2ac

2ac --- Fem

The current political system is key to disrupt gendered power structures

Peterson, 92. Editor V Spike (Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Arizona), Gendered States p 66.

In other words, the state as a dealer in power, a wielder of weapons, an inherently violent institution is the object of suspicion and resistance by both antiliberal feminists and liberal internationalists. And, especially now, when the international system is undergoing immense change, pressures for denationalizing change—certainly discourse arguing for it- will be persistent. In the face of such pressures, I believe that feminist critics of the present state system should beware. The very fact that the state creates, condenses, and focuses political power may make it the best friend, not the enemy, of feminists—because the availability of real political power is essential to real democratic control. Not sufficient, I know, but essential. My basic premise is that political power can significantly disrupt patriarchal and class (which is to say, economic) power. It holds the potential, at least, for disrupting the patriarchal/economic oppression of those in the lower reaches of class, sex and race hierarchies. It is indisputable that, in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, it has been the political power of states that has confronted the massive economic power privately constructed out of the industrial processes and has imposed obligations on employers for the welfare of workers as well as providing additional social support for the population at large. And the political tempering of economic power has been the most responsive to broad public needs in liberal democracies, where government must respond roughly to the interests of voters. Of course, this is not the whole story. The nation-states of this period have also perpetrated horrors of torture and war, have aided the development of elite-controlled industrial wealth, and have not sufficiently responded to the human needs of their less powerful constituents. But I believe it is better to try to restrain the horrors and abuses than to give up on the limits that state organized political power can bring to bear on the forms of class-based, race-based, sex-based power that consistute the greatest sources of oppression we are likely to face.

Security creates value to life.

Booth 5 [Ken, visiting researcher - US Naval War College, Critical Security Studies and World Politics, p. 22]

The best starting point for conceptualizing security lies in the real conditions of insecurity suffered by people and collectivities. Look around. What is immediately striking is that some degree of insecurity, as a life-determining condition, is universal. To the extent an individual or group is insecure, to the extent their life choices and changes are taken away; this is because of the resources and energy they need to invest in seeking safety from domineering threats – whether these are the lack of food for one’s children, or organizing to resist a foreign aggressor. The corollary of the relationship between insecurity and a determined life is that a degree of security creates life possibilities. Security might therefore be conceived as synonymous with opening up space in people’s lives. This allows for individual and collective human becoming – the capacity to have some choice about living differently – consistent with the same but different search by others. Two interrelated conclusion follow from this. First, security can be understood as an instrumental value; it frees its possessors to a greater or lesser extent from life-determining constraints and so allows different life possibilities to be explored. Second, security is not synonymous simply with survival. One can survive without being secure (the experience of refugees in long-term camps in war-torn parts of the world, for example). Security is therefore more than mere animal survival (basic animal existence). It is survival-plus, the plus being the possibility to explore human becoming. As an instrumental value, security is sought because it free people(s) to some degree to do other than deal with threats to their human being. The achievement of a level of security–and security is always relative –gives to individuals and groups some time, energy, and scope to choose to be or become, other than merely surviving as human biological organisms. Security is an important dimension of the process by which the human species can reinvent itself beyond the merely biological.

The critique of rationality and humanism obscures social forces that cause environmental collapse and breeds fascism

BIEHL AND STAUDENMAIER 1995 (Janet and Peter, “Ecofascism: Lessons from the German Experience,” http://www.spunk.org/texts/places/germany/sp001630/ecofasc.html)

What prevents ecological politics from yielding reaction or fascism with an ecological patina is an ecology movement that maintains a broad social emphasis, one that places the ecological crisis in a social context. As social ecologists, we see the roots of the present ecological crisis in an irrational society--not in the biological makeup of human beings, nor in a particular religion, nor in reason, science, or technology. On the contrary, we uphold the importance of reason, science, and technology in creating both a progressive ecological movement and an ecological society. It is a specific set of social relations--above all, the competitive market economy--that is presently destroying the biosphere.Mysticism and biologism, at the very least, deflect public attention away from such social causes. In presenting these essays, we are trying to preserve the all-important progressive and emancipatory implications of ecological politics. More than ever, an ecological commitment requires people today to avoid repeating the errors of the past, lest the ecology movement become absorbed in the mystical and antihumanistic trends that abound today.

