1AC vs hkr ASu
1AC
1AC—Advantage
Advantage 1 is Hegemony
U.S. military presence in Iraq & Syria destabilizes West Asia and pushes the region
further toward illiberalism
Hoffman 11-6 [Jon Hoffman - policy analyst in defense and foreign policy at the Cato Institute;
Hoffman holds a Ph.D. in political science, an M.A. in Middle East and Islamic Studies, and a B.A. in
Global Affairs, all from George Mason University. November 6, 2023. “US Is Barreling toward Another
War in the Middle East.” Cato Institute. https://www.cato.org/commentary/us-barreling-towardanother-war-middle-east] //neth
The United States is barreling toward another war in the [West Asia]. The conflict between Israel and
Hamas is rapidly escalating across the region and risks dragging the United States directly into the fray.
The recent barrage of ballistic missiles and drones launched by Yemen’s Houthi movement at Israel —
coupled with a statement by the group that such attacks will continue — and the continued attacks on
U.S. positions in the region show this conflict is expanding fast. The United States now finds itself on a new
war footing with Iran and its regional partners, whom many in Congress have cast as part of a new “Axis
of Evil” that includes Russia and China. The Biden administration is preparing for such a scenario, yet adequate measures are not
being taken by Washington to prevent such a disaster from transpiring. Fear among the American public that the United States will be dragged
into another Middle East war is rising fast: according to a recent Quinnipiac poll, 84% of respondents were either “very” or “somewhat”
concerned that the U.S. could be drawn into the conflict. What exactly is the Biden administration doing to avoid the broader conflict?
President Biden and his team have repeatedly warned Israel against making the same “mistakes” the United States made following
September 11, 2001, but it would appear Washington has yet to learn from our own errors of the past two decades. If
the
administration does not want to enter another war in the Middle East, it needs to prevent the conflict
from pulling in additional actors from across the region. The way the war is being fought at present seems to make that
outcome more likely, not less. Following Hamas’s terror attack on Israel on October 7, the United States significantly increased its military
presence in the Middle East in hopes of deterring a broader regional conflict. The United States deployed two aircraft carrier strike groups, with
roughly 7,500 personnel on each, two guided‐missile destroyers, and nine air squadrons to the Eastern Mediterranean and Red Sea region.
Washington also deployed an additional 4,000 troops to the region, with another 2,000 on standby, adding to the roughly 30,000 troops
already in the region. This buildup comes as the conflict is escalating considerably. Over 1,500 Israelis and more than 9,770 Palestinians have
died as a result of the war. The situation inside Gaza is dire, with over one million displaced and thousands in desperate need of humanitarian
assistance. In the West Bank, violence has also been escalating, with an estimated 152 Palestinians killed by Israeli settlers and soldiers since
the war began, resulting in the United States calling on Israel to “protect Palestinians from Israeli extremist settler violence.” Outside
of
the war itself, violence is increasing throughout the region. U.S. forces in the Middle East have already
been targeted at least 23 times in Iraq and Syria by groups connected to Iran. In response, U.S. forces conducted
airstrikes on two facilities linked to the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) in Syria, while vowing to retaliate further if the targeting of
U.S. personnel continues. Israel and Hezbollah continue to engage in clashes, with almost 50 Hezbollah fighters killed since October 7.
Hezbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, delivered his first public address since the start of the war on Friday Nov. 3, where he stressed the
independent decision‐making of Hamas in launching its attack on Israel while also pressing for an end to the conflict, but maintained that a
region‐wide war remains possible. Nasrallah also praised Yemen’s Houthis for getting involved. Following the latest barrage of ballistic missiles
and drones, the Houthis have now targeted Israel three times since the war began. Israel has also continued to strike Iran‐backed militias in
Syria following the outbreak of war in Gaza. The Biden administration needs to square up to the fact that a broader war in the Middle East
would be ruinous for the United States and the region. Given
the relative military weakness of America’s regional
partners — with the exception of Israel, who would nonetheless be overextended in such a scenario —
the United States would have to do the lion’s share of the fighting and would bear the majority of its costs.
Such a war would result in dramatic new levels of U.S. commitments and entanglements in the region at a time when the Middle East no longer
represents a core theater of U.S. interests. The risk of a major war in the Middle East comes as the United States is already deeply engaged in
assisting Ukraine against Russia’s invasion and trying to deter China in the Indo‐Pacific, while carrying a national debt north of $33 trillion and
running $1 trillion‐plus budget deficits each year in peacetime. Opening a new front in the Middle East while trying to pursue Washington’s
stated interests in Europe and the Indo‐Pacific risks plunging America toward an economic crisis. It
goes without saying that for the
[West Asia] itself, such a war would be catastrophic, destabilizing the region politically, economically,
and militarily. The war would threaten to empower illiberal actors across the region at the expense of
genuine stability. The profound human and material costs would plague the Middle East for generations to come. It should be clear
from the past several decades that throwing money, weapons and military assets at the region often has
profound negative consequences. In this case, Washington is risking further escalation and even direct U.S. involvement in a
region‐wide war. Biden needs to make clear that the central U.S. interest is to stay out of the revolving door of Middle East conflicts and avoid
being dragged into a ruinous military campaign across the region.
The perception of ongoing instigation of violence wrecks America’s credibility as a
promoter of democracy – withdrawal k2 positive perception of American LIO
Yom 23 [Sean L. Yom - Senior Fellow in the Middle East Program at the Foreign Policy Research
Institute and an Associate Professor of Political Science at Temple University. March 30, 2023.
“Hegemony, Democracy, and the Legacy of the Iraq War.” Foreign Policy Research Institute.
https://www.fpri.org/article/2023/03/hegemony-democracy-and-the-legacy-of-the-iraq-war/] //neth
The Iraq War transformed America’s role in the Middle East and North Africa in three ways. The first two are well-known. The conflict exposed
the limits of US hegemony by engaging its military in a winless occupation, and it unleashed an emboldened Iran to pursue an expansionist
agenda that has destabilized parts of the region. The third effect was equally consequential, but often overlooked. The
Iraq conflict
sullied the image of Western democracy promotion, because it tied the universal issue of freedom to
the particular violence of an American conquest. Since then, advocates of democratization across the region—grassroots
movements, civic activists, professional associations, youth groups, and others—have not trusted the United States and its Western allies to
serve as credible sponsors for democracy. Even today, amidst an era of revolutionary challenges against authoritarian rule, the United States
carries little moral weight as a beacon of democracy. This ugly legacy demands closer scrutiny. Within the Middle East and North Africa, the Iraq
War embodied what the Bush administration then called its “Freedom Agenda.” In the post-Cold War era, the United States enjoyed an
extraordinary, if brief, period of geopolitical primacy. The Middle East had become a unipolar arena under American hegemony, with Russian
interests and Chinese financing not even a glimmer upon the strategic horizon. After 9/11, the region morphed into the logical frontier by which
Washington could enforce its vision of global order. In addition to the broader war against al Qaeda, the extermination of Saddam Hussein’s
dictatorship served as a test of this resolve. Yet for all the chimera of finding Iraq’s purported weapons of mass destruction, it was the clarion
call of implanting freedom—of spreading Western liberalism and democracy into dark corners of a distant Muslim land—that punctuated public
justifications of the war long after Baghdad fell. At the time, the cause of democracy seemed worth it. The
push for war masked a
deeper bipartisan consensus that despotism in the [West Asia] represented an existential threat to US
national interests. Dictatorships bred dissatisfied citizens that could be seduced by the propaganda of terrorist organizations; and
friendly democracies, not rapacious autocracies, could be better entrusted with protecting Israel and safeguarding regional oil. Thus, a
simplistic logic reigned. If the United States could engender a wave of Middle East democratization, then grateful peoples and the new
governments they elected would gladly help satisfy its long-term goals. Such democracy promotion required new diplomatic and economic
commitments, such as pressuring governments to curtail repression, ramping up assistance to civil society, and conditioning aid on democratic
reforms. But the keystone was always war. The invasion of Iraq enshrined not just America’s coercive firepower but also the
credibility of its liberal commitment. If a post-Saddam Iraq became a shining exemplar of US-built democracy, then every future call for
freedom would carry an interminable clause: Democratize, or else we will do it for you. Of course, the Freedom Agenda ended with a whimper.
By the end of the Bush administration, the previous appetite to remake regional order on a grandiose scale had been replaced with resigned
acceptance that Iraq was mired in carnage and corruption. Elsewhere, not only allies like Morocco, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia, but recalcitrant
autocracies like Iran and Syria easily shrugged off American pressures for democratic reform. Yet even as the Obama administration began to
scale down American interventionism—beginning a process of withdrawal from the Middle East that continues today—the damage was done.
Across the Arab world, many people not only reviled the Iraq War but associated any democratic advocacy by the United States and its Western
allies as inherently tainted. Some
levers of American democracy promotion, such as civil society assistance and
educational exchanges, persisted. But on the ground, few local visionaries saw the United States as a trustworthy partner for
change, because its hands were stained by Iraqi blood. Critically, the Iraq War did not make Arab societies turn away
from democracy. Public surveys like the Arab Barometer have shown consistently high levels of support for democratization across the
region. More proof burst forth during 2011–2012, when the Arab Spring raised a raucous wave of popular uprisings across the Middle East and
North Africa. Those revolts highlighted the demands of many young citizens for democratic rights, whether they were ruled by dynastic kings in
Bahrain and Jordan or presidents-for-life in Tunisia and Egypt. A second wave of unrest during 2018–2019 pitted more protesters against the
military generals of Algeria and Sudan, as well as the feckless factionalism of Lebanon and a still-turbulent Iraq. The ongoing demonstrations in
Iran stand as another reminder that the quest for political change remains unending.
Democracy k2 American primacy – past examples prove
Brands ‘18 (Hal Brands, Henry A. Kissinger Distinguished Professor of Global Affairs at the Johns
Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), Texas National Security Review Vol
1, Iss 2 February 2018 | 8–33. Accessed December 31, 2022. Stable URL:
https://doi.org/10.15781/T2VH5D166 | https://tnsr.org/2018/02/choosing-primacy-u-s-strategy-globalorder-dawn-post-cold-war-era-2/) //neth & SJ
U.S. policy played little role in initiating those transformations. Bush admitted to Gorbachev in December 1989, “We were shocked by the
swiftness of the changes that unfolded.”43 As events raced ahead, however, the administration became deeply engaged, endorsing and
actively pushing for German reunification under Western auspices. “No approach on our part toward Germany is without risk,” Scowcroft wrote
in a memo to Bush, “but at this point the most dangerous course of all for the United States may be to allow others to set the shape and
character of a united Germany and or the future structure of European security.”44 By
mid-1990 and after, the administration
was even considering eventual expansion of NATO further into the former Warsaw Pact area to
discourage post-Cold War instability and foster political and economic reform.45 Existing scholarship has
explored the contours of U.S. policy on these issues.46 More salient here is that events in Europe in 1989 and 1990
powerfully interacted with the main currents in American thinking about the post-Cold War world. In
one sense, the breakdown of Soviet rule in Eastern Europe provided a breathtaking demonstration of
just how immense the possibilities might be in this emerging era. “We were witnessing the sorts of changes usually
only imposed by victors at the end of a major war,” Scowcroft later wrote in his memoir. Reunification on Western terms, he had observed
contemporaneously, in November 1989, would “rip the heart out of the Soviet security system” in Eastern Europe and mark a “fundamental
shift in the strategic balance.”47 Moreover, the
transitions underway in Eastern Europe were underscoring the
possibility for further advances by free markets and free political systems. “We are witnessing the transformation of
almost every state in Eastern Europe into more democratic societies, dominated by pluralistic political systems matched to decentralized
economies,” Scowcroft wrote in a memo to the president.48 This
prospect was a principal driver of U.S. policy in 1989
and 1990. U.S. officials studiously engaged Moscow in the multilateral diplomacy surrounding reunification, and they carefully avoided
humiliating Gorbachev over the catastrophic retreat of Soviet influence. Privately, however, Bush and Scowcroft intended to exploit U.S.
