***HEG SUSTAINABLE***
INDICT
Prefer our evidence – decline theorists are alarmists who focus on
snapshots
Dunn and McClelland, 13 – Professor of International Politics and Head of the Department of
Political Science and International Studies at the University of Birmingham AND Associate Director for
North America at the risk analytics consultancy Maplecroft in charge of energy policy (David and Mark,
“Shale gas and the revival of American power: debunking decline?,” The Royal Institute of International
Affairs, http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1468-2346.12081/abstract)//eek
One of the obstacles to good scholarship that all observers of contemporary affairs face
is the temptation to exaggerate the impact of recently occurring events in relation to
either established patterns of behaviour or longer-term systemic trends. Economists
refer to this as ‘present bias’. As the dominant power in the international system, the
United States is open to more such speculation than any other nation. Following costly military
interventions and questionable economic policies, America’s relative decline has been widely announced,
especially given dramatic economic growth in China. Those who have defended the
durability of US power have often chosen to take the fight to the declinists on somewhat
intangible grounds, stressing soft power, the importance of liberal democratic norms
and the changing nature of power itself. This article, however, takes a different approach and suggests that
there are still sufficient grounds for defending the resil- ience of American power on
material grounds: namely, that the revolution in shale gas production calls for a fundamental
reassessment of the material basis of American power. While significant caveats remain regarding
environmental issues, the lifespans of shale gas wells and the utility of energy independence, the more optimistic assessments of the
potential of US shale basins indicate an energy future for the United States that is markedly different from the one envisaged only
five years ago, when LNG terminals were being developed in the United States to process large imports. The revolution in shale gas
production now offers the alluring prospect for US policy-makers of a far greater retention of American wealth than previously
envisaged, and hundreds of billions of dollars every year— which would have been spent on energy imports—available for more
produc- tive use in the American economy. When Canadian energy reserves are factored into future forecasts, and the North
American market is seen more broadly, the future situation looks even better for the United States. There are likely to be much
greater dollar inflows back into the United States from Canada than if those same petrodollars were being spent, as they are now, in
Venezuela, Saudi Arabia or Qatar. On top of the benefits generated by falling energy imports, shale gas production has caused the
price of natural gas to plummet, reducing costs for both US consumers and US industrial and manufacturing interests.
LAUNDRY LIST
US hegemony is uniquely sustainable – tech, gas boom, allies, nukes,
geography, soft power, and the liberal order
Ikenburry, 14 – a professor of Politics and International Affairs in the Woodrow Wilson School of
Public and International Affairs at Princeton University, former senior fellow at Brookings, and PhD
(John, “The Illusion of Geopolitics: The Enduring Power of the Liberal Order,” 2014, Council on Foreign
Relations, Proquest)//eek
In 1904, the English geographer Halford Mackinder wrote that the great power that controlled the
heartland of Eurasia would command "the World-Island" and thus the world itself. For Mead, Eurasia
has returned as the great prize of geopolitics. Across the far reaches of this
supercontinent, he argues, China, Iran, and Russia are seeking to establish their spheres
of influence and challenge U.S. interests, slowly but relentlessly attempting to dominate
Eurasia and thereby threaten the United States and the rest of the world. This vision misses a
deeper reality. In matters of geopolitics (not to mention demographics, politics, and ideas), the
United States has a decisive advantage over China, Iran, and Russia. Although the
United States will no doubt come down from the peak of hegemony that it occupied during
the unipolar era, its power is still unrivaled. Its wealth and technological advantages
remain far out of the reach of China and Russia, to say nothing of Iran. Its recovering
economy, now bolstered by massive new natural gas resources, allows it to maintain a
global military presence and credible security commitments. Indeed, Washington enjoys a
unique ability to win friends and influence states. According to a study led by the political
scientist Brett Ashley Leeds, the United States boasts military partnerships with more than
60 countries, whereas Russia counts eight formal allies and China has just one (North
Korea). As one British dip- lomat told me several years ago, "China doesn't seem to do alliances." But the
United States does, and they pay a double dividend: not only do alliances provide a global
platform for the projection of U.S. power, but they also distribute the burden of
providing security. The military capabilities aggregated in this U.S.-led alliance system
outweigh anything China or Russia might generate for decades to come. Then there are
the nuclear weapons. These arms, which the United States, China, and Russia all possess (and Iran is
seeking), help the United States in two ways. First, thanks to the logic of mutual assured
destruction, they radically reduce the likelihood of great-power war. Such upheavals
have provided opportunities for past great powers, including the United States in World War II,
to entrench their own international orders. The atomic age has robbed China and Russia
of this opportunity. Second, nuclear weapons also make China and Russia more secure,
giving them assurance that the United States will never invade. That's a good thing,
because it reduces the likelihood that they will resort to desperate moves, born of
insecurity, that risk war and undermine the liberal order. Geography reinforces the United States'
other advantages. As the only great power not surrounded by other great powers, the
country has appeared less threatening to other states and was able to rise dramatically
over the course of the last century without triggering a war. After the Cold War, when the
United States was the world's sole superpower, other global powers, oceans away, did not even
attempt to balance against it. In fact, the United States' geographic posi- tion has led other
countries to worry more about abandonment than domination. Allies in Europe, Asia, and
the Middle East have sought to draw the United States into playing a greater role in their
regions. The result is what the historian Geir Lundestad has called an "empire by invitation." The
United States' geographic advantage is on full display in Asia. Most countries there see China as a
greater potential danger-due to its proximity, if nothing else-than the United States. Except for
the United States, every major power in the world lives in a crowded geopolitical
neighborhood where shifts in power routinely provoke counterbalancing-including by one
another. China is discovering this dynamic today as surrounding states react to its rise by modern- izing
their militaries and reinforcing their alliances. Russia has known it for decades, and has faced it most
recently in Ukraine, which in recent years has increased its military spending and sought closer ties to the
eu. Geographic isolation has also given the United States reason to champion universal
principles that allow it to access various regions of the world. The country has long promoted the
open-door policy and the principle of self-determination and opposed colonialism-less out of a
sense of idealism than due to the practical realities of keeping Europe, Asia, and the Middle East open for
trade and diplomacy. In the late 1930s, the main question facing the United States was how large a
geopolitical space, or "grand area," it would need to exist as a great power in a world of empires, regional
blocs, and spheres of influ- ence. World War II made the answer clear: the country's prosperity and
security depended on access to every region. And in the ensuing decades, with some important and
damaging exceptions, such as Vietnam, the United States has embraced postimperial
principles. It was during these postwar years that geopolitics and order building
converged. A liberal international framework was the answer that statesmen such as Dean Acheson,
George Kennan, and George Marshall offered to the challenge of Soviet expansionism. The system they
built strengthened and enriched the United States and its allies, to the detriment of its
illiberal opponents. It also stabilized the world economy and established mechanisms
for tackling global problems. The end of the Cold War has not changed the logic behind this project.
Fortunately, the liberal principles that Washington has pushed enjoy near-universal
appeal, because they have tended to be a good fit with the modernizing forces of
economic growth and social advancement. As the historian Charles Maier has put it, the United
States surfed the wave of twentieth-century modernization. But some have argued that this congruence
between the American project and the forces of modernity has weakened in recent years. The 2008
financial crisis, the thinking goes, marked a world-historical turning point, at which the United States lost
its vanguard role in facilitating economic advancement. Yet even if that were true, it hardly follows
that China and Russia have replaced the United States as the standard-bearers of the
global economy. Even Mead does not argue that China, Iran, or Russia offers the world a
new model of modernity. If these illiberal powers really do threaten Washington and the rest of the
liberal capitalist world, then they will need to find and ride the next great wave of modernization. They are
unlikely to do that.
ALLIANCES
Hege is sustainable – military and economic fundamentals are more
important than recent political events and trends
Jones, 14 – Senior Fellow, Foreign Policy Director, Project on International Order and Strategy @
Brookings (Bruce, “American Leadership in a World in Flux,” March 10, 2014,
http://www.brookings.edu/research/opinions/2014/03/10-american-leadership-fluxjones?rssid=LatestFromBrookings)//eek
There's never been a more important time to understand American power, and leadership. We need only
look to Russian special forces in Crimea, Chinese warships in the East China Sea, and an ever-deeper
crisis in Syria to see the stakes. In every region, and at home, critics decry the lack of American leadership,
and American withdrawal from the world stage. The narrative of American decline and
withdrawal is becoming the conventional wisdom. But is it right? What we're really seeing
is a mounting gap between the fundamentals, on the one hand, and perceptions and policy
on the other. The fundamentals of American power are still strong. We spend more on
our military than the next 15 countries combined, 10 of whom are close allies, and we
have a huge advantage in high-tech weaponry, training, a global network of bases, a
dominant intelligence capacity. (That doesn't necessarily translate into easy military answers to
crises, of course.) We dominate the league tables in higher education. The shale and tight oil
revolution give us an increasingly strong position in global energy markets, and
demonstrate the technological dynamism of our economy. Our population is young, and
growing. And no leading power in modern history has had anything like the
suite of alliances that America enjoys.
BRIC
BRIC doesn’t impact hege – fundamentals and no BRIC cooperation
Jones, 14 – Senior Fellow, Foreign Policy Director, Project on International Order and Strategy @
Brookings (Bruce, “American Leadership in a World in Flux,” March 10, 2014,
http://www.brookings.edu/research/opinions/2014/03/10-american-leadership-fluxjones?rssid=LatestFromBrookings)//eek
Now, at some point in the next decade or two, China's economy will match that of the U.S. in
size. But comparing the two on the basis of size is like comparing the Lakers to a middleschool basketball team - yes, both have 11 players, but the comparison ends there. Even when
China's economy overtakes that of the U.S., Americans will be far richer per capita, the
American economy will occupy a far more influential segment of the market, and the
American dollar will still play a vastly larger role in global finance. America's GDP may
have declined to roughly 22% of the world total (from a high of around 25%) but American firms
still account for almost 50% of global profits, and American business still dominate sectors like
finance and high technology. Oh and there's this: the more China's economy grows, the more
ours grows, since China is an increasingly large trade partner. But there's no question that the big
three emerging powers, China, India and Brazil, play an increasingly important role in international
affairs. (Let's stop lumping Russia in with these countries--one of the biggest problems with the concept
of the 'BRICs' is the way it conflates these dynamic, market-oriented economies of the big three with
Russia's resource economy's recovery from its 1990s collapse.) Are they trying to challenge the U.S.? It's
complicated. All three have grievances, and they're jockeying for space and leverage. They
do want to challenge the West's dominance in key global regimes like trade and finance--to
reshape them, but not to break them. And China is looking to challenge American naval dominance
off its coastlines in the East and South China Seas--vital trading routes for the Chinese economy. In all
this, they have common or at least overlapping interests--and Russia is aligned with these goals. But this
is not a unified bloc seeking to challenge the West. India and China have fought three
wars against each other, and while they're now huge trading partners they still eye each
other with suspicion and nervousness, while their armies test each other in the Himalayas. China
and Russia have some common interests, and occasionally collaborate to stymie Western initiatives-but these are rival powers too, and each is actively exploring relations with other powers
like India and Japan to balance their relationship with each other. What divides these
powers is far more important than what unites them. And in the case of the big three,
their growth is dependent on a stable global financial system, and on global trade. For
China and India, they're also embarked in a far-flung search for the energy resources
they need to grow--and they're finding them in places they have no power to stabilize on their own.
They are both increasingly dependent on oil from the Persian Gulf, and thus on
America's military presence there. The fact is that their growth, now and for the next
decades, is still dependent on American power. Not so with Russia. Russia looks more set to
challenge Western influence in its neighborhood, and is less dependent on international trade. But even
Russia is vulnerable to global markets, and to energy sales to Europe. As I write the
threat of sanctions on Russia, in response to its military moves in the Crimea, is being
felt in the Russian business community, and in the Russian stock market. In short, there
are a lot of sources of tension and rivalry in
contemporary international politics, but also
important sources of restraint--and of cooperation, against terrorism in particular, but
also proliferation and threats to trade. Navigating this tense balance between rivalry and restraint
is going to be the dominant challenge for American leadership in the years to come. It's going to take
patient management of our allies (and a certain patience by our allies), and it's going to take an ability to
work with countries like India and Brazil that are neither friend nor foe. And it's going to take sound
policy. An example of the opposite: taking out Qaddafi's regime, but failing to put a stabilization presence
into Libya afterwards, to secure the peace. Syria is more complicated but little doubt that the
Administration's confused stance over chemical weapons and airstrikes in August 2013 did little to project
confidence in American power. Critics argue that if the United States withdraws from international
leadership we're going to see chaos and confusion. They're right. This hasn't happened yet, though,
despite some perceptions to the contrary. We have the underlying capacity, a powerful alliance
structure, and a favorable international landscape.
CHINA
China lacks the military, economy, and domestic stability to challenge the
US—and it doesn’t want to lead anyways
Beauchamp 14
(Zack, B.A.s in Philosophy and Political Science from Brown University and M.Sc in International
Relations from the London School of Economics; 2/13/14, The Week, “China has not replaced America —
and it never will,” http://theweek.com/article/index/256406/china-has-not-replaced-america-mdashand-it-never-will, Accessed 7/30/14, JC)
China faces too many internal problems and regional rivals to ever make a real play for
global leadership. And even if Beijing could take the global leadership mantle soon, it
wouldn't. China wants to play inside the existing global order's rules, not change them.
Start with the obvious military point: The Chinese military has nothing like the global reach of its
American rival's. China only has one aircraft carrier, a refitted Russian vessel. The U.S. has 10,
plus nine marine mini-carriers. China's first homemade carrier is slated for completion in 2018, by which
time the U.S. will have yet another modern carrier, and be well on its way to finishing another. The idea
that China will be able to compete on a global scale in the short to medium term is absurd. Even in East
Asia, it's not so easy for China. In 2012, Center for Strategic and International Studies experts
Anthony Cordesman and Nicholas Yarosh looked at the data on Chinese and Taiwanese military strength.
They found that while China's relative naval strength was growing, Taiwan had actually improved the
balance of air power in its favor between 2005 and 2012 — just as China's economic growth rate, and
hence influx of new resources to spend on its military, was peaking. China's equipment is often
outdated, and its training regimes can be comically bad. A major part of its strategic missile
force patrols on horseback because it doesn't have helicopters. This isn't to deny China's military is getting
stronger. It is. And one day, this might require the United States to rethink its strategic posture in East
Asia. But Chinese hard power is nowhere close to replacing, or even thinking about
challenging, American military hegemony. And look at China's geopolitical neighborhood. As a
result of historical enmity and massive power disparities, Beijing would have a tough time
convincing Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan that its military buildup is anything but
threatening. Consequently, the smaller East Asian states are likely to get over their mutual
disagreements and stick it out together in the American-led alliance system for the
foreseeable future. To the north and west, China is bordered by Russia and India. China fought
each of them as recently as the 1960s, and both are likely to be threatened by any serious Chinese military
buildup. Unlike the United States, bordered by oceans and two friendly states, China is
surrounded by enemies and rivals. Projecting power globally is hard when you've got to
worry about defending your own turf. But what happens when China's GDP passes
America's? Well, for one thing, we're not really sure when that will be. Realizing that current
growth rates were economically and ecologically unsustainable, the Chinese government
cut off the investment spigot that fueled its extraordinary 10 percent average annual growth. Today,
China's growth rate is about half of what it was in 2007. One analysis suggests China's GDP may not
surpass America's until the 2100s. Moreover, China's GDP per capita is a long way off
from matching Western standards. In 2012, the World Bank assessed China's at $6,009; the
United States' was $57,749. The per-person measure of wealth matters in that it reflects the government's
capacity to pay for things that make its citizens happy and healthy. That's where China's internal
headaches begin. The Chinese government has staked its domestic political legitimacy on delivering rapid,
massive improvements in quality of life for its citizens. As growth slows, domestic political
dissent may rise. Moreover, growth's worst side effect to date — an unprecedented ecological
crisis — is also a source of massive discontent. China has 20 of the world's 30 most polluted
cities; environmental cleanup costs may hoover up 3 percent of China's GDP. That's throwing 30 percent
of its yearly average growth (during the pre-2013 boom years!) down the drain. The mass death and
poisoning that follow as severe pollution's handmaidens threaten the very foundations of the
Communist Party's power. American University China scholar Judith Shapiro writes that
environmental protests — which sometimes "shut down" huge cities — are "so severe
and so central to the manner in which China will 'rise' that it is no exaggeration to say
that they cannot be separated from its national identity and the government's ability to
provide for the Chinese people." That's hardly the only threat to the Chinese economy. China's
financial system bears a disturbing resemblance to pre-crisis Wall Street. Its muchvaunted attempt to move away from an unsustainable export-based economy, according to
Minxin Pei, may break on the rocks of massive corruption and other economic problems. After
listing a slew of related problems, Pei suggests we need to start envisioning a world of "declining Chinese
strength and rising probability of an unexpected democratic transition in the coming two decades." But
even if this economic gloom and doom is wrong, and China really is destined for a prosperous
future, there's one simple reason China will never displace America as global leader: It
doesn't want to. Chinese foreign policy, to date, has been characterized by a sort of realist
incrementalism. China has displayed no interest in taking over America's role as protector of the global
commons; that's altogether too altruistic a task. Instead, China is content to let the United States
and its allies keep the sea lanes open and free ride off of their efforts. A powerful China, in other
words, would most likely to be happy to pursue its own interests inside the existing global order rather
than supplanting it. In 2003, Harvard's Iain Alastair Johnston analyzed data about Chinese
hostility to the global status quo across five dimensions: participation in international institutions,
compliance with international norms, twisting the rules that govern global institutions, making the
transformation of global political power into a clear policy goal, and acting militarily on that objective. He
found that China was "more integrated into and more cooperative within international
institutions than ever before," and that there was "murky" evidence at best of intent to
challenge the United States outside of them. Johnston reassessed parts of his argument in 2013 and
concluded that not much had changed. It actually, then, wouldn't be bad for Americans if China bears like
Pei were wrong, and China really did blossom economically in the 21st century. China probably won't have
the military means to challenge the foundations of global stability and prosperity, and even if it didn't, its
leaders don't seem to want to.
China rise doesn’t destroy hege – size of the economy is irrelevant and trade
guarantees they don’t even challenge
Jones, 14 – Senior Fellow, Foreign Policy Director, Project on International Order and Strategy @
Brookings (Bruce, “American Leadership in a World in Flux,” March 10, 2014,
http://www.brookings.edu/research/opinions/2014/03/10-american-leadership-fluxjones?rssid=LatestFromBrookings)//eek
Now, at some point in the next decade or two, China's economy will match that of the U.S. in
size. But comparing the two on the basis of size is like comparing the Lakers to a middleschool basketball team - yes, both have 11 players, but the comparison ends there. Even when
China's economy overtakes that of the U.S., Americans will be far richer per
capita, the
American economy will occupy a far more influential segment of the market, and the
American dollar will still play a vastly larger role in global finance. America's GDP may
have declined to roughly 22% of the world total (from a high of around 25%) but American firms
still account for almost 50% of global profits, and American business still dominate sectors like
finance and high technology. Oh and there's this: the more China's economy grows, the more
ours grows, since China is an increasingly large trade partner.
No China rise – economics, alliances, and soft power
Dunn and McClelland, 13 – Professor of International Politics and Head of the Department of
Political Science and International Studies at the University of Birmingham AND Associate Director for
North America at the risk analytics consultancy Maplecroft in charge of energy policy (David and Mark,
“Shale gas and the revival of American power: debunking decline?,” The Royal Institute of International
Affairs, http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1468-2346.12081/abstract)//eek
There are arguments for the continued endurance of the Pax Americana other than the specific potential
of US oil and gas reserves to revivify the material base of American power. According to Cox, there are
three central grounds for reservations over whether a power shift from Washington to
Beijing is actually occurring. First, economics has been too easily conflated with power.
Second, the West still retains more structural advantages and assets than commonly
acknowledged. Third, China’s rise is likely to prompt the United States to retain an
enduring military presence in East Asia and lead other Asian powers to retain strong
alliances with the United States to constrain China’s freedom of action in foreign affairs .
Similar themes have also been highlighted by Nye, who argues that the link between economic
growth and actual power in terms of the ability to attain desired outcomes has been
overstated. The United States also retains an enormous military advantage over China,
in addition to a significant reservoir of soft power on which it can draw. For Nye, the
question is not so much whether America is in decline—he argues there is a ‘reasonable probability’ that
the United States will remain the most powerful state for decades—as whether it can successfully wield
‘smart power’ to achieve its goals.14 With Cox and Nye as a useful introduction, arguments countering
notions of American decline can broadly be grouped around three themes. The first, drawing on aspects of
liberal internationalist thought, is that American power is not simply a crude reflection of its
material strength. The second is that Chinese material strength, both economic and
military, has been exaggerated and weaknesses all too frequently glossed over. The third
is that American economic power has been underestimated, with temporary setbacks to
economic growth in recent years presented as fundamental, masking the under lying
robustness of the US economy. It is in the context of this theme that the revival of the energy
landscape in the United States will be considered below.
No challengers—China seeks multilateral ventures, not hegemony
China Daily 13
(Zhang Yuwei China Daily, 9/29/13, China Daily, “China won't seek hegemony, FM tells UN,”
http://usa.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2013-09/29/content_17001750.htm, Accessed 7/28/14, JC)
"Wang Yi's message was clear: China is not like past imperial powers." Zhu Zhiqun, a professor of political science
and international relations at Bucknell University in Pennsylvania, said Wang's remarks reassure the international community that
China will continue to focus on development and peace and will not seek hegemony .
"China has been criticized by some for not being responsible as a great power," Zhu said. "Now the new leadership will
demonstrate its confidence, maturity and sense of mission as a big power through more
positive involvement in international affairs. "Its approach to territorial disputes with
some neighbors is rational and pragmatic, finding a solution through negotiation and
consultation. If no easy solution can be found, then shelve the disputes and focus on joint exploration of the resources near
the disputed areas." Zhu said it is noteworthy that the foreign minister said China will "play a more
proactive and constructive role in addressing international and regional hotspot issues".
Wang also called for peaceful solutions through dialogue to nuclear issues in Iran and on the Korean Peninsula, adding that China
has been working to promote a peaceful settlement of the Iranian nuclear issue through
dialogue. He pointed out in his speech that this is the 10th year of the Six-Party Talks. "We hope that parties will create
conditions, build consensus, work toward the same goal and resume the talks at an early date," he said. Wang said China "has
played a constructive role in seeking a comprehensive, lasting and appropriate solution
to the Iranian nuclear issue so as to uphold the international nonproliferation regime and peace and stability in the
Middle East". "China calls for an immediate end to hostilities and violence in Syria so as to create necessary
conditions for the verification and destruction of chemical weapons. We call for the early opening of the Geneva II conference and
faster progress in a political resolution of the Syrian issue." Wang said Beijing does not seek national gains in
Syria. It respects the Syrian people's aspirations and choices, and China will continue to assist them, including refugees who have
fled the country. The foreign
minister called for "an early launch of intergovernmental
negotiations on the post-2015 agenda". "The post-2015 development agenda should continue to focus on development and
poverty elimination; give due consideration to national conditions and stages of development in different countries; and respect
their independent choices of development paths," Wang said. Barry Carin, a senior fellow with the Canada-based Center for
International Governance Innovation, however, warned the debate will be very difficult. "We risk a fuzzy outcome rather than a
cogent narrative, including vision and principles, together with a limited number of concrete and time-bound commitments," Carin
said.
ECONOMY
The US economy is strong and can’t independently tank hegemony—their
authors cite policy mistakes, not systemic failure
Soare 13
(Dr. Simona R., researcher at IPSDMH, 2013, PROVOCARILE LUMII EUROATLANTICE, Nr. 1-2,
“Global Goliath vs. Global Leader: the United States’ Difficult Choice,” Accessed 7/28/14, JC)
The critics of the declinist school generally emphasize the
U.S. economy is not in danger of decline. Brooks and
massive presence of the U.S. in the global economy, the
fact that its currency is the global reserve currency and the global commercial
transactions currency, that the American economy acts as the global market of last
resort and the largest provider of FDI to finance other economies, these are all strong
arguments that other states in the system are more economically dependent on the U.S. and
that Washington is in the driver seat when it comes to making and imposing the rules of
the game in the international political economy. Furthermore, leading economists such as Krugman argue
Wohlforth (2008: 98-147)argue the sheer
that economic crises and recessions are habitual in the international political
economy (Krugman,2012); but altogether economic
crises and recessions are not enough to cause a
great power’s decline: “one recession, or even a severe economic crisis, need not mean
the beginning of the end for a great power. The United States suffered deep and
prolonged economic crises in the 1890s, the 1930s, and the 1970s. In each case, it
rebounded in the following decade and actually ended up in a stronger position relative
to other powers than before the crisis. The 1910s, the1940s, and the 1980s were all high
points of American global power and influence” (Kagan,2012). The thing that most critics of
the declinist school are unclear about is why the present American economic downturn is more signifi-cantly negative for the
American power that previous economic downturns; declinist scholars like to emphasize that for the first time in its history the U.S.
is not just faced with a recession, but it actually risks bankruptcy because of inherent structural problems – aging population,
growing social security and healthcare costs, growing defense budgets, etc. – that have yet to be addres-sed. Yet as Josef Joffe (2012)
clearly points out, this is the latest of a series of five American waves of relative power decline. And there does not seem to be much
difference between the current situation and previous ones – except Iraq. The fact of the matter is the war in Iraq – the U.S.’ war of
choice – is the only pertinent evidence the declinists bring to support their claims. According to declinist pundits, the Iraq war cost
the American tax payer an estimated $1.7 trillion, increased the American foreign debt by $490billion (Blyth, 2012; Belasco, 2011)
and fed the federal budget deficit. On top of it all, the U.S. has just undergone the second most severe economic crisis in its history
which left a huge dent on the American economy. Even four years on, the American economy is recovering very slowly.
Unemployment remains disfunctionally high; the economic output is rising, but remains unstable; reindustrialization is slow, etc. So
deep are the American economic problems that in August 2011 two simultaneous caps were needed on public spending: the Budget
Control Act (BCA) which placed caps on discretionary public expenditure in general, both defense and non-defense related and the
sequester which placed additional caps on mandatory public spending starting January 1, 2013. However, the declinists
offer
little evidentiary support for their claims concerning relative power decline; indicate
unclear savings from switching to a more prudent grand strategy; and rests on unknown
costs of maintaining the U.S. status absent its engagement in the system as well as
unclear costs of alternative grand strategies(Brooks, Ikenberry and Wohlforth, 2013a; 2013b). While it is true
that the quantitative evidence of American economic power indicate a slow-down of the American economy, the declinists fail
to establish a causal connection between Washington’s extensive global commitments
and over-militarized policy and this particular economic downturn. By all accounts, the relocation
of the American industry overseas over the last two decades cost the American economy tens of millions of jobs which amount to far
more than the estimated $900 billion the U.S. spends on its global defense commitments every decade. Similarly, the Bush-era tax
cuts cost the American economy and the federal budget over$3.5 trillion according to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO, 2013)
estimates and this is twice the value of the Iraq war’s costs. Moreover, the CBO’s data indicates the deficit was relatively stable and
sustainable during the Bush administrations varying between $120-480billion. Only in 2009, during the Obama administration, did
the deficit truly quadrupled reaching $1.3 billion; and it has not come down substantially since. If the Bush administrations spent
trillions of dollars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Obama administration raised, not diminished defense spending. In fact, the defense
deficit for the 2002-2012 period amounts to roughly $1.8trillion – that is, $180 billion annually on average, triple the amount the
declinists claim needs to be shaved off of the defense budget to become sustainable. The data simply just don’t add up. The American
defense budget has been growing larger than the 2012 dollars equivalents of the Cold War era budget; but the average defense
budget between 2002-2012 was roughly 4% of GDP, which is far less than the average 7.6% of the Cold era. Therefore, arguing
the U.S. is overstretched because of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan does not seem to be supported by
empirical evidence and the evidentiary support offered by the declinists is more
circumstantial than causal and probatory. Granted, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq might not have
accomplished much in terms of military and political goals, but they did cost far less than the Vietnam War. Why are the first
considered examples of overstretch and the latter not? As for the foreign
public debt, it may be at record high levels
nowadays, but it reached these levels because of a combination of political decisions, not only
because of the American global security commitments. In fact, as Krugman (2012) pertinently points out,
the Clinton economic plan brought the American economy on an unprece-dented growth path. Had the Bush administration
maintained that plan, by 2012 economic estimates show the U.S. would have completely paid its foreign debt using the budget
surpluses generated by the economic growth. And the U.S. become just as indebted to finance its $787 billion stimulus package to
mitigate the effects of the economic crisis, even though the measure was tardive and insufficient. Any one of the causes invoked here
are just as pertinent as the declinists prefered cause.
America’s military gap isn’t shrinking—technology is too far ahead
Beeson 4
(Mark Beeson, University of Queensland, 11/26/4, paper for symposium on Bush and Asia: America’s
Evolving Relations with East Asia, Brisbane, “American ascendancy: Conceptualizing contemporary
hegemony,” p. 13-14,
http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/eserv.php?pid=UQ:10021&dsID=mb_am_asc_04.pdf, Accessed
7/30/14, JC)
One of the most distinctive aspects of America's strategic position is its unprecedented
global reach, and the huge lead the US enjoys in terms of technological sophistication
and military hardware. Realists rightly draw attention to the importance of strategic considerations
in understanding American dominance: American hegemony was initiated by the Second World War. and
the distinctive liberal order that US hegemony helped to create in its aftermath occurred within the
overarching context of the Cold War. Consequently, two temporal considerations are especially germane
here: first, American actions, especially during the early phases of the Cold War (as both liberals and
Gramscians point out), enjoyed a good deal of legitimacy — at least amongst key allies. In other
words, the specific geo-political dynamics of the Cold War constrained and gave a particular direction to
American grand strategy, one that is strikingly different to the contemporary period. This leads to a
second point: despite the ending of the Cold War and the beginning of an era of 'unipolarity",
there has been little winding back of the spatial distribution or reach of American
military power. On the contrary, what Chalmers Johnson (2004) describes as an 'empire of bases'
has become a permanent, highly institutionalized part of America's overall strategic
position.^ One of the continuities of American hegemony, then, has been an accelerating
pursuit of military dominance and what Bacevich (2002: 49) has described as the increasing
militarization of foreign policy. The actions of the present Bush administration have dramatically
highlighted the continuing importance of America's military power, and provided a telling reminder about
the importance of agency: the doctrine of pre- emption and the willingness to act unilaterally are
distinctive qualities of the Bush administration and testimony to the ideational impact of the *neo-con"
advisors that have assumed prominent positions in the Bush administration (Mann 2004). The Bush
administration also highlights the way military and economic interests can intersect within a
particular administration to shape policy outcomes (Phillips 2004). Consequently, as observers
like Bacevich and former National Security Advisor to the Carter administration, Zbigniew Brzezinski,
point out, America's promotion of global economic liberalism and pursuit of military
domination are deeply inter-linked elements of the US's overall hegemonic position.
Crucially, however, even arch realists like Brzezinski (2004: 143) recognize that without legitimacy both
the application of military power and the larger project of liberal globalization are imperiled.
Their authors overestimate economic decline – demographics, social
trends, education, tech, and manufacturing
Dunn and McClelland, 13 – Professor of International Politics and Head of the Department of
Political Science and International Studies at the University of Birmingham AND Associate Director for
North America at the risk analytics consultancy Maplecroft in charge of energy policy (David and Mark,
“Shale gas and the revival of American power: debunking decline?,” The Royal Institute of International
Affairs, http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1468-2346.12081/abstract)//eek
Weaknesses in the American economy have been widely expounded upon, especially
following the 2008–2009 economic crisis. The debt burden hanging over the American economy—
attributed by Democrats to unfettered and unregulated markets, and by Republicans to excessive
spending—has loomed large in accounts of a power shift from the United States to China. Limitations
in the American model, however, mask underlying, residual structural strengths upon
which the United States can continue to draw to help sustain its hegemony, irrespective
of recent developments in the US energy sector. Perhaps most importantly for the long
term, the United States’ demographic prospects are much better than those of either
East Asian or European states. The United States will retain a fertility rate above 2.0,
owing to a combination of higher birth rate and immigration. New immigrants, both
legal and illegal, tend to be younger than the average American, lowering the age of the
population as a whole. Kotkin argues that the US population will rise by 100 million by
2050, ensuring the continued prosperity and power of the American state. This population
increase could ensure that the United States keeps ahead of the debt curve in a manner that
most European countries will be unable to do. Nye also points to a range of other demographic and
social indicators that bode well for US domestic stability and the retention of American
power, including reduced crime, divorce and teen pregnancy rates, a continued high
level of religious observance, and a robust civil society. The dominance of American
higher education and scientific research and development will also be a source of US
strength. Of the top 20 universities in the world, 13 are currently located in the United
States, and US scientific and technological dominance will be extended by the fact that it
spends twice as high a proportion of GDP on research and development (2.7 per cent) as
China does.26 The US also continues to lead the world in the number of Nobel prizes won:
by 2011 it had won 39 per cent of the total and 47 per cent of those awarded in sciences, medicine and
economics.27 American power is further likely to be fortified by a revival of the manufacturing sector of its economy. After many decades of decline in which manufac- turing jobs
were outsourced to low-cost economies like China, there is now startling evidence of a new
blossoming of the domestic sector. The US manufac- turing labour force is becoming cheaper,
more productive and more flexible— all features that are attractive to investors seeking new
manufacturing locations. Sirkin, Zinser and Hohner argue that 800,000 new manufacturing jobs will be
created in the United States by 2015, creating 3.2 million new jobs in total. They argue that the tipping
point at which multinationals return their manufacturing operations to the United States has nearly been
reached in several product areas including computers, motor parts, plastics and rubber.28 It is the nexus
between energy and manufacturing in particular that suggests that current developments in US
manufacturing will last, and portends a significant and continuing under- pinning of American power.
