Tournament: 0Contact Info | Round: Quads | Opponent: Errybody | Judge: Probably someone from Greenhill or UNT
NikhilJainDebate2@gmail.com

If I don't get back to you within a few days to a week, email chmarshall14@gmail.com

This wiki should have the off case/impact turns that we've read/gone for in the 2nr. A lot of misc case cards are read in debates and the wiki would be pretty messy to include 2 random econ defense cards, so if you want any case stuff, don't hesitate to email me

Tournament: 0Contact Info | Round: Quads | Opponent: Errybody | Judge: Probably someone from Greenhill or UNT
NikhilJainDebate2@gmail.com

If I don't get back to you within a few days to a week, email chmarshall14@gmail.com

This wiki should have the off case/impact turns that we've read/gone for in the 2nr. A lot of misc case cards are read in debates and the wiki would be pretty messy to include 2 random econ defense cards, so if you want any case stuff, don't hesitate to email me

Tournament: 0Contact Info | Round: Quads | Opponent: Errybody | Judge: Probably someone from Greenhill or UNT
NikhilJainDebate2@gmail.com

If I don't get back to you within a few days to a week, email chmarshall14@gmail.com

This wiki should have the off case/impact turns that we've read/gone for in the 2nr. A lot of misc case cards are read in debates and the wiki would be pretty messy to include 2 random econ defense cards, so if you want any case stuff, don't hesitate to email me

Tournament: Grapevine | Round: 4 | Opponent: Highland Park HS | Judge: Sam Shore
Reject the aff’s coercive politics—displaces voluntary efforts
Younkins 2k (Dr. Edward W. Younkins, Professor of Accountancy and Business Administration at Wheeling Jesuit University in West Virginia, “Civil Society: The Realm of Freedom,” No 63, 6-10-2000, http://www.quebecoislibre.org/000610-11.htm, JMP)
 
Recently (and ironically), government projects and programs have been started to restore civil
AND
have bureaucrats and politicians « solve » our problems and run our lives.

Tournament: Grapevine | Round: 5 | Opponent: Greenhill MR | Judge:
Burke=2NR

The aff’s enframing reifies an ontology and epistemology of violence, creating all existence as standing-reserve—the impact is extinction—Vote negative to reject the aff’s violent ontology for one of becoming—the perm fails—operates within flawed spaces of enframing
Burke 7, IR prof, 7—Associate Professor of Politics and International Relations in the University of New South Wales (Anthony, Theory and Event, Volume 10, Issue 2, 2007, “Ontologies of War: Violence, Existence and Reason,” Project MUSE, RBatra)

I see such a drive for ontological ....... violence? Will our thought?

Tournament: Greenhill | Round: 3 | Opponent: Bronx Science DM | Judge: ScottyP
The United States federal government should extend a tax credit of 39 cents for every dollar invested by business, non-governmental organizations, and individuals that plan. 

Tax credits solves the case – avoid corruption and bureaucracy – aff fails – waste
Werker, 7
(Professor-Harvard Business School, 10/20, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/20/opinion/20werker.html)

While foreign aid works in some situations, it is beset by two huge problems. First, there is never enough money to go around. Last year, the United States provided $23 billion of development aid to foreign countries.  This was more than any other donor, but it still resulted in very little for the billion people who live on less than one dollar per day. The second problem is that the money that does get distributed doesn't always reach the people who need it. As Jeffrey Sachs has noted, of every dollar given to Africa, only 44 cents is actually directed toward economic development. The rest goes to debt service, consultants and humanitarian emergencies. And after those expenses are subtracted, the money that remains is further reduced by mismanagement and corruption. A solution to both problems would be to give tax credits to American companies that invest in qualified developing countries. A similar program that focuses on domestic poverty has been a resounding success. In 2000, Congress created $6 billion of tax credits for businesses that invest in poor communities within the United States. The theory was that the cycles of poverty and joblessness in poor communities could be ended only by the development of local businesses, not by an aid check. Seven years later, so many businesses want to invest in poor areas that only a quarter of the companies that applied for tax credits in 2006 received them. Using the domestic program as a template, Congress should provide a 39-cent tax credit for every dollar of American investment in developing countries. If General Electric were to build a $100 million factory in Madagascar, its tax bill would be reduced by $39 million. The lost revenue to government coffers would be offset by reducing direct foreign aid by the same amount. The power of substituting tax credits for lump sums of cash is that while the latter would bring at most $39 million to Madagascar, the former results in a $100 million investment. For the exact same cost to the federal government, Madagascar receives far more resources. And by leveraging its foreign aid dollars, the United States is better off too, for reasons ranging from the creation of new markets to alleviating conditions that may aid terrorist recruitment. Using tax credits instead of traditional foreign aid also means that the money will be spent more prudently. Because for-profit companies are focused on the bottom line, these companies will by nature be more protective than government agencies of the money they invest in developing countries. Developing countries themselves clamor for more foreign investment as a way to generate real economic development. They set up export promotion agencies and offer their own tax breaks to foreign companies. With $100 million in foreign investment from American companies, government officials in Madagascar could spend their time tackling other domestic problems. Moving from inefficient direct aid to investment tax credits could lead to a fivefold increase in the capital that is deployed in developing countries. Of the $23 billion the United States currently spends on foreign aid, less than half reaches the ground. Providing $23 billion in tax credits, on the other hand, would lead to $59 billion of investment, if the domestic formula is applied abroad. Of course, the private sector is not always efficient, and not all of the money allocated to foreign aid should be converted to tax credits. But by involving the private sector, the United States could significantly increase the amount of money we spend in poor countries, without using any more taxpayer dollars. A program of tax credits for private investment in developing countries could be structured to reinforce goals other than economic growth. The tax credits could be awarded to countries that embrace ''green'' development or good governance, providing an extra incentive for countries to achieve these goals. Eligibility could be restricted to new investment that generates jobs and transfers know-how to the poorest countries that do not compete directly with American workers.

Tournament: Greenhill Round Robin | Round: 6 | Opponent: Carollton GR | Judge: Esteban Pipkin, Sheila Peterson
The United States Department of Defense should
- Implement Wired and Ravilious’s initiatives
Weird/Ravilious say The United States federal government should establish and contribute funding to an international entity, with oversight by the International Council for Science, dedicated to implementing projects to add necessary quantities of calcium hydroxide to global oceans and to enhance the reflexivity of stratocumulus clouds through the spraying of marine salt water on stratocumulus clouds.
The United States federal government should
- suspend all direct and indirect federal subsidies for corn ethanol. 

- extend a tax credit of 39 cents for every dollar invested by business, non-governmental organizations, and individuals that increase financing for advanced biofuels in mexico
Subsidy ruins demand for corn ethanol – solves food prices
Aziz 13
John, “It's time for America to end ethanol subsidies”, 7/31, http://theweek.com/article/index/247596/its-time-for-america-to-end-ethanol-subsidies, CMR

One of the key reasons for the growth in ethanol production has been government subsidies
AND
subsidies — both direct and indirect — to the ash heap of history.

Tax credits solves the case – avoid corruption and bureaucracy
Werker, 7
(Professor-Harvard Business School, 10/20, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/20/opinion/20werker.html)

While foreign aid works in some situations, it is beset by two huge problems
AND
how to the poorest countries that do not compete directly with American workers.

Ocean quicklime solves warming
Wired 8 (7/22, New Geoengineering Scheme Tackles Ocean Acidification, Too, http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/07/new-geoengineer.html, AG)

A scheme to dump quicklime into the oceans to sequester more carbon in their depths
AND
in lime production from the 300 million tons now produced in the world.

Cloud reflexivity solves warming
Ravilious 5 (Kate, The Guardian, Clouds could clear way to saving planet 2/10, http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2005/feb/10/environment.society, AMiles)

Earth looks as if it is about to overheat. Temperatures are rising, ice
AND
increasing the droplet numbers in marine stratocumulus clouds could have a significant effect.

Tournament: Stanford | Round: 4 | Opponent: Damien LR | Judge:
The United States federal government should
- end all military exercises in the Yellow Sea and in the South China Sea and assure the People’s Republic of China of benign intent.
- initiate a strategy of democracy promotion towards the People’s Republic of China as outlined by our Green and Kliman evidence.

Ending military exercises solves Chinese backlash without hurting allied assurance
Lee 10—the moving force behind the Asian affairs website China Matters which provides continuing critical updates on China and Asia-Pacific policies, publishes frequently in Asia Times (Peter, 19 July 2010, "The New Face of U.S.-China Relations: 'Strategic Reassurance' or Old-Fashioned Rollback?", The Asia-Pacific Journal, http://www.japanfocus.org/-Peter-Lee/3385, RBatra)

China does not object to the U.S. navy's presence in the western Pacific and even shows understanding that some countries in this region still need the U.S. military to provide a sense of security. And no country has the capability to replace the United States in this capacity. But, this does not mean the United States can ignore China's self-esteem and drive their aircraft carrier straight to the front of China's doorstep to flex their muscles.
Only when the United States learns to respect the western Pacific countries and adapt to the changes of their politics, economies and, in particular, public opinion, can its authority in this region be recognized. The United States should make people feel that the U.S. military presence in this region is peaceful and necessary, not vice versa.
Furthermore, the United States needs to take into account these countries' moods if it wants to become a peacemaker, not a troublemaker. Otherwise, the United States will have difficulties in staying in the region for a long time and its interests here will be difficult to effectively protect. (9)
People’s Daily’s international affairs mouthpiece, Global Times, ran an editorial with a similar theme—and wording—under the title “Yellow Sea No Place for US Carrier”:
Many Chinese are tired of the abrupt changes in US posture. The US just stressed the importance of partnership between the two countries at the second Strategic and Economic Dialogue at the end of last month. Now, it looks as if the US could try to incite China with military aggression. (10)

Tournament: Greenhill round robin | Round: 7 | Opponent: Centennial Koos | Judge: Talon Powers, Juan Guarcia
Plan destroys Chinese influence
Fergusson 12 (Robbie, e-International Relations, 7/23/12, “The Chinese Challenge to the Monroe Doctrine,” http://www.e-ir.info/2012/07/23/does-chinese-growth-in-latin-america-threaten-american-interests/)//DR. H

China’s thirst for resources With the fastest growing large economy in the world, China’s
AND
S allies. The table below shows where China imports its oil from.

Chinese influence is key to Chinese growth
Armony 12 (Ariel Armony is Weeks Professor in Latin American Studies, Professor of International Studies and Director of the Center for Latin American Studies (CLAS) at the University of Miami. Spring 2012 “What Is China to Latin America”, http://lacc.fiu.edu/hemisphere/hemisphere_vol_21.pdf nkj) Note—Please excuse the capitalization issues—the article wouldn’t copy right

What is China to Latin America? Among other things, China represents a market
AND
satisfy the Chinese leadership’s demand for “equality, fairness, and justice,” 

That solves global economic collapse and nuclear lashout
Buzan and Foot 04 – professor of International Relations  at the London School of Economics and Political Science; professor of International Relations at St. Anthony College, (Barry and Rosemary, “Does China Matter? A Reassessment: Essays in Memory of Gerald Segal”, ed., Questia, p. 145-147, USC Libraries)JK

China, East Asia and the world The underlying argument in this section is that
AND
of just such a sequence was what underpinned Gerry's concern to promote constrainment.

Tournament: Greenhill | Round: Doubles | Opponent: CPS BY | Judge: Shakelford, Gonzalez, Gaston
Removal from the terror list appeases the regime – increases trade and travel cash flows – legitimizes the regime
Poblete ’11 (Jason Poblete—attorney and expert on U.S. export control laws and regulations for military and dual-use items, economic sanctions, and free trade. FEBRUARY 25, 2011. http://jasonpoblete.com/2011/02/25/u-s-cuba-law-cherry-picking-makes-for-bad-pie/)
At Brookings last week, a panel of experts who support trade with the Cuban government waxed on about the powers that the President has under U.S. law to further ease sanctions on the regime. A report was presented by a lawyer that was paid for by a group that supports this approach toward Cuba. The panel was titled, ”U.S.-Cuba Relations: Moving Policy Forward in 2011 and Beyond.” When it comes to U.S.-Cuba policy, there is no shortage of opinion on this town as to what to do next. Statutes, laws, regulations, and policy statement can easily be cherry-picked to craft a master solution; but at the heart of the matter is a political decision that has nothing to do with law or policy. Contrary to what anti-Cuba embargo advocates argue, there is no robust economic sanctions program in force against the Cuban regime. There are many choices on the books to squeeze the Cuban government, but few of them are used to do so. Indeed, even under Republican administrations trade to Cuba has exponentially increased while the regime-targeting sanctions decreased or, as is the case for most, ever been used. The Cuban regime is full of bad seeds. There is no enlightened or Third Way of dealing with it. It has survived as long as it has because we keep feeding it with money from remittances and tourist travel. Yes, tourist travel. A majority of the people that visit Cuba may claim that it is for family visits. And undoubtedly some of it is. But the overwhelming majority of people visit to have fun and go sightseeing. My grandparents passed away last year and, until the end, they were proud that they never returned to Cuba and, as they would frequently say, “ni un centavo he mandado”. They never sent money or medicine to Cuba and would, at times, politely curse those who did. Harsh? Maybe. But those of us who never lived under Communism will never really know what it was like. “The President maintains broad authority and discretion to significantly ease specific provisions of the Cuba sanctions regime in support of particular U.S. foreign policy objectives,” concludes the report released at Brookings last week. Reasonable legal scholars can argue about this, but, this report fails to take into account that there are significant statutory requirements that have been ignored by Republican and Democratic Administrations that require sanctions tightening, no matter what. In the case of Cuba, legal cherry-picking has made for bad pie. It has been disproportionately done to favor easing sanctions, never truly increasing sanctions on the regime. At this juncture, it is not in the U.S. interest to ease sanctions anymore on the regime. There area some very serious issues on the table that need to be addressed, not the least of which are the billions owed by the regime to certified U.S. claimants whose properties and businesses were expropriated without compensation by Cuban thugs. Cuba’s cooperation with state sponsors of terrorism have correctly placed Cuba on the state sponsors of terror list, where it must remain. The regime steals U.S. military and commercial secrets, then sells them to other rogue regimes such as the Iranians. And the list goes on. Easing sanctions on the regime would be reckless and will not help the Cuban people. The current Cuban government has nothing of value to offer the U.S. but headaches. What we should be doing is encouraging new leaders to urge the dinosaurs to step aside and put in motion a process that empowers free people, and as required by statute, creates a transition government without Fidel Castro or Raul Castro. If the Obama Administration wants to help the Cuban people and the Cuban opposition, use some tough love. Enforce sanctions on the regime, as intended by the Congress and clearly laid out in statute. For folks who think that some of us on this side of the issue are not open to new approaches toward Cuba, they are sorely mistaken. Quite the opposite. In fact, some things that we need to do may raise some eyebrows in conservative circles. We need to do more to reach out to the true freedom seekers and it may require sacrifices along the way, but always keeping U.S. interests in mind, first and foremost. However, during the past few years, neither aim of U.S. law and policy has been successfully achieved: isolation of the Cuban regime, support for the Cuban people. Appeasing the regime with more and more trade and travel, as we have done for decades, is not a policy but a copt out to making the tough decisions that need to be made.
that kills US credibility and causes Latin American democratic backsliding, a China-Russia-Cuba alliance, and aggressive Cuban Lashout
Brookes 9 Peter Brookes 4/16/2009 (heritage council, Senior Fellow, Brookes is serving his third term as a congressionally appointed member of the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission. He previously served in the administration of President George W. Bush as deputy assistant secretary of defense for Asian and Pacific affairs. In this post, he was responsible for U.S. defense policy for 38 countries and five bilateral defense alliances in Asia, Brookes was a professional staff member with the House International Relations Committee. He also served with the CIA and the State Department at the United Nations. In the private sector, he worked in the defense and intelligence industries.
A decorated Navy veteran, Brookes served on active duty in Latin America, Asia and the Middle East in aviation and intelligence billets, Brookes, now a retired Navy commander, served as a reservist with the National Security Agency, Defense Intelligence Agency, Naval Intelligence, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Office of the Vice President, Brookes is pursuing a doctorate at Georgetown University. He is a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy (B.S.); the Defense Language Institute (Russian); the Naval War College; and the Johns Hopkins University (M.A.). He also has taught at the National Defense University and studied German and Polish, National Security Affairs, “Keep the Embargo, O” http://www.heritage.org/research/commentary/2009/04/keep-the-embargo-o)

Lifting the embargo won't normalize relations, but instead legitimize -- and wave the white flag to -- Fidel's 50-year fight against the Yanquis, further lionizing the dictator and encouraging the Latin American Left.¶ Because the economy is nationalized, trade will pour plenty of cash into the Cuban national coffers -- allowing Havana to suppress dissent at home and bolster its communist agenda abroad.¶ The last thing we should do is to fill the pockets of a regime that'll use those profits to keep a jackboot on the neck of the Cuban people. The political and human-rights situation in Cuba is grim enough already.¶ The police state controls the lives of 11 million Cubans in what has become an island prison. The people enjoy none of the basic civil liberties -- no freedom of speech, press, assembly or association.¶ Security types monitor foreign journalists, restrict Internet access and foreign news and censor the domestic media. The regime holds more than 200 political dissidents in jails that rats won't live in.¶ We also don't need a pumped-up Cuba that could become a serious menace to US interests in Latin America, the Caribbean -- or beyond. (The likes of China, Russia and Iran might also look to partner with a revitalized Cuba.)¶ With an influx of resources, the Cuban regime would surely team up with the rulers of nations like Venezuela, Nicaragua and Bolivia to advance socialism and anti-Americanism in the Western Hemisphere.¶ The embargo has stifled Havana's ambitions ever since the Castros lost their Soviet sponsorship in the early 1990s. Anyone noticed the lack of trouble Cuba has caused internationally since then? Contrast that with the 1980s some time.¶ Regrettably, 110 years after independence from Spain (courtesy of Uncle Sam), Cuba still isn't free. Instead of utopia, it has become a dystopia at the hands of the Castro brothers.¶ The US embargo remains a matter of principle -- and an appropriate response to Cuba's brutal repression of its people. Giving in to evil only begets more of it. Haven't we learned that yet?¶ Until we see progress in loosing the Cuban people from the yoke of the communist regime, we should hold firm onto the leverage the embargo provides.

Obama weakness causes global conflict
Coes 11 – Ben Coes 11, Visiting Fellow at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. A graduate of Columbia College, where he won the prestigious Bennett Cerf Memorial Prize “The disease of a weak president”, The Daily Caller, http://dailycaller.com/2011/09/30/the-disease-of-a-weak-president/
The disease of a weak president usually begins with the Achilles’ heel all politicians are born with — the desire to be popular. It leads to pandering to different audiences, people and countries and creates a sloppy, incoherent set of policies. Ironically, it ultimately results in that very politician losing the trust and respect of friends and foes alike.¶ In the case of Israel, those of us who are strong supporters can at least take comfort in the knowledge that Tel Aviv will do whatever is necessary to protect itself from potential threats from its unfriendly neighbors. While it would be preferable for the Israelis to be able to count on the United States, in both word and deed, the fact is right now they stand alone. Obama and his foreign policy team have undercut the Israelis in a multitude of ways. Despite this, I wouldn’t bet against the soldiers of Shin Bet, Shayetet 13 and the Israeli Defense Forces.¶ But Obama’s weakness could — in other places — have implications far, far worse than anything that might ultimately occur in Israel. The triangular plot of land that connects Pakistan, India and China is held together with much more fragility and is built upon a truly foreboding foundation of religious hatreds, radicalism, resource envy and nuclear weapons.¶ If you can only worry about preventing one foreign policy disaster, worry about this one. Here are a few unsettling facts to think about:¶ First, Pakistan and India have fought three wars since the British de-colonized and left the region in 1947. All three wars occurred before the two countries had nuclear weapons. Both countries now possess hundreds of nuclear weapons, enough to wipe each other off the map many times over.¶ Second, Pakistan is 97 Muslim. It is a question of when — not if — Pakistan elects a radical Islamist in the mold of Ayatollah Khomeini as its president. Make no mistake, it will happen, and when it does the world will have a far greater concern than Ali Khamenei or Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and a single nuclear device.¶ Third, China sits at the northern border of both India and Pakistan. China is strategically aligned with Pakistan. Most concerning, China covets India’s natural resources. Over the years, it has slowly inched its way into the northern tier of India-controlled Kashmir Territory, appropriating land and resources and drawing little notice from the outside world.¶ In my book, Coup D’Etat, I consider this tinderbox of colliding forces in Pakistan, India and China as a thriller writer. But thriller writers have the luxury of solving problems by imagining solutions on the page. In my book, when Pakistan elects a radical Islamist who then starts a war with India and introduces nuclear weapons to the theater, America steps in and removes the Pakistani leader through a coup d’état.¶ I wish it was that simple.¶ The more complicated and difficult truth is that we, as Americans, must take sides. We must be willing to be unpopular in certain places. Most important, we must be ready and willing to threaten our military might on behalf of our allies. And our allies are Israel and India.¶ There are many threats out there — Islamic radicalism, Chinese technology espionage, global debt and half a dozen other things that smarter people than me are no doubt worrying about. But the single greatest threat to America is none of these. The single greatest threat facing America and our allies is a weak U.S. president. It doesn’t have to be this way. President Obama could — if he chose — develop a backbone and lead. Alternatively, America could elect a new president. It has to be one or the other. The status quo is simply not an option.

Infinite number of ‘root causes’ means only deterrence solves
Moore 4 Walter L. Brown Professor of Law at the University of Virginia School of Law (John Norton Moore, “Solving the War Puzzle: beyond the democratic peace,” pg 41-43)

If major interstate war is predominantly a product of a synergy between a potential nondemocratic aggressor and an absence of effective deterrence, what is the role of many traditional “causes” of war? Past and many contemporary, theories of war and religious differences, arms races, poverty or social injustice, competition for resources, incidents and accidents, greed, fear, and perceptions of “honor”, or many other such factors.  Such factors may well play a role in motivating aggression or in serving as a means for generating fear and manipulating public opinion.  The reality, however, is that while some of these may have more potential to contribute to war than others, there may well be an infinite set of motivating factors, or human wants, motivating aggression.  It is not the independent existence of such motivating factors for war but rather the circumstances permitting or encouraging high risk decisions leading to war that are the key to most effectively controlling war….Yet another way to conceptualize the importance of democracy and deterrence in war avoidance is to note that each in its own way internalizes the costs to decision elites of engaging in high risk aggressive behavior.  Democracy internalizes these costs in a variety of ways including displeasure of the electorate at having war imposed upon it by its own government.  And deterrence either prevents achievement of the objective altogether or imposes punishing costs making the gamble not worth the risk.

Criticizing Western “imperialism” obscures more insidious practices by regional powers
Shaw 2 – Sussex IR Professor (Martin, The Problem of the Quasi-Imperial State, www.martinshaw.org/empire.htm)

Nor have many considered the possibility that if the concept of imperialism has a relevance today, it applies to certain aggressive, authoritarian regimes of the non-Western world rather than to the contemporary West. In this paper I fully accept that there is a concentration of much world power - economic, cultural, political and military - in the hands of Western elites. In my recent book, Theory of the Global State, I discuss the development of a 'global-Western state conglomerate' (Shaw 2000). I argue that 'global' ideas and institutions, whose significance characterizes the new political era that has opened with the end of the Cold War, depend largely - but not solely - on Western power. I hold no brief and intend no apology for official Western ideas and behaviour. And yet I propose that the idea of a new imperialism is a profoundly misleading, indeed ideological concept that obscures the realities of power and especially of empire in the twenty-first century. This notion is an obstacle to understanding the significance, extent and limits of contemporary Western power. It simultaneously serves to obscure many real causes of oppression, suffering and struggle for transformation against the quasi-imperial power of many regional states. I argue that in the global era, this separation has finally become critical. This is for two related reasons. On the one hand, Western power has moved into new territory, largely uncharted -- and I argue unchartable -- with the critical tools of anti-imperialism. On the other hand, the politics of empire remain all too real, in classic forms that recall both modern imperialism and earlier empires, in many non-Western states, and they are revived in many political struggles today. Thus the concept of a 'new imperialism' fails to deal with both key post-imperial features of Western power and the quasi-imperial character of many non-Western states. The concept overstates Western power and understates the dangers posed by other, more authoritarian and imperial centres of power. Politically it identifies the West as the principal enemy of the world's people, when for many of them there are far more real and dangerous enemies closer to.

Tournament: Berkeley | Round: Octas | Opponent: Katy Taylor | Judge: Jorge Toledo, John Hines, Tom Woodhead
Even absent hegemony, the aff’s destruction of the state destroys living conditions, sparking xenophobic violence and population purification campaigns
Weiner, 96(Myron, former professor of Political Science @ MIT, Ethics, national sovereignty and the control of immigration, The International Migration Review, Spring 30.1)

To most citizens, however, the argument in favor of national sovereignty with respect to control over migration appears to be commonsensical. Let us consider what the consequences might be if a country had completely open borders to anyone who wished to enter. While this approach seems to take the moral high ground by avoiding coercion, it clearly jeopardizes the well-being of the host population and threatens politicide. A safe and prosperous country that declares its borders open risks being overwhelmed by a massive influx of immigrants from poor and/or violent countries. If the country then provides these immigrants with the same benefits it offers its own citizens (education for children, healthcare, unemployment benefits, etc.), its social services and welfare services may be stretched to the limit. The country's own poor may find themselves pushed aside by migrants prepared to work at lower wages. If the number of migrants is large enough, the local population may find itself outnumbered by people who speak another language, belong to another culture, and perhaps seek to change the political system. As the number of migrants grows, the local population may become xenophobic, resulting in the growth of antimigrant political organizations, violence, and social disorder. Poor countries might also be at risk if their borders are open. Peasants from densely populated neighboring countries might freely enter in search of land and employment, thereby putting pressure on the local population. Refugees from civil conflict might cross the border and damage the local ecology by cutting firewood, consuming water, generating waste, and destroying grasslands. The indigenous population might become acutely afraid of domination by the intruding ethnic group, especially if the community is one with which it has a history of enmity. Any country, rich or poor, that opened its borders might soon find other states taking advantage of its beneficent policy. A neighboring country whose elite wanted a more homogeneous society could now readily expel its minorities. A government that wanted a more egalitarian society could dump its unemployed and its poor. An authoritarian regime could rid itself of its opponents; a country could empty its jails, mental institutions, and homes for the aged. In an extreme case, an overcrowded populous country could take over a hypothetically generous country simply by "transferring" a large part of its population, and an aggressive country would no longer need tanks and missiles for an invasion. Notwithstanding these objections, some political theorists argue that liberal democratic societies ought to have open borders, or that, short of open borders, a liberal democratic country should take in as many migrants and refugees as its citizenry will allow. The primary criterion for admission, these theorists insist, should not be the needs of the host country but the plight of those who seek admission.

---Abandoning state reforms causes worse forces to fill-in
Barbrook 97 (Dr. Richard, School of Westminster, Nettime, “More Provocations”, 6-5,
http://www.nettime.org/Lists-Archives/nettime-l-9706/msg00034.html)
I thought that this position is clear from my remarks about the ultra-left posturing of the ‘zero-work’ demand. In Europe, we have real social problems of deprivation and poverty which, in part, can only be solved by state action. This does not make me a statist, but rather anti-anti-statist. By opposing such intervention because they are carried out by the state anarchists are tacitly lining up with the neo-liberals. Even worse, refusing even to vote for the left, they acquiese to rule by neo-liberal parties. I deeply admire direct action movements. I was a radio pirate and we provide server space for anti-roads and environmental movements. However, this doesn’t mean that I support political abstentionism or, even worse, the mystical nonsense produced by Hakim Bey. It is great for artists and others to adopt a marginality as a life style choice, but most of the people who are economically and socially marginalised were never given any choice. They are excluded from society as a result of deliberate policies of deregulation, privatisation and welfare cutbacks carried out by neo-liberal governments. During the ‘70s. I was a pro-situ punk rocker until Thatcher got elected. Then we learnt the hard way that voting did change things and lots of people suffered if state power was withdrawn from certain areas of our life, such as welfare and employment.  Anarchism can be a fun artistic pose. However, human suffering is not.

Even if the State does bad things, any alternative is more violent—only the State can provide peace and liberation.
Neil A. Englehart, Assistant Professor of Government and Law at Lafayette College, 2003 (“In Defense of State Building: States, Rights, and Justice,” Dissent, Fall, Available Online to Subscribing Institutions via Academic Search Elite, p. 18)

State failure has become an increasingly important policy concern since 9/11. Strengthening or reconstructing failed states has even become an explicit goal of American foreign policy. Yet many Americans across the political spectrum regard states with deep suspicion and abiding hostility, as instruments of oppression. In truth, states are more likely to protect human rights than any other form of political organization. Acknowledging that potential is today a moral and political imperative.  The evil that states do is well known. There are abundant examples: from the brutality of the Thirty Years War to the Stalinist purges, the Holocaust in Nazi Germany, and the Rwandan genocide. Because its repressive capacities are so clear, political theorists seek to protect us from the state (Locke), to divide and limit its power (Madison), to liberate us from it (Marx), or to dissolve it entirely (Foucault). Yet Hobbes’s picture of life without the state— poor, nasty, brutish, and short—still resonates. States can only be called oppressive if there is an alternative available, a more promising political order.  States dominate our minds as much as they dominate the globe. The conceptual hegemony of the state is so great that there has been little serious thinking about alternative arrangements. Anarchist visions may sound liberating, but only because they assume that life under anarchy would be much like it is now—only better. In fact, anarchists depend on the very order they seek to abolish, assuming that people will be treated as free and equal, able to make uncoerced choices outside the protection of the state. Their utopian visions set the parameters of critiques of the state, but they seldom recognize that the necessary substructure of their utopia doesn’t exist “nowhere”— it exists only where states have established law and order.  In real life, the alternatives to the state are more violent, more coercive social and political orders dominated by warlords and gangs. Not quite the Hobbesian war of all against all, they are rather wars of group against group, dividing society and destroying the possibility of a peaceful public sphere, of civil society, rights, and social justice. The corollary to the oppressiveness of non-state politics is that, contrary to our commonsense understanding, states are relatively liberating and egalitarian. Compared to actually existing alternatives, states have more potential for protecting human rights, human security, and international peace than any other political order. That’s why state building is so important.

Tournament: Berkeley | Round: Octas | Opponent: Katy Taylor | Judge: Jorge Toledo, John Hines, Tom Woodhead
1NC Heg
Heg is good—it underlies all the self-reinforcing systems that correlate with inter-state peace—collapse ensures multiple nuclear wars
Thomas P.M. Barnett 11 Senior Strategic Researcher and Professor in the Warfare Analysis and Research Department “The New Rules: Leadership Fatigue Puts U.S., and Globalization, at Crossroads,” March 7 http://www.worldpoliticsreview.com/articles/8099/the-new-rules-leadership-fatigue-puts-u-s-and-globalization-at-crossroads
It is worth first examining the larger picture: We live in a time of arguably the greatest structural change in the global order yet endured, with this historical moment's most amazing feature being its relative and absolute lack of mass violence. That is something to consider when Americans contemplate military intervention in Libya, because if we do take the step to prevent larger-scale killing by engaging in some killing of our own, we will not be adding to some fantastically imagined global death count stemming from the ongoing "megalomania" and "evil" of American "empire." We'll be engaging in the same sort of system-administering activity that has marked our stunningly successful stewardship of global order since World War II. Let me be more blunt: As the guardian of globalization, the U.S. military has been the greatest force for peace the world has ever known. Had America been removed from the global dynamics that governed the 20th century, the mass murder never would have ended. Indeed, it's entirely conceivable there would now be no identifiable human civilization left, once nuclear weapons entered the killing equation. But the world did not keep sliding down that path of perpetual war. Instead, America stepped up and changed everything by ushering in our now-perpetual great-power peace. We introduced the international liberal trade order known as globalization and played loyal Leviathan over its spread. What resulted was the collapse of empires, an explosion of democracy, the persistent spread of human rights, the liberation of women, the doubling of life expectancy, a roughly 10-fold increase in adjusted global GDP and a profound and persistent reduction in battle deaths from state-based conflicts. That is what American "hubris" actually delivered. Please remember that the next time some TV pundit sells you the image of "unbridled" American military power as the cause of global disorder instead of its cure. With self-deprecation bordering on self-loathing, we now imagine a post-American world that is anything but. Just watch who scatters and who steps up as the Facebook revolutions erupt across the Arab world. While we might imagine ourselves the status quo power, we remain the world's most vigorously revisionist force. ¶ As for the sheer "evil" that is our military-industrial complex, again, let's examine what the world looked like before that establishment reared its ugly head. The last great period of global structural change was the first half of the 20th century, a period that saw a death toll of about 100 million across two world wars. That comes to an average of 2 million deaths a year in a world of approximately 2 billion souls. Today, with far more comprehensive worldwide reporting, researchers report an average of less than 100,000 battle deaths annually in a world fast approaching 7 billion people. Though admittedly crude, these calculations suggest a 90 percent absolute drop and a 99 percent relative drop in deaths due to war. We are clearly headed for a world order characterized by multipolarity, something the American-birthed system was designed to both encourage and accommodate. But given how things turned out the last time we collectively faced such a fluid structure, we would do well to keep U.S. power, in all of its forms, deeply embedded in the geometry to come.¶ To continue the historical survey, after salvaging Western Europe from its half-century of civil war, the U.S. emerged as the progenitor of a new, far more just form of globalization -- one based on actual free trade rather than colonialism. America then successfully replicated globalization further in East Asia over the second half of the 20th century, setting the stage for the Pacific Century now unfolding. 