strength and Soviet weakness to remake the European order on American terms. “The Soviets are not in a position to dictate Germany’s
relationship with NATO,” Bush said at a meeting with West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl in early 1990. “To hell with that. We prevailed and
they didn’t.”49 Accordingly, the administration encouraged Kohl to move briskly toward reunification, while also pressing Moscow to accept
reunification within NATO and decisively rejecting Soviet proposed alternatives such as a neutralized Germany. As they did so, American
officials treated Gorbachev with great respect in their bilateral dealings, and Bush and Kohl arranged for concessions — especially German
financial assistance to Moscow — to ensure Soviet acquiescence. Yet the guiding assumption remained that Washington and its allies must
move decisively to lock in epochal changes. “There is so much change in Eastern Europe,” Bush said in January 1990. “We should seize the
opportunity to make things better for the world.”50 There were widespread fears that the collapse of Soviet authority in Eastern Europe could
unleash ethnic violence or resurgent nationalist rivalries within that region. The
process of German reunification thus offered
tantalizing opportunities to ensure American dominance in post-Cold War Europe. At the same time,
that process also reinforced the idea that such strategic assertiveness was necessary to manage
emerging dangers. Reunification was deeply worrying to Poland, France, the United Kingdom, and the Soviet Union, which feared that a
united Germany might once again dominate Europe. As NATO Secretary General Manfred Wörner privately warned Bush as the diplomacy
surrounding reunification heated up, “The Old Pandora’s box of competition and rivalry in Europe” might be reopened.51 More broadly, there
were widespread fears that the collapse of Soviet authority in Eastern Europe could unleash ethnic violence or resurgent nationalist rivalries
within that region. “The outlines of ancient European antagonisms are already beginning to emerge,” Scowcroft wrote in late 1989. A “power
vacuum is developing” as Soviet influence receded.52 For
the Bush administration, these concerns powerfully
underscored the need not to retract U.S. influence but to maintain and expand it. By this logic, keeping a
reunified Germany within NATO would preclude resurgent instability by tying the new German state to the West and thereby eliminating the
competitive security dynamics that might otherwise emerge. As Baker warned, “Unless we find a way to truly anchor Germany in European
institutions we will sow the seeds for history to repeat itself.”53 Moreover, integrating a reunified Germany into NATO would ensure that the
alliance remained relevant after the Cold War, thereby also ensuring a continued role for U.S. power in Europe. The alternatives, Scowcroft
warned Bush in a key memorandum, were dangerous: “Twentieth century history gives no encouragement to those who believe the Europeans
can achieve and sustain this balance of power and keep the peace without the United States.”54 From late 1989 onward, this perspective
propelled efforts not simply to bring a reunified Germany into NATO but also to adapt that alliance to preserve its utility after the Cold War.
Amid German reunification, the Bush administration secured alliance reforms meant to make a strong and vibrant NATO more acceptable to a
retreating Soviet Union. The alliance adjusted its force posture to take account of the decreasing Soviet threat, deemphasized the role of
nuclear weapons, and stressed NATO’s political (as opposed to strictly military) functions. Likewise, the administration took steps to
accommodate European desires for greater influence over their own security affairs in the post-Cold War era, while reaffirming NATO’s primacy
on European defense. “Our essential goal,” noted one administration strategy memo from 1990, was “a viable NATO that is the foundation for
Atlantic cooperation on political and security concerns and maintains the position of the United States as a European power.55 What made this
goal achievable was that there was widespread European support for a strong and perhaps expanded U.S. role. Although the French did seek a
more independent European security identity as the Cold War ended, neither they nor any other ally sought the withdrawal of U.S. troops from
Europe. As British Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd would say in 1990, “European security without the United States simply does not make
sense.”56 Even the Soviets and their erstwhile allies agreed. Although he initially resisted German reunification within NATO (and Moscow
would later object to NATO expansion during the 1990s and after), Gorbachev ultimately concluded that a united Germany tied to Washington
was preferable to an independent, neutral Germany. “The presence of American troops can play a containing role,” Gorbachev acknowledged
in a conversation with Baker.57 And as early as the spring of 1990, Warsaw Pact countries such as Poland and Hungary were inquiring about
eventual NATO membership as a guarantee of their own security.58 The United States did not immediately undertake NATO expansion in the
early 1990s, largely for fear of antagonizing Moscow at a time when Soviet troops had yet to be fully withdrawn from Eastern Europe, and
because U.S. officials had yet to study or debate the issue in sufficient detail to reach internal consensus.59 But even in 1990 and 1991, the
Bush administration was tentatively taking exploratory steps, such as extending NATO military liaison relationships to the bloc countries, and
the basic geopolitical logic of expansion was starting to take hold. The Office of the Secretary of Defense and the State Department Policy
Planning Staff believed, as the National Security Council’s director for European security affairs, Philip Zelikow, put it in October 1990, that it
was important “to keep the door ajar and not give the East Europeans the impression that NATO is forever a closed club.”60 Internal
documents argued that expansion would help avoid nationalist frictions and security dilemmas in Eastern Europe. Moreover, as one State
Department official subsequently wrote in 1992, Democratization
and economic development have a better chance of
succeeding if national security concerns in the Eastern democracies were reduced by credible,
multilateral security guarantees.61 In several respects, then, the European crisis of 1989 to 1990
underscored and helped to clarify key elements of Bush administration thinking. This episode reinforced
the idea that U.S. ascendancy and the weakening of traditional rivals had created a moment of
transition in which Washington could act decisively to achieve lasting structural changes. It affirmed the
notion that American influence and U.S.-led institutions could serve a critical stabilizing purpose amid
geopolitical uncertainty. Finally, this episode offered evidence for the idea that insofar as U.S. power promoted stability in the
international system, its maintenance and even expansion after the Cold War might be more welcomed than resisted. Many of these ideas
would soon reappear in the American reaction to a second major international crisis.
Primacy prevents great-power conflict — multipolar revisionism fragments the global
order and causes nuclear war.
Brands & Edel, 19 — Hal Brands; PhD, Henry A. Kissinger Distinguished Professor of Global Affairs at
the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. Charles Edel; PhD, Senior Fellow and
Visiting Scholar at the United States Studies Centre at the University of Sydney. (“The Lessons of
Tragedy: Statecraft and World Order;” Ch. 6: Darkening Horizon; Published by Yale University Press;
//GrRv)
Each of these geopolitical challenges is different, and each reflects the distinctive interests, ambitions, and history of the country undertaking it.
Yet there
is growing cooperation between the countries that are challenging the regional pillars of the
U.S.-led order. Russia and China have collaborated on issues such as energy, sales and development of military
technology, opposition to additional U.S. military deployments on the Korean peninsula, and naval exercises from the South China Sea to
the Baltic. In Syria, Iran provided the shock troops that helped keep Russia’s ally, Bashar al-Assad, in power, as
Moscow provided the air power and the diplomatic cover. “Our cooperation can isolate America,” supreme leader Ali Khamenei
told Putin in 2017. More broadly, what links these challenges together is their opposition to the constellation of
power, norms, and relationships that the U.S.-led order entails, and in their propensity to use violence,
coercion, and intimidation as means of making that opposition effective. Taken collectively, these challenges
constitute a geopolitical sea change from the post-Cold War era. The revival of great-power competition entails
higher international tensions than the world has known for decades, and the revival of arms races, security dilemmas, and
other artifacts of a more dangerous past. It entails sharper conflicts over the international rules of the
road on issues ranging from freedom of navigation to the illegitimacy of altering borders by force, and
intensifying competitions
over states that reside at the intersection of rival powers’ areas of interest. It requires confronting the prospect
that rival powers could overturn the favorable regional balances that have underpinned the U.S.-led
order for decades, and that they might construct rival spheres of influence from which America and the liberal
ideas it has long promoted would be excluded. Finally, it necessitates recognizing that great-power rivalry could lead to greatpower war, a prospect that seemed to have followed the Soviet empire onto the ash heap of history. Both Beijing and Moscow
are, after all, optimizing their forces and exercising aggressively in preparation for potential conflicts with
the United States and its allies; Russian doctrine explicitly emphasizes the limited use of nuc
s to achieve escalation
dominance in a war with Washington. In Syria, U.S. and Russian forces even came into deadly contact in early 2018.
lear weapon
American airpower decimated a contingent of government-sponsored Russian mercenaries that was attacking a base at which U.S. troops were
present, an incident demonstrating the increasing boldness of Russian operations and the corresponding potential for escalation. The
world
has not yet returned to the epic clashes for global dominance that characterized the twentieth century, but it has returned to the
historical norm of great-power struggle, with all the associated dangers. Those dangers may be even greater than most
observers appreciate, because if today’s great-power competitions are still most intense at the regional level, who is to say where these
competitions will end? By all appearances, Russia
does not simply want to be a “regional power” (as Obama cuttingly
aspires to the deep European and extra-regional impact
that previous incarnations of the Russian state enjoyed. Why else would Putin boast about how far his troops can drive
into Eastern Europe? Why else would Moscow be deploying military power into the [West Asia]? Why else would it
be continuing to cultivate intelligence and military relationships in regions as remote as Latin America?
Likewise, China is today focused primarily on securing its own geopolitical neighborhood, but its ambitions
for tomorrow are clearly much bolder. Beijing probably does not envision itself fully overthrowing the international order,
simply because it has profited far too much from the U.S.-anchored global economy. Yet China has nonetheless positioned itself
for a global challenge to U.S. influence. Chinese military forces are deploying ever farther from China’s
immediate periphery; Beijing has projected power into the Arctic and established bases and logistical
points in the Indian Ocean and Horn of Africa. Popular Chinese movies depict Beijing replacing Washington as the dominant
actor in sub-Saharan Africa—a fictional representation of a real-life effort long under way. The Belt and Road Initiative bespeaks
an aspiration to link China to countries throughout Central Asia, the Middle East, and Europe; BRI, AIIB, and
RCEP look like the beginning of an alternative institutional architecture to rival Washington’s. In 2017, Xi Jinping told the Nineteenth
National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party that Beijing could now “take center stage in the
world” and act as an alternative to U.S. leadership.38 These ambitions may or may not be realistic. But they demonstrate
just how significantly the world’s leading authoritarian powers desire to shift the global environment over time. The revisionism we are
seeing today may therefore be only the beginning. As China’s power continues to grow, or if it is successful
in dominating the Western Pacific, it will surely move on to grander endeavors. If Russia reconsolidates control
over the former Soviet space, it may seek to bring parts of the former Warsaw Pact to heel. Historically, this has been a recurring
pattern of great-power behavior—interests expand with power, the appetite grows with the eating,
risk-taking increases as early gambles are seen to pay off.39 This pattern is precisely why the revival of great-power
competition is so concerning—because geopolitical revisionism by unsatisfied major powers has so often
presaged intensifying international conflict, confrontation, and even war. The great-power behavior occurring today
described it) that dominates South Ossetia and Crimea.37 It
represents the warning light flashing on the dashboard. It tells us there may be still-greater traumas to come. The threats today are compelling
and urgent, and there may someday come a time when the balance of power has shifted so markedly that the postwar international system
cannot be sustained. Yet that moment of failure has not yet arrived, and so the goal of U.S. strategy should be not to hasten it by giving up
prematurely, but to push it off as far into the future as possible. Rather than
simply acquiescing in the decline of a world it spent
aggressively bolster its defenses, with an eye to preserving and perhaps
even selectively advancing its remarkable achievements.
