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The aff is economic imperialism hidden by benevolence ---this encourages countervailing forces which turn the case.

Veltmeyer, ’11 - Professor of Development Studies at the Universidad Autónoma de Zacatecas in Mexico and Professor of Sociology and International Development Studies at St. Mary’s University, (Henry, “US imperialism in Latin America: then and now, here and there,” estudios críticos del desarrollo, vol. I, núm. 1, segundo semestre de 2011, pp. 89–123, http://estudiosdeldesarrollo.net/critical/rev1/3.pdf)//A-Berg

Finding itself in the wake of a second world war as the dominant economic power in the «free world» the US strove assiduously to consolidate this power at the level of foreign policy. Under prevailing conditions that included the potential threat posed by the USSR and the fallout from a spreading and unstoppable decolonization movement in the economically backward areas of the world, United States (US) policymakers decided on, and actively pursued, a foreign policy with three pillars. One of these pillars was a strategy of economic reconstruction of an economically devastated Europe and the capitalist development of the economies and societies on the periphery of the system. A second pillar of the post–war order was what would become known as the «Bretton woods system», composed of three institutions (a Bank of Economic Reconstruction and Development—the World Bank today; the International Monetary fund; and a General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade that would morph into the WTO 50 years on) and the mechanism of the US dollar, based on a fixed gold standard, as the currency of international trade.1 The third pillar was would become the United Nations—a system of international organizations designed to provide the necessary conditions of (capitalist) development and collective security, a system of multilateral conflict resolution. The motivating force behind this foreign policy was clear enough: to advance the geopolitical and economic interests of the US as a world power, including considerations of profit and strategic security (to make the world save for US investments and to reactivate a capital accumulation process). It was to be an empire of free trade and capitalist development, plus democracy where possible, a system of capitalist democracies backed up by a system of international organizations dominated by the US, a military alliance (NATO) focused on Europe in the protection of US interests and collective security, and a more global network of military bases to provide logistical support for its global military apparatus. Within the institutional framework of this system and international order the US was particularly concerned to consolidate its power and influence in Latin America and the Caribbean, regarded by policymakers and many politicians as a legitimate sphere of undue influence—the exercise of state power in the «national interest». This chapter will elaborate on economic and political dynamics of the efforts pursued by the US to pursue these interests via the projection of state power—and the resulting «informal empire» constructed by default. US IMPERIALISM IN LATIN AMERICA—FORMS AND DYNAMICS The US has always been imperialistic in its approach to national development in Latin America, but in the wake of World War II the situation that it found itself in—commanding, it is estimated, half of the world’s industrial capacity and 80% of its financial resources; and already an occupying power of major proportions3—awakened in US policymaking circles and its foreign policy establishment its historic mission regarding the Americas and also the dream of world domination, provoking the quest to bring it about in the preferred form of an «informal empire». A key strategy to this purpose was to institute the rules for what would later be termed «global governance»—for securing its economic and geopolitical strategic intents in a world liberated from colonial rule (id est competing empires). The resulting world order, dubbed Bretton Woods I by some,4 provided an institutional framework for advancing the geopolitical strategic interests of the US in the context of a «cold war» waged against the emerging power of the USSR, and for advancing cooperation for international development, a policy designed to ensure that the economically backward countries seeking to liberate themselves from the yoke of European colonialism would not succumb to the siren of communism, that they would undertake a nation–building and development process on a capitalist path. This development project required the US to assume the lead but also share power with its major allies, strategic partners in a common enterprise organised as the OECD and a united Europe,6 with a system of United Nations institutions to provide a multilateral response to any security threats (and that prevented any one country for embarking on the path of world domination via unilateral action. This was the price that the US had to pay for national security under conditions of an emerging threat presented by the USSR—soviet communism backed up by what was feared to be a growing if not commanding state power. In this context the US began to construct its empire, and it did so on a foundation of six pillars: 1. Consolidation of the liberal capitalist world order, renovating it on neoliberal lines in the early 1980s when conditions allowed; 2. A system of military bases strategically across the world, to provide thereby the staging point and logistics for the projection of military power when needed, and rule by military force when circumstances would dictate; 3. A project of cooperation for international development, to provide financial and technical assistance to countries and regimes willing to sign on the project—to provide a safe haven for US economic interests and pave the way for the expansion of capitalism and democracy, the bulwarks of US imperialism; 4. Implementation of a neoliberal agenda of policy reforms—to adjust the macroeconomic and development policies to the requirements of a new world order in which the forces of freedom would be released from the constraints of the welfare–development state; 5. Regional integration—construction of regional free trade agreements to cooperate with, and not discriminate against, US economic interests regarding international trade; 6. Globalization—the integration of economies across the world into the global economy in a system designed to give maximum freedom to the operating units of the global empire. Each strategy not only served as a pillar of imperial policy but provided the focal point for the projection of state power in different forms as circumstances required or permitted. Together they constituted what might be termed imperialism. Each element of the system was, and is, dynamic in its operations but ultimately unstable because of the countervailing forces that they generated. Within ruling class circles in the US since at least 2000 there is an open acceptance that theirs is an imperial state and that the US should maintain or act to restore its dominant position in the 21st century by any means available, and certainly by force if need be. The whole tenor of the debate in the past two decades over US foreign policy, Mann (2007) notes, is framed in these terms. In this connection, Richard Hass, the current director of Policy Planning in e State Department, wrote an essay in November 2000 advocating that the US adopt an «imperial» feign policy. He defined this as «a foreign policy that attempts to organise the world along certain principles affecting relations between states and conditions within them». This would not be achieved through colonization or colonies but thorough what he termed «informal control» based on a «good neighbour policy» backed up by military force if and when necessary—harking back to the «informal empire» of a previous era (McLean, 1995; Roorda, 1998). Mechanisms such as international financial markets and structural reforms in macroeconomic policy, and agencies such as the World Bank, the WTO and the IMF, would work to ensure the dominance of US interests, with the military iron fist backing up the invisible hand of the market and any failure in multilateral security arrangements. This system of «economic imperialism», maintained by US hegemony as leader of the «free world» (representing the virtues of capitalist democracy), was in place and fully functioning from the 1950s throughout 1980s and the reign of Ronald Reagan. In the 1990s, with the disappearance of the threat of the Soviet Union and international communism, this system of economic imperialism, bed as it was on the hegemony of «democracy and freedom» as well multilateralism in international security arrangements, did not as much break down as it was eclipsed by the emergence of the «new imperialism» based on the unilateral projection of military force as a means of securing world domination in «the American century».7 This conception of a «new imperialism», a «raw imperialism» that would not «hesitate to use [coercive] force if, when and where necessary» (Cooper, 2000), based on «aggressive multilateralism» or the unilateral projection, and strategic use, of state power including emphatic military force, was advanced in neoconservative circles over years of largely internal debate, and put into practice by a succession of regimes, both democratic and republican. It achieved its consummate form in George W. Bush’s White House, in the Gang of Four (Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Condoleeza Rice, Dick Cheney),8 and its maximum expression in a policy of imperial war in the Middle east and the Gulf region. Although the US also projected its military power in other theatres of imperial war such Yugoslavia9 and Colombia (viz. the covert Colombia– centered class war «on subversives» against the FARC–EP’ overt regional «war on drugs») the policy of imperial war and the strategy of military force were primarily directed towards the Gulf region (see, inter alia, Petras and Veltmeyer, 2003). In the academic world the issue as to the specific or dominant form taken by imperialism has not been generally framed as a matter of when and under what circumstances military force might be needed or legitimately used (generlly seen as a «last resort» but as the necessary part of the arsenal of force available to the state, conceived of as the only legitimate repository of the use of violence in the «national interest»). Rather, the issue of armed force in the imperialist projection of military power has been framed in terms of an understanding, or the argument. That an imperial order cannot be maintained by force and coercion; it requires «hegemony», which is to say, acquiescence by the subalterns of imperial power achieved by a widespread belief in e legitimacy of that power generated by an overarching myth or dominant ideology—the idea of freedom in the post world war II context of the «cold war» against communism and the idea of globalization in the new imperial order established in the 1980s. Power relations of domination and subordination, even when backed up by coercive or armed force, invariably give rise to resistance, and are only sustainable if and when they are legitimated by an effective ideology—ideas of «democracy» and «freedom» in the case of the American empire or «globalization» in the case of the economic imperialism that came into play in the 1990s.

The impact is cultural extinction.

Escobar 95 - Distinguished Professor of Anthropology, UNC-Chapel Hill (Arturo, “Encountering Development: The Making and Unmaking of the Third World,” pg. 52-54)//BB

The crucial threshold and transformation that took place in the early post– World War II period discussed in this chapter were the result not of a radical epistemological or political breakthrough but of the reorganization of a number of factors that allowed the Third World to display a new visibility and to irrupt into a new realm of language. This new space was carved out of the vast and dense surface of the Third World, placing it in a field of power. Underdevelopment became the subject of political technologies that sought to erase it from the face of the Earth but that ended up, instead, multiplying it to infinity.¶ Development fostered a way of conceiving of social life as a technical problem, as a matter of rational decision and management to be entrusted to that group of people—the development professionals—whose specialized knowledge allegedly qualified them for the task. Instead of seeing change as a process rooted in the interpretation of each society's history and cultural tradition—as a number of intellectuals in various parts of the Third World had attempted to do in the 1920s and 1930s (Gandhi being the best known of them)—these professionals sought to devise mechanisms and procedures to make societies fit a preexisting model that embodied the structures and functions of modernity. Like sorcerers' apprentices, the development professionals awakened once again the dream of reason that, in their hands, as in earlier instances, produced a troubling reality.¶ At times, development grew to be so important for Third World countries that it became acceptable for their rulers to subject their populations to an infinite variety of interventions, to more encompassing forms of power and systems of control; so important that First and Third World elites accepted the price of massive impoverishment, of selling Third World resources to the most convenient bidder, of degrading their physical and human ecologies, of killing and torturing, of condemning their indigenous populations to near extinction; so important that many in the Third World began to think of themselves as inferior, underdeveloped, and ignorant and to doubt the value of their own culture, deciding instead to pledge allegiance to the banners of reason and progress; so important, finally, that the achievement of development clouded the awareness of the impossibility of fulfilling the promises that development seemed to be making.¶ After four decades of this discourse, most forms of understanding and representing the Third World are still dictated by the same basic tenets. The forms of power that have appeared act not so much by repression but by normalization; not by ignorance but by controlled knowledge; not by humanitarian concern but by the bureaucratization of social action. As the conditions that gave rise to development became more pressing, it could only increase its hold, refine its methods, and extend its reach even further. That the materiality of these conditions is not conjured up by an “objective” body of knowledge but is charted out by the rational discourses of economists, politicians, and development experts of all types should already be clear. What has been achieved is a specific configuration of factors and forces in which the new language of development finds support. As a discourse, development is thus a very real historical formation, albeit articulated around an artificial construct (underdevelopment) and upon a certain materiality (the conditions baptized as underdevelopment), which must be conceptualized in different ways if the power of the development discourse is to be challenged or displaced.¶ To be sure, there is a situation of economic exploitation that must be recognized and dealt with. Power is too cynical at the level of exploitation and should be resisted on its own terms. There is also a certain materiality of life conditions that is extremely preoccupying and that requires great effort and attention. But those seeking to understand the Third World through development have long lost sight of this materiality by building upon it a reality that like a castle in the air has haunted us for decades. Understanding the history of the investment of the Third World by Western forms of knowledge and power is a way to shift the ground somewhat so that we can start to look at that materiality with different eyes and in different categories.¶ The coherence of effects that the development discourse achieved is the key to its success as a hegemonic form of representation: the construction of the poor and underdeveloped as universal, preconstituted subjects, based on the privilege of the representers; the exercise of power over the Third World made possible by this discursive homogenization (which entails the erasure of the complexity and diversity of Third World peoples, so that a squatter in Mexico City, a Nepalese peasant, and a Tuareg nomad become equivalent to each other as poor and underdeveloped); and the colonization and domination of the natural and human ecologies and economies of the Third World. 26¶ Development assumes a teleology to the extent that it proposes that the “natives” will sooner or later be reformed; at the same time, however, it reproduces endlessly the separation between reformers and those to be reformed by keeping alive the premise of the Third World as different and inferior, as having a limited humanity in relation to the accomplished European. Development relies on this perpetual recognition and disavowal of difference, a feature identified by Bhabha (1990) as inherent to discrimination. The signifiers of “poverty”, “illiteracy,” “hunger,” and so forth have already achieved a fixity as signifieds of “underdevelopment” which seems impossible to sunder. Perhaps no other factor has contributed to cementing the association of “poverty” with “underdevelopment” as the discourse of economists. To them I dedicate the coming chapter.

The alternative is to vote negative --- rejecting imperialism in this round serves as a starting point to theorize anti-imperialism and break down hegemonic systems of knowledge.

Morrissey 11 – (John, Department of Geography, National University of Ireland, 2011, “Architects of Empire: The Military–Strategic Studies Complex and the Scripting of US National Security,” Antipode Vol. 43, (2):435-470, http://aran.library.nuigalway.ie/xmlui/handle/10379/2893)//a-berg

As an academic working in political geography, a key starting point of resistance for me is the careful detailing of the largely unseen inner workings of empire in our contemporary world, ultimately in order to be better able to resist it (which is what this paper has been about). That resistance can manifest itself in counter-scriptings in a variety of contexts, from lecture halls to town halls, from academic journals to online blogs. And in a variety of public forums, many geographers have played, and continue to play, important roles in critiquing the war on terror and advancing more nuanced, reasoned and humane geographies and histories of Islam and the Middle East (Gregory 2005). Such academic and public intellectual work can also crucially liaise with, learn from, and be transformed by grassroots activists in peace and social justice movements throughout the world.44 And linking to their work in our teaching especially has more power than perhaps we sometimes realise; especially given the multimedia teaching and learning tools available today.45 A recent Antipodespecial issue saw a number of insightful reflections on the possibilities of “practising public scholarship” [volume 40(3), 2008]. The contributors outline various ways in which critical geographies can support and enable political and social activism. In addition, Don Mitchell makes an important point in reminding us thatacademic “intellectual” and “bureaucratic” work are also “vital parts of any activism” (Mitchell 2008:448). Disrupting and countering the abstracted geopolitical scriptings of strategic studies can take on a variety of forms. But both inside and outside the academy, a key intellectual task, I think, is theorizing anti-imperialism— both historically and in our contemporary moment. Effective counterdiscourses for our time must surely incorporate the lessons learned from the anti-imperial/anti-colonial struggles of history—from Ireland to India, from Algeria to Vietnam. Appellations like “insurgents” do the same discursive work today as the historical preference “rebels” did in reductively demonizing whole populations and delegitimizing their right to resistance. But more importantly, perhaps, they serve too to disengage us from unpacking the discourses and practices of contemporary anti-imperialism. Yet historical contexts of resistance have much to offer if our endgame is articulating critical and humane geographies of our contemporary world. And this is a crucial challenge, given the sheer pervasiveness of strategic geopolitical discourses that negate human geographical realities. Such scriptings are not only intellectually unconvincing; they are dangerous and hugely consequential. In seeking to avoid dangerously reductive accounts of the world, geography for me has always had a particular responsibility and strength. In understanding conflict, past and present, discourse has perpetually played a troubled role. In reading the current proliferation of “geopolitical discourse”, it is useful to bear in mind history’smultiple reminders of the impossibilities of “colonial discourse” (Morrissey 2010). There is a need to spatialize and locate the material and corporeal geographies of war; not just its imaginative geographies. The spaces and agency of resistance or so-called “insurgency” in the war on terror, for example, are little theorized and frequently not even recognized; reflecting a power relations of knowledge familiar to any student of colonial history. This remains a key challenge for critical accounts of our contemporary geopolitical world. That said, however, connecting what James Sidaway calls the “banal geopolitics” of militarism to its brutal consequences will always be an urgent task too (Sidaway 2001, 2008). And the dots can be joined. The military–strategic studies complex in contemporary America is a powerful producer of banal geopolitics, patronized and prioritized geographical knowledge and ultimately actionable geostrategic intelligence. Its experts and advocates are both architects of empire and apologists for its consequences. Their dominant national security discourse is about positing legitimized, aggressive US military action against the threat of irrational terrorism emanating from the Middle East; it is about presenting the USA as the guardian of global economic health; and it is about imperial ambition too. This paper has sought to expose the military–strategic studies complex as playing a central role in support of that imperial ambition and in the advancement of its aggressive geopolitics. I hope it has signalled too the imperative of resistance. In the face of ubiquitous scriptings of insecurity, war and geopolitics in our contemporary world, the task of both exposing the geoeconomic stakes and insisting on real places with real people, with bodies and rights just like us, is as urgent as ever.

