Pan K

1NC
1NC K
The affirmatives representations of China as threatening locks
in an epistemological approach to China that makes war
inevitablethe alternative is to question their assumptions
about China to make space for new and less violent scholarship
to be possiblewe must start the debate about the resolution
at the level of representations and scholarship
Chengxin Pan, Senior Lecturer In International Relations at Deakin University, I was
educated in China during times of its profound change and transformation (19751995). After studying and working at Peking University for more than a decade, I
went to the Australian National University, where I received my PhD degree in
Political Science and International Relations. Over the years, I have held visiting
positions at the University of Melbourne, the Hong Kong University of Science and
Technology, and Peking University. I am a member of the International Studies
Association (ISA), Australian Institute of International Affairs, and have been on the
editorial board of Series in International Relations Classics (World Affairs Press,
Beijing). "The 'China threat' in American self-imagination: the discursive
construction of other as power politics." Alternatives: Global, Local, Political 29.3
(2004): 305+. Academic OneFile. Web, Accessed: 4-12-16, /Kent Denver-MB
the "China threat" argument in mainstream U.S. IR literature is
derived, primarily, from a discursive construction of otherness. This
construction is predicated on a particular narcissistic understanding of the U.S. self
and on a positivist-based realism, concerned with absolute certainty and security, a
concern central to the dominant U.S. self-imaginary . Within these frameworks, it
seems imperative that China be treated as a threatening, absolute other since it is
unable to fit neatly into the U.S.-led evolutionary scheme or guarantee absolute
security for the United States, so that U.S. power preponderance in the post-Cold War world can still be
legitimated. Not only does this reductionist representation come at the expense of
understanding China as a dynamic, multifaceted country but it leads inevitably to a
policy of containment that, in turn, tends to enhance the influence of realpolitik
thinking, nationalist extremism, and hard-line stance in today's China. Even a
small dose of the containment strategy is likely to have a highly dramatic impact on
U.S.-China relations, as the 1995-1996 missile crisis and the 2001 spy-plane incident have vividly attested.
In this respect, Chalmers Johnson is right when he suggests that " a policy of containment toward
China implies the possibility of war, just as it did during the Cold War vis-a-vis the former Soviet
Union. The balance of terror prevented war between the United States and the Soviet
Union, but this may not work in the case of China." (93) For instance, as the United States
I have argued above that
presses ahead with a missile-defence shield to "guarantee" its invulnerability from rather unlikely sources of missile
attacks, it would be almost certain to intensify China's sense of vulnerability and compel it to expand its current
it is not
impossible that the two countries, and possibly the whole region, might be dragged
into an escalating arms race that would eventually make war more likely. Neither
the United States nor China is likely to be keen on fighting the other . But as has been
demonstrated, the "China threat" argument, for all its alleged desire for peace and
small nuclear arsenal so as to maintain the efficiency of its limited deterrence. In consequence,
security, tends to make war preparedness the most "realistic" option for both
sides. At this juncture, worthy of note is an interesting comment made by Charlie Neuhauser, a leading CIA China
specialist, on the Vietnam War, a war fought by the United States to contain the then-Communist "other."
Neuhauser says, "Nobody wants it. We don't want it, Ho Chi Minh doesn't want it; it's simply a question of annoying
the other side." (94) And, as we know, in an unwanted war some fifty-eight thousand young people from the United
to call for
a halt to the vicious circle of theory as practice associated with the "China threat"
literature, tinkering with the current positivist-dominated U.S. IR scholarship on
China is no longer adequate. Rather, what is needed is to question this un-selfreflective scholarship itself, particularly its connections with the dominant way in
which the United States and the West in general represent themselves and others
via their positivist epistemology, so that alternative, more nuanced, and less
dangerous ways of interpreting and debating China might become
possible.
States and an estimated two million Vietnamese men, women, and children lost their lives. Therefore,
The logic of security makes violence inevitable, and is the root

cause of destructive features of contemporary modernity
Burke 7 (Anthony, Senior Lecturer in Politics and International Relations at UNSW, Sydney, Ontologies of War: Violence,
Existence and Reason, Theory and Event, 10.2, Muse)
My argument here, whilst normatively sympathetic to Kant's moral demand for the eventual abolition of war,
war is not an enduring

historical or anthropological feature, or a neutral and rational instrument
of policy -- that it is rather the product of hegemonic forms of knowledge
about political action and community -- my analysis does suggest some sobering conclusions
about its power as an idea and formation. Neither the progressive flow of history nor the
pacific tendencies of an international society of republican states will save
us. The violent ontologies I have described here in fact dominate the conceptual and
policy frameworks of modern republican states and have come, against everything Kant
militates against excessive optimism.86 Even as I am arguing that
hoped for, to stand in for progress, modernity and reason. Indeed what Heidegger argues, I think with some
the enframing world view has come to stand in for being itself.
Enframing, argues Heidegger, 'does not simply endanger man in his relationship
to himself and to everything that is...it drives out every other possibility
of revealing...the rule of Enframing threatens man with the possibility that it could be denied to him to enter
credibility, is that
into a more original revealing and hence to experience the call of a more primal truth.'87 What I take from
Heidegger's argument -- one that I have sought to extend by analysing the militaristic power of modern ontologies
the challenge is posed not merely by a

few varieties of weapon, government, technology or policy, but by an
overarching system of thinking and understanding that lays claim to our
entire space of truth and existence. Many of the most destructive features
of contemporary modernity -- militarism, repression, coercive diplomacy,
covert intervention, geopolitics, economic exploitation and ecological
destruction -- derive not merely from particular choices by policymakers
based on their particular interests, but from calculative, 'empirical'
discourses of scientific and political truth rooted in powerful enlightenment
images of being. Confined within such an epistemological and cultural
universe, policymakers' choices become necessities, their actions become
inevitabilities, and humans suffer and die. Viewed in this light, 'rationality' is the
name we give the chain of reasoning which builds one structure of truth
of political existence and security -- is a view that
on another until a course of action, however violent or dangerous,

becomes preordained through that reasoning's very operation and
existence. It creates both discursive constraints -- available choices may
simply not be seen as credible or legitimate -- and material constraints
that derive from the mutually reinforcing cascade of discourses and
events which then preordain militarism and violence as necessary policy
responses, however ineffective, dysfunctional or chaotic. The force of my own and Heidegger's analysis does,
admittedly, tend towards a deterministic fatalism. On my part this is quite deliberate; it is important to allow this
Large sections of modern societies -- especially

parts of the media, political leaderships and national security institutions
-- are utterly trapped within the Clausewitzian paradigm, within the
instrumental utilitarianism of 'enframing' and the stark ontology of the friend and enemy.
possible conclusion to weigh on us.
They are certainly tremendously aggressive and energetic in continually stating and reinstating its force. But is
there a way out? Is there no possibility of agency and choice? Is this not the key normative problem I raised at the
the modern ontologies of war efface agency, causality and

responsibility from decision making; the responsibility that comes with having choices and
outset, of how
making decisions, with exercising power? (In this I am much closer to Connolly than Foucault, in Connolly's
even in the face of the anonymous power of discourse to

produce and limit subjects, selves remain capable of agency and thus
incur responsibilities.88) There seems no point in following Heidegger in seeking a more 'primal truth' of
insistence that,
being -- that is to reinstate ontology and obscure its worldly manifestations and consequences from critique.
However we can, while refusing Heidegger's unworldly89 nostalgia, appreciate that he was searching for a way out
of the modern system of calculation; that he was searching for a 'questioning', 'free relationship' to technology that
would not be immediately recaptured by the strategic, calculating vision of enframing. Yet his path out is somewhat
chimerical -- his faith in 'art' and the older Greek attitudes of 'responsibility and indebtedness' offer us valuable
When we consider the problem of

policy, the force of this analysis suggests that choice and agency can be
all too often limited; they can remain confined (sometimes quite wilfully) within the
overarching strategic and security paradigms. Or, more hopefully, policy choices could aim
to bring into being a more enduringly inclusive, cosmopolitan and peaceful logic
of the political. But this cannot be done without seizing alternatives from outside
clues to the kind of sensibility needed, but little more.
the space of enframing and utilitarian strategic thought, by being aware of its presence and weight and activating a
very different concept of existence, security and action.90 This would seem to hinge upon 'questioning' as such -on the questions we put to the real and our efforts to create and act into it. Do security and strategic policies seek
to exploit and direct humans as material, as energy, or do they seek to protect and enlarge human dignity and
autonomy? Do they seek to impose by force an unjust status quo (as in Palestine), or to remove one injustice only
to replace it with others (the U.S. in Iraq or Afghanistan), or do so at an unacceptable human, economic, and
Do we see our actions within an instrumental, amoral

framework (of 'interests') and a linear chain of causes and effects (the
idea of force), or do we see them as folding into a complex interplay of
languages, norms, events and consequences which are less predictable
and controllable?91 And most fundamentally: Are we seeking to coerce or persuade? Are less violent and
environmental price?
more sustainable choices available? Will our actions perpetuate or help to end the global rule of insecurity and
violence? Will our thought?
The alternative is to reject the security discourse of the 1ac.

Only resistance can generate genuine political thought
Neoclous 8 Mark Neocleous, Prof. of Government @ Brunel, 2008 [Critique of
Security, 185-6]
The only way out
of
such a dilemma, to escape the fetish, is
perhaps
to eschew the
logic of security altogether - to reject it as so ideologically loaded in favour of the state that any real
political thought other than the authoritarian and reactionary should be pressed to give it up. That is clearly
something that can not be achieved within the limits of bourgeois thought and thus could never even begin to be
the constant iteration of the

refrain 'this is an insecure world' and reiteration of one fear, anxiety and insecurity after another
will also make it hard to do. But it is something that the critique of security suggests we may have to
consider if we want a political way out of the impasse of security. This impasse exists because security has
now become so all-encompassing that it marginalises all else, most notably
the constructive conflicts, debates and discussions that animate political life. The constant
imagined by the security intellectual. It is also something that
prioritising of a mythical security as a political end - as the political end constitutes a rejection of politics in any
meaningful sense of the term. That is, as a mode of action in which differences can be articulated, in which the
conflicts and struggles that arise from such differences can be fought for and negotiated, in which people might
come to believe that another world is possible - that they might transform the world and in turn be transformed.
it
suppresses all issues of power and turns political questions into debates
about the most efficient way to achieve 'security', despite the fact that we are never
Security politics simply removes this; worse, it remoeves it while purportedly addressing it. In so doing
quite told - never could be told - what might count as having achieved it. Security politics is, in this sense, an antipolitics,"' dominating political discourse in much the same manner as the security state tries to dominate human
beings, reinforcing security fetishism and the monopolistic character of security on the political imagination. We
therefore need to get beyond security politics, not add yet more 'sectors' to it in a way that simply expands the
scope of the state and legitimises state intervention in yet more and more areas of our lives. Simon Dalby reports a
personal communication with Michael Williams, co-editor of the important text Critical Security Studies, in which the
if you take away security, what do you put in the hole that's left
behind? But I'm inclined to agree with Dalby: maybe there is no hole."' The mistake has been to
latter asks:
think that there is a hole and that this hole needs to be filled with a new vision or revision of security in which it is
re-mapped or civilised or gendered or humanised or expanded or whatever. All of these ultimately remain within the
statist political imaginary, and consequently end up reaffirming the state as the terrain of modern politics, the
The real task is not to fill the supposed hole with yet another vision of security, but to
fight for an alternative political language which takes us beyond the narrow horizon of
bourgeois security and which therefore does not constantly throw us into the arms of
the state. That's the point of critical politics: to develop a new political language more adequate to the kind of
grounds of security.
society we want. Thus while much of what I have said here has been of a negative order, part of the tradition of
the negative may be as significant as the positive in setting

thought on new paths. For if security really is the supreme concept of bourgeois society and the
fundamental thematic of liberalism, then to keep harping on about insecurity and to keep
demanding 'more security' (while meekly hoping that this increased security doesn't damage our liberty) is to
blind ourselves to the possibility of building real alternatives to the authoritarian tendencies in
contemporary politics. To situate ourselves against security politics would allow us to
critical theory is that
circumvent the debilitating effect achieved through the constant securitising of social and political issues,
debilitating in the sense that 'security' helps consolidate the power of the existing forms of social domination and
allow us to forge
another kind of politics centred on a different conception of the good. We
justifies the short-circuiting of even the most democratic forms. It would also
need a new way of thinking and talking about social being and politics that moves us beyond security. This would
perhaps be emancipatory in the true sense of the word. What this might mean, precisely, must be open to debate.
But it certainly requires recognising that security is an illusion that has forgotten it is an illusion; it requires
recognising that security is not the same as solidarity ;
it requires accepting that insecurity is

part of the human condition, and thus giving up the search for the certainty of security and instead
learning to tolerate the uncertainties, ambiguities and 'insecurities' that come with
being human; it requires accepting that 'securitizing' an issue does not mean
dealing with it politically, but bracketing it out and handing it to the state;
it requires us to be brave enough to return the gift."'
Links
Link China Threat Discourse

All aspects of engagement with China is framed through a
threat narrative that assumes China is dangerous to western
civilizationthe rely on a discursive constructions used to
bolster the hegemonic dominance of the US at the expense of
the rest of the world
That China constitutes a growing "threat" to the United States is
arguably one of the most important "discoveries" by U.S. IR scholars in the postCold War era. For many, this "threat" is obvious for a variety of reasons concerning
economic, military, cultural, and political dimensions. First and foremost, much of today's
alarm about the "rise of China" resolves around the phenomenal development of the
Chinese economy during the past twenty-five years : Its overall size has more than quadrupled since
The "China Threat" Argument
1978. China expert Nicholas Lardy of the Brookings Institution suggested that "the pace of China's industrial development and trade
expansion is unparalleled in modern economic history." He went on: "While this has led to unprecedented improvements in Chinese
incomes and living standards, it also poses challenges for other countries." (6) One such challenge is thought to be job losses in the
United States. A recent study done for a U.S. congressional panel found that at least 760,000 U.S. manufacturing jobs have migrated
to China since 1992. (7) Associated with this economic boom is China's growing trade surplus with the United States, which,
according to Time magazine journalists Richard Bernstein and Ross Munro, increased nearly tenfold from $3.5 billion in 1988 to
roughly $33.8 billion in 1995. This trade imbalance, as they put it, is a function of a Chinese strategy to target certain industries and
to undersell American competition via a system of subsidies and high tariffs. And that is why the deficit is harmful to the American
For many, also

frightening is a prospect of the emergence of so-called "Greater China " (a vast economic
zone consisting of mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan). As Harry Harding points out, " Although [Greater China]
was originally intended in [a] benign economic sense, ... in some quarters it evokes
much more aggressive analogies, such as the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere or Greater Germany." (9) In
this context, some believe that China's economic challenge inevitably gives rise to a
simultaneous military threat. As Denny Roy argues: "A stronger, wealthier China would
have greater where-withal to increase its arsenal of nuclear-armed ICBMs and to
increase their lethality through improvements in range, accuracy, and survivability .
If China continues its rate of economic expansion, absolute growth in Chinese
nuclear capabilities should be expected to increase. " (10) Furthermore, U.S. Congressman Bob Schaffer
claimed that China's military buildup, already under way at an alarming rate, was aimed at the United States. (11) In addition
to what they see as a worrying economic and military expansion, many U.S. China
scholars believe that there exist still other dimensions to the "China threat"
problem, such as China's "Middle Kingdom" mentality, unresolved historical
economy and likely to become an area of ever greater conflict in bilateral relations in the future. (8)
grievances, and an undemocratic government. (12) Warren I. Cohen argues that "probably the most
ethnocentric people in the world, the Chinese considered their realm the center of the universe, the Middle Kingdom, and regarded
the outside world has good reason to