generations building, America should
A receding US deterrent is a catalyst for great-power conflict — decline causes
transition wars and miscalculation
Brands & Edel, 19 — Hal Brands; PhD, Henry A. Kissinger Distinguished Professor of Global Affairs at
the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. Charles Edel; PhD, Senior Fellow and
Visiting Scholar at the United States Studies Centre at the University of Sydney. (“The Lessons of
Tragedy: Statecraft and World Order;” Ch. 7: Rediscovering Tragedy; Published by Yale University Press;
//GrRv)
Moreover, if
discussions of “international order” can quickly take on an abstract quality, the consequences
of collapse—the lives lost or ruptured, the prosperity destroyed, the moral depravities committed—can be
frighteningly concrete. Thucydides had it right when he described what happens in such a vacuum of security and morality: “Death thus
raged in every shape … there was no length to which violence did not go.”3 This is all indisputably depressing, but it should not be the least bit
surprising. If it were possible to construct an international system that was truly universal in its appeal; if it were possible to freeze global power
relationships at that moment of creation; if
it were possible for states to put aside the very human ambitions,
emotions, and fears that drive their behavior: then, perhaps, the world could permanently escape the
competitive impulses that make international orders impermanent and their demise so traumatic. But
none of this has ever been possible. International orders, even the most inclusive ones, create winners
and losers because they benefit states unequally. The power balances that underpin a given system shift
over time, encouraging new tests of strength. And although the human desire for peace and prosperity is strong, countries
also remain motivated by ideological passion, greed, and insecurity. The most successful orders can mitigate the
effects of these dynamics; they can suppress the sources of conflict and upheaval. But they cannot eliminate them
entirely. This point is essential in considering the trajectory of the post-1945 order. It is tempting for individuals in nearly
every geopolitical era to believe that their world is somehow different—that it is immune to the dangers
of conflict and collapse. It is alluring to think that progress can be self-sustaining, and that liberal
principles can triumph even if liberal actors are no longer preeminent. To do so, however, is to fall prey to the same
ahistorical mindset that so predictably precedes the fall. Yes, the American order is exceptional in the level of stability,
prosperity, and liberal dominance it has provided, and in the level of consent it has generated from countries around the
world. Yet it is not so exceptional as to be exempt from the dangers of decline and decay. As the Greeks surely
would have realized, in fact, it is precisely when one succumbs to the illusion that tragedy is impossible that tragedy becomes all the more
likely. II This leads to a second component of a tragic sensibility—an appreciation that tragedy is once again stalking global affairs. The U.S.-led
system is undoubtedly strong and resilient in many respects, as shown by the simple fact that it has survived as long as it has. Yet what endured
in the past is not destined to endure in the future, and today the structure is groaning as the stresses mount. Long-standing
principles
such as nonaggression and freedom of navigation are being undermined from Eastern Europe to the
South China Sea. International predators like North Korea and radical jihadist groups are using creative, asymmetric strategies to cause
geopolitical disruption out of all proportion to their material power. The democratic wave has receded amid the growing prevalence and power
of authoritarianism. Revisionist
autocracies are reshaping regional environments in Europe, the Middle East,
and East Asia, and waging sophisticated assaults against the political systems and geopolitical positions
of their competitors. These countries are building privileged spheres of influence in critical areas of the
globe; they are casting ever longer shadows, both strategic and ideological, across the international landscape. Meanwhile, the countries
with the most to lose should the current system crack are too often divided and demoralized; their strategic torpor and distraction are creating
vacuums that the revisionists are all too happy to fill. The protectors of the post-1945 order seem stuck in neutral, or even reverse, as the
attackers push forward. This has historically been a dangerous combination. Faced
with this daunting panorama, some
analysts will take refuge in the hope that these challenges will simply exhaust themselves, or that
revisionist powers will be satiated once their regional ambitions are fulfilled. Yet most systems tend
toward more, rather than less, entropy over time, meaning that more, rather than less, energy is
required to stabilize them. And revisionist powers rarely reach some natural point at which their
aspirations subside; those aspirations often grow with each success.4 Today, the dissatisfied dictatorships, especially
Russia and China, see themselves as being locked in a form of geopolitical conflict with the United
States; they are already using force and other types of coercion to chip away at the American order. Should
they succeed in claiming regional primacy and reestablishing a spheres-of-influence world, the result
would be not to dampen but to inflame international conflict. Competition among the great powers
would intensify as hostile spheres rub up against one another; the security of the global commons—the
foundation of international prosperity—would be threatened by escalating geopolitical rivalry. The
prospects for self-determination and liberalism would fade as small states fall under the sway of stronger, authoritarian neighbors. And
crucially, as Daniel Twining notes, regional
dominance could serve as a “springboard for global contestation”—for
the renewed clashes for systemic dominance that Americans thought they had left behind with the end of the Cold War.5 It is
impossible to predict precisely when the pressures on the existing order might become unbearable, or to know how close we are to that critical
inflection point at which the dangers metastasize and the pace of decay dramatically accelerates. One can only speculate what the terminal
crisis of the system will look like if and when it occurs. What is clear is that the telltale
signs of erosion are already ubiquitous
and the trend-lines are running in the wrong direction. The first step toward recovery is admitting you have a problem.
Having a tragic sensibility requires seeing the world for what it is and where it is going, especially when the outlook is ominous. III If the
international order is under strain, however, it does not follow that its collapse is unavoidable. Here a third aspect of a
tragic sensibility is vital: the ability to reject complacency without falling into fatalism. Nietzsche defined tragic pleasure as the “reaffirmation of
the will to live in the face of death.”6 It was just such a rejection of fatalism—of the belief that the next great global crackup was inevitable—
that motivated U.S. policymakers to create the post-1945 order and sustain it through the crises that followed. Today, it is true enough that the
grandest aspirations of the post–Cold War era are unlikely to be fulfilled anytime soon. Given the instability and revisionism roiling the
international environment, it is simply beyond America’s power—if it was ever possible in the first place—to create a truly global order in which
liberal values are universal, geopolitical competition has ceased, and authoritarian rivals have been fully pacified and converted into
“responsible stakeholders.” Yet the existing international order, incomplete and threatened as it is, still constitutes a remarkable historical
achievement. The
creation of a global balance of power that favors the democracies, the prevention of
unchecked aggression and intimidation by predatory powers, and the promotion of a prosperous and an
integrated world in which liberal values have achieved great prevalence are all triumphs worth
preserving. A more reasonable goal, then, would be to defend this existing order against the depredations
of those attacking it, and America undoubtedly has the power for this essential undertaking.
Extinction
Edwards 17 [Paul N. Edwards, CISAC’s William J. Perry Fellow in International Security at Stanford’s
Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. Being interviewed by EarthSky. How nuclear war
would affect Earth’s climate. September 8, 2017. earthsky.org/human-world/how-nuclear-war-wouldaffect-earths-climate] Note, we are only reading parts of the interview that are directly from Paul
Edwards -- MMG
In the nuclear conversation, what are we not talking about that we should be? We
are not talking enough about the climatic
effects of nuclear war. The “nuclear winter” theory of the mid-1980s played a significant role in the arms reductions of that period. But
with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the reduction of U.S. and Russian nuclear arsenals, this aspect of nuclear war has faded
from view. That’s not good. In the mid-2000s, climate scientists such as Alan Robock (Rutgers) took another look
at nuclear winter theory. This time around, they used much-improved and much more detailed climate
models than those available 20 years earlier. They also tested the potential effects of smaller nuclear exchanges. The result: an
exchange involving just 50 nuclear weapons — the kind of thing we might see in an India-Pakistan war, for example — could loft 5 billion
kilograms of smoke, soot and dust high into the stratosphere. That’s enough to cool the entire planet by about 2 degrees Fahrenheit (1.25
degrees Celsius) — about where we were during the Little Ice Age of the 17th century. Growing seasons could be shortened enough to create
really significant food shortages. So the climatic effects of even a relatively small nuclear war would be planet-wide. What about a larger-scale
conflict? A U.S.-Russia
war currently seems unlikely, but if it were to occur, hundreds or even thousands of
nuclear weapons might be launched. The climatic consequences would be catastrophic: global average
temperatures would drop as much as 12 degrees Fahrenheit (7 degrees Celsius) for up to several years
— temperatures last seen during the great ice ages. Meanwhile, smoke and dust circulating in the
stratosphere would darken the atmosphere enough to inhibit photosynthesis, causing disastrous crop
failures, widespread famine and massive ecological disruption. The effect would be similar to that of the
giant meteor believed to be responsible for the extinction of the dinosaurs. This time, we would be the
dinosaurs. Many people are concerned about North Korea’s advancing missile capabilities. Is nuclear war likely in your opinion? At this
writing, I think we are closer to a nuclear war than we have been since the early 1960s. In the North Korea case, both
Kim Jong-un and President Trump are bullies inclined to escalate confrontations. President Trump lacks impulse control, and there are precious
few checks on his ability to initiate a nuclear strike. We have to hope that our generals, both inside and outside the White House, can rein him
in. North Korea would most certainly “lose” a nuclear war with the United States. But many millions would die, including hundreds of thousands
of Americans currently living in South Korea and Japan (probable North Korean targets). Such vast damage would be wrought in Korea, Japan
and Pacific island territories (such as Guam) that any “victory” wouldn’t deserve the name. Not only would that region be left with horrible
suffering amongst the survivors; it would also immediately face famine and rampant disease. Radioactive fallout from such a war would spread
around the world, including to the U.S. It has been more than 70 years since the last time a nuclear bomb was used in warfare. What would be
the effects on the environment and on human health today? To my knowledge, most of the changes in nuclear weapons technology since the
1950s have focused on making them smaller and lighter, and making delivery systems more accurate, rather than on changing their effects on
the environment or on human health. So-called “battlefield” weapons with lower explosive yields are part of some arsenals now — but it’s
quite unlikely that any exchange between two nuclear powers would stay limited to these smaller, less
destructive bombs.
Be highly skeptical of heg bad arguments – their evidence is epistemologically suspect
and bought off by revisionist powers
Gilsinan 20 [(Kathy, a St. Louis-based contributing writer at The Atlantic. Her book, The Helpers:
Profiles From the Front Lines of the Pandemic, comes out in March 2022. She was previously an editor at
World Politics Review.) “How China Is Planning to Win Back the World” The Atlantic, 5/28/2020.
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2020/05/china-disinformation-propaganda-united-statesxi-jinping/612085/] BC
This was a bizarre salvo in China’s
propaganda war with the United States over the coronavirus, and it showcased
Beijing’s latest information weaponry. Misleading spin, obfuscation, concealment, and hyperbole have
been hallmarks of the Chinese Communist Party’s propaganda campaign, before and during the coronavirus era. But
the pandemic appears to have given rise to more forceful attacks on foreign governments, as well as a
new level of flirtation with outright disinformation. The party has never waged a global struggle quite
like this one—and its battle with the U.S. over where the virus came from and whose failures made the pandemic worse have marked a
serious deterioration in the two countries’ ties. Just months ago, Trump was praising Xi Jinping for how he handled the outbreak; now Trump is toying with cutting
off relations with the Chinese government altogether. Seven
decades ago, Mao Zedong publicly embraced a benevolent
view of propaganda, as if he were a latter-day prophet spreading the communist gospel: “We should
carry on constant propaganda among the people on the facts of world progress and the bright future
ahead so that they will build their confidence in victory,” he mused in 1945. Just a few months ago, Xi Jinping urged
state journalists to spread “positive propaganda” for the “correct guidance of public opinion.” Indeed,
Beijing’s global propaganda efforts in recent years have been more about promoting China’s virtues
than about spreading acrimony and confusion, à la Russian information ops and election meddling. Moscow wants a weakened and
divided West, one that leaves Russia free to dominate its self-appointed sphere of influence—but Russia in 2016 was also an economically sluggish, oil-dependent
nation with an economy a tenth the size of America’s, and lacked the resources to remake the world in its image. Beijing
has a much bigger prize
in mind and a much longer-term plan to get it: The contest isn’t about who gets to run the U.S. It’s
about who deserves to run the world. And China, with its economy poised to overtake that of the United
States, has already plowed billions into crafting an image as a responsible global leader, and billions
more into cultivating global dependence on Chinese investments and Chinese markets. “While the
[Chinese Communist Party] has long sought to be a global influencer, their efforts today are aggressive
and sophisticated,” Bill Evanina, the director of the National Counterintelligence and Security Center, wrote in an email. “In short, they’re looking to
reshape the history of coronavirus and protect their reputation at home and around the world.” Before the
coronavirus hit, the party was becoming bolder in its propaganda efforts overseas as China grew richer and more powerful, trying to promote around the world the orthodoxy it enforced at
beneficence and goodness of the CCP. This involved publicizing Chinese investments in the
developing world, arm-twisting diplomats to toe a pro-China line, ruthlessly trying to stifle even other
countries’ freedom to dissent—to the point of sanctioning Norway in 2010 when the Norwegian Nobel
Committee awarded its peace prize to the imprisoned democracy activist Liu Xiaobo, who died in 2017.