ENERGY BOOM
Generic
Heg sustainable – new oil reserves guarantee all aspects
Dunn and McClelland, 13 – Professor of International Politics and Head of the Department of
Political Science and International Studies at the University of Birmingham AND Associate Director for
North America at the risk analytics consultancy Maplecroft in charge of energy policy (David and Mark,
“Shale gas and the revival of American power: debunking decline?,” The Royal Institute of International
Affairs, http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1468-2346.12081/abstract)//eek
Shale gas, oil and American power In his 2011 International Affairs article, ‘The art of declining politely’,
Quinn argues the case for America’s relative decline, suggesting that President Obama’s cautious
approach to foreign policy is appropriate for America’s current position. Yet Quinn leaves the following
caveat: ‘For the United States, avoiding relative decline over the coming decades will
require the discovery of some as yet unknown propulsive engine for revitalizing its own
economic growth or some grave breakdown disproportionately afflicting the rising
powers.’29 Fortunately for the United States’ prospects of retaining its pre-eminence in
international politics, there are indications that such a ‘propulsive engine’ is emerging .
After years of dwindling reserves, the US oil and gas industry is in the embryonic stages of a
dramatic reversal of fortunes. Vast deposits of shale gas and oil, previously either
undiscovered or considered not technically recoverable—a view that prevailed as little as five
years ago—have begun to be exploited. These shale ‘plays’ suggest the prospect of a
complete transformation of the US energy industry, serving to aid the revival of
America’s industrial base, and even offering the potential for energy self-sufficiency.
Such an eventuality could have important geopolitical implications, not simply
bolstering American power, but somewhat weakening the relative power of OPEC and
exporters of conventional natural gas such as Russia. This is not to argue that such an outcome
is guaranteed; environmental concerns and scepticism about the extent of US shale reserves could yet
derail such an outcome. The implications for global politics, however, if the more optimistic
predictions of US shale gas and oil reserves are fully realized, have not been fully
factored into narratives of American decline; and indeed, they offer a different future for the
United States in its attempt to retain hegemony. Vast formations of shale rock are located
underground throughout large parts of the lower states of the US, including New York,
Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia, Texas and North Dakota. Although it has long been known that significant oil and gas deposits exist here, the low pressure of the reservoirs and the low levels of permeability
and porosity of the rock meant that these reserves were not deemed technically or commercially
recoverable. Many such areas, for example the Barnett shale play in Texas, were not even on energy
forecast maps in the late 1990s.30 Technological innovation, however, particularly in the form
of horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing (fracking), has brought about a rapid
reassessment of America’s energy reserves. Fracking involves water, sand and chemical fluids
being injected underground at pressure to fracture the shale and release gas and oil from the rock. Large
amounts of shale gas and accompanying tight oil trapped in the shale could now assist in the
transformation of the material base of America’s power.31 The reassessment of America’s shale gas
reserves has been rapid and dramatic. A Baker Institute–Rice University study provides a helpful timeline
of the changing estimates of US shale gas reserves over the past decade.32 In 2003, a National Petroleum
Council study estimated technically recoverable US reserves at 38 trillion cubic feet (tcf ). In 2005, the US
Energy Information Administration (EIA), part of the Department of Energy, lifted the estimate to 140 tcf,
which it further raised to a range of 380–900 tcf (a mean of 640 tcf ) in 2008. In 2009, the Potential Gas
Committee estimated US shale gas at 680 tcf, and by 2011 Advanced Resources International had raised
the bar yet again, stating US shale gas reserves at 860 tcf, and a colossal 1,930 tcf in North America as a
whole. Russia, the location of the world’s largest conventional gas reserves, is estimated to have a total
conven- tional deposit of approximately 1,700 tcf.33 A 2013 study by the US EIA concluded that 7,299 tcf
of shale gas existed worldwide—in the United States and 41 other countries combined—raising estimated
global natural gas reserves by 47 per cent from the global total of 15,583 tcf of conventional gas.34 The
impact of shale gas is likely to have a disproportionately positive impact on the United States as it is
particularly well positioned to exploit shale gas effectively, compared to its competitors. It is not simply
estimates of shale gas reserves that have been rising in the United States; production
has been increasing rapidly too. In 2006, just 1 tcf of shale gas was produced in the United States;
by 2010 the figure had increased almost fivefold to 4.8 tcf.35 Estimates suggest this new total will
have more than quadrupled by 2040, and that as early as the 2030s shale gas, produced
in negligible amounts at the start of the millennium, will represent over 50 per cent of
US natural gas production. The production of tight oil in shale plays in the United States has also
increased dramatically. The EIA estimates that reserves of 58 billion barrels of technically
recoverable shale oil exist in the US, over twice as much as its 2011 assessment. In 2000
the United States produced 200,000 barrels of tight oil a day; in 2011 it produced five
times as much, 1 million barrels. Some estimates now suggest that by 2017 tight oil
production will have risen fivefold again to 5 million barrels a day. Estimates of US tight oil
reserves lag somewhat behind shale gas assessments; however, if production increases at similar rates as
in shale gas, the results could be even more significant. Leonardo mgeri argues that once increases in tight
oil and biofuel operations are factored in, the United States could overtake Saudi Arabia as the
world’s leading producer of oil as early as 2017. It is no small irony that realists, whose IR
paradigms stress the importance of the material basis of power, have been found at the
forefront of those arguing for America’s relative decline, often overlooking important
changes in the material base of US power that pose a significant challenge to the heart of
the declinist case. By contrast John Deutch, professor of chemistry at MIT and former
director of the CIA, argues that the discovery of shale gas has given rise to ‘perhaps the
greatest shift in energy-reserve estimates in the last half century’. The rapid turnaround
in the fortunes of the US oil and gas industry has a range of domestic and foreign
implications, some of which are likely to help entrench American power, others of which
may weaken the economic base of states that are often seen as hostile to US interests.
The domestic economic benefits to the United States of shale gas are already large, even
in the current embryonic phase of the industry. There are both direct and indirect effects of the
recent explosion in shale gas exploitation. Most obviously, it will result in the United States not requiring
imported lique- fied natural gas (LNG) to meet domestic demand, and is likely to result in the US
becoming an exporter of LNG in the medium term. Indeed, the Obama adminis- tration has
already approved four LNG export projects, and terminals designed to process LNG
imports are now being fundamentally overhauled to enable exports. The price of natural
gas in the US has plummeted, with clear benefits for domestic and industrial consumers. The
pricing point of natural gas—known in the US as the Henry Hub price—is already less than a third of what
it was in 2008. A study of the long-term domestic implications of shale gas production
indicates that by 2035 the average American household will have $2,000 more
disposable income per year solely as a result of reduced gas costs for themselves and the
companies from which they purchase products. Indeed, the price of natural gas has dropped so
low that it has created difficulties for some energy companies which have had to write down the value of
their shale gas assets and focus attention in the short term on higher-margin natural gas liquids and tight
oil. In addition to the basic fact of a greater retention of economic wealth from not
having to import natural gas, there are a number of indirect benefits to shale gas
exploitation. Industrial and manufacturing companies in particular, with high electricity
usage, are likely to benefit from lower energy costs. Low-cost shale gas is also
increasingly being used as a feedstock for chemical companies—partly explaining the
opposition that has come from this sector towards future LNG exports, which could
raise the domestic price of natural gas. Thus, in addition to the hundreds of thousands of
jobs created directly in the oil and gas industry, employment gains in the chemicals,
manufacturing and wider industrial sectors are also likely to result from cheaper gas and
electricity. One study reported that, even while still in the earliest stages of growth, shale gas has already
created over 600,000 jobs in the United States, and projects a further rise to a total of 870,000 new jobs
by 2015, directly contributing $118.2 billion to US GDP. Even ignoring the numerous other economic and
strategic benefits, the basic tax return in terms of royalties from shale gas production is
estimated to be worth just under $1 trillion over the next 25 years.44 Despite other
environmental concerns discussed later, compared with its fossil fuel competitors, shale gas exploitation
is considered to produce smaller quantities of harmful greenhouse gases than either coal or oil.45
America’s reliance on the burning of coal to generate electricity has, up to now, been a large impediment
to its full embrace of measures to inhibit climate change. Natural gas, in contrast to coal, is widely
considered to be a bridge to a more nearly carbon-free future that cannot yet be realized economically.46
Although a carbon-free future is still out of reach, shale gas offers a cleaner road towards that goal than
burning a conventional fossil fuel such as coal. The environmental benefits of shale gas could go beyond
simply replacing coal in electricity production. The low price of gas is likely to incentivize and
expedite the development of technological change, especially in transport . Deutch argues
that, as shale gas production increases in the United States and worldwide, the price of
gas may come increasingly to be set internationally rather than remain subject to local
variation. However, such an outcome would have to overcome significant transport costs,
given that LNG is much more costly to transport than crude oil. A consequence of
increased natural gas production in the United States, and eventually elsewhere, could
be a significant drop in revenue—and an accompa- nying loss of geopolitical power—for current
conventional oil and gas exporters. Fortunately for the future of US power, it is these states in
particular that have been most geopolitically problematic for America. Shale gas offers
policy- makers in Washington the prospect of a long-term reduction in revenue for
OPEC and for the two states with the world’s leading conventional gas reserves: Russia
and Iran. OPEC will increasingly have to look to Asian markets in an attempt to replace
a significant drop in demand from North America. The Baker Insti- tute–Rice University
investigation into the geopolitical consequences of shale gas is illuminating. Russia’s share of the
natural gas market in Europe is likely to fall to 13 per cent by 2040 from 27 per cent in
2009 as a result of shale gas production, which will also significantly reduce the ability
of the Iranian regime to engage in energy diplomacy. The shale revolution in the United
States could also reduce oil exports from Venezuela and thus limit America’s oil
dependence on Latin America. The upshot of this is that the United States will play a
more important role in determining global energy supplies and prices than it does at
present. Europe, for example, currently beholden to the demands of Russian policy-makers,
would need to pay much closer attention to the United States and look westwards for
natural gas imports. Even if direct LNG exports to Europe from the US turn out to be
relatively low, falling US demand for Russian natural gas could lower its price on
European markets. Currently, the US is dependent on international stability for its energy
needs at a time when the security of that supply is often in doubt and the increase in the
price of oil is damaging to both the US and the global economy. Control of oil prices and
supply in particular has fluctuated considerably in the twelve years since the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the
United States. In 2001, the price of a barrel of crude oil was $28; by mid-2013 it was fluctuating just over
$100 a barrel. The massive increases in the price of oil throughout this period have contributed in a
significant way to America’s economic woes. As Robert Zubrin argues, the increase in oil prices has acted
like a massive tax increase on the American economy: Oil prices have risen ... 900 percent in the past
twelve years. In 1999, Americans paid $90 billion for all their oil, less than 5 percent of what they paid in
federal taxes. At current prices of $108 per barrel, Americans this year will pay over $800 billion for oil,
an amount equal to 33 percent of all federal tax . . . leaving us paying more for oil than we pay to the
federal government.52 The effects of these increases were felt through an increase in
unemployment in the late 2000s which in turn led to mortgage defaults, destroying the
value of the mortgage-backed securities held by America’s banks. The resulting bailout
of the banks by the government to avoid a general collapse of the financial system
landed American taxpayers with an additional bill of $800 billion. The economic
downturn resulting from the ‘credit crunch’ is as infamous as it has been enduring. In
addition, the period since 2011 has witnessed disruption to energy supplies owing to
unrest in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Syria, keeping prices high despite the reduction in
global demand caused by the recession, and the continuing effects of oil sanctions on
Iran. Such developments create strong incentives for greater development of domestic
shale as a safe, stable, cheap energy source, and could spur technological innovation to
resort increasingly to natural gas instead of crude oil in some transport functions in the
medium to long term.
AT: Well Depletion
Tech solves depletion concerns
Dunn and McClelland, 13 – Professor of International Politics and Head of the Department of
Political Science and International Studies at the University of Birmingham AND Associate Director for
North America at the risk analytics consultancy Maplecroft in charge of energy policy (David and Mark,
“Shale gas and the revival of American power: debunking decline?,” The Royal Institute of International
Affairs, http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1468-2346.12081/abstract)//eek
Some have cast doubt on the long-term viability of shale gas wells. Paul Stevens argues
that natural gas is more difficult and expensive to transport than oil, and that this will
inhibit the development of a global gas market with a global price instead of regional
prices.59 Shale gas also requires more wells than conven- tional gas to produce the equivalent amount of
natural gas, and the longevity of shale gas wells has been questioned. Some early analysis of shale gas
wells in the Barnett Play in Texas suggested that shale gas wells experienced depletion in production of 39
per cent in years one and two, 50 per cent between years one and three, and 95 per cent between years
one and ten. This could suggest a lifespan of a shale gas well of 8–12 years compared to 30–40 years or
more for a conventional gas well.60 However, as the technology continues to be refined,
depletion rates are falling, suggesting that more efficient production is likely in the
future. Deutch also argues that the extraction costs of shale gas are approximately $2–3
per 1,000 cubic feet of gas produced—somewhere between a third and a half the cost of
conventional natural gas.
AT: Environmental Crackdown
There will be no environmental crackdown – environmental concerns
aren’t conclusive enough
Dunn and McClelland, 13 – Professor of International Politics and Head of the Department of
Political Science and International Studies at the University of Birmingham AND Associate Director for
North America at the risk analytics consultancy Maplecroft in charge of energy policy (David and Mark,
“Shale gas and the revival of American power: debunking decline?,” The Royal Institute of International
Affairs, http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1468-2346.12081/abstract)//eek
Environmental objections to shale gas extraction, however, are likely to prove a more
serious challenge to the US shale gas industry and therefore to the central pillar of the argument.
Like proposed exploitation of oil sands in Alberta, Canada, shale gas extraction in the
United States is highly controversial. Three central environmental objec- tions to the development
of shale gas have emerged: a suspected link to seismic activity; the pollution of groundwater and aquifers;
and claims that shale gas extraction produces more greenhouse gases than conventional oil and gas and
therefore could accelerate climate change. A series of earthquakes in Youngstown, Ohio, in 2011,
culminating in a quake of 4.0 on the Richter Scale on New Year’s Eve, is judged by many scientists to have
been caused by wastewater injection wells linked to fracking.62 Similar concerns have been expressed
about potential links between fracking and earthquakes in the UK near Blackpool. Water pollu- tion
caused by the chemicals involved in the fracking process is also considered problematic. A report by the
US Environmental Protection Agency released in December 2011 argued that groundwater and an aquifer
had been contaminated near Pavillion, Wyoming, by a range of chemicals including benzene and methane
that were suspected to be a result of fracking in the area. Concerns also arose in some areas in the
Marcellus shale in the Appalachians, where residents claimed that tap water contained methane to the
extent that they could set light to the water.63 Whether fracking contributes more or less to
climate change than conventional oil and gas production is a matter of some contention.
Supporters of shale gas production have claimed it can function as a bridge fuel to a carbon-free future,
while critics argue that fracking could be a significant contributor to greenhouse gas emissions as a result
of methane leaks during production. In 2011, an editorial in The Economist argued that talk about shale
gas as a bridge to a cleaner future was misplaced. Although it is a cleaner fossil fuel than crude oil or coal,
it is essentially not competing with these alone, but also with more renewable forms of energy. So every
cubic foot of shale gas produced is not just reducing the consumption of coal or dirtier fossil fuels, but is
damaging the competitiveness of renewable forms of energy including wind power and solar energy, so
could be extending the period of reliance on fossil fuels and delaying transfer to renewables.64 Even
though the mainstream scientific view states that shale gas is a cleaner fossil fuel than oil
and coal, this has been challenged, with a research team at Cornell arguing that shale gas extraction
produces more methane than conventional gas extraction or even coal mining.65 The environmental
case against shale gas extraction, however, is not conclu- sive; and, given the likely
economic benefits of shale gas to US economic growth and the revival of the country’s
industrial base, there would almost certainly need to be more robust substantiation of
serious environmental harm before any brake was applied to its development. The
Oklahoma Geological Survey’s investigation into a series of earthquakes in the state
since 2009, for example, concluded that a link between fracking and seismic activity was
impossible to prove conclusively. Concerns are also largely related to wastewater
injection processes, which are also a feature of some conventional hydrocarbon
extraction activity and thus not really an argument against fracking per se. Reports of
water pollution from fluids involved in US shale gas extraction also remain very rare
relative to the number of shale gas wells in the country, suggesting that pollution caused by fracking
could be a result of local conditions or slack practices rather than a more systemic flaw.
And the Cornell study suggesting that shale gas extraction is producing more damaging
greenhouse gases than conventional fossil fuel extraction remains very much an outlier
at present, with many other scientific studies instead stressing the low carbon intensity
of production.
AT: Other Countries Have Larger Stocks
Total US stocks are irrelevant – US shale is easier to develop and overall the
allies have more
Dunn and McClelland, 13 – Professor of International Politics and Head of the Department of
Political Science and International Studies at the University of Birmingham AND Associate Director for
North America at the risk analytics consultancy Maplecroft in charge of energy policy (David and Mark,
“Shale gas and the revival of American power: debunking decline?,” The Royal Institute of International
Affairs, http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1468-2346.12081/abstract)//eek
Closer examination of each of these objections, however, suggests that most of these reservations are
misplaced. Certainly, according to the most recent estimates, the United States does not
have the largest reserves of shale gas of any state in the world. As noted above, US estimates
all fall below 1,000 tcf. China is estimated to have 1,115 tcf, and large reserves are also identified in
Argentina (802 tcf ), Algeria (707 tcf ), Canada (573 tcf ) and Mexico (545 tcf ).54 There are also shale
resources in the Middle East and Russia which have still not been comprehensively assessed. Despite
these figures, several factors suggest that the United States could benefit disproportionately from its
reserves. The first point, with specific reference to its European competitors, is that shale
gas development in the United States has far fewer regulatory hurdles to cross—as it does,
indeed, compared to other types of fossil fuels in America. Fracking is exempt from key
regulatory provisions in the 2005 Energy Policy Act—widely seen as a concession to Dick
Cheney’s inter- vention—and in the United States, unlike the majority of developed
countries, the mineral rights for developing shale gas belong to landowners, resulting in
far less public opposition than would be seen in a country where the state owns the
mineral rights. The actual construction cost of a shale gas well is also significantly
cheaper in the United States than in other developed countries. A shale gas well can cost up
to $14 million to sink in Europe, but less than a third of that in some US shale plays, where shale gas is
often located closer to the surface than it is in Poland, for example; and there is a far greater availability of
fracking rigs in the US.56 The impact of other countries holding large shale reserves is also
partly moderated by the fact that Mexico and Canada, likely to be two of America’s
greatest competitors in shale gas production, are both members of NAFTA and
integrated parts of the North American market and economic zone as a whole. The
development of these economies would also disproportionately benefit the US economy
as opposed to its emerging global rivals; and if more countries looked to Canada or
Mexico to meet their energy needs than to Saudi Arabia or Russia, this would be to the
advantage of the United States.
INSTITUTIONS
US hegemony underpins liberal institutionalism—creates a forum for
internationally beneficially strategies for economic growth and conflict
prevention
Kromah 9
(Lamii Moivi Kromah, MA student, Department of International Relations @ University of the
Witwatersrand, February 2009, “The Institutional Nature of U.S. Hegemony: Post 9/11,” p. 46-49,
http://wiredspace.wits.ac.za/bitstream/handle/10539/7301/MARR%2009.pdf?sequence=1, Accessed
7/30/14, JC)
Especially after the cold war America can be described as trying to keep its position at the top
but also integrating others more thoroughly in the international system that it
dominates. It is assumed that the differential growth of power in a state system would undermine the
status quo and lead to hegemonic war between declining and rising powers48, but I see a different
pattern: the U.S. hegemonic stability promoting liberal institutionalism, the events following
9/11 are a brief abnormality from this path, but the general trend will be toward institutional liberalism.
Hegemonic states are the crucial components in military alliances that turn back the
major threats to mutual sovereignties and hence political domination of the system.
Instead of being territorially aggressive and eliminating other states, hegemons respect
other's territory. They aspire to be leaders and hence are upholders of inter-stateness and interterritoriality.49 The nature of the institutions themselves must, however, be examined. They were shaped
in the years immediately after World War II by the United States. The American willingness to
establish institutions, the World Bank to deal with finance and trade. United Nations to
resolve global conflict, NATO to provide security for Western Europe, is explained in
terms of the theory of collective goods. It is commonplace in the regimes literature that the United
States, in so doing, was providing not only private goods for its own benefit but also (and perhaps
especially) collective goods desired by, and for the benefit of, other capitalist states and members of the
international system in general. (Particular care is needed here about equating state interest with
"national" interest.) Not only was the United States protecting its own territory and commercial
enterprises, it was providing military protection for some fifty allies and almost as many
neutrals. Not only was it ensuring a liberal, open, near-global economy for its own
prosperity, it was providing the basis for the prosperity of all capitalist states and even
for some states organized on non- capitalist principles (those willing to abide by the basic rules
established to govern international trade and finance). While such behaviour was not exactly selfless or
altruistic, certainly the benefits-however distributed by class, state, or region-did accrue to many others,
not just to Americans.50 For the truth about U.S. dominant role in the world is known to most clear-eyed
international observers. And the truth is that the benevolent hegemony exercised by the United
States is good for a vast portion of the world's population. It is certainly a better international
arrangement than all realistic alternatives. To undermine it would cost many others around the
world far more than it would cost Americans-and far sooner. As Samuel Huntington wrote five years ago,
before he joined the plethora of scholars disturbed by the "arrogance" of American hegemony; "A world
without U.S. primacy will be a world with more violence and disorder and less democracy
and economic growth than a world where the United States continues to have more
influence than any other country shaping global affairs".51 1 argue that the overall Americanshaped system is still in place. It is this macro political system-a legacy of American power and its
liberal polity that remains and serves to foster agreement and consensus. This is precisely
what people want when they look for U.S. leadership and hegemony.52 If the U.S. retreats from its
hegemonic role, who would supplant it, not Europe, not China, not the Muslim world -and
certainly not the United Nations. Unfortunately, the alternative to a single superpower is not a
multilateral Utopia, but the anarchic nightmare of a New Dark Age. Moreover, the
alternative to unipolarity would not be multipolarity at all. It would be 'apolarity' -a global vacuum of
power.53 Since the end of WWII the United States has been the clear and dominant leader
politically, economically and military. But its leadership as been unique; it has not been
tyrannical, its leadership and hegemony has focused on relative gains and has forgone absolute gains.
The difference lies in the exercise of power. The strength acquired by the United States in the aftermath of
World War II was far greater than any single nation had ever possessed, at least since the Roman Empire.
America's share of the world economy, the overwhelming superiority of its military
capacity-augmented for a time by a monopoly of nuclear weapons and the capacity to deliver them—
gave it the choice of pursuing any number of global ambitions. That the American people "might
have set the crown of world empire on their brows," as one British statesman put it in 1951, but chose not
to, was a decision of singular importance in world history and recognized as such.54 Leadership is really
an elegant word for power. To exercise leadership is to get others to do things that they would not
otherwise do. It involves the ability to shape, directly or indirectly, the interests or actions of others.
Leadership may involve the ability to not just "twist arms" but also to get other states to
conceive of their interests and policy goals in new ways. This suggests a second element of
leadership, which involves not just the marshalling of power capabilities and material resources. It also
involves the ability to project a set of political ideas or principles about the proper or effective ordering of
politics. It suggests the ability to produce concerted or collaborative actions by several states or other
actors. Leadership is the use of power to orchestrate the actions of a group toward a
collective end.55
RISING POWERS
Hegemony is sustainable – rising powers will be boxed out by the liberal
order
Ikenburry, 14 – a professor of Politics and International Affairs in the Woodrow Wilson School of
Public and International Affairs at Princeton University, former senior fellow at Brookings, and PhD
(John, “The Illusion of Geopolitics: The Enduring Power of the Liberal Order,” 2014, Council on Foreign
Relations, Proquest)//eek
Mead's vision of a contest over Eurasia between the United States and China, Iran, and
Russia misses the more profound power transition under way: the increasing ascendancy
of liberal capitalist democracy. To be sure, many liberal democracies are struggling at the moment
with slow economic growth, social inequality, and political instability. But the spread of liberal
democracy throughout the world, beginning in the late 1970s and accelerating after the Cold War, has
dramatically strengthened the United States' position and tightened the geopolitical
circle around China and Russia. It's easy to forget how rare liberal democracy once was. Until the
twentieth century, it was confined to the West and parts of Latin America. After World War II, however, it
began to reach beyond those realms, as newly independent states established self-rule. During the 1950s,
1960s, and early 1970s, military coups and new dictators put the brakes on democratic transitions. But in
the late 1970s, what the political scientist Samuel Huntington termed "the third wave" of democratization
washed over southern Europe, Latin America, and East Asia. Then the Cold War ended, and a cohort of
former communist states in eastern Europe were brought into the democratic fold. By the late 1990s, 60
percent of all countries had become democracies. Although some backsliding has occurred, the
more significant trend has been the emergence of a group of democratic middle powers,
in- cluding Australia, Brazil, India, Indonesia, Mexico, South Korea, and Turkey. These
rising democracies are acting as stakeholders in the international system: pushing for
multilateral cooperation, seeking greater rights and responsibilities, and exercising
influence through peaceful means. Such countries lend the liberal world order new
geopolitical heft. As the political scientist Larry Diamond has noted, if Argentina, Brazil,
India, Indonesia, South Africa, and Turkey regain their economic footing and strengthen
their democratic rule, the G-20, which also includes the United States and European
countries, "will have become a strong 'club of democracies,' with only Russia, China, and
Saudi Arabia holding out." The rise of a global middle class of demo- cratic states has turned China
and Russia into outliers-not, as Mead fears, legitimate contestants for global leadership. In fact, the
democratic upsurge has been deeply problematic for both countries. In eastern Europe, former
Soviet states and satellites have gone democratic and joined the West. As worrisome as
Russian President Vladimir Putin's moves in Crimea have been, they reflect Russia's
geopolitical vulnerability, not its strength. Over the last two decades, the West has crept
closer to Russia's borders. In 1999, the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland entered nato. They
were joined in 2004 by seven more former members of the Soviet bloc, and in 2009, by Albania and
Croatia. In the meantime, six former Soviet republics have headed down the path to membership by
joining nato's Partnership for Peace program. Mead makes much of Putin's achievements in
Georgia, Armenia, and Crimea. Yet even though Putin is winning some small battles, he
is losing the war. Russia is not on the rise; to the contrary, it is experiencing one of the
greatest geopolitical contractions of any major power in the modern era. Democracy is
encircling China, too. In the mid-1980s, India and Japan were the only Asian democracies, but since
then, Indonesia, Mongolia, the Philippines, South Korea, Taiwan, and Thailand have
joined the club. Myanmar (also called Burma) has made cautious steps toward multiparty rulesteps that have come, as China has not failed to notice, in conjunction with warming relations
with the United States. China now lives in a decidedly democratic neighborhood. These political
transformations have put China and Russia on the defensive. Consider the recent
developments in Ukraine. The eco- nomic and political currents in most of the country
are inexorably flowing westward, a trend that terrifies Putin. His only recourse has been to
strong-arm Ukraine into resisting the eu and remaining in Russia's orbit. Although he may
be able to keep Crimea under Russian control, his grip on the rest of the country is slipping. As
the eu dip- lomat Robert Cooper has noted, Putin can try to delay the moment when Ukraine
"affiliates with the eu, but he can't stop it." Indeed, Putin might not even be able to accomplish
that, since his provocative moves may serve only to speed Ukraine's move toward Europe. China faces a
similar predicament in Taiwan. Chinese leaders sincerely believe that Taiwan is part of
China, but the Taiwanese do not. The democratic transition on the island has made its
inhabitants' claims to nationhood more deeply felt and legitimate. A 2011 survey found that
if the Taiwanese could be assured that China would not attack Taiwan, 80 percent of them would support
declaring independence. Like Russia, China wants geopolitical control over its
neighborhood. But the spread of democracy to all corners of Asia has made oldfashioned domination the only way to achieve that, and that option is costly and selfdefeating. While the rise of democratic states makes life more difficult for China and
Russia, it makes the world safer for the United States. Those two powers may count as U.S.
rivals, but the rivalry takes place on a very uneven playing field: the United States has the most friends,
and the most capable ones, too. Washington and its allies account for 75 percent of global
military spending. Democratization has put China and Russia in a geopolitical box. Iran
is not surrounded by democracies, but it is threatened by a restive pro-democracy
movement at home. More important, Iran is the weakest member of Mead's axis, with a
much smaller economy and military than the United States and the other great powers.
It is also the target of the strongest international sanctions regime ever assembled, with
help from China and Russia. The Obama administration's diplomacy with Iran may or may not succeed,
but it is not clear what Mead would do differently to prevent the country from acquiring nuclear weapons.
U.S. President Barack Obama's approach has the virtue of offering Tehran a path by which it
can move from being a hostile regional power to becoming a more constructive,
nonnuclear member of the international community-a potential geopolitical game
changer that Mead fails to appreciate.
Even if rising power’s can challenge, they won’t – increasing integration
and interests in the liberal order
Ikenburry, 14 – a professor of Politics and International Affairs in the Woodrow Wilson School of
Public and International Affairs at Princeton University, former senior fellow at Brookings, and PhD
(John, “The Illusion of Geopolitics: The Enduring Power of the Liberal Order,” 2014, Council on Foreign
Relations, Proquest)//eek
Not only does Mead underestimate the strength of the United States and the order it
built; he also overstates the degree to which China and Russia are seeking to resist both.
(Apart from its nuclear ambitions, Iran looks like a state engaged more in futile protest than
actual resistance, so it shouldn't be considered anything close to a revisionist power.) Without a doubt,
China and Russia desire greater regional influence. China has made aggressive claims over
maritime rights and nearby contested islands, and it has embarked on an arms buildup. Putin has visions
of reclaiming Russia's dominance in its "near abroad." Both great powers bristle at U.S. leadership and
resist it when they can. But China and Russia are not true revisionists. As former Israeli Foreign
Minister Shlomo Ben-Ami has said, Putin's foreign policy is "more a reflection of his
resentment of Russia's geopolitical marginal- ization than a battle cry from a rising
empire." China, of course, is an actual rising power, and this does invite dangerous competition with
U.S. allies in Asia. But China is not currently trying to break those alliances or overthrow the
wider system of regional security governance embodied in the Association of Southeast
Asian Nations and the East Asia Summit. And even if China harbors ambitions of
eventually do- ing so, U.S. security partnerships in the region are, if anything, getting
stronger, not weaker. At most, China and Russia are spoilers. They do not have the interests-let
alone the ideas, capacities, or allies-to lead them to upend existing global rules and
institutions. In fact, although they resent that the United States stands at the top of the
current geopolitical system, they embrace the underlying logic of that framework , and
with good reason. Openness gives them access to trade, investment, and technology from
other societies. Rules give them tools to protect their sovereignty and interests. Despite
controversies over the new idea of "the responsibility to protect" (which has been applied
only selec- tively), the current world order enshrines the age-old norms of state sovereignty
and nonintervention. Those Westphalian principles remain the bedrock of world
politics-and China and Russia have tied their national interests to them (despite Putin's
disturbing irredentism). It should come as no surprise, then, that China and Russia have become deeply
integrated into the existing international order. They are both permanent members of the un
Security Council, with veto rights, and they both participate actively in the World Trade
Organi- zation, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and the G-20. They are
geopolitical insiders, sitting at all the high tables of global governance. China, despite its rapid
ascent, has no ambitious global agenda; it remains fixated inward, on preserving party rule.
Some Chinese intel- lectuals and political figures, such as Yan Xuetong and Zhu Chenghu, do
have a wish list of revisionist goals. They see the Western system as a threat and are waiting for the
day when China can reorganize the international order. But these voices do not reach very far into
the political elite. Indeed, Chinese leaders have moved away from their earlier calls for sweeping
change. In 2007, at its Central Committee meeting, the Chinese Communist Party
replaced previous proposals for a "new international economic order" with calls for
more modest reforms centering on fairness and justice. The Chinese scholar Wang Jisi has
argued that this move is "subtle but important," shifting China's orientation toward that of a global
reformer. China now wants a larger role in the International Monetary Fund and the
World Bank, greater voice in such forums as the G-20, and wider global use of its
currency. That is not the agenda of a country trying to revise the economic order. China
and Russia are also members in good standing of the nuclear club. The centerpiece of the
Cold War settlement between the United States and the Soviet Union (and then Russia) was a shared
effort to limit atomic weapons. Although U.S.-Russian relations have since soured, the
nuclear component of their arrangement has held. In 2010, Moscow and Washington
signed the New start treaty, which requires mutual reductions in long- range nuclear weapons.
Before the 1990s, China was a nuclear outsider. Although it had a modest arsenal, it saw itself as a
voice of the nonnuclear developing world and criticized arms control agreements and
test bans. But in a remarkable shift, China has since come to support the array of
nuclear accords, including the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and the Comprehensive
Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. It has affirmed a "no first use" doctrine, kept its arsenal small,
and taken its entire nuclear force off alert. China has also played an active role in the
Nuclear Security Summit, an initiative proposed by Obama in 2009, and it has joined the "P5
process," a collaborate effort to safeguard nuclear weapons. Across a wide range of issues,
China and Russia are acting more like established great powers than revisionist ones. They often choose
to shun multilateralism, but so, too, on occasion do the United States and other powerful democracies.
(Beijing has ratified the un Conven- tion on the Law of the Sea; Washington has not.) And China and
Russia are using global rules and institutions to advance their own interests. Their
struggles with the United States revolve around gaining voice within the existing order
and manipulating it to suit their needs. They wish to enhance their positions within the
system, but they are not trying to replace it. Across a wide range of issues, China and Russia
are acting more like established great powers than revisionist ones. They often choose to shun
multilateralism, but so, too, on occasion do the United States and other powerful
democracies. (Beijing has ratified the un Conven- tion on the Law of the Sea; Washington has not.)
And China and Russia are using global rules and institutions to advance their own
interests. Their struggles with the United States revolve around gaining voice within the
existing order and manipulating it to suit their needs. They wish to enhance their
positions within the system, but they are not trying to replace it.