be concerned that "China will seek to reestablish in some form the political and
cultural hegemony that it enjoyed in Asia during the Ming and early Qing dynasties."
(14) At another level, from a "democratic peace" standpoint, a China under the rule of
an authoritarian regime is predisposed to behave irresponsibly. As Bernstein and Munro put it: If
all cultural differences as signs of inferiority." (13) As a result, it is argued,
the history of the last two hundred years is any guide, the more democratic countries become, the less likely they are to fight wars
against each other. The more dictatorial they are, the more war prone they become. Indeed, if the current Beijing regime continues
to engage in military adventurism--as it did in the Taiwan Strait in 1996--there will be a real chance of at least limited naval or air
clashes with the United States. (15) Subscribing to the same logic, Denny Roy asserts that " the
establishment of a
liberal democracy in China is extremely unlikely in the foreseeable future .... Without
democratization within, there is no basis for expecting more pacific behavior
without." (16) However, for other observers, even if China does become democratized, the
threat may still remain. Postulating what he calls the "democratic paradox " phenomenon,
Samuel Huntington suggests that democratization is as likely to encourage
international conflict as it is to promote peace. (17) Indeed, many China watchers believe
that an increase in market freedom has already led to an upsurge in Chinese
nationalism, the only thing that allegedly provides the glue to hold contemporary China together. (18) It is argued
that such nationalist sentiment, coupled with memories of its past humiliation and
thwarted grandeur, will make China an increasingly dissatisfied, revisionist power-hence, a threat to the international status quo . Furthermore, some point out that what
is also troublesome is an entrenched realpolitik strategic culture in
traditional Chinese thought. Harvard China expert Alastair Iain Johnston, for example, argues that Chinese
strategic culture is dominated by the parabellum (prepare for war) paradigm. This paradigm believes that
warfare is a relatively constant feature in international relations, that stakes in
conflicts with the adversary are zero-sum in nature , and that the use of force is the
most efficacious means of dealing with threat. (19) From this, Warren Cohen concludes that if Johnston's
analysis of China's strategic culture is correct--and I believe that it is--generational change will not guarantee a kinder, gentler
China. Nor will the ultimate disappearance of communism in Beijing. The powerful China we have every reason to expect in the
twenty-first century is likely to be as aggressive and expansionist as China has been whenever it has been the dominant power in
Apart from these so-called "domestic" reasons for the "China threat," some
commentators arrive at a similar conclusion based on the historical experience of
power realignment as a result of the rise and fall of great powers. China, from this
perspective, is regarded as the most likely candidate to fill the power vacuum created by
the end of U.S.-Soviet rivalry in East Asia. This, according to Kenneth Lieberthal at the University of
Michigan (and formerly of the U.S. State Department), "will inevitably present major challenges to the
United States and the rest of the international system since the perennial question
has been how the international community can accommodate the ambitions of
newly powerful states, which have always forced realignment of the international
system and have more often than not led to war." (21) For this reason, the rise of China has
often been likened to that of Nazi Germany and militarist Japan on the eve of the
two world wars. For example, Richard K. Betts and Thomas J. Christensen argue: Like Germany a century ago, China is a
Asia. (20)
late-blooming great power emerging into a world already ordered strategically by earlier arrivals; a continental power surrounded by
other powers who are collectively stronger but individually weaker (with the exception of the United States and, perhaps, Japan); a
bustling country with great expectations, dissatisfied with its place in the international pecking order, if only with regard to
international prestige and respect. The quest for a rightful "place in the sun" will, it is argued, inevitably foster growing friction with
it seems there has been enough reason and

empirical evidence for the United States to be vigilant about China's future
ambition. While there are debates over the extent to which the threat is imminent or
to which approaches might best explain it, the "objective" quality of such a
Japan, Russia, India or the United States. (22) At this point,
threat has been taken for granted. In the words of Walter McDougall, the Pulitzer Prize-winning historian
and strategic thinker at the University of Pennsylvania, recognizing the "China threat" is "commonsense
geopolitics." (23) For Huntington, the challenge of "Greater China" to the West is simply a
rapidly growing cultural, economic, and political "reality ." (24) Similarly, when they claim
that "China can pose a grave problem," Betts and Christensen are convinced that they are merely
referring to "the truth." (25) In the following sections, I want to question this "truth," and,
more generally, question the objective, self-evidentiary attitudes that underpin
it. In my view, the "China threat" literature is best understood as a particular kind of
discursive practice that dichotomizes the West and China as self and other. In this sense,
the "truism" that China presents a growing threat is not so much an objective
reflection of contemporary global reality, per se, as it is a discursive construction
of otherness that acts to bolster the hegemonic leadership of the United States
in the post-Cold War world. Therefore, to have a better understanding of how the
discursive construction of China as a "threat" takes place , it is now necessary to
turn attention to a particularly dominant way of U.S. self-imagination .
Attempts to know China through expert discourse are locked in

a neo-realist framing of China as a threatthe potential for
geopolitical instability emanating from China becomes
justification for US military and ideological dominancefueling
further perceptions of China as the enemy other
China seems to fall perfectly into the
"threat" category, particularly given its growing power . However, China's power as
such does not speak for itself in terms of an emerging threat . By any reasonable measure,
China remains a largely poor country edged with only a sliver of affluence along its coastal areas. Nor is
China's sheer size a self-evident confirmation of the "China threat" thesis, as other
countries like India, Brazil, and Australia are almost as big as China. Instead, China as a "threat" has
much to do with the particular mode of U.S. self-imagination. As Steve Chan
notes: China is an object of attention not only because of its huge size, ancient legacy, or current or
projected relative national power.... The importance of China has to do with
perceptions, especially those regarding the potential that Beijing will become an
example, source, or model that contradicts Western liberalism as the reigning paradigm. In
an era of supposed universalizing cosmopolitanism, China demonstrates the potency and
At first glance, as the "China threat" literature has told us,
persistence of nationalism, and embodies an alternative to Western and especially

U.S. conceptions of democracy and capitalism. China is a reminder that history is not close to an
end. (39) Certainly, I do not deny China's potential for strategic misbehavior in the global context, nor do I claim the
there is no
such thing as "Chinese reality" that can automatically speak for itself, for
example, as a "threat." Rather, the "China threat" is essentially a specifically
social meaning given to China by its U.S. observers , a meaning that cannot be
disconnected from the dominant U.S. self-construction . Thus, to fully understand the
U.S. "China threat" argument, it is essential to recognize its autobiographical nature.
Indeed, the construction of other is not only a product of U.S. self-imagination, but
often a necessary foil to it. For example, by taking this particular representation of
China as Chinese reality per se, those scholars are able to assert their self-identity as
"mature," "rational" realists capable of knowing the "hard facts" of international
politics, in distinction from those "idealists" whose views are said to be grounded more in "an article of faith"
than in "historical experience." (41) On the other hand, given that history is apparently not
"progressively" linear, the invocation of a certain other not only helps explain away
such historical uncertainties or "anomalies" and maintain the credibility of the
allegedly universal path trodden by the United States, but also serves to highlight
U.S. "indispensability." As Samuel Huntington puts it, "If being an American means being committed to the
"essential peacefulness" of Chinese culture. (40) Having said that, my main point here is that
principles of liberty, democracy, individualism, and private property, and if there is no evil empire out there
threatening those principles, what indeed does it mean to be an American, and what becomes of American national
it seems that the constructions of the particular U.S. self and its
other are always intertwined and mutually reinforcing. Some may suggest that there
is nothing particularly wrong with this since psychologists generally agree that
"individuals and groups define their identity by differentiating themselves from and
placing themselves in opposition to others ." (43) This is perhaps true. As the Swiss linguist
Ferdinand de Saussure tells us, meaning itself depends on difference and differentiation. (44) Yet, to
understand the U.S. dichotomized constructions of self/other in this light is to
normalize them and render them unproblematic , because it is also apparent that
not all identity-defining practices necessarily perceive others in terms of either
universal sameness or absolute otherness and that difference need not equate to
threat. The Discursive Construction of China as Other in the "China Threat" Literature Having examined how the
"China threat" literature is enabled by and serves the purpose of a particular U.S.
self-construction, I want to turn now to the issue of how this literature represents a discursive
construction of other, instead of an "objective" account of Chinese reality. This, I
argue, has less to do with its portrayal of China as a threat per se than with its essentialization and
totalization of China as an externally knowable object, independent of historically
contingent contexts or dynamic international interactions . In this sense, the discursive
construction of China as a threatening other cannot be detached from (neo)realism,
a positivist, ahistorical framework of analysis within which global life is reduced to
endless interstate rivalry for power and survival . As many critical IR scholars have noted,
(neo)realism is not a transcendent description of global reality but is predicated on
the modernist Western identity, which, in the quest for scientific certainty, has come
to define itself essentially as the sovereign territorial nation-state . This realist selfidentity of Western states leads to the constitution of anarchy as the sphere of
insecurity, disorder, and war. In an anarchical system, as (neo)realists argue, " the
gain of one side is often considered to be the loss of the other," (45) and "All other
interests?" (42) In this way,
states are potential threats." (46) In order to survive in such a system, states
inevitably pursue power or capability. In doing so, these realist claims represent
what R. B. J. Walker calls "a specific historical articulation of relations of
universality/particularity and self/Other." (47) The (neo)realist paradigm has
dominated the U.S. IR discipline in general and the U.S. China studies field in
particular. As Kurt Campbell notes, after the end of the Cold War, a whole new crop of China
experts "are much more likely to have a background in strategic studies or
international relations than China itself." (48) As a result, for those experts to know
China is nothing more or less than to undertake a geopolitical analysis of it, often by
asking only a few questions such as how China will "behave" in a strategic sense
and how it may affect the regional or global balance of power, with a particular
emphasis on China's military power or capabilities. As Thomas J. Christensen notes, "Although
many have focused on intentions as well as capabilities, the most prevalent
component of the [China threat] debate is the assessment of China's overall future
military power compared with that of the United States and other East Asian
regional powers." (49) Consequently, almost by default, China emerges as an
absolute other and a threat thanks to this (neo)realist prism. The (neo)realist
emphasis on survival and security in international relations dovetails perfectly with
the U.S. self-imagination, because for the United States to define itself as the
indispensable nation in a world of anarchy is often to demand absolute security . As
James Chace and Caleb Carr note, "for over two centuries the aspiration toward an eventual
condition of absolute security has been viewed as central to an effective American
foreign policy." (50) And this self-identification in turn leads to the definition of not
only "tangible" foreign powers but global contingency and uncertainty per se as
threats. For example, former U.S. President George H. W. Bush repeatedly said that "the enemy [of America] is
unpredictability. The enemy is instability ." (51) Similarly, arguing for the continuation of U.S. Cold War
alliances, a high-ranking Pentagon official asked, "if we pull out, who knows what nervousness will result?" (52)
Thus understood, by its very uncertain character, China would now automatically
constitute a threat to the United States. For example, Bernstein and Munro believe that "China's
political unpredictability, the always-present possibility that it will fall into a state of
domestic disunion and factional fighting," constitutes a source of danger . (53) In like
manner, Richard Betts and Thomas Christensen write: If the PLA [People's Liberation Army] remains second-rate,
should the world breathe a sigh of relief? Not entirely.... Drawing China into the web of global interdependence may
do more to encourage peace than war, but it cannot guarantee that the pursuit of heartfelt political interests will be
blocked by a fear of economic consequences.... U.S. efforts to create a stable balance across the Taiwan Strait
might deter the use of force under certain circumstances, but certainly not all. (54) The upshot, therefore, is that
since China displays no absolute certainty for peace, it must be, by definition, an
uncertainty, and hence, a threat. In the same way, a multitude of other
unpredictable factors (such as ethnic rivalry, local insurgencies, overpopulation,
drug trafficking, environmental degradation, rogue states, the spread of weapons of
mass destruction, and international terrorism) have also been labeled as "threats"
to U.S. security. Yet, it seems that in the post-Cold War environment, China represents a kind of
uncertainty par excellence. "Whatever the prospects for a more peaceful, more democratic, and more just
world order, nothing seems more uncertain today than the future of post-Deng China," (55)
argues Samuel Kim. And such an archetypical uncertainty is crucial to the enterprise of
U.S. self-construction, because it seems that only an uncertainty with potentially
global consequences such as China could justify U.S. indispensability or its
continued world dominance. In this sense, Bruce Cumings aptly suggested in 1996 that China (as a
threat) was basically "a metaphor for an enormously expensive Pentagon that has
lost its bearings and that requires a formidable 'renegade state' to define its mission
(Islam is rather vague, and Iran lacks necessary weights)." (56)
Link Economics
IR uses Chinas GDP, industrial output, bilateral trade, foreign

reserves, and investment to measure its power. This is a form
of capitalism that the state uses to ensure its political survival.
Pan 14 Chengxin Pan, senior lecturer in international relations and a member of
the Centre for Citizenship and Globalisation at Deakin University, Australia.
Rethinking Chinese Power: A Conceptual Corrective to the Power Shift Narrative.
{Shoell}
A main driving force behind the perceived power shift to China is believed to be the rise of its economic power.
Conventional assessments of Chinese economic power rely heavily on data about

Chinas economic capabilities, such as its GDP, industrial output, bilateral trade,
foreign reserves, and investment. These assessments also assume that such
capabilities, being the properties of the Chinese state, necessarily reflect Chinese power. As Ian
Bremmer observes, The [Chinese] bureaucracy uses select privately owned companies to dominate key industries.
They use sovereign wealth funds, created from the countrys enormous reserves of foreign currency, to direct huge
Chinas political leaders are using markets to create wealth that

can be used to maximize state control of the next phase of the countrys
developmentand their own chances of political survival. This is a form of
capitalism in which the state uses markets primarily for political gain. (2010, 63) Here
Bremmer refers to a range of national economic capabilities as indicators of state power. While such capabilities
as sovereign wealth funds and foreign reserves in China are no doubt Chengxin Pan 395
impressive, including them as part of Chinese national economic power is
misleading. For a start, many so-called Chinese economic power indicators cannot be
characterized as Chinese, let alone as belonging to the Chinese state. The Chinese state
no doubt has played a crucial role in Chinas economic rise. But the more relevant questions are what
role the Chinese state has played, and to what effect . A related question is whether the Chinese
state itself has undergone transformation. I return to the last point later. For now, one effect of the Chinese
governments economic reform and opening-up policy has clearly been the
integration of the Chinese economy into the global economy, particularly through its
linkages to global production networks (GPNs). Much attention has now been paid to
how this integration may affect Chinese foreign policy, but what it means for our
understanding of Chinese power is yet to be clearly delineated. 2
flows of capital. In sum,
Link Engagement
Engagement with China is producing slow reform and lowering
military threats. Knee-jerk threat perceptions should not
overwhelm these positive long-term trends.
Lubman, 04 (Stanley, "The Dragon As Demon: Images Of China On Capitol Hill"
(March 4, 2004). Center for the Study of Law and Society Jurisprudence and Social
Policy Program. JSP/Center for the Study of Law and Society Faculty Working
Papers. Paper 18., Stanley Lubman is Lecturer in Law and Visiting Scholar at the
Center for the Study of Law and Society, University of California ( Berkeley),
http://repositories.cdlib.org/csls/fwp/18).
After Tiananmen, as Lampton and others have most usefully recalled, American policy was thrown
into indecision over whether to engage or punish China .14 The conflict between
these orientations was nowhere more apparent than in the annual Congressional
debates over the renewal of Most Favored Nation (MFN) treatment of Chinese imports into the US. The
annual ritual was required by the Jackson-Vanik Amendment to the Trade Act of 1974, which required Congressional
agreement to approve or reject a Presidential decision to extend MFN to non-market economies. The debates, as
Lampton says, created an annual opportunityfor politicians and interest groups to demonstrate their
commitment to American values and to promote their concerns.15 The debates were further complicated by the
vacillation of President Clinton, who early in his first term linked extension of MFN to China with progress on specific
human rights issues, and then, less than a year later, delinked trading status and human rights.16 The institutional
changes and policy debates during the 1990s that have been briefly noted here provide essential background to the
PNTR debates of 1999-2000. Well before PNTR became an issue, debate in Congress and among both policy-makers
The issues are fundamental: Will