Xi has elevated the role of propaganda even further as he has vowed to build China’s power and
prosperity, declaring, “The superiority of our system will be fully demonstrated through a brighter
future.” The coronavirus outbreak and the global outcry against China’s failures of transparency and containment were not part of the plan. They sparked an
international backlash that, by Beijing’s reported reckoning, was worse than anything it had faced since
the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989. So Beijing leaped to seize, or at least confuse, the global story
of the virus and its cast of heroes and villains. This has involved unleashing techniques Russia perfected during the U.S. presidential election in 2016.
“We’ve seen China adopt Russian-style social media manipulation tactics like using bots and trolls to
amplify disinformation on COVID-19,” Lea Gabrielle, the special envoy and coordinator for the State Department’s Global Engagement Center, wrote to me in an
home, about the
email. “Both countries repress information within their countries while taking advantage of the open and free information environments in democracies to push conspiracy theories that seek
Chinese diplomats, official media, and Twitter
influencers launched an aggressive frenzy of defense, scrambling to preserve the Chinese Communist
Party’s cratering reputation at home and overseas. And then they went on offense, with an assist from perhaps thousands of fake or hacked Twitter
to undermine those environments.” As the world realized the virus was spreading out of control,
accounts, according to the investigative site ProPublica. The result was a coordinated campaign of attacks on the United States, and the spread of disinformation and confusion about where
Other countries’ faltering responses to the virus have
only bolstered this narrative, and the CCP has gleefully trumpeted America’s failures in particular. “Loose
the virus really came from and whose screwup it was, really, that led to so much death.
political system in the US allows more than 4000 people to die of pandemic every day,” Hu Xijin, the editor in chief of the Global Times newspaper, tweeted in April. “Americans are so good
Beyond the immediate crisis, this kind of narrative also serves the longer-term goal. In the words of Matt
Ultimately it’s about the [Chinese Communist
Party] being the most powerful political entity on the planet.” The CCP has evolved in its themes and
tactics over the course of the coronavirus information war so far, as it battles to bolster its own
reputation and degrade that of the United States. The campaign has been widespread and highly
focused at the same time. And the party has grown even more emboldened in the belief that it’s too
big to fail, and that the reeling world may condemn it but still depends on it.
tempered.”
Schrader, a former China analyst with the Alliance for Securing Democracy at the German Marshall Fund: “
1AC—Advantage
Advantage 2 is Regional Conflict
U.S. military presence causes Iranian attacks on American troops – risks escalation to
regional war & draws in allies
France24 10-31 [France24 is an international news channel thatbroadcasts 24/7 to 521.7 million
households around the world in French, Arabic, English and Spanish. October 31, 2023. “Attacks on US
forces risk conflict with Iran.” https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20231031-attacks-on-us-forcesrisk-conflict-with-iran] //neth
The United States has blamed the spike in rocket and drone attacks -- at least 14 in Iraq and nine in Syria since October 17 -- on Iran-backed
forces, and carried out strikes last week in Syria on sites the Pentagon said were linked to Tehran. Washington has massive firepower at its
disposal but its military response to the attacks has so far been limited to those strikes -- which the Pentagon said did not appear to have
caused casualties -- in a potential bid to head off a broader conflict. "We
are concerned about all elements of Iran's threat
network increasing their attacks in a way that risks miscalculation, or tipping the region into war," a
senior US defense official said Monday. "Everybody loses in a regional war, which is why we're working
through partners, with allies, working the phone lines, increasing posture to make clear our desire to
prevent regional conflict," the official said. Washington says the attacks on its troops are separate from the current IsraelHamas conflict that began earlier this month when the militant group carried out a shock cross-border attack from Gaza that Israeli officials say
killed more than 1,400 people. But Iran said Monday that the attacks on US forces are the result of "wrong American policies" including support
for Israel, whose retaliatory bombardment has killed more than 8,300 people, according to the Gaza health ministry. 'Seeking to hold back'
There are roughly 2,500 American troops in Iraq and some 900 in Syria as part of efforts to prevent a resurgence of the Islamic State jihadist
group, which once held significant territory in both countries. The damage from the recent attacks on those forces has been limited so far -- 21
American personnel suffered minor injuries and a contractor died of a cardiac event while sheltering during a false alarm -- but there is
significant potential for things to get worse. "There
is substantial risk for US-Iran escalation due to spillover from the
Israel-Hamas war," either at Tehran's direction or because its proxies decide to on their own, said Jeffrey
Martini, a senior defense researcher at RAND. Iran has proxy forces in both Iraq and Syria that have
repeatedly targeted American troops in the past -- something that had stopped prior to recent events
due to Washington reaching "an informal understanding with Iran on reducing regional tensions,"
Martini said. Jon Alterman, director of the Middle East Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said the current
situation differs from past spates of attacks because "all of Iran's proxies seem to be getting into the act simultaneously," increasing "the
likelihood of something going wrong." The United States has repeatedly said it wants to keep the Israel-Hamas war from becoming a broader
conflict and has bolstered its forces in the region -- including with one carrier strike group that is there and another in transit -- as part of its
deterrence efforts. "Washington is seeking to hold back while simultaneously making clear that it doesn't need to," Alterman said of its
response to the attacks on its troops, noting that deterrence "requires both the capability and willingness to inflict much more damage, while
deciding not to do so." "The challenge, from a US perspective, is if you never inflict that damage, your adversary doubts your willingness, but if
you do inflict that damage, you can get trapped in an escalatory spiral."
Iran continues to develop nuclear capabilities
Irish et al 11-13 [John Irish - Senior Correspondent at Reuters News with focus on foreign policy.
Arshan Mohammed – Reuters Diplomatic Correspondent. Francois Murphy – Reuters Chief
Correspondent, Vienna. November 16, 2023. “Iran enriches more uranium as Gaza war rages, US vote
looms.” https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/iran-enriches-more-uranium-gaza-war-rages-usvote-looms-2023-11-17/] //neth
PARIS/WASHINGTON/VIENNA, Nov 17 (Reuters) - The United States and its allies have few routes left to rein in Iran's nuclear work with
prospects for talks long buried and tougher actions against Tehran running the risk of stoking tensions in a region already enflamed by the Gaza
war. With a U.S. election next year limiting Washington's room for manoeuvre, four serving and three former diplomats painted a bleak picture
of efforts to curb Iran's nuclear programme, which according to U.N. nuclear watchdog reports continues to advance. The diplomats spoke to
Reuters on condition of anonymity. According
to one of the two confidential reports by the International Atomic
Energy Agency and seen by Reuters, Iran now has enough uranium enriched up to 60% purity - close to
weapons-grade and a level Western powers say has no civilian use - to make three bombs. The stockpile
continues to grow, the reports say, even though Iran has consistently denied wanting nuclear arms.
Having failed to revive a nuclear deal between Iran and world powers that was abandoned by former U.S. President Donald Trump in 2018,
President Joe Biden has no room for now even to consider a more informal "understanding" to curb Iran's nuclear work with a regional conflict
raging and tension spiralling. "There is a sort of paralysis, especially among the Americans ... because they don't want to add fuel to the fire,"
said a senior European diplomat. Any negotiations to reach an "understanding" with Iran would have entailed Washington offering concessions
- such as easing its tough sanctions regime on Tehran - in return for Iranian constraint. Such a move now looks inconceivable after Iran-backed
Palestinian group Hamas launched its devastating attack on Oct. 7 on U.S. ally Israel. Since then, Iran's regional proxy militias have launched
dozens of attacks on U.S. and coalition troops in Iraq and Syria, according to the Pentagon. At home, the Biden administration is constrained by
U.S. presidential elections now just a year away. Trump, who at the moment looks most likely to be Biden's opponent, could seize on any
engagement with Tehran and portray it as weakness. "In the current environment, it is simply not politically feasible to seek an accommodation
with Iran on the nuclear issue," said Robert Einhorn, a former U.S. State Department official. "The political debate is really not going to be about
negotiating with Iran, it's going to be about confronting Iran," he said. IRAN STONEWALLING IAEA Washington has deployed two aircraft
carriers to the region and warplanes to the eastern Mediterranean, partly as a warning to Tehran. But U.S. officials have also made clear they
do not want an escalation, urging Iran-backed militias to stand down. Washington and its French, British and German allies - which were among
the parties to the 2015 nuclear deal - will now focus on next week's IAEA Board of Governors meeting. This
week's IAEA reports
showed Iran was making steady nuclear progress and indicated that Tehran continued to stonewall the
agency in monitoring its work. A deal in March to re-install monitoring equipment including surveillance
cameras, which were removed last year at Iran's behest, has only partially been honoured. Tehran's "dedesignation" in September of some of the agency's most experienced inspectors - a move that effectively bars them from working in Iran - has
also exasperated the IAEA. Western powers in September had threatened to pass a binding resolution ordering Iran to reverse course - one of
the strongest sanctions in the IAEA board's armoury. Four diplomats said a resolution was now unlikely because it was imperative to avoid a
diplomatic and nuclear escalation with Iran while attention is focused on Israel's conflict with Hamas. They said a less inflammatory move, such
as a firm non-binding statement, that would threaten tougher action at the next board meeting in March was more likely for now. "We can't
have a resolution," said the senior European diplomat. "If we were to pass a resolution ... it risks pushing them (the Iranians) over the edge ... to
90% enrichment." Weapons-grade uranium is around 90% purity. Two diplomats said all that could be done in coming months was to support
IAEA chief Rafael Grossi's efforts to strengthen oversight of Iran's nuclear programme. He has been seeking to re-designate his inspectors
before the end of the year. "It's way too early to say whether Iran will become a nuclear state or whether it will stay a threshold state like now,"
one diplomat said. "But for now it will keep enriching."
Iran’s allies in a conflict with the U.S. would include Russia & China – they want to
remake the world order, which includes countering U.S. power
Mazza 12-13 [Michael Mazza is a senior non-resident fellow at the Global Taiwan Institute, a senior
director at the Project 2049 Institute, and a non-resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
December 13, 2023. “The Axis of Disorder: How Russia, Iran, and China Want to Remake the World.”
https://globaltaiwan.org/2023/12/the-axis-of-disorder-how-russia-iran-and-china-want-to-remake-theworld/] //neth
Even so, the basic nature of the Westphalian order—a system of sovereign states coequal in status if not in power—remained largely
unchanged, despite America’s more fulsome embrace of liberal internationalism and despite movements in some regions, notably Europe,
toward supra-regional organization. The Westphalian order, and especially its modern structures, is now under threat. Moscow’s and Beijing’s
imperial pretensions, though distinct, both harken to earlier eras in which their Russian and Chinese forebears had yet to buy into the
Westphalian approach to international organization. The Russian cyberattack on Estonia in 2007, the invasion of Georgia in 2008, the illegal
annexation of Crimea in 2014, and the full-scale assault on Ukraine in 2022 all made manifest what Putinistic rhetoric had long espoused: a
worldview in which Russian neighbors are not sovereign states, properly understood. Russia now stands at the precipice of a return to the
tsarist approach of nonstop expansion; whether Russia topples over the edge depends in large part on what happens in Ukraine. China,
meanwhile, has long bristled at a world order in which it is supposed to be bound by rules it did not write—and in which it is simply one country
among many equals, both in Asia and globally. Beijing has set out to reestablish a Sino-centric order, at least in its own neighborhood—and
perhaps beyond. Domestic and international economic policy and the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI, formerly known as “One Belt, One Road,” 一
帶一路) are designed to ensure that all economic roads lead to Beijing. Investments in military power and the increasing use of that power are
meant to ensure Beijing can secure by intimidation and force what foreign economic interests alone do not guarantee: that China, and China
alone, sits atop a new Asian hierarchy, in which might makes right and which the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) can rule over something like a
modern-day tributary system. Iran
and its Shiite satellites, including Hamas and Hezbollah, have a very different
idea of international order, but share with Russia and China opposition to the presiding order today.