The most complex and inclusive security models prove hegemonic stability theory
Murray 12 – Professor of Political Science @ Alberta
Robert, “Arctic politics in the emerging multipolar system: challenges and consequences,” The Polar Journal, 2.1
It is no overstatement to say that the end of the Cold War was one of the most important events in recent world history. Scholars from many areas of study have used the fall of the Soviet Union as a starting point to explain shifts in security, globalization, humanitarianism and institutional integration, all of which played important roles in world affairs in the immediate post-Cold War era. Since 1991, explanatory models for international and global politics have broadened their scope to include variables such as individual preferences, capitalist oppression, ideational construction, environmentalism, gender and sexual politics, and discursive power to levels previously unforeseen throughout the Cold War years. As such, we now see the world as a far more complex and nefarious arena in which power and dominance are exercised each day. At the systemic level, the fall of the Soviet Union equated to nothing short of a monumental shift in the way states would make foreign and defence strategy. For 50 years, the bipolar system was dominated by two superpowers constantly competing and building arms in an effort to balance one another. The end of the Cold War signalled a major shift in systemic arrangement, as the system went from being bipolar to the world entering what was often referred to as the “unipolar moment.”1 The era of unipolarity and American hegemony in the international system has been marked by stability in an interstate sense, and the realignment of various spheres of influence in the wake of the Soviet Union’s demise. Far from being just a theoretical notion, the unipolar moment has also provided states with an environment in which to pursue their national self-interest where the likelihood of conflict is decreased and great power security competition has been minimized.2 As such, new areas of foreign affairs and defence strategy have become far more important than they could have been throughout the bipolar con- strained Cold War years. One of the most notable examples in this regard has been the increased desire for territorial protection and extension in the Arctic region. In an era of state preoccupation with humanitarianism, terrorism and economic reces- sion, it is being suggested by some observers that the Arctic has become the primary stage through which states, both great and minor in power, can pursue their self-interest in a way that combines soft power cooperation through bodies of gov- ernance with hard power and military build-up. As things presently stand, there are a variety of nations and institutions all seek- ing to claim governing authority over different parts of the circumpolar region. Nations making claims to parts of the Arctic Ocean or other northern waters include Canada, Russia, the United States, Norway, Iceland and Denmark/Greenland. On the institutional side, Arctic governance has been debated and defined by bodies such as the United Nations, the European Union, the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) and the Arctic Council.3 To date, no clear resolution to competing claims is in sight, and in some cases the situation is on the verge of becoming far more competitive as nations such as Russia have resorted to asserting possible military solutions to contested Arctic issues to bolster their declarations. It is important to note the increased levels of interest over Arctic relations between states, but, on this point, little attention has been given to the influence of the international system over this situation. If the unipolar moment has been defined as an era of relative stability and diplomatic coexistence, and tensions in the Arctic are already on the rise, what is to happen when the multipolar system finally emerges in the near future? Since 2005, the status of the United States as systemic hegemon has been in decline due to economic, military and political strains placed on American power capabilities throughout the Bush era and beyond. This decrease in relative power preponderance has been even further exacerbated by the economic recession starting in 2008 and the nation’s inability to stabilize its markets. As such, the predictions of those like Christopher Layne and John Mearsheimer are on the verge of coming to fruition, in that the unipolar moment is about to end.4 New great powers are ris- ing, the United States is no longer able to prevent these nations from balancing their power, and the once obvious prevalence of American power is far murkier than it was a decade ago. As the multipolar era becomes increasingly likely, one must ponder the effects this shift might have on state foreign and defence strategy- making, especially towards the Arctic region. To date, though its relative power position has declined significantly in recent years, the United States remains the hegemon of the international system, but it is contended here that such status is soon to evaporate. In this context, this article argues that the emergence of a multipolar systemic arrangement is very likely to increase security competition in the system as a whole, and the Arctic will be at the epicentre of such conflict. To lend support to this hypothesis, an examination of the impending shift from unipolarity to multipolarity will be made, as will an account of current security dynamics in the circumpolar region. The article concludes with a stark warning that without some kind of real action towards settling competing Arctic claims, it will be left to states to secure their own territorial assertions through hard power and forceful means. The system is unipolar ... for now In order to evaluate the polarity of the international system in a given historical period, one must identify the hierarchy of power in terms of the number of super or great powers dominating international outcomes. Counting great or super powers can be somewhat difficult in contemporary international relations, as scholars have begun to expand the notions of power and capabilities, but the clearest guideline for being able to identify great powers is through determining capabilities. The rea- son it is essential to understand the great powers in international relations is that they, above all other states, institutions, non-state actors and ideational forces, are responsible for the daily conduct of behaviour in the international system, and they have been historically accountable for substantial alterations to power distribution since the 1648 Peace of Westphalia. Measuring capabilities allows observers to explain which states are most likely to affect the behaviour of other states, to use force or violence; also, the number of great powers in a given era determines how stable or unstable the international system will be. Identifying great powers is literally done by evaluating each state’s capabilities in essential areas of political life that can maximize security or extend one’s power. When discussing the distribution of power across states, there is a clear hierarchy of capabilities among states that leads observers to classify these utility maximizing, rational actors as super, great, major, middle or minor powers in the international system. In terms of actual measurement, Kenneth Waltz argues: “Their rank depends on how they score on all of the following items: size of population and territory, resource endowment, economic capability, military strength, political stability and competence.”5 Once these various factors are taken into account, one can clearly determine the given polarity of the system at a given moment in history. Why is polarity important? According to structural realist theory, the number of great powers in the system determines how conflictual, violent or stable interna- tional politics will be. While the overall structure of the system remains anarchic, meaning a clear absence of a governing authority above states that can control their actions, there can be consequential variations within the anarchic structure that can impact how states will evaluate their foreign and defence policy strategies and affect their overall behaviour. Waltz claims that “ ‘consequential’ variations in number are changes of number that lead to different expectations about the effect of structure on units.”6 There are three types of structure within the system that have been determined throughout the history of the modern state system – unipolarity, bipolar- ity and multipolarity. The consequential variations described by Waltz take place when great powers either rise or fall, and induce shifts from one type of polarity to another. The rise and fall of great powers is perhaps the most important explanatory aspect of international politics because it is these states that “inherently possess some offensive military capability, which gives them the wherewithal to hurt and possibly destroy each other.”7 Though the primary motivation for all states is secu- rity maximization, great powers become the most important actors because while they are capable of defending themselves, they also have the ability to extend their sphere of influence in offensive posturing. It is in this context that the polarity of the system becomes even more vital, in that the more great powers there are, the greater likelihood of violence and conflict there is. In each systemic arrangement, the abilities of great powers to pursue their ultimate goal, which is hegemony, dic- tates whether foreign and defence policy strategies will be overtly defensive or potentially offensive. All states are like-units, in that they all strive for survival by making rational calculations about how to best pursue their interests in an anarchic system. Of course, strategies of states will differ greatly based on the distribution of power, meaning that great powers are able to pursue their goals more freely than minor powers because they can operate without allies or institutions in achieving their goals. Lesser powers, however, typically try to increase their power position in world affairs through various alliance blocs and institutional binding. In doing so, it is hoped that middle and minor powers are able to guarantee their survival by align- ing themselves with powers larger than themselves. Given the arrangement of the system, the number of alliances or blocs of power will differ, which also contributes to just how stable or violent the system will be. Conflict, or the possibility of it, is a constant problem in international relations due to the anarchic structure of the international system. Anarchy, by its definition, denotes a lack of overarching authority and thus states, especially the most powerful states, are able to behave as they would like, without any external body capable of controlling their actions. Robert Art and Robert Jervis aptly define anarchy by argu- ing: “States can make commitments and treaties, but no sovereign power ensures compliance and punished deviation. This – the absence of a supreme power – is what is meant by the anarchic environment of international politics.”8 In anarchy, just as in the state of nature or war prior to the establishment of civilized human society, there is no harmony and actors are left to their own inclinations to pursue their self-interest. The key elements of anarchy that precipitate conflict are the con- stant distrust of others’ motives, the assumption that other actors may not be as rational as oneself, and, as Waltz notes, “a state will use force to attain its goals if, after assessing the prospects for success, it values those goals more than it values the pleasures of peace.”9 The constant tensions between states, and the ability of great powers to more freely pursue their national interests, contributes to a system where security and survival are at a premium, and the polarity of the system matters to all states. By definition, bipolar systems are the most stable. According to Mearsheimer, this assumption is made based on three criteria: First, the number of conflict dyads is fewer, leaving fewer possibilities for war. Sec- ond, deterrence is easier, because imbalances of power are fewer and more easily averted. Third, the prospects for deterrence are greater because miscalculations of rela- tive power and opponents’ resolve are fewer and less likely.10 By contrast, multipolar systems have a far greater probability of conflict, tension and distrust among states. War is far more likely in multipolar systems because major power dyads are more numerous, each posing the potential for conflict. Conflict could also erupt across dyads involving major and minor powers. Dyads between minor powers could also lead to war .... Wars in a multipolar world involving just minor powers or only one major power are not likely to be as devastating as a conflict between two major powers. However, local wars tend to widen and escalate. Hence there is always a chance that a small war will trigger a general conflict.11 While bipolarity is considered to be the most stable arrangement, and multipolarity the least stable, there is also the rare time when the system is unipolar in character. Put simply, unipolarity occurs when there is such a preponderance of power by one state that others are incapable of balancing against it. According to William Wohl- forth, unipolarity is also a stable and peaceful arrangement: unipolarity favors the absence of war among the great powers and comparatively low levels of competition for prestige or security for two reasons: the leading state’s power advantage removes the problem of hegemonic rivalry from world politics, and it reduces the salience and stakes of balance-of-power politics among the major states.12 The status of the hegemonic power in a unipolar system allows for the expansion of its normative agenda, but also allows it to pacify international affairs because it lacks both a hegemonic rival and the effects of balance of power politics.13 As such, unipolar systems can be stable, depending on whom the hegemon is and what its vision for dominance might be. Since the end of World War II, only two types of polarity have been seen. Between 1945 and 1991, the system was bipolar, in that there were only two super- powers dominating the affairs of international politics. This bipolar arrangement was surprisingly stable and though smaller proxy wars erupted throughout the years of the Cold War, the relations between the two dominant powers, namely the United States and the Soviet Union, never came to a head. There are various explanations for why this was the case, but John Mearsheimer provides perhaps the most concise and accurate explanations as he contends that the absence of war in Europe and beyond throughout the Cold War can be attributed to three specific factors: the bipolar distribution of military power on the European Continent; the rough mili- tary equality between the two states comprising the two poles in Europe, the United States and the Soviet Union; and the fact that each superpower was armed with a large nuclear arsenal.14 At the conclusion of the Cold War, there was a clear and major shift in the distribution of power in the system, which translated into the unipolar moment. With the fall of the Soviet Union, the United States retained its superpower status and held a preponderance of power in virtually all areas of capabilities measurement. Christopher Layne contends that American hegemony is contingent upon two factors: First, the United States enjoys a commanding preeminence in both military and eco- nomic power. Second, since the Soviet Union’s disappearance, no other great power has emerged to challenge US preponderance. In this sense, US hegemony is the result of objective material conditions.15 Throughout the Clinton and early years of the Bush administrations, the role of the United States as systemic hegemon was virtually unquestioned, and it seemed as if American hegemony could last for a very long time. It was not until the latter years of the Bush administration that the waning of American hegemony began to become apparent. One of the key reasons the system remains unipolar is that there has yet to be a state that can balance against US power in either the hard or soft power senses. That said, the main reason for the decline in American hegemony has been a costly set of irrational and ill-advised foreign policy decisions, combined with years of economic overvaluation that eroded the hegemonic position of the world’s lone superpower.16 Both the intervention into Iraq, starting in 2003, and the fallout of the 2008 recession have served to substantially weaken the United States in both the hard and soft power contexts, and thus it is clear that a multipolar system is on the horizon. As Layne notes, “although a new geopolitical balance has yet to emerge, there is considerable evidence that other states have been engaging in bal- ancing against the United States – including hard balancing.”17 The emerging great powers, especially China and Russia, will have a profound impact on the conduct of international relations in the years to come. Perhaps the most important area of security competition that has gone under- scrutinized from a systemic standpoint is the increased level of interest in the Arctic. Currently, the competing claims for the circumpolar region are mostly peaceful and focusing on diplomatic and legal battles, but recent trends suggest that non-violent strategy may not continue. As the era of American hegemony comes to an end, and a multipolar system begins to emerge, the impact on the Arctic region is likely to be profound due to the militaristic nature of state security strategies, unpredictability and a potential retreat from cooperation normally seen in multipolar structures. The Arctic in the unipolar moment One of the cornerstones of America’s unipolar moment has been the remarkable decline in interstate conflict. Since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, the interna- tional system has not been on the verge of any major war, nor have great powers aggressively pursued policies that would balance against American power in a way that would be taken seriously. According to many scholarly studies, the world since the end of the Cold War has become far more secure in the interstate sense, and security and defence policies of states are now preoccupied more with human- centric and intrastate variables than anything else. Though it is difficult to deny that the world has become more stable at the systemic level, the role of hard power and military capabilities did not disappear with the Soviet Union; instead, the use of militarism to achieve national goals in the unipolar moment greatly decreased as a direct result of the values and grand strategy of the United States. The impact of a unipolar systemic arrangement on state behaviour is best explained by the hegemonic stability theory.18 According to this theory, a unipolar structure is able to pacify the relations of states because there is recognition of the hegemon’s ability to control or intervene in conflicts that may threaten its power, or the order of the system. Wohlforth summarizes the basic precept of hegemonic stability theory by contending: The theory stipulates that especially powerful states (“hegemons”) foster international orders that are stable until differential growth in power produces a dissatisfied state with the capability to challenge the dominant state for leadership. The clearer and lar- ger the concentration of power in the leading state, the more peaceful the international order associated with it will be ... If the system is unipolar, the great power hierar- chy should be much more stable than any hierarchy lodged within a system of more than one pole. Because unipolarity is based on a historically unprecedented concentra- tion of power in the United States, a potentially important source of great power con- flict – hegemonic rivalry – will be missing.19 It is essential to note two things about the status of the United States as systemic hegemon throughout the immediate post-Cold War era – first, that its preponderance of power in every area of capability measurement created a stable and less tense system in which states were able to interact; and second, that the United States’ time as hegemon has fostered the growth of multilateral institutions and agreements rather than a bullying type of unipolarity.20 From a systemic standpoint, it would seem that there is little reason to be concerned about military aggression, arms racing and distrustful competition in the modern system, but one vital concern to note is that much of the unipolar and hegeomic stability literature completely ignores the role of the Arctic in state security calculations. Throughout an era of institutional binding, regional integra- tion, humanitarianism and soft power growth, the competition for the Arctic was following much of the same pattern, with states preferring to make their claims in institutional or legal settings. Yet, as the unipolar moment has started to decline, and multipolarity is on the horizon, the competition in the circumpolar region has taken on a very different tone. Competing claims over Arctic territories, such as the Northwest Passage, Beaufort Sea and other maritime boundaries, and the use of the region as a space for military exercises are by no means new and they have not come to the forefront of the strategic security agendas of states since the post-9/11 era. Rather, throughout the Cold War, the Arctic was a realm of constant supervision, not because either superpower wanted to develop the region, but more because of the mutual fear each side had of offensive attacks being launched over the pole. Even throughout the unipolar moment, the Arctic has been a space for sovereignty competition, but the nature of the competition had been mostly legal, institutional or soft power focused.21 Worth noting as well is the very complex nature of reasons for state interests in the Arctic. Mark Nuttall effectively summarizes the complexities of the high north as he claims: In the post-Cold War world the Arctic is seen as a natural scientific laboratory, under- stood as a homeland for indigenous peoples, a place of sovereignty conflicts, an emerg- ing hydrocarbon province with which the world is coming to think of as one of the last major frontiers for oil and gas, and a region of dramatic environmental change.22 Though the intricacies of Arctic competition are intriguing to note, it is how states are strategically asserting their claims that is of particular importance. The start of America’s hegemonic decline has allowed states to revisit their approaches to the Arctic as nations jockey for position by balancing or rivalling American preferences. As a result, the nature of Arctic competition has incorporated both soft power and hard power elements. Further, the nature of militarism and hard power tension has increased due to the recent spending and strategic shifts by many Arctic states in recent years, including Canada, Norway, Sweden and Russia.23 The reasons for America’s decline are relatively unsurprising – military overextension in Afghanistan and Iraq; the lack of international support for American foreign policy objectives throughout the Bush era; the 2008 economic recession; and the utter dis- trust by most states, including close American allies, of the United States’ political objectives.24 The system remains unipolar, of course, but as stated above, the pre- ponderance of power capabilities has substantially diminished, opening the door for others to balance and rival American power in the coming years. Coincidentally, it has also been the revelations of science in recent years that have also promoted a faster pace for those states making Arctic claims. The role of climate change and its impact over the Arctic has allowed for states to more freely move into the region and pursue strategies previously unavailable.25 According to Lotta Numminen, climate change has recently affected states’ perceptions of the possible economic opportunities in the Arctic in four ways: first, that the subsurface of the Arctic Ocean floor is assumed to contain substantial oil and gas reserves, to which there will be increased access; second, that melting waters will provide new waters for international fisheries; third, the increase in research strategies; and fourth, is the greater access to sea passages.26 One of the main reasons states see the Arctic region as such a lucrative area is the potential for increasing their respec- tive economic and natural resource capabilities. Previously, the northern ice caps prevented states from entering most of the Arctic Ocean and surrounding areas, but as these environmental situations change, states have readily identified the high north as a priority in both their security and economic strategies. Among the main reasons the Arctic has not been more readily seen as a poten- tial area for security competition and conflict is the interpretation that the United States has little or no interest in the circumpolar region at all. According to Stephen Brooks and William Wohlforth, American hegemony throughout the post-Cold War era was seen as passive, stable and enduring because of the lack of counterpower being demonstrated in the system: Bounded by oceans to the east and west and weak, friendly powers to the north and south, the United States is both less vulnerable than previous aspiring hegemons and also less threatening to others. The main potential challengers to its unipolarity, mean- while – China, Russia, Japan, and Germany – are in the opposite position. They can- not augment their military capabilities so as to balance the United States without simultaneously becoming an immediate threat to their neighbors. Politics, even interna- tional politics, is local. Although American power attracts a lot of attention globally, states are usually more concerned with their own neighborhoods than with the global equilibrium. Were any of the potential challengers to make a serious run at the United States, regional balancing efforts would almost certainly help contain them, as would the massive latent power capabilities of the United States, which could be mobilized as necessary to head off an emerging threat.27 Almost completely omitted from such interpretations, however, are America’s north- ern borders over Alaska and into the Arctic. Latitudinal thinking would seem to indicate that Brooks and Wohlforth are correct in terms of America’s interests in many areas of the globe, but this ignores what has been happening at the top of the world in the high north. It is not as if the United States has been ignorant of its own decline in power, especially regarding the Arctic. In 2009, the United States issued National Security Presidential Directive 66 and Homeland Security Presidential Directive 25 that deal exclusively with American Arctic policy. According to these directives, the altera- tions to national policies of other states regarding the Arctic compelled the United States to clearly outline the security and development strategies they would use to protect its Arctic interests. Among the first, and most clear, elements of the direc- tives is the clear intention of the United States to defend their national security interests. According to Article III, subsection B 1 of the directives: The United States has broad and fundamental national security interests in the Arctic region and is prepared to operate either independently or in conjunction with other states to safeguard these interests. These interests include suchmatters as missile defense and early warning; deployment ofsea and air systems for strategic sealift, strategic deterrence, maritime presence, and maritime security operations; and ensuring freedom of navigation and overflight.28 The contemporary changes to the international system as the era of American hegemony has begun to wane, the effects of climate change and greater access, and the increasingly militaristic strategies of most every Arctic state have led to a situa- tion where tensions are at an all time high, and that legal or institutional processes are unlikely to resolve anything amicably. As the system continues its transition away from unipolarity, observers are left to ponder what might come next after an era of relative interstate stability. Multipolarity and the circumpolar In their 2002 article on the nature of United States primacy and the enduring aspects of American hegemony, Brooks and Wohlforth argue that the United States would have to act as a benevolent hegemon in order to prevent counterbalancing and to be able to build effective regimes worldwide. They argue: Magnanimity and restraint in the face of temptation are tenets of successful statecraft that have proved their worth from classical Greece onward. Standing taller than lead- ing states of the past, the United States has unprecedented freedom to do as it pleases. It can play the game for itself alone or for the system as a whole; it can focus on small returns today or larger ones tomorrow. If the administration truly wants to be loved as well as feared, the policy answers are not hard to find.29 The problem with such analyses of American hegemony is that the Bush administration chose to ignore utterly such warnings and, rather than acting mag- nanimously, post-9/11 American foreign policy did precisely what it should not have. Pre-emption, coercion and irrational interventions, combined with a major economic recession, all serve to explain why American hegemony began to decline by 2005 in terms of both actual power levels and perceptions of legitimate hege- monic status.30 The clearest sign that American exceptionalism has been decreasing is the aggressive and regional balancing dynamics taking place between states in the Arctic region. Security strategy in the circumpolar region has altered dramatically since 2005, with more states showing interest, hard power spending increasing, and legal pro- cesses being coupled by at times overtly offensive strategy.31 Russia, Canada and a number of European states, especially Norway and Sweden, exemplify this line of argument about how sovereignty claims have become focused on traditional inter- state arms racing and militarism while soft power components, like governance structures and legal processes, continually evolve.32 As mentioned previously, even the United States has woken up to see that, as their hegemony declines, other states have begun to balance against them in the Arctic, thus provoking the 2009 Presi- dential Directives. Even so, Arctic interested nations have not yielded to American claims, nor has there been any evidence of America’s closest allies backing down in the face of its Arctic assertions, most clearly evidenced by Canada’s continued claims over the Northwest Passage.33 In the international relations canon, most observers point to either India or China as emerging great powers that are the most likely to counterbalance Ameri- can power. The 2004 American National Intelligence Council report highlights this theory by stating: The likely emergence of China and India as new major global players – similar to the rise of Germany in the 19th century and the United States in the early 20th century – will transform the geopolitical landscape, with impacts potentially as dramatic as those of the previous two centuries. In the same way that commentators refer to the 1900s as the American Century, the early 21st century may be seen as the time when some in the developing world led by China and India came into their own.34 Both China and India have recently expressed their interest in Arctic affairs, but no power is as close to rivalling or challenging American power in hard power terms than Russia. This is especially true in the Arctic, as Russia’s Arctic policies have made its intentions towards asserting its control over territory it deems to be sovereign very clear. The role of the Arctic in Russian foreign policy cannot be understated. According to Russia’s 2008 Arctic policy document, the region is seen as the epicentre of Russia’s military and socio-economic development. The top two priorities for Russian Arctic interests are defined as follows: (a) In the sphere of socio-economic development – the expansion of the resource base of the Arctic Zone of the Russian Federation, in order to substantially satisfy Russia’s needs in hydrocarbon resources, hydro-biological resources, and other types of strate- gic raw materials; (b) In the sphere of military security, defense, and safekeeping of the state borders of the Russian Federation located in the Arctic Zone of the Russian Federation – the upkeep of a favorable operational regime in the Arctic Zone of the Russian Federa- tion, including the maintenance of the required combat potential of military groupings under the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, other troops, military formations and agencies in this region ...35 In order to achieve these goals, the Russians have created a unique military brigade to be permanently posted in the Arctic, have placed a Russian Federation flag on the Arctic Ocean seabed, have conducted various missile tests, have sailed their nuclear submarines through contested waters and have openly challenged the abilities of other states to enforce their own claims. In response to Russian offensive posturing and the inability of the United States to dissuade security competition in the area, middle and minor powers have begun to use hard power as a means of trying to enforce their sovereignty. Perhaps the best example here is Canada, whose military capabilities are extremely weak, but strong rhetoric and a drastically increased level of high-north military spending since 2006 seems to indicate that the Canadian government cannot rely on its American alliances to protect its interests, and that posturing by states like Russia or even Denmark clearly threaten Canada’s national interests. As Norway, Sweden and Denmark have begun to put an emphasis on hard power capabilities to extend or defend northern claims, Canada has done the same. Worth noting as well in the Canadian context is that, while great powers like Russia and the United States can easily defeat any middle or minor power, Canada’s capabilities are being either rivalled or surpassed by European states like Norway.36 Canada’s realization of the evolving security and environmental climate in the Arctic has compelled changes to its domestic and foreign security policies, each seeking to assert Canadian sovereignty over areas of the Arctic, especially the Northwest Passage. One of the main components of now Prime Minister Harper’s 2005–06 campaign was to bolster Arctic security resources, as many Canadians have identified the region as an essential part of Canada’s national security and identity.37 Rob Huebert argues: The Harper government has increasingly recognized the significance of maintaining a strong presence in the Arctic and has vigorously begun to improve Canada’s northern abilities ... The Harper government has also made a series of promises to consider- ably expand Canada’s northern capability ... If these promises are implemented, Canada will have significantly improved its ability to control activity in its Arctic.38 In virtually any other area of the world, Canadian national security cannot be divorced from the United States, which is a partial explanation for why Canada has traditionally been considered a middle power since the end of World War II.39 Yet, since the start of American decline, the Canadian government has recognized that its fate in the Arctic will be its own, and not intrinsically tied to the protection of the United States, as the Americans have their own interests in the region and have shown a complete disregard for Canadian claims over the Northwest Passage and the Beaufort Sea. As the world moves towards multipolarity, it has become increasingly obvious that the Arctic region represents an area of increased security competition and a potentially conflictual region in the future. Multipolar systems are the most unsta- ble, and history has shown these to produce military conflict due to the natural effects brought by a larger number of self-interested powers vying for power and security. Further, as new great powers begin to emerge, American strategic consid- erations will be spread so thin that they will be unable to prevent against their even- tual loss of hegemony. The largest mistake being made at this time by international security scholars and policymakers is their normal obsession with China, India and latitudinal thinking. The next area of major war is not likely to be the Middle East, the Indian Ocean or the South China Sea, due to traditional security balancing, deterrence and economic interests in each of these areas. Multipolarity naturally brings the possibility of war. Mearsheimer contends that war is far more likely in multipolar systems for three reasons: First, there are more opportunities for war, because there are more potential conflict dyads in a multipolar system. Second, imbalances of power are more commonplace in a multipolar world, and thus great powers are more likely to have the capability to win a war, making deterrence more difficult and war more likely. Third, the potential for miscalculation is greater in multipolarity: states might think they have the capabil- ity to coerce or conquer another state when, in fact, they do not.40 Presently, there is little reason to believe that tension and strategic posturing will lead to the outbreak of war in the near future. That said, as America’s influence continues to wane, other states have shown their desire to take full advantage of the United States’ inability to control northern affairs. If the United States does lose its hegemony, which many commentators believe is inevitable, there will be at least four dyads in security calculations, with Russia, China and India entering the fray, and two of those states have Arctic borders and a historical legacy of conflict. Power imbalance in the Arctic is already apparent, with only Russia and the United States as great powers, while the other Arctic states are middle or minor powers with no hope of preventing a great power from doing as it pleases. Lastly, miscalculation is evident in the present context, as Sweden and Norway are both arming for possible Russian aggression, though Russia has shown little or no overtly aggressive tendencies towards Nordic nations. Unipolarity was not going to last forever, but as it fades the probability of northern conflict is ever increasing. The shift to hard power strategies, the effects of cli- mate change, and the decline of the United States all speak to the fact that multipolarity can increase levels of tension and mistrust, thus altering the currently stable nature of Arctic affairs. Efforts at Arctic governance through institutional binding or legal claims, as seen in the Arctic Council and UNCLOS, are able at present to mitigate the ongoing and ever increasing security competition in the high north, but as the system changes from unipolarity to multipolarity, constraining state behaviour becomes increasingly difficult. As such, observers must be mindful of the systemic variables at play when explaining and forecasting Arctic politics, as changes to the structure are very likely to translate into changes to state security strategies.

Collapse causes transition wars
Walton 7 Lecturer in International Relations and Strategic Studies at the University of Reading in Reading, England, 07 Dale C, “geopolitics and the great powers in the twenty-first century”, http://books.google.com/books?id=AQLTD1R-47ACandprintsec=frontcoverandsource=gbs_navlinks_s#v=onepageandq=andf=false

Although international political conditions will differ enormously in the coming decades from those of the middle 1940’s, it would be grossly irresponsible for the United States to shrug off its burdens of great power status and return to the slumber that it once enjoyed. Almost certainly, if the United States had refused to take an active role in European politics in the middle of the twentieth century, a world would have emerged in which American values would not have flourished and even their survival on the North American continent would have been profoundly threatened. America’s refusal to play a substantial role in the great power struggles of this century would have similarly deleterious effects. Importantly, if the United States withdraws to its hemisphere a third world war is far more likely. In a meta region full of young rising powers the presence of a strategically mature superpower can be expected to have a stabilizing effect; the enormous military resources possessed by America compels would be aggressors to consider carefully before launching a strategic adventure. Even more chillingly, as noted above, it is possible that the multipolar system could become sufficiently unbalanced that it would collapse, with a power such as China building a coalition that would allow it ultimately to emerge as the master of eastern Eurasia and the greatest power in the world. nited States is the “court of last resort” protecting against such an eventuality. The latter possibility does not contradict the above argument that us unipolarity is unsustainable - as an extra Eurasian power lacking the ruthlessness to destroy potential great power competitors preventatively, Washington simply cannot sustain unipolarity indefinitely. Nonetheless, while the emerging multipolar system appears robust it should receive “care and feeding” – otherwise it is vulnerable to grossly unbalanced events such as the creation of a very aggressive coalition dedicated to achieving Eurasian hegemony and willing if necessary to fight a third world war t o achieve it. Most likely such a coalition would not be able to simply bully its way to hegemony; it probably would have to fight, the results being a war enormously costly in blood, perhaps even one that would dwarf World War II in its price. If the aggressive coalition won, in turn, the multipolar system would be destroyed and the United States would face a competitor far more powerful than itself , and in all likelihood a world in which democracy and personal liberty would be in eclipse. In any case it is a geopolitical imperative for the United States that no power or coalition attains hegemony in Eastern Eurasia, much less that an explicitly hostile state or coalition succeeds in doing so. If the United States is to guard its national interests in this century, it is vital that it ensures the transition from unipolarity to multipolarity occurs in as gentle a manner as possible. In this capacity, it is important to understand that the United States is in long term relative decline, but, at the same time to acknowledge that it has very great military, financial and diplomatic resources at its disposal. If Washington deploys these resources wisely it can maximize its security over the long term and minimize the probability of a great power war.

Use your ballot to affirm American Hegemony
Kagan 1998 – PhD, graduate of Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, adjunct history professor at Georgetown, senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (Robert, Foreign Policy, “The benevolent empire”, chm)

Those contributing to the growing chorus of antihegemony and multipolarity may know they are playing a dangerous game, one that needs to be conducted with the utmost care, as French leaders did during the Cold War, lest the entire international system come crashing down around them. What they may not have adequately calculated, however, is the possibility that Americans will not respond as wisely as they generally did during the Cold War. Americans and their leaders should not take all this sophisticated whining about U.S. hegemony too seriously. They certainly should not take it more seriously than the whiners themselves do. But, of course, Americans are taking it seriously. In the United States these days, the lugubrious guilt trip of post-Vietnam liberalism is echoed even by conservatives, with William Buckley, Samuel Huntington, and James Schlesinger all decrying American "hubris," "arrogance," and "imperialism." Clinton administration officials, in between speeches exalting America as the "indispensable" nation, increasingly behave as if what is truly indispensable is the prior approval of China, France, and Russia for every military action. Moreover, at another level, there is a stirring of neo-isolationism in America today, a mood that nicely complements the view among many Europeans that America is meddling too much in everyone else's business and taking too little time to mind its own. The existence of the Soviet Union disciplined Americans and made them see that their enlightened self-interest lay in a relatively generous foreign policy. Today, that discipline is no longer present. In other words, foreign grumbling about American hegemony would be merely amusing, were it not for the very real possibility that too many Americans will forget —- even if most of the rest of the world does not —- just how important continued American dominance is to the preservation of a reasonable level of international security and prosperity. World leaders may want to keep this in mind when they pop the champagne corks in celebration of the next American humbling.

No risk of endless intervention and leadership is stable – robust engagement accesses our impacts
Brooks, et al, 13 By Stephen G. Brooks; G. John Ikenberry and William C. Wohlforth  STEPHEN G. BROOKS is Associate Professor of Government at Dartmouth College.  G. JOHN IKENBERRY is Albert G. Milbank Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University and Global Eminence Scholar at Kyung Hee University in Seoul.  WILLIAM C. WOHLFORTH is Daniel Webster Professor of Government at Dartmouth College, p. Foreign Affairs
LED NOT INTO TEMPTATION
The costs of U.S. foreign policy that matter most, of course, are human lives, and critics of an expansive grand strategy worry that the United States might get dragged into unnecessary wars. Securing smaller allies, they argue, emboldens those states to take risks they would not otherwise accept, pulling the superpower sponsor into costly conflicts--a classic moral hazard problem. Concerned about the reputational costs of failing to honor the country's alliance commitments, U.S. leaders might go to war even when no national interests are at stake.¶ History shows, however, that great powers anticipate the danger of entrapment and structure their agreements to protect themselves from it. It is nearly impossible to find a clear case of a smaller power luring a reluctant great power into war. For decades, World War I served as the canonical example of entangling alliances supposedly drawing great powers into a fight, but an outpouring of new historical research has overturned the conventional wisdom, revealing that the war was more the result of a conscious decision on Germany's part to try to dominate Europe than a case of alliance entrapment.¶ If anything, alliances reduce the risk of getting pulled into a conflict. In East Asia, the regional security agreements that Washington struck after World War II were designed, in the words of the political scientist Victor Cha, to "constrain anticommunist allies in the region that might engage in aggressive behavior against adversaries that could entrap the United States in an unwanted larger war." The same logic is now at play in the U.S.Taiwanese relationship. After cross-strait tensions flared in the 1990s and the first decade of this century, U.S. officials grew concerned that their ambiguous support for Taiwan might expose them to the risk of entrapment. So the Bush administration adjusted its policy, clarifying that its goal was to not only deter China from an unprovoked attack but also deter Taiwan from unilateral moves toward independence.¶ For many advocates of retrenchment, the problem is that the mere possession of globe-girdling military capabilities supposedly inflates policymakers' conception of the national interest, so much so that every foreign problem begins to look like America's to solve. Critics also argue that the country's military superiority causes it to seek total solutions to security problems, as in Afghanistan and Iraq, that could be dealt with in less costly ways. Only a country that possessed such awesome military power and faced no serious geopolitical rival would fail to be satisfied with partial fixes, such as containment, and instead embark on wild schemes of democracy building, the argument goes.¶ Furthermore, they contend, the United States' outsized military creates a sense of obligation to do something with it even when no U.S. interests are at stake. As Madeleine Albright, then the U.S. ambassador to the UN, famously asked Colin Powell, then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, when debating intervention in Bosnia in 1993, "What's the point of having this superb military you're always talking about if we can't use it?"¶ If the U.S. military scrapped its forces and shuttered its bases, then the country would no doubt eliminate the risk of entering needless wars, having tied itself to the mast like Ulysses. But if it instead merely moved its forces over the horizon, as is more commonly proposed by advocates of retrenchment, whatever temptations there were to intervene would not disappear. The bigger problem with the idea that a forward posture distorts conceptions of the national interest, however, is that it rests on just one case: Iraq. That war is an outlier in terms of both its high costs (it accounts for some two-thirds of the casualties and budget costs of all U.S. wars since 1990) and the degree to which the United States shouldered them alone. In the Persian Gulf War and the interventions in Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, and Libya, U.S. allies bore more of the burden, controlling for the size of their economies and populations.¶ Besides, the Iraq war was not an inevitable consequence of pursuing the United States' existing grand strategy; many scholars and policymakers who prefer an engaged America strongly opposed the war. Likewise, continuing the current grand strategy in no way condemns the United States to more wars like it. Consider how the country, after it lost in Vietnam, waged the rest of the Cold War with proxies and highly limited interventions. Iraq has generated a similar reluctance to undertake large expeditionary operations--what the political scientist John Mueller has dubbed "the Iraq syndrome." Those contending that the United States' grand strategy ineluctably leads the country into temptation need to present much more evidence before their case can be convincing.

Infinite number of possible ‘root causes’ means that only incentives theory solves
Moore 4—chaired law prof, UVA. Frm first Chairman of the Board of the US Institute of Peace and as the Counselor on Int Law to the Dept. of State (John, Beyond the Democratic Peace,  44 Va. J. Int'l L. 341, Lexis, AMiles)
If major interstate war is predominantly a product of a synergy between a potential nondemocratic aggressor and an absence of effective deterrence, what is the role of the many traditional "causes" of war? Past, and many contemporary, theories of war have focused on the role of specific disputes between nations, ethnic and religious differences, arms races, poverty and social injustice, competition for resources, incidents and accidents, greed, fear, perceptions of "honor," and many other factors. Such factors may well play a role in motivating aggression or generating fear and manipulating public opinion. The reality, however, is that while some of these factors may have more potential to contribute to war than others, there may well be an infinite set of motivating factors, or human wants, motivating aggression. It is not the independent existence of such motivating factors for war but rather the circumstances permitting or encouraging high-risk decisions leading to war that is the key to more effectively controlling armed conflict. And the same may also be true of democide. The early focus in the Rwanda slaughter on "ethnic conflict," as though Hutus and Tutsis had begun to slaughter each other through spontaneous combustion, distracted our attention from the reality that a nondemocratic Hutu regime had carefully planned and orchestrated a genocide against Rwandan Tutsis as well as its Hutu opponents. 158 Certainly if we were able to press a button and end poverty, racism, religious intolerance, injustice, and endless disputes, we would want to do so. Indeed, democratic governments must remain committed to policies that will produce a better world by all measures of human progress. The broader achievement of democracy and the rule of law will itself assist in this progress. No one, however, has yet been able to demonstrate the kind of robust correlation with any of these "traditional" causes of war  that is reflected in the "democratic peace." Further, given the difficulties in overcoming many of these social problems, an approach to war exclusively dependent on their solution may doom us to war for generations to come. *394 A useful framework for thinking about the war puzzle is provided in the Kenneth Waltz classic Man, the State and War, 159 first published in 1954 for the Institute of War and Peace Studies, in which he notes that previous thinkers about the causes of war have tended to assign responsibility at one of the three levels of individual psychology, the nature of the state, or the nature of the international system. This tripartite level of analysis has subsequently been widely copied in the study of international relations. We might summarize my analysis in this classical construct by suggesting that the most critical variables are the second and third levels, or "images," of analysis. Government structures, at the second level, seem to play a central role in levels of aggressiveness in high-risk behavior leading to major war. In this, the "democratic peace" is an essential insight. The third level of analysis, the international system, or totality of external incentives influencing the decision to go to war, is also critical when government structures do not restrain such high-risk behavior on their own. Indeed, nondemocratic systems may not only fail to constrain inappropriate aggressive behavior, they may even massively enable it by placing the resources of the state at the disposal of a ruthless regime elite. It is not that the first level of analysis, the individual, is unimportant - I have already argued that it is important in elite perceptions about the permissibility and feasibility of force and resultant necessary levels of deterrence. It is, instead, that the second level of analysis, government structures, may be a powerful proxy for settings bringing to power those who are disposed to aggressive military adventures and in creating incentive structures predisposed to high-risk behavior. We might also want to keep open the possibility that a war/peace model focused on democracy and deterrence might be further usefully refined by adding psychological profiles of particular leaders as we assess the likelihood of aggression and levels of necessary deterrence. Nondemocracies' leaders can have different perceptions of the necessity or usefulness of force and, as Marcus Aurelius should remind us, not all absolute leaders are Caligulas or Neros. Further, the history of ancient Egypt reminds us that not all Pharaohs were disposed to make war on their neighbors. Despite the importance of individual leaders, however, the key to war avoidance is understanding that major international war is critically an interaction, or synergy, of certain characteristics at levels two and three - specifically an absence of *395 democracy and an absence of effective deterrence. Yet another way to conceptualize the importance of democracy and deterrence in war avoidance is to note that each in its own way internalizes the costs to decision elites of engaging in high-risk aggressive behavior. Democracy internalizes these costs in a variety of ways including displeasure of the electorate at having war imposed upon it by its own government. And deterrence either prevents achievement of the objective altogether or imposes punishing costs making the gamble not worth the risk. 160 III. Testing the Hypothesis Hypotheses, or paradigms, are useful if they reflect the real world better than previously held paradigms. In the complex world of foreign affairs and the war puzzle, perfection is unlikely. No general construct will fit all cases even in the restricted category of "major interstate war;" there are simply too many variables. We should insist, however, on testing against the real world and on results that suggest enhanced usefulness over other constructs. In testing the hypothesis, we can test it for consistency with major wars. That is, in looking, for example, at the principal interstate wars in the twentieth century, did they present both a nondemocratic aggressor and an absence of effective deterrence? 161 And although it, by itself, does not prove causation, we might also want to test the hypothesis against settings of potential wars that did not occur. That is, in non-war settings, was there an absence of at least one element of the synergy? We might also ask questions about the effect of changes on the international system in either element of the synergy. That is, what, in general, happens when a totalitarian state makes a transition to stable democracy or vice versa? And what, in general, happens when levels of deterrence are dramatically increased or decreased? 