Chinas economic growth lead to political reform domestically, and will China, with its
enormous potential economic and military power, be a constructive member of the international
community or a threat to the security of other nations, including the United States?
Those who urge continued US-China engagement emphasize that China has
undergone extensive economic and social change since economic reforms began in
1979 that have improved the material lives of many Chinese and considerably
increased their personal freedoms. Supporters of engagement urge that a long-term
view must be taken of the possibilities for change in Chinas political institutions.
They recognize that China remains an authoritarian state dominated by the Chinese
and academics had produced sharply opposed views of China.
Communist Party (CCP) and that the Chinese party-state continues to maintain institutions and practices that
They argue,
however, that the conditions necessary for the rise of civil society and democratic
government can only develop slowly, if at all. Russia and Eastern Europe are examples of the
violate principles of human rights that have been given expression in United Nations conventions.
difficulties that attend transitions from Communist totalitarianism and planned economies toward democratization
They also urge that China's involvement in international institutions

will promote Chinas positive participation in the international community ; that
and freer economies.
membership in the WTO will make China increasingly subject to international trade rules; and that expanded foreign
trade and investment will aid Chinas economic development and, therefore, eventual political reform.
Link Expert Knowledge

Discount their claims to expert knowledgedebate isnt about
facts about China being true or falseinstead you should
approach the debate from the question of the way that our
representations of China frame reality in a particular way
blocking other modes of knowledge
It is mainly on the basis of this self-fashioning that many U.S. scholars have for long
claimed their "expertise" on China. For example, from his observation (presumably on Western TV
networks) of the Chinese protest against the U.S. bombing of their embassy in Belgrade in May 1999, Robert
Kagan is confident enough to speak on behalf of the whole Chinese people , claiming
that he knows "the fact" of "what [China] really thinks about the United States ." That
is, "they consider the United States an enemy--or, more precisely, the enemy.... How
else can one interpret the Chinese government's response to the bombing?" he
asks, rhetorically. (57) For Kagan, because the Chinese "have no other information"
than their government's propaganda, the protesters cannot rationally "know" the
whole event as "we" do. Thus, their anger must have been orchestrated, unreal, and
hence need not be taken seriously. (58) Given that Kagan heads the U.S. Leadership
Project at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and is very much at the
heart of redefining the United States as the benevolent global hegemon, his
confidence in speaking for the Chinese "other" is perhaps not surprising . In a similar
vein, without producing in-depth analysis, Bernstein and Munro invoke with great
ease such all-encompassing notions as "the Chinese tradition " and its "entire threethousand-year history." (59) In particular, they repeatedly speak of what China's "real" goal is: "China is an
unsatisfied and ambitious power whose goal is to dominate Asia.... China aims at achieving a kind of hegemony....
China is so big and so naturally powerful that [we know] it will tend to dominate its region even if it does not intend
to do so as a matter of national policy." (60) Likewise, with the goal of absolute security for the United States in
mind, Richard Betts and Thomas Christensen argue: The truth is that China can pose a grave problem even if it
does not become a military power on the American model, does not intend to commit aggression, integrates into a
global economy, and liberalizes politically. Similarly, the United States could face a dangerous conflict over Taiwan
even if it turns out that Beijing lacks the capacity to conquer the island.... This is true because of geography;
because of America's reliance on alliances to project power; and because of China's capacity to harm U.S. forces,
U.S. regional allies, and the American homeland, even while losing a war in the technical, military sense. (61) By
neither China's capabilities nor intentions really matter. Rather,

almost by its mere geographical existence, China has been qualified as an absolute
strategic "other," a discursive construct from which it cannot escape. Because
now, it seems clear that
of this, "China" in U.S. IR discourse has been objectified and deprived of its own
subjectivity and exists mainly in and for the U.S. self. Little wonder that for many U.S. China
specialists, China becomes merely a "national security concern" for the United States,
with the "severe disproportion between the keen attention to China as a security
concern and the intractable neglect of China's [own] security concerns in the
current debate." (62) At this point, at issue here is no longer whether the "China
threat" argument is true or false, but is rather its reflection of a shared
positivist mentality among mainstream China experts that they know China better
than do the Chinese themselves. (63) "We" alone can know for sure that they
consider "us" their enemy and thus pose a menace to "us." Such an account of
China, in many ways, strongly seems to resemble Orientalists' problematic
distinction between the West and the Orient . Like orientalism, the U.S. construction
of the Chinese "other" does not require that China acknowledge the
validity of that dichotomous construction. Indeed, as Edward Said point out, "It is
enough for 'us' to set up these distinctions in our own minds; [and] 'they' become
'they' accordingly." (64)
Link Management
Their China discourse becomes a foundation for management
of Chinaplacing the US in the dominate role of manager
and China into the subordinate role as managed. This is the
foundation for US dominance
The discursive construction of the U.S. self and the "Chinese threat" argument are
not innocent, descriptive accounts of some "independent" reality. Rather, they are
always a clarion call for the practice of power politics. At the apex of this
power-politics agenda is the politico-strategic question of "what is to be done" to
make the United States secure from the (perceived) threats it faces. At a general level, as
Benjamin Schwarz proposes, this requires an unhindered path to U.S. global hegemony
that means not only that the United States must dominate wealthy and technologically sophisticated states in
Europe and East Asia-- America's "allies"--but also that it must deal with such nuisances as Saddam Hussein,
Slobodan Milosevic and Kim Jong Il, so that potential great powers need not acquire the means to deal with those
problems themselves. And those powers that eschew American supervision--such as China--must be both engaged
and contained. The upshot of "American leadership" is that the United States must spend nearly as much on
national security as the rest of the world combined. (67)
This "neocontainment" policy has been echoed in
the "China threat" literature. In a short yet decisive article titled "Why We Must Contain China,"
Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer insists that "containing China" and "undermining its ruthless
dictatorship" constitute two essential components of "any rational policy toward a rising, threatening China." Not
only is a policy other than containment considered irrational, but even a delay to implement it would be
undesirable, as he urges that "containment of such a bully must begin early in its career." To this end, Krauthammer
offers such "practical" options as strengthening regional alliances (with Vietnam, India, and Russia, as well as Japan)
to box in China; standing by Chinese dissidents; denying Beijing the right to host the Olympics; and keeping China
Containing China is of course not

the only option arising from the "China threat" literature . More often than not, there
is a subtle, business-style "crisis management" policy. For example, Bernstein and Munro
shy away from the word containment, preferring to call their China policy management. (69)
Yet, what remains unchanged in the management formula is a continued
promotion of controlling China. For instance, a perusal of Bernstein and Munro's texts reveals that
what they mean by management is no different than Krauthammer's explicit containment stance.
(70) By framing U.S.-China relations as an issue of "crisis management," they leave
little doubt of who is the "manager" and who is to be "managed ." In a more straightforward
manner, Betts and Christensen state that coercion and war must be part and parcel of
the China management policy: In addressing the China challenge, the United States needs to think
from joining the World Trade Organization on the terms it desires. (68)
hard about three related questions: first, how to avoid crises and war through prudent, coercive diplomacy; second,
how to manage crises and fight a war if the avoidance effort fails; third, how to end crises and terminate war at
This is not to imply that the kind of

perspectives outlined above will automatically be translated into actual China
policy, but one does not have to be exceedingly perceptive to note that the "China
threat" perspective does exert enormous influence on U.S. policy making on China .
costs acceptable to the United States and its allies. (71)
To illustrate this point, I want now to examine some specific implications of U.S. representations of the "China
threat" for U.S.-China relations in relation to the 1995-1996 Taiwan Strait missile crisis and the "spy plane" incident
of 2001.
Link Multilateralism
The affirmative enforces a process of colonial mimicry that
forces subaltern states to adopt US ideals to survive and thrive
L.H.M. Ling et al, Graduate Program in International Affairs, The New School,
Ching-Chane Hwang and Boyu Chen, Graduate Institute of Political Science, National
Sun Yat-sen University, Kaohsiung, Taiwan, Subaltern straits: exit, voice, and
loyalty in the United StatesChinaTaiwan relations, 2010, International relations
of the Asia Pacific Vol. 10, Issue 1, pp. 33-59, Oxford Journals, /Kent Denver-MB
Subalternity refers to the subordination of a state,
in service to a ruling master. The master can take various forms:
for example, a military commander, a colonial metropole, a dominant market, a ruling ideology, an
imperial infrastructure, or a global hegemon. Given these asymmetrical relations,
subalternity often provokes a pattern of emulation or mimicry (Bhabha, 1994). The
subaltern mimics the master not just to survive but to survive well, given the
hegemonic structure that dominates both. In today's US-led world politics, national
or social mimicry can entail building major institutions like a parliament or
independent press, importing political rhetoric like democracy and freedom,
applying economic practices like liberalization and privatization, copying cultural
representations in fashion, film, and the like, and depicting personal identity as individual
and self-interested (Ling, 2002b).
We call this condition subaltern straits.
society, or group of people
Link Power Shift

Conventional IR oversimplifies the power shift from the
United States to China
{Shoell}
A growing body of literature has focused on an alleged power shift from the
United States to China (and from the West to the East more generally). For all its complexities and nuances,
much of this power-shift literature continues to unreflectively hold onto a conventional
way of conceptualizing power as a type of quantitatively measurable and zero-sum
property possessed by the state. Without critically engaging with the conceptual
question of what power means, however, the power-shift debate is both inadequate
and misleading. Drawing on some alternative ways of conceptualizing power, I aim to illustrate the contingent
and socially constructed nature of Chinese economic power and, in doing so, problematize the widely held view of
a US-China power shift. I contend that insofar as power is socially constructed, how it is conceptualized matters for
The need to rethink power is at the core of building a new type of

major power relationship.
international relations.
West East power-shift theories ignore the slippery concept

of power.
{Shoell}
The now-familiar narrative on a power shift comprises a wide range of literature and centers on at least four
whether there has been a power shift; how far-reaching this shift has been,
and whether it can be slowed down or even reversed; in what areas (e.g., economic
power, military power, or soft power) the shift is most evident; and what this shift
means for great-power relations as well as how to best respond to it . In this vast literature,
opinions have ranged, for example, from assertions that we are already in the Chinese
century to claims that China still has a long way to go (Nye 2002; Chan 2008; Gurtov 2013),
and from the power transition thesis that a more powerful China is more likely to
challenge the international status quo (Tammen and Kugler 2006) to a more sanguine belief that
socializing China into the international community is still possible (Steinfeld 2010). Hotly
concepts:
debated as these power-shift questions are, what is missing is a more reflective analysis of the concept of power
itself. As Shaun Breslin argues, in the study of Chinas IR, The concept of power is often left undefined, with an
assumption that size and importance is the same as power (2007, 6). In a similar vein, Jeffrey Reeves and Ramon
Pacheco Pardo note that the
study of modern Chinese power remains largely
underdeveloped (2013, 450). This conceptual underdevelopment is certainly not unique to the study of
China. According to Martin Smith (2012, 1), IR analysts in general are often more comfortable
thinking and writing about who has power and what they do with it, rather than
about the core issue of what it is. There may be a good reason for this general unease. Though
power is a central political concept in the study of IR, it has been widely recognized
as notoriously elusive, slippery, essentially contested, and most troublesome
(Keohane and Nye 2001, 1; Barnett and Duvall 2005, 2; Gilpin 1981, 13). This conceptual minefield notwithstanding,
some audacious efforts at theorizing power have been made. As demonstrated in many different typologies of
power, social and political theorists as well as scholars from international political economy and constructivist
perspectives have made some noteworthy contributions to our thinking about power. The introduction of the
concept soft power by Joseph Nye (1990), for example, has generated a vibrant new research program in IR,
including the subfield of Chinese IR (Li 2009). The division of power into coercive, normative, and remunerative
power by sociologist Amitai Etzioni has been aptly applied to the study of Chinese power (Lampton 2008). In
addition to the conventional understanding of power as resources or capabilities, scholars have added motivation,
desire, and will to the mix, thereby helping differentiate actual power from potential power (Baldwin 1980; Strange
informed by Foucaults notion of disciplinary power as well as the

faces of power debate (Dahl 1957; Bachrach and Baratz 1962; Lukes 2005), Barnett and Duvall (2005)
and Guzzini (2013) have begun theorizing power from a constructivist perspective . To be sure,
1996). Furthermore,
this theoretical debate on power is far from settled or completed, and my intention is not to engage directly with it.
the various efforts at theorizing and conceptualizing power have added more
nuanced understandings to the question of what power is. Surprisingly, however, these
different understandings have been largely absent from the power-shift narrative .
Indeed, the two bodies of literature are marked by conspicuous mutual neglect . Except at
the most general level, few theorists of power seem interested in the current power-shift
debate with the possible exception of Nye (2010). Meanwhile, few power-shift analysts pay
close attention to what theorists have to say about the complexities of power in
international relations. Even as the word power figures prominently in the titles of many publications on
power shift, as a concept it rarely receives any in-depth discussion. True, in the debate there is a
shared understanding about what makes a state powerful (Chan 2008, 2), but there has
been no explicit self-reflection on this understanding.
But
Link State Based IR
State-centric, resource-based conceptions of power are

inadequatepower is not zero-sum.
{Shoell}
COMMONLY AGREED-UPON STATEMENTS IN THE ARGUMENTATIVE international relations (IR) community are often
hard to come by, but one exception is the view that the center of gravity in world politics is shifting away from
The early twenty-first century, the argument goes, is witnessing a

dramatic power shift from the West to the East, and from the United States to China
in particular (Hoge 2004; Prestowitz 2005; Shambaugh 2005; Mahbubani 2008; White 2010). Yet amid such
burgeoning discourses on a power shift, the dominant way of conceptualizing power has
remained largely unchanged. While scholars in the debate often disagree on how to measure the
changing distribution of power, they rarely question their state-centric, resource-based
concept of power itself. Without critically examining the concept of power, the
power-shift debate, no matter how sophisticated, will remain inadequate. In this article I
call for rethinking power by paying more attention to the complex and changing
meanings of power. Given that China has received the lions share of attention in contemporary power-shift
where it used to be.
analysis, the focus of this rethinking is on Chinese power. Since the rapidly developing Chinese economy has most
directly fueled the power-shift narrative, my study draws on some specific vignettes about Chinese economic power
My aim is not to
to draw attention to the insights
offered by some existing critical power analyses in order to introduce necessary
conceptual self-reflexivity into the power-shift debate. I have divided this article into four parts.
I begin with a discussion of the mutual neglect between the power-shift debate and the
literature on the concept of power. Next, I provide an overview of a conception of power
alternative to the state-centric, quantitative, and zero-sum understanding of power
that has dominated the power-shift narrative . In the third section, I illustrate the contingency
and socially constructed nature of Chinese economic power and what it means for
the so-called US-China power shift. I conclude by calling for further interrogating our
conventional ways of thinking about power. I argue that unless a new type of power
discourse emerges, the United States and China, among other countries, will be
hard pressed to build a new type of major power relationship.
for example, Made in China, the China price, and Chinas financial nuclear weapons.
arrive at some kind of general theory about Chinese power; rather, it is
State-centric, quantitative, zero-sum thinking on power results

