Resolved: The United States ought to substantially reduce its military presence in the West Asia-North Africa region. Two Decades Later, the Enduring Legacy of 9/11 | Pew Research Center - Ev abt Afghanistan and stats after 9/11 Arms Sales: Israeli Arms Sales Israel is currently using US weapons (that we’re basically giving away) to commit atrocities against civilians. - Arms sales to Israel sanction the occupation of Palestinian territory --- current policy poisons the peace process toward a two-state solution [This is outdated obviously, you should look for new cards that are updated to October of this year.] Tolan 16 [Sandy, associate professor at the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism at the University of Southern California, best-selling author, and an award-winning radio and print journalist who reports on and comments frequently about Palestine and Israel, author of the international best-seller, The Lemon Tree, an acclaimed history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, writes currently for the Los Angeles Times, Salon, The Daily Beast, Truthdig, The Los Angeles Review of Books, and Al-Jazeera English, “American Weapons Are Blocking True Peace Between Israel and Palestine,” The Nation, October 18, 2016, https://www.thenation.com/article/american-weapons-are-blocking-true-peace-between-israel-and-pal estine] Washington has finally thrown in the towel on its long, tortured efforts to establish peace between Israel and the Palestinians. You won’t find any acknowledgement of this in the official record. Formally, the United States still supports a two-state solution to the conflict. But the Obama administration’s recent 10-year, $38 billion pledge to renew Israel’s arsenal of weaponry, while still ostensibly pursuing “peace,” makes clear just how bankrupt that policy is. For two decades, Israeli leaders and their neoconservative backers in this country, hell-bent on building and expanding settlements on Palestinian land, have worked to undermine America’s stated efforts—and paid no price. Now, with that record weapons package, the United States has made it all too clear that they won’t have to. Ever. The military alliance between the United States and Israel has long been at odds with the stated intentions of successive administrations in Washington to foster peace in the Holy Land. One White House after another has preferred the “solution” of having it both ways: supporting a two-state solution while richly rewarding, with lethal weaponry, an incorrigible client state that was working as fast as it could to undermine just such a solution. This ongoing duality seemed at its most surreal in the last few weeks. First, President Obama announced the new military deal, with its promised delivery of fighter jets and other hardware, citing the “unshakable” American military alliance with Israel. The following week, at the United Nations, he declared, “Israel must recognize that it cannot permanently occupy and settle Palestinian land.” Next, he flew to Israel for the funeral of Shimon Peres, and in a tribute to the Nobel Prize–winning former Israeli president, spoke of a man who grasped that “the Jewish people weren’t born to rule another people” and brought up the “unfinished business” of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. (Peres is remembered quite differently by Palestinians as an early pioneer of settlement building and the author of the brutal Operation Grapes of Wrath assaults on Lebanon in 1996.) Not long after the funeral, the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu brazenly approved a new settlement deep in the West Bank, prompting the State Department to “strongly condemn” the action as “deeply troubling.” Such scolding words, however, shrivel into nothingness in the face of a single number: 38 billion. With its latest promise of military aid, the United States has essentially sanctioned Israel’s impunity, its endless colonization of Palestinian land, its military occupation of the West Bank, and its periodic attacks by F-16 fighter jets and Apache helicopters using Hellfire missiles on the civilians of Gaza. Yes, Hamas’s crude and occasionally deadly rockets sometimes help provoke Israeli fire, and human rights investigations have found that both sides have committed war crimes. But Israel’s explosive power in the 2014 Gaza war, fueled in large part by American military aid and political support, exceeded that of Hamas by an estimated 1,500-to-1. By one estimate, all of Hamas’s rockets, measured in explosive power, were equal to 12 of the one-ton bombs Israel dropped on Gaza. And it loosed hundreds of those, and fired tens of thousands of shells, rockets and mortars. In the process, nearly 250 times more Palestinian civilians died than civilians in Israel. Now, with Gaza severed from the West Bank, and Palestinians facing new waves of settlers amid a half-century-long military occupation, the United States has chosen not to apply pressure to its out-of-control ally, but instead to resupply its armed forces in a massive way. This means that we’ve finally arrived at something of a historic (if hardly noticed) moment. After all these decades, the two-state solution, critically flawed as it was, should now officially be declared dead—and consider the United States an accomplice in its murder. In other words, the Obama administration has handed Israel’s leaders and the neoconservatives who have long championed this path the victory they’ve sought for more than two decades. THE CHAOS KIDS Twenty years ago, the pro-Israel hard right in America designed the core strategy that helped lead to this American capitulation. In 1996, a task force led by neocons Richard Perle (future chairman of the Defense Policy Board), David Wurmser (future senior Middle East adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney), Douglas Feith (future undersecretary of defense), and others issued a policy paper aimed at