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LD Military Aid Starter Set

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Table of Contents

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Table of Contents
Military Assistance Starter Set
LD Military Aid Starter Set ....................................................................................................................................................................... 1

Table of Contents .................................................................................................................................................................................... 2

Table of Contents.......................................................................................................................................................................... 3

Explanation of Arguments .................................................................................................................................................................. 7

Resolution ..................................................................................................................................................................................... 8

Aff Explanation ............................................................................................................................................................................. 9

Neg Explanation .......................................................................................................................................................................... 10

Saudi Arabia Aff ..................................................................................................................................................................................... 11

1ACs ................................................................................................................................................................................................. 12

Affirmation ................................................................................................................................................................................. 13

Human Rights Credibility – 1AC .................................................................................................................................................. 32

Democracy Promotion – 1AC ...................................................................................................................................................... 36

***Ethics Advantage – 1AC ........................................................................................................................................................ 14

Ethics Advantage .............................................................................................................................................................................. 42

Utilitarianism Bad – 2NC ............................................................................................................................................................. 44

Consequences Bad – 2AC ............................................................................................................................................................ 48

Structural Violence First – 2AC ................................................................................................................................................... 54

Root Cause – 2AC ........................................................................................................................................................................ 56

K of Middle East War – 2AC ........................................................................................................................................................ 57

No War – 2AC ............................................................................................................................................................................. 61

AT: Realism – 2AC ....................................................................................................................................................................... 64

AT: Life First ................................................................................................................................................................................ 67

AT: Predictions – 2AC .................................................................................................................................................................. 69

AT: Nuclear Winter ..................................................................................................................................................................... 72

Human Rights Credibility Advantage ................................................................................................................................................ 78

Support Undermines Human Rights – 2AC ................................................................................................................................. 79

HR War Impact – 1AC ................................................................................................................................................................. 81

HR War Impact – 2AC ................................................................................................................................................................. 83

HR Econ Impact – 1AC ................................................................................................................................................................ 85

HR K2 Econ – 2AC ....................................................................................................................................................................... 87

HR K2 Trade – 1AC .......................................................................................................................... Error! Bookmark not defined.

HR K2 Trade – 2AC .......................................................................................................................... Error! Bookmark not defined.

HR K2 Solve Terror – 2AC ............................................................................................................................................................ 89

HR K2 Solve Failed States – 1AC .................................................................................................................................................. 92

HR Solves Warming – 1AC............................................................................................................... Error! Bookmark not defined.

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Democracy Promotion Advantage ................................................................................................................................................... 96

Aid Undermines Demo Promo – 2AC .......................................................................................................................................... 97

Democracy Promotion Impact Calc – 2AC .................................................................................................................................. 99

Africa – 2AC .............................................................................................................................................................................. 101

Backsliding Causes War – 2AC .................................................................................................................................................. 104

Disease – 2AC ........................................................................................................................................................................... 107

Environment – 2AC ................................................................................................................................................................... 109

Promotion Good – 2AC ............................................................................................................................................................. 111

Middle East/Terrorism – 2AC .................................................................................................................................................... 114

Trade – 2AC .............................................................................................................................................................................. 118

AT: Mansfield/Snyder – 1AR ..................................................................................................................................................... 119

Answers to Saudi Military Aid Good ............................................................................................................................................... 122

Military Aid Useless – 2AC ........................................................................................................................................................ 123

Military Aid Doesn’t Solve Yemen Instability/Iran – 2AC .......................................................................................................... 126

AT: Military Assistance K2 US Influence in Saudi Arabia ........................................................................................................... 128

AT: Saudi Arabia Needs the Weapons for Security ................................................................................................................... 129

AT: Saudi Will go to Russia/China ............................................................................................................................................. 130

US Military Presence Solves the Impact – 2AC.......................................................................................................................... 131

No Middle East War – 2AC ........................................................................................................................................................ 132

Neg Saudi Arabia ................................................................................................................................................................................. 137

Saudi Alliance Good DA .................................................................................................................................................................. 138

Military Assistance to Saudi Good – 1NC .................................................................................................................................. 139

Impact Overview – 2NC ............................................................................................................................................................ 148

AT: Middle East War Impact Defense ....................................................................................................................................... 150

Saudi K2 US Defense Base – 2NC .............................................................................................................................................. 153

Foreign Sales Key ...................................................................................................................................................................... 155

Exports Key – 2NC ..................................................................................................................................................................... 156

Impact Calc – 2NC ..................................................................................................................................................................... 157

Arms Sales -> Econ – 2NC ......................................................................................................................................................... 162

Industrial Base -> Heg – 2NC ..................................................................................................................................................... 163

Military Aid K2 Containing Iran – 2NC ....................................................................................................................................... 164

Containing Iran K2 Prevent War – 2NC ..................................................................................................................................... 166

China Fill in Bad – 2NC .............................................................................................................................................................. 168

Democracy Promotion Bad ............................................................................................................................................................
169

Africa War – 1NC ..................................................................................................................................................................... 170

Africa War – 2NC ..................................................................................................................................................................... 173

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Disease – 1NC .......................................................................................................................................................................... 176

Disease – 2NC .......................................................................................................................................................................... 178

Enviro – 1NC ............................................................................................................................................................................ 181

Enviro – 2NC ............................................................................................................................................................................ 182

Promotion Bad – 1NC .............................................................................................................................................................. 184

Promotion Bad – 2NC ............................................................................................................................................................... 187

Terrorism – 1NC ...................................................................................................................................................................... 193

Terrorism – 2NC ...................................................................................................................................................................... 195

A2: Demo -> Trade .................................................................................................................................................................. 198

Democracy Promotion Advantage Answers ................................................................................................................................... 200

Plan doesn’t solve – 1NC .......................................................................................................................................................... 201

Plan doesn’t solve – 2NC .......................................................................................................................................................... 202

Promotion fails – 1NC ............................................................................................................................................................... 203

Promotion fails – 2NC ............................................................................................................................................................... 204

Alt cause – Egypt – 1NC ............................................................................................................................................................ 207

Alt cause – funding – 1NC ......................................................................................................................................................... 208

Alt cause – funding – 2NC ......................................................................................................................................................... 209

AT: Democracy impact - 1NC ................................................................................................................................................... 211

AT: Democracy impact – 2NC ................................................................................................................................................... 212

Human Rights Credibility Advantage Answers ............................................................................................................................... 215

HR Cred Fails – 1NC .................................................................................................................................................................. 216

HR Cred Fails – 2NC .................................................................................................................................................................. 219

I-law fails – 1NC ........................................................................................................................................................................ 222

I-law Fails – 2NC ........................................................................................................................................................................ 225

Trump Thumper – 1NC ............................................................................................................................................................. 233

Trump Thumper – 2NC ............................................................................................................................................................. 236

Other Human Right Specific Thumpers ..................................................................................................................................... 245

Multilat Fails – 1NC ................................................................................................................................................................... 253

Multilat Fails – 2NC ................................................................................................................................................................... 255

No IHR Enforcement – 2NC ....................................................................................................................................................... 266

2NC – Thumper - Drones T/Allies .............................................................................................................................................. 269

Ethics Advantage ............................................................................................................................................................................ 271
Nuclear War = Extinction – 1NC ................................................................................................................................................ 275

Nuclear War Outweighs the Aff – 1NC ...................................................................................................................................... 276

Util – 1NC .................................................................................................................................................................................. 277

Util – 2NC .................................................................................................................................................................................. 279

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Realism True – 1NC ................................................................................................................................................................... 281

War Turns Structural Violence – 1NC........................................................................................................................................ 284

No Root Cause of War – 1NC .................................................................................................................................................... 285

Extinction Possible – 1NC .......................................................................................................................................................... 287

AT: Predictions k – 1NC ............................................................................................................................................................. 288

AT: predictions K – 2NC ............................................................................................................................................................ 289

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Explanation of Arguments

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Resolution
Resolved: The United States ought not provide military aid to authoritarian
regimes.

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Aff Explanation
The affirmative can choose between three different contentions presented here
about why military aid to authoritarian regimes is bad.

The first contention in this file is just an ethical contention about the efficacy of
providing military aid to authoritarian regimes. These are governments that
utilize the military aid from the United States to repress its populace. These
governments deny individuals civil liberties and justify the existence of brutal
military regimes, and the United States supports them due to potential military
alliances. This form of structural violence should be ceased and needs to be
evaluated before any other issues. The contention here, specifically discusses
how military aid to Saudi Arabia has been utilized to expand the war in Yemen
and has created a humanitarian crisis that needs to be ceased.

Contention two is about Human Rights credibility. This argument is that the US
attempts to promote a standard of human rights abroad. This standard cannot
(as argued by the aff) be taken as credible or legitimate if the United States
continues to give aid to authoritarian regimes that repress individual freedom
and liberties. In the Saudi Arabia context, think about how we support a regime
that censors speech, and denies cetain liberties to the press. The US cannot
effectively tell other nations to act in a certain manner, if we support a regime
that does the same things we are telling other nations, like China, not to do.

The third contention to choose from is about democracy promotion. This has a
similar story as the HR contention, which is about how the US attempts to
promote democracy as a desirable model of governance. That push is made
ineffective if the US legitimizes authoritarian regimes by providing them with
military aid. That is bad because promoting democracy is good.

If you were choosing which contentions to read, you should not read the ethics
advantage and one of the other advantages. Only read the ethics contention on
its own, since that contention has some components that would contradict with
the other two contentions.

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Neg Explanation
In this starter set, the main piece of neg offense is about how military assistance
to Saudi Arabia is good. Military aid cements the military alliance between the
two countries. This alliance is necessary to counter growing Iranian influence in
the region, it helps contain ISIS, and if the US were to cease its military aid to
Saudi Arabia, then Saudi Arabia will create partnerships with China/Russia to
make up for the decline in US aid. All of these scenarios are bad and should be
prevented.

The second main piece of offense is an impact turn to the aff contention about
democracy promotion. This argument is that promoting democracy prevents
multilateral cooperation. China, Russia, a host of countries in the Middle East
and elsewhere are not democratic, and they won’t ever meet the threshold the
US has set up as being a democratic country. Thus when the US attempts to
push this democratic model globally, it alienates these other nations and
prevents effective cooperation between these nations which is bad. This is the
set of Kupchan cards.
Additionally the negative is prepared to say that democracy as an end goal isn’t
actually a good idea. The process of transitioning a country to become
democratic can cause conflict, specifically within Africa, and the are other
issues associated with democracy, such as causing terrorism, or environmental
destruction.

Saudi Arabia Aff

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1ACs

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Affirmation
I affirm that resolved: The United States ought not provide military aid to Saudi
Arabia.

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Ethics Advantage – 1AC

The United States has expanded military aid to Saudi Arabia under the guise of
aid being necessary to maintain “national security” interests in the region. This
aid however has never been used to maintain security but has instead been
instrumental in the maintenance of Saudi Arabian intervention into Yemen. This
intervention has created one of the largest humanitarian issues in history
targeting millions of innocent civilians.
Ro Khanna, 10-20-2018, represents the south bay in the U.S. House of Representatives,
where he serves on the Armed Services Committee. He is the vice chair of the Congressional
Progressive Caucus, "Congress must end U.S. military aid to Saudi war in Yemen", SFChronicle,
https://www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/article/Congress-must-end-U-S-military-aid-to-Saudi-
war13319536.php

Every ghastly new detail we learn about the disappearance of journalist Jamal Khashoggi suggests
that this was a premeditated murder, carried out at the direction of the highest level of the Saudi dictatorship. The cascading revelations rival
the gore of horror films, from the 15 Saudis who flew into Turkey, lying in wait for Khashoggi inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, to the bone-saw-equipped forensics specialist

Just weeks before,

who reportedly dismembered Khashoggi’s body wearing headphones and recommending that others listen to music as well.

Khashoggi had publicly pleaded with the de facto ruler of the Saudi regime, Prince Mohammed
bin Salman, to curb his propensity for violence. Khashoggi’s September column for the
Washington Post was headlined “Saudi Arabia’s crown prince must restore dignity to
his country — by ending Yemen’s cruel war.” Cruel” is, if anything, an understatement “. Since
2015, the Saudis have launched an estimated
18,000 air strikes on Yemen , attacking hospitals
,

,
a blockade on food and medicine from freely the
fuel
entering country
, ,
schools , water and even . The Saudis also imposed
plants funerals markets
treatment farms
in what can only be described as a deliberate effort to starve the civilian population into submission . Buried
by the news of Khashoggi’s slaying was a grim new warning by Lise Grande, the U.N.’s
humanitarian coordinator for Yemen: The nation could experience the world’s worst famine in
100 years ,
with 12 million to 13 million innocent civilians at risk of dying from the lack of food within
months. As early as 2015, Foreign Policy magazine reported the Saudi coalition’s “daily
bombing campaign
tanker planes refueling coalition jets.” Yet there was never a debate would not be possible
without the constant presence of U.S. Air Force
or vote by the people’s elected congressional

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representatives, as required by the Constitution, as to whether the U.S. military should participate in the Saudi
government’s genocidal war.
As the architect of this hideous military strategy, Mohammed bin
Salman reacted to Khashoggi’s criticisms the way he knew best. MbS, as he’s known, probably
ordered the assassination of Khashoggi and then — just as the Saudi regime did after bombing
a school bus filled with Yemeni children last — issued ever-shifting and contradictory
lies
relying on the Trump administration’s full backing and clumsy assistance in the cover-
month
,

up. MbS’ campaign of killing Yemenis and Saudis alike must come to an end . Congressional
Progressive

Caucus co-chair Mark Pocan, D-Wis., and I are leading dozens of our colleagues, including top House Democrats, in demanding answers from the Trump administration about its
possible complicity in Khashoggi’s killing. We also are working to force a vote in Congress to decisively shut down unconstitutional U.S. participation in the Saudi regime’s gruesome
war in Yemen within weeks. Partnering with Sen. Bernie Sanders, independent-Vermont, we aim to secure majorities in both chambers of Congress as soon as we return to
Washington to direct the president to remove U.S. forces from unauthorized hostilities in Yemen. We are invoking the War Powers Resolution with the aim of passing House
Congressional Resolution 138 and Senate Joint Resolution 54. These resolutions have priority over other foreign policy considerations in the chambers, and the votes on them
cannot be blocked by Republican leadership. Never before has such a feat been attempted in both houses of Congress at once — but the War Power Resolution allows members
of Congress to force votes to end illegal U.S. military participation in this war. When we succeed, the Saudi campaign will inevitably collapse. If our moral compass is to guide our
country after the butchering of Jamal Khashoggi, the incineration of thousands of Yemenis in U.S.-Saudi air strikes, and the quiet deaths of more than 100,000 Yemeni children who
succumbed to war-triggered hunger and disease over the past two years, Congress must pass these resolutions. America’s founders deliberately broke with the unchecked power
enjoyed by Europe’s monarchs by vesting Congress with the sole authority over the question of war and peace. By forcing long-overdue sunlight and public participation into the
now-secret realm of war, these resolutions will help restore our republic and end America’s complicity in such incomprehensibly immense human

suffering. Today’s leaders owe it to all those who have sacrificed for a fairer world to bring an end
to the worst humanitarian crisis on Earth.

This intervention is only made possible through the endless aid given by the
United States resulting in the destabilization of the entire region
Brett Morris, 12-1-2017, "How the United States Is Helping Saudi Arabia Destabilize the
Middle East", Medium, https://medium.com/s/just-world-order/how-the-united-states-
ishelping-saudi-arabia-destabilize-the-middle-east-b408863289b3

At around two in the morning on August 25, 2017, a five-year-old girl named Buthaina lost

her entire family . Saudi Arabia had dropped a bomb on her home and several others
in
Sana’a, the capital of Yemen, as part of its ongoing campaign against Houthi rebels . The attack killed 16
people, including Buthaina’s parents and four siblings, and injured 17 others. Now under the care of her aunt

and uncle, Buthaina herself was one of the injured. Images of Where does Saudi Arabia get the Buthaina
trying to

bombs it uses to kill all these people? For the most part, they come from the United States open her bruised eyes went viral
after the attack.
, with the United Kingdom and

from 1950 to 2016, the United

France also supplying substantial amounts. According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute,

States provided Saudi Arabia with more than $34 billion worth of arms, while the United Kingdom provided more

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The United States is the world’s leading arms exporter, and
Saudi Arabia is its top client. than $10 billion, and France provided more than $7 billion.

The bomb that injured Buthaina and killed her family originated in the United States, as an Amnesty International

investigation found. Buthaina and her family are just a few of the victims of the long-standing U.S.-
Saudi alliance—an alliance that has allowed Saudi Arabia to remain one of the worst human

jihadist movements throughout the world, at the cost of thousands of lives.

rights abusers in the world, export its odious Wahhabi interpretation of Islam , and inspire
The basis for the U.S.-Saudi alliance is the fact that Saudi Arabia sits on top
Oil, Money, and the “Threat” of Iran

of a lot of oil, as well as its opposition to actors and movements in the region that run counter
to U.S.
hegemonic ambitions. Nowadays, the United States gets most of its oil through domestic production or from Canada. (The United States is now the world’s
leading oil producer, with Saudi Arabia a close second.) Just 11 percent of the oil that the United States imports comes from Saudi Arabia. Despite this, the United States — under
both Republican and Democratic administrations — has backed Saudi Arabia and will likely continue to do so in the future. Although the United States is currently enjoying its
own oil boom, it’s likely to be short-lived. Domestic oil production will probably begin to decline around 2020, as the United States has proven reserves of just 10 billion barrels.

In 1945, the State

The Saudis and their OPEC partners, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates, on the other hand, have proven reserves of 460 billion barrels.

Department identified Saudi Arabia’s oil resources as “a stupendous source of strategic power,
and one of the greatest material prizes in world history.” That hasn’t changed — and there’s no
reason Washington won’t want Saudi Arabia to remain firmly inside its camp. In
addition, if all those massive arms deals between Washington and Riyadh were suddenly to stop, defense contractors like Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, and General Dynamics

Furthermore, Saudi Arabia’s extremist variant of Islam has been very useful
would stand to lose lots of money.

for the United States. Despite the rhetoric about a “clash of civilizations” supposedly happening between the
West and Islam, the United States has, for the most part, traditionally sided with extremist sects of

Islam against their more secular enemies for the simple reason that those secular enemies
would rather remain independent of U.S. domination . The U.S.-Saudi relationship began in the 1930s but strengthened after
Gamal Abdel Nasser became president of Egypt in 1956. Nasser, a neutralist and secularist during the Cold War, nationalized many of Egypt’s industries and instituted social
welfare measures. For these crimes, he was considered “an extremely dangerous fanatic” with a “Hitler-ite personality” by Secretary of State John Foster Dulles. Since Nasser
had widespread prestige throughout the Arab world for his anti-imperialism and independence, the United States needed a counterweight in the region. “The people are on
Nasser’s side,” as Eisenhower complained. That counterweight was Saudi Arabia, an absolute monarchy and the only country in the world named after a ruling family (the Al

Saud family). The U.S.-Saudi relationship took on new urgency in 1979, when Iran overthrew its U.S.-
installed dictator. The United States and United Kingdom had overthrown Iran’s democratically elected government in 1953, because its secular leader,
With the loss of its ally in Iran, U.S. support for Saudi Arabia
Mohammed Mossadegh, had nationalized Iran’s oil industry.

would now be based not only on the kingdom’s opposition to secular nationalist movements
and governments, but also against the Shia theocracy in Iran. U.S. opposition
to Iran has nothing to do with Iran’s human rights record or its authoritarian If it were, the
government.
United States would not be supporting Saudi
record and a more authoritarian government Arabia, which has a much worse human rights
. Unlike Saudi Arabia, Iran has actual elections, women have some kind of rights, and
there

Nor is U.S. opposition to Iran based on Iran’s support for “extremist” groups
is a liberal opposition.

abroad  — because, again, Saudi Arabia supports and inspires much worse extremist groups

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abroad. The
Watch this dumbfounded State Department official trying to explain the contradiction between U.S. support for Saudi Arabia while opposing Iran:

truth is, Iran just isn’t a threat to the United States. Its military budget is $13
billion, equivalent to about 2 percent of the U.S. military budget of $611 billion, the highest
in the
world. (Saudi Arabia’s military budget is $64 billion, the fourth highest in the world.) Iran does not have nuclear weapons, nor
does it have a nuclear weapons program. As the Defense Department has pointed out, “Iran’s
military doctrine is primarily defensive.” Why, then, does the United States take such an
antagonistic attitude toward Iran? The answer is simple: Iran refuses to subordinate itself to
U.S. hegemony. Anybody who doesn’t follow orders is an enemy.

And it isn’t just Yemen – military aid to Saudi Arabia has propped up the entire
authoritarian regime justifying endless human right violations
Brett Morris, 12-1-2017, "How the United States Is Helping Saudi Arabia Destabilize the
Middle East", Medium, https://medium.com/s/just-world-order/how-the-united-states-
ishelping-saudi-arabia-destabilize-the-middle-east-b408863289b3

Saudi Arabia’s Human Rights Record (Or Lack Thereof) As a 2004 report from the Pentagon’s Defense Science Board
explains, “Muslims
do not ‘hate our increasing support for what Muslims collectively see as tyrannies,” such
freedom,’ but rather,
they hate our policies,” which
includes the “longstanding, even
as Saudi Arabia . Saudi Arabia is a totalitarian dictatorship , an absolute monarchy currently
ruled by the 81-year-old King Salman. However, his son and heir to the throne, the 32-year-old Mohammad bin Salman, is thought to be the de facto leader because King Salman

MBS, has announced a slew of initiatives and “reforms” meant

suffers from dementia. Mohammad bin Salman, also known as

to modernize Saudi Arabia’s economy and improve Saudi Arabia’s image abroad. For example,
Saudi Arabia recently ended its ban on women driving. For the most part, however, Saudi
Arabia remains the human rights horror story it’s always been. There are no national
elections or political parties. The extremist Wahhabi interpretation of Sunni Islam is
the
official state religion, and the public practice of any religion outside of Islam is illegal .
Freedom of expression does not exist . Saudi Arabia’s anti-terrorism laws “create a
legal
framework that appears to criminalize virtually all dissident thought or expression as
terrorism,” as
Human Calling for atheist thought in any form.” “ Anyone who throws away their loyalty Rights
Watch
documents. In Saudi Arabia, “terrorist acts” include:
“to the country’s rulers.”

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Seeking to shake the social fabric or national cohesion, or calling, participating, promoting,
“

or inciting sit-ins, protests, meetings, or group statements in any form, or anyone who harms

than any other country in the world

the unity or stability of the kingdom by any means.” Saudi Arabia is more gender-segregated
. As Amnesty International explained in its annual review
of Saudi Arabia, “Women remained legally subordinate and inferior in status to men in
relation to marriage, divorce, child custody and inheritance, and could not access higher
education, take paid employment or travel abroad without the approval of their male

offenses such as “ witchcraft and sorcery

guardian.” The death penalty is applied liberally in the kingdom , including for nonviolent
,” and while juveniles cannot be executed, they can
be sentenced to death — meaning, if a child receives a death sentence, he or she is held until
turning 18, at which point the execution is carried out. Saudi Arabia executed at least 154 people in 2016. (The United States,
Executions are often carried
meanwhile, shamefully retained its status as the only Western government to execute its citizens, killing 20 people in 2016.)

out with a public beheading and sometimes followed by crucifixion — meaning after the execution is carried out, the
body is displayed publicly for a time. Ali al-Nimr, for example, has been sentenced to die by way of beheading

and crucifixion for the “crime” — committed at the age of 16 — for “going out to a number of
marches, demonstrations, and gatherings against the state and repeating some chants against
the state,” among other things.

These violations creates the breeding ground for social instability and manifests
itself in uncontrollable structural violence
Brett Morris, 12-1-2017, "How the United States Is Helping Saudi Arabia Destabilize the
Middle East", Medium, https://medium.com/s/just-world-order/how-the-united-states-
ishelping-saudi-arabia-destabilize-the-middle-east-b408863289b3

Today, Saudi Arabia is creating a humanitarian catastrophe in Yemen, with U.S. support. Since 2015,
Saudi Arabia has been bombing Yemen to defeat the Houthis, a group that Saudi Arabia accuses of being

proxies for Iran —  an exaggerated claim . In addition to bombing civilian targets such as
homes, schools, hospitals, mosques, and markets, Saudi Arabia has instituted a
blockade on At least
Yemen, “making an already catastrophic situation far worse,” according to the World Health Organization, the World Food Programme, and UNICEF.

10,000 people have died in the conflict , with another 3 million people displaced . Saudi
Arabia’s

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bombing campaign and blockade have helped cause a cholera epidemic in Yemen that “ has
become the largest and fastest-spreading outbreak of the disease in modern
history, with a million cases expected by the end of the year and at least 600,000 children

likely to be affected,” as the Guardian reports. As Zeeshan Aleem writes for Vox, Saudi Arabia’s campaign has
“contributed to a malnutrition crisis of colossal proportions: Close to 80
percent of Yemen’s population lacks reliable access to food, and the United Nations estimates
that 7 million of the country’s population of 28 million people are facing famine.” None of this
would be possible

the plug on the intervention since the beginning

for the
without U.S. support. As Alex Emmons writes Intercept: The U.S. has had the power to pull
. Bruce Riedel, a senior fellow at the
Brookings Institution and a 30-year veteran of the CIA, explained last year that “if the United
States and the United Kingdom, tonight, told King Salman [of Saudi Arabia], ‘This war has to end,’ it
would end tomorrow. The Royal Saudi Air Force cannot operate without American and British
support .” In his final days in office, Obama halted some arms sales to Saudi Arabia (when everyone knew
Trump could simply reauthorize them when taking office, which he did), but other than this,
both the Obama and Trump administrations have strongly backed Saudi Arabia and its
campaign in Yemen, with massive arms deals, intelligence sharing, and refueling Saudi planes
as they continue to bomb Yemeni civilians. Even putting all moral questions aside — which
we shouldn’t — it’s clear that what the United States is doing with Saudi Arabia is

undermining its own national security . Policies such as arming and supporting the
Saudi
tyranny to kill thousands of innocent Muslims in
for terrorist groups such as al-Qaeda. Yemen have a tendency to drive recruitment
Thankfully, there is growing congressional opposition toward U.S. support for Saudi Arabia. Saudi

Arabia’s tyrannical government and despicable actions — and U.S. support for them — are immoral and destabilizing.

Ceasing this structural violence must come first and outweighs any other issue –
it creates all forms of macro-level violence – obscuring its role guarantees
future conflicts - reject their appeals to empirical evidence because suffering
cannot be captured in a dataset
Springer, 2011 Simon, Professor of Geography @ University of Otago, “Violence sits in
places? Cultural practice, neoliberal rationalism, and virulent imaginative geographies,” Political
Geography (30) pp. 90-98
The confounding effects of violence ensure that it is a phenomena shot through with a certain perceptual blindness. In his monumental essay ‘Critique
of Violence’, Walter Benjamin (1986) exposed our unremitting tendency to obscure violence in its institutionalized forms, and because of this opacity,
our inclination to regard violence exclusively as something we can see through its direct expression. Yet the structural violence

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resulting from our political and economic systems ( Farmer, 2004 and Galtung, 1969), and the symbolic

physics

violence born of our discourses ( Bourdieu, 2001 and Jiwani, 2006), are something like the dark matter of
, ‘[they] may be invisible, but [they have] to be taken into account if one is to make
sense of what might otherwise seem to be ‘irrational’ explosions of subjective [or direct] violence’ ( Zizek,
2008: 2). These seemingly invisible geographies of violence – including the hidden fist of the market itself – have both

‘nonillusory effects’ ( Springer, 2008) and pathogenic affects in afflicting human bodies that create
suffering ( Farmer, 2003), which can be seen if one cares to look critically enough. Yet, because of their sheer
we are pervasiveness , systematization , and banality all too frequently blinded from
seeing
that which is perhaps most obvious . This itself marks an epistemological downward spiral , as
‘the economic’ in
particular is evermore abstracted and its ‘real world’ implications are increasingly erased from
collective consciousness ( Hart, 2008). ‘The clearest available example of such epistemic violence’,
Gayatri Spivak (1988: 24–25) contends, ‘is the remotely orchestrated, far-flung, and heterogeneous project to

constitute the colonial subject as Other’, and it is here that the relationship between
Orientalism and neoliberalism is revealed. Since Orientalism is a discourse that functions precisely due to its ability to conceal an underlying symbolic
violence (Tuastad, 2003), and because the structural violence of poverty and inequality that stems from the political economies of neoliberalism is cast
as illusory (Springer, 2008), my reflections on neoliberalism, Orientalism, and their resultant imaginative and material violent geographies are, as
presented here, purposefully theoretical. As Derek Gregory (1993: 275) passionately argues, ‘human geographers have to work with social theory…

themselves”, no matter how closely… we listen’.

Empiricism is not an option , if it ever was, because the “facts” do not ( and never will ) “speak for
Although the ‘facts’ of violence can be
assembled , tallied , and categorized , the cultural scope and emotional weight of violence
can
never be entirely captured through empirical analysis. After Auschwitz, and now after 9/11, casting a sideways glance
at violence through the poetic abstractions of theory must be considered as an enabling possibility .
This is particularly the case with respect to understanding the geographies of violence, as our understandings of space and place are also largely poetic
(Bachelard, 1964 and Kong, 2001)

Prioritize debate over the ethics of the system that the AFF endorses prior to
evaluating the consequences of the plan – there is no way to calculate costs or

19
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benefits without first establishing an ethical baseline to judge what is an

acceptable outcome
Burke et al, 2014 Anthony, Associate Professor of International and Political Studies at UNSW
Australia, Katrina Lee-Koo is Senior Lecturer in International Relations at the Australian National
University, and Matt McDonald is Senior Lecturer in International Relations at the University of
Queensland “Ethics and Global Security” pg 1-9

With its world wars , cold wars, proxy wars, colonial wars, guerrilla wars, civil wars, drug wars,
and new wars, not to mention its genocides, nuclear weapons , economic crises, gender-based violence, refugees,
famines and environmental disasters , the twentieth century was a century of chronic
and
endemic insecurity. What will the twenty-fi rst century become? It certainly has not started out well. Its fi
rst decade alone saw aircraft smashing into New York’s World Trade Center, a new global war on terror, the near-death of the nuclear
non-prolif eration regime, the Indian Ocean and Japanese tsunamis, Cyclone Nargis, the war in Iraq , genocide
in the
Sudan, and three brutal wars in Palestine and Lebanon. The picture beyond that does not improve
when we add global stalemate on climate change , mass slaughter in the Congo,
Islamist terrorism in Pakistan and India , a craze for walls and “border protection”, and strategic
anxiety about Iran, North Korea, the rise of China, and a future of drone, cyber and space war.
All of these examples have been riven with moral anxiety and exemplifi ed particular
choices ethical
: whether to use poison gas against enemy forces to protect one’s own; whether to bomb populated areas to shorten a war or degrade an
enemy’s industrial capacity; whether to develop and deploy weapons that can destroy cities in a few seconds and kill millions; whether to use starvation
as a weapon of war; whether to support Islamic extremists in a proxy war in Afghanistan against the Soviet Union, in the face of warnings about how
they were likely to turn on their masters afterwards; and when that time came, whether to fi ght such extremists by systemic violations of the
international laws of war and human rights. The debates over these issues refl ect many things: their inherent moral complexity,
competing ethics and norms, and a global interest in their rightness and long-term impact. None of these ethical questions and dilemmas are new, but
the fi eld of security studies has been slow to address them, and it has not established a tradition of ethical thought (Burke 2010; for new research see
Floyd 2007; Hayden 2005; Robinson 2011; Roe 2012). This book attempts to address that gap, and to contribute to a dialogue about the possibilities for
a genuinely global security orientation and practice in international politics. We survey a range of ethical perspectives and arguments relating to diverse
problems on the global security agenda, so that we can begin to understand how ethical commitments shape
security relationships and outcomes : how poor or compromised ethics can contribute

insecurity ; and how good ethical arguments and decisions might be able to improve the situation
to
. While

examining elements of existing ethical perspectives (such as realism, liberalism and just war theory), we push on to argue for a specifi cally
cosmopolitan ethics . A cosmopolitan ethics aims to ensure the security of all states and

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communities through time, by aiming for the elimination rather than just the management of
grave insecurities. We regard such an ethics as not merely morally desirable , but as
strategically necessary , and with this objective, we develop ethical guidelines for the decisions
and
policies of all security actors. We list these principles here in Box 1.1 below, and explain them in the section entitled ‘Key Principles of a
Cosmopolitan Security Ethics’. If practices of global security politics raise ethical questions at the conceptual level, they have also precipitated broader
debate and contestation in the “real world” of international security. The Burmese military’s refusal to allow foreign aid to enter the country after the
2008 cyclone, which killed 140,000, provoked global outrage, calls for foreign intervention, and active regional diplomacy (Evans 2008b; Kouchner
2008). After the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, which killed more than 280,000, the United Nations and ASEAN moved to create an early warning system
and response capability in recognition of the failure to have such a system in place beforehand or to even put such threats on the region’s security
agenda (Burke and McDonald 2007: 1). Some of the scientists who built the fi rst atomic bombs questioned their use in warfare and opposed the later
development of fusion weapons, while scores of former national security policymakers have supported calls for total nuclear disarmament (Bird 2005:
426; Burke 2009; Oppenheimer 1984: 113; Schweber 2000). The 2011 tsunami and nuclear accident at Fukushima led many Japanese (and four
European countries) to question the role of nuclear power in their energy supply, and brought calls for stronger global regulation of the industry
(Fackler 2012). The widespread bombing and targeting of civilians in war have provoked major innovations in International Humanitarian Law (IHL),
including the classifi cation of area bombing and rape as war crimes, and new treaties outlawing land mines and cluster weapons. The International
Criminal Court (ICC) was established to prosecute major international crimes including war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide, and aggression.
Aggression has been defi ned in such a way (‘the use of armed force by a State against the sovereignty, territorial integrity or political independence of
another State, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Charter of the United Nations’) that it would have put the US, Britain and Australia in the
dock had it been in force at the time of the invasion of Iraq in 2003 (Amendments to the Rome Statute 2010). The moral anxiety and debate in such

cases—just a few of many—suggests something important. . Ethics matters In this book, we contend that the nature of global
insecurity in the last century, and the kinds of security that the world will be
able to achieve in this century, depends significantly on ethics : on the ethics we bring to our analysis, policymaking
and decisions; on the
ethics that underpins our understanding of what security is and to whom it is owed; and on the ethics that shapes the realities we accept or deny.

Whether people live or die , whether they suffer or prosper — which people live and prosper and
where they are able to do so— are
ethical questions. How these questions are answered in the real world will be the
results of particular ethical frameworks , rules and decisions ; the result of the ways in which ethical dilemmas are
posed, and how they are addressed and resolved. Is it right to attack—
or target—cities with nuclear weapons? Is it right to
even possess them? Is it right to detain asylum seekers, push their boats out to sea, or return them to the places from which they fl ed? Is it right to
target terrorists and insurgents with remote-controlled robotic aircraft and missiles, even if those killed include civilians and if their operators aim—and
kill—without risk? Is it right to invade a foreign country to stop crimes against humanity, end a famine, build a state, or remove a regime, and if so,
what are the right ways of going about it? Is it right to use torture, or suspend habeas corpus or the rule of law, to protect our security? What forms of
reasoning, what criteria and ends, should govern such decisions? These are some of what most of us recognise as
“moral” questions central to war and security—questions about killing, harm and humanity—and put in this form they are certainly of great
importance. In particular, such questions are addressed in great depth in the “just war” tradition, and you will read more about that school of thought
in the pages that follow. However, in this book we argue that the infl uence and problem of ethics in security goes beyond moral choices in particular
cases, and beyond questions of war and violence, to take in the very system and infrastructure of global security itself. This “system” is a dynamic and
contested set of processes that develops out of the frameworks provided by (and actions of) key structures and actors: international treaties and law,
regional and global organisations, governments, militaries, intelligence and aid agencies, NGOs, corporations, communities, and civil society
organisations. The “international” management of security, however, should not be confused with a genuinely global sensibility, perspective, practice

or set of institutions. Currently, we have a largely state-centric international security system that attempts
very imperfectly to deal with increasingly global processes and dynamics of insecurity: risks and
threats that have transnational and often global sources and symptoms. This system is structured around a cooperative

tension (and sometimes outright confl ict) between national security policies and military alliances, regional security organisations (like ASEAN or the
OSCE) and collective security “regimes” of international law, treaty agreements and international organisations in areas like arms control, disarmament,

21
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and the environment. These regimes refl ect both cosmopolitan commitments to deal with global
problems in an eff ective and equitable way, and an uglier power politics that generates
compromises that reflect particular national and corporate (rather than global) interests . Such
regimes are also almost entirely missing or stagnant in areas like the energy and the world economy. A
global approach to security
thus recognises that our common problems are global in scope and that national, regional and
collective security responses need to be reformed to serve genuinely global ends (Burke 2013a). In
our view, the kind of global security system we have, how and to whom it provides security, is
. Does this system serve the interests of states and corporations alone or the interests of all
the very first ethical question people

and the ecosystems that they depend on? Does it serve the interests of the wealthy and powerful, or the poor
and the marginalised? Does it serve the interests of some at an unacceptable cost to others? These concerns preoccupied a “high level
panel” of former states-people asked by then United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan to map out a new global security agenda in 2004. In their
report, A More Secure World, they said: Diff erences of power, wealth and geography do determine what we perceive as the gravest threats to our

survival and well-

all threats to their survival . Inequitable responses to threats further fuel division being.
Differences
of focus lead us to dismiss what others perceive as the gravest of
. Many people
believe that what passes for collective security today is simply a system for protecting the rich and powerful. (United Nations 2004: 2) We believe that
“ethics” and “morality” are not things that can be brought to insecurity or war from outside, to a space that would otherwise be unethical or amoral.

Rather, we believe that even before we face a specific moral decision , ethics constitutes the choices
available to us— that
ethical commitments , options , limits and imperatives
particular are
implicit in the system itself, and in particular theoretical and policy world views. Every vision, every practice, and every
system of security has an ethics—even if we cannot agree that all are equally ethical. As Richard Shapcott argues,
any work of political
ethics must draw attention to the possible consequences or implications of different
starting points …it is only once we have assessed or understood these [consequences]
that
we can reflect adequately upon our ethics and whether we think the costs of our
are worth it, positions
or not, or whether they are justifi able or need modifi cation. (Shapcott 2010: vii-viiii) In sum, even as we accept that to be able
to

term a perspective or behaviour “amoral”, “immoral”, or “unethical” is a powerful and sometimes legitimate use of language, it
is analytically
more helpful to be able to lay out the assumptions and commitments of a range of ethical
frameworks that bear on the problems and realities of global security, so that their eff ects
can be considered and judged. Even as we assume a responsibility to advance a distinctive global security

ethics that is better—that will lead to a more just and stable world—we do so in a global political context Debate among where moral
pluralism is a fact.

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competing ethical perspectives is necessary and important. Following Aristotle in his Nicomachean Ethics, we see
ethics not merely as right or moral behaviour, but as
a vision of the good—the ‘highest good’, an end towards which ‘every action and decision seems to aim’ (Aristotle 2012: 216). This distinguishes our
approach from the “just war” tradition, which is the closest thing we currently have to an ethics that addresses (some) security questions, like war,
terrorism and intervention. The end of the just war tradition seems unduly modest, being merely to reduce the evils of an institution (war) that it
otherwise sees as an enduring social fact (Walzer 2006). Our interest is larger: to understand and judge war and violence within a more general global
picture—and ethics—of security. When ethics is understood in terms of an overarching vision of the social or political good, moral conduct and
decision-making will then be framed so as to contribute to the desired end, and will be shaped by the ways in which that good is defi ned and
understood. What that ultimate end is becomes crucial, because so much fl ows from it. Indeed, defi ning the ultimate good not only drives ethics, but
is an ethical problem in itself, because settling on the overarching end of ethics involves making decisions about what the world is (or ought to be) like,
who matters, what their needs are, who has responsibility, what those responsibilities are, and how to discharge them. It shapes the realities we can
see or attempt to create. We also focus on ethics because of an important practical distinction between “ethics” and “morality”. It is often said that
morality relates to conduct whereas ethics relates to a broader good towards which moral conduct will lead. It also seems that when morality is
invoked in international aff airs it is used negatively, to resolve a problem where it may be necessary to do harm or have truck with evil— to
decide when killing may be legitimate or necessary, how much killing, for how long, and at a cost that does Ethics not exceed the good we may be
trying to do by way of it. Morality here is about St Thomas Aquinas’s “double eff ect”. , in contrast, opens up a
more positive trajectory: to think of more systemic visions of peace, justice and human fl
ourishing that might eliminate the need to resort to violence. At the same time, we acknowledge that grand
ethical or moral visions can be dangerous, if they legitimate unjust practices or blind us to destructive consequences. And we accept the need for
constant refl ection on and interrogation of our ethical commitments and their implications in practice. Even if in this book we accept the (contested)
claim that the highest good—the end—of ethics is “security”, there is a range of diverse and confl icting perspectives on what these ends are. (Our
view, as we explain below, is that the best way to understand security as a highest good is in a global or cosmopolitan way.) The most infl uential
perspective, as discussed in Chapter 1, is associated with the theory of realism and the majority of state practices. It holds
that national security is the ultimate end, and the security of individuals , ecosystems or the
world in general is invisible or is at
least subordinate. Some classical realists also profess a concern to stabilise a
structurally unalterable system of state confl ict, so as to reduce the incidence and severity of war and seek mutual security. The
national
security perspective views the security of one’s own state’s citizens as paramount, and views
global security relationships through the prism of how that state has determined its “national
interests”— which could well include the security of citizens and other states, environmental protection, and human rights, but often does
not.

In this perspective “international security” is the problem of managing cooperative,

competitive and confl ictual relations among states that act fi rst and foremost according to
their own interests—however those interests are defi ned. The interests and security of others can be disregarded or even sacrifi ced to that
end. An alternative perspective—which has gained traction in the United Nations and among NGOs—is that human security is the ultimate good, and
that national security policies and international security relations need to aim for that goal. While it remains a contested concept, among the most
compelling accounts of human security was set out by the United Nations’ Commission on Human Security, which described it as being based on the
creation of ‘political, social, environmental, economic, military and cultural systems that together give people the building blocks of survival, livelihood
and dignity’ at an individual and community level. In this view of human security, systems work holistically and give people both ‘freedom from fear’
and ‘freedom from want’ to enable a diverse range of cultures, faiths and communities to prosper and coexist (Commission on Human Security 2003:
4). A third perspective hovers uneasily between the two, but has also been infl uential since the end of the Second World War, especially on the
founding of the United Nations and on the development of key arms control, disarmament, and regional and global security regimes. This view, linked
to liberal and international society perspectives in international relations thought, is that collective security is the ultimate end—especially of
international law and global cooperation. This perspective holds that states must subordinate their freedoms and interests to international law,
participate constructively in a transnational system of security, and consider the security needs and interests of other states. Later ideas of common
and cooperative security gave even stronger emphasis to a view that security could only be achieved in common with other states through rule-based
cooperative mechanisms and practices (Evans 1993; Independent Commission 1982). This perspective shapes the attitudes of many states towards
important global security regimes such as that formed around the United Nations Charter, the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons
(NPT), and to a lesser extent, regional organisations such as the African Union (AU), the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and the
Organisation for Security Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). It was also the concern of important UN documents: the 2004 report of the High Level Panel on
Threats, Challenges and Change, and the Secretary-General’s 2005 report, In Larger Freedom, released prior to the most signifi cant conference of UN
member states since the organisation’s founding, the 2005 World Summit. However, the collective security system remains largely state-centric (even if
concerns with human security and crimes against humanity are increasingly present in UN discussions and Security Council decision-making) and is
ethically troubling in three signifi cant ways. First, the collective security system is still centred on states’ rights

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and problem-solving

and interests , and affords spoilers great latitude to damage efforts at global cooperation
; second, the system is riven with power play and inequality, especially when we consider
the membership of the Security Council and the veto powers held by its permanent members; and third, when collective security turns to coercion and
enforcement it can be extremely destructive of human life and stability, as happened during the comprehensive trade embargo enforced on Iraq during
the 1990s, and is a risk in any form of “humanitarian” intervention. In this book, we will argue for a fourth perspective that draws normative inspiration
from aspects of the human and cooperative security approaches and seeks to harmonise national security practices with
legitimate global ends. This perspective argues, in a “cosmopolitan” way, that global security is the ultimate end that should
govern the security
an ethics
of all human beings, communities, ecosystems and states is of equal value of security; that
. The ethics of a global security
system holds that the reduction and prevention of serious harm is an overarching goal, and that competing claims must wherever possible be harmonised
and negotiated through dialogue, rules and law rather than violence and coercion. Even where violence might remain regrettably necessary or ethically
defensible, it will still mark a broader failure of the system to provide comprehensive security and reduce confl ict, and may put all those other eff orts
into peril. More about the core aims and principles of this cosmopolitan global security ethics is outlined below. We are aware that such a system will be
diffi cult to achieve in a world where many governments and actors are unsympathetic to its premises, but we also argue that were this ethics to become
infl uential, the security benefi ts for all states, human beings and the global environment would be great. It is an ethics aimed at creating security on a
universal basis, rather than providing limited succour to some parts of a world that merely seeks to manage and limit insecurity. A further word is needed
here about the problem posed by ethical pluralism— which contradicts the commonsense view that behaviours and norms can be divided between those
that are ethical and those that are not. Ethics
is not a choice to do good when the overwhelming temptation—
or the easier option—is to do evil; it is, rather, a competing set of perspectives

about what it is to do good, and about what that good might be. It is challenging to think, for example, that an
ethic could provide moral sanction to the killing of tens of thousands of noncombatants to defend a state in a time of “supreme emergency”, a
consequence that many consider to be evil. Yet this argument, made by the respected American philosopher Michael Walzer (2006: 251–63) in his book
Just and Unjust Wars, is just one of many morally-controversial positions that have been put by “just war” theorists. Even as they have done so much to
defend the principle of non-combatant immunity and provide rational guidelines for the resort to war, some just war writers have endorsed the use of
torture in extreme situations and supported preventive war in violation of the United Nations Charter (Ignatieff 2004: 140; Bellamy 2006c; Burke 2005;
Reus-Smit
2005). As
that promises as much danger as benefit to humankind and the planet we depend on much as it
may
occasionally disturb us, ethics is a contested and morally pluralistic space, one
. In short, ethics is contained in everything we do and are, and the very possibility of security (or
insecurity) for billions of human beings hinges on it.

Linear predictions and securitization naturalize militarism and efface complex

analysis of interrelated problems – this makes managing global crises impossible
and means you should reject negative offense
Gupta, 2014 Asha, Poli Sci PhD @ University of Delhi, “Militarizing International Relations,”
http://paperroom.ipsa.org/papers/paper_30926.pdf)

We need to go into the depth of militarization and militarism still prevailing in the 21st century. It has
to be seen as a
‘manifestation of global political economy that has breached the limits of wider
environmental and natural resource systems in which it is embedded’. Conventional
approach is to view the multiple crises in the form of ‘climate
change’, ‘energy depletion’, ‘food scarcity’ and

24
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‘economic instability’ as independently, whereas these happen to be ‘ interconnected’ and

‘interwoven’. No wonder, the conventional I nternational R elations missed this interconnection and focused on the ‘securitization’ of these
crises ‘as amplifiers of
traditional security threats, militarization of policy responses, and naturalizing the proliferation of violent
requiring counter-

productive militarized responses and/or futile interstate negotiations’. In a way it justified ‘reifying
conflicts’ and ‘humanitarian disasters’ (Ahmed, 2011: 335-336). In coming decades, wars are unlikely to be fought over claim on territories.
Rather, the current global crisis, such as, demographic expansion, environmental degradation and energy depletion are likely to lead to
‘geopolitical conflicts’ over dominant strategic resources, such as, food, water and energy. For instance, the UN International Panel on Climate Change
reported in 2007 that the increase of fossil fuel emissions at the then rate would result in the rise of global average temperature by 6°C by the end of
21st century making the planet earth mostly ‘uninhabitable’ (IPCC Report, 2007). To retain a safe climate, it would be necessary to contain it at 2°C,
though we have already crossed this danger limit despite the risk of ‘catastrophic’ and ‘irreversible climate change’ (Hansen et al, 2008). Similarly,
excessive exploitation of fossil fuel, such as, oil, gas and coal, has also led to depletion of essential resources. The crude oil production cannot meet the
current demands. According to the Oilwatch Monthly, ‘world conventional oil production fell by almost one million barrels per day from July to August
2008’. Both nuclear power and coal were also facing similar fate accompli. According to the Strategic Survey (2007: 47-60), the ‘existential security
threat’ that ‘will come increasingly to the forefront as countries begin to see falls in available resources and economic vitality, increased stress on their
armed forces, greater instability in regions of strategic import, increases in ethnic rivalries, and a widening gap between rich and poor’. To Campbell
(2007), global crisis, such as, climate change, can lead to state failure in the form of ungovernability. The strategic implications of variegated climate
change could be in the form of ‘food and water shortages, proliferation of infectious diseases, increased frequency of natural disasters, heightened
energy insecurity, environmental refugees and the greater probability of inherently unpredictable wild cards’ (Dupont, 2008: 29-54). In fact, the

climate
change and energy depletion have not only disrupted global food production and economic
systems but have also led to ‘the crisis in international relations’ (Ahmed, 2011: 341). Climate change and other
crises are studied today in the context of their strategic implications in ‘exacerbating vulnerability to violent conflict’ or in the context of ‘interstate

negotiations and global governance’ (Deuchars, 2010). Whereas some scholars

focus on the role of natural resource
shortage or abundance in creating situation of anarchy and violence, others go deeper by investigating the
capacity or inability of the states to negotiate ‘viable cooperative international regulatory frameworks to prevent or respond to crises’ (Ahmed, 2011:
344). To O’Keefe (2009: 1-2), biophysical environment plays an important role in ‘triggering and prolonging the structural conditions that result in
conflict’. To her, environmental anarchy occurs in weak state that lack ‘active government regulation’ of internal distribution of natural resources,
resulting into a ‘tragedy of the commons’. Resource scarcities often lead to ‘security dilemmas’ over ownership of resources often settled by ‘resort to

violence’ (O’Keefe, 2009: 1-2). Such a theory fails to understand the interstate system today that itself
exploits the
biophysical environment . It is interesting to note that violence occurs not only in weaker

states but also in ‘resource abundant states’ where greed plays a pivotal role rather than
the
needs . For instance, intra-state conflicts were financed by the export of commodities, such as, diamonds in the case of Angola and Sierra Leone
and tropical timber in the case of West Africa (Bannon and Collier, 2013: 8-16). The neoliberal policy of structural adjustments, economic
liberalization and privatization also led to the erosion of the state structures and generation of social crisis resulting into identity politics (Kaldor, 2007:
58). Often

under traditional neo-realist logic, it was assumed that to deal with such crisis, it was
necessary to expand the state-military capabilities under centralized governance. Neo-realism took
‘interstate competition, rivalry and warfare as inevitable functions of the states’ (Lacy, 2005). It
could not understand the complex interdependence of global crisis . These crises cannot
be
placed simply in the context of an international system based upon ‘a set of states’. These have
to be placed in the context of ‘a transnational global structure based upon an exploitative
relationship with biophysical environment’. The current global crises cannot be understood
merely as new issues appended to existing security agendas because if we do so,

25
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we cannot analyse the root causes for such crises then . Ironically, the neo-realist approach
policy as a necessary response to
legitimizes militarization of foreign and domestic
such
crises on pragmatic grounds, but it actually leads to ‘ escalation of resource wars’ in the name of
security (Peters, 2009: 212-14). Quite surprisingly, despite security being the fundamental goal of state foreign
policies, the states have, in practice, supported ‘global systemic amplifiers of insecurity’
(Kahler, 1998: 919-41). Since the values of environmental regimes cannot be reduced purely to state interests, we find a lot of emphasis on good
governance based upon ‘more transparency’, ‘more accountability’, ‘more robust international regulation’, ‘corporate social responsibility’ and
‘cosmopolitan principles, such as, democratization, political equality and freedom of civil society’ (Frynas, 2009: 6). It is based on the assumption that in
today’s rapidly changing world scenario, gains of one state do not necessarily imply losses for another. It is in the mutual interest of the states to
cooperate in an interdependent world by avoiding unnecessary tensions or conflicts (Keohane, 1984). The theory of mutual maximization of power, in
fact, results into the formation of environmental regimes. It fails to understand the true relationship among the states, human beings and biophysical
environment. The ‘human metabolism with nature’ cannot be externalized from ‘state praxis’. Nor can the ‘international’ be fragmented into ‘a
multiplicity of disconnected state units’ (Lacher, 2003: 521-41). To Simon Dalby (2004), ‘humans live in a complex interaction
with environments that adapt and change in much more complex ways than is facilitated by
linear thinking within the territorial boxes of contemporary administrative arrangements’.
Hence it becomes necessary to understand the complex politics of local environment and struggles over specific resources
in the context of global markets and transnational
colonization and imperialism in the 19th and 20th centuries and global
connections. As such, crisis today have
to be studied in the context of ‘historicallyspecific socio-political system’.
According to Professor Ahmed (2011: 349), whether or not they lead to conflict depends on existing relations of power at local, national and
transnational scales, and on how those relations are configured by structures of resource ownership, mediated by ideas and values, and supported by
military power. The current trend is to militarise international relations by the economic and political hegemons in the name of urgency for
securitisation in view of recent global crisis. They justify resort to force by extra-legal powers. By labelling certain issues as grave and pertaining to
security, some states succeed in moving them ‘outside the remit of democratic decision making’. For instance, the USA and the Coalition of Willing
waged a war on Iraq for possessing weapons of massive destruction during the Bush administration, though some allude to the fight for crude oil as the
real cause. In some cases the militaries were entrusted the role of the police to deal with internal problems of law and order or insurgencies. Often, the
measures used in such cases had been disproportionate as is reflected in the case of war on Iraq in the name of ‘war on terrorism’.
Climate change can also provide a pretext for militarisation of international relations in future. In fact, the securitization of can only
global crisis
lead to further escalation in insecurities due to reification of militarisation of social ,
relations.
economic and political
In the past, ‘the internal reductionism, fragmentation and

compartmentalisation’ plagued the orthodox theory by ‘ externalising global crisis from one
another’, by ‘externalising states from one another’, by ‘ externalising the inter-state system
from its biophysical environment’ and by ‘externalising new social groups as
dangerous outsiders’ . It is quite clear in the case of preoccupation of the USA and its western
allies with
military intervention in the name of humanitarian intervention. Their premise is clearly based on the construction
of ‘outsider identities’. Such exclusionary devices are ‘intimately bound up with political and economic

processes’, such as, their strategic interests in ‘proliferating military bases in the Middle East’,
‘economic interests in control of oil’, and ‘the wider political goal of maintaining American hegemony’ by

dominating resource rich regions in the name of globalisation (Stokes, 2009: 88). For instance, in the case of massive

26
 27
violence in the form of genocides, we can hold the ideological process of identifying certain
groups as outside the ‘imagined community of
makes wars possible without ‘enemies’ inclusion’ responsible. It
. To Hinton (2002: 4-6), genocides constituted a process of ‘othering’ where previously
‘included’ groups become ‘ideologically recast’ and dehumanised as threatening and dangerous outsiders, be it along ethnic, religious, political or

economic lines – eventually legitimising their annihilation . Without a political act, genocide could not have taken place.
Usually, the outsider group is first constructed and
then held responsible for crisis conditions and
mass violence. It legitimises militarization of international relations. For instance, the Pentagon’s Quadrennial Defence Review (2014)
reconfirmed a direct link between climate change and national security which was suggested earlier by
the Military Advisory Board in 2007. According to this report, ‘the accelerating rate of climate change poses a severe risk to national security and acts as
a catalyst for global political conflict’. The Centre for Naval Analyses Military Advisory Board held the climate change responsible for the draught in
Middle East and Africa resulting into conflicts over food and water and escalating ‘longstanding regional and ethnic tensions into violent clashes’. The
report also found that the rising sea levels could add to the refugee problem in Eastern India, Bangladesh and Mekong Delta in Vietnam. It also pointed
out that an increase in the ‘catastrophic weather events worldwide will create more demand for American troops, even as flooding and extreme
weather events at home could damage naval ports and military bases. Linking climate change with national security, the Pentagon officials held
(Davenport, 2014: 15): The department certainly agrees that climate change is having an impact on national security, whether by increasing global
instability by opening the arctic or by increasing sea level and storm surge near our coastal installations. John Conger, the Deputy Undersecretary of the
Pentagon, said: We are actively integrating climate considerations across the full spectrum of our activities to ensure a ready and resilient force.
According to the Pentagon’s Quadrennial Defence Review (2014), the effects of global warming in the shape of ‘rising sea levels’, ‘extreme weather
patterns’ and ‘terrorism’ are to be treated as ‘threat multipliers that will aggravate stressors abroad, such as, poverty, environmental degradation,
political instability and social tensions – conditions that can enable terrorist activity’ requiring military intervention for humanitarian causes. Time

is, therefore, ripe for pondering over the

‘hidden costs’ (Muth, 2012) and ‘true motives behind militarization of i nternational r elations’.

No war OR escalation
Yuval Noah Harari 17, internationally best-selling author of Sapiens: A Brief History of
Humankind and Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow; he lectures at the Hebrew University
of Jerusalem, 6-23-2017, "Why It’s No Longer Possible for Any Country to Win a War," Time,
http://time.com/4826856/russia-trump-north-korea-china-war/

The last few decades have been the most peaceful era in human history . For the first time ever,
fewer people die today from human violence than from traffic accidents, obesity or even
suicide. Whereas in early agricultural societies human violence caused up to 15% of all human
deaths, and in the twentieth century it caused 5%, today it is responsible for only about 1% .
Yet the international climate is rapidly deteriorating; warmongering is back in vogue, and
military expenditure is ballooning. Both laypeople and experts fear that just as in 1914 the
murder of an Austrian archduke sparked the First World War, in 2017 some incident in the
Syrian Desert or an unwise move in the Korean Peninsula might ignite a global conflict . Yet
there are several key differences between 2017 and 1914 . Back then, war had great appeal to
elites across the world because they had concrete examples for how successful wars
contribute to economic success and political power. Now, successful wars seem to be an
endangered species. From the days of Assyria and Rome, great empires were usually built through war, and elites in
1914
had plenty of recent examples for the huge profits a successful war can bring. In 1846–48 the United States invaded Mexico, and for
the price of 13,000 dead American soldiers, it got California, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, New Mexico and parts of Colorado, Kansas,
Wyoming and Oklahoma. It was the bargain of the millennium. Similarly, imperial Japan cherished its victories over China and Russia;

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Germany glorified its triumph over France; and almost every great power had a string of splendid little colonial wars to its name. When
France, Britain or Italy contemplated putting boots on the ground in Vietnam, Nigeria or Libya, their main fear was that somebody
else might get there first. In 2017, global elites don’t know what a successful war even looks
like. They may have read about them in history books and seen fanciful recreations in Hollywood blockbusters, but they have
good reason to suspect that this type of war has gone extinct. Though some third-world dictators and non-state actors still
manage to flourish through war, it seems that major powers no longer know how to do so. The greatest victory in living
memory — of the United States over the Soviet Union — was achieved without any major
military confrontation . The U.S. then got a fleeting taste of old-fashioned military glory in the
First Gulf War — which only tempted it to waste trillions on
humiliating military fiascos in

armed conflicts since its Vietnam

Iraq and Afghanistan . China , the rising power of the early twenty-first century, has assiduously avoided all
ese debacle of 1979, and it owes its ascent strictly to
economic factors. In this, it has emulated not the Japanese and German empires of the pre-
1914 era, but rather the nonviolent Japanese and German economic miracles of the post1945
era. Even in the Middle East, regional powers don’t know how to wage successful wars. Iran
gained nothing from the long bloodbath of the Iran-Iraq War and subsequently avoided
all direct military confrontations . It became regional hegemon by default, as its two
main
enemies — the U.S. and Iraq — got embroiled in a war that destroyed both Iraq and the
American appetite for Middle Eastern quagmires. Much the same can be said of Israel , which
waged its last successful war fifty years ago. Since 1967, Israel has prospered despite its many wars, not thanks to them. Its
conquered territories are a heavy economic burden and a crippling political liability. Like Iran, Israel has recently improved its
geopolitical position not by waging successful wars, but by avoiding getting sucked into the wars that devastated Iraq, Syria and

Libya. The
only recent successful war waged by a major power has been the Russian conquest of
the Crimea. However, it was made possible by an extraordinary set of circumstances : The
Ukrainian army showed no resistance; other powers refrained from intervening; and the Crimean population either supported the
invaders or peacefully accepted the conquest as a fait accompli. These circumstances will be hard to reproduce. If
the precondition for a successful war is the absence of any enemies willing to resist, it limits the available opportunities. Indeed,
when Russia sought to reproduce its Crimean success in other parts of the Ukraine, it encountered substantially stiffer opposition,
and the war in eastern Ukraine bogged down into an unproductive stalemate. Conquering decrepit Soviet-era factories in Luhansk

and Donetsk hardly pays for the war, and it certainly does not offset the costs of international sanctions. The
conquest of
Crimea notwithstanding, it seems that in the twenty-first century the most successful strategy
is to keep your peace and let others do the
fighting for you. Why has it become so ? One reason is the change in the nature of the difficult
for major powers to wage successful wars
economy . In the past, if you defeated your enemy on the battlefield, you could easily cash
in
by looting enemy cities, selling enemy civilians in the slave markets and occupying valuable wheat fields and gold mines. Yet in

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the twenty-first century, only puny profits could be made that way. Today, the main economic
assets consist of technical and institutional knowledge — and you cannot conquer knowledge
through war . An
organization such as ISIS may flourish by looting cities and oil wells in the

Middle East — in 2014, ISIS seized more than $500 million from Iraqi banks and in 2015 made an additional $500 million from
selling oil. But China and the U.S. are unlikely to start a war for a paltry billion . As for spending
trillions of dollars on a war against the U.S., how could China repay these expenses and
balance all the war damages and lost trade opportunities? Would the victorious People’s
Liberation Army loot the riches of
Silicon Valley? True, corporations such as Apple, Facebook and Google are worth hundreds of
billions of dollars, but you cannot seize these fortunes by
force . There are no silicon mines in Silicon Valley. A successful war could theoretically still bring huge profits by
enabling the victor to rearrange the global trade system in its favor, as the U.S. did after its victory over Hitler. However, present-day
military technology would make it extremely difficult to repeat this feat. By
definition, profits large enough to make
a global war worthwhile for the victor will also make it worthwhile for the loser to resort to
weapons of mass destruction . The atom bomb has turned “victory” in a World War into .
collective suicide It is no coincidence that since Hiroshima
superpowers never fought one
another directly, and engaged only in what (for them) were low-stake conflicts in which none was
tempted to use nuclear weapons to avert defeat. Indeed, even attacking a second-rate nuclear power such
as Iran or North Korea is an extremely unattractive proposition. Cyber warfare makes things
even worse for would-be imperialists. As recently as the days of George W. Bush, the U.S. could wreak havoc in faroff
Fallujah while the Iraqis had no means of retaliating against San Francisco. But if the U.S. now attacks a country
possessing even moderate cyber warfare capabilities, malware and logic bombs could stop air
traffic in Dallas, cause trains to collide in Philadelphia and bring down the electric grid in
Michigan. In the great age of conquerors, warfare was a low-damage, high-profit affair. At the
battle of Hastings in 1066, William the Conqueror gained the whole of England in a single day for the cost of a few thousand dead.
Nuclear weapons and cyber warfare, by contrast, are high-damage, low-profit technologies.
You could use such tools to destroy entire countries, but not to build profitable empires .

No extinction from nuke war

Keir A. Lieber & Daryl G. Press 17. Keir A. Lieber is Associate Professor in the Edmund A. Walsh
School of Foreign Service and the Department of Government at Georgetown University. Daryl
G. Press is Associate Professor in the Department of Government at Dartmouth College.
04/01/2017. “The New Era of Counterforce: Technological Change and the Future of Nuclear
Deterrence.” International Security, vol. 41, no. 4, pp. 9–49.

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Technological improvements chipped away at the sources of inaccuracy , however. Leaps in
navigation and guidance, including advanced
inertial sensors with precisely determine their position in flight and guide themselves
stellar updates,
improved the ability of missiles to , as
on course . Other breakthroughs allowed mobile delivery systems, such as
needed, back
submarines and mobile land-based launchers, to accurately determine
their own position prior to launch, greatly improving their accuracy .28 As a result of these
innovations, new
missiles emerged in the mid-1980s with far better accuracy than their predecessors, rendering hardened targets vulnerable as never
before. For bombers, onboard computers now continuously measure the variables that previously confounded bombardiers. Data on aircraft speed and location are uploaded from the aircraft into the computers
of “smart” bombs and cruise missiles, which in turn automatically plot a flight path from the release location to the target. The weapons adjust their trajectory as they fly to remain on course.29 As a result, bombs
and missiles can achieve levels of accuracy unimaginable at the start of the nuclear age. The leap in munitions accuracy has been showcased repeatedly during conventional wars: videos of missiles and bombs
guiding themselves directly to designated targets now appear mundane. Although the effects of the accuracy revolution on nuclear delivery systems are equally dramatic, they have received far less attention,
despite huge implications for the survivability of hardened targets. IMPROVED MISSILE ACCURACY Figure 1 illustrates one consequence of the accuracy revolution, as applied to nuclear forces, by comparing the
effectiveness of U.S. ballistic missiles in 1985 to those in the current U.S. arsenal.30 We use formulas, employed by nuclear analysts for decades, to estimate the effectiveness of missile strikes against a typical
hardened silo.31 The figure distinguishes three potential outcomes of a missile strike: hit, miss, and fail. “Hit” means that the warhead detonates within the lethal radius (LR) of the aimpoint, thus destroying the
target. “Miss” means that the warhead detonates outside the LR, leaving the target undamaged. “Fail” means that some element of the attacking missile system malfunctioned, leaving the target undamaged.
figure Figure 1. The Growing Vulnerability of Hard Targets, 1985–2017 note: The calculations underlying this figure assume targets hardened to withstand 3,000 pounds per square inch (psi). Data for 1985 are
based on the most capable U.S. land-based intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) and submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM) at the time: the Minuteman III ICBM armed with a W78 warhead and the Trident
I C-4 SLBM armed with a W76 warhead. The 2017 ICBM data are based on the same Minuteman III / W78, with an improved guidance system. The 2017 SLBM data show both contemporary configurations of the
Trident II D-5 missile: one version armed with the W76 and the other with higher-yield W88 warheads. The data and sources for U.S. weapon systems are in the online appendix,
http://dx.doi:10.7910/DVN/NKZJVT, table A1. Figure 1 shows that the accuracy improvements of the past three decades have led to substantial leaps in counterforce capabilities. In 1985 a U.S. intercontinental
ballistic missile (ICBM) had only about a 54 percent chance of destroying a missile silo hardened to withstand 3,000 pounds per square inch (psi) overpressure. In 2017 that figure exceeds 74 percent. The
improvement in submarine-launched weapons is starker: from 9 percent to 80 percent (using the larger-yield W88 warhead). Figure 1 also suggests, however, that despite vast improvements in missile accuracy,
the weapons still are not effective enough to be employed individually against hardened targets. Even modern ballistic missiles are expected to miss or fail 20–30 percent of the time. The simple solution to that
problem, striking each target multiple times, has never been a feasible option because of the problem of fratricide: the danger that incoming weapons might destroy or deflect each other.32 The accuracy
revolution, however, also offers a solution to the fratricide problem, opening the door to assigning multiple warheads against a single target, and thus paving the way to disarming counterforce strikes. THE FADING
PROBLEM OF FRATRICIDE One type of fratricide occurs when the prompt effects of nuclear detonations— radiation, heat, and overpressure—destroy or deflect nearby warheads. To protect those warheads,
targeters must separate the incoming weapons by at least 3–5 seconds.33 A second source of fratricide is harder to overcome. Destroying hard targets typically requires low-altitude detonations (socalled ground
bursts), which vaporize material on the ground. When the debris begins to cool, 6–8 seconds after the detonation, it solidifies and forms a dust cloud that envelops the target. Even small dust particles can be lethal
to incoming warheads speeding through the cloud to the target. Particles in the debris cloud take approximately 20 minutes to settle back to ground.34 For decades, these two sources of fratricide, acting together,
posed a major problem for nuclear planners.35 Multiple warheads could be aimed at a single target if they were separated by at least 3–5 seconds (to avoid interfering with each other); yet, all inbound warheads
had to arrive within 6–8 seconds of the first (before the dust cloud formed). As a result, assigning more than two weapons to each target would produce only marginal gains: if the first one resulted in a miss, the
target would likely be shielded when the third or fourth warhead arrived.36 Improvements in accuracy, however, have greatly mitigated the problem of fratricide. As figure 1 shows, the proportion of misses—the
main culprit of fratricide—compared to hits is fading. To be clear, some weapons will still fail; that is, they will be prevented from destroying their targets because of malfunctioning missile boosters, faulty
guidance systems, or defective warheads. Those kinds of failures, however, do not generally cause fratricide, because the warheads do not detonate near the target. Only those that miss— that is, those that travel
to the target area and detonate outside the LR—will create a dust cloud that shields the target from other incoming weapons. In short, leaps in accuracy are essentially reducing the set of three outcomes (hit, fail,
or miss) to just two: hit or fail. The “miss” category, the key cause of fratricide, has virtually disappeared.37 THE CUMULATIVE CONSEQUENCES FOR COUNTERFORCE The end of fratricide is just one development
that has helped negate hardening and increased the vulnerability of nuclear arsenals. The computer revolution has led to other improvements that, taken together, significantly increase counterforce capabilities.
First, improved accuracy has transformed the role of ballistic missile submarines, turning these instruments of retaliation against population centers into potent counterforce weapons. Recall (from figure 1 above)
that a 1985 submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM) had only a 9 percent chance of destroying a hardened target. This meant that although ballistic missile submarines could destroy “soft” targets (e.g., cities),
they could not destroy the hardened sites that would be a key focus of a disarming attack. Increased SLBM accuracy has added hundreds of SLBM warheads to the counterforce arsenal; it has also unlocked other
advantages that submarines possess over land-based missiles. For example, submarines have flexibility in firing location, allowing them to strike targets that are out of range of ICBMs or that are deployed in
locations that ICBMs cannot hit.38 Submarines also permit strikes from close range, reducing an adversary's response time. And because submarines can fire from unpredictable locations, SLBM launches are more
difficult to detect than ICBM attacks, further reducing adversary response time before impact. Second, upgraded fuses are making ballistic missiles even more capable than figure 1 reports. In a compelling new
analysis, Theodore Postol explores the implications of new “compensating” fuses that exist on most U.S. SLBMs and that will soon be deployed on the entire force.39 Reentry vehicles equipped with this fusing
system use an altimeter to measure the difference between the actual and expected trajectory of the reentry vehicle, and then compensate for inaccuracies by adjusting the warhead's height of burst.40
Specifically, if the altimeter reveals that the warhead is off track and will detonate “short” of the target, the fusing system lowers the height of burst, allowing the weapon to travel farther (hence, closer to the
aimpoint) before detonation. Alternatively, if the reentry vehicle is going to detonate beyond the target, the height of burst is adjusted upward to allow the weapon to detonate before it travels too far.41 Without
this technology, as figure 1 shows, the lower-yield W76 warheads are much less effective against hardened targets than their higher-yield cousins, the W88s. The improved fuse cuts the effectiveness gap roughly
in half, making the hundreds of W76s in the U.S. arsenal potent counterforce weapons for the first time.42 The consequences of the new fuse are, therefore, profound, essentially tripling the size of the U.S.
submarine-based arsenal against hard targets.43 More broadly, the technology at the core of compensating fuses is available to any state capable of building modern multistage ballistic missiles.44 A third key
improvement, rapid missile retargeting, increases the effectiveness of ballistic missiles by reducing the consequence of malfunctions. As figure 1 illustrates, when accuracy increases, missile reliability becomes the
main hurdle to attacks on hardened targets. For decades analysts have recognized a solution to this problem: if missile failures can be detected, the targets assigned to the malfunctioning missiles can be rapidly
reassigned to other missiles held in reserve.45 The capability to retarget missiles in a matter of minutes was installed at U.S. ICBM launch control centers in the 1990s and on U.S. submarines in the early 2000s,
and both systems have since been upgraded.46 We do not know if the United States has adopted war plans that fully exploit rapid reprogramming to minimize the effects of missile failures.47 Nevertheless, such a
targeting approach is within the technical capabilities of the United States and other major nuclear powers and may already be incorporated into war plans.48 Table 1 illustrates the consequences of these
improvements against two hypothetical target sets: 100 moderately hard mobile missile shelters and 200 hardened missile silos.49 Row 1 shows the approximate counterforce capabilities of a 1985-era U.S.
Minuteman III ICBM strike; a 2-on-1 attack would have been expected to leave 8 mobile missile shelters intact. A strike against 200 hardened silos would fare worse, with 42 targets expected to survive. Table Table
1. The Demise of Hard Target Survivability The remaining rows in table 1 highlight the implications of the changes that have occurred from 1985 to 2017. Row 2 illustrates the impact of improved Minuteman III
guidance, which reportedly reduced circular error probable (CEP) from 183 to 120 meters. Row 3 employs the most capable missile and warhead combination in the current U.S. arsenal: the Trident II armed with a
high-yield W88 warhead. As the results in both rows show, upgraded missiles perform better than their predecessor, but not well enough to conduct effective disarming strikes against large target sets. Rows 4–7
demonstrate how the various improvements in missile technology have combined to create transformative counterforce capabilities. In row 4, we use a more realistic figure for missile system reliability. Although
80 percent missile reliability is traditionally used as a baseline, much evidence suggests that the actual reliability of modern missiles exceeds 90 percent.50 Row 4 shows attack outcomes for a Trident II/W88 with
90 percent reliability. Row 5 shows the consequences if the United States can reprogram its missiles to replace boost-phase failures. As row 5 reveals, a 2-on-1 attack with reprogramming would be expected to
destroy every hardened shelter or silo. Row 6 omits reprogramming, but it demonstrates the impact of the decline in fratricide by adding a third warhead to each target, resulting again in the destruction of either
target set. Row 7 illustrates the impact of compensating fuses. This row, unlike the others, employs the lower-yield warhead on the Trident II missiles (the W76). With the compensating fuse, a 2-on-1 attack using
W76s would be expected to destroy all the mobile missile shelters and all but one of the hardened silos. (An attack that mixed W88s and W76s could destroy the entire hardened silo force.) The results in table 1
are simply the output of a model. In the real world, the effectiveness of any strike would depend on many factors not modeled here, including the skill of the attacking forces, the accuracy of target intelligence,
the ability of the targeted country to detect an inbound strike and “launch on warning,” and other factors that depend on the political and strategic context. As a result, these calculations tell us less about the
precise vulnerability of a given arsenal at a given time—though one can reach arresting conclusions based on the evidence—and more about trends in how technology is undermining survivability.51 One crucial
consequence of the accuracy revolution is not captured in the above results. Yet, its impact on the vulnerability of nuclear arsenals may be just as profound. The accuracy revolution has rendered low-casualty
counterforce attacks plausible for the first time. THE DAWN OF LOW-CASUALTY COUNTERFORCE In nuclear deterrence theory, the primary factor preventing nuclear attack is the attacker's fear of retaliation. In

reality, however, additional sources of inhibition exist, including the terrible civilian consequences of an attempted counterforce strike. If a leader

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contemplating a disarming strike knows that such an attack will inflict massive casualties on the
enemy, that leader will also understand that the failure to disarm the enemy will provoke a
massive punitive response , foreclosing the possibility of a limited nuclear exchange. Furthermore, if a
disarming strike would cause enormous civilian casualties in the target country, but also possibly in allied and neutral neighboring
countries, leaders who value human life or the fate of allies would contemplate such an attack in only the direst circumstances. The
link between civilian casualties and nuclear inhibition explains why many arms control advocates oppose the development of less
Counterforce was tantamount to
destructive nuclear weapons; they worry that such weapons are more “usable.”52
mass casualties throughout the nuclear age, but the accuracy revolution is severing that link .
In the past, the main impediment to low-casualty nuclear counterforce strikes has been radioactive fallout. Targeters would have

had to rely on ground bursts to maximize destructive effects against hardened facilities such as
silos and storage sites. Detonations close to the ground have a major drawback, however : debris is
sucked up into the fireball, where it mixes with radioactive material, spreading radiation
wherever it settles . Although the other effects of nuclear detonations (e.g., blast and fire) can
have
large-scale consequences for civilians, in many circumstances those effects can be
minimized .53 If a strike produces fallout, however, the consequences are potentially vast and difficult to predict.54 In
theory, it has always been possible to employ nuclear weapons without creating
much fallout. If weapons are detonated at high altitude (above the “fallout threshold”), very little debris
from the ground will be drawn up into the fireball, greatly reducing fallout .55 In practice, however,
this targeting strategy has never been feasible against hardened sites. The problem is that any
high-yield weapon that detonates low enough to destroy a hardened target will also be low
enough to create fallout. Low-yield weapons could do the job and remain above the fallout
threshold, but that has always been impractical because low-yield weapons would need to be
delivered with great precision to destroy hardened sites, which was previously impossible.56 Figure 2 illustrates why
high-yield strikes against hard targets inevitably create fallout, and it highlights the potential low-yield solution to the fallout
problem. The vertical axis reflects weapon yield, and the horizontal axis depicts the hardness of potential targets—with the
approximate values for mobile missile shelters and missile silos indicated. The solid black line shows the maximum yield of a weapon
that can generate enough overpressure to destroy a target from above the fallout threshold. For example, figure 2 shows that for a
3,000 psi target, the highest-yield weapon that can destroy it while remaining above the fallout threshold is 0.35 kilotons. A
largeryield weapon will necessarily cause fallout if it destroys the target. A low-fallout strike against a 1,000 psi mobile missile shelter
would require a weapon with 50 kilotons yield, or less. In short, low-fatality nuclear counterforce is possible, but it requires low-yield
weapons, and hence very accurate delivery. figure Figure 2. The Potential for Low-Fallout Nuclear Counterforce note: “Target
hardness” (the horizontal axis) is measured in pounds per square inch (psi), with a typical range of psi for hardened mobile missile
shelters and missile silos noted. “Yield” (the vertical axis) is measured in kilotons and plotted on a logarithmic scale. The curve depicts
the maximum weapon yield that can destroy a given target from above the fallout threshold. Any weapon yield/target hardness
combination above the line that is effective enough to destroy the target will necessarily result in fallout. Points below the line
indicate that weapons can be detonated at an altitude that will destroy the target yet produce little or no fallout. See the online

appendix for calculations. The accuracy of nuclear delivery systems is now to the point that low-
casualty disarming strikes are possible . For example, a 0.3 kiloton bomb would require a CEP of 10–15 meters to
be
highly effective against hard targets;57 that level of accuracy is likely within the reach of the new guided B61-12, which is slated to
replace all nuclear gravity bombs in the U.S. arsenal.58 Similarly, a 5-kiloton missile warhead, which may approximate the yield of the
fission primary on many existing ballistic missiles, could destroy a hardened target if its CEP was approximately 50 meters.59 That
level of accuracy was implausible for most of the Cold War, yet it is within reach of many countries today.60 By

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detonating weapons above the fallout threshold, targeters can greatly reduce fallout relative
to ground bursts. But how significant are these reductions? How many fewer deaths would be caused in
comparison with ground burst strikes? To compare the fallout and potential fatalities from high-yield and
low-yield counterforce operations, we used unclassified U.S. Defense Department software,
called Hazard Prediction and Assessment Capability (HPAC).61 We modeled two different
counterforce strikes, one using a “traditional” high-yield approach and one employing lowyield
airbursts, against five hardened targets in North Korea (e.g., nuclear storage sites or hardened mobile
missile shelters). Because there is no available unclassified information about the location of North Korea's nuclear storage sites, we
modeled strikes against notional locations around the DPRK's periphery. The results of the two strikes, illustrated in
figure 3, are starkly different . The traditional approach (on the left side) would likely destroy the
targets, but at a terrible price: millions of fatalities across the Korean Peninsula. The lowyield
option, by contrast, would produce vastly fewer deaths . As long as the targets were located outside
North Korean cities, the number of Korean fatalities from a low-yield strike would be comparable to the human losses
from conventional operations . In fact, the fallout contours that are visible in figure 3 for the low-
yield scenario correspond to annual radiation levels deemed acceptable by the U.S. O ccupational
. figure
S afety and H ealth A dministration [OSHA] Figure 3. Low-Fallout Counterforce Option against North Korea note: The
figure illustrates the potential fallout consequences of two alternative
counterforce strikes against five notional North Korean hardened nuclear sites. In both strike options, each target is destroyed with
greater than 95 percent probability. The high-yield attack employs ten W88 warheads (455-kiloton yield), with two warheads against
each target. Because high-yield weapons cannot destroy hardened sites from above the fallout threshold, the W88s are ground
bursts. The low-yield attack uses twenty B61 bombs (0.3-kiloton yield), set to detonate at an altitude that maximizes effectiveness
while minimizing fallout. The fallout patterns and casualty figures were generated using unclassified U.S. Defense Department
software, called Hazard Prediction and Assessment Capability. The precise results of the HPAC simulation should
be treated with skepticism: wind speed and direction change constantly, altering fallout
patterns. The amount of fallout
generated in the low-yield scenario is so low , however, that the results of figure 3 are robust

regardless of which way the wind blows: few people located away from the actual targets
would be killed. The point of figure 3 is not to predict the outcome
of a counterforce strike on North Korea, but to reveal the relationship between accuracy and fallout. When accuracy was
poor, the only approach to nuclear counterforce was high-yield strikes, which would create
catastrophic results such as the one depicted above. The accuracy revolution has changed the
calculus, however; low-fatality
nuclear strikes are now possible .62 The accuracy revolution is ongoing. As accuracy
continues
to improve, the effectiveness of conventional attacks on hard targets will continue to
increase . Today, low-yield nuclear weapons can destroy targets that once required very large yield detonations. In the future,
many of those targets will be vulnerable to conventional attacks. In sum, from the start of the nuclear age
to the present, force planners have relied on hardening as a key strategy for ensuring the survivability of their
arsenals. That strategy made sense, and until recently ensured that disarming strikes would not

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only fail, but also kill millions of civilians in the process. Technology never stands still, however,
and the technical foundations of deterrence , particularly for the strategy of hardening, have
been greatly undermined by leaps in accuracy . Counterforce in the Age of Transparency While advances in accuracy are negating
hardening as a strategy for protecting nuclear forces, leaps in remote sensing are undermining the other main approach: concealment. Finding concealed forces, particularly
mobile ones, remains a major challenge. Trends in technology, however, are eroding the security that mobility once provided. In the ongoing competition between “hiders” and
“seekers,” waged by ballistic missile submarines, mobile land-based missiles, and the forces that seek to track them, the hider's job is growing more difficult than ever before.
Five trends are ushering in an age of unprecedented transparency.63 First, sensor platforms have become more diverse. The mainstays of Cold War technical intelligence—
satellites, submarines, and piloted aircraft—continue to play a vital role, and they are being supplemented by new platforms. For example, remotely piloted aircraft and
underwater drones now gather intelligence during peacetime and war. Autonomous sensors, hidden on the ground or tethered to the seabed, monitor adversary facilities,
forces, and operations. Additionally, the past two decades have witnessed the development of a new “virtual” sensing platform: cyberspying.64 Second, sensors are collecting a
widening array of signals for analysis using a growing list of techniques. Early Cold War strategic intelligence relied heavily on photoreconnaissance, underwater acoustics, and
the collection of adversary communications—all of which remain important. Now, modern sensors gather data from across the entire electromagnetic spectrum; they employ
seismic and acoustic sensors in tandem; and they emit radar at various frequencies depending on their purpose, for example, to maximize resolution or to penetrate foliage.
Modern remote sensing exploits an increasing number of analytic techniques, including spectroscopy to identify the vapors leaking from faraway facilities, interferometry to
discover underground structures, and signals processing techniques (such as those underpinning synthetic aperture radars) that allow radars to perform better than their
antenna size would seem to permit.65 Third, remote sensing platforms increasingly provide persistent observation. At the beginning of the Cold War, strategic intelligence was
hobbled by sensors that collected snapshots rather than streams of data. Spy planes sprinted past targets, and satellites passed overhead and then disappeared over the
horizon. Over time those sensors were supplemented with platforms that remained in place and soaked up data, such as signals intelligence antennas, undersea hydrophones,
and geostationary satellites. The trend toward persistence is continuing. Today, remotely piloted vehicles can loiter near enemy targets, and autonomous sensors can monitor
critical road junctures for months or years. Persistent observation is essential if the goal is not merely to count enemy weapons, but also to track their movement. The fourth
factor in the ongoing remote sensing revolution is the steady improvement in sensor resolution. In every field that employs remote sensing technology, including medicine,
geology, and astronomy, improved sensors and advanced data processing are permitting more accurate measures and fainter signals to be discerned from background noise.
The leap in satellite image resolution is but one example: the first U.S. reconnaissance satellite (Corona) could detect objects as small as 25 feet across. Today, even commercial
satellites (e.g., DigitalGlobe's WorldView-3 and WorldView-4) can collect images with 1-foot resolution, and U.S. spy satellites are reportedly capable of resolutions less than 4
inches.66 Advances in resolution are not merely transforming optical remote sensing systems; they are extending what can be seen by infrared sensors, advanced radars,
interferometers and spectrographs, and many other sensors. The fifth key trend is the huge increase in data transmission speed. During the first decades of the Cold War, it took
days or longer to transmit information from sensors to analysts. At least a full day passed before the photographs snapped by U-2 aircraft were developed and analyzed. Early
satellites were slower: the satellite had to finish its roll of film, and then eject the canister, which would be caught midair and flown to a facility for development and analysis. All
told, images collected at the beginning of a satellite mission might take weeks before they arrived at an analyst's desk. Today, by contrast, intelligence gathered by aircraft,
satellites, and drones can be transmitted in nearly real time. The data can be transmitted to intelligence analysts, political leaders, and in some cases directly to military

commanders conducting operations. None of these technological trends alone is transformative. Taken together , however, they
are creating a degree of transparency that was unimaginable even two decades ago. These new
remote sensing technologies are not proliferating around the world evenly; the United States,
for example, seems to have exploited new sensing technologies more intensively than other
countries. Many countries are developing expertise in advanced sensing, however. The sensing revolution is a global
phenomenon, with implications for the survivability of all countries' nuclear arsenals. Remote sensing technologies have improved
greatly, but the crucial question is whether these
advances have meaningfully increased the vulnerability
of the two most elusive types of nuclear delivery systems: SSBNs and mobile land-based missiles. If the
ability to track submarines at sea or mobile missiles on patrol remains out of reach, then the counterforce improvements we identify
are less significant, at least for now. In
fact, SSBNs have never been as invulnerable as analysts typically
assume, and advances in remote sensing appear to be reducing the survivability of both
submarines and mobile missiles .

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Human Rights Credibility – 1AC

The Khashoggi incident has created a new impetus from the Trump
administration to push global human right standards but actually following
through with ending military aid is necessary to provide credibility to that push
Elise Carlson-Rainer, 10-18-2018, Ph.D., is an assistant professor and doctoral program
faculty member American Public University’s School of Security and Global Studies.
Carlson-Rainer is a former U.S. diplomat and worked in the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights
and Labor., "Khashoggi prompts Trump to reconsider human rights in foreign policy", TheHill,
https://thehill.com/opinion/international/412058-khashoggi-prompts-trump-to-
reconsiderhuman-rights-in-foreign-policy

The suspected killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi at the hands of Saudi officials in their consulate in Istanbul has
riveted the news media. It has also fueled speculation and condemnation from governments

and leaders worldwide , and produced a dramatic showdown between Saudi Arabia and
its
allies around the globe. The Khashoggi case, and in particular the Trump administration’s
initial reaction to it, has also have produced something else: a flashpoint of the U.S.

concerns into the forefront

addressing Saudi Arabia’sof

treatment
journalists that has catapulted human rights
of U.S.-Saudi relations. The Trump administration’s high-level condemnation is
unprecedented for two reasons. First, Saudi Arabia is an important and strategic Middle East ally.
As
such, the Trump administration and its predecessors historically have been relatively silent on
the kingdom‘s human rights record. Washington has typically issued only the meekest of statements when the country beheads human rights activists, hangs LGBT
citizens, or stones women. Second, Trump’s initial threats to “severely punish” Saudi Arabia, in this case, are
unexpected . The administration has not prioritized human rights concerns in U.S. foreign engagements. While not referring to “human rights” per se, condemning the

killing of a foreign journalist is tantamount to the strongest human rights foreign policy the
U.S. government has exhibited toward Saudi Arabia in decades. A look at Saudi practices, as well as the history of U.S.-Saudi
relations, underscores the exceptional nature of the Trump administration’s reaction to the Khashoggi matter. Arresting or killing a member of its journalist corps is not a new practice for the kingdom. In 2016, the
Guardian reported that the number of beheadings reached the highest level in two decades. This is a country where people are put to death for “apostasy, sorcery, and adultery.” In addition, women charged with

According to the U.S. government’s Human Rights Report in 2017, the

“witchcraft” are stoned to death or beheaded.

most significant Saudi human rights abuses included: unlawful killings torture arbitrary arrest
and detention (including of lawyers, human rights activists, and antigovernment reformists)
the imprisonment of political prisoners arbitrary interference with privacy restrictions on
freedom of expression (including on the internet, and criminalization of libel) restrictions on

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freedoms of peaceful assembly, association, movement, and religion Although finally allowing Saudi women to drive received
much international press attention, the kingdom remains a dangerous place for women, LGBT people, bloggers and labor rights activists. Quite
In the face of this situation, the
simply, anyone who strays from the status quo, or questions any power structure in the kingdom, is liable to be repressed.

kingdom has largely received a free pass in diplomatic engagements for how it treats its own
people. Saudi Arabia was the first country that Trump visited after his inauguration. Both Bush administrations maintained a close
relationship with Saudi Arabia. President Barack Obama also continued a close alliance with
the kingdom. In 2015, upon the death of King Abdullah, Obama praised his "enduring contribution to the search for peace" in the Middle East. Then-Secretary of State John Kerry called him a "man
of wisdom and vision." The United States is far from alone in working with Saudi Arabia despite its terrible human rights record. Historically, Western nations and the United States have turned a blind eye to Saudi
Arabia’s human rights abuses while nations such as Iran are roundly condemned for similar actions and policies against journalists and women. Jeopardizing the entire strategic Saudi-U.S. relationship based upon

if Trump follows his rhetoric with action, he

the fate of one journalist would certainly set the Trump administration apart from its predecessors. And

would become one of the strongest defenders of international press freedom s. This would be an ironic
Has the Trump
distinction many American journalists — who have been accused of being “enemies of the people” by the President — would certainly find hard to accept.

administration’s early reaction and warning to Saudi Arabia represented non-committal

rhetoric, or does it signal a policy shift — one that would help restore the perception and
reputation of the United States as a staunch defender of human rights in the international
arena? While it remains to be seen whether the administration’s rhetoric will be matched
with actions, Trump’s statements are a jolt to international standards and diplomatic norms
regarding bilateral relations and human rights between the United States and Saudi Arabia .

Studies prove that continuing military aid to authoritarian regimes makes any
push for human right promotion uncredible.
Nussaibah Younis, 2014 senior research associate at the Project on Middle East Democracy,
“US policies in the Arab world must be seen to resonate with its values” Dec 13 2014,
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/dec/14/cia-torture-report-us-foreignpolicy-
arab-world)

Continued US support for repressive governments has also undermined confidence in the
country. In September, President Obama gave a speech at the Clinton Global Initiative declaring: “Partnering and protecting civil
society groups around the world is now a mission across the US government.” At the same time, his administration has fought to
bypass pro-democracy conditions on military aid to Egypt, and last week achieved its goal by inserting a “national security” waiver
into the spending bill expected to be passed by Congress soon. This is despite the fact that the government of President Abdel Fatah
al-Sisi has mounted a fierce attack against civil society organisations in Egypt, forcing many of them to suspend their operations or
leave the country. There
is a sense among some in the Obama administration that in the face of security threats in
the region, the US cannot afford to pursue a pro-democracy policy. But it is by failing to live up to
the values that it claims to hold dear that the US most egregiously stokes anti-American
sentiment in the Middle East and undermines its own interests. Moreover, many of the authoritarian
regimes supported by the US disseminate anti-American propaganda in a shameless attempt to shore up their own legitimacy at the
US’s expense. In August, Sisi accused the US of working with the Muslim Brotherhood, Qatar and Turkey to fund online media
projects that “aim to undermine Egypt’s stability”. The state-controlled Egyptian media is rife with absurd anti-American conspiracy

The Bahraini government, which the US has failed to hold to account for its vicious
theories.
crackdown on the pro-democracy movement in the country, has launched similarly outrageous
attacks on the US. Bahrain barred congressman James McGovern from entering the country, expelled assistant secretary of
state for democracy, human rights and labour Tom Malinowski, and presided over a campaign to vilify US ambassador Thomas

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Krajeski . The
result is that both regime supporters and opponents have huge antipathy towards
the US, as the former buy into the propaganda circulated by the regime and the latter lament the
lack of US support for their pro-democracy movements. In Bahrain, both the monarchists and Shia opponents
have become increasingly anti-American. An academic study on Egypt also found that many of those both in favour of the military
coup against President Morsi and those against it held anti-American views. Concerns that the release of the
Senate torture report would undermine US moral standing in the Middle East fail to recognise the
vast damage that has already been done. Both US inconsistencies in its pursuit of democracy
and human rights in the region, in conjunction with a fuelling of anti-American sentiment by state-run press in the Arab
world, have contributed to a profound cynicism about US intentions in the region. The result is that even

when the US tries to engage positively with the region, it is met with an unrelenting search for ulterior motives. The best way
for the US to improve its standing in the region is to pursue policies that resonate with US
values. It cannot preach against the torture of prisoners when it allows such abuse to take place in its own agencies, and fails to
hold those responsible to account. The US should also reorient its foreign policy in order to hold other
governments to account for their abuses of human rights, and refuse to supply military aid to
those countries that use violence to suppress dissent. In the long term, supporting such regimes
damages US credibility and undermines security.

Uniquely true of Saudi Arabia – US military aid to them is creating one of the
largest humanitarian issues in history
Radhya Almutawakel, 5-21-2018, "Saudi Arabia Must be Held to Account for Human Rights
Violations in Yemen", Mwatana for Human Rights, http://mwatana.org/en/new-
reportcondemns-saudi-airstrikes/

The international community must scrutinize Saudi Arabia’s military operation in Yemen , and
urge
Saudi Arabia to cease its relentless bombing campaign and devastating restrictions on aid
and access to healthcare, said the Mwatana Organization for Human Rights and Columbia Law School’s Human Rights Clinic in a new report submitted to the
United Nations for the UN’s review of Saudi Arabia’s human rights record. “No one has been spared in the war in Yemen—for more

than three years, Saudi-led coalition airstrikes have killed and injured thousands of civilians,
destroying homes, schools, hospitals, and even hitting weddings and funerals,” said Radhya
Almutawakel, Chairperson of Mwatana Organization for Human Rights. “When governments review Saudi Arabia’s human rights record at the UN later this year, they must

The
examine Saudi conduct not only in Saudi Arabia but also in Yemen, and offer recommendations to promote human rights and a peaceful solution to the conflict.”

report, authored by international legal experts and experienced human rights investigators
and based on the results of detailed investigations conducted in Yemen over the entire period
of Saudi involvement in the war in Yemen, highlights the high rates of civilian casualties and
the destruction of civilian infrastructure caused by Saudi-led coalition airstrikes. Mwatana has documented
a number of incidents in which civilians were harmed where the presence of military targets was not evident, raising serious questions about Saudi Arabia’s compliance with its

Saudi Arabia’s continued restriction of vital food imports and

legal obligations. The new report also explains how

humanitarian aid to Yemen has exacerbated what the United Nations has described as the “
worst humanitarian crisis in the world .” Yemen is currently facing the largest recorded
cholera epidemic, and more than eight million Yemenis are at acute risk of famine. The report
also details how Saudi Arabia’s closure of the Sana’a International Airport prevents civilians
from accessing lifesaving healthcare and violates international law.

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HR cred is vital to control conflict escalation

Brody 14 (Alan, on the Advisory Board of the University of Iowa Center for Human Rights,
“Making Human Rights the Heart of American Policy,” UICHR, November 25, 2014,
http://uichr.org/2014/11/making-human-rights-the-heart-of-american-policy-by-
alanbrody/.Making human rights the heart of American politics)

Unfortunately, as the world moved

forward to American leadership has been increasingly missing in action. formulate a series of
international human
rights
agreements, We ratified the 1979 Covenant to Protect Civil and Political rights only in 1993, and even then with a series of
crippling reservations. And the Senate has never ratified its twin, the Covenant to Protect Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, or
the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women. America has become the human rights “drop out,”
behaving like a troubled, self- indulgent teenager convinced that all the rest of the world is wrong and only he is right. The
Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), this month celebrating the 25 th anniversary of its adoption, is an embarrassing example
of such American exceptionalism run amok: 194 countries ratified the CRC; only the essentially failed states of Somalia and South
Sudan haven’t been able to do so, along with the United States. Defenders of our action assert that America’s laws and institutions
are already superior to anything the rest of the world may have to offer. Our media and politicians choking in hatred and fear over
the arrival of 50,000 child refugees earlier this year didn’t project an image of American superiority, however, nor did the images
coming out of Ferguson after the shooting of an

unmed black teenager, or the statistics that show America has the highest rates of incarceration in the world. In abandoning

of the world may pose

our roles and responsibilities for global human America has given up the moral
rights, high
ground it formerly occupied in the eyes of the world. This has undermined our position
for
taking on the many challenges to , human decency, and basic civil and political that the
rights
security Putins,
the Xi Jinpings, and the Ayatollahs as they pursue their own economic and national security
interests. When we have occasionally intervened in cases of gross violations of human rights, our interventions have appeared to the
world to be highly selective. We may go into places like Iraq or Libya where our national security interests are at stake or great
quantities of oil are in the ground, but not into the Congo where millions of civilians have died (while mineral wealth continues to
flow out of the country). In addition, after the unraveling of the Communist threat in 1989-92, the United States largely abandoned
its leadership – at home and abroad -- in promoting economic and social rights. The concept of claims to such rights, by individuals,
would carry concomitant responsibilities of states, civil society institutions and even corporations to ensure people have good health,
education, and a decent living. The American state and the interests corporations that increasingly control it do not want to
recognize the legitimacy of such claims that would require them to fulfill such responsibilities. The world has thus come to see
American foreign policy as
being essentially about
It is in this context that we now face the appearance of the ‘Caliphs’ of ISIL, Boko
protecting and promoting
the interests of what is already the world’s wealthiest and most powerful nation.

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Haram, and other pretenders who seek to establish ecclesiastical states, and who are ready to use military force in the
rawest of ways to suppress the human rights of their own and or peoples. The only response America seems able to bring to bear, to
oppose them, is our own raw military power in a “War on Terror” that seems only to be begetting more terror. The more “effective”
we become in projecting our military power into the impoverished villages and slums where such groups arise, the more the socalled
“collateral damage” we inflict looks to the people on the receiving end to be no different from what those we call terrorists are
inflicting. Our “whack a mole” approach using bombs and drones to suppress enemies in one placonly seems to motivate the

emergence of new ones elsewhere, and each seems more sophisticated than the last. If
we continue in these
directions, we face an ‘everybody loses’ prospect not unlike what the world went through
during the first half of the 20 th century.
America’s global leadership during contributed immensely to the relative world peace the period of our
“Greatest
Generation” in the mid- to late- 20 th century and development that characterized that period. I fear that both Americans
and freedom-loving persons around the world are going to
rue the loss of that American leadership, and the chaos that could easily replace it. But America
cannot regain such leadership
simply through use of military power. “Leadership” exercised by applying force outside of an
internationally acceptable moral and legal framework only encourages others to follow that
same example in pursuit of their own ends. Our “war on terror” as presently conceived thus has no end.
Destructive patterns of action and counteraction will only continue and worsen unless the United States joins with other nations
committed to a just international order. Together we need to offer and act upon a vision that satisfies the moral and material
aspirations of all the world’s peoples, and especially of those whom our global economic system has left behind.

Democracy Promotion – 1AC

Aid to authoritarian regimes undermines the legitimacy of both international
norms AND US democracy promotion
al-Gharbi 15 (Musa al-Gharbi is a social epistemologist affiliated with the Southwest Initiative
for the Study of Middle East Conflicts “Why America Lacks Credibility in the Middle East” March
10 2015, http://fpif.org/america-lacks-credibility-middle-east/)

America, on the other hand, has a serious credibility problem in the Middle East. The results of U.S.
interventions in the region have been consistently catastrophic: Whether in Afghanistan,
Pakistan, Iraq, Yemen, Libya, or Syria, direct U.S. involvement is usually followed by an erosion of
state governance, the empowerment of exploitative sub-state and non-state actors, and a
dramatic rise in violence, civil tension, and unrest. American indirect involvement, meanwhile, tends to empower
corrupt, oppressive, and undemocratic forces — such as in Pakistan, Egypt, Palestine, Saudi Arabia, and Bahrain. In terms of achieving
positive outcomes, America simply has absolutely no credibility in the Middle East. However,
character is also important: Moral credibility means a nation’s intentions and motivations are more likely to be trusted. Strategic and
moral credibility are interrelated: Consistently generating good outcomes goes a long way toward bolstering one’s reputation. Even if
the methods for achieving an objective seem questionable, they tend to be justified retrospectively if things turn out all right. In the
interim, people are much more willing to extend the benefit of doubt to those with a strong track record of success. Conversely, moral
credibility can help make up for occasional bad outcomes — an agent is afforded slack when things go awry if it’s perceived as being
genuinely well-intentioned. However,
when there are glaring inconsistencies between a government’s
declared aspirations (say, promotion of democracy and human rights) and their
means of realization (imposing Western socio-economic models at the expense of indigenous self-determination) — especially
when paired with a general failure to realize stated objectives (producing chaos rather than order, be it liberal or

otherwise) — these generate suspicion about its real intentions and motives. Hypocrisy Undermines
“Resolve” Part of what contributes to America’s cycle of diplomatic and military failures in the

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Middle East is an underlying distrust of the United States among most Arabs, which inspires
widespread ambivalence or resistance to U.S. efforts in the region. The source of this deficit has nothing to do
with U.S. follow-through or resolve, as foreign policy hawks love to allege. One can be consistent with regards to backing up threats,

etc. while still being a hypocrite in the moral sphere. Indeed, this is precisely the problem America faces. After decades of
supporting the region’s dictators with arms and money, Washington has now formed a coalition with
both the surviving local autocrats and the Middle East’s former imperial powers to “bring democracy” to
Syria and (once more) to Iraq. Is it any surprise the “Arab street” is mistrustful? It further fuels skepticism when America attempts to
fight ISIS — a group largely empowered by previous U.S. support for other non-state actors in Iraq, Libya, and Syria — by training and
arming new, ineffective, and unpopular proxy militias. Moreover, these new groups are often aligned with, and trained in, Saudi Arabia
— the power most responsible for proliferating the ideology embraced by the so-called “Islamic State.” It seems disingenuous
when the U.S. condemns Russia for funding non-state actors in Ukraine, or
Pakistan for doing so in Afghanistan, or Iran in Lebanon — even as America expands its own support of insurgents
in Syria. The Arab public is outraged when U.S. policymakers decry human rights violations
elsewhere while continuing to support Israel and shield it from international accountability for its occupation of the West Bank or its
wars on Gaza. And it doesn’t help at all when the Obama administration, among other failings, declines to prosecute clear and
grievous infractions like torture by its own intelligence agencies, while calling for regime change in other countries for the same sorts

of infractions. When American representatives lecture others about upholding the very international
rules and norms the U.S. government systematically and unapologetically violates
through its drone strikes and mass surveillance, enhanced interrogation, and extraordinary rendition programs, others will not
take American rhetoric or ideals seriously. These glaring contradictions imbue the entire ethical
project with a cynical hue — undermining not just American credibility, but the general value of
moral discourse on the world stage more generally. This breakdown, in turn, disrupts consensus
building and cooperation, threatening the long-term viability of the rules-based international
order Americans sacrificed so much in years past to establish and preserve. Changing the Dynamic But
there is good news: The United States can simultaneously bolster its moral and strategic credibility by
adopting a more sensible foreign policy. The first step will be to adopt more modest aspirations and pragmatic
strategies in order to avoid making problems worse. Within this narrower framework, the United States should strive to adopt the
same policies it promotes for others. If Washington wants to stem the growth and proliferation of non-state actors, for example, the
U.S. should stop funding them as well — and should pressure its allies to follow suit. Instead, Washington can provide material and
logistical support to the relevant state actors to help these governments first contain the spread of ungoverned zones and then
gradually reclaim control over lost territories. (Of course, this support should be contingent on a basic respect for human rights.)
Rather than orchestrating another destabilizing regime-change in Syria, furthermore, the United States should aspire towards gradual,
viable, and meaningful reform of the state — which will require an inclusive diplomatic approach regarding the Baathist government
and its foreign patrons, as well as a piecemeal agenda for rehabilitating the state and its institutions. In the short term, this means
prioritizing peacekeeping, humanitarian assistance, and reconstruction in support of a negotiated settlement rather than trying to
force polarizing elections in the wake of a violent uprising. But perhaps most
significantly, if America wants to
promote democracy in the Middle East, it should start by rethinking the levels and types of aid
afforded to Israel and the region’s autocrats absent substantial political reform. All of these
measures would undermine extremist groups, both materially and ideologically, by enhancing Arabs’
selfdetermination while advancing international law and order. As a result, this approach could
generate much better results with significantly less investment and blowback. Perhaps more
importantly, these policies would help rebuild America’s credibility by building a better world —in the
Mideast and beyond.

