts to move forward with Iraqs economic reconstruction and political development. Chinese Analysis of the Implications for the PRCs National Security Although Chinese scholars continue to express concerns about U.S. willingness to engage unilaterally in preventive wars, as demonstrated by the invasion and occupation of Iraq, they also appear to have concluded that the problems the United States is facing as the conflict in Iraq drags on will have benefits for Chinas national security and standing in the world. Indeed, Chinese experts have concluded that the Iraq war has weakened the United States economically and militarily. They also assess that it has strained Americas alliances, undermined its international image, and weakened its soft power [15]. Some Chinese analysts expect the United States to be less aggressive in its efforts to transform authoritarian regimes into democracies as a result of the high costs imposed by the conflict in Iraq. For example, one PLA analyst concludes that even some of the most enthusiastic proponents of the Iraq war have begun to realize that the gap between their ambition and reality is too wide [16]. Some Chinese analysts

also appear to have concluded that the Iraq war has diminished U.S. willingness and ability to intervene militarily in other hotspots. This conclusion has potentially troubling implications for Chinese assessments of the likelihood of U.S. military intervention in a Taiwan crisis or conflict . In particular, some Chinese assessments suggest there is a danger that Chinese analysts will overestimate the extent to which the U.S. militarys prolonged involvement in Iraq would influence its capability to intervene rapidly and decisively in a Taiwan Strait conflict. Although the war in Iraq is clearly tying down a large proportion of U.S. ground forces, senior U.S. military officers have attempted to disabuse Chinese observers of the notion that this would prevent the United States from responding to Chinas use force against Taiwan,
stating publicly that U.S. air and naval forces in the Asia Pacific region are sufficient to respond to any potential crisis [17].

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2AC Taiwan Attack Add-on (2/2)

That Conflict Goes Nuclear
Adams 2k9 (Jonathon, reporter for global post and newsweek on China and Taiwan, 3/31/09, Global Post, The dragon sharpens its claws, http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/china-and-its-neighbors/090331/the-dragon-sharpens-its-claws) TAIPEI It's the stuff of dark sci-fi scenarios; the war that nobody wants. But the most recent Pentagon report on

China's military power released last week shows how high the stakes have become, in the unlikely event the United States and China ever do come to blows. China has the world's fastest-growing military.
It is building state-of-the art fighter jets, destroyers, and anti-ship missiles worth billions of dollars. It's just confirmed it will build an aircraft carrier. And according to the Pentagon, it's now fielding a new nuclear force able to "inflict significant damage on most large American cities." Most disturbing, Chinese military officials have publicly threatened to use that capability against the United States in a conflict over Taiwan. "China doesn't just threaten war, it threatens nuclear war," said John Tkacik, a China expert and former U.S. diplomat, at a forum in Taipei last weekend. "This is the kind of thing that rattles cages in the U.S." For now, Taiwan is

the only plausible cause of military conflict between the world's superpower and the rising Asian giant

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Spending
US must withdrawal to curb spending- spending is increasing exponentially
Christopher Preble et al, 2004 (Director of foreign policy studies at CATO; Exiting Iraq: Why the U.S. must end the military occupation and renew the war against Al Qaeda, p. 36, CB)

The United States already spends more on its military than all of the leading developed nations of the world, combined. If current trends continue, the United States will spend more than all of the rest of the planet by 2007. In an era of burdensome government spending, stifling taxation, and expanding deficits, Washington should be looking for ways to economize. Limiting the size and scope of our military would be a good place to start. Absent a firm commitment to substantially reduce, and in short order eliminate, the U.S. military garrison in Iraq, such economies will be impossible to achieve. Iraq withdrawal saves $1.1 trillion
Heiser 2009 (JAMES, new American reporter Partial Iraq Withdrawal Could Save $1.1 trillion FRIDAY, 04 SEPTEMBER 2009 12:30 http://www.thenewamerican.com/index.php/usnews/health-care/1822) The Army Times is reporting that a congressional study has once again discovered the obvious: pulling out of

Iraq will save money. A speedier withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq and Afghanistan would shave $1.1 trillion off the budget in the next decade, a new congressional budget projection says. The Army Times article declares, That would be a sizeable cut in defense-related spending from 2010 through 2019, which the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates at $7.4 trillion. The mind-boggling $7.4 trillion to be alloted for defense spending is based on continuing the status quo in Iraq , while the
proposed savings would come not from pulling out of Iraq, but from cutting the presence of American soldiers to a level comparable to the number presently serving in South Korea. According to the Army Times:

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Econ
Immediate Withdrawal Saves Billions
Pea 2003 (Charles V., director of defense policy studies at the Cato Institute, is a member of the Coalition for a Realistic Foreign Policy. http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=3281 Iraq: Exit Rather Than Spend) Seventeen lawmakers -- Republicans and Democrats -- who recently returned from a trip to Iraq say they

must support the president's special request for $87 billion to underwrite U.S. military operations and reconstruction efforts in Iraq. Why should American taxpayers make a large down payment on what is likely to be a
long-term and expensive mortgage on Iraq? Because, they say, the money is needed to restore order, stability, and safety for troops that might be in for an extended occupation. According to Rep. Norm Dicks (D-Wash.): "If we are going to have security for our troops, we must fund reconstruction." My, how things change -- like the sands of Iraq's deserts. The original reason for changing the regime in Baghdad was the threat posed by Iraq's store of weapons of mass destruction, which U.S.led inspectors have yet to find. Then it was Iraq's links to al Qaeda, although none has been confirmed and even President Bush admits that there is no evidence to tie Saddam Hussein to 9/11. Only at the 11th hour did the president argue that it was necessary to depose Hussein to liberate the Iraqi people and establish democracy in the Middle East -- an argument that has become more prominent after the war. Finally, in the post-war period, Iraq is cited as the central front in the war on terrorism. However, this is largely the result of going to war in the first place and creating a target in al Qaeda's backyard. Now the safety of U.S. troops -- rather than defending America's national security -- has become the primary rationale for

staying the course. But if troop safety is the driving concern, there is an obvious alternative to piling $87 billion on top of the earlier $75 billion Iraq war supplemental appropriation and continuing to expand a $400 billion budget deficit. The answer? Withdraw U.S. forces from Iraq. Rather than abandoning Iraq, the
United States would simply be making good on the president's prewar promise: "The United States has no intention of determining the precise form of Iraq's new government. That choice belongs to the Iraqi people." But the president has to do better than saying that the transition to self-government will "neither be hurried nor delayed." There needs to be a definitive and prompt timetable for U.S. withdrawal. The administration must hand the government of Iraq back to the Iraqis, sooner rather than later. In the words of one Iraqi: "We thank the Americans for getting rid of Saddam's regime, but now Iraq must be run by Iraqis." The longer American forces stay, however well intentioned and noble the motive, the more Iraqis will come to resent a foreign occupier. Even Ahmad Chalabi -- founder of the Iraqi National Congress exile group that urged the administration into war -- is now arguing for handing more control over to the Iraqi Governing Council and a prompt transition to a provisional government. Secretary of State Colin Powell has suggested that a new Iraqi constitution could be written within six months, paving the way for elections and self-rule within another six months. Members of the U.S.-appointed Iraqi governing council contend that the process could take as long as 18 months. But if the U.S. Constitution -- written without any working model -- was completed in four months, certainly the Iraqis could do the same in six months. More importantly, the United States should not insist on a constitution and an American-style democratic government that may not comport with Muslim values. Rather, Iraqi self-determination and self-rule should be the goal -with the clear understanding that whatever form the new government in Baghdad takes, it must not support terrorists who would attack the United States. The desire of some Iraqis for a slow transition should raise eyebrows in Washington. To be blunt, a prolonged U.S. occupation is becoming the rationale for the United States to lavish even more

money on Iraq. (It is somewhat self-fulfilling: The more we spend, the longer we stay, and on and on.) That development is the first sure sign that, whether by design or default, Iraq has become part of an American empire. Eventually, empires end up defending their client states' interests rather than the best interests of their own people, and that already seems to be the case in Iraq. The United States must leave Iraq posthaste before the Iraqi mission becomes a sinkhole that swallows billions more of taxpayer dollars and all too many American lives. The best way to guarantee the safety of American troops is to bring them
home.

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*****General Aff Solvency***** Solvency: W/D Solves Reconstruction

Withdrawal key to building Iraq and preventing terror funding- Iraqi government key
Christopher Preble et al, 2004 (Director of foreign policy studies at CATO; Exiting Iraq: Why the U.S. must end the military occupation and renew the war against Al Qaeda, p. 44, CB) Oil revenue is the key to Iraqs rebuilding effort. Iraqi oil began to flow immediately after punitive economic sanctions were lifted, and the flow will accelerate as Iraqs damaged and decrepit equipment and

infrastructure are returned to operability, regardless of whether U.S. troops are stationed in Iraq. U.S. policy in the Persian Gulf should not be based on the assumption that the regions energy resources will not make it to market absent the presence of U.S. troops. It is in the interest of Iraqs government, even a government not necessarily committed to principles of Western-style democracy, to ensure that Iraqs oil reaches global markets. A related concern is that terrorists will be able to finance their operations with Iraqi oil revenue. Indeed, bin Laden has urged his followers not to damage oil wells since oil is the source of Arab power.130 Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups are criminal enterprises, adept at securing finances in a variety of ways, from marketing stolen consumer credit cards to drug smuggling and trafficking. That problem is not unique to Iraq, and there are a variety of ways to eliminate sources of terrorist funding. The least effective approach would be to leave the U.S. military to guard Iraqi oil fields to ensure that Al Qaeda or other terrorists dont steal a few million gallons of crude. Responsibility for ensuring that Iraqi oil revenues flow to legitimate businesses, and not terrorist coffers, must fall to the Iraqi people . In short, we need the cooperation of Middle Eastern governments to track down terrorist financing. That cooperation may be harder to come by if the United States maintains a military occupation that they loathe.

