R2 HOT NEG OS
1NC
OFF
1NC --- OFF
‘In the area’ means all of the activities
Law Insider, No Date, "In the area Definition," Law Insider,
https://www.lawinsider.com/dictionary/in-the-area//jc
In the area means all of the activities. Examples of In the area in a sentence In the area of sustainability, Raiffeisen KAG also
attends so-called “stakeholder forums” which provide an excellent platform for a dialogue with stakeholders such as suppliers, clients,
employees, representatives of authorities and other investors. In the area of business dialogues, Raiffeisen KAG distinguishes between proactive and reactive engagement. In the area between roadways of a divided highway, including crossovers.
Violation---The AFF does not cooperate over the entire area of cybersecurity.
Prefer it---Allowing the AFF to cooperate over miniscule parts of each of the three
topic areas exponentially multiplies the number of topical AF and makes quality neg
ground impossible because the AFF is indistinct from the status quo
1NC --- OFF
NATO’s endless securitization justifies its very existence---their threat projection
situates the Global South as an object for colonization which makes war inevitable
Schlag 17 [Gabi Schlag, Teaching Associate and Research Fellow, Professorship International Security
Policy and Conflict Research, Institute for International Politics, Helmut Schmidt University Hamburg,
PhD Goethe University Frankfurt, “Re-constituting NATO: Foundational Narratives of Transatlantic
Security Cooperation in the 1950s and 1990s,” Chapter 8, Uses of 'the West': Security and the Politics of
Order, eds. Gunther Hellmann & Benjamin Herborth, Cambridge University Press, 2017, ISBN 978-1-10716849-7, pp.156-178 Accessed 8/3/2022] CSUF JmB//recut by smarx, AZG]
One could imagine that the saying ‘There is life in an old dog yet’ fits quite well for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Many serious
challenges threatened its cohesion, such as the Suez crisis in 1956, the disputes over the so-called double track-decision in 1979, and the
dissolution of the Warsaw Pact in 1993. While the history of the alliance has often been told as a history of crises (e.g. Stanley Hoffman, 1981),
neither internal disputes over the war in Iraq nor the disappearance of a ‘communist threat’ have led to a breakup of NATO. The transatlantic alliance lives on. It has even expanded in size and tasks after the end of the Cold War. Recent tensions
between ‘the West’ and Russia over Crimea and Ukraine make clear that the Atlantic alliance is anything but dead. As Stephen Walt put it:
‘NATO owes Putin a big thank-you’ (Walt, 2014). In
International Relations (IR), debates on the Atlantic alliance have
witnessed ups and downs as well. While realist, liberal, and institutionalist scholars strove to explain the
existence and persistence of NATO by referring either to an alliance against threat (Walt, 1990, 1997), an
alliance of democracies (Risse-Kappen, 1995, Risse, 1996), or a security manager (Wallander, 2000), other approaches
have advocated a more critical and reflective understanding of the discourses and practices which
constitute(d) the alliance in the first place (Klein, 1990; Bially Mattern, 2005; Behnke, 2013; Hellmann, 2006; Jackson 2003;
Neumann and Williams, 2000; Pouliot, 2010; Adler, 2008). NATO’s lasting ability to overcome internal and external
challenges to its cohesion, I will argue, directs our attention exactly to the discursive practices which enabled a
continuous reconstitution of a Western security community. By re-constitution I refer to the Janus-faced
process of activating and transforming foundational narratives which justify the existence and continuity
of NATO. This process commonly includes constructions of threats and a sense of a shared identity which
are both ingrained in symbolic orders and mobilized by articulations of a common security strategy. Of
further interest, therefore, is how the allies answered the question why NATO should exist , how they
invented and used a common notion of identity, interests, and threats in order to justify a deep and lasting pattern
of military cooperation between North America and (Western) European states. Such a critical constructivist
approach directs our attention to the political dynamics whereby a Western security community is
invented in the first place instead of already presuming it as taken for granted (cf. Tilly, 1998, Bartelson, 2009,
Herborth, 2009). It emphasizes that the practical usage of meaning imbues an act of political power with quite tremendous institutional
consequences. Invented as a geopolitical community of solidarity in the early 1950s with a clear distinction of friends and enemies, NATO
symbolized more than a classical military alliance. Compared to the ‘pledge’ of collective defense in Article 5 of the North
Atlantic Treaty, Article 4 emphasized that the allies ‘will consult together whenever . . . the territorial integrity, political
independence or security of any of the Parties is threatened’. Exactly this invocation of a political community made NATO’s
evolution possible and enabled a smooth reorientation towards out-of-area missions and Eastern
enlargement in the 1990s. This chapter continues with a brief conceptual discussion of the relationship between identity and security
by focusing on critical constructivist approaches in IR. In the second section I turn to NATO’s strategic discourse in the late 1940s/early 1950s
and the 1990s. In these two periods, the Atlantic alliance seemed to be tenuous, but its (continued) existence could be restored by the
declaration of a common strategic concept. In conclusion I show how these discursive foundations of a transatlantic alliance relate to the
overall theme of this volume, the (re-)constitution of ‘the West’. Foundational Narratives: Securing a Western Community In the last twenty
years, a turn to discourses and practices has altered the field of security studies in many ways (Buzan and Hansen, 2009). While security studies
were traditionally dominated by paradigmatic approaches many scholars have problematized such a rigid fixation on grand theories and a
positivist epistemology. In particular the liberal accounts on NATO’s taken-for-granted identity and its normative attractiveness as a democratic
alliance, as well as realist and institutionalist explanations of NATO’s likely or unlikely continuity (Risse-Kappen, 1995, 1996; Wallander 2000,
Waltz, 1990), were targeted as expressions of a rationalist fixation on causation and macro-structural phenomena (Hellmann, 2006; Sjursen,
2004; Jackson, 2003).
Identities, interests, and threats, however, neither signify distinct causes and effects nor
do they describe static objects one could easily ‘observe’; they are constructed inter-subjectively and
they are only meaningful in the sense that people make use of references to ‘identities’, ‘interests’, and
‘threats’ in specific ways (Weldes et al., 1998, p. 13; Wæver 1995, p. 55; Jackson, 2006, chapter 2; Bially Mattern, 2005, p. 92). For
critical constructivists, therefore, all our knowledge about social facts is dependent on communicative processes where people produce
meaning and knowledge through the practical usage of language (Guzzini, 2005, p. 498). Critical constructivist and poststructuralist approaches
are interested, in particular, in understanding these discursive practices – i.e. how people make sense of their worlds, how they create and
mobilize a common identity or threat assessment and how such references unfold institutional consequences. While some critics have argued
that constructivists might underestimate material conditions of power, a critical approach takes power quite seriously (Guzzini, 2005; Bially
Mattern, 2006; Barnett and Duvall, 2000). Despite a material fixation on capabilities, the concept of power in critical constructivism indicates
‘the realm of political action and its justification’ (Guzzini, 2005, p. 508), including the institutional consequences made possible by these acts.
Power, then, is part of distinct discourses understood as symbolic orders which constrain and enable what can be meaningfully said (Doty,
1996, p. 6; Hansen, 2006, p. 19). While discourse approaches pose the most forceful challenge to more traditional approaches in security
studies, scholars occasionally overemphasize the macro-structural level of symbolic orders in general and the disciplinary power of discourses in
particular. However, it is always the practical invocation, mobilization, and transformation of structures of signification whereby people make
sense of their world and justify why they act the way they do (cf. Jackson, 2006, p. 15; Tilly, 2006; Boltanski and Thevenot, 2006). An assumed
‘shared’ identity between North America and Europe, composed of historical, social, and normative patterns of interaction, is nothing but the
actualization of a common discourse where ‘the West’ figures as a powerful yet notoriously vague signifier. Bearing these arguments of critical
constructivist approaches in mind, it is of central interest, then, how NATO
is ‘able to mobilize its longstanding identity as
the expression and military guarantor of Western civilization’ closely connected to the democratic and
capitalist bonds among its member countries (Neumann and Williams, 2000, p. 361; italics added). It goes without saying that
a common threat perception during the heydays of the Cold War has tightened these bonds. However, it does
not explain how Western security cooperation was made possible in the first place and why it lasted for over 60 years, including the phase of
detente ´ in the 1970s. Hence, the
key shortcoming of realist, liberal, and institutionalist approaches to NATO is
that they take the actor’s articulations of threats and interests at face value, while a critical approach
directs our attention to how actors invoke threats, interest, and identities and to what kind of
institutional consequences are made possible by these acts (Klein, 1990, p. 315, p. 317; Jackson, 2003, p. 224). Such a
perspective on the usage of concepts and their meaning is interested in the ways and forms of inscribing plots, characters, relations, and
motives for action. As Trine Flockhart (2012, p. 80) writes, ‘[n]arratives describe the history, purpose and achievements of a collective entity
such as NATO, and they contribute in the process towards its unity and facilitate its continuous transformation’. These I will call foundational
narratives. Foundational refers to two related aspects characteristic of most political narratives: first, it directs our attention to the justifications
why something exists. In NATO’s
case this refers to the justifications mobilized by the allies in order to found
and keep an ‘alliance’, i.e. to construct meaningful stories about what ‘NATO’ is and how its past,
present, and future are to be described. Foundational narratives are answers to ‘why’- questions – questions such as ‘why do we
still need NATO?’. Second, the term ‘foundational’ emphasizes the taken-for-grantedness of these narratives. Narratives are foundational when
they restore unity in the light of (more or less) serious ‘identity crises’ where constructions of common representations appear as problematic.
References to a ‘global war on terrorism’, for example, where
military intervention and preemption is articulated as
necessary, altered the organizational design of NATO in many ways. Within these discursive patterns the continuing
relevance of a transatlantic alliance was never really questioned, irrespective of whether NATO was defined as a system of collective defense or
a forum for political consultation. Understood in this way, foundational narratives are powerful and consequential in the sense that they enable
and constrain the re-constitution of political subjects. Foundational
narratives come in different forms. In this chapter I argue that they
materialize in NATO’s strategic documents where the allies agree on a highly symbolic assurance of their
mutual trust and shared identity. They frequently invoke a common purpose, mobilize a shared threat
assessment, and rearticulate a collective defense assurance as laid down in Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty. Official
strategic concepts during the Cold War included M.C. 3 (1949), M.C. 14/2 known as ‘massive retaliation’ (1957), and M.C. 14/3 known as
‘flexible response’ (1968) and were accompanied by more detailed strategic guidance and planning documents. In the 1990s, NATO’s strategic
concept became an issue of public declaration, symbolized by the Alliance’s ‘New Strategic Concept’ (1991) and its follow-up documents in
1999 – NATO’s fiftieth birthday – and 2010. All
strategic concepts reflected changing security perceptions and
restored the unity of the alliance by codifying onestrategy. In the late 1940s/early 1950s, the foundations for a
transatlantic alliance were laid down in the North Atlantic Treaty and the following strategic concepts and guidance. Forty years later,
the
dissolution of the Soviet Union made a public revision of NATO’s strategy necessary in order to reorient the alliance after the ‘end of the Cold War’ had been declared. Although many commentators doubted that
NATO would survive this period of transformation, the alliance counts twenty-eight members today and seems to be ‘very much in business’, as
former General Secretary Manfred Worner once stated. ¨ 1 2 The Formation of the Transatlantic Alliance and the Beginning of the Cold War
When tensions between the Western powers and the Soviet Union intensified after the defeat of Nazi Germany, the
formalization of a
transatlantic alliance was perceived as an obligation to counter and deter an apparent Eastern threat.2
The purpose of the alliance, NATO’s first Secretary General Lord Ismay has often been cited as saying, was ‘to keep the Americans in, the
Russians out and the Germans down’. While France and Britain, the driving forces behind the initiative to form a military alliance, strongly
called for a lasting presence of the US in European affairs, the Truman administration, supported by isolationist sentiments in Congress, had
more reservations about pursuing such a project (Kaplan, 1999, pp. 7–28; Osgood, 1962).3 Most controversial was the issue of military
assistance. While the US government preferred a nonbinding and declaratory formulation, French diplomat Armand Berard ´ and British
diplomat Sir Frederic Hoyer-Millar, both delegates to the so called exploratory talks, insisted on a reliable and forceful assurance of US military
assistance (Kaplan, 1999, p. 16–17). When the Truman government drafted a compromise formula, US objections to a formalized alliance were
overcome. In a memo to President Truman in 1948, his advisor Clark Clifford remarked that the preamble of a transatlantic declaration should
make clear that ‘the main object of the instrument would be to preserve western civilization in the geographical area covered by the
agreement’.4 The North Atlantic Treaty, signed on 4 April 1949 by ten Western European states, the US, and Canada, outlined the principles of
the new alliance – consultation (Article 4) and collective defense (Article 5) – and called for the development of an organizational structure
(Article 9). The preamble of the treaty states: The parties to this Treaty reaffirm their faith in the purpose and principles of the Charter of the
United Nations and their desire to live in peace with all peoples and governments. They are determined to safeguard the freedom, common
heritage and civilization of their peoples, founded on the principles of democracy, individual liberty and the rule of law. They seek to promote
stability and well-being in the North Atlantic area. (North Atlantic Treaty, 1949; italics added) The contractual language (‘parties’, ‘Treaty’) of
the preamble postulated a community based on shared principles as laid out in the Charter of the United Nations and closely linked to
democracy, liberty, and the rule of law. In the late 1940s such an equivalence between these principles and the North Atlantic area is not
surprising given the overall perception of a clash between antagonistic identity constructions, a ‘free world’ on the one side and ‘communism’
on the other side. However, the
preamble included a puzzling formulation: it assumes that a community of
likemined states is already in existence due to the act of ‘re-affirming’ a common faith expressed in
another legal document, the Charter of the United Nations, as well as ‘re-affirming’ a shared desire to
live in peace. Such a community is then explicated by referring to freedom, common heritage, and civilization as well as principles of
democracy, individual liberty, and the rule of law. All these signifiers have, for some time, commonly been associated
with ‘the West’. Here NATO materializes as an actualization of an already existing community, not as a
newly created military alliance. Hence, NATO was justified as the means to promote stability and wellbeing between the contracting parties instead of a goal in itself. While many commentators would presume that
NATO is the institutional core of what we commonly call ‘the West’, the term itself is surprisingly absent in the North Atlantic Treaty and the
following strategic concepts. The
central subject of every strategic document during the Cold War is the ‘North
Atlantic treaty area’, specified as the defense of ‘America and Europe’ (North Atlantic Treaty, Article 5). The name
to be given to the institutionalized security cooperation between the US and their Western European
allies was of central concern for both sides. While the foreign ministers of France and Britain, Bidault
and Bevin, preferred a ‘European’ title for the treaty, US delegates refused such a narrowly defined
subject. The ‘‘North Atlantic’, which developed as a compromise, symbolized a geographic and political bond which
connected the US, Europe, and some geostrategically important members such as Portugal and Iceland
(Kaplan, 2004, p. 30). The insistence of the Truman administration on integrating Canada, Portugal (Azores Islands), and Iceland also pleased
those isolationists in the US Congress who rejected NATO as a ‘European’ alliance (Kaplan, 2004, p. 33p). The
goal of containing
communism made it even possible to include an autocratic member such as Portugal, which hardly
counted as a reliable candidate for ‘safeguarding the freedom of their people’, as one of the preamble
states. Invoking the alliance primarily as a loosely defined geopolitical entity signaled a willingness to distance oneself from the specific
political circumstances in 1948/49. It united the geographic and political project of a ‘Western’ alliance between
North America and (Western) Europe. While the term ‘area’ evoked associations of space and territory, the boundaries of this
entity remained rather vague due to the geographical fuzziness of the ‘North Atlantic’ (Franke, 2010).5 How the notion
of a ‘North
Atlantic area’ is used within NATO’s strategic concepts, nevertheless, illustrates a crucial point. By
reading NATO’s strategic concepts, one gets the impression that such an ‘area’ – however materially and
ideationally unbounded it may remain – is not defended against a specific, identifiable threat but is
constructed as a political space with various social and cultural relations worthy of being secured in a
broad sense. The treaty title and preamble do not primarily mobilize a military purpose but a notion of geopolitical unity and durability to
be taken for granted. Despite the imagination of an already existing and geopolitically bounded community, NATO is generally described as a
system of collective defense. For most Western European states, Article 5 formalized the (military) assistance of its transatlantic partner and
the economic support of the US government to rebuild Western Europe as well as to restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic
area. Military assistance, though, was not inscribed as a necessity; rather it was invoked with a strong notion of solidarity: The Parties agree
that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all and consequently
they agree that, if such an armed attack occurs, each of them, in exercise of the right of individual or collective self-defense recognised by
Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations, will assist the Party or Parties so attacked by taking forthwith, individually and in concert with
the other Parties, such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force, to restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic
area. (Article 5, North Atlantic Treaty, 1949; italics added) Article 5 was perceived as a ‘pledge’ made by the US to defend their Western
European allies who were alarmed by the superior number of Soviet conventional forces.6 Framing
this pledge in terms of a
mutual assurance of assistance implied a strong symbol of solidarity. The compromise formula that
active assistance would not be an automatic demand pleased all sides due to the different
interpretations it made possible. For the US Congress, the strongest opponent of the ‘entanglement’ of the US with a European
alliance, it expressed the freedom of choice isolationists insisted on. For Western European states, Article 5 confirmed the
solidarity and military assistance of US conventional and in particular nuclear forces if such assistance
would become necessary. Article 5 is mostly seen as the source of collective defense. Its consequences, though, were ambivalent: on
the one hand, it expressed the defensive purpose of the alliance (‘restore’); on the other hand, it made possible a policy of planning,
preparation, and precaution in order to ‘maintain the security of the North Atlantic area’ (emphasis added). In
relation to the
geopolitical imagination of a community, regional defense planning was one central institutional
consequence which constituted NATO as a military as well as political enterprise. Although Article 5 is mostly
seen as the ‘heart’ of NATO, it was only in combination with Article 4 (consultation) and Article 9 (Council) that an integrated military command
structure, the standardization and modernization of forces, and even a common nuclear policy developed so quickly. Through
the
invocation of this geopolitical community of solidarity, NATO transformed into a military organization
and assured the presence of US forces in Europe. During the formative years of the alliance this foundational
narrative of a geopolitical community of solidarity was consolidated in the strategic concepts and
guidance via a clear distinction between the ‘Western allies’ on the one hand and the ‘Soviet Union’
with its satellites on the other. NATO’s first strategic concept – at least the first document entitled ‘strategic concept’ available in
the archives – was drafted in October 1949 and intended to ‘ensure unity of thought and purpose’ as stated on the cover page (M.C. 3;
Wheeler, 2001, p. 123; Pedlow, 1997).7 The kind of community imagined by the signatories put strong emphasis on unity understood in a broad
sense. As
a highly confidential and mandatory text, the strategic concept authorized the national
executives and the intergovernmental committees of NATO to take any measure in order to provide for
the defense of the North Atlantic area. The integration of ‘political, economic, and psychological as well
as purely military means’ was articulated as a central requirement for efficient defense. Deterrence and, if
necessary, collective defense were set up as a core strategy of prevention and preparation. Hence, the insignia of
the Allied Command Europe reads ‘vigilance is the price of liberty’. Key to the implementation of the defense concept was
to ‘[i]nsure the ability to deliver the atomic bomb promptly’ as the primary responsibility of the US
government and the strategy of ‘forward defense’. The main purpose of NATO was to effectively
coordinate and integrate collective defense planning in order to ‘unite the strength of the North Atlantic
Treaty nations’. This policy included the standardization of military doctrines, combined training exercises,
exchange of intelligence information, and ‘cooperation in the construction, maintenance and operation
of military installations of mutual concern’. M.C. 3, however, invoked neither a strong concept of ‘the
West’ nor a clear description of an ‘Eastern threat’. It referred to ‘the enemy’ only as an abstract
source of insecurity and uncertainty. The strategic concept and every subsequent revision of it are
accompanied by guidelines for strategic planning. The first official strategic guidance in 1950, M.C. 14, emphasized ‘the
necessity for developing methods to compensate for numerical inferiority’ compared to Soviet (conventional) forces.8 Entitled as a ‘directive’,
regional planning groups, NATO’s core institutional structure in the 1950s, were authorized to develop ‘detailed regional defense plans which . .
. will ensure the unity of defense of the North Atlantic Treaty nations’. Until 1 July 1954 NATO member states were instructed to implement a
medium term defense plan ‘for building up the overall military capabilities of the North Atlantic Treaty nations’. NATO
allies should be
prepared for ‘war’ with the Soviet Union, which had ‘maintained, if not increased, her technical, military
and economic capabilities’. Anticipating a potential war with the Soviet Union, NATO’s military planning
was justified as an act of defense which was based on several ‘assumptions’ about Soviet intentions, for
example ‘[t]hat the USSR will initiate air attacks on the North Atlantic Treaty nations in Europe and the Western Hemisphere’ (italics added).
The Soviet Union was invoked as an expansionist and aggressive adversary with stronger and larger
conventional forces than those of the Western allies. Therefore, a common nuclear policy was justified as
the primary mean to prevent war. It symbolically marked the beginning of the Cold War when
assessments of ‘Western’ and ‘Eastern’ alignment invented a global conflict with mainly two competing
ideological camps. NATO’s defense policy, as stated in M.C. 14, was based on a distinction between peace-time and war-time as two
operational modes of security: In peacetime the objectives of the defense policy of the North Atlantic Treaty powers are to convince the USSR
that war does not pay, and, should war occur, to insure a successful defense of the North Atlantic area. This policy requires the development of
adequate military strength and a close coordination of the political, economic and psychological efforts of member nations. (M.C. 14, 1950;
italics added) Effective
deterrence and collective defense ‘required’ military modernization and political
coordination. Hence, as a geopolitical community of solidarity, NATO was re-constituted as a military and political
enterprise, including economic and psychological efforts. It re-affirmed a sense of ‘Western we-ness’
which reached far beyond the specific historical circumstances of responding to a Soviet threat and
developed a comprehensive approach to security. Deterrence and precaution were only two sides of
the same coin, namely securing ‘the West’. The continuing debates between the NATO allies in the early 1950s centered on
questions of effective defense planning, deterrence, and nuclear policy. A ‘Report by the Military Committee on the most effective pattern of
NATO military strength for the next few years’ in 1954 (M.C. 48) explicated the concept of ‘massive retaliation’ including a ‘forward defense’ of
Europe on West German territory (Kaplan, 2004, p. 63f., 80f.; Kugler, 1993, p. 101). It
formalized the ‘New Look policy’ of US
president Eisenhower, the former SACEUR, in order to guarantee an economically efficient deterrence
(Trachtenberg, 1992). US nuclear air capacities were the cornerstone of ‘massive retaliation’ , NATO’s
strategic concept until 1968. The
nuclearization of the alliance gave the European member states a strong voice
in the development of a common nuclear strategy and shifted the ‘balance of power within NATO’ in the
1960s from the USA to European member states (Tuschhoff, 1999, p. 159). Self/other depictions culminated in a stylized
presentation of a monolithic Soviet system on the one hand and a democratic alliance on the other hand: The Soviet political system, with its
power of immediate decision and its advantage of strict security, as compared with the free and democratic system of the NATO type which
must obtain decisions through group action, provides an initial advantage of great importance in achieving surprise. (M.C. 48, 1954; italics
added) While the Soviet Union held the advantage of surprise, Western allies
were convinced that they had only one
choice: nuclear planning. The prevention of war, in particular the ‘overrun of Europe’ by Soviet
conventional forces, legitimized effective deterrence based on a numerical and qualitative superiority
in nuclear capacities which had to be integrated in the so-called forces in being, i.e. forces being held in a
state of readiness. The enclosure, the most confidential part of M.C. 48, listed those measures ‘necessary to increase the deterrent and
defensive value of NATO forces’: integrated atomic capabilities, early warning and alert systems, a German
contribution to ‘forces in being’, and measures to ensure the survival of NATO forces after a Soviet first
strike. NATO’s forward defense strategy, including the Rhine-Ijssel line, made a military contribution of Germany
even more necessary and provided an early justification for a German membership (cf. Jackson 2006). In the
next 35 years, NATO had to weather turbulent times of ups and downs: the Suez crisis in 1956, the withdrawal of France from the integrated
military command structure in 1966, the invocation of flexible response as the new strategic concept in 1968, the policy of detente in the
1970s, NATO’s controversial double-track decision in 1979, and the changing political constellations in the Soviet Union beginning with
Gorbachev’s reform policies in the mid-1980s. The list of crises and renewed routines, however, is much longer and certainly one reason why
research on NATO, its histories and policies, characterized security studies for many decades. With the
dissolution of the Soviet Union, a re-orientation of the alliance seemed to be necessary, even inevitable
in order to explicate why NATO should continue to exist. 3 The Re-orientation of the Alliance after the Cold War With the
announcement of Mikhail Gorbachev as General Secretary of the Communist Party in 1985, Soviet ‘new thinking’ of transparency (glasnost) and
domestic reform (perestroika) tremendously changed the established discursive patterns of self/other relations and threat constructions. The
London Declaration, following the NATO summit in July 1990, symbolically proclaimed the end of the Cold War, and the allies invited the
members of the Warsaw Pact to declare that ‘we are no longer adversaries’.9 With the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact in
the early 1990s, most commentators expected that
NATO’s strategy of flexible response, forward defense,
and nuclear first strike capabilities had lost its validity as well, even that the alliance would suffer the
same fate of disappearance (Waltz, 1990, 1993; Snyder, 1990; Mearsheimer, 1990). Nevertheless, there seemed to be a
strong consensus between the member states that NATO should persist. For the allies, NATO still played a
significant internal and external role: externally, in preventing, containing, and controlling instabilities
and militarized conflicts in Central and Eastern Europe, including the neutralization of a renewed
Russian threat (Duffield, 1994, p. 767–70; see also Pouliot, 2010); internally, in providing an institutional mechanism to overcome the
classical security dilemma by practices of reassurance, transparency, and de-nationalization of forces (Duffield, 1994, p. 772–775; see also
Adler, 2008).10 While neorealists predicted a slow but inevitable decline of the transatlantic alliance, a variety of institutionalist approaches
explained the looming continuity of the Atlantic alliance through institutional adaption and its inherent political function (Wallander, 2000, p.
717; Haftendorn, 1996; Duffield, 1994). New
‘partnership programs’ evolved that were intended to ‘persuade the
partners that learning the practices of a community of the like-minded and coming to share an identity
with its members will make them part of this community’ (Adler, 2008, p. 207; see also Gheciu, 2005). Bearing these
multiple assets and cooperative security practices of NATO in mind, new strategic concepts and military directives developed hand in hand with
the declaration of new challenges and missions in the 1990s. While previous strategic concepts had been highly confidential and drafted by
military experts within the alliance, the alliance’s concepts in 1991, 1999, and 2010 were unclassified and – in the case of the last concept in
2010 – the work of an appointed political expert group.11 Today, NATO’s
strategic concept represents a new kind of
public diplomacy which is primarily directed at national publics in order to explain why NATO should
continue to exist, expand, and intervene in conflicts far beyond the ‘transatlantic area’. In 1991, shortly
after the proclaimed end of the Cold War, the new strategic concept was an expression of an unexpected crisis caused by the rapid
transformations in Europe (Kay, 1998, p. 61). The first years of the 1990s were mainly experienced as a period of uncertainty regarding the
future direction of security relations between ‘the East’ and ‘the West’. Already the title of the new strategic concept introduced the subject as
a well-known entity, i.e. ‘The Alliance’s new strategic concept’. The term ‘Alliance’, written in capital letters, re-confirmed the positive
connotations of the World War II alliance against Hitler Germany and liberated Western security community from the geographical notion of
reactivated the geopolitical connotation of former times by focusing
primarily on Europe’s territorial and political transformation in the East. One central question the new strategic
the ‘Transatlantic’. Nevertheless, it coevally
concept was intended to answer was what aim the Atlantic alliance could serve in a world where a territorial threat had ceased to exist for the
better part. Turning away from the depiction of a communist Soviet aggression of territorial expansion, Europe’s transformation was presented
as the main referent object of security, including a ‘vision of Europe whole and free’ (SC 1991). Clear
distinctions of military and
ideological alignment as articulated in the early 1950s had disappeared; new but still uncertain
formations of political unity were developing. The strategic concept therefore distinguished between the Soviet Union on the
one hand, and the countries of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE), the ‘USSR’s former satellites’ which ‘have fully recovered their sovereignty’
(SC 1991) on the other hand. Because of political changes in ‘the East’, there were also ‘significant changes’ in ‘the West’: German unification
and the development of a European security identity in the context of the European Community. The document, however, articulated ‘the
West’, now explicitly named, as an expanding project which already expected to incorporate CEE: All the countries that were formerly
adversaries of NATO have dismantled the Warsaw Pact and rejected ideological hostility to the West. They have, in varying degrees, embraced
and begun to implement policies aimed at achieving pluralistic democracy, the rule of law, respect for human rights and a market economy.
The political division of Europe that was the source of the military confrontation of the Cold War period has thus been overcome. (SC 1991,
italics added) The
invention of CEE symbolically bridged the dissolution of the Eastern bloc and opened a
range of new political, diplomatic, but also military relations for the Western allies with the former
members of the Warsaw Pact. NATO policies of dialogue and cooperation were created as instruments
of incorporation closely associated with notions such as democracy, human rights, and market economy.
Neumann (2001) argues that the invention of the category CEE and how it was used by both sides was quite
important in order to open up the road for NATO’s as well as EU’s eastern enlargement
(see also Behnke,
2013; Schimmelfennig, 2003). Such a split of the ‘Eastern bloc’ made it possible to conceive of the CEE as being liberated from communist rule
and returning to a democratic and free Europe where the Cold War period and their association with Russia seemed to be just a transitory
coincidence. A
geopolitical narrative was once again mobilized in order to integrate Europe, ‘whole and
free’, into the Transatlantic community of solidarity. The perception of a vanishing Eastern threat and the invention of the
CEE, however, also pushed for a revision of NATO’s flexible response strategy, including a justification of why
NATO should persist at a time when a major war was becoming ever more unlikely. The document continues:
In contrast with the predominant threat of the past, the risks to Allied security that remain are multi-faceted in nature and multi-directional
which makes them hard to predict and assess. NATO must be capable of responding to such risks if stability in Europe and the security of
Alliance members are to be preserved. (SC 1991) Such
a diffuse presentation of ‘risks’ which are ‘multi-faceted’ and
‘multidirectional’ emphasized NATO’s planning capabilities and a renewed concept of precaution. In
many ways, the focus on non-military challenges ‘dislodged the distinction between the possible and
the probable’ (Williams, 2009, p. 1). While some scholars argue that ‘[r]isk is becoming the operative concept of
Western security’ since the 1990s (Rasmussen 2001, p. 285), it was only before the background of NATO’s existing
planning capacities that such an invocation of risks could be worked on. Already in the 1950s, the allies laid
the foundation for an institutional structure which was dominated by practices of military and strategic
planning and the management of different scenarios of attack and defense. The allies planned in detail
for a prospective war in Europe if prevention would fail. This renewed and now more explicit emphasis
on risks and precaution highlighted the relevance of Article 4: Any armed attack on the territory of the Allies, from
whatever direction, would be covered by Articles 5 and 6 of the Washington Treaty. However, Alliance security must also take account of the
global context.
Alliance security interests can be affected by other risks of a wider nature, including
proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, disruption of the flow of vital resources, and actions of
terrorism and sabotage. Arrangements exist within the Alliance for consultation among the Allies under Article 4 of the Washington
Treaty and, where appropriate, coordination of their efforts including their responses to such risks. (SC, 1991; italics added) Internally, Article 5
guaranteed alliance solidarity and the indivisibility of transatlantic security; externally, such an assurance of military support was intended to
deter a Soviet attack, e.g. ‘convincing the USSR that war does not pay’. With
the proclamation of an end of the Cold War,
the external function of Article 5 had to be re-interpreted due to the invocation of new non-territorial
risks and challenges. In a world where classical inter-state wars and conflicts were vanishing, deterrence was increasingly perceived as
an anachronistic strategy of the old times. ‘However’, as the new strategic concept explicitly cautioned, dangers had
not disappeared but turned into more diffuse risks. The invocation of ‘uncertainty’ and ‘risks’ thus
strengthened Article 4 as a mechanism of political consultation and initiated NATO’s transformation
towards enhanced practices of security management. Bearing this discursive shift from Article 5 to Article 4 in mind,
outof-area missions were the most explicit expression of institutional consequences, including new
consultation and cooperation practices. The rationale for non-article 5 and out-of-area missions, though, was already inscribed in
the 1950s when the strategic concept outlined that ‘[i]n order to preserve peace and security in the NATO area, it is essential that, without
disregarding the security of the NATO area, hostile Soviet influence in non-NATO regions is countered’ (M.C. 14/2, 1957).12 NATO’s active
military engagement began when the Allied Mobile Force (AMF), a small multinational force which was founded in 1960, was deployed in the
southeast of Turkey during the Gulf War in 1991. The
violent fragmentation of Yugoslavia in the following years was
perceived as a test case for providing regional stability and security. Hence, the ‘Partnership for Peace’ program
initially originated as a ‘Partnership for Peacekeeping’ (Wallander, 2000, p. 721). With the air strikes against Serbia in 1999 and even more
explicitly in reaction to the attacks on 9/11, NATO’s
selfimage as a defender of human rights manifested its
confirmed self-image as an ‘alliance of democracies’.13 The new emphasis on ‘political means’, as stated
in the strategic concept in 1991, already relied on a wide conception of security, including ‘dialogue’,
‘cooperation’, and ‘collective defense’ for the purpose of ‘protecting peace in a new Europe’. While the allies
distinguished between peacetime and wartime in the 1950s, a third operational mode of security was now added: crisis.
Peace should be ‘protected’, war should be ‘prevented’, and in the event of crisis NATO forces should
‘contribute to the management of such crises and their peaceful resolution’. Combined with the invocation of new
uncertainties and risks, the notion of crisis helped to justify the development of rapid reaction forces and
multinational forces in order to prevent (or at least contain) a crisis. Compared to this new emphasis on
NATO’s ability of crisis management, the fear of war still loomed in the back of any risks assessment. In
the light of uncertainties – crisis, risks, and war – the alliance had to be prepared for anything. Nuclear forces, therefore, continued to play a
significant strategic and political role: The fundamental purpose of the nuclear forces of the Allies is political: to preserve peace and prevent
coercion and any kind of war. . . Nuclear forces based in Europe and committed to NATO provide an essential political and military link between
the European and the North American members of the Alliance. (SC 1991, italics added) Strategically, nuclear
forces signaled a
posture of deterrence; politically, they ensured the cohesion and unity of the allies despite the material
inequalities between the US and their European allies. US nuclear forces stationed in Europe symbolized
a strong political bond of solidarity While dialogue and cooperation in uncertain times were now the
buzzwords of a ‘new world order’, this uncertainty about the future also provoked a sense of insecurity
and an urge to be prepared for the worst. The continued stationing of nuclear forces in Europe and the development of
multinational as well as rapid reaction forces were a response to this uncertainty. NATO’s central message boiled down to:
‘we are prepared’ . This confidence in the continued relevance of the alliance was newly inscribed in its
foundational narrative of a geopolitical community of solidarity which now expanded geographically to
the East and was functionally expanded into a political community according to Article 4 of the
Washington Treaty. This re-constitution of NATO continued through the strategic concepts of 1999 and 2010, solidifying these discursive
shifts in several ways. Most explicit is a strengthening of Article 4 and the political power of the alliance, the
global perspective on NATO’s mission, and the functional re-organization of the military command
structure. While NATO’s foundational narrative of a geopolitical community of solidarity had initially
enabled a regionally organized military command structure (regional planning groups, then SACEUR and SACLANT) as
well as the deployment of US nuclear forces in Europe, the appearance of new risks and uncertainties
beyond the realm of territorial defense in the 1990s enabled a functional transformation: SACEUR became
Allied Command for Operations (ACO) and SACLANT became Allied Command Transformation (ACT). While the old military structure
symbolised the transAtlantic bond – Supreme Allied Command Europe and Supreme Allied Command Atlantic – the new division between
operations and transformations dissolved such a narrow geographical representation. In this sense NATO re-constituted itself as a Western
global alliance, ‘Western’ in its identity and global in its mission. 4 Conclusion
Debates over the future of NATO easily
transform into debates about whether ‘Western civilization’ and ‘the West’ as a whole might be in
decline or whether they are the winner of the Cold War’s ideological battles (cf. Huntington, 1993; Fukuyama,
1989). Compared to NATO, however, a Western security community seems to be quite prosperous despite
continuing conflicts between NATO members (Cox, 2005; Pouliot, 2006). In this chapter I have tried to show that a
transatlantic alliance was (re-)constituted via the mobilization and re-articulation of foundational
narratives by the allies in order to justify the existence, continuity, and transformation of NATO.
Foundational narratives, then, direct our attention exactly to the politics of security and identity where political subjects are
formed in the first place and help to understand how security communities are constituted instead of
postulating that they are already existing (Adler and Barnett 1998, p. 3; contrary: Deutsch et al., 1969). In conclusion, I want to
highlight how NATO’s re-constitution relates to the overall theme of this volume, ‘the West’. It is not
surprising that NATO allies often referred to ‘democracy’, ‘individual liberty’, or ‘the rule of law’ in order
to justify NATO as a geo-political community of solidarity with defensive and peaceful intentions.
Accordingly, it is not surprising that the Soviet Union was repeatedly accused of modernizing its military capacities,
harboring expansionist intentions, and being an aggressive opponent in an ideological struggle between ‘freedom’ and ‘communism’. This
rather plain self/other construction, however, was quickly modified in the early 1990s by declaring
invoking the CEE as a distinct political subject, and by focusing
defense. Moreover,
an ‘end of the Cold War’,
on new risks and challenges different from the past focus on territorial
NATO had ‘gone global’ in order to ‘bring stability to other parts of the world’ (Daalder and Goldgeier, 2006, p.
105; Brzezinski, 2009). While this global NATO is depicted as a result of changing security politics, in particular as a consequence of a globalized
terrorist threat, it is
short-sighted to argue that these transformations are merely a reaction to external
pressures. Grand narratives about a ‘Cold War’ and a ‘War on Terrorism’ are as much produced by a transatlantic
security discourse intended to make sense of the world as they serve to justify political decisions . It is a
moot question whether the global projection of power by ‘the West’ caused violent opposition around the globe or whether ‘new wars’ and
terror networks such as Al Qaida caused a transformation of NATO. It is puzzling, though, that NATO has managed to secure its survival and to
transform. I have argued that the creation and repetition of foundational narratives – in particular the invention of a geopolitical community of
solidarity and a political community according to Article 4 of the Washington Treaty – made such a two-sided re-constitution of continuity and
transformation possible. This also implies that NATO
will persist and at once change as long as the allies carry on rearticulating this foundational narrative . Such a foundational narrative serves its integrating function
only against the background of ‘the West’ as a shared yet unspecified signifier, which is implicitly represented as a
threatened referent object of security. ‘Europe’, the ‘transatlantic area’, respectively ‘the West’ are the endangered
subjects of NATO’s strategic discourse justifying a durable and institutionally dense military
cooperation of its member states and a nuclearization of its defense strategy. Whenever allies pursued
(national) security policies without consultation , conflicts and crisis within the alliance were foreseeable . It
only through NATO that ‘the West’ could utilize its power position through a specific form of selfauthorization.
NATO, respectively Western states, presented ‘democracy’, ‘human rights’, the ‘rule of law’, and ‘market economy’ as
normatively unquestioned principles they had already realized. Others had only one choice : to comply
was
or to resist . The normative attractiveness of ‘the West’, thus, also implies the temptations of selfauthorizing and securitizing practices where a culture of legal formalism is marginalized (Wæver, 1995;
Koskenniemi, 2001). Yet ‘Others’ might only be known as defectors to a Western project of modernization and democracy. After two decades
of academic and political debate about NATO’s growing irrelevance and likely or unlikely dissolution, the military escalation on the Crimean
peninsula and in Eastern Ukraine has definitely revived the alliance. Some commentators even predict the dawn of a new Cold War based on
well-known patterns of enmity between ‘the West’ and ‘the East’. This is not the place to reflect on the current political situation and its impact
on NATO’s future. Given its history, however, NATO General Secretary Stoltenberg’s recent remark should be taken seriously that ‘one of our
greatest strengths is our ability to adapt’.
