Lay 1AC
Framing
The standard is maximizing expected wellbeing
Revisionary intuitionism is true and proves util.
[Yudkowsky, Eliezer Shlomo. (American writer on rationality, known for his
view that the invention of Artificial General Intelligence would pose an
immediate threat to the existence of humankind unless the AGI has effective
features built in for the specific purpose of making it harmless. Founder of
LessWrong.) “The ‘Intuitions’ Behind ‘Utilitarianism.’” LessWrong 2.0,
LessWrong, 28 Jan. 2008,
www.lesswrong.com/posts/r5MSQ83gtbjWRBDWJ/the-intuitions-behindutilitarianism.]
I haven't said much about metaethics - the nature of morality - because that has a forward dependency on a discussion of the Mind Projection Fallacy that I haven't gotten to
yet. I used to be very confused about metaethics. After my confusion finally cleared up, I did a postmortem on my previous thoughts. I found that my object-level moral
reasoning had been valuable and my meta-level moral reasoning had been worse than useless. And this appears to be a general syndrome - people do much better when
discussing whether torture is good or bad than when they discuss the meaning of "good" and "bad". Thus, I deem it prudent to keep moral discussions on the object level
wherever I possibly can. Occasionally people object to any discussion of morality on the grounds that morality doesn't exist, and in lieu of jumping over the forward dependency
to explain that "exist" is not the right term to use here, I generally say, "But what do you do anyway?" and take the discussion back down to the object level. Paul Gowder,
though, has pointed out that both the idea of choosing a googolplex dust specks in a googolplex eyes over 50 years of torture for one person, and the idea of "utilitarianism",
depend on "intuition". He says I've argued that the two are not compatible, but charges me with failing to argue for the utilitarian intuitions that I appeal to. Now "intuition" is
not how I would describe the computations that underlie human morality and distinguish us, as moralists, from an ideal philosopher of perfect emptiness and/or a rock. But I am
okay with using the word "intuition" as a term of art, bearing in mind that "intuition" in this sense is not to be contrasted to reason, but is, rather, the cognitive building block
the project of morality as a project of
renormalizing intuition. We have intuitions about things that seem desirable or undesirable, intuitions about actions that are right or wrong, intuitions
about how to resolve conflicting intuitions, intuitions about how to systematize specific intuitions into general principles. Delete all the intuitions, and you
aren't left with an ideal philosopher of perfect emptiness, you're left with a rock. Keep all your specific intuitions and refuse to build upon
the reflective ones, and you aren't left with an ideal philosopher of perfect spontaneity and genuineness, you're left with a grunting caveperson running in
circles, due to cyclical preferences and similar inconsistencies. "Intuition", as a term of art, is not a curse word when it comes to morality - there is nothing else to argue
out of which both long verbal arguments and fast perceptual arguments are constructed. I see
from. Even modus ponens is an "intuition" in this sense - it's just that modus ponens still seems like a good idea after being formalized, reflected on, extrapolated out to see if it
has sensible consequences, etcetera. So that is "intuition". However, Gowder did not say what he meant by "utilitarianism". Does utilitarianism say... That right actions are
strictly determined by good consequences? That praiseworthy actions depend on justifiable expectations of good consequences? That probabilities of consequences should
normatively be discounted by their probability, so that a 50% probability of something bad should weigh exactly half as much in our tradeoffs? That virtuous actions always
correspond to maximizing expected utility under some utility function? That two harmful events are worse than one? That two independent occurrences of a harm (not to the
same person, not interacting with each other) are exactly twice as bad as one? That for any two harms A and B, with A much worse than B, there exists some tiny probability
such that gambling on this probability of A is preferable to a certainty of B? If you say that I advocate something, or that my argument depends on something, and that it is
wrong, do please specify what this thingy is... anyway, I accept 3, 5, 6, and 7, but not 4; I am not sure about the phrasing of 1; and 2 is true, I guess, but phrased in a rather
solipsistic and selfish fashion: you should not worry about being praiseworthy. Now, what are the "intuitions" upon which my "utilitarianism" depends? This is a deepish sort of
topic, but I'll take a quick stab at it. First of all, it's not just that someone presented me with a list of statements like those above, and I decided which ones sounded
if you try to violate "utilitarianism", you run into paradoxes, contradictions, circular preferences, and other things
that aren't symptoms of moral wrongness so much as moral incoherence. After you think about moral problems for a while,
and also find new truths about the world, and even discover disturbing facts about how you yourself work, you often end up with different
moral opinions than when you started out. This does not quite define moral progress, but it is how we experience
moral progress. As part of my experienced moral progress, I've drawn a conceptual separation between questions of type Where should we go? and questions of
"intuitive". Among other things,
type How should we get there? (Could that be what Gowder means by saying I'm "utilitarian"?) The question of where a road goes - where it leads - you can answer by traveling
the road and finding out. If you have a false belief about where the road leads, this falsity can be destroyed by the truth in a very direct and straightforward manner. When it
comes to wanting to go to a particular place, this want is not entirely immune from the destructive powers of truth. You could go there and find that you regret it afterward
(which does not define moral error, but is how we experience moral error). But, even so, wanting to be in a particular place seems worth distinguishing from wanting to take a
particular road to a particular place. Our intuitions about where to go are arguable enough, but our intuitions about how to get there are frankly messed up. After the two
hundred and eighty-seventh research study showing that people will chop their own feet off if you frame the problem the wrong way, you start to distrust first impressions.