Rejecting the affirmative’s production of knowledge in THIS academic space sparks a language of critique that reclaims public spaces from the militarization of knowledge --- this is NOT about offense and defense or weighing the case --- this is a pass/fail gateway issue. If the 1AC has produced bad scholarship, you vote negative to send them home to write a better 1AC.

Giroux 12 (Henry, Global TV Network Chair in English and Cultural Studies at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, “Against the Militarized Academy”, 7.4.12,http://nnomy.org/index.php?option=com_flexicontent&view=items&cid=290%3Amilitarism-a-war&id=545%3Aagainst-the-militarized-academy&Itemid=821&lang=en, [CL])

While there is an ongoing discussion about what shape the military-industrial complex will take under an Obama presidency, what is often left out of this analysis is the intrusion of the military into higher education. One example of the increasingly intensified and expansive symbiosis between the military-industrial complex and academia was on full display when Robert Gates, the secretary of defense, announced the creation of what he calls a new "Minerva Consortium," ironically named after the goddess of wisdom, whose purpose is to fund various universities to "carry out social-sciences research relevant to national security."(1) Gates's desire to turn universities into militarized knowledge factories producing knowledge, research and personnel in the interest of the Homeland (In)Security State should be of special concern for intellectuals, artists, academics and others who believe that the university should oppose such interests and alignments. At the very least, the emergence of the Minerva Consortium raises a larger set of concerns about the ongoing militarization of higher education in the United States. In a post-9/11 world, with its all-embracing war on terror and a culture of fear, the increasing spread of the discourse and values of militarization throughout the social order is intensifying the shift from the promise of a liberal democracy to the reality of a militarized society. Militarization suggests more than simply a militaristic ideal - with its celebration of war as the truest measure of the health of the nation and the soldier-warrior as the most noble expression of the merging of masculinity and unquestioning patriotism - but an intensification and expansion of the underlying values, practices, ideologies, social relations and cultural representations associated with military culture. What appears new about the amplified militarization of the post-9/11 world is that it has become normalized, serving as a powerful educational force that shapes our lives, memories and daily experiences. As an educational force, military power produces identities, goods, institutions, knowledge, modes of communication and affective investments - in short, it now bears down on all aspects of social life and the social order. As Michael Geyer points out, what is distinctive about the militarization of the social order is that civil society not only "organizes itself for the production of violence,"(2) but increasingly spurs a gradual erosion of civil liberties. Military power and policies are expanded to address not only matters of defense and security, but also problems associated with the entire health and social life of the nation, which are now measured by military spending, discipline and loyalty, as well as hierarchical modes of authority. As citizens increasingly assume the roles of informer, soldier and consumer willing to enlist in or be conscripted by the totalizing war on terror, we see the very idea of the university as a site of critical thinking, public service and socially responsible research being usurped by a manic jingoism and a market-driven fundamentalism that enshrine the entrepreneurial spirit and military aggression as means to dominate and control society. This should not surprise us, since, as William G. Martin, a professor of sociology at Binghamton University, indicates, "universities, colleges and schools have been targeted precisely because they are charged with both socializing youth and producing knowledge of peoples and cultures beyond the borders of Anglo-America."(3) But rather than be lulled into complacency by the insidious spread of corporate and military power, we need to be prepared to reclaim institutions such as the university that have historically served as vital democratic spheresprotecting and serving the interests of social justice and equality. What I want to suggest is that such a struggle is not only political, but also pedagogical in nature. Over 17 million students pass through the hallowed halls of academe, and it is crucial that they be educated in ways that enable them to recognize creeping militarization and its effects throughout American society, particularly in terms of how these effects threaten "democratic government at home just as they menace the independence and sovereignty of other countries."(4) But students must also recognize how such anti-democratic forces work in attempting to dismantle the university itself as a place to learn how to think critically and participate in public debate and civic engagement.(5) In part, this means giving them the tools to fight for the demilitarization of knowledge on college campuses - to resist complicity with the production of knowledge, information and technologies in classrooms and research labs that contribute to militarized goals and violence. Even so, there is more at stake than simply educating students to be alert to the dangers of militarization and the way in which it is redefining the very mission of higher education. Chalmers Johnson, in his continuing critique of the threat that the politics of empire presents to democracy at home and abroad, argues that if the United States is not to degenerate into a military dictatorship, in spite of Obama's election, a grass-roots movement will have to occupy center stage in opposing militarization, government secrecy and imperial power, while reclaiming the basic principles of democracy.(6) Such a task may seem daunting, but there is a crucial need for faculty, students, administrators and concerned citizens to develop alliances for long-term organizations and social movements to resist the growing ties among higher education, on the one hand, and the armed forces, intelligence agencies and war industries on the other - ties that play a crucial role in reproducing militarized knowledge. Opposing militarization as part of a broader pedagogical strategy in and out of the classroom also raises the question of what kinds of competencies, skills and knowledge might be crucial to such a task. One possibility is to develop critical educational theories and practices that define the space of learning not only through the critical consumption of knowledge but also through its production for peaceful and socially just ends. In the fight against militarization and "armed intellectuals," educators need a language of critique, but they also need a language that embraces a sense of hope and collective struggle.This means elaborating the meaning of politics through a concerted effort to expand the space of politics by reclaiming "the public character of spaces, relations, and institutions regarded as private" on the other.(7) We live at a time when matters of life and death are central to political governance.While registering the shift in power toward the large-scale production of death, disposability and exclusion, a new understanding of the meaning and purpose of higher education must also point to notions of agency, power and responsibility that operate in the service of life, democratic struggles and the expansion of human rights. Finally, if higher education is to come to grips with the multilayered pathologies produced by militarization, it will have to rethink not merely the space of the university as a democratic public sphere, but also the global space in which intellectuals, educators, students, artists, labor unions and other social actors and movements can form transnational alliances to oppose the death-dealing ideology of militarization and its effects on the world - including violence, pollution, massive poverty, racism, the arms trade, growth of privatized armies, civil conflict, child slavery and the ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. As the Bush regime comes to an end, it is time for educators and students to take a stand and develop global organizations that can be mobilized in the effort to supplant a culture of war with a culture of peace, whose elemental principles must be grounded in relations of economic, political, cultural and social democracy and the desire to sustain human life.

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Text: Congress should delegate the authority to negotiate as an economic partner with Mexico in the Trans-Pacific Partnership to the Department of State. The Department of State should pursue and enact the congressional delegation.

Solves and net benefit is ptx.

Epstein et Al., 99 (David Epstein- Department of Political Science and Stanford Graduate School of Business, Columbia and Stanford University, and Sharyn O’Hallaron- Department of Political Science and the School of International and Public Affairs and Hoover Institution, Columbia and Stanford University, January 1999 (“The Nondelegation Doctrine and the Separation of Powers” – Cardozo Law Review) p. lexis

Our institutional analysis begins with the observation that there are two alternative modes for specifying the details of public policy. Policy can be made through the typical legislative process, in which a committee considers a bill and reports it to the floor of the chamber, and then a majority of the floor members must agree on a policy to enact. Alternatively, Congress can pass a law that delegates authority to regulatory agencies, allowing them to fill in some or all of the details of policy. The key is that, given a fixed amount of policy details to be specified, these two modes of poli [*962] cymaking are substitutes for each other. To the degree that one is used more, the other will perforce be used less. Note also that it is Congress who chooses where policy is made. Legislators can either write detailed, exacting laws, in which case the executive branch will have little or no substantive input into policy, they can delegate the details to agencies, thereby giving the executive branch a substantial role in the policymaking process, or they can pick any point in between. Since legislators' primary goal is reelection, it follows that policy will be made so as to maximize legislators' reelection chances. Thus, delegation will follow the natural fault lines of legislators' political advantage. In making this institutional choice, legislators face costs either way. Making explicit laws requires legislative time and energy that might be profitably spent on more electorally productive activities. After all, one of the reasons bureaucracies are created is for agencies to implement policies in areas where Congress has neither the time nor expertise to micro-manage policy decisions, and by restricting flexibility, Congress would be limiting agencies' ability to adjust to changing circumstances. This tradeoff is captured well by Terry Moe in his discussion of regulatory structure: The most direct way [to control agencies] is for today's authorities to specify, in excruciating detail, precisely what the agency is to do and how it is to do it, leaving as little as possible to the discretionary judgment of bureaucrats - and thus as little as possible for future authorities to exercise control over, short of passing new legislation... Obviously, this is not a formula for creating effective organizations. In the interests of public protection, agencies are knowingly burdened with cumbersome, complicated, technically inappropriate structures that undermine their capacity to perform their jobs well. n40 Where oversight and monitoring problems do not exist, legislators would readily delegate authority to the executive branch, taking advantage of agency expertise, conserving scarce resources of time, staff, and energy, and avoiding the logrolls, delays, and informational inefficiencies associated with the committee system. Consider, for example, the issue of airline safety, which is characterized on the one hand by the need for technical expertise, and on the other hand by an almost complete absence of potential political benefits. That is, policymakers will receive little credit if airlines run well and no disasters occur, but they will have to with [*963] stand intense scrutiny if something goes wrong. n41 Furthermore, legislative and executive preferences on this issue would tend to be almost perfectly aligned - have fewer accidents as long as the costs to airlines are not prohibitive. The set of individuals receiving benefits, the public who use the airlines, is diffused and ill organized, while those paying the costs of regulation, the airline companies, are well-organized and politically active. Furthermore, keeping in mind that deficiencies in the system are easily detectable, delegated power is relatively simple to monitor. For all these reasons, even if legislators had unlimited time and resources of their own (which they do not), delegation to the executive branch would be the preferred mode of policymaking.

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A. Interpretation --- economic engagement must use economic contacts --- the aff is diplomatic.

Resnik, 1 – Assistant Professor of Political Science at Yeshiva University (Evan, Journal of International Affairs, “Defining Engagement” v54, n2, political science complete)

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.

B. Violation – the affirmative promotes Mexico’s membership in the TPP --- that is distinct.

C. Voting issue –

1. limits – they explode the topic – blurring the lines between economic and other forms of engagement makes any positive interaction with another country topical. It’s impossible to predict or prepare

2. negative ground – the economic limit is vital to critiques of economics, trade disads, and non-economic counterplans

3. precision – it’s key to effective policy analysis

Resnik, 1 – Assistant Professor of Political Science at Yeshiva University (Evan, Journal of International Affairs, “Defining Engagement” v54, n2, political science complete)

In matters of national security, establishing a clear definition of terms is a precondition for effective policymaking. Decisionmakers who invoke critical terms in an erratic, ad hoc fashion risk alienating their constituencies. They also risk exacerbating misperceptions and hostility among those the policies target. Scholars who commit the same error undercut their ability to conduct valuable empirical research. Hence, if scholars and policymakers fail rigorously to define "engagement," they undermine the ability to build an effective foreign policy.

The refined definition I propose as a substitute for existing descriptions of engagement is different in two important ways: First, it clarifies the menu of choices available for policymakers by allowing engagement to be distinguished from related approaches such as appeasement, containment and isolation. Second, it lays the groundwork for systematic and objective research on historical cases of engagement in order to discern the conditions under which it can be used effectively. Such research will, in turn, help policymakers acquire the information necessary to better manage the rogue states of the 21st century.

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Obama is pushing Congress to resolve the debt ceiling --- political capital is key.

Pace 9/12

Julie, AP White House correspondent, Syria debate on hold, Obama refocuses on agenda, The Fresno Bee, 9/12/13, http://www.fresnobee.com/2013/09/12/3493538/obama-seeks-to-focus-on-domestic.html

With a military strike against Syria on hold, President Barack Obama tried Thursday to reignite momentum for his second-term domestic agenda. But his progress could hinge on the strength of his standing on Capitol Hill after what even allies acknowledge were missteps in the latest foreign crisis.¶ "It is still important to recognize that we have a lot of things left to do here in this government," Obama told his Cabinet, starting a sustained White House push to refocus the nation on matters at home as key benchmarks on the budget and health care rapidly approach.¶ "The American people are still interested in making sure that our kids are getting the kind of education they deserve, that we are putting people back to work," Obama said.¶ The White House plans to use next week's five-year anniversary of the 2008 financial collapse to warn Republicans that shutting down the government or failing to raise the debt limit could drag down the still-fragile economy. With Hispanic Heritage Month to begin Monday, Obama is also expected to press for a stalled immigration overhaul and urge minorities to sign up for health care exchanges beginning Oct. 1.¶ Among the events planned for next week is a White House ceremony highlighting Americans working on immigrant and citizenship issues. Administration officials will also promote overhaul efforts at naturalization ceremonies across the country. On Sept. 21, Obama will speak at the Congressional Black Caucus Gala, where he'll trumpet what the administration says are benefits of the president's health care law for African-Americans and other minorities.¶ Two major factors are driving Obama's push to get back on track with domestic issues after three weeks of Syria dominating the political debate. Polls show the economy, jobs and health care remain Americans' top concerns. And Obama has a limited window to make progress on those matters in a second term, when lame-duck status can quickly creep up on presidents, particularly if they start losing public support.¶ Obama already is grappling with some of the lowest approval ratings of his presidency. A Pew Research Center/USA Today poll out this week put his approval at 44 percent. That's down from 55 percent at the end of 2012.¶ Potential military intervention in Syria also is deeply unpopular with many Americans, with a Pew survey finding that 63 percent opposing the idea. And the president's publicly shifting positions on how to respond to a deadly chemical weapons attack in Syria also have confused many Americans and congressional lawmakers.¶ "In times of crisis, the more clarity the better," said Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., a strong supporter of U.S. intervention in Syria. "This has been confusing. For those who are inclined to support the president, it's been pretty hard to nail down what the purpose of a military strike is."¶ For a time, the Obama administration appeared to be barreling toward an imminent strike in retaliation for the Aug. 21 chemical weapons attack. But Obama made a sudden reversal and instead decided to seek congressional approval for military action.¶ Even after administration officials briefed hundreds of lawmakers on classified intelligence, there appeared to be limited backing for a use-of-force resolution on Capitol Hill. Rather than face defeat, Obama asked lawmakers this week to postpone any votes while the U.S. explores the viability of a deal to secure Syria's chemical weapons stockpiles.¶ That pause comes as a relief to Obama and many Democrats eager to return to issues more in line with the public's concerns. The most pressing matters are a Sept. 30 deadline to approve funding to keep the government open — the new fiscal year begins Oct. 1 — and the start of sign-ups for health care exchanges, a crucial element of the health care overhaul.¶ On Wednesday, a revolt by tea party conservatives forced House Republican leaders to delay a vote on a temporary spending bill written to head off a government shutdown. Several dozen staunch conservatives are seeking to couple the spending bill with a provision to derail implementation of the health care law.¶ The White House also may face a fight with Republicans over raising the nation's debt ceiling this fall. While Obama has insisted he won't negotiate over the debt limit, House Speaker John Boehner on Thursday said the GOP will insist on curbing spending.

TPP costs political capital – empirics

Singh 12

Robert, Professor of Politics at Birkbeck College, University of London, Barack Obama's Post-American Foreign Policy: The Limits of Engagement, http://www.bloomsburyacademic.com/view/Barack-Obama-Foreign-Policy/chapter-ba-9781780931111-chapter-007.xml?print

Second, under Obama, Washington's own approach to trade policy – and regional trade policy especially – was, as David Pilling termed it, “something of a shambles.”35 Substantial elements of the congressional Democratic Party, along with labor unions and others active in the party base, were heavily opposed to expanding free trade agreements that, they alleged, outsourced US jobs overseas. Although, under George W. Bush, the US had signed a free trade agreement with South Korea in 2007, it still remained for the US Senate to ratify in 2011 – despite President Obama calling for action on the measure in his 2011 State of the Union speech and repeating this in his address to a joint session of Congress on September 8, 2011. With the twenty-one-member Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Group (APEC), of which the US is a member, many years from concluding a free trade deal, the Obama administration instead invested political capital in promoting a Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement among a sub-group of nine APEC members, including Australia, Chile and Singapore. But a TPP – even with the unlikely participation of Japan – would remain a very limited anchor for a genuine regional compact. While the US remained at the margins of some of the key economic relationships in the region, China was an increasingly prominent player in America's “backyard” of Latin America (see Table 7.2).