Their wholesale rejection of security is bad --- we can use security when necessary to help people that need it

Nunes 2012 (Joao – Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Politics and International Studies at the University of Warwick, Reclaiming the political: Emancipation and critique in security studies, Security Dialogue 43, p. 349-350)

In fact, a profound distrust towards security is present in the work of Michael Dillon, who understands security as a ‘generative principle of formation’ (1996: 127), a register of meaning that entails a politics of calculability, closure, exclusion and violence. Dillon (1996: 130) identifies within Western thought a ‘metaphysical politics of security’ that makes ‘politics a matter of command; membership of a political community a matter of obedience; love synonymous with a policing order; order a function of discipline; and identity a narcissistic paranoia’. Similar concerns are present in the work of Didier Bigo, for whom security is a liberal political register that strives to make the world calculable, ‘makes a fantasy of homogeneity and seeks the end of any resistances or struggles’ (2008: 109). Mark Neocleous (2011: 186) takes these concerns in a more radical direction by linking security to fascism. In the works of these authors, one can identify a tendency to see security as inherently connected to exclusion, totalization and even violence. The idea of a ‘logic’ of security is now widely present in the critical security studies literature. Claudia Aradau (2008: 72), for example, writes of an ‘exclusionary logic of security’ underpinning and legitimizing ‘forms of domination’. Rens van Munster (2007: 239) assumes a ‘logic of security’, predicated upon a ‘political organization on the exclusionary basis of fear’. Laura Shepherd (2008: 70) also identifies a liberal and highly problematic ‘organizational logic’ in security. Although there would probably be disagreement over the degree to which this logic is inescapable, it is symptomatic of an overwhelmingly pessimistic outlook that a great number of critical scholars are now making the case for moving away from security. The normative preference for desecuritization has been picked up in attempts to contest, resist and ‘unmake’ security (Aradau, 2004; Huysmans, 2006; Bigo, 2007). For these contributions, security cannot be reconstructed and political transformation can only be brought about when security and its logic are removed from the equation (Aradau, 2008; Van Munster, 2009; Peoples, 2011). This tendency in the literature is problematic for the critique of security in at least three ways. First, it constitutes a blind spot in the effort of politicization. The assumption of an exclusionary, totalizing or violent logic of security can be seen as an essentialization and a moment of closure. To be faithful to itself, the politicization of security would need to recognize that there is nothing natural or necessary about security – and that security as a paradigm of thought or a register of meaning is also a construction that depends upon its reproduction and performance through practice. The exclusionary and violent meanings that have been attached to security are themselves the result of social and historical processes, and can thus be changed. Second, the institution of this apolitical realm runs counter to the purposes of critique by foreclosing an engagement with the different ways in which security may be constructed. As Matt McDonald (2012) has argued, because security means different things for different people, one must always understand it in context. Assuming from the start that security implies the narrowing of choice and the empowerment of an elite forecloses the acknowledgment of security claims that may seek to achieve exactly the opposite: alternative possibilities in an already narrow debate and the contestation of elite power.5 In connection to this, the claims to insecurity put forward by individuals and groups run the risk of being neglected if the desire to be more secure is identified with a compulsion towards totalization, and if aspirations to a life with a degree of predictability are identified with violence. Finally, this tendency blunts critical security studies as a resource for practical politics. By overlooking the possibility of reconsidering security from within – opting instead for its replacement with other ideals – the critical field weakens its capacity to confront head-on the exceptionalist connotations that security has acquired in policymaking circles. Critical scholars run the risk of playing into this agenda when they tie security to exclusionary and violent practices, thereby failing to question security actors as they take those views for granted and act as if they were inevitable. Overall, security is just too important – both as a concept and as a political instrument – to be simply abandoned by critical scholars. As McDonald (2012: 163) has put it, If security is politically powerful, is the foundation of political legitimacy for a range of actors, and involves the articulation of our core values and the means of their protection, we cannot afford to allow dominant discourses of security to be confused with the essence of security itself. In sum, the trajectory that critical security studies has taken in recent years has significant limitations. The politicization of security has made extraordinary progress in problematizing predominant security ideas and practices; however, it has paradoxically resulted in a depoliticization of the meaning of security itself. By foreclosing the possibility of alternative notions of security, this imbalanced politicization weakens the analytical capacity of critical security studies, undermines its ability to function as a political resource and runs the risk of being politically counterproductive. Seeking to address these limitations, the next section revisits emancipatory understandings of security.

Feminist scholars fall prey to the “Myth of Framework” and exclude valuable research—reinforce the things they’re trying to eliminate—including empirics is valuable

Caprioli 04, Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Minnesota at Duluth 04 (Mary, “Feminist IR Theory and Quantitative Methodology: A Critical Analysis”, International Studies Review 6:2, June 2004, JSTOR)//AS