Democracy promotion resolves the root cause of major impacts

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Miller 12 — Paul D. Miller, Assistant Professor in the Department of Regional and Analytical
Studies at the College of International Security Affairs at the National Defense University, serves
as an Officer in the U.S. Army Reserve and was deployed to Afghanistan in 2002, served as
Director for Afghanistan on the National Security Council from 2007 to 2009, served as a
political analyst for the Central Intelligence Agency specializing in South Asia, holds a Masters in
Public Policy from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University and a Ph.D.
in International Relations from Georgetown University, 2012 (“American Grand Strategy and the
Democratic Peace,” Survival: Global Politics and Strategy, Volume 54, Issue 2, Available Online
to Subscribing Institutions via Taylor & Francis Online)
A grand strategy that includes promoting the democratic peace has much to recommend it. The historical
evidence seems convincing: established democracies rarely, if ever, fight one another. The more states that
adopt democracy, the fewer there are that are likely to become enemies of the United States. Additionally,
as summarised by Sean M. Lynn Jones, editor of International Security, democracy has a number of other benefits directly helpful for
US national security. Democracies are less likely to use violence against their own people and therefore less
likely to draw in outside intervention. They rarely sponsor international terrorism. Democracies have
better long-run economic prospects, rarely experience famine, and produce fewer refugees than
nondemocracies, which means they require less international aid, are more likely to trade with and invest
in the United States, and are more likely to become centres of innovation and productivity .27¶ Scholars
have offered a range of reasons why democracies rarely fight one another , which collectively suggest that the
benefits of democracy are not ephemeral accidents but permanent features of this form of government.
Citizens of democracies believe they share values with other democracies, and thus are slower to see
other democracies as potential enemies or combatants. Democracy enforces peaceful dispute-resolution
domestically, a norm that democratic leaders may simply transplant to the international arena, especially in
disputes with other democracies. Institutional considerations are also relevant. Democracies typically constrain the
government's war powers through civilian control and checks and balances, making it harder to launch a
war. The public, which pays the cost of war in a democracy, is likely to be more selective about the wars it chooses
to fight. And democracies are unable to control information about themselves because of the freedoms of
speech and press, which decreases misperceptions that could lead to war and, in a militarised dispute,
improves the credibility of a democracy's military threats and hence decreases opponents' willingness to
gamble on war.28¶ Promoting democracy also fits naturally with other long-standing components of US grand strategy.
Washington has, for example, long sought to prevent the rise of a hostile hegemon in strategically important areas of the world –
especially Europe or East Asia – by maintaining a favourable balance of power through military dominance and a network of allies.
Preventing hegemony has rightly animated US policy for generations, from its tack-andweave between Britain and France from 1776
to 1815 to its involvement in both World Wars and the Cold War. A commitment to democracy is, in a sense, the corollary to resistance
to hegemony, as democratic systems are defined by a diffusion of power among many actors, thus limiting the chances for tyranny.
The same holds internationally: the United States should work to keep power diffused among many sovereign states and international
organisations to prevent the rise of a hostile, coercive hegemon. Regimes committed to those ideals at home are more likely to apply
them abroad, while autocracies are more likely to seek to expand their power at others' expense, both domestically and
promoting
internationally. The growth of democracy abroad alters the balance of power in the United States' favour.¶ Finally,
democracy is well suited to one of the major challenges of the twenty-first century: state failure and its
attendant threats. The United States can and should respond to the rising tide of state failure across the
world with democratic peace-building interventions. The consequences of state failure and anarchy across
much of the world – including the rise of terrorist groups, organised crime, drug cartels, human traffickers,
nuclear smugglers, pandemic disease and piracy – collectively erode global stability and liberalism and raise
the cost of US leadership. Effective democratic peace-building (meaning peace-building that is well armed, well funded
and well planned) is the answer to this challenge. When successful, it holds out the promise not just of treating
these various symptoms, but of addressing the disease. The alternative is to play global Whack-a-Mole

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with the crisis du jour, sniping pirates one day, drone-bombing terrorists or barricading drug cartels into
narco-statelets the next. Such policy is reactive, defensive and events-driven, the opposite of what strategy
is supposed to be. A grand strategy would complement these immediate, short-term actions to stave off
threats with longer-term efforts to address the underlying challenges to stability and democracy.

And absent effective democracy promotion international backsliding leads to

great power war
Kagan, Senior Fellow, Foreign Policy, Project on International Order and Strategy, Brookings,
15 (Robert, January, “Is Democracy in Decline? The Weight of Geopolitics,”
http://www.brookings.edu/research/articles/2015/01/democracy-in-decline-weight-
ofgeopolitics-kagan,)
Politics follows geopolitics, or so it has often seemed throughout history. When the Athenian democracy’s empire rose in the fifth century B.C.E., the
number of Greek city-states ruled by democrats proliferated; Sparta’s power was reflected in the spread of Spartan-style oligarchies. When the Soviet
Union’s power rose in the early Cold War years, communism spread. In the later Cold War years, when the United States and Western Europe gained
the advantage and ultimately triumphed, democracies proliferated and communism collapsed. Was this all just the outcome of the battle of ideas, as
Francis Fukuyama and others argue, with the better idea of liberal capitalism triumphing over the worse ideas of communism and fascism? Or did liberal
ideas triumph in part because of real battles and shifts that occurred less in the realm of thought than in the realm of power? These are relevant questions
again. We live in a time when democratic nations are in retreat in the realm of geopolitics,

and when democracy itself is also in retreat. The latter phenomenon has been well documented
by Freedom House, which has recorded declines in freedom in the world for nine straight years.
At the level of geopolitics, the shifting tectonic plates have yet to produce a seismic rearrangement of

power, but rumblings are audible. The United States has been in a state of retrenchment since
President Barack Obama took office in 2009. The democratic nations of Europe, which some might have expected to pick up the slack, have instead
turned inward and all but abandoned earlier dreams of reshaping the international system in their image. As for such rising democracies as Brazil, India,
Turkey, and South Africa, they are neither rising as fast as once anticipated nor yet behaving as democracies in world affairs. Their focus remains
narrow and regional. Their national identities remain shaped by postcolonial and nonaligned sensibilities—by old but carefully nursed resentments—
which lead them, for instance, to shield rather than condemn autocratic Russia’s invasion of democratic Ukraine, or, in the case of Brazil, to prefer the
company of Venezuelan dictators to that of North American democratic presidents. Meanwhile, insofar
as there is energy in the
international system, it comes from the great-power autocracies, China and Russia, and from
would-be theocrats pursuing their dream of a new caliphate in the Middle East. For all their many
problems and weaknesses, it is still these autocracies and these aspiring religious totalitarians that

that seem increasingly unleashed while the democracies feel increasingly constrained.

push forward while the democracies draw back , that act while the democracies react, and
It should not be surprising that one
of the side effects of these circumstances has been the weakening and
in some cases collapse of democracy in those places where it was newest and weakest. Geopolitical
shifts among the reigning great powers, often but not always the result of wars, can have significant effects on the domestic politics of the smaller and
weaker nations of the world. Global democratizing trends have been stopped and reversed before. Consider
the interwar years. In 1920, when the number of democracies in the world had doubled in the

aftermath of the First World War, contemporaries such as the British historian James Bryce believed that they
were witnessing “a natural trend, due to a general law of social progress.”[1] Yet almost
immediately the new democracies in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland began to fall. Europe’s democratic
great powers, France and Britain, were suffering the effects of the recent devastating war, while the one rich
and healthy democratic power, the United States, had retreated to the safety of its distant shores. In the vacuum

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came Mussolini’s rise to power in Italy in 1922, the crumbling of Germany’s Weimar Republic, and the broader
triumph of European fascism. Greek democracy fell in 1936. Spanish democracy fell to Franco that same year.
Military coups overthrew democratic governments in Portugal, Brazil, Uruguay, and
Argentina. Japan’s shaky democracy succumbed to military rule and then to a form of fascism.
Across three continents, fragile democracies gave way to authoritarian forces exploiting the

vulnerabilities of the democratic system, while other democracies fell prey to the worldwide
economic depression. There was a ripple effect, too—the success of fascism in one country
strengthened similar movements elsewhere, sometimes directly. Spanish fascists received military assistance from the fascist
regimes in Germany and Italy. The result was that by 1939 the democratic gains of the previous forty years had been wiped out. The period after the First World War showed not only that democratic gains could be
reversed, but that democracy need not always triumph even in the competition of ideas. For it was not just that democracies had been overthrown. The very idea of democracy had been “discredited,” as John A.
Hobson observed.[2] Democracy’s aura of inevitability vanished as great numbers of people rejected the idea that it was a better form of government. Human beings, after all, do not yearn only for freedom,
autonomy, individuality, and recognition. Especially in times of difficulty, they yearn also for comfort, security, order, and, importantly, a sense of belonging to something larger than themselves, something that
submerges autonomy and individuality—all of which autocracies can sometimes provide, or at least appear to provide, better than democracies. In the 1920s and 1930s, the fascist governments looked stronger,
more energetic and efficient, and more capable of providing reassurance in troubled times. They appealed effectively to nationalist, ethnic, and tribal sentiments. The many weaknesses of Germany’s Weimar
democracy, inadequately supported by the democratic great powers, and of the fragile and short-lived democracies of Italy and Spain made their people susceptible to the appeals of the Nazis, Mussolini, and
Franco, just as the weaknesses of Russian democracy in the 1990s made a more authoritarian government under Vladimir Putin attractive to many Russians. People tend to follow winners, and between the wars

the democratic-capitalist countries looked weak and in retreat compared with the apparently vigorous fascist regimes and with Stalin’s Soviet Union
. It took a second world war

and another military victory by the Allied democracies (plus the Soviet Union) to reverse the trend
again . The United States imposed democracy by force and through
prolonged occupations in West Germany, Italy, Japan, Austria, and South Korea. With
the victory of the democracies and the
discrediting of fascism—chiefly on the battlefield—many other countries followed suit. Greece and Turkey both moved in a
democratic direction, as did Brazil, Argentina, Peru, Ecuador, Venezuela, and Colombia. Some of the new nations born as Europe shed its colonies also experimented with democratic government, the most
prominent example being India. By 1950, the number of democracies had grown to between twenty and thirty, and they governed close to 40 percent of the world’s population. Was this the victory of an idea or
the victory of arms? Was it the product of an inevitable human evolution or, as Samuel P. Huntington later observed, of “historically discrete events”?[3] We would prefer to believe the former, but evidence
suggests the latter, for it turned out that even the great wave of democracy following World War II was not irreversible. Another “reverse wave” hit from the late 1950s through the early 1970s. Peru, Brazil,
Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Uruguay, Ecuador, South Korea, the Philippines, Pakistan, Indonesia, and Greece all fell back under authoritarian rule. In Africa, Nigeria was the most prominent of the newly decolonized
nations where democracy failed. By 1975, more than three-dozen governments around the world had been installed by military coups.[4] Few spoke of democracy’s inevitability in the 1970s or even in the early
1980s. As late as 1984, Huntington himself believed that “the limits of democratic development in the world” had been reached, noting the “unreceptivity to democracy of several major cultural traditions,” as well
as “the substantial power of antidemocratic governments (particularly the Soviet Union).”[5] But then, unexpectedly, came the “third wave.” From the mid-1970s through the early 1990s, the number of
democracies in the world rose to an astonishing 120, representing well over half the world’s population. What explained the prolonged success of democratization over the last quarter of the twentieth century? It
could not have been merely the steady rise of the global economy and the general yearning for freedom, autonomy, and recognition. Neither economic growth nor human yearnings had prevented the democratic
reversals of the 1960s and early 1970s. Until the third wave, many nations around the world careened back and forth between democracy and authoritarianism in a cyclical, almost predictable manner. What was
most notable about the third wave was that this cyclical alternation between democracy and autocracy was interrupted. Nations moved into a democratic phase and stayed there. But why? The International
Climate Improves The answer is related to the configuration of power and ideas in the world. The international climate from the mid-1970s onward was simply more hospitable to democracies and more
challenging to autocratic governments than had been the case in past eras. In his study, Huntington emphasized the change, following the Second Vatican Council, in the Catholic Church’s doctrine regarding order
and revolution, which tended to weaken the legitimacy of authoritarian governments in Catholic countries. The growing success and attractiveness of the European Community (EC), meanwhile, had an impact on
the internal policies of nations such as Portugal, Greece, and Spain, which sought the economic benefits of membership in the EC and therefore felt pressure to conform to its democratic norms. These norms
increasingly became international norms. But they did not appear out of nowhere or as the result of some natural evolution of the human species. As Huntington noted, “The pervasiveness of democratic norms

The United States, in fact, played a critical role in making

rested in large part on the commitment to those norms of the most powerful country in the world.[6]

the explosion of democracy possible. This was not because U.S. policy makers consistently promoted democracy around the world. They did not. At
various times throughout the Cold War, U.S. policy often supported dictatorships as part of the battle against communism or simply out of indifference. It even permitted or was complicit in the overthrow of
democratic regimes deemed unreliable—those of Mohammad Mossadegh in Iran in 1953, Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala in 1954, and Salvador Allende in Chile in 1973. At times, U.S. foreign policy was almost hostile
to democracy. President Richard Nixon regarded it as “not necessarily the best form of government for people in Asia, Africa, and Latin America.”[7] Nor, when the United States did support democracy, was it
purely out of fealty to principle. Often it was for strategic reasons. Officials in President Ronald Reagan’s administration came to believe that democratic governments might actually be better than autocracies at
fending off communist insurgencies, for instance. And often it was popular local demands that compelled the United States to make a choice that it would otherwise have preferred to avoid, between supporting an
unpopular and possibly faltering dictatorship and “getting on the side of the people.” Reagan would have preferred to support the dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos in the 1980s had he not been confronted by the
moral challenge of Filipino “people power.” Rarely if ever did the United States seek a change of regime primarily out of devotion to democratic principles. Beginning in the mid-1970s, however, the general
inclination of the United States did begin to shift toward a more critical view of dictatorship. The U.S. Congress, led by human-rights advocates, began to condition or cut off U.S. aid to authoritarian allies, which
weakened their hold on power. In the Helsinki Accords of 1975, a reference to human-rights issues drew greater attention to the cause of dissidents and other opponents of dictatorship in the Eastern bloc.
President Jimmy Carter focused attention on the human-rights abuses of the Soviet Union as well as of right-wing governments in Latin America and elsewhere. The U.S. government’s international information
services, including the Voice of America and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, put greater emphasis on democracy and human rights in their programming. The Reagan administration, after first trying to roll back
Carter’s human-rights agenda, eventually embraced it and made the promotion of democracy part of its stated (if not always its actual) policy. Even during this period, U.S. policy was far from consistent. Many
allied dictatorships, especially in the Middle East, were not only tolerated but actively supported with U.S. economic and military aid. But the net effect of the shift in U.S. policy, joined with the efforts of Europe,
was significant. The third wave began in 1974 in Portugal, where the Carnation Revolution put an end to a half-century of dictatorship. As Larry Diamond notes, this revolution did not just happen. The United States
and the European democracies played a key role, making a “heavy investment . . . in support of the democratic parties.”[8] Over the next decade and a half, the United States used a variety of tools, including direct
military intervention, to aid democratic transitions and prevent the undermining of existing fragile democracies all across the globe. In 1978, Carter threatened military action in the Dominican Republic when long-
serving president Joaquín Balaguer refused to give up power after losing an election. In 1983, Reagan’s invasion of Grenada restored a democratic government after a military coup. In 1986, the United States
threatened military action to prevent Marcos from forcibly annulling an election that he had lost. In 1989, President George H.W. Bush invaded Panama to help install democracy after military strongman Manuel
Noriega had annulled his nation’s elections. Throughout this period, too, the United States used its influence to block military coups in Honduras, Bolivia, El Salvador, Peru, and South Korea. Elsewhere it urged
presidents not to try staying in office beyond constitutional limits. Huntington estimated that over the course of about a decade and a half, U.S. support had been “critical to democratization in the Dominican
Republic, Grenada, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Uruguay, Peru, Ecuador, Panama, and the Philippines” and was “a contributing factor to democratization in Portugal, Chile, Poland, Korea, Bolivia, and
Taiwan.”[9] Many developments both global and local helped to produce the democratizing trend of the late 1970s and the 1980s, and there might have been a democratic wave even if the United States had not
been so influential. The question is whether the wave would have been as large and as lasting. The stable zones of democracy in Europe and Japan proved to be powerful
magnets. The liberal free-market and free-trade system increasingly outperformed the stagnating economies of the socialist bloc, especially at the dawn of the information
revolution. The greater
, if
activism of the U nited S tates, together with that of other successful democracies, helped to build a broad
not

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universal, consensus that was more sympathetic to democratic forms of government and less
sympathetic to authoritarian forms. Diamond and others have noted how important it was
that these “global democratic norms” came to be “reflected in regional and international
institutions and agreements as never before.”[10] Those norms had an impact on the internal
political processes of countries, making it harder for authoritarians to weather political and
economic storms and easier for democratic movements to gain legitimacy. But “norms” are
transient as well. In the 1930s, the trendsetting nations were fascist dictatorships. In the 1950s and 1960s, variants of socialism were in
vogue. But from the 1970s until recently, the United States and a handful of other democratic powers set the fashion trend. They pushed—some might

even say imposed—democratic principles and embedded them in international institutions and agreements. Equally important was

had barely taken root.

the role that the U nited S tates played in preventing backsliding away from democracy where it
Perhaps the most significant U.S. contribution was simply to prevent military coups against fledgling democratic
governments. In a sense, the United States was interfering in what might have been a natural cycle, preventing nations that ordinarily would have been

“due” for an authoritarian phase from following the usual pattern. It

was not that the United States was exporting
democracy everywhere. More often, it played the role of “catcher in the rye”—preventing
young democracies from falling off the cliff—in places such as the Philippines, Colombia, and Panama. This helped to
give the third wave unprecedented breadth and durability. Finally, there was the collapse of the Soviet Union and with it the fall of Central
and Eastern Europe’s communist regimes and their replacement by democracies. What role the United States played in hastening the Soviet downfall may be in dispute, but surely it played some part, both by
containing the Soviet empire militarily and by outperforming it economically and technologically. And at the heart of the struggle were the peoples of the former Warsaw Pact countries themselves. They had long
yearned to achieve the liberation of their respective nations from the Soviet Union, which also meant liberation from communism. These peoples wanted to join the rest of Europe, which offered an economic and
social model that was even more attractive than that of the United States. That Central and East Europeans uniformly chose democratic forms of government, however, was not simply the fruit of aspirations for
freedom or comfort. It also reflected the desires of these peoples to place themselves under the U.S. security umbrella. The strategic, the economic, the political, and the ideological were thus inseparable. Those
nations that wanted to be part of NATO, and later of the European Union, knew that they would stand no chance of admission without democratic credentials. These democratic transitions, which turned the third
wave into a democratic tsunami, need not have occurred had the world been configured differently. That a democratic, united, and prosperous Western Europe was even there to exert a powerful magnetic pull on
its eastern neighbors was due to U.S. actions after World War II. The Lost Future of 1848 Contrast the fate of democratic movements in the late twentieth century with that of the liberal revolutions that swept
Europe in 1848. Beginning in France, the “Springtime of the Peoples,” as it was known, included liberal reformers and constitutionalists, nationalists, and representatives of the rising middle class as well as radical
workers and socialists. In a matter of weeks, they toppled kings and princes and shook thrones in France, Poland, Austria, and Romania, as well as the Italian peninsula and the German principalities. In the end,
however, the liberal movements failed, partly because they lacked cohesion, but also because the autocratic powers forcibly crushed them. The Prussian army helped to defeat liberal movements in the German
lands, while the Russian czar sent his troops into Romania and Hungary. Tens of thousands of protesters were killed in the streets of Europe. The sword proved mightier than the pen. It mattered that the more
liberal powers, Britain and France, adopted a neutral posture throughout the liberal ferment, even though France’s own revolution had sparked and inspired the pan-European movement. The British monarchy
and aristocracy were afraid of radicalism at home. Both France and Britain were more concerned with preserving peace among the great powers than with providing assistance to fellow liberals. The preservation
of the European balance among the five great powers benefited the forces of counterrevolution everywhere, and the Springtime of the Peoples was suppressed.[11] As a result, for several decades the forces of
reaction in Europe were strengthened against the forces of liberalism. Scholars have speculated about how differently Europe and the world might have evolved had the liberal revolutions of 1848 succeeded: How
might German history have unfolded had national unification been achieved under a liberal parliamentary system rather than under the leadership of Otto von Bismarck? The “Iron Chancellor” unified the nation
not through elections and debates, but through military victories won by the great power of the conservative Prussian army under the Hohenzollern dynasty. As the historian A.J.P. Taylor observed, history reached
a turning point in 1848, but Germany “failed to turn.”[12] Might Germans have learned a different lesson from the one that Bismarck taught—namely, that “the great questions of the age are not decided by
speeches and majority decisions . . . but by blood and iron”?[13] Yet the international system of the day was not configured in such a way as to encourage liberal and democratic change. The European balance of
power in the mid-nineteenth century did not favor democracy, and so it is not surprising that democracy failed to triumph anywhere.[14] We can also speculate about how differently today’s world might have

evolved without the U.S. role in shaping an international environment favorable to democracy, and how it might evolve should the United States find itself no longer strong enough to play that role .
Democratic transitions are not inevitable , even where the conditions may be ripe. Nations
may enter a transition zone—economically, socially, and politically—where the probability of moving in a
democratic direction
reigning great powers, often determine which direction change takes increases or decreases.
But foreign influences,
usually exerted by the
. Strong authoritarian powers willing to support
conservative forces against liberal movements can undo what might otherwise have been a “natural” evolution to democracy, just as powerful democratic nations can help liberal forces that, left to their own
devices, might otherwise fail. In the 1980s as in the 1840s, liberal movements arose for their own reasons in different countries, but their success or failure was influenced by the balance of power at the
international level. In the era of U.S. predominance, the balance was generally favorable to democracy, which helps to explain why the liberal revolutions of that later era succeeded. Had the United States not been
so powerful, there would have been fewer transitions to democracy, and those that occurred might have been short-lived. It might have meant a shallower and more easily reversed third wave.[15] Democracy,
Autocracy, and Power What about today? With the democratic superpower curtailing its global influence, regional powers are setting the tone in their respective regions. Not surprisingly, dictatorships are more
common in the environs of Russia, along the borders of China (North Korea, Burma, and Thailand), and in the Middle East, where long dictatorial traditions have so far mostly withstood the challenge of popular
uprisings. But even in regions where democracies remain strong, authoritarians have been able to make a determined stand while their democratic neighbors passively stand by. Thus Hungary’s leaders, in the heart
of an indifferent Europe, proclaim their love of illiberalism and crack down on press and political freedoms while the rest of the European Union, supposedly a club for democracies only, looks away. In South
America, democracy is engaged in a contest with dictatorship, but an indifferent Brazil looks on, thinking only of trade and of North American imperialism. Meanwhile in Central America, next door to an indifferent
Mexico, democracy collapses under the weight of drugs and crime and the resurgence of the caudillos. Yet it may be unfair to blame regional powers for not doing what they have never done.

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Insofar as the shift in the geopolitical equation has affected the fate of democracies
worldwide, it is probably the change in the democratic superpower’s behavior that bears most
of the responsibility. If that superpower does
democracy around the world rolled back further not change its course, we are likely to see
. There is nothing inevitable about democracy. The liberal world order we have been living in
these
past decades was not bequeathed by “the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God.” It is not the endpoint of human progress. There are those who would prefer a world order different from the liberal one. Until now,
however, they have not been able to have their way, but not because their ideas of governance are impossible to enact. Who is to say that Putinism in Russia or China’s particular brand of authoritarianism will not
survive as far into the future as European democracy, which, after all, is less than a century old on most of the continent? Autocracy in Russia and China has certainly been around longer than any Western
democracy. Indeed, it is autocracy, not democracy, that has been the norm in human history—only in recent decades have the democracies, led by the United States, had the power to shape the world. Skeptics of
U.S. “democracy promotion” have long argued that many of the places where the democratic experiment has been tried over the past few decades are not a natural fit for that form of government, and that the

Given that democratic governments have taken deep root in

United States has tried to plant democracy in some very infertile soils.

widely varying circumstances, from impoverished India to “Confucian” East Asia to Islamic Indonesia, we ought to have
some modesty about asserting where the soil is right or not right for democracy. Yet it should
be clear that the
liberal world order, supported and defended by a democratic superpower prospects for
democracy have
been much better under the protection of a
or by a collection of

democratic great powers. Today, as always, democracy is a fragile flower. It requires constant support, constant tending,
and the plucking of weeds and fencing-off of
the jungle that threaten it both from within and
without . In the absence of such efforts, the jungle and the weeds may sooner or later come
back to reclaim the land.

Ethics Advantage

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Status Quo Doesn’t Solve – 2AC

Even if there are measures in the status quo to limit aid, it doesn’t cut off all aid
completely and it doesn’t disprove that we ought not to give aid to Saudi
Arabia meaning you can still vote aff
And their evidence is about a bill that has yet to pass – Trump will veto it
Rachel Oswald, 11-28-2018, "Senate Defies Trump on Saudi Arabia, Advances Yemen
Measure", Roll Call, https://www.rollcall.com/news/politics/senate-saudi-arabia-vote

The Senate’s action also came on the heels of a White House veto threat of the resolution,
arguing it “would harm bilateral relationships in the region” and hamper counterterrorism
operations against al-Qaida and the Islamic State.

And the bill won’t ever pass – congress can’t find common ground
Jordain Carney, 12-2-2018, "Senate headed for clash over Saudi Arabia", TheHill,
https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/419214-senate-headed-clash-over-saudi-arabia

lawmakers need to figure out what a final bill will look like as they prepare to take a next
But now,

step of bringing the resolution up for debate — and a potentially raucous floor drama. The war
powers fight is uncharted waters for a Senate
challenge the White House’s war authority. that has repeatedly rejected attempts to
“This is new territory, I mean this hasn’t been done in the past, and I want to do everything
I

can to ensure that this is handled in a dignified manner,” said Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. First, senators will need to
agree to proceed to the resolution — sponsored by Sens. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Mike Lee (R-Utah) — that requires Trump to remove any troops in or
“affecting” Yemen within 30 days. But supporters are confident that they’ll easily overcome that procedural hurdle, which requires only a simple majority, after already

It’s what comes after that is causing heartburn for advocates of the resolution
securing 63 votes to advance it.

and leadership alike, who

are hoping to get an otherwise derail the bill. “I think this blows up the minute you get
agreement that would
prevent an unwieldy debate that could
too far afield ,” Murphy said, characterizing himself as open to “limited” and on-topic
amendments. Without a deal on how to move forward, senators are predicting a
marathon floor session akin to the infamous “vote-a-ramas” that accompany budget
resolutions, where any senator can force a vote on any amendment on any issue. That would
allow any senator
to bring up political lightning rods and force tough votes that would otherwise be prevented

from coming to the floor. “ Absent a consent agreement, there is a potential for
unlimited
vote-a-rama where we could be voting on anything from immigration reform to criminal justice reform,” said Sen. John Cornyn (Texas), the No. 2 Senate Republican,
adding the freewheeling votes could be “rather confusing.” Senators are jockeying to pitch their own proposals with no

clear indication of which, if any, plans could wrangle together the votes needed to pass.

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Thirty-seven Republicans voted against the underlying resolution, though some might support competing proposals that
would effectively replace the current bill.

Yemen Outweighs – 2AC

Yemen is the worst human rights crisis in history – outweighs their offense
Radhya Almutawakel, 5-21-2018, "Saudi Arabia Must be Held to Account for Human Rights
Violations in Yemen", Mwatana for Human Rights, http://mwatana.org/en/new-
reportcondemns-saudi-airstrikes/

The international community must scrutinize Saudi Arabia’s military operation in Yemen , and
urge
Saudi Arabia to cease its relentless bombing campaign and devastating restrictions on aid
and access to healthcare, said the Mwatana Organization for Human Rights and Columbia Law School’s Human Rights Clinic in a new report submitted to the
United Nations for the UN’s review of Saudi Arabia’s human rights record. “No one has been spared in the war in Yemen—for more

than three years, Saudi-led coalition airstrikes have killed and injured thousands of civilians,
destroying homes, schools, hospitals, and even hitting weddings and funerals,” said Radhya
Almutawakel, Chairperson of Mwatana Organization for Human Rights. “When governments review Saudi Arabia’s human rights record at the UN later this year, they must

The
examine Saudi conduct not only in Saudi Arabia but also in Yemen, and offer recommendations to promote human rights and a peaceful solution to the conflict.”

report, authored by international legal experts and experienced human rights investigators
and based on the results of detailed investigations conducted in Yemen over the entire period
of Saudi involvement in the war in Yemen, highlights the high rates of civilian casualties and
the destruction of civilian infrastructure caused by Saudi-led coalition airstrikes. Mwatana has documented
a number of incidents in which civilians were harmed where the presence of military targets was not evident, raising serious questions about Saudi Arabia’s compliance with its

Saudi Arabia’s continued restriction of vital food imports and

legal obligations. The new report also explains how

humanitarian aid to Yemen has exacerbated what the United Nations has described as the “
worst humanitarian crisis in the world .” Yemen is currently facing the largest recorded
cholera epidemic, and more than eight million Yemenis are at acute risk of famine. The report
also details how Saudi Arabia’s closure of the Sana’a International Airport prevents civilians
from accessing lifesaving healthcare and violates international law.

Utilitarianism Bad – 2NC

Utilitarianism is a bad model for decision making – justifies atrocities and
genocide in the name of the greater good
Santos 3 2003, Boaventura de Souza Santos is a Professor of Sociology at the University of
Coimbra, “Collective Suicide?”, Bad Subjects, Issue # 63 ,
http://www.ces.fe.uc.pt/opiniao/bss/072en.php

According to Franz Hinkelammert, the West has repeatedly been under the illusion that it should try
to save humanity by destroying part of it . This is a salvific and sacrificial destruction,

46
 47
committed in the name of the need to radically materialize all the possibilities opened up by a
given social and political reality over which it is supposed to have total power. This is how it
was in colonialism , with the genocide of indigenous peoples , and the African slaves . This is
how it was in the period of imperialist struggle s, which caused millions of deaths in two world
wars and many other colonial wars. This is how it was in Stalinism , with the Gulag and in
Nazism , with the holocaust . And now today, this is how it is in neoliberalism, with the collective
With the war against Iraq,
sacrifice of the periphery and even the semiperiphery of the world system. it is fitting to ask whether
what is in progress is a new genocidal and sacrificial illusion, and what its scope might be. It is above all
appropriate to ask if the new illusion will not herald the radicalization and the ultimate
perversion of the western illusion: destroying all of humanity in the illusion of saving it.
Sacrificial genocide arises from a
totalitarian illusion that is manifested in the belief that there are no alternatives to the
present-day reality and that the problems and difficulties
confronting it arise from failing to take its logic of development to its ultimate consequences.
If there is unemployment, hunger and death in the Third World, this is not the result of market
failures; instead, it is the outcome of the market laws not having been fully applied. If there is
terrorism, this is not due to the violence of the conditions that generate it; it is due, rather, to
the fact that total violence has not
been employed to physically This political logic is based on the supposition of total
eradicate all terrorists and
potential terrorists.
power and knowledge , and on the radical rejection of alternatives; it is ultra-conservative
in
that it aims to infinitely reproduce the status quo. Inherent to it is the notion of the end of history. During the last
hundred years, the West has experienced three versions of this logic , and, therefore, seen three versions of the end of

history: Stalinism, with its logic of insuperable efficiency of the plan; Nazism, with its logic of racial superiority; and neoliberalism,
with its logic of insuperable efficiency of the market. The first two periods involved the destruction of democracy. The last one trivializes democracy,
disarming it in the face of social actors sufficiently powerful to be able to privatize the State and international institutions in their favour. I have
described this situation as a combination of political democracy and social fascism. One current manifestation of this combination resides in the fact
that intensely strong public opinion, worldwide, against the war is found to be incapable of halting the war machine set in motion by supposedly

democratic rulers. At all these moments, a death drive , a catastrophic heroism, predominates, the

idea of a looming collective suicide , only preventable by the massive destruction of the
other . Paradoxically, the broader the definition of the other and the efficacy of its destruction, the
more likely collective suicide becomes . In its sacrificial genocide version,
neoliberalism is a mixture of market radicalization, neoconservatism and Christian Its death
fundamentalism.

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drive takes a number of forms, from the idea of "discardable populations" , referring to
citizens of the
Third World not capable of being exploited as workers and consumers, to the concept of
"collateral damage" , to refer to the deaths, as a result of war, of thousands of
innocent civilians. The last, catastrophic heroism, is quite clear on two facts: according to reliable calculations by the Non-Governmental
Organization MEDACT, in London, between 48 and 260 thousand civilians will die during the war and in the three months after (this is without there
being civil war or a nuclear attack); the war will cost 100 billion dollars, enough to pay the health costs of the world's poorest countries for four years.

Is it possible to fight this death drive? We must bear in mind that, historically, sacrificial destruction has
always been linked to the economic pillage of natural resources and the labor force, to the
imperial design of radically changing the terms of economic, social, political and cultural
exchanges in the face of falling efficiency rates postulated by the maximalist logic of the

totalitarian illusion in operation. It is as though hegemonic powers, both when they are on
the
rise and when they are in decline, repeatedly go through times of primitive accumulation,
legitimizing the most shameful violence in the name of futures where, by definition, there is no

room for what must be destroyed . In today's version, the period of primitive accumulation consists of
combining neoliberal economic globalization with the globalization of war. The machine of
democracy and liberty turns into a machine of horror and destruction.

Debaters are not in the position to activate immediate change, which means
you should prioritize good scholarship over saving hypothetical lives – debate
does not have the same time constraints of real-world policymaking which
means we should take the opportunity to weed out epistemic flaws
Bilgin, IR Prof @ Bilikent University, 4
(Pinar, “From ‘Rogue’ to ‘Failed’ States? The Fallacy of Short-termism” Politics 24 (3))

Calls for alternative approaches to the phenomenon of state failure are often met with the criticism that such
alternatives could only work in the long term whereas 'something' needs to be done here and
now. Whilst recognising the need for immediate action, it is the role of the political scientist to point to the fallacy of
'short-termism' in the conduct of current policy. Short-termism is defined by Ken Booth (1999, p. 4) as 'approaching security issues
within the time frame of the next election, not the next generation'. Viewed as such, short-termism is the enemy of true strategic

thinking. The latter requires policymakers to rethink their long-term goals and take small steps
towards achieving them. It also requires heeding against taking steps that might eventually
become self-defeating. The United States has presently fought three wars against two of its Cold War
allies in the post-Cold War era, namely, the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein and the Taliban in Afghanistan. Both were supported in an attempt to preserve the delicate
balance between the United States and the Soviet Union. The Cold War policy of supporting client regimes has eventually backfired in that US policymakers now have to face the
instability they have caused. Hence the need for a comprehensive understanding of state failure and the role Western states have played in failing them through varied forms of
intervention. Although some commentators may judge that the road to the existing situation is paved with good intentions, a truly strategic approach to the problem of
international terrorism requires a more sensitive consideration of the medium-to-long-term implications of state building in different parts of the world whilst also addressing
the root causes of the problem of state 'failure'. Developing this line of argument further, reflection on different socially relevant meanings of 'state failure' in relation to
different time increments shaping policymaking might convey alternative considerations. In line with John Ruggie (1998, pp. 167–170), divergent issues might then come to the

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viewed through the lenses of an incremental time
fore when viewed through the different lenses of particular time increments. Firstly,

frame, more immediate concerns to policymakers usually become apparent when linked to
precocious assumptions about terrorist networks, banditry and the breakdown of social order within
failed states. Hence relevant players and events are readily identified (al-Qa'eda), their attributes assessed (axis of evil, 'strong'/'weak' states) and judgements made
The key analytical problem for policymaking in this narrow and
about their long-term significance (war on terrorism).

blinkered domain is the one of choice given the constraints of time and energy devoted to a
particular decision. These factors lead policymakers to bring conceptual baggage to bear on an
issue that simplifies but also distorts information. Taking a second temporal form, that of a conjunctural time
frame, policy responses are subject to more fundamental epistemological concerns. Factors

assumed to be constant within an incremental time frame are more variable and it is more
difficult to produce an intended effect on ongoing processes than it is on actors and discrete events.
For instance, how long should the 'war on terror' be waged for? Areas of policy in this realm can therefore begin to be come more

concerned with the underlying forces that shape current trajectories. Shifting attention to a third temporal form draws
attention to still different dimensions. Within an epochal time frame an agenda still in the making appears that

requires a shift in decision-making, away from a conventional problem-solving mode 'wherein doing nothing is
the
favoured on burden-of-proof grounds', towards a risk-averting mode, characterised by prudent contingency measures. To conclude, in relation to 'failed states',

latter time frame entails reflecting on the very structural conditions shaping the problems of 'failure'
raised throughout the present discussion, which will demand lasting and delicate attention from practitioners across the

academy and policymaking communities alike.

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Consequences Bad – 2AC

How public discussions are framed and the ethical underpinnings of that
discussion are more important than trying to determine the effects than the
policy itself. Debating the content of maintaining military assistance is
occultation - the banality of war is no longer sustained or broken down through
direct participation or visceral refusal, it depends on tactic acquiesce to its logic
via a rhetoric of enemyship. Prioritize critique of their rhetorical practices that
naturalize militarism as a mechanism to resolve their impacts.
Engels, 2013 Jeremy Engels, Associate Professor in Communications @ Penn State University,
and William O. Saas is a Ph.D. Candidate, in the Department of Communication Arts & Sciences,
Penn State University. “On Acquiescence and Ends-Less War: An Inquiry into the New War
Rhetoric,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 99(2): 225-232
Our nation faces a number of grave problems today, but none is more dangerous to democracy than war. War saps resources, destroys bodies, and perverts public discussion. Of

course, war is nothing new in the U S tates. Our nation is founded on the rhetoric of enemyship , and thus one hears distant
nited
roar of today's violent rhetoric in the founding documents of the
United States.' What is new is the length and cost, both human and economic, of the various wars occurring under the open-ended umbrella of the "war on terror," a conflict of
perpetual exception with neither definite rhetorical boundaries nor a foreseeable end. The ongoing war in

Afghanistan is the longest war in American history. Over 2,000 soldiers have died, and more than 68,000 have been wounded. The
war has cost nearly $1.2 trillion, according to the US Department of Defense. The UN estimates that nearly 13,000 civilians have died in Afghanistan.'^ The US invaded Iraq in
2003 and removed most of its remaining troops in December 2011. Iraq Body Count estimates that between 110,000 and 120,000 civilians died during the US war in Iraq, though
this might be a terrible underestimate by hundreds of thousands.^ The Wall Street Journal projects that the Iraq War will cost US taxpayers $4 trillion, including the
everaccelerating health care costs for returning veterans." In sum, as The Christian Science monitor points out, the cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is greater than the
cost of World War II.^ These wars, along with military action in Pakistan, Yemen, and Libya have US defense spending near all-time highs, doubling from 2001 to 2008^: in 2011,

20 percent of the federal budget was spent on "defense" ($718 billion). Turning away from the monetized discourses of neo-liberalism, we can already see
that

demystify the discourses justifying war. We must do this not merely to exercise our critical chops but instead to instruct
the human costs of war are of themselves unacceptable. Rhetorical critics must describe and ultimately
in which we live and
students and publics about the rhetorics that both shape the world undermine the world
alike

that we would otherwise desire to create. At its best, the rhetorical

criticism of war acknowledges

and embraces this pedagogical end. In the current climate of perpetual war and public passivity, perhaps
the most vital contribution rhetorical critics

can make would be to generate a meaningful critique of endless war's evolving rhetorical
infrastructure . We begin our critique with a simple observation: War today requires technique and effort—witness the
exponential increase in defense spending and the explosion of the national security bureaucracy—^ but this effort is drawn from a small
percentage of the population, while an ever more rarefied and secretive elite class directs the wartechnique itself. This observation, in turn, begs the
question: How does the contemporary war machine sustain itself in the face of so obviously and overwhelmingly deleterious global and domestic ramifications? We find that one

answer to this question lies outside the reach of traditional rhetorical criticism that would measure rhetorical success in terms of an assent/dissent binary. To be
for " or " against " war has today become a rather inconsequential , fodder
distinction for
"

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bumper stickers and empty campaign promises . Overriding the for/against distinction is a
. While not completely irrelevant, we argue, assent has been reduced to
something
general feeling of acquiescence in relation to war
like a 2 percent additive to the black oil of public acquiescence that now powers the war machine. To understand contemporary war
rhetoric, we must study rhetorics designed to promote acquiescence rather than assent. How, then, do these acquiescent rhetorics work? And what is their history? Business as
usual: in the early days following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, this was President George W. Bush's formula for victory. Hence, his words on September 20, 2001:
"I ask your continued participation in and confidence in the American economy. Terrorists attacked a symbol of American prosperity. They did not touch its source. America is
successful because of the hard work, and creativity, and enterprise of our people. These were the true strengths of our economy before September 11th, and they are our
strengths today." He repeated these sentiments on September 27, 2001, speaking to airline workers at O'Hare International Airport in Chicago about new airport security
measures. He observed "When they struck, they wanted to create an atmosphere of fear. And one of the great goals of this nation's war is to restore public confidence in the
airline industry, is to tell the traveling public, 'Get on board. Do your business around the country. Fly and enjoy America's great destination spots. Go down to Disney World in

To
Florida, take your families and enjoy life the way we want it to be enjoyed.'" One goal of presidential rhetoric was, apparently, to facilitate a return to normalcy.

contribute to the war effort, Americans needed only go about their daily routines and maybe
enjoy a nice vacation. September 20 was a fateful day in the rhetorical history of the present. On that day. President Bush first uttered the phrase "war on
terror."'° He spoke these words during the same speech—an address to a joint session of Congress—in which he urged Americans to defeat "terror" by going about their

we see the two faces of our new

everyday business, the same speech in which he prescribed retail therapy for a wounded nation. On this day,

normal: the articulation of endless global war with leisure and consumption. One face is
spectacular ; the other quotidian . And though it is only natural to focus critical attention
on
the violence of spectacular , ever escalating rhetorics demonizing the enemy , we cannot
understand the "war on terror"
without seriously considering the rhetorical potency of President Bush's
injunction to go on vacation and hence to leave the war-making to the professionals. Many observers—including then presidential candidate Barack
Obama—attributed the manifold setbacks of the "war on terror" to President Bush's purported failure of rhetorical leadership after September 11. Here is Obama in 2008:
"President Bush did some smart things at the outset, but one of the opportunities that was missed was, when he spoke to the American people, he said, 'Go out and shop.'"'^
According to Obama, Bush failed by refusing to turn public support for conflict into sacrifice for the war effort. Bush neither received nor requested civic sacrifice. Yet it seems to

us that the absence of civic sacrifice is, in fact, a desired outcome of the new war rhetoric. This war rhetoric aims to turn civic attention
away from war and toward consumption ; and when citizens must encounter war, this rhetoric
aims to disempower the demos and thereby preclude . This rhetoric does not aim for
Here we
disagree with
dissent
those critics who framed President Bush's early comments as, somehow, a failure of
assent—it desires acquiescence. leadership. We view the president's words as part and parcel of a rhetorical strategy that seeks to facilitate
acquiescence to war. This strategy has been successful—yet

critics look for its success in the wrong places when we assume that mobilization of the public is
necessary for the prosecution of the "war on terror." In turn, the violence of the new war rhetoric is less about the
manipulation of individual psyches and more about the creation of a symbolic landscape in
which resistance to objective violence seems pointless . The violence of this rhetoric is found in how

at home while perpetuating destruction abroad

it normalizes war and brings citizens to peace with such violence —in how it promotes passivity
. We propose a two-fold typology for studying the rhetorical architecture of the so

called "war on terror." First, there are rhetorics aimed at producing assent. President Bush often attempted to harness the public will, employing rhetorics of covenant
renewal^^, mission'^, exhilarated reluctance^*, compressed time^^, floating bombs^^, and the "reciprocal satanization of enemies,"^^ and by deceiving Americans about
WMDs in Iraq.^* In President Bush's call for Americans to consume and vacation, we see a second category of war discourse that aims to cultivate acquiescence. In its most basic

form, this rhetoric aims at promoting a glazed-over half-acceptance of the inevitability of war, whatever the outcome. More intensely, this rhetoric can act

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like a narcotic , cultivating numbness and passivity in the face of war. The rhetorics of
acquiescence deliberately depoliticize citizens . Such rhetorics display war in such a way that it
cannot be contested, constituting a distracted civic body numb to violence abroad and to the
collateral damage done by war to democracy at home. President Bush was never the idiot man-child the Left painted him to be. In those first days following September 11, Bush
did not fail by telling Americans to continue their daily routines. In fact, in those early days, he described a war rhetoric ideally suited to a new style of war, a largely privatized,
neoliberal war fought with public money. This rhetoric does not care much about civic mobilization for war; it says, trust us, we've got this, and then aims to distract attention
away from war so that the war machine can run unimpeded by citizens or democracy. Modern rhetorical scholarship concerning war continues to be shaped by the tragic
experience of World War I (WWI)—the first war in American history in which the government enlisted the might of communication technology in the war effort. WWI revealed
what David Zarefsky calls "the two faces" of democratic rhetoric—one rhetoric aimed at helping communities come together Io deliberate and hash out solutions to shared
problems; the other rhetoric (exemplified by President Wilson and his Committee on Public Information) aimed at manufacturing consent through propaganda and the
manipulation of emotion. Randolph Bourne derived a different lesson from the rhetoric of WWI, forwarding the idea that, at a base level, war requires acquiescence, not
assent.^° Bourne was not surprised by the manufactured jingoism of WWI. He expected Americans to be carried away by the enemyship of "the State"—"the organization of the
herd to act offensively or defensively against another herd similarly organized." Yet in his essay "A War Diary" published in September 1917, Bourne did not detail a culture on
fire. Instead, using his own experience of accommodation to WWI as a model. Bourne described a culture adjusting to the war-technique. Time brings a better adjustment to the
war.... The kind of war which we are conducting is an enterprise which the American government does not have to carry on with the hearty cooperation of the American people
but only with their acquiescence. And that acquiescence seems sufficient to float an indefinitely protracted war for vague or even largely uncomprehend and unaccepted
purposes. Our resources in men and materials are vast enough to organize the war-technique without enlisting more than a fi-action of the people's conscious For scholars
including Walter Lippmann and Edward Bsrnays, WWI revealed the potency of government-sponsored propaganda for mobilizing democratic publics toward conflict. Bourne
learned this lesson, too, but for him it did not capture the simple and astonishing fact that modern warfare did not require the mobilization of conscious democratic energy. It
required acquiescence. To better understand the import of Bourne's observations, it is worth briefly considering the etymology of the word "acquiescence." According to the
Oxford English Dictionary, the English word "acquiescence" is derived from the classical Latin verb acquiescere-, a compound verb consisting of the prefix ad (to or towards) and
the verb quiescere (to be at rest).^^ Acquiescere means "moving towards a state of rest." '* In medieval Latin, acquiescere came to entail an active recognition of a power
greater than oneself, a Logos supreme to which one would pay tribute and in the name of which one ceded political agency in order to achieve spititual completeness (hence
Calvin's acquiescere in scriptura)}^ Retaining this sense of coming to rest {ad- -\-quiescere). Bourne suggested that acquiescence—the process of coming to peace with war while
withholding assent—^was an apt descriptor for his experience, and the experience of many other Americans (especially young intellectuals) of war in 1917. Of course, plenty of
Americans were ginned up for war against the purportedly "monstrous" Germans. The rhetoric of assent was vital to the war effort of WWI; the CPI did its job well. WWI crushed
the chippy democratic platitudes espoused by progressive philosophers that Americans were somehow too "rational" and "civilized" to be whipped into a frenzy. Yet at the same
time. Bourne observed that for many Americans who were opposed to the war—who felt that it was wrong and even "evil"—acquiescence was the name of the game. These

dissidents never assented. They simply convinced themselves—or were convinced by external factors—that
dissent was pointless . It was in deference to the apparently inexorable forward motion of war, and
in service of the rather hopeful presupposition that the war would end, that Bourne lapsed
into acquiescence. Cries of outrage against war here gave way to the acquiescent prayer: "This, too, shall pass." Bourne arrived honestly at his acquiescence, and
he understood the implications of his accommodation. Today, acquiescence is manufactured and mass-produced. Acquiescence has become propaganda just as potent, and just

as integral to the war effort, as rhetorics seeking to produce assent and cultivate patriotic rage. Today, acquiescence has equaled—and perhaps even
supplanted — enemyship as the foundation of war rhetoric. There is still talk of friends and enemies, of course. But it
is
mediated by calls for consumption and vacation. Bourne's work offers an obvious starting point for sketching out the key characteristics of acquiescent rhetorics. The nature of
the "war on terror," however, prevents us from simply transposing Bourne's reflections on WWI onto present exigencies. Indeed, while the "great war" and the "war on terror"
share a number of general characteristics (most notably, both were framed as wars for "democracy"), the differences are decisive. In terms of duration, US involvement in World
War I was brief relative to our protracted engagements in Afghanistan, Iraq, and the Arabian Peninsula. In terms of distance, the development of drone warfare and the
proliferation of paramilitary intelligence squads promise a historically unprecedented reduction of American bodies at risk. Most importantly, the war on terror shows no
promise of ending, whether by way of conclusively vanquished enemies or by way of the full exhaustion of resources. There will always be a "number two" leader of the named
opposition to demonize, target, hunt, and kill. Thus, to call the war "endless" gets close to the truth, but a more precise formulation will find the source of endlessness in the
war's distinctive lack of ends; not endless war, but ends-less war. A number of tropes and techniques are used today to promote acquiescence, to cultivate passivity in the face

. Authorities play rhetorical trump cards such as "support

of death, to nurture numbness toward the unacceptable human costs of battle

the troops" and the discourse of "evil" to stifle dissent .^^ Acquiescent rhetorics make critique

tantamount to opposing the troops (which few will do), hence teaching citizens that opposing war is
futile. Such rhetorics further de-legitimate criticism by dissent as a violation of "the contract of
blood" forged with those innocent victims who died on 9/11.^^ Furthermore, acquiescent rhetorics draw on the
performative ethos of the military and the symbolic power of the uniform to deflect not just civic authority but citizen attention from battle. In fact, acquiescent rhetorics seem
to draw on the social fact that the general's uniform has become the new white lab coat, the symbol of scientific authority that facilitated obedience during the famed Milgram

Experiments. The framing of public discussion facilitates acquiescence in contemporary wartime: thus,
both the grounds on which war has been justified and the ends toward which
war is

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adjusted are bracketed and hence made infandous . The rhetorics of acquiescence bury
the
grounds for war under nearly impermeable layers of political presentism and keep the ends
of war in a state of perpetual flux so that they cannot be challenged. Specific details of the war effort are
excised from the public realm through the rhetorical maneuver of "occultatio" and the authors
of such violence—the president, his administration, and the broader national security establishment—use a wide range of
techniques to displace their own responsibility in the orchestration of war.^^ Freed from the need to cultivate assent, acquiescent
rhetorics take the form of a status update: hence. President Obama's March 28, 2011 speech on Libya, framed as an "update" to Americans ten days after the bombs of
"Operation Odyssey Dawn" had begun to fall. Such post facto discourse is a new norm: Americans are called to acquiesce to decisions already made and actions already taken.
The Obama Administration has obscured the very definition of "war" with euphemisms like "limited kinetic action." The original obfuscation, the "war on terror," is a perpetually
shifting, ends-less conflict that denies the very status of war. How do you dissent from something that seems so overwhelming, so inexorable? It's hard to hit a perpetually
shifting target. Moreover, as the government has become increasingly secretive about the details of war, crucial information is kept fi-om citizens—or its revelation is branded
"treason," as in the WikiLeaks case—making it much more challenging to dissent. Furthermore, government surveillance of citizens cows citizens into quietism. So what's the

point of dissent? After all, this, too, will pass. Thus even the most critical citizens come to rest in peace with war. The
confidence game of the new war rhetoric is one of perpetually shifting ends. In this "post-9/11" paradigm of war rhetoric, citizens are rarely asked to harness their civic energy to
support the war effort, but instead are called to passively cede their wills to a greater Logos, the machinery of ends-less war. President Obama has embodied the dramatic role
of wartime caretaker more adeptly than his predecessor, repeatedly exhorting citizens to "look forward" rather than to examine the historical grounds upon which the present
state of ends-less war was founded and institutionalized. All the while, that forward horizon is constantly being reshaped—from retribution, to prevention, to disarmament, to
democratization, to intervention, and so on, as needed. What Max Weber called "charisma of office"—the phenomenon whereby extraordinary political power is passed on
between charismatically inflected leaders—is here cast in bold relief: until and unless the grounds of the new war rhetoric are meaningfully represented and unapologetically
challenged, ends-less war can only continue unabated.^° War rhetoric is a mode of display that aims to dispose audiences to certain ways and states of being in the world. This,
in turn, is the essence of the new war rhetoric: authorities tell us, don't worry, we've got this, just go about your everyday business, go to the mall, and take a vacation. What we

Acquiescent rhetorics facilitate war by

are calling acquiescent rhetorics aim to disempower citizens by cultivating passivity and numbness.

shutting down inquiry and deliberation and, as such, are anathema to rhetoric's nobler, democratic ends. Rhetorical scholars thus have
an important job to do. We must bring the objective violence of war out into the open so that all affected by
, ,
grounds ends war can meaningfully question the of battle. We can do this by
means and
the rhetorics used to promote acquiescence describing, and

demobilizing, . In sum, we believe that by

making the seemingly uncontestable contestable , rhetorical critics can and should begin to invent
by creating a

pedagogy that would reactivate an acquiescent public space for talk where we
have previously been content to
remain silent.

debating policy proposals creates terrible decision making skills since our
theoretical understanding of IR are so thin – focusing debate on assumptions
first solves their offence
Freier, Associate Professor of National Security Studies with the Strategic Studies Institute (SSI),
6-17-15 (Nate, CSIS International Security Program senior associate, 20 year U.S. Army career,
last military assignment was as director of national security affairs at SSI, “Does Anyone Really
Know What's Going On? Likely Not.,”
http://www.strategicstudiesinstitute.army.mil/index.cfm/articles//Does-Anyone-Really-
KnowWhats-Going-On/2015/06/17, accessed 8-12-15, CMM)

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National security elites have fallen into a funk over the recent course of U.S. policy. At first
glance, it seems the mythical Midas Touch of the U nited S tates as indispensable to solving
the
world’s most compelling challenges is just that . . . myth. Even a cursory examination of
current events betrays a veritable dog’s breakfast of U.S. policy gone or going substantially
wrong. Indeed, on the heels of widely perceived disappointments in Iraq and Afghanistan, the
United States appears persistently plagued by serial misfortune. Making matters worse, each
individual letdown seems to arrive via unforced error; and, all seem to bring with them their
own catalog of unanticipated costs and hazards. Let us review the bidding. In spite of some
substantial American commitment to reverse Islamic State gains in Iraq and Syria, more
territory falls victim to its predations by the day. Further, the U.S.-enabled liberation of Libya
from decades of dictatorship has become instead a clinic in unintended consequences. Further,
Yemen, once heralded as an American counterterrorism success, has devolved into a new
round of lethal civil conflict. The Gulf States, too, are suddenly vulnerable, as they find
themselves hemmed in by violent disorder on three fronts and Iranian provocation on a fourth.
A more traditional state-based set of challenges appears to be emerging somewhat
unchecked—or, at a minimum, undeterred—as well. In East Asia, the pivot has not slowed
Chinese adventurism, as China continues to press on multiple fronts for substantial change in
the international status quo. Likewise, in Europe, the U.S. reset with Russia is now a footnote—
maybe worse, a punch line, as hope for rapprochement has yielded to despair over Russia’s
reemergence as a manipulative spoiler and subversive regional contender. The list goes on,
and with the U.S. election season heating up, a predictable and unsophisticated blame game
threatens to all but swallow competent debate about the pathology of our most recent policy
disappointments. Hyperpoliticized chatter will follow, decrying indecisive and feckless
policymakers recklessly putting U.S. interests at risk. The case will be simple: the United States
is currently neither faithful enough to its friends nor aggressive or assertive enough with its
foes and is, as a consequence, reaping the whirlwind. The remedy, according to those holding
this view, is impulsive and visceral, relying on heavier, more unqualified doses of good faith
and guts to roll back our perceived losses. I say, Not so fast! There is merit in all thoughtful
criticisms of contemporary U.S. policy. For example, let us stipulate to some mishandling of U.S.
foreign and security affairs over the last 15 years. However, there is also more to the story than
meets the eye. In this case, failure is not, as the saying goes, an orphan, but, rather, born of
innumerable conventional perspectives wedded more to what was or is preferred than what
actually is or is likely to be. Indeed, the real failure of contemporary policy is more elemental,

frightening, and collective in origin than a simple shortage of good faith and guts . In
reality,
we (and I really mean all of us) no longer understand the system within which we are
operating well enough to make rational national security decisions that have a prayer of even

modest durability over time. We live in complex and uncertain times where there are
frankly

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more “known unknowns” than we are all comfortable admitting. Further, the speed of both
system-level change and threat generation are quantum leaps ahead of a
national security

bureaucracy that fully matured during the predictable, binary competition of the Cold War
.
Thus, in fairness to those in office and as a caution to those hoping to succeed them, healthy
acknowledgement of our fundamental fallibility is good place to start for future national
security strategy. The rules governing international security and the context within which
those rules are applied change so fast now that no one is intellectually well-postured yet to
chart reasonable, effective, and sufficiently
adaptable courses of action for U.S. policy going

forward . The number and diversity of consequential actors, competing priorities and
interests, and sources of hazard make new-age statecraft a complex and ambiguous
business to be sure; clear definitions of success or failure are illusive, and the margin of error
separating the two is razor thin regardless. There, I said it. Alarming as it may sound, no one
has a lock on wisdom anymore in national security . We will, for a time, all drive
blind through
a thicket of modern challenges that, in reality, present serial discontinuities from our collective
past. Perhaps as early as November 9, 1989—and the fall of the Berlin Wall— American officials
have been on an extended course of discovery, learning a great deal about the definition,
extent, and limits of 21st-century power. All too often, they rushed to the old playbook for
answers when new challenges arose. It had some residual value through the 1990s. However, it
was exposed as grossly unsophisticated with the September 11, 2001, attacks and their
aftermath. Nonetheless, the old playbook lingers as the world changes fundamentally around
us. Until there is a new, more sophisticated appreciation of the
strategic context within which the United States is operating, there will not be an effective
replacement for those in the game to reference . Further, without keen sensitivity to what is
actually afoot in international relations, the more impulsive remedies of the good faith and

guts crowd may prove more harmful than doing nothing at all. Thus, patience just may be
the
new currency of risk-informed national security decisionmaking. Those in power and those
who want it need a more nuanced, holistic, and systemic
understanding of why events are

unfolding as they are . Getting to that understanding will require substantial courage,
temperance, honesty, and endurance among the policy elite. After all, the
road to real understanding is likely to be littered with new rounds of perceived failure. In military
terms, it will be less a well-planned deliberate attack on the future and more a movement to

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contact. There will be policy objectives and a general path to achieve them. However, the
number, form, and aggregate hazard of the threats and challenges that emerge along the way
will not be fully appreciated (if they ever are) until fully upon us. That, in a nutshell, is the
burden of
21st century decisionmaking. I suggest all parties should hold fire with their criticism until
they have thoughtfully
reimagined contemporary security conditions together in a more

sophisticated manner . They will not, of course. There is no media bounce in patience.
However, truth be told, most of the adversity U.S. policymaking has experienced lately
springs from
widespread systemic volatility lying largely beyond the proximate control of
American authorities. Without adequate preparation, tomorrow’s leaders will be as ill-

equipped for it as their predecessors have been ; and thus, today’s critic will be
tomorrow’s
scapegoat.

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Structural Violence First – 2AC

Invisible wars come first – only looking backwards at inequality can solve
extinction
Szentes, Professor Emeritus at the Corvinus University of Budapest, 8
(Tamás, and member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, “Globalisation and prospects of the
world society”
http://www.eadi.org/fileadmin/Documents/Events/exco/Glob.___prospects__jav..pdf)
[]=gender corrected

It’s a common place that human society can survive and develop only in a lasting real peace. Without peace
countries cannot develop. Although since 1945 there has been no world war, but --numerous local wars took place, --terrorism has
spread all over the world, undermining security even in the most developed and powerful countries, --arms race and
militarisation have not ended with the collapse of the Soviet bloc, but escalated and continued, extending also to
weapons of mass destruction and misusing enormous resources badly needed for development, --many “invisible wars”
are suffered by the poor and oppressed people, manifested in mass misery, poverty, unemployment,
homelessness, starvation and malnutrition, epidemics and poor health conditions, exploitation and
oppression, racial and other discrimination, physical terror, organised injustice, disguised forms of violence, the
denial or regular infringement of the democratic rights of citizens, women, youth, ethnic or
religious minorities, etc., and last but not least, in the degradation of human
the “war against Nature
environment, which means that --”, i.e.
the disturbance of ecological balance, wasteful management of natural resources, and large-scale pollution of our
environment, is still going on, causing also losses and fatal dangers for human life. Behind global terrorism and “invisible
wars” we find striking international and intrasociety inequities and distorted
development patterns , which tend to generate social as well as international paving the way
tensions , thus
for unrest and “visible” wars . It is a commonplace now that peace is not merely the absence of war. The between

lasting and within societies involve not only - though, of course, necessarily -
prerequisites of a peace
demilitarisation, but also a systematic and gradual elimination of
the roots of violence, of the causes of “invisible wars”, of the structural and institutional bases
of large-scale international and intra-society
inequalities, exploitation Peace requires a process of and oppression. social and
national
emancipation
, a progressive, democratic transformation of societies and the world bringing about equal rights and
opportunities for all people, sovereign participation and mutually advantageous co-operation among nations. It further requires a
pluralistic democracy on global level with an appropriate system of proportional representation of the world society, articulation of
diverse interests and their peaceful reconciliation, by non-violent conflict management, and thus also a global governance with a
really global institutional system. Under the contemporary conditions of accelerating globalisation and deepening global
interdependencies in our world, peace is indivisible in both time and space. It cannot exist if reduced to a period only after or
before war, and cannot be safeguarded in one part of the world when some others suffer visible or
invisible wars. Thus, peace requires, indeed, a new, demilitarised and democratic world order, which can provide equal
opportunities for sustainable development. “Sustainability of development” (both on national and world level) is often interpreted as
an issue of environmental protection only and reduced to the need for preserving the ecological balance and delivering the next

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generations not a destroyed Nature with overexhausted resources and polluted environment. However, no ecological balance
can be ensured, unless the deep international development gap and intra-society
inequalities are substantially reduced. Owing to global interdependencies there may exist hardly any “zero-sumgames”,
in which one can gain at the expense of others, but, instead, the “negative-sum-games” tend to predominate, in which everybody
must suffer, later or sooner, directly or indirectly, losses. Therefore, the actual question is not about
“sustainability of
of [hu]mankind development” but rather about the “sustainability of
i.e.human
survival
life”,
– because of ecological
imbalance and globalised terrorism. When Professor Louk de la Rive Box was the
president of EADI, one day we had an exchange of views on the state and future of development studies. We agreed that
development studies are not any more restricted to the case of underdeveloped countries, as the developed ones (as well as the
former “socialist” countries) are also facing development problems, such as those of structural and institutional (and even system-)
transformation, requirements of changes in development patterns, and concerns about natural environment. While all these are
true, today I would dare say that besides (or even instead of) “development studies” we must speak about and make “survival
studies”. While the monetary, financial, and debt crises are cyclical, we live in an almost permanent crisis of the
world society, which is multidimensional in nature, involving not only economic but also socio-psychological, behavioural, cultural

and political aspects. The narrow-minded, election-oriented, selfish behaviour motivated by thirst for
power and wealth, which still characterise the political leadership almost all over the world, paves the way for the
final, last catastrophe. One cannot doubt, of course, that great many positive historical changes have also taken place in the
world in the last century. Such as decolonisation, transformation of socio-economic systems, democratisation of political life in some
former fascist or authoritarian states, institutionalisation of welfare policies in several countries, rise of international organisations
and new forums for negotiations, conflict management and cooperation, institutionalisation of international assistance programmes
by multilateral agencies, codification of human rights, and rights of sovereignty and democracy also on international level, collapse of
the militarised Soviet bloc and system-change3 in the countries concerned, the end of cold war, etc., to mention only a few.
Nevertheless, the crisis of the world society has extended and deepened, approaching to a point of bifurcation that necessarily puts
an end to the present tendencies, either by the final catastrophe or a common solution. Under the circumstances
provided by rapidly progressing science and technological revolutions, human society cannot
survive unless such profound intra-society and international inequalities prevailing today
are soon eliminated . Like a single spacecraft, the Earth can no longer afford to have a 'crew' divided
into

two parts: the rich, privileged, wellfed, well-educated, on the one hand, and the poor, deprived, starving,
sick and uneducated, on the other. Dangerous 'zero-sum-games' (which mostly prove to be “negative-sum-games”) can hardly
be played any more by visible or invisible wars in the world society. Because of global interdependencies, the apparent winner
becomes also a loser. The real choice for the world society is between negative- and positive-sum-games: i.e. between, on the one
hand, continuation of visible and “invisible wars”, as long as this is possible at all, and, on the other, transformation of the world
order by demilitarisation and democratization. No ideological or terminological camouflage can conceal this real dilemma any more,
which is to be faced not in the distant future, by the next generations, but in the coming years, because of global terrorism soon
having nuclear and other mass destructive weapons, and also due to irreversible changes in natural environment.

Root Cause – 2AC

The neg’s attachment to Militarism guarantees WWIII Boyle,
I-Law Prof @ University of Illinois, 13
(Francis, “Unlimited Imperialism and the Threat of World War III: U.S. Militarism at the Start of
the 21st Century,” http://www.globalresearch.ca/unlimited-imperialism-and-the-threat-
ofworld-war-iii-u-smilitarism-at-the-start-of-the-21st-century/5316852)

Historically, this latest eruption of American militarism at the start of the 21st Century is akin to

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that of America opening the 20th Century by means of the U.S.-instigated Spanish-American War in 1898. Then the Republican
administration of President William McKinley stole their colonial empire from Spain i n Cuba, Puerto Rico,

Guam, and the Philippines; inflicted a near genocidal war against the Filipino people; while at the
same time illegally annexing the Kingdom of Hawaii and subjecting the Native Hawaiian people (who call themselves the
Kanaka Maoli) to near genocidal conditions. Additionally, McKinley’s military and colonial expansion into the Pacific was also designed
to secure America’s economic exploitation of China pursuant to the euphemistic rubric of the “open door” policy. But over the next four decades
America’s aggressive presence, policies, and practices in the “Pacific” would ineluctably pave the way for Japan’s attack at Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 194l,

and thus America’s precipitation into the ongoing Second World War. Today a
century later the serial imperial aggressions
launched and menaced by the Republican Bush Jr. administration and now the Democratic Obama
administration are threatening to set off World War III. By shamelessly exploiting the terrible tragedy of 11 September
2001, the Bush Jr. administration set forth to steal a hydrocarbon empire from the
Muslim states and peoples living in Central Asia and the Persian Gulf and Africa under the bogus pretexts of (1) fighting a war against international
terrorism; and/or (2) eliminating weapons of mass destruction; and/or (3) the promotion of democracy; and/or (4) self-styled “humanitarian
intervention”/responsibility to protect. Only this time the geopolitical stakes are infinitely greater than they were a century ago: control and
domination of two-thirds of the world’s hydrocarbon resources and thus the very fundament and energizer of the global economic system – oil and gas.
The Bush Jr./ Obama administrations have already targeted the remaining hydrocarbon reserves of Africa, Latin America, and Southeast Asia for further
conquest or domination, together with the strategic choke-points at sea and on land required for their transportation. In this regard, the Bush Jr.
administration announced the establishment of the U.S. Pentagon’s Africa
Command (AFRICOM) in order to better control, dominate, and exploit both the natural resources and the variegated peoples of the continent of Africa,
the very cradle of our human species. Libya and the Libyans became the first victims to succumb to AFRICOM under the Obama administration.
They will not be the last. This current bout of U.S. imperialism is what Hans Morgenthau denominated “unlimited imperialism” in his seminal work

Politics Among Nations (4th ed. 1968, at 52-53): “The outstanding historic examples of unlimited imperialism are
the expansionist policies of Alexander the Great, Rome, the Arabs in the
seventh and eighth centuries, Napoleon I, and Hitler. They all have in common no limits , feeds on its own
rational

successes and , if not stopped by a superior force, will go on to the confines of the political world
an urge toward expansion which knows
. This
urge will not be satisfied so long as there remains anywhere a possible object of domination–a politically organized group of men which by its very

is, as we shall see, , exactly the lack of moderation the aspiration to

independence challenges the conqueror’s lust for power. It

conquer all that lends itself to conquest, characteristic of unlimited

imperialism, which in the past has been the undoing of the imperialistic policies of this kind…”
It is the Unlimited Imperialists along the lines of Alexander, Rome, Napoleon and Hitler who are
now in charge of conducting American foreign policy. The factual circumstances surrounding the
outbreaks of both the First World
War hover like twin Swords of Damocles over the heads of
and the Second World War currently
all humanity.

K of Middle East War – 2AC

Predictions of Middle Eastern instability are based on Eurocentric IR theories
that are grounded in fear of Arab agency – their representations reify imperial
logics that understand the West as the only source of positive values which
obscures the role that colonialism has played in creating the underlying

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conditions for instability - this sanitization of liberal violence creates the pretext
for military adventurism
Hazbun, 2013 Waleed, PhD. Associate Professor in Political Studies @ American University of
Beirut, “The geopolitics of knowledge and the challenge of postcolonial agency International
relations, US policy, and the Arab world,”
http://hazbun.mwoodward.com/Hazbun_Oxford%20Handbook.pdf

Rather than detailing the numerous continuities between the Bush and Obama administration policies towards the Middle East, this
chapter
maps the ‘constellation of power and knowledge’ within American scholarship about
international politics and US policy in the Middle East. Th ese discourses tend to privilege certain

deployed to sustain them.

forms of global order while ignoring the hierarchical power relations and means of violence
At the same time, they reject the legitimacy of the subjectivity, history,
and memory of political actors external to this order (for a brief elaboration, see Grovogui 20 10). As Arlene Tickner
and Ole Waever observe, the Arab world ‘was the original object of “orientalist” knowledge practices’

(Said 1979), and again today it is (for large parts of western debate) : the primary global exception an exception
to the global security order, to modernity, to secularism, to
forms of knowledge and reason that constitute the “we” talking about these very exceptions
(Pasha 2007)’ (Tickner and Waever 2009: 172; see also Hazbun 2011). American scholarship about international politics

and US policy in the Middle East

(even before 9/11) tends to deny the agency of Arab actors or to recognize it only when measured in
reference to western-imposed orders . Arab regimes
that support such orders are represented as enlightened autocrats or reformist modernizers. By
contrast, Arab states and societies that oppose such orders are viewed as unacceptable threats ,

not only to regional (US-aligned) states but also to western powers and the global order more
generally. As a result, Arab actors are never viewed as legitimate actors with their own interests

playing an autonomous regional role or having a voice in shaping the regional or international
order (outside of externally draft
ed scripts). Such a broad critique of international relations and US foreign policy scholarship of the Middle East is a project that exceeds the
scope of this chapter. Instead, I will begin by drawing on that broader critique in order to sketch some crucial threads of argument within the
scholarship that help illustrate how the Obama administration’s initial reaction to the democratic revolutions of the Arab uprisings have conformed to

rather than transcended earlier constructions that ‘mark other people as irredeemably “Other”’. The first thread reveals how the discourse of
international relations evolved from the internal micro-history of politics across the European
continent to view the consolidated, ethnically and racially homogenous nation state as the
normal key actor in international politics . The ‘deficiencies’ of postcolonial states are thus
constructed as a source of insecurity and threat to global order . A second thread, which emerged
particularly with the end of the Cold War, views the increasing power of such Third World states exclusively as

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a source of insecurity generating heightened anxiety . These perspectives highlight an underappreciated aspect
of
the genealogy of Samuel Huntington’s ‘clash of civilizations’ argument (1993, 1996), which I argue was just as much driven by a realist fear of the rising
power of Th ird World states as it was an ‘orientalist’, some might add Islamophobic, reading of the emerging post-Cold War order. The remainder of
the chapter suggests that the Obama administration might not be as motivated as Huntington or the George W. Bush administration to
build ‘architectures of enmity’, but that its policies and visions for the Middle East still fail to embrace the

agency of regional forces even as local actors are asserting themselves in new and often
democratic ways . I show how, instead, major speeches and policies have attempted to position the US
on the side of the Arab peoples while offering little room for accommodating their agency at a
time when its effects are most apparent . Obama has recently sought to redefine the logic for
the strong American presence in the region by arguing that the US is a necessary force for the
realization of Arab goals. His statements suggest that the US still privileges US-dominated forms of
global order, ignores their hierarchical power relations, and fails to fully recognize the
agency
of Middle East states and societies as actors in the international system. I conclude by briefl y outlining some
of the emerging forces attempting to redefi ne regional politics through the realization of new sources and forms of postcolonial agency. Most narratives
recounting the development of international relations (IR) as a fi eld of study begin at the end of World War II (see, for example, Kahler 1997 ). Th is
timeframe privileges as its master narrative the US-led eff ort to forge a ‘liberal’ international order to govern global economic and security relations as
well as the rise and eventual decline of the Cold War (see Gopal in this part of the volume). At the same time, this framing removes from view the racial
hierarchies and imperial geopolitics that characterized the development of the fi eld before 1945. Few readers of the respected journal Foreign Aff airs
(published by the Council on Foreign Relations) know that this, the world’s fi rst journal of international relations, was founded in 1910 as the Journal of
Race Development (Vitalis 2010: 928–9). During the post-war evolution of international relations as a fi eld, these traces were erased in part by the
dominance of neo-realist approaches that mapped international politics in units of the nation state and their power capabilities (Waltz 1979; Keohane
1986; Mearsheimer 2003). In its most simplifi ed expression, neo-realism views global politics as a billiard table with
balls of diff erent masses (based on their power capabilities) struggling to survive in an environment of
anarchy, that is, with no enforceable global law. Neo-realism attempts to determine how the structure of the ‘systemlevel’ environment (consisting
of rival states seeking to increase their relative power and making alliances) shape patterns of state behaviour. For example , according to neo-realism,
the nature of polarity—if there are one, two, or three-plus great powers in this system—is the most important factor shaping these patterns. Neo-realism
viewed the bipolar Cold War order as a stable, mostly peaceful system because states tended to align with one or the other great power, leading to rival
sides with relatively equal capabilities and thereby preventing a confl ict between the two major powers.

Th roughout the Cold War, American

policymakers, security analysts, and IR scholars generally discussed
US policy and interests in the Middle East using the tools and language of neo-realism. While
neo-realism’s statist billiard ball imagery tends to discount the role of domestic politics and
ideology , in scholarship about the Middle East Arab states and societies are nevertheless
repeatedly marked as ‘Other’ while their agency is denied . Most recent eff orts to modify the
prevailing neo-realist framework to better represent the legacies of colonialism, the challenges
of postcolonial state formation, and
have failed to escape a Eurocentric framework contemporary patterns of politics
in the
Middle East, . One consequence is that such frameworks,
by highlighting the domestic sources of instability in these states, generally obscure the role the US often plays as a
generator of insecurity (see Smith and Turner in
this part of the volume). Take for example ‘subaltern realism’ or other similar notions

developed by neo-realists to better explain the behaviour of Th ird World states (Ayoob 1998).
In accepting the European model
of a nation state as the normal unit within the international system, such notions depict the

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vast diversity of Th ird World states in terms of their common lack of fully consolidated state
structures and homogenous national identity. Aft er identifying this as a defect, these units are measured
against the European template to suggest that Th ird World states are more likely to be led by
regimes that lack legitimacy and to experience political instability. As a result, they are less likely to
follow the
encourage an unstable, threatening, and war-prone international environment. behaviour
patterns
that produce stable regional balances of power and instead
Eff orts to modify the
neo-realist framework have oft en been consciously developed with intentions to better refl ect (‘describe, explain, and predict’) the behaviour of
nonwestern states (Ayoob 1998: 32). More critically, they seek to counter international relations scholarship that fails to recognize how weaker states
is eff ort to recognize the agency of
might shape the international or system-level environment (Ayoob 1998: 33). Th

postcolonial states is limited, however, by its focus on measuring it in terms of how it might impact
on the security concerns of the great powers (Bilgin 2008: 11). A stark example of the deployment of this logic
is the work of scholars like Steven David who published a 1992/3 essay in the leading journal of international relations and security studies
International Security entitled ‘Why the Th ird World Still Matters’. David’s essay provides an ominous map of post-Cold War global politics. It seeks to
counter a view common in much neo-realist scholarship that with the end of global superpower competition, which had exaggerated the strategic
importance of the Th ird World, US policymakers should focus American policy and resources on regions of critical strategic importance such as the
advanced industrialized states of Europe (see Van Evera 1990). By contrast, writing in the wake of the 1990–1 Gulf War, David calls for continuing and
extending the American projection of power into the Middle East. At a time when neo-realism was facing challenges, and as many scholars were
beginning to suggest that the end of the Cold War and prospects for increasing global economic interdependence were making the world safer for the

US, Davidattempts to reanimate neo-realism’s Hobbesian vision of the dangers of international

anarchy through his depiction of the threats posed by Th ird World states. He notes the
‘growing likelihood that Th ird World States will act in ways inimical to American interests, due
to the persistence of instability oft en leading to war’ (129). David argues that ‘leaders of these
states may be unable or unwilling to follow “rational” policies that would safeguard
American interests’ (129). Foreshadowing the claims of the George W. Bush administration, he suggests that deterrence may be
an unworkable strategy against such states. In sum, the essay off ers a logic for the expanded
American projection of power based on ‘the increasing capability of many Th ird World states
to threaten American interests, particularly in the areas of nuclear proliferation and supply

colonialism

of oil’ (129). In outlining the causes of instability, this portrait recognizes select aspects of the legacy of
. Th e European colonial powers, David notes, promoted political divides along ethnic lines and
imposed arbitrary borders on peoples who shared little common history and culture. Drawing on
Samuel Huntington’s earlier work Political Order in Changing Societies (1968), David argues that, unlike West European states, Th ird World states
witnessed the emergence of mass political participation before a ‘well-educated citizenry’ arose to build institutions to channel participation and
govern populations. David eff ectively transposes Huntington’s warning about the destabilizing aspects of increased political participation at the
domestic level to make similar claims at the international level. Huntington’s critique of modernization theory, in which he highlights the likelihood of
populist social mobilization leading to ‘political decay’ in Th ird World states, resembles David’s anxiety about the dangers posed by Th ird World states,
which are either due to the likelihood of political instability or because they are not eff ectively incorporated into the American global security

architecture. Again generalizing

vastly, David claims that Th ird World leaders do not face the
institutional restraint of popular consent and are thus more likely than western states to
engage in war when it serves their personal interest and maintenance of power even if war
might be inimical to popular and national interests. He also claims that Th ird World states have

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more war-prone cultures since ‘enemies are vilified and dehumanized in the press and
. . . [while
textbooks the] glories of military struggle are celebrated’ (136), and asserts that ‘the religious beliefs of
many Th ird World states may also make them less resistant to going to war’ (136). On top of this
analysis, David goes on to outline ‘the bleak future of the Th ird World’ suff ering economic decline, rapid

population growth, environmental disasters, and massive inequality gaps that impede the rise
of democracy (140–2). Th is approach does not recognize how interventionist policies by the US
and the structure
of the northern-dominated liberal international economic order pose

threats to Th ird World states and societies (see Niva 1999). Rather, it suggests that Th ird
World
states cannot be trusted as constituent members of international society and that the US
must, especially aft er the end of the Cold War, continue to project power across the globe to ensure its own
safety and security. In Th e Colonial Present , Gregory identifi es the ‘at once extraordinary and dangerous claims’ (57) Huntington
makes

about ‘Islam’ in Th e Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (1996). As in other insightful and penetrating critiques, Gregory

highlights Huntington’s insidious deployment of the concepts of identity, culture, and religion
to construct an intense, exclusionary map of global politics that ‘mark other people as
irredeemably “Other”’ (Gregory 2004: 16, as above; see also Mignolo in Part I of this volume). Huntington’s focus
on culture and the idea of civilizations as units in international politics has led many scholars of international relations to read his work in terms of how
these units diverge from neo-realist international relations theory. Th ey highlight Huntington’s suggestion that nation states will no longer be the
principal actors in global politics and that ‘culture’ rather than rival ideologies or economic interests will become the basis of confl ict. Huntington’s
original 1993 essay was published months aft er David’s International Security article, which was written within the idiom of neo-realist international
relations theory.
However, the two essays (by a scholar and his former student) share a common thread that has oft en been missed amongst the reaction and debate

about Huntington’s crude use of the concept of culture. They

are both driven by anxiety about the rising power and
agency of Third World states. And at
global order is one shaped and dominated by the US. the same time, both assume that the
only acceptable
David begins his essay by stating his concern that ‘many Th ird
World states are becoming increasingly powerful’ (127). His anxiety about future patterns of global politics in which Th ird World states have increased
agency is only amplifi ed by the uncertain nature of the global order at the end of the Cold War. While many ‘defensive realists’ saw increased stability
and decline of confl ict, in part because the US no longer needed to project power so extensively into regions of limited strategic value (Van Evera
1990), others suggested a teleological path towards the consolidation of a US-led liberal international order as more states adopted various forms of
capitalist democracy (most emphatically, Fukuyama 1989; for a sophisticated version, see Deudney and Ikenberry 1999). Rereading Huntington with
this debate in mind it is striking how his argument is driven by a recognition of the desire of non-western states to become actors in global politics,
which is at every moment countered by an anxiety—we might copy his quote from Bernard Lewis and call it a ‘perhaps irrational . . . reaction’ (quoted
in Huntington 1993: 32)—that makes him unwilling to accept or accommodate it. He justifi es his unwillingness to imagine what such accommodation
would look like by resorting to his concept of civilizations that are defi ned by fundamental, incommensurable diff erences (25–9) that will shape future
patterns of global confl ict. As aspects of the neo-realist approach to international relations were facing numerous challenges due to shift s in global
politics—the end of the Cold War, the erosion of nation state sovereignty, globalization— Huntington
developed the concept of
‘civilizations’ to reanimate select elements of the neo-realist approach that tended to sustain
American militarism and unilateralism and the American quest for global primacy. He
rejuvenated the notion that the structure of the international system continually poses
existential security threats to states, thus compelling them to do anything necessary to survive

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in this hostile environment. Lost in much of the debate provoked by Huntington’s ‘clash of civilizations’ thesis is the fact that he was
addressing a critical question of concern to scholars of postcolonialism. Like David, at the centre of Huntington’s concern and anxiety is

the realization that increasingly, non-western states will seek to assert their own agency and
will not readily concede to being socialized into a US-defi ned and dominated order. Huntington
exposes the contradictions in claims that the US-led liberal international order is truly inclusive and non-hierarchical. ‘Th e West in eff ect’, Huntington
writes, ‘is using international institutions, military power and economic resources to run the world in ways that maintain Western predominance,

protect Western interests and promote Western political and economic values’ (1993: 40). He recognizes that ‘ decisions
made at the
U.N. Security Council or in the International Monetary Fund that refl ect the interests of the
West are presented to the world as refl ecting the desires of the world community’ (39). A critical
example is that ‘in the post-Cold War world the primary objective of arms control is to prevent the development by non-Western societies of military
capabilities that could threaten Western interests’ (46). But ‘the West’, he notes, ‘promotes non-proliferation as a universal norm’ (46; emphasis
added).

No War – 2AC
No escalation NOR accidents NOR lash-out---multiple organizational and
psychological checks
Michael Quinlan 9, distinguished former British defence strategist and former Permanent
Under-Secretary of State, Thinking About Nuclear Weapons, 2009, p.63-69

Even if initial nuclear use did not quickly end the fighting, the supposition of inexorable momentum in a developing exchange,
with each side rushing to overreaction amid confusion and uncertainty, is implausible . It fails
to consider what the situation of the decisionmakers would really be. Neither side could
want escalation . Both would be appalled at what was going on. Both would be desperately looking for signs that the
other
was ready to call a halt. Both, given the capacity for evasion or concealment which modern delivery platforms and vehicles can possess, could have in reserve significant forces invulnerable
enough not to entail use-or-lose pressures. (It may be more open to question, as noted earlier, whether newer nuclear-weapon possessors can be immediately in that position; but it is within reach of any

substantial state with advanced technological capabilities, and attaining it is certain to be a high priority in the development of forces.) As a result, neither side can have any
predisposition to suppose, in an ambiguous situation of fearful
risk, that the right course none of this analysis rests on
when in doubt is to go on copiously launching weapons. And any
presumption of highly subtle or pre-concerted rationality . The rationality required is plain. The
argument is reinforced if we consider the possible reasoning of an aggressor at a more dispassionate level. Any substantial nuclear armoury can inflict destruction outweighing any possible prize that aggression
could hope to seize. A state attacking the possessor of such an armoury must therefore be doing so (once given that it cannot count upon destroying the armoury pre-emptively) on a judgement that the possessor
would be found lacking in the will to use it. If the attacked possessor used nuclear weapons, whether first or in response to the aggressor's own first use, this judgement would begin to look dangerously

precarious. There must be at least a substantial possibility of the aggressor leaders' concluding that
their initial judgement had been mistaken —that the risks were after all greater than whatever
prize they had been seeking, and that for their own country's survival they must call off the
aggression. Deterrence planning such as that of NATO was directed in the first place to preventing the initial misjudgement and in the second, if it were nevertheless made, to compelling such a
reappraisal. The former aim had to have primacy, because it could not be taken for granted that the latter was certain to work. But there was no ground for assuming in advance, for all possible scenarios, that the

chance of its working must be negligible. An aggressor state would itself be at huge risk if nuclear war developed, as
its leaders would know. It may be argued that a policy which abandons hope of physically defeating the enemy and simply hopes to get him to desist is pure gamble, a matter of who
blinks first; and that the political and moral nature of most likely aggressors, almost ex hypothesis, makes them the less likely to blink. One response to this is to ask what is the alternative—it can only be surrender.
But a more positive and hopeful answer lies in the fact that the criticism is posed in a political vacuum. Real-life conflict would have a political context. The context which concerned NATO during the cold war, for
example, was one of defending vital interests against a postulated aggressor whose own vital interests would not be engaged, or would be less engaged. Certainty is not possible, but a clear asymmetry of vital
interest is a legitimate basis for expecting an asymmetry, credible to both sides, of resolve in conflict. That places upon statesmen, as page 23 has noted, the key task in deterrence of building up in advance a clear
and shared grasp of where limits lie. That was plainly achieved in cold-war Europe. 11 vital interests have been defined in a way that is clear, and also clearly not overlapping or incompatible with

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It was also sometimes suggested by critics that whatever might
those of the adversary, a credible basis has been laid for the likelihood of greater resolve in resistance.

be indicated by theoretical discussion of political will and interests, the military environment of
nuclear warfare—particularly difficulties of communication and control—would drive escalation with overwhelming
probability to the limit. But it is obscure why matters should be regarded as inevitably so for
every possible level and setting of action. Even if the history of war suggested (as it scarcely
does) that military decision-makers are mostly apt to work on the principle 'When in doubt, lash out ',
the nuclear revolution creates an utterly new situation. The pervasive reality, always plain to both sides during the cold war, is 'If this goes on to
the end, we are all ruined'. Given that inexorable escalation would mean catastrophe for both, it would be

perverse to suppose them permanently incapable of framing arrangements which avoid it. As page
16 has noted, NATO gave its military commanders no widespread delegated authority, in peace or war, to launch nuclear weapons without specific political direction. Many types of
weapon moreover had physical safeguards such as PALs incorporated to reinforce
organizational ones. There were multiple communication and control systems for passing
information, orders, and prohibitions. Such systems could not be totally guaranteed against disruption if at a fairly intense level of strategic exchange—which was
only one of many possible levels of conflict— an adversary judged it to be in his interest to weaken political control. It was far from clear why he necessarily should so judge. Even then, however, it remained
possible to operate on a general fail-safe presumption: no authorization, no use. That was the basis on which NATO operated. If it is feared that the arrangements which a nuclear-weapon possessor has in place do
not meet such standards in some respects, the logical course is to continue to improve them rather than to assume escalation to be certain and uncontrollable, with all the enormous inferences that would have to
flow from such an assumption. The likelihood of escalation can never be 100 per cent, and never zero. Where between those two extremes it may lie can never be precisely calculable in advance; and even were it
so calculable, it would not be uniquely fixed—it would stand to vary hugely with circumstances. That there should be any risk at all of escalation to widespread nuclear war must be deeply disturbing, and decision-
makers would always have to weigh it most anxiously. But a pair of key truths about it need to be recognized. The first is that the risk of escalation to large-scale nuclear war is inescapably present in any significant
armed conflict between nuclear-capable powers, whoever may have started the conflict and whoever may first have used any particular category of weapon. The initiator of the conflict will always have physically
available to him options for applying more force if he meets effective resistance. If the risk of escalation, whatever its degree of probability, is to be regarded as absolutely unacceptable, the necessary inference is
that a state attacked by a substantial nuclear power must forgo military resistance. It must surrender, even if it has a nuclear armoury of its own. But the companion truth is that, as page 47 has noted,

The exploitation of that burden is the crucial route, if conflict

the risk of escalation is an inescapable burden also upon the aggressor.

does break out, for managing it to a tolerable outcome—the only route, indeed, intermediate
between surrender and holocaust, and so the necessary basis for deterrence beforehand. The
working out of plans to exploit escalation risk most effectively in deterring potential aggression entails further and complex issues. It is for example plainly desirable, wherever geography, politics, and available
resources so permit without triggering arms races, to make provisions and dispositions that are likely to place the onus of making the bigger and more evidently dangerous steps in escalation upon the aggressor
who wishes to maintain his attack, rather than upon the defender. (The customary shorthand for this desirable posture used to be 'escalation dominance'.) These issues are not further discussed here. But
addressing them needs to start from acknowledgement that there are in any event no certainties or absolutes available, no options guaranteed to be risk-free and cost-free. Deterrence is not possible without
escalation risk; and its presence can point to no automatic policy conclusion save for those who espouse outright pacifism and accept its consequences. Accident and Miscalculation Ensuring the safety and security
of nuclear weapons plainly needs to be taken most seriously. Detailed information is understandably not published, but such direct evidence as there is suggests that it always has been so taken in every possessor

Critics have nevertheless from time to time argued that the possibility of
state, with the inevitable occasional failures to follow strict procedures dealt with rigorously.

accident involving nuclear weapons is so substantial that it must weigh heavily in the entire evaluation of whether war-prevention structures entailing
their existence should be tolerated at all. Two sorts of scenario are usually in question. The first is that of a single grave event involving an unintended nuclear explosion—a technical disaster at a storage site, for
example, or the accidental or unauthorized launch of a delivery system with a live nuclear warhead. The second is that of some event—perhaps such an explosion or launch, or some other mishap such as

malfunction or misinterpretation of radar signals or computer systems—initiating a sequence of response and counter-response that culminated in a nuclear exchange which no one had truly intended. No
event that is physically possible can be said to be of absolutely zero probability (just as at an opposite extreme
it is absurd to claim, as has been heard from distinguished figures, that nuclear-weapon use can be guaranteed to happen within some finite future span despite not having happened for over sixty years). But
human affairs cannot be managed to the standard of either zero or total probability. We have to assess
levels between those theoretical limits and weigh their reality and implications against other
factors, in security planning as in everyday life. There have certainly been, across the decades since 1945, many known
accidents involving nuclear weapons, from transporters skidding off roads to bomber aircraft crashing with or accidentally dropping the weapons they carried (in
past days when such carriage was a frequent feature of readiness arrangements—it no longer is). A few of these accidents may have released into the nearby environment highly toxic material.
None
however has entailed a nuclear detonation. Some commentators suggest that this reflects bizarrely good fortune amid such massive activity and
deployment over so many

years. A more rational deduction from the facts of this long experience would however be that the
probability of any accident triggering a nuclear explosion is extremely low . It might be further noted that the

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mechanisms needed to set off such an explosion are technically demanding, and that in a large number of
ways the past sixty years have seen extensive improvements in safety arrangements for both the

design and the handling of weapons. It is undoubtedly possible to see respects in which, after the cold war, some of the factors bearing upon risk may be new or more
adverse; but some are now plainly less so. The years which the world has come through entirely without accidental or unauthorized detonation have included early decades in which knowledge was sketchier,
precautions were less developed, and weapon designs were less ultra-safe than they later became, as well as substantial periods in which weapon numbers were larger, deployments more widespread and diverse,

movements more frequent, and several aspects of doctrine and readiness arrangements more tense. Similar considerations apply to the hypothesis of
nuclear war being mistakenly triggered by false alarm. Critics again point to the fact, as it is understood, of numerous occasions when initial
steps in alert sequences for US nuclear forces were embarked upon, or at least called for, by indicators mistaken or misconstrued. In none of these instances, it is accepted, did matters get at all near to nuclear

launch—extraordinary good fortune again, critics have suggested. But the rival and more logical inference from hundreds of events
stretching over sixty years of experience presents itself once more: that the probability of initial
misinterpretation leading far towards mistaken launch is remote . Precisely because any
nuclear-weapon possessor recognizes the vast gravity of any launch, release sequences have
many steps, and human decision is repeatedly interposed as well as capping the sequences. To
convey that because a first step was prompted the world somehow came close to accidental nuclear war is wild
hyperbole , rather like asserting, when a tennis champion has lost his opening service game,
that he was nearly beaten in straight sets. History anyway scarcely offers any ready example of
major war started by accident even before the nuclear revolution imposed an order-of-
magnitude increase in caution. It was occasionally conjectured that nuclear war might be triggered by the real but accidental or unauthorized
launch of a strategic nuclear-weapon delivery system in the direction of a potential adversary. No such launch is known to have occurred in over sixty years. The probability of it is
therefore

very
nuclear exchange is far-fetched. It fails to consider the real situation of decision-makers low.
But
even if it did happen, the further hypothesis of its initiating a general
, as pages

The notion that cosmic holocaust might be mistakenly precipitated in this way
63-4 have brought out.

belongs to science fiction.

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AT: Realism – 2AC

The ontological presupposition that the world is violent assures violence---the
structure of realist IR is not inevitable---alternative imaginations through a
nonviolent ethics of peace can break the strategic deadlock that otherwise
assure nuclear war and climate change
Dalby 8 Simon, Carleton University “GEOPOLITICS, GRAND STRATEGY AND CRITIQUE: TWENTY
YEARS AND COUNTING …”
http://www.researchgate.net/publication/228591597_GEOPOLITICS_GRAND_STRATEGY_AND_CRITIQUE_TWENTY_YEARS_AND_COUNTING/file/60b7d
529d2a37a02ad.pdf.

If geography's raison d'etre is to investigate the earth as the home of humanity then the really big questions
of the future
and the possibilities of both nuclear warfare and/or climate change induced disruptions to the
conditions for urban civilization are clearly within the remit of critical geopolitics and will remain so.
Linking these two themes has long been one of my intellectual preoccupations but it puts the most basic questions of politics at the

heart of geographical considerations. Are we

to understand ourselves as on earth, squabbling over control
of discrete territories and threatening massive violence to our putative rivals in other sovereign
spaces, or are we to understand our fate as increasingly a matter of reorganizing a dynamic
biosphere in which we all dwell? Posing matters this bluntly is now key to
focusing on matters of security and insecurity and
the matters of biopolitics at the largest of scales. Doing so also goes back to Neil Smith's (1990) formulation of matters of uneven
development in the 1980s and his insistence that the dynamism of capitalism has to be understood as simultaneously producing
nature and space. Critical
geopolitics is all about understanding the production of knowledge of
spaces facilitating certain kinds of violent practice, the drawing of lines, the specification of dangers and the
legitimization of violent actions to deal with these “threats”. Recently Nick Megoran (2008) has raised the
explicit issue of the relationships of all this to the morality of warfare. In the process he has issued what amounts to an invitation to
discuss much more explicitly the crucial question of violence and how those of us who write critical geopolitics situate ourselves in
this regard. Focusing on Gerard Toal's discussion of Iraq (Ó Tuathail 2003) and Bosnia (Ó Tuathail 2005) he effectively poses the
question of whether Toal is, to use the phrasing from his first paper in (Ó Tuathail 1986), "practicing geopolitics" rather than "exposing"
its violence. The suggestion Megoran makes is that Toal effectively operates within the categories of just war theory and as such falls
prey to the logics of state violence implicit in the theory. But if
one is to venture into practical politics and take
stands on particular instances of state violence these issues these pitfalls await all practitioners.
In so far as the world is divided into spatial entities competing for power and willing to use violence
or the threat thereof to gain their ends such logics play out. Of course as Megoran (2008) makes clear, spatial
entities don't compete, bureaucracies, functionaries and politicians do and the reification of their
actions in spatial tropes remains a powerful geographical sleight of hand that requires
continuous critical commentary from us all. Or as I put it in one of my initial formulations “the function of a critical geopolitics is not
to provide ‘advice to the prince’ in terms of using geopolitical reasoning to advise state policy-makers, but rather to investigate how
geopolitical reasoning is used as an ideological device to maintain social relations of domination within contemporary global politics”
(Dalby 1990:14-15). What Megoran (2008) doesn't do in his pointed raising of the
possibilities of non- violence
is push his analysis of realism to the conclusion that operating within an ontology of rival spatial units
arbitrated ultimately by violence is doomed to the tragedy of the eternal return of war. The
logic of clashing rival autonomous entities arbitrated by violence runs through the neo-realist
approach to i nternational r elations just as much as it runs through the cultural logic of the national rifle association in the
United States. These two share more than the acronym NRA, they share an ontological

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presupposition of competitive and potentially antagonistic autonomy. In the world of

a
nuclear superpowers it was quite clear two decades ago that this wasn't "realistic" as long
term mode of security for anyone on the planet. The discussions of nuclear winter and the immediate climate
change that a central nuclear war would create got attention in many places; coupled to the Chernobyl disaster it was part of the

shakeup of the Soviet system in the 1980s. The

Gorbachev innovations in new thinking concerning security
recognized that the nuclear standoff was far too dangerous a game to play and set out to defuse the confrontation
and manage international rivalries in a manner designed to remove the danger of crisis escalation (MccGwire 1991). The
tragedy is that American foreign policy makers, wedded to the ontology of clashing entities,
interpreted the subsequent implosion of the Soviet Union as a victory and a confirmation of
their superiority and rectitude. In the process the wisdom showed by the Soviet leaders in recognising the necessity of defusing
an impossible standoff, and thinking anew about security in a fragile biosphere, was swept aside and
numerous possibilities of a politics of international cooperation were precluded in the West as
the financial shocks of humbled and humiliated former Russian rivals (Klein 2007). The
neo-liberalism
neo-realist school precludes the possibility of change when it reasserts the
identities of the protagonists in the structural tragedies of anarchy. In this at least it reproduced some of
the worst attributes of the earlier social Darwinist streams of geopolitik. But as globalization and the debate about
climate change make clear, such artificial
dangerous ethical practices , not the given

categories of our political being boundaries are

. Understanding this provides a powerful mode of critique but not the practical
policy
stances that activists facing immediate tactical decisions frequently insist of scholars when they demand that they take a stand. In so
far as politics is about who decides before it is about what it is that needs deciding, the invocation of authority and threats of
violence are unavoidable. Pressing necessities are deferred in the endless arguments about
legitimate authority; pointing out the pernicious consequences of prioritizing rivalries over
commonalities is a matter of critique too.
The possibility of other

political games , other modes of living together is what the non- violence argument is about and its tied
directly

into challenging the assumption of clashing autonomies as the ontological condition of our times. More specifically it is precisely
about disputing the assumptions of war as necessarily the ultimate arbiter of these
rivalries

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with all the violence that goes with that assumption; this is the cartographic specification of a pervasive
architecture of enmity that underlies international relations thinking. Geographical sensitivities are an especially good way into these
discussions and critical geopolitics has to be about these arguments if it is to tackle the legitimations of violence that explicitly concern
Megoran (2008) and at least implicitly concern the rest of us. My own attempt to do all these things has been to address the key that
links violence, wars, strategy and identity in the discussions of security and, over the decades, write a series of critical essays pointing
out the political choices implicit in how danger is articulated to various identities. In doing so it seems to me essential to take the
geographical formulations in these arguments seriously and use these as the starting points for analyzing how these discursive
formations work. It also seems important to understand how these discussions play out in popular culture (Dalby 2008b), the practical
geopolitical reasoning of policy makers and the writings of the journalists who legitimize these practices. Geopolitics works in all these
places and hence is worth tackling in many genres; this is precisely what the proliferation of critical geopolitical analyses have been
doing in this decade, and in that sense at least, this critical work has become the normal way of doing geographical scholarship. But
all this is premised on the assumption that war as either a tool of policy or a permanent social
relation is unethical, that in the long run in a small biosphere that humanity is rapidly
destabilizing, nuclear weapons and strategies to use them are untenable. In
Burke’s (2007) terms we all need to start from ethical peace formulations of an
rather than that war is just from assumptions . Doing so requires tackling the
big hard questions about violence, questions which have been made more
pressing of late by the insistence by the most powerful state on the planet that it is at war, in an
aggressive “long war” as part of its struggle to end

needs critique

tyranny on the planet . Its this prior condition of war that is the most important point that
, but after twenty years the contributions to this discussion are now widespread and at times somewhat
inchoate, not least because war and domination sometimes get forgotten. The sub discipline looks very different now in comparison
to what existed in the 1980s when this all got started (Dalby 2008a). The current discussion of audience reception, fandom and how
popular readers and viewers extends the analysis of critical geopolitics further in another useful direction, and offers considerable
possibilities for critical engagement with the framing of larger political debates (Dodds 2006; Dittmer and Dodds 2008). But it seems
that if we are to take Sparke's (2007) arguments about a post-foundational ethic seriously as geographers we do need to tie his
concerns not only to matters of identities and spaces, but to the other major traditional theme of geography too, matters of nature,
environment and the biosphere as the home of humanity. While much of the discussion of social nature, of hybrids and cyborgs,
commodity chains and animal geographies has updated these themes, at the largest scale, that of the geopolitical, matters that
concern us here, much more work remains to be done on these themes (Dalby 2007). Not
least in linking war, identity,
geography and ecology together much more closely in contemporary thinking while
simultaneously looking to the alternatives for a more peaceful world.

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AT: Life First

Prioritization of life obscures the questions of how life is lived and managed –
their framing of existential risk makes racism tolerable in the short term as a
survival strategy in order for enjoyment to be felt in the future, which will
always defer justice and create war in the name of peace.
Dillon, 2015 Michael, IR Prof @ Lancaster, “Biopolitics of Security : A Political Analytic of
Finitude,” pg. 153-156

Following the religious revolutions of the seventeenth century, especially, politics

and rule were obliged to seek some
other warrant than that of a divinely ordained cosmos. However much they nonetheless continued to rely on some
guarantor of universal order, that guarantor could no longer be confidently formulated in terms of a providential God divinel y manifested throughout
creation. Science, commerce, urbanisation, religious war and the rise of the state, as well as the bloody rivalry of conflicting confessions of faith, put paid
to that game. What, therefore, first distin- guished modern accounts of government and politics, for Foucault, was the way in which they sought, in the
problematisation of all accounts of transcendent order, to ground the problematic of rule, instead, in some internal, or immanent, political rationality. In
the process of documenting how the biopolitical aspects of this his— torical transformation of politics, government and governance emerged, Foucault
makes a whole variety of arguments. I boil these down to emphasise the following four points. First, Foucault maintains historically that political modernity
arose from war, specifically race war. Second, he observes that early biopolitics, taking life as its referent object of power and politics, focused on the
empirical referent of' population'. Third, he extended his initial argument by maintaining that not only did political modernity arise out of race 'war, but
he insisted that the very grid of intelligibility of modern politics itself continues to derive from war. I describe this as a process in which the logos of war
is inscribed as the logos of peace. Arguing with Foucault, but beyond Foucault, I seek to derive a fourth argument. I maintain, in addition, that the
logos of peace is systematically inscribed with the logos of war through
discourses of security. What is enunciated at the level of ontopolitical necessity — the reality that species existence
revolves around survival and that that life must first be secured if it is to be promoted — is also
inscribed at the level of rule through the operation of biopolltical governmentallty. To the degree that
contemporary politics is biopolitical, therefore, biopoliticised racism does not so much take place
via political rationalities which proclaim the 'realism' of racial supremacy . It more regularly occurs
instead, now, through the socio-technical systems which comprise the governing technologies of biopolitics. It is these which more regularly exercise
that everyday discrimination against lives required, biopolitical y, to make life live. Within Atlantic societies, these days, race and biopolitics
meet — occur and recur — throughout the circulatory relays and institutions of all its governmental
capillaries of power, rather than in officially endorsed political rationalities of race. A complex
assemblage of power relations, or, what Foucault calls dispositifs de sécuriré, racial markers help adjudicate the
living for biopolitics (Foucault 2007). The modern politics which first arose in France and England during the course of the seventeenth
century arose, according to Foucault, through war, and the wars through which they arose were race wars (la guerre des races). Here, Foucault contests
the history and interpretation of the origin of early modern politics. His pro- tagonists are many They include, in particular, Machiavelli and Hobbes as
well as Hegel. Machiavelli and Hobbes are challenged because the former is preoccupied with the politics of seizing and retaining a sovereign's grip on
his territorial state (Machiavelli), and because the latteri account of politics derives from the posited abstraction of a war of all against all rather than
real confllct, and the mortga- ging of the political subject's life to the death dealing monopoly of the sovereign (Hobbes). Hegel's dialectic is
challenged because Foucault does not subscribe to the idea of history having a goal or telos and he does
not believe in the idea of a historical subject coming to fruition through history. He was never that kind of historian.

