THA Neg Wave 2

***Neg Updates
***Neg Updates .............................................................................................................................. 1 ***Oil DA Mechanics ................................................................................................................. 3 Oil Prices 1NC Link ................................................................................................................ 4 2NC Prices Up ......................................................................................................................... 5 2NC Oil DA Link .................................................................................................................... 6 2NC Speculation Internal Link ................................................................................................ 7 ***Venezuela .............................................................................................................................. 8 1NC ......................................................................................................................................... 9 Venezuela- Yes Escalation .................................................................................................... 11 Venezuela 2NC Econ UQ ................................................................................................... 12 Venezuela 2NC Econ UQ: AT Default .............................................................................. 13 Venezuela 2NC Prices K/T Econ ....................................................................................... 14 Venezuela 2NC US Key ..................................................................................................... 17 Venezuela 2NC AT Diversification ................................................................................... 18 Venezuela 2NC AT No Reserves ....................................................................................... 19 Venezuela MPX: Colombia RelationsUQ ...................................................................... 20 2NC Yes Escalation............................................................................................................... 21 ***Russia .................................................................................................................................. 22 1NC ....................................................................................................................................... 23 Russian Econ High Growth ................................................................................................ 26 Russian Econ High AT Eurozone....................................................................................... 27 Russia - 2NC AT Low Prices Now ....................................................................................... 28 Russia - 2NC AT Dutch DiseaseNot Happening............................................................... 30 Russia - 2NC AT Dutch DiseaseManufacturing ............................................................... 31 Russia - 2NC Prices K/T Econ .............................................................................................. 34 Russia MPX: EconGlobal Econ ..................................................................................... 35 Russia MPX: EconNationalism ...................................................................................... 36 Drilling Bad Updates .................................................................................................................. 37 ***Neolib K Updates ................................................................................................................. 39 Framework Answers .............................................................................................................. 40 Periphery DA.......................................................................................................................... 42 2NC V2L Impact ..................................................................................................................... 45 2NC Growth/Envt Impact ..................................................................................................... 46 2NC Food Crisis Impact .......................................................................................................... 49 2NC Jevons Paradox............................................................................................................ 51 2NC Hegemony Link .............................................................................................................. 54 2NC A2: Economy Impact ...................................................................................................... 58 2NC A2: Environment/Warming ............................................................................................ 59 PEMEX Answers ......................................................................................................................... 60 A2: Oil Dependence ............................................................................................................... 61 A2: Oil Shocks ........................................................................................................................ 62 A2: Anti-Americanism ............................................................................................................ 64

THA Neg Wave 2

Coop Answers ............................................................................................................................ 67 A2: Disease Impacts............................................................................................................... 68 A2: Zoonautic Disease ........................................................................................................... 70 A2: Bird Flu Impact ................................................................................................................ 71 A2: HIV Mutations ................................................................................................................. 73 A2: Loose Nukes .................................................................................................................... 75 Gas Answers .............................................................................................................................. 76 1NC SCS/China Adv ................................................................................................................ 77 1NC Manufacturing ............................................................................................................... 79 1NC Chemical Industry .......................................................................................................... 81 1NC Pakistan Impact .............................................................................................................. 82 1NC Geopolitics/Iran Power .................................................................................................. 84 LA Add-on Answers ................................................................................................................... 88 A2: Econ Leadership .............................................................................................................. 89 A2: Resource Wars ................................................................................................................ 92

THA Neg Wave 2

***Oil DA Mechanics

THA Neg Wave 2

Oil Prices 1NC Link

Oil prices will stay high now because of Mexico production downturn- plan causes major drop in oil prices by jumpstarting Mexican production Alter 12
DIANE ALTER, Contributing Writer, Money Morning, Oil Prices Promise to Head Higher As Mexican Production Dwindles, August 24, 2012, http://moneymorning.com/2012/08/24/oil-prices-promise-to-head-higher-as-mexican-production-dwindles/

According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), Mexican oil production reached a peak of 3.2 million barrels a day in 2008. And by 2011, it wasn't even producing 3 million barrels a day. Since then oil production has slipped to 2.5 million barrels a day. Worse still, Mexico could actually become a net importer of oil within a decade if it cannot find fresh discoveries to make up for the 25% production
drop since 2004

and fails to change its current policies . Higher Oil Prices Worldwide Mexico

is currently ranked No. 7 on the list of the world's top oil producers, so less Mexican oil production would also mean higher oil prices worldwide . The loss of Mexico's 1 million barrels a day in exports over an extended period would be a greater blow than the total lost due to sanctions on Iran.
While the effects of Mexico's lagging oil production are clear, the causes are more complex. The root of the problem is years of neglect and a government-enforced monopoly. Nationalized in 1938, Mexico's

oil industry has prohibited oil behemoths like Exxon Mobil (NYSE: XOM), BP (NYSE ADR: BP) and others from taking any sizable stake in the country's oil operations. If it allowed more investments from international oil companies, Mexico could revive production , industry analysts say. But that won't be easy. Petroleos Mexicancos, PEMEX, has sole control of the Mexican oil industry and doles out over 32% of its revenue to Mexico's government. But while the Mexican government likes the oil revenue, it has failed to re-invest enough money back into the industry. Mexican lawmakers have long resisted providing PEMEX with the funds needed to find new sources of crude .

THA Neg Wave 2

2NC Prices Up
Prices are high in NA now- specific to Mexican crude McCarthy 13
SHAWN MCCARTHY - GLOBAL ENERGY REPORTER, International price gap for heavy oil a wasted opportunity for Alberta, Apr. 29 2013, http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/industry-news/energy-and-resources/international-price-gap-forheavy-oil-a-wasted-opportunity-for-alberta/article11621032/

Heavy oil producers are receiving top dollar in international markets, even as Alberta oil sands
producers face ongoing frustration in trying to reach the refiners who are eager to process their diluted bitumen. Petroleos Mexicanos (Pemex) competes

with Canadian heavy oil producers in the Gulf of Mexico, and its heavy Mayan crude is currently priced at $96 (U.S.) a barrel, $5 more than the trendsetting light crude, West Texas
Intermediate, and nearly $30 more than Canadian heavy crude was fetching in the North American futures market.

But its not only in North America where heavy crude is being valued highly . Prices for Saudi Arabian heavy crude delivered in China in the first quarter average $106 a barrel, just $6 below the
average price for North Sea Brent, the leading international light crude. Bank of Nova Scotia commodities economist Patricia Mohr said the higher international prices for heavy crude represent an opportunity lost for Canadian producers, who have only limited, albeit growing, capacity to reach beyond the U.S. Midwest and Ontario markets.

THA Neg Wave 2

2NC Oil DA Link

Pipelines cause major decrease in prices- reverses shortages in North American markets McCarthy 13
SHAWN MCCARTHY - GLOBAL ENERGY REPORTER, International price gap for heavy oil a wasted opportunity for Alberta, Apr. 29 2013, http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/industry-news/energy-and-resources/international-price-gap-forheavy-oil-a-wasted-opportunity-for-alberta/article11621032/

The differentials between Canadian bitumen prices and other sources of heavy crude would narrow greatly if pipelines such as the Keystone XL to Texas, and the Northern Gateway to the B.C. coast, were constructed,
Ms. Mohr said. As hopefully we do get Keystone XL approved and eventually are able to sell more crude in Texas, we will get higher prices, Ms. Mohr said. And we would get higher prices also if we were selling in China. There

is currently a shortage of heavy crude on the global marketplace after declining production in Venezuela and Mexico, coupled with the international sanctions that have resulted in reduced Iranian supply and a decision by the Saudis to curb their production due to weak overall oil demand worldwide.

THA Neg Wave 2

2NC Speculation Internal Link

Market signal is key-even if the plan doesnt increase production for 10 years changing government signal causes prices to crash Munro 12
Neil, Daily Caller, "Oil prices fall on rumor, but Obama insists nothing can be done" 3/17 dailycaller.com/2012/03/17/oil-prices-fallon-rumor-but-obama-insists-nothing-can-be-done/2/ President Barack Obama repeatedly says theres no magic wand to force down gas prices and salve the publics increasing anger . His spokesmen say theres no magic wand, quick fix, or silver bullet. But mere

rumors quickly cut $2 off the $106 per-barrel Thursday morning, The price fell because traders reacted to rumors that the White House was going to sell oil from the nations oil storehouse, the Strat egic Petroleum Reserve. The prospect of a sudden increase in supply, amid slack demand in a stalled economy, prompted a rush of oil trades which dropped the price by just over $2 in one hour . The rumor was false, and prices lurched back up to $105 by the end of the Thursday, and $107 by the end of Friday. But the rapid shifts in price shows how the supply of oil is so low that it is bumping against slack demand . That collision raises prices somewhat because oil-traders buy, sell, dump or hoard oil to make incremental profits whenever they predict a local or temporary shortage or surplus. The mere rumor of a SPR sell-off dropped prices by $2, or 2 percent. But there was a real sell-off in 2008 when prices fell by $9.26 during a announcement by President George W. Bush that he would push to open up new areas for oil exploration. That presidential promise of more oil yielded a 6.3 percent drop from the prevailing price of $136, even though that oil would not
come online for 10 or 15 years. Thursdays been saying for weeks that the

temporary drop tells us what the American Petroleum Institute has president can do something now that will put downward pressure

on prices, said Eric Wohlschlegel, APIs spokesman. The price drop shows what could be accomplished if the president really
wanted to increase supplies of U.S. oil energy, said Dan Kish, senior vice president at the Institute for Energy Research. Obamas claim that there is nothing he can do about oil prices is pure unadulterated bullshit, Kish said. If he announced to forward markets that the United States was going to get serious about starting to produce its energy. it would put down pressure on price, h uge downward pressure, he said. Youre not going to drop it to $50 a barrel, but

youd put a huge amount of

downward pressure on it,

he said.

The oil would not arrive for years, but many people

would be immediately hired to help develop the oil fields , he said. However, Obama is curbing oil supplies, and forcing up oil prices, to protect his business and political allies in the green-tech sector, Kish said. Lower oil prices would ruin allies business plans, slam the bank balances of his venture capital donors, cut funding for the environmental gr oups and disrupt his crony capitalist networks, Kish said. On March 15, Obama denounced his critics calls for a Bush -like action to increase the oil supply, even as he tried to take credit for work done by Bush, by state officials and by oil companies during the last several years.

THA Neg Wave 2

***Venezuela

THA Neg Wave 2

1NC
Low prices cause Venezuela adventurism and South American wardraws in great powers Litle 8
Justice, South America and the Petrocrat Problem [http://financialmarket99.blogspot.com/2008/03/taipan-daily-south-america-and.html] March 4 Now, in Colombia, the shoe is on the other foot. As a result, as The Washington Times puts it, South America is on the brink of war. Fighting Over FARC For decades the Colombian government has been plagued by FARC, a self-proclaimed Marxist-Leninist guerrilla group. FARC makes its stronghold in the lush Colombian jungles and is highly active in the cocaine trade. For obvious reasons, tied to political ideology and the war on drugs, the United States considers FARC to be terrorists. But, just as the Contras were freedom fighters in the eyes of Uncle Sam, the FARC guerrillas are freedom fighters in the eyes of Venezuela. Relations between Venezuela and Colombia were already on a downward spiral. They blew apart completely a few days ago when, with the help of U.S. intelligence, Colombia targeted and killed a top FARC leader in Ecuador. In response to the cross-border assassination -- deemed an infringement on Ecuadors sovereignty -Venezuela and Ecuador amassed thousands of troops, tanks and fighter jets on the Colombian border. Hugo Chavez, Venezuelas president, then threatened to join forces with the FARC rebels in overthrowing the Colombian government. In an ironic twist, Venezuelas Chavez is accused of secretly funding FARC to the tune of $300 million -just as the Reagan administration once secretly funded the Contras. (As the old saying goes, one mans terrorist is another mans freedom fighter.) A High-Stakes Bluff Alvaro Uribe, Colombias president, is considered a friend to the United States. The war on drugs is another factor. If Venezuela actually invades Colombia, the United States will likely get involved . The obvious question is, get involved with what? American military might is already stretched thin. Chavez knows this, of course. He is probably running a highstakes bluff, betting that Americas hands are tied by Iraq. (Ecuadors leftist leader, Rafael Correa, is merely following Chavez lead.) That is the logical assessment but its hard to know for sure. The home-front stakes are high for Chavez right now. In spite of all the oil money, cracks in the Venezuelan economy are widening. Corruption, incompetence and the shortage-inducing effect of price controls are taking a toll. With paradise crumbling, Chavez bold bid to become president for life was rejected. His populist sway is fading. Straight From the Playbook If dictators were handed a playbook along with the keys to the new regime, the top Hail Mary play would be this one: When theres trouble at home, make trouble abroad. Dictators always need a cause to rail against or an enemy to fight. This gives them an excuse to keep the country in lock-down mode. Meanwhile, stirring up nationalist sentiment is a kind of sleight-of-hand; it gives the people something to focus on other than their own troubles. For a dictator on the ropes, making trouble abroad hits all the right strategy points. When the people are angry and ready to rise up, redirect their ire towards an outside target. If normal political functions can be suspended in a time of military emergency, so much the better. This is why the possibility of an actual Colombian invasion cant be ruled out . The more Venezuelas economic situation deteriorates, the less Chavez has to lose in executing an insane gamble abroad. The Petrocrat Problem Whether South America erupts into war or not -- which could still happen as of this writing -- Venezuela nicely illustrates the Petrocrat Problem. (While democracy means rule by the people, a petrocracy is basically rule by oil interests.) In short, the Petrocrat

THA Neg Wave 2 Problem is this: A number of regimes around the world -- from Venezuela to Iran to Russia to various members of OPEC -- are dependent on the high price of oil for their continued stability . These regimes have become addicted to their oil money inflows. They have been spending like mad and making big promises to maintain stability. If those oil inflows were to stop (or significantly decline), economic chaos could ensue. Populist sentiment could erupt. Entrenched leaders could fall. This presents a nasty Catch-22 because, if the price of oil falls enough to threaten one (or all) of the various petrocrat regimes, the incentive to stir things up becomes greatly magnified. Or think of it like this: If the price of oil were to go into real decline, Hugo Chavez would have a big problem. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad would have a big problem. Vladimir Putin would have a big problem. The House of Saud would have a big problem and so on. The end result of an oil-price decline could thus be one (or more than one) of these players doing something drastic. (Like touching off a small-scale hot war , for example.)

10

THA Neg Wave 2

11

Venezuela- Yes Escalation

Latin American wars go global even absent escalation, they cause counterbalancing and conflict Rochin, Professor of Political Science, 94
James, Professor of Political Science at Okanagan University College, Discovering the Americas: the evolution of Canadian foreign policy towards Latin America, pp. 130-131
While there were economic motivations for Canadian policy in Central America, security considerations were perhaps more important. Canada possessed an interest in promoting stability in the face of a potential decline of U.S. hegemony in the Americas. Perceptions of declining U.S. influence in the region which had some credibility in 1979-1984 due to the wildly inequitable divisions of wealth in some U.S. client states in Latin America, in addition to political repression, under-development, mounting external debt, anti-American sentiment produced by decades of subjugation to U.S. strategic and economic interests, and so on were linked to the prospect of explosive events occurring in

the hemisphere. Hence, the Central American imbroglio was viewed as a fuse which could ignite a cataclysmic process throughout the region. Analysts at the time worried that in a worst-case scenario, instability created by a regional war, beginning in Central America and spreading elsewhere in Latin America, might preoccupy Washington to the extent that the United States would be unable to perform adequately its important hegemonic role in the international arena a concern expressed by the director of research for Canadas Standing Committee Report on Central America. It was feared that such a predicament could generate increased global instability and perhaps even a hegemonic war. This is one of the motivations which led Canada to become involved in
efforts at regional conflict resolution, such as Contadora, as will be discussed in the next chapter.

THA Neg Wave 2

12

Venezuela 2NC Econ UQ

Venezuela econ high nowoil revenue responsible Devereux 5/17
Charlie, Venezuela Economy Grows at Fastest Pace in Almost Four Years [http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-05-17/venezuelan-economy-grew-more-than-expectedin-first-quarter-1-.html] Venezuelas economy grew at the fastest pace since 2008 in the first quarter as record oil revenue allowed President Hugo Chavez to finance a boom in housing construction ahead of elections this year. The economy expanded 5.6 percent from the year earlier, Finance Minister Jorge Giordani said at a press conference in Caracas today. The median estimate of seven analysts surveyed by Bloomberg was for growth of 4.1 percent. The economy grew at the fastest pace since the second quarter of 2008, when it expanded 7.8 percent. A raft of new social programs for the elderly and children in extreme poverty as well as a pledge to eradicate a 2 million- home deficit are cornerstones of Chavezs re-election bid in October. The construction industry led expansion in the first quarter, leaping 29.6 percent from the year before while financial institutions grew 27.7 percent, the bank said. Here we have a vision of growth for the next six years, Giordani said. Weve left behind the six quarters of recession which were affected by the world capitalist crisis. This is growth based on a productive model.

THA Neg Wave 2

13

Venezuela 2NC Econ UQ: AT Default

High prices mean no default The Economist 11
Oil Leak [http://www.economist.com/node/18233412] February 24 Yet even though things look bad now, a default probably does not loom in the near future. If oil stays at $100 a barrel, the Capital Economics report calculates, Venezuela's export revenues should just cover its foreign-exchange requirements$11 billion of debt service, $28 billion of capital flight, and $100 billion of importsover the next two years. And even if petroleum prices drop, the central bank has $22.5 billion in cash and gold, and another $7.5 billion in further unspecified illiquid assets.

THA Neg Wave 2

14

Venezuela 2NC Prices K/T Econ

High prices are they lynch pin of Venezuelas economy Mander 7/15
Benedict, Venezuela more prone to oil price jitters [http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/415985c27a88-11e1-8ae6-00144feab49a.html#axzz23I4Ik6J4] But the Opec nation remains more dependent than ever on something less easy for the fiery socialist leader to demonise oil. With fewer than 100 days to go until the October 7 presidential election, the issue of Venezuelas growing oil dependency and the governments record of economic mismanagement has come to the fore as recent polls show Mr Chvez in a statistical tie with opposition leader Henrique Capriles Radonski. There is no question about it. Venezuela is not only more dependent on oil, but it is more dependent on the price of oil , as production has not increased, says Jorge Pion, a research fellow at the University of Texas. The rise in oil prices since Mr Chvez came to power in 1998 has been a boon in many ways, allowing him to bolster his popularity by splurging oil revenues on social programmes, in to which state-owned oil company PDVSA funnelled some $53bn between 2006 and 2010. The problem, however, is that PDVSA has neglected to invest in its core business, causing production to decline: it spent just $1bn in exploration activities over the same period. Venezuela produced 2.72m barrels a day in 2011, according to BPs annual statistical review, versus 3.48m bpd in 1998 when Mr Chvez was first elected. This has made the economy more dependent on oil prices staying high. Oil prices are the Achilles heel of the Venezuelan economy, added Mr Pion.

Low oil prices hurt Venezuelas economy 95% of export Wall Street Journal 6/15
Wall Street Journal June 15, 2012 Venezuela Oil Basket Drops To Lowest Price In 16 Months http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-20120615-711648.html CARACAS (Dow Jones)--The price of Venezuela's basket of crude oil and refined products continued falling in the week ending Friday, losing $1.99 to settle at $92.06 per barrel, its lowest level in nearly 16 months. In a statement, the Energy Ministry said the price drop, which keeps the South American country's principal export below the key $100-a-barrel mark for the third consecutive week, is due to excess supply in the market as well as worries about global economic growth. Declines in crude-oil prices came as the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries Thursday decided to keep unchanged the group's production ceiling of 30 million barrels a day. Venezuelan Oil Minister Rafael Ramirez was among the loudest voices calling for strict compliance to the production limit in a bid to prevent prices from slipping further. Ramirez has frequently accused some Gulf countries of flooding the market to cater to major consumer nations. Venezuela has often said that $100 per barrel is fair price for the commodity that makes up 95% of its exports. High oil prices are crucial for President Hugo Chavez as he ramps up government spending in preparation for his re-election big in October. But with crude-oil prices falling and the government's fiscal deficit on the rise, Venezuela is seen as having to cut back on expenditures in 2013, while also will likely to devalue the bolivar currency's fixed rate against the dollar. In a note to clients sent out Wednesday, Bank of America Merrill Lynch forecast that the combination of events would likely "produce a deep GDP contraction" next year.

THA Neg Wave 2

15

High oil prices are key to the Venezuelan economy and political stability Market Oracle 11
Market Oracle Mar 11, 2011 Higher Crude Oil Prices Pouring Profits into Venezuela's Economy http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article26857.html Oil provides 95% of Venezuela's export income, making the country's economy extremely reliant on oil prices. The oil industry is dominated by state-run oil company Petrleos de Venezuela S.A. (PDVSA). "Latin American economies continue to be sensitive to energy prices," said Money Morning Contributing Writer and energy expert Dr. Kent Moors. "While Venezuela in particular will reflect the OPEC approach, since it is a member, its production moving forward is governed by heavy oil from the Orinoco. This requires a greater emphasis on technology not controlled by Caracas and will increase the overall cost of the crude produced. Now at prices above $100 a barrel, the increased costs can certainly be absorbed (the same can be said for production from Canadian oil sands)." The Orinoco Belt is a section in the southern strip of the Orinoco River Basin in central Venezuela. It boasts a heavy crude oil supply and has been estimated to eventually produce 2.1 million barrels of oil a day. Venezuela last year awarded stakes to private companies to develop the resources. Evaluating the impact of higher oil prices requires more than a look at Venezuela's oil producing capability. "Two other elements, however, also come into play -political stability and the overall condition of the Venezuelan economy," Moors said. "The latter becomes a more pronounced issue as inflation continues to accelerate." The country's soaring inflation rate is the highest in Latin America. Prices rose 1.7% in February, bringing the 12-month total inflation rate to 28.5%. The government set a target of 23% to 25% for 2011.

High prices key to sustain Venezuelan growth Gupta 11

Girish, High Oil Prices Boost Venezuela's Economy, but Growth Isn't Sustainable [http://www.minyanville.com/businessmarkets/articles/venezuela-ecoomy-hugo-chavez-imfoil/5/20/2011/id/34668] May 20 The Venezuelan economy has grown 4.5% in the first quarter, compared to the same period last year, following two years of recession. This was significantly higher than the expected figure of 1.7%. The IMF predicted 1.4% annual growth for the next five years. The positive news is thought to be the result of a simple balancing of statistics following two years of recession, with the first quarter of last year registering a 4.8% decline thanks in part to an electricity crisis. This, coupled with a 10.4% rise in expenditure, has helped private consumption to recover, according to a briefing note sent out by Barclays Capital. According to central bank president Nelson Merentes, the public sector grew 3.3% while the private sector grew 4.6%. Imports rose 22% during the period. Despite the 1.8% decline in oil production, Venezuelas primary money-spinner, revenues from oil exports increased 25.7%, or $4 billion, thanks to high international prices. Alejandro Grisanti of Barclays Capital believes that it is oil prices that Venezuela has to thank for the news. The result suggests the continuity of an unsustainable growth model that depends on increasing oil prices to propel domestic demand, he says. In the short run, we expect the government to continue to stimulate the economy by increasing expenditures, which could put the public sector in a more vulnerable position over the long term and may require significant reform after the 2012 presidential election. However, the Financial Times was quick to point out that the strongest growth (8% plus) experienced by Venezuela came in 2006 and 2007, when oil prices were around $60 a barrel. It seems that oil prices now need to be much higher to support similar levels of growth, thanks to the governments unorthodox economic policies, says Benedict Mander. [These] have failed to stop

THA Neg Wave 2 continued high inflation and left the private sectors productive apparatus much diminished after ongoing expropriations and nationalisations.