incoming Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. “A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm” advocated that Israel walk away from its embrace of the Oslo peace process and Oslo’s focus on territorial concessions. The paper’s essential ingredients included weakening Israel’s neighbors via regime change in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq and “roll back” in Syria and Iran. The authors’ recommendations turned out to be anything but a wish list, given that a number of them would soon hold influential positions in the administration of George W. Bush. As journalist Jim Lobe wrote in 2007: [T]he task force, which was chaired by Perle, argued that regime change in Iraq—of which Feith was among the most ardent advocates within the Pentagon—would enable Israel and the U.S. to decisively shift the balance of power in the region so that Israel could make a “clean break” from the Oslo process (or any framework that would require it to give up “land for peace”) and, in so doing, “secure the realm” against Palestinian territorial claims. In other words, as early as 1996, these neocons were already imagining what would become the disastrous invasion of Iraq in 2003. You could argue, of course, that neither the neocons nor Netanyahu could have foreseen the chaos that would follow, with Iraq nearly cracking open and Syria essentially collapsing into horrific civil war and violence, civilians stranded under relentless bombing, and the biggest refugee crisis since World War II gripping Europe and the world. But you would, at least in some sense, be wrong, for certain of the neocon advocates of regime change imagined chaos as an essential part of the process from early on. “One can only hope that we turn the region into a caldron, and faster, please,” wrote Michael Ledeen of the American Enterprise Institute in National Review during the buildup to the invasion of Iraq. (In 1985, as a consultant to the National Security Council and to Oliver North, Ledeen had helped broker the illegal arms-for-hostages deal with Iran by setting up meetings between weapons dealers and Israel.) “The war won’t end in Baghdad,” Ledeen later wrote, in The Wall Street Journal. “We must also topple terror states in Tehran and Damascus.” The neocons got so much more than they bargained for in Iraq, and so much less than they wanted in Syria and Iran. Their recent attempts—with Netanyahu as their chief spokesman—to block the Obama administration’s Iran nuclear deal, for example, went down in flames. Still, it’s stunning to think just how much their strategy of regime change and chaos helped transform our world and the Greater Middle East for the worse, and to be reminded that its ultimate goal, at least in those early days, was in large part to keep Israel from having to pursue a peace deal with the Palestinians. Of course, there were other benefits the neocons imagined back then as part of their historic attempt to redraw the map of the Middle East. Controlling some of the vast oil reserves of that region was one of them, but of course that didn’t exactly turn out to be a “mission accomplished” moment either. Only the Israeli part of the plan seemed to succeed as once imagined. So here we are 20 years later. All around the Holy Land, states are collapsing or at least their foundations are crumbling, and Israel’s actions make clear that it isn’t about to help improve the situation in any way. It visibly intends to pursue a policy of colonization, permanent human rights violations, and absolute rule over the Palestinians. These are facts on the ground that former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, Netanyahu, the Israeli right wing, and those American neocon visionaries fought so hard to establish. A succession of leaders in Washington—at least those who weren’t designing this policy themselves—have been played for fools. In the two-plus decades since the 1993 Oslo Agreement, which some believed would put Israel and the Palestinians on the path to peace, and that “Clean Break” document which was written to undermine it, the West Bank settler population has grown from 109,000 to nearly 400,000 (an estimated 15% of whom are American). The would-be capital of a Palestinian state, East Jerusalem, is now surrounded by 17 Jewish settlements. Palestinians nominally control a mere 18% of the West Bank (also known as Area A), or 4 percent of the entire land base of Israel/Palestine. The Palestinians’ would-be homeland is now checkered with military bases, settlements, settlers-only roads, and hundreds of checkpoints and barriers—all in a West Bank the size of Delaware, our second-smallest state. An estimated 40 percent of adult male Palestinians, and thousands of children, have seen the insides of Israeli jails and prisons; many of them languish there without charges. Israel has, in essence, created a Jim Crow–like separate and unequal reality there: a one-state “solution” that it alone controls. The United States has done almost nothing about this (other than carefully couched, periodic State Department words of complaint), while its ally marched forward unchecked. Not since James Baker was secretary of state under the first President Bush before—notably enough—the signing of the Oslo accords has any US leader threatened to withhold funds unless Israel stops building settlements on Palestinian land. The phrase “friends don’t let friends drive drunk” no longer applies in US-Israeli relations. Rather, what we hear are regular pledges of “absolute, total, unvarnished commitment to Israel’s security.” Those were, in fact, the words of Vice President Joe Biden during a 2010 visit to Israel—a pledge offered, as it turned out, only a few hours before the Netanyahu government announced the construction of 1,600 new apartments in East Jerusalem. “Unvarnished commitment” in 2016 means that $38 billion for what Obama called “the world’s most advanced weapons technology.” That includes 33 of Lockheed’s F-35 Joint Strike Fighter jets, at $200 million per jet, part of a