When you've read enough research on scope insensitivity - people will pay only 28% more to protect all 57 wilderness areas in Ontario than one area,
people will
pay the same amount to save 50,000 lives as 5,000 lives... that sort of thing... Well, the worst case of scope insensitivity I've ever
heard of was described here by Slovic: Other recent research shows similar results. Two Israeli psychologists asked people to contribute to a costly life-saving treatment. They
could offer that contribution to a group of eight sick children, or to an individual child selected from the group. The target amount needed to save the child (or children) was the
same in both cases. Contributions to individual group members far outweighed the contributions to the entire group. There's other research along similar lines, but I'm just
presenting one example, 'cause, y'know, eight examples would probably have less impact. If you know the general experimental paradigm, then the reason for the above
behavior is pretty obvious - focusing your attention on a single child creates more emotional arousal than trying to distribute attention around eight children simultaneously. So
people are willing to pay more to help one child than to help eight. Now,
you could look at this intuition, and think it was revealing
some kind of incredibly deep moral truth which shows that one child's good fortune is somehow devalued by the other children's good fortune. But what about
the billions of other children in the world? Why isn't it a bad idea to help this one child, when that causes the value of all the other children to go down? How can it be
Or you could look at
say: "The intuition is wrong: the brain can't successfully multiply by eight and get a larger quantity than it started
significantly better to have 1,329,342,410 happy children than 1,329,342,409, but then somewhat worse to have seven more at 1,329,342,417?
that and
with. But it ought to, normatively speaking." And once you realize that the brain can't multiply by eight, then the other cases of scope neglect stop seeming to reveal some
fundamental truth about 50,000 lives being worth just the same effort as 5,000 lives, or whatever. You don't get the impression you're looking at the revelation of a deep moral
truth about nonagglomerative utilities. It's just that the brain doesn't goddamn multiply. Quantities get thrown out the window. If you have $100 to spend, and you spend $20
each on each of 5 efforts to save 5,000 lives, you will do worse than if you spend $100 on a single effort to save 50,000 lives. Likewise if such choices are made by 10 different
people, rather than the same person. As soon as you start believing that it is better to save 50,000 lives than 25,000 lives, that simple preference of final destinations has
implications for the choice of paths, when you consider five different events that save 5,000 lives. (It is a general principle that Bayesians see no difference between the long-run
answer and the short-run answer; you never get two different answers from computing the same question two different ways. But the long run is a helpful intuition pump, so I
am talking about it anyway.) The aggregative valuation strategy of "shut up and multiply" arises from the simple preference to have more of something - to save as many lives as
possible - when you have to describe general principles for choosing more than once, acting more than once, planning at more than one time. Aggregation also arises from
claiming that the more complex than I know. But that's for one event. When it comes to multiplying by quantities and probabilities, complication is to be avoided - at least if you
When you've reflected on enough intuitions, and corrected enough absurdities, you
see a common denominator, a meta-principle at work, which one might phrase as "Shut up and
multiply." Where music is concerned, I care about the journey. When lives are at stake, I shut up and multiply. It is more important that lives be saved, than that we
care more about the destination than the journey.
start to
conform to any particular ritual in saving them. And the optimal path to that destination is governed by laws that are simple, because they are math. And that's why I'm a
utilitarian - at least when I am doing something that is overwhelmingly more important than my own feelings about it - which is most of the time, because there are not many
utilitarians, and many things left undone.