16

THA Neg Wave 2

17

Venezuela 2NC US Key

US action immediately spills over largest importer of Venezuelas oil MercoPress 11
MercoPress January 22nd 2011 Oil Price in Venezuela at Two Year High http://en.mercopress.com/2011/01/22/oil-price-in-venezuela-at-two-year-high The United States is the largest importer of Venezuelas oil exports. In 2008, the United States imported 1.19 million barrels per day (bpd) of crude oil and petroleum products from Venezuela, down from 1.36 million bpd in 2007. Historically, Venezuela has been one of the most important suppliers of foreign oil to the United States, but that importance has been diminishing, especially under Venezuela President Hugo Chavez. In 1960, Venezuelas share of U.S. oil imports stood at 50%, but Venezuela now bounces between being the fourth and fifth largest supplier to the US, supplying only 9% of total US oil imports in 2008. According to data provided by the US Energy Information Administration (EIA), the statistical arm of the Department of Energy, sales of Venezuelan crude oil and byproducts to the United States amounted to 1,008,000 barrels per day in September 2010 - a 12% fall in Venezuelan oil exports to the United States compared to the amount of oil and byproducts exported in September 2009, which averaged 1,146,000 bpd. Venezuelan oil exports slightly declined (14,000 bpd) in September compared to August 2010, when the daily averaged was 1,022,000 bpd exported to the US. From January to September, Venezuelan oil exports to the US averaged 1,005,000 bpd, while during the same period of last year they averaged 1,119,000 bpd. Despite the cumulative decline, Venezuela was the fifth crude oil and byproducts supplier to the United States in September.

THA Neg Wave 2

18

Venezuela 2NC AT Diversification

Diversification efforts not enoughoil is more important Alvarez and Hanson 9
Cesar and Stephanie, Venezuela's Oil-Based Economy [http://www.cfr.org/economics/venezuelas-oil-based-economy/p12089] February 9 Hugo Chavez took office in 1999. Since then, Venezuelas economy has remained squarely centered on oil production. In 2006, Chavez announced a nationalization of oil fields managed by foreign companies, which resulted in an increase of the governments shares in these projects from 40 percent to 60 percent. Government officials argue, however, that economic growth efforts are not solely focused on oil. Venezuelas ambassador to the United States, Bernardo Alvarez Herrera, wrote in a 2006 Foreign Affairs essay that the non-oil sector, which includes mining, manufacturing, and agriculture, grew 10.6 percent in 2005, indicating an important diversification of the country's economy. Yet even if the country is working to diversify, oil still predominates , says Miguel Tinker-Salas, a professor of Latin American history at Pomona College.

THA Neg Wave 2

19

Venezuela 2NC AT No Reserves

False. Venezuela has the worlds largest reserves LeVine 12
Steve, Is Venezuela on the cusp of a post-Chavez oil boom? [http://oilandglory.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2012/02/22/is_venezuela_on_the_cusp_of_a_post_ch avez_oil_boom] February 22 Venezuela has the largest proven oil reserves on the planet -- 296 billion barrels, according to OPEC figures. The number is slightly misleading: Saudi Arabia's 264 billion barrels are higher quality and cheaper to produce than the extremely heavy crude of Venezuela's Orinoco Basin; yet Venezuela's reserves are so massive that such details almost don't matter.

THA Neg Wave 2

20

Venezuela MPX: Colombia RelationsUQ

Relations are tense now Gupta 11
Girish, Oil Fails to Lubricate Venezuelan Economy [http://www.minyanville.com/businessmarkets/articles/venezuela-news-venezuela-economylibya-news/2/24/2011/id/32988] February 14 Relations between Colombia and Venezuela remain tense. The latter admits to owing the former $335m over a clash between Chvez and Colombia's then president Alvaro Uribe in July 2010, after which Venezuelan importers stopped outstanding debt payments to Colombian exporters. Venezuela restarted repayments after new Colombian president Juan Manual Santos came to power and the countries attempted to work together and renew their relationship. Colombian business owners remain skeptical of Venezuela's will to fully repay the money though.

THA Neg Wave 2

21

2NC Yes Escalation

THA Neg Wave 2

22

***Russia

THA Neg Wave 2

23

1NC
High prices key to sustain Russias economylow prices cause collapse World Finance Review 12
Hooked On Oil:Russias Vulnerability To Oil Prices [http://worldfinancereview.com/may%202012/33-34.pdf] May 20 The Russian economys very close correlation with commodity prices, first and foremost with oil prices, has proved a boon over most of the past decade. Rapidly rising oil prices supported speedy expansion of its economy, sustained high current account and fiscal surpluses, and led to the rapid accumulation of fiscal reserves. These developments have supported significant improvements in Russias creditworthiness after the sovereign had emerged from selective default only in December 2000. Russias foreign currency sovereign rating quickly rose from B- at the beginning of 2001 to investment grade BBB- by January 2005, and to a peak of BBB+ in September 2006. Nevertheless, Russias commodity dependency has at times also proved a burden. In 2008, Russias domestic economic bubble, which had in part been fed by rapidly rising oil prices, burst. In its wake, credit, asset prices, and economic activity started to correct. On top of that, global oil prices collapsed on the back of the global financial crisis and a recession in most developed economies, delivering an additional shock to Russias economy. In line with these developments, our foreign currency rating on Russia dropped by one notch to BBB, its current level, in December 2008. The key indicators of Russias economic performance closely correlate with trends in oil prices. As for any commodity economy, Russias nominal GDP is driven not so much by growth of the real economy, but by commodity prices . Broadly the same trend is visible for Russias trade balance, where exports of crude and oil products account for well above 50% of all goods exports, while gas accounts for about another 10%, and metals for 20%. Hence, the trade balance patterns closely follow oil price developments. Even the Russian rubles exchange rate against the U.S. dollar, when adjusted for inflation differentials, follows oil prices very closely. Much in line with the trade balance, it tends to appreciate as oil prices rise, and to depreciate as oil prices fall. PUBLIC FINANCES ARE ADDICTED TO OIL The impact of oil prices on Russias public finances is even more pronounced than on the overall economy. This is the result of a combination of direct and indirect effects. The marginal total tax rate for exported crude oil amounts to 86%. We estimate that direct revenues from oil through the mineral extraction tax and export duties alone generated close to one-half of federal government revenue in 2011 and still more than a quarter of total general government revenue. These revenues are directly affected by changes in the oil price. Calculating the direct impact of oil price changes on budget revenues, assuming stable oil production and exports, we find that a $10 change in the oil price leads to a 1% of GDP change in government revenues. On top of that, the strong impact the oil price has on economic activity--and hence the tax base--in Russia also creates an indirect channel through which oil prices affect the governments general tax intake. Because a decrease in the oil price depresses GDP and hence incomes, profit, and consumption in the economy, the governments general tax intake is also reduced. We estimate this indirect effect to contribute another 0.4% of GDP change in government revenue per $10 change in oil price. The steep increase in the oil price over the past decade has not only led to a sustained improvement in Russias government finances, characterized by large government surpluses and the accumulation of government assets until 2008. Government expenditure programs, including countercyclical spending during the recession that started in 2008,

THA Neg Wave 2 have also led to a continuous rise in the budget breakeven price of oil, that is, the price of oil required to balance the general government budget. While the breakeven price of oil started off at about $20 at the start of the last decade, we now estimate it to amount to $120 in 2012. So unless the average annual oil price sets a new record in 2012, Russias budget is likely to be in deficit this year. Russias fiscal expansion is also visible in the trend of the non-oil deficit, that is, the budget deficit excluding oil revenues. This has risen considerably, to an estimated 9.4% of GDP in 2011, from 4.8% of GDP in 2008, while at the same time the governments non-oil revenues declined to 10.9% of GDP from 13.4%. The dependence on oil (and other commodities) remains a key vulnerability of Russias economy, in our view, and in particular of Russias public finances. On the one hand, oil prices this year so far are well above the governments budget assumption of $100 and would support achievement of the 1.5% of GDP deficit target, not considering any of the spending promises made by newly elected president Vladimir Putin during his presidential election campaign. However, a downward correction in oil prices, particularly if longer lasting, would quickly put considerable pressure on Russias public finances

24

Russian economic decline causes nuclear war Filger 9

Sheldon Filger, founder of Global Economic Crisis, The Huffington Post. Russian Economy Faces Disastrous Free Fall Contraction. 5/10/9. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sheldonfilger/russian-economy-faces-dis_b_201147.html In Russia historically, economic health and political stability are intertwined to a degree that is rarely encountered in other major industrialized economies. It was the economic stagnation of the former Soviet Union that led to its political downfall. Similarly, Medvedev and Putin, both intimately acquainted with their nations history, are unquestionably alarmed at the prospect that Russias economic crisis will endanger the nations political stability, achieved at great cost after years of chaos following the demise of the Soviet Union. Already, strikes and protests are occurring among rank and file workers facing unemployment or non-payment of their salaries. Recent polling demonstrates that the once supreme popularity ratings of Putin and Medvedev are eroding rapidly. Beyond the political elites are the financial oligarchs, who have been forced to deleverage, even unloading their yachts and executive jets in a desperate attempt to raise cash. Should the Russian economy deteriorate to the point where economic collapse is not out of the question, the impact will go far beyond the obvious accelerant such an outcome would be for the Global Economic Crisis. There is a geopolitical dimension that is even more relevant then the economic context. Despite its economic vulnerabilities and perceived decline from superpower status, Russia remains one of only two nations on earth with a nuclear arsenal of sufficient scope and capability to destroy the world as we know it. For that reason, it is not only President Medvedev and Prime Minister Putin who will be lying awake at nights over the prospect that a national economic crisis can transform itself into a virulent and destabilizing social and political upheaval. It just may be possible that U.S. President Barack Obamas national security team has already briefed him about the consequences of a major economic meltdown in Russia for the peace of the world. After all, the most recent national intelligence estimates put out by the U.S. intelligence community have already concluded that the Global Economic Crisis represents the greatest national security threat to the United States, due to its facilitating political instability in the world. During the years Boris Yeltsin ruled Russia, security forces responsible for guarding the nations nuclear arsenal went without pay for months at a time, leading to fears that desperate personnel would illicitly sell nuclear weapons to terrorist organizations. If the current economic crisis in Russia were to deteriorate

THA Neg Wave 2 much further, how secure would the Russian nuclear arsenal remain? It may be that the financial impact of the Global Economic Crisis is its least dangerous consequence.

25

THA Neg Wave 2

26

Russian Econ High Growth

Russian economy growing through 2012oil prices key vulnerability Adomanis 8/16
Forbes Consultant, "Russia's Economy is Still Growing Faster than Every EU Country," 8/16/12 www.forbes.com/sites/markadomanis/2012/08/16/russias-economy-is-still-growing-faster-thanevery-eu-country/ AD 8/25/12 Midway through 2012, the Russian economy is growing at a reasonable pace, foreign debt is almost non-existent, the budget is, for the moment, roughly in balance, and the opposition is still fragmented and leaderless. This would seem to be a uniquely poor recipe for a successful revolutionary upheaval. Basically, everything hinges on the trajectory of the Russian economy, and it really doesnt seem to be doing poorly at the moment. This is particularly true when you compare Russias decent performance with the consistently awful performance of the EU and the Eurozone, both of which appear to be in outright recession. I understand that Russia is vulnerable to a collapse in oil prices. Really, I do. But while Ive seen many predictions that the price of oil will collapse at some point in the future, Ive also seen quite a few stories like this one from Reuters:

Domestic demand fueling growth Rose 8/14

Scott, Bloomberg Businessweek 8/14/12 "Russian Industrial Growth Probably Accelerated to 2.5% in July," www.businessweek.com/news/2012-08-14/russian-industrial-growth-probablyaccelerated-to-2-dot-5-percent-in-july AD 8/25/12 Russian industrial-production growth probably accelerated in July as homegrown demand for cars helped offset weaker metals exports. Output at factories, mines and utilities expanded 2.5 percent from a year earlier, according to the median of 15 estimates in a Bloomberg survey. That would be faster than Junes 1.9 percent growth. The Federal Statistics Service in Moscow will release the data today or tomorrow. The economy of the worlds largest energy exporter is weathering the debt crisis in the euro area, which accounts for about half of trade, with domestic demand powering growth of 4 percent from a year earlier in the second quarter. Indicators of sentiment among Russian producers and consumers remain fairly positive, the central bank said Aug. 10. Domestic demand remains exceptionally strong, mainly because budget policy served as a stimulus at the start of the year, said Alexey Pogorelov, an economist at Credit Suisse in Moscow.

THA Neg Wave 2

27

Russian Econ High AT Eurozone

Russia insulated from Eurozone collapse RIA Novosti 8/3
"IMF Urges Russia to Avoid Economy Overheating," 8/3/12 en.ria.ru/business/20120803/174947064.html AD 8/25/12 Regarding possible negative spillover for the Russian economy amid the eurozone crisis, the IMF considers "Russia is better placed to handle such spillover than in 2008" owing to its flexible exchange rate and positive net foreign asset position of Russian banks, which means they are less vulnerable to exchange rate swings than they were in 2008.

THA Neg Wave 2

28

Russia - 2NC AT Low Prices Now

Only long term low prices caused by the aff cause a recessionRussia has buffers for short term fluctuations Bush 12
Jason, Reuters staff writer Oil-price slide highlights risks to Putin's Russia [http://uk.reuters.com/article/2012/07/02/uk-russia-oil-idUKLNE86102820120702] July 2 "If the oil price is temporarily at these levels, or even lower, it's not a huge problem. The issue is whether it stays there. " Oil and gas taxes account for around half of revenues raised by the federal budget, which Putin, as prime minister, used to boost public sector pay and pensions as a way of overcoming the 2009 economic slump. Putin, who has taken a more populist approach to dealing with his declining popularity, promised even more public sector pay rises as part of his election campaign. While that would cushion the immediate blow of any slowdown, running down the fiscal reserves to maintain high social spending would only increase Russia's long-term vulnerability to yet another oil price shock. "In the short term they can sustain a very low oil price, but they need to address the structural problems in health, education and pensions," said Ivan Tchakarov, chief Russia economist at Renaissance Capital. "This is not a sustainable fiscal policy, there's no question about it." DEPENDENCY The last time oil prices fell so precipitously, in 2009, Russia's economy slumped by a dramatic 8 percent. Collapsing oil was also a catalyst for Russia's 1998 economic crisis that ended in devaluation and default. Putin, in his annual statement on the budget on Thursday, acknowledged that Russia's reliance on energy prices was one of its biggest policy headaches. "The Russian budgetary system is highly dependent on the situation on world commodity markets," he said. "This limits the opportunities for budget manoeuvre." For now, Finance Minister Anton Siluanov has earmarked $6 billion that could be spent in 2012 f rom a budget rainy-day fund should a deteriorating global economy drag on growth in Russia. "We hope we don't have to make use of these measures, because the steps being taken by the government and central bank are sufficient," Siluanov said. He trimmed his 2013 budget deficit forecast to 1.5 percent of gross domestic product, assuming an average oil price of $97 per barrel. The fiscal plan will help keep the national debt, now around 10 percent of GDP, manageably low. BUFFER Analysts say the impact on Russia of lower oil prices may be milder than during previous falls. "In the short term, in the next one to three years, we are fine," said Tchakarov. He noted that according to Finance Ministry calculations, every one dollar fall in the oil price means that the government loses around 55 billion roubles in oil-related taxes over the course of a year. With the budget presently balancing at around $115 per barrel, an oil price of $90 per barrel, if sustained over a full year, would leave the government short to the tune of around $40 billion a year. But that is still just a fraction of the $185 billion that Russia has stashed away in two fiscal reserve funds, designed to stabilise the budget in just such an emergency. Even at $60 per barrel - the average oil price during the crisis year of 2009 - the reserve funds could cover the shortfall for about two years. "I find this worrying about the budget at this moment a little beside the point," said Clemens Grafe, chief Russia economist at Goldman Sachs. "The fiscal buffers they have to absorb this are going to be sufficient without cutting expenditure." Analysts also point out that since the previous financial crisis in 2008-2009, the central bank has radically changed the exchange rate regime, allowing the rouble to fall in line with the cheaper oil price. Since oil began its latest slide in mid-March, the rouble has lost around 15 percent of its value against the dollar. "The rouble weakened exactly in line with the oil

THA Neg Wave 2 price. And a weaker rouble is very good because it will secure the rouble equivalent of oil taxes for the budget," said Evgeny Gavrilenkov, chief economist at Troika Dialog. SIGNIFICANT SLOWDOWN Despite these buffers, most economists expect that a sustained fall in the oil price would cause a significant slowdown in Russia's economic growth - still a surprisingly resilient 4.2 percent in May. "Between $70 and $80 per barrel you will have a recession," said Westin from Aton. Russia's ability to maintain government spending is limited by the so called non-oil deficit - a measure of the underlying state of the budget once oil taxes are removed - that has ballooned from 5 percent of gross domestic product in 2008 to over 10 percent this year. Even before the latest decline in the oil price, the International Monetary Fund and World Bank were urging Russia to scale back this underlying deficit by cutting down on bloated government spending. In a recent interview with Reuters, Russia's deputy prime minister Igor Shuvalov vowed that while the government intended to use its reserves to maintain expenditures this year, next year's budget would be "very frugal, tight and responsible". That implies that sooner or later, falling oil prices will force cutbacks that will hit the pockets of ordinary Russians.

29

THA Neg Wave 2

30

Russia - 2NC AT Dutch DiseaseNot Happening

Russia does not have dutch disease high oil prices are good for the Russia economy all sectors benefit from oil money. Dashevsky 11
Steven Dashevsky, Managing Director of Dashevsky & Partners. The Russian economy and its oil. May 24, 2011. Russia Times. http://rt.com/business/news/russia-economy-oil-rpice/ There are elements of Dutch disease, so I think not all the symptoms are here because the oil industry is not, Dutch disease happens when one industry, in this case oil and gas industry, really begins to crowd out investment and jobs and becomes the centre of everything, so the rest of the economy kind of dies. In the Russian case, its a little bit different because a lot of the money that flows into the country, via the oil and gas sector, subsequently flows further into the economy. So the impact from the oil and gas sector for example, on the currency is not what it used to be. So, yeah, if the oil prices are high it gets stronger, but its not dramatically stronger, and I think the economy is becoming, in relative terms, it is getting better if oil prices are high, instead of getting worse. Dutch disease really happens if there is one sector that is doing well and it drains resources from all the other sectors. In Russias case when oil prices are high, all sectors are enjoying it because it trickles down to the entire economy. So I think there are certain elements of it, but I dont think Russia has Dutch disease, and whatever people say, fortunately if oil prices are high it is good for Russia, and it is good for Russia as a whole, not just for Russian oil companies.

THA Neg Wave 2

31

Russia - 2NC AT Dutch DiseaseManufacturing

Dutch disease doesnt apply to Russialongitudinal statistical studies proves oil production causes an INCREASE in manufacturing Kuboniwa 10professor @ The Economic Research Institute
Masaaki, Diagnosing the Russian DiseaseGrowth and Structure of the Russian Economy Then and Now These estimates confirm that the impacts of oil prices on the overall manufacturing output as well as its subsector outputs were strongly positive. This is not a symptom of the Dutch Disease but a key characteristic of the Russian Disease. Needless to say, our regression analyses are insufficient due to the lack of data. Nevertheless, the Dutch Disease hypothesis (the slower growth of manufacturing in response to oil price rises or extraction increases) can be rejected for Russia. Our conclusion is quite different from suggestions in the preceding literature, including Oomes and Kalcheva (2007). Uses of quarterly or monthly industrial output data and controls over variables may not render our conclusion invalid. However, it is noteworthy that the recent data of annual disaggregated GDP for 2003-2009 (Rosstat HP as of September 8, 2010) may pose some challenges for our analysis based on the official industrial production data. The number of samples is too small to derive good analytical results. We provide only preliminary observations. The new data include 36 subsectors of the manufacturing. Applying the data to our output-oil price equation, for 3 sectors, we have a clearly negative relation between sectoral GDP and oil prices at the 5 to 10 percent significance level. These sectors consist of (a) textile manufacturing (excluding apparel), (b) optical equipment manufacturing, photographic and film equipment, and watches and clocks, and (c) aircraft manufacturing (including space transport equipment). The overall manufacturing GDP and 16 subsectors show a significantly positive impact of oil prices on the overall output and their outputs for 20032009, while the correlation between oil price changes and output changes for the remaining 17 sectors is very weak for this period. The clearly negative results mostly arise from the statistical discrepancies between growth figures of the industrial output statistics and the national accounts statistics in Rosstat. Table 2 illustrates some of these differences. As is shown, the overall manufacturing GDP growth is less than its output growth given by the industrial statistics, although the correlation coefficient of these short time series has a rather good value of 0.956. The growth of the textile and apparel sector GDP is much less than its output growth from the industrial statistics. The value of the correlation coefficient of these two time series is only 0.483. This is largely due to the discrepancy between the growth rates in 2005 when oil prices jumped 47 percent. The growth rate of the textile and apparel output based on the industrial statistics was 3.6 percent in 2005, whereas the growth rate of its value added from the national accounts statistics was markedly negative (-11.8 percent). In general, the growth rate of the gross output of a sector can differ from its value added. However, the Russian discrepancy for the textile and apparel industry may be beyond the possible allowance range. Within the framework of the Russian national accounts, there are only slight differences between the growth figures of sectoral gross output and value added (Rosstat, 2009), while, in some cases, including the mining sector and the crude oil and gas subsector, there are considerable differences between the growth figures of the industrial statistics and the national accounts statistics. Since the present Russian industrial production statistics are not based on the gross output shares at a base year (the Soviet practice) but on the value-added shares (the international standard), we can rely upon these statistics when considering output changes. We need further research on this problem. Nevertheless, the positive impact of oil prices on the overall value added of

THA Neg Wave 2 manufacturing cannot be rejected. We can also suggest the importance of manufacturing for the Russian growth. Figure 7 shows sectoral contributions to the growth rate in 2007 and 2009 based on the official statistics (precisely, contributions of growth of the sectoral value added at basic prices to the overall growth rate of GDP at market prices). For instance, the sectoral contribution for 2007 is calculated as (the nominal sectoral share in the base year 2006)*(the sectoral real growth rate in 2007). The largest contributor to the 2007 growth rate of 8.5 percent was the trade sector (2 percentage points), followed by the real estate sector (1.8 percentage points) and the dummy sector of net taxes on product (1.3 percentage points). It is noteworthy that the real estate sector includes many business activities (rental of movables, computers, and related activities, R&D, legal and economic activities, architectural and engineering activities, advertising, activities of employment agencies, and other business activities). Excluding the dummy sector, the manufacturing was the third largest contributor (1.2 percentage points) of 15 sectors. The mining sectors contribution was negative (-0.2 percentage point). If we replace the sectoral value added at basic prices (current prices) in the base year 2006 by the sectoral GDP at market prices, as in the practice of national accounts in Japan and the United States, the share of manufacturing GDP in the overall GDP in 2006 will increase by more than 50 percent than the official share of the value added in the total GDP. This suggests that the contribution of the manufacturing GDP to the 2007 GDP growth rate will also increase from 1.2 to 1.8 percentage points by 50 percent (we do not have to adjust the official growth rate in accordance with changes in the nominal shares). Furthermore, if foreign trade revenues generated from exports of the oil and gas are transferred from the trade sector to the mining sector (crude oil and gas) and the manufacturing sector (refined oil), this will reduce the share of the trade sector value added in the total GDP by 25 percent. As a result, the contribution of the trade sector to the 2007 GDP growth rate should be reduced from 2 to 1.5 percentage points by 25 percent. After all, if Japanese and U.S. methodologies are used, the manufacturing sector would be the largest contributor to the 2007 growth rate. Based on the official data, the largest contributor to the 2009 GDP contraction of 7.9 percent was the manufacturing sector (2.4 percentage points), followed by the dummy sector of net taxes on product (1.9 percentage points) and the trade sector (1.8 percentage points). The mining sectors contribution to the contraction was only 0.1 percentage point. After similar adjustments made for 2007, the contraction contribution of the manufacturing sector will increase from 2.4 to 3.5 percentage points. Approximately half of the 2009 recession can be explained by the manufacturing slump. Thus, it is clear that the impact of the manufacturing sector on the Russian overall Table 3 presents the industrial structure of Russia in comparison with four oil-rich countries and Japan. The Russian original data is converted to an estimation in which the net taxes on products are distributed among sectors and foreign trade and transport revenues from oil and gas sectors are transferred to the mining sector and the manufacturing sector (see Kuboniwa, Tabata, and Ustinova, 2003). The above adjustments of sectoral value added for the contribution calculations were derived from the information presented in this table. From this table, we can derive the following findings. First, the estimated GDP share of the Russian mining sector of 19 percent is sufficiently large, whereas it is much less than the GDP share of Norway (23 percent), Saudi Arabia (48 percent), and Azerbaijan (55 percent). From the viewpoint of industrial structure, the oil dependency in Russia is much less than that in Norway, with a highly developed GDP per capita level, and that of Saudi Arabia, which has the worlds largest oil reserves. Second, the estimated GDP share of the Russian manufacturing sector of 24 percent is much higher than the manufacturing GDP share in Norway (9 percent), Saudi Arabia (9 percent), Azerbaijan (5 percent), and Kazakhstan (12 percent), even though one-fourth of the Russian manufacturing GDP is generated by the oil refinery subsector. Surprisingly, this manufacturing share in Russia is much larger than the

32

THA Neg Wave 2 corresponding GDP share of 18 percent in Japan, with highly developed manufacturing partially because Japan experienced a hollowing out of manufacturing through capital outflow. As was stated, Russia also experienced the hollowing out of manufacturing in quite a different context.