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Solvency: Residuals Solve

Iraqi Soldiers K2 preventing regional war and economic collapse
Thomas E. Ricks, NY Times Contributor, Febuary 23rd 2010, Extending Our Stay in Iraq, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/24/opinion/24ricks.html?pagewanted=1&sq=Iraq&st=nyt&scp=5 Extending the American military presence will be even more politically controversial in Iraq, and for that reason, it would be best to let Iraqi leaders make the first public move to re-open the s tatus of forces agreement of 2008, which calls for American troops to be out of the country by the end of next year. But I think leaders in

both countries may come to recognize that the best way to deter a return to civil war is to find a way to keep 30,000 to 50,000 United States service members in Iraq for many years to come. These troops missions would be far narrower than during the surge era; their primary goal would be to train and advise Iraqi security forces and to carry out counterterrorism missions. (It is actually hard to get below 30,000 and still have an effective
force; many troops are needed for logistics, maintenance, medical, intelligence, communications and headquarters jobs, and additional infantry units are then needed to protect the people performing those tasks.) Such a relatively small, tailored

force would not be big enough to wage a war, but it might be enough to deter a new one from breaking out. An Iraqi civil war would likely be a three- or four-sided affair, with the Shiites breaking into proand anti-Iranian factions. It could also easily metastasize into a regional war. Neighboring powers like Turkey and Iran are already involved in Iraqi affairs, and the Sunni Arab states would be unlikely to stand by and watch a Shiite-dominated regime in Baghdad slaughter the Sunni minority. A regional war in the middle of the worlds oil patch could shake the global economy to its foundations and make the current recession look mild.

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Solvency: Complete Withdrawal Key

Gradual, Complete withdrawal key
Burner, et al 2008 (Darce, candidate for US House, Washington, along with a group of United States Democratic congressional candidates, retired military officers and national security professionals http://burner.3cdn.net/20f4382dfab715f445_qvm6ibjk6.pdf TO END THE WAR IN IRAQ A RESPONSIBLE PLAN) End the military action in Iraq and transition control of and responsibility for Iraq to the Iraqis Responsibly ending the

U.S. military action in Iraq and returning control of the country to the Iraqis is a critical step in enhancing U.S. security. This solution requires that no residual U.S. troops remain in Iraq. The continued presence in Iraq of so-called residual forces beyond the minimum needed for standard embassy-protection would be a serious mistake. Any such troops would become a magnet for insurgent attacks and unless they did nothing at all would inevitably become players in Iraqs domestic political disputes, thus forcing the United States to continue to play referee to Iraqs civil conflicts. Soldiers tasked
with training missions would, to be effective, have to be embedded in Iraqi combat formations necessarily involving them directly in combat, thus continuing to hold American strategic fortunes hostage to events in Iraq that are beyond our control. If the Iraqi people unambiguously request peacekeeping forces, the U.S. should work with legitimate international organizations to assist in that regard. Troop drawdown The U.S. does not have enough troops to remain in Iraq at

the current levels indefinitely. The limitations on troop availability will demand some drawdown in the short term. 29 While the current administration and its allies may seek to portray a return pre-surge troop levels as the beginning of a military withdrawal, it is not enough to reduce troop levels to pre-surge levels. We must end the presence in Iraq of U.S. troops. This should be accomplished based on planning provided by our military leadership; the safety of our remaining troops during the drawdown period is of utmost importance. Moreover, the drawdown of troops must be coordinated with increased civil and economic assistance, and executed in such a way as to contain the threat of terrorism and prevent an abrupt destabilization of the region. Per Recommendations 0-2 of the Iraq Study Group Report, therefore: Iraq Study Group Recommendation 40: The United States should not make an open-ended commitment to keep large numbers of American troops deployed in Iraq. Iraq Study Group Recommendation 41: The United States must make it clear to the Iraqi government that the United States could carry out its plans, including planned redeployments, even if Iraq does not implement its planned changes. Americas other security needs and the future of our
military cannot be made hostage to the actions or inactions of the Iraqi government. Iraq Study Group Recommendation 42: We should seek to complete the training and equipping mission by the first quarter of 2008, as stated by General George Casey on October 2, 2006. The timelines laid out in the Iraq Study Group should be updated, but in accordance with those recommendations, troop draw-downs should begin immediately and continue until no more troops remain

in Iraq. The timeline should not be dependent on the Iraqis.

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Solvency: Fast Withdrawal Key

Iraq withdrawal possible in 3-6 months fast withdrawal key
Cochran 2007 (Gregory, physicist and evolutionary biologist Easy Out: Leave the office furniture behind. It isn't worth one soldier's life. http://www.amconmag.com/article/2007/sep/24/00006/)

The longer we stay, the more men we lose. How can anyone believe that piles of junk are worth anyones life? We could spend extra time in Iraq in order to ship home toxic waste, but we can do without that kind of cosmic irony. Better to gift-wrap those drums and let the Iraqis steal them. I say it again: bring out men, weapons, ammo, vital sparesleave the pews. Leaving behind everything but war-fighting equipment makes the move manageable. Weve shipped something like 9 million tons of stuff to Iraq, but only a small fractionless than 10 percentis war materiel. Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International
Studies says that we have somewhere between 140,000 and 200,000 tons of crucial equipment and supplies in Iraq, as well as 15-20,000 vehicles and major weapons. That cant add up to more than half a million tons total. Those vehicles can be