Debt ceiling causes Iran strikes

Nimmo 6

Kurt, Iran Attack: No Way Back Now, 1/18/6, http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m19768&l=i&size=1&hd=0

But none of this is relevant now. Israel will goad the United States—with the dumbfounded blessing of the Europeans (or their blue-blood rulers) and the ineffectual suck-up Security Council—into blasting the daylights out of Iran, probably killing thousands, if not eventually hundreds of thousands of innocent people. It appears all of this will go down in March, when "diplomacy" finally fails in the United Nations and, significantly, when America reaches its $8,184 trillion debt ceiling, thus forcing the nation (to the greedy glee of the criminal neolib financier class) into a spurt of military Keynesianism in order to jump-start the economy. Few seem to notice this is what happened in Germany in the 1930s and the result was fascism and mass misery and incomprehensible numbers of dead people. "Wars provide an economic boost but typically produce little of lasting value," notes Gracchus Jones. "But in America today, there is no economic engine, and if there is one thing modern economic history proves, it is that you cannot have prosperity without one."

Nuclear war

Chossudovsky in 7

Michel, Professor of Economics, The Unthinkable: The US- Israeli Nuclear War on Iran, http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=CHO20070121&articleId=4536

The World is at the crossroads of the most serious crisis in modern history. The US has embarked on a military adventure, "a long war", which threatens the future of humanity. At no point since the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima on August 6th, 1945, has humanity been closer to the unthinkable, a nuclear holocaust which could potentially spread, in terms of radioactive fallout, over a large part of the Middle East. There is mounting evidence that the Bush Administration in liaison with Israel and NATO is planning the launching of a nuclear war against Iran, ironically, in retaliation for its nonexistent nuclear weapons program. The US-Israeli military operation is said to be in "an advanced state of readiness". If such a plan were to be launched, the war would escalate and eventually engulf the entire Middle-East Central Asian region. The war could extend beyond the region, as some analysts have suggested, ultimately leading us into a World War III scenario.

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Next off is topicality –

Engagement towards a government must be conditional, the plan isn’t.

Haass and O’Sullivan, 2k - *Vice President and Director of Foreign Policy Studies at the Brookings Institution AND **a Fellow with the Foreign Policy Studies Program at the Brookings Institution (Richard and Meghan, “Terms of Engagement: Alternatives to Punitive Policies” Survival,, vol. 42, no. 2, Summer 2000, http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/research/files/articles/2000/6/summer%20haass/2000survival.pdf

Many different types of engagement strategies exist, depending on who is engaged, the kind of incentives employed and the sorts of objectives pursued. Engagement may be conditional when it entails a negotiated series of exchanges, such as where the US extends positive inducements for changes undertaken by the target country. Or engagement may be unconditional if it offers modifications in US policy towards a country without the explicit expectation that a reciprocal act will follow. Generally, conditional engagement is geared towards a government; unconditional engagement works with a country’s civil society or private sector in the hopes of promoting forces that will eventually facilitate cooperation.

B. voter for limits and ground --- requiring the aff to use a predictable mechanism like a quid pro quo is essential for disad links and critiques of attaching strings

case

china

U.S.-China cooperation is impossible

Friedberg 12 - Aaron L., Professor of Politics and International Affairs at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University, September/October 2012, “Bucking Beijing,” Foreign Affairs, Vol. 91, No. 5, p. 48-58

Recent events have raised serious doubts about both elements of this strategy. Decades of trade and talk have not hastened China's political liberalization. Indeed, the last few years have been marked by an intensified crackdown on domestic dissent. At the same time, the much-touted economic relationship between the two Pacific powers has become a major source of friction. And despite hopes for enhanced cooperation, Beijing has actually done very little to help Washington solve pressing international problems, such as North Korea's acquisition of nuclear weapons or Iran's attempts to develop them. Finally, far from accepting the status quo, China's leaders have become more forceful in attempting to control the waters and resources off their country's coasts. As for balancing, the continued buildup of China's military capabilities, coupled with impending cuts in U.S. defense spending, suggests that the regional distribution of power is set to shift sharply in Beijing's favor. WHY WE CAN'T ALL JUST GET ALONG TODAY, CHINA'S ruling elites are both arrogant and insecure. In their view, continued rule by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is essential to China's stability, prosperity, and prestige; it is also, not coincidentally, vital to their own safety and comfort. Although they have largely accepted some form of capitalism in the economic sphere, they remain committed to preserving their hold on political power. The CCP'S determination to maintain control informs the regime's threat perceptions, goals, and policies. Anxious about their legitimacy, China's rulers are eager to portray themselves as defenders of the national honor. Although they believe China is on track to become a world power on par with the United States, they remain deeply fearful of encirclement and ideological subversion. And despite Washington's attempts to reassure them of its benign intentions, Chinese leaders are convinced that the United States aims to block China's rise and, ultimately, undermine its one-party system of government.¶ Like the United States, since the end of the Cold War, China has pursued an essentially constant approach toward its greatest external challenger. For the most part, Beijing has sought to avoid outright confrontation with the United States while pursuing economic growth and building up all the elements of its "comprehensive national power," a Chinese strategic concept that encompasses military strength, technological prowess, and diplomatic influence. Even as they remain on the defensive, however, Chinese officials have not been content to remain passive. They have sought incremental advances, slowly expanding China's sphere of influence and strengthening its position in Asia while working quietly to erode that of the United States. Although they are careful never to say so directly, they seek to have China displace the United States in the long run and to restore China to what they regard as its rightful place as the preponderant regional power. Chinese strategists do not believe that they can achieve this objective quickly or through a frontal assault. Instead, they seek to reassure their neighbors, relying on the attractive force of China's massive economy to counter nascent balancing efforts against it. Following the advice of the ancient military strategist Sun-tzu, Beijing aims to "win without fighting," gradually creating a situation in which overt resistance to its wishes will appear futile. The failure to date to achieve a genuine entente between the United States and China is the result not of a lack of effort but of a fundamental divergence of interests. Although limited cooperation on specific issues might be possible, the ideological gap between the two nations is simply too great, and the level of trust between them too low, to permit a stable modus vivendi. What China's current leaders ultimately want -- regional hegemony -- is not something their counterparts in Washington are willing to give. That would run counter to an axiomatic goal of U.S. grand strategy, which has remained constant for decades: to prevent the domination of either end of the Eurasian landmass by one or more potentially hostile powers. The reasons for this goal involve a mix of strategic, economic, and ideological considerations that will continue to be valid into the foreseeable future.

US first strike means no escalation and no extinction

Lieber and Press 13

Keir A. Lieber, Associate Professor, Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University, Daryl G. Press, Associate Professor of Government, Dartmouth College Coordinator of War and Peace Studies at the John Sloan Dickey Center, Strategic Studies Quarterly, Spring 2013, "The New Era of Nuclear Weapons, Deterrence, and Conflict", http://www.au.af.mil/au/ssq/digital/pdf/spring_13/lieber.pdf

The first set of arguments is about an important, yet virtually unnoticed, consequence of changes in military technology and the balance of power. In a nutshell, the same revolution in accuracy that has transformed conventional warfare has had equally momentous consequences for nuclear weapons and deterrence. 2 Very accurate delivery systems, new reconnaissance technologies, and the downsizing of arsenals from Cold War levels have made both conventional and nuclear counterforce strikes against nuclear arsenals much more feasible than ever before. Perhaps most surprising, pairing highly accurate delivery systems with nuclear weapons permits target strategies that would create virtually no radioactive fallout, hence, vastly reduced fatalities. For nuclear analysts weaned on two seeming truths of the Cold War era—that nuclear arsenals reliably deter attacks via the threat of retaliation, and that nuclear weapons use is tantamount to mass slaughter—the implications of the counterforce revolution should be jarring. The conventional view linking nuclear weapons to stalemate and slaughter was correct during the latter decades of the Cold War. By the mid 1960s, a truly effective nuclear counterforce strike by either side— that is, a disarming blow by one superpower against the nuclear arsenal of the other—had become impossible. 3 Each of the superpowers wielded an enormous arsenal, which was deployed on a diverse set of delivery systems. The sheer number of targets that would have to be destroyed, combined with the limitations of contemporary guidance systems, virtually guaranteed that any disarming attack would fail, leaving the enemy with a large number of surviving weapons with which to retaliate. Furthermore, any significant counterforce strike would have produced enormous quantities of lethal radioactive fallout and hence caused millions of civilian casualties. 4 Most Cold War strategists—many of whom are still active in the nuclear analytical community today—came to instinctively associate nuclear weapons with stalemate and nuclear use with Armageddon. But nuclear weapons—like virtually all other weapons—have changed dramatically over the past four decades. Modern guidance systems permit nuclear planners to achieve “probabilities of damage” against hardened nuclear targets that were unheard of during the Cold War. And heightened accuracy also permits nontraditional targeting strategies that would further increase the effectiveness of counterforce strikes and greatly reduce casualties. 5 The revolution in accuracy and sensors, and the relatively small contemporary arsenals, mean that nuclear balances around the world—for example, between the United States and China, the United States and North Korea, and perhaps in the future between Iran and Israel—bear little resemblance to the Cold War superpower standoff. To illustrate the revolution in accuracy, in 2006 we modeled the hardest case for our claim: a hypothetical US first strike on the next largest nuclear arsenal in the world, that of Russia. The same models that were used during the Cold War to demonstrate the inescapability of stalemate—the condition of “mutual assured destruction,” or MAD—now suggested that even the large Russian arsenal could be destroyed in a disarming strike. 6 Furthermore, the dramatic leap in accuracy—which is the foundation for effective counterforce—is based on widely available technologies within reach of other nuclear-armed states, including Russia, China, Pakistan, and others. Our overriding message is not about the US-Russian nuclear balance per se. Rather, our point is that key beliefs about nuclear weapons have been overturned; scholars and analysts need to reexamine their underlying assumptions about nuclear stalemate and deterrence. Since 2006, we have discussed these issues with many nuclear analysts, US government officials, and military officers involved with the nuclear mission. Almost everything we learned reinforced our views about the counterforce revolution and suggests our earlier work understated the leap in US counterforce capabilities—with one exception. We previously argued that US “nuclear primacy”—the ability to use nuclear weapons to destroy the strategic forces of any other country—appeared to be an intentional goal of US policymakers. We noted that even as the United States greatly reduced its nuclear arsenal, it retained, and in some cases improved, those nuclear forces that were ideally suited to the counterforce mission. Based on what we have subsequently learned, we would recast and sharpen this part of our argument to contend that the United States is intentionally pursuing “strategic primacy”—meaning that Washington seeks the ability to defeat enemy nuclear forces (as well as other WMD)—but that US nuclear weapons are but one dimension of that effort. In fact, the effort to neutralize adversary strategic forces—that is, achieve strategic primacy—spans nearly every realm of warfare: for example, ballistic missile defense, antisubmarine warfare, intelligencesurveillance-and-reconnaissance systems, offensive cyber warfare, conventional precision strike, and long-range precision strike, in addition to nuclear strike capabilities.

trade

Alt causes to US mexico trade.

Shapiro, 1ac author, 13 - President of the Institute of the Americas a public policy think tank at UCSD (Charles, "Time to shift focus in relations with Mexico," San Diego Union Tribune, 2/6/13, web.utsandiego.com/news/2013/Feb/06/mexico-trade-economy/?~23article-copy)//a-berg

Unfortunately, when the U.S. looks south, we tend to focus on the security and violence. We applaud the unprecedented bilateral cooperation in the fight against transnational organized crime, and we have advocated for U.S. security assistance to Mexico in that effort. It is time to shift to a greater focus on economic and geopolitical opportunities.

A joint competitiveness agenda should begin with making business easier at our common border. Important security gains have been achieved, but trade facilitation has received insufficient attention, despite the steady integration of cross-border supply chains. Long and unpredictable crossing times mean bottlenecks at the border, and relatively few ports of entry have seen major upgrades. Infrastructure investment and expansion of pre-clearance programs will require intense bilateral cooperation and consultation with the private sector in both nations.

Alt cause --- emissions trading scheme.

Surgenor 11/7 (Christopher, editor greenairline.com, “Failure to solve US aviation dispute with Europe over EU ETS would pose enormous international trade and climate risks” http://www.greenaironline.com/news.php?viewStory=1616, ken)

The United States dispute with Europe over the inclusion of its carriers in the EU ETS is a test case on a matter of truly historic importance, says a policy brief from Washington, DC-based consultancy Climate Advisers. Failure to reach a solution would pose enormous risks not only for transatlantic trade relations but also for the global climate and trade systems. Many of the perceptions over the “transatlantic turbulence” have rested on a number of myths in the US, say the authors. They warn policymakers that in their attempts to protect the nation’s airlines, the United States risks establishing a trade principle it will deeply regret later. With Europe, the US and the major emerging economies led by China far apart on when aviation emissions should be capped, there is little evidence that the 15-year stalemate at ICAO is likely to be broken in favour of a global consensus solution “any time soon”, they add, and the US and Europe should seek a bilateral agreement. The briefing by Nigel Purvis, President of Climate Advisers, and Samuel Grausz, who leads the company’s transportation practice, was prepared for The German Marshall Fund of the United States, a nonpartisan American public policy and grant-making institution dedicated to promoting better understanding and cooperation between North America and Europe. The authors say the aviation dispute is different and far more important than past trade “skirmishes” as what is at stake is the principle of whether nations may adopt climate laws that have impacts on foreign companies offering goods or services in their territories. The ability to regulate foreign firms competing within one’s own territory and maintain a level playing field with domestic firms is essential, they say, particularly as decades of climate diplomacy have made plain that nations have different levels of political will when it comes to adopting climate policies. The EU ETS directive, they report, has been crafted so that EU airlines do not benefit relative to US airlines as the rules apply to all carriers equally flying a given route, regardless of national origin and may, if anything, harm EU airlines by forcing them to cover the emissions for all their flights, while non-EU airlines only have to cover flights to and from Europe. “When the United States gets serious about climate protection, moreover, it will be the first nation to insist on a level playing field,” says the briefing. “Indeed, every major climate bill considered in Congress since 2005 contemplated fees or border measures to protect US manufacturers in energy-intensive industries from unfair competition from China and elsewhere. In protecting US airlines, the United States risks establishing a trade principle it will deeply regret later when it tries to protect US firms from unfair competition from major emerging economies.” The main argument used against the application of the EU ETS to US carriers centres on an infringement of US sovereignty, one of seven myths the authors seek to debunk in their policy brief. Providing nations do not discriminate against foreign carriers, international rules generally allow for regulation of flights both in and out of their territory. As an example, the authors cite the example of the United States requiring all planes going to and from the US to have reinforced cockpit doors and to limit liquids and gels in carry-on luggage. It further requires foreign airports with flights to the United States to have security checkpoints that meet US standards. Outside of the aviation sector, the US routinely adopts laws with extraterritorial implications, comment the authors, such as anti-corruption and anti-terrorism measures, and is more willing than any other country in the world to regulate foreigners for actions originating outside its territory. “What Europe is doing on aviation pollution is well within the practice pioneered by the United States,” they say. A solution to the dispute through an ICAO global agreement is not imminent, they believe, as nations remain far apart. Europe seeks a global system that delivers emissions reductions now, whereas the US favours the industry-backed proposal to cap global emissions from 2020. China, India and other major emerging countries are unwilling to accept emissions cuts now or in 2020, preferring to rely on fuel efficiency standards and non-binding goals. Challenging Europe over the EU ETS by bringing an Article 84 dispute procedure at ICAO may not produce an acceptable outcome to all parties, warn the authors, with the losing side possibly appealing through the dispute resolution process in the World Trade Organization (WTO). However, WTO rules are complex and also unclear on environmental measures and the United States has a history of not taking cases to the WTO unless it believes it will prevail. “A fully-fledged legal case in ICAO or the WTO would be risky for the transatlantic allies and for the world as a whole,” judges the briefing. “Both sides could lose out and, even more importantly, the outcome could jeopardise the global trade system and the global climate.” Instead, the authors argue the United States and Europe should take proactive steps to resolve the dispute between them. “

Trade is resilient.