Tehran’s goals in some ways call to mind pre-Westphalian Europe, in which sectarian differences drove interstate conflict. Iran
remains
committed to “exporting” the revolution, by which it aims to spread Shiism and provide Shia Muslims
with the ideological, military, and economic tools to defeat “imperialists.” Despite Hamas’s role in governing Gaza,
its objectives are similarly religious in nature, according to its own covenant: “They are the fighting against the false, defeating it and
vanquishing it so that justice could prevail, homelands be retrieved and from its mosques would the voice of the mu’azen emerge declaring the
establishment of the state of Islam, so that people and things would return each to their right places and Allah is our helper.” Russia,
China, Iran, and Hamas are all, then, revisionists. They may not agree on what world order should ultimately look like—or
whether there should even be a world order—but they are united in opposition to the order as it stands. And they are making headway. The
world now may be approaching a moment in which, to use Kissinger’s framing, no single concept of order enjoys widespread legitimacy and the
balance of power that has long upheld the presiding order proves no longer up to the task. Richard Haass, former president of the Council on
Foreign Relations (CFR) and longtime US diplomat, is right when he argues that “the term ‘order’ implicitly also reflects the degree of disorder
that inevitably exists.” But what happens when disorder—or the lack of any agreed upon framework for organizing the world—reigns supreme?
China Gets Ready to Pounce At
the moment, Russia, Iran, and Iranian state and nonstate satellites are the main
antagonists in the assault on global order. All are striving to wipe fellow sovereign states off the map, and have strained against
or ignored entirely the “international legal and organizational structures” that Kissinger points to as aimed at curtailing “the anarchical nature
of the world.” Beijing has decided not to stand in their way. Indeed, China has provided modest but important support for their efforts. Xi
Jinping, perhaps, assesses that once others have done the hard work of tearing down global order, China can swoop in to rebuild order in its
own image. In the meantime, Xi is likely assessing what he can get away with in this incipient age of global disorder. He may already be trying to
take advantage, most notably in the South China Sea. The past year has been marked by near-unrelenting pressure on the Philippines. That it is
targeted at the only American treaty ally with South China Sea claims is no accident. Beijing is clearly testing the Biden Administration at a time
when it is grappling with other conflicts and has been signaling that it is eager to stabilize US-China relations. Put another way, he is testing
both the legitimacy of an order in which international differences are supposed to be solved peacefully and whether American (and allied)
power is capable of upholding it. What
Xi learns in the South China Sea and from observing American approaches
to countering Russia and Iran could prove ominous for Taiwan, Japan, and China’s other neighbors in
Asia. The United States has crucial, regionally specific interests at stake in both Europe and the [West Asia],
but it also has a more abstract interest in defending the global order in which it has thrived—and under
which repeats of the twentieth century’s most abhorrent spasms of bloodletting have been largely
avoided. If Washington fails to do so, the risk that China will pounce will grow far more acute.
US-Russia nuclear war presents a uniquely worse extinction risk
Farquhar et al 2017 (Sebastian Farquhar, John Halstead, Owen Cotton-Barratt, Stefan Schubert,
Haydn Belfield, and Andrew Snyder-Beattie. “Existential Risk: Diplomacy & Governance.” Global
Priorities Project 2017. https://www.fhi.ox.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/Existential-Risks-2017-01-23.pdf)
//neth
The bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki demonstrated the unprecedented destructive power of nuclear weapons. However, even
in
an all-out nuclear war between the United States and Russia, despite horrific casualties, neither country’s
population is likely to be completely destroyed by the direct effects of the blast, fire, and radiation.8 The
aftermath could be much worse: the burning of flammable materials could send massive amounts of
smoke into the atmosphere, which would absorb sunlight and cause sustained global cooling, severe
ozone loss, and agricultural disruption – a nuclear winter. According to one model 9 , an all-out exchange of 4,000
weapons10 could lead to a drop in global temperatures of around 8°C, making it impossible to grow food for 4 to 5 years. This could leave
some survivors in parts of Australia and New Zealand, but they would be in a very precarious situation
and the threat of extinction from other sources would be great. An exchange on this scale is only
possible between the US and Russia who have more than 90% of the world’s nuclear weapons, with
stockpiles of around 4,500 warheads each, although many are not operationally deployed.11 Some models
suggest that even a small regional nuclear war involving 100 nuclear weapons would produce a nuclear winter serious enough to put
two billion people at risk of starvation,12 though this estimate might be pessimistic.13 Wars on this scale are unlikely to lead to
outright human extinction, but this does suggest that conflicts which are around an order of magnitude
larger may be likely to threaten civilisation. It should be emphasised that there is very large uncertainty about the effects of a
large nuclear war on global climate. This remains an area where increased academic research work, including more detailed climate modelling
and a better understanding of how survivors might be able to cope and adapt, would have high returns. It is very difficult to precisely estimate
the probability of existential risk from nuclear war over the next century, and existing attempts leave very large confidence intervals. According
to many experts, the most likely nuclear war at present is between India and Pakistan.14 However,
given the relatively modest
size of their arsenals, the risk of human extinction is plausibly greater from a conflict between the United
States and Russia. Tensions between these countries
Iran war causes extinction — deterrence invites conflict.
Farley ’22 [Dr.Robert; PhD from the University of Washington, Professor of Political Science at the
University of Kentucky’s Patterson School of Diplomacy; January 3, 2023; “5 Places Where World War III
Could Erupt In 2022”; https://www.19fortyfive.com/2022/01/5-places-where-world-war-iii-could-eruptin-2022/]
5 Places World
War III Could Erupt: Iran Any honest appraisal of US policy towards Iran now recognizes that
then-President Donald Trump’s decision to abandon the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), better known as the Iran
Nuclear Deal, was a disastrous mistake. The US effort to increase military and economic coercion against
Iran has failed. Iran has stepped up its nuclear efforts while improving the sophistication of its missile
forces and increasing its covert activities across the region. Negotiations have thus far failed to restore the status quo, as
the United States has stumbled over its inability to commit and Tehran has taken a tough attitude. If negotiations fail to bring Iran
into some kind of a deal, the threat of military action lurks in the background. While the Biden administration doesn’t seem
excited about the prospect of war, US allies in Riyadh and Jerusalem could try to trigger a confrontation. Similarly, if
Iran comes to believe an attack is inevitable, it could pre-empt with all the tools it has available. Iran lacks
committed great power backing, but a conflict in the Middle East could open opportunities elsewhere for Russia and
China.
The U.S. is the only power capable of ending the escalation toward all-out war –
withdrawal of military presence is key
Krauss 1-8 [Joseph Krauss – Middle East correspondent for the Associated Press. January 8, 2024.
“Fears escalate that Israel, U.S. and Iran’s allies moving towards all-out war.”
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/fears-escalate-that-israel-u-s-and-irans-allies-moving-towardsall-out-war] //neth
In the last week alone, Israel has killed a senior Hamas militant in an airstrike in Beirut, Hezbollah has struck a sensitive Israeli base with rockets,
the United States has killed a militia commander in Baghdad and Iran-backed rebels in Yemen have traded fire with the U.S. Navy. Each
strike and counterstrike increases the risk of the already catastrophic war in Gaza spilling across the
region. And in the decades-old standoff pitting the U.S. and Israel against Iran and allied militant groups, there are fears that any one party
could trigger a wider war if only to avoid appearing weak. The divisions within each camp add another layer of volatility: Hamas might have
hoped its Oct. 7 attack would drag its allies into a wider war with Israel. Israelis increasingly talk about the need to change the equation in
Lebanon — and on Monday an Israeli airstrike killed a Hezbollah commander — even as Washington aims to contain the conflict. As
the
intertwined chess games grow ever more complicated, the potential for miscalculation rises. Gaza is ground
zero Hamas says the Oct. 7 rampage across southern Israel that triggered the war in Gaza was a purely Palestinian response to decades of
Israeli domination. There is no evidence that Iran, Hezbollah or other allied groups played a direct role or even knew about it beforehand. But
when Israel responded by launching one of the 21st century’s most devastating military campaigns in Gaza, a besieged enclave home to 2.3
million Palestinians, the so-called Axis of Resistance — Iran and the militant groups it supports across the region — faced pressure to respond.
The Palestinian cause has deep resonance across the region, and leaving Hamas alone to face Israel’s fury would have risked unraveling a
military alliance that Iran has been building up since the 1979 Islamic Revolution put it on a collision course with the West. “They don’t want
war, but at the same they don’t want to let the Israelis keep striking without retaliation,” said Qassim Qassir, a Lebanese expert on Hezbollah.
“Something big has to happen, without going to war, so that the Israelis and Americans are convinced that there is no way forward,” he said.
Hezbollah threads the needle Of all Iran’s regional proxies, Hezbollah faces the biggest dilemma. If it tolerates Israeli attacks, like the strike in
Beirut that killed Hamas’ deputy political leader, it risks appearing to be a weak or unreliable ally. But if it triggers a full war, Israel has
threatened to wreak major destruction on Lebanon, which is already mired in a severe economic crisis. Even Hezbollah’s supporters may see
that as too heavy a price to pay for a Palestinian ally. Hezbollah
has carried out strikes along the border nearly every
day since the war in Gaza broke out, with the apparent aim of tying down some Israeli troops. Israel has
returned fire, but each side appears to be carefully calibrating its actions to limit the intensity. A Hezbollah barrage of at least 40 rockets fired at
an Israeli military base on Saturday sent a message without starting a war, though it may have triggered Monday’s strike. Would 80 rockets
have been a step too far? What if someone had been killed? How many casualties would warrant a full-blown offensive? The grim math
provides no clear answers. And in the end, experts say, it might not be a single strike that does it. Israel is determined to see tens of thousands
of its citizens return to communities near the border with Lebanon that were evacuated under Hezbollah fire nearly three months ago, and
after Oct. 7, it may no longer be able to tolerate an armed Hezbollah presence just on the other side of the frontier. Israeli
leaders have
repeatedly threatened to use military force if Hezbollah doesn’t respect a 2006 U.N. cease-fire that
ordered the militant group to withdraw from the border. “Neither side wants a war, but the two sides believe it is
inevitable,” said Yoel Guzansky, a senior researcher at Israel’s Institute for National Security Studies at Tel Aviv University. “Everybody in Israel
thinks it’s just a matter of time until we need to change the reality,” so that people can return to their homes, he said. U.S. deterrence only
goes so far The U.S. positioned two aircraft carrier strike groups in the region in October. One is returning home, but is being replaced by other
warships. The deployments sent an unmistakable warning to Iran and its allies against widening the conflict, but not all of them seem to have
received the message. Iran-backed
militant groups in Syria and Iraq have launched dozens of rocket attacks on
U.S. bases. The Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen have attacked international shipping in the Red Sea, with potential consequences for
the world economy. Iran says its allies act on their own and not on orders from Tehran. The last thing most Americans want after two decades
of costly campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan is another war in the Middle East. But in recent weeks, U.S. forces have killed a senior Iran-backed
militia commander in Iraq and 10 Houthi rebels who were trying to board a container ship, spilling blood that could call out for a response.
Washington has struggled to cobble together a multi-national security force to protect Red Sea shipping. But it appears hesitant to attack the
Houthis on land when they appear close to reaching a peace deal with Saudi Arabia after years of war. Meanwhile, Israeli officials have said the
window for its allies to get both Hezbollah and the Houthis to stand down is closing. How does this end? The
regional tensions are
likely to remain high as long as Israel keeps up its offensive in Gaza, which it says is aimed at crushing
Hamas. Many wonder if that’s even possible, given the group’s deep roots in Palestinian society, and Israel’s own leaders say it will take
many more months. The U.S., which has provided crucial military and diplomatic support for Israel’s offensive,
is widely seen as the only power capable of ending it. Iran’s allies seem to believe Washington will step in if its own costs get
too high — hence the attacks on U.S. bases and international shipping. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, European Union foreign policy
chief Josep Borrell, and German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock are all back in the region this week, with the aim of trying to contain the
violence through diplomacy. But the most important messages will still likely be sent by rocket. “The Americans do not want an open war with
Iran, and the Iranians do not want an open war with the United States,” said Ali Hamadeh, an analyst who writes for Lebanon’s An-Nahar
newspaper. “Therefore, there are negotiations by fire.”