Conventional feminists appear to make several errors in creating a dichotomy be- tween what is considered "feminist" research and what would be called quantitative research. First, by maintaining that a dichotomy exists between methodologies, conventional IR feminists create and perpetuate a hierarchy. Second, conventional IR feminists commit the same error they accuse IR scholars of making by limiting the definition of legitimate scholarship based on methodology. Third, conventional feminists routinely accept the socially constructed belief in the superiority of quan- titative methodology rather than deconstructing this notion and accepting quan- titative methodology as one of many imperfect research tools. There is little utility in constructing a divide if none exists. As Thomas Kuhn (1962) argues, common measures do exist across paradigms that provide a shared basis for theory. It seems overly pessimistic to accept Karl Popper's "Myth of Framework," which postulates that "we are prisoners caught in the framework of our theories, our expectations, our past experiences, our language, and that as a consequence, we cannot communicate with or judge those working in terms of a different paradigm" (Neufeld 1995:44). Some feminists (for example, Tickner 1996, 2001; Peterson 2002; Steans 2003) appear to embrace this "Myth of Frame- work" by accentuating the differences between the perspectives of feminist and IR theorists based on their past experiences and languages and criticize IR theorists for their lack of communication with feminist IR scholars. Ironically, the "Myth of Framework" shares a number of assumptions with Hob- bes's description of the state of nature that feminists routinely reject. The "Myth of Framework" assumes no middle ground-scholars are presumably entrenched in their own worldviews without hope of compromise or the ability to understand others' worldviews. If this is the case, scholars are doomed to discussions with like- minded individuals rather than having a productive dialogue with those outside their own worldview. Scholars who accept the "Myth of Framework" have essentially cre- ated a Tower of Babel in which they choose not to understand each other's language. The acceptance of such a myth creates conflict and establishes a hierarchy within international relations scholarship even though conventional feminists theoretically seek to identify and eradicate conflict and hierarchy within society as a whole. The purported language difference between feminist and IR scholars appears to be methodological. In general, feminist IR scholars2 are skeptical of empiricistmethodologies and "have never been satisfied with the boundary constraints of conventional IR" (Tickner 2001:2). As noted above, conventional international re- lations is defined on the basis of methodology as a commitment "to empiricism and data-based methods of testing" (Tickner 2001:149). Ironically, some feminist IR scholars place boundary constraints on feminist IR scholarship by limiting its def- inition to a critical-interpretive methodology (see Carpenter 2003:ftn. 1). Rather than pushing methodological boundaries to expand the field and to promote in- clusiveness, conventional IR feminists appear to discriminate against quantitative research. If conventional feminists are willing to embrace multicultural approaches to feminism, why restrict research tools?There would seem to be a lack of con- sistency between rhetoric and practice. Especially at the global level, there need not be only one way to achieve feminist goals. Hence, conventional feminist IR scholars might benefit from participating in mainstream IR scholars' evolving embrace of methodological pluralism and epistemological opportunism (Bueno de Mesquita 2002; Chan 2002; Fearon and Wendt 2002). One must assume that feminist IR scholars support the pursuit of research that broadens our understanding of international relations. Such a research agenda must include both evidence and logic (Bueno de Mesquita 2002; Chan 2002). Theorizing, case study evidence (specific details), and external validity (generality) are all necessary components of research-only through a combination of all three modes of inquiry can we begin to gain confidence in our understanding. "And still we debate what seems to have been obvious to our predecessors: to gain under- standing, we need to integrate careful empirical analysis with the equally careful application of the power of reason" (Bueno de Mesquita 2002:2). Different types of scholarship "make different contributions that can be mutually beneficial, as when historical studies isolate immediate causes that act as catalysts for the general ten- dencies identified in aggregate analyses" (Chan 2002:754). Without logic and theory, the general tendencies identified through quantitative analysis are incomplete. "In the absence of guidance from such logic, the data exercises degenerate into mindless fishing expeditions and are vulnerable to spu- rious interpretations" (Chan 2002:750). Most scholars concerned with gender cer- tainly owe a debt to Jean BethkeElshtain (1987), Cynthia Enloe (1989), and Ann Tickner (1992). These IR feminists shattered the publishing boundary for feminist IR scholarship and tackled the difficult task of deconstructing IR theory, including its founding myths, thereby creating the logic to guide feminist quantitative re- search. It is only through exposure to feminist literature that one can begin to scientifically question the sexist assumptions inherent in the dominant paradigms of international relations.

Our environment reps are key to change --- this card specifically answers their framework.

Crist 4 (Eileen, Professor at Virginia Tech in the Department of Science and Technology, “Against the social construction of nature and wilderness”, Environmental Ethics 26;1, p 13-6, http://www.sts.vt.edu/faculty/crist/againstsocialconstruction.pdf)

Yet, constructivist analyses of "nature" favor remaining in the comfort zone of zestless agnosticism and noncommittal meta-discourse. As David Kidner suggests, this intellectual stance may function as a mechanism against facing the devastation of the biosphere—an undertaking long underway but gathering momentum with the imminent bottlenecking of a triumphant global consumerism and unprecedented population levels. Human-driven extinction—in the ballpark of Wilson's estimated 27,000 species per year—is so unthinkable a fact that choosing to ignore it may well be the psychologically risk-free option.¶ Nevertheless, this is the opportune historical moment for intellectuals in the humanities and social sciences to join forces with conservation scientists in order to help create the consciousness shift and policy changes to stop this irreversible destruction. Given this outlook, how students in the human sciences are trained to regard scientific knowledge, and what kind of messages percolate to the public from the academy about the nature of scientific findings, matter immensely. The "agnostic stance" of constructivism toward "scientific claims" about the environment—a stance supposedly mandatory for discerning how scientific knowledge is "socially assembled"[32]—is, to borrow a legendary one-liner, striving to interpret the world at an hour that is pressingly calling us to change it.