Criticizing Western “imperialism” obscures more insidious practices by regional powers
Shaw 2 – Sussex IR Professor (Martin, The Problem of the Quasi-Imperial State, www.martinshaw.org/empire.htm)

Nor have many considered the possibility that if the concept of imperialism has a relevance today, it applies to certain aggressive, authoritarian regimes of the non-Western world rather than to the contemporary West. In this paper I fully accept that there is a concentration of much world power - economic, cultural, political and military - in the hands of Western elites. In my recent book, Theory of the Global State, I discuss the development of a 'global-Western state conglomerate' (Shaw 2000). I argue that 'global' ideas and institutions, whose significance characterizes the new political era that has opened with the end of the Cold War, depend largely - but not solely - on Western power. I hold no brief and intend no apology for official Western ideas and behaviour. And yet I propose that the idea of a new imperialism is a profoundly misleading, indeed ideological concept that obscures the realities of power and especially of empire in the twenty-first century. This notion is an obstacle to understanding the significance, extent and limits of contemporary Western power. It simultaneously serves to obscure many real causes of oppression, suffering and struggle for transformation against the quasi-imperial power of many regional states. I argue that in the global era, this separation has finally become critical. This is for two related reasons. On the one hand, Western power has moved into new territory, largely uncharted -- and I argue unchartable -- with the critical tools of anti-imperialism. On the other hand, the politics of empire remain all too real, in classic forms that recall both modern imperialism and earlier empires, in many non-Western states, and they are revived in many political struggles today. Thus the concept of a 'new imperialism' fails to deal with both key post-imperial features of Western power and the quasi-imperial character of many non-Western states. The concept overstates Western power and understates the dangers posed by other, more authoritarian and imperial centres of power. Politically it identifies the West as the principal enemy of the world's people, when for many of them there are far more real and dangerous enemies closer to.

Social science proves – power vacuums support the natural incentive to seek status by fighting
Wohlforth 09 – professor of government at Dartmouth (William, “Unipolarity, Status Competition, and Great Power War,” World Affairs, January, project muse)

The upshot is a near scholarly consensus that unpolarity’s consequences for great power conflict are indeterminate and that a power shift resulting in a return to bipolarity or multipolarity will not raise the specter of great power war. This article questions the consensus on two counts. First, I show that it depends crucially on a dubious assumption about human motivation. Prominent theories of war are based on the assumption that people are mainly motivated by the instrumental pursuit of tangible ends such as physical security and material prosperity. This is why such theories seem irrelevant to interactions among great powers in an international environment that diminishes the utility of war for the pursuit of such ends. Yet we know that people are motivated by a great many non-instrumental motives, not least by concerns regarding their social status. 3 As John Harsanyi noted, “Apart from economic payoffs, social status (social rank) seems to be the most important incentive and motivating force of social behavior.”4 This proposition rests on much firmer scientific ground now than when Harsanyi expressed it a generation ago, as cumulating research shows that humans appear to be hardwired for sensitivity to status and that relative standing is a powerful and independent motivator of behavior.5 End Page 29
Second, I question the dominant view that status quo evaluations are relatively independent of the distribution of capabilities. If the status of states depends in some measure on their relative capabilities, and if states derive utility from status, then different distributions of capabilities may affect levels of satisfaction, just as different income distributions may affect levels of status competition in domestic settings. 6 Building on research in psychology and sociology, I argue that even capabilities distributions among major powers foster ambiguous status hierarchies, which generate more dissatisfaction and clashes over the status quo. And the more stratified the distribution of capabilities, the less likely such status competition is.
Unipolarity thus generates far fewer incentives than either bipolarity or multipolarity for direct great power positional competition over status. Elites in the other major powers continue to prefer higher status, but in a unipolar system they face comparatively weak incentives to translate that preference into costly action. And the absence of such incentives matters because social status is a positional good—something whose value depends on how much one has in relation to others.7 “If everyone has high status,” Randall Schweller notes, “no one does.”8 While one actor might increase its status, all cannot simultaneously do so. High status is thus inherently scarce, and competitions for status tend to be zero sum.9

Tournament: Grapevine | Round: 1 | Opponent: Christian Crossing | Judge: Bruce Miller
Obama has the upper hand on debt limit now but GOP demands could create a complicated battle
Kapur, 9/9 -~-- TPM’s senior congressional reporter and Supreme Court correspondent
(9/9/2013, Sahil, “Is House GOP Backing Down In Debt Limit Fight?” http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2013/09/house-gop-cantor-memo-debt-ceiling-cr-sequester-immigration.php)

House Republicans are taming members’ expectations ahead of the debt limit showdown, signaling that
AND
charge and returns us to a pre-2008 level of discretionary spending.”

Immigration tanks debt – breaks the delicate compromise between business and labor
Werner 3-30-13
Congressional reporter for AP specializing in immigration
“Immigration Reform: Business, Labor Get Deal On Worker Program, Source Says” By ERICA WERNER 03/30/13 08:41 PM ET EDT http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/30/immigration-reform_n_2985521.html

Big business and labor have struck a deal on a new low-skilled worker
AND
other illegal immigrants, in an effort to create a stable agricultural workforce.

Calling in a favor on the plan burns up Obama’s limited leverage with House Republicans  
Moore, 9/10 -~-- Guardianand#39;s US finance and economics editor
(Heidi, 9/10/2013, “Syria: the great distraction; Obama is focused on a conflict abroad, but the fight he should be gearing up for is with Congress on Americaand#39;s economic security,” http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/sep/10/obama-syria-what-about-sequester))

Before President Obama speaks to the nation about Syria tonight, take a look at
AND
better. As it is, he should now judge his actions better.

(   ) Entertaining GOP negotiating demands will drag the process out and trigger economic collapse
Lobello, 8/27 -~-- business editor at TheWeek.com (Carmel, 8/27/2013, “How the looming debt ceiling fight could screw up the U.S. economy; Yup, this is happening — again,” http://theweek.com/article/index/248775/how-the-looming-debt-ceiling-fight-could-screw-up-the-us-economy))

Ready for more debt-ceiling drama? The Treasury Department said Monday it would
AND
Failure to meet that responsibility would cause irreparable harm to the American economy.and#34;

Independently, economic leadership prevents war—perception matters
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, served as special assistant to the president for national security affairs and senior director for Asia on the National Security Council, holds a Ph.D. from Columbia University, and Michael E. Oand#39;Hanlon, Director of Research and Senior Fellow in Foreign Policy at the Brookings Institution, Visiting Lecturer at Princeton University, Adjunct Professor at Johns Hopkins University, holds a Ph.D. from Princeton University, 2012 (“The Real National Security Threat: Americaand#39;s Debt,” Los Angeles Times, July 10th, Available Online at http://www.brookings.edu/research/opinions/2012/07/10-economy-foreign-policy-lieberthal-ohanlon, Accessed 07-12-2012)
Why is this situation so serious? First, we are headed for a level
AND
really possible if that fundamental prerequisite to effective foreign policy is not reestablished.

Tournament: MBA | Round: 3 | Opponent: Lexington AX | Judge: Linda Collier
TPA will pass—PC is key
Schneider, 12/17 (Howard, 12/17/2013, “Obama, to sell trade pacts, will outline the benefits of globalization,” http://www.stltoday.com/business/local/obama-to-sell-trade-pacts-will-outline-the-benefits-of/article_3bebc586-6ed7-50dd-879c-3f331fd54363.html))
WASHINGTON • After months of international negotiations over two new trade treaties, the Obama administration is planning a major push to make the case that the agreements will put Americans to work at a decent wage and not further winnow the country's manufacturing base.
European and U.S. negotiators are in Washington this week to continue work on an agreement that would mesh the world's two largest economies more closely together. A second proposed treaty, the 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), may be finished early next year, creating a trade zone covering 40 percent of world economic output and reaching from Chile to Japan.
The legislation needed for both agreements to clear Congress is expected to be introduced early in 2014, and the administration "is beginning to ramp up" for what could be the most extensive debate in more than a decade over the opportunities and risks of globalization, said an official who was not authorized to speak publicly about the administration's strategy. "We will be mobilizing a whole administration effort to build public and congressional support," the official said.
LIKELY TO BE CONTROVERSIAL
It is likely to be a controversial battle, forcing President Barack Obama to stump for policies that some of his strongest political allies — particularly organized labor and environmental groups — are likely to oppose. It is a debate set against the backdrop of 7 percent unemployment and concern about the loss of U.S. jobs that coincided with the rise of manufacturing power in countries such as China.
The measures under consideration would cover the bulk of global economic activity and reshape economic relations around the globe — setting the first rules for new industries that are thriving thanks to the Internet and renegotiating standards for old ones such as shoemaking.
Obama has focused much of his recent economic policy on boosting trade and global investment. He will now need to make the case that a broad new set of trade agreements will help U.S. workers and not merely shift jobs overseas or benefit a small clique of global corporations, as many trade skeptics argue has happened before.
SETTING 'THE RULES OF THE GAME'
These agreements "will set the rules of the game … in a way that levels the playing field and allows our workers to compete more effectively. If we don't do that, the rules will be set by others," U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman said Tuesday. Chinese economic influence in Asia is a particular concern.
"At the end of the day, when the deal is done, we will be able to explain to everybody the balances that we struck and we will have support for the substance of it," Froman said.
The countries involved range from long-standing U.S. industrial allies such as Germany and Japan to developing nations such as Vietnam and Malaysia, each posing its own challenges in completing the agreements and winning support in the United States.
A more open Japanese auto market could be of great benefit to U.S. manufacturers, for example, while the administration envisions Vietnam becoming a geopolitically important model of how a government-planned economy can transition to a system of stronger individual rights and more market-based rules for state-run enterprises.
DOMESTIC OPPOSITION
Several major union leaders, as well as some corporate executives and civil society groups, have been skeptical that those benefits will ever be realized and argue that the TPP in particular is being negotiated with such little public disclosure that it is hard to judge the potential effects.
On Capitol Hill, there is ill will to overcome from the recent government shutdown and controversy over the rollout of the health-care law. Unemployment is high and a core group of Democrats feels that prior trade agreements — from Clinton-era treaties with Mexico and Canada to the decision to let China join the World Trade Organization — have helped hollow out America's manufacturing middle class.
Democrats who favor trade — including important figures such as Rep. Sander Levin, D-Mich., — want tougher guarantees in any upcoming treaty, including enforceable rules to ensure that major trading partners don't unfairly manipulate the value of their currencies to gain advantage.
Civil society groups have raised a myriad of complaints, and the usually pro-trade GOP may splinter as members affiliated with the tea party movement argue against providing Obama with the same authority that presidents since Gerald Ford have been given to negotiate trade treaties without fear of congressional amendment.
FIRST BATTLE: 'FAST-TRACK AUTHORITY'
In fact, the first battle will be over not a trade agreement but that "fast-track" authority. Fast-track rules let Congress set negotiating parameters for the administration but requires any subsequent treaty to receive a quick up-or-down vote without amendment — a way to assure negotiating partners that deals will not be returned with a long list of congressional changes to barter over.
The Republican and Democratic chairmen of the House Ways and Means Committee and the Senate Finance Committee are working on a trade promotion authority bill expected to be introduced early in 2014. That will be the forum to work out some of the major fears or complaints lawmakers have voiced over the TPP and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership with Europe.
Obama "needs to make clear this is important," said Jake Colvin, a vice president of the National Foreign Trade Council, a business lobby. "Potentially there is a significant amount of support in the center among Democrats and Republicans to get it over the line."
Free-trade agreements with South Korea, Colombia and Panama have been approved under Obama. But they originally dated to the Bush administration and were covered by fast-track laws that have since expired.
POLITICALLY FRAUGHT DEBATE
The last debate over trade promotion authority, in 2002, showed how narrow and politically fraught the margins can become: The measure was approved 215 to 212 in the House on a largely party-line vote.
The politics of trade since then have arguably become more intense. The U.S. sway over the world economic system was rocked by the financial crisis, and China's rapid growth has led U.S. unions, politicians and others to insist that future trade agreements not only open markets but also ensure that U.S. workers are not left at a disadvantage.
New "21st century" issues such as the transfer of data across national borders, intellectual property rules for biotechnology, and appropriate regulations for state-owned enterprises are being negotiated for the first time, alongside age-old disputes over agriculture and whether cheese from somewhere other than Roquefort-sur-Soulzon smells just as sweet.
When the latest round of Pacific talks ended this month in Singapore, House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp, R-Mich, said there had been "considerable bipartisan and bicameral progress" on a trade promotion bill.
He said he felt legislation could pass "early next year, if we have the administration's active participation."

Plan unpopular
Vanderpool, 1ac ev, 6 (Tim, “NADBank Blues Will border cleanup efforts be abandoned?,” Tucson Weekly, 4/16/06, http://www.tucsonweekly.com/tucson/nadbank-blues/Content?oid=1083801)

The NADBank was an outgrowth of the North American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA, enacted by Canada, the United States and Mexico in 1993. Headquartered in San Antonio, Texas, it was essentially created to quiet environmentalists and Latino activists, who feared the free-trade compact would further industrialize an already heavily polluted borderland. With $3 billion in lending capital--provided in equal shares by the United States and Mexico--the bank has since helped finance 90 projects, and another 59 are in the pipeline.
At the same time, NADBank funding also triggers U.S. Environmental Protection Agency grants. In total, it is responsible for $2.35 billion in regional improvements, ranging from clean-water systems and dust-reducing pavement projects to crucial waste facilities in Arizona communities such as Bisbee, Yuma and Nogales.
Still, the NADBank has been no stranger to criticism. Environmentalists condemn its secretive operating style, while others have chastised the bank's inability to offer lower-interest loans to desperately poor communities.

TPA key to trade and economy
Riley and Kim 13, Jay Van Andel Senior Policy Analyst in Trade Policy and Senior Policy Analyst, Economic Freedom, 2013
(Bryan and Anthony, “Advancing Trade Freedom: Key Objective of Trade Promotion Authority Renewal”, Heritage, April 16, http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2013/04/advancing-trade-freedom-key-objective-of-trade-promotion-authority-renewal, accessed on 7/9/13, BT)
Trade Promotion Authority (TPA) has been a critical tool for advancing free trade and spreading its benefits to a greater number of Americans. TPA, also known as “fast track” authority, is the legislative power Congress grants to the President to negotiate reciprocal trade agreements. Provided the President observes certain statutory obligations under TPA, Congress agrees to consider implementing those trade pacts without amending them.More than a decade has passed since TPA was last renewed in 2002, and its authority expired in 2007. Reinstituting TPA may well be the most important legislative action on trade for both Congress and the President in 2013 given the urgency of restoring America’s credibility in advancing open markets and securing greater benefits of two-way trade for Americans. As the case for timely reinstallation of an effective and practical TPA is stronger than ever, the quest for renewing TPA should be guided by principles that enhance trade freedom, a vital component of America’s economic freedom.Both House Ways and Means Committee chairman David Camp (R–MI) and Senate Finance Committee chairman Max Baucus (D–MT) have announced plans to pursue TPA legislation. However, many lawmakers have correctly pointed out that a proactive push from President Obama is critical, given that trade bills have been a thorny issue for many Democrats in recent years.Historically, it has been common practice, although not formally required, to have the President request that Congress provide renewed TPA. In fact, except for President Obama, every President since Franklin Roosevelt has either requested or received trade negotiating authority.1After four years of informing Congress it would seek TPA at “the appropriate time,” early this year the Obama Administration finally indicated its interest in working with Congress to get TPA done. The President’s 2013 trade agenda offered the Administration’s most forward-leaning language yet, specifying that “to facilitate the conclusion, approval, and implementation of market-opening negotiating efforts, we will also work with Congress on Trade Promotion Authority.”2In the 2002 Bipartisan Trade Promotion Authority Act, Congress—whose role in formulating U.S. trade policy includes defining trade negotiation objectives—made it clear thatthe expansion of international trade is vital to the national security of the United States. Trade is critical to the economic growth and strength of the United States and to its leadership in the world. Stable trading relationships promote security and prosperity.… Leadership by the United States in international trade fosters open markets, democracy, and peace throughout the world.3The Obama Administration often seems to regard trade as a zero-sum game of capturing value that would otherwise go elsewhere. However, trade liberalization is about creating and adding value, capitalizing on competitive advantages, and further harnessing the power of freedom and choice. Trade has been an integral part of America’s extraordinary economic progress over the past decades. Since 1929, trade volume has increased from less than 9 percent of U.S. gross domestic product (GDP) to around 30 percent, while real U.S. GDP per person increased from $8,000 to more than $43,000.This progress faces continuing threats, mainly from special-interest groups that malign free trade in an attempt to seek protection from competition at the expense of everyone else. Some lawmakers have even viewed TPA legislation as a vehicle to address the perceived costs of free trade for the U.S. economy. However, using TPA renewal to redress the suspected costs of trade is an ill-advised idea. TPA is an instrument that not only enables America to secure increased access to overseas markets but also provides the unique opportunity for the U.S. to reduce its own barriers and advance economic freedom. Congress and the President can help the American economy by removing barriers that limit its competitiveness. With open trade and investment ensured, the interplay of low tax rates and efficient regulations could effectively enhance America’s economic freedom. Entangling TPA with a protectionist agenda, on the other hand, would not serve America’s interests in the global market.

Nuke war and turns case
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, served as special assistant to the president for national security affairs and senior director for Asia on the National Security Council, holds a Ph.D. from Columbia University, and Michael E. O'Hanlon, Director of Research and Senior Fellow in Foreign Policy at the Brookings Institution, Visiting Lecturer at Princeton University, Adjunct Professor at Johns Hopkins University, holds a Ph.D. from Princeton University, 2012 (“The Real National Security Threat: America's Debt,” Los Angeles Times, July 10th, Available Online at http://www.brookings.edu/research/opinions/2012/07/10-economy-foreign-policy-lieberthal-ohanlon, Accessed 07-12-2012)

Lastly, American economic weakness undercuts U.S. leadership abroad. Other countries sense 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 urgent big-picture issue: restoring U.S. economic strength. Nothing else is really possible if that fundamental prerequisite to effective foreign policy is not reestablished.

Tournament: GBX | Round: Octas | Opponent: Greenhill DJ | Judge: Jeff Buntin, Sara Sanchez, Shelia Peterson
Obama has held off new sanctions but needs PC to sustain Congressional support for ongoing negotiation commitments
Parsi 11 – 20 – 13 (Trita Parsi is founder and president of the National Iranian American Council and an expert on US-Iranian relations, “Negotiations with Iran show promise, but true test comes later,” http://america.aljazeera.com/opinions/2013/11/iran-us-negotiationsgenevanuclearprogram.html, CMR) 

However, it is also clear that the real hurdles to an enduring deal will not be encountered now, but after the first agreement has been concluded. This is partly because Washington's ability to give concessions has not been truly tested yet. The misinformation spread by Israeli cabinet ministers and opponents of President Barack Obama in the U.S. Congress notwithstanding, most of concessions in the first phase of the deal currently being negotiated in Geneva will be provided by Tehran. In return, the United States and European Union are offering very little. The sanctions relief is minimal and carefully avoids congressional approval. Obama has spent a lot of political capital in the past two weeks simply to convince Congress not to adopt new sanctions. If a deal is reached this week in Geneva, Obama will be faced with the much taller order of getting Congress to actually roll back existing sanctions.
Plan kills obama—focus and PC Link
Shear, 13
(Michael, NYT White house correspondent, 5/5,  http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/05/world/americas/in-latin-america-us-shifts-focus-from-drug-war-to-economy.html?pagewanted=all)

Last week, Mr. Obama returned to capitals in Latin America with a vastly different message. Relationships with countries racked by drug violence and organized crime should focus more on economic development and less on the endless battles against drug traffickers and organized crime capos that have left few clear victors. The countries, Mexico in particular, need to set their own course on security, with the United States playing more of a backing role. That approach runs the risk of being seen as kowtowing to governments more concerned about their public image than the underlying problems tarnishing it. Mexico, which is eager to play up its economic growth, has mounted an aggressive effort to play down its crime problems, going as far as to encourage the news media to avoid certain slang words in reports. “The problem will not just go away,” said Michael Shifter, president of the Inter-American Dialogue. “It needs to be tackled head-on, with a comprehensive strategy that includes but goes beyond stimulating economic growth and alleviating poverty. “Obama becomes vulnerable to the charge of downplaying the region’s overriding issue, and the chief obstacle to economic progress,” he added. “It is fine to change the narrative from security to economics as long as the reality on the ground reflects and fits with the new story line.” Administration officials insist that Mr. Obama remains cleareyed about the security challenges, but the new emphasis corresponds with a change in focus by the Mexican government. The new Mexican president, Enrique Peña Nieto, took office in December vowing to reduce the violence that exploded under the militarized approach to the drug war adopted by his predecessor, Felipe Calderón. That effort left about 60,000 Mexicans dead and appears not to have significantly damaged the drug-trafficking industry. In addition to a focus on reducing violence, which some critics have interpreted as taking a softer line on the drug gangs, Mr. Peña Nieto has also moved to reduce American involvement in law enforcement south of the border. With friction and mistrust between American and Mexican law enforcement agencies growing, Mr. Obama suggested that the United States would no longer seek to dominate the security agenda. “It is obviously up to the Mexican people to determine their security structures and how it engages with other nations, including the United States,” he said, standing next to Mr. Peña Nieto on Thursday in Mexico City. “But the main point I made to the president is that we support the Mexican government’s focus on reducing violence, and we look forward to continuing our good cooperation in any way that the Mexican government deems appropriate.” In some ways, conceding leadership of the drug fight to Mexico hews to a guiding principle of Mr. Obama’s foreign policy, in which American supremacy is played down, at least publicly, in favor of a multilateral approach. But that philosophy could collide with the concerns of lawmakers in Washington, who have expressed frustration with what they see as a lack of clarity in Mexico’s security plans. And security analysts say the entrenched corruption in Mexican law enforcement has long clouded the partnership with their American counterparts. Putting Mexico in the driver’s seat on security marks a shift in a balance of power that has always tipped to the United States and, analysts said, will carry political risk as Congress negotiates an immigration bill that is expected to include provisions for tighter border security. “If there is a perception in the U.S. Congress that security cooperation is weakening, that could play into the hands of those who oppose immigration reform,” said Vanda Felbab-Brown, a counternarcotics expert at the Brookings Institution in Washington. “Realistically, the border is as tight as could be and there have been few spillovers of the violence from Mexico into the U.S.,” she added, but perceptions count in Washington “and can be easily distorted.” “Drugs today are not very important to the U.S. public over all,” she added, “but they are important to committed drug warriors who are politically powerful.” Representative Michael T. McCaul, a Texas Republican who is chairman of the Homeland Security Committee, has warned against the danger of drug cartels forming alliances with terrorist groups. “While these threats exist, you would be surprised to find that the administration thinks its work here is done,” he wrote in an opinion article for Roll Call last month, pressing for more border controls in the bill. The Obama administration has said any evidence of such cooperation is very thin, but even without terrorist connections, drug gangs pose threats to peace and security. Human rights advocates said they feared the United States would ease pressure on Mexico to investigate disappearances and other abuses at the hands of the police and military, who have received substantial American support. The shift in approach “suggests that the Obama administration either doesn’t object to these abusive practices or is only willing to raise such concerns when it’s politically convenient,” said José Miguel Vivanco, director of Human Rights Watch’s Americas division. Still, administration officials have said there may have been an overemphasis on the bellicose language and high-profile hunts for cartel leaders while the real problem of lawlessness worsens. American antidrug aid is shifting more toward training police and shoring up judicial systems that have allowed criminals to kill with impunity in Mexico and Central America. United States officials said Mr. Obama remains well aware of the region’s problems with security, even as he is determined that they not overshadow the economic opportunities. It is clear Mr. Obama, whatever his words four years ago, now believes there has been too much security talk. In a speech to Mexican students on Friday, Mr. Obama urged people in the two countries to look beyond a one-dimensional focus on what he called real security concerns, saying it is “time for us to put the old mind-sets aside.” And he repeated the theme later in the day in Costa Rica, lamenting that when it comes to the United States and Central America, “so much of the focus ends up being on security.” “We also have to recognize that problems like narco-trafficking arise in part when a country is vulnerable because of poverty, because of institutions that are not working for the people, because young people don’t see a brighter future ahead,” Mr. Obama said in a news conference with Laura Chinchilla, the president of Costa Rica.

Global nuclear war in a month if talks fail – US sanctions will wreck diplomacy
Press TV 11/13 Cites Jeff Steinberg, a Senior Editor at the Executive Intelligence Review, “Global nuclear conflict between US, Russia, China likely if Iran talks fail”, http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2013/11/13/334544/global-nuclear-war-likely-if-iran-talks-fail/, CMR

A global conflict between the US, Russia, and China is likely in the coming months should the world powers fail to reach a nuclear deal with Iran, an American analyst says.¶ “If the talks fail, if the agreements being pursued are not successfully carried forward and implemented, then there would be enormous international pressure to drive towards a conflict with Iran before US President Barack Obama leaves office and that’s a very great danger that no one can underestimate the importance of,” senior editor at the Executive Intelligence Review Jeff Steinberg told Press TV on Wednesday. ¶ “The United States could find itself on one side and Russia and China on the other and those are the kinds of conditions that can lead to miscalculation and general roar,” Steinberg said. ¶ “So the danger in this situation is that if these talks don’t go forward, we could be facing a global conflict in the coming months and years and that’s got to be avoided at all costs when you’ve got countries like the United States, Russia, and China with” their arsenals of “nuclear weapons,” he warned. ¶ The warning came one day after the White House told Congress not to impose new sanctions against Tehran because failure in talks with Iran could lead to war. ¶ White House press secretary Jay Carney called on Congress to allow more time for diplomacy as US lawmakers are considering tougher sanctions. ¶ "This is a decision to support diplomacy and a possible peaceful resolution to this issue," Carney said. "The American people do not want a march to war." ¶ Meanwhile, US Secretary of State John Kerry is set to meet with the Senate Banking Committee on Wednesday to hold off on more sanctions on the Iranian economy. ¶ State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said Kerry "will be clear that putting new sanctions in place would be a mistake." ¶ "While we are still determining if there is a diplomatic path forward, what we are asking for right now is a pause, a temporary pause in sanctions. We are not taking away sanctions. We are not rolling them back," Psaki added.

Tournament: MBA | Round: Octas | Opponent: Niles West | Judge: Gannon, Ms J, Gibson
Collapse of society is inevitable—it’s better to have it now than to have a catastrophic one in the future
MacKenzie 8 (Debora, Are We Doomed, New Scientist, Vol. 197 Issue 2650, p32-35, 4p, 4 May 2005, EBSCO, AMiles) 

DOOMSDAY. The end of civilisation. Literature and film abound with tales of plague, famine and wars which ravage the planet, leaving a few survivors scratching out a primitive existence amid the ruins. Every civilisation in history has collapsed, after all. Why should ours be any different? Doomsday scenarios typically feature a knockout blow: a massive asteroid, all-out nuclear war or a catastrophic pandemic. Yet there is another chilling possibility: what if the very nature of civilisation means that ours, like all the others, is destined to collapse sooner or later? A few researchers have been making such claims for years. Disturbingly, recent insights from fields such as complexity theory suggest that they are right. It appears that once a society develops beyond a certain level of complexity it becomes increasingly fragile. Eventually, it reaches a point at which even a relatively minor disturbance can bring everything crashing down. Some say we have already reached this point, and that it is time to start thinking about how we might manage collapse. Others insist it is not yet too late, and that we can - we must - act now to keep disaster at bay. History is not on our side. Think of Sumeria, of ancient Egypt and of the Maya. In his 2005 best-seller, Jared Diamond of the University of California, Los Angeles, blamed environmental mismanagement for the fall of the Mayan civilisation and others, and warned that we might be heading the same way unless we choose to stop destroying our environmental support systems. Lester Brown of the Earth Policy Institute in Washington DC agrees. He has that governments must pay more attention to vital environmental resources. "It's not about saving the planet. It's about saving civilisation," he says. Others think our problems run deeper. From the moment our ancestors started to settle down and build cities, we have had to find solutions to the problems that success brings. "For the past 10,000 years, problem solving has produced increasing complexity in human societies," says Joseph Tainter, an archaeologist at the University of Utah, Salt Lake City, and author of the 1988 book The Collapse of Complex Societies. If crops fail because rain is patchy, build irrigation canals. When they silt up, organise dredging crews. When the bigger crop yields lead to a bigger population, build more canals. When there are too many for ad hoc repairs, install a management bureaucracy, and tax people to pay for it. When they complain, invent tax inspectors and a system to record the sums paid. That much the Sumerians knew. Diminishing returns There is, however, a price to be paid. Every extra layer of organisation imposes a cost in terms of energy, the common currency of all human efforts, from building canals to educating scribes. And increasing complexity, Tainter realised, produces diminishing returns. The extra food produced by each extra hour of labour - or joule of energy invested per farmed hectare - diminishes as that investment mounts. We see the same thing today in a declining number of patents per dollar invested in research as that research investment mounts. This law of diminishing returns appears everywhere, Tainter says. To keep growing, societies must keep solving problems as they arise. Yet each problem solved means more complexity. Success generates a larger population, more kinds of specialists, more resources to manage, more information to juggle - and, ultimately, less bang for your buck. Eventually, says Tainter, the point is reached when all the energy and resources available to a society are required just to maintain its existing level of complexity. Then when the climate changes or barbarians invade, overstretched institutions break down and civil order collapses. What emerges is a less complex society, which is organised on a smaller scale or has been taken over by another group. Tainter sees diminishing returns as the underlying reason for the collapse of all ancient civilisations, from the early Chinese dynasties to the Greek city state of Mycenae. These civilisations relied on the solar energy that could be harvested from food, fodder and wood, and from wind. When this had been stretched to its limit, things fell apart. Western industrial civilisation has become bigger and more complex than any before it by exploiting new sources of energy, notably coal and oil, but these are limited. There are increasing signs of diminishing returns: the energy required to get is mounting and although global is still increasing, constant innovation is needed to cope with environmental degradation and evolving - the yield boosts per unit of investment in innovation are shrinking. "Since problems are inevitable," Tainter warns, "this process is in part ineluctable." Is Tainter right? An analysis of complex systems has led Yaneer Bar-Yam, head of the New England Complex Systems Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts, to the same conclusion that Tainter reached from studying history. Social organisations become steadily more complex as they are required to deal both with environmental problems and with challenges from neighbouring societies that are also becoming more complex, Bar-Yam says. This eventually leads to a fundamental shift in the way the society is organised. "To run a hierarchy, managers cannot be less complex than the system they are managing," Bar-Yam says. As complexity increases, societies add ever more layers of management but, ultimately in a hierarchy, one individual has to try and get their head around the whole thing, and this starts to become impossible. At that point, hierarchies give way to networks in which decision-making is distributed. We are at this point. This shift to decentralised networks has led to a widespread belief that modern society is more resilient than the old hierarchical systems. "I don't foresee a collapse in society because of increased complexity," says futurologist and industry consultant Ray Hammond. "Our strength is in our highly distributed decision making." This, he says, makes modern western societies more resilient than those like the old Soviet Union, in which decision making was centralised. Things are not that simple, says Thomas Homer-Dixon, a political scientist at the University of Toronto, Canada, and author of the 2006 book The Upside of Down. "Initially, increasing connectedness and diversity helps: if one village has a crop failure, it can get food from another village that didn't." As connections increase, though, networked systems become increasingly tightly coupled. This means the impacts of failures can propagate: the more closely those two villages come to depend on each other, the more both will suffer if either has a problem. "Complexity leads to higher vulnerability in some ways," says Bar-Yam. "This is not widely understood." The reason is that as networks become ever tighter, they start to transmit shocks rather than absorb them. "The intricate networks that tightly connect us together - and move people, materials, information, money and energy - amplify and transmit any shock," says Homer-Dixon. "A financial crisis, a terrorist attack or a disease outbreak has almost instant destabilising effects, from one side of the world to the other." For instance, in 2003 large areas of North America and Europe suffered when apparently insignificant nodes of their respective electricity grids failed. And this year China suffered a similar blackout after heavy snow hit power lines. Tightly coupled networks like these create the potential for propagating failure across many critical industries, says Charles Perrow of Yale University, a leading authority on industrial accidents and disasters. Credit crunch Perrow says interconnectedness in the global production system has now reached the point where "a breakdown anywhere increasingly means a breakdown everywhere". This is especially true of the world's financial systems, where the coupling is very tight. "Now we have a debt crisis with the biggest player, the US. The consequences could be enormous." "A networked society behaves like a multicellular organism," says Bar-Yam, "random damage is like lopping a chunk off a sheep." Whether or not the sheep survives depends on which chunk is lost. And while we are pretty sure which chunks a sheep needs, it isn't clear - it may not even be predictable - which chunks of our densely networked civilisation are critical, until it's too late. "When we do the analysis, almost any part is critical if you lose enough of it," says Bar-Yam. "Now that we can ask questions of such systems in more sophisticated ways, we are discovering that they can be very vulnerable. That means civilisation is very vulnerable." So what can we do? "The key issue is really whether we respond successfully in the face of the new vulnerabilities we have," Bar-Yam says. That means making sure our "global sheep" does not get injured in the first place - something that may be hard to guarantee as the climate shifts and the world's fuel and mineral resources dwindle. Scientists in other fields are also warning that complex systems are prone to collapse. Similar ideas have emerged from the study of natural cycles in ecosystems, based on the work of ecologist Buzz Holling, now at the University of Florida, Gainesville. Some ecosystems become steadily more complex over time: as a patch of new forest grows and matures, specialist species may replace more generalist species, biomass builds up and the trees, beetles and bacteria form an increasingly rigid and ever more tightly coupled system. "It becomes an extremely efficient system for remaining constant in the face of the normal range of conditions," says Homer-Dixon. But unusual conditions - an insect outbreak, fire or drought - can trigger dramatic changes as the impact cascades through the system. The end result may be the collapse of the old ecosystem and its replacement by a newer, simpler one. Globalisation is resulting in the same tight coupling and fine-tuning of our systems to a narrow range of conditions, he says. Redundancy is being systematically eliminated as companies maximise profits. Some products are produced by only one factory worldwide. Financially, it makes sense, as mass production maximises efficiency. Unfortunately, it also minimises resilience. "We need to be more selective about increasing the connectivity and speed of our critical systems," says Homer-Dixon. "Sometimes the costs outweigh the benefits." Is there an alternative? Could we heed these warnings and start carefully climbing back down the complexity ladder? Tainter knows of only one civilisation that managed to decline but not fall. "After the Byzantine empire lost most of its territory to the Arabs, they simplified their entire society. Cities mostly disappeared, literacy and numeracy declined, their economy became less monetised, and they switched from professional army to peasant militia." Pulling off the same trick will be harder for our more advanced society. Nevertheless, Homer-Dixon thinks we should be taking action now. "First, we need to encourage distributed and decentralised production of vital goods like energy and food," he says. "Second, we need to remember that slack isn't always waste. A manufacturing company with a large inventory may lose some money on warehousing, but it can keep running even if its suppliers are temporarily out of action." The electricity industry in the US has already started identifying hubs in the grid with no redundancy available and is putting some back in, Homer-Dixon points out. Governments could encourage other sectors to follow suit. The trouble is that in a world of fierce competition, private companies will always increase efficiency unless governments subsidise inefficiency in the public interest. Homer-Dixon doubts we can stave off collapse completely. He points to what he calls "tectonic" stresses that will shove our rigid, tightly coupled system outside the range of conditions it is becoming ever more finely tuned to. These include population growth, the growing divide between the world's rich and poor, financial instability, weapons proliferation, disappearing forests and fisheries, and climate change. In imposing new complex solutions we will run into the problem of diminishing returns - just as we are running out of cheap and plentiful energy. "This is the fundamental challenge humankind faces. We need to allow for the healthy breakdown in natural function in our societies in a way that doesn't produce catastrophic collapse, but instead leads to healthy renewal," Homer-Dixon says. This is what happens in forests, which are a patchy mix of old growth and newer areas created by disease or fire. If the ecosystem in one patch collapses, it is recolonised and renewed by younger forest elsewhere. We must allow partial breakdown here and there, followed by renewal, he says, rather than trying so hard to avert breakdown by increasing complexity that any resulting crisis is actually worse. Lester Brown thinks we are fast running out of time. "The world can no longer afford to waste a day. We need a Great Mobilisation, as we had in wartime," he says. "There has been tremendous progress in just the past few years. For the first time, I am starting to see how an alternative economy might emerge. But it's now a race between tipping points - which will come first, a switch to sustainable technology, or collapse?" Tainter is not convinced that even new technology will save civilisation in the long run. "I sometimes think of this as a 'faith-based' approach to the future," he says. Even a society reinvigorated by cheap new energy sources will eventually face the problem of diminishing returns once more. Innovation itself might be subject to diminishing returns, or perhaps absolute limits. Studies of the way by Luis Bettencourt of the Los Alamos National Laboratory, New Mexico, support this idea. His team's work suggests that an ever-faster rate of innovation is required to keep cities growing and prevent stagnation or collapse, and in the long run this cannot be sustainable.

Collapse causes a mindset shift towards sustainable society
Taylor, 8 (Graeme, Master’s degree in Conflict Analysis and Management, Coordinator of BEST Future, “Evolution’s Edge: The Coming Collapse and Transformation of Our World,” Pomegranate Press, pg. 192, ebrary, pdf, Tashma)
As regional and global crises grow and the world economy begins to fail, it becomes increasingly clear to people all over the world that the current global system is unsustainable and heading for catastrophic collapse. More and more people will then question the destructive values and institutions of the industrial system and begin to look for constructive alternatives — pathways to survival. Large numbers of people will be attracted to the developing systems-based vision of a sustainable future. The emergence of this new paradigm will enable the rapid constructive transformation of global views, values, technologies and social structures.