Even if they challenge they will fail, the order is to strong – deep
engagement key
Ikenburry, 14 – a professor of Politics and International Affairs in the Woodrow Wilson School of
Public and International Affairs at Princeton University, former senior fellow at Brookings, and PhD
(John, “The Illusion of Geopolitics: The Enduring Power of the Liberal Order,” 2014, Council on Foreign
Relations, Proquest)//eek
Ultimately, even
if China and Russia do attempt to contest the basic terms of the current
global order, the adventure will be daunting and self-defeating. These powers aren't just
up against the United States; they would also have to contend with the most globally
organized and deeply entrenched order the world has ever seen, one that is dominated by
states that are liberal, capitalist, and democratic. This order is backed by a U.S.-led
network of alliances, institutions, geopolitical bargains, client states, and democratic
partnerships. It has proved dynamic and expansive, easily integrating rising states ,
beginning with Japan and Germany after World War II. It has shown a capacity for shared
leadership, as exemplified by such forums as the G-8 and the G-20. It has allowed rising
non-Western countries to trade and grow, sharing the dividends of modernization. It has
accommodated a surprisingly wide variety of political and economic models-social democratic (western
Europe), neoliberal (the United Kingdom and the United States), and state capitalist (East Asia). The
prosperity of nearly every country-and the stability of its government-fundamentally depends on this
order. In the age of liberal order, revisionist struggles are a fool's errand. Indeed, China
and Russia know this. They do not have grand visions of an alternative order. For them,
international relations are mainly about the search for commerce and resources, the
protection of their sover- eignty, and, where possible, regional domination. They have
shown no interest in building their own orders or even taking full responsibility for the
current one and have offered no alternative visions of global economic or political progress.
That's a critical shortcoming, since international orders rise and fall not simply with the
power of the leading state; their success also hinges on whether they are seen as
legitimate and whether their actual operation solves problems that both weak and
powerful states care about. In the struggle for world order, China and Russia (and certainly Iran) are
simply not in the game. Under these circumstances, the United States should not give up its efforts to
strengthen the liberal order. The world that Washington inhabits today is one it should welcome. And the
grand strategy it should pursue is the one it has followed for decades: deep global
engagement. It is a strategy in which the United States ties itself to the regions of the
world through trade, alliances, multilateral institutions, and diplomacy. It is a strategy
in which the United States establishes leadership not simply through the exercise of
power but also through sustained efforts at global problem solving and rule making. It
created a world that is friendly to American interests, and it is made friendly because, as President John
F. Kennedy once said, it is a world "where the weak are safe and the strong are just."∂
XXXXXXXX
XXXXXXX
AT: HARD POWER BAD
Heg is sustainable—multilateralism and cooperation are hallmarks
Ikenburry, 14 – a professor of Politics and International Affairs in the Woodrow Wilson School of
Public and International Affairs at Princeton University, former senior fellow at Brookings, and PhD
(John, “The Illusion of Geopolitics: The Enduring Power of the Liberal Order,” 2014, Council on Foreign
Relations, Proquest)//eek
Mead also mischaracterizes the thrust of U.S. foreign policy. Since the end of the Cold
War, he argues, the United States has ignored geopolitical issues involving territory and
spheres of influence and instead adopted a Pollyannaish emphasis on building the global
order. But this is a false dichotomy. The United States does not focus on issues of global
order, such as arms control and trade, because it assumes that geopolitical conflict is
gone forever; it undertakes such efforts pre- cisely because it wants to manage greatpower competition. Order building is not premised on the end of geopolitics; it is about how to
answer the big questions of geopolitics. Indeed, the construction of a U.S.-led global order did not
begin with the end of the Cold War; it won the Cold War. In the nearly 70 years since World War II,
Washington has undertaken sustained efforts to build a far-flung system of multilateral
institutions, alliances, trade agreements, and political partnerships. This project has
helped draw countries into the United States' orbit. It has helped strengthen global
norms and rules that undercut the legitimacy of nineteenth- century-style spheres of
influence, bids for regional domination, and territorial grabs. And it has given the United
States the capacities, partnerships, and principles to confront today's great-power spoilers and
revisionists, such as they are. Alliances, partnerships, multilateralism, democracy-these are
the tools of U.S. leadership, and they are winning, not losing, the twenty-first-century struggles over
geopolitics and the world order.
AT: INTERVENTIONISM BAD
Their policy snapshots don’t indict hegemony’s sustainability—their
authors mistake between being unwilling to intervene for being unable to
Murray and Herrington 14
(Robert W. Murray, Vice-President @ Research at the Frontier Centre for Public Policy, Adjunct
Profe2ssor of Political Science @ University of Alberta, Senior Fellow of Security and Defence Policy @
Atlantic Institute for Market Studies, and a Research Fellow at the University of Alberta’s European
Union Centre of Excellence; and Luke M. Herrington, PhD student in the Department of Political Science
@ University of Kansas, March 6 2014, “Russia, Ukraine, and the Testing of American Hegemony,”
http://www.e-ir.info/2014/03/06/russia-ukraine-and-the-testing-of-american-hegemony/, Accessed
7/30/14, JC)
Many pundits, and even some scholars and military thinkers, favor greater action by the Obama
Administration in the Ukraine. The world is unipolar, they assert, so the US must be capable of defending
the norms and principles of international law, peace and security, and even weaker states in the face of
aggression. This logic applies beyond Ukraine, with similar calls for American interventionism in Syria,
Central African Republic, etc. The fact remains that it has become a common assumption that
because the system is unipolar and the US is the world’s lone superpower, it has the
ability to intervene in every crisis at every corner of the globe. And if the US can
intervene, it should. Because President Obama has failed to meet these challenges headon—from the “green movement” in Iran, to the Arab Spring, and on to Libya, Syria, and
Ukraine—many of his critics accuse him of orchestrating a foreign policy of retreat. Or
worse still, that his aloofness in world politics means that he has no coherent foreign policy to speak of at
all. Indeed, last August, Frida Ghitis said the Obama Administration’s foreign policy was in “tailspin.”
The problems with these arguments—that President Obama is not doing enough to meet
these crises, or that the US ought to do more because it can—are many, but they
fundamentally misunderstand unipolarity (or polarity in general) on one hand, hegemony on
the other, and the relationship between the two—a problem itself derived from the neoReaganite/neoconservative misunderstanding of hegemony and hegemonic stability. Being the only
superpower in a unipolar system (i.e., the hegemon) does not automatically afford the US the
ability to act in every crisis, especially if doing so requires acting alone. Unilateralism has costs.
Not only is the cost of action itself increased by acting alone (resources cannot be
pooled), but it can cost political capital for a hegemon to act unilaterally if doing so is
seen as illegitimate by a sufficiently large proportion of other powers in the system. A
unipolar structure does not somehow erode or overcome the perceptions of states trying to ensure their
relative power position in the international system. The hegemon must calculate, like other states,
what will best serve its interests and what actions may be too costly, whether those costs
are political, military, economic, or some combination of the above.
AT: MEAD
Mead is an alarmist. China and Russia don’t effect hege – they can’t
destabilize the current order – even if they could they have no incentive to
Ikenberry, 14 – a professor of Politics and International Affairs in the Woodrow Wilson School of
Public and International Affairs at Princeton University, former senior fellow at Brookings, and PhD
(John, “The Illusion of Geopolitics: The Enduring Power of the Liberal Order,” 2014, Council on Foreign
Relations, Proquest)//eek
Walter Russell Mead paints a disturbing portrait of the United States' geopolitical
predicament. As he sees it, an increasingly formidable coalition of illiberal powersChina, Iran, and Russia-is determined to undo the post-Cold War settlement and the U.S.led global order that stands behind it. Across Eurasia, he argues, these aggrieved states are bent on
building spheres of influence to threaten the foundations of U.S. leadership and the global order. So the
United States must rethink its optimism, including its post-Cold War belief that rising non-Western states
can be persuaded to join the West and play by its rules. For Mead, the time has come to confront the
threats from these increasingly dangerous geopolitical foes.
But Mead's alarmism is based on a colossal misreading of modern power realities . It is a
misreading of the logic and character of the existing world order, which is more stable and
expansive than Mead depicts, leading him to overestimate the ability of the "axis of
weevils" to undermine it. And it is a misreading of China and Russia, which are not fullscale revisionist powers but part-time spoilers at best, as suspi- cious of each other as
they are of the outside world. True, they look for opportunities to resist the United States'
global leadership, and recently, as in the past, they have pushed back against it, particularly when
confronted in their own neighborhoods. But even these conflicts are fueled more by weaknesstheir leaders' and regimes'-than by strength. They have no appealing brand. And when it
comes to their overriding interests, Russia and, especially, China are deeply integrated
into the world economy and its governing institutions.
***INTERNAL LINKS***
OIL
Oil is the key internal to hege – maintaining the oil boom is critical to
energy security, economic power, and strategic leverage
Dunn and McClelland, 13 – Professor of International Politics and Head of the Department of
Political Science and International Studies at the University of Birmingham AND Associate Director for
North America at the risk analytics consultancy Maplecroft in charge of energy policy (David and Mark,
“Shale gas and the revival of American power: debunking decline?,” The Royal Institute of International
Affairs, http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1468-2346.12081/abstract)//eek
Shale gas, oil and American power In his 2011 International Affairs article, ‘The art of declining politely’, Quinn argues the case for
America’s relative decline, suggesting that President Obama’s cautious approach to foreign policy is appropriate for America’s
current position. Yet Quinn leaves the following caveat: ‘For
the United States, avoiding relative decline
over the coming decades will require the discovery of some as yet unknown propulsive
engine for revitalizing its own economic growth or some grave breakdown
disproportionately afflicting the rising powers.’29 Fortunately for the United States’ prospects of
retaining its pre-eminence in international politics, there are indications that such a
‘propulsive engine’ is emerging. After years of dwindling reserves, the US oil and gas industry is in
the embryonic stages of a dramatic reversal of fortunes. Vast deposits of shale gas and
oil, previously either undiscovered or considered not technically recoverable—a view that
prevailed as little as five years ago—have begun to be exploited. These shale ‘plays’ suggest the
prospect of a complete transformation of the US energy industry, serving to aid the
revival of America’s industrial base, and even offering the potential for energy selfsufficiency. Such an eventuality could have important geopolitical implications, not
simply bolstering American power, but somewhat weakening the relative power of
OPEC and exporters of conventional natural gas such as Russia. This is not to argue
that such an outcome is guaranteed; environmental concerns and
scepticism about the extent of US shale reserves could yet derail such an
outcome . The implications for global politics, however, if the more optimistic predictions of US shale gas and oil reserves are
fully realized, have not been fully factored into narratives of American decline; and indeed, they offer a different future for the
United States in its attempt to retain hegemony. Vast formations of shale rock are located underground throughout large parts of the
lower states of the US, including New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia, Texas and North Dakota. Although it has long been
known that signifi- cant oil and gas deposits exist here, the low pressure of the reservoirs and the low levels of permeability and
porosity of the rock meant that these reserves were not deemed technically or commercially recoverable. Many such areas, for
example the Barnett shale play in Texas, were not even on energy forecast maps in the late 1990s.30 Technological innovation,
however, particularly in the form of horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing (fracking), has brought about a rapid reassessment
of America’s energy reserves. Fracking involves water, sand and chemical fluids being injected underground at pressure to fracture
the shale and release gas and oil from the rock. Large amounts of shale gas and accompanying tight oil trapped in the shale could
now assist in the transformation of the material base of America’s power.31 It is no small irony that realists,
whose IR
paradigms stress the importance of the material basis of power, have been found at the
forefront of those arguing for America’s relative decline, often overlooking important
changes in the material base of US power that pose a significant challenge to the heart of
the declinist case. By contrast John Deutch, professor of chemistry at MIT and former director
of the CIA, argues that the discovery of shale gas has given rise to ‘perhaps the greatest
shift in energy-reserve estimates in the last half century’. The rapid turnaround in the
fortunes of the US oil and gas industry has a range of domestic and foreign implications,
some of which
are likely to help entrench American power, others of which may weaken the
economic base of states that are often seen as hostile to US interests. The domestic
economic benefits to the United States of shale gas are already large, even in the current
embryonic phase of the industry. There are both direct and indirect effects of the recent explosion in shale gas exploitation.
Most obviously, it will result in the United States not requiring imported lique- fied natural gas (LNG) to meet domestic demand,
and is likely to result in the US becoming an exporter of LNG in the medium term. Indeed, the Obama adminis- tration has already
approved four LNG export projects, and terminals designed to process LNG imports are now being fundamentally overhauled to
enable exports.41 The price of natural gas in the US has plummeted, with clear benefits for domestic and industrial consumers. The
pricing point of natural gas—known in the US as the Henry Hub price—is already less than a third of what it was in 2008.42 A study
of the long-term domestic implications of shale gas production indicates that by 2035 the average American household will have
$2,000 more disposable income per year solely as a result of reduced gas costs for themselves and the companies from which they
purchase products.43 Indeed, the price of natural gas has dropped so low that it has created difficulties for some energy companies
which have had to write down the value of their shale gas assets and focus attention in the short term on higher-margin natural gas
liquids and tight oil. In addition to the basic fact of a greater retention of economic wealth from not having to import natural gas,
there are a number of indirect benefits to shale gas exploitation. Industrial and manufacturing companies in particular, with high
electricity usage, are likely to benefit from lower energy costs. Low-cost shale gas is also increasingly being used as a feedstock for
chemical companies—partly explaining the opposition that has come from this sector towards future LNG exports, which could raise
the domestic price of natural gas. Thus, in addition to the hundreds of thousands of jobs created directly in the oil and gas industry,
employment gains in the chemicals, manufacturing and wider industrial sectors are also likely to result from cheaper gas and
electricity. One study reported that, even while still in the earliest stages of growth, shale gas has already created over 600,000 jobs
in the United States, and projects a further rise to a total of 870,000 new jobs by 2015, directly contributing $118.2 billion to US
GDP. Even ignoring the numerous other economic and strategic benefits, the basic tax return in terms of royalties from shale gas
production is estimated to be worth just under $1 trillion over the next 25 years.44 Despite other environmental concerns discussed
later, compared with its fossil fuel competitors, shale gas exploitation is considered to produce smaller quantities of harmful
greenhouse gases than either coal or oil.45 America’s reliance on the burning of coal to generate electricity has, up to now, been a
large impediment to its full embrace of measures to inhibit climate change. Natural gas, in contrast to coal, is widely considered to
be a bridge to a more nearly carbon-free future that cannot yet be realized economically.46 Although a carbon-free future is still out
of reach, shale gas offers a cleaner road towards that goal than burning a conventional fossil fuel such as coal. The environmental
benefits of shale gas could go beyond simply replacing coal in electricity production. The low price of gas is likely to incentivize and
expedite the development of technological change, especially in transport. Deutch argues that, as shale gas production increases in
the United States and worldwide, the price of gas may come increasingly to be set internationally rather than remain subject to local
variation. However, such an outcome would have to overcome significant transport costs, given that LNG is much more costly to
transport than crude oil. A consequence of increased natural gas production in the United States, and eventually elsewhere, could be
a significant drop in revenue—and an accompa- nying loss of geopolitical power—for current conventional oil and gas exporters.
Fortunately for the future of US power, it is these states in particular that have been most geopolitically problematic for America.
Shale gas offers policy- makers in Washington the prospect of a long-term reduction in revenue for OPEC and for the two states with
the world’s leading conventional gas reserves: Russia and Iran. OPEC will increasingly have to look to Asian markets in an attempt
to replace a significant drop in demand from North America. The Baker Insti- tute–Rice University investigation into the
geopolitical consequences of shale gas is illuminating. Russia’s share of the natural gas market in Europe is likely to fall to 13 per
cent by 2040 from 27 per cent in 2009 as a result of shale gas production, which will also significantly reduce the ability of the
Iranian regime to engage in energy diplomacy. The shale revolution in the United States could also reduce oil exports from
Venezuela and thus limit America’s oil dependence on Latin America.50 The upshot of this is that the United States will play a more
important role in determining global energy supplies and prices than it does at present. Europe, for example, currently beholden to
the demands of Russian policy-makers, would need to pay much closer attention to the United States and look westwards for natural
gas imports.51 Even if direct LNG exports to Europe from the US turn out to be relatively low, falling US demand for Russian natural
gas could lower its price on European markets. A consequence of increased natural gas production in the United States, and
eventually elsewhere, could be a significant drop in revenue—and an accompa- nying loss of geopolitical power—for current
conventional oil and gas exporters. Fortunately for the future of US power, it is these states in particular that have been most
geopolitically problematic for America. Shale gas offers policy- makers in Washington the prospect of a long-term reduction in
revenue for OPEC and for the two states with the world’s leading conventional gas reserves: Russia and Iran. OPEC will increasingly
have to look to Asian markets in an attempt to replace a significant drop in demand from North America. The Baker Insti- tute–Rice
University investigation into the geopolitical consequences of shale gas is illuminating. Russia’s share of the natural gas market in
Europe is likely to fall to 13 per cent by 2040 from 27 per cent in 2009 as a result of shale gas production, which will also
significantly reduce the ability of the Iranian regime to engage in energy diplomacy. The
shale revolution in the
United States could also reduce oil exports from Venezuela and thus limit America’s oil
dependence on Latin America. The upshot of this is that the United States will play a
more important role in determining global energy supplies and prices than it does at present.
Europe, for example, currently beholden to the demands of Russian policy-makers, would
need to pay much closer attention to the United States and look westwards for natural
gas imports. Even if direct LNG exports to Europe from the US turn out to be relatively
low, falling US demand for Russian natural gas could lower its price on European
markets. Currently, the US is dependent on international stability for its energy needs at a
time when the security of that supply is often in doubt and the increase in the price of oil
is damaging to both the US and the global economy. Control of oil prices and supply in particular has
fluctuated considerably in the twelve years since the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the United States. In 2001, the price of a barrel of crude
oil was $28; by mid-2013 it was fluctuating just over $100 a barrel. The massive increases in the price of oil throughout this period
have contributed in a significant way to America’s economic woes. As Robert Zubrin argues, the
increase in oil prices
has acted like a massive tax increase on the American economy: Oil prices have risen ... 900 percent
in the past twelve years. In 1999, Americans paid $90 billion for all their oil, less than 5 percent of what they paid in federal taxes. At
current prices of $108 per barrel, Americans this year will pay over $800 billion for oil, an amount equal to 33 percent of all federal
tax . . . leaving us paying more for oil than we pay to the federal government.52 The
effects of these increases were
felt through an increase in unemployment in the late 2000s which in turn led to
mortgage defaults, destroying the value of the mortgage-backed securities held by
America’s banks. The resulting bailout of the banks by the government to avoid a
general collapse of the financial system landed American taxpayers with an additional
bill of $800 billion. The economic downturn resulting from the ‘credit crunch’ is as
infamous as it has been enduring. In addition, the period since 2011 has witnessed
disruption to energy supplies owing to unrest in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Syria,
keeping prices high despite the reduction in global demand caused by the recession, and
the continuing effects of oil sanctions on Iran. Such developments create strong
incentives for greater development of domestic shale as a safe, stable, cheap energy
source, and could spur technological innovation to resort increasingly to natural gas
instead of crude oil in some transport functions in the medium to long term.
ECONOMY O/W SOFT POWER
Soft power is more important than economic power – control of the
international order and alliances – our authors are in the consensus
Dunn and McClelland, 13 – Professor of International Politics and Head of the Department of
Political Science and International Studies at the University of Birmingham AND Associate Director for
North America at the risk analytics consultancy Maplecroft in charge of energy policy (David and Mark,
“Shale gas and the revival of American power: debunking decline?,” The Royal Institute of International
Affairs, http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1468-2346.12081/abstract)//eek
The idea that power is not merely a reflection of material capabilities is hardly either
novel or restricted to discussion of US foreign policy or decline. Indeed, from Dahl to Lukes,
Foucault and Habermas, the concept of power itself is possibly the most contested term in political
science.15 Only the most ardent of realist IR scholars would deny that power consists of
more than just the crude material base of a state. American hegemony does not simply
pass to China on some future date when Chinese GDP surpasses that of the United
States. If an economic metric like GDP was the sole criterion by which such matters
were judged then the EU would have already replaced the US as global hegemon. Instead,
there are characteristics of the current international order that allow particularly
‘American’ ideas of liberalism, democracy and free markets to prosper, and these are
unlikely simply to disappear if and when China’s economy overtakes America’s. The legacy
of the power of previous hegemons is evidence of this phenomenon, in that their enduring role in the
international system is greater than their current economic weight alone would justify. In a similar way,
for the US leadership role to be superseded would require the legitimacy of the existing
world order to be systematically dismantled to undermine American power, not simply
relegate its economy into second place.16 China is unlikely to challenge the United States while
the legitimacy of the Pax Americana is not fundamentally deemed void. To challenge the viability of
the US-led order, China would need both to delegitimize the present hegemon and to
offer an attractive alternative to other states. This is extremely difficult for China to
achieve, given its paucity of allies and the fact that there is little indication that its
authoritarian model is an attractive one for export.17 China, then, labours under a serious
lack of soft power compared to key states in the West, especially the United States. Indeed, to
convincingly replace the United States as hegemon it would almost certainly require a greater degree of
hard power to compensate for the deficiency in its soft power. For most of the world it is America
rather than China or another competitor that is the ‘power balancer of choice’. Although
US soft power was undoubtedly harmed by botched handling of the wars in Afghanistan
and Iraq, it is nonetheless distinctly premature to speak of a permanent loss of soft
power. Although images from Guantánamo Bay and Abu Ghraib have damaged America’s reputation, it
still has a vast array of soft power levers at its disposal, and President Obama’s five years
in office since 2009 have somewhat redeemed the United States in the eyes of certain
foreign observers. Most states in the world are not determined to contain or balance
American power. American unipolarity has not generated a coalition of countries
seeking to rein it in. In the current unipolar system there are fewer incentives for states
to seek status in positional struggle than in multipolar or bipolar international
systems.20 Indeed, Brooks and Wohlforth argue that the tremendous concentration of global
power in the United States after the Cold War has essentially rendered ‘inoperative’
much of traditional IR scholarship concerned with power balances and international
systemic constraints. Even if one accepts that China will become a Great Power in the
future, its power is still significantly dependent upon the international system, which in
turn depends on US leadership to function effectively.22
SOFT POWER NOT KEY
Soft power fails – Russia proves and it is dependent on hard power
Cecire, 14 – an Black Sea and Eurasia regional analyst and an associate scholar at the Foreign Policy
Research Institute (Michael, “The Limits of Soft Power,” April 1, 2014,
http://nationalinterest.org/commentary/the-limits-soft-power-10163?page=2)//eek
The Russian invasion of Ukraine has already punctured much of the prevailing foreignpolicy thinking that had become pro forma in Washington and Europe. In particular, the
notion that Western unilateral disarmament can somehow be balanced or compensated
for with less tangible forms of influence—soft power—has much to answer for in this ongoing
crisis. By now, it is clear that Moscow’s actions in Crimea strongly demonstrate the sharp
limits of soft power, especially one that appears to have been decoupled from hard
power, the traditional final arbiter of interstate relations. Ukraine is not merely a geopolitical
setback, but a symptom of a misplaced faith in the potency of postmodern soft power as
foreign policy plan A through Z. Ukraine’s rapid transformation from homo Sovieticus–ruled
kleptocracy to inspiring popular revolution to the latest victim of Russian imperialism has been
astonishing. In the span of mere weeks, Ukraine’s political cleavages have been magnified as
the faultline of a tense geopolitical contest between the Euro-Atlantic community and a
revanchist, increasingly militant Russia. In the Western scramble to come to terms with the new
threat landscape—let alone formulating an effective, unified response—Crimea has almost certainly
already been lost. Meanwhile, Russia seems poised to expand its writ into other areas of
eastern Ukraine just as it aggressively probes Euro-Atlantic readiness in the Baltic, Turkey, and the
Caucasus. In Washington, defense and administration officials appear resigned—if only
unofficially—to Russian control over Crimea (if not eastern Ukraine) and are digging in for the long
haul. How did we get here? Among the ideologues, the answer lies in the foreign policies of the current or
previous administrations. On the right, President Obama’s “reset” and subordination of foreign
policy to domestic issues is the obvious cause. And on the left, President Bush’s wars have
given the Kremlin the perfect moral justification. But the reality, like many things, is hardly one
sided. Partisans decrying President Obama’s “weakness” appear to ignore that the administration's
response to Russia’s occupation of Crimea is already far more muscular than President Bush’s reaction to
the Russian invasion of Georgia 2008. And conversely, some of the left’s bizarre use of a war they
supposedly opposed to equivocate on the invasion of a sovereign state by corrupt autocracy is as selfcontradictory as it is troubling. The likelier culprit is not so intimately tethered to the tribalisms of
American politics, though ideology inevitably has played a role. Instead , the Western political class
has become intoxicated with the notion that soft power, now the highly fashionable foreignpolicy instrument of first resort, can compensate for—or in some ways replace altogether—diminished
hard power. If the late 1990s was the heyday for liberal internationalism by airpower, the late 2000s saw
an analogous consensus congregate around soft power. Soft power is supposed to describe the
latent factors—values, economy, culture and the like—of a state, entity or idea to persuade or attract.
This contrasts with its more recognizable counterpart, hard power, which is based on the more
traditional principle of coercion. There is little doubt that soft power is a real and
fundamentally important phenomenon in the conduct of international relations. Contributions from
scholars like Joseph Nye and Giulio Gallarotti have made a compelling case that soft power is a powerful
geopolitical signifier; but what began as a keen observation had morphed into a cottage
industry looking to leverage soft power into a foreign-policy panacea. In an illuminating
2011 paper published by the Strategic Studies Institute at the U.S. Army War College, University of
Reading (U.K.) political scientist Colin S. Gray rightly acknowledges the merits of the soft-power thesis
while articulating its practical limitations, particularly in the policy arena. “While it is sensible to seek
influence abroad as cost-effectively as possible, it is only prudent to be modest in one's expectations of the
soft power to be secured by cultural influence,” cautions Gray. Indeed, soft power’s attraction and
subsequent embrace by the foreign policy elite had as much to do with its usefulness as a substitute for
“hard power” as its salience as an idea. But while hard and soft power can be complementary,
Gray observes that soft power can in no way compensate for military power. “Sad to say,”
laments Gray, “there is no convincing evidence suggesting an absence of demand for the
threat and use of military force.” Sad, indeed. However, events in Ukraine have exposed the
stark limits of soft power in a way that no analysis ever could. There is no small irony in
the fact that Russia’s forceful military intervention into Ukraine was preceded by a
grinding, if superficially velveted, tug of war between Moscow and the West over Ukraine’s integration
with two competing soft-power “vehicles”—the EU and the Moscow-led Customs Unioncum-Eurasian Union. It was Yanukovych’s abandonment of Ukraine’s pledge to sign an Association
Agreement with the EU—following intense Russian coercion—that protests began again in earnest.
Yanukovych’s turn to brutality eventually precipitated his toppling, Russia’s military intervention, and
now Crimea’s annexation. The idea of soft power as operational policy should be buried.
While there is some government role in propagating and wielding soft power—public
affairs, policy making, and, yes, sometimes psychological operations—the real business of soft
power is exists well outside of the domain of the state. In reality, the track record of
operationalizing soft power has been, to date, abysmal. Russia is a case in point. Moscow
repeatedly sought to revise the post-Cold War order through a variety of projects that might
normally be filed as soft-power initiatives: then president Dmitry Medvedev’s repeated attempts to
reorient the European security architecture; the Kremlin obsession with making the ruble an
international reserve currency; the formation of the Russia-led Customs Union in 2010; and the
(now likely stillborn) plans to establish the Eurasian Union. And yet, in the end, Crimea was
forcibly seized by men with guns. Indeed, the truer currency of power remains the ability
to coerce. Fatigue from disastrous wars in Iraq and Afghanistan elevated expectations
that soft power could supplant a beleaguered and overstretched U.S. military. Why,
indeed, would the U.S. opt for coercion when civilizational persuasion could do the trick? Pro-West people
power in Eurasia seemed to bolster the case for operationalized soft power after the “color revolutions” in
Georgia, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan. Yet the longer-term results were unpredictable at best and
disastrous at worst. Over time, it has become increasingly apparent that soft power is
perhaps less an instrument to wield than a favorable wind at our backs. The crisis with
Russia has laid bare the limits of soft power as well as the continued relevance of hard
power—even in “postmodern” Europe. While the Obama administration should be credited with being
among the few Western governments to offer a relatively serious response to the Ukraine crisis, the
White House overall still seems uncomfortable with the difficult but very real role that
hard power necessarily plays in establishing and policing a U.S.-led, liberal normative
order. This must change with the new circumstances established by Russian
revanchism. Western values can only be propagated and upheld with the ultimate
guarantee of hard power. And if the West is not prepared to enforce its values with
tangible consequences, then perhaps we should abandon the pretense of a rules-based
international system and cease the cruel practice of giving hope where there is none to
be had. Soft power is here to stay, but its moment as a diplomatic instrument has long
since gone. Because, in reality, it was never really much more than an illusion of what we
wished the world to be rather than the one that exists.
ECONOMY O/W HARD POWER
Economic power is more important than and key to hard power –
diminishing returns, perception, and long-term defense spending – it’s not
reverse causal
Drezner, 13 – Professor of International Politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts
University (Daniel, “Military Primacy Doesn’t Pay (Nearly As Much As You Think),” International
Security, Volume 38, Number 1, Summer 2013, pp. 52-79, MIT Press)//eek
For the past generation, U.S. military hegemony has been a concrete fact in world politics. The anticipated
austerity of the defense budget has prompted concerns among some analysts that the costs of any
reduction in defense spending outweigh the benefits to the U.S. economy. This article has
assessed the merits and demerits of military hegemony for a superpower’s economy. Reasons have been
put forward to describe how U.S. military supremacy rep- resents a net economic gain: the inculcation of
geoeconomic and geopolitical favoritism, and the generation of greater benefits from global public goods
un- der the shadow of military primacy. The empirical record suggests that many of the hypothesized
benefits have been overstated. The private sector responds positively to a country’s
military capability, but only up to a point; military primacy is hardly a prerequisite for
attracting trade and investment. Geopolitical favoritism does occur, but only during periods of
bipolarity. Economic exchange is actually less correlated with security ties under
conditions of unipolarity. Finally, military primacy does appear to be an important adjunct to the
creation of an open global econ- omy and the reduction of militarized disputes and security rivalries, but
military supremacy is only one component of unipolarity. A decline in the hegemon’s
economic power undercuts many of unipolarity’s posited benefits. Both the public goods
and geopolitical favoritism arguments have some valid- ity, but both rely on the
hegemon’s economic might as much as its military might for the causal pathways to
function. To be clear, nothing here should suggest that military predominance does not confer
signiacant political and diplomatic benefits on the hegemon. Mili- tary preeminence can translate into a
force multiplier for other forms of statecraft, including the use of economic sanctions. As Barry Posen
notes, com- mand of the global commons “allows the United States to exploit more fully other sources of
power, including its own economic and military might as well as the economic and military might of its
allies.”119 It also seems clear that full- spectrum unipolarity does yield signiacant benefits. Still, the
argument that military preeminence alone produces signiacant economic gain appears
to be exaggerated. The results presented in this article are preliminary—greater and deeper dives into
the data must be made. Nevertheless, if these results hold, there are signiacant implications for
both international relations theory and U.S. foreign policy. For theorists, these andings have
implications for the role that military power plays in world politics. Over the past forty years, there has
been a running debate in international relations scholarship regarding the relative fungibility of power.
Some realists have argued that force is a fungible tool of statecraft; critics argue that power resources are
harder to deploy across issue areas.120 The arguments presented here suggest that the fungibility of
military power is more circumscribed than advocates of military primacy contend. Military power is
essential in a wide variety of cases, but the argument that an overseas military presence
pays for itself, or heavily defrays the costs of deep engagement, does not hold up. Only
full-spectrum primacy yields the hypoth- esized benefits that allegedly flow from military hegemony.
There are also clear implications for U.S. foreign policy and ascal policy. The lesson from this analysis for
U.S. grand strategy is that an overreliance on mili- tary preponderance is badly misguided.
Again, it is not that military power is useless; it is that the law of diminishing marginal
returns has kicked in. The United States would proat more from investing in
nonmilitary power re- sources than in military assets. An excessive reliance on military
might, to the exclusion of other dimensions of power, will yield negative returns. Without a revived economy and the associated global recognition of a renaissance in
American economic power, the United States runs the risk of strategic insolvency.121
The United States needs to focus primarily on policies that will rejuvenate economic
growth, accelerate job creation, and promote greater in- novation and productivity. If
the U.S. economy is perceived to be rebounding, then the biggest economic benefits that
have been hypothesized to flow from military predominance will be preserved.
Furthermore, over the long run, eco- nomic growth is the strongest driver for growth in
defense spending.122 Short- term cuts can lead to long-term growth in defense spending.
As policymakers weigh the choice between maintaining a large military and taking steps to- ward
economic revival, the results in this article point strongly toward deeper cuts in defense expenditures.
Multilat Bad
***HEG GOOD IMPACTS***
2AC—Arctic
Hegemony prevents Arctic conflict escalation
Borgerson ‘8 (Scott, International Affairs Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, March/April,
“Arctic Meltdown: The Economic and Security Implications of Global Warming”
http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/63222/scott-g-borgerson/arctic-meltdown)
Washington cannot afford to stand idly by. The Arctic region is not currently governed by any
comprehensive multilateral norms and regulations because it was never expected to become a navigable
waterway or a site for large-scale commercial development. Decisions made by Arctic powers in the
coming years will therefore profoundly shape the future of the region for decades. Without U.S. leadership
to help develop diplomatic solutions to competing claims and potential conflicts, the region could erupt in
an armed mad dash for its resources.