Personal identity is nonexistent-empirics prove
[Parfit, Derek. (British philosopher who specialised in personal identity,
rationality, and ethics. He is widely considered one of the most important and
influential moral philosophers of the late 20th and early 21st
centuries.) Reasons and Persons. Oxford University Press, 1984.] (bracketed for
gendered language)
Human beings have a lower brain and two upper
hemispheres, which are connected by a bundle of fibres. In treating a few people with severe epilepsy, surgeons have cut these
Some recent medical cases provide striking evidence in favour of the Reductionist View.
fibres. The aim was to reduce the severity of epileptic fits, by confining their causes to a single hemisphere. This aim was achieved. But the operations had another unintended
consequence. The effect, in the words of one surgeon, was the creation of 'two separate spheres of consciousness'. 33 This effect was revealed by various psychological tests.
These made use of two facts. We control our right arms with our left hemispheres, and vice versa. And what is in the right halves of our visual fields we see with our left
When someone's hemispheres have been disconnected, psychologists can thus
present to this person two different written questions in the two halves of [their] visual field, and can
receive two different answers written by this person's two hands.
hemispheres, and vice versa.
The ROB is to evaluate the simulated consequences of the aff
[Alan Coverstone (masters in communication from Wake Forest, longtime
debate coach), “Acting on Activism: Realizing the vision of debate with prosocial impact,” Paper presented at the National Communication Association
Annual Conference, 11/17/05]
An important concern emerges when Mitchell describes reflexive fiat as a contest strategy capable of eschewing the power to directly control external actors (1998b, p. 20).
Describing debates about what our government should do as attempts to control outside actors is debilitating and disempowering.
Control of the US
government is exactly what an active, participatory citizenry is supposed to be all about. After all, if democracy means anything, it means
that citizens not only have the right, they also bear the obligation to discuss and debate what the government should
be doing. Absent that discussion and debate, much of the motivation for personal political activism is also lost. Those who have coopted Mitchell’s argument for individual advocacy often quickly respond that nothing we do in a debate round can actually change government policy, and unfortunately, an
entire generation of debaters has now swallowed this assertion as an article of faith. The best most will muster is, Of course not, but you don’t either! The assertion that nothing
we do in debate has any impact on government policy is one that carries the potential to undermine Mitchell’s entire project. If there is nothing we can do in a debate round to
change government policy, then we are left with precious little in the way of pro-social options for addressing problems we face. At best, we can pursue some Pilot-like hand
washing that can purify us as individuals through quixotic activism but offer little to society as a whole. It is very important to note that Mitchell (1998b) tries carefully to limit
and bound his notion of reflexive fiat by maintaining that because it views fiat as a concrete course of action, it is bounded by the limits of pragmatism (p. 20). Pursued properly,
the debates that Mitchell would like to see are those in which the relative efficacy of concrete political strategies for pro-social change is debated. In a few noteworthy
examples, this approach has been employed successfully, and I must say that I have thoroughly enjoyed judging and coaching those debates. The students in my program have
learned to stretch their understanding of their role in the political process because of the experience. Therefore, those who say I am opposed to Mitchell’s goals here should
take care at such a blanket assertion. However, contest debate teaches students to combine personal experience with the language of political power. Powerful personal
narratives unconnected to political power are regularly co-opted by those who do learn the language of power. One need look no further than the annual state of the Union
policy contest
debates encourage promotes active learning of the vocabulary and levers of power in America.
Address where personal story after personal story is used to support the political agenda of those in power. The so-called role-playing that public
Imagining the ability to use our own arguments to influence government action is one of the great virtues of academic debate. Gerald Graff (2003) analyzed the decline of
argumentation in academic discourse and found a source of student antipathy to public argument in an interesting place. m up against their aversion to the role of public
spokesperson that formal writing presupposes. It’s as if such students can’t imagine any rewards for being a public actor or even imagining themselves in such a role. This lack of
interest in the public sphere may in turn reflect a loss of confidence in the possibility that the arguments we make in public will have an effect on the world. Today’s students’
lack of faith in the power of persuasion reflects the waning of the ideal of civic participation that led educators for centuries to place rhetorical and argumentative training at the
center of the school and college curriculum. (Graff, 2003, p. 57) The power to imagine public advocacy that actually makes a difference is one of the great virtues of the
Simulation of success in the public realm is far more
empowering to students than completely abandoning all notions of personal power in the face of
traditional notion of fiat that critics deride as mere simulation.