Analysis of gender can be integrated into policymaking—proven effective

Murphy 96, Research Professor; Department of Conflict Resolution, Human Security, and Global Governance at the University of Massachusetts, 96 (Craig N., “Seeing Women, Recognizing Gender, Recasting International Relations”, International Organization 50:3, Summer 1996, JSTOR)//AS

Skocpol's work also exemplifies one way that the value of "looking for the women" can be integrated with the central concerns of a field. While Skocpol is critical of fellow political sociologists who attempt to explain major changes in modern industrial societies by looking only at the roles of women, her immersion in "the rich, recently created, literature" in American women's history led her to look for the role of women in creating the modern welfare state. In the process of doing so she found thather "state-centric approach had evolved into a 'polity-centered approach'" as she "grappled with a central issue in the study of any nation's identity: the transformations over time in the issues, social identities, and styles of politics that succeed (or fail) at influencing agendas of political debate and public policy making."32 Similarly, consider- ation of the roles of women in the formation and disintegration of modern international orders would probably lead international relations away from a state-centric approach toward one that allows scholars to see the interplay of national (and other) identities in the formation of international policy. In large part this is because, as Skocpol argues, consideration of the role of women leads us immediately to recognize the constitutive power of a ubiquitous form of identity: gender.

Discourses of gender have already become institutionalized and are antiproductive

Baden and Goetz 97, Researcher and Policy Analyst specialising in Agricultural Development, Food Security and Gender Equality and Chief Advisor of Governance, Peace and Security at UNIFEM respectively 97 (Sally and Anne Marie, “Who Needs [Sex] When You Can Have [Gender]? Conflicting Discourses on Gender at Beijing”, Feminist Review 56, Summer 1997, http://graduateinstitute.ch/webdav/site/developpement/shared/developpement/mdev/soutienauxcours0809/verschuur_rights/E742_Baden_Goetz.pdf)//AS

One of these, early on in the Forum, was entitled 'Feminism: from movement to establishment', convened by the Applied Socio-economic Research (ASR) organization of Pakistan. Nighat Khan, Director of ASR and a panellist at this workshop, argued that gender analysis had become a technocratic discourse, in spite of its roots in socialist feminism, dominated by researchers, policy-makers and consultants, which no longer addressed 5 issues of power central to women's subordination. She identified factors underlying this shift as the professionalization and 'NGOization' of the women's movement and the consequent lack of accountability of 'gender experts' to a grassroots constituency. A more radical perspective on the z Beijing process and associated discourse on gender came from the Revolutionary Women of the Philippines, whose pamphlet 'The Gender Trap: an imperialist scheme for co-opting the world's women', attacked gender mainstreaming as a scheme to buy off once committed activists (Makibaka 1995: 5). NighatKhan asserted that the focus on gender, rather than women, had become counter-productive in that it had allowed the discussion to shift from a focus on women, to women and men and, finally, back to men.This latter point was echoed by others at the NGO Forum. Eugene Barriteau, presenting on a panel for Development Alternatives with Women in a New Era (DAWN), described how in Jamaica the shift in discourse from women to gender had resulted, in policy circles, in a focus away from women, to 'men at risk,' reflecting concern about men's failure in education and in securing employment, while women perform much better educationally and many support families alone. This view is also reflected in other accounts. A Bangladeshi development worker is quoted by Kabeer as saying: 'Do you think we are ready for gender in development in Bangladesh when we have not yet addressed the problems of women in development?' It transpired that 'the new vocabulary of gender was being used in her organization to deny the very existence of women specific disadvantage and hence the need for specific measures which might address this disadvantage' (Kabeer, 1994: xii). According to Razavi and Miller, in their recent review of conceptual shifts in the women and development discourse: Although the gender discourse has filtered through to policy making institutions, in the process actors have re-interpreted the concept of gender to suit their institutional needs. In some instances, 'gender' has been used to side-step a focus on 'women' and on the radical policy implications of overcoming their disprivilege. (Razavi and Miller, 1995a: 41)

2ac --- CIR

Immigration won’t pass – no PC and House GOP

Parnes 10/18

Amie, The Hill, Obama’s hollow debt victory, 10/18/13, http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/329219-obamas-hollow-debt-victory