in surrendering all power to the sovereign state, turns the aff.
{Shoell}
Before proceeding further, it is worth noting that the shared understanding of power implied in the power-shift
narrative is itself derived from a particular theoretical position on power that is commonly associated with realism
and the first face of power (Dahl 1957). This point is evident
in the wide (if only implicit) use of the
definition that power is the ability of an actor to get others to do something they
otherwise would not do (and at an acceptable cost to the actor) (Keohane and Nye 2001,
10). When the actor denotes the state, as it often does in IR literature, a state-centric,
quantitative, and zero-sum mode of thinking on power becomes evident. According
to this model, first of all, power is seen as a crucial property of the state, which is the
sovereign owner or wielder of all resources within its territory. John Mearsheimers
(2001, 55) notion that power is based on the particular material capabilities that a
state possesses is a case in point. In fact, the state and power in international
relations are considered so closely linked that power has been metonymically
used to signify the state per se (as in the terms great powers and status quo powers). Second,
defined in terms of state-owned capabilities, power is believed to be quantitatively measurable.
Hindess (1996, 12) notes that, in modern Western thought, a strong tradition takes power as
a simple quantitative phenomenon. This tradition has certainly continued in the power-shift narrative.
Indeed, to make sense of the idea of systemic power shifts or the very balance of
power, a measure of power has to be assumed (Guzzini 2013, 114). A good example can be
found in Hugh Whites (2012, 32) understanding of power: Economic primacy is ultimately just a question of
arithmetic, not an index of national character. GDP is determined by a simple sum: the amount produced by each
worker, multiplied by the number of workers. In a more sophisticated but still largely quantitative fashion,
Chestnut and Johnston (2009) similarly treat the evaluation of US-China power
relations as a matter of mathematical calculation of each countrys capabilities. Third,
with this materialist notion of power as a measurable state property, power
relations are often seen as zero-sum. A greater power, with the possession of more resources, will
prevail over a lesser one, a view that can be traced back to Thucydides (1972, 402): The strong do what
they have the power to do and the weak accept what they have to accept. In this
sense, power is viewed as an instrument of domination and control (Hindess 1996, 2).1
Not only does a loss of power mean a loss of control, but ones loss is seen as
anothers gain. Given this state-centric, quantitative, and zero-sum model, little
wonder that much is at stake in the power-shift debate. I do not, however, suggest that every
analyst in the debate shares the same carbon-copy understanding of power. In fact, there are always
different emphases on different aspects of power, and when it comes to both measuring power
and the indicators and data they use to measure it, divergences are the rule rather than
exception, yet in most cases these differences have been empirical and
data-related rather than conceptual in nature. Even when analysts
subconsciously draw on different conceptualizations of power, often such
conceptual variations are not the focus of contention.
The aff cant solve their [heg] advantagetransnational

corperations, NGOs, the media, the internet, investors, etc. are
not beholden to the state. Therefore power cannot come from
the holder of power.
{Shoell}
In this article, my main purpose is to offer a conceptual corrective to this neglect of explicit critical engagement
with the concept of power in the power-shift literature. While there is no single alternative way of conceptualizing
although the state does

hold power, it is not a neatly bounded property coterminous with state boundaries.
Rather, it has always been exercised by or through a diversity of actors, agents,
and social structures alongside the state. Among them, for example, are consumers,
investors, transnational corporations, credit rating agencies, markets, global supply
chains, nongovernmental organizations, the media, the Internet, and even the ruled
and the powerless. Such agents and structures often transcend national
borders and are not necessarily beholden to state power. Nor can their
power be readily mapped onto the state in which they happen to reside. All these
considerations undermine the possibility of seeing power as solely a spatial
monopoly exercised by states (Sassen 2006, 222). Thus, upon a closer look, the complex
geographies of power in global politics defy a state-centric conception. Second, power
is always relational and contextual (Barnett and Duvall 2005; Hagstrm 2005; Piven 2008; Guzzini
2013). As Guzzini (2013, 24) notes, Any power instrument becomes a potential power
resource only if its control is seen to be valued by other actors in the interaction.
Power comes out of this relation, not from the power holder alone . Relational and
power, power may be rethought at least along the following dimensions. First,
contextual power may be best understood not in terms of its quantifiable capabilities but within its specific social
contexts. The same amount of capability may not translate into the same degree of power or achieve the same
With the acceleration of globalization and

expansion of global production networks, even the state rarely stands still. As the
state becomes more internationalized or globalized, its power may change in
quality as well as quantity (Cox 1987; Agnew 2003, 7879). As a consequence, national power
is not only less receptive to objective measurement but is also less national in
nature. Certainly this does not imply the end of the nation-state, nor is the world quite as flat as Thomas
Friedman (2005) has famously asserted. Nevertheless, the national boundaries of power, if such
things exist, are becoming more blurred and flattened. In short, it has become
problematic to invoke the sharpedged notions of national economy and state power
effect within different relationships or domains.
or, for that matter, the perceived congruence between the two. If power has no independently verifiable quantity,
power relations are rarely zero-sum, unless they are imagined as such and acted upon
power takes on an interdependent dimension, which , among other things,
means that what some have lost, others have not gained (Strange 1996, 14). Moreover,
power cuts both ways, a phenomenon Anthony Giddens calls the dialectic of control in social systems
(1986, 16; emphasis in original). This point holds true even in seemingly asymmetric
relationships, such as those between landlords and tenants, state elites and voting
publics, priests and their parishioners, and masters and slaves (Piven 2008). Given that
then
accordingly. In reality,
power is not always neatly distributed in proportion to the distribution of capabilities, a shift in the latter may not
a states relational power is not

merely a reflection of its position in the distribution of capabilities across states (Waltz
1979); it also bears the imprint of global political economic structures. In this sense, a small
necessarily mean a corresponding shift in the former. Furthermore,
countrys power against potential aggression may be greater than its defense capabilities might indicate, thanks to
its intersubjectively recognized sovereignty in the international system. Meanwhile,
with structurally
derived relational power also comes structural vulnerability. As we know well in domestic
politics, independent members who hold the balance of power in parliament gain power primarily because of their
contingent structural position; by the same token, their power is susceptible to changes of that structure. Power in
the international system is no exception.
Impact
Impact Structural Violence

The discourse of a dangerous China is premised on a racialized
process of Otherization which makes structural violence and
mass warfare inevitable
Turner 14 (Oliver Turner, Hallsworth Research Fellow at the University of
Manchester, PhD from the University of Manchester, April 2014, American Images
of China: Identity, Power, Policy, pp 23-30) gz
The world is a product of interpretation, and interpretations are vulnerable to
disagreement and conflict. 53 Accordingly, the evil and threatening Fu Manchu
represents a particular truth about China in equal measure to the genial and
Americanised Charlie Chan. This precludes a strictly positivistic logic of
explanation, the purpose of which is to search for a singular, definitive
understanding of what China represents at any given moment. Instead, a logic of
interpretation, which concerns itself less with identifying causality within
international relations than it does with interrogating the consequences of
representational processes, is required. 54 This is what enables the transference
from why to how questions described in the introduction, since the principal concern is
not why the United States has chosen to engage in certain practices towards China,
but how those practices have been made possible through the historical
production of subjective truth . Social constructivist and postcolonial IR scholars are
now among the most active in formulating the types of (how) questions about
representation and the interrelations of power and knowledge around which this
analysis is conducted. 55 A key source of inspiration is Edward Saids Orientalism , in which it is argued
that, for centuries, the identity of the global East has been constructed and
reconstructed (as exotic, threatening, technologically inferior, etc.) so as to
enable its domination by the West. 56 As such, the Asian region (like any other) is
less an objective, natural reality than it is a product of Western
imaginations. 57 It exists for the West, or so it appears in the mind of the
Orientalist. The imaginative geography of China has always been constructed
within American imaginations, for American imaginations , to enable
particular courses of US China policy. Yet while China has always been the product of American
discourse and representation, the argument here is not that ideas are the primary or even singular drivers of
international affairs. Crucially, the intention is to emphasise the co-constitution of the ideational and material
worlds. As Alexander Wendt explains, the claim is not that ideas are more important than power and interest, or
that they are autonomous from power and interest. Power and interest are just as important and determining as
power and interest have the effects they do in virtue of the

ideas that make them up. 58 To suggest, then, that American understandings about
China simply shift and evolve as a result of external developments most notably of
Chinas behaviour, which, as illustrated in the review of the literature above, has been a strong tendency of
many authors and thus that they can be attributed little or no consequence to the
dynamics of Sino-US relations and the formulation of US China policy, is
fundamentally misguided. Increases in Chinas military capabilities today , for example,
do matter (see Chapters 5 and 6). What is important, however, is not simply the
emergence of those capabilities, but that China which so many people (rightly or
wrongly) consider potentially dangerous now possesses them. Like China, India has a
large standing army, nuclear weapons, an increasing defence budget and so on, but
before. The claim is rather that
it is rarely perceived as a threat to the United States. The UKs 500 nuclear
weapons are considered less threatening to American interests than North Koreas
(unsophisticated and unreliable) five. 59 Unavoidably, then, identity also matters.
Discourses and imagery define, to varying extents, what China is and how it
must be approached, regardless of its intentions or observable behaviour . Discourse and
imagery: constructing the reality of China American images of China are understood here to be
the products of discourse about that land and its people. Michel Foucault described
discourse as the general domain of all statements, representing either a group of individual statements, or a
American discourses of China are

thus envisioned as the articulation of ideas about that country in the broadest
possible sense. Ultimately, American images of China constitute the discursive
construction of truth or reality about it. Of course, imagery in the form of art or photography,
regulated practice which accounts for a number of statements. 60
for example, is overtly visual rather than discursive, yet, like that of the world around us, its meaning will always be
interpreted and articulated through language. For the purposes of this analysis American images and
representations of China are considered synonymous. This is an assumption reinforced by Szalay et al., who argue
that images are selective, often affect-laden representations of reality. 61 Peter Hays Gries explains that
Americans look at China as though staring at the inkblots of a Rorschach test,

revealing more about themselves than about China itself. 62 This central role
of American identity in the construction of China is reiterated by Jesperson:
[American] images of China have largely come from Americans assumptions
about themselves, he argues. 63 As outlined already in this chapter, the relevant literatures as a whole
do little to support this claim. However, the identity of any actor is meaningless without the
presence of another because meaning itself is created in discourse . 64 This mutual
constitution of opposing identities, of self and other, is articulated by David Campbell:
identity whether personal or collective is not fixed by nature . . . rather, identity
is constituted in relation to difference. But neither is difference fixed by nature . . . Difference
is constituted in relation to identity. 65 While the extent to which discourses remain stable over time varies,
American images of China whether enduring or not have been manufactured

from perceptions of the identity of the United States itself . 66 However, the four key
constructions of China examined with particular focus throughout this book Idealised, Opportunity, Uncivilised and
Threatening China are examples of images which have endured because, to reaffirm, their production and
images
can be likened to Saids notion of Latent Orientalism: an underlying and almost
unconscious collectivity of shared ideas and beliefs about the global East which has
preserved a unanimity, stability and durability of representation. 67 As will be
shown, Idealised China became established from understandings about a more
scientifically enlightened and advanced United States. Uncivilised China has
always been produced in relation to presumed superior standards of American
civilisation. Opportunity China exists primarily for particular American ideals of
free international trade and open markets. Threatening China has been produced
to confirm the need to secure the United States from external threat. In a broad
sense, the identity of the United States has traditionally been defined in part by an
imagined commitment to the values of democracy, personal liberty and
the free market. 68 This constitutes what has been termed a democratic-capitalist ideology, or ethos. 69 It
is shown that images of China have frequently been produced from these
understandings, such as Uncivilised China, which has been conceived as
uncivilised because it lacks these commitments and qualities. In addition,
historically the United States has been conceived as a pre-dominantly
White/Caucasian society. 70 This constitutes another powerful site from which
reproduction can be traced to among the most intrinsic components of American identity. These types of
China and the Chinese, as non-White, have been produced. 71 Robert Blauner vividly
describes the power and longevity of the race issue within the United States, likening it to a gritty old boxer who
The dominance of the White American population, he

argues, has resulted in the internal colonialism of non-Whites like the Chinese
who, to varying extents, inhabit imbalanced power relations which favour the
former. 73 This analysis shows that Chinese in America have been historically beholden to
political and economic arrangements over which they have had little control . In
just wont stay down. 72
Orientalism Said argued that during the nineteenth century, all Europeans were racist or ethnocentric. 74 The
argument here is not that the Chinese have been the consistent and uniform victims of American racism; it is that
race is a political, rather than a natural, category, and powerful discourses have
racially objectified the Chinese as a non-White other without necessarily
implying racist sentiment. Of course, classificatory labels such as White and non-White are often
unhelpful and even meaningless. Indeed, Homi Bhabha challenges neat delineations between cultures on the basis
that they exist in a state of perennial mixedness. 75 Yet identities are frequently and crudely contrasted with
others and, to reaffirm, American images of China (racial or otherwise) need not be informed and/or sophisticated
to circulate. What is important is that they do circulate, with the capacity to represent selected realities about China
and its people. This analysis also demonstrates the historical persistence of embedded understandings even into
China represents a cultural inferior of the United States . Such

perceptions have not been unique, uniform or timeless, yet, as Michael Shapiro observes, the process of
making others foreign most commonly ensures their status as less-than-equal
subjects. 76 Ikechi Mgbeoji argues that Western (particularly European) colonialism habitually
propagated the truth that the only route for the non-West to become less inferior
was to aspire to the standards of the West. 77 A comparable dynamic is revealed throughout
the twenty- first century that
the chapters that follow, through ingrained expectations that China must lessen its imagined inferiority by
American images of China have often been

produced within a paternalistic structure, wherein the actions of the latter as
the parental authority are understood to represent the best interests of the former .
78 These enduring assumptions are explained in part with reference to implicit
American understandings of exceptionalism, and of the United States as a
redeemer nation with a responsibility to advance its Enlightenment values
abroad. 79 American governmental papers, notes Bruce Kuklick, have always advanced a vision of the world
rooted in Protestantism and the Enlightenment. 80 In this analysis, American exceptionalism is most
emphatically demonstrated by the construction of China through negation, a
strategy used to deny the history of foreign others and construct (or
deconstruct) their geographies as a blank spaces, or tabula rasas, waiting
to be filled. 81 Ultimately, it is demonstrated that across the history of Sino-US relations
particular discourses of China, like those outlined above, have become naturalised
statements of fact and accepted simply as what is. 82 This has generated
common sense, a form of knowledge that goes unquestioned since it is assumed
to be a true reflection of reality. 83 Common sense knowledges are almost
unconsciously reproduced and rarely scrutinised or challenged. 84 This was
conforming to American expectations. In this sense,
evident throughout much of the late nineteenth century and during the early Cold War, for example, when
The
naturalisation of discourses means that they have never been free or
unrestricted, but, rather, moulded and constrained as the product of systemic
regulations which promote selected ideas and suppress others. 85 Foucault
refers to these regulations as societal rules of exclusion. 86 This ensures that
discourse is always controlled, selected [and] organised so that the ideas of
some are accepted, whereas those of others are ignored or rejected and
Threatening China seemingly posed a danger to White America (see Chapters 2 and 3 respectively).
considered beyond the lines of acceptable argument . 87 Walter Lippmann put it another way,
suggesting that in the great blooming, buzzing confusion of the outer world we pick
out what our culture has already defined for us . 88 As certain discourses of
China have been promoted as common sense, others have inevitably been
marginalised and silenced. For much of the Cold War, for example, discourses of Opportunity and
Idealised China were subdued within American imaginations as Threatening and Uncivilised China became
discourse is a site from which power can be challenged and