Lamy ’11(Pascal Lamy is the Director-General of the World Trade Organization. Lamy is Honorary President of Paris-based think tank Notre Europe. Lamy graduated from the prestigious Sciences Po Paris, from HEC and ÉNA, graduating second in his year of those specializing in economics. “System Upgrade” BY PASCAL LAMY | APRIL 18, 2011)

Any doubts about the stability and importance of the global trade architecture should have been dispelled by the remarkable manner in which the system has endured the devastating economic crisis that shook the world from 2008 to 2009. That durability stands in stark contrast with many other elements in the international architecture, which proved too brittle to withstand this shock. For example, governments have yet to devise an international system for managing climate change or currency volatility. Other issues heavily tinged by domestic politics, such as migration, are not even on the international agenda and face fire even at the regional level, as we have seen with the influx of immigrants to Europe following recent events in North Africa. By now, it should be clear that the failure to establish a system of global governance in the area of international finance unquestionably blunted governments' ability to respond effectively to the crisis. Yet even while a great many things went wrong in the crisis, the trading system responded precisely as it was intended to. Compare that with the 1930s, when the last great global economic calamity unfolded. No such system was in place, and the global economy paid a heavy price. The United States passed the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act in 1930, quadrupling tariffs and raising duties to at least 60 percent on more than 3,000 types of imported products. Faced with this provocation, America's trading partners did not sit idly by; tit-for-tat retaliation rapidly ensued, closing markets and throttling trade. Between 1929 and 1934, world trade contracted 66 percent. The bulk of this collapse was due to disintegrating demand and the drying-up of credit. But the imposition of prohibitive duties not only pushed the economy further into depression -- it also fostered a profound sense of ill will between governments and contributed to the international tensions that led to World War II. To prevent this from happening again, leaders of great vision and wisdom agreed to create a rules-based, transparent, and nondiscriminatory trading system. Men like James Meade and Cordell Hull succeeded in encouraging 23 countries to accept a compact known as the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT). Since the GATT came into force in 1948 and since the World Trade Organization (WTO) opened its doors in 1995, the world has not seen protectionist outbreaks like those of the early 1930s. This is not to say that the trading system has not been tested. Protectionist pressures surged in 1971, for example, when the gold standard for currency conversion was abandoned, and during the 1997-1998 Asian economic crisis, when Pacific Rim countries saw their economies contract by double-digit margins. In each case, markets stayed open to the flow of goods and services from the affected countries, enabling them to trade their way back to stability and prosperity.

Alt causes to protection and it’s empirically denied

Zappone, 12 [January, Chris, Sydney Morning Herald, 'Murky protectionism' on the rise - but no trade war, http://www.smh.com.au/business/world-business/murky-protectionism-on-the-rise--but-no-trade-war-20120110-1pt3t.html]

At the outset of the global financial crisis, the world’s leaders pledged to resist calls to shield their local economies in order to prevent a trade war that could further damage global growth.¶ Four years on, with China slowing, Europe heading into recession and a political environment soured by successive financial crises, the question arises: how long will policymakers be able to resist those calls for more protectionism?¶ “Free trade is going to be under pressure,” said Lowy Institute international economy program director Mark Thirlwell. “Since 2007-08 the case for moving to greater trade liberalisation has got tougher and the demands for protection have increased.”¶ Only last week, China, which is grappling with a slowdown, raised the prospect of a trade war with the European Union in response to the EU's implementation of a carbon emissions tax on air travel to and from Europe. Earlier last month China imposed tariffs up to 21 per cent on US-made cars, affecting about $US4 billion imports a year.¶ Advertisement ¶ Across the Pacific, US politicians in the throes of an election year with 8.5 per cent unemployment have issued more strident calls for China to “play by the rules” and allow the yuan to appreciate faster against the US dollar. The US has also asked the World Trade Organisation to probe China's support for its solar panel industry and the restrictions Beijing has placed on US poultry imports.¶ In fact, the most recent WTO data shows that the number of trade restrictive measures enacted by members rose 53 per cent to 339 occurrences over the year to October.¶ Yet the WTO admits that the motives behind the spate of actions aren’t always simply to protect local jobs. “Not all measures categorised as trade restrictive may have been adopted with such an intention,” the body said.¶ In Brazil, for example, the steep rise in the value of its currency, the real, has sparked a torrent of car imports into the country - similar to the online-overseas shopping boom in Australia. Brazil has in turn put a one-year provisional 30 per cent increase on auto imports, to counterbalance the effects of their strong currency.¶ In the US, China and Australia, infrastructure spending measures contain “buy local” requirements to stoke domestic growth, not necessary punish foreign businesses. The federal government in September streamlined its anti-dumping system that eases the way for companies to ask for investigations into imported goods that come in below market value to Australia. Again, well within the rules.¶ “What we’ve seen is a gradual ratcheting up of trade intervention,” said Mr Thirlwell, amounting to what he calls “murky protectionism” or government intervention through support for industries or complaints to global trade authorities.¶ To date, observers such as Mr Thirlwell say most countries have remained remarkably resistant to throwing up significant trade barriers.¶ For example, in November, the US, Australia and seven other Asian-Pacific nations including Japan, outlined the plan for an ambitious multilateral Trans-Pacific Partnership trade block worth 40 per cent of the world’s trade, in an effort to increase the flow of cross-border goods and investment. Japan, China and South Korea are also in the later stages of negotiation over a free trade deal between those three nations.¶ Australian National University international trade lecturer John Tang doesn’t believe the world is on the edge a new round of protectionism.¶ “I don’t see a general sea change towards protectionism for major trading blocks but that may be because so much of the industrialised world is relying on developing countries to sustain their exports,” he said.¶ Nevertheless, a shift in the political reality of the US, China or elsewhere could change that, he said.¶ Washington DC-based Brookings Institution fellow Joshua Meltzer said that if the euro zone broke up, elevating the crisis to a new stage, nations may switch to much more protective measures.¶ ‘‘I wouldn’t go so far to say the global economy is so integrated that we could never have anything that would approach a trade war,” said Washington DC-based Brookings Institution fellow Joshua Meltzer. “But I don’t think we’re on that track.”

Decline doesn’t cause conflict.

Gelb 10 - Leslie H., President Emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations; was a senior official in the U.S. Defense Department from 1967 to 1969 and in the State Department from 1977 to 1979, November/December 2010, “GDP Now Matters More Than Force,” Foreign Affairs, Vol. 89, No. 6

To an unprecedented degree, the major powers now need one another to grow their economies, and they are loath to jeopardize this interdependence by allowing traditional military and strategic competitions to escalate into wars. In the past, U.S. enemies--such as the Soviet Union--would have rejoiced at the United States' losing a war in Afghanistan. Today, the United States and its enemies share an interest in blocking the spread of both Taliban extremism and the Afghan-based drug trade. China also looks to U.S. arms to protect its investments in Afghanistan, such as large natural-resource mines. More broadly, no great nation is challenging the balance of power in either Europe or Asia. Although nations may not help one another, they rarely oppose one another in explosive situations. Given the receding threat of great-power war, leaders around the world can afford to elevate economic priorities as never before. To be sure, leaders throughout history have pursued economic strength as the foundation of state power, but power itself was equated with military might. Today, the prevailing idea is that economic strength should be applied primarily toward achieving economic--not military--ends. Money is what counts most, so most nations limit their spending on standing armies and avoid military interventions. What preoccupies most leaders is trade, investment, access to markets, exchange rates, additional riches for the rich, and a better life for the rest. This trend is plain among the rising regional powers known as the BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India, and China) and among such others as Indonesia, Mexico, South Africa, and Turkey. Although these countries' leaders have major security concerns--such as India with regard to Pakistan--their paramount objective has become economic strength. For most, economic growth is their prime means of fending off internal political opposition. China makes perhaps the best case for the primacy of economics. Although it might emerge as a spoiler decades hence, Beijing currently promotes the existing economic order and does not threaten war. Because Beijing has been playing the new economic game at a maestro level--staying out of wars and political confrontations and zeroing in on business--its global influence far exceeds its existing economic strength. China gains extra power from others' expectations of its future growth. The country has become a global economic giant without becoming a global military power. Nations do not fear China's military might; they fear its ability to give or withhold trade and investments.

3. Protectionism won’t spiral out of control .

Marshall, 09 (Andrew – asia political risk correspondent, Assault on free trade a key political risk, Reuters, 1/21/2009, p. lexis)

PREVENTING DISASTER Despite the risks, many analysts argue that a wholesale retreat into protectionism can be averted, because globalization has brought benefits governments will not want to reverse. "Fears that the financial crisis is ushering in an era of intensive nationalism and protectionism are overwrought," said Control Risks in its outlook for 2009. "The financial crisis has ... demonstrated that the global economy remains deeply interconnected and dependent on forging compromises between domestic politics and international capital." Cheap imports from emerging markets have brought significant benefits to consumers and companies in the developed world. "This factor, combined with the entrenched nature of global supply chains, is likely to limit the political tolerance for protectionism, at least in the main developed-country markets and in emerging markets that are highly dependent on exports," the Economist Intelligence Unit said.

2nc cards

Largest proximate cause of failure.

Washington Post 12 (“Are the U.S. and Europe headed for a trade war over airline carbon fees?” 9/25/ http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/wp/2012/09/25/could-the-u-s-and-europe-start-a-trade-war-over-airline-carbon-fees/, ken)
Are the United States and Europe poised for a trade war over airline fees? Suddenly, that’s not such a ludicrous question. Late last Friday night, the Senate unanimously passed a bill to try to block a European Union plan to cap carbon emissions on all flights in and out of Europe. The bill sets the stage for a cross-Atlantic showdown that could get unruly. What’s all the fuss about? (LM Otero/AP) The tempest started back in January, when a new E.U. law went into effect requiring all flights that take off from or land in Europe to buy allowances for their carbon emissions. This would fold the aviation sector into the continent’s cap-and-trade program for greenhouse emissions. All told, the new law would add about $3 to $6 to the cost of a flight from New York to London, according to an analysis from the MIT Global Change Program. That may sound like small change in an era of baggage and booking fees—indeed, airlines quickly hiked their ticket prices to cover the cost of buying carbon permits. But Congress didn’t take kindly to a unilateral attempt by Europe to tax U.S. airlines. The House has already passed a bill that would forbid air carriers from participating in the program, period. The Senate version is a little more flexible: It would allow the U.S. transportation secretary to determine whether it was in the country’s interest to participate in the program. Now, here’s where things get tricky. Both the House and Senate bills also require the Department of Transportation to hold airlines “harmless” in the event that they get slapped with fines for not participating in the E.U. program. And if U.S. airlines don’t comply with the law, they’ll face as much as $22 billion in fines between now and 2020, according to one estimate. So who will cover the airlines’ fines? Taxpayers? The bills’ supporters have remained fairly vague on this point. There are two possible scenarios here, explains Annie Petsonk, a lawyer for the Environmental Defense Fund. First, if the Senate bill becomes law and airlines are forced to pay fines to the E.U., they could always try suing the government to recoup their losses — in which case they would be paid out of the taxpayer-backed Judgment Fund. Presumably, this wouldn’t be a popular option. An alternative, under an obscure but important U.S. law called the International Air Transportation Fair Competitive Practices Act (with practice, this rolls off the tongue), would be for the United States to declare that the E.U. is acting unreasonably and impose fines on European airlines in retaliation. That money could then be used to reimburse U.S. airlines. The trouble, Petsonk notes, is that Europe has its own laws that allow its regulators to retaliate in turn. Soon we’re in a never-ending battle over trans-Atlantic fees and fines. “Then you have a full-blown trade war,” says Petsonk. Right now, it’s a stand-off. European officials don’t want to back down on their emissions program. That’s because E.U. industries that are already regulated by Europe’s cap-and-trade program have argued that it’s unfair for airlines to be excluded. At the same time, the E.U. is under intense pressure. China and India have prohibited their airlines from taking part in the program. Beijing is also blocking purchases of European Airbus planes. And now the U.S. House and Senate have both passed bills opposing U.S. participation. So, perhaps the E.U. will just back down altogether — recently, the Associated Press reported that European officials “may recommend the suspension of the continent’s carbon emission fees” to avert a bloody trade onslaught. But Petsonk notes that another possibility is for the United States and Europe to come to some agreement on aviation emissions. Under the Senate bill, the transportation secretary can end the prohibition on airline participation if “an international alternative is agreed to.”

These disputes are categorically different --- they ENSURE failure.

Ahearn 6 (Raymond J. Specialist in International Trade and Finance Foreign Affairs, Defense, and Trade Division “Trade Conflict and the U.S.-European Union Economic Relationship” July, http://fpc.state.gov/documents/organization/71826.pdf, ken)

Trade disputes may have discernible impacts on U.S.-EU efforts to provide leadership of the world economy. The disputes absorb a significant amount of time and energy of key policymakers at the expense of efforts to pursue common interests and objectives, such as completing the Doha round of multilateral trade negotiations. Moreover, the two powers need to set an example of cooperation and adherence to WTO rules if the whole system is not to unravel. The credibility of the WTO depends critically on a prompt, effective, and fair dispute-settlement mechanism. Unfortunately, the EU is seen by U.S. policymakers and interest groups affected by the beef and banana cases as having used every loophole to delay decisions and then refuse to comply with panel decisions. Similarly, U.S. compliance efforts in FSC and Byrd Amendment disputes are found wanting by EU policymakers. While only a handful of U.S.-EU WTO disputes have ended in withdrawal of concessions (i.e. retaliation) since 1995, non-compliance by a key member arguably weakens the authority of the WTO and serves as a poor model for the rest of the world.53 Why should we comply with WTO panel decisions if the EU does not have to, many countries ask. Non-compliance by one of the two leading economic powers is also said to diminish the perceived value of negotiating new trade agreements.54

1. Currency manipulation

Pettis 2009 – Professor of Finance with Peking University’s Guanghua School of Management, member of the Institute of Latin American Studies Advisory Board at Columbia University as well as the Dean’s Advisory Board at the School of Public and International Affairs (12/1, Michael, Carnegie Endowment, “Competitive Devaluations Threaten a Trade War”, http://www.carnegieendowment.org/publications/index.cfm?fa=view&id=24248, WEA)

Vietnam’s decision to devalue its currency by 5 per cent last week to protect itself from undervaluation of the Chinese renminbi, and the worried response from Thailand and other Asian countries, suggests the move towards global trade conflict may already be unstoppable. As one group of countries seeks to gain or maintain trade advantage by manipulating their currencies, the historical precedent suggests that countries that are not able to devalue will respond with trade protection, especially tariffs and other barriers, and global trade will suffer. In the 1930s many, but not all, major economies imposed draconian constraints on trade which sharply contracted international commerce and almost certainly slowed the global recovery. It was widely understood then that the collapse in international trade would only worsen the crisis, and yet countries, seeking to protect their own positions, collectively engaged in behaviour that left them worse off. American economists Barry Eichengreen and Douglas Irwin recently published a paper examining the roots of the post-1930 surge in protection. They argue that during the 1920s and shortly after the onset of the 1929 crisis, several countries abandoned the gold standard and engaged in beggar-thy-neighbour competitive devaluations. These countries subsequently experienced rapid improvements in their trade balances and suffered much less from the ravages of the global contraction of the 1930s. But others, most obviously the US and European “gold bloc” countries, were sharply constrained in their ability to adjust their currencies. These countries suffered much of the brunt of the adjustment as imports became more competitive against their domestic industries, especially in relation to countries that were less constrained. These were also the countries that were most likely to resort to what the authors call the “second-best” adjustment mechanisms – tariffs, import quotas, exchange controls, and so on. “The exchange rate regime and economic policies associated with it were key determinants of trade policies of the early 1930s,” they wrote. “Countries that remained on the gold standard, keeping their currencies fixed against gold, were more likely to restrict foreign trade. With other countries devaluing and gaining competitiveness at their expense, they adopted such policies to strengthen the balance of payments and fend off gold losses.” That should not surprise us. In a world of contracting global demand policymakers were concerned not just with measures to boost domestic demand but also with measures that allowed them to acquire a greater share of foreign net demand. The easiest way to do this was by devaluation. But countries that were unable to realign their currencies remained under pressure to find alternative ways of helping their domestic industries. They resorted to tariffs and import quotas. The same thing may be happening again. Of course no currency is any longer tied to gold, so there is no country whose ability to devalue, as in the 1930s, is limited by a commitment to maintain gold parity. But there are countries whose abilities to manage their currencies are nonetheless severely constrained. The US dollar, for example, is widely believed to be overvalued, especially in relation to the currencies of Asian nations. Because of massive intervention by Asian central banks, however, it is proving almost impossible for the dollar to adjust sufficiently, except against floating currencies such as the euro. This creates a similar problem for Europe. Although few analysts believe the euro to be undervalued against the dollar – indeed, most believe it is more likely to be overvalued – it is nonetheless forced to bear the brunt of US dollar adjustment by further appreciation. This means that both the US and eurozone countries suffer from currency intervention and competitive devaluations elsewhere, with little room to adjust. What can the US and Europe do? If Messrs Eichengreen and Irwin are right, they are likely to resort to the same “second-best” options available to them as countries locked into overvalued gold exchange rates in the 1930s. They will raise tariffs or otherwise intervene directly in trade, and it is pretty clear already that as US and European anger over currency misalignment grows, the recourse to protectionism is also growing. Nearly everyone agrees that a world that retreats into direct and indirect forms of trade protection is a world that is worse off and likely to recover more slowly from the global crisis. But the fact that everyone seems to agree on this point should not allay our worries. In the 1930s, it was also well understood that the crisis would be exacerbated by plunging international trade. This did not stop a descent into protectionism which put the “Great” into the Great Depression. Once again it seems we are going to make the same mistake. Countries that can expand their share of global demand by competitive devaluations are seeking to do so. Countries that cannot will almost certainly consider more direct forms of intervention. We should worry. Without serious global co-ordination, in which the US and Europe forswear protectionism in exchange for significant appreciation of undervalued currencies, rising tariffs appear inevitable.