troubled $1.5 trillion weapons system subsidized by US taxpayers. Other deadly hardware headed for Israel: cargo planes, F-15 fighter jets, battle tanks, armored personnel carriers, a new class of warships whose guided missiles would undoubtedly be aimed directly at Gaza, and more of Lockheed’s Hellfire missiles. If recent history is any indication, you would need to add fresh supplies of bombs, grenades, torpedoes, rocket launchers, mortars, howitzers, machine guns, shotguns, pistols, and bayonets. As part of the agreement, US arms manufacturers will soon supply 100 percent of that weaponry, while Israeli weapons manufacturers will be phased out of US military aid. “It’s a win-win for Israeli security and the U.S. economy,” a White House aide cheerily told the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz. THE (TRUMP) WHITE HOUSE AND ISRAEL Current policy, if that’s the right word, could perhaps be summed up as weapons, weapons, and more weapons, while Washington otherwise washed its hands of what was always known as “the peace process” (despite that fig leaf still in place). Today, functionally, there’s no such process left. And that’s unlikely to change under either a President Clinton or a President Trump. If anything, it may get worse. During the Democratic primary campaign, for instance, Hillary Clinton promised to invite Netanyahu to the White House “during my first month in office” in order to “reaffirm” Washington’s “unbreakable bond with Israel.” In a speech to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), which labels itself “America’s pro-Israel lobby,” she was virtually silent on the Israeli settlement issue, except to promise to protect Israel against its own violations of international law. She attacked Trump from the right, denouncing his once-expressed wish to remain “neutral” on the issue of Israel and Palestine. In the 1990s, as first lady, Clinton had stirred controversy by uttering the word “Palestine” and kissing Yasser Arafat’s widow, Suha, on the cheek. Now she fully embraces those who believe Israel can do no wrong, including Hollywood mogul Haim Saban, who has donated at least $6.4 million to her campaign, and millions more to the Clinton Foundation and the Democratic National Committee. Saban, an Israeli-American whose billions came largely from the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers franchise, describes himself as “a one-issue guy, and my issue is Israel.” Last year, he convened a “secret” Las Vegas meeting with fellow billionaire Sheldon Adelson, the bankroller of a panoply of Republican candidates and a huge supporter of Israel’s settlement project. Their aim: to shut down, if not criminalize, the pro-Palestinian Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement, or BDS. That boycott movement targets cultural institutions and businesses including those that profit from the occupation of the West Bank. Its approach is akin to the movement to impose sanctions on South Africa during the apartheid era. With Saban’s millions destined for her campaign war chest, Clinton wrote to her benefactor to express her “alarm” over BDS, “seeking your thoughts and recommendations” to “work together to counter BDS.” Yet it’s a nonviolent movement that aims to confront Israel’s human rights abuses through direct economic and political pressure, not guns or terror attacks. Would Clinton prefer suicide bombers and rockets? Never mind that the relatively modest movement has been endorsed by an assortment of international trade unions, scholarly associations, church groups, the Jewish Voice for Peace, and Nobel Peace Prize winner Desmond Tutu. At the root of BDS, Clinton has hinted darkly, is anti-Semitism. “At a time when anti-Semitism is on the rise across the world,” she wrote Saban, “we need to repudiate forceful efforts to malign and undermine Israel and the Jewish people.” As for Trump, some Palestinians were encouraged by his statement to MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough that he might “be sort of a neutral guy” on the issue. He told the AP: “I have a real question as to whether or not both sides want to make it. A lot will have to do with Israel and whether or not Israel wants to make the deal—whether or not Israel’s willing to sacrifice certain things.” Yet Trump subsequently fell in line with Republican orthodoxy, pledging among other things to move the US Embassy to Jerusalem, a litmus test for supporters of the hard right in Israel, and a virtual guarantee that East Jerusalem, at the center of the Palestinian dream of statehood, will remain in Israel’s hands. In the short term, then, the prospect for an American-brokered just peace may be as bleak as it’s ever been—even though US officials know full well that a just solution to the conflict would remove a primary recruiting tool for jihadists. For the next four to eight years, American leadership will, by all indications, shore up the status quo, which means combining all that weaponry and de facto acquiescence in Israel’s land grabs with, perhaps, the occasional hand-wringing State Department statement. Saudi Arms Sales SA is currently using US weapons to enforce an oppressive regime. - US arm sales to Saudi Arabia destabilize the Middle East and hurt our credibility – arguments about economic benefits are exaggerated and backwards Lam 19 [Sophia, The Gate, “Ending US Arms Sales to Saudi Arabia”, http://uchicagogate.com/articles/2019/4/9/ending-us-arms-sales-saudi-arabia/] Selling arms to Saudi Arabia has long been controversial because many view the sales as aiding Saudi Arabia in worsening the humanitarian crisis in Yemen. Arms sales to Saudi Arabia have received additional media scrutiny due to the murder of dissident and journalist Jamal Khashoggi by the Saudi government. While Trump has not been fazed by Khashoggi’s murder, calls for arms export restrictions have been growing. In recent years, numerous exporters have dramatically decreased their sales to Saudi Arabia. The United