Security is a political fantasy that justifies the securitizing against the next threat---this
self-fulfilling prophecy maintains the construction of enemies to create endless wars
and biopolitical governance
Tulumello, S. ‘21. Agonistic security: Transcending (de/re) constructive divides in critical security
studies. Security dialogue, 52(4), 325-342. Accessed 8/6/22 CSUF JmB//recut by smarx, AZG]
Security is about the prevention of events yet-to-happen ; hence future is—or rather possible futures are—the object of
security practice. Preventing means acting here-andnow on a threat, which is then “the future cause of a
change in the present” (Massumi, 2005: 35). Securing is about anticipating (cf. Anderson, 2010a, b; Aradau and van Munster,
2012; Amoore, 2013) “a virtual cause, or quasicause” (Massumi, 2005: 35).7 Among the characteristic elements of modern society is, according
to Ulrich Beck (1992[1986]), the emergence of “risk” and its management as a central governmental practice.8 Risk
is about the
quantification of the future, and particularly of future dangers, in terms of probability (see Aradau and van
Munster, 2012: 99-100). The “balance” between prevention/anticipation and other dimensions becomes central to security thinking at this
juncture. A
self-perceived risk society shifts the focus from the “event”—and reactions to it—to the
management of potential threats, which need to be continuously assessed and anticipated. Practices based
on risk management are about calculating the trade-off between probability and the impact of a certain event. In this framework,
securitization is a cost/benefit curve: The more we invest, the more we increase security, at the same
time curtailing other dimensions. At a certain point, increasing securitization becomes more expensive than
the benefit (increased security); thence the balance is found. Economic thinking of this kind has permeated more and
more fields of governance, from the “securitization of life” (Lobo-Guerrero, 2014) to conceptualizations of
crime control (Foucault, 2007[2004]: 4-5; cf. Becker, 1974). In line with the hegemonic standing of the individual in Western Enlightenment
ideas (Panikkar, 1982; Mouffe, 2008; Mignolo, 2009), the analytical conceptualization of the balance is devised as one among competing
individual rights. This is particularly evident in the way the United Nations (the quintessentially universalist institution) envisage security, more
recently in the paradigm of human security (for an overview, see Smith, 2005: 51-55). We recognize that all individuals, in particular vulnerable
people, are entitled to freedom from fear and freedom from want, with an equal opportunity to enjoy all their rights and fully develop their
human potential. To this end, we commit ourselves to discussing and defining the notion of human security (UN, 2005: #143). The
human
security paradigm constructs a liberal individual as its subject (see Shepherd, 2008; Robinson, 2016) and, in stressing
the interrelatedness of the “human elements of security, rights and development” (UNHSU, 2009: 6), it is concerned about “strik[ing] a balance
among humanitarian, political, military, human rights and development strategies” (CHS, 2003: 28; see also Panikkar, 1982: 83). Another
example of the balancing of rights, and its paradoxes, is the deployment of CCTV
systems as preventative means , a field where
most regulations are concerned with striking a balance of “proportionality” between the (alleged) increase of personal safety9 and the loss of
privacy.10 In short, mainstream logics of security, centered on Western conceptions of individual human rights, seek the correct balance among
security and other rights. I stress the centrality of Enlightenment conceptions because the nature of contemporary security logics becomes
evident at this juncture. Lacanian
planning theory (e.g. Gunder, 2003; Allmendinger and Gunder, 2005) has discussed how
modernist planning—which is rooted in Enlightenment ideas, and health and social order concerns—is
permeated by a desire for security and certainty. It follows that the fantasy of security is central to
modern Western thinking; as is a permanent state of unfullfillment : Much of what we perceive of as
social reality is actually a culturally constructed set of fantasies that seek to provide a sense of
completeness, or ontological wholeness, that we all desire, but is never actually achieved (Gunder, 2003:
293). Anderson called “radical ambiguity of security” (2010b: 229)
the coexistence of the fantasy of security with the
impossibility to secure. Because “living bodies can never be completely protected” (Lorey, 2015[2012]: 20 ),
securing is a never completed task. Since there is always another potential threat, another virtual
cause of disruption, more security calls for more security, in an unstoppable circuit. In psychosocial terms,
these logics are typical of relations of control, based on the assumption that the other is always inclined to
transgression and should thus relentlessly prove their innocence (Carli and Paniccia, 2003: 212-225). The idea of
“balancing” between an insatiable right, security, and other rights seems quite problematic: a “myth” (Neocleous, 2007) crucial to the
construction of the liberal order. Security may never be achieved, but it is always worth trying harder, as long as endangered individuals exist,
as summarized by two powerful statesmen: We will chase terrorists everywhere. If in an airport, then in the airport. So if we find them in the
toilet, excuse me, we’ll rub them out in the outhouse. And that’s it, case closed (Vladimir Putin, 1999). I want to put all the nation’s resources
into protecting our citizens. […] We will eradicate terrorism because we are attached to freedom (François Hollande, 2015).11 For Putin and
Hollande, security only makes sense
as a good that institutions must pursue in its purest form: absolute
security. These formulations may be hyperbolic, but their underlining logic is not structurally different
from that at the core of mainstream Western/liberal understandings of security, for instance UN’s Human
Security—see also Christian Borch’s discussion of the totalitarian biopolitical character of crime prevention (2015: 95-119). And though all
these understandings of security have different ideas about the correct balance between security and
rights, they are all concerned with striking it. Inevitably, freedom and security end up converging—with the
latter trumping the former—as evident in this excerpt from an interview with Italian former center-left Minister of Internal Affairs:
Security is freedom: It is evident that there cannot be an idea of security without guaranteeing individual freedom; and at the same time, there
is no true freedom if everyday safety is not guaranteed (Marco Minniti, 2017).12 These
contradictions are taking on an even
more pronounced scale amid recent transformations of the way futures are conceptualized in security
practice. More and more, so-called “low-probability, high-impact” events, and possibility in spite of
probability, have become central to security logics (Amoore, 2013; Anderson, 2010a, 2010b). Terrorism is possibly the most
evident example of this trend: In the West, being victim of a terror attack is an event with extremely low probability;13 and yet compare this
with the amount of political discourse and governmental resources concerned with terrorism—is the late “risk society” concerned with actually
measurable risks, after all?14 While
attention to low-probability, high-impact events increases, the focus shifts
toward the management of all behaviors and bodies that are considered to be out of place (Aradau and van
Munster, 2012; Borch, 2015). Critical thinkers have therefore argued that the logics of terrorism preparedness
have become the central discursive engine in pushing toward the normalization of states of
“emergency” and “exception” (Agamben, 2003, 2015; Adey et al., 2015). Needless to say, there are powerful interests behind the
securitization in the name of terrorism and other threats—critical urban studies, for instance, have shown how terrorism is the central
discursive engine in the attack late capitalism has launched against democracy (see, e.g., Rossi and Vanolo, 2012[2010]). And yet, if large
majorities—especially in the Western world, but increasingly so in the Global South—support the allocation of so much resources in, and to
constrain their own rights in the name of, the fight against phenomena with such low actual “impact”, this could also be due to the fact that
the fantasy of security seems more real than it has ever been. After all, never in the history of mankind have there been
safer societies than contemporary Western ones (Bauman, 2005). Of course, this is not valid for everyone. Security is distributed very
unevenly internally within societies, among geographic, class, ethnic/racial, gender, and other divides;
but most attention is devoted to fighting (allegedly, cf. Melossi, 2003) external threats.
The AFF’s erroneous predictions in foreign policy create false alarms that obscure
reality
Favour Obi-Okolie 14, Delta State University, Abraka Delta State, Nigeria, 2014, “Towards A Quantum
Mechanical Model of Foreign Policy Analysis,” International Affairs and Global Strategy, Vol.27, 2014.
Uncertainty, as noted earlier, is one of the key features of quantum mechanics. It holds
that no matter how carefully we
observe, even with adequate knowledge of initial conditions, we can never objectively understand a
physical reality. Applying the concept to politics, Cioffi-Revilla defines uncertainty as the “lack of sureness or absence of strict
determination in political life”44 Rathbun furthers that “information is ambiguous because the world is complex and can only be approximated
and partially understood due to cognitive limitations.”45 He therefore sought to explain the element of uncertainty within mainstream IR
theories. For realists, it is experienced in fear of each other’s intention, while rationalists try to cope with uncertainty through international
institutions charged to monitor and signal benign intent. For constructivists, uncertainty stems from an assumption that states are uncertain
about action to take when norms as defined by identity are absent. Then cognitivists argue that uncertainty emanates from the confusion
caused by the complexity of international politics as well as mental limitations of statesmen. 46 Assessing uncertainty from the quantum
mechanical framework, we begin with Heisenberg who is arguably the first to introduce the principle. From his perspective, we
cannot
completely describe an object since we cannot simultaneously describe its momentum and position with
exactitude. The more accurately we understand position, the less accurately we understand the
momentum, vice versa . As such, it becomes impossible to predict the destination of a moving object
since we cannot accurately determine its position and momentum at the same time. From quantum
mechanical thought, this is may be due to hidden variables and/or non-locality. Non-locality describes the possibility of a quantum state to
interact with another quantum state of the same pair, even when separated by large distances without an established means of
communication. By
position we refer to the location of an object relative to a reference point while
momentum is taken to mean the measure of the motion of an object relative to its mass and velocity.
Position in theoretical physics is synonymous with the condition of a State prior to an action or event being analysed. By condition we mean the
geographic and politico-economic structure of a State. In
the same vein, the foreign policy action of a State in a given
case, accounts for momentum in physics. Therefore, by directly applying Heisenberg’s argument to
foreign policy analysis, it is impossible to completely understand foreign policy behaviour of a State by
merely understanding its condition prior to the behaviour being analysed. Also, it is impossible to predict the
outcome of a given foreign policy behaviour. This explains why despite efforts to predict the outcome of a given foreign policy behaviour,
mainstream approaches to foreign policy analysis have routinely fallen short in this regard. A
good example showing the
compatibility of Heisenberg’s uncertainty in foreign policy analysis could be found in the recent Arab
Spring. An understanding of the socio-political landscape of the Arab world had led scholars of different
schools to conclude that democracy was essentially incompatible with the Arab world. However, at the
outbreak of the region-wide uprising, scholars began to foretell democratization. Soon, scholars began
to make reversals in their predictions, such that it is no longer fashionable to equate the Arab uprising
with democratization. What is deducible from this instance is that, in agreement with Heisenberg’s uncertainty, it is impossible
to understand the present and predict the future by simply understanding initial conditions . This position is
also understood by recalling that whereas the Cold
War engaged IR scholars in a war of paradigms, none of the
theories and models predicted the end of the conflict.47 Schrodinger’s wave equation furthers our
understanding of the compatibility of quantum mechanics with foreign policy analysis. Inferring from his postulation, it
is impossible to understand the totality of a State’s foreign policy behaviour. Rather, every
State possesses every possible
theoretical element that can be attributed to a State’s foreign policy. For instance, before observation is made, every
state is weak and strong at the same time; aggressive and accommodating; cooperative and competitive. However, upon observation,
the observer interferes with reality such that the condition of the State aligns with the premonition of
the observer/analyst. Thus, we are uncertain of a State’s foreign policy behaviour until we decide to
observe and/or analyse. Upon analysis, our uncertainty is substituted by the ‘creation’ of reality . It is at this
point therefore that the foreign policy analyst relinquishes every claim to objectivity, having created the reality s/he claims to analyse. Relating
the foregoing to Bohr’s contribution to Quantum Mechanics, the
foreign policy analyst can no longer be regarded as an
impartial observer but as an active participant. The instrument with which s/he assesses a
phenomenon directly interacts with the physical object being observed to influence the result obtained.
Consequently, we could safely assume that if no one was observing, then nothing would be existing. Then, should we now assume that
occurrences in international politics are the creation of analysts? To a large extent, the
answer weighs to the affirmative and
accounts for why certain state and non-state actors, cognizant of this fact, have immensely invested
towards gaining the attention of observers/analysts. Terrorist organizations routinely post videos of
violence on the internet for analysts to ‘create’ their existence. States regularly release videos and
images of military drills and military hardware. The essence is to gain attention of analysts who would
therefore ‘create’ the desired reality . Indeed, terrorism is non-existent until it is so designated by
analysts. More so, war is simply what analysts and observers make of it . In addition to the foregoing, quantum
mechanics gives us insight in understanding causation. This is chiefly in its notion of
interconnectedness which carries potentially far-reaching implications for foreign policy analysis.
According to Senge, et al, we are now aware that interconnectivity is the organizing principle of the universe.48 The universe is interconnected
in a complex web or relationships such that we cannot adequately understand a physical reality without acknowledging its web of relationships.
However, this aspect of the universe was ignored by the Newtonian scientists perhaps as a result of the pervasiveness of relationships which
can sometimes fade into the background so that “only the apparently separate ‘things’ of the world are noticed.”49 If objects are
interconnected within the universe, do we then assume same for humans and States? Of course, yes. This is largely because humans as well as
States share the same feature with all other objects: wave-particle duality. As particles they have form, boundaries, and identity while as wave,
they possess an unstructured potential which, according to Zohar, spreads out across the boundaries of space, time, choice and identity.50
Therefore, State and non-State actors, as applicable to other objects, are interconnected or better still entangled in a complex manner that
makes it particularly tasking if not impossible to accurately assess foreign policy behaviour. From the foregoing, it could be assumed that
quantum mechanics emphasizes what we cannot do over what we can do. How does it then help our understanding of foreign policy? The
answer is not far-fetched. By
identifying what we cannot do, quantum mechanics saves us from raising false
alarms and making erroneous claims. It rather makes case for intellectual diligence by encouraging
cross-paradigmatic approach to foreign policy analysis. It underscores that no single theory or
approach to foreign policy analysis is on its own adequate for foreign policy analysis. Thus, by engaging
all possible approaches, the analyst increases the proportion of objectivity in his/her analysis.
The alternative is a process of desecuritization---that creates an interrogation of
epistemological failures of the 1AC
Bourbeau, P., & Vuori, J. A. ’15. Security, resilience and desecuritization: multidirectional moves and
dynamics. Critical Studies on Security, 3(3), 253-268. Accessed 8/16/2022 CSUF JmB
The ceteris paribus normative push, and political recommendation of the securitization approach has
been “less security, more politics”, and the development of “possible modalities” for the
desecuritization of politics (Wæver 1989a: 52): it is generally (which can only be assessed in practice
though) more conducive to treat identities as identities, religion as religion, the environment as the
environment, and so on, and to engage their politics through the particular modalities and rationalities
of those fields rather than those of security. In the received reading, whilst securitization raises issues
into the realm of security policies and practices (Arrow 2a in Figure 1), desecuritization lowers issues
back into the realm of “regular politics” or removes issues from the political agenda altogether (Arrow 1
in Figure 1). Desecuritization can be achieved through a number of options: by simply not talking
about issues in terms of security, by keeping responses to securitized issues in forms that do not
create security dilemmas or other vicious spirals, and by moving security issues back into “normal
politics” (Wæver 2000: 253). These options can follow objectivist, constructivist, or deconstructivist
strategies in bringing about desecuritization (Huysmans (1995: 65-67). These differ in regard to how the
process relates to the claimed threat: has the threat been dealt with, can the security drama be
somehow handled from without, or can identities beyond security threats be produced from within the
process. Beyond conceptualizing desecuritization as an option or a strategy, it has also been viewed
from the viewpoint of political actors (de Wilde 2008: 597), and their political moves in games of
contestation and resistance (Vuori 2011a, 2015). There can be desecuritizing actors who evade,
circumvent, or directly oppose securitizing moves by, for example, emphasizing competing threats (de
Wilde 2008: 597). Security policies aim at desecuritization (the solution to the threatening situation), but
desecuritization can also happen independently from the actions of securitizing or desecuritizing
actors: the original security problem may be solved, institutions may adapt through new reproductive
structures, discourses may change (e.g. with the loss of interest or audiences), and the original referent
object may be lost (de Wilde 2008). A key issue of debate has been on whether desecuritization can be
considered to be an active political process, or whether desecuritization can only happen as a fading
away of the issue (Behnke 2006: 65): the question is whether the logic and possibility of securitization
is necessarily retained in explicit discussions of whether an issue has retained the status of a security
issue. As empirical studies of securitization and desecuritization dynamics (e.g. Salter and Multu 2013,
Lupovici 2014, Vuori 2015, Donnelly 2015) have shown, it is difficult to point to a definitive end-point for
either securitization or desecuritization: political and social situations evolve. Whichever the
philosophical stance on how and whether desecuritization can be achieved (Vuori 2011a), such empirical
studies show that political actors do make active desecuritization moves. Indeed, systematizing
empirical studies of desecuritization, Hansen (2012: 529; 539-545) has identified four ideal type forms
for the concept. In regard to its issues of concern, namely the status of enmity and the possibility of a
public sphere, when a larger conflict is still within the realm of possibility, but when a particular issue is
presented with terms other than security, we have an instance of (1) “change through stabilisation”
(Arrow 2b in Figure 1); when another issue takes the place of a previously securitized issue, we have (2)
“replacement”; when the originally phrased threat is resolved, we have (3) rearticulation; and finally,
when potentially insecure subjects are marginalized through depoliticization, we have (4) “ silencing”
(types 2-3 are represented by arrow 1 in Figure 1). The previous literature on both securitization (Arrow
2a in Figure 1) and desecuritization (Arrow 1 in Figure 1) have produced ample illustrations of both
dynamics. As a brief example of how both dynamics can alter between the same political actors, we can
use some of the vicissitudes of Sino-Soviet relations. China entered the Cold War in the Soviet camp and
relied on the Soviet Union as the guarantee of the international security of the new People’s Republic.
Chinese views in the late 1940s clearly structured the world into two opposing camps, with China firmly
in the Soviet one (Mao 1949). In the 1950s, however, Sino-Soviet relations soured, and the following
“Sino-Soviet split” (Lüthi 2008) has been used as an example of the capacity of “parochial”
securitizations to become disaffected by or even be withdrawn from dominant “macrosecuritizations”
(Buzan and Wæver 2009: 257). Following the split, Sino-Soviet relations in the 1960s were characterized
by intensive ideological conflict, and Mao Zedong securitized Soviet revisionism as a major threat for the
Chinese Communist Party (Vuori 2011b). Indeed, newly available documents suggest that it was the
Chinese side, in effect Mao Zedong, which was more active in the pursuit of ideological conflict (Lüthi
2008: 2). In his securitization of the Soviet Union, Mao linked the revisionism he identified there to that
which he also securitized domestically (Vuori 2011b), and the issue of revisionism was presented as an
issue of life and death for the party. Sino-Soviet relations began to mend in the 1980s with the removal
of a number of political obstacles and with the intensification of the conflict between the US and the
Soviet Union (Wishnick 2001). Yet, it is only with the fall of the Soviet Union that we can see an overall
desecuritization in the form of rearticulation (Hansen 2012: 542-544) taking place in Sino-Russian
relations. In the aftermath of the end of the Cold War, China’s line was not to take the lead in
international affairs. China worked towards “world multipolarization”, which was exemplified with China
and Russia forming a “strategic partnership” in 1996. China and Russia even shared the same “threat
package” of “terrorism, separatism, and religious extremism” (the “three evils”) within the Shanghai
Cooperation Organization (Jackson 2006: 310). These are strong indicators of how the two states have
managed to reform their identities away from the Sino-Soviet antagonism. In the overall state relations
then, we can see a rearticulative desecuritization tactic at play on both sides: ever since the early
1980s, China’s policy towards the Soviet Union (and later Russia) shifted from antagonism to one of
collaboration and negotiation rather than securitization. Desecuritization can be conceptualised in the
above manner as a negative ontological corollary to securitization. Yet, it is also prudent to investigate
securitization and desecuritization as political moves in order to potentially understand the logic of
when and how they are wielded in practical politics. It is proposed here that in addition to instances
where a securitized situation is dismantled (Arrow 1 in Figure 1), desecuritization can also be viewed as
a political move that can be deployed before “securitization plays” in a game of securitization (Arrow 2a
in Figure 1). In other words, desecuritization moves – both in terms of discourse and practice – can be
used in a preemptive manner before the threshold of securitization is reached (Arrow 2b in Figure 1).
For Wæver (2000: 254), silencing can be a strategy to “pre-empt or forestall securitization”. We argue
here that beyond silencing, active desecuritization efforts can be made to block the escalation of a
contention. Thereby, in addition to change through stabilization (Hansen 2012) and the silencing of an
issue (Wæver 2000), there can be explicit rebuttals of security frames and claims before they are
solidified into policy. This tactic can be termed pre-emptive desecuritization through rebuttal.
1NC --- OFF
Text: The United States federal government should substantially increase its security
assistance with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in the area of cybersecurity
capacity-building.
The Department of Defense should:
--- provide all relevant information, training, and expertise to the Department of
State; AND
--- defer to the Department of State on all activities regarding cybersecurity capacity
building
Centralizing control in the DoS augments their ability to guide policy, improves
cooperation, and creates more effective assistance.
Bergmann & Schimtt ’21 [Max and Alexandra Schmitt; March 9; Senior Fellow at the Center for
American Progress, M.A. in Comparative Politics from the London School of Economics; Senior Policy
Analyst on the national security and international policy team, M.A. in Public Policy from Harvard
University; Center for American Progress, “A Plan To Reform U.S. Security Assistance,”
https://www.americanprogress.org/article/plan-reform-u-s-security-assistance/]
Introduction and summary
U.S. security assistance is broken and in need of an overhaul. Over the past two decades, the
bureaucratic system developed to deliver billions of dollars of military aid to partner nations has evolved and expanded not
by design but as the result of a series of ad hoc legislative and policy changes. Though the U.S. Department of State
was initially in charge of security assistance policy and accounts, since 9/11, the U.S. Department of
Defense ( DOD ) has established a separate , well-funded security assistance bureaucracy at the Pentagon. This
has inhibited effective congressional oversight, harmed coordination between diplomacy and
defense, and contributed to the growing militarization of U.S. foreign policy. It has created a
dysfunctional and bifurcated security assistance system.
Under the current security assistance system, the returns on America’s security investments are limited, inconsistent, and not strategic. The
consequences of today’s broken system include increased reliance on the military to solve foreign policy challenges; a perpetuated status quo
whereby nondemocratic partners receive U.S. assistance and where human rights abuses are ignored; and an ineffective and unwieldy
bureaucracy. This matters because the United States depends on capable allies and partners as a core component of its national security
strategy, but the current system is not suited to the task. A new administration can change this by embracing wholesale reform of the security
assistance system. To do so, however, a Biden-Harris administration must move quickly to work with Congress and include such reforms in any
effort to rebuild and revive U.S. diplomacy. This will require talking not only about security assistance authorities, but fundamentally about
money and resources as well. Any reform efforts intending to bolster the role of the State Department must start by examining how funding is
oriented and balanced between the departments. This necessitates close cooperation with the Hill.
There must be a dramatic realignment of U.S. security assistance. This report provides an overview and a systemic
critique of the current bureaucratic structure of U.S. security assistance and outlines how transferring resources and responsibilities for security
assistance back to the State Department will better advance U.S. interests and address the current geopolitical challenges America confronts. It
calls for reviving the centrality of diplomacy by restoring the State Department’s role, as originally intended under U.S. law, as the overseer of
all U.S. foreign assistance. It also offers recommendations for expanding and training the security assistance workforce, improving interagency
coordination, elevating human rights concerns in security assistance policy, and adapting best practices from the DOD.
Specifically, this report calls
for transferring the following programs and funding from the DOD to the State
Department:


The relatively newly created Section 333 train and equip authority, which replicates the State Department’s Foreign Military
Financing (FMF) authority
The DOD’s security assistance authorities that focus on long-term security force reform to the State Department, including the
Afghanistan Security Forces Fund, the Counter-Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) Train and Equip Fund, and the Ukraine Security
Assistance Initiative fund
This would result in a roughly $7 billion transfer, significantly augmenting the State Department’s budget and
capacity to guide security assistance policy.
Putting the State Department back in charge of security assistance will be a major reform and will
require significant operational changes within the department, as well as a dramatic expansion of its
administrative capacity . This will take time to implement and require significant reform within the agency.
The DOD has done an admirable job in setting up a new institutional structure, in implementing assistance, and in coordinating with the State
Department. However, officials across the U.S. foreign policy world acknowledge that the system is not working. Tommy Ross, a former DOD
official in charge of overseeing the Pentagon’s security assistance, recently argued that U.S. security assistance is “not fit for purpose” and is
“out of sync with U.S. priorities when it comes to where resources are needed most and the types of capabilities required by America’s allied
and partners.”1 Indeed, throughout much of the last decade, it has been DOD officials who publicly argued for increased funding for the State
Department.2 Ultimately, the
current bifurcated security assistance system is suboptimal and results in the
bureaucratic diminishment of the State Department relative to the military considerations of the DOD.
Transferring resources and responsibility to the State Department would centralize responsibility for
foreign aid under diplomatic
control, while improving interagency cooperation , as DOD would remain the primary
implementer of U.S. assistance.
Some of these ideas will likely be met with innate skepticism from a generation of security professionals whose experience in Washington has
been characterized by an ever-withering State Department and an ever-strengthening Pentagon. This report anticipates and rebuts likely
arguments against reform, including the capacity of the State Department to take on this responsibility, the benefits of the Pentagon’s current
management, or the unnecessary disruption that would result from significant bureaucratic change laid out in this proposal.
Failing to reform security assistance not only leaves the United States with a wasteful and inefficient
status quo, it also perpetuates the marginalization of diplomacy and locks in the military’s newly
found dominance in driving U.S. foreign policy. The current security assistance system evolved to
address the threats posed by the post-9/11 era and is now outdated and ill-suited for a new geopolitical
environment characterized by competition. If the next administration is to revive U.S. diplomacy and rebuild the State
Department, it must empower the agency to oversee and direct foreign assistance. The Biden-Harris administration should seize the
opportunity to work with a new Congress to reform the system from its first days in office and restore an effective tool in the U.S. foreign policy
arsenal.
A new security assistance system, centralized and coordinated within the State Department, would
allow the United States to wield its security assistance more effectively and responsibly in today’s
competitive geopolitical environment. Arms transfers, training, and support could also better support
U.S. foreign policy goals, in particular bolstering democratic partners and emerging democracies,
making them stronger U.S. partners to counter threats from authoritarian actors. Empowering the
State Department to oversee and manage security assistance would also ensure that aid is used to advance a values-
based foreign policy that respects and supports human rights.3 It would also give U.S. diplomats greater clout and leverage and potentially
create greater coherence to the provision of foreign assistance overall.
The result would be to strengthen a key tool in the
U.S. foreign policy toolbox and increase the clout and authority of America’s diplomats, which is
badly needed in this new era of geopolitical competition .
Enhanced diplomatic credibility solves every transnational risk
Burns 20, Goodman Family professor of the practice of diplomacy and international relations, is chair
of the Harvard Kennedy School’s Program on Transatlantic Relations, director of the Future of Diplomacy
Project, and a co-leader of the American Secretaries of State Project (Nicholas, “The Indispensable
Power,” Harvard Magazine, https://www.harvardmagazine.com/2020/07/features-forumindispensable-power)//BB
DIPLOMACY has never been so important as now
, when we are confronting the most serious crises since the Second World War: the global pandemic and economic collapse. When we emerge finally
from the grip of the coronavirus, Americans will need to account for a public-health disaster that has killed well over 100,000 people to date and shuttered nearly every institution in our society (including Harvard) for much of the spring and into the summer. But
we’ll also
need to look beyond our borders
How should nations be better prepared
Will major economies collaborate
The answer to these questions will
depend
on our ability to work diplomatically across the world
the nation leaned heavily on its
unmatched military might during the Cold War, after 9/11, and in the Afghan and Iraq wars. Now
to assess what went wrong globally. Why did the World Health Organization—its long and continuing record of expertise in matters of global health notwithstanding—not press China more
aggressively to tell the truth about the virus in early January?
for a possible second wave? Can they agree to share a vaccine equitably among the world’s 7.7 billion people?
the
to prevent the current recession from turning into another Great Depression?
in large measure
in this multi-front struggle. As a former career Foreign Service officer, I have spent four decades
of my professional life representing the United States overseas and teaching about America’s role as the indispensable power in the international arena. For much of that time,
—
of the coronavirus to every inhabited continent,
, with the spread
diplomacy’s time has come in the reconstruction of a more stable and better world
.
Unfortunately, restoring the role of U.S. diplomacy won’t be easy. One early casualty of the pandemic is our plummeting credibility as the unmatched global power. For the first time since World War II, America has chosen not to lead in confronting a quintessentially global threat. With
American energy and confidence in short supply, President Donald Trump is a spectral figure on the world stage as nations struggle to contain the virus. Instead of leading the G-20 major economies against the contagion, the world has watched an American president castigate China for
birthing the “Wuhan Virus,” pin the blame for the failed response on the World Health Organization, and—as one of my European students lamented—fail even to offer a simple word of sympathy in all those endless news conferences to those dying in Italy and Spain and other bedrock
America should place its diplomats out in front
forces
to be used only when diplomacy fails
is only one of many among a new type of threat that requires us to lead
allies. Former Secretary of State Colin Powell has long maintained that
in reserve,
(“on point” in the military vernacular),
with armed
coronavirus
diplomacy
the
. Powell’s dictum is an important reminder of how the United States should seek to lead in this time of pandemic, for the
as much
through
the power of
as through
transnational threats that affect every nation
climate change
food and water shortages narcotics and crime cartels
cyber security pandemics
We cannot
that of the military. Many of the students I teach point to
and person on earth as our greatest challenges:
,
, the lack of
succeed in containing them without
forming
diplomatic alliances
,
, and
top the list.
among governments, universities, foundations, businesses, and citizens. This new brand of diplomacy is not an alternative
to the military but its logical partner in the twenty-first century American arsenal. The military remains essential to fight terrorists, and to counter rivals Russia and China an d outlaw governments in North Korea and Iran, but even in these cases we have to have robust diplomacy to
achieve our aims. Even if we deployed the full might of the U.S. military to eliminate the North Korean and Iranian nuclear programs, and the regimes that support them, does anyone believe that would, by itself, “solve” the problem? Even in those cases, deft, multilateral diplomacy will
have to play a lead role—as recent experience has shown.
We can no longer default to force alone
, as we have done so often since 9/11. A Foreign Service for 2030 AMERICA’S DIPLOMATIC EFFECTIVENESS rests, in
large part, on the women and men of the U.S. Foreign Service—more than 11,000 career officials in more than 280 embassies and consulates and at the State Department in Washington, D.C. They are our primary interface with foreign governments, businesses, and citizens. They
adjudicate immigrant and non-immigrant visas and refugee admissions to the United States. They help American businesses overcome barriers to foreign trade and investment. They manage difficult war and peace challenges in every corner of the world—from daily challenges to the
most intricate, strategic matters vital to our national security and prosperity. Diplomatic collaboration also underpins our ability to advance the more positive scientific, technological, and societal trends that can sustain the historic alleviation of poverty worldwide, promote women’s
rights, and realize the promise of a carbon-free economy. Just when we need to turn to diplomacy, however, the Foreign Service is experiencing one of the greatest crises in its long history. Some of the damage has been caused by prior Democratic as well as Republican administrations.
The United States is the only major country that fills a third or more of its ambassadorial assignments with political appointees, often poorly qualified, from outside the career ranks—often depriving the country of the advantages it could secure with expert, professional, nonpartisan
diplomatic representation around the world. That mistake has only accelerated, with the current administration appointing the lowest percentage of career ambassadors in more than half a century. Former generals and admirals have been appointed to ambassa dorships that would
otherwise be filled—as they should be—by civilian officers. The politicization and militarization of our foreign policy by both parties is a genuine problem. More broadly, the Foreign Service has been substantially weakened and is in need of major repair. Even as the Trump
administration’s budget requests for the Department of Defense rose from $686 billion to as high as $718 billion during its first two years, it sought to slash the State Department’s budget by up to a third. The administration fired several of America’s most senior and experienced
diplomats early in 2017 and sidelined countless others, triggering an exodus of officers of every rank. The president himself has castigated career diplomats as the “Deep State.” Unsurprisingly, morale has crashed and young Americans’ applications for the Foreign Service have fallen to
just under 10,000 from a high of 31,000 in 2003—a worrisome indicator that our nation’s ability to attract superb diplomatic talent is being eroded. Re-Imagining American Diplomacy THE KENNEDY SCHOOL launched an ambitious, nonpartisan initiative this winter—A New American
Diplomacy for the 21st Century—to address these concerns and spark a national conversation about the future of the Foreign Service. I am working with former Foreign Service colleagues, Ambassadors Nancy McEldowney, Marc Grossman, and Marcie Ries, to issue a major public report
after the November presidential election. We have organized online meetings with hundreds of current and former officials, business and nonprofit leaders, and everyday citizens to discuss ways to strengthen the career service. American diplomacy needs a major generational update.
Since 9/11, Congress and three administrations have reformed the U.S. military and intelligence services and created the Department of Homeland Security. But collectively, they did little to re-imagine diplomacy’s role in the American arsenal. During the last century, there have been just
three efforts to modernize the U.S. diplomatic corps: in 1924, 1946, and 1980 (when Congress passed the last major State Department Authorization Act). In our vastly altered geo-strategic environment, 40 years later, it is time to renew the mission of the Foreign Service. Barack Obama,
Benjamin Netanyahu, and Mahmoud Abbas, September 22, 2009, at the Waldorf Astoria, New York City Photograph by John Angelillo-Pool/Getty Images We can mine America’s long diplomatic history for inspiration. Drawing on my own experience, I recall, as a young intern at the U.S.
embassy in Mauritania, seeing first-hand the respect and influence President Jimmy Carter earned as the first U.S. leader to make Africa a priority. A decade later, when I served at the National Security Council with responsibility for the Soviet Union, I witnessed President George H.W.
Bush negotiate the peaceful end of the Cold War and Bill Clinton consolidate the triumph of democracy over communism. President George W. Bush launched the bipartisan PEPFAR initiative to help in the fight against HIV/AIDs, polio, malaria, and other deadly diseases in Africa, the
Caribbean, and elsewhere (a useful precedent when thinking about what it will really take to combat the coronavirus, not only in the developed nations, but in those with far fewer economic and healthcare resources). It was on 9/11, however, as U.S. ambassador to the North Atlantic
Treaty Organization, that I learned one of the most powerful lessons about diplomacy. Just a few hours after Al Qaida terrorists attacked the World Trade Center and Pentagon, my phone started to ring at NATO headquarters outside Brussels. My Canadian colleague, David Wright, called
first—followed by the ambassadors of the United Kingdom, France, Poland, Germany, Italy, and many others. Each asked, “What can we do to help?” Those were very welcome words on the single darkest day in recent American history. By the next morning, invoking Article 5 of the 1949
NATO Treaty for the first time in history, all of the NATO-allied countries came to the rescue of the United States—lending mighty political and diplomatic support to the military response that would come later. Our allies considered Osama Bin Laden’s attacks on New York and
Washington as an attack on them as well. Their militaries all went into Afghanistan with us (the majority remain 19 years later—and they and other partner nations have suffered more than 1,000 combat deaths; we owe them a lot). Contrary to such evidence, the current president
believes the United States is strongest when it acts alone—unburdened of allies and partners whom he views as relics of our Cold War past. I lived the history of 9/11 and draw a very different lesson about the value of allies to the United States. Why would we want to live alone in a
troubled and dangerous world, without the benefit of friends and allies by our side?
Our NATO allies
, as well as Japan, South Korea, and Australia,
act as multipliers of American power in
the world
. They provide a lifeline of military, economic, and political support when we often need it most. They represent the great power differential between the United States and our rivals Russia and China, who can count on no such allies when the chips are down. As
we recover from two decades of war and COVID-19’s assault on our society and economy, we will need to look at our global role in a new way. The era when America could run the world by fiat has vanished. We are still the strongest economic, military, and technological power—but
And although we will need to call on the military to defend us in
the future, we will more often than not need to outwit and outmaneuver adversaries through
diplomats
from pandemics to climate change
China, India, and others are gaining on us. We can no longer overpower our adversaries in every crisis.
the strength of our
and our alliances—not to mention mustering support for those broader, nonmilitary crises we now face,
.
1NC --- OFF
The United States Federal Government ought to increase its defense cooperation with
the European Union in the area of [cybersecurity capacity building.]
US-EU cooperation’s uniquely positioned to propagate emerging tech norms. It spills
up to revitalize broader EU leadership.
Raluca Csernatoni 21, visiting scholar at Carnegie Europe in Brussels, where she leads the
workstreams on European security and defence, as well as emerging and disruptive technologies, also a
guest professor with the Brussels School of Governance of the Free University of Brussels, “The
Technology Challenge in the Transatlantic Relationship,” European View, vol. 20, no. 2, SAGE
Publications Ltd, 10/01/2021, pp. 157–165
Values-based regulation of tech
Both the EU and the US have taken steps to set new standards for responsible innovation in EDTs,
particularly in the case of AI development (Brattberg et al. 2020). Steps have also been taken to limit the monopolistic surveillance and dataharvesting power of big tech and digital platforms by ushering in a new era of regulation. These
are important areas of
transatlantic technology cooperation, focusing on the proper regulation and evaluation of potential
misuses of EDTs, as well as on their human rights, democratic and ethical implications. Concerning the
regulation of tech giants, the EU has been a first mover (Csernatoni 2021b). There are also signs of converging attitudes in the
transatlantic debate on anti-trust issues, competition policy, and the human-centric and responsible development of EDTs such as AI. Data
governance, digital regulation and establishing technological standards were set out as areas for potential collaboration at the EU–US summit
on 15 June 2021, both for the envisaged EU–US TTC and for the respective working groups dealing with the various technology and digitalrelated portfolios.
The underlying goals of transatlantic technological cooperation are (1) to promote shared approaches to responsible
innovation and human-centric models for research on, and the development and deployment of EDTs
(especially AI); (2) to ensure the democratic accountability of online digital platforms; (3) to facilitate the free flow of data and its
governance; and (4) to collaborate on building the resilience of digital and technology global supply chains. In terms
of regulatory interventions, the EU has certain advantages that it should seek to better capitalise on when it
comes to international engagement and building and reinforcing partnerships. The EU’s experience with data
privacy regulation, with its flagship General Data Protection Regulation, could serve as an example for establishing global
norms for emerging technologies and the private sector. Indeed, the EU’s ‘White Paper on AI’ (European Commission 2020c)
and the proposed AI regulation (the ‘AI Act’) (European Commission 2021c), as the first-ever attempts to regulate AI, are
likely to
influence the global regulatory debate.
EU leaders have argued that technological and digital sovereignty is also about protecting European culture and values (European Commission
2020b), in which fundamental rights are prioritised. With the new strategy of a Europe Fit for the Digital Age (European Commission 2020a), the
European Commission wants to deliver on the promise of human-centric and risk-based tech regulation as part of a comprehensive regulatory
package that includes the European Digital Strategy, the European Data Strategy, the Digital Services Act, the Digital Markets Act and the
proposed AI Act (European Commission 2021c). The aim is to create a safer and more open digital space, establish a level playing field when it
comes to gatekeeper online platforms and propose comprehensive legislation targeting AI uses. The White House has also released its AI
Principles, which focus on a strategy for engaging in the creation of AI technical standards, and an AI regulatory document intended to ensure
the trustworthy development, testing, deployment and adoption of AI technologies (Brattberg 2020).
Thus, aligning transatlantic
strategies on tech regulation, including on the issue of responsible AI innovation and
data privacy, is very much needed to promote the stronger global democratic governance of EDTs. While respecting some differences
and challenges across the Atlantic when it comes to data privacy debates, data transfers, data taxation and regulation, the EU and the US
should endeavour to actively combine the EU’s global regulatory prowess and the US’s commercial
competitive edge in technology (Bradford and Csernatoni 2021). Indeed, the Biden administration appears to be willing to
collaborate with the EU on the broad strokes of responsible technological innovation and digital regulation. But some of the EU’s actions,
especially concerning data privacy, digital taxation and antitrust, are still issues that need to be ironed out in the transatlantic relationship
(Brattberg 2020). The new EU–US TTC forum might be the best place to politically address such sources of friction, as well as to lead the valuesbased governance of the technological and digital transformation.
EU legitimacy and norm-setting prevent global conflict and transnational threats--extinction
Dr. Rosa Balfour 19, Senior Transatlantic Fellow at the German Marshall Fund of the United States,
PhD in International Relations from the London School of Economics and Political Science, MA in History
from Cambridge University, MSc in European Studies from the London School of Economics and Political
Science, Senior Advisor to the European Policy Centre, Associate of LSE Ideas, “The European Foreign
Policy in a Hostile Environment”, The Progressive Post, 4/11/2019,
https://progressivepost.eu/debates/next-economy/european-foreign-policy-hostile-environment
In a brittle world without enduring strong international alliances, the debate on Europe’s ‘strategic
autonomy’ has gained new resonance, but it should not shadow the EU’s unique key international
assets in the global economy and multilateral order. Working with global networks to promote norms and
public goods is key to push back on nationalism, the rise of geopolitics and transactionalism.
Strategic autonomy’ and ‘complementarity with NATO’ usually appear in the same sentence in the European debate – the latest doctrinal
iteration to be found in the EU Global Strategy of June 2016. The ensemble reflects Europe’s need to rely on its transatlantic relationship for
security and territorial defence, empowering it to carry out foreign policy too. The EU’s greatest foreign policy achievement of enlarging to
Central Europe after the Cold War, pursued in tandem with NATO expansion, is testimony to this pairing.
Since the end of 2016, the US President’s international preferences undermine directly or indirectly Europe’s security. Whether it is the
insistence on greater burden-sharing, US action in the Middle East, or trade disputes with China, current US policies put Europe’s security –
already challenged by Russian action in Eastern Europe and the Middle East – at risk.
European leaders have started to question whether the transatlantic relationship needs to be preserved no matter what, or whether Europe
should emancipate from it. The
debate on ‘strategic autonomy’ is animating recent efforts in the field of security and defence. It
refers to the ability to make and carry out decisions on defence, to conduct military operations
autonomously, and to have the industrial capabilities to do so. Even if this level of strategic autonomy were agreed
upon, it would take a generation for Europe to affect the world stage.
The focus on strategic autonomy speaks to present insecurities in European societies, but not to the EU’s
international legitimacy where, possibly, the European Union has better opportunities to develop means of
political autonomy which befit its history and international identity. The emerging debate on economic sovereignty is
addressing for the first time the degree to which the EU can make political use of some of its economic and financial tools, such as the Euro as
an international currency. After all, the EU and its Member States remain the world’s largest trade bloc and donor.
On the multilateral stage, Europe faces an increasingly hostile environment but remains the best hope
to pursue universal principles, such as human rights and the rule of law, which underpin the resilience of
that multilateral system. How to partner with other countries and actors around the globe to push back on
attacks to international order is no longer a second order priority.
If the way ahead appears clear, achieving it is a tall order. The rationale for collective action for the EU seems obvious – the ‘politics of scale’, or
to be stronger together rather than weaker apart – but historically difficult to achieve. The
multiple threats and risks on Europe’s
doorsteps have only minimally bridged the strategic divergence that continues to beset the continent, and
the rise of the populist radical right is beginning to undermine existing European external policies, not to speak of a higher level of ambition.
Looking at global politics from a non-European perspective, how Europe’s friends and partners around the world will welcome a bid for greater
autonomy – politically, economically, and strategically – still needs to be seen. The EU’s worldview that it has acted as a ‘force for good’ is not
uncritically accepted. After all, that ethical stand was also possible thanks to the EU’s belonging to a stable and hegemonic West.
If Europe wants to engage with the world and simultaneously strengthen its strategic identity it needs to square some circles. Without
giving into the facile critique that realism and geopolitics render multilateral principles obsolete and
warrant hard-nosed politics, Europe should leverage its assets, which are irrevocably embedded in
multilateralism and cooperation. Climate change, conflict prevention and mediation, and an open and
fairer international trade system are among the assets that the EU can concretely work towards globally.
To do so it needs to engage flexibly with global actors, focusing more on multilevel networks including civil society rather than on the
traditional partnerships between governments, some of which are no longer benign or useful. Both will require a dose of humility in listening to
non-European world views and of pragmatism in seeking appropriate strategies and paths forward.
Last but not least, if Europe wants to imagine its own history of prosperity, democracy and peace as still relevant to the debates taking place
in the rest of the world, it also needs
to think about the global future sustainability of welfare, taking progressive
in a more global and open debate about public common goods.
politics outside national boundaries and engaging
1NC --- OFF
First/Next OFF is Topicality--Intelligence sharing is NOT security cooperation
Albert Zaccor 5, then a US Army Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council, August 2005, “Security
Cooperation and Non-State Threats: A Call for an Integrated Strategy,”
https://www.files.ethz.ch/isn/46290/2005_08_Security_Cooperation_and_Non-State_Threats.pdf, cc
Relationships built on trust and mutual interests are also necessary to obtain cooperation from foreign governments in the area of Intelligence and Information. It
is useful to separate the distinct , but related, issues of Intelligence Sharing and Intelligence Security
Cooperation . Intelligence Sharing is a critical element in the fight against non-state threats, or strategic crime. By its nature, however, such
sharing involves
sensitive sources, methods and arrangements , normally in the context of a bilateral relationship. Its
sensitivity requires delicate handling in highly restrictive channels. Intelligence sharing, in practice, falls outside
the scope of Security Cooperation. Intelligence S ecurity C ooperation, on the other hand, involves the development of interoperable
and cooperative intelligence systems and processes designed to enhance
the ability of one partner to work with one or several
other partners . The core activities in Intelligence Security Cooperation are analytical and expertise exchanges, familiarization,
training , and traditional Security Assistance. Both Intelligence Sharing and Intelligence Security Cooperation are mutually supporting. It is clear that the quality
and reliability of intelligence we get from our partners depends on the competence, capability, professionalism, and trustworthiness of their national intelligence
services and how compatible their operations are with ours. Intelligence Security Cooperation provides the tools to develop long-range relationships with foreign
partners to improve both the quality of the intelligence we share and our ability to work together.
Vote neg to preserve limits. Our interpretation excludes thousands of affirmatives
which merely release intel over microscopic issues, resulting in inconsequential
changes to the status quo that the negative can never predict
ON
1NC – Adv 2 - Turn
1 - Concede 1NC Cramer that the aff solves Cohesion – we are impact turning that
NATO causes Russia and China to create an Axis of Evil against the US – the US fails at
deterrence
Eugene Rumer and Richard Sokolsky 22, Rumer, former national intelligence officer for Russia at the
U.S. National Intelligence Council, a senior fellow and the director of Carnegie’s Russia and Eurasia
Program; Sokolsky, senior fellow in Carnegie’s Russia and Eurasia Program; 3-23-22, “Russia’s National
Security Narrative: All Quiet on the Eastern Front,” https://carnegieendowment.org/2022/05/23/russias-national-security-narrative-all-quiet-on-eastern-front-pub-87185, jy
Putin’s war against Ukraine, preceded by his demands for the United States and its NATO allies to fundamentally alter post–Cold War European security
arrangements, has dispelled all doubts—to the extent that any remained—about the primacy of Europe as the principal theater where Russia’s strategic interests
reside, from where the principal threats to the country’s security emanate, and where the principal efforts to defend it from those threats are concentrated. As a
critical strategic theater, Asia pales in comparison with Europe. The attack on Ukraine demonstrates the dominance of Europe and the unimportance of Asia—
beyond China—in Russian strategic thinking.