2. New protectionist policies

Miller and Markheim, 09 – Ambassador to the UN Economics and Social Council, Director of the Center for International Trade and Economics at Heritage (9/28, Terry and Daniella, Heritage Foundation, “Global Trade Liberalization Continues, But Risks Abound”, http://www.heritage.org/Research/Reports/2009/09/Global-Trade-Liberalization-Continues-But-Risks-Abound, WEA)

The U.S. auto bailout set off a rash of government handouts, cheap loans, and other interventions in the industry in France, Japan, Germany, the United Kingdom, China, Argentina, Brazil, Sweden, and Italy, among other countries.[5] Direct and indirect subsidies for the financial sector, insurance firms, and other sensitive industries can be very costly for both domestic and global markets. Firms receiving government handouts obtain an artificial competitive advantage over firms that do not, which could result in more efficient and productive companies being driven out of business. If those subsidies come with requirements that subsidized firms employ only domestic workers, lend only to domestic businesses, or buy only from domestic suppliers, the economic distortions they introduce are even more pernicious, forcing the inefficient allocation of resources across countries and causing economic harm to businesses and families around the world. Export subsidies are particularly trade-distorting and, in the case of agriculture products, an especially sensitive topic within the WTO. Subsidies and many other domestic support programs artificially prop up domestic prices for food and food products.

Thus, they raise the cost of living for families buying food that is produced expensively in home markets. In addition, the same trade measures depress world prices for agricultural products, negatively affecting farmers in developing countries and stifling their attempts to weather the economic downturn, rise from poverty, and improve their living standards. In late May 2009, the U.S. announced export subsidies to bolster international sales of U.S. dairy products. Blaming the role of similar subsidies introduced by the EU in January 2009 for declining U.S. competitiveness in global dairy markets, America has opted to respond in kind instead of trying to persuade the Europeans to eliminate their trade-distorting measures--the very kinds of measures that both the EU and U.S. promised to avoid in their G-20 pledges. The expanded use of domestic preferences in government procurement dictated in "Buy American" provisions harms the domestic economy as well as the international market. Limiting competition to domestic firms increases the likelihood that government will not get the best value for the taxpayers' dollar. Moreover, while the U.S. promised to adhere to its international commitments of maintaining some openness to foreign sources in government procurement, this promise means less than it might appear. Only national signatories to the Agreement on Government Procurement in the WTO or U.S. free trade agreements have some protection under the new provisions. Many more countries, including such key U.S. trade partners as India, Brazil, and China, could be shut out from U.S. government contracts and retaliate in kind, closing the door on U.S. firms anxious to find customers anywhere they can. Where America walks, others may choose to follow. Not forgotten are new or higher tariffs, quotas, import and export taxes, and outright bans on trade. Among others, Russia has raised tariffs on automobiles; Brazil, on certain steel products; Vietnam, on semi-finished iron and non-alloy steel; India, on soybean oils; Zambia, on finished petroleum products; and Ecuador, on more than 600 products.[6] China has banned the import of Belgian chocolate, Italian brandy, and other products, and India has closed its market to toys from China.[7] Less transparent but with as much potential to undermine international trade are new, excessive trade-licensing rules, tax levies and rebates, sanitary and product safety restrictions, environmental controls, and other regulatory non-tariff barriers to trade that many countries are adopting. Examples include Indonesia restricting port access for certain garments, footwear, toys, electronics, and food and Argentina imposing non-automatic licensing requirements on a host of goods.[8] Today, more barriers to trade are being considered by countries around the world. Not all of these measures violate international trade commitments made by countries in the WTO or other regional and bilateral trade agreements; but all restrict trade, distort economic incentives, restrain worldwide growth, and ultimately undermine the rules-based spirit of the WTO and the international trade system it monitors. With many countries taking an incremental approach to adding barriers to trade, many measures may seem trivial when considered in isolation and relative to total trade flows. However, when these measures are aggregated, the concern that the international trading system will eventually drown under a steadily rising tide of protectionism becomes very real. Global trade is put at risk today by the growing number of distortions that new protectionist policies are imposing on markets. Moreover, global trade is put at risk in the future as the specter of a global trade war looms larger with each new tit-for-tat trade restriction that countries impose on each other, and as the worsening and increasingly confrontational trade environment undermines the chance for a timely conclusion to the Doha Round.

3. Multilateralism is dead

Miller and Markheim, 09 – Ambassador to the UN Economics and Social Council, Director of the Center for International Trade and Economics at Heritage (9/28, Terry and Daniella, Heritage Foundation, “Global Trade Liberalization Continues, But Risks Abound”, http://www.heritage.org/Research/Reports/2009/09/Global-Trade-Liberalization-Continues-But-Risks-Abound, WEA)

After more than half a century of trade liberalization, multilateral efforts at the World Trade Organization (WTO) and elsewhere have ground to a halt. So far, negotiations within the Doha Round have failed to result in a comprehensive agreement that is satisfactory to all WTO members. The collapse of negotiations in July 2008 reflects both divergent thinking on the role that trade liberalization plays in advancing economic development and intransigence among some members with respect to upholding their commitment to eliminating trade barriers. Moreover, the Doha process of multilateral trade negotiations is based on the idea that it is easier for countries to lower their tariffs and other trade barriers if others do so as well. There is some political merit to this idea. The actual negotiations, however, involve a dynamic that runs counter to the goal of freeing trade. Countries hold jealously to protectionist measures that hurt the efficiency of their own economies, offering them up only in exchange for similar "concessions" from others. The psychology of the process could not be worse, because it encourages countries to value things that hurt themselves, like tariffs, import quotas, or domestic subsidies. With trade negotiations in the WTO stalled, the continued lack of a new, comprehensive multilateral trade pact reduces countries' discipline in keeping a rein on using protectionist measures to prop up domestic companies during the current economic slump. Higher tariffs, quotas, government subsidies and cheap loans to businesses, restrictive domestic-preference requirements in government procurement, and new regulatory barriers to trade are only some of the policy mechanisms that nations are introducing in a misguided attempt to bolster their domestic economies. These measures not only distort and reduce international markets for goods and services, but also have a chilling effect on private investment at home--the very thing needed to help economies get back on track and grow in the longer term.Moreover, protectionism adds to the economic burden faced by families that are trying to stretch uncertain incomes to pay for more expensive goods and can result in lost jobs when import-using firms either can no longer afford to stay in business or lose customers as the wall protecting foreign markets grows ever higher. Indeed, households in highly trade-dependent countries are hit especially hard when markets contract as a consequence of the global recession and then again when trade partners resort to protectionism. Recent WTO and World Bank studies, in addition to revealing the impact that the global recession has had on trade, shed some light on the protectionist measures that countries have adopted in response to tougher economic times. The WTO reports that global trade will contract this year by 10 percent.[2] Additionally, the volume of trade from developed countries is expected to fall by an average of 14 percent, and from developing countries by an average of 7 percent.[3] This forecast contraction in trade is being driven largely by falling global demand, but it could be exacerbated by an increase in the world's use of trade measures to protect domestic special interests from competition. After a few short months, the World Bank reported that 17 G-20 members and other countries had implemented approximately 78 new trade-restrictive measures since the onset of the financial crisis and that 47 of these measures had been adopted since the G-20 pledge against protectionism in November 2008.[4]

Single blows against trade don’t spread—no impact

Ikenson, 09 – director of Cato's Center for Trade Policy Studies (Daniel, Center for Trade Policy Studies, Free Trade Bulletin 37, “A protectionism fling”, http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=10651, WEA)

Still even more importantly, the trade rules are not so restrictive that governments obsess over finding ways around them. It is not the existence of the rules that compels countries to liberalize trade. Governments typically are not looking for excuses to raise trade barriers. If compliance were the primary motivation for countries to liberalize trade, we would not observe applied tariff rates that are so much lower than the maximum allowable rates. And we would likely observe much greater use of the various trade remedies across industries and more invocation of restrictions in the name of health and other technical barriers to trade. Trade liberalization is motivated by self-interest, and the disparities between bound and applied rates are explained by the fact that most members have a preference for openness. There are real benefits, beyond the reciprocal openings of others' markets, to keeping one's own trade barriers low. Nevertheless, governments have been invoking protectionist measures over the past several months. Here are just a few examples:6z * In India, tariffs and other restrictions have been raised on some steel products; * Ecuador raised tariffs on 940 different products by a range of 5 to 20 percentage points; * Indonesia limited the number of points of entry into domestic commerce for imported products and is requiring its civil servants to buy only Indonesianmade products; and * Argentina made licensing requirements more onerous for so-called sensitive products, such as auto parts, textiles, TVs, and shoes. And here is how a top-circulation American daily newspaper described the global flirtation with trade barriers in December: Moving to shield battered domestic manufacturers from foreign imports, Indonesia is slapping restrictions on at least 500 products this month, demanding special licenses and new fees on imports. Russia is hiking tariffs on imported cars, poultry and pork. France is launching a state fund to protect French companies from foreign takeovers. Officials in Argentina and Brazil are seeking to raise tariffs on products from imported wine and textiles to leather goods and peaches.7 There may be nothing necessarily incorrect about the facts reported. But the tone and implications are possibly misleading. It is hard to accept the otherwise marginally significant facts without also accepting the provocative metaphors and sense of impending doom. Those actions have less antagonistic explanations and more benign interpretations. The actions of Indonesia, Argentina, and Brazil are consistent with their rights under the WTO agreements and will have a negligible collective impact on world trade. Russia is not even a member of the WTO and frequently behaves outside of international norms, so its actions have very limited representative value. And France has intervened to block foreign takeovers of French companies on other occasions this decade, so its actions are not particularly noteworthy. The popular media usually lacks nuance in its accounting of trade policy events and often intones that the present will be a replay of the 1930s.

This proves zero risk of protectionist backsliding

Anderson, 09 – head of Asia-Pacific economics for UBS (8/17, Jonathan, Cajing, “Economist: Reality Check for Prophets of Protectionism”, http://english.caijing.com.cn/2009-08-17/110225722.html, WEA)

One of the greatest fears among investors today is that the global economy will be affected by the return of protectionism. Many remember the 1930s as a disastrous time for trade. Not only did rich countries sink in the Great Depression, but they gradually closed doors to global trade and capital flow, starting with the passage of the infamous Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act in the United States in 1930. International trade spiraled down. It's been estimated that total global trade volume fell by nearly two-thirds between 1929 and 1933, dealing a crushing blow to growth and development hopes around the world. Now, here we are again, at the beginning of what some commentators call the "Great Depression II." And according to the World Trade Organization, we are seeing a sharp uptick in protectionist measures around the world. Are we risking another wave of trade destruction that closes the world's doors? And could a new wave crush China and the rest of the emerging world? The short answer is no. We do not worry much about the protectionism issue. We think these fears are vastly overstated for four reasons. First, conditions in the global economy are not that bad. If we look back at the Great Depression in the 1930s, we find the United States economy contracted nearly 30 percent in real terms, and more than a quarter of the entire workforce was unemployed. Up to one-third of the economy simply disappeared. In many European economies, the impact was greater still. How do things look today? At last count, the United States, euro zone countries, and Japan had seen a cumulative GDP contraction of 6 percent or so, with average unemployment nearing 9 percent. And this is probably as bad as it will get; the world economy is now expected to stabilize and recover in the second half of 2009. Of course, the recovery may be extremely weak. But even if developed countries don't grow at all over the next 18 months, the situation still compares favorably with the events of 75 years ago. In other words, there's just no reason to look for the same kind of protectionist reaction today. We should add that we're not seeing it. The WTO has reported a sharp increase in various protectionist actions, claims and cases, but the overall economic impact of these measures is still small by any standard. This is likely to be the worst it will get. Second, the effects of "plain vanilla" protectionism are highly exaggerated. Although Smoot-Hawley passed in 1930, raising tariffs on thousands of products, most economists agree the real attack on global trade didn't come until the breakup of the international monetary and exchange rate arrangements in 1931, and a corresponding collapse of global finance. Of course, many pundits now worry about the fall of the U.S. dollar as a global invoicing and reserve currency, and that this could have a similarly negative impact on trade and financing. However, we should stress that as bad as the U.S. economy looks at present, it's still the best thing we have. The European Union is beset by crushing regional disparities and political pressures, with significant basket cases hiding inside its borders. Japan simply doesn't have the necessary dynamism or commitment to globalization. And as far as fiscal balance sheets are concerned, all three major regions have equally significant problems. The United States stands alone in terms of how fast the Federal Reserve has expanded its monetary balance sheet, raising specific concerns about U.S. inflation and its impact on the dollar. But as one can see by looking at U.S. economic data, we are still falling into a deflation cycle for the time being, with nary a hint of inflationary pressure yet. We fully expect the Fed to be able to rein in the monetary expansion quickly if these pressures arise. We should add that, although it's fashionable to look at China and the yuan as a rising competitor to the dollar, this is simply not a realistic theme for the next 10 years – and perhaps for much longer. China doesn't have an open capital account, which means there is little opportunity or interest in holding the yuan as a serious asset. If anything, the impact of the current global crisis is likely to convince mainland authorities to be slow in opening their borders. China also doesn't have the kind of deep, domestic financial markets required of a global reserve currency; the bond market in particular is still in its infancy. As a result, it will be a long time indeed before the yuan starts playing a real role on the global stage. Third, even if we do see an unexpected wave of protectionism, emerging countries have less to lose than the developed world. Let's start by asking this question: When we talk about "protectionism," what exactly are we trying to protect? The answer is, of course, domestic workers and domestic jobs. In what areas do the labor forces of the United States, Europe and Japan work? The vast majority are in services and construction, sectors that don't compete much directly on the international arena. Only 10 to 15 percent are manufacturing jobs, and these are mostly in capital intensive, high-tech industries such as autos, precision machinery and high-end electronics. By contrast, manufactured goods that China and other emerging markets sell – toys, textiles, running shoes, sporting goods, light electronics, etc. – are barely made at all in the G3 countries. Rich countries outsourced most of these low-end, labor-intensive jobs a long time ago. A related point holds for commodities and raw materials, which make up much of the rest of the exports from the low-income world. All three major, developed regions are heavily dependent on imported resources, and this is unlikely to change in the foreseeable future. The bottom line here is that even if we do get a big wave of protectionism in developed countries, it unlikely to be aimed specifically at low-end goods from the developed world. Rather, it makes more sense to protect the auto industry along with high-end equipment and chemical manufacturers. Moreover, any tariffs and barriers placed on toys and textiles are much more likely to raise consumer prices than crush volumes, given the absence of competitive domestic industries that could take advantage of protection to grab local market shares. The final point concerns financial leverage. There has never been a time in recent global economic history when the developed world was so dependent on low-income countries for financial resources. For the first time, the emerging world is a net financial creditor. Given the rapid expansion of public debts, the major developed countries are extremely interested in seeing China and other low-income countries continue to buy U.S. Treasuries, Japanese Government Bonds and various European debt instruments. The impact of a big, potential pullout from global bond markets actually could be much more negative than positive in terms of protecting domestic industries. So emerging markets now are in a much better bargaining position than at any time in the past. Protectionist fears are likely to continue to bother investors over the next year or two, and perhaps longer. But we don't think the real situation supports these fears.