Kingdom transferred $843 million worth of arms in 2016, but only $438 million in 2017. French exports dropped from $174 million in 2015 to $27 million in 2017. These decreases have tightened the flow of weaponry, from missiles to bombs to firearms, into Saudi Arabia. The US arms sales to Saudi Arabia are deeply troubling for three reasons: they exacerbate the humanitarian crisis in Yemen, hurt the American domestic economy and are detrimental to American foreign policy. Shutting the door on Saudi arms sales will allow the United States to stop indirectly promoting conflict orchestrated by Saudi Arabia and to better improve its domestic economy. Ending arms sales will also reassert American authority in its relationship with Saudi Arabia, an allied state that benefits from US partnership without meaningful accountability. Arms Sales and Conflict Escalation Saudi Arabia’s military actions have provoked conflict throughout the Middle East. The Hoover Institute’s Toby Jones explains that Saudi Arabia has become increasingly violent and unpredictable under Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman, who was appointed in 2017. Direct military support has empowered Saudi leaders to lash out recklessly without meaningful accountability, leading thousands of Yemenis, Bahrainis, Syrians and even Saudi citizens to starve and die in attacks. American arm sales embolden Saudi hawks to continue their hardcore military approaches. Since 2011, Saudi Arabia has intervened in the affairs of states like Tunisia, Syria and Qatar. Weapons produced and provided by the US have facilitated the deaths of innocent civilians in Yemen. US bombs produced by Lockheed Martin killed forty children on a school bus in August 2018. A similar strike killed 155 people in a funeral hall, and 97 people were killed at a Yemeni market by a bomb from the United States. While US arm sales are not the sole cause of the geopolitical and humanitarian crisis in Yemen, arms sales certainly enable conflicts to persist and proliferate: recipients of major conventional weapons are 70 percent more likely to engage in conflict than non-recipients. The United States has an antecedent role in Yemen’s current situation through its Saudi arms sales and can take steps towards alleviating Yemenis’ suffering. Ending US arms sales to Saudi Arabia will help resolve the conflict in Yemen in two ways. First, US arms often end up in the wrong hands, sometimes intentionally and sometimes unintentionally. Nima Elbagir of CNN reports that Saudi Arabia has been transferring American weapons to Salafi militias and other factions to escalate the conflict. These groups cannot adequately retain the weapons that they receive. For example, Houthi and Iranian-backed forces have also wielded US weapons in Yemen. The Houthis are currently more militarily sophisticated and better able to strike beyond Yemen’s borders than they were at the start of the war. Ending arms sales will disarm groups on both sides and help stop large quantities of weapons from stoking the flames of conflict. Second, ending arms sales will ground Saudi Arabia’s airstrikes. Other than proxy groups, Saudi Arabia’s main method to wage war and perpetrate genocide is by deploying its US-fueled air force. The United States continually refuels the coalition aircraft that is used to kill a large number of civilians in coalition airstrikes; US-made munitions have been found at numerous attack sites, ranging from hospitals to weddings. In Yemen alone, over half of civilian deaths have been caused by Saudi airstrikes that targeted hospitals, funerals, schools and refugee camps. The Saudis have blockaded food and supplies from entering Yemen in coordination with the United States as well. Ending arms sales will limit Saudi Arabia’s capability to incite violence abroad and stifle civilian populations’ wellbeings. Moreover, Saudi Arabia’s military technology is maintained and upgraded by the United States with almost no assistance from the Saudis. Shifting maintenance costs to Saudi Arabia will help check Saudi aggression. The Economics of Arms Sales Grand claims about the importance of arms sales to maintaining American jobs and boosting the domestic economy are often exaggerated so that private defense companies can keep deals that generate enormous profit. Private sector defense workers only make up about 0.5 percent of the total US labor force and almost none of them depend specifically on arms sales to Saudi Arabia for their livelihood. Even if the deals ended, companies such as Lockheed Martin and Boeing would only lose about 2 percent of revenue. In fact, these arms deals create significantly more job opportunities for Saudis than for Americans. Empirically, Trump’s plan will create nearly ten thousand jobs in Saudi ports but only five hundred US jobs overall. US arms sales to Saudi Arabia have hurt the US economy by diverting funds away from better economic growth opportunities. Investments into military jobs are often less effective than federal spending on education, healthcare, or infrastructure. Professor Heidi Garrett-Peltier of Brown University sums it up: by increasing military spending, America pays an economic opportunity cost that sacrifices the chance to fund programs that are better at job creation. These sectors create many more jobs than defense spending does and can generate better value for the overall economy. If increasing job opportunities and expanding the American economy is the priority, then, military contracts are far from the most effective solution. Defense contractors are economically-driven corporations that seek higher profits. To avoid the political backlash of Saudi arms sales in their pursuits, contractors tend to claim that they are both helping the American economy and assisting the US government’s Saudi relations. Lockheed Martin alone will acquire about $900 million from Saudi sales in 2020 and an additional $450 million contract if Saudi Arabia decides to deploy an American ballistic