33

THA Neg Wave 2

34

Russia - 2NC Prices K/T Econ

Downfall of the oil industry collapses the Russian economy Dashevsky 11
Steven,The Russian economy and its oil [http://rt.com/business/news/russia-economy-oilrpice/] May 24 RT: High oil prices have helped Russias budget but is the country too dependent on energy exports? SD: Well the dependence has declined greatly in recent years, but I think the sad truth remains that, to a very significant degree, Russias budget revenues and overall fiscal health is still very dependent on the level of oil prices. RT: How does the energy sector shape the Russian investment climate? SD: Well, there are many ways how the events happening in the oil and gas sector influence what is happening in the broader economy. On the one hand this is the biggest source of cash flow generation in the country, so in a sense its the biggest source of investment funds, both for the companies, and for the government and also because oil companies invest very significant amounts of money every year, so the ability of Russian oil companies to spend money affects really the entire Russian economy from transport companies to oil service companies to catering companies to local airlines so it is still, despite the significant efforts to diversify the economy, its a very important source of investment funds.Thats kind of one angle, and another angle is what is happening in the Russian oil and gas sector, since it is the biggest sector in the economy, affects the general investment climate, from the kind of sentiment perspective.So, when something good happens like potentially was going to happen, BP-Rosneft deal, or if there are good events happening, new fields are being developed, new pipelines are being brought on-stream, that gives investor additional confidence that the economy is progressing very well, and people are investing money in it, and the whole country is open for business.Vice versa, if things are not going well, if deals are breaking up, if instead of going to work people going to courts against each other, that clearly creates a big drag on the investors sentiment for all of the Russian economy, not just oil and gas.

THA Neg Wave 2

35

Russia MPX: EconGlobal Econ

Russian economy is key to the global economy Australian Financial Review 2K
January 8,. afr.com

As a big debtor nation, Russias ability to meet its financial obligations also matters to world markets as the Russian roubles collapse and accompanying loan default in August 1998 starkly revealed. The crisis raised fears of a domino effect across emerging markets that could ultimately push the global economy into recession . That, in the end, didnt occur. But an economist specializing in Russia at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, Ivan Szegvari, says the confidence of international investors in emerging markets, and transitional economies as a whole, is affected by what happens in Russia. In addition, Russia remains one of the most important clients of international financial institutions such as the International Monetary Fund.

THA Neg Wave 2

36

Russia MPX: EconNationalism

Economic depression cause Russian ultra-nationalism
Somin 8
(Ila, Russia After Putin, March 25 2008, http://www.volokh.com/posts/1206472900.shtml)

Obviously, the big difference between Russia and the many other similar societies is that Russia just happens to have huge quantities of oil and nuclear weapons. The big question for the future is whether or not continued economic growth will lead to pressure for liberalization, or whether the Russian political elite will succeed in maintaining a semiauthoritarian system in the long run. Another key question is what will happen when oil prices fall and Russia's economy suffers a downturn. It's possible that the resulting anger at the government will redound to the benefit of supporters of liberal democracy. But I fear that it will instead lead to increased support for the Communists or for ultra-nationalists and anti-Semites, such as Vladimir Zhirinovsky. In Russia, as elsewhere, most of the public is rationally ignorant about politics, and has little incentive to evaluate what they do know in a logical way. As a result, Russia's next economic crisis could result in a much worse government taking power, not a better one. As Young points out, Russian extremists of both the right and the left can tap into a long tradition of nationalism and belief in the notion that all problems can be solved by a leader with a "strong hand." On the other hand, Russia also has a long counter-tradition of pro-Western liberalization. Former world chess champion and political opposition leader Gary Kasparov represents that tendency today. When the current government eventually runs into trouble, much will depend on whether the ultra-nationalists or the liberal democrats are better positioned to take advantage of the situation. Unfortunately, Putin and Medvedev have targeted democrats for repression far more than the communists and nationalists. However, that very fact might give them greater credibility with the public when and if the current regime becomes unpopular. Russian hardliners lead to extinction Nyquist 1 (J.R., November 12, pg. http://www.financialsense.com/stormwatch/geo/pastanalysis/2001/111201.htm) Unfortunately, the main threat to America's future is not from rogue states or terrorists. The main threat is from Russia, the principle supplier and trainer of global terrorists since World War II. Americans should be reminded that Russia's war machine was built on the idea of fighting and winning a future nuclear war against America. According to a leading Russian defector and two leading U.S. intelligence analysts, the fall of the Soviet Union did not change this logic. As crazy as that sounds, experts like Dr. Peter Vincent Pry and William Lee warn that Russia's nuclear war-fighting strategy has been improved since the collapse of the Soviet Union and the threat of nuclear aggression from Russia is growing instead of shrinking.

THA Neg Wave 2

37

Drilling Bad Updates

Unmitigated drilling destroys watersheds- shoddy construction and massive toxic wastewater Argetsinger, 11 -- J.D. Candidate, Certificate in Environmental Law, Pace Law School
(Beren, Pace Environmental Law Review, "The Marcellus Shale: Bridge to a Clean Energy Future or Bridge to Nowhere?," 29 Pace Envtl. L. Rev. 321, Fall 2011, l/n, accessed 5-24-12, mss)
As noted above, the EIA's long-term projections estimate that over forty-five percent of all natural gas produced in the United States by 2035 will come from shale gas. Experience in shale gas-producing states reveals that hydraulic fracturing

has significant impacts on water and

air resources; with nearly half the country's natural gas supply expected to come from shale, the long-term consequences must be considered and addressed now. Reports of shale gas development in Colorado, Wyoming, Texas, and Pennsylvania highlight numerous water and air contamination problems that have arisen from shale gas production. n53 Improper [*331] well

casing, lax on-site wastewater storage practices and perhaps even the hydraulic fracturing process itself, can allow natural gas constituents to migrate into and permanently contaminate underground aquifers and private wells. n54 The dumping of flowback waters into streams and onto
roads contaminates surface waters and improperly treated fracking wastewater at sewage treatment plants (often defined as publicly owned treatment works or "POTWs") damage streams and drinking water supplies, putting human and ecological health at risk. n55 Air pollutants in the form of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and nitrous oxides (NOx), which are precursors to ground level ozone, a respiratory hazard, arise from the concentrated operation of diesel pumps, truck traffic, and on-site generators. n56 Methane gas, a highly potent greenhouse gas, and other pollution constituents are released through the drilling, fracturing, venting, flaring, condensation, and transportation processes of a well's lifecycle. n57 A. Water Pollution The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (NYS DEC or DEC) estimates that the hydraulic fracturing process requires anywhere from 2.9 million to 7.8 million gallons of injected water combined with chemicals and sand to fracture a single well, depending on the depth of the well and geology of the area. n58 DEC estimates that over the next thirty years, "there could be up to 40,000 wells developed with the high volume hydraulic fracturing technology." n59 Reports from hydraulic fractured wells in northern Pennsylvania indicate that between nine and thirty-five percent (or 216,000 to 2.8 million [*332] gallons) of the water-chemical solution used in fracking returns as "flowback" before a well begins to produce gas. n60 Handling and treating these high volumes of flowback

water is a significant operational challenge of extracting shale gas and one that has not been met in some states. The treatment of flowback waters has proven a persistent challenge in Pennsylvania, causing environmental damage that regulators in some areas have been slow to address. n61 Former Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) Commissioner John Hanger said in a DEP
press release in April 2010: The treating and disposing of gas drilling brine and fracturing wastewater is a significant challenge for the natural gas industry because of its exceptionally high total dissolved solid (TDS) concentrations... . Marcellus drilling

is growing rapidly and our rules must be strengthened now to prevent our waterways from being seriously harmed in the future.
n62 However, the DEP has largely limited its regulatory oversight on the issue of wastewater disposal at POTWs to a request that shale gas producers "voluntarily" cease disposing of flowback water at some POTWs. n63 The issue of improper treatment of hydraulic fracturing wastewater is compounded by specific exemptions for hydraulic fracturing from certain federal environmental laws. For example, [*333] the Energy Policy Act of 2005 amended the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA) to largely exempt gas drillers from the SDWA, from EPA regulation, and from disclosure of the chemicals used in hydraulic fracturing operations. n64 While some states such as New York would require drillers to meet higher standards, n65 industry has largely fought efforts to force public disclosure as well as federal efforts to study the impacts of chemicals used in hydraulic fracturing on drinking water. n66 Independent analysis of products used in some western states for the production of oil and gas revealed more than 350 products containing hundreds of chemicals, the vast majority of which have known adverse effects on human health and the environment. n67 However, industry feet dragging on public disclosure has contributed to incomplete knowledge of the chemical makeup and concentrations used in fracturing fluids, and the full extent of the risk the chemicals pose to human and environmental health is unknown. n68 The NYS DEC advised in its Revised Draft Supplemental Generic Environmental Impact Statement (Revised dSGEIS) that: There is little meaningful information one way or the other about the potential impact on human health of chronic low level exposures to many of these chemicals, as could occur if an aquifer were to be contaminated as the result of a spill or release that is undetected and/or unremediated. n69 Incomplete knowledge of the chemical constituents injected into wells during the fracturing process raise concerns about [*334] understanding their effects on people and how to treat acute and chronic exposure. Further, as noted above, the fracturing fluids that return to the surface in flowback wastewaters create particularly daunting treatment challenges. The fracking solution pumped into the wells dissolves large quantities of salts, heavy metals such as barium and strontium, and radioactive materials. n70 When the water returns to the surface, it is stored for reuse, recycled, or treated and disposed. Currently, Pennsylvania is the only state that allows for the primary method for disposal of drilling wastewaters at POTWs. n71 Many POTWs are incapable of treating fracking wastewater and discharges of untreated fracking wastewater into surface waters create environmental and human health hazards. n72 The chemicals, radioactivity levels, and high salt concentrations pose difficulties for managers because most POTWs are not equipped to test for or treat all of these substances. n73 John H. Quigley, former Pennsylvania Secretary of the Department of Conservation and Natural Resources, stated: we're

burning the furniture to heat the house ... in shifting away from coal and toward natural gas, we're trying for cleaner air, but we're producing massive amounts of toxic wastewater with salts and naturally occurring radioactive materials, and it's not clear
we have a plan for properly handling this waste. n74

THA Neg Wave 2

38

Extinction WWP, 10
(Western Watersheds Project, "Protecting Watersheds," 2010, www.westernwatersheds.org/issues/protecting-watersheds, accessed 5-29-12, mss)
Protecting Watersheds A watershed is land that contributes water to a stream, river, lake, pond, wetland or other body of water. The boundary that separates one watershed from another, causing falling rain or melting snow or spring water to flow downhill in one direction or the other, is known as a watershed divide. John Wesley Powell put it well when he said that a watershed is: "that area of land, a bounded hydrologic system, within which all living things are inextricably linked by their common water course" The defining watershed divide in the United States is the Continental Divide which generally follows the Rocky Mountains and determines whether water flows to the Pacific or Atlantic Ocean. Our biggest watershed is that of the Mississippi River which starts in Minnesota and spreads across 40% of the lower 48 states, drawing its water from the Yellowstone, Missouri, Platte, Arkansas, Canadian, Red, Wisconsin, Illinois, Ohio and Tennessee Rivers---and their drainages. While major watersheds are clearly visible on satellite photographs and maps, within each one is an intricate web of secondary drainages, each fed by a myriad of streams and smaller creeks, many unnamed and so small a person can jump across them. In many parts of the country, particularly in the arid West, these smaller drainages may cover thousands of acres, yet collect far less water than those in the East. For example, the Hudson River has a flow equivalent to that of the Colorado, yet collects its water from a land area less than 1/20th the size required by the Colorado River which is 1,400 miles long. Because there is very little land that is truly flat, watersheds and drainages are all around us, and just about everybody in the United States is within walking distance of one whether they live in a city, on a farm, in a desert, or on an island. Some carry the names of well known rivers like the Columbia and the Rio Grande. Most, however, do not, and remain anonymous, hidden in culverts or ditches or flowing only intermittently in high deserts, unrecognized and unheralded as vital,

contributing parts of the complex system that supplies all of our fresh surface water. Surface water
runs through watersheds and drainages, from mountains or high ground to the sea. Underlying watersheds, or adjacent to most of them, however, is an even greater source of supply, ground water. Ground water is formed when falling rain or melting snow percol ates deep into the ground over time, sometimes centuries, to a level where it is stored in porous rock and sand and accumulates there until tapped by drilled wells or comes to the surface of its own accord as a spring or artesian well. This stored ground w ater is commonly referred to as an aquifer and its level is measured in terms of a water table. Like watersheds, water stored in aquifers generally seeps downhill, and many, like the Mississippi River drainage, cover wide areas of the United States. The nations largest deposit of ground water is the Ogallala Aquifer System that underlies 8 states, Wyoming, Colorado, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas and New Mexico. Many smaller aquifers are found across the country and some remain unnamed and uncharted. These two water

resources, surface and ground water, not only sustain all life but are the only practical source of fresh water we have for industry, agriculture, and municipal use. And although they are often viewed as two separate entities, they are, for the most part, inextricably linked. For example, in addition to rain and melting snow, ground water
springs are vital to maintaining the flow of many streams and rivers in a watershed. And a great deal of surface water, about 25% of it, percolates deep into the ground where it is stored in or helps recharge our aquifers. The remaining surface water, after evaporation, which claims some 40%, becomes the complex system of streams and rivers that flow through watersheds from the mountains or high ground to the sea. Along the way, however, some of that water is temporarily held back in ponds, wetlands and the land bordering creeks, streams and rivers where water may not be visible but lies just below the surface. These areas are collectively referred to as riparian zones, and while they constitute only a small percentage of the land in most watersheds, they

are the heart and soul of a delicately balanced natural system that, collectively, produces our fresh water. A healthy, functioning riparian zone is a virtual classroom in life sciences---botany, biology, animal ecology, fisheries, entomology and ornithology---and contains a miraculous diversity of wildlife, fish, birds, bugs and an array of vegetation ranging from trees and grasses to algae and other aquatic plants. Riparian zones and the biodiversity they contain are interdependent. That is, the trees, plants, grasses, reeds, and algae provide food, shade, protection and habitat for wildlife, birds and fish. Their root systems stabilize soil and prevent erosion and flooding in
wet seasons; and in dry seasons, this vegetation retains water and releases it slowly to maintain even stream flows. For their part, the variety of animals, fish, birds, and bugs living in these zones aerate the soil, spread pollen and seeds and eventually, when they die and fungi and bacteria break down the dead organic matter, provide nourishment for a new generation of riparian vegetation. This is an oversimplified description of a pristine riparian zone within a source watershed, that critical part of the system where water is gathered from a web of springs, bogs and creeks and begins its long, twisting journey from the mountains to the sea. Such pristine conditions still exist in some isolated areas, but today no major river arrives at its terminus in this condition, and some dont make it at all. Along the way, watersheds are radically transformed by man. Rivers are dammed, channeled, and otherwise diverted to serve a multitude of agricultural, industrial and municipal purposes. And while a good portion of the water is eventually released back into the system, much of it is polluted and requires costly purification. Today, water which is literally running out of water.

conservation is one of the most

serious natural resource issues facing this country, and nowhere is conservation more important than in the arid West

THA Neg Wave 2

39

***Neolib K Updates

THA Neg Wave 2

40

Framework Answers
Sequencing is key focusing on state politics absolves individual responsibility for the environment and turns case independent reason to vote neg
Trennel 6 (Paul, Ph.D of the University of Wales, Department of International Politics, The (Im)possibility of Environmental Security) Thirdly, it can be claimed that the security mindset channels the obligation to address environmental issues in an unwelcome direction. Due to terms laid out by the social contract security is essentially something done by statesthere is no obligation or moral duty on citizens to provide securityIn this sense security is essentially emptyit is not a sign of positive political initiative (Dalby, 1992a: 97-8). Therefore, casting an issue in security terms puts the onus of action onto governments, creating a docile citizenry who await instructions from their leaders as to the next step rather than taking it on their own backs to do something about pressing concerns. This is unwelcome because governments have limited incentives to act on environmental issues, as their collectively poor track record to date reveals. Paul Brown notes that at present in all the large democracies the short-term politics of winning the next election and the need to increase the annual profits of industry rule over the long term interests of the human race (1996: 10; see also Booth 1991: 348). There is no clearer evidence for this than the grounds on which George W. Bush explained his decision to opt out of the Kyoto Protocol: I told the world I thought that Kyoto was a lousy deal for AmericaIt meant that we had to cut emissions below 1990 levels, which would have meant I would have presided over massive layoffs and economic destruction (BBC: 2006). The short-term focus of government elites and the long-term nature of the environmental threat means that any policy which puts the burden of responsibility on the shoulders of governments should be viewed with scepticism as this may have the effect of breeding inaction on environmental issues. Moreover, governmental legislation may not be the most appropriate route to solving the problem at hand. If environmental vulnerabilities are to be effectively addressed *t]he routine behaviour of practically everyone must be altered (Deudney, 1990: 465). In the case of the environmental sector it is not large scale and intentional assaults but the cumulative effect of small and seemingly innocent acts such as driving a car or taking a flight that do the damage. Exactly how a legislative response could serve to alter non-criminal apolitical acts by individuals (Prins, 1993: 176- 177) which lie beyond established categories of the political is unclear. Andrew Dobson has covered this ground in claiming that the solution to environmental hazards lies not in piecemeal legislation but in the fostering of a culture of ecological citizenship. His call is made on the grounds that legislating on the environment, forcing people to adapt, does not reach the necessary depth to produce long-lasting change, but merely plugs the problem temporarily. He cites Italian car-free city days as evidence of this, noting that whilst selected cities may be free of automobiles on a single predetermined day, numbers return to previous levels immediately thereafter (2003: 3). This indicates that the deeper message underlying the policy is not being successfully conveyed. Enduring environmental solutions are likely to emerge only when citizens choose to change their ways because they understand that there exists a pressing need to do so. Such a realisation is unlikely to be prompted by the top-down, state oriented focus supplied by a security framework.

THA Neg Wave 2

41

They isolate policy from politicscondensing advocacy to a 4 second plan means you cant assess who debated betterplan focus trains you not to defend the process by which you make conclusions, which turns their offense
Gunder et al, Aukland University senior planning lecturer, 2009 (Michael, Planning in Ten Words or Less: A Lacanian Entanglement with Spatial Planning pgs 111-2) The hegemonic network, or bloc, initially shapes the debates and draws on appropriate policies of desired success, such as the needs of bohemians, knowledge clusters, or talented knowledge workers, as to what constitutes their desired enjoyment (cobblestones, chrome and cappuccinos at sidewalk cafes) and what is therefore lacking in local competitiveness. In tum, this defines what is blighted and dysfunctional and in need of economic, spatial planning, or other, remedy. Such an argument is predicated on a logic, or more accurately a rhetoric, that a lack of a particular defined type of enjoyment, or competitiveness (for surely they are one and the same) is inherently unhealthy for the aggregate social body. Lack and its resolution are generally presented as technical, rather than political issues. Consequently, technocrats in partnership with their "dominant stakeholders can ensure the impression of rationally seeking to produce happiness for the many, whilst, of course, achieving their stakeholders' specific interests (Gunder and Hillier 2007a, 469). The current post-democratic milieu facilitates the above through avoidance of critical policy debate challenging favoured orthodox positions and policy approaches. Consideration of policy deficiencies, or alternative solutions, are eradicated from political debate so that while token institutions of liberal democracy: are retained, conflicting positions and arguments are negated (Stavrakakis 2003, 59). Consequently, the safe names in the field who feed the policy orthodoxy are repeatedly used, or their work drawn upon, by different stakeholders, while more critical voices are silenced by their inability to shape policy debates' (Boland 2007, 1032). The economic development or spatial planning policy analyst thus continues to partition reality ideologically by deploying only the orthodox "successful' or "best practice' economic development or spatial planning responses. This further maintains the dominant, or hegemonic, status quo while providing "a cover and shield against critical thought by acting in the manner of a "buffer" isolating the political held from any research that is independent and radical in its conception as in its implications for public policy' (Wacquant 2004, 99). At the same time, adoption of the hegemonic orthodoxy tends to generate similar policy responses for every competing local area or city-region, largely resulting in a zero-sum game (Blair and Kumar 1997).