undermined, meaning the logic that discourses of China claim to advance can
always be questioned and opposed. 89 [W]here there is power, argued
Foucault, there is resistance. 90 Resistance is a highly contested concept, especially within
postcolonial IR, but here resistance discourses are those which challenge the most
powerful and established American ideas about China , exposing their
vulnerability and introducing alternative modes of thinking. Discourses may be
buried or masked by rules of exclusion and deemed inferior, naive or
inadequately articulated. 91 Unofficial or subjugated knowledges about
China, however, always have the potential to reappear. 92 Moreover, discourses are not
dominant. Yet
discrete or isolated units of analysis. Their peripheries are open, overlapping and constituted by others. 93 In this
analysis it is shown that the four key constructions of China have often coexisted, and have on occasions become
mutually reinforcing. Discourses of China should also not be essentialised, and throughout the chapters that follow
it is shown that while such constructions as Threatening and inferior China have resurfaced in recognisable forms,
they have always been in a perpetual state of flux. 94 They have evolved and been modified to meet new
the
assumption remains that China should conform to the (superior) standards of
Western civilisation, yet it is no longer brazenly referred to as uncivilised and the relevant imagery is
advanced in more subtle forms (see Chapter 6). Ultimately, the discursive production of American
images of China, and the resulting construction of truths and realities, means they
have been the historical subjects of classification strategies. The process of
classification relies upon stereotypes, or controlling images, whereby individuals
and groups are imbued with quick and easy representations for the purpose of
identification. 95 Importantly, then, and as the term controlling image implies,
those representations have always been imbued with a form of power. The power of
representation: political possibility and US China policy Power in global affairs is not merely the
capacity of states to exert material force; it exists in less conventional forms and
spaces. In IR it is now a widely contested concept, becoming increasingly denaturalised, dispersed and ultimately
devoid of an assumed centre. 96 Power is understood by Foucault to be inextricable from
knowledge, such that one cannot be advanced in the absence of the other . 97 The
result is a power/knowledge nexus which precludes the advancement of
discourse and the establishment of truth as neutral or dispassionate endeavours . 98
This means that American discourses and imagery of China have never been
produced objectively or in the absence of purpose and intent. Their dissemination
must be acknowledged as a performance of power, however seemingly innocent
or benign. As will be shown throughout the chapters that follow, American representations of China
have regularly been advanced with a clear agenda . This occurred during the latter half of the
nineteenth century when ideas about a China threat were promoted by those who
openly favoured restrictions against Chinese immigrations, and during the Cold War
when propaganda depicted Red China in highly threatening terms in support
of the United States communist containment policy (see Chapter 4). Equally, and as
Fairclough argues, common sense discourses may represent an ideological sleight of
circumstances and new frames of reference so that today, for example, just like in the nineteenth century,
hand by advancing an opinion or point of view which is disguised as truth or

fact. 99 That which becomes common sense is largely determined by comparatively
more powerful actors. 100 Thus, imagery can be circulated with an explicit motivation
but, and as already suggested, it can also be reproduced almost unconsciously . In line
with Saids notion of Latent Orientalism, ideas can become naturalised and accepted fact,
as Gramscis organic intellectuals across society engage in their promotion and continuation because as
truths they appear so unproblematic. Historically, Sino-American relations of
power have been dominated by the United States both in terms of material
capability and of ideational forces or power/knowledge . As a circulating medium, however,
power is not inevitably suppressive, nor is it the possession of individuals or
institutions. It is everywhere, working productively through social relations and in
the construction of reality as much as of the actors within it. 101 Accordingly, while the
power of representation may appear readily observable in late nineteenth century American newspaper articles
which vehemently opposed Chinese immigration to the United States, for example, it was just as inextricable from
the arguments of those who wrote positively of a more civilised land and people. It would be erroneous to suggest,
then, that China and the Chinese have been the perpetual victims of American power (discursive or material).
Material forces are only attributed meaning for use as a result of certain knowledges
about them. 102 In other words, it is discourse or power/knowledge which ensures
that material capabilities can be utilised, and in what manner. As Doty explains, the
fact that the United States claims unrivalled material power is undeniably
important. However, the US does not consider invading every country over which it
boasts military superiority or, indeed, against which it exhibits grievance . 103 That
military power is constituted by understandings of identity , and of who to
invade (among other things) and who not. Discourse, notes Obeyesekere, is about practice. . . .
Insofar as discourse evolves it begins to affect the practice. 104 International relations, therefore,
represents an arena of power that is both political and discursive, wherein
discourses create certain political possibilities and preclude others . 105 Yet
such a reassessment of power does not entirely preclude an appreciation for those which preceded it. 106 To
Material
power is affective as a result of the ideas of which it is constituted . 107 David Campbell
explains that foreign policy is an extension to the international realm of the human
tendency to identify unfamiliar others as alien and foreign . 108 Richard Ashley
similarly notes that modern statecraft is more accurately termed modern mancraft. 109 Such societal
discourses of foreignness are discourses of separation and difference by which
states are made foreign from one other in a specific sort of boundary producing
political performance . 110 It is argued here that the production and dissemination of
American images of China constitutes this performance, and represents the
ubiquitous process by which China and the Chinese are made foreign from the
United States for the purpose of enabling US China policies . As Campbell puts it, foreign
policy represents the international inscription of foreignness . 111 This analysis will
demonstrate that the most stable and enduring images of China ( Threatening,
Uncivilised, etc.) have traditionally been comparatively active in this regard, to
explain not why particular American foreign policies towards China have occurred,
but how they have been made possible . As outlined in the introduction, this study shows that
American images of China including those which circulate in the present day
have frequently been those of an inferior or unequal land and people expected
to conform to the superior values of American identity such as democracy
and capitalism. The construction of foreign others as barbaric, uncivilised, etc.,
reiterate, the suggestion is not that ideas are more important than, or distinct from, material power.
has historically enabled and legitimised the appropriation of (particularly nonWestern) lands and resources, as well as the subjugation and extermination
of people. 112 Ellingson agrees, noting that the historical construction of non-Europeans
as lower peoples has been at the heart of the establishment of a global
European hegemony. 113 The study also shows that Chinas imagined inferiority has
commonly been articulated through racial discourse and imagery. Race here
represents an especially powerful site of identity construction from which images
of a non-White China have been produced, and is shown to have been an
integral component of the foreign policy process at numerable historical
junctures. 114 Glazer and Moynihan, for instance, argue that immigration has long been, and remains, the most
important determinant of American foreign policy because it responds so powerfully to the ethnic composition of
Pierterse describes racism as the psychology of

imperialism, with the capacity to justify overseas domination. 116 American
discourses and imagery of China, then, have consistently determined the
boundaries of the politically possible by being inextricable from, and complicit
within, every stage of the formulation, enactment and justification of US China
policy. The nature and purpose of that policy, however, must be reconsidered. In the previous section it was
the United States. 115 Jan
shown that throughout the relevant literatures US China policy has been conceived in relatively restrictive terms as
a bridge between two states. 117 This analysis further draws from the work of Campbell, who argues that
foreign policy not only represents the international inscription of societal discourses
of separation and difference, but actively reaffirms them . 118 Acts of foreign policy, in
short, impose particular interpretations of the world, thereby reproducing them . 119
US China policy is shown here to be a political performance active within the
construction of Chinas identity as well as that of the United States,
perpetuating the cycle of discursive difference so that the production of
imagery continues. For example, the possibility of US involvement in the nineteenth-century opium wars
was not only introduced by discourse and imagery of Uncivilised China, it was also an act which itself reinforced the
it reproduced
Uncivilised China in comparison to the more civilised United States by
affirming the requirement of the former to modernise to what were considered
more enlightened Western practices and values. It makes no sense to assume that the
representational processes of which it was constituted. Specifically, and as shown in Chapter 2,
enactment of US China policy signals the end of discourses capacity to construct reality and social actors. Instead it
carries on, reproducing the understandings upon which policies rely and in which they are framed, to be relied upon
US China policy has

consistently worked not only in the construction of identity, but also in the
protection of the identity of the United States when seemingly threatened
by that of China. 120 Danger can be ascribed to otherness wherever it may be
found. 121 Yet not all potential dangers are interpreted as such. The designation of threat is
therefore at least partly constitutive of representational processes which determine
what is dangerous and what is not. 122 As Wendt explains, every state in the world does not represent
a danger to every other, and so international threats must be constitutive of particular ideas
which make them interpretable as such. 123 This means that Sino-US relations must
be understood as boundary-producing rituals in which dangers from China,
when identified, are not merely from calculations of material threat, but are
partly the result of subjective interpretation. 124 In this book it is argued that a key
purpose of depicting China as a threat has been to protect the components of
American identity (primarily racial and ideological) deemed most fundamental to
its being. As such, representations of a threatening China have most commonly
again in the future. Related to this point, this book also demonstrates that
been advanced by, and served the interests of, those who support actions to
defend that identity. It is shown that this has included politicians and policymaking circles, such as those
within the administration of President Harry Truman which implemented the Cold War containment of the PRC
(Chapter 4). It also exposes the complicity of other societal individuals and institutions, including elements of the
late-nineteenth-century American media which supported restrictions against Chinese immigration to the Western
United States (Chapter 2). To some extent, dangers in the international realm always constitute threats to identity.
125 In the analysis which follows, it is shown that this has been especially evident during moments of crisis (or
rupture) to American identity which demonstrate most emphatically how dangers are socially constructed. 126
Crises of identity occur when the existing order is considered in danger of collapse. The prevailing authority is seen
to be weakened and rhetoric over how to reassert the natural identity intensifies. 127 The Cold War represents one
such moment of crisis for American identity, as Washingtons containment policy functioned to protect the latter
from the threatening values of communist Red China, which conflicted with those of the democratic-capitalist
This is not to suggest that danger is non-material. Indeed,

representational processes separate us from them through a logic of
difference which determines the relative salience of material factors in the
assessment of external threats. 128 Yet as Hixson asserts, [f]oreign policy plays a
profoundly significant role in the process of creating, affirming and disciplining
conceptions of national identity, 129 and the United States has always been
especially dependent upon representational practices for understandings
about its identity. 130
United States.
Impact Turns War

The continuation of enemy creation makes arms races and
human extinction inevitable
Frank and Melville, 1 (Jerome and Andrei, professor Emeritus of Psychiatry, Johns
Hopkins University School of Medicine, Section Head, Institute of USA and Canada
Studies, Academy of Sciences of the USSR, The Image of the Enemy and the
Process of Change,
http://www-ee.stanford.edu/~hellman/Breakthrough/book/chapters/frank.html)
The arms race is not driven by weapons alone. It is also driven by a very simple
psychological phenomenon, the image of the enemy. Weapons of total destruction
would be useless without such images. For such weapons to have any purpose,
there must be people who may be totally destroyed. Adversaries must be
transformed into demons. Once such images have been created, they, in turn, drive
the arms race. People resist giving them up. There is a desire to see everything in a
light which will reinforce the image. Images foster closed minds and reinforce
resistance to change. But change is possible. It has happened many times in
history. Whole peoples have changed their views of one another. Even between the
superpowers, areas of special accommodation have been achieved, agreements
have been followed. New technologies offer new potentials for communication. New
goals which transcend the narrow national interests of each will offer a framework
for future common actions. In working out the way to achieve those goals the
If
humankind is to survive in the nuclear age, there must be
progress in this direction.
enemy images can be gradually lessened, perhaps even dissolved.
Turns Case China Threat Fails
Because of the complexity of the 21st century global economy,

China cannot thrive if its rivals flounder. Therefore
constructing the China Threat results only in mutual
economic strife for China and the United State.
{Shoell}
a national economy approach to power as implied in the power-shift
narrative often misses the relational, contextual, structural, and social nature of
Chinese economic power, which has become increasingly deterritorialized and
denationalized as a result of the new transnational accumulation dynamics (HartLandsberg and Burkett 2006, 4). Therefore, talking about Chinese economic power no longer
makes as much sense. This assertion goes beyond the power and interdependence thesis that Chinese
As noted above,
and foreign economic powers are mutually dependent as otherwise discrete power entities (Keohane and Nye
the very national category of economic power is increasingly elusive in

the dynamic global production networks, which are what differentiate economic
globalization today from the interdependent world economy of the past (Steinfeld 2010).
2001). That is,
In such networks, power takes on a form of networked power, defined by Anne-Marie Slaughter (2009, 100) as the
ability to make the maximum number of valuable connections. Slaughter further argues that
the United
States still has a clear and sustainable edge in networked power (Slaughter 2009, 95).
This may well be so, but to see networked power this way (as yet again a kind of
quantifiable resource possessed by a state) is to misunderstand the fundamentally
different nature of networked power, which, by definition, cannot be divided easily along
national boundaries. To have networked power in the world means that, to use Thomas Friedmans words,
Were nothing without the rest of the world (2000, 372). Thus, even as China has gained
tremendous networked power, especially on the economic front, such power is
necessarily highly contingent on its relationship to the outside world, and that
relationship, by definition, cannot be dictated by China alone; it must be negotiated
and mutually constituted in bilateral and multilateral contexts. Consequently,
Chinese networked economic power cannot be sustained at the expense of other
economies. As Nathan and Scobell (2012, 276) note, China will not prosper like nineteenth-century colonial
powers by exploiting and impoverishing other societies. . . . Unlike Spain competing with Portugal in
the sixteenth century, Holland competing with Spain in the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries, or Britain competing with France in the nineteenth century,
China will not get ahead if its rivals do not. Their economic decline or destruction
will not help China.
Alternative
Alternative Interrogation Key

State centered security will always fail because it centers its
calculus on wild risk assessmentonly by interrogating the
epistemological assumptions of their securitization and the
causes of crises can we solve them
Ahmed 12 Dr. Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed is Executive Director of the Institute for
Policy Research and Development (IPRD), an independent think tank focused on the
study of violent conflict, he has taught at the Department of International Relations,
University of Sussex "The international relations of crisis and the crisis of
international relations: from the securitisation of scarcity to the militarisation of
society" Global Change, Peace & Security Volume 23, Issue 3, 2011 Taylor Francis
to shift our frame of orientation away from conventional statecentrism toward a 'human security' approach are valid, this cannot be achieved without
confronting the deeper theoretical assumptions underlying conventional
approaches to 'non-traditional' security issues.106 By occluding the structural
origin and systemic dynamic of global ecological, energy and economic crises,
orthodox approaches are incapable of transforming them. Coupled with their excessive state-centrism, this
means they operate largely at the level of 'surface' impacts of global crises in terms of how they will affect
quite traditional security issues relative to sustaining state integrity, such as international terrorism, violent conflict
and population movements. Global crises end up fuelling the projection of risk onto
social networks, groups and countries that cross the geopolitical fault-lines of these 'surface' impacts which happen to intersect largely with Muslim communities . Hence, regions
particularly vulnerable to climate change impacts, containing large repositories of hydrocarbon energy
resources, or subject to demographic transformations in the context of rising population pressures, have become the focus
of state security planning in the context of counter-terrorism operations abroad. The intensifying problematisation
and externalisation of Muslim-majority regions and populations by Western security
agencies - as a discourse - is therefore not only interwoven with growing state perceptions of
global crisis acceleration, but driven ultimately by an epistemological failure to interrogate
the systemic causes of this acceleration in collective state policies (which themselves occur in the
While recommendations
context of particular social, political and economic structures). This expansion of militarisation is thus coeval with the subliminal normative
presumption that the social relations of the perpetrators, in this case Western states, must be protected and perpetuated at any cost - precisely
because the efficacy of the prevailing geopolitical and economic order is ideologically beyond question . As much as this
analysis highlights
undermines
the idea of a symbiotic link between natural resources and conflict per se. Neither
'resource shortages' nor 'resource abundance' (in ecological, energy, food and monetary terms)
necessitate conflict by themselves. There are two key operative factors that determine whether
either condition could lead to conflict. The first is the extent to which either condition can generate socio-political crises that
challenge or undermine the prevailing order. The second is the way in which stakeholder actors choose to actually respond to the latter crises. To
understand these factors accurately requires close attention to the political, economic and ideological
strictures of resource exploitation, consumption and distribution between different
social groups and classes. Overlooking the systematic causes of social crisis leads to a heightened
tendency to problematise its symptoms, in the forms of challenges from particular social groups. This can
lead to externalisation of those groups, and the legitimisation of violence
towards them. Ultimately, this systems approach to global crises strongly suggests that
a direct link between global systemic crises, social polarisation and state militarisation, it fundamentally
conventional policy 'reform' is woefully inadequate. Global warming and energy depletion
are manifestations of a civilisation which is in overshoot . The current scale and organisation of human activities is breaching
the limits of the wider environmental and natural resource systems in which industrial civilisation is embedded. This breach is now increasingly
visible in the form of two interlinked crises in global food production and the global financial system. In short, industrial civilisation in its current
form is unsustainable. This
calls for a process of wholesale civilisational transition to adapt to the inevitable

arrival of the post-carbon era through social, political and economic transformation. Yet conventional
theoretical and policy approaches fail to (1) fully engage with the gravity of research in the natural
sciences and (2) translate the social science implications of this research in terms of the
embeddedness of human social systems in natural systems. Hence, lacking capacity for
epistemological self-reflection and inhibiting the transformative responses urgently required, they reify
and normalise mass violence against diverse 'Others' , newly constructed as
traditional security threats enormously amplified by global crises - a process that guarantees the
intensification and globalisation of insecurity on the road to ecological, energy and
economic catastrophe. Such an outcome, of course, is not inevitable, but extensive new
transdisciplinary research in IR and the wider social sciences - drawing on and integrating human and critical security studies,
political ecology, historical sociology and historical materialism, while engaging directly with developments in the natural sciences - is
urgently required to develop coherent conceptual frameworks which could inform more sober,
effective, and joined-up policy-making on these issues.
Alternative Comes before Policy