governmental hegemony by teaching students that nothing they can do in a contest debate can ever make any difference in public policy. Contest debating is well suited to
rewarding public activism if it stops accepting as an article of faith that personal agency is somehow undermined by the so-called role playing in debate. Debate is role-playing
whether we imagine government action or imagine individual action. Imagining myself starting a socialist revolution in America is no less of a fantasy than imagining myself
making a difference on Capitol Hill. Furthermore, both fantasies influenced my personal and political development virtually ensuring a life of active, pro-social, political
participation. Neither fantasy reduced the likelihood that I would spend my life trying to make the difference I imagined. One fantasy actually does make a greater difference:
the one that speaks the language of political power. The other fantasy disables action by making one a laughingstock to those who wield the language of power. Fantasy
motivates and role-playing trains through visualization. Until we can imagine it, we cannot really do it. Role-playing without question teaches students to be comfortable with
the language of power, and that language paves the way for genuine and effective political activism. Debates over the relative efficacy of political strategies for pro-social change
must confront governmental power at some point. There is a fallacy in arguing that movements represent a better political strategy than voting and person-to-person advocacy.
Sure, a full-scale movement would be better than the limited voice I have as a participating citizen going from door to door in a campaign, but so would full-scale government
action. Unfortunately, the gap between my individual decision to pursue movement politics and the emergence of a full-scale movement is at least as great as the gap between
my vote and democratic change. They both represent utopian fiat. Invocation of Mitchell to support utopian movement fiat is simply not supported by his work, and too often,
such invocation discourages the concrete actions he argues for in favor of the personal rejectionism that under girds the political cynicism that is a fundamental cause of voter
and participatory abstention in America today.
Definition of illiberal democracy
[Zakaria, Fareed. (Fareed Rafiq Zakaria is an Indian-American journalist, political
scientist and author. He is the host of CNN's Fareed Zakaria GPS and writes a
weekly column for The Washington Post. He has been a columnist for
Newsweek, editor of Newsweek Intern. He also coined the term “illiberal
democracy.”)“The Rise of Illiberal Democracy.” Foreign Affairs, vol. 76, no. 6,
1997, pp. 22–43., doi:10.2307/20048274.] dy
The American diplomat Richard Holbrooke pondered a problem on the eve of the September 1996 elections in Bosnia, which were meant to restore civic life to that ravaged
country. "Suppose the election was declared free and fair," he said, and those elected are "racists, fascists, separatists, who are publicly opposed to [peace and reintegration].
Democratically elected regimes, often ones
that have been reelected or reaffirmed through referenda, are routinely ignoring constitutional limits on their power
and depriving their citizens of basic rights and freedoms. From Peru to the Palestinian Authority, from Sierra Leone to Slovakia, from
That is the dilemma." Indeed it is, not just in the former Yugoslavia, but increasingly around the world.
Pakistan to the Philip pines, we see the rise of a disturbing phenomenon in international life? illiberal democracy.
Plantext:
Resolved: In an illiberal democracy, the public’s right to know
ought to be valued above the right to privacy of candidates for
public office.
Contention: The aff takes down illiberal
democracy.
Corruption is a backbone of illiberal democracies: Hungary proves.
[Freedom House. (U.S.-based 501 U.S. government-funded non-governmental
organization that conducts research and advocacy on democracy, political
freedom, and human rights. )“Modern Authoritarianism: Illiberal
Democracies.” Modern Authoritarianism: Illiberal Democracies | Freedom
House, Freedom House, 10 July 2017, freedomhouse.org/report/modernauthoritarianism-illiberal-democracies.]dy
Perhaps the more far-reaching measures introduced under Orban have been in
the economic sphere. Since 2010, Hungary has evolved into a crony capitalist state par
excellence. But unlike in outright kleptocracies such as Russia, where the
regime itself is organized around the plunder of public wealth by the ruling
clique, Orbán has used state laws and procurement contracts to create a wealthy Fideszaffiliated business constituency that can finance political campaigns, reward party
supporters, and operate friendly media outlets. The enrichment of cronies is less an
objective in itself than a means of fortifying the dominant political party against any
future challenge from the opposition. While Orbán is highly unpopular in
European liberal circles, he has gained a following among conservatives in both
Europe and the United States. At a 2015 congressional subcommittee hearing in
Washington, one Republican legislator after another defended the Fidesz
government, often in ways that demonstrated blatant ignorance of political
conditions in Budapest.10 Conservatives praise Orbán for his commitment to
traditional values and decisive leadership, but they ignore the course he has set
for the economy. Since taking power in 2010, the prime minister has violated
practically every principle of the free market and prudent economic
stewardship. Were Hungary a developing state in Latin America or Africa, donor
governments would likely have imposed special conditions on foreign
assistance given the overt acts of corruption and cronyism that Fidesz has
embraced as a matter of public policy. This includes a pattern of awarding government
contracts to businesses with Fidesz ties, the adoption of special laws to benefit Fidesz
supporters in the business community, the use of punitive taxation against foreign-owned
corporations, tax concessions for corporations controlled by Fidesz loyalists, and the granting of
control over nationalized sectors of the economy to Fidesz supporters.