driven out. The crucial equipment would have to be trucked out, which would take a week or two of normal traffic on the main road to Kuwait. We already make over 1,000 trips a day, and the trucks must be nearly empty when returning. With this one choice, weve made the move almost 20 times easier. Some may object on the grounds that all those creature comforts and office supplies cost billions of dollars, but even if you put aside for the moment the extra lives lost in a long, drawn-out exit, remember that the occupation is costing us $10 billion a month. Staying even one extra week to get out the last of the porta-potties is like running into a burning building to save your sea monkeys. Sometimes the Army
answers a different question than the one the reporters asked. They wanted to know how long it would take to leave Iraq, but they were told how long it would take to get everything back to the Stateswhich is not the same thing at all. Once our forces get into Kuwait, theyre safe, even if theyre not yet home . Of course, in some cases the professionals are being honest and crazy at the same time. They keep saying that its going to take amazingly long to get tanks and vehicles home, since they must be cleaned painstakingly in order to meet Agriculture Department regulations. In fact, that need not slow down our exit at all. We can wash them down in Kuwait. More fundamentally, thinking that regulations trump

all other considerations in a real, albeit pointless, war is, not to put too fine a point on it, nuts. If we can violate the Geneva Conventions and the UN Charter, we can probably get away with bending a few bureaucratic rules. The same analysts, most of them anyway, have expressed concern that we will have to fight our way out of Iraq. I think theres a fair chance that we will face some opposition, although more practical Iraqis will probably be busy looting our camps as we abandon them, just as they have looted the bases abandoned by the British in the south. But we can be sure that the opposition will be insignificant and our casualties few, since the insurgents we face in Iraq would be extremely weak in a conventional fight. Remember that we lost fewer than 150 men during the invasion, when we faced 23 divisions, organized troops armed with (according to U.S. estimates) almost 2,000 main battle tanks, 3,500 armored personnel carriers, and 2,000 artillery pieces. The insurgents today have no tanks, no APCs, no heavy artillery, and yet were supposed to worry about the havoc they would wreak during any withdrawal. Weve been seeing about 100 men a month killed in action in 2007, wed lose fewer in a rapid withdrawal than we would by staying one more month. The
insurgents excel at planting IEDs and blending into the populationbut thats all theyre good at. In a conventional battle, they would do about as well as a rabbit in a lawnmower. If youre worried that the Iraqi army were always training might turn on us, relax: we never gave them any heavy weapons, which shows that someone was thinking ahead. Since the fight our way out risks have been wildly

planners should reconsider their notion of withdrawing most troops by air. If the insurgents manage to shoot down even one C-130 full of troops with a surface-to-air missile, we will lose more men than we would by taking Route Tampa. Moreover, we have to get those tanks and armored vehicles out somehow, and simply driving them to Kuwait with full
exaggerated, crews does the job while keeping the withdrawing force strongmuch stronger than any potential opposition. Politicians, for the most part, have accepted statements about withdrawal requiring anywhere from one to two years. They want to be responsiblethatll be the day. Some may have calculated that slow withdrawal might better disguise defeat and thus be more politically palatable, but I dont think many are that Machiavellian. I think instead that, with a few honorable exceptions, theyre profoundly ignorant of war and thus have to blindly accept anything the professional military says. That ignorance is, of course, one of the reasons we got into this mess in the first place. That goes double for columnists: in pundit-land, a military expert is someone who thinks that the phalanx is cutting-edge technology. The

we can get troops and war-fighting equipment out of Iraq rapidly and relatively safely, certainly in less than six months, probably in three. Neither the Iraqis nor the Department of Agriculture can materially interfere with withdrawal. It would be
bottom line is that faster than that, except for complications such as evacuating contractors and completely securing or destroying advanced weaponry that we dont want examined or copied by potential enemies. That, we need

Fast withdrawal is safer than slowit minimizes the slow bleed of occupation, and it avoids leaving dangerously weak forces in-country for long periods. Once we make up our mind to leave, then twere
to be careful about.

well twere done quickly.

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Solvency: Current Timetable Best

12 month departure schedule is best
Perry, et al 2009 (Walter L. Perry, Ph.D. in information technology, George Mason University; M.S. in operations research, Tulane University; M.B.A., Tulane University; A.B. in mathematics, Northeastern University; Stuart E. Johnson, Keith Crane, David C. Gompert, John Gordon IV, Robert E. Hunter, Dalia Dassa Kaye, Terrence K. Kelly, Eric Peltz, Howard J. Shatz Withdrawing from Iraq Alternative Schedules, Associated Risks, and Mitigating Strategies http://www.rand.org/pubs/monographs/2009/RAND_MG882.sum.pdf) Alternative 1: Combat Units Depart by April 30, 2010 In this alternative, all U.S. combat units will depart within 12 months of the start of the drawdown (May 1, 2009). The departure of combat units will leave 44,000