We need to question the assumptions and language that frame
policies. The alternative is a prerequisite to effective policies
in the future
Bruce 96
(Robert, Associate Professor in Social Science Curtin University and Graeme
Cheeseman, Senior Lecturer University of New South Wales, Discourses of Danger
and Dread Frontiers, p. 5-9)
This goal is pursued in ways which are still unconventional in the intellectual milieu of international relations in Australia, even
though they are gaining influence worldwide as traditional modes of theory and practice are rendered inadequate by global trends
The inability to give meaning to global changes reflects

partly the enclosed, elitist world of professional security analysts and bureaucratic
experts, where entry is gained by learning and accepting to speak a particular, exclusionary
language. The contributors to this book are familiar with the discourse, but accord no privileged place to its knowledge form as
reality in debates on defence and security. Indeed, they believe that debate will be furthered only through
a long overdue critical re-evaluation of elite perspectives. Pluralistic, democratically-oriented perspectives
on Australias identity are both required and essential if Australias thinking on defence and security is to be invigorated. This is
not a conventional policy book; nor should it be, in the sense of offering policy-makers and their academic
counterparts sets of neat alternative solutions, in familiar language and format, to problems
they pose. This expectation is in itself a considerable part of the problem to be analysed . It is,
that defy comprehension, let alone policy.
however, a book about policy, one that questions how problems are framed by policy-makers. It challenges the
proposition that irreducible bodies of real knowledge on defence and security exist independently of their context
in the world, and it demonstrates how security policy is articulated authoritatively by the elite keepers of that
knowledge, experts trained to recognize enduring, universal wisdom. All others, from this perspective, must accept such wisdom
or remain outside the expert domain, tainted by their inability to comply with the rightness of the official line. But it is precisely the
official line, or at least its image of the world, that needs to be problematised. If the critic responds directly to the demand for policy
Before engaging in the policy

debate the critics need to reframe the basic terms of reference . This book, then, reflects and
alternatives, without addressing this image, he or she is tacitly endorsing it.
underlines the importance of Antonio Gramsci and Edward Saids critical intellectuals.15 The demand, tacit or otherwise, that the
policy-makers frame of reference be accepted as the only basis for discussion and analysis ignores a three thousand year old
tradition commonly associated with Socrates and purportedly integral to the Western tradition of democratic dialogue. More
immediately, it ignores post-seventeenth century democratic traditions which insist that a good society must have within it some
way of critically assessing its knowledge and the decisions based upon that knowledge which impact upon citizens of such a society.
This is a tradition with a slightly different connotation in contemporary liberal democracies which, during the Cold War, were
proclaimed different and superior to the totalitarian enemy precisely because there were institutional checks and balances upon
power. In short, one of the major differences between open societies and their (closed) counterparts behind the Iron Curtain was
that the former encouraged the critical testing of the knowledge and decisions of the powerful and assessing them against liberal
democratic principles. The latter tolerated criticism only on rare and limited occasions. For some, this represented the triumph of
rational-scientific methods of inquiry and techniques of falsification. For others, especially since
positivism and
rationalism have lost much of their allure, it meant that for society to become open and liberal, sectors of
the population must be independent of the state and free to question its knowledge and power. Though we do not expect this
position to be accepted by every reader, contributors to this book believe that critical dialogue is long overdue in Australia and
security community continues to

invoke closed monological narratives on defence and security. This book also questions the
distinctions between policy practice and academic theory that inform conventional accounts of
Australian security. One of its major concerns, particularly in chapters 1 and 2, is to illustrate how theory is integral to
the practice of security analysis and policy prescription. The book also calls on policymakers, academics and students of defence and security to think critically about what they are reading, writing and
saying; to begin to ask, of their work and study, difficult and searching questions raised in other disciplines; to recognise, no
matter how uncomfortable it feels, that what is involved in theory and practice is not the ability to identify a
needs to be listened to. For all its liberal democratic trappings, Australias
replacement for failed models, but a realisation that terms and concepts state sovereignty, balance of power,
security, and so on are contested and problematic, and that the world is indeterminate,
always becoming what is written about it. Critical analysis which shows how particular kinds of theoretical
presumptions can effectively exclude vital areas of political life from analysis has
direct practical implications for policy-makers, academics and citizens who face the daunting task of
steering Australia through some potentially choppy international waters over the next few years. There is also much of interest in
the chapters for those struggling to give meaning to a world where so much that has long been taken for granted now demands
imaginative, incisive reappraisal. The contributors, too, have struggled to find meaning, often despairing at the terrible human costs
readers will find no single, fully formed panacea for the

There are none. Every chapter, however, in its own way,
offers something more than is found in orthodox literature, often by exposing ritualistic Cold War defence and security
mind-sets that are dressed up as new thinking . Chapters 7 and 9, for example, present alternative ways of
of international violence. This is why
worlds ills
in general, or Australias security in particular.
engaging in security and defence practice. Others (chapters 3, 4, 5, 6 and 8) seek to alert policy-makers, academics and students to
alternative theoretical possibilities which might better serve an Australian community pursuing security and prosperity in an
uncertain world. All chapters confront the policy community and its counterparts in the academy with a deep awareness of the
intellectual and material constraints imposed by dominant traditions of realism, but they avoid dismissive and exclusionary terms
which often in the past characterized exchanges between policy-makers and their critics. This is because, as noted earlier,
attention needs to be paid to the words and the thought processes of those being
criticized. A close reading of this kind draws attention to underlying assumptions, showing they need to be
recognized and questioned. A sense of doubt (in place of confident certainty) is a
necessary prelude to a genuine search for alternative policies. First comes an
awareness of the need for new perspectives, then specific policies may follow . As Jim
George argues in the following chapter, we need to look not so much at contending policies as they
are made for us but at challenging the discursive process which gives [favoured
interpretations of reality] their meaning and which direct [Australias] policy/analytical/military responses.
This process is not restricted to the small, official defence and security establishment huddled around the US-Australian War
Memorial in Canberra. It also encompasses much of Australias academic defence and security community located primarily though
not exclusively within the Australian National University and the University College of the University of New South Wales. These
discursive processes are examined in detail in subsequent chapters as authors attempt to make sense of a politics of exclusion and
closure which exercises disciplinary power over Australias security community. They also question the discourse of regional
security, security cooperation, peacekeeping and alliance politics that are central to Australias official and academic security
agenda in the 1990s. This is seen as an important task especially when, as is revealed, the disciplines of International Relations and
Strategic Studies are under challenge from critical and theoretical debates ranging across the social sciences and humanities;
debates that are nowhere to be found in Australian defence and security studies. The chapters graphically illustrate how Australias
public policies on defence and security are informed, underpinned and legitimised by a narrowly-based intellectual enterprise which
draws strength from contested concepts of realism and liberalism, which in turn seek legitimacy through policy-making processes.
Contributors ask whether Australias policy-makers and their academic advisors are unaware of broader intellectual debates, or
resistant to them, or choose not to understand them, and why?
Framework
Framing Assumptions First

This debate is about assumptionsapproaches to engagement
with China as value neutral mask the power relations
embedded in the ways that we approach and represent China
debate isnt value neutral but an active attempt to shape
certain conceptions of China as natural through the way it is
described and understoodquestioning our descriptions of
China is a more productive starting point for the debate
China and its relationship with the United States has long been a fascinating subject
of study in the mainstream U.S. international relations community . This is reflected,
for example, in the current heated debates over whether China is primarily a strategic
threat to or a market bonanza for the United States and whether containment or
engagement is the best way to deal with it. (1) While U.S. China scholars argue
fiercely over "what China precisely is," their debates have been underpinned by
some common ground, especially in terms of a positivist epistemology. Firstly, they
believe that China is ultimately a knowable object, whose reality can be, and
ought to be, empirically revealed by scientific means. For example, after expressing his
dissatisfaction with often conflicting Western perceptions of China, David M. Lampton, former president of the
National Committee on U.S.-China Relations, suggests that "it is time to step back and look at where China is today,
Like many
other China scholars, Lampton views his object of study as essentially "something we
can stand back from and observe with clinical detachment." (3) Secondly, associated with
the first assumption, it is commonly believed that China scholars merely serve as
"disinterested observers" and that their studies of China are neutral, passive
descriptions of reality. And thirdly, in pondering whether China poses a threat or
offers an opportunity to the United States, they rarely raise the question of "what
the United States is." That is, the meaning of the United States is believed to be
certain and beyond doubt. I do not dismiss altogether the conventional ways of debating China. It is not
where it might be going, and what consequences that direction will hold for the rest of the world." (2)
the purpose of this article to venture my own "observation" of "where China is today," nor to join the "containment"
to contribute to a novel dimension of the

China debate by questioning the seemingly unproblematic assumptions
shared by most China scholars in the mainstream IR community in the United
versus "engagement" debate per se. Rather, I want
States. To perform this task, I will focus attention on a particularly significant component of the China debate ;
namely, the "China threat" literature. More specifically, I want to argue that U.S. conceptions of
China as a threatening other are always intrinsically linked to how U.S.
policymakers/mainstream China specialists see themselves (as representatives of the
indispensable, security-conscious nation, for example). As such, they are not value-free, objective
descriptions of an independent, preexisting Chinese reality out there, but are better
understood as a kind of normative, meaning-giving practice that often legitimates
power politics in U.S.-China relations and helps transform the "China threat" into
social reality. In other words, it is self-fulfilling in practice, and is always part of the
"China threat" problem it purports merely to describe. In doing so, I seek to bring to the fore
two interconnected themes of self/other constructions and of theory as practice inherent in the "China
threat" literature--themes that have been overridden and rendered largely invisible by
those common positivist assumptions. These themes are of course nothing new nor peculiar to
the "China threat" literature. They have been identified elsewhere by critics of some
conventional fields of study such as ethnography, anthropology, oriental studies,
political science, and international relations . (4) Yet, so far, the China field in the West in
general and the U.S. "China threat" literature in particular have shown remarkable
resistance to systematic critical reflection on both their normative status as
discursive practice and their enormous practical implications for international
politics. (5) It is in this context that this article seeks to make a contribution.
Framework Discourse
Power relations are social constructed by the actors involved
in the rise of China
{Shoell}
China finds it difficult to claim economic capabilities as Chinese power, it is
highly doubtful that it could convert wealth or capital into virtually all types of
power and influence (Knorr 1973, 75). For instance, despite Chinas promise to buy Eurozone debt, its
If
attempts to get southern Eurozone members to press Brussels to grant it market economy status have not
it is easier to use money to achieve

prudential returns than to gain strategic geopolitical advantage (de Jonquires 2012). Even
in the case of business dealings with supposedly much weaker states in Africa, Chinese power has met
with spirited resistance. Ricardo Soares de Oliveira at Oxford University was quoted in the New York Times
succeeded. More often than not, as the Chinese have found out,
as saying that the prototypical weak state in Africa can have serious leverage, and that African-Chinese relations
instead of reflecting some

material resourcebased balance of power, power relations are ultimately socially
constructed by all actors involved; the Chinese live in a world not just of their
making (Agnew 2010, 575), and Chinas rise does not take place in a normative vacuum.
are not as unbalanced as is sometimes argued (Nossiter 2013). Thus,
Whatever power it may have accumulated must be subject to evolving normative constructions and constraints.
Contemporary China has been growing up within a regime-intensive international system, with its behavior and
use of power subject to a variety of international norms that did not exist when Europe and the United States
When it comes to US-China relations, in

many ways the United States has created a world after its own image, which is the
world in which China now finds itself (Panitch and Gindin 2012). This US-led world order, in
the words of Ikenberry (2008, 28), is hard to overturn and easy to join. Indeed, some
scholars go so far as to suggest that we are not moving into a Sino-centred age, but into an
age of China integrated into American Empire (Parisot 2013, 1162). China is now playing our
developed (Lanteigne 2005, 32; Lampton 2008, 209).
game (Steinfeld 2010). Playing our game or not, the Chinese state itself has still undergone transformation in the
evolving international society. Jim Glassman reminds us that states
can be seen not as existing

external to markets or production networks but rather as being produced and
reproduced in the same processes that produce markets and production networks
(Glassman 2011, 157), which is indeed how the Chinese state is being (re)produced. As
Beijing finds itself increasingly enmeshed into the globalized economy, it also
realizes that its legitimacy and power depend on the stability and well-being of the
global system. The state has thus acquired Chengxin Pan 401 dual responsibility to both national economies
and the world economy (Cox 1987). In this context, analysts may argue that the Chinese state itself is no
longer quite what it used to be (Pan 2009b). While its role continues to be central to Chinas economic
activities, its function has been transformed in the process of Chinas global economic integration, which the state
This situation, of course, does not mean an eventual convergence of

China with the West or the end of global competition . What it does mean is that the
nature of that competition has become more complex than what the power shifts of
the past would suggest.
has helped instigate.
Framework Discourse Key

Materialism link. Discourse key to change.
{Shoell}
Third, power is socially constructed. If our idea of what belongs to the realm of reality is given for us in
the language that we use (Winch 1958, 15), power as a central phenomenon in reality must also owe its meaning
a fuller understanding of power needs to take

seriously its normative and discursive constructions. In the eyes of many power transition
theorists, a countrys power status is ontologically independent of ideational factors
such as intentions and norms (even though these may be seen as relevant variables in states power
and existence to how we conceptualize it. Thus,
behavior). Yet, as John Allen notes, power as an outcome cannot and should not be read off from a resource base
(2003, 5). Likewise, Guzzini (2013, 115) argues that what
counts as a power resource in the first

place cannot be assessed ex ante independently from general norms, the actors
particular value systems, and the specific historical context of the interaction . In
other words, power depends on its social recognition within a community (Ashley 1986).
Consequently, in power analysis a focus on the (material) distribution of power is not
enough (Hindess 1996); it must also, according to Barnett and Duvall, include a consideration of
the normative structures and discourses (2005, 3). If diverse discourses are at play in
the construction of power, then a considerable indeterminacy in the patterning of
power may result (Piven 2008, 4). Power indeterminacy has always been compounded by the evolving
normative context in which power is constructed, legitimized, and exercised. Realists insist that country A
with more material capabilities than country B has more control over the latter, but
in reality a clear-cut correlation between capabilities and control is rare (Hoffmann 1967).
Scholars, including some notable neorealists, acknowledge that military primacy does not
always pay, at least not as much as is commonly assumed (Waltz 1979; Drezner 2013). At the root of
this nonalignment between power as resources and power as effects are not just
some power conversion problems, but more importantly the intrinsic factor of norms
and discourses. By helping legitimize or delegitimize power, discourses construct as
well as constrain power. Given that power is contextual, relational, interdependent,
non-zero-sum, and socially constructed, it is more than a property monopolized by
the state, and its shift necessarily entails more than just a spatial shift between
states. From this perspective, we need to rethink Chinas rising power. Focusing on
Chinese economic power, I examine in the next section how changes in Chinese power cannot be
simply described in terms of Chinas rise (and the Wests fall).
Discourse First
Discourse analysis is theoretically and methodologically a
priori to policy analysis because it founds the interpretative
ground from which policy can begin.
Renwick and Qing 99
(Neel, Centre for Asia Pacific Studies, and Cao, senior lecturer in chinese studies,
Chinas Political Discourse Towards the 21st Century: Victimhood, Identity, and
Political Power, East Asia Studies, Winter, 1999, pg. 116-120)
Discourse analysis denotes a theoretical and methodological approach
to language and language use. This study relates linguistic analysis of texts and verbal utterances to a
wider social context.10 Language as social practice means, firstly, that language is an integral part of society,
not external to it; secondly, it is a social process; and, thirdly, language is a socially conditioned process.
Language is thus both discourse and social practice, and discourse is used to refer to the
whole process of social interaction of which a text is only a part. In addition to the text, this wider process
includes the related processes of production and interpretation. Text analysis, therefore, is just one part of
discourse analysis that should include productive and interpretative processes. Discourse involves social
conditions in which the production and interpretation of texts takes place in three dimensions: situational,
institutional, and social. The situational dimension is defined as the immediate social environment in which the
discourse occurs. The institutional dimension constitutes a wider matrix for the discourse. Lastly, the social
The key to this