No impact to growth—studies prove
Miller 1—Professor of Economics Morris, Professor of Economics, Poverty: A Cause of War?, http://archive.peacemagazine.org/v17n1p08.htm, CMR

Library shelves are heavy with studies focused on the correlates and causes of war. Some of the leading scholars in that field suggest that we drop the concept of causality, since it can rarely be demonstrated. Nevertheless, it may be helpful to look at the motives of war-prone political leaders and the ways they have gained and maintained power, even to the point of leading their nations to war. Poverty: The Prime Causal Factor? Poverty is most often named as the prime causal factor. Therefore we approach the question by asking whether poverty is characteristic of the nations or groups that have engaged in wars. As we shall see, poverty has never been as significant a factor as one would imagine. Largely this is because of the traits of the poor as a group - particularly their tendency to tolerate their suffering in silence and/or be deterred by the force of repressive regimes. Their voicelessness and powerlessness translate into passivity. Also, because of their illiteracy and ignorance of worldly affairs, the poor become susceptible to the messages of war-bent demagogues and often willing to become cannon fodder. The situations conductive to war involve political repression of dissidents, tight control over media that stir up chauvinism and ethnic prejudices, religious fervor, and sentiments of revenge. The poor succumb to leaders who have the power to create such conditions for their own self-serving purposes. Desperately poor people in poor nations cannot organize wars, which are exceptionally costly. The statistics speak eloquently on this point. In the last 40 years the global arms trade has been about $1500 billion, of which two-thirds were the purchases of developing countries. That is an amount roughly equal to the foreign capital they obtained through official development aid (ODA). Since ODA does not finance arms purchases (except insofar as money that is not spent by a government on aid-financed roads is available for other purposes such as military procurement) financing is also required to control the media and communicate with the populace to convince them to support the war. Large-scale armed conflict is so expensive that governments must resort to exceptional sources, such as drug dealing, diamond smuggling, brigandry, or deal-making with other countries. The reliance on illicit operations is well documented in a recent World Bank report that studied 47 civil wars that took place between 1960 and 1999, the main conclusion of which is that the key factor is the availability of commodities to plunder. For greed to yield war, there must be financial opportunities. Only affluent political leaders and elites can amass such weaponry, diverting funds to the military even when this runs contrary to the interests of the population. In most inter-state wars the antagonists were wealthy enough to build up their armaments and propagandize or repress to gain acceptance for their policies. Economic Crises? Some scholars have argued that it is not poverty, as such, that contributes to the support for armed conflict, but rather some catalyst, such as an economic crisis. However, a study by Minxin Pei and Ariel Adesnik shows that this hypothesis lacks merit. After studying 93 episodes of economic crisis in 22 countries in Latin American and Asia since World War II, they concluded that much of the conventional thinking about the political impact of economic crisis is wrong: "The severity of economic crisis - as measured in terms of inflation and negative growth - bore no relationship to the collapse of regimes ... or (in democratic states, rarely) to an outbreak of violence... In the cases of dictatorships and semi-democracies, the ruling elites responded to crises by increasing repression (thereby using one form of violence to abort another)." 

No escalation
Ferguson 9, Professor of History @ Harvard, 2/23 (Niall, http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20090223.wferguson0223/BNStory/crashandrecovery/home/?pageRequested=all, CMR)

Niall Ferguson: “There will be blood, in the sense that a crisis of this magnitude is bound to increase political as well as economic conflict. It is bound to destabilize some countries. It will cause civil wars to break out, that have been dormant. It will topple governments that were moderate and bring in governments that are extreme. These things are pretty predictable. The question is whether the general destabilization, the return of, if you like, political risk, ultimately leads to something really big in the realm of geopolitics. That seems a less certain outcome. We've already talked about why China and the United States are in an embrace they don't dare end. If Russia is looking for trouble the way Mr. Putin seems to be, I still have some doubt as to whether it can really make this trouble, because of the weakness of the Russian economy. It's hard to imagine Russia invading Ukraine without weakening its economic plight. They're desperately trying to prevent the ruble from falling off a cliff. They're spending all their reserves to prop it up. It's hardly going to help if they do another Georgia.”
“I was more struck Putin's bluster than his potential to bite, when he spoke at Davos. But he made a really good point, which I keep coming back to. In his speech, he said crises like this will encourage governments to engage in foreign policy aggression. I don't think he was talking about himself, but he might have been. It's true, one of the things historically that we see, and also when we go back to 30s, but also to the depressions 1870s and 1980s, weak regimes will often resort to a more aggressive foreign policy, to try to bolster their position. It's legitimacy that you can gain without economic disparity – playing the nationalist card. I wouldn't be surprised to see some of that in the year ahead.
It's just that I don't see it producing anything comparable with 1914 or 1939. It's kind of hard to envisage a world war. Even when most pessimistic, I struggle to see how that would work, because the U.S., for all its difficulties in the financial world, is so overwhelmingly dominant in the military world.

Royal goes neg
Royal ‘10 (Jedediah Royal, Director of Cooperative Threat Reduction at the U.S. Department of Defense, 2010, “Economic Integration, Economic Signaling and the Problem of Economic Crises,” in Economics of War and Peace: Economic, Legal and Political Perspectives, ed. Goldsmith and Brauer) 

CONCLUSION
The logic of ECST supports arguments for greater economic interdependence to reduce the likelihood of con?ict. This chapter does not argue against the utility of signalling theory. It does, however, suggest that when considering the occurrence of and conditions created by economic crises, ECST logic is dubious as an organising principle for security policymakers. The discussion pulls together some distinct areas of research that have not yet featured prominently in the ECST literature. Studies associating economic interdependence, economic crises and the potential for external con?ict indicate that global interdependence is not necessarily a con?ict suppressing process and may be con?ict-enhancing at certain points. Furthermore, the conditions created by economic crises decrease the willingness of states to send economic costly signals, even though such signals may be most effective during an economic crisis. These two points warrant further consideration in the debate over ECST and, more broadly, theories linking interdependence and peace. The debate takes on particular importance for policymakers when considering the increasingly important US-China relationship and the long-term prospects for peace in the Asia-Paci?c. Recent US policy towards China, such as the ‘responsible stakeholder’ approach, assumes that greater interdependence with China should decrease the likelihood for con?ict. Some have even suggested that the economic relationship is necessary to ensure strategic competition does not lead to major war (see, e.g., Kastner, 2006). If US or Chinese policymakers do indeed intend to rely on economic interdependence to reduce the likelihood of con?ict, much more study is required to understand how and when interdependence impacts the security and the defence behaviour of states. This chapter contributes some thoughts to that larger debate. NOTES I. Notable counterarguments include Barbieri (1996). Gowa (I994), and Levy and Ali I998 . 2.‘ Of?):ial statements have focused on this explanation as well. See, for example, Bernanke (2009). 3. For a dissenting study. see Elbadawi and Hegre (2008). 4. Note that Skaperdas and Syropoulos (2001) argue that states will have a greater incentive to arm against those with which it is interdependent to hedge against coercion. This argument could be extended to include protectionism in extreme cases. Creseenzi (2005) both challenges and agrees with Copeland’s theory by suggesting that a more important indicator is the exit costs involved in terminating an economic relationship. which could be a function of the availability of alternatives. 5. There is also substantial research to indicate that periods of strong economic growth are also positively correlated with a rise in the likelihood of con?ict. Pollins (2008) and Pollins and Schweller (I999) provide excellent insights into this body of literature.

Growth makes war inevitable
Trainer 2—Senior Lecturer of School of Social Work @ University of New South Wales (Ted, If You Want Affluence, Prepare for War, Democracy and Nature, Vol. 8, No. 2, EBSCO, AMiles)

If this limits-to-growth analysis is at all valid, the implications for the problem of global peace and conflict and security are clear and savage. If we all remain determined to increase our living standards, our level of production and consumption, in a world where resources are already scarce, where only a few have affluent living standards but another 8 billion will be wanting them too, and which we, the rich, are determined to get richer without any limit, then nothing is more guaranteed than that there will be increasing levels of conflict and violence. To put it another way, if we insist on remaining affluent we will need to remain heavily armed. Increased conflict in at least the following categories can be expected. First, the present conflict over resources between the rich elites and the poor majority in the Third World must increase, for example, as ‘development’ under globalisation takes more land, water and forests into export markets. Second, there are conflicts between the Third World and the rich world, the major recent examples being the war between the US and Iraq over control of oil. Iraq invaded Kuwait and the US intervened, accompanied by much high-sounding rhetoric (having found nothing unacceptable about Israel’s invasions of Lebanon or the Indonesian invasion of East Timor). As has often been noted, had Kuwait been one of the world’s leading exporters of broccoli, rather than oil, it is doubtful whether the US would have been so eager to come to its defence. At the time of writing, the US is at war in Central Asia over ‘terrorism’. Few would doubt that a ‘collateral’ outcome will be the establishment of regimes that will give the West access to the oil wealth of Central Asia. Following are some references to the connection many have recognised between rich world affluence and conflict. General M.D. Taylor, US Army retired argued ‘... US military priorities just be shifted towards insuring a steady flow of resources from the Third World’. Taylor referred to ‘… fierce competition among industrial powers for the same raw materials markets sought by the United States’ and ‘… growing hostility displayed by have-not nations towards their affluent counterparts’.62 ‘Struggles are taking place, or are in the offing, between rich and poor nations over their share of the world product; within the industrial world over their share of industrial resources and markets’.63 ‘That more than half of the people on this planet are poorly nourished while a small percentage live in historically unparalleled luxury is a sure recipe for continued and even escalating international conflict.’64 The oil embargo placed on the US by OPEC in the early 1970s prompted the US to make it clear that it was prepared to go to war in order to secure supplies. ‘President Carter last week issued a clear warning that any attempt to gain control of the Persian Gulf would lead to war.’ It would ‘… be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States’.65 ‘The US is ready to take military action if Russia threatens vital American interests in the Persian Gulf, the US Secretary of Defence, Mr Brown, said yesterday.’66 Klare’s recent book Resource Wars discusses this theme in detail, stressing the coming significance of water as a source of international conflict. ‘Global demand for many key materials is growing at an unsustainable rate. … the incidence of conflict over vital materials is sure to grow. … The wars of the future will largely be fought over the possession and control of vital economic goods. … resource wars will become, in the years ahead, the most distinctive feature of the global security environment.’67 Much of the rich world’s participation in the conflicts taking place throughout the world is driven by the determination to back a faction that will then look favourably on Western interests. In a report entitled, ‘The rich prize that is Shaba’, Breeze begins, ‘Increasing rivalry over a share-out between France and Belgium of the mineral riches of Shaba Province lies behind the joint Franco– Belgian paratroop airlift to Zaire. … These mineral riches make the province a valuable prize and help explain the West’s extended diplomatic courtship …’68 Then there is potential conflict between the rich nations who are after all the ones most dependent on securing large quantities of resources. ‘The resource and energy intensive modes of production employed in nearly all industries necessitate continuing armed coercion and competition to secure raw materials.’69 ‘Struggles are taking place, or are in the offing, between rich and poor nations over their share of the world product, within the industrial world over their share of industrial resources and markets …’70 Growth, competition, expansion … and war Finally, at the most abstract level, the struggle for greater wealth and power is central in the literature on the causes of war. ‘… warfare appears as a normal and periodic form of competition within the capitalist world economy. … world wars regularly occur during a period of economic expansion. ’71 ‘War is an inevitable result of the struggle between economies for expansion.’72 Choucri and North say their most important finding is that domestic growth is a strong determinant of national expansion and that this results in competition between nations and war.73 The First and Second World Wars can be seen as being largely about imperial grabbing. Germany, Italy and Japan sought to expand their territory and resource access. Britain already held much of the world within its empire … which it had previously fought 72 wars to take! ‘Finite resources in a world of expanding populations and increasing per capita demands create a situation ripe for international violence.’74 Ashley focuses on the significance of the quest for economic growth. ‘War is mainly explicable in terms of differential growth in a world of scarce and unevenly distributed resources … expansion is a prime source of conflict. So long as the dynamics of differential growth remain unmanaged, it is probable that these long term processes will sooner or later carry major powers into war.’75 Security The point being made can be put in terms of security. One way to seek security is to develop greater capacity to repel attack. In the case of nations this means large expenditure of money, resources and effort on military preparedness. However there is a much better strategy; i.e. to live in ways that do not oblige you to take more than your fair share and therefore that do not give anyone any motive to attack you. Tut! This is not possible unless there is global economic justice. If a few insist on levels of affluence, industrialisation and economic growth that are totally impossible for all to achieve, and which could not be possible if they were taking only their fair share of global resources, then they must remain heavily armed and their security will require readiness to use their arms to defend their unjust privileges. In other words, if we want affluence we must prepare for war. If we insist on continuing to take most of the oil and other resources while many suffer intense deprivation because they cannot get access to them then we must be prepared to maintain the aircraft carriers and rapid deployment forces, and the despotic regimes, without which we cannot secure the oil fields and plantations. Global peace is not possible without global justice, and that is not possible unless rich countries move to ‘The Simpler Way’. 

Extinction
Chase-Dunn 96—Distinguished Professor of Sociology and Director of the Institute for Research on World-Systems at the University of (Christopher, Conflict Among Core States: World-System Cycles and Trends, 23 January 1996, http://wsarch.ucr.edu/archive/papers/c-dandhall/warprop.htm, AMiles)
Note-figure omitted 

Late in the K-wave upswing (i.e. in the 2020s), the world-system schema predicts a window of vulnerability to another round of world war. This is when world wars have occurred in the past. Intensified rivalry and competition for raw materials and markets will coincide with a multipolar distribution of military power among core states. The world-system model does not predict who the next hegemon will be. Rather it designates that there will be structural forces in motion that will favor the construction of a new hierarchy. Historical particularities and the unique features of the era will shape the outcome and select the winners and losers. If it were possible for the current system to survive the holocaust of another war among core states, the outcome of the war would be the main arbiter of hegemonic succession. While the hegemonic sequence has been a messy method of selecting global "leadership" in the past, the settlement of hegemonic rivalry by force in the future will be a disaster that our species may not survive. It is my concern about this possible disaster that motivates this effort to understand how the hegemonic sequence has occurred in the past and the factors affecting hegemonic rivalry in the next decades. What are the cyclical processes and secular trends that may affect the probability of future world wars? The world-system model is presented in Figure 1. This model depicts the variables that I contend will be the main influences on the probability of war among core states. The four variables that raise the probability of core war are the Kondratieff cycle, hegemonic decline, population pressure (and resource scarcity) and global inequality. The four variables that reduce the probability of core war are the destructiveness of weaponry, international economic interdependency, international political integration and disarmament. The probability of war may be high without a war occurring, of course. Joshua Goldstein's (1988) study of war severity (battle deaths per year) in wars among the "great powers" demonstrated the existence of a fifty-year cycle of core wars. Goldstein's study shows how this "war wave" tracks rather closely with the Kondratieff long economic cycle over the past 500 years of world-system history. It is the future of this war cycle that I am trying to predict. Factors that Increase the Likelihood of War Among Core States The proposed model divides variables into those that are alleged to increase the probability of war among core states and those that decrease that probability. There are four of each. Kondratieff waves The first variable that has a positive effect on the probability of war among core powers is the Kondratieff wave -- a forty to sixty year cycle of economic growth and stagnation. Goldstein (1988) provides evidence that the most destructive core wars tend to occur late in a Kondratieff A-phase (upswing). Earlier research by Thompson and Zuk (1982) also supports the conclusion that core wars are more likely to begin near the end of an upswing. Boswell and Sweat's (1991) analysis also supports the Goldstein thesis. But several other world-system theorists have argued that core wars occur primarily during K-wave B-phases. This disagreement over timing is related to a disagreement over causation. According to Goldstein states are war machines that always have a desire to utilize military force, but wars are costly and so statesmen tend to refrain from going to war when state revenues are low. On the other hand, statesmen are more likely to engage in warfare when state revenues are high (because the states can then afford the high costs of war). Boswell and Sweat call this the "resource theory of war." 

Growth collapses the environment – the impact is extinction
Barry 12 (Glen, President and Founder of Ecological Internet, Ph.D. in Land Resources from the University of Wisconsin, “Human Family's Ecocidal Death Wish,” 1/31/12, http://www.countercurrents.org/barry310112.htm, Tashma)
The ecological foundation of being is unraveling before our very eyes. Without ecosystems there is no life. Fiercely loving Earth is the answer. Let's sustain global ecology together like our shared survival and abundance depends upon it. And while we set out using classic civil disobedience tactics, let's not dismiss out of hand any obstruction, uncivil disobedience, sabotage and targeted insurgency tactics - that are non-terrorist - and that may be necessary to achieve global ecological sustainability. The human family's shared survival depends upon passionately defending Earth using all means necessary. Earth's ecosystems are collapsing under the burden of human growth, destroying our one shared biosphere that makes life possible. Industrial growth - frantically destroying ecosystems to feed insatiable, ever-growing appetites - is an aberration, a mistake, a disease. If left untreated, this will be the end of the human family, all life, and Earth's very being. Infinite economic growth at the expense of ecosystems is impossible, and seeking endless and inequitable growth in consumption and population can only lead to collapse and massive die-off. Humanity's last best chance to justly and equitably sustain a livable planet is to protect and restore ecosystems, end fossil fuels, and a people's power Earth revolution to utterly destroy the ecocidal industrial growth machine. We are all bloody fools to tolerate and not immediately overthrow a violently ecocidal system that is killing us all. If we all understood the implications of global ecosystem collapse, we would go now, together, and slay the global growth machine. It is too late to escape profound ecological decline, yet complete disastrous social and ecological collapse - and possible end to most or all life - may yet be avoided. Sustaining ecology must become society's central organizing principle or humans and all species face horrendous death. Globally it is time for radical change to simply survive converging ecology, food, war, water, inequity, population, climate, jobs, ocean, and extinction crises. It is deeply troubling most "environmentalists" deny the severity of ecosystem collapse, rejecting out of hand revolutionary measures sufficient to sustain ecology. Earth is dying a death of a billion lashes as ecosystems are liquidated for consumption as if nature has no worth. 80 of old forests are gone, 50 of top soil, 90 of big ocean fish, bee populations are collapsing, we are undergoing abrupt climate change, and two billion are hungry and thirsty - to say nothing of acidic and dead oceans, nitrogen pollution, fracking and tar sands, extinction, desertification, water scarcity, pervasive toxics, and how all these ecological crises interact and reinforce each other. Yes, you read this right - EARTH IS DYING - not that humans are going extinct, but Earth will recover. A whole body of global change and ecology science and intuition indicates Earth is well past its carrying capacity and planetary boundaries, that enough ecosystems have been lost, diminished, and changed forever, that the biogeochemical process that make life possible are failing. We face an unprecedented planetary ecological emergency.

Growth causes warming – the impact is extinction
Taylor, 8 (Graeme, Master’s degree in Conflict Analysis and Management, Coordinator of BEST Future, “Evolution’s Edge: The Coming Collapse and Transformation of Our World,” Pomegranate Press, pg. 35-37, ebrary, pdf, Tashma)
Human economic activities are raising global temperatures through adding greenhouse gases that trap heat from the sun in the atmosphere.20These pollutants are primarily carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide. Concentrations of carbon dioxide, which are higher than they have been for 650,000 years, are rising faster each year. This means that the rate of global warming is accelerating. When climate scientists predict rising temperatures they are talking about longterm global trends. In the short term, weather cycles and regional variations can produce colder or hotter temperatures than average — for example the La Niña effect produced unusually cold weather in the Northern Hemisphere in the winter of 2007/8.21The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) forecasts that if current trends continue, average global temperatures will probably rise between 3.2?F-7.2?F (1.8?C - 4?C ) by the end of the century. However, it is possible that temperatures will increase as little as 2?F (1.1?C) or as much as  11.5?F (6.4?C). The implications of increasing temperatures can be seen in Figure 5. Global warming adds energy to the atmosphere, causing weather patterns to change and extreme events to occur more frequently. Over the last 100 years, average global temperatures have risen by 1.4?F (0.8?C). Although this appears to be only a small increase, it has been enough to provoke major shifts in the Earth’s climate. Glaciers are retreating, coral reefs are bleaching, deserts are advancing, storms are strengthening, rainforests are burning and polar ice is melting.25 It is easy to see that if an increase of less than 1.8?F (1?C) is already having serious impacts, then further increases are likely to have disastrous consequences. The IPCC estimates that if average global temperatures rise by more than 3.6?F (2?C), it will probably trigger rapid, major, and irreversible impacts, including the extinction of hundreds of thousands of species, the conversion of rainforests to dry savannah, the spread of deserts, increasing drought in dry areas of the planet, increasing precipitation and floods in wet areas, falling crop yields and rising sea levels.26The impacts of rising temperatures are explained in detail by Mark Lynas in his award-winning book Six Degrees.27 It is not possible to accurately calculate the impacts or costs of climate change since, for example, we can’t put a value on the hundreds of thousands of species that will go extinct if temperatures rise by even a few degrees. The Stern Review on the economics of climate change concluded that rising temperatures “create risks of major disruption to economic and social activity, on a scale similar to those associated with the great wars and the economic depression of the first half of the 20thcentury.”29 At higher temperatures the consequences will be catastrophic. Much of the planet will become uninhabitable, and most of the species alive today will go extinct. It will be almost impossible to maintain advanced civilizations in these conditions. The threat of runaway global warming is worrying an increasing number of scientists.30 If the natural processes that keep the Earth’s climate in equilibrium are seriously damaged, it may become impossible to prevent global temperatures from getting hotter year after year — even if all further greenhouse gas emissions are stopped. Some climate change tipping points have already been passed: for example, the Earth’s ability to reflect sunlight is declining as the massive ice sheets that air-condition our planet melt, and the ability of our planet melt, and the ability of oceans and soils to absorb carbon dioxide has been sharply reduced. Global warming will not only have to be stopped, but also reversed to reduce temperatures back to a level at which biophysical processes can maintain an equilibrium — an equilibrium which was lost in the 1980s when average global temperatures rose higher than 0.9?F (0.5?C) above pre-industrial levels. If this isn’t done quickly, global warming will trigger an irreversible destructive cycle in which a warming atmosphere and warming oceans will destroy the rainforests, ocean algae and other vital ecosystems that remove carbon from the air. 

Growth causes water wars and scarcity  
Speth, law prof, 8—Served as President Jimmy Carter’s White House environmental adviser and as head of the United Nations’ largest agency for international development Prof at Vermont law school. Former dean of the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies at Yale University . Former Professor of Law at Georgetown University Law Center, teaching environmental and constitutional law. .Former Chairman of the Council on Environmental Quality in the Executive Office of the President. Co-founder of the Natural Resources Defense Council. Was law clerk to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Hugo L. Black JD, Yale. (James Gustave, The Bridge at the Edge of the World: Capitalism, the Environment, and Crossing from Crisis to Sustainability, Gigapedia, 32-34, AMiles)

 First, there is the crisis of natural watercourses and their attendant wetlands. No natural areas have been as degraded by human activities as freshwater systems. Natural water courses and the vibrant life associated with them have been extensively affected by dams, dikes, diversions, stream channelization, wetland filling and other modifications, and, of course, pollution. Sixty percent of the world’s major river basins have been severely or moderately fragmented by dams or other construction. Since 1950 the number of large dams has increased from 5,700 worldwide to more than 41,000. Much of this activity is done to secure access to the water, but power production, fl ood control, navigation, and land reclamation have also been important factors. As freshwater is diverted from natural sources, ecosystems dependent on that water suff er, including aquatic systems, wetlands, and forests. About half the world’s wetlands have been lost, and more than a fi fth of known freshwater species have already been driven to extinction.41 The second crisis is the crisis of freshwater supply. Human demand for water climbed sixfold in the twentieth century, and the trend continues today. Humanity now withdraws slightly over half of accessible freshwater, and water withdrawals could climb to 70 percent by 2025.42 Meeting the world’s demands for freshwater is proving problematic. About 40 percent of the world’s people already live in countries that are classified as “water stressed,” meaning that already 20 to 40 percent of the available freshwater is being used by human societies. Projections indicate that the percentage of people living in water-stressed countries could rise to 65 percent by 2025.43 A large portion of freshwater withdrawals, about 70 percent, goes to agriculture. Since 1960, acreage under irrigation has more than doubled. A special problem is occurring in India, China, and elsewhere in Asia where tens of millions of tubewells are depleting “fossil” groundwaters. The New Scientist reports that “hundreds of millions of Indians may see their land turned to desert.”44 Overall, according to a study by top water specialists from around the world, world demand for water could double by 2050.45 “At the worst,” the New York Times reported, “a deepening water crisis would fuel violent conflicts, dry up rivers and increase groundwater pollution. . . . It would also force the rural poor to clear ever-more grasslands and forests to grow food and leave many more people hungry.”46 Last, there is the crisis of pollution. Pollutants of all types are discharged into the world’s waters in enormous quantities, reducing the capacities of bodies of water to support life in the water and to support human communities. Contamination denies a large portion of the world’s population access to clean water supplies§ Marked 09:25 § . About a billion people, a fi fth of the world’s population, lack clean drinking water; 40 percent lack sanitary services. The World Health Organization calculates that each year about 1.6 million children die from diseases caused by unsafe drinking water and lack of water for sanitation and hygiene.47 Water supply issues will become increasingly prevalent in the United States. Freshwater withdrawals per capita from surface and groundwaters in the United States are twice that of the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) as a whole. The Environmental Protection Agency estimates that if current American water use remains constant at a hundred gallons per person per day, thirtysix states will face water shortages by 2013. As a result, humanity’s “fi rst need” will soon be privatized. Investors are moving into a water related market that is estimated to be worth at least $150 billion in the United States by 2010. “Water is a growth driver for as long and as far as the eye can see,” a Goldman Sachs water analyst told the New York Times in 2006.48 

Extinction
Barlow 8—National chairperson of The Council of Canadians. Co-founder of the Blue Planet Project.  Chairs the board of Washington-based Food and Water Watch and is also an executive member of the San Francisco–based International Forum on Globalization and a Councillor with the Hamburg-based World Future Council. She is the recipient of eight honorary doctorates. Served as Senior Advisor on Water to the 63rd President of the United Nations General Assembly (Maude,  The Global Water Crisis and the Coming Battle for the Right to Water, 25 February 2008, http://www.fpif.org/articles/the_global_water_crisis_and_the_coming_battle_for_the_right_to_water, AMiles)

 The three water crises – dwindling freshwater supplies, inequitable access to water and the corporate control of water – pose the greatest threat of our time to the planet and to our survival. Together with impending climate change from fossil fuel emissions, the water crises impose some life-or-death decisions on us all. Unless we collectively change our behavior, we are heading toward a world of deepening conflict and potential wars over the dwindling supplies of freshwater – between nations, between rich and poor, between the public and the private interest, between rural and urban populations, and between the competing needs of the natural world and industrialized humans. Water Is Becoming a Growing Source of Conflict Between Countries Around the world, more that 215 major rivers and 300 groundwater basins and aquifers are shared by two or more countries, creating tensions over ownership and use of the precious waters they contain. Growing shortages and unequal distribution of water are causing disagreements, sometimes violent, and becoming a security risk in many regions. Britain’s former defense secretary, John Reid, warns of coming “water wars.” In a public statement on the eve of a 2006 summit on climate change, Reid predicted that violence and political conflict would become more likely as watersheds turn to deserts, glaciers melt and water supplies are poisoned. He went so far as to say that the global water crisis was becoming a global security issue and that Britain’s armed forces should be prepared to tackle conflicts, including warfare, over dwindling water sources. “Such changes make the emergence of violent conflict more, rather than less, likely,” former British prime minister Tony Blair told The Independent. “The blunt truth is that the lack of water and agricultural land is a significant contributory factor to the tragic conflict we see unfolding in Darfur. We should see this as a warning sign.” The Independent gave several other examples of regions of potential conflict. These include Israel, Jordan and Palestine, who all rely on the Jordan River, which is controlled by Israel; Turkey and Syria, where Turkish plans to build dams on the Euphrates River brought the country to the brink of war with Syria in 1998, and where Syria now accuses Turkey of deliberately meddling with its water supply; China and India, where the Brahmaputra River has caused tension between the two countries in the past, and where China’s proposal to divert the river is re-igniting the divisions; Angola, Botswana and Namibia, where disputes over the Okavango water basin that have flared in the past are now threatening to re-ignite as Namibia is proposing to build a threehundred- kilometer pipeline that will drain the delta; Ethiopia and Egypt, where population growth is threatening conflict along the Nile; and Bangladesh and India, where flooding in the Ganges caused by melting glaciers in the Himalayas is wreaking havoc in Bangladesh, leading to a rise in illegal, and unpopular, migration to India. 

Growth turns terrorosim
Cronin 3—Senior Associate at the Oxford Leverhulme Programme on the Changing Character of War (Audrey Kurth, “Behind the Curve: Globalization and International Terrorism”, Project MUSE)

The objectives of international terrorism have also changed as a result of globalization. Foreign intrusions and growing awareness of shrinking global space have created incentives to use the ideal asymmetrical weapon, terrorism, for more ambitious purposes. The political incentives to attack major targets such as the United States with powerful weapons have greatly increased. The perceived corruption of indigenous customs, religions, languages, economies, and so on are blamed on an international system often unconsciously molded by American behavior. The accompanying distortions in local communities as a result of exposure to the global marketplace of goods and ideas are increasingly blamed on U.S.- sponsored modernization and those who support it. The advancement of technology, however, is not the driving force behind the terrorist threat to the United States and its allies, despite what some have assumed. Instead, at the heart of this threat are frustrated populations and international movements that are increasingly inclined to lash out against U.S.-led globalization. As Christopher Coker observes, globalization is reducing tendencies toward instrumental violence (i.e., violence between states and even between communities), but it is enhancing incentives for expressive violence (or violence that is ritualistic, symbolic, and communicative). The new international terrorism is End Page 51 increasingly engendered by a need to assert identity or meaning against forces of homogeneity, especially on the part of cultures that are threatened by, or left behind by, the secular future that Western-led globalization brings. According to a report recently published by the United Nations Development Programme, the region of greatest deficit in measures of human development—the Arab world—is also the heart of the most threatening religiously inspired terrorism. Much more work needs to be done on the significance of this correlation, but increasingly sources of political discontent are arising from disenfranchised areas in the Arab world that feel left behind by the promise of globalization and its assurances of broader freedom, prosperity, and access to knowledge. The results are dashed expectations, heightened resentment of the perceived U.S.-led hegemonic system, and a shift of focus away from more proximate targets within the region. Of course, the motivations behind this threat should not be oversimplified: Anti-American terrorism is spurred in part by a desire to change U.S. policy in the Middle East and Persian Gulf regions as well as by growing antipathy in the developing world vis-à-vis the forces of globalization. It is also crucial to distinguish between the motivations of leaders such as Osama bin Laden and their followers. The former seem to be more driven by calculated strategic decisions to shift the locus of attack away from repressive indigenous governments to the more attractive and media-rich target of the United States. The latter appear to be more driven by religious concepts cleverly distorted to arouse anger and passion in societies full of pent-up frustration. To some degree, terrorism is directed against the United States because of its engagement and policies in various regions. Anti-Americanism is closely related to antiglobalization, because (intentionally or not) the primary driver of the powerful forces resulting in globalization is the United States. Analyzing terrorism as something separate from globalization is misleading and potentially dangerous. Indeed globalization and terrorism are intricately intertwined forces characterizing international security in the twenty-first century. The main question is whether terrorism will succeed in disrupting the End Page 52 promise of improved livelihoods for millions of people on Earth. Globalization is not an inevitable, linear development, and it can be disrupted by such unconventional means as international terrorism. Conversely, modern international terrorism is especially dangerous because of the power that it potentially derives from globalization—whether through access to CBNR weapons, global media outreach, or a diverse network of financial and information resources.  

Turns the impact to bioterrorism
Krepinevich 9 (Andrew, President of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments and Distinguished Visiting Professor @ George Mason's School of Public Policy, Congressional Consultant on Military Affairs, PhD Harvard, "7 Deadly Scenarios," February)
Over the past several decades the world has experience a wave of globalization, far surpassing the great surge that swept over the globe in the years leading up to World War I. The growth of the world economy---facilitated by lower trade barriers, global supply chains, international financial networks, and global communication---has yielded many benefits, including increased wealth and great economic efficiencies. It has also yielded an unprecedented level of mobility---in the movement of capital, goods, and services, in people (including migration) , and last but not least, in disease. For nearly a century the world has been spared the specter of mass deaths induced by a killer disease. The last great global pandemic occurred at the end of World War I, when the misnamed Spanish influenza killed an estimated 20 million people---including nearly 700,000 Americans---before it ran its course. To a significant degree, the spread of influenza was aided and abetted by the world war, which saw the armed forces of many nations on the move from their home countries to other parts of the world. Even then, however, human mobility and trade were far more constrained than they are today, when every year millions of passengers pass through U.S. airports alone. There have been several canaries in humanity's mine shaft, warning of impending disaster. According to the scientific community, the world has been overdue for some form of pandemic. On occasions too numerous to count, members of the medical profession have stated that "it is not a matter of if such an event will occur, but when." As the World Health Organization met in Geneva in the summer of 2009, health officials were citing the "near-misses" the world had recently experienced with the AIDS virus, tuberculosis, and avian flu (commonly referred to as bird flu), and warned that, absent a major effort to improve the globe's public health system, humanity's good fortune could not---and would not---last. But the issue has to struggle to get on the global agenda. Here in America the 2008 presidential campaign (which began in early 2007) was dominated by the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the broader problem of militant Islam, rising energy prices, a falling economy, and growing concerns about global warming. Neither public health concerns over a pandemic nor the country's illegal alien problem appeared prominently on the political radar screen. Call them the "stealth" issues---the ones that we failed to detect.

Tournament: Greenhill Round Robin | Round: 4 | Opponent: Bronx Law AL | Judge: Sara Sanchez, Dave Arnett
The affirmative’s failure to advance a topical defense of federal policy undermines debate’s transformative and intellectual potential—this is a voting issue
Economic engagement is an exchange between governments
Resnick 1 – Dr. Evan Resnick, Ph.D. in Political Science from Columbia University, Assistant Professor of Political Science at Yeshiva University, “Defining Engagement”, Journal of International Affairs, Spring, 54(2), Ebsco
A REFINED DEFINITION OF ENGAGEMENT
In order to establish a more effective framework for dealing with unsavory regimes, I
AND
hope that this will precipitate political change from below within the target state.

USFG should means the debate is about government policy implementation
Ericson 3 (Jon M., Dean Emeritus of the College of Liberal Arts – California Polytechnic U., et al., The Debater’s Guide, Third Edition, p. 4)

The Proposition of Policy: Urging Future Action In policy propositions, each topic contains
AND
compelling reasons for an audience to perform the future action that you propose. 

Allowing the aff to talk about historical or tangential issues with Latin America is endless and uncontestable—they can give tons of personal narratives about the horrors of racism, sexism, classisim, and colonialism—we can’t dispute the historical facts that slavery on the plantation existed or was a major atrocity which is the only ground they give us—the other awful ground they give us does not allow a valuable discussion—there is a life that we have outside of debate—an unlimited topic ensures that we can only focus on debate and must give up on everything else—this makes debate not worth doing for anyone
Harris 13 (Scott, April 5 “This ballot by Scott Harris” http://www.cedadebate.org/forum/index.php?topic=4762.0, nkj)

I understand that there has been some criticism of Northwestern’s strategy in this debate round
AND
are a real impact because I feel their impact in my everyday existence.  

A limited topic of discussion that provides for equitable ground is key to inculcation of decision-making and advocacy skills
Steinberg and Freeley 8 *Austin J. Freeley is a Boston based attorney who focuses on criminal, personal injury and civil rights law, AND David L. Steinberg , Lecturer of Communication Studies @ U Miami, Argumentation and Debate: Critical Thinking for Reasoned Decision Making pp45-
Debate is a means of settling differences, so there must be a difference of
AND
Congress to make progress on the immigration debate during the summer of 2007.
Someone disturbed by the problem of the growing underclass of poorly educated, socially disenfranchised
AND
specific policies to be investigated and aid discussants in identifying points of difference.
To have a productive debate, which facilitates effective decision making by directing and placing
AND

the comparative effectiveness of writing or physical force for a specific purpose.
Although we now have a general subject, we have not yet stated a problem
AND
particular point of difference, which will be outlined in the following discussion.

Effective deliberation is key to decisionmaking which helps us in every asset of our lives. It’s essential to have an informed citizenry that can reclaim the political and solve global problems—this is the true prerequisite to knowledge and allows us to challenge those authors who uphold a methodology of being masters of the plantation
Lundberg 10
Christian O. Lundberg 10 Professor of Communications @ University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, “Tradition of Debate in North Carolina” in Navigating Opportunity: Policy Debate in the 21st Century By Allan D. Louden, p311
The second major problem with the critique that identifies a naivety in articulating debate and
AND
their time and political energies toward policies that matter the most to them.
The merits of debate as a tool for building democratic capacity-building take on a special significance in the context of information literacy. John Larkin (2005, HO) argues that one of the primary failings of modern colleges and universities is that they have not changed curriculum to match with the challenges of a new information environment. This is a problem for the course of academic study in our current context, but perhaps more important, argues Larkin, for the future of a citizenry that will need to make evaluative choices against an increasingly complex and multimediatcd information environment (ibid-). Larkin's study tested the benefits of debate participation on information-literacy skills and concluded that in-class debate participants reported significantly higher self-efficacy ratings of their ability to navigate academic search databases and to effectively search and use other Web resources:
To analyze the self-report ratings of the instructional and control group students,
AND
searching, not just in academic databases. (Larkin 2005, 144)
Larkin's study substantiates Thomas Worthcn and Gaylcn Pack's (1992, 3) claim that
AND
cite and rely upon from an easily accessible and veritable cornucopia of materials.
There are, without a doubt, a number of important criticisms of employing debate
AND
to the possibilities of meaningful political engagement and new articulations of democratic life.
Expanding this practice is crucial, if only because the more we produce citizens that
AND
with the existential challenges to democracy in an increasingly complex world. 

You can vote negative to endorse salsa and the idea of changing debate—T only requires  a determination that they are outside the bounds of the topic, NOT that they are wrong – this is a more effective way to rally support around their ideas---even the most liberal version of their evidence says debate can’t proceed without substantive procedural regulation like T  
Dryzek 6—Professor of Social and Political Theory, The Australian National University (John, Reconciling Pluralism and Consensus as Political Ideals, American Journal of Political Science,Vol. 50, No. 3, July 2006, Pp. 634–649)
A more radical contemporary pluralism is suspicious of liberal and communitarian devices for reconciling difference
AND
need principles to regulate the substance of what rightfully belongs in democratic debate. 