Prior to the war in Ukraine, the view that Russian strategic thinking was myopic and misguided was widespread in the U.S. national security community. According
to this view, the real threat to Russia in the medium and long term would emerge from China rather than the West. Sooner or later, the Russian strategic
community would realize that. And the sooner it could be disabused of its mistaken approach to China, the better for the United States, whose interests would be
best served by preventing Russia from becoming an ally and force multiplier of China. U.S. policy, therefore, should de-emphasize rivalry with Russia and instead
seek to drive a wedge between Moscow and Beijing. In other words, it was a policy prescription for a partnership with Russia on the basis of perceiving a shared
threat from China.
That prescription is no longer viable. However, for many years before the invasion of Ukraine, Western analysts and policymakers ignored the basic fact that
Russia’s partnership with China is not a short-term marriage of convenience but grounded in a set of
coherent, complementary, and well-thought-out strategic rationales. This should have been obvious to
anyone who followed the strategic discourse in Russia, read its national security documents, and sought to understand the basics of
its domestic politics, national security decisionmaking, and economy.
One striking aspect of the Russian national security discourse largely overlooked by many in the U.S. strategic community is its all-consuming preoccupation with
perceived threats from the West. Insecurity
vis-à-vis the West has been the defining feature of official security
documents since the 1990s, when the United States and Europe considered the Cold War to be over. In Russia, by contrast, the West’s security
policy has always been viewed as a continuation in one form or another of its Cold War policies, initially as a “Cold War
light” version, but increasingly as a manifestation of the West’s hostile intentions toward Russia.
Another striking aspect of Russian national security documents that has been overlooked is the absence in them of any references to China as a challenge, let alone
a potential source of threats to Russia. As
alarm about China and its growing ambitions on the world stage became louder in the
United States, Russia’s national security documents avoided any mention of the country other than as a partner, and
instead increasingly concentrated on the West as the principal source of threats . These documents, however, reflect
the actual thinking of the country’s national security leadership and its strategic posture.
This paper first provides an overview of these documents, their evolution since the breakup of the Soviet Union, and the strategic backdrop to that evolution. It
then focuses on the treatment of China in these documents and explores the reasons why they have ignored the country as a threat or a challenge to Russian
national security. Next, the paper explores the unofficial Russian debate about China, considers the practical manifestations in Russian defense policy of its Eurocentric preoccupation, and concludes with implications for the United States.
IT IS ABOUT EUROPE
The war in Ukraine is but the latest conflict in the long historic cycle of war and peace in the
relationship between Russia and the rest of Europe. Virtually the entire history of Russia as a modern state
is one of wars waged in the European theater —against Sweden, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, Prussia, Great Britain, France,
Turkey, Austria, Germany, and so on.
The history of Russia’s
relationship with Asia contains nothing similar . Compared to the major European wars, the conquest
of Siberia was a series of skirmishes , few of which are recognized as milestones in Russian history. Two major military undertakings stand
out—the lost Russo-Japanese war of 1904–1905 and the August 1945 campaign against Japan in Manchuria, which is extolled in Russian historiography as the final
chapter of the Second World War. The latter lasted just a few weeks and is generally considered a footnote to the main war effort in the European theater, where
the victory is celebrated on May 9 as the end of the Great Patriotic War.
Since the emergence of post-Soviet Russia in 1991, the
Kremlin’s preoccupation with the insecurity of the country’s
western flank has manifested itself on multiple occasions, and in defiance of indisputable trends in European security since the end of the Cold War. In the
1990s, Russian
leaders objected to NATO admitting new members from Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. Russia’s president at the
time, Boris Yeltsin, accused U.S. president Bill Clinton of trying to split the continent again.1 Russia’s military threatened prospective members of the alliance with
nuclear weapons, its foreign intelligence service warned about military retaliation in general, and its diplomats
charged that the “NATO-
centrism” and “NATO-mania” of U.S. policy “cannot suit Russia.”2 All of these accusations became the
major, persistent theme in Russian policy toward Europe, culminating in the demands to fundamentally
revise European security arrangements presented to the United States and NATO in December 2021 as the
prelude to the war against Ukraine.3
Throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, Russia’s objections to NATO’s eastward expansion made little sense to an outside observer as the country’s struggles and
biggest challenges were domestic during that period—the bloody campaign to suppress the separatist guerilla movement in Chechnya, the instability in the wider
North Caucasus region, the sputtering efforts to revive the economy, and the political chaos. The United States and its NATO allies had nothing to do with any of
these, and they provided financial and technical assistance to the Russian government on a wide range of economic and societal reforms.
Moreover, in the aftermath of the Soviet Union’s breakup, the United States and its allies spent vast amounts of money on programs that were essential to Russian
national security. They financed and in many other ways facilitated the removal to Russia and securing of the vast nuclear arsenal and other weapons of mass
destruction scattered across several former Soviet republics. Although this Cooperative Threat Reduction program was one of the key U.S. national security
priorities, its immediate beneficiary was Russia.4
As NATO’s eastward expansion got underway, the United States, eager to collect the post–Cold War “peace dividend,” drastically reduced its military presence in
Europe.5 At the end of the Cold War, it had some 300,000 troops in the continent. By 1995, that number had decreased to just over 100,000, where it remained
approximately for the next decade. By 2008, it dropped to about 65,000, where it has been ever since. By 2013—the last year before the annexation of Crimea by
Russia—the United States had reduced the number of its tanks deployed in the European theater from 5,000 in 1989 to zero.6 Other NATO members had carried
out equally drastic changes to reduce their defense spending and the size of their militaries.7
Thus, NATO’s expansion was accompanied by a process of its demilitarization. In speeches by its leaders and in official statements, the alliance embraced as its
purpose securing “a lasting peace in Europe, based on common values of individual liberty, democracy, human rights and the rule of law.”8 That purpose at times
seemed to overshadow its original mission of common defense, which was expected—or almost presumed—to become obsolete as common values would become
the foundation of European security. In two strategic concepts—in 1999 and 2010—NATO also declared achieving “partnership” with Russia as a goal.9 In some
documents it already referred to its relationship with Russia as a “partnership.”10
Senior U.S. officials in speeches and testimonies throughout the pivotal 1990s stated
that expansion would not involve greater
deployments of U.S. troops to the territories of new members but would instead result in an overall reduction of the U.S. military presence on the
continent, which would be transformed into an “area where wars simply do not happen.”11 The alliance also pledged to Russia that it had
no intention, no plan and no reason to deploy nuclear weapons on the territory of new members, nor any need to change any aspect of NATO’s nuclear
posture or nuclear policy – and do not foresee any future need to do so.12
And, given their small size and military capabilities, none of the new members could pose individually or collectively a meaningful threat to Russia.
In addition to its three pillars of propagation of shared democratic values, reduction of NATO’s military forces, and eastward expansion, the revamped European
security architecture was buttressed by two key treaties intended to enhance the stability and security of all European nations. The first was the Intermediate-Range
Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty signed by the United States and the Soviet Union in 1987, which eliminated an entire class of weapons that Soviet leaders had found
threatening to their heartland and destabilizing for international security.13 The other was the Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (CFE) Treaty in 1990, which
imposed limits on and regulated military deployments by all its signatories.14 In addition, Vienna Document 99 provided for increased transparency of military
activities to build mutual confidence and reduce the risk of inadvertent and accidental escalation.
In addition to these treaties and documents governing primarily European security matters, the
United States and Russia signed several armscontrol treaties that greatly reduced the numbers of strategic nuclear weapons and means of their delivery in their
arsenals. The 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty ( START I), the 2002 Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty (SORT), and New START in 2010 were
major contributions to both countries’ security.
When measured by such indicators as the presence of powerful hostile neighbors, the military footprint as well as the declarations and actions of its presumed
principal adversary in the European theater, and the framework of legally binding treaties, Russia entered the twenty-first century with the security of its western
flank assured as never before. That, however, was not enough for it.
IT IS OFFICIAL
These positive changes in European security were noted in a succession of Russian national security documents of the 1990s and the 2000s. However, these
documents also expressed a clear unease about the eastward expansion of NATO. Beginning with the 1993 military doctrine, “the
expansion of military blocs and alliances to the detriment of the interests of the Russian Federation’s military security” was noted as a “danger” that could become
an actual threat in the event of “the introduction of foreign troops in the territory of neighboring states of the Russian Federation.”15 The
expansion of
NATO became a key theme in subsequent iterations of military doctrine and national security strategy ,
with growing apprehension that
“military dangers to the Russian Federation [were] intensifying,” chief among
them the “military infrastructure of NATO member countries ” approaching Russia’s borders.16
The most notable official pronouncement in this regard was Putin’s speech at the 2007 Munich Security Conference in
which he issued a stern warning to the United States and its allies not to expand NATO further
eastward.17 The Kremlin followed up on Putin’s warning by crushing the Georgian military in the brief 2008 war to make clear that
it would not tolerate Tbilisi’s ambitions to join NATO.
The war was followed by the resumption of cooperative relations with the West.18 But the détente with the West
during Dmitry Medvedev’s presidency did not diminish Russian opposition to NATO’s eastward expansion as a threat
to its security interests.19
Russia’s balancing act between cooperation and competition with NATO ended following its 2014 annexation of
Crimea and the start of its undeclared war in eastern Ukraine. NATO was officially and unequivocally
declared the principal source of military danger to the country.20 Russia’s most recent National Security Strategy, published in July
2021, describes the United States and NATO as developing options for nuclear and conventional strikes against the country.21
The war against Ukraine, launched by the Kremlin in response to the West’s refusal to accept its demands to fundamentally revise the post–Cold War
security arrangements, has put an end to the few remaining hopes of managing the tense relationship through
such channels as the NATO–Russia Council, the Normandy Format to resolve the stalemate in eastern Ukraine, and the U.S.-Russia Strategic Stability
Dialogue.22 The post–Cold War chapter in relations has ended with a major war between Russia and Ukraine backed by NATO in effect with all measures just short
of direct participation by alliance troops. The
ongoing conflict underscores the primacy of the European theater for
Russia and the role of the United States and NATO as the pacing challenge for its defense and national security
policy.
CHINA MISSING
By contrast, China is virtually absent from the Russian official statements, national security documents, and narratives spanning the three
post–Cold War decades. The most recent National Security Strategy contains two references to the country: one in the context of “developing a relationship of allencompassing partnership and strategic cooperation,” and the other in the context of deepening cooperation with it in the context of the BRICS (Brazil-India-ChinaSouth Africa) counterpart to the U.S.-led G7 group of advanced democracies.23 Earlier iterations similarly referred to China as a partner with whom Russia planned
to sustain and expand cooperative relations.24
Partnership with China has been the counterweight to Russia’s increasingly adversarial relations with
the United States and NATO. The two have progressed in synch over the course of Putin’s leadership, and
the war against Ukraine is the most recent manifestation of this dynamic. Just before the war, Putin and Chinese
President Xi Jinping jointly announced the “no limits” friendship and declared that there were “no ‘forbidden’
areas for cooperation” between their two countries. These statements confirmed that balancing against the West
by aligning ever closer with China is at the heart of Russian policy .25
From Russia’s perspective, the partnership with China rests on solid reasoning. This includes political complementarity
between two authoritarian governments and economic complementarity between China’s manufacturing sector and Russia’s resource wealth. For Russia’s ruling
elite, the relationship is particularly important for two reasons. First, unlike the United States and the European Union, China
does not seek to
impose its values or demand domestic political changes that would loosen its hold on power in
exchange for partnership. Beijing would also probably look unfavorably at attempts by Moscow to liberalize domestic politics. Second, Russia’s ruling
elite derives significant material benefits from controlling the commanding heights of the economy. It has little incentive to change the resource sector’s dominant
role in the economy, which benefits from trade with China.
Beyond these ideological, political, and economic factors, Russia has
sound strategic reasons
China. Their priorities complement rather than contradict each other. Since Russia’s
for pursuing and strengthening its partnership with
primary theater is Europe and China’s is the
Asia-Pacific, their strategic interests overlap only in Central Asia, a region that is of secondary
importance for both and where they can deconflict their interests as long as no strategic competitor like the United States is present.
Russia and China share a common adversary in the United States, which has global capabilities and
presence that they see as challenging their interests in their critical theaters. Both consider U.S.
defense programs, such as missile defenses deployed in Europe and the Asia-Pacific or to protect the homeland, as a
threat to their security and an attempt by the United States to deny them the ability to deter and
retaliate against it in the event of war. Russia and China also in effect function as a force multiplier for
each other by tying up U.S. capabilities in their respective critical theaters and thus preventing it
from focusing its efforts on one or the other.
AVOIDING A TWO-THEATER CONFRONTATION
For Russia, which during most of the Cold War faced a major confrontation in two strategic theaters—with the
United States and NATO in Europe and with China in Asia—the repeat of that experience, which ultimately led to the collapse of the Soviet
economy and the breakup of the Soviet Union, is not an option. The Kremlin sees the West as by far the most serious
threat, which must be prioritized while disagreements with China have to be managed and resolved
through diplomacy .
A great deal has been written about the successful diplomatic maneuver that was the opening of U.S. relations with China during former president Richard Nixon’s
administration. For the Soviet Union, already facing a hostile China in its Far East since the early 1960s as a result of the Sino-Soviet split, the prospect of an
alignment between Washington and Beijing translated into a major military and economic burden. At the height of the Cold War, it had to maintain as many as fifty
divisions facing China along a border of 4,200 kilometers.26 That was in addition to the sixty-five divisions in the western Soviet Union, twenty on its southern flank,
and thirty in Eastern Europe.27 If the West’s victory in the Cold War is attributed to the inability of the Soviet economy to sustain the burden of competition with
the United States and its allies, significant credit is owed to China as a force multiplier in that competition.
The imperative to avoid a two-theater confrontation with powerful adversaries is also a lesson of the
Soviet experience during the Second World War. After the experience of tense relations in the 1930s, which culminated in a major battle
in 1939 in Mongolia, the Soviet Union signed a neutrality pact with Japan in 1941.28 Combined with intelligence that Japan would not launch an attack against its
Far East, this secured the Soviet Union’s strategic rear.29 No longer threatened with a two-front war in Europe and in Asia, Moscow was able to concentrate its
effort on the war with Germany. This is a lesson well remembered in Russia today.30
The only major military campaign carried out by the Soviet army in the Pacific took place after the defeat of Germany. Launched against Japan in August 1945, when
the outcome of the war in the Pacific was not in doubt, this lasted just a few weeks and was concluded in early September. Known as the Manchurian campaign, it
resulted in the defeat of the Japanese Kwantung Army.31
In Soviet and Russian
military literature, which relies heavily on historical experience to inform future concepts of operations,
the Manchurian campaign has long been held up as a successful example of rapid offensive operations
designed to bring about a quick defeat of the enemy as early as in the initial phase of the war.32 In preparation for it, in early 1945, the Soviet High
Command undertook major troop redeployments to the Far East from Europe, where the outcome of the war with Germany was
already certain. In April 1945, the Soviet Union renounced its nonaggression treaty with Japan.33 It issued a declaration of war on August 8 and the following day
launched its offensive—three days after the United States dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima. The operation was concluded on September 2, when Japan
surrendered. During the Cold War and the long period of tension with China, the Manchurian campaign was seen as the prototype for potential future operations
against it.34
However, more recent Russian historiography reflects a different understanding of the Manchurian campaign. Instead of offering lessons for the conduct of
hypothetical future operations against China, it is used to correct what Russia sees as the false historical narrative propagated in the West that the campaign was of
marginal impact on the defeat of Japan in the Second World War. On the occasion of the seventieth anniversary of the campaign in 2015, the dean of Russian
military scientists, Army General Mahmut Gareev, who as a young officer fought in the Second World War and participated in the campaign, published an article
challenging the proposition that the U.S. atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki had played the decisive role in the defeat of Japan, arguing instead that
the Manchurian campaign was of the “greatest military-political significance.”35 The campaign, he stated, had precipitated the capitulation of Japan.
Instead of the anti-China bias evident in Russian Cold War writings, more recent ones reflect a clear anti-Japan bias and emphasize the Japanese threat to the Soviet
Union and China during the Second World War. Also on the occasion of the seventieth anniversary of the Manchurian campaign, the official Russian government
newspaper Rossiyskaya Gazeta charged that “Japanese aggression had for many years posed a serious threat to the vital interests of the Soviet and Chinese peoples,
[and] millions of Chinese were enslaved by treacherous occupiers.”36 Gareev wrote in his article that the defeat of the Japanese army in Manchuria “washed away
the shame of [Russia’s] defeat” in the Russo-Japanese war of 1905, which had weighed as “a heavy memory in the conscience of our country.”
The shift in Russian official historiography from the Cold War preoccupation with China to the post–Cold War focus on Japan is consistent with changes in security
policy. Russia’s ever-closer partnership with China has relegated the prospect of a military confrontation between them to the margins, whereas the deteriorating
relationship with the United States has elevated the perception of threat from its treaty ally Japan.
Japan is also the only country—other than Ukraine, after the illegal annexation of Crimea by Russia—that maintains active territorial claims against Russia. The
Russian military doctrine published in 2003 highlights the threat of maritime landing operations in the Far East.37 The potential culprit in such contingencies could
only be Japan, possibly in coalition with the United States. The document also notes that inadequate transport links between central Russia and the Far East could
have a “negative impact” on the course of military operations.38 The combination of Japanese territorial claims and inferior Russian capabilities in this theater could
in the event of a conflict leave Russia with few alternatives to resorting to nuclear strikes against the invaders.
Japan hosts U.S. troops on its territory and participates in joint military activities with the United States in the Asia-Pacific. Although it has canceled two previously
planned sites for the U.S. Aegis Ashore missile system, it has decided to procure two Aegis-equipped ships and thus to contribute to what Russian officials perceive
as the U.S.-led effort to build global missile defenses, which they consider to be a threat to Russia.39 Russian analysts have also criticized Japan’s changes in its
defense posture that entail, in their view, growing geographic ambitions, capabilities beyond self-defense, and participation in presumably U.S.-led coalition wars.40
Overall, however, the
Far East and the Asia-Pacific do not hold a special place as an independent theater of
operations in Russian official military thinking . Rather, its importance reflects threat perceptions driven by
adversarial relations with the United States and its NATO allies centered on Europe and the imperative
of avoiding a simultaneous confrontation in two far-flung theaters .
It’s impossible to defend against both. China’s the larger threat, but Russia will punish
the US if the relationship doesn’t stabilize.
Hal Brands 22, Prof of Global Affairs at John Hopkins University, 1-18-2022, "The Overstretched
Superpower," https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/china/2022-01-18/overstretchedsuperpower?check_logged_in=1&utm_medium=promo_email&utm_source=lo_flows&utm_campaign=r
egistered_user_welcome&utm_term=email_1&utm_content=20220618, jy
ASIA FIRST
Biden’s initial theory of foreign policy was straightforward: don’t let smaller challenges distract from the big
one . Of all the threats Washington faces, Biden’s interim national security strategy argued, China “is the only competitor” able to
“mount a sustained challenge to a stable and open international system.” That challenge has become greater as China
has accelerated its efforts to overturn the balance of power in Asia . When Biden took office, U.S. military leaders publicly
warned that Beijing
could invade Taiwan by 2027. Biden was not naive enough to think that other problems would simply vanish. With trouble
brewing on this central front, however, he did seek a measure of calm on others.
Biden avoided another doomed “reset” with Russia, but held an early summit with Putin in a bid to establish a “stable and predictable” relationship. He also sought
to find a path back to the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran, thereby reducing the growing risk of confrontation in the Middle East. Finally, Biden ended the U.S. war in
Afghanistan, a decision he justified by arguing that it was time to refocus attention and resources on the Indo-Pacific. Relations with U.S. allies followed the same
pattern: the administration dropped U.S. opposition to the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline linking Russia and western Europe, wagering that ending a contentious
dispute with Germany would make it easier to win Berlin’s cooperation vis-à-vis Beijing.
Biden’s emerging defense strategy has a similar thrust. The Trump administration made
a major shift in U.S. defense planning, arguing
that the Pentagon must relentlessly prepare for a conflict against a great-power challenge—particularly from
China —even though that meant accepting greater risk in other regions. Biden’s Pentagon likewise spent 2021 focusing on how to
deter or defeat Chinese aggression, withdrawing scarce assets such as missile defense batteries from the Middle East,
and making longer-term budgetary investments meant to “prioritize China and its military modernization as our pacing
challenge.”
TROUBLE EVERYWHERE
Biden is undoubtedly right that the Chinese challenge overshadows all others , despite unresolved debates in
Washington over exactly when that challenge will become most severe. His
administration has made major moves in the Sino-American
competition during its first year—expanding
multilateral military planning and exercises in the western Pacific, focusing bodies such as
NATO and the G-7 on Beijing’s belligerence, and launching the AUKUS partnership with Australia and the United Kingdom. Yet Biden hasn’t enjoyed
anything resembling a respite on other fronts .
The U.S. withdrawal
from Afghanistan precipitated the collapse of the government there, generating a near-term crisis that
longer-term legacies—strategic and humanitarian—that are likely to do the same. Meanwhile, a
brutal internal conflict in Ethiopia destabilized one of Africa’s most important countries. Most problematic of all, U.S. relations with Iran
and Russia became worse , not better.
consumed Washington’s attention and leaving
The United States is an overstretched hegemon, with a defense strategy out of balance with the
foreign policy it supports.
Iran has taken a hard-line stance in negotiations on a revived nuclear deal while steadily decreasing the amount
of time it would need to produce a potential weapon. Tehran’s proxies have also conducted periodic attacks against
U.S. personnel and partners in the Middle East as part of an ongoing effort to force an American withdrawal from the region.
Putin, for his part, has authorized or at least permitted significant cyberattacks against critical infrastructure in the
United States. He threatened war against Ukraine in the spring and has now mobilized forces for what U.S. officials fear could be a major
invasion and prolonged occupation of that country. To preserve the peace, Moscow has demanded an acknowledged Russian sphere of influence and the
rollback of NATO’s military presence in eastern Europe. What exactly Putin has in mind for Ukraine is uncertain, but “stable
clearly not
and predictable” is
how he envisions his relationship with the United States.
These are ominous signs for 2022. The United
States could find itself facing grave security crises in Europe and the Middle East in
addition to persistent and elevated tensions in the Pacific. And these possibilities hint at a deeper problem in U.S.
statecraft, one that has been accumulating for years :
strategic overstretch .
MORE WITH LESS
Facing trouble on many fronts is business as usual for a global power. U.S. foreign policy—and the defense strategy that buttresses it—has long been designed with
that problem in mind. After the Cold War, the United States adopted a “two major regional contingencies” approach to defense planning. In essence, it committed
to maintaining a military large and capable enough to fight two serious wars in separate regions at roughly the same time. U.S. planners were under no illusion that
Washington could fully indemnify itself against all the threats it faced if they happened to manifest simultaneously. Their aim was to limit the risk inherent in a
global foreign policy by ensuring that an enemy in one theater could not wage a successful war of aggression while the Pentagon was busy with a crisis in another.
Just as the United Kingdom, the superpower of its day, had a two-power naval standard in the nineteenth century, a unipolar United States had a two-war standard
for a generation after 1991.
Over time, however, the
two-war standard became impossible to sustain. The defense spending cuts associated with
the Budget Control Act of 2011 (later compounded by the sequestration cuts of 2013) forced the Pentagon to adopt a somewhat stingier
“one-plus” war standard aimed at defeating one capable aggressor and stalemating or “imposing unacceptable costs” on another. Meanwhile, the
number of threats was increasing . During the post-Cold War era, the Pentagon worried mostly about potential conflicts in the Persian Gulf and
the Korean Peninsula. But the events of 2014 and 2015—the Islamic State’s rampage through Iraq and Syria, Russian aggression in Ukraine, and
China’s drive for dominance in the South China Sea, along with ongoing operations in Afghanistan—showed that U.S.
allies and interests were now imperiled in several regions at once.
Leaders in Moscow and Tehran see that the United States is stretched thin and eager to pay more
attention to China .
Washington’s enemies were also growing more formidable. The two-war standard was primarily focused
on rogue states with second-class militaries. Now, the United States had to contend with two near-peer
competitors, China and Russia, that boasted world-class conventional capabilities alongside the
advantages that would come from fighting on their own geopolitical doorsteps. By the end of Barack Obama’s
presidency, it was an open question whether the United States could defeat China if Beijing assaulted Taiwan, or Russia if Moscow invaded the Baltic region. What
was clear was that any such war
would require the overwhelming majority of the Pentagon’s combat power ,
along with virtually all of its airlift and sealift capabilities.
This realization prompted a major change in U.S. defense planning. The
Trump administration’s defense strategy declared that the two-war
standard was history . The U.S. military would henceforth be sized and shaped to win one major war against a great-power competitor. The United
States would still be capable of “deterring” aggression in other theaters, but, as a bipartisan commission that included several current Biden administration officials
pointed out, how exactly the Pentagon would do so without the capability to defeat such aggression remained ambiguous.
Shifting to a one-war standard was a sensible way to motivate the lethargic Pentagon bureaucracy to find creative solutions to the urgent, daunting challenge of
war with a near-peer rival. It involved a sober recognition that losing a great-power war could inflict a death blow
on the U.S.-led international order . Yet the 2018 defense strategy was also an acknowledgment of overstretch: the United States could
focus on its primary challenge only by reducing its ability to focus on others . This limitation is the root of the problem
Biden has inherited, and it has some dangerous implications.
THE CREDIBILITY GAP
The most glaring danger , highlighted by the concurrent crises in eastern Europe and East Asia, is that the United States could
have to fight wars against China and Russia simultaneously. This would indeed be a nightmare
scenario for a one-war military. But it wouldn’t take a global security meltdown to reveal the problems caused
by Washington’s predicament.
First, overstretch
limits U.S. options in a crisis. Where the United States should draw the line against Russian
aggression in eastern Europe, how hard it should push back against Tehran’s provocations in the Middle East, and
whether it should use force to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear threshold state are matters that reasonable
people can debate. But the fact that the United States increasingly has a China centric defense strategy has a
constraining effect in other theaters. If a U.S. president knows that the Pentagon will need everything it
has for an all-too-plausible war with China, he or she will be less inclined to use force against Iran or
Russia , lest Washington be caught short if violence erupts in the Pacific.
This issue leads to a second problem: the loss of diplomatic influence in situations short of war. Since the
2021, some observers have speculated
Taiwan and Ukraine crises of early
that Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping are coordinating their coercion as a
way of threatening Washington with a two-front war . The reality is that explicit coordination is hardly
necessary to profit from U.S. overextension.
Historically, overstretched
superpowers have eventually faced hard choices.
Leaders in Moscow and Tehran can see that the United States is stretched thin militarily and eager to pay more attention to China. This gives them an incentive to
push Washington harder in hopes of achieving gains at the expense of a distracted superpower. As the Russia expert Michael Kofman has written, Putin’s strategy of
using military coercion to revise the post-Cold War order in Europe is premised on his belief that the “greater threat from China” will eventually “force Washington
to compromise and renegotiate.” The more intense its focus on China, the higher the price the United States may be willing to pay for restraint in other places.
The perils of overstretch, however, are not confined to secondary theaters. Weakness at the periphery can
ultimately cause weakness at the center . A decade ago, the United States withdrew its forces from Iraq to economize in the Middle East and
pivot toward the Pacific. Iraq’s subsequent collapse forced Washington to reengage there, fighting a multi-year conflict that devoured resources and attention.
Similarly, if
the United States finds itself in a showdown with Iran or if Russia attempts to revise the status quo in
eastern Europe, Washington may once again find itself pivoting away from the Pacific to reinforce underresourced regions that still matter to U.S. security. America’s defense strategy is increasingly focused on the IndoPacific, but its foreign policy remains stubbornly global . That’s a recipe for trouble all around.
TOUGH CHOICES
To be clear, military
power is hardly the only thing that matters in global affairs. But it is a necessary component of an effective
foreign policy, if only because force remains the ultimate arbiter of international disputes. Xi, Putin, and other U.S. adversaries are unlikely to be swayed by
Biden’s “relentless diplomacy” unless they are also awed by the military power that backs it up.
Historically, overstretched superpowers have eventually faced hard choices about how to address
mismatches between commitments and capabilities. When the United Kingdom found itself with more rivals than it could handle in the late nineteenth and
early twentieth centuries, it began appeasing those that were less dangerous and proximate—including the United States—to concentrate on containing Germany.
When the Korean War revealed that Washington’s containment policy outstripped its military resources, the United States was forced to undertake a significant
defense buildup to close the gap.
The Biden administration may try to
skirt this dilemma by managing tensions with Iran, Russia, and other
challengers while encouraging allies in Europe and partners in the Middle East to take greater
responsibility for their own defense. That’s an understandable instinct. In the near term, both the geopolitical costs of true
retrenchment and the financial costs of rearmament may seem to exceed the difficulties of muddling
along. Yet Biden’s first year has already shown that overstretch inflicts damage on the installment plan. Eventually, the
world will punish a superpower that allows its strategic deficit to grow too big for too long.
Overstretch cedes competition with China, making hotspots escalate.
Nishtha Kaushiki 21, Assistant Prof of International Studies at the Central University of Punjab, 12-1021, "China: A nemesis that NATO wouldn’t want,"
https://www.dailypioneer.com/2021/columnists/china--a-nemesis-that-nato-wouldn---t-want.html, jy
The mention of China as a potential challenger to NATO first emerged in one of its documents in 2019, and by 2020-21, it has become its "systemic rival". From a
Euro-Atlantic perspective, Russia is a direct military threat that does not shy away from a head-on clash. Its primary focus is on its immediate strategic backyardEastern Europe and Central Asia. On the other hand, China
has violent tendencies towards its neighbours and politically
intimidates the countries of other regions by actively using its economic and political clout. Further, it has
forged strategic partnerships with authoritarian countries, attempts to change the existing security
architectures by challenging the freedom of navigation of commercial ships by buying or financing
strategic assets worldwide. Thus, it has a global strategic agenda and is far more dangerous than Russia
for the EU and NATO .
There has been an upward trend of trade between the EU and China. During the first nine months of 2020, the bilateral trade between the two was Euro 425.5
billion. Simultaneously, the EU-US trade saw a downward trend of -11.4 percent for imports and -10 percent for exports. With regard to the Chinese BRI, in 2018,
China marked its strategic presence in North-Western Europe with the takeover of Zeebrugge terminal in Belgium and Greece's Piraeus seaport,followed by crucial
infrastructural development projects in Spain, Italy and Greece. Germany's Duisburg inland port should not be missed either. The EU and NATO essentially see the
17+1 format as a leapfrog approach by Beijing that threatens the region's security.
In 2019, two significant developments took place. First, at the EU-China summit in April 2019, a few states opposed a standard EU stand against China, given its
strategic influence. Second, Italy was the first G7 country to join the BRI. Thus, the cracks in the solidarity of the EU began to appear. In the investments sector, the
regulatory preferences for the 5G rollout have been chiefly guided by the US. The EU security concerns have vetted the domestic legal guidelines of individual
states, and hence, all efforts have been made to sideline Huawei, which is primarily seen as a "Trojan Horse". As China aims to become a world leader in Artificial
Intelligence by 2030, the penetration of Huawei and other such critical technologies such as biotechnology and robotics, the propaganda warfare through
disinformation campaigns challenges both Europe and the US. The additional challenge 'democratic backsliding' due to the Chinese influence over the fragile
partners of the EU and the 'potential members' can also not be missed. In light of this, the 2021 summit communiqué acknowledged the evolving nature of warfare
involving the malicious use of AI apart from simultaneous attacks with hypersonic missiles. The threat has thus become three-fold -- a fully modernised conventional
attack with the potential of a supplemented nuclear attack apart from the emerging contours of hybrid warfare and the questions of the continuance of supply
chains. In a nutshell, the Chinese policies of geostrategic and geo-economic penetration apart from its Military-Civil Fusion (MCF) strategy constitute the core of its
"systemic challenge".
During the Cold War, it was asserted that the security of Western Europe depended upon the containment of the Soviet Union. Nevertheless, with the 'unipolar
moment' gradually coming to an end with the US overstretch with wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the incorporation of Russia in the Atlantic partnership would
probably have allowed NATO to geographically and politically cross the barriers of Eurasia. Consequently, today from "spoiler states", Russia and China have rapidly
transformed themselves into "revisionist states", and the role of China is a much profound one. With Joint exercises of both the countries in the Mediterranean and
the Baltic Sea and Beijing's recent outreach to Equatorial Guinea to establish its first permanent military mission in the Atlantic, the Euro Atlantic insecurities will
increase all the more.
Had the Sino-Russo strategic convergences been nipped in the bud itself by strategic re-evaluation and the inclusion
of Russia in NATO , the story of geopolitics perhaps could have been fundamentally different , both for the EU and as for
South Asia. Acceptance of Russia as an "equal" would have probably done away with the heartburns that
Moscow has right now. The inability to accept that hybrid warfare (4th and 5th generation) would necessitate
politically expanding the horizons of deterrence against a new rising power (China) has done more harm than
good to NATO. The visionary approach of including Russia in NATO was discouraged when Russia's request to join the
organisation was
turned down by the U.S. not once but thrice, leading to the creation of new political faultlines. It
also led to strengthening the Sino-Russo alliance apart from leaving a geopolitical vacuum in which
China and Russia could attempt to downplay the EU and NATO. Today, the takeover or annexation of the Crimea, the
Ukrainian crisis, the refugee dispute between Poland and Belarus, and the inclusion of the EU countries in the
BRI Corridor have become the larger geopolitical testers of a 'United' EU and NATO, apart from the US sphere of influence.
There is still a lack of political cohesion on the methodologies to tackle China in this direction. While the US and Britain
have decided to boycott Beijing 2022 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games, the EU, on the other hand, has refrained from taking a
collective stand on the issue. Given the increasingly intertwined stakes that the Union has with China, it is hesitant to take a joint stand fearing its
retaliatory "economic coercion". France's position is contrary to the US, which is well grasped in the backdrop of the formation of the AUKUS and the severed deal
between Canberra and Paris. Such emerging diverging approaches within the EU that China would possibly try to use in its favour to increase its strategic foothold,
thereby weakening the Atlantic alliance.
Early this year, G7 partners announced the 'Build Back Better World Initiative' (B3W), followed by the 'Global Gateway' initiative that aims to mobilise Euro 300
billion between 2021 and 2027. As one can see, the developments are similar to the 'Greek-Turkish Aid Bill' — the US initial response to contain Communist
expansion. However, in the contemporary scenario, additions
such as hybrid warfare, hostile economic takeovers, and
dual-use ports have ushered in new dimensions of geopolitics . A full-blown 'New Cold War' is in place.
China and Russia would probably seek to militarily distract the EU and the US with small but essential
'hotspots' such as Taiwan and Ukraine. The risks of escalation and misjudgement have increased the
chances of open hostilities all the more, but, given the constraints of economic dependencies , especially the
questions of the continuance of supply chain routes, one
can be still doubtful of the NATO response . Nevertheless, territorial
nibbling would also not be taken lightly by NATO. The vicious circle thus seems to continue with more of
trade wars, sanctions, and hostile takeovers , thereby creating sharp polarisations throughout the globe
and regional and other organisations such as the EU and NATO.
NATO intrinsically causes entanglement – countries empirically go rogue
Galen ’22 [Ted; 01/08/22; PhD in U.S. diplomatic history from the University of Texas, senior fellow for
defense and foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute, served as Cato’s director of foreign policy
studies from 1986 to 1995 and as vice president for defense and foreign policy studies from 1995 to
2011; "NATO Security Dependents Are Not Useful Allies," Cato Institute,
https://www.cato.org/commentary/nato-security-dependents-are-not-useful-allies //smarx, AZG]
Washington’s patron‐client relationship with the Baltic republics is risky, and U.S. leaders were unwise
to push for their inclusion in NATO. However, beginning with George W. Bush’s administration, officials
have engaged in even more reckless conduct regarding possible alliance membership for two other
countries, Georgia and Ukraine. They have done so despite repeated warnings from the Kremlin that
making either country (especially Ukraine) a NATO member would cross a red line that Moscow cannot
tolerate.
BUSH CONDUCTED a veritable geopolitical love affair with both Georgia and Ukraine, portraying them as
models for emerging democracies and repeatedly referring to them as U.S. allies in the most glowing
terms. Only firm French and German opposition thwarted Bush’s lobbying effort to get NATO to grant
Tbilisi and Kiev membership. Berlin and Paris were troubled by evidence of endemic political and
economic corruption in both countries, but they were even more worried that further NATO expansion
would create a crisis with Moscow. Their continued opposition has thus far prevented the addition of
Georgia and Ukraine to NATO’s ranks, even as the alliance added multiple Balkan mini‐states.
However, U.S. actions have increasingly made the issue of formal membership a distinction without a
difference, and the outcomes indicate that even unwise informal security relations with client states
can cause serious trouble. Bush encouraged Georgia to take a firmer stance against the continued
presence of Russian “peacekeeping troops” in two breakaway regions, South Ossetia and Abkhazia. In
addition, the United States was busily equipping and training Georgian military forces. Georgia’s
president, Mikheil Saakashvili, apparently read too much into Washington’s expressions of support. In
August 2008, his forces launched an attack on Russian units in South Ossetia, and Moscow responded
with a full‐scale offensive that soon overran much of Georgia. When Saakashvili begged for U.S. and
NATO help to repel the Russian “aggression,” Bush expressed firm support for Georgia’s sovereignty, but
he also indicated that U.S. troops would not be coming to Tbilisi’s rescue. A U.S. client had tried to
create a military confrontation between NATO and Russia for its own parochial goals, but it had
misread Washington’s signals. Clumsy U.S. policy, though, was at least partly responsible for that
dangerous episode.
Unfortunately, the actions of subsequent foreign policy teams with respect to Georgia, and even more
so with respect to Ukraine, indicate that U.S. leaders learned nothing from the mistakes in 2008.
Officials in both the Trump and Biden administrations have treated Kiev as a de facto NATO member and
a crucial U.S. military ally. Trump’s administration approved multiple weapons shipments to Kiev, sales
that included Javelin anti‐tank missiles that Russia considers especially destabilizing. Such transactions
have continued since Joe Biden entered the White House.
Worse, Washington’s security relationship with Kiev goes far beyond arms sales. Over the past five
years, U.S. forces have conducted multiple joint exercises (war games) with Ukrainian units. Washington
also has successfully pressed NATO to include Ukraine in the alliance’s war games. Indeed, Ukraine
hosted and led the latest version, Rapid Trident 21. It is no secret that such exercises are directed
against Russia. In early April 2021, Biden assured Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy of
Washington’s “unwavering support for Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity in the face of
Russia’s ongoing aggression.”
Such a pledge places the United States in a very dangerous situation. Kiev seeks to regain Crimea,
which Russia annexed following U.S. and European Union backing for demonstrators who overthrew
Ukraine’s elected, pro‐Russian president in 2014. Indeed, Zelenskyy and other Ukrainian officials have
expressed that intention repeatedly and in diverse settings. Kiev’s behavior also has become
disturbingly bellicose. In early April 2021, both the Zelenskyy government and NATO complained loudly
when Russia moved some 80,000 troops and heavy weaponry closer to Crimea and other areas along
the border with Ukraine. What they did not mention, and most Western press accounts also ignored,
was that Kiev had previously executed its own military buildup, amid statements of a determination to
regain Crimea. In any case, an extremely tense confrontation between NATO and Russia ensued, which
was not resolved until Russia pulled back its forces in late April.
Given the size of its territory and population, Ukraine is not in the same category as the Balkan and
Baltic mini‐states or Georgia. However, it has an even greater potential to entangle the United States
and the rest of NATO in a perilous war. The April 2021 episode was a classic case of a security client
behaving in ways that could trigger an armed conflict. For all of Kiev’s boasts about regaining Crimea,
the outcome of a military clash between Russia and Ukraine would be a foregone conclusion. Ukraine
would have no chance of prevailing without massive outside assistance. Even disregarding the crucial
difference that Russia possesses a strategic and tactical nuclear arsenal, while Ukraine does not,
Russia’s advantages in conventional forces are massive. Legislation that the Ukrainian parliament
approved in July 2021 will increase Kiev’s armed forces to 261,000, but Russia fields more than 1 million
active‐duty personnel. Moreover, although U.S. aid has improved the quality of the hardware available
to Ukraine, Russia’s troops are equipped with some of the most sophisticated weapons in the world.
U.S. leaders should be deeply concerned when a security dependent suffering from such quantitative
and qualitative disadvantages makes empty boasts about retaking lost territory. It is even more
worrisome when that client engages in provocative military gestures toward its powerful neighbor.
That is precisely the way that a rogue dependent can entangle its great power protector in a
disastrous war. U.S. leaders should want no part of such a risky patron‐client relationship.
THE TEST of whether a specific country is a worthwhile U.S. ally or a useless, perhaps dangerous,
dependent should not be terribly difficult. A key question that must be asked is: Does that country
substantially add to America’s own economic and military capabilities without creating significant new
dangers or vulnerabilities? Only if that question can be answered with an unequivocal “yes,” should the
country be considered a beneficial ally. Otherwise, it is either a useless or (even worse) a dangerous
security client. U.S. leaders badly need to learn the difference. As a result of NATO’s expanded
membership and mission, the United States has acquired a worrisome number of both types.
East Asian, African and Latin American conflict coming now
Seán O Regan 16, Master’s Degree in Commerce and Government from the University College Cork,
Postgraduate Diploma in Conflict and Dispute Resolution from Trinity College, Dublin, Higher Diploma in
Accounting, Business, Accounting, Tax, and Law from Dublin City University, “Conflict Resolution
Revisited: Peaceful Resolution, Mediation and Responsibility to Protect”, All Azimuth: A Journal of
Foreign Policy and Peace, Volume 5, Issue 1, January, p. 70-73
Thus, there
is a well-rehearsed commitment to the principle of peace and by implication the peaceful
resolution of disputes. The bipolar world order established after the Second World War made a mockery of this commitment. The term
conflict prevention in this era meant containing the potential for nuclear war between the major
blocs . The ideological struggle between those blocs was carried into conflict all over the globe , notably in
East Asia (Korea and Vietnam), Africa (the Congo and Angola) and Latin America (Chile and Nicaragua). The international
community’s response was generally to insert peacekeeping forces between parties in conflict without necessarily dealing
with the root causes of the conflict. Many such conflicts ended with the collapse of the Soviet Union, but long-suppressed
animosities between the constituent republics of that Union and its client states erupted . The international community’s failure to
deal with the ethnic/sectarian conflicts in the Caucasus and South Eastern Europe on the one hand and the
Rwanda genocide on the other impelled discussion of conflict prevention from academia to foreign policy formation. While the
UN and the OSCE had long-standing commitments to conflict prevention, exercise of all possible options was in practice limited by international
politics. When it became clear that, as Smith12 put it, the balance of terror of the Cold War would not be replaced by peace and security, the
issue of conflict prevention became prominent for the international community.
3. Current Conflict Resolution Practice
Van Waalraven13 explored the conflict policies of a sample of Western countries (Canada, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, and the United
Kingdom) and found that general conflict policy, as against specific conflict intervention, was embedded in other, mainly development
assistance, policies. He found it difficult to identify generic approaches to conflict prevention, although all countries examined used similar
language in their descriptions of conflict and its causes, even if there was only vague consensus on what those causes are.