President Obama’s victory over congressional Republicans is likely to have a short shelf life.¶ Even the president’s staunchest allies are skeptical that his triumph in the debt-ceiling battle has produced much capital for the White House to spend on priorities like immigration reform. ¶ “I don’t know that this changes anything,” one former senior administration official said. “I don’t think the president has new mojo from this.”¶ “What did they really do? They brought the country to the same place where we were a few weeks ago,” the former official said. “This isn’t like he passed healthcare. He ended a government shutdown and raised the debt limit. Those are routine items. It’s not like he campaigned on it.”¶ Obama took his second victory lap in two days Thursday on the heels of the bipartisan deal, chiding congressional Republicans for engaging in political brinksmanship with the economy on the day the government reopened after a 16-day shutdown.¶ He also blamed the GOP — as he has in recent days — for bringing the nation dangerously close to defaulting on the debt limit. ¶ “You don’t like a particular policy or a particular president, then argue for your position,” Obama said in the State Dining Room at the White House. “Go out there and win an election.”¶ “Push to change it,” the president said. “But don’t break it.”¶ While he rallied White House allies with the sentiment, he also angered Republicans, who felt it was a sucker punch.¶ “The president’s admonishment ignores his own shortcomings,” said one senior Republican adviser working on Capitol Hill. “The fact is, he shares equal blame for the shutdown. It’s not as if the stalemate was created overnight. The shutdown is fallout from Obama’s lack of outreach and his ineffective approach to being a leader.”¶ The GOP adviser — who acknowledged defeat in the fight — said Obama’s admonition was “entirely void of the substance of the debate and designed to demonize legitimate opposition.¶ “[It] totally ignored was the president’s own past opposition to raising the debt ceiling and the months leading to this episode when the White House could have been working with Congress to avoid such a crisis,” the adviser said.¶ Republican strategist Ron Bonjean said he didn’t expect relations between Obama and Republicans to improve.¶ “No one has political capital at this point to really accomplish major legislative initiatives by the end of this year,” Bonjean said. “It’s highly unlikely that any comprehensive immigration reform bill would be able to move through the House after such a bruising fight over the shutdown and the debt ceiling.”¶ The former senior administration official seemed to agree, saying any hope for cooperation on a comprehensive immigration bill seems unlikely.¶ “No way,” the former official said. “I don’t see how it happens.”

Democratic insiders agree

- insiders concede no pass

- House GOP won’t compromise

Miller 10/24

Zeke, Time Magazine, Obama’s New Immigration Pivot Isn’t About Immigration, 10/24/13, http://swampland.time.com/2013/10/24/obamas-new-immigration-pivot-isnt-about-immigration/

But privately, administration officials and congressional Democrats admit that they are unlikely to get immigration reform through Congress any time soon. Minutes after Obama spoke, Brendan Buck, a spokesman for Speaker John Boehner released a statement rejecting Obama’s calls for a comprehensive plan. “The House will not consider any massive, Obamacare-style legislation that no one understands,” Buck wrote. “Instead, the House is committed to a common sense, step-by-step approach that gives Americans confidence that reform is done the right way.” Obama has long approached the issue of immigration cautiously, preferring to let congressional Democrats shoulder the burden of trying to push legislation through Congress—a fact that didn’t go unnoticed by activists. Obama has deported illegal immigrants at a faster rate than any other president, quickly approaching 2 million deportations in five years in office. That careful path shifted in 2012 when Obama signed an executive order deferring action for young illegal immigrants, known by advocates as “DREAMers” for the stymied legislation that would grant them a path to citizenship. The poll-tested election-year action helped Obama capture over 70 percent of the national Hispanic vote last November, and quickly after the election Obama made immigration reform a top priority.¶ Earlier this year the conditions were ripe for a compromise. Moderate Republicans, sensing that their party was rushing toward a demographic time bomb, were ready to compromise. Now the situation is entirely different. Some Republican proponents, like Sen. Marco Rubio, have gone quiet. The shutdown and debt limit battle has only emboldened the party’s conservative wing, who are less likely than ever before to embrace a part of the president’s agenda.

Oil loves the plan and lobby for it---determines Congressional sentiment

Sadowski 11 – Richard Sadowski 11, J.D., Hofstra University School of Law, Fall 2011, “IN THIS ISSUE: NATURAL RESOURCE CONFLICT: CUBAN OFFSHORE DRILLING: PREPARATION AND PREVENTION WITHIN THE FRAMEWORK OF THE UNITED STATES' EMBARGO,” Sustainable Development Law & Policy, 12 Sustainable Dev. L. & Pol'y 37, p. lexis

A U.S. Geological Survey estimates that Cuba's offshore oil fields hold at least four and a half billion barrels of recoverable oil and ten trillion cubic feet of natural gas. n29 Cupet, the state-owned Cuban energy company, insists that actual reserves are double that of the U.S. estimate. n30 One estimate indicates that Cuba could be producing 525,000 barrels of oil per day. n31 Given this vast resource, Cuba has already leased offshore oil exploration blocks to operators from Spain, Norway, and India. n32 Offshore oil discoveries in Cuba are placing increasing pressure for the United States to end the embargo. First, U.S. energy companies are eager to compete for access to Cuban oil reserves. n33 [*38] Secondly, fears of a Cuban oil spill are argued to warrant U.S. investment and technology. n34 Finally, the concern over Cuban offshore drilling renews cries that the embargo is largely a failure and harms human rights.¶ ECONOMICS: U.S. COMPANIES WANT IN¶ For U.S. companies, the embargo creates concern that they will lose out on an opportunity to develop a nearby resource. n35 Oil companies have a long history of utilizing political pressure for self-serving purposes. n36 American politicians, ever fearful of high energy costs, are especially susceptible to oil-lobby pressures. n37 This dynamic was exemplified in 2008, when then-Vice President Dick Cheney told the board of directors of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce that "oil is being drilled right now sixty miles off the coast of Florida. But we're not doing it, the Chinese are, in cooperation with the Cuban government. Even the communists have figured out that a good answer to high prices is more supply" n38¶ This pressure for U.S. investment in oil is exacerbated by America's expected increase in consumption rates. n39 Oil company stocks are valued in large part on access to reserves. n40 Thus, more leases, including those in Cuban waters, equal higher stock valuation. n41 "The last thing that American energy companies want is to be trapped on the sidelines by sanctions while European, Canadian and Latin American rivals are free to develop new oil resources on the doorstep of the United States." n42