Even if we never become the federal government, the skills of policymaking we gain in debate will help us in our lives—every written agreement on every level of society requires negotiations and compromise—it’s the only way to make permanent, codified change over racial issues
Themba-Nixon 2K (Makani, Executive Director of The Praxis Project, a nonprofit organization helping communities use media and policy advocacy to advance health equity and justice. “Changing the Rules: What Public Policy Means for Organizing” Colorlines 3.2)

"This is all about policy," a woman complained to me in a recent
AND
should be. And then we must be committed to making it so. 

This round won’t change debate—the idea that it does crushes their project
Atchison and Panetta 9 – *Director of Debate at Trinity University and Director of Debate at the University of Georgia (Jarrod, and Edward, “Intercollegiate Debate and Speech Communication: Issues for the Future,” The Sage Handbook of Rhetorical Studies, Lunsford, Andrea, ed., 2009, p. 317-334)

The final problem with an individual debate round focus is the role of competition.
AND
long community problems requires a tremendous effort by a great number of people.

Tournament: Stanford | Round: 6 | Opponent: SVDP YM | Judge:
Resolved is legislative
Parcher 1 - Jeff Parcher, former debate coach at Georgetown, Feb 2001 http://www.ndtceda.com/archives/200102/0790.html

Pardon me if I turn to a source besides Bill. American Heritage Dictionary: Resolve: 1. To make a firm decision about. 2. To decide or express by formal vote. 3. To separate something into constiutent parts See Syns at *analyze* (emphasis in orginal) 4. Find a solution to. See Syns at *Solve* (emphasis in original) 5. To dispel: resolve a doubt. - n 1. Firmness of purpose; resolution. 2. A determination or decision. (2) The very nature of the word "resolution" makes it a question. American Heritage: A course of action determined or decided on. A formal statement of a decision, as by a legislature. (3) The resolution is obviously a question. Any other conclusion is utterly inconceivable. Why? Context. The debate community empowers a topic committee to write a topic for ALTERNATE side debating. The committee is not a random group of people coming together to "reserve" themselves about some issue. There is context - they are empowered by a community to do something. In their deliberations, the topic community attempts to craft a resolution which can be ANSWERED in either direction. They focus on issues like ground and fairness because they know the resolution will serve as the basis for debate which will be resolved by determining the policy desirablility of that resolution. That's not only what they do, but it's what we REQUIRE them to do. We don't just send the topic committee somewhere to adopt their own group resolution. It's not the end point of a resolution adopted by a body - it's the preliminary wording of a resolution sent to others to be answered or decided upon. (4) Further context: the word resolved is used to emphasize the fact that it's policy debate. Resolved comes from the adoption of resolutions by legislative bodies. A resolution is either adopted or it is not. It's a question before a legislative body. Should this statement be adopted or not. (5) The very terms 'affirmative' and 'negative' support my view. One affirms a resolution. Affirmative and negative are the equivalents of 'yes' or 'no' - which, of course, are answers to a question.   

USFG should means the debate is only about government policy
Ericson 3 (Jon M., Dean Emeritus of the College of Liberal Arts – California Polytechnic U., et al., The Debater’s Guide, Third Edition, p. 4)

The Proposition of Policy: Urging Future Action In policy propositions, each topic contains certain key elements, although they have slightly different functions from comparable elements of value-oriented propositions. 1. An agent doing the acting ---“The United States” in “The United States should adopt a policy of free trade.” Like the object of evaluation in a proposition of value, the agent is the subject of the sentence. 2. The verb should—the first part of a verb phrase that urges action. 3. An action verb to follow should in the should-verb combination. For example, should adopt here means to put a program or policy into action though governmental means. 4. A specification of directions or a limitation of the action desired. The phrase free trade, for example, gives direction and limits to the topic, which would, for example, eliminate consideration of increasing tariffs, discussing diplomatic recognition, or discussing interstate commerce. Propositions of policy deal with future action. Nothing has yet occurred. The entire debate is about whether something ought to occur. What you agree to do, then, when you accept the affirmative side in such a debate is to offer sufficient and compelling reasons for an audience to perform the future action that you propose. 

Voting issue
Preparation and clash—changing the topic post facto manipulates balance of prep, which structurally favors the aff because they are able to choose the initial framework for debate and permute non-competitive counter-methodologies—strategic fairness on a limited topic is key to engaging a well-prepared opponent—they force us to  give up every other pursuit for win debates
Harris 13 (Scott, April 5 “This ballot by Scott Harris” http://www.cedadebate.org/forum/index.php?topic=4762.0, nkj)

I understand that there has been some criticism of Northwestern’s strategy in this debate round.  This criticism is premised on the idea that they ran framework instead of engaging Emporia’s argument about home and the Wiz.  I think this criticism is unfair.  Northwestern’s framework argument did engage Emporia’s argument.  Emporia said that you should vote for the team that performatively and methodologically made debate a home.  Northwestern’s argument directly clashed with that contention.  My problem in this debate was with aspects of the execution of the argument rather than with the strategy itself.  It has always made me angry in debates when people have treated topicality as if it were a less important argument than other arguments in debate.   Topicality is a real argument.  It is a researched strategy.  It is an argument that challenges many affirmatives.  The fact that other arguments could be run in a debate or are run in a debate does not make topicality somehow a less important argument.  In reality, for many of you that go on to law school you will spend much of your life running topicality arguments because you will find that words in the law matter.  The rest of us will experience the ways that word choices matter in contracts, in leases, in writing laws and in many aspects of our lives.  Kansas ran an affirmative a few years ago about how the location of a comma in a law led a couple of districts to misinterpret the law into allowing individuals to be incarcerated in jail for two days without having any formal charges filed against them.  For those individuals the location of the comma in the law had major consequences.  Debates about words are not insignificant.  Debates about what kinds of arguments we should or should not be making in debates are not insignificant either.  The limits debate is an argument that has real pragmatic consequences.  I found myself earlier this year judging Harvard’s eco-pedagogy aff and thought to myself—I could stay up tonight and put a strategy together on eco-pedagogy, but then I thought to myself—why should I have to?  Yes, I could put together a strategy against any random argument somebody makes employing an energy metaphor but the reality is there are only so many nights to stay up all night researching.  I would like to actually spend time playing catch with my children occasionally or maybe even read a book or go to a movie or spend some time with my wife.  A world where there are an infinite number of affirmatives is a world where the demand to have a specific strategy and not run framework is a world that says this community doesn’t care whether its participants have a life or do well in school or spend time with their families.  I know there is a new call abounding for interpreting this NDT as a mandate for broader more diverse topics.  The reality is that will create more work to prepare for the teams that choose to debate the topic but will have little to no effect on the teams that refuse to debate the topic.  Broader topics that do not require positive government action or are bidirectional will not make teams that won’t debate the topic choose to debate the topic.  I think that is a con job.  I am not opposed to broader topics necessarily.  I tend to like the way high school topics are written more than the way college topics are written.  I just think people who take the meaning of the outcome of this NDT as proof that we need to make it so people get to talk about anything they want to talk about without having to debate against topicality or framework arguments are interested in constructing a world that might make debate an unending nightmare and not a very good home in which to live.  Limits, to me, are a real impact because I feel their impact in my everyday existence.  

Debate’s a game—fairness and rules come first
Villa 96—Dana Villa Political Theory @ UC Santa Barbara Arendt and Heidegger: the Fate of the Political p. 37
If political action is to be valued for its own sake, then the content of political action must be politics “in the sense that political action is talk about politics.”  The circularity of this formulation, given by George Kateb, is unavoidable.  It helps if we use an analogy that Kateb proposes, the analogy between such a purely political politics and a game.  “A game,” writes Kateb, “is not ‘about’ anything outside itself, it is its own sufficient world…the content of any game is itself.”  What matters in a game is the play itself, and the quality of this play is utterly dependent upon the willingness and ability of the players to enter the “world” of the game.  The Arendtian conception of politics is one in which the spirit animating the “play” (the sharing of words and deeds)comes before all else—before personal concerns, groups, interests, and even moral claims.  If allowed to dominate the “game,” these elements detracts from the play and from the performance of action.  A good game happens only when the players submit themselves to its spirit and do not allow subjective or external motives to dictate the play.  A good game, like genuine politics, is played for its own sake.

A limited topic is key to decision-making and advocacy skills
Steinberg and Freeley 8 *Austin J. Freeley is a Boston based attorney who focuses on criminal, personal injury and civil rights law, AND David L. Steinberg , Lecturer of Communication Studies @ U Miami, Argumentation and Debate: Critical Thinking for Reasoned Decision Making pp45-
Debate is a means of settling differences, so there must be a difference of opinion or a conflict of interest before there can be a debate. If everyone is in agreement on a tact or value or policy, there is no need for debate: the matter can be settled by unanimous consent. Thus, for example, it would be pointless to attempt to debate "Resolved: That two plus two equals four," because there is simply no controversy about this statement. (Controversy is an essential prerequisite of debate. Where there is no clash of ideas, proposals, interests, or expressed positions on issues, there is no debate. In addition, debate cannot produce effective decisions without clear identification of a question or questions to be answered. For example, general argument may occur about the broad topic of illegal immigration. How many illegal immigrants are in the United States? What is the impact of illegal immigration and immigrants on our economy? What is their impact on our communities? Do they commit crimes? Do they take jobs from American workers? Do they pay taxes? Do they require social services? Is it a problem that some do not speak English? Is it the responsibility of employers to discourage illegal immigration by not hiring undocumented workers? Should they have the opportunity- to gain citizenship? Docs illegal immigration pose a security threat to our country? Do illegal immigrants do work that American workers are unwilling to do? Are their rights as workers and as human beings at risk due to their status? Are they abused by employers, law enforcement, housing, and businesses? I low are their families impacted by their status? What is the moral and philosophical obligation of a nation state to maintain its borders? Should we build a wall on the Mexican border, establish a national identification can!, or enforce existing laws against employers? Should we invite immigrants to become U.S. citizens? Surely you can think of many more concerns to be addressed by a conversation about the topic area of illegal immigration. Participation in this "debate" is likely to be emotional and intense. However, it is not likely to be productive or useful without focus on a particular question and identification of a line demarcating sides in the controversy. To be discussed and resolved effectively, controversies must be stated clearly. Vague understanding results in unfocused deliberation and poor decisions, frustration, and emotional distress, as evidenced by the failure of the United States Congress to make progress on the immigration debate during the summer of 2007.
Someone disturbed by the problem of the growing underclass of poorly educated, socially disenfranchised youths might observe, "Public schools are doing a terrible job! They are overcrowded, and many teachers are poorly qualified in their subject areas. Even the best teachers can do little more than struggle to maintain order in their classrooms." That same concerned citizen, facing a complex range of issues, might arrive at an unhelpful decision, such as "We ought to do something about this" or. worse. "It's too complicated a problem to deal with." Groups of concerned citizens worried about the state of public education could join together to express their frustrations, anger, disillusionment, and emotions regarding the schools, but without a focus for their discussions, they could easily agree about the sorry state of education without finding points of clarity or potential solutions. A gripe session would follow. But if a precise question is posed—such as "What can be done to improve public education?"—then a more profitable area of discussion is opened up simply by placing a focus on the search for a concrete solution step. One or more judgments can be phrased in the form of debate propositions, motions for parliamentary debate, or bills for legislative assemblies. The statements "Resolved: That the federal government should implement a program of charter schools in at-risk communities" and "Resolved: That the state of Florida should adopt a school voucher program" more clearly idrentify specific ways of dealing with educational problems in a manageable form, suitable for debate. They provide specific policies to be investigated and aid discussants in identifying points of difference.
To have a productive debate, which facilitates effective decision making by directing and placing limits on the decision to be made, the basis for argument should be clearly defined. If we merely talk about "homelessness" or "abortion" or "crime'* or "global warming" we are likely to have an interesting discussion but not to establish profitable basis for argument. For example, the statement "Resolved: That the pen is mightier than the sword" is debatable, yet fails to provide much basis for clear argumentation. If we take this statement to mean that the written word is more effective than physical force for some purposes, we can identify a problem area: the comparative effectiveness of writing or physical force for a specific purpose.
Although we now have a general subject, we have not yet stated a problem. It is still too broad, too loosely worded to promote well-organized argument. What sort of writing are we concerned with—poems, novels, government documents, website development, advertising, or what? What does "effectiveness" mean in this context? What kind of physical force is being compared—fists, dueling swords, bazookas, nuclear weapons, or what? A more specific question might be. "Would a mutual defense treaty or a visit by our fleet be more effective in assuring Liurania of our support in a certain crisis?" The basis for argument could be phrased in a debate proposition such as "Resolved: That the United States should enter into a mutual defense treatv with Laurania." Negative advocates might oppose this proposition by arguing that fleet maneuvers would be a better solution. This is not to say that debates should completely avoid creative interpretation of the controversy by advocates, or that good debates cannot occur over competing interpretations of the controversy; in fact, these sorts of debates may be very engaging. The point is that debate is best facilitated by the guidance provided by focus on a particular point of difference, which will be outlined in the following discussion.

Government policy discussions are key
Esberg and Sagan 12 *Jane Esberg is special assistant to the director at New York University's Center on. International Cooperation. She was the winner of 2009 Firestone Medal, AND Scott Sagan is a professor of political science and director of Stanford's Center for International Security and Cooperation “NEGOTIATING NONPROLIFERATION: Scholarship, Pedagogy, and Nuclear Weapons Policy,” 2/17 The Nonproliferation Review, 19:1, 95-108
These government or quasi-government think tank simulations often provide very similar lessons for high-level players as are learned by students in educational simulations. Government participants learn about the importance of understanding foreign perspectives, the need to practice internal coordination, and the necessity to compromise and coordinate with other governments in negotiations and crises. During the Cold War, political scientist Robert Mandel noted how crisis exercises and war games forced government officials to overcome ‘‘bureaucratic myopia,’’ moving beyond their normal organizational roles and thinking more creatively about how others might react in a crisis or conflict.6 The skills of imagination and the subsequent ability to predict foreign interests and reactions remain critical for real-world foreign policy makers. For example, simulations of the Iranian nuclear crisis*held in 2009 and 2010 at the Brookings Institution’s Saban Center and at Harvard University’s Belfer Center, and involving former US senior officials and regional experts*highlighted the dangers of misunderstanding foreign governments’ preferences and misinterpreting their subsequent behavior. In both simulations, the primary criticism of the US negotiating team lay in a failure to predict accurately how other states, both allies and adversaries, would behave in response to US policy initiatives.7
By university age, students often have a pre-defined view of international affairs, and the literature on simulations in education has long emphasized how such exercises force students to challenge their assumptions about how other governments behave and how their own government works.8 Since simulations became more common as a teaching tool in the late 1950s, educational literature has expounded on their benefits, from encouraging engagement by breaking from the typical lecture format, to improving communication skills, to promoting teamwork.9 More broadly, simulations can deepen understanding by asking students to link fact and theory, providing a context for facts while bringing theory into the realm of practice.10 These exercises are particularly valuable in teaching international affairs for many of the same reasons they are useful for policy makers: they force participants to ‘‘grapple with the issues arising from a world in flux.’’11 Simulations have been used successfully to teach students about such disparate topics as European politics, the Kashmir crisis, and US response to the mass killings in Darfur.12 Role-playing exercises certainly encourage students to learn political and technical facts* but they learn them in a more active style. Rather than sitting in a classroom and merely receiving knowledge, students actively research ‘‘their’’ government’s positions and actively argue, brief, and negotiate with others.13 Facts can change quickly; simulations teach students how to contextualize and act on information.14

Substantive constraints on the debate are key to pluralism and agonistic democracy
Dryzek 6—Professor of Social and Political Theory, The Australian National University (John, Reconciling Pluralism and Consensus as Political Ideals, American Journal of Political Science,Vol. 50, No. 3, July 2006, Pp. 634–649)

A more radical contemporary pluralism is suspicious of liberal and communitarian devices for reconciling difference. Such a critical pluralism is associated with agonists such as Connolly (1991), Honig (1993), and Mouffe (2000), and difference democrats such as Young (2000). As Honig puts it, “Difference is just another word for what used to be called pluralism” (1996, 60). Critical pluralists resemble liberals in that they begin from the variety of ways it is possible to experience the world, but stress that the experiences and perspectives of marginalized and oppressed groups are likely to be very different from dominant groups. They also have a strong suspicion of liberal theory that looks neutral but in practice supports and serves the powerful.
Difference democrats are hostile to consensus, partly because consensus decisionmaking (of the sort popular in 1970s radical groups) conceals informal oppression under the guise of concern for all by disallowing dissent (Zablocki 1980). But the real target is political theory that deploys consensus, especially deliberative and liberal theory. Young (1996, 125–26) argues that the appeals to unity and the common good that deliberative theorists under sway of the consensus ideal stress as the proper forms of political communication can often be oppressive. For deliberation so oriented all too easily equates the common good with the interests of the more powerful, thus sidelining legitimate concerns of the marginalized. Asking the underprivileged to set aside their particularistic concerns also means marginalizing their favored forms of expression, especially the telling of personal stories (Young 1996, 126).3 Speaking for an agonistic conception of democracy (to which Young also subscribes; 2000, 49–51), Mouffe states:
To negate the ineradicable character of antagonism and aim at a universal rational consensus— that is the real threat to democracy. Indeed, this can lead to violence being unrecognized and hidden behind appeals to “rationality,” as is often the case in liberal thinking. (1996, 248)
Mouffe is a radical pluralist: “By pluralism I mean the end of a substantive idea of the good life” (1996, 246). But neither Mouffe nor Young want to abolish communication in the name of pluralism and difference; much of their work advocates sustained attention to communication. Mouffe also cautions against uncritical celebration of difference, for some differences imply “subordination and should therefore be challenged by a radical democratic politics” (1996, 247). Mouffe raises the question of the terms in which engagement across difference might proceed. Participants should ideally accept that the positions of others are legitimate, though not as a result of being persuaded in argument. Instead, it is a matter of being open to conversion due to adoption of a particular kind of democratic attitude that converts antagonism into agonism, fighting into critical engagement, enemies into adversaries who are treated with respect. Respect here is not just (liberal) toleration, but positive validation of the position of others. For Young, a communicative democracy would be composed of people showing “equal respect,” under “procedural rules of fair discussion and decisionmaking” (1996, 126). Schlosberg speaks of “agonistic respect” as “a critical pluralist ethos” (1999, 70).
Mouffe and Young both want pluralism to be regulated by a particular kind of attitude, be it respectful, agonistic, or even in Young’s (2000, 16–51) case reasonable. Thus neither proposes unregulated pluralism as an alternative to (deliberative) consensus. This regulation cannot be just procedural, for that would imply “anything goes” in terms of the substance of positions. Recall that Mouffe rejects differences that imply subordination. Agonistic ideals demand judgments about what is worthy of respect and what is not. Connolly (1991, 211) worries about dogmatic assertions and denials of identity that fuel existential resentments that would have to be changed to make agonism possible. Young seeks “transformation of private, self-regarding desires into public appeals to justice” (2000, 51). Thus for Mouffe, Connolly, and Young alike, regulative principles for democratic communication are not just attitudinal or procedural; they also refer to the substance of the kinds of claims that are worthy of respect. These authors would not want to legislate substance and are suspicious of the content of any alleged consensus. But in retreating from “anything goes” relativism, they need principles to regulate the substance of what rightfully belongs in democratic debate. 

Effective deliberation is key to decisionmaking—that’s key to an informed citizenry that can reclaim the political and solve existential problems
Lundberg 10
Christian O. Lundberg 10 Professor of Communications @ University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, “Tradition of Debate in North Carolina” in Navigating Opportunity: Policy Debate in the 21st Century By Allan D. Louden, p311
The second major problem with the critique that identifies a naivety in articulating debate and democracy is that it presumes that the primary pedagogical outcome of debate is speech capacities. But the democratic capacities built by debate are not limited to speech—as indicated earlier, debate builds capacity for critical thinking, analysis of public claims, informed decision making, and better public judgment. If the picture of modem political life that underwrites this critique of debate is a pessimistic view of increasingly labyrinthine and bureaucratic administrative politics, rapid scientific and technological change outpacing the capacities of the citizenry to comprehend them, and ever-expanding insular special-interest- and money-driven politics, it is a puzzling solution, at best, to argue that these conditions warrant giving up on debate. If democracy is open to rearticulation, it is open to rearticulation precisely because as the challenges of modern political life proliferate, the citizenry's capacities can change, which is one of the primary reasons that theorists of democracy such as Ocwey in The Public awl Its Problems place such a high premium on education (Dewey 1988,63, 154). Debate provides an indispensible form of education in the modem articulation of democracy because it builds precisely the skills that allow the citizenry to research and be informed about policy decisions that impact them, to son rhroueh and evaluate the evidence for and relative merits of arguments for and against a policy in an increasingly infonnation-rich environment, and to prioritize their time and political energies toward policies that matter the most to them.
The merits of debate as a tool for building democratic capacity-building take on a special significance in the context of information literacy. John Larkin (2005, HO) argues that one of the primary failings of modern colleges and universities is that they have not changed curriculum to match with the challenges of a new information environment. This is a problem for the course of academic study in our current context, but perhaps more important, argues Larkin, for the future of a citizenry that will need to make evaluative choices against an increasingly complex and multimediatcd information environment (ibid-). Larkin's study tested the benefits of debate participation on information-literacy skills and concluded that in-class debate participants reported significantly higher self-efficacy ratings of their ability to navigate academic search databases and to effectively search and use other Web resources:
To analyze the self-report ratings of the instructional and control group students, we first conducted a multivariate analysis of variance on all of the ratings, looking jointly at the effect of instmction/no instruction and debate topic . . . that it did not matter which topic students had been assigned . . . students in the Instnictional debate) group were significantly more confident in their ability to access information and less likely to feel that they needed help to do so----These findings clearly indicate greater self-efficacy for online searching among students who participated in (debate).... These results constitute strong support for the effectiveness of the project on students' self-efficacy for online searching in the academic databases. There was an unintended effect, however: After doing ... the project, instructional group students also felt more confident than the other students in their ability to get good information from Yahoo and Google. It may be that the library research experience increased self-efficacy for any searching, not just in academic databases. (Larkin 2005, 144)
Larkin's study substantiates Thomas Worthcn and Gaylcn Pack's (1992, 3) claim that debate in the college classroom plays a critical role in fostering the kind of problem-solving skills demanded by the increasingly rich media and information environment of modernity. Though their essay was written in 1992 on the cusp of the eventual explosion of the Internet as a medium, Worthcn and Pack's framing of the issue was prescient: the primary question facing today's student has changed from how to best research a topic to the crucial question of learning how to best evaluate which arguments to cite and rely upon from an easily accessible and veritable cornucopia of materials.
There are, without a doubt, a number of important criticisms of employing debate as a model for democratic deliberation. But cumulatively, the evidence presented here warrants strong support for expanding debate practice in the classroom as a technology for enhancing democratic deliberative capacities. The unique combination of critical thinking skills, research and information processing skills, oral communication skills, and capacities for listening and thoughtful, open engagement with hotly contested issues argues for debate as a crucial component of a rich and vital democratic life. In-class debate practice both aids students in achieving the best goals of college and university education, and serves as an unmatched practice for creating thoughtful, engaged, open-minded and self-critical students who are open to the possibilities of meaningful political engagement and new articulations of democratic life.
Expanding this practice is crucial, if only because the more we produce citizens that can actively and effectively engage the political process, the more likely we are to produce revisions of democratic life that are necessary if democracy is not only to survive, but to thrive. Democracy faces a myriad of challenges, including: domestic and international issues of class, gender, and racial justice; wholesale environmental destruction and the potential for rapid climate change; emerging threats to international stability in the form of terrorism, intervention and new possibilities for great power conflict; and increasing challenges of rapid globalization including an increasingly volatile global economic structure. More than any specific policy or proposal, an informed and active citizenry that deliberates with greater skill and sensitivity provides one of the best hopes for responsive and effective democratic governance, and by extension, one of the last best hopes for dealing with the existential challenges to democracy in an increasingly complex world. 

There’s topical versions that can use most of the 1ac...changes by debate

Policymaking is essential to create permanent, codified change at every level of society
Themba-Nixon 2K (Makani, Executive Director of The Praxis Project, a nonprofit organization helping communities use media and policy advocacy to advance health equity and justice. “Changing the Rules: What Public Policy Means for Organizing” Colorlines 3.2)

"This is all about policy," a woman complained to me in a recent conversation. "I'm an organizer." The flourish and passion with which she made the distinction said everything. Policy is for wonks, sell-out politicians, and ivory-tower eggheads. Organizing is what real, grassroots people do. Common as it may be, this distinction doesn't bear out in the real world. Policy is more than law. It is any written agreement (formal or informal) that specifies how an institution, governing body, or community will address shared problems or attain shared goals. It spells out the terms and the consequences of these agreements and is the codification of the body's values-as represented by those present in the policymaking process. Given who's usually present, most policies reflect the political agenda of powerful elites. Yet, policy can be a force for change-especially when we bring our base and community organizing into the process. In essence, policies are the codification of power relationships and resource allocation. Policies are the rules of the world we live in. Changing the world means changing the rules. So, if organizing is about changing the rules and building power, how can organizing be separated from policies? Can we really speak truth to power, fight the right, stop corporate abuses, or win racial justice without contesting the rules and the rulers, the policies and the policymakers? The answer is no-and double no for people of color. Today, racism subtly dominates nearly every aspect of policymaking. From ballot propositions to city funding priorities, policy is increasingly about the control, de-funding, and disfranchisement of communities of color. What Do We Stand For? Take the public conversation about welfare reform, for example. Most of us know it isn't really about putting people to work. The right's message was framed around racial stereotypes of lazy, cheating "welfare queens" whose poverty was "cultural." But the new welfare policy was about moving billions of dollars in individual cash payments and direct services from welfare recipients to other, more powerful, social actors. Many of us were too busy to tune into the welfare policy drama in Washington, only to find it washed up right on our doorsteps. Our members are suffering from workfare policies, new regulations, and cutoffs. Families who were barely getting by under the old rules are being pushed over the edge by the new policies. Policy doesn't get more relevant than this. And so we got involved in policy-as defense. Yet we have to do more than block their punches. We have to start the fight with initiatives of our own. Those who do are finding offense a bit more fun than defense alone. Living wage ordinances, youth development initiatives, even gun control and alcohol and tobacco policies are finding their way onto the public agenda, thanks to focused community organizing that leverages power for community-driven initiatives. - Over 600 local policies have been passed to regulate the tobacco industry. Local coalitions have taken the lead by writing ordinances that address local problems and organizing broad support for them. - Nearly 100 gun control and violence prevention policies have been enacted since 1991. - Milwaukee, Boston, and Oakland are among the cities that have passed living wage ordinances: local laws that guarantee higher than minimum wages for workers, usually set as the minimum needed to keep a family of four above poverty. These are just a few of the examples that demonstrate how organizing for local policy advocacy has made inroads in areas where positive national policy had been stalled by conservatives. Increasingly, the local policy arena is where the action is and where activists are finding success. Of course, corporate interests-which are usually the target of these policies-are gearing up in defense. Tactics include front groups, economic pressure, and the tried and true: cold, hard cash. Despite these barriers, grassroots organizing can be very effective at the smaller scale of local politics. At the local level, we have greater access to elected officials and officials have a greater reliance on their constituents for reelection. For example, getting 400 people to show up at city hall in just about any city in the U.S. is quite impressive. On the other hand, 400 people at the state house or the Congress would have a less significant impact. Add to that the fact that all 400 people at city hall are usually constituents, and the impact is even greater. Recent trends in government underscore the importance of local policy. Congress has enacted a series of measures devolving significant power to state and local government. Welfare, health care, and the regulation of food and drinking water safety are among the areas where states and localities now have greater rule. Devolution has some negative consequences to be sure. History has taught us that, for social services and civil rights in particular, the lack of clear federal standards and mechanisms for accountability lead to uneven enforcement and even discriminatory implementation of policies. Still, there are real opportunities for advancing progressive initiatives in this more localized environment. Greater local control can mean greater community power to shape and implement important social policies that were heretofore out of reach. To do so will require careful attention to the mechanics of local policymaking and a clear blueprint of what we stand for. Getting It in Writing Much of the work of framing what we stand for takes place in the shaping of demands. By getting into the policy arena in a proactive manner, we can take our demands to the next level. Our demands can become law, with real consequences if the agreement is broken. After all the organizing, press work, and effort, a group should leave a decisionmaker with more than a handshake and his or her word. Of course, this work requires a certain amount of interaction with "the suits," as well as struggles with the bureaucracy, the technical language, and the all-too-common resistance by decisionmakers. Still, if it's worth demanding, it's worth having in writing-whether as law, regulation, or internal policy. From ballot initiatives on rent control to laws requiring worker protections, organizers are leveraging their power into written policies that are making a real difference in their communities. Of course, policy work is just one tool in our organizing arsenal, but it is a tool we simply can't afford to ignore. Making policy work an integral part of organizing will require a certain amount of retrofitting. We will need to develop the capacity to translate our information, data, and experience into stories that are designed to affect the public conversation. Perhaps most important, we will need to move beyond fighting problems and on to framing solutions that bring us closer to our vision of how things should be. And then we must be committed to making it so. 

Especially true in the case of Latin America
Baxter 10 (Jorge, Education Specialist, Department of Education and Culture in the Organization of American States, Former Coordinator of the Inter-American Program on Education for Democratic Values and Practices at the OAS, PHD in International Comparative Education and Policy from University of Maryland College Park, “Towards a Deliberative and Democratic Model of International Cooperation in Education in Latin America”, Inter-American Journal of Education for Democracy, 3(2), 224-254, https://scholarworks.iu.edu/journals/index.php/ried/article/viewFile/1016/1307, Accessed: 7/30/13)OG
In the context of international¶ education cooperation and international¶ development in Latin America, where¶ there are great asymmetries in power and¶ resources, it seems that this critique could¶ have some validity. However, rather than¶ concluding that deliberation and participation¶ should be reduced, one could conclude (as¶ is argued in this paper) that they should¶ be enhanced and expanded. Those that¶ advocate for a “thicker” democratization in¶ the region would likely advocate for a more¶ substantive approach to deliberation in policy¶ which establishes certain parameters such¶ as “education is an intrinsic human right,”¶ and which would place an emphasis on¶ achieving quality education outcomes¶ for all as the goal. This does not mean that¶ they would not advocate for deliberation but¶ rather would set parameters for deliberation¶ in order to ensure that the outcomes do not¶ lead to “unjust” policy (e.g., a policy that¶ might promote more inequity in education).¶ Those that advocate for a “thinner” approach¶ to democratization would tend to advocate¶ for a procedural approach to deliberation in¶ education policy and would most likely place¶ emphasis on equal opportunity of access¶ to quality education.¶ Instability critique: Education in Latin¶ America suffers from too much instability and¶ is too politicized. Increasing participation and¶ deliberation would only further politicize the¶ situation and polarize those who advocate for¶ educational reform and those who block it.¶ The average term of a minister of education¶ is one-and-a-half years; each time a new¶ minister comes to office, new policies are¶ passed which, according to deliberative¶ democratic theory, would need to be reasoned¶ and debated with citizens. Deliberation in this¶ context would promote even more instability¶ and would lead to further politicization of¶ education reform.¶ Response: Political instability and¶ lack of continuity in policy reform are serious¶ limitations that to some degree are inherent¶ in democratic institutions and processes. The¶ reality is that if any education reform is to¶ succeed in the long term, it needs more than¶ the efforts of governments or international¶ organizations. It needs the sustained support¶ of stakeholders across sectors (public,¶ private, and civil society) and over time. It¶ has been argued that the main problem in¶ basic education in Latin America is the lack¶ of a broad social consensus, recognizing¶ that there is a problem of equity and quality¶ in the provision of education (Schiefelbein,¶ 1997). This lack of broad social consensus¶ is especially challenging where there is, as¶ noted in the critique, a lack of continuity¶ in education reform. Reform in education¶ takes time, sometimes decades. Ensuring¶ continuity in education reform policies is¶ therefore crucial, and this requires public¶ consensus. Deliberative forums convening¶ government, private sector, and civil society¶ groups can contribute to developing this public¶ consensus and to providing more continuity¶ in policy. Deliberative forums combined¶ with collaborative projects can help promote¶ learning, distribute institutional memory,¶ support capacity-building efforts, and bring¶ more resources to bear on the education¶ reform process. Creating a space for citizens¶ to deliberate on the role of education is¶ fundamental for promoting broad social¶ consensus around education reforms. In Latin¶ America, the most innovative and successful¶ reforms have all created multiple and¶ continuous opportunities for diverse groups¶ across the education sector and society to¶ provide input and to have opportunities for¶ meaningful collaborative action. International¶ organizations, leveraging their regional and¶ international position, can contribute by¶ promoting policy dialogue and collaborative¶ actions among ministries and also with key¶ stakeholders across sectors. The challenge¶ is to develop a better understanding of how¶ deliberation can be used to promote more¶ collaborative as opposed to more adversarial¶ and partisan forms of politics. This is perhaps¶ one area which deliberative theorists need to¶ explore more.¶ 5. Power critique: The final critique relates¶ the possibility that increasing deliberation¶ and participation can lead to increased¶ inequality. Fung and Wright (2003) note¶ that deliberation can turn into domination¶ in a context where “participants in these¶ processes usually face each other from¶ unequal positions of power.” Every reform¶ in education creates winners and losers, and¶ very few create “win-win” situations. Those¶ in power would have to submit to the rules of¶ deliberation and relinquish “control” over the¶ various dimensions of democratic decisionmaking.¶ This is naïve and not politically¶ feasible.¶ Response: This is a valid critique¶ worth considering. Structural inequalities¶ and asymmetries of power in governments¶ and international institutions in Latin America¶ have facilitated domination by elites in terms¶ of authority, power, and control in politics.¶ Asymmetries of power in international¶ cooperation in education are also clear,¶ especially when powerful financial (World¶ Bank, IDB, IMF) or political (OAS, UNESCO)¶ organizations engage with local stakeholders¶ and condition policy options with funding¶ or political support. What this paper has¶ argued is relevant again here: that instead of¶ rejecting further democratization in the face¶ of these challenges, including the challenge¶ of elite “domination,” what is needed is more¶ and better democracy, defined in terms of its¶ breadth, depth, range, and control. Finally,¶ dealing with elite domination in international¶ deliberative forums will require conscious and¶ skilled facilitation on the part of international¶ organizations, which themselves are often¶ elitist and hegemonic.¶ Final Thoughts: So What?¶ Perhaps the most critical question¶ that emerges in the argument for increased¶ democratization and deliberation is simply:¶ So what? Does increased democratization and¶ deliberation actually lead to better outcomes¶ in education? More empirical research on this¶ critical question is needed. However, experiments¶ in deliberative democracy in education reform¶ in Brazil through the UNESCO and Ministry of¶ Education Coordinated Action Plan and Porto¶ Alegre‘s Citizen School, and also to some degree¶ at the international level with the OAS pilot¶ experiment in developing a more democratic¶ model of international cooperation from 2001-¶ 2005, have shown that deliberative processes¶ can enhance learning on the part of those¶ participating. Fung and Wright (2003) refer to¶ these experiments in deliberation as “schools¶ of democracy” because participants exercise¶ their capacities of argument, planning, and¶ evaluation. Deliberation promotes joint reflection¶ and consideration of others’ views. Citizens¶ who participate in deliberative forums develop¶ competencies that are important not only for¶ active citizenship (listening, communication,¶ problem-solving, conflict resolution, selfregulation skills) but also crucial for managing¶ change and school reform. Many of the same¶ skills that are developed through citizen¶ deliberation and participation are also essential¶ for transforming school cultures, promoting¶ “learning organizations” (Senge, 2000), fostering¶ communities of reflective practitioners (Schon,¶ 1991) and developing communities of practice¶ (Wenger, 2001). There is evidence from some¶ research that democratic interactions can create¶ knowledge that is more rigorous, precise, and¶ relevant than that produced in authoritarian¶ environments (Jaramillo, 2005). Another¶ important aspect of enhancing deliberative¶ democracy and democratization is that it moves¶ from a focus on individuals and their own¶ preferences towards more collective forms of¶ learning and collaboration.¶ Up to now, international organizations¶ have endorsed a “thin” version of democratization¶ that is content with formal and centralized¶ mechanisms of “representation” and “policy¶ dialogue.” If a new, more deliberative and¶ democratic model of cooperation in education in¶ the region were to emerge, what would it look¶ like?¶ First of all, a more deliberative and¶ democratic model of international cooperation in¶ education would involve more direct and deeper¶ forms of participation from everyday citizens,¶ including teachers, school directors, families,¶ school communities, students, and mesolevel¶ actors such as civil society organizations.¶ This participation would move beyond simple¶ consultation to more authentic forms of joint¶ decision-making and deliberation. The model¶ would involve more accountability on the¶ part of international organizations in terms¶ of transparency, and would require injecting¶ ethical reasoning into policies and programming.¶ In addition, a new more democratic model of¶ international cooperation would expand the¶ range of policy options available to countries¶ through devolution of authority, power, and¶ control, combined with oversight and horizontal¶ accountability mechanisms. A more democratic¶ model of international cooperation would stress¶ valuing, systematizing, and disseminating¶ local knowledge and innovation. Finally,¶ democratization and deliberation in international¶ cooperation in education would lead to enhanced¶ learning and agency on the part of participating¶ countries, groups, and individuals, and thus¶ contribute to better outcomes in terms of quality¶ and equity in education at national and local¶ levels.