Hegel is also implicitly contested because, like

Hobbes, he also substitutes an real wars : 'invasions , struggles , plundering , disguises, ploys'
ontological mechanism for the historical fields of force which were instituted by
(Foucault 1986: 76; see also Marks 2000). Since Foucault describes how these early modern wars were race

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wars, race figured from the very beginning as one of the ensemble of dividing practices which gave birth to modern discourses of the political, and
the apparatus of modern economies and state-craft. He describes how, with the dissolution of the Christian world, civil
war and emerging conflicts over the institution of absolute monarchy, jurists, political theorisers and popularisers, in both England and France, appealed
to the traditions of their 'race' —Anglo-Saxon, or Frank, for example — to proclaim or protest newly emergent forms of rule. In the late seventeenth
century, and throughout the course of the eighteenth, liberal
biopolitics began to find its warrant, instead,
in the biological understanding of life as species being. It enacted that warrant, especially
against the
limits set by what were increasingly said to be the independent dynamics of life sovereign
claims of
absolute monarchy, by seeking to align government with the
Good government then became government
processes; such as those exhibited, for example, by 'population' and 'economy'.

which not only respected the limits within which it should govern, but artfully sought to
manipulate and
manage those limits for the good governance of species life. Life thus came to teach
liberal
biopolitics what it needed to know if it was to promote, regulate and govern life effectively
according to the 'natural' limits set by the exigencies of species existence itself. Crucially, those limits,
and the life processes which they demarcate, had to be amenable to calculation to their own specific forms of power/knowledge. If they were not, then
liberal biopolitics would quite literally not know what to govern, or how to govern. Where bodies and populations, nonetheless, appear to exceed or

escape calculation in some way or other,

however, there monstrosity
the biopolitician . This fear was regularly expressed in racial terms. lies for the biopolitical
technician and for
It found expression in the early political
arithmetic of seventeenth and eighteenth biopohtics ,just as it finds expression today in the biometrics and risk calculations which enact twenty-first
century biopo i- tics: especially in the allied campaigns of' homeland security', 'national resilience' and the 'war on terror' as well as throughout
immigration and asylum policies. But one has to be clear about what Life comes to mean under this emergent biopolitical regime.

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AT: Predictions – 2AC

Predictions can be good – but violent ones foreground violent social
relationships which make war and environmental destruction inevitable –
change your assumptions from realpolik to cooperation
Dalby 11 Simon Dalby, Carleton University "PEACE AND GEOPOLITICS: IMAGINING PEACEFUL
GEOGRAPHIES" Nov 2011 http-server.carleton.ca/~sdalby/papers/PEACEFUL_GEOGRAPHIES.pdf

Thinking intelligently about peace within the discipline of geography requires us to juxtapose our
aspirations to a peaceful world, one beyond war and at least the most egregious injustices of
structural violence, with careful analysis of how the world is being changed so that useful
advocacy is possible. Contrary to arguments that construct a real world of politics separate from peace activism, one
commonly formulated in terms of an autonomous realm of the international, the arguments from both critical international

relations thinking as well as the early critical geopolitics discussions were precisely that the reasonings of politics are
part of politics, and that thinking carefully about the
ontological matter as part of the political world that constitutes the possible options for
framings invoked in political discourse
political actors. The task for scholars in present times, as so often in the past has to be to keep
aspiration,
analysis and advocacy in creative tension; wishful thinking has to be avoided at each stage, but if intellectual activity is to be
useful in making a more peaceful world then naivety is no help. Analysis can channel aspiration into useful advocacy precisely by
acting as an antidote to either emotional impulse or thoughtless heroic gestures. It is crucial to the task of the academic and as such

careful
linking academic activity directly into practical action is simply part of our trade. Teaching matters greatly here, and
advocacy of peaceful possibilities is key to teaching critical geopolitics. The scholarly research both on territory
and war as well
as discussions of how these issues are handled matters greatly . Confrontation is not inevitable

environmental degradation and its security implications both

show clearly that ; political initiatives toward cooperation rather than real politik lead to
constructive solutions.
Continuing to challenge determinist arguments that argue otherwise remains a key task for geographers (Kearns 2009).

Delegitimization of violence is a key part of all this. Ending death penalties, reducing physical abuse,
torture,
Amnesty International campaigns and international solidarity in the face of suffering as well as extending the norms of politics and
the appropriate cultural modes acceptable for ruling. It is precisely the failure of the US to live up to supposedly higher civilizational
standards in Abu Graib, Guantanamo and now in the targeting of drone weapons that undermines its legitimacy in many places

(Gregory 2010,Hannah 2006). Coupled with the great lengths to which the U nited S tates has gone to
render its actions legitimate , and to avoid potential problems with the international criminal court,
matters of legality offer considerable options for activist geographers to contribute to changing
societal norms away from militarism . The links to critical legal geographies need further attention too; jurisdiction

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matters (Gregory 2006)! The overall conclusion from this paper is that geographers should never forget that politics is prior to all the
other discussions and understanding peace in the context of particular forms of politics is not unrelated to the forms of rule and
authority invoked in particular situations. Contextualisations continue to matter greatly; there are complex geographies to all this.
The world is changing rapidly but shaping that change is a matter of practical initiatives, and peacemaking. This simple point should
never be forgotten neither should the opposite point that war may happen despite good intentions. No doubt in the next few years
there will be further reflections on the processes that lead to the outbreak of the First World War, The Guns of August in Barbara
Tuchman’s (1962)famous terms, or what Niall Ferguson (2006) discusses in terms of metaphors of a train wreck. Building institutions
that can negotiate and cooperate in the face of destabilizing crises events matters greatly, notwithstanding the popular animosity
towards governments built up by a generation of neo-liberal ideology and right wing populist movements generously funded by
those with an interest in turning states into the tools of capital. In the face of endless neo-Malthusian fears of
scarcities and disruptions to come, the possibilities of a more peaceful world remain achievable
in many places. Challenging fearful cartographies , refusing the designation of difference and
distance as necessarily dangerous has long been part of the geographers’
potential contribution, as Nick Megoran reminds us all frequently with his repeated invocation of Peter Kropotkin’s
(1885)statement concerning what geography ought to be. Thinking long and hard about the diffusion of military technologies and the
possible ways geographers might usefully contribute to the discussions of arms control, not least the key point about the implicit
geopolitics in the supposedly technical arrangements of weapons limitation verifications matters too (Dalby 2011b). Arms control
needs very much more attention. Ultimately geopolitics is crucial in that if the dominant mappings of politics continue to specify the
world in terms of territorial domains of rule in rivalry with one another, and with military force as the ultimate arbiter, then the
possibilities of its use remain on the agenda. Realists will argue that this is inevitable. But if the pacification of international national,
or perhaps that should be inter-imperial, relations that the United Nations system has begun, is extended then the possibilities of a

pacific geopolitics open up. Now the

challenge is to see new modes of rule that deal with the most
important mappings of an interconnected globe where ecological matters require mappings of
interconnection rather than borders of autonomous entities (Dalby 2009b).Who decides
the
future of the planet matters greatly , but politics remains at least so far a matter of who decides
long before it is a matter of what gets decided over. That too is a
the fate of the earth is at stake matter for peaceful geographers to tackle;
, and as a discipline with aspirations to study it as humanity’s home, our attention
is

certainly warranted. In the circumstances of rapid global change and the potential disruptions that are coming, we now have
additional compelling reasons to work towards making Santayana’s dismal assertion
concerning the inevitability of war a thing of the past.

Predicting threats legitimizes the war narrative---the alternatives imagination of

interconnected social relations underpinning our ontological condition remaps
global conflict and connects the dots of humanities global fate---this engenders
cooperation and peace comparatively better
Dalby 8 Simon, Carleton University “GEOPOLITICS, GRAND STRATEGY AND CRITIQUE: TWENTY
YEARS AND COUNTING …” file:///C:/Users/Debate%2013/Downloads/60b7d529d2a37a02ad.pdf

The particular forms of violence that plague our planet are legitimated by numerous narratives
,
but the geographical specifications of insecurity remain key to understanding how others are rendered threatening and, in Ken
Hewitt's (1983) terms, how the dangerous dialectic of place attachment is used to facilitate sacrifice at home and destruction abroad.
Its here that the links between the current discussions of popular geopolitics and the larger discussions of politics and discourse

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come into play. Its also here that geographers are called to tell other stories, the possibilities of re-crafting narratives of identity to
facilitate cooperation rather than perpetuating the neo-colonial architectures of enmity (Gregory 2004). Its about much
more than texts; securitization is also very much about tele-visual images and the larger cultural
productions of danger (Williams 2003). The converse of this, which needs much more intelligent analysis, concerns the
possibilities of challenging images of danger in terms of empathetic gestures of cooperation. Its about post disaster reconstruction,
the return of displaced people in Bosnia, and thinking carefully about infrastructure provision so that future Katrinas, and Ikes are

much less damaging. Our

engagements with popular culture and the narratives of opportunity are relatively
neglected and here in particular the discipline in general and critical geopolitics in particular has much
more to do in imagining future ecological possibilities, challenging the contemporary
imagination to think in terms of dwelling sensibly in small biosphere rather than appropriating
an external earth to perpetuate international rivalries (Klare 2008; Carmody and Owusu 2007). Thus the geo in
This requires a
geopolitics becomes a changing biosphere, not a series of cartographic designations of competing rival states.
strategy that is very different from classical geopolitics and the
enmity is the fate of humanity assumptions that eternal
. Thomas Hobbes and John Locke have dominated the geographical imagination for
far
too long; Sarah Palin's lust for drilling in Alaska's ecological reserves to perpetuate the myth of the resource frontier as the American
identity, is only the most obvious recent symbol of all that threatens a sustainable future.
Imagining cooperative
futures, working with cultural agencies to engage with the best about progressive
movements, remains a task to which much more effort can usefully be devoted in the next
two
useful contributions to ending the condition of war as the permanent social relation
decades. Above all if we are to make
of our times we need to remain focused on the critique of the cultural production of places with

attributes which supposedly necessitate violent practices. Challenging our own identities as residents of
Mordor may also help in maintaining critical distance from the taken for granted geopolitical assumptions of the rich and powerful.

By remapping the connections between places and peoples in the Anthropocene the
interconnectedness of our fates is made much clearer and so too the necessity to think
about
insecurities as about things other than the rivalries of elites. The politics of such a peace is but one
part of the task for critics, geographical and otherwise of contemporary politics, but an undoubtedly important one that
will keep us all busy for the next twenty years!

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AT: Nuclear Winter

Nuclear winter is survivable
Denkenberger et al. 17. Tennessee State University; Global Catastrophic Risk Institute. 03/2017.
“Feeding Everyone If the Sun Is Obscured and Industry Is Disabled.” International Journal of
Disaster Risk Reduction, vol. 21, pp. 284–290.

Two estimates put the probability of full-scale nuclear war at order of magnitude 1% per year (Barrett et al., 2013;
Hellman, 2008). Then there is uncertainty in whether this would cause agricultural collapse and
whether it would cause industrial collapse. However, if these latter probabilities together are 1%, this means there
is a 0.01% chance per year that industry would collapse and 50% of the sun would be blocked. Given that there are other routes to
losing the sun and industry, this gives roughly 1% chance this century. This scenario presents a grave threat to civilization, which could
have repercussions for the far future. Because there are potentially so many future generations, the far future is of overwhelming
importance (Beckstead, 2013). The extended diminishment of the sun and loss of industry would present many problems. The first
priorities are food, water, shelter and clothing as these are the basic necessities. With the loss of industry, provision of food is likely
to be the greatest challenge, and this is the primary focus of the analysis presented here. Additional challenges covered here include
provision of water treatment and transportation to food and water sources. Previous work has analyzed provisioning needs in
scenarios of the sun being blocked (Denkenberger and Pearce, 2014). In these scenarios, industry was assumed to remain functioning
(Denkenberger and Pearce, 2015), which allows the possibility of maintaining near-current living locations and levels of consumption
of goods. In this study, the additional collapse of industry precludes this so only a technical path to save nearly all human life in such
a catastrophe is analyzed. We consider the worst-case scenario where
industry is disrupted over an extended period. 2. Background and Assumptions In some of the less
challenging
combined catastrophe scenarios, it may be possible to continue running the majority of machines for a short time with the fossil
fuels that had previously been brought to the surface or from the use of microgrids or shielded electrical systems. Strategic
petroleum reserves are typically underground, which may not be accessible. There is significant above-ground crude oil because
much crude oil is shipped across the ocean and this takes a long time. Also, there is significant storage of coal at power plants. But
the most valuable fuels likely would be gasoline and diesel. The net available shell storage capacity of terminals and tank farms in
the U.S. is 40 billion L of gasoline and 30 billion L of diesel (Energy Information Administration, 2016). Though this capacity would not
be fully utilized, this does not include the storage in pipelines, trucks, vehicle filling stations, and households. Therefore, we use
these numbers a proxies for the storage, and multiply by five to estimate the global value. The fuel use rate of a chainsaw at near
maximum power is 1.3 L/hr (Magnusson et al., 2000). It would take ~130 billion chainsaw hours to fell and delimb all the tropical
trees in the world (Denkenberger and Pearce, 2014). Therefore, it would require about 80% of gasoline storage to fell and delimb the
tropical trees. The energy intensity of trucking is 2.2 MJ/(ton-km) (Brown and Hatch, 2002). If the weight of each person plus
equipment and supplies is 120 kg, to relocate 1 billion people 4000 km to the forests would require 18% of diesel storage. This is
very conservative because much of the movement would be accomplished by far more efficient rail, and even trucks can be run
more efficiently than currently. Furthermore, natural gas would continue to bleed out of wells without any human input. It may be
possible without large-scale industry to retrofit some vehicles to burn natural gas. Then the natural gas could be stored in large bags
(Dartnell, 2014) or possibly compressed into tanks to allow longer distance trips. In addition, it is possible to run some machines on
gasified wood (LaFontaine and Zimmerman, 1989). Repairing these systems and re-establishing electrical infrastructure would be a
goal of the long term and this work would start immediately after a catastrophe. However, human needs would need to be met
immediately (and continually) and here we focus on what is technically possible without the electrical infrastructure and half of
sunlight, leaving economics and politics for future work. Previous work has analyzed food sources as if they were individual, with the
goal of ramping to 100% of human food requirements as quickly as possible. The present work recognizes that the goal would be a
diversity of foods. Furthermore, the current analysis includes interactions between food sources, and allows the addition of each
food source to a total supply similar to (Baum et al., 2015). HEMPs could disable vehicles, including ships (Foster, 2008). However,
these detonations would not likely be over open oceans, which means that many ships may still be operational. However, it is
possible that a series of super computer viruses could disable ships through the Internet or GPS links. Ships may lose powered
motion and continue to drift due to currents and winds. Currents alone would generally not bring ships to shore, but wind would.
Empty ships and container ships with lower density cargo sit higher in the ocean and would be pushed faster by the wind. To extend
the lives of the crew, solar stills could be improvised on the ships for freshwater production. There would be some food storage and
it may be possible to improvise gear to harvest fish and edible seaweed. When the ship gets close to shore, or ahead of time if the
people are going to die before reaching shore, it may be possible to let the anchor down to avoid the ship running aground and
being damaged. However, storms could damage the drifting ships. The locations of some of the ships could be estimated by human
memory and non-electronic records. Also, known shipping lanes could be targeted for rescue missions. Since the disabling of ships is

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not very likely and even if they were disabled there are number of retrieval options, we assume that all ships are available to use.
The calculations are accurate to within an order of magnitude. However, when summing multiple food sources, the uncertainty
decreases. 3. Food 3.1 Stored Food and Agriculture in Reduced Solar Conditions Global grain production is 2.7 billion tons (Gt)/yr
(Tilman et al., 2002), and grains are 29% total of fiber and moisture (Hurburgh, 2006; United States Department of Agriculture,
2006). Therefore, this is 1.9 Gt/yr dry carbohydrate equivalent. Grains make up half of the calories produced (Meadows et al.,
2004); thus, the total food production is 3.8 Gt dry/yr. The food requirement with low waste is 1.5 Gt/yr (Denkenberger and Pearce,
2014). Livestock consume 35% of the world’s grain (Earth Policy Institute, 2011). Therefore, the initial state before the catastrophe
shows a plant production of 210% of requirement (not including the part that goes to livestock) and 10% of requirement animal
products (see Figure 1). The average annual global wheat storage is 4 months at current wheat consumption (Do et al., 2010).
Assuming this applies to all grains, there would be 5 months of full food from grain storage. In addition, we estimate that there is a
1-month supply at crisis levels of consumption of food total in the following locations: households, stores, and warehouses (livestock
would generally be retained, but with alternate feed). The soot released into the stratosphere from the burning
of cities in a regional nuclear war would increase UV levels at the surface significantly
(Mills et al., 2008). Full-scale nuclear war focused on here would be significantly worse (Bardeen unpublished results). The
tropics would generally stay unfrozen, but even though crops currently grown outside the tropics
would be able to tolerate the lower light, precipitation, and temperature, they generally would
not be adapted for the high UV levels. One exception is crops being grown on the
Tibetan plateau because of the thin high-altitude atmosphere. Here the UV index exceeds 16 for a
significant amount of time (Chen et al., 2013). There is uncertainty, but roughly the UV levels in the tropics near sea level
would recover to current Tibetan values after three years (Bardeen unpublished results). Because a
variety of crops is grown on the Tibetan plateau, this gives potential for handling different
soil conditions in the tropics. There are also other high-altitude areas like the Andes from which crops
could be
Most crops now are grown outside their native habitat (Robinson, 2007), bolstering the
relocated.
feasibility of relocation . Only about one percent of the total area of the Tibetan plateau is cultivated and two thirds of the
total area or 165 million ha is classified as rangeland (Miller, 2003). Therefore, the cultivated area is approximately 25,000 km2 . The
number of seeds available from Tibet depends on the timing of the catastrophe. The best case would be at harvest, so that all seeds
could be relocated and not eaten. The worst-case would be immediately after planting such that the plants would not mature and
produce new seed. But even in this case, some seed would be withheld from planting as seed-producing operations will typically carry
over 1-3 years of stock seed as insurance against a crop failure (Chester et al., 1988). Since one seed planted will produce
approximately 100 seeds at harvest (Chester et al., 1988), we conservatively assume initial seed amounts 100 times lower than at
harvest. Since the yield is approximately 100 times as much as the planted seed, and we divide this by six to represent unfavorable
climactic and industrial conditions. In reality, the yield per plant may not decrease as much as the yield per planted area. Furthermore,
crops producing more seeds could be favored and they could be harvested twice per year in the tropics. Therefore, this ramping
analysis is very conservative. To maximize the ramp rate of plants, only the part of the plants that are not seeds should be eaten
initially. With a growth rate of a factor of 16 per year, this would cover the entire tropical land area of 30 million km2 in approximately
3 years providing significant food as shown in Figure 1. Soon after the catastrophe, UV levels may be too high to grow crops outdoors,
but they could be grown under glass or polymer. Though there is limited supply of these materials,

the initial area planted is small. During the first few generations, further UV resistance could be bred into the plants. As the
climate recovers , the productivity in the tropics would increase and planted area could be
expanded. We estimate near full climate recovery after 15 years based on (Robock et al., 2007) and this corresponds to 380% as
much as food requirements because entire current planted and forest area would be cultivated without industry (Cole et al., 2016).
We assume that the productivity in the tropics once UV levels recover to that of Tibet would be approximately half as much as the
normal climate, loss of industry scenario (which conservatively assumes preindustrial agricultural productivity and no substitution to
higher calorie per hectare crops (Cole et al., 2016)). There would be significant fertilizer available from the conversion of leaves and
wood. Also, tropical trees would be converted preferentially so that the time the tropics is covered with crops, much of the wood
would be gone. Even in places where there is still wood, it would be possible with nonindustrial techniques to plant the crops
between the logs. This alone produces enough food to feed everyone. If we were to instead take half the productivity of current
Tibetan grains (4.5 ton/ha (Miller, 2003)), the amount of food produced would feed everyone three times over with just tropical

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area. Also, we ignore the possibility of grazing outside the tropics, so this analysis is conservative. A number of experiments
have subjected conventional crops to very high UV levels (Kakani et
al., 2003). More work would be needed
the results are encouraging
to fully simulate the conditions of nuclear winter in the tropics, but . If
conventional crops could be grown in the tropics immediately after the catastrophe, the supply from plants would be significantly
higher in the first few years than shown in Figure 1. Without
mechanization, a farmer can grow four hectares
of wheat, which would feed about 20 people (Langer, 1994). Unfavorable climate would worsen the
situation, but still there is significant margin of safety from a labor perspective . 3.2 Leaves
The human-digestible fraction of the dry weight of killed tree leaves (as opposed to depleted leaves that are shed to become leaf
litter) is approximately 50% (Jacquemoud et al., 1996) and we assume this applies to all nonwoody biomass that is killed by the
catastrophe. The promising nonindustrial technique to extract human food from leaves involves grinding and pressing leaves, and
then coagulating (causing the solids to clump for removal) the resultant liquid (Kennedy and Leaf for Life, 1993). The hand powered
equipment could be constructed without industry, but remaining fossil fuels could accelerate the process. The global nonwoody
vegetation is 90 Gt (Denkenberger and Pearce, 2014). With limited transportation capabilities, people would generally need to move
to the leaves. In the case of tree leaves, this would then set the people up to convert the wood to food as well. Humans would carefully
control competing mammals that could eat the dead leaves. Also, with the lower temperatures, competing insects would be less of a
problem. The labor for harvesting the leaves could be minimized by running a gloved hand over the branch to strip many
leaves/needles off at once. Chainsaws with residual fossil fuel could cut the trees down quickly. If half of nonwoody
biomass
is nontoxic with 5% dry matter extraction, it would
be a 1.5 year supply of full human food . This could be
ramped up very quickly because no organisms need to grow (see Figure 1). The remaining liquid that does
not coagulate is brown. This could be fed to non-cellulose digesters such as chickens (see Figure 1). Then the solids from the
initial pressing could be fed to mushrooms or cellulose-digesting animals (ruminants, horses, rabbits,
etc.), depending on availability of these organisms and demand for different types of food. In Figure 1, we assume this all goes to
mushrooms would be
mushrooms because at least initially there are insufficient cellulose-digesting animals. These
grown indoors in existing structures, and temporary structures where necessary. The temporary
structures could be log cabins or sod houses where there is not forest. White button mushrooms have a maximum biological efficiency (wet weight of mushrooms divided by dry

weight of growing medium) of 100% (Chang and Miles, 1984) so with 90% water, this is 10% caloric efficiency. We assume half the 10% value due to nonideal substrates and
pests. Mushrooms could also grow on depleted leaves. With roughly twice the biomass available and the same conversion efficiency as leaf extraction, this could provide three
years of full human food. Mushrooms can have billions of spores, so the ramp rate is very high. The waste from the mushroom growth contains the mycelia (“roots”) of the
mushroom. It may be feasible to have chickens pick the mycelia out. The remainder can be fed to cellulose digesting animals (Spinosa, 2008), which in turn could be eaten by
humans. 3.3 Trees Log structures could be constructed without industry to house mushrooms growing on logs. The heat released from the oxidation of the wood may provide
enough heating, but biomass burning could always provide additional heating. It would be best to pull the trees down in order to expose many of the roots. We assume this
additional biomass would counteract the biomass required for heating and other uses, so that the available amount of biomass for mushroom conversion is the aboveground
mass (40% of the total vegetation (Food and Agriculture Organization, 2000)). This yields approximately 400 Gt of dry equivalent. Then in order to have animals (or trucks with
remaining diesel) pull the logs into structures, the logs should be severed from the root base with chainsaws. There are other constraints associated with preparing the wood for
mushroom growth, including making spawn (mushroom spores plus a growing medium), making holes for the spawn, putting the spawn in the holes, and sealing the holes to
prevent competing organisms. Spawn can be based on sawdust, which could come from drilling). Humans could hand make human- or animal-powered drills. The worst-case
scenario from a labor perspective is a hand-powered drill. One recommendation for the holes is 8 mm diameter, 40 mm depth, and 70 mm separation (Hazeltine and Bull, 2003).
If it takes one minute to drill the hole, this yields 1.4 people fed by mushrooms per driller. However, the food production is over approximately 4 years, so there is significant
labor investment. On the other hand, cattle can convert cellulose to food at approximately 11% efficiency (Denkenberger and Pearce, 2014), and we assume that 80% of the
initial energy in the wood remains after mushroom production, which is the case for mushrooms grown on manure (Brendan Borrell, 2009). This would feed about nine times as
many people as the mushrooms, and rabbit conversion efficiency would be even higher. Also, given the hole dimensions recommendation was for an electric drill, it may be
possible to reduce drilling requirements without significantly degrading mushroom output. The current technique for sealing the holes is using paraffin wax, but there would be
insufficient supply of this. Therefore, an alternative is heating polymer film (possibly salvaged from landfills or produced from above-ground fossil fuels) and applying this.
Sealing may not even be required, because once the mushrooms fruit, they break the seal. And they fruit many times over the years it takes to consume the logs. A log 1 m long
and 0.1 m in diameter will produce ~1 kg of wet mushrooms over 4 years (Hazeltine and Bull, 2003). The dry density of wood is 0.5 g/cm3 (Ragland et al., 1991) and mushrooms

are 10% dry weight (Chang and Miles, 2000), so this yields ~2% caloric efficiency. Therefore, outdoor mushroom growth is estimated to be 1% because of nonideal logs, pests,
and inexperienced human error. This would provide three years of food for all people. Mushroom food production starts 6 months after the catastrophe as shown in Figure 1.
With 1 billion people drilling over the years, the food produced from the mushrooms ramps up and peaks after about four years when the mushrooms stop producing. After
that, freshly drilled trees start producing mushrooms, maintaining output. This would not require all the trees in the tropics, which is why the feasibility of preparing the trees in
the tropics was considered with remaining gasoline. Again, the waste from the mushrooms could be fed to cellulose digesters such as cattle and rabbits. The food production
ramp curve of large cellulose digesters is the same as in previous work, though we truncate it at 25% because other food sources are sufficient at this point. Rabbits have an age
and sexual maturity of four months per litter, four litters per year (Zhiqiang and Xiaoyan, 2008). This results in an ideal growth rate of approximately 500%. Taking the square
root yields 150% per year growth rate. There are ~700 million domesticated rabbits globally (Lukefahr, 1985), which is a significant underestimate of the total number of rabbits.
With an average wet weight of 1 kg, this represents an initial caloric production of 0.05% of human food. Waste from these cellulose-digesting animals could be fed to chickens
because the waste is high in bacteria, which can be digested by non-cellulose digesters. Disease risk from animals eating the excrement from other animals can be minimized by
pasteurizing the waste, having the animals not closely related and by proper handling and cooking of animal products. However, we conservatively ignore the potential food
production from this route. The labor required for other steps for wood mushrooms production or other food production, such as cutting down trees if gasoline supply is
insufficient, harvesting leaves, making temporary structures, etc. is significantly less than hand-drilling holes. It should be noted that, after the trees die and dry out, they would
be susceptible to fire. Lightning can cause smoldering for several days before it transitions into active flaming combustion (Kasischke and Stocks, 2012). Since people will quickly
distribute themselves to small plots of forest that they are converting into food, it should be feasible for them to survey the land for any smoke after each lightning storm. The

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smoldering combustion could likely be extinguished manually. Alternatively, it may be possible to install lightning rods to protect the forests, perhaps elevated by select trees or
balloons filled with leaked natural gas. If these techniques are not successful, society could focus on trees in areas where it is frozen much of the time. Mushrooms could grow
on trees inside log structures. Though lightning could ignite the warmed logs inside, there would be significant spacing between the structures and they would have a cold
exterior, so fire spread would be unlikely. 3.4 Fishing The ramp rate for fish is the same as in previous work (Denkenberger and Pearce, 2015), though this is added to current
production of approximately 3% of the human food from fish. However, without industry, the catch rate would be significantly lower. Scaling Chinese total tonnage capacity of
fishing vessels by its catch to the global catch yields current total tonnage capacity of fishing vessels of 54 million tons (FAO, 2014). Cargo ship capacity is approximately 800
million tons (Christiansen et al., 2004). With one third the speed (see Section 4.1) and all ships retrofitted to be fishing, this yields a maximum fish catch of ~40% of human food.
Unfortunately, this would only persist until the nutrients in the upper layer of the ocean are depleted. We model this as a sudden reduction in fish catch after 2.5 years (see
Figure 1), recognizing that it would actually be a slow reduction. Some amount of production could be maintained by fertilizing the ocean. Since there are nitrogen-fixing bacteria
in the ocean (Karl et al., 1997), we focus on phosphorus. Small fish are ~4% phosphorus by dry weight (Santos et al., 2016). Unfortunately, there is very little phosphorus in wood
ash (Karoline, 2012). However, there is roughly 2.5% phosphorus by weight in dried chicken manure (Ghaly, 2013). In the ocean iron fertilization experiments, only ~7% of carbon
initially sequestered is expected to fall to the ocean floor over a 100 year period (Gnanadesikan et al., 2003). Using this percentage to determine the efficiency of conversion of
phosphorus into fish, this yields a 240% weight of dry manure to fertilize a given weight of dried fish. This means some ships would be dedicated to fertilizing, in addition to the
fertilizer brought out by the fishing ships. Since the overall fish yield is significantly lower than in the upwelling case (see Figure 1), there would be sufficient ships. Though
conversion to phosphorus could be lower efficiency, waste from other animals and humans could be used. Biomass fires could be used to dry the fish on the ship. It may be
possible to concentrate the nutrients in the manure by removing residual fiber, requiring less shipping. The chicken manure could instead be fed to mushrooms or cellulose
digesters. However, fish would provide additional diet diversity. Also, the conversion efficiency (not counting the solar energy input) would be higher for fish. Of the dry feed of
chickens, ~50% is converted into dry weight of manure (McCall, 1980). 1 The resulting fish output is shown in Figure 1. One way of increasing fish output during upwelling would
be by reducing fishing transportation by relocating people to islands. 1 This statistic was originally from 1914, which could be appropriate for the loss of industry and for nonideal
food for chickens. 3.5 Interactions Figure 1 shows one possible scenario for the deployment of various food sources. Obviously many more are possible, though the food sources
dependent on the waste from other conversion processes are constrained because the waste must first be produced, and the preservation of those wastes to use later would be
more difficult. The scenario shown attempts to make the food supply fairly consistent and also provide a diversity of foods at all times. Leaf extraction is ramped up to a high
level to limit the use of stored food. Then the leaves killed by the catastrophe are consumed by the time agriculture becomes large. Mushrooms grown on leaves have similar
behavior because they are largely depending on the waste from leaf extraction. This helps with diet diversification. Leaf extraction continues at a lower level based on
agricultural residues, and this assumes that the dry weight of the agricultural residues that is not toxic is equal to the dry weight of the food grown. With six months of stored
food, we chose a minimum of 150% of food requirements, which allowed some stored food to be consumed over the entire 10- year period. Rabbits and ruminants are capped
even though more food could be obtained from them with the copious mushroom-digested wood. After about five years, the safety margin becomes very large. This is fortunate
because if burning of biomass is a significant problem, it would be more severe the further one goes from the time of the catastrophe. The actual food consumption can be
smoother than this graph by storing alternate foods. After 10 years, agriculture could recover to pre-catastrophe levels. Therefore, we assume that alternate foods are ceased,
and the practice of feeding edible food to animals reappears. 3.6 Other potential food sources Having bacteria partially decompose lignocellulose (fiber) for noncellulose
digesters (humans, chickens, and rats (the latter are partial cellulose digesters)) is less certain to succeed, especially without industry, so it is not considered here. Another food
source considered in previous work was cellulose-digesting beetles. However, the ramping time was similar to rabbits considered here. And rabbits are superior from the
perspectives of taste, social acceptability and ease of raising. Methane-digesting bacteria were also considered in previous work, but without industry, the supply of natural gas
would be much smaller and the process would likely need to rely on industrial techniques. Furthermore, the technique of producing enzymes at scale to turn cellulose into sugar
would also likely require industry. A new possibility is pyrolyzing wood to produce methane and hydrogen for bacteria. This also produces charcoal, meaning the conversion
efficiency to bacteria would be lower. However, some amount of charcoal would be useful for heating and cooking. Also, this process would produce food far faster than
mushroom softening of wood. Charcoal can be made without industry, but the growing of the bacteria would benefit from industrial techniques. Therefore, this food source is
not quantified here. Mushrooms could also grow on currently decomposing wood in forests and landfills and on peat (Rhodes, 2014). However, peat and to some extent landfills
would put carbon dioxide into the air that would not otherwise make it there. Furthermore, people may reject food grown on landfill material. Competing organisms would be
more difficult to control on currently decomposing wood. Other food sources not quantified here that could be analyzed for future work include seaweed and termites eating
wood. Still other food sources would require much more extensive preparation. Storing food would be very expensive and would exacerbate current malnutrition (Baum et al.,
2015). Crops could be genetically engineered for cold and UV tolerance, but in order to produce a significant amount of food rapidly, either the crops need to be planted or a
large amount stored. 3.7 Diet Diversity People outside the tropics inland would have some diet diversity with leaf extract, mushrooms, and land animals. The majority of the
fishing initially would be outside the tropics because that is where the ocean would upwell. People on the coast would therefore have fish and perhaps some seaweed. People in
the tropics would have leaf extract, mushrooms, land animals, and plants. Therefore, some trade would be very beneficial for diet diversity. 4. Nonfood needs Providing nonfood
needs in this scenario is similar to the scenario of only losing industry, which has been covered previously (Abdelkhaliq et al., 2016). Here we only discuss additional challenges.
4.1 Transportation Immediately after the catastrophe, there would likely be significant winds because the continents would cool off faster than the oceans. However, after this
transient period, wind intensity is likely to be lower than normal because wind is generally driven by the sun. When the sun is 50% blocked, the winds driving the ships would be
roughly 2/3 as fast (Bardeen unpublished results). This means that the wind-powered vehicles could go only 2/3 as fast as the case of no sun blocking (wind powered with no sun
blocking was half as fast as with industry (Abdelkhaliq et al., 2016)), so overall this is one third as fast as currently. The current global shipping traffic is 53,000 Gt moved 1
kilometer (Gt-km) (UNCTAD, 2009). This does not include the capacity of military and other vessels, which is conservative. With the slower speed in a catastrophe and being full
both directions, duty cycle would be higher. However, it will take longer to load and unload without industry, so we assume duty cycle remains the same. With one third the
speed of current ships the capacity would be 18,000 Gt-km. If we consider 0.2 Gt of food being required to be transported 12,000 km over the ocean, this would be 2,400
Gtkm/yr. Of course there would be other shipping requirements, but there is significant safety margin, which is why we assumed that nearly all merchant ships would be

If this same 0.2 Gt of food needs to be moved 4,000 km over land total (on both the
available for fishing.

producing and receiving continents), this is 800 Gt-km/yr. Barges could be kite powered at least part of the time,
but modern
ones are so large that it would be difficult for animals to pull them. Heavy trucks would also take many animals .
However, with the low rolling resistance of rail (0.0015 (Toolbox, 2016)), not too many animals
would be required to pull a single railcar. However, there is a limited number of rail cars. Therefore, we focus this
analysis on light-duty vehicles (LDVs). There are 190 million LDVs in the United States (U.S. Department of
Transportation, 2016), so if this is one quarter of the total, this is approximately 800 million globally. The average curb mass of cars in
the U.S. is approximately 1500 kg (Wenzel, 2010). The average LDV in the U.S. would be heavier (because of vans, sport-utility
vehicles, and pickup trucks), but we estimate that this number is reasonable for the average global LDV. A lower bound for the
average cargo capacity is the mass of five people, roughly 350 kg. The powertrain makes up about 28% of the curb mass (Roth et al.,
2001). Some components other than the powertrain could be removed, but we conservatively ignore this. Therefore, when the
powertrain is removed, the total cargo capacity would be ~800 kg. The rolling resistance of a high pressure tire on asphalt is
approximately 0.01 (Toolbox, 2016). There are 1.4 billion cattle in the world. An ox can produce 450 W of useful power for six hours

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a day at 1 m/s (Carruthers and Rodriguez, 1992). Though many of the cattle in the world are dairy, which would not be as strong as
oxen, we assume this factor counteracts the conservatism of fraction cargo capacity. On level road, only approximately half a head of
cattle would be required to pull the fully loaded LDV. Going up hills would require more, and we estimate average effort is twice

as much as on the level. These

assumptions yield approximately 11,000 Gt-km/yr inland
transportation capability from cattle pulling LDVs. This is an order of magnitude greater than
the food movement requirement . This would allow other inland movement such as
manure
out of the mid-latitude continents for ocean fertilization , wood from forests to burn to dry
manure produced in grasslands, and wood from forests to the coasts to put on ships for drying
the fish. 4.2 Miscellaneous A further additional challenge is that with roughly half as much sun,
there will be about half as much precipitation (Robock et al., 2007). However, since vegetation
would die in most areas, runoff and groundwater recharge could be even greater than in the

case with the sun . Because forests require significant precipitation, there would generally be
surface water available nearby . However, in drier areas without infrastructure, a high-value use of the remaining fossil
fuels would be drilling wells. Then people would lower a vessel into the well to retrieve water (and this could be done with existing
wells as well (Abdelkhaliq et al., 2016)). Another additional challenge would be clothing because of the
inability to grow new fiber. There is a significant over supply of clothing currently , so it is unlikely to
present a major challenge in the short term. One longer term solution is to wear animal skins , e.g. from the
draft animals. With the burning of biomass to heat buildings and loss of industrial firefighting, mass fires in cities could be a
significant risk. The lower temperatures associated with the sun being obscured would reduce fire spread. Selective removal of
buildings would also reduce the probability of mass fire. This would be consistent with many people having to move out of urban
areas for food production. 5. Discussion In previous work considering the 50% sunblocking scenario with the retention of industry,
agriculture was not considered. However, this work was too conservative considering the outputs predicted upon Tibetan
agriculture. Now that here it has been demonstrated that agriculture could be important even without industry, obviously it could be
important with industry. Rabbits would also be a promising option with industry. If industry is restored before the
smoke settles, this case reverts to the 50% sun with industry case, which is much less challenging. Also,
if industry is not
restored by the time the sun comes back out, this reverts to the no industry case, which again
is less extreme . In some cases, catastrophes can be correlated, and therefore much more likely to
happen at the same time than if they were uncorrelated. One example of this is the use of solar radiation management, which
reduces the amount of sunlight absorbed by the earth. This would combat climate change using techniques such as sulfate particles
injected into the stratosphere. If this solar radiation management were stopped, there would be rapid warming of the climate
(Matthews and Caldeira, 2007). Therefore, it is likely only to be stopped if there were some catastrophe (Baum et al., 2013).
However, then society would have to contend both with the initial catastrophe and the rapid warming of the climate due to
cessation of solar radiation management: “double catastrophe.” The loss of industry would clearly mean the loss of solar radiation
management. Of course the impact on agriculture of rapid warming is different than rapid cooling, increased UV and lower sunlight.
However, many of the techniques discussed here could still be used. A super crop pest (animal, e.g. insect) or pathogen could be
spread globally in a coordinated attack (Madden and Wheelis, 2003). If the response were to restrict trade, this could cause the
collapse of fossil-fuel-dependent industry in many areas. Even though this would not be a sunblocking scenario, the result would be
similar to losing crops and industry. Labor calculations indicate that most people could be dedicated to restoring industry. Also, this
means a minority of people would need to be relocated. Generally since approximately twice as much food as required could be
produced, this indicates that little relocation of people between continents would be required. 6. Future work It would be
preferable if the catastrophe could be prevented . There are steps to reduce the chances
of

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nuclear war (Barrett et al., 2013). Also, there are interventions to reduce the risk of losing electricity and industry (Cole et al.,
2016). But even if all this prevention and protection is feasible and justified, until it is all implemented, a backup plan is required. We
ignore the additional food sources of feeding food processing, retailing, and household waste to animals. Because there is
significant safety margin in feeding , even if food storage were at the
everyone minimum
when the catastrophe hit, everyone could still be . Furthermore, it would be even
fed easier
to feed everyone if there were some warning before the catastrophe. We leave the actual recovery
time (and mechanism) from various catastrophes for future work. Experiments to be performed include sealing the holes in logs by
heating a sheet of polymer. The other food sources could be further investigated. Experiments on lightning rods and fire surveillance
would also be valuable. Demonstrating conversion of logs into mushrooms in log structures subjected to freezing conditions outside
would be illuminating. Nutrition is future work, though we note that a similar diet was shown to be adequate (Griswold et al., 2016),
and there are other methods of producing vitamins such as growing certain types of bacteria. 7. Conclusions For combined sun
blocking and industrial failure scenarios, the reduced output of conventional agriculture would present a threat of causing mass
starvation. This study showed that one
solution in the short term is extracting edible calories from killed
leaves using distributed mechanical processes. Then a constrained food web could be formed
where part of the remainder from this could be fed to chickens , and the rest coupled with leaf
litter could have mushrooms grown on it. A second group of solutions is growing
mushrooms on dead trees and the residue going to cellulose digesting animals such as cattle
and rabbits . Typically in these catastrophes the sun is not blocked completely, so some
(e.g.
agriculture would be possible based off of existing farming in extreme environments growing
UV and
cold tolerant crops in the tropics). Furthermore,
the cooling climate would cool the upper layer of the
ocean, causing upwelling of nutrient-rich deep ocean water . This would facilitate
algae growth in the ocean, feeding fish; retrofitting of ships to be sail powered could
enable
significant fishing. The results of this study show these solutions could enable the feeding of
everyone given minimal preparation, and this preparation should be a high priority now.

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Human Rights Credibility Advantage

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Support Undermines Human Rights – 2AC

Ending military assistance to Saudi Arabia is the only way to reinvigorate human
right credibility – lack of action following the Khashoggi incident sends the
perception that authoritarian states can do whatever they want
Anne Gearan, 11-20-2018, White House correspondent for The Washington Post, "For
Trump, The Bottom Line On Saudi Arabia Takes Precedence Over Human Rights", Washington
Post, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/for-trump-the-bottom-line-on-saudi-
arabiatakes-precedence-over-human-rights/2018/11/20/a8813bb0-ecf4-11e8-
baac2a674e91502b_story.html?utm_term=.22b27797f99d

Trump’s declaration Tuesday that he won’t hold Saudi rulers accountable for the killing
President

of journalist Jamal Khashoggi distilled the president’s foreign policy approach to its
transactional and personalized essence. Nearly two years into his presidency, Trump is unswerving in his
instinct to make everything — from trade to terrorism, from climate change to human rights — about what
bottom line. he sees as the
“We may never know all of the facts surrounding the murder of Mr. Jamal Khashoggi. In any case, our relationship is with the Kingdom of Saudi

Arabia,” Trump said in an oddly brisk statement laying out that the U.S. business and security relationship with Saudi Arabia, and with its designated next leader, is paramount.

He cited arms sales with the kingdom, its role as a bulwark against Iran and the threat
of
higher oil prices as risks to the United States if his administration ruptured the relationship
over the Khashoggi killing. The statement was issued as Trump prepared to head to his golf resort in Florida for the Thanksgiving holiday and in the wake
of the CIA’s conclusion that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman had ordered the Oct. 2 killing of Khashoggi, a Washington Post contributor and U.S. resident. The
nothing-to-see-here tone, the fractured syntax and falsehoods, and the abundance of exclamation points were pure Trump — and as far from the massaged, nuanced products
of past White Houses as one could imagine. In March, Trump holds a chart highlighting arms sales to Saudi Arabia during a meeting with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman at
the White House. (Evan Vucci/AP) “It’s ‘America First,’ ” Trump told reporters Tuesday before departing for Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach. “For me, it’s all about America First. We’re
not going to give up hundreds of billions of dollars in orders and let Russia, China and everybody else have them.” Trump said that Saudi Arabia had helped him keep oil prices
down and that without those efforts, “oil prices would go through the roof.” As with U.S. intelligence assessments that Russia interfered in the 2016 election to help Trump, he
overrode his advisers and downplayed their findings in favor of his own priorities and interpretation of events. “King Salman and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman
vigorously deny any knowledge of the planning or execution of the murder of Mr. Khashoggi. Our intelligence agencies continue to assess all information, but it could very well
be that the Crown Prince had knowledge of this tragic event — maybe he did and maybe he didn’t!” Trump wrote. Trump’s clannish management style is also a factor in the
Saudi decision. He has entrusted the relationship to his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, who has built a close partnership with MBS, as the young Saudi heir is known. Kushner has
argued within the administration that the crown prince is crucial to assisting White House policy against Iran and in providing backing for a U.S.-sponsored Mideast peace
package expected soon. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Tuesday defended Trump’s decision to not hold Saudi Arabia’s leaders accountable for Khashoggi’s killing. (Al
Drago/Bloomberg) Telling reporters later that there is no “definitive” proof, Trump washed his hands of the matter. “I think that statement was pretty obvious, what I said,”
Trump said, as reporters shouted questions above the din of the presidential helicopter blades. “I’m not going to destroy the world economy” or harm U.S. interests in the
Middle East or elsewhere over this case, he said. The Trump administration has applied sanctions on 17 Saudis allegedly involved in the killing inside the Saudi Consulate in

Istanbul, but Trump appeared to be effectively writing off the possibility of larger consequences. Those
might have included sanctions or a rebuke against the royal family, cancellation of weapons sales, or a boycott. Trump has also bucked convention and the advice of Cabinet and

The
career government officials in pulling out of the Iran nuclear deal and the Paris climate accord and in deploying punitive tariffs against allies and foes alike.

president always places himself at the center of events and decides what to do from that
standpoint, said Ross Kennedy, an American history professor and presidential scholar at Illinois State University. In the case of Saudi Arabia, the kingdom’s lavish
welcome in Riyadh for Trump in 2017 set the tone, Kennedy said. “He really personalizes his interactions, not just with people in domestic audiences or in business or with
people he meets” at the White House, Kennedy said. “He does it with foreign leaders, and he bases much of what he does by how they treat him personally. The Saudis really

Past administrations, both Republican and Democratic, have prized a strategic

laid it on thick.”

partnership with Saudi Arabia and sometimes tempered criticism of human rights abuses ,
including religious persecution and the jailing of dissidents. But President George W. Bush also argued
that U.S. national security interests were served by defending human rights abroad, and his
administration claimed to raise particular cases each time U.S. officials met with leaders of
Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Russia and other countries with poor human rights records. On Iran, Riyadh has

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leveraged Trump’s opposition to the nuclear deal reached under President Barack Obama, appealing to Trump’s impulse to reverse his predecessor’s policies and giving Trump
additional diplomatic footing to pull out of the agreement, Kennedy said. Trump’s statement Tuesday begins with an indictment of Iranian activities in the Middle East. Iranian
Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif responded by mocking Trump on his English-language Twitter feed, including a reference to the U.S. president’s false claim that Finland

Trump bizarrely devotes the FIRST paragraph of his

spends “a lot of time raking” its forests to prevent wildfires. “Mr.

shameful statement on Saudi atrocities to accuse IRAN of every sort of malfeasance he can
think of,” Zarif wrote. “Perhaps we’re also responsible for the California fires, because we didn’t help rake the forests — just like the Finns do?”

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HR War Impact 1AC

HR cred is vital to control conflict escalation

Brody 14 (Alan, on the Advisory Board of the University of Iowa Center for Human Rights,
“Making Human Rights the Heart of American Policy,” UICHR, November 25, 2014,
http://uichr.org/2014/11/making-human-rights-the-heart-of-american-policy-by-
alanbrody/.Making human rights the heart of American politics)

Unfortunately, as the world moved

forward to American leadership has been increasingly missing in action. formulate a series of
international human
rights
agreements, We ratified the 1979 Covenant
to Protect Civil and Political rights only in 1993, and even then with a series of crippling reservations. And the Senate has never
ratified its twin, the Covenant to Protect Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, or the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of
Discrimination Against Women. America has become the human rights “drop out,” behaving like a troubled, self- indulgent teenager
convinced that all the rest of the world is wrong and only he is right. The Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), this month
celebrating the 25 th anniversary of its adoption, is an embarrassing example of such American exceptionalism run amok: 194
countries ratified the CRC; only the essentially failed states of Somalia and South Sudan haven’t been able to do so, along with the
United States. Defenders of our action assert that America’s laws and institutions are already superior to anything the rest of the
world may have to offer. Our media and politicians choking in hatred and fear over the arrival of 50,000 child refugees earlier this
year didn’t project an image of American superiority, however, nor did the images coming out of Ferguson after the shooting of an

unmed black teenager, or the statistics that show America has the highest rates of incarceration in the world. In abandoning
our roles and responsibilities for global human rights, America has given up the moral high

of the world may pose

ground it formerly occupied in the eyes of the world. This has undermined our position for

taking on the many challenges to security , human decency, and basic civil and political rights that the Putins,
the Xi Jinpings, and the Ayatollahs as they pursue their own economic and national security
interests. When we have occasionally intervened in cases of gross violations of human rights, our interventions have appeared to the
world to be highly selective. We may go into places like Iraq or Libya where our national security interests are at stake or great
quantities of oil are in the ground, but not into the Congo where millions of civilians have died (while mineral wealth continues to
flow out of the country). In addition, after the unraveling of the Communist threat in 1989-92, the United States largely abandoned
its leadership – at home and abroad -- in promoting economic and social rights. The concept of claims to such rights, by individuals,
would carry concomitant responsibilities of states, civil society institutions and even corporations to ensure people have good health,
education, and a decent living. The American state and the interests corporations that increasingly control it do not want to
recognize the legitimacy of such claims that would require them to fulfill such responsibilities. The world has thus come to see
American foreign policy as
being essentially about
It is in this context that we now face the appearance of the ‘Caliphs’ of ISIL, Boko
protecting and promoting
the interests of what is already the world’s wealthiest and most powerful nation.

Haram, and other pretenders who seek to establish ecclesiastical states, and who are ready to use military force in the
rawest of ways to suppress the human rights of their own and or peoples. The only response America seems able to bring to bear, to
oppose them, is our own raw military power in a “War on Terror” that seems only to be begetting more terror. The more “effective”
we become in projecting our military power into the impoverished villages and slums where such groups arise, the more the socalled
“collateral damage” we inflict looks to the people on the receiving end to be no different from what those we call terrorists are

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–
inflicting. Our “whack a mole” approach using bombs and drones to suppress enemies in one placonly seems to motivate the

directions, we face an ‘everybody loses’ prospect not unlike what the world went through

during the first half of the 20 th century. America’s global leadership during the period of our
emergence of new ones elsewhere, and each seems more sophisticated than the last. If we continue in these

“Greatest

Generation” in the mid- to late- 20 th century contributed immensely to the relative world peace and development
that characterized that period. I fear that both Americans and freedom-loving persons around the world are going to
rue the loss of that American leadership, and the chaos that could easily replace it. But America
cannot
regain such leadership simply through use of military power. “Leadership” exercised by applying force outside
of an internationally acceptable moral and legal framework only encourages others to
follow that same example in pursuit of their own ends. Our “war on terror” as presently conceived thus has no end.
Destructive patterns of action and counteraction will only continue and worsen unless the United States joins with other nations
committed to a just international order. Together we need to offer and act upon a vision that satisfies the moral and material
aspirations of all the world’s peoples, and especially of those whom our global economic system has left behind.

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HR War Impact 2AC

Human rights solve conflict –
First, human rights compliance and credibility generates trust necessary for
cooperation and conflict de-escalation
Sriram 9 – Chandra Lekha, of Law at the University of London, School of Oriental and African
Studies, “War, Conflict and Human Rights Theory and Practice,” Routledge, 2009

War, armed conflict, and human rights The relationship between war and other violent conflict is complex
and

dynamic As discussed later, violations of human rights can be both causes and consequences of violent conflict. Further, gross

violations of human lights and violations of international humanitarian law can alter the course of
, in
conflicts , adding grievances and changing the interests of various actors turn making conflicts

more intractable . Where this is the case, conflict resolution can become much more difficult , not least
because ,
many issues beyond the original "root causes" of conflict will be at stake
and because

trust between the warring parties will be extremely low. Finally, demands for accountability will
be
made, whether by victims and relatives of victims, by local and international nongovernmental organizations, or by various
international actors such as donor countries The pursuit of legal accountability is often controversial, and is often resisted by
one or more of the lighting parties; insisting upon legal accountability may
peace implementation impede negotiations or
. Nonetheless, there have been numerous attempts to pursue legal accountability while also
making peace, and this book will examine many such cases.

Second, causes grievances that are the tipping point for internal conflict and
civil war
Sriram 9 – Chandra Lekha, of Law at the University of London, School of Oriental and African
Studies, “War, Conflict and Human Rights Theory and Practice,” Routledge, 2009
Human rights violations as causes of conflict Human rights violations can he both causes and consequences of conflict. We begin with

the ways in which human rights violations can generate conflict , with some examples for illustration in Box 11. In the
most general sense, grievances over the real or perceived denial of rights can generate social conflict .
This may be the case where there is systematic discrimination, differential access to education or health
care, limited freedom of expression or religion, or denial of political participation, whether based upon race,
ethnicity, caste, religion. language, gender, or some other characteristic. These violations may seem
relatively minor, particularly in comparison to some of the grave crimes examined later in this book, including war but they
crimes and genocide,

can still generate real grievances and social unrest. In functional polities, such grievances may
be

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–
handled through relatively

peaceful, constitutional means, However, in weak, corrupt, abusive, or collapsed and collapsing
whether through litigation in the courts
or through legislative reform or administrative policy change.

states, such conflict is more likely to become violent . Thai violence may be merely sporadic, if
serious,

or it may give rise to more systematic opposition. Violent conflict may also emerge where there are more violent human
righls abuses- illegal detention, extrajudicial execution, disappearances, torture, widespread killing, or even attempts at genocide
Where civilians have already been targeted by such violence, whether committed by the state or by nonstate actors, it
is unlikely that peaceful resistance will have much effect, so it is yet more
likely that affected individuals human rights violations are
and groups will take up arms to defend themselves In such situations, then,

an important, underlying cause of conflict, although seldom the only one. Once war has erupted,
any
serious attempt at conflict resolution will also have to address the underlying sources
of the original conflict, including abuses of human rights. Otherwise, violence, particularly , is likely to re-
retaliation for past abuses

emerge once third-party mediators, observers, or peacekeepers have departed.

Lack of human rights compliance undercuts conflict resolution and deescalation

Sriram 9 – Chandra Lekha, of Law at the University of London, School of Oriental and African
Studies, “War, Conflict and Human Rights Theory and Practice,” Routledge, 2009

Human rights violations as transformers of conflict dynamics Human rights violations are not
only

causes and consequences of violent conflict, however, they are also potentially transformative of

conflicts and may make their resolution a greater challenge Thus, conflicts that may begin over

resources, religion, or ethnic or territorial claims, may. as they progress, create new grievances through the
Further, such violations
real and perceived violation of human rights by one or more parties
may

violent action . In such mobilization, it becomes easy to demonize the "other."

reify divides in society , making it easier for leaders to mobilize people —civilian and armed— to
whether rebel group or

state actor, which in turn facilitates not merely killing on the battlefield, but also Ihe commission of further
human rights violations. The conflict may be transformed, although not always, into one that is primarily about
grievances, identity, and recrimination, even though other causes may have precipitated the original fighting.

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Further, and this is key from the perspective of conflict resolution, heightened mistrust and

have abused one another to sit face-to-face and negotiate

resentments make initial negotiations difficult, and may create impediments to long-term
peacebuilding and reconciliation. Moreover, it is difficult to convince people and groups who
: even if leaders take that step ,

terrain of peacebuilding

ordinary individuals might be reluctant to set aside grievances. This fundamentally changes the
; victims, civil society, and other actors may demand redress of past abuses,

even though such redress is likely to be resisted by some or all of the warring parties.

HR Econ Impact 1AC

Strong human rights is key to economic growth – statistically significant
econometric analysis proves
Brown 8 – Peter, MA in Economics @ the University of Oslo, “The effect of Human Rights on
Economic Growth” https://www.duo.uio.no/handle/10852/17533
The “Lee thesis” claims that there is a tradeoff between a country’s respect for human rights and its economic growth. This argument
has been used for justifying the lack of protection of human rights in developing countries. Without acknowledging the legitimacy of
the argument, this paper investigates the claim. It does this by analyzing the effects of a subset of human rights (physical integrity
rights) on economic growth. The paper presents a brief review of previous theoretical and empirical contributions to understanding
how human rights practices affect various economic variables, including foreign direct investment, domestic investment, foreign aid,
and trade. The main focus of the paper is on the empirical level, by means of econometric analysis on crosssectional time-series data.
With country-years as the unit of analysis, the
paper presents estimations on the effect of physical integrity rights
on economic growth through diverse econometric techniques . Using OLS, a cross-
country estimation is performed on values averaged over time, and this estimates significant positive effects of physical integrity
rights. However, deeper analysis using the panel data and dummy variables for each value of the physical integrity index (range 0-8)
allows a nonlinear relationship to be observed. The results are striking. There appears to be a strong nonlinear
and non-monotonic relationship between the physical integrity index (range 0-8) and GDP
growth . The results from OLS with panel corrected standard errors, random effects, fixed effects and
nonparametric matching all indicate a similar structure. While a score of 0 on the physical integrity index
is associated with the lowest growth rates, a score of 2 is associated with the highest growth, in all estimations. Scores above 2
are generally associated with substantially lower growth rates, though a relatively large increase in
growth is observed as the score goes from 7 to 8. The non-monotonic result is consistent with

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–
Robert Barro’s inverse U-shaped
relationship between democracy facilitates higher growth through reduced fear and higher and
economic growth. His argument is that an
initial reduction of repression
security , allowing a country’s inhabitants to be more productive . A subsequent reduction of repression
leads

to less growth through demands for redistribution or political uncertainty. However, in contrast to Barro, here a final
increase in growth is observed as the repression reaches the lowest level. Further analysis indicates

that this relationship

is robust to various specifications . Regressions on disaggregated indices indicate that there

are heterogeneous effects of the variables indicating torture, disappearances, extrajudicial killings and political imprisonment, which
together make up the physical integrity index. These are estimated to have various effects on growth, possibly leading to the
nonlinear and non-monotonic relationship between the aggregated physical integrity index and growth

Nuclear war
Merlini, Senior Fellow – Brookings, 11
[Cesare Merlini, nonresident senior fellow at the Center on the United States and Europe and
chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Italian Institute for International Affairs (IAI) in Rome.
He served as IAI president from 1979 to 2001. Until 2009, he also occupied the position of
executive vice chairman of the Council for the United States and Italy, which he co-founded in
1983. His areas of expertise include transatlantic relations, European integration and nuclear
non-proliferation, with particular focus on nuclear science and technology. A Post-Secular
World? DOI: 10.1080/00396338.2011.571015 Article Requests: Order Reprints : Request
Permissions Published in: journal Survival, Volume 53, Issue 2 April 2011 , pages 117 - 130
Publication Frequency: 6 issues per year Download PDF Download PDF (~357 KB) View
Related Articles To cite this Article: Merlini, Cesare 'A Post-Secular World?', Survival, 53:2, 117 –
130]
Two neatly opposed scenarios for the future of the world order illustrate the range of possibilities, albeit at the risk of
oversimplification. The first scenario entails the premature crumbling of the post-Westphalian system. One or more of the acute
tensions apparent today evolves into an open and traditional conflict between states, perhaps even involving the use of

nuclear weapons. The crisis might be triggered by a collapse of the global economic and financial system,
the vulnerability of which we have just experienced,
and the prospect of a second Great
Depression, with consequences for peace and democracy similar to those of the first. Whatever the trigger, the
unlimited exercise of national sovereignty, exclusive self-interest and rejection of outside interference would likely be
amplified, emptying , perhaps entirely, the half-full glass of multilateralism, including the UN and the European Union.
Many of the more likely conflicts, such as between Israel and Iran or India and Pakistan, have potential religious
dimensions. Short of war, tensions such as those related to immigration might become unbearable. Familiar issues of creed and
identity could be exacerbated. One way or another, the secular rational approach would be sidestepped by a return to theocratic
absolutes, competing or converging with secular absolutes such as unbridled nationalism.

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HR K2 Econ – 2AC
First, encourages stronger rates of foreign direct investment
Brown 8 – Peter, MA in Economics @ the University of Oslo, “The effect of Human Rights on
Economic Growth” https://www.duo.uio.no/handle/10852/17533

2.2.2 Effect on Foreign Direct Investment How do human rights practices affect foreign direct investment? Busse
(2004) has explored this empirically, and found that a country’s
respect for civil and political rights has a
significantly positive effect on foreign direct investment. In addition, Busse reports changes in the effect
of
rights over time. While in the 1990s the coefficient of civil and political rights is significantly positive, the coefficient in the 1980s is
not significant but still positive. However, in the 1970s the reported coefficient is negative, though not significant. This implies that
the strong significant relationship does not hold for the 1970s and 1980s, and there is no evidence that the
Transnational Corporations made decisions based on these rights in this period. Busse presents two hypotheses for the
change in policies. The first is that the main sectors of FDI have changed over the time period. Busse claims
that FDI in the 1970s was driven more driven by transnational companies’ (TNCs) search for raw materials (Busse,
p. 57), which depended more on location of these resources, and therefore more on specific host countries. TNCs were therefore
In the 1980s and 1990s other motives were
more dependent on good relations with governments of the host country.
driving investment by TNCs, such as cheap labor and access proximity to export markets . Since TNCs had a
wider choice of countries for these activities, they could be more selective of their investment

sites . In addition, they depended less on the local government than previously . The second hypothesis

explaining change in policy presented by Busse is that the increased focus of nongovernmental
. As technology has eased
organizations (NGOs) on exposing human rights violations of TNCs the

spread of information, increasing awareness of violations has made TNCs vulnerable to

.
campaigns exposing unpalatable practices TNCs must now weigh the benefits of cheap labor
against the probability of negative publicity. Blanton and Blanton (2007b) have analyzed the effects of
human rights practices on FDI over the time period 1980-2004. They argue that good human rights practices can
reduce risks for investors by increasing political stability in host countries and reducing the probability of “audience costs”, costs
imposed by public campaigns targeting companies involved in poor human rights (HR) practices. The study focuses on investment in
Controlling for market size, development, economic
nonOECD countries, with FDI inflows as the dependent variable.
growth, trade openness, government consumption, resource wealth, and democracy, the authors find that
HR practices affect FDI flows positively and significantly both directly and indirectly
through human capital (life expectancy and education). They also calculate the magnitudes of the effects, estimating
that
the direct effect of a shift from the lowest level of respect of human rights to the highest level is associated with an increase of FDI flow
equivalent to over 4% of the host country’s GDP. The indirect effects are estimated to be much smaller, but still substantial.

Second, efficiency and strong property rights

Brown 8 – Peter, MA in Economics @ the University of Oslo, “The effect of Human Rights on
Economic Growth” https://www.duo.uio.no/handle/10852/17533

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2.2.1 Direct effect on growth A direct effect of protection of human rights may be that citizens and
workers have
an increased optimism, less fear, and more trust in the economy, and therefore
choose to work more . Lorenz Blume and Stefan Voigt (2007) argue that physical integrity rights are a
precondition for other rights such as property and civil rights, and are therefore efficiency
enhancing . Their paper “Economic Effects of Human Rights” is the first paper I have found to empirically estimate the impact
of
human rights on economic variables, instead of vice versa (and to the authors’ knowledge, the first paper published on the topic).
Using human rights data from 1990 to 1997, Blume and Voigt estimate the effects of human rights practices on
growth, investment, and productivity. They find that while the estimated direct effect of physical integrity
rights is positive, it is not statistically significant.

Third, domestic investment – investors will infer a safer investment climate

Brown 8 – Peter, MA in Economics @ the University of Oslo, “The effect of Human Rights on
Economic Growth” https://www.duo.uio.no/handle/10852/17533

2.2.3 Domestic investment By investing resources instead of consuming them, such as investing in
infrastructure

like roads, power, and telecommunications, economies can facilitate future growth. Private investment production
techniques and factories will allow these to produce goods and services more efficiently . Many of the arguments
that human rights practices affect foreign direct investment are also valid for domestic investment. Blume and Voigt also estimate the

effects of human rights on investment and productivity, both of which are assumed to positively affect

growth . They do find significant positive effects of physical integrity on investment and
productivity . Farber (1999) explores theoretically how investors may infer information on the
investment
climate, and specifically risk of expropriation, from a country’s human rights practices. The author assumes
that
providing Since they are costly to provide, provision of them can be interpreted as a credible

protection of
signal that the countries are willing to pay short term costs for long term gains human rights
has a cost, since
they act as trumps over normal government decisions.
. Investors infer from

this that countries have a low discount rate, and that it is less likely that the country will sacrifice long-term interests to benefit short-term ones. ?

HR K2 Solve Terror – 2AC

Turn – strong human rights frameworks are key to fight terrorism
Hoffman 4 – Paul, Chair of the International Executive Committee of Amnesty International.
He is a civil rights and human rights lawyer with the Venice-based law firm of Schonbrun,
DeSimone, Seplow, Harris & Hoffman LLP. He also teaches international human rights law at USC
Law School and Oxford University, “Human Rights and Terrorism” Human Rights Quarterly 26.4
(2004) 932-955

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History shows that when societies trade human rights for security, most often they get neither . Instead,
minorities and other marginalized groups pay the price through violation
of their human rights. Sometimes this trade-off comes in the form of mass murder or genocide, other times in the form of
arbitrary arrest and imprisonment, or the suppression of speech or religion. Indeed, millions of lives have been
destroyed in the last sixty years when human rights norms have not been observed.5 Undermining the strength
of [End Page 934] international
human rights law and institutions will only facilitate such human rights violations in the future and
.6 Also, a state's failure to adhere to
confound efforts to bring violators to justice
fundamental

human rights norms makes it more likely that terrorist organizations will find it easier to recruit

adherents among the discontented and disenfranchised and among the family and friends of those
whose

human rights have been violated. Human rights violations in the name of fighting terrorism undermine efforts

to respond to the threats of terrorism, making us less rather than more secure in
both the
short and long run. Failure to respect universal human rights norms not only undermines our shared values,
it undermines the international cooperation and public support so crucial to
developing effective antiterrorism efforts . No nation, no matter how powerful, can solve the
problem
of terrorism on its own. All governments need the voluntary cooperation of every segment of its society to

be effective in preventing acts of terrorism . Without adherence to [End Page 935] international human

rights standards, such cooperation will be more difficult, if not impossible, to obtain at the

international,
national, and local levels.

Studies prove
Hoffman 4 – Paul, Chair of the International Executive Committee of Amnesty International.
He is a civil rights and human rights lawyer with the Venice-based law firm of Schonbrun,
DeSimone, Seplow, Harris & Hoffman LLP. He also teaches international human rights law at USC
Law School and Oxford University, “Human Rights and Terrorism” Human Rights Quarterly 26.4
(2004) 932-955

B. A Human Rights Framework Does Not Impair the Fight Against Terrorism Implicit in the design
of the "war on terrorism" is the notion that the international human rights framework necessarily complicates the
fight against terrorism. However, there is nothing in the existing human rights framework that need impair
international efforts to fight terrorism. Indeed, it is difficult to see how international cooperation
in the fight against terrorism can be
maintained without respect for the rule of law. Nothing in international human rights law prevents
governments from passing laws that impose criminal penalties

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on those who would conspire or act to commit mass murder and destruction. Indeed, many nations have already
enacted such laws. Governments may not enact laws that infringe on freedom of expression, religion, or
other freedoms or that are so vague they invite abuse. Antiterrorism laws can be fashioned within these basic
requirements. Some post-September 11 legislation raised these concerns, but the scope for legislation
that addresses terrorist acts remains broad. Even if one assumes the
detainees are not covered by
international humanitarian law,46 the international human rights framework still requires they be tried for a recognizable
criminal offense and be granted the internationally recognized guarantees of a fair trial. The United States had no difficulty
complying with these requirements in response to the first World Trade Center bombing,47 showing it is possible for governments
to create special procedures for handling classified or sensitive evidence in such trials in accordance with their legal systems. Many
countries have experience trying alleged terrorists in
ordinary courts under procedures that comply, or at There can be increased cooperation at every
least arguably comply, with international standards.
level of government within a human rights framework. Many human rights standards, beginning with
Article 29 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, explicitly recognize limitations based on the
.
requirements of public order or security There is a substantial body of international, regional, and domestic

jurisprudence in balancing liberty and security in a wide variety of specific contexts. These standards should be respected
and enforced, not
emergencies that justify suspension of some international human rights ignored. International
human rights law also
explicitly recognizes that there may be
[End Page 951]

protections during times of crisis .48 For example, Article 4 of the ICCPR allows for measures
derogating
from obligations assumed under the Covenant in a time of "public emergency" that is "officially proclaimed" and
"threatens the life of the nation." Notification of this declaration must be given to other state parties through the
SecretaryGeneral. Derogating measures must only be to the extent "strictly required by the exigencies of the
situation," and cannot involve discrimination on the ground of race, color, sex, language, religion, or social origin
and cannot conflict with other international law obligations. While the Bush administration has used the rhetoric of national security
to justify the incognito detention of hundreds of Arab residents in the US for minor immigration violations since September 11, it has
yet to notify the Secretary-General of declaration of an emergency under Article 4. Moreover, there are some obligations
(e.g., the right to life, the prohibition against torture, and other forms of cruel, inhumane, and degrading treatment or punishment)
that are nonderogable. In addition to these explicit nonderogable rights, the Human Rights Committee has determined that the
obligation to treat detainees with humanity, the prohibition of the arbitrary deprivation of liberty, and the presumption of innocence
have become peremptory rules of international law. These new rules further restrict what may be done in a crisis situation.49
International human rights bodies, especially regional human rights bodies, have had

substantial experience in adjudicating cases arising out of alleged terrorism attacks and
terrorist groups .50 The international human rights framework was developed with the possibility of
crisis threatening the life of a nation in mind. There are no grounds to abandon the framework

altogether because of the events of September 11 or because of the threat of similar attacks
.

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[End Page 952]

A strong human rights paradigm would undercut the root cause of terrorism –
only the aff prevents the possibility of attacks definitively
Hoffman 4 – Paul, Chair of the International Executive Committee of Amnesty International.
He is a civil rights and human rights lawyer with the Venice-based law firm of Schonbrun,
DeSimone, Seplow, Harris & Hoffman LLP. He also teaches international human rights law at USC
Law School and Oxford University, “Human Rights and Terrorism” Human Rights Quarterly 26.4
(2004) 932-955
C. A Human Rights Framework Is Essential For Real Human Security Without denying the legitimacy
of

responding to threats of terrorist attacks, a central problem with the "war on terrorism" is that it ignores other equally or

more pressing challenges to human security. For hundreds of millions of people in the world today, the most
.
important source of insecurity is not a terrorist threat but grinding, extreme poverty More than a
billion of the world's six billion people live on less than one dollar a day. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights and
the entire human rights framework is based on the indivisibility of human rights. This includes not only civil and
political rights but also economic, social, and cultural rights . The must be eliminated if terrorism
discrepancy between these human rights promises and the reality of life for
more than one-sixth of the world's people is to be controlled. Every human being is entitled to a standard of
living that allows for their health and
wellbeing, including food, shelter, and medical care. Yet more than three thousand African children die of malaria each day. Only a
tiny percentage of the twenty-six million people infected with HIV/AIDS have access to the health care and medicine they need to
survive. Many additional examples could be given. Many
governments have adopted the Millennium Development
Goals to be achieved by 2015.51 The goals include targets for child and infant mortality, the availability of primary
education for all children, halving the number of people without access to clean water along with many others.
According to the World Bank,52 these goals will not be achieved, in part because the "war on terrorism" is
shifting attention and resources away from long-term development issues. How can
we eradicate violent challenges to the existing world order if education is not universal? Without education and peaceful

exchanges between peoples, the "war on terrorism" will only succeed in creating new
generations of warriors . [End Page 953] Why is terrorism given more attention than the scourge of violence against
women? Millions of women are terrorized in their daily lives, yet no "war" on violence against
women is being waged. Clearly, this problem is more widespread than terrorist violence and invariably makes women insecure as
well as second-class citizens in every corner of the world. If some of the resources and attention devoted to the "war
on terrorism" were diverted to the eradication of world poverty or eliminating violence against women,
would the world be more
secure? There is no easy answer to this question, but the "war on terrorism" seems to sideline any serious

discussions, along with any serious action on

the other pressing causes of human insecurity.

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True security depends on all of the world's peoples having a stake in the international system and
receiving the basic rights promised by the
Universal Declaration of Human The "war on terrorism" undermines that prospect by Rights,
regardless of race, gender, religion, or any
other status.

ignoring all other causes of human insecurity, while undermining human rights norms that

offer a promise of human security for all human beings . The challenge of terrorism is real
and

cannot be ignored; however, it must not blind states of the other challenges just as pressing as

the fight against terrorism.

HR K2 Solve Failed States – 1AC

Snowballing human rights violations are the tipping point that causes
precipitating political instability in failed states and sustains internal conflict
Sriram 9 – Chandra Lekha, of Law at the University of London, School of Oriental and African
Studies, “War, Conflict and Human Rights Theory and Practice,” Routledge, 2009
Human rights violations as causes of conflict Human rights violations can he both causes and consequences of conflict. We begin with the ways in which

human rights violations can generate conflict , with some examples for illustration in Box 11. In the most general sense,

grievances over the real or perceived denial of rights can generate social conflict . This may be the case
where there is systematic discrimination, differential access to education or health care, limited freedom
of expression or religion, or denial of political participation, whether based upon race, ethnicity, caste, religion. language,
gender, or some other characteristic. These violations may
seem relatively minor, particularly in comparison to some of the but they can still generate real grievances
grave crimes examined later in this book, including war crimes and genocide,

and social unrest. In functional polities, such grievances may be handled through relatively peaceful,

constitutional means, whether through litigation in the courts or through legislative reform or administrative policy change. However,

in weak, corrupt, abusive, or collapsed and collapsing states, such conflict is more likely to
become violent . Thai violence may be merely sporadic, if serious, or it may give rise to more systematic
opposition.
Violent conflict may also emerge where there are more violent human righls abuses- illegal detention, extrajudicial execution, disappearances, torture,
widespread killing, or even attempts at genocide Where civilians have already been targeted by such violence, whether committed
it is unlikely that peaceful resistance will have much effect , so it is yet more likely
by the state or by nonstate actors,
that affected individuals
human rights violations are an important, underlying cause of conflict, and groups will take up
arms to defend
themselves In such situations, then,
although seldom the only one.

Once war has erupted, any serious attempt at conflict resolution will also have to address the underlying
sources of the original conflict, including abuses of human rights. Otherwise, violence, particularly retaliation for past

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abuses, is likely to re-emerge once third-party mediators, observers, or peacekeepers have departed.

Failed states cause great power wars – power vacuums and competing interests
make the risk of intervention high
Grygiel, John Hopkins IR professor, 2009 (Jakub, “Vacuum Wars: The Coming Competition
Over Failed States,” American Interest, Jul/Aug 2009, http://www.the-
americaninterest.com/article.cfm?piece=622, )
Mention “failed states” in an academic seminar or a policy meeting and you will hear a laundry list of
tragic problems: poverty, disease, famine, refugees flowing across borders and more. If it is a really
gloomy day, you will hear that failed states are associated with terrorism, ethnic cleansing and genocide.
This is the conventional wisdom that has developed over the past two decades, and rightly so given the scale of the human tragedies in Bosnia, Somalia and
Rwanda, just to mention the most egregious cases of the 1990s. This prevailing view of failed states, however, though true, is also incomplete.

Failed states are not only a source of domestic calamities; they are also potentially a source of great
power competition that in the past has often led to confrontation, crisis and war. The failure of a state
creates a vacuum that, especially in strategically important regions, draws in competitive great-
power
intervention. This more traditional view of state failure is less prevalent these days, for only recently has the prospect of great power competition over failed
“vacuum” states returned. But, clearly, recent events in Georgia—as well as possible future scenarios in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, as well as southeastern Europe, Asia and
parts of Africa—suggest that it might be a good time to adjust, really to expand, the way we think about “failed states” and the kinds of problems they can cause. The difference
between the prevailing and the traditional view on state failure is not merely one of accent or nuance; it has important policy implications. Intense great power

conflict over the spoils of a failed state will demand a fundamentally different set of strategies and skills
from the United States. Whereas the response to the humanitarian disasters following state failure tends to consist of peacekeeping and
state-building missions, large-scale military operations and swift unilateral action are the most likely strategies
great powers will adopt when competing over a power vacuum. On the political level, multilateral cooperation,
often within the setting of international institutions, is feasible as well as desirable in case of humanitarian disasters. But it is considerably
more difficult, perhaps impossible, when a failed state becomes an arena of great power
competition. The
prevailing view of failed states is an obvious product of the past two decades—a period in which an entirely new generation of scholars and policymakers has entered their
respective professions. A combination of events—the end of the Cold War, the collapse of the Soviet Union and the prostration of states such as Somalia, Rwanda, Haiti and
Bosnia, and most importantly the terrorist attacks of September 11—created two interlocked impressions concerning the sources of state failure that are today largely accepted
uncritically. The first of these is that weak states have unraveled because of the great powers’ disinterest in them, which has allowed serious domestic problems, ranging from
poverty to ethnic and social strife, to degenerate into chaos and systemic governance failure.1 The basic idea here is that the Cold War had a stabilizing effect in several strategic
regions where either the United States or the Soviet Union supported recently fashioned states with little domestic legitimacy and cohesion for fear that, if they did not, the rival
superpower might gain advantage. Some fortunate Third World neutrals even managed a kind of foreign aid arbitrage, attracting help from both sides. When support from the
superpowers ended, many of these states, such as Somalia and Yugoslavia, were torn apart by internal factionalism. The state lacked the money to bribe compliance or to generate
a larger economic pie, degenerating rapidly into corruption and violence. The key conclusion: The most egregious and tragic examples of failed states in the 1990s occurred
because of great power neglect rather than meddling. The related second impression that post-Cold War events have created is that the main threat posed by failed states starts
from within them and subsequently spills over to others. Failed states export threats ranging from crime to drugs to refugees to, most dramatically, global terrorism.2 The
lawlessness and violence of such states often spills across borders in the form of waves of refugees, the creation of asylums for criminals and more besides. As the number and
severity of failed state cases rose, Western powers reacted much of the time by hoping that the problems arising from the failure of states, even those geographically close to the
United States or Europe like Haiti and Bosnia, would remain essentially limited so that internal chaos could simply be waited out. Interventions such as in Somalia, Bosnia or Haiti
were driven by a Western public shocked by vivid images of suffering and slaughter rather than by a sense that these collapsed states directly threatened U.S. national security.
The 9/11 terrorist attacks against the United States changed the perception that failed states could be safely ignored. The Hobbesian world of a failed state could be distant, but
it was also a breeding ground for terrorist networks that could train their foot soldiers, establish logistical bases and plan attacks against distant countries. Failed states suddenly
were not only humanitarian disasters but security threats. As Francis Fukuyama observed in 2004, “radical Islamist terrorism combined with the availability of weapons of mass
destruction added a major security dimension to the burden of problems created by weak governance.”3 However, 9/11 did not alter the conviction that the main threat posed
by failed states stems from endogenous problems and not from a great power competition to fill the vacuum created by their demise. At least in the immediate aftermath of the
terrorist attacks, there was a naive feeling that the Islamist threat festering in failed or weak states such as Afghanistan was a menace to the international community writ large,
and certainly to great powers like Russia and China, as well as the United States. It was therefore assumed that the great powers would cooperate to combat terrorism and not
compete with each other for control over failing or failed states. As Stephen David pointed out in these pages, “Instead of living in a world of international anarchy and domestic
The solution stemming from such a view of failed states falls under the
order, we have international order and domestic anarchy.”4

broad category of “nation-building.” If the main challenge of failed states is internally generated and caused
by a collapse of domestic order, then the solution must be to rebuild
state institutions and restore authority and order, preferably under some sort of multilateral arrangement that would enhance the
legitimacy of what is necessarily an intrusive endeavor. Great powers are expected to cooperate, not compete, to fix failed states. U.S. foreign policy
continues to reflect this prevailing view. Then-Director of the Policy Planning staff, Stephen Krasner, and Carlos Pascual, then-Coordinator for

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Reconstruction and Stabilization at the State Department, wrote in 2005 that, “ when
chaos prevails, terrorism, narcotics trade,
weapons proliferation, and other forms of organized crime can flourish.” Moreover, “modern conflicts are
far more likely to be internal, civil matters than to be clashes between opposing countries.”5 The prevailing
view of failed states is, to repeat, not wrong, just incomplete—for it ignores the competitive nature of great power interactions. The
traditional
understanding of power vacuums is still very relevant. Sudan, Central Asia, Indonesia, parts of Latin
America and many other areas are characterized by weak and often collapsing states that are increasingly
arenas for great power competition. The interest of these great powers is not to rebuild the state or to engage in “nation-building” for humanitarian
purposes but to establish a foothold in the region, to obtain favorable economic deals, especially in the energy sector, and to weaken the

presence of other great powers. Let’s look at just three possible future scenarios. In
the first, imagine that parts of Indonesia
become increasingly difficult to govern and are wracked by riots. Chinese minorities are attacked, while
pirates prowl sealanes in ever greater numbers. Bejing, pressured by domestic opinion to help the Chinese
diaspora, as well as by fears that its seaborne commerce will be interrupted, intervenes in the region.
China’s action is then perceived as a threat by Japan, which projects its own power into the region. The
United States, India and others then intervene to protect their interests, as well. In the second scenario,
imagine that Uzbekistan collapses after years of chronic mismanagement and continued Islamist agitation. Uzbekistan’s natural resources and its
strategic value as a route to the Caspian or Middle East are suddenly up for grabs, and Russia and China begin to compete for control over it, possibly
followed by other states like Iran and Turkey. In a third scenario, imagine that the repressive government of Sudan loses the ability to maintain control
over the state, and that chaos spreads from Darfur outward to Chad and other neighbors. Powers distant and nearby decide to extend their control over
the threatened oil fields. China, though still at least a decade away from having serious power projection capabilities, already has men on the ground in
Sudan protecting some of the fields and uses them to control the country’s natural resources. These scenarios are not at all outlandish, as recent events
have shown. Kosovo, which formally declared independence on February 17, 2008, continues to strain relationships between the
United States and Europe, on the one hand, and Serbia and Russia, on the other. The resulting tension may degenerate into violence as
Serbian nationalists and perhaps even the Serbian army intervene in Kosovo. It is conceivable then that Russia would support Belgrade,

leading to a serious confrontation with the European Union and the United States. A
similar conflict, pitting Russia against NATO or
the United States alone, or some other alliance of European states, could develop in several post-Soviet
regions, from Georgia to the Baltics. Last summer’s war in Georgia, for instance, showed incipient signs of a great power confrontation between Russia
and the United States over the fate of a weak state, further destabilized by a rash local leadership and aggressive meddling by Moscow. The future of
Ukraine may follow a parallel pattern: Russian citizens (or, to be precise, ethnic Russians who are given passports by Moscow) may claim to be harassed
by Ukrainian authorities, who are weak and divided. A refugee problem could then arise, giving Moscow a ready justification to intervene militarily. The
question would then be whether NATO, or the United States, or some alliance of Poland and other states would feel the need and have

the ability to prevent Ukraine from falling under Russian control. Another
example could arise in Iraq. If the United States fails
to stabilize the situation and withdraws, or even merely scales down its military presence too quickly, one
outcome could be the collapse of the central government in Baghdad. The resulting vacuum would be
filled by militias and other groups, who would engage in violent conflict for oil, political control and sectarian revenge. This tragic
situation would be compounded if Iran and Saudi Arabia, the two regional powers with the most direct
interests in the outcome, entered the fray more directly than they have so far. In sum, there are many
more plausible scenarios in which a failed state could become a playground of both regional and great
power rivalry, which is why we urgently need to dust off the traditional view of failed states and consider its main features as well as its array of
consequences. The traditional view starts from a widely shared assumption that, as nature abhors vacuums, so does the international system. As
Richard Nixon once said to Mao Zedong, “In international relations there are no good choices. One thing is sure—we can leave no

vacuums, because they can be filled.”6 The power vacuums created by failed states attract the interests of
great powers because they are an easy way to expand their spheres of influence while weakening their
opponents or forestalling their intervention. A state that decides not to fill a power vacuum is effectively inviting other states to do so, thereby
potentially decreasing its own relative power. This simple, inescapable logic is based on the view that international relations are essentially a zero-sum
game: My gain is your loss. A failed state creates a dramatic opportunity to gain something, whether natural resources, territory or a strategically
pivotal location. The power that controls it first necessarily increases its own standing relative to other states. As Walter Lippmann wrote in 1915, the
anarchy of the world is due to the backwardness of weak states; . . . the modern nations have lived in armed peace and collapsed into hideous warfare
because in Asia, Africa, the Balkans, Central and South America there are rich territories in which weakness invites exploitation, in which inefficiency
and corruption invite imperial expansion, in which the prizes are so great that the competition for them is to the knife.7 The
threat posed by
failed states, therefore, need not emanate mainly from within . After all, by definition a failed state is no longer an actor
capable of conducting a foreign policy. It is a politically inert geographic area whose fate is dependent on the actions of others. The main

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menace to international security stems from competition between these “others.” As Arnold Wolfers put it in 1951,
The
because of the competitive nature of international relations, “expansion would be sure to take place wherever a power vacuum existed.”8

challenge is that the incentive to extend control over a vacuum or a failed state is similar for many states.
In fact, even if one state has a stronger desire to control a power vacuum because of its geographic
proximity, natural resources or strategic location, this very interest spurs other states to seek command
over the same territory simply because doing so weakens that state. The ability to deprive a state of something that will
give it a substantial advantage is itself a source of power. Hence a failed state suddenly becomes a
strategic prize, because it either adds to one’s own power or subtracts from another’s . The prevailing and traditional
views of failed states reflect two separate realities. Therefore, we should not restrict ourselves to one view or the other when studying our options. The difference is not just
academic; it has very practical consequences. First and foremost, if we take the traditional view, failed states may pose an even greater danger to international security than
policymakers and academics currently predict. Humanitarian disasters are certainly tragedies that deserve serious attention; yet they do not pose the worst threats to U.S.
security or world stability. That honor still belongs to the possibility of a great power confrontation. While the past decade or so has allowed us to ignore great power rivalries as
the main feature of international relations, there is no guarantee that this happy circumstance will continue long into the future. Second, there is no one-size-fits-all policy option
for a given failed state. Humanitarian disasters carry a set of policy prescriptions that are liable to be counterproductive in an arena of great power conflict. It is almost a truism
that failed states require multilateral cooperation, given their global impact. But the traditional view of failed states leads us not to seek multilateral settings but to act
preemptively and often unilaterally. Indeed, it is often safer to seek to extend one’s control over failed states quickly in order to limit the possibility of intervention by other great

powers. Third, the role of armed forces engaged in failed states needs to be re-evaluated in light of the traditional view. If failed states require only

“nation-building”, the military forces of the intervening powers will have to develop skills that are more
like those of a police force: comfortable with a limited use of force, adept at distinguishing peaceful
civilians from criminals, able to enforce law and order, good at managing interactions within the societies
and many other tasks as well. However, the traditional view suggests that one must be prepared to apply the full spectrum of military force in case of a direct
confrontation with another great power. Sending a weakly armed peacekeeping force into a situation in which such a confrontation is possible could easily prove disastrous. Thus
the United States should not focus only or overly much on preparing for low-intensity conflicts and counterinsurgency operations to the detriment of preparing for a major war
involving another state. Rather, it should maintain and improve its ability to deny other powers access to regions at stake and increase its readiness for a direct confrontation.
Finally, on the political level, nation-building under the aegis of the United Nations or even NATO may not be the solution to failed states. If they are problems not just of foreign
aid and law enforcement, but also of great power conflict and bilateral diplomacy, we should expect a reversion to an atavistic set of state actions that were supposed to have
been made obsolete by the triumph of liberal internationalism. As to the outcomes of vacuum wars, finally, history suggests four basic possibilities: nonintervention by all
powers; partition; unilateral preventive intervention; and war. If a failed state was too distant and ultimately strategically irrelevant, great powers simply ignored it, sensing that
an intervention would not increase their own power. In many ways the irrelevance of a failed state leads to the most stable situation, one in which the prevailing view is most
applicable. But there are ever fewer areas of the world that fall into this category. Interconnectedness combined with the

growing power-projection capability of powers such as China creates incentives to intervene in even the
most remote areas. The possible scenarios of Indonesia or Sudan are good examples of this. So we are left with the other three options. Great
powers have employed partition or division into spheres of influence to avoid a massive confrontation. The partitions of Poland at the end of the 18th
century are a classic example. The next option is unilateral preventive intervention. Basically, this involves a rapid intervention by one power to establish
its dominance over the area in question, preventing the other interested parties from projecting their power there. In brief, one power arrives first at
the carcass of the failed or failing state and preempts conflict by making it too costly for others. The last option, which is not mutually exclusive of the
others, is war. The inability to reach an agreement to divide or unilaterally control a failed state can lead to a
violent clash . The exact features of such a war may range from battles between mass armies
to attempts at subversion and insurgency. But the underlying characteristic is the direct involvement of
two or more powers.

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Democracy Promotion Advantage

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Aid Undermines Demo Promo – 2AC

Aid undermines overall democracy promotion – makes the US look hypocritical
Vine, 2014 David Vine, professor at American University, “The Bases of War in the Middle
East” November 13 2014, http://www.thenation.com/article/bases-war-middle-east/
The ongoing US presence in Saudi Arabia, however modest, should remind us of the dangers of maintaining bases in the region. The
garrisoning of the Muslim holy land was a major recruiting tool for Al Qaeda and part of Osama bin Laden’s professed motivation for
the 9/11 attacks. (He called the presence of US troops “the greatest of these aggressions incurred by the Muslims since the death of

the prophet.”) Indeed, US

bases and troops in the Middle East have been a “major catalyst for anti-
Americanism and radicalization” since a suicide bombing killed 241 marines in Lebanon in 1983. Other attacks have
come in Saudi Arabia in 1996, Yemen in 2000 against the USS Cole, and during the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Research has
shown a strong correlation between a US basing presence and Al Qaeda recruitment. Part of the
anti-American anger has stemmed from the support US bases offer to repressive, undemocratic
regimes. Few of the countries in the Greater Middle East are fully democratic, and some are among the
world’s worst human rights abusers. Most notably, the US government has offered only tepid
criticism of the Bahraini government as it has violently cracked down on pro-democracy
protesters with
a string of what the Economist Democracy Index calls “authoritarian regimes the help of the
Saudis and the
United Arab Emirates (UAE). Beyond Bahrain, US bases are found
in ,” including

Afghanistan, Bahrain, Djibouti, Egypt, Ethiopia, Jordan, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, UAE and Yemen. Maintaining
bases in such countries props up autocrats and other repressive governments, makes the United States
complicit in their crimes, and seriously undermines efforts to spread democracy and
improve the wellbeing of people around the world. Of course, using bases to launch wars and other kinds of interventions does
much the same, generating anger, antagonism and anti-American attacks. A recent UN report suggests that Washington’s air
campaign against the Islamic State had led foreign militants to join the movement on “an unprecedented scale.” And so the cycle of
warfare that started in 1980 is likely to continue. “Even if US and allied forces succeed in routing this militant group,” retired Army
colonel and political scientist Andrew Bacevich writes of the Islamic State, “there is little reason to expect” a positive outcome in the
region. As Bin Laden and the Afghan mujahidin morphed into Al Qaeda and the Taliban and as former Iraqi Baathists and Al Qaeda
followers in Iraq morphed into IS, “there is,” as Bacevich says, “always another Islamic State waiting in the wings.” The Carter
Doctrine’s bases and military buildup strategy and its belief that “the skillful application of US military might” can secure oil
supplies and solve the region’s problems was, he adds, “flawed from the outset.” Rather than providing security, the

infrastructure of bases in the Greater Middle East has made it ever easier to go to war far from home. It has
enabled wars of choice and an interventionist foreign policy that has resulted in repeated
disasters for the region, the United States and the world. Since 2001 alone, US-led wars in Afghanistan,
Pakistan, Iraq and Yemen have minimally caused hundreds of thousands of deaths and possibly more than 1 million deaths in Iraq
alone. The sad irony is that any legitimate desire to maintain the free flow of regional oil to the global economy could be sustained
through other far less expensive and deadly means. Maintaining
scores of bases costing billions of dollars a
year is unnecessary to protect oil supplies and ensure regional peace—especially in an era in which the
United States gets only around 10 percent of its net oil and natural gas from the region. In addition to the direct damage our military
spending has caused, it has diverted money and attention from developing the kinds of alternative energy sources that could free
the United States and the world from a dependence on Middle Eastern oil—and from the cycle of war that our military bases have
fed.

Empirics and stats prove assistances undermines democracy promotion

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Vine, 2015 David, -prof anthropology, American- Base Nation: How U.S. Military Bases Abroad
Harm America and the World p.110-111 Edited for ableist language- we don’t endorse this
language
Research by the Johns Hopkins political scientist Kent Calder confirms the "dictatorship
hypothesis": consistently, "the United States tends to support dictators [and other undemocratic
regimes] in nations where it enjoys basing facilities."54 Honduras and Bahrain, Egypt and Thailand, are far from
an aberration. At the same time, research shows that authoritarian rulers have often used a U.S. base presence to
ensure and extend their own domestic political survival. Some rulers, like the Philippines' Ferdinand
Marcos, the South Korean dictator Syngman Rhee, and Kyrgyzstan's Askar Akayev, have used the bases to extract
economic assistance from U.S. officials, which they have then shared with political allies to shore
up domestic support. Others have relied on U.S. bases to bolster their international prestige and
legitimacy or to justify violence against domestic political opponents. After the 1980 Kwangju
massacre, in which the South Korean government killed around 240 pro- democracy demonstrators, strongman General Chun
Doohwan explicitly cited the presence of U.S. bases and troops to suggest that his actions enjoyed U.S. support.55 Whether or not
the United States really supported Chun's actions is a matter of continuing debate. But it is clear that in countries with
U.S. bases, American officials have repeatedly [reduced] muted their criticism of repressive
regimes and downplayed the promotion of democratization, decolonization, and human rights. In the case
of the
Spanish dictator Francisco Franco, for example, a 1969-70 U.S. Senate investigation dis- covered that annual
U.S.-Spanish
military exercises were designed to prepare a military response to an anti-Franco uprising and keep
his regime in power despite its domestic repression and continuation of Spanish colonial
rule. As the base expert Alexander Cooley puts it, "The U.S. basing presence may have diminished these host countries'
overall national sovereignty, but it also afforded their rulers significant private political benefits.'*56 The
result has been a pattern of U.S. support for violence and repression. Not surprisingly, this can
also be a self-reinforcing cycle. As the protests at Soto Cano suggest, supporting repressive regimes builds
resentment and opposition to the United States—which makes the eviction of U.S. bases all the
more likely when countries do transition to democratic rule.57 Knowing this the U.S. military
has even more incentive to prevent that transition from taking place.
Democracy Promotion Impact Calc – 2AC
Democratic peace theory is the most statistically robust finding in political
science – this impact controls escalation of everything – all of their conflict
filters and miscalculation warrants are aff arguments because democracy is a
necessary condition for effective communication of threats and diplomatic
bargaining
Dafoe, Professor @ Yale, 13 (Allan, “Does Capitalism Account for the Democratic Peace?
The Evidence Still Says No,” 110-111,)
The democratic peace—the empirical association between democracy and peace—is an extremely robust finding. More generally,
many liberal factors are associated with peace and many explanations have been offered for these asocialions, including the
effects Of: liberal norms, democratic signaling, credible commitments, the free press, economic

interdependence, declining benefits of conquest, signaling via capital markets, constraints on

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the state, constraints on leaders, and others. Scholars are still mapping the contours of the liberal peace, and we remain a long way
from fully understanding the respective Of these different candidate causal mechanisms, All this being said, the robustness of the

democratic peace, as one interrelated empirical aspect of the liberal peace, is impressive. The democratic peace has
been interrogated for over two decades and no one has been able to identity an alternative factor
accounts for it in cross- national statistical analyses. Democracy in any two countries (joint democracy)
has been shown to be robustly negatively associated with militarized interstate disputes (MIDS), fatal
MIDS, crises, escalation, and Wars. The democratic peace is for good reason widely cited and regarded as one of the most productive
research programs.2 We also agree with the editors and contributors to this volume that additional study Of the capitalist peace is likely to generate
substantial insight_ Ourmandate in this chapter, however, is to respond to the specific claims made by Mousseau, Or-sun, Ungerer,
and Mousseau (2013, henceforth denoted MOUM) that social-market capitalism "accounts for the effect of peace that was

previously attributed to democracy" (2015:101), extending the alleged finding that "the democratic
peace is found to be spurious
unsubstantiated
in analyses of MIDS (Mousseau
2009, 2012)" (MOUM 2013:95). we show that
their results contra the democratic peace are fragile and unpersuasive
these claims are , and that
. Before turning 10 the details Of the
analysis Of MOUM, we reflect On the nature Of causal inference using kinds of cross-national analyses typical to this research.

Democracy checks global conflicts

Kasparov, Chairman of the Human Rights Foundation, 2/16/2017
Garry, “Democracy and Human Rights: The Case for U.S. Leadership”
http://www.foreign.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/021617_Kasparov_%20Testimony.pdf

There existential threat today is not found

The Soviet Union was an existential threat, and this focused the attention of the world, and the American people.

on a map, but it is very real. The forces of the past are making steady progress against the
modern world order . Terrorist in the Middle East, extremist across
movements parties Europe, a
paranoid tyrant in North Korea threatening nuclear blackmail , and, at the center of the web, an
aggressive KGB dictator in
Russia . They all want to turn the world back to a dark past because their survival

is threatened by the values of the free world, epitomized by the United States. And they are
thriving as the U.S. has retreated. The global freedom index has
declined for ten consecutive years. No one like to talk about the United States as a global policeman, but

this is what happens when there is no cop on the beat.

American leadership begins at

if there is no unity on the meaning and importance of these
home , right here. America cannot lead
the
world on democracy and human rights
things . Leadership is required to make that case clearly and powerfully. Right now, Americans are
engaged in politics at a level not seen in decades. It is an opportunity for them to rediscover that making
America great begins with believing America can be great. The Cold War was won on American

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values that were shared by both parties and nearly every American. Institutions that were
created by
a Democrat, Truman, were triumphant forty years later thanks to the courage of a Republican, Reagan. This bipartisan consistency
created
democracies . Strong institutions that outlast politicians allow for long-range planning the
decades of
strategic stability that is the great strength of
dictators can operate only tactically, not strategically, because they are not constrained
. In contrast,

by the balance of powers , but cannot afford to think beyond their own survival . This is why a
dictator like Putin has an advantage in chaos, the ability to move quickly. This can only be met by strategy, by long-term goals that are based on shared
. The
values, not on polls and cable news. The fear of making things worse has paralyzed the United States from trying to make things better. There will always be setbacks, but the United States cannot quit

spread of democracy is the only proven remedy for nearly every crisis that plagues the world
today. War, famine, poverty, terrorism –all are generated and exacerbated by authoritarian
regimes . A policy of America First inevitably puts American security last. American leadership is required because there is no
one
else, and because it is good for America. There is no weapon or wall that is more powerful for security than
America being envied, imitated, and admired around the world . Admired not for being
perfect, but for having the exceptional courage to always try to be better. Thank you

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Africa – 2AC
Democracy in Africa is key to stability – prevents ethnic disputes and conflict
escalation.
Pilling, Africa editor of the Financial Times, 1/23/2017
David, “Africa: A shrinking space for autocrats” https://www.ft.com/content/716ee35e-
dd6d11e6-9d7c-be108f1c1dce

For many Africans like those in Gambia, used to decades of oppressive rule, even the prospect of democracy
is enough to spark talk of rejuvenation . Two days before Mr Jammeh announced he was going, an extended family in Banjul sat down to watch last Thursday’s televised inauguration of Adama

Barrow, the surprise victor in December’s election. They predicted that many Gambians living abroad would now send money home or move back to start businesses. Celebrations in northern Nigeria following the election victory of Muhammadu Buhari in 2015 ©
AFP Mr Barrow had been forced to hold his swearing-in ceremony in neighbouring Senegal because Mr Jammeh was refusing to stand down and threatening to fight to the last. But the fact that the country was edging towards a democratic resolution was enough to

Gambia is not the only country to have defied the odds.

trigger excited celebrations. “That’s what I’m talking about: a new Gambia,” shouted Matarr, a 32-year-old.

In 2015, Nigeria, the continent’s most populous country, struck a blow for democracy when it
pulled off its first peaceful transition between civilian governments since independence. Old
dictatorships, such as that in Burkina Faso, have crumbled, and sturdy democratic traditions — in

have held firm in countries as far apart as Ghana, Botswana and

the context of Africa’s short and turbulent postcolonial history —

Mauritius. Gambia aside, the last year or so, admittedly, has not been great for African democracy . Leaders in Burundi and Rwanda changed

constitutions to allow themselves to stay on. Joseph Kabila failed to hold an election in the Democratic Republic of Congo, a vast, lawless country that — despite its name — has never had a properly democratic transfer of power. In Uganda, President Yoweri
Museveni, in office for 30 years and counting, held flawed elections. In Gabon, President Ali Bongo, whose father notched up 42 years, won in an election that was swung by what seemed to many an improbable 95.5 per cent of the vote on a 99 per cent turnout in

Mr Bongo’s home district. Still, belief in the democratic process among Africans remains strong . At a time when democracy is under pressure

in the west and when people have put their faith in strongmen from India to Russia and from China to the Philippines, Africans retain a belief in both the sanctity of the electoral process and the importance of protecting institutions. FT View Regional diplomacy gives
Gambia hope The demise of a west African strongman defies a global trend “I’m excited my country is respecting democracy,” said Bless Kale, a 26-year-old student, the day before December’s general election in Ghana, which ended with the transfer of power to the
opposition. “The process is very, very fair.” According to Afrobarometer, which polls opinion in more than 35 African countries, over two-thirds of respondents in a 2014-15 survey said democracy was “always preferable”, with just 11 per cent countenancing
dictatorship or one-party rule under some circumstances. “It always amazes me whenever you have an election in Africa, you see the queues of people outside the polling stations in the sun and the heat,” says Mr Ibrahim. “It seems like our poor people in Africa

believe more in western democracy than westerners do.” Fighting ‘proxy wars’ Emmanuel Gyimah-Boadi, executive director of the Ghana Centre for Democratic Development, says there are still good reasons to
back democracy in Africa For a start . , he says, it has had a decent record of resolving ethnic

to real wars in countries criss-crossed by ethnic divisions courtesy of colonial mapmakers

disputes. Elections , he says, may be “a proxy war for control of the state”, but that is preferable
.

Democracies are messy, but which African countries have imploded because they are
“

democratic adding that elections helped resolve civil wars in Liberia and Sierra Leone.
?” he asks,

“The urge for democracy — for good government — has always been there,” he adds. “It is
the supply that is lacking.” The craving is strong partly because so few people in Africa have experienced true democracy. Former Gambia president Yahya Jammeh at the window of the plane taking him out of the

country on Saturday © AFP Idealism after independence from colonial rule gave way to despair as country after country fell into the hands of incompetent or pernicious leaders, many of them soldiers. Perhaps for that reason, the democratic sentiment goes deeper

Africa’s dictatorships, in contrast to

than in parts of east Asia, where people have sometimes expressed a willingness to suspend the “luxury” of multi-party politics for economic progress.

states such as South Korea, Singapore and China, have a poor record of development , with the possible, though

democratic governments in Africa tend to produce less of a mess than

not yet proven, exceptions of Ethiopia and Rwanda. “On the whole,

dictatorships says Meredith, an expert on the continent at Oxford university.