methodological approach therefore lies in gaining an understanding of
the relationship between the text, the way that it has been produced,
and the social condition within which it is created, promulgated, and
comprehended. These three dimensions of discourse (situational, institutional, and social) establish one
dimension involves the whole of a given society as an organisational entity.
set of analytical parameters for the study of text. This methodology develops three additional analytical levels
for examining and explaining text: description, interpretation, and explanation. At the descriptive level, the
formal properties of the text contain experimental, relational, and expressive values. This allows for the
exploration of the experience of the text producer and the play of knowledge and beliefs in the textual content;
the social relationships enacted through the text; and the text producers assessment of the social reality, and
thus to the relationship between subjects and social identities. The interpretative level explores the relationship
between text and social interaction and allows the text to be seen both as the product of production and as a
The explanatory level focuses upon the dynamics of

social interaction and social conditions. The three types of descriptive value are realised
source of interpretation.
through the use of vocabulary and grammar. However, one cannot directly extrapolate from the formal features
of a text to these structural effects on the constitution of a society. The relationship between text and social
structures is mediated largely through discourse because the values of textual features become real only when
they are embedded in social interactions, where texts are produced and interpreted against a background of
schema. Schema are usefully defined by Henry Widdowson as cognitive constructs or configurations of
knowledge which we place over events so as to bring them into alignment with familiar patterns of experience
and belief. They therefore serve as devices for categorising and arranging in-formation so that it can be
interpreted and retained.2 These discursive processes and their dependence on schematic knowledge are the
concern of the second analytical level-interpretation .
Interpretation is concerned with

participants processes of text production and text assessment . However,
within the limits of this study, the focus is placed upon the latter in order to explore issues of social power.
Interpretations are generated primarily through a combination of the texts content and the interpreters
particular schematic knowledge. Formal features of the text are thecueswhich activate elements of
interpreters schemata. Interpretations are generated through the dialectical interplay ofcuesand schemata.
There are three dimensions of interpretation: textual, intertextual, and contextual. The textual dimension
consists of phonology~ grammar, vocabulary, semantics, and pragmatics. The intertextual dimension relates
the text to a historical series of texts. Therefore, intertextual interpretation is a matter of deciding which textual
series a particular text belongs to, and what can be taken as interpretative common ground for participant
readers. Contextual interpretation refers to what has previously described as situational, institutional, and social
context as societal determinants of a text. Broadly, contextual interpretation can be formulated into four major
questions: What is going on (contents)?; Who is involved (subjects)?; In what relations (relations)?; and
What is the role of language (connections)?The stage of interpretation breaks-open received delusions of
autonomy on the part of subjects in discourse. It renders explicit what, for many readers, is generally implicit:
the dependence of discursive practice on the unexplicated schematic knowledge often presented in the form of
common-sense assumptions and self evidenttruths. However, interpretation alone does not explain the
relations of power and domination, and the ideologies built into these assumptions illuminate the way that
discursive practice forms a site of social struggle. Therefore, a further analytical level needs to be introduced;
that of explanation. Explanation is a portrayal of discourse as part of a social process, as a social practice,
showing how it is determined by social structures, and what reproductive effects discourses can cumulatively
Two dimensions will be

examined closely in the present study: the reproduction of discourse
and the relations of power. When aspects of schematic knowledge are
drawn upon as interpretative procedures in the production and
interpretation of texts, they are thereby reproduced. Reproduction is
generally an unintended and unconscious effect of production and
interpretation. It connects the stages of interpretation and explanation .
have on those structures, sustaining them or changing them.3
The former is concerned with how schematic knowledge is drawn upon in processing discourse, and the latter
with the social constitution and change of schematic knowledge, including their reproduction in discourse
practice. In this sense, social determinations and effects are mediated by schematic knowledge in a dialectic
relationship between social structures and schematic knowledge through discourse. Thus, social structures
shape schematic knowledge, which in turn shape discourse; and discourse sustains or changes schematic
social structures are embedded in relations of power and social processes and practices are
sites of social struggle. Therefore, explanation is a matter of assessing a discourse as part of
knowledge, which in turn sustains or changes social structures. However,
processes of social struggle within a matrix of power relations. <CONTINUED> Power relations determine
discourses and these relations are themselves the outcome of struggles, and are established and naturalised by
power elites. The focus upon social determination places emphasis on the past; on the results of past struggle.
Any discourse will have determinants and effects that operate in all three analytical dimensions and at all three
analytical levels. In applying this analytical framework, a discourse is to be evaluated multi-dimensionally
according to the situational, institutional, and social dimensions and descriptive, interpretive, and explanatory
levels of analysis. This study also seeks to relate this methodological matrix to the more specific consideration
of political discourse advanced by William Connolly in his 1974 study entitled The Terms of Political Discourse.4
This early study in the field usefully addressed the relationship of language, meaning. political thought, and
action. Connolly argued that the terms of political discourse set the frame within which political thought and
From this basic assumption, a convincing argument is made

that [t]he language of politics is not a neutral medium that conveys
ideas independently formed; it is an institutionalised structure of
meanings that channels political thought and action in certain
directions.6 Specifically, this work defined the terms of political discourse in three ways: as the
action proceed.5
vocabulary commonly employed in political thought and action; as the ways in which the meanings
conventionally embodied in that vocabulary set the frame for political reflection by establishing criteria to be
met before an event or act can be said to fall within the ambit of a given concept; and asuthe judgements of
commitments that are conventionally sanctioned when these critena are met.7
Only by examining
these terms can thetacit judgements embedded in the language of
politics be made explicit and subject to critical assessment. 8
Discourse reproduces itself in social reality and must be dealt

with as the fundamental substance of politics.
Renwick and Qing 99
(Neel, Centre for Asia Pacific Studies, and Cao, senior lecturer in chinese studies,
Chinas Political Discourse Towards the 21st Century: Victimhood, Identity, and
Political Power, East Asia Studies, Winter, 1999, pg. 116-120)
Explanation is a portrayal of discourse as part of a social pro cess, as a

social practice, showing how it is determined by social structures, and
what reproductive effects discourses can cumulatively have on those
structures, sustaining them or changing them.13 Two dimensions will be examined
closely in the present study: the reproduction of discourse and the relations of power. When aspects of
schematic knowledge are drawn upon as interpretative procedures in the production and interpretation of texts,
they are thereby reproduced.
Reproduction is generally an unintended and unconscious effect of production and interpretation. It connects the stages of
interpretation and explanation. The former is concerned with how schematic knowledge is
drawn upon in processing discourse, and the latter with the social constitution and change of schematic knowledge, including their reproduction in discourse practice. In this sense, social determinations and effects are
mediated by schematic knowledge in a dialectic relationship between social structures and schematic
knowledge through discourse. Thus,
social structures shape schematic knowledge,

which in turn shape discourse; and discourse sustains or changes
schematic knowledge, which in turn sustains or changes social
structures. However, social structures are embedded in relations of
power and social processes and practices are sites of social struggle .
Therefore, explanation is a matter of assessing a discourse as part of
processes of social struggle within a matrix of power relations. Power
relations determine discourses and these relations are themselves the outcome of struggles, and are
established and naturalised by power elites. The focus upon social determination places emphasis on the past;
on the results of past struggle. Any discourse will have determinants and effects that operate m all three
analytical dimensions and at all three analytical levels. In applying this analytical framework, a discourse is to
be evaluated multi-dimensionally according to the situational, institutional, and social dimensions and
descriptive, interpretive, and explanatory levels of analysis. This study also seeks to relate this methodological
matrix to the more specific consideration of political discourse advanced by William Connolly in his 1974 study
entitled The Terms of Political Discourse.4 This early study in the field usefully addressed the relationship of
language, meanin& political thought, and action. Connolly argued that the terms of political discourse set the
frame within which political thought and action proceed.15 From this basic assumption, a convincing argument
The language of politics is not a neutral medium that conveys

ideas independently formed; it is an institutionalised structure of
meanings that channels political thought and action in certain
directions.6 Specifically, this work defined the terms of political discourse in three ways: as the
is made that
vocabulary commonly employed in political thought and action; as the ways in which the meanings
conventionally embodied in that vocabulary set the frame for political reflection by establishing criteria to be
met before an event or act can be said to fall within the ambit of a given concept; and asthe judgements of
commitments that are conventionally sanctioned when these critena are met.17 Only by examining these
terms can thetacit judgements embedded in the language of politics be made explicit and subject to critical
assessment.8
2NC Answers
2NC AT: Perm

Perm failscant acknowledge alternative ways of
understanding China
It may be the case that there is nothing inherently wrong with perceiving others
through one's own subjective lens. Yet, what is problematic with mainstream U.S.
China watchers is that they refuse to acknowledge the legitimacy of the inherent
fluidity of Chinese identity and subjectivity and try instead to fix its ambiguity as
absolute difference from "us," a kind of certainty that denotes nothing but
otherness and threats. As a result, it becomes difficult to find a legitimate space
for alternative ways of understanding an inherently volatile, amorphous China
(65) or to recognize that China's future trajectory in global politics is contingent
essentially on how "we" in the United States and the West in general want to see it
as well as on how the Chinese choose to shape it. (66) Indeed, discourses of "us"
and "them" are always closely linked to how "we" as "what we are" deal with "them"
as "what they are" in the practical realm. This is exactly how the discursive strategy
of perceiving China as a threatening other should be understood, a point addressed
in the following section, which explores some of the practical dimension of this
discursive strategy in the containment perspectives and hegemonic ambitions of
U.S. foreign policy.
Masking DA - the state instrumentalizes the alternative which

only masks the plans violent governmentalitythe
permutation is just a faade of change that does nothing to
change the discursive framing of security
Laura Sjoberg 13, Department of Political Science, University of Florida ,
Gainesville The paradox of security cosmopolitanism?, Critical Studies on Security,
1:1, 29-34
Burke suggests that security cosmopolitanism rejects a procedural faith in strongly post-Westphalian
forms of government and democracy (p. 17) and reiterates that such an approach includes no
automatic faith in any one institutional design (p. 24). This seems to move away from one of the
Particularly,
prominent critiques of, in Anna Agathangelou and Lings (2009) words, the neoliberal imperium, as reliant on
Western, liberal notions of governance to the detriment of those on whom such a form of government is imposed.
Burke clearly problematizes this imposition, framing many of the serious problems in global politics as a result of
choices that create destructive dynamics and constraints (p. 15) at least in part by Western, liberal governments
At the same time, the solution seems to be

clearly situated within the discursive framework of the problem . Burke suggests
characterizing modernity as culpable for insecurity.
that there should be a primary concern for effectiveness, equality, fairness, and justice not for states, per se, but
for human beings, and the global biosphere (p. 24). Unless the only problem with modernity is the postWestphalian structure of the state (which this approach does not eschew, but claims not to privilege), then this
statement of values might entrench the problem. Many of the ideas of equality, fairness, and justice that come to
mind with the (somewhat rehearsed) use of those words in progressive politics are inseparable from an ethos of
enlightenment modernity.
This may be problematic on a number of levels. First,
it may fail to interrupt
the series of choices that
Burke suggests produce a cycle of insecurity. Second, it may fold

back onto itself in the recommendations that security cosmopolitanism produces. This especially concerned me in
he places greater faith in the ethical,

legal suppression of dangerous processes and actions than in formalistic or
procedural solutions (p. 24). It seems to me that there is a good argument that suppression is itself a
dangerous process, yet Burkes framework does not really include a
mechanism for internal critique. Another problem that seems to confound security
Burkes discussion of how to end dangerous processes, where
normative, and
cosmopolitanism is evaluating the relationships between power, governance, and governmentality. There are
certainly several ways in which Burke uses a notion of the state that distinguishes security cosmopolitanism from
the mainstream neoliberal literature. For example, he characterizes the state as an entity whose national survival
depends on its global participation, obligations, and depen- dencies, (citing Burke 2013a, 5). This view of the state
sees it as not only survival-seeking (in the neo-neo synthesis sense) but also dependent on its positive interactions
with other states for survival. Burkes approach to government/governance initially appears to be global rather than
state-based, another potentially transformative move. For example, he sees the job of security cosmopolitanism as
to theorize and defend norms for the responsible conduct and conceptualization of global security governance (p.
21). At the same time, later in the article, Burke suggests entrenching the current structure of the state. His
practical approach of looking for the solidarity of the governing with the governed seems to simultaneously
interrogate the current power structures and reify them. Burke says: Such a solidarity of the governed that
engages in a practical interrogation of power ought to be a significant feature of security cosmopolitanism. At the
same time, however, security cosmopolitanism must be concerned with improving the global governance of
This attachment to the improvement of existing

structures of governance seems to be at the heart of what I see as the failure of
the radical potential in the idea of security cosmopolitanism. When discussing how the
security by elites and experts. (p. 21)
power dynamics between the elite and the subordinated might change, Burke suggests that voluntary renunciation
of the privileges and powers of both state and corporate sovereignty will no doubt be a necessary feature of such
Relying on the voluntary renunciation of power by the powerful seems

both unrealistic and not particularly theoretically innovative. This seems to be at
the center of a paradox inherent in security cosmopolitanism: Faith in the Western
liberal state is insidious, but the Western liberal state does not have to be.
Modernity causes insecurity, but need not be discarded fully. Some universalizations are
dangerous, others are benign. Dangerous processes must be stopped, even if by dangerous
processes. Moral entrepreneurship is the key, but ther e is no clear foundation for what counts as moral. The
an order (p. 25).
security cosmopolitanism critique is inspired by consequentialism, but lacks deontological foundations despite
deontological implications. Burke calls for (and indeed demands) to take responsibility for it (p. 23) in terms of
both formal and moral accountability (p. 24). In so doing, he endorses (Booths vision of) moral progress (p. 25),
Security
cosmopolitanism, then, is a proclamation for radical change that is initially stalled by
its internal contradictions and further handicapped by its lack of capacity to enact
the very sort of radical change Burke sees it as fundamental to righting the wrongs he sees in the world.
The result seems to be the (potential) reification of existing
governments/governmentality through what essentially appears to be a nonanthropocentric human security which cannot be clearly distinguished from current
notions of human security (p. 15). It appears to remain top-down and without clear
moral foundation while claiming significant improvement over existing approaches.
despite understanding the insidious deployment of various notions of moral progress by others.
This appearance/seduction of improvement without real promise for

change might be more insidious than the nihilism of which many post-structuralists are
accused, as it seductively appears to solve a problem it does not solve.
Alt is mutually exclusive any advocacy that endorses security

logic undermines the alt
Neocleous 08
[Mark Neocleous, Professor of the Critique of Political Economy; Head of Department
of Politics & History Brunel University, Critique of Security, 2008 185-186, book]
The only way out of such a dilemma, to escape the fetish, is perhaps to eschew the logic of security
altogether - to reject it as so ideologically loaded in favour of the state that any real
political thought other than the authoritarian and reactionary should be pressed to
give it up. That is clearly something that can not be achieved within the limits of bourgeois thought and thus
could never even begin to be imagined by the security intellectual. It is also something that the
constant iteration of the refrain 'this is an insecure world' and reiteration of one
fear, anxiety and insecurity after another will also make it hard to do. But it is something
that the critique of security suggests we may have to consider if we want a political
way out of the impasse of security. This impasse exists because security has now become so allencompassing that it marginalises all else, most notably the constructive conflicts, debates and discussions that
The constant prioritising of a mythical security as a political end - as