) Empirics prove

Naím 10 -Moisés, editor in chief of Foreign Policy, January/February 2010, “It Didn’t Happen,” http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/01/04/it_didnt_happen?print=yes&hidecomments=yes&page=full

Just a few months ago, the consensus among influential thinkers was that the economic crisis would unleash a wave of geopolitical plagues. Xenophobic outbursts, civil wars, collapsing currencies, protectionism, international conflicts, and street riots were only some of the dire consequences expected by the experts. It didn't happen. Although the crash did cause severe economic damage and widespread human suffering, and though the world did change in important ways for the worse -- the International Monetary Fund, for example, estimates that the global economy's new and permanent trajectory is a 10 percent lower rate of GDP growth than before the crisis -- the scary predictions for the most part failed to materialize. Sadly, the same experts who failed to foresee the economic crisis were also blindsided by the speed of the recovery. More than a year into the crisis, we now know just how off they were. From telling us about the imminent collapse of the international financial system to prophecies of a 10-year recession, here are six of the most common predictions about the crisis that have been proven wrong: The international financial system will collapse. It didn't. As Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns, and Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac crashed, as Citigroup and many other pillars of the financial system teetered on the brink, and as stock markets everywhere entered into free fall, the wise men predicted a total system meltdown. The economy has "fallen off a cliff," warned investment guru Warren Buffett. Fellow financial wizard George Soros agreed, noting the world economy was on "life support," calling the turbulence more severe than during the Great Depression, and comparing the situation to the demise of the Soviet Union. The natural corollary of such doomsday scenarios was the possibility that depositors would lose access to the funds in their bank accounts. From there to visions of martial law imposed to control street protests and the looting of bank offices was just an easy step for thousands of Internet-fueled conspiracy theorists. Even today, the financial system is still frail, banks are still failing, credit is scarce, and risks abound. But the financial system is working, and the perception that it is too unsafe to use or that it can suddenly crash out of existence has largely dissipated. The economic crisis will last for at least two years and maybe even a decade. It didn't. By fall of 2009, the economies of the United States, Europe, and Japan had begun to grow again, and many of the largest developing economies, such as China, India, and Brazil, were growing at an even faster pace. This was surely a far cry from the doom-laden -- and widely echoed -- prophecies of economist Nouriel Roubini. In late 2008 he warned that radical governmental actions at best would prevent "what will now be an ugly and nasty two-year recession and financial crisis from turning into a systemic meltdown and a decade-long economic depression." Roubini was far from the only pessimist. "The danger," warned Harvard University's Kenneth Rogoff, another distinguished economist, in the fall of 2008, "is that instead of having a few bad years, we'll have another lost decade." It turned out that radical policy reactions were far more effective than anyone had expected in shortening the life of the recession. The U.S. dollar will crash. It didn't. Instead, the American currency's value increased 20 percent between July 2008 and March 2009, at the height of the crisis. At first, investors from around the world sought refuge in the U.S. dollar. Then, as the U.S. government bailed out troubled companies and stimulated the economy with aggressive public spending, the U.S. fiscal deficit skyrocketed and anxieties about a dollar devaluation mounted. By the second half of 2009, the U.S. currency had lost value. But devaluation has not turned out to be the catastrophic crash predicted by the pessimists. Rather, as Financial Times columnist Martin Wolf noted, "The dollar's correction is not just natural; it is helpful. It will lower the risk of deflation in the U.S. and facilitate the correction of the global 'imbalances' that helped cause the crisis." Protectionism will surge. It didn't. Trade flows did drop dramatically in late 2008 and early 2009, but they started to grow again in the second half of 2009 as economies recovered. Pascal Lamy, director-general of the World Trade Organization, had warned that the global financial crisis was bound to lead to surges in protectionism as governments sought to blame foreigners for their problems. "That is exactly what happened in the 1930s when [protectionism] was the virus that spread the crisis all over the place," he said in October 2008, echoing a widely held sentiment among trade experts. And it is true that many governments dabbled in protectionism, including not only the U.S. Congress's much-derided "Buy American" provision, but also measures such as increased tariffs or import restrictions imposed in 17 of the G-20 countries. Yet one year later, a report from the European Union concluded that "a widespread and systemic escalation of protectionism has been prevented." The protectionist temptation is always there, and a meaningful increase in trade barriers cannot be ruled out. But it has not happened yet. The crisis in rich countries will drag down developing ones. It didn't. As the economies of America and Europe screeched to a halt during the nightmarish first quarter of 2009, China's economy accelerated, part of a broader trend in which emerging markets fared better through the crisis than the world's most advanced economies. As the rich countries entered a deep recession and the woes of the U.S. financial market affected banking systems everywhere, the idea that emerging economies could "decouple" from the advanced ones was widely mocked. But decouple they did. Some emerging economies relied on their domestic markets, others on exports to other growing countries (China, for example, displaced the United States last year as Brazil's top export market). Still others had ample foreign reserves, low exposure to toxic financial assets, or, like Chile, had taken measures in anticipation of an eventual global slowdown. Not all developing countries managed to escape the worst of the crisis -- and many, such as Mexico and Iran, were deeply hurt -- but many others managed to avoid the fate of the advanced economies. Violent political turmoil will become more common. It didn't. Electorates did punish governments for the economic hard times. But this was mostly in Europe and mostly peaceful and democratic. "There will be blood," prophesied Harvard historian Niall Ferguson last spring. "A crisis of this magnitude is bound to increase political [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." No, it turns out: They aren't.

C) Studies go neg.

Miller, 2k – Professor of Administration at the University of Ottawa (Morris, Interdisciplinary Science Review, Vol. 25, No. 4, 2000, May 21st 2010, KONTOPOULOS)

The question may be reformulated. Do wars spring from a popular reaction to a sudden economic crisis that exacerbates poverty and growing disparities in wealth and incomes? Perhaps one could argue, as some scholars do, that it is some dramatic event or sequence of such events leading to the exacerbation of poverty that, in turn, leads to this deplorable denouement. This exogenous factor might act as a catalyst for a violent reaction on the part of the people or on the part of the political leadership who would then possibly be tempted to seek a diversion by finding or, if need be, fabricating an enemy and setting in train the process leading to war. According to a study under- taken by Minxin Pei and Ariel Adesnik of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, there would not appear to be any merit in this hypothesis. After studying ninety-three episodes of economic crisis in twenty-two countries in Latin America and Asia in the years since the Second World War they concluded that:19 Much of the conventional wisdom about the political impact of economic crises may be 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).

Diversionary war theory is false --- they’ve got it backwards --- low growth makes countries cautious.

Boehmer, 07 – political science professor at the University of Texas (Charles, Politics & Policy, 35:4, “The Effects of Economic Crisis, Domestic Discord, and State Efficacy on the Decision to Initiate Interstate Conflict”, WEA)

Economic Growth and Fatal MIDs The theory presented earlier predicts that lower rates of growth suppress participation in foreign conflicts, particularly concerning conflict initiation and escalation to combat. To sustain combat, states need to be militarily prepared and not open up a second front when they are already fighting, or may fear, domestic opposition. A good example would be when the various Afghani resistance fighters expelled the Soviet Union from their territory, but the Taliban crumbled when it had to face the combined forces of the United States and Northern Alliance insurrection. Yet the coefficient for GDP growth and MID initiations was negative but insignificant. However, considering that there are many reasons why states fight, the logic presented earlier should hold especially in regard to the risk of participating in more severe conflicts. Threats to use military force may be safe to make and may be made with both external and internal actors in mind, but in the end may remain mere cheap talk that does not risk escalation if there is a chance to back down. Chiozza and Goemans (2004b) found that secure leaders were more likely to become involved in war than insecure leaders, supporting the theory and evidence presented here. We should find that leaders who face domestic opposition and a poorly performing economy shy away from situations that could escalate to combat if doing so would compromise their ability to retain power.

They’re using sloppy methodology—diversionary war theory is an unfounded assertion

Bennett and Nordstrom, 00 – department of political science at Penn State (D Scott and Timothy, The Journal of Conflict Resolution, 44:1, “Foreign policy substitutability and internal economic problems in enduring rivalries”, ProQuest, WEA)

The nature of the results has led some to question the validity of the theories. For example, Bruce Bueno de Mesquita. (1985) posits that the logical flaw in externalization theory lies in the psychological nature of the original scapegoat hypothesis on which externalization theory is based. While the international relations version of this theory is indeed written in psychological terms (in-group/out-group), it may be that "the logical foundation for the leap from individual psychology to national action remains non-existent" (1985, 130). Similarly, Levy (1989, 266) puts forth four problems with the original causal process as described by Simmel (1955), Coser (1956), and other early writers on externalization: (1) little attention is paid to the direction of the relationship between internal problems and external conflict, (2) attempts to develop or test alternative theoretical relationships are rare, (3) precise specifications of when externalization should occur theoretically are rare, and (4) the conditions under which externalization conditions should hold are unexplored. The conclusion that Levy draws from these theoretical issues is that many of the empirical studies suffer from problems of misspecified models (1989, 267). An additional possible source of discrepancies in findings about diversionary conflict may be attributable to differences in research design and variable measurement. Studies have used a variety of research designs, different dependent variables (uses of force, major uses of force, militarized disputes), different estimation techniques, and different data sets covering different time periods and different states. Even the central concept of externalization, namely, domestic trouble, is unclear. Most studies to date have used presidential popularity, overall presidential success, the election calendar, or a misery index composed of inflation and unemployment as indicators of presidential problems. Cross-national studies have most frequently examined what James (19 88, 103) categorizes as manifest conflict, a category which includes protest demonstrations, political strikes, armed attacks, and deaths from domestic violence. This category can be opposed to latent conflict, which exists when sources of trouble are present but have not yet led to the physical manifestations of dissatisfaction. Diversionary conflict theory as presented is typically so general in its discussion of internal problems that it opens a Pandora's box of possible indicators of domestic conflict, and all of the types of measures discussed above fit with the theory. The vague nature of the theory may be contributing to this possible problem of model misspecification, but there are few arguments that suggest one indicator is superior to the others. Alternative relationships between domestic economic performance and international conflict also have been proposed, perhaps most importantly by Blainey (1973, 74). Blainey offers the alternative hypothesis about economics and war that economically challenged countries are more likely to be the target of aggressive military acts than their initiator (1973, 86). Faced with a poor target in a bad economic situation, who is faced with an unhappy populace and possibly limited resources, potential conflict initiators are likely to see opportunity. The argument also parallels the historical notion that leaders would only go to war when their coffers were full-in bad times, leaders may simply not be able to afford to go to conflict. Blainey's argument appears to pose a challenge to diversionary conflict theory in its emphasis on what is the most likely direction of conflict. Note, however, that its prediction (weak states become targets) differs from a strategic application of diversionary conflict theory.

Domestic sentiment ensures relations are ineffective.

Perlez 7/18 – Jane, chief diplomatic correspondent in the Beijing bureau of The New York Times, “In China and U.S., Mutual Distrust Grows, Study Finds,” July 18, 2013, http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/18/world/asia/in-china-and-us-mutual-distrust-grows-study-finds.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0#h[])//a-berg

BEIJING — Americans view China in a markedly less favorable light than two years ago, and Chinese attitudes toward the United States have also soured, a sign that the two countries are drifting apart at the level of public opinion, according to a Pew Global Survey to be released on Thursday. The survey showed that since 2011, China’s approval rating in the United States has dropped 14 percentage points to 37 percent, the lowest rating for China in any region in the world. Negative attitudes toward the United States among the Chinese rose to 53 percent, a nine-point increase. The deep skepticism toward China in the United States reflected the persistent worry that China’s fast-growing economy, even though it is slowing, threatens jobs in a weak American economy, said Bruce Stokes, the director of Pew Global Economic Attitudes, in Washington. But opinion makers in China, and Chinese people familiar with the United States, gave far broader reasons than pure economics for China’s sinking image. They cited China’s portrayal of itself as a newly confident and rich power on the world stage, a posture that seems threatening to Americans and Europeans. Some Chinese pointed to what they regarded as consistently negative coverage of China in the American news media. China’s suddenly testy relations with some of its neighbors, including Japan, probably contributed to the unease, they said. In the United States, in particular, Chinese personal wealth has been on conspicuous display, generating bitterness, they said. And Chinese corporations — most recently Shuanghui International, which made a $4.7 billion bid for the United States’ biggest pork producer, Smithfield Foods — are causing consternation about Chinese ownership of brand-name American assets, they said. Another development that is breeding American resentment, they said, is the Chinese elite’s practice of sending its children to top American schools and universities, in some cases crowding out American applicants with fewer resources. “It is understandable that Americans and others are nervous about China when it talks about itself as a great power or a major power,” said Rui Chenggang, a prominent interviewer of world leaders on CCTV, China’s state-run television. “It’s understandable that when people see what is happening between China and Japan and neighboring countries, and they see military exercises, that they are nervous.” Mr. Rui said he believed that concern was misplaced. “All the world thinkers who have decades of experience in China, from Henry Kissinger to Robert Zoellick, say China will be preoccupied by its domestic challenges, like environmental pollution, unemployment among college students and nonperforming loans,” he said. The Pew results arrive as already bumpy economic and military relations between Washington and Beijing have been damaged further by the revelations of Edward J. Snowden, the former intelligence contractor who last month leaked details of the National Security Agency's sweeping surveillance of foreigners and Americans. The survey was conducted in March and April in 39 countries, well before the impact of Mr. Snowden’s actions could be measured. The disclosures about the extent of American cyberespionage have received scornful coverage in China’s state-run news media and have fanned distrust of the United States on China’s Weibo, a popular microblogging platform. In the United States, Pew interviewed 1,002 people by phone from March 4 to March 18. In China, Horizonkey conducted the survey from March 4 to April 6, with personal interviews of 3,226 people in 12 cities. Pew later bought those results. Both surveys had a margin of sampling error of plus or minus four percentage points. With a focus on the intensifying rivalry between the United States and China, the results have piqued widespread interest within the American government. This week, in advance of the survey’s release, Pew briefed State Department officials. Over all, the United States was regarded more favorably in the world than China, with a median 63 percent to 50 percent. America was believed to respect the personal freedoms of its people far more than China, with large majorities in Germany, France and Spain saying individual freedoms were ignored in China, the poll said. China was viewed most favorably in Africa, with a 72 percent approval rating, followed by Asia and Latin America, at 58 percent. China’s approval rating in Europe was 43 percent. China’s low approval rating in the West correlated with the recent findings of Tao Xie, a professor of political science at Beijing Foreign Studies University. In a paper in the current issue of The Journal of Contemporary China, published by a British company, Professor Tao wrote that people in poor countries admired China’s economic success, while those in the West had negative feelings about China’s political system that trumped its economic achievements. “In developed, Western countries, people care more about values and political rights,” Professor Tao said in an interview. “Regardless of how cozy a relationship the German leader, Chancellor Merkel, has with the Chinese leaders, at the popular level in Germany attitudes to China are not going to change.” Professor Tao’s article, “What Affects China’s National Image? A Cross-National Study of Public Opinion,” was rejected by Chinese academic publications because it criticized the Confucius Institutes that the Chinese government has opened in many countries, he said. The article said the institutes, designed to project soft power, had failed to reverse China’s “rather negative image” in most of the countries where they operated. China’s image abroad, particularly in the United States, faces two major hurdles, said Hung Huang, a prominent media commentator in Beijing. First, the American news media have given unfair coverage of China, said Ms. Hung, who has lived in the United States and is now an American citizen. Second, she said, the Chinese government bungled its efforts to present China to the world, even as billions were spent on language-training institutes and electronic billboards in Times Square. “The Chinese government is probably the worst government at PR,” she said. “I don’t think the Ugandan government can do any worse.”