Right to know combats corruption
[Transparency International. (international non-governmental organization
which is based in Berlin, Germany, and was founded in 1993. Its nonprofit
purpose is to take action to combat global corruption with civil societal anticorruption measures and to prevent criminal activities arising from corruption.)
“Using the Right to Information as an Anti-Corruption Tool” Transparency
International, 2006, pp. 1–22.]
The right of citizens to know what governments, international organizations and private
corporations are doing, and how public resources are allocated, directly reflects anticorruption concerns. Corruption flourishes in darkness and so any progress towards opening
governments and intergovernmental organizations to public scrutiny is likely to advance anticorruption efforts.
Advantage 1: EU
Illiberal democracy is spreading in Europe.
[Krastev, Ivan. “Eastern Europe's Illiberal Revolution.” Foreign Affairs, Foreign
Affairs Magazine, 12 July 2018, www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/hungary/201804-16/eastern-europes-illiberal-revolution.]
Yet beneath these differences lie telling commonalities. Across eastern Europe, a
new illiberal consensus is emerging, marked by xenophobic nationalism and supported,
somewhat unexpectedly, by young people who came of age after the demise of
communism. If the liberals who dominated in the 1990s were preoccupied with
the rights of ethnic, religious, and sexual minorities, this new consensus is about the
rights of the majority.
Illiberal democracies in the EU have been hostile to the system, which renders
it more unstable.
[Morillas [et al], Pol, and Kiera Hepford. “Illiberal Democracies in the EU: The
Visegrad Group and the Risk of Disintegration.” Barcelona Centre for
International Affairs, Jan. 2017.]
Known as the Visegrad Group, or V4, the alliance of the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and
Slovakia was formed in 1993, with all countries accessing the European Union nearly a decade
later, in 2004. In recent years, these four countries have become an area of increasing political
concern and analysis, as their leaders have moved towards a more Eurosceptic stance, widening
the so-called east-west divide in the EU. The V4 countries, particularly Poland and Hungary,
have largely shifted to self-described “illiberal democracies” that mark a turn away from
political liberalism, with some countries consolidating extraordinary government prerogatives
and limiting constitutional provisions that once nurtured an environment promoting the rule of
law and a free and open society. These countries’ disillusionment over the handling of recent
crises, most notably the refugee crisis, has created a backlash in which the V4 is challenging
the decisions made in Brussels while at the same time still benefiting greatly from EU
membership, particularly through structural and cohesion funds.
EU collapse will cause a massive hit to the European economy.
[Buiter, Willem. “The Terrible Consequences of a Eurozone Collapse.” Financial
Times, Financial Times, 7 Dec. 2011, www.ft.com/content/6cf8ce18-2042-11e19878-00144feabdc0.]
What happens if the euro collapses? A euro area breakup, even a partial one involving the exit
of one or more fiscally and competitively weak countries, would be chaotic. A full or
comprehensive break-up, with the euro area splintering into a Greater Deutschmark zone and
about 10 national currencies would create pandemonium. It would not be a planned, orderly,
gradual unwinding of existing political, economic and legal commitments. Exit, partial or full,
would likely be precipitated by disorderly sovereign defaults in the fiscally and competitively
weak member states, whose currencies would weaken dramatically and whose banks would
fail. If Spain and Italy were to exit, there would be a collapse of systemically important financial
institutions throughout the European Union and North America and years of global depression.
Consider the exit of a fiscally and competitively weak country, such as Greece– an event to
which I assign a probability of about 20-25 per cent. Most contracts, including bank deposits,
sovereign debt, pensions and wages would be redenominated in new Drachma and a sharp
devaluation, say 65 per cent, of the new currency would follow. As soon as an exit was
anticipated, depositors would flee Greek banks and all new lending governed by Greek law
would effectively cease. Even before the exit, the sovereign and the banking system would fail
because of a lack of funding. Following the exit, contracts and financial instruments written
under foreign law would likely remain euro-denominated. Balance sheets would become
unbalanced and widespread default, insolvency and bankruptcy would result. Greek output
would collapse.