2AC—Asia
Hegemony solves everything Asian
Lieber ‘5 (Robert, Professor of Government and International Affairs at Georgetown University,The
American Era: Power and Strategy for the 21st Century, p. 174)
Taken together, these Asian involvements are not
without risk, especially vis-a-vis North Korea, China-Taiwan,
and the uncertain future of a nuclear-armed Pakistan. Nonetheless, the American engagement provides both
reassurance and deterrence and thus eases the security dilemmas of the key states there, including
countries that are America's allies but remain suspicious of each other. Given the history of the region, an
American withdrawal would be likely to trigger arms races and the accelerated proliferation of nuclear
weapons. It is thus no exaggeration to describe the American presence as providing the "oxygen" crucial
for the region's stability and economic prosperity.
2AC—China
Hegemony decreases chances of war with China
Lieber ‘5 (Robert J., Professor of Government and International Affairs at Georgetown University, The
American Era: Power and Strategy for the 21st Century, (p. 158))
Parallels between America's role in East Asia and its involvements in Europe might seem far-fetched. Asia's geography and history
are enormously different, there is no regional organization in any way comparable to the European Union, the area is not a zone of
peace, conflict among its leading states remains a potential risk, and there is nothing remotely resembling NATO as a formal
multilateral alliance binding the United States to the region's security and the regional states to one another. Yet, as in Europe, the
United States plays a unique stabilizing role in Asia that no other country or organization is capable of
playing. Far from being a source of tension or instability, this presence tends to reduce competition among
regional powers and to deter armed conflict. Disengagement, as urged by some critics of American primacy, would
probably lead to more dangerous competition or power-balancing among the principal countries of Asia
as well as to a more unstable security environment and the spread of nuclear weapons. As a consequence,
even China acquiesces in America's regional role despite the fact that it is the one country with the long-term potential to
emerge as a true major power competitor
2AC—Disease
Hegemony is key to prevent disease
Meier 10 – Asst. Professor of Global Health Policy @ UNC Chapel Hill (Benjamin Mason, The Obama
Administration’s Global Health Initiative: Public Health Law, U.S. Foreign Policy & Universal Human
Rights, Public Health Law, 2010)
Global health is fast becoming an explicit goal of U.S. policy – with legislation, regulations, and policy
statements guiding our funding, activities, and programs to address public health abroad. At the intersection
of foreign policy and health policy, this global health imperative for public health law is poised to grow under the Obama
Administration’s Global Health Initiative. With contemporary institutions of global health governance now over 60 years old, the
nature of the global health architecture has changed considerably as the United States has shifted its global health priorities.[i] As a
leading progenitor of the global health governance framework, the United States has long sought a place for global health policy to
alleviate suffering in an increasingly interconnected world. However, with U.S. policymakers harboring suspicions that global
governance would advance “socialized medicine” in the midst of the Cold War, the United States constrained international
organizations to medical “impact projects” that would advance U.S. foreign policy interests.[ii] Despite fleeting U.S. support for
global health policy in the 1970s,[iii] the 1980 election of President Reagan—and with it, principled opposition to international
organizations—would limit opportunities for global health governance.[iv] Given a growing leadership vacuum in global
health, the global health architecture began to shift toward greater U.S. hegemony in global health policy,
with scholars increasingly noting that “the U.S. domestic agenda is driving the global agenda.”[v] Moving
away from a model of working through international institutions for global health governance, the United
States is bypassing multilateral organizations and pursuing a herculean expansion in bilateral health
assistance, increasingly making U.S. foreign policy a singular force for global health.[ vi] As the largest donor to
global health—in absolute dollars, albeit less committed relative to GDP—foreign health assistance is fast becoming an anchor of
U.S. soft power – answering the call for global health leadership in a post-Cold War world.[vii] Where once this role was
defined by uncoordinated medical approaches to select high-profile diseases, the United States is moving
toward coordinated foreign assistance to public health systems. With U.S. health diplomacy once grounded solely in
the containment of the Cold War—to combat the “unsatisfactory living conditions on which Communism feeds,” influencing minds
as much as bodies[viii]—the 1961 establishment of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) galvanized foreign
assistance for public health, administering technical and economic assistance for the provision of health services.[ix] However, even
as extended by President Bush’s 2003 Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), these ambitious global health commitments
would be criticized for excessive reliance on medical services and for “crowding out” public health systems in the developing
world.[x] In spite of burgeoning efforts to address HIV, malaria, and tuberculosis, these fragmented U.S. efforts continued to lack
coordination across government agencies, attention to health systems, and strategy for foreign assistance. But as ethical claims and
human rights have renewed attention to the plight of the world’s poor,[xi] the United States has moved to coordinate foreign
assistance for global health. Given the need for a comprehensive strategy to govern U.S. engagement with global health[xii]—a need
that grew dire as the global financial crisis decimated global health[xiii]—the Institute of Medicine (IOM) recommended that the
United States engage more deliberately in global health leadership.[xiv] To reshape foreign health assistance across U.S. agencies,
programs, and partners, the Obama Administration’s Global Health Initiative (GHI) seeks to develop a unified global health strategy
to integrate and organize U.S. global health efforts. Focusing on public health systems (specifically health financing, information
management, and workforce capacity-building institutions)—adding onto existing disease-specific efforts (with 70% of funds
earmarked for PEPFAR, notwithstanding a stabilization in HIV funding)—the GHI seeks to shape how the U.S. government
coordinates its resources across global health activities and engages with developing countries in meeting nine targets for global
health (delineated in figure 1), achieving these targets through seven key principles (delineated in figure 2).[xv] While it is unclear to
what extent this foreign policy effort will meet its targets and principles for health system strengthening, preliminary coordination
among agencies has begun to identify areas in which the United States could have the greatest sustainable impact on public health
outcomes.[xvi] With $63 billion requested for this Initiative over a six year period, the GHI will seek to prioritize country-led efforts
to reach the most effective and efficient improvements for public health systems. These changes in U.S. policy will
greatly influence disease prevention and health promotion throughout the world, with public health
lawyers holding key positions in shaping this policy. With an imperative to create policy frameworks to
guide our innovative programs in global health, the need has never been greater to rethink how we in
public health law endeavor to meet global health needs – viewing ourselves as key actors in the global
health architecture and viewing our work as medicine on a global scale.
2AC—Economy
Hegemony solves your economy scenario
Mandelbaum ‘5 (Michael, Professor and Director of the American Foreign Policy Program at Johns
Hopkins, The Case for Goliath: How America Acts As the World’s Government in the Twenty-First
Century, p. 192-195)
Although the spread of nuclear weapons, with the corresponding increase in the likelihood that a nuclear shot would be fired in
anger somewhere in the world, counted as the most serious potential consequence of the abandonment by the United States of its
role as the world's government, it was not the only one. In the previous period of American international reticence, the 1920s and
1930s, the global
economy suffered serious damage that a more active American role might have
mitigated. A twenty-first-century American retreat could have similarly adverse international economic
consequences. The economic collapse of the 1930s caused extensive hardship throughout the world and led indirectly to World
War II by paving the way for the people who started it to gain power in Germany and Japan. In retrospect, the Great
Depression is widely believed to have been caused by a series of errors in public policy that made an
economic downturn far worse than it would have been had governments responded to it in appropriate fashion. Since the
1930s, acting on the lessons drawn from that experience by professional economists, governments have taken steps that have helped
to prevent a recurrence of the disasters of that decade.' In the face of reduced demand, for example, governments have increased
rather than cut spending. Fiscal and monetary crises have evoked rescue efforts rather than a studied indifference based on the
assumption that market forces will readily reestablish a desirable economic equilibrium. In contrast to the widespread practice of
the 1930s, political authorities now understand that putting up barriers to imports in an attempt to revive domestic production will
in fact worsen economic conditions everywhere. Still, a serious, prolonged failure of the international economy,
inflicting the kind of hardship the world experienced in the 1930s (which some Asian countries also suffered as a
result of their fiscal crises in the 1990s) does not lie beyond the realm of possibility. Market economies remain subject to
cyclical downturns, which public policy can limit but has not found a way to eliminate entirely. Markets also have an inherent
tendency to form bubbles, excessive values for particular assets, whether seventeenth century Dutch tulips or twentieth century
Japanese real estate and Thai currency, that cause economic harm when the bubble bursts and prices plunge. In responding to these
events, governments can make errors. They can act too slowly, or fail to implement the proper policies, or implement improper ones.
Moreover, the global economy and the national economies that comprise it, like a living organism, change
constantly and sometimes rapidly: Capital flows across sovereign borders, for instance, far more rapidly and in much
greater volume in the early twenty-first century than ever before. This means that measures that successfully address economic
malfunctions at one time may have less effect at another, just as medical science must cope with the appearance of new strains of
influenza against which existing vaccines are not effective. Most importantly, since the Great Depression, an active
American international economic role has been crucial both in fortifying the conditions for global
economic well-being and in coping with the problems that have occurred, especially periodic recessions
and currency crises, by applying the lessons of the past. The absence of such a role could weaken those
conditions and aggravate those problems. The overall American role in the world since World War II therefore has
something in common with the theme of the Frank Capra film It's a Wonderful Life, in which the angel Clarence, played by Henry
Travers, shows James Stewart, playing the bank clerk George Bailey, who believes his existence to have been worthless, how life in
his small town of Bedford Falls would have unfolded had he never been born. George Bailey learns that people he knows and loves
turn out to be far worse off without him. So it is with the United States and its role as the world's government. Without that role,
the world very likely would have been in the past, and would become in the future, a less secure and less
prosperous place. The abdication by the United States of some or all of the responsibilities for
international security that it had come to bear in the first decade of the twenty-first century would deprive
the international system of one of its principal safety features, which keeps countries from smashing into
each other, as they are historically prone to do. In this sense, a world without America would be the
equivalent of a freeway full of cars without brakes. Similarly, should the American government abandon
some or all of the ways in which it had, at the dawn of the new century, come to support global economic
activity, the world economy would function less effectively and might even suffer a severe and costly
breakdown. A world without the United States would in this way resemble a fleet of cars without gasoline.
2AC—Environment
Hegemony key to setting environmental norms
Falkner ‘5 (Robert, Department of International Relations, London School of Economics, American
Hegemony and the Global Environment, ISR, Volume 7 Page 585)
The first use of hegemony in international environmental politics revolves around the use of superior
power in the interest of international regime building. Young (1989:88) has argued in International Cooperation:
Building Regimes for Natural Resources and the Environment that, even though hegemonic states rarely impose international
regimes against the wishes of other states, they play an important role in providing leadership in the creation of
mutually agreeable environmental regimes. Although environmental leadership does not necessarily result from
hegemonic power, it is closely linked to such power. Environmental leadership can take many different forms: policy
entrepreneurship of individual actors in international bargaining that facilitates compromise and agreement in the interest of
environmental causes (entrepreneurial leadership); diffusion and role model effects of national environmental policy (intellectual
leadership); and the more explicit use of economic incentives and sanctions in pursuit of international environmental objectives
(structural leadership) (Young 1991; Lake 1993; Vogel 1997; Tews 2004). Even though hegemony is neither a necessary nor
sufficient condition for the existence of environmental leadership, it is usually only powerful states that have a lasting effect on
international negotiations and norm creation. Weaker states may assume a leading position when it comes to developing progressive
environmental policies or demanding stringent international rules. But such initiatives will remain ineffective if they are not backed
up by political and economic clout that can foster international agreement and induce compliance. For example, smaller European
states such as Denmark and the Netherlands have often been in the vanguard of environmental policy innovation, but Germany,
Europe's largest economy, is usually credited with providing the essential leadership for advancing environmental policies at the EU
level. A similar picture emerges in the international system. It is mainly states that have dominant economic and
political clout and whose position in the international economy affords them the possibility of exerting
indirect or direct pressure on other states that can provide effective leadership on environmental issues.
The United States is a good example of this conclusion. For much of the early phase of international environmental politics,
the United States provided international leadership in one form or the other. It was one of the first leading industrialized nations to
develop comprehensive environmental legislation and regulatory institutions. The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA),
which was set up in 1970 to integrate the widely scattered programs and institutions dealing with environmental matters, instantly
became a model for similar regulatory agencies that were created in other industrialized countries during the 1970s. Much of this
state activity was underpinned by the world's most dynamic environmental movement, which came into existence in the mid-1960s.
US environmental groups ranging from the more traditional bodies (Sierra Club, National Audubon Society) to modern
environmental nongovernmental organizations (Environmental Defense Fund, Natural Resources Defense Council, Greenpeace)
worked to create broadly based domestic support for a more ambitious environmental policy at home and abroad. US scientists and
activists came to play a leading role in the global environmental movement that began to emerge in the 1970s (Kraft 2004). At the
international level, the United States began to claim the mantle of environmental leader , first at the UN
Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm in 1972 (Hopgood 1998:96), and later in the context of the multilateral efforts
to agree on environmental treaties. Having declared eight whale species endangered based on the Endangered Species Act of 1969,
the United States took up the issue of whale preservation internationally and initiated a transformation of the international whaling
regime to emphasize species protection rather than natural resource usage. US diplomatic pressure and threat of sanctions were
instrumental in getting the International Whaling Commission to place a ban on commercial whaling in 1984 (Porter and Brown
1996:77–81; Fletcher 2001). Also in the 1970s, the United States began to support international efforts to take action against ozone
layer depletion and in the 1980s became a key advocate of international restrictions on the use of ozone-depleting chemicals. During
the negotiations on the Montreal Protocol, the US government provided important leadership and exerted pressure on skeptical
states, especially the European producers of ozone-depleting substances, that objected to strong international measures (Benedick
1991). Whereas the ozone negotiations provided the United States with an opportunity to display leadership in a multilateral context,
US policy on the conservation of species took on a more unilateral character. More than any other country, the United
States has used the threat of sanctions to change other nations' behavior in areas that endanger
threatened species. Using import restrictions on products made in an environmentally damaging way, the US government
forced foreign fishing fleets to comply with American standards of protection of, for example, dolphins and sea turtles (DeSombre
2001).
2AC—Free Trade
Hegemony fosters free trade
Walt ‘2 (Stephen, Academic Dean at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University,
Robert and Renee Belfer Professorship in International Affairs, American Primacy: It’s prospects and
pitfalls”, Naval War College Review, Spring 2002, Vol. LV, No. 2)
By facilitating the development of a more open and liberal world economy, American primacy also fosters
global prosperity. Economic interdependence is often said to be a cause of world peace, but it is more
accurate to say that peace encourages interdependence—by making it easier for states to accept the
potential vulnerabilities of extensive international intercourse.10 Investors are more willing to send
money abroad when the danger of war is remote, and states worry less about being dependent on others
when they are not concerned that these connections might be severed. When states are relatively secure,
they will also be less fixated on how the gains from cooperation are distributed . In particular, they are less likely
to worry that extensive cooperation will benefit others more and thereby place them at a relative disadvantage over time.11 By
providing a tranquil international environment, in short, U.S. primacy has created political conditions
that are conducive to expanding global trade and investment. Indeed, American primacy was a
prerequisite for the creation and gradual expansion of the European Union, which is often touted as a triumph of
economic self-interest over historical rivalries. Because the United States was there to protect the Europeans from
the Soviet Union and from each other, they could safely ignore the balance of power within Western
Europe and concentrate on expanding their overall level of economic integration. The expansion of world
trade has been a major source of increased global prosperity, and U.S. primacy is one of the central pillars
upon which that system rests.12 The United States also played a leading role in establishing the various
institutions that regulate and manage the world economy. As a number of commentators have noted, the
current era of “globalization” is itself partly an artifact of American power. As Thomas Friedman puts it, “Without
America on duty, there will be no America Online.”13
2AC—India
US military presence prevents Indo/Pak war
Khan ‘3 (Feroz, Brigadier General and Former Director of Arms Control and Disarmament Affairs in the
Strategic Plans Division of the Joint Services Headquarters in Pakistan, Arms Control Today, “The
Independence-Dependence Paradox: Stability Dilemmas in South Asia”, Volume 33, Issue 8, October)
This logic is vividly applicable in the case of South Asia. Both
countries hurl themselves into crises that deepen,
escalate, and reach a point of spiraling out of control, only to unwind with outside intervention-notably by
the United States. One author has suggested that "India and Pakistan brinkmanship is not wild-eyed but designed to meet policy
objectives.... Pakistan ratchets up tensions to garner external (mainly U.S.) pressure on India to come to
[the] bargaining table, India uses coercive diplomacy to bring pressure on Pakistan to halt support for
militants.... In using brinkmanship both India and Pakistan want ultimately [to be] held back while
having the United States push their interests forward." 20 But this strategy leaves the region in a dangerous limbo
because the decision is left to the United States to determine whether it intervenes or not.21 The South Asian protagonists
have thus become more dependent than ever on the United States. Yet, much to the chagrin of the region, the
United States has neither the time nor the patience to accord priority to the region, which President Bill Clinton once described as
the "most dangerous place."22 Consequently, a dangerous pattern has set in: India and Pakistan push a crisis to the brink,
anticipating U.S. intervention, and the United States might take its time in the belief that South Asian crises are manageable through
"firefighting diplomacy" and that there is no urgency to launch a proactive process of conflict resolution. The brinkmanship is not
aimed to fight a war but to win the crisis, and both hope that the U.S. intervention would be helpful. One scholar has noted, "Each
has misread its closer ties to the United States as evidence that Washington has embraced its perspective. Each has treated the
intense engagement and military presence of the United States as insurance against escalation to war , or
indicated an inclination to ratify an impending Fissile Material/Cut-off Convention.
2AC—Intervention
Intervention is inevitable – it is a question of how effective
Kagan, ‘11 [Robert Kagan is a contributing editor to The Weekly Standard and a senior fellow in
foreign policy at the Brookings Institution. “The Price of Power”. The Weekly Standard, Jan 24, 2011, Vol.
16, No. 18. http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/price-power_533696.html?page=3]
Whether this was really American strategy in that era is open for debate—most would argue the United
States in this era was trying to stay out of war not as part of a considered strategic judgment but as an end
in itself. Even if the United States had been pursuing offshore balancing in the first decades of the 20th
century, however, would we really call that strategy a success? The United States wound up intervening
with millions of troops, first in Europe, and then in Asia and Europe simultaneously, in the two most dreadful wars in human
history. It was with the memory of those two wars in mind, and in the belief that American strategy in those
interwar years had been mistaken, that American statesmen during and after World War II determined on
the new global strategy that the United States has pursued ever since. Under Franklin Roosevelt, and then under
the leadership of Harry Truman and Dean Acheson, American leaders determined that the safest course was to build
“situations of strength” (Acheson’s phrase) in strategic locations around the world, to build a “preponderance of
power,” and to create an international system with American power at its center. They left substantial numbers
of troops in East Asia and in Europe and built a globe-girdling system of naval and air bases to enable the rapid projection of force to
strategically important parts of the world. They did not do this on a lark or out of a yearning for global dominion. They simply
rejected the offshore balancing strategy, and they did so because they believed it had led to great,
destructive wars in the past and would likely do so again. They believed their new global strategy was
more likely to deter major war and therefore be less destructive and less expensive in the long run.
Subsequent administrations, from both parties and with often differing perspectives on the proper course
in many areas of foreign policy, have all agreed on this core strategic approach. From the beginning this strategy
was assailed as too ambitious and too expensive. At the dawn of the Cold War, Walter Lippmann railed against Truman’s
containment strategy as suffering from an unsustainable gap between ends and means that would bankrupt the United States and
exhaust its power. Decades later, in the waning years of the Cold War, Paul Kennedy warned of “imperial overstretch,” arguing that
American decline was inevitable “if the trends in national indebtedness, low productivity increases, [etc.]” were allowed to continue
at the same time as “massive American commitments of men, money and materials are made in different parts of the globe.” Today,
we are once again being told that this global strategy needs to give way to a more restrained and modest
approach, even though the indebtedness crisis that we face in coming years is not caused by the present, largely successful global
strategy. Of course it is precisely the success of that strategy that is taken for granted. The enormous
benefits that this strategy has provided, including the financial benefits, somehow never appear on the
ledger. They should. We might begin by asking about the global security order that the United States has sustained since Word War
II—the prevention of major war, the support of an open trading system, and promotion of the liberal principles of free markets and
free government. How much is that order worth? What would be the cost of its collapse or transformation into another type of
order? Whatever the nature of the current economic difficulties, the past six decades have seen a greater
increase in global prosperity than any time in human history. Hundreds of millions have been lifted out of
poverty. Once-backward nations have become economic dynamos. And the American economy , though
suffering ups and downs throughout this period, has on the whole benefited immensely from this international
order. One price of this success has been maintaining a sufficient military capacity to provide the essential
security underpinnings of this order. But has the price not been worth it? In the first half of the 20th century, the United
States found itself engaged in two world wars. In the second half, this global American strategy helped produce a peaceful end to the
great-power struggle of the Cold War and then 20 more years of great-power peace. Looked at coldly, simply in terms of
dollars and cents, the benefits of that strategy far outweigh the costs. The danger, as always, is that we don’t even
realize the benefits our strategic choices have provided. Many assume that the world has simply become more peaceful, that greatpower conflict has become impossible, that nations have learned that military force has little utility, that economic power is what
counts. This belief in progress and the perfectibility of humankind and the institutions of international order is always alluring to
Americans and Europeans and other children of the Enlightenment. It was the prevalent belief in the decade before World War I, in
the first years after World War II, and in those heady days after the Cold War when people spoke of the “end of history.” It is always
tempting to believe that the international order the United States built and sustained with its power can exist in the absence of that
power, or at least with much less of it. This is the hidden assumption of those who call for a change in American
strategy: that the United States can stop playing its role and yet all the benefits that came from that role
will keep pouring in. This is a great if recurring illusion, the idea that you can pull a leg out from under a table and the
table will not fall over. Much of the
present debate, it should be acknowledged, is not about the defense budget
or the fiscal crisis at all. It is only the latest round in a long-running debate over the nature and purposes
of American foreign policy. At the tactical level, some use the fiscal crisis as a justification for a different approach to, say,
Afghanistan. Richard Haass, for instance, who has long favored a change of strategy from “counterinsurgency” to
“counterterrorism,” now uses the budget crisis to bolster his case—although he leaves unclear how much money would be saved by
such a shift in strategy. At the broader level of grand strategy, the current debate, though revived by the budget crisis, can be traced
back a century or more, but its most recent expression came with the end of the Cold War. In the early 1990s, some critics, often
calling themselves “realists,” expressed their unhappiness with a foreign policy—first under George H.W. Bush and then under Bill
Clinton—that cast the United States as leader of a “new world order,” the “indispensable nation.” As early as 1992, Robert W. Tucker
and David C. Hendrickson assailed President Bush for launching the first Persian Gulf war in response to Saddam Hussein’s
invasion and occupation of Kuwait. They charged him with pursuing “a new world role . . . required neither by security need nor by
traditional conceptions of the nation’s purpose,” a role that gave “military force” an “excessive and disproportionate . . . position in
our statecraft.” Tucker and Hendrickson were frank enough to acknowledge that, pace Paul Kennedy, the “peril” was not actually “to
the nation’s purse” or even to “our interests” but to the nation’s “soul.” This has always been the core critique of expansive American
foreign policy doctrines, from the time of the Founders to the present—not that a policy of extensive global involvement is
necessarily impractical but that it is immoral and contrary to the nation’s true ideals. Today this alleged profligacy in the use of force
is variously attributed to the influence of “neoconservatives” or to those Mearsheimer calls the “liberal imperialists” of the Clinton
administration, who have presumably now taken hold of the Obama administration as well. But the critics share a common
premise: that if only the United States would return to a more “normal” approach to the world,
intervening abroad far less frequently and eschewing efforts at “nation-building,” then this would allow
the United States to cut back on the resources it expends on foreign policy. Thanks to Haass’s clever formulation,
there has been a great deal of talk lately about “wars of choice” as opposed to “wars of necessity.” Haass labels both the war in Iraq
and the war in Afghanistan “wars of choice.” Today, many ask whether the United States can simply avoid such allegedly optional
interventions in the future, as well as the occupations and exercises in “nation-building” that often seem to follow. Although the
idea of eliminating “wars of choice” appears sensible, the historical record suggests it will not be as simple
as many think. The problem is, almost every war or intervention the United States has engaged in
throughout its history has been optional—and not just the Bosnias, Haitis, Somalias, or Vietnams, but the
Korean War, the Spanish-American War, World War I, and even World War II (at least the war in Europe), not
to mention the many armed interventions throughout Latin America and the Caribbean over the course of
the past century, from Cuba in 1898 to Panama in 1989. A case can be made, and has been made by serious historians,
that every one of these wars and interventions was avoidable and unnecessary. To note that our most recent wars have also been
wars of choice, therefore, is not as useful as it seems. In theory, the United States could refrain from intervening
abroad. But, in practice, will it? Many assume today that the American public has had it with
interventions, and Alice Rivlin certainly reflects a strong current of opinion when she says that “much of the public does not
believe that we need to go in and take over other people’s countries.” That sentiment has often been heard after
interventions, especially those with mixed or dubious results. It was heard after the four-year-long war in the
Philippines, which cost 4,000 American lives and untold Filipino casualties. It was heard after Korea and after Vietnam. It
was heard after Somalia. Yet the reality has been that after each intervention, the sentiment against foreign
involvement has faded, and the United States has intervened again. Depending on how one chooses to count, the
United States has undertaken roughly 25 overseas interventions since 1898: Cuba, 1898 The Philippines, 18981902 China, 1900 Cuba, 1906 Nicaragua, 1910 & 1912 Mexico, 1914 Haiti, 1915 Dominican Republic, 1916 Mexico, 1917 World War I,
1917-1918 Nicaragua, 1927 World War II, 1941-1945 Korea, 1950-1953 Lebanon, 1958 Vietnam, 1963-1973 Dominican Republic, 1965
Grenada, 1983 Panama, 1989 First Persian Gulf war, 1991 Somalia, 1992 Haiti, 1994 Bosnia, 1995 Kosovo, 1999 Afghanistan, 2001present Iraq, 2003-present That is one intervention every 4.5 years on average. Overall, the United States has intervened or
been engaged in combat somewhere in 52 out of the last 112 years, or roughly 47 percent of the time. Since the end of the
Cold War, it is true, the rate of U.S. interventions has increased, with an intervention roughly once every 2.5 years and American
troops intervening or engaged in combat in 16 out of 22 years, or over 70 percent of the time, since the fall of the Berlin Wall. The
argument for returning to “normal” begs the question: What is normal for the United States? The
historical record of the last century suggests that it is not a policy of nonintervention. This record ought to
raise doubts about the theory that American behavior these past two decades is the product of certain
unique ideological or doctrinal movements, whether “liberal imperialism” or “neoconservatism.” Allegedly “realist”
presidents in this era have been just as likely to order interventions as their more idealistic colleagues.
George H.W. Bush was as profligate an intervener as Bill Clinton. He invaded Panama in 1989, intervened in Somalia in 1992—both
on primarily idealistic and humanitarian grounds—which along with the first Persian Gulf war in 1991 made for three interventions
in a single four-year term. Since 1898 the list of presidents who ordered armed interventions abroad has included William McKinley,
Theodore Roose-velt, William Howard Taft, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, John F.
Kennedy, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush. One would be hard-pressed to find a
common ideological or doctrinal thread among them—unless it is the doctrine and ideology of a mainstream
American foreign policy that leans more toward intervention than many imagine or would care to admit.
Many don’t want to admit it, and the only thing as consistent as this pattern of American behavior has been the claim by
contemporary critics that it is abnormal and a departure from American traditions. The anti-imperialists of the late 1890s, the
isolationists of the 1920s and 1930s, the critics of Korea and Vietnam, and the critics of the first Persian Gulf war, the interventions
in the Balkans, and the more recent wars of the Bush years have all insisted that the nation had in those instances behaved unusually
or irrationally. And yet the behavior has continued. To note this consistency is not the same as justifying it. The United
States may have been wrong for much of the past 112 years. Some critics would endorse the sentiment expressed by the historian
Howard K. Beale in the 1950s, that “the men of 1900” had steered the United States onto a disastrous course of world power which
for the subsequent half-century had done the United States and the world no end of harm. But whether one lauds or
condemns this past century of American foreign policy—and one can find reasons to do both—the fact of
this consistency remains. It would require not just a modest reshaping of American foreign policy
priorities but a sharp departure from this tradition to bring about the kinds of changes that would allow
the United States to make do with a substantially a so. There is no great wave of isolationism sweeping the
country. There is not even the equivalent of a Patrick Buchanan, who received 3 million votes in the 1992 Republican primaries.
Any isolationist tendencies that might exist are severely tempered by continuing fears of terrorist attacks
that might be launched from overseas. Nor are the vast majority of Americans suffering from economic calamity
to nearly the degree that they did in the Great Depression. Even if we were to repeat the policies of the 1930s,
however, it is worth recalling that the unusual restraint of those years was not sufficient to keep the United
States out of war. On the contrary, the United States took actions which ultimately led to the greatest and
most costly foreign intervention in its history. Even the most determined and in those years powerful isolationists could
not prevent it. Today there are a number of obvious possible contingencies that might lead the United States
to substantial interventions overseas, notwithstanding the preference of the public and its political leaders to avoid them.
Few Americans want a war with Iran, for instance. But it is not implausible that a president—indeed, this president—might find
himself in a situation where military conflict at some level is hard to avoid. The continued success of the international sanctions
regime that the Obama administration has so skillfully put into place, for instance, might eventually cause the Iranian government to
lash out in some way—perhaps by attempting to close the Strait of Hormuz. Recall that Japan launched its attack on Pearl Harbor in
no small part as a response to oil sanctions imposed by a Roosevelt administration that had not the slightest interest or intention of
fighting a war against Japan but was merely expressing moral outrage at Japanese behavior on the Chinese mainland. Perhaps in
an Iranian contingency, the military actions would stay limited. But perhaps, too, they would escalate.
One could well imagine an American public, now so eager to avoid intervention, suddenly demanding that
their president retaliate. Then there is the possibility that a military exchange between Israel and Iran,
initiated by Israel, could drag the United States into conflict with Iran. Are such scenarios so farfetched that they can
be ruled out by Pentagon planners? Other possible contingencies include a war on the Korean Peninsula , where the
United States is bound by treaty to come to the aid of its South Korean ally; and possible interventions in Yemen or
Somalia, should those states fail even more than they already have and become even more fertile ground for al Qaeda and other
terrorist groups. And what about those “humanitarian” interventions that are first on everyone’s list to be avoided?
Should another earthquake or some other natural or man-made catastrophe strike, say, Haiti and present
the looming prospect of mass starvation and disease and political anarchy just a few hundred miles off
U.S. shores, with the possibility of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of refugees, can anyone be
confident that an American president will not feel compelled to send an intervention force to help? Some may
hope that a smaller U.S. military, compelled by the necessity of budget constraints, would prevent a president from
intervening. More likely, however, it would simply prevent a president from intervening effectively. This,
after all, was the experience of the Bush administration in Iraq and Afghanistan . Both because of constraints and
as a conscious strategic choice, the Bush administration sent too few troops to both countries. The results were lengthy, unsuccessful
conflicts, burgeoning counterinsurgencies, and loss of confidence in American will and capacity, as well as large annual
expenditures. Would it not have been better, and also cheaper, to have sent larger numbers of forces initially to both places and
brought about a more rapid conclusion to the fighting? The point is, it may prove cheaper in the long run to have larger forces that
can fight wars quickly and conclusively, as Colin Powell long ago suggested, than to have smaller forces that can’t. Would a defense
planner trying to anticipate future American actions be wise to base planned force structure on the assumption that the United
States is out of the intervention business? Or would that be the kind of penny-wise, pound-foolish calculation that, in matters of
national security, can prove so unfortunate? The debates over whether and how the United States should respond to the world’s
strategic challenges will and should continue. Armed interventions overseas should be weighed carefully, as always, with an eye to
whether the risk of inaction is greater than the risks of action. And as always, these judgments will be merely that: judgments, made
with inadequate information and intelligence and no certainty about the outcomes. No foreign policy doctrine can avoid errors of
omission and commission. But history has provided some lessons, and for the United States the lesson has been fairly clear: The
world is better off, and the United States is better off, in the kind of international system that American power has built and
defended.
2AC—Middle East
Hegemony key to prevent Middle Eastern instability
Mead ‘7 (Walter Russell, Author of Mead 92, “Why We’re in the Gulf” December 27 th,
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119872041294251867.html?mod=googlenews_wsj)
The end of America's ability to safeguard the Gulf and the trade routes around it would be enormously
damaging -- and not just to us. Defense budgets would grow dramatically in every major power center, and Middle Eastern
politics would be further destabilized, as every country sought political influence in Middle Eastern countries to
ensure access to oil in the resulting free for all. The potential for conflict and chaos is real. A world of
insecure and suspicious great powers engaged in military competition over vital interests would not be a
safe or happy place. Every ship that China builds to protect the increasing numbers of supertankers needed to bring oil from the
Middle East to China in years ahead would also be a threat to Japan's oil security -- as well as to the oil security of India and Taiwan.
European cooperation would likely be undermined as well, as countries sought to make their best deals with Russia, the Gulf states
and other oil rich neighbors like Algeria. America's Persian Gulf policy is one of the chief ways through which the
U.S. is trying to build a peaceful world and where the exercise of American power, while driven ultimately by
domestic concerns and by the American national interest, provides vital public goods to the global community . The next
American president, regardless of party and regardless of his or her views about the wisdom of George W. Bush's invasion of Iraq,
will necessarily make the security of the Persian Gulf states one of America's very highest international priorities.