THA Neg Wave 2

42

Periphery DA
The 1AC displaces the perspective of those most violently affected by the plan they bracket the debate to US benefits while erasing the ecological violence done against the periphery turns case and causes extinction Bryant 95 (Bunyan, Professor in the School of Natural Resources and Environment, and an
adjunct professor in the Center for Afro-American and African Studies at the University of Michigan, Environmental Justice: Issues, Policies, and Solutions, p. 209-212
Although the post-World War II economy was designed when environmental consideration was not a problem, today this is no longer the case; we must be concerned enough about environmental protection to make it a part of our economic design. Today, temporal and spatial relations of pollution have drastically changed within the last 100 years or so. A hundred years ago we polluted a small spatial area and it took the earth a short time to heal itself. Today we pollute large areas of the earth as evidenced by the international problems of acid rain, the depletion of the ozone layer, global warming, nuclear meltdowns, and the difficulties in the safe storage of spent fuels from nuclear

we have embarked upon an era of pollution so toxic and persistent that it will take the earth in some areas thousands of years to heal itself. To curtail environmental pollutants, we must build new institutions to prevent
power plants. Perhaps widespread destruction from pollutants that know no geopolitical boundaries. We need to do this because pollutants are not respectful of international boundaries; it does little good if one country practices sound environmental protection while its neighbors fail to do so.

Countries of the world are intricately linked

together in ways not clear 50 years ago; they find themselves victims of environmental destruction even
though the causes of that destruction originated in another part of the world . Acid rain,
global warming, depletion of the ozone layer, nuclear accidents like the one at Chernobyl, make all countries vulnerable to environmental destruction. The cooperative relations forged after World War II are now obsolete. New cooperative relations need to be agreed upon cooperative relations that show that pollution prevention and species preservation are inseparably linked to economic development and survival of planet earth . Economic development is linked to pollution prevention even though the market fails to include
the true cost of pollution in its pricing of products and services; it fails to place a value on the destruction of plant and animal species. To date, most industrialized nations, the high polluters, have had an incentive to pollute because they did not incur the cost of producing goods and services in a nonpolluting manner. The world will have to pay for the true cost of production and to practice prudent stewardship of our natural resources if we are to sustain ourselves on this planet. We cannot expect Third World countries to participate in debt-for-nature swaps as a means for saving the rainforest or as a means for the reduction of greenhouse gases, while a considerable amount of such gases come from industrial nations and from fossil fuel consumption. Like disease, population growth is politically, economically, and structurally determined. Due to inadequate income maintenance programs and social security, families in developing countries are more apt to have large families not only to ensure the survival of children within the first five years, but to work the fields and care for the elderly. As development increases, so do education, health, and birth control. In his chapter, Buttel states that ecological development and substantial debt forgiveness would be more significant in alleviating Third World environmental degradation (or population problems) than ratification of any UNCED biodiversity or forest conventions. Because population control programs fail to address the structural characteristics of poverty, such programs for developing countries have been for the most part dismal failures. Growth and development along ecological lines have a better chance of controlling population growth in developing countries than the best population control programs to date. Although population control is important, we often focus a considerable amount of our attention on population problems of developing countries. Yet there are more people per square mile in Western Europe than in most developing countries. During his/her lifetime an American child causes 35 times the environmental damage of an Indian child and 280 times that of a Haitian child (Boggs, 1993: 1). The addiction to consumerism of highly industrialized countries has to

Worldwide environmental protection is only one part of the complex problems we face today. We cannot ignore world poverty; it is intricately linked to environmental protection . If this is the case, then how do we deal with world poverty? How do we bring about lasting
be seen as a major culprit, and thus must be balanced against the benefits of population control in Third World countries. peace in the world? Clearly we can no longer afford a South Africa as it was once organized, or ethnic cleansing by Serbian nationalists. These types of conflicts bankrupt us morally and destroy our connectedness with one another as a world community. Yet, we may be headed on a course where the politically induced famine, poverty, and chaos of Somalia today will become commonplace and world peace more difficult, particularly if the European Common Market, Japan, and the United States trade primarily among

Growing poverty will lead only to more world disequilibrium to wars and famine as countries become more aggressive and cross international borders for resources to ward off widespread hunger and rampant unemployment.
themselves, leaving Third World countries to fend for themselves. To tackle these problems requires a quantum leap in global cooperation and commitment of the highest magnitude; it requires development of an international tax, levied through the United nations or some other international body, so that the world community can become more involved in helping to deal with issues of environmental

public institutions. They must, indeed, be able to respond to the rapid changes that reverberate throughout the world. If they fail to
protection, poverty, and peace. Since the market system has been bold and flexible enough to meet changing conditions, so too must

change, then we will surely meet the fate of the dinosaur . The Soviet Union gave up a system that was unworkable in exchange
for another one. Although it has not been easy, individual countries of the former Soviet Union have the potential of reemerging looking very different and stronger. Or they could emerge looking very different and weaker. They could become societies that are both socially and environmentally destructive or they can become societies where people have decent jobs, places to live, educational opportunities for all citizens, and sustainable social structures that are safe and nurturing. Although North Americans are experiencing economic and social discomforts, we too will have to change, or we may find ourselves engulfed by political and economic forces beyond our control. In 1994, the out-sweeping of Democrats from national offices may be symptomatic of deeper and more fundamental problems. If the mean-spirited behavior that characterized the 1994 election is carried over into the governance of the country, this may only fan the flames of discontent. We may be embarking upon a long struggle over ideology, culture, and the

despite all the political turmoil, we must take risks and try out new ideas ideas never dreamed of before and ideas we thought were impossible to implement . To implement these ideas we must overcome institutional inertia in order to enhance intentional change. We need to give up tradition and business as usual . To view the future as a challenge and as an opportunity to make the world a better place, we must be willing to take political and economic risks . The
very heart and soul of the country. But question is not growth, but what kind of growth, and where it will take place. For example, we can maintain current levels of productivity or become even more productive if we farm organically. Because of ideological conflicts, it is hard for us to view the Cuban experience with an unjaundiced eye; but we ask you to place political differences aside and pay attention to the lyrics of organic farming and not to the music of Communism. In other words, we must get beyond political differences and ideological conflicts; we must

THA Neg Wave 2

43

find success stories of healing the planet no matter where they exist be they in Communist or non-Communist countries, developed or underdeveloped countries. We must ascertain what lessons can be learned from them, and examine how they would benefit the world community. In most instances, we will have to chart a new course.

Continued use of certain technologies and chemicals that are incompatible with the ecosystem will take us down the road of no return. We are already witnessing the catastrophic destruction of our environment and disproportionate impacts of environmental insults on

communities of color and low-income groups. If such destruction continues, it will undoubtedly deal harmful blows to our social,
we find ourselves in a house divided, where the cleavages between the races are in fact getting worse. We find ourselves in a house divided where the gap between the rich and the poor has increased. We find ourselves in a house
economic, and political institutions. As a nation, divided where the gap between the young and the old has widened. During the 1980s, there were few visions of healing the country. In the 1990s, despite the catastrophic economic and environmental results of the 1980s, and despite the conservative takeover of both houses of Congress, we must look for glimmers of hope. We must stand by what we think is right and defend our position with passion. And at times we need to slow down and reflect and do a lot of soul searching in order to redirect ourselves, if need be. We must chart out a new course of defining who we are as a people, by redefining our relationship with government, with nature, with one another, and where we want to be as a nation. We need to find a way of expressing this definition of ourselves to one another. Undeniably we are a nation of different ethnic groups and races, and of multiple

Because economic institutions are based upon the growth paradigm of extracting and processing natural resources, we will surely perish if we use them to foul the global nest. But it does not have to be this way. Although sound environmental policies can be compatible with good business practices and quality of life, we may have to jettison the moral argument of environmental protection in favor of the self-interest argument, thereby demonstrating that the survival of business enterprises is intricately tied to good stewardship of natural resources and environmental protection. Too often we forget that
interest groups, and if we cannot live in peace and in harmony with ourselves and with nature it bodes ominously for future world relations.

short-sightedness can propel us down a narrow path, where we are unable to see the long-term effects of our actions.
The ideas and policies discussed in this book are ways of getting ourselves back on track. The ideas presented here will hopefully provide substantive material for discourse. These policies are not carved in stone, nor are they meant to be for every city, suburb, or rural area. Municipalities or rural areas should have flexibility in dealing with their sitespecific problems. , because dumping in Third World countries or in the atmosphere today will surely haunt the world tomorrow. Ideas presented here may irritate some and dismay others, but we need to make some drastic changes in our lifestyles and institutions in order to foster environmental justice. Many of the policy ideas mentioned in this book have been around for some time, but they have not been implemented. The struggle for environmental justice emerging from the people of color and low-income communities may provide the necessary political impulse to make these policies a reality. Environmental justice provides opportunities for those most affected by environmental degradation and poverty to make policies to save not only themselves from differential impact of environmental hazards, but to save those resp onsible for the lions share of the planets destruction. This struggle emerging from the environmental experience of oppressed people brings forth a new consciousness a new consciousness shaped by immediate demands for certainty and solution. It is a struggle to make a true connection between humanity and nature. This struggle to resolve environmental problems may force the nation to alter its priorities; it may force the nation to address issues of environmental justice and, by doing so, it may ultimately result in a cleaner and healthier environment for all of us. Although we may never eliminate all toxic materials from the production cycle, we should at least have that as a goal.

Yet we need to extend our concern about local sustainability beyond geopolitical boundaries

Violence against the peripehery produces global warfare and obscures its root causes in neutrality Rodriguez 7 (Dylan, Professor, Dept. of Ethnic Studies @ University of California Riverside,
November Kritika Kultura, Issue 9, AMERICAN GLOBALITY AND THE U. S. PRISON REGIME: STATE VIOLENCE AND WHITE SUPREMACY FROM ABU GHRAIB TO STOCKTON TO BAGONG DIWA, Available online at http://www.ateneo.edu/ateneo/www/UserFiles/121/docs/kkissue09.pdf,) Variable, overlapping, and mutually constituting white supremacist regimes have in fact been fundamental to the formation and movements of the United States, from racial chattel slavery and frontier genocide to recent and current modes of neoliberal land displacement and (domestic-to- global) warfare . Without exception, these regimes have been differently entangled with the states changing paradigms, strategies, and technologies of human incarceration and punishment (to follow the prior examples: the plantation, the reservation, the neoliberal sweatshop, and the domestic-to-global prison). The historical nature of these entanglements is widely acknowledged, although explanations of the structuring relations of force tend to either isolate or historically compartmentalize the complexities of historical white supremacy. For the theoretical purposes of this essay, white supremacy may be understood as a logic of social organization that produces regimented, institutionalized, and militarized conceptions of hierarchized human difference, enforced through coercions and violence s that are structured by genocidal possibility (including physical extermination and curtailment of peoples collective capacities to socially, culturally, or

THA Neg Wave 2 biologically reproduce). As a historical vernacular and philosophical apparatus of domination, white supremacy is simultaneously premised on and consistently innovating universalized conceptions of the white (European and euroamerican) human vis--vis the rigorous production, penal discipline, and frequent social, political, and biological neutralization or extermination of the (non-white) sub- or non-human. To consider white supremacy as essential to American social formation (rather than a freakish or extremist deviation from it) facilitates a discussion of the modalities through which this material logic of violence overdetermines the social, political, economic, and cultural structures that compose American globality and constitute the common sense that is organic to its ordering.

44

THA Neg Wave 2

45

2NC V2L Impact

The system kills agency and value to life Giroux 11
Henry A. Giroux English and Cultural Studies Department, McMaster University, Hamilton, Canada, 2011 "Neoliberalism and the death of the social state: remembering Walter Benjamin's Angel of History," Social Identities, Vol. 17, No. 4, July 2011, 587-601 As history is erased and economics becomes the driving force for all aspects of political, cultural, and social life, those institutional and political forces that hold the reins of power now become the purveyors of social death , comfortably ensconced in a political imaginary that wreaks human misery on the planet as the rich and powerful reap huge financial gains for themselves. The principal players of casino capitalism live in the highly circumscribed time of short-term investments and financial gains and are more than willing to close their eyes to the carnage and suffering all around them while they are sucked into the black hole of the future. As the social state is eviscerated by an all-embracing market fundamentalism, society increasingly becomes a machine for destroying the power of civic culture and civic life, proliferating the ideologies and technologies of what is increasingly and unequivocally becoming a punishing state. And, quoting Achille Mbembe (2003), politics becomes a form of social death in which 'the future is collapsed into the present' (p. 37).

THA Neg Wave 2

46

2NC Growth/Envt Impact

Marketization link turns both biodiversity and growth see the perverse logic of hiking electricity prices to SOLVE the markets failures by causing the market to fail Li 8 (Minqi, professor of economics at the University of Utah, An Age of Transition: The
United States, China, Peak Oil, and the Demise of Neoliberalism, http://monthlyreview.org/2008/04/01/an-age-of-transition-the-united-states-china-peak-oiland-the-demise-of-neoliberalism, AM) The global capitalist economy depends on fossil fuels (oil, natural gas, and coal) for 80 percent of the worlds energy supply. Oil accounts for one-third of the total energy supply and 90 percent of the energy used in the transportation sector. Oil is also an essential input for the production of fertilizers, plastics, modern medicine, and other chemicals. Oil is a nonrenewable resource. In a recent study, the German Energy Watch Group points out that world oil discoveries peaked in the 1960s and world crude oil production has probably already peaked and will start to decline in the coming years. Outside OPEC, oil production in twenty-five major oil producing countries or regions has already peaked, and only nine countries or regions still have growth potential. All the major international oil companies are struggling to prevent their oil production from declining.3 Colin Campbell of the Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas estimates that the world production of all liquids (including crude oil, tar sands, oil shales, natural gas liquids, gas-to-liquids, coal-to-liquids, and biofuels) is likely to peak around 2010. After the peak, the world oil production will fall by about 25 percent by 2020 and by about two-thirds by 2050. Campbell also estimates that the world natural gas production will peak by 2045. In an earlier study, the German Energy Watch Group expects the world coal production to peak by 2025.4 Nuclear energy and many renewable energy sources (such as solar and wind), in addition to their many other limitations, cannot be used to make liquid and gaseous fuels or serve as inputs in chemical industries. Biomass is the only renewable energy source that can be used as a substitute for fossil fuel in the making of liquid or gaseous fuels. But large-scale production of biomass could lead to many serious environmental problems, and the potential of biomass is limited by the available quantity of productive land and fresh water. Ted Trainer, an Australian eco-socialist, estimates that meeting the current U.S. demand for oil and gas would require that the equivalent of nine times all U.S. crop land or eight times all currently forested U.S. land be fully devoted to production of biomass. Trainer concludes that there is no possibility that more than a quite small fraction of liquid fuel and gas demand could be met by biomass sources.5 If world oil production and the production of other fossil fuels reach their peak and start to decline in the coming years, then the global capitalist economy will face an unprecedented crisis that it will find difficult to overcome. The rapid depletion of fossil fuels is only one among many serious environmental problems the world is confronting today. The capitalist economic system is based on production for profit and capital accumulation. In a global capitalist economy, the competition between individual capitalists, corporations, and capitalist states forces each of them constantly to pursue accumulation of capital on increasingly larger scales. Therefore, under capitalism, there is a tendency for material production and consumption to expand incessantly. After centuries of relentless accumulation, the worlds nonrenewable resources are being rapidly depleted and the earths ecological system is now on the verge of collapse. The survival of the human civilization is at stake.6 Some argue that because of technological progress, the advanced capitalist countries have become dematerialized (decreasing the throughput of materials and energy

THA Neg Wave 2

47

per unit of output) as economic growth relies more upon services than traditional industrial sectors, thus making economic growth less detrimental to the environment. In fact, many of the modern services sectors (such as transportation and telecommunication) are highly energy and resource intensive. Despite such claims regarding dematerialization, the advanced capitalist countries are ecologically much more wasteful than the periphery, with per capita consumption of energy and resources and a per capita ecological footprint far higher than the world average. According to the Living Planet Report, North America has a per capita ecological footprint of 9.4 global hectares, more than four times the world average (2.2 global hectares). The supposedly environmentally friendly European Union has a per capita ecological footprint of 4.8 global hectares, or more than twice the world average. Cuba, the only country that remains committed to socialist goals among the historical socialist states, is the only country that has accomplished a high level of human development (with a human development index greater than 0.8) while having a per capita ecological footprint smaller than the world average.7 Claims of the advanced capitalist economies to dematerialization in the wider, more meaningful sense of declining overall environmental impact are in fact refuted by the Jevons Paradox, which says that increased efficiency in the throughput of energy and materials normally leads to an increase in the scale of operations, thereby enlarging the overall ecological footprint. This has been a normal pattern throughout the history of capitalism .8 Moreover, part of what is referred to as dematerialization arises from the relocation of industrial capital from the advanced capitalist countries to the periphery in pursuit of cheap labor and low environmental standards. The dramatic rise of Chinese capitalism partly results from this global capital relocation. Although the advanced capitalist countries may have become slightly dematerialized in this sense, the capitalists and the so-called middle classes in China, India, Russia, and much of the periphery are emulating and reproducing the very wasteful capitalist consumerist life style on a massively enlarged scale. Global capitalism as a whole continues to move relentlessly toward global environmental catastrophe. The Demise of Neoliberalism and the Age of Transition On February 1, Immanuel Wallerstein, the leading world system theorist, in his biweekly commentaries pronounced the year 2008 to be the year of the Demise of the Neoliberal Globalization. Wallerstein begins by pointing out that throughout the history of the capitalist world-system, the ideas of free market capitalism with minimal government intervention and the ideas of state regulated capitalism with some social protection have been in fashion in alternating cycles. In response to the worldwide profit stagnation in the 1970s, neoliberalism became politically dominant in the advanced capitalist countries, in the periphery, and eventually in the former socialist bloc. However, neoliberalism failed to deliver its promise of economic growth, and as the global inequalities surged, much of the world population suffered from declines in real incomes. After the mid1990s, neoliberalism met with growing resistance throughout the world and many governments have been under pressure to restore some state regulation and social protection. Confronted with economic crisis, the Bush administration has simultaneously pursued a further widening of inequality at home and unilateral imperialism abroad. These policies have by now failed decisively. As the United States can no longer finance its economy and imperialist adventure with increasingly larger foreign debt, the U.S. dollar, Wallerstein believes, faces the prospect of a free fall and will cease to be the worlds reserve currency. Wallerstein concludes: The political balance is swinging back.The real question is not whether
this phase is over but whether the swing back will be able, as in the past, to restore a state of relative equilibrium in the world-system. Or has too much damage been done? And are we now in for more

violent chaos in the world-economy and therefore in the world-system as a whole?9 Following Wallersteins arguments, in the coming years we are likely to witness a major realignment of

THA Neg Wave 2

48

global political and economic forces. There will be an upsurge in the global class struggle over the direction of the global social transformation. If we are in one of the normal cycles of the capitalist world-system, then toward the end of the current period of instability and crisis, we probably will observe a return to the dominance of Keynesian or state capitalist policies and institutions throughout the world. However, too much damage has been done. After centuries of global capitalist accumulation, the global environment is on the verge of collapse and there is no more ecological space for another major expansion of global capitalism. The choice is starkeither
humanity will permit capitalism to destroy the environment and therefore the material basis of human civilization, or it will destroy capitalism first. The struggle for ecological sustainability must join

forces with the struggles of the oppressed and exploited to rebuild the global economy on the basis of production for human needs in accordance with democratic and socialist principles. In this sense, we have entered into a new age of transition. Toward the end of this transition, one way or the other we will be in a fundamentally different world and it is up to us to decide what kind of world it turns out to be.

THA Neg Wave 2

49

2NC Food Crisis Impact

The status quo food crisis in directly linked to the logic of neoliberalspeculation and land grabbing
Houtart 11(Francois, Belgian Marxist Sociologist, serves as an advisor to CETRI (Centre Tricontinental) a Belgian non-governmental organization which he founded in 1976, was awarded the UNESCO-Madanjeet Singh Prize for the Promotion of Tolerance and Non-Violence, FROM COMMON GOODS TO THE COMMON GOOD OF HUMANITY, ROSA LUXEMBURG FOUNDATION BRUSSELS, NOVEMBER) There are two aspects to the food crisis. One is a conjunction of short-term factors, the other is due to (structural) long term factors. The former can be seen in the sudden rise of food prices in 2007 and 2008. It is true that this can be attributed to several causes, such as dwindling reserves, but the main reason was speculative , with the production of agrofuels being partly responsible (maize-based ethanol in the United States). Thus over a period of two years, the price of wheat on the Chicago stock exchange rose by 100 per cent, maize by 98 per cent and ethanol by 80 per cent. During these years appreciable amounts of speculative capital moved from other sectors into investing in food production in the expectation of rapid and significant profits. As a consequence, according to the FAO director general, in each of the years 2008 and 2009 more than 50 million people fell below the poverty line, and the total number of those living in poverty rose to the unprecedented level of over one billion people. This was clearly the result of the logic of profits , the capitalist law of value. The second aspect is structural. Over the last few years there has been an expansion of monoculture, resulting in the concentration of land-holdings in other words, a veritable reversal of land reform. Peasant and family agriculture is being destroyed all over the world on the pretext of its low productivity. It is true that monoculture can produce from 500 and even 1,000 times more than peasant agriculture in its present state. Nevertheless, two factors should be taken into account: first, this kind of production is leading to ecological destruction. It eliminates forests, and contaminates the soil and the waters of oceans and rivers through the massive use of chemical products. Over the next 50 to 75 years we shall be creating the deserts of tomorrow. Second, peasants are being thrown off their lands, and millions of them have to migrate to the cities, to live in shanty towns, exacerbating the tasks of women and causing urban crises, as well as increasing internal migratory pressure, as in Brazil; or they are going to other countries (Mexico, Central America, Colombia, Ecuador, Philippines, Sri Lanka, India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Morocco, Algeria, West Africa).Together with public services, agriculture is now one of the new frontiers for capital (Samir Amin, 2004), especially in times when the profitability of productive industrial capital is relatively reduced and there is a considerable expansion of financial capital seeking new sources of profit. Recently we have witnessed an unprecedented phenomenon: the land grabbing by private and State capital, particularly in Africa, for the production of food and agrofuels. The South Korean corporation Daewoo obtained a concession of 1,200,000 hectares in Madagascar for a period of 99 years, which provoked a serious political crisis in that country and finally a revision of the contract. Countries like Libya and the Gulf Emirates are doing likewise in Mali and various other African countries. European and North American mining and agro-energy multinationals are securing the opportunity to exploit tens of millions of hectares for long periods, as Chinese State and private enterprises are also doing. There is very little concern in these initiatives for

THA Neg Wave 2

50

the ecological and social implications, which are considered as externalities, i.e. external to market calculations. And this is precisely the second aspect of capitalist logic, after the growth of the rate of profitability. It is not capital that is having to deal with the negative effects, but local societies and individuals. This has always been the strategy of capital, even in the countries of the centre, with no concern for the fate of the working classes, or for the peoples in the peripheries under colonialism. There is no concern, either, for nature and the way of life of local populations. It is for all these reasons that the food crisis, in both its conjunctural and structural aspects, is directly linked to the logic of capitalism.