missile defense system. Contractors like Lockheed Martin are increasing revenue streams at the expense of millions of lives in Yemen. The United States should not continue to prioritize defense contractor business opportunities over its capability to mitigate the humanitarian crisis in Yemen and the continuously dire implications of Saudi Arabia weapons purchases. Ending the arms sales will also lift the veil on the Trump Administration’s disingenuous economic justifications for politically expedient Saudi relations. The Trump Administration has long used economic arguments to cover for their political and military desires. However, the arms sales to Saudi Arabia transcend economics. By maintaining Saudi arms sales, the United States is declining to hold countries accountable in exchange for the comfortable benefits offered by the status quo. The administration has attempted to simplify the arms sales issue to make the controversy appear more palatable. In reality, the arms sales are diverting American dollars to a sector that is relatively ineffective at job development, implicitly condoning human rights abuses that stem from those sales and harming American foreign policy itself. The Foreign Policy of Arms Sales Many supporters of arms sales, including the current US government, are concerned about protecting US influence and stabilizing the Saudi-Iranian relationship. They argue that cutting arms sales would reduce the US’ presence, embolden Iran and allow the Yemen conflict to further spiral out of control. Iran is backing Houthi rebels that are fighting against Saudi Arabia. If the US scales back its commitments to Saudi Arabia, Iran could expand its regional influence and its purportedly violent tendencies. However, as mentioned earlier, it is important to note that US arms sales are themselves perpetuating the conflict by injecting weapons of war into Yemen. Saudi Arabia is the medium through which myriad parties acquire arms. Ending the arms sales will mitigate Saudi Arabia and Iran’s thirsts for power by constraining the conflict’s capacity for violence. While the US government suggests that arms sales incline Saudi Arabia to cooperate with the US’ agenda, the reverse is true. Rather than the United States gaining leverage through arms sales, Saudi Arabia has gained more power instead. Patricia Sullivan of Foreign Policy Analysis writes that, empirically, states that receive military aid are less cooperative than states that do not. States that receive military aid are willing to take advantage of their leverage because the US often refrains from holding allied states completely accountable to their commitments or to American principles. Khashoggi’s murder casts a long shadow in that regard: Trump has chosen to turn a blind eye to Saudi Arabia’s blatant disregard for civil liberties in the professed service of protecting America’s economy. Though not anywhere near as powerful as the US, Saudi Arabia has escaped the Khashoggi situation with its US arms deals intact. The United States continues to play a preeminent role in Saudi weapons acquisitions. European countries have reduced their arms sales in response to Khashoggi’s death while the United States has increased sales. There are multiple actors in the international game but the US has the biggest muscles to flex, economically and diplomatically speaking. Nearly all of Saudi Arabia’s weapons have American parts or are maintained by American technicians. Saudi Arabia cannot find an easy replacement for its US weapons imports: it would take decades for Saudi Arabia to implement different systems and the transition costs of such a switch would be monumental. By ending arms sales, the United States can assert its sway over Saudi Arabia: if Saudi weapons and systems are so reliant on US assistance, perhaps the Saudis should be compelled to comply with new US terms; Such a move would help change the narrative that the US will never use its military aid leverage over other countries. If the United States suspended arms sales to Saudi Arabia, other major arms exporters might either take similar measures or continue to follow their own preexisting scalebacks. End Saudi Arms Sales The United States’ arms sales to Saudi Arabia are flawed in humanitarian, economic and political terms. Rather than search for innovative ways to justify protecting arms sales to Saudi Arabia, the United States can and should work to legitimately foster sustainable peace and stability in the Middle East. In short, the United States ought to reverse its wrongs by ending its arms sales to Saudi Arabia. Doing so will not only allow war-torn Yemen to begin to recover, but would also allow the United States to better revitalize its own economy, and reassert its military leverage and international authority to hold allied states like Saudi Arabia accountable for their agendas and actions. A/2 AFF: blocks ideas A/2 Democracy, a little of terrorism blocks T/DL: The US military still successfully counters the threat of terrorism. - Gause 23: US presence in the region yields important benefits in terms of regional and global influence including coutnerterrorism, - A historical example from 9/11, how there was not another major terrorist attack on that scale. Historical DL: The US in the ASEAN proves that emphasizing democracy too much risks harming strategically important alliances. - Myers 21: Many countries there like Thailand and the Philipines are autocracies so democracy doesn't do much there DL: Democracy doesnt work because: - Fein 23: promoting democracy may aggravate threats to the US which is why the US has supported dictators in some cases. Gause, F. Gregory. “Should We Stay Or Should We Go? The United States And The Middle East.” Survival. 