2AC—Proliferation
Perception of American strength prevents prolif and first strikes
Talent and Hall ‘10, March (Jim - distinguished fellow in government relations at the Heritage
Foundation, and Heath, Sowing the Wind, p. http://www.freedomsolutions.org/2010/03/sowing-thewind-the-decay-of-american-power-and-its-consequences/)
There is a reason that regimes like Iran and North Korea go to the time and expense, and assume the risks of
developing nuclear weapons programs; nuclear capability empowers them to achieve their ends, and thereby poses
challenges to the U nited S tates, for several reasons. First, there is a danger that rogue regimes with nuclear material may
assist terrorists in developing w eapons of m ass d estruction.[36] Even the possibility that such regimes may do so gives
them leverage internationally. Second, these regimes have ambitions in their regions and around the world.[37] Some of their
leaders are fanatical enough to actually consider a first strike using nuclear weapons ; for example, highranking officials of the Iranian government have openly discussed using a nuclear weapon against Israel.[38]
Whether a first strike occurs or not, the possession of nuclear capability frees aggressive regimes to pursue their other goals violently
with less fear of retaliation. For example, North Korea’s nuclear capability means that it could attack South Korea
conventionally with a measure of impunity; even if the attack failed, the United States and its allies would be less likely to remove the
North Korean regime in retaliation. In other words, nuclear capability lessens the penalties which could be exacted on
North Korea if it engages in aggression, which makes the aggression more
likely. The same logic applies to Iran, which is
nuclear attack by Iran is
possible, but the real danger of Iranian nuclear capability is that it would make conventional aggression in the
region more likely.[39] Finally, the more nations that get nuclear weapons, the greater the pressure on other
nations to acquire them as a deterrent, and this is particularly true when a government acquiring the capability is
seen as unstable or aggressive. North Korea’s possession of nuclear weapons has tended, for obvious reasons, to make the
why the other nations in the Middle East are so concerned about Iran’s nuclear program. A
South Koreans and Japanese uncomfortable about having no deterrent themselves. The possibility of uncontrolled proliferation—
what experts call a “nuclear cascade”[40]—is tremendously dangerous; it increases the possibility that
terrorists can get nuclear material from a national program, and it raises the prospect of a multilateral nuclear
confrontation between nations.[41] Many of the smaller nuclear nations do not have well-established first strike
doctrine or launch protocols; the chance of a nuclear exchange, accidental or intentional, increases
geometrically when a confrontation is multilateral. The antidote to proliferation is American leadership and power. The reality
and perception of American strength not only deters aggressive regimes from acquiring w eapons of m ass
d estruction; it reassures other countries that they can exist safely under the umbrella of American power
without having to develop their own deterrent capability.[42]
Heg solves proliferation – liberalism and security umbrella
Deudney et. al 11 [Daniel is associate professor of Political Science at John’s Hopkins University.
Edited by Michael
Mastanduno, Professor of Government and Dean of Faculty at Dartmouth College, and G. John Ikenberry, Professor of Politics and
International Affairs at Princeton University, William Wolforth, the Daniel Webster Professor at Dartmouth College, where he
teaches in the Department of Government, “Unipolarity and nuclear weapons” 2011 International Relations Theory and the
Consequences of Unipolarity pg. 305]
The diffusion of nuclear weapons in the international system is significantly entangled with the role of the unipolar hegemonic state.
The existence of a unipolar state playing the role of a liberal hegemon has arguably been a major
constraint on the rate and extent of proliferation. The extended military alliance system of the United States
has been a major reason why many potentially nuclear states have forgone acquisition. Starting with
Germany and Japan, and extending to a long list of European and East Asian states, the American
alliances are widely understood to provide a “nuclear umbrella .” Overall, without such a state playing this role,
proliferation would likely have been much more extensive.
The liberal features of the American hegemonic sate also have contributed to constrain the rate and extent
of proliferation. American leadership, and the general liberal internationalist vision of law-governed
cooperative international politics, both enabled and infuses the non-proliferation regime. Similarly, the
robust and inclusive liberal
world trading system that has been a distinctive and salient feature of the
American liberal hegemonic system offers integrating states paths to secure themselves that make nuclear
acquisition less attractive.
Hegemony solves proliferation
Brookes ‘8 (Peter, Senior Fellow for National Security Affairs at The Heritage Foundation. He is also a
member of the congressional U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, Heritage, Why the
World Still Needs America's Military Might, November 24 th 2008)
The United States military has also been a central player in the attempts to halt weapons of mass destruction
(WMD) and ballistic missile proliferation. In 2003, President Bush created the Prolifera-tion Security Initiative (PSI), an
initiative to counter the spread of WMD and their delivery systems throughout the world. The U.S. military's
capabili-ties help put teeth in the PSI, a voluntary, multilat-eral organization of 90-plus nations which uses national laws
and joint military operations to fight proliferation. While many of the PSI's efforts aren't made pub-lic due to the potential for
revealing sensitive intel-ligence sources and methods, some operations do make their way to the media. For instance, accord-ing to
the U.S. State Department, the PSI stopped exports to Iran's missile program and heavy water- related equipment to Tehran's
nuclear program, which many believe is actually a nuclear weapons program. In the same vein, the United States is also
devel-oping the world's most prodigious-ever ballistic missile defense system to protect the American
homeland, its deployed troops, allies, and friends, including Europe. While missile defense has its crit-ics, it may
provide the best answer to the spread of ballistic missiles and the unconventional payloads, including the
WMD, they may carry. Unfortunately, the missile and WMD prolifera-tion trend is not positive. For instance, 10
years ago, there were only six nuclear weapons states. Today there are nine members of the once-exclusive nucle-ar weapons club,
with Iran perhaps knocking at the door. Twenty-five years ago, nine countries had bal-listic missiles. Today, there are 28 countries
with ballistic missile arsenals of varying degrees. This defensive system will not only provide deter-rence to the use
of these weapons, but also provide policymakers with a greater range of options in pre-venting or
responding to such attacks, whether from a state or non-state actor. Perhaps General Trey Obering, the Director of
the Missile Defense Agency, said it best when describing the value of missile defense in countering the grow-ing
threat of WMD and delivery system prolifera-tion: "I believe that one of the reasons we've seen the
proliferation of these missiles in the past is that there has historically been no defense against them ."
2AC—Russia
Hegemony prevents a hot war with Russia
Arbatov ‘7 (Alexei, Corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, member of the Editorial
Board of Russia in Global Affairs , Is a New Cold War Imminent? 08-08)
However, the low probability of a new Cold War and the collapse of American unipolarity (as a political doctrine, if not in
reality) cannot
be a cause for complacency. Multipolarity, existing objectively at various levels and interdependently,
holds many difficulties and threats. For example, if the Russia-NATO confrontation persists, it can do much
damage to both parties and international security. Or, alternatively, if Kosovo secedes from Serbia, this may provoke
similar processes in Abkhazia, South Ossetia and Transdniestria, and involve Russia in armed conflicts with Georgia
and Moldova, two countries that are supported by NATO. Another flash point involves Ukraine . In the event
of Kiev’s sudden admission into the North Atlantic Alliance (recently sanctioned by the U.S. Congress), such a move may divide
Ukraine and provoke mass disorders there, thus making it difficult for Russia and the West to refrain from interfering. Meanwhile,
U.S. plans to build a missile defense system in Central and Eastern Europe may cause Russia to withdraw from the INF Treaty and
resume programs for producing intermediate-range missiles. Washington may respond by deploying similar missiles in Europe,
which would dramatically increase the vulnerability of Russia’s strategic forces and their control and warning systems. This could
make the stage for nuclear confrontation even tenser.
2AC—Terrorism
Hegemony solves terrorism
Walt ‘2 (Stein, Professor of international affairs at Harvard, American Primacy, http://www.nwc
.navy.mil/press/review/2002/spring/art1-sp2.htm))
Perhaps the most obvious reason why states seek primacy—and why the United States benefits from its current
position—is that international politics is a dangerous business. Being wealthier and stronger than other states does not guarantee
that a state will survive, of course, and it cannot insulate a state from all outside pressures. But the strongest state is more
likely to escape serious harm than weaker ones are, and it will be better equipped to resist the pressures that arise.
Because the United States is so powerful, and because its society is so wealthy, it has ample resources to devote to whatever
problems it may face in the future. At the beginning of the Cold War, for example, its power enabled the United States to help rebuild
Europe and Japan, to assist them in developing stable democratic orders, and to subsidize the emergence of an open international
economic order.7 The United States was also able to deploy powerful armed forces in Europe and Asia as effective deterrents to
Soviet expansion. When the strategic importance of the Persian Gulf increased in the late 1970s, the United States created its Rapid
Deployment Force in order to deter threats to the West’s oil supplies; in 1990–91 it used these capabilities to liberate Kuwait. Also,
when the United States was attacked by the Al-Qaeda terrorist network in September 2001, it had the
wherewithal to oust the network’s Taliban hosts and to compel broad international support for its
campaign to eradicate Al-Qaeda itself. It would have been much harder to do any of these things if the
United States had been weaker.
Specifically solves nuclear terrorism
Kagan ‘7 (Robert, Senior Associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and Senior
Transatlantic Fellow at the German Marshall Fund, “End of Dreams, Return of History,” Hoover
Institution, No. 144, August/September)
Now and probably for the coming decades, organized terrorist groups will seek to strike at the United
States, and at modernity itself, when and where they can. This war will not and cannot be the totality of
America ’s worldwide strategy. It can be only a piece of it. But given the high stakes, it must be prosecuted
ruthlessly, effectively, and for as long as the threat persists. This will sometimes require military
interventions when, as in Afghanistan, states either cannot or will not deny the terrorists a base. That
aspect of the “war on terror” is certainly not going away. One need only contemplate the American
popular response should a terrorist group explode a nuclear weapon on American soil. No president of
any party or ideological coloration will be able to resist the demands of the American people for retaliation
and revenge, and not only against the terrorists but against any nation that aided or harbored them. Nor,
one suspects, will the American people disapprove when a president takes preemptive action to forestall
such a possibility — assuming the action is not bungled. The United States will not have many eager
partners in this fight. For although in the struggle between modernization and tradition, the United
States, Russia, China, Europe, and the other great powers are roughly on the same side, the things that
divide them from each other — the competing national ambitions and ideological differences — will
inevitably blunt their ability or their willingness to cooperate in the military aspects of a fight against
radical Islamic terrorism.
Hegemony not root cause of backlash
Lieber ‘5 (Robert, PhD from Harvard, Professor of Government and International Affairs at Georgetown,
former consultant to the State Department and for National Intelligence Estimates, “The American Era”,
pages 121-123)
Elsewhere, although American policies and practices can be a source of resentment, and primacy can
readily translate into bruised feelings about the exercise of American power, the predominant sources of
anti-Americanism are deep-seated and structural and are only secondarily due to specific policies. This
was especially evident in the aftermath of September 11, and a statement by sixty leading American
scholars made a telling point when it observed the way in which bin Laden and the attackers directed their
hatred against the United States itself rather than make any specific policy demands: . . . the killing was
done for its own sake. The leader of Al Qaeda described the “blessed strikes” of September 11 as blows
against America, “the head of world infidelity.” Clearly, then, our attackers despise not just our
government, but our overall society, our entire way of living. Fundamentally, their grievance concerns not
only what our leaders do, but also who we are.68 The Anglo-Indian author, Salman Rushdie, himself a
target of a fatwa calling for his death as punishment for supposed blasphemy, captures this phenomenon
when he writes that even if a Middle East peace settlement between Israelis and Palestinians were
achieved, anti-Americanism would be likely to continue unabated.69 This animosity toward America is
driven by several mechanisms: the desire of authoritarian regimes to deflect criticism away from their
own corrupt rule, the agendas of virulently anti-modernist movements that paradoxically can now utilize
television and the Internet to disseminate their views, and widespread frustration and alienation. Yet
Islamic radicalism is by no means dominant, and it remains contested within these societies, not least (as
Afghanistan under Taliban rule demonstrated) because its anti-rational, theocratic, and misogynist values
do not provide a viable option for successfully confronting the tasks of modernization. Moreover, hostility
to the United States is not universal, and America’s successful exercise of power may sometimes actually
discourage opposition.70 In parts of the Muslim world, modernist views have surfaced to contest the
radical Islamist vision. In at least some cases, journalists, intellectuals, and government leaders
condemned the 9/11 attacks, spoke out against extremism and the search for scapegoats, and challenged
the notion that returning to practices of the distant past can solve practical problems of society and
economy. Thus, as a former Libyan Prime Minister has observed, “Perhaps most of the things we
complain of . . . stem from our own flaws.”71 Similarly, following the July 2004 release of the 9/11
Commission Report, the former dean of the Faculty of Islamic Law at the University of Qatar wrote an
article calling on Arabs to recant their conspiracy theories about the September 11 attacks and to apologize
for spreading theses ideas: Why won’t we take the opportunity of the appearance of the 9-11 Commission’s
report to ponder why destructive violence and a culture of destruction have taken root in our society? Why
won’t we take this opportunity to reconsider our educational system, our curricula, including the
religious, media, and cultural discourse that causes our youth to live in a constant tension with the
world?72 Ultimately, the root causes of fanaticism and cultural backlash lie not within the
United States and the West but inside the foreign societies themselves. Culture is both a mode of self
and group expression and a source of upheaval and contestation. There is less a “clash of civilizations”
than a clash within civilizations. Outsiders can take steps to encourage moderate elements within these
societies, but much more depends on developments inside the countries concerned. The outcome of this
competition may ultimately shape whether globalization itself continues or instead is violently
overturned, much as the guns of August 1914 touched off a world war and reversed a century’s trend of
increasing openness, integration, and interdependence.
2AC—Japan
Hegemony key to Japanese alliance
Takadoro ‘8 (Masayuki, Keio University Professor of International Political Science and Economics,
Financial crisis marks end of US as hyper power, Mainchini, Nov 5)
Thus, Japan's basic approach should be to make clear both internally and externally that it will
support moderate and
sensible leadership by the U.S. while trying to enhance its own ability to act independently. This is not tantamount to blindly
obeying the U.S. At this time of crisis, discord between nations could threaten not only the global economy but world order as a
whole Japan now has a good chance to persuade Washington, which may be prepared to listen to the friendly counsel of its ally, to
revert to sensible leadership as Japan's financial system is relatively stable and sound. A United States that behaves in an excessive
manner is a threat to Japan, to the world and above all to the U.S. itself. However, a shaky U.S. would also be a threat to
Japan, which relies on it for national security and the international economic order it provides. While it is easy to
criticize the United States, its sensible leadership is still the best hope for the world to create a liberal and open
world order
2AC—Warming
Hegemony key to global warming
Cascio ‘8 (Jamais, Writer for the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies, The Big Picture:
Climate Chaos)
The relationship between climate chaos and the rise of the post-hegemonic world is tricky. Climate disruption isn’t causing the
decline of US hegemony, nor is it caused by that decline. However, global warming underscores the weakness of the American
hegemony, and that the decline of American hegemony weakens the potential for a near-term coordinated
response to global warming. Moreover, this decline has the potential to make dealing with climate chaos
more difficult. The best example of this situation occurred at the Bali global warming conference in December. The US
delegation refused to sign an agreement accepted by essentially the rest of the participants, instead arguing for its own alternative.
Kevin Conrad, the delegate from Papua New Guinea, then stepped to the microphone and said this: There’s an old saying: If you
are not willing to lead, then get out of the way. I ask the United States: We asked for your leadership; we seek your leadership. But if
for some reason you are not willing to lead, leave it to the rest of us; please get out of the way. A weakened American
hegemon is one that is most likely to either try a costly attempt to shore up its power, or lash out at rising
competitors, distracting national and world leadership at a time when distraction is most problematic. Of all of the
risks to our global capacity to deal with global warming, this is the most dangerous.
ECONOMY
Indict
There evidence is biased – the economic benefits of hege are hyped – even
by academics
Drezner, 13 – Professor of International Politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts
University (Daniel, “Military Primacy Doesn’t Pay (Nearly As Much As You Think),” International
Security, Volume 38, Number 1, Summer 2013, pp. 52-79, MIT Press)//eek
This article evaluates whether the economic benefits of military preeminence and deep engagement are as
great as proponents suggest. This evaluation begins by breaking down the arguments that military
primacy yields economic returns into the most commonly articulated causal mechanisms. It then assesses
what the scholarly literature and evidence can conclude about those causal mechanisms. The three
most plausible pathways are the geo- economic favoritism that foreign capital inflows
provide for military superpowers; the geopolitical favoritism gained from an outsized
military presence; and the public goods benefits that flow from hegemonic stability.
Each of these arguments is less empirically persuasive than is commonly articulated in
policy circles. There is little evidence that military primacy yields appreciable
geoeconomic gains. The evidence for geopolitical favoritism is much more robust during
periods of bipolarity than it is under unipolarity, which suggests that primacy in and of
itself does not yield material transfers. The evidence for public goods benefits is
strongest, but military predomi- nance plays a supporting role in that causal logic; it is
only full-spectrum unipolarity—a condition in which a single actor is universally acknowledged to
be the dominant actor across a variety of power dimensions—that yields ap- preciable economic
gains. The economic benefits from military predominance alone seem, at a minimum, to
have been exaggerated in policy and scholarly circles. While there are economic benefits to
possessing a great power military, diminishing marginal returns are evident well before achieving military
pri- macy. The principal benefits that come with military primacy appear to flow only when
coupled with economic primacy. These findings have signiacant implications for theoretical debates
about the fungibility of military power, and should be considered when assessing U.S. ascal options and
grand strat- egy for the coming decade.
Geoeconomic Favoritism
Hegeomony hurts geoeconomic favoritism – it alienates capital and
decreases trust – democracy accounts for the US’s geoeconomic position –
reserve currency proves
Drezner, 13 – Professor of International Politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts
University (Daniel, “Military Primacy Doesn’t Pay (Nearly As Much As You Think),” International
Security, Volume 38, Number 1, Summer 2013, pp. 52-79, MIT Press)//eek
The historical literature does not lend much support to geoeconomic favorit- ism.
Jonathan Kirshner’s work demonstrates that financial interests are con- cerned with the minimization of
risk. As part of ensuring global order, military hegemons frequently need to exercise their
military power; such actions intro- duce the possibility of macroeconomic instability
into financial markets and national economies. Kirshner shows that, historically, the financial
sector has staunchly opposed initiating the use of force in world politics. Even military hegemons
must therefore be wary of alienating global capital: “[S]tates,” he writes, “must be alert to the
fact that by choosing a more assertive or ambi- tious national security strategy . . . they may be
‘punished’ by international financial markets, principally via capital right, pressure on
the exchange rate, and greater difaculty in borrowing abroad.”34 At a minimum, this set
of capital market preferences implies that hegemons receive negligible geoeconomic
benefits from military primacy. The behavior of reserve currencies between the two
world wars is another data point against geoeconomic favoritism. If this logic is valid, then
military power should also be a principal factor in determining which state issues the
reserve currency. Both the United Kingdom in the nineteenth century and the United
States after 1945 meet this criterion. Because these states were also the largest economies and
largest financial centers during those respective pe- riods, however, the causal factors are
overdetermined. During the interwar period, however, there was a signiacant disparity
between the military capa- bilities of Great Britain and the United States; the former had
far greater power projection capabilities than those of the latter.35 On other dimensions—market size,
financial depth—the United States and the United Kingdom were more evenly matched.
Despite the British military advantage, however, the most recent economic history on this
subject shows that public- and private-sector ac- tors began treating the dollar as a
reserve currency as early as the mid-1920s.36 Economic and financial factors, not the
military balance of power, primarily determine the location of the reserve currency. The
recent economics literature on the causes of national financial strength further downplays the role of
military power and favors that of domestic polit- ical institutions. While both democratic and
authoritarian great powers have possessed large military establishments, this literature
concludes that inclu- sive, democratic political institutions play the crucial role in
allowing large states to exploit their financial power. Because these institutions can allow
po- litical leaders to credibly commit, states housing such institutions are per- ceived as
more likely to honor their debts.37 States with large militaries are also more vulnerable
to the development of “extractive” political institutions: polit- ically powerful actors can
exploit the coercive apparatus of a large military to develop political institutions that
reward members of the selectorate with private goods, rather than the public goods
necessary to attract inward capi- tal flows.38 History suggests that absolutist leaders with large
militaries have been far more likely to repudiate their debts.39 As Daron Acemojlu and James Robinson
have demonstrated, countries based on extractive political institu- tions are more likely to possess
comparatively more sclerotic economies.40 For any national government, some degree of defense
spending and military prowess reassures private-sector actors that their investments will be secure.
Beyond that base level, however, all of the literature indicates that primacy yields little in the
way of geoeconomic returns. Security is certainly a necessary condition for attracting
foreign capital inflows, but predominance does not ap- pear to be a prerequisite. If
anything, an outsized military, by loosening con- straints on the state to refrain from
military adventurism, retards rather than enhances inward private capital flows.
Burden Sharing
Hege does not result in geopolitical favoritism or burden sharing – their
evidence assumes bipolarity – trade agreements, regional economics,
basing, and arms deals prove – that states’ immediate interests outweigh
unipolarity
Drezner, 13 – Professor of International Politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts
University (Daniel, “Military Primacy Doesn’t Pay (Nearly As Much As You Think),” International
Security, Volume 38, Number 1, Summer 2013, pp. 52-79, MIT Press)//eek
There are some signiacant flaws to this supporting evidence, however. Most of the data that support
a connection between security alliances and economic integration come from the Cold
War era, not from the post–Cold War era of U.S. military predominance. Theoretically, a
bipolar distribution of power is most likely to lead to coherent and segmented blocs of
countries. Structural re- alists predict that under bipolarity, relative gains concerns between
the two blocs should be relatively high, leading to a tighter integration between security and economic blocs.49 Statistical tests confirm that it was during the bipo- lar era of
the Cold War that foreign economic policies seemed to most strictly follow the oag.50
Indeed, whereas the 1990–91 Gulf War happened during the waning days of bipolarity,
the 2003 Iraq War occurred during a period of un- contested military primacy—and yet
the United States secured far less burden- sharing during Operation Iraqi Freedom than during
Operation Desert Storm. A glance at the global political economy of the pre-1914 period or
post-1990 era suggests that the linkage between security and economic ties has been
much weaker during these eras. In the nineteenth-century era of globalization, trade
agreements, trade flows, migration flows, and capital flows bore little relationship to
emerging alliance structures.51 Indeed, economic interdepen- dence was so strong among
non-allies that it triggered security concerns among the great powers at the turn of the century.52
Most famously, Germany and the United Kingdom were each other’s largest trading partner imme- diately
prior to the start of the World War I. The same pattern emerges in the post–Cold War global economy.
During a period when the direct economic benefits from U.S. military primacy should
have been at their greatest, China became the epicenter of the global supply chain and
the largest foreign market for stalwart U.S. allies such as Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan.
Furthermore, U.S. military primacy has not deterred China from dramatically expanding
its commercial interests across the developing world over the past decade—nor has it deterred
countries in the Paciac Rim, Latin America, Africa, or the Middle East from welcoming Chinese trade and
investment.53 The assertions by U.S. policymakers that American military power has
translated into tangible policy concessions on economic negotiations do not hold up to
empirical scrutiny. If geopolitical favoritism mattered, then the free trade agreement
between the United States and South Korea should contain terms that are appreciably
more favorable to Washington than those contained in the South Korea–European
Union free trade agreement, which was negoti- ated at the same time. Analyses of the two
trade deals, however, do not reveal that result. Both agreements are comprehensive and contain
roughly similar terms across a wide variety of sectors. While the United States did earn better terms in
areas such as vegetable products and transportation, the European Union received better terms
on automotive safety protocols, chemi- cals, machinery, and electronics.54 These differences are
primarily a function of European and American priorities, not U.S. military leverage .55
Similarly, the claim that the United States has leveraged its security alliances into
managing regional economic governance is unsubstantiated. Regional analysts agree
that APEC has been the least important regional forum over the past fifteen years. During
that time period, despite U.S. military primacy, most of the forward momentum in regional
integration did not include the United States.56 The current state of U.S. basing fees and
arms sales also clashes with the geopolitical favoritism hypothesis. If this argument holds,
then Washington should earn a signiacant return on its overseas military bases. Furthermore, from its
position of primacy, the United States should dominate the global arms trade. Neither
assertion is empirically valid. Most assessments of U.S. basing expenditures conclude
that the United States expends, at a minimum, tens of billions more than it receives
annually from its forward military preence.57 As Kent Calder concludes in his review of U.S.
overseas bases, al- though some countries do subsidize the presence of the U.S. military, “far more
common are the cases where the United States pays nations to host bases, rather than
getting paid to do so.”58 The post–Cold War trend in arms sales is just as telling. In the aftermath
of the Soviet breakup, the United States con- trolled 60 percent of the global arms
market. If geopolitical favoritism mat- tered, then U.S. arms producers should have
maintained or increased that market share. Jonathan Caverley and Ethan Kapstein’s research
reveals, how- ever, that the United States is now responsible for less than 30 percent of the
global arms market—a 50 percent decline in U.S. market share. Furthermore, Caverley and Kapstein
demonstrate that the United States government incor- porates geopolitical factors into its
pricing of arms sales.59 During the era of military primacy, the United States has
sacriaced economic rents for stronger political ties. This is an inversion of the
geopolitical favoritism hypothesis. History also suggests the absence of a correlation
between realpolitik con- cerns and the degree of cooperation among monetary
authorities. In the years prior to World War I, for example, central banking authorities cooperated
across Europe to avert systemic crises even as foreign ministers engaged in balancing behavior on the
continent.60 As Barry Eichengreen observes, “In 1898 the Reichsbank and German commercial banks
obtained assistance from the Bank of England and the Bank of France. In 1906 and 1907 the Bank of
England, faced with another financial crisis, again obtained support from the Bank of France and the
German Reichsbank. The Russian State Bank in turn shipped gold to Berlin to replenish the Reichsbank’s
reserves.”61 All of this oc- curred despite the absence of a military hegemon on the European continent.
Even with heightened concerns about geopolitical rivalries, central bankers continued to act to preserve
the status quo in international monetary relations. Not until the 1911 Agadir crisis did this pattern of
international monetary co- operation begin to break down; the Reichsbank, in particular, began to hoard
specie in preparation for armed conoict.62 The same pattern emerges for monetary cooperation
after the end of the Cold War. Cooperation among global central bankers during the
acute phase of the financial crisis was strong.63 And although U.S. allies have helped to
prop up the dollar as the world’s reserve currency, China has also played a pivotal role,
albeit for self-interested reasons. After the 1998 Asian financial cri- sis, it began to buy dollars as a
form of self-insurance against a financial panic. It subsequently purchased dollar-denominated debt as a
means of keeping its export-led growth model aooat.64 Regardless of its reasons, China was not
shy in purchasing dollars, helping to keep U.S. interest rates low despite rising budget
deacits over the past decade.65 China also rejected summer 2008 over- tures from Moscow to
exploit problems at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac as a means to force U.S. action.66 If the United
States’ biggest potential rival was en- gaged in the same kind of dollar-supporting role as
close allies, then it sug- gests that U.S. bilateral security relationships did not play a
causal role in preserving the dollar’s standing as the world reserve currency. Geopolitical
favoritism has existed in world politics, but its effects have been more truncated than commonly posited.
Geopolitical favoritism matters more during periods of bipolarity than it does under
unipolarity. Military primacy does not in and of itself affect direct economic transfers to
the hegemonic power. During periods of unipolarity, allies do not appear to have
bestowed economic benefits on the militarily predominant actor any more than they
have on its potential rivals.
Liberal Order/Trade
Hegemony/naval power isn’t key to the liberal order or trade – disruptions
are solved by other actors – at worst Multipolarity solves just as well
Drezner, 13 – Professor of International Politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts
University (Daniel, “Military Primacy Doesn’t Pay (Nearly As Much As You Think),” International
Security, Volume 38, Number 1, Summer 2013, pp. 52-79, MIT Press)//eek
The empirical evidence for this causal mechanism is stronger than for the mechanisms previously
discussed in this article, although there are signiacant qualiaers. On one hand, the literature rejects
the notion that hegemony is a necessary condition for an open global economy.81 Indeed,
the existence of a liberal hegemon alone is not a sufficient condition; supporter states
also play a crucial role in the spread of economic openness.82 Although the precise causal
mechanisms remain disputed, hegemonic eras are nevertheless strongly correlated with lower trade
barriers and greater levels of globalization.83 Furthermore, direct evidence exists that the exercise of
military power to protect sea-lanes boosts global trade flows (though the magnitude of the effect is
disputed). The presence of naval forces during times of militarized disputes has reduced market
expectations of supply disruptions.84 It could be argued, however, that concerns about energy
disruptions have been overstated; even in instances when U.S. military intervention was
absent, world oil markets have rapidly adjusted to price spikes.85 A similar story can be
told when ana- lyzing the naval reaction to the post-2008 surge in Somali piracy.
Attacks spiked after the financial crisis and peaked in 2011. Attacks remain at an
elevated level after peaking in 2011, but their success rate has fallen markedly. Between
2011 and 2012, the number of successful global piracy attacks de- clined by 67 percent. The
presence of multinational naval patrols—including the U.S. Navy—in the most vulnerable sealanes has helped matters, but the improved private security on board the commercial
tankers appears to have helped even more.86 The historical evidence further suggests that global
and regional systems with a sole superpower have lower levels of arms races and violent
conflict. In one empirical review of the literature, Daniel Geller concluded, “The only polar structure that
appears to inouence conoict probability is unipolarity.”87 Examinations of pre-Westphalian regional
systems also support this anding.88 For example, the East Asia region had a clear hegemon in
China from the start of the Ming dynasty to the peak of the Manchu dynasty. The result
was a pe- riod of remarkable political stability. Countries in the region refrained from attacking
China and each other; Beijing refrained from converting its hegem- ony into an expanding empire.89
Except for moments of Chinese stagnation, war was extremely rare during this period; indeed, it was so
rare that some Chinese international relations scholars now extol this tianxia era as a model for the future
of global order.90
Economic and soft power have a greater influence on the liberal order than
hard power
Drezner, 13 – Professor of International Politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts
University (Daniel, “Military Primacy Doesn’t Pay (Nearly As Much As You Think),” International
Security, Volume 38, Number 1, Summer 2013, pp. 52-79, MIT Press)//eek
The second caveat is whether military power alone is the primary driver for the public
goods benefits of unipolarity. Most scholars who attempt to determine the presence of unipolarity
do not rely solely on military mea- sures to make that assertion. The literature on measuring state
power relies on multiple metrics. Joseph Nye has repeatedly referred to power in world politics as a
“three-dimensional chessboard” that comprises military, eco- nomic, and “soft power”
dimensions. Scholars who debate the persistence of American unipolarity include, at a
minimum, both economic and military measures of power.99 Hegemony relies on
multiple channels of power. This matters because the primary causal mechanism that
leads to peace and prosperity through uni- polarity is the elimination of uncertainty.100
When hegemony is uncontested and acknowledged by all major actors, then secondary
states have less need to attempt to balance or to engage in status-seeking behavior.
Indeed, even schol- ars who argue for the persistence of unipolarity acknowledge the importance of
preeminence across a variety of power metrics. Wohlforth notes: The theory suggests that it is not just
the aggregate distribution of capabilities that matters for status competition but also the
evenness with which key dimensions—such as naval, military, economic, and technological—are
distrib uted. Uneven capability portfolios—when states excel in different relevant material dimensions—make status inconsistency more likely. When an actor possesses some
attributes of high status but not others, uncertainty and status inconsistency are likely. The more a
lower-ranked actor matches the higher- ranked group in some but not all key material
dimensions of status, the more likely it is to conceive an interest in contesting its rank
and the more likely the higher-ranked state is to resist.101 If Wohlforth’s logic is accurate, then
military power alone does not explain the reduction of conoict or security rivalries in the
post–Cold War era. It is the combination of military and economic supremacy that leads to
peace and prosperity. For unipolarity to yield positive economic benefits through
systemic stability, it must be full-spectrum unipolarity.
XXXXXXXX
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Hegemony underpins an open international economy
Prabhakar 10
(RAHUL PRABHAKAR, University of Oxford, JAN 8 2010, “Hegemonic Stability Theory and the 20th
Century International Economy,” http://www.e-ir.info/2010/01/08/hegemonic-stability-theory-and-the20th-century-international-economy/ , Accessed 7/30/14, JC)
An important consideration in the debate over hegemonic stability theory is the role of the hegemon in
generating cooperation. The neoliberal hegemon rescues the financial system through the public good of
counter-cyclical liquidity and the neorealist ascendant hegemon opens global trade through sheer
economic size, but it is the hegemon which encourages institutionalized cooperation that
creates a sustainable, open international economy. According to Keohane, hegemons induce
weaker states to join cooperative regimes that decrease transaction costs, reduce
uncertainty, and build consistent expectations for economic interactions. This is a more
nuanced view than that suggested by the role of neorealist hegemon; the cooperative hegemon has
to identify common interests with allies, adjust its own bargaining position, and “invest
some of their power resources in the building of institutions.”[6] These institutions, in
turn, can impart durability for an open international economy in the face of hegemonic
decline. Hence, a neoliberal emphasis on international public goods and the neorealist focus on
structural factors underpin two basic theories of hegemonic stability, but can be readily revised by
considering the role of hegemonic cooperation.