THA Neg Wave 2

51

2NC Jevons Paradox

Plan is one step forward and two steps back energy production exponentially compounds consumption turns the case
Foster et al, 10 (JOHN B. is editor of Monthly Review and professor of sociology, University of Oregon. BRETT CLARK is assistant professor of sociology, North Carolina State University. RICHARD YORK is co-editor of Organization & Environment and associate professor of sociology, University of Oregon, Capitalism and the Curse of Energy Efficiency: The Return of the Jevons Paradox, Monthly Review, November 2010. Vol. 62, Iss. 6; pg. 1, 12 pgs, proquest) The Jevons Paradox was forgotten in the heyday of the age of petroleum during the first threequarters of the twentieth century, but reappeared in the 1970s due to increasing concerns over resource scarcity associated with the Club of Rome's Limits to Growth analysis, heightened by the oil-energy crisis of 1973-74. As energy efficiency measures were introduced, economists became concerned with their effectiveness. This led to the resurrection, at the end of the 1970s and the beginning of the 1980s, of the general question posed by the Jevons Paradox, in the form of what was called the "rebound effect." This was the fairly straightforward notion that engineering efficiency gains normally led to a decrease in the effective price of a commodity, thereby generating increased demand, so that the gains in efficiency did not produce a decrease in consumption to an equal extent. The Jevons Paradox has often been relegated to a more extreme version of the rebound effect, in which there is a backfire, or a rebound of more than 100 percent of "engineering savings," resulting in an increase rather than decrease in the consumption of a given resource.30 Technological optimists have tried to argue that the rebound effect is small, and therefore environmental problems can be solved largely by technological innovation alone, with the efficiency gains translating into lower throughput of energy and materials (dematerialization). Empirical evidence of a substantial rebound effect is, however, strong. For example, technological advancements in motor vehicles, which have increased the average miles per gallon of vehicles by 30 percent in the United States since 1980, have not reduced the overall energy used by motor vehicles. Fuel consumption per vehicle stayed constant while the efficiency gains led to the augmentation, not only of the numbers of cars and trucks on the roads (and the miles driven), but also their size and "performance" (acceleration rate, cruising speed, etc.) - so that SUVs and minivans now dot U.S. highways. At the macro level, the Jevons Paradox can be seen in the fact that, even though the United States has managed to double its energy efficiency since 1975, its energy consumption has risen dramatically. Juliet Schor notes that over the last thirty-five years: energy expended per dollar of GDP has been cut in half. But rather than falling, energy demand has increased, by roughly 40 percent. Moreover, demand is rising fastest in those sectors that have had the biggest efficiency gains - transport and residential energy use. Refrigerator efficiency improved by 10 percent, but the number of refrigerators in use rose by 20 percent. In aviation, fuel consumption per mile fell by more than 40 percent, but total fuel use grew by 150 percent because passenger miles rose. Vehicles are a similar story. And with soaring demand, we've had soaring emissions. Carbon dioxide from these two sectors has risen 40 percent, twice the rate of the larger economy. Economists and environmentalists who try to measure the direct effects of efficiency on the lowering of price and the immediate rebound effect generally tend to see the rebound effect as relatively small, in the range of 10 to 30 percent in high-energy consumption areas such as home heating and cooling and cars. But once the indirect effects, apparent at the macro level, are incorporated, the Jevons Paradox remains extremely significant. It is here at the

THA Neg Wave 2

52

macro level that scale effects come to bear: improvements in energy efficiency can lower the effective cost of various products, propelling the overall economy and expanding overall energy use.31 Ecological economists Mario Giampietro and Kozo Mayumi argue that the Jevons Paradox can only be understood in a macro-evolutionary model, where improvements in efficiency result in changes in the matrices of the economy, such that the overall effect is to increase scale and tempo of the system as a whole.32 Most analyses of the Jevons Paradox remain abstract, based on isolated technological effects, and removed from the historical process. They fail to examine, as Jevons himself did, the character of industrialization. Moreover, they are still further removed from a realistic understanding of the accumulationdriven character of capitalist development. An economic system devoted to profits, accumulation, and economic expansion without end will tend to use any efficiency gains or cost reductions to expand the overall scale of production. Technological innovation will therefore be heavily geared to these same expansive ends. It is no mere coincidence that each of the epochmaking innovations (namely, the steam engine, the railroad, and the automobile) that dominated the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries were characterized by their importance in driving capital accumulation and the positive feedback they generated with respect to economic growth as a whole - so that the scale effects on the economy arising from their development necessarily overshot improvements in technological efficiency.33 Conservation in the aggregate is impossible for capitalism, however much the output/input ratio may be increased in the engineering of a given product. This is because all savings tend to spur further capital formation (provided that investment outlets are available). This is especially the case where core industrial resources - what Jevons called "central materials" or "staple products" - are concerned. The Fallacy of Dematerialization The Jevons Paradox is the product of a capitalist economic system that is unable to conserve on a macro scale, geared, as it is, to maximizing the throughput of energy and materials from resource tap to final waste sink. Energy savings in such a system tend to be used as a means for further development of the economic order, generating what Alfred Lotka called the "maximum energy flux," rather than minimum energy production.34 The deemphasis on absolute (as opposed to relative) energy conservation is built into the nature and logic of capitalism as a system unreservedly devoted to the gods of production and profit. As Marx put it: "Accumulate, accumulate! That is Moses and the prophets!"35 Seen in the context of a capitalist society, the Jevons Paradox therefore demonstrates the fallacy of current notions that the environmental problems facing society can be solved by purely technological means. Mainstream environmental economists often refer to "dematerialization," or the "decoupling" of economic growth, from consumption of greater energy and resources. Growth in energy efficiency is often taken as a concrete indication that the environmental problem is being solved. Yet savings in materials and energy, in the context of a given process of production, as we have seen, are nothing new; they are part of the everyday history of capitalist development.36 Each new steam engine, as Jevons emphasized, was more efficient than the one before. "Raw materials-savings processes," environmental sociologist Stephen Bunker noted, "are older than the Industrial Revolution, and they have been dynamic throughout the history of capitalism." Any notion that reduction in material throughput, per unit of national income, is a new phenomenon is therefore "profoundly ahistorical."37 What is neglected, then, in simplistic notions that increased energy efficiency normally leads to increased energy savings overall, is the reality of the Jevons Paradox relationship - through which energy savings are used to promote new capital formation and the proliferation of commodities, demanding ever greater resources. Rather than an anomaly, the rule that efficiency increases energy and material use is integral to the "regime of capital"

THA Neg Wave 2

53

itself.38 As stated in The Weight of Nations, an important empirical study of material outflows in recent decades in five industrial nations (Austria, Germany, the Netherlands, the United States, and Japan): "Efficiency gains brought by technology and new management practices have been offset by [increases in] the scale of economic growth."39 The result is the production of mountains upon mountains of commodities, cheapening unit costs and leading to greater squandering of material resources. Under monopoly capitalism, moreover, such commodities increasingly take the form of artificial use values, promoted by a vast marketing system and designed to instill ever more demand for commodities and the exchange values they represent as a substitute for the fulfillment of genuine human needs. Unnecessary, wasteful goods are produced by useless toil to enhance purely economic values at the expense of the environment. Any slowdown in this process of ecological destruction, under the present system, spells economic disaster. In Jevons's eyes, the "momentous choice" raised by a continuation of business as usual was simply "between brief but true [national] greatness and longer continued mediocrity. " He opted for the former - the maximum energy flux. A century and a half later, in our much bigger, more global - but no less expansive - economy, it is no longer simply national supremacy that is at stake, but the fate of the planet itself. To be sure, there are those who maintain that we should "live high now and let the future take care of itself." To choose this course, though, is to court planetary disaster. The only real answer for humanity (including future generations) and the earth as a whole is to alter the social relations of production, to create a system in which efficiency is no longer a curse - a higher system in which equality, human development, community, and sustainability are the explicit goals.

THA Neg Wave 2

54

2NC Hegemony Link

Hegemony causes paranoid imperial violence there are no global threats extinction is inevitable because US scenario planning is grounded in pursuing constructed threats causes error replication that culminate in eternal warfare Engelhardt 10/12 (Tom, Fellow at the Nation Institute, Overwrought empire: The discrediting
of US military power, http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/10/20121010104331399712.html) And here's the odd thing: in a sense, little has changed since then and yet everything seems different. Think of it as the American imperial paradox: everywhere there are now "threats" against our well-being which seem to demand action and yet nowhere are there commensurate enemies to go with them. Everywhere the US military still reigns supreme by almost any measure you might care to apply; and yet - in case the paradox has escaped you - nowhere can it achieve its goals, however modest. At one level, the American situation should simply take your breath away. Never before in modern history had there been an arms race of only one or a great power confrontation of only one. And at least in military terms, just as the neoconservatives imagined in those early years of the 21st century, the US remains the "sole superpower" or even "hyperpower" of planet Earth. The planet's top gun And yet the more dominant the US military becomes in its ability to destroy and the more its forces are spread across the globe, the more the defeats and semi-defeats pile up, the more the missteps and mistakes grow, the more the strains show, the more the suicides rise, the more the nation's treasure disappears down a black hole - and in response to all of this, the more moves the Pentagon makes. A great power without a significant enemy? You might have to go back to the Roman Empire at its height or some Chinese dynasty in full flower to find anything like it. And yet Osama bin Laden is dead. Al-Qaeda is reportedly a shadow of its former self. The great regional threats of the moment, North Korea and Iran, are regimes held together by baling wire and the suffering of their populaces. The only incipient great power rival on the planet, China, has just launched its first aircraft carrier, a refurbished Ukrainian throwaway from the 1990s on whose deck the country has no planes capable of landing. The US has 1,000 or more bases around the world; other countries, a handful. The US spends as much on its military as the next 14 powers (mostly allies) combined. In fact, it's investing an estimated $1.45 trillion to produce and operate a single future aircraft, the F-35 - more than any country, the US included, now spends on its national defence annually. The US military is singular in other ways, too. It alone has divided the globe - the complete world - into six "commands". With (lest anything be left out) an added command, Stratcom, for the heavens and another, recently established, for the only space not previously occupied, cyberspace, where we're already unofficially "at war". No other country on the planet thinks of itself in faintly comparable military terms. When its high command plans for its future "needs," thanks to Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Martin Dempsey, they repair (don't say "retreat") to a military base south of the capital where they argue out their future and war-game various possible crises while striding across a map of the world larger than a basketball court. What other military would come up with such a method? The president now has at his command not one, but two private armies. The first is the CIA, which in recent years has been heavily militarised, is overseen by a former four-star general (who calls the job "living the dream"), and is running its own private assassination campaigns and drone air wars throughout the Greater Middle East. The second is an expanding elite, the Joint Special Operations Command, cocooned inside the US military, members of whom are now

THA Neg Wave 2

55

deployed to hot spots around the globe. The US Navy, with its 11 nuclear-powered aircraft carrier task forces, is dominant on the global waves in a way that only the British Navy might once have been; and the US Air Force controls the global skies in much of the world in a totally uncontested fashion. (Despite numerous wars and conflicts, the last American plane possibly downed in aerial combat was in the first Gulf War in 1991.) Across much of the global south, there is no sovereign space Washington's drones can't penetrate to kill those judged by the White House to be threats. In sum, the US is now the sole planetary Top Gun in a way that empire-builders once undoubtedly fantasised about, but that none from Genghis Khan on have ever achieved: alone and essentially uncontested on the planet. In fact, by every measure (except success), the likes of it has never been seen. Blindsided by predictably unintended consequences By all the usual measuring sticks, the US should be supreme in a historically unprecedented way. And yet it couldn't be more obvious that it's not, that despite all the bases, elite forces, private armies, drones, aircraft carriers, wars, conflicts, strikes, interventions, and clandestine operations, despite a labyrinthine intelligence bureaucracy that never seems to stop growing and into which we pour a minimum of $80bn a year, nothing seems to work out in an imperially satisfying way. It couldn't be more obvious that this is not a glorious dream, but some kind of ever-expanding imperial nightmare. This should, of course, have been selfevident since at least early 2004, less than a year after the Bush administration invaded and occupied Iraq, when the roadside bombs started to explode and the suicide bombings to mount, while the comparisons of the US to Rome and of a prospective Pax Americana in the Greater Middle East to the Pax Romana vanished like a morning mist on a blazing day. Still, the wars against relatively small, ill-armed sets of insurgents dragged toward their dismally predictable ends. (It says the world that, after almost 11 years of war, the 2,000th US military death in Afghanistan occurred at the hands of an Afghan "ally" in an "insider attack".) In those years, Washington continued to be regularly blindsided by the unintended consequences of its military moves. Surprises - none pleasant - became the order of the day and victories proved vanishingly rare. One thing seems obvious: a superpower military with unparalleled capabilities for one-way destruction no longer has the more basic ability to impose its will anywhere on the planet. Quite the opposite, US military power has been remarkably discredited globally by the most pitiful of forces. From Pakistan to Honduras, just about anywhere it goes in the old colonial or neocolonial world, in those regions known in the contested Cold War era as the Third World, resistance of one unexpected sort or another arises and failure ensues in some often longdrawn-out and spectacular fashion. Given the lack of enemies - a few thousand jihadis, a small set of minority insurgencies, a couple of feeble regional powers - why this is so, what exactly the force is that prevents Washington's success, remains mysterious. Certainly, it's in some way related to the more than half-century of decolonisation movements, rebellions and insurgencies that were a feature of the previous century. It also has something to do with the way economic heft has spread beyond the US, Europe and Japan - with the rise of the "tigers" in Asia, the explosion of the Chinese and Indian economies, the advances of Brazil and Turkey, and the movement of the planet toward some kind of genuine economic multi-polarity. It may also have something to do with the end of the Cold War, which put an end as well to several centuries of imperial or great power competition and left the sole "victor", it now seems clear, heading toward the exits wreathed in self-congratulation. Explain it as you will, it's as if the planet itself, or humanity, had somehow been inoculated against the imposition of imperial power, as if it now rejected it whenever and wherever applied. In the previous century, it took a half-nation, North Korea, backed by Russian supplies and Chinese troops to fight the US to a draw, or a popular insurgent movement backed by a local power, North Vietnam, backed in turn by the

THA Neg Wave 2

56

Soviet Union and China to defeat American power. Now, small-scale minority insurgencies, largely using roadside bombs and suicide bombers, are fighting American power to a draw (or worse) with no great power behind them at all. Think of the growing force that resists such military might as the equivalent of the "dark matter" in the universe. The evidence is in. We now know (or should know) that it's there, even if we can't see it. Washington's wars on autopilot After the last decade of military failures, stand-offs and frustrations, you might think that this would be apparent in Washington. After all, the US is now visibly an overextended empire, its sway waning from the Greater Middle East to Latin America, the limits of its power increasingly evident. And yet, here's the curious thing: two administrations in Washington have drawn none of the obvious conclusions and no matter how the presidential election turns out, it's already clear that, in this regard, nothing will change. Even as military power has proven itself a bust again and again, our policymakers have come to rely ever more completely on a military-first response to global problems. In other words, we are not just a classically overextended empire, but also an overwrought one operating on some kind of militarised autopilot. Lacking is a learning curve. By all evidence, it's not just that there isn't one, but that there can't be one. Washington, it seems, now has only one mode of thought and action, no matter who is at the helm or what the problem may be, and it always involves, directly or indirectly, openly or clandestinely, the application of militarised force. Nor does it matter that each further application only destabilises some region yet more or undermines further what once were known as "American interests". Take Libya, as an example. It briefly seemed to count as a rare American military success story: a decisive intervention in support of a rebellion against a brutal dictator - so brutal, in fact, that the CIA previously shipped "terrorist suspects", Islamic rebels fighting against the Gaddafi regime, there for torture. No US casualties resulted, while American and NATO air strikes were decisive in bringing a set of ill-armed, ill-organised rebels to power. In the world of unintended consequences, however, the fall of Gaddafi sent Tuareg mercenaries from his militias, armed with high-end weaponry, across the border into Mali. There, when the dust settled, the whole northern part of the country had come unhinged and fallen under the sway of Islamic extremists and al-Qaeda wannabes as other parts of North Africa threatened to destabilise. At the same time, of course, the first American casualties of the intervention occurred when Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans died in an attack on the Benghazi consulate and a local "safe house". With matters worsening regionally, the response couldn't have been more predictable. As Greg Miller and Craig Whitlock of the Washington Post recently reported, in ongoing secret meetings, the White House is planning for military operations against al-Qaeda-in-the-Magreb (North Africa), now armed with weaponry pillaged from Gaddafi's stockpiles. These plans evidently include the approach used in Yemen (US special forces on the ground and CIA drone strikes), or a Somalia "formula" (drone strikes, special forces operations, CIA operations and the support of African proxy armies), or even at some point "the possibility of direct US intervention". In addition, Eric Schmitt and David Kilpatrick of the New York Times reportthat the Obama administration is "preparing retaliation" against those it believes killed the US ambassador, possibly including "drone strikes, special operations raids like the one that killed Osama bin Laden and joint missions with Libyan authorities". The near certainty that, like the previous intervention, this next set of military actions will only further destabilise the region with yet more unpleasant surprises and unintended consequences hardly seems to matter. Nor does the fact that, in crude form, the results of such acts are known to us ahead of time have an effect on the unstoppable urge to plan and order them. Such situations are increasingly legion across the Greater Middle East and elsewhere. Take one other tiny example: Iraq, from which, after almost a decade-long military

THA Neg Wave 2

57

disaster, the "last" US units essentially fled in the middle of the night as 2011 ended. Even in those last moments, the Obama administration and the Pentagon were still trying to keep significant numbers of US troops there (and, in fact, did manage to leave behind possibly several hundred as trainers of elite Iraqi units). Meanwhile, Iraq has been supportive of the embattled Syrian regime and drawn ever closer to Iran, even as its own sectarian strife has ratcheted upward. Having watched this unsettling fallout from its last round in the country, according to the New York Times, the US is now negotiating an agreement "that could result in the return of small units of American soldiers to Iraq on training missions. At the request of the Iraqi government, according to General Caslen, a unit of Army Special Operations soldiers was recently deployed to Iraq to advise on counterterrorism and help with intelligence". Don't you just want to speak to those negotiators the way you might to a child: No, don't do that! The urge to return to the scene of their previous disaster, however, seems unstaunchable. You could offer various explanations for why our policymakers, military and civilian, continue in such a repetitive - and even from an imperial point of view - self-destructive vein in situations where unpleasant surprises are essentially guaranteed and lack of success a given. Yes, there is the militaryindustrial complex to be fed. Yes, we are interested in the control of crucial resources, especially energy, and so on. But it's probably more reasonable to say that a deeply militarised mindset and the global maneuvers that go with it are by now just part of the way of life of a Washington eternally "at war". They are the tics of a great power with the equivalent of Tourette's Syndrome. They happen because they can't help but happen, because they are engraved in the policy DNA of our national security complex, and can evidently no longer be altered. In other words, they can't help themselves.

THA Neg Wave 2

58

2NC A2: Economy Impact

Economic crisis rhetoric causes a self-fulfilling prophecy rhetoric and framing circumscribes the possibilities for political action
Hanan 10 (Joshua Stanley, PHD communication studies, professor of communication at Temple University (Managing the Meltdown Rhetorically: Economic Imaginaries and the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 dissertation The University of Texas at Austin)
Economic crisis rhetoric describes the art of mitigating or exacerbating crises in capitalism through discourse. Since at least the Great Depression there has existed an awareness in the public sphere that the language used to discuss the economy impacts the economys actual performance.12 In The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, John Maynard Keynes coined the term animal spirits to refer to the seemingly emotional and affective nature of economic markets.13 According to Keynesone of the most respected economists of all timethe

economy was as much a product of language as it was about concrete fundamentals. Because the economy was ultimately held together by confidencean immaterial device of the mindthe way public officials spoke about the economy could play a powerful role in how the economy was actually experienced.14 During the current economic crisis the Keynesian perspective that confidence shapes the economy
has become increasingly mainstream.15 Early in 2009, for example, Newsweek columnist Jonathan Alter speculated that Barack

Obamas greatest challenge as president would be to talk Americans out of the ongoing economic recession.16 Suggesting that the
biggest obstacle facing the nation is essentially a crisis of confidence, Alter argues that the president can only restore popular faith in the economy (and, by extension, the economy itself) through the strategic use of language: What's a president to do? If he starts in with the happy talk, he sounds like John McCain saying "the fundamentals of the economy are strong," which is what sealed the election for Obama in the first place. But if he gets too gloomy, he'll scare the bejesus out of the entire world. The balance Obama strikes is to say that things will get worse before they get better, but that they will get better. Now he must convince us that's true. While Alters comments serve as the latest proof of rhetorics compelling power to affect the economys material performance, in the discipline of communication studies there mitigating and exacerbating

has been little research exploring the role of language in capitalist crises.17 This lack of scholarship is unfortunate given that in contemporary communication studies one of the central assumptions is that under late capitalism rhetoric has become increasingly central to all social life.18 In a globalized and mass mediated society increasingly defined by immaterial production,19 rhetoric is central to how human beings make sense of the world and how they direct their actions toward particular objectives.20 In this respect, there is every reason to believe that rhetoric functions similarly in the context of economic crises and the purpose of this literature review is to substantiate the basis for making such claims.

THA Neg Wave 2

59

2NC A2: Environment/Warming

Apocalyptic environmental rhetoric causes eco-authoritarianism and political apathy turns the case Buell 3 (Frederick, cultural critic on the environmental crisis and a Professor of English at Queens College and the author of five books, From Apocalypse To Way of Life, pages 185-186) Looked at critically, then, crisis discourse thus suffers from a number of liabilities. First, it seems to have become a political liability almost as much as an asset. It calls up a fierce and effective opposition with its predictions; worse, its more specific predictions are all too vulnerable to refutation by events. It also exposes environmentalists to being called grim doomsters and antilife Puritan extremists. Further, concern with crisis has all too often tempted people to try to find a total solution to the problems involved a phrase that, as an astute analyst of the limitations of crisis discourse, John Barry, puts it, is all too reminiscent of the Third Reichs infamous final solution.55 A total crisis of societyenvironmental crisis at its gravestthreatens to translate despair into inhumanist authoritarianism; more often, however, it helps keep merely dysfunctional authority in place. It thus leads, Barry suggests, to the belief that only elite- and expert-led solutions are possible.56 At the same time it depoliticizes people, inducing them to accept their impotence as individuals; this is something that has made many people today feel, ironically and/or passively, that since it makes no difference at all what any individual does on his or her own, one might as well go along with it. Yet another pitfall for the full and sustained elaboration of environmental crisis is, though least discussed, perhaps the most deeply ironic. A problem with deep cultural and psychological as well as social effects, it is embodied in a startlingly simple proposition: the worse one feels environmental crisis is, the more one is tempted to turn ones back on the environment. This means, preeminently, turning ones back on natureon traditions of nature feeling, traditions of knowledge about nature (ones that range from organic farming techniques to the different departments of ecological science), and traditions of nature-based activism. If nature is thoroughly wrecked these days, people need to delink from nature and live in postnaturea conclusion that, as the next chapter shows, many in U.S. society drew at the end of the millenium. Explorations of how deeply nature has been wounded and how intensely vulnerable to and dependent on human actions it is can thus lead, ironically, to further indifference to nature-based environmental issues, not greater concern with them. But what quickly becomes evident to any reflective consideration of the difficulties of crisis discourse is that all of these liabilities are in fact bound tightly up with one specific notion of environmental crisiswith 1960s- and 1970s-style environmental apocalypticism. Excessive concern about them does not recognize that crisis discourse as a whole has significantly changed since the 1970s. They remain inducements to look away from serious reflection on environmental crisis only if one does not explore how environmental crisis has turned of late from apocalypse to dwelling place. The apocalyptic mode had a number of prominent features: it was preoccupied with running out and running into walls; with scarcity and with the imminent rupture of limits; with actions that promised and temporally predicted imminent total meltdown; and with (often, though not always) the need for immediate total solution. Thus doomsterism was its reigning mode; eco-authoritarianism was a grave temptation; and as crisis was elaborated to show more and more severe deformations of nature, temptation increased to refute it, or give up, or even cut off ties to clearly terminal nature.