,” Martin Podcast Gambians celebrate peaceful

transition of power Gambia, a tiny West African country popular with tourists, is celebrating its first democratic transition after the country’s long serving president, Yahya Jammeh, was finally persuaded to step down. David Pilling, the FT’s Africa editor, recently back
from the capital Banjul, talks to Fiona Symon about how this came about and what it means for democracy in the wider region. The Organisation of African Unity, disbanded in 2002, was known as a dictators’ club. Its successor, the African Union, is committed to the
ballot box in spite of the fact that its 54 members include some old-fashioned autocrats. The AU’s Democratic Charter, signed in 2007, commits its leaders to “a political culture of change of power based on the holding of regular, free, fair and transparent elections”.
Of course, that commitment is often honoured in the breach. The institution in Africa that has done as much as any to entrench democratic norms is the Economic Community of West African States. Ostensibly a trade grouping of 15 countries, it has developed a
strong constitutional bent. From the day Gambia’s Mr Jammeh started disputing the result of December’s election, Ecowas leaders mounted a no-holds-barred campaign to push him out. The delegation of leaders who flew to Banjul two weeks ago to put pressure on
Mr Jammeh to accept the result is an advertisement for west Africa’s improving record. It was headed by Muhammadu Buhari, president of Nigeria, a former military leader who defeated Goo dluck Jonathan in the much-praised 2015 election. Also prominent were
Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, whose 2005 election win in Liberia drew a line under two decades of civil war; John Mahama, the recently defeated former president of Ghana, a country that has held smooth elections since 1992; and Senegal’s Macky Sall, who held a

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referendum to shorten term limits. ‘Our turn to eat’ Mohammed Ibn Chambas, a Ghanaian lawyer and the UN’s top representative to west Africa, says the region has reduced the space in which dictators can flourish. Even a despot such as Mr Jammeh, who seized
power in a coup 22 years ago, felt obliged to hold reasonably clean elections, he says. Vote-counting in Gambia was carried out in public, one reason Mr Jammeh was unable to hide his defeat. Ecowas was sufficiently com mitted to the idea of stopping Mr Jammeh

West Africa, once a byword for

stealing the election that it mounted military action. Protesters clash with police in 2016 after elections were delayed in the Democratic Republic of Congo © AFP

coups and dictators, is now probably the most democratic region on the continent . With so many of today’s leaders

, a domino effect has taken hold and the region as a whole has become committed
the beneficiary of elections

to the idea. “If you get one or two governments that exercise democratic practices, it tends to influence neighbouring countries,” says Mr Meredith. At the other end of the scale is central Africa and the Great Lakes region, where democratic

transition is the exception. East Africa is not much better. Elections will take place this August in Kenya, a country whose electoral process has often been marred by violence and ethnic rivalries. Kenya has proved typical of the “it’s our turn to eat” blight on much of
African democracy, in which winners use the ballot box to seize the levers of state. In southern Africa, politics is still dominated by liberation parties. South Africa, once a great advertisement for the transformational power of democracy, mirrors the complexity of
the democratic story on the continent as a whole. In one sense, it has been a huge disappointment. Under Jacob Zuma, the African National Congress is becoming a typical liberation party, busily enriching itself and failing to improve the lives of many South Africans.

true
Yet the country’s institutions have held up well. The public protector has exposed corruption and the electorate has delivered its verdict, punishing the ANC at the ballot box in last year’s municipal elections. Mr Meredith says

democracy, as the case of South Africa shows, means more than holding regular elections. “It
also requires the rule of law, a robust civil society, an independent judiciary and a relatively
free press.” In this regard, too, the picture across Africa is mixed. In many countries, institutions have been ransacked and the state has cracked

down on dissent. That is often a reaction to the very real flourishing of civil society among a better informed and more urban populace. In several countries, including Kenya, there have been mobilisations in support of electoral commissions, whose independence

Gambia’s case shows that the space for autocrats is shrinking Even the
and effectiveness have improved across the continent. .

worst dictators in Africa, feel obliged to hold occasional elections. And, as Mr

from Mr Mugabe to Mr Kabila,

Jammeh has found to his cost, once you seek the verdict of the people, anything can happen.

Democracy promotion is key to African stability – backsliding now causes war

and terrorism. Economist, 2016
“Africa’s fragile democracies” 8/20 http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21705319-
endcold-war-multi-party-democracy-has-flourished-many-countries-it-now

And yet, as our reporting makes clear (see article), African democracy has stalled—or even gone into reverse. Too often, it is an
illiberal sort of pseudo-
That bodes ill for a continent where institutions are still fragile,
democracy in which the incumbent
demonises the opposition, exploits the

corruption rife and economies weakened by the fall of commodity prices power of the state to stack the
electoral contest in his favour and
removes constraints on his power.
(one of the fastest-growing regions of

). For Africa to fulfil its promise, the young,

the world has become one of the slowest

rediscover its zeal for democracy. dynamic continent must

Lost in democratic transition The latest worrying example is Zambia. It was one of the first African countries to

undergo a democratic transition, when Kenneth Kaunda stepped down after losing an election in 1991. This week Edgar Lungu was re-elected president with a paper-thin
majority in a campaign marred by the harassment of the opposition, the closure of the country’s leading independent newspaper, accusations of vote-rigging and street protests.
Especially in central Africa, incumbent leaders are changing or sidestepping constitutional term limits to extend their time in office, often provoking unrest. Kenya, where
political tension is rising, faces worries about violence in next year’s general election. Freedom House, an American think-tank, reckons that in 1973 only about 30% of sub-
Saharan countries were “free” or “partly free”. In its latest report the share stands at 59%. That is a big improvement, obviously, but it is down from 71% in 2008. Countries that
are “not free” still outnumber those that are. A big chunk in the middle is made up of flawed and fragile states that are only “partly free”. The people of Africa deserve better.
For democracy to work, winners must not be greedy, losers must accept defeat and both need trusted institutions to act as arbiters and stabilisers. Yet, in many places,

some or all of these elements are missing. The best way for democracy to flourish would be to expand and
strengthen Africa’s emerging middle class . Increasingly connected to the world, Africans
know
better than anyone the shortcomings of their leaders. Take South Africa. Despite its model constitution, vibrant press and diverse economy, it

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has been tarnished under its president, Jacob Zuma. He has hollowed out institutions, among them bodies tasked with fighting corruption. And yet South Africa also demonstrates
the power of voters. In municipal elections this month, the mighty African National Congress lost control of major cities. For the first time, a plausible alternative party of power is

Free societies and free economies reinforce each

emerging in the liberal, business-friendly Democratic Alliance.

other. African countries need to diversify away from dependence on exporting commodities,
which in turn means liberalising markets and bolstering independent institutions . The rest of the world
can help by expanding access to rich-world markets for African goods, particularly in agriculture. To the victor the spoils As well as promoting a middle
class, diversification mitigates the curse of winner-take-all politics . When a country’s wealth is concentrated in natural
resources, controlling the state gives a leader access to the cash needed to maintain power. The problem is aggravated by the
complex, multi-ethnic form of many African states, whose borders may have been created by
colonial whim. Voting patterns often follow tribe or clan rather than class or ideology, so tend to lock in the advantage of one or other group. Losing an election can
mean being cut out of the spoils permanently. Dealing with variegated polities requires doses of decentralisation (as in Kenya), federalism (as in Nigeria) and requirements for
parties or leaders to demonstrate a degree of cross-country or cross-ethnic support. Where democracies are fragile, the two-term rule for heads of government is invaluable, as it
forces change. Mandela set the example by stepping down after just one term. The two-term rule should be enshrined as a norm by Africa’s regional bodies, just as the African
Union forbids coups. Can the outside world do more than provide African countries with markets? China has become Africa’s biggest trading partner, supplying aid and
investment with few or no strings attached in terms of the rule of law and human rights. But even China, especially now that its own economy has slowed, is not in the business

of propping up bankrupt African autocrats. This means that Western influence, though diminished, remains

investment and sympathy in international lending bodies

considerable —for historical reasons, and because many African countries still look to the West for aid,
. With the end of the commodity
boom, growing numbers
of countries face a But the West has flagged in its efforts to promote democracy balance-
of-payments crisis. Any fresh loans should
be conditional on

strengthening independent institutions. , especially in places, such as around the Horn of Africa and the Sahel, where the
priority is to defeat jihadists.
That is short-sighted. Decades of counter-terrorism teaches that the best bulwarks against
extremism are states that are prosperous and just. And that is most likely to come about
when rulers serve at the will of their people.

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Backsliding Causes War – 2AC

Backsliding causes war and undermines US influence which de-escalates
conflicts.
Kendall-Taylor, deputy national intelligence officer for Russia and Eurasia at the National
Intelligence Council, 2016
Andrea, “How Democracy’s Decline Would Undermine the International Order” 7/15
https://www.csis.org/analysis/how-democracy%E2%80%99s-decline-would-
undermineinternational-order

there is an emerging consensus in the world of foreign policy: threats to

It is rare that policymakers, analysts, and academics agree. But

the stability of the current international order are rising. The norms institutions that , values, laws, and

have undergirded the international system between nations are being gradually and governed relationships

dismantled . The most discussed sources of this pressure are the ascent of China and other non-Western countries, Russia’s assertive foreign policy, and the diffusion of power from traditional nation-states to nonstate actors, such as

nongovernmental organizations, multinational corporations, and technology-empowered individuals. Largely missing from these discussions, however, is the specter of widespread
democratic decline. Rising challenges to democratic governance across the globe are a major strain on the international
system, but they receive far less attention in discussions of the shifting world order. In the 70 years since the end of World War II, the United States has fostered a global
order dominated by states that are liberal, capitalist, and democratic . The United States has promoted the spread of democracy to strengthen global norms and rules that constitute

However, despite the steady rise of democracy

the foundation of our current international system. over the last 10 since the end of the Cold War,

years we have seen dramatic reversals in respect for democratic principles across the globe. A 2015 Freedom House report stated

that the “acceptance of democracy as the world’s dominant form of government—and of an international system built on democratic ideals—is under greater threat than at any point in the last 25 years.” Although the number of democracies in the world is at an all-

rollback of democracy in a few influential states or even in a number

time high, there are a number of key trends that are working to undermine democracy. The

of less consequential ones would almost certainly accelerate meaningful changes in

important foundation for U.S. cooperation abroad

today’s global order. Democratic decline would weaken U.S. partnerships and erode an
. Research demonstrates that domestic politics are a key
determinant of the international behavior of states democracies are more likely to form . In particular,

alliances and cooperate more fully with other democracies than with autocracies . Similarly,

authoritarian countries have established mechanisms for cooperation and sharing of “worst
practices.” An increase in authoritarian countries would provide a broader platform for , then,

coordination that could enable these countries to overcome their divergent histories, values , and

factors that are frequently cited as obstacles to the formation of a cohesive challenge to
interests—

the U.S.-led international system Recent examples support the empirical data. . Democratic

backsliding in Hungary and led to enhanced relations between

these countries and Russia Egypt’s the hardening of autocracy under Abdel Fattah el-Sisi

have

. Likewise, democratic decline in Bangladesh has led Sheikh Hasina Wazed and her ruling Awami League to seek closer relations with China and Russia, in part to mitigate Western pressure

and bolster the regime’s domestic standing. Although none of these burgeoning relationships has developed into a highly unified partnership, democratic backsliding in these countries has provided a basis for cooperation where it did not previously exist. And while

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further democratic decline could

the United States certainly finds common cause with authoritarian partners on specific issues, the depth and reliability of such cooperation is limited. Consequently,

seriously compromise the United States’ ability to form the kinds of deep partnerships required that will be

to confront today’s increasingly complex challenges . Global issues such as climate change,
migration, and violent extremism demand the
democratic backsliding would put in peril. coordination and cooperation that
Put simply, the United States is a less effective and influential actor if it loses its ability to rely on its partnerships with other democratic nations.

A slide toward authoritarianism could also challenge the

influence in critical international institutions current global order by diluting U.S.
, including the United Nations , the World Bank, and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Democratic decline would weaken
Western

efforts within these institutions to advance issues such as Internet freedom and the responsibility to protect. In the case of Internet governance, for example, Western democracies support an open, largely private, global Internet. Autocracies, in contrast, promote
state control over the Internet, including laws and other mechanisms that facilitate their ability to censor and persecute dissidents. Already many autocracies, including Belarus, China, Iran, and Zimbabwe, have coalesced in the “Likeminded Group of Developing
Countries” within the United Nations to advocate their interests. Within the IMF and World Bank, autocracies—along with other developing nations—seek to water down conditionality or the reforms that lenders require in exchange for financial support. If
successful, diminished conditionality would enfeeble an important incentive for governance reforms. In a more extreme scenario, the rising influence of autocracies could enable these countries to bypass the IMF and World Bank all together. For example, the
Chinese-created Asian Infrastructure and Investment Bank and the BRICS Bank—which includes Russia, China, and an increasingly authoritarian South Africa—provide countries with the potential to bypass existing global financial institutions when it suits their

interests. Authoritarian-led alternatives pose the risk that global economic governance will become fragmented and less effective. Violence and instability would also likely

increase if more democracies give way to autocracy . International relations literature tells
us
that democracies are less likely to fight wars against other democracies suggesting that ,

interstate wars would rise as the number of democracies declines. within countries that Moreover,

are already autocratic, additional movement away from democracy, or an “authoritarian

hardening,” would increase global instability repressive autocracies are the most likely to . Highly

experience state failure, as was the case in the Central African Republic, Libya, Somalia, Syria,
and Yemen . In this way, democratic decline would significantly strain the international order
because
rising levels of instability would exceed the West’s ability to respond to the tremendous
of peacekeeping costs
, humanitarian assistance, and refugee flows. Finally, widespread democratic decline would contribute to rising anti-U.S. sentiment that could fuel a global order that is increasingly antagonistic to the United
States

and its values. Most autocracies are highly suspicious of U.S. intentions and view the creation of an external enemy as an effective means for boosting their own public support. Russian president Vladimir Putin, Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro, and Bolivian
president Evo Morales regularly accuse the United States of fomenting instability and supporting regime change. This vilification of the United States is a convenient way of distracting their publics from regime shortcomings and fostering public support for

strongman tactics. Since 9/11, and particularly in the wake of the Arab Spring, Western enthusiasm for democracy support has waned. Rising levels of instability, including in

Ukraine and the Middle East , fragile governance in Afghanistan and Iraq, and sustained threats from terrorist groups such as
ISIL have increased Western focus on security and stability . U.S. preoccupation with intelligence sharing, basing and overflight rights, along with the perception

that autocracy equates with stability, are trumping democracy and human rights considerations. While rising levels of global instability explain part of Washington’s shift from an historical commitment to democracy, the nature of the policy process itself is a less
appreciated factor. Policy discussions tend to occur on a country-by-country basis—leading to choices that weigh the costs and benefits of democracy support within the confines of a single country. From this perspective, the benefits of counterterrorism cooperation
or access to natural resources are regularly judged to outweigh the perceived costs of supporting human rights. A serious problem arises, however, when this process is replicated across countries. The bilateral focus rarely incorporates the risks to the

Many of the threats to the current global order, such as

U.S.-led global order that arise from widespread democratic decline across multiple countries.

China’s rise or the diffusion of power, are driven by factors that the United States and West
more generally have little leverage to control Democracy is an area where Western influence or . , however,

actions can affect outcomes. Factoring in the risks that arise from a global democratic decline
into policy discussions is a vital step to building a comprehensive approach to
support democracy
. Bringing this perspective to the table may not lead to dramatic shifts in foreign policy, but it would ensure that we are having the right conversation.

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Backsliding guarantees great power war

Azar Gat 11, the Ezer Weizman Professor of National Security at Tel Aviv University, 2011, “The
Changing Character of War,” in The Changing Character of War, ed. Hew Strachan and Sibylle
Scheipers, p. 30-32

Since 1945, the decline of major great power war has deepened further. Nuclear weapons have concentrated the
minds of all concerned wonderfully, but no less important have been the institutionalization of free trade and the closely related process of rapid and sustained
economic growth throughout the capitalist world. The communist bloc did not participate in the system of free trade, but at least initially it too experienced
substantial growth, and, unlike Germany and Japan, it was always sufficiently large and rich in natural resources to maintain an autarky of sorts. With the
Soviet collapse and with the integration of the former communist powers into the global capitalist economy, the prospect of a major war within the developed
world seems to have become very remote indeed. This is one of the main sources for the feeling that war has been transformed: its geopolitical centre of

War now seems to be

gravity has shifted radically. The modernized, economically developed parts of the world constitute a ‘zone of peace’.

confined to the less-developed parts of the globe, the world’s ‘zone of war’, where
countries that have so far failed to embrace modernization and its pacifying spin-
off effects continue to be engaged in wars among themselves, as well as with developed countries.¶ While the trend is
very real, one wonders if the near disappearance of armed conflict
within the remain as stark developed
world is likely to as it has been since the collapse of communism. The
post-Cold War moment may turn out to be a fleeting one. The probability of major wars within
the developed world remains low— because of the factors already mentioned: increasing wealth, economic

openness and interdependence, and nuclear deterrence. But the deep sense of change prevailing since 1989 has been

based on the far more radical notion that the triumph of capitalism also spelled the
irresistible
ultimate victory of democracy; and that in an affluent and democratic world, major conflict no longer needs to be feared or seriously
prepared for. This notion, however, is fast eroding with the return of capitalist non-democratic
great powers that have been absent from the international system
since 1945. Above all,
there is the formerly communist and fast industrializing authoritarian-capitalist China, whose massive growth represents the greatest

change in the global balance of power. Russia, too, is retreating from its postcommunist
liberalism and assuming an increasingly authoritarian character.¶ Authoritarian
capitalism may be more viable than people tend to assume . 8 The communist great powers failed even though
capitalist
they were potentially larger than the democracies, because their economic systems failed them. By contrast, the

authoritarian/totalitarian powers during the first half of the twentieth century, Germany
and Japan, particularly the former, were as efficient economically as, and if anything more successful
militarily than, their democratic counterparts. They were defeated in war mainly because they were too small and
ultimately succumbed to the exceptional continental size of the United States (in alliance with the communist Soviet Union during the Second World War).

new non-democratic powers are both large and capitalist. China in particular is the
However, the

largest player in the international system in terms of population and is showing

spectacular economic growth that within a generation or two is likely to make it a true non-democratic superpower.¶ Although the
return of capitalist non-democratic great powers does not necessarily imply open conflict or war, it might
indicate that the
short-lived and that a universal ‘democratic peace’ may still be far off democratic
hegemony since
the Soviet Union’s collapse could be
. The new capitalist authoritarian powers are deeply integrated into the world economy. They partake of the development-open-trade-capitalist cause of peace,
but not of the liberal democratic cause. Thus, it is crucially important that any protectionist turn in the system is avoided so as to prevent a grab for markets and
raw materials such as that which followed the disastrous slide into imperial protectionism and conflict during the first part of the twentieth century. Of course, the

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openness of the world economy does not depend exclusively on the democracies. In time, China itself might become more protectionist, as it grows wealthier,
its labour costs rise, and its current competitive edge diminishes.¶ With the possible exception of the sore Taiwan problem, China is likely to be less restless
and revisionist than

as
the territorially confined Germany and Japan were. Russia, which is still reeling from having lost an empire, may be more problematic. However,

China grows in power, it is likely to become more assertive, flex its muscles, and
behave like a superpower, even if it does not become particularly aggressive. The democratic and
nondemocratic powers may coexist more or less peacefully, albeit warily, side by side, armed because of
mutual

fear and suspicion, as a result of the so-called ‘security dilemma’, and against worst-case scenarios. But there
is also the prospect of more antagonistic relations, potential and actual
accentuated ideological rivalry,
conflict, intensified arms races, and even new cold wars, with spheres of influence and opposing coalitions. Although great
power
relations will probably vary from those that prevailed during any of the great twentieth-century conflicts, as conditions are never quite the same, they may vary
less than seemed likely only a short while ago.

Disease – 2AC
Democracy is key to prevent and contain disease spread
Ruger, leading scholar of global and domestic health policy and public health, 5
(Jennifer, PhD, Prof of Medical Ethics and Health Policy @ U Penn, “Democracy and health,”
http://qjmed.oxfordjournals.org/content/98/4/299,)
One theory that relates political institutions to human development focuses primarily on democratic principles, such as regular elections, universal suffrage, representation, one
person–one vote, multiparty competition, and civil liberties.16 In this realm of thinking, representative democracy is generally understood to produce competition for popular
support among elites who are trying to maintain or win elected office,17 although some argue that politicians’ responsiveness to citizens’ needs and concerns has waned in some

Democratic institutions might therefore relate to health through, for example, alleviation of social
settings.12

disparities and income inequalities that results from greater political voice and participation.18–20 Improving the
health of the worst-off can in turn improve a country's aggregate performance in health.
Political institutions might also affect health through their general impact on universal health policy issues, such as universal access to high-quality services. In such cases,

political institutions might help create universal health insurance and access programs such as the
British National Health Service or the Canadian Health Insurance System.21–23 By contrast, the absence of representative democracy provides few incentives for political elites

Authoritarian regimes
to compete for votes,24 resulting in less political responsiveness and fewer incentives to spread benefits universally or to the poor.

suppress political competition and tend to have an interest in preventing human

development, because improved health, education, and economic security mobilizes citizens to advocate for greater
participation and more resources. While much can be said about the link between politics and health, this paper examines one aspect of this relationship—the impact of key
democratic principles on health. After presenting a philosophical framework that links democracy and health, it analyses three major public health events in China: the 1958–
1961 famine, the SARS epidemic, and the emerging threat of HIV/AIDS. These three case studies explore the idea that a lack of democratic institutions, especially a free press and
multiparty elections, can have deleterious effects on health. The link between democracy and health can be viewed through a philosophical framework, which sees societal
development as expanding individual freedoms, and focuses on two basic aspects of freedom: opportunity and process.5 The opportunity aspect judges public policy by its
impact on individuals’ substantive freedoms or capabilities: for example, its impact on individuals’ capability to avoid premature mortality, preventable morbidity, or involuntary
starvation.5,7,25–27 The process aspect stipulates that public participation in political decisions and social choice is a constitutive part of public policy. This philosophical
framework focuses on enhancing individuals’ agency or ability to understand and ‘shape their own destiny and help each other.’5 In this paradigm, citizens make their own
decisions as active agents of change, and state actions must be evaluated in terms of their effectiveness in expanding individual freedom. As Amartya Sen has demonstrated,5
such freedom can be realized, in part, through a multiparty democracy, with elections and free media, open public debate and discussion, and guaranteed individual civil and
political rights. In such a framework, health is an intrinsically valued end of development and public policy and is also a means to other valuable ends.6–8,25 The same can be
said of political freedoms. Applying this framework to developing countries reveals widely different political, economic, and social contexts. Analysing public health episodes in
China in historical perspective within this framework reveals a political and cultural history of authoritarianism, and a lack of civil liberties, political rights, and freedom of the
press that have dramatically impacted the population's health. Between 1958 and 1961, one of the largest famines in recorded history killed nearly 30 million people in
China.28–31 This tragedy followed the famous Great Leap Forward, which was initiated, in part, to improve the health of the Chinese people. Many have sought to explain this
paradox and the resulting health disaster. The country's authoritarian and undemocratic political system is considered a leading reason why the government failed to respond
quickly and effectively to public need.28,,29 The Chinese government received little pressure to report the famine, because the absence of an opposition group and the lack of
open journalism created an uninformed public.29 Furthermore, the government did not admit the failure of the Great Leap Forward for several years. This motivated
government leaders to exaggerate crop yields, to give the impression that agricultural and rural economic policies were successful. During the height of the famine, Chinese
authorities noted they had 100 million more metric tons of grain than they actually had.29 This misconception kept Chinese imports of food grains down while food grain exports
peaked. In 1959, China imported about 2000 tons of food grains, compared with 223 000 tons in 1958.29 During the same period, exports of food grains peaked in 1959 at 4.2
million tons, up from 1.9 million tons in 1957 and 2.7 million tons in 1958.29 China's famine was also associated with a decline in food production. The average national grain
output per capita in 1956–1957 was 308 kg, which fell by 17% in 1959 and reached its lowest level—a decline of approximately 30%—in 1960.29 However, the rural population

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suffered much more than the urban population, because the government moved food from rural to urban areas. In one province, grain availability was 288 kg per head in an
urban area but only 122 kg per head in rural areas.29 Additionally, food procurement from rural areas rose from 17% in 1957 to 21% in 1958 and 28% in 1959.29 Thus, people in
rural areas had to part with a larger proportion of their output. The culprit in this case was the political system, as the famine was not made public for three years, and there
were no official policies for responding. The primary feature of the Chinese government, an ‘absence of adversarial politics and open journalism,‘29 contributed to the largest
famine in history. Sen has argued that political freedoms can help prevent major social disasters such as widespread famine because the existence of free, uncensored media
draws attention to social needs and allows government policies to be evaluated openly. Similarly, democratic elections (with a choice of parties) forces the party in power to
justify its policies or reform them in accordance with people's needs. Sen argues that China's inability to prevent the famine of 1958–1961 resulted in part from its lack of a free,
uncensored press and the absence of opposition parties that would have poked holes in the government's propaganda, false reports, and failed reform policies. Instead, the
government continued to pursue a set of harmful policies. A key aspect of this argument is that the lack of a free press actually ‘misled the government itself‘5 because state
policy was dictated by the government's own dogma and by inaccurate reports from local Communist Party officials who were competing for ‘credit in Beijing.‘5 Sen notes that

China's
this campaign of distortion and misinformation led the government to vastly overestimate the country's food supply.5,28,29,,31 More recently,

lack of democratic freedoms made it unable to respond promptly to a new

health crisis: SARS Severe
Acute Respiratory Syndrome (). The government's immediate response to SARS was reminiscent of its reactions to the famine 40 years before. Its first inclination was

to cover up, rather than reveal, both the scope and severity of the disease, thwarting control efforts. For example, the government's censorship of news about the spread
of SARS in Guangdong Province in
was possible
2003, which
because the Communist Party directly controlled the media.
accelerated the spread of the
disease,32,,33
Had citizens been made aware of SARS earlier through

accurate reporting of its prevalence and geographic spread and evidence-based prevention and treatment recommendations, they would have known how to take precautions
and obtain needed care. The government was exceptionally vigilant at first however, about hiding evidence of SARS through heavy-handed propaganda and control of
information. It also threatened citizens with execution and lengthy imprisonment should they become infected with or knowingly spread SARS.34 And there was forceful
suppression of opposition or anti-government sentiment as well as infringements of civil liberties. The Chinese government's pledges of honest reporting of infections and firing of
public officials (e.g. firing both the mayor of Beijing and China's health minister) at first brought hope for real political reform,35 but subsequent efforts fell short of that goal.
Far from acting as an independent and free agent, the Communist Party's newspaper, People's Daily, instead served as a Party instrument by publicly praising government
leadership and strategies and misreporting public opinion. For example, it noted that ‘the people have become more trusting and supportive of the party and government.‘34 An

ironic twist to the SARS story is that China made a successful transition to a more open, internationally connected,
market-oriented economy but failed to capitalize on the simultaneous global movement for

epidemic fatally impacted the rest of the world

democratization . This change exacted a high price from China and the global community because, unlike the 1958–1961 famine, China's SARS
. Consequently, China's failure to contain and effectively address SARS exposed it to

international criticism and provided a strong rationale for sovereign nations and global institutions such as the World Health Organization (WHO) to become more actively involved
in its political economy. Indeed, the ripple effect of the SARS crisis penetrated the international development community itself, forcing WHO to consider reforms that would allow
it to ‘fight future international threats’ more powerfully.36 Thus, while China's handling of SARS has many similarities to the famine of the mid-twentieth century,

China's mismanagement of the outbreak

those similarities remain primarily domestic. In today's more integrated global economy,

impacted the rest of the world as its catastrophic neglect of economic freedom 40 years ago
affected its own people. This time around, however, the international community pressured China to respond, demonstrating that the effects of global
integration can be two-directional. China's handling of the 1958–1961 famine and the SARS epidemic points to a few key lessons that may help China, and the global community,
address future public health threats, particularly the emergence of HIV/AIDS in China. In 2003, an estimated 840 000 individuals in China were living with HIV/AIDS, 80 000 of whom
had AIDS.37 First, while the SARS epidemic exemplified the most authoritarian aspects of the Chinese political system (initial cover-up of the epidemic and massive firing and jailing
of health officials), the experience has led to higher standards of public accountability. For example, the Chinese Ministry of Health has drafted regulations to hold accountable
government officials who cover-up HIV/AIDS.38 To the extent that China can codify (in law), enforce, and apply these regulations to those who have or will cover up the AIDS
epidemic, it will have learned its lessons from SARS and the past famine. Second, China's handling of SARS emphasized that its public-health practices and policies affect the entire
world and therefore provide the rest of the world with a vested interest in cooperating internationally to ensure global health.39 A recent report on HIV/AIDS, for example, argued
that the US should significantly increase its bilateral and multilateral ‘engagement’ with China to pre-empt a generalized epidemic that would have catastrophic global
consequences.40 Indeed, the SARS episode in particular demonstrated weaknesses in ‘China's system for monitoring and responding to infectious disease.‘41 This has

Applying this lesson to the case of

raised global concerns about the ability of the Chinese public health system to monitor emerging diseases.40,,41

HIV/AIDS means that China's public health practices are more vulnerable to public criticism. In
order to obtain funding from the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, for
example, the Chinese government was forced to publicize the spread of HIV through unsafe blood collection

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centres in a number of provinces.42 This public exposure could ultimately lead to impartial investigation of local and state authorities’ involvement in the collection and
transmission of HIV-contaminated blood by, for example, the United Nations (UNAIDS or WHO). The Global Fund application also shed light on how the stigma surrounding HIV/AIDS

This could lead to more rapid

in China has significantly hampered the country's social and political response to the epidemic.42

progress in protecting the rights of, and eliminating prejudice and discrimination practices
against,43 people affected by HIV/AIDS. Third, the SARS and famine case studies demonstrate the
importance of sharing and accessing information, which can be essential for
treating disease. preventing and
Both tragedies tested the Chinese governments’ lack of toleration of public discussion and debate on public health subjects, and the mistake
of

hiding public health failures. In light of these events, the government has learned to treat HIV/AIDS as a major and genuine public health concern that requires a serious,
coordinated response. A recent report on HIV/AIDS in China recommended media and educational campaigns, especially aimed at youth and China's migrant population,40 and a
focus on informed, comprehensive approaches to prevention and treatment.40 A fourth lesson lies in the deleterious social impact of violations in individual rights to freedom of
assembly, association, and expression. The ability to exercise these rights enables citizens to organize interest groups to advocate for rights, respect, and resources. These rights,

coupled with the ability to have free and full access to (and to share) information creates conditions under which effective advocacy can take place. Experience
with the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the US demonstrates, for example, the power of advocacy groups
(people living with HIV/AIDS in particular) in obtaining rights, resources, and

greater dignity. Grassroots organizing by members of civil society (grassroots NGOs, for example) can have a positive effect
on individuals’ health by improving access to, and the quality of, health care and residential services for people living with HIV/AIDS.
Such assistance is critically needed in the fight against HIV/AIDS
in China, especially in the delivery of public health services to poor, rural populations involving both Chinese and foreign NGOs.40 A final key lesson from SARS and the 1958–
1961 famine rests in the absolutely essential role of free, uncensored information, including the ability to voice complaints and opposition to government practices and policies
and to shed light on corruption. The SARS-famine case studies highlight the Chinese government's history of censorship and restrictions on freedom of the press. To combat
HIV/AIDS and prevent it from becoming a full-scale epidemic, the Chinese government must permit both domestic and foreign journalists to report on the disease without any

restrictions. Early indications suggest that the government is taking steps to address these restrictions better. Democratic institutions and practices can
affect human development in multiple ways, including population health and well-being. The
can have deleterious affects on health absence of democracy, in particular,
, as the 1958–1961 Chinese famine and the 2003 SARS outbreak demonstrate. These case
studies

highlight factors that are essential for preventing a full-scale HIV/AIDS epidemic in China: new and better standards of public accountability; an international imperative to

cooperate globally to ensure health; freely

available information,
especially about disease prevention, control, and
treatment; protection of individual rights and freedom of assembly, association and expression; and the ability to voice complaints and opposition. By instituting

these rights in a timely fashion, China may be able to contain the HIV/AIDS epidemic before it loses millions of its citizens to yet another public health tragedy.

Environment – 2AC
Democracy is key to environmental protection and combating climate change
Policardo, Department of Economics, University of Siena, 14
(Laura, “Is Democracy Good for the Environment? Quasi-Experimental Evidence from Regime
Transitions,” http://download.springer.com/static/pdf/487/art%253A10.1007%252Fs10640014-
9870-0.pdf?auth66=1425160461_0d08c5e0152df793998a3e39d2809b6d&ext=.pdf,)

Despite the different views about the effect of democracy on the environmental management, in this paper I show that democracy and
environmental quality are positively correlated . To show that, I use the powerful
approach of ITS design in cointegration
analysis to show that democratic countries and autocratic ones have two different targets of environmental quality, with those for democracy higher

than those for autocracies. Previous

works on democracy and environmental quality were indeed unable
to assert that democracy is really good for the environment because they did not show that
non-democracies are not. Segmented regression analysis of ITS allows not only to see the effect of
democracy through time, but also if this effect differs from the effect of autocracy. The

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weakness of the previous works in this field was therefore that not comparing the results with
those for dictatorships, the positive effect of democracy on the environment might not be due
to democracy per se, but from other effects, like maturation, or technological progress, common to
both regimes. In this panel of 47 transition countries, this approach shows that democratisation is consistently

associated to a reduction of CO2 emissions and PM10 concentrations, but this process may be quite slow because—at least in
the ECM relative to CO2 emissions—it is detectable only in the long run. Due to the fact that democratic institutions tend to be slower than autocratic
ones in taking decisions and acting, in the short run we do not observe a negative effect of democracy on the level of emissions, while the positive
effect of dictatorship is quite consistent. Inequality has two different effects depending on the incumbent regime: in any case it counterbalances the
global effect of the regime. In democracy, increased inequality means that the decisive citizen is poorer and so less willing to pay for environmental
protection. This however assuming perfect democracy only and full participation to the poll. From another point of view, it is reasonable to think that
democratic institutions work worse when inequality is high, due to the scarce participation of the poor to the electoral processes, and therefore
democracies with high income inequality resemble more to a dictatorship than a democracy itself, because decisions are taken by a small (and usually
strongly interested) group of people. Inequality during periods of autocracy, under the assumption that this inequality favors the dictator at the
expense of the rest of the citizens, it may retain the negative effect of the regime since it increases the dictator’s income and so it increases his demand

for environmental quality, which may be

driven by a limited (although high)
opportunity to substitute
is that dictatorships tend to be associated to a worse environment than
environment with private consumption. The overall effect, however,
democracies.

Best studies go NEG

Chen, Center for Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law, 13
(Vincent, “Democracy and the Environment,”
http://cddrl.fsi.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/Vincent_Chen.pdf,)

The relationship between human institutions and the environment it inhabits has long
interested social scientists. This paper asks the question of whether democratic governments bring about better
environmental performance compared to their autocratic counterparts, and if so, what causal mechanisms might explain
relationship.
Using a large-N this

empirical analysis, I observe a positive relationship between democracy and environmental

performance when isolating the effects of other socio-economic measurements such as developmental level, population density, and
industry

structure. Furthermore, governance features associated with democracies are important

conditional factors in realizing the environmental benefits brought about by democracy. In
particular, democracy is most effective in addressing environmental issues with substantial human

health implications because the environmental preferences of the public is more easily
expressed in the political arena of a democratic society.

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Promotion Good – 2AC

Backsliding undermines US hegemony and promotion is key to international US
influence that solves wars
Kendall-Taylor, deputy national intelligence officer for Russia and Eurasia at the National
Intelligence Council, 2016
Andrea, “How Democracy’s Decline Would Undermine the International Order” 7/15
https://www.csis.org/analysis/how-democracy%E2%80%99s-decline-would-
undermineinternational-order

there is an emerging consensus in the world of foreign policy: threats to

It is rare that policymakers, analysts, and academics agree. But

the stability of the current international order are rising. The norms institutions that , values, laws, and

have undergirded the international system between nations are being gradually and governed relationships

dismantled . The most discussed sources of this pressure are the ascent of China and other non-Western countries, Russia’s assertive foreign policy, and the diffusion of power from traditional nation-states to nonstate actors, such as

nongovernmental organizations, multinational corporations, and technology-empowered individuals. Largely missing from these discussions, however, is the specter of widespread
democratic decline. Rising challenges to democratic governance across the globe are a major strain on the international
system, but they receive far less attention in discussions of the shifting world order. In the 70 years since the end of World War II, the United States has fostered a global
order dominated by states that are liberal, capitalist, and democratic . The United States has promoted the spread of democracy to strengthen global norms and rules that constitute

However, despite the steady rise of democracy

the foundation of our current international system. over the last 10 since the end of the Cold War,

years we have seen dramatic reversals in respect for democratic principles across the globe. A 2015 Freedom House report stated

that the “acceptance of democracy as the world’s dominant form of government—and of an international system built on democratic ideals—is under greater threat than at any point in the last 25 years.” Although the number of democracies in the world is at an all-

rollback of democracy in a few influential states or even in a

time high, there are a number of key trends that are working to undermine democracy. The

number of less consequential ones would almost certainly accelerate meaningful changes in

important foundation for U.S. cooperation abroad

today’s global order. Democratic decline would weaken U.S. partnerships and erode an
. Research demonstrates that domestic politics are a key
determinant of the international behavior of states democracies are more likely to form . In particular,

alliances and cooperate more fully with other democracies than with autocracies . Similarly,

authoritarian countries have established mechanisms for cooperation and sharing of “worst
practices.” An increase in authoritarian countries would provide a broader platform for , then,

coordination that could enable these countries to overcome their divergent histories, values , and

factors that are frequently cited as obstacles to the formation of a cohesive challenge to
interests—

the U.S.-led international system Recent examples support the empirical data. . Democratic

backsliding in Hungary and led to enhanced relations between

these countries and Russia Egypt’s the hardening of autocracy under Abdel Fattah el-Sisi

have

. Likewise, democratic decline in Bangladesh has led Sheikh Hasina Wazed and her ruling Awami League to seek closer relations with China and Russia, in part to mitigate Western pressure

and bolster the regime’s domestic standing. Although none of these burgeoning relationships has developed into a highly unified partnership, democratic backsliding in these countries has provided a basis for cooperation where it did not previously exist. And while

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further democratic decline could

the United States certainly finds common cause with authoritarian partners on specific issues, the depth and reliability of such cooperation is limited. Consequently,

seriously compromise the United States’ ability to form the kinds of deep partnerships required that will be

to confront today’s increasingly complex challenges . Global issues such as climate change,
migration, and violent extremism demand the
democratic backsliding would put in peril. coordination and cooperation that
Put simply, the United States is a less effective and influential actor if it loses its ability to rely on its partnerships with other democratic nations.

A slide toward authoritarianism could also challenge the

influence in critical international institutions current global order by diluting U.S.
, including the United Nations , the World Bank, and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Democratic decline would weaken
Western

efforts within these institutions to advance issues such as Internet freedom and the responsibility to protect. In the case of Internet governance, for example, Western democracies support an open, largely private, global Internet. Autocracies, in contrast, promote
state control over the Internet, including laws and other mechanisms that facilitate their ability to censor and persecute dissidents. Already many autocracies, including Belarus, China, Iran, and Zimbabwe, have coalesced in the “Like minded Group of Developing
Countries” within the United Nations to advocate their interests. Within the IMF and World Bank, autocracies—along with other developing nations—seek to water down conditionality or the reforms that lenders require in exchange for financial support. If
successful, diminished conditionality would enfeeble an important incentive for governance reforms. In a more extreme scenario, the rising influence of autocracies could enable these countries to bypass the IMF and World Bank all together. For example, the
Chinese-created Asian Infrastructure and Investment Bank and the BRICS Bank—which includes Russia, China, and an increasingly authoritarian South Africa—provide countries with the potential to bypass existing global financial institutions when it suits their

interests. Authoritarian-led alternatives pose the risk that global economic governance will become fragmented and less effective. Violence and instability would also likely

increase if more democracies give way to autocracy . International relations literature tells
us
that democracies are less likely to fight wars against other democracies suggesting that ,

interstate wars would rise as the number of democracies declines. within countries that Moreover,

are already autocratic, additional movement away from democracy, or an “authoritarian

hardening,” would increase global instability repressive autocracies are the most likely to . Highly

experience state failure, as was the case in the Central African Republic, Libya, Somalia, Syria,
and Yemen . In this way, democratic decline would significantly strain the international order
because
rising levels of instability would exceed the West’s ability to respond to the tremendous
of peacekeeping costs
, humanitarian assistance, and refugee flows. Finally, widespread democratic decline would contribute to rising anti-U.S. sentiment that could fuel a global order that is increasingly antagonistic to the United
States

and its values. Most autocracies are highly suspicious of U.S. intentions and view the creation of an external enemy as an ef fective means for boosting their own public support. Russian president Vladimir Putin, Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro, and Bolivian
president Evo Morales regularly accuse the United States of fomenting instability and supporting regime change. This vilification of the United States is a convenient way of distracting their publics from regime shortcomings and fostering public support for

strongman tactics. Since 9/11, and particularly in the wake of the Arab Spring, Western enthusiasm for democracy support has waned. Rising levels of instability, including in

Ukraine and the Middle East , fragile governance in Afghanistan and Iraq, and sustained threats from terrorist groups such as
ISIL have increased Western focus on security and stability . U.S. preoccupation with intelligence sharing, basing and overflight rights, along with the perception

that autocracy equates with stability, are trumping democracy and human rights considerations. While rising levels of global instability explain part of Washington’s shift from an historical commitment to democracy, the nature of the policy process itself is a less
appreciated factor. Policy discussions tend to occur on a country-by-country basis—leading to choices that weigh the costs and benefits of democracy support within the confines of a single country. From this perspective, the benefits of counterterrorism cooperation
or access to natural resources are regularly judged to outweigh the perceived costs of supporting human rights. A serious problem arises, however, when this process is replicated across countries. The bilateral focus rarely incorporates the risks to the

Many of the threats to the current global order, such as

U.S.-led global order that arise from widespread democratic decline across multiple countries.

China’s rise or the diffusion of power, are driven by factors that the United States and West
more generally have little leverage to control Democracy is an area where Western influence or . , however,

actions can affect outcomes. Factoring in the risks that arise from a global democratic decline
into policy discussions is a vital step to building a comprehensive approach to
support democracy
. Bringing this perspective to the table may not lead to dramatic shifts in foreign policy, but it would ensure that we are having the right conversation.

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Democracy promotion makes hegemony sustainable.

Cohen, fellow at The Century Foundation, 9
(Michael, “Revitalizing U.S. Democracy Promotion: a Comprehensive Plan For Reform,” New
American Foundation,
http://www.newamerica.net/files/nafmigration/Revitalizing_US_Democracy_Promotion.pdf,)

This has hardly been a capricious or ill-conceived policy choice. Democracy has proven to be, as
Winston Churchill famously observed, “the worst form of government except all those other
forms that have been tried.” We know today that democracies are generally more
prosperous , better governed , less likely to wage war against their neighbors , and enjoy
greater
political stability than non-democratic states. Democracy, at its core,
remains the most effective means of holding political serves America’s political, leaders
accountable for their actions and responsive to the needs of their
citizens. The global spread of democracy also

diplomatic, and economic interests . As the political scientists Michael McFaul and
Francis
Fukuyama have noted, “ No country in the world has benefited more from the worldwide

advance of democracy than the United States .”1 Above all, the promotion of democracy
is
consistent with the values that have long underpinned U.S. foreign policy.

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Middle East/Terrorism – 2AC

Demo promo solves middle east war/terrorism
Hamid, deputy director of the Brookings Doha Center, 10
(Shadi, is and a fellow at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution.
Steven Brooke is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Government at the University of Texas.
He was formerly a research associate at the Nixon Center. “Promoting Democracy to Stop
Terror, Revisited,” Hoover Institute, February 1, 2010
http://www.hoover.org/research/promoting-democracy-stop-terror-revisited,)

U.s. democracy promotion in the Middle East has suffered a series of crippling defeats. Despite occasionally paying lip service to the idea, few politicians on either the left or right
appear committed to supporting democratic reform as a central component of American policy in the region. Who can really blame them, given that democracy promotion has
become toxic to a public with little patience left for various “missions” abroad? But as the Obama administration struggles to renew ties with the Muslim world, particularly in
light of the June 2009 Cairo speech, it should resist the urge to abandon its predecessor’s focus on promoting democracy in what remains the most undemocratic region in the

Promoting democratic reform, this time not just with rhetoric but with action, should be given higher priority in the
world.

current administration, even though early indications suggest the opposite may be happening. Despite all its bad press, democracy
the most effective way to undermine terrorism and political
violence in the Middle East promotion remains, in the long run,
. This is not a very popular argument. Indeed, a key feature of the post-Bush debate over democratization is an insistence on

separating support for democracy from any explicit national security rationale. This, however, would be a mistake with troubling consequences for American foreign policy. A
post-Bush reassessment The twilight of the Bush presidency and the start of Obama’s ushered in an expansive discussion over the place of human rights and democracy in
American foreign policy. An emerging consensus suggests that the U.S. approach must be fundamentally reassessed and “repositioned.” This means, in part, a scaling down of
scope and ambition and of avoiding the sweeping Wilsonian tones of recent years. That certainly sounds good. Anything, after all, would be better than the Bush administration’s
disconcerting mix of revolutionary pro-democracy rhetoric with time-honored realist policies of privileging “stable” pro-American dictators. This only managed to wring the worst
out of both approaches. For its part, the Obama administration has made a strategic decision to shift the focus to resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which it sees, correctly,
as a major source of Arab grievance. This, in turn, has led the administration to strengthen ties with autocratic regimes, such as Egypt and Jordan, which it sees as critical to the

, by downgrading support of Middle East

peace process. Some might see such developments as a welcome re-prioritization. However

democracy to one among many policy priorities, we risk returning to a pre-9/11 status quo, where the
promotion of democracy would neither be worn on our sleeve nor trump short-term hard interests. The “transformative” nature of any democracy promotion project would be
replaced by a more sober, targeted focus on providing technical assistance to legislative and judicial branches and strengthening civil society organizations in the region. In many
ways, this would be a welcome change from the ideological overload of the post-9/11 environment. But in other ways, it would not. Those who wish to avoid a piecemeal
approach to reform and revive U.S. efforts to support democracy often come back to invocations of American exceptionalism and the argument that the United States, as the
world’s most powerful nation, has a responsibility to advance the very ideals which animated its founding. These arguments are attractive and admirable, but how durable can
they be when translated into concrete policy initiatives? In the wake of a war ostensibly waged in the name of democracy, can a strategy resting on gauzy moral imperatives
garner bipartisan support and therefore long-term policy stability? In an ideal world, there would not be a need to justify or rationalize supporting democracy abroad; the moral
imperative would be enough. But in the world of politics and decision-making, it rarely is. Democracy and terrorism after 9/11 After the attacks of September 11th, a basic,
intuitive proposition surfaced — that without basic democratic freedoms, citizens lack peaceful, constructive means to express their grievances and are thus more likely to resort
to violence. Accordingly, 9/11 did not happen because the terrorists hated our freedom, but, rather, because the Middle East’s stifling political environment had bred frustration,
anger, and, ultimately, violence. Many in the region saw us as complicit, in large part because we were actively supporting — to the tune of billions of dollars in economic and
military aid — the region’s most repressive regimes. The realization that our longstanding support of dictatorships had backfired, producing a Middle East rife with instability and
political violence, was a sobering one, and grounded the policy debate in a way that has since been lost. The unfolding debate was interesting to watch, if only because it
contradicted the popular perception that Republicans were uninterested in the “root causes” of terrorism. In fact, they were. And their somewhat novel ideas on how to address
them would begin to figure prominently in the rhetoric and policies of the Bush administration. In a landmark speech at the National Endowment for Democracy in November
2003, President Bush argued that “as long as the Middle East remains a place where freedom does not flourish, it will remain a place of stagnation, resentment, and violence
ready for export.” This theme would become the centerpiece of his inaugural and State of the Union addresses in early 2005. In the latter, the president declared that “the best
antidote to radicalism and terror is the tolerance and hope kindled in free societies.” In the summer of 2005, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told a Cairo audience that
“things have changed. We had a very rude awakening on September 11th, when I think we realized that our policies to try and promote what we thought was stability in the
Middle East had actually allowed, underneath, a very malignant, meaning cancerous, form of extremism to grow up underneath because people didn’t have outlets for their
political views.” The aggressive rhetoric was initially supported by the creation of aid programs with strong democracy components such as the Middle East Partnership Initiative
(mepi). But with a deteriorating Iraq, an expansionist Iran, and the electoral success of Islamist parties throughout the region, American enthusiasm for promoting democracy
began to wane. One Egyptian human rights activist despondently told us in the summer of 2006 that Washington’s rhetoric “convinced thousands that the U.S. was serious
about democracy and reform. We also believed this, but we were being deceived.” Perhaps the most disheartening sign of how far the democratic wave receded in the Middle
East came during the 2007 State of the Union address. President Bush singled out “places like Cuba, Belarus, and Burma,” for democracy promotion, all safely away from his
chaotic, failing experiment in the Arab World. It is safe to say that the Bush administration’s project to promote Middle East democracy failed. It failed because it was never
really tried. It is safe to say that the Bush administration’s project to promote Middle East democracy failed. It failed because it was never really tried. With the exception of a
brief period in 2004 and 2005 when significant pressure was put on Arab regimes, democracy promotion was little more than a rhetorical device. But lost in the shuffle is the fact
that one of the strongest rationales for the “freedom agenda” — that the way to defeat terrorism in the long run is by supporting the growth of democratic institutions — hasn’t
necessarily been proven wrong, nor should it be so readily discarded due to its unfortunate association with the wrong methods and messengers. But this is precisely what
seems to have happened. In the Fall 2007 Washington Quarterly, Francis Fukuyama and Michael McFaul argued that “the loudly proclaimed instrumentalization of democracy
promotion in pursuit of U.S. national interests, such as the war on terrorism, taints democracy promotion and makes the United States seem hypocritical when security,
economic, or other concerns trump its interests in democracy, as they inevitably will.” Around the same time, Thomas Carothers, writing in the Washington Post, was more

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explicit in wishing to disassociate supporting democracy from the fight against terror: “Democracy promotion will need to be repositioned in the war on terrorism, away from
the role of rhetorical centerpiece. It’s an appealing notion that democratization will undercut the roots of violent Islamic radicalism. Yet democracy is not an antiterrorist elixir.
At times democratization empowers political moderates over radicals, but it can also have the opposite effect.” Carothers and others are correct that democracy is not, nor has it
ever been, some kind of panacea. To embrace such lofty expectations will only hasten disappointment. Promoting democracy is a difficult business with risks and consequences,
among them the chance that emerging or immature democracies might, in the short-term, experience increased political violence and instability. And lack of democracy cannot
take the blame for those, like the July 7th London bomber Mohammed Siddique Khan, whose paths to terrorism began in the freest nations in the world. As the histories of some

of these jihadists illustrate, powerful cultural and religious forces cannot be ignored. That said, decoupling support for

democracy from the broader effort to combat terrorism and religious extremism in the Middle
East would be a costly strategic misstep. If there is indeed a link between lack of democracy and terrorism — and we will argue that there is —
then the matter of Middle East democracy is more urgent than it would otherwise be . The question of
urgency is not an inconsequential one. Most policymakers and analysts would agree that the region’s democratization should, in theory at least, be a long-term goal. But, if it is only
considered as such, then it will not figure high on the agenda of an administration with a whole host of other problems, both foreign and domestic, to worry about.

However, if the continued dominance of autocratic regimes in the region translates into a greater
likelihood of political violence and terrorism , then it becomes an
immediate threat to regional
stability that the U.S. will need to address sooner rather than later. It is worth emphasizing that democracy promotion does not involve only our relationships with
authoritarian allies. It is worth emphasizing that democracy promotion does not involve only our relationships with authoritarian allies like Egypt, Jordan, or Saudi Arabia. Our
ability and willingness to understand the relationship between autocracy and terror is also intimately tied to future success in Iraq. Drawing on captured documents previously
unavailable to the public, a 2008 study by West Point’s Combating Terrorism Center found that “low levels of civil liberties are a powerful predictor of the national origin of
foreign fighters in Iraq.” Of nearly 600 al Qaeda in Iraq fighters listed in the declassified documents, 41 percent were from Saudi Arabia while 19 percent were of Libyan origin. The
study also notes that “Saudi Arabian jihadis contribute far more money to [al Qaeda in Iraq] than fighters from other countries.” According to the Freedom House index, the Saudi
regime is one of the 17 most repressive governments in the world. Because the kingdom brooks no dissent at home, it has, since the early 1980s, sought to bolster its legitimacy
by encouraging militants to fight abroad in support of various pan-Islamist causes. Since the late 1990s, those militants have tended to target the United States. In

other words, Saudi Arabia’s internal politics can have devastating external consequences. Democratic reform also holds out hope for confronting
other Middle Eastern flashpoints . In recent years, the notion of incorporating violent political actors in nonviolent,
democratic processes has gained some currency, particularly in light of the successful integration of insurgents in Iraq. Meanwhile, in the Palestinian territories, whatever else one
wishes to say about Hamas, the group’s electoral participation since 2006 has coincided with a precipitous drop in the suicide bombings that had long been their hallmark.

Recognizing the relevance of democracy to some of the thorniest Middle Eastern conflicts —
whose effects reverberate to our shores — makes democracy promotion much harder to dismiss as a luxury of idealism and a purely moral, long-
term concern. In short, understanding the interplay between tyranny and terror can allow us to better judge — and, if necessary, elevate — the place of democracy promotion in
the hierarchy of national priorities. When we say we want democracy but do very little about it, our credibility suffers and we are left open to charges of hypocrisy.

Deemphasizing support for democracy, on the other hand, will have significant consequences at a time
when Arabs and Muslims are looking to us for moral leadership and holding out great
expectations for an American president who many continue to see as sympathetic to their
concerns. Obama’s Cairo speech, hailed throughout the Middle East, was a step in the right direction, but disappointment has since grown as the administration has
Dropping democracy down on the agenda would ignore the
failed to follow up with tangible policy changes on the ground.

fact that our ideals coincide with those of the majority of Middle Easterners who are angry at
us not for promoting democracy, but because we do not. When we say we want democracy but do very little about it, our credibility suffers and we
the fight against terror is not simply about
are left open to charges of hypocrisy. This credibility gap should not be dismissed. Ultimately,

“connecting the dots,” improving interagency coordination, and killing terrorists; it is just as
important to have a broader vision that addresses the sources of political violence. Any long-term
strategy must take into account an emerging body of evidence which shows that lack of democracy can be a key

predictor of terrorism, and correlates with it more strongly than other commonly cited factors
like poverty and unemployment . If understood and utilized correctly, democracy promotion can become a key
component of a revitalized counterterrorism strategy that tackles the core problem of
reducing the appeal of violent extremism in Muslim societies. It has the potential to succeed where the more traditional,
hard power components of counterterrorism strategy have failed. The link between lack of democracy and terrorism also has consequences for American domestic politics. It
provides a unifying theme for Democrats and Republicans alike, one that honors our ideals while helping keep us safe and secure. To the extent that politicians have had
difficulty selling democracy promotion to the American people, the “tyranny-terror link” provides a promising narrative for U.S. policy in managing the immense challenges of

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today’s Middle East. Is there a “tyranny-terror link”? The post-9/11 emphasis on democracy promotion as an essential component of counterterrorism did not go unchallenged.
A group of dissenters offered a number of provocative articles arguing the contrary. And as the “freedom agenda” began to stumble, their voices grew more influential. The
most noteworthy of these efforts was F. Gregory Gause’s 2005Foreign Affairs article “Can Democracy Stop Terrorism?” Gause offers what, at first blush, appears a systematic
dismantling of a convenient myth: The numbers published by the U.S. government do not bear out claims of a close link between terrorism and authoritarianism either. Between
2000 and 2003, according to the State Department’s annual “Patterns of Global Terrorism” report, 269 major terrorist incidents around the world occurred in countries classified
as “free” by Freedom House, 119 occurred in “partly free” countries, and 138 occurred in “not free” countries . . . This is not to argue that free countries are more likely to
produce terrorists than other countries. Rather, these numbers simply indicate that there is no relationship between the incidence of terrorism in a given country and the degree
of freedom enjoyed by its citizens. They certainly do not indicate that democracies are substantially less susceptible to terrorism than are other forms of government. Yes, Gause
is correct: There is no relationship between, as he puts it, “the incidence of terrorism in a given country and the degree of freedom enjoyed by its citizens.” But this is the right
answer to the wrong question. It is certainly true that democracies, such as the United States and Britain, are often targets of terrorism. But Gause’s argument tells us nothing
about how, why, and when terrorists resort to violence. The tyranny-terror hypothesis is concerned with which kinds of countries — specifically what regime types —
are more likely to produce terrorists. This requires us to examine individual terrorists’ country of origin, rather than their targets. Other scholars have essentially replicated
Gause’s findings. In a 2006 article in the journal Terrorism and Political Violence, James A. Piazza argues that higher levels of democracy are actually associated with increased
incidence of international terrorism. He comes to this conclusion because, like Gause, he is interested in which states are terrorist targets, not which states produce the terrorists
in the first place. In a later 2008 International Politics article that expands and modifies his arguments, Piazza continues to record terrorist attacks “based on the country of
occurrence, not the nationality or national legal status of the perpetrator.” While this approach may tell us whether democracies are more likely to experience terrorism, it does
not answer the question the tyranny-terror hypothesis seeks to explore. A second concern is that Piazza, like Gause, uses data from the State Department’s Patterns of Global
Terrorism serial publication. There are deficiencies with this data set. Primarily, it tracks only “global terrorism” and therefore tells us nothing about domestic terrorism (e.g., an
Egyptian citizen attacking the Egyptian government). This is not just a casual oversight. Before the rise of al Qaeda, radical Islamist groups were doctrinally committed to
attacking only their own governments. The original objective of most jihadist groups, such as Egypt’s al-Jihad, the Armed Islamic Group (gia) in Algeria, and Juhayman al-Otaibi’s
ragtag group of fighters who took over the Grand Mosque of Mecca in 1979, was to overthrow ruling elites. Before there was the “far enemy” of the United States, there was the
“near enemy,” those regimes seen as traitors to Islam. Before the rise of al Qaeda, radical Islamist groups were doctrinally committed to attacking only their own governments.
In another effort worth noting, published as a 2006 Harvard University working paper, Erica Chenoweth attempts to tackle the terrorism issue. She states in her introduction that
one of her goals “is to contribute to the growing policy literature endorsing democracy as a way to eradicate terrorism. This project is a critique of the latter perspective, offering
some considerations for scholars and policymakers who advocate democratization without taking into account all of its potential ramifications.” But, again, the fact that she is
interested primarily in where terrorists operate, rather than how and why countries produce terrorists in the first place, makes her study, while commendable for other reasons,
less relevant for our purposes. Meanwhile, Michael Freeman, in a thought-provoking 2008 study that appeared in Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, attempts to disaggregate the
effects of democracy on the underlying factors he contends motivate al Qaeda and affiliated networks, one of them being frustration over illegitimate authoritarian regimes. The
article is a step forward in attempting a more focused analysis of the relationship between democracy and global jihadism, but it contains a significant flaw in its rejection of the
tyranny-terror link. Freeman argues that for jihadists, “their own governments are illegitimate because they are insufficiently religious; secular democratic governments would
be even worse.” First of all, with mainstream Islamist parties likely to do well in free elections, democratically elected governments in the Middle East would almost certainly be
more religiously-inclined rather than less. In any case, proponents of a link between autocracy and terror have never argued that progress on political reform will completely
eradicate terrorism. Democracy, whether in its liberal or Islamist manifestations, will not convince al Qaeda to give up arms or channel its efforts into the political process. Those
in the jihadist hardcore can only be defeated through military and law enforcement means. For them, it is too late.

What democracy can do, though, is prevent those most susceptible to extremist recruitment — tens of
millions of frustrated Arabs and Muslims throughout the Middle East — from turning to political violence, by giving them alternative

outlets for peaceful political expression. This recognition is crucial to moving our counterterrorism strategy beyond crisis
management and towards prevention. Polls have consistently shown widespread support for democratic ideals among Muslims worldwide. By choosing to focus specifically on
the motivations of al Qaeda jihadists, Freeman neglects the Muslim population at large. It is true that among most doctrinaire Salafists, democracy is seen as an intrusion by man
into God’s sacred domain. But neither these Salafists, nor al Qaeda, are representative of Islamists, let alone the broader Muslim community. Polls have consistently shown
widespread support for democratic ideals among Muslims worldwide, while popular Islamist groups like the Muslim Brotherhood have, in recent years, publicly committed to
many of the foundational components of democratic life. The 2006 Pew global attitudes survey notes that: There is enduring belief in democracy among Muslim publics, which
contrasts sharply with the skepticism many Westerners express about whether democracy can take root in the Muslim world. Pluralities or majorities in every Muslim country
surveyed say that democracy is not just for the West and can work in their countries. This is America’s audience, not the jihadists who refuse to accept the legitimacy of anything
other than the most restrictive interpretations of Sharia law. In short, although the articles by Gause, Piazza, Chenoweth, and Freeman purport to cast doubt on tyranny-terror
linkages, a close reading reveals flawed methodologies that lead them to fall short in addressing the relationship between autocracy and terrorism. A 2006 paper in the
Economics of National Security by Harvard’s Alberto Abadie attempts to address some of these limitations. He correctly notes that international terrorism represents only a
small fraction of the total amount of terrorist activity. According to the mipt Terrorism Knowledge Base, from 1998 to 2008, only 9.2 percent of recorded terrorist events were
international in nature. Limiting the field to the Middle East reveals a similar percentage of international attacks: 10.1 percent. To help account for this deficiency, Abadie uses a
data set from an international risk agency — the World Market Research Center’s Global Terrorism Index — that has, as Abadie explains, “the advantage of reflecting the total
amount of terrorist risk for every country in the world” by considering a number of factors, including presence, motivation, efficacy, scale, and prevention of terrorism. While
risk ratings do not say much about the perpetrators’ country of origin, the fact that they take into account not only international but also domestic terrorist attacks means they
provide a more balanced sample. For example, if autocracies are more likely to produce terrorists, then we can expect the risk ratings of repressive dictatorships, like those in
Egypt and Saudi Arabia, to be relatively high. Abadie’s findings seem to support the existence of a link between authoritarianism and terrorist activity. He observes that “over
most of the range of the political rights index, lower levels of political
rights are associated with higher levels of terrorism.” No compelling
evidence debunks the tyrannyterror link and, instead, the evidence
A 2005 Freedom House study went further and found
seems to point in the opposite direction.

a strong correlation between autocracy and terrorism, noting that “between 1999 and 2003, 70 percent of all deaths
from

terrorism were caused by terrorists and terrorist groups originating in Not Free societies, while only 8 percent of all fatalities were generated by terrorists and terror movements
with origins in Free societies.” In addition to this quantitative difference, the study noted that terrorists from “not free” societies were even more brutal and their attacks over
twice as lethal as those of their counterparts from “free” societies. In our view, of the recent studies on autocracy-terror linkages, a relatively early 2003 article by Alan Krueger
and Jitka Maleckova stands apart (Krueger builds on the article in his excellent 2007 book What Makes a Terrorist?). The authors employ innovative methods to get around the
data limitations highlighted earlier. Using the descriptions of terrorist attacks in the State Department’s Patterns of Global Terror, they try to determine the perpetrator’s
national origin. For instance, instead of recording the September 11th attacks as occurring in the U.S., they look instead at the nationalities of the 19 hijackers, which for their
purposes, and ours, is the more relevant measure. Like many other scholars, Krueger and Maleckova do not examine domestic terrorism, which is obviously a matter of concern.
However, their study, which explores the effects of several different factors on terrorism including education and poverty, is nearly alone in addressing the implied causal
hypothesis of the tyranny-terror link as it relates to recent developments in the Middle East — that one’s political environment has a bearing on whether he or she will resort to
political violence. Drawing on their results, Krueger and Maleckova conclude that “the only variable that was consistently associated with the number of terrorists was the
Freedom House index of political rights and civil liberties.” In What Makes a Terrorist? Krueger notes the same finding, that “terrorists are more likely to come from countries
that suppress political and civil rights.” Krueger and David Laitin build on this argument in their chapter in Terrorism, Economic Development, and Political Openness(2008), again
observing that “countries that afford a low level of political rights are more likely to be the springboards of terrorism.” These findings suggest that democracy promotion and the

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fight against terror should not be treated as discrete policy concerns. There is still much work to be done. The very nature of autocratic regimes makes gathering data on
domestic terrorist events difficult, because governments have strong inducements to either suppress or exaggerate the incidence of violent opposition in the service of their

political goals. Still, no compelling evidence debunks the tyranny-terror link and, instead, the evidence
seems to point in the opposite direction. A new strategy A multitude of factors — economic, political, cultural, and religious — contribute to
Islamic radicalism and terror. However, one important factor, and one that appears to have a strong empirical basis, is the Middle East’s democracy deficit. Any long-term strategy
to combat terrorism should therefore include a vigorous, sustained effort to support democracy and democrats in a region long debilitated by autocracy. Obviously, this

abandoning such a critical task would mean more of the same — a

is an enormous challenge and should not be taken lightly. However,

Middle East that continues to fester as a source of political instability and religious extremism. And, in today’s world,
such instability, and the violence that so often results, cannot be contained; it will spill over and harm America and its allies. A new
democracy promotion strategy in the Middle East should include a variety of measures, including making aid to autocratic regimes conditional on political and human rights reforms;
elevating democracy as a crucial part of all high-level bilateral discussions with Arab leaders; coming to terms with the inclusion of nonviolent Islamist parties in the political process;
using membership in international organizations as leverage; increasing the budget for programs like the Middle East Partnership Initiative and the Millennium
Challenge Account; deepening cooperation with the European Union to spread responsibility; and sponsoring initiatives that bring together Islamist and secular groups to forge inclusive pro-democracy
platforms. The pace of democratization should take into account local contexts yet must maintain a consistent focus on expanding the rights of citizens, supporting the development of viable
opposition parties, and moving toward free and fair elections. Before moving in such a direction, the idea of Middle East democracy must be rehabilitated in the eyes of policymakers and the public
alike. But before moving in such a direction, the idea of Middle East democracy must be rehabilitated in the eyes of policymakers and the public alike. Absent a bipartisan political commitment, any
new effort will falter. We realize that elevating democracy promotion will mean breaking with the last several decades of U.S. policy, which has relied upon close relationships with Arab regimes at the
expense of Arab publics. But our long-term national security, as well as our broader interests in the region, demand such a reorientation. The first step, however, is to reestablish a consensus here at
home on both the utility and value of democracy promotion. Once that happens, the discussion of how to actually do it can be conducted with greater clarity. If, on the other hand, we choose to
continue along the current path — paying lip service to the importance of democracy abroad but doing increasingly less to actually support it — a great opportunity will be lost. Turning away from the
Arabs and Muslims who overwhelmingly support greater freedom and democracy will rob us of perhaps our strongest weapon in the broader struggle of ideas. For decades, the people of the region
have been denied the ability to chart their own course, ask their own questions, and form their own governments. Lack of democratic outlets has pushed people towards extreme methods of

opposition and made the resort to terrorist acts more likely. Recognizing this is a crucial step toward a sustained effort to

promote Middle East democracy and represents our best chance at a durable and effective
counterterrorism policy that protects our vital interests while remaining true to our ideals.

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Trade – 2AC
Democracy turns trade – reject their studies – they are small-N
Thacker 7 (Strom C. Thacker Boston University Department of International Relations, “Does
Democracy Promote Economic Openness?,”
http://www.bu.edu/sthacker/files/2012/01/DoesDemocracy-Permit-Economic-Openness.pdf,)

This study offers the most comprehensive and historically sensitive test of the relationship
between democracy and economic openness . Previous studies were either of the small-N, case
study variety, or focused typically on a single category of economic openness (e.g., trade, FDI, etc.). Fewer still
have considered democracy as both a contemporary and historical phenomenon. More broadly, this paper’s findings on contemporary levels of democracy
differ from those of others. Some have found no consistent relationship between contemporary levels of democracy and development outcomes, while
finding a robust relationship between development and democratic stock (Gerring et al. 2005, Gerring et al. 2006, Gallagher and
Thacker 2007). In contrast, this paper finds fairly robust relationships for both democracy level and stock, even when controlling for the other. Finally,

many other studies, including many of those associated with this project, offer highly suggestive evidence of a causal
relationship between democracy and development. But many of the causal mechanisms linking
the two together remain fairly theoretically opaque and empirically untested (indeed, many
are unmeasureable and therefore not amenable to empirical testing). Economic openness itself has little or no intrinsic value; its value lies in the

consequential benefits that it produces for society as a whole. 7 If democracy promotes economic openness , that may
be one way in which is promotes the broader social welfare. While I do not argue that economic policies are the
only, or even primary, possible causal link between democracy and development, it is conceivable that they are one manner in which

democracy helps promote development.

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AT: Mansfield/Snyder – 1AR

Their stats are baseless – democratization solves war and risk of lashout is low
Rummel, Professor Emeritus of Political Science, 6
(Rudy, “Does Incomplete Democratization Risk War?,”
https://democraticpeace.wordpress.com/2009/01/07/does-incomplete-democratization-
riskwar/,)
Perhaps you have come across this argument about promoting democracy: “Yes, maybe once countries achieve a liberal (mature, well-established)
democracy, they don’t make war on each other, BUT in the process of democratization, they make more war than do other nations, even more than dictators
against each other.” Therefore, it is sometimes concluded, fostering democracy is a dangerous project.
And this argument is used against our involvement in Iraq. A major source for this assertion is the published research by Jack Snyder and Edward Mansfield
in their book, Electing To Fight: Why Emerging Democracies Go To War (2005). I’m increasingly finding that academics, commentators, and journalist
critical of Bush’s promotion of democratic freedom are supporting their arguments with quotations and “findings” from this book Snyder and
Mansfield’s research is often misconstrued and anyway, their research does not support the
claims made about it. For a most recent example of this misuse, see “Democracy and Violence”. Because of the great importance of this
issue and getting the facts right, I’m editing and reposting my review of the Snyder-Mansfield book. They analyze data for over a century of wars,
18161992, during which they found (dealing with only their composite index of democratization for simplicity here) 90 incomplete transitions to
democracy for 64 nations, and 50 complete transitions for 35 nations. Over this period, there were 79 wars, and for their sample, the probability of a
nation going to war in their sample was .037, very small. Now, using these data, they confirm—that is, further empirically prove— that when
democratized, nations do not make war on each other. This is an easy one, since in their data no two democracies made war on each other. This should
be the highlight of any fair use of the Snyder-Mansfield book, since this confirms what Bush says in support of his Forward Strategy of Freedom:
“democracies don’t make war on each other.” However, this empirical finding does not agree with the biases of those wanting t o use the book against
American involvement in Iraq and fostering freedom, and it is ignored. Second, the authors go though extensive tests to determine whether incomplete
democratized nations were most prone to war. Having done such research myself, I have much respect for the effort, time, and thought they put into
this, and therefore hate to be a spoilsport. However, it is like two neighbors who build a car in their garage. It’s beautiful, with glittering chrome,
comfortable fake leather seats, state of the art dashboard, and a well waxed red paint job. But when they start it up, all the unseen motor will do is put-
put a few times, and stop. Since they are trying to establish whether democratizing nations went to war (1 =
yes, or 0 = no) more than

others, they used logistic regression analysis, but they did not check if the assumptions of their

model were met in order to assess the significance of their regression coefficients (see on the use
of

“p” and significance). They provide no correlations between the independent variables so that one can assess
their multicollinearity (see my Little Primer” on this here, which is as applicable to logistic regression as it is to multiple regression) and
seem
unaware of the problem it creates. They put much emphasis on the significance of their index
of incomplete
the significance of their regression coefficients may be inflated transition, but if their
twelve independent
variables are highly correlated, which I think
they are, then . When they claim that nations
with incomplete democratizations are “roughly four to fifteen times more likely to go to war,” this is probably based on highly biased regression coefficients.
Also, the authors provide no justification for their applying tests of significance to a whole population. If this whole sample is meant to

there is the problem of the number

represent all nations at all time, then it is not random, and its distribution is unknown. Then

of cases for which they calculate their significance. As the number of cases (“N”) increases, smaller
results become significant until what is significant is meaningless (again, see on the use of “p”). For
example, a correlation of .378 is statistically significant for 20 cases, .165 for 100 cases, and .052 for 1,000 cases. Now, square .052, which is .003
rounded off. This says that the two variables only have 0.3% of their variation in common. This is meaningless (would you buy an expensive drug that
had a 3 out of a 1,000 chance it would help you? Only if you had terminal cancer), although some unwary researchers might trumpet such significant
results. This misuse of significance happens all the time, since the idea is that bigger samples are always better. This is only true if one concentrates not

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on significance, but on the percent of variation in common. All this being said, what was the sample size in the democratization study? It was 9,229! And
the gist of their results depends on significance. Then there is the question of efficiency. How well does the logistic regression fit (predict, account for,
explain) wars, if democratization is incomplete? They provide no measure of this. In regular multiple regression, there is the multiple correlation
squared (R^2) which tells us the proportion of variation in the dependent variable accounted for by the regression equation. However, such is
inappropriate for logistic regression. So, there is a “pseudo R^2″ one can calculate, or for the list of wars, one can count the number of nations correctly
placed in the no-war, or war category. The authors do neither. But, there is one thing we can do. The logistic regression comes out with the likelihood
— probability — that war will occur, given the independent variables, among which is incomplete democratization. But this is usually such a small
number in logistic regression that the natural log of the likelihood is given. Now, to get the probability of war from their logistic regression, one takes
the anti-log of the log likelihood, which is e^(log likelihood). I did this for their log likelihood of -1339.96, and it is an infinitesimal number. It is so small
that the google and my Mac calculators could only give it as zero. Just for e^-13, it is 2.26 x 10^-6; for -130 it is 3.5 x 10^-57. That is, the

equations they provide in their book are useless. Then there is their way of measuring war,
which is as yes, or no. And this is a methodological mindset that has led many researchers to
mistakenly conclude that democracies are as warlike as other regimes (see my published article on this here).
It gives the same weight to a war in which a democracy suffers few killed in combat versus a
nondemocracy that has millions killed, e.g., the Boxer Rebellion counted as a war for Britain when
it had 34 killed versus 7.5 million for the Soviets in WWII. One war each. This biases results
against democracies, which by far have the least killed in wars, as they should by democratic peace theory. Rather, it is the number killed in
war that should be counted for each country, and not the number of wars. In sum, the results about the war likeness of democracy in Electing To Fight do
not prove (show, establish, indicate) that incomplete democratization is a danger to peace. The results cannot fairly and objectively be used to argue
against Bush’s foreign policy, BUT ONLY FOR IT.

US policy is based around gradualism – that solves their link arguments

Thomas Carothers, 07 is vice-president for international politics and governance and director
of the Democracy and Rule of Law Project at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace,
“The "Sequencing" Fallacy,” Journal of Democracy 18.1 (2007) 12-27, ava

Associated with the "no-preconditions" enthusiasm of democracy promoters has been a

dominant model of transition featuring a decisive breakthrough in which the old regime
collapses and the country moves very quickly to open national elections, followed by longer-term processes of
state reform and civil society strengthening. Only a minority of countries in the past several decades have closely adhered to this model, however, and they have been (as in

attempted transitions often have led to different

Central Europe) generally well positioned in terms of facilitative factors. Elsewhere,

outcomes, including hybrid polities and even outright reversions to autocracy. As a result, democracy promoters are increasingly seeking
alternative approaches for countries that face complicating conditions. One avenue of this search leads to a more gradualistic
approach to democratization and democracy promotion. Democratic gradualism is different from sequencing. It does
not entail putting off for decades or indefinitely the core element of democratization—the
It involves reaching for the core element now, but doing
development of fair and open processes of political competition and choice.

so in iterative and cumulative ways rather than all at once. Gradualism can take different
forms depending on the context. With respect to societies emerging from violent conflicts , for
example, a valuable debate has emerged among democracy promoters in recent years about the

dangers of "premature elections." Advocates of moving more gradually toward elections in

such contexts are not arguing for indefinite delay pending the creation of deep structural conditions. The idea, rather, is to put
off elections for at most several years to allow in-depth negotiations between contending
political groups, so that the main political forces can get used to dealing with one another peacefully and agree on the rules of the game before potentially divisive
elections are held.15 As the case of South Africa's unhurried approach to elections in the early 1990s demonstrates, citizens eager to have their chance to vote will be willing to

wait if the delay in voting is clearly limited and if it is tied to an inclusive process of building a national consensus. Authoritarian governments that
show some genuine interest in reform, [End Page 25] usually as part of a quest for economic development, often claim that they are

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gradualist democratizers. Such claims are usually false. The brand of pseudodemocratic gradualism that authoritarians tout typically overstates the political impact that economic

democracy promoters
reforms will likely exert, and limits political reforms to very minor steps. In places such as China and parts of the Middle East,

are increasingly seeking a middle path between unrealistic calls for sudden political openings
and excessive praise for minor reforms. This new approach highlights the need for small but
significant steps that create space and mechanisms for true political competition and point the way to an
eventual end of the rulers' monopoly on power. Such steps might include allowing independent civil society organizations that engage in politically related advocacy; permitting
the establishment of political associations or other types of protoparties independent of the ruling party; holding local or provincial elections in which not just independent
candidates but candidates representing these political associations can compete; and tolerating a modicum of open public space in which truly independent media can operate
and criticism of the rulers can find voice. In semiauthoritarian countries, powerholders often abuse the concept of gradualism by claiming that their partial political liberalization is
a necessary halfway house on the way to democracy, when in fact it is a means to avoid altogether the kinds of far-reaching political changes that would threaten

Democracy promoters who are determined to avoid becoming enablers of such

semiauthoritarian rule.

false gradualism should focus on strategies aimed at rendering more meaningful such political
competition as does exist. A list of such strategies would feature the creation of a genuinely
independent system of electoral administration; the legalization of excluded political parties; the reinforcement of those institutions,
the securing of permission for independent citizens'
such as legislatures, in which a degree of real pluralism is already extant;

groups to monitor and criticize elections and other key aspects of the political process; and the
diminution via constitutional reform of those zones of political power that remain exempt
from the competitive process.16 Gradualism is not a magic bullet. It can be easily misused by those who are insincere about democratization. It gives
democracy promoters no great new forms of influence that they can use to enhance their mostly modest role. It does not mean that democracy will never go awry or disappoint. And
it is not universally applicable—there will still be places where pushing for rapid movement toward elections makes sense, and others where no signs of movement toward

political pluralism are detectable at all. But gradualism is a vital additional approach that is being added, and should be
further developed as part of the broader evolution of democracy promotion away from a standard transitional template. The difference between gradualism and sequentialism

Gradualism is a [End Page 26] different way of engaging in

may at first appear subtle or merely semantic. In fact, however, it is fundamental.

or pushing for democratization now, in service of a belief in democratic possibility .

Sequentialism is a method for putting off democratization until some uncertain future time,
rooted in skepticism about democracy's value and chances.

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Answers to Saudi Military Aid Good

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Military Aid Useless – 2AC

Military aid to Saudi Arabia’s useless – doesn’t accomplish anything and every
part of the disad is wrong.
---Can’t solve isis

---Hasn’t resolve any violence in Yemen

---Can’t counter Iran

---Won’t cause a shift to Russia/China

Andrew Miller, and Richard Sokolsky, 2-27-2018, nonresident scholar in Carnegie’s Middle
East Program., a nonresident senior fellow in Carnegie’s Russia and Eurasia Program, "What Has
$49 Billion in Foreign Military Aid Bought Us? Not Much", Carnegie Endowment for International
Peace, https://carnegieendowment.org/2018/02/27/what-has-49-billion-in-foreign-military-
aidbought-us-not-much-pub-75657

Every year around this time, the administration submits its annual
It’s a scene right out of the movie Groundhog Day.

request to Congress to appropriate billions of dollars for America’s allies and partners in the
Middle East to finance their purchase of U.S. military training and equipment. Congress rubber
stamps these requests with little regard for whether this assistance achieves U.S. foreign policy
objectives. It does the same when the executive branch requests congressional approval of arms sales for cold hard cash. Such docility might be good industrial policy—after all, it creates jobs in key
congressional districts, provides corporate welfare for America’s defense companies, and helps maintain the defense industrial base. But it makes for lousy foreign policy. The United States will continue to pour
money down a rat hole until Congress and the executive branch better understand why these problems keep recurring and muster the political will to fix them. Based on our experience in the State Department,
here is our diagnosis of the problem and some remedies for what ails U.S. military assistance in the Middle East. In the U.S. foreign policy toolkit, security assistance and arms transfers have become the

Grant assistance and weapons sales are treated as Swiss Army

instruments of choice for American diplomats and soldiers.

Knives, all-purpose tools appropriate for use in virtually any scenario. According to the
prevailing view in the U.S. government, security assistance works wonders: it builds the
capabilities of partner countries, provides influence over their policies, and guarantees access
to influential institutions and personalities in capitals across the globe. If true, this would
seem to more than justify the $48.7 billion the U.S. has spent on security assistance to the
Middle East over the past decade. In reality, U.S. military assistance promises more than it delivers.
There is scant evidence outside of a few isolated cases that U.S. material support to Middle Eastern
countries has fulfilled any of these purposes. Recipients of U.S. funding and weapons have largely
failed to make major strides in their capabilities and, in some
instances, may have even regressed. Despite $47 billion in U.S. military assistance over 40 years,
the Egyptian military has struggled mightily to contain an ISIS-affiliate numbering no
more than 1,200 militants The Saudis barely used their American-made advanced combat
.

aircraft in the U.S.-led anti-ISIS operation in Syria, and $89 billion in arms sales to the
kingdom over the last 10 years has not prevented Riyadh from getting bogged down in an
. The

increasingly costly quagmire in Yemen with U.S.-supplied weapons U.S. has sold hundreds of

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billions of dollars in military hardware to Persian Gulf countries and yet collectively they are
not capable of defending the free flow of oil from the Gulf against a militarily weaker Iran without U.S.
assistance. Likewise, the track record of using security assistance to increase

U.S. influence in the region is no more encouraging. While recipient countries are happy
to
utter platitudes about increased cooperation, they generally—and successfully—resist Washington’s requests
to modify their policies in exchange for assistance. Ongoing U.S. assistance to Egypt did not
leave Cairo open to American pleas to desist from forcibly dispersing two largely non-violent
sit-ins in the capital, in which over 800 people were massacred. Likewise, U.S. attempts to
explicitly link military assistance and arms sales to a recipient country’s domestic political
behavior have not borne much fruit. For instance, the Obama administration’s suspension of some types of military assistance to Egypt in 2013 did not lead to “credible
progress” toward democratic reforms. Nor did putting a $4 billion arms package for Bahrain on hold yield an improvement in that country’s human rights environment. Importantly, these failures have more to do
with a lack of political will in Washington, in which the U.S. capitulated before its coercive measures could have the desired effect, than any inherent limitation in what withholding weapons shipments can
accomplish. But the frequency with which the United States folds in these standoffs suggests a structural problem in U.S. assistance mechanisms that undermines its efficacy as a tool of influence. U.S.

officials have excellent access in Middle Eastern capitals, but it is hard to attribute this to
military assistance and arms sales. The United States remains a predominant international player and
most countries do not have the luxury of ignoring Washington for long. Pentagon officials
argue that the provision of material support increases their contacts with foreign militaries,
creating opportunities to learn more about partner armed forces. In practice, however,
recipient countries take great precautions to limit and regulate U.S. access to their troops. As
an example, most Egyptian military personnel are prohibited from interacting with U.S.
officials, while a small core of vetted senior officers are entrusted with managing Egypt’s
military relationship with the United States. Under existing conditions, U.S. interests and taxpayers are not
the primary beneficiaries of military assistance and arms sales. Instead, it is U.S. defense
contractors and regional militaries that often prioritize domestic political influence over
operational capabilities. In recent years, the U.S. arms industry has registered record profits, a pattern likely to continue given President Trump’s initiative to expedite government
approval of weapons sales. Indeed, the State Department cleared a record number of arms sales in Fiscal Year 2017 ($75.9 billion). While champions of the U.S. arms industry defend it as an engine of job growth,

Middle Eastern militaries have exploited arms

economists have found that investments in other industries are more efficient job generators. Meanwhile,

sales to buttress their prestige and to support local patronage networks, both of which help to
sustain their dominant position in domestic politics. Egypt’s procurement of over 1,000 M1A1 Abrams tanks, for instance, has less to do with their
military value than with the Egyptian jobs supported by a co-production plant in country. The Egyptian Armed Forces have so far opted not to deploy M1A1s in combat in the restive Sinai Peninsula. In his State of

President Trump endorsed “legislation to help ensure American foreign-assistance

the Union address,

dollars always serve American interests, and only go to America’s friends.” But even when this
assistance goes to America’s friends, it rarely serves American interests . Decisions to sell
weapons to allies, friends, and partners often involve hand-waving and intellectual laziness. It
is unusual when clear objectives with measurable benchmarks of progress are identified for
weapons sales and assistance levels. Instead, proponents of these sales invoke tired bromides
about how assistance will provide access to the recipient’s military leadership or further
cement the bilateral relationship. But access
should not be confused should not be treated as an end in itself with influence—and

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“relationship maintenance” . Washington has become so fixated on doling out billions of dollars for this purpose that it often forgets what this assistance is
for in the first place: securing U.S. interests. More often than not, our allies and client states take the
money and use their weapons in pursuit of policies inimical to U.S. interests or kvetch about
American unreliability. Saudi Arabia, which has used American-supplied weapons to visit ruin
on Yemen and strengthen Jihadist groups there, is a poster child for this phenomenon. So, too,
is the UAE, which is an accomplice in Riyadh’s immoral and strategically disastrous campaign in
Yemen and used American-supplied weapons in Libya in support of a renegade general. A
second and related problem is that the U.S. government does a poor job of holding allies and
clients to account for behavior
that runs counter to American There is no systematic review of what U.S. military assistance
interests.
accomplishes The key questions that rarely get asked ., let alone answered, are what does
the
U.S. want and expect from the assistance we provide and how does this aid help or hurt
America’s ability to achieve these goals? If the U.S. cannot identify actions that the recipient
would not have otherwise taken as a result of this assistance, then it is nothing more than a
welfare program, and has two pernicious effects. First, it encourages “moral hazard”—
recipients to do whatever they want with the assistance without having to fear the
consequences of their actions. Second, it creates “reverse leverage”— Washington bends over
backwards to keep relations smooth and the assistance flowing, rather than leverage the
recipient’s dependence on U.S. military
support and , a legacy of the Middle East peace process political commitments. Both of
these
pathologies are, in part. The Arab countries at peace with Israel (Egypt and Jordan) view their
U.S. military aid packages as an entitlement owed to them in exchange for burying the hatchet with the Jewish state, which supersedes U.S. concerns about military capacity or influence. What Washington gets for
providing this aid is confidence that two of Israel’s neighbors will remain at peace with it. But this is a misrepresentation of history; Washington did not make a formal aid commitment to either country when they
signed peace treaties with Israel. And, most importantly, the future of the peace treaties is no longer dependent on U.S. assistance. Egypt and Jordan find it in their own interests to preserve peace with Israel, with
or without American support. U.S. military assistance in the Middle East (and more broadly) is in need of serious reform. Here are four major innovations to help fix it: Before allocating security assistance,
recipients should first have to demonstrate their commitment to a set of norms, standards, and rules of good security-sector governance. The State Department and Congress should create new mechanisms to
rigorously assess, monitor, and evaluate security assistance against performance benchmarks that are linked to U.S. foreign policy objectives. The sale of weapons should be linked to new training commitments
that the host country would have to fulfill in advance before taking delivery of the weapons and equipment. To demonstrate its commitment to performance and results, all contracts for the supply of weapons
and training should include “sunset” provisions based on mutually agreed upon performance milestones. Most in the American defense establishment would agree in principle that introducing more accountability

for U.S. military assistance and arms sales is a worthy goal. But they would also express concern that the measures we
recommend would prompt Middle Eastern countries to turn to Russia or China for easier
terms . However, for many of our security partners, especially Saudi Arabia and Egypt, integrating
Russian and Chinese weapons into their force structure would create serious operational and
logistical problems . Moreover, neither Moscow nor Beijing offers grant assistance, which
means they are not viable substitutes for countries that depend on U.S. financial help to buy
equipment. Even for countries that use their own money, their strong preference for U.S.

equipment , which they view as both superior to the alternatives and a sign of American
support, suggests they would be willing to submit to more rigorous oversight if
that is the price of obtaining American weapons. U.S. military assistance in the Middle East
could magnify our influence and help build local military forces that reduce the burden on U.S.

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forces. Unfortunately, billions in American taxpayer money have been spent for unclear
purposes without sufficient oversight. By learning from past mistakes and implementing our
recommended reforms, the U.S. government can begin to break this cycle of waste and
missed opportunities.

Military Aid Doesn’t Solve Yemen Instability/Iran – 2AC

US military assistance to Saudi Arabia doesn’t stabilize yemen or deter iran
Jeremy Shapiro, 10-26-2016, Research Director at the European Council on Foreign Relations.
Previously, he was a fellow at the Brookings Institution. Prior to Brookings, he was a member of
the U.S. State Department’s policy planning staff, "What a Real Review of U.S. Military
Assistance to Saudi Arabia Would Say", War on the Rocks,
https://warontherocks.com/2016/10/what-a-real-review-of-u-s-military-assistance-to-
saudiarabia-would-say/

Americans have not paid much attention to the war In Yemen. With all eyes on Syria and the neo-Cold War rivalry there with Russia,
Yemen did not come up at all in the presidential debates. Yet according to UN figures, the war has left 10,000 dead and 900,000 civilians

displaced — and it arguably implicates the United

States even more than the Syrian conflict. has been aided and abetted from the
The Saudi Arabian
beginning by the United States. U.S.-supplied military aircraft intervention in Yemen, which began in
March 2015,

, refueled by U.S. tanker planes and directed by U.S. intelligence assets,

are bombing Yemen almost daily with U.S.-made weapons. America’s responsibility was
brought into stark relief earlier this month, when Saudi planes mistakenly bombed a packed
funeral in the Yemeni capital, killing 140 and wounding over 500 people. It was only the latest in a series of Saudi attacks that have killed civilians, leading U.N.
experts to condemn Saudi actions in Yemen as war crimes. In the aftermath, the White House
announced that U.S military assistance to Saudi Arabia does not amount to a
blank check and that it would begin an immediate “policy review” of this aid The “policy to
Saudi
review” is an old and established Washington technique for avoiding tough decisions.
Arabia.
Faced with a

choice between unpalatable alternatives, the government initiates a review to study the question in depth. The hope is that by the time the review is finished, the political pressure to take action will have passed.

The purpose of a review is often to buy time and create space for an administration to keep
doing what it has been doing, not to create clarity or to change policy. This review of U.S.
military assistance to Saudi Arabia will likely not be an exception to this rule. U.S. officials are
visibly uncomfortable with supporting the Saudi war in Yemen, but the U.S.-Saudi relationship
is still considered a pillar of broader U.S. policy in the Middle East. Plus, the big-dollar value of
arms deals between U.S. firms and the Saudi government means changing U.S. policy would

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be politically difficult. Buying time with a review seems the only option. Saving Time But time is not cheap, particularly for

civilians in Yemen . The problems created by U.S. policy toward Saudi Arabia generally and
this
conflict in particular are not new. We don’t really need a lengthy review to understand the tough choices involved in U.S. military assistance to Saudi Arabia. We can say
already what a serious and sober review would look like. So here is our effort to save the U.S. government some time, even if that is the last thing it wants. A proper review would
begin by acknowledging that the sale of U.S. arms to Saudi Arabia is big business . During the span of the Bush
and Obama administrations, total U.S. arms sales to Saudi Arabia increased by nearly 97 percent. The U.S. has offered $115 billion in arms sales to Saudi Arabia during the Obama administration. Over the last three
years alone — since the start of negotiations with Iran on its nuclear program — America has sold nearly $36 billion in arms to Saudi Arabia. These sales are certainly in the commercial interests of the United States
and the American firms that manufacture the weapons. They create jobs, generate corporate profits, and improve the U.S. balance of trade. But whether the massive sale of American arms to the Saudis serves U.S.

geopolitical interests is a much more debatable proposition. U.S. military assistance to Saudi Arabia is a mere tool of
American policy toward the Kingdom , not an end in itself . As such, it should serve broader
objectives in the relationship. It should influence the Saudi government to make decisions
that support American interests and priorities in the relationship and in the region more broadly. The key
question is this: What does the United States want from the Saudis, and how does U.S.
military assistance to the Kingdom help or hurt its ability to achieve these goals? For years, the
U.S.-Saudi relationship was underpinned by the deal of U.S. security in exchange for Saudi oil.
But the United States currently buys very little oil from Saudi Arabia and is no longer

dependent on Middle Eastern oil . The increase in U.S. oil and gas production means that
Saudi Arabia is no longer even the key swing producer able
to stabilize prices. Flexible U.S.
producers now fulfill that function, without any government action. While Saudi Arabia is still one of the most important oil
producers and continues exert its influence on the price of oil, changes in the energy market combined with Saudi Arabia’s own financial situation mean the Saudi government is no longer able to use the oil price

as a strategic weapon to either support or oppose U.S. policy. What remains is the idea that U.S. military assistance buys access
to Saudi
decision-making, have often been able to use the American preoccupation with access to
but access is not
the same as influence. The Saudis, in a form of reverse leverage,
pursue more weapons deals . On the evidence, there is no basis for the belief that U.S.
military
assistance has led the Saudis to take actions that they would otherwise not have taken. And in
the case of Yemen, there is clear evidence that this assistance has empowered the Saudis to
take actions that are not in American interests. The Saudis see U.S. arms sales to them as a
kind of entitlement, in part because they pay cash for these systems, rather than getting
financial support from the United States. The U.S. government has more or less bought into this Saudi view. As a consequence, the
U.S. government has never given the Saudis any reason to believe that they have to work to
earn U.S. military assistance. On the contrary , the Saudis seem to have leveraged America’s
desire to sell arms to secure American assistance in Yemen. A proper review would note that American military
assistance to the Kingdom, just like U.S. military sales more broadly, should be linked to the real military threats
confronting the Saudis. The Kingdom faces

the threats of cyber warfare, terrorist attacks, and the Saudis do not confront a credible threat of a large-scale Iranian missile

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attacks on critical infrastructure. The United States is appropriately

conventional military attack from Iran or any other country. helping the Saudis to defend against these threats. But

With rare exceptions, the United States gives the Saudis what they want

rather than what they need, militarily speaking. Massive American military sales over the years of state-of-the-art armored vehicles, combat aircraft, and sophisticated munitions are of questionable value in
deterring Iran from cyber or missile attacks or in keeping the Persian Gulf open to commerce, especially since the U.S. maintains a sizeable military footprint in Bahrain and the Arabia Sea to prevent interruptions
in the flow of oil. Instead of pouring these weapons into the Kingdom, which diverts billions of dollars from addressing many of the country’s internal woes, the United States should provide less advanced and less
costly intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance platforms, naval mine countermeasures capabilities, and law enforcement assistance. Washington should also look to use military assistance to break down
Saudi resistance to working with partners in the region and developing joint capabilities. Given that Saudi and U.S. views on how to deal with Iran diverge so profoundly, United States should probably reconsider

We have seen the destruction the Saudis have visited

continuing to contribute to Saudi Arabia’s acquisition of a power projection capability.

upon Yemen with critical U.S. military enablers such as aerial refueling and intelligence. Is it
really in U.S. interests to provide the Saudis with more military wherewithal to threaten Iran
or to attack Iran’s military or its proxy forces? It is unnerving to think how the Saudis might
use this capability, judging by the havoc they have wreaked in Yemen . The United States wants Saudi Arabia — and its
Arab friends more broadly — to take greater responsibility for their own security and for regional security. Military assistance can contribute to this goal, but it should be tailored more precisely to supporting a

A Saudi power projection capability carries the risk that the

Saudi regional role that is more closely aligned with U.S. strategic interests.

Kingdom will use this capacity in ways that undercut American interests and priorities. The
United States possesses an interest in promoting a thaw in the Saudi-Iranian relationship, but
the bitter enmity the Saudis exhibit toward Iran implies they do not share this priority . Accordingly,
the United States should act with great restraint in improving the Kingdom’s ability to attack targets in Iran.

AT: Military Assistance K2 US Influence in Saudi Arabia

Military assistance doesn’t increase US leverage in Saudi Arabia
Jeremy Shapiro, 10-26-2016, Research Director at the European Council on Foreign Relations.
Previously, he was a fellow at the Brookings Institution. Prior to Brookings, he was a member of
the U.S. State Department’s policy planning staff, "What a Real Review of U.S. Military
Assistance to Saudi Arabia Would Say", War on the Rocks,
https://warontherocks.com/2016/10/what-a-real-review-of-u-s-military-assistance-to-
saudiarabia-would-say/

U.S.
A New Approach to Supporting the Kingdom Given the above, we see three main takeaways from a hard-headed review of U.S. military assistance to Saudi Arabia. First,

security assistance has bought far less influence over Saudi foreign policy than is commonly
assumed. Whether in Iraq, Syria, Yemen, or elsewhere in the region, the Saudi role in
advancing American interests and priorities has often not been helpful , even though the
Saudi military establishment is almost totally dependent on American weapons , training, and logistics support.
If Washington has tried to leverage this dependence to garner greater Saudi support for
American interests, there’s precious little evidence that it has worked.

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AT: Saudi Arabia Needs the Weapons for Security

US military assistance doesn’t matter for Saudi security
Jeremy Shapiro, 10-26-2016, Research Director at the European Council on Foreign Relations.
Previously, he was a fellow at the Brookings Institution. Prior to Brookings, he was a member of
the U.S. State Department’s policy planning staff, "What a Real Review of U.S. Military
Assistance to Saudi Arabia Would Say", War on the Rocks,
https://warontherocks.com/2016/10/what-a-real-review-of-u-s-military-assistance-to-
saudiarabia-would-say/

Second, over the years, the United States has sold Saudi Arabia too many
sophisticated weapons that it does not need to defend itself against Riyadh has not used
the external threats it faces. these high-end weapons effectively . And
when the Saudis have used them at all, as they are
in Yemen today, they have generally done so against low-end threats and in ways not
congruent with U.S. interests.

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AT: Saudi Will go to Russia/China

They won’t shift to Russia/China
Jeremy Shapiro, 10-26-2016, Research Director at the European Council on Foreign Relations.
Previously, he was a fellow at the Brookings Institution. Prior to Brookings, he was a member of
the U.S. State Department’s policy planning staff, "What a Real Review of U.S. Military
Assistance to Saudi Arabia Would Say", War on the Rocks,
https://warontherocks.com/2016/10/what-a-real-review-of-u-s-military-assistance-to-
saudiarabia-would-say/

It is, of course, possible that the Saudis would turn to Russia or China for arms if U.S. restrictions
become too burdensome. But the Saudi military strongly prefers U.S. weapons for both
political and military reasons . Integrating Russian and Chinese weapons into their force
structure would create serious logistical and operational
problems . Further, Saudi dependence on the U.S. military logistics system will ensure a continued
long-term service and support
contracts with the U.S. defense industry. It would also be imprudent for the United States to continue selling certain weapons systems to the
Saudis solely out of fear of losing business.

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US Military Presence Solves the Impact – 2AC

Even absent military assistance to Saudi Arabia we’d have a massive military
presence in the region – that should solve any of their impacts
Jeremy Shapiro, 10-26-2016, Research Director at the European Council on Foreign Relations.
Previously, he was a fellow at the Brookings Institution. Prior to Brookings, he was a member of
the U.S. State Department’s policy planning staff, "What a Real Review of U.S. Military
Assistance to Saudi Arabia Would Say", War on the Rocks,
https://warontherocks.com/2016/10/what-a-real-review-of-u-s-military-assistance-to-
saudiarabia-would-say/

Massive American military

With rare exceptions, the United States gives the Saudis what they want rather than what they need, militarily speaking.

sales over the years of state-of-the-art armored vehicles, combat aircraft, and sophisticated
munitions are of questionable value in deterring Iran from cyber or missile attacks or in

footprint in Bahrain and the Arabia Sea to prevent interruptions

keeping the Persian Gulf open to commerce , especially since the U.S. maintains a sizeable military
in the flow of oil. Instead of pouring these weapons

into the Kingdom, which diverts billions of dollars from addressing many of the country’s internal woes, the United States should provide less advanced and less costly intelligence,
surveillance, and reconnaissance platforms, naval mine countermeasures capabilities, and law enforcement assistance. Washington should also look to use military assistance to
break down Saudi resistance to working with partners in the region and developing joint capabilities.

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No Middle East War – 2AC

No great power involvement in Middle East war---every external actor will limit
damage from regional instability rather than get involved
Ekaterina Stepanova 16, researcher at the Institute of World Economy and International
Relations, Summer 2016, “Russia in the Middle East: Back to a “Grand Strategy” – or Enforcing
Multilateralism?,” http://www.cairn-int.info/article-E_PE_162_0023--russia-in-the-
middleeast.htm

In contrast to the 20th century and the early years of the 21st century, the regional crisis in the 2010s
developed at a time when, overall, the role and leverage of major powers external to the
Middle East, as either active meddlers or security guarantors in the region, or both, actually declined
rather than increased . The United States serves as the most evident case in point: the “post-
interventionist” US administration has clearly become “tired of the Middle East”, struggling and often failing to keep pace with the dynamically
changing situation and unable to alter or decisively affect the course of events. The same even more
strongly applies to the European powers. In terms of activity and impact, regional actors (Iran, Saudi Arabia, Qatar,
UAE and Turkey) increasingly appeared to outplay external powers and influence.
For external powers, however, that did not remove a number of risks and threats connected to, or emanating from, the Middle East.
The increase and diversification of global energy supply and the latest crisis in energy prices made the region less central to the
global economy than it had been in the past. At the same time, the fundamental socio-political, statehood and security crisis in the
Middle East brought with it new security concerns and implications. They mostly stemmed from reinforced perceptions about the
long-term nature of regional instability, the continuing potential for further destabilization, and the related consequences and
implications beyond the region, ranging from terrorist connections to migration flows. These challenges affect external powers
unevenly. For instance, the role of the Iraq-Syria area as the main focal point for global terrorism activity and magnet for
transnational flows of violent extremists in the mid-2010s poses a threat to everyone (but mostly to the countries of the region
itself, as well as to those in Europe and Eurasia). In contrast, the avalanche of refugee and migrant flows from the Middle East
primarily targets Europe (rather than North America, Eurasia, or other regions).

Until recently, the main type of response by key (Western) external powers to turbulent developments in
the Middle East, while not amounting to a hands-off approach, boils down to limited containment .
Examples range from limited air strikes against “Islamic State” positions in Iraq and Syria, carried out by the US-led coalition since
2014, to the 2013 deal on Syria’s chemical disarmament co-brokered by the United States and Russia. Not surprisingly, this
limitedcontainment approach has had equally limited results for Syria, Iraq and the region – as well as for the West itself (as shown,
e.g., by the persistent migrant flows and accelerating terrorist attacks in Europe). Despite the growing centrality of
the
Middle East to global politics and security, and its more direct impact on and ties to the West, this damage limitation
course taken by key external actors has not been very different from, e.g., the
approach taken by the United States and its Western allies (and also by Russia and China) to the Afghanistan problem
in recent years.

No Middle East impact

Cook et al., CFR Middle East Studies senior fellow,
(Steven, “Why the Iraq war won't engulf the Mideast”, 6-28,
http://www.iht.com/bin/print.php?id=6383265,)

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Underlying this anxiety was a scenario in which Iraq's sectarian and ethnic violence spills over into neighboring countries, producing conflicts between the major Arab states and Iran as well as Turkey and the
Kurdistan Regional Government. These wars then destabilize the entire region well beyond the current conflict zone, involving heavyweights like Egypt. This is scary stuff indeed, but with the exception of the
conflict between Turkey and the Kurds, the scenario is far from an accurate reflection of the way Middle Eastern leaders view the situation in Iraq and calculate their interests there. It is abundantly clear that
major outside powers like Saudi Arabia, Iran and Turkey are heavily involved in Iraq. These countries have so much at stake in the future of Iraq that it is natural they would seek to influence political developments
in the country. Yet, the Saudis, Iranians, Jordanians, Syrians, and others are very unlikely to go to war either to protect their own sect or ethnic group or to prevent one country from gaining the upper hand in Iraq.

The reasons are fairly straightforward. First, Middle Eastern leaders, like politicians everywhere, are primarily interested in one thing: self-preservation.
Committing forces to Iraq is an inherently risky proposition, which, if the conflict went badly, could threaten domestic political stability. Moreover, most
Arab armies are geared
for sending troops
toward regime protection rather than projecting power and thus
have little capability to

Iraq. Second, there is

cause for concern about the so-called blowback scenario in which jihadis returning from Iraq destabilize their home countries, plunging the region into conflict. Middle Eastern leaders are preparing for this
possibility. Unlike in the 1990s, when Arab fighters in the Afghan jihad against the Soviet Union returned to Algeria, Egypt and Saudi Arabia and became a source of instability, Arab security services are being
vigilant about who is coming in and going from their countries. In the last month, the Saudi government has arrested approximately 200 people suspected of ties with militants. Riyadh is also

there is no precedent for Arab leaders to

building a 700 kilometer wall along part of its frontier with Iraq in order to keep militants out of the kingdom. Finally,

commit forces to conflicts in which they are not directly involved. The Iraqis and the Saudis did send small contingents to fight the
Israelis in 1948 and 1967, but they were either ineffective or never made it. In the 1970s and 1980s, Arab countries other than Syria, which had a compelling

interest in establishing its hegemony over Lebanon, never committed forces either to protect the
Lebanese from the Israelis or from other Lebanese. The civil war in Lebanon was regarded
as someone else's fight. Indeed, this is the way many leaders view the current situation in Iraq. To Cairo, Amman
and Riyadh, the situation in Iraq is worrisome, but in the end it is an Iraqi and American fight . As far as Iranian mullahs are
concerned, they have long preferred to press their interests through proxies as opposed to direct engagement. At a time when Tehran has access and influence over powerful Shiite militias, a massive cross-border

The Middle
incursion is both unlikely and unnecessary. So Iraqis will remain locked in a sectarian and ethnic struggle that outside powers may abet, but will remain within the borders of Iraq.