***ALTERNATIVES FAIL***
MULTIPOLARITY
Decreases Multilateralism
Multipolarity decreases multilateralism – without coercion there is an
incentive to exploit shared resources
Laidi, 14 – Professor of International Relations at Sciences Po and director of research at the Center
for European Studies at the Institute of Political Studies in Paris (Zaki, “Towards a Post-Hegemonic
World: The Multipolar Threat to the Multilateral Order,” Apr 25, 2014,
http://www.laidi.com/sitedp/sites/default/files/IP_Towards%20a%20PostHegemonic%20World.pdf)//eek
Fifty years ago the American sociologist Mancur Olson wrote in a work that has since become a classic
that ‘unless the number of individuals in a group is quite small, or unless there is coercion or some other
special device to make individuals act in their common interest, rational, self- interested individuals will
not act to achieve their common or group interests’ (Olson, 1978). In other words, according to Mancur
Olson the existence of common interests among individuals in no way guarantees
cooperation between them. Indeed, if the number is large, some actors will be tempted to
take advantage of the benefits of public goods without shouldering any of the expenses
necessary to maintain them. This is the famous free rider argument. The application of
this analysis to the international system is both relevant and current. Indeed,
multipolarity, understood as a global redistribution process among an increasing
number of actors, does not imply the linear development of cooperative arrangements
underlying the concept of multilateralism. In fact, the opposite is occurring. If anything,
multipolarity is placing multilateralism on a more precarious footing. Olson was of course
careful to specify that cooperative arrangements could eschew free riders through coercion or selective
incentives (Olson, 1978). But these are the very tools that are becoming increasingly less effective. In a
multipolar world tending toward the equalization of power, the use of coercion becomes
tricky. Thus it would be inconceivable in the 21st century to imagine Great Britain waging an opium war
against China, or the United States re-enacting a Commodore Perry expedition to demand greater
openness from the Chinese when it came to the governance of state-owned enterprises. At the same time,
selective incentives are dwindling, either because ‘falling’ western powers do not have
many such incentives left in their armoury, or because they refuse to grant any to those
emerging countries which theyconsider to be economic or even strategic rivals. As a
result multilateral regulatory mechanisms are eroding. Hence, with regard to trade, WTO
negotiations have effectively stalled; and on climate the Kyoto Protocol seems almost to
have unravelled completely. Global governance, in short, is caught in an in-between
state characteristic of hegemonic transitions. The ‘declining’ powers are no longer
strong enough to impose their preferences; meanwhile, even though the rising new
powers feel confident enough to reject Western requests that they cease to be free riders,
they are neither strong enough nor united enough to propose anything like a new fare
system. This situation can be interpreted in a number of different ways. According to one view - based
on the theory of hegemonic transition - those who are willing cannot, and those who can, are not willing,
as was the case with the United States in the interwar period. 2 Alternately, according to a more novel and
complex interpretation, emerging powers will increasingly contest Western hegemony without wanting to
substitute it. This would be a transition without hegemony – the very definition of multipolarity. The
outcome would be an historic in-between order marked, in all probability, by an unprecedented
reassertion of what I term ‘sovereignist’ impulses . But there is also a third possibility: the decline of
one hegemony – that of the West - and with it the reassertion of various national interests
‘without consideration for the systemic problems that precisely need global solutions’
(Arrighi et al, 2003)3. Granted, this general argument has subtleties that we will return to; and Olson’s
theory does not explain everything. But the central idea here is that multipolarity does not
automatically give way to multilateralism. On the contrary: multilateral institutions will be
less and less able to meet their objectives because states within the international system
will disagree on the process for pursuing the common good and the attendant sharing of
responsibility. Indeed, this is already beginning to happen as the great impasse over trade
and climate negotiations now shows. Furthermore, this impasse poses an especially big
problem for the European Union – an organization whose political DNA so-to- speak
has historically been based on multilateralism. The EU, to be blunt, faces the very real risk
of being caught between a rock and a hard place: that is between the United States and
China, the world’s two leading trade powers and two greatest polluters (Bremmer and
Huntsman, 2013).
Superpowers don’t get to retire—multilateralism and peace are only
possible in a world of US leadership
Kagan 5/26
(Robert Kagan, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, 5/26/14, New Republic, “Superpowers Don't
Get to Retire,” http://www.newrepublic.com/article/117859/allure-normalcy-what-america-still-owesworld, Accessed 7/28/14, JC)
Periods of peace and prosperity can make people forget what the world “as it is” really looks like,
and to conclude that the human race has simply ascended to some higher plateau of being. This was the common view in Europe in
the first decade of the twentieth century. At a time when there had not been a war between great powers in 40 years, or a major
Europe-wide war in a century, the air was filled with talk of a new millennium in which wars among civilized nations had become
impossible. Three-quarters of a century and two world wars and a cold war later, millennial thoughts return. Studies cited by Fareed
Zakaria purport to show that some “transformation
of international relations” has occurred. “Changes of
borders by force” have dropped dramatically “since 1946.” The nations of Western
Europe, having been responsible for two new wars a year for 600 years, had not even started
one “since 1945.” Steven Pinker observes that the number of deaths from war, ethnic conflict, and
military coups has declined—since 1945—and concludes that the human race has become “socialized” to prefer
peace and nonviolence. The dates when these changes supposedly began ought to be a tip-off. Is it
a coincidence that these happy trends began when the American world order was
established after World War II, or that they accelerated in the last two decades of the twentieth
century, when America’s only serious competitor collapsed? Imagine strolling through Central Park
and, after noting how much safer it had become, deciding that humanity must simply have become less violent—without thinking
that perhaps the New York Police Department had something to do with it. In fact, the world “as it is” is a dangerous and often brutal
place. There
has been no transformation in human behavior or in international relations. In
the twenty-first century, no less than in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, force remains the ultima ratio. The question,
today as in the past, is not whether nations are willing to resort to force but whether they
believe they can get away with it when they do. If there has been less aggression, less ethnic
cleansing, less territorial conquest over the past 70 years, it is because the United States and
its allies have both punished and deterred aggression, have intervened, sometimes, to prevent ethnic
cleansing, and have gone to war to reverse territorial conquest. The restraint showed by other nations has not been a sign of human
progress, the strengthening of international institutions, or the triumph of the rule of law. It has been a response to a
global
configuration of power that, until recently, has made restraint seem the safer course. When
Vladimir Putin failed to achieve his goals in Ukraine through political and economic means, he turned to force, because he believed
that he could. He will continue to use force so long as he believes that the payoff exceeds the cost. Nor is he unique in this respect.
What might China do were it not hemmed in by a ring of powerful nations backed by the United
States? For that matter, what would Japan do if it were much more powerful and much less dependent on the United
States for its security? We have not had to find out the answers to these questions, not yet, because American predominance, the
American alliance system, and the economic, political, and institutional aspects of the
present order, all ultimately dependent on power, have mostly kept the lid closed on this Pandora’s
box. Nor have we had to find out yet what the world “as it is” would do to the remarkable spread of democracy. Skeptics of
“democracy promotion” argue that the United States has often tried to plant democracy in infertile soil. They may be right. The
widespread flowering of democracy around the world in recent decades may prove to have been artificial and therefore tenuous. As
Michael Ignatieff once observed, it may be that “liberal civilization” itself “runs deeply against the human grain and is achieved and
sustained only by the most unremitting struggle against human nature.” Perhaps this fragile
democratic garden
requires the protection of a liberal world order, with constant feeding, watering,
weeding, and the fencing off of an ever-encroaching jungle. In the absence of such efforts, the weeds
and the jungle may sooner or later come back to reclaim the land. One wonders if even the current economic
order reflects the world “as it is.” A world in which autocracies make ever more
ambitious attempts to control the flow of information, and in which autocratic
kleptocracies use national wealth and resources to further their private interests, may
prove less hospitable to the kind of free flow of commerce the world has come to appreciate in recent
decades. In fact, from the time that Roosevelt and Truman first launched it, the whole project of promoting and defending a liberal
world order has been a concerted effort not to accept the world “as it is.” The American project has aimed at shaping a world
different from what had always been, taking advantage of America’s unique situation to do what no nation had ever been able to do.
Today, however, because many Americans no longer recall what the world “as it is” really looks like, they cannot imagine it. They
bemoan the burdens and failures inherent in the grand strategy but take for granted all
the remarkable benefits. Nor do they realize, perhaps, how quickly it can all unravel. The
international system is an elaborate web of power relationships, in which every nation,
from the biggest to the smallest, is constantly feeling for shifts or disturbances. Since 1945, and especially
since 1989, the web has been geared to respond primarily to the United States. Allies
observe American behavior and calculate America’s reliability. Nations hemmed in or
threatened by American power watch for signs of growing or diminishing power and
will. When the United States appears to retrench, allies necessarily become anxious,
while others look for opportunities. In recent years, the world has picked up unmistakable signals that Americans
may no longer want to carry the burden of global responsibility. Others read the polls, read the president’s speeches calling for
“nation-building at home,” see the declining defense budgets and defense capabilities, and note the extreme reticence, on the part of
both American political parties, about using force. The
world judges that, were it not for American warweariness, the United States probably would by now have used force in Syria—just as it did in
Kosovo, in Bosnia, and in Panama. President Obama himself recently acknowledged as much when he said, “It’s not that
it’s not worth it. It’s that after a decade of war, you know, the United States has limits.” Such statements set the
web vibrating. In East Asia, nations living in close proximity to an increasingly powerful
China want to know whether Americans will make a similar kind of calculation when it
comes to defending them; in the Middle East, nations worried about Iran wonder if they
will be left to confront it alone; in Eastern Europe and the Baltic states, American
security guarantees are meaningless unless Americans are able and willing to meet
them. Are they? No one has taken a poll lately on whether the United States should come to the defense of its treaty allies in the
event of a war between, say, China and Japan; or whether it should come to the defense of Estonia in a Ukraine-like conflict with
Russia. The answers might prove interesting. Meanwhile, the signs
of the global order breaking down are all
around us. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and seizure of Crimea was the first time since World
War II that a nation in Europe had engaged in territorial conquest. If Iran manages to
acquire a nuclear weapon, it will likely lead other powers in the region to do the same, effectively
undoing the nonproliferation regime, which, along with American power, has managed to keep the number of
nuclear-armed powers limited over the past half century. Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Russia are engaged in a proxy war in Syria that,
in addition to the 150,000 dead and the millions displaced, has further destabilized a region that had already been in
upheaval. In East Asia, nervousness about China’s rise, combined with uncertainty
about America’s commitment, is exacerbating tensions. In recent years the number of democracies
around the world has been steadily declining, while the number of autocracies grows. If these trends continue, in the
near future we are likely to see increasing conflict, increasing wars over territory, greater
ethnic and sectarian violence, and a shrinking world of democracies.
MULTILATERALISM
Decreases Heg
Multilateralism destroys hegemony – by decreasing the signal of US
committal, it incentivizes competition and disincentives burden sharing
Selden, 13 – director of the Defence and Security Committee of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly
AND an Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Florida (ZACHARY, “Balancing
Against or Balancing With? The Spectrum of Alignment and the Endurance of American Hegemony,”
Security Studies Journal, 08 May 2013,
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09636412.2013.786918#.U8b7VI1dVe8)//eek
The purpose of this article is to develop an understanding of why many second-tier states expanded
their security cooperation with the United States from 2001–2009 when American
foreign policy was internationally unpopular and viewed as highly unilateral, as well as the
implications of this trend for the endurance of American hegemony. T. V. Paul and Robert Pape
argue that American unilateralism drove second-tier states to frustrate American
actions through soft balancing, thus weakening the endurance of US hegemony.1 Yet, William
Wohlforth and others counter that second-tier states would continue to align with the United
States out of fear of rising regional powers and the desire to avoid running afoul of what
is still the most powerful state in the international system.2 Understanding which of these
choices—soft balancing against the hege- mon or alignment with the hegemon—is more prevalent among
second-tier states has significant ramifications for the endurance of American hegemony. The record of
the 2001–2009 period indicates that a wide range of second- tier states not only aligned
with the United States, they strengthened their security cooperation in a manner that
extended the reach of the US military at a time when American foreign policy was widely
seen as unilateral.3 In addi- tion, they did so by incurring certain costs that helped to
spread the burden of maintaining the American hegemonic system. This pattern of
alignment with the United States has implications for the endurance of American hege- mony because
states aligned with the United States may have more at stake in the maintenance of
American hegemony than the United States itself. A smaller American naval presence in
the Asia Pacific region, for example, may be seen as a relatively minor shift in the United
States with some beneficial budgetary savings. In Vietnam, Australia, or the Philippines,
however, such a shift could prompt a wholesale reevaluation of national defense policy
and have costly implications. Therefore, second-tier states have an incentive to participate in
activities that extend the endurance of American hegemony, even if they do not receive a
formal security guarantee for their efforts. This may have implications for American foreign policy.
There are dis- tinct policy recommendations flowing from the logic of those scholars and policy
professionals who argue that a more proactive and unilateral foreign policy speeds the decline of
American hegemony. The most important of these is that the United States should practice a policy of
self-restraint that defers to international organizations, which would alleviate concerns about the current
preponderance of the United States in the international system.4 A policy of self-restraint would signal
that the United States is not a threat to other major powers and preclude attempts at balancing. This
policy would also help to set a norm for the behavior of future great powers and recog- nize the emerging
reality of a multipolar world. Another policy implication from this line of reasoning is that the United
States should reduce its global military presence that both encourages balancing behavior by other states
and speeds hegemonic decline by draining financial resources.6 Yet, this policy of restraint may be
precisely what would cause second- tier states to question the utility of their security
relationship with the United States and move away from policies that help to maintain
American hege- mony. This could at least partially explain the trend of states moving to es- tablish
closer security relationships with the United States in the 2001–2009 period, when it was at its most
proactive and least deferential to interna- tional organizations. States may logically conclude that a
hegemon willing to project power regardless of international opinion will be likely to use
its power in the defense of the hegemony that is in the interest of second-tier states.
Second-tier states might be far less willing to contribute to the main- tenance of
American hegemony if the United States behaves in a manner that raises doubts as to
the durability of its commitments or its willingness to use its power in the international
arena. Thus, what would trigger a se- rious decline in the cooperation that helps to
sustain American hegemony would be a self-imposed reduction in the ability of the
United States to project power and an increased reluctance to use its power in support of
its national interests. As Keir Lieber and Gerard Alexander note, the United States is threaten- ing
to a relatively small number of states.7 Regional powers such as Russia and China,
however, present a security challenge to many of the states on their borders. Russia has
used its energy resources to pressure Ukraine dur- ing its elections, has repeatedly violated the airspace of
the Baltic states, and has taken a range of actions against Georgia.8 In 2007 alone, a cyber attack
emanating from Russia temporarily crippled internet connectivity in Estonia, Russia cut off the flow of
energy to Lithuania when that country decided to sell its main oil refinery to a Polish rather than Russian
company, and Rus- sian aircraft fired missiles into Georgian territory.9 In the summer of 2008, Russia
launched an invasion of Georgia that demonstrated its willingness to use military force to resolve issues in
its “near abroad.” China as well has sought to expand its influence in the Asia-Pacific region and South
Asia. Its military buildup, establishment of military facilities in Burma and islands off the coast of India,
and major assistance to Pakistan’s nuclear program are all viewed with varying levels of concern by
China’s neighbors. Defense spending is difficult to gauge given the opacity of the Chinese budgeting
system, but most estimates show double-digit increases since the early 1990s with an average increase of
16.5 percent annually since 2001.10 A 2006 review of the country’s foreign and defense policy signaled a
decision to “make a break with Deng’s cautious axioms and instead, embark on a path of high-profile force
projection.”11 Although many scholars of Asian security note the success of China’s “charm offensive”
using trade, diplomacy, and other tools of persuasion to bolster its position in the region, there is a debate
within the field as to China’s intentions and how other states in the region are reacting.12 These actions
push second-tier states to align with the United States and, despite much discussion of
the emergence of a multipolar world and the end of American hegemony, the emerging
pattern of alignment with the United States means that its hegemony may be far longerlasting than some assume. This article first proposes an explanation of the expansion of security
cooperation with the United States between 2001 and 2009. It then examines the increasingly broad
range of alignment with the United States demonstrated by second-tier states in the same period and
offers a means to measure alignment. It then examines the changes in the relationship between the
United States and three states in the 2001–2009 period that span the range from soft alignment to hard
alliance. Lastly, it concludes with a consideration of the implications of this pattern for the future of
American hegemony.
Burden Sharing
Unilateralism is good – it incentivizes burden sharing, which makes
hegemony politically, economically, and strategically effective
Selden, 13 – director of the Defence and Security Committee of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly
AND an Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Florida (ZACHARY, “Balancing
Against or Balancing With? The Spectrum of Alignment and the Endurance of American Hegemony,”
Security Studies Journal, 08 May 2013,
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09636412.2013.786918#.U8b7VI1dVe8)//eek
The purpose of this article, however, is to build on this insight and consider the ramifications for the
endurance of American hegemony. What has emerged is a broad spectrum of alignment with the United
States rang- ing from “hard” treaty-based alliances to “soft” alignments that contribute to American
security goals without a formal treaty obligation. This pattern of alignment with the United States has
implications for the endurance of American hegemony because that hegemony is vital to the interests of a
wide range of second-tier states. Contributing to its maintenance and extension is therefore a
relatively cheap strategy for second-tier states compared to the alternatives of
attempting to balance the regional power by building up their own capabilities, forming
a regional alliance, or adapting to a system domi- nated by a regional power with
demonstrated aggressive intentions. It is also a viable strategy precisely because the United States
remains the globally predominant power. Secondary states take actions to extend and preserve
American hege- mony through contributions of national military facilities that extend the
reach of the US military, direct and indirect financial contributions, and troop contributions to
US-led operations. For example, it would be virtually im- possible for the United States to
maintain its global strategic reach without military bases in partner countries. American
bases, however, are costly to construct and maintain, which leads to an alternative that is far more affordable: using national facilities of the secondary state. In the case of Singapore, the government constructed
a naval facility configured to host US Navy ves- sels. The Changi naval base in Singapore opened in 2004
and is an important port for the US Navy in a particularly strategic region. It was specifically built to hold
an American aircraft carrier, and Singapore also hosts four US littoral combat ships on a rotational basis
at Changi.21 Another means of taking on some of the costs of American hegemony is by
providing direct or indirect financial contributions. Japan provides fi- nancial contributions
that help to spread some of the costs of maintaining US hegemony in the Asia-Pacific region. Not only has
Japan paid for approxi- mately half of the eight billion dollars it cost to rearrange the presence of US
forces in Japan along the lines set forth in the US Global Posture Review,22 it also used its development
assistance to pay for military equipment for other US Asian partners.23 Ukraine and Georgia use troop
contributions as a means of taking on some of the burden of maintaining American hegemony. Ukraine
committed approximately two thousand troops to the US-led coalition in Iraq, the largest single nonNATO contribution. This was not a symbolic contribution: exclud- ing the United States, Ukrainian forces
suffered the third highest number of coalition casualties in that conflict.24 Georgia committed 2,000
troops to the coalition in Iraq and approximately 2,400 under US command in Afghanistan. In both cases
those contributions represent significant portions of their de- ployable active duty armed forces. In all of
these cases the countries in question could have made merely token contributions to US-led
missions or minimized their investment in facil- ities that enable the reach of the US
military. Instead they took measures and incurred costs that spread the burden of
maintaining American hegemony. It is difficult to put a total value on these
contributions, but it is certainly true that the maintenance of American hegemony would
be more expensive and logistically difficult for the United States without them. As an
example, the total troop contributions of the states in this study to the US-led operations in Iraq and
Afghanistan amounted to more than fifteen thousand military personnel, or approximately one US Army
division.25 As strained as the US military was in the 2001–2009 period, it would have been under much
greater stress without those troop contributions. This alone may not account for the endurance of
American hegemony, and there are multiple reasons why American hegemony can be
expected to endure regardless of the actions of second-tier states. The fact that the
system has endured thus far suggests a certain path dependency.26 Despite the
indications of a relative decline in American power, there is no state or combination of
states that can (or wants to) challenge the United States.27 Most states can be expected to
understand this basic power disparity and would be loath to incur the enmity of the
United States, which remains the sole superpower.28 Yet, it is important to note that many secondtier states are not offering token support to the United States, but rather incurring
distinct costs to increase their level of alignment with the hegemon. Those increased
contributions by second-tier states help to maintain American hegemony. Logically,
however, secondary states would only do so if they had confidence that the United States
has the will to use military power in the defense of its hegemony. Therefore, a policy that
is aimed at preserving American global military capabilities and a demonstrated willingness to use those capabilities when necessary may be what drives the international
cooperation that will help to sustain American hegemony. It is worth noting in this context
that the majority of the non-NATO states that contributed troops to the US-led coalitions
in Iraq and Afghanistan were from the states that surround Russia and China.29 But those
states also gave the US diplomatic cover in the run-up to the Iraq war. Both the Philippines and
Singapore, for example, sat on the United Nations Security Council in 2003 and offered vocal support of
the US position. Neither state had any interest in Iraq, and in the case of the Philippines there was some
risk that its support of the war effort would intensify its difficulties with the Muslim-based insurgency in
the southern islands. Yet, both the Philippines and Singapore made a point of underscoring the value of
the security relationship with the United States. What might cause states in the region to
question the utility of offering such support would be a decline in the United States’
capabilities or its willingness to use them in support of its hegemony. Such concerns were
exhibited by South Korea in the wake of the Cheohan incident in 2010 in which a South Korean vessel was
sunk by North Korean forces. The American response was viewed as weak in South Korea and moving
planned US-Korean joint naval exercises closer to Japan in the wake of the incident was seen as giving
into Chinese pressure.30 Philippine officials have expressed concern that the United States is not sending
strong enough signals that it will back up its ally in its ongoing territorial disputes with China.31 Asian
periodicals are peppered with editorials that exhibit concern about US defense spending cuts and the
United States’ ability to maintain its presence in the region.32 The Canberra Times notes that in its
dispute with the Philippines, China is “testing the effectiveness of America’s bedrock military ties with the
region for all to see,” but goes on to states that, “deep cuts in its [the US] defence budget . . . [and] failure
to put in place a credible strategy to deter Chinese assertiveness will also have potentially damaging
consequences—for the future of US Asia- Pacific alliances and security partnerships, and for American
engagement in the region.”33 As an editorial from The Nation (Thailand) notes, if the United States can
no longer be relied upon as the guarantor of regional security, it is prudent to conclude that “the region
will no longer be a place where only one major power plays a dominant role. Now there will be multiple
players in the security landscape; and the region has to be ready.”34 This would mean that Thailand, and
other Asian states should increasingly hedge their bets and that security cooperation with the United
States would be less beneficial. In other words, why incur risks and costs in supporting American
hegemony if the United States’ ability and willingness to maintain it are in doubt? The United States is
the globally predominant power and even with recent cuts its military budget remains
more than that of Russia, China, and Europe combined.35 But it is international
perceptions about the willingness of the United States to use its power that matter most
in this context. This is anecdotal evidence and it is a ripe topic for more in-depth re- search, but it has
distinct ramifications for American foreign policy. The Philippines and Vietnam, for example, both
express concerns about the increased military capabilities of China and its willingness to use them in the
Asia-Pacific region.36 Both countries have noted this as the reason for their increased security
cooperation with the United States that facilitates the American military presence in their region.37 They
do so logically because they believe this will improve their security. Yet , a United States that demon-
strates a lack of will to defend its hegemony would not be as valuable a security partner,
nor would it be worth risking the enmity of the rising re- gional power by drawing closer
to a waning hegemon. Thus a policy of restraint could speed the process of hegemonic
decline. The basis of American hegemony has changed somewhat since the end of the Cold War but the
change is relatively subtle. During the Cold War, American hegemony was based on the premise of
something worse.38 That is, American hegemony could be annoying and troublesome but it was better
than the alternative: potential domination by the Soviet Union. In the current environment, there is not a
single “something worse”; rather there are multiple “somethings worse” in the form of regional powers.
They do not necessarily pose immediate threats to the territorial integrity of their
neighbors, but their ability to pressure weaker states for concessions and their repeated
demonstrations of aggressive intentions drive their neighbors to build closer ties with
the United States. The following section examines how this is producing a wide-range of alignment
with the United States and the implications of this trend for the endurance of American hegemony.
Unilateralism is key to maintain alliance coherence – other strategies
guarantee unstable alliances
Selden, 13 – director of the Defence and Security Committee of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly
AND an Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Florida (ZACHARY, “Balancing
Against or Balancing With? The Spectrum of Alignment and the Endurance of American Hegemony,”
Security Studies Journal, 08 May 2013,
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09636412.2013.786918#.U8b7VI1dVe8)//eek
Regardless of the degree of formality, states form alliances to improve their
security through
deterrence. By gathering allies, they increase the re- sources that can be brought to their
defense. Alliances, therefore, should be a stabilizing factor in the international system, but
they can also lead to destabilizing behavior in which the alliance partners may be
tempted to push off the costs of deterring aggressor states to others (buck-passing) or may
be drawn into conflicts they could otherwise avoid (chain-ganging). This tendency
toward stability or destabilization may be a product of the polarity of the system. In a
bipolar system, alliances are relatively firm as there is little chance that an alliance partner would defect to
the opposite threatening pole. In a multipolar system, however, alliances may be more fluid as
states have a broader range of potential partners and the delineation between friend and
enemy may not be as clear.43 Any consideration of alliances or balancing is rooted in balance of
power theory, which is the touchstone of realist international relations theory. Under conditions of
anarchy where there is no higher authority than the state that can guarantee the
sovereignty of the individual states, each state must do what it can to survive. Some
states will do better than others in the anarchic environment and the more powerful will
seek hegemony as their expanding concept of national interest drives them to acquire
still more power to protect their expanded territorial, political, and economic interests.
Yet, as one state approaches hegemonic status, other states will tend to form balancing
coalitions to protect themselves against the potential threat posed by the aspiring hegemon. In
Waltz’s formulation, “balance of power theory leads one to expect that states, if they are free to do so, will
flock to the weaker side.”44 The existence of a single predominant power should prompt other states to
either expand their military capability to balance against it or band together in a coalition whose collective
power will provide sufficient resources to balance against that single power.45 Historically, states balance
against the stronger power to protect their fundamental interest of remaining independent, sovereign
actors.46 The most important challenge to the idea that states balance against power in
and of itself is Stephen Walt’s concept that states in fact balance against threats and not
simply against power.47 What is and is not a threat, however, is highly subjective. The
intentions of the hegemon, however be- nign, are not terribly relevant because, as Robert
Jervis notes, “minds can be changed, new leaders can come to power, values can shift, new
opportuni- ties and dangers can arise.” Therefore, smaller states can be expected to balance
against the hegemon’s power rather than a specific threat because, as Christopher Layne stresses, “in a
unipolar world, others must worry about the hegemon’s capabilities, not its intentions.”49 Yet, the
concept of balance of power needs to be considered in a re- gional as well as a global context; geography
is a significant variable that should not be discounted.50 Regional powers, particularly
those with demon- strated aggressive attentions, pose a more significant immediate
threat to their smaller neighbors than the globally predominant power. In this sit- uation,
states concerned about those proximate threats tend to align with the global power as
insurance against regional powers. States that are not geographically proximate to the rising
regional powers are less concerned about the implications of their increased capabilities and are freer to
engage in behavior that runs contrary to the interests of the hegemon. This may ex- plain the pattern in
which some western European states engage in behavior that at times aims to counter American goals,
while most eastern European states, members of the former Soviet Union, and states in the vicinity of
China engage in behavior that forges closer security ties between them and the United States with the
express intent of facilitating American military activities in their region. When Russia and China
take actions that raise the threat perceptions of their neighbors, the incentives for
pulling closer to the United States increase. It is not a coincidence, for example, that Poland finalized its agreement to host the US third site missile defense system in the wake of the Russian invasion of
Georgia in August 2008 when public support in Poland for establishing a closer security relationship with
the US soared.51
Multilateralism and retrenchment cause perception of a decline and
crushes alliances – empirics prove
Selden, 13 – director of the Defence and Security Committee of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly
AND an Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Florida (ZACHARY, “Balancing
Against or Balancing With? The Spectrum of Alignment and the Endurance of American Hegemony,”
Security Studies Journal, 08 May 2013,
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09636412.2013.786918#.U8b7VI1dVe8)//eek
Implications for the Endurance of American Hegemony A survey of the states that surround Russia and
China shows that alignment with the United States was far more prevalent than soft
balancing against it in the 2001–2009 period when many states across Asia and Europe built or
deepened their security ties to the United States. Those ties do not necessarily reach the
threshold of formal alliances, but they involve a set of actions that facilitates the global
reach of the US military while simultaneously increasing the security ties between the
United States and the country in question. This pattern cuts across old alliances and
new partnerships. India has broken a long-standing tradition of neutrality to form a
closer security re- lationship with the United States, which is at least in part driven by its
perception of a threat posed by a rising China. Japan is a long-standing ally of the United States
that has sought to bolster its security ties to the United States in the post-2001 period. Ukraine as a postSoviet republic has sought a closer security relationship with the United States, but it is only one example:
virtually all of the European post-Soviet republics and former Warsaw pact members have sought a closer
security relationship with the United States since 2001. This is part of a trend that includes many of the
states in south Asia and the Asia-Pacific region. What is significant, however, is the implication
of this trend for American hegemony. At a time when many analysts predict the waning
of American hegemony either from imperial overstretch or the rise of new powers,
increased alignment with the United States indicates that American hegemony may
endure in part because many states have an interest in maintaining it.112 In fact, the
interest of secondary states in the maintenance of American hegemony may be greater
than that of the United States itself. For the United States, a somewhat reduced role in
global affairs and a smaller military might be seen as advantageous in some quarters, and
the United States would still have a massive ability to project power and influence even it were somewhat
diminished.113 That is, a relative decline in American capabilities would still leave it with an
absolute advantage for the immediate future. For many of the states surrounding Russia
and China, however, the maintenance of American hegemony checks the influence of
those regional powers that constitute the “somethings worse” in the current
international environment. Contributing to the maintenance of American hegemony,
there- fore, is cost-effective behavior for second-tier states compared to either attempting to balance against the regional power or adapting to the demands of the
regional power. This strategy is viable because the United States is the predominant power with global
power projection capabilities. What would cause this to no longer be the preferred strategy would be
actions on the part of the United States that cause second-tier states to question its ability or willingness
policy
professionals and scholars who argue that a policy of self- restraint that
binds American power to international institutions helps to maintain the
United States’ position as the system leader may be prescribing a course of
action that will in fact speed the decline of American hegemony. A United
States that is less willing or able to project power will be of less strategic utility to
second-tier states, and, in turn, they will have less reason to contribute the troops,
to project power. This dynamic has distinct implications for American foreign policy. Those
facilities, and financing that help to sustain American hegemony. There are clear limits to
this logic; actions by the United States that make it a more threatening power than regional powers such
as Russia and China would tip the calculation among second-tier states in a different direction. At the
same time, the consequences of overstretch could weaken the ability of the United States to make good on
its alliance commitments. But the idea that a retrenchment of the United States and a
significantly reduced international presence will improve its position in the
international environment is not necessarily true; in fact the history of the past decade
suggests something quite different. What maintains second-tier states’ support of
American hegemony, therefore, is the fear that what will replace it will be far worse, as
well as the credibility and capability of the United States. To the extent that regional
powers such as China and Russia pose a threat to their neighbors, American hegemony
is likely to be preferred and supported, which should lessen to some extent the burden
on the United States of maintaining its hegemony. Japan’s willingness to finance the shifting of
US forces in Japan, Ukraine, and Georgia’s troop contributions to US-led coalitions and Singapore’s port
construction are a few examples that could become part of a pattern. Yet, this behavior is conditioned by
the actions of the regional powers; if China and Russia become less threatening powers, neighboring
states would feel less need to cooperate with the United States, participate in US-led military missions
that are not central to their interests, agree to host US forces on their territory, or share the financial
burdens of maintaining American hegemony. The support of second-tier states for the maintenance of
American hege- mony is, therefore, predicated on their threat perceptions of Russia and China. To the
extent that those regional powers provide that stimulus with- out tipping into major war involving the
United States, the situation is op- timal for the maintenance of American hegemony. This is not
dissimilar to the basis of American hegemony in the Cold War when it was the premise
of “something worse” in the form of the Soviet Union, which made Amer- ican
hegemony the preferred option. Today, the “something worse” is a broader and
somewhat more amorphous threat, but it provides the raison d’etre for second-tier
states’ contributions to the maintenance of American hegemony.