THA Neg Wave 2

60

PEMEX Answers

THA Neg Wave 2

61

A2: Oil Dependence

Foreign oil dependence inevitable Woods and Collins 07 (Clinton J. Woods is a legislative analyst in the transportation industry
and William F. Collins is a freelance political writer, July 14, 2007, 'Energy Independence' is a Pipedream, July 14, 2007, http://www.americanthinker.com/2007/07/energy_independence_is_a_piped.html) "Energy independence" has become political shorthand for reducing our reliance on oil imports from the Middle East and Latin America. Consumption of imported coal and natural gas is not the problem. The U.S. is a leading producer of both fuels, and the only substantial imports come from our benign northern neighbor, Canada. Supporters of energy independence are correct to point out that we are increasingly reliant on imported oil. Petroleum imports currently represent around 59% of total U.S. oil consumption, as compared with 35% in 1973. It does not follow, however, that a reduction in domestic consumption will have an appreciable or positive impact on our dependence on foreign oil. Every single proposal to achieve energy independence (from the currently fashionable ethanol incentives and fuel efficiency standards to an increase in domestic oil production) will have a negligible effect on the amount of oil imported from abroad. The reason for this is simple: U.S. oil producers face substantially higher production costs than their foreign competitors. As of 1999, finding costs (the largest portion of total production costs) in the United States were nearly twice that of Middle Eastern exporters. Non-American producers have access to more plentiful and easily-extractable petroleum. As we reduce domestic consumption through comprehensive energy reform, the oil displaced will be from high-cost American producers, not those in Saudi Arabia or Venezuela. Absent a draconian prohibition on petroleum imports, market forces ensure that the lower cost foreign producers will continue to provide most of the United States' oil, regardless of any undesirable political baggage. The end result
of such a policy would be twofold: U.S. producers will be priced out of the market, and foreign imports will end up providing for greater percentage of total domestic petroleum consumption. The facts, however, never seem to get in the way of political opportunism. While pushing for an increase in Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards, Senator Dianne Feinstein explicitly justified her support for the measure in terms of energy independence, disingenuously arguing that higher fuel efficiency "would save nearly the amount of oil we currently import from the Persian Gulf." William Laffer III of the Heritage Foundation dispensed with this argument as early as 1991, when he explained that "since American oil producers face substantially higher costs per barrel that producers in other parts of the

Attempts to achieve oil selfsufficiency also will do nothing to insulate the U.S. from energy price fluctuations. Our increasingly globalized economy guarantees that U.S. oil prices are at the mercy of even the smallest blip in international petroleum markets. Even if we were completely energy self-sufficient, global supply disruptions would still drive up the price of oil through increased demand.
world, the Americans would be forced to stop selling oil" if more stringent CAFE standards were enacted.

THA Neg Wave 2

62

A2: Oil Shocks

Oil policy ensures regional actors protect the Gulf Jones, 11
(Prof-History-Rutgers, 6/10, http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2011/06/timeto-disband-the-bahrain-based-us-fifth-fleet/240243/1/) Aside from enabling brutal behavior, the logic behind our heavy military presence in the Gulf may be outdated. Ever since President Jimmy Carter outlined a strategic doctrine that stated the U.S. would "use any means necessary, including military force" to protect its "vital interests" in the Persian Gulf, the United States has seen its military commitments to the region intensify. Since the mid-1980s, the U.S. has in a sense been engaged in one long war in the Gulf. It helped intensify the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s, led Desert Storm in 1990 and 1991, imposed no-fly zones over Iraq in the 1990s, and invaded Iraq in 2003, all to some extent on the basis of the Carter Doctrine. If security and stability are measured by the absence of conflict, the American military approach to the Gulf has not been much of a success. But the Gulf, after all, is a tough neighborhood, and the U.S. has maintained the oil access it's sought. Had the world not intervened in 1990, Saddam Hussein could well have used his captured of Kuwaiti oil fields for political leverage against his many enemies. Iran could try the same using its own vast energy resources. But these anxieties are based on a fundamental miscalculation -- that oil is in tight supply and that its distribution or flow must be protected. These fears are rooted in the oil crises of the 1970s, when Arab oil embargoes and the Iranian revolution shook the world economy and helped tip the U.S. into recession. The reality is that, today, there is not too little oil. There is too much oil. There has been ever since the 1970s crises led oil producers to develop new energy resources in deep-water wells, oil sands, shale, and heavy crude, all of which have drastically expanded the global energy supply. But oil producers, following the example of oil companies in the 20th century, have been committed, especially recently, to manufacturing scarcity. They do so in order to drive up prices and revenues, a significant share of which they redistribute at home in an effort to buy the favor and the quiescence of their subjects. This is especially true in Saudi Arabia and Bahrain. Since the late 1960s, oil states have viewed the provision of cradle-to-grave social services as a basic part of their ruling contract. But as they've expanded services and wealth, they have eliminated opportunities for political participation. It is an expensive arrangement, one that depends on sufficient revenues. As a result, the regimes are dependent on their prize for survival. For all the geostrategic considerations that surround protecting oil, the bottom line is that energy producers have to sell their product. They cannot drink it. Given this, and given that fears of instability drive prices up even further, it is not necessary for outside powers like the U.S. to protect them. In the long run, protecting the oil producers has only entrenched a system in which "friendly" oil powers limit production and, rather than serve global markets, work against them. It is unfavorable but predictable, an arrangement that Washington has accepted for decades. Although successive presidents have come under pressure to end American dependency on Middle Eastern oil, since the early 1970s, billions of petrodollars have recycled through the U.S. economy.

Global spare capacity is huge zero risk of serious shortages Gholz and Press 8

THA Neg Wave 2 (Eugene, Professor of Public Affairs University of Texas at Austin, and Daryl G., Professor of Government Dartmouth College, All the Oil We Need, The New York Times, 8-21, Lexis) WHILE oil prices have declined somewhat of late, the volatility of the market and the political and religious unrest in major oil-producing countries has Americans worrying more than ever about energy security. But they have little to fear -- contrary to common understanding, there are robust stockpiles of oil around the globe that could see us through any foreseeable calamities on the world market. True, trouble for the world's energy supplies could come from many directions. Hurricanes and other natural disasters could suddenly disrupt oil production or transportation. Iran loudly and regularly proclaims that it can block oil exports from the Persian Gulf. The anti-American rhetoric of President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela raises fears of an export cutoff there. And ongoing civil unrest wreaks havoc with Nigeria's output. Even worse, this uncertainty comes in the context of worrisome reports that oil producers have little spare capacity, meaning that they could not quickly ramp up production to compensate for a disruption. But such fears rest on a misunderstanding. The world actually has enormous spare oil capacity. It has simply moved. In the past, major oil producers like Saudi Arabia controlled it. But for years the world's major consumers have bought extra oil to fill their emergency petroleum reserves. Moreover, whereas the world's reserve supply once sat in relatively inaccessible pools, much of it now sits in easily accessible salt caverns and storage tanks. And consumers control the spigots. During a supply disruption, Americans would no longer have to rely on the good will of foreign governments. The United States alone has just more than 700 million barrels of crude oil in its Strategic Petroleum Reserve. Government stockpiles in Europe add nearly another 200 million barrels of crude and more than 200 million barrels of refined products. In Asia, American allies hold another 400 million barrels. And China is creating a reserve that should reach more than 100 million barrels by 2010. Those figures only count the government-controlled stocks. Private inventories fluctuate with market conditions, but American commercial inventories alone include well over a billion barrels. Adding up commercial and government stockpiles, the major consuming countries around the world control more than four billion barrels. Some policy makers and analysts worry that these emergency stocks are too small. For example, they sometimes compare the American strategic reserve to total American consumption, so the reserves appear dangerously inadequate. The United States consumes about 20 million barrels of oil every day, so the Strategic Petroleum Reserve could only supply the country for 35 days. (Furthermore, the United States could not draw oil out of the reserve at anything approaching a rate of 20 million barrels per day.) This is why President Bush in his 2007 State of the Union address called for doubling the strategic reserve. But this vulnerability is a mirage. The size of plausible disruptions, not total consumption, determines the adequacy of global reserves. The worst oil disruptions in history deprived global markets of five million to six million barrels per day. Specifically, the collapse of the Iranian oil industry during the revolution in 1978 cut production by nearly five million barrels a day, and the sanctions on Iraq after its conquest of Kuwait in 1990 eliminated 5.3 million barrels of supply. If a future disruption were as bad as history's worst, American and allied governments' crude oil stocks alone could replace every lost barrel for eight months.

63

THA Neg Wave 2

64

A2: Anti-Americanism
Anti Americanism doesnt hurt US hardpower capabilities/ability to influence Kagan 12 senior fellow in Foreign Policy at Brookings
Robert The Importance of U.S. Military Might Shouldnt Be Underestimated [http://www.brookings.edu/opinions/2012/0202_us_military_power_kagan.aspx] February 2 That order has rested significantly on the U.S. ability to provide security in parts of the world, such as Europe and Asia, that had known endless cycles of warfare before the arrival of the United States. The worlds free-trade, free-market economy has depended on Americas ability to keep trade routes open, even during times of conflict. And the remarkably wide spread of democracy around the world owes something to Americas ability to provide support to democratic forces under siege and to protect peoples from dictators such as Moammar Gaddafi and Slobodan Milosevic. Some find it absurd that the United States should have a larger military than the next 10 nations combined. But that gap in military power has probably been the greatest factor in upholding an international system that, in historical terms, is unique and uniquely beneficial to Americans. Nor should we forget that this power is part of what makes America attractive to many other nations. The world has not always loved America. During the era of Vietnam and Watergate and the ugly last stand of segregationists, America was often hated. But nations that relied on the United States for security from threatening neighbors tended to overlook the countrys flaws. In the 1960s, millions of young Europeans took to the streets to protest American imperialism, while their governments worked to ensure that the alliance with the United States held firm.

Structural factors and American foreign policy ideology guarantee other states will perceive America as revisionist and aggressive Ikenberry et al. 9
G. John, Michael Mastanduno and William C. Wohlforth, professors of politics and international affairs at Princeton University and Dartmouth College, World Politics, Unipolarity, State Behavior, and Systemic Consequences, 2009, p. asp Robert Jerviss article in this issue demonstrates that this assumption is no longer tenable. While the case can be made that a unipoleparticularly one that achieved this status in an international system already strongly shaped by its power and preferencesmight rationally opt for conservatism,20 international relations scholarship is rich with hypotheses proposing that the opposite is equally if not more likely. Jervis argues that unipolarity offers powerful structural incentives for the leading state to be revisionist. These include the absence of countervailing power, the tendency for both the interests and the fears of the leading state to increase as its relative capabilities increase, and the psychological tendency to worry more about the future to the extent the present situation is desirable. Jervis also suggests that these structural incentives are reinforced by particular features of the American approach to unipolaritythe sense after the attacks of September 11, 2001, that the world could and must be transformed and the enduring and widespread belief that international peace and cooperation will be sustained only when all other important states are democratic. The structural and contingent features of contemporary unipolarity point plausibly in

THA Neg Wave 2 the direction of a revisionist unipole, one simultaneously powerful, fearful, and opportunistic.

65

No comprehensive data supports counterbalancing-US primacy systemically checks it Brooks et al 12

(Stephen G. Brooks is Associate Professor of Government at Dartmouth College. G. John Ikenberry is the Albert G. Milbank Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University in the Department of Politics and the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. William C. Wohlforth is the Daniel Webster Professor in the Department of Government at Dartmouth College. Don't Come Home, America: The Case against Retrenchment International Security Volume 37, Number 3, Winter 2012/2013. Project Muse) Critics contend that deep engagement's focus on U.S. leadership generates systemic costs. U.S. foreign policy is "self-abrading" in Posen's words: "[T]he very act of seeking more control injects negative energy into global politics as quickly as it finds enemies to vanquish."27 The United States' latent material capabilities are not the problem. If they were, then retrenchment could not logically be the solution. Rather, the argument is that efforts to translate those latent capabilities into a position of global leadership generate systemic responses that speed the diffusion of capabilities away from the United States. As Richard Betts puts it, "[A]ttempts at running the world generate resistance."28 Balancing. Some advocates of retrenchment suggest that deep engagement in the security affairs of the world's key regions "prompts other states to balance against U.S. power however they can."29 Such counterbalancing could take the form of alliance formation (institutionalized interstate security cooperation against the United States that would not occur if America retrenched), "internal balancing" (the conversion of latent capacity into military power that would not occur if the United States retrenched), or "soft balancing" (the use of institutions and other nonmilitary means to hamstring U.S. policy that would not occur if the United States retrenched). It is now generally understood that the current grand strategy of deep engagement runs no risk of generating "hard" counterbalancing. When properly specified, realist balance of power theory does not predict counterhegemonic balancing against the United States: the conditions that sparked internal and external counterbalancing against past leading statesnotably the existence of contiguous peer rival great powersdo not apply.30 Moreover, recent scholarship [End Page 20] strongly supports the proposition that the deep engagement strategyand the maintenance of the formidable military power that underwrites itslows rather than hastens the speed at which capabilities might diffuse to a more balanced distribution. As we argue below, securing partners and allies in key regions reduces their incentives to generate military capabilities.31 Less often noted is that these same security guarantees provide leverage to prevent U.S. allieswhich comprise the majority of the most modern and effective militaries in the worldfrom transferring military technologies and production techniques to potential rivals. The U.S. dominance of the high-end defense industry also allows Washington to trade access to its defense market for compliance on key security issues, such as technology transfers to potential geopolitical opponents.32 The embargo on military sales to Chinain place since 1989is a case in point. More generally, recent years have witnessed an outpouring of scholarship directly refuting the proposition forwarded by many retrenchment proponents that U.S. military preeminence sparks a diffusion of military power. On the contrary, there are many settings in which the first

THA Neg Wave 2 mover's military innovations are unlikely to be adopted successfully by potential rivals.33 Path dependence, scale economies, learning effects regarding production techniques, and barriers to entry in the production of high-end military power make the maintenance of unmatched capabilities far easier than many retrenchment advocates suggestparticularly in today's environment in which modern weaponry is so much more complex both to produce and to use than in past eras.34 A United States less committed to global leadership with a less [End Page 21] dominant military posture would have far less capacity to control the diffusion of military power. Concerning balance of threat theory, its author, Stephen Walt, concludes that because of the numerous systemic factors that mitigate other powers' perceptions of U.S. threats to their security, the United States would have to "have the same expansionist ambitions [as] Napoleonic France, Wilhelmine and Nazi Germany, or the Soviet Union" to spark a hard balancing coalition.35 Expanding the theoretical lens to encompass domestic and international institutions only strengthens the case. Deep engagement allows the United States to institutionalize its alliances and wrap its hegemonic rule in a rules-based order. The result is to make the U.S. alliance systemespecially among its core liberal membersfar more robust and harder to challenge than if the United States were to disengage.36 Needless to say, the evidence is perfectly consistent with this near consensus regarding the nature of balancing in today's system. The United States has pursued a grand strategy of deep engagement in a unipolar setting for twenty years. For at least a portion of his eight-year administration, George W. Bush followed a more "unilateral" foreign policy that many scholars (critics and defenders of deep engagement alike) saw as being far more threatening to other states.37 Yet multiple, comprehensive analyses find no evidence of external or internal balancing by major powers. 38

66

THA Neg Wave 2

67

Coop Answers

THA Neg Wave 2

68

A2: Disease Impacts

No wide spread pandemicsbiophysical limitations Gladwell 95
Malcom Gladwell, New York Bureau Chief of the Washington Post. The New Republic. July 17, 1995. The Plague Year. http://www.tnr.com/article/books-and-arts/the-plague-year This is what is wrong with the Andromeda Strain argument. Every infectious agent that has ever plagued humanity has had to adopt a specific strategy, but every strategy carries a corresponding cost, and this makes human counterattack possible. Malaria is vicious and deadly, but it relies on mosquitoes to spread from one human to the next, which means that draining swamps and putting up mosquito netting can all but halt endemic malaria. Smallpox is extraordinarily durable, remaining infectious in the environment for years, but its very durability, its essential rigidity, is what makes it one of the easiest microbes to create a vaccine against. aids is almost invariably lethal because its attacks the body at its point of great vulnerability, that is, the immune system, but the fact that it targets blood cells is what makes it so relatively uninfectious. I could go on, but the point is obvious. Any microbe capable of wiping us all out would have to be everything at once: as contagious as flu, as durable as the cold, as lethal as Ebola, as stealthy as HIV and so doggedly resistant to mutation that it would stay deadly over the course of a long epidemic. But viruses are not, well, superhuman. They cannot do everything at once. It is one of the ironies of the analysis of alarmists such as Preston that they are all too willing to point out the limitations of human beings, but they neglect to point out the limitations of microscopic life forms. If there are any conclusions to be drawn about disease, they are actually the opposite of what is imagined in books such as The Hot Zone and The Coming Plague. It is true that the effect of the dramatic demographic and social changes in the world over the past few decades is to create new opportunities for disease. But they are likely to create not homogeneous patterns of disease, as humans experienced in the past, so much as heterogeneous patterns of disease. People are traveling more and living in different combinations. Gene pools that were once distinct are mixing through intermarriage. Adults who once would have died in middle age are now living into their 80s. Children with particular genetic configurations who once died at birth or in infancy are now living longer lives. If you talk to demographers, they will tell you that what they anticipate is increasing clusters of new and odd diseases moving into these new genetic and demographic niches. Rare diseases will be showing up in greater numbers. Entirely unknown diseases will emerge for the first time. But the same diversity that created them within those population subgroups will keep them there. Laurie Garrett's book is mistitled. We are not facing "the coming plague." We are facing "the coming outbreaks."

Burnout happens first MacPhee & Marx 98

(Ross (American Museum of Natural History) and Preson (Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Facility and Tulane University) http://www.amnh.org/science/biodiversity/extinction/Day1/disease/Bit1.html) It is well known that lethal diseases can have a profound effect on species' population size and structure. However, it is generally accepted that the principal populational effects of disease are acute--that is, short-term. In other words, although a species may suffer substantial loss from the effects of a given highly infectious disease at a given time, the facts indicate that natural populations tend to bounce back after the period of high

THA Neg Wave 2 losses. Thus, disease as a primary cause of extinction seems implausible. However, this is the normal case, where the disease-provoking pathogen and its host have had a long relationship. Ordinarily, it is not in the pathogens interest to rapidly kill off large numbers of individuals in its host species, because that might imperil its own survival. Disease theorists long ago expressed the idea that pathogens tend to evolve toward a "benign" state of affairs with their hosts, which means in practice that they continue to infect, but tend not to kill (or at least not rapidly). A very good reason for suspecting this to be an accurate view of pathogen-host relationships is that individuals with few or no genetic defenses against a particular pathogen will be maintained within the host population, thus ensuring the pathogen's ultimate survival.

69

THA Neg Wave 2

70

A2: Zoonautic Disease

Ebola is not an extinction threat too deadly and burns out. Gladwell 95
Malcom Gladwell, New York Bureau Chief of the Washington Post. The New Republic. July 17, 1995. The Plague Year. http://www.tnr.com/article/books-and-arts/the-plague-year Let's start with Ebola. Preston argues that Ebola, under the right conditions, could obliterate a significant chunk of humanity. "If the Ebola Sudan virus had managed to spread out of central Africa," he writes of one of the first known Ebola outbreaks, "it might have entered Khartoum in a few weeks, penetrated Cairo a few weeks after that, and from there it would have hopped to Athens, New York, Paris, London, Singapore--it would have gone everywhere on the planet. Yet that never happened.... For reasons that are not clear, the outbreak subsided." But this is simply not true. The reason for the abatement of the outbreak is entirely clear. Ebola kills its victims too quickly. It is one of the fundamental rules of infectious diseases, which Preston no more than hints at, that the deadlier they are to the people they infect, the less dangerous they are to everyone else. Ebola kills within two weeks, and during those two weeks it is not as if its victims are walking around meeting and infecting hundreds of unsuspecting others the way someone with a cold does. After only a brief incubation period, they are at home or in the hospital, immediately, obviously and unambiguously sick, with limited contact with the outside world. How much chance, then, do they have to pass on their disease? This is why Ebola causes outbreaks, not epidemics. It cannot sustain itself. Ironically, the outbreak in Zaire that has so clearly boosted the visibility and the sales of The Hot Zone is also the event that most emphatically demonstrates the book's dishonesty on this point. Here was a crowded, filthy slum, crammed with 500,000 people under the worst sanitary conditions: an ideal breeding ground, in short, for an epidemic. And how far did Ebola get? Two hundred people. Maybe a few dozen more. Ebola Sudan was as likely to get to the moon as it was (in Preston's hyperbolic formulation) to leave Central Africa and find its way to Athens, Paris, London and Singapore. An airborne version of Ebola, of course, is a different matter. Had the Reston strain of Ebola been lethal to humans, Preston is quite right in arguing that it would have posed a terrifying health threat. But not that terrifying, since airborne Ebola would still face the same selection pressures as normal Ebola. There are strains of influenza virus, for example, that are capable of killing just as quickly and as implacably as Ebola. But when flu season comes every year to America, the flu strain that ends up infecting most people is so weakened that it kills only some of the very oldest and frailest of the elderly. Why? Because a very nasty flu virus simply cannot survive for very long. The people who get infected with it get sick very quickly, and so severely that they go home and lie in their beds. The strain dies with them. And the strains that survive are the milder ones, the ones that keep the infected well enough that they can still go to work and keep on infecting others. The 1918 strain was, in some ways, an abberation. Because of wartime conditions, it started out nastier--and stayed nastier longer--than flu usually does. But even that virus, as vicious a virus as we have ever seen, eventually hit a wall. Airborne Ebola would, like the 1918 flu virus, cut a deadly swath through those at the center of the epidemic. But Ebola, like the flu, mutates rapidly, producing a wide variety of strains in intense evolutionary competition, and so there is every reason to believe that it, too, would soon burn itself out.

THA Neg Wave 2

71

A2: Bird Flu Impact

Threat of bird flu is low. Coates 9
Joseph F. Coates, Consulting Futurist, Inc. Risks and threats to civilization, humankind, and the earth. Futures Volume 41, Issue 10, December 2009, Pages 694-705. ScienceDirect.
Pandemics are epidemics that have spread and intensified in an area or the region affected, which can be worldwide. There are six kinds of pandemics to consider. Natural ones are

among animals, people or plants and the second threeinduced by an enemy or terrorist activity or by an insane crankcould possibly be induced in animals, people and plants.
The striking situation, in the past year, of following the bird flu as it moved across China to the eastern edge of Europe, reveals two important considerations. First, the flu, being transmittable from birds to people, is still a relatively low probability event with little or no significant risk to people now. All of the people who died from the bird flu had physically handled birds. Second, for the disease to be a significant risk to humankind, it must mutate into a form that can be transmitted from person to person as the common cold is. That could be the germ of a global catastrophe. The story, so far, shows how rare that kind of mutation is. But by no means is

there any reason to be complacent about it. Billions upon billions of birds must have viruses with a mutation rate that makes the change to person-to-person contagion likely.