U.S. troops, who will subsequently be drawn down. This force will consist of units that perform key enabling functions and training for the ISF as well as the support forces necessary to sustain these forces
(to include base support) and support limited ISF counterterrorism operations. This residual force will depart no later than December 2011, a departure date in line with the Security Agreement between the United States and Iraq. The following describe alternative 1: Rationale: This alternative offers the administration an option to remove all combat units early if desired. Although at present there appears to be no reason to expedite the drawdown in this way, conditions may change: For example, U.S. forces may be needed to support conflicts elsewhere in the world,

the Iraqi government may call for a faster removal of U.S. forces in response to a changing political climate in Iraq, or the economic situation in the United States may dictate the need to reduce costs by bringing our forces home early. Planning: Initiating this plan would normally take 90 days to allow for the
necessary planning. However, the planning conducted as part of the current plan can provide for the initial redeployments in this alternative, cutting the lead-time requirement by about 30 days to a decision in early June. Additional planning that is necessary can take place as the initial units begin to redeploy. ISF support: Under this alternative, the ability to

partner U.S. combat units with their ISF counterparts for training purposes will end in April 2010. However, the full, predrawdown complement of trainers (3,500) will remain in the residual force through April 2011. These trainers comprise the mobile training teams (MTTs), and they conduct much of the training of the Iraqi Army. There are 16,500 enablers available to support ISF operations through the end of April 2011; the enablers will then draw down through the end of the Security Agreement period in December 2011. Security: Because of the short timeframe to draw down all combat units from Iraq in this alternative, the number of combat units available through February 2010 to help secure the Iraqi election process is fewer than in alternative 2.2 Compared with 2003, when many U.S. Army support units were not prepared to provide their own security, these units are now better trained and armed to protect themselves. This may reduce the need for U.S. combat units to be present in Iraq to provide force protection to support forces.
Unforeseen contingencies: After April 2010, the ability of the remaining forces to engage in combat operations is greatly reduced. Contingency operations will likely be conducted primarily by the ISF. Leaving Iraq: Combat units

will depart at a sharp pace from May 2009 through April 2010. Once the combat units have departed, the remaining forces will draw down through December 31, 2011. By the end of December 2011, the last U.S. military personnel will have departed and all U.S. bases will have been closed or transferred to the Government of Iraq (GoI). To mitigate some of the potential risks, the United States could take the following measures: Reassign some U.S. personnel from combat units to MTTs and other organizations to train the ISF. Base U.S. combat units (e.g., two combat brigades) in a nearby nation, such as Kuwait, to provide a quick-reaction capability. (Understandably, this would require a negotiated agreement between the United States and
Kuwait, but if successful, it would provide a good hedge against risks generated by the departure of combat units from Iraq.) Shift some security functions and ISF training inside Iraq to contractors. Leave behind some U.S.

equipment in the combat units for the ISF for training and future operations.

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Solvency: Current Timetable Best

Current withdrawal timeframe best troops not key to elections
Katulis April 12, 2010 (Brian, a Senior Fellow at American Progress, where his work focuses on U.S. national security policy in the Middle East and South Asia. Katulis has served as a consultant to numerous U.S. government agencies, private corporations, and nongovernmental organizations on projects in more than two dozen countries http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2010/04/tricky_timelines.html Navigating Tricky Timelines in Iraq) Some analysts have argued that moving U.S. troops out in this sensitive period is unwise. The current plan would bring U.S. troop levels down to about 50,000 by this fall. Yet many of those making the case for staying longer have been wrong about Iraq before. Tom Ricks, a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security who covered the war for The Washington Post, made the case for extending the U.S. troop presence beyond the current timeline earlier this year. Ken Pollack at Brookings last month wrote that one problem President Obama faces is a domestic political base that is fanatical that he keep to this drawdown schedule regardless of what happens in Iraq. These two analysts, as well as many others who make the case for U.S. troops staying in longer, fail to recognize two key things. First, if anyone is fanatical about adhering to the troop withdrawal timelines, it is the Iraqis. Iraqs

leaders demanded a clear timeline for troop withdrawals in its negotiations with the Bush administration, and there are strong political actors in Iraq who are demanding an end to what they view as an occupation. Just look at the recent demonstration in the southern Iraqi city of Najaf the demonstrators
marked the seventh anniversary of the fall of Baghdad by calling for the occupation to end. Second, many Iraqis do not view U.S. troops favorably. A faulty assumption that

many analysts make is to overstate how essential the Iraqi public actually views the U.S. troop presence to be. U.S. troops have for the most part been outside of Iraqs urban areas since last summer except in certain circumstances.
And this is the biggest factor leading to the minimal U.S. troop losses and injuries in Iraq last year.

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Solvency: W/D Solves Econ

Withdrawal key to solve the economy
Burner, et al 2008 (Darce, candidate for US House, Washington, along with a group of United States Democratic congressional candidates, retired military officers and national security professionals http://burner.3cdn.net/20f4382dfab715f445_qvm6ibjk6.pdf TO END THE WAR IN IRAQ A RESPONSIBLE PLAN) The Iraq War has cost U.S. taxpayers a staggering $526 billion so far 5 in direct costs, and roughly $. trillion to the economy so far. 6 Thats $6,500 for each U.S. family of four, or roughly $ billion for each Congressional district in the country. The full economic cost of the war is estimated to be $ trillion. 7 As the U.S. economy spirals into recession, the economic impact of the war is both a clear contributor and a factor crippling our ability to

respond.

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*****AT: Off-Case Args***** AT: Deterrence D.A.