East is a region both prone and accustomed to civil wars. But given its experience with ambiguous
conflicts, the region has also developed an intuitive ability to contain its civil strife and prevent
local conflicts from enveloping the entire Middle East.

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AT: Terrorism Impact

No uniqueness for a scenario – terrorism has lost
The Spectator, 8-1-2018, "Terrorism isn’t ‘losing’. It has already lost", Spectator,
https://www.spectator.co.uk/2018/08/terrorism-isnt-losing-it-has-already-lost/

By now, the routine is familiar: a lone wolf strikes, roads are sealed off, buildings locked down and a biographical
picture begins to emerge. Often, the perpetrator turns out to be born and bred in Britain. His astonished friends and neighbours say they saw no signs that he had succumbed to
fanaticism. It later emerges that radicalisation happened incredibly quickly — perhaps inspired by online videos — and the terror plan was so low-tech that interception would have been impossible. How, it might
be asked, can any country protect itself against such threats? But Britain has protected itself, both in thwarting such attacks and in blunting their impact. The latest attacker found the House of Commons protected
by barriers. After driving around Westminster for 90 minutes, he drove into one of these barriers, killing no one. Within seconds, he was in handcuffs. It was, of course, a reminder of a vulnerability, the type of
attack that could come from anyone with a car and murderous intent. But it was also a reminder of the professionalism of the police and security services, and the efficacy of the steps taken. Since last year’s attack
in Westminster, 13 Islamist terror plots have been thwarted in the UK. The relative quiet we have seen recently is not because of a lack of jihadists. Instead, it shows the effectiveness of the security services: how a
democracy can respond, successfully, to a terror threat without loss of civil liberties or making citizens feel under siege. Jihadists are now resorting to smaller plots, knowing that larger ones will

Al Qaeda used to publish a digital magazine called Inspire. British spies were
probably be thwarted.

eventually able to hack into it, at one point changing bombmaking instructions into a recipe
for cupcakes. The ability of spies to intercept terror cells led the Islamic State to realise at an
early stage that it would be unable to hatch 9/11-style mass-casualty attacks because
whenever a network of potential jihadists is created in the West, it now stands a high chance

of being intercepted. Last year, Khalid Masood used a car and a knife to take five lives in
Westminster
and injure 50. Tom Hurd, the counter-terrorism chief, has long argued that this — the lone
wolf attack — is the main threat because larger attacks, with hundreds of potential victims,

demonstrably , in Britain and abroad: it can claim lives but it never succeeds in achieving its stated aims
are now normally prevented . It’s not that terrorism is failing. It’s that it has failed,
.

The IRA’s campaign for a united Ireland was an abject failure, after almost a quarter-century
of bomb attacks and 3,600 killed in the Troubles. Al Qaeda’s stated aim was the withdrawal of
American influence from the Middle East, specifically Saudi Arabia. In the end, Osama bin
Laden ended up advising his lieutenants not to target civilians because it was counterproductive .
Che chnya was on course for independence from Russia before its
separatists were blamed for the bombing of two Moscow flats in 1999, which killed hundreds. From that
point on, the Chechen agenda was viewed with the sort of contempt that the Spanish hold for
Basque separatists after the atrocities of ETA. One study of 40 years of terrorism, starting in
1968, found that 96 per cent of such movements failed to achieve their objectives in any way at all. For
attacks using suicide bombs, the failure rate was 100 per cent. Terrorism might be an expression
of rage , but it always serves to harden opposition to the cause. The Islamic State

force of 100,000 fighters has been reduced to a rump

has now gone the way of al Qaeda. It has been forced out of its various strongholds and its
. Three years ago, security officials were braced

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for a spate of terror attacks as an estimated 850 of Islamic State’s British recruits began to
return home. But our security services have risen to the challenge. The nature of their work means that we rarely hear about the
success stories. Ministers, quite understandably, will still always talk up the likelihood of an attack. Vigilance is essential because, as the IRA once put it, terrorists just need be lucky once. But after stepping down
as head of MI6, Sir Richard Dearlove said that the jihadi menace is ‘obviously serious, but containable and ultimately manageable’. There has long been talk of closing Parliament Square to traffic, to improve
security, but it has been resisted by politicians because this would be seen as giving in to jihadists. Instead, security has been stepped up and security barriers erected — which, as we saw this week, were effective.

The greatest resource is the courage of the police who risk their lives guarding the public; one gave his life last year. Such bravery means that our democratic architecture has been able to survive — and the
terrorist aim of creating a climate of fear has failed. It will, of course, never be possible to
prevent attempted attacks. But recent history shows that it is possible to stop terror
succeeding. Democracies tend not to give in to terror.
No means or motive for nuclear terror – their authors are hacks.
Weiss 2015 Leonard, visiting scholar at the Center for International Security and
Cooperation at Stanford University, USA, and a member of the National Advisory Board of
the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, On fear and nuclear terrorism, Bulletin
of the Atomic Scientists 2015, Vol. 71(2) 75–87

There is clearly some risk of nuclear terrorism via theft of weapons, but the risk is low, and a
successful theft of a nuclear weapon would likely require a team of insiders working within
an otherwise highly secure environment. There is also some risk that a nuclear-armed
country might use a terrorist group to launch a nuclear attack on an adversary. This
possibility is also of low probability, because the sponsor country would almost inevitably
risk nuclear annihilation itself. Finally, a terrorist group might try to design and build its
own weapon, possibly with the help of disaffected persons from a weapon state who might provide them with nuclear
know-how and/or materials. Given all the steps needed to achieve a weapon that is workable with
high probability without being discovered and without suffering an accident this scenario is
also fraught with risk for the terrorists. As a result, terrorists are much more likely to try to
achieve their aims using conventional weapons, which are cheaper, safer, and technically
more reliable. Thus, while no one can discount completely the acquisition by a terrorist
group of a nuclear explosive weapon, such an event appears to be of very low probability
over the next decade at least, and can be made still lower using techniques or policies that do not require constitutionally
problematic steps by the federal government or an optional war whose death rate could match or exceed what the terrorists
There is a tendency on the part of security policy advocates to hype security
are capable of.
threats to obtain support for their desired policy outcomes. They are free to do so in a democratic
society, and most come by their advocacy through genuine conviction that a real security threat is receiving insufficient
there is now enough evidence of how such advocacy has been distorted for the
attention. But
purpose of overcoming political opposition to policies stemming from ideology that careful
public exposure and examination of data on claimed threats should be part of any such
debate. Until this happens, the most appropriate attitude toward claimed threats of nuclear
terrorism, especially when accompanied by advocacy of policies intruding on individual freedom, should be one of
skepticism. Interestingly, while all this attention to nuclear terrorism goes on, the United States and other nuclear nations
have no problem promoting the use of nuclear power and national nuclear programs (only for friends, of course) that end up
creating more nuclear materials that can be used for weapons. The use of civilian nuclear programs to disguise national weapon
ambitions has been a hallmark of proliferation history ever since the Atoms for Peace program (Sokolski, 2001), suggesting that
the real nuclear threat resides where it always has resided in national nuclear programs; but placing the threat where it properly
belongs does not carry the public-relations frisson currently attached to the word Òterrorism.Ó

No trump terror retaliation – he’d be risk adverse.

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Miller, Distinguished scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center, 2016

Aaron, “9/11: What Would Trump Do?”
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/03/donald-trump-2016-terrorist-
attackforeign-policy-213784

Meanwhile back on planet earth, Donald Trump as president will confront the same gap between
words and deeds that faced his predecessors and the constraints that impinge on any
president at home and abroad. I fear the

unpredictability of a Trump presidency. (I can barely utter those words in close proximity.)
Still if I had to wager, I’d bet that risk aversion rather than risk readiness in Trump’s
case—as for most bullies, and this one highly
inexperienced in foreign policy— will
prevail in response to an ISIS style Paris or Brussels attack in the United States. I know it’s going to come as
a

shocker, but I’m betting the Trumpian response would be a lot closer to what Barack Obama might do than
Bush 43. We’ve seen that movie before Iraq; Patriot Act; waterboarding, torture; tens of thousands of

ground forces deployed; trillions expended. Outside of the torture he’s endorsed, Trump has opposed wasting money in the

Middle East nation-building; sending large numbers of U.S. troops, etc. I’d expect more air and
missile strikes, maybe more
special operators to Iraq and Syria in a stepped up campaign to deprive ISIS of territory.

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Neg Saudi Arabia

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Saudi Alliance Good DA

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Military Aid to Saudi Good – 1NC

Undermining military aid to Saudi Arabia collapses the overall US-Saudi alliance
and creates multiple scenarios for Mideast instability
James Phillips 10-19-2018 Senior Research Fellow, The Heritage Foundation Full
Investigation Needed Before U.S. Takes Action on the Khashoggi Crisis
https://www.heritage.org/middle-east/commentary/full-investigation-needed-us-takes-
actionthe-khashoggi-crisis
The U.S. Response The Trump administration must make it clear to the Saudis that a failure to come clean on the Khashoggi affair could severely undermine Saudi-American ties.
It should disabuse Riyadh of any notion that the White House is willing or able to protect Saudi Arabia from congressionally-imposed sanctions, if the Saudis continue to stonewall
international efforts to get to the bottom of the matter. In this context, Thursday’s announcement that Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin had cancelled his participation in next
week’s Saudi investment summit is an appropriate and necessary signal. The U.S. cannot turn a blind eye to state-sponsored murder or allow it to pass without consequences. As
a matter of principle, Washington should support free speech, a free press, and respect for the rule of law. It cannot give Saudi Arabia a free pass. If guilt is established, then it
must hold the Saudis accountable. There must be real consequences for such a horrific act. Saudi officials found responsible for criminal acts should be removed from their
positions and prosecuted. But until guilt has been established through a full investigation, it would be premature for U.S. officials to impose punitive measures against Saudi

Washington should not overreact by torpedoing the alliance , which could trigger even
Arabia.

more dangerous actions by Saudi Arabia and play into the hands of U.S.
adversaries, such as Iran, Russia, and China. If proven to have occurred, it is likely the murder
of Khashoggi was motivated by a sense of insecurity and vulnerability. Washington must take
care that its response does not exacerbate that insecurity, leading Riyadh to take further steps
that undermine American interests. In any event, the U.S. should try to insulate vital bilateral
security cooperation from the fallout of the Khashoggi affair. The worst possible outcome
would be a rush to judgement which destroys an important long-term partnership , pushes
Saudi Arabia into the arms of Russia or China, and undermines efforts to contain Iran ,
defeat ISIS , and stabilize the volatile Middle East.
And maintaining military aid is vital to continuing arm sales between the US and
Saudi Arabia
Jeremy Shapiro, 10-26-2016, Research Director at the European Council on Foreign Relations.
Previously, he was a fellow at the Brookings Institution. Prior to Brookings, he was a member of
the U.S. State Department’s policy planning staff, "What a Real Review of U.S. Military
Assistance to Saudi Arabia Would Say", War on the Rocks,
https://warontherocks.com/2016/10/what-a-real-review-of-u-s-military-assistance-to-
saudiarabia-would-say/
A proper review would begin by acknowledging that
the sale of U.S. arms to Saudi Arabia is big business. During the span of the Bush and Obama
administrations, total U.S. arms sales to Saudi Arabia increased by nearly 97 percent. The U.S. has offered
$115 billion in arms sales to Saudi Arabia during the Obama administration. Over the last three years alone — since the start of negotiations with Iran on its nuclear program
— America has sold nearly $36 billion in arms to Saudi Arabia. These sales are certainly in the

,
weapons . They create profits , and improve the U.S. balance of trade
generate
jobs corporate

commercial interests of the United States and the American firms that manufacture the
. But

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whether the massive sale of American arms to the Saudis serves U.S. geopolitical interests is a much more debatable proposition. U.S. military assistance to Saudi Arabia is a mere tool of American policy toward
the Kingdom, not an end in itself. As such, it should serve broader objectives in the relationship. It should influence the Saudi government to make decisions that support American interests and priorities in the
relationship and in the region more broadly. The key question is this: What does the United States want from the Saudis, and how does U.S. military assistance to the Kingdom help or hurt its ability to achieve
these goals? For years, the U.S.-Saudi relationship was underpinned by the deal of U.S. security in exchange for Saudi oil. But the United States currently buys very little oil from Saudi Arabia and is no longer
dependent on Middle Eastern oil. The increase in U.S. oil and gas production means that Saudi Arabia is no longer even the key swing producer able to stabilize prices. Flexible U.S. producers now fulfill that
function, without any government action. While Saudi Arabia is still one of the most important oil producers and continues exert its influence on the price of oil, changes in the energy market combined with Saudi

Arabia’s own financial situation mean the Saudi government is no longer able to use the oil price as a strategic weapon to either support or oppose U.S. policy. What remains is the
idea that U.S. military assistance buys access to Saudi decision-making, but access is not the same as influence. The
Saudis, in a form of reverse leverage, have often been able to use the American preoccupation with access to
. On the evidence, there is no basis for the belief that U.S. military assistance has led the Saudis to take actions that they would otherwise not
pursue more weapons deals have

taken. And in the case of Yemen, there is clear evidence that this assistance has empowered the Saudis to take actions that are not in American
interests.

That is critical to the US defense base – Saudi Arabia is a vital market

Ghoshal 10/15/15 --- Debalina, Research Associate, Delhi Policy Group, “The softening of
Saudi Arabia towards the Iranian nuclear deal would yield positive results in US-Saudi relations”
http://www.turkishweekly.net/2015/10/15/op-ed/the-softening-of-saudi-arabia-towards-
theiranian-nuclear-deal-would-yield-positive-results-in-us-saudi-relations/
Of course, while the Saudi Arabians might have mellowed down when it comes to the nuclear deal, this does not necessarily
mean that they are attempting to improve relations with Iran. Saudi Arabia’s Foreign Minister Adel al Jubeir was quoted as saying
that because the nuclear deal assures that Iran would not have easy access to nuclear weapons, it would enable Saudi
Arabia to focus more intensely on Iran’s “nefarious” activities in the region. Further, he believes that the deal will “contribute to
security and stability”[3] in the region. This softening
of the Saudis towards the nuclear deal can only be a
step forward on the path to renewing relations between Riyadh and Washington. This relation
has been soured not only by the Iranian nuclear deal, but also by the U.S.’s foreign policy on matters pertaining to the Syrian crisis
and the fledgling democratic trajectories ofTunisia and Egypt as well as the inability of the U.S. to check Iranian influence

in Iraq. Renewed Saudi-U.S. relations would bear positive results . Just like Iran, Saudi Arabia has
joined the tates in its fight against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant U nited S (ISIL). Moreover, any
discontent with the U.S. on the part of the Saudis could cost the former an important
defence export market as Saudi Arabia is one of the leading importers of U.S. weapons
.
Moreover, the Saudis also know that the nuclear deal is going to be passed by U.S. Congress. Hence, the only solution is to join
hands with the U.S. to ensure that the verification mechanisms outlined in the agreement are in place. Also, for the U.S.,
gaining the Saudi’s confidence is necessary if it is to deploy a regional Terminal High Altitude Air
Defence (THAAD) system in the GCC countries successfully. Estranged relations with Saudi Arabia
could make this effort to deploy a joint missile defence system a difficult task.

Defense industrial base is key to deterrence – multiple nuke wars.

Helprin 2015 Mark, senior fellow of the Claremont Institute, Indefensible Defense, 6/22/15
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/419604/indefensible-defense-mark-helprin

Continual warfare in the Middle East, a nuclear Iran, electromagnetic-pulse weapons,

emerging pathogens, and terrorism involving weapons of mass destruction variously threaten
the United States, some with catastrophe on a scale we have not experienced since the Civil War.
Nevertheless, these are phenomena that bloom and fade, and that, with redirection and augmentation of resources we possess, we
are equipped to face, given the wit and will to do so. But underlying the surface chaos that dominates the

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news cycle are the currents that lead to world war . In governance by tweet, these are insufficiently addressed
for being insufficiently immediate. And yet, more than anything else, how we approach the strength of the

American military, the nuclear calculus, China, and Russia will determine the security , prosperity,
honor, and at long range even the sovereignty and existence of this country. THE AMERICAN WAY OF WAR Upon our will
to provide for defense, all else rests. Without it, even the most brilliant innovations and trenchant strategies will not
suffice. In one form or another, the American way of war and of the deterrence of war has always been
reliance on surplus. Even as we barely survived the winter of Valley Forge, we enjoyed immense and forgiving strategic
depth, the 3,000-mile barrier of the Atlantic, and the great forests that would later give birth to the Navy. In the Civil War, the
North’s burgeoning industrial and demographic powers meshed with the infancy of America’s technological ascendance to presage
superiority in mass industrial — and then scientific — 20th-century warfare. The way we fight is that we do not stint. Subtract the

monumental preparations, cripple the defense industrial base, and we will fail to deter wars that we
.
will then go on to lose
Maintaining military aid to Saudi Arabia is necessary to
prevent Russia and China from filling in
Natasha Turak, 10-23-2018, CNBC Contributor, "Threats of US sanctions could accelerate a
Saudi shift eastward ", CNBC, https://www.cnbc.com/2018/10/23/threats-of-ussanctions-
could-accelerate-a-saudi-shift-eastward.html

As the fallout over the killing of Saudi journalist and U.S. resident Jamal Khashoggi continues, age-old alliances are

for sanctions on America's number one arms customer

being In contradiction to President Donald Trump, who voiced opposition to

tested. has any
interference in U.S. weapons sales to Saudi , members of Congress openly
Arabia are calling
. German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Sunday announced a hold on

arms sales to the kingdom for the time being, a move lauded by many in the international community. But some now fear that severing arms sales to the
Saudis will simply push them to turn eastward. "If the U.S. and West in general move toward some meaningful sanctions of Saudi Arabia,
we would be joking to imagine that the Saudis would just sit
down and accept it," Ayham Kamel, head of Eurasia Group's Middle East and North Africa practice,
told CNBC's "Squawk Box Europe" Monday. "The

Saudis I think will begin to tilt — they were already doing that beforehand — they'll be doing
I doubt Mr. Putin would've given the
more business with China and Russia. Saudis much trouble with this crisis as Mr. Trump has." Testing ties

Khashoggi, a columnist for the Washington Post and frequent critic of the Saudi royal family, disappeared
after entering the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on October 2. Turkish officials allege he was murdered and dismembered by a Saudi hit squad. After initially insisting that Khashoggi
left the consulate unharmed, the Saudi government last week said that he died in a "fistfight" while in the building, but provided few details and no evidence. Multiple
investigations are underway. The scandal has prompted scores of ministers and CEOs to withdraw from a major international summit being held this week in Riyadh, aimed at
showcasing Saudi Arabia's investment opportunities. But while U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin has pulled out along with heavyweight American CEOs like Jamie Dimon

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and Larry Fink, the heads of Russia's direct investment fund (RDIF) will still be in attendance. An opportunity for Russia and China? Saudi Arabia has already been increasing

In June, Vladimir Putin

business with the Russians and the Chinese.

hosted Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman at the Kremlin, where the two agreed to
"expand cooperation in oil and gas matters" after working together on output deals to
stabilize markets amid fluctuating global crude prices. And October of last year saw the first-ever visit of a Saudi
monarch — King Salman — to Russia, during which a $1 billion joint investment fund was created and 15 cooperation agreements were signed in the areas
of technology, defense and agriculture, including Moscow's readiness to sell Riyadh its S-400 missile defense system. China, meanwhile, is the
kingdom's largest trading partner, with $42 billion in bilateral trade in 2017. Last March, the two signed a raft of deals worth a reported $65 billion
ranging from energy to space in sectors

in yuan instead of dollars as retaliation for potential U.S. sanctions. technology. Some in Riyadh have also
talked of trading oil
But as trade tensions with the U.S. continue to

put strain on China's economy, it is likely to lay low at this stage to avoid further conflict with the U.S. administration. Additionally, China is far from able to match U.S. weapons
production in terms of sophistication and capabilities, defense experts say. Beijing sold just $20 million in arms to the Saudis last year, compared to $3.4 billion in exports from
the U.S., according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.
Maintaining stability Riyadh's increasing engagement with eastern power
this diplomatic crisis could spur its acceleration not necessarily new, but , according to Saman Vakil, a
centers is

research fellow at U.K. think tank

Chatham House and a professor at Johns Hopkins' School of Advanced
International Studies. "In Riyadh, diversification of relationships and not putting all their eggs in Washington's basket has been a longstanding policy," Vakil told
CNBC, describing energy deals with China dating back to the 1990s. "And it could be in their

continued interest, because if there are forthcoming sanctions China's policy of non- from the EU or
the U.S. on human rights issues, obviously

interference would make sense for them, strategically speaking."

If China fills in for the US then it ensures war would occur – creates
miscalculation within the region.
Lin, John Hopkins Center for Transatlantic Relations fellow, 2013
(Christina, “China’s Strategic Shift Toward The Region Of The Four Seas: The Middle Kingdom
Arrives In The Middle East”, 3-18, http://www.rubincenter.org/2013/03/chinas-strategic-
shifttoward-the-region-of-the-four-seas-the-middle-kingdom-arrives-in-the-middle-east/)

China has also embarked on rapid military modernization and enhancing its long-range power
projection capabilities. It is building railway networks connecting Central Asia, the Middle East, and Europe. Beijing is
particularly interested in a high-speed rail that plays a key military transport and logistics role in China’s efforts to project power
across Eurasia. The military has already used the Shanghai-Nanjing express railway to transport troops at speeds of up to 350 km per
hour, touting the practice of employing these dual-use (both commercial and military applications) strategic railways as an ideal way
to project personnel and light equipment in “military operations other than war” (MOOTW) to protect its interests abroad.[31] The
People’s Liberation Army (PLA)’s General Logistics Department (GLD)
is actively participating in the design and
planning of China’s high-speed railway, with military requirements becoming part of the
development process. Indeed, the GLD is looking to implement rapid mobilization and deployment of troops via high-speed
rails once they are completed across
Eurasia.[32] Dubbed the “Iron Silk Road”, in November 2010, China signed
agreements with Iran to connect railways through Central Asia, as well as onto Turkey and

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Europe.[33] It recently inked deals to build Israel’s high-speed railway linking the ports of Ashdod and Eilat, with eventual
connections to Jordan’s Aqaba Port.[34] In its recent meeting with Egypt’s Mursi, China also inked deals to build a high-speed railway
linking Cairo, Alexandria, Luxor, and Hurghada,[35] with a longer-term view to eventually connect Africa with the Middle East via

Egypt. As China’s overseas interests expand in tandem with China ’s rise in power, the Middle Kingdom will become
. The
more assertive in using its military to protect its burgeoning assets abroad
Chinese
military has also changed its strategy from “coastal defense” to “far sea defense,” seeking to
project naval power well beyond its coast , from the oil ports of the Middle East to the shipping
lanes of the Pacific.
Admiral Liu Huaqing, who modernized China’s navy as its commander from 1982-1988, defined the Sino-centric concept of the Near
Sea, as well as the Middle and Far Seas as depicted in the Map 5 below.[36] In an interview with Xinhua in 2010, Rear Adm. Zhang
Huachen, deputy commander of the East Sea Fleet, said, “With
our naval strategy changing now, we are going
from coastal defense to far sea defense.” He added, “With the expansion of the country’s
economic interests, the navy wants to better protect the country’s transportation routes and
the safety of our major sea lanes .”[37] Yin Zhuo, a retired PLAN rear admiral, stated in an interview with
People’s
Daily Online that the PLAN was tasked with two primary missions: the preservation of China’s maritime security (including territorial
integrity) and the protection of China’s burgeoning and far-flung maritime economic interests.[38] Indeed, Chinese naval vessels
have embarked on active diplomacy in the far seas. It conducts regular port calls and “shows of flags” in the Gulf of Aden–where it
conducts anti-piracy missions–as well as in the Mediterranean Sea and the Black Sea–where China has acquired various seaports in
the littorals by helping to bail out the Eurozone. In July and August of 2012, Chinese warships passed through the Suez Canal and
entered the Mediterranean Sea at the same time Russia dispatched its naval flotilla to Tartus in Syria. A website called Turkish Navy
tracked all three ships–the Qingdao destroyer, Yantai frigate, and the Weishan Hu supply ship. However, Weishan Hu disappeared
for a couple of days–with some speculating it was possibly replenishing Russian warships in support of the Asad regime.[39] Weishan
Hu can carry 10,500 tons of fuel, 250 tons of water, and 680 tons of ammunition.[40] Naval vessels can be at sea and resupply one
another undetected. Knowing Russian ships were also active in the Gulf of Aden, some posit that there is a possibility China and
Russia were conducting seaborne supply swaps there, with Russia later transporting supplies to Tartus, Syria.[41] This would not be
the first time China has claimed neutrality while covertly helping a dictator with whom it has lucrative contracts. In September 2011,
it was revealed that China’s state-controlled arms manufacturers offered to sell $200 million of arms to Qadhafi via Algeria and
South Africa. This included rocket launchers, anti-tank missiles, and QW-18–a surface-to-air missile similar to a U.S. Stinger and capable
of bringing down NATO aircrafts. This was in violation of the UN arms embargo, which China supported.[42] Yet others
observe the significance of the Chinese navy’s “show of flags” as deterrence against Western
military intervention in Syria. Writing in The Diplomat, J. Michael Cole argued that “for the first time since
China’s re-emergence as a power to be reckoned with, Western powers are being confronted
with scenarios involving the risks of clashes with Chinese military forces outside the Asian
giant’s backyard.”[43] He further argued that there may be a possibility whereby the People’s Liberation Army Navy
(PLAN) may not directly take part in hostilities, but PLAN or Russian ships could attempt to
create a line at sea to prevent Western ships from approaching Syria to launch military
operations against it, or to prevent an embargo. In the Chinese Communist controlled mouthpiece the Global
Times, an August 2012 article asserted that the Mediterranean needed to become accustomed to China’s naval presence.[44] By
showing its flag west of the Suez, China is signaling its interest as a trading nation in accessing sea-lanes, such as the Strait of
Hormuz, the Bosporus, and Gibraltar.[45] In another paper from the National University of Singapore, Geoff Wade argued that

China’s maritime strategy was not about establishing military bases and territorial control on
foreign soil, but rather using maritime dominance and gunboat diplomacy to establish
economic and political control over ports and shipping lanes.[46] That is, by using a maritime
power’s dominant presence to control economic lifelines of nodal points, networks, ports, and
trade routes, China can thus control trade and wield great power . Wade coins this “proto-maritime

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colonialism,” whereby a dominant maritime power takes control of main port polities along major East-West maritime trade
networks as well as the seas in between, thus gaining economic and political benefits. This is less costly than establishing forward
operating bases for the military, which smacks of occupation and colonialism in some host countries. As such, China has steadily
acquired controlling stakes or equities in the main seaports of container traffic along the rimland of the Eurasia continent, which has
come to be known as China’s “string of pearls” naval strategy. Around the Mediterranean, China is acquiring stakes in shipping and
logistics companies and is expanding ports in Greece (Piraeus Port), France (Port of Marseille Fosx 4XL container terminal), Spain (El
Prat pier in the Barcelona Port), as well as rail, air terminals, and fiber optic networks in Portugal (Huawei and Portugal Telecom) and
Italy (air terminal north of Rome). In the Eastern Mediterranean, the China Harbor Engineering Company is expanding Lebanon’s
Tripoli port. In Israel, it is cooperating with Ashdod port authorities and building a light rail from Tel Aviv to Eilat. It is also connecting
the Eilat port to the Ashdod and Haifa ports in Israel. In Egypt, China’s shipping company COSCO has a 20 percent share in the Danish
Maersk container port in Port Said. At the same time, China is attempting to recoup and renegotiate infrastructure contracts
elsewhere in North Africa following the Arab Spring. Across the Suez Canal in the Red Sea, China is already enlarging Port Sudan, which
gives China the ability to deliver maritime shipments (whether civilian or military) to Sudan, East Africa, and the Horn of Africa region.
Near the Persian Gulf in February 2013, China took operational control of Pakistan’s Gwadar Port from Singapore’s PSA International,
which it also built.[47] However, China still faces obstacles in challenging the
U.S. military and realizing its goal as a dominant
maritime power. The Mediterranean is still dominated by NATO and the U.S. 6th Fleet, and the Gulf of Aden and the Persian
Gulf by U.S. 5th Fleet. In the near-term, China’s navy will show its presence as a new kid on the block in the
far seas, but will be unable to challenge U.S. naval pre-eminence. However, over the longer term, as the
United States and NATO cut back on their defense budgets due to economic woes while China
continues to increase its spending and military modernization, the U.S. naval position may begin
to erode as China becomes a formidable competitor for influence in
power projection in this region . CHINA’S NEW PROACTIVE DIPLOMACY IN THE MIDDLE EAST On August 14,
2012,
Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Wendy Sherman and Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Zhai Jun launched the inaugural
round of the U.S.-China Middle East Dialogue in Beijing. The initiative was driven by China’s increasing activities and assertiveness in
the Middle East.[48] China’s shift in policy away from its traditional “non-intervention” stance toward this region is driven by a
combination of domestic, regional, and international factors. Domestic Driver: Shift in China’s Perception of the Middle East As
stated earlier, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) regime survival is tied to continual economic growth and delivering improving
living standards to the Chinese people. Its “go out” strategy to acquire energy assets abroad since 1993 has driven China to have a
more assertive and interventionist stance in its approach to the Middle East. As its overseas interests continue to expand with
China’s rise, the Chinese government has found that it can no longer strictly adhere to its “non-intervention” stance, but needs to be
more proactive diplomatically, politically, and militarily in order to protect its interests. Since
the 2003 U.S. intervention in
Iraq, China has become more active in pursuing Beijing fears that Washington’s Middle East a
“counter-encirclement strategy” against
perceived U.S. hegemony in the Middle East.[49]
strategy entails advancing the encirclement of China and creating a norm of regime change
against undemocratic states, which would implicitly challenge CCP legitimacy at home .[50] In
2004,
then Chinese Foreign Minister Qian Qichen blasted U.S. foreign policy in an article published in China Daily. He wrote that the United
States has “put forward its ‘Big Middle East’ reform program… [The] U.S. case in Iraq has caused the Muslim world and Arab countries
to believe that the super power already regards them as targets for its ambitious ‘democratic reform program.’”[51] According to a
2004 interview with Ambassador Wu Jianmin, a rising star in China’s diplomatic circle, Chinese foreign policy was transforming from
“Responsive diplomacy” (Fanying shi waijiao) to “Proactive diplomacy” (Zhudong shi waijiao).[52] In 2005, Jin Liangxiang, research
fellow at the Shanghai Institute for International Studies, argued that China was experiencing a new activism and that “the age of
Chinese passivity in the Middle East is over.”[53] He declared, “If U.S. strategic calculations in the Middle East do not take Chinese
interests into account, then they will not reflect reality.”[54] That same year, President Hu Jintao delivered a message to the People’s
Liberation Army (PLA) on the “New Historic Missions” strategy, which underscores the PLA’s role in safeguarding national interest
overseas.[55] There is also a rising tide of domestic nationalism, with China’s own historic narrative
as a victim in the past “century of humiliation” and that the time has come to reassert the
Middle Kingdom’s proper place in the world.[56] This plays well in enhancing the

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CCP’s standing for domestic consumption, especially in view of the upcoming leadership change in the 18th Party Congress in
October 2012, which set the course for China for the next eight years until 2020. Xi-Jinping, the next president to replace Hu Jintao,
is a princeling and a Maoist, placing strong focus on the PLA’s role in foreign policy. Hu, on the other hand, was a Dengist who was
more focused on economic development. As such, with Xi Jinping at the helm of China’s leadership, he will likely steer China’s
foreign policy onto a more active course. Regional Drivers: United States’ Asia Pivot and China’s Fear of Encirclement Chinese leaders
and strategists have often lambasted U.S. strategy of encircling and containing a rising China.[57] China views that its eastern flank is
already surrounded by anti-Chinese alliances forged by the U.S. defense treaties with Japan, South Korea, Australia, the Philippines,
and Thailand, in addition to defense cooperation with Taiwan, Singapore, and Indonesia. With the post September 11 War on
Terrorism and subsequent stationing of U.S./NATO troops in Central Asia and Afghanistan, China is now encircled by a U.S. military
presence to contain its freedom of action. Air Force colonel Dai Xu, a renowned military strategist, wrote in an article, “China is in a
crescent-shaped ring of encirclement. The ring begins in Japan, stretches through nations in the South China Sea to India, and ends
in Afghanistan. Washington’s deployment of anti-missile systems around China’s periphery forms a crescent shaped encirclement”
(See Map 7). As the United States embarks on its pivot to Asia in order to contain China and it partners with Southeast Asian nations
to counter China’s territorial and maritime claims in the South China Sea, Beijing is taking counter-encirclement
steps. China is doing so by forging partnerships with key pivotal countries with anti-Western

. Turkey is especially
sentiments, such as Pakistan, Iran, and Turkey, followed by Egypt
important
given: (1) The combination of its EU/NATO ties with having an Islamist government that is oriented toward the Islamic world; and (2)

having one foot in NATO and another foot in the SCO. As such, it is an
important partnering pole in the left flank
of the Eurasia continent for China to project its influence on and counter-balance the United

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States and the West. The Chinese have always been wary of Western-sponsored revolutions spreading to Central Asia,
because it feared that Xinjiang would follow suit and declare independence from China, just as the Central Asian Republics declared
independence from the Soviet Union. Moreover, for many years, the Turkic Uyghurs in Xinjiang enjoyed the protection and
sympathetic support of their separatist movement in Turkey. As such, China is seeking Turkey’s cooperation and reciprocity in
respecting Xinjiang as China’s territory in exchange for supporting Turkey’s stance on the Kurds in Turkey. The SCO is thus an
effective vehicle through which both could cooperate and expand their influence in Central Asia. International Changes: Arab Spring
Surprise and Uncertainty in Middle East The Arab Spring caught China by surprise, and it suffered great investment losses. These
investment ties involved years of building influence and negotiations with previous regimes. The CCP values stability with
authoritarian regimes for its infrastructure projects in the Middle East, North Africa, and Central Asia. It also fears the West will
encourage pro-Western regime changes that are detrimental to Chinese interests. In addition, by voting for UN Security Council
Resolutions (UNSCRs) and supporting regime change due to human rights abuses, it opens the door for future Western interventions
in China over its own human rights abuses (e.g., Tiannamen Square Massacre, Tibet, Xinjiang, etc.). Libya In the case of Libya, China
perceived that by being complicit with the West via its abstention from UNSCR 1973, it directly contributed to the fall of Qadhafi
with disappointing payoffs. Domestic nationalists criticized the government for “compromising its principles” and “acquiescing to
Western demands,” and in the international arena, neither the West nor the Libyan National Transitional Council (NTC) showed
appreciation for China’s abstention.[58] China lost more than $20 billion worth of investments; had to evacuate 36,000 Chinese
nationals from Libya; and when Beijing urged NTC to protect its oil interests, it was shocked and humiliated by the public
announcement from the Libyan oil company AGOCO that they “don’t have a problem with Western countries, but may have political
issues with Russia and China.”[59] China was unprepared to protect its interests in this scenario. Its perception of gaining nothing
while losing everything by acquiescing to the West thus significantly contributed to its subsequent decision to veto the Syrian
resolution. Syria China perceived it was tricked by Westerners on UNSCR 1973, which NATO exploited to intervene militarily to oust
Qadhafi under the fig leaf of Responsibility to Protect (R2P). Beijing has thus taken a harsh stance in Syria via its UNSC veto.
Professor Yin Gang, a Middle East expert with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said the veto was an effort to stop the UN
from interfering in the domestic affairs of another country. Yin explained, “Beijing’s concern is also of Syria becoming another Libya…
if the UN can do this in Syria, it will do it again to another country in the future, and that is what Chinese leaders are worried
about.”[60] Moreover, Beijing wanted to side with Russia to counterbalance U.S. influence in the region. Professor Xiao Xian, a
leading Middle East expert and vice president of the Chinese Association for Middle East Studies, said, “The only explanation for
China’s move is that Beijing is seeking closer collaboration with Moscow in order to check and balance the U.S.-led Western
alliance’s domination of global affairs.”[61] In Beijing’s cost-benefit analysis, China’s acquiescence to UNSCR 1973, which resulted in
Western military intervention, was a complete loss. According to Yan Xuetong, a prominent Chinese strategist, the West and Arab
states did not appreciate China’s effort on Libya and chastised it for not participating in the military campaign. Yan argues,
“Regardless of how China votes on Syria, the West will always see China as an undemocratic country with a poor human rights
record and the Arab states will always side with the West.”[62] Thus China perceives its veto of the Syria resolution as something
that does not fundamentally cost Beijing anything. However, it had much to gain by saving Moscow from international isolation–the
joint veto was a powerful demonstration of Sino-Russia diplomatic cooperation to maintain a power balance in the Middle East.
More importantly, China fears denial of access to energy sources in regions where Western military interventions prop up
proWestern regimes. China is also changing to a more nuanced and sophisticated strategy of hedging its interests with current
regimes as well as the opposition. The bitter lesson from its belated and ongoing unstable relationship with the Libyan NTC
prompted Beijing to be more proactive in building relations with the Syrian opposition, while simultaneously pursuing a mediation
role inside and outside of Syria.[63] As such, in February 2012, China’s Foreign Ministry conducted shuttle diplomacy and dispatched
senior delegations to Syria, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Iran, Jordan, Israel, and the Palestinian Authority for consultations. It has also
become more assertive militarily, sending Chinese warships to the Mediterranean Sea in a “show of flags,” along with Russian naval
flotilla presence near Syria. With so many overseas interests at stake, China is no longer strictly adhering to its non-interference
stance. Egypt Henry Kissinger said in the Middle East, there could be no war without Egypt and no peace without Syria. Well aware
of this, China is thus courting Egypt, the cultural center of the Arab world and a geostrategic pivot state controlling the Suez Canal
and in close proximity to the Horn of Africa, to further project its influence in the Middle East and Africa. Sino-Egypt ties date back to
the first meeting between Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser and Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai during the 1955 inaugural NAM
meeting in Bandung, Indonesia. China courted Egypt because it was the most populous Arab country, a center of gravity in the Arab
world, and as such backed Egypt’s aspirations to assume a role in representing Africa and the Middle East alongside the five UNSC
members.[64] Egypt is also a leading advocate of greater Sino-Arab cooperation under the auspices of the Arab League as well as
enhancing ties between China and the Africa Union.[65] China also has vast investments in Egypt’s hydrocarbon industry, as well as
construction, telecommunications, and agriculture. Beijing has pursued agreements that enhance China’s direct access to Egyptian
port facilities along the Suez Canal through Hong Kong’s Hutchison Whampoa, Ltd, a firm with close ties to the PLA. It has also taken
advantage of other economic opportunities in the Suez Canal Zone, further consolidating its “proto-maritime colonialism” stance in
controlling and securing influence around the strategic trade and communications choke points across the globe.[66] China and
Egypt have also expanded military cooperation. Significantly, in June 2002, a PLAN fleet representing the North China Sea Fleet
crossed the Suez Canal and docked in the port city of Alexandria during its first around-the-world voyage.[67] In 2005, China’s PLA
front company, National Aero-Technology Import and Export Corporation (CATIC), also partnered with Egypt’s A.O.I. Aircraft to
jointly produce K-8E flight trainers,[68] thus bringing both countries’ defense industries and militaries into a closer relationship.

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According to a study by the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, from 1989-2008, China sold more weapons to Egypt
than Sudan and Zimbabwe (its traditional clients) combined, making Egypt China’s biggest weapons market in Africa.[69] The study
also observed that U.S. military assistance to Egypt freed up cash for Egypt’s government to then purchase additional Chinese arms.
Some analysts are worried that the increased Chinese presence in Egypt, coupled with a Mursi government less loyal to the United
States, would give China access to American military technology.[70] By courting Egypt, China has enhanced its regional influence
and has gained a better position to check U.S. power in a region of vital strategic significance. It is projecting into the part of the
world that was a traditional U.S. sphere of influence, just as it perceives the United States as encroaching on its sphere of influence
and core interests in the Western Pacific and Central Asia. Likewise, Egypt is seeking to diversify away from its dependence on the
United States for military and economic assistance. Mursi hedged his bets by making China its first visit outside of the Middle East,
ahead of the United States. As Saed Lawendy, political expert with the al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies said to
Xinhua, “The president believes the economy is the fuel oil that moves the international political truck forward, for that reason he
headed to China which is the second powerful economy in the world [sic].”[71] IMPLICATIONS FOR THE UNITED STATES IN NEAR
FUTURE AsU.S. influence begins to wane in the Middle East and pivots, or “rebalances,” toward
the Asia Pacific, China is seizing a strategic window of opportunity to fill the growing vacuum
and attempting to shape a post-Arab Spring region that is more hospitable for China’s power
projection capabilities. A rising power with expanding interests,
proactive in the Middle East and North Africa . Beijing also needs continued market access both for extraction
of
strategic mineral resources as well as export markets to fuel its ever-expanding war chest. As such, the Chinese navy has now entered
“NATO Lake” of the Mediterranean Sea to protect its interests. This
is an example of an area outside of the
Asia Pacific where there is a risk of a potential military clash between the United States and
China . In fact, China’s naval ambitions and aircraft carrier even fuelled fear in Great Britain; in the aftermath of Chinese naval
vessels having sailed to the Mediterranean to help evacuate its 36,000 citizens in Libya, a Daily Mail article was entitled
“After Beijing sends a frigate to the Med, a leading author poses a chilling question…how long until a Chinese aircraft carrier sails up
the Thames?”[72] An Expanding Definition of China’s Core Interests Despite its economic rise, China is not liberalizing. As John Lee
from the Hudson Institute argues, the West holds a seductive belief that authoritarian China will be increasingly integrated into a
liberal order and will emerge as a defender of such order. However, China is moving in the opposite direction of what a
“responsible
stakeholder” in a liberal order ought to be doing.[73] Rather, it is wishing
to supplant the U.S.-led post-war
liberal world order of the “Washington Consensus” with its own “Beijing Consensus,” based on
authoritarian rule for economic development.[74] Beijing has its own definition and rule of
the international game. It also has its own historic narrative of payback time as it emerges from its “Century of
Humiliation,” which dictates their current behavior. Already, the South China Sea is witnessing an emboldened China. In July 2012,
China’s State Council approved the establishment of a new national prefecture on Woody Island in the Paracel Islands, which is
disputed territory between Vietnam and China. China’s Central Military Commission announced that it would deploy a garrison of
soldiers to guard the Paracel Islands, announced a new policy of “regular combat-readiness patrols” in the South China Sea, and
began offering oil exploration rights in locations recognized by the international community as within Vietnam’s exclusive economic
zone.[75] Although China established a new military garrison and unilaterally annexed a disputed area, America’s reaction has been
muted. In a recent Wall Street Journal article, Senator James Webb (D-VA) observed that China’s economic power and its assertive
use of its navy and commercial vessels to project influence has changed the dynamics in East Asia. He criticized, “In truth, American
vacillations have for years emboldened China.”[76] He added that East Asian allies were “waiting to see whether America will live up
to its uncomfortable, but necessary, role as the true guarantor of stability in East Asia, or whether the region will again be
dominated by belligerence and intimidation.” Indeed, allies in the Middle East are watching as well. The muted U.S. responses to
China’s clashes with Japan, Vietnam, and the Philippines in the Western Pacific and U.S. inaction toward North Korea’s sinking of
South Korea’s naval vessel Cheonan in 2010, have negative implications for the credibility of the U.S. security umbrella. Israel and
Gulf Allies Watching U.S. Strategy in East Asia, East Asian Allies Watching U.S. Strategy in the Middle East In light of the 2010 North
Korean menace in East Asia, Israel and the Gulf allies were watching the U.S. reaction to an ally under attack, as they faced their own
Iranian menace in West Asia. Emile El-Hokayem, political editor of The National (UAE) and senior fellow at the International Institute
for Strategic Studies (IISS), stated at a July 2010 Wilson Center conference that the Gulf states had their own Taiwan issue. The UAE
has disputes over three islands with Iran (see Map 9), and Hokayem said the Gulf States looked at Taiwan as a litmus test for a U.S.
security guarantee.[77] He observed that the Gulf States saw that North Korea sank the Cheonan and the United States did nothing.
He questioned whether the U.S. would protect its Gulf allies if they would get involved in a situation in which Iran sank a vessel.

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Hokayem said that how the United States treats its East Asian allies has direct relevance for the Gulf States. It is also relevant for
Israel, as the Israeli press kept a close watch on events unfolding on the Korean Peninsula, since Iran emulates North Korea’s
playbook. “Why a brazen N. Korea is Israel’s concern,” “As Iran watches Korea,” and “S. Korea, N. Korea, Israel and Iran” are samples
of press titles at the time.[78] Now, Middle East and East Asian allies are once again watching the U.S. reaction to China’s actions in
the South China Sea, as well as Iran’s belligerence against Israel and Gulf allies in the Middle East. Credibility of U.S. Security

Guarantee and Allied Reassurance The

credibility of the U.S. security guarantee is at a critical crossroads.
The U.S. course of action will have long-lasting ramifications for regional security both in the
Middle East and in East Asia . If United States fails to reassure its allies, there will

increased nuclear proliferation that threatens to destabilize both regions.

be a loss of confidence in U.S. security umbrella . This in turn will lead to an arms race and
Israel is a litmus test of U.S.
credibility as a dependable ally, as allies from both Asia and the Middle East watch. U.S. behavior in the Arab Spring in helping to
oust Mubarak is already viewed as a betrayal and abandonment of a steadfast ally. East Asian allies are also losing confidence in
view of the muted U.S. responses to North Korea’s menace as well as China’s actions in the region. Both regions are at a nuclear
tipping point that will decide to abandon the U.S. security umbrella and embark on a cascade of nuclear proliferation, or retain
confidence in the U.S. security guarantee and remain under its nuclear umbrella. In a 2008 Congressional report entitled “Chain
Reaction: Avoiding a Nuclear Arms Race in the Middle East,” the report concluded that if Iran became nuclear, Egypt, Turkey and
especially Saudi Arabia would likely go nuclear.[79] Egypt until now had two means of deterrence from the nuclear weapons path:
(1) the peace treaty with Israel; and (2) a security partnership with the United States. However, given the new Muslim Brotherhood
leadership that threatens to dissolve the peace treaty and security partnership, Egypt may embark on this path. In 2006, members of
the Brotherhood advocated a nuclear weapons program. Its spokesman Dr. Hamdi Hassan said that Egyptians “are ready to starve”
to obtain a nuclear weapons.[80] Likewise, Turkey under the Islamist AKP leadership is considering Chinese bids to build nuclear
reactors, due to its ability to secure financing without requiring guarantees from the Turkish government.[81] As for Saudi Arabia, it
lacks confidence in the U.S. nuclear umbrella. In the 1980s, it secretly procured 50 to 60 CSS-2 missiles from China that could fit
nuclear warheads, in addition to financing Pakistan’s nuclear weapons program. Former U.S. Ambassador to Saudi Arabia, Chas
Freeman, disclosed that Saudi officials warned him if Iran obtained nuclear weapons, the Saudis would be compelled to acquire their
In face of China’s actions in the Western Pacific and the inability of the
own deterrent stockpile.[82]
international community to prevent a nuclear North Korea, the risk for an East Asian regional
crossover of the nuclear tipping point is much higher . Three U.S. allies have a prior history of
clandestine
nuclear weapons programs (e.g., Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan). In a 2007 CSIS study, the strength of the security alliance was
found to be the overriding factor in a state’s choice to seek nuclear weapons.[83] In the case of Taiwan and South Korea, the
perception of the decreasing U.S. security commitment has led to a corresponding pursuit of clandestine nuclear programs.[84] In
the case of Japan, it considered and rejected the nuclear options four times due to confidence in the U.S. security guarantee: (1) the
1960s due to the 1964 Chinese nuclear test; (2) mid-1970s due to debate on ratifying the NPT; (3) mid-1990s debate on indefinite
extension of NPT; and (4) North Korea nuclear crisis when it conducted nuclear tests in 2006 and 2009.[85] However, under the
Obama administration, the credibility of the U.S. security guarantee has been eroding. The muted
U.S. responses in face of Chinese actions, a nuclear North Korea’s threats to East Asia allies, a nuclearizing Iran’s threats towards
Israel and Gulf allies, is no longer assuring U.S. allies. As
war drums beat in the Middle East, both friends and
foes alike are watching–China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, the Gulf, and East Asian allies. Whether
the United States chooses to stand with Israel or to let Israel stand alone, will warn others of the credibility of the United States as a
guarantor of security and its preponderant power. As Senator Webb penned in the Wall Street Journal, allies are watching to see if
the United States will step up to the plate and defend its status as a security guarantor in face of aggression, or will it finally
relinquish this title and cede it to the Middle Kingdom to confirm its Sino-centric place in the world.\

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Impact Overview – 2NC

1NC Phillips says absent military cooperation between the US and saudia that
containing Iran and solving ISIS becomes impossible –
Iran causes extinction
Avery 13 – (11/6, John Scales, Lektor Emeritus, Associate Professor, at the Department of
Chemistry, University of Copenhagen, Contact Person in Denmark for Pugwash Conferences on
Science and World Affairs and received the Nobel Peace Prize for his work, Member of the
Danish Peace Commission of 1998, former Technical Advisor, World Health Organization,
Regional Office for Europe , former Chairman of the Danish Peace Academy, PhD in Theoretical
Chemistry and MSc in Theoretical Physics, “ An Attack On Iran Could Escalate Into Global
Nuclear War ,” http://www.countercurrents.org/avery061113.htm)

As we approach the 100th anniversary World War I, we should remember that this colossal
disaster escalated uncontrollably from what was intended to be a minor conflict. There is a
danger that an attack on Iran would escalate into a large-scale war in the Middle East, entirely destabilizing a

region that is already deep in problems. The unstable government of Pakistan might be overthrown , and the revolutionary Pakistani government might enter
introducing the war on the

side of Iran, thus

nuclear weapons into the conflict . Russia and China, firm allies of Iran, might also be drawn
into a general war in the Middle East. Since much of the world's oil comes from the region, such a war would certainly cause the price of oil to reach unheard-of heights, with catastrophic effects on

the global economy. In the dangerous situation that could potentially result from an attack on Iran, there is a risk that nuclear weapons would be used, either
intentionally, or by accident or miscalculation. Recent research has shown that besides
making large areas of the world uninhabitable a nuclear war would damage through long-lasting radioactive contamination,

global agriculture to such a extent that a global famine of previously unknown proportions
would result. Thus, nuclear war is the ultimate ecological catastrophe. It could destroy

human civilization and much of the biosphere . To risk such a war would be an unforgivable offense against the lives and future of all the peoples of the world, US citizens

included.

As does ISIS
Muna Al-Fuzai 15, spent six years with Ministry of Defense in Kuwait, former UN Goodwill
Ambassador, noted columnist, a business consultant, a political activist, 11-28-2015, "World
War III," Kuwait Times, http://news.kuwaittimes.net/website/world-war-iii/

Is the world about to change the slogan of the war on terrorism to World War III ? Will we hear the drums of war
again after 70 years of world peace since the last world war? Is it going to reshape the world map? Clearly there are different views and scenarios for the world’s major powers that manage crucial decisions on

how the situation must end or be controlled in the light of the proliferation of terrorist organizations, their branches and agents around the world, all
posing a major threat to everyone. It seems until there is understanding of the beneficiaries of these organizations, the announcement of a new war

is inevitable . Some believe that the shooting down by Turkey of a Russian fighter jet was like pouring oil on fire that created extra tension in the region that may lead to a new war. But I don’t
believe in this view, because Turkish foreign policy has had a fixed principle for centuries, whereas Russian ambitions in the region are the greatest threat to Turkey. So Russia and Turkey are in different camps and
an international consensus broker is essential, of course. The United States of America is playing this role now. Even if we assume that this incident hadn’t occurred, the heated conditions are not going to calm
down nor peace achieved as long as there is almost an international cover for unknown organizations calling themselves Islamic. But the truth of the matter is that the Islamic religion is innocent. And whether

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these militants declare themselves moderate, opposition, extreme or by any other name, they are still eyeing a spot in a rich and strategic area
like Syria or Iraq, which is a real disaster for us in this region. Right now there is a state of global alert
against IS in the wake of the recent Paris attacks and the downing of a Russian passenger aircraft over Sinai.
Turkey seems concerned that the Russian position will increase stiffness in the war on terror, whether it is done with the consent of
the US, Saudi Arabia and other countries or not, especially now that Russia has a strong hand in the region and major allies. So events may evolve in the coming days faster than we expect, especially with the
elimination of large terrorist organizations such as IS and others. This is not a controversial topic, bearing in mind the possibility of all terror groups uniting together. Interests unite enemies. This matter does not

require a lot of intelligence. Every world war needs a conflict somewhere for the interests of greater powers to
create a new world order. And with the large number of terrorist organizations inside Syria, the land is ready . Even
if an alliance is formed now between the great powers to destroy IS, it may result in a conflict between the major powers on

Russia and the United States are holding different views about the way the future of Syria must be shaped and the role of
how to do so. It appears that both

terrorist organizations. It seems clear that Russia finds these organizations a

threat to be eliminated, but the United States’ statements do not seem No country is
agreeable to this scenario, especially with the US election coming soon.

the world , even to faraway countries such as India , Pakistan or the East China Sea

safe today from the possibility of a world war . Any fighting here could spread to other parts of
region, for example,

especially if China
forced to respond , and the entire Pacific region will then fall into a quagmire of chaos conducts
preemptive strikes
on US military installations. The US will be
. Henry

The view of World War III appears on the horizon with its two
Kissinger, former US national security adviser, said in an interview recently: “

ends, which are the United States on the one hand and China, Russia and Iran on the other”. He added that this war will
be a draconian one with one victor – the United States.
global
That was his point of view. But we are no longer in the

pandemonium , I do not think that there will be any victors era of World War I and II, and in light of the overlapping of

ideologies and .

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AT: Middle East War Impact Defense

That would escalate---it’s a tinderbox.
Larry Goodson 18. Professor of Middle East Studies at the U.S. Army War College. 02-02-18.
“Five Enduring Barriers to Peace in the Middle East.” Army War College.
https://warroom.armywarcollege.edu/articles/five-enduring-barriers-to-peace-in-the-
middleeast/

More importantly, America’s position has changed in the world, allowing a resurgent Russia , rising

China , and awakening India to challenge each other and America n hegemony. The Mid
dle
East has become an important arena of their competition , especially because of oil. Half
of
China’s
oil comes out of the Persian Gulf to fuel the economic rise of what is now the world’s largest oil importer. India, the world’s
third-leading oil importer, gets more than half of its oil from the region, and India is also the
world’s leading recipient of labor remittances from overseas workers, primarily from laborers
employed in the Persian Gulf. exporter in the world, Russia The
second-leading oil is availability and pricing interested
in Middle Eastern oil primarily for what its do to the
market for Russian oil . Other Russian interests in the Middle East include arms sales , base
access (its
only bases outside of the traditional Soviet zone are in
a nti- a ccess /a rea- d enial zone in the Black Sea
Syria), and the creation and expansion of
an region. Meanwhile, this is happening as the
global position of the United States has slipped during an Obama Administration that struggled to “lead from
behind” and a Trump Administration marked by erratic swings from foreign policy adventurism to “America First” neo-isolationism.

Powerful nations with competing interests often find that the collision of those interests
leads to war . Having so many great power interests converge in a part of the world that
has
historically been an active arena of conflict is worrisome. Since the late 1970s, the region has
had the highest number of fatalities due to war. Three of the world’s top five countries in
military spending per capita are Middle Eastern (Saudi Arabia is first, Israel is third, and Kuwait is fifth). Middle
Eastern countries have also developed or pursued w eapons of m ass d estruction, with Israel
widely known to have nuclear weapons and a robust delivery capability, while seven Middle
Eastern countries have or have had biological or chemical weapons . Syria, Afghanistan, and Iraq
currently occupy the bottom three spots on the Global Peace Index. As great power competition

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resurfaces and now takes place in a conflict-prone, unstable Middle East , the question seems
not to be if great power conflict will occur, but when .

Middle East war destroys the economy and draws in global powers
Dervis 17 [Kemal, Senior Fellow in the Global Economy and Development program, and the
Edward M. Bernstein Scholar. He was Vice President and Director of the program from April
2009 to November 2017. Formerly head of the United Nations Development Programme and
Minister of Economic Affairs of Turkey, he focuses on global economics, emerging markets,
European issues, development and international institutions. "Is another debt crisis on the
way?" 2017. https://www.brookings.edu/opinions/is-another-debt-crisis-on-the-way/]

That said, geopolitical risks should not be discounted . While markets tend to shrug off
localized political crises and even larger geopolitical challenges, some dramas may be set to
,
spin out of control . In particular, the North Korean nuclear threat remains acute
with the
possibility of a sudden escalation raising the risk of conflict between the U.S. and China.

The Middle East remains another source of serious instability , with tensions in the Gulf
Iran and Saudi Arabia having
intensified to the point that Russia that might end up clashing
hostilities between and/or turmoil within Saudi Arabia are
not unthinkable. In this case, it is
with the U.S.

Even barring such a major geopolitical upheaval, which would severely damage the global
economy ’s prospects in the short run, serious medium- and
long-term risks loom. Rising income inequality, exacerbated by the mismatch
between skills and jobs in the digital age, will impede growth, unless a wide array of difficult
structural reforms are implemented, including reforms aimed at constraining climate change.

Goes Nuclear---can’t turn it because scenario is about conventional conflict

escalating
Russell, 9 (James A. Russell, Senior Lecturer, National Security Affairs, Naval Postgraduate
School, ‘9 (Spring) “Strategic Stability Reconsidered: Prospects for Escalation and Nuclear War in
the Middle East” IFRI, Proliferation Papers//, #26,
__http://www.ifri.org/downloads/PP26_Russell_2009.pdf__)

Strategic stability in the region is thus undermined by various factors: (1) asymmetric interests in the bargaining framework that can
introduce unpredictable behavior from actors; (2) the presence of non-state actors that introduce unpredictability into relationships between the

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antagonists; (3) incompatible

assumptions about the structure of the deterrent relationship that
makes the bargaining framework strategically unstable; (4) perceptions by Israel and the United States that its
window of opportunity for military action is closing, which could prompt a preventive attack; (5) the prospect that Iran’s response to pre-emptive

attacks could involve unconventional weapons, which could prompt escalation by Israel and/or the United States; (6) the lack of a communications
framework to build trust and cooperation among framework participants.
These systemic weaknesses in the coercive bargaining framework all suggest that escalation by any the parties could happen

either on purpose or as a result of miscalculation or the pressures of wartime circumstance . Given these
factors, it is disturbingly easy to imagine scenarios under which could quickly escalate in a conflict
which the regional antagonists would consider the nuclear weapons use of chemical, biological, or . It
would be a mistake to believe the
nuclear taboo can somehow magically keep nuclear weapons from being used in the context of an unstable strategic framework. Systemic asymmetries
between actors in fact suggest a certain increase in the probability of war – a war in which escalation could happen quickly and from a variety of
participants. Once such a war starts, events would likely develop a momentum all their own and decision-making would consequently be shaped in
unpredictable ways. The international community must take this possibility seriously, and muster every tool at its disposal to prevent such an outcome,
which would be an unprecedented disaster for the peoples of the region, with substantial risk for the entire world.
It causes terror from domestic instability and shocks---that causes extinction
Crowley, 3/26/14 – Michael, Chief Foreign Affairs Correspondent for TIME (“Yes, Obama Really Is Worried About a
Manhattan Nuke,” Time, http://time.com/39131/barack-obama-nuke-manhattan-new-york/ //Red)

The President was accused of changing a difficult subject when he said a nuclear weapon going off in New York City was
more of a threat to the U.S. than Russia, but he is actually laser-focused on non-proliferation and nuclear security issues Yikes! Does Obama
really think there’s a serious chance that Manhattan could get nuked? He almost certainly does. Some people accused Obama of
changing a difficult subject: “Simply because the President can dream up other horrible scenarios is no excuse for failing to address the immediate ones,” snapped conservative Washington Post blogger Jennifer
Rubin. Obama made his startling claim in response to a question about the way he’d teased Mitt Romney for claiming, during the 2012 campaign, that Russia was America’s greatest strategic foe. In hindsight,

Obama’s response to Romney seems glib at best. And nuclear terrorism certainly seems a more remote prospect than it did a
few years ago. After Sept. 11, 2001, there was constant talk about such a nightmare scenario. It was invoked as a reason to invade Iraq. John Kerry and George W. Bush agreed on virtually nothing
in 2004, except the view that nuclear terrorism was the gravest security threat facing the U.S. Such talk is less common now, thanks to a weakened al-Qaeda
leadership and, perhaps, a post-Iraq reluctance in Washington to hype the WMD threat. (Incidentally, the White House said on Tuesday that Obama wasn’t referring to any specific new intelligence about
nuclear terrorism.) Sept. 11 also caused governments around the world to take the prospect of catastrophic

terrorism more seriously. That led to security upgrades everywhere from Eastern Europe to Africa to
Australia (and the surrender of 15 bombs’ worth of material by Ukraine). But the threat itself remains all too real. “We’ve made enormous progress

over the course of the last few years,” Matthew Bunn, a nuclear-proliferation
expert at Harvard’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, said at a recent nuclear-security conference in Washington. “But there’s a long, long way to go.”
Experts have recently estimated the probability of such an attack in the near future at between 30% and 50%. That number might’ve been too high to begin with, and may be even more so now thanks to recent

advances in nuclear security. But what’s an acceptable risk for such an utterly nightmarish event? Would you fly on a plane with even a 1% chance of crashing? The probability guru
Nate Silver has looked at the numbers and concluded that nuclear terrorism represents a far
greater risk than conventional terrorism, adding that “a more rational antiterrorism policy would focus resources heavily, perhaps almost exclusively, on threats
of nuclear and weapons-of-mass-destruction terror.” As it happens, the federal government spends millions of dollars furnishing New York City and other major cities with nuclear-detection gear — although NYC
lawmakers seized on Obama’s comment to complain that the President’s budget would cut Manhattan’s nuke-finding funding from $22 million to $12 million next year. By the time a bomb reaches a big city, however,
it’s probably too late to avert a catastrophe. That’s why Obama has put so much effort into his nuclear-security summits, which emphasize the need to carefully secure and monitor nuclear material that could be

A small
stolen and fashioned into a bomb. A terrorist group could never enrich its own uranium, or acquire plutonium — just look at how much time, money and effort Iran has spent trying to do so.

group with modest scientific knowledge and a low budget, however, probably could make a
Hiroshima-grade bomb from highly enriched uranium. Where would terrorists get that nuclear
material? They could steal it by force, a scenario that can’t be ignored in Pakistan. Or they could

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buy it from smugglers, who continue to be caught peddling uranium stolen from the old Soviet nuclear complex. The goal of the
U.S.-led nuclear summits is to keep world leaders focused on the problem. “He believes that this is one of the most important legacies of his Administration,” Obama’s coordinator for weapons of mass destruction
and arms control, Elizabeth Sherwood-Randall, said earlier this month. A gimmicky nuclear-terrorism war game conducted in the Hague this week — which reportedly irritated German Chancellor Angela Merkel —
seems mainly to have been a PR stunt. The main task now is to pursue international standards and practices for ensuring nuclear security. Unfortunately, the countries of greatest concern — namely Pakistan and

Putin may threaten international

North Korea — refuse to participate in such collegial international efforts. That’s just one reason why Obama’s concern is justified. Vladimir

norms — but nuclear terrorism threatens civilization as we know it.

Saudi K2 US Defense Base – 2NC

Exports to Saudi Arabia are the largest and most important for the US defense
industrial base
Hartung 10/19/15 --- William D., Senior Adviser to the Security Assistance Monitor program,
“U.S. Arms Transfers to the Middle East: Promoting Stability or Fueling Conflict?”
http://www.securityassistance.org/blog/us-arms-transfers-middle-east-promoting-stability-
orfueling-conflict

recent surge in Introduction: The Obama Arms Bazaar The

unprecedented boom in major U.S. arms sales U.S. arms transfers to the Middle East is part
of an
that has been presided over by the Obama administration. In President Obama’s first six years in office, new agreements under the Pentagon’s

Foreign Military Sales (FMS) program – the largest channel for U.S. weapons exports – totaled over $195
billion.[1] Overall, the Obama administration has approved more major weapons deals than any U.S. administration since World War II. The

majority of the Obama administration’s major arms sales –

with over $49 billion in new agreements

over 56 per cent – have gone to the Middle East and Persian Gulf, with Saudi Arabia topping the list
.[2] This is particularly troubling given the complex array of conflicts raging

throughout the region, and given the Saudi regime’s use of U.S.-supplied weaponry in its military intervention in Yemen. The increase in
arms sales under the Obama administration is rooted in two factors, one political and one economic. The political factor
is grounded in President Obama’s pledge to avoid getting into any new, large-scale “boots on the
ground” conflicts like Iraq or Afghanistan.[3] His alternative has been to rely on tactics designed to limit U.S. casualties, from
drone strikes to arming and training allies to carry out fighting that might otherwise have been done by U.S. troops. This aspect of the Obama policy mirrors
the approach taken by Richard Nixon in the wake of the Vietnam War, when he armed regional surrogates like Iran under the Shah to fight on

the economic behalf of U.S. interests in key regions.[4] On

promoter of exports in general and arms exports in particular front, the Obama administration has been a
major
. In doing so, it has been responding to pressure
from weapons manufacturers like Boeing, Lockheed Martin and General Dynamics who are seeking to increase export sales to counterbalance a leveling
off of Pentagon procurement spending. The extent of the Obama administration’s commitment to promoting weapons sales was underscored at a
March 2013 hearing on arms export control policy when Tom Kelly, who was principal deputy assistant secretary of the State Department’s bureau of
political-military affairs, said that “it is an issue that has the attention of every top-level official who’s working on foreign policy throughout the
government . . . in advocating on behalf of our companies and doing everything we can to make sure these sales go through.”[5]\ In addition to setting

higher goals for arms exports in general, major

weapons contractors have attempted to use foreign sales to
keep open key production lines for systems that are reaching the end of the line in terms of

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Pentagon procurement. For example, earlier this year it was reported that Boeing had concluded a deal to sell 40 F-18s to Kuwait, which
will extend the life of the program for another year or more beyond its current projected end date of early 2017.[6] Similarly, the General Dynamics M1
tank has been surviving on a combination of Congressional add-ons and a deal for tanks and tank upgrades for Saudi Arabia.[7]

Billion dollar industry

Kavanaugh, vocative, 5-8-15
(Shane Dixon, “Obama’s “Ironclad” Diplomacy In Middle East Is A Cash Cow Back Home,”
http://www.vocativ.com/usa/nat-sec/obamas-ironclad-diplomacy-in-middle-east-is-a-cash-
cowback-home/)

President Obama’s “ironclad commitment” to Persian Gulf

allies may fail to calm Arab concerns about the resolutions to the increased will certainly be a boon to the U.S instability

in the Middle East, national security experts say. But it economy, pumping billions of dollars into its defense
industry. Saudi Arabia and other
members of the Gulf Cooperation Council left Camp David last week with little in the way of bold, hardline pledges from
the United States on Iran, Syria or ISIS. Instead, they were offered to continue buying billions of dollars in

advanced weapons, which the Obama administration has aggressively sold to them, time and time again, over the last six years. Continuing
escalated arming of one side in the ongoing regional proxy war between Saudi Arabia and Iran will also likely only heighten tensions between those two
powers.

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Foreign Sales Key

Key to economies of scale and deterrence
Eaglen, Senior Policy Analyst for National Security @ Heritage, 9
(Mackenzie M. is and Eric Sayers is a Research Assistant in the Douglas and Sarah Allison Center
for Foreign Policy Studies, a division of the Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute for
International Studies, at The Heritage Foundation. “Maintaining the Superiority of America's
Defense Industrial Base,” http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2009/05/maintaining-
thesuperiority-of-americas-defense-industrial-base)

America's military strength remains vital to preserving the nation's interests and sustaining
international stability. While much of this strength is derived from the professionalism and skills of America's armed forces, the
technologically superior military platforms that the U.S. has developed and fielded since World War II
are also vital to ensuring a superior fighting force. In both peace and war, America's defense
manufacturing industrial base has allowed
the United States to design and build an advanced array of weapons systems and platforms to
meet the full spectrum of potential missions the military may be called upon to fulfill. Securing
America's military dominance for the decades ahead will require: An industrial base that can
retain a highly skilled workforce with critical
skill sets and Sustained investment in platforms that offer future commanders and civilian leaders a vital set of core military
capabilities and equipment to respond to any threat. America's military may also benefit from a more open
international defense market . A 2005 Heritage Foundation study examined the effect of globalization on the defense market
and

concluded that access to foreign suppliers would play a significant and positive role in helping the Pentagon
to access a broader industrial base and meet
efficiently .[1] These findings still hold true today immediate defense needs more
. While remaining focused on the critical technologies, industries, and

skills that are not readily available in the global market, Congress
should also support increased foreign military sales to
help complement America's domestic defense industrial base.
Exports Key – 2NC
Exports are key to the industrial base and power projection
Heselden 2013 Luke, MA in International Affairs from American University, Researcher,
Defense-Industrial Initiatives Group CSIS, The 21st Century Build-Down
http://csis.org/files/publication/130627_newperspectives_issue4.pdf

Drastic reductions in resources pinch any organization, and DoD is no different. Rather
than making draconian cuts to
force structure and troop benefits, DoD has instead historically chosen to reduce its
procurement budget by prolonging the shelf-life of existing platforms, stretching out new acquisition
programs, and purchasing fewer new units of equipment than it had originally intended. If the
defense industry is to thrive in such a challenging environment, it will need to look abroad for

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new markets . American defense contractors are aware of the history of defense draw-downs, and are
examining the best ways to weather the fiscal storm. Last November, Boeing announced major layoffs in its
defense division, citing declining defense spending.4 This comes after public concerns from several other corporations regarding

reduced spending and its implications for industry.5 Complicating

matters is the lack of diversity in the
revenue streams of large American defense contractors. Four of the five largest American
companies in the defense business generate more than three-quarters of their
revenue from the defense sector, leaving them vulnerable to declines in A healthy
government spending.6
defense industrial base is vital to America’s ability to project power and protect interests
globally . Although further cuts to defense budgets will almost certainly mean additional reductions to the defense industry’s
workforce, infrastructure, and operational capability, it is in the interest of America’s economic and
national security that this pillar of domestic industrial capacity does not wither. It will help
ensure American competitiveness in science and technology development and make sure that
the platforms necessary for waging future wars are designed, developed, and manufactured
domestically. A robust industrial base also means protecting jobs and infrastructure at home, which is particularly important in
today’s economic climate. To protect domestic industrial capacity and strengthen strategic relationships globally, industry and
government should work together to develop inexpensive platforms designed and constructed with the budgetary realities and
tactical requirements of foreign governments in mind. By
developing export-ready platforms, the U.S. defense
industry will generate new incentives for foreign governments to buy American.

Defense Base Impact – 2NC

Weakening defense industrial base makes deterrence impossible – US
capabilities lag behind rivals, emboldens Iran which flips the case – that’s Halprin.
Strong defense industrial base solves nuclear war with Russia, China, North
Korea, India/Pakistan, and contains the impact of failed states across the globe
O’Hanlon, Senior Fellow @ Brookings, 11
(Michael, “The National Security Industrial Base: A Crucial Asset of the United States, Whose
Future May Be in Jeopardy,”
http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/research/files/papers/2011/2/defense%20ohanlon/02_def
ense_ohanlon.pdf)

Good defense industrial policy is not just about potential assets, but also must include an assessment of the
nation’s security requirements as well as the threats faced by the United States. It is for this reason that the policy process logically
begins with a national security strategy, coordinated at the White House, to guide defense planning and budgeting. The same logic should therefore apply
to a consideration of the nation’s future national security industrial base requirements. There are numerous ways to assess potential risks to American
security and thus possible requirements for the nation’s armed forces that would be supplied by the defense industrial base. As an example, the following
are a range of scenarios that the U.S. military could be called upon to deal with in the coming years. The list is suggestive, rather than complete; more
important than its wide geographic scope is its functional variability, and coverage of many different types of possible warfare:21 „

Airstrikes against Iran or perhaps a naval blockade of the country, or at least the potential to threaten the
Iranian regime’s hold on power in order to deter major aggression „ War between India and

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Pakistan over Kashmir that then leads to a robust international peace implementation force

against China in open conflict,

with strong U.S. participation Another Korean involving weapons of

„ war , perhaps mass
destruction A Taiwan contingency that pit the United
could , if things went tragically wrong, States
including not only classic kinetic operations but (as with other scenarios here) cyberwarfare and

perhaps combat in space „ Perhaps more plausibly, Chinese

challenges to other disputed islands and associated
sea and seabed resources near its coasts „ A Russian attack on a former Soviet republic
worse like Georgia or, yet given their NATO membership, the Baltic states „ A major terrorist attack on
U.S. soil, perhaps even involving weapons of mass destruction „ A collapsing Congo
or Indonesia …or
Mexico Pakistan As one looks into the future, any such list will evolve not only as a function of
or

geopolitics but also of technology. Certainly the trends in computers have already been remarkable, and if "Moore's
Law"
continues to hold, there could be another billion fold increase in computing power within roughly 25
years. There may be somewhat analogous trends underway in areas such as microbiology and nanotechnology, even if the enthusiasts for a
“revolution in military affairs” of the 1990s often overstated their cases and made their arguments about technological progress too sweeping and bold.23
These trends are providing the basis for the existing growth in systems like robotics to new ones
like directed energy or nanotechnology. The implications of technological trends are that the
domains in which conflict could take place, and for which the military will be looking to find
solutions, will extend into new areas such as cyber, space, and the changed global
environs as well. This will connect to huge demographic trends to create what might be termed the urban hot zone. That is, just as 15 years ago
the U.S. military was not gearing up for a counterinsurgency fight in rural Afghanistan, it may be failing now to face up to a future fight that is much

different, and perhaps more urban. A

strong majority of the world's future population will lie in major
urban areas and some 50 new megacities (with populations of 10 million or more) will be created around the world within a
quarter century. Violence and national security threats are likely to be found emanating from such places, where hundreds of millions of individuals, many
poorly educated and underemployed yet aware of all that the world offers that they cannot easily access, could represent potential recruits for various
militant movements. All of these developments have major implications for not just the defense budget and weapons decisions, but also for the

people that DoD and industry must hire. Operating complex systems effectively, a traditional American strength,
will require attracting technology-literate people even more than in the past. Rosie the riveter might not
have to become Gussie the group theorist, but the trend is clear nonetheless. The United States armed forces also must think hard about how to attract

and retain, and thus the

nation’s universities and industry must figure out how to supply, individuals
with a "Google mindset" who expect access to information as well as modern devices without
all the bureaucratic encumbrances and hierarchical structures that traditionally afflict military

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organizations. Another key aspect of this change is that the U.S. will have no monopoly on power and some of
these sophisticated technologies, meaning not just a diversity of new environments to
prepare for, but a deeper lethality within them . The future period holds a greater spread of access-denial technology,
cyberthreats and "GRAM" technologies (guided rockets, artillery, and mortars). Such a "democratization of destruction" will continue with small states
Even more, a “proliferated world” of WMD in the
and non-state groups having greater access to lethal technologies.24

hands of a greater number of states seems a strong possibility. Some argue for pursuit of a nuclear-free world, but
even if that goal proves viable as a vision, in the interim it is just as likely

that the threat could become more complex and acute. the likelihood that one or more
Nuclear campaign planning could become more
nuclear weapons will be used somewhere probably grows. important, as
25 Another key challenge, especially in such realms
as
cyberwarfare, is integration—not only within individual systems but across systems, and with enough flexibility to allow for modernization, adaptation and
innovation. This, though, stands in direct contrast to another key demand, which is to build resilient networks that can resist and recover from

attacks. This
same growing DoD concern over cyber-assurance will likely grow on the hardware
side, as more and more investment and production moves away from traditional U.S. partners
and suppliers.26 Not all is foreboding. Historically, the United States remains quite secure as a major power. In addition, with China the only
plausible rising rival of comparable power, we may not face major challenges anywhere except the Western Pacific—and some would debate the
degree to which China, however impressive as a rising power in many ways, is likely to pose a security threat to the United States or its allies.

Moreover, for all of China’s strengths in manufacturing, the

United States still enjoys advantages of leadership in
innovation. The ability to integrate across systems and technologies has been and will be a key
strength. We can use methods such as data mining to improve intelligence collection and the forecasting and tracking of threats. We have a
history in the “black world” of remarkable game-changing inventions. But the challenges are great. Making this even more difficult from a defense
industrial strategy perspective is that we do not have a national security strategy with clear priorities. The main customer, DoD, is often unsure of its
clear wants and needs and thus companies are not likely to receive clear demand signals. The 2010 Quadrennial
Defense Review
document, for example, recognized
that industrial base issues are important but failed to lay out any
actual strategy or guideposts for protecting and enhancing this economic sector. On the Congressional side, the main tendency loosely
seems to be towards major platforms and minimizing the role for U.S. ground forces, but again, it is unclear whether this links to the defined needs in a
future environment.

That goes nuclear – deterrence key

Henriksen 2012 Thomas, Ph.D., Senior Fellow, Hoover Institution, Stanford University,
America and the Rogue States, p6 185-188

Throughout the ages, freestanding, warlike polities have for brief periods threatened the international order while
existing outside the orbit of great powers. The last quarter of a century witnessed another of these episodes. The
immediate years after the USSR fell apart witnessed a sudden profusion of rogue states , for which
the world was ill-prepared after four decades of reasonably predictive actions from the two

superpowers and their allies. Rogue entities in earlier historical periods possessed similar traits. The
post-Cold War adversarial states
fought, subverted, and confronted other countries for their own nefarious ends. They differed

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from their historical predecessors by going after WMD, which exponentially heightens their

destructive power and their danger to other countries. Now, as in the past, heavyweights conspire against
small, aggressive , free- lance states bent on upsetting political order. Taking on all comers
alone is a dangerous game for a pariah, no matter
how much a garrison state it is. Cuba, Libya (before its revolution), and
Sudan passed from rogue status to nations less threatening to global peace. At this juncture, Syria's Assad barely clings to power amid a
popular revolt. Self-preservation traditionally dictates that outgunned rogues align with stronger protectors. Sometimes renegade
regimes
are useful to a major state, as when the Soviet Union employed them in its chess match with the
United States. Today, China seems to be in the same business. As the world relapses back to great

power politics, modern-day Machiavellians will look for their "prince" and find him in
personages such as Kim Jong II or Bashar al-Assad . Be this as it may, lone-wolf states have traditionally
succumbed or aligned themselves with a more powerful patron . Much the same state of affairs is occurring in
our period. Syria hunkered behind a resurgent Russia opposed to the West, North Korea moved under the
wing of an ascending China , and an isolated Iran took advantage of the Sino-Russo pushback

against America —all very reminiscent of the Cold War competition among great powers and their satellites.
Some adversarial nations—Sudan, Libya, and

Cuba—slipped from the adversarial column. But as some rogues disappear, others
will, no doubt, emerge . It is still too early to know whether Venezuela is a rogue-in-the- making or
merely another Latin American authoritarian state. At the very least, it has a dangerous linkage to Iran. Currently rouge
behavior sets them against the prevailing international society in the early twenty-first century. Their reliance on
dictatorship, repression, and brutal security forces makes their rule hard but brittle. As with all tyrannies they live and die by the sword. They are like
inherently unstable most police states. Rogue regimes fear internal change. Externally, they
pursue risky approaches at times , in part, to consolidate their rule or
exert their regional presence. The
historical trajectory of rogues has pointed toward an axis or at least connections with a potential guardian power. Present-
day adversarial states also are maneuvering from isolation to the protective eaves of a powerful patron, as Syria fell in with Iran, North Korea draws
closer to China, Iran seeks an anti-Western security bloc with China and Russia, and Cuba is on Venezuelan life support. Without foreign buttressing,
the stand-alone rogues must curtail their regional threats, as did Libya in 2003 and Cuba after the Soviet Union split apart. Or they can suffer the fate of
Iraq which the United States militarily crushed, althought it paid a high price to quell an antiforeign insurgency and furious sectarian violence in the
aftermath of its invasion. History’s muse is too scornful and unpredictable to hazard a confident prophesy, but the historical record augurs against
longevity for rogue regimes. Today’s world of instant communication via the Internet, YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook along with the allure of the
youth culture act as powerful solvents eating away at closed, repressive regimes premised on threats to neighbors in the name of ideological

abstractions. Until rogues succumb or fall under the sway of a restraining power, the U nited S tates and
allied nations must tackle the challenges they present. Direct conflict , as in the Iraq War, against another rogue nation is
far too expensive in economic and human costs for serial application. Proceeding
to invasion, regime change,
and occupation is an option but an unlikely one, especially since the United States amassed staggering debts with a more than SI trillion price tag for the
Iraq and Afghan wars. The human toll likewise was steep with over 6,000 US military deaths, tens of thousands seriously wounded, and hundreds of

thousands of inhabitants killed in the two theaters. America's

dark economic picture is crimping its international
endeavors. Intervention-cum-nation-building remedies for derelict countries are almost beyond consideration,

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given America's struggling economic recovery, cash-strapped federal budget, and blooming
entitlement debt. The only viable approach is one embodying containment and deterrence
to confront the threats emanating from rogue states. This approach requires the hard power of
military forces to give it credibility. Armed might, in part, persuaded Libya and perhaps Iran to halt
their drive for WMD, as noted earlier. Libya’s Qaddafi believed President Bush planned to invade his country
once the Iraq campaign ended. The Libyan strongman decided to renounce his nuclear program and open his

country to international arms inspectors. Iran also appears to have suspended the development of weapons in

its nuclear-energy effort at the time of the US invasion into Iraq. Earlier, the North Korean regime seemed awed by

Americas application of electronic, push-button military technology during the Persian Gulf War, the first
time that "smart" weapons had been can
deployed with devastating
serve as a powerful inducement to some outlaw states to disarm effectiveness. The threat of
military action, therefore, . A "carrots"-laden approach
(without any sticks) comes off as bribery from a weak hand , as North Korea so often surmised about the American "nice"
approach.
Hard power also reinforces antirogue alliances and international sanctions to contain
Containment and deterrence need not be totally pacific. The containment-plus
and deter rogue-state aggression. approach
against Saddam Hussein following the Persian Gulf War encompassed air strikes, no-fly zones,
and even on-the-ground assistance to Iraqi Kurds for a decade. The US-led NATO military siege against Slobodan Milosevic" was accompanied by political
campaigning training and funds for antiregime dissidents in nearby countries, who went on to organize demonstrations that toppled the Serbian dictator.
Even before the Arab Spring uprisings engulfed Syria, the United States had secretly financed the political opposition. The US Department of State funded
a satellite television channel that beamed in anti-Assad programming beginning in April 2009.123 South Korean democracy activists have floated balloons
into the DPRK laden with antiregime messages calling for protests among the Northern population to no avail. This angers Pyongyang but so far has been
ineffective. Computer viruses and cyber warfare offer more subtle—and deniable—sabotage instruments than aerial bombardments to undermine rogue
threats.

Outweighs their war scenarios

Johnson, Forbes contributor and Presidential Medal of Freedom winner, 2013
(Paul, “A Lesson For Rogue States”, 5-8,
http://www.forbes.com/sites/currentevents/2013/05/08/a-lesson-for-rogue-states/, )
Although we live in a violent world, where an internal conflict such as the Syrian civil war can cost 70,000 lives over a two-year period, there hasn’t
Today’s three superpowers–the U.S., Russia and China–
been a major war between the great powers in 68 years.

have no conflicts of interest that can’t be resolved through compromise. All have hair-trigger nuclear alert
systems, but the sheer scale of their armories has forced them to take nuclear conflict seriously. Thus, in a real sense, nuclear weapons have succeeded

in abolishing the concept of a winnable war. The same cannot be said, however, for certain paranoid rogue states,
namely North Korea and Iran. If these two nations appear to be prospering –that is, if their nuclear threats are winning them

attention and respect, financial bribes in the form of aid and all the other goodies by which petty dictators count success–other prospective

rogues will join them. One such state is Venezuela. Currently its oil wealth is largely wasted, but
it is great enough to buy entree to a junior nuclear club. Another possibility is Pakistan, which already
has a small nuclear capability and is teetering on the brink of chaos. Other potential rogues are one or two of the

components that made up the former Soviet Union. All the more reason to ensure that North Korea and Iran are

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dramatically punished for traveling the nuclear path. But how? It’s of little use imposing further sanctions, as they chiefly fall on the long-suffering
populations. Recent disclosures about life in North Korea reveal how effectively the ruling elite is protected from the physical consequences of its
nuclear quest, enjoying high standards of living while the masses starve. Things aren’t much better in Iran. Both regimes are beyond the reach of civilized
reasoning, one locked into a totalitarian vise of such comprehensiveness as to rule out revolt, the other victim of a religious despotism from which there
currently seems no escape. Either country might take a fatal step of its own volition. Were North Korea to attack the South, it would draw down a
retribution in conventional firepower from the heavily armed South and a possible nuclear response from the U.S., which would effectively terminate
the regime. Iran has frequently threatened to destroy Israel and exterminate its people. Were it to attempt to carry out such a plan, the Israeli response
The balance of probabilities is that
would be so devastating that it would put an end to the theocracy forthwith.

neither nation will embark on a deliberate war but instead will carry on blustering. This,
however, doesn’t rule out war by accident–a small-scale nuclear conflict precipitated by
the

blunders of a totalitarian elite. Preventing Disaster The most effective, yet cold-blooded, way
to
teach these states the consequences of continuing their nuclear efforts would be to make an
example of one by destroying its ruling class. The obvious candidate would be North Korea. Were we able to contrive
circumstances in which this occurred, it’s probable that Iran, as well as any other prospective rogues, would abandon its nuclear aims. But how to do this? At the least there
would need to be general agreement on such a course among Russia, China and the U.S. But China would view the replacement of its communist ally with a
neutral, unified Korea as a serious loss. Compensation would be required. Still, it’s worth exploring.
What we

must avoid is a jittery world in which proliferating rogue states perpetually seek to become
nuclear ones. The risk of an accidental conflict breaking out that would then drag in the

major powers is too great. This is precisely how the 1914 Sarajevo assassination broadened into World War I. Itis
fortunate
the major powers appear to have understood the dangers of nuclear conflict without having
had to
experience At present all we have are the bellicose bellowing of the rogues and the well-
them. Now
they must turn their minds, responsibly, to solving the menace of rogue states.
meaning drift of the Great Powers–a formula for an eventual and monumental disaster that
could be the end of us all.

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Arms Sales -> Econ – 2NC

Arms sales to GCC key to economic leadership
Guzansky, senior researcher @ the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) at
Tel Aviv University, 13
(Yoel, “America Can't Abandon the Middle East,”
http://nationalinterest.org/commentary/america-cant-abandon-the-middle-east-8232?page=2)

The scope of U.S. weapons sales in recent years, directed primarily to the Gulf states , is
unprecedented . From 2008-11, agreements with Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates
totaled $70 billion . In addition, in November 2012, the agency overseeing
foreign arms sales
formally notified Congress that it had approved the possible sales of sophisticated
aerialdefense systems. Such sales are blatant attempts to reassure and strengthen its U.S.
allies in the region. Moreover, the value of the sales and the potential for future ones are
important considerations, particularly in light of the slow U.S. economic recovery.

Nuclear war
O Hanlon et al. 12 (O’Hanlon 12 Kenneth G. Lieberthal, Director of the John L. Thornton China Center and Senior Fellow in Foreign Policy and Global
Economy and Development at the Brookings Institution, former Professor at the University of Michigan [“The Real National Security Threat: America's Debt,” Los Angeles Times, July
10th, http://www.brookings.edu/research/opinions/2012/07/10-economy-foreign-policy-lieberthal-ohanlon]

Alas, globalization and automation trends of the last generation have increasingly called the American dream into question for the working classes. Another decade of underinvestment
in what is required to remedy this situation will make an isolationist or populist president far more likely because much of the country will question whether an internationalist role
makes sense for America — especially if it costs us well over half a trillion dollars in defense spending annually yet seems correlated with more job losses.

American economic weakness undercuts U.S. leadership . Other countries sense

abroad
Lastly,

our weakness and wonder about our purport 7ed decline. If this perception becomes more widespread, and the case that we are in decline becomes more

persuasive, countries will begin to take actions that reflect their skepticism about America's future . Allies and
friends will doubt our commitment and may pursue nuclear weapons for their own security, for
example; adversaries will sense opportunity and be less restrained in throwing around
their weight in their own neighborhoods. The crucial Persian Gulf and Western Pacific regions will likely
become less stable . Major war will become more likely. When running for president last time, Obama
eloquently articulated big foreign policy visions: healing
America's breach with the Muslim world, controlling global climate change , dramatically
curbing global poverty through development aid, moving toward a world free of nuclear
weapons . These were, and remain, worthy if elusive goals. However, for Obama or his
successor, there is now a much more

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if fundamental prerequisite to foreign is not

effective
that policy reestablished

urgent big- restoring U.S. economic Nothing else possible

issue: really
picture strength. is
.

Industrial Base -> Heg – 2NC

Key to HEG
Eaglen, Senior Policy Analyst for National Security @ Heritage, 9
(Mackenzie M. is and Eric Sayers is a Research Assistant in the Douglas and Sarah Allison Center
for Foreign Policy Studies, a division of the Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute for
International Studies, at The Heritage Foundation. “Maintaining the Superiority of America's
Defense Industrial Base,” http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2009/05/maintaining-
thesuperiority-of-americas-defense-industrial-base)

Since World War II, the

United States has benefited from the skills of a robust defense industrial and
manufacturing workforce. Over six decades, various U.S. defense strategies have emphasized
the benefits of a technologically superior military to help deter and win wars.
This "technical overmatch" has been pursued by the U.S. military for decades in an attempt to deter
potential enemies from engaging the U.S. in conflict and to reduce risk and the loss of life on
the battlefield. The ability to maintain America's military technological edge reflects the
superior efficiency of America's defense industry. America's capital-intensive Air Force and Navy
operate the world's best fighter aircraft, long-range bombers, aircraft carriers, destroyers,
cruisers, and submarines. Similarly, the Army is building a host of next-generation platforms, including
tanks and attack helicopters, that will allow it to complete its missions. This is also the case in platform systems
and areas such as low-observable and very-low-observable technologies, submarine quieting,
acoustic detection, digital-signal processing for a range of applications, active electronically
scanned arrays, near-real-time sensor-to-shooter targeting connectivity, and all-weather
guided munitions.[2] Technology alone has not assured American military superiority, the defense
industry has nevertheless been a potent enabler of American military might . The base of this
power can be found in a series of core capabilities that the U.S. has been able to maintain and
continue to modernize over recent decades. These include, among others, air dominance,
strategic lift, the ability to project power throughout and beyond the world's oceans,
counterinsurgency proficiency, and the ability to seize and control land. Maintaining these capabilities has
enabled the soldier, sailor, airman, and Marine to remain adequately prepared for a full spectrum of potential operations.

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Military Aid K2 Containing Iran – 2NC

Cutting of military aid to Saudi makes containing Iran impossible
Natasha Turak, 10-23-2018, "How Congress Can Force Trump'S Hand On Saudi Sanctions —
And Why The Consequences Would Be Major", CNBC,
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/10/23/howcongress-can-force-trumps-hand-on-saudi-sanctions--
and-why-the-consequences-would-bemajor.html

As the world awaits the truth, or something close to it, about Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi's killing inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, one of the Gulf's most stalwart

security relationships hangs in a precarious position. Congress and the White House have sharply different views on how to approach
the

diplomatic crisis, now in its third week. Legislators are loudly calling for sanctions on weapons sales on Saudi Arabia and a robust response if the
government in Riyadh is proven to have been behind Khashoggi's death. But while President Donald Trump has expressed his desire to get to the bottom of the case, he's appeared
more reluctant to punish his allies in the kingdom , whose support is vital in carrying out his
agenda to isolate Iran and keep oil prices stable ahead of the November midterm elections. Khashoggi, a columnist for the Washington Post and
frequent critic of the Saudi royal family, disappeared after entering the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on October 2. Turkish officials told The New York Times that it has audio evidence which proves Khashoggi was
tortured, killed and subsequently dismembered by a hit team of Saudi agents. After initially insisting that Khashoggi left the consulate unharmed, the Saudi government last week said that he died in a "fistfight"
while in the building, but provided few details and no evidence. Multiple investigations are underway, and Turkey's President Recep Erdogan has called for the perpetrators of the crime to be tried in Istanbul,
though he's stopped short of accusing the government directly. Close votes If the details coming out of the Khashoggi case implicate the Saudi government and the crown prince, Western governments —
particularly the U.S. — will be under heightened pressure to punish the Saudis through mechanisms like sanctions on weapons sales or on individuals. That is the most obvious path Congress can take, though it can
be done in a few ways, each with its own set of obstacles. Lawmakers from both parties have in the last year prompted floor votes attempting to choke Washington's support for the kingdom, each time losing by
narrow margins. But a former U.S. national security official with extensive experience in the Gulf, who preferred to remain anonymous due to the sensitivity of the situation, warned that after the midterm
elections, the mood toward the Saudis would be much more aggressive than in the past. Whatever the election's outcome, "I think either way there will be a more skeptical — if not hostile — relationship with
Saudi Arabia in the legislature," the former official said. "And the relatively free hand that the administration gave is going to be a little more constrained. "The Saudis are very lucky that Congress is in recess for
campaigning — if Congress were in session there would be hearings, and they would not be good hearings." 'Sanction the hell out of Saudi Arabia' Republican Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, a longtime
defender of U.S.-Saudi ties, told Fox News last week that the response to the kingdom was up to the president, but added: "What I would do, I know what I'm going to do, I'm going to sanction the hell out of Saudi
Arabia." The Saudis purchased $65 billion in military equipment from Washington under the Obama administration, according to the Congressional Research Service. And Trump has repeatedly cited a $110 billion
arms deal signed with the kingdom in May of 2017 as a major engine for U.S. jobs, and a key justification for preserving defense trade between the two. But so far, Riyadh has only purchased $14.5 billion worth of
"helicopters, tanks, ships, weapons, and training," according to the Pentagon — the remainder of the $110 billion appears to be more of a vague wish list. The 'special relationship' "The most concrete challenge

facing the U.S. political establishment is that while there is certainly an inclination to ensure that there's accountability,
the U.S.-Saudi relationship is key to U.S.
influence in the region ," Ayham Kamel, head of Middle East and North Africa for risk
consultancy Eurasia Group, told CNBC. Mutual Saudi-U.S.

interests date back to 1933, beginning with Saudi Arabia granting oil exploration rights to
American companies, and later providing the U.S. a major source of energy during its crude-strapped World War II years. A security alliance evolved whereby Washington sold arms and
provided military training to the Saudis and used the country as a bulwark against Soviet expansion during the Cold War. This later extended to U.S. protection during former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's
invasion of Kuwait, and the partnership managed to survive both the 1973 OPEC embargo and the September 11 attacks, the latter of which implicated a number of Saudi nationals. The two have continued their
security partnership since, with a focus on counterterrorism, despite obvious differences in values and controversies over the funding of terrorism and radical Islamic ideology. Under former President Barack
Obama, relations between Washington and Riyadh cooled. Trump's personal friendship with Mohammed bin Salman seemed to set the relationship back on track, especially as the White House sees the kingdom
as central in its efforts to isolate Iran and forge an Israel-Palestine peace plan. Magnitsky sanctions and halting weapons sales On October 10, a bipartisan group of more than 20 senators, including the top
Democrat and Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, penned a letter to the White House triggering the Global Magnistky Act, which is designed to penalize governments for human rights abuses.
This gives the administration four months to carry out an investigation and determine whether abuses occurred. It also, however, gives the executive a fair amount of discretion in its response. In the absence of
Magnitsky sanctions, lawmakers can still resort to direct sanctions of their own via the normal committee process, as they did last year with sanctions on Russia despite Trump's opposition. And Congress has 30
days to review and attempt to block weapons sales; Senators Christopher Murphy, a Democrat, and Rand Paul, a Republican, have pledged to offer a joint resolution blocking any potential White House sale of
precision-guided munitions to the kingdom. The pair tried this before in June of 2017, but failed to block a munitions sale to Riyadh in a close floor vote of 47-53. There is likely to be more support for a vote in the
current climate, though whether the majority would be sufficient to override a presidential veto is uncertain. Cutting support for the Yemen War Under the War Powers Resolution, Congress could also vote to halt
U.S. military support for missions not initially approved by Congress, such as the Saudi offensive in Yemen. The U.S. currently provides refuelling, intelligence and targeting support to the Saudis, whose aerial
bombing campaign and war with Yemen's Houthi rebels has led to tens of thousands of deaths and widespread famine, according to UN reports. In March, a bipartisan group of senators forced a vote on the War
Powers Resolution, losing in a 44-55 vote. In the current environment, appetite for a similar vote may now be stronger. 'The greatest challenge in US-Saudi relations since 9/11' Still, security experts point out the

The Khashoggi affair is the greatest challenge in U.S.-Saudi

importance of the two very different countries' shared regional interests. "

relations since 9/11," said Dave DesRoches, an associate professor and senior military fellow at
the National Defense University in Washington, DC. "It is quite possible that there will be various sanctions imposed, but this should not obscure
the fact that the U.S. is the oldest and most reliable security partner of the Saudi Arabia, and that

Saudi Arabia knows its best prospects for security lay in a close operational and strategic
relationship with the U.S.," he said. Trump and officials in Washington have also expressed concern that pressures may accelerate a Saudi shift eastward, with Russia and China keen
to create a wedge between the two allies, though they presently lack the capacity to match the U.S. in terms of weapons provisions and military support. But it's about a lot more than just weapons, Eurasia

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Group's Kamel said. " Saudi Arabia has been the prime ally of the West in the region. You take that out of
the equation , then the Middle East looks very, very different . Especially at a time when the
U.S. is trying to contain Iranian power ,
influence, oil exports altogether. How There no doubt that the U.S.-Saudi relationship will
you do that
without the Saudis is a big problem I think." "

be damaged," he added. "The only question is to what extent."

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Containing Iran K2 Prevent War – 2NC

Unrestrained Iran causes escalatory Middle East war
David Wainer, Donna Abu-Nasr , and Henry Meyer, 5-2-18, Bloomberg staff writers, “ Israel
and Iran on Path to War as Mideast Tinderbox Awaits Spark ”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-05-03/israel-sees-iran-war-looming-
asmideast-tinderbox-awaits-a-spark

There have been coups and revolutions, external invasions and proxy conflicts, but the Middle East hasn’t seen a head-to-head war between
major regional powers since the 1980s. There’s a growing risk that one is about to break out in

Syria, pitting Israel against Iran . The Islamic Republic’s forces are entrenching there, after joining the fight to prop up President Bashar al-Assad.
The Jewish state, perceiving a direct threat on its border, is subjecting them to an escalating barrage of

airstrikes. Nobody expects those strikes to go unanswered. The

path to escalation is clear, and the rhetoric is apocalyptic . “We will demolish every site where we see an Iranian attempt to
position

itself,’’ Israel’s Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman told the London-based Saudi newspaper Elaph, adding that the Iranian regime is “living its final days.’’ In Tehran, Hossein
Salami, deputy commander of the Revolutionary Guards, said that “100,000 missiles are ready to fly’’ in Israel’s direction, and warned they could bring about its “annihilation

Iran and Israel have been exchanging threats for decades. What’s different now
and collapse.’’ Light a Match

is that Syria’s civil war, which sucked in both countries, provides a potential battlespace -- one
that’s much closer to Jerusalem than to Tehran. Israeli officials say there are 80,000 fighters in Syria who
take orders from Iran. As they help Assad recapture territory, militiamen from Hezbollah have deployed within a few
kilometers of the Golan Heights on Israel’s border. Iran has vowed to avenge its citizens killed by the
Israeli airstrikes, and it has plenty of options for doing so. It’s a tinderbox , says Ofer Shelach, a member of the foreign affairs and defense
committee in Israel’s parliament. “I’m worried about the possibility that a match ignited in the Golan will light up a war going all the way to the sea.’’
Even more troubling is the absence of firefighters. Israelis lament that Washington has become a bit-part player, unable to impose a Syrian settlement that would guarantee its
ally’s security. Absent that, “we can only represent our interests through force,’’ Shelach says. Asked about Israel-Iran tensions at a press briefing on Thursday, Pentagon
spokeswoman Dana White said the

U.S. is concerned by Iranian actions that destabilize the region “,” including through its proxy Hezbollah.
“ Wherever Iran is, chaos follows,” she said. Able or Willing Far from tamping down tensions, President Donald Trump -– egged on by Israel –- has
been ramping them up. By threatening to withdraw next week from the international agreement to curb Iran’s nuclear program, he’s added another volatile element to the
regional mix. The only power with channels open to both sides, and the clout to play mediator, is Russia. President Vladimir Putin’s intervention in 2015 to shore up Assad has left
Russia as the strongest actor in Syria. Putin is seeking to impose a peace that would lock in his political gains, so he has every interest in averting any spread of the war. But that

While Russia has cordial ties with Israel, they’re likely outweighed by the
doesn’t mean he’s able or willing to rein in Iran.

confluence of interests with the Islamic Republic, whose ground forces were crucial to the success of

Putin’s Syrian gambit. Repeatedly threatened with attack or regime-change by its enemies, Iran sees the sympathetic governments in Damascus and Beirut as
providing strategic depth. ‘Unstable, Unmanaged’ Now, the Iranians in Syria have graduated from helping Assad to “building their strategic presence against Israel,’’ said Paul

Salem, senior vice president at the Middle East Institute in Washington. “ It appears that neither the Russians nor the Assad regime
are in control or can limit these things,’’ he said. “The situation is highly unstable and highly
unmanaged.’’ One test of Russia’s ability to manage it may come in southern Syria, where Islamic State and other jihadists and rebels still hold territory near Israel’s
border -- enclaves that are among the likely next targets for Assad’s advancing army. “Before they do that, the Russians need to have an arrangement with the Israelis,’’ said Yuri
Barmin, a Middle East expert at the Russian International Affairs Council, which advises the Kremlin. Russia is “willing to negotiate on the issue of Iran and Iran’s presence’’ in
those regions, he said. ‘It’s Shortsighted’ That may not be enough to meet Israeli concerns, which extend far beyond the border. Earlier in the Syrian conflict, Israel’s airstrikes
typically aimed to destroy weapons convoys bound for Hezbollah in Lebanon. There’s been a significant change. Two strikes in the past month -– widely attributed to Israel, though
the Jewish state doesn’t comment on such matters –- targeted permanent infrastructure used by Iran’s forces. Both took place deep inside Syrian territory. “It’s shortsighted to
look at it in terms of how many kilometers from the border Iran is sitting,’’ said Amos Gilad, who recently stepped down as director of political-military affairs at

Israel’s Defense Ministry. “ Iran cannot be allowed to base themselves militarily in Syria. And Israel is fully

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determined to prevent that.’’ To be sure, the goal could be achieved without a full-blown war. Salem, at the Middle East Institute, says the likeliest
outcome is that Israel and Iran will avoid a conflict that neither really wants -- though he says the risk that they’ll end up fighting is higher than at any time since the
IsraelHezbollah war in 2006. And although hostilities have effectively begun with the airstrikes, many analysts say that they can be contained to Syria -– where Israel and Iran can
square off without their allies necessarily being drawn into the fight. ‘Never!’ “Never!’’ said Liberman, when asked if clashes with Iran could lead to clashes with Russia. “There will
be no confrontation with them.’’ In Beirut, Sami Nader of the Levant Institute for Strategic Studies said that Russia may not oppose an Israeli attack on Iranian positions in Syria,
provided it doesn’t threaten to topple the Assad regime that is “the Russians’ main card at the negotiating table.” Barmin, the Kremlin adviser, said there’s plenty of

daylight between the “diverging interests” of Russia and Iran.So far, Russia’s response to Israeli airstrikes has been muted. But
after the U.S. bombed Syrian targets last month, to punish Assad for an alleged chemical attack, Russian officials said they may deliver

state-of-the-art S-300 missile defense systems to Syria. That would pose new risks for the
Israeli air force -– and increase the chance of a flashpoint . Israel’s parliament this week passed a law empowering the prime
minister and defense to declare war without wider Cabinet approval in “extreme circumstances.” Half a century ago, Israel launched a surprise attack against its Arab enemies. A
few years later, in 1973, the tables were turned. In both cases, one of the combatants consciously opted for war. But that’s not how Israel’s more recent conflicts have started,

says Shelach. “It always happened because the situation escalated, deteriorated, without any of the sides making a decision.’’ And that’s the risk he sees now,
with no obvious off-ramp .