Bird flu wont mutate and even if it does its not a threatimproved health conditions Siegel 5
Marc, associate professor at the New York University School of Medicine, 10/11/05, LA Times, http://articles.latimes.com/2005/oct/11/opinion/oe-siegel11 The facts are these: The current H5N1 avian influenza virus has not mutated into a form that can easily infect humans, and the 60 people in the world who have died of this bird flu have done so not because this bug is on the road to mutation but because millions of birds throughout Asia have been infected, and the more birds that have it, the more likely that an occasional human bird handler will be infected. Most human influenzas begin as bird flus, but many bird flus never change to a form that can harm us. Though flu pandemics occur on the average of three times per century, and we are clearly overdue (the last was in 1968), there is absolutely no indication that the transformation to mass human killer is about to happen. The threat is theoretical. Unfortunately, the attention it has received makes it feel like something terrible is inevitable. Why the overreaction? For one thing, direct comparisons to the Spanish flu of 1918, a scourge that killed more than 50 million people worldwide, has alarmed the public unnecessarily. In fact, there are many scenarios in which the current bird flu wont mutate into a form as deadly as the 1918 virus. And even if we accept the Spanish flu scenario, health conditions in 1918 were far worse in most of the world than they are now. Many people lived in squalor; 17 million influenza deaths occurred in India, versus about half a million deaths in the U.S. There were no flu vaccinations, no antiviral drugs, and containment by isolating infected individuals wasnt effective, largely because of poor information and poor compliance. Todays media reach could be a useful tool to aid compliance. Of course, the concern that air travel can spread viral infections faster may be valid, but infected migratory birds were sufficient in 1918. Unfortunately, public health alarms are sounded too often and too soon. SARS was broadcast as a new global killer to which we had zero

THA Neg Wave 2 immunity, and yet it petered out long before it killed a single person in the United States. SARS was something to be taken seriously, but the real lessons of SARS, smallpox, West Nile virus, anthrax and mad cow disease werent learned by our leaders that potential health threats are more effectively examined in the laboratory than at a news conference.

72

THA Neg Wave 2

73

A2: HIV Mutations

Aids does not pose an extinction level threat. Coates 9
Joseph F. Coates, Consulting Futurist, Inc. Risks and threats to civilization, humankind, and the earth. Futures Volume 41, Issue 10, December 2009, Pages 694-705. ScienceDirect. In terms of people, there is always the problem of natural diseases. Some of them can have quite severe effects on the total population and on the economy as we are seeing with the AIDS in

Black Africa. This may seriously upset the economies in a half dozen countries and lead to massive new social problems. On the other hand, it is giving greater opportunities to women by creating a labor shortage and increasing wages. But on net, no one can claim that it is a benefit to Black Africa. In the advanced nations AIDS
the general society. In contrast it could, in China, India, Pakistan, Indonesia as well as

will settle down to being a significant disease but not one causing serious disruption or threats to

Bangladesh become pandemic as it is in Black Africa since those governments have been reluctant to acknowledge the problem and to implement broadscale public health measures. No threat to culture or civilization from AIDS is plausible . AIDS wont cause extinction even with high mutation rate. Yu 9
Victoria Yu, Spring 2009, Human Extinction: The Uncertainty of Our Fate, http://dujs.dartmouth.edu/spring-2009/human-extinction-the-uncertainty-of-our-fate

A pandemic will kill off all humans. In the past, humans have indeed fallen victim to viruses. Perhaps the best-known case was the bubonic plague that killed up to one third of the European population in the mid-14th century (7). While vaccines have been developed for the plague and some other infectious diseases, new viral strains are constantly emerging a process that maintains the possibility of a pandemicfacilitated human extinction. Some surveyed students mentioned AIDS as a potential pandemic-causing virus. It is true that scientists have been unable thus far to find a sustainable cure for AIDS, mainly due to HIVs rapid and constant evolution. Specifically, two factors account for the viruss abnormally high mutation rate: 1. HIVs use of reverse transcriptase, which does not have a proof-reading mechanism, and 2. the lack of an error-correction mechanism in HIV DNA polymerase (8). Luckily, though,
there are certain characteristics of HIV that make it a poor candidate for a large-scale global infection: HIV can lie dormant in the human body for years without manifesting itself, and AIDS itself does not kill directly, but rather through the weakening of the immune system.

No airborne HIVcant mutate and climate sensitivity Gladwell 95

Malcom Gladwell, New York Bureau Chief of the Washington Post. The New Republic. July 17, 1995. The Plague Year. http://www.tnr.com/article/books-and-arts/the-plague-year Then there is the problem of mutation. To become airborne, HIV would have to evolve in such a way as to become more durable. Right now the virus is highly sensitive to changes

THA Neg Wave 2 in temperature and light. But it is hardly going to do any damage if it dies the moment it is coughed into the air and exposed to ultraviolet rays. HIV would have to get as tough as a cold virus, which can live for days on a countertop or a doorknob. At the same time HIV would have to get more flexible. Right now HIV mutates in only a limited manner. The virus essentially keeps changing its clothes, but its inner workings stay the same. It kills everyone by infecting the same key blood cells. To become airborne, it would have to undergo a truly fundamental transformation, switching to an entirely different class of cells. How can HIV make two contradictory changes at the same time, becoming both less and more flexible?

74

THA Neg Wave 2

75

A2: Loose Nukes

Terrorists do not have access to lose nukes, multiple safeguards check even if they were stolen, and even if a nuclear state collapse their material would be safe. Mueller 10
John Mueller, professor of political science at Ohio State University. Calming Our Nuclear Jitters. Issues in Science and Technology. 1/1/2010. Vol.26,Iss.2;p.58-66. Academic Search Premiere.
The terrorist group might also seek to steal or illicitly purchase a loose nuke somewhere. However, it seems probable that none exist. All governments have an intense interest in controlling any weapons on their territory because of fears that they might become the primary target. Moreover, as technology has developed, finished bombs have been outfitted with devices that trigger a non-nuclear explosion that destroys the bomb if it is tampered with. And there are other security techniques: Bombs can be kept disassembled with the component parts stored in separate high-security vaults, and a process can be set up in which two people and multiple codes are required not only to use the bomb but to store, maintain, and deploy it. As

Younger points out, only a few people in the world have the knowledge to cause an unauthorized detonation of a nuclear weapon. There could be dangers in the chaos that would emerge if a nuclear state were to utterly collapse; Pakistan is frequently cited in this
context and sometimes North Korea as well. However, even under such conditions, nuclear weapons would probably remain under heavy guard by people who know that a purloined bomb might be used in their own territory. They would still have locks and, in the case of Pakistan, the weapons would be disassembled.

Security measures check loose nukes Rhle 7

Michael Rhle is Head of Speechwriting and Senior Policy Adviser in the Policy Planning Unit of the NATO Secretary General, Analysis: The nuclear dimensions of jihadist terrorism, Winter 2007, http://www.nato.int/docu/review/2007/issue4/english/analysis1.html A third explanation is that some of al-Qaidas efforts may have been disrupted through counter-terrorism efforts. Indeed, it appears that since 9/11 several planned attacks involving the use of weapons of mass destruction have been thwarted. Moreover, the international intervention in Afghanistan has effectively denied al Qaida its major home base and has forced it to disperse, thereby making any concerted planning of a nuclear attack far more difficult. The national and collective measures taken by many governments, such as intelligence cooperation, enhanced container security, uncovering nuclear smuggling networks, securing loose nukes from the former Soviet Union, and draining terrorist financing networks, may have further degraded the ability of terrorists to launch a nuclear attack .

THA Neg Wave 2

76

Gas Answers

THA Neg Wave 2

77

1NC SCS/China Adv

Alt cause- shipping routes, fish, and oil Deutsche Welle 12 (9-5 ("Why is the South China Sea such a bone of contention?" 9-5-12, l/n, accessed 10-6-12, mss) Why is the South China Sea such a bone of contention? The tension in the South China Sea has escalated since the start of the 21st century, as neighboring states vie to protect their strategic and economic interests, but what are they really fighting for? Its geopolitical location, an abundance of fish and huge gas and oil reserves make the South China Sea particularly attractive to the 10 states that all lay claim to parts of it - China, Taiwan, the Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei, Vietnam, Indonesia, Singapore, Thailand and Cambodia. There are also hundreds of islands and reefs in the South China Sea, which the Vietnamese call the East Sea. The Paracel Islands (known as the Xisha in China and the Hoang Sa in Vietnam), the Spratly Islands (known as the Nansha Qundao in China, the Truong Sa in Vietnam and the Kapuluan ng Kalayaan in the Philippines) are the most important disputed island groups. The sea is also important to the rest of the world as it connects Europe, Africa, the Middle East and South Asia with East Asia and at least one third of global shipping transits through its waters. Almost all of China's oil exports arrive via the South China Sea and nearly all of China's exports to Europe and Africa go in the opposite direction. "In strategic and military terms, the South China Sea is in a key position that enables control not only over South East Asia but over the wider realm of South and East Asia too," Gerhard Will from the German Institute for International and Security Affairs in Berlin told DW. Fish in abundance The South China Sea is also home to an abundance of fish. According to the International Crisis Group, 10 percent of the annual global fish yield hails from this huge body of water. However, the fisheries are at risk from over-fishing and pollution. More and more, fishermen are being forced out into deeper waters to make a living but here they sometimes clash with maritime patrol forces protecting their national interests. Fishermen have been arrested, their nets damaged and their boats confiscated by the security forces of other countries. Such incidents have increased in recent years. Not only is fish an important source of protein for the population, it is often an important branch of the economy. In 2010, the fishing industry made up 7 percent of Vietnam's GDP. In the Philippines, some 1.5 million people earn their living from fishing. Rich in gas and oil However, it is the unknown riches of gas and oil that are creating most of the tension over the South China Sea, especially as the energy needs of China and Southeast Asian nations grow as their economies boom. "The deep waters have not yet been explored. Companies are reluctant because of the border disputes," Hans Georg Babies from the German Mineral Resources Agency told DW. Estimates for the amount of oil range from four to 30 billion tons. The latter figure would be equivalent to all of Saudi Arabia's oil reserves.

Resource irrelevant- its an entirely a sovereignty issue Hogue 12 (9-21 Platts Asia news editor of energy (Thomas, "Five uninhabited islets and three barren rocks: oil and the dispute over the two China seas," Platts, 9-21-12, blogs.platts.com/2012/09/21/japan-china/, accessed 10-6-12, mss) In the East China Sea, China has estimated there may be as much as much 160 billion barrels of oil and 210 Tcf of gas, although other estimates run lower. None of the figures mentioned in a

THA Neg Wave 2

78

US Energy Information Administration report in 2008, however, really jive with an interim report from state-owned CNOOC that shows 300,000 barrels of crude oil and liquids and 6 Bcf of gas produced from East China Sea licenses in the first six months of the year. Thats out of CNOOCs total domestic output of 105 million barrels of crude oil and liquids and 118.1 Bcf of gas. In short, practically nothing. As well, other oil companies dont have much faith in the potential of the region. In 2004, Shell and the then Unocal pulled out of contracts to explore for natural gas in the Xihu Trough to the northwest of the Diaoyu-Senkaku islands in the East China Sea, saying that the resources werent commercial. The record of futility in the area goes back further, with Taiwan and Japan not having made any significant finds onshore or offshore after spending decades looking for oil and gas resources since the 1970s. The closest significant oil and gas fields of any size lie further to the north and to the west in Chinas Bohai Bay. Not really what one would consider highly prospective territory then. What that means is that the dispute over the barren rocky outcroppings in the East China Sea likely has nothing to do with oil and gas, and thus there is no potential commercial gain that might eventually bring China and Japan together in the interest of the mutual economic benefit of jointly exploiting much-needed hydrocarbon resources. And what that means is that as long as each country is claiming that the Diaoyu-Senkaku islands are an integral part of its territory, periodic eruptions of anti-Japan protests in China and disruption to Japanese businesses there is what can be seen ahead. SCS de-escalation now- China and regional economics Jinping 12 (, 9-21 -- AP staff (Xi, "China Sidesteps South China Sea Island Disputes," AP, bigstory.ap.org/article/china-sidesteps-south-china-sea-island-disputes, accessed 10-6-12, ms) China has sought to soothe neighbors it has feuded with over territory in the South China Sea, a stark contrast to recent angry statements and violent street protests targeting Japan over a similar dispute. Vice President Xi Jinping China's presumed next leader emphasized economic ties and civic exchanges in remarks Friday to delegates from the 10 countries that make up the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. Xi played down South China Sea territorial disputes with the Philippines, Vietnam and others that have flared up again this year. "I hope the situation would not reverse backward and bilateral relations could come back to the track of normal development," Xi told the Philippines' interior and local government secretary, Mar Roxas, according to China's official Xinhua News Agency. In his address at the annual meeting with ASEAN members, held in the southern Chinese city of Nanning, Xi said China was committed to "common development and steadily improving cooperation mechanisms in various fields." With two-way trade growing 20 percent annually to $362.8 billion last year, China and its southern neighbors are increasingly intertwined, requiring even greater cooperation across a range of fields, Xi said. The contrasting approaches to the territorial feuds highlight Beijing's desire to keep the South China Sea disputes in check and avoid drawing in China's chief rival, the United States, which maintains close security ties with many countries in the region. While eager to assert its claims, Beijing needs a peaceful regional environment to achieve its development goals and has a limited capacity to handle multiple diplomatic crises simultaneously.

THA Neg Wave 2

79

1NC Manufacturing
Too many alt causes to manufacturing Lewis 10/19/12 Staffwriter (Lewis, Matt K. The incredible shrinking manufacturing sector. 19 October 2012. http://theweek.com/bullpen/column/235089/the-incredible-shrinkingmanufacturing-sector) During the second presidential debate, President Obama echoed those lyrics. Today, only 9 percent of Americans work in manufacturing jobs. American industry has declined on Obama's watch something he readily admits to. During Tuesday night's debate, he channeled Springsteen, saying that "some jobs are going, and won't be coming back." Part of this is unavoidable. It has to do with globalized markets and outsourcing. The obvious benefits of high productivity and low wages overseas is irresistible to many businesses. It has to do with immigration and technology. Meanwhile, American industry is becoming more productive and efficient a good thing, except that it means we can create more stuff with fewer workers. The good news, the president tried to reassure us, is that the void left by these disappearing manufacturing jobs will be filled by high-paying, high-skills occupations. Whether that's true or not, there's an obvious point he did not state: Many Americans will be left behind in the process. As the world changes, some people simply can't or won't adapt. And the president's vision leaves those Americans behind. Manufacturing jobs were once the cornerstone of American industry. You could graduate from high school (or not) and get a job in a factory that would pay you enough money to support a middle-class family. However, during the Reagan era, manufacturing declined significantly, setting in motion a trend that lasted through both Bush administrations as well as the Clinton administration. This isn't a Republican or Democratic problem. There's plenty of bipartisan blame to go around. Manufacturing not key to the economy Chapman, 12 -- Tribune editorial board member (Steve, "Manufacturing an economic myth," Chicago Tribune, 3-18-12, articles.chicagotribune.com/2012-03-18/news/ct-oped-0318-chapman20120318_1_manufacturing-sector-rick-santorum-products, accessed 10-3-12, mss) Manufacturing accounts for a shrinking slice of the total economy mainly because as we grow wealthier, we spend a smaller portion of our income on physical products, like carsand appliances, and a bigger one on services, from health care to cellphone contracts to restaurant meals. That phenomenon holds across the developed world. It's the result of the free market at work, endlessly shifting resources to accommodate changes in consumer demand. Politicians don't think they should tell Americans to eat at Burger King instead of Chipotle, or buy baseball bats instead of soccer balls. They didn't insist we keep our typewriters when personal computers came along. For the most part, our leaders take it as normal and sensible to defer to consumer demand, rather than try to dictate it. Given that, why do they think they ought to rig the tax code to push consumption dollars from services, which Americans want, to goods, which they don't want quite so much? Why should they divert investment from more popular businesses to less popular ones? That's what the measures offered by Santorum and Obama would do. The point is to ease the tax burden of manufacturers at the expense of other companies, on the superstition that the former are more valuable than the latter. It's hard to see the fairness or the economic logic. When the president unveiled his proposal, Jade West of

THA Neg Wave 2 the National Association of Wholesaler-Distributors complained to The New York Times, "My guys are totally freaked out by manufacturing getting a different tax rate than we do. They're not more important in the economy than retail or distribution or anything else." In fact, manufacturing is bound to be a diminishing share of any advanced economy. Obama and Santorum can fling money into the teeth of that trend. But any time politicians want to resist powerful and beneficial economic forces, bet on the economic forces.

80

THA Neg Wave 2

81

1NC Chemical Industry

Environmental regs biggest i/l to collapse the chem industry Shannon 10
Mike, Global and US Sector Leader Chemicals and Performance Technologies, The Outlook for the US Chemical Industry KMPG http://www.kpmg.com/US/en/IssuesAndInsights/ArticlesPublications/Documents/us-chemicalindustry-outlook.pdf US chemical companies are also concerned with the Regulation on Registration, Evaluation, Authorization and Restriction of Chemicals (REACH) implemented by the European Union (EU). While this regulation has no effect on US soil, US producers exporting an additive or solvent or other substances for use by an EU manufacturer may find their product within REACH jurisdiction. 66 The European Commission has estimated that the direct costs of REACH to the chemical industry will total US $2.8 billion over the first 11 years of the regulation. 67 In the US, mechanisms to limit carbon and other greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions have the greatest potential to influence the chemical industry. Existing US cap-and-trade programs include: Acid Rain Program (part of the 1990 Clean Air Act) NOx Budget Trading Program (first administered in 2003) Clean Air Interstate Rule which uses a cap-and-trade system designed to reduce sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides nationwide by 70 percent 66 Chemical News & Intelligence: Costs of EU chemical regulations reach US businesses, February 17, 2010 67 European Commission: REACH in Brief, October 2007 Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, a market-based effort by ten northeast and mid-Atlantic states to limit GHG emissions Midwestern Greenhouse Gas Reduction Accord and the Western Climate Initiative in which US states and jurisdictions in Canada and Mexico are designing regional cap and-trade programs

Global warming regulations are weakening the chemical industry. Lammey 8

Alan Lammy, Oil and Natural Gas Futures Analyst. May 5, 2008. Natural Gas Weekly. Chemical Business-Cycle Downturn Could Be Bearish for Gas Market. Lexis. "There are more and more regulations forced upon the industry as a consequence of newly developed climate-change policies," another industry director said. "And, of course, the industry will have to live with high oil and natural gas prices for the foreseeable future. The profitability of the chemical industry has always been held captive to the domestic and worldwide economies, plus the cost of its feedstock oil and gas. We're already starting to see a slow down for our products. So as we slow our production accordingly, it will undoubtedly put more natural gas supply back on the market."

THA Neg Wave 2

82

1NC Pakistan Impact

No Pakistani collapse
AP 10 Pakistan's stability, leadership under spotlight after floods and double dealing accusations, August 6th, http://www.foxnews.com/world/2010/08/06/pakistans-stability-leadershipspotlight-floods-double-dealing-accusations/ Not for the first time, Pakistan appears to be teetering on the edge with a government unable to cope. Floods are ravaging a country at war with al-Qaida and the Taliban. Riots, slayings and arson are gripping the largest city. Suggestions are flying that the intelligence agency is aiding Afghan insurgents. The crises raise questions about a nation crucial to U.S. hopes of success in Afghanistan and to the global campaign against Islamist militancy. Despite the recent headlines, few here see Pakistan in danger of collapse or being overrun by militants a fear that had been expressed before the army fought back against insurgents advancing from their base in the Swat Valley early last year. From its birth in 1947, Pakistan has been dogged by military coups, corrupt and inefficient leaders, natural disasters, assassinations and civil unrest. Through it all, Pakistan has not prospered but it survives. There is plenty to be worried about, but also indications that when push comes to shove the state is able to respond," said Mosharraf Zaidi, an analyst and writer who has advised foreign governments on aid missions to Pakistan. "The military has many weaknesses, but it has done a reasonable job in relief efforts. There have been gaps in the response. But this is a developing a country, right?" The recent flooding came at a sensitive time for Pakistan, with Western doubts over its loyalty heightened by the leaking of U.S. military documents that strengthened suspicions the security establishment was supporting Afghan insurgents while receiving billions in Western aid. With few easy choices, the United States has made it clear it intends to stick with Pakistan. Indeed, it has used the floods to demonstrate its commitment to the country, rushing emergency assistance and dispatching helicopters to ferry the goods. The Pakistani government's response to the floods has been sharply criticized at home, especially since President Asif Ali Zardari departed for a European tour. With so many Pakistanis suffering, the trip has left the already weak and unpopular leader even more vulnerable politically. The flooding was triggered by what meteorologists said were "once-in-a-century" rains. The worst affected area is the northwest, a stronghold for Islamist militants. Parts of the northwest have seen army offensives over the last two years. Unless the people are helped quickly and the region is rebuilt, anger at the government could translate into support for the militants. At least one charity with suspected links to a militant outfit has established relief camps there. The extremism threat was highlighted by a suicide bombing in the main northwestern town of Peshawar on Wednesday. The bomber killed the head of the Frontier Constabulary, a paramilitary force in the northwest at the forefront of the terror fight. With authorities concentrating on flood relief, some officials have expressed concern that militants could regroup. The city of Karachi has seen militant violence and is rumored to be a hiding place for top Taliban and al-Qaida fighters. It has also been plagued by regular bouts of political and ethnic bloodletting since the 1980s, though it has been calmer in recent years. The latest violence erupted after the assassination of a leading member of the city's ruling party. More than 70 people have been killed in revenge attacks since then, paralyzing parts of the city of 16 million people. While serious, the unrest does not yet pose an immediate threat to the stability of the country. Although the

THA Neg Wave 2 U.S. is unpopular, there is little public support for the hardline Islamist rule espoused by the Taliban and their allies. Their small movement has been unable to control any Pakistani territory beyond the northwest, home to only about 20 million of the country's 175 million people.

83

The army will maintain control even during a coup. Cheema 8

Pervaiz Iqbal Cheema, works for the Islambad Policy Research Institute. Pakistan's nuclear assets. March 16, 2008. http://ipripak.org/articles/newspapers/paknucas.shtml Turkish military chiefs statement appears to reflect the need to support and strengthen Pakistan with a view to enable Pakistan to maintain tight control over its nuclear assets. A weak and unstable Pakistan could create opportunities for undesirable elements to capitalise on the situation in order to realise their aims and objectives. Alternative interpretation is that General Buyukanit was highlighting the creeping dangers in the light of Western interpretation of the situation. Given the incumbent situation, which is certainly not all that rosy, the Turkish general stressed that if President Musharraf lost his grip on Pakistan, the country could fall into the hands of the insurgent Taliban. What seems to be rather intriguing is the attention attached to the abilities of the Taliban to gain control. To some of us it seems somewhat exaggerated. Besides, such interpretations totally ignore the abilities of the Pakistan Army to protect its assets. Admittedly, the Taliban has made gains during the last few months, which are primarily the product of Isaf/Natos failure in Afghanistan, but this does not mean that with the resurfacing of the Taliban the Pakistan Army has lost its abilities to handle them.