This would spill over to the global economy, owing to the importance of the
economies of other EU members. Ripple effects from this will hit the US
[Kern, Soern. “What Would a Euro Collapse Mean for the United States?” GEES,
27 July 2010, www.gees.org/articulos/what-would-a-euro-collapse-mean-for-the-unitedstates.]
In assessing the effects of a potential collapse of the euro, timing is everything. A sudden
disintegration of the euro due to financial panic on international markets would almost
certainly increase the risk of financial contagion spreading to the United States, especially in
light of America’s $12 trillion debt load. In the ensuing turmoil, American banks could stand to
face billions or possibly trillions of dollars in losses on their credit exposure to Europe, and thus
call into question the solvency of the entire American financial system. At a very minimum,
economic and financial chaos in Europe would severely disrupt American exports to Europe, and
thus slow the economic recovery in the United States.
Hits to the US economy lead to nuclear war.
[Foster, Dennis. “Would President Trump Go To War If Domestic Woes
Occur?” In Homeland Security, December 19, 2016,
inhomelandsecurity.com/would-president-trump-go-to-war-to-divertattention-from-problems-at-home.]
If the U.S. economy tanks, should we expect Donald Trump to engage in a diversionary war?
Since the age of Machiavelli, analysts have expected world leaders to launch international
conflicts to deflect popular attention away from problems at home. By stirring up feelings of
patriotism, leaders might escape the political costs of scandal, unpopularity — or a poorly
performing economy. One often-cited example of diversionary war in modern times is
Argentina’s 1982 invasion of the Falklands, which several (though not all) political scientists
attribute to the junta’s desire to divert the people’s attention from a disastrous economy. In a
2014 article, Jonathan Keller and I argued that whether U.S. presidents engage in diversionary
conflicts depends in part on their psychological traits — how they frame the world, process
information and develop plans of action. Certain traits predispose leaders to more belligerent
behavior. Do words translate into foreign policy action? One way to identify these traits is
content analyses of leaders’ rhetoric. The more leaders use certain types of verbal constructs,
the more likely they are to possess traits that lead them to use military force. For one,
conceptually simplistic leaders view the world in “black and white” terms; they develop
unsophisticated solutions to problems and are largely insensitive to risks. Similarly, distrustful
leaders tend to exaggerate threats and rely on aggression to deal with threats. Distrustful
leaders typically favor military action and are confident in their ability to wield it effectively.
Thus, when faced with politically damaging problems that are hard to solve — such as a faltering
economy — leaders who are both distrustful and simplistic are less likely to put together
complex, direct responses. Instead, they develop simplistic but risky “solutions” that divert
popular attention from the problem, utilizing the tools with which they are most comfortable
and confident (military force). Based on our analysis of the rhetoric of previous U.S. presidents,
we found that presidents whose language appeared more simplistic and distrustful, such as
Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower and George W. Bush, were more likely to use force abroad in
times of rising inflation and unemployment. By contrast, John F. Kennedy and Bill Clinton, whose
rhetoric pegged them as more complex and trusting, were less likely to do so. What about
Donald Trump? Since Donald Trump’s election, many commentators have expressed concern
about how he will react to new challenges and whether he might make quick recourse to
military action. For example, the Guardian’s George Monbiot has argued that political realities
will stymie Trump’s agenda, especially his promises regarding the economy. Then, rather than
risk disappointing his base, Trump might try to rally public opinion to his side via military action.
I sampled Trump’s campaign rhetoric, analyzing 71,446 words across 24 events from January
2015 to December 2016. Using a program for measuring leadership traits in rhetoric, I estimated
what Trump’s words may tell us about his level of distrust and conceptual complexity. The graph
below shows Trump’s level of distrust compared to previous presidents. As a candidate, Trump
also scored second-lowest among presidents in conceptual complexity. Compared to earlier
presidents, he used more words and phrases that indicate less willingness to see multiple
dimensions or ambiguities in the decision-making environment. These include words and
phrases like “absolutely,” “greatest” and “without a doubt.”A possible implication for military
action I took these data on Trump and plugged them into the statistical model that we
developed to predict major uses of force by the United States from 1953 to 2000. For a
president of average distrust and conceptual complexity, an economic downturn only weakly
predicts an increase in the use of force. But the model would predict that a president with
Trump’s numbers would respond to even a minor economic downturn with an increase in the
use of force. For example, were the misery index (aggregate inflation and unemployment) equal
to 12 — about where it stood in October 2011 — the model predicts a president with Trump’s
psychological traits would initiate more than one major conflict per quarter. Of course,
predictions from such a model come with a lot of uncertainty. By necessity, any measures of a
president’s traits are imperfect. And we do not know whether there will be an economic
downturn. Moreover, campaigning is not governing, and the responsibilities of the Oval Office
might moderate Donald Trump. The psychologist Philip Tetlock has found that presidents often
become more conceptually complex once they enter office. Nevertheless, this analysis suggests
some cause for concern about the international ramifications of an economic downturn with a
President Trump in the White House.