2019. Web. December 10, 2023. <https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/00396338.2019.1662114>. On balance, the American ground-force base in Kuwait, the Fifth Fleet naval base in Bahrain, Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar, Al Dhafra Air Base in the UAE and the access arrangements in Oman provide the United States with a politically and financially sustainable military presence in a part of the world that, as long as oil remains a strategic commodity, will still be central to the world economy. The US presence in the region yields important benefits in terms of regional and global influence. The basing structure is sufficient for a more modest set of American goals in the region. By itself, it cannot support a policy of military intervention and occupation in the interest of democracy promotion or regime change in larger regional states. But it can support a robust counter-terrorism strategy, afford Washington influence with regional governments, and act as a deterrent to efforts by other actors to disrupt or dominate the world’s most important oil patch. This should be enough for an America that should be looking to rock many fewer casbahs in the Middle East. Myers, Lucas. “When U.S. Democracy Promotion Hits A Wall.” Wilson Center. August 17, 2021. Web. December 11, 2023. <https://www.wilsoncenter.org/blog-post/when-usdemocracy-promotion-hits-wall>. Relations with ASEAN, Authoritarians, and Flawed Democracies U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin’s July trip to Southeast Asia brings home the fact that the United States needs ASEAN and its regional allies and partners—both autocracies and flawed democracies—and it has prioritized relations with them over democracy promotion. In Singapore, Secretary Austin firmly reiterated the U.S. role in Southeast Asia, its support for its allies and partners, and criticized China’s aggressive foreign policy under President Xi Jinping. His second stopover in Vietnam featured similarly strong language on China. Perhaps most importantly, his visit to the Philippines secured (for now, at least) the Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA) that enables U.S. troops to operate on Philippine territory and had been threatened repeatedly by President Rodrigo Duterte as part of his administration’s outreach to China. Considering that threatened U.S. Magnitsky sanctions contributed to the scuffle over the VFA, Secretary Austin ignored tensions over Duterte’s backsliding to make only a cursory mention of U.S.-Philippine shared democratic values to instead focus on security ties and other regional threats. Criticizing Duterte and his government for its authoritarianism or the ongoing drug war would, of course, be poor diplomacy and unlikely to encourage the Duterte administration to align with the United States—or shore up its own democracy. It should therefore come as no surprise that Secretary Austin made only a few mentions of promoting democracy during the trip and instead focused on reassuring ASEAN and making short-term gains in alliance and partnership management. From the standpoint of shoring up these relationships, Secretary Austin’s efforts and follow-on work by Secretary of State Antony Blinken were successful but arguably minimized democracy promotion. Fundamentally, there is little appetite for democracy promotion in Southeast Asia or a new Cold War drawn along ideological battle lines. Treaty allies Thailand and the Philippines are respectively an autocracy and a swiftly backsliding democracy—as well as both being relatively warm to China. Vietnam, a crucial security partner, operates under single-party Communist rule. Meanwhile, even Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore are only “partially free” under Freedom House’s rubric— and at the low end of that spectrum at that. No country in ASEAN scores higher than a 59 (Indonesia), and Jakarta itself declined over the past year. Too much emphasis on democracy promotion therefore risks alienating these geostrategic countries. Fein, Bruce. “Stop U.S. Democracy Promotion Abroad.” Washington Times. December 24, 2014. Web. December 11, 2023. <https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/dec/24/bruce-fein-stop-united-statesdemocracypromotion-/>. The U.S. government should cease its arrogant and ill-informed attempts to promote democracy around the globe — whether in Cuba, Iraq, Afghanistan, Communist China, Ukraine, Burma or otherwise. The attempts are extraneous to the purposes of the United States Constitution. Democratically elected leaders can be every bit as tyrannical and aggressive towards the United States as unelected dictators. Hamas, listed as an international terrorist organization, decisively triumphed in Palestinian parliamentary elections in 2006. It has ruled in Gaza since 2007, routinely denies human rights, chronically attacks Israel, and execrates the United States. Egypt’s first democratically elected president, Mohamed Morsi, proved as much or more contemptuous of the rule of law, human rights and amity towards Israel and the United States than his dictatorial predecessor, Hosni Mubarak. Thus, the United States shed only crocodile tears when he was overthrown in a military coup. Adolf Hitler climbed to power through popular elections. His Nationalist Socialists captured more than 37 percent of the vote in 1932 to become the largest party in the Reichstag. Free and fair elections in Saudi Arabia would yield victory for radical Islamic parties with affinity and sympathy for the murderous perpetrators of 9/11. In sum, promoting democracy in foreign lands may aggravate rather than diminish threats to perceived interests of the United States. Thus, we have supported dictators over democrats in Iran, Guatemala, Chile, Indonesia, Argentina, Bahrain, Kuwait, Cambodia, Brazil, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Spain, the Philippines, ad infinitum. In any event, democracy promotion is overwhelmingly a fool’s errand. The process is vastly too complex for us to master or to jump start. Sending nations copies of the Declaration of Independence and Constitution will not do. Words without a reinforcing political culture are worthless. Iraq’s Constitution prohibits