The Council of the
European Union, at its June 2001 meeting in Gothenburg,14 endorsed a programme of conflict
prevention,15 stating this would “improve the Union’s capacity to undertake coherent early warning,
analysis and action [to prevent conflict]” and that “[c] onflict prevention is one of the main objectives of the
Union’s external relations and should be integrated in all its relevant aspects.” This document and the European Security Strategy16
provided the foundation for the elaboration of a whole series of policies, including the promotion of
mediation in conflict prevention and resolution. It was followed in 2009 by the “Concept on Strengthening EU Mediation and Dialogue
Capacities,”17 which uses the term mediation to encompass improved communication, negotiation, dialogue and facilitation through the
offices of a third party, namely the EU. In this document mediation can be directive and coercive. It
also notes the EU’s financial
power and moral authority as positive factors in a mediation process.
NATO makes those conflicts inevitable – but other actors solve.
Hugo Klijn 11. Senior research fellow at the Security and Conflict Programme of the Institute for
International Relations 'Clingendael' in The Hague. “Chapter 15. Europe’s Virtual Security Debate and a
New Transatlantic Relationship”. Nato’s Retirement? Essays in Honour of Peter Volten.
https://www.peacepalacelibrary.nl/ebooks/files/334997151.pdf
Of course, it makes sense for countries to ally themselves with the world’s foremost power, and only for that reason NATO will continue to exist
for some time to come. But increasingly, the
de facto EU-US-NATO triangle is becoming untenable . On the one hand,
sustaining US-led NATO as Europe’s primary security forum at the end of the day runs counter to EU
ambitions in the field of foreign and security policy . On the other hand it ties Europe to a more global US
security agenda that, deep down, it does not subscribe to and that it is certainly not willing to shoulder
financially . Finally, as long as Europe remains a function of US security policy, this will put a curb on its
ability to forge comprehensive partnerships with third parties. Revamping the Transatlantic Relationship The transatlantic
relationship, North America’s partnership with Europe, is still the world’s most vital economic, strategic and political bond, and will remain so for
the foreseeable future. The
question is, however, whether NATO should remain its ultimate embodiment, or
whether this relationship should be remodelled and based on a broad and new strategic EU-US partnership,
including provisions on security and defence such as a mutual assistance clause. Such a recalibrated partnership
would leave room for differences in approach and be more informal in nature, while not necessarily always involving all 27 EU
members, but still important when crises erupt. We have seen examples of this kind of cooperation on Iran , with the EU3
teaming up with the US, and the Middle East, where the EU sits next to the USA, the UN and Russia in the Quartet: both
cases that do not allow for direct NATO involvement. Good Old NATO Critics will maintain that we cannot do without NATO’s
unique capabilities, in terms of joint planning and interoperability. No other organization but NATO can conduct an operation like ISAF, the
argument runs. But in many respects ISAF is a revealing operation. What we really see in Afghanistan is an able and willing coalition that runs the
demanding southern and eastern regional commands, and a host of other countries doing something else in the more benign provinces. Out of
ISAF’s 46 contributors,
non-NATO member Australia seamlessly joins combat operations in the South, while NATO
member Germany is carrying out its national stabilization operation in the north, steered by the Bundestag rather than by NATO. None of these
countries would be able to sustain their operations without US enablers.
So it is rather the US, and not necessarily NATO, which is
pivotal within ISAF. Trading NATO for the EU-USA does not mean doing away with the acquis atlantique, but
it would mean doing away with a top-heavy alliance that served its purpose well but increasingly stirs unease in
Europe , while becoming less relevant to Washington – even if the newest US National Security Strategy routinely speaks of NATO as the preeminent security alliance in the world today. NATO, or Europe, is nowhere as central in US security thinking as many
Europeans like to believe. When 9/11 occurred, invoking the alliance’s Article 5 only came as an afterthought. Paradoxically, this trend
may be reinforced under a less traditionally inclined president Obama, no matter how enthusiastically his inauguration was celebrated in Europe.
Moreover, building a
new relationship with the USA which is more balanced than it is now would likely stimulate
Europe to further boost its post-Second World War integration process . Third Parties Last but not least, a new
transatlantic partnership more firmly based on both participants’ autonomy would enable the EU, but also the
USA, to review their relations with third parties . Take, for example, Russia. Among other reasons, the EU-Russia
relationship, important because of the density of trade, investment and energy links but marred by endless negotiations
on a new strategic agreement, is held back because of Moscow’s frustration that it cannot discuss security with the EU, which tends to
refer to NATO instead. As long as Europe labels NATO as its primary security organization, Moscow is likely to
regard the EU’s neighbourhood policies as affiliated with the alliance’s enlargement agenda , given the
expressed synergies between these two ‘EuroAtlantic organizations’. More broadly speaking, the outside world will look at Europe
as a more serious interlocutor as it depends less on US security guarantees . Sticking to the Russia example, the US,
lacking the economic dimension in its relationship with Moscow, is perfectly capable of concluding deals on strategic issues, such as the recent
START agreement on nuclear arsenals. But many, not all, of the bilateral irritants concern Europe and are NATO related. It is probably no
coincidence that Russian compliance with START has been made dependent on missile defence developments in Europe.
Deterrence FAILS but other actors check US withdrawal
Walt 21 Professor of International relations at the Harvard Kennedy School at Harvard University and a
political scientist. Ph. D in Political Science from UC Berkeley. (Stephen M. Walt, 3-23-21, "It’s Time to
Fold America’s Nuclear Umbrella," Foreign Policy, https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/03/23/its-time-tofold-americas-nuclear-umbrella/)HS
A recent report by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, “Preventing Nuclear Proliferation and Reassuring America’s Allies,” took a small step in
a rather surprising direction. The title captures its main theme perfectly: To discourage its allies from acquiring their own nuclear weapons, the
United States needs to counter doubts raised during the Trump administration and reassure its allies about the strength of the United States’
commitment to their security.
Given that the report was written by a multinational group of well-known foreign-policy
findings and prescriptions are unproblematic. But the following recommendation caught my eye:
insiders, most of their
“Europe needs to build up the nuclear dimension of its defense efforts, including by retaining and modernizing capabilities for existing NATO
nuclear missions and by France and Britain working together to extend their nuclear deterrents to their European allies.”
Why is this statement so intriguing? Because it shows the authors of this report recognize that Europe
as a whole might be more
secure if it could rely on a locally based deterrent instead of continuing to shelter under the U.S. nuclear
umbrella. And if that is true for the nations of Europe, then it might well be true for others. Although the report’s authors are opposed
to new states joining the nuclear club (Britain and France are already members), their statement clearly implies
that deterrence would be strengthened if states facing serious external threats had a nuclear guarantee
that didn’t depend on Uncle Sam.
This is hardly a new issue. Since fairly early in the nuclear age, the United States has used nuclear weapons to “extend deterrence” and shield
some of its allies. It sought to convince potential adversaries that the United States might use its formidable nuclear arsenal if these allies were
attacked, even if the United States was not. Of course, there was always some chance that a war involving one of the United States’ allies might
escalate to the nuclear level, either by accident, through inadvertence, or via deliberate decision, no matter what U.S. leaders said in advance.
Even so, Washington went to considerable lengths to make its nuclear umbrella credible, partly to discourage enemies from attacking but also
to convince its allies not to get nuclear weapons themselves.
Accordingly, U.S. leaders made lots of public statements linking the U.S. arsenal to its core alliance commitments,
and NATO drew up various plans and doctrinal pronouncements designed to reinforce perceptions of a reliable U.S. guarantee. The United
States also deployed thousands of warheads on some of its allies’ territory, along with dual-key arrangements that gave those allies some say in
how, when, or if these fearsome weapons got used. Lastly, and very importantly, the United States kept trying to achieve a meaningful degree
of nuclear superiority to make a possible first use of nuclear weapons to defend allies more credible. Instead of acquiring a “minimum
deterrent” (i.e., retaliatory forces that could survive any possible attack and then inflict unacceptable damage on an aggressor), U.S. war plans
and weapons decisions always focused on trying to come out on top in the awful event of an actual nuclear war.
Why did the United States do this? In good part because convincing people you might use nuclear weapons to defend an ally isn’t easy. One
might imagine a U.S. president using nuclear weapons to retaliate against a direct attack on U.S. territory or to deter the extremely unlikely
prospect of a conventional invasion that threatened U.S. independence. This
is the one thing nuclear weapons are good for:
deterring existential threats to their possessors’ independence or autonomy. This form of deterrence (sometimes
termed “basic” or “Type I”) works because the deterring side will almost certainly care more about preserving its own independence than a
potential attacker is likely to care about trying to take it away. Because the balance of resolve favors the defender, even much
weaker
nuclear powers can deter enemies from attacking them directly. If you don’t find this argument persuasive, remember
the U.S. attacked non-nuclear Iraq in 2003 and non-nuclear Libya in 2011, but it leaves nuclear-armed
North Korea alone.
By contrast, deterring
a conventional or a nuclear attack on an ally by threatening to go nuclear—and
convincing your allies that you really mean it—is more challenging. It is one thing to threaten to use nuclear weapons
to keep one’s own country from being subjugated but quite another to do so to save an ally from defeat or domination. Or, as people used to
wonder back in the Cold War, would
a U.S. president really risk Washington or Chicago to save Paris or Berlin?
Long after they had left office, a few former U.S. officials suggested the answer was almost certainly “no.” Extended
deterrence could still work because potential attackers can’t be sure about any of this, but it still isn’t as credible as deterring
attacks on one’s own territory.
The solution to this conundrum—if one can call it that—is to achieve overwhelming “nuclear superiority.” If you could wipe out an adversary’s
entire nuclear force in a first strike, you wouldn’t have to fear its retaliation, and using nuclear weapons to defend an ally would be much more
credible. Even if a splendid first strike were not possible, perhaps you could convince a potential attacker that it will end up even worse off than
you are at the end of a nuclear war to convince it not to put so much as a toe on the first rung of the escalation ladder.
Thus, the perceived need to extend deterrence is one of the reasons why the United States has long sought nuclear superiority. It’s not the only
reason: A genuine first strike capability could limit damage in the event of an actual war. A few commentators have also tried to argue—not
very convincingly—that superiority would enable the stronger side to coerce weaker states in crises. Chasing the holy grail of a first-strike
advantage was also popular with defense contractors and parts of the armed services because it requires spending billions of dollars annually
on more and more accurate weapons, more efficient and destructive warheads, improved surveillance and anti-submarine warfare capabilities,
and lots of other shiny objects.
Interestingly, a number of sophisticated scholars have recently claimed that technological
advances have put the United
States on the brink of a true first-strike capability. Perhaps in theory, but certainly not as a usable option. To see why, ask
yourself what you would do if you were president and facing a serious crisis with a nuclear-armed adversary. You’ve put the armed services on
alert, and there is some danger that force might be used and fighting could escalate. Suppose your military advisors and intelligence experts tell
you if you order a first strike now, you can almost certainly destroy the enemy’s entire nuclear arsenal, leaving the United States unscathed and
in an ideal position to resolve the dispute on favorable terms.
Being a sensible person, you’d undoubtedly ask them: “Can you guarantee that? Are you absolutely, 100 percent sure the enemy will have zero
usable weapons left, and therefore, we won’t even get our hair mussed?”
“We are highly confident of success,” you are told. “But there is a slim
chance that a few enemy weapons would survive
and reach U.S. soil. No more than one to three.”
Even if you weren’t troubled by the moral issues involved in ordering an attack that would kill untold numbers of people (and
you ought to be), would you do it? Of course you wouldn’t, because you wouldn’t want to risk losing New York, Los Angeles,
Chicago, Boston, or any other major U.S. city, which is what might happen if that first strike you authorized turned out to be
just a tiny bit less effective than your advisors predicted. To issue a launch order, you’d have to believe the proposed attack
would work perfectly the very first time it was executed (simulations and exercises aren’t the same), almost all of
the missiles and bombs that have been sitting in silos or storage facilities for years would work as
designed, and the other side wouldn’t have dispersed its own forces or hidden some extra weapons in
places you had failed to detect. Based on everything the United States’ knows about complex military operations and the limits of
intelligence, you’d be a fool to roll the dice in this way.
One more thing: As
first-strike capabilities improve, adversaries may respond by keeping forces on higher
alert or adopting “launch-on-warning” procedures that increase the risk of accidental or inadvertent
war. No matter what U.S. forces are capable of in theory, in short, it’s hard to see how any president would be willing to
use nukes first even if the probability of “success” was extremely high. This reality casts further doubt on
the whole idea of extended deterrence, insofar as it is based on the threat to deliberately escalate to the nuclear level if a key
ally is in danger of being conquered.
Extending a protective
umbrella over allies in Europe and Asia may have made good sense during the Cold
War, both to protect them and to discourage proliferation. But the nuclear weapons environment has changed: The number
of nuclear-armed states has crept upward, and several countries (India, Pakistan, and the United Kingdom) are increasing the
size of their own arsenals (though they remain far lower than U.S. or Russian levels). Moreover, the United States is not as tightly
coupled to some of its traditional allies as it was during the Cold War, and serious rifts may continue to grow despite the
Biden administration’s efforts to restore alliance solidarity and reassert U.S. leadership.
Which raises the obvious question: Does
it still make sense to shield allies under the U.S. nuclear umbrella? Using
the threat of nuclear use to protect other countries is not cost- or risk-free, and it may even be more dangerous than letting
some other states acquire arsenals of their own and encouraging them to rely on “Type I” deterrence provided
by their own national capabilities.
This view has been advanced before—most notably by Kenneth Waltz in a controversial Adelphi Paper 40 years ago. Waltz was not advocating
giving other states the bomb or arguing that the rapid spread of nuclear weapons would be desirable; his central point was that trying to
prevent the slow spread of these weapons was not without costs of its own and that in some cases, as he put it, “more may be better.” The
question is: Is that becoming the case today?
To be sure, folding the nuclear umbrella might well have some negative effects. It might make states long accustomed to U.S. protection
question its commitment (though there’s no logical reason for them to do so if it is still in the United States’ interest to aid their defense in
other ways). It could also reduce U.S. influence or leverage if certain allies were no longer as dependent on U.S. protection, though folding the
umbrella would not eliminate their reliance on other elements of U.S. power. Removing the
U.S. nuclear guarantee might
encourage a few states to pursue nuclear arms of their own, but it is not obvious that acquisition by Japan or
Germany would be a terrible outcome from a purely U.S. perspective.
Moreover, even the possibility
that these states might take over responsibility for deterring attacks on their
own territory could have a sobering effect on a rising China and a recalcitrant Russia. In particular, it would
remind Beijing and Moscow that their own behavior will affect the strategic calculations that their
neighbors make in the near future, including decisions about nuclear arms. If China doesn’t want to face more
nuclear weapons states in its immediate region, for instance, then its leaders should start asking themselves what they can
do to make those neighbors feel less need for additional protection. The obvious answer: Stop harassing them in
various ways, drop the sharp-elbowed approach to diplomacy, stick to agreements previously reached, and do more to resolve existing disputes
on a fair-minded basis.
Whatever Washington ultimately chooses to do with its nuclear umbrella, the more important task is to move beyond the tendency to see
nuclear weapons as potent signs of status, indispensable tools of statecraft, or powerful sources of leverage. Nuclear weapons are extremely
useful for deterring direct and all-out attacks on one’s own homeland but not much else. For that purpose, a great power doesn’t need an
enormous arsenal or some hypothetical capability to “fight and win” a nuclear exchange. All
it needs is a stockpile that can
survive an enemy attack and be able to respond in kind. Properly concealed or protected, they don’t
need to be poised and ready to strike at a moment’s notice. Fetishizing the bomb and using it to try to protect others
isn’t just expensive; it may also be dangerous
1NC – Adv 2 – Defense
2 - NATO says no –
a. Spoilers will ruin the process.
Basu ’5-18 — Zachary; national security reporter at Axios. "Strongmen spoilers in Turkey and Hungary
threaten Western unity"; Axios; https://www.axios.com/2022/05/18/turkey- NATO-finland-swedenhungary-russia; //CYang
Why it matters: Critics have accused Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan of employing a " hostage-taking " tactic also
practiced by Hungary, which for weeks has been singlehandedly blocking the European Union from imposing an
embargo on Russian oil. The outsized influence of single-member states in the EU and NATO has drawn increased
scrutiny in recent years, especially as both Hungary and Turkey have drifted toward authoritarianism and strengthened their ties with Russia.
Their resistance to two critical Western priorities risks undermining
the united front that leaders like President Biden have
touted as key to effectively responding to Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Driving the news: U.S. Secretary of State Antony
Blinken, who has said he is "very confident" all NATO allies will ultimately approve Sweden and Finland's applications, will meet on Wednesday
with Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu. Çavuşoğlu said Sunday that in exchange for Turkey lifting its opposition, Sweden and Finland
must end their alleged support for Kurdish groups that Turkey views as terrorists and a top national security threat. Turkey is also expected to
use its leverage to seek bilateral concessions from the U.S., including speeding up the potential sale of F-16 fighter jets. Between the liens:
Özgür Ünlühisarcıklı, director of the German Marshall Fund's office in Ankara, told Axios that Erdoğan "saw an opportunity to extract some
benefits both for Turkey and for his own political standing" ahead of a crucial election next year. Erdoğan
believes he's "more or less
free to do whatever he wants ," Ünlühisarcıklı said. He argued it's hard to stand up to Erdogan on this issue, given
the high stakes of Sweden and Finland's NATO applications, and the unique role Turkey is playing in Ukraine as both a
mediator in peace talks and supplier of highly effective drones. Critics, meanwhile, say the stunt could set
a precedent for other
NATO leaders to essentially seek bribes in moments of crisis — with some going as far as to call Turkey a "Trojan horse"
within the Western alliance. Zoom out: That label has long been used to describe Hungary's role as a
spoiler within the EU.
Hungary's far-right prime minister Viktor Orbán is viewed as the most pro-Russian leader in the EU, and for weeks has
used his veto to prevent the bloc from banning imports of Russian oil. In the meantime, Orbán has used his leverage
to pressure the EU to send Hungary a financial compensation package — effectively neutralizing Brussels'
landmark decision this year to withhold pandemic recovery funds from Hungary over its democratic backsliding.
b. Conflicting interpretations and fights over intel sharing block unification.
Sophie Arts, 18 (Sophie Arts, Program Officer of Security and Defense at GMF in Washington, 12-132018, accessed on 5-29-2022, German Marshall Fund, “Offense as the New Defense: New Life for
NATO’s Cyber Policy”, https://www.gmfus.org/publications/offense-new-defense-new-life-natos-cyberpolicy, HBisevac)
While the United States’ announcement that it would contribute its capabilities could help lend credibility to NATO’s cyber deterrence, further
clarification is needed within NATO, particularly when it comes to its command structure in the cyber
domain. Without clarity on this front, it is hard to imagine that the 29 NATO allies who have different
threat perceptions, and face issues of cohesion and trust, could agree on effective response scenarios in
a crisis situation. This is particularly critical, because cyber operations will be subject to political approval by
the NATO allies. The new Cyber Operations Center, which should be fully operational in 2023, could play an important role in that
respect, but the lack of operational authority may pose a significant challenge.37 According to NATO, the center aims to “strengthen cyber
defenses and integrate cyber capabilities into NATO planning and operations.”38 But as the U.S. declaration on its potential cyber support to
NATO confirms, it appears at this point that the center will serve to coordinate rather than oversee operations. This, coupled
with
allies’ unwillingness to share intelligence that may be critical to NATO’s strategic efforts, makes it difficult
to envision the center as an effective tool in implementing a coherent top-down cyber strategy in the near
future.
1NC – Adv 1
3 – No terminal impact to miscalc – that was cx – when they make new spin in the 2AC
– we get new answers.
4 - No large-scale Russian cyberattacks
Baezner ’17 [Marie and Patrice Robin; Feb; Cyber Defense Project (CDP) Center for Security Studies
(CSS), ETH Zürich, “Cyber-Conflict Between the United States of America and Russia”
https://www.research-collection.ethz.ch/bitstream/handle/20.500.11850/184547/Cyber-Reports-201702.pdf?sequence=1]
On the other hand, both
states might not desire further escalation, preferring to restrain the conflict to
cyberspace. Each would follow the “tit-for-tat” logic and accuse each other while never reaching a
tipping point where the conflict spills over to a conventional war . Such a tipping point would be linked to the intensity of the
attack or the nature of the targets. Both
nations would keep the cyberattacks small enough not to trigger a bigger
reaction. The same would be observed on the choice of targets, with both avoiding certain critical or
sensitive targets, for instance critical infrastructures. In order to contain the conflict in cyberspace, both states would have to
demonstrate their restraint by selecting options with low risk of miscalculation (Lin, 2012, pp. 64–66). In the future,
it might also be possible to see a deescalation in the form of the emergence of an international treaty or
at least further bilateral treaties between the USA and Russia on cyberattacks. For example, during the last few years,
businesses in the USA were often hacked and spied on by the Chinese military. These intrusions were mostly cyber-economic-espionage and were said to have
supported the theft of billions of dollars’ worth of intellectual property (Bamford, 2016). In September 2015,
the USA and China signed an
agreement engaging both countries not to support or conduct cyber-theft of intellectual property.
Moreover, the parties have made the commitment not to use cyberattacks against each other’s critical infrastructures in peace-time and to support the
establishment of international behavioral norms in cyberspace (Rosenfeld, 2015). Both
states also highlighted the fact that they could
not control each individual in their country and therefore could not be held responsible for individual
acts. Since then it seems that the number of attacks on commercial targets has diminished (Timm, 2016). Former President Obama suggested the creation of a
position of cybersecurity ambassador to deal with bilateral or multilateral treaties concerning cyber-norms (Lee, 2016). For this kind of de-escalation to take effect,
the termination of the conflict at hand must be the stated aim of both parties. A clear common understanding of the terms of agreement is required and must be
based on trust-building efforts, as well as the assurance of mutual adherence. The difficulty of tracking the implementation of such agreements in cyberspace has
been an obstacle preventing more states consenting to such solutions (Lin, 2012, pp. 62–64). Nevertheless,
a dialogue on cyberspace already
exists between the USA and Russia since July 2013. This cooperation includes Confidence Building Measures ( CBM ) such
as the creation of working groups on the issue of ICT security, exchange of information between the two
national Computer Emergency Response Teams (CERT), and the creation of a direct communication line to directly
manage ICT incidents
(Segal, 2016; The White House, Office of the Press Secretary, 2013). In October 2016, former President Obama used the latter to
inform Russian President Putin that the USA was accusing Russia of interference in the election process (Ignatius, 2016). Furthermore, Russia and the USA take part
in the UN GGE supporting the future establishment of international norms on actions in cyberspace. They
stated that international law can
be applied in cyberspace and therefore, the rules of proportionality and limited collateral damage
should also be respected in cyberattacks (Ignatius, 2016; United Nations General Assembly, 2015). These examples demonstrate that
even though the two states are involved in a “tit-for-tat” logic in their relations on a tactical level,
there was still a dialogue on the strategic level , at least until 2015. The recent cyberattacks in USA and the election of Donald Trump as
US President, bring new uncertainties.
5 - China’s not a cyber threat.
Jinghua ’19---Lyu Jinghua, visiting scholar with Carnegie’s Cyber Policy Initiative. Her research focuses
primarily on cybersecurity and China-U.S. defense relations. [“What Are China’s Cyber Capabilities and
Intentions?” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 4-1-2019,
https://carnegieendowment.org/2019/04/01/what-are-china-s-cyber-capabilities-and-intentions-pub78734] KS
News stories on the cyber threat that China poses appear on a regular basis. Most underscore a view that China is using cyber power to rise and
ultimately win global dominance, and that the Chinese government is behind the scenes in many malicious cyber activities. Though many of the
allegations focus on the tension between China and the United States on cyber espionage, these
actions are unlikely to cause
armed conflict since almost all capable actors conduct cyber espionage.
Suspicions of intentions and capabilities of cyber warfare, however, could drag the US and China into arms races, and even hot wars, due to the
role cyber tools can play in military operations. Given the risks, it
is necessary to examine China’s views on cyber warfare
from a narrative that is different from what most readers are familiar with.
CONTEXT FOR CHINA’S VIEWS ON CYBER WARFARE
China’s academic discussion of cyber warfare started in the 1990s when it was called “information warfare.” Impressed by how the US military
benefited from the application of high technologies in the Gulf War—and subsequent operations in Kosovo, Afghanistan, and Iraq—China
began to realize that there is no way to adequately defend itself without following the changes in the forms of war in which high technologies,
mainly information technologies, play more critical roles.
In 1993, two years after the Gulf War, the Chinese military adjusted its military strategic guideline which set “winning local wars in conditions of
modern technology, particularly high technology” as the basic aim of preparations for military struggle (PMS). In 2004, one year after the Iraq
War, the military’s PMS was changed to “winning local wars under conditions of informationization.” The basic understanding, as elaborated in
China’s National Defense in 2004, is that “informationization has become the key factor in enhancing the warfighting capability of the armed
forces.”
The first time that the Chinese military publicly addressed cyber warfare from a holistic point of view was in the 2013 version of “The Science of
Military Strategy”—a study by the Academy of Military Science. It emphasized that cyberspace has become a new and essential domain of
military struggle in today’s world. A similar tone appeared in the 2015 Ministry of National Defense paper entitled “China’s Military Strategy.”
While the latter document modified the basic point for PMS to “winning informationized local wars,” it also addressed cybersecurity for the first
time in an official military document. It defined cyberspace as a “new pillar of economic and social development, and a new domain of national
security,” and declared clearly that “China is confronted with grave security threats to its cyber infrastructure” as “international strategic
competition in cyberspace has been turning increasingly fiercer, quite a few countries are developing their cyber military forces.”
Based on the above approach that China is taking to cyberspace and its own national security, a few
conclusions can be drawn. The first is that China has not developed its cyber capabilities in a vacuum.
Rather, they have developed them as a response to the changing cyber warfare approaches and
practices of other countries, especially those of the US and Russia. The second is that the Chinese government’s views
on cyber warfare are consistent with its military strategy, which is modified according to the national security environment, domestic situation,
and activities of foreign militaries.
CORE AIMS OF CHINA’S CYBER WARFARE
Though there is no commonly accepted conception of cyber warfare, one made by a RAND Corporation study is frequently quoted by Chinese
military analysts: cyber warfare is strategic warfare in the information age, just as it was nuclear warfare in the 20th century. This definition
serves as the foundation to argue that cyber warfare has much broader significance to national security and involves competition in areas
beyond the military, such as the economy, diplomacy, and social development.
Again, China’s Military Strategy describes the primary objectives of cyber capabilities to include: “cyberspace situation awareness, cyber
defense, support for the country’s endeavors in cyberspace, and participation in international cyber cooperation.” The strategy frames these
objectives within the aims of “stemming major cyber crises, ensuring national network and information security, and maintaining national
security and social stability.”
Of these objectives, an essential one is national security and social stability. As shown by several incidents, such as the protests after Iran’s 2009
presidential election, the Arab Spring, as well as Occupy Wall Street and the London Riots of 2011, social media plays a vital role in helping to
plan and carry out such protests and movements. The
Chinese government’s monitoring of the internet and social
media is based on its potential use as a platform to disseminate information that could cause similar
social unrest to spread, which could lead to large-scale social and political instability.
Another essential objective, in common with all states, is defending critical information infrastructure. China is
more and more dependent on information networks in all aspects, including in defense. Although it has a
large-scale technology industry and possesses the potential to compete with the US in some, most of its core network
technologies and key software and hardware are provided by US companies.
China uses the term “eight King Kongs” to describe the top internet companies in its domestic supply chain: Apple, Cisco, Google, IBM, Intel,
Microsoft, Oracle, and Qualcomm. Heavy
dependence on these companies’ products makes it necessary to work
towards developing the domestic technology industry and its capabilities, and to thereby make the
country’s internal internet infrastructure more secure. It also makes China believe that its primary
mission in cyberspace is to ensure information security of critical areas, which is inherently defensive
and non-destructive.
Many, including the US government, have accused the Chinese government and military of cyberattacks in which
intellectual property has been stolen. In this regard, there are several distinctions to make clear. The first is between those cyberattacks that
aim to destroy, and cyber espionage for intelligence collection. The second is to make clear those forms of cyber espionage that are related to
national security concerns and those for economic interests. And the last is between malicious cyber activities that one government or military
should take responsibility for, and those that are attributed to a government or military based on less-than-reliable key indicators of where
activities originate.
The implications of distinguishing clearly are great and there is a need for far lengthier analyses and studies. Looking at the issue briefly, most
accusations levied at China are related to the latter distinction. Until
today, there is no irrefutable evidence to show
China has been involved in cyberattacks that aim to destroy or have destroyed. While cyber espionage
for national security concerns is a common action conducted by most countries, cyber espionage for
economic benefit is an accusation continually made against the Chinese government and military.
However, there are reports indicating a notable decline in commercial cyber espionage allegedly
attributed to Chinese sources, at least in the first few months following an agreement reached between
Chinese President Xi Jinping and US President Barack Obama in 2015.
The overall
defensive perspective of the government is ultimately in line with China’s strategic guidelines
and its understanding of the general characteristics of cyber warfare. China has consistently said that it
adheres to the strategic guideline of Active Defense, as elaborated in the 2015 defense paper. Guided by these
principles, the primary stated goal in cyber warfare is to enhance defense capabilities in order to survive and
counter after suffering an offensive cyber strike.
Some observers may conclude that it is more worthwhile to invest resources into cyber offense since cyberspace is offense-dominant.
However, the
principle that the best defense is a good offense is not applicable in cyberspace. As argued by
PLA Senior Colonel Li Daguang, after the first round of a cyberattack, the targeted side can respond with a
precise counter-attack as long as it has a strong defense. The attacker will then suffer unfavorable
outcomes if its defense is not good enough. From this perspective, it is wiser to make efforts in
building up a strong defense.
IS CHINA’S CYBER CAPABILITY AS FORMIDABLE AS IMAGINED?
As mentioned, cyber warfare encompasses far more
areas than the military and intelligence gathering. It is
therefore logical to measure one country’s cyber capability by a more comprehensive evaluation, which
at least includes: technological research and development (R&D) and innovation capabilities; information
technology industry companies; internet infrastructure scale; influences of internet websites; internet
diplomacy and foreign policy capabilities; cyber military strength; and comprehensiveness of cyberspace
strategy. If evaluated along all these criteria, China’s cyber power largely lags behind that of the US.
Aside from China’s disadvantages in critical technological self-sufficiency as mentioned above, it
is not as advanced in other
aspects as well. According to the ICT Development Index (IDI), which is based on 11 indicators to
monitor and compare developments in information and communication technology across countries,
China respectively ranked 80th, 81st, and 82nd among 176 states in 2017, 2016, and 2015.
Part of China’s low influence on the global internet is due to the fact that its
primary languages are not widely used on the
internet outside the country. Though there are a massive number of Chinese speakers throughout the world, Chinese languages are only
used by 1.7 percent of all websites, while 53.9 percent use English.
China’s internet is also one of the most regularly attacked. According to a report published in February 2019 by Beijing
Knownsec Information Technology, China suffered the highest rate of distributed denial of service attacks (DDOS)
in the world in 2018—an average of over 800 million a day. Scanning and backdoor intrusions made up
the majority of the attacks and about 97 percent were conducted by domestic hackers. However, a
growing percentage came from overseas, mostly from the US, South Korea, and Japan. Among all the attacks
originating overseas, those that targeted government and financial websites largely outnumbered those on
other targets.
Similar statistics can be found elsewhere. However, it is not the intention here to describe how vulnerable China is, but to emphasize that a
more comprehensive and objective assessment of China’s cyber power is in urgent need. As Joseph Nye argued,
exaggerated fears
about growing Chinese power can become a cause of conflict. The same logic applies in cyberspace,
especially at a time when China-US bilateral relations are seeing sharp twists and turns.
6 – their inherency concedes clarifying Article 5 is key to solve via deterrence
capabilities – massive alt cause – that’s CX
7 - No cyber impact.
James Andrew Lewis, 20 (James Andrew Lewis is the Senior Vice President at the Center for Strategic
and International Studies and Director of the Technology Policy Program, 8-17-2020, accessed on 6-42022, Center for Strategic and International Studies, “Dismissing Cyber Catastrophe”,
https://www.csis.org/analysis/dismissing-cyber-catastrophe, HBisevac)
More importantly, there
are powerful strategic constraints on those who have the ability to launch
catastrophe attacks. We have more than two decades of experience with the use of cyber techniques and
operations for coercive and criminal purposes and have a clear understanding of motives, capabilities, and
intentions. We can be guided by the methods of the Strategic Bombing Survey, which used interviews and observation (rather than
hypotheses) to determine effect. These methods apply equally to cyberattacks. The conclusions we can draw from this are: Nonstate
actors and most states lack the capability to launch attacks that cause physical damage at any level,
much less a catastrophe. There have been regular predictions every year for over a decade that nonstate actors will acquire these high-end
cyber capabilities in two or three years in what has become a cycle of repetition. The monetary
return is negligible, which
dissuades the skilled cybercriminals (mostly Russian speaking) who might have the necessary skills. One mystery is
why these groups have not been used as mercenaries, and this may reflect either a degree of control by the Russian state (if it has forbidden
mercenary acts) or a degree of caution by criminals. There
is enough uncertainty among potential attackers about the
United States’ ability to attribute that they are unwilling to risk massive retaliation in response to a
catastrophic attack. (They are perfectly willing to take the risk of attribution for espionage and coercive cyber actions.) No one has
ever died from a cyberattack, and only a handful of these attacks have produced physical damage. A cyberattack is not a
nuclear weapon, and it is intellectually lazy to equate them to nuclear weapons. Using a tactical nuclear weapon against
an urban center would produce several hundred thousand casualties, while a strategic nuclear exchange would cause tens of millions of
casualties and immense physical destruction. These are catastrophes that some hack cannot duplicate. The shadow of nuclear war distorts
discussion of cyber warfare. State
use of cyber operations is consistent with their broad national strategies and
interests. Their primary emphasis is on espionage and political coercion. The United States has opponents and is
in conflict with them, but they have no interest in launching a catastrophic cyberattack since it would certainly
produce an equally catastrophic retaliation. Their goal is to stay below the “use-of-force” threshold and undertake damaging
cyber actions against the United States, not start a war. This has implications for the discussion of inadvertent escalation, something
that has also never occurred. The concern over escalation deserves a longer discussion, as there are both technological and
strategic constraints that shape and limit risk in cyber operations, and the absence of inadvertent escalation suggests a
high degree of control for cyber capabilities by advanced states. Attackers, particularly among the United States’ major
opponents for whom cyber is just one of the tools for confrontation, seek to avoid actions that could trigger escalation. The U nited S tates has
two opponents ( China and Russia ) who are capable of damaging cyberattacks. Russia has demonstrated its attack skills on the Ukrainian
power grid, but neither
Russia nor China would be well served by a similar attack on the U nited S tates. Iran is
improving and may reach the
point where it could use cyberattacks to cause major damage, but it would only do
so when it has decided to engage in a major armed conflict with the U nited S tates. Iran might attack targets
outside the United States and its allies with less risk and continues to experiment with cyberattacks against Israeli critical infrastructure.
North Korea has not yet developed this kind of capability.
8 - Cyber escalation is a myth.
Erica Lonergan, 4-15 (Erica Lonergan is Assistant Professor in the Army Cyber Institute at West Point
and a Research Scholar at the Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies at Columbia University and
previously served as Senior Director on the U.S. Cyberspace Solarium Commission, 4-15-2022, accessed
on 6-8-2022, Foreign Affairs, “The Cyber-Escalation Fallacy”,
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/russian-federation/2022-04-15/cyber-escalation-fallacy,
HBisevac)
In fact, the negligible role of cyberattacks in the Ukraine conflict should come as no surprise. Through war simulations, statistical analyses, and
other kinds of studies, scholars have found little evidence that cyber-operations provide effective forms of coercion or that they cause
escalation to actual military conflict. That is because for all its potential to disrupt companies, hospitals, and utility grids during peacetime,
cyberpower is much harder to use against targets of strategic significance or to achieve outcomes with
decisive impacts, either on the battlefield or during crises short of war. In failing to recognize this, U.S. officials and
policymakers are approaching the use of cyberpower in a way that may be doing more harm than good—
treating cyber-operations like any other weapon of war rather than as a nonlethal instrument of statecraft and, in the process,
overlooking the considerable opportunities as well as risks they present.
THE MYTH OF CYBER-ESCALATION
Much of the current
understanding in Washington about the role of cyber-operations in conflict is built on longstanding but false assumptions about cyberspace. Many scholars have asserted that cyber-operations could easily lead to military
escalation, up to and including the use of nuclear weapons. Jason Healey and Robert Jervis, for example, expressing a widely held view, have
argued that an incident that takes place in cyberspace, “might cross the threshold into armed conflict either through a sense of impunity or
through miscalculation or mistake.” Policymakers have also long believed that cyberspace poses grave perils. In 2012, Secretary of Defense
Leon Panetta warned of an impending “cyber-Pearl Harbor,” in which adversaries could take down critical U.S. infrastructure through
cyberattacks. Nearly a decade later, FBI Director Christopher Wray compared the threat from ransomware—when actors hold a target hostage
by encrypting data and demanding a ransom payment in return for decrypting it—to the 9/11 attacks. And as recently as December 2021,
Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin noted that in cyberspace, “norms of behavior aren’t well-established and the risks of escalation and
miscalculation are high.”
Seemingly buttressing these claims has been a long record of cyber-operations by hostile governments. In recent years, states ranging from
Russia and China to Iran and North Korea have used cyberspace to conduct large-scale espionage, inflict significant economic damage, and
undermine democratic institutions. In January 2021, for example, attackers linked to the Chinese government were able to breach Microsoft’s
Exchange email servers, giving them access to communications and other private information from companies and governments, and may have
allowed other malicious actors to conduct ransomware attacks. That breach followed on the heels of a Russian intrusion against the software
vendor SolarWinds, in which hackers were able to access a huge quantity of sensitive government and corporate data—an espionage treasure
trove. Cyberattacks have also inflicted significant economic costs. The NotPetya attack affected critical infrastructure around the world—
ranging from logistics and energy to finance and government—causing upward of $10 billion in damage.
But the
assumption that cyber-operations play a central role in either provoking or extending war is
wrong. Hundreds of cyber-incidents have occurred between rivals with long histories of tension or even
conflict, but none has ever triggered an escalation to war. North Korea, for example, has conducted major
cyberattacks against South Korea on at least four different occasions, including the “Ten Days of Rain” denial of service
attack—in which a network is flooded with an overwhelming number of requests, becoming temporarily inaccessible to users—against South
Korean government websites, financial institutions, and critical infrastructure in 2011 and the “Dark Seoul” attack in 2013, which disrupted
service across the country’s financial and media sectors.
It would be reasonable
to expect that these operations might escalate the situation on the Korean
Peninsula, especially because North Korea’s war plans against South Korea reportedly involve cyber-operations. Yet that is not what
happened. Instead, in each case, the South Korean response was minimal and limited to either direct, official attribution to North Korea by
government officials or more indirect public suggestions that Pyongyang was likely behind the attacks.
Similarly, although the United States reserves the right to respond to cyberattacks in any way it sees fit, including with military force, it has until
now relied on economic sanctions, indictments, diplomatic actions, and some reported instances of tit-for-tat cyber-responses. For example,
following Russia’s interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, the Obama administration expelled 35 Russian diplomats and shuttered
two facilities said to be hubs for Russian espionage. The Treasury Department also levied economic sanctions against Russian officials. Yet
according to media reports, the administration ultimately rejected plans to conduct retaliatory cyber-operations against Russia. And although
the United States did use its own cyber-operations to respond to Russian attacks during the 2018 midterm elections, it limited itself to
temporarily disrupting the Internet Research Agency, a Russian troll farm.
These measured responses are not unusual. Despite decades of malicious
behavior in cyberspace—and no matter the level
have always been contained below the level of armed conflict. Indeed, researchers
have found that major adversarial powers across the world have routinely observed a “firebreak” between
cyberattacks and conventional military operations: a mutually understood line that distinguishes strategic
interactions above and below it, similar to the threshold that exists for the employment of nuclear weapons.
of destruction—cyberattacks
9 - No NC3 hacking.
Futter ’16 [Andrew; 2016; International Politics Professor at the University of Leicester; “War Games
Redux? Cyberthreats, US–Russian Strategic Stability, and New Challenges for Nuclear Security and Arms
Control,” European Security 25(2), p. 171-172]
It is of course highly unlikely that either the USA or Russia has plans – or perhaps more importantly, the
desire – to fully undermine the other’s nuclear c ommand and c ontrol systems as a precursor to some type of disarming
first strike, but the perception that nuclear forces and associated systems could be vulnerable or compromised is persuasive. Or as Hayes
(2015) puts it, “The risks of cyber disablement entering into our nuclear forces are real”. While the
growing possibility of “cyber
disablement” should not be overstated (notions of a “cyber-Pearl Harbor” (Panetta 2012) or “cyber 9–11”
(Charles 2013) have done little to help understand the nature of the challenge), cyberthreats are nevertheless an increasingly
important component of the contemporary US–Russia strategic context. This is particularly the case when they are combined with other emerging military-technical developments and
programmes. The net result, especially given the current downturn in US–Russian strategic relations, and the way cyber is exacerbating the impact of other problematic strategic dynamics, is
that is seems highly unlikely that either the USA or Russia will make the requisite moves to de-alert nuclear forces that the new cyber challenges appear to necessitate, or for that matter to
(re)embrace the “deep nuclear cuts” agenda any time soon.
Assessing the options for arms control and enhancing mutual security
Given the new challenges presented by cyber to both US and Russian nuclear forces and to US–Russia strategic stability, it is important to consider what might be done to help mitigate and
guard against these threats, and thereby help minimise the risks of unintentional launches, miscalculation, and accidents, and perhaps create the conditions for greater stability, de-alerting,
and further nuclear cuts. While there is unlikely to be a panacea or “magic bullet” that will reduce the risk of cyberattacks on US and Russian nuclear forces to zero – be they designed to launch
nuclear weapons or compromise the systems that support them – there are a number of options that might be considered and pursued in order to address these different types of threats and
vulnerabilities. None, of these however, will be easy.
The most obvious and immediate priority for both the USA and Russia is working (potentially together) to harden and better protect nuclear systems against possible cyberattack, intrusion, or
cyber-induced accidents. In fact, in October 2013 it was announced that Russian nuclear command and control networks would be protected against cyber incursion and attacks by “special
units” of the Strategic Missile Forces (Russia Today 2014). Other measures will include better network defences and firewalls, more sophisticated cryptographic codes, upgraded and better
protected communications systems (including cables), extra redundancy, and better training and screening for the practitioners that operate these systems (see Ullman 2015). However, and
while comprehensive reviews are underway to assess the vulnerabilities of current US and Russian nuclear systems to cyberattacks, it may well be that US and Russian C2 infrastructure
becomes more vulnerable to cyber as it is modernised and old analogue systems are replaced with increasingly hi-tech digital platforms.
As a result, and while
nuclear
weapons and command and control infrastructure are likely to be the best protected of all computer
systems, and “air gapped” 14 from the wider Internet – this does not mean they are invulnerable or will continue to be
secure in the future, particularly as systems are modernised or become more complex (Fritz 2009). Or as Peggy Morse, ICBM systems director
at Boeing, put it, “while its old it’s very secure” (quoted in Reed 2012).
10 - Attribution Fails – false flag, spoofing, and non state groups – but even if it works
it doesn’t deter anybody.