Plan bolsters political capital and is popular with the public

- public opinion

- demographic shifts

Hinderdael 11

Klass, M.A. candidate at SAIS Bologna Center, concentrating in American Foreign Policy and Energy, Resources, and Environment, Breaking the Logjam, 6/11/11, http://bcjournal.org/volume-14/breaking-the-logjam.html?printerFriendly=true

In the wake of a markedly diminished strategic threat from the Cuban island after the end of the Cold War, domestic political goals trumped other goals in terms of setting Cuba policy, particularly during election years. Nonetheless, legislative momentum for engaging Cuba has picked up decidedly, even as some presidents have lagged behind. This momentum has coincided with a slow shift in public opinion and demographics that make ending the embargo and engaging Cuba popular amongst both the majority of American voters, as well as the majority of the Cuban-American constituency.¶ Two events in the late 1990s have often been pointed to as significant turning points in the political views and weight of Cuban-American voters. First, many traveled to Cuba for the 1998 papal visit, and embraced Pope John Paul II’s call for “Cuba to open to the world, and the world to open to Cuba.”40 then, two years later, the Elián González episode of 2000 allowed for a shift dubbed by Daniel Erikson the “Elián meets the China syndrome.”41 With the majority of Americans calling for Elián to be reunited with his father in Cuba, a position that anti-Castro Cuban-Americans opposed vehemently, the Cuban-American community, by taking such a hard-line stance, lost some of its legitimacy in the American political system. Furthermore, a harsh Cuba policy stood in stark contrast to a simultaneous broadening of America’s economic and diplomatic ties with China.¶ Polls over the last decade have revealed the dramatic shift in the views of Cuban-Americans. They indicate that, while in 1997, only 22 percent of Miami-Dade County Cuban-Americans favored ending the embargo, by 2004, that percentage had risen to 34 percent, and by December 2008 to 55 percent (in 2008, 65 percent also supported ending restrictions on travel and remittances).42 these statistics indicate that Obama’s positions in the run-up to the 2008 presidential election may not have been such a bad political strategy after all. Furthermore, we should expect to see politicians increasingly catering to these beliefs as they continue to gain political expediency.¶ Perhaps more significantly, Americans on both sides of the political spectrum support significant changes in Cuba policy, from relaxing travel and remittance restrictions to opening up diplomatic relations. They also believe that the island provides little threat to the United States, and that engagement is the most likely policy to lead Cuba towards democratic reform. An April 2009 World Public opinion poll drew the following conclusions from republican (r) and Democrat (D) pollsters:43¶ In terms of the US embargo policy, just days before the World Public opinion poll was released, separate Gallup and ABC polls showed that approximately 55 percent of Americans believe the embargo should be ended, with 35 percent believing it should be continued, and the rest unsure.44 Due to such strong public support for a shift in Cuba policy, the risks of making a drastic shift in the country’s Cuba policies are decreasing rapidly. Leaders willing to promote such a transformation stand to reap significant political gains.¶ A steady demographical shift in the Cuban-American population also makes such a stance politically pragmatic. As experts have noted, first generation Cuban-Americans, traditionally more linked to Cuba policy hardliners, “are retreating from the political stage, if for no reason other than age.”45 In contrast, later-generation immigrants are no longer single-issue voters, made particularly evident during the 2008 election, as the majority of Cuban-American voters agreed with Obama’s Cuba policy, but still voted for Senator John McCain.¶ In fact, Florida International University (FIU) polls show that on a variety of issues, including ending restrictions on remittances and travel, ending the embargo, and reestablishing diplomatic relations, there is a 15 to 20 percent hike in support for these policies among those who immigrated between 1980 and 1998, as opposed to earlier immigrants. There is an additional increase of 5 percent for those who came to America after 1998.46 Clearly, as these demographics continue to provide rising support for engagement and ending the embargo, politicians should and will attempt to shift Cuba policy accordingly.¶ Nonetheless, while the above views do provide increasing political clout, one cannot discard the historical significance of election year Florida politics. During his campaign, President Bush repeatedly condemned the June 2000 seizure of Elián González and made it clear that “he intended to confront [Fidel] Castro.”47 Harsh anti-Castro rhetoric ultimately helped Bush win the election, as he won 80 percent of the Cuban-American vote and the state of Florida by only 537 votes.48¶ In the aftermath of the 2000 presidential election, it is inevitable that candidates continue to fear alienating a strong voting bloc in a key swing state. Similarly, republican campaign finance money going into Democratic coffers bolsters the status quo and prevents policy modifications.49 Florida can still determine an election, but candidates should note the weakening correlation between the voting patterns of Cuban-Americans and the Cuba policies touted by politicians, as well as the demographical changes that have taken place since 2000.¶ Ultimately, public support amongst Americans as a whole, as well as Cuban-Americans in particular, shows that pragmatism is winning, and that the majority prefers engagement over isolation. More recently, Raúl’s reforms are also providing domestic momentum for a transformation of US-Cuba policy. Forward-looking American leaders will see these shifts and take advantage of the political gains that they provide by ending the embargo and normalizing relations with Cuba.