The vast majority of the debate community, including everyone in this room is aware of the 1ac's harms—orientation towards a goal without concrete policy ensures failure
Bryant 12 (Levi, Critique of the Academic Left, http://larvalsubjects.wordpress.com/2012/11/11/underpants-gnomes-a-critique-of-the-academic-left/)

I must be in a mood today– half irritated, half amused –because I find myself ranting.  Of course, that’s not entirely unusual.  So this afternoon I came across a post by a friend quoting something discussing the environmental movement that pushed all the right button. As the post read,¶ For mainstream environmentalism– conservationism, green consumerism, and resource management –humans are conceptually separated out of nature and mythically placed in privileged positions of authority and control over ecological communities and their nonhuman constituents. What emerges is the fiction of a marketplace of ‘raw materials’ and ‘resources’ through which human-centered wants, constructed as needs, might be satisfied. The mainstream narratives are replete with such metaphors carbon trading!. Natural complexity _{mutuality, and diversity are rendered virtually meaningless given discursive parameters that reduce nature to discrete units of exchange measuring extractive capacities. Jeff Shantz, “Green Syndicalism”¶ While finding elements this description perplexing– I can’t say that I see many environmentalists treating nature and culture as distinct or suggesting that we’re sovereigns of nature –I do agree that we conceive much of our relationship to the natural world in economic terms (not a surprise that capitalism is today a universal). This, however, is not what bothers me about this passage.¶ What I wonder is just what we’re supposed to do even if all of this is true? What, given existing conditions, are we to do if all of this is right? At least green consumerism, conservation, resource management, and things like carbon trading are engaging in activities that are making real differences. From this passage– and maybe the entire text would disabuse me of this conclusion –it sounds like we are to reject all of these interventions because they remain tied to a capitalist model of production that the author (and myself) find abhorrent. The idea seems to be that if we endorse these things we are tainting our hands and would therefore do well to reject them altogether.¶ The problem as I see it is that this is the worst sort of abstraction (in the Marxist sense) and wishful thinking. Within a Marxo-Hegelian context, a thought is abstract when it ignores all of the mediations in which a thing is embedded. For example, I understand a robust tree abstractly when I attribute its robustness, say, to its genetics alone, ignoring the complex relations to its soil, the air, sunshine, rainfall, etc., that also allowed it to grow robustly in this way. This is the sort of critique we’re always leveling against the neoliberals. They are abstract thinkers. In their doxa that individuals are entirely responsible for themselves and that they completely make themselves by pulling themselves up by their bootstraps, neoliberals ignore all the mediations belonging to the social and material context in which human beings develop that play a role in determining the vectors of their life. They ignore, for example, that George W. Bush grew up in a family that was highly connected to the world of business and government and that this gave him opportunities that someone living in a remote region of Alaska in a very different material infrastructure and set of family relations does not have. To think concretely is to engage in a cartography of these mediations, a mapping of these networks, from circumstance to circumstance (what I call an “onto-cartography”). It is to map assemblages, networks, or ecologies in the constitution of entities.¶ Unfortunately, the academic left falls prey to its own form of abstraction. It’s good at carrying out critiques that denounce various social formations, yet very poor at proposing any sort of realistic constructions of alternatives. This because it thinks abstractly in its own way, ignoring how networks, assemblages, structures, or regimes of attraction would have to be remade to create a workable alternative. Here I’m reminded by the “underpants gnomes” depicted in South Park:¶ The underpants gnomes have a plan for achieving profit that goes like this:¶ Phase 1: Collect Underpants¶ Phase 2: ?¶ Phase 3: Profit!¶ They even have a catchy song to go with their work:¶ Well this is sadly how it often is with the academic left. Our plan seems to be as follows:¶ Phase 1: Ultra-Radical Critique¶ Phase 2: ?¶ Phase 3: Revolution and complete social transformation!¶ Our problem is that we seem perpetually stuck at phase 1 without ever explaining what is to be done at phase 2. Often the critiques articulated at phase 1 are right, but there are nonetheless all sorts of problems with those critiques nonetheless. In order to reach phase 3, we have to produce new collectives. In order for new collectives to be produced, people need to be able to hear and understand the critiques developed at phase 1. Yet this is where everything begins to fall apart. Even though these critiques are often right, we express them in ways that only an academic with a PhD in critical theory and post-structural theory can understand. How exactly is Adorno to produce an effect in the world if only PhD’s in the humanities can understand him? Who are these things for? We seem to always ignore these things and then look down our noses with disdain at the Naomi Kleins and David Graebers of the world. To make matters worse, we publish our work in expensive academic journals that only universities can afford, with presses that don’t have a wide distribution, and give our talks at expensive hotels at academic conferences attended only by other academics. Again, who are these things for? Is it an accident that so many activists look away from these things with contempt, thinking their more about an academic industry and tenure, than producing change in the world? If a tree falls in a forest and no one is there to hear it, it doesn’t make a sound! Seriously dudes and dudettes, what are you doing?¶ But finally, and worst of all, us Marxists and anarchists all too often act like assholes. We denounce others, we condemn them, we berate them for not engaging with the questions we want to engage with, and we vilify them when they don’t embrace every bit of the doxa that we endorse. We are every bit as off-putting and unpleasant as the fundamentalist minister or the priest of the inquisition (have people yet understood that Deleuze and Guattari’s Anti-Oedipus was a critique of the French communist party system and the Stalinist party system, and the horrific passions that arise out of parties and identifications in general?). This type of “revolutionary” is the greatest friend of the reactionary and capitalist because they do more to drive people into the embrace of reigning ideology than to undermine reigning ideology. These are the people that keep Rush Limbaugh in business. Well done!¶ But this isn’t where our most serious shortcomings lie. Our most serious shortcomings are to be found at phase 2. We almost never make concrete proposals for how things ought to be restructured, for what new material infrastructures and semiotic fields need to be produced, and when we do, our critique-intoxicated cynics and skeptics immediately jump in with an analysis of all the ways in which these things contain dirty secrets, ugly motives, and are doomed to fail. How, I wonder, are we to do anything at all when we have no concrete proposals? We live on a planet of 6 billion people. These 6 billion people are dependent on a certain network of production and distribution to meet the needs of their consumption. That network of production and distribution does involve the extraction of resources, the production of food, the maintenance of paths of transit and communication, the disposal of waste, the building of shelters, the distribution of medicines, etc., etc., etc.¶ What are your proposals? How will you meet these problems? How will you navigate the existing mediations or semiotic and material features of infrastructure? Marx and Lenin had proposals. Do you? Have you even explored the cartography of the problem? Today we are so intellectually bankrupt on these points that we even have theorists speaking of events and acts and talking about a return to the old socialist party systems, ignoring the horror they generated, their failures, and not even proposing ways of avoiding the repetition of these horrors in a new system of organization. Who among our critical theorists is thinking seriously about how to build a distribution and production system that is responsive to the needs of global consumption, avoiding the problems of planned economy, ie., who is doing this in a way that gets notice in our circles? Who is addressing the problems of micro-fascism that arise with party systems (there’s a reason that it was the Negri and Hardt contingent, not the Badiou contingent that has been the heart of the occupy movement). At least the ecologists are thinking about these things in these terms because, well, they think ecologically. Sadly we need something more, a melding of the ecologists, the Marxists, and the anarchists. We’re not getting it yet though, as far as I can tell. Indeed, folks seem attracted to yet another critical paradigm, Laruelle.¶ I would love, just for a moment, to hear a radical environmentalist talk about his ideal high school that would be academically sound. How would he provide for the energy needs of that school? How would he meet building codes in an environmentally sound way? How would she provide food for the students? What would be her plan for waste disposal? And most importantly, how would she navigate the school board, the state legislature, the federal government, and all the families of these students? What is your plan? What is your alternative? I think there are alternatives. I saw one that approached an alternative in Rotterdam. If you want to make a truly revolutionary contribution, this is where you should start. Why should anyone even bother listening to you if you aren’t proposing real plans? But we haven’t even gotten to that point. Instead we’re like underpants gnomes, saying “revolution is the answer!” without addressing any of the infrastructural questions of just how revolution is to be produced, what alternatives it would offer, and how we would concretely go about building those alternatives. Masturbation.¶ “Underpants gnome” deserves to be a category in critical theory; a sort of synonym for self-congratulatory masturbation. We need less critique not because critique isn’t important or necessary– it is –but because we know the critiques, we know the problems. We’re intoxicated with critique because it’s easy and safe. We best every opponent with critique. We occupy a position of moral superiority with critique. But do we really do anything with critique? What we need today, more than ever, is composition or carpentry. Everyone knows something is wrong.  Everyone knows this system is destructive and stacked against them.  Even the Tea Party knows something is wrong with the economic system, despite having the wrong economic theory.  None of us, however, are proposing alternatives.  Instead we prefer to shout and denounce.  Good luck with that.}

Tournament: Greenhill | Round: Doubles | Opponent: CPS BY | Judge: Shakelford, Gonzalez, Gaston
Otherization and moral outrage at terrorism sustains great power coalitions
Dibb 2 (Paul, head of the Strategic and Defense Studies Centre, The Future of International Coalitions, Washington Quarterly 25:2, lexis, AG)

The United States is leading a moral campaign. In World War II, the firm conviction that evil was being fought greatly simplified the Allied effort. n10 The image of a "just war" nourished the Allies' willingness to fight the war to the bitter end. The difference between the war against terrorism and World War II, of course, is that in World War II the Allied powers were all the victims of aggression, simplifying the task of constructing a wartime consensus. Until and unless terrorists attack other Western powers, maintaining the coalition in the longer term will be difficult. The sense of moral outrage, however, has certainly led to the view that this war is just.

Biggest risk of great power wars is collapse of a common enemy to sustain coalitions
Dyer 6 (Gwynne, lecturer on international affairs, Ph.D. in Military and Middle Eastern History, U London, If 9/11 hadn’t happened, http://www.nowtoronto.com/issues/2006-09-14/news_story.php, AG)

There may even be a hidden benefit in the concept of a "war on terror." It is a profoundly dishonest concept, since it is actually directed mainly against Muslim groups that have grievances against the various great powers: Chechens against Russia, Muslim Uyghurs against China, Kashmiri Muslims and their Pakistani cousins against India, and practically everybody in the Arab world and Iran against the U.S. and Britain. The terrorists' methods are reprehensible, but their grievances are often real. The determination of the great powers to oppose not only their methods but their goals is also real. That gives them a common enemy and a shared strategy. The main risk at this point in history is that the great powers will drift back into some kind of alliance confrontation. Key resources are getting scarcer, the climate is changing, and the rise of China and India means that the pecking order of the great powers is due to change again in the relatively near future. Given those preconditions, any strategic analyst worth his salt could draw up a dozen different scenarios of disaster by lunchtime.

Tournament: NDCA | Round: Semis | Opponent: Carrolton GR | Judge: DHeidt, ScottyP, Campbell
see open source

Tournament: Greenhill | Round: 3 | Opponent: Bronx Science DM | Judge: ScottyP
Its is possessive
English Grammar 5
(Glossary of English Grammar Terms, http://www.usingenglish.com/glossary/possessive-pronoun.html)

Mine, yours, his, hers, its, ours, theirs are the possessive pronouns used to substitute a noun and to show possession or ownership. EG. This is your disk and that's mine. (Mine substitutes the word disk and shows that it belongs to me.)

Tournament: Greenhill | Round: 2 | Opponent: CPS PF | Judge: Shakelford
They’re not topical—economic engagement is increasing economic contacts and interdependence in multiple-areas to influence the political behavior of a state
Resnick 1 – Dr. Evan Resnick, Ph.D. in Political Science from Columbia University, Assistant Professor of Political Science at Yeshiva University, “Defining Engagement”, Journal of International Affairs, Spring, 54(2), Ebsco
A REFINED DEFINITION OF ENGAGEMENT
In order to establish a more effective framework for dealing with unsavory regimes, I propose that we define engagement as the attempt to influence the political behavior of a target state through the comprehensive establishment and enhancement of contacts with that state across multiple issue-areas (i.e. diplomatic, military, economic, cultural). The following is a brief list of the specific forms that such contacts might include:
DIPLOMATIC CONTACTS
Extension of diplomatic recognition; normalization of diplomatic relations
Promotion of target-state membership in international institutions and regimes
Summit meetings and other visits by the head of state and other senior government officials of sender state to target state and vice-versa
MILITARY CONTACTS
Visits of senior military officials of the sender state to the target state and vice-versa
Arms transfers
Military aid and cooperation
Military exchange and training programs
Confidence and security-building measures
Intelligence sharing
ECONOMIC CONTACTS
Trade agreements and promotion
Foreign economic and humanitarian aid in the form of loans and/or grants
CULTURAL CONTACTS
Cultural treaties
Inauguration of travel and tourism links
Sport, artistic and academic exchanges (n25)
Engagement is an iterated process in which the sender and target state develop a relationship of increasing interdependence, culminating in the endpoint of "normalized relations" characterized by a high level of interactions across multiple domains. Engagement is a quintessential exchange relationship: the target state wants the prestige and material resources that would accrue to it from increased contacts with the sender state, while the sender state seeks to modify the domestic and/or foreign policy behavior of the target state. This deductive logic could adopt a number of different forms or strategies when deployed in practice.(n26) For instance, individual contacts can be established by the sender state at either a low or a high level of conditionality.(n27) Additionally, the sender state can achieve its objectives using engagement through any one of the following causal processes: by directly modifying the behavior of the target regime; by manipulating or reinforcing the target states' domestic balance of political power between competing factions that advocate divergent policies; or by shifting preferences at the grassroots level in the hope that this will precipitate political change from below within the target state.
This definition implies that three necessary conditions must hold for engagement to constitute an effective foreign policy instrument. First, the overall magnitude of contacts between the sender and target states must initially be low. If two states are already bound by dense contacts in multiple domains (i.e., are already in a highly interdependent relationship), engagement loses its impact as an effective policy tool. Hence, one could not reasonably invoke the possibility of the US engaging Canada or Japan in order to effect a change in either country's political behavior. Second, the material or prestige needs of the target state must be significant, as engagement derives its power from the promise that it can fulfill those needs. The greater the needs of the target state, the more amenable to engagement it is likely to be. For example, North Korea's receptivity to engagement by the US dramatically increased in the wake of the demise of its chief patron, the Soviet Union, and the near-total collapse of its national economy.(n28)
Third, the target state must perceive the engager and the international order it represents as a potential source of the material or prestige resources it desires. This means that autarkic, revolutionary and unlimited regimes which eschew the norms and institutions of the prevailing order, such as Stalin's Soviet Union or Hitler's Germany, will not be seduced by the potential benefits of engagement.
This reformulated conceptualization avoids the pitfalls of prevailing scholarly conceptions of engagement. It considers the policy as a set of means rather than ends, does not delimit the types of states that can either engage or be engaged, explicitly encompasses contacts in multiple issue-areas, allows for the existence of multiple objectives in any given instance of engagement and, as will be shown below, permits the elucidation of multiple types of positive sanctions.

Tournament: Grapevine | Round: Semis | Opponent: Greenhill DJ | Judge:
They’re not topical—economic engagement is increasing economic contacts and interdependence in multiple-areas to influence the political behavior of a state
Resnick 1 – Dr. Evan Resnick, Ph.D. in Political Science from Columbia University, Assistant Professor of Political Science at Yeshiva University, “Defining Engagement”, Journal of International Affairs, Spring, 54(2), Ebsco
A REFINED DEFINITION OF ENGAGEMENT
In order to establish a ....... the elucidation of multiple types of positive sanctions.

“Toward” means in the direction of—visas are a domestic policy
Taylor 6 – CJ Taylor, Supreme Court Justice on the Supreme Court of Michigan, “Supreme Court of Michigan. Grievance Administrator, Petitioner-Appellant, v. Geoffrey N. Fieger, Respondent-Appellee”, 7-31, http://faculty.law.wayne.edu/henning/ProfResp/Grievance20Administrator20v20Fieger.pdf

MRPC 3.5(c) provides that a lawyer ........ of" and "with respect to; as regards."

Tournament: Alta | Round: 2 | Opponent: Igraham | Judge: Nate Tribble
They’re not topical—doubling engagement is a substantial increase
Indo-US Business 9 Indo-US Business, bimonthly publication by New Media Communication Pvt. Ltd. and the Indo-American Chamber of Commerce, “Report: Target $320 bn by 2018: Mission Possible,” May-June 2009, http://www.newmediacomm.com/publication/indo_us/mayjun09/report.html
This report has been prepared in the context of new governments in both countries and examines the potential of bilateral economic engagement in the next 10 years.¶ The report says: “Considering that India, a country with a GDP of around $1 trillion, accounts for a mere 1.3 percent of US trade, there is substantial potential to increase bilateral trade. The two countries should set a target of doubling bilateral trade every three years, which would mean a trade level of $320 billion by 2018, an eight-time increase over nine years. It is also recommended to set in place a Comprehensive Economic Cooperation Agreement covering both goods and services.”¶ The report emphasizes that Indo-US economic relations in the next years can attain the following dimensions:¶ • Strategic shift from high-technology trade to frontier technology India and USA can be close partners in expanding knowledge frontiers in science and technology, including space, robotics, nuclear energy, defense, etc. and their business applications. India can play a key role in signature multi-country projects in space, oceanography, polar exploration, etc.¶ • Robust trade in mass-market and niche products Comprehensive Economic Cooperation Agreement, including goods, to be set in place to take advantage of complementary competitiveness. Set a target of $320 billion in ten years, with robust bilateral investments leading the way for high volume turnover. Quality and safety would be the basis for exchange.¶ • High interface in services trade Strong bilateral engagement across diverse services sectors. This would involve significant liberalization of the Indian services economy on the one hand, and easy movement of personnel across borders on the other.¶ • Preferred investment destinations Scale up mutual investments massively. An investment treaty should be rapidly negotiated. US investors should have a leading role in the economic transformation of India. US companies can emerge as key partners for Indian business.¶ • Building infrastructure in India India needs over $475 billion in investments over the next five years to sustain a high growth rate of 8-9 percent. The US private sector can find a big opportunity in the next decade in India's need for capacity building in infrastructure. Collaboration in this regard would prove to be a mutually beneficial partnership.¶ • Collaboration on clean energy and climate change India's rapid development makes it one of the fastest-growing energy users and carbon emitters. US is the largest energy user and highest carbon emitter after China. Both countries can collaborate closely on energy security, emissions, efficiency, and renewable energy as well as on global discussions on mitigating climate change.¶ • Collaboration in healthcare: US and India to collaborate in making healthcare more affordable and accessible worldwide. Healthcare market in India was nearly at $ 38 billion in 2007, expected to grow at 15 percent per annum to reach $ 79 billion by 2012. Tremendous opportunities can be found in providing healthcare services, building healthcare infrastructure and developing related technologies.¶ • Seamless cross-continental cooperation in knowledge economy sectors India and the US to be anchors for global interaction in sectors such as biotechnology, nanotechnology, drug development, renewable energy, green products, etc. RandD, innovation, and academic collaborations to be close and continuous, rooted in strong IP protection.¶ • Strong cooperation in education and academia Participation in each other's higher education and research sectors. Centers of educational excellence should open campuses in the other country to offer students the best of education in their place of residence. This would also enable high-level continuous exchange of professors, researchers and academics, and cross-cultural educational interchange.¶ • It is crucial to engage the private sectors of both countries in a strong partnership at all enterprise and sector levels. Governments can guide and aid private sector partnerships.¶ Though India-US economic relations have moved into a new phase of intensive interaction since 2000, the recent Indo-US nuclear agreement can act as a springboard for a new trajectory of bilateral economic engagement.¶ Global Economic Crisis and Opportunities¶ The global economic crisis, which has hit the US hard, creates a new opportunity for both sides to not only leverage each other's advantages, but also provide mutually support. While the US seeks markets for its industry products, India needs technology and expertise for faster development and global integration. In the medium term, protectionist measures must be avoided. Over the longer term of 10 years, India and the US can become much more significant economic partners.¶ To ensure that the synergies of both countries complement each other, the governments need to address internal barriers to trade and investment. India needs to undertake pending reforms to open up sectors of interest to US businesses and improve the investment climate. Similarly, the US must work towards reducing barriers for trade and investments from India and facilitate freer movement of professionals between the countries. The US must view India as a strategic partner and rank it high in its economic priorities.¶ Following Measures Are Needed:¶ • A Comprehensive Economic Cooperation Agreement to cover goods and services¶ • A Bilateral Investment Treaty¶ • Opening up of key sectors such as retail and higher education in India to FDI¶ • Freer movement of people under H1-B visa scheme¶ • The private sectors of both sides must be an integral part of the new engagement. Industry associations on both sides must take the lead in overcoming the information barrier, building brand relevance, and forging new business ventures.¶ • Cooperation must shift to interaction between regions, industry sectors, and enterprises of all sizes.¶ Though India has felt the impact of the global meltdown in terms of falling production and exports, the situation is not alarmingly dire so far due to high savings and investment rates, consistent internal demand, low exports in relation to GDP, and strong measures to counteract the crisis. Recovery in India is expected to be faster and steeper than the global norm.¶ In the US, mitigation and containment is the immediate urgency. Indicators are expected to show positive signs from the third quarter of 2009. A crisis of demand, following on the heels of financial and confidence seizure, will be the key factor to be resolved, going forward. Within this scenario, US companies may consider it profitable to examine opportunities in India's infrastructure and consumer durables sectors.¶ It is important that the US and India do not indulge in protectionist measures and lower each other's market access. Proposals that limit H1-B visas, create non-tariff barriers to trade, mandate use of local products, etc should not dominate for a protracted period. Business should be left unfettered to re-energize respective economies.¶ It may be reiterated that substantial increase in economic engagement would require intensive policy measures on both sides. More particularly, India would need to progress much faster on overall trade and economic liberalization and reforms to facilitate greater participation of overseas businesses in its economy. Areas that need to be addressed include agriculture, infrastructure, direct and indirect taxes, investment facilitation, administrative procedures, financial sector, services including retail trade, mining, etc

Tournament: Greenhill | Round: 5 | Opponent: Stratford SO | Judge: Alyssa Lucas-Bolin
Ending the embargo kills US credibility and causes Latin American democratic backsliding, a China-Russia-Cuba alliance, and aggressive Cuban Lashout
Brookes 9 Peter Brookes 4/16/2009 (heritage council, Senior Fellow, Brookes is serving his third term as a congressionally appointed member of the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission. He previously served in the administration of President George W. Bush as deputy assistant secretary of defense for Asian and Pacific affairs. In this post, he was responsible for U.S. defense policy for 38 countries and five bilateral defense alliances in Asia, Brookes was a professional staff member with the House International Relations Committee. He also served with the CIA and the State Department at the United Nations. In the private sector, he worked in the defense and intelligence industries.
A decorated Navy veteran, Brookes served on active duty in Latin America, Asia and the Middle East in aviation and intelligence billets, Brookes, now a retired Navy commander, served as a reservist with the National Security Agency, Defense Intelligence Agency, Naval Intelligence, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Office of the Vice President, Brookes is pursuing a doctorate at Georgetown University. He is a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy (B.S.); the Defense Language Institute (Russian); the Naval War College; and the Johns Hopkins University (M.A.). He also has taught at the National Defense University and studied German and Polish, National Security Affairs, “Keep the Embargo, O” http://www.heritage.org/research/commentary/2009/04/keep-the-embargo-o)

Lifting the embargo won't normalize relations, but instead legitimize -- and wave the white flag to -- Fidel's 50-year fight against the Yanquis, further lionizing the dictator and encouraging the Latin American Left.¶ Because the economy is nationalized, trade will pour plenty of cash into the Cuban national coffers -- allowing Havana to suppress dissent at home and bolster its communist agenda abroad.¶ The last thing we should do is to fill the pockets of a regime that'll use those profits to keep a jackboot on the neck of the Cuban people. The political and human-rights situation in Cuba is grim enough already.¶ The police state controls the lives of 11 million Cubans in what has become an island prison. The people enjoy none of the basic civil liberties -- no freedom of speech, press, assembly or association.¶ Security types monitor foreign journalists, restrict Internet access and foreign news and censor the domestic media. The regime holds more than 200 political dissidents in jails that rats won't live in.¶ We also don't need a pumped-up Cuba that could become a serious menace to US interests in Latin America, the Caribbean -- or beyond. (The likes of China, Russia and Iran might also look to partner with a revitalized Cuba.)¶ With an influx of resources, the Cuban regime would surely team up with the rulers of nations like Venezuela, Nicaragua and Bolivia to advance socialism and anti-Americanism in the Western Hemisphere.¶ The embargo has stifled Havana's ambitions ever since the Castros lost their Soviet sponsorship in the early 1990s. Anyone noticed the lack of trouble Cuba has caused internationally since then? Contrast that with the 1980s some time.¶ Regrettably, 110 years after independence from Spain (courtesy of Uncle Sam), Cuba still isn't free. Instead of utopia, it has become a dystopia at the hands of the Castro brothers.¶ The US embargo remains a matter of principle -- and an appropriate response to Cuba's brutal repression of its people. Giving in to evil only begets more of it. Haven't we learned that yet?¶ Until we see progress in loosing the Cuban people from the yoke of the communist regime, we should hold firm onto the leverage the embargo provides.

That alliance causes nuclear and biological war and the end of capitalism
Gussack 7 (September, Nevin, Guest Writer for THE CENTER FOR INTELLIGENCE STUDIES a non-partisan public policy institution dedicated to the research and dissemination of substantive information regarding the threat posed by foreign intelligence services to the United States, http://www.centerforintelligencestudies.org/OC_RedDawn.html, “RED DAWN IN RETROSPECT:
COMMUNIST PLANS OF CONQUEST DURING THE COLD WAR”, nkj) 

Note: The “Main Enemy” means the US

Executive Summary: Since the dawn of the 1917 Bolshevik revolution, international communism sought to cripple capitalism and the liberal democracies through indirect subversion, encirclement, and if necessary outright military conquest. The Western response had combined mixed levels of military preparedness and appeasement in their foreign and security policies towards the communist world. Our public knowledge of communist subversion and military intentions has been shaped by the majority of print and media sources and academia. These institutions provided gross misinterpretations or inaccuracies due to leftist or “anti-Cold War” biases. This reality was the result of the penetration of New Left worldviews and personalities into the opinion molding centers of power. Many American based multinational corporations also permeated the debate with views that accommodation and trade would mellow the juggernaut of communist military power. More than a few of these titans of the business world also supported the communist states as models of efficient new societies. Hence, popular knowledge of communist plans of aggression had proven to be vastly distorted by the media and even government agencies under the influence of the Left and big business. This essay will document the history of communist invasion planning in Europe, Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Flexible utilization of nuclear, biological, chemical, and conventional war tactics characterized the communist effort to pulverize the Main Enemy. Also discussed is the ultimate goal of the occupation and communization of the territories under attack. The documented evidence will explain how collaborationists would then seize power in the targeted nations. This essay will prove to be especially relevant in the contemporary political discourse, where many pundits and politicians trumpet the notion that “communism is dead” and “China is becoming capitalist.” However, current Chinese and Russian military plans, along with their truculent statements and exercises necessitate a comprehension of the recent Cold War past. China, North Korea, Vietnam, Laos, and Cuba remain communist states and committed to the eventual destruction of capitalism. Meanwhile, the Russian Federation and some Eastern European countries (e.g. Bulgaria, Romania, Czech Republic) have “ex-communist” apparatchiks still holding influential levers of power in the business and intelligence fields. Hence it is important for the believers and doubters of my thesis to reflect deeply on the wise words of George Santayana: “He who does not learn from history is doomed to repeat it.”
One of the most derided assertions concerning Soviet intentions during the Cold War was their drive for ultimate conquest of the United States and non-communist world. Such derision and hostility towards the notion of a Soviet long range plan for world conquest emanated from prominent academics, businessmen, and politicians in the Free World. Such forces of appeasement castigated the notion of the Soviets possessing a desire for world control/domination. However, the available anecdotal and primary source evidence indicates that the Soviets and their allies consistently cooperated in the final goal of the crippling and ultimately defeating the United States and its allies in Europe and the Third World. Open warfare would be considered one of many options for this long-range plan.
The communist world adopted a flexible strategic and tactical approach in their military plans for the subjugation of the non-communist world. The available evidence points to the following characteristics of their military program: 1) Employment of encirclement of the United States and other Free World nations by unfriendly communist governments 2) Utilization of special operations forces, intelligence services, and proxy terrorists/CPs to create disruption and assassinate prominent VIPs in the target countries 3) Usage of chemical-biological, atomic, and conventional armaments to remove the command and control, key industries, and intercontinental military assets in NATO and in CONUS 4) Utilizing communist regional powers, such as Vietnam and Cuba, to impose Marxism Leninism in their respective regions. The elements of surprise and maximum force for points 2, 3, and 4 were to be critical in the Soviet’s success on the battlefield. Thus, the Red Dawn Scenario is completed, with the triumph of global communist totalitarianism. In this essay, we will discuss the various encirclement and occupation plans with information gleaned from scholars, defectors, and primary source documents.
Soviet war plans against NATO and CONUS could be traced as far back as the early 1950s when Stalin was the supreme General Secretary of the CPSU and Premier of the USSR. Karel Kaplan was a chief archivist for the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (CPCz) until his defection to the West in 1968. Kaplan provided information concerning a meeting that Stalin had with Soviet armed forces generals and their counterparts in satellite states of Europe. Alexej Cepicka, the Czech Minister of Defense provided this scenario, as paraphrased by Kaplan:
After a report by representatives of the bloc about the condition of their respective armies, Stalin took the floor to elaborate on the idea of the military occupation of the whole of Europe, insisting on the necessity of preparing it very well. Since the Korean War had demonstrated the military weakness of the United States, despite its use of highly advanced technology, it seemed appropriate to Stalin to take advantage of this in Europe. He developed arguments in support of the following thesis: `No European army is in a position to seriously oppose the Soviet army and it can even be anticipated that there will be no resistance at all. The current military power of the United States is not very great. For the time being, the Soviet camp therefore enjoys a distinct superiority. But this is merely temporary, for some three or four years. Afterward, the United States will have at its disposal means for transporting reinforcements to Western Europe and will also be able to take advantage of its atomic superiority. Consequently, it will be necessary to make use of this brief interval to systematically prepare our armies by mobilizing all our economic, political, and human resources. During the forthcoming three or four years, all of our domestic and international policies will be subordinated to this goal. Only the total mobilization of our resources will allow us to grasp this unique opportunity to extend socialism throughout the whole of Europe.
In this scenario, the elements of surprise, total mobilization, and the strength of the conventional forces would be used to achieve a victory for “socialism” in Europe. These assets of the communists would theoretically compensate for their comparative weaknesses in naval and atomic power that was possessed by the USA.
Another Czech Army colonel who defected to the West testified under the pseudonym Jan Bukar to the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) about Stalin’s war and occupation plans against Europe. Such objectives were to be achieved by 1955. While enrolled at the Frunze Military Academy in the Soviet Union, Bukar learned that the USA would be “the theater of future military operations.” He was taught by Soviet experts on the topography and geography of the United States and was informed that Alaska would be re-absorbed into the USSR. Bukar and 3,000 other Soviet and European satellite officers were all privy to these plans of the future conquest of the United States and Europe.
Evidence of communist long-range plans also surfaced during the period of Stalin’s influence over the international communist movement. One such long-range plan entailed the isolation of the United States by detaching her European allies and fomenting revolution in the Third World nations and Europe’s colonies. Communism would then sweep the Third World and revolution would sweep Europe, thus depriving the West of valuable resources for its economy. Europe and United States, cut off from their resource base, would be plunged into revolution. Stalin himself viewed the outlying colonies of the West as the “rear” of “imperialism. In an interview with a Japanese journalist, later printed in his Works, Stalin clearly stated:
Do I not think that the growth of the revolutionary movement in China, India, Persia, Egypt and other Eastern countries is a sign that the time is drawing near when the Western powers will bury themselves in the grave they have dug for themselves in the East? Yes, I do. The colonial countries constitute the principal rear of imperialism. The revolutionisation of this rear is bound to undermine imperialism not only in the sense that imperialism will be deprived of its rear, but also in the sense that the revolutionisation of the East is bound to give a powerful impulse to the intensification of the revolutionary crisis in the West. Attacked on two sides -- in the rear as well as in front -- imperialism will be forced to admit that it is doomed.
Utilizing this strategy, Mao Tse Tung drew up such a plan for the encirclement of the capitalist world and sent Foreign Minister Chou En Lai in March 1953 to Moscow to submit this document to their Soviet allies. This plan, the Memorandum on New Program for World Revolution, entailed the following steps: 1) Separate the USA from Japan, France, and Britain by playing on war weariness and the benefits of trade with the USSR. 2) Conquest of the Republic of China (ROC-Taiwan) 3) Revolution of Indochina by the Viet Minh to be completed in two-year period. 4) Fall of Burma, then Thailand, and Indonesia. Withdrawal of all British colonial forces from East Asia by 1960. 5) Combined military and industrial power of the USSR and China would force “ruling clique” in Japan to collapse. A "peaceful evolution” would then occur, bringing to power a communist government in Tokyo. 6) India, at that time, was considered a “friend” of China and the Soviet Union. 7) A “peace offensive” would be launched throughout the planning period of the World Revolution. 8) The Philippines and the Arab world would then become communist through “economic cooperation, alliances, united fronts, and coalitions” by 1965. 9) Africa would be plunged into revolution, forcing “the imperialist and the colonizationists” to be “quickly driven into the sea.” 10) Europe would then be disconnected from her colonies in the Third World, with a “total economic collapse” occurring. 11) The USA, Canada, and South America would then be isolated. Mao expected that if the USA were to commence a war, the “courses of action” are then outlined in the “memorandum for military aid.”
It is worthy to note that this ominous document was published in the Congressional Record on April 29, 1954 by California Republican Senator Knowland. Mao Tse Tung was known to expound upon his desire to conquer the globe for communism in conversations with generals, admirals, and officials on other occasions. On June 28, 1958 Mao informed his generals and admirals that “Now the Pacific Ocean is not peaceful. It can only be peaceful when we take it over.” Lin Biao then added “We must build big ships, and be prepared to land in Japan, the Philippines, and San Francisco.” Late in 1958, Mao stated to his provincial chiefs that: “In the future we will set up the Earth Control Committee, and make a uniform plan for the Earth.”
After Stalin’s death, the Soviet leadership continued to couple military plans against the capitalist world with their long-range plans of encirclement. These military plans contained massive usage of nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons on strategic NATO military, political, and economic targets in Europe. This aggression would occur in tandem with a massive infantry, airborne, and armored Warsaw Pact invasion. Such an assault would be presaged by sabotage by communist agents and special operations forces against key VIPs and installations. The initial CBW, atomic, and conventional assault would be conducted in a blitzkrieg fashion, modeled after the Wehrmacht and Nazi military units during World War II. A document produced in the wake of the Warsaw Pact exercise Soyuz-83 and issued by the East German Defense Council highlighted this strategy of lightning speed:
The strategic groupings of troops and naval forces of the armed forces of the USSR, the Poland People’s Republic, the GDR, and the CSSR have the following mission: The principal aim of the first strategic operation with troops on four Fronts is a rapid advance, reaching the frontiers of France by the 13th or 15th day, and thereby:

• taking the territories of Denmark, the FRG, the Netherlands, and Belgium;
• forcing the withdrawal of these West European countries from the war; and
  *continuing the strategic operation by establishing two additional Fronts inside France, shattering the  strategic reserves on French territory, and reaching Vizcaya and the
  Spanish border by day 30 or 35, thus accomplishing the final aims of the first strategic operation by removing France from the war.”
  In 1988-1989, the advanced course for the senior officer corps of the East German Army in which the “instructions of the Commander-in-Chief of the Pact’s Joint Armed Forces regarding the operational mission of troops and naval forces” laid out that: The goal of the operation is to liberate the territories of the GDR and CSSR, to occupy the economically important regions of the FRG east of the Rhine, and to create the right circumstances for a transition to a general offensive aimed at bringing about the withdrawal of the European NATO states from the war.
  The exercise “Staff Training 89” called for the utilization of 76 nuclear weapons, some of which having a high yield in the West German provinces of Schleswig-Holstein. Another purpose of this usage of mass destruction weapons was also to induce panic and disorder in the Western democracies. This would thus have the effect of weakening the resistance of the Free World and the cohesion of the NATO allies. As one document stated:
   “It is desirable to consider (...) nuclear attacks on such centers as Hannover or Brunswick, Kiel and Bremen. The destruction of these cities will likely cause a complete disorganization of political life, the economy, etc. It will significantly influence the creation of panic in areas of nuclear strikes. The exploitation of the effects of strikes by our propaganda may contribute to the spread of panic among enemy armies and populations (...). In order to exclude Denmark from the war as quickly as possible, nuclear strikes should be launched at Esbjerg (an important strategic point in the NATO system) and Roskilde (Zealand Island), and subsequently a widespread special propaganda action aimed at deepening the existing panic should be conducted to warn Denmark's troops and civilian population of the consequences of further resistance and the threat that, in the event of continuation of the war, further atomic strikes will occur. (Excerpt from a presentation by the commander of the Polish Front, General Zygmunt Duszynski, in 1961)
  Even during the so-called “fall of communism,” Warsaw Pact military plans and aggressive exercises continued. The Agence France Presse reported in 1991 that “as late as June 1990, eight months after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the NVA's (Nationale Volksarmee/National People’s Army of East Germany) 5th Army carried out joint exercises with the Soviet military that still rehearsed for a westward offensive in northern Germany. The plan involved the use of chemical weapons and up to 87 nuclear warheads. And a similar war game involving Soviet and East German generals was planned for September, less than a month before German unification. Major American newspapers also reported that despite the “fall of communism” and withdrawal of Soviet troops in Eastern Europe in 1989-1990, the USSR retained large arms, fuel, and ammunition dumps in the region. It also became known that the USSR retained in violation of the 1987 INF Treaty SS-23 nuclear missiles in East Germany, Czechoslovakia, and Bulgaria. In 1990, media reports indicated that the East Germans retained chemical weapons stockpiles. This information alone should force Cold War historians to honestly reappraise the Gorbachev period and highlight his continued commitment to world communism. The available evidence indicated that under the late Gorbachev period, Soviet war preparations for Western Europe did not abate in any sense. They only assumed a deceptive stance to anesthetize Western opinion and further achieve an element of surprise.
  The occupation of the NATO and non-communist countries in Europe would involve the following known factors: 1) A flood of propaganda to convince the Europeans of the just cause of the communist invasion 2) Introduction of the mechanisms of a planned socialist economy through currency revisions, rationing, and control of reconstructed industrial plants 3) Usage of collaborators as puppet rulers of the subject populations 4) Mass internment and executions of “class enemies” 5) Administration of occupied territories by Soviet and Warsaw Pact military commanders.
  An East German defector from their National People’s Army (NVA), Captain Guenter Alfons Malikowski of the First Armored Division, revealed documents in 1960 outlining Warsaw Pact war plans against the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG-West Germany). One of the documents was a proclamation to residents of occupied Kiel to cooperate with the “liberating” East German occupying forces. One proclamation exhorted: “The last pockets of resistance in the city have been wiped out. The city is in the hands of the troops of the National People’s Army of the German Democratic Republic. The army of the first workers’ and farmers’ state in Germany has not come as a occupation army to tyrannize over the working people. We have come to do away with fascism and militarism in Germany once and for all. We seek the cooperation of the democratically minded and constructive forces of the city.”
  A series of Czech documents entitled “Czechoslovak Drafts of Orders and Appeals to be Issued in Occupied Western European Territories,” dated June 29, 1964, is partially reprinted below:
   “Order of the Commander of the Western Front Political Directorate of the Western Front Special Propaganda Department July 2, 1964 Re: Draft of Order of the Commander of the Western Front On Soldiers’ Conduct towards Population of the Liberated Territories and on Principles of Treatment of POWs Order of the Commander of the Western Front
  Every Czechoslovak soldier must be aware of the fact that he is a soldier of a socialist army, which wages a just war for the defense of his socialist country. Our aim is not to subdue other nations, to seed fear and panic among the population, but to annihilate imperialism and to bring real freedom to the nations, which imperialism has brought into this hopeless war against us.
  I order (therefore) all members of the Czechoslovak People’s Army fighting on enemy territory: To maintain the basic principles of socialist humanism, as well as the internationally valid practices stipulated by the Geneva Convention, to maintain humanitarian treatment of those who do not take a direct part in combat actions and of those who lay down their arms or have been neutralized in the fight by illness or injuries, as well as to comply with the demands of human dignity.