Withdrawal key to preventing terrorism- occupation weakens the volunteer force and encourages terrorist recruitment
Christopher Preble et al, 2004 (Director of foreign policy studies at CATO; Exiting Iraq: Why the U.S. must end the military occupation and renew the war against Al Qaeda, p. 35, CB)

The American military occupation of Iraq distracts our attention from Al Qaeda and facilitates the recruitment of a new class of anti-American terrorists . Furthermore, U.S. forces must leave Iraq because it will be ruinously expensivein terms of both dollars and livesto stay. The occupation exposes our forces to intolerable risks. And those burdens and risks threaten to weaken the all-volunteer force, rendering it less capable of waging necessary wars in the future. The end result would be a diminution of Americas ability to deter and defeat challengers to our vital security interests.

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2AC Training PIC

Maintaining training operations doesnt enhance stabilitythe ISF is too far gone
Simon, 7 (Steven, Senior Fellow in Middle Eastern Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, America and Iraq: The Case for Disengagement, Survival 49:1, 61-84, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00396330701254537

Leaving behind US training personnel who could not defend themselves would be imprudent, especially since they would not make a decisive difference in the loyalty, reliability and effectiveness of the Iraqi forces to which they were attached. Very few units would benefit from this kind of assistance now. Any US
advisers embedded with Iraqi units would be at far greater risk of assassination or abduction than their comrades in training units. The deployment of special-operations advisers would be appropriate only in exceptional cases in which the US command and Iraqi governments identified superior potential for vital missions, such as suppressing death squads or insurgent cells, renditions, defending the Green Zone and vital installations, or protecting reconstruction teams.

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Partial Withdrawal CP
[ ] Fast and complete withdrawal key- perception of maintaining a long term military presence kills solvency.
Ted Galen Carpenter Vice President, Defense and Foreign Policy Studies Cato Institute January 11, 2007 Escaping the Trap: Why the United States Must Leave Iraq http://www.cato.org/testimony/ct-tgc01112007.html Deciding to Leave The United States needs to adopt a withdrawal strategy measured in months, not years . Indeed, the president should begin the process of removing American troops immediately, and that process needs to be complete in no more than six months. A longer schedule would simply prolong the agony. It would also afford various Iraq factions (especially the Kurds and some of the Shia political players) the opportunity to try to entice or manipulate the United States into delaying the withdrawal of its forces still further. Emotionally, deciding to leave under current conditions will not be easy, for it requires an implicit admission that Washington has failed in its ambitious goal to create a stable, united, democratic, secular Iraq that would be a model for peace throughout the Middle East. But that goal was unrealistic from the outset. It is difficult for any nation, and especially the American superpower, to admit failure. However, it is better to admit failure when the adverse consequences are relatively modest. A defeat in

Iraq would assuredly be a setback for the United States, particularly in terms of global clout and credibility. But one of the advantages to being a superpower is that the country can absorb a setback without experiencing
catastrophic damage to its core interests or capabilities. Defeat in Iraq does not even come close to threatening those interests or capabilities. Most important, a withdrawal now will be less painful than withdrawing years from now when the cost in blood, treasure, and credibility will prove far greater. The withdrawal needs to be comprehensive, not partial. The only troops remaining in Iraq should be a modest number of Special Forces personnel who would work with political factions in Iraq inclined to eradicate the Al Qaeda interlopers in their country. It must be clear to Iraqis and populations

throughout the Muslim world that Washington has no intention of trying to maintain a military presence in Iraq. Above all, U.S. policymakers need to absorb the larger lesson of the Iraq debacle. Launching an elective war in
pursuit of a nation-building chimera was an act of folly. It is a folly they should vow never to repeat in any other country.