1ar

at jackson

Nuke war threat is real and o/w racism and invisible violence---their expansion of structural violence to an all-pervasive omnipresence makes preventing war impossible – also answers their value to life claim

Boulding 78 - Ken is professor of economics and director, Center for Research on Conflict Resolution, University of Michigan, “Future Directions in Conflict and Peace Studies,” The Journal of Conflict Resolution, Vol. 22, No. 2 (Jun., 1978), pp. 342-354

Galtung is very legitimately interested in problems of world poverty and the failure of development of the really poor. He tried to amalga- mate this interest with the peace research interest in the more narrow sense. Unfortunately, he did this by downgrading the study of inter- national peace, labeling it "negative peace" (it should really have been labeled "negative war") and then developing the concept of "structural violence," which initially meant all those social structures and histories which produced an expectation of life less than that of the richest and longest-lived societies. He argued by analogy that if people died before the age, say, of 70 from avoidable causes, that this was a death in "war"' which could only be remedied by something called "positive peace." Unfortunately, the concept of structural violence was broadened, in the word of one slightly unfriendly critic, to include anything that Galtung did not like. Another factor in this situation was the feeling, certainly in the 1960s and early 1970s, that nuclear deterrence was actually succeeding as deterrence and that the problem of nuclear war had receded into the background. This it seems to me is a most danger- ous illusion and diverted conflict and peace research for ten years or more away from problems of disarmament and stable peace toward a grand, vague study of world developments, for which most of the peace researchers are not particularly well qualified. To my mind, at least, the quality of the research has suffered severely as a result.' The complex nature of the split within the peace research community is reflected in two international peace research organizations. The official one, the International Peace Research Association (IPRA), tends to be dominated by Europeans somewhat to the political left, is rather, hostile to the United States and to the multinational cor- porations, sympathetic to the New International Economic Order and thinks of itself as being interested in justice rather than in peace. The Peace Science Society (International), which used to be called the Peace Research Society (International), is mainly the creation of Walter Isard of the University of Pennsylvania. It conducts meetings all around the world and represents a more peace-oriented, quantitative, science- based enterprise, without much interest in ideology. COPRED, while officially the North American representative of IPRA, has very little active connection with it and contains within itself the same ideological split which, divides the peace research community in general. It has, however, been able to hold together and at least promote a certain amount of interaction between the two points of view. Again representing the "scientific" rather than the "ideological" point of view, we have SIPRI, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, very generously (by the usual peace research stand- ards) financed by the Swedish government, which has performed an enormously useful service in the collection and publishing of data on such things as the war industry, technological developments, arma- ments, and the arms trade. The Institute is very largely the creation of Alva Myrdal. In spite of the remarkable work which it has done, how- ever, her last book on disarmament (1976) is almost a cry of despair over the folly and hypocrisy of international policies, the overwhelming power of the military, and the inability of mere information, however good, go change the course of events as we head toward ultimate ca- tastrophe. I do not wholly share her pessimism, but it is hard not to be a little disappointed with the results of this first generation of the peace research movement. Myrdal called attention very dramatically to the appalling danger in which Europe stands, as the major battleground between Europe, the United States, and the Soviet Union if war ever should break out. It may perhaps be a subconscious recognition-and psychological denial-of the sword of Damocles hanging over Europe that has made the European peace research movement retreat from the realities of the international system into what I must unkindly describe as fantasies of justice. But the American peace research community, likewise, has retreated into a somewhat niggling scientism, with sophisticated meth- odologies and not very many new ideas. I must confess that when I first became involved with the peace research enterprise 25 years ago I had hopes that it might produce some- thing like the Keynesian revolution in economics, which was the result of some rather simple ideas that had never really been thought out clearly before (though they had been anticipated by Malthus and others), coupled with a substantial improvement in the information system with the development of national income statistics which rein- forced this new theoretical framework. As a result, we have had in a single generation a very massive change in what might be called the "conventional wisdom" of economic policy, and even though this conventional wisdom is not wholly wise, there is a world of difference between Herbert Hoover and his total failure to deal with the Great Depression, simply because of everybody's ignorance, and the moder- ately skillful handling of the depression which followed the change in oil prices in 1-974, which, compared with the period 1929 to 1932, was little more than a bad cold compared with a galloping pneumonia. In the international system, however, there has been only glacial change in the conventional wisdom. There has been some improvement. Kissinger was an improvement on John Foster Dulles. We have had the beginnings of detente, and at least the possibility on the horizon of stable peace between the United States and the Soviet Union, indeed in the whole temperate zone-even though the tropics still remain uneasy and beset with arms races, wars, and revolutions which we cannot really afford. Nor can we pretend that peace around the temper- ate zone is stable enough so that we do not have to worry about it. The qualitative arms race goes on and could easily take us over the cliff. The record of peace research in the last generation, therefore, is one of very partial success. It has created a discipline and that is something of long-run consequence, most certainly for the good. It has made very little dent on the conventional wisdom of the policy makers anywhere in the world. It has not been able to prevent an arms race, any more§ Marked 18:43 § , I suppose we might say, than the Keynesian economics has been able to prevent inflation. But whereas inflation is an inconvenience, the arms race may well be another catastrophe. Where, then, do we go from here? Can we see new horizons for peace and conflict research to get it out of the doldrums in which it has been now for almost ten years? The challenge is surely great enough. It still remains true that war, the breakdown of Galtung's "negative peace," remains the greatest clear and present danger to the human race, a danger to human survival far greater than poverty, or injustice, or oppression, desirable and necessary as it is to eliminate these things. Up to the present generation, war has been a cost and an inconven- ience to the human race, but it has rarely been fatal to the process of evolutionary development as a whole. It has probably not absorbed more than 5% of human time, effort, and resources. Even in the twenti- eth century, with its two world wars and innumerable smaller ones, it has probably not acounted for more than 5% of deaths, though of course a larger proportion of premature deaths. Now, however, ad- vancing technology is creating a situation where in the first place we are developing a single world system that does not have the redundancy of the many isolated systems of the past and in which therefore if any- thing goes wrong everything goes wrong. The Mayan civilization could collapse in 900 A.D., and collapse almost irretrievably without Europe or China even being aware of the fact. When we had a number of iso- lated systems, the catastrophe in one was ultimately recoverable by migration from the surviving systems. The one-world system, therefore, which science, transportation, and communication are rapidly giving us, is inherently more precarious than the many-world system of the past. It is all the more important, therefore, to make it internally robust and capable only of recoverable catastrophes. The necessity for stable peace, therefore, increases with every improvement in technology, either of war or of peacex