Advantage 2: Turkey
Erdogan’s actions are increasing tensions in the Middle East significantly
[Jansen, Micheal. “Erdogan Re-Election Threatens Further Instability in Middle
East.” The Irish Times, The Irish Times, 28 June 2018,
www.irishtimes.com/opinion/erdogan-re-election-threatens-further-instabilityin-middle-east-1.3545803.]
The re-election of Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan to a new five-year term in office
poses a serious threat to the stability of the Middle East. Having won the top job and a
majority in the national assembly, Erdogan is determined to not only change Turkey from a
parliamentary to a presidential system of governance but also pursue transformative domestic
and regional agendas. He seeks to turn Turkey into a faith-based state and extend its regional
reach and influence through military means and export of the Salafi fundamentalist brand of
Islam. His dream is for Turkey to reclaim its Ottoman politico-military-religious heritage with
himself as sultan. He intends to accomplish this project by 2023, the centenary of the founding
of modern Turkey by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. Ironically, Ataturk was a militant secularist who
erased the country’s Ottoman past and relinquished Ottoman possessions. He could turn over in
his grave if Erdogan achieves his vision. In 2003, soon after Erdogan’s Justice and Development
Party took power and he became prime minister, Ankara adopted a policy of “zero problems
with neighbours” and cultivated good relations with Syria, Iran, Iraq, Iraq’s Kurdish region and
Israel. This policy, however, clashed with Erdogan’s missionary Ottoman vision to which he gives
precedence. “Zero problems” faltered in 2009 when Turkey criticised Tehran for cracking down
on protests against the fraudulent election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. In 2010 Ankara
condemned ally Israel when its naval commandos stormed a Turkish ferry carrying activists
bound for Gaza, killing 10. In 2014, Erdogan castigated Israel’s war on Gaza and adopted the
Palestinian cause as a means of courting Arab public opinion and securing for Turkey a role in
negotiations between Palestinians and Israelis. Destructive action He followed up verbal
interventions with destructive action on the ground, creating problems with all Turkey’s
neighbours. He has every intention of continuing on this destructive course. Since 2011,
Erdogan has supported Syrian rebels and foreign jihadis seeking to oust Syria’s government and
occupied towns in the north of that country. The Turkish army has deployed a surrogate force
of largely jihadi fighters in Turkish-held areas along the Syrian-Turkish border and in Syria’s
northwestern Idlib province. Erdogan claims he seeks to prevent Syrian Kurds from connecting
with rebellious Turkish Kurds in the southeast of his country but he is, in fact, creating Turkishprotected jihadi bases in Syria, ensuring the survival of extremists, using them to strike
outside these bases, and giving them opportunities to migrate. He is determined to reclaim
former Ottoman possessions in both Syria and Iraq. His efforts in Syria are likely to risk clashes
with Moscow and Tehran which are fighting to restore Damascus’s sovereignty over the entire
country and could lead to conflict with Baghdad’s ally Iran and, perhaps, the United States in
Iraq.
Middle Eastern conflict will go global and nuclear
[Primakov, Yevgeny. “Russia in Global Affairs.” Yevgeny Primakov "The
Fundamental Conflict. " / Russia in Global Affairs. Foreign Policy Research
Foundation, 2009, eng.globalaffairs.ru/number/n_13593.]