the political end constitutes a rejection of politics in any meaningful sense of the
term. That is, as a mode of action in which differences can be articulated, in which the conflicts and
struggles that arise from such differences can be fought for and negotiated, in which
animate political life.
people might come to believe that another world is possible - that they might transform the world and in turn be
Security politics simply removes this; worse, it remoeves it while

purportedly addressing it. In so doing it suppresses all issues of power and turns political questions into
transformed.
debates about the most efficient way to achieve 'security', despite the fact that we are never quite told - never
could be told - what might count as having achieved it. Security politics is, in this sense, an anti-politics,"'
dominating political discourse in much the same manner as the security state tries to dominate human beings,
reinforcing security fetishism and the monopolistic character of security on the political imagination. We therefore
need to get beyond security politics, not add yet more 'sectors' to it in a way that simply expands the scope of the
state and legitimises state intervention in yet more and more areas of our lives. Simon Dalby reports a personal
communication with Michael Williams, co-editor of the important text Critical Security Studies, in which the latter
asks: if you take away security, what do you put in the hole that's left behind? But I'm inclined to agree with Dalby:
The mistake has been to think that there is a hole and that this
hole needs to be filled with a new vision or revision of security in which it is remapped or civilised or gendered or humanised or expanded or whatever. All of
these ultimately remain within the statist political imaginary, and consequently end up
maybe there is no hole."'
reaffirming the state as the terrain of modern politics, the grounds of security. The real task is not to fill the
supposed hole with yet another vision of security, but to fight for an alternative political language which takes us
beyond the narrow horizon of bourgeois security and which therefore does not constantly throw us into the arms of
the state. That's the point of critical politics: to develop a new political language more adequate to the kind of
society we want. Thus while much of what I have said here has been of a negative order, part of the tradition of
critical theory is that the negative may be as significant as the positive in setting thought on new paths. For if
security really is the supreme concept of bourgeois society and the fundamental thematic of liberalism, then to
keep harping on about insecurity and to keep demanding 'more security' (while meekly hoping that this increased
security doesn't damage our liberty) is to blind ourselves to the possibility of building real alternatives to the
To situate ourselves against security politics

would allow us to circumvent the debilitating effect achieved through the constant
securitising of social and political issues, debilitating in the sense that 'security'
authoritarian tendencies in contemporary politics.
helps consolidate the power of the existing forms of social domination and justifies
the short-circuiting of even the most democratic forms . It would also allow us to forge another
kind of politics centred on a different conception of the good. We need a new way of thinking and
talking about social being and politics that moves us beyond security. This would perhaps
be emancipatory in the true sense of the word. What this might mean, precisely, must be open to debate. But it
it requires
recognising that security is not the same as solidarity; it requires accepting that
insecurity is part of the human condition, and thus giving up the search for the
certainty of security and instead learning to tolerate the uncertainties, ambiguities
and 'insecurities' that come with being human; it requires accepting that
'securitizing' an issue does not mean dealing with it politically, but bracketing it out
and handing it to the state; it requires us to be brave enough to return the gift."
certainly requires recognising that security is an illusion that has forgotten it is an illusion;
2NC AT: Were Cooperation

Their approach to China makes cooperation impossible
anything China does will never be enough to satisfy US fears
their framing makes their plan fail
Given the danger and high stakes involved, some may wonder why China did not
simply cooperate so that there would be no need for U.S. "containment." To some extent, China has
been cooperative. For example, Beijing was at pains to calm a disgruntled Chinese
public by explaining that the U.S. "sorry" letter issued at the end of the spy-plane incident was a
genuine "apology," with U.S. officials openly rejecting that interpretation. On the Taiwan question, China has
dropped many of its previous demands (such as "one China" being defined as the People's Republic).
As to the South China Sea, China has allowed the ASEAN Regional Forum to seek a
negotiated solution to the Spratly Islands dispute and also agreed to join the Philippines as
cochairs of the working group on confidence-building measures. (89) In January 2002, China chose to play down an
incident that a presidential jet outfitted in the United States had been crammed with sophisticated satellite-
it, "illustrates the depth of China's

current commitment to cultivating better relations with the United States." (90) Also,
over the years, China has ratified a number of key nonproliferation treaties and pledged
not to assist countries in developing missiles with ranges that exceed the limits
established under the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR ). More recently, China
has collaborated with the United States in the war on terrorism, including issuing new
operated bugs, a decision that, as the New York Times puts
regulations to restrict the export of missile technology to countries usually accused by the United States of aiding
terrorists. Indeed, as some have argued,
by any reasonable measure China is now more

responsible in international affairs than at any time since 1949. (91) And yet, the
real problem is that, so long as the United States continues to stake its
self-identity on the realization of absolute security, no amount of Chinese
cooperation would be enough. For instance, Iain Johnston views the constructive
development of China's arms-control policy as a kind of "realpolitik adaptation,"
rather than "genuine learning." (92) From this perspective, however China has
changed, it would remain a fundamentally threatening other , which the United
States cannot live with but has to take full control of .
2NC AT: Realism

REALISM DOESNT LIMIT WAR- ITS THE ROOT CAUSE
Burke 07
(Anthony, Senior Lecturer in Politics and International Relations at UNSW, Sydney,
Ontologies of War: Violence, Existence and Reason, Theory & Event, Volume 10,
Issue 2, 2007, pMUSE, cheek)
I was motivated to begin the larger project from which this essay derives by a number of concerns. I felt that
the available critical, interpretive or performative languages of war -realist and liberal international relations theories, just war theories, and
various Clausewitzian derivations of strategy -- failed us, because they
either perform or refuse to place under suspicion the underlying
political ontologies that I have sought to unmask and question here. Many
realists have quite nuanced and critical attitudes to the use of force, but ultimately affirm
strategic thought and remain embedded within the existential
framework of the nation-state. Both liberal internationalist and just war
doctrines seek mainly to improve the accountability of decision-making
in security affairs and to limit some of the worst moral enormities of
war, but (apart from the more radical versions of cosmopolitanism) they fail to question the
ontological claims of political community or strategic theory.82
2NC AT: Threats real

STATE SECURITY IS A PLOY THAT CONJURES NON-EXISTENT
SCENARIOS TO JUSTIFY STATE POWER
Neocleous 2003
[Mark, Teaches politics @ Brunel, Imagining the state, Philadelphia: Open University
Press, 107-8//uwyo-ajl]
The state system and the statist political imaginary together use
terrorism to effect a political rationalization of violence under the firm
control of the state. In this context, the declaration of a war on terrorism by the US state and its allies
in 2001 proves nothing other than the state's own misunderstanding of the world it has created. (And note that
such a declaration was immediately expanded to include designated states which could then properly be confronted.) The standard Left-liberal critique of the category `terrorism' is to point to the lack of any internationally
agreed definition of the term (the UN, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization - NATO - and the European Union EU - have all struggled to come up with an acceptable definition); or to point to the contradiction involved in the
once denigrated `terrorist' being feted as `world statesman' (Mandela), or to the once-celebrated `freedom
fighter' being castigated as `terrorist' (Bin Laden); or, finally, to point to the hypocrisy of western liberal
democracies training and funding armed rebellions in some parts of the globe while objecting to them
elsewhere. While pertinent, these arguments miss the central point, which is that terrorism is defined according
States define terrorism

according to their own interests, and the predominant interests are necessarily those of the hegemonic forces. This then consolidates the state's claim
to a monopoly of violence: terrorism will only end, says the state, when
you all fully obey the demand to use violence only when we say so. As
such, terrorism turns out to be the lifeblood of state terror . Such obedience
as demanded by the state has traditionally been offered in exchange for
protection. The state attempts to `set before mens eyes the mutu- all Relation between Protection and
to the demands of the raison d'Etat of hegemonic powers.
Obedience', as Hobbes puts it.34 This mutual relation has remained a key trope throughout western thought
concerning the state. But what is meant by `protection'? Charles Tilly has noted that the word sounds two
contrasting tones. One is comforting, calling up images of a friendly shelter against danger and a form of
security or safety provided by a powerful friend, a large insurance policy, a sturdy roof or a bulwark against
evoking the racket in which a local strong man

forces merchants to pay tribute in order to avoid damage . In the second
scenario, of course, the dangers are often imaginary: the strong man encourages the
terrorism. The other, however, is more ominous,
imagination of danger and may even threaten the danger himself in order to prove that it really does exist. The
state's provision of protection plays on the first meaning of the term - recall how crucial the ideas of `security'
and `welfare' are to statecraft - but the state could equally be said to be providing `protection' in the second
To the extent that the threats against which a given

government protects its citizens are imaginary or are consequences of
its own activities, the government has organized a protection racket.
Since governments themselves commonly simulate, stimulate, or even fabricate
threats of external war and since the repressive and extractive activities of governments often
sense of the term:
constitute the largest current threats to the livelihoods of their own citizens, many governments operate in
essentially the same way as racketeers. ~ The state, in other words, is a protection racket - and like all
protection rackets it is a process of domination in which the `protected' become evermore subordinated to the
`protector'. But this begs a question: who is to be protected? Better still: who is not to be protected? And what
about those who appear to be `protected' by no state at all?
2NC AT: Util

UTILITARIAN ENFRAMING COUPLED WITH THE DRIVE FOR
SECURITY CAUSES A TOTALIZING METAPHYSICAL VIOLENCE
Burke in 2007
(Anthony, Senior Lecturer in Politics and International Relations at UNSW, Sydney,
Ontologies of War: Violence, Existence and Reason, Theory & Event, Volume 10,
Issue 2, 2007, pMUSE, cheek)
This essay describes firstly the ontology of the national security state
and secondly
the rationalist ontology of strategy (by way of the geopolitical thought of Henry Kissinger),
showing how they crystallise into a mutually reinforcing system of
support and justification, especially in the thought of Clausewitz. This creates both a
profound ethical and pragmatic problem. The ethical problem arises
because of their militaristic force -- they embody and reinforce a norm of
war -- and because they enact what Martin Heidegger calls an 'enframing'
image of technology and being in which humans are merely utilitarian
instruments for use, control and destruction, and force -- in the words of one
famous Cold War strategist -- can be thought of as a 'power to hurt'.19 The
pragmatic problem arises because force so often produces neither the linear
#
(by way of the political philosophy of Thomas Hobbes, Carl Schmitt and G. W. F. Hegel)
system of effects imagined in strategic theory nor anything we could meaningfully call security, but rather turns
in upon itself in a nihilistic spiral of pain and destruction . In the era of a 'war on terror'
dominantly conceived in Schmittian and Clausewitzian terms,20 the arguments of Hannah Arendt (that
violence collapses ends into means) and Emmanuel Levinas (that 'every war
employs arms that turn against those that wield them' ) take on added
significance. Neither, however, explored what occurs when war and being are made to
coincide, other than Levinas' intriguing comment that in war persons 'play roles in which they no longer
recognises themselves, making them betray not only commitments but their own substance'. 21 #
What
I am trying to describe in this essay is a complex relation between, and
interweaving of, epistemology and ontology. But it is not my view that these are distinct
modes of knowledge or levels of truth, because in the social field named by security,
statecraft and violence they are made to blur together, continually
referring back on each other, like charges darting between electrodes. Rather they are related
systems of knowledge with particular systemic roles and intensities of claim about truth, political being and
Positivistic or scientific claims to epistemological truth

supply an air of predictability and reliability to policy and political
action, which in turn support larger ontological claims to national being
and purpose, drawing them into a common horizon of certainty that is
one of the central features of past-Cartesian modernity . Here it may be
useful to see ontology as a more totalising and metaphysical set of
claims about truth, and epistemology as more pragmatic and
instrumental; but while a distinction between epistemology (knowledge as
technique) and ontology (knowledge as being) has analytical value, it tends to break
down in action.
political necessity.
CALCULATION RENDERS LIFE MEANINGLESS:

Dillon 99
[Political Theory, Another Justice April 164-165]
Quite the reverse. The subject was never a firm foundation for justice, much less a hospitable vehicle for the reception of the call of another
Justice. It was never in possession of that self-possession which was supposed to secure the certainty of itself, of a self-possession that would
enable it ultimately to adjudicate everything. The very indexicality required of sovereign subjectivity gave rise rather to a commensurability
much more amenable to the expendability required of the political and material economies of mass societies than it did to the singular,
invaluable, and uncanny uniqueness of the self. The value of the subject became the standard unit of currency for the
political arithmetic of States and the political economies of capitalism.34 They trade in it still to
devastating global effect. The technologisation of the political has become manifest and global. Economies
of evaluation necessarily require calculability.35 Thus no valuation without mensuration and no mensuration
without indexation. Once rendered calculable, however, units of account are necessarily submissible not only to valuation but also, of course,
to devaluation. Devaluation, logically, can extend to the point of counting as nothing. Hence, no mensuration without
demensuration either. There
is nothing abstract about this: the declension of economies of value leads to the
zero point of holocaust. However liberating and emancipating systems of valuerightsmay claim to be, for example, they run the
risk of counting out the invaluable. Counted out, the invaluable may then lose its purchase on life. Here with, then, the
necessity of championing the invaluable itself. For we must never forget that, we are dealing always with whatever exceeds measure.36
But how does that necessity present itself? Another Justice answers: as the surplus of the duty to answer to the claim of Justice over rights.
That duty, as with the advent of another Justice, is integral to the lack constitutive of the human way of being. The event of this lack is not a
negative experience. Rather, it is an encounter with a reserve charged with possibility. As possibility, it is that which enables life to be lived
in excess without the overdose of actuality.37 What this also means is that the human is not decided. It is precisely undecidable.
Undecidability means being in a position of having to decide without having already been fully determined and without being capable of
bringing an end to the requirement for decision.

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1NC

The logic of security makes violence inevitable, and is the root

war is not an enduring

the challenge is posed not merely by a

on another until a course of action, however violent or dangerous,

Large sections of modern societies -- especially

the modern ontologies of war efface agency, causality and

even in the face of the anonymous power of discourse to

When we consider the problem of

Do we see our actions within an instrumental, amoral

The alternative is to reject the security discourse of the 1ac.

such a dilemma, to escape the fetish, is

the constant iteration of the

the negative may be as significant as the positive in setting

it requires accepting that insecurity is

Link China Threat Discourse

For many, also

the outside world has good reason to

it seems there has been enough reason and

Attempts to know China through expert discourse are locked in

persistence of nationalism, and embodies an alternative to Western and especially

IR uses Chinas GDP, industrial output, bilateral trade, foreign

Conventional assessments of Chinese economic power rely heavily on data about

Chinas political leaders are using markets to create wealth that

The issues are fundamental: Will

They also urge that China's involvement in international institutions

Link Expert Knowledge

neither China's capabilities nor intentions really matter. Rather,

This "neocontainment" policy has been echoed in

Containing China is of course not

This is not to imply that the kind of

Link Power Shift

The need to rethink power is at the core of building a new type of

West East power-shift theories ignore the slippery concept

study of modern Chinese power remains largely

informed by Foucaults notion of disciplinary power as well as the

Link State Based IR

State-centric, resource-based conceptions of power are

The early twenty-first century, the argument goes, is witnessing a

State-centric, quantitative, zero-sum thinking on power results

in the wide (if only implicit) use of the

The aff cant solve their [heg] advantagetransnational

although the state does

With the acceleration of globalization and

a states relational power is not

Impact Structural Violence

power and interest have the effects they do in virtue of the

American discourses of China are

Americans look at China as though staring at the inkblots of a Rorschach test,

American images of China whether enduring or not have been manufactured

The dominance of the White American population, he

China represents a cultural inferior of the United States . Such

American images of China have often been

discourse is a site from which power can be challenged and

hand by advancing an opinion or point of view which is disguised as truth or

Pierterse describes racism as the psychology of

US China policy has

This is not to suggest that danger is non-material. Indeed,

Impact Turns War

Turns Case China Threat Fails

Because of the complexity of the 21st century global economy,

the very national category of economic power is increasingly elusive in

Alternative Interrogation Key