at predicts

Turn—rejecting strategic predictions of threats makes them inevitable—decision makers will rely on preconceived conceptions of threat rather than the more qualified predictions of analysts

Fitzsimmons, 2007 [Michael, Washington DC defense analyst, “The Problem of Uncertainty in Strategic Planning”, Survival, Winter 06-07, online]

But handling even this weaker form of uncertainty is still quite challeng- ing. If not sufficiently bounded, a high degree of variability in planning factors can exact a significant price on planning. The complexity presented by great variability strains the cognitive abilities of even the most sophisticated decision- makers.15 And even a robust decision-making process sensitive to cognitive limitations necessarily sacrifices depth of analysis for breadth as variability and complexity grows. It should follow, then, that in planning under conditions of risk, variability in strategic calculation should be carefully tailored to available analytic and decision processes. Why is this important? What harm can an imbalance between complexity and cognitive or analytic capacity in strategic planning bring? Stated simply, where analysis is silent or inadequate, the personal beliefs of decision-makers fill the void. As political scientist Richard Betts found in a study of strategic sur- prise, in ‘an environment that lacks clarity, abounds with conflicting data, and allows no time for rigorous assessment of sources and validity, ambiguity allows intuition or wishfulness to drive interpretation ... The greater the ambiguity, the greater the impact of preconceptions.’16 The decision-making environment that Betts describes here is one of political-military crisis, not long-term strategic planning. But a strategist who sees uncertainty as the central fact of his environ- ment brings upon himself some of the pathologies of crisis decision-making. He invites ambiguity, takes conflicting data for granted and substitutes a priori scepticism about the validity of prediction for time pressure as a rationale for discounting the importance of analytic rigour. It is important not to exaggerate the extent to which data and ‘rigorous assessment’ can illuminate strategic choices. Ambiguity is a fact of life, and scepticism of analysis is necessary. Accordingly, the intuition and judgement of decision-makers will always be vital to strategy, and attempting to subordinate those factors to some formulaic, deterministic decision-making model would be both undesirable and unrealistic. All the same, there is danger in the opposite extreme as well. Without careful analysis of what is relatively likely and what is relatively unlikely, what will be the possible bases for strategic choices? A decision-maker with no faith in prediction is left with little more than a set of worst-case scenarios and his existing beliefs about the world to confront the choices before him. Those beliefs may be more or less well founded, but if they are not made explicit and subject to analysis and debate regarding their application to particular strategic contexts, they remain only beliefs and premises, rather than rational judgements. Even at their best, such decisions are likely to be poorly understood by the organisations charged with their implementation. At their worst, such decisions may be poorly understood by the decision-makers themselves.