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China Fill in Bad – 2NC

China fill in will create a flashpoint due to strategic stability of the middle east
to both countries
Sheikh, New Eastern Outlook IR research analyst, 2015
(Salman, “Chinese ‘Assault’ on the Middle East”, 2-26,
http://journalneo.org/2015/02/26/chinese-assault-on-the-middle-east/)

Not only this; the

Middle East has come to acquire central position in China’s Silk Road project that
focuses on integrating the enormous swathe of territories between China and the Middle East
by concentrating on infrastructure, transportation, energy, telecommunications,
technology and security. On the other hand, China’s insistence on multi-polarity as opposed to the US dominance in the
Middle East implicitly means that the status of the US in the region would have to deteriorate further significantly before
Washington, despite Obama’s willingness to consult with others in contrast to his predecessor, George W. Bush, would be willing to
Chinese and the US approach to the region is
entertain the Chinese approach. One or the other way, however,
not only diametrically opposed but also has the
unhappy and uneasy conflicting relationship potential to lock both the states into an
. Although the US and China are also competing
for hegemony in Africa, they are unlikely to engage in an intense geo-economic conflict there.
However, the Middle East is different, primarily because of, apart from its huge oil reservoirs,
its geographic proximity to the US’ arch strategic competitors in the world: Russia and China

itself . Secondly, the Middle East can be a potential flashpoint between China and the US
because of its importance in the completion of China’s ambitious Silk Road project.
Chinese President Xi

Jinping outlined
his country’s policy framework towards the region when he called, in June 2013, for
the revival of the Silk Road under the motto of “One Belt, One Road.” There is no denying the fact the Silk Road is an
important guide for China’s Middle East diplomacy because Arab countries are at the western intersection of one road, one belt grand
policy. Notwithstanding China’s ambitious project and its potential to trigger development in the region, China cannot simply
‘replace’ the US in the region; for, China cannot hope to take full advantage of its project in such a chaotic situation as it
is today, nor can China itself hope to bring peace because of its strict adherence to the principle of non-intervention. Although non-
intervention coupled with economic incentives has so far allowed China to tread on slowly; however, it is likely to be more difficult
to maintain this path as the crisis in the Middle East escalates and potentially spills out of the region. Because of China’s lack of
interest in the politics of the Middle East, China needs the US, at least for the time being, to manage crisis; and, this is exactly where
China’s greatest policy dilemma lies. It can neither afford the US’ overwhelming influence in the region, nor can it afford to manage
the crisis on its own. It is this
very dilemma that can lock China and the US in an uneasy relationship,
having the potential of escalation into a tug of war, if not a fully-fledged armed
conflict managed through proxy groups.

Democracy Promotion Bad

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Africa War – 1NC

Democratization causes in Africa war – autocratic peace theory is true
Gartzke, Poli Sci Prof @ UCSD, 13
(Erik, “Permanent Friends? Dynamic Difference and the Democratic Peace,” International
Studies Quarterly Volume 57, Issue 1, pages 171–185)
The “autocratic peace” involves a class of arguments about the conflictual consequences of
regime similarity and difference. Theories disagree over whether democratic and autocratic
relations are distinct or equivalent. Early studies of the autocratic peace typically focused on
certain geographic regions. Despite having little democracy, low levels of economic
development, arbitrary national borders, and widespread civil conflict, Africa experiences
surprisingly little interstate war . Several studies attribute the “African peace”
to
historical norms and to the strategic behavior of insecure leaders who
recognize
that challenging existing borders invites continental war while encouraging
secessionist movements risks reciprocal meddling in the country's own domestic affairs
(Jackson and Rosberg 1982; Herbst 1989, 1990).5 However, these arguments fail to address
tensions between individual (state, leader) interests and social goods. The security dilemma
implies precisely that leaders act aggressively despite lacking revisionist objectives (Jervis
1978).
Initial statistical evidence of an autocratic peace emerged in a negative form with the
observation that mixed democratic–autocratic dyads are more conflict prone than either
jointly democratic or jointly autocratic dyads (Gleditsch and Hegre 1997; Raknerud and
Hegre 1997). Studies have sought systematic evidence for or against an autocratic peace.
Oren and Hays (1997) evaluate several data sets, finding that autocracies are less war prone
than democracy–autocracy pairs. Indeed, they find that socialist countries with advanced
industrialized economies are more peaceful than democracies. Werner (2000) finds an
effect of political similarity that coexists with the widely recognized effect of joint
democracy. She attributes the result to shared preferences arising from a reduced likelihood
of disputes over domestic politics. Peceny, Beer and Sanchez-Terry (2002) break down the
broad category of autocracy into multiple subgroups and find evidence that shared
autocratic type (personalistic dictatorships, single-party regimes, or military juntas)
reduces conflict, although the observed effects are less pronounced than for joint
democracy. Henderson (2002) goes further by arguing that there is no empirically verifiable
democratic peace. Instead, political dissimilarity causes conflict. Souva (2004) argues
and finds that similarity of both political and economic institutions
encourages peace. In the most sophisticated analysis to date, Bennett (2006) finds a
robust autocratic peace , though the effect is smaller than for joint democracy and limited
to coherent autocratic regimes. Petersen (2004), in contrast, uses an alternate
categorization of autocracy and finds no support for the claim that similarity prevents or
limits conflict. Still, the bulk of evidence suggests that similar polities are associated with
relative peace, even among nondemocracies.

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The autocratic peace poses unique challenges for democratic peace theories. Given that the
democratic peace highlights apparently unique characteristics of joint democracy, many
explanations are predicated on attributes found only in democratic regimes. An autocratic
peace implies that scholars should focus on corollaries or consequences of shared
regime type , in addition to, or perhaps even instead of democracy . In this
context,
arguments about democratic norms (Maoz and Russett 1993; Dixon 1994), improved
democratic signaling ability (Fearon 1994; Schultz 1998 , 1999, 2001), the peculiar
incentives imposed on leaders by democratic institutions (Bueno de Mesquita et al.
1999, 2003), and democratic learning (Cederman 2001a) all invite additional scrutiny.
While it is theoretically possible that a democratic peace and an autocratic peace could arise
from independent causal processes, logical elegance and the empirical similarities
inherent in shared regime type provide cause to explore theoretical arguments that
spring from regime similarity in general .

Another source of novel empirical variation for second-generation democratic peace

research involves temporal dynamics in the relationship between regime type and conflict
behavior. Cederman (2001a) raised this possibility in arguing that an appropriate
interpretation of Kant requires viewing the democratic peace as a macro-historical learning
process in which the effects of the democratic peace strengthened over time. Indeed,
criticisms of the democratic peace often focus on “near misses,” most of which occur in the
nineteenth century (Layne 1994; Elman 1997). At the same time, however, there is
evidence that the democratic peace may have weakened after the Cold War (Sobek,
Clark and Kimball 2006; Gowa 2010). Of course, such dynamic effects may be spurious,
arising from failures to control for variables that trend with democracy over time (Gartzke
and Weisiger 2013b) or even more prosaically from deficiencies in standard measures of
democracy that may overstate the prevalence of democracies in earlier time periods.6 To
the extent that they exist, however, temporal dynamics in the relationship between
shared regime type and conflict behavior provide another novel empirical
relationship that can be used in refining theories of liberal peace.

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A third empirical characteristic of democracy that deserves mention is its distinctly

nonrandom distribution. Today, Europe is almost entirely democratic; Africa and the Middle
East are predominantly autocratic.7 Indeed, it is impossible to fully explain transitions to
and from democracy without reference to the regional mix of regime types (Gleditsch and
Ward 2006). This clustering in turn influences the democratic peace: A country may be
more likely to democratize (Gleditsch 2003), and a new democracy may be more likely to
survive, if the country finds itself in a democratic neighborhood (Cederman and Gleditsch
2004). Clustering by regime type is certainly appealing given the key prediction of the
democratic peace; democracies should prefer democratic neighbors, as this makes conflict
unlikely. However, regime type clustering does not emerge in an organic fashion from
conventional democratic peace theories, since none of the most common arguments
(norms, constraints, information, identity) explicitly considers geography. Further, the
rationale used to reconcile geographic clustering by regime type with democratic peace
theory implies precisely that it is difference in regime type that is particularly pernicious to
peace. The desire of democracies to encourage or compel regime
change in autocratic neighbors must mean that the security dilemma is intense

between unlike regimes. Autocracies, in turn, must prefer autocrats as neighbors

especially
, if
for no other reason than that insecure democrats incline toward undermining
autocracies .

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Africa War – 2NC

Africa has high volumes of war – but they are much lower than what
democratic peace theory suggests which proves peace is locked in by
exogenous factors like norms against meddling due to reciprocal
legitimacy risks– regime similarity drives peace which means
transitions to democracy create conflicts of difference, a few
democracies will try to meddle with authoritarian regimes which causes
war.
Prefer our stats – first, temporality - DPT has declining relevancy when
the end of the Cold War is controlled for – their data captures irrelevant
information because our theory is true in this era
Second, regional specificity,– democracy causes war in Africa because it
reduces audience costs relative to autocracies – prefer our ev – it
accounts for neopatrimonialism – their ev is based on “African
peculiarity” and it’s not dyadic meaning their systemic models are
biased by propinquity
Henderson, Political Science Prof @ Pennsylvania State University, 9
(Errol, “Disturbing the Peace: African Warfare, Political Inversion and the Universality of the
Democratic Peace Thesis,” British Journal of Political Science 39.1 pp. 25-58)

The findings generally support the political inversion thesis that more politically
open - if not necessarily full-scale democratic -
fight each other. Ironically, the absence of African regimes are more likely to
support for the democratic peace thesis
among African dyads suggests the greater similarity of African conflict processes with
those prevalent within most regions of the world, given that the democratic peace is not
operative in any region of the world other than the West. In this way, the findings do not
substantiate the broad claims of those who argue that African politics are inherently
different from non-African politics. Moreover, 'African peculiarity' theses are gainsaid by
the findings that the relationship between alliance membership , contiguity,
distance and international conflict in Africa are similar to what we find in other
regions.128
The political inversion thesis examined herein accounts for the relationship between
joint democracy and conflict in Africa by focusing on 'African particularity' - borne of
differences in the domestic political institutions of African states , without assuming
'African peculiarity' , rooted in dubious claims about African people. It
draws
inferences from this institutional framework to the decision-making orientation of
Africa's neopatrimonial leaders and in this way provides a rational explanation of

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African political behaviour that is often absent in analyses of Africa's wars that
reduce African conflict processes to , single-factor 'explanations' such as 'tribe'
'greed' or a range of 'heart of darkness'
formulations. The theoretical argument suggests,
inter alia, that African democratic leaders often enjoy greater domestic legitimacy than
leaders of autocratic regimes; and the latter are more likely to resist deploying
troops away from the capital for fear of insurgency . Less constrained by such
fears,
democratic leaders should be more willing to deploy troops abroad or at least to the
borders of their states to engage in international conflict. Therefore, two relatively
open African states - both similarly unconstrained
by problems of illegitimacy - should be more likely ( ceteris paribus) to become involved
in MIDs and to fight each other.

This relationship is evident in the African MIDs involving democratic Botswana and
anocratic Rhodesia from 1976 to 1977. After launching Operation
Thrasher in February
1976 to deal with military incursions of Mozambique-based guerrillas, Ian Smith's
government in Rhodesia turned its attention to Botswana, which had begun to provide
staging camps for the rebels. The dispute escalated on 18 December 1976 into an exchange
of gunfire between Rhodesian forces and Botswana police (Botswana did not have an army
at the time), and two days later Botswana announced that Rhodesian forces had violated its
territory over thirty times since November 1976.129 On that day Rhodesia announced the
creation of a new operational military zone that included the disputatious border area with
Botswana, thus exacerbating the crisis and leading the United Nations' (UN) Security Council
to condemn Rhodesia. The Security Council also demanded the cessation of hostilities and
dispatched a UN mission to Botswana.

escalates – causes WWIII

Mead, Foreign Affairs Prof @ Bard, 13
(Walter Russell, Peace In The Congo? Why The World Should Care, http://www.the-
americaninterest.com/2013/12/15/peace-in-the-congo-why-the-world-should-care/)

The Congo war should be a reminder to us all that the foundations of our world are dynamite , and that the
new conflicts on the scale of the horrific wars of the 20th century potential for
with us today. is very much
The second lesson from this conflict stems from the realization of how much patience and commitment from the international community (which

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in this case included the Atlantic democracies and a coalition of African states working as individual countries and through various international institutions) it has taken to get this
far towards peace. Particularly at a time when many Americans want the US to turn inwards, there are people who make the argument that it is really none of America’s business
to invest time and energy in the often thankless task of solving these conflicts. That might be an ugly but defensible position if we didn’t live in such a tinderbox world. Someone
could rationally say, yes, it’s terrible that a million plus people are being killed overseas in a horrific conflict, but the war is really very far away and America has
urgent needs at home and we should husband the resources we have available for foreign policy on things that have more power to affect us directly. The problem is
that these
wars spread . They may start in places that we don’t care much about (most Americans didn’t give a rat’s patootie about
whether

Germany controlled the Sudetenland in 1938 or Danzig in 1939) but spread to places that we do care very
much about they tend to
. This can be because a revisionist great power like Germany in 1938-39 needs to overturn the balance of power in Europe to achieve its goals, or it
can

be because instability in a very remote place triggers problems in places that we care about very much. Out
of Afghanistan in 2001 came both 9/11 and the waves of
insurgency and instability that threaten to rip nuclear-armed Pakistan apart or trigger wider conflict with India. Out of the mess in Syria a witches’ brew of terrorism and religious
conflict looks set to complicate the security of our allies in Europe and the Middle East and even the security of the

oil supply on which the world economy so profoundly depends. Africa, and the potential for upheaval there, is of more

importance to American security than many people may understand . The line
between

approaches of the Sahara are ideal petri dishes

Africa and the Middle East is a soft one. The weak states that straddle the southern
for Al Qaeda type groups to form and attract local support.
There are networks of funding and religious contact that give groups in these countries potential access to
funds , ,
weapons from the Middle East. A war in the eastern Congo might
fighters training and
not
create the swirling underworld of arms
trading , money transfers , illegal directly trigger these other conflicts, but it
commerce helps to
and the rise of a generation of young men who become experienced fighters—and know no

other way to make a living. It destabilizes the environment for neighboring states (like Uganda and Kenya) that play much more direct role in potential crises of greater concern to
us. This is why the Clinton, Bush and Obama administrations (representing three very different kinds of American politics) have all been engaged in efforts like the peace keeping
effort in the Congo. It is why, despite our budget problems at home and despite our often justifiable impatience with the complexities of dealing with international coalitions and

the inadequacies of international institutions, we need to continue the slow and painstaking work that makes agreements like this one possible. The
world we live in is an explosive one. There are all kinds of things that can go horribly wrong , and what happens
in one corner of the world doesn’t necessarily stay there.
Reducing the danger requires an active, global American foreign policy whether we like it or not. The potential for new communal and religious wars that kill millions of people and
endanger American security and world peace is very real. The world seems safer than the world of the 1930s and

1940s in part because the United States and many of our friends and allies are working quietly around the world to contain outbreaks of violence, address the issues that
exacerbate hatred and distrust, and in the last analysis are willing to provide the security guarantees and deterrents that prevent
mass mayhem.

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Disease – 1NC
Democracy causes disease spread – authoritarianism solves
Schwartz, Poli Sci Prof @ State University of New York, 12
(Jonathon, Compensating for the ‘Authoritarian Advantage’ in Crisis Response: A
Comparative Case Study of SARS Pandemic Responses in China and Taiwan, J OF CHIN
POLIT SCI (2012) 17:313–331)

In the aftermath of the SARS epidemic much was made of China’s effective efforts at disease control and prevention. China’s perceived

success in controlling SARS stands in stark contrast with Taiwan’s troubled response
to its own SARS outbreak. Why does Taiwan, a geographically small, densely populated country with a democratic government, wealthy and
modern knowledge-based economy, fail to effectively respond to SARS whereas big, heavily populated, relatively under-developed and
authoritarian China succeeds? Does regime type explain China’s relative success, and to the extent that regime type matters, what
can be done to compensate for China’s ‘authoritarian advantage’ in crisis response? To address these questions I conduct a comparative analysis
of pandemic response by Taiwan and China. Due to space limitations, I focus primarily on Taiwan, drawing on previous studies of China to
highlight the differences between Chinese and Taiwanese responses. In the final section I draw on this comparison to identify means to
compensate for China’s ‘authoritarian advantage’. Crisis and Response The crisis literature distinguishes between routine crises and novel crises.
In routine crises (frequently recurring crises such as fires and floods), political leaders may defer to operational commanders – people such as
fire fighters or police officers - who have dealt with similar crises in the past. These operational commanders have trained for, and perhaps
experienced similar crises and are able to respond effectively with only moderate adaptation of existing crisis response procedures [1].

However, this approach cannot be followed in the case of novel crises. Novel
crises are crises where there is little
past experience to draw on. Such crises include massive events such as hurricane Katrina, the 2011
Japan earthquake and tsunami or
the spread of a previously unknown infectious disease the 9/11 attacks on the United States that
explode on the scene, or more insidious crises
such
as that only slowly makes itself evident. Of the two

types of novel crises the insidious type is often far more dangerous. The danger lies in the likelihood that the
leadership will fail to recognize the insidious crisis as a crisis because it develops only slowly
and
seems amenable to existing response strategies. As a result, the leadership may become aware of the crisis only after it has become widespread
or more threatening [2]. SARS is an example of insidious crises. It at first went unrecognized and only slowly did the leadership come to realize
the immensity of the threat it represented. Both forms of novel crises require flexible leadership and response capabilities. The leadership must
quickly identify the challenge, engage relevant bureaucracies, implement a response, communicate the nature of the crisis and response
effectively and clearly to the public, and control the message as it is being broadcast by the media to the public. These
already extremely challenging tasks must be accomplished in a compressed timeframe under highly stressful
conditions. Not surprisingly, governments
often fail . Some authors argue that an already challenging situation for leaders is made even
more so if they are functioning in a democratic system. In democracies,
major
emergencies require involvement by multiple jurisdictions and many levels of
among these often overlapping and contentious jurisdictions
representative Coordinating can
government
.
be difficult. Politicians must identify and
justify priorities and actions to local leaders, the the challenges are less public and
the mass media.1 These same authors suggest that
significant in authoritarian regimes . Authoritarian leaders enjoy an ‘ authoritarian
advantage’ , being less likely to need to negotiate with bureaucracies over

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jurisdictional powers or struggle to disentangle overlapping institutions. Furthermore, the

media and by extension the message to the public are more easily controlled.

Burnout is wrong – disease risks extinction

Kerscher 14—Professor, unclear where because every website about him is in German
(Karl-Heinz, “Space Education”, Wissenschaftliche Studie, 2014, 92 Seiten)
The death toll for a pandemic is equal to the virulence, the deadliness of the pathogen or pathogens,
multiplied by the number of people eventually infected. It has been hypothesized that
there is an upper limit to the virulence of naturally evolved pathogens. This is because a
pathogen that quickly kills its hosts might not have enough time to spread to new
ones, while one that kills its hosts more slowly or not at all will allow carriers more time
to spread the infection, and thus likely out-compete a more lethal species or strain. This simple model
predicts that if virulence and transmission are not linked in any way, pathogens will evolve
towards low virulence and rapid transmission. However, this assumption is not always
valid and in more complex models, where the level of virulence and the rate of
transmission are related, high levels of virulence can evolve. The level of virulence that
is possible is instead limited by the existence of complex populations of hosts, with different
susceptibilities to infection, or by some hosts being geographically isolated. The size of the host population and competition

between different strains of pathogens can also alter virulence. There

are numerous historical examples
of pandemics that have had a devastating effect on a large number of people, which
makes the possibility of global pandemic a realistic threat to human civilization.

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Disease – 2NC
Democracy causes disease spread – audience costs constrain effective response
– authoritarian regimes solve, they can take the unpopular actions necessary to
stop pandemics – that’s Schwartz.
Cross sectional analysis proves – Taiwan versus China during SARS Schwartz,
Poli Sci Prof @ State University of New York, 12
(Jonathon, Compensating for the ‘Authoritarian Advantage’ in Crisis Response: A
Comparative Case Study of SARS Pandemic Responses in China and Taiwan, J OF CHIN
POLIT SCI (2012) 17:313–331)
Public Support for Government Initiatives Comparative data on public confidence in government and political parties in Taiwan and China
exhibit major differences. According to World Values Survey data, 96.7 percent of Chinese express either a great deal or quite a lot of confidence
in government. In Taiwan the equivalent level of confidence is expressed by only 69.7 percent. Eighty six point five percent of Chinese express a

great deal or quite a lot of confidence in political parties (CCP), whereas in Taiwan only 35.6 percent express such confidence. These

significant differences reflect the greater legitimacy enjoyed by China’s central government
leadership and the government’s greater ability to mobilize the population in response to a
crisis.23 Due to the relative lack of public confidence in the leadership in Taiwan, government leaders
hesitated to act strongly against the SARS outbreak for fear of alienating the
population. voting
Officials feared that unpopular restrictions on personal movement and economic activity might turn the public against
the

ruling party. The

public, influenced by often sensationalist reports in the mass media, were openly
sceptical of government statements and acted to block or simply ignore central government
initiatives. For example, despite ongoing central government assurances, when the public in Hsinchu county learned of plans to move SARS
patients to their local hospital from hospitals in Taipei, numerous people, led by local government officials, rallied to block the transfer. Similar
though recognizing the benefits to
incidents across the island left Taiwan ‘divided into many small fortresses…’. Notably,

activating civil society organizations to respond to outbreaks, this was not done during
SARS .24 Enjoying high public confidence, China’s leadership could mobilize the public . While
its
ability to recentralize decision making power, rapidly enact rules and regulations including
clearly coercive and civil liberties-limiting policies, were central to China’s SARS response,
these actions were accompanied by reliance on a traditional communist tool
highly effective that proved
- the mobilization campaign. The government mobilized the public in general but also a variety of
traditional and non-traditional civil society groups. Traditional civil society organizations played only a limited role in the Chinese SARS
response, the key to effective mobilization in China was the Shequ (which replaced the residence committee in 1999) [13]. These are defined as
grassroots, self-governing mass organizations in article 11 of China’s constitution. Shequ are appendages of subdistrict offices, which in turn are
subordinate to district and then municipal governments. Described as non-conventional social service organizations, Shequ both assist in
implementing government policies (such as the one child policy) but also intercede on behalf of the public (for example coordinating collective
responses to local problems). Paralleling the Shequ are the village committees. These are perhaps best described as a form of quasi-independent
organization under the close supervision of the state [14]. Read describes these as “straddler groups” – groups that bridge the divide between
state and society. They cannot be viewed as autonomous social organizations in the conventional Western sense, nor should they be dismissed

as purely instruments of the state [15]. During the

SARS outbreak, they served under the guidance and with
the training of local CDCs and hospitals. They took responsibility for monitoring their
communities for potential SARS cases and notifying hospitals. Because the committees are constituted of

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community members, the committees knew most of the people in their locations and were able to keep close tabs on comings and goings. If a person
had recently returned from a SARS affected region of the country, this information would soon be obtained by the committee members and passed on to
relevant officials [16].

Authoritarian advantage – they control information better, improves treatment

Schwartz, Poli Sci Prof @ State University of New York, 12
(Jonathon, Compensating for the ‘Authoritarian Advantage’ in Crisis Response: A
Comparative Case Study of SARS Pandemic Responses in China and Taiwan, J OF CHIN
POLIT SCI (2012) 17:313–331)
As noted, in evaluating its response to SARS, the Taiwan government attributed its failure to
effectively overcome SARS at least in part to exclusion from inter-governmental organizations,
specifically the WHO. It is correct that after been expelled Taiwan lost the direct support of
the WHO. However, this is an insufficient explanation of relative failure. As seen, Taiwan
public health officials conceded that despite some delays in obtaining information on SARS,
they ultimately obtained the information required from the USCDC and WHO officials.
Furthermore, the WHO website offered a wealth of information, thereby providing Taiwan
officials an additional resource. In short, lack of WHO membership does
not offer a convincing explanation of Taiwan’s relative failure to The authoritarian
control SARS.

advantage argument carries more weight . With the disease spreading across China,
the
Chinese leadership was able to recentralize decision making power , enforce strict top-down

and the public as a whole;

regulations on SARS treatment , control and reporting; mobilize state and non-state actors
and, control the message deriving from the mass media. In
Taiwan, political considerations constrained similar government actions . Inter-party rivalries
limited communication and cooperation among jurisdictions. And even though recognized
by epidemiologists as important and effective, fear of inducing a popular backlash at the polls
caused the government to hesitate when considering implementation
of coercive and
unpopular disease control initiatives. The state was unable to control the
flow of information
to the public, and in important cases the public refused to believe state pronouncements or
cooperate with state initiatives.

Disease doesn’t care about norms – democracy sets us up to fail

Mayer, Professor at Harvard Medical School, 8
(Kenneth, The Social Ecology of Infectious Diseases, pp. 420-421)
In addition to the methodological limitations lo illustrating quantitatively the relationship between governance and infectious disease control,

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responses lead to more effective disease control,

there are several examples that can be cited to suggest that more authoritarian
or that governance has little ultimate impact on infectious

disease rates. Certainly

it is true that, despite the
best (or worst) intentions of individuals and stubbornly indifferent to
or even contrary
governments, infectious pathogens can be
theories of health and human rights . HIV
transmission can be limited in civil
war
settings, for example, even when human rights abuses are widespread and governments
have collapsed. In Angola. a pro tracted civil war which reduced cross-border travel and trade is thought to have left the country
somewhat protected from the early introduction and spread of disease compared to many of its neighbors: however, the war also impeded the
ability of the government to conduct surveillance and education around the dis ease. and destroyed the health services needed to respond to
AIDS. The war also curtailed the formation of a vibrant civil society, such as the development of NGOs and AIDS service
organizations, which
see a sharp
have been highly effective in both prevention and care elsewhere. Post-conflict countries often in
increase HIV prevalence, presum ably as measures of governance are improving,
indicating that the relationship between HIV and governance may involve a similar time-lag to the relationship between widespread

transmission of 111V and the onset and recognition of AIDS. In Mozambique. for example, the HIV rate soared
shortly after the cessation of civil conflict in 1992. Another example of the difficulty
with the temporal rela tionship between governance and 111V prevalence comes from the Kingdom of Swaziland. referred to above. The rapid
rise in HIV prevalence, from 4 percent in 1992 to 26 percent in 1996. did not occur with a simultaneous deterioration of governance: rather, the
precondition and weaknesses in Swaziland allowed for the rapid spread of HIV once it was fully introduced into the country. Conversely. the
apparent improvement in the HIV epidemic in Zimbabwe, with HIV prevalence decreasing from 25 percent to 20 percent between 2001 and
2005 despite a worsening human rights and governance environment, may he reflective of ear lier actions by the government and, importantly.
by international donors, while the impact of current government actions will only be reflected in the years to come (Human Rights Watch,
2006a). Vaccine-preventable diseases may similarly reflect a time-lag between the breakdown of governance (and hence vaccinaion cam paigns)
and the accumulation of a large enough susceptible cohort of individuals to sustain disease transmission.

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Enviro – 1NC
Democracy destroys the environment – extinction – try or die for
authoritarianism
Daniel, Poli Sci @ University of Leeds, 12
(Charles, To what extent is democracy detrimental to the current and future aims of
environmental policy and technologies?, POLIS Journal Vol. 7, Summer 2012)
This is exactly what Mark Beeson suggests in his argument for the coming of environmental authoritarianism. He acknowledges the fact that

Whilst democracy has allowed

individual liberty has led to ‘environmentally destructive behaviour’ (Beeson 2010: 276).

for a more open discussion on environmental issues as well as raising awareness, there has been
too much trust put on ecological enlightenment through education. For Beeson, this ‘relies
too much on an optimistic, naïve view of human nature’ (Beeson 2010: 282), the idea that an attitude of
respect, through the emergence of a shared cosmopolitan rhetoric will produce environmental improvement is wide of the mark. As Beeson
rightly points out, the ‘sobering reality’ is that as the human population continues to grow, consuming
resources on an unprecedented scale will have less and less , ‘policy-makers

capacity
to intervene to keep damage to the environment from producing serious social
disruption’ (Beeson 2010: 283). , Liberal democracy through the necessities dictated by a capitalist economy has built
its survival on the continued exploitation of environmental resources to a point where
an attempt to gain control of this practice has become almost impossible . The
article, whilst not wholly advocating the Asian political model (indeed Beeson highlights the fact that China is a ruthless exploiter of its own
natural environment and sets a poor example for the rest of the continent), is appropriately pessimistic

towards the success of liberal democracy. It therefore seems rational

authoritarianism to put forward
soft as a viable alternative: for it avoids trust in the individual ,
taking a negative view of human
nature and advocates the need for state control , particularly surrounding urgent
. Whilst it is difficult to accept, it may be the case that
policy issues like the environment
‘good
forms of authoritarianism, in which environmentally unsustainable forms of behaviour are simply forbidden, may
become not only justifiable, but essential for the survival of humanity’ (Beeson 2010: 289).

Enviro – 2NC
authoritarianism solves environment
Beeson, Poli Sci Prof @ University of Western Australia, 10
(Mark, The coming of environmental authoritarianism,
http://www.academia.edu/539179/The_coming_of_environmental_authoritarianism)

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The East Asian region generally and Southeast Asia in particular have longbeen associated with authoritarian rule. It
is argued that the intensificationof a range of environmental problems means that authoritarian rule islikely to
become even more commonplace there in the future. Countrieswith limited state capacity will struggle to deal with
the consequences of population expansion, economic development and the environmentaldegradation with which
they are associated. A resurgence of authoritarianrule is made even more likely by China’s ‘successful’
developmentalexample and the extent of the region’s existing
environmental problems.The dispiriting reality may be that – may even prove more capable

of responding to the complex

environmental pressures in the region
authoritarian regimes – unattractive asthey may be
political and

than some of its democracies. Keywords: authoritarianism; environment; Southeast Asia;

The environment has become the defining

China;development; path dependency Introduction
public policy issue of the era. Notonly will political responses to environmental challenges determine
the healthof the planet, but continuing environmental degradation may also affect
political systems. This interaction is likely to be especially acute in parts of
theworld where environmental problems are most pressing and the state’s
ability to respond to such challenges is weakest. One possible consequence of
environmental degradation is the development or consolidation of
authoritarian rule as political elites come to privilege regime maintenance and
internalstability over political liberalisation. Even efforts to mitigate the impact
of, orrespond to, environmental change may involve a decrease in individual
liberty as governments seek to transform environmentally destructive behaviour. As a result, ‘environmental
authoritarianism’ may become an increasingly common response
to the destructive impacts of climate change in an age of diminishedexpectations.Long before the recent global
economic crisis inflicted such a blow onAnglo-American forms of economic organisation, it was apparent that
therewere other models of economic development and other modes of politicalorganisation that had admirers around
the world. The rise of illiberal forms of capitalism and an apparent ‘democratic recession’ serve as a powerful remin-
ders that there was nothing inevitable about the triumph of ‘Western’ politicaland economic practices or values
(Zakaria 2003, Diamond 2008).

no turns—democracies make a lot of commitments but don’t follow

through
David Held & Angus Fane Hervey 9 Policy Network. David Held is Graham Wallas Professor of Political
Science and Co-Director of LSE Global Governance at the London School of Economics. Angus Fane Hervey is a
Doctoral Student and Ralph Miliband Scholar in the Department of Government at the London School of Economics.
Democracy, climate change and global governance
On balance, while evidence on the link between political institutions and environmental sustainability does seem to
suggest that democracies are preferable to authoritarian regimes, we might expect the effect to be far greater than it
actually is. Why is this the case? Part of the reason might be attributed to the different types of transmission
mechanisms that translate policy commitment into policy outcomes. Battig & Bernauer (2009), for example, find that
while the effect of democracy on political commitment to climate change is
positive, the effect on policy outcomes, measured in terms of emissions and trends, is
ambiguous . They observe that the causal chain from environmental risks to public
perceptions of such risks, to public demand for risk mitigation, and to
policy output is shorter than the one leading from risk via policy output to policy
outcome. Because of that, outcomes are influenced by a range of other factors, such as the properties of the resource in
question, mitigation costs, and the efficiency of implementing agencies. Politicians might

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easily declare a set of public policy commitments to climate change mitigation,

but the outcome of such efforts is affected by factors that are often outside of
their control. The result is that policymakers respond quite well to public demands
for more environmental protection, but tend to discount implementation
problems, hoping that voters will not be able to identify these within a short
enough time period to use their votes as a punishment for any failure to deliver.

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Promotion Bad – 1NC

Democracy promotion causes transition wars and prevents effective global
governance.
Kupchan, 2014 (Charles, Professor of International Affairs at Georgetown University and senior fellow at the Council on
Foreign Relations, “No One's World”, Huffington Post, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/charles-kupchan/transforming-
worldpower_b_4703784.html)

The global distribution of power is fast changing . Europe and the United States, which for some
two

centuries have together dominated the global landscape, are ceding power and influence to China, India,
Brazil, and other emerging powers. The implications of this continuing redistribution of global
power will be magnified by the fact that
rising nations are forging their own brands of

governance and capitalism, not embracing the political and economic norms associated with the
"Western way." The
twenty-first century will not belong Western democracies thus face the prospect of a world to
Europe, the United States, China, or anyone else; it
will be no one's world. As they look ahead,
transformed . Their global sway is on the wane. Their brand of modernity -- liberal democracy,
industrial

capitalism, and secular nationalism -- will

have to compete with other political and economic models ,
including state capitalism in China and Russia, political Islam in the Middle East, and left-wing
populism in Latin America. If the West is to succeed in adjusting to these changes and anchoring the quickening turn in
global affairs, it will have to reclaim its economic health and recover its political vitality -- not easy tasks when Europe is being pulled
apart by its debt crisis and the United States is virtually paralyzed by partisan polarization. THE WORLD'S CHANGING MAP OF POWER

The next few decades will bring a complete overhaul of the global pecking order . During the
Cold
War, the Western allies accounted for more than two-thirds of global output. Now they represent about half of output, and this
As of 2010, four of the top five economies in the world were still from the
figure is decreasing.
developed world (the United States, Japan, Germany and France). From the developing world, only China made the grade,
occupying second place. By 2050, according to Goldman Sachs, four of the top five economies will come from
the developing world (China, India, Brazil, and Russia). From today's developed world, only the United States will make
the cut; it will rank second, and its economy will be about half the size of China's. This leveling in the
international distribution of power is poised to unfold quite quickly .
The World Bank predicts that the
US dollar will lose its global dominance by 2025 as the dollar, euro, and China's renminbi become co-equals in a "multi-currency"
monetary system. Goldman Sachs projects that the
collective economic output of the top four developing countries --
Brazil, China, India, Russia -- will match that of the G7 countries by 2032. This reallocation of global
wealth will result primarily from the rise of "the rest", not the absolute decline of the West. Indeed, a combination of economic
resilience and military superiority will keep the United States at or near the top of the pecking order for years to come. And as long
as the European Union holds
together, it will remain one of the
the West is losing the hegemonic position that it has long enjoyed

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world's main centers of commerce and investment for the foreseeable future. Nonetheless, .

History makes clear that such transitions in the distribution of global power are dangerous; they
.
usually bring with them instability and, not infrequently, great-power war A defining strategic
challenge of the twenty-first
The West will have to adapt not just to the loss of its
century will be managing this
transition and ensuring that it occurs peacefully. ALTERNATIVE MODELS
material primacy, but also to its diminishing ideological dominance . Rather than following
the

West's path of development and obediently

accepting their place in the liberal international order erected
rising nations are fashioning their own versions of
by liberal democracies after World War II,
modernity and pushing back against the West's ideological ambitions. Efforts to manage If the
coming turn in global affairs will thus take place in a world that is increasingly diverse and
unwieldy.
Western leaders remain blind to this new reality and continue to expect conformity to
Western values, they will not only misunderstand emerging powers, but also alienate the

many countries tired of being herded toward Western standards of governance. Developing nations are fast
acquiring the economic and political wherewithal to consolidate brands of
modernity that
represent durable alternatives to the West's. THE UPSIDE OF STATE CAPITALISM The last thirty years of Chinese
development, for example, look nothing like the path followed by Europe and North America. The West's ascent was led by its
middle class, which overturned absolute monarchy, insisted on a separation of church and state, and unleashed the entrepreneurial

and technological potential vital to the Industrial Revolution. In contrast, the

authoritarian Chinese state has won
over its middle class: its economy outperforms those of Western competitors, enriching its
bourgeoisie and lifting hundreds of millions out of poverty. Moreover, in today's fast and fluid global
economy, the control afforded by state capitalism has its distinct advantages. China - in no small part because it has retained control
over policy instruments abandoned by liberal states - has proved quite adept at taking advantage of globalization's benefits while
limiting its liabilities. It should be no surprise that Russia, Vietnam and others are following China's
lead. The Middle East is similarly set to confound expectations of political conformity .
Participatory
politics may be arriving in the region, but most of the Muslim world recognizes no distinction between the realms
of the sacred and the secular; mosque and state are inseparable, ensuring that political
Islam is returning as coercive regimes fall. Indeed, a 2013 poll revealed that nearly two-thirds of Egyptians want civil law to adhere
strictly to the Koran. And Egypt is the rule, not the exception. If nothing else, the Arab Spring has shown that
democratization does not equal Westernization. It is past time for Europe and the United States to rethink their longstanding
alignment with the region's secular parties. True, risingpowers like India and Brazil are more stable, secular
democracies that appear to be hewing closely to the Western model. But these countries have
democratized while their populations consist mainly of the urban and rural poor, not the middle class. As a result, both nations

have embraced a left-wing populism wary of free markets and of representative institutions that
seem to deliver benefits only to a privileged elite. Rising democracies are also following

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their own paths on foreign policy . India, for example, has demonstrated pronounced
ambivalence
toward US efforts to make it a strategic partner. New Delhi is at odds with Washington on issues
ranging from Afghanistan to climate change, and it has been deepening commercial ties with Iran just as the United States and

Europe have been tightening sanctions. Standing

up to the West still holds cachet in India and Brazil, one
reason New Delhi and Brasília line up with Washington less than 25 percent of the time at the
United Nations. Europe and the United States have long presumed that the world's democracies will as a matter of course ally themselves
with the West; common values supposedly mean common interests. But if India and Brazil are any indication,
even
rising powers that are stable democracies will chart their own courses, expediting the arrival
of a world that no longer plays by Western rules . The twenty-first century will not be the first time the
world's
major powers embraced quite different models of governance and commerce: during the seventeenth century, the Holy Roman
Empire, Ottoman Empire, Mughal Empire, Qing Dynasty and Tokugawa Shogunate each ran its affairs according to its own distinct
rules and
culture. But
these powers
This century, in contrast, will be the first time in history in which multiple versions
were largely
self-contained; they interacted little and thus had no need to agree on a set of common rules.

of order and modernity coexist in an interconnected world ; no longer will the West anchor
globalization.

Multiple power centers, and the competing models they represent, will vie on a more level playing field.
Effective global governance will require forging common ground amid an equalizing
distribution of power and rising ideological diversity .

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Promotion Bad – 2NC

Perception alone of US democracy promotion demonizes non-Western
approaches causes global great power instability
Kupchan, 2011 Charles, professor of international affairs at Georgetown University and Whitney Shepardson Senior Fellow
at the Council on Foreign Relations, June 2011, “The false promise of unipolarity: constraints on the exercise of American power,”
Cambridge Review of International Affairs, Vol. 24, No. 2, p. 165-173

The substantive gap between the norms of the Western order and those that inform the
domestic and foreign policies of rising powers has not
gone unnoticed (Kupchan and Mount 2009). illusory response Nonetheless, many scholars have
offered an : that the United
dedicate the twilight hours of their primacy to universalizing
States and its democratic allies
should
Western norms . According to G John Ikenberry (2008, 37, 25), ‘the United States’ global position may
be

weakening, but the international system the United States leads can remain the dominant order of the twenty-first century’. The
West should ‘sink the roots of this order as
deeply as possible’ to ensure that the world continues confidence in the universality of the Western to
play by its rules even as its material preponderance wanes.
Such
order is, however, based on wishful thinking about the likely trajectory of ascending
powers,
which throughout history have sought to adjust the prevailing order in ways that advantage
their own interests. Presuming that rising states will readily
embrace Western norms is not
only unrealistic, but also dangerous , promising to alienate emerging powers that will be
in the years ahead (Gat 2007). Brooks
pivotal to global stability and Wohlforth do not address this issue—presumably
because they believe that US preponderance is so durable that they need not concern themselves with the
normative orientations

of rising powers. But facts on the ground suggest otherwise. China

is, as of 2010, the world’s second largest
economy, holds massive amounts of US debt, and is strengthening its economic and strategic
presence in many quarters of the globe; the G-8 has given way to the G-20; the prime minister of
democratic India has called for ‘new global “rules of the game”’ and the ‘reform and revitalization’ of
international institutions (Mahbubane 2008, 235); the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank have increased the voting
weight of developing countries; and the United Nations Security Council is coming under growing pressure to enlarge the voices of

emerging powers. All

of these developments come at the expense of the influence and normative
preferences of the United States and its Western allies. By the numbers, Brooks and Wohlforth are correct that
unipolarity persists. But rising powers are already challenging the pecking order and guiding

norms of the international system. If the next international system is to be characterized by

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toleration of political diversity

consensus

norm-governed order rather than competitive anarchy , the West will have to make room for
the competing visions of rising powers . A new order will have to be based on great-power
and rather than the normative hegemony of
the West .
Ending democracy promotion is key to rebuilding US international
legitimacy that prevents great power wars.
Fujimoto, 2012 (Kevin, Lt. Colonel, U.S. Army, January 11, 2012, “Preserving U.S. National Security Interests
Through a Liberal World Construct,” http://www.strategicstudiesinstitute.army.mil/index.cfm/articles/Preserving-US-
National-Security-Interests-Liberal-World-Construct/2012/1/11)

The emergence of peer competitors, not terrorism, presents the greatest long-term
threat to our national security. Over the past decade, while the United States concentrated its geopolitical focus on fighting two
land wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, China has quietly begun implementing a strategy to emerge as the

dominant imperial power within Southeast Asia and the Indian Ocean. Within the next 2 decades, China
will likely replace the United States as the Asia-Pacific regional hegemonic power, if not
replace us as the global superpower.1 Although China presents its rise as peaceful and non-hegemonic, its construction of naval bases in neighboring

countries and military expansion in the region contradict that argument. With a credible threat to its leading position
in a unipolar global order, the United States should adopt a grand strategy of
“investment,” building legitimacy and capacity in the very institutions that will
protect our interests in a liberal global construct of the future when we are no longer the dominant
imperial power. Similar to the Clinton era's grand strategy of “enlargement,”2 investment supports a world order
predicated upon a system of basic rules and principles, however, it differs in that the United
States should concentrate on the institutions (i.e., United Nations, World Trade Organization, ASEAN, alliances, etc.) that
support a world order, as opposed to expanding democracy as a system of governance for other
sovereign nations. Despite its claims of a benevolent expansion, China is already executing a strategy of expansion similar
to that of Imperial Japan's Manchukuo policy during the 1930s.3 This three-part strategy
involves: “(i) (providing) investments in economic
significant
conducting) military interventions
infrastructure for extracting natural resources; (ii) (
and, (iii) . . . (annexing) via installation of puppet governments.”4 China has already
(to) protect economic interests;

solidified its control over neighboring North Korea and Burma, and has similarly
begun more ambitious engagements in Africa and Central Asia where it seeks to expand its frontier.5
Noted political scientist Samuel P. Huntington provides further analysis of the motives behind China's imperial aspirations. He contends that “China

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(has) historically conceived itself as encompassing a “‘Sinic Zone'. . . (with) two goals: to become the champion of
Chinese culture . . . and to resume its historical position, which it lost in the nineteenth century, as the
hegemonic power in East Asia.”6 Furthermore, China holds one quarter of the world's population, and rapid economic growth will
increase its demand for natural resources from outside its borders as its people seek a standard of living comparable to that of Western civilization.

The rise of peer competitors has historically resulted in regional instability and one should
compare “the emergence of China to the rise of. . . Germany as the dominant
power in Europe in the late nineteenth century.”7 Furthermore, the rise of another peer competitor on the level of
the Soviet Union of the Cold War ultimately threatens U.S. global influence, challenging its concepts of human rights, liberalism, and democracy; as well
This decline in influence, while initially limited to the
as its ability to co-opt other nations to accept them.8

Asia-Pacific region, threatens to result in significant conflict if it ultimately leads to a

paradigm shift in the ideas and principles that govern the existing world
order. A grand building
strategy of investment to address the threat of China requires investing in institutions, addressing ungoverned states, and
legitimacy through multilateralism . The United States must build capacity in the existing
institutions and alliances accepted globally as legitimate representative bodies of the world's governments. For true legitimacy, the
United States must support these institutions, not only when convenient, in order to
avoid the appearance of unilateralism, which would ultimately undermine the very
organizations upon whom it will rely when it is no longer the global hegemon. The
United States must also address ungoverned states, not only as breeding grounds for terrorism, but as
conflicts that threaten to spread into regional instability, thereby drawing in superpowers with
competing interests. Huntington proposes that the greatest source of conflict will come from what
he defines as one

“core” nation's involvement in a conflict between another core nation and a minor state within its

involve combatants from the U nited S

immediate sphere of influence. 9 For example, regional instability in South Asia10 threatens to
tates, India, China, and the surrounding nations. Appropriately,
the United States, as a global power, must apply all elements of its national power
now to address the problem of weak and failing states, which threaten to serve as the
principal catalysts of future global conflicts.11 Admittedly, the application of American power in the internal affairs of
a sovereign nation raises issues. Experts have posed the question of whether the United States should act as the world's enforcer of stability, imposing its
concepts of human rights on other states. In response to this concern, The International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty authored a
study titled, The Responsibility to Protect,12 calling for revisions to the understanding of sovereignty within the United Nations (UN) charter. This
commission places the responsibility to protect peoples of sovereign nations on both the state itself and, more importantly, on the international

community.13 If approved, this

revision will establish a precedent whereby the United States has not
only the authority and responsibility to act within the internal affairs of a repressive
government, but does so with global legitimacy if done under the auspices of a UN
mandate. Any effort to legitimize and support a liberal world construct requires the United
States to adopt a multilateral doctrine which avoids the precepts of the previous
administration: “preemptive war, democratization, and U.S. primacy of

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unilateralism ,”14 which have resulted in the alienation of former allies worldwide. Predominantly Muslim nations, whose citizens had
previously looked to the United States as an example of representative governance, viewed the Iraq invasion as the seminal dividing action
between

the Western and the Islamic world. Appropriately,

any future American interventions into the internal affairs of
another sovereign nation must first seek to establish consensus by gaining the approval of a
body representing global opinion, and must reject military unilateralism as a threat to that governing
body's legitimacy. Despite the long-standing U.S. tradition of a liberal foreign policy since the start of the Cold War, the famous liberal leviathan, John
Ikenberry, argues that “the post-9/11 doctrine of national security strategy . . . has been based on . . . American global dominance, the preventative use
of force, coalitions of the willing, and the struggle between liberty and evil.”15 American
foreign policy has misguidedly
focused on spreading democracy , as opposed to building a liberal international order
based on universally accepted principles that actually set the conditions for individual nation states to select their own
system of governance. Anne-Marie Slaughter, the former Dean of the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, argues that true

Wilsonian idealists “support liberal democracy, but reject the possibility of

democratizing peoples . . .”16 and reject military primacy in favor of supporting a
rulesbased system of order. Investment in a liberal world order would also set the conditions for
the
United States to garner support from noncommitted regional powers (i.e., Russia, India, Japan, etc.), or “swing
civilizations,” in countering China's increasing hegemonic influence.17 These states reside within close proximity to the Indian Ocean, which will
likely emerge as the geopolitical focus of the American foreign policy during the 21st century, and appropriately have the ability to offset China's imperial
dominance in the region.18 Critics of a liberal world construct argue that idealism is not necessary, based on the assumption that nations that trade
together will not go to war with each other.19 In response, foreign affairs columnist Thomas L. Friedman rebukes their arguments, acknowledging the
predicate of commercial interdependence as a factor only in the decision to go to war, and argues that while globalization is creating a new international
order, differences between civilizations still create friction that may overcome all other factors and lead to conflict.20 Detractors also warn that as China
grows in power, it will no longer observe “the basic rules and principles of a liberal international order,” which largely result from Western concepts of
foreign relations. Ikenberry addresses this risk, citing that China's leaders already recognize that they will gain
more authority within the existing liberal order, as opposed to contesting it. China's
leaders “want the protection and rights that come from the
international order's . . . defense of sovereignty,”21 from which they have benefitted during their recent history of
economic growth and international expansion. Even if China executes a peaceful rise and the United States

overestimates a Sinic threat to its national security interest, the emergence of a new imperial power will challenge
American leadership in the Indian Ocean and Asia-Pacific region. That being said, it is more likely that China, as

evidenced by its military and economic expansion, will displace the United States as
the regional hegemonic power. Recognizing this threat now, the United States must
prepare for the eventual transition and immediately begin building the legitimacy
and support of a system of rules that will protect its
longer the world's only superpower interests later when we are no
.

Democracy promotion promotes backlash – causes war with Russia and China.
Kupchan, 2012 (Charles, professor of International Affairs at Georgetown University and senior fellow at the
Council on Foreign Relations, “No One's World: The West, the Rising Rest, and the Coming Global Turn”, Kindle edition (no page
numbers)

Although Western hegemony is in its waning days, it still provides a significant level of global stability. Teamwork between the
United States and the EU continues to represent the world's most important partnership. The EU's aggregate wealth rivals
America's, and the U.S. economy will remain number one into the next decade. The American military will

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maintain its primacy well beyond the next decade, and Washington's diplomatic clout
will be second to none for the foreseeable future. Nonetheless, the stability afforded
by Western predominance will slip away in step with its material and ideological
primacy. Accordingly, the West must work with emerging powers to take advantage of
to map out the rules that will govern the next world.
the current window of opportunity
Otherwise,
multipolarity coupled with ideological dissensus will ensure balance-of-power
competition and unfettered jockeying for power, position, and prestige. It is far preferable to
arrive at a new rules-based order by design rather than head toward a new anarchy by default. The goal should be to
forge a consensus among major states about the foundational principles of the next
world. The West will have to be ready for compromise; the rules must be acceptable to powers that adhere to very different
conceptions of what constitutes a just and acceptable order. The political diversity that will characterize the next world suggests
that aiming low and crafting a rules-based order that endures is wiser than aiming high and coming away emptyhanded. What
follows is a sketch of what the rules of the next order might look like—a set of principles on which the West
and the rising rest may well be able to find common ground. Defining Legitimacy Under American
leadership, the West has propagated a conception of order that equates political
legitimacy with liberal democracy. If a new rules-based order is to emerge, the West
will have to embrace political diversity rather than insist that liberal democracy is the
only legitimate form of government. To be sure, nondemocracies currently have
their say in global institutions, such as the United Nations, the World Bank, and the G-20. But even as the West does
business with autocracies in these and other settings, it also delegitimates them in
word and action. The United States leads the charge on this front. In his second inaugural
address, George W. Bush stated that, "America's vital interests and our deepest beliefs are now one.... So it is the policy of the
United States to seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture." Although
of different political stripes, Barack Obama told the UN General Assembly in 2010 that "experience shows us that history is on
the side of liberty; that the strongest foundation for human progress lies in open economies, open societies, and open
governments. To put it simply, democracy, more than any other form of government, delivers for our citizens."- Obama also
made clear his commitment to democracy promotion in outlining the U.S.
response to the Arab Spring: The United States supports a set of universal rights. And these rights include free
speech, the freedom of peaceful assembly, the freedom of religion, equality for men and women under the rule of law, and the
right to choose your own leaders.... Our support for these principles is not a secondary interest... it
is a top priority that must be translated into concrete actions, and supported by all of the diplomatic, economic and strategic

tools at our disposal.2 Europe generally shares this outlook. Catherine Ashton, the
EU's foreign policy chief,
declared in 2010 that, "democracy, human rights, security, governance and sustainable
development are intrinsically linked. Democratic principles have their roots in universal norms and values."-
Such statements affirm Robert Kagan's observation that elites in the West "have operated on the ideological conviction that
liberal democracy is the only legitimate form of government and that other forms of government are not only illegitimate but

transitory.'' This stance

is morally compelling and consistent with values deeply held
among the Atlantic democracies. But the equation of legitimacy with democracy
undermines the West's influence among emerging powers. Even countries like Brazil
and India, both of which are stable democracies, tend to view the West's obsession
with democracy promotion as little more than uninvited meddling in the affairs of
others. The backlash is of course considerably harsher in autocracies such as China
and Russia,
which regularly warn the United States and the EU to stay out of the

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domestic affairs of other countries . In Putin's words, "We are all perfectly aware of the realities of
domestic
political life. I do not think it is really necessary to explain anything to anybody. We are not going to interfere in domestic politics,
just as we do not think that they should prevent practical relations ... from developing. Domestic politics are domestic politics."
For the West to speak out against political repression and overt violations of the rule of law is not only warranted but obligatory.
to predicate constructive relations with rising powers on their readiness to
But
embrace a Western notion of legitimacy is another matter altogether. Senator John McCain is
off course in insisting that "It is the democracies of the world that will provide the pillars upon which we can and must build
only if the West works cooperatively with all regimes
an enduring peace."— On the contrary,
willing to reciprocate—democracies and nondemocracies alike—will it be able to
build an enduring peace. Terrorism, nuclear proliferation, climate change, energy
security, water and food security,
financial crisis—these challenges are global in
nature and can be effectively addressed only in partnership with a wide array of

countries . It makes little sense for the West to denigrate and ostracize regimes
whose cooperation it needs to fashion a secure new order; the stakes are too high.
Western countries only harm their own interests when they label as illegitimate
governments that are not liberal democracies. Recognizing the next world's
inevitable political diversity and thereby consolidating cooperation with rising
powers of diverse regime type is far more sensible than insisting on the universality
of Western conceptions of legitimacy—and alienating potential partners. The West
and rising rest must arrive at
a new, more inclusive, notion of legitimacy if they are to agree on an ideological foundation for the next world.

embrace of political diversity promotes U.S. interests more effectively in

the multilateral international order than promoting a narrow
democratic model
Kupchan and Mount, 2009 (Charles, professor of International Affairs at Georgetown University and senior
fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, and Adam, doctoral candidate in the Department of Government at Georgetown
University, “The Autonomy Rule,” Democracy: A Journal of Ideas, Spring 2009,
http://www.democracyjournal.org/pdf/12/Kupchan.pdf)

Many American strategists recognize the inevitability of a more level global playing
field, but they have arrived at an illusory response: that the United States and its
democratic allies should dedicate the twilight hours of their primacy to
universalizing the Western order. According to G. John Ikenberry, a political scientist at Princeton University, “The United States’
global position may be weakening, but the international system the United States leads can remain the dominant order of the twenty-first century.”
The West should “sink the
roots of this order as Such confidence in the universality of the Western order is, however,
deeply as possible” to
ensure that the world continues to play by its rules even as its material
preponderance wanes.

based on wishful thinking about the likely trajectory of ascending powers , which throughout

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history have sought to adjust the prevailing order in ways that favor their own interests. Presuming that rising states will
readily take their seats at the West’s table is unrealistic and even dangerous,
promising to alienate emerging powers that will be pivotal to global stability in the years
ahead. Instead, the
West will have to make room for the competing visions of rising powers
and prepare for an international system in which its principles no longer serve as the
primary anchor. Sinking the roots of the West, founding a “league of democracies,”
and turning NATO into a global alliance of democratic states would be admirable
visions in a politically homogeneous world. But
command widespread acceptance the Western model does not
. If the next international system is to be characterized by norm-governed order
rather

it will have to be based on great-power consensus and toleration of

than competitive anarchy,
political diversity rather than Western primacy and the single-minded pursuit of
universal democracy. To that end, the United States should take the lead in fashioning a
more diverse and inclusive global order. Call it the “Autonomy Rule”: the terms of the next order
should be negotiated among all states , be they democratic or not , that provide
responsible governance and broadly promote the autonomy and welfare of their
citizens. The West will have to give as much as it gets in shaping the world that comes next. This approach does not constitute acquiescence to
illiberalism, but rather a more progressive understanding of America’s liberal tradition. Just as it does at home, the
United States
should welcome diversity abroad, accepting that liberal democracy must compete
respectfully in the marketplace of ideas with other types of regimes. Indeed, toleration of
reasonably just alternative political systems will promote U.S. interests far more
effectively t8han the hubris of neoconservatism or the narrow idealism of the current liberal consensus. Respect for responsible governments, toleration
of political and cultural diversity, balance between global governance and devolution to regional authorities, and a more modest brand of

globalization—these are the principles around which the next order is most likely to take
shape.

Terrorism – 1NC
Democracy causes terrorism – laundry list
Savun, Poli Sci Prof @ Pitt, 9
(Burcu, Democracy, Foreign Policy, and Terrorism, Journal of Conflict Resolution Volume XX
Number X, pp. online)

Many scholars, particularly within the past decade, have argued that democratic states are more likely to be
targets of transnational terrorism . According to this camp, there are various aspects of the democratic regimes that
facilitate terrorism. First, democracies, by providing freedom of organization, expression, and

movement for their citizens, enable terrorist groups to undertake their illegal activities with
relative ease (Engene 2004; Hamilton and Hamilton 1983). The commitment to civil liberties in democratic societies can be used by
terrorist groups to organize and carry out their attacks without being noticed (Eubank and Weinberg 1994, 2001). Repressive

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regimes reduce the ability of terrorist groups to organize and carry out their
activities, whereas democracies provide a permissive environment . Second,
institutional constraints imposed on democratic governments are usually higher
than the ones on other types of regimes . Although these constraints are intended to protect the citizens of
democracies from the undue exercise of power by their leaders, they also limit the actions and ability of democratic governments to fight

terrorism (Schmid 1992; Li 2005; Wilkinson 1986, 2006). Terrorist groups perceive democracies as soft

democracies to costs.

targets that can be pressured to give into their demands due to the sensitivity of
Pape (2003, 2005) shows that terrorist groups tend to target
democracies more frequently because they know that liberal democracies usually
accede to their demands . Freedom of press is another factor that is argued to
encourage transnational terrorism in democracies. A free press serves the interests of terrorist groups
whose main goal is to advertise their cause to a wide audience and gain publicity and recognition (Crenshaw 1981). Unlike
in
repressive regimes, terrorist incidents are more likely to be reported in detail by the
free press in democratic societies. Therefore, press freedom in democracies gives a
valuable opportunity to publicity-hungry terrorists to create widespread fear (Li 2005;
Nacos 1994).

Goes nuclear
Kroenig, Associate Professor and IR @ Georgetown, 14
(R. Davis Gibbons and Matthew Kroenig, a Nonresident Senior Fellow at the Brent Scowcroft
Center on International Security at The Atlantic Council. “The Next Nuclear War,”
http://www.matthewkroenig.com/Kroenig_The%20Next%20Nuclear%20War.pdf)
Since the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, scholars, analysts, and politicians have focused on the nexus of nuclear weapons
and terrorism. In his closing statement at the 2012 Nuclear Security Summit, President Obama concluded, “We've agreed that
nuclear terrorism is one of the most urgent and serious threats to global security.”88 Though there has been some debate on how
seriously this threat should be taken,89 evidence indicates that terrorist organizations have both
expressed a desire for nuclear weapons and made attempts to buy or seize nuclear material.
Declassified documents from the United States suggest
Osama bin Laden directed e T his associates to purchase
uranium.90 In addition, Chechnya-based separatist groups, L ashkar--aiba in South Asia, and

Aum Shinrikyo in Japan have also expressed the desire for nuclear weapons in the past.91 Most analysts consider
it unlikely that a state would knowingly provide a terrorist group with a bomb, but it is conceivable that a
group could steal one. This fear is especially acute in the case of Pakistan, where an unstable
government with a growing nuclear arsenal exists in an area with many terrorist organizations. The government
of Pakistan has taken steps in recent years to allay these fears, yet reason for concern remains.92 A second means by which a
terrorist group could attain a nuclear capability is by obtaining fissile material and constructing

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its own crude nuclear bomb. The main challenge for terrorist organizations seeking this capability is finding sufficient
fissile material. Approximately 8 kilograms of plutonium or 25 kilograms of highly enriched
uranium (HEU) is necessary for a bomb. Since 9/11, the United States, Russia, the IAEA, and other partners have taken
on a number of efforts to decrease the risks of terrorists accessing nuclear material. UN Security Council Resolution 1540, the 2005
Amendment to the Convention on the Physical Protection of Nuclear Material, and the 2005 International Convention for the

Suppression of Acts of Nuclear Terrorism all seek to increase global cooperation to prevent nuclear terrorism. Overall, the
global
stocks of HEU and plutonium are decreasing, but the sheer volume of global fissile material
makes this an on-going challenge and the U.S. budget for these activities has recently been cut.
Unlike nuclear-
armed states, it would be relatively difficult to deter terrorists from taking action.93
In other words, if efforts to keep nuclear weapons out of terrorist hands ever fail, we may witness a
nuclear 9/11.

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Terrorism – 2NC
Democracy incentivizes terrorism!
Li, Poli Sci Prof @ Pennsylvania State University, 5
(Quan, “Does Democracy Promote or Reduce Transnational Terrorist Incidents?” Journal of
Conflict Resolution 49.2, p. 278-297)

Countries going through regime changes are vulnerable to more transnational

terrorist attacks , while countries with stable regimes tend to experience fewer
incidents . Larger countries are exposed to more transnational terrorist attacks than
are smaller ones. Countries with more capable governments tend to
experience more terrorist incidents. While they may have more resources to crack
down on terrorists, they are more attractive and salient targets for publicity-seeking
terrorists.
Terrorist activities against more capable
coverage, wider influence, and better recruit governments receive more media
s. While terrorists may have to pay high costs for acting
against
these governments, the expected returns also are likely to be high. Military conflict involvement reduces the number of terrorist incidents in the
country. While external military conflict creates grievances and opportunities for terrorists, it often leads to tightened domestic security
measures, raising the costs of terrorist activities. Countries with a history of terrorist activities continue to have more terrorist events. Terrorist
groups, once operational organizationally, tend to continue their activities. Consistent with the finding of Enders and Sandler (1999),
transnational terrorist incidents declined in the post–cold war era. The Middle East and Europe are most susceptible to terrorist attacks, while
Asia, America, and Africa experience fewer incidents relative to the Middle East.

Prefer our stats – theirs are based on all democracies – ours assume the
unique vulnerabilities created by transitioning regimes which is what
we are impact turning
Lutz, Poli Sci Prof @ Indiana, 10
(James, Democracy and Terrorism, Perspectives on Terrorism 4.1 p. online)
A number of factors may help to explain these mixed results. Somewhat limited number
of international incidents, compared to domestic attacks (which outnumber international
incidents by a factor of seven or more), has meant that singular events with high casualties
are statistical outliers that could have affected the results. In addition, if regimes in
transition are actually more vulnerable , the presence of changes in the
political
system could be a confounding factor. A transition from one authoritarian regime to
another (military regime to a one-party system or vice versa) could increase
opportunities for terrorism that would not necessarily be associated with
democratization. Iran, for example, underwent a period of terrorism initiated by
secular and leftist groups that lasted for 18 months. The clerical regime of

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the new Islamic Republic was vulnerable since it was making the transition from the
partial authoritarianism of the old monarchy to the totalitarianism of the new
theocracy. [30] Similarly, if new democracies are indeed more prone to terrorism, the
association between terrorism and democracy could be more variable since not all
democracies are equally vulnerable.

Coercion key – democracies can only co-opt which terrorist ideology prevents
Wilson, Penn State University, 13
(Matthew, Autocracies and Terrorism: Conditioning Effects of Authoritarian Regime-Type
on Terrorist Attacks,
http://www.personal.psu.edu/jap45/Manuscript,%20Wilson%20Piazza,_Autocracies%20a
nd%20Terrorism,%20AJPS.pdf)

Democratic regimes are more likely to experience terrorism

H1

Consistent with the efforts of previous empirical studies such as Eubank and Weinberg
(2001, 1998, 1994) and Pape (2003), we expect to find confirmatory results that democratic
rule is a positive predictor of terrorism . This is because democracies are mostly7
limited to co-option strategies , such as widening political participation, to deal with
terrorism and are much more institutionally constrained from employing
serious coercion . The institutionalized protections under democracy mean that
whether or not it is observed, reliance on coercion to quell
limited strategy popular dissent is a . The mechanism should be different for
democracies compared to
party-based autocracies .

Authoritarianism solves – crack down Wilson,

Penn State University, 13
(Matthew, Autocracies and Terrorism: Conditioning Effects of Authoritarian Regime-Type
on Terrorist Attacks,
http://www.personal.psu.edu/jap45/Manuscript,%20Wilson%20Piazza,_Autocracies%20a
nd%20Terrorism,%20AJPS.pdf)

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The uniqueness of party-based authoritarianism predicts a number of political

outcomes. Authoritarian regimes that use seemingly democratic institutions fare
better than those without. Leaders in party-based regimes, as opposed to military
regimes or personalist regimes, are more likely to leave office regularly and without
(Weeks, 2008a, b; Debs and Goemans, 2010; Wright and Escriba-Folch, 2011).
violence
They are less-likely to face international challenges and more likely to
attract
investment ( Weeks, 2008a, b; Wright, 2008). They show longer periods of rule (Debs,
2010; Debs and Goemans, 2010; Gandhi, 2008; Greene, 2010; Gandhi, 2008;
Ghandi and
Lust-Okar, 2009, Levitsky and Way, 2002), and they experience lower levels of

domestic conflict (Gurses and Mason, 2011; Fjelde, 2010). To this end, party-based
autocracies should be less-likely to experience terrorism.

Transition makes the impact six times more likely Wilson,

Penn State University, 13
(Matthew, Autocracies and Terrorism: Conditioning Effects of Authoritarian Regime-Type
on Terrorist Attacks,
http://www.personal.psu.edu/jap45/Manuscript,%20Wilson%20Piazza,_Autocracies%20a
nd%20Terrorism,%20AJPS.pdf)
As it regards the
probability of
experiencing no no terrorism in a given year, compared to military regimes and democracies
terrorist attacks, party-
based autocracies are significantly more likely to have .
This relationship is confirmed true below a 0.01 probability of error . The odds for
partybased autocracy not experiencing a terrorist attack are roughly 6.5 to 1, compared
to
democracies . Compared to military regimes, the odds are roughly 2.8 to 1. Personalist dictatorships are also more likely than
democracies to experience no terrorism in a given year (i.e., to be in the “certain-zero group”). Monarchies and mixed
regimes (those that Geddes codes as single-party-military-personalist) are also less likely than military regimes to experience zero attacks.
Party-based autocracies are most likely to have no terrorist attacks.

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A2: Demo -> Trade

Democracy doesn’t boost trade – incomplete information prevents
collective action on issues of interest
Namasaka, London School of Economics, 15
(Martin, Trade as a Collective Action Problem,
https://mpra.ub.unimuenchen.de/68146/1/MPRA_paper_68146.pdf)
Perfect democracy

First assume a perfect democracy , as a perfect political market. Every citizen has equal
power to influence the government and the government is perfectly accountable to the
majority of its citizens. Will this lead to a government advancing free trade? One problem
might be: although the total value of free trade might be greater to society, there may
not be a numerical majority of citizens benefitting from free trade . This raises the
distribution problem – but it is difficult to see how we can say that society benefits when a
majority of its members loses. This also raises problems about how we define the ‘collective
interest.’ Therefore,
this causes a perfectly democratic government to not advance the

aggregate state interest of free trade . But even if one assumes that a majority
does
have an interest in free trade or that the government taxes the ‘winners’ from trade to
compensate the ‘losers’, (Note that the winners will often be foreigners and the losers
nationals) this is why equitable trading relationships depend upon viable global
governance – in this case the ability of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) to
guarantee equitable outcomes. It is not clear that the state will advance this common
interest . Rodrik (1998a) points
out that the transaction costs of compensating the losers might greatly
outweigh the aggregate benefits from trade. Furthermore, incomplete information
about which individual may be a ‘winner’ or a ‘loser’ might stop [refrain] some of the
beneficiaries of trade liberalization from supporting it. The necessary majority of
citizens supporting free trade might not exist, even under these
conditions. Even in a perfect democracy , it is thus not clear that the government will
advance the aggregate state interest of free trade .
Begging the question, “Is it a state interest or a social interest, or are they the same?

Turn – democracy reduces trade

Schweller 2K (Randall Schweller, Professor of Political Science at Ohio State University,
2000, American Democracy Promotion, p. 53)

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Fragile
First, free trade reinforces competition, and competition produces losers as well as winners.
democratizing states are under enormous pressure to appease uncompetitive
domestic distributional coalitions by adopting protectionist policies at the

there is no reason to expect that developing states will choose free trade

and global liberalism over neomercantilist policies; expense of the general

national and
cosmopolitan
capitalism does not require liberal democracy.
interests in free trade. In other
words, and, indeed, there are good reasons to expect that they will choose the latter. Certainly, the shock-treatment
approach to capitalism regardless of social consequences that was adopted by many nations recently liberated from
communism placed at risk the fragile democratizing processes under way in these newly autonomous states. Second,
while liberal democracy requires a market economy, Benjamin Barber correctly notes: The stealth rhetoric
that assumes capitalist interests are not only compatible with but actively
advance democratic ideals, translated into policy, is difficult to reconcile with
the international realities of the last fifty years. Market economies have shown
a remark¬able adaptability and have flourished in many tyrannical states from
Chile to South Korea, from Panama to
Singapore. Indeed, the state with one of the world’s least demo¬cratic governments—the People’s Republic of
China—possesses one of the world’s fastest-growing market economies.
Capitalism simply requires a stable political climate and consumers with access
to markets. The unstable, even chaotic, conditions characteristic of emerging
democracies are scarcely conducive to the development of a thriv¬ing market
economy.

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Democracy Promotion Advantage Answers

204
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Plan doesn’t solve – 1NC

Even if the US ended military aid to the Middle East – there is no impetus to
promote democracy – US diplomats and policymakers don’t want to rock the
boat or facilitate perceived instability
Carothers 12/22/14 – Thomas, JD, Harvard Law School, “Why Is the United States
Shortchanging Its Commitment to Democracy?”
http://carnegieendowment.org/2014/12/22/why-is-united-states-shortchanging-
itscommitment-to-democracy

Why this striking reduction in democracy aid? It is not a product of a broader contraction of U.S. foreign
aid

spending, which remains robust overall Rather, it is a policy choice , reflecting both skepticism about the
relative importance of democracy work by senior U.S. aid officials and, more generally, the muted
emphasis on democracy-building by the Obama foreign policy team. Some might see the decline in
U.S. democracy aid as an understandable response to the
more unstable and conflict-prone world confronting policymakers. U.S. foreign policy in such a
convulsive climate, the thinking goes,
should emphasize stability above all — democracy will have to wait . A tempting idea, perhaps, but a
dangerously wrong one.

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Plan doesn’t solve – 2NC

Plan doesn’t solve democracy promotion – the US doesn’t want to promote it in
the Middle East or other countries regardless of whether or not we have
military aid – they think that democracy will give rise to anti-US democratic
parties or Islamist parties – they’ll be passive instead of active in exacting their
leverage – that’s Carothers

And US policymakers won’t shift to promoting democracy or exacting their

leverage after the plan – they think democracy promotion is a failed effort that
is next to impossible
Hamid and Mandaville 14 – Shadi, contributing writer for The Atlantic, a fellow at the
Project on U.S. Relations with the Islamic World at the Brookings Institution's Center for Middle
East Policy, Peter, professor of public and international affairs at George Mason University and a
former member of the State Department’s policy-planning staff, “The U.S. Is Giving Up on
Middle East Democracy—and That's a Mistake”
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/01/the-us-is-giving-up-on-middle-
eastdemocracy-and-thats-a-mistake/282890/

But to look at this as a security problem risks conflating cause and effect. Today’s Middle East
is a product, at least in part, of failed democratization, and one of the reasons it failed was the
timid, half-hearted support of the Obama administration. That the U.S. is fundamentally
limited in its ability to influence the internal politics of Arab states has been a consistent
theme within the Obama administration as well as among analysts . No one denies that there are
limits
to what the U.S. can (or can’t) do; the question, however, is what those limits are.

Promotion fails – 1NC

Democracy promotion fails – it isn’t a panacea for foreign policy concerns and
the US will backtrack on promotion policies due to conflicts of interest
Mead 15 – Russell, James Clarke Chace Professor of Foreign Affairs and Humanities at Bard
College and Professor of American foreign policy at Yale University, “The Paradox of American
Democracy Promotion” http://www.the-american-interest.com/2015/04/09/the-paradox-
ofamerican-democracy-promotion/

Clearly, while realists may underestimate the profound importance of democracy promotion,
true believers underestimate its difficulty . In Africa, for example, it’s likely that in many countries
tribal and religious identities will become more important as economic development
proceeds. As states become richer and more effective, people often care more about who controls it,
more about whether the state is run by people who think like they do, speak like they do, and operate in support of their interests
than about the purity of its democratic credentials. So we are likely to continue to see a link between the rise

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of democracy and the rise of various forms of social conflict and tension within and between countries, and
not just in Africa. Both the Bush and the Obama Administrations looked to the spread of democracy in
the Middle East as a solution to critical foreign policy problems; democracy, both presidents believed,
was the best cure for the social and economic ills that inflamed radical jihadi ideology and hatred
of the U nited S tates. This may well be true, but both Presidents learned that the Democracy Fairy does not
.
show up on an American timetable If democracy comes to the Middle East, it will come in a

time, at a pace, in a form, and in a manner that are driven by local forces. One can make similar
arguments about China, Russia, Central Asia, and many other places in this world.
American policymakers need to understand that it is only in exceptional and fortunate
circumstances that democracy promotion activities by the United States will affect grave international
problems in a policy-relevant time frame. The idea that the
Democracy Fairy can be induced to arrive on an accelerated always an error to base policy decisions on the
schedule and will solve intractable foreign policy problems is an
attractive one. It is, however, almost
immanence of democratic transformation. Rather than look to a democratic surge to make our stickiest
problems
go away, policymakers would do better to believe, and to argue, that democracy will be more likely to arrive in more places around the
world if and as we solve our urgent foreign policy problems. Democracy promotion should be seen as, at
best, a long-term proposition. Its value in the short term is more as an instrument for changing perceptions than as an
instrument for changing reality. Policymakers may choose to highlight democracy promotion as a way to
build public support both at home and abroad; they should not, however, deceive themselves into the
belief that promoting democracy in a country will often be an effective strategy for resolving America’s
foreign policy problems with that country. Indeed, democracy promotion (especially if it fails, but
sometimes even when it ) may well make bilateral relations considerably more difficult succeeds. A
democratically elected Saudi government might, for example, be more religiously radical and
.
geopolitically aggressive than the current regime
Certainly the outcome of democratic
elections in Israel has not always improved U.S.-Israel relations. A democratically elected
Chinese government might take an even harder line than Beijing now does
over China’s
territorial disputes with its neighbors.

Promotion fails – 2NC

Democracy promotion fails
A. External pressure fails – American visions of democracy won’t be
accepted since they conflict with cultural and political local interests
B. Backtracking – the US will stop promoting democracy once the process is
underway – they’ll realize that replacing autocratic regimes with democracies

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doesn’t necessarily result in governments that support American foreign policy

interests, for example, Islamist parties in Saudi Arabia or Egypt – that’s Mead

US association with Israel means democracy promotion in the Middle East fails
– parties and institutions propped up by the US will be discredited by autocrats
Weisbrot 12 – Mark, staffwriter, “Why American 'democracy promotion' rings hollow in the
Middle East”
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/cifamerica/2012/jan/31/americandemocracy-
promotion-rings-hollow

Nowhere is this more obvious than in the Middle East, where the US government's policy of collaboration with
Israel's denial of Palestinian national rights has put it at odds with populations throughout
the region . As a result, Washington fears democracy in many countries because it will inevitably lead to more governments
taking the side of the Palestinians, and opposing other US ambitions in the region, such as its desire for military
bases and alliances. Even in Iraq, where Washington brags about having toppled a dictatorship, the people had to fight the
occupying authorities for the right to hold national elections, and then to kick US troops out of the country. This creates a vicious
cycle in which hated and often repressive governments are supportive of US foreign policy, and these governments receive US
support, increasing regional animosity toward the United States. In some cases, it also leads to terrorist attacks against US
institutions or citizens, which is then used by our leaders to justify long or endless wars (for example, Iraq and Afghanistan). A poll of
Arab public opinion (pdf) by the University of Maryland and Zogby International, which included Egypt, asked respondents to "name
two countries that are the biggest threat to you": 88% named the United States, and 77% named Israel; only 9% chose Iran.
Another ugly side-effect
of US government-sponsored "democracy-promotion" is that it helps governments that want
to repress authentic, national, pro-democracy movements. Most of the repressive
governments
in the Middle East and North Africa have tried to delegitimize their opponents with the taint of
association with Washington , in most
cases falsely. In Egypt, before the raids on foreign organizations, the government
arrested youth activists associated with the April 6th movement, and other activists. Here in Washington, there seems to be little awareness
that "pro-democracy" groups funded by the US government might have a credibility
problem in most of the world. But this is true – even when these groups aren't actively opposing democracy. Their funding
would be a good target for budget cuts.

Promotion fails – the way the US would promote it would be inconsistent with
local sovereign preferences
Bridoux 15 – Jeff, Lecturer in International Politics at Aberystwyth University, UK. He holds a BA in Political Science &
International Relations and a Master in Political Science from the Université Libre de Bruxelles and a PhD from The University of Kent
(Canterbury). His research interests are power in International Relations, American Foreign Policy, the Middle East and East Asia,
post-conflict reconstruction, and democracy promotion and democratization, “Jeff Bridoux on Democracy Promotion in the Post9/11
Era” http://ciceromagazine.com/features/jeff-bridoux-on-democracy-promotion-in-the-post-911-era/

Is it really possible to promote democracy or does artificially creating it from the outside
mean it is an enterprise doomed to fail? Does democracy have to be organic to take root? During recent
fieldwork

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in Tunisia, I had very interesting

discussions about democracy promotion invariably replies included snickering followed by with
the youth there. To the question “What is
democracy promotion?”
critiques of U.S. foreign policy : Democracy promotion is a “product”, an “American brand”,
“a
hegemonic policy.” Interestingly, the notion that democracy can be imposed was dismissed
systematically : “How a concept like democracy could be imposed? That would not be democratic!” In the mind of
young Tunisians, there is no doubt that the Western model of liberal democracy coupled to
free market economy might not be ideal. For democracy to succeed, whatever the model
that would be adopted, it has to be organically developed . Ownership of the political and economic transition
must be local . This is something democracy promoters know and tend to incorporate in
their policy design and implementation. Yet, fundamentally, there is little deviation from the liberal

democratic model and this causes substantial frustration for local populations because
such
a model is not always aligned with local values and preferences regarding the political and
social future envisioned. Even though democracy promoters’ rhetoric puts the emphasis
on
the importance of the local, the lack of democratic alternatives to the populations receiving
democracy aid makes the concept of the local as implemented by democracy promoters
irrelevant: You can be
democratic as long as you do not contest the dominance of liberal
democracy and free market economy.

Forcing rapid democratic transition externally encourages the rise of

antidemocratic forces within a democracy – reproduces problems that are even
worse than autocracies
Fein 12/24/14 – Bruce, served as associate deputy attorney general and general counsel of the
Federal Communications Commission under President Reagan, is president of the law firm Bruce
Fein & Associates Inc., “Stop U.S. democracy promotion abroad”
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/dec/24/bruce-fein-stop-united-
statesdemocracy-promotion-/?page=all

The U.S. government should cease its arrogant and ill-informed attempts to promote democracy around the
globe — whether in Cuba, Iraq, Afghanistan, Communist China, Ukraine, Burma or otherwise. The attempts are extraneous to the
purposesof the United States Constitution. Democratically elected leaders can be every bit
as tyrannical and aggressive U nited S towards the tates as unelected dictators. Hamas, listed as an

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international terrorist organization, decisively triumphed in Palestinian parliamentary elections in 2006. It has
ruled in Gaza
since 2007, routinely denies
human rights, chronically attacks Israel, and execrates the U nited S tates.
Egypt’s first democratically elected president, Mohamed Morsi, proved as much or more
contemptuous of the rule of law, human rights and amity towards Israel and the U nited S tates
than his dictatorial predecessor, Hosni Mubarak. Thus, the United States shed only crocodile tears when he was
overthrown in a military coup. Adolf Hitler climbed to power through popular elections. His Nationalist Socialists
captured more than 37 percent of the vote in 1932 to become the largest party in the Reichstag. Free and fair elections in Saudi
Arabia would yield victory for radical Islamic parties with affinity and sympathy for the murderous perpetrators of 9/11. In sum,
promoting
democracy in foreign lands may aggravate rather than diminish threats to perceived interests of the
United States. Thus, we have supported dictators over democrats in Iran, Guatemala, Chile, Indonesia, Argentina, Bahrain, Kuwait,

Cambodia, Brazil, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Spain, the Philippines, ad infinitum. In any event, democracy

promotion is overwhelmingly a fool’s errand. The process is vastly too complex for us to
master or to jump start . Sending nations copies of the Declaration of Independence and
Constitution will not do.

Words without a reinforcing political culture are worthless . Iraq’s Constitution prohibits laws
that contradict the “principles of democracy.” But Salmon Rushdie would be killed if he
attempted to sell The Satanic Verses in Baghdad. We also forget that democracy in the nited tates
U S
evolved over more than seven We cannot expect more from other people.
centuries. Anglo-
American democracy was born with the Magna Carta to check the absolutism of King John in 1215 on the fields of Runnymede.
Through succeeding centuries and periodic civil wars, the powers of Parliament strengthened and the powers of the King diminished.
Landmarks included the Grand Remonstrance, the beheading of Charles I by Oliver Cromwell, and the English Bill of Rights of 1688.
American colonists claimed the rights of British freemen. They soon took on the trappings of democracy with the
Virginia House of Burgesses, the Mayflower Compact, the Connecticut Charter Oak, the Maryland Toleration Act, etc. The United
States Constitution was not drafted until 1787, more than five centuries after Magna Carta. Democratic principles did not completely
triumph until the Civil War Amendments ending slavery and enfranchising blacks, and the Women’s Suffrage Amendment ending their
disenfranchisement in 1919. Blacksdid not de facto enjoy the right to vote until the Voting Rights Act
of 1965, more seven and one-half centuries since the road to democracy began at
Runnymede. It was facilitated in the United States by a literate society, a homogeneity of ethnicity, culture and language, natural
boundaries, and an unprecedented array of profound and selfless leaders, for example, George Washington and James

Madison. Despite these vast advantages, the U nited S tates still needed a bloody Civil War and an
obscenely prolonged period of Jim Crow before finally achieving substantial national unity and racial
justice. In light of our own seven-century journey to democracy,the idea that we can install democratic
dispensations in nations that are at the pre-Magna Carta stage of political maturity and lacking
our peculiar cultural advantages is delusional . Our miserable track record speaks for itself,
including South Vietnam, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Egypt, Burma, South Sudan, Somalia,
Syria, and Bahrain. Taiwan moved into a democratic orbit in 1988 after the deaths of dictators
Chiang Kai-shek and his son Chiang Ching-kuo, and South Korea did the same after military strongman Chun But these
Doo Hwan left office.

democratic movements were indigenous . The U nited S tates was complacent with reliable,
friendly,

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and anti-democratic leadership. At best, democracy promotion is harmless — like shouting at the weather. At worst,
it is counterproductive. Many societies are insufficiently mature, literate, and homogeneous
to for its practice. Democracy in these places degenerates into majoritarian, sectarian, or tribal
. Russia, Iraq, Syria, Libya, and South Sudan
tyrannies notwithstanding formal elections
are
emblematic . Democracy is given a bad name, which may handicap its return at a more propitious time. Our energies
should be devoted to purging the evils from our own democracy. We should then be satisfied
with influencing developments abroad by example, simpliciter.

Alt cause – Egypt – 1NC

Support for Al-Sisi in Egypt undermines US credibility in democracy promotion throughout
the Middle East and the world writ large
Dunne 14 – Charles, W., scholar at the Middle East Institute and former senior program
manager for the Middle East and North Africa at Freedom House. Prior to joining Freedom
House, Dunne spent 24 years as a diplomat in the U.S. Foreign Service, serving overseas in Cairo,
Jerusalem, and Madras, India., “Democracy Promotion: Obama's Mixed Record”
http://www.mei.edu/content/article/democracy-promotion-obamas-mixed-record

Finally, in Egypt, the hoped-for transition to democracy that the U nited S tates had extolled has been
almost completely reversed . The military-backed interim government that was put in place after President Mohamed Morsi’s
ouster in July 2013, as well as the administration of President Abdul-Fattah el-Sisi after his election in May 2014,

have

suppressed political opposition and have solidified the military’s control . Nearly 40,000 people,
many of them supporters or
sympathizers of the Muslim Brotherhood, have been jailed. Few security officials have been prosecuted or
otherwise held accountable for the killings of protesters, including the more than 1,000 killed in the attack on the sit-in at
Rabaa al-Adawiya Square[3] in August 2013. Legal restrictions on freedom of assembly have been tightened
and a new law restricting the activities of NGOs, considered by most observers to be more
Official U.S.
draconian than the current Mubarak-era Law 84 of 2002, will likely be passed by the incoming parliament.

reaction to these developments often has been muted. Following the evacuation of nine Americans
from
Cairo after they were threatened with arrest and trial in the so-called NGO “foreign funding” case, the State Department downplayed
the issue, despite the June 2013 conviction in the case of 43 Egyptians and foreigners, including 16 Americans. This

year the administration indicated that it intends to resume military aid that was briefly suspended due
to human rights concerns.[4] The relatively low- key U.S. reaction was summed up in
Secretary of State John

Kerry’s July 2014 press conference in Cairo, in which he “thanked the people of Egypt for their
hard work in transitioning to a democracy through their elections,”[5] as if the election in
Egypt that carried Sisi to the presidency was all that mattered to the establishment of a

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democracy. In short, the administration’s early support for democratization and political change in
has been driven off course the Middle East by frustrating events, new challenges, old
interests, and a
rather stubborn default to maintaining existing relationships at the expense of reform . No
comprehensive review of U.S. policy toward political change in the Middle East has been undertaken, and no major policy changes
have been evident. It comes as no surprise, therefore, that a
poll released in June 2014 by sharp decline in confidence that the U nited S
Zogby Research Services concluded that “there is a tates is

committed to democracy across the Middle East.”[6]

Alt cause – funding – 1NC
Even if the US was able to gain moral authority by undermining support for
autocracies – their democracy promotion efforts would fail because of budget
cuts to democracy and governance assistance
Dunne 14 – Charles, W., scholar at the Middle East Institute and former senior program
manager for the Middle East and North Africa at Freedom House. Prior to joining Freedom
House, Dunne spent 24 years as a diplomat in the U.S. Foreign Service, serving overseas in Cairo,
Jerusalem, and Madras, India., “Democracy Promotion: Obama's Mixed Record”
http://www.mei.edu/content/article/democracy-promotion-obamas-mixed-record

The administration has been shifting its emphasis and priorities for some time . The
Middle
East Partnership Initiative (MEPI), a State Department office originally established to focus mainly on supporting human
rights and good governance, is undergoing an extensive reorganization,[7] with up to 25 percent of its
funding being moved to economic and educational initiatives. A new office within the State Department’s
Near East Bureau, NEA/AC (assistance coordination), is being formed to encompass MEPI and more closely align U.S. aid to the region
with policy goals, to the dismay of those who support an independent MEPI and strong pro-democracy programming.

Overall assistance for democracy and governance (D&G) is decreasing . As POMED notes,[8] in 2010,
the year before the “Arab Spring” uprisings, the tates U nited S provided $6.7
billion in foreign

assistance to the Middle East and North Africa, with 73 percent of that amount allocated for military and security assistance
and 7.4 percent for D&G programming. Those figures for the 2015 budget request are 76
percent for military and security assistance and 5.8 percent for D&G. The Forum for the Future,
organized by the Bush administration in 2004 to create an OSCE-like dialogue[9] on a broad range of political and economic issues
and to bring civil society together with regional governments to discuss political reform, last met in Cairo in 2013 with desultory
discussions, minimal press attention, and a calculated dearth of civil society participants.[10]

Alt cause – funding – 2NC

Even if the US was attempting to promote democracy, it wouldn’t be effective –
the US doesn’t have enough funding going towards democracy and governance

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aid because of budget cuts – undermines legal aid, anti-corruption, and

institutional capacity building – that’s Dunne

US democracy promotion can’t be effective – not enough funding for

development of governance and democratic institutions through foreign aid
Carothers 12/22/14 – Thomas, JD, Harvard Law School, “Why Is the United States
Shortchanging Its Commitment to Democracy?”
http://carnegieendowment.org/2014/12/22/why-is-united-states-shortchanging-
itscommitment-to-democracy
U.S. assistance to advance democracy worldwide is in decline . Such spending has shrunk by
28 percent during Barack Obama’s presidency and is now less than $2 billion per year. The decline has
been

especially severe at the U.S. A gency for I nternational D evelopment, which traditionally funds the bulk of U.S. democracy assistance
and established itself in the 1990s as the largest source of such aid worldwide. According to data provided by the
agency, USAID spending to foster democracy, human rights and accountable governance abroad
has fallen by 38 percent since 2009. The drop-off affects almost every region to which such aid is directed. It has been
largest in the Middle East — a startling 72 percent cut that came just as much of the Arab world
attempted a historic shift toward democracy. In Africa, a 43 percent decline has left a paltry $80 million for democracy work for the
entire continent outside of Liberia and South Sudan. Overall, the number of countries where USAID operates dedicated democracy
programs has fallen from 91 to 63. To grasp just how unimpressive the U.S. commitment to aiding democracy abroad has become,
consider this: Leaving aside Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, USAID spending on democracy, rights and governance in fiscal 2014 —
$860 million — totaled less than what just one U.S. citizen, George Soros, spends annually to foster open society globally (full
disclosure: I chair an advisory board of one program of the Soros foundations). The main aid agency of the country that prides itself
on being an unmatched force for democracy cannot even match the financial commitment of one of its citizens? Of course aid
is not the only means by which the U nited S tates seeks to foster democracy in the world. Skillful
diplomacy — resolving electoral standoffs, bolstering promising pro-democratic leaders and punishing toxic
undemocratic ones —
But democracy aid plays a distinctive role can accomplish much. . It can be the glue
that helps
cement into place the foundational elements — such as effective legal institutions,
representative parliaments, pluralistic political parties, civil society organizations and
independent media — necessary to sustain democratic breakthroug hs. Shortchanging the aid side
of democracy support . Why ensures longer-term failures this striking
reduction in democracy aid? It is not a product of

a broader contraction of U.S. foreign aid spending, which remains robust overall. Rather,
it is a policy choice, reflecting
both skepticism about the relative importance of democracy work by senior U.S. aid officials
and, more generally, the muted emphasis on democracy-building by the Obama foreign policy

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team. Some might see the decline in U.S. democracy aid as an understandable response to the
more unstable and conflict-prone world confronting policymakers. U.S.
foreign policy in such a convulsive climate, the thinking goes, should emphasize democracy will
stability above all —
have to wait . A tempting idea, perhaps, but a dangerously wrong one.

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AT: Democracy impact - 1NC

Democracy doesn’t solve global problems or access any of our impacts
Mead 15 (Walter Russell Mead is editor of The American Interest Online, James Clarke Chace
Professor of Humanities and Foreign Policy at Bard College, and Distinguished Scholar in
American Strategy and Statesmanship at the Hudson Institute, “The Paradox of American
Democracy Promotion” April 9 2015, http://www.the-american-
interest.com/2015/04/09/theparadox-of-american-democracy-promotion/)

So we are likely to continue to see a link between the rise of democracy and the rise of various forms of
social conflict and tension within and between countries, and not just in Africa. Both the Bush and the
Obama Administrations looked to the spread of democracy in the Middle East as a solution to
critical foreign policy problems; democracy, both presidents believed, was the best cure for the social and economic ills that
inflamed radical jihadi ideology and hatred of the United States. This may well be true, but both Presidents learned
that the Democracy Fairy does not show up on an American timetable. If democracy comes to
the Middle East, it will come in a time, at a pace, in a form, and in a manner that are driven by local
forces. One can make similar arguments about China, Russia, Central Asia, and many other places in this
world. American policymakers need to understand that it is only in exceptional and fortunate circumstances
that democracy promotion activities by the United States will affect grave international problems in a
policy-relevant time frame. The idea that the Democracy Fairy can be induced to arrive on an
accelerated schedule and will solve intractable foreign policy problems is an attractive one. It is,
however, almost always an error to base policy decisions on the immanence of democratic
transformation. Rather than look to a democratic surge to make our stickiest problems go away,
policymakers would do better to believe, and to argue, that democracy will be more likely to arrive in
more places around the world if and as we solve our urgent foreign policy problems.
Democracy promotion should be seen as, at best, a long-term proposition. Its value in the short term is more
as an instrument for changing perceptions than as an instrument for changing reality. Policymakers may choose to

highlight democracy promotion as a way to build public support both at home and abroad; they should not, however, deceive
themselves into the belief that promoting democracy in a country will often be an effective
strategy for resolving America’s foreign policy problems with that country. Indeed, democracy
promotion (especially if it fails, but sometimes even when it succeeds) may well make bilateral relations
considerably more difficult. A democratically elected Saudi government might, for example, be more
religiously radical and geopolitically aggressive than the current regime. Certainly the outcome of
democratic elections in Israel has not always improved U.S.-Israel relations. A democratically elected Chinese
government might take an even harder line than Beijing now does over China’s territorial disputes
with its neighbors.
AT: Democracy impact – 2NC
Democratic peace is bad scholarship – it’s a function of great powers.
McDonald 2015 Patrick, Associate Professor of Government at the University of Texas at
Austin, Great Powers, Hierarchy, and Endogenous Regimes: Rethinking the Domestic Causes of
Peace, International Organization / Volume 69 / Issue 03 / 2015

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the statistical relationship linking

These critiques generate two related empirical and theoretical arguments. First,
democracy to peace is weaker than generally acknowledged, so weak that it is largely
nonexistent. The correlation between democracy and peace is limited to two narrow historical
windows, namely the interwar and post–Cold War periods, and dependent on a few high-leverage outlier
countries in Europe that contradict rather than confirm the basic theoretical expectations of the
democratic peace. A wide range of papers have repeatedly confirmed its existence by neglecting how the omission of
significant historical differences in the broader structure of international politics , particularly after
World War I, biases the results generated by standard research design decisions in favor of the
democratic peace. Second, reexamining a set of typical results shows that any remaining statistical
relationship between democracy and peace cannot be caused by the internal institutions
associated with democracy. Instead, the apparent peace among democracies that
has been repeatedly confirmed in statistical tests rests on historically specific elements of
great power bargains that emerge in the aftermath of major conflicts like World War I, World War II, and the Cold War.

These settlements transform the organizational composition of the

system in at least three important ways—by creating new states, by reshaping hierarchical
orders, and by altering the distribution of regime type in the system. These organizational
changes influence aggregate patterns of military conflict by resetting conflicts of political
interests among the resulting political organizations and by creating new hierarchical orders in
which great powers shape the regime type of subordinate states and impose peaceful foreign
policies on them. This focus on
hierarchy and historical variation in great power orders accounts for five components of the statistical relationship between
democracy and peace: membership in a great power hierarchy shapes regime type; great powers impose peace on subordinate
states within their hierarchical orders; great powers have disproportionately extended some form of a hierarchical relationship to
democratic dyads in the post–1918 period; the collapse of multinational empires in the immediate aftermath of World War I and the
Cold War dramatically increased the number of independent states and democracies in the system; and a radical change in military
conflict participation rates by key European countries—namely Germany, France, and the United Kingdom—in Europe before and

after 1945. In
short, the “democratic peace” that has emerged in the aftermath of World War I is
spurious, nested in a larger great power order that is periodically renegotiated in the
aftermath of war and imperial collapse.

Accounting for hierarchy takes out any statistical relationship between

democracy and peace.
McDonald 2015 Patrick, Associate Professor of Government at the University of Texas at
Austin, Great Powers, Hierarchy, and Endogenous Regimes: Rethinking the Domestic Causes of
Peace, International Organization / Volume 69 / Issue 03 / 2015

Together these three elements—historical variation in a series of negotiated great power orders
that follow major conflicts, endogenous regime type, and the capacity of hierarchy to promote
institutional similarity and peace—explain the empirical finding commonly known as the
democratic peace. This section identifies seven manifestations of these more general factors to challenge the possibility
of a causal relationship between democracy and peace and to understand why the empirical relationship between democracy and
peace has long appeared to be so robust after 1918. Important components of these great-power-induced trends, including the
distribution of military conflict by regime type and by historical period (1816–1918, 1919–1945, 1946–1991, 1992–2000) and the
distribution of dyadic regime pairings by historical period, can be seen in descriptive statistics provided in the supplementary

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the number of independent states in the international system increased

appendix.43 First,
significantly after World War I, simultaneously creating a sizable difference in sample size
between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Drawing on the sample used in subsequent regressions, the
number of dyad year observations before and after World War I grows from 56,925 (1816–1918) to 468,189 (1919–2000). This
growth in state (and dyad) count contributes to the increasing rarity of military conflict after World War II, particularly in the latter
part of the twentieth century.44 The descriptive statistics in the supplementary appendix show that the highest rate of conflict by

regime type and by historical period occurs within democratic dyads over the period from 1816 to 1918. This
contradictory
relationship gets overwhelmed in standard statistical tests that use historically aggregated
samples because there are so many more states (and observations) in the post–1945 period. Second,
the population of democratic dyads in the international system is shocked upward in two
historical periods, those immediately following World War I and the Cold War. The proportion of
dyad year observations composed of two democracies moves from 2 percent in the period up to 1918 to slightly over 9 percent in
the period from 1919 to 1945.45 Over 73 percent of democratic dyad year observations in the interwar period (3,062 of 4,169)
include at least one state that democratized between 1918 and 1925. The proportion of democratic dyads in the system is then
stable until the post–Cold War period46 when it jumps to nearly 23 percent of all dyad year observations (25,205 of 110,700 total
dyad year observations). Of the post–1991 democratic dyads, over 40 percent (10,260) include at least one state that democratized

from 1988 to 1993. These

two periods in which the proportion of democratic dyads jumps upward
possess significant implications for the empirical relationship between democracy and peace
because it is restricted to these periods. Peace settlements that ended World War I and the Cold War generated new states,
some of which started out as democracies in large part because of the support extended for them by the democratic

victors.47 Consequently, for these statistically important moments in the 1920s and 1990s, statehood,
democratization, and peace were all endogenous or part of the settlements that ended prior
conflicts .48 The consequences of not modeling important systemic sources of democratization are illustrated with dyads
including former Warsaw Pact members after World War II.49 Even though these countries were relatively peaceful on
average throughout this period, they affect the statistical relationship between democracy and peace differently before and after
the collapse of the Soviet Union.50 Dyad year observations with these countries weaken the statistical relationship between
democracy and peace during the Cold War because they include peaceful autocrats. Cases with these same countries strengthen the
statistical relationship between democracy and peace after the collapse of the Soviet empire because they become democratic
states that avoid conflict. Consequently, the collapse of the Soviet Union and the withdrawal of its empire in Eastern Europe
strengthen the statistical relationship between democracy and peace in single-equation estimates that leave regime type exogenous
by transforming nondemocratic dyads that avoid military conflict during the Cold War into democratic dyads that also avoid conflict

after the Cold War. Third, even

though the wave of self-determination sparked by the end of World
War I heightened the political costs associated with preserving formal empires, great powers
adjusted their hierarchical orders so that they included states that possessed legal
independence. The British Empire is one such example.51 The Correlates of War project classifies Canada, Australia, New
Zealand, and South Africa as independent states in 1920. Yet they play a similarly critical role in British war efforts in World War I (as
colonies) and World War II (as independent states). This hierarchical evolution manifests in the increased willingness of great powers
after 1918 to increase their formal security obligations to independent states. In the statistical analysis, I capture this element of
hierarchy with a dummy variable that takes on a value of 1 if any non-great power member of a dyad possesses a defensive alliance
with a great power. Before 1919, at least one member of 22 percent of all dyads was allied to a great power. This proportion
increases to 53.4 percent of all dyads after 1918. Moreover, the democratic great powers, particularly the United States, drive these
changes. Before 1919, democratic great powers extend security commitments to at least one state in slightly less than 3 percent of

Fourth, the post–World War I

all dyads. After World War I, this proportion jumps to nearly 46 percent of all dyads.
period is distinguished by the disproportionate extension of these great power spheres of
influence to dyads composed of two democracies. Before 1919, at least one state in 5.6 percent of democratic
dyads possessed a security guarantee from a great power. After World War I, this proportion climbs to over 70 percent of

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democratic dyads.52 This

is a critical difference between the nineteenth- and twentieth-century
periods that has helped give rise to the apparent emergence of the democratic peace after
World War I.

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Human Rights Credibility Advantage Answers

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HR Cred Fails – 1NC

IRHL is ineffective – global trends and lack of commitments
Ingrid Wuerth 2017, Law professor at Vanderbilt Law, 12-12-2017, “International Law in the
Post-Human Rights Era”, Texas Law Review, https://texaslawreview.org/international-law-
posthuman-rights-era/

Human rights, and especially their transformation of sovereignty and their enforcement
through international law, are in a period of stasis and decline. One potential objection is that any such
decline is temporary or cyclical. After all, states remain bound by substantive human rights treaties and the customary international law
protecting human rights. In a few years, the international legal enforcement of human rights could be back on an upswing.

Maybe. But several factors suggest that the decline is longer-term, including the relative decline
in Western
economic and political power, broader global trends towards populism, and the
selective and half-hearted efforts by Western countries to promote human rights through

international law. Human rights themselves may, let us hope, improve over time, and the
drive and motivation to secure human rights will certainly continue , but neither
means that international human rights law should or must be the preferred vehicle for doing so. A
second potential objection is that there is no decline because there was no heyday: states
never took the international legal enforcement of human rights law seriously, even if
activists did . As the doctrinal discussions above illustrate, however, state practice in many areas changed around the turn
of
the century, even if those doctrines were never fully implemented and their on-the-ground effectiveness is contested.

2 Exiting the Human Rights Council thumps

Michael Posner 18, Jerome Kohlberg professor of ethics and finance at NYU Stern School of
Business and director of the Center for Business and Human Rights, served in the Obama
Administration from September 2009 until March 2013, as the assistant secretary of state for
democracy, human rights and labor, 6-19-2018, "Why U.S. Withdrawal From The Human Rights
Council Is A Dangerous Leadership Mistake," Forbes,
https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelposner/2018/06/19/u-s-withdrawal-from-the-un-
humanrights-council/#6a07b1d5de2b

The Trump administration’s decision to withdraw from the United Nations Human Rights
Council is yet another step in the administration’s retreat from the world stage . Once widely
viewed as a global leader on issues like human rights, the U.S. is now a marginal player , in
headlong retreat from the leadership position it has occupied since World War II. In the
postwar era, the U.S. played a major role as an architect of the UN system and other
international organizations and agreements that have dramatically advanced the country’s security and its economic and
political interests. There is a direct link between the

That’s why the withdrawal from the UN

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development of this international order and our prosperity and success over the last 70 years.
Human Rights Council is such a mistake. U.S. leadership in human rights has benefited the country and its allies. In
the
security realm, the U.S. military led the effort to create the four Geneva Conventions of 1949. These accords have protected American service members
for almost seven decades. On the economic front, the U.S. again took the lead in crafting the so-called Bretton Woods agreements that led to the
creation of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. These institutions have helped lift billions of people out of poverty. United States
consumers and companies have also greatly benefited from the resultant globalized economic order. Politically, the United Nations in 1946 created a
human rights body, then called the Commission on Human Rights. Under the stewardship of Eleanor Roosevelt, the Commission drafted and adopted the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights, a document that emulates American constitutional guarantees such as freedom of speech and religion, and
asserts that people everywhere are entitled to these protections. Governments
that have embraced this agenda based
on human rights, the rule of law and democracy are America’s closest friends, strongest trading
partners and most important strategic allies. In the name of what it calls an “America
First” approach, the current U.S. administration is not only failing to continue these efforts, it
is actually leading an attempt to dismantle many of the agreements and institutions that
generations of U.S. officials worked so hard to build . The decision to withdraw from the
Human Rights Council is the most recent manifestation of this attempt. International action on
human rights has always been a
challenge, This is especially true in today’s sharply polarized world. reflecting deep
political divisions among
governments. The 47 members who now comprise the Council are from governments with
widely different perspectives and interests,
including a number of states that are themselves serious rights violators. All
too often, the Council fails to act when
powerful governments like Russia or China commit systematic violations. In other cases, governments
pursue political agendas in the name of human rights. For decades a coalition of governments from South Asia and the Middle East
pursued a “defamation of religion” resolution that would have seriously compromised free speech. When
the Council veers
off track, as it did in that instance, the United States often has played a leading role in getting
it back on track. One area where U.S. leadership has been most central is in challenging the
Council’s disproportionate focus on Israel, a failing that Republican and Democratic administrations have consistently
challenged for decades. By withdrawing from the Council, the Trump administration has
forfeited its seat at the table and its standing to challenge this and other areas where the
Council continues to come up short . In an era when human rights are being attacked across
the globe, U.S. leadership on these issues is more needed than ever. Walking away from the
Human Rights Council will not help protect the rights of the most vulnerable; it
will leave
them more isolated and insecure. The America First agenda is serving neither America nor its
allies around the world.

Trump is the death of treaties.