The Middle East conflict is unparalleled in terms of its potential for spreading globally. During
the Cold War, amid which the Arab-Israeli conflict evolved, the two opposing superpowers
directly supported the conflicting parties: the Soviet Union supported Arab countries, while the
United States supported Israel. On the one hand, the bipolar world order which existed at that
time objectively played in favor of the escalation of the Middle East conflict into a global
confrontation. On the other hand, the Soviet Union and the United States were not interested in
such developments and they managed to keep the situation under control. The behavior of both
superpowers in the course of all the wars in the Middle East proves that. In 1956, during the
Anglo-French-Israeli military invasion of Egypt (which followed Cairo’s decision to nationalize the
Suez Canal Company) the United States – contrary to the widespread belief in various countries,
including Russia – not only refrained from supporting its allies but insistently pressed – along
with the Soviet Union – for the cessation of the armed action. Washington feared that the
tripartite aggression would undermine the positions of the West in the Arab world and would
result in a direct clash with the Soviet Union. Fears that hostilities in the Middle East might
acquire a global dimension could materialize also during the Six-Day War of 1967. On its eve,
Moscow and Washington urged each other to cool down their “clients.” When the war began,
both superpowers assured each other that they did not intend to get involved in the crisis
militarily and that that they would make efforts at the United Nations to negotiate terms for a
ceasefire. On July 5, the Chairman of the Soviet Government, Alexei Kosygin, who was
authorized by the Politburo to conduct negotiations on behalf of the Soviet leadership, for the
first time ever used a hot line for this purpose. After the USS Liberty was attacked by Israeli
forces, which later claimed the attack was a case of mistaken identity, U.S. President Lyndon
Johnson immediately notified Kosygin that the movement of the U.S. Navy in the Mediterranean
Sea was only intended to help the crew of the attacked ship and to investigate the incident. The
situation repeated itself during the hostilities of October 1973. Russian publications of those
years argued that it was the Soviet Union that prevented U.S. military involvement in those
events. In contrast, many U.S. authors claimed that a U.S. reaction thwarted Soviet plans to send
troops to the Middle East. Neither statement is true. The atmosphere was really quite tense.
Sentiments both in Washington and Moscow were in favor of interference, yet both capitals
were far from taking real action. When U.S. troops were put on high alert, Henry Kissinger
assured Soviet Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin that this was done largely for domestic
considerations and should not be seen by Moscow as a hostile act. In a private conversation
with Dobrynin, President Richard Nixon said the same, adding that he might have overreacted
but that this had been done amidst a hostile campaign against him over Watergate. Meanwhile,
Kosygin and Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko at a Politburo meeting in Moscow strongly
rejected a proposal by Defense Minister Marshal Andrei Grechko to “demonstrate” Soviet
military presence in Egypt in response to Israel’s refusal to comply with a UN Security Council
resolution. Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev took the side of Kosygin and Gromyko, saying that he
was against any Soviet involvement in the conflict. The above suggests an unequivocal
conclusion that control by the superpowers in the bipolar world did not allow the Middle East
conflict to escalate into a global confrontation. After the end of the Cold War, some scholars
and political observers concluded that a real threat of the Arab-Israeli conflict going beyond
regional frameworks ceased to exist. However, in the 21st century this conclusion no longer
conforms to the reality. The U.S. military operation in Iraq has changed the balance of forces in
the Middle East. The disappearance of the Iraqi counterbalance has brought Iran to the fore as a
regional power claiming a direct role in various Middle East processes. I do not belong to those
who believe that the Iranian leadership has already made a political decision to create nuclear
weapons of its own. Yet Tehran seems to have set itself the goal of achieving a technological
level that would let it make such a decision (the “Japanese model”) under unfavorable
circumstances. Israel already possesses nuclear weapons and delivery vehicles. In such
circumstances, the absence of a Middle East settlement opens a dangerous prospect of a
nuclear collision in the region, which would have catastrophic consequences for the whole
world. The transition to a multipolar world has objectively strengthened the role of states and
organizations that are directly involved in regional conflicts, which increases the latter’s danger
and reduces the possibility of controlling them. This refers, above all, to the Middle East
conflict. The coming of Barack Obama to the presidency has allayed fears that the United States
could deliver a preventive strike against Iran (under George W. Bush, it was one of the most
discussed topics in the United States). However, fears have increased that such a strike can be
launched by Israel, which would have unpredictable consequences for the region and beyond. It
seems that President Obama’s position does not completely rule out such a possibility.
Underview
Spec good: Not specifying means that we have a vague policy that doesn’t
target anything and is really wishy washy, which is bad based on the ROB. Spec
also prevents infinite PICs, which rob me of offense, which kills fairness. Spec
also is good because we debate nuances of the topic and not a bunch of surface
level arguments; we go deeper into the topic, which is good for education.
Semantics bad: you need context to make words make sense. You can’t argue
that you should win because a word’s dictionary definition doesn’t 100% match
up with the way I used it; context creates meaning as a whole.
Aff gets 1AR theory: Checks against infinite abuse.
Aff gets RVIS: Reciprocity: neg has T and theory, aff only has theory.
Neg doesn’t get RVIs: Neg can collapse on theory for 6 minutes; 6:3 timeskew
maks 2ar impossible in this circumstance.