1AC—Plan
Plan: The United States ought to substantially reduce its military presence in the West
Asia-North Africa region by removing its presence from the Persian Gulf and Syria.
Protecting American interests in the region no longer necessitates boots on the
ground
Logan ‘20 [Justin Logan - director of defense and foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute. “THE CASE
FOR WITHDRAWING FROM THE MIDDLE EAST.” September 20, 2020. Defense Priorities.
https://www.defensepriorities.org/explainers/the-case-for-withdrawing-from-the-middle-east] //neth
The Trump administration’s National Security Strategy states that the U.S. “seeks a Middle East that is not a safe haven or breeding ground for
jihadist terrorists, not dominated by any power hostile to the United States, and that contributes to a stable global energy market.”1 These
priorities echo those of prior administrations. Terrorism, Israel’s well-being, and oil are the main reasons the U.S. cares about the Middle East.2
In service of these interests, the U.S. spends tens of billions of dollars every year trying to manage the region’s politics. In one of the most
careful estimates of the cost savings, Eugene Gholz concludes that jettisoning the Middle East mission would produce savings on the order of
$65–70 billion per year.3 The U.S. also keeps tens of thousands of military personnel on bases in the region.
From Bahrain to Egypt to Iraq to Kuwait to Qatar to Syria to the United Arab Emirates, the U.S. has dozens of military bases and installations
across the CENTCOM Area of Responsibility. The U.S. has also fought wars and engaged in costly diplomacy across the region. Although some
wars, like the 2011 air campaign in Libya, are not directly related to oil, Israel, or terrorism, the two wars in Iraq, the U.S. involvement in the
wars in Syria and Yemen, and the “maximum pressure” campaign against Iran all grew in part from those underlying worries. Similarly,
bipartisan devotion to the Saudi royal family and the Israeli government are tied to beliefs about the region’s importance to Americans.
These costly policies are puzzling because, on paper, the region is a strategic backwater. Its GDP constitutes 3.3
percent of world GDP, compared to 32.5 percent in the Western Hemisphere and 25 percent each in Europe and East Asia.4 The Middle East’s
population is between 3.5 and 5 percent of the world total, depending on how one counts.5 Even if one country were to dominate—or
conquer—a region with those economic and human resources, it could not pose a serious military threat to the U.S. In order
to think
that the region has great importance to U.S. national security, policymakers have relied on murky
theories about energy economics, the regional balance of power, and the threat of terrorism. None of
these theories justify current U.S. policy in the region. U.S. interests in the Middle East do not require
stationing American troops in the region. Moreover, the ideas justifying a permanent troop presence there have been wrong for
decades; they did not become wrong once the U.S. became a net exporter of petroleum, or once Israel developed Iron Dome, or once Al-Qaeda
was dispersed in 2001 and 2002. The U.S. military maintains an outsized basing presence for ground troops in the Middle East despite the
region’s marginal and shrinking strategic importance. The
narrow and manageable potential threats from there can be
defended against with an offshore posture. The goal of this paper is not to lay out a detailed plan or timeframe for withdrawing
U.S. troops from the region, but rather to scrutinize the justifications for U.S. policy in the region to date. Although mostly unspoken, these
justifications are bad in their best rendering. If there is no good justification for a costly and destructive government policy, it should end.
Withdrawal can preserve Israel’s security & avoid provoking Iran
Logan ‘20 [Justin Logan - director of defense and foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute. “THE CASE
FOR WITHDRAWING FROM THE MIDDLE EAST.” September 20, 2020. Defense Priorities.
https://www.defensepriorities.org/explainers/the-case-for-withdrawing-from-the-middle-east] //neth
One also hears concerns regarding the safety and power position of American partners in the region, especially Israel. For example, President
Trump recently claimed, “we don’t have to be in the Middle East, other than we want to protect Israel.”24 Concern over Israel’s well-being is a
longstanding component of U.S. policy. In 1970, Secretary of State William P. Rogers told Face the Nation in the context of arms sales to Israel
that: [I]t’s in our best interest to be sure that Israel survives as a nation. That’s been our policy, and that will continue to be our policy. So we
have to take whatever action we think is necessary to give them the assurance that they need that their independence and sovereignty is going
to continue.25 But here again, the mechanism through which Israel’s security turns on a robust American military posture in the region is
unclear. Since
the Israel Defense Forces shellacked the Egyptians, Syrians, and Jordanians in the Six-Day
War in 1967, Israel has aggressively pursued its interests throughout the region with relative impunity,
except for terrorism. (A forward U.S. military presence in the region does nothing to help the Jewish state with its terrorism problem.)
Israel today enjoys an enormous qualitative military edge over any combination of potential regional
rivals in conventional military terms. Last year Israel spent $20.5 billion on its military, making it the fifteenth largest spender in
the world and second largest in the Middle East behind Saudi Arabia. In the last decade Israel has increased its annual military spending by 30
percent.26 Israel also has at least 90 nuclear weapons deployed on an array of platforms, including submarines, that give it a secure secondstrike capability against any state in the region that might threaten its survival.27 No other state in the region has nuclear weapons.
Moreover, the maelstrom of sectarian conflict that recent U.S. policy in the region helped unleash
harms, rather than benefits, Israel. Israel likes having U.S. diplomatic cover for its policies in the
Occupied Territories, but whatever the merits of providing it, doing so does not require tens of
thousands of U.S. servicemembers deployed in the region. Similarly, the current Israeli leadership seems
to want the U.S. to confront, or perhaps attack, Iran.28 But the conventional military balance in the
region, combined with the uselessness of nuclear weapons for compellence—as opposed to
deterrence—means that Israel's security does not require attacking Iran.29 American leaders should find the
wherewithal to say so.
Withdrawal avoids creation of new conflicts and avoids giving Iran leverage
Brownlee 11-27 [(Jason, is a professor of Government at the University of Texas at Austin, where he
teaches about and conducts research on U.S. military intervention, dictatorships, and dissent, with a
focus on the politics of South Asia and the Middle East), “US Troops In Iraq And Syria Aren't 'Keeping The
Peace'”, https://responsiblestatecraft.org/us-troops-in-iraq-and-syria/, Nov 27 2023] SS
The regional reverberations of the
Israel-Gaza war demonstrate why the White House should scrap, not reinforce,
America’s outdated and unnecessarily provocative troop presence in Syria and Iraq. President Joe Biden should
redeploy these forces to a safer position offshore and leave it to self-interested Syrians and Iraqis to
prevent ISIS from reemerging. As Biden’s own policy on Afghanistan demonstrated — and as I observed on the ground earlier this fall —
withdrawing U.S. soldiers and Marines can bolster American security by turning the fight against Islamic
State over to well-motivated local belligerents while freeing up U.S. personnel to serve in more vital
areas. Likewise, pivoting out of Syria and Iraq will not make Americans any less safe, but it will deny local
militias, and their presumptive patrons in Iran, the chance to use unneeded outposts for leverage over
our national strategy. Since October 17, some 900 U.S. troops in Syria and 2,500 in Iraq have been taking fire from
Iran-linked militias and, subsequently, drawing retaliatory air support, including an attack by a C-130
gunship that killed eight members of the Kataib Hezbollah group in Iraq last week. The U.S. service members are the
lingering footprint of Operation Inherent Resolve, which began in 2015 to defeat the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq and succeeded in 2019 in eliminating the physical
ISIS caliphate, thereby reducing ISIS to “a survival posture” without territory. Rather
than taking the win and packing up, the Trump
and Biden administrations kept in place some troops, who have become a recurring target of
opportunity for Iran and its surrogates during moments of tension. In the past five weeks, the Iran-linked
militants’ rockets and one-way attack drones have injured over sixty of these Americans. The prolonged
American deployment, driven by policy inertia more than strategic necessity, has added tinder to a
potential U.S.-Iranian conflagration that would eclipse the Israel-Gaza War. One Pentagon official has remarked in
defiance, “Iran’s objective… has been to force a withdrawal of the U.S. military from the region… What I would observe is that we’re still there [in Iraq and Syria].”
This reluctance to relinquish former ISIS territory to independently-minded governments recapitulates the mindset that made the Afghanistan
and Iraq
wars so unnecessarily costly. Rather than cutting its losses, the White House and Pentagon have doubled down,
with two aircraft carrier groups in the Eastern Mediterranean, an airstrike on an Iran-linked weapons
depot in Syria, and an additional 1,200 troops for staffing regional air defenses, and now strikes inside
Iraq — over the objections of Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani, whose coalition is linked to Kataib
Hezbollah. When it comes to escalating or winding down U.S. military interventions, the deciding factor should not be what Iran’s leaders want in largely deserted
corners of Iraq and Syria, but what policies best serve American interests. On this question, Biden’s controversial decision in 2021 to pull all U.S. forces from
Afghanistan offers an important lesson. As I have seen firsthand, complete withdrawal
can serve Washington’s counterterrorism
and strategic goals, even if the policy cedes physical terrain to governments with which U.S. officials do
not see eye to eye.
When the Israel-Gaza war broke out the weekend of October 7, I was wrapping up an uneventful three weeks of visiting what were once the deadliest zones of America’s recent wars: Kabul, Kandahar, and Helmand provinces in Afghanistan; and the cities of Baghdad, Fallujah, Ramadi, and Mosul in Iraq. I
traversed dozens of Taliban and Iraqi government checkpoints, as I toured cities and rural areas without any sense of threat from officials or terrorists. The physical security I experienced in both countries dispels the most common fear about withdrawing American troops, that exiting will increase the danger to Americans and our interests while strategically advantaging recalcitrant
governments. It is difficult to overstate the level of internal stability Afghanistan has enjoyed since August 2021. In the wake of America’s flawed evacuation from Kabul airport, analysts and policymakers expected the country to implode and spread armed conflict onto its neighbors and the world. Instead, political violence in Afghanistan plummeted by 80% in the first year after
American forces left. Crucially, the Taliban’s security forces curbed the threat of mass-casualty attacks by Islamic State’s local offshoot, accomplishing in a matter of months what the Pentagon and CIA had been trying to achieve since 2015. While yes they are under the thumb of the oppressive Taliban regime, Afghans are experiencing their longest respite from war since the Soviet
Army invaded on Christmas Eve 1979. Meanwhile, U.S. forces that would be committed to high-risk, low-reward combat missions in land-locked Afghanistan are available for “deterring and responding to great-power aggression.” If the Taliban can hobble Islamic State’s operations in an impoverished agrarian country with a supposedly “weak and failing state” ripe for transnational
jihadism, there is every reason to expect the armed forces of Syria and Iraq can be equally effective. The Syrian military, backed not only by Iran but also Russia, has the wherewithal and materiel to deal with the dead-enders of ISIS’s defunct caliphate. Next door, last year’s spike in oil prices allowed Baghdad to adopt the largest budget in its history, including $23 billion for the
security sector. Further, I can report that the roadways of Iraq are festooned with billboards of the “martyred” Iranian special forces commander Qasem Soleimani. His ubiquitous visage, in addition to al-Sudani’s high-profile visit to Tehran after Secretary of State Blinken’s furtive November 5 drop-in, puts paid to the idea that American boots on the ground can “check Iranian
ISIS has long since been defeated and Operation Inherent Resolve should be shuttered at
the first opportunity. The August 2021 withdrawal from Afghanistan offers a vivid — if unexpected —
precedent for making this timely and prudent shift. This further demonstrates that letting local actors
handle Islamic State fighters — and whatever lands those jihadists claimed — will not empower
America’s challengers, but can enable a nimbler U.S. foreign policy.
influence” in Iraq or other Shia-led states such as Syria.
1AC—Framing
Pleasure and pain are intrinsic value and disvalue – everything else regresses – robust
neuroscience.