ASSUMPÇÃO 20 [May 6, 2020, Clara writes for E-International Relations, “The Problem of Cyber
Attribution Between States”, https://www.e-ir.info/2020/05/06/the-problem-of-cyber-attributionbetween-states/] RVP
What is cyber attribution and why does it pose a problem to states?
when discussing
cyber attribution between states, unveiling the identity of the attacker is not enough. International
cyber attribution is a complex process that puts together and tests two different layers of investigation: technical and strategic. The technical attribution deals with the direct proofs
Traditionally, cyber attribution refers to allocating the responsibility of an attack to an attacker or group of attackers, and subsequently, unveiling their real-world identity.[3] However,
of the cyberattack, meaning the digital forensic evidence. It studies the computer code and modularity of the software used in the assault, the network activity during the event, and the language artefacts of the software and the
Due
to false flag operations and spoofing techniques, the chances of achieving perfect technical attribution
are low.[5]
system behind it, for example. Technicians will also investigate the type of targeting, which vulnerabilities the malicious software exploited, how it entered the victim’s system and what the intruder was looking for.[4]
The more elaborate the attack, the harder it is to attribute. Even perfect technical attribution, however,
will only go as far as identifying the individual or group behind the attack. Nevertheless, in cyber attribution between states, the
core question is not “Who did it?”, but “Who is to blame?” [6] In order to define the responsibility for the
attack, a strategic layer of investigation is also necessary. This will analyse the human aspects of the operation, such as the patterns of life of the attack[7] and the
level of resources invested in it. This analysis, joined with a study of the geopolitical context, history, politics and information gathered through intelligence, helps shed light on the attacker’s potential influence or backing from
Cyber attribution is thus a political judgment based on technical and strategic information. As such, it is not a binary or absolute affair, but one
that is gradual and may oscillate from low to high-quality. States ponder over the political stakes when making a public attribution. [9] Regardless of how sure
hostile states.[8]
they are over the quality of their claim, public international attributions are political actions and a state’s prerogative.
The main goal of publicising a cyber attribution is
deterrence – the victim is making it known that it has enough capabilities to identify the perpetrators, and as such, emphasise its ability to punish and retaliate. However, in the case of
Attribution poses a problem not only with regard to its feasibility and quality but also regarding its usefulness.
states, deterrence is not always achieved. Boebert comes forth with scenarios that help elucidate this dilemma. He highlights four potential cases of cyberattacks on states: 1.
Attacks that are directly planned and organised by a state without the use of non-state actors; 2. Attacks that are planned and sponsored by a state, but
executed through non-state actors; 3. Attacks that are tolerated by the host country and executed by non-state actors; and 4. Attacks that are planned and executed by non-state actors
with no involvement of any state.[10]
In the first case, public attribution would have little effect in terms of deterrence, as it would most probably take place in an environment of international tension and imminent direct conflict
. Public
attribution, in this instance, could even be the trigger for war . In the second case, the involvement of
non-state actors brings a cloak of plausible deniability to the state, making attribution obscured. The
individual or group behind the attack would also be under the protection of the organising state, making
it harder to enforce prosecution . In the third case, attribution is even more obscure, as there are no overt
detectable links between the attackers and the organising state. The individual or group behind the attacks might be vulnerable to prosecution, but
deterrence from attacks backed by states is not achieved. Finally, the fourth scenario is the only where deterrence is achieved through public cyber attribution. The organiser of the attack, being a non-state actor, is uncovered and
at the mercy of a much more powerful actor, making the promise of harsh punishment enough to act as deterrence from similar attacks.[11]
cyber attribution is an intricate process that does not work in binaries, but rather in a scale of quality
where absolute certainty is impossible. Making attribution public aims to increase cyber deterrence. However,
this tactic may not work for states dealing with direct or indirect attacks by another state. The complexity of this situation is
Thus,
increased by the lack of a clear standard in international law on how to deal with state responsibility in cyberattacks. In the next section, I will briefly analyse the two main legal regimes used in such cases: the Effective Control
Doctrine and the Overall Control Doctrine.
2NC
K
Countering securitized discourse via debates usurps hegemonic narratives
Jessica M Williams ’20 [Post-doctoral fellow at the Centre for Civil Society and Governance, Faculty of
Social Science, The University of Hong Kong. LLB in Law from the University of Exeter, Master of Science
(International Relations) from Cardiff University, Ph.D. in Social Sciences from the University of Hong
Kong.; “Discourse inertia and the governance of transboundary rivers in Asia”; March 2020; Volume 3;
Earth System Governance; https://doi.org/10.1016/j.esg.2019.100041; Accessed 7/19/21]
In the present paper elements of institutional theory, policy
networks and analytical governance are used to complement
discourse theory. This leads us to propose the conceptualisation of discourse inertia. In terms of discourse, inertia is considered to
represent the persistent promotion and dominance of a perception of reality. This leads to the
continuous reproduction of certain storylines and elements of a discourse. Sanctioned discourses, often ones that are
institutionalised, are thought more likely to achieve or display inertia due to the involvement of path dependent tendencies and
powerful entrenched interests.
Discourse is considered to be dynamic, even where discourse inertia is present, as discourses must
constantly be represented and reinforced. Once an actor's, or a group's, discourse becomes dominant, it is fiercely
defended . Subsequently, dominant discourses are constantly reinforced and embedded. This can lead to certain narratives becoming
entrenched within both institutions and political and social practices, thus reaching an ideational status. These privileged narratives
become taken for granted and self-reinforcing, making them prone to discourse inertia. More shallow narratives can function over
privileged narratives to achieve an interest or align with an outside commitment. These narratives are more fluid and flexible and are,
therefore, easily manipulated.
The concept of discourse inertia reflects how a discourse may persist and resist pressures for change. It contributes to our understanding
discourse dynamics, dissonance and governance. Discourse
inertia may aid in understanding the persistence of a certain
policy pathway, despite evidence of its ineffectiveness or the presence of more suitable alternative approaches.
Discourse inertia is illustrated by utilising and extending Den Besten et al. (2014) ‘ discursive-institutional spiral ’ (Fig.
1). The discursive-institutional spiral demonstrates how discourses evolve. A spiral exists between actors, their ideas, subject
areas and institutional initiatives. Moments of institutionalisation start each loop of the spiral, which then leads to discussion and
debates that draw in new actors. The more actors that become involved, the more likely that new ideas and
concepts will be introduced. The expansion of actors and ideas subsequently leads to institutionalisation, which narrows the
discourse. Certain ideas are excluded and actors are empowered or disempowered. Institutionalisation then begins the next loop
of the spiral as well as the inception of new ideas and rise of critical discourses. Power can be exercised by excluding or
including actors or ideas in the discursive-institutional process (Den Besten et al., 2014).
This concept is extended through the proposal of a narrowing discursive-institutional spiral. Here, a process akin to institutional
path dependency occurs within the spiral, which restricts the entry of new actors and ideas into the discourse. As a result, the evolution
and expansion of the discursive-institutional spiral is limited (Fig. 2 and 3). Certain discursive elements that become
institutionalised may be self-reinforcing along subsequent spirals. These elements may consistently exclude other elements and
actors. This can further limit the ability of new actors to access the discourse, which reduces the introduction of
alternative ideas
Epistemology comes first---IR constitutes itself through linguistic and discursive
practices like the aff---policy cannot be disentangled from its epistemological
justifications
Ringmar 14 – Erik Ringmar is professor in the Department of Political Science and International
Relations at İbn Haldun Üniversitesi, Istanbul, Turkey; 2014 (“Performance, Not Performativity: An
Embodied Critique of Post-Structural IR Theory”, Performativity and Agency in International Politics,
Available online at https://lucris.lub.lu.se/ws/files/6266345/7512005.pdf, Accessed 03-08-2021)
When applied to the study of international politics, this position turns into a critique of the state, or
rather, a critique of sovereignty. There is no state, say post-structural international relations scholars
such as Cynthia Weber and David Campbell, at least if we take the state to constitute a pre-existing
subject to which sovereignty can be attached as an attribute.9 Focusing on “institutions,“ the “people,“
or perhaps on the state as a transcendental idea, mainstream accounts always presuppose that which
they intend to prove. Instead sovereignty must be understood as the process through which political
subjects come to constitute themselves as such. “I suggest,“ says Weber, “that sovereign nation-states are
not pre-given subjects but in process and that all subjects in process (be they individual or collective)
are the ontological effects of practices which are performatively enacted.”10
Weber's idea of “performatively enacted practices” needs further elucidation.11 Even if we reject the
idea of a pre-given self, there is certainly the illusion of such a being, and the question thus becomes
how that illusion arose. According to poststructural theory, the self is created through reiterative
linguistic practices. Language precedes the human subject, they explain; we are born into language, and
language is best understood as a semiotic structure where the meaning of each word is constituted by
its difference from other words. It is, as Ferdinand Saussure once argued, the structure as a whole that
ultimately determines what things mean. According to performativity theorists, in other words,
structure is to practice as langue is to parole; as the abstract rules that make possible the production of
grammatical sentences, that is, are to the production of an actual sentence.12 A structure, like langue, is
a complex of rules with a virtual existence whereas practice, like speech, is an enactment of these rules
in space and time.
But a semiotic structure is not yet a sovereign self. We move closer to the subject once we realize that
words do not only mean things but also do things in the world. Words have what John Austin's in How to Do
Things with Words, 1962, called a “perlocutionary force.”13 The proverbial example is the “I do” of the
wedding ceremony. By speaking the words, you are not merely conveying meaning, you are also doing
something, you are constituting a marriage. The words are performed and thereby enacted.14 Adding to
Austin's conclusions, Derrida emphasizes what he calls the “citational” quality of even the most
pragmatic forms of language use. That is, the texts we invoke always cite seemingly absent contexts from
which they ultimately derive their meaning. “Could a performative utterance succeed,” Derrida asks,
if its formulation did not repeat a “coded” or iterable utterance, or in other words, if the
formula I pronounce in order to open a meeting, launch a ship or a marriage were not
identifiable as conforming with an iterable model, if it were not then identifiable in some way as
a “citation”?15
This is how the subject comes to constitute itself. “The subject is inscribed in language, is a 'function' of
language, becomes a speaking subject only by making its speech conform … to the system of the rules of
language as a system of differences.”16 The human subject is “a being devoid of Being until it is
organized by a system of codes.”17
This is an argument further developed by Judith Butler.18 Our identities take shape, she says, through
the perlocutionary force of the discourse we apply to ourselves. Talking about the being that we take
our selves to be, we quote statements that connote normalcy and imply acceptance much as a lawyer
might cite supporting precedents in a court of law. By making performative statements, and applying
them to ourselves, a certain person comes into being; performativity is “a compulsory reiteration of
those norms through which a subject is constituted”; “subjectivity is performatively constituted by the
ritualized production or codified social behavior.”19 These statements, says Butler, are not only
repetitive and ritualistic but also socially determined. If we misquote the established discourse and fail
to construct an appropriate self for ourselves, we are punished through various, often surprisingly
severe, social sanctions.20
This is the argument which Cynthia Weber and David Campbell apply to the study of international
relations. “There is no sovereign or state identity behind expressions of state sovereignty,“ Weber
summarizes. “The identity of the state is performatively constituted by the very expressions that are said
to be its results.”21 States, Campbell concurs, are “unavoidably paradoxical entities which do not possess
pre-discursive, stable identities.”22 Foreign policy discourse is “a persistent impersonation that passes as the
real”; states state and through their statements they instate and reinstate themselves as sovereign
actors. This is a constantly ongoing process. “For a state to end its practices of representation would be
to expose its lack of prediscursive foundations; stasis would be death.“23 Weber talks about sovereignty
as a form of simulation, but while simulations usually are defined through their likeness to the real, the
world politics which she describes contains no originals.24
As an illustration, consider Thomas Hobbes' solution to the problems of life in the state of nature.25 By
handing over their right to self-defense to a common power who guarantees their security, individuals
no longer threaten each other. Yet prior to the signing of this contract, there was no people; the people
literally declared itself into existence.26 Derrida analyzes the American Declaration of Independence of
1776 in the same terms.27 The authors of the declaration, he says, referred to themselves as the
“Representatives” of “the good People of these Colonies,” but these people did not exist prior to the
issuing of the declaration itself. It was only through the signatures that the people came to constitute
itself as such. “The people” who authorizes their representatives to make the declaration is invented by
the declaration they authorize.28
Or consider the case of military interventions, as discussed by both Weber and Campbell. Interventions
are violations of independence, but as such they exemplify the power of the same performative
practice. Military interventions, we might say, constitute a discursive boundary along which the principle
of sovereignty breaks down. By analyzing where and how this boundary is drawn, we learn where and
how sovereignty is produced.29 It is for that reason interesting to see how military interventions have
been justified. In Writing Security, Campbell discusses a striking example: the Requerimiento, the short
proclamation which the conquistadors read to the native populations of the New World before they
took possession of their land and imposed European laws on them.30 “Therefore I beg and require you
as best I can,” the conquistadors declared, in Spanish, to the puzzled locals, “...
we will not compel you to turn Christians. But if you do not to it … with the help of God, I will
enter forcefully against you, and I will make war everywhere and however I can, and I will
subject you to the yoke and obedience of the Church and His Majesty, and I will take your wives
and children, and I will make them slaves ...31
As Weber shows in Simulating Sovereignty, the right to violate sovereignty has continued to be a
privilege of the most powerful states. At the time of World War I, national self-determination was
enshrined as an absolute principle; absolute, that is, as long as it did not run up against the
fundamental interests of the leading states — compare the invasion in support of the Whites after the
Russian Revolution of 1917. Sovereignty continues to be the core principle of the international system to
this day, except when it is in the interests of the United States and its allies to violate it ― witness
Grenada in 1983 and Panama in 1989 (and, we might add, Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003). As
Campbell points out, the sovereign state continues to be defined through its opposite ― the “failed
states” which exist outside the peaceful, democratic and prosperous core administered by the
Americans.32 It is consequently only by extending U.S. hegemony that problems such as terrorism can
be addressed. This too is a performative practice: interventions are a way of specifying “the way the
world (now) is,” and like all similar geopolitical descriptions it contains a prescription for how to “put the
world right.”33
Allies want less securitization, NOT more---here’s a link to the plan that turns the case
Cooper 21, nonresident senior fellow with the Atlantic Council, a former assistant secretary at the
Department of State, and a US Army combat veteran (R Clarek, American security cooperation needs an
‘integrity check’,” Atlantic Council, https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/new-atlanticist/americansecurity-cooperation-needs-an-integrity-check/)
Yet successful security
cooperation—which includes arms transfers, training, security assistance, treaties, or agreements—is built
around two key principles: trust and integrity of commitment, both of which are at risk today thanks
to the haphazard US withdrawal from Afghanistan. In the US military, the term “integrity check” refers to a
concern about an individual’s or unit’s capability or trustworthiness. Following the debacle in Kabul, the
United States and its global security cooperation posture is in dire need of one. Just look at the anger expressed
by stalwart NATO allies such as the United Kingdom, which in the aftermath of 9/11 unquestionably joined in to invoke the Washington Treaty’s
Article 5 for collective self-defense (the first time the Alliance ever did so). That NATO launched its first operations outside the Euro-Atlantic
area and began a far-reaching transformation of capabilities signaled its trust in the United States’ reliability when it came to security
cooperation. Now,
treaty allies and partner nations are reassessing their bilateral security relationships with
the United States. It’s not just the NATO states caught off-guard by the haphazard departure from Afghanistan
that will think twice before embarking upon future military campaigns with the United States. Resolute defense partners in the Middle
East and the Indo-Pacific—including Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Qatar, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan—likely also need overt reassurance, such as a
clear national-security strategy and declared recommitments. Additionally, these partners are increasingly feeling the need to proactively raise
their own defense capabilities by boosting their budgets or coordinating with allies to ensure regional security along with the United States.
Besides stress-testing the integrity of American security cooperation, the Afghanistan
withdrawal also highlights the
necessity of staying the course on long-term investment in mutually beneficial security partnerships with countries
with which the United States has shared interests—or shared threats. Well before the fall of Afghanistan, foreign partners
were already questioning the reliability of the United States at a time when the debate in Washington about our global
posture was becoming increasingly politicized. The case for partnering with the United States needs to be clearly articulated through the
presence, performance, and processes of American security cooperation. The quality of US aerospace and defense equipment, the commitment
to build capabilities, and the reassurance that comes from partnering with the US military must include further transparency, accountability,
and predictability of policies. If not, American allies
and partners will be hesitant to collaborate with us on future
shared security requirements—or simply seek cooperation elsewhere .
Trump’s rhetoric shook the alliance---questions regarding US commitment divide
members
Robinson 22 — Eric; M.P.P. in public policy, College of William & Mary; B.A. in economics,
government, College of William & Mary, senior research programmer and analyst at RAND Corporation.
June 7, 2022; "American politics could derail NATO’s momentum — unless leaders prepare now.";
Breaking Defense; https://breakingdefense.com/2022/06/american-politics-could-derail- NATOsmomentum-unless-leaders-prepare-now/; //CYang
With an active Russian invasion on its doorstep and Finland and Sweden asking to join, NATO seems more relevant than at any point since the
fall of the Berlin Wall. But, former counterterrorism official Eric Robinson warns the following op-ed, alliance
leaders need to keep a
wary eye on the looming danger that is American politics . It is a moment of triumph for NATO. The alliance’s main threat,
the Russian military, suffered decisive defeats in the battles for Kyiv and Kharkiv in Ukraine. Furthermore, as a direct result of Russia’s invasion,
both Sweden and Finland have petitioned NATO for membership. Not since the Berlin Wall fell has a component of the United States’
commitment to Europe’s security been so clearly validated. Regrettably, this remarkable state of affairs in Europe obscures the alliance’s
true fragility — a vulnerability so pronounced that NATO’s current confidence could soon become a historic
footnote . Internal disputes are not new to NATO, of course. Charles de Gaulle withdrew French military forces from NATO’s high
command, Greece and Turkey are effectively rivals, and there is a substantial disparity in defense spending among
members. These challenges pale in comparison , however, to NATO’s most critical vulnerability : American
politics. In 1947, Sen. Arthur Vandenberg established a baseline for American political alignment when he stated that “politics stops at the
water’s edge,” that partisan differences should be minimized in matters of national security. Republicans and Democrats alike would certainly
vary in their approaches, but challenging the Soviet Union provided a degree of predictability to American foreign policy. This partisan harmony
continued beyond the Cold War, extending into bipartisan support for the Persian Gulf War and the invasion of Iraq. Then came Donald
Trump, and an open hostility to America’s longstanding international practices. As a candidate, Trump articulated a
deep skepticism of America’s international obligations and his arguments resonated with voters who had soured on the
foreign policy establishment. His version of “ America
First ” echoed the original America First Committee of the 1930s and 1940s:
disdainful of international commitments, comfortable with authoritarian systems, and accepting moral
compromises as a cost of doing business in a rough world. During his time in office, Trump did not shift his views on limiting
America’s international obligations, but he never truly acted on his intuition, either. NATO remained shaken yet intact, his administration
amended NAFTA with Canada and Mexico, and his team helped establish official relationships between Israel and a series of once-hostile
countries. However, since Trump’s exit from office, reporting indicates that he expressed
interest or actively explored going further,
including wanting to withdraw military forces from Europe and end the US military commitment to the
Republic of Korea, two pillars of America’s global security commitment. And notably, Trump’s former national security
advisor John Bolton has specifically said he believed Trump would seek to leave NATO . The popularity of “America First”
politics returns
us to NATO’s critical vulnerability . If he decides to run again, Trump seems almost assured to be the
GOP’s nominee for president in 2024. Recent primaries and patterns of behavior among Republicans currently in the House and Senate
have shown that Trump’s hold on the GOP may not be ironclad, but he remains the leading party figure. Should Trump return to the White
House, he
would likely do so with a Republican House and Senate far less likely to push back on his foreign
policy than during his first term in office — and as a president who will assuredly be inclined to listen to his close supporters
encouraging his basest instincts .
There’s threat inflation specifically around NATO---confluence of institutional and
social incentives
Friedman 20 Benjamin H. Friedman, adjunct lecturer at George Washington University’s Elliott School
of International Affairs, policy director at Defense Priorities, former research fellow in defense and
homeland security studies at the CATO Institute, PhD candidate political science, MIT, graduate of
Dartmouth College, “Alarums and Excursions: Explaining Threat Inflation in U.S. Foreign Policy,” CATO
Institute, 6-17-2020, https://www.cato.org/publications/alarums-excursions-explaining-threat-inflationus-foreign-policy /GoGreen!//rehighlighted by smarx, AZG]
In Elizabethan theater, “alarums and excursions” was a stage direction calling for actors to rush about the stage in a chaotic clamor suggestive
of battle.1 In
American politics, threat inflation has a similarly theatrical role: it tries to confuse and excite an
audience to win its support for some policy, often military excursions of some sort. This chapter explains why
U.S. defense politics is especially prone to such behavior—why, that is, U.S. leaders serially exaggerate the nation’s
vulnerability to national security threats.
power gives the United States the opportunity to adopt expansive foreign
policy goals.2 “Expansive” here refers not necessarily to attempts at expansion in the sense of territorial
acquisition but to a militarily active and interventionist grand strategy . To heighten support for those
The explanation, in a nutshell, is that
goals, U.S. leaders exaggerate their contribution to domestic security. Over time, expansive foreign policy also
generates societal interests tied to its survival. Those interests, most prominently national security
organizations, inflate threats to protect their prerogatives . Educated amid that cacophony of threat
inflation, new political leaders learn to echo it, either because doing so seems politically safe or
because they believe it. Assertions of insecurity become a cultural habit of American elites.
The chapter begins by defining threat inflation and describing how U.S. leaders use it. It then reviews political science and economics concepts
showing how special interest groups dominate debates about risk. The second section shows how the growth of U.S. power distributes the
costs of expansive foreign policies, thus undermining the formation of interest groups opposed to such policies. The next shows how power
concentrates the benefits of those policies, forming interests that promote themselves with threat inflation. The last section discusses
conditions that make for more balanced debate about threats and how to foster them.
In explaining U.S. threat inflation, the chapter sheds light on which security threats are especially prone to exaggeration; on why reactions to
new threats are often slow; on why fears tend to outlast the dangers that brought them; and, more generally, how debate fails to purge myth—
how the democratic marketplace of ideas fails.
Threat Inflation as Conflict Socialization
Threat inflation is speech that gives an exaggerated sense of danger. It need not involve lying . U.S.
leaders, for example, often
threat‐inflate by abusing worst‐case scenarios—highlighting a dangerous
possibility and omitting its probability .3 Shorn of context, the possibility implies more danger than reality merits. If you tell
someone skiing bunny slopes in New Hampshire to beware of avalanches and illustrate the danger with tales of heliskiers buried by snow in the
Canadian Rockies, you are not lying. But you have failed to point out that the danger of an avalanche in the White Mountains is remote. You are
inflating skiing’s danger. Of course, in
national security politics, exaggeration is rarely so blatant. It can be difficult
to separate the prudent warning from threat inflation, especially when the speaker’s job is to warn .
In the Semi‐Sovereign People, E. E. Schattschneider imagines democratic politics as a street fight watched by a crowd.4 The fight’s outcome, he
tells us, depends on the extent of the crowd’s involvement. So the brawlers may try to involve the crowd, depending on its disposition and on
how the fight is going. In politics, he argues, beneficiaries of the policy status quo will seek to keep conflict narrow, whereas those seeking
change will often try to broaden it. Activists frustrated by local politics might try to involve state government, and statewide combatants may
look to the federal government. The full Congress can reverse its committees’ actions. The secretary of defense might reevaluate an army
decision, and the president, driven by public opinion, might overrule him.
In U.S. politics, threat inflation is often a shout of “danger!” meant to socialize conflict, an effort to
energize public opinion. The U.S. system, according to Theodore Lowi, is especially prone to such appeals.
Compared with dictatorships or even parliamentary governments, power in the U nited S tates is diffuse: spread among
branches of government, committees, agencies, and private interest groups.5 Those entities are
potential points of resistance to policy change. They create a powerful bias toward the status quo.
Crises and wars unify public goals, overcoming the typical stasis. Invocations of insecurity attempt to
create a similarly unifying sense of crisis that removes parochial barriers to collective action .6 Because
policymakers always struggle to implement their proposals, alarmism is a regular feature of U.S.
policy debate. It rarely works. But as with most shouts for help, the absence of initial success is likely to produce louder shouting, not
quiet. Threat inflators are searching for arguments that win with the public.
Another species of threat inflation defends the status quo. Advocates of security organizations and
policies naturally defend them by references to the dangers that they confront. Such defenses shade
easily into exaggeration, especially as the relevant threat lessens.
Misperception vs. Dishonesty
The considerable academic literature dealing with how states misunderstand and mismanage danger
generally focuses on errors of perception—psychological bias, ignorance, intelligence mistakes, and
other communication and comprehension problems that prevent the state from correctly interpreting
information.7 So the Nazi threat mounted without a proper response because nations slept, blind to its menace. The 9/11 attacks resulted
from a “failure of imagination.”8 The United States invaded Iraq because it overestimated Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction arsenal. The
solution to misperception is to see more clearly— correct for predictable biases, collect better intelligence,
improve analysis of it, share information faster, and use better theory about enemy thinking .
The tendency to attribute security policy failure to misperception follows what can be called the rational‐comprehensive model of politics,
where government is seen as a process of revealing the national interest.9 Intelligence and commission reports, congressional hearings, and
analysis from think tanks or academics inform policymakers’ perceptions. Those perceptions yield policy without too much trouble.
The rational‐comprehensive model sees liberal democracy as a marketplace of ideas that selects for truth and wise foreign policy and sees
misperception as a distorter of that market’s prices.10 The separation of powers and the need for public approval mean that policies will be
publicly debated. Debate will be wide because the public bears the cost of policies and thus has an interest in truthful analysis of their
consequences. Contestation exposes the errors supporting policy options, costing them support. Even the prospect of dissent can prevent
leaders from proposing actions detrimental to the national interest. Leaders either learn directly from debate or adjust their preferences for
electoral reasons as the public debates its way toward wisdom. The nation will not always avoid folly but will eventually recognize it and self‐
correct. Liberal countries will adjust better than illiberal ones to the international system’s pressures and will adopt wiser foreign policies.11
They should continually reevaluate their assessments of threats and the efficacy of policy responses, adjusting programs and spending
accordingly.
Misperception is often a convincing tool for understanding failures in security policy. But
there are several reasons to suspect
that political analysts overdiagnose it. First, misperception flatters social science. If flawed theoretical
lenses cause leaders to misperceive, analysts are optometrists. Their importance under this approach
probably makes them overly eager to use it. Second, perceptual explanations for policy failures invite
technocratic solutions, which essentially say stick with present policy goals while improving the
means—tweaking the engine rather than swapping cars or picking a new destination. Because those
fixes threaten no important public organization or interest, they are relatively uncontroversial and
easy to implement, making them especially attractive to politically ambitious analysts . Third, misperception
shucks aside dishonesty. Children know that politics is dishonest, but international relations scholarship pays little attention to it, probably
because it is hidden.12 Elected leaders avoid admitting that they often sacrifice the general or national interest for narrower ones, even those
they were elected to represent. National security politics are particularly prone to that problem. The supposed stakes make parochial
considerations seem particularly inappropriate, hence the myth that politics stops at the water’s edge.
Pluralism and Threat Perception
The theory elaborated here sees leaders’ tendency to purposely mislead the public as the main cause of national errors about threat. The theory comes from pluralism, not the rational‐comprehensive model.13 Pluralism sees democratic government as an arena for the competition of
interests manifest in pressure groups, congressional committees, and government agencies. In pluralism, sales and bargaining are the guts of democracy; science is just the marketing language. That is because the legitimacy that democratic rule gathers by process is never enough.
Science’s sheen, the ritual consultation of expertise, expands policies’ appeal. White papers, intelligence reports, and other forms of expert analysis are less for enlightenment than affirmation—to convince observers that government serves their interests, rescuing it from the ward
heeler, the backroom plutocrats, and the like.14 Policies are solutions seeking problems to solve.15 The rational‐comprehensive model has the causal arrow backward; estimates of danger are more servants of policy preferences than their cause. Ideas’ competition is less a marketplace
than a theater, where debate produces noise and passion but little progress toward truth or agreement.16
The American government is supposed to avoid the problem of special interests triumphing over the general interest. In Federalist 10, James Madison argues that faction checks faction in large republics, preventing narrow interests from dominating public policy.17 Madison’s essay
reflects a classically liberal idea—one present in the checks and balances in the Constitution—that competition among self‐interested actors serves the general interest.
David Truman and other early pluralists use similar logic to argue that the U.S. government succeeds by inviting group competition.18 The distribution of power in American government makes it uniquely open to influence, encouraging the formation of political interest groups. Those
groups include not only economic interests such as industry associations but also religious groups, civil rights organizations, conservationists, and so forth. New groups organize to advanc e new goals or to defend old ones against other interest groups. For example, public health advocacy
groups trying to ban smoking in bars may prompt bar owners to organize against the ban.
Pluralists see the political interest groups as servants of various societal goods or ends, which they embed in the aims of government agencies. Policymaking is the competition of those goods. The government as it stands—its budget and programs—is their compromise, though not a
static one. That outcome approximates the national interest better than any alternative, though none of the competitors will ever be satisfied.
In an optimistic reading of pluralism, interest‐group competition heightens appreciation of truth. If groups mislead the public, they are likely to harm other groups’ interests. Those groups will combat the misinformation. For example, if the army exaggerates an enemy’s capability in order
to win funds for more personnel, the air force may correct the record for fear that the funds will come from its budget. Export industries might downplay threats if responses to them threaten market access. These fights spill into debates in the Congress or the press, and observers learn
what is accurate.
Mancur Olson’s The Logic of Collective Action critiques the optimistic kind of pluralism. Olson argues that many societal goods—those that he calls public goods—lack interest‐group protection and, therefore, public policies that serve them.19 His argument implies that no one will inflate
threats to serve those goods or to combat threat inflation that harms them.
Public goods have two characteristics, Olson says. No one can be effectively excluded from enjoying the good (nonexcludability), and one person’s consumption of the good does not reduce availability of the good for consumption by others (nonrivalry). Those characteristics encourage
people to free-ride—to try to enjoy the good without contributing to its provision. As a result, people lack incentive to provide public goods. That is the collective action or free‐rider problem. Small groups overcome the free‐rider problem by enforcing participation and providing benefits
for participation (select benefits) to members.
Pecuniary motives are not the sole cause of people’s preferences about politics or engagement in it, of course. People often damage their material well‐being in service of social, familial, moral, or religious ends. But the fact that some people’s behavior does not reliably follow from
material incentives does not mean that they do not create general tendencies that powerfully affect politics. Collective acti on theory suggests that without the aid of private interests, public goods will be underprovided, whatever the efforts of do‐gooders. Moreover, even if one’s goals
derive from moral considerations, free riding impedes organization.
Government overcomes collective action problems by coercion— forcing people to fund public goods via taxation. But without private interests pushing it in the first place, why will government provide the good? Collective action theory says policy in any given area will serve private
interests, not the national interest.
Pure public goods are rare. In most cases, government provision of a good via policy creates classes of beneficiaries.20 A policy’s costs and benefits distribute unevenly and, therefore, so do incentives to try to implement or change it. That insight points to a more realistic way of
considering political organization: transaction costs. That term means the cost of engaging in economic exchange, excluding the good’s price. Transaction costs include the effort required to make a deal and gather the information needed to determine whet her it is worthwhile.
In public policy terms, the transaction costs that a person would expend to learn his or her interests generally outweigh the benefits gained from doing so. If you do not pay the information cost of learning your interest, you cannot know t hat for sure, of course. But people will have a
general sense that in most policy areas, their efforts are unlikely to pay off. They remain rationally ignorant. Only people who receive relatively high returns from the good have incentive to learn their interests, let alone organize others in service of them.
Policy outcomes, then, depend less on a policy’s total costs and benefits for society than on the intensity and distribution of interests that the policy creates. Minorities with concentrated interests rule over disinterested majorities.21 Those groups—concentrated or special interests— will
likely dictate policy if it causes no one losses of similar magnitude. Though transaction costs are an economic concept, their relevance extends to immaterial interests and groups formed to advance them. What facilitates organization is not the nature or origin of preferences but their
distribution. The few whose moral or religious fervor makes them care deeply about a policy area exercise outsize influence over it. Cuban exiles dominate U.S. policy toward Cuba just as the farm lobby dominates agricultural policy.
Transaction costs explain how narrow interests dominate not only policy but also ideas about policy. Politics are rife with what economists call information asymmetry—where one party to a potential exchange holds most of the information about the value of a good being sold.22
Because people lack incentive to pay the cost of figuring out what a good is worth to them, they use proxies to guide their political preferences.23 Those that stand to benefit more directly will gather the relevant information, employ experts, and try to convince a larger and more
uncertain group that the good is valuable enough to justify their action—organization, contributions, or votes. For example, interest groups such as the Chamber of Commerce will struggle to convince would‐be members that their contribution buys them something worthwhile. Ideas
about politics, including what constitutes a threat, are largely the byproduct of the formation and conflict of organized political interests.24 Voting for a party or candidate is deciding whose story about your best interest to believe.
That logic extends to ideologies, which are informal normative frameworks.25 Ideology is considered here to be a species of institution, which means rules and norms governing human behavior.26 Ideologies allow people to generate many preferences from a few beliefs. The belief that
you are a conservative, for example, yields a plethora of beliefs about how society ought to be constituted. Ideology thus lowers both the cost of policy preferences and the cost of translating them into action. Leaders use ideology to convince the public to support particular policies.
Once a policy’s cost becomes high enough, those paying have incentive to inform themselves, reducing asymmetry and the potential for
manipulation. For example, those likely to be drafted into Vietnam and killed became more informed about the war and more likely to oppose
it.27 Where information is cheaper, more individuals have incentive to gather it and discern their interests more carefully.
This analysis of
transaction costs has three implications about threat perception and national reaction to
threats worth highlighting. First, because learning about security is expensive, national security is especially
prone to information asymmetry and thus to threat inflation . Few entities can afford the surveillance
assets needed to know the disposition of foreign missiles. It is hard to learn what terrorists in Waziristan are
doing, even if you live there. As a result, information about threats comes mostly from government or analysts
tied to it.28 Threats are ambiguous, and the logic of policies meant to mitigate them is often complex.
Providers of security play a particularly dominant role in the formation of public ideas about it.
Second, the distribution of societal interests implicated by responses to the danger—the domestic
economy of incentives—drives national reactions to danger. If responding to a threat creates
concentrated benefits and diffuse costs, government will likely adopt expensive and aggressive policies
to combat it. Threats that encourage policies creating concentrated costs and diffuse benefits may
provoke little response. Policies that concentrate costs and benefits will create controversy and a
balanced response to threats. If responding to a threat concentrates no interest, we should expect an
indifferent policy response.
Third, national threat perception will be slow to respond to changes in threat. Interests tied to a threat will not disappear with it. They will continue to promote it or the similar threats that they combat.29 In fact, by endangering those interests, the threat’s disappearance may even
increase their output of hype.
Unrestrained Power Causes Threat Inflation
Expansive defense policies and perception of threats that justify them serve the national security establishment but harm the American public slightly. Threat inflation is one tool that the establishment uses to convince the public otherwise. Because expansive policies’ costs distribute to
everyone as deficits or taxes, few people have an incentive to organize against them and convince the public of its true interests.
Arnold Wolfers argues that the term “national security” tends to cloak other interests:
A glance at history will suffice to show that survival has only exceptionally been at stake, particularly for major powers. If nations were not concerned with the protection of values other than their survival as independent states, most of them, most of the time, would not have had to be
seriously worried about their security, despite what manipulators of public opinion engaged in mustering greater security eff orts may have said to the contrary.30
Wolfers says that we give rhetoric too much due in considering the sources of foreign policy. States want safety, but they also seek status, mat erial gain, and ideological goods. Some states, he says, value such goals more than security.31 To maximize support, they always talk about their
goals in relation to security, however, obscuring the distinction between needs and wants.
The modern United States is Wolfers’s poster child. National survival is virtually ensured by geography, tradition, nuclear weapons, and the wealth and technology that generate military power. For most Americans, unsuccessful wars, even the recent one in Iraq, result in little more than
marginally higher tax rates or debt. Since the draft’s end, war kills only the volunteer military and foreigners. Contrast that with Europeans living 100 years ago or the Athenians portrayed by Thucydides, where foreign policy failures meant c onquest and mass death, and even successful
wars would kill many sons and consume a considerable portion of societal wealth. U.S. foreign policy, no matter how misguided, rarely endangers safety at home.32
But nothing sells foreign policy in public like danger. To increase public support for an interventionist foreign policy, lea ders portray it as a means to lessen threats. That portrayal requires threat inflation. There is a paradox: security increases the sense of insecurity.33 In economic terms,
the costs of expansive U.S. foreign policies might badly outweigh the benefits, but costs are diffuse. The United States makes foreign policy like rich people shop: indulging luxurious tastes without much concern about price.
That argument is broadly consistent with realism. Realism concerns the systematic interaction of power. It sees rival power, or appreciation of its possibility, as the source of restraint in domestic and international politics. Power checks power. We can preach self‐restraint, but preaching
rarely restrains when opportunities for indulgence arise.
Realism is sometimes seen as the absence of folly, as clear‐eyed pragmatism. But that view is realpolitik—the behavior the international system encourages, according to Kenneth Waltz.34 His theory, structural realism, considers states to be like units in anarchy seeking survival with
varying capability. The system created by the interaction of those units is competitive. Competition encourages states to protect their power through realpolitik. One su ch behavior is to balance each other’s power. Another is to appreciate the limits of power, the danger of provoking
rivals. International politics thus generally encourages restraint in territorial acquisition, troop deployment, and war making.
Structural realism should not be confused with the unconditional prediction that states adopt realpolitik—pragmatic, restrained policies.35 The theory says that international relations generally create pressures against military adventurism, but not always. Systemic pressures vary with
time, geography, and relative capabilities. When threats are remote and relative resources great, structural realism suggests that foreign policy contrary to realpolitik is more likely.36 Another way to put it is that states, like people, are more likely to act according to moral values when
the price of doing so is low.37
Systemic pressures were strong in European states a century ago. They have long been weak in the United States. They are nearly absent today. As a result, the United States has embraced realpolitik only intermittently, when threats loomed, and has traditionally indulged an expansive
foreign policy. Realists today typically argue that the international system will teach the United States restraint, sooner or later. But structural realism can accommodate the idea that the system is the problem, not the solution.
The absence of international constraint is an open door. Relative power and safety offer an opportunity for an expansive foreign policy. Whether or not the state walks through depends on its internal characteristics.38 But a history of being unrestrained internationally will affect
characteristics in consequential ways. The education offered by international politics needs to become institutionalized to guide state policy. So it will be slow to take even once conditions encourage it, and it will outlast the dangers that brought it. What matters in producing threat
inflation is not simply the absence of restraint because of relative power, but the history of being unrestrained and safe.
Institutions explain why not all states, having the same power as the United States does, would do as it does.39 For historical reasons, a state with similar relative power and safety might have more doubt about whether it can be a global force for good. Having been institutionalized,
those beliefs resist changes in international conditions, changing only gradually or because of shocking events. For example, experience renovated German and Japanese ideas about foreign policy, replacing militarism with reluctance to use force. Laws and traditions limit the size and
influence of those nations’ military establishments, which were once powerful supporters of expansive foreign policy.40 The two world wars left even their European victors chary of policies that risk war, at least more chary than the United States, where those wars were less painful.
As discussed earlier, ideologies organize social action. Those with the most at stake—those that stand to receive concentrated material or moral benefits—will tend to dominate ideological debate. But, as social constructs, ideologies are broadly disputed, making consensus hard to
achieve. Overly abrupt proposed changes in ideological content will be rejected by other ideological leaders and thus will convince few. Over time, however, ideologies should shift to match the interests of intellectual and political elites.
We can analyze the evolution of American ideas about foreign policy this way. By generating new interests in expansionist foreign policy, as will be discussed, and by lessening and distributing the costs of such policy, growth in relative power helped change ideas. The United States was
generally isolationist in its first century of independence because it had little capability to participate in global power politics and wanted to be unmolested by other powers. There was no American empire to promote, and there were European empires to keep out. An army was
occasionally raised and a navy kept to that end, but they needed an anti‐imperial ideology for support. The absence of a permanent military establishment limited support for more expansionist takes on liberal ideology.41 The liberal tradition confused and retarded the embrace of
expansion but did not prevent it.
Opportunity and experience were the key causes of the American shift to expansive military policies in the 20th century, particularly after World War II.42 Europe wanted American support against communism, allowing the assertion of American power there. U.S. leaders justified the
new expansionist policies by disparaging isolationism and conflating the spread of liberalism with U.S. security.43 Soviet power prevented
U.S. military intervention in some areas, like Eastern Europe and (along with China) discouraged escalation of the Korean and Vietnam Wars. The tragic results of Vietnam tempered U.S. enthusiasm for military intervention for the rest of the Cold War. But the Soviet Union did little to
prevent interventions in most of the Third World. And communism’s threat encouraged some states to invite U.S. defenses, encouraging interventions. The Soviet Union’s collapse left the United States even less restrained. The Gulf War and the perceived success of the Cold War served
the story that advocates of expansive foreign policy told. Those events helped overcome the lingering popularity of insularity. Government support for realpolitik ideas diminished after the Cold War, and foreign policy idealism flourished.
In the course of U.S. history, Americans went from considering liberalism a fragile thing protected at
home by isolation to something protected abroad by troops or delivered there by wars of liberation or
state repair. That ideological shift produced more threat inflation. It did so because leaders motivated by
ideological ends always avail themselves of arguments about the security benefits of their proposed
action. There is a feedback mechanism here. As a result of being unrestrained and rich, the United States, in
the course of its history, became more active abroad. To promote activist policies, leaders hyped threats and
made ideological arguments. Over time, others, including new leaders, came to support those policies
because they had learned the ideology, generating more threat inflation.44
Who Hypes What and Why
The United States is likely to adopt foreign policies contrary to its interests if the costs of the policy are diffuse and the benefits are
concentrated. The theory discussed in this section can be thought of as the benefit side of that equation. To summarize: expansive defense
policies and perception of threats that justify them harm the American public slightly but help the national security establishment.45 The
establishment inflates threats to try to convince the public otherwise—that policies conductive to various parochial interests serve the public
interest. Because expansive policies’ costs sparsely distribute to everyone as deficits or taxes, few people have an incentive to organize and
resist the establishment’s take on threats. An exception is military service members, who bear great cost in the event of war. But professional
norms discourage service members from taking vocal anti‐war stances. So the establishment dominates the creation and interpretation of
information about threats. Because the establishment formed in the past and changes with difficulty, it tends to focus on past threats, or
threats like them, thus hindering the nation’s ability to react to new types of threats. The president generally compromises with the
establishment because of its information advantage and the limited power and time he has to combat it. To sell that compromise, the president
echoes the establishment’s threat inflation.
The rest of this section discusses why specific
elements of the national security establishment hype threats and
encourage the president to do so. The entities discussed include the so‐called iron triangle—military services,
congressional committees, and defense contractors—and intelligence agencies, nongovernmental
veterans and military organizations, think tank and academic defense analysts, foreign governments,
and the media. Before examining the incentives that influence those groups, a caveat is needed. The claim here is not that
people are simply products of their organizational or personal interests, that fidelity to such incentives
is an inviolate law of human behavior. People often serve the national interest at the expense of their
own. Working in government can be an example. But though people often resist those incentives,
they push, pull, and create general tendencies .