1. To maintain extraordinary vigilance and alertness, to intervene severely against those soldiers who would trespass it. To impede the activities of revanchist elements and their attempts to destroy objects of military significance and to wage espionage activities. Not to accept anything from the population, in particular food, drink, etc. To detain, disarm and hand over to the nearest commander anybody who has been caught committing hostile acts. To intervene immediately and in a radical way against elements caught conducting hostile acts who do not cease their resistance. To treat citizens who do not directly participate in hostile actions in the spirit of the basic principles of human morality, disregarding their statehood, political convictions and property. Commanding officers shall take measures to avoid incorrect emotional and other reactions towards their subordinates. They will intervene as severely as possible against those who have denigrated the personal dignity of people, who willfully steal or damage their property or threaten the health and life of the people.
   The advantages of POW status shall not be extended to terrorist guerrillas or a hostile population who, despite appeals of our bodies, secretly hide and bear arms, while fighting us unlawfully, deceitfully attacking and murdering our soldiers.
   Safe Conduct, i.e., Surrender Pass for NATO soldiers (English Version)
   The NATO soldier who carries this laissez-passer is using it as a sign of his genuine wish to give himself up. He is to be disarmed, to be well looked after, to receive food and medical attention as required and to be removed from the danger zone as soon as possible. This holds good for a group of soldiers as well.
   Appeal to French Soldiers French Soldier! Liberated France, the France of tomorrow shall need you. Your family shall need you to take care of them, your children shall need you to bring them up, your parents shall need you to provide for their comfortable old age. Your country shall need you to give her the strength of your hands, your mind, to make her recover her grandeur and happiness. Do you want to sacrifice your life, which is so badly needed, to the war for German interests? French soldier! Give up fighting, save yourself for France. Whom Shall Your Death Help? This war, into which Americans and Germans have drawn your country, is not your war. It is the war of North American monopolies, which attempt to subdue the whole world under them. But what can the war bring you? The Polish Army was delegated with the following tasks in their occupation of the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG-West Germany): The Surrender of Hannover according to the Polish Army’s “Bison” Exercise (April 21–28, 1971) Due to the capitulation of the Hannover garrison, the Command of the Front has decided to provide assistance to the 5th Army by restoring the city to full function. For this reason, for the disposition of the command of the 5th Army, we direct: – one military police company from the NVA; – one company for the protection of public order from the Army Security Service; – a group of civilian party aktiv members from the SED (20 members); – a group of press and radio journalists from the GDR (8); – specialists in typography and radiophony (12); – part of a front group to secure special propaganda (24 officers, ensigns, and non-commissioned officers). The groups mentioned above will report for the disposition of the command of the 5th Army today at 6:00 p.m. In the following days the government of the GDR will direct other groups of specialists to the city of Hannover. Each time, the arrival of these groups will be signaled. Responsibilities of the 5th Army command include: a) to organize the Hannover Garrison Command and appoint one of the senior officers from the 6th Armored Division as commandant of the Garrison; b) to assign specified forces and equipment from the above-mentioned formations to the commandant of the Garrison. Simultaneously, with the support of democratic forces, to organize the regular police; c) to organize quick and efficient press and radio information for the people; d) to form a temporary camp for prisoners-of-war from the crew of the surrendered garrison; e) to provide full protection and defense for depots and storehouses (both civilian and military); f) to bring water-works, power plants, and heating plants into operation; g) to assist the leadership that is being organized with the distribution of foodstuffs from local supplies; h) to establish a united front municipal government recruited from activists from the KPD German Communist Party and the SPD German Social Democratic Party; i) as the removal of the ruins progresses, to bring industrial plants into production.
   …
   After a general assessment of the state of food reserves as well as the state of medical needs for civilians and prisoners, report specific requests to the staff of the Front by 11:00 a. m., April 29, 1971.
   Source: Collection Political Administration of the Military District of Silesia, File 152448/74/42. Archives of the Ground Forces, Wroclaw.”
   The invasion and occupation plans for West Berlin and Germany were codenamed Operation Stoss and after 1987, Operation Zentrum. These operations would involve 32,000 Stasi, People’s Police, elite airborne units (e.g. Willi Sanger paratroop units) and regular East German and Soviet army units. It is also worth mentioning that the East Germans, like their Spetsnaz counterparts, had a special operations unit that dressed up in West German Bundeswehr uniforms and equipped with U.S. built M-48 tanks and M-113 APCs. This unit, which was subordinate to the Stasi, was to be used in deception and sabotage operations in the Federal Republic. The West German Communist Party (DKP) sent cadres to East Germany for military training in sabotage, industrial unrest, and protests during a Warsaw Pact invasion. West Germany would then be administered in its entirety by the East German Army, while an occupied Berlin would be divided into several zones. These zones would be administered by the East German and Soviet officials. "Besatzungsgeld" or occupation money would be printed for use by the occupying troops and the local population. Hence, the capitalist Deutschemark would be abolished in the FRG. Airports and rail stations would then be managed by previously trained experts from the East. The Stasi also reprinted new maps and signs for West German cities under occupation. For example, Koenigsallee, Duesseldorf's avenue of furs, jewels and designer fashions, was to be dubbed Karl Marx Allee. Special medals, known as the Bluecher Orders, were minted and stored for the eventual awarding to East German military officers and troops. Berlin’s city government would be overthrown and the Stasi would be tasked in purging political and other “class enemies.” These enemies would include anti-communists, businessmen, anti-leftists, civil servants, and police officials. The Stasi drew up such lists of specific individuals who were then to be dispatched to “internment camps.” The invasion of West Berlin would be known as Day X and would involve the Stasi and East German Army storming through 59 breaches in the Berlin Wall. All means of communications and transportation in Berlin would be captured and churches shut down. Economic assets and the means of communication would be harnessed by the occupying East German forces. Berlin would be administered by 12 neighborhood administrative offices, according to a document drawn up for the head of the Stasi Erich Mielke. The document itself was drawn up by the District Leader of the Berlin Area of the Ministry of State Security, Lieutenant-General Wolfgang Schwanitz. This plan for the occupation of West Berlin was in force as late as 1985, according to historian Dr. Otto Wenzel.
   The Soviets also intended to occupy all of Western Europe, including Spain, France, Great Britain, and Portugal in their invasion, according to defecting Czech Major General Jan Sejna. Strategic targets in Britain, such as the London subways and water supply, were to be sabotaged. Interestingly, the British Parliament Buildings were to spared the effects of Soviet bombing runs. According to Sejna, the USSR reasoned that “we could make it inoperative through other means.” Other industrial and military targets would be destroyed by the special forces of the communists. A Soviet occupation force and/or a “progressive” British government would then “settle accounts with the bourgeois leaders.” In the spring of 1964, KGB Chairman Aleksandr Shelepin gave Czech Communist leader Antonin Novotny a list of potentially hostile British leaders in business, politics, and the police/army. They consisted of leaders of most major political parties and the section on the Conservative Party went down to the constituency level. The lists were compiled by the KGB and the British Communist Party and were replete with biographical notes and a recommendation of judicial action. These unfortunate British VIPs would either be detained or executed without trial. The most prominent leaders, such as Edward Heath, Sir Alex Douglas-Home, and Harold Wilson were to undergo show trials before their execution.
   The French Army was expected to collapse and the fall of France would be accomplished in two days. Sejna also stated that “ration cards, handbills, tickets, and signs” were printed for the occupation forces and local populations in Switzerland, France, and West Germany. Arrest lists consisting of 10,000 prominent West German public figures were also drawn up. The French list, according to Sejna, has tens of thousands of names, including legislators, businessmen, trade union leaders, journalists, military officers, police officials, and mayors. The invading troops would retain mobile courts to try and execute thousands of “war criminals.” Soviet officials will then resume full control of occupied France, with the Commander of the Trans-Carpathian Red Army divisions becoming its commandant.
   Collaborators in the native Communist Parties would then assume power in the occupied territories of the former NATO countries. For example, Soviet Marshal Yakubovsky informed General Sejna that there were 4,000 Austrian collaborators that the USSR could count on to “round up undesirable civilians once the country was occupied.” Sejna also described in his book We Will Bury You how the Soviets would also occupy Switzerland through an invasion of armored and paratroop units. Key points in Switzerland were expected to be captured in Day 3 of a general Warsaw Pact blitz across Europe. Key cities Sweden was to be occupied within twenty four hours and paratroopers would seize ports and industrial plants intact for use by the invaders. Sejna stated that the Warsaw Pact believed that they could subdue Sweden in a total of one week, excepting residual guerrilla resistance. Finland, under the presidency of Urho Kekkonen, would be bound by a private agreement with the Soviets to support the Warsaw Pact forces. Soviet Marshal Grechko informed Sejna that Finland would declare itself a “non-belligerent” and turn over its ports and territory to the USSR armed forces. The Dutch armed forces were looked upon as a heavily penetrated and weak force, subject to disruption due to the unionization of its soldiers. The Soviets expected the Dutch forces to collapse and the government to declare its “neutrality.” The government would then prevent NATO from utilizing its ports and the USSR would occupy the country.
   It also became known recently that maps of the Western European nations were produced by the Soviet Union and its successor, the Russian Federation, from 1950 to at least 1997. Such documents were significant for two reasons: 1) They proved Soviet long range military planning for aggression 2) Discredits the notion that Gorbachev and his successors as less dictatorial and aggressive in their intentions towards the capitalist world. It is highly intriguing that the “democratic” post-1991 Yeltsin government would produce such maps, while posing as a “kindler, gentler” Russia. The existence of maps dated after 1991 also suggests that the Russian Federation, under rule of “former” communists considered the Western world enemy nations and the continued target of invasion and occupation. Our intelligence services and diplomatic service need to analyze this piece of evidence and ascertain the level of continued hostile Russian Federation intentions towards the Western powers.
   The British map-making firm, Landmark Information Group stated that these Soviet-produced maps “revealed the exact location and purpose of every structure of possible military importance. The firm says experts believe they were developed using aerial photos, satellite images, local knowledge and even spies. "’The Russians managed to map out 16,000 sq km of the UK, including 103 major UK towns and cities,’" says the firm.” These maps are highly detailed and in this author’s opinion, are comparative or superior to U. S. Geodetic and Survey Maps. These Soviet generated maps of Ireland, Sweden, and Britain included depths of waterways, roads, locations of facilities, and other militarily useful information. Militarily significant targets were color coded blue, while other installations were colored pink, brown, and black. In fact, John Davies, a British expert on Russian maps, said the maps left a "fascinating legacy" of the Soviet quest to become the dominant global political power. Mr. Davies stated further: "Realizing the military, economic and political benefits of topographic information, the Soviet military set about mapping the whole world -a mammoth task which took over 50 years before, during and after the Cold War to complete." Today, very little is known about how the organization was structured and how such incredible results were achieved. Certainly the operation was militarily-driven, very well controlled, achieving spectacular results.” The Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet published a Soviet made map dating from 1987. The accuracy and details of these maps worried the normally far left Swedish government, which was horrified at such proof that their country was a target of Soviet invasion. Pravda stated that:
   The maps depicted the coast in the area of Stockholm and Karlskruna – the major army base of the Swedish Navy in the Baltic area. The detailed maps showed all defensive installations on the outskirts of the two cities, as well as the spots for landing commandos, and the depth of secret waterways. Swedish experts concluded that the Soviet Headquarters used those maps to organize an incursion in Sweden. The maps were of very high quality – better than the creations of best Swedish military mappers. As a result, the nation was so scared like never before, not even during the worst Cold War period. When Swedish Prime Minister Goran Persson looked at the photographs, he said that the worst apprehension of those people, who considered Moscow a source of direct danger, was verified. The prime minister also said that after the documents are studied in detailed, the Swedish government will decide, if it is worth making a protest against Russia or not.
   The post-Stalin generation of Soviet and international communist leaders were also committed to a long range plan of military and political encirclement of CONUS and other key Free World nations with hostile revolutionary and communist satellites. General Jan Sejna was privy to such plans while serving in the highest ranks of the Czech Armed Forces (CSLA) and Party (CPCz) apparatus. According to Sejna, this strategic planning document was called “The Long Term Strategic Plan for the Next Ten to Fifteen Years and the Years After.” It outlined this policy of subversion, invasion, demoralization, and ultimate surrender of the democratic world in the face of the communist juggernaut. The section of the title “...and the Years After” indicated that the Warsaw Pact and their allies had a flexible strategy for the crippling of the capitalist world that fluctuated according to the prevailing political situations in the non-communist countries. The encirclement, invasion, and eventual surrender and occupation of the NATO countries and CONUS would be achieved during Phases Three and Four of the Plan. They were known as “The Period of Dynamic Social Change” and “The Era of Global Democratic Peace” and were supposed to be achieved by 1995. However, Sejna had indicated that Soviet long-range planning tactics and their timetables were subject to adjustment. However, their ultimate goal of “Global Democratic Peace” (i.e. Red Dawn) remained unchanged.
   The battlegrounds of Asia, Latin America, Africa, and the Middle East had been the targets of aggression by the Soviets and their proxies, with the twin goals of geographically and economically encircling the United States. Encirclement of CONUS and NATO would occur through 1) communist usage of proxy terrorist revolutionary movements seizing power in Third World and allied countries having close geographic proximity to key non-communist nations and natural resources, i.e. the FMLN in El Salvador, PLO, ANC, Communist Party of Thailand (CPT), etc. 2) Outright foreign invasion by satellite states, in coordination with the USSR 3) Usage of special forces, party, and intelligence agents of Soviet aligned nations to sabotage and sow chaos in the Free World.
   After the fall of Cambodia, Laos, and South Vietnam to the communists, a remarkable document surfaced in that region. It was revealed by a Viet Cong defector Nguyen Cong Hoan, who also served in the puppet National Assembly in the Socialist Republic of Vietnam (SRV). This document was entitled Vietnam-Southeast Asia and was circulated in June 1976, then withdrawn due to its sensitive nature. Tran Quynh, private secretary to Communist Politburo official Le Duan commented that this document called for “the liberation of Thailand will be next. It is a historical necessity and a responsibility of ours.” Clearly, the Vietnamese and their allies had the ultimate domination of the ASEAN nations and the eviction of remaining U.S. influence as a long-term goal. It is also worthy to note that in 1975, the North Vietnamese inherited a tremendous arsenal of weapons from the old ARVN (Army of the Republic of Vietnam) to supplement their communist manufactured weapons. Hence, the North Vietnamese had tremendous military might at that time to possibly carry out an invasion of Thailand if political conditions permitted.
   South Korea was another target of encirclement, subversion, and aggression by the Soviet-Chinese ally of North Korea. One of the highest-ranking defectors from the North, Workers’ Party ideological chief Hwang Jang-yop, outlined this strategy in a 1997 press conference with the South Korean press:
   One of the basic North Korean policies on the Republic of Korea, which has not changed over the past 50 years, is to force the collapse of the South internally. The second is to unify the country by arms. In the Workers Party alone, there are many departments that handle affairs of the South, such as the United Front Department and the Social and Cultural Department which are working openly and other departments that manage underground organizations. In addition, there is the operations department in charge of infiltration and a department that collects information. There are many departments.”
   When asked about North Korea’s ability and determination to carry out a war with the South, Hwang responded:
   It is a very tough question. That war will eventually inevitably break out, at some time, has become common knowledge (in the North). Since I am not the commander-in-chief, I can't know whether it will be an all-out war or a limited war. Presumably, however, it will be an all-out war. As for timing, all international and domestic conditions will be taken into consideration. I think it will occur when preparations for the internal collapse of the South and an armed invasion occur simultaneously. I presume that North Korea will provoke a war when the situation in the South becomes complicated or chaotic and when the South's allies are dividing their strength for events in other parts of the world.
   Yossef Bodansky also revealed that North Korean special operations forces even probed America’s backyard in Mexico and Central America:
   Meanwhile, the DPRK has been closely studying infiltration avenues and techniques into the U.S. since at least early 1983, when four small North Korean freighters escorted by several small trawlers, all fitted with a vast array of antennae and other ELINT equipment, were patrolling the Gulf of California and the shores of California and northern Mexico. Although the primary and original mission of this flotilla was to collect electronic intelligence and provide early-warning in case of a U.S. military intervention in Central America, the ships were well equipped to study, and possibly even conduct, insertion operations. The Korean crews were “soldiers or commandoes” also involved with Central American revolutionaries. Moreover, the DPRK freighters used in these operations were of the same type used for the clandestine insertion of DPRK Spetsnaz into hostile countries and supporting international terrorist activities.
   Bodansky had also written that North Korean special operations forces also utilized Soviet and Eastern European style mock-up training facilities of South Korean cities:
   The main intelligence school now has an 8km long “South Korean” city with restaurant, coffee shop, supermarket, stationary shop, etc. Despite the ideological threat, the school has a constant supply of the latest South Korean newspapers and movies. An Myong-Chin observed that the subway station and bus terminal, as well as some other key buildings, are identical to those of Seoul.Just how serious Pyongyang is about the imminence of hostilities and the key rôle of special operations in such a war can be learned from the training of the intelligence Spetsnaz forces. Most important is the infiltration training of operatives of the Operations Department which is conducted by the “715 Liaison Office”. This training includes actual penetrations into South Korea, through underground tunnels and other means. At times, the operatives stay a few kms south of the DMZ. An MyongChin reported that on several occasions he had penetrated more than 2km south of the DMZ in order to study and experiment with ROK and U.S. military procedures, examine the Spetsnaz troops’ ability to evade guards and patrols, and gain confidence.
   North Korea’s propaganda and military strategies appeared to have at least some effect on South Korean morale. A Soviet document recounting a conversation between Gorbachev and Kim il Sung was most revealing and frank in its analysis of the decay of South Korean society. Kim il Sung bragged that: “There is a big movement in favor of socialism in the South, and work is underway to create a national front. One third of South Korean parliamentarians support the North. Unlike the recent past when Americans were perceived as liberators and supporters, now many, not to mention the students, speak against the American presence.”
   Historian and journalist Isabella Ginor revealed evidence of the USSR’s intention to assist in an invasion and occupation of the State of Israel in 1967. Soviet truculence and hatred for the Jews and Israel was revealed when Red Army Marshal Grechko stated in 1963 “within 15 years the Israelis will be happy if we just permit them to live.” The SovietArab invasion and occupation of Israel would involve usage of naval landings, airborne reinforcements, and air support for ground operations. Ginor also revealed that Soviet Spetsnaz commandos were to be strategically situated to sabotage Israeli targets:
   Well before 1967, Israel had been targeted by the KGB's Foreign Intelligence Directorate as a theater of operations during a larger East-West conflict. Preparations had been made there for parachuting at least diversionnye razvedyvatelnye gruppy (sabotage-intelligence groups) to destroy Israeli targets. During 1964-66, according to documents supplied by the defecting KGB archivist Vasili Mitrokhin, Israel was one of the countries where caches of arms and radio equipment were prepositioned for such operations. Mitrokhin claims some of these were booby trapped and may be in place to this day. The direct involvement of Soviet personnel on Israeli soil, at least on a small scale, had thus already been considered and approved.”
   The occupation plans for the Jewish State of Israel entailed the collaboration of its Arab population and the insertion of interpreters to work with the people: “As early as May 11, Soviet Arabic-language interpreters stationed in Egypt were summoned to the Soviet Embassy in Cairo. One of them later recounted to journalist Aleksandr Khaldeev that they were told war between Egypt and Israel was inevitable. Later they were taken to Alexandria and informed they would be posted to the Black Sea Fleet, now cruising off the Israeli shore. “One of the interpreters...said he knew for sure that we would be attached to a 'desant,' or landing force, that would be landing in Haifa Israel's main commercial harbor and naval base or slightly northward.” The interpreters were to handle liaison with Israel’s Arab population, who “ were longing for us.”
   It is also more than likely that the PLO and associated terrorist splinters, along with the Soviet financed Communist Party of Israel (Rakah) would also provide personnel and collaborators in an occupied Israel.
   Meanwhile, the Soviet Union had ambitious plans for their Afghan puppet communists in Kabul. The Soviet puppet People’s Democratic Party (PDPA) government in Afghanistan positioned itself very firmly in the Soviet military camp. This was most apparent when Afghan Minister of Defense Abdul Qader stated in 1982 that: “In the future the Afghan Army will play a significant role like that of the Cuban and Vietnamese Armies…not far away is the day when our army will become a strong and energetic army capable of defending peace and security not only in Afghanistan, but in the region as well.”
   Hence, the Afghan soldiers of the PDPA communist dictatorship were designated as the new janissaries for the export of communism in the South Central Asian region.
   The ruling communist FRELIMO movement in Mozambique, in cooperation with the communists of Mugabe’s Zimbabwe, Cuba, and the Soviet Union, planned to conquer the anti-communist dictatorship of President Hastings Banda of Malawi. President Banda was noted for its opposition to Soviet expansionism in Africa and at one time provided assistance to anti-communist rebels in Mozambique called RENAMO. The Mozambicans would then replace the Banda regime by Malawian communist exiles. According to captured documents, former Mozambican communist president Samora Machel recommended that:
   Mozambique and Zimbabwe must bring into being a new force in Malawi. Banda is worn out. We must not allow South Africa to set the course in Malawi. We must not allow the English, Americans and the Federal Republic of Germany to choose the Malawi leaders. The Army knows how these things must be done...We can also organize a Malawi Liberation Front, equip ourselves and infiltrate into Malawi in order to destroy the bandits (the Renamo guerrillas) who are there. We may also define the targets for such a front for the liberation of Malawi.
   Creation of a puppet force to “liberate” and govern Malawi appeared to be modeled after Soviet plans for Europe and the consequent installation of quisling regimes. According to the captured documents, Mozambicans residing in Malawi were also to be harnessed as a fifth column in the FRELIMO destabilization campaign against the Banda government: “'We know Malawi, because we have two million Mozambicans there. The Malawians are in our hands. We have Mozambicans inside the Army, the police, the Young Pioneers ,' he claims.” This again would follow the usual communist pattern of using native peoples (overseas Chinese, Russians, etc.) for subversive purposes.
   The South Africans captured these documents when Mozambican communist dictator Samora Machel’s presidential aircraft crashed in 1986. The recovered documentation revealed the high level of coordination between FRELIMO, Zimbabwe, the Soviets, and the Cubans in planning their subversion and attack on Malawi, and provided important information concerning the military strategy and the equipment to be utilized. The South Africans revealed the following details:
   Mr. Botha said it was not clear from the document who the full Mozambican delegation to the meeting was, but President Machel had clearly led the discussion and his Prime Minister, Mr. Mario Machungo, was present as well. The Zimbabwe delegation had been led by Mr. Emmerson Munangagwa, Minister of State Security. He had been accompanied by Zimbabwe's Ambassador to Mozambique, Mr. H.E. Mvundura (he was ordered to leave the meeting when the plot was discussed), Mr. E.R. Kadungure, Minister of State Defence, General Rex Nhongo, Army Commander, Air Marshal J. Tungamirai, Maj-Gen Maseko and Lt-Col Shumba, of the Zimbabwe National Army, and others. President Banda had been referred to as ''criminal'' in the talks. . .Malawi's police and defence force would be infiltrated and strategic bridges in the country would be destroyed along with other vital parts of its infrastructure. Malawi would be cut off from Tanzania and Zambia. It was made clear it was time President Banda should go, and that the Malawi army would be able to handle the situation. Russians and Cubans were involved in the joint Mozambican and Zimbabwean plot to overthrow the Malawi government militarily and politically. . . At the meeting, President Machel is recorded as having said he wanted to talk, at ease, with ''the military men'', and in the absence of Zimbabwe's Ambassador to Mozambique. . . Discussing the plan, President Machel, said the ''military men'' had to place ''allavailable means in Zambezia'', the province bordering Malawi. . . ''We have some special forces for special operations, we have about 41 MiG-21 (jet fighters) . . . agency ellipses the victory is being planned . . . agency ellipses it demands cold-bloodedness.'' The transport of troops and equipment of Zambezia and Tete provinces was discussed, with the vital role Zimbabwe's transport facilities would play here, and the organization of medical services and food. President Kenneth Kaunda of Zambia, who is mentioned briefly in the minutes, had not guaranteed the closing of his border with Malawi, and his ''answer was not satisfactory''. President Machel said ''we have been at this table with the Mozambicans, Cubans and Soviets since last Friday (10th October) and we said that we should go immediately to Zambezia''. President Machel also warned the meeting not to underestimate South Africa ''because it can transport armed bandits by sea, using submarines and ships . . . agency ellipses she is desperate because we uncovered Malawi.'' The vital information for logistical planning was still being awaited, but had in fact been expected in time for the meeting. President Machel said he wanted to transfer his MiG-21s from Maputo to Beira so they could depart from there. The MiG-17s would be going to Zambezia, together with (helicopter) gunships. Summing up the logistical planning and the cost of the operation, President Machel said ''we will be ready to act if we have all this. We must make sure that if Malawi diverts its goods to Tanzania we will destroy the bridges linking Malawi to Tanzania . . . agency ellipses they must be bridges which took four to five years to build. If the goods are diverted to Zambia, we will not destroy the Zambian bridges but we will destroy the Malawian bridges which provide access to the Kazangula/Botswana route and to South Africa. If we destroy the bridges to Tanzania and Zambia we will have Malawi in our hands…”He also said he did not want to provoke those who sided with Malawi . . . agency ellipses ''I don't want to increase enemies . . . agency ellipses I can't do that''. The military action had to be backed by political action and Malawi had to be persuaded to allow Zimbabwean troops to cross its territory into Zambezia. The people of Malawi had to be convinced the Mozambique and Zimbabwe forces were in ''solidarity'' with them and not their government. Mr. Munangagwa told President Machel, ''there is a force ready to go'', but that there were preparations that had to be jointly made with Zimbabwe. Problems with the transport of military hardware from Mozambique harbours were also raised. . .”
   Perhaps the most threatening geographic situation to CONUS would be communist revolution sweeping up the Central American isthmus and Mexico. This situation would dramatically alter the world balance of power directly pose a military threat to the United States. Top Sandinista and Cuban policymakers clearly yearned for the revolutionary dominoes to fall in Latin America. Mexican nationalism and anti-Americanism appeared to be a valuable card the USSR and its allies would use to garner support for its Red Dawn scenario for CONUS. According to defecting Sandinista cadre Alberto Suhr, Nicaragua’s Interior Minister Tomas Borge stated their long term goals succinctly: “We have Nicaragua, soon we will have El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Costa Rica and Mexico. One day, tomorrow or 15 years from now, we're going to take 5 to 10 million Mexicans and they're going to have one thing in mind -- cross the border, go into Dallas, go into Houston, go into New Mexico, go into San Diego, and each one has embedded in his mind the idea of killing 10 Americans.”
   Another Sandinista defector, Major Roger Miranda, indicated that Sandinista military planning, even during the Gorbachev period, is implemented in coordination with the Soviet Union and Cuba. A Reader’s Digest article based on Miranda’s information indicated that:
    “The peace plan is a weapon to eliminate the Contras," Ortega told the members. First, it should be used to influence the U.S. Congress to cut off funds for the Contras. Once that happened, the Contras would cease to exist. Then the Sandinistas would build active and reserve forces of 600,000 soldiers. By 1995 they would have received flamethrowers, 122-mm. self-propelled howitzers and a squadron of MiG-21Bs from the Soviets. This military would help them establish a Soviet Central America. El Salvador would be the first to fall. Then, with the aid of local guerrillas, the Sandinistas would subvert the governments of Guatemala, Costa Rica and Honduras. The Soviets had already agreed to this plan's guidelines. Now they needed detailed proposals. Throughout September and October, Miranda dutifully worked on the 68-page summary of military needs to be submitted to the Cubans and Soviets on November 17th.”
   Former Sandinista State Security officer Miguel Bolanos indicated that Soviet coordination of the Sandinista’s plans for aggression against their neighbors began soon after the revolution in July 1979: “My first awareness of the interest Nicaragua had against Honduras was early after the triumph of the revolution in October 1979. At that time there were five Soviet generals as advisors to the Sandinistas. In one of their sessions, they displayed the map of Honduras with their military capabilities and next to it was what was left militarily of Nicaragua. It was decided and advised at that time that Nicaragua had to concentrate on a military buildup to fight against Honduras. Today, Nicaragua is capable of defeating Honduras militarily in a matter of days.”
   According to an article in the March 8th, 1981 edition of the Boston Globe an FMLN commander Neto and his comrades had this vision for a communist victory of proletarian internationalism:
   This is not just a Salvadoran revolution," said Neto. "We have to help all of the oppressed and exploited people of Latin America. After we triumph here we will go to Guatemala and offer our proletarian brothers the benefit of our experience." Neto said even revolution in Guatemala is not the final goal for him and his Marxist-Leninist comrades. "Eventually we will fight in Mexico," said Neto. He said the guerrillas are not convinced the Mexican regime is any more egalitarian than the Salvadoran junta they are now fighting. "The Mexican government is not deluding us by its support for our people," Neto said. "We know all about the Mexican government. We know what the government is." Neto's goal to fight in Guatemala and other Latin American countries was shared by nearly every guerrilla interviewed in Chalatenango. "Once all of the Third World countries have had their revolutions and withhold their natural resources from the United States, the capitalist system in the United States will collapse," said a former university studentturned- guerrilla
   The Cuban and Sandinista intelligence were very confidant of the reliability of their assets and their capabilities in Mexico. Bolanos stated that: “"In long term strategy, Mexico is slated to be the last country to fall. The high ranking Cuban intelligence officials that I talked with were very confident of their position in Mexico. They used to say that 'we have everything under control.' They have a large number of agents in the unions and political parties. If they just snap their fingers, the situation will explode. They have also paid off and blackmailed the Mexican security forces, which would thus be paralyzed in a crisis."
   According to Bolanos, the FMLN of El Salvador already had contingency plans for the composition of the new government if they were victorious: “The insurgents have all the positions' in their ‘government’ designated to certain individuals already. Everything has been carefully thought out: who shall have a Ministry, who will command the armed forces. They have everything very well calculated.”
   Hostile communist forces in Latin America also targeted key strategic U.S. targets in time of conflict. Tomas Borge had indicated on September 22, 1979 that Sandinista aggression would also be carried out against U.S. forces in the Panama Canal Zone in support of the pro-Cuban Torrijos government: “Managua home service stated that in the course of a speech on 20th September at the Augusto Cesar Sandino Police Training Centre, Tomas Borge, Interior Minister and member of the Sandinist People's Army Supreme Command and of the FSLN Joint National Directorate, and assured the people of Panama that the Nicaraguan people were ready to help them defend the Canal. "We are willing to go to Panama with our Sandinist forces, carrying the rifles of the revolution."
   The final target of the Soviet Union and their satellites is the continental United States (CONUS). In Notes on Grand Strategy, journalist J.R. Nyquist recounts what defecting Russian GRU Colonel Stanislav Lunev stated concerning the Soviet war plan against NATO during the 1980s. Nyquist wrote that it had four stages: “According to Lunev the First Strategic Echelon of the Warsaw Pact would drive over NATO's nuclear land mines and be destroyed. Then the Second Strategic Echelon would advance to exchange tactical nuclear blows with NATO forces. Then the Third Strategic Echelon would overrun Europe.” The elimination of Europe would then place the United States in an extremely vulnerable position. Soviet superiority in atomic, chemical, and biological arms would provide the communist world with the means of implementing nuclear blackmail. Most frightening was the admission by the Minister of the Russian Atomic Energy Agency Victor N. Mikhailov had 45,000 strategic and tactical nuclear bombs and missiles in their arsenal. This figure exceeded even the highest U.S. figures of Soviet nuclear warheads by 15,000. This sobering statistic should give pause for concern among policy makers concerning Soviet/Russian firepower and faulty U.S. intelligence gathering techniques and sources. This amount of Soviet firepower would be a large bargaining chip for potential nuclear blackmail that could leverage a U.S. Government surrender of CONUS territory.
   According to Colonel Lunev, the Russian General Staff revised their war plan against the United States in 1991-1992. Lunev was informed that the “nuclear war plan is still good” against CONUS. The Russian Federation would send troops to occupy Alaska and Canada and launch their ICBMs and SLBMs against the United States. Meanwhile, Communist China would provide a follow-up invasion and occupation of CONUS with massive amounts of infantry troops. Lunev’s 1998 testimony about a Chinese conventional occupation of CONUS is confirmed by the secret speech given by China’s Minister of Defense and vice-chairman of China’s Central Military Commission Chi Haotian. Haotian’s speech combined aggressive nationalism with communism and viewed the United States as the ultimate enemy and vast expanse of land for the Chinese population to occupy. Haotian exhorted:
   To resolve the issue of America we must be able to transcend conventions and restrictions. In history, when a country defeated another country or occupied another country, it could not kill all the people in the conquered land, because back then you could not kill people effectively with sabers or long spears, or even with rifles or machine guns. Therefore, it was impossible to gain a stretch of land without keeping the people on that land. However, if we conquered America in this fashion, we would not be able to make many people migrate there.
   Only by using special means to “clean up” America will we be able to lead the Chinese people there. This is the only choice left for us. This is not a matter of whether we are willing to do it or not. What kind of special means is there available for us to “clean up” America? Conventional weapons such as fighters, canons, missiles and battleships won’t do; neither will highly destructive weapons such as nuclear weapons. We are not as foolish as to want to perish together with America by using nuclear weapons, despite the fact that we have been exclaiming that we will have the Taiwan issue resolved at whatever cost. Only by using non-destructive weapons that can kill many people will we be able to reserve America for ourselves. There has been rapid development of modern biological technology, and new bio weapons have been invented one after another. Of course we have not been idle; in the past years we have seized the opportunity to master weapons of this kind. We are capable of achieving our purpose of “cleaning up” America all of a sudden. When Comrade Xiaoping was still with us, the Party Central Committee had the perspicacity to make the right decision not to develop aircraft carrier groups and focus instead on developing lethal weapons that can eliminate mass populations of the enemy country. From a humanitarian perspective, we should issue a warning to the American people and persuade them to leave America and leave the land they have lived in to the Chinese people. Or at least they should leave half of the United States to be China’s colony, because America was first discovered by the Chinese. But would this work? If this strategy does not work, then there is only one choice left to us. That is, use decisive means to “clean up” America, and reserve America for our use in a moment. Our historical experience has proven that as long as we make it happen, nobody in the world can do anything about us. Furthermore, if the United States as the leader is gone, then other enemies have to surrender to us. Biological weapons are unprecedented in their ruthlessness, but if the Americans do not die then the Chinese have to die. If the Chinese people are strapped to the present land, a total societal collapse is bound to take place. According to the computation of the author of Yellow Peril, more than half of the Chinese will die, and that figure would be more than 800 million people! Just after the liberation, our yellow land supported nearly 500 million people, while today the official figure of the population is more than 1.3 billion. This yellow land has reached the limit of its capacity. One day, who knows how soon it will come, the great collapse will occur any time and more than half of the population will have to go. We must prepare ourselves for two scenarios. If our biological weapons succeed in the surprise attack on the United States, the Chinese people will be able to keep their losses at a minimum in the fight against the United States. If, however, the attack fails and triggers a nuclear retaliation from the United States, China would perhaps suffer a catastrophe in which more than half of its population would perish. That is why we need to be ready with air defense systems for our big and medium-sized cities. Whatever the case may be, we can only move forward fearlessly for the sake of our Party and state and our nation’s future, regardless of the hardships we have to face and the sacrifices we have to make. The population, even if more than half dies, can be reproduced. But if the Party falls, everything is gone, and forever gone! It is indeed brutal to kill one or two hundred million Americans. But that is the only path that will secure a Chinese century, a century in which the CCP leads the world. We, as revolutionary humanitarians, do not want deaths. But if history confronts us with a choice between deaths of Chinese and those of Americans, we’d have to pick the latter as, for us, it is more important to safeguard the lives of the Chinese people and the life of our Party. That is because, after all, we are Chinese and members of the CCP. Since the day we joined the CCP, the Party’s life has always been above all else! History will prove that we made the right choice.”
   Despite the “fall” of the Soviet Union, communism continues to cast an aggressive design on the Free World nations. Our leaders must adopt a bi-partisan policy to take such sentiments of the Chinese and Russians seriously and prepare for massive attacks, as detailed in the above passages.
   According to Lunev, such a Soviet/Chinese attack would utilize the element of surprise and would be preceded by sabotage by Spetsnaz. Such measures would also generate mass chaos, thus hampering the capitalist enemies’ ability to wage war. Special operations forces, covert cadres within communist parties, and undercover intelligence agents would be utilized in this initial overture of aggression. These forces are disguised as sailors, sport teams, trade delegations, embassy staff, students, and even natives of the target nation. According to Col. Stanislav Lunev, who defected from the GRU in 1992, GRU Spetsnaz/Special Destinations Group teams had already infiltrated the United States and targeted key military and political leaders. These Spetsnaz forces are training within the United States and their knowledge of foreign languages and cultures have allowed them to effectively pose as Germans or Eastern Europeans. Suitcase nuclear bombs and explosives disguised as bricks, logs, rocks, etc. were planted in well hidden caches in the Shenandoah and Hudson River Valleys, amongst other locations. Stores of chemical weapons were also included this secret Spetsnaz arsenal in the United States.
   Lunev argued in 1998 that China and Russia combined could defeat the United States in a combined nuclear-conventional war. Under the revised Russian-Chinese war plan, anti-American Third World nations would be invited for “looting rights.” Based on the evidence, Cuba could qualify as a player in the above mentioned scenario. According to journalist Servando Gonzalez and Dr. Manuel Cereijo, Castro’s Tropas Especiales (Special Troops) have been training since 1990 for attacks against the United States. Vietnamese and Chinese military personnel were advising the Tropas Especiales to conduct operations in CONUS. Gonzalez details their specific regimen:
   Since 1990, Cuban Special Forces troops (the ones under the direct command of Castro himself) have been training for the possibility of an attack directed at some parts of continental United States, most likely Florida. Intensive training courses have been underway, at least since 1990, under a program provided by Vietnam, at the Vietnam People's Army base at Hoa Binh, an inland town south-west of Hanoi. Personnel attending the school specialize in commando attacks and infiltration. They are considered by experts to be a very professional group, with great potential to inflict damage to a country. They are between 20 and 35 years old, and speak fluent English… These men are trained in infiltration techniques and operations and can be effectively used to carry bacteriological and chemical warfare to the United States.”
   Post-Mao Chinese Communist Party leaders continued the policies of supporting world communist revolution. In a May 1994 visit, a U.S. Republican Party delegation met with the Vice Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party Mo Xiusong and asked: “Is the long-term aim of the Chinese Communist Party still world Communism?" Mo responded, ‘Yes, of course. That is why we exist.’” Chinese Communist theorists also predicted that major Western Powers (Japan, Germany, Russia, United States) would move away from capitalism and adopt their own versions of China’s “socialist market economy.” These nations would then comprise a “harmonious world” based on China’s system of international relations, known as the Five Principles of Peaceful Co-Existence. Capitalist America is viewed by Communist China as a power in decline. For example, the 1997 book American Social Diseases by Wan Guang postulated that the United States was in decline because of the following socio-economic and political factors: 1) The great disparity between rich and poor 2) The homeless 3) Wide racial gaps 4)Right-wing extremist groups, i.e. militias and white supremacist groups 5) Destruction of the family and the problems of children and women 6)Crime and drug use 7) Generation gaps 8) Spiritual and moral crisis ('spiritual deficit' and 'moral extinction,' 'excessive sexual indulgence')"
   This decay is perceived as the Achilles’ Heel of the fabric of U.S. society by the Chinese Communists and is a key factor in easing the difficulties for totalitarian nations to overtake the Free World.