Blum et al. 18 Kenneth Blum, 1Department of Psychiatry, Boonshoft School of Medicine, Dayton VA Medical Center, Wright State
University, Dayton, OH, USA 2Department of Psychiatry, McKnight Brain Institute, University of Florida College of Medicine, Gainesville, FL, USA
3Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Keck Medicine University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA 4Division of Applied
Clinical Research & Education, Dominion Diagnostics, LLC, North Kingstown, RI, USA 5Department of Precision Medicine, Geneus Health LLC,
San Antonio, TX, USA 6Department of Addiction Research & Therapy, Nupathways Inc., Innsbrook, MO, USA 7Department of Clinical Neurology,
Path Foundation, New York, NY, USA 8Division of Neuroscience-Based Addiction Therapy, The Shores Treatment & Recovery Center, Port Saint
Lucie, FL, USA 9Institute of Psychology, Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, Hungary 10Division of Addiction Research, Dominion Diagnostics,
LLC. North Kingston, RI, USA 11Victory Nutrition International, Lederach, PA., USA 12National Human Genome Center at Howard University,
Washington, DC., USA, Marjorie Gondré-Lewis, 12National Human Genome Center at Howard University, Washington, DC., USA 13Departments
of Anatomy and Psychiatry, Howard University College of Medicine, Washington, DC US, Bruce Steinberg, 4Division of Applied Clinical Research
& Education, Dominion Diagnostics, LLC, North Kingstown, RI, USA, Igor Elman, 15Department Psychiatry, Cooper University School of
Medicine, Camden, NJ, USA, David Baron, 3Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Keck Medicine University of Southern California,
Los Angeles, CA, USA, Edward J Modestino, 14Department of Psychology, Curry College, Milton, MA, USA, Rajendra D Badgaiyan, 15Department
Psychiatry, Cooper University School of Medicine, Camden, NJ, USA, Mark S Gold 16Department of Psychiatry, Washington University, St. Louis,
MO, USA, “Our evolved unique pleasure circuit makes humans different from apes: Reconsideration of data derived from animal studies”, U.S.
Department of Veterans Affairs, 28 February 2018, accessed: 19 August 2020, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6446569/, R.S.
rct LHSTG
Pleasure is not only one of the three primary reward functions but it also defines reward. As homeostasis explains the
functions of only a limited number of rewards, the principal reason why particular stimuli, objects, events,
situations, and activities are rewarding may be due to pleasure. This applies first of all to sex and to the primary
homeostatic rewards of food and liquid and extends to money, taste, beauty, social encounters and nonmaterial, internally set, and intrinsic
rewards. Pleasure, as
the primary effect of rewards, drives the prime reward functions of learning, approach behavior, and
decision making and provides the basis for hedonic theories of reward function. We are attracted by most
rewards and exert intense efforts to obtain them, just because they are enjoyable [10]. Pleasure is a passive
reaction that derives from the experience or prediction of reward and may lead to a long-lasting state of happiness. The word happiness is
difficult to define. In fact, just obtaining physical pleasure may not be enough. One key to happiness involves a network of good friends.
However, it is not obvious how the higher forms of satisfaction and pleasure are related to an ice cream cone, or to your team winning a
sporting event. Recent multidisciplinary research, using
both humans and detailed invasive brain analysis of animals
has discovered some critical ways that the brain processes pleasure [14]. Pleasure as a hallmark of reward
is sufficient for defining a reward, but it may not be necessary. A reward may generate positive learning and approach
behavior simply because it contains substances that are essential for body function. When we are hungry, we may
eat bad and unpleasant meals. A monkey who receives hundreds of small drops of water every morning in the laboratory is unlikely to feel a
rush of pleasure every time it gets the 0.1 ml. Nevertheless, with these precautions in mind, we may define any stimulus, object, event, activity,
or situation that has the potential to produce pleasure as a reward. In the context of reward deficiency or for disorders of addiction,
homeostasis pursues pharmacological treatments: drugs to treat drug addiction, obesity, and other compulsive behaviors. The theory of
allostasis suggests broader approaches - such as re-expanding the range of possible pleasures and providing opportunities to expend effort in
their pursuit. [15]. It is noteworthy, the first animal studies eliciting approach behavior by electrical brain stimulation interpreted their findings
as a discovery of the brain’s pleasure centers [16] which were later partly associated with midbrain dopamine neurons [17–19] despite the
notorious difficulties of identifying emotions in animals. Evolutionary theories of pleasure: The love connection BO:D Charles Darwin and other
biological scientists that have examined the biological evolution and
its basic principles found various mechanisms that
steer behavior and biological development. Besides their theory on natural selection, it was particularly the sexual selection
process that gained significance in the latter context over the last century, especially when it comes to the question of what makes us “what we
are,” i.e., human. However, the capacity to sexually select and evolve is not at all a human accomplishment alone or a sign of our uniqueness;
yet, we humans, as it seems, are ingenious in fooling ourselves and others–when we are in love or desperately search for it. It is well
established that modern biological theory conjectures that organisms
are the result of evolutionary competition. In fact,
stresses gene survival and propagation as the basic mechanism of life [20]. Only genes that lead
to the fittest phenotype will make it. It is noteworthy that the phenotype is selected based on behavior that maximizes gene
propagation. To do so, the phenotype must survive and generate offspring, and be better at it than its competitors. Thus, the ultimate,
Richard Dawkins
distal function of rewards is to increase evolutionary fitness by ensuring the survival of the organism and reproduction. It
is agreed that learning, approach, economic decisions, and positive emotions are the proximal functions through which phenotypes obtain
other necessary nutrients for survival, mating, and care for offspring. Behavioral reward
functions have evolved to help
individuals to survive and propagate their genes. Apparently, people need to live well and long enough to
reproduce. Most would agree that homo-sapiens do so by ingesting the substances that make their bodies function properly. For this
reason, foods and drinks are rewards. Additional rewards, including those used for economic exchanges, ensure sufficient palatable food and
drink supply. Mating and gene propagation is supported by powerful sexual attraction. Additional properties, like body form, augment the
chance to mate and nourish and defend offspring and are therefore also rewards. Care for offspring until they can reproduce themselves helps
gene propagation and is rewarding; otherwise, many believe mating is useless. According to David E Comings, as any
small edge will
ultimately result in evolutionary advantage [21], additional reward mechanisms like novelty seeking and exploration widen the
spectrum of available rewards and thus enhance the chance for survival, reproduction, and ultimate gene propagation. These functions may
help us to obtain the benefits of distant rewards that are determined by our own interests and not immediately available in the environment.
Thus the distal reward function in gene propagation and evolutionary fitness defines the proximal
reward functions that we see in everyday behavior. That is why foods, drinks, mates, and offspring are
rewarding. There have been theories linking pleasure as a required component of health benefits salutogenesis, (salugenesis). In essence,
under these terms, pleasure is described as a state or feeling of happiness and satisfaction resulting from an
experience that one enjoys. Regarding pleasure, it is a double-edged sword, on the one hand, it promotes positive feelings (like
mindfulness) and even better cognition, possibly through the release of dopamine [22]. But on the other hand, pleasure simultaneously
encourages addiction and other negative behaviors, i.e., motivational toxicity. It is a complex neurobiological phenomenon, relying on reward
circuitry or limbic activity. It is important to realize that through the “Brain Reward Cascade” (BRC) endorphin and endogenous morphinergic
mechanisms may play a role [23]. While natural rewards are essential for survival and appetitive motivation leading to beneficial biological
behaviors like eating, sex, and reproduction, crucial social interactions seem to further facilitate the positive effects exerted by pleasurable
experiences. Indeed, experimentation with addictive drugs is capable of directly acting on reward pathways and causing deterioration of these
systems promoting hypodopaminergia [24]. Most would agree that pleasurable activities can stimulate personal growth and may help to induce
healthy behavioral changes, including stress management [25]. The work of Esch and Stefano [26] concerning the link between compassion and
love implicate the brain reward system, and pleasure induction suggests that social contact in general, i.e., love, attachment, and compassion,
can be highly effective in stress reduction, survival, and overall health. Understanding the role of neurotransmission and pleasurable states
both positive and negative have been adequately studied over many decades [26–37], but comparative anatomical and neurobiological
function between animals and homo sapiens appear to be required and seem to be in an infancy stage. Finding happiness is different between
apes and humans As stated earlier in this expert opinion one key to happiness involves a network of good friends [38]. However, it is not
entirely clear exactly how the higher forms of satisfaction and pleasure are related to a sugar rush, winning a sports event or even sky diving, all
of which augment dopamine release at the reward brain site. Recent multidisciplinary research, using both humans and detailed invasive brain
analysis of animals has discovered some critical ways that the brain processes pleasure. Remarkably, there are pathways for ordinary
liking and pleasure, which are limited in scope as described above in this commentary. However, there are many brain
regions, often termed hot and cold spots, that significantly modulate (increase or decrease) our pleasure or even
produce the opposite of pleasure— that is disgust and fear [39]. One specific region of the nucleus accumbens is
organized like a computer keyboard, with particular stimulus triggers in rows— producing an increase and
decrease of pleasure and disgust. Moreover, the cortex has unique roles in the cognitive evaluation of our feelings of
pleasure [40]. Importantly, the interplay of these multiple triggers and the higher brain centers in the prefrontal cortex are very intricate and
are just being uncovered. Desire and reward centers It is surprising that many different sources of pleasure activate the same circuits between
the mesocorticolimbic regions (Figure 1). Reward and desire are two aspects pleasure induction and have a very widespread, large circuit. Some
part of this circuit distinguishes between desire and dread. The so-called pleasure circuitry called “REWARD” involves a well-known dopamine
pathway in the mesolimbic system that can influence both pleasure and motivation. In simplest terms, the well-established mesolimbic system
is a dopamine circuit for reward. It starts in the ventral tegmental area (VTA) of the midbrain and travels to the nucleus accumbens (Figure 2). It
is the cornerstone target to all addictions. The VTA is encompassed with neurons using glutamate, GABA, and dopamine. The nucleus
accumbens (NAc) is located within the ventral striatum and is divided into two sub-regions—the motor and limbic regions associated with its
core and shell, respectively. The NAc has spiny neurons that receive dopamine from the VTA and glutamate (a dopamine driver) from the
hippocampus, amygdala and medial prefrontal cortex. Subsequently, the NAc projects GABA signals to an area termed the ventral pallidum
(VP). The region is a relay station in the limbic loop of the basal ganglia, critical for motivation, behavior, emotions and the “Feel Good”
response. This defined system of the brain is involved in all addictions –substance, and non –substance related. In 1995, our laboratory coined
the term “Reward Deficiency Syndrome” (RDS) to describe genetic and epigenetic induced hypodopaminergia in the “Brain Reward Cascade”
that contribute to addiction and compulsive behaviors [3,6,41]. Furthermore, ordinary “liking”
of something, or pure pleasure, is
represented by small regions mainly in the limbic system (old reptilian part of the brain). These may be part of larger
neural circuits. In Latin, hedus is the term for “sweet”; and in Greek, hodone is the term for “pleasure.” Thus, the word Hedonic is now
referring to various subcomponents of pleasure: some associated with purely sensory and others with more complex emotions involving
morals, aesthetics, and social interactions. The capacity to have pleasure is part of being healthy and may even extend life, especially if linked to
optimism as a dopaminergic response [42]. Psychiatric illness often includes symptoms of an abnormal inability to experience pleasure, referred
to as anhedonia. A negative feeling state is called dysphoria, which can consist of many emotions such as pain, depression, anxiety, fear, and
disgust. Previously many scientists used animal research to uncover the complex mechanisms of pleasure, liking, motivation and even emotions
like panic and fear, as discussed above [43]. However, as a significant amount of related research about the specific brain regions of
pleasure/reward circuitry has been derived from invasive studies of animals, these cannot be directly compared with subjective states
experienced by humans. In an attempt to resolve the controversy regarding the causal contributions of mesolimbic dopamine systems to
reward, we have previously evaluated the three-main competing explanatory categories: “liking,” “learning,” and “wanting” [3]. That is,
dopamine may mediate (a) liking: the hedonic impact of reward, (b) learning: learned predictions about rewarding effects, or (c) wanting: the
pursuit of rewards by attributing incentive salience to reward-related stimuli [44]. We have evaluated these hypotheses, especially as they
relate to the RDS, and we find that the incentive salience or “wanting” hypothesis of dopaminergic functioning is supported by a majority of the
scientific evidence. Various neuroimaging studies have shown that anticipated behaviors such as sex and gaming, delicious foods and drugs of
abuse all affect brain regions associated with reward networks, and may not be unidirectional. Drugs of abuse enhance dopamine signaling
which sensitizes mesolimbic brain mechanisms that apparently evolved explicitly to attribute incentive salience to various rewards [45].