laws that contradict the “principles of democracy.” But Salmon Rushdie would be killed if he attempted to sell The Satanic Verses in Baghdad. We also forget that democracy in the United States evolved over more than seven centuries. We cannot expect more from other people. Anglo-American democracy was born with the Magna Carta to check the absolutism of King John in 1215 on the fields of Runnymede. Through succeeding centuries and periodic civil wars, the powers of Parliament strengthened and the powers of the King diminished. Landmarks included the Grand Remonstrance, the beheading of Charles I by Oliver Cromwell, and the English Bill of Rights of 1688. American colonists claimed the rights of British freemen. They soon took on the trappings of democracy with the Virginia House of Burgesses, the Mayflower Compact, the Connecticut Charter Oak, the Maryland Toleration Act, etc. The United States Constitution was not drafted until 1787, more than five centuries after Magna Carta. Democratic principles did not completely triumph until the Civil War Amendments ending slavery and enfranchising blacks, and the Women’s Suffrage Amendment ending their disenfranchisement in 1919. Blacks did not de facto enjoy the right to vote until the Voting Rights Act of 1965, more seven and one-half centuries since the road to democracy began at Runnymede. It was facilitated in the United States by a literate society, a homogeneity of ethnicity, culture and language, natural boundaries, and an unprecedented array of profound and selfless leaders, for example, George Washington and James Madison. Despite these vast advantages, the United States still needed a bloody Civil War and an obscenely prolonged period of Jim Crow before finally achieving substantial national unity and racial justice. In light of our own seven-century journey to democracy, the idea that we can install democratic dispensations in nations that are at the pre-Magna Carta stage of political maturity and lacking our peculiar cultural advantages is delusional. Our miserable track record speaks for itself, including South Vietnam, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Egypt, Burma, South Sudan, Somalia, Syria, and Bahrain. Taiwan moved into a democratic orbit in 1988 after the deaths of dictators Chiang Kai-shek and his son Chiang Ching-kuo, and South Korea did the same after military strongman Chun Doo Hwan left office. But these democratic movements were indigenous. The United States was complacent with reliable, friendly, and anti-democratic leadership. At best, democracy promotion is harmless — like shouting at the weather. At worst, it is counterproductive. Many societies are insufficiently mature, literate, and homogeneous to for its practice. Democracy in these places degenerates into majoritarian, sectarian, or tribal tyrannies notwithstanding formal elections. Russia, Iraq, Syria, Libya, and South Sudan are emblematic. Democracy is given a bad name, which may handicap its return at a more propitious time A/2 Drones NU: Soliman 22, Drones are inevitable---they're being used by state and non-state actors throughout West Asia-North Africa. - Houthi and the UAE are good examples DL: Gordon 23: Drones are key to countering Iran and protecting US troops. Soliman, Mohammed. “Drones Are Re-engineering The Geopolitics Of The Middle East.” Middle East Institute. March 07, 2022. Web. December 10, 2023. <https://www.mei.edu/publications/drones-are-re-engineering-geopolitics-middleeast>. Regional proliferation of drones Regional powers are increasingly employing drone technology. Military strategies are adapting and are likely to involve a mix of state-of-the-art, foreign-made UAVs and locally produced UAV fleets. In an interview with the Middle East Institute on Feb. 8, 2021, U.S. Central Command chief Gen. Kenneth McKenzie cautioned against the spread of lowcost unmanned aerial systems by state and non-state actors. Drones, however, are here to stay and will continue to affect military dynamics and strategic hierarchies in the Middle East and elsewhere. In many cases, non-state actors have now gained drone capabilities that are strong enough to impose strategic decisions on state actors. The Houthi attacks on the UAE are a prime example of these new dynamics. Nation-states in the region should establish a governance regime that sets standards for the use of drones and the transfer of drone technology to non-state actors that aim to destabilize the region. Gordon, Chris. “US Drone Thwarts Militia Attack On American Troops In Iraq.” Air & Space Forces Magazine. December 03, 2023. Web. December 10, 2023. <https://www.airandspaceforces.com/us-drone-thwarts-militia-attack-american-troopsiraq/>. The U.S. conducted a drone strike in Iraq on Dec. 3, as the American troops there continue to be targeted by Iranian-backed militants, U.S. officials said. The strike took place near Kirkuk as the militants were preparing to attack U.S. troops in northern Iraq, a U.S. official told Air & Space Forces Magazine. A half-dozen airstrikes have been carried out by the U.S. against Iranian-aligned militias in Iraq and Syria in roughly five weeks, but this appears to be first one known to have been carried out by a drone. Images posted on social media of the aftermath show the remnants of a variant of a Hellfire missile amid bodies of dead fighters. Five militants were killed and the drone they were preparing to launch at U.S. forces was destroyed, Deputy Pentagon Press Secretary Sabrina Singh said. The U.S. notified Iraqi security forces of the strike and they responded and confirmed the deaths, she added. American forces in Iraq and Syria have come under attack by militia groups at least 76 times since Oct. 17, a U.S. military official said. At first, the U.S. limited its strikes to Iran-backed militias in Syria, even when some of the militia attacks occurred in Iraq, to avoid roiling politics in Baghdad. But now the U.S. appears to be more willing to take action in Iraq to protect its