-- India Module
Unilateralism is key to India relations – strong US power projection is key
to make India balance against China
Selden, 13 – director of the Defence and Security Committee of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly
AND an Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Florida (ZACHARY, “Balancing
Against or Balancing With? The Spectrum of Alignment and the Endurance of American Hegemony,”
Security Studies Journal, 08 May 2013,
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09636412.2013.786918#.U8b7VI1dVe8)//eek
India US-India relations have waxed and waned, but the trend since 2001 in partic- ular
is toward closer strategic cooperation. Since then, Indian leaders have consistently moved the
country toward greater strategic cooperation with the United States, reversing a long-standing nonaligned
tradition in Indian foreign policy. Given India’s growing economic and military power, it would appear to
be a good candidate to engage in soft balancing or strategic hedg- ing against American hegemony. Yet,
despite India’s traditional antipathy to the global position of the United States, India has
sought out closer security ties with it in recent years. There are, of course, many factors that
may ex- plain this increased security relationship. India and the United States share a concern
over the danger of radical Islamist terrorism. The United States’ com- plex relationship
with India’s long-standing regional rival, Pakistan, is clearly another reason for India to
ensure that it has some influence in Washington, D.C. Yet, India’s concern over China’s
growing regional power is also a sig- nificant issue that makes security cooperation with
the globally predominant power an attractive option. The emerging relationship is sometimes
depicted as one driven by Amer- ican desires to contain China, but this discounts India’s concerns about
China and the potential threat it poses to India.62 There are a number of indica- tions that India views
China as its main strategic competitor in the region, and much of India’s strategy appears to be driven by
its desire to balance against China’s growing ability to act as a regional hegemon. In 1998 Indian Defense
Minister George Fernandes stated that China posed the greatest threat to India, surpassing the threat
posed by Pakistan.63 To support his contention he cited China’s supplying of nuclear
technology to Pakistan, but also emphasized China’s recent acquisition of bases in the
Indian Ocean and alleged that China was stockpiling nuclear weapons along India’s
northern border. This is by no means a consensus position across the Indian political spectrum, but it
is clear that the 1962 border war between India and China set the tone for the relationship in later
years.64 India’s nuclear weapons program is depicted by Indian analysts as product of the Sino-Indian
rivalry, and its continued development is seen more as aimed at balancing China than Pakistan’.65 Indian
analysts also note that China sent its troops into Indian territory sixty-five times in the first half of 2008
alone. In response, India is developing its road and airfield infrastructure in the border region and
creating new mountain divisions of fifteen thousand troops each to be deployed in the area.66 Although
China has been a consistent factor in Indian strategic thinking since the 1960s, the
potential danger posed by China increased significantly in the post-Cold War era. The
demise of the Soviet Union put an end to the Friendship Treaty that was seen as a major part of India’s
security strat- egy. From the early days of independence, India viewed the Soviet Union as a major
security partner. In addition to supplying most of its weapons, the Friendship Treaty with the Soviet
Union was seen as providing a secu- rity hedge against China. The collapse of the Soviet Union left India
in a weakened position. India’s defense policy has long since held China as the reference point and
without the Soviet Union, India was more isolated and self-reliant than at any previous time.67 This
coincided with a period of significant growth in China’s regional power and its development of power
projection capabilities into the Indian Ocean. Combined with China’s expanded ties with states around
India, some Indian security analysts warned of the risk of a strategic encirclement by
China.68 India in turn made efforts to bolster its naval and air force presence in the
region with an eye toward countering China’s influence, particularly its facilities in Burma’s
Coco Islands. As Indian Navy Admiral Raman Suthan clearly stated, “We keep hearing about China’s
interest in the Coco Islands and are wary of its growing interest in the region.”69 The post-Cold War
period also featured a growing defense relationship between India and the United
States. This increased security cooperation is viewed by many analysts as a hedge to
counter the growing regional power of China, although this is generally downplayed in both
capitals.70 But improved US-Indian security cooperation faced a number of stumbling blocks in the
1990s. In particular, nonproliferation concerns made it difficult for the United States to bridge the gap
between its commitment to non- proliferation and its interest in a closer relationship with India. Starting
in 2001, however, the United States and India embarked on a new relationship when they
agreed to establish a strategic framework dialogue. This new framework included enhanced
cooperation on export controls on high technology items, but the relationship quickly evolved toward increased military cooperation.71 After a rapid series of discussions in November 2001, the
United States and India moved toward military cooper- ation in the form of defense
technology sales agreements and the protection of strategic sea lanes, an area of
particular importance to India given China’s increasing presence in the Indian Ocean.72
The following month the two governments issued a joint statement that they “share strategic interests in
Asia and beyond” and that they would undertake joint security initiatives.73 This rapprochement was
rapidly followed with more concrete actions, particularly in naval cooperation. The 1990s saw some
limited cooperation between the Indian and US navies, and between 1992 and 1996 the two countries held
three joint exercises. But relations soured after the Indian nu- clear tests in 1998. That cooperation,
however, quickly revived in 2001 after a series of high-level meetings between American and Indian
officials. India granted refueling rights in Indian ports to US warships involved in operations in
Afghanistan, the two countries ran joint exercises in December 2001 and India offered over-flight access
and air base use to US aircraft in the region.74 A series of military exercises facilitated the
development of unprecedented military coordination that was on display in the tsunami
relief operations carried out by the Indian and US navies in the Indian Ocean in late
2004 and early 2005.75 In 2005 the two countries signed the New Framework for the USIndia Defense Relationship that elaborated on a common understanding of the need for
improved defense cooperation and established a Defense Production and Procurement
Group to facilitate defense industrial coopera- tion.76 The size and number of joint
military exercises continued to increase with the Malabar 07 naval exercise involving
twenty thousand personnel, mainly from the US and Indian navies.77 In 2009 India
hosted the largest deployment of the US military’s ground forces’ armored vehicles
outside of the Middle East for the bilateral Yudh Abhyas exercise.78 Clearly one of the major driving
forces of US actions was the increased threat of terrorist activity and the desire to bring India into closer
cooperation with its counter-terrorism initiatives. This suited India well given its record of terrorist
incidents and its increased awareness of the potential for additional large-scale Islamist militant action
following the Mumbai attack in November 2008. But for India, much of the effort to build a
better security relationship with the United States appears to be at least partially driven
by the perceived threat of an increasingly powerful China. As noted above, much of the
military cooperation between the two states was focused on naval exercises and largescale ground exercises, neither of which would be expected if the primary driver of the
security relationship was a mutual concern about terrorism. The broader strategic
significance of improved US-India security ties was not lost on China. Alarmed at the
growing level of Indo-US cooperation, China has attempted to dissuade India from
pursuing closer relations with the United States.79 India is a nuclear power with a strong and
growing economy. Its military is growing in capability and reach and the overall picture of India’s development is highly positive. It would seem logical that India, especially given its traditional
antipathy toward American hegemony, would use its growing power to weaken that
hegemony or hedge against it. Instead, India is actively working to establish deeper
security ties with the United States. None of this is to say that the United States and India have
formed an alliance, and there are numerous sticking points in the relationship that hinder its progress,
particularly the US relationship with Pakistan. Yet, it is clear that the Indo-US strategic
relationship has developed dramatically in the 2001–2009 period in a manner that
serves both Indian interests and American strategic goals in Asia.
-- Japan Module
Unilateralism is key to the Japan alliance – strong US power projection is
key to ensure Japanese cooperation against China
Selden, 13 – director of the Defence and Security Committee of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly
AND an Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Florida (ZACHARY, “Balancing
Against or Balancing With? The Spectrum of Alignment and the Endurance of American Hegemony,”
Security Studies Journal, 08 May 2013,
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09636412.2013.786918#.U8b7VI1dVe8)//eek
Japan Unlike India, Japan is a long-standing ally of the United States. The post-World War II
occupation, US military bases, and an American-drafted Japanese constitution obviously tied Japan to the
United States in a network of security arrangements that Japan did not have full control of in the 1950s
and 1960s. It was not until 1972, for example, that Japan regained sovereignty over the island of Okinawa.
Given its proximity to the Soviet Union, Japan had clear security interests in common with the United
States that made for a solid alliance during the Cold War. In the 1990s, however, there were questions as to the direction and durability of the US-Japan alliance.80 For many observers, the
end of the Cold War combined with the economic rivalry between the United States and Japan was
destined to lead to a weakening of the security-based alliance.81 Yet, in the first decade of the
twenty-first century the US-Japanese al- liance grew considerably stronger. Most
significantly, Japan and the United States revamped their security alliance in 2005 in a manner that ties
the two even more closely on a range of issues.82 Japan also contributed Japanese Self Defense Forces to
US-led coalition operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.83 In fact, the security relationship between the two
countries in the 2001–2009 period developed to the point that Japan was sometimes referred to as the
“Great Britain of Asia” implying that there was a “special relationship” with Japan on par with the one
between the United States and the United Kingdom.84 All of this would appear to run counter to
the assertion that American foreign policy in the 2001–2009 period was generally
pushing second-tier states to frustrate the exercise of American power in the
international system. Japan is an economically powerful state that for many years was
predicted to become a rival of the United States, shaking off the restraints on it left from the
legacy of WWII and emerging as a power in its own right.85 But rather than minimizing its
security relationship with the United States in this period, Japan actively sought to forge
closer security ties with it. The agreement that formalized the US-Japan security
relationship dur- ing the Cold War has been updated in ways that strengthen Japan’s
role in advancing the two countries’ mutual security interests. The most recent 2005 security
agreement follows on changes in the security agreement made in 1997, which in turn extended Japan’s
responsibilities and the scope of bilateral activities from the previous arrangement. Under that
agreement, the 1960s formulation of Japan’s geographic involvement in security-related matters was
confined to the region north of the Philippines and the area surrounding Japan. The 1997 defense
guidelines remove this geographic definition and state that Japan will play a role in “situations in areas
sur- rounding Japan that will have an important influence on Japan’s peace and security.”86 At the time,
Japanese officials did not conceive of the Middle East or the Indian Ocean as being within their remit.87
This rapidly changed as Japan moved to support the United States through its maritime contribution to
Operation Enduring Freedom beginning in December 2001. Japan’s participation in US-led operations
after 2001 was primarily symbolic; the refueling operation in the Indian Ocean, the airlift mission in the
Persian Gulf and the five hundred Japanese Self Defense Force personnel in southern Iraq were helpful
but hardly decisive contributions. But those contributions showed that Japan was willing to act in support
of US goals beyond the East Asian region. The reason that Japan did so is that its security depends on
a combina- tion of multilateral and bilateral relationships to mitigate potential dangers
in the region, but the bilateral relationship with the United States is the linchpin. The
danger posed by North Korea’s weapons programs, and the long-standing if
overshadowed territorial issues between Japan and Russia play a role in the
development of a stronger security relationship between the United States and Japan in
the post-2001 period.88 In addition, Japan is heavily dependent on imported oil and relies
on the US Navy’s ability to ensure its free transit through the major sea lanes of
communication from the Persian Gulf to the South China Sea. Another highly significant
driver of this relationship, however, is Japan’s concerns regarding the increase in
China’s regional power. China is a major trading partner for all states in the region,
including Japan, and Japan for its part seeks to enmesh China in a web of ties that will
ensure Japanese security. This interest dovetails with the rather consistent US strategy
toward China, which is sometimes summed up as opening up, tying down, and binding together.89
Nonetheless, Japan wants to avoid the emergence of a China-dominated system in the
region and is concerned about the propensity of China to use its increased naval power
in the region.90 Recent disputes over territorial control of the potentially oil-rich areas of the South
China Sea have prompted Japanese defense planners to explicitly factor China into their justifications for
a more proactive Japanese military posture.91 The Japanese Defense Ministry’s annual report entitled
Defense of Japan 2011 spells this out in detail. In particular, the document cites China’s “overbearing”
naval activities, and notes that China is, “expanding and intensifying its activities in its surrounding
waters . . . its military activities are referred to as a mat- ter of concern for the region and the international
community, including Japan.” 92 The document goes on to state that China, “can be expected to ex- pand
its sphere of naval activities and carry out operations,” and highlights the important strategic role of USJapan naval cooperation in this regard. An entire chapter of the document is devoted to “Deepening of the
Japan- U.S. Alliance” and notes that one of the alliance’s primary objectives is to, “encourage
China’s responsible role in regional stability.”93 Part of the deepening of the alliance
involves shifting more of the burden of supporting the US military presence in the
region onto Japan, and Japanese analysts see the increased security ties between the
two countries in the context of Japan’s concerns about China’s role in the region.94 The
practical ramifications of the 2005 agreement can be seen in the increased cooperation on missile defense
and US force deployments. Under the agreement, Japan would host an X-band early warning system in
northern Japan. In addition the Japanese Air Defense Command would move to the US Yokuda Air Base
near Tokyo, which would become a joint command for missile defense. US forces stationed in Japan
would be realigned to allow for more flexibility, and Japan would shoulder much of the
financial burden of this movement. Following from the recommendations of the US Global Posture
Review, eight thousand US Marines of those stationed in Okinawa would move to Guam. Yet at the same
time, the headquarters for the US Army First Corps would move from the United States to Camp Zama
near Tokyo to build better bilateral coordination. These moves were designed to reduce the burden on
local communities in Okinawa where the heavy US military presence had become a political issue for local
and national officials, while at the same time increasing the coordination of US and Japanese forces and
strengthening the ability of the United States to deal with regional contingencies. Some of the intensified
security ties developed between 2001 and 2009 were ascribed to the close relationship between then
Prime Minister Ju- nichiro Koizumi and President George W. Bush, and in fact the relationship did
appear to waver after those two leaders were replaced.95 But the al- liance with the United States
is fundamental to Japanese security and is only likely to increase in relevance as China
continues along its growth trajectory. Japan took a range of actions to solidify the alliance in the
2001–2009 pe- riod, demonstrating its value to the United States as a security partner and facilitating US
military action in the Asia Pacific, South Asia, and Middle East.
A2: Soft Balancing
Soft-balancing doesn’t exist – even if it did unilateralism deters it
Selden, 13 – director of the Defence and Security Committee of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly
AND an Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Florida (ZACHARY, “Balancing
Against or Balancing With? The Spectrum of Alignment and the Endurance of American Hegemony,”
Security Studies Journal, 08 May 2013,
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09636412.2013.786918#.U8b7VI1dVe8)//eek
The concept of soft balancing, however, has been thoroughly critiqued by those who
note, among other points, that it is often difficult to tell where the normal give and take
of policy disputes ends and soft balancing begins, or how much of purported soft
balancing is driven by domestic political considerations or regional security concerns.18
More significantly, second- tier states may have a range of reasons for engaging in security
cooperation with the United States rather than balancing against it, softly or otherwise.
In particular, second-tier states may be concerned about the potential of regional
powers to threaten their interests and, therefore, engage in a hedging strategy by
aligning with the United States. This latter interpretation appears to be more supported
by the history of the past decade in which a large number of states strengthened their security
cooperation with the United States and increased their ability to facilitate the global reach of the US
military. Between 2001 and 2009, nine eastern European states sought and obtained
membership in NATO, an institution defined by its explicit American security guarantee .
Georgia, several Balkan states, and Ukraine (until 2010) continue to seek NATO membership and
the vast majority of them participated in US-led military operations in this period. India dramatically
shifted away from its deeply rooted principle of nonalignment to engage in a range of
cooperative military activities with the United States. Japan and Australia reaffirmed
their alliances with the United States and also participated in US-led military operations in Iraq and
Afghanistan. In an effort to reduce their vulnerability, states in close proximity to Rus- sia and
China have strengthened their security ties with the United States. Some have done so by
seeking membership in NATO, or reaffirming and in- creasing their commitment to existing alliances with
the United States. Others have done so by demonstrating their value to the United States by facilitating
US military activities in the region, participating in US-led missions, and tying their militaries to that of
the United States through cooperative programs, training exercises, and other activities. This supports
William Wohlforth’s ar- gument that unipolarity may endure because attempts by regional
powers such as China and Russia to increase their standing are likely to generate regional counterbalances among neighboring states that in many cases involve the United
States.
A2: Alliances not K2 Hege
Alliances are key to hard-power – they help the US project globally
Selden, 13 – director of the Defence and Security Committee of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly
AND an Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Florida (ZACHARY, “Balancing
Against or Balancing With? The Spectrum of Alignment and the Endurance of American Hegemony,”
Security Studies Journal, 08 May 2013,
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09636412.2013.786918#.U8b7VI1dVe8)//eek
Identifying hard alliance behavior is relatively straightforward as it is de- fined by a
formal agreement. Thus, the enlargement of NATO in the 2001–2009 period to encompass many of
the satellites of the former Soviet Union is an indicator of how the US-centric alliance system was
strengthened at the hard end of the scale. But what are appropriate ways to identify alignment at the
softer end of the scale? Logically, we should expect behavior that indicates a willingness on the part of the
secondary state to tie its security to that of the United States and participate in activities that further
American security interests. In particular, we can consider three measures: (1) participating in
joint exercises and cooperative training programs, (2) participating in US-led military
coalitions, and (3) establishing bases for American forces or altering existing
agreements in line with the US Global Posture Review.54¶ Those measures are
significant indicators of the potential costs the second-tier state is willing to bear as part
of building a security relationship with the United States. Participation in joint exercises
and training programs may appear to be a minimal commitment, but it often involves
the tem- porary placement of US armed forces in the country, a move that sends a signal
to regional powers. More significantly, those exercises and training programs are explicitly
designed to make the military of the second-tier state more interoperable with the US
armed forces so that it can participate in fu- ture operations. Thus, it is an important first step
that a secondary state can take to demonstrate its potential utility as a security partner to the United
States. Participation in US-led coalitions involves a commitment of military personnel and equipment to
missions in which the second-tier state might not otherwise be involved. In addition to the operational
costs, there are potential domestic political costs to the second-tier state’s leadership, espe- cially if its
armed forces sustain casualties as a result. Allowing the United States to establish bases on the
national territory or use it as a temporary staging facility demonstrates a willingness by
the second-tier state to cede control over national territory to advance American
strategic aims. This is a significant commitment in peacetime, but in the event of
hostilities the risks could be much higher as those facilities could become targets.
Turn—Heg Solves Multilateralism
Hegemony supplements multilateral approaches—NATO, the World Bank,
and EU thrive under US leadership
Kromah 9
(Lamii Moivi Kromah, MA student, Department of International Relations @ University of the
Witwatersrand, February 2009, “The Institutional Nature of U.S. Hegemony: Post 9/11,” p. 62-63,
http://wiredspace.wits.ac.za/bitstream/handle/10539/7301/MARR%2009.pdf?sequence=1, Accessed
7/30/14, JC)
The well-documented invasion of Iraq, and the Bush Doctrine marked a significant change in U.S. foreign
policy; U.S. foreign policy seemed bent on going against the will of its allies, France and Germany, and
unilaterally invading countries. A unilateral America is a transitory phenomenon; the acts of
September 11, 2001 were so heinous that a majority of the foreign policy decision
makers were willing to condone unilateralism. But after seven years of unilateralism the Bush
regime has realized its error and reverted back to multilateralism. Allies have been
consulted on a regular basis; international organizations have been approached in order so solve
conflicts ranging from Somalia, Iraq, and Georgia; such as the United Nations, North
Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), World Bank, and European Union. NATO enlargement
represents the best case of continual U.S. multilateralism. After 9/11 Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovenia,
Slovakia, Bulgaria, and Romania have entered NATO. Croatia and Albania are scheduled to join in 2009.
Although essentially a military alliance; NATO membership offers humanitarian aid, conflict
resolution mechanisms, and economic aid. Since NATO is viewed as the catalyst that rebuilt
Western Europe. The new members feel that it will do the same for the Eastern European
countries that are now entering by providing security guarantees against a revisionist Russia and
much needed development aid and access to Western European and American markets
and grants. President Clinton was the first to voice this opinion: that NATO and not European
institutions like the European Union and EEC had turned Western Europe into “a source of
stability instead of hostility,” and that NATO expansion could do for Europe’s East what it did
for Europe’s West: Prevent a return to local rivalries. In other words, stability requires a
hegemon, which is why “America remains the indispensable nation” and why U.S. policy
is driven to extend the frontiers of stability, so that “a gray zone of insecurity [does] not
reemerge in Europe”71 Perhaps the most recent example of the failure of Unilateralism and the return
to multilateralism by the United States is the handling of the Somali security crisis. Alarmed at the Islamic
Court’s growing strength and popularity, in early 2006 the CIA began supplying significant quantities of
arms and money to a coalition of secular Mogadishu warlords under the name Alliance for the Restoration
of Peace and Counter Terrorism (ARPCT). The CIA program had been a poorly conceived attempt to hunt
down the small number of al-Qaeda affiliated individuals involved in the 1998 bombings of the US
embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, then thought to be hiding in Somalia. But the operation failed
disastrously and, according to reports, ‘the payoffs added to an anarchic situation that led many Somalis
to turn to the Islamic Courts for protection’.72
Defense
Multilat down/fails – negotiation structure, developed countries,
undeveloped countries, and sovereignty
Laidi, 14 – Professor of International Relations at Sciences Po and director of research at the Center
for European Studies at the Institute of Political Studies in Paris (Zaki, “Towards a Post-Hegemonic
World: The Multipolar Threat to the Multilateral Order,” Apr 25, 2014,
http://www.laidi.com/sitedp/sites/default/files/IP_Towards%20a%20PostHegemonic%20World.pdf)//eek
Westphalian ultilateralism This apparently irresistible trend was not to last however. The
multilateral order began to wilt with consequences that were not only evident in the
areas such as trade and climate, but also in other sectors too, including those that were
the most difficult for states to monitor, such as the internet (Klimburg, 2013). As a result
we began to witness the emergence of what might best be described as a form of
‘Westphalian multilateralism’, a system in which ‘states asserted their national
sovereignty by saying no (...) even if it was sometimes masked by agreement in general
terms’ (Wade, 2011). But what caused this shift? Four factors basically: the structure of
negotiations which were only becoming more complex under conditions of economic
multipolarity; a fundamental reassessment by Western countries of what they actually
stood to gain from the multilateral system; the increasing ability – and willingness – by
developing countries’ to block a system which they believed had hitherto been heavily
skewed in favour of the West; and finally, these same countries’ interpretation of the world
exclusively in terms of sovereignty (Croom, 2009; Laïdi, 2012).
Multilat fails – the negotiation structure demands in impossible level of
agreement due to differing interests
Laidi, 14 – Professor of International Relations at Sciences Po and director of research at the Center
for European Studies at the Institute of Political Studies in Paris (Zaki, “Towards a Post-Hegemonic
World: The Multipolar Threat to the Multilateral Order,” Apr 25, 2014,
http://www.laidi.com/sitedp/sites/default/files/IP_Towards%20a%20PostHegemonic%20World.pdf)//eek
Multilateral trade and climate negotiations share many similarities. Both operate on the
principles of universal representation (everyone has a say), consensus (no veto rights), single undertaking
(all must agree to the whole package, and not just certain parts of it), and the differentiation of obligations
according to the level of development5. Both offer a Christmas tree of sorts, ranging from the general to
the specific, the key element here being commitments from all parties to agree to certain defined
objectives. Although a priori attractive, this general model assumes a strong commitment from
all to achieve a result at all costs. However, given the fragility of initial compromises made
to launch negotiations – not to mention the dramatic change in power relations among
states over time - all the benefits of an inclusive negotiation model were soon to become
structural obstacles to success; and universal representation, buoyed by the growing
political clout of developing countries, has resulted in fragmented negotiations. This is
hardly surprising given that multilateral trade negotiations include around twenty
negotiating chapters; these in turn are further subdivided into extremely technical subtopics. As a result negotiations cover around a hundred subjects involving close to a
hundred and fifty actors, including some very powerful actors such as the United States, Brazil, India
and China, as well as some regional clusters. (Ismail, 2009)6. Taken together, all this has meant that
multilateral trade negotiations have been stalled since 2008 - though agricultural issues (that
were initially at the heart of the dispute between developed and emerging countries) have become much
less significant as prices for agricultural products have risen, thereby limiting the importance of subsidies,
and as developing countries have realised that Western agricultural markets offer much more limited
opportunities than the markets of the other major emerging countries. But this has not done away with
the problem. Rather it has shifted it to non-agricultural market access – an area where Western and
emerging countries continue to differ on the necessary trade-offs. In climate negotiations, the
apparent challenge was much more clearly defined at first: to reduce greenhouse gas
emissions globally on the basis of scientific recommendations generally accepted by the
international community. Nevertheless, negotiations floundered, in part because of the
phenomenal number of diverse actors involved, not to mention the very different
priorities of developing and developed countries. Developed countries insisted on commitments
on emissions while developing countries started pressing for financial compensation from 2002 onwards.
The issue of development became central to climate negotiations as parties sought to move towards a
post-Kyoto agreement (Rajamani, 2012). And even though the developing countries did not
reject trade liberalization as such, they linker this to a guarantee of development. But
this more fundamental division was not the only one. There were other divergences
between a regional bloc such as the European Union (deemed to be favourable to a framework
agreement on climate) and the ‘umbrella group’ of more ‘reluctant’ countries, including the
United States and Australia. Major emerging powers also tended to view the problem
differently to oil-producing countries, who in turn did not necessarily share the same
approach as island states, landlocked mountainous countries, and the least developed
countries (Roberts, 2011). Granted, this plurality of interests had existed in the past. But
beyond the fact that it was a lot smaller, it was long kept in check by the ability of
Western countries to divide developing countries and the equally great difficulty of
countries like India or Brazil to create stable but heterogeneous coalitions (Narlikar, 2005).
In the area of trade things were no easier. Indeed, the West’s ability to impose itself in
multilateral trade negotiations came to a screeching halt in 2003 during the ministerial conference in
Cancun when India and Brazil (with the quiet support of China) blocked efforts by United States and
Europe to force progress in the negotiations launched in Doha two years earlier (Narlikar and Tussie,
2004). The Brazilians, who were behind this manoeuvre, also had a specific political objective: to show
West in general and the United States in particular, that the world was no longer under their control as it
still seemed to be before the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. They seized on Western proposals to reduce
agricultural subsidies, deemed too weak, to block negotiations before they even started; and ever since,
trade negotiations have been deadlocked, even as the sources of disagreement have changed. Thirteen
years after it was launched Doha’s Development Round has still not come to an end for
lack of agreement among three key players: the United States, China and India (Ismail,
2009). The very idea of a new round of multilateral negotiations has few if any supporters
today. And the single undertaking rule, which developed countries initially created as a
means to keep out free riders, ultimately backfired against the West. Knowing that
under this principle no negotiations could be concluded without them, emerging
countries decided to simply block activity, without necessarily making a
counterproposal, even if this involved using the poorest countries as cover. Because
their weight has allowed them to acquire veto power in trade and climate negotiations
(Hurrell and Segupta, 2012), emerging powers have contributed to the formation of a bipolar
system with the West, to the detriment of the least developed countries. The latter are
torn between their grievances with emerging countries and their fears that if they openly
break with the emerging powers they risk becoming pawns of the West. This explains
why the expansion of the concept of developing countries has done little to close the
deep political rift between developed and developing countries. Furthermore, the principle
of common but differentiated responsibility between developed and developing
countries has been interpreted in increasingly different ways between the two parties.
According to the excellent expression of Pascal Lamy, developed countries see the emerging
powers as ‘rich countries with many poor people’, while the latter see themselves as
‘poor countries with some rich people’. This divergence is key, because beyond
differences in interests, lies an even more crucial problem of representation. For the West,
multilateral negotiations are only of interest if they facilitate access to the markets of
emerging powers. Meanwhile, the latter’s priority is to make tangible gains in terms of
development (Harbinson, 2012). Indeed, the most important country among them, China,
has bristled at the high cost of WTO membership in terms of tariff dismantling (Mattoo
and Subramanian, 2012).
Mulitilat fails – developed and developing countries have disparate
interests but equal economic power
Laidi, 14 – Professor of International Relations at Sciences Po and director of research at the Center
for European Studies at the Institute of Political Studies in Paris (Zaki, “Towards a Post-Hegemonic
World: The Multipolar Threat to the Multilateral Order,” Apr 25, 2014,
http://www.laidi.com/sitedp/sites/default/files/IP_Towards%20a%20PostHegemonic%20World.pdf)//eek
A reassessment of the West’s gains from multilateralism If multilateralism has been seriously
damaged by the rise of new actors and profound divisions between states situated at
different levels of economic development, it has been further weakened by massive
economic shifts in the world. In 1992, when the Earth Summit was launched in an effort to revitalize
multilateralism after the Cold War, OECD countries accounted for 64% of global wealth. Today, rich and
developing countries account for about 50% each. In less than ten years therefore the
balance of economic power has altered enormously. This development in turn represents the
end of one historical cycle that began in 1750 with the industrial revolution in the West and the beginning
of another in which Asia will regain the position it had over two hundred and fifty years ago. In the very
near future China’s GNP will have nominally outpaced that of the United States; and by
2030, the GNP of the United States and Europe together will only represent 26% of
global GNP as opposed to the 51% it controlled in 2010 (World Bank, 2011). The magnitude
of this ‘power shift’ has also been amplified by its unusually rapid progression. Thus
when Obama took office in 2009, Chinese GNP was equivalent to 58% of U.S. GNP; by
the end of his first term the share had grown to 80%. How could one imagine such a tectonic
shift occurring, and leaving the rules of multilateralism, created 20 to 30 years ago, intact? But the
implications of this shift are even deeper than these figures imply. For as the West has seen
its relative share of global trade decrease, it has become more dependent on emerging
markets to ensure its own prosperity. Granted, the latter still needs developed markets to support
their growth and to access Western technologies. But emerging economies also know that
developed countries need them more than ever since at least 70% of global purchasing
power and 90% of the global population are now located outside of the West. Western
economies are also burdened by large public deficits which dampen consumption and
investment. Exports to emerging markets have therefore become a crucial source of
growth, as Germany’s example shows. Even the American economy, long protected by the strength
of its domestic market, has become crucially reliant on foreign markets. This is evidenced by the
considerable increase in international trade as a share of U.S. GNP, from 13% in 1970 to 30% in 2006
(Aheam, 2012). Europe faces the same challenges. For a long time, it was protected by the exceptional
intensity of intra-European trade relations. But the slowdown in growth and the maturity of its markets
have lessened the importance of this factor. Exports are now the main driver of growth, and have helped
to mitigate the effects of the recession (European Commission, 2013). Europe currently accounts for only
6% of global demand, versus 13% for the United States and 75% for emerging powers13. All of which is to
say that the United States and Europe are essentially facing the same challenges, even though, contrary to
popular belief, Europe has generally weathered the rise of emerging powers better than the United States:
its share of the global market has remained stable, around 20%, while that of the United States has
decreased by 4%. That said, Europeans and Americans face the same challenge from the emerging
powers. This is the backdrop of the proposed free trade agreement between the United
States and Europe and the accompanying feeling in both that emerging countries are
punching well below their weight in terms of their contributions to global public goods
(Rajamani, 2000). They further believe that on their most salient issues (investment,
intellectual property, access to public procurement, access to services) the classical multilateral
framework does not allow the West to extract the concessions it should be expecting
from emerging powers. The Obama administration has been most vocal in articulating this view. As it
put it: ‘[We] will offer a place at the table to any nation, group, or citizen willing to shoulder a fair share of
the burden. [...] It will make it more difficult for others to abdicate their responsibilities’14. Robert
Zoellick, the American president of the World Bank, reiterated the central idea that emerging powers
should assume greater responsibility (Zoellick, 2010). The U.S. administration increasingly
equates the opening of markets with job losses. While multilateral trade negotiations are
supposed to benefit all the actors involved, the breakdown of gains by country or
economic sectors is of course highly variable. America’s declining interest in multilateral trade
negotiations can in large part be attributed to the fact that at the end of the Uruguay Round (1994) the
country’s current account deficit was no more than 1% of its GNP; on the eve of the 2008 crisis, the figure
had already risen to 6% (Agur, 2008). Yet according to the U.S., a WTO agreement along the
lines of the latest proposals tabled in 2011 would have led to an increase in imports twice
as high as the projected increase in exports. Even more worrisome for the U.S. was that
such an agreement would benefit China more than other developing countries (Schott,
2011). This brings us back to our starting point: the United States’ deep dissatisfaction
with a special and differential treatment mechanism that provides cover for emerging
powers to not open their markets for goods and services (Schwab, 2011). More generally, the
Western sees a series of unresolved problems with the trade practices of most emerging
economies. These have focused, amongst other things, on (a) Government procurement
in emerging economies (b) the weak rules underwriting intellectual property rights
under the framework of the TRIPS agreement and the agreement on opening services
markets 16; (c) Restrictions on investments in emerging countries; and (d) Subsidies to
state-owned enterprises in emerging countries that are considered to be the source of
unfair competition with Western companies, which receive little or no subsidies17.
Europe strongly shares many of these concerns. Indeed, on nearly all these issues its interests
are very close to those of the United States. However, unlike the US, Europe would never have dreamed of
blocking the final stage of negotiations at the WTO in 2008. Europe supported the compromise proposed
by Pascal Lamy and railed against American intransigence. Europe continued to sing the praises of
multilateralism, even as its actions were deviating from it (Rompuy, 2012). It should be noted, however,
that contrary to prevailing opinion, Europe’s trade position has suffered relatively less from the rise of
emerging powers than that of the United States and Japan. Its share of global exports has remained
remarkably stable since the mid-1990s, hovering around 20%. Meanwhile, the U.S. share fell 4.4% to 13%,
versus 14% for China (European Commission, 2008). For their part, emerging countries put
forward a hodgepodge of arguments: their under-developed economies; how little
developed countries are offering in return for market access or in terms of financial
compensation for climate change measures; developed countries maintaining high levels
of protection for sensitive sectors despite a low general level (‘tariff peaks’); the West’s
refusal to take into account its historical responsibility when assessing the costs
associated with climate change, for example.
Multilateralism fails – countries see it as impinging on sovereignty and
prefer bilateral negotiation
Laidi, 14 – Professor of International Relations at Sciences Po and director of research at the Center
for European Studies at the Institute of Political Studies in Paris (Zaki, “Towards a Post-Hegemonic
World: The Multipolar Threat to the Multilateral Order,” Apr 25, 2014,
http://www.laidi.com/sitedp/sites/default/files/IP_Towards%20a%20PostHegemonic%20World.pdf)//eek
Economic ‘sovereignism’ A third reason why multilateralism has suffered a serious setback
has been a renewed willingness by governments to either protect key sectors in their
own economy or refuse to open their economies to what they see as unfair competition.
Significantly, this trend of economic ‘sovereignism’ has been on the rise in both developed
and emerging countries. The turning point in this development was perhaps the 2009 Copenhagen
climate summit. The United States, like many other developed countries, made its commitments
conditional on the emerging countries taking a decisive position of their own. But meanwhile China was
mobilizing the emerging countries and encouraging them to refuse to commit to targets or to accept
monitoring on their territory (Lloyd, 2012). However – and this is where sovereignist narrative most
strikingly manifested itself – the United States joined emerging countries (in opposition to Europe) in
opposing the notion that each state had a shared and common interest in reaching a multilateral
agreement. Politically this represented a radical shift. Thus while the United States and China may
have been divided over their respective responsibilities in terms of climate change, they both agreed
that no multilateral negotiation would be concluded without them. They also agreed that
it would be unacceptable for them to subordinate their interests as sovereign states to
multilateral constraints defined in an international forum. (Viola et al, 2012). In other words,
the U.S. and China were imposing an inverted model for negotiations - moving from a
top down process that set a framework under which states would be responsible for
fulfilling their obligations, to a bottom up process where the premise was that each state
was only responsible for that which it was willing to contribute (Falkner et al, 2010). This was
a fundamental reversal of perspective, and its first consequence was to significantly reduce the ambition
of climate negotiations (Lloyd, 2012). Since then other developments have only confirmed the retreat
from multilateralism. Rio +20 in 2012 for example was supposed to ‘take stock’ twenty years after the
famous Earth Summit of 1992. But not only did Rio +20 not yield any agreement, the event
highlighted other obvious divisions, most obviously about how one was supposed to build ‘green
economies. Basically, developing countries (adhering to the principle of shared but differentiated
responsibility) argued this could only be achieved if there a significant transfer of
technologies from the developed countries to the developing. But the consequence of
this was that the United States soon lost interest in coming to any agreement. Europe
meanwhile sought to reach some common agreement (Horner, 2012). As for China, though it did not
challenge the concept of a green economy completely, it did make it clear that it would
try to reach this goal on its own within the framework of a 5-year plan and not as a
result of an international agreement. At the same time the United States and China seemed
to be making their own side deal. Indeed, when in June 2013 the new Chinese President and
President Obama met in California, the two together agreed bilaterally to open the way to
gradually but definitively ending the production and consumption of hydro
fluorocarbons (HFC). If this agreement were extended to the rest of the international community, it
would of course have led to a reduction equivalent to two years of greenhouse gas emissions18. Even so,
this was still a bilateral agreement reached between the two great powers; in effect
representing the demise of multilateralism as it had initially been conceived many
decades back. From this perspective it is interesting to note that the two leading powers chose to
integrate this agreement into the framework of the Montreal Protocol on the ozone layer even though
HFCs contribute to greenhouse gas emissions rather than to the destruction of the ozone layer. It is
reasonable to assume that the Americans and the Chinese preferred to tack this agreement onto an
already-signed and uncontroversial Protocol rather than onto the Kyoto Protocol, which would have been
a more logical fit.