Addictive substances are voluntarily self-administered, and they enhance (directly or indirectly) dopaminergic synaptic function in the NAc. This
activation of the brain reward networks (producing the ecstatic “high” that users seek). Although these circuits were initially thought to encode
a set point of hedonic tone, it is now being considered to be far more complicated in function, also encoding attention, reward expectancy,
disconfirmation of reward expectancy, and incentive motivation [46]. The argument about addiction as a disease may be confused with a
predisposition to substance and nonsubstance rewards relative to the extreme effect of drugs of abuse on brain neurochemistry. The former
sets up an individual to be at high risk through both genetic polymorphisms in reward genes as well as harmful epigenetic insult. Some
Psychologists, even with all the data, still infer that addiction is not a disease [47]. Elevated stress levels, together with polymorphisms (genetic
variations) of various dopaminergic genes and the genes related to other neurotransmitters (and their genetic variants), and may have an
additive effect on vulnerability to various addictions [48]. In this regard, Vanyukov, et al. [48] suggested based on review that whereas the
gateway hypothesis does not specify mechanistic connections between “stages,” and does not extend to the risks for addictions the concept of
common liability to addictions may be more parsimonious. The latter theory is grounded in genetic theory and supported by data identifying
common sources of variation in the risk for specific addictions (e.g., RDS). This commonality has identifiable neurobiological substrate and
plausible evolutionary explanations. Over many years the controversy of dopamine involvement in especially “pleasure” has led to confusion
concerning separating motivation from actual pleasure (wanting versus liking) [49]. We take the position that animal studies cannot provide
real clinical information as described by self-reports in humans. As mentioned earlier and in the abstract, on November 23rd, 2017, evidence
for our concerns was discovered [50] In essence, although nonhuman primate brains are similar to our own, the disparity between other
primates and those of human cognitive abilities tells us that surface similarity is not the whole story. Sousa
et al. [50] small case found
various differentially expressed genes, to associate with pleasure related systems. Furthermore, the
dopaminergic interneurons located in the human neocortex were absent from the neocortex of nonhuman African apes. Such differences in
neuronal transcriptional programs may underlie a variety of neurodevelopmental disorders. In simpler terms, the system controls the
production of dopamine, a chemical messenger that plays a significant role in pleasure and rewards. The senior author, Dr. Nenad Sestan from
Yale, stated: “Humans have evolved a dopamine system that is different than the one in chimpanzees.” This may explain why the behavior of
humans is so unique from that of non-human primates, even though our brains are so surprisingly similar, Sestan said: “It might also shed light
on why people are vulnerable to mental disorders such as autism (possibly even addiction).” Remarkably, this research finding emerged from
an extensive, multicenter collaboration to compare the brains across several species. These researchers examined 247
specimens
of neural tissue from six humans, five chimpanzees, and five macaque monkeys. Moreover, these
investigators analyzed which genes were turned on or off in 16 regions of the brain. While the differences
among species were subtle, there was a remarkable contrast in the neocortices, specifically in an area of
the brain that is much more developed in humans than in chimpanzees. In fact, these researchers found that a gene
called tyrosine hydroxylase (TH) for the enzyme, responsible for the production of dopamine, was
expressed in the neocortex of humans, but not chimpanzees. As discussed earlier, dopamine is best known for
its essential role within the brain’s reward system; the very system that responds to everything from sex, to
gambling, to food, and to addictive drugs. However, dopamine also assists in regulating emotional responses, memory, and
movement. Notably, abnormal dopamine levels have been linked to disorders including Parkinson’s, schizophrenia and spectrum disorders such
as autism and addiction or RDS. Nora Volkow, the director of NIDA, pointed out that one alluring possibility is that the neurotransmitter
dopamine plays a substantial role in humans’ ability to pursue various rewards that are perhaps months
or even years away in the future. This same idea has been suggested by Dr. Robert Sapolsky, a professor of biology and neurology at
Stanford University. Dr. Sapolsky cited evidence that dopamine levels rise dramatically in humans when we anticipate potential rewards that
are uncertain and even far off in our futures, such as retirement or even the possible alterlife. This
may explain what often
motivates people to work for things that have no apparent short-term benefit [51]. In similar work, Volkow and
Bale [52] proposed a model in which dopamine can favor NOW processes through phasic signaling in reward circuits or LATER processes
through tonic signaling in control circuits. Specifically, they suggest that through its modulation of the orbitofrontal cortex, which processes
salience attribution, dopamine also enables shilting from NOW to LATER, while its modulation of the insula, which processes interoceptive
information, influences the probability of selecting NOW versus LATER actions based on an individual’s physiological state. This hypothesis
further supports the concept that disruptions along these circuits contribute to diverse pathologies, including obesity and addiction or RDS.
Thus, the standard is hedonistic act util.
Prefer additionally –
1) Actor specificity—governments must use util because they don’t have intentions
and are constantly dealing with tradeoffs—outweighs since different agents have
different obligations—takes out calc indicts since they are empirically denied.
2) Extinction outweighs under any framework – moral uncertainty and future
generations
Pummer 15 [(Theron, Junior Research Fellow in Philosophy at St. Anne's College, University of Oxford)
“Moral Agreement on Saving the World,“ Practical Ethics University of Oxford, 5/18/15,
http://blog.practicalethics.ox.ac.uk/2015/05/moral-agreement-on-saving-the-world/]
There appears to be lot of disagreement in moral philosophy. Whether these many apparent disagreements are deep
and irresolvable, I believe there is at least one thing it is reasonable to agree on right now, whatever general
moral view we adopt: that it is very important to reduce the risk that all intelligent beings on this planet
are eliminated by an enormous catastrophe, such as a nuclear war. How we might in fact try to reduce such existential
risks is discussed elsewhere. My claim here is only that we – whether we’re consequentialists, deontologists, or virtue ethicists – should all
agree that we should try to save the world. According to consequentialism, we should maximize the good, where this is taken to be the
goodness, from an impartial perspective, of outcomes. Clearly one thing that makes an outcome good is that the people in it are doing well.
There is little disagreement here.
If the happiness or well-being of possible future people is just as important as
that of people who already exist, and if they would have good lives, it is not hard to see how reducing
existential risk is easily the most important thing in the whole world. This is for the familiar reason that
there are so many people who could exist in the future – there are trillions upon trillions… upon trillions.
There are so many possible future people that reducing existential risk is arguably the most important
thing in the world, even if the well-being of these possible people were given only 0.001% as much
weight as that of existing people. Even on a wholly person-affecting view – according to which there’s nothing (apart from effects
on existing people) to be said in favor of creating happy people – the case for reducing existential risk is very strong. As noted in this seminal
paper, this case is strengthened by the fact that there’s
a good chance that many existing people will, with the aid of
life-extension technology, live very long and very high quality lives. You might think what I have just
argued applies to consequentialists only. There is a tendency to assume that, if an argument appeals to
consequentialist considerations (the goodness of outcomes), it is irrelevant to non-consequentialists. But
that is a huge mistake. Non-consequentialism is the view that there’s more that determines rightness than the
goodness of consequences or outcomes; it is not the view that the latter don’t matter. Even John Rawls
wrote, “All ethical doctrines worth our attention take consequences into account in judging rightness.
One which did not would simply be irrational, crazy.” Minimally plausible versions of deontology and
virtue ethics must be concerned in part with promoting the good, from an impartial point of view.
They’d thus imply very strong reasons to reduce existential risk, at least when this doesn’t significantly involve doing
harm to others or damaging one’s character. What’s even more surprising, perhaps, is that even if our own good (or that of those near and dear
to us) has much greater weight than goodness from the impartial “point of view of the universe,” indeed even if the latter is entirely morally
irrelevant, we may nonetheless have very strong reasons to reduce existential risk. Even egoism, the view that each agent should maximize her
own good, might imply strong reasons to reduce existential risk. It will depend, among other things, on what one’s own good consists in. If well-
being consisted in pleasure only, it is somewhat harder to argue that egoism would imply strong reasons to reduce existential risk – perhaps we
could argue that one would maximize her expected hedonic well-being by funding life extension technology or by having herself cryogenically
frozen at the time of her bodily death as well as giving money to reduce existential risk (so that there is a world for her to live in!). I am not
sure, however, how strong the reasons to do this would be. But views which imply that, if I don’t care about other people, I have no or very
little reason to help them are not even minimally plausible views (in addition to hedonistic egoism, I here have in mind views that imply that
one has no reason to perform an act unless one actually desires to do that act). To be minimally plausible, egoism will need to be paired with a
more sophisticated account of well-being. To see this, it is enough to consider, as Plato did, the possibility of a ring of invisibility – suppose that,
while wearing it, Ayn could derive some pleasure by helping the poor, but instead could derive just a bit more by severely harming them.
Hedonistic egoism would absurdly imply she should do the latter. To avoid this implication, egoists would need to build something like the
meaningfulness of a life into well-being, in some robust way, where this would to a significant extent be a function of other-regarding concerns
(see chapter 12 of this classic intro to ethics). But once these elements are included, we can (roughly, as above) argue that this sort of egoism
will imply strong reasons to reduce existential risk. Add to all of this Samuel Scheffler’s recent intriguing arguments (quick podcast version
available here) that most of what makes our lives go well would be undermined if there were no future generations of intelligent persons. On
his view, my life would contain vastly less well-being if (say) a year after my death the world came to an end. So obviously if Scheffler were right
I’d have very strong reason to reduce existential risk. We
should also take into account moral uncertainty. What is it
reasonable for one to do, when one is uncertain not (only) about the empirical facts, but also about the
moral facts? I’ve just argued that there’s agreement among minimally plausible ethical views that we
have strong reason to reduce existential risk – not only consequentialists, but also deontologists, virtue
ethicists, and sophisticated egoists should agree. But even those (hedonistic egoists) who disagree should have a significant
level of confidence that they are mistaken, and that one of the above views is correct. Even if they were 90% sure that their
view is the correct one (and 10% sure that one of these other ones is correct), they would have pretty
strong reason, from the standpoint of moral uncertainty, to reduce existential risk. Perhaps most
disturbingly still, even if we are only 1% sure that the well-being of possible future people matters, it is
at least arguable that, from the standpoint of moral uncertainty, reducing existential risk is the most
important thing in the world. Again, this is largely for the reason that there are so many people who could exist in the future – there
are trillions upon trillions… upon trillions. (For more on this and other related issues, see this excellent dissertation). Of course, it is uncertain
whether these untold trillions would, in general, have good lives. It’s possible they’ll be miserable. It is enough for my claim that there is moral
agreement in the relevant sense if, at least given certain empirical claims about what future lives would most likely be like, all minimally
plausible moral views would converge on the conclusion that we should try to save the world. While there are some non-crazy views that place
significantly greater moral weight on avoiding suffering than on promoting happiness, for reasons others have offered (and for independent
reasons I won’t get into here unless requested to), they nonetheless seem to be fairly implausible views. And even if things did not go well for
our ancestors, I am optimistic that they will overall go fantastically well for our descendants, if we allow them to. I suspect that most of us alive
today – at least those of us not suffering from extreme illness or poverty – have lives that are well worth living, and that things will continue to
improve. Derek
Parfit, whose work has emphasized future generations as well as agreement in ethics,
described our situation clearly and accurately: “We live during the hinge of history. Given the scientific and
technological discoveries of the last two centuries, the world has never changed as fast. We shall soon
have even greater powers to transform, not only our surroundings, but ourselves and our successors. If
we act wisely in the next few centuries, humanity will survive its most dangerous and decisive period.
Our descendants could, if necessary, go elsewhere, spreading through this galaxy…. Our descendants
might, I believe, make the further future very good. But that good future may also depend in part on us.
If our selfish recklessness ends human history, we would be acting very wrongly.” (From chapter 36 of On What
Matters)