J.R. Nyquist noted in The Origins of the Fourth World War that the Soviets intended to divide the United States into military administrative zones of occupation. A similar plan for the division of the United States was reported earlier by former U.S. Senator Karl Mundt, who infiltrated a 1934 meeting of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA). At that meeting the CPUSA leaders expounded upon a plan for seizing power from within and subdividing the United States into nine administrative zones based upon river authorities, such as the TVA. Plans to divide CONUS and cede Alaska could be interpreted as a means to dissolve the national identity of the United States and its population.
Major General Jan Sejna also elaborated on the Soviet plan to conquer CONUS in a roundtable discussion with Dr. Joseph D. Douglass held at Summit University on November 28, 1987. Sejna stated that the Soviets and their allies would launch a nuclear attack against the strategic military, communications, and economic targets in the United States. As in Europe, the destruction would be expected by Soviet planners to create chaos amongst the population and U.S. military forces within CONUS. This unrest and division would provide fertile ground for the surrender of the U.S. Government. Dr. Douglass expected that disaffected portions of the U.S. military might provide troops to assist in the occupation of the United States. Sejna stated that quisling Salvation Committees would then be formed in the United States of by leftist politicians and collaborators that viewed accommodation as the best hope for the survival of our nation. There are clear contemporary historical examples of this situation in the 20th Century. One would be the case of occupied France during World War II. Many individuals who considered themselves patriots such as Petain, Weygand, Laval, and others, or ideological sympathizers such as Doriot, Deat, and Chateaubriant, cooperated with the German invaders. The Vichy regime became a political reality, despite the fact that relations between France and Germany had been characterized with open hostility and competing nationalisms for centuries.
Unfortunately, there is no evidence that the United States government ever considered the possibility that the Soviets might occupy CONUS. A fictionalized example of the prevalent mindset can be found in The Doomsday Scenario by L. Douglas Keeney, which was based on declassified plans and reports detailing a Soviet nuclear attack and survival/recovery effort by the U.S. Government. The plans and reports examined by Keeney in the course of writing the novel did not indicate or address the contingency of a Soviet conventional invasion and occupation.
The testimonies of Sejna and Lunev are clearly confirmed by Soviet military writings. Soviet military theory clearly endorsed the usage of nuclear weapons to create defeatism within the ranks of enemy armies and populations. Unlike U.S. Government documents, Soviet military literature emphasized the importance of final victory and occupation of enemy territory. Clearly, the United States was the glavny vrag or “Main Enemy.” The 1972 edition of Marxism Leninism on War and Army opined that, “The very first nuclear attack on the enemy may inflict such immense casualties and produce such vast destruction that his economic, moral-political and military capabilities will collapse.”
According to Marshal Sokolovsky in Soviet Military Strategy “In a future war, the socialist coalition will aim at conclusive political and military goals. To attain those goals, it will not be enough just to destroy the enemy’s means of nuclear attack, to defeat his main forces by missile blows and to disorganize his rear. For final victory … it will be absolutely necessary to smash the enemy’s armed forces completely, deprive him of strategic areas of deployment, liquidate his military bases, and occupy his strategically important regions... For this reason, the Ground Forces will undoubtedly play an important role, along with the missile forces, in achieving the final goals of the war”
Sokolovsky also felt that “The Soviet Union and the countries of people’s democracy, in order to protect their socialist achievements, will be forced adopt no less decisive aims directed towards the total defeat of the armed forces of the enemy with simultaneous disorganization of his interior zone, and towards suppression of the enemy’s will to resist, and rendering aid to the people to free them from the yoke of imperialism.”
The glavny vrag would clearly be the prized “strategically important” region to be crippled and occupied. Resistance to the occupying armies of socialism would be crushed. Colonel M.P. Skirdo in The People, The Army, The Commander stated that “With the liquidation of antagonistic classes and with the complete victory of socialism, the army of a socialist state concludes its internal function, namely, suppression of the residual resistance of exploiters within the country.” Lt. General Aviation G. Lobov elaborated on the real possibility of a satellite government seizing power in the ashes of a nuclear war: “when the enemy, as a result of the massive nuclear strikes inflicted upon him, such strikes being the main part of the attack, capitulates and peace loving forces accede to political power in his country….”

Another Soviet theorist Prokhorov implored that quisling leftists have a duty to seize power during a global war: “Under conditions of a sharp conflict, crisis situation which war engenders, the proletariat and all revolutionary elements in society have the particularly responsible duty to carry out a revolution, to overthrow the bourgeoisie, to take power into their own hands.”
Even during the 1980s, the USSR was committed to unconditional victory over the Main Enemy during a war of mass destruction. Marshal Nikolai Ogarkov stated that “The principles of the development and the nature of training of the Soviet Armed Forces are aimed above all at repelling a possible aggression, inflicting crushing retaliatory blows on the aggressor and at guaranteeing the defence of the gains of the Great October Revolution.'' In the mid-1980s Ogarkov also opined in the pamphlet History Teaches Vigilance that “Proceeding from this, the Soviet military doctrine requires the ability not simply to defend but also to possess the ability to inflict crushing response strikes on an aggressor and rout it under any conditions.'' A 1980 Soviet Military Encyclopedia article by Marshal Ogarkov predicted that: “If nuclear war is foisted upon the Soviet Union, the Soviets will have definite advantages stemming from the just goals of the war and the advanced nature of their social and state system.” Ogarkov concluded that the war would create “objective possibilities for them to achieve victory.” Colonel General V. A. Merimsky wrote in Tactical Preparation of Motorized Tank Subunits (1987) that: “In order to achieve final victory, it is necessary, using the results of nuclear strikes, to complete the enemy’s defeat, to limit his possibilities for putting up resistance, and to occupy his territory.”
Ominously, the military theory of the Russian Federation has not been altered appreciably in favor a less truculent doctrine. A November 1993 special issue of Voyennaya Mysl (Military Thought) implicitly indicated that the United States and NATO would continue to be the Main Enemy of the Russian armed forces. The article stated:
For the duration of the military reform, the principal responsibility for the country's defense could be entrusted to nuclear weapons. Main provisions of the Russian Federation's military doctrine define the role of strategic nuclear forces and their possible use as follows: The aim of the policy of the Russian Federation in the sphere of nuclear weapons is to avert the threat of a nuclear war by precluding an aggression against the Russian Federation and its allies. The Russian Federation: shall never use its nuclear weapons against any other state party to the Non-Proliferation Treaty of the July 1, 1968 which does not possess nuclear weapons unless: a) such a state, which has allied relations with a nuclear state, attacks the Russian Federation, its territory, Armed Forces and other troops or its allies; b) such a state collaborates with a nuclear power in carrying out, or supporting, an invasion or an armed aggression against the Russian Federation, its territory, Armed Forces and other troops or its allies....
The USSR considered the United States and the rest of North America as a likely battleground for their armed forces. Classified Soviet military records outlined special zones which indicated “theaters of military action” (TVDs) for air, sea, and ground forces. According to these records, the TVDs would be subdivided into 1) North American TVD: consists of the lower forty eight states in CONUS 2) Alaska was included in the Far Eastern TVD 3) Canada; Mexico; Central America down to Panama; the West Indies; Greenland; and Iceland were included in the North American and Northwestern TVDs. This was another indication of the USSR’s intentions to launch massive attacks as a means to cripple the last bastion of capitalism and impose communism in the “Main Enemy.” The above-mentioned military doctrines would be put into brutal and bloody practice. Defector and intelligence information support the notion that the Soviets were seriously considering the usage of friendly leftist parties and terrorists to seize control of the U.S. Government in the event of encirclement and/or occupation of CONUS. Larry Grathwohl was an informant for the FBI within the communist revolutionary movement the Weather Underground (WUO). While collecting intelligence on the WUO, Grathwohl was privy to the group’s future plans. In an interview Grathwohl stated:
I brought up the subject of what's going to happen after we take over the government. You know, we become responsible for administrating, you know, 250 million people. And there was no answer. No one had given any thought to economics. How are you going to clothe and feed these people? The only thing that I could get was that they expected that the Cubans, the North Vietnamese, the Chinese and the Russians would all want to occupy different portions of the United States. They also believed that their immediate responsibility would be to protect against what they called the counter-revolution. And they felt that this counter-revolution could best be guarded against by creating and establishing re-education in the Southwest where we would take all of the people who needed to be re-educated into the new way of thinking and teach them how things were going to be. I asked, "Well, what is going to happen to those people that we can't re-educate, that are die-hard capitalists?" And the reply was that they'd have to be eliminated and when I pursued this further, they estimated that they'd have to eliminate 25 million people in these re-education centers. And when I say eliminate, I mean kill 25 million people. I want you to imagine sitting in a room with 25 people, most of whom have graduate degrees from Columbia and other well-known educational centers and hear them figuring out the logistics for the elimination of 25 million people and they were dead serious."
It is interesting to note that the supposedly opposing forces of the Soviet Union and China would appear to pool their forces together to jointly occupy the United States. We will be discussing the place of China in the Soviet war strategy in a future article. Former Black Panther terrorist Eldridge Cleaver revealed Soviet and Chinese long range strategy in a Reader’s Digest article:
Cleaver’s most astonishing experience abroad was to be invited to gatherings where the plans of other nations for the United States were freely discussed. ‘What was being said was really the projection of an entire strategy - namely that, first, the international communist movement would liberate the so-called Third World, and would colonize the world. That would isolate the United States. At the same time, the superiority in the balance of armed power would be shifting in favor of the new world. And then the moment would come when, because of the internal disintegration of the United States, it would be possible to destroy the U.S. military machine.’ Then the revolutionaries within the United States would seize power. The revolutionaries abroad have a slogan: ‘We will destroy them from without; they will destroy them from within’…They (communist powers) take for granted that they can count on certain elements inside the United States. This is part of their perspective: that they are eventually going to conquer and destroy; that they will win. These revelations Cleaver says he heard sometimes over cocktails at embassies. ‘I’ve talked with generals from the Soviet Union and marshals from China. I’ve been present when they toasted the destruction of the United States. They carry on constant planning of surprise attacks. They are out to eliminate, if possible, but in any case, to surround and surpass and neutralize the United States.”
Latin American satellites of the Soviet Union would apparently be conscripted into the effort to subjugate the United States through ideological rallying and territorial bribery. Former Polish Ambassador Zdzislaw Rurarz had a conversation with a Soviet official before he defected in 1981 about the usage of Mexico in the war against the United States. The article stated: “The official said the Germans had been premature in their efforts to manipulate the Mexicans to cause trouble for the U.S. in World War I. But with Mexico's big population increase, he thought the time would soon be ripe to try that ploy again. The Germans promised to help Mexico recover Texas, New Mexico and Arizona. The Soviet official said they might ‘add even a part of California.’ They already have a name for the area—Azatlan.” According to former DGI officer Major Florentino Aspillaga, Fidel Castro considered becoming a president of a united Latin America under Cuban communist domination as late as the mid 1980s. A Soviet conquest would have made this possibility a strong enticement for Castro’s participation in the neutralization and ultimate defeat of CONUS. In fact, the fictional novel and movie Amerika about a Soviet occupation of the United States presented Fidel Castro as a ruler of a “Greater Cuba.” This Greater Cuba would presumably include parts of Latin America and the Caribbean outside the original territory of the existing Republic of Cuba.
According to available evidence, Cuba appeared to be a militant partner in aggression against the United States. The island’s communist dictator, Fidel Castro, hated the United States and desired its destruction and humiliation. Castro stated in a letter to confidante Celia Sanchez that “I have sworn to myself that Americans are going to pay dearly for what they are doing. When this war is over, a much wider and bigger war will begin for me, the war I am going to wage against them. I realize that is going to be my true destiny.” In a 1959 meeting with military officers, Castro further revealed his intentions against the United States: “No, the war is just beginning, because this is going to end in a war against the United States." Such messianic and destructive sentiments allowed Castro to contemplate destructive actions against CONUS targets during a global war. Cuba coordinated their preparations against the United States with their communist allies worldwide. In the late 1970s, a large group of Cuban soldiers traveled and trained for beach landings in North Vietnam for a larger "simulated invasion of the United States." Castro also bragged in 1980 about the capabilities of his intelligence and sabotage officers in the United States in a meeting with top Sandinistas and Central American terrorists: “We have agents of absolute confidence all over the United States who are ready to undertake whatever actions are necessary at the time of our choosing. The Yankees cannot even begin to image the capabilities we have in their country. You all read about the riots in Miami...We can accomplish things that would make the riots in Florida look like a sunshower." CIA and DIA (Defense Intelligence Agency) reports provided corroboration to the notion that Cuba placed infiltrators in the United States for the purposes of sabotage and terrorism. Apparently, an unknown portion of these infiltrators were not even Cuban nationals:
Also, CIA and DIA reports reveal the operation of an international communist youth training center southeast of Santiago de Cuba in the mid-and-late 1960s. The young people, many of whom were blacks and Vietnamese, were being trained for subversive operations against the United States. One intelligence source reported that many of these young people were children of French soldiers who had either defected to the Vietnamese communists during the French Indochina or were children of French forces who were POWs and still held by the Hanoi communists. Reportedly, they had been given Vietnamese wives, and the children were taken away from their parents at a very young age and sent to communist youth camps similar to those in the Soviet Union and "Hitler's Children" in Nazi Germany. According to a DIA source, their control officer was Jesus Jiminez Escobar. ‘The students (agents) were to be infiltrated into the United States through normal airlift channels and would be claimed by relatives on their arrival.’ ‘Their subversive activities against the United States would include sabotage in connection with race riots...’ Another DIA source said that "the 5th contingent was infiltrated into the U.S. from Canada through Calais, Maine.’
Castro also had military plans for sabotage and destruction against targets in the U.S. stretching as far back as at least 1962. For example, Castro ordered his air force to program their computers on MIG-23s to attack the Turkey Point Nuclear Power Plant in Homestead, Florida in retaliation for the U.S. led liberation of Grenada in 1983. According to General Rafael del Pino, who was a commander of the Cuban Air Force at the time, Castro intended to inflict heavy physical and psychological casualties: “I want to do something that they will remember for the rest of their lives and then, when we are gone, history will remind them that we were the only ones who made them pay dearly for their imperialistic arrogance around the world."
Another instance of Cuban plans for aggression against the CONUS dated from 1962, with the staff and officialdom of their UN Mission in New York City as the participants. An attaché to the Cuban UN Mission, Roberto Santiesteban Casanova was one of the ringleaders of a plot to destroy oil refineries in NJ, the Statue of Liberty, major department stores, the 42nd Street Bus Terminal, and Grand Central Station. Fortunately, the FBI prevented this plot from becoming a tragic reality. In the 1980s, Soviet advisers at Cuban chemical warfare schools were reported to witness Castro bragging that he would be prepared to kill millions of Americans with biological and chemical weapons that he had stockpiled.
Although the plans detailed above for the defeat and occupation of the United States may now seem fantastical, it is clear that the Communist strategists that developed them anticipated the willing collaboration of many Americans. For the most part, these collaborators were to be drawn from the ranks of the Communist Party of the United States and the radical leftwing groups affiliated with them, such as the Black Panthers. But there is also reason to believe that they also expected the willing cooperation of the leaders of U. S. multinational corporations as well. A large percentage of these corporations favored expanded trade and technology transfers with the communist countries, and this was especially true of those that specialized in computers, machinery, steel and other metallurgical products, food, finance, and consumer goods. Many communist nations already had (and still have) trade and economic councils that included senior executives of private corporations, and communist party officials and senior intelligence officers. Such councils served as instruments to gain high technology goods and as conduits for propaganda to weaken U.S. resistance to Soviet and communist measures for world domination. Secretive organizations such as the former U.S.-USSR Trade and Economic Council (USTEC) were known to harbor a large number of high-ranking KGB officers, such as General Yevgeny Petrovich Pitrovanov. Arguably, the attitudes of détente, internationalist minded members of the U.S. business and governmental elite was summarized by the comment made by the former head of the Ford Foundation H. Rowan Gaither to Congressional investigator Norman Dodd: "Mr. Dodd, all of us who have a hand in the making of policies here have had experience either with the OSS during the war or the European Economic Administration after the war. We've had experience operating under directives, and these directives emanate and did emanate from the White House. Now, we still operate under just such directives. Would you like to know what the substance of these directives is? I said, “Mr. Gaither, I’d like very much to know,” whereupon he made this statement to me: “Mr. Dodd, we are here operate in response to similar directives, the substance of which is that we shall use our grant-making power so to alter life in the United States that it can be comfortably merged with the Soviet Union.
Leaked copies of the USTEC journal indicated this attitude of a common merging of interests of the USSR and United States. One example was an ad placed by Archer Daniels Midland (ADM) depicting the East Coast of the United States connected to the western border of the Soviet Union. Other advertisements and articles depicted what was portrayed as fruitful economic collaboration between the Soviets and American businesses. Defectors from communist parties and countries alleged unusually close ties with big business elites. Former Novosti official and seasoned KGB-flack Yuri Bezmenov (aka Tomas Schuman) claimed that: “During trips to the Moscow airport he (Bezmenov) noticed private American jets landing, the occupants hugged by high ranking communist officials, and then whisked away in government vehicles. When he asked his supervisor about the Americans he was told that "they are our friends" and that it would be best if he didn't inquire further about such matters. Eventually he came to the conclusion that the apparent conflict between communism and capitalism was contrived, and that wealthy capitalists were working closely with high-ranking communists. That realization led him to defect from the Soviet Union.”
Thus it is difficult for serious observers to escape the conclusion that portions of the U.S. business community would have willingly collaborated with the Soviets if they had succeeded in occupying the United States. Czech Major General Jan Sejna alleged that collaboration between Western bankers and the Czech Communists extended to a massive drug-running operation designed to demoralize the free nations of the world. “Jan Sejna made the arrangements for the Western bankers to visit Czechoslovakia in order to plan with the KGB how they would launder the profits of the Red Cocaine operation.”
Former FBI official and author W. Cleon Skousen recounted a conversation he had with Dr. Bella Dodd, who had been a high-level member of the U.S. Communist Party: “I think the Communist conspiracy is merely a branch of a much bigger conspiracy!" she told him. According to Skousen, she had first became aware of some mysterious superleadership right after World War II when the U.S. Communist Party had difficulty getting instructions from Moscow on several vital matters requiring immediate attention. The American Communist hierarchy was told that any time they had an emergency of this kind they should contact any one of three designated persons at the Waldorf Towers. According to Dr. Dodd, whenever the Party obtained instructions from any of these three men, Moscow always ratified them. "What puzzled Dr. Dodd," Skousen records, "was that not one of these three contacts was a Russian. Nor were any of them Communists. In fact, all three were extremely wealthy American capitalists." "I would certainly like to find out who is really running things," said Dr. Dodd.”
If Dr. Dodd was correct, then these unnamed business executives served, at least, as conduits or messengers for communist orders originating in Moscow. Still, the notion that certain capitalists actually controlled the communist movement seems implausible to this writer. The available evidence suggests that certain elements of the U.S. multinational corporation elite cooperated with the communists as partners to ultimately weaken our resistance to totalitarianism. Many historical examples abound concerning capitalist cooperation with communist and other totalitarian, collectivist parties. They included: Lenin’s proposal to emulate the German World War I Zwangiwirtscaft, or war economy, by conscripting the Russian business elite to increase production; the “patriotic capitalists” that collaborated with the Chinese Communist dictatorship from 1949 until about the mid 1950s; and the German and later French and other Western European industrialists that cooperated with the Nazi’s during World War II. Here it is important to note that the Nazi’s and the puppet regimes they established adhered to an anti-capitalist, collectivist ideology that regimented and at times threatened the same businessmen and industrialists that collaborated with them in occupied Europe. Their propaganda also exhorted the theme of liberation and the destruction of what was termed the exploitative, capitalistic plutocracies of the United States and Britain.
During the Cold War, American policy makers failed to heed the available evidence and prepare the population psychologically and militarily to confront the threat. As this paper has sought to demonstrate, the Soviet Union and its global allies were committed to the destruction and ultimate occupation of the United States, and – unfortunately – the old threats have not entirely disappeared. Like the mythical shape shifter, they have assumed new and perhaps more deadly forms.
In the aftermath of 9-11, it is no longer plausible to assume that the American homeland is safe from attack. For that reason, I would offer the following policy prescriptions to help counter the manifest threats and to protect the population of the United States:
1) Continuous and uninterrupted investment and deployment of advanced infantry, armored, airpower, and naval weapons. Reject all treaties that allow us to prevent missile
defense systems, while enemies build such weapons up in a duplicitous fashion.
2) Revitalize a civil defense system that would truly allow survivability during and after an attack of ICBMs or portable WMDs containing atomic, biological, and chemical
warheads. Stock the necessary supplies (food, antidotes, medicines, etc.) in logically located storage facilities/shelters in case of emergency.
3)  Immediately reverse "globalization" and outsourcing and revitalize American consumer, strategic, and energy industries in order to regain self-sufficiency. This would mean initial sacrifices by labor, management and stockholders in the short term; but social stability and improved economic employment prospects would ultimately result.
4)End the unnatural emphasis on market hedonism and the shopping mall regime, which cripples the soul, our productive capacity, and our sense of values.
5) Re-establish meaningful internal security measures to monitor and if legally warranted prosecute subversive and terrorist organizations and support groups in the USA. This
also means restoring congressional investigations of such individuals and groups. Constitutional liberties must be strongly maintained, yet not used as a clever excuse to destroy
the security and fabric of the Republic.
6) Upgrading our intelligence and counterintelligence by accepting inconvenient and unpopular truths such as moles and penetrations of our CIA, FBI, armed forces, etc. to point of compromising technical information and altering strategic and foreign policies. Setting a higher and stricter standard for the quality of personnel employed in
intelligence and military agencies in order to minimize blackmail and compromise by enemy nations.
7) Shut down, if necessary, embassies, trade missions, interests sections, front companies, and UN Missions of hostile nations in order to disrupt and uproot espionage, propaganda/disinformation, and smuggling/trading networks. If necessary, U.S. diplomats and personnel could meet with enemy nation diplomats regarding international issues on an agreed upon neutral third party country such as Switzerland. The most important goal of this point is to keep their networks out of the USA.
8) Place strictly enforced regulations on the private sector and government bodies such as the U.S. Export-Import Bank precluding them from providing loans, grants, machinery, technology, food, medicine, and other products to hostile totalitarian regimes and "liberation" movements  
As a people and as a nation we must heed the lessons of history in order to confront both the continuing threats posed by totalitarian states and movements, and the more recent and perhaps more immediate dangers posed by Islamist states and terrorist organizations. Thus it seems fitting to close this paper with the quotation that opened it: “He who does not learn from history is doomed to repeat it.”
Obama weakness causes global conflict
Coes 11 – Ben Coes 11, Visiting Fellow at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. A graduate of Columbia College, where he won the prestigious Bennett Cerf Memorial Prize “The disease of a weak president”, The Daily Caller, http://dailycaller.com/2011/09/30/the-disease-of-a-weak-president/
The disease of a weak president usually begins with the Achilles’ heel all politicians are born with — the desire to be popular. It leads to pandering to different audiences, people and countries and creates a sloppy, incoherent set of policies. Ironically, it ultimately results in that very politician losing the trust and respect of friends and foes alike.¶ In the case of Israel, those of us who are strong supporters can at least take comfort in the knowledge that Tel Aviv will do whatever is necessary to protect itself from potential threats from its unfriendly neighbors. While it would be preferable for the Israelis to be able to count on the United States, in both word and deed, the fact is right now they stand alone. Obama and his foreign policy team have undercut the Israelis in a multitude of ways. Despite this, I wouldn’t bet against the soldiers of Shin Bet, Shayetet 13 and the Israeli Defense Forces.¶ But Obama’s weakness could — in other places — have implications far, far worse than anything that might ultimately occur in Israel. The triangular plot of land that connects Pakistan, India and China is held together with much more fragility and is built upon a truly foreboding foundation of religious hatreds, radicalism, resource envy and nuclear weapons.¶ If you can only worry about preventing one foreign policy disaster, worry about this one. Here are a few unsettling facts to think about:¶ First, Pakistan and India have fought three wars since the British de-colonized and left the region in 1947. All three wars occurred before the two countries had nuclear weapons. Both countries now possess hundreds of nuclear weapons, enough to wipe each other off the map many times over.¶ Second, Pakistan is 97 Muslim. It is a question of when — not if — Pakistan elects a radical Islamist in the mold of Ayatollah Khomeini as its president. Make no mistake, it will happen, and when it does the world will have a far greater concern than Ali Khamenei or Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and a single nuclear device.¶ Third, China sits at the northern border of both India and Pakistan. China is strategically aligned with Pakistan. Most concerning, China covets India’s natural resources. Over the years, it has slowly inched its way into the northern tier of India-controlled Kashmir Territory, appropriating land and resources and drawing little notice from the outside world.¶ In my book, Coup D’Etat, I consider this tinderbox of colliding forces in Pakistan, India and China as a thriller writer. But thriller writers have the luxury of solving problems by imagining solutions on the page. In my book, when Pakistan elects a radical Islamist who then starts a war with India and introduces nuclear weapons to the theater, America steps in and removes the Pakistani leader through a coup d’état.¶ I wish it was that simple.¶ The more complicated and difficult truth is that we, as Americans, must take sides. We must be willing to be unpopular in certain places. Most important, we must be ready and willing to threaten our military might on behalf of our allies. And our allies are Israel and India.¶ There are many threats out there — Islamic radicalism, Chinese technology espionage, global debt and half a dozen other things that smarter people than me are no doubt worrying about. But the single greatest threat to America is none of these. The single greatest threat facing America and our allies is a weak U.S. president. It doesn’t have to be this way. President Obama could — if he chose — develop a backbone and lead. Alternatively, America could elect a new president. It has to be one or the other. The status quo is simply not an option.

Democratic backsliding in Latin America causes regional proliferation and nuclear conflict
Schulz 2k (Donald Schulz, Chairman of the Political Science Department at Cleveland State University, March 2000, The United States and Latin America: Shaping an Elusive Future, http://www.strategicstudiesinstitute.army.mil/pdffiles/pub31.pdf)
A second major interest is the promotion of democracy. At first glance, this might appear to be a peripheral concern. For much of its history, the United States was perfectly comfortable with authoritarian regimes in Latin America, so long as they did not threaten higher priority interests like regional security or U.S. economic holdings. But that is no longer the case. U.S. values have changed; democracy has been elevated to the status of an "important" interest. In part, this has been because American leaders have gained a greater appreciation of the role of legitimacy as a source of political stability. Governments that are popularly elected and respect human rights and the rule of law are less dangerous to both their citizens and their neighbors. Nations which are substantively democratic tend not to go to war with one another. They are also less vulnerable to the threat of internal war provoked, in part, by government violence and illegality.(5) In short, democracy and economic integration are not simply value preferences, but are increasingly bound up with hemispheric security. To take just one example: The restoration of democracy in Brazil and Argentina and their increasingly strong and profitable relationship in Mercosur have contributed in no small degree to their decisions to foresake the development of nuclear weapons. Perceptions of threat have declined, and perceptions of the benefits of cooperation have grown, and this has permitted progress on a range of security issues from border disputes, to peacekeeping, environmental protection, counternarcotics, and the combat of organized crime.¶ CONTINUES¶ Until recently, the primary U.S. concern about Brazil has been that it might acquire nuclear weapons and delivery systems. In the 1970s, the Brazilian military embarked on a secret program to develop an atom bomb. By the late 1980s, both Brazil and Argentina were aggressively pursuing nuclear development programs that had clear military spin-offs.54 There were powerful military and civilian advocates of developing nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles within both countries. Today, however, the situation has changed. As a result of political leadership transitions in both countries, Brazil and Argentina now appear firmly committed to restricting their nuclear programs to peaceful purposes. They have entered into various nuclear-related agreements with each other—most notably the quadripartite comprehensive safeguards agreement (1991), which permits the inspection of all their nuclear installations by the International Atomic Energy Agency—and have joined the Missile Technology Control Regime. Even so, no one can be certain about the future. As Scott Tollefson has observed: • . . the military application of Brazil’s nuclear and space programs depends less on technological considerations than on political will. While technological constraints present a formidable barrier to achieving nuclear bombs and ballistic missiles, that barrier is not insurmountable. The critical element, therefore, in determining the applications of Brazil’s nuclear and space technologies will be primarily political.55 Put simply, if changes in political leadership were instrumental in redirecting Brazil’s nuclear program towards peaceful purposes, future political upheavals could still produce a reversion to previous orientations. Civilian supremacy is not so strong that it could not be swept away by a coup, especially if the legitimacy of the current democratic experiment were to be undermined by economic crisis and growing poverty/inequality. Nor are civilian leaders necessarily less militaristic or more committed to democracy than the military. The example of Peru’s Fujimori comes immediately to mind. How serious a threat might Brazil potentially be? It has been estimated that if the nuclear plant at Angra dos Reis (Angra I) were only producing at 30 percent capacity, it could produce five 20-kiloton weapons a year. If production from other plants were included, Brazil would have a capability three times greater than India or Pakistan. Furthermore, its defense industry already has a substantial missile producing capability. On the other hand, the country has a very limited capacity to project its military power via air and sealift or to sustain its forces over long distances. And though a 1983 law authorizes significant military manpower increases (which could place Brazil at a numerical level slightly higher than France, Iran and Pakistan), such growth will be restricted by a lack of economic resources. Indeed, the development of all these military potentials has been, and will continue to be, severely constrained by a lack of money. (Which is one reason Brazil decided to engage in arms control with Argentina in the first p1ace.) In short, a restoration of Brazilian militarism, imbued with nationalistic ambitions for great power status, is not unthinkable, and such a regime could present some fairly serious problems. That government would probably need foreign as well as domestic enemies to help justify it’s existence. One obvious candidate would be the United States, which would presumably be critical of any return to dictatorial rule. Beyond this, moreover, the spectre of a predatory international community, covetous of the riches of the Amazon, could help rally political support to the regime. For years, some Brazilian military officers have been warning of “foreign intervention.” Indeed, as far back as 1991 General Antenor de Santa Cruz Abreu, then chief of the Military Command of the Amazon, threatened to transform the region into a “new Vietnam” if developed countries tried to “internationalize” the Amazon. Subsequently, in 1993, U.S.-Guyanese combined military exercises near the Brazilian border provoked an angry response from many high-ranking Brazilian officers.57 Since then, of course, U.S.-Brazilian relations have improved considerably. Nevertheless, the basic U.S./ international concerns over the Amaazon—the threat to the region’s ecology through burning and deforestation, the presence of narcotrafficking activities, the Indian question, etc.—have not disappeared, and some may very well intensify in the years ahead. At the same time, if the growing trend towards subregional economic groupings—in particular, MERCOSUR—continues, it is likely to increase competition between Southern Cone and NAFTA countries. Economic conflicts, in turn, may be expected to intensify political differences, and could lead to heightened politico-military rivalry between different blocs or coalitions in the hemisphere.

Tournament: Greenhill Round Robin | Round: 1 | Opponent: Westminster HL | Judge: Louie Petit, Michael Greenstein
A) Climate treaties decimate hegemony and readiness
Carlucci, Former Secretary of Defense and Chair of the Carlyle Group, 5-18-98 (Frank, “Making military sense out of Kyoto,” Washington Times, nkj)

Prior to the 1997 Kyoto meeting on global climate change, Defense Secretary William Cohen
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because of an unproven environmental threat that may loom in the 2znd Century. 

Heg solves multiple nuclear wars
Kagan, PhD in history, 7— senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Listed as one of the world’s “Top 100 Public Intellectuals” by Foreign Policy. Former member of the State Department Policy Planning Staff. BA from Yale, MPP from JFK School of Government at Harvard, PhD in  American History from American  University. (Robert, July, End of Dreams, Return of History, http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2007/07/end_of_dreams_return_of_histor.html, AG/JMP)

Were the United States to diminish its influence in the regions where it is currently
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is likely to be one of intensified competition among nations and nationalist movements.

B) Cap and trade is kills the economy and destroys innovation
Richards 9—Jay Richards is a visiting scholar at the heritage institute (“The Economy Hits Home: Energy and the Environment” http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2009/10/the-economy-hits-home-energy-and-the-environment, nkj)

Some Fake Solutions: Cap and Trade and Its Cousins Unlike plans that are frankly
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The benefits, in contrast, are small, theoretical, and remote.

Innovation key to solve extinction
Baker 2k – Former Industrial Economist
Brent Barker, electrical engineer, and manager of corporate communications for the Electric Power Research Institute and former industrial economist and staff author at SRI International and as a commercial research analyst at USX Corporation, “Technology and the Quest for Sustainability.” EPRI Journal, Summer, INFOTRAC
Sustainability has been the subject of much discussion and a steady stream of policy forums
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full measure to future generations everywhere in the world. Thatfuture begins now.

C) Binding cuts cause global protectionism
Competitive Enterprise Institute 97 (“Kyoto Media Advisory,” http://www.cei.org/gencon/003,02747.cfm, ZBurdette)

Still, policy does have implications. To sanction anti-energy use policies anywhere
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President Fred Smith terms "a baby step on the escalator to oblivion."
Even such initial economic costs would likely exacerbate already troubling protectionist tendencies in the U
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Byrd-Hagel resolution may well evolve into a new force for protectionism. 

Trade is good
Dreier 11 – Rep. Chairman of the House Rules Committee (Rep. David Dreier, 1/5/11, Politico, “Bipartisanship can revive economy,” http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0111/47044.html, JMP)
There are no higher priorities for our country right now than job creation and economic
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yes, even the ability to respond to natural disasters in South America.