No impact or risk from Pakistani loose nukes Mueller 10 professor of political science at OSU
John Mueller, professor of political science at Ohio State University, Calming Our Nuclear Jitters, Issues in Science & Technology, Winter 2010, Vol. 26, Issue 2 The terrorist group might also seek to steal or illicitly purchase a "loose nuke" somewhere. However, it seems probable that none exist. All governments have an intense interest in
controlling any weapons on their territory because of fears that they might become the primary target. Moreover, as technology has developed, finished bombs have been outfitted with devices that trigger a non-nuclear explosion that destroys the bomb if it is tampered with . And there are other security techniques: Bombs can be kept disassembled with the component parts stored in separate high-security vaults, and a process can be set up in which two people and multiple codes are required not only to use the bomb but to store, maintain, and deploy it .

As Younger points out, "only a few people in the world have the knowledge to cause an unauthorized detonation of a nuclear weapon." There could be dangers in the chaos that would emerge if a nuclear state were to utterly collapse; Pakistan is frequently cited in this context and sometimes North Korea as well. However, even under such conditions, nuclear weapons would probably remain under heavy guard by people who know that a purloined bomb might be used in their own territory. They would still have locks and, in the case of Pakistan, the weapons would be disassembled.

THA Neg Wave 2

84

1NC Geopolitics/Iran Power

Irans military power is exaggerated. Aghsan and Jakobsen 10
Ali Rahigh-Aghsan is Assistant Professor at the Department of Society and Globalisation, Roskilde University and Peter Viggo Jakobsen is Associate Professor at the Department of Political Science, University of Copenhagen. The Rise of Iran: How Durable, How Dangerous?. The Middle East Journal, Volume 64, Number 4, Autumn 2010, pp. 559-573. Project Muse. Accounts of Irans growing military power generally fail to place it within a regional context, ignore the poor quality of Irans equipment and manpower, and exaggerate its offensive and political potential. If one merely looks at numbers, the Iranian military appears quite formidable, enjoying advantages in both manpower and materiel. However, this picture changes once defense spending and the quality of the armed forces are taken into account. Iran has been outspent massively by the six members of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC): Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). These countries spent 7.5 times as much on their defense as Iran in the ten-year period 19972007; with respect to procurement, the difference is even more dramatic as the GCC spent 15.6 times as much on arms as Iran during the period of 19882007. The armed forces of the GCC consequently have far better equipment than Iran. The GCC has a total of 495 and 1,816 high-quality combat aircraft and tanks, respectively, compared to Irans 55 high-quality combat aircraft and 730 tanks. Saudi Arabia alone has more highquality combat aircraft and tanks than Iran. The GCC also has more major naval combat ships than Iran in all categories, except submarines (Iran has three, while the GCC possess none).11 Irans manpower advantage also disappears when quality is taken into account: 220,000 of its 545,000 active personnel are made up of 18-month conscripts that receive only three months of military training. Moreover, GCC training cooperation with France, the UK, and the US helps to further enhance their qualitative advantage vis--vis the Iranian armed forces, which do not benefit from such cooperation with leading military powers. There is obviously more to military power than quantity, and the GCC countries are incapable of using their capabilities jointly in an effective manner to counter an Iranian attack. The key point to take away from the balance of forces just presented, however, is that the GCC countries are strong enough to deny Iran a quick and decisive victory, giving the US time to bring its superior air- and sea-power to bear against Iranian attackers. This makes an overt Iranian conventional attack on the GCC countries next to unthinkable and significantly reduces Irans ability to coerce the GCC militarily.12 The regimes best offensive cards are consequently the Navys ability to close the Strait of Hormuz13 and the 125,000-strong Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) potent capacity for asymmetric warfare and terrorist activities.

No Russia threat rapprochement coming now Laqueur 10 Director of the Wiener Library Institute of Contemporary History
Waliter, Director of the Wiener Library Institute of Contemporary History, in London, and Chair of the International Research Council at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Moscow's Modernization Dilemma: Is Russia Charting a New Foreign Policy?, Nov/Dec Foreign Affairs, Proquest It seems gradually to have dawned on at least some Russian strategic thinkers that nato in its present form does not really present a major threat to Russia or, perhaps, to anyone.

THA Neg Wave 2 (According to Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, nato is no longer a threat, only a "danger," which is presumably less than a threat.) Nato member states have shelved the idea of offering admission to Georgia and Ukraine. At the same time, Washington, following the European example, has toned down its criticism of Russian violations of human rights and lessened its support for domestic opposition groups in Russia and Westernleaning states such as Georgia, which Moscow regards as hostile threats. From
Moscow's perspective, the West has largely accepted Russia's claims to a zone of privileged interests-whatever the fears of Russia's neighbors, there is little Western countries can do to help. In short, the West's relative weight is declining, but so is Russia's, making a policy of rapprochement appealing for all sides . For Moscow, this new, conciliatory approach is largely focused on economic and, above all, technological modernization. The emphasis of a position

85

paper prepared by the Russian Foreign Ministry and published by Russian Newsweek in May 2010 was almost entirely such modernization. It outlined how Moscow should improve its relations with more than 60 countries, from Brunei to Mongolia, using measures including state treaties and agreements between research institutes. The document-and the new policy-appears to be based on a compromise between various elements in the Russian leadership. President Dmitry Medvedev's faction, which seems to be behind this statement, is clearly willing to take some more risks; it is also possible that Medvedev's supporters are using the argument of modernization to sell a broader policy of dtente to various domestic constituencies. The moderate conservatives, such as Prime Minister Putin; his deputy chief of staff, Vladislav Surkov; his deputy prime minister, Igor Sechin; and his foreign policy adviser, Yuri Ushakov, understand that Russia's dependence on oil and gas exports must be reduced and that modernization will inevitably involve a political price-but they are fearful that the price could be too high. Meanwhile, both the right (Russia's ultranationalists) and the left (the Communists) are not, in principle, against modernization but would like it to happen without any political price at all. The
new dtente has shown itself in a number of cases: Russia's voting for un sanctions against Iran, expressing remorse about the Katyn massacre, reaching an agreement with the United States to reduce nuclear weapons, inviting nato soldiers to march on Red Square on Victory Day, being offered warships from France, proposing a Russian-EU crisis management agreement, and some others. But there are difficulties ahead-old suspicions and new conflicts of interest will not

easily be overcome, and may even derail the new course, just as the dtente of the 1970s came to a halt despite goodwill on both sides. In August, Putin said that his anti-Western speech in Munich three years ago had been very useful in retrospect. If so, then how far can the changes in Russia's foreign policy be expected to go?

No impact to regionally strong Russia Grigoryan '12

Suren, political analyst who worked for the Ministry of Defense of Armenia for 10+ years, Masters Degree in Comparative Politics at the London School of Economics and Political Science, "U.S.-Russia: My Enemy, My Partner?" Foreign Policy Journal, 1/15/12 www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/2012/01/15/u-s-russia-my-enemy-my-partner/0/, AD 5/22/12

All this is in the past, official Washington says. As President Barack Obama put it in 2009 during his visit to Moscow, America wants to see Russia strong, peaceful, prosperous, and self-confident, because the United States needs exactly this kind of partner in the twenty-first century. The words of U.S. Ambassador to Russia John R. Beyrle on the same subject are even more emotional: We are not interested in weak Russia. Weak Russia is the worst nightmare for the US. We understand perfectly

THA Neg Wave 2

86

what challenges we are faced withand we must cope with them in alliance with strong partners. Thanks to its geostrategic position, immense resources and human capital, Russia may be exactlysuch a partner.[15] Indeed, Russia has the historical experience, the human and material resources, and the political will necessary for controlling and even managing regional processes. However, is Russia comfortable with the role of regional regulator after being a global actor for 150 years? Most probably it is. First, it has learned to assess its capabilities realistically, especially in the
economic sphere, and it understands perfectly its subordinate position compared to other rising powers of Eurasia, let alone the United States. Secondly, it has not only offered to coordinate the situation in the post-Soviet space, but also to become a rightful (in some cases even irreplaceable) mediator in solving the most acute problems with neighboring regions (the Middle East, Central Asia) and states (Iran, North Korea, and others), which

contemporary Russian strategy considers extremely important in terms of the countrys national security interests. Furthermore, under the circumstances, when Russian political thought continues searching for a new geopolitical identity, even the role of regional regulator not only satisfies Russias imperial ambitions but also facilitates the realization of the post-Soviet area integration project within the Eurasian Economic Community (EAEC).[16] However, the question arises, why does the United States need Russia to realize its imperial ambitions? The most obvious reasons are as follows: First, Russia is capable and willing to assume the role of regional regulator. Throughout the last 20 years (i.e., after the collapse of the Soviet Union), Moscow has de facto played the role of regional coordinator, despite Russias economic chaos, political reorganization, weakness of its central government, and demoralization of its armed forces in the 1990s. Russia continued holding the keys to resolution or at least freezing of regional interethnic (the South Caucasus, Transdnistria) and civil conflicts (Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan) in the postSoviet area. Moreover, the states that have had acute conflicts with the West (e.g., Iran, North Korea) were always more willing to have contact with Russia rather than other powers; even the most radical movements of the Arab East continue maintaining contacts with her. Today, when Russia has overcome (although with tremendous material, moral, and political losses) one of the most difficult periods of her historywhen the power vertical has been rebuilt, significant financial recourses have been accumulated allowing the country to proceed with economic and technological modernization, and the armed forces are revivingit is more beneficial for the United States to have Russia as a partner rather than a rival in the extremely complicated region of Eurasia. Americans have not forgotten the many unexpected problems they were faced with after the demise of the USSR: the WMD proliferation threat, uncontrolled trade of conventional weapons, separatism, illegal drug trafficking, terrorism, human trafficking on an immense scale, and so forth. Most of these remain serious issues even today. Among all countries pretending to regional leadership, only two have enough historical experience and appropriate capabilities for solving these problemsnamely, Russia and China. However, China still refrains from partaking in solving such issues (perhaps except through mediation in negotiations with North Korea). Some experts insist that this is because Beijing is still mainly focused on expanding its potential.[17] As for our judgment, perhaps arguably enough, Chinese political culture is less predisposed to expansionism,

THA Neg Wave 2

87

whereas it still dominates in Russia. This is exactly the reason the role of regional gendarme suits her mentality very well, as it in essence remains imperial. Second, economically, Russia is much weaker than the European Union or China. Given this fact, the United States desire to see Russia in a position of regional political manager appears quite logical. Given its economic and technological weakness, Russia in the foreseeable future will not be able to compete with the U.S. on a global scale. Meanwhile, Europe and China can definitely do so. As for Russias nuclear potential, which is still comparable with Americas, it is hardly a source of serious concern for the only world superpower. In contrast to the nervous dilettantes that are present on the nuclear scene, Moscow has been a tested, predictable, and responsible partner-adversary since Cold War times. For this reason, it is much more beneficial and also easier for Washington (and acceptable for Moscow) to channel their military mightthe worlds biggest arsenals of nuclear armstoward deterring such dilettantes instead of exerting pressure on each other. If such consensus between Washington and Moscow is achieved, Russia, with its nuclear potential, may acquire a new function: as a balancing force between Eastern and Western, and Northern and Southern parts of the vast Eurasian continent.

THA Neg Wave 2

88

LA Add-on Answers

THA Neg Wave 2

89

A2: Econ Leadership

Economy instability doesnt affect international security Barnett 9 (Thomas P.M. Barnett, senior managing director of Enterra Solutions LLC, The New
Rules: Security Remains Stable Amid Financial Crisis, 8/25/2009, http://www.aprodex.com/thenew-rules--security-remains-stable-amid-financial-crisis-398-bl.aspx) When the global financial crisis struck roughly a year ago, the blogosphere was ablaze with all sorts of scary predictions of, and commentary regarding, ensuing conflict and wars -- a rerun of the Great Depression leading to world war, as it were. Now, as global economic news brightens and recovery -- surprisingly led by China and emerging markets -- is the talk of the day, it's interesting to look back over the past year and realize how globalization's first truly worldwide recession has had virtually no impact whatsoever on the international security landscape. None of the more than three-dozen ongoing conflicts listed by GlobalSecurity.org can be clearly attributed to the global recession. Indeed, the last new entry (civil conflict between Hamas and Fatah in the Palestine) predates the economic crisis by a year, and three quarters of the chronic struggles began in the last century. Ditto for the 15 low-intensity conflicts listed by Wikipedia (where the latest entry is the Mexican "drug war" begun in 2006). Certainly, the Russia-Georgia conflict last August was specifically timed, but by most accounts the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics was the most important external trigger (followed by the U.S. presidential campaign) for that sudden spike in an almost two-decade long struggle between Georgia and its two breakaway regions. Looking over the various databases, then, we see a most familiar picture: the usual mix of civil conflicts, insurgencies, and liberation-themed terrorist movements. Besides the recent Russia-Georgia dust-up, the only two potential state-on-state wars (North v. South Korea, Israel v. Iran) are both tied to one side acquiring a nuclear weapon capacity -- a process wholly unrelated to global economic trends. And with the United States effectively tied down by its two ongoing major interventions (Iraq and Afghanistan-bleedinginto-Pakistan), our involvement elsewhere around the planet has been quite modest, both leading up to and following the onset of the economic crisis: e.g., the usual counter-drug efforts in Latin America, the usual military exercises with allies across Asia, mixing it up with pirates off Somalia's coast). Everywhere else we find serious instability we pretty much let it burn, occasionally pressing the Chinese -- unsuccessfully -- to do something. Our new Africa Command, for example, hasn't led us to anything beyond advising and training local forces. So, to sum up: * No significant uptick in mass violence or unrest (remember the smattering of urban riots last year in places like Greece, Moldova and Latvia?); * The usual frequency maintained in civil conflicts (in all the usual places); * Not a single state-on-state war directly caused (and no great-power-on-great-power crises even triggered); * No great improvement or disruption in great-power cooperation regarding the emergence of new nuclear powers (despite all that diplomacy); * A modest scaling back of international policing efforts by the system's acknowledged Leviathan power (inevitable given the strain); and * No serious efforts by any rising great power to challenge that Leviathan or supplant its role. (The worst things we can cite are Moscow's occasional deployments of strategic assets to the Western hemisphere and its weak efforts to outbid the United States on basing rights in Kyrgyzstan; but the best include China and India stepping up their aid and investments in Afghanistan and Iraq.) Sure, we've finally seen global defense spending surpass the previous world record set in the late 1980s, but even that's likely to wane given the stress on public budgets created by all this unprecedented "stimulus" spending. If anything, the friendly cooperation on such stimulus packaging was the

THA Neg Wave 2

90

most notable great-power dynamic caused by the crisis . Can we say that the world has suffered a distinct shift to political radicalism as a result of the economic crisis? Indeed, no. The world's major economies remain governed by center-left or center-right political factions that remain decidedly friendly to both markets and trade. In the short run, there were attempts across the board to insulate economies from immediate damage (in effect, as much protectionism as allowed under current trade rules), but there was no great slide into "trade wars." Instead, the World Trade Organization is functioning as it was designed to function, and regional efforts toward free-trade agreements have not slowed. Can we say Islamic radicalism was inflamed by the economic crisis? If it was, that shift was clearly overwhelmed by the Islamic world's growing disenchantment with the brutality displayed by violent extremist groups such as al-Qaida. And looking forward, austere economic times are just as likely to breed connecting evangelicalism as disconnecting fundamentalism. At the end of the day, the economic crisis did not prove to be sufficiently frightening to provoke major economies into establishing global regulatory schemes, even as it has sparked a spirited -- and much needed, as I argued last week - discussion of the continuing viability of the U.S. dollar as the world's primary reserve currency. Naturally, plenty of experts and pundits have attached great significance to this debate, seeing in it the beginning of "economic warfare" and the like between "fading" America and "rising" China. And yet, in a world of globally integrated production chains and interconnected financial markets, such "diverging interests" hardly constitute signposts for wars up ahead. Frankly, I don't welcome a world in which America's fiscal profligacy goes undisciplined, so bring it on -please! Add it all up and it's fair to say that this global financial crisis has proven the great resilience of America's post-World War II international liberal trade order.

Recession disproves American economic leadership Blackwill 9 (Former associate dean of the Kennedy School of Government and Deputy
Assistant to the President and Deputy National Security Advisor for Strategic Planning (Robert, RAND, The Geopolitical Consequences of the World Economic RecessionA Caution, http://www.rand.org/pubs/occasional_papers/2009/RAND_OP275.pdf) First, the United States, five years from today. Did the global recession weaken the political will of the United States to, over the long term, defend its external interests? Many analysts are already forecasting a yes to this question. As a result of what they see as the international loss of faith in the American market economy model and in U.S. leadership, they assert that Washingtons influence in international affairs is bound to recede, indeed is already diminishing. For some, the wish is the father of this thought. But where is the empirical evidence? From South Asia, through relations with China and Russia through the Middle East peace process, through dealing with Irans nuclear ambitions and North Koreas nuclear weaponization and missile activities, through confronting humanitarian crises in Africa and instability in Latin America, the United States has the unchallenged diplomatic lead . Who could charge the Obama Administration with diplomatic passivity since taking office? Indeed, one could instead conclude that the current global economic turbulence is causing countries to seek the familiar and to rely more and not less on their American connection. In any event, foreigners (and some Americans) often underestimate the existential resilience of the United States. In this respect, George Friedmans new book, The Next Hundred Years,14 and his view that the United States will be as dominant a force in the 21st century as it was in the last half of the 20th century, is worth considering. So once again, those who now predict, as they have in every decade since

THA Neg Wave 2

91

1945, American decay and withdrawal will be wrong 15 from John Flynns 1955 The Decline of the American Republic and How to Rebuild It,16 to Paul Kennedys 1987 The Rise and Fall of Great Powers,17 to Andrew Bacevichs 2008 The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism,18 to Godfrey Hodgsons 2009 The Myth of American Exceptionalism19 and many dozens of similar books in between. Indeed, the policies of the Obama Administration, for better or worse, are likely to be far more influential and lasting regarding Americas longer-term geopolitical power projection than the present economic decline. To sum up regarding the United States and the global economic worsening, former Council on Foreign Relations President Les Gelb, in his new book, Power Rules: How Common Sense Can Rescue American Foreign Policy,20 insists that a nations power is what it always wasessentially the capacity to get people to do what they dont want to do, by pressure and coercion, using ones resources and position. . . . The world is not flat. . . . The shape of global power is decidedly pyramidal with the United States alone at the top, a second tier of major countries (China, Japan, India, Russia, the United Kingdom, France, Germany and Brazil), and several tiers descending below. . . . Among all nations, only the United States is a true global power with global reach. Lee Kuan Yew, former Prime Minister of the Republic of Singapore, agrees: After the crisis, the US is most likely to remain at the top of every key index of national power for decades. It will remain the dominant global player for the next few decades. No major issue concerning international peace and stability can be resolved without US leadership, and no country or grouping can yet replace America as the dominant global power.21 The current global economic crisis will not alter this reality. And the capitalist market model will continue to dominate international economics, not least because China and India have adopted their own versions of it.

THA Neg Wave 2

92

A2: Resource Wars

No resource wars no defensible method and empirically true
-their you just wait mantra has been repeated for decades

Fettweis 11 Professor of Political Science @ Tulane

Christopher, Professor of Political Science @ Tulane, Dangerous Times?: The International Politics of Great Power Peace, pg. 110-111 This resource-wars, ecopessimist vision was originally articulated by specialists from other fields. Beginning in the 1960s and 1970s, a string of dire predictions emerged from population biologists, environmentalists) climatologists, and others warning humanity about the limits to the carrying capacity of the Earth. It is beyond the scope of this study to evaluate the science of these ventures; it is clear however that when their findings strayed beyond hard science into politics, these studies were abysmal failures.' An apparent unfamiliarity with the workings of human society and a general tendency to analyze people as if they were sheep or crawfish helps account for the underperformance of these predictions through the years. Among human populations, politics matters. A number of international relations scholars have taken the data and arguments generated by these hard scientists and applied to them an understand ing of state behavior, in the process generating a somewhat more sophisticated vision of politics to come. These scholars reduce the monocausality in their projections, but remain solidly pessimistic about the future. Overall, this vision holds that conflict will become more frequent in the future as demand outstrips supply of a variety of vital resources, amid runaway, uneven population growth.' international competition for access to vital materials," argued Michael Klare, "is certain to become increasingly intense and conflictive." Other scholars have argued that scarcity will contribute to increased civil strife and ethnic conflict.' From an analytical perspective, the utility of the ecopessimist vision is rather limited. It does not contain two of the three components that are necessary for the prediction-evaluation method: It does not spring logically from the core tenets of a standing theory, nor does it contain specific, falsifiable premises with time horizons. Since its prediction is monolithicthe ecopessimists are focused almost entirely on conflict -a systematic evaluation of the vision would be too brief to he interesting, because so far it has clearly not been borne out by events. There is little need to repeat the analysis of the preceding chapter) since the evidence regarding resource conflicts is incontrovertible: There have been none, despite the steady stream of warnings and rather gaudy additions to the numbers of both people and states.' The expectation of civil strife exacerbated by resource scarcity has also not been met, since violence has declined in regions of intense scarcity as well as those of plenty. As of now, eco pessimists fall back on the familiar, unconvincing defense of their predictions: just you wait, 'We are to believe that there is an environmental threshold below which humanity cannot sink, but that it just has not yet been reached.

No resource wars costs too high and calculations have changed Fettweis 11 Professor of Political Science @ Tulane
Christopher, Professor of Political Science @ Tulane, Dangerous Times?: The International Politics of Great Power Peace, pg. 126 If the cases above are any indication, no stage of this life cycle carries much risk of major war to control resources. In fact, the most obvious observation that emerges from the study of petropolitics is that at no time have great powers come close to loggerheads over

THA Neg Wave 2 control of these vital regions. No country has ever actively prepared to conquer these weak areas, nor has any felt it necessary to prepare to defend them. Consumer cooperation, rather than conflict, is the rule. There has never been a war to control territory that contains fossil fuels, and there are good reasons to believe it is likely that there never will be. The conventional wisdom concerning the inevitability of energy wars is probably wrong. Why has great power behavior failed to live up to pessimistic expectations? While it is hard to argue that democracy has helped confound the various ecopessimist projections, since not all interested parties are democracies, other rationalist explanations for stability cannot be entirely ruled out. Perhaps it is the fear of escalation toward a nuclear holocaust that has kept the great powers from fighting over oil. Perhaps liberal internationalists are correct and complex interdependence should be given primary credit. 'Whatever the initial cause the idea that war would he a viable option to control the most valuable regions in the world does not seem to have occurred to the great consumer nations. As time goes on, it becomes more and more unlikely that it ever will. Resources have historically been a primary motivator for war. The most valuable regions-those worthy of contestation and conquest-have always been those that were the richest. Today, that calculation seems to have changed, even regarding the most vulnerable, valuable regions in the world. It seems as if the states of the industrialized world have indeed taken Angell's ideas to heart and have reached the conclusion that oil is not worth fighting one another for. Perhaps, for the first time, nothing is.

93