Multilat fails – EU decline
Laidi, 14 – Professor of International Relations at Sciences Po and director of research at the Center
for European Studies at the Institute of Political Studies in Paris (Zaki, “Towards a Post-Hegemonic
World: The Multipolar Threat to the Multilateral Order,” Apr 25, 2014,
http://www.laidi.com/sitedp/sites/default/files/IP_Towards%20a%20PostHegemonic%20World.pdf)//eek
As we have tried to show the retreat from multilateralism has been no accident. It stems from long-term
shifts in the balance of power in the world economy, a lack of consensus on a set of increasingly complex
global issues, and the increasingly important role played in the international system by a diverse group of
emerging economies who may disagree on many things but together share a belief in the importance of
economic sovereignty. Taken together this development has to be seen as being structurally detrimental to
a Europe which has always seen normative regulation and international institutions as being crucial
(Laïdi, 2008). Multilateralism is in many ways in Europe’s political DNA. Indeed, in the aftermath of the
Cold War, Europe believed that multilateralism’s time had come (Elsig et al, 2011); and this certainly
looked to be the case. In fact, between 1990 and 2005 over 76 multilateral treaties were signed, many of
great significance including the 1992 Chemical Weapons Convention, the creation of the WTO in 1994, the
1996 CTBT, the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, and the 2000 Cartagena Protocol (Elsig et al, 2011). It is no
coincidence that for close to a decade the European Union was able to show real
international leadership on many subjects, provided they were not security-related
(Paterson, 2009). In 1999, Angela Merkel even stated that to address climate change, states needed to
delegate their power to an international organisation, regardless of the cost – an unthinkable proposition
for any non-European leader to make19. Indeed, at the same time as she was extolling the virtues of
multilateralism the United States was retreating from it (Falkner, 2013). However, it was not just the
US turn away from multilateralism that was a problem. The fact of the matter was that
as one century gave way to another, Europe’s weight within the world was beginning to
decline. One simple of measuring this was by looking at greenhouse gas emissions.
themselves. When the terms of global negotiations on climate were set at the 1992 Rio
Summit, Europe accounted for 23% of greenhouse gas emissions with Europe and the
United States together accounting for 50% . Twenty years on, there were still two great
powers in the climate area. But they were no longer the same ones, with the United
States now accounting for 17% of global emissions and China for 30%. Moreover, if India
(5.4%) and Brazil (1.3%) were to be included, it would mean that the four great ‘sovereignist’ powers were
now dominant in terms of shaping climate change with Europe now only playing a relatively minor role as
an emitter (12% in total)20. This would also explain Europe’s marginalisation in Copenhagen, where the
United States and emerging countries finalised a minimal agreement without Europe (Roberts, 2011).
The Kyoto Protocol (still championed in Europe) is now utterly obsolete since it only
covers less than one third of greenhouse gas emissions (Bodansky and Diringer, 2010). This
reality is compounded by Europe’s political and strategic inability to really enter the
negotiation process since it is difficult to see how Europe could makes its commitments
conditional on those of the others. In the field of trade Europe does of course remain in a
strong position. It is after all the world’s leading trading power with a market share that has remained
surprisingly stable over the past decade (European Commission, 2012). Furthermore, Europe does have a
single trade negotiator with significant leeway over member States once a negotiating mandate is secured.
Under Pascal Lamy, then Trade Commissioner (2000-2004), the Commission opted for multilateralism,
to the point where it froze all bilateral trade negotiations in order to give the WTO’s Doha Round a full
chance. But following his departure, the Commission in 2006 started to shift and began to explore
the possibility of new bilateral agreements with the emerging countries (Evenett, 2007).
The European commitment to opening its own market was further eroded as
unemployment grew; indeed, even before the euro crisis, the EU had to demonstrate
that its trade policy would not adversely impact on European levels of employment
(European Commission, 2010). Here the American and European positions coincided. In fact,
the desire by both to enter into bilateral negotiations to reach a free trade agreement not
only showed how much the two had in common economically but how frustrated they
had become with multilateralism. Moreover, by creating a stronger free trade area of their
own they would be better placed to deal with China by building a high-standard
regulatory space between the United States and Europe to force China to either comply
or remain on the side-lines and risk exclusion. At the same time the U.S. has also
become actively engaged in negotiating an agreement with its fourteen Transpacific
Partnership members, again to the exclusion of China. The idea here, clearly, is to use
bilateralism to obtain what multilateralism no longer can: rules that may then become
global standards.
OFFSHORE BALANCING
Offshore balancing can’t advance US interests—relies excessively on bribery
and diplomacy while failing to curtail interventions
Feaver 13
(Peter, PhD @ Harvard, Professor of Political Science and Public Policy @ Duke, Director of the Triangle
Institute for Security Studies (TISS), and Director of the Duke Program in American Grand Strategy;
4/30/13, Foreign Policy, Shadow Government: Notes from the loyal opposition, “Not even one cheer for
offshore balancing?”
http://shadow.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2013/04/30/not_even_one_cheer_for_off_shore_balancing,
Accessed 7/28/14, JC)
Perhaps unwittingly, Walt makes a strong case for why offshore
balancing is unlikely to work well in protecting
U.S. interests in these areas. Walt is unsparing in his critique of the alleged covert program to buy
influence in Afghanistan, which he derides as "sleaze" and as a likely culprit in what he predicts will
be failure in Afghanistan. Likewise, he argues that providing arms to Syrian rebels will not provide
much influence over them, and so the United States should not go down that path. What
Walt fails to do is reflect on how his critique of these policies leads logically to a deeper critique of
offshore balancing -- for the very steps he is deriding as leading to failure are the core
elements of any long-term offshore balancing approach to these challenges. Maybe it is a bit
unfair to treat Afghanistan as a case of offshore balancing. After all we have been "onshore" in force for over a decade now. However,
even offshore balancers recognize the need for episodic military involvement, which is what
distinguishes them from pure isolationists. An offshore balancing approach to Afghanistan would have been an
extreme version of the light-footprint posture favored by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld: massive punitive action
followed by extensive efforts at buying influence among local warlords. This is precisely what
John Mearsheimer at the time endorsed as a policy of "open wallets." Offshore balancers reject the costly heavy footprint approach
of counterinsurgency because they believe the United States can more effectively achieve its objectives through a light footprint.
Going forward, what
else could the offshore balancing prescription for Afghanistan offer if not a
reliance on bribery and diplomacy? It is absolutely fair to label Obama's current Syria policy as an attempt at
offshore balancing. The administration has been resolute in avoiding an on-shore commitment in Syria, even to the extent of
revising its own red-lines regarding Syrian WMD, and President Obama doubled down on this in his press conferenceTuesday. But
how can the United States shape the local balance of power without intervening directly
and without arming favored rebel factions? Apparently, according to Walt, it cannot, which means
that offshore balancing is doing no better at advancing U.S. interests than on-shore involvement. The
failure of offshore balancing does not prove the wisdom of military intervention. Perhaps
Syria and Afghanistan are hopeless cases and, if so, there is an argument for not squandering American resources in futile efforts.
But Walt's implicit critique of offshore balancing points the way to a fuller exploration of the strategy, one that would go well beyond
this blogpost. If even academic proponents of offshore balancing mock its core components, is it any wonder that policymakers with
real responsibility for results will be reluctant to rely on it alone? Offshore balancing is no panacea, just as military intervention is no
panacea. Yet when even proponents of offshore balancing denigrate the tools that the strategy requires, it may be time to rethink its
basic premises.
REGIONAL BALANCING
Regional hegemony fails—WMD spread and interventionism by fading
powers check
Merom 3
(Gil, senior lecturer @ University of Sydney, PhD @ Cornell, 2003, Journal of Strategic Studies, 26:1, 109135, DOI: 10.1080/01402390308559310, “Realist Hypotheses on Regional Peace,” Taylor and Francis,
Accessed 7/30/14, JC)
No local state is going to rise to regional hegemony in engaged regions simply because
systemic actors are not going to allow it. In contested regions competing great powers
would prevent the rise of their adversaries' protege to hegemony by supporting its local
opposition. In short, the local power structure in contested regions is expected to reflect
systemic rivalries and exclude the possibility of local hegemony. Some suggest that a local
state may rise to hegemonic position in captive regions presumably because it could serve as a proxy
policeman of the systemic master. According to realist logic, however, the odds are against such
development because it would violate fundamental principles of power politics. Obviously, a
systemic master would be in a lesser power position vis-A-vis a hypothetical local hegemon as compared
to its position vis-a-vis a multitude of local actors among whom power is distributed more evenly.22
Hence the imperial logic of 'divide and rule' and the foundations of certain realist analyses and
recommendations. For example, Posen and Ross describe the vision of the realist strategy of
preponderance in the following way: In East Asia, the United States would maintain a military presence
sufficient to ensure regional stability and prevent the emergence of a power vacuum or regional hegemon.
The same approach applied to the Middle East and Southwest Asia, where the United States intended to
remain the preeminent extra-regional power. Hence also the preference of a systemic actor, as Martin
Indyk notes with regard to the US, to be a 'custodian of [the] region's balance-~f-power',~~ rather than
accept local hegemony in captive regions. The 1991 Gulf War may be seen as a sort of empirical
corroboration. Geoffrey Kemp and others have noted that Iraq was not destroyed or weakened fatally
during the war for the sake of regional stability.'Tet what underlies this 'regional stability' is the fact that
Iraq was spared because it was expected to check (again), in the future, a (regional) hegemony-seeking
Iran. Further Analysis of Autonomous Regions: 'Intractable' versus 'Drifting' Regions The logic of
relative power and varying interest leads to further division of autonomous regions into
intractable and drifting. Theoretically, regions may become intractable either 'by default' - when the
power projection capacity of global actors is limited, or 'by design7 - when regional actors can stand up to
global powers. In reality, however, no intractable regions can today form by default because
modern technologies enable systemic actors to project power everywhere (although most of
them would consider this unreasonably costly). At the same time, modem technologies may also help
create intractable regions by design. In particular, the spread of weapons of mass destruction and
delivery-means provides regional actors with the potential power to deter systemic
engagement. In short, intractable regions may be created in the future because technology
may alter the balance of power between actors on the regional and global levels.26 The
South-Central Asian region, from Iran to India, could be approaching the status of an intractable region as
a result of such change. Drifting regions differ from intractable regions in that they are the offspring of
indifference rather than defiance. They are free because global actors see no value in them. Realists are
inclined to disagree over which circumstances encourage the creation of drifting regions. Some realists
believe that hegemonic preoccupation with prestige and credibility induces regional intervention2' - that
is, they would suggest that unipolar systems impede the creation of drifting regions. Other realists believe
that systemic competition breeds intervention and therefore one would expect them to regard multipolar
systems as discouraging the creation of such regions.28 Among these scholars, those who believe that
competition is most intense in bipolar systems (and thus, that the negative value of regions increases)
must be convinced that drifting regions are least likely to develop in such a setting." They may support
their argument by reference to the underlying logic of formulations of the American administration
during the Cold War (including NSC-68 and the Domino Theory), and the excessive intervention of both
superpowers during this period in remote corners of Asia, Latin America and Africa.
APOLARITY
Thinking of multipolarity as the alternative to hegemony is utopian—
American decline causes apolarity, terrorism, protectionism, nuclear war,
and disease
Ferguson 4
(Niall, professor of history at Harvard University, a senior research fellow of Jesus College, Oxford, and
senior fellow of the Hoover Institution at Stanford University; 8/17/4, “A World Without Power,”
http://fnf.org.ph/downloadables/A_World_Without_Power_as_published_in_Foreign_Policy.pdf,
Accessed 7/30/14, JC)
Yet universal claims were also an integral part of the rhetoric of that era. All the empires claimed to rule
the world; some, unaware of the existence of other civilizations, maybe even believed that they did. The
reality, however, was not a global Christendom, nor an all- embracing Empire of Heaven. The reality was
political fragmentation. And that is also true today. The defining characteristic of our age is not a
shift of power upward to supranational institutions, but downward. With the end of
states' monopoly on the means of violence and the collapse of their control over
channels of communication, humanity has entered an era characterized as much by
disintegration as integration. If free flows of information and of means of production empower
multinational corporations and nongovernmental organizations (as well as evangelistic religious cults of
all denominations), the free flow of destructive technology empowers both criminal
organizations and terrorist cells. These groups can operate, it seems, wherever they choose, from
Hamburg to Gaza. By contrast, the writ of the international community is not global at all. It is, in fact,
increasingly confined to a few strategic cities such as Kabul and Pristina. In short, it is the nonstate actors
who truly wield global power—including both the monks and the Vikings of our time. So what is left?
Waning empires. Religious revivals. Incipient anarchy. A coming retreat into fortified
cities. These are the Dark Age experiences that a world without a hyperpower might
quickly find itself reliving. The trouble is, of course, that this Dark Age would be an altogether
more dangerous one than the Dark Age of the ninth century. For the world is much more
populous—roughly 20 times more—so friction between the world's disparate “tribes” is bound
to be more frequent. Technology has transformed production; now human societies depend not
merely on freshwater and the harvest but also on supplies of fossil fuels that are known to be
finite. Technology has upgraded destruction, too, so it is now possible not just to sack a city but
to obliterate it. For more than two decades, globalization—the integration of world markets for
commodities, labor, and capital—has raised living standards throughout the world, except where
countries have shut themselves off from the process through tyranny or civil war. The reversal of
globalization—which a new Dark Age would produce—would certainly lead to economic
stagnation and even depression. As the United States sought to protect itself after a second
September 11 devastates, say, Houston or Chicago, it would inevitably become a less open society,
less hospitable for foreigners seeking to work, visit, or do business. Meanwhile, as Europe's
Muslim enclaves grew, Islamist extremists' infiltration of the EU would become irreversible, increasing
trans-Atlantic tensions over the Middle East to the breaking point. An economic meltdown in China
would plunge the Communist system into crisis, unleashing the centrifugal forces that
undermined previous Chinese empires. Western investors would lose out and conclude that lower
returns at home are preferable to the risks of default abroad. The worst effects of the new Dark Age
would be felt on the edges of the waning great powers. The wealthiest ports of the global
economy—from New York to Rotterdam to Shanghai—would become the targets of plunderers
and pirates. With ease, terrorists could disrupt the freedom of the seas, targeting oil
tankers, aircraft carriers, and cruise liners, while Western nations frantically
concentrated on making their airports secure. Meanwhile, limited nuclear wars could
devastate numerous regions, beginning in the Korean peninsula and Kashmir, perhaps
ending catastrophically in the Middle East. In Latin America, wretchedly poor citizens would seek
solace in Evangelical Christianity imported by U.S. religious orders. In Africa, the great plagues of
AIDS and malaria would continue their deadly work. The few remaining solvent airlines would
simply suspend services to many cities in these continents; who would wish to leave their privately
guarded safe havens to go there? For all these reasons, the prospect of an apolar world should
frighten us today a great deal more than it frightened the heirs of Charlemagne. If the United States
retreats from global hegemony—its fragile self-image dented by minor setbacks on the imperial
frontier—its critics at home and abroad must not pretend that they are ushering in a new era
of multipolar harmony, or even a return to the good old balance of power. Be careful what
you wish for. The alternative to unipolarity would not be multipolarity at all. It would be
apolarity—a global vacuum of power. And far more dangerous forces than rival great
powers would benefit from such a not-so-new world disorder.
***MISCELLANEOUS***
OFFSHORE DRILLING
Other forms of drilling don’t solve – regulatory freedom, mineral rights,
and construction costs mean only fracking is cost-competive
Dunn and McClelland, 13 – Professor of International Politics and Head of the Department of
Political Science and International Studies at the University of Birmingham AND Associate Director for
North America at the risk analytics consultancy Maplecroft in charge of energy policy (David and Mark,
“Shale gas and the revival of American power: debunking decline?,” The Royal Institute of International
Affairs, http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1468-2346.12081/abstract)//eek
Closer examination of each of these objections, however, suggests that most of these reservations are
misplaced. Certainly, according to the most recent estimates, the United States does not
have the largest reserves of shale gas of any state in the world. As noted above, US estimates
all fall below 1,000 tcf. China is estimated to have 1,115 tcf, and large reserves are also identified in
Argentina (802 tcf ), Algeria (707 tcf ), Canada (573 tcf ) and Mexico (545 tcf ).54 There are also shale
resources in the Middle East and Russia which have still not been comprehensively assessed. Despite
these figures, several factors suggest that the United States could benefit disproportionately from its
reserves. The first point, with specific reference to its European competitors, is that shale
gas development in the United States has far fewer regulatory hurdles to cross—as it does,
indeed, compared to other types of fossil fuels in America. Fracking is exempt from key
regulatory provisions in the 2005 Energy Policy Act—widely seen as a concession to Dick
Cheney’s inter- vention—and in the United States, unlike the majority of developed
countries, the mineral rights for developing shale gas belong to landowners, resulting in
far less public opposition than would be seen in a country where the state owns the
mineral rights. The actual construction cost of a shale gas well is also significantly
cheaper in the United States than in other developed countries. A shale gas well can cost up
to $14 million to sink in Europe, but less than a third of that in some US shale plays, where shale gas is
often located closer to the surface than it is in Poland, for example; and there is a far greater availability of
fracking rigs in the US.56 The impact of other countries holding large shale reserves is also partly
moderated by the fact that Mexico and Canada, likely to be two of America’s greatest competitors in shale
gas production, are both members of NAFTA and integrated parts of the North American market and
economic zone as a whole. The development of these economies would also disproportionately benefit the
US economy as opposed to its emerging global rivals; and if more countries looked to Canada or Mexico to
meet their energy needs than to Saudi Arabia or Russia, this would be to the advantage of the United
States.
NATURAL GAS
Natural Gas models – amount and pricing
Dunn and McClelland, 13 – Professor of International Politics and Head of the Department of
Political Science and International Studies at the University of Birmingham AND Associate Director for
North America at the risk analytics consultancy Maplecroft in charge of energy policy (David and Mark,
“Shale gas and the revival of American power: debunking decline?,” The Royal Institute of International
Affairs, http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1468-2346.12081/abstract)//eek
The overseas impact of a revival of the US energy industry could also be very significant.
Cheap, abundant shale gas flooding the US energy market—and its likely export—will result
in natural gas playing a much larger role in the functioning of the global economy,
especially as other countries including China, Argentina, Mexico, Canada and Australia follow suit in the
development of these resources. Such a development will encourage and probably expedite
the use of natural gas in an increasing number of functions in society, including
electricity generation and transport. Countries with the largest conventional gas reserves—Russia,
Iran and Qatar—stand to lose the most from this, but all the major OPEC oil exporters, including Saudi
Arabia and Venezuela, could see lower prices for their oil exports in the medium to long term if the most
optimistic predictions of the potential
NAVAL BLOCKADE
Notes:
Seemed relevant to hege and I figured there might be an aff that solves this.
Obviously, an aff couldn’t directly invest in this but there is a bunch of stuff
about how “Air-Sea Battle” is key to be able to blockade China.
Blockade K2 Deterrence
The Chinese naval modernization is outpacing US capabilities – the ability
to enact a naval blockade is critical to effective deterrence
Mirski, 13 – junior fellow in the South Asia Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International
Peace (Sean, “The Context, Conduct and Consequences of an American Naval Blockade of China,” Journal
of Strategic Studies, 12 Feb 2013, http://carnegieendowment.org/2013/02/12/stranglehold-contextconduct-and-consequences-of-american-naval-blockade-of-china/fowj)//eek
Since World War II, the United States has aimed to preserve military primacy in the Asia-Pacific region.
Rather than using this ascendancy for expansionist purposes, the United States sought to maintain
regional stability through deterrence. For over five decades, its forces largely preserved command over the
global commons in the pursuit of this mission. Even to this day, the United States remains the region’s
most powerful military actor. But American military dominance is steadily eroding thanks to
the breakneck pace of China’s military modernization, and, as a result, the military
balance in the region is shifting. Since the mid-1990s, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) has
been in the process of creating a formidable anti-access and area denial (A2/AD) complex
in China’s near seas. As China continues to upgrade its A2/AD system, it presents a
serious and sustained challenge to the United States’ operational access to the region. In
wartime, some American forces may initially be prevented from operating in China’s near
seas. Even in peacetime, China’s A2/AD complex arguably attenuates the United States’
ability to defend its interests and its allies from potential Chinese coercion, and with it,
the American-organized system of deterrence and regional stability. The mounting challenge
presented by China’s military modernization has led the United States to review existing military
strategies and to conceptualize new ones. In the universe of possible strategies, the idea of a naval
blockade deserves greater scrutiny. By prosecuting a naval blockade, the United States would
leverage China’s intense dependence on foreign trade – particularly oil – to debilitate the
Chinese state. A carefully-organized blockade could thus serve as a powerful instrument of
American military power that contributes to overcoming the pressing challenge of
China’s A2/AD system. A blockade could also provide the United States with several
gradations of escalation control and be easily paired with alternate military strategies.
Even if a blockade is never executed, its viability would still impact
American and Chinese policies for deterrence reasons. The United States’
regional strategy is predicated on the belief that a favorable military balance deters
attempts to change the status quo by force, thus reassuring allies and upholding
strategic stability. The viability of a blockade influences this calculus, and can
accordingly affect American and Chinese actions – both military and non-military – that
are based on perceptions of it. If a naval blockade is a feasible strategy, it strengthens the
American system of deterrence and dilutes any potential attempts by China to coerce the
United States or its allies. Moreover, if a blockade’s viability can be clearly enunciated, it would
also enhance crisis stability and dampen the prospects of escalation due to
misunderstandings – on either side – about the regional balance of power. Yet despite the
importance of understanding the viability of a blockade, the existing literature on the subject is
remarkably sparse, circumscribed and inconclusive.4 While scholars of regional security affairs often
reference their disparate beliefs about the possibility of a blockade, no consensus exists around either its
strategic or operational viability. The few studies that have been undertaken are perspicacious and
refreshingly creative, but they are limited in either their scope or detail. To date, no one has yet carried
out a comprehensive public examination of a blockade’s prospects despite the striking implications of
such a study for the Asia-Pacific military balance, regional deterrence and stability, and American military
strategy. In part, a blockade strategy has been overlooked because economic warfare
strategies seem inherently misguided given the close commer- cial ties between China
and the United States. But if a serious conflict between the two nations erupted, then
their immediate security interests would quickly override their trade interdependence
and wreak enormous economic damage on both sides, regardless of whether a blockade were
employed.
Blockade K2 Winning China War
A blockade is key to win a war – they are trade reliant
Mirski, 13 – junior fellow in the South Asia Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International
Peace (Sean, “The Context, Conduct and Consequences of an American Naval Blockade of China,” Journal
of Strategic Studies, 12 Feb 2013, http://carnegieendowment.org/2013/02/12/stranglehold-contextconduct-and-consequences-of-american-naval-blockade-of-china/fowj)//eek
The Strategic Context of a Blockade China’s economy relies intensely on maritime trade,
especially with regards to oil imports. In keeping with its reputation as the ‘world’s workshop’,
China depends on imported raw materials to export finished goods. Trade dominates
China’s export-oriented economy, comprising 52.1 per cent of China’s GDP (of which 90 per cent is
seaborne).6 The People’s Republic is known for being the world’s largest exporter of merchandise goods
($1.6 trillion in 2010), but it is also the world’s second largest importer of merchandise goods ($1.4 trillion
in 2010) and the world’s third largest importer of natural resources ($330 billion in 2008).7 Most
strikingly, China’s energy security is closely tied to its reliance on imported oil. In 2011,
China purchased almost 60 per cent of its oil abroad – an astounding 5.7 million barrels per day – and it
then depended on maritime transport to bring 90 per cent of that oil home.8 The country is intensely
and irreplaceably reliant on oil in the industrial and transportation sectors, and will
become even more so in the foreseeable future.9 China’s Achilles’ heel may well be
imported oil. In the context of a Sino-American war, the United States could try to take
China’s greatest national strength – its export-oriented, booming economic growth
model – and transform it into a major military weakness. To do so, the United States
would implement a naval blockade of China that attempted to choke off most of China’s
maritime trade. Under the right conditions, the United States might be able to secure victory
by debilitating China’s economy severely enough to bring it to the negotiating table.11
An embargo is key to win a war – political will and domestic space
Mirski, 13 – junior fellow in the South Asia Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International
Peace (Sean, “The Context, Conduct and Consequences of an American Naval Blockade of China,” Journal
of Strategic Studies, 12 Feb 2013, http://carnegieendowment.org/2013/02/12/stranglehold-contextconduct-and-consequences-of-american-naval-blockade-of-china/fowj)//eek
However, if the United States perceived that its vital interests were at stake in a conflict,
then it would be willing to shoulder greater burdens and expend greater effort in order
to win it.12 In such an ‘extensive’ conflict, Washington may be willing to bear higher costs – including
the cost of resisting international pressure to immediately terminate the conflict – to the point where a
blockade would become an appropriate strategy. Equally importantly, the significance of the
interests at stake would reinforce the United States’ political will and give American
leaders the domestic political space necessary for prosecuting a longer- term conflict.
An embargo is key to win a war – political will and domestic space
Mirski, 13 – junior fellow in the South Asia Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International
Peace (Sean, “The Context, Conduct and Consequences of an American Naval Blockade of China,” Journal
of Strategic Studies, 12 Feb 2013, http://carnegieendowment.org/2013/02/12/stranglehold-contextconduct-and-consequences-of-american-naval-blockade-of-china/fowj)//eek
An American War of Exhaustion Given the presumed context of the conflict – especially the
improb- ability of decisive military victory – the United States would be forced to pursue an
overall ‘Fabian’ strategy as part of a war of exhaustion.14 The ultimate source of a
country’s military strength lies in its national power, which is rooted in its national
resources and performance.15 Thus, even if the United States completely routed China’s
forces on the battlefront, China could still indefinitely generate and project new forces from
the safety of its heartland. Hence, the United States would need to broaden its focus beyond just the
battlefield: it would have to realize that a war of exhaustion is not won on the battlefront per se;
instead, it ends only when one side’s overall national power can no longer sustain its war
effort. A blockade could be a powerful way of conducting a war of exhaustion because it
could directly strike at the sources of China’s national power. A blockade strategy would
also allow American forces to overcome the singular challenge posed by a SinoAmerican conflict: the United States would have to win a great power war without the
threat of invading Chinese territory, a sharp departure from past conflicts when states
would accelerate the collapse of their opponents’ ability and willingness to fight by
directly attacking their territory. Of course, a blockade strategy alone would be unlikely to provide
either the material or psychological clout necessary to induce Chinese capitulation, so the United States
would only use a blockade as part of a larger military strategy. But in conjunction with victories on the
battlefront, a blockade could wear China down more quickly and efficiently than a
battlefront strategy alone, which could only indirectly enervate the Chinese state. As part
of a war of exhaustion, a blockade strategy would help drive Beijing to the peace table through two
potential paths.16 First, it would weaken China’s ultimate ability to prevail in the military
conflict to the point where eventual defeat becomes certain and an extension of the
Chinese war effort is a needless waste of resources. Second, by diluting the cohesion of the
Chinese state, a blockade strategy would also attempt to raise the specter of other
threats graver to Beijing than a direct military loss, which could then compel China’s
leaders to sue for peace. For instance, as Beijing was forced to direct resources away from its internal
security apparatus, it may be confronted by the looming threat of a revolution or civil war, either of which
threatens the Chinese state more than does a declaration of military defeat.
I can’t really find a use for this
The basing system is messed up
Cooley and Nexon 13
(Alexander Cooley, Professor of Political Science at Bar- nard College in New York City, PhD advisor @
Columbia U, and faculty member of Columbia’s Harriman Institute and Saltzman Institute of War and
Peace Studies; and Daniel H. Nexon, Associate Professor in the Department of Government and the
School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University and former International Affairs Fellow @ U.S.
Department of Defense as a Council on Foreign Relations; 2013, American Political Science Association,
“The Empire Will Compensate You: The Structural Dynamics of the U.S. Overseas Basing Network”)
American military preeminence derives from a variety of economic, organizational, technological, and
political sources. Of these, political scientists have paid perhaps the least attention to the political
architecture that sustains its “command of the commons”: “the world-wide U.S. base structure and the
ability of U.S. diplomacy . . . to secure additional bases and overflight rights.”1 This neglect is unfortunate.
The U.S. basing net- work not only plays a critical role in American global force projection, but it also
enmeshes Washington in the domestic politics of its numerous base hosts, shapes bilat eral relations, and
sometimes becomes a flashpoint for ant-Americanism.2 Shifting strategic priorities and the cur- rent
pressure on U.S. defense budgets may lead to major transformations in the nature and distribution of the
basing network.3 In every region of the world—from East Asia to Latin America—the changing politics of
basing will have profound ramifications for global order and inter- national security.4 How should we
make sense of the world-wide political dynamics of the U.S. overseas basing network? Many ana- lysts
focus on specific basing arrangements. They acknowl- edge that developments in one part of the network
impact those elsewhere, but still treat each bilateral relationship as essentially distinct. Studies in a
diverse array of disci- plines, however, challenge this approach. They stress that anti-base and antimilitarist protest movements are becom- ing increasingly transnational in character and are thus starting
to link together the politics of different basing relationships.5 Those who analyze the shifting character of
anti-base political contention often work in a broader tradition that sees the world-wide basing network
as the central consti- tutive element of “American Empire.”6 Ellen Lutz, for example, observes that,
“Whether or not it recognizes itself as such, a country can be called an empire when its policies aim to
assert and maintain dominance over other regions” and notes that “each [imperial power] used military
bases to maintain some forms of rule over regions far from their center.”7 Scholars who make this claim
examine the social and political pressures that U.S. bases exert on host com- munities;8 they also
question the fundamental legitimacy of the U.S. overseas basing presence. Chalmers Johnson for
example, notes that “Perhaps the Romans did not find it strange to have their troops in Gaul, nor the
British in South Africa.” But, that “it is past time . . . for Americans to consider why we have created an
empire . . . and what the consequences of our imperial stance might be for the rest of the world and for
ourselves.”9 Indeed, Johnson argues that America’s basing relationships produce signif- icant political
“blowback” across its empire that threatens U.S. security. In broad terms, we agree that drawing an
analogy to “imperial orders” offers a useful analytical starting point for understanding certain features of
the U.S. basing net- work. Both involve a hierarchical core-periphery system in which subordinate
political units concede aspects of their sovereignty to a dominant polity under “particular, distinct
compacts.”10 And these compacts often prove polit- ically contentious. But the basing network also
deviates from imperial sys- tems in consequential ways. Washington seldom exercises rule over base
hosts; nor does it monopolize the external relations of members of the basing network. The overall
structure of the U.S. basing network looks like what John Ikenberry calls a “neo-imperial logic” that
“take[s] the shape of a global ‘hub and spoke’ system” based on “bilateral- ism, ‘special relationships’,
client states, and patronage- oriented foreign policy.”11 Within this structure, though, are arrangements
that more closely resemble “liberal” and “multilateral” hegemonic orders—such as those among the
United States and NATO members—where states retain their sovereignty but their relations are informed
by a com- mon security purpose, shared values, multilateral agree- ments, and coordinating mechanisms.
In this article, we examine the consequences of the hybrid character of the U.S. overseas basing network.
We implement a classic explanatory strategy of assessing real- world institutional arrangements by
focusing on how they involve similarities and differences with one or more ideal- typical form. We use
theoretical analysis of the organiza- tional logic of imperial orders as a benchmark for making sense of the
political dynamics of the basing network.12 In contrast, most analysis in security studies starts, albeit
implicitly, with ideal-typical accounts of anarchical orders.13 Recent work has examined variations in
forms of international hierarchy, but usually in the absence of well-developed account of the structure and
dynamics of empires associated with comparative and historical scholarship.14 The crux of our argument:
the hybrid character of the basing network risks producing many of the pathologies found in imperial
systems, but without the full range of benefits empires realize from their organizational logic. In fact,
contemporary globalization processes—such as enhanced global communications and opportunities for
transnational mobilization—exacerbate these patholo- gies. They render Washington more vulnerable to
credible threats of exit from host countries, coordinated resistance to aspects of U.S. basing policy, and
hypocrisy costs endemic to maintaining heterogeneous bargains with diverse base- hosting regimes.15
Associated processes that once took decades now play out over a few years. Our analysis addresses two
important themes in the study of contemporary world politics: international order and globalization.
Concerns with U.S. relative decline have led to a flood of analysis about the nature of the American-led
order and its likely fate. Much of this work focuses on very general aspects of order or the shifting
dispositions and capabilities of specific states. It tends to sidestep systematic analysis of the concrete
architecture of contemporary international order—such that associated with the U.S. overseas basing
network or the flow of international trade.16 This architecture plays a key role in shaping the terms of
power politics. Greater attention to it will also help us to understand the implications of novel features of
contemporary world politics—such as various processes associated with globalization—for inter- national
security. The article proceeds as follows: First, we assess the “empire of bases.” We develop our argument
by assessing how similarities and differences between imperial sys- tems and the U.S. basing network
account for observed dynamics in the history of the network. Second, we dis- cuss the impact of
contemporary globalization processes on these dynamics. Third, we illustrate with short cases from
negotiations in Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Iraq. We conclude with recommendations for U.S. basing
pol- icy. U.S. policymakers should avoid becoming politically dependent on any single host or even
referring diplomat- ically to facilities as “indispensible.” They should strive to adopt more standard
agreements, such as the NATO Status of Forces Agreement, and avoid binding them- selves to any
particular individual regime or autocrat. More broadly, in this globalized world, policymakers must adapt
to the growing hypocrisy costs incurred by pursu- ing evidently contradictory policies in the same region
with different governments.