No offense—Increased Chinese relations doesn’t increase cooperation

Bremmer 2009 (Ian is an IR prof, Columbia. Faculty member at Stanford’s Hoover Institution. Senior Fellow, World Policy Institute. PhD in pol sci, Stanford—AND—Nouriel Roubini—professor of economics at New York University's Stern School of Business and chairman of RGE Monitor. “The Yin and Yang of U.S.-China Relations”, 1 September 2009,http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204731804574384601554931882.html)

American and Chinese officials said all the right things during this summer's inaugural round of their Strategic and Economic Dialogue. President Barack Obama pledged to "forge a path to the future that we seek for our children." Chinese State Councilor Dai Bingguo wondered aloud whether America and China can "build better relations despite very different social systems, cultures and histories." He answered his own question, in English, with a "Yes we can." They can, but they probably won't. Yes, Mr. Obama will visit China in November. But when it comes to international burden-sharing, Washington is focused on geopolitical headaches while China confines its heavy-lifting to geoeconomic challenges. The two sides have good reason to cooperate, but there's a growing gap between what Washington expects from Beijing and what the Chinese can deliver. Many of the issues that create conflict in U.S.-Chinese relations are well known: an enormous bilateral trade deficit, disputes over the value of China's currency, protections for U.S. intellectual property, the dollar's role as international reserve currency, conflicts over human rights, naval altercations, protectionist threats from both sides, and disagreements over how best to handle North Korea's Kim Jong Il. But there are other, less obvious obstacles to partnership. First, both governments remain largely focused on formidable domestic challenges. Mr. Obama knows his political fortunes depend largely on the resilience of the U.S. economy and its ability to generate jobs. He's occupied for the moment with a high-stakes poker game with lawmakers in his own party over ambitious health-care and energy-reform plans. China's leadership faces competing internal demands from those who want to stimulate the economy toward another round of export-driven growth and others who want to shift quickly toward greater dependence on domestic consumption. Given the trade deficit, Washington would like Beijing to focus on the latter, but China won't move as fast as the U.S. would like, in part because the leadership recognizes that the loss of millions of manufacturing and construction jobs in recent months could fuel further turmoil in a country that already sees tens of thousands of large-scale protests each year. Second, there's the bureaucratic problem. For the past several years, former U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson chaired a strategic dialogue with Chinese Vice Premier Wang Qishan. Washington and Beijing have now expanded the scope of talks to include the State Department and China's foreign ministry. Leaving aside the difficulties in building trust between U.S. and Chinese negotiators, State and Treasury don't coordinate well on strategy, and there's no guarantee that China's foreign and finance ministries will work seamlessly together either. The new formula for talks is bureaucratic infighting squared. The third reason the U.S. and China won't build a durable strategic partnership is that Beijing has little appetite for the larger geopolitical role Washington would like it to play. Why should Beijing accept the risks that come with direct involvement in conflicts involving Iran and Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, Israelis and Palestinians, Somalia and Sudan, and other sources of potential turmoil? It has more immediate problems at home. On many issues where the U.S. wants China's support—on Iran's nuclear program, for example—Beijing's interests don't coincide with Washington's. Even in East Asia, China has good reason to avoid the heavy lifting on security, because the U.S. naval presence limits the risk that Japan, India, and other states will spend much more money on their militaries. It's not as though Beijing is enjoying a free ride. China's more than $2 trillion in foreign currency reserves gives its leadership enormous clout as international lender of last resort. Its considerable contribution to global stability is mainly in financing Washington's spiraling debt. By righting its own economy, China can be the primary engine of near-term global growth. Isn't that service enough, Chinese officials ask, at a time when economic crises aggravate so many international problems? The one tangible result of this summer's Strategic and Economic dialogue, a "memorandum of understanding" on climate change, reveals the larger problem. It's valuable to have an agreement in principle, but there were no hard choices on the primary bone of contention—carbon emissions. That's a problem that will generate friction in months to come. Whenever U.S. and Chinese officials get together these days, they trigger a new round of speculation that the world's most important bilateral relationship might soon become its most valuable strategic alliance. It's wrong to entirely dismiss the value of effective speeches and positive political symbolism. But as U.S. and Chinese negotiators move from words to work, they're going to be pulling in different directions.

US solar tariffs make cooperation impossible

AP 5/19/12 [“Ruling adds to China trade tension: POSSIBLE U.S. TARIFFS ON SOLAR-PANEL IMPORTS MAY THREATEN CLEAN ENERGY COOPERATION,” http://www.stltoday.com/business/local/ruling-adds-to-china-trade-tension/article_c7071e82-78b7-5d95-b943-a8c6e5cc93de.html]

POSSIBLE U.S. TARIFFS ON SOLAR-PANEL IMPORTS MAY THREATEN CLEAN ENERGY COOPERATION¶ BEIJING • China's government on Friday rejected a U.S. antidumping ruling against its makers of solar power equipment, and Chinese manufacturers warned possible higher tariffs might hurt efforts to promote clean energy.¶ The conflict has worsened U.S.-Chinese trade tensions. The two governments have pledged to cooperate in developing renewable energy but accuse each other of violating free-trade pledges by subsidizing their own manufacturers.¶ "The U.S. ruling is unfair, and the Chinese side expresses its extreme dissatisfaction," said a Commerce Ministry spokesman, Shen Danyang, in a statement.¶ Shen warned the ruling might harm clean energy cooperation but gave no indication how Beijing might respond. Some American companies that oppose the trade probe have warned China might retaliate against U.S. suppliers.

China is a paper tiger.

Kelly, ’13 - Robert E., associate professor of international relations in the Department of Political Science and Diplomacy at Pusan National University, September 06, 2013, “Why the West Should Relax About China,” http://thediplomat.com/2013/09/06/why-the-west-should-relax-about-china/?all=true)//a-berg

Westerners are nothing if not breathless about China. Books describing its rise often have titles like When China Rules the World, Contest for Supremacy, Eclipse(of the U.S. by China), and so on. China is such a preoccupation that the U.S. has now “pivoted” to Asia. And the U.S. Department of Defense, eager to cash-in on the China hype in an era of sequestration and domestic exhaustion with the “Global War on Terror,” tells us now that the U.S. must shift to an Air-Sea Battle concept (ASB). In a not-so-amazing coincidence, ASB is chock of full of the sorts of costly, high-profile, air and maritime mega-platforms the military-industrial complex adores. China’s single, barely functional aircraft carrier—the second one is not due for awhile—is a god-send to hawks and neo-cons everywhere. Even as the U.S. scales back in the Middle East, defense can seemingly never be cut. Indeed, the terrible irony of the pivot to Asia from the Middle East is that ASB platforms like satellites, drones, up-armored aircraft carriers, stealth jets and littoral ships will cost so much that staying focused on the Middle East may well be less expensive. (For a running debate on ASB, start here.) Before the U.S. goes down this path, with the obvious tit-for-tat arming spiral it may provoke, it is worth noting how many other hurdles China’s rise faces beyond the U.S. military in the western Pacific. Richard Haas recently argued that “foreign policy begins at home.” As the U.S. pivots out of the Middle Eastern quagmire, perhaps America can take some time off to “nation-build at home,” as the president promised, before it rushes headlong into this expensive, provocative ASB posture. The U.S. foreign policy community’s zeal to always find something to do with U.S. power should not blind us to the many local obstacles China faces. The pivot to Asia, like the war in Iraq, is not a necessity; it is a choice. And U.S. voters who would like resources to go to schools, health care, infrastructure, deficit reduction, and so on, should know this: 1. Japan. This is the most obvious reason China will never become hegemon in Asia, much less genuinely challenge the U.S. at the global level. Westerners tend to downplay Japan, because of its terrible deflationary funk over the last two decades. It is true that Japan has slipped far from its glory days when Paul Kennedy put it on the cover the Rise and Fall of the Great Powers. But Japan is still the world’s third-largest economy. Its military, although numerically smaller than China’s, is far better trained and technologically proficient. And China’s recent replacement of Japan as the world’s second-largest economy seems to have galvanized Japanese voters to a new level of seriousness about getting Japan back on track under Abe. Sino-Japanese competition goes back to the 19th century, or arguably the Ming dynasty when Japan was the troublesome, badly behaved “little brother” to Confucian China. This hardly means that the two nations are fated to come into conflict. But it does suggest that Japan will not acquiesce to anything like Chinese hegemony or a Sinic Monroe Doctrine. For all the talk about the Middle Kingdom coming back, recall that only one Japanese shogun (Yoshimitsu) ever acknowledged Japan’s inferior status in the older tributary order. Certain Chinese officials, unaccustomed to speaking in front of responsible media, may say foolish things, but in a strictly balance-of-power sense, we can expect the Japanese to go eye-to-eye before accepting Chinese regional primacy. Like almost everyone else in Asia, Japan is eager to trade with China, but not to be dominated by it. Chinese may say Japan is being “unleashed” (as one colleague once put it at a conference I attended), but so what? Japan is not the revanchist or imperialist China says it is. As Jennifer Lind has noted repeatedly, Japan has come a long way. Bushido militarism is two generations dead, and Tokyo restricts itself to a defense spending cap at just one percent of GDP. Indeed, China shamelessly uses such rhetoric for domestic legitimacy purposes, as well as to deter Japanese re-armament. But if China does not like it, well, too bad? Either they can behave better or face a tougher, more heavily armed Japan. World War II cannot be a permanent, go-to excuse for China to dredge up whenever it wishes to block Japan and grease its own rise. Japan is highly unlikely to roll over for anything like Chinese dominance because of a war seventy years ago. 2. The rest of China’s neighbors. Sticking with geopolitics for a moment, consider China’s encirclement. Even its coastline is hemmed in by Japan, Taiwan and ASEAN, while its continental situation is like Germany’s—surrounded by many states, almost all wary of domination. Even Myanmar has begun to tack away. Should China genuinely act dangerously – although again, we should be wary of listening to military figures unaccustomed to speaking to uncowed foreign audiences – building a containment ring around China, with the U.S. lurking off-shore, would not be that difficult. It is a commonplace to compare China to Wilhelmine Germany, but the Germans lost, twice, and the Chinese know that. 3. Nondemocratic China cannot credibly commit to restraint, so it will never be trusted. Nondemocracies have a hard time credibly committing their good intentions to neighbors. Because their policy process is closed and opaque, and given to unpredictable swings as poorly understood elites take power, other states inevitably hedge against even their best behavior. The little goodwill toward China accumulated despite a decade of cautious “peaceful rising” is a good example. Suddenly, a few years ago, China swung toward belligerence in its maritime disputes, and its neighbors, even Myanamar, turned rapidly against it. Indeed, the great irony of Chinese power is how ideologically limited it is. China has no friends; even Kim Jong Il reportedly told a U.S. official that he did not trust China. True, China has business partners in democracies like South Korea, Australia and Japan. But these states will never be China’s friends, or, in geopolitical terms, enter into a “security community” with it. So long as China is an autocracy with political prisons, poor human rights protections, and no elections, its outreach will be limited to the strictly utilitarian. It can bully Hollywood into saccharine portrayals, but it will never build affective relations akin to those between the U.S. and Canada, or Germany and France. 4. Domestic caps and restrains. Finally, it is increasingly understood that China can no longer maintain its headline growth rates at breakneck speed. Many China domestic specialists have argued this for a long time. Communist party rule is perpetual unstable; it was widely noted recently that China spends more on internal than external security. Someday, the crisis will come, as it does to all autocracies. Meanwhile, population inversion, huge environmental problems, and rising health care issues like obesity and heavy smoking will curb the medium-term ability of China to project power in a local environment of fearful neighbors. As is happening in the U.S., a population that is older, sicker and fatter will increasingly demand welfare expenditures that crowd out military spending. This may not produce a democratic peace so much as a “diabetic peace,” but the outcome is similar.

This proves deterrence checks

Glaser 11 (Charles, Professor of PoliSci and International Affairs and Director of the Institute for Security and Conflict Studies @ George Washington University, “Will China’s Rise Lead to War?” March/April Foreign Affairs)

What does all this imply about the rise of China? At the broadest level, the news is good. Current international conditions should enable both the United States and China to protect their vital interests without posing large threats to each other. Nuclear weapons make it relatively easy for major powers to maintain highly effective deterrent forces. Even if Chinese power were to greatly exceed U.S. power somewhere down the road, the United States would still be able to maintain nuclear forces that could survive any Chinese attack and threaten massive damage in retaliation. Large-scale conventional attack by China against the U.S. homeland, meanwhile, are virtually impossible because the United States and China are separated by the vast expanse of the Pacific Ocean, across which it would be difficult to attack. No foreseeable increase in China’s power would be large enough to overcome these twin advantages of defense for the United States. The same defensive advantages, moreover, apply to China as well. Although China is currently much weaker than the United States militarily, it will soon be able to build a nuclear force that meets its requirements for deterrence. And China should not find the United States’ massive conventional capabilities especially threatening, because the bulk of U.S. forces, logistics, and support lie across the Pacific. The overall effect of these conditions is to greatly moderate the security dilemma. Both the United States and China will be able to maintain high levels of security now and through any potential rise of China to superpower status. This should help Washington and Beijing avoid truly strained geopolitical relations, which should in turn help ensure that the security dilemma stays moderate, thereby facilitating cooperation. The United States, for example, will have the option to forego responding to China’s modernization of its nuclear force. This restraint will help reassure China that the United States does not want to threaten its security - and thus help head off a downward political spiral fueled by nuclear competition.

Fx t explodes topic

Derrick, 98 - LIEUTENANT COLONEL ROBERT R. DERRICK United States Army (“ENGAGEMENT: THE NATIONS PREMIER GRAND STRATEGY, WHO'S IN CHARGE?” http://www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?AD=ADA342695)

In addition to the agencies that administer the programs listed in figure 3, the State Department proclaims that "...protecting national interests and advancing US goals involve virtually every agency of the government...."16 US governmental agencies with international reach directly engage as a part of their daily routines. Agencies that deal strictly with domestic policy indirectly engage through the effect their actions have on US markets and thus world markets. For example the Departments of State, Defense, Agriculture, Transportation, and Energy, have both domestic and international responsibilities. From trade status to travel status, from immigration rules to export of tools, from training flights to basing rights, US agencies directly and indirectly engage through hundreds of programs. US governmental agencies that inadvertently operate at crosspurposes, through misunderstanding or ignorance, must ultimately be coordinated at some point. Since there is no single director below the President to coordinate the US engagement activities of the three elements of national power, it becomes the responsibility of the regional CINCs and Ambassadors.

Engagement should be defined as the means, not an end – it’s necessary for education and effective policy analysis

Resnik, 1 – Assistant Professor of Political Science at Yeshiva University (Evan, Journal of International Affairs, “Defining Engagement” v54, n2, political science complete)

DEFINING ENGAGEMENT TOO NARROWLY

The third trap that has ensnared numerous scholars is the tendency to needlessly circumscribe the parameters of engagement. This results from attempts to: define engagement as ends rather than means; stipulate the types of states that can engage or be engaged; restrict the types of behaviors that comprise engagement; and limit the types of behaviors that can be modified through engagement. Each of these restrictions hampers the task of evaluating the utility of engagement relative to other policies objectively accurately.¶ Some scholars have excessively narrowed the definition of engagement by defining it according to the ends sought rather than the means employed. For example, Schweller and Wohlforth assert that if any distinction can be drawn between engagement and appeasement, "it is that the goal of engagement is not simply tension-reduction and the avoidance of war but also an attempt to socialize [a] dissatisfied power into acceptance of the established order."(n17) Such ends-based definitions hinder the study of engagement in two ways. First, because the act of policymaking consists of selecting from a variety of alternative means in the pursuit of a given end(s), it stands to reason that policy instruments are more effectively conceptualized in terms of means rather than ends. When defined as different means, policies can be more easily compared with one another across a whole spectrum of discrete ends, in order to gauge more accurately the circumstances under which each policy is relatively more or less effective.(n18)Second, scholars who define engagement as the end of peaceful socialization inevitably create a bias for future empirical research on engagement outcomes. This is because it is difficult to imagine a more ambitious foreign policy objective than the peaceable transformation of a revisionist state that rejects the dominant norms and practices of the international system into a status-quo state that embodies those same norms and practices. The equation of engagement with socialization alone forecloses the possibility that engagement could be employed to accomplish more modest goals such as tension-reduction. Therefore, all else being equal, scholars using this loaded definition will be predisposed to conclude from examination only of the hardest cases of attempted socialization that the policy is ineffective.(n19) Considering engagement as a set of means would enable analysts to more fairly assess the effectiveness of engagement relative to other policies in achieving an array of ends.

1nr

2nc impact overview

DA outweighs and turns the case --- global economic collapse causes nuclear war and extinction --- creates global hotspots and diversionary war which emboldens rogue nations --- that’s Friedberg and Schoenfeld.

Turns every aff impact.