The national security establishment is neither a unified entity nor a conspiracy. Its parts have various goals that lead them to compete and
promote different dangers. But their interests in exaggerating threats often overlap.46 Les Aspin explained that confluence well:
The ends of MIC Inc. [the military‐industrial complex] are achieved through 1,001 individual and
basically unrelated decisions, which taken together have the effect of a conspiracy without there ever
being one. The decisions are taken not only by the services and their contractors, but also by labor unions,
local politicians, and a press inflicted with community boosterism. These factotums, who might otherwise be brawling
with one and other, rarely link arms in pursuit of the ends of the MIC, but the decisions they take in pursuit of their perceived self‐interest have
the same result. On the other side, there
is no other side. The power of a labor union or of a big business is
circumscribed by the fact that there are opposite (if not equal) pressures working against it. But the MIC
has long functioned in an atmosphere of at best inchoate countervailing pressures.47
Congress and the executive branch share power over defense and foreign policy. The executive, however, has become dominant since the start
of the Cold War, thanks largely to congressional acquiescence.48 The executive drives national threat perceptions, though Congress plays a key
role under certain circumstances. Within the executive branch, the White House directs security policy, but the president and his staff have
limited time and political capital. The real executers of defense policy are the national security agencies, especially the military services.
National Security Agencies
Organizational theory helps us understand why security agencies inflate threats . Successful agencies mature
by responding to their political environment , particularly early formative experiences.49 They ensure political and
budgetary support by reliably producing whatever outputs they were created to deliver. They motivate
employees through promotional tracks and harmonize their actions with common training and standard
operating procedures. They maximize autonomy, avoiding reliance on other agencies that might disrupt their ability to achieve their
goal. Those adaptations yield a fixed way of doing business or doctrine.50 Doctrine typically consists of various related tasks carried out by
specialized personnel, meaning that it requires a division of labor. Divisions of labor are especially important in military organizations because
of the complex nature of their work. Those performing the most essential jobs rise to dominate the management structure. Hence, a hierarchy
forms around a doctrine. Its maintenance protects the organization’s purpose.51 The organization teaches employees the doctrine’s worth,
making it a culture, an ethos, or a mission.
Security agencies inflate threats to preserve public and budgetary support for their mission. Tied by
incentive structures to their purpose, organizations pursue it at the expense of economy or truth. It is
not that those considerations are ignored, just that they matter less than organizational health, which
depends on outside support for its missions. When their preferred threats fade, security organizations
will search for new enemies to justify their services. The better the threat fits their doctrine, the more
they hype it.
The tendency to promote threats to protect missions is strongest in large and unified organizations such as the U.S. Air Force. The tendency is
weaker in smaller and less focused organizations. Fewer resources mean less ability to influence opinion directly and fewer dependents in
Congress and industry that share the organization’s view. A divided sense of mission means less incentive to sell a particular threat. For
example, the U.S. Coast Guard might hesitate to sell the terrorist threat should counterterrorism force it to shift focus from harbor patrol, one
of its traditional missions.
Dedication to purpose makes bureaucratized agencies reliable servants of their goal, but it limits organizations’ ability to respond to new
conditions. A new mission would require a new division of labor, resulting in a new hierarchy. Leaders are unlikely to cast themselves and their
protégés aside, especially when the current mission has reliably brought outside support, including funding. So government organizations tend
to embrace only change that is consistent with their doctrine.52 In national security, that tendency means that organizations will be slow to
adapt to the new types of threats. The U.S. Army struggles with counterinsurgency. The Drug Enforcement Agency exists because the Federal
Bureau of Investigation was reluctant to chase drug criminals. Agencies will not hype threats that seem to require doctrinal innovation.
Organizations promote threats via congressional testimony, reports, leaks, press conferences and
releases, and sponsored research, as well as by feeding information to congressional allies . As
autonomy seekers, security agencies prefer to monopolize intelligence assessments about threats that
concern them. Where that monopoly is impossible, they use their own intelligence units to inflate their
favored threats to compete with other agencies .
Independent intelligence agencies such as the Central Intelligence Agency will likely provide more accurate assessments than will military intelligence agencies. Because providing accurate intelligence is the CIA’s mission, it has a greater incentive to assess correctly.53 It checks the
military services’ ability to use their intelligence agencies to hype threats. But, for three reasons, independent intelligence agencies bend their analysis toward that of the organizations most relevant to the threats being assessed. First, military intelligence agencies may convince them.
Second, the independent intelligence agency may compromise to avoid being out on a political limb. Third, intelligence agencies serve presidents, who are themselves influenced by military preferences about dangers, as discussed later.54
Prestige and secrecy aid military threat inflation. Prestige stems from the rarity of military expertise and the self‐sacrifice that service members risk. Prestige makes it harder to challenge military assessments, particularly where other military authorities do not contradict them. Secrecy
often shields official claims about danger from scrutiny.
Congress
Congress has the power to challenge executive branch takes on threats but generally lacks an interest in using it. Constitutional powers to legislate, enact agency budgets, and—in the Senate’s case—approve agency heads give legislators leverage over executive agencies. That leverage
can encourage agencies to echo congressional views on dangers or to resist publicizing threat assessments likely to offend their congressional sponsors. Legislators can also directly promote their take on threats. Though congressional committees lack the staff and expertise to evaluate
many threats, they can pick their spots. They can produce committee reports, fund outside experts to produce analysis, or request reports from the Government Accountability Office or Congressional Budget Office. They can hold hearings where experts testify about threats. Committee
hearings and reports, especially full committees, can generate substantial media coverage.
Congressional power over defense policy is held largely by congressional committees eager to fund the agencies they oversee. Defense authorization and especially appropriations committees function basically as real estate committees that are interested mainly in extracting federal
funds for local defense contracts and bases.55 Members typically join defense committees because of a local base or defense production facility, and reliably promot e and echo dire assessments that encourage defense spending benefiting that local interest. Where they challenge
executive branch assessments, it is usually because they are not sufficiently dire.
Members of congressional defense committees fight mainly about where to locate military bases or produce military goods. But because most locations are settled and the committees must produce an annual compromise among regions in the form of a budget bill, comity prevails.56
Members rarely attack the basis for others’ funds by undermining the threat claims that justify it. That live‐and‐let‐live ethos thrives particularly when defense spending is rising. Budget growth dulls distributional conflicts. Declining budgets force choice, and members then become more
likely to attack one another’s arguments, including their portrayal of threats. But norms of accommodation persist, and budgets generally rise.
The Defense Industry
The defense industry does little itself to promote security threats but encourages others to do so.
Contractors are too obviously biased to make compelling Cassandras. Their public communications, therefore, tend to
include only vague messages about their weapons’ usefulness and economic benefits. Moreover, their expertise lies in moving the government,
not the public.57 They mostly leave detailed talk about danger to military personnel, politicians, and the experts that they fund.
Contractors influence Congress—and to a lesser extent the military services—in three ways. First, they
sponsor studies by nominally independent analysts. Second, they lobby and make campaign
contributions to win congressional support for their work. Members of Congress who receive those
funds are more likely to aid contractors and promote threats to justify it. But campaign finance
influences lawmakers far less than local jobs, the third source of contractor influence.58 During the Cold War,
the distribution of military bases and production contracts, especially those to the burgeoning aerospace industry, gave more U.S. regions and
their elected representatives a stake in high defense spending.59 By distributing production facilities and subcontracts, the defense industry
encourages politicians to justify their constituency’s spoils with threat inflation. Note, however, that the members themselves press for those
jobs, making contractors less the driver of political outcomes than their servant.
Nongovernmental Organizations
Various support communities echo the military services’ take on threats.60 Veterans’ organizations and service support organizations, such as
the Air Force Association and Navy League, are composed of people who personally identify with a service. They reflect organizational talking
points. The public presence of veterans’ networks in most communities reminds Americans that there are always enemies to defend against.61
The defense establishment’s need for friendly expertise during the Cold War aided the growth of
defense analysis in think tanks and, to a lesser extent, among academics. Scholars’ nominal
independence and appeal to scientific expertise provide an aura of credibility. Defense analysts
reflect the interests and threat assessments of the national security establishment, or a portion of it,
for three reasons.
The first is inclination. People who seek careers studying weapons and militaries are more likely than is
the general population to believe in the efficacy of using them and thus are more likely to see threats
that need defending against. That is typical. Scholars of international development tend to believe in foreign aid. Environmental
analysts are usually environmentalists.
The second source of analyst bias is funding . Some nominally independent experts moonlight as paid
consultants for defense contractors or investment firms. Others hope to do so and thus avoid saying
things that are likely to offend future employers . Many think tanks also rely on Pentagon contracts or congressional
allocations for budgetary support. Analysts receiving such funding tend to answer only the questions their sponsors ask and to avoid saying
anything that is liable to offend sponsors, including future ones.
Third, careerism encourages think tank analysts to reflect the national security establishment’s threat
inflation. Many hope to work in future administrations and thus reliably reflect the threat assessments
of one party’s elite. Because both parties typically inflate threats, so do ambitious analysts. Because they are
uncertain about patrons’ future ends and might want to find others, they are cautious in their deviations from mainstream views about security
issues. Even analysts uninterested in entering government need a sense of danger to be relevant. They are in the national security business too.
Without threats, they will have fewer chances to testify before Congress, fewer media invitations, and so forth. So defense analysts have little
interest in noting the arrival of safety or placing dangers in context.
Those factors produce selective speech, not necessarily dishonesty. Politically ambitious analysts tend to focus on how to best combat threats,
not on whether they should be combated or how pressing they are. They write mostly about operational issues that offend few, rather than
taking the riskier track of questioning established goals, such as existing alliances. They learn that it is safer for their careers to warn of dangers
other than overreaction. Academic researchers avoid those pressures to the extent that they have different career incentives. They are less a
part of what they study.62 They rely less on grants from security agencies and work less often for contractors.
Foreign States
Foreign states encourage American elites to combat their enemies via lobbying, trips arranged for U.S.
officials and intellectuals, and publicity campaigns. Because they cannot vote or contribute to campaign
coffers, ideological affinity and threat inflation are their main tools to gather support for military aid
or commitments. They often conflate their security with Americans’ and embellish their liberalism while
casting their rivals as illiberal .
Like other interest groups, foreign lobbies can dominate issue areas that engage no other strong interest. In the language of transaction costs,
foreign lobbies reliably succeed until they concentrate costs sufficient to motivate rivals. One sort of concentrated cost that limits foreign
lobbies’ effectiveness is war. That is why lobbies can rarely induce Americans to undertake costly acts such as invasions on their behalf.63 But
U.S. security is so profound that foreign lobbies can do a lot of mischief before they do enough to awaken powerful resistance. The security loss
is typically minor, the consequences remote and hard to understand. U.S. foreign policies serving the ideological affinities of vocal minorities
are a luxury that safety often affords.
Long‐term alliances institutionalize interests that exaggerate the dangers that the alliance counters.
The most obvious example is the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, which has generated various justifications for
its existence since the Soviet Union collapsed. Foundations
and think tanks that are focused on keeping the United
States tied to Europe support those threat arguments. Employees and affiliates of those organizations
maintain professional and personal ties and fly each other across the ocean for conferences. They all
depend to an extent on the notion that the alliance defends against something. Other U.S. alliances, even informal
ones such as those with Taiwan and Israel, create similar networks of transnational dependents.
News Media
The media are more like the national security establishment’s microphone than its watchdog.64 The
media tend to reflect, rather than evaluate, the threat assessments of the national security elite for
three reasons.65 First, reporters are mostly generalists lacking the regional or technical expertise to
thoroughly evaluate government claims. They are easily awed by military prestige and knowledge, especially now that the draft
is long gone and few reporters have served. Second, media outlets lack incentive to produce skeptical analysis even
if they can. They win readers by publishing news quickly. Critical analysis is not their core business.
Moreover, hype and alarm attract more readers than caveat and caution.66 Third and most important,
information about security threats is usually hard to gather. It often comes from dangerous or remote
regions. Collecting it requires skill in foreign languages, an appetite for personal risk, or access to
expensive technologies such as satellites that are mostly controlled by states. The information is largely
secret and thus centrally controlled. Even when security information is made public, it often requires
interpretation from experts, who tend to either work in government or to reflect its biases, for the reasons
discussed earlier.
Thus, national security reporting depends on official sources . Those sources can, for example, grant or
revoke access to war zones or secret information as a reward for reporting that reflects their views.
That dependence creates a culture of accommodation where reporters cultivate and avoid offending
sources .
Where official consensus is lacking, the media can play something of a watchdog role. Skeptical reporting increases with divided government, when conflict about policy arises among or within agencies, congressional committees, or executive branch officials.67 Officials in conflict leak
information, offer anonymous quotes questioning competing claims, and hold informative hearings to promote their take. Where the media checks official claims about threats, it is typically capitalizing on those schisms and conveying other official doubts rather than discovering it via
gumshoe reporting. There is ample conflict in American national security policy, particularly when new policies arise. But consensus about threats generally prevails, preventing the media from helping check threat exaggeration.
The Presidency
The publicity and authority now commanded by the president and his national security appointees in the White House give them considerable power to promote threats. On foreign issues, where Congress plays a relatively small role, presidents have less competition for public
attention.68 The president can also use his formal powers—including appointments and budgetary and legislative authority—to pressure agencies to tow his line about threats or at least to avoid contradicting it in public.
Presidents rarely use those powers to combat threat inflation, however. They tend, instead, to echo the national security establishment’s assessments. They do so because their power is more limited than we often imagine. Even in foreign policy, where power resides more in the
executive branch, the bureaucracy enjoys considerable latitude. Limits on time, expertise, and popularity check the president’s willingness to persuade others to do his bidding.69 To convince staff members to follow a particular course requires some presidential effort. Firing an official
for insubordination is a pain and sometimes a scandal. Forcing an agency to comply with presidential wishes may require various threats and cajolements. Getting congressional cooperation may require public struggle. Any of those acts may burn political capital, which presidents struggle
to gather.
Limits on power encourage presidents to choose fights carefully and to compromise with the bureaucracy and Congress on policy issues. The president and his agents are less policymakers than policy custodians who work to manage the compromise that governs particular policy areas
and satisfy interested parties. The status quo, having recently gathered enough support to exist, is usually the most attainable compromise and the path of least bureaucratic resistance.70 That working compromise is manifest in budgets.
Once the president compromises and signs a budget, the many policies it contains become his own. Explaining his limited power to alter policy is unlikely to be effective public relations, so presidents will generally choose instead to promote the compromise policy. The easiest way to do
so is to repeat the standard arguments in the policy’s favor, which are typically those the agencies already make. The result is that presidential rhetoric about security threats usually reflects the security establishment’s rhetoric. Because the national security establishment, for the reasons
given earlier, tends to overstate dangers, so does the president.
Nevertheless, there are exceptional circumstances that push presidents to downplay threats. First, a president advocating military budget cuts has reason to avoid inflating threats and even to acknowledge safety. Second, although a president arguing f or war is likely to hype the enemy
he hopes to attack, he may play down the threat the war itself poses. Third, a president trying to end a military conflict sh ould have the opposite inclinations. Fourth, if the administration hopes to increase funding to combat a new threat, it may need to shift funds from organizations or
functions dealing with old threats to fund the new effort. The president may then play down the old threats.
A Sum of Our Fears?
How do those various actors’ fears conglomerate? To a large extent, they do not. There is considerable competition for resources and power within the national security establishment. That competition encourages competing perspectives about security threats. Because of the way the
United States constructs budgets, resource competition increases with bureaucratic proximity. For example, the navy surface fleet’s biggest competitor for dollars is other navy components. Other defense agencies are a secondary concern, and agencies funded in nondefense budgets an
even more remote one. Competition also increases with austerity, which heightens tradeoffs among and within defense agencies. As noted, organizations competing for support might debase the risks that rivals peddle so as to eat their rivals’ budgetary lunches.
Still, the interests that make up the national security establishment are more cooperative than competitive. One reason is that budgets rise more often than they fall. Second, strong organizations such as the military services can suppress conflict in their ranks, thereby preventing rifts—or
at least publicity about rifts. Third, a similar ethos, colloquially called “jointness,” has infused the Department of Defense, especially since the passage of the Goldwater‐Nichols legislation in 1986.71 Through various measures, the law encourages cooperation among the services, and
prevents open debate. A more important source of jointness is the tradition, dating to the Kennedy administration, where each military service gets about the same share of the defense budget every year.72 The tradition encourages the branches to produce arguments that grow the
total defense budget, rather than attacking the relevance of rivals.
Left unchallenged, the overwrought fears that justify U.S. security policy become a kind of social
convention, especially among informed elites .73 People adapt their opinions to their peers’ because they learn from them
and because
conformity is socially easier than dissent. Agreement tends to make people’s views more
extreme .74 That problem is particularly acute in Washington’s security debates, where ambition checks
dissent. The less threat deflation analysts chance, the less others feel free to echo it.
Conclusion: Prospects for Balance
Threat inflation bridges the gap between what U.S. defense policy is and what it claims to be. U.S. defense policy is an expression of
international power and a compromise among jostling entities unified by a preference for military action or spending. U.S. defense policy
pretends to be a servant of domestic security.
Power has made the United States more prone to exaggerate security threats. Wealth and safety limited exposure to the international dangers
that encourage military restraint. The military actions that power allowed, meanwhile, spawned political interests that prefer ambitious military
policies abroad. Those interests inflate threats to convince everyone else that those policies serve the national interest. The
threat
inflators do not sing together exactly, but their collective voices produce a powerful chorus. Because the
voices that are heard mostly benefit from a perception of danger, the world they portray to Americans,
especially those who pay attention to the news, is one of swirling dangers. At least during peace, truth about security falls victim to a
free‐rider problem.
Still, U.S. politics, including the current sort, occasionally favor the growth of political interests that
are prone to resist threat inflation or even to understate threats. Examination of those conditions
points at ways to rebalance debate and improve U.S. security policy. We escape bad security policy not
by quixotic attempts to banish organizational and other parochial interests from political debate, but
by getting new participants into the fight .
Think tanks participate in a profit-driven militarization sweatshop whereby security
justifications are produced by “independent researchers” and “unbiased” councilmembers.
Marshall 20 (Shana Marshall, associate director of the Institute for Middle East Studies and assistant
research professor at The George Washington University, holds an MA and PhD in IR and Comparative
Politics from the University of Maryland; "The Defense Industry’s Role in Militarizing US Foreign Policy",
Spring 2020, in Middle East Report 294, https://merip.org/2020/06/the-defense-industrys-role-inmilitarizing-us-foreign-policy/, DOA: 8-8-2022)//ATJ
Defense Industry Financing of Pro-War Policy Research
The defense industry’s enormous appetite for consultants and marketing services has spawned a
collection of complementary industries such as business intelligence analysts, industry journalists, niche
financial advisors, and organizers of arms fairs and industry conferences. These businesses exist to
service defense firms: to market them, to promote their products, to facilitate their growth and
expansion.
The industry’s greatest asset, however, is the vast troves of seemingly independent research that
supports interventionist foreign policies and loose weapons export regimes. Foreign policy and military
policy intellectuals, and the think tanks they staff, form an extensive infrastructure interwoven with the
global military-industrial complex, which has a dramatic impact on US foreign policy. Twelve of the 25
most-cited US think tanks receive big money from weapons manufacturers.[1] The security justifications
produced by these researchers and the weapons industry’s drive for profit are mutually reinforcing. [2] Most
Washington, DC-based think tanks like the International Institute for Strategic Studies, the Brookings
Institution, the Center for Strategic and International Studies and the Arab Gulf States Institute,
produce material that promotes an aggressive foreign policy. Consider the Center for Security and International
Studies ( CSIS ), one
of the leading foreign policy think tanks in the United States: Among its 17 largest donors
are six of the largest weapons makers (Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Raytheon, SAAB AB and Huntington Ingalls,
the largest military shipbuilder in the United States).
Even donors that do not initially look like defense firms are often financial firms with major interests in
the defense industry: Starr Insurance is one of the largest insurers of US military contractors and other US government personnel
operating overseas and Duquesne Family Capital LLC (run by infamous hedge fund manager Stanley Druckenmiller) has at various points held
significant stakes in major defense firms. A scroll down the list of smaller tier donors reveals most of the rest of the military industrial complex,
including General Dynamics, BAE, Bell Helicopter, Airbus and Thales.
The major think tanks draw their research fellows overwhelmingly from the national security
establishment, where they have spent years cultivating ties with industry. These ties directly impact the
research they produce, which directly impacts the policies that are implemented. Take a recent example: the
above-mentioned CSIS authored a report sponsored (paid for) by the Aerospace Industries Association, the
defense industry’s largest lobby group, on the status of the US defense industrial base. The CSIS report states, “the number of prime vendors
declined from an average of approximately 78,500 to 61,700” between 2011 and 2015, driven (they assert) by sequestration and slower growth
in defense spending.[3] This
finding percolates through specialized defense industry media until it reaches the
mainstream (in this case The Wall Street Journal) where it becomes, “Cuts to US military
spending…contributed to an estimated 17,000 US firms leaving the industry between 2011 and 2015.” [4]
The report itself, however, states that, “due to the limitations in the subcontract database, CSIS cannot say whether these companies have exited
the industrial base,” meaning they could have changed their name, merged with a competitor, incorporated in a different country, been assigned
a different industrial code (so they would no longer show up in the relevant database), been acquired by a larger firm or dropped their civilian
production lines and become smaller to focus only on defense items.
For an industry lobbying association, the cost of financing a think tank report is peanuts compared to the
payoff of getting your biased narrative into the major dailies and in front of the eyeballs of policymakers
and their staff members. The fact that a large organization like CSIS with substantial resources and personnel that specializes in
researching the defense industry cannot even disentangle corporate filings and government statistics to make a more declarative statement
about the fate of these firms also hints at
decades of industry efforts to deceive, inveigle and obfuscate, making it
impossible for critics of militarism to muster truly comprehensive figures.
Major customers of the US defense industry also finance think tanks to help promote looser export
regimes. In 2016 the UAE paid $250,000 for a policy paper at the Center for a New American Security (a
major liberal think tank) that argued for loosening the Missile Technology Control Regime that prohibited
the export of sophisticated drones to the UAE. Two months after the paper was released, a bipartisan
group of House members wrote to President Trump pressing him to approve the UAE drone sale, using
the same arguments cited in the paper. Language is often cribbed directly from literature produced by
lobbying groups and reproduced in the statements made by elected representatives and the content of
the legislation they pass, yet another marker of the blurred lines between the fortunes of private business and the careers of public
officials in the United States. It also begs the question, if industry groups (directly or indirectly) are dictating the terms of policy, why bother
electing representatives in the first place? In order to devise a democratic and accountable foreign policy it is necessary to divorce questions of
war from questions of executive compensation and shareholder dividends, through processes of nationalization as outlined by Pete Moore
elsewhere in this issue.
Like defense firms, the Gulf states spend large sums to influence political campaigns and are major donors to US think tanks, providing over $85
million to nine such organizations between 2010 and 2017. Most of these funds were disbursed to deflect criticism of the Saudi-UAE bombing
campaign in Yemen and to undermine the Iran nuclear deal. This financial support partly explains the limited opposition to the war on Yemen
from establishment US foreign policy circles and Congress (until the Saudi government murdered journalist Jamal Khashoggi in October 2018), as
well as the promotion of new weapons exports and defense programs. Other states, including Libya, Syria, Tunisia and Egypt, retain highly-paid
lobbying firms to plant op-eds in American newspapers, secure private meetings with influential government officials and fund friendly policy
memos, often in anticipation of opposition to big defense export deals—another way that government policy and spending patterns are shaped
by the arms trade and military prerogatives.
Well-funded think tanks—such as the Foundation for the Defense of Democracy ( FDD ), a hard-right neoconservative think tank—
can even bankroll their experts directly into the executive foreign policy apparatus. As reported by the Institute for
Responsible Statecraft, Richard
Goldberg, one of the National Security Council’s most outspoken Iran hawks, sat
on the council while his salary and partial expenses were paid by FDD. Nor is this an isolated incident, as
researchers from similar organizations, such as the pro-Israel Washington Institute for Near East Policy ( WINEP ), also
make rotations onto the council. Overlap of this kind is not surprising, given the formal
institutionalization of the revolving door between the private sector and government through legislation
like the Intergovernmental Personnel Act, meant to loan industry and academic experts to the government on a temporary
basis. Nonetheless, the
bias of the program is clear, since the Department of Defense has four such exchange
programs directly funneling personnel into its units, while other major agencies with equally complex scientific and technical
mandates (such as the Department of Energy and the Treasury) have only one such dedicated program.
The plan applies failed linear models to NATO operations---guarantees black swans
that destroy solvency and global stability
- “black swans,” or unpredictable events, are everywhere---they’ll disrupt solvency
- especially in the context of int’l organizations---simple cause-and-effect chains can’t account for dozens
of actors
Imre Porkoláb 18, National Liaison Representative of Hungary to the NATO Supreme Allied Command
Transformation; and Ben Zweibelson, Program Director for Design and Innovation at the Joint Special
Operations University and is a doctoral student at Lancaster University, 2018, “DESIGNING A NATO THAT
THINKS DIFFERENTLY FOR 21ST CENTURY COMPLEX CHALLENGES,” Defence Review, No. 2018/1, p. 196212 /jpb
In the 21st Century, the
international defense community has largely struggled with how to organize,
strategize, and act effectively in increasingly complex and emergent contexts where the previous
distinctions between war and peace have blurred beyond comprehension .3 Governments and their
militaries continue to experience radical and entirely unforeseen calamities that defy historical
patterns and essentially rewrite the rulebooks. Popularly termed ‘ black swan events ,’4 they continue to shatter
any illusion of stability or extension of normalcy in foreign affairs.
Western Armed Forces as well as intergovernmental military alliances, such as
NATO, appear increasingly unable to deal with
these problems using traditional planning and organizing methodologies alone.5 What had worked well
previously no longer appears to possess the same precision and control. The formal operational-level
military planning process, initially developed to cope with Cold War Era large-scale military activities in “a
conventional, industrialised state vs industrialised state setting”6 now is seemingly incapable of providing sufficient means
of getting the organization unstuck.
Within this new and increasingly chaotic context, NATO has to fulfill all three core tasks at the same time, which requires new and noble
approaches from policymakers, and military personnel alike. While Russia’s ‘little green men’ are not necessarily different from earlier
applications in unconventional warfare, their inclusion in multiple domains supported by expansive technology, social media, propaganda, and
the malicious activity in the cyberspace7 provides a far more complex canvas upon which rivals can create never-before-seen complex problemsets that defy previously accepted definitions for conflict and war.
Complex contexts require different ways of thinking and decision-making8 and require a different awareness and appreciation. In simplistic
settings, organizations
see things they have previously experienced,9 and for NATO, an organization with so
much success in the past, these experiences can be an obstacle to change in today’s VUCA world.10 [***TO
volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity . It is meant to describe
the highly dynamic chaotic environment. VUCA also conflates four distinct types of challenges that demand four distinct types of
FOOTNOTE 10***] 10 VUCA is short for
responses. The notion of VUCA was introduced by the U.S. Army War College in the 1990s. The deeper meaning of each element of VUCA: (1)
Volatility. The nature and dynamics of change, and the nature and speed of change forces and change catalysts. (2) Uncertainty. The lack of
predictability, the prospects for surprise, and the sense of awareness and understanding of issues and events. (3) Complexity (or variety) is
measured by the number of distinguishable states it is capable of having and is beyond the control of
any individual. The multiplex of forces, the confounding of issues, no cause-and-effect chain and
confusion that surround an organization creates and entangled web of complexity. (4) Ambiguity occurs when
no clear interpretation of a phenomenon or set of events. It can never be eliminated altogether and the haziness of
reality, the potential for misreads, and the mixed meanings of conditions always cause-and-effect confusion. For a better
there is
understanding see: Berinato, S. “A Framework for Understanding VUCA”. Harvard Business Review 59/9. 2014. https://hbr.org/2014/09/aframework-for-understanding-vuca, Accessed on 31 May 2017.; Bennett, N. and Lemoine, G. J. “What VUCA Really means for You”. Harvard
Business Review 59/1. 2014. https://hbr.org/2014/01/what-vuca-really-means-for-you, Accessed on 31 May 2017. [***END FOOTNOTE 10***]
Complex contexts often have only one repeating and predictable process: an
organization will continue to experience things
they have never seen before that marginalize or defeat all established practices and favored tools .11
Russia’s a defensive realist---NATO makes them offensive
Roger Boyd 22, PhD, Fellow at the Balsillie School of International Affairs, 3-16-2022, "A realist take on
the Ukraine war," https://canadiandimension.com/articles/view/a-realist-take-on-the-ukraine-war, jy
No conflict “just happens,” it is an historical process and therefore we must look at that process. I propose that we
start with the collapse of the Soviet Union; a time when the “peace dividend” was widely proclaimed. It has now been comprehensively documented that a
number of US state officials made explicit promises that with the unification of Germany the Western NATO
alliance would
not move any further east . Instead, a neutral Eastern Europe was envisaged, especially by the Russians, as a way of ensuring an
enduring peace. With the collapse of Russia into a depression worse than that suffered by the US in the 1930s, and the weakness of the Russian leadership of Boris
Yelstin, such considerations were thrown aside.
In 1999 the
Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland joined the ranks of NATO members. In 2004, Bulgaria, Romania, Slovakia,
and the Baltic states of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia were added; with Latvia and Estonia sharing borders with the main part of Russia—the latter
not far away from the major Russian city of St. Petersburg. Several years later, at the 2007 Munich Security Conference, Russian President Vladimir Putin
explicitly stated his discomfort and alarm at the eastward march of NATO. His concerns were rejected out of hand by the West. Then came
the 2008 war with Georgia , which was partly triggered by tensions arising from Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili
seeking NATO membership . At this time, Belarus was ruled by Alexander Lukashenko, a dictator who attempted to balance between East and West,
while Ukraine was governed by the Western-leaning Viktor Yushchenko (after the 2004 Orange Revolution that led to the overturning of the election of the Russianleaning Viktor Yanukovych) who stated a desire to join the EU and NATO. Russia’s concerns about having a large Western-aligned state only 500 kilometres from
Moscow were partly assuaged with the election of Yanukovych in 2010.
Then came the fateful events of 2014, as Yanukovych struggled to balance between the EU and Russia, leading to his rejection of an EU association agreement that
would have significantly damaged trade relations with Russia and aligned Ukrainian foreign policy more with that of the West. At this time, a compromise
agreement between the EU and Russia would have maintained the balance in Ukraine and helped allay Russia’s security concerns, but that was not forthcoming.
At this point we should stop and think
about what the response of the US would have been to, for example, a Cold
War alliance between Canada and the Soviet Union . Indeed, any reasonable person would assume either a
US-inspired coup or an outright invasion. Belarus and Ukraine are to Russia what Canada and Mexico
are to the US. Instead of a compromise agreement, the elected president of Ukraine was deposed in a coup— openly supported
by Western politicians and diplomats who spent significant time in Maidan Square egging the protesters
on—that installed an extremely anti-Russian administration. Imagine Russian politicians and diplomats publicly
endorsing protestors against the current Canadian government who amassed outside parliament last
month. Of course, the US would be extremely concerned, just as Russia was in 2014.
In response to the Maidan coup, Russia
acted to maintain its national interests, including its massive naval base
in Crimea . The debate over whether this was a breakaway region freely voting to join Russia or an annexation of Ukrainian territory by Russia is an endless
one, but it is pointless from a realist point of view. Russia secured its security by maintaining its naval base in the Black Sea and
making sure that such a base did not fall into the hands of the West. Russia also supplied arms and support to the two breakaway republics in the southwestern
Donbas region, full of Russian speaking Ukrainians who did not wish to be ruled by a Ukrainian nationalist government.
Since 2014 Ukraine
has become increasingly aligned with the West, signing the EU association agreement
and accepting extensive military training, coordination and munitions from Western nations, including Canada. Its leaders have
increasingly called for membership of both the EU and NATO, with those calls escalating recently with little pushback
from the West . Last year, Putin stated Russia’s security redlines, which included a Ukraine in NATO but again
these were treated with disdain. Even his promises of a “military-technical” response by Russia were not heeded, and the Ukrainian president’s calls for Ukraine to
become a nuclear power were not rejected by Western leaders.
acted out of its rational self-interest after all of its calls for a non-military resolution to
its legitimate, and actually existential, security concerns had been rejected. Russia invaded Ukraine and
will turn it into a Russia-aligned nation, securing its own security; any commentators who think that Russia is not militarily
Ultimately, Russia
capable of doing such a thing are ignorant of the basic facts on the ground and the Russian military.
All war is of course a horrible thing, as is the ongoing genocidal war in Yemen by a Saudi Arabia that Canada arms, as was the illegal war of aggression against Iraq by
our ally the US, and as was the destruction of the state of Libya by NATO. Those who cry out against the civilian deaths in Ukraine must take time to consider why
those other deaths aren’t as important, just as with the over 13,000 civilian deaths in the Donbas in the last eight years caused chiefly by Ukrainian government
forces and pro-Kyiv militias. The answer is of course that they are not different, just some of the killing is done by those our state considers to be allies and some by
those it considers to be enemies.
A realist analysis puts such considerations to one side and allows us to rationally assess what actions are appropriate; just as
cooler heads
prevailed during the Cuban missile crisis in 1962 and saved the world from nuclear annihilation. To get
lost in our own propaganda is incredibly dangerous when our opponent is a nuclear power capable of
ending human civilization .
This should be a time for reflection on the Western policy establishment’s responsibility for creating an
existential threat to Russia that should have been expected to lead to a major response . The sanctions
currently being leveled against the Russian economy are unlikely to dissuade Putin, and Russia has extensively prepared for
them; it is a massive exporter of raw materials that the world cannot do without , and the ‘international community’
outside the West has refused to sanction Russia.
The extensive damage to Western economies, especially Europe, through the range of sanctions enacted, are currently being exacerbated through the theft of
Russia’s foreign exchange reserves. The West benefits hugely from the current global financial system based upon the US dollar, but it has now been displayed that
the West thinks nothing of outright theft and financial warfare. The previous cases of Iran, Venezuela, and Afghanistan were relatively small. The case of Russia is
large enough to catch other nation’s attention and lead them to create a parallel financial system.
What’s more, Western
statements of support, no matter how fulsome, come to nothing when a real war starts with a country that
possesses a highly competent military and nuclear weapons. Ukraine in reality is
on its own against Russia, no matter how many Western
sanctions are implemented or how much material is provided. Other nations will take note of this.
Reflection does not seem to be in order though, as the US has threatened nations who have refused
to sanction Russia. The most profound outcome of such threats may be a reconciliation of India with
China, and a closer relationship between India and its erstwhile ally Russia. This is not 1995, and the West can no
longer push nations such as India around without significant blowback .
After the Cuban missile crisis, the US leadership realized that it must treat the Soviet Union with some respect if nuclear war was to be averted. The
West
must now learn to respect other nation’s security needs if it wants to avoid becoming increasingly separated from the rest of the
world. As the philosopher Mike Tyson put it so well, “
Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth .” The
Russian invasion is the West’s punch in the mouth, and it desperately needs a new plan .
Complexity shreds realism
Ross Douthat 22, a New York Times columnist and The Atlantic senior editor, March 9th, 2022, "They
Predicted the Ukraine War. But Did They Still Get It Wrong?" The New York Times,
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/09/opinion/ukraine-russia-invasion-west.html [ML]
It’s a curious feature of Western debate since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine that a school of thought that predicted some version of this conflict
has been depicted as discredited by the partial fulfillment of its prophecies.
From the 1990s to the 2010s, from George Kennan’s opposition to NATO expansion to John Mearsheimer’s critique of American involvement in
Ukraine, thinkers associated with foreign policy realism — the school known for its cold-eyed expectation of great power conflict, its doubts
about idealistic visions of world order — argued that the attempt to integrate Russia’s borderlands into Western institutions and alliances was
poisoning relations with Moscow, making great-power conflict more likely, and exposing nations like Ukraine to disastrous risks.
“The West is leading Ukraine down the primrose path,” Mearsheimer averred in 2015, “and the end result is that Ukraine is going to get
wrecked.”
But now that Ukraine is, in fact, being wrecked by a Russian invasion, there’s a widespread view that his realist worldview lies in ruins too —
that Mearsheimer has “lost his reputation and credibility” (to quote the Portuguese thinker Bruno Maçães) and that the realist conception of
nations as “pieces in a game of Risk” with “eternal interests or permanent geopolitical orientations, fixed motivations or predictable goals” (to
quote Anne Applebaum of The Atlantic) should be discarded on the evidence of Vladimir Putin’s invasion and the Ukrainian response.
The larger critique of realism that Applebaum and Maçães are speaking for goes something like this: Yes,
realists like Mearsheimer
predicted some kind of conflict over Ukraine. But realism’s predictions still did not describe reality, for three
reasons. First, the predictions imagined a defensive logic to Russian strategic conduct, oriented around the
protection of a sphere of influence , a fear of encirclement by NATO. But the decision to invade seems to have
been motivated more by Putin’s professed and very personal desire to restore a mystical vision of
greater Russia — a grand ideological idea that the mere Western pledge not to admit Ukraine to NATO was
unlikely to appease.
Second, the
realist predictions underestimated the agency and strength of Ukrainians themselves, treating
Russia’s near abroad as a landscape where only great-power force projection really mattered, ignoring Ukraine’s potential capacity — now
demonstrated on the battlefield — to resist Russia and rally global support even without direct military support from the United States or
NATO.
Finally, the
realist predictions drained the moral dimension out of global politics, effectively legitimizing
imperialist appetites and “blaming the victim,” as it were, when the moral responsibility for aggression
ultimately rests with the aggressor , not with nations merely seeking self-determination or mutual defense.
As someone who considers himself a realist (to the extent that it makes sense for a newspaper columnist to claim such affinities), I think part of
this critique has bite. For instance, my sense is that because today’s realist thinkers mostly operate within the liberal West and define
themselves against its pieties — especially the globalist utopianism that had so much purchase in the post-Cold War era — there is a constant
temptation to assume that nonliberal regimes must be more rational actors, more realist in their practices and aims, than the naïve idealists in
America or Europe. And thus when a crisis comes, it must be the unrealism of the West that’s primarily, even essentially, at fault.
You can see this temptation at work in the interview Mearsheimer gave to Isaac Chotiner of The New Yorker, published soon after the Russian
invasion began. On the one hand the interview offers a perspicacious realist critique of how idealism led America astray in the George W. Bush
era, via a naïve theory of how aggressive war might democratize in the Middle East.
But then when it comes to Putin’s aggressive war, Mearsheimer seems to assume that the Russian president thinks
rather than like the
like him, the realist,
utopian politicians of the West. Putin, he says, “understands that he cannot conquer Ukraine and integrate it
into a greater Russia or into a reincarnation of the former Soviet Union.” And if the United States only worked harder “to create friendly
relations” with Moscow, Mearsheimer argues, there could be a tacit American-Russian “balancing coalition” against the rising power of China.
But why
should Putin necessarily be immune from the hubris and delusions of Western leaders? Why
should we assume that he doesn’t dream of reintegrating Ukraine and Belarus into a greater Russia? Why should we take for granted that the
right diplomatic strategy will bring him into an American coalition against China, when he might instead be committed to a sweeping ideological
vision of Eurasian power aligned against the decadent West?
Why should we assume, in other words, that structural and schematic explanations of Putin’s war are more
important than personal and ideological explanations? After all, as the historian Adam Tooze points out, it appears that
very few members of the Russian foreign policy elite — all presumably opponents of NATO expansion, all “devotees to
Russia’s future as a great power” — actually believed that Putin would invade. And if so many participants in Putin’s regime, all
good servants of the national interest as realists define it, wouldn’t have made his fateful choice, then did realist premises actually predict the
war itself?
Just as important, did they predict the way the war has played out so far? I myself did not: My assumption was that Ukraine might mount a
strong resistance in the western part of its territory, but that Russia would sweep pretty easily to the Dnieper and probably put Volodymyr
Zelensky’s government to flight. (Some version of this assumption was shared by U.S.
intelligence, which was predicting the
quick fall of Kyiv two days into the war.) After almost two weeks of stalled-out offensives and mounting Russian
casualties, that faulty assumption does look a bit like a Risk-board view of the world, where all that
matters is positioning and pieces, not patriotism, morale, leadership and luck .
And there are a lot of ways that this kind of Risk-board mentality can deceive. Flash back a few decades, for instance, to the late Cold War, and
a crude realist analysis might have insisted that Poland would always be in some kind of deep thrall to Russia — because it had so often been
dominated by Moscow, its geography left it so open to invasion from the east, and so on — and that it was strategic folly to imagine otherwise.
But Polish leadership and patriotism, Soviet weakness and unexpected historical events all contrived to change that calculus, so that today
Poland’s strategic independence and Western alignment, while hardly invulnerable, both look relatively secure.
Is it unrealistic for Kyiv to aspire to what Warsaw has gained? Right now I would still say yes. But is it impossible,
in the way that some realist thinking tends to suggest — as though some law of physics binds Ukraine to
Russia? No : I think anyone watching this war so far, watching both the struggles of the Russian military and the solidifying of a Ukrainian
national consciousness, would have to give more credit to long-term Ukrainian ambitions, and a little less to the inevitability of Russian regional
dominance.
realist theory , or at least certain intellectual temptations associated with realism, has suffered
from its contact with the reality of war so far.
So those are two places where
Realism ignores physiological elements---some people are irrational
Tuomas Forsberg 21, Professor of International Politics at the University of Tampere and Deputy
Director of the Centre of Excellence on Choices of Russian Modernization at the Aleksanteri Institute of
the University of Helsinki; Christer Pursiainen is Professor of Societal Safety and Environment at the
Department of Engineering and Safety, Faculty of Science and Technology, Arctic University of Norway,
2021, “The Psychology of Foreign Policy,” Palgrave Studies in Political Psychology,
https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-030-79887-1
Realism, in its various formulations, has always had a somewhat ambivalent relationship to psychology
(Donnelly, 2000, pp. 43–80; Edinger, 2021). Hans Morgenthau (1955), the founder of political realism, warned against the search for the clue to
foreign policy exclusively in the motives of state leaders because it was both futile and deceptive. Yet many political realists have still paid a
great deal of attention to major figures in international politics and their actions, starting from some implicit psychological analysis on the basis
of the leader’s experience or moral characteristics. Political
realism assumes rationality as the methodological
starting point for analysis, yet Morgenthau (1946, p. 154) himself fundamentally doubted the extent to
which foreign policy decision-makers or any human being can be rational ; indeed, he called the idea of human
rationality a “rationalist superstition.” To the
extent that rationality in realism would be tantamount to basing
one’s actions on power alone, Reinhold Niebuhr (2013, p. 4; see also Meinecke, 1957, p. 433) in turn admitted that in reality this is
not the case: “Politics will, to the end of history, be an area where conscience and power meet, where the ethical and coercive
factors of human life will interpenetrate and work out their tentative and uneasy compromises.” Yet
neither Morgenthau nor other classical realists provided a clear account of the psychological aspects of
foreign policy other than the general deficiency of human nature. Structural realism (neorealism) shifted the angle of
the older political realism away from state leaders to the structural conditions of the international system (Elman, 1996). In a vulgar reading of
structural realism, it is sometimes maintained that any statesperson would behave in a similar way in given structural conditions. The
most
visible scholar of offensive realism in the past twenty years or so, John Mearsheimer, argues that
Russia’s actions in Ukraine in 2014 should be seen as a self-evident reaction to the West’s aggressive grand
strategy: “No Russian leader would tolerate a military alliance that was Moscow’s mortal enemy until
recently moving into Ukraine. Nor would any Russian leader stand idly by while the West helped install a
government there that was determined to integrate Ukraine into the West” (Mearsheimer, 2014, p. 82, italics
added). Hence, the psychological idiosyncrasies of individual decision-makers are completely neglected. Yet
Mearsheimer titles his article ‘Why the Ukraine Crisis is the West’s Fault: The Liberal Delusions that Provoked Putin’, revealing the clear
psychological microfoundations of the author’s overly structuralist argument.