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Ingrid Wuerth, 11/14/2016. Helen Strong Curry Professor of International Law at Vanderbilt Law School, where she also
directs the international legal studies program. She is a leading scholar of foreign affairs, public international law and international
litigation. She serves on the State Department’s Advisory Committee on Public International Law, she is a Reporter on the American
Law Institute’s Restatement (Fourth) on U.S. Foreign Relations Law, and she is on the editorial board of the American Journal of
International Law. She has won Fulbright and Alexander von Humboldt awards permitting her to spend substantial time in Germany
and she is an elected member of the German Society of International Law. “International Law in the Age of Trump: A Post-Human
Rights Agenda,” Lawfare Blog. https://www.lawfareblog.com/international-law-age-trump-post-human-rights-agenda

TheTrump presidency will have a significant impact on international law, including a potential
withdrawal from or re-negotiation of the Paris Agreement on Climate Change and the Iran nuclear deal. Although
those two examples would pit the United States against much of the rest of the world, in other respects Trump’s election is consistent
with ongoing global changes. To take a well-known example, Trump’s opposition to NAFTA appears to align with worldwide populism
and hostility to trade agreements, as illustrated by Brexit.

Trump’s election is also consistent with other trends in international law. As I argued before the election, we are in the midst of
a world-wide decline in international human rights and a related rise in power by China and Russia over
the content of international law, a theme discussed last week by Anne Peters here. Liberal intervention on behalf of human rights—
opposed by China and Russia—would almost certainly have received a boost from a Hillary Clinton administration. Although it is
difficult to predict what direction the new administration will take, it is likely that the U.S. will expend little energy on
promoting the international legal protection of human rights (putting aside here international humanitarian
law, the law of armed conflict, and other related areas of international law).

We are, in other words, probably already in the “post-human rights era” of international law,
meaning that the enforcement and expansion of human rights through binding international
law will decline. Fortunately, thanks in part to the historic successes of the human rights movement, there are many other
ways to advance the cause of human rights, including regional human rights institutions, soft international norms (such as the
historic Helsinki Accords), and domestic or transnational political reform and activism. Promoting civil liberties and human rights at
home and abroad should be an important objective in the coming years, all the more so with Trump as President, but perhaps not
through the enforcement of binding international law.

The Trump administration should use the post-human rights era as an opportunity to promote a different international law agenda:
a strong core of international law dedicated to protecting international peace and security. The pursuit of human rights by the West
through international law has weakened other norms of international law. Kosovo is an illustration. President Clinton’s 1999
“humanitarian intervention” in Kosovo lacked the authorization of the U.N. Security Council and violated international law; the
intervention ultimately led to the creation of the new state of Kosovo over the bitter opposition of Russia and Serbia. The Kosovo
precedent was used by Russia to support the right to self-determination for South Ossetia and Crimea. More broadly, doctrinal
innovations like universal jurisdiction and the lifting of immunity for human rights violations can generate regional tensions and
disagreements.

Quite simply, the

West has lost its bid to promote human rights as politically neutral standards
binding upon all nations as a matter of international law. That effort foundered most visibly on
the shoals of selective, coercive enforcement, including in Iraq, but also including the use of
force to effectuate regime change in Libya and the limited effectiveness of the Human Rights
Council. A turn away from using international law to promote human rights—whether or not the first best choice in an ideal world—creates
an opportunity to strengthen other vitally important norms of international law.

HR Cred Fails – 2NC

One shot solutions don’t solve human rights credibility

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Miller, Wilson Center distinguished scholar, 2013

(Aaron, “Speak No Evil”, 5-28,
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/05/28/speak_no_evil_obama_drone_speech,)

I'll take the word of those who argue that drones are the poster child for the anger Arabs and Muslims feel toward America. I can see why. But
the
grievances toward the United States in this region run deep, and the source of that anger is
not only drones. Don't forget: The Middle East was exasperated with Washington long before
droning, and it remains eager to blame America for just about everything. The list of the Arab world's
grievances go on and on: America is blamed for supporting the authoritarian Arab kings, blindly backing

Israel, not talking to Hamas, not intervening militarily in Syria, intervening militarily in Iraq
and
Afghanistan, And that's even before we discuss the small but determined minority of and,
according to
Egyptian liberals, for supporting Egypt's Muslim
Brotherhood.
Muslims who do, in fact, hate us because of who we are -- not just because of what we do. No nuanced
modulation of our approach on drone strikes or the closure of Gitmo is going to change any
of that.

Human Rights Cred is irrelevant — public opinion, global norms, and NGO
networks outweigh US policy
Moravcsik, Princeton international affairs professor, 2005
(Andrew, “The Paradox of U.S. Human Rights Policy”,
http://www.princeton.edu/~amoravcs/library/paradox.pdf, )

It is natural to ask: What

are the consequences of U.S. "exemptionalism” and noncompliance? International
lawyers and human rights activists regularly issue dire warnings about the ways in which the
apparent hypocrisy of the United States encourages foreign governments to violate human rights,

ignore international pressure, and undermine international human rights institutions. In Patricia
Derian's oft-cited statement before the Senate in I979: "Ratification by the United States significantly will enhance the legitimacy and acceptance of these
standards. It will encourage other countries to join those which have already accepted the treaties. And, in countries where human rights

generally are not respected, it will aid citizens in raising human rights issues.""' One constantly hears this refrain. Yet
there is little
empirical reason to accept it. Human rights norms have in fact spread widely without much
attention to U.S. domestic policy. In the wake of the "third wave"• democratization in Eastern
Europe, East Asia, and Latin America, government after government moved ahead toward more
active domestic and international human rights policies without attending to U.S. domestic or
international practice." The human rights movement has firmly embedded itself in public

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opinion and NGO networks, in the United States as well as elsewhere, despite the dubious
legal status of international norms in the United States. One reads occasional quotations from recalcitrant
governments citing American noncompliance in their own defense-most recently Israel and Australia-but there is little evidence that this was more than

a redundant justification for policies made on other grounds. Other

governments adhere or do not adhere to global
norms, comply or do not comply with judgments of tribunals, for reasons that seem to have little to do with U.S.
multilateral policy.

US credibility irrelevant – authoritarian states don’t follow norms

McGinnis et al., Northwestern law professor, 2007
(John, “Global Constitutionalism: Global Influence On U.S. Jurisprudence: Should International
Law Be Part of Our Law?”, 59 Stan. L. Rev. 1175, lexis, )

The costs and benefits of our norms will be

The second benefit to foreigners of distinctive U.S. legal norms is information.

visible for all to see. n268 Particularly in an era of increased empirical social science testing , over time we
will be able to analyze and identify the effects of differences in norms between the United States and
other nations. n269 Such diversity benefits foreigners as foreign nations can decide to adopt our
good norms and avoid our bad ones . The only noteworthy counterargument is the claim that U.S. norms
will have more harmful effects than those of raw international law, yet other nations will still
copy them. But both parts of this proposition seem doubtful. First, U.S. law emerges from a democratic process that creates a likelihood that
it will cause less harm than rules that emerge from the nondemocratic processes [*1235] that create international law. Second, other

democratic nations can use their own political processes to screen out American norms that
might cause harm if copied. Of course, many nations remain authoritarian. n270 But our norms
are not likely to have much influence on their choice of norms. Authoritarian states are likely to select
norms that serve the interests of those in power, regardless of the norms we adopt. It is true that
sometimes they
might cite our
"cover." They would have adopted the same rules, anyway. norms as cover
for their
decisions. But the crucial word here is
The cover may bamboozle some and thus be
counted a cost. But this would seem marginal compared to the harm of allowing raw international law to trump domestic law.

Wide-spread torture is inevitable and guts human rights cred Hilde,

Maryland public policy professor, 2009
(Thomas, “Beyond Guantanamo. Restoring U.S. Credibility on Human Rights”,
http://www.boell.org/downloads/hbf_Beyond_Guantanamo_Thomas_Hilde(2).pdf, )

Beginning at least in 2002, the

United States created and developed a policy instituting torture — what
it calls “enhanced interrogation” — of its detainees in the “global war on terror”2 under the

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general framework of a state of necessity. Many of these torture techniques have already been used and refined by the Western powers
during the 20th century.3 They are also built partially into U.S. “survival, evasion, resistance, escape” (sere) training

program techniques, which reportedly also adapt techniques previously used by China.4 The logic of torture used as an
information-seeking instrument in the current conflict, however, has entailed the creation of a large-scale
institution of torture , spread among several countries , and implicating hundreds and
perhaps thousands of people.5 This institution strikes at the heart of the very idea of human
rights and core principles of liberal democratic society. It raises important and uncomfortable
questions about the nature of human rights in the wake of the torture at Guantánamo and other sites, the policy and
practice of extraordinary rendition, indefinite detentions and the suspension of due process
and habeas corpus, the violation of domestic and international laws, and perhaps other
features and goals of the program yet to come into the public light. The claim is a claim to exception or necessity to
the suspension of laws and civil liberties in a moment of national emergency. This is not unusual, unfortunately. Most
states have similar national emergency procedures, even if only implicit. The law will always
be suspended in the name of survival and the global war on terror was framed as a matter of the
survival of civilization. With self-defense being the moral justification of violence par excellence, extraordinary acts
may be viewed as entirely legitimate in the defense of civilization. What should also concern us, however, is
the suspension of rights in the name of political expediency. In other words, this is not only a moment for lawyers to rise to the occasion. The
problem is political and philosophical. There is more at stake than the legally appropriate
punishment of terrorists and credibility of certain public officials and agencies. The
prohibition of torture has been formal international law since the UN Declaration on Human Rights (1948) and the
Geneva Conventions (1949). It is also generally assumed to be an international peremptory norm (jus cogens), a norm

accepted universally by the international community that cannot be derogated, such as the norm of
state sovereignty. The UN Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (1984/1987) and the
nonbinding Istanbul Protocol (1999), among other international legal instruments, further codified the norm into international law. Torture

violates international law, usually domestic law (as, for example, in the 8th Amendment to the United States constitution
banning “cruel and unusual punishment”), basic morality, and one of the fundamental shared norms of international society. Violation of the law

entails criminality by definition. Violation

of a basic shared norm entails a loss of moral and political standing,
of credibility, trust, and legitimacy in international society.

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I-law fails – 1NC

I-law fails – states only abide by international law when it helps them – the aff
can’t create an effective enforcement mechanism that forces states to abide by
international norms when it doesn’t suit them.
Patrick Porter 16, academic director of the Strategy and Security Institute at the University of
Exeter., 8-28-2016, "Sorry, Folks. There Is No Rules-Based World Order.," National Interest,
https://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-skeptics/sorry-folks-there-no-rules-based-world-
order17497?page=0%2C2

It would be one thing if the “rules-based” cliché were harmless. It is not harmless. It suffers
from three defects. Firstly, its claims about “how things are” is untrue, historically and today .
Contrary to those
nostalgic for a there was never a golden era of rule adherence to which we can return.
rule-based liberal
order that the United States bound itself to after World War II, As
Stephen Walt observed, historically “we mostly made up the rules, and chucked them or
ignored them
when they got in defining the system as ‘rule-based’ doesn’t make much sense if the leading
our way. . . there
are rules, but we don't define the system in this way. For starters,
state(s) can ignore the rules whenever they want to.” The United States was not an
umpire
above the fray. Umpires don’t overthrow governments, assassinate rulers or blockade
countries. Every major power, past and present, including every permanent member of the
Security Council, has on occasion significantly violated international law, or rejected the
rulings of international courts, or even denied their authority. Jacques Chirac’s France, like
Gerhard
Schroeder’s Germany, opposed the invasion of Iraq on the grounds of opposing “unilateralism” and upholding the Security Council’s

authority. Yet France

itself flouted the same rule, participating in NATO’s unauthorized and illegal
bombing of Serbia in 1999 to rescue Kosovo Albanians from genocide. As an American hawk
observed, “if there ever was an international order of the kind they describe, then Europe
undermined it in 1999, too.” In 1985, France sank the Greenpeace ship Rainbow Warrior ,
agreeing to arbitration but refusing to submit to the International Court of Justice. The United
States has not even ratified the international Law of the Sea that it urges China to observe. In
the 1980s, when Nicaragua successfully sued America before the International Court of Justice
over the mining of its harbors, Washington refused to pay reparations and refused to
recognise the authority of the court. America’s UN ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick’s
rationalization was inflammatory, and true: the ICJ, she claimed, is a “semi-legal” body that
“nations sometimes accept and sometimes don’t.” Secondly, the “rules-based” ideal cannot
be realized in future , because of the tragic nature of international life . There is no

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transcendental impartial authority that can enforce rules in a disinterested and consistent

pressure they will rely on themselves if they can.

way . There may be global governance, but there is no global government, and when states feel enough
Rules themselves, like norms, can conflict.
We have already noted a case in point: the collision between the authority of the Security
Council and international humanitarian law against the targeting of civilians. Consider a provocative
suggestion: sometimes states are right to act illegally. Our own Western states violate international law from time to time, and with
justification. Though our preference is for international authorization, we have compelling interests that at times will be threatened,
so compelling that we won’t hold them hostage to the cause of international consensus. Indeed, we may believe, with
good conscience, that the welfare of world order itself obliges the occasional breaking of
rules. The same President Obama who invokes the “rules-based order” carries out extrajudicial assassinations of Islamists, and not
always with the prior consent of host countries or the Security Council, thus infringing both sovereignty and due process. In
principle, he is right to do so. American citizens are not entitled to decamp to remote countries and, unmolested, urge their
compatriots to slaughter other Americans. Armed Islamists from other countries, likewise, are not entitled to prepare aggression
against American civilians without disruption. The states where they find sanctuary may be either too weak, or too passive, to
apprehend them. In such circumstances, it is reasonable for America to treat armed adversaries as armed adversaries, without
relying on others’ permission. “Rules-based,” however, is a stretch. The issue came into sharp focus for Britain’s former prime
minister, David Cameron, who had urged China to buy in to the “rules-based world.” Confronted by the outrage of Syria’s use of
chemical weapons against civilians, Cameron in the autumn of 2013 discovered powerful reasons to set formal rules aside. Making
the case for punitive airstrikes against the regime, to punish and deter future WMD atrocities, Cameron insisted, “if we’re saying
there can only be a response if the UN Security Council votes positively, we are in fact contracting out our foreign policy, our
morality, to the potential of a Russian veto. Now I think that is a very misguided approach.” For a government that talks so often
about the rule of law, all of a sudden morality and rules were distinct, and Britain could reject rules for the sake of other valued
things. Neither is this apparent doctrine an isolated case. Unless we are claiming an
Anglo-American privilege, if one major power can selectively refuse to submit to Major states will invoke rules, the
Security Council or courts, why can’t others?

and at their discretion, will break them. Theirs is a great-power privilege. This is the world we

live in . Thirdly, attempting to bring about a world of consistent rules, enforced by an

international authority, will harm the West’s ability to navigate its way It is not the
ahead.
case, as some argue , that better rules or reformed institutions will adequately address the

problem . The problem is more intractable. The world is a tragic place, where not all good
things go together, and cannot offer dilemma-free clarity and consistency. Even doing
good or
principled things may require accommodation with oppressive regimes. Recall the celebrated case of Chile’s dictator Augusto
Pinochet, who was put under house arrest in London in 1999. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was widely condemned for her
unyielding support for Pinochet. As her critics fail to note, when Thatcher’s Britain fought to recapture the Falkland Islands from
Argentina in 1982, it relied on Chile’s covert assistance , in particular early warnings of air attacks on British naval forces, warnings
provided by long-range radar. On the one day the radar were switched off for maintenance, two British transports were sunk.
Pinochet played a vital role in Britain’s victory, and took grave risks to do so. Were we to take legalists’ advice, and commit to
arresting and trying the leaders of oppressive regimes, how confident could we be of their help in future? At the dawn of the
postwar era, Hans Morgenthau identified the legalist vision, that conceived of the world in absolute terms of peace, law and crime.
This would make “compromise, the virtue of the old diplomacy, the treason of the new.” As Morgenthau’s critique implied, “rules”
and “order” are distinct and conflicting concepts, just as “illegal” and “immoral” are concepts wrongly conflated. “Rules” suggest

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Order, though,
strictness, nonnegotiability and clarity, and above all a supreme umpire empowered to enforce the rules.
depends on compromise, negotiation and trade-offs, in the absence of a referee. Many of
these require hard value judgements, in a world so messy that rules themselves can collide .
My own experience is that, off the record, government officials agree that their master concept is a

impossible? There is no value pretending the world is anything other than it manifestly is

charade . Yet, they reason, it is still worth pursuing. Is it, though, wise to pursue the
.

Instead of wishfully invoking a fictitious order that even our own states are likely to reject at
critical junctures, our decisionmakers should consider how to negotiate a rougher world, the
compromises
they are willing If there is a pathway to peace, it is not the competitive invocation of rules, or
to make, the
violations they will tolerate, the principles they will need to stretch.
the lawyerizing of foreign policy . Neither can solve the inherent dilemmas of power and
order. The alternative need not be “mere anarchy.” If
there is a workable world order to be forged, it will
be made primarily by diplomats who go beyond reading international documents. It
will rely on compromise, adjustment, mutual concessions and a continually
negotiated universe, backed by deterrence and material strength. That may not It is at least
be an attractive world.
a realistic one, in which prudent diplomacy has sometimes succeeded. It is also the only
world we can have. It’s sad that it needs repeating, but we can’t have it all.

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I-law Fails – 2NC

There is no reform that can fix a system based on fundamentally flawed ideals –
power determines international interactions, and major powers will always
selectively ignore the rules they make – there’s no international enforcement
mechanism that can change that – that’s Porter

Enforcing i-law differently won’t change anything – the specific provisions of

ilaw allow for military action making any attempt to restrain conflict
impossible.
Damon Linker 18, senior correspondent at The Week, PhD in Political Science from Michigan
State University, MA from NYU, 4-17-2018, "International law won't save us," The Week,
http://theweek.com/articles/767687/international-law-wont-save

International law will not save us from stupidity or hubris in the conduct of American foreign

policy . That much should be obvious to everyone 15 years after George W. Bush launched a war
against Saddam Hussein's Iraq that was justified as an effort to enforce international law
while being simultaneously denounced at home and abroad as such an egregious violation of
international law that leading members of the Bush administration deserved to be hauled before The Hague as war criminals.
But alas, it isn't obvious — or at least not as obvious as it should be. Just look at the reaction of leading members
of Washington's foreign policy establishment to the decision of the Trump administration (along
with the governments of Great Britain and France) to launch a punitive strike against Syria in retaliation for
the government of Bashar al-Assad allegedly using chemical weapons against his own people in his
country's interminable civil war. Many of the people cheering on this show of force have taken this
—
tension or contradiction to a whole new level somehow embracing both positions at once,
maintaining that the American-led attack probably violated international law (whether under the
1997 Chemical Weapons Convention or the vaguer humanitarian imperative to protect the victims of violence and injustice) but
was nevertheless welcome and perhaps even long overdue in order to uphold and enforce …
international law. The instinct to appeal to an extra-political, universal legal standard to hem
. As a
in the actions of states is very deeply embedded in the thinking of Western elites recent,
illuminating book explains, it has roots in early modern just-war theory, picked up momentum in the years following World War I,
when several writers, thinkers, and political actors attempted to pass laws that would effectively outlaw war at the international level,
and then gained decisive traction after World War II, with the creation of the norms and institutions of the liberal international order.
Today the legitimacy and wisdom of the attempt to devise and enforce a body of international
law is taken for granted across the West by almost everyone on the center left and center right
. Yet this project is also riddled with conceptual confusions that render it far
less salutary than is commonly recognized and could well doom it to eventual irrelevancy
.

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Those who would like to forestall that fate would be well advised to take note of these defects
so they can respond with eyes wide open. Although international law was first devised to
bind the actions of states on the world stage and make them less likely to start wars, in

reality international law is often invoked as a justification for launching military attacks
.

Hence the arguments in favor of bombing Assad's forces in Syria in order to enforce international laws
against the use of chemical weapons and in favor of protecting civilians in the name of humanitarianism. That's because
international law is modeled on the only kind
the laws that abide within particular states. of laws with which human beings are familiar:
And those laws obviously work in both ways as well. They do
not
simply outlaw certain actions on the part of individuals and groups. They also punish those who transgress the law, uphold certain ideals
of justice, and seek to realize the common good of the political community, including the maintenance of order. Under certain

circumstances, all three can require the use of force by the government. Similarly, international
law doesn't just
outlaw certain kinds of wars. It also establishes
conditions that's where the trouble starts. under which war is authorized and
required. And The citizens of a particular political community
frequently disagree with each other about the nature of justice and what it demands in
particular circumstances. That disagreement helps to set politics in motion, as different factions seek political rule,
including the power of settling the question of justice (at least for the time being — until another faction takes power). Liberal
democratic government is an elaborate institutional mechanism for regularizing to this clamor for power on the part of competing

factions. If
international law is going to authorize and require war to enforce the law, including
the meting out of punishment to states that wage the wrong kind of wars or wage them in the
wrong ways, then the question immediately
arises of who is writing the and whether both are being done justly laws and making the
decisions in particular cases — . Those are political issues. To get
a sense of how quickly they can become intractable in an international context, consider a tweet by foreign policy analyst Emma
Ashford that posed a series of pointed questions shortly after the bombing of Syria commenced: "Why Syria, not Yemen? Why Libya,
not Myanmar? Why chemical weapons, not barrel bombs?" The answer, of course, is that international law is primarily
written and enforced by Western powers, and Western powers (like all state
actors) have distinctive interests that shape their priorities in international the enforcement
affairs. But then
of international law isn't truly international at all. It's an expression of the outlook of
one
part — the most powerful part — of the global community of nations. This sets up the
conditions for justified accusations of double standards , as critics of
Western, and especially American,
foreign policy accuse the West of turning a blind eye to Israel's violations of
international law, or ignoring the criminal
acts of senior members of the Bush
This implies that the problem could be solved by enforcing
administration, or engaging in hero worship of
the mass murderer Winston Churchill.

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international law more consistently

Butand
thefairly.
problem runs deeper than that.
Liberal politics has stringent standards for establishing the legitimacy for law : The governed must give
their consent, public opinion must be consulted through the medium of elections for representative offices, and the people must also
be given a say in who gets to serve as judge, jury, and executioner of violations of justice.
But of course the
international system doesn't work like this at all. As the world's most powerful
nation and
primary founder of the international system itself, the U.S. has assigned itself the role of
authoring the laws
and enforcing them that brings us to a final, potentially fatal paradox in the international as
it sees fit, with a
little help from a few relatively powerful friends. And
system . Even when the United States and its allies act to enforce international law — as
NATO did in Libya in 2011 — the results are often disappointing and sometimes
outright horrifying , with people formerly living under an abusive despot faced with the
prospect of life in a Hobbesian civil war, defending themselves any way they can in the ruins of a crumbling state.
This isn't what the U.S. aimed to achieve in Libya, or Iraq, or Afghanistan. But it's what we've
bequeathed to each of them — because breaking a nation is far easier than building one. The
idea of international law only makes sense in the context of a single political community of
worldwide extent. Yet if the international order as it currently exists were a single political

community, it would be a
failed state led by a powerful, well-meaning, but extremely
capricious and often clueless tyrant who governs without consent, metes out punishment
inconsistently, and loves to make sweeping moral pronouncements that raise expectations
for justice while failing to secure it for most of those living under its rule. "International law"

sounds good. But that doesn't mean it makes sense.

And countries are realists – they won’t abide by norms

Patrick Porter 16, academic director of the Strategy and Security Institute at the University of
Exeter., 8-28-2016, "Sorry, Folks. There Is No Rules-Based World Order.," National Interest,
https://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-skeptics/sorry-folks-there-no-rules-based-world-
order17497?page=0%2C2

If there is one concept, endlessly recalled, that rings through debate about foreign affairs, it is
the “rules-based” international order. The notion that all are bound by a global set of rules, an international law
above power, is foundational to the UK National Security Strategy and the Australian Defence White Paper , and to the United

States’ National Security Strategy . The United Nations itself was created to end the scourge of war and
erect a rule of law in its place. This was always difficult, especially so now in an age of greater

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multipolarity and contestation , where the claims of sovereignty and the claims of human rights
conflict, and observers worry that the very idea of rules is being eroded. “Rules-
based” has become an incantation, summoned often and automatically, as though repeating it
will make
it so. Order is better than chaos, obviously. A degree of regularity and process is better than the arbitrariness of power untamed, and
it is better for states to formulate rough principles for the road, even if the road is unruly. The problem is not law.
The problem is legalism, the ambition that formal rules can supplant power politics and
substitute for wider judgement, that politics itself can be obviated by codes and institutions. If
faithfully observed, the idea that the world should revolve strictly around laws and their
enforcement would quickly destroy a country’s ability to have a foreign policy. Five years ago,
Amnesty International demonstrated where such doctrines lead, when it insisted that the
Canadian government arrest former President George W. Bush for his part in torture while on
a visit. Canada, surprisingly, resisted the temptation, deciding that it had
other interests at stake in its relationship with a neighboring Like other concepts
superpower—such as survival.
that attempt to reduce the world to one big thing, legalism is of limited value . We can’t have
a rules-based world order. Indeed, a fetish for rules is more the problem than the answer.
“Rules-based international order” is a seductive phrase. It sounds enlightened. It is part of the
lingua franca of an internationalist class of lawyers, officials and commentators . It rolls off the
tongue like other high-minded concepts, from “global governance” to
“international community.” It is tailor made for the graduate lounge, the petition, the press release or the The
debating chamber. concept is also a weapon that tempts major powers, its mantle
offering their activities the

exalted stature of police action. Tested in the unforgiving world of actual decisions, it doesn’t
live up to its billing. The absolute insistence on rules compliance is at the heart of a doctrine developed by former UN
Secretary-General Kofi Annan and reasserted in the wake of the Iraq War. Annan, another advocate of
the rules-based order, insisted that the United Nations is the “sole source of legitimacy” for the use of force. Annan’s doctrines rose
to prominence in the days when the main focus of complaints about illegality was America’s Bush administration, whose invasion of
Iraq without a final, second Security Council Resolution allegedly tore up a widely respected rule book, turning a built-up lawful order
into a lawless world . For Annan, the lesson of Iraq was the need to work together through the UN. Unfortunately for that argument,
most of the violence that occurred in post-Saddam Iraq took place after the United Nations Security Council passed Resolution 1546
in June 2004, unanimously authorizing the continuing presence of a multinational force. Iraqi insurgents had already showed what
they thought of the “sole source of legitimacy” blowing up the UN headquarters in Baghdad.
Is it possible that UN
authority is not quite so all-important as legalists think it is? Nevertheless, the idea has become
contagious that military action can only be legitimate with the assent of the UN, an organization
that once had Colonel Qaddafi’s Libya as chair of its Human Rights Commission, and whose Security Council includes regimes
responsible for atrocities in Tiananmen Square and Tibet, or Chechnya and Crimea. Applied consistently, this doctrine
would have blocked interventions that were justified morally and strategically, such as Vietnam’s
intervention to end the Cambodian genocide, or Tanzania’s intervention against Idi Amin in Uganda. As the socialist intellectual Norm
Geras suggested in his challenge to legalism, given the human weight of what is at stake, international law must take its chances “with
the other pressing moral considerations that govern life and death.” If that applies to human rights, why not also national security or,
indeed, international order itself? Syria today raises the issue. Britain’s former secretary for international
development Andrew Mitchell recently denounced the Russian-Syrian bombardment of Aleppo. Demanding
international action to end the slaughter, he insisted that only the UN could “symbolise the

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authority of the international community.” Mitchell did not acknowledge that the Security
Council has Russia as a permanent member, an active belligerent wielding veto power. The
obvious problem is that one arbitrator of the rules is also a bloodstained
aggressor that is unwilling to intervene against itself . In effect, Mitchell is asserting
strict
adherence to the very
institutional If only there were no tradeoffs between the cause of international obstacles
that prevent the
intervention he claims is morally urgent.
institutions’ authority and righteous military action. If only we could have it both ways.
China’s aggressive expansion into the South China Sea has restaged the problem of global
rules. Observers, understandably enough, object to China’s exorbitant “nine-dash line”
territorial claims, its incursions into disputed waters, islands and shoals, and its repudiation of the Permanent Court of
Arbitration’s recent unanimous ruling against it. Again, critics complain that China’s misbehavior undermines a
rule-bound order, demanding U.S.-led resistance to defend the rule of law. As when President
Vladimir Putin bit off the Crimea and fell on the Ukraine, those who write so irenically about
international “rules” suggest that geopolitical thuggery is a thing of the past , a
nineteenthcentury regression in a law-bound twenty-first century. This ahistorical assumption,
of a recent past of rule observance and consensus, explains some of the unwarranted surprise
of critics, some of whom expected China to take up America’s invitation to submit to the rules
of the Pax Americana. A rising China’s attempt to dominate its
neighborhood, bully its neighbors and It should not shock reject a tribunal’s verdict may
offend. . It is, historically, unexceptional.
Neither does China show any sign of capitulating in the face of the verdict . It has
responded
with threats and escalation, and its own population if anything is more belligerent on the issue than its government. If

a major power with the pressure of a multitude of nationalists will not submit to the “rulesbased” order
that apparently prevails, that order must have been fragile, or fictitious, to
begin with.

I-law generally fails and U.S. leadership doesn’t matter and is a bad standard for
it
Pollack 14 - Professor of Political Science and Law and Jean Monnet Chair @ Temple
University; Ph.D. from Harvard University [Mark “Who Supports International Law, and Why?
The United States, the European Union, and International Law” The International Journal of
Constitutional Law, Vol. 13, No. 4 (2014)
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Mark_Pollack2/publication/280786025_Who_Supports_I
nternational_Law_and_Why_The_United_States_the_European_Union_and_International_Law
/links/55c6bdfe08aebc967df53997.pdf]

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If we examine the recent literature on the US attitude toward international law, we encounter a common
charge that the US has withdrawn from its postwar leadership role, acting not as a leader but as a
laggard in the negotiation of international treaties.13 By contrast, it is often argued that the mantle of leadership
has passed to the EU in a number of issue-areas such as the
environment and climate change.14 While such leadership
leadership is clearly not required for
can be important in the development of international law, a state to be

considered supportive of the rule of . international law Indeed, the assertion of diplomatic leadership may represent not
so much a commitment to international law per se, but simply a vigorous effort to shape the
content of international law in

line with one’s own substantive preferences. Furthermore, to state the obvious, failure to provide leadership does
not constitute a violation of international law .

2. Consent A second dimension of support is consent to be bound by international rules, or what political scientists
sometimes refer to as commitment. That is, even in the absence of leadership, a state may demonstrate a consistent
willingness to be bound by the provisions of international law, or conversely that same state may refuse to be bound,
in various ways. With respect to treaty law, the most obvious expression of consent is signature and ratification of a treaty
– or lack thereof. At the extreme, a state may refuse to sign a given treaty, indicating that the executive
of the state in question has no intent to become a party to the agreement. Examples of such refusal in
the US case include such landmark agreements as the 1982 Law of the Sea Convention (LOSC) and the
1997 Land Mines Treaty, which have been signed and ratified by 162 states (plus the EU) and by 159 states, respectively,
but neither signed nor ratified by the US.

Alternatively, a state may sign a treaty, indicating an initial intent to be bound, but subsequently fail to ratify
, cutting across a variety of issue-
the agreement . Examples from the US case are legion
areas
including arms control (the SALT II accords, the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty), humanitarian law
(Protocols I and II to the Geneva Conventions), criminal law (the Rome Statute of the International Criminal
Court), environmental law (the Kyoto Protocol, and many others), human rights law (the Convention on the
Rights of Persons with Disabilities, and many others), trade law (the International Trade
Organization), and other agreements such as the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties (VCLT).
Looking more broadly at the ratification behavior of multiple states, Elsig et al. have demonstrated that states vary
dramatically in their willingness to ratify multilateral treaties negotiated since the end of the Cold War. Examining state
ratification rates for 76 post-Cold War multilateral treaties open to all states and spanning a wide range of issue-areas, the
authors find that the top nine ratifiers are all European, as are 16 of the top 20. By contrast, the US is ranked 76th, with
a ratification rate of only 45.05%, notably behind China (69th) and India (71st), but ahead
slightly ahead of Russia (97th). 15

Judging from these data, it appears as if the US does indeed have what we might call a consent, commitment, or
ratification problem, demonstrating, at least in the post-Cold War era, a far lower rate of consent to multilateral treaties
than European countries. Even where a state signs and ratifies treaties, it can limit the nature and extent of
its consent to be bound through a variety of flexibility mechanisms , which include provisions
such as limited duration (sunset) clauses, exit clauses, safeguard clauses, and reservations,

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understandings, and declarations (RUDs).16 The literature on the US has primarily emphasized two of these
exit and RUDs Prominent US examples of exit include the Bush Administration’s
flexibility mechanisms, .
unilateral denunciation of the bilateral Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, and
the temporary US withdrawals from the International Labor Organization and UNESCO, among others,
although Helfer’s data indicate that the use of exit remains relatively rare for the US and for other countries.

Reservations are more common , and the US has actively availed itself of its right reserve away from treaty
provisions

that would require significant changes in policy or that are considered to violate the provisions of the US Constitution. Indeed, it is
this pattern of US reluctance to sign and ratify treaties, together with the use of reservations and other flexibility
mechanisms, that Michael Ignatieff calls “American exemptionalism,” in which the US seeks exemption even
from international rules that it supports.17 The few comparative studies of reservations to treaties, however, the
suggest that

US is not unique in seeking reservations to human rights or other treaties, and a particularly interesting study
by

Eric Neumayer suggests that, at least in the area of human rights, it may be democratic countries with the strongest
commitment to the rule of law, including European countries as well as the US, that are most likely to adopt
reservations to international treaties, since they are most likely to avoid being bound by
treaties that violate their domestic constitutions or with which they have no intention of complying. 18 If so, then the adoption of reservations
might be interpreted as a sign of support for the rule of law, rather than a rejection of it.

Structural uncertainty makes i-law ineffective.

Goldsmith 9—Jack Goldsmith, Henry L. Shattuck Professor of Law, Harvard Law School, Daryl
Levinson, Fessenden Professor of Law, Harvard Law School, Harvard Law Review, May 2009, vol.
122, no. 7, "LAW FOR STATES: INTERNATIONAL LAW, CONSTITUTIONAL LAW, PUBLIC LAW",
1792-1868

A. International Law

nternational law lacks a centralized and hierarchical lawmaker I akin to the legislature inside a state to
specify authoritative sources of law and the mechanisms of legal change and reconciliation. It also
. As
lacks centralized and hierarchical judicial institutions to resolve the resulting legal uncertainty
a
result, its norms are imprecise, contested, internally contradictory , overlapping, and subject to

fueled skepticism about its status as law ; law that is unclear

multiple interpretations and claims. International law’s inability to resolve this uncertainty has
or unknowable, many believe, cannot be

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described as a real legal system, and in any case cannot be effective .32
States coordinate public understandings of what counts as law largely through the institutional mechanism of an authoritative
legislature. But of course there exists no global legislature. International legal rules are created through two decentralized
mechanisms: treaties and customary international law (CIL). A treaty results from the consent of two or more nations, and binds only
those nations that ratify it.33 A small handful of treaties — the U.N. Charter and the Geneva Conventions, for example — have been
ratified by practically every nation in the world. But even these universal laws are laboriously constructed through the same
decentralized process of negotiation and consent. CIL also originates through a decentralized process; its content is derived from
those customary state practices that states follow out of a sense of legal obligation (opinio juris).34

These decentralized lawmaking processes give rise to fundamental uncertainty about the
content of international legal norms. The
problem of uncertainty is most severe with respect
to CIL, which lacks any clear rule of recognition. Little agreement exists as to what types of
state action count as state practice.35 Official pronouncements, certain types
of legislation, and diplomatic
correspondence are relatively (but not entirely) uncontroversial sources of CIL, but international law has no settled
method for weighing or ordering these sources or for
determining when they count as evidence
of opinio juris. Bilateral and multilateral treaties are sometimes invoked as evidence of CIL, though rarely consistently or coherently.36
The writings of jurists are a secondary source of CIL, but jurists rarely agree even on supposedly settled rules.37
Nonbinding statements and resolutions of multilateral bodies, most notably the resolutions of the U.N. General Assembly, are also

invoked as a basis for CIL, as are moral and ethical claims. Needless to say, each potentially relevant source of CIL
may point in a different direction , and there is no
formula or agreed-upon set of principles for
reconciling them. Nor is there any authoritative institutional mechanism — the equivalent of a legislature
or supreme court — for definitively resolving CIL’s content. The unsurprising result is frequent and
persistent contestation over the content of CIL.
By comparison, the secondary rules for treatymaking are relatively well-settled, and there is much less disagreement over what
counts as a treaty.38 But there
is still a great deal of disagreement about the content of treaty-based
international law because the relationships between different treaties, and between treaties
and CIL, . are subject to no settled rules The U.N. Charter is among the most fundamental of
international laws, and its Article 103 provides that Charter
obligations trump other international law obligations.39 But when NATO countries bombed Kosovo in violation
of the U.N. Charter’s prohibition on the use of force, many scholars contended that there was a
developing CIL exception for humanitarian
intervention, and there has been much disagreement — among both scholars and nations — about this point ever since.40
There are also many unsettled questions about the validity of important treaty obligations that conflict with the Charter. 41 Similarly,
different human rights treaties (for example the European Convention on Human Rights42 and the International Covenant on Civil
and Political Rights43) contain different and in some respects contradictory rights, and there is disagreement among courts, legal
institutions, and scholars about which prevails.44 The same is true of obligations imposed by the World Trade Organization that
conflict with obligations imposed by other treaty regimes.45

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Thus, even when the relevant rules of international law can be clearly identified, it often remains
.
unclear how overlapping and inconsistent rules are to be reconciled and systematized In

theory, the international legal system has a set of meta-rules — rules of nonretroactivity, last-in-time, the priority
of lex specialis, and normative hierarchy (prioritizing the U.N.
Charter or jus cogens norms) — that are supposed to
But in practice these rules are often contested and

indeterminate. 47 Lacking a centralized legislative process, the international legal system commonly allow
help sort out these conflicts.46
s
for the unbridled proliferation of contradictory norms.

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Trump Thumper – 1NC

Trump fundamentally undermines the system – no one change to the system
will overcome his incompetency
Simon Tisdall 18, foreign affairs commentator. He has been a foreign leader writer, foreign
editor and US editor for the Guardian, 7-8-2018, "Whose side is Trump’s America on? The
answer is becoming more and more obvious," Guardian,
https://www.theguardian.com/usnews/2018/jul/08/donald-trump-uk-visit-contempt-for-
european-allies
Nato summits are generally unremarkable affairs, but this week’s two-day gathering in Brussels will be an exception. European members
of the transatlantic alliance are pondering their biggest conundrum since its creation almost 70 years ago: is the US a

friend – or a foe? Only 18 months ago, the question would have been dismissed as absurd. But the globally destructive
impact of Donald Trump’s chaotic presidency has shattered conventional
wisdom and left
strategic and geopolitical certainties in ruins. The problem is not only that Trump will again
insist on the other 28 Nato members increasing their defence spending, on the specious grounds the US
is being “ripped off”. It’s not merely that he has queried the founding treaty’s article 5 commitment
to collective defence, or that he may close US military bases in Germany. The more
fundamental problem is that the US president is questioning the purpose of Nato , despite
it
having advanced US security and economic interests since 1949, undercut efforts to forge greater European unity that could have challenged
US dominance, kept the Soviet Union/Russia at bay, and (mostly) maintained peace in Europe.
Bottom line:
Trump simply doesn’t buy into, or understand, basic concepts such as collective
security,
burden-sharing, forward defence and the balance of power. He just doesn’t get it. This
myopic, isolationist view, consistent with his “America First” outlook, reflects Trump’s
hostility to multilateralism in general. He scorns the UN, and has cut its US funding and
boycotted its human rights council in Geneva. He repudiates World Trade Organisation rules ,
adopting unilateral, protectionist tariffs that spark trade wars and threaten European jobs.
Trump tore up the Paris global climate change treaty, pulled out of the UN-endorsed 2015 Iran
nuclear deal so beloved of Europe, and recently urged France to follow Britain in abandoning
the EU – an organisation he treats with contempt. He singlehandedly wrecked last month’s G7 summit of
leading democracies in Canada, petulantly rejecting its conclusions and insulting his hosts.
More gallingly, Trump treats old friends worse than ostensible enemies, personalising
political interactions and resorting to bullying, rudeness and open misogyny. Angela Merkel
has been singled out for special abuse. At the G7 meeting, he tossed two Starburst sweets at
the Germans chancellor and said: “Here, Angela, don’t say I never give you anything.” Ever
since he grabbed Theresa May’s hand at their first White House meeting last year, Trump has
treated the British prime minister with patronising disrespect. His crass interventions in British life, for
example via tweets promoting the far-right group Britain First, and attacking London’s Muslim mayor, Sadiq Khan, were
extraordinarily insulting. The Queen’s famous sang-froid may be tested to destruction when his visit to Britain begins on Thursday.

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If Trump’s crude, nationalistic policies and uncouth persona were the only problems, the

European allies might just cope . But in recent months, as he has jettisoned experienced
advisers and his belief in his own infallibility has grown,
Trump has moved from difficult partner to potential enemy. The question grows ever more pressing: whose
side is Trump’s America really on?
Trump’s sycophantic courting last year of the Saudi royals and China’s authoritarian president,
Xi Jinping, were early indications of his preference for dictators over democrats. His recent summit with
Kim Jong-un did nothing to curb North Korea’s nuclear arms buildup. But it did reveal Trump’s almost indecent love of raw power and ostentation. This
ugly trait will be on show again when he meets Vladimir Putin, Russia’s he-man president, in Helsinki on 16 July. Jon Huntsman, the US ambassador to
Moscow, insists that Trump will focus on Russia’s “malign activity”, be it in Ukraine, in cyberspace, or in conducting chemical weapons attacks in Syria
and Salisbury. Trump has also promised to quiz Putin over covert Russian meddling that benefited his 2016 election campaign, activity confirmed last
week by a US senate report. But will he really do so in the private, closed-doors summit he has demanded? A more likely prospect is more crapulous
fawning over an autocratic leader who exercises a mysterious hold over Trump and, most Nato members believe, threatens European security. As with
Kim in Singapore, Trump’s big day out with Putin in Helsinki will be noisily declared, by him, to be an outstanding success contributing to global
s.
But just as likely are
harmony. If, as is suggested, the two men agree to extend the New Start nuclear arms treaty, that will be a rare plu

unilateral, Nato-busting Trump moves to ease sanctions on Russia over Ukraine, a deal to keep
Bashar al-Assad in power in
concessions undermining the post-Salisbury western consensus. Syria, the “normalisation” of
Putin’s regime, and other
In an augury of worse to come,

Trump will also seek Putin’s support over Iran. US efforts to force regime change in Tehran are gathering pace,
principally by halting Iranian oil sales and trying to starve out the mullahs. Even as European diplomats struggle to sustain open lines
to Tehran, the US navy is gearing up for confrontation if Iran’s revolutionary guards retaliate, as threatened, by closing the Strait of
Hormuz and blocking all Gulf oil exports. Here,
in a nutshell, is why Trump’s US increasingly poses a threat
to Britain and Europe. In a reckless bid to impose his will on a sovereign people,he is risking a
global energy crisis, a new war in the Middle East and the safety and prosperity of all America’s
allies. With friends like him, who needs enemies?

Every violation decreases compliance norms – thumpers take out solvency

Ingrid Wuerth 2017, Law professor at Vanderbilt Law, 12-12-2017, “International Law in the
Post-Human Rights Era”, Texas Law Review, https://texaslawreview.org/international-law-
posthuman-rights-era/

1. Rational Choice.—Rational
choice theories of state behavior support the broken windows
analogy. They assume that states are rational and selfinterested.265 They take state
preferences as exogenous and fixed, and they assume states have “no innate preference for
complying with international law.” 266 Scholars have focused on several mechanisms
that
states use to enforce their international commitments, including reputation, retaliation, and
reciprocity.267 Beginning with reputation, widespread violations of international human rights norms
by states mean that, as a whole, states will have a poorer reputation for compliance and that
the (many) noncomplying states themselves will have a poorer reputation for compliance .
These two drops in reputation—one in states’ overall reputation for noncompliance and one
in the reputation of particular noncomplying states—should produce two effects. First, rational

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choice scholars argue that, on the margin, states with little reputation for compliance may decide it is
”
“too costly to build a good reputation. 268 A diminished reputation for compliance by many
states as a result of widespread violations of international human rights norms means that
more states have an overall reputation of noncompliance. As a result, overall noncompliance
.
with international law will increase because more states will simply give up on compliance
Second, and more importantly,
if states as a whole tend to expect noncompliance from each other,
the costs of entering into treaties or
developing norms of customary international law

become higher for all states .A baseline reputation of noncompliance among states
generally
means that states will have to do more in a treaty agreement to generate trustworthy
commitments (such as monitoring noncompliance), making some agreements not worth the
time or effort .269 Similarly, if entities tasked with
formal enforcement—such as the treaty
monitoring bodies discussed in the next section—fail to ensure compliance, states may be deterred from
making additional international commitments ,270 while the possibility of formal
enforcement may at the same time make informal enforcement by the parties less likely. 271
Rational choice scholars also argue that retaliation and reciprocity generate compliance with international law.272 These
mechanisms, too, are undermined by widespread violations of international human rights law. First,
as mentioned above, a widespread belief that states do not comply with international obligations
makes it more difficult to generate trustworthy commitments, even if those commitments
might be enforced through retaliation or reciprocity rather than directly through reputation.
Second, states benefit from having a reputation for using reciprocity or retaliatory sanctions,
which can be costly to impose. A state contemplating a violation of its international legal
obligations might be deterred from doing so if the state (or states) that
would be aggrieved by the breach has (or have) a general reputation for The widespread
imposing sanctions.273
under- and noncompliance with international human rights law can lead states to believe
there is general unwillingness to impose retaliatory sanctions for violations of international
law . Building on rational choice models, behavioral law and economics scholars hypothesize that states’ willingness to engage in
retaliation is partly a function of their perception of fairness and bias.274 If correct, this suggests another

problem with widespread violations of international human the view that international
rights law:
human rights law is selectively enforced . If only some states are “punished” for human rights
violations, the result may be perceptions of bias and unfairness in the international legal
system as a whole. Those perceptions may, in turn, make states generally less willing to

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impose sanctions on other states, in particular those which they perceive as receiving unfair treatment in the human
rights context. One possible example of this dynamic is some states’ reluctance to condemn
Russia’s annexation of Crimea, which observers attribute in part to non-Western states’
“conviction that the West enjoys an unjustified position of privilege in the international
system.” 275

Trump Thumper – 2NC

Trump broke the system – a litany of actions (ruining the G7 summit, tariffs,
pulling out of Paris and Iran, denouncing the UN and WTO) combined with his
callous attitude towards allies position him as the enemy internationally – takes
out solvency – the aff can’t fiat away Trump being a brat – that’s Tisdall
Independently this means the aff can’t solve – Trump can’t leverage the aff to
push a human rights agenda
Eugene Robinson, 11-22-2018, WaPo Columnist, " Trump is not a champion of human rights.
He is a clueless clown.", Washington Post, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/trumpis-
not-a-champion-of-human-rights-he-is-a-clueless-clown/2018/11/22/979a1342-edd7-
11e88679-934a2b33be52_story.html?utm_term=.a08e1762f50c

In Riyadh, they must be laughing at President Trump. In Pyongyang, too, and in Tehran. In
Beijing and, of course, in Moscow, they must be laughing until it hurts . They look at
Washington and they don’t see a champion of freedom and human rights. They see a preening,
clueless clown. Trump’s reaction — or non-reaction — to the Saudi regime’s brutal
killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi is a holiday-season gift to autocrats around the globe . It shows
them that if you just shower Trump with over-
the-top flattery, feed him some geopolitical mumbo jumbo and , he will literally let you get away with murder.
make vague promises to perhaps buy some American-made goods in the futureRecall

what happened: The Saudi government lured Khashoggi, a contributing columnist for The Post, to the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul, where a team of assassins lay in wait.
Khashoggi was killed and his body dismembered. The CIA has reportedly concluded with “high confidence” — as close to certainty as the agency gets — that the assassination

After weeks of hemming and hawing, the

was ordered by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the nation’s de facto ruler.

White House put out a statement Tuesday from Trump making clear that for the murder of
Khashoggi — who lived in Virginia, was a permanent U.S. resident and had children who are U.S. citizens — the Saudi regime will face no
consequences. Zero. Not even a slap on the wrist. Despite the CIA’s assessment that the crown prince ordered the killing, the
White

House statement waffles on whether he even knew about it in advance: “Maybe he did and maybe he didn’t!” Trump said the same thing later to reporters, adding, “We are with
Saudi Arabia. We’re staying with Saudi Arabia.” Even more appalling, the statement — which is littered with exclamation points, suggesting Trump himself had a hand in writing
it — attacks and defames the victim. Khashoggi was a respected journalist who sometimes criticized the Saudi government. The president of the United States suggests he
deserved to die. “Representatives of Saudi Arabia say that Jamal Khashoggi was an ‘enemy of the state’ and a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, but my decision is in no way
based on that,” the statement says. That is a rhetorical device known as paraleipsis — saying something by professing not to say it — and its use to suggest the Saudis were

In the statement — which is headlined “America First!” —

somehow justified in killing Khashoggi makes me want to throw up.

Trump emphasizes what he calls the “record amount of money” that Saudi Arabia is
supposedly prepared to spend in the United States. Trump goes on to make a series of false

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claims. No, there is no agreement for the Saudis to spend $450 billion on U.S. goods, despite Trump’s assertion. No, there is no firm agreement for $110 billion in arms sales;
the actual figure is $14.5 billion. No, what Trump reckons as “hundreds of thousands of jobs” are not at stake. And no, the Saudis could not simply decide to buy Chinese

The truth is that in the U.S.-Saudi relationship, the United States holds all the
or Russian arms, instead.

cards. We don’t need the Saudis’ oil and can easily do without their arms purchases. By
contrast, without U.S. military assistance and American-made spare parts, the Saudi armed
forces could not function. But leave aside Trump’s inability to calculate the power equation
here — perhaps he should read “The Art of the Deal” — and consider the factors that are absent from his thinking. There is no mention in his statement of human rights, no
mention of freedom of the press. There is no notion of the United States as an advocate for liberty or a foe of despotism. There is only the amoral pursuit of what Trump sees — not
very clearly — as U.S. national interests. President Trump holds a chart highlighting arms sales to Saudi Arabia during a White House meeting with Saudi Crown Prince

The Saudi royals got on Trump’s good side by hosting his first
Mohammed bin Salman, left, in March. (Evan Vucci/AP)

foreign visit and fawning over him as if he, too, were an absolute monarch. North Korea’s Kim
Jong Un was gracious and deferential to Trump at their summit — and now continues his
nuclear and ballistic missile programs unmolested. Russia’s Vladimir Putin complimented
Trump’s political skill — and escaped any meaningful punishment for meddling in the 2016
election. There cannot be a strongman ruler in the world who fails to see the pattern — and
the opportunity. Lavish Trump with praise. Treat him like a king. Wave a fistful of money in
front of his face. And if you want to, say, kill an inconvenient journalist, he’ll look the other
way .

More thumpers –
1 – Drone policy
Daphne Eviatar 17, Director of the Security with Human Rights program at Amnesty
International USA, 10-2-2017, "Easing Restrictions on US Killings Outside War Zones Would be a
Serious Mistake," Just Security, https://www.justsecurity.org/45532/easing-killings-war-
zonesmistake/

President Donald Trump is poised to rescind some of the key rules crafted by the Obama administration
that restrain the use of armed drones and other lethal operations outside war zones, the New
York Times reported last month. Most significantly, the administration wants to remove the requirement in
Obama’s Presidential Policy Guidance, or PPG, that the U.S. will only lethally target individuals
off the battlefield if they pose a “continuing, imminent threat to U.S. persons.” Although that
policy itself stretched the definition of “imminence” beyond any meaningful boundaries, it at
least suggested a nod toward international law. The new guidance reportedly removes the
imminence requirement altogether, allowing the U.S. government to kill “foot-soldier jihadists
with no unique skills or leadership roles” and regardless of what threat, if any, they pose.
The proposed new policy hasn’t gotten that much
In other words, it doesn’t even pretend to comply

with international legal limits. That’s a real problem.

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attention, perhaps because it’s been drowned out by the latest Trump travel ban and threats to annihilate North Korea. Its
significance has also been downplayed by some experts, who apparently expected worse. But it deserves more scrutiny, for several
reasons. First, the
rules governing lethal targeting aren’t just legalistic quibbling. They literally are
a matter of life and death. President Barack Obama finally announced his internal rules – at least the policy, if not
necessarily the practice – after numerous incidents of drone strikes obliterating what turned out to be whole groups of civilians.
These attacks killed 14 people attending a wedding, according to the Yemeni government; dozens attending funerals in Pakistan,
according to the Bureau of Investigative Journalism; and 18 laborers in a remote village in Pakistan’s North Waziristan, many of whom
had simply gathered to share a meal. In 2013, Amnesty International documented this and other examples of drone strikes in North
Waziristan between January 2012 and August 2013, based on detailed field research. Amnesty was “seriously concerned that these
and other strikes have resulted in unlawful killings that may constitute extrajudicial executions or war crimes.” Some of those strikes
occurred after the presidential policy was reportedly approved, in May
Obama’s guidance at least ostensibly The proposed Trump plan would do away
2013. President
attempted to rein in strikes on civilians.
with even that. Potentially, that’s a big deal. Not everyone seems to see it that way. Luke Hartig, who served as senior
counterterrorism advisor on the National Security Council under Obama, for example, breathed a sigh of
relief last week that the policy wasn’t “nearly as bad as we might have feared,” since the Obama rules weren’t scrapped altogether.
After all, Trump as a candidate had said he’d “take out” terrorists’ families if elected. University of Michigan Law School professor
Monica Hakimi wrote the changes were “quite problematic,” but added that “the governing international legal standard on lethal
operations remains

Obama’s policy guidance was drafted to address when the U.S.

unsettled.” But is it? Not really.
government could use lethal force outside an armed conflict because it’s clear that in that
situation, the more permissive laws of war do not apply. But even Obama’s policy failed to acknowledge
clearly that international human rights law does apply. And it only permits killing when strictly
unavoidable to protect against an imminent threat to life. The policy Trump is reportedly
considering would completely ignore that. The new policy would also scrap Obama’s rules
requiring high-level vetting before kill operations outside war zones are approved. The leaked
Trump policy guidance does appear to keep in place the Obama requirement of “near certainty” that no civilian bystanders will be
killed. That’s a good thing, and suggests military leaders understand the importance of protecting civilians. But since the policy
would give license to target individuals that international law considers civilians, it’s not exactly reassuring. It does this by allowing
U.S. officials to merely categorize the whole group of people likely to be killed by a missile strike as “militants” – a term which has no
legal meaning – and thereby justify their killing. Will the policy define more carefully what makes a “low-level foot soldier”
targetable outside of an armed conflict? Based on the reporting so far, it’s impossible to know. But lots of people carry guns in rural
Yemen, Somalia and the tribal areas of Pakistan. That doesn’t necessarily make them “militants” and it certainly doesn’t make them
a lawful target for lethal force under any reading of international law. The
United States has been down this road
before, whether violating international law by
scores of civilians outside battlegrounds torturing detainees or perhaps by killing
. U.S. officials have acknowledged that such acts have increased
hostility

toward the United States and undermined U.S. national security. At a time when both U.S. allies and enemies seem
uncertain what the U.S. government will do next, it’s important for administration officials and
lawmakers to make clear they’ll stand up for the rule of law and ensure that U.S. forces do
everything they can to prevent unnecessary deaths. That’s not, as some might suggest, being “soft on terrorists.” It’s recognizing that

when it comes to killing people, following international human rights law is both legally required, and
critical to
gaining necessary support for U.S. counterterrorism efforts.

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2 – Tariffs
Jennifer A. Hillman 18, professor at Georgetown University Law Center and was a member of
the World Trade Organization’s Appellate Body from 2007-11, 6-1-2018, "Trump Tariffs
Threaten National Security," NYT,
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/01/opinion/trumpnational-security-tariffs.html

The Trump administration has made three reckless moves on trade in recent days . On May 23, it
launched
an investigation into whether imports of cars and S.U.V.s threaten the national security of the
United States. Then President Trump signaled that he’d let Chinese
telecommunications giant ZTE off the hook, despite its “false statements” and repeated violations of United States
sanctions on North Korea or Iran. Thursday brought a third misguided decision to impose tariffs on steel
and aluminum from our staunchest allies, including Canada and the European Union, again contending that
their exports threaten our national security. “Economic security is military security,” Commerce Secretary Wilbur
Ross has said. But this administration’s push to blur, or even erase, the line between our economic

and national security interests is dangerous — both for the United States and for the world .
First, the Trump administration is making
overly broad interpretations of national security These actions undermine international law
and then insisting these claims cannot be
challenged.
and threaten the rules-based global trading system. The law being invoked to justify these new tariffs
was
crafted during the Cold War. It gives the president broad power to ensure that the United States is not overly dependent on imports for critical defense
needs, especially imports from countries we don’t trust to supply us in times of war. International
law is
more precise. It allows countries to pile on tariffs or take other actions that would otherwise
violate their trade commitments when they judge them necessary to protect their essential
security interests. This exception applies only in cases related to
trade in nuclear materials, arms or ammunition; or during war or Trump’s tariffs do not fit
international emergency. Mr. within any of those boxes. Those who
crafted the “national security” exception to the
international trading rules tried to balance every country’s need to judge their own national
security risks with the concern that an open-ended
exception would be misused. Hence, “national security” is The Trump administration has upset that
limited to cases involving emergencies, war and weapons.

balance . If the United States can justify tariffs on cars as a threat to national security, then
every country in the world can most likely justify restrictions on almost any product
under a similar claim. For more than two decades after the World Trade Organization was
created in 1995, no claim for breaking the trade rules through the national security exception
had ever reached a W.T.O. dispute settlement panel. None of the member countries wanted to allow the
“nameless,
faceless” bureaucrats in Geneva to define their essential security interests. That
changed in 2017, with a claim by
Russia, which had imposed myriad trade and transit restrictions on Ukraine, which challenged

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the Russian measures at the W.T.O. In the dispute, Russia contends that the moment any country claims its actions
are based on national security, the judges hearing the case must put down their pens and go home. The
only W.T.O. member joining Russia’s contention is the United States. This is It provides all
dangerous.
countries with a “get out of jail free” card that can be played just by saying the magic words

“national security.” Blurring the line between economic and national security also
invites
retaliation. The United States agreed to eliminate steel tariffs and lower aluminum tariffs to below 5 percent in 1995 in
exchange for tariff cuts by others. Now, by imposing 25 percent tariffs on steel and 10 percent on aluminum, the United States has
broken that commitment. And by imposing the tariffs on some but not all trading partners (South Korea, Australia, Argentina and

Brazil are exempt), the

United States has also broken its commitment not to discriminate among
W.T.O. members.

3 – Syria
Sandeep Gopalan 18, Pro Vice-Chancellor for Academic Innovation and professor of Law at
Deakin University, 4-10-2018, "Trump's 'big price' for Syria will illustrate failure of UN and
international law," TheHill, http://thehill.com/opinion/international/382460-trumps-big-
pricefor-syria-will-illustrate-failure-of-un-and

Syria’s government killed at least 70 civilians over the past weekend — some estimates put the deaths
over 150 — in attacks on Douma, reportedly using Sarin gas. Under President Bashar al-Assad, the government used chemical
weapons in 2017 to kill at least 90 people, including children. Yet, because of obstruction by Russia, the United
Nations has been unable to effectively respond even though the Organisation for the
Prohibition of Chemical Weapons confirmed their use. U.S. President Donald Trump warned on Monday:
“Everybody’s gonna pay a price. [Putin] will. Everybody will. ... We have a lot of options militarily, and we’ll be letting you
know pretty soon, probably after the fact.” In the meantime, Israel is reported to have carried out missile strikes on a Syrian
target near Homs. The
United Nations Security Council met on Monday, and the United States has
demanded an investigation into the use of chemical weapons. But on Tuesday, Russia rejected
a resolution to investigate the chemical weapons attack. While these shenanigans continue,
what is the “big price” to which Trump refers? Could he be intending to launch missile attacks and, if so, is such an attack
legal? Unfortunately for the president, international law does not allow him to inflict a big price on the man he calls “Animal Assad.” The United Nations
Charter prohibits the use of force. Specifically, Article 2(4) states: “All members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force
against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the purposes of the United Nations.” The
only recognized exceptions are upon the authorization of the Security Council, or for self-defense. The charter vests the Security Council with the right
to use force under Article 42. The Council can use force if other measures (under Article 41) “would be inadequate, or have proved to be inadequate.”
The use of force includes actions “by air, sea, or land forces as may be necessary to maintain or restore international peace and security.” Article 51
speaks to the right to self-defense. The charter does not impair “the inherent right of individual or collective self-defense if an armed attack occurs
against a member of the United Nations.” In the current situation, there is no “armed attack” against the United States, and even the most tortured
The Security Council is unlikely to authorize use of force
reading cannot support an argument for self-defence.

because of a Russian veto protecting Assad. Could strikes be legal under existing U.N. Security Council resolutions?
The relevant resolution, Res. 2118 of 2013, “decided that [Syria] shall not use, develop, produce, otherwise acquire, stockpile or retain
chemical weapons.” This “decision” is not backed up with any direct consequences; the resolution merely states

that if Syria does not comply, the Council may decide to “impose measures under Chapter VII.” In
other words, there is no
authorization for military action by any state, even if it is proved that Syria did in fact use
chemical weapons on Saturday. The Security Council likely will stop short of military action and explore measures under

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Article 41 or other provisions first. That

means President Trump may not be able to impose a big price on
Assad strictly in accordance with international law. So, is the United States without any legal
options for military action? Not necessarily, based on precedent. In 2017, the United
States fired 59 Tomahawk missiles on a Syrian base following the use of chemical weapons by
Assad. The strike was greeted with acclaim by the international community and the United Nations did not
condemn the United States as a law-breaker . States including Australia, the United Kingdom, France,
Germany,
Netherlands, Japan, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Kuwait all supported the U.S. action as a
proportionate response, though there were dissenting voices from Russia and Indonesia. Similarly, the Israeli strike
against a Syrian nuclear facility in 2007 has been greeted with silence that apparently
condones it. NATO has carried out strikes in Kosovo, claiming humanitarian intervention, although that doctrine has found little
subsequent support. The current impasse is a terrible indictment of the U.N. system. What is the
purpose of a legal system that allows a state to use chemical weapons against its own citizens
and escape all consequences?
Recent incidents seem to suggest that international law applies
only against weak states; a state with
the support of a member state with a veto in the

Security Council can do as it pleases . The lack of a safety valve allowing for military options
in
situations that clearly warrant action will prompt states to ignore international law and act
anyway. France and the United States have signaled their willingness to order military action
against Syria without any apparent regard for legality. If strikes eventuate, France and the
United States will face no consequences, based on precedents, and the only consequence is a
further erosion of international law’s potency as a meaningful system for constraining states.

4 – immigration policy
Jeffrey Davis 18, Professor in the Political Science Department at the University of Maryland, 6-
30-2018, "Trump's 'zero-tolerance' immigration policy still violates fundamental human rights
laws," Business Insider, https://www.businessinsider.com/trumps-zero-tolerance-
immigrationpolicy-violates-human-rights-laws-2018-6

After public outcry and political pressure, President Donald Trump ended the practice of
separating children from their families at the border in an executive order signed on June 20.
However, he left in place requirements to prosecute or at least detain immigrants who may have entered the country unlawfully —
including children and asylum-seekers. On June 25, border control officials announced that families crossing the border would not be
detained until sufficient detention space was made available. Individuals traveling alone will continue to be prosecuted. Meanwhile,

the White House insisted there had been no retreat from its "zero tolerance" policies . The
military
has agreed to provide additional space to detain 20,000 immigrants for extended periods. These policies are unlawful.
Through my research on human rights, I am very familiar with the pattern of governments exploiting fear to justify rights violations.
They nearly always portray their victims as evil, as threats, or as criminals, not worthy of basic human dignity. For example, the George
W. Bush administration relied on the fear of terrorism to justify the kidnapping, torture, and cruel and inhuman treatment of
detainees. Courts around the world have since condemned these violations of human rights law. The US is now doing something
similar with its immigration policies. This month President Trump defended his "zero tolerance"

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immigration policies by claiming his opponents "don't care about crime and want illegal
immigrants, no matter how bad they may be, to pour into and infest our country, like MS-13."
MS-13 refers to Mara Salvatrucha, an international criminal gang that, ironically, started in Los Angeles and spread across the continent.
Detaining These characterizations provide the pretext for allowing the country to defy
and
fundamental principles of international law in the way it treats immigrants.
prosecuting asylum-
seekers The United States agreed to the Convention Relating to the Status of
Refugees when it joined 145 other nations in ratifying the Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees in 1968. These treaties define
a "refugee" as a person fleeing her or his country of origin because of a well-founded fear of persecution on the basis of race,

religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group or political opinion. Under the treaties, refugees have the
human right to request asylum. In addition, these treaties forbid countries from expelling refugees
or from sending any immigrants to countries where their life or freedom would be threatened
on the basis of the same five categories. These treaties also prohibit countries from punishing
refugees for entering illegally if their life or freedom was threatened at home.
Despite the fact that our Constitution makes the rules in these treaties binding US law, the
Trump administration is treating asylum-seekers like criminals. When the US government prosecutes
or
imprisons these asylum-seekers, it violates the rights protected in the two treaties that recognize the human right to seek asylum.
Indefinitely detaining immigrant children All immigrants, including refugees, are protected by
international law, especially children. Another treaty that protects those caught up in the
Trump administration's immigration policies is the International Covenant on Civil and
Political Rights. It was ratified by the United States in 1992. It mandates that when a government arrests,

detains or imprisons a person it must treat them humanely and with respect for "the inherent dignity of When the US the
human

detains immigrants indefinitely, especially if they are children, it violates the covenant. person."
This
is
clear from findings issued by the American Academy of Pediatrics: "Conditions in US detention facilities, which include forcing children to sleep on
cement floors, open toilets, constant light exposure, insufficient food and water, no bathing facilities, and extremely cold temperatures, are
traumatizing for children." According to the academy, the effects of detention on children and parents often include "anxiety, depression and
posttraumatic stress disorder." For the 2,300 children who were separated from their parents at the border, the effects are even more harmful. In a
recent article in the New England Journal of Medicine, pediatrician Dr. Fiona Danaher writes that separation can hinder the development of children and
cause

lifelong physical and mental illness. Detaining

families, parents or children indefinitely disrupts the very
fabric of the family. The covenant explicitly recognizes the fundamental right to family life. It
prohibits governments from interfering with the family and requires them to protect children and their connections to their family regardless of their
national origin. The US currently has more than 10,000 children detained, who currently spend an average of 56 days in detention centers, according to
The Washington Post. According to 2017 data compiled by the Global Detention Project, the United States has more than 300,000 immigrants detained
overall, more than 40,000 of whom are asylum-seekers. With President Trump's new order calling for indefinite detention, these numbers are sure to
climb, especially when more detention space is made available. The covenant expressly forbids detaining immigrants this way. It guarantees "the right
to liberty" and prohibits "arbitrary arrest or detention." It requires states to allow anyone detained to challenge his or her detention "before a court …
without delay." Tenets of US law The treatment of immigrants raises a number of conflicts with domestic
law as well. Detaining children indefinitely violates a 1997 court settlement that requires the release of immigrant children within 20 days. On
June 24, President Trump called for the immediate deportation of all unlawful immigrants without any court review. In addition to violating the laws
discussed above, this would violate the due process clause in our Constitution which provides that the government may not deprive anyone of their
"life, liberty, or property, without due process of law." In February, the Supreme Court refused to decide the legality of detaining certain asylumseekers
and other immigrants for extended periods without bail hearings. Justice Stephen Breyer dissented and argued that detaining immigrants for extended

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periods without any judicial review was unconstitutional. He explained, "The Due Process Clause — itself reflecting the language of the Magna Carta —
prevents arbitrary detention," and "freedom from bodily restraint has always been at the core of the liberty protected" by law.

Unlawful prosecution and detention policies are alive and well . Make no mistake, away
from
the border, the US will continue to strip children from their parents by locking them up and
deporting them. There is no international police force to punish the United States for

government get away with even the most egregious constitutional violations.

violating its treaty obligations . If recent cases are any indication, the Supreme Court will likely let the
These legal principles
exist for a reason. History teaches all too clearly that they exist because without them tyranny flourishes and the least powerful among
us suffer.

5 – Paris
Zack Beauchamp 17, senior reporter at Vox, where he covers global politics and ideology, and
a host of Worldly, Vox's podcast on covering foreign policy and international relations, 6-1-2017,
"Trump’s withdrawal from Paris is a major blow to the American-led global order," Vox,
https://www.vox.com/world/2017/6/1/15719968/trump-paris-climate-agreement-world

“In order to fulfill my solemn duty to protect America and its citizens, the United States will withdraw from the Paris climate
accord,” President Trump said in a Rose Garden statement on Thursday afternoon. The move puts the United States in rare
company. The only countries that aren’t part of the Paris agreement are semiauthoritarian
Nicaragua and Syria, where Bashar al-Assad’s regime is too busy slaughtering its
own people to worry about climate change. Think about that for a second . The United States,
the world’s sole superpower and architect of the international
order, is reportedly going to quit an agreement that shares near-universal support globally .
Even North Korea is on board.
This isn’t just a random piece of trivia. It speaks to the major, major implications that Trump’s decision
has for America’s strategic position around
the world. While the president cast the
Paris agreement as fundamentally unfair to the United States — "at what point does America
get demeaned, at what point do they start laughing at us" — it actually is part of a web of
interconnected agreements that sustain America’s dominant global position in the world.
Isolating the US in this fashion sends an extraordinarily strong signal to other major powers
that the US cannot be trusted to act on its international commitments, or even to work
within international organizations at all. Washington depends on other countries trusting it
to stay in agreements to maintain agreements that preserve American strength. America’s status as
sole superpower persists in part because other powerful countries, like France and Germany and Japan, think that American leadership
is in their best interests. Every time Trump suggests these countries can’t count on the US

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anymore — through actions like pulling out of Paris and insulting NATO allies in his foreign

trip — he threatens the very foundations of America’s global power. “It’s death by a
thousand cuts — and I don’t know what cut we’re at,” says William Wohlforth, an
international relations professor at Dartmouth College. So while the key issue when it comes
to Paris is climate change itself — whether the world’s countries can continue to work together effectively to prevent
catastrophic warming — it’s also a vital issue for America’s position in the world. The Trump
administration either doesn’t
understand this or doesn’t care. “Trust takes a long time to build — and you can lose it very
quickly,” Paul Musgrave , a scholar of US foreign policy at the
University of Massachusetts Amherst, says. Paris isn’t a treaty, or formal international law. It’s a nonbinding
agreement, one that commits countries to taking a set of unspecified steps to keep global warming below 2°C. Actually meeting that
goal is nigh impossible, but Paris is essentially designed to shame and prod countries into at least making a good-faith effort to
seriously reduce their CO2 emissions and build up their green energy capabilities. This flatly cannot work without the United States.
As the world’s largest economy and second-largest CO2 emitter (China is No. 1), US cooperation with Paris is vital to convincing
other countries to make a serious effort to meet their targets. If the US isn’t trying, the logic goes, then why should we? For this
reason, the Obama administration played a major role in writing the original text of the Paris agreement, shaping it such that its
terms were acceptable for American interests. Pulling out of the agreement at this point suggests that the
US doesn’t care about climate change anymore, or about the potentially catastrophic consequences for the planet. sends a But it
also

broader signal that the US considers its obligations to be optional . That the US leadership
can
no longer be trusted to adhere to agreements on issues of vital concerns for other countries —
even when it helps set the terms of the agreements itself. “We’re talking about undoing
something that was the project, the signal accomplishment of a whole group of countries —
on more or less on a whim,” Musgrave says. The problem with that, though, is that the entirety
of America’s global strategy is founded on the opposite perception. It depends on
other
countries trusting the US to abide closely enough to its on-paper agreements that it won’t
pose a threat to them. Consider American’s staggeringly large military. The US spends more on defense than every other major economy
combined (meaning Japan, Germany, Russia, France, the UK, India, and Brazil). It also has more than 27 times as many foreign bases as every other
nation combined. Historically, this kind of extraordinary military advantage would lead other countries to counterbalance, to build up their own
militaries to match the potential threat emanating from Washington. Yet there’s no worry among French or British leaders that the US is going to
invade their countries. Other developed countries, like South Korea and Germany, even allow the US to maintain massive bases on their soil. That’s
because the US has credibly committed to ally indefinitely with these countries. America is obligated to do more than just not invade Germany; it’s
pledged to actually defend Germany in the event of an attack. These kinds of agreements render extraordinary amounts of US dominance over other
countries basically acceptable to major powers that might otherwise be rivals. You can see a similar effect play out in nonmilitary parts of world politics,
like the economy. The US is the only country to have veto power over major decisions at both the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank,
giving it tremendous power over global cash flows. World Trade Organization negotiating rules give the US disproportionate leverage over the rules
governing global trade. Yet other countries seem to be basically fine with that: They treat the IMF, World Bank, and WTO as the basic arbiters of how
the global economy functions. The reason why, again, is that these organizations bind the US too. If a WTO ruling on a trade dispute goes against the
United States, the US has committed to accepting that. These rules constrain America enough, and benefit all the weaker countries in enough concrete
“
By
ways, that everyone is willing to accept their basic contours. This helps preserve America’s dominant place in the global hierarchy indefinitely.

binding itself to other states within a system of rules and institutions, the leading state makes
its power more acceptable to other states, creating incentives for support rather than
opposition,” Princeton professor G. John Ikenberry writes in Liberal Leviathan, his influential book on US

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power. Leaving Paris undermines faith in this system to operate as promised . The US has made
a major
commitment to
other countries to It has now decided to quit those rules, and simply do whatever it wants
agree to a certain set
of rules for tackling a shared
problem, climate change. .
What’s to say the US won’t do the same thing again on something else — abandon a NATO
ally, say, or simply ignore an unfavorable WTO ruling? “There’s a lot of trade-offs that happen between one
policy area and another,” Wohlforth says. “Once you’re backing out of too many things, aside from the thing you’re negotiating, you
can end up reducing your leverage.”

Even if they solve a significant list of alt causes, accountability is fragile and the
remaining violations will still undermine the fundamentals of the system
Ingrid Wuerth 2017, Law professor at Vanderbilt Law, 12-12-2017, “International Law in the
Post-Human Rights Era”, Texas Law Review, https://texaslawreview.org/international-law-
posthuman-rights-era/
Changes in the doctrine of sources to accommodate human rights have made international
law more elastic; it now permits the adoption of norms despite greater noncompliance and
.
more nonconforming behavior And beyond the changes to the formal sources of
international law, there are other widespread violations of international human rights law,
such as a failure to abide by even those treaty norms to which no reservation was made
.

Such failures extend even to ministerial tasks, such as filing required reports to treaty-

monitoring bodies .256 There is a parallel development in the mandate of the U.N. Security
Council, which has grown to include many human rights issues that the
Council These changes to international law may encourage noncompliance with other
cannot
remedy or prevent.
international legal norms , not just those governing human rights . The intuition here is
an
imperfect analogy to the “broken windows” theory of crime prevention: widespread violations
of human rights law may be a symbol of unaccountability, 257 a signal that “no one cares”
about violations of international law and that “no one is in charge.” 258 Accountability is a
central concern of public international law . The system lacks a centralized enforcement
mechanism, and as a result, compliance and effectiveness pose important—some would say

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fundamental—challenges to the relevance of public international law. 259 In this context, behavior
that signals a lack of
accountability may be especially damaging to the enforcement and deterrence of international
law writ large. To some extent, this intuition has already been voiced within the human rights
discourse.260 The domestic broken windows theory argues that “mere” “disorder” or
“victimless” crimes lead to more serious violations of the law.261 Human rights violations are not victimless and can impose
significant costs to human lives and dignity. As well, the broken windows theory of domestic law enforcement may depend upon and
itself create certain subjects or categories of people, such as the “honest” versus the “disorderly,” upon which social influences

operate differently.262 Although the

analogy is thus imperfect— and despite great controversy over
the domestic broken windows theory and its relationship to domestic policing263—the
question remains: if states are in widespread violation of, or noncompliance with,
international human rights law, are they (and other states) more likely to violate other norms
of international law? Models of state compliance with international law— rational choice,
constructivism, the sociology of international organizations—answer this question
affirmatively,264 and so do empirical studies of social psychology and domestic law.

Other Human Right Specific Thumpers

US human rights credibility is jacked now – NSA surveillance, torture, indefinite
detention, Guantanamo Bay and drone strikes all prevent US external pressure
from being effective
Morgus Winter 15 – Robert, Robert Morgus is a Research Associate at the New America
Foundation’s Open Technology Institute, where he combines his technical knowledge with a
background in international relations to provide policy relevant research and writing at the
intersection of cyber space and international affairs, “CREDIBILITY MATTERS: REVISITING HARD
POWER, SOFT POWER, AND SMART POWER”
http://publicdiplomacymagazine.com/wpcontent/uploads/2015/02/Magazine-LGBT-Winter-
2014-Smart-Power.pdf

In 2003, General Wesley Clark noted that the attraction of American culture, ideas, and values gave the United States
“influence far beyond the hard edge of traditional balanceof-power politics.”5 The ability to attract, set an agenda,
and persuade others comes from a resource scarcer than the oil that makes both our economy credibility and military
tick: .6 In an ungoverned global system where leaders are not elected, the credibility of an actor cannot be
inherited or derived from laws like in many political systems. Rather, it stems from either performance or, at least in the past,
charisma. But in a global society with increasingly immediate access to knowledge and information, charismatic leaders that
do not deliver on promises
lose credibility rapidly . Thus, in the information age, credibility stems primarily from being or
doing
what the world perceives as “good” more often than not. Public diplomacy, the act
of engaging publics abroad with the intent to inform and influence, is on the front line of any exercise But it is less
of soft power.

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effective without legitimacy and credibility . In 2004, some noted that United States soft power was declining
in
the wake of morally questionable wars and tactics and continued to wane on the heels of the Snowden disclosures.7,8 Is the United
States' credibility reaching a tipping point? Hindsight will, as always, be 20/20. But this is not the first time that the United States'
foreign policy displayed a protracted lapse in moral judgment. Over the course of the Cold War, the United States deposed several
popularly elected leaders, fought secretive wars against Marxist movements around the world, sacrificed an unknown number of
lives, and confusingly supported some “authoritarian” regimes while opposing “totalitarian” ones, an arbitrary distinction lost on this
author. What may differentiate the modern cycle of moral erosion from the previous one exhibited during the Cold
War is the content of the United States' U nited S misdeeds. The tates still clings, at least rhetorically, to
powerful ideals: freedom, liberty, and justice for all. However, as the recent torture report and
the Snowden revelations

most starkly illustrate, the U nited S tates is letting itself down . The revelations that the NSA is
spying on American citizens and that the FBI is
authorized to severely hinder the U nited S collect phone and communication records en masse
tates' ability to credibly promote freedom and
liberty for all. Programs like the NSA’s PRISM and the FBI’s Data Intercept Technology Unit are likely to cause a
chilling-effect , wherein people, assuming they are being monitored, self-censor. Self-censorship of speech and
communication eventually leads to self-censorship of thought, the most basic freedom. Critical thinkers around
the world have taken note of the United States' hypocritical promotion of freedom for all abroad while limiting it at home.9 On
December 2, 2014, the Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court announced in no uncertain terms that the United States'
and United Kingdom’s treatment of detainees captured in Iraq and Afghanistan was under examination, an indication that the rest of
the world is aware of and actively questioning US actions.10 Then, just a week later, on December 9, the Senate released a
report detailing the wrongful detention of nearly 25% of the inmates held in the CIA’s secret prisons,
many of whom were subject to questionable interrogation tactics that many around torture the world are calling . But those
in charge of the programs deny that the treatment of detainees constitutes torture, and one of the architects of the
program, former Vice President Dick Cheney, has gone so far as to say that anything less than flying airplanes into buildings and
killing three thousand Americans does not meet the definition of torture.11 How is that for a moral high ground? Further
unpopular programs, like the
drone program , which has seen a marked uptick in usage in the past five years, and the

sully the United States' reputation, and with it the United States' credibility

Guantánamo Bay detention camp, which has not been closed despite a promise to do so, further
.12 American values are the root of US soft

power. But the U nited S tates cannot credibly continue to trumpet freedom, liberty, and justice for all without
acknowledging and somehow rectifying the actions of the past fifteen years as they begin to
come to
light. Without privacy, there is no freedom. Without a state that grants, guards, and guarantees freedom, there is no liberty.
Without acknowledgement of and restitution for crimes committed, whether legal or moral, there is no justice. As American
policymakers and leaders turn a blind eye to the wrongdoings that they and their predecessors have committed or
allowed, the rest of the world has noticed. As Martha Finnemore and Henry Farrell pointed out in Foreign Affairs in 2014,
U nited S
“the tates is far from the only hypocrite in
international politics. But the U nited S tates’ hypocrisy matters

more than that of other countries

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… because most of the world today lives within an order that the
U nited S tates built, one that is both underwritten by US power and legitimated by liberal ideas.”13
US
ability to exercise soft power is experiencing a slow atrophy —limiting the ways in which it can exercise
smart power. Perhaps the Senate’s report is a step in the right direction. Though the contents of the report are troubling, the report
itself is an acknowledgement of mistakes. How the current American powers that be react to the report will prove crucial. None of
this is to say that the United States is no longer a powerful global actor. Hard power is still useful to defend territory and maintain

security, but it is a poor device to fight ideas. The

delicate balance between hard and soft power has been
upset, and right now, it is evident that the US power scale is tipped heavily towards hard
power. Leaders in the U nited S tates government continue to avoid the difficult moral questions
.
that can make or break soft power rather than acknowledging them This underinvestment in

soft power contributes to its continued erosion and risks further degenerating the values

that underlie it. Above all, the U nited States is currently experiencing a deficit of soft power
and
its ability to utilize power in a smart way is waning . The upcoming issue of Public Diplomacy Magazine will
examine the various facets of power by discussing questions of how soft power can complement hard power and how the United States
and others can (re)build their global credibility to utilize smart power more effectively.

Torture memos killed US soft power, legitimacy, and human rights credibility
Lord 12/23/14 – Kristin, staffwriter for foreign policy, “soft power outage,”
http://foreignpolicy.com/2014/12/23/soft-power-outage/

The release of a long-awaited report by the U.S. Senate Select

Committee on Intelligence on the CIA’s secret detention and blow to the U nited S tates’ moral
interrogation program dealt yet
authority and its credibility as a defender of human rights another
around the globe. It also begs the question: How
much damage must the United States suffer before it learns to take soft power more seriously and, finally, learn to use it more
proactively? To understand the immediate damage done to U.S. influence, look no further than the commentary surrounding the
report’s release. According to the Washington Post, the state-run Chinese news service Xinhua editorialized that
America is neither a suitable role model nor a qualified judge on human rights issues in
“

other countries ,” while a pro-government television commentator in Egypt observed, “The U nited S tates cannot
demand
human rights reports from other countries since this [document] proves they know nothing about
human rights.” The Islamic State and other extremists joined the propaganda gold rush.
One tweet, quoted in a report from the SITE Intelligence Group, pointed to the audacity of the United States lecturing Muslims about
brutality, adding, “Getting beheaded
is 100 Such reactions are galling and they do real harm to U.S. credibility times more humane, more
dignified than what these filthy
scumbags do to
Muslims.” . But the fault lies not with

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those who released the report, as some critics argue, but with those who permitted and perpetrated acts of torture, those who lied
about it to America’s elected representatives, and those who willfully kept the president and senior members of the
Bush
administration in the dark. Their actions undermined not only American values, but also American influence and
national security interests. In the words of a former prisoner of war, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), the actions laid out in the
Senate report “stained our national honor” and “did much harm and little practical good.” The release of the report provides
Americans with an opportunity to reflect on the morality of their nation’s actions. But it is also should be seen an opportunity to
reflect on the United States’ soft power strategy, which is related to moral authority, but also distinct. While morality is a normative
system of values and principles that guides just behavior, soft power is ultimately about influence. As Joseph Nye,
the former dean of the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, has argued, there are many different ways to affect the
behavior of others. One can coerce with threats. One can induce with incentives. Or one
can exercise the power of
attraction, co-opting others who want the same things you want through the legitimacy of your policies and the
values upon which they’re founded. The latter is called soft power. Moral authority facilitates soft power, but so do
relationships, shared values, and interlinking interests. Given the ideological component of so many of the national security threats
that face the United States going forward — and the inability of any one country to meet them alone — soft power can be an
important part of the strategy to address these threats. But Americans will need to cultivate it.

US torture, indefinite detention, and rendition has done immeasurable damage

to American soft power
Brian 15 – Dooley, Director, Human Rights First's Human Rights Defenders Program, “CIA
Torture's Immeasurable Damage to U.S. Global Leadership”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/brian-dooley/cia-tortures-immeasurable_b_6404530.html

Last month's revelations about CIA torture have hurt U.S. credibility worldwide . The Senate
Intelligence Committee's report on CIA Interrogation concluded the program " created tensions with U.S.
partners and allies...complicating bilateral intelligence relationships ." It said the
program
caused immeasurable damage to the U nited S "tates' public standing, as well as to the United States'
longstanding global leadership on human rights in general...." Immeasurable is right -- in a literal sense it's

impossible to gauge just how badly Washington's international U.S. image has been hurt by

the CIA's torture . The CIA was never among the world's most trusted global brands, even among U.S. allies, but
torture
revelations have diminished U.S. claims to moral leadership and reduced its "soft power." An
editorial in influential Spanish newspaper El Pais argued that the revelations mean the U.S. can no longer present itself
as "a beacon of freedom." Releasing the report isn't what's hurt America's reputation -- making public and facing up to its
mistakes are generally seen as a plus -- and the backlash attacks against American embassies and personnel overseas some warned
would be triggered by the report's release hasn't happened. After Abu Ghraib and earlier revelations from Guantanamo it's not
much of a shock for foreigners that the CIA tortured detainees and lied about it to other parts of the U.S. government, though details
of rectal feeding and other abuses refreshed memories of what went on during the Bush presidency. Western government leaders
have been fairly muted in their reaction to the revelations, and their responses have generally concentrated on applauding the U.S.
for doing the right thing in owning up to its sins (the U.K. is facing a not dissimilar test of transparency now its 1970s treatment of
the "Hooded Men" in Northern Ireland is under renewed scrutiny). There have been some calls for prosecutions of
American officials, including from Members of the European Parliament and the U.N.'s Special

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Rapporteur on Counterterrorism. But for governments complicit in hosting black sites or otherwise facilitating the CIA's torture, is
difficult to condemn what happened too vigorously. U.S. allies that facilitated American torture might be nervous about closer
scrutiny of where the CIA money went. "To encourage governments to clandestinely host CIA detention sites, or to increase support
for existing sites, the CIA provided millions of dollars in cash payments to foreign government officials," says the report. "CIA
Headquarters encouraged CIA Stations to construct a 'wish list' of proposed financial assistance to xxxxxxx [entities of foreign
governments], and to 'think big' in terms of that assistance." The Senate report estimates that the CIA Detention and Interrogation
Program cost "well over $300 million in non-personnel costs. This included funding for the CIA to construct and maintain detention
facilities, including two facilities costing nearly $[number redacted] million that were never used..." Following the release of the
report, former Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski admitted for the first time there had been a CIA "black site" in the country.
Kwasniewski was in power from 1995 to 2005 and had previously denied the existence of a CIA site in Poland. Now he says there was
a facility but that the Polish government had no knowledge of torture or mistreatment there. Around
50 countries are
reported to have been involved in enabling the CIA program, either by hosting black sites or otherwise
facilitating its
operation.
complicating their relationships with the US and making future co-operation
Some are now
under pressure from their media and public for having enabled the torture,
more problematic. Afghanistan President Ashraf Ghani described the revelations as shocking and inhumane,
and

announced that from now on the US would not be able to detain Afghans in the country. Lithuania
and Romania are among the countries now exposed to possible international legal action for
having hosted CIA torture facilities, and while the Thai government is keen to distance itself from the revelations, denying it hosted a
secret prison, it is widely reported that Detention Site Green was based in the country. President Bush's personal assurances to Irish
government leaders that Shannon airport was not being used as a refueling stop for flights carrying detainees are still met with some
skepticism in Europe, and after the guarantee given to Ireland the Bush White House told the European Union it wouldn't be offering
assurances to other governments on a country-by-country basis. The
revelations mean being seen as friends with
the CIA is less attractive than ever , and will make it harder politically for some allies to
partner with US intelligence agencies . But releasing the report was the right thing to do: in the long run
continuing
the coverup and refusing to admit what really happened would have hurt the U.S. far more.

And soft power can’t survive the torture memo – it is irreparable despite the
affs efforts to revive it
Champion 12/16/14 – Marc, writes editorials on international affairs for Bloomberg View,
“U.S. soft power takes a hit in wake of report”
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/opinion/2014/12/16/commentary/world-commentary/u-s-
softpower-takes-a-hit-in-wake-of-report/#.Vfm6ZhHBzGd

it’s an open question whether soft power can survive being used to such grotesque ends But .
One of the many reasons for which the torture program was a terrible idea was that once exposed it has deeply
damaged the U.S. brand and thus eroded U.S. alliances : Forced rectal feeding just
isn’t
something that most people associate with the values of life, liberty and the pursuit of
happiness.

It’s not just state leaders – the global public doesn’t approve of US torture and
interrogation

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Pew Global 6/23/15 “Global Publics Back U.S. on Fighting ISIS, but Are Critical of Post-9/11
Torture” http://www.pewglobal.org/2015/06/23/global-publics-back-u-s-on-fighting-isis-butare-
critical-of-post-911-torture/

The rise of ISIS has generated strong concerns in nations around the world, and a new Pew Research Center
survey finds broad global support for American military efforts against the terrorist group. And unlike the
Iraq War a decade ago, the current U.S. air campaign in Iraq and Syria is backed by majorities in America’s European allies and

endorsed by publics in key Middle Eastern

of recent U.S. national security policy : the harsh interrogation methods nations. However, global publics
mostly oppose another element used against suspected
terrorists in the wake of 9/11 that many consider torture . A median of 50% across 40 nations
surveyed say they oppose these practices , which
were detailed in a widely publicized U.S. Senate report in December 2014.
Only 35% believe they were justified. Americans disagree – nearly six-in-ten (58%) say they were justified.

Drone strikes undermine US soft power, legitimacy, and human rights credibility
now – global opinion polls prove
Champion 12/16/14 – Marc, writes editorials on international affairs for Bloomberg View,
“U.S. soft power takes a hit in wake of report”
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/opinion/2014/12/16/commentary/world-commentary/u-s-
softpower-takes-a-hit-in-wake-of-report/#.Vfm6ZhHBzGd

But it’s worth remarking that torture is not the only national security policy that poses a threat to U.S.
alliances . Friendly governments are still being asked to trust in the good judgment and good offices of the U.S.
intelligence agencies, as well as in their effective oversight, even when there’s reason to question whether
that

trust is being honored. One such policy is U.S. President Barack Obama’s expansive use of drone strikes
against suspected terrorists. The tacit rationale for this policy is
that the targeted individuals are conducting activities so heinous that all nations should accept
the right of the U.S. to kill these criminals
without due process , wherever they may be, based on U.S. intelligence assessments. As with the arguments in support
of

torture, however, this justification quickly falls apart . Even Americans don’t believe in it: Look at the
controversy that arose when Anwar al-Awlaki, a terrorist suspect who
happened to be a U.S. citizen, was targeted and killed in a drone strike. If many Americans thought al-
Awaliki deserved due process, on what basis should a Yemeni, German or Pakistani national suspected
of the same heinous crimes not deserve it, too? Not

surprisingly, the U.S. has very little backing worldwide for drone strikes . In July’s edition of
the
Pew Global Attitudes Research Project, there was net support for the policy in only four of 44 countries :

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Israel, Kenya, Nigeria and the U.S. Majorities opposed the strikes even in staunch U.S. allies such as Japan
(82 percent), the United Kingdom (59 percent) and
Poland (54 percent). The smart move for the U.S. to make long ago would have been to propose an international treaty governing the
use of drone strikes. So long as it was the only country that had the capability, it could have set the terms of the rules. Soon, most
countries will have armed drones and will cite U.S. practice to justify their own strikes extra-
territorial, extra-judicial strikes.

Drone strikes undermine US soft power – civilian casualties and destruction of

cooperation in the Middle East
Duru 9/24/14 – Naomi, “IT’S A BIRD, IT’S A PLANE…” http://www.wupr.org/2014/09/24/its-
abird-its-a-plane/
The first reported drone strike against militants happened in 2002 in Yemen under the Bush administration in an operation targeted

at Osama Bin Laden. Under President Barack Obama, the number of drones used in warfare has escalated dramatically,
with the president responsible for 310 out of the 362 total drone strikes undertaken by the US government.
Drones are being used in counterterrorism efforts, and Foreign Affairs’ August 2013 article on why drones fail articulates the goals of
drone usage to be threefold: the strategic defeat of al Qaeda and its affiliates, the containment of local conflicts so as not to breed
new enemies, and the preservation of American security. Despite the fanfare, drones are not accomplishing all of these goals. Firstly,

drones do not contain conflicts in the long-term—they breed new enemies because of civilian
casualties . Civilian casualties inevitably affect how the United States is seen on the global stage. Because drones are targeted
at
“militants,” the definition of this term is crucial. President Obama has classified anyone military-aged in a warzone as a militant,
which makes the exact number of civilian deaths difficult to quantify. The Bureau of Investigative Journalism

Casualties like this decrease the United States’ soft power, the ability to influence
estimates between 416 and 951 civilians, including 168 to 200 children, have been killed in Pakistan
alone.
.
without force, in the area . With the increasing use of drones, our soft power is rapidly declining
In
Pakistan, an overwhelming 74 percent of the population sees America as an enemy. Soft
power and American popularity is crucial in the Middle East , because the non-
radicals who
support our efforts work as a counterweight to terrorism in the area. When they are against
us, fighting terrorism becomes even more difficult .

Global NSA metadata collection damages US soft power and legitimacy

Champion 12/16/14 – Marc, writes editorials on international affairs for Bloomberg View,
“U.S. soft power takes a hit in wake of report”
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/opinion/2014/12/16/commentary/world-commentary/u-s-
softpower-takes-a-hit-in-wake-of-report/#.Vfm6ZhHBzGd

A second area where the U.S. is suffering severe damage to its image is from the N ational

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S ecurity A gency ’s claim to have the collection of Internet metadata from citizens anywhere and
everywhere . As with the U.S. renditions policy, America’s closest allies collude in this collection effort and
have suffered a public backlash as a result. Again, the publics of these countries
aren’t wholly
naive: They know that governments spy on other governments, as well as on criminals and terrorists. Indeed,
they mostly support spying on terrorists. But the NSA revelations were disruptive, because they created the
perception that the U.S. was using its dominance of the Internet to collect data on ordinary

U.S. monitoring foreign citizens in all except five countries

citizens across the globe . Again, according to the Pew global survey, majorities disapprove of the
(one of which was the U.S.). Americans should
hardly be surprised: More than 60 percent of them find it unacceptable for the U.S. to spy on its own citizens — so why would
Germans or Italians feel otherwise? Indeed, the only assurance foreigners have that data collected by the NSA isn’t
being misused is the word of the NSA. Americans at least have the protection of some due process: U.S. agencies need a
court order to spy on Americans, but not foreigners. Last week’s torture report should trigger a wider
reassessment of the utility of refusing to set limits on the unique powers and capabilities the
U.S. enjoys. If it doesn’t, the U.S. will find itself trying to draw on ever dwindling reserves of
soft power.

US support of Al-Sisi in Egypt undermines US soft power and credibility in the

Middle East
Lloyd 11/12/14 – John, co-founded the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at the
University of Oxford, where he is Senior Research Fellow, “U.S. ‘soft power’ hits another hard
reality in the Middle East” http://blogs.reuters.com/john-lloyd/2014/11/12/u-s-soft-power-
hitsanother-hard-reality-in-the-middle-east/
Nowhere in the globe does idealism face a more testing
challenge than in the Middle East — This is seen most starkly in Egypt
now burying the last hopeful remains of the Arab Spring. . The overthrow in 2011 of
the 30-year autocrat Hosni Mubarak was followed by rule by the army; then by an election which brought a government of the
Islamist Muslim Brotherhood, headed by President Mohamed Morsi; then a popular coup against Morsi’s rackety regime, followed
by more army rule – sanctified by the election, in June of this year, of Field Marshal Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, formerly the chief of staff.
The military, which had governed Egypt through presidents Gamal Abdel Nasser, Anwar Sadat and Mubarak since the Free Officers’
Revolution of 1952 were, after a brief intermission, back. And back tougher. The field marshal promised
democracy,
freedom, an independent press and all
good things. He appeared competent; he soon gathered But he shows greater competence in shutting praise
from economists for measures to improve his country’s
economy.

down what had become a briefly raucous and creative civil society. Both before and after his
election,

al-Sisi’s army and police suppressed demonstrations by Brotherhood supporters with savage

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force : well over a thousand have been killed, hundreds condemned to death, thousands more
imprisoned. local and foreign NGOs have been closed down or closed themselves.
Bit by bit,

Those who protest these and other measures are arrested under laws that ban unauthorized demonstrations, or anti-
terrorist legislation. One protester, the popular blogger and activist Alaa Abdel-Fattah, got 15 years – though a retrial
is scheduled for next week. The news media — especially television — had cascaded off in a variety of sparkling directions: no longer.
Three alJazeera journalists received long prison sentences in July, as the Qatari channel is increasingly suspected of support for the
Brotherhood: the judge said they were “guided by the devil.” Late last month, top editors and TV presenters gathered to declare that
they were with the military — and promised to confront “the hostile culture toward the national project and the foundations of the
Egyptian state.” Bassem Youssef, the surgeon who became a TV satire star with a Jon Stewart-style talk show poking — quite hard —
at the Brotherhood government and at the military, gave up in June, saying, “The present climate in Egypt is not suitable for a political
satire program.” It’s clear enough that al-Sisi’s regime is the harshest since that of Nasser in the
1950s and 60s. But where the latter sought to remold society to bring socialism to Egypt and unity to the Arab world — both failures —
the former has another reason for imposing order. Egypt is in the grip of a sustained violent onslaught by
Islamic militants, organized by those who see the overthrow of the Brotherhood government as an abomination. The militants
wish to go much further than the fumbling Morsi-led administration, to impose an Islamist
tyranny on the country. Earlier this week, the group Ansar Beit al-Maqdis (‘Supporters of Jerusalem’) formally affiliated itself with the
larger Islamic State, which has now moved into the spot of terrorist challenge number one. Islamic State’s stores of looted weaponry
and control of some oil wells in Iraq gives it a heft that other groups need to take on an army, like that of Egypt. Ansar Beit al-Maqdis
has already killed hundreds of army and police, and range from Sinai in the east to the deserts in the west — and may soon threaten
Cairo with bombs and attacks. The stage is set for

democratic freedoms and civic rights will suffer more a long struggle And a bloody one, in
which
. Egypt, with other Arab states — including Saudi Arabia,
Jordan and the Emirates — have coalesced to oppose the Islamist terrorist groups, headed by Hamas in Gaza and now metastasizing
into new networks of threat. In doing so, they have softened their enmity to the “natural” bogey state, Israel. Egypt, which
has a longtime accord with the Jewish state, now views Hamas with the same hatred as Israel does. And thus it is that the
U
nited tates must again set aside its ideals in favor of realpolitik. President Barack Obama met
S
al-Sisi in New
York, when the Egyptian leader attended the United Nations. He raised the issue of the Al Jazeera journalists,
but that was against the backdrop of increased military aid to Egypt and clear signs of closer
cooperation on issues such as the fight against Islamic State. The anti-militant Arab coalition may or may
not hold. If it does, it shows a welcome assumption of responsibility for the peace of the region, and resistance to the extreme

Islamist version of fascism, from its strongest powers. It may, in its course, bring a rapprochement with Israel closer. It’s a great
prize. It’s just that it means putting the issues of democratic rule, civil society and freedom of
speech and the press, in the box marked – “See you later, Arab Spring!” The best to be hoped
is that it’s not “Goodbye!”

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Multilat Fails – 1NC

Multilateralism is unenforceable and useless – non-compliance costs are low
and unilateral preferences will always trump collaboration
Harlan Grant Cohen 2018, Gabriel M. Wilner/UGA Foundation Professor in International Law,
University of Georgia School of Law, 3-16-2018, “Multilateralism’s Life Cycle”, The American
Society of International Law, https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/american-journal-
ofinternational-law/article/multilateralisms-life-cycle/49343526DF8DD1B9C3834F0577C03B98

But the same forces driving regional trade agreements also risk tearing them apart. Voters in the
United States worry that Mexico and Canada have benefited more than the United States from
the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), China more from the WTO, South Korea more from the
Korea-U.S. Trade Agreement.109 The concern that the TPP might mean more of the same was a
key factor in its anemic public support and its eventual abandonment by the presidential candidates.
Brexit seemed to reflect similar voter concerns about the relative benefits of
EU membership.110 One symbol associated with the rise of economic populism in various
developed states
over the past year is the “elephant graph” created by Branko Milanović. 111 The graph shows the global
change in real income from 1998–2008 by income percentile. Starkly, much of the world—the 10th–65th income percentiles along
with the very top earners—have experienced massive growth in real income over that period. One group, though, has not—the
75th–85th income percentiles. While the first group is disproportionately located in the new economic powerhouses of Asia, the
second is disproportionately represented by the middle class of the older developed states.112 The
sense by some Brexit
and Trump voters that
is not pure fantasy and seems to be driving their policy preferences they have been relative
“losers” in the current
multilateral institutions
. This heightened concern for relative gains, growing out of greater multipolarity and combined
with the shifting costs and benefits of cooperation through multilateral institutions, may be
casting a shadow over
security cooperation as well . In a bipolar world, NATO served the interests of both the
United
States and its allies well. The United States could see NATO as essentially an extension of U.S. security policy. Even if it had
to sometimes bow to its allies’ demands,113 cooperation with European allies (and Canada) expanded U.S. power and served the
U.S. agenda. European states, while at times bristling under U.S. dominance, nonetheless needed U.S. support. In
a multipolar
world, where Russia may or may not be the top security concern of the United States and
where other NATO states are themselves more powerful, particularly economically, NATO
might look more like constraint than a tool to some in the United States—both with regard to U.S.
priorities and U.S. actions. Trump’s complaints about the relative benefits and costs borne by the
United States and its European allies114 may not be so surprising. A similar story might be told
about the role of the United Nations, which for a brief time following the end of the Cold War looked like it might
become the central forum for global security. For the United States, enjoying its unipolar moment, working through the United
Nations may have allowed it to get greater buy-in for its policies. And multilateral support may have lowered the costs of pursuing
U.S. policies—enough to outweigh the perceived costs of multilateral engagement (much of the time). For other states, bringing U.S.
policy into the United Nations, while clearly strengthening the United States, may have carried the promise of some increased voice

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and the possibility of placing some constraints on the hegemon’s actions. In

an increasingly multipolar world, those
perceptions of the relative value of cooperation through the United Nations may be shifting.
For the United States, action through the United Nations may look more like a constraint than
a force multiplier. At the same time, for other actors like Russia, China, and Saudi Arabia115 (not
to mention Iran), eager to flex their newfound muscles, the UN may seem an
embodiment of old power dynamics and structures, out of which they had been left.116 Action
moves from the halls of UN headquarters to the ground in Ukraine, Syria, the South China Sea, and Yemen, where the situation looks
much more like a free-for-all, in which cooperation is more likely to be bilateral and opportunistic than long-term and multilateral.
Of course, on issues on which the United States, or others, may feel like it cannot act alone or with a small group of allies, where
only mass multilateral action is perceived to be useful, like the North Korean nuclear threat, the United Nations may continue to be

seen as the best working forum. Overall though, states’ individual security priorities seem to be taking precedence
over more systemic concerns about global peace and security.