roughly 2,500 troops in the country. The militants who were targeted in the drone attack belonged to Harakat Hezbollah al-Nujaba, an Iraqi group founded by the militant leader Akram al-Kabbi, said Michael Knights of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. That group has been designated as a terrorist organization by the U.S. State Department. The Biden administration has repeatedly pressed Iraqi leaders to have their forces stop the militia attacks. But the Iraqi government’s seeming inability to do so has prompted the U.S. to take action, to the consternation of the authorities in Baghdad. “These defensive strikes on attack cells provide very close connection between crime and punishment which makes it very easy for the Biden administration to claim it is self defense,” Knights said. In their effort to encourage the Iraqis to act, President Biden, Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III and Secretary of State Antony Blinken have called Iraqi prime minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani. “The secretary called on the Iraqi government to fulfill its commitments to protect all installations hosting U.S. personnel at its invitation and to pursue those responsible for attacks on U.S. personnel in Iraq,” the State Department said in a readout of Blinken’s Dec. 1 call with Sudani. The Iraq attack was not the only military action the U.S. took Dec. 3. The U.S. military also responded when Houthi rebels in Yemen launched missiles and drones at ships in the Red Sea. The USS Carney guided-missile destroyer shot down multiple drones and missiles in the span of a few hours as it attempted to come to the aid of the several commercial vessels in distress, according to U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM). “As we are working to stabilize the region, Iran is raising tensions,” Austin said during a speech at the Reagan National Defense Forum in Simi Valley, Calif. on Dec. 2. “And after attacks against U.S. personnel in Iraq and Syria, our forces repeatedly struck facilities in Iraq and eastern Syria used by Iran’s IRGC and by militias affiliated with Iran. We will not tolerate attacks on American personnel. And so these attacks must stop. And until they do, we will do what we need to do to protect our troops—and to impose costs on those who attack them.” A/2 Israel-Hamas War DL: Kenney-Shawa 23’: Israeli occupation could continue without US backing. - The US only accounts for 1% of Israel's GDP and Israeli arms sales are well w/o the US DL: Todd 23’: Strategic partnership with Israel is essential to US foreign policy in WANA and preventing Iran's nuclear proliferation. - A world where fewer countries have nuclear capabilities is a better one. Kenney-Shawa, Tariq. “Cutting US Aid To Israel Doesn't Go Nearly Far Enough.” The Nation. August 21, 2023. Web. December 09, 2023. <https://www.thenation.com/article/world/united-states-cutting-israel-aid-notenough/>. This raises the question: If the US were to go as far as leveraging military aid on the condition that Israel end the occupation and allow Palestinian self-determination, would Israel acquiesce? Well, let’s look at some facts. Israel’s per capita gross domestic product is over $50,000— similar to that of Canada and Finland and higher than that of France and Japan. US aid accounts for only about 1 percent of Israel’s GDP. In addition to its developed economy, Israel fields one of the most well-trained and equipped armies in the world and boasts a rapidly expanding domestic military-industrial complex. In 2022 alone, Israeli arms sales ranging from unmanned combat drones to advanced spyware amounted to over $12.5 billion. So the answer is: No, the withdrawal of US aid would not place any particular economic pressure on Israel. It can fund the occupation very well on its own. The case that Israel simply no longer needs US aid in order to sustain its healthy economy or its monstrous qualitative military edge over all regional threats is clear. But even more important to consider is the reality that, at its core, Israeli apartheid is not about money. It’s about a much more inexhaustible resource: ideology. Israel’s leaders are now more determined than ever to live out their extreme expansionist settlercolonial visions no matter the cost Lopez, Todd. “Defense Official Says U.S. Remains Committed To Middle East.” U.S. Department of Defense News. June 05, 2023. Web. December 10, 2023. <https://www.defense.gov/News/News-Stories/Article/Article/3417495/defenseofficial-says-us-re mains-committed-to-middle-east/>. The preferred method to ensure Iran doesn't get a nuclear weapon, Stroul said, is the diplomatic course. But that has to be backed up with a willingness and a capability to use force, if necessary. “Secretary [Lloyd J.] Austin's job is to ensure that should President Biden ask for the military plans and options, he's ready to provide them,” she said. “And my job as the deputy assistant secretary of defense is to make sure that we're on top of that.” Part of ensuring a credible military option, Stroul said, is the strong U.S. relationship with Israel. “Our partnership in the Department of Defense with the Israeli ministry of defense and the Israeli Defense Forces is incredibly important,” Stroul said. “In fact, it's critical. So, we are working every day to deepen and increase our military cooperation with Israel.” The work includes, among other things, intelligence sharing and military exercises. In January, for instance, the U.S. and Israel concluded the largest military exercise the nations have held together: Juniper Oak 23.2. More than 7,000 personnel participated in the all-domain exercise, which was meant to ensure the U.S. and Israel are able to work together militarily in an emergency, Stroul said. “It's also to make sure that both our other friends and allies in the region and our adversaries are taking note of the critical work we're doing together to be prepared should military force be required,” she said.