Diplomacy is possible BUT Putin hates NATO---we need desecuritization
Mahshie '22 [Abraham Mahshie; 2/15/2022; M.A. at the University of Missouri School of Journalism,
the Pentagon Editor for Air Force Magazine with two decades of experience and served as a diplomat
and defense contractor; "'Cautious Optimism’ as Moscow Hints at Diplomacy, Withdrawal Ahead of
NATO Meeting," Air Force Magazine, https://www.airforcemag.com/cautious-optimism-as-moscowrussia-hints-at-diplomacy-withdrawal-ahead-of-nato-meeting/ smarx, AZG]
Smith underscored that the
U.S. and NATO position was two-track: to pursue diplomacy by welcoming
continued dialogue with Russia; and to reinforce NATO against potential Russian aggression.
The U.S. has already unilaterally reinforced eastern flank allies by sending 5,000 troops to Central and Eastern Europe,
including 3,000 Soldiers from the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division to Poland and 1,000 from a U.S. Stryker squadron at Vilseck, Germany, to
Romania.
Stoltenberg said the U.S. additions are meaningful.
“I saw the Stryker units coming into Romania, coming into Constanta, and there are more U.S. planes, there are more German, Italian, and
other allies [who] have also stepped up,” he said.
In addition to troop movements, the U.S. Air Force has now sent eight F-16s and 16 F-15s to the eastern flank.
Eight additional F-15s from the 336th Fighter Squadron, 4th Fighter Wing, at Seymour Johnson Air Force Base, N.C., deployed to Lask Air Base,
Poland, on Feb. 14 to augment the eight F-15s already there from the 48th Fighter Wing at RAF Lakenheath, U.K., U.S. Air Forces in Europe
confirmed to Air Force Magazine. Eight F-16s from the 52nd Fighter Wing at Spangdahlem Air Base, Germany, deployed to Fetesti Air Base,
Romania, on Feb. 11. The fighter jets in both locations will take part in NATO enhanced air policing missions and joint training.
The U.S. also maintains on high alert an additional 8,500 troops in the United States to act as a NATO
Response Force if called upon.
A NATO official from the eastern flank told Air Force Magazine the alliance has “not seen anything specific” with
regard to threats emanating from Russia, but that hybrid activities, including propaganda against border areas of Poland,
Lithuania, and Latvia, continue.
A heavy Russian troop presence in Belarus, which borders the Baltic countries, is also worrying because it has shrunk indications and warning
time.
The official said the Alliance is watching Russian activities closely to see if actions match recent statements.
“I think everybody is waiting and watching with caution for those messages to be confirmed,” the official
said.
A Feb. 14 move by the Russian lower house Duma to draft resolutions recognizing the breakaway republics of Donetsk and Luhansk, in
southeast Ukraine, as independent states also worries NATO.
“That would obviously be a new shift in in the escalation,” Smith said, adding that the recognition would violate Ukraine’s territorial integrity
and break Russia’s commitment to the Minsk protocol, which reduced conflict in 2014 after Russia invaded Ukraine and annexed Crimea.
The NATO eastern flank official also cited the Duma resolutions as concerning.
Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III was scheduled to leave Washington, D.C. Feb. 15 to attend the Meeting of NATO Ministers of Defence,
scheduled for Feb. 15-16, before traveling on to Poland and Lithuania, where he will meet with his counterparts and American troops. Before
leaving Brussels on Feb. 17, Austin and the other defense ministers of the 30-member Alliance will meet with the defense ministers of aspiring
members Ukraine and Georgia.
Putin has made clear that he does not want NATO to expand eastward , and he has specifically called
for barring Ukraine and Georgia from entering the alliance. NATO and the United States have stood firm
on the so-called NATO “open-door policy” that allows any country to pursue membership.
Still, NATO leaders believe there is a possibility of averting a Russian invasion.
“We
believe the best path is through dialogue and de-escalation. And we have urged them at every
turn to come back to the table,” Smith said of dialogue with Russia. “We do not understand fundamentally, none
of us do, what is inside President Putin’s head. And, so, we cannot make any guess how, where all of
this is headed.”
Their Russophobia is why Russia won’t cooperate in the squo---the alt solves
Kari Roberts 16, Kari Roberts joined the Policy Studies Department in 2009. She received her BA
(Hons) and MA in Political Studies from the University of Manitoba and her PhD in Political Science from
the University of Calgary in 2004, “Why a Normal Relationship with Russia is so Hard: Russophobia in
Clinton-era American foreign policy discourse and the decision to expand NATO,” Mount Royal
University, 05/21/2016, p7-9 \\pairie
Lieven speculates that the intellectual basis for this Russophobia may stem from 19th Century British propaganda regarding Russian
expansionism and its inherent wickedness. Lieven
notes that this demonization of other peoples, sometimes taking
on a racist tone, has long been present within Western, and American, foreign policy making. 34 Moreover,
there is a tendency to assume that what was once assumed about a nation and its peoples shall forever be
true about them, even in the absence of supporting evidence. This sort of historical determinism denies a nuanced appreciation for
cultural evolution and very much denies the potential for American leaders to view post-Soviet Russia’s disappointing struggles with democracy
for what they are. Instead, they have been viewed against the backdrop of Russia’s Tsarist and Communist experiences and are therefore
“wicked.”35 This is evidenced by Henry Kissinger’s 2000 remark that Russian imperialism has continued for centuries, characterized by
subjugation of its neighbours and “overawing those not under its direct control” and in Zbigniew Brzezinski’s assigning of blame for Stalinist-era
policies to present day Russians.36 For Lieven, to view past conduct as less a product of history and more a product of culture or “national
DNA” of sorts, comes perilously close to racism. There
is a certain essentialism in the American discourse on Russia
that equates these acts with “Russianness.” Perhaps, as Tsygankov suggests, demonizing Russia continued to help
justify US strategy toward the USSR in the Cold War. For Lieven, this legitimized the military buildup, the
containment, the worldview and actions that stemmed from the need to balance Soviet power.37 Yet, as
Lieven importantly notes, even those who demonize Russia for its past seem to have little problem embracing Communist China, 38 so perhaps
it is not communism in Russia’s past the Western leaders fear, but rather something cultural, something innately “Russian.”
Lieven concurs about the self-reinforcing nature of Russophobia, noting the US’ “need for enemies”39
as an instrumental component of its own narrative of exceptionalism. Perhaps the result of viewing
Russia as the enemy for so long is the reason it has become one. Russophobia has enabled the judging of Russia “by
utterly different standards than those applied to other countries.”40 Tsygankov and Lieven are correct to suggest a linkage between
Russophobia and America’s own mythologies about its place in the world. America’s destiny is to be a cultural hegemon atop the global
hierarchy of nations. The
perception of American superiority seems to require an “ other” to assume a
position of inferiority. Russia has long represented a new cultural frontier and a divergent history, one that was assumed to be far less
“exceptional” than the American experience. Challenges to the presumption of American hegemony have often been met with not simply
disagreement, but a de-legitimizing of the very existence of the ‘other.’ Russia is not immune from ideas of exceptionalism and the two nations
have perpetuated a soft rivalry that possesses “nationalist phobias” 41 that can be mutually reinforcing.
Gertan Dijkink acknowledges that this “gross distinction between East and West as opposite cultures” is part of the US discourse on Russia.42
For Dijkink, this does not have to be addressed directly, or be part of a public discussion, because it has become “naturalized,” or considered to
be common sense. He notes that experience and discourse create an imaginative geography of the outside world, which contributes to the
“American foreign policy aims to perpetuate, serve and
affirm the American way of life,” 44 thus helping to explain why Russia’s alternative to “the American
way,” presents a challenge. Georg Lofflman confirms the impact of 32 Ibid., pp.. 67, 71. 33 Anatol Lieven, “Against Russophobia,”
construction of visions of the world.”43 Dijkink notes that, after all,
World Policy Journal 17:4 (Winter 2000-2001), p. 25. 34 Ibid., p. 26. mythology on discourse and the influence on foreign policy outcomes.45
Myths shape identity, become themselves part of identity, and influence action. It is reasonable to suggest that American exceptionalism
influences Russophobia. If the US is unique, its values superior, and therefore its preeminence in the international system assumed, and if
Russia fundamentally challenges these values – America’s very identity – in some way, then fear of what Russia represents may be a
consequence. Putin himself famously warned Americans in 2013 of the dangers of seeing themselves as exceptional.46
Richard Sakwa notes the difficult time US leaders have had accepting Russia as an equal.47 Russia did not see itself as a defeated power after
the Cold War and conducted itself as such, a view in opposition to the prevailing Washington narrative. Sakwa notes that Russia as a democratic
state was no less revisionist than Russia as a communist state and that this was threatening to the existing world order that presumed the
hegemony of western liberal ideas. 48 Even though Russian foreign policy was actually fairly unthreatening, and could even be characterized as
collaborative for many years, it was not universally viewed this way because of the geopolitical threat it was perceived to represent.49 Sakwa
also claims that some of the anti-Russianism has a strong basis in history, as Russia has never really been considered to be a part of Europe. Its
very presence has motivated European integration; post WWII European identity was constructed on the basis of Russian exclusion, a reality
that was confirmed by decades of the Cold War. That the fear of Russia and the exclusionary attitude toward Russia persist, driven largely by
the United States and the derivative suspicion of Russia from the Cold War period, is problematic but not surprising.50
Russophobia in Western discourse has been written about, by Russians themselves - poets and writers - for nearly two centuries.51 Some have
suggested that Russian fears of American Russophobia fuel a siege mentality present within Moscow since the end of the Cold War.
Russophobia has had an impact; it has influenced the manner in which Russia approaches its own
relations with the West. Valentina Feklyunina confirms that the assumption of American Russophobia by Russians themselves has
shaped Russia’s self perception, and more importantly it has shaped Russia’s expectations for how foreign nations will engage with them. 52
Russian leaders anticipate anti-Russianism in their dealings with the West, which shapes and perpetuate
an “us vs. them” discourse among Russian decision makers that may be reinforcing the narrative of fear
in Washington.
US-China war is unlikely, BUT they make it inevitable
Talmadge 18 [we read yellow] (Caitlin Talmadge – Associate Professor of Security Studies at the
Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University, “Beijing’s Nuclear Option: Why a
U.S.-Chinese War Could Spiral Out of Control,” November/December 2018, Foreign Affairs,
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/china/2018-10-15/beijings-nuclear-option) //Bosley
Members of China’s strategic com‐munity tend to dismiss such concerns. Likewise, U.S.
studies of a potential war with China
often exclude nuclear weapons from the analysis entirely, treating them as basically irrelevant to the course of a
conflict. Asked about the issue in 2015, Dennis Blair, the former commander of U.S. forces in the Indo-Pacific,
estimated the likelihood of a U.S.-Chinese nuclear crisis as “somewhere between nil and zero.”
This assurance is misguided. If deployed against China, the Pentagon’s
preferred style of conventional warfare would
be a potential recipe for nuclear escalation . Since the end of the Cold War, the United States’ signature approach to war has been
simple: punch deep into enemy territory in order to rapidly knock out the opponent’s key military assets at minimal cost. But the Pentagon
developed this formula in wars against Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Serbia, none of which was a nuclear power.
China, by contrast, not only has nuclear weapons; it has also intermingled them with its conventional
military forces , making it difficult to attack one without attacking the other. This means that a major U.S. military campaign
targeting China’s conventional forces would likely also threaten its nuclear arsenal . Faced with such a threat,
Chinese leaders could decide to use their nuclear weapons while they were still able to.
As U.S. and Chinese leaders navigate a relationship fraught with mutual suspicion, they must come to grips with the fact that a
conventional war could skid into a nuclear confrontation . Although this risk is not high in absolute terms,
its consequences for the region and the world
would be devastatin g. As long as the United States and China
continue to pursue their current grand strategies , the risk is likely to endure . This means that leaders on
both sides should dispense with the illusion that they can easily fight a limited war . They should focus
instead on managing or resolving the political, economic, and military tensions that might lead to a conflict in the
first place.
Advantage 1
No impact to civilian infrastructure attacks.
Lewis ’20 [James Andrew; 8/17/20; senior vice president and director of the Strategic Technologies
Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies; "Dismissing Cyber Catastrophe,"
https://www.csis.org/analysis/dismissing-cyber-catastrophe]
A catastrophic cyberattack was first predicted in the mid-1990s. Since then, predictions of a
catastrophe have appeared
regularly and have entered the popular consciousness. As a trope, a cyber catastrophe captures our imagination,
but as analysis, it remains entirely imaginary and is of dubious value as a basis for policymaking. There has
never been a catastrophic cyberattack .
To qualify as a catastrophe, an event must produce damaging mass effect, including casualties and destruction. The
fires that swept across California last summer were a catastrophe. Covid-19 has been a catastrophe, especially in countries with inadequate
responses. With man-made actions, however, a
catastrophe is harder to produce than it may seem, and for
cyberattacks a catastrophe requires organizational and technical skills most actors still do not possess.
It requires planning, reconnaissance to find vulnerabilities, and then acquiring or building attack
tools —things that require resources and experience. To achieve mass effect, either a few central targets (like an
electrical grid) need
to be hit or multiple targets would have to be hit simultaneously (as is the case with urban water
systems), something
that is itself an operational challenge .
It is easier to imagine a catastrophe than to produce it. The 2003 East Coast blackout is the archetype
for an attack on the U.S. electrical grid. No one died in this blackout, and services were restored in a few days.
As electric production is digitized, vulnerability increases, but many
electrical companies have made cybersecurity a
priority. Similarly, at water treatment plants, the chemicals used to purify water are controlled in ways
that make mass releases difficult. In any case, it would take a massive amount of chemicals to poison large
rivers or lakes, more than most companies keep on hand, and any release would quickly be diluted .
Resilience solves.
Lewis ’20 [James Andrew; 8/17/20; senior vice president and director of the Strategic Technologies
Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies; "Dismissing Cyber Catastrophe,"
https://www.csis.org/analysis/dismissing-cyber-catastrophe]
One major failing of catastrophe scenarios is that they discount the robustness and resilience of modern economies. These economies
present multiple targets and configurations; they are harder to damage through cyberattack than they
look, given the growing (albeit incomplete) attention to cybersecurity; and experience shows that people
compensate for damage and quickly repair or rebuild . This was one of the counterintuitive lessons of the Strategic
Bombing Survey. Pre-war
planning assumed that civilian morale and production would crumple under aerial
bombardment. In fact, the opposite
occurred. Resistance hardened and production was restored .1
Err against catastrophe.
Lewis ’20 [James Andrew; 8/17/20; senior vice president and director of the Strategic Technologies
Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies; "Dismissing Cyber Catastrophe,"
https://www.csis.org/analysis/dismissing-cyber-catastrophe]
This is a short overview of why catastrophe
is unlikely . Several longer CSIS reports go into the reasons in some detail. Past
performance may not necessarily predict the future, but after 25 years without a single catastrophic cyberattack, we
should invoke the concept cautiously, if at all. Why then, it is raised so often?
Some of the explanation for the emphasis on cyber catastrophe is hortatory. When the author of one of the first reports (in the
1990s) to sound the alarm over cyber catastrophe was asked later why he had warned of a cyber Pearl Harbor when it was clear this was not
going to happen, his reply was that he hoped
to scare people into action. "Catastrophe is nigh; we must act" was
possibly a reasonable strategy 22 years ago, but no longer .
The resilience of historical events to remain culturally significant must be taken into account for an objective assessment of cyber warfare, and
this will require the United States to discard some hypothetical scenarios.
The long experience of living under the shadow
of nuclear annihilation still shapes American thinking and conditions the United States to expect
extreme outcomes. American thinking is also shaped by the experience of 9/11 , a wrenching attack that caught the
United States by surprise. Fears of another 9/11 reinforce the memory of nuclear war in driving the catastrophe
trope, but when applied to cyberattack, these scenarios do not track with operational requirements
or the nature of opponent strategy and planning. The contours of cyber warfare are emerging, but they
are not always what we discuss. Better policy will require greater objectivity .
No China rise or war.
Swaine '21 [Michael; 4/21/21; PhD in Government from Harvard University, director of the East Asia
program at the Quincy Institute; "China Doesn’t Pose an Existential Threat for America,"
https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/04/21/china-existential-threat-america/]
There is no doubt that Beijing’s
behavior in many areas challenges existing U.S. and allied interests and democratic
values. Particularly under Xi Jinping, China has used its greater economic and military power to intimidate rival
claimants in territorial disputes and punish nations that make statements or take what Beijing views as
threatening or insulting actions. It has engaged in extensive commercial hacking and theft of technologies and favors military intimidation
over dialogue in dealing with Taiwan. And it has employed draconian, repressive policies in Tibet and Xinjiang and suppressed democratic
freedoms in Hong Kong.
This deeply troubling behavior certainly requires a strong, concerted response from the United States and other
nations. But
to be effective, such a response also requires an accurate assessment of China’s future
impact on the United States and the world.
And in this regard, it is extremely counterproductive to U.S. interests to assert or even imply, as many now
do, that
the above Chinese actions constitute an all-of-society, existential threat to the United States, the West,
and ultimately the entire world, thereby justifying a Cold War-style, zero-sum containment stance toward Beijing. Such
an extreme stance stifles debate and the search for more positive-sum policy outcomes while leading to the usual calls for major increases in
defense spending.
In fact, there isn’t much actual evidence to support the notion of China as an existential threat. That does
not mean that China is not a threat in some areas, but Washington needs to approach this issue based on the facts, not
dangerous rhetoric . Unfortunately, right-sizing the challenges that China poses seems to be an impossible task for Washington.
In the most basic, literal sense, an
existential threat means a threat to the physical existence of the nation through the
possession of an ability and intent to exterminate the U.S. population, presumably via the use of highly lethal nuclear,
chemical, or biological weapons . A less conventional understanding of the term posits the radical erosion or
ending of U.S. prosperity and freedoms through economic, political, ideational, and military pressure, thereby in essence
destroying the basis for the American way of life. Any threats that fall below these two definitions do not convey what is
meant by the word “ existential .”
As a military power, China has no ability to destroy the United States without destroying itself.
China’s nuclear capabilities are far below those of the United States, and its conventional military,
while regionally potentially powerful, has a fraction of the budget of that of the United States.
Some argue that China could militarily push the United States out of Asia and dominate that region,
denying the country air and naval access and hence support for critical allies. This would presumably have an existential impact by virtue of the
supposedly critical importance of that region to the stability and prosperity of the United States. Yet
there are no signs that
Washington is losing either the will or the capacity to remain a major military actor in the region and one
closely connected to major Asian allies, which are themselves opposed to China dominating the region. In
reality, the greater danger in Asia is that Washington could so militarize its response to China that its actions and
policies become repugnant even to U.S. allies.
This leaves the unconventional threats . Here they are presumably twofold: economic and technological,
and in the realm of ideas and influence operations within the United States and other Western countries, including
the export of China’s so-called “model” of authoritarian rule to the rest of the world.
The former threats would presumably consist of China attaining a level of total superiority over both
economic and technological levers of influence globally and with regard to the United States (perhaps combined with a successful
military blocking of U.S. sea lines of communication) that would so impoverish the country as to threaten its existence as a stable and
prosperous democracy and bring it under Chinese control. Presumably, the
specific basis of such leverage would consist of nearabsolute global Chinese dominance over both trade and investment relations and supply chains with the
United States and other countries and over all the key technologies driving future growth and military capabilities.
It is virtually inconceivable that China could achieve such a level of dominance over the United States.
The United States possesses abundant energy, human, technological, and other resources; a huge
and dynamic domestic market; enormous levels of accumulated wealth and capital stocks; and the
globe’s financial reserve currency .
In contrast, while China boasts a highly entrepreneurial and dynamic workforce, it labors
under major structural and
political constraints such as insufficient arable land, a rapidly aging society, a heavy reliance on
energy imports, and stifling ideological and state-centered controls across society.
Beijing has certainly used its economic leverage (such as market access) to pressure foreign companies and
governments to support Chinese policies or stop what it regards as unacceptable behavior, e.g., regarding Taiwan. While such economic
coercion is by no means unique to China, it certainly can erode freedom of speech, thus threatening one of democracy’s core principles. But
this hardly rises to the level of an existential threat to American values, given both the limited reach of
Chinese economic power and the countervailing global economic power and political influence of
democratic states .
Miscalc doesn’t go nuclear.
Tertrais 17 – Bruno Tertrais, Doctorate from the Paris Political Science Institute, Deputy Director of the
Paris-based Fondation pour la Recherche Strategique. [“On the Brink”—Really? Revisiting Nuclear Close
Calls Since 1945, The Washington Quarterly, 40(2), Taylor & Francis]//BPS
The Tradition of Non-Use Is Strong
The Cuban crisis reveals that Soviet and U.S. officials were able to refrain from foolish judgments even in
conditions of extreme stress . Adversaries have never put at stake the “vital interests” of their opponents—either because they were
unable to, or because they never intended to, or simply because they feared retaliation. The
barriers to the use of nuclear
weapons were solid, and the “tradition of non-use” emerged very quickly .
One last element of the anti-nuclear narrative deserves discussion. There
is no certainty at all that any use of a nuclear
weapon would turn into a major nuclear war . Yes, Cuba was a time of great danger. But why would the use of a nuclear
torpedo, for instance, necessarily have led to a global thermonuclear exchange? Is it not at least equally likely that the two countries would
have done their best to limit escalation? It is possible, as Herman Kahn famously argued, that “the
nuclear threshold is not so
weak that a single use of nuclear weapons would make anyone careless about crossing it a second
time.”79
Escalation in the nuclear age would not necessarily be a descent into the abyss . It might very well be the
equivalent of walking up a staircase where the last stairs are considerably higher than the first ones. Resistance to actual use or launch could
increase as one moves up the escalation ladder—not unlike two magnets repelling each other.
The narrative claiming that the world has stood many times “on the brink of apocalypse,” or that we were
within a “hair’s breadth” of a nuclear catastrophe, thus deserves deconstruction. It discards the strength of the technical, operational, or
mental safety valves that prevent nuclear use. Stanislas Petrov, the “man who saved the world,” was not a superhero who single-handedly
stopped a runaway train: he was
an average Soviet official who applied procedures .
Some legitimate questions remain. What would happen if a false alarm erupted during wartime? If a full-blown conflict involving nuclear-armed
countries erupted—something that has never happened, probably thanks to deterrence—can we assume that caution would still prevail? This
is an important question and a legitimate preoccupation. The
absence of any such conflict since 1945 suggests that
nuclear deterrence is a robust construct —but no human construct is infallible. Whether it is for safety mechanisms or for
deterrence, even “virtually impossible” does not mean zero. Some would argue that any probability of a nuclear war is too much. But surely this
does not close the discussion: a very small probability of a deadly car accident has to be balanced against the benefits of driving to work, for
instance. Is the nuclear system “tolerably safe”?80 The conversation between proponents of deterrence and anti-nuclear activists should
revolve around the costs and benefits equation. It is also far from certain that such safety mechanisms and human resistance will always be
present in the decision-making complexes of all nuclear-armed states (think North Korea or Pakistan, for instance).
Nevertheless, a
history of nearly 40 crises with some nuclear dimension has taught an important lesion: solid command-
and-control arrangements, sound procedures, constant vigilance, efficient training, and coolheadedness of leadership have ensured—and can continue to ensure—that nuclear weapons will continue to
play only a deterrence role. “Luck” has very little to do with it.
1NR
Adv 2
1. AFGHANISTAN – destroyed public opinion of NATO
Kulikov 21 - political expert (Valery, “NATO collapse comes closer,” NEWAGE Opinion, 9-3-21,
https://www.newagebd.net/article/148030/nato-collapse-comes-closer, Accessed 9-12-22, alexx)
THE shameful events in Afghanistan in recent weeks have led to a dramatic loss of credibility for the
United States and NATO in the minds of the Western public. The earlier criticism of the Atlantic Alliance’s policies and
actions has now increased enormously and has become the most widespread meme in the publications of various media. The mournful
announcement of the British Daily Mail is more straightforward than ever. Next to the image of a coffin covered in the national flag, is posed a
question Britain has never been able to answer: what, in the end, did they all die for in Afghanistan? The British TV channel Sky rightly points
out that after the withdrawal of Soviet troops in 1989, the official government of Afghanistan endured for three years, and after the US
withdrawal it did not last even three hours. The
seizure of power in Afghanistan by the Taliban (banned in Russia) is
a grave disgrace and a shameful defeat for NATO, believes the Swiss TV channel SRF. One of the Alliance’s
grandest projects of the past two decades has been brought to an ignominious grave. Western countries have
failed to build democracy in Afghanistan, and now they refuse to even address the future of the country and its people. NATO secretary general
Jens Stoltenberg is not cut out for big speeches; indeed, even when he has something positive to say, he gives, to put it mildly, ‘an excessively
reserved impression’, writes a diplomatic correspondent of the Swiss TV channel SRF. When Stoltenberg was finally confronted about the
failure of the Western military alliance in Afghanistan, he looked deeply broken and depressed. As the Wall Street Journal points out, Biden’s
‘disgraceful departure’ from Afghanistan was a slap in the face for NATO. Following the 9/11 attacks, when the
Collective Defence Clause was invoked for the first time in history in Afghanistan, America’s allies in the Alliance have shed
much blood in that country, spent vast sums of money in the conflict, and lost more than a thousand
people. The newspaper stresses that Washington almost mocked its partners when in his speech about
the withdrawal of troops Biden only briefly mentioned NATO and did not say a word about the
European allies of the United States. So it is not surprising that European leaders are seething with anger, concludes The Wall
Street Journal. In his time, French president Emmanuel Macron was met with a barrage of criticism when he spoke of NATO as ‘brain dead’ in
2019. But it was then that he warned that no matter who was in charge of the United States, it was becoming an increasingly less dependable
ally. And today, Macron’s words seem nothing short of prophetic throughout the European capitals. For
Europe, the Taliban’s
seizure of power in Afghanistan is an unmitigated nightmare, writes Deutsche Wirtschafts Nachrichten. First of all,
because the US has shown through its hasty withdrawal that it no longer intends to defend the ‘free
world’, and without American support Europe does not have enough strength to defend itself, and this catastrophic deficit is unlikely to be
eliminated soon. Moreover, there has been talk in the European Union for many years about the need for a
European army, which, however, has come to nothing so far. The Lisbon Treaty provides for a tight tie between the
European Union and NATO, headed by the United States, but given the changed circumstances, this point needs to be reconsidered, the
Germans argue. The
notion that Americans would be willing to engage in worldwide warfare in the name of
protecting democracy has become an illusion. The Truman Doctrine, adopted in 1947, stipulated that Washington would
support free nations in their struggle against totalitarian regimes, but under former President Donald Trump and his
successor, Joe Biden, the United States has abandoned these values, the German newspaper notes. In an August 17
interview with the online publication Parlamentní listy, Czech President Milos Zeman said that the US has fallen from the prestige
of a world leader after the withdrawal from Afghanistan, and concerns have been raised about the
meaning of NATO’s existence. The Czech president noted that the distrust of NATO on the part of the member countries will only
grow after the recent incidents in Afghanistan. At that, he stressed: ‘But if NATO has been a failure, then that should lead to a reassessment of
our military spending and an emphasis on national defence.’ Criticising the NATO evacuation in Afghanistan, the German tabloid Bild paid
special attention to the fact that during the organisation of the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan, the Bundeswehr focused on removing
29 pallets of beer and a popular German beer-lemonade mix, as well as 340 bottles of wine, champagne and other alcohol that remained in
stock at its base in Mazar-i-Sharif. Additional transportation capacity was provided for this, which was not previously available for the local
German helpers who risked their lives to make Afghanistan a better place. Thus, 65,000 cans of beer turned out to be more valuable to the
German government and defence minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer than the people who risked their lives to make Afghanistan better, the
German media emphasise. European leaders are wondering how the current failure in Afghanistan will affect NATO. However, according to The
Washington Post observer, they should also reflect on the fact that the
existence of the alliance is threatened by the
hostile public opinion in their own countries. The core principle of the alliance is the rule that all countries must come to the
aid of a member of it in the event it is attacked. If one refuses to participate in collective defence, the entire alliance
will cease to be. And the withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan raises the question of whether or
not that country can live up to its commitments. However, recent public opinion polls show that those
polled are no longer willing to support the US in either a conflict with Russia or in a conflict with China…
Twenty years ago, hardly anyone could have imagined that by ending the war in Afghanistan, Washington would almost call the Taliban its ally.
Today, these fighters ensure the evacuation of Kabul, the Americans provide them with reports with all the data on their citizens and Afghans,
who ‘can be allowed to enter the airport.’ These passenger lists have already been dubbed the execution lists. ‘Since July, the US has evacuated
more than 100,000 people from Afghanistan. Were all of them Americans? Were all of them heroes? No! Only 5,000 of them are US citizens.
Were each and everyone of the remaining 95,000 all interpreters? No! Today, the State Department admitted that they have no idea how many
of these people have a special visa proving that they worked for the US. The pilots are not given passenger lists. We are told that refugees pass
the border without being searched. It appears that we don’t even know who they are taking back here’, says Fox News host Carlson Tucker. On
the whole, the public opinion, amid recent events in Afghanistan, is that the
US and NATO have once again displayed to the
world their inadequacy in achieving their designated goals. And this, in turn, raises justifiable doubts as
to their ability to fulfil their declared international obligations regarding the security of their allies and
partners.
2. ILLIBERALISM – massive backsliding among NATO members fueled by Russian
propaganda
Katz and Taussig 18 *Director of Democracy Initiatives and a senior fellow with The German Marshall
Fund of the United States. Former Deputy assistant administrator in the Europe and Eurasia bureau at
the U.S. Agency for International Development, Jonathon. **United States Department of Defense
Foreign Policy Advisor. PhD in International Security Studies and US Foreign Policy. Former Research
director for the Project on Europe and the Transatlantic Relationship at Harvard Kennedy School.
Foreign policy advisor in the German Bundestag and in the Transatlantic Division of the German Foreign
Office. (Jonathan Katz and Torrey Taussig, 7-10-2018, "An inconvenient truth: Addressing democratic
backsliding within NATO," Brookings, https://www.brookings.edu/blog/order-fromchaos/2018/07/10/an-inconvenient-truth-addressing-democratic-backsliding-within-nato/)HS
There is also significant democratic backsliding among NATO member states. The cast of illiberal
characters—who are leading the charge in the wrong direction—includes the recently reelected and
empowered Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and his Justice and Development Party (AKP),
Jaroslaw Kaczynski’s Law and Justice (PiS) Party in Poland, and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán
and the ruling Fidesz Party. Each has proven more than willing to repress free media, dismantle checks
and balances, demonize political opposition, clamp down on civil society, and diminish the rule of law.
America’s democratic system and norms under President Trump are also under duress; as a result,
Freedom House downgraded the country’s score on the basis of weakening political rights and civil
liberties.
Despite these alarming developments, NATO leaders have relegated democratic backsliding to the
backburner. Opponents of making the case for democracy within NATO might argue that pushing
Ankara, Warsaw, and Budapest too hard on their commitments to good governance will exacerbate
already tense divisions in the alliance. Others might say that Russia would be the prime beneficiary of a
contentious democracy discussion at NATO. Yet this is a counterproductive approach with current and
potential costs to NATO’s future. Here are three security-based reasons why the United States and
NATO should care about democratic backsliding, and actions the alliance can take to address them.
Russia is already benefiting from and effectively leveraging its relationships with Hungary and Turkey to
exacerbate discord within Europe and NATO. Viktor Orbán and Vladimir Putin see one another as allies
in their disdain for the European Union and Orbán has courted Russian financial and political support as
he builds an illiberal democracy in Hungary. Russian propaganda also finds fertile ground in Hungarian
media. A 2018 Senate Foreign Relations Committee report noted that Russian state-owned media
content “by Sputnik and RT is widely referenced by pro-government news sources in Hungary.” The
report cited Orbán as the EU and NATO’s most supportive leader of Putin’s worldview and leadership.
Acting as the Russian “camel’s nose under the tent,” Orbán is thwarting Ukraine and NATO’s partnership
efforts by blocking the Ukraine-NATO Commission from meeting at the upcoming summit.
In Turkey, Erdoğan has rattled the NATO alliance by pursuing a deal to purchase the S-400 missile
system from Russia. In addition to hurting NATO’s ability to cooperate on security, the system is also not
compatible with NATO’s defenses. Through arms and energy deals, Putin uses Turkey as a wedge to
divide NATO. Similarly, Erdoğan might see his deals with Putin as a way to free Turkey from Western
leverage, particularly as European states push back on his brand of authoritarian politics by cutting EU
pre-accession funds. After winning the recent twin parliamentary and presidential elections, an
emboldened Erdoğan will likely become an even more problematic partner for NATO.
Other illiberal and populist governments, including Italy’s new anti-establishment government, could
follow suit in enhancing their partnerships with Russia, creating future intelligence-sharing and cohesion
problems for the alliance. President Putin is building ties with illiberal leaders across Europe while
attacking fundamental elements of Western democracies, including electoral process and open
information spaces.
There is a strong link between democratic governance and security gains. Liberal democracies have
historically been less likely to experience intra- and interstate conflict, generate refugees, and harbor
violent extremists. They are also better at maintaining transparent institutions, civilian control of the
military and intelligence services, and working together on confidence-building measures, all of which
are core features of NATO’s ability to collectively defend its members. On the other hand, corruption
and insecurity grow under politicized institutions and poor rule of law. This hurts NATO’s renewed
efforts to combat terrorism, as military and security communities have long acknowledged the
connection between corruption and the existence of criminal networks, traffickers, and terrorists within
state borders.
Corruption also opens space for Russian kleptocratic networks close to Putin to operate and gain
influence. For example, in 2014 Orbán awarded Rosatom, a Russian state-owned nuclear company, the
sole contract to build two nuclear plants in Hungary in exchange for a 10 billion euro loan from Moscow.
The Hungarian parliament, dominated by Orbán’s Fidesz Party, then passed a rushed vote to keep data
from the nuclear deal confidential for 30 years in the name of “national security.” The deal diminished
transparent economic competition within the European Union and solidified Hungary and Russia’s
energy ties.
Distrust among allies hurts alliance interoperability. The PiS Party’s assault on independent media and
the Constitutional Court, including efforts last week to summarily force out 27 Polish Supreme Court
justices, have isolated Poland from France and Germany, diminishing trust among the European nations.
This could make it increasingly difficult for Washington to gain consensus on joint decisions,
communications, and operations. If NATO is dedicated to building resiliency along Russia’s periphery by
placing multi-national battalions in Poland, then it should not ignore the accountable institutions that
would strengthen this joint effort.
What can NATO do to counter democratic backsliding within its ranks? After a troubling G-7 meeting in
Canada, the upcoming NATO summit in Brussels may be a hair twisting exercise in alliance management.
Muted cohesion, however, is not enough to address the anti-democratic trends tearing apart the fabric
of Europe and NATO. Strong actions and words are needed to counter this democratic crisis.
First, in fighting for the relevance of NATO’s Article V promise of collective defense, we should not forget
about NATO’s other founding articles, including Article II: states’ promise to strengthen free institutions
within their borders. We should also recall the central governance requirements that states needed to
meet in order to join the alliance, including rules around civilian control of the military, legislative
monitoring, and transparency of arms procurements—all democratic foundations that make the alliance
stronger.
In practice, NATO needs a new mechanism to hold members accountable when there is democratic
backsliding and when the principles of the Washington Treaty, NATO’s founding document, are violated.
Celeste Wallender, President Obama’s special assistant to the president and senior director for Russian
and Eurasian affairs at the National Security Council, argues persuasively for several measures here. As
she and others have noted, NATO currently has no options to suspend, expel, or penalize a NATO
member, for example Hungary, for violating a core tenet of the alliance’s democratic values. There is not
even a proper venue at NATO—for example the North Atlantic Council (NAC), NATO’s main
decisionmaking body—to raise matters that some consider a direct threat to the alliance’s core
principles. The NAC already has over a dozen committees, but none deal directly with democratic
backsliding and human rights violations in the alliance.
3. Biden furthers NATO decline – conflicting demands, lack of pressure, and allied
freeriding make common defense impossible.
Maitra 6/22 Sumantra Maitra, Sumantra Maitra is a national-security fellow at the Center for the
National Interest and an elected associate fellow at the Royal Historical Society, June 22, 2022, “What
Biden Gets Wrong About European Defense”, The National Interest,
https://nationalinterest.org/feature/what-biden-gets-wrong-about-european-defense-203116, //smarx
LJS.
no amount of added expenditure would offset the unsustainable grand strategy of providing
security across the globe, especially with rich allies freeriding.
Ultimately,
by Sumantra Maitra Follow Sumantra Maitra on TwitterL
Arecent news report in Financial Times suggests that Germany, after harrumphing over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and pledging a massive rehaul of German defense sector, has returned to
its roots. “Germany has proposed basing most of the 3,500 extra troops it plans to contribute to Nato forces on its own soil rather than in Lithuania,” the report states, adding that “Berlin’s
latest proposal is for a brigade to be stationed in Germany and deployed to Lithuania — where it has led the existing 1,000-strong multinational battle group since 2017 — only if needed. The
force would also have a permanent headquarters in Lithuania, manned by 50 to 60 staff members and the rest of the personnel would regularly come to the country for training.”
One can hardly blame Berlin. If a major European power sees its biggest threat bogged down in the east, with weapons and funding coming from the allies in the West, it would be considered
a very realist approach. Consider the recent details. Ukrainian officials have demanded around 1,000 howitzers and 800 multiple rocket launcher systems and tanks to offset Russia’s slow but
steady advance in the east. Of course, there’s a tiny problem with that: It’s not possible for Europe to provide those arms. Europeans do not have that many, nor do they have the industrial
capacity to produce them in the duration required. Added to that is the unnamed demand of around one million shells and rockets as ammunition. It is a demand for a whole new army.
The only country that can provide this much in that duration is the United States, and it would cost trillions and would empty the Defense Department’s current stockpiles. So far, naturally, the
major burden has been taken by the United States, in both weapons and resources, and cash. And it has not been
easy. The Biden administration is battling inflation at home and trying to fund a war abroad in the far
corners of Europe. It recently announced that the United States is providing an additional $1 billion in military aid to Ukraine, which includes eighteen howitzers, 36,000 rounds
of howitzer ammunition, and two Harpoon coastal defense systems. Meanwhile, the Senate Armed Services Committee added $45 billion increase to President Joe Biden’s budget, taking the
total cost to a whopping $847 billion, to, in its own words, “counteract runaway inflation, aid Ukraine, replenish weapons sent into the fight against Russia, and fund military priorities left out
of the Pentagon budget request.”
This is not sustainable. A recent Kiel Institute paper states that “in total, we trace €85 billion in government-to-government commitments from January 24, 2022, until June
7 … it is remarkable that the US alone has committed considerably more than all EU countries combined, in whose immediate neighborhood the war is raging.” In a different poll, 76 percent of
Germans answered yes to the question, “Should Germany become more independent from the United States in its security policy?” The two plausible hypotheses from these trends suggest:
One, the EU doesn’t see Russia as enough of a threat and knows Uncle Sucker is there to pay with enough flattery about the rules-based order. Two, the United States is failing to prioritize due
to internal political dynamics, old-school Europe-first reflexes, and the massive blitz of the pro-Ukraine public relations lobby. Neither of those conclusions provides any optimism.
it is the Biden administration’s incoherence that is the problem. Biden doubled down on rhetoric
expressing that NATO is sacred, instead of adding more pressure on the EU, in general, and Germany, in particular, to rearm, as the previous administration did. Added to that is ideological dogmatism. A deepened European political and defense relationship
will only be enhanced when Europe has fixed borders—not ever-expanding frontiers. Indeed, this idea of an “Open
Europe” that is pushed by small states on the periphery and a commitment to an ever-expanding NATO
and EU makes it difficult to strategize a common defense based on common interests and fixed funding. Ultimately, no amount of
added expenditure would offset the unsustainable grand strategy of providing security across the globe, especially with rich allies
Partly,
freeriding. It is a strategy that risks overstretch, insolvency, and ultimately, collapse.
Lack of unity and coherence on strategy --- splits on Ukraine strategy
Osborne 7/8/22
(Tony, “Europe Commits To Defense, But Is Unity Cracking?,” pg online @
https://aviationweek.com/shownews/farnborough-airshow/europe-commits-defense-unity-cracking
//um-ef)
NATO and EU leaders have spoken warmly of the unity demonstrated by member states, and across the continent, European
allies have set in
motion spending hikes that could reverse decades of swingeing cuts imposed since the end of the Cold War. Traditionally
nonmilitarily-aligned Finland and Sweden have submitted requests to join NATO, and a Danish referendum has chosen to end the country’s long-standing opt-out to
Europe’s Common Security and Defense Policy (CSDP). Many European countries, along with Australia, Canada and the U.S., have supplied ever-increasing amounts
of weapons and equipment to Ukraine while backfilling equipment into those Eastern European countries that are transferring Soviet-era gear eastward. Yet
as
the war approaches its 150th day, fractures are appearing . Nations appear divided over how the conflict
should end, either through negotiated settlement between Kyiv and Moscow or the complete removal of
Russian forces from Ukrainian soil. There is also disagreement over how to manage the social, political
and economic impact that the conflict and sanctions imposed on Russia are having on everyday life in
Europe, as energy prices skyrocket and propel inflation to historic highs. Questions remain about the levels of military equipment to supply to
Ukraine, too, as well as where Europe’s renewed defense spending should be directed, where equipment will be sourced and whether—after years of cuts—armed
forces will have the resources to absorb the vast amounts of equipment they are gearing up to buy. “European unity has been much stronger than [Russian
President Vladimir] Putin probably would have expected,” says Bastian Giegerich, the director of defense and military analysis at the London-based International
Institute for Strategic Studies. “But my
worry is that we are past peak coherence on this matter . . . and beginning to
see some splits emerge.” He cites recent struggles among EU members to agree on new sanctions
packages. “This doesn’t mean it will all fall apart, but I think it’ll be more difficult now to keep the pressure on ,” he adds.
Ukraine shoots non-prolif.
Michael E. O'Hanlon and Bruce Riedel 22, O'Hanlon, senior fellow and director of research in Foreign
Policy at the Brookings Institution; Riedel, senior fellow and director of the Brookings Intelligence
Project; 3-29-2022, "The Russia-Ukraine war may be bad news for nuclear nonproliferation,"
https://www.brookings.edu/blog/order-from-chaos/2022/03/29/the-russia-ukraine-war-may-be-badnews-for-nuclear-nonproliferation/, jy
Alas, though some arms control advocates would like to argue that the only purpose of nuclear weapons is to deter a nuclear attack on one’s territory, recent world
events confirm that nuclear weapons can have another plausible purpose for some countries. For smaller or weaker states, owning
nuclear weapons
helps ensure that a large country will not be able to attack them and overthrow their government. Or, at least, the converse is
true — NOT having nukes clearly leaves one vulnerable .
Just ask Saddam
Hussein, who did not have nuclear weapons, about the 2003 Iraq war. Or Moammar Gadhafi, who also
did not have nuclear weapons, about the 2011 NATO air campaign launched against Libya after he threatened to exterminate domestic opponents. Of course,
we cannot really ask them — because not only are their regimes gone, they are dead , as a direct consequence of wars that they could not
deter with conventional arms alone.
Watching all this, Kim Jong Un had already
made the calculation, long before the Ukraine war, that he would cherish the North
Korean nuclear weapons that his grandfather and father had bequeathed him. Our efforts to persuade him to denuclearize have
failed under U.S. President Joe Biden’s four immediate predecessors, and the Biden team itself appears to be putting little effort into the quest itself, perhaps
out of recognition that the task is just too hard if attempted in absolutist terms.
North Korea is not alone. Twenty four years ago we tried to persuade Pakistan not to test nuclear weapons after India had done so.
Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott led a team to Islamabad to make the case. Then Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif reluctantly said he had no choice,
and, buoyed by Saudi money and his Chinese ally, Pakistan tested.
Now we
as its
watch a Ukrainian regime vilified as “Nazi” in nature by Russian propaganda fighting for its territory, as well
existence as a country — and indeed the personal survival of its leadership. Can there be any doubt that Putin would prefer the dismemberment and
annexation of Ukraine — Putin has repeatedly called into doubt the very concept of Ukraine as a sovereign state — and the capture or killing of its president,
Volodymyr Zelenskyy, given the way Putin has demonized him? When aggressors have extremist, existential goals like these, nuclear theorists rightly argue that
nuclear weapons alas CAN be relevant, for threatening unacceptable retaliation to any such attack and thereby deterring it.
At the end of the Cold War, Ukraine had the world’s third largest nuclear arsenal. The fact that, in 1994, Ukraine returned to Russia almost 2,000 nuclear weapons
that it had inherited from the breakup of the Soviet Union — receiving in reply a guarantee, in the form of the Budapest Memorandum (also signed by the U.K. and
U.S.) that Ukraine would not be attacked — adds insult to the injury. Presumably Kyiv would like to take that decision back, given Russia’s subsequent behavior.
Some countries
will draw two lessons, neither in the interest of the United States, from this history. If you have nuclear weapons,
keep them. If you don’t have them yet, get them , especially if you lack a strong defender like the United States as your ally, and if you
have beef with a big country that could plausibly lead to war.
Thinking through similar hypothetical scenarios 60 years ago, President John F. Kennedy predicted that there would be at least 25 nuclear weapons powers in the
course of the 20th century. Luckily, he was wrong, and today we still have only nine. But the reasons for Kennedy’s fears persist; in fact, recent events have
exacerbated and magnified them.
There is no simple solution to this problem, and we certainly do not propose that the United States enter the Ukraine war and fight a nuclear superpower today to
reduce the risks of nuclear nonproliferation tomorrow. That would be oxymoronic in the extreme.
However, there are other more practical implications of this analysis. One is clearly that the Biden team and U.S. government, more broadly, should be working as
hard as possible, not only to help Ukraine defend itself, but to seek a diplomatic solution to the conflict that preserves intact most or all of Ukraine’s territory as well
as its government. Otherwise, beyond the further damage done to Ukraine and its people, the resulting precedent will be terrible for the cause of nuclear
nonproliferation. Second, we need to be more careful about promising alliance expansion when we don’t really mean it. NATO proposed, back in 2008, that Ukraine
would someday be invited to join the alliance — but with no timetable and no interim security guarantee. That had the net effect of painting a bullseye on Kyiv’s
back that Russia has now targeted. Third, where we do have allies and alliances, we need to be resolute and consistent in conveying our seriousness about
defending them. Biden is doing this latter job well, but his predecessor did not.
If we fail in these efforts, Kennedy’s
prediction about the spread of nuclear weapons may wind up just being
premature, not wrong . That would be a very dangerous and regrettable outcome for the future of international security.
No prolif spread nor escalation.
Mueller 17 – John Mueller, Political Science Professor at Ohio State University. [Nuclear Weapons:
Proliferation and Terrorism, CATO Handbook for Policymakers, 8th Edition,
https://object.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/serials/files/cato-handbook-policymakers/2017/2/catohandbook-for-policymakers-8th-edition-76_0.pdf]
However, nuclear
proliferation is unlikely to accelerate or prove to be a major danger . Terrorists are likely to
continue to find that obtaining and using nuclear weapons is exceedingly difficult. And aggressive counterproliferation policies can generate
costs far higher than those likely to be inflicted by the proliferation problem they seek to address. Those policies need careful reconsideration.
Nuclear Proliferation
Except for their effects on agonies, obsessions, rhetoric, posturing, and spending, the
consequences of nuclear proliferation
have been largely benign: those who have acquired the weapons have “ used” them simply to stoke their
egos or to deter real or imagined threats . For the most part, nuclear powers have found the weapons to be a
notable waste of time, money, effort, and scientific talent. They have quietly kept the weapons in
storage and haven’t even found much benefit in rattling them from time to time . If the recent efforts to keep
Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons have been successful, those efforts have done Iran a favor.
There has never been a militarily compelling reason to use nuclear weapons, particularly because it has not been possible to identify suitable
targets—or targets that couldn’t be attacked as effectively by conventional munitions. Conceivably, conditions exist under which nuclear
weapons could serve a deterrent function, but there is little reason to suspect that they have been necessary to deter war thus far, even during
the Cold War. The main Cold War contestants have never believed that a repetition of World War II, whether embellished by nuclear weapons
or not, is remotely in their interests.
Moreover, the weapons have not proved to be crucial status symbols. How much more status would Japan have if it possessed nuclear
weapons? Would anybody pay a great deal more attention to Britain or France if their arsenals held 5,000 nuclear weapons, or much less if they
had none? Did China need nuclear weapons to impress the world with its economic growth or its Olympics?
Those considerations
help explain why alarmists have been wrong for decades about the pace of
nuclear proliferation . Most famously, in the 1960s, President John Kennedy anticipated that in another decade “fifteen or twenty or
twenty-five nations may have these weapons.” Yet, of the
dozens of technologically capable countries that have
considered obtaining nuclear arsenals, very few have done so. Insofar as most leaders of most countries (even rogue
ones) have considered acquiring the weapons, they have come to appreciate several drawbacks of doing so: nuclear weapons are dangerous,
costly, and likely to rile the neighbors. Moreover, as the University of Southern California’s Jacques Hymans has demonstrated, the weapons
have also been exceedingly difficult for administratively dysfunctional countries to obtain—it took decades for North Korea and Pakistan to do
so. In consequence,
alarmist predictions about proliferation chains, cascades, dominoes, waves,
avalanches, epidemics, and points of no return have proved faulty .
Although proliferation
had rational leaders.
has so far had little consequence , that is not because the only countries to get nuclear weapons have
Large, important countries that acquired the bomb were run at the time by unchallenged—
deranged — monsters. Consider Joseph Stalin, who, in 1949, was planning to change the climate of the
Soviet Union by planting a lot of trees, and Mao Zedong, who, in 1964, had just carried out a bizarre social experiment that resulted in an
perhaps certifiably
artificial famine in which tens of millions of Chinese perished.
Some also fear that a country might use its nuclear weapons to “dominate” its area. That argument was used with dramatic urgency before
2003 when Saddam Hussein supposedly posed great danger, and it has been frequently applied to Iran. Exactly how that domination is to be
carried out is never made clear. The notion, apparently, is this: should an atomic rogue state rattle the occasional rocket, other countries in the
area, suitably intimidated, would bow to its demands. Far more likely, threatened states would make common cause with each other and with
other concerned countries (including nuclear ones) against the threatening neighbor. That is how countries coalesced into an alliance of
convenience to oppose Iraq’s region-threatening invasion of Kuwait in 1990.
another concern has been that the weapons will go off, by accident or miscalculation , devastating the
planet in the process: the weapons exist in the thousands, sooner or later one or more of them will inevitably go off. But those
prognostications have now failed to deliver for 70 years. That time period suggests something more
Yet
than luck is operating . Moreover, the notion that if one nuclear weapon goes off in one place, the world
will necessarily be plunged into thermonuclear cataclysm should remain in the domain of Hollywood
scriptwriters .
No prolif or testing impact
John Mueller 19—Senior Research Scientist and Adjunct Professor at Mershon Center for International Security
Studies. ("Exaggerated Alarm and Destructive Excursions: Antiproliferation Policy and The Case of North Korea,”
August 27, 2019, from First World Congress of Security Studies, hosted by the Research Institute for National
Security Affairs, https://politicalscience.osu.edu/faculty/jmueller/PAKaoKorea19.pdf)
The proliferation of
nuclear weapons has been far slower than predicted, and this seems to be because the weapons do not
generally convey much advantage to their possessor. Dozens of technologically capable countries have
considered obtaining nuclear arsenals, but very few have done so. A key reason for this is that the possession of such
expensive armaments actually conveys in almost all cases rather little advantage to the possessor. In the main, they are
difficult to obtain , militarily useless, a spectacular waste of time , money, and scientific talent, distasteful, and
likely to rile the neighbors . Moreover, the weapons have also been exceedingly difficult to obtain for administratively
dysfunctional countries.9
Moreover, the consequences
of what little proliferation has taken place have been substantially benign . Those who have
acquired the weapons have “used” them simply to stoke their egos or to deter real or imagined threats. For the most
part, they
have quietly kept the weapons in storage and haven’t even found much benefit in rattling them from time to time.
Nor have the weapons proven to be crucial status—or virility—symbols, although Pakistan and Russia do probably garner more
attention that they would if they did not have nuclear weapons. But how much more status would Japan have if it possessed nuclear
weapons? Would anybody pay a great deal more attention to Britain or France if their arsenals held 5,000 nuclear
weapons, or would anybody pay much less if they had none? Did China need nuclear weapons to impress the world with its economic
growth? Or with its Olympics?
Proliferation alarmists may occasionally grant that countries principally obtain a nuclear arsenal to counter real or
perceived threats, but many go on to argue that the newly nuclear country will then use its nuclear weapons to
“ dominate ” the area. That argument was repeatedly trotted out with dramatic urgency before 2003 for the dangers supposedly posed by Saddam Hussein,
and it is now being applied to Iran. Exactly
how that domination business is to be carried out is never made clear .10 But the notion, apparently,
is that should an atomic country rattle the occasional rocket, other countries in the area, suitably intimidated, would supinely bow to its demands. Far more likely,
any threatened states will make common cause with each other and with other concerned countries against the
threatening neighbor—rather in the way they coalesced into an alliance of convenience to oppose Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990.
But - Proliferation decreases propensity for war---best stats
(Akisato Suzuki 15, PhD @ Dublin City University whose research focuses on causes of non-electoral
forms of politics such as armed conflict, corruption, and protests, “Is more better or worse? New
empirics on nuclear proliferation and interstate conflict by Random Forests”, Research & Politics, AprilJune 2015: 1–7, https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/2053168015589625//hh, recut: smarx,
MLC)
Does nuclear proliferation decrease or increase interstate conflict?
Introduction
The existing theories provide different, and often conflicting, explanations. Quantitative
research has assessed the empirical validity of various explanations, but has only utilized a dyadic-level or crisis-level of analysis (Asal and Beardsley, 2007; Bell and Miller, 2015; Gartzke and Jo, 2009; Geller, 1990; Narang, 2013; Rauchhaus, 2009; Sobek et al., 2012). This is surprising,
because nuclear proliferation is principally a systemic phenomenon, since it increases the number of nuclear states in the interstate system. Thus, it remains unclear how nuclear proliferation is empirically associated with a propensity for interstate conflict at the interstate–systemic level.
A systemic propensity for conflict may not be understood simply as an aggregate of lower levels of phenomena. For example, even if nuclear weapons had a significant effect on conflict at the dyadic level, this effect might be negligible as an aggregate at the systemic level. This is a
this paper contributes to the existing literature by empirically
examining how a change in the number of nuclear states influences a propensity for conflict at the
reasonable concern, because the majority of states in the system are non-nuclear states. Given these issues,
interstate–systemic level Because the literature lacks a rigorous empirical answer to the theoretical
debate,
it utilizes the machine learning method Random Forests
one of the best-performing supervised learning models currently available
Random Forests can address theoretical and methodological problems to analyze the
relationship between nuclear proliferation and a systemic propensity for interstate conflict, as this paper
discusses in greater detail
Nuclear-proliferation optimists argue
that nuclear weapons reduce conflict because of the intolerable cost of nuclear war
Nuclear symmetry
should deter states from resorting to war, because war
could result in the use of nuclear weapons
Far from lowering the expected cost of aggression, a nuclear offense, even against a
.
like Rauchhaus (2009) this paper tests existing theories rather than proposing a new theory. To this end,
(Breiman, 2001; for an R package, see Liaw and Wiener, 2002),
(Caruana and
NiculescuMizil, 2006).
. The paper first reviews the scholarly debate on nuclear proliferation and interstate conflict. Second, it empirically examines the relationship between nuclear proliferation and a systemic propensity for interstate
conflict, using a Random Forests model to analyze interstate–systemic year data from 1950 to2009. Finally, it presents implications for the literature and policy making. Theories
(Mearsheimer, 1984/1985: 21; Waltz, 2003: 6–9).
Therefore, “more may be better” (Waltz, 2003: 3).
(a dyad of nuclear states)
(Powell, 1985). Rauchhaus (2009: 263) notes that the nuclear deterrence literature is “virtually silent” on the effect of nuclear asymmetry (a nuclear state versus a non-
nuclear state), but Waltz (2003: 17) argues, “
non-nuclear state, raises the possible costs of aggression to incalculable heights because the aggressor
cannot be sure of the reaction of other states Non-nuclear states should also be deterred from
”.
engaging in war with nuclear states, because non-nuclear states fear nuclear retaliation
they should also decrease conflict short of war, because states would hesitate to initiate conflict which
could escalate to war.
new nuclear states are not more prone to conflict than old nuclear states the logic and
. If nuclear weapons prevent war,
Optimists admit that nuclear weapons do not necessarily prevent all types of interstate conflict (see Hagerty, 2009: 109 –110; Waltz, 2003: 17), but they do not argue that nuclear weapons increase conflict either. Waltz (2003:
9–26) also suggests that
, because
assumptions of nuclear deterrence can be applied not only to old nuclear major powers but to any kind
of states
(minor powers, domestically unstable states, autocratic states, or states engaged in rivalry). In short, optimist logic expects that nuclear proliferation reduces a systemic propensity for interstate conflict through deterrent effects. Nuclear-proliferation pessimists
suggest that nuclear proliferation sometimes increases conflict; in discussions of nuclear symmetry, pessimists point out the problem of the stability–instability paradox, whereby “nuclear deterrence at the strategic level allows for greater flexibility and aggression at lower levels”
(Saideman, 2005: 219; see also Snyder, 1965). Analyzing why Pakistan resorted to unconventional warfare against India even af ter both states became nuclear-armed, Bajpai (2009: 170) argues that the “existence [of nuclear weapons] created the conditions under which one side,
Pakistan, felt that the fear of nuclear war allowed it to prosecute an insurgency/terror war against India”. Thus, nuclear symmetry can provoke limited war and conflict, if not full-scale war. As for nuclear asymmetry, Geller (1990: 307) points out that “the possession of nuclear weapons
has no evident inhibitory effect on the escalation propensities of the non-nuclear opponent” for the following two reasons: first, the nonnuclear state may doubt that the nuclear opponent will actually use nuclear weapons due to “its lack of military significance” or “political and ethical
inhibitions”; and second, the non-nuclear state may have greater interests in the conflict than the nuclear opponent. Hence, Geller concludes that, in nuclear asymmetry, “war is a distinct possibility, with aggressive escalation by the non-nuclear power probable” (Geller 1990: 307). As for
the age of nuclear states, Sagan (2003: 53–72) suggests that new nuclear states are more prone to conflict than old ones, because the assumptions of nuclear deterrence cannot be applied to the former. Other states may be motivated to initiate preventive war to destroy new nuclear
states’ nuclear programs in their early stages, while new nuclear states may lack second-strike capabilities for effective deterrence. The implication of this argument is twofold: first, if new nuclear states do not have as much deterrence credibility as do old nuclear states, they are likely to
motivate other states to initiate conflict. Other states are faced with a closing window of opportunities to secure their interest vis-à-vis new nuclear states. With time, their nuclear capabilities will develop, making it more difficult for other states to change the status quo by military
means. Second, because they fear that other states will initiate conflict earlier rather than later, new nuclear states may initiate conflict as a costly signal to increase their deterrence credibility. Therefore, according to pessimist logic, new nuclear states are more likely to experience
conflict (either as a target or an initiator) than old nuclear states or non-nuclear states. In summary, pessimist logic says that nuclear proliferation occasionally increases a systemic propensity for interstate conflict, particularly after a new nuclear state appears in the system. Bueno de
Mesquita and Riker (1982) and Intriligator and Brito (1981) suggest middle-ground views. While their model primarily focuses on the relationship between nuclear proliferation and the probability of nuclear war, it can be inferred that if the number of nuclear states changes the
probability of nuclear war, it should also change the probability of interstate conflict which could escalate to such war. Bueno de Mesquita and Riker’s (1982) formal model shows that nuclear proliferation increases the probability of conflict until the number of nuclear states reaches five,
and then the probability keeps decreasing along with further proliferation. Intriligator and Brito’s (1981) model indicates that nuclear proliferation causes the probability of conflict to increase until the second nuclear state obtains sufficient nuclear capabilities, and then further
proliferation either decreases or increases the probability depending on the potentiality of accidental or irrational war. In short, these two models expect a non-linear relationship between nuclear proliferation and a systemic propensity for interstate conflict. Finally, nuclear proliferation
could mitigate conflict through two ‘indirect’ mechanisms: first, extended nuclear deterrence decreases the likelihood of a non-nuclear protégé being a target of conflict (Fuhrmann and Sechser, 2014; see also Huth, 1990 and Weede, 1983), and ceteris paribus, nuclear proliferation should
result in a larger number of extended nuclear deterrence measures, thereby reducing a systemic propensity for conflict; and s econd, since nuclear weapons expand states’ foreign interests (Bell and Miller, 2015), the emergence of nuclear states might discourage non-nuclear dyads,
Given these conflict-reducing/provoking effects of nuclear
proliferation, what overall effect would nuclear proliferation have on a systemic propensity for
conflict? This is difficult to answer, not only due to the controversy over whether nuclear states are
more or less prone to conflict, but also because the existing theories do not explain whether those
conflict-reducing/provoking effects are large enough to influence a systemic propensity for interstate
particularly those in the same region, from engaging in conflict for fear of intervention by these nuclear states.
conflict
This challenge motivates the empirical examination of the
relationship between nuclear proliferation and a systemic propensity for conflict
The
interstate–systemic year data are used here to investigate the relationship between nuclear
proliferation and a systemic propensity for interstate conflict. The dependent variable is the number of
, given the ratio of nuclear states to non-nuclear states in the system.
. Empirical investigation by Random Forests
militarized interstate dispute onsets
standardized as the ratio to the number of
states in the interstate system
Observations one year ahead are used to
make sure that causal effects precede a variation in the dispute–state ratio Two regressors are used to
examine the effect of nuclear proliferation: the number of nuclear states
and count of the
years since the number of nuclear states changes
The model also includes the number of democratic states
in the interstate system, the gross world product
and the binary variable of unipolarity
these three variables control for democratic peace
capitalist peace
(Palmer et al., 2015; version 4.01 is used) per systemic-year,
(Correlates of War Project, 2011) – hereafter, the ‘dispute–state ratio’.
(t+1)
.2
in the interstate system;
a
(hereafter ‘nuclear year counter’), measuring the effect of new nuclear states (Horowitz, 2009). The data about nuclear states are from Gartzke and
(Polity2 score ⩾ 6 in
Kroenig (2009); additionally, the current paper codes North Korea as a nuclear state since 2009 (Table 1).3
Marshall, 2013)
(coded zero until 1989 and one from 1990; see Monteiro, 2011/2012);
(Earth Policy Institute, 2012),
(Russett and Oneal, 2001),
and polarity
[TABLE 1 REMOVED]
A lagged dependent variable is also included to address the temporal dependence of
time-series data
Random Forests has been widely used
in numerous scientific studies
Breiman’s original paper has
(Gartzke, 2007),
(Monteiro, 2011/2012) respectively.
The number of nuclear states and these control variables suffer from multicollinearity (see Table A-9 in the online appendix), and this paer
[paper] later explains how to resolve this problem.
. The temporal scope is 1950–2009 (i.e. N=59) due to the data availability and the use of the dependent variable at t+1. The descriptive statistics of all variables are displayed in Table 2.4 As mentioned in the introduction, this paper uses the
machine learning, non-parametric method Random Forests for the empirical investigation.5 Although it is unfamiliar to most political science and international relations analysts,
(Strobl et al., 2009: 324; Strobl et al., 2008). The popularity of the method is also apparent from the fact that
been cited 12,721 times in the literature
measures how ‘important’ each regressor is
.6 Random Forests generates two useful analytics:
(2001)
first, ‘conditional variable importance’
, conditional on the remaining regressors (Hothorn et al., 2006; Strobl et al., 2007, 2008). This is analogous to statistical significance in conventional regression models.
The significance threshold proposed by Strobl et al. (2009: 343) is whether the importance score of a regressor is negative, zero, or lower than the absolute value of the lowest negative score. If none applies, the regressor is considered as important; and the second relevant analytic is a
[TABLE 2 REMOVED] Random Forests
has three attractive and distinctive characteristics for the purposes of this paper: first, the estimation of
conditional variable importance and partial dependence plots enable conventional applied researchers
to interpret non-parametric analysis in an intuitive way;
Random Forests can examine non-linearity
which is desirable because, as already noted, some theories expect non-linearity between
nuclear proliferation and a systemic propensity for conflict and finally, it can cope with potential
partial dependence plot (Friedman, 2001). This estimates the marginal effect of each regressor on the dependent variable while taking the remaining regressors into consideration.
second,
(Strobl et al., 2009: 339–341),
;
interactions and multicollinearity between regressors
The specific capabilities of Random Forests are
(Strobl et al., 2009: 339–341; Strobl et al., 2008). As noted before, most of the regressors here are highly correlated, and also it is
plausible to anticipate some interaction effect between them (e.g. the number of democratic states and the gross world product).
therefore essential.
The estimation of conditional variable importance shows that the
nuclear year counter has a negative importance score
.7 Thus,
the nuclear year counter is not important in explaining the dispute–state ratio. This suggests that the
optimist theory is supported
Controlling for democratic peace, capitalist peace, and polarity, the number of nuclear states is still a
. The remaining regressors have an importance score higher than the absolute value of the importance score of the nuclear year counter, meaning that they are all important.
significant predictor in explaining a systemic propensity for interstate conflict
. Figure 1 presents the partial dependence plots of the model.8 First,
a larger number of nuclear states is associated with a lower dispute–state ratio although the
changes from two nuclear states to three and from six to seven increase the ratio instead. Thus, the
relationship is empirically non-linear
Overall, however, the optimist
on average,
,
, as Bueno de Mesquita and Riker (1982) and Intriligator and Brito (1981) expected in part.
theory is supported, and the change from two nuclear states to nine nuclear states decreases the
dispute–state ratio
approximately from 0.228 to 0.18. This means that,
if there are 194 states in the system
(as there were in 2009),
the number of
militarized interstate dispute onsets per system-year decreases approximately from 44 to 35 This is a
substantively significant decline.
the nuclear year counter shows a concave relationship with the
.
Second,
dispute–state ratio, suggesting that new nuclear states are less prone to conflict than middle-aged
nuclear states
pessimist theory finds no support from either the variable importance estimation or
the partial dependence plot. as for the control variables, the number of democratic states and the
gross world product have a complex non-linear relationship with the dispute–state ratio if the
number of democratic states and the gross world product are sufficiently large, they tend to decrease
the dispute– state ratio substantive effects are also significant, though not as much as the number of
nuclear states
Unipolarity
. Thus, the
Finally,
, but
. Their
. When comparing the effect of their lowest and highest values (23 and 94 in the number of democratic states and 7 and 71.2 in the gross world product), the number of democratic states decreases the number of militarized interstate dispute onsets
per system-year approximately from 40 to 37, and the gross world product from 44 to 37.
is also associated with a decline in the dispute–state ratio, suggesting that unipolarity is better than bipolarity in terms of a systemic propensity for interstate
its effect is negligible as it reduces the number of militarized interstate dispute onsets per
system-year from 39 to 38.
the optimist expectation of the relationship between
nuclear proliferation and interstate conflict is empirically supported a larger number of nuclear
conflict; however,
,
One caveat is, as explained in the online appendix, that the results of the number of democratic states and unipolarity are significantly sensitive to a parameter setting. Thus, these predictors are less robust, and
the aforementioned points about them should be treated with caution. Discussion and concluding remarks The main findings reveal that
:9 first,
states on average decreases the systemic propensity for interstate conflict
; and second,
there is no clear
evidence that the emergence of new nuclear states increases the systemic propensity for interstate
conflict
conflict.
. Gartzke and Jo (2009) argue that nuclear weapons themselves have no exogenous effect on the probability of conflict, because when a state is engaged in or expects to engage in conflict, it may develop nuclear weapons to keep fighting, or to prepare for, that
[FIGURE 1 REMOVED]
If this selection effect existed, the analysis should overestimate the conflict-provoking effect of nuclear proliferation in the above model. Still, the results indicate that a larger number of nuclear states are associated
with fewer disputes in the system.
NATO forces Russia’s hand to cementing the axis – from 2022.
Bradley Devlin 22, MA Political Economy from UC Berkeley, 2-11-22, “Thank NATO For The New
Russia-China Pact,” https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/thank-nato-for-the-newrussia-china-pact/, jy
The new partnership between Russia and China is America's chickens coming home to roost .
Russia and China announced the formation of a “no-limits” partnership last week, the predictable consequence of America’s misguided policy towards post-Soviet
Russia and ill-advised embrace of a rising China.
Putin and Xi publicized the agreement, spanning over 5,000 words in English, just before the two leaders were seen at the opening ceremonies of the Winter
Olympics in Beijing, which is under diplomatic boycott by the U.S. and other Western nations over the CCP’s human-rights abuses. “Friendship between the two
States has no limits, there are no ‘forbidden’ areas of cooperation,” the signatory nations said in a joint statement.
In the
new bilateral pact, the nations pledged mutual support on issues that are sure to enflame the U.S. and
its allies . Russia proclaimed its support of the One-China principle —the idea that Taiwan is an inseparable part of China—and
expressed opposition
to Taiwanese independence. For its part, China joined Russia’s call to end NATO
enlargement . The pair also reiterated their opposition to the trilateral “AUKUS” agreement, which would help provide the
Australians with nuclear-powered submarines, and “the advancement of U.S. plans to develop global missile [defense] and
deploy its elements in various regions of the world, combined with capacity building of high-precision
non-nuclear weapons for disarming strikes and other strategic objectives.”
Further, China and Russia pledged to cooperate on the development of artificial intelligence, information security, and space technologies. The nations also unveiled
an energy deal worth $117.5 billion that will bolster Russia’s gas exports to East Asia.
Evolving circumstances in Ukraine and the South China Sea provide the backdrop, and considerable
incentive, for the new agreement between China and Russia. Russia has amassed over 100,000 troops on its border with Ukraine over the past
few months. The Biden administration has responded by announcing the deployment of about 3,000 additional U.S. troops to Europe, keeping another 8,500 on
standby. Aside from the AUKUS agreement, things
have grown more complicated in the South China Sea due to an increased
number of Chinese incursions into Taiwan’s air defense identification zone (ADIZ) and rumors that Washington might shed its
strategic ambiguity with respect to Taiwan. These developments are the latest in a long line of miscalculations by the
U.S. foreign policy apparatus over 30 years.
In 1949, many core European countries were still recovering from the Second World War. The Soviet Union was, too, but its economy had recovered more rapidly
than expected and it was developing and testing nuclear weapons. Thus, trans-Atlanticists saw a need for a defensive alliance to stave off whatever territorial
ambitions the Soviet Union had in Western Europe. Et voilà, NATO was born. Originally, the alliance had 12 members. Only one, Norway, shared a border with
Russia. The Soviets responded with the creation of their own alliance, the Warsaw Pact, in 1955. By then, NATO had already added Greece, Turkey, and West
Germany.
Thirty-six years later, increased pressure from the West and contradictions within the Soviet system resulted in the dissolution of the USSR in 1991. The U.S. and its
NATO allies outlasted the Soviets and the Warsaw Pact. Just like that, NATO’s raison d’être disappeared . NATO was
forced to reckon with the consequences of victory. More
than four decades of bureaucratic entrenchment and military-
industrial expansion made the thought of ending NATO unpopular —not to mention the fact that the United States,
unquestionably the leader of the NATO alliance, saw the alliance as a means to cement its global hegemony.
So, instead of going out of business, NATO
went out of area, wading into conflicts in the Middle East and
micromanaging European instability. Since the fall of the USSR, NATO has pursued a dual track of diplomacy with
Russia—simultaneously cooperating with Russia
on its chosen campaigns to remain relevant and
maintaining the Cold
War frame that Russia is the main menace in Europe.
From 1994-1997, it appeared NATO and Russia were making real efforts to find areas of mutual cooperation. Russia entered into NATO’s Partnership for Peace
program in 1994, and three years later, the two parties signed the Founding Act on Mutual Relations, Cooperation and Security, stating “the reasons why NATO and
Russia believe that it is in their shared interest to cooperate more broadly and intensively.”
In 1999, however, NATO
returned to its old ways, accepting Hungary, Poland, and the Czech Republic as members
move angered the Russians, as NATO expansion was still a sore point for even post-Soviet Russia. The Russians had
already felt betrayed by the fact that, in subsequent negotiations between the USSR and president George H.W. Bush’s administration, then-U.S.
of the alliance. The
Secretary of State James Baker’s alleged promise to the USSR that NATO would move “not one inch” eastward never reappeared. NATO’s expansion in 1999
confirmed Russia’s fears.
Nevertheless, NATO continued to court Russian cooperation. At the 2002 NATO Summit in Rome, the alliance and Russia signed another agreement to create the
NATO-Russia Council, which produced results in issue areas such as counterterrorism.
Yet NATO
continued to undercut its progress with Russia
in other areas by its
continued expansion . In 2004, NATO
expanded for the fifth time , adding Bulgaria, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, and the Baltic states (Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania), two of which share a
border with Russia. NATO then made Albania and Croatia members in 2009, Montenegro in 2017, and North Macedonia as recently as 2020. “Not one inch” turned
into nearly 1,000 miles pretty quickly.
Russia believes NATO expansion won’t end there . Given the precedent NATO has set, it’s hard to blame them . In fact,
NATO and some of its key member states like the
U.S. have openly expressed desires to keep expanding up to Russia’s
western border. NATO has been courting Ukraine and Georgia, two vital nations in the Russian cultural
imagination, since 1994.
While the U.S.-led NATO alliance was
pursuing its muddled , incoherent approach to Russia, Russia and China
started patching up the holes in their relationship left by the Sino-Soviet split. The two nations solved a decades-long
border dispute, increased trade in vital industries like machine goods, textiles, energy, and other natural
resources. The U.S. encouraged China’s rise to global prominence by, among other things, allowing it to enter the World Trade Organization. As one Joe Biden
said in 2011, “a rising China is a positive, positive development, not only for China but for America and the world writ large.”
Which brings us to the present moment, in which the
industrial complex, refuse
trans-Atlantic foreign policy elites , bolstered by their beneficiaries in the military-
to offer any prudent course-correction to prevent the formation of a full-fledged
axis against the United States . This could end with America’s sons and daughters dying overseas to solve the problems they created. But it
doesn’t have to.
NATO is obsolete and unsustainable---Europe can defend itself
Logan 7/23 (Justin Logan, master’s degree in international relations from the University of Chicago
and a bachelor’s degree in international relations from American University, director of defense and
foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute, his articles have appeared in International Security, the
Journal of Strategic Studies, Strategic Studies Quarterly, Foreign Policy, the National Interest, the
Harvard International Review, Orbis, the Foreign Service Journal, National Review, Politico Magazine,
and the American Prospect; "NATO Is a Luxury Good the United States Doesn’t Need", 7-23-2022, Cato
Institute, https://www.cato.org/commentary/nato-luxury-good-united-states-doesnt-need, DOA: 8-282022)//sposten
For decades, the most widely held belief in the Washington foreign‐policy establishment has been that NATO is tremendously valuable to the United States. As
former U.S. diplomat William Burns wrote in his memoir, even the expansion of the alliance “stayed on autopilot as a matter of U.S. policy, long after its
fundamental assumptions should have been reassessed. Commitments originally meant to reflect interests morphed into interests themselves.” Being
a
NATO skeptic in Washington is like being a middle‐aged white guy at a Bad Bunny concert. On both counts, take
it from me: You feel out of place.
As Burns suggests, one
thing that happens with unexamined consensus is that arguments in its favor fail to be
sharpened by contact with their opponents. Kathleen J. McInnis has thankfully stepped into the breach, offering Foreign Policy readers an
argument that Americans still need NATO.
Her essay argues forcefully that NATO is the taproot of the “enormous economic prosperity and freedom” that Americans enjoy. Not only prosperity and freedom,
though: Providing security for Europeans “allows the United States to set the international security agenda,” enhances U.S. credibility in Asia, helped facilitate
Washington’s post‑9/11 wars, helps handle “anti‐piracy missions off the Horn of Africa … China, climate change, and advanced disruptive technologies” in addition
to “disinformation operations, pandemic response, migration, and terrorism.”
Whew.
Some of us might argue that lubricating
U.S. operations in the greater Middle East after 9/11 was a bad thing —given
that the missions themselves were mostly bad. The
United States squandered $8 trillion, thousands of lives, and almost two
decades of attention in Iraq and Afghanistan. Anything that made that easier should be tallied as a debit, not a credit.
But there’s
a bigger problem. NATO isn’t about pandemic response or anti‐piracy. It has no capabilities,
no authority, and no fitness for these purposes. NATO is an old‐fashioned military alliance. However
big a problem migration or disinformation may be, the alliance wasn’t designed and still isn’t tailored for
dealing with them.
These problems aren’t just missing from the North Atlantic Treaty; they appear only as marketing in
more recent official documents, including NATO’s just‐issued Strategic Concept. NATO is
sold —and sells itself—as many things,
but it is, by treaty and by the structure of its bureaucracy, a military alliance dedicated to the security of its
members.
Given NATO’s origins as a military alliance aimed at deterring Soviet aggression , we should ask ourselves: With
the Soviets out and the Germans down, why did the United States struggle so mightily to stay in after
the Cold War? The answer is simple: NATO is, and always has been, a vehicle for maintaining the United States
as the dominant security player in Europe. That there were sharper disagreements about this idea in the 1950s than there are today
speaks volumes about the lack of debate in today’s Washington.
Even the Rand Corp. report that McInnis cites in support of the idea of “defense in depth” in Europe remarks that U.S.
leaders only adopted the
concept grudgingly out of fear that “U.S. allies were too weak to contain the Soviet Union on their
own.” As that report observes, the four divisions Congress agreed to send to Germany in 1950 “were not intended to remain there indefinitely; instead, the U.S.
troops were to be withdrawn when Western Europe had recovered sufficiently to field its own conventional deterrent.”
Western Europe had recovered sufficiently to field its own conventional deterrent less than a decade
later. By 1959, a memo described U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower as lamenting: “The Europeans now attempt to consider this
deployment as a permanent and definite commitment. We are carrying practically the whole weight of
the strategic deterrent force, also conducting space activities, and atomic programs. We paid for most of the
infrastructure, and maintain large air and naval forces as well as six divisions. He thinks the Europeans are close to ‘making a sucker out of Uncle Sam’; so long as
they could prove a need for emergency help, that was one thing. But that time has passed.”
Does the United States need to remain the main provider of security in Europe forever? Recent
developments in Europe, spurred by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, suggest it doesn’t. Germany’s
Zeitenwende —officially translated as “watershed” but something more like “new era”—was almost unthinkable six months ago. Berlin didn’t just cancel
the Nord Stream 2 pipeline (analysts had worried it might not) but also established
a 100 billion euro ($107 billion) fund to bolster its
defense and committed itself thereafter to spending 2 percent of its GDP on defense. Poland and several other
states made similar pledges to increase spending.
But as political scientist Barry Posen remarked at a recent Cato Institute panel, there
is reason to worry these pledges won’t
materialize. The United States has rushed into the breach, sending 20,000 additional U.S. troops to
Europe to reassure NATO allies. The downside of reassurance is that when you reassure enough, your
allies are likely to believe you and may not step up and do more for their own defense. It seems likely that the
Europeans, confident behind Captain America’s shield, will go back to business as usual in Europe. For
example, as Jennifer Lind’s work on Japan shows, Japan
did relatively more for its own defense only when it feared the
United States might do less. In this case, the Russian invasion of Ukraine provided shock therapy for European threat assessments.
Restoring the United States as Europe’s pacifier may restore indifference and inaction.
In 2022, U.S. allies are not too weak to contain Russia on their own. They simply refuse to do so out of
the well‐founded belief that the United States will do so for them, and accordingly their people would
benefit from spending their own tax dollars on domestic priorities.
The United States cannot maintain its role as the cornerstone of European security while successfully
competing with a growing China forever. And the cheap‐riding that afflicts the U.S. alliance in Europe also addles its alliances in Asia.
Panegyrics to the trans‐Atlantic community are still in vogue in Washington because they are seen as cheap. They aren’t. Resource
constraints are beginning to bite. The defense budget, already bloated at $847 billion, is not headed to $1 trillion and above anytime soon.
Maintaining U.S. domination of the European security scene is a luxury good the United States doesn’t
need in 2022. The United States fought two wars to prevent a European hegemon from emerging in the 20th century. There is no potential
European hegemon on or even over the horizon at the present. For all Russia’s bluster, it’s struggling
to take even part of a much smaller, poorer neighbor—let alone hold it. It’s time to take the win.
For those reasons, advocates
of NATO as a permanent alliance should probably start thinking about Plan B, not
advertising the alliance as a cure‐all for problems including climate change, piracy, and disinformation.
Europe is rich and strong enough to defend itself. But the Europeans won’t do so unless the United
States stops doing it for them.
The impact is about coordination, not an alliance---that’s possible and sparks war.
Kendall-Taylor 19, PhD in Political Science from Yale, Senior Fellow in and Director of the
Transatlantic Security Program at the Center for a New American Security an Adjunct Professor in
Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service. (Andrea, 03-21-2019, "An Emerging China-Russia
Axis?: Implications for the United States in an Era of Strategic Competition", CNAS,
https://www.cnas.org/publications/congressional-testimony/an-emerging-china-russia-axisimplications-for-the-united-states-in-an-era-of-strategic-competition)
4. Deepening relations between Russia and China will be among the most significant U.S. foreign policy challenges in the coming decade.
Russia and China are unlikely to forge a formal military alliance . But even short of such an alliance, their
growing alignment and coordination will present a significant challenge for U.S. national security in the
coming years. The Director of National Intelligence warned in his 2019 Annual Threat Assessment that strengthening ties between China and
Russia will present a “wide variety of economic, political, counterintelligence, military, and diplomatic challenges to the United States and its
allies.”5 If
Russia-China relations continue to grow, it would harm U.S. interests by enhancing their
mutual capabilities and stretching U.S. capabilities, complicating U.S. strategic planning by potentially
dividing U.S. power, emboldening them to act knowing they will have each other’s support , enhancing the
perceived legitimacy of the alternative they provide, and
diluting U.S leverage over countries willing to play the United States
off Russia and China.6 Russia and China are also poised to challenge U.S. interests through the complementarity of their actions.7 Russia
and China take different approaches to pursuing their foreign policy objectives. Russian foreign policy is
confrontational and brazen. So far, China has used a subtler and more risk-averse strategy, preferring stability that is conducive to building
economic ties and influence. Although
their tactics are different, they have the potential to converge in
synergistic ways such that the combined effects on U.S. interests is greater than the sum of their
individual efforts . This dynamic is most evident in Europe, but there is potential for greater synergies between
Russia and China to create new challenges for the United States.
block.
China and Russia will manage their differences because they’re both motivated in
countering the U.S. BUT, if the American-Russian relationship stabilizes, collaboration
would cease.
Yun Sun 22, Senior Fellow and Co-Director of the East Asia Program at Stimson, former Visiting Fellow
at the Brookings Institution, 3-4-2022, "China’s Strategic Assessment of Russia: More Complicated Than
You Think," https://warontherocks.com/2022/03/chinas-strategic-assessment-of-russia-morecomplicated-than-you-think/, jy
Brought Together by a Mutual Adversary
China and Russia are pushed together by two factors. The first is the shared threat the United States poses . The
second is a leader-level nostalgia for the Sino-Soviet partnership. The most salient characteristic of the Sino-Russian alignment today is
their shared threat perception of the United States. This does not mean that China and Russia would not have any relationship absent
this shared perspective — they always have and always will. But it does mean that the shape and health of their relationship would be
completely different if the shared threat perception of the United States was not present.
Prior to the 2014 crisis over Ukraine, China and Russia had a lukewarm relationship. However, the crisis created a watershed event that led Chinese government
experts to designate 2014 as “a year of abnormal acceleration of Sino-Russia relations,” although, this acceleration needs to be qualified since China has not yet
recognized Russia’s annexation of Crimea. Still, around that time, China’s
strategic anxiety over the U.S. strategy of “rebalancing
to Asia” coincided with Russia’s fear over NATO’s potential expansion . As such, China made a
determination that “China and Russia face the same international pressure from the U.S. bully on a wide range of issues
from global governance to their neighborhood and to their domestic affairs.” For Beijing, China and Russia are both identified as revisionist powers in the
international order (although the common title disguises critical distinctions of their desired goals). Furthermore, the
United States constitutes the
most important threat to both countries in their primary theaters — China in the West Pacific and Russia in
Eastern Europe. Alignment and cooperation is thus sought, almost instinctively, to mitigate Chinese and
Russian isolation by the West, to divide American attention and resources, and to complicate U.S. military
planning in both theaters .
Such an alignment is significant for alleviating strategic pressure on China , at least psychologically. At a minimum,
it provides a reassurance that China is not countering U.S. hegemony alone. As long as the United States
pursues “dual containment” of both China and Russia, the alignment will have motivation and
justification. Given the overarching theme in the Chinese national security strategy that defines the United States as China’s primary threat, any
disagreements with Russia are seen as secondary and Russian diplomatic and military capabilities will be
seen as a valuable asset .
Yet Russia’s fondness for strategic maneuver, such as the utilization of hybrid warfare, also constitutes a major risk for China. Four hundred years of Sino-Russian
relations has taught the Chinese that during China’s conflicts with others, the Russian modus operandi is to maximize its own benefits in the name of mediation and
assistance for China. For example, Russia carved out one million square kilometers of Chinese territory through its mediation of the Second Opium War. Therefore,
the assessment by China’s Russia hands is that Moscow not only sees the “new Cold War” between Washington and Beijing as beneficial for Russia, but that Russia
is also responsible for “exploiting and deepening the suspicion, hostility and fear” between Washington and Beijing through diplomatic maneuvers and
manipulations. Yet, these experts also vigorously warn about Russian acts of “balancing and coalescing” with both America and China.
So long as the United States remains the biggest threat to China and Russia, the latter will manage
their differences to serve the more important goal of countering U.S. pressure . However, while such alignment is
strong in terms of words and postures, it is weak on actions. As attested by the joint statement by China and Russia during Putin’s most recent visit of Beijing, the
two countries are adept at verbally expressing their shared positions and mutual support, but they are short on concrete policies to be adopted. For example, as
China tries to gauge Russia’s substantive support in the South China Sea and on Taiwan, nothing but tepid statements have emerged, along with one joint military
exercise in the South China Sea in 2016. While support in this limited domain does not do justice to China and Russia’s coordination on the global scale, the
authenticity of the Sino-Russian friendship is tested by how Russia will act toward China’s most important security concerns, such as Taiwan and the South China
Sea.
Sino-Russian alignment is also vulnerable to shifts in the balance of relations between the United States,
China, and Russia. This is the core weakness of a relationship driven by external factors, in the eyes of Chinese analysts. As put by Ji Zhiye, former
president of CICIR, , the Sino-Russian relationship is “temporary, uncertain, vulnerable and could be severely
weakened by even slight changes in the external factor (the U.S. policy toward both).” Improvement of relations
with the United States, by either China or Russia, will undermine the confidence by the other party.
Furthermore, overwhelming Russian dependence on China from sweeping Western sanctions will sow the seeds of Russian discontent against China and result in
efforts to distance and counterbalance.