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OSB Good
Only an offshore balancing role can take into account new geopolitical realitiesthe alternative is prolif and terrorism
Layne, 2009 (Christopher, Ph.D., chair of intelligence and national security at Texas A&M, Americas Middle East grand strategy after Iraq: the moment for oshore balancing has arrived, Review of International Studies 35, 5-25) Oshore balancing is based on the assumption that the most vital US interests are preventing the emergence of a dominant power in Europe and East Asia a Eurasian hegemon and forestalling the emergence of a regional (oil) hegemon in the Middle East. Only a Eurasian hegemon could pose an existential threat to the US. A regional hegemon in the Middle East could imperil the ow of oil upon which the US economy, and the economies of the advanced industrial states depend. As an oshore balancer, the US would rely on the tried and true dynamics of the balance of power to thwart any states with hegemonic ambitions. An oshore balancing strategy would permit the US to withdraw its ground forces from Eurasia (including the Middle East) and assume an over-the-horizon military posture. If and only if regional power balances look to be failing would the US re-insert its troops into Eurasia. Oshore balancing contrasts sharply with primacy because primacists fear a world with independent, multiple poles of power. Primacy is based on the belief that it is better for the US to defend its allies and clients than to have them defend themselves. Oshore balancers, on the other hand, believe for an insular great power like the US, the best strategy is to rely on a balance of power approach that devolves to other states the costs and risks of their defense. Oshore balancing is a realist strategy because it eschews the ideological crusading on behalf of democracy that is endemic to Wilsonianism, denes US interests in terms of what is vital rather than simply desirable, balances ends and means, and is based on prudence and self-restraint in the conduct of US strategy. Most of all it is a strategy that ts within the broad realist tradition because it recognises the dierence between, on one hand, what the sociologist Max Weber called the ethic of conviction and, on the other hand, the ethic of responsibility. In foreign policymaking the road to hell is paved with good intentions, and policies must be judged on their consequences, not on the intentions that underlie them. The Bush administrations disastrous policies in Iraq and the Middle East are a much needed reminder that this is a test Wilsonianism too often fails. Although there are some nuanced dierences among oshore balancings proponents, they fundamentally agree on the strategys basic premises. First, oshore balancers recognise that one of the few ironclad rules in international politics is that when one great power becomes too powerful when it bids to achieve hegemony it is defeated by the counter-balancing eorts of the other major powers in the international system. The history of the modern international state system (which dates back to about 1500) is littered with the wreckage of great powers that tried an failed to achieve geopolitical primacy: the Hapsburg Empire under Charles V, Spain under Philip II, France under Louis XIV and Napoleon, and Germany under Hitler (and, some would argue, under Kaiser Wilhelm II). Failure is the fate of hegemons. The reason is simple: the basic motivation of all major states is to survive, and when one among them threatens to gain preponderant power, the security of the others is threatened. Some primacists believe that the US is immune to being counter-balanced because, as the only great power in a unipolar system, it is so much more powerful than its nearest possible competitors.4 Yet, recent studies by the CIA oer compelling evidence that by 2020 the era of Americas unipolar ascendancy will be drawing to a close as new poles of power in the international system approach the US share of world power.5 And, of course, growing apprehensions about the military, as well as economic, implications of Chinas rapid ascent are at the very least an implicit acknowledgment that the days of unchallenged US dominance in world aairs are numbered. Oshore balancers believe the US must adjust to incipient multipolarity because they understand that unless the US is prepared to ght an unending series of preventive wars new great powers inevitably will emerge in the next decade or two. A second point upon which oshore balancers agree is that in addition to the traditional kind of hard, or military counter-balancing that the US will face in coming years, there are new forms of balancing with which Washington already is contending, including socalled soft balancing.6 The most notable manifestation of soft balancing is the use by other major states of diplomacy and international institutions to try to restrain American actions. The attempt by France, Germany, Russia and China to forestall the US invasion of Iraq by withholding United Nations Security Council authorisation is one example of soft balancing. Another example is the eort of the same nations and Britain to promote a diplomatic solution to the Iranian nuclear issue that will avoid the imposition of UN sanctions on Teheran, and a possible armed confrontation between the US and Iran. Even if soft balancing eorts fail, they are important for two reasons. First, they indicate that other major states regard US geopolitical dominance as a problem that needs to be addressed. Second, soft balancing eorts to rein-in American power may help the other major states learn to cooperate in ways that will the open the door to future hard balancing against the US.7 In addition to soft balancing, asymmetric strategies are another type of non- traditional balancing that is being employed to contest US primacy. When employed by states, asymmetric strategies mean the acquisition of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) capabilities. Regional powers especially those on the US hit list like Iran and Saddam Husseins Iraq cannot slug it out toe-to-toe against the US dominant high-tech conventional forces. Because they are threatened by the US,

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CNDI 2010 Iraq Aff Regents Lab however, these states seek other methods of osetting American power, and dissuading Washington from using its military muscle against them. WMD especially the possession of nuclear weapons is one way these states can level the strategic playing eld and deter the US from attacking them. Terrorism is another asymmetric strategy one employed by non-state actors like Al-Qaeda and similar jihadist groups to resist US dominance. The use of asymmetric strategies to oppose American power especially in the Middle East where US policy has an imperial dimension illustrates the dictum that empires inevitably provoke resistance. Oshore balancing as a wedge strategy? Heretofore, proponents of oshore balancing have seen the strategy primarily as a means of shifting the costs and risks of opposing rising Eurasian, or regional, hegemons from the US to other states. Oshore balancing seeks to capitalise on the inherent strategic advantages that insular great powers possess. First, they can rely on regional power balances to contain rising powers.8 Second, if it should become necessary for them to become involved, because they are protected by geography and their own military capabilities they can stand on the sidelines and wait for the most opportune moment to decide when, and on which side, to intervene. Moreover, by taking advantage of the freedom of action that allows them to enter conicts later rather than sooner, they can extract the maximum concessions from their alliance partners as their price for entering a conict. However, beyond these traditional advantages of insularity, oshore balancing does or can have a wedge strategy dimension. Wedge strategies are the grand strategic equivalent of what the great baseball executive Branch Rickey called addition by subtraction. A Timothy W. Crawford has pointed out, when discussing power relations among great powers, most security studies scholars focus on addition. Hence, they pay great attention to balancing behaviour both internal and external as a means by which great powers seek to increase their relative power. However, although often neglected, wedge strategies are way of accomplishing the same objective increasing the states relative power by a very dierent means: by subtracting potential opponents from the ranks of its adversaries.9 That is, wedge strategies are a policy to increase a states relative power over external threats, by preventing the grouping or causing the dispersal of threatening alliances.10 Great powers can improve their relative power position not only by forming coalitions and/or building up their own military capabilities, but also by preventing other states that might be inclined to align against them from doing so, or by persuading an actual or potential ally of an adversary to drop out of the alliance and assume a posture of neutrality.11 Another aspect of wedge strategies is that they can, if used successfully, prevent others from taking balancing actions directed at the state. While not generally conceived of as a wedge strategy, oshore balancing is a way that an insular great power can neutralise threats to its security. By acting as an oshore balancer, an insular great power can accomplish two vital grand strategic tasks. First, because its would-be adversaries invariably live in dangerous neighbourhoods, by truly being oshore and non-threatening, an insular great power can deect the focus of other states security policies away from itself. Simply put, if an oshore power stands on the sidelines, other great powers will compete against each other, not against it. It can thus enhance its security simply because the dynamics of balance-of-power politics invariably will draw would-be competitors in other regions into rivalries with each other. The fact that non-insular states must worry constantly about possible threats from nearby neighbours is a factor that historically has worked to increase the relative power position of insular states. Thus, as Paul Kennedy notes, after 1815 a major reason that Britains interests were not challenged by an overwhelming coalition was due to the preoccupation of virtually all European statesman with continental power politics because it was the moves of their neighbors, not the usually discreet workings of British sea power, which interested them.12