Harris and Burrows 9

Mathew, PhD European History @ Cambridge, counselor in the National Intelligence Council (NIC) and Jennifer is a member of the NIC’s Long Range Analysis Unit “Revisiting the Future: Geopolitical Effects of the Financial Crisis” http://www.ciaonet.org/journals/twq/v32i2/f_0016178_13952.pdf

Increased Potential for Global Conflict

Of course, the report encompasses more than economics and indeed believes the future is likely to be the result of a number of intersecting and interlocking forces. With so many possible permutations of outcomes, each with ample Revisiting the Future opportunity for unintended consequences, there is a growing sense of insecurity. Even so, history may be more instructive than ever. While we continue to believe that the Great Depression is not likely to be repeated, the lessons to be drawn from that period include the harmful effects on fledgling democracies and multiethnic societies (think Central Europe in 1920s and 1930s) and on the sustainability of multilateral institutions (think League of Nations in the same period). There is no reason to think that this would not be true in the twenty-first as much as in the twentieth century. For that reason, the ways in which the potential for greater conflict could grow would seem to be even more apt in a constantly volatile economic environment as they would be if change would be steadier. In surveying those risks, the report stressed the likelihood that terrorism and nonproliferation will remain priorities even as resource issues move up on the international agenda. Terrorism’s appeal will decline if economic growth continues in the Middle East and youth unemployment is reduced. For those terrorist groups that remain active in 2025, however, the diffusion of technologies and scientific knowledge will place some of the world’s most dangerous capabilities within their reach. Terrorist groups in 2025 will likely be a combination of descendants of long established groups_inheriting organizational structures, command and control processes, and training procedures necessary to conduct sophisticated attacks_and newly emergent collections of the angry and disenfranchised that become self-radicalized, particularly in the absence of economic outlets that would become narrower in an economic downturn. The most dangerous casualty of any economically-induced drawdown of U.S. military presence would almost certainly be the Middle East. Although Iran’s acquisition of nuclear weapons is not inevitable, worries about a nuclear-armed Iran could lead states in the region to develop new security arrangements with external powers, acquire additional weapons, and consider pursuing their own nuclear ambitions. It is not clear that the type of stable deterrent relationship that existed between the great powers for most of the Cold War would emerge naturally in the Middle East with a nuclear Iran. Episodes of low intensity conflict and terrorism taking place under a nuclear umbrella could lead to an unintended escalation and broader conflict if clear red lines between those states involved are not well established. The close proximity of potential nuclear rivals combined with underdeveloped surveillance capabilities and mobile dual-capable Iranian missile systems also will produce inherent difficulties in achieving reliable indications and warning of an impending nuclear attack. The lack of strategic depth in neighboring states like Israel, short warning and missile flight times, and uncertainty of Iranian intentions may place more focus on preemption rather than defense, potentially leading to escalating crises.

Yes PC

Yes PC – multiple reasons

Kornblum 9/11

John, Former U.S. ambassador to Germany, Judy Asks: Is Obama a Lame-Duck President?, 9/11/13, http://carnegieeurope.eu/strategiceurope/?fa=52932&lang=en

U.S. President Barack Obama is far from a lame-duck president.¶ Such charges often arise when a politician is facing difficulties, and it is true that Obama has not been as adroit as he might have been on issues such as Syria. But if Syrian stocks of poison gas are put under international control, as was proposed this week, he will in fact gain in both influence and reputation.¶ And the reality is that the U.S. economy is improving, the nation’s overseas military involvements are being cut back, and the Republicans continue to self-destruct.¶ There is rough sledding ahead, but the president has more than enough political capital to deal with the problems he faces.

Turns China --- causes a draw in over Iran ties goes nuclear --- that’s the 1nc evidence, also turns trade bc obvi full scal nuclear war would shut down the market ---- it also turns trade bc if we cant increase the debt ceiling then have no money our economy collapse and no one will trade with us

at intrinsicness

We should evaluate the politics DA as an intrinsic cost of the plan

a) Decisionmaking --- Willpower is a finite resource both in Congress and our personal lives --- debating the politics DA lets us practice being realistic about our ability to make and stick to tough choices.

b) Negotiations --- Politics gives us a unique opportunity to learn about how negotiations operate --- that’s an essential skill for good advocates.

The DA is intrinsic.

Stephenson, ’08 (Matthew C., Harvard Law Professor, Michigan Law Review, “Optimal political control of the bureaucracy,” 10-1-8, pg. 53(58) Vol. 107 No. 1, www.michiganlawreview.org/assets/pdfs/107/1/stephenson.pdf‎)//a-berg

The assumption of increasing marginal control costs is important to the subsequent results, so it is worth pausing to explain its justification. This assumption is premised on the notions that bureaucratic control costs are primarily opportunity costs--the diversion of time, effort, and political capital from other activities--and that the president tries to allocate these resources efficiently, sacrificing low-value activities before high-value activities. Imagine, for purposes of illustration, that the president has 100 units of political capital that she allocates to an array of tasks. If the president devotes a single unit of capital to influence a particular bureaucratic decision (so the president devotes 1 unit to bureaucratic control and 99 to other tasks), she will sacrifice whichever other activity was least valuable to her; to do otherwise would be irrational. The value of that foregone activity is the cost of devoting 1 unit of political capital to bureaucratic control. Now suppose the president devotes a second unit of political capital to bureaucratic control (so that she applies 2 units to bureaucratic control and 98 units to other tasks.) (67) Because the president has already foregone the lowest-valued of her original set of alternative activities, the opportunity cost of devoting this second unit of political capital to bureaucratic control will be higher than the opportunity cost of the first unit. Hence, the cost to the president of devoting 2 units of political capital to bureaucratic control is more than twice as great as the cost of devoting 1 unit to bureaucratic control. As long as the president rationally sacrifices low-value activities before high-value activities, then the marginal cost to the president of influencing the bureaucracy is increasing in the distance the president moves the bureaucracy's ideal point. (68)

Intrinsicness is a voting issue –

1) Moving target - affs should have to defend the plan to the death

2) Kills ground - we would have no DAs since the USFG has unlimited agential ambit.

Politics DAs are good they force current events research on a topic that stays the same and we gain education about the political effects of the plan – which is key to prevent civic disengagement later in life.

3) Counterintep - they get topical intrinsicness, they should have to prove the necessity of the resolution

2nc Link Ext.

1nc ev says tpp specifically empirically causes fights which subsumes there argument that repubs like trade in general so they will like the plan

TPP costs political capital

Bremmer and Gordon 13

Ian and David, Eurasia Group, New York Times, Two Key Foreign Policy Openings for Obama, 2/25/13, http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/26/opinion/global/two-key-foreign-policy-openings-for-obama.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

The Trans-Pacific Partnership can help counter the growth of state capitalism and extend U.S. influence in the Pacific in much the same way that potential E.U. membership once encouraged reform in former Warsaw Pact countries, states that might otherwise have followed a familiar path of least resistance back toward state-run economics and authoritarian rule.¶ This trade pact is not an attempt to contain China or stunt its growth. Instead, it is an enormous investment in the future of free markets — and an invitation to China’s neighbors to share the benefits of free trade while deepening their political and security relationships with Washington. It is also a signal that America intends to remain in Asia as a stabilizing force, even as China becomes a more influential economic and security player, in the region and beyond.¶ Hurdles must be cleared on regulatory and agricultural issues if Pacific partnership members are to complete talks by their stated October deadline, and Obama can provide crucial momentum. By publicly highlighting his prioritization of the Pacific partnership and personally pressing Abe to join the bargaining, he will signal to both current and potential members that he is ready to spend political capital at home to make the partnership a reality.¶ Washington will have to compromise on key provisions of the deal, but the Pacific partnership will provide the United States with something it badly needs: A secure and lasting foothold for liberal trade, investment, and regulatory principles in the world’s most economically promising region, one that might otherwise remain frozen in China’s lengthening state capitalist shadow. With a parallel agreement brewing with the European Union, Obama has a golden opportunity to reshape the global trade and investment landscape to better serve U.S. interests and enhance growth prospects at home.¶ The shale revolution creates a similar opportunity. The unprecedented growth in U.S. gas production brought about by changes in drilling and extraction technology has triggered a battle in Washington over who should benefit. Refiners, manufacturers and consumers want the benefits of cheap energy for the domestic economy. Producers want to profit from access to new markets both at home and abroad. Under U.S. law, the Department of Energy must find that exports of liquefied natural gas, or L.N.G., are in the public interest before approving a project. U.S. allies in Europe are hoping for a surge on L.N.G. exports from America that will ease dependence on countries like Russia and Iran.¶ By giving our friends what they want, the president can promote free-market principles, add significant downward pressure on global gas prices that benefit all consumers, and blunt the market power of Russia and Iran. A decision to green light L.N.G. exports could be written into the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which would create U.S. leverage for its partners, especially Japan, which has long pushed for access to more U.S.-produced energy.¶ Perhaps the best reason for Obama to do these things is that they are doable. On questions of budgets and borrowing, immigration reform, gun control, and a dozen other hot topics, Democrats and Republicans stand miles apart. But if the president will devote time, energy and political capital to a trade deal that defines the United States as a permanent Pacific power and an energy policy that both redefines America’s market potential and tightens the bonds that bind America and its allies, he will have enough votes from the two parties — and the support he needs from U.S. business leaders — to make both happen.

2nc at syria

1nc Pace evidence says Syria is on hold – Obama is pushing resolution of the debt ceiling – prefer issue specific uniqueness – Obama has enough PC to hold on the debt ceiling

Russia deal provides cover – no loss of PC

Bohan 9/11

Caren, Reuters, Delay in Syria vote frees Obama to shift to hefty domestic agenda, 9/11/13, http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/09/11/us-usa-obama-agenda-idUSBRE98A0Z920130911

Putting off a decision on military strikes on Syria allows President Barack Obama to shift his attention back to a weighty domestic agenda for the fall that includes budget fights, immigration and selecting a new chairman of the Federal Reserve.¶ Obama and his aides have immersed themselves for a week and a half in an intensive effort to win support in Congress for U.S. military action in Syria after a suspected chemical weapons attack last month killed more than 1,400 people.¶ But the effort, which included meetings by Obama on Capitol Hill on Tuesday followed by his televised speech to Americans, seemed headed for an embarrassing defeat, with large numbers of both Democrats and Republicans expressing opposition.¶ The push for a vote on Syria - which has now been delayed - had threatened to crowd out the busy legislative agenda for the final three months of 2013 and drain Obama's political clout, making it harder for him to press his priorities.¶ But analysts said a proposal floated by Russia, which the Obama administration is now exploring, to place Syria's weapons under international control may allow Obama to emerge from a difficult dilemma with minimal political damage.¶ "He dodges a tough political situation this way," said John Pitney, professor of politics at Claremont McKenna College in California.¶ Pitney said the delay in the Syria vote removes a big burden for Obama, given that Americans, who overwhelmingly opposed military intervention in Syria, will now be able to shift their attention to other matters.

Syria won’t affect budget negotiations – GOP was already against Obama on the budget

Bohan 9/11

Caren, Reuters, Delay in Syria vote frees Obama to shift to hefty domestic agenda, 9/11/13, http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/09/11/us-usa-obama-agenda-idUSBRE98A0Z920130911

On issues like the budget battles in which Obama will go toe-to-toe with Republicans, the Syria push will have little fallout for Obama, predicted Matt Bennett, senior vice president at Third Way, a center-left think tank.¶ Republicans showed a huge resistance to Obama's agenda well before the administration's effort to win congressional backing on Syria began to falter, Bennett noted. He said the time focused on Syria over the last week and half did nothing to change that dynamic.

Syria after debt

O’Brien 9/10

Teri O'Brien, Americas Original Conservative Warrior Princess, KGB Grownup Rescues Man-child 'Commander in Chief', 9/10/13, Lexis

Tonight on Fox News Channel Barack Obama told Chris Wallace that he envisions the pursuit of a Congressional authorization of force for his 'unbelievably small' limited strike on Syria taking several weeks, which puts it after the beginning of the Obamacare 'marketplaces,' which are already a disaster, and the debt ceiling debate.

at: dickinson

PC key

Dickinson 09 (Matthew, professor of political science at Middlebury College. He taught previously at Harvard University, where he also received his Ph.D., working under the supervision of presidential scholar Richard Neustadt, We All Want a Revolution: Neustadt, New Institutionalism, and the Future of Presidency Research, Presidential Studies Quarterly 39 no4 736-70 D 2009)

Nonetheless, if Neustadt clearly recognizes that a president's influence in Congress is exercised mostly, as George Edwards (1989) puts it, "at the margins," his case studies in PP also suggest that, within this limited bound, presidents do strive to influence legislative outcomes. But how? Scholars often argue that a president's most direct means of influence is to directly lobby certain members of Congress, often through quid pro quo exchanges, at critical junctures during the lawmaking sequence. Spatial models of legislative voting suggest that these lobbying efforts are most effective when presidents target the median, veto, and filibuster "pivots" within Congress. This logic finds empirical support in vote-switching studies that indicate that presidents do direct lobbying efforts at these pivotal voters, and with positive legislative results. Keith Krehbiel analyzes successive votes by legislators in the context of a presidential veto and finds "modest support for the sometimes doubted stylized fact of presidential power as persuasion" (1998, 153-54). Similarly, David Brady and Craig Volden look at vote switching by members of Congress in successive Congresses on nearly identical legislation and also conclude that presidents do influence the votes of at least some legislators (1998, 125-36). In his study of presidential lobbying on key votes on important domestic legislation during the 83rd (1953-54) through 108th (2003-04) Congresses, Matthew Beckman shows that in addition to these pivotal voters, presidents also lobby leaders in both congressional parties in order to control what legislative alternatives make it onto the congressional agenda (more on this later). These lobbying efforts are correlated with a greater likelihood that a president's legislative preferences will come to a vote (Beckmann 2008, n.d.).

Spills over and it’s finite

Marshall and Prins, ‘11 [BRYAN W. MARSHALL Miami University BRANDON C. PRINS University of Tennessee & Howard H. Baker, Jr. Center for Public Policy Power or Posturing? Policy Availability and Congressional Influence on U.S. Presidential Decisions to Use Force Presidential Studies Quarterly 41, no. 3 (September) 2011]

We argue that the more important effect of Congress occurs because presidents anticipate how the use of force may affect the larger congressional environment in which they inevitably have to operate (Brulé, Marshall, and Prins 2010). It may be true that presidents consider the chances that Congress will react to a specific use of force with countervailing tools, but even more importantly they anticipate the likelihood that a foreign conflict may damage (or advantage) their political fortunes elsewhere—in essence, the presidential calculus to use force factors in how such actions might shape their ability to achieve legislative priorities. To be clear, presidents can and do choose to use force and press for legislative initiatives in Congress. Taking unilateral actions in foreign policy does not preclude the president from working the legislative process on Capitol Hill. However, political capital is finite so spending resources in one area lessens what the president can bring to bear in other areas. That is, presidents consider the congressional environment in their decision to use force because their success at promoting policy change in either foreign or domestic affairs is largely determined by their relationship with Congress. Presidents do not make such decisions devoid of calculations regarding congressional preferences and behavior or how such decisions may influence their ability to achieve legislative objectives. This is true in large part because presidential behavior is motivated by multiple goals that are intimately tied to Congress. Presidents place a premium on passing legislative initiatives. The passage of policy is integral to their goals of reelection and enhancing their place in history (Canes-Wrone 2001; Moe 1985). Therefore, presidents seek to build and protect their relationship with Congress.

PC key – empirics

Dmitri Simes, Executive Director, Nixon Center and Paul Saunders, “START of a Pyrrhic Victory,” NATIONAL INTEREST, 2010, http://nationalinterest.org/commentary/start-pyrrhic-victory-4626, accessed 10-2-11.

Had the lame-duck session not already been so contentious, this need not have been a particular problem. Several Senate Republicans indicated openness to supporting the treaty earlier in the session, including Senator Lindsey Graham and Senator John McCain. Senator Jon Kyl—seen by many as leading Republican opposition to the agreement—was actually quite careful to avoid saying that he opposed New START until almost immediately prior to the vote. Our ownconversations with Republican Senate sources during the lame duck session suggested that several additional Republicans could have voted to ratify New START under other circumstances; Senator Lamar Alexander is quoted in the press as saying that Republican anger over unrelated legislation cost five to ten votes. By the time the Senate reached New START, earlier conduct by Senate Democrats and the White House had alienated many Republicans who could have voted for the treaty. That the administration secured thirteen Republican votes (including some from retiring Senators) for the treaty now—and had many more potentially within its grasp—makes clear what many had believed all along: it would not have been so difficult for President Obama to win the fourteen Republican votes needed for ratification in the new Senate, if he had been prepared to wait and to work more cooperatively with Senate Republicans. Senator Kerry’s comment that “70 votes is yesterday’s 95” ignores the reality that he and the White House could have secured many more than 70 votes had they handled the process differently and attempts to shift the blame for the low vote count onto Republicans.

at fiat solves link

1. Even if you win this argument – there’s still backlash to the plan which drains Obama’s capital and triggers the link

2. Fiat is the least means necessary – Obama changes his mind and pushes it, that’s the most likely. Your interpretation would have every senator/representative change their mind.

3. Politics DAs are good – key to neg ground, net benefit to tons of counterplans, the only way to access current events education. Important because debaters become policymakers. Defer to link specificity – this is a no risk unwarranted arg by the aff.