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Multilat Fails – 2NC

Multilateral cooperation fails – states want to preserve relative superiority, so
they won’t enter into agreements that are good for them if they also benefit
other states disproportionately – multilateral institutions are becoming
increasingly costly for states, so they’d rather just leave them – that’s Cohen
States have increasingly diminishing reason to abide by multilateral agreements
Harlan Grant Cohen 2018, Gabriel M. Wilner/UGA Foundation Professor in International Law,
University of Georgia School of Law, 3-16-2018, “Multilateralism’s Life Cycle”, The American
Society of International Law, https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/american-journal-
ofinternational-law/article/multilateralisms-life-cycle/49343526DF8DD1B9C3834F0577C03B98

As proof of the influence of global scripts, scholars have observed disconnects between states’
external commitment and internal behaviors.86 Such scholars have suggested
that over time, the former may influence the latter, moving the states to In the short
actual compliance.87
term though, this observation recognizes the inherent instability of these commitments.
Until internal behaviors or attitudes change, state commitments may be highly sensitive to
external power shifts. If the pessimistic story is true,
then many global, multilateral institutions The incentives to remain or comply may no
may either unravel or be gutted by
multipolarity.
longer be there . Keeping everyone together may require either sweetening the deal for
each
individual member (tacitly allowing non-WTO conforming free trade agreements) or decreasing the downside risk
by weakening the
overall Paradoxically, the diminished power of linkages may be compounded by
agreement
(accepting the views of African states on official immunity88). IV. THE
DOWNSIDE OF SUCCESS

the increasing effectiveness89 of these various multilateral institutions . For those states who
had little interest in
the institutions in the first place, and who perceive little short-term benefit from these
institutions, the effectiveness of the institution is a cost. As the institutions take
hold, states may see increasing pressure to come into compliance with the institutions’ rules, whether on trade, human rights, investment
protection, or criminal justice. States’ chosen policies may face challenge at international organizations, in front of

international courts and tribunals, and even in domestic courts. Costs associated with membership in a particular
institution may range from economic sanctions, awards of compensation, judicial criticism,
NGO shaming and pressure, to negative public opinion at home. It is key that, for the state receiving
little perceived benefit from the institution, even bad publicity may be enough of a cost to
make withdrawal seem reasonable, particularly if the costs of withdrawal seem low. African

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states considering withdrawal from the Rome Statute may have already crossed that
threshold. Given other states’ inconsistent commitment to the ICC, they may rightly see
the costs of withdrawal will also be low. Venezuela too may have crossed that threshold with regard to the Inter-American
Human Rights system.90 Withdrawal is unlikely to do relevant damage to the Maduro government’s already exceedingly low reputation for human
rights, giving that government little reason to stay in and face continued shaming. The Duterte government in the Philippines may be thinking through
similar math with regard to the ICC, United Nations, and other institutions. At the very least, President Duterte’s threat of leaving91 may change the
calculus of his critics who do not want to lose the limited leverage they have. Of course, for at least some states, increasingly effective institutions should
provide some benefits. States can rely on the WTO to guarantee that the benefits they bargained for are protected. Members of the UN

Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) benefit from increased security and stability for shipping, fishing, and mining. All of these benefits

should raise the costs of withdrawal and/or non-compliance. The problem is that this calculus
is true for many members of that institution. With so many states reliant on those institutions’
continued success, free-riding becomes a real, viable strategy. States know that they can
withdraw from, violate, or cheat on the agreement without it falling apart. Others have too
much invested in it. China, the United States, the European Union, and others can play hard and fast with WTO rules,
knowing that the overall agreement and the benefits they receive will not go away. In particular, those states have negotiated free
trade agreements hard to square with WTO rules. Few have challenged them though,92 almost certainly for fear that a successful
challenge would undermine either their own such agreements or the WTO as a whole. Better for everyone to look the other way.

Similarly, the
United Kingdom has consistently fallen back on the continued presence of the WTO
and its rules both to justify Brexit and as supposed leverage in its negotiations with the rest of
the European Union.93 The United States has long been able to rely on the stability created by
UNCLOS even as it remains outside.94 China has largely ignored the Permanent Court of
Arbitration’s decision against it with regard to China’s actions in the South China Sea,95 knowing
that it would still benefit from the regime elsewhere in the world.96

Multilateral deals are ineffective, local solutions are better

Harlan Grant Cohen 2018, Gabriel M. Wilner/UGA Foundation Professor in International Law,
University of Georgia School of Law, 3-16-2018, “Multilateralism’s Life Cycle”, The American
Society of International Law, https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/american-journal-
ofinternational-law/article/multilateralisms-life-cycle/49343526DF8DD1B9C3834F0577C03B98

But to the extent to which there has been a blanket preference for global-scale multilateral
deals to provide global public goods,123 that preference may need to be rethought . Providing
global public goods in a multipolar world may
require smaller deals that can guarantee states specific, desirable club goods. International
justice, for example, might have to move to the local level, take local interests more directly into
account, and promise specific realizable benefits to the country or countries in question.124 And
this may be the case even if the resulting deals are less efficient or effective in providing the
broader good. Enhancing protections for endangered species or
labor rights through TPP-like free trade areas, with all of that model’s flaws, may be more durable and effective than attempts to work
through the global multilateral Convention on the International Trade in Endangered Species. Local, bilateral, and

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regional environmental governance may more effectively get actors to change their policies
than global multilateral ones. Tim Meyer, for example, has noted how local clean energy plans
that favor local providers can overcome political obstacles better than national or multilateral
efforts.125 The cost is borne as an externality by others; such costs though may be the inevitable byproduct of multipolar,
postmultilateral policymaking. Notably, while these other-shape solutions may be less efficient from a
global policy perspective, they may be fairer or more just along other metrics.126 These structural
realities thus dovetail well with other critiques of multilateralism-for-multilateralism’s-sake,
including concerns that multilateral solutions are not neutral, that they may favor certain
interests over others , and that a more pluralist perspective that encourages bespoke policy
choices may be more normatively desirable.127 One can hear echoes of older concerns about
the “democracy deficit” of multilateral institutions128 beneath current voter complaints in the
United Kingdom, United States, and elsewhere that multilateral institutions ignore them in
favor of others. Deeper, broader integration may not always be better. Seeing multilateralism’s structural
limits may help reveal some of its normative ones as well. Policymakers will also have to think
hard about whether providing any particular global good really does require universal or near
universal participation. An agreement between the states with the most emissions may be more important for progress on
climate change than a broader agreement that can win everyone’s support. And while some aspects of a problem may require near
universal cooperation, other discrete aspects may take the form of aggregate effort or even single-best-effort public goods.129
Norm-setting and implementation may require different strategies and different shape
agreements. For the former, global multilateral deals may continue to be the best strategy; for
the latter they may not.
Policymakers may have to break Recognizing multilateralism’s limits may make policymaking more
complex problems into their

component parts and devise an effective strategy for solving each. complicated, but it may also make it more
thoughtful.

Global multilateral cooperation structurally fails---overwhelming data confirms

Robert J Lieber 14, Professor, Department of Government, Georgetown University, 2014, “The
Rise of the BRICS and American primacy,” International Politics, Vol. 51, p. 137-154

liberal internationalists and others tend to assume that international relations are a
Equally important,
positive sum game (Keohane, 1984; Ruggie, 1993). Experiences with multilateralism and with regional international
institutions are said to encourage cooperation. Transparency, reciprocity and habits of collaboration are seen as self-reinforcing. In
order to achieve their own domestic needs for economic growth, countries find not only these experiences beneficial, but such
cooperation spills over across related functions and issue areas. A generation ago, scholars writing and theorizing about regional
integration in Western Europe defined this process as one of ‘spillover’. For liberal internationalists and globalists there is at least an
implied analogy with that European experience despite the immense differences in geography, history and path dependence.5 That
assumption has some basis in the areas of economics and trade, though the mercantilist and
predatory behavior of Inthe security realm China provides a serious contrary indicator. , however, there is little
reason for such an optimistic assumption. Cases in point include nuclear proliferation (North Korea,
Iran), tensions in East Asia
(China, Japan, Vietnam, South Korea, the Philippines, the East and South China Seas) and conflicts in the Middle East
(Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Egypt, Lebanon, as well as Israel and the Palestinians). Nonetheless there are exceptions. Brazil has
played a continuing role in UN Peacekeeping. It assigns nearly 2500 military and police personnel to those missions and has played a
leading role in Haiti, where it has commanded the UN’s operation since 2004. It also has headed the maritime component of UNIFIL

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(Lebanon) since 2011. In addition, Turkey has participated actively in NATO-led peacekeeping missions in Bosnia (SFOR), Kosovo
(KFOR), and Afghanistan (ISAF).

Skepticism about the BRICS and the momentum assumed by liberal internationalists has not
been scarce.6 Realist scholars have understandably been critical of the
assumptions underlying these approaches as well as of the foreign policy choices they increasing reason for criticism
imply. However, other scholars too have found .

For example, Barma et al (2013, p. 56) have recently observed that, ‘Instead of a gradual trend toward global
problem solving punctuated by isolated failures, we have seen the
opposite stunningly few over the last several years essentially
:
instances of international cooperation on significant issues’.
Moreover,
Patrick (2010, p. 44) of the Council on Foreign Relations has cautioned that, ‘The
United States should be under no
illusions about the ease of socializing rising nations. Emerging powers may be clamoring for
greater global influence, but they often oppose the political and economic ground rules of the
inherited Western liberal order, seek to transform existing multilateral arrangements, and shy
away from assuming significant global responsibilities’ . In this regard, Laidi
has argued that despite their own heterogeneity, the BRICS actually opposing Western liberal
share a common objective in
internationalist narratives that run counter to traditional state sovereignty. Instead, they seek to protect
their
own prerogatives, independence of action and national autonomy in an increasingly
interdependent world (Laidi, 2012, pp. 614–615).
Multilateralism fails—diverging interests and a lack of faith guarantee
cooperation is at best superficial
Heribert Dieter 14, Senior Associate at the German Institute for International and Security
Affairs, Non-Resident Senior Fellow, Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies, Visiting Professor
for International Political Economy at Zeppelin University, Doctorate in Political Science and
Economics, Free University of Berlin, 1/31/14, The G-20 and the Dilemma of Asymmetric
Sovereignty – Why Multilateralism Is Failing in Crisis Prevention, International Relations and
Security Network, http://www.isn.ethz.ch/Digital-Library/Articles/Detail/?lng=en&id=176145

the mantra-like repetition

Yet, tightening the rules for financial market regulation is not the only field where the G-20 is failing. Despite

of memoranda of understanding, the trade ministers of the G-20 have not been able to overcome their
conflicts of interest and reach a settlement in the Doha Round of the World Trade Organization (WTO). What are the reasons for this
failure?Although the G-20 managed to prevent a revival of protectionist measures on a broad front in the midst of the crisis, there is a large gap between
There is not one final communiqué that lacks a
the announcements of the G-20 and quantifiable results in trade policy.

clear statement stressing the importance of the WTO and the necessity to conclude the Doha Round.
Nonetheless, the reality of trade policy looks very different. All the states that are preventing the conclusion of the Doha
Round through their vetoes are members of the G-20.

Despite there being little public information available on the reasons for the deadlock in the Doha Round, it is known that the US, Brazil, and China are blocking
its conclusion. The emerging economies Brazil and China oppose the US’s demand for the complete elimination of tariffs on industrial goods. Conversely, the
US resists the request to comprehensively abandon subsidies to the agricultural sector.Thus, the Doha Round is not concluded because

three important members of the G-20 no longer believe in multilateral solutions and would rather

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engage in preferential agreements. For experts in the field of international trade, this is a paradox. There is a broad consensus that a
single rulebook for international trade would facilitate economic growth and contribute to a worldwide increase in prosperity. This, however, cannot be
said for the currently popular free trade agreements. So why are the countries in the G-20 incapable of further developing the common rules for
international trade? One explanation is the lack of a hegemonic power that is willing to guarantee compliance with the rules of the game, but at the
same time establish a system that provides member countries with sufficient economic benefits. In any event, this is how the postwar economy
emerged: The US enforced the system of Bretton Woods and made sure that the participation in this economic regime remained attractive. Of course,
the Bretton Woods regime never was a truly global system, since member countries of the Council on Mutual Economic Assistance did not participate.
Still, within the bipolar order of the Cold War, the US managed to keep the system open and stable. ¶ After the collapse of the USSR and the following
short-lived “unipolar moment” (Charles Krauthammer) of complete hegemony of the US, the multilateral order was being advanced until 1995, the
founding year of the WTO. Since the turn of the millennium and the parallel emergence of a multipolar order, nearly all attempts to organize

cooperation without hegemony (Bob Keohane) have failed. The

present multipolar world is characterized by superficial
cooperation. Global Governance, whether in policies to prevent further climate
change or in economic policy, remains on hold . Even worse: The world is returning to regulation on the level of the
nation-state and non-cooperation. The American political scientist Ian Bremmer refers to the resulting situation as “G-Zero,” an era in which groups such
as the G-20 will no longer play a vital role. The negative perception of the international division of labor ¶ Apparently, there is no such thing as an
identity of interests of individual states, as assumed by the advocates of global regulation and global governance. In other words: The gap
between the preferences of individual states is widening rather than narrowing. However, governments must respect the
preferences of their societies in the formulation of policies if they do not wish to lose legitimacy. Then again, the different

preferences of societies are the immediate result of severely diverging perceptions of the international
division of labor. Even in the G-20, individual societies have very different perceptions of the effects of

globalization and its economic effects.¶ In Europe and the US, many people are increasingly critical of the international division of labor, if not
outright hostile to globalization. According to a number of surveys, only about one-fifth to one-third of the respondents in OECD countries see greater
opportunities than risks in globalization. Even in Germany, numerous politicians and citizens have been critical of globalization, although Germany
strongly benefits from open markets and the resulting intensification of international trade. ¶ Without a political anchoring in the member states, the G-

20 has no future¶ The unfavorable perceptions of globalization and the outlined asymmetric sovereignty
have resulted in a standstill in the G-20. Instead of a further development of the multilateral order, at best
the status quo will be preserved. This is why we can expect nothing substantial – at least in terms of
economic policy and financial regulation – from the G-20 summit in St. Petersburg on September 5 and 6.
The structural impediments to successful financial regulation and trade policies on a supranational level cannot be overcome by the heads of
government and state of the
G-20. At least there is some hope in those areas where the countries of the G-20 have identical interests. This applies primarily to measures to close
down tax loopholes. In 2008, ambitious expectations of a comprehensive reorganization of international trade relations through the G-20 were raised.
Unfortunately, the G-20 cannot and will not deliver on crisis prevention. Today, more modest goals will have to be set. The key obstacle to success in the
further development of global rules in trade and finance can be found in the G-20 societies themselves. Perceptions about globalization need to be
addressed by policy makers at the national level, as do the widespread reservations about the international division of labor in the OECD countries. If

societies continue to show diverging preferences, the development of comprehensive global

economic governance in the G-20 will be all but impossible.

Gridlock is locked in — assumes their impacts

David Held 13, Professor of Politics and International Relations, at the University of Durham
AND Thomas Hale, Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Blavatnik School of Government, Oxford
University AND Kevin Young, Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at the
University of Massachusetts Amherst, 5/24/13, “Gridlock: the growing breakdown of global
cooperation,” http://www.opendemocracy.net/thomas-hale-david-held-kevin-
young/gridlockgrowing-breakdown-of-global-cooperation

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Self-reinforcing interdependence has now progressed to the point where it has altered our ability
to engage in further global cooperation. That is, economic and political shifts in large part attributable to
the successes of the post-war multilateral order are now amongst the factors grinding that system into gridlock.
Because of the remarkable success of global cooperation in the postwar order, human interconnectedness weighs much more heavily
on politics than it did in 1945. The need for international cooperation has never been higher. Yet the “supply”
side of the equation, institutionalized multilateral cooperation, has stalled. In areas such as
nuclear proliferation, the explosion of small arms sales, terrorism, failed states, global economic
imbalances, financial market
instability, global poverty and multilateral and transnational cooperation is now increasingly
inequality, biodiversity losses,

water deficits and climate change,

becoming a general feature of global governance

ineffective or threadbare . Gridlock is not unique to one issue domain, but appears to be
: cooperation seems to be increasingly difficult and deficient
at precisely the time when it is needed most.

Effective coordination is impossible---transaction costs and divergent interests

guarantee failure
David Held 13, Professor of Politics and International Relations, at the University of Durham
AND Thomas Hale, Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Blavatnik School of Government, Oxford
University AND Kevin Young, Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at the
University of Massachusetts Amherst, 5/24/13, “Gridlock: the growing breakdown of global
cooperation,” http://www.opendemocracy.net/thomas-hale-david-held-kevin-
young/gridlockgrowing-breakdown-of-global-cooperation

It is possible to identify four reasons for this blockage, four pathways to gridlock: rising multipolarity,
institutional inertia, harder problems, and institutional fragmentation. Each pathway can be thought of as a growing trend that
embodies a specific mix of causal mechanisms. Each of these are explained briefly below.¶ Growing
multipolarity. The
absolute number of states has increased by 300 percent in the last 70 years, meaning that the
most basic transaction costs of global governance have grown. More importantly, the number of
states that “matter” on a given issue—that is, the states without whose cooperation a global problem cannot be
adequately addressed—has expanded by similar proportions. At Bretton Woods in 1945, the rules of the
world economy could essentially be written by the United States with some consultation with the UK and other
European allies. In the aftermath of the 2008-2009 crisis, the G-20 has become the principal forum for
global economic management, not because the established powers desired to be more inclusive, but because they could not solve
the problem on their own. However, a consequence of this progress is now that many more
countries, representing a
diverse range of interests, must agree in order for global cooperation to occur .¶ Institutional

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inertia. The postwar order succeeded, in part, because it incentivized great power involvement in key
institutions. From the UN Security Council, to the Bretton Woods institutions, to the Non-
Proliferation Treaty, key pillars of the global order explicitly grant special privileges to the countries that were wealthy and powerful

at the time of their creation. This

hierarchy was necessary to secure the participation of the most
important countries in global governance. Today, the gain from this trade-off has shrunk while the
costs have grown. As power shifts from West to East, North to South, a broader range of participation is needed
on nearly all global issues if they are to be dealt with effectively. At the same time, following decolonization, the end of the Cold War
and economic development, the idea that some countries should hold more rights and privileges than
others is increasingly (and rightly) regarded as morally bankrupt. And yet, the architects of the postwar order
did not, in most cases, design institutions that would organically adjust to fluctuations in national power. ¶ Harder problems.
As independence has deepened, the types and scope of problems around which countries must
cooperate has evolved. Problems are both now more extensive, implicating a broader range of
countries and individuals within countries, and intensive, penetrating deep into the domestic
policy space and daily life. Consider the example of trade. For much of the postwar era, trade negotiations
focused on reducing tariff levels on manufactured products traded between industrialized countries. Now,
however, negotiating a trade agreement requires also discussing a host of social, environmental,
and cultural subjects - GMOs, intellectual property, health and environmental standards,
biodiversity, labour standards—about which countries often disagree sharply. In the area of
environmental change a similar set of considerations applies. To clean up industrial smog or
address ozone depletion required fairly discrete actions from a small number of top polluters. By
contrast, the threat of climate change and the efforts to mitigate it involve
nearly all Yet, the divergence of countries of the globe. voice and interest within both the
developed and
developing worlds, along with the sheer complexity of the incentives needed to achieve a
low carbon economy, have made a global deal , thus impossible far, (Falkner et al. 2011; Victor
2011).¶

Fragmentation. The institution-builders of the 1940s began with, essentially, a blank slate. But efforts to cooperate
internationally today occur in a dense institutional ecosystem shaped by path dependency. The
exponential rise in both multilateral and transnational organizations has created a more complex
multilevel and multi-actor system of global governance. Within this dense web of institutions
mandates can conflict, interventions are frequently uncoordinated, and all too typically scarce
resources are subject to intense competition. In this context, the proliferation of institutions tends
to lead to dysfunctional fragmentation , reducing the ability of multilateral institutions to
. When
provide public goods funding and political will are scarce, countries need focal points to guide policy
(Keohane and Martin 1995), which can help define the nature and form of cooperation. Yet, when international regimes
overlap,

these positive effects disaggregate resources and political

are weakened.
will, while increasing transaction costs
Fragmented institutions, in turn,
.¶ In stressing four pathways to gridlock we emphasize the manner in which

contemporary global governance problems build up on each othe r, although different pathways can

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The challenges now faced by the multilateral order are

carry more significance in some domains than in others.
substantially different from those faced by the 1945 victors in the postwar settlement. They
are second-order
cooperation they now block and inhibit problem solving and reform at the global level
problems arising
from previous phases of success in global coordination. Together, .

No will or capability for effective cooperation

Hellmann, 13 (Gunther Hellmann is a senior fellow at the Transatlantic Academy, an initiative
of the German Marshall Fund, “The Decline of Multilateralism,” May 2, German Marshall Fund
Blog, http://blog.gmfus.org/2013/05/02/the-decline-of-multilateralism/)

It is becoming increasingly difficult to argue against retrenchment in Europe and

WASHINGTON—

North America. Economic crises and domestic political stagnation absorb energy and consume financial
resources. Global military engagements in faraway places cost lives and treasure and often yield
limited success. There is growing disillusionment with democracy promotion. Coalitions of sovereign state
defenders like the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) make life for the guardians of the liberal world order ever more challenging. The upshot is
multilateral fatigue in both Europe and North America.¶ This is a perilous state of affairs because state-transcending global
problems are proliferating. “Global Trends 2030,” a study published by the U.S. National Intelligence Council last December, predicts that “the current, largely Western dominance
of global structures … will have been transformed by 2030 to be more in line with the changing hierarchy of new economic players.” Yet even if this were to happen,

it remains unclear to what degree new or reformed institutions “will have tackled
the report argues,

growing global challenges.Ӧ One might be forgiven for taking this to be an overly optimistic projection. Based on current trends,
the outlook is much gloomie r, due mainly to the political contagion effects of sovereigntism,
the fixation on state sovereignty as an absolute value, and minilateralism . Moisés Naím, who initially coined
the term, defined minilateralism as getting together the “smallest possible number of countries needed to have the largest possible impact on solving a particular problem.” The
problem is that the smallest possible number may quickly grow very large; Naím’s own book, The End of Power, provides ample evidence that this is so. Consider, for instance,
the number and political weight of countries needed to address the problems in the aftermath of a military escalation in the Middle East and Persian Gulf. The minimum number
of countries required to effectively regulate global warming does not look any more encouraging. In other words, sovereigntism and minilateralism are symptoms of the crisis of
liberal world order — manifestations of The Democratic Disconnect — and not a recipe for curing its ills.¶ In the old days when multilateralism was not yet qualified politically
with such adjectives as “assertive” (Madeleine Albright) or “effective” (EU), it served as a descriptor for a fundamental transformation of interstate collaboration in the second
half of the 20th century. In an influential article, John Ruggie, a Harvard professor and former high-ranking UN official, showed that the actual practice of multilateralism by the
liberal democracies of North America and Europe after World War II was based on a set of generalized principles of conduct. These principles rendered segments of the post-war
international order into more reliable cooperative settings, such as the United Nations, or islands of peaceful change, such as the zone of European integration. A readiness to

the “liberal
give up sovereignty or, at least to cooperate on the basis of reciprocity, were characteristic elements of multilateralism and what came to be called

world order.Ӧ This liberal order is under strain today because its creators and guardians have
themselves strayed from these principles. In the security field, “coalitions of the willing” have
undermined multilateralism not only in the UN context, but also in NATO. In economic and
financial matters, the politics of European sovereign debt crisis management illustrates both
the dangers of executive federalism and the limits of diffuse reciprocity among Europe’s
nation states in the world’s most integrated region. “Responsible stakeholders,” the former Deputy Secretary of State Robert
Zoellick once said, do more than merely “conduct diplomacy to promote their national interests…They recognize that the international system sustains their peaceful prosperity, so
they work to sustain that system.” What was meant as advice to China when Zoellick gave that speech in 2005 can easily be redirected at the liberal democracies of North

America and Europe today.¶ There are no easy ways out. Even if the slide toward retrenchment can be stopped,
the prospects do not seem bright for the kind of bold new initiatives for global institutional reform
that are required . It is debatable whether calls for “democratic

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internationalism” or a new alignment among “like-minded democracies” can do the trick, but
Europe and North America need to realize that their stakes in the liberal order are much higher than those of relative newcomers. Indeed, overcoming crises at home hinges at least
in part on sustaining a conducive global environment. Readjusting the balance between minilateralism and multilateralism will help.

Global governance is inevitable---rising powers will play by the rules

G. John Ikenberry 11, Albert G. Milbank Professor of Politics and International Affairs at
Princeton University, “The Future of the Liberal World Order”, Foreign Affairs, May/June 2011,
http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/67730/g-john-ikenberry/the-future-of-the-liberal-
worldorder?page=show

But this panicked narrative misses a deeper reality : although the United States' position in the global system is
changing, the liberal international order is alive and well . The struggle over international order today is not about
fundamental principles. China and other emerging great powers do not want to contest the basic rules
and principles of the liberal international order; they wish to gain more authority and leadership
within it. Indeed, today's power transition represents not the defeat of the liberal order but its
ultimate ascendance. Brazil, China, and India have all become more prosperous and
capable by operating inside the existing international order -- benefiting from its rules, practices, and
institutions, including the World Trade Organization (WTO) and the newly organized G-20. Their economic success and growing
influence are tied to the liberal internationalist organization of world politics, and they have deep interests in
preserving that system.¶ In the meantime, alternatives to an open and rule-based order have yet to
crystallize . Even though the last decade has brought remarkable upheavals in the global system -- the emergence of new
powers, bitter disputes among Western allies over the United States' unipolar ambitions, and a global financial crisis
and recession -- the liberal international order has no competitors. On the contrary, the rise of non-Western
powers and the growth of economic and security interdependence are creating new constituencies for it.¶ To be sure, as wealth and
power become less concentrated in the United States' hands, the country will be less able to shape world politics. But the
underlying
foundations of the liberal international order will survive and thrive . Indeed, now may be the best
time
for the United States and its democratic partners to update the liberal order for a new era, ensuring that it continues to provide the
benefits of security and prosperity that it has provided since the middle of the twentieth century. ¶ THE LIBERAL ASCENDANCY¶
China and the other emerging powers do not face simply an American-led order or a Western system. They face a
broader international order that is the product of centuries of struggle and innovation. It is highly
developed, expansive, integrated, institutionalized, and deeply rooted in the societies and
economies of both advanced capitalist states and developing states. And over the last half century, this order has been unusually
capable of assimilating rising powers and reconciling political and cultural diversity.

Countries have interests in the existing order---no chance of overall collapse

G. John Ikenberry 11, Albert G. Milbank Professor of Politics and International Affairs at
Princeton University, “The Future of the Liberal World Order”, Foreign Affairs, May/June 2011,
http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/67730/g-john-ikenberry/the-future-of-the-liberal-
worldorder?page=show

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To begin with, rising states have deep interests in an open and rule-based system. Openness gives
them access to other societies -- for trade, investment, and knowledge sharing. Without the unrestricted investment
from the United States and Europe of the past several decades, for instance, China and the other rising states would be on a much
slower developmental path. As these countries grow, they will encounter protectionist and discriminatory reactions from
slowergrowing countries threatened with the loss of jobs and markets. As a result, the rising states will find the rules
and
institutions that uphold nondiscrimination and equal access to be critical. The World Trade
Organization -- the most formal and developed institution of the liberal international order -- enshrines these rules
and norms, and rising states have been eager to join the WTO and gain the rights and protections
it affords. China is already deeply enmeshed in the global trading system , with a
remarkable 40 percent of its GNP composed of exports -- 25 percent of which go to the United States.¶ China
could be
drawn further into the liberal order through its desire to have the yuan become an international
currency rivaling the U.S. dollar. Aside from conferring prestige, this feat could also stabilize China's exchange rate and
grant Chinese leaders autonomy in setting macroeconomic policy. But if China wants to make the yuan a global currency, it will need
to loosen its currency controls and strengthen its domestic financial rules and institutions. As Barry Eichengreen and other economic
historians have noted, the U.S. dollar assumed its international role after World War II not only because the U.S. economy was large
but also because the United States had highly developed financial markets and domestic institutions -- economic and political -- that
were stable, open, and grounded in the rule of law. China will feel pressures to establish these same institutional preconditions if it

wants the benefits of a global currency.¶ Internationalist-oriented

elites in Brazil, China, India, and elsewhere are growing
in influence within their societies, creating an expanding global constituency for an
open and rule-based international order. These elites were not party to the grand bargains that lay behind the
founding of the liberal order in the early postwar decades, and they are seeking to renegotiate their countries' positions within the
system. But they are nonetheless embracing the rules and institutions of the old order. They want the
protections and rights that come from the international order's Westphalian defense of sovereignty. They care about great-power
authority. They want the protections and rights relating to trade and investment. And they want to use the rules and institutions of
liberal internationalism as platforms to project their influence and acquire legitimacy at home and abroad. The UN Security Council,
the G-20, the governing bodies of the Bretton Woods institutions -- these are all stages on which rising non-Western states can
acquire great-power authority and exercise global leadership.¶ NO OTHER ORDER¶ Meanwhile, there is no competing
global organizing logic to liberal internationalism. An alternative, illiberal order -- a "Beijing model" --
would presumably be organized around exclusive blocs, spheres of influence, and mercantilist
networks. It would be less open and rule-based, and it would be dominated by an array of state-to-state ties. But on a global
scale, such a system would not advance the interests of any of the major states, including China. The
Beijing model only works when one or a few states opportunistically exploit an open system of
markets. But if everyone does, it is no longer an open system but a
fragmented, mercantilist, everyone suffers and protectionist complex -- and .¶ It is possible that China
could nonetheless move in this direction.
This is a future in which China is not a full-blown illiberal hegemon that reorganizes the global rules and institutions. It is simply a spoiler.
It attempts to operate both inside and outside the liberal international order. In this case, China would be successful enough

with its authoritarian model of development to resist the pressures to liberalize and democratize. But if
the rest of the world does
not gravitate toward this model, China will find itself subjected to pressure to play by the
rules . This dynamic was on display in February 2011, when Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff joined U.S. Treasury Secretary
Timothy Geithner in expressing concern over China's currency policy. China can free-ride on the
liberal international order, but it will pay the costs of doing so -- and it will still not be able to impose its illiberal vision
on the world.

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Multilateralism is strong—fragmented international cooperation solves better

and overcomes their alt causes
Stewart Patrick 14, Senior fellow and director of the program on International Institutions and
Global Governance (IIGG) at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), PhD in International
Relations from Stanford, Rhodes Scholar at Oxford, January/Feburary 2014, The Unruled World:
The Case for Good Enough Global Governance, Foreign Affairs,
http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/140343/stewart-patrick/the-unruled-world
The analysts Ian Bremmer and David Gordon have written about the emergence of a “G-Zero world,” in which collective global leadership
is almost impossible thanks to a global diffusion of power among countries with widely divergent interests. But what

really marks the contemporary era is not the absence of multilateralism but its astonishing diversity
. Collective action is no longer focused solely, or even primarily, on the UN and other
universal, treaty-based institutions, nor even on a single apex forum such as the G-20. Rather, governments
have taken to operating in many venues simultaneously, participating in a bewildering array of issue-specific
networks and partnerships whose membership varies based on situational interests, shared values, and

relevant capabilities.¶ A hallmark of this “G-X” world is the temporary coalition of strange bedfellows. Consider the
multinational antipiracy armada that has emerged in the Indian Ocean. This loosely coordinated flotilla involves
naval vessels from not only the United States and its NATO allies but also China, India, Indonesia, Iran, Japan, Malaysia, Russia, Saudi

Arabia, South Korea, and Yemen. These countries might disagree on many issues, but they have found
common cause in securing sea-lanes off the African coast.¶ At the same time, the G-X world permits the United States
to strengthen its links within the traditional West. Take the surprisingly resilient G-8, composed of the United States,
Japan, Germany, France, the United Kingdom, Italy, Canada, and Russia (plus the EU). For years, pundits have predicted the G-8’s

demise, and yet it still moves. The G-8 allows

advanced market democracies to coordinate their positions
on sensitive political and security issues -- just as the parallel financially focused G-7 permits them to harmonize
their macroeconomic policies. With the exception of authoritarian Russia, unwisely added in 1997, G-8 members share similar
worldviews and values, strategic interests, and major policy preferences. This like-mindedness facilitates policy coordination on
matters ranging from human rights to humanitarian intervention, rogue states to regional stability.¶ The wealthy G-8 members also
possess distinctive assets -- financial, diplomatic, military, and ideological -- to deploy in the service of their convictions. At the
Deauville summit of May 2011, the G-8 moved quickly to offer diplomatic support and material assistance to the Arab Spring
countries. That action reaffirmed the G-8 as a practical and symbolic anchor of the Western liberal order while reminding the world
that the G-8 remains the overwhelming source of official development assistance.¶ In global governance, as elsewhere, necessity is
the mother of invention, and the global credit crisis that struck with full force in 2008 led to the rise to prominence of a relatively
new international grouping, the G-20. Facing the potential meltdown of the international financial system, leaders of the world’s
major economies -- both developed and developing -- shared an overriding interest in avoiding a second Great Depression. Stuck in
the same lifeboat, they assented to a slew of institutional innovations, including elevating the G-20 finance ministers’ group to the

leaders’ level, creating an exclusive global crisis-response committee.¶ The

G-20 quickly racked up some notable
achievements. It injected unprecedented liquidity into the world economy through coordinated
national actions, including some $5 trillion in stimulus at the London summit of April 2009. It created the Financial Stability
Board, charged with developing new regulatory standards for systemically important financial institutions, and insisted on
new bank capital account requirements under the Basel III agreement. It revitalized and augmented the
coffers of the once-moribund International Monetary Fund and negotiated governance reforms within the World Bank and the IMF
to give greater voice to emerging economies. And its members adopted “standstill” provisions to avoid a recurrence of the ruinous
tit-for-tat trade protectionism of the 1930s.¶ As the immediate panic receded and an uneven global recovery took hold, however,
narrow national interests again came to the fore, slowing the G-20’s momentum. For the past four years, the G-20 -- whose
heterogeneous members possess diverse values, political systems, and levels of development -- has struggled to evolve from a

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shortterm crisis manager to a longer-term steering group for the global economy. The reform of major international financial
institutions has also stalled, as established (notably European) powers resist reallocating voting weight and governing board seats. So
what looked for a brief moment like the dawn of a newly preeminent global forum proved to be just one more outlet store in the
sprawl.¶ GOVERNANCE IN PIECES¶ For much of the past two decades, UN mega-conferences dominated multilateral diplomacy. But
when it comes to multilateralism, bigger is rarely better, and the era of the mega-conference is ending as major
powers recognize the futility of negotiating comprehensive international agreements among 193 UN member states, in the full glare
of the media and alongside tens of thousands of activists, interest groups, and hangers-on. Countries will continue to assemble for
annual confabs, such as the Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), in the
Sisyphean quest to secure “binding” commitments from developed and developing countries. But that circus will
increasingly
become a sideshow, as the action shifts to less formal settings and narrower groupings of the
relevant and capable. Already, the 17 largest greenhouse gas emitters have created the Major
Economies Forum on Energy and Climate, seeking breakthroughs outside the lumbering
UNFCCC. To date, the forum has underdelivered. But more tangible progress has occurred through parallel
national efforts, as states pledge to undertake a menu of domestic actions, which they subsequently submit to the forum for
collective review.¶ Regional organizations are giving universal bodies a run for their money.¶ There is a more general lesson here.
Faced with fiendishly complex issues, such as climate change, transnational networks of government officials now
seek incremental progress by disaggregating those issues into manageable chunks and agreeing
to coordinate action on specific agenda items. Call it “global governance in pieces.” For
climate change, this means abandoning the quest for an elusive soup-to-nuts agreement to mitigate and adapt to global warming.
Instead, negotiators pursue separate initiatives, such as phasing out wasteful fossil fuel subsidies, launching minilateral clean
technology partnerships, and expanding the UN Collaborative Program on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest
The result is not a unitary international
Degradation in Developing Countries, among other worthwhile schemes.
regime grounded in a single institution or treaty but a cluster of complementary activities that
political scientists call a “regime complex.”¶ Something similar is happening in global health, where the oncepremier
World Health Organization now shares policy space and a division of labor with other major organizations, such as the
World Bank; specialized UN agencies, such as UNAIDS; public-private partnerships, such as the GAVI Alliance (formerly called the
Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization); philanthropic organizations, such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation;
consultative bodies, such as the eight-nation (plus the EU) Global Health Security Initiative; and multi-stakeholder bodies, such as the
Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. The upshot is a disaggregated system of global health governance.¶

Sometimes, the piecemeal approach may be able to achieve more than its stagnant universalist
alternative . Given the failure of the WTO’s Doha Round, for example, the United States and other nations have turned to
preferential trade agreements in order to spur further liberalization of commerce. Some are bilateral, such as the
U.S.–South Korean pact. But others involve multiple countries. These include two initiatives that constitute the centerpiece of
Obama’s second-term trade agenda: the Trans-Pacific Partnership and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership. The
administration describes each as a steppingstone toward global liberalization. And yet future WTO negotiations will likely take a
disaggregated form, as subsets of WTO members move forward on more manageable specific issues (such as public procurement or
investment) while avoiding those lightning-rod topics (such as trade in agriculture) that have repeatedly stymied comprehensive
trade negotiations.

No IHR Enforcement – 2NC

I-law fails – it’s unenforceable and countries selectively ignore it
Dr William Partlett 18, Associate Professor, Melbourne Law School, University of Melbourne,
4-1-2018, "Does it matter that strikes against Syria violate international law? ," Pursuit,
https://pursuit.unimelb.edu.au/articles/does-it-matter-that-strikes-against-syria-
violateinternational-law

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** edited for clarity

Despite this clear illegality,many of the richest and most powerful countries in the world have
supported the attack [on Syria]. This includes all members of the North Atlantic Treaty
Organization (NATO), as well as Israel and Japan. Most have voiced this support by arguing
that, with a deadlocked UN Security Council, the only effective way to deter the future use of
chemical weapons is through the limited use of force that punishes a state for using such weapons against its
citizens. Australian Prime Minster Malcolm Turnbull praised the attacks, stating that “the Assad regime

must not be allowed to commit such crimes with impunity.” But this is not a legal argument ,
and according to some legal experts, the language has the
flavour of armed reprisals which is clearly unlawful. All that is left really of this argument is
that the attacks are “illegal but legitimate.” But if “illegal but legitimate” becomes an
accepted principle, then the Charter’s limits, at least on the use of force, become meaningless.
WHAT SHOULD WE DO? So, how should we respond
One option is to continue to disregard
to this gap between the use of force and the international law regulating it?
international law and justify the illegal use of force in the language of morality. This would
essentially continue the status quo approach and further the slow degradation of Article 2(4)’s
prohibition against the use of force in
the international legal system. This International law - without a centralised institutional
approach might be wellintentioned but would come
mechanism for enforcement - already faces significant problems of
with considerable cost.
enforcement. The less
respect countries pay to the letter of international law on the use of force - particularly
Western
countries - fact, it becomes far harder - if not impossible - for the United States, the UK, and
the more
likely it is that other countries themselves will not choose to follow it. In
France to condemn the use of force by other countries when they themselves grossly flaunt
it. So if we care at all about the “rules-based order”, we should worry about ignoring international law constraints on the use of force.
Otherwise we are admitting that international legal regime on the use of force has completely broken down.

Broken windows theory – mass violations of international law make it infeasible

to use as an international enforcement mechanism
Ingrid Wuerth 17, the Helen Strong Curry Professor of International Law at Vanderbilt Law
School, where she also directs the international legal studies program. She is a leading scholar of
foreign affairs, public international law and international litigation. She serves on the State
Department’s Advisory Committee on Public International Law, she is a Reporter on the
American Law Institute’s Restatement (Fourth) on U.S. Foreign Relations Law, and she is on the
editorial board of the American Journal of International Law. She has won Fulbright and
Alexander von Humboldt awards permitting her to spend substantial time in Germany and she is
an elected member of the German Society of International Law, 4-10-2017, "Does International

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Law Have a “Broken Windows” Problem?," Lawfare,

https://www.lawfareblog.com/doesinternational-law-have-broken-windows-problem
Many norms of international law , especially international human rights law, are widely
violated. The international legal system as a whole may suffer as result. International human
rights law has changed international law. The two primary sources of international legal
obligations—treaties and custom—have become more expansive and looser so as to bring
more human rights norms into the ambit of international law, despite wide-spread
noncompliance with those norms. In one sense, the success of the effort is clear: international law
now regulates a vast array of human-rights-related conduct. Whether the expansion is an
effective way to promote human rights is widely-debated. The broader, unacknowledged
problem, however, is the potential effect of the expansion on international law as a whole , as
I discuss in detail here. Today, international law includes a broad range of human rights norms which
are
Wide-spread violations of some legal norms may, in turn, make it harder to enforce
routinely violated, from the U.N. reporting requirements to gross violations of human dignity.
others . As a (very) imperfect analogy, consider the “broken windows” theory of crime
prevention: widespread violations of human rights law may be a symbol of
unaccountability, a signal that no one cares about violations of international law and that no
one is in charge .
Accountability is a fundamental concern of public international law because the system lacks

a centralized enforcement mechanism . Whatever the merits of the “broken

windows”
argument in the context of domestic law enforcement, behavior which signals a lack of
accountability may be especially damaging to international law writ large. Theoretical
literature on compliance with international law suggests that non- compliance in some
areas

makes other norms of international law harder to enforce. Work on rational choice posits,
for
example, that states comply with international law in part to protect their reputations. If
states as a whole tend to expect non-compliance from each other, the costs of entering
into treaties or developing norms of customary international law become higher for all A
states.
baseline reputation of non-compliance among states generally harms interstate cooperation
because it means that states will have to do more in a treaty agreement to generate
trustworthy commitments (such as monitoring non-compliance), and because it makes some

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agreements not worth the time or effort . To be sure, these effects depend upon states having reputations
for
compliance which are not entirely issue-specific or compartmentalized, a plausible assumption for reasons explained here (pages

103-06). Other theories of compliance with international law, including constructivism and
organizational sociology, also suggest that widespread non-compliance with human rights will
make the rest of international law less effective. For example, constructivists Jutta Brunnée and Stephen Toope
argue that international legal obligations arise from communities of practice which
have shared understandings and which generate norms with specific characteristics Lack of of
legality. congruence between a norm and behavior impedes the development of a
community of

practice . They reason in the context of torture (page 232) that “a widespread failure to
uphold the law as formally enunciated leads to a sense of hypocrisy which
undermines fidelity
to law.” Research from domestic law and social psychology, including the work of Tom Tyler, suggests that widespread lack of
faith in government and its ability to solve problems undermines peoples’ sense of their own obligation to follow the law. If
international law does have a problem along these lines, one solution is to more effectively enforce international human rights law:

Doing so would not only benefit human rights, but also international law as whole. Yet creating a truly effective

international human rights enforcement system seems unlikely. A more

complicated
possibility is to find ways to promote and protect human rights that do not depend upon
binding norms of international law, including regional human rights courts and tribunals,
domestic statutes and constitutions, capacity building and iterative interactions with review
bodies, the enforcement of soft obligations, and so on. Thanks to the successes of the international human
rights movement, there are a wide variety of tools designed to improve global human rights practices. While we have yet to see
whether those mechanisms will work if they are de-coupled from binding international legal commitments, it is clear that we should
understand international human rights law as part of a broader international legal system. The debate around international law and
human rights should be re-framed to consider not just potential benefits to human rights but also the potential costs to international
law as a whole.

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2NC – Thumper - Drones T/Allies

Our drone policy pisses of allies – turns coop
Adriana Edmeades Jones 17, Legal and Policy Director at Rights Watch, 11-13-2017,
"Implications of Trump’s New Drone Policy for Countries Assisting the U.S.," Just Security,
https://www.justsecurity.org/47011/implications-trumps-drone-policy-countries-assisting-u-s/

But there is another perspective relevant to the changes governing the U.S. drone program –
that of the significant number of States
worldwide, which play a greater or lesser The point is not just one of academic interest to the
part in supporting and facilitating that
program.
rest of the world , because many States observing the shifting U.S. policy themselves bear
responsibility , as a matter of international law, for U.S. drone activity. A number of States
(particularly in Europe) provide logistical and intelligence assistance to the U.S.
drone program.
Taking the United Kingdom as an example, while the precise scope and degree of its involvement in the U.S. drone program is, as I
have previously set out here, opaque, there has long been evidence that U.K. military and spy agencies share location intelligence to
the U.S. drone program and provide access to U.K. air bases for certain aspects of operations. Other States provide further logistical
support to the drone program, and in 2016 Italy reached an agreement allowing U.S. drone strikes to be launched from the Sigonella
States that assist U.S. drone strikes in these ways are themselves subject to
air base in Sicily.
international law standards, which may attribute responsibility to them for any wrongful acts
committed by the U.S . The question of the attribution of State responsibility at
international
law is largely summarized and encapsulated in the International Law Commission’s Articles on
Responsibility of States for Internationally Wrongful Acts (‘the ASR’), now generally agreed to reflect customary
international law binding on all States. Article 16 of the ASR provides that a State which “aids or assists another State” in the commission of any wrongful
act is responsible if the assisting State “does so with knowledge of the circumstances of the internationally wrongful act” a nd the act “would be
internationally wrongful if committed” by the assisting State. The International Court of Justice considered this type of liability in the Bosnia Genocide
case, and concluded that a State would be liable for aiding and assisting another to violate international law where the assisting State was actually
aware of plans of the recipient, which as a matter of fact would violate international law (a speculative opinion being insufficient). Articles 40 and 41
provide a narrower rule, applying only in circumstances where fundamental non-derogable principles of international law – what are known as ‘jus
cogens norms’ – are concerned. Where one State is guilty of such a serious breach, other States are prohibited from rendering any assistance, whether
The significance of the change between the
before or after the event, to support or legitimize the unlawful situation .

Obama PPG and the Trump PSP for assisting States is as follows. While there has been
some recent wavering (in particular in U.K. Government statements following the Royal Air Force drone strike on British
citizen Reyaad Khan in Syria in August 2015), no European State that renders assistance to the U.S. drone
program accepts the doctrine of a worldwide armed conflict justifying drone strikes against any
target affiliated with al-Qaeda or ISIS. As a result, for European States to square their assistance to
the U.S. drone program with their own obligations not to facilitate or maintain strikes that
violate international law, those States have needed to be able to point to restrictions in U.S.
practice that give them comfort that the U.S. is in compliance with the legal standards they
recognize. The Obama PPG criterion that targets outside established areas of armed hostilities should only be targeted when
posing a “continuing, imminent threat” afforded assisting States that cover: They could rely on that restriction
as indicating that strikes would be carried out only where they would have been justified by one of the international law principles,
which allows responses to imminent threats – perhaps anticipatory self-defense as a matter of the jus ad bellum, or the sort of
necessary action in response to a threat, which is an allowable exception to international human right law’s protection of the right to

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life. Confident that, whatever the disagreements over legal theory, the facts of the U.S. drone program would conform with the
restrictions they themselves observed, assisting States were able to continue support, while avoiding being fixed with knowledge of
intentional legal violations. But the deletion of the “continuing and imminent threat” standard in the
Trump PSP appears to signal that the U.S. posture unequivocally entails the
use of lethal force against persons who do not pose a threat and who lie outside the scope of any armed
conflict recognized by States other than the U.S. Even if that has always been the U.S. approach in theory,
the Trump PSP removes the Obama PPG fig leaf, which suggested that its excesses might be
mitigated in practice. (Although, as Letta Taylor astutely pointed out recently, the extent of compliance under the Obama
administration is questionable). States assisting the U.S. must now, in light of the Trump PSP,
investigate and clarify both U.S. intentions and their own policy regarding continued
cooperation. States can hardly maintain their previous favorable reading of the U.S. drone
program, based on the studied ambiguity of the Obama PPG. Fixed with the knowledge that a program
allows for the overseas assassination of non-threatening individuals outside the context of armed conflict, States rendering logistical
and intelligence assistance to the U.S. drone program will be forced to interrogate each and every drone strike if they are to ensure
that they avoid liability for complicity under Article 16 or Articles 40 and 41 of the ASR. States can no longer have a blanket policy of
providing assistance. Up until now, assisting States have avoided either devising or disclosing any of the grounds upon which they

assess the legality of the U.S. drone strikes to which they render assistance. In
the coming Trump environment,
where compliance with U.S. executive branch policy may well not be sufficient, even on a
charitable reading, to give comfort that strikes are deployed in a manner compliant with
international law, the burden on States to develop mechanisms to satisfy themselves, and
their citizens, that what they are involved in is lawful, will be accordingly even heavier.

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Ethics Advantage

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US Cutting Military Aid Now – 1NC

The Senate will cut military aid to Saudi Arabia now
Susan Ferrechio, 12-6-2018, "Sen ate heading for historic vote to pull US military aid to
Saudi Arabia" , Washington
Examiner,
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/congress/senate-heading-for-historic-vote-topull-
us-military-aid-to-saudi-arabia

The Senate could begin debating a measure as early as Monday that would override the
for the Saudi-led war in Yemen. The
Trump administration and force the withdrawal of U.S. support
effort
is fueled in large part by a strong sense among lawmakers in both parties that the United
States needs to rebuke Saudi Arabia over the murder of dissident Jamal Khashoggi . The Senate has
never considered a measure to withdraw U.S. military forces from an overseas conflict, and the resolution would compel them to take such a vote. Many
think the Senate will take it up. The vote hasn’t been scheduled yet, but Senate lawmakers anticipate Monday’s agenda will include passage of a motion
to proceed to the joint resolution. “My guess is it’s got more than 51,” said Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob
Corker, R-Tenn., referring to a majority vote in the Senate that would be needed to proceed to the measure. “My sense is the motion to proceed will be
successful.” The tri-partisan measure is sponsored by Sens. Mike Lee, R-Utah, Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Chris Murphy, D-Conn. and
calls
for ending U.S. military involvement in the war between a Saudi-led coalition and Iran-backed
Houthis in Yemen. Sanders, Lee, and Murphy believe the United States should not be aiding
the Saudis in a war that has created a humanitarian crisis in Yemen . According to lawmakers, 10,000
civilians have been killed in the war and 40,000 have been wounded. The majority of the
population is struggling to avoid starvation. A large faction of Republican lawmakers is eager to avoid a vote on the War
Powers Act because they believe it would set a dangerous precedent that could be applied to any United States ally. At the same time, they are
determined to rebuke the Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who the CIA
determined is responsible for the October murder and dismemberment of Khashoggi in the
Saudi consulate in Istanbul.

US Cutting Military Aid Now – 2NC

The senate is moving to cut aid
Rachel Oswald, 11-28-2018, "Senate Defies Trump on Saudi Arabia, Advances Yemen
Measure", Roll Call, https://www.rollcall.com/news/politics/senate-saudi-arabia-vote

In a rebuke to the White House, the Senate cast a procedural vote Wednesday to advance a resolution
that would cut off most U.S. military aid to Saudi
Arabia’s war operations in
Yemen. The Senate voted 63-37 to agree to a motion to discharge the Foreign Relations Committee from considering the measure, which authorizes the
chamber to begin mulling the resolution, a debate that is likely to occur next week.

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Congress will push to challenge trump and limit aid

Nahal Toosi and Marianne Levine, 12-5-2018, "Congress looks to usurp Trump’s foreign policy
powers", POLITICO, https://www.politico.com/story/2018/12/05/congress-trump-foreignpolicy-
jamal-khashoggi-yemen-1046064

The Senate is on the verge of an extraordinary rebuke of Donald Trump’s foreign policy,
underscoring a bipartisan willingness to encroach on the president’s powers as commander
in chief. From forcing Trump to impose sanctions on Russia to raising questions about his
nuclear trigger finger, lawmakers are repeatedly asserting themselves in an area long
dominated by the executive branch. And now the fury is so great on Capitol Hill over the Saudi
murder of Washington Post
columnist Jamal Khashoggi — that senators are deliberating over whether to pull U.S. and
the Trump
administration’s tepid response —
support for the Saudi-led coalition fighting in Yemen. That senators have allowed the debate to even reach this stage is itself a reproach
to

Trump, who has downplayed evidence implicating the powerful Saudi crown prince suspected of masterminding the killing. Trump has “forced members of the Senate to clarify that many of us continue to believe
that we are a country that is safe and secure and prosperous when we put our values first and our interests second, not the other way around,” said Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.), a member of the Foreign Relations

it’s Trump’s fellow Republicans who have often led the charge against his foreign
Committee. In fact,

policy — a sign that his nationalist views have gained little traction in his party’s upper rungs.
And with Democrats taking control of the House next month, the Hill’s intrusion on foreign
policy is likely to get even sharper. Trump’s disdain for multilateralism, insults to U.S. allies and
transactional approach to dealings with other countries have
Republicans and Democrats alike. long alarmed top
Trump’s attempts to gain favor with Russian President Vladimir Putin also upset many in both parties. Signs that Congress would push

back on Trump came within weeks of his taking office in 2017, when he proposed a budget that slashed funding for the State Department by a third. Republicans and Democrats dismissed the proposal and used
their budget-setting power to protect funding for U.S. diplomacy. Later in the year, Congress overwhelmingly passed a bill imposing sanctions on Russia over its interference in the 2016 presidential race. Unlike
other such measures, the bill did not include a provision allowing the president to unilaterally waive sanctions, another rebuke of Trump, who reluctantly signed the veto-proof bill even as he said parts were
unconstitutional. The congressional reprimands of Trump also have taken other, often symbolic forms. One example came when the GOP chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Bob Corker of
Tennessee, convened a hearing to examine the president’s authority to use nuclear weapons. The hearing indicated that lawmakers did not trust Trump’s judgment, especially as he was exchanging heated rhetoric
at the time with the nuclear-armed leader of North Korea. Lawmakers on the left and right have frequently issued statements slamming the president for insulting U.S. allies in Europe and beyond. Behind the
scenes, some lawmakers reach out directly to officials in offended governments to assure them of America’s continued support. Lawmakers also have supported resolutions re-affirming U.S. support for the NATO
military alliance. Earlier this year, a bipartisan group introduced legislation that would bar the president from quitting NATO without Senate consent. Senate Republicans, including Corker and Sen. Pat Toomey (R-
Pa.), pushed legislation earlier this year that would give Congress the authority to sign off on tariffs linked to national security, in a sign of their unease with Trump’s protectionist tendencies. The congressional
rebukes at times extend to foreign policy matters in which the president appears to take little interest. Next week, the House is expected to easily pass a resolution declaring that the Myanmar military has been
waging a genocide against Rohingya Muslims. The move amounts to a swipe at Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and an administration that refuses to take a stand on whether the anti-Rohingya

moves “reflect a bipartisan majority of lawmakers who are fundamentally

campaign amounts to genocide. Such

more internationalist and humanitarian in their global outlook than the president ,” said
Mariah Sixkiller, a former adviser to Democrat Steny Hoyer, the incoming House majority
leader. “On the Republican side, some of that is true compassionate conservatism. That strain still exists.” Jamie Fly, a former adviser to GOP Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, noted: “There appear to be few
repercussions with voters for Republican members who oppose the president on foreign policy – indicating perhaps that the Republican base may continue to support him in spite of his foreign policy views rather

The ongoing Congress-White House clash over Saudi Arabia encapsulates many
than because of them.”

concerns on the Hill about Trump, including his admiration for dictators, his vitriol toward
journalists and a transactional approach to foreign affairs that puts little value on human rights
. Senators briefed this week by CIA director Gina Haspel say they are more convinced

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than ever that the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, orchestrated the murder of
Khashoggi. Khashoggi, who was living in the United States, had criticized the prince. He disappeared on Oct. 2 after entering the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey. The Saudi government admits he
was killed by a hit squad waiting for him, but it denies the prince played a role. Trump has argued that Saudi Arabia is too important to U.S. interests — keeping oil markets stable, containing Iran, and selling

weapons — to anger by punishing the heir apparent. But top lawmakers from both parties say they cannot let the crown
prince off the hook. MBS, as he is also known, is in his 30s; if he reaches the throne he could rule for decades, and his record of squelching dissent so far has some lawmakers deeply alarmed
about his future reign.

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Nuclear War = Extinction – 1NC

Nuke war causes extinction AND outweighs other existential risks
PND 16. internally citing Zbigniew Brzezinski, Council of Foreign Relations and former national
security adviser to President Carter, Toon and Robock’s 2012 study on nuclear winter in the
Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, Gareth Evans’ International Commission on Nuclear
Nonproliferation and Disarmament Report, Congressional EMP studies, studies on nuclear
winter by Seth Baum of the Global Catastrophic Risk Institute and Martin Hellman of Stanford
University, and U.S. and Russian former Defense Secretaries and former heads of nuclear missile
forces, brief submitted to the United Nations General Assembly, Open-Ended Working Group on
nuclear risks. A/AC.286/NGO/13. 05-03-2016.
http://www.reachingcriticalwill.org/images/documents/Disarmamentfora/OEWG/2016/Docum
ents/NGO13.pdf

Consequences human survival 12. Even if the 'other' side does NOT launch in response
the smoke from 'their' burning cities (incinerated by 'us') will still make 'our' country (and the rest uninhabitable of
the world) ,
potentially inducing global famine lasting up to decades . Toon and Robock note in ‘Self Assured
Destruction’, in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists 68/5, 2012, that: 13. “A nuclear war between
Russia and the United States, even after the arsenal reductions planned under New START, could produce a nuclear winter. Hence, an
attack by either side could be

suicidal, resulting in self assured destruction . Even a 'small' nuclear war between India and
Pakistan , with each country detonating 50 Hiroshima-size atom bombs--only about 0.03 percent of the global nuclear
arsenal's

explosive power--as air bursts in urban areas, could

produce so much smoke that temperatures would fall
below those of the Little Ice Age of the fourteenth to nineteenth centuries, shortening the growing season
around the world and threatening the global food supply. Furthermore, there would be massive ozone
depletion, allowing more ultraviolet radiation to reach Earth's surface. Recent studies predict that
agricultural production in U nited S tates and China
parts of the would decline by about 20 percent for
four years, and by 10 percent for a decade.” 14. A conflagration involving USA/NATO forces and those of Russian federation would

most likely cause the deaths of most/nearly all/ all humans (and severely impact/extinguish other
species ) as well as destroying the delicate interwoven techno-structure on which latter-
day 'civilization' has come to depend. Temperatures would drop to below those of the last
iceage for up to 30 years as a result of the lofting of up to 180 million tonnes of very black soot
into the stratosphere where it would remain for decades. 15. Though human ingenuity and
resilience shouldn't be underestimated, human survival itself is arguably problematic, to put it
mildly, under a 2000+ warhead USA/Russian federation scenario. 16. The Joint Statement on Catastrophic Humanitarian
Consequences signed October 2013 by 146 governments mentioned 'Human Survival' no less than 5 times. The most recent

(December 2014) one gives it a highly prominent place. Gareth Evans ’ ICNND (International Commission on
Nuclear Non-proliferation and Disarmament) Report made it clear that it saw the threat posed
by nuclear weapons use as one that at least threatens what we now call 'civilization' and that potentially

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threatens human survival with an immediacy that even climate change does not , though we
can
see the results of climate change here and now and of course the immediate post-nuclear results for Hiroshima and Nagasaki as well.

Nuclear War Outweighs the Aff – 1NC

Outweighs the aff – endlessly repeating that military aid “causes violence” is
NOT a substitute for impact calculus – some violence matters more, and war is
conceptually distinct!
Tarak Barkawi 12, PhD in Political Science, Reader in the Department of International
Relations, London School of Economics, “Of Camps and Critiques: A Reply to ‘Security, War,
Violence’,” Millennium - Journal of International Studies September 2012 vol. 41 no. 1 124-130

A final totalising move in ‘Security, War, Violence’ is the idea that the study of war should be subsumed
under the category of ‘violence’ . The reasons offered for this are: violence does not entail a
hierarchy in which war is privileged; a focus on violence encourages
us to see war in relational terms and makes visible other kinds of violence besides that of war ; and that the

analysis of violence somehow

enables the disentangling of politics from war and a proper critique of liberal violence.22 I have no particular objection to the study of
violence, and I certainly think there should be more of it in the social sciences. However, why and how this obviates or subsumes the
study of war is obscure to me . Is war not
historically significant enough to justify inquiry into
War is a more specific category it? relative to violence in general, referring to reciprocal organised
violence between political entities. I make no claims that
the study of war should be privileged over that of
other forms of violence. Both the violence of war, and that of, say, patriarchy, demand scholarly attention, but they

are also distinct if related topics requiring different forms of theorisation and inquiry . As for
relationality, the category of war is already inherently relational; one does not need the concept of
violence in general to see this. What precisely distinguishes war from many other kinds of violence, such
as genocide or massacre, is that war is a relational form of violence in which the other side

shoots back. This is ultimately the source of war’s generative social powers, for it is amidst the clash of arms that the truths which define social and political orders are
brought into question. A broader focus on violence in general risks losing this central, distinctive
character of the violence of war . Is it really more theoretically or politically adequate to
start
referring to the Second World War as an instance of ‘violence’? Equally, while I
am all for the analysis of liberal violence, another broad ‘structural violence’ category which would include issues of , I also think we
have far from exhausted the subject of liberalism and war, an important area of inquiry now dominated by the mostly self-
serving nostrums of the
liberal peace debates.

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Util – 1NC
Our impacts outweigh – utilitarianism
Seth D. Baum & Anthony M. Barrett 18. Global Catastrophic Risk Institute. 2018. “Global
Catastrophes: The Most Extreme Risks.” Risk in Extreme Environments: Preparing, Avoiding,
Mitigating, and Managing, edited by Vicki Bier, Routledge, pp. 174–184.

2. What Is GCR And Why Is It Important? Taken

literally , a global catastrophe can be any event that is in
some way catastrophic across the globe. This suggests a rather low threshold for what counts as a
global catastrophe. An event causing just one death on each continent (say, from a jet-setting assassin) could rate as a global

catastrophe, because surely these deaths would be catastrophic for the deceased and their loved ones. However, in

common usage, a global catastrophe would be catastrophic for a significant portion of the
globe. Minimum thresholds have variously been set around ten thousand to ten million deaths or $10 billion to $10 trillion in
damages (Bostrom and Ćirković 2008), or death of one quarter of the human population (Atkinson 1999; Hempsell 2004). Others
have
emphasized catastrophes
civilization (Beckstead 2013), that human civilization does not recover from that cause long-term
declines in the trajectory
of human
(Maher and Baum 2013),

that drastically reduce humanity’s potential for future achievements (Bostrom 2002, using the term
“ existential risk ”), or that result in human extinction (Matheny 2007; Posner 2004). A common theme
across all these treatments of GCR is that some catastrophes are vastly more
important than others . Carl Sagan was perhaps the first to recognize this, in his commentary on nuclear winter
(Sagan

1983). Withoutnuclear winter, a global nuclear war might kill several hundred million people.
This is obviously a major catastrophe, but humanity would presumably carry on. However,
with nuclear winter , per Sagan, humanity could go extinct . The loss would be not just an
additional four billion or so deaths, but the loss of
all future generations . To paraphrase Sagan, the
loss would be billions and billions of lives, or even more . Sagan estimated 500 trillion lives ,
assuming humanity would continue for ten million
more years, which he cited as typical for a successful species. Sagan’s 500 trillion number may
even be an underestimate . The analysis here
takes an adventurous turn, hinging on the evolution of the human species and the long-term fate of the universe. On these long time
scales, the descendants of contemporary humans may no longer be recognizably “human”. The issue then is whether the
descendants are still worth caring about, whatever they are. If they are, then it begs the question of how many of them there will be.
Barring major global catastrophe, Earth will remain habitable for about one billion more years 2 until the Sun gets too warm and
large. The rest of the Solar System, Milky Way galaxy, universe, and (if it exists) the multiverse will remain habitable for a lot longer

than that (Adams and Laughlin 1997), should our descendants gain the capacity to migrate there. An
open question in
astronomy is whether it is possible for the descendants of humanity to continue living for an
infinite length of time or instead merely an astronomically large but finite length of time (see

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e.g. Ćirković 2002; Kaku 2005). Either way, the stakes with global catastrophes could be much larger
than the loss of 500 trillion lives. Debates about the infinite vs. the merely astronomical are
of theoretical interest (Ng 1991; Bossert et al. 2007), but they have limited practical significance . This
can be seen when evaluating GCRs from a standard risk-equals-probability-times-magnitude
framework . Using Sagan’s 500 trillion lives estimate, it follows that reducing the probability
of global catastrophe by a mere one-in-500-trillion chance is of the same significance as
saving one human life. Phrased differently, society should try 500 trillion times harder to
prevent a

global catastrophe than it should to save a person’s life . Or, preventing one million deaths is
equivalent to a one-in500-million reduction in the probability of global catastrophe. This
suggests society should make extremely large investment in
virtually all other objectives. GCR reduction, at the expense of
Judge and legal scholar Richard Posner made a similar point in monetary terms (Posner
2004). Posner used $50,000 as the value of a statistical human life (VSL) and 12 billion humans as the total loss of life (double the
2004 world population); he describes both figures as significant underestimates. Multiplying them gives $600 trillion as an
underestimate of the value of preventing global catastrophe. For comparison, the United States government typically uses a VSL of
around one to ten million dollars (Robinson 2007). Multiplying a $10 million VSL with 500 trillion lives gives $5x1021 as the value of
preventing global catastrophe. But even using “just" $600 trillion, society should be willing to spend at least that much
to prevent a global catastrophe, which converts to being willing to spend at least $1
million for a one-in-500-million
reduction in the probability of global catastrophe. Thus while reasonable disagreement exists
on how large of a VSL to use and how much to count future generations, even low-end
positions suggest vast resource allocations should be redirected to reducing GCR. This
conclusion is only strengthened when considering the astronomical size of the stakes , but the
same point holds either way. The bottom line is that, as long as something along the lines of the standard
riskequals-probability-times-magnitude framework is being used, then even tiny GCR
reductions merit significant effort. This point holds especially strongly for risks of
catastrophes that would cause permanent harm to global human civilization . The discussion thus
far has assumed that all human lives are valued equally. This assumption is not
universally held . People often value some people more than others, favoring themselves, their
family

and friends, their compatriots, their generation, or others whom they identify with. Great debates rage on across
moral philosophy, economics, and other fields about how much people should value others
who are distant in space, time, or social relation, as well as the unborn members of future generations. This debate is crucial
for all valuations of risk, including GCR. Indeed, if each of us only cares about our immediate selves, then global catastrophes may not
be especially important, and we probably have better things to do with our time than worry about them. While everyone has
the right to their own views and feelings , we find that the strongest arguments are for the widely
held position that all human lives should be valued equally . This position is succinctly stated in
the United States Declaration of Independence, updated in the 1848 Declaration of Sentiments: “We hold these truths to be

selfevident: that all men and 3 women are created equal”. Philosophers speak of an agent-neutral, objective

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“view from nowhere” (Nagel 1986) or a “veil of ignorance” (Rawls 1971) in which each person considers
what is best for society irrespective of which member of society they happen to be . Such a
perspective suggests valuing everyone equally , regardless of who they are or where or when
they live. This in turn suggests a very high value for reducing GCR , or a high degree of priority
for GCR reduction efforts.

Util – 2NC
Util’s the only coherent ethical philosophy – all human lives have potential
value, which means the only imperative is to maximize the number of lives
preserved – nuke war kills the 8 billion on the planet NOW and the hundreds of
trillions in future generations – that’s Baum and Barrett

Their ethics are tautological – competing rights claims collapse – the only option
is to maximize lives saved
Joshua Greene 10, Associate Professor of Social science in the Department of Psychology at
Harvard University, “The Secret Joke of Kant’s Soul published in Moral Psychology: Historical and
Contemporary Readings,” Historical and Contemporary Readings,
www.fed.cuhk.edu.hk/~lchang/material/Evolutionary/Developmental/Greene-KantSoul.pdf
What turn-of-the-millennium science is telling us is that human moral judgment is not a
pristine
rational enterprise
, that our moral judgments are driven by a hodgepodge
of emotional dispositions, which themselves were
shaped by a hodgepodge of evolutionary forces, both biological and cultural. Because of this, it is exceedingly unlikely that there is
any rationally coherent normative moral theory that can accommodate our moral intuitions. Moreover, anyone who claims to have
such a theory, or even part of one, almost certainly doesn't. Instead, what that person probably has is a moral rationalization. It
seems then, that we have somehow crossed the infamous "is"-"ought" divide. How did this happen? Didn't Hume (Hume, 1978) and
Moore (Moore, 1966) warn us against trying to derive an "ought" from and "is?" How did we go from descriptive scientific theories
concerning moral psychology to skepticism about a whole class of normative moral theories? The answer is that we did not, as Hume
and Moore anticipated, attempt to derive an "ought" from and "is." That is, our method has been inductive rather than deductive.
We have inferred on the basis of the available evidence that the phenomenon of rationalist deontological philosophy is best
explained as a rationalization of evolved emotional intuition (Harman, 1977). Missing the Deontological Point I suspect that

rationalist deontologists will remain unmoved by the arguments presented here. Instead, I suspect, they
will insist that I have simply misunderstood what Kant and like-minded deontologists are all about. Deontology, they will
say, isn't about this intuition or that intuition. It's not defined by its normative differences with consequentialism. Rather, deontology
is about taking humanity seriously. Above all else, it's about respect for persons. It's about treating others as fellow rational creatures
rather than as mere objects, about acting for reasons rational beings can share. And so on (Korsgaard, 1996a; Korsgaard, 1996b). This
is, no doubt, how many deontologists see deontology. But this insider's view, as I've suggested, may be misleading. The problem,
is that it defines deontology in terms of values that are not distinctively
more specifically,
deontological, though they may appear to be from the inside. Consider the following analogy with religion.
When one asks a religious person to explain the essence of his religion, one often gets an answer like this: "It's about love, really. It's
about looking out for other people, looking beyond oneself. It's about community, being part of something larger than oneself." This
sort of answer accurately captures the phenomenology of many people's religion, but it's nevertheless inadequate for distinguishing
religion from other things. This is because many, if not most, non-religious people aspire to love deeply, look out for other people,
avoid self-absorption, have a sense of a community, and be connected to things larger than themselves. In other words, secular
humanists and atheists can assent to most of what many religious people think religion is all about. From a secular humanist's point

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of view, in contrast, what's distinctive about religion is its commitment to the existence of supernatural entities as well as formal
religious institutions and doctrines. And they're right. These things really do distinguish religious from non-religious practices, though
they may appear to be secondary to many people operating from within a religious point of view. In the same way, I believe that
most of the standard deontological/Kantian self-characterizatons fail to distinguish deontology from other approaches to ethics. (See
also Kagan (Kagan, 1997, pp. 70-78.) on the difficulty of defining deontology.) It seems to me that consequentialists, as

much as anyone else, have respect for persons, are against treating people as mere objects, wish to act
for reasons that rational creatures can share, etc. A consequentialist respects other persons, and refrains from
treating them as mere objects, by counting every person's well-being in the decision-making process.
Likewise, a consequentialist attempts to act according to reasons that rational creatures can share by acting according to principles
that give equal weight to everyone's interests, i.e. that are impartial. This is not to say that consequentialists and deontologists don't
differ. They do. It's just that the real differences may not be what deontologists often take them to be. What, then, distinguishes
deontology from other kinds of moral thought? A good strategy for answering this question is to start with concrete disagreements
between deontologists and others (such as consequentialists) and then work backward in search of deeper principles. This is what
I've attempted to do with the trolley and footbridge cases, and other instances in which deontologists and consequentialists

disagree. Ifyou ask a deontologically-minded person why it's wrong to push someone in front of
speeding trolley in order to save five others, you will get characteristically deontological answers. Some will be
tautological: "Because it's murder!" Others will be more sophisticated: "The ends don't justify the means."
"You have to respect people's rights." But, as we know, these answers don't really explain anything, because if you
give the same people (on different occasions) the trolley case or the loop case (See above), they'll make the opposite judgment,
even though their initial explanation concerning the footbridge case applies equally well to one or both of these cases. Talk about
rights, respect for persons, and reasons we can share are natural attempts to explain, in "cognitive" terms, what we feel when we
find ourselves having emotionally driven intuitions that are odds with the cold calculus of consequentialism. Although these

explanations are inevitably incomplete, there seems to be "something deeply right" about them because
they give voice to powerful moral emotions. But, as with many religious people's accounts of what's essential to
religion, they don't really explain what's distinctive about the philosophy in question.

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Realism True – 1NC

Realism true
Marcelo de Araujo 14, professor for Ethics at Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro, “Moral
Enhancement and Political Realism,” Journal of Evolution and Technology 24(2): 29-43

moral enhancement theorists argue that a society of morally enhanced individuals would be in
Some

a better position to cope with

important climate change , grand scale terrorist attacks , or the risk of catastrophic wars. problems
that humankind is likely to
face in the future such
as, for instance, the threats posed by The
assumption here is quite simple: our inability to cope successfully with these problems stems mainly
from a sort of deficit in human beings’ moral motivation . If human beings were morally better
– if we had enhanced moral dispositions – there would be fewer wars, less terrorism , and more willingness to save
our environment . Although simple and attractive, this assumption is , as I intend to show, false . At the root of threats
to
the survival of humankind in the future is not a deficit in our moral disposition s , but the endurance
of a n old political arrangement that prevents the pursuit of shared goals on a
collective basis. The political arrangement I have in mind here is the international system of states. In my analysis of the political implications of moral enhancement, I intend to concentrate my
attention only on the supposition that we could avoid major wars in the future by making individuals morally better. I do not intend to discuss the threats posed by climate change, or by terrorism, although some
human enhancement theorists also seek to cover these topics. I will explain, in the course of my analysis, a conceptual distinction between “human nature realism” and “structural realism,” well-known in the field
of international relations theory. Thomas Douglas seems to have been among the first to explore the idea of “moral enhancement” as a new form of human enhancement. He certainly helped to kick off the
current phase of the debate. In a paper published in 2008, Douglas suggests that in the “future people might use biomedical technology to morally enhance themselves.” Douglas characterizes moral enhancement
in terms of the acquisition of “morally better motives” (Douglas 2008, 229). Mark Walker, in a paper published in 2009, suggests a similar idea. He characterizes moral enhancement in terms of improved moral
dispositions or “genetic virtues”: The Genetic Virtue Program (GVP) is a proposal for influencing our moral nature through biology, that is, it is an alternate yet complementary means by which ethics and ethicists
might contribute to the task of making our lives and world a better place. The basic idea is simple enough: genes influence human behavior, so altering the genes of individuals may alter the influence genes exert
on behavior. (Walker 2009, 27–28) Walker does not argue in favor of any specific moral theory, such as, for instance, virtue ethics. Whether one endorses a deontological or a utilitarian approach to ethics, he
argues, the concept of virtue is relevant to the extent that virtues motivate us either to do the right thing or to maximize the good (Walker 2009, 35). Moral enhancement theory, however, does not reduce the
ethical debate to the problem of moral dispositions. Morality also concerns, to a large extent, questions about reasons for action. And moral enhancement, most certainly, will not improve our moral beliefs;
neither could it be used to settle moral disagreements. This seems to have led some authors to criticize the moral enhancement idea on the ground that it neglects the cognitive side of our moral behavior. Robert
Sparrow, for instance, argues that, from a Kantian point of view, moral enhancement would have to provide us with better moral beliefs rather than enhanced moral motivation (Sparrow 2014, 25; see also Agar

Many people, across different countries, already

2010, 74). Yet, it seems to me that this objection misses the point of the moral enhancement idea.

share moral beliefs relating, for instance, to the wrongness of harming or killing other people
arbitrarily, or to the moral requirement to help people in need. They may share moral beliefs while not sharing the same reasons for these beliefs, or perhaps even not being able to articulate the
beliefs in the conceptual framework of a moral theory (Blackford 2010, 83). But although they share some moral beliefs, in some circumstances they may lack the appropriate motivation to act accordingly. Moral
enhancement, thus, aims at improving moral motivation, and leaves open the question as to how to improve our moral judgments. In a recent paper, published in The Journal of Medical Ethics, neuroscientist
Molly Crockett reports the state of the art in the still very embryonic field of moral enhancement. She points out, for example, that the selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) citalopram seems to increase
harm aversion. There is, moreover, some evidence that this substance may be effective in the treatment of specific types of aggressive behavior. Like Douglas, Crockett emphasizes that moral enhancement should
aim at individuals’ moral motives (Crockett 2014; see also Spence 2008; Terbeck et al. 2013). Another substance that is frequently mentioned in the moral enhancement literature is oxytocin. Some

studies suggest that willingness to cooperate with other people,and to trust unknown prospective cooperators, may be
enhanced by an increase in the levels of oxytocin in the organism (Zak 2008, 2011; Zak and Kugler 2011; Persson and Savulescu 2012, 118–119). Oxytocin
has also been reported to be “associated with the subjective experience of empathy” (Zak 2011, 55; Zak and Kugler 2011, 144). The question I would like to examine now concerns the supposition that moral
enhancement – comprehended in these terms and assuming for the sake of argument that, some day, it might become effective and safe – may also help us in coping with the threat of devastating wars in the

The assumption that there is a relationship between, on the one hand, threats to the survival of
future.

humankind and, on the other, a sort of “deficit” in our moral dispositions is clearly made by some moral
enhancements theorists. Douglas, for instance, argues that “according to many plausible theories, some of the world’s most important problems — such as developing world poverty,
climate change and war — can be attributed to these moral deficits” (2008, 230). Walker, in a similar vein, writes about the possibility of “using biotechnology to alter our biological natures in an effort to reduce
evil in the world” (2009, 29). And Julian Savulescu and Ingmar Persson go as far as to defend the “the need for moral enhancement” of humankind in a series of articles, and in a book published in 2012. One of the
reasons Savulescu and Persson advance for the moral enhancement of humankind is that our moral dispositions seem to have remained basically unchanged over the last millennia (Persson and Savulescu 2012, 2).
These dispositions have proved thus far quite useful for the survival of human beings as a species. They have enabled us to cooperate with each other in the collective production of things such as food, shelter,
tools, and farming. They have also played a crucial role in the creation and refinement of a variety of human institutions such as settlements, villages, and laws. Although the possibility of free-riding has never been
fully eradicated, the benefits provided by cooperation have largely exceeded the disadvantages of our having to deal with occasional uncooperative or untrustworthy individuals (Persson and Savulescu 2012, 39).

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The problem, however, is that the same dispositions that have enabled human beings in the past to engage in the collective production of so many artifacts and institutions now seem powerless in the face of the
human capacity to destroy other human beings on a grand scale, or perhaps even to annihilate the entire human species. There is, according to Savulescu and Persson, a “mismatch” between our cognitive
faculties and our evolved moral attitudes: “[…] as we have repeatedly stressed, owing to the progress of science, the range of our powers of action has widely outgrown the range of our spontaneous moral
attitudes, and created a dangerous mismatch” (Persson and Savulescu 2012, 103; see also Persson and Savulescu 2010, 660; Persson and Savulescu 2011b; DeGrazie 2012, 2; Rakić 2014, 2). This worry about the
mismatch between, on the one hand, the modern technological capacity to destroy and, on the other, our limited moral commitments is not new. The political philosopher Hans Morgenthau, best known for his
defense of political realism, called attention to the same problem nearly fifty years ago. In the wake of the first successful tests with thermonuclear bombs, conducted by the USA and the former Soviet Union,
Morgenthau referred to the “contrast” between the technological progress of our age and our feeble moral attitudes as one of the most disturbing dilemmas of our time: The first dilemma consists in the contrast
between the technological unification of the world and the parochial moral commitments and political institutions of the age. Moral commitments and political institutions, dating from an age which modern
technology has left behind, have not kept pace with technological achievements and, hence, are incapable of controlling their destructive potentialities. (Morgenthau 1962, 174) Moral enhancement theorists and
political realists like Morgenthau, therefore, share the thesis that our natural moral dispositions are not strong enough to prevent human beings from endangering their own existence as a species. But they differ
as to the best way out of this quandary: moral enhancement theorists argue for the re-engineering of our moral dispositions, whereas Morgenthau accepted the immutability of human nature and argued, instead,
for the re-engineering of world politics. Both positions, as I intend to show, are wrong in assuming that the “dilemma” results from the weakness of our spontaneous moral dispositions in the face of the

both positions are correct in recognizing the real possibility

unprecedented technological achievements of our time. On the other hand,

of global catastrophes resulting from the malevolent use of, for instance, biotechnology or

nuclear capabilities. The supposition that individuals’ unwillingness to cooperate with each other, even when they would be better-off by choosing to cooperate, results from a sort of
deficit of dispositions such as altruism, empathy, and benevolence has been at the core of some important political theories. This idea is an important assumption in the works of early modern political realists such
as Machiavelli and Thomas Hobbes. It was also later endorsed by some well-known authors writing about the origins of war in the first half of the twentieth century. It was then believed, as Sigmund Freud

Freud went as far as to

suggested in a text from 1932, that the main cause of wars is a human tendency to “hatred and destruction” (in German: ein Trieb zum Hassen und Vernichtung).

suggest that human beings have an ingrained “inclination” to “aggression” and

“destruction” (Aggressionstrieb, Aggressionsneigung, and Destruktionstrieb), and that this inclination has a “good biological basis” (biologisch wohl begründet) (Freud 1999, 20–24; see also Freud
attempt to employ Freud’s conception of human nature in
1950; Forbes 1984; Pick 1993, 211–227; Medoff 2009). The

understanding international relations has recently been resumed, for instance by Kurt Jacobsen in a paper entitled “Why Freud
Matters: Psychoanalysis and International Relations Revisited,” published in 2013. Morgenthau himself was deeply influenced by Freud’s speculations on the origins of war.1 Early in the 1930s, Morgenthau wrote
an essay called “On the Origin of the Political from the Nature of Human Beings” (Über die Herkunft des Politischen aus dem Wesen des Menschen), which contains several references to Freud’s theory about the
human propensity to aggression.2 Morgenthau’s most influential book, Politics among Nations: The Struggle for Power and Peace, first published in 1948 and then successively revised and edited, is still considered
a landmark work in the tradition of political realism. According to Morgenthau, politics is governed by laws that have their origin in human nature: “Political realism believes that politics, like society in general, is
governed by objective laws that have their roots in human nature” (Morgenthau 2006, 4). Just like human enhancement theorists, Morgenthau also takes for granted that human nature has not changed over recent
millennia: “Human nature, in which the laws of politics have their roots, has not changed since the classical philosophies of China, India, and Greece endeavored to discover these laws” (Morgenthau 2006, 4). And
since, for Morgenthau, human nature prompts human beings to act selfishly, rather than cooperatively, political leaders will sometimes favor conflict over cooperation, unless some superior power compels them to
act otherwise. Now, this is exactly what happens in the domain of international relations. For in the international sphere there is not a supranational institution with the real power to prevent states from pursuing
means of self-defense. The acquisition of means of self-defense, however, is frequently perceived by other states as a threat to their own security. This leads to the security dilemma and the possibility of war. As
Morgenthau put the problem in an article published in 1967: “The actions of states are determined not by moral principles and legal commitments but by considerations of interest and power” (1967, 3). Because
Morgenthau and early modern political philosophers such as Machiavelli and Hobbes defended political realism on the grounds provided by a specific conception human nature, their version of political realism has
been frequently called “human nature realism.” The literature on human nature realism has become quite extensive (Speer 1968; Booth 1991; Freyberg-Inan 2003; Kaufman 2006; Molloy 2006, 82–85; Craig 2007;
Scheuerman 2007, 2010, 2012; Schuett 2007; Neascu 2009; Behr 2010, 210–225; Brown 2011; Jütersonke 2012). It is not my intention here to present a fully-fledged account of the tradition of human nature realism,
but rather to emphasize the extent to which some moral enhancement theorists, in their description of some of the gloomy scenarios humankind is likely to face in the future, implicitly endorse this kind of political
realism. Indeed, like human nature realists, moral enhancement theorists assume that human nature has not changed over the last millennia, and that violence and lack of cooperation in the international sphere
result chiefly from human nature’s limited inclination to pursue morally desirable goals. One may, of course, criticize the human enhancement project by rejecting the assumption that conflict and violence in the

Sparrow correctly argues that “structural

international domain should be explained by means of a theory about human nature. In a reply to Savulescu and Persson,

issues,” rather than human nature , constitute the main factor

underlying political conflicts (Sparrow 2014, 29). But he does not explain what exactly these “structural issues” are, as I intend to do later. Sparrow is right in rejecting the human
nature theory underlying the human enhancement project. But this underlying assumption, in my view, is not trivially false or simply “ludicrous,” as he suggests. Human nature realism has been implicitly or
explicitly endorsed by leading political philosophers ever since Thucydides speculated on the origins of war in antiquity (Freyberg-Inan 2003, 23–36). True, it might be objected that “human nature realism,” as it
was defended by Morgenthau and earlier political philosophers, relied upon a metaphysical or psychoanalytical conception of human nature, a conception that, actually, did not have the support of any serious
scientific investigation (Smith 1983, 167). Yet, over the last few years there has been much empirical research in fields such as developmental psychology and evolutionary biology that apparently gives some
support to the realist claim. Some of these studies suggest that an inclination to aggression and conflict has its origins in our evolutionary history. This idea, then, has recently led some authors to resume “human
nature realism” on new foundations, devoid of the metaphysical assumptions of the early realists, and entirely grounded in empirical research. Indeed, some recent works in the field of international relations
theory already seek to call attention to evolutionary biology as a possible new start for political realism. This point is clearly made, for instance, by Bradley Thayer, who published in 2004 a book called Darwin and
International Relations: On the Evolutionary Origins of War and Ethnic Conflict. And in a paper published in 2000, he affirms the following: Evolutionary theory provides a stronger foundation for realism because it
is based on science, not on theology or metaphysics. I use the theory to explain two human traits: egoism and domination. I submit that the egoistic and dominating behavior of individuals, which is commonly
described as “realist,” is a product of the evolutionary process. I focus on these two traits because they are critical components of any realist argument in explaining international politics. (Thayer 2000, 125; see
also Thayer 2004) Thayer basically argues that a tendency to egoism and domination stems from human evolutionary history. The predominance of conflict and competition in the domain of international politics,
he argues, is a reflex of dispositions that can now be proved to be part of our evolved human nature in a way that Morgenthau and other earlier political philosophers could not have established in their own time.
Now, what some moral enhancement theorists propose is a direct intervention in our “evolved limited moral psychology” as a means to make us “fit” to cope with some possible devastating consequences from
the predominance of conflict and competition in the domain of international politics (Persson and Savulescu 2010, 664). Moral enhancement theorists comprehend the nature of war and conflicts, especially those
conflicts that humankind is likely to face in the future, as the result of human beings’ limited moral motivations. Compared to supporters of human nature realism, however, moral enhancement theorists are less
skeptical about the prospect of our taming human beings’ proclivity to do evil. For our knowledge in fields such as neurology and pharmacology does already enable us to enhance people’s performance in a

variety of activities, and there seems to be no reason to assume it will not enable us to enhance people morally in the future. But the question, of course, is whether moral
enhancement will also survival
of humankind , as Savulescu and Persson propose, or to reduce evil in the world improve the prospect of
our coping successfully with some major
threats to the

, as proposed by Walker. V. The point to which I would next like to call

attention is that “human nature realism” – which is implicitly presupposed by some moral enhancement theorists – has been much criticized over the last decades within the tradition of political realism itself.
“Structural realism,” unlike “human nature realism,” does not seek to derive a theory about conflicts and violence in the context of international relations from a theory of the moral shortcomings of human
nature. Structural realism was originally proposed by Kenneth Waltz in Man, the State and War, published in 1959, and then later in another book called Theory of International Politics, published in 1979. In both
works, Waltz seeks to avoid committing himself to any specific conception of human nature (Waltz 2001, x–xi). Waltz’s thesis is that the thrust of the political realism doctrine can be retained without our having to

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commit ourselves to any theory about the shortcomings of human nature. What is relevant for our understanding of international politics is, instead, our understanding of the “structure” of the international
system of states (Waltz 1986). John Mearsheimer, too, is an important contemporary advocate of political realism. Although he seeks to distance himself from some ideas defended by Waltz, he also rejects human

nature realism and, like Waltz, refers to himself as a supporter of “structural realism” (Mearsheimer 2001, 20).
One of the basic tenets of political realism
(whether “human nature realism” or “structural realism”) is,
first, that the states are the

power in the international arena.

Moral considerations in international affairs, according to realists, are secondary

main, if not the only, relevant actors in the context of international relations;
and second, that states compete for
when set against

the state’s primary goal, . namely its own security and survival But while human nature realists such as Morgenthau explain the struggle
for power as a result of human beings’ natural inclinations, structural realists like Waltz and Mearsheimer argue that
conflicts in the international arena do not stem from human nature, but from the very

“structure” of the international system of states (Mearsheimer 2001, 18). According to Waltz and Mearsheimer, it is this structure that compels individuals
to act as they do in the domain of international affairs. And one distinguishing feature of the international system of states is its
“anarchical structure,” i.e. the lack of a central government analogous to the central governments that exist in the context of domestic politics. It means that
each individual state is responsible for its own integrity and survival. In the absence of a
superior authority, over and above the power of each sovereign state, political leaders often feel compelled to
over morality favor security
, even if, all other things being considered, they would naturally be more inclined to trust and to cooperate with political leaders of other states. On the other hand, when
political

leaders do trust and cooperate with other states, it is not necessarily their benevolent nature that motivates them to be cooperative and trustworthy, but, again, it is the structure of the system of states that
compels them. The concept of human nature, as we can see, does not play a decisive role here. Because Waltz and Mearsheimer depart from “human nature realism,” their version of political realism has also

sometimes been called “neo-realism” (Booth 1991, 533). Thus, even if human being s turn out to become morally enhanced in the future,
humankind may still have to face the same scary scenarios described by some moral enhancement theorists. This is likely to
happen if, indeed, human beings remain compelled to cooperate within the present structure of the system of
states. Consider, for instance, the incident with a Norwegian weather rocket in January 1995. Russian radars detected a missile that was initially suspected of being on its way to reach Moscow in five minutes. All
levels of Russian military defense were immediately put on alert for a possible imminent attack and massive retaliation. It is reported that for the first time in history a Russian president had before him, ready to
be used, the “nuclear briefcase” from which the permission to launch nuclear weapons is issued. And that happened when the Cold War was already supposed to be over! In the event, it was realized that the

under the
rocket was leaving Russian territory and Boris Yeltsin did not have to enter the history books as the man who started the third world war by mistake (Cirincione 2008, 382).3 But

crushing pressure of having to decide in such a short time, and on the basis of unreliable
information, whether or not to retaliate, even a
morally enhanced Yeltsin might have given in spite of strong moral dispositions to
orders to launch a devastating
the contrary. nuclear response – and that
Writing for The Guardian on the basis of recently declassified documents, Rupert Myers reports further incidents similar to the one of 1995. He suggests that as more states
strive

to acquire nuclear capability, the danger of a major nuclear accident is likely to increase (Myers 2014). What has to be changed, therefore, is not human
moral dispositions, but the very structure of the political international system of states within which
we currently live. As far as major threats to the survival of

humankind are concerned, moral enhancement might play an important role in the future only to the extent that it will help humankind to change the structure of the system of states. While moral
enhancement may possibly have desirable results in some areas of human cooperation that do not badly threaten our security – such as

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donating food, medicine, and money to poorer countries – it will not motivate political leaders to dismantle their nuclear
weapons . Neither will it deter other political leaders from pursuing nuclear capability , at any
rate not as long as the structure of international politics compels them to see prospective
cooperators in the present as possible enemies in the future. The idea of a “structure” should not be understood here in metaphysical
terms, as though it mysteriously existed in a transcendent world and had the magical power of determining leaders’ decisions in this world. The word “structure” denotes merely a political arrangement in which

there are no powerful law-enforcing institutions. And in the absence of the kind of security that law-enforcing institutions
have the force to create, political leaders will often fail to cooperate, and occasionally engage in conflicts and
wars, in those areas that are critical to their security and survival. Given the structure of international
politics and the basic goal of survival, this

is likely to continue to happen, even if, in the future, political leaders become less egoistic and power-

seeking through moral enhancement. On the other hand, since the structure of the international system of states is itself another human institution, there is no reason to suppose that it cannot ever
be changed. If people become morally enhanced in the future they may possibly feel more strongly motivated to change the structure of the system of states, or perhaps even feel inclined to abolish it altogether.

In my view, however, addressing major threats to the survival of humankind in the future by means of
bioengineering is unlikely to yield the expected results , so long as moral enhancement
is
pursued within the present framework of the international system of states.

War Turns Structural Violence – 1NC

War turns structural violence
Joshua Goldstein 1, IR professor at American University, War and Gender, p. 412, Google
Books

Many peace scholars and

First, peace activists face a dilemma in thinking about causes of war and working for peace.
activists support the approach, “if you want peace, work for justice.” Then, if one believes that
sexism contributes to war, one can work for gender justice specifically (perhaps. among others) in order to

assumption that injustices cause war. The evidence in this book suggests that causality
pursue peace. This approach brings strategic allies to the peace movement (women, labor, minorities), but rests on
the runs at least as strongly the other way . War is not a product of capitalism, imperialism,
gender, innate aggression, or any other single cause, although all of these influence wars’ outbreaks and
outcomes. Rather, war has in part fueled and sustained these and other injustices. 9 So, “if you
want peace, work for peace.” Indeed, if you want justice (gender and others), work for peace.
Causality does not run just upward through the levels of analysis, from types of individuals, societies, and governments up to war. It runs
downward too. Enloe suggests that changes in attitudes towards war and the military may be the most important way to
“reverse women’s oppression.” The dilemma is that peace work focused on justice brings to the peace movement energy, allies, and
moral grounding, yet, in light of this book’s evidence, the emphasis on injustice as the main cause of war seems
to be empirically inadequate.

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No Root Cause of War – 1NC

No root cause of nukes or war---BUT the DA turns the case.
John Horgan 14. Director of the Center for Science Writings at Stevens Institute of Technology,
“To End War, Focus on Culture Rather than "Root Causes"”, Scientific American, 8-18,
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/to-end-war-focus-on-culture-rather-thanroot-
causes/

When I started researching war, I also assumed that to get rid of war, we have to get rid of its root
causes. The trouble is, scholars have identified countless causes of war. One pseudo-
explanation (which I'm glad Kloor does not mention, and which I rebut early on in my book and in posts such as this) is that
war stems from a compulsion bred into our ancestors by natural selection. Biology underpins war, as it underpins all
human behaviors. The crucial question is, why does war break out in certain places and times and not others? The most
popular non-biological explanations of war are what I call the Malthusian and Marxist hypotheses.
The first posits that war stems from our tendency to over-reproduce and hence fight over land
and other resources. The second holds that war stems from inequality, the tendency of
societies (especially capitalist ones) to divide into haves and have-nots. Scholars have also
blamed wars on religion , racism and nationalism , which Kloor mentions above, as well as such
fundamental social traits as hierarchy, sexism and injustice. If you cherry pick , you
always find evidence to support your favorite theory. But as scholars such as Lewis Fry Richardson

(whom my friend David Berreby recently profiled) have shown, neither the Malthusian and Marxist theories no r any of the
other explanations above can account for the vast diversity of wars . Moreover, some factors
that provoke conflict, such as
religion, can also inhibit it. Religion has inspired some of our greatest antiwar leaders, notably Gandhi and Martin Luther King. I have
found only one theory of war that fits the facts. The theory holds
that war is a self-perpetuating, contagious meme, which can
propagate independently of
other social and environmental factors
. As anthropologist Margaret Mead put it in a famous 1940
essay,
"Warfare Is Only an Invention—Not a Biological Necessity." In other words, the major cause of war is war itself, which has a terrible tendency
to spread even to societies that would prefer to remain peaceful. I make this point in my book and in a 2010 blog post,
"Margaret Mead’s war theory kicks butt of neo-Darwinian and Malthusian models." Here is an edited excerpt: In his 1997 book War
Before Civilization, anthropologist Lawrence Keeley notes that war among North American Indians often stemmed from the
aggression of just a few extremely warlike tribes, "rotten apples that spoiled their regional barrels." He added, "Less aggressive
societies, stimulated by more warlike groups in their vicinity, become more bellicose themselves." Societies in a violent region, the
political scientist Azar Gat emphasizes in his 2006 book War in Human Civilization, have a strong incentive to carry out preemptive
attacks. Societies may "attack the other side in order to eliminate or severely weaken them as a potential enemy. Indeed, this option
only makes the other side more insecure, rendering the security dilemma more acute. War can thus become a self-fulfilling

prophecy. The fear of war breeds war." Many people are pessimistic about ending war because they assume

it will require radical social engineering . World peace will require eliminating
poverty, inequality, sexism, racism or [fill in the blank] . We will need to eradicate religion, or all embrace
the same religion. We will need to get rid of all nation states and become anarchists, or form a single global government. My

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analysis of war suggests that if we want to end war, we don't need to create a society radically
different from our own, let alone a utopia. If we want to end war, we should focus on ending war
and the culture of war rather than on supposed causal factors . If we can do that, we will take

a major step toward solving many other social problems , as I argued in my previous post.
of our
And
that brings me to Keith Kloor's final challenge to me. He devotes much of his column to a discussion of how extremists on both sides of
the conflict between Israel and Palestine have "hijacked the peace process. Horrific spasmodic cycles of violence and death is the

result." He asks me how we can "rid the world of extremist groups that sow the seeds of war." Kloor has his causation

least as much as vice versa

backwards . Just as war promotes poverty, tyranny, inequality and resource depletion at
, so war promotes fanaticism. Once militarism seizes hold of a society, it can transform
vast populations into virtual sociopaths. It turns decent, ethical, reasonable people into intolerant fanatics capable of the most
heinous acts.Breaking out of what Kloor calls "spasmodic cycles of violence and death" can be extraordinarily
difficult, but history offers many examples of societies that have done just that. Germany and
France were bitter, bloody rivals for centuries. But it is now inconceivable that Germany and
France—or any members of the European Union--would go to war against each other. One of my favorite
examples of a nation that has renounced militarism is Costa Rica. Like many of its neighbors in Central
American, Costa was once wracked by terrible violence. But after a bloody civil war in the 1940s, Costa Rica
disbanded its army, freeing up more funds for education, health care, transportation and tourism. It is often ranked as one of
the most peaceful, healthy, "happy" nations in the world.

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Extinction Possible – 1NC

Extinction is possible – their authors underestimate the risk
Anderson 12 (Ross Anderson, deputy director of Aeon Magazine, “We’re Underestimating the
Risk of Human Extinction”, The Atlantic, March 2012,
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/03/were-underestimating-the-risk-
ofhuman-extinction/253821/)

Unthinkable as it may be, humanity, every last person, could someday be wiped from the face
of the Earth. We have learned to worry about asteroids and supervolcanoes, but the more-likely scenario, according to Nick Bostrom, a professor of philosophy at Oxford, is that we
humans will destroy ourselves. Bostrom, who directs Oxford's Future of Humanity Institute, has argued over the course of several papers that human
extinction risks are poorly understood and, worse still, severely underestimated by society. Some of
these existential risks are fairly well known, especially the natural ones. But others are
obscure or even exotic. Most worrying to Bostrom is the subset of existential risks that arise
from human technology, a subset that he expects to grow in number and potency over the next century. Despite his concerns about the risks posed to humans by technological
Bostrom is no luddite. In fact, he is a longtime advocate of transhumanism---the effort to improve the
progress,

human condition, and even human nature itself, through technological means. In the long run
he sees technology as a bridge, a bridge we humans must cross with great care, in order to
reach new and better modes of being. In his work, Bostrom uses the tools of philosophy and
mathematics, in particular probability theory, to try and determine how we as a species might
achieve this safe passage. What follows is my conversation with Bostrom about some of the most interesting and worrying existential risks that humanity might encounter in the
decades and centuries to come, and about what we can do to make sure we outlast them.

AT: Predictions k – 1NC

Predictions are good enough to act on. The aff sets the bar too high
Chernoff 9 (Fred, Prof. IR and Dir. IR – Colgate U., European Journal of International Relations,
“Conventionalism as an Adequate Basis for Policy-Relevant IR Theory”, 15:1, Sage)

For these and other reasons, many social theorists and social scientists have come to the conclusion that prediction is
impossible. Well-known IR reflexivists like Rick Ashley, Robert Cox, Rob Walker and Alex Wendt have attacked naturalism by emphasizing the interpretive nature of
social theory. Ashley is explicit in his critique of prediction, as is Cox, who says quite simply, ‘It is impossible to predict the future’ (Ashley, 1986: 283; Cox, 1987: 139, cf. also
1987: 393). More recently, Heikki Patomäki has argued that ‘qualitative changes and emergence are possible, but predictions are not’ defective and that the latter two
presuppose an unjustifiably narrow notion of ‘prediction’.14 A determined prediction sceptic may continue to hold that there is too great a degree of complexity of social
relationships (which comprise ‘open systems’) to allow any prediction whatsoever. Two very simple examples may circumscribe and help to refute a radical variety of scepticism.

we all make reliable social predictions and do so with great frequency. We can predict with high probability that a
First,

spouse, child or parent will react to certain well-known stimuli that we might supply, based on extensive past experience. More to the point of IR prediction
– scepticism, we
can imagine a young child in the UK who (perhaps at the cinema) (1) picks up a bit of 19th-century British imperial lore thus gaining a sense of the power of the crown, without
knowing anything of current balances of power, (2) hears some stories about the US–UK invasion of Iraq in the context of the aim of advancing democracy, and (3) hears a bit
about communist China and democratic Taiwan. Although the specific term ‘preventativ e strike’ might not enter into her lexicon, it is possible to imagine the child, whose
knowledge is thus limited, thinking that if democratic Taiwan were threatened by China, the UK would (possibly or probably) launch a strike on China to protect it, much as the
UK had done to help democracy in Iraq. In co ntrast to the

child,readers of this journal and scholars who study the world more thoroughly have factual information (e.g. about the relative
military and economic capabilities of the UK and China) and hold some cause-and-effect principles (such as that states do not

usually initiate actions that leaders understand will have an extremely high probability of undercutting their

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power with almost no chances of success). Anyone who has adequate knowledge of world politics would
predict that the UK will not launch a preventive
attack against China. In the real world, China knows that for the next decade and well beyond the UK will not intervene militarily in its affairs .
While Chinese leaders have to plan for many likely — and even a few somewhat unlikely — future possibilities, they do not have to plan for various implausible contingencies:
they do not have to structure forces geared to defend against specifically UK forces and do not ha ve to conduct diplomacy with the UK in a way that would be required if such
an attack were a real possibility. Any rational decision-maker in China may use some cause-and-effect (probabilistic) principles along with knowledge of specific facts relating to
the Sino-British relationship to predict (P2) that the UK will not land its forces on
Chinese territory — even in the event of a war over Taiwan (that is, the probability is very close to zero). The statement P2 qualifies as a pred iction based on DEF above and counts
as knowledge for Chinese political and military decision-makers. A Chinese diplomat or military planner who would deny that theorybased prediction would have no basis to rule
out extremely implausible predictions like P2 and would thus have to prepare for such unlikely contingencies as UK action against China. A reflexivist theorist sceptical of
‘prediction’ in IR might argue that the China example distorts the notion by using a trivial prediction and treating it as a meaningful one. But the critic’s temptation to dismiss its

value stems precisely from the fact that it is so obviously true. The
value to Chinaof knowing that the UK is not a military threat is significant . The fact that, under current
conditions, any plausible cause-and-effect understanding of IR that one might adopt would yield P2, that the ‘UK will not attack China’, does not diminish the value to China of
knowing the UK does not pose a military threat. A critic might also argue that DEF and the China example al low non-scientific claims to count as predictions. But we note that
while physics and chemistry offer precise ‘point predictions’, other natural sciences, such as seismology, genetics or meteorology, produce predictions that are often much less
specific; that is, they describe the predicted ‘events’ in broader time frame and typically in probabilistic terms. We often find predictions about the probability, for example, of a
seismic event in the form ‘some time in the next thre e years’ rather than ‘two years from next Monday at 11:17 am’. DEF includes approximate and probabilistic propositions as

With the help

predictions and is thus able to catagorize as a prediction the former sort of statement, which is of a type that is often of great value to policy -makers.

of these ‘nonpoint predictions’ coming from the natural and the social sciences, leaders are able to choose the courses ofaction
(e.g.
more stringent earthquake-safety building codes, or procuring an additional carrier battle group) that are most likely to accomplish the leaders’ desir ed ends. So while ‘point
predictions’ are not what political leaders require in most decision-making situations, critics of IR predictiveness often attack the predictive

capacity of IR theory for its inability to deliver them. The critics thus commit the straw man fallacy by requiring a sort of
prediction in IR (1) that few, if any, theorists claim to be able to offer, (2) that are not required by policy-
makers for theory-based predictions to be valuable, and (3) that are not possible even in some natural sciences.15 The range of theorists included in ‘reflexivists’ here is very wide
and it is possible to dissent from some of the general descriptions. From the point of view of the central argum ent of this article, there are two important features that should be
rendered accurately. One is that reflexivists reject explanat ion–prediction symmetry, which allows them to pursue causal (or constitutive) explanation without any commitment
to prediction. The second is that almost all share clear opposition to predictive social science.16 The reflexivist commitment to both of these conclusions should be evident from
the foregoing discussion.

AT: predictions K – 2NC

Scenario planning is possible and key to making effective decisions
Kurasawa 4 (Professor of Sociology, York University of Toronto, Fuyuki, Constellations Volume 11, No 4)
A radically postmodern line of thinking, for instance, would lead us to believe that it is pointless
, perhaps even harmful, to strive for farsightedness in light of the aforementioned crisis of
conventional paradigms of historical analysis. If, contra teleological models, history has no intrinsic meaning,
direction, or endpoint to be discovered through human reason, and if, contra scientistic futurism, prospective trends

cannot be predicted without error, then the abyss of chronological inscrutability supposedly opens up at our feet. The future
appears to be unknowable, an outcome of chance. Therefore, rather than embarking upon grandiose speculation about
what may occur, we should adopt a pragmatism that abandons itself to the twists and turns of history; let us be content to
formulate ad hoc responses to emergencies as they arise. While this argument has the merit of underscoring the fallibilistic
conflates the necessary recognition of the contingency of history
nature of all predictive schemes, it
with unwarranted assertions about the latter’s total opacity and indeterminacy. Acknowledging
the fact that the future cannot be known with absolute certainty does not imply abandoning
the task of trying to understand what is brewing on the horizon and to prepare for crises already
coming into their own. In fact, the incorporation of the principle of fallibility into the work of
prevention means that we must be ever more vigilant for warning signs of disaster and for
responses that provoke unintended or unexpected consequences (a point to

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In addition, from a normative point of view, the

which I will return in the final section of this paper).
acceptance of historical contingency and of the self-limiting character of farsightedness
places the duty of preventing catastrophe squarely on the shoulders of present generations.
The future no longer appears to be a metaphysical creature of destiny or of the cunning of reason, nor can
it be sloughed off to pure randomness. It becomes, instead, a result of human action
shaped by decisions in the present – including, of course, trying to anticipate and prepare for possible and
avoidable sources of harm to our successors. Combining a sense of analytical contingency toward the
future and ethical responsibility for it, the idea of early warning is making its way into
preventive action on the global stage.

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