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AT: Troops PIC/ Need Troops to Train

There is no need to have troops stay, military personal say that they will be ineffective and Iraq can take care of itself
General William Odom, April 2, 2008 (TESTIMONY BEFORE THE SENATE FOREIGN RELATIONS COMMITTEE ON IRAQ, http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article19671.htm) First, it is insisted that we must leave behind military training element with no combat forces to secure them. This makes no sense at all. The idea that US military trainers left alone in Iraq can be safe and

effective is flatly rejected by several NCOs and junior officers I have heard describe their personal experiences. Moreover, training foreign forces before they have a consolidated political authority to command their loyalty is a windmill tilt. Finally, Iraq is not short on military skills.

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FYI About the Aff

US withdrawal logistics
Carter 2007 (a former Army officer and Iraq veteran http://www.slate.com/id/2166853/ Exit Stage Right: A step-bystep plan for withdrawing from Iraq. By Phillip Carter Updated Wednesday, May 23, 2007) Freedom bird: Not every soldier will drive out of Iraq. Many will fly instead, either because they lack the armored vehicles to drive out or because it makes no sense for them to do so. Most civilians and contractors will fly out as well. U.S. Air Force transports will likely pick these people up at the massive airbases that dot Iraq. Some will fly south to Kuwait on older propeller-driven aircraft and board civilian planes there for the long flight back to the United States. A small number will fly directly to Europe or North America on long-range military planes. The hundreds of military helicopters now flying in Iraq will likely migrate south to the port at Umm Qasr, or the ports in Kuwait, for their seaborne voyage home. It took three weeks to fight from Kuwait up to Baghdad, but that was with terrible weather and intense fighting. The withdrawal would likely go much faster, although it would hinge on two variables. The first is the pace set by military commanders for the move, who will likely choose something on a spectrum between rapid chaotic withdrawal and a slow, phased withdrawal over several months. The second variable is the "throughput" problem: Literally, how many of the 300,000 troops, civilians, and contractors in Iraq can squeeze through the airfields and seaports of Iraq and Kuwait to come home? Even if commanders dictate a rapid pullout, it may take weeks or months to bring everyone home from Kuwait and the Persian Gulf region. Yard sale: Over the past four years in Iraq, American occupying forces have built, bought, accumulated, or shipped over entire cities' worth of stuffeverything from aircraft-maintenance facilities to barracks to gymnasiums to Burger King stands. But, as the saying goes, you can't take it with you. U.S. troops will formally transfer much of the combat gear to the Iraqi military, such as unarmored Humvees and other aging weapons systems that are not cost-effective to ship home, especially given current plans to buy new ones. Those buildings with a military use will also be transferred to the Iraqi military, as was done when the military consolidated its footprint throughout Iraq from many small bases into a few supersized ones. The remainder will simply be abandoned to the Iraqi people. Adieu, Iraqis: One important question facing the United States during its exit will be what to do with the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis who aided our occupation as interpreters, contractors, and government civilians. To date, we have turned a cold shoulder to these men and women despite clear evidence they are being hunted down and slaughtered by both Sunni insurgents and Shiite militias, depending on their particular sect. Despite the powerful moral arguments for helping Iraqis resettle in the Middle East or the United States, efforts to help the Iraqis have stalled for political reasons. A decision to withdraw from Iraq might force some compromise on those issues, but if the withdrawal unfolds too quickly, these refugees may be stuck. A few good men: Even if the United States pulls out from Iraq entirely, it will likely still leave some government personnel behind to man its embassy. The current embassy staff numbers in the thousands, largely because it also manages the occupation and reconstruction effort in addition to serving a traditional diplomatic role. After the withdrawal, the embassy staff will shrink, but it will also need to become more self-sufficient, complete with all of the political, military, intelligence, and security elements it needs to do its job without the American military nearby to help. Eventually, though, the embassy, too, may become untenable, either because the United States decides to abandon Iraq entirely or because it comes under attack. At that point, we may see a replay of what happened at Southeast Asian embassies during the 1970s. Without any airbases to fly home from or ground combat units to drive out of Iraq with, embassy personnel will evacuate the country in the most inglorious and politically charged way: by helicopter from embassy rooftops and courtyards.

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Article for Me
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2005/06/